Chasing Red

  Nick Thacker

  Kevin Ikenberry

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Peacemaker

  Help!

  Also by Kevin Ikenberry

  About Kevin Ikenberry

  Also by Nick Thacker

  About Nick Thacker

  Chapter One

  THE SUNBATHED LINE OF TOURISTS trailed by, each of them looking for a special sort of escape from their dreadful lives. He grinned as he lay flat on the top of his board, the gentle throbbing of the Atlantic Ocean alerting him to the coming of a larger wave. He watched them, the 9-5ers, all of them enjoying the waning days of their coveted vacations they’d scrapped and saved to produce, knowing that all of them were searching for something and knowing none of them would find it. They would experience a temporary relief, then they'd trudge the many miles and a lot of money back, back to the desks and the meetings and the nonstop emails.

  There was something to be said for the type of life he now found himself living, even though he hadn't exactly chosen the timing of it.

  Life outside the Army had proven much more difficult for Gareth Red than he'd believed possible. He'd figured not having a First Sergeant or any officers barking orders at him would be easy to get used to, but the solace, the loneliness of it all, surprised him.

  He even thought he might start to miss it someday. The order, the controlled chaos, the endless trainings and assignments. The camaraderie, even when he was all but isolated in a forward operating base in some third-world country. He thought back to how he'd gotten here, how he'd become a surfing people-watcher, wasting away on the beach. Things hadn’t gone quite the way he’d planned when he’d raised his right hand seven years before.

  It had all started with the mission. He’d completed countless missions in more than a dozen countries, but the mission was the one that had changed everything. It had given him the hope of turning his skill set and passion into something profitable. Signing his life away to the mercenary contractors and private security firms wasn’t really his cup of adrenaline, so he opted for a more personal approach.

  Or, to be more accurate, the approach had opted for him. They’d given him enough money to turn whatever bad choices he’d made in his past nothing but memories, and — best of all — he could work alone. No teams, no contractors, no bosses. They’d found him during a training session at a well-hidden complex deep in the forests of North Carolina, sending word through the higher-ups that they'd requested his services.

  And his particular skill set.

  He was one of the best snipers the Army had, and he was only getting better. His confirmed kill count was high enough to turn heads wherever he found himself in a new place on the other end of a fresh PCS. His reputation, it seemed, often preceded him.

  Looking around at the pristine beach, Red watched a family pile into a rented Jeep, the sand stuck to each of their blinding white legs. They argued over something inconsequential, then packed up the rest of their beach gear and drove away.

  Red tried to recall the events, in order, that led to his laying on a surfboard off the coast of Puerto Rico, floating away the days of sunshine.

  The Army knew everything about his mission to Russia, because they'd allowed him to go in the first place. The orders had come from above, as if someone up there was doing a favor for someone at the bank that had hired him. It had gone through the proper channels, even getting delivered to him personally by the lead intelligence officer at the camp. He’d believed this sort of thing was a common practice. Turns out, the Army’s blind-eye toward contracting operations wasn’t as blind as he’d been led to believe.

  No, it hadn’t been the mission itself that had caused the problem: it was accepting money under the table for accomplishing the mission they didn't like.

  It was a lot of money, he reminded himself. Enough money.

  Enough that the decision had been a simple one, even considering the risks.

  His service to the United States of America was over. He'd tried to argue, but it was fruitless. With trumped up charges of 'conduct unbecoming a soldier in the United States Army, failure to disclose foreign travel, and failure to disclose gifts from a foreign entity,' Gareth Red went from army sniper to just another vacationing civilian trying to find their place in the world in less than a month.

  The difference was that unlike the freckled-white families that frequented this beach, he didn’t have a job stateside to get back to. He was here on a permanent vacation, nothing but the easy Puerto Rican pace of life to look forward to.

  He had no one to tell, no family to fill in. There was no dog or cat or hamster to worry about, and there was no sense trying to keep the off-base apartment his Army paycheck used to pay for. All he’d had to do was meet with his attorney, make an escape plan, and process his clearing paperwork. The attorney had offered the suggestion of Puerto Rico — ‘the un-statiest state in the United States,’ the man had said, his voice modulating the way it might if the sentence was one he’d rehearsed a thousand times but never had the opportunity to use.

  Red hadn’t wanted to disappear, as he wasn’t a criminal. He didn’t need the attorney’s recommended ex-skip tracer’s help in creating a new identity, a new life, a new history. He didn’t want to ‘start over.’ He wanted to start whatever was next. Location, with his lack of connections, was optional as long as it was warm.

  The Army hadn't come after the million he'd made in Russia. They could have, he supposed, but that might have raised a stink that no one wanted. There would have been questions as to the nature of the request of one of their soldiers’ time, and certain powers-that-be would have insisted on a full disclosure from Gareth’s direct bosses. He assumed it was all a mess they’d rather not have to clean up. Instead, they told him to keep his mouth shut, leave the army behind, and he could keep the money.

  Red did as he was told, and the interest-generating million-plus US dollars in his Puerto Rican bank account thanked him for it.

  He pressed his hands forward and let the cool waters submerge his arms, allowing it to lap up onto his shoulders. It was hot today, like it was every day, but there was nowhere else on Earth he could think of that he’d rather be.

  Once again his mind shifted to the recent past. He'd walked out of the personnel section at Fort Benning, Georgia with his discharge orders and a half-hearted ‘good luck’ from the staff before they cashiered out the next sonuvabitch who’d failed to learn that the army was an endless feeding machine. It was a 24/7 meat grinder, and it seemed as though an endless amount of recruits were learning daily that they were little more than the midwestern-raised, corn-fed beef. He'd be nothing but a memory to his former buddies in a few weeks at most. He didn’t fault them for it — he’d known them all about as well as an ant would know the other ants in its colony.

  As their official song said, the Army kept ‘rolling along.’

  Red had made sure that the gear he wanted to keep was packed in a portable shipping container and ready to follow wherever he went. Everything else — not much — was left behind and sold to the first bidder. He'd driven his Jeep Wrangler to a car lot near the Hartsfield-Atlanta International Airport and sold it for ten-thousand cash.

  He had Puerto Rico in mind thanks to his attorney, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of anyone or anything he knew of that was actually from there. Maybe a type of rum? He thought he’d had Puerto Rican rum before. He was sure he’d never met a Puerto Rican person. He’d walked into the airport and asked the man at the desk what flights to Puerto Rico were leaving soon.

  There was only one.

  He ended up with a first-class ticket to San Juan, Puerto Rico and spent a week wandering the north coast of the island before gravitating to Carolina and Isla Verde Beach. Another week passed and he found the kind of place he'd always wanted. Secluded and facing the ocean just off PR-187 about a half-mile from the eastern fence line of the Luis Munoz Marin airport, the price had been a little steep, but for a lonely soldier wanting nothing more than to be left alone, it was a perfect spot, and with a little more than a million bucks sitting in a bank account, the purchase was a no-brainer for him.

  Within days of landing on a new island he was the proud new owner of an acre of land, including the beachfront, with a small house and two sheds. The smaller one at the water's edge held his stand-up paddleboard and other surfing and beach paraphernalia while the larger one nearer to the house held the not-forgotten tools of his trade. The portable container he’d put the majority of his gear inside arrived three days after he'd closed on the property. The advantage to living in Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, was that those tools didn’t have to be registered with the local authorities, which was just as well.

  With everything he thought he'd ever wanted surrounding him, Red hadn't expected that he'd be miserable inside of two months. It was a pain, an actual physical pain, d eep down. He’d experienced something similar years ago, but this was different. It was hollower, emptier, as if he was just one full meal away from satisfaction, but no matter how much he ate he couldn’t get there. One morning, though, he watched a family of tourists messing around with surf boards in the pitiful surf just east of his property. They’d laughed and giggled for hours, even when they’d started to sunburn like cooked lobsters. Red had to admit that it looked like fun, and he’d stood up and headed to San Juan with his first real purpose in weeks.

  Surfing provided the solace Red needed to piece things together. Something about sitting in the sun, the waves lapping against his legs, helped him feel like he was almost satisfied. He'd never been good at it, but after he'd purchased a beat-up old Jeep and a couple of boards, he made the trek to the surf spots every day. His own abode sported a great view of the surf, but it wasn’t the type of surf anyone wanted to surf on, ironically. So he drove or hiked every day, trying to find the best breaks around.

  The Chatara and La Ocho breaks were fun, but the real surfers gathered at Aviones off Isla Verde Beach. When the surf was up, it was a fast, left-hand ride like Pipeline in Hawaii. When it was down and glassy, it was something he could practice on and feel almost like a real surfer. He'd taken more than a few falls there and been the cause of a few scattered jeers and covered smiles amongst the competitive local surfers. He’d been around enough that a few of the surfers recognized him and even gave him the wide berth most surfers gave newbies. They didn’t want to get hurt by a gangly white kid on a beat up surfboard. The locals seemed nice enough. Most of them, though, like the tourists, would leave by late morning even if the surf was up. They had real jobs and real lives to get back to, Red had assumed. On his second trip to Aviones, he'd figured out the real reason.

  Chapter Two

  ISLA VERDE — ‘THE GREEN ISLAND’ — Beach was gorgeous and in the middle of the most prosperous areas of San Juan. The beach itself was really three separate, distinct beaches. Two of the three were the typical tourist fare: sprawling high-rise hotels and beachfront tiki bars stretching out to where the sand met the surf. Bikini-bottomed blondes and their muscled boy-toys sporting plenty of non-functional strength. Puerto Rican street vendors selling fresh-squeezed juices and tacos and all manner of wares, constantly encroaching on the protected resort district’s territory. The crowds were thick, noisy, and stifling. Not Gareth’s scene.

  But Gareth preferred the third beach of Isla Verde. It was calmer most days, especially when the surf was glassy. But when the ocean rose and offered itself up to the surfing gods, it was the best surfing spot on the island. The surf break was more secluded, requiring a bit of a walk from the main strip, and parking could be rough. All it took was a perfect weather forecast with forecast wave height’s in the six foot range and the place would crawl with surfers by sunrise.

  All of those things were perfectly acceptable to Gareth. After all, he wasn’t on a schedule — there was nothing to do to fill his days other than surf and eat, and he didn’t mind a bit of an extra workout. Between the walk and the paddling, he’d regained some of the strength he’d lost when daily physical training was no longer mandated. In a short amount of time, Red felt better about his situation, save for one thing.

  The thing that bugged him was that there were gangs here — Puerto Rico was one of the many Caribbean and South American destinations that constantly struggled with violence. Their main export was tourism, but the source of their income was also the source of their high crime rate.

  One gang in particular liked to surf, and they liked to do it here. Red hadn't caught their name or anything distinctive about them, but they showed up like clockwork by noon every day. At first he'd thought they were merely a group of rich kids driving their parents' expensive sports cars, but when he’d seen them force the tourists and other surfers out of the water with raised fists and not-so-subtle threats of violence, he realized that they were much more than spoiled children. They’d never brandished any weapon, but Gareth knew from experience that weapons were certainly within the gang’s reach and they’d love the chance to use them.

  Red was typically an early-morning surfer, preferring the quieter, calmer winds and crowds, but today he’d gotten a late start. Staying up until 2am watching reruns of M*A*S*H had seemed like a good idea at the time. Sleeping late, Red decided to surf at the last possible moment to catch the morning tide. He’d made it here in time to catch some of the better crests, but he looked up and noticed that it was well past noon.

  He considered his options, seeing the gang arrive. From his board, the idle Thursday morning beach traffic thinned. Red watched them come and turned his head over his right shoulder looking back at the ocean. There was a great set of waves coming in and he wanted to stay in the water for one last wave when the rich kids arrived and the frightened locals paddled ashore and hurried to their cars.

  Red focused on the coming set. The first wave looked larger and faster than anything he’d seen that morning. Sunlight caught the eastern edge of the wave like a flash of diamonds as it rose toward him. The water around him now clear of surfers, Red had the place to himself. He turned the board to the best possible entry point and paddled like hell to catch the wave as it broke hard to his left. Heart pounding, Red realized the wave was larger than anything he'd surfed before as he dropped in — at least seven or eight feet. He’d been training, practicing for this. I’m ready, he thought. I’m more than ready.

  He felt the reassuring and welcome rush of adrenaline rush into his body, like an old friend. As the board bit into the wave's face, Red stood and leaned into the turn to cross the breaking wave’s face. He'd made it halfway across when the reality of what he'd done struck him. He was too low, and too slow, to avoid to wave breaking onto him.

  Oh shit! What in the hell am I —

  The moment of panic was his downfall. Red tumbled into the water, felt the ankle strap snap viciously as the board pulled through the breaking wave. His body was traveling one direction, still underwater, and his board slid across the surface of the water, heading another direction. He pulled his foot back, catching a bit of sand from the shallow bottom, then he surfaced behind the wave, laughing and inhaling a deep breath of fresh sea air.

  Okay, he thought. So maybe I’m not ready for this.

  Collecting the board took an extra second or two, but he draped an arm over it and pushed it toward shore, walking on the sandy bottom as the water grew shallower. Three of the rich boys were waiting for him. He heard them derisively calling out to him in Spanish before he'd even closed the distance. He didn't speak the language, but it wasn’t difficult to understand what they were attempting to communicate in a not-so-pleasant manner.

  He came up from the water and they quieted, likely waiting for him to get even closer. At six-four with a lean muscular frame that he had no plans of changing, Red wasn't some pasty-faced tourist. Red ran a hand through his now-shaggy hair as he stood the board on its end and disconnected the ankle strap.

  "Hey! This is our beach, man." The voice came from the center of the three men. His short black hair was stylishly shaved on one side and immaculately gelled on the other. Diamond earrings glistened in both earlobes. Based on the posturing of the two bigger men at his side, gently swaying with their superior’s words, this little guy was the leader of this particular pack. "Get the fuck off our waves, gringo."

  Red put on a smile, something he’d been working on for the past few months. Can’t argue with a smile, he thought. Even if it’s forced. He brought the board up under his left arm but made no attempt to stop and talk. Knowing when to get out of Dodge was a critical skill. "Yeah, sorry about that," he said. He tried — a little, at least — to make the words sound genuine.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11