The Eagle and the Wolf: Acceptable Loses (443 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.66 on 11 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by HighVoltage900 (View user info) at 2007-07-11 11:00:36 EDT
First installment: http://www.ubersite.com/m/109863
It took a few days for everything to sort themselves out. I went through debriefing, which is really an interrogation that you have a higher chance of walking away from. The Abacus 6 was in American hands, job well done, kudos all around. Not that I received a lot of help beyond them getting me in the door. But they have to plump up their merits somehow, might as well tag on to my success right?
I got a wrap for my shoulder and a cast to hold my arm. It hurt like hell, I never knew a separated shoulder would burn so much. After the excitement had died down and the adrenaline wore off the pain flared to my head and made me sit down.
It takes a lot to make me sit down.
But it's just an injury, nothing serious you know? The military doc told me I might lose some mobility and muscle mass if I didn't exercise it regularly after it healed. That kind of scared me. The problem with a biological machine like the body is that it can be fixed, but sometimes the repairs don't return it to 100% functionality.
I went home, to my little town house in Capital Heights, only a few miles from the battlefield of earlier. The first thing I went for was my drop box, an inset into my wall that was used occasionally to relay messages from the higher ups. The only way to access the inset was a picture frame on the inside, which meant every time someone had to come into my home when I wasn't around.
That's the first thing that takes a little while to get used to. People will enter and leave your house freely in this business.
In the drop box was a location, date, and a time written encoded on a note card. When I decoded the time and committed it to memory I burned the note card and put the remains into the toilet.
Then I went and sat on my bed.
It took a few minutes before my brain started thinking. Thinking can be dangerous, it leads you down paths you might not want to explore. I thought about the note card residue that was in the toilet bowl. The time and place where I was supposed to go for more information, to be frank it was frightening. Most of the jobs I had done had always involved me being in the background or surrounded by teammates. For the first time, I had been alone, and the reality of how close I was to being killed washed over me.
My breath froze in my chest and I grabbed at my shirt. Fear and shock rushed my senses and my whole world shuddered. They were shooting at you. They wanted to kill you. You almost died. If you had been slower and hesitated you would be dead.
Breathing.... Breathing... the sound of breathing was in my head. Listening to the breathing calmed me down. Its rhythm, although frenetic, was soothing because it was uniform.
I sat there for a long time listening to my breathing before I reached to the bedside table and called my father.
The phone rang.
It rang.
Click.
"Hello?" I heard my dad say.
I didn't speak at first.
"Hello? Who is this?" Dad said.
"It's me." I croaked.
"Oh. Jason I... It's good to hear from you. How are you son?"
I didn't speak again.
"Jason?"
"I'm not doing so well dad." I blurted out. My brain was screaming in my head. Shut up! Shut up! Don't talk to him! Hang up the phone now!
"What's wrong?" He asked warily. His voice sounded weaker than the last time we had spoken. It seemed like his heart and old age were catching up to him.
"I can't talk about it." I said painfully. My heart was beating fast, I needed comfort. I needed my dad to take care of me again, to make my problems go away. I was now marked by the second most powerful country in the world. They would know who I was, what I looked like. They could find me anywhere on earth. They could reach anywhere.
"You don't sound good."
"Neither do you." I said.
"Good enough to take care of my son. I'll always be able to do that." He said. I smiled at the thought of my dad exchanging fire with Soviet soldiers outside his retirement home.
"There are some things.... Some things I do..."
"I know you told me you won't be able to tell me everything you do. I trust you won't do anything you wouldn't want to."
"I .... Want to talk to you dad." I blurted out. My brain roared and screamed at my fear to stow away and stop fucking up.
My dad was silent for a while.
"Not on the phone." I said. "In person."
"You know I will drive up there the moment you tell me you need me." He said concerned. The line was silent for a moment.
"I know... I could tell you everyth.... I could tell you.... I just needed to hear you say that I'm doing something good you know? That I'm doing it all because I'm a good person, that it won't all be for naught if... if I..." I was having trouble keeping my tone straight. Speaking to my dad brought back everything human about me. Childhood, being in time out, my sister and my mother, the car accident that turned our family from four to two, followed by the years my father and I spent together. Those memories blanketed over the more recent ones. The ones of military service, of combat, of initiation to the CIA, of my special training, of the Russian's and everything they were going to do to me.
He was my weakness.
"I'm sorry dad I shouldn't have called." I stammered quickly.
"No it's not wrong that you..." He said but I interrupted him.
"Dad forget you heard this conversation. I love you and I'll see you at thanksgiving." I said and hung up the phone.
I went to sleep. It wasn't late but I went to sleep and kept sleeping. Every few hours I would wake up with my mind swirling and always asked the question "Should I get up?" to myself. When I thought of leaving my warm and comforting bed the answer always became no. So I stayed there, even as the sun rose and then began to go down again.
Then there was a knock at the door.
I blearily stumbled out of bed, readjusting the clothes I had forgotten to take off as they had bunched up in awkward and uncomfortable places. My forehead was matted with sweat and my eyes were bloodshot and cloudy. I entirely looked the part of a specially trained US spy.
I opened the door and a man in a two piece blue suit was standing in the doorway with dark red roses.
"If you're looking for a date you came to the wrong place. Next door maybe." I said slurring through a dry tongue.
"Jason Mathis?" He asked without even cracking a smile at my joke.
"Yeah? Who's asking?" I asked and immediately straightened up. When someone knows your name they are dangerous.
"My name is Ed Harding. I am a director in the Operations section of the CIA. I came here in person because I am the one who invented the plan for you to go and steal the Abacus 6 machine." He said still standing in the doorway. I wasn't moving aside to let him in. Paranoia kicked in.
Really? Are you? You know for a fact I don't know who plans my missions, you could be anyone with that knowledge. You could be Russian trying to gain entry into my house and to assassinate me.
"Hmm." I murmured.
"I came here in person because I feel guilty. I know you got the Abacus 6 which is of great help to your country and you should be proud. But the Soviet's achieved backlash against you." He said somberly. Backlash?
"What do you mean?" I asked warily.
"Your father, Lawrence Mathis. He was coming up to see you from Winchester wasn't he?" Ed asked. My heart thudded loudly once and stopped beating.
Dad? I told you to stay home. What have you done?
"While he was driving it appears a semi truck nudged him from behind and knocked him into a light industry truck which broke in front of him. His car was completely crushed with him inside of it." He told me with his words being washed away in a huge rushing sound in my head. No... no no no no no no no.... NO!
"I don't.... I can't...." I said with my legs wobbling underneath me. I grabbed the door tightly. That maneuver is an assassin's trick, the one with the cars. He didn't even need to tell me that neither of the drivers had been found. They never would be.
"I'm sorry to tell you this son. My condolences. America mourns for your lose and praises you for your sacrifice." Ed said, bending over and placing the flowers at my feet before walking away with his head bowed. I stood there in the doorway with my mouth open gawking at his back while he walked away.
Really? The Russian's killed him? Or was it something I said.... Something I let slip.
"I .... Want to talk to you dad. Not on the phone. In person."
Right when I said that, the Russian's, just as much as the American's had a reason for him to be removed. And I would never know.
Either way, I killed my father.
A week and a half later I was at my father's closed casket funeral. A week and a half of disturbing reports of reconstructive surgery on a cadaver only to have a closed casket. Fuck them all.
And continually I looked over my back, questioning the Russians and my own government. One of them killed my father. One of them is responsible. But I couldn't turn my back on both or I would lose precious amounts of protection and be killed.
The funeral was sparsely populated. A few of dad's friends from the retirement home came, as well as a long lost friend I had from my days in the Army Rangers. But sitting at the front of the funeral home was me and only me. As time went on the mourners dispersed, hours ticked by and I sat there staring at the ground and thinking about which way I killed him.
I didn't notice that a man in a long black overcoat and a somber black suit had walked up next to me.
"May I sit down?" He asked, his accent thick. I nodded blankly without thinking. The man sat next to me and put a bouquet of flowers in my lap.
"I am sorry comrade, about your lose." He said with a thick Russian accent. My mind froze and I turned to him slowly. Slowly going up his legs to his chest to his neck to his face and a flashback hit me of the Abacus room. The dark man.
"My name, at least in your circles, is the Timber Wolf." He said straightly.
User Reviews
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2007-07-16 13:48:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by HighVoltage900 (user info) at 2007-07-12 23:49:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Zebra I don't mind the critique. If I did, I wouldn't post it.
And they are the Soviet's because it's 1978 in the story.
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-07-12 18:19:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Still boilerplate, and the whole father thing didn't quite ring true.
Why would an apparently well trained spy call his father right after a top secret mission to tell him he needed to speak in person? I understand the guy was upset, but...
That would be an amateurish mistake, especially when he is "marked by the second most powerful country in the world." I doubt this guy would then just pick up his phone and have a conversation like that unless it was a secure transmission. The explanation that his father is his "weakness" just doesn't quite cut it for a man with the experience and training you describe.
Speaking of which, there are no Soviets any more. I would change all the references to Russians, which you used interchangeably. Unless I missed something which indicated the story takes place before the breakup of the USSR.
The paragraph with all the personal detail like the car accident that killed his mother and sister was a little too quick and ineffective in terms of empathy fot that reason.
Maybe come up with a better way to get the father killed. I get that you want him to inadvertently cause his father's death for the added guilt/revenge theme, but you need to get more creative with that aspect for it to be believable. It's possible a phone call could work, but the way you wrote it was much too obvious.
Maybe you'll get into it in future installments, but why would his 'enemies' kill an old man in a retirement home, anyway? If the father has some importance other than just being his father, a hint in this installment would have been nice before revealing it later. If there is no connection to any spy agency activity, I doubt the Russians or any other entity would waste time and resources staging a fake accident to kill the guy.
Basically, this was kinda blah. A lot of this stuff could be better with more development. Someone like Robert Ludlum, when broken down, is quite predictable, it's just that he draws the reader in so well with detail and style. I think it's very hard to get the spy stuff done in a short story.
Still, this is a good effort for ubersite.
Hope you don't mind the critique, it's ultimately just my opinion. I just found this interesting enough to comment in depth.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-07-12 02:33:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-07-11 15:25:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-07-05 11:34:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is a boy story.
Submitted by loki (user info) at 2007-07-11 13:51:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
this is a bit Bourneish
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-07-11 12:37:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
DANGERDANGER
Submitted by HighVoltage900 (user info) at 2007-07-11 12:03:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-07-11 11:17:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Do you mean, 'Acceptable LosSes'?
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Holy mother fucking shit. God damn it I feel stupid.
*goes and kills self*
Submitted by lover101 (user info) at 2007-07-11 12:01:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2007-07-11 11:17:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Do you mean, 'Acceptable LosSes'?
Submitted by Susie_Derkins (user info) at 2007-07-11 11:13:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
More please.