ISE Wars: Close Your Eyes and Squeeze, Chapter 2

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July 19, 2007 9:13pm
Location: Metropolitan Opera House – New York, USA
Scene: Act II – Scene 3 Turandot – Puccini
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It’s funny, really. Three days ago, Ibrahim Abdullah had been pulled from assignment in Northern Czechoslovakia to tie up the loose ends of an error. Apparently, two operatives had gone to New York City to terminate a visiting millionaire cum terrorist from Japan. They eventually reported back to their superiors as neatly portioned frozen meatballs shipped via UPS. Amateurs…

Ibrahim didn’t really enjoy opera more than any other musical form. He nurtured a passion for any music that grabbed hold of an escaping soul and returned it to Earth. That was the way he felt. Escaping. Puccini rescued him. In the seventh lighting cove high above the silent audience in NY’s grand Met, Ibrahim still wore the robes of a certain Roman Catholic Monsignor Goodsall…the robes he used to accompany the perfect alias for the perfect injection to this perfect sniper’s nest. On stage the greatest tenor in the world granted Ibrahim audience in the most perfect musical nirvana of all time. This time. Perfect.

It wasn’t the vocation of the target that most intrigued Ibrahim. He could have turned down the assignment. After all, any CIA hack with a Russian hunting rifle could kill a terrorist. Elementary. It was the fifth item in the target’s character profile that truly convinced Ibrahim to come to New York: PEDOPHILE. This zombie would have to go. Ibrahim knew this. Elementary.

Ibrahim couldn’t interrupt the aria. Not when there were so many free microseconds to come. Ibrahim closed his eyes, relaxing the finger exactly 2.4 centimeters from the trigger of his M24 SWS. The master’s song on stage took Ibrahim back to a pain. A time when all was right, and the world was a happy place, with parties and family and celebration and children. Children? His brother, his wife and his son. His little boy. Ibrahim’s nephew. Kasim. So happy. So trusting. The neighbor. A schoolteacher himself and supposed to be trusted. Children trusted him. Kasim trusted him. They all trusted him. He ripped away the future for this boy…this now husk of a boy. White blindness. The courts would handle everything. White. The courts would blunder. White. Ibrahim could handle this. White. Ibrahim knew how not to blunder. White. No more pain. White. They never found what was left of the school teacher that everybody trusted. White. Over. White. Elementary.

Ibrahim opened his eyes to a clouded scene on stage. The master tenor mirrored Abrahim’s face with tears of agony streaming from tormented eyes. Almost over. And just three rows away the Japanese zombie sat nervously thumbing through his program. Safety off. Ibrahim blinked hard, fighting the heat of the tears boiling in his eyes. Tears that burned with the fire of rage. Now was the time.

The final note of the aria still echoed in the rafters as the audience rose to their feet in thunderous applause. Loving applause for the master. The Japanese zombie stood out of surprise, as if not knowing the full reason why. Ibrahim snapped the safety release off as simply as performing an unnoticed anatomical act. Now was the time. The nanosecond. For Kasim. The tears. Now. Perfect.

“This isn’t the time Abe.”

“Huh?” Abe turned his head just in time to see a mist, focused directly at his face and timed perfectly for inhalation. “No….”

The darkness of the cove grew quickly darker. The pain subsided. The applause began to fade.
The figure over him was possibly the most beautiful woman Ibrahim had ever seen. He knew her from somewhere. Though wearing a black cap, Ibrahim could almost see the short, blonde hair he knew was under the fabric. “Anya?”

The woman silently placed a body dressed in identical vestments next to Ibrahim. On it’s chest, the woman placed a small device. She then placed Ibrahim’s rifle in the hands of the lifeless body. “Sorry Abe. I know what this stick means to you. Your birthday’s coming up. We’ll see what I can do.”. The woman motioned, and two others lifted Ibrahim swiftly from the floor of the cove. He could here the muffled rapport of the rifle, then a scream from the theater as he passed into unconsciousness. Gunfire somewhere…up there. His mind’s eyes calmed him, numbing the memory of this strange event. A face. Those eyes. Her hair. Anya. Perfect.

 

ISE Wars: First Born, Chapter 1

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July 18, 2007 5:57am
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana – USA
Scene: A Deserted Dock in New Orleans
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The air was thick and filled with spice. A breeze crawled in from the gulf carrying with it just enough sweetness to warn of the coming dawn. New Orleans. Ellen Baker shut here eyes tightly. A minute to regenerate before the sun arrived.

The mission that brought Agent Baker here to this musical city demanded a stretching of limits. An hour ago she was air-dropped from a low-altitude stealth chopper one mile off the coast. A long distance swim would normally not task her finely honed skills, but full surveillance and infiltration equipment tugged her repeatedly toward the living darkness of the deep with every stroke. The only way, she was told. So many eyes watching the waters.

The man known as Dai Jong was responsible for three tenths of the narcotics traffic in the southern United States. Every law enforcement agency wanted him, but few could come close enough. Ellen Baker fully understood that she was thrown at Dai Jong as a side-pitched effort to catch him off guard. She also knew full well that she was now and always expendable. C’est la vie.

Ellen opened her eyes and drew a deep breath. The sun was coming. This was going to be a hot one. An army of souls was awakening in this city, and any one of them would gladly betray her mission for a few bucks and the favor of Master Dai Jong.

The sun was approaching fast. Too fast. No, not the sun. Instincts beat at Ellen’s heart like a maddening war drum. A voice screamed in her head with enough power to force her to action. Without thought, she dove to her left, coming out of a perfect roll into a low, crouching stance with pistol drawn. The air occupying the space where Agent Baker sat a splintered second ago seemed to almost snap with energy. Antique bricks exploded into a blinding storm as a stream of bullets deconstructed the wall.

With lightning thought, Ellen calculated the trajectory of the gun fire. She thrust her hand toward the shooter and let loose her silent ordnance.

Ellen knew her shots had been accurate. Her target’s scream was muffled by a great gout of thick, hot liquid. From her peripheral vision, she saw the new sunlight momentarily stained with crimson. In a mere beat, Ellen rolled again toward the edge of the dock, firing a bit too quickly in her recovery. Her bullets ripped through a massive plate window, once baring the name of a long established, local fish monger. This meant one thing to Ellen: her second target was still in one piece.

Baker began to right her stance, when the worse kind of luck altered her plan. As she began to shift, she was pulled back by a large, bent, metal bracket which had pierced the fabric of her wet suit and about an inch and a half of flesh on her right thigh. Then came the slight sting and warm wash of blood. Ellen glanced upward to locate her attacker, only to witness that which she imagined so often in the darkest of nightmares: a single red dot targeting her heart and fed by a sinister pinpoint beam of laser light.

“It’s over, Narc!”

Ellen’s mind searched every memory store of her extensive training. There was no way to free her leg from the iron bracket and gain favorable positioning in time. “You have to kill me first! And that’s always been the hardest part!”. Baker dropped her gun to the planks and with a fluid move, brought her hand to the pressure switch in the fabric covering her right wrist. “I surrender!”. In a calm whisper, she took control of her destiny. ‘Now. I lay me down to sleep’

Time stopped. Ellen could hear only the faint breeze from the Gulf and her own smooth breathing. As plain as a charcoal sketch on a blank, white page, Ellen could see her attacker squeeze the trigger.

But the action never came. Instead, the killer jerked his head back like a chicken strutting in a farm yard. Ellen watched in slow motion as the man’s eyes squinted in disbelief. She grinned slightly, imaging briefly how this man resembled the holy figures she had seen in a television documentary on India in the 1940′s. A simple hole opened in the smooth patch of flesh of the man’s forehead. He fell efficiently to the ground.

Ellen held her finger in place over the switch. The rules had changed. But how?

“Such bad luck, Agent Baker”.

Ellen could sense the origin of the voice, but couldn’t see it.

“In the river of fate, a simple stone can change its mighty course for thousands of years. We need you to keep swimming.”.

Out of nowhere, a mass of lifeless flesh in a black wet suit fell to the planks with a heavy thunk just two feet in front of Ellen. “Say good-bye to Ellen Baker, my friend.”.

Ellen heard a faint pop of her suit’s fabric as something bit into shoulder. “Wait.”

Ellen’s eyes betrayed her. Her vision became a staccato fugue, as if she was permitted to view only mere frames in a cinematic reality. A face. Slit, Asian eyes. Black, leather car seat. A flash. A terrible fire through a tinted window. Darkness.