“We are coming into SRQ now, we will be landing within minutes.” I sat up and looked out the window at what I used to know. The airport got bigger but the sun is still just as bright. The plane touched down and went into a private hanger that my family still owned for friends to fly out to our estate. The engines shut off and I grabbed the duffle bag I took from my mothers. The door opened and I stepped back out into what I swore I was never coming back to. The pilot reached his hand out to me as I stepped onto the ground. “I will await your return sir.” I shook his hand and thanked him, walking towards the SUV parked at the other end. The doors opened and another man stepped out, taller than the SUV. I knew exactly who it was and why he was here. “You know you’re not going to do this alone right?” I dropped the bag on the ground and opened my arms to give him a hug. “I’m guessing mom called you and had you fly in?” He pulled me close and squeezed me tight. “I got word from her that you were on the warpath.” He let go and pushed me back, getting a look at me. “Come on man, I’ll explain on the ride.” His driver opened the door and then tried to grab my bag. “No thanks, I got this.” I picked up the bag and walked around to open the back and toss it in. I closed it and walked back to the other side and climbed inside. I pulled the door closed and the vehicle started moving. “What’s in the bag?” I knew he was going to ask, he wasn’t going to like the answer but I needed him to know. “Just some gear.” He looked up at his driver and then over to me. “Is it what I think it is?” I shook my head yes and he nodded with me. “As your brother, I feel it’s right for you to use his gear, he trained you.” The driver looked up into the rear view mirror as he said that, his reaction didn’t sit right with me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent a text message to an old contact of mine.
“D, I’m back and I’m compromised, heading south on Washington from the airport, family crest on the vehicle.”
It took a few minutes to get a response but when he did it was simple. “Kk” I knew he was going to meet up with us shortly so I only had a few minutes to ask questions. “Where is your driver taking us?” He looked around the area and then leaned forward, “Driver, this isn’t the route I instructed you to take.” The driver looked into the rearview mirror once more and his passenger seat partner started to sit up more. “There is a roadblock ahead, we are taking another route sir.” My brother sat back and threw up his hands. “It’s always something in this town, now I remember why we left.” We pulled up to a red light and stopped, I could see down the road three large white SUVs coming this way, I knew it was my contact. “Driver put the vehicle in park, I need to get something out of my bag.” He didn’t move and then my brother repeated the same statement. The driver put it in park and I reached behind my back for my pistol as I leaned towards my brother. “Open the door and get out.” As soon as the man in the passenger seat made his move for his pistol I drew mine and put a bullet through the head rest and into him. I aimed over to the driver and fired another round into him as well. “OUT!” I flung the door open, moving to the back to grab my bag as my contact rolled up. “Can we please move before the cops show up!?” My brother stood in shock as I grabbed his arm pulling him towards the other vehicles. “Get in!” I pushed him inside and climbed in closing the door as we sped off down the road. “Always good to see you D, sorry it’s on such short notice and not on better terms.” He turned around with a cigar in his hand and gave a smile to my brother and I. “Comfy? Good! Now what the hell is going on my man??” I looked at my brother who had his hands on his face. “Listen to me.” I grabbed my brother’s arm and turned him to look at me. “Anyone that you trusted, anyone you told anything to is now considered a threat. The only people we can trust are the pilot who flew me in and these guys. Do you understand me?” My brother shook his head yes, took a deep breath and then began asking questions.
We circled around the town to get back to my contacts hideout where I had another stash of supplies. I explained to my brother everything that has happened so far and what I was going to do. “Do you really think you can pull this off?” I looked down at my phone as the lock screen lit up, the picture of my wife and I on vacation in the mountains. “I have to see this through, I have to make this right.” My brother got what I was getting at and started to understand the caliber of the situation. “What I need from you, is the old you, I need the you that I grew up with back. Forget all that crap the psychologists said and told you to do, I need YOU back and I need it now.” We pulled into the hideout on the bad side of town and my contacts crew started coming from around corners. “Alright my guys, listen here, this area is monitored around the clock, no matter what happens, no one is going to get to you.” He looked right at me, “The code to the building is still the same. No one has been in there since you left, best of luck you two.” We opened the doors and climbed out, I grabbed my bag from the middle seat and then closed the door. The three SUVs pulled away and went down the road. My brother looked around the area at all the guys who were watching us. “So how exactly do you know this guy?” I threw the bag over my shoulder and walked to the door, pushing in the code to open it. “I did his Chemistry course in college.” The locks turned and the door opened. “Right, Chemistry, college, got it.” We walked inside and the lights automatically turned on. I waited for my brother to get in the room and then pushed the door closed, the locks turning as it sealed us inside. “Come on, we need to get ready.” I opened another door that had a keypad on it, getting us into the main part of the building. I hit the light switch on the side of the wall, showing me everything I left from my past. “Dude, why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” The door closed behind us and he was looking around the room at everything I had hidden away. “Didn’t you ever read my book?” I looked at him as he made an embarrassed face, “It’s on my nightstand ok! I’ll read it when I get home.” We both laughed about it and I set my bag on the table in the center of the room. I took a deep breath and opened it, pulling out the file my friend in Mexico gave me. “This is where we are going. My friend was able to get a fix on transmissions coming in and out of there, this is where the target is at.” My brother flipped the file around to look at it across the table, “This is deep man, he is going to have that place on full alert. You’re talking about half a mile to go through before we get to that building.” I turned around to a locker on the wall and opened it, pulling out two Ghillie suits and setting them on the table. “They won’t even see us coming.” He looked at them and then at me. “Now I trained in one of these and know how to use them, do you?” I shook my head left to right, “Should have read my book man.” He rolled his eyes and grabbed one of them. “So we have the suits, do we have anything else for them?” I hit the light switch next to the locker, turning on the lights inside the cage. “I’ve got everything and anything you could possibly want.” His eyes got wide as the caged room lit up and the walls covered in guns started to become clear.
After a few hours of gathering what we would need and going over our plan, we managed to have everything packed and ready to go. “So when are we going to push on him?” My brother looked around at everything we had and then the clock on the wall. ”Now” I reached inside a small key safe on the wall and grabbed a key. “Get your things, we will take them in the night.” I picked up my gear off the table and went through the back door of the room. “Throw your stuff in the bed and help me get this started again.” I opened the hood of the old pick up and began filling the oil pan. “You got gas for this thing?” My brother was fumbling through tarps and shelves looking for it. “There is a jerry can under the workbench, should have enough to get us to the gas station down the road.” He got it open and poured it into the tank, closing the gas cap quickly. “You better make sure this gas station is open, you wont get but maybe fifteen miles from that.” I put the oil cap back on and closed the hood. “Let’s go, this should work.” I opened the driver door and my brother climbed in next to me on the other side. I turned the key over, the truck sputtered for a second and then turned over, pushing out carbon build up. “Ok, we are off.” I pushed the garage door opener on the visor and we pulled off into the dark street and I closed it as we pulled away. “The gas station is right around the corner from here, we will still be safe from any eyes there.” The truck took a moment to get up to its working potential but as we pulled into the gas station it began to sputter and die on us. “Fifteen miles may have been a bit overzealous.” My brother was chuckling under his breath as we stalled out and coasted into the gas pump. “Stay put, I’ll be right back.” My brother sat up straight and started looking in all directions. “Hey, a bit more subtle man.” He slouched back down in the seat but kept looking around. I walked up to the door and it opened with a chime. “Sorry we are closed” I walked up to the man behind the counter who was counting his cigarettes. “What ever happened to always being opened if I needed it?” He turned around and his eyes got wide. “HEY MAN! When did you move back to town?!” He reached across the counter to shake my hand. “I’m only in town for the night, tying up a nasty loose end.” I handed him sixty dollars and told him to keep it. “You ain’t bringing it back here are you?” I smiled and shook my head no as I pointed to the cigarettes behind him. “No, this one is outside of town, outside of your control.” He handed the cigarettes to me and a lighter to go with it. “Well, you know you always have a home here. Tell your brother in the truck hi for me and don’t be a stranger.” I shook his hand again and a tear fell from his eye. “Say hi to your wife for me will you?” He shook his head yes and pushed me off. “Good seeing you again my old friend, stay safe.” I walked out the door and back to the truck, pulling the nozzle and opening the gas can. “Will we get enough to make it?” I pulled the handle and flipped the latch down. “Yeah man, we got enough to make.” I looked off into the night sky, I knew that this night was going to be a long one. The latch popped and the nozzle stopped pumping. I put it up, closed the gas tank and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “I thought you gave that up?” I clicked the lighter twice and took a long drag, holding it as I turned the truck over. “Ya I thought I did too.”
Two hours later we pulled off the road onto a county service road. “Come on, we are going to stalk in.” He opened the door and reached into the bed for his gear. I pulled the lucky I flipped from the pack, crumpling it and tossing it back into the cab. I lit it and began to unpack as well. Within minutes my brother and I were in full ghillie suits with our weapons at the ready. “We have only a few hours before the sun comes up. We need to be done and gone before then.” He looked around for a direction to where we were going. “How do you plan on getting away with this in the end?” I began walking off the road through the trees. “The same way I got away with it in the beginning.” He was silent for a few minutes until he heard the water running. ‘How did you get away with it in the beginning?” I pulled the bushes aside to give us access to the small river. “Spoiler alert from the book, boot prints get lost when walking in a river.” He chuckled slightly and nodded his head. “Alright, I’m tracking.” We dragged our legs with the water to avoid splashing as we walked up the small river. I knew this river from when I first started hunting out here. “As we come up to this bend, we are going to have to get low. There is a guard sitting in the trees.” We got out of the river and crawled along the sand until we saw the guard stand. “We can sneak past him, he won’t see us if we move into the grass.” My brother shifted and pulled his rifle to his shoulder. “Yeah that’s a no go for me, just means another person to deal with on the way out.” I pulled my rifle up and shouldered it as well. “Then let’s make sure there is no one else in the trees before you shoot.” We scanned the area and found another guard on the far side, behind the building in another tree stand. “You take the one close, I’ll get the one on the other side.” I felt his gaze shift to me and knew what he was going to say. “Read my book, trust me, I can hit this guy.” My brother pulled the bolt on his rifle and loaded a round as I did the same. “3…2…1…” Pew! The grass in front of us moved from the muzzle blast. I heard the one close to us hit the ground as the one on the other side fell to the ground too. “Let’s move, we only have an hour before the sun rises.” We got up slowly and kept a lower crouched movement as we got closer to the property. “Hold up, look at the roof.” My brother pulled his rifle up and looked to the roof as I looked around the building. “Man, this guy has some major paranoia issues.” I looked around the building and saw two more men patrolling the grounds. “If there are two in the trees, two on the ground outside, then I’m thinking there are two others inside with him.” I pulled my eyes back from the scope and looked over at my brother. “Either we take these two now, or we just walk out and get captured to get inside.” My brother looked back at me with confusion, “Is it even a decision? We take those two now.” I put my eyes back to the scope and watched for a few more minutes. “When they come back around, call it.“ After another minute the two men came face to face on their walking path. “Left”, they stopped to talk for a second. “3…2…1…” PEW! My brother shot before I did, his round dropping the first guy and then my heart began to race. The guy was shocked and before he could make any movements my round struck him in the head, clearing the area. My brother started to get up as I kept looking around. “Wait!” He stopped and started to get lower again. “There is another, he is coming from the side now.” I pulled the botl and pushed another round into the chamber. “I got him.” He walked out and just as he turned the corner to see the other two on the ground, PEW! The bullet struck him in the chest and he hit the ground. “Move now.” I got up with my brother and we ran through the opening with our rifles at the ready. As we came up to the side of the house, We both slung our rifles to our backs and drew our pistols.
I put the side of my head against the door to listen. “I only hear one voice.” My brother looked over his shoulder and then around the corner. “Go in a stacked entry or split entry?” I looked behind me and around the open area. “Stacked, I’ll take point.” I flipped the safety off and reached forward with my left hand to turn the knob, it was locked. I turned to look at my brother “Its loc-” At that moment I heard the lock turn and the door opened inward. Another man stepped outside and I quickly grabbed him, spun him to the front of me and pushed inside. “MOVE!” My brother came in behind me and cleared my back. I pushed the man forward and he hit the floor, leveling my handgun to the man behind the desk. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He moved one of his hands under the desk. “HANDS UP!” I moved closer to him. BANG! My brother killed the man on the ground. “Alright, you’re the boss here.” My brother passed me and pulled him from his chair. “Clear, it’s just us three.” I looked down at my watch and then the reflection of the monitor in the glass. “He’s already triggered the alarm.” He chuckled and shifted off my brother with his shoulders. “I’m disappointed in you, the old you would have been here inside of a week, not half a year. You’ve gotten weak.” I gripped the pistol tighter and pushed the barrel against his forehead. “You set me up!” He reached up for the barrel and pulled it into his head, my brother pushed his pistol against his head. “Do it! Show me you’ve got the stones and do it!” I could tell he had finally lost it, I pulled the gun back and put it in my holster. “Why man, why couldn’t you just let it go??” My brother pushed his pistol harder, “Answer him.” The man turned to my brother and then to me. “So you’ve dragged your big brother into this then?” I pulled the hood off the ghillie suit, revealing the whole mask. “He told me a while ago that we should have just buried you under the jail.” He put the same smirk he always had on his face. “So you had to get your brother involved and take your fathers mask to face me?” My blood began to boil. “What? You didn’t think I remembered? Shame though, that fortress you hid your pregnant wife in isn’t going to save her.” I took a step forward closer to him. “Go, I need to handle this on my own. I need you to call home.” My brother looked at me and I could see the concern behind his mask. “GO!” He holstered his pistol and stepped back towards me. “Take the truck back to the airport, get on the plane and get home.” He handed me his field knife, “You took the mask, you put it back.” He patted my shoulder and walked out of the house. “You want to know the truth?” I pulled my field knife out as well and crossed my arms with a knife in each hand. “That night, when everything went south, you didn’t complete the contract. I had to be the one to do it, it was a two man contract, it was our thing, no loose ends.” I dropped my arms to my sides and rolled my neck. “We had codes we went by, the first one was absolutely no children, you know that! I don’t care if they were a witness, they were a child, no older than five years old!” He rubbed the bridge of his nose like he always used to. “That child would have said something, that child would have exposed us!” He was getting angry and filled with regret. “Then if that was to happen we would have dealt with it, I wasn’t going to do it!” He put one hand up and reached onto his desk, picking up a book. “This though, this was my main reason. You glorified what you did, you made it seem romantic and every man’s dream job.” I never knew that he read my book, “Dude its fiction to the world? No one knows the truth. WE MADE SURE OF THAT!” He dropped the book on the desk and tucked his hands into his pockets. “You’re right, we did take care of it, but not so you could get famous and put the feds onto the entire operation.” He was delusional, “Before I published it I sent it to the organization to make sure that it was ok that I did publish it, THEY CLEARED IT! You’re going insane dude!” I was starting to lose my patience with him, this needed to end once and for all. He just kept that smirk on his face and crossed his arms,”So what’s it going to be then, partner?”
I knew the code, blood in, blood out, but I already shed blood to get out once. I threw the knife my brother handed me into the table, sticking straight up. “We both know the code.” He looked at the knife and then went to reach for it but stopped. “For someone who went a long way to come and get me, you really want to stick to the code now?” I tossed my knife back and forth between my hands, “Yeah, I do, now pick up the blade and man up.” I hit a nerve, I saw it in his face. He quickly pulled the knife up and flipped it around on his hand. “Remember who gave you your first knife? Do you really think you have what it takes to beat me?” He always did like to exaggerate his point before getting to it. “Yeah but you didn’t train me, my father did.” He lunged forward unpredictably and managed to graze my side. “Must not have trained you well enough!” I flipped the knife upside down and walked in a circle around him, waiting for him to make his next move. “Maybe, let’s find out.” He lunged at me again, this time I side stepped him and drove the blade under his arm into his shoulder. “Or maybe you just can’t see past your own delusions!” I pulled the knife out as his arm dropped and he stumbled to get back up again. “Got lucky kid, now I’ll kill you!” I took another step back to give him some room and he began to bleed through his shirt. “Then kill me, stop talking about it and just do it!” He stumbled back to his desk and braced himself against it as he tried to walk around it. “What’s wrong? Got bested by a kid who wasn’t trained well enough?” He dropped the knife on the floor and slumped down into his chair. “If I’m not leaving, neither are you…” I heard the click of the safety from under the desk and dove to the side. BOOM! The shotgun blew through the front of the desk, sending wood chips everywhere. “Just like always! You could never stick to the code!” I rolled over and got up on my feet, flipping the knife blade to my hand. He was standing up trying to get the shotgun from under the desk. As soon as he got it free and leveled it, I threw the knife directly into his heart. BOOM! The shotgun went off with the pellets impacting the plate carrier I had on underneath my ghillie suit. I fell to the floor from the impact, knocking the air from my chest. “Jesus….” I rolled over and tried to push myself up and get to my feet. After stumbling to get upright I looked to him, sitting slumped in his chair trying to mumble something. “F-F-Fu-…” I grabbed the knife and twisted it inside his chest. “You too…” I Stood up and watched as the life left his eyes, it was finally over. I saw a pack of cigarettes on his desk, picked it up and took one out. “Shame, you had a real nice place out here in the woods all by yourself.” I lit the cigarette and took a long drag from it. “I hope you burn in hell for what you did.” I walked to the door and opened it, took one last drag and flicked the cigarette onto the rug on the carpet. “I’ll start the fire for you.” The rug took flame quickly and began to spread. I pulled the ghillie suit off as I walked away leaving it to burn with everything else. I got half way through the field and took the plate carrier off and tossed it on the ground. I dropped the rest of my gear on the ground and walked away free from everything, except the mask. I held it in my hands and looked as the building behind me began to roar. “What do you want from me…” I felt a tear fall down my face and I heard a voice in the back of my mind. “I want you to live.” I put the mask in one hand and reached in my pocket for my phone and sent a text to my contact. “Hey, can you come out here and pick me up?” I began to walk down the road that leads back to the main road.
After about an hour of walking, my contact pulled up. “Hey man, where is your brother?” I climbed into the passenger seat of his SUV, “I sent him back already, he didn’t need to know everything.” He looked at me and shook his head understandingly, “I get it my man, some things should just stay with one person and die with others.” He began to drive back and finally asked, “What’s with the mask?” I looked out the window at the open fields and then back at him, “Take me to the beach and I’ll tell you.” An hour later we stood on the beach, in front of a sand dune, with a plant that was protected. “My father is out here.” I looked around the beach at everyone else that was going about their day. “My father is also right here.” I held up the mask with both hands and pulled it close to my head. “I’m so sorry father…” My contact put his hand on my shoulder, “Come on man, we need to get you back home.” I followed him back to the SUV and we drove back to the airport. As we pulled in I saw the pickup my brother took back with him on the side of the hanger. We got closer and I saw the plane sitting in the hanger still. “Give me your gun, something is wrong.” We pulled into the opening and I got out with a pistol at the ready, “Stay put.” I looked around with my arms extended forward. “Hey!” I swung around to see my brother and the pilot standing in a doorway to the small office. “Jesus Christ dude, what are you two doing here still!? You should be in the air already, my wife and child are in danger!” I put up one hand stopping the questions and walked back to my contact handing the pistol back to him. “I appreciate everything you have done for me. Maybe one day I’ll bring you out to Oregon and you can see the estate.” He took the pistol and shoved it in his waistband. “It’s too cold there, how about you just introduce me to your wife and child when it’s time. Maybe then you can meet my wife and daughter.” He pulled me close for a hug and then let me go. “Get home my man, your wife needs you and so does your future child.” He turned to walk away and before he got into his SUV he hollered one more time to me. “Aye! Keep your ass out of trouble alright!?”He reached inside for the mask and tossed it to me, laughing and then climbed in, driving off quickly. I looked at the mask once more, “It’s time to go back home dad.” My brother and the pilot stood at the stairs into the plane. “You ok?” I walked up and started climbing the stairs, “I’m not sure if I ever will be.” I felt my brother’s hand on my back patting me. We took our seats as the pilot closed the door. “So why did you stay?” He looked over at me and smiled, “You’re not the only one with connections.” I knew my brother knew people but I wasn’t sure how many people he knew. “I called the home office in Oregon and tipped them off to suspicious activity around the manor. They caught five guys in a van with illegal weapons and no permits for the other ones.” I wasn’t sure how he got the government involved with this. “What happened to them?” He weighed his hands up and down, “The justice department will make sure those guys never see the light of day again.“ The plane began to pick up speed and finally took off. “This is your captain speaking, we will be in the air for approximately four hours. So sit back and enjoy the flight and try to get some sleep.”
Four hours later
“We have touched down and will be parked within a few minutes.” My brother and I woke up and got ready to get off the plane. I picked up the mask and climbed out of my seat. “Hey man, if you ever need to talk about all this, give me a call.” My brother pulled me in for a hug and then let me go. “Thanks man.” The pilot came out and opened the door to let the stairs down. We left the plane and walked through the hangar to a series of Volkswagen SUVs parked in a line. Simultaneously all the doors opened and my wife was helped out of one and my mother helped out of another. “Oh my god…” I must have looked like death rolled over, the fear that was in my wife’s eyes was worse than I had seen before. “Hey darling, I told you I would come home.” She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed as hard as she could. “Don’t you ever do this to me again!” She began crying as I held her tight and rocked her side to side. “I won’t, I promise.” I looked over to see my mother and brother talking. They exchanged a hug and my brother climbed into one of the SUV’s and drove off. My mother walked up to us with her hands open,“Your brother is heading back to his home. Now let’s get you back to the estate and get you cleaned up, you have to start learning to be a father and no longer a killer.” My wife wrapped her arm around one of mine and started to pull me to the SUV. “Do you want to talk about it?” I looked down at the mask in my other hand and then at her. “Give me a little bit and I will, I promise.” She rubbed her hand on my arm and gave it a kiss. “Ok my love.”
Six months later…
“Hey, your phone is ringing, hun!” I walked from the balcony and picked up my phone. “Who is it?” I looked down at the name on the screen, “My Editor?” I walked back onto the balcony of the manor.
“Hello?”
“Hey, I was wondering if you were interested in what we talked about last year?”
“I’m not sure about that anymore, I don’t think it is a good idea.”
My wife looked up at me, she was close and listening in.
“It would be great for your name! The readers loved your first book, give them the origin story!”
I choked for a moment and looked to my wife for an answer, her face was filled with terror.
“Hello? Are you still there? What do you think?”
“I don’t think the world is ready to know how I became the Wraith.”
Around the block and on the bus. 