Prologue
Los Angeles International Airport
Arrivals Concourse
April 22nd
11:40 AM
Phillip's lethal reaction was cat-like and instantaneous. Without warning, his hand shot forward to the girl's throat. Startling her, his muscle-hardened grip encircled her slender neck. The terrified girl's face reddened. Her eyes bulged in fear. A faint gurgling sound escaped her open mouth as he began to squeeze ....
Seconds before, three taunting females, each no more than twenty years of age, with stringy, unkempt hair, circled in front of him. They wore bizarre tie-dyed T-shirts with white peace signs painted on their fronts, faded, shapeless skirts that swept the floor, and colorful beads around their necks. Each blocked Phillip's path, shouting angrily at him.
The girl in the middle secreted in her hand an open container of liquid dye.
They singled Phillip out because he was wearing a uniform.
All three pointed at him, chanting repeatedly in unison, "Baby killer! Baby killer! No more war!"
***
The world Phillip remembered shattered the moment the liquid red dye drenched his uniform. Splashing upwards, it stained the rows of brightly colored military ribbons neatly affixed above the left breast pocket. The instant he felt the thick, cool liquid, and a wet sensation trickle down his neck, a natural instinct brought his hand up to search for a wound. His fingers found none.
Was this a malicious trick his mind was playing on him?
Several of the onlookers gasped; murmurs of disbelief echoed through the milling crowd of gawking strangers as they broke their disorderly ranks, circling around Phillip and the chanting girls, giving them quarter as if they were making room for pugilists preparing for battle.
Suddenly, Phillip's arms were seized in vice-like grips. He was pulled away from the offending girl, off-balance, backwards, breaking his hold on her throat. His head was thrust painfully forward. A stranger's arm snaked tightly around Phillip's throat, threatening to cut off his breathing.
A stern commanding order of, "Stand down, Marine!" interrupted him and brought things back into focus.
Phillip immediately complied.
When he looked back, the taunting girls, they were gone, escaped into the crowd. They were replaced by two very large military policemen, flanking him on either side, still holding him firmly in check.
"Come with us, Marine," ordered the ranking MP in a firm voice, as he loosened his grip on Phillip. "We'll get you cleaned up and on your way. But first we need information from you for our report."
The burly MP hastily turned from Phillip and led the way through the parting crowd toward a nearby office door.
The other MP, walking beside Phillip, remarked in a raised authoritative voice, for the benefit of everyone in the crowd, "This crap happens all too often across the whole country. Damn hippies ... making their political statements at the expense of good men serving their country."
***
Images of childhood memories, broken bits and pieces of his past, flashed rapidly through Phillip's mind....
The little boy's small hand trembled as his fingers touched his brow. He proudly held his slender right arm and elbow in a rigid salute, just as he had watched his father do so many times in the past. He clutched a Popsicle stick in his other hand. A small paper flag dangled dutifully from its top edge where it had been painstakingly glued. It mattered not that the flag's red and white stripes were of different widths, or that the number of white stars on its navy blue field was questionable. He had lovingly crafted it at school the previous day for this very special occasion.
The faded green uniform cap, given to him by his father on the day of his departure, shielded his face from the bright midday's sun. It was such a long time ago that his father left for a place called Japan. The little boy worried now that his father might not recognize him, since he had grown those few inches in his absence. He had missed his father terribly.
His little face twitched as he fought to keep the corners of his mouth from turning up into a smile. He knew that men standing at attention were supposed to look serious, but still he smiled with pride as the parade neared the spot where he anxiously stood waiting....
The color guard came first, proudly holding the unfurled, gold-fringed waving flags, the American flag waving its stars and stripes above the rest. And a military flag dipped just below it, with a rainbow of colorful streamers hanging from atop its staff, each a reminder of the battles fought and won.
Young men in uniforms followed close behind.
His father was among the group of men dressed in their neatly creased uniforms and highly polished boots, marching triumphal for all to see. They held their shoulders high, chests forward swelled with pride, shouldering rifles as they marched smartly in step, together, to the echo of the drum's cadence, thump, thump, thump, thump. Just like the excited beat of the little boy's heart as he stood proudly atop the curb.
They had returned home from the war, finally, and the whole town turned out to cheer for them, proclaiming their sacrifices for freedom and thankful for their safe return.
That was then ... two decades ago.
***
Where were the cheering crowds of yesteryear now, those joyful throngs lining the streets, waving their flags as the parade of veterans marched in triumph, having returned home from war, all heroes in the hearts and minds of the waiting women and children?
Being surrounded by hundreds of unfamiliar faces, strangers crowded together moving without direction, with no apparent sense of purpose in the tumultuous airport setting, was nearly overwhelming for Phillip.
He left behind his all too familiar jungle surroundings in Vietnam twenty-three hours ago, thousands of miles away, and returned to a memory of what he believed was a land of peace and tranquility. Burdened with the memories of his recent past, disillusioned, and confused with the present, Phillip struggled to grasp an understanding of these changes that had taken place in his absence.
This was the beginning ....
Chapter 1
Taking a human life is a simple animal act; living with the knowledge of what you have done requires a special talent.
***
One of few marines possessing unique traits sought by the United States Marine Corps during the height of its involvement in Vietnam, Phillip Givens was selected from a group of several hundred trainees. The candidates were chosen for special psychological testing after completing their infantry training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
At the completion of the rigorous week's long testing process, only a handful of successful candidates remained. In due course, these highly motivated marines were given several months of extensive specialized military training, and ultimately assigned to recon units.
"Celer—Silens—Mortalis" is the Latin motto for those elite men of recon.
Recon is a term used by the military denoting use of scouting techniques, counter-insurgency tactics, clandestine ops, and more—all those things young, naive men dream of as their minds conjure the glory of battle and their adrenaline levels rise.
Phillip became one of the proud few.
He and his platoon members were tasked with gathering combat intelligence while performing reconnaissance in the unforgiving jungles of Vietnam, an environment where an error in judgment or a false move could prove fatal for all.
Combat intelligence—now there's an oxymoron if ever there was one.
All the men were young toughs, dedicated to the mercenary ideals of war and hungry for action. They quickly became a close-knit team and skilled hunters of men. The team learned the art of war quickly; their survival depended on it. Using an array of weapons, camouflage, and concealment for all environments, they were ready to practice their art in the jungle, villages, and towns. The powers-that-be at the Pentagon saw to it that they were given chance after chance to practice their deadly art, and practice they did ... in hell.
Their youthful enthusiasm soon turned to apathy as they learned that war is a horrible thing to witness up close.
Day after day, they experienced the constant traumatic stress from suppression of their fear. A never-ending fog of mental exhaustion besieged them, fueled by their daily exposure to deafening explosions, the dead and dying, and the smell of burning-rotting flesh, memories that could never be forgotten. The combination of these experiences would have long-term consequences far into their futures.
These surreal memories would haunt their idle waking hours, spurred on by unexpected triggers at inconvenient times. Recurring nightmares of horrific scenes of death and devastation, of smells permanently imbedded in their nostrils, of un-suppressible echoes of the injured and dying crying out for their help would become unwelcome bedfellows.
The visible scars their bodies sustained during the many firefights they survived healed with time. The internalized emotional scars, the deaths of comrades, the enemy's senseless maiming of innocent villagers and their children, those memories of horrific proportions would never completely heal.
When they returned to their loved ones, having aged far beyond their years, they were seen as hardened, heartless, and cold. How could they ever explain the wounds, the blood, and loss of limbs caused by the enemy's heinous booby traps, exploding mines, and even their own burning, blistering napalm?
Could a non-combatant ever comprehend the piercing, numbing pain they shared when lifting a fellow marine, or what was left of him, wrapped in a bloodstained rubber poncho, into a helicopter? A comrade who moments before was fighting beside them, alive, and then, collapsed to the ground, withering in agonizing pain from shredded skin and muscle, bleeding out. His screams pleading with them for help. And when the firefight was over, it was too late, too late to help a brother-in-arms, a friend who had given his life for them so they could live on. One closer in death than any living relative would ever be; helping to lift his motionless remains onto a waiting chopper for that last ride to a dark, sterile field morgue, and then, an unsung hero finally gone home ... in a flag-draped coffin.
Emotional inability to speak of these tragedies made their life a living hell. Their reluctance to share the painful memories with others close to them was crippling. Their silence was received as social indifference and distanced them further from the very things they sought—love and understanding.
To the remaining multitude, they were labeled assassins.
After a third consecutive grueling tour of combat, hunting an elusive enemy in an unforgiving jungle full of blood-sucking insects and deadly biting reptiles, in villages and towns of unpronounceable names, Sgt. Phillip Givens had honed his professional skills to a razor's edge.
He had lived the recon motto, "Swift—Silent—Deadly."
After leaving Vietnam, he would not see or hear from the few surviving members of his recon platoon until several years later. And when he finally did, he would be looking at a nightmare's reflection in a mirror.
Sgt. Givens' next assignment was in Europe, advisory duty in Holland. He was to help train Dutch Marines in counter-insurgency tactics, something he had learned so well that he had survived where others had not.
He silently questioned, Why me? Was it the government's payment for a job well done, or was it their sinister plan to distance the inconceivable results of his warfare experiences and the horrors of his impersonal, professional handiwork from an unsuspecting nation?
What could they do with their assassins who survived?
***
One and a half years later, with his remaining military enlistment completed, Phillip aimlessly wandered about the south of Europe on a month-long vacation, unable to fit in as a civilian tourist. He watched with detachment as those oblivious and unaffected by the senseless horrors of war still happening in another part of the world were soaking up the sun and enjoying the beaches in France and Spain. Unconscious ambivalence of the masses toward the suffering of their fellow human beings sparked equal amounts of anger and distain deep within him.
After a long night of drinking, feeling hot, sweaty, thirsty, and completely disoriented, he awoke with a start. Phillip had a splitting headache. Pinning his right arm to the bed was a woman's body lying face down, her facial features nearly hidden by her long, silky black hair. Her tanned, naked body was partially covered with a crumpled, gritty sheet.
He could not remember who she was or where she had come from.
For that brief moment, his recollection was suddenly transported back in time to a memory of a hot, humid hotel room in the Nha Trang Hotel, in Vietnam.
Phillip could see from the torn foil packets discarded on the nightstand, the lipstick smears on the drinking glasses, and the near-empty bottle of scotch lying on its side, that they must have enjoyed themselves.
Had he bedded a Vietnamese prostitute in a drunken stupor?
He was confused.
Was he still on his in-country military leave from his recon platoon, at their base camp northwest of the hamlet of Buon Ma Thuot, the one overlooking the Cambodian border in the Central Highlands of Vietnam?
How long had he been here?
He knew it was late morning by the piercing bright sunlight that streamed into the room through cracks in the closed wooden shutters. He could feel the rising heat and humidity of the day. All of his functioning senses told him he was in Nha Trang.
Phillip uttered, "Ciao Coe," a greeting in Vietnamese, to the naked woman lying beside him as she awoke with a low groan. She turned her generously shaped body over to face him, exposing her tanned breasts as she propped herself up on one elbow. With a questioned look on her face, she asked in a heavy English accent, "What the bloody hell did you just say to me?"
He repeated himself in Vietnamese again, this time greeting her with what he thought was her name, "Ciao, Vi Do Lok," a woman from his not so distant past.
The naked woman lying beside him stared back with a blank expression.
He had met Vi near the end of his first tour of duty, when he had taken a well-earned leave in Nha Trang, a city on the central coast of Vietnam bordering the South China Sea. Phillip had taken a room at the aging, three-storied Nha Trang Hotel for his short week's leave. He ate his evening meals at the open-air restaurant that was set atop the third floor of the hotel, overlooking the beach and the sea. It was run by an aging Frenchman and his Vietnamese wife, who stayed on after the French pulled out of Vietnam in the mid-1950s. The first floor's main bar was where Phillip did most of his drinking, and it was there that he met Vi Do Lok.
He still recalled those first words Vi spoke to him in her broken GI-English, "Hey ... you buy me Saigon tea. I talk you plenty, make you number-one happy." And she always kept her word, as long as the drinks kept coming.
Saigon tea, he quickly learned, was a nearly alcohol-free drink made of a small drop of booze, weak tea, and ice; only the bar-girls were permitted to be served them. For every Saigon tea bought for the bar-girl, the bar owner kept 80 percent of its cost, and the girl got the remaining 20 percent, plus any tip she sweet-talked her guy into giving her. If you stopped buying the girl drinks, she would move on to another guy who was more willing to buy one.
Hell, the cost of drinks was a small price to pay for a few hours of female company, mindless conversation, and mental escape from the senseless war raging around them. For a lonely, homesick marine, thousands of miles from his home, this was as close to female companionship as he could get.
Vi was born in Nha Trang. Her parents came to the mid-coastal area from a small village near the Northern Vietnamese/Chinese border in the late 1940s. Both of her parents were killed during the ensuing fight against the French, two years after she was born. Vi was placed in an orphanage where she grew up and attended school into her early teens, later becoming a bar-girl in order to survive when the Americans entered the North/South conflict in the mid-1960s. She was a couple of years older by bar-girl standards, slightly taller and more full-figured than the other bar-girls who hailed from the southern coastal regions of the country. Perhaps that is why she appealed to Phillip; she was different.
His first night in the bar found him sitting, talking with Vi, laughing and drinking himself into a stupor on the local Vietnamese beer, Bah-mi-Bah, or "33" as the French first labeled it in the early 1950s. One never knew from one bottle to the next what percentage of alcohol was going to be in the beer; it didn't matter anyway.
The bar-girls had a strict code amongst themselves; if a girl hooked up with a customer, the other girls left him alone. So it was with Vi, whom Phillip had hooked up with on the first night and every night afterwards.
There were girls for hire of course, for prostitution, "boom-boom" as the girls called it; others, like Vi, were not. She made it very clear their first night that she was a bar-girl, "there to make plenty talk," and, "no boom-boom." To wake up with a hangover and a prostitute lying beside you in Vietnam meant almost certainty you would be visiting a medical corpsman for a shot of penicillin ... or worse.
***
And then this raven-haired beauty's English accent snapped Phillip back to the present. "Bloody hell, you told me you were an American bloke last night. Who are you?" she demanded.
Holding his neck and the back of his head so it would not fall off, Phillip shook it to clear the fog. Then it came crashing back, the present, her, last night, and where he ... no, where they were.
L'Estartit, Spain. The sun-drenched golden beaches of Catalonia, on the Costa Brava, at the Santa Clara Hotel north of Barcelona. He met her at one of the many bars that masqueraded as dance clubs in town, frequented by the English tourists who flocked there in the summer months on annual holidays. They gathered there to sunbathe topless, drink themselves silly, and hook up, making vacation memories to carry them through the long, rainy, cold winters of the United Kingdom.
"Maureen, I uh ... I am an American," he stammered as he remembered her name. "Sorry about the Vietnamese. I got lost there for a second."
"Huh, you got lost?" she asked cautiously.
"Yes, it happens sometimes when I've drank more scotch than I should, and I wake up with a beautiful woman holding me down," he lied, grinning at her.
Maureen Fenelon, a curvaceous, twenty-four-year-old, single, attractive female of medium height, was on holiday with her girlfriend. She worked as a legal assistant for a barrister in London. Maureen loved the sun and the ocean beaches, and as any single woman on holiday in Spain, she also loved to cavort topless on the beach. No tan lines for this beauty. As for the nightlife, well, lots of drinking and dancing, and if one was lucky, the night ended with passionate sex. It did.
Her facial features softened, and she smiled back at him, flashing her bright white, perfectly straight teeth.
Pulling the sheet away, she coyly rolled over on top of him, before Phillip could tell her he was fresh out of condoms. After a few moments of delicious foreplay, he had to stop her before he lost all willpower and took the plunge bareback. He upended her into the middle of the bed, tossing the sheet over her head, quickly scooted off of it, and was into the shower before she could get untangled again.
They shared a quick, cold shower together, agreeing that breakfast was next on their agenda, and dressed for the morning. Because it was her room, Phillip was committed to wearing last night's wrinkled clothes.
As they left the room together, Maureen blocked the door. Half turning, she struck a movie-star provocative pose, slipping the shoulder strap of her skimpy top down, flashing Phillip playfully in the doorway, threatening in a low, sexy voice not to move until he agreed, "The next thing after breakfast is a stop for a resupply."
How could he not agree to her demand? He did, and then pushed the giggling vixen into the hallway.
***
The hotel's restaurant, having catered to the UK and European vacationers for several years, had a regular menu of English-style selections for breakfast; his favorites were fried tomatoes, country ham, and fresh eggs. Not forgetting the toast and marmalade, of course; and for those diehards eating really late, as they were, strong black coffee or tea.
They were seated in a corner alcove, with potted plants partially blocking the view from the entrance and main dining area. The alcove and the white linen tablecloth afforded Maureen the extra sense of privacy so she could continue her playfulness with Phillip. That was until her girlfriend decided to join them.
Maureen's girlfriend, Tara Scythe, who was a year younger and a perky two inches shorter than Maureen, with natural red hair worn short, sparkling green eyes, and freckles, lots of freckles, worked as an administrative research assistant for the same barrister's firm. Tara was not a happy girl this morning when she joined them at breakfast. She did not order anything to eat, just sat thumbing through a woman's magazine complaining about the night before over her cup of steaming hot Earl Gray.
Tara lamented she had not enjoyed herself because of an obnoxious Belgian wanker she met at the dance club the night before. Phillip and Maureen had also met there the previous night but had no recollection of the guy she was describing. She explained how he was nice enough at first, but after a couple of shared drinks and slow dances with him, he began demanding that she dance onlywith him and started manhandling her on the dance floor. She was barely able to avoid him by faking a need for use of the loo, as the Brits refer to it, and then sneaking out the back door of the club. She warned them that she was concerned about running into him again because he was also a guest at the hotel.
Having said that, Tara looked up from the magazine and her face went pale. She was looking directly at a very muscular, twenty-something, blond, six-foot-three-inches-tall male walking briskly toward their table. He did not look happy.
Tara hastily stood up, excusing herself, and prepared to leave.
Phillip calmly touched her arm and asked her to stay. He also asked to borrow her magazine as she reluctantly dropped back down into her chair, waiting for the wanker, now standing next to her, to speak.
Without waiting for the courtesy of an introduction to Tara's friends, the wanker pulled a chair from a table next to theirs and sat down facing Tara, his back turned to Phillip and Maureen.
This was his first mistake.
Because of the late hour for breakfast, the dining room had few people in it. Only one well-dressed gentleman, sitting alone at a table across the room from them, appeared to be paying any attention to the activity unfolding at their table.
The Belgian wanker boisterously demanded that Tara apologize for sneaking out on him last night, and that she pay for the drinks he bought her, since she embarrassed him in front of his friends. To make matters worse, he voiced, "I am preparing to leave for Belgium this morning and want my money right now!"
Tara laughed out loud as she told him to, "Fuck off, wanker!" She began pushing her chair back and stood up once again, when he grabbed her left wrist. Twisting it sharply, he caused her to wince in pain and forced her to sit back down quickly.
This was his second mistake.
Still holding Tara's wrist, the wanker turned in his chair to face Maureen as she loudly protested his manhandling of Tara. He was half-facing Phillip when he started to stand, still holding onto Tara with his right hand.
This was his third and final mistake.
Fact: Phillip was twenty-six years old and six feet tall; being of average weight, he did not want a full-frontal, one-on-one confrontation with this oversized, raging bull. Phillip prepared by rolling the borrowed magazine into a tight, two-inch solid rod. He held the rolled magazine rod in the middle so either end was available for use when the time came. It was rapidly approaching.
Phillip cautiously eased his chair away from the table, leaning forward and to the right toward the wanker. Reaching across his body, he quickly gripped the left wrist of the wanker.
The Belgian bolted upright, just as Phillip knew he would, and turned to face him.
That is when Phillip pulled the Belgian's left wrist forward and down, at the same time hammering the end of the rolled magazine rod twice, very hard, in rapid secession, sharply into the wanker's chest just below his solar plexus, into his diaphragm.
The Belgian had a surprised look on his face as he let go of Tara, dropping rapidly into his chair, sucking for the air Phillip had knocked out of him. Phillip then hit him once more with the rolled magazine rod, striking hard on his carotid artery, knocking him out completely. His eyes closed as his arms fell limply to his sides and his chin dropped to his chest. He would be out for a while.
All this happened in less than three seconds.
Maureen and Tara, still sitting, were completely stunned. Each stared blankly now at the Belgian's slumped-over body in the chair, not yet registering what just took place.
Phillip calmly stood up and suggested they pay the bill and leave, quickly. He placed Tara's magazine on the Belgian's lap, positioned his limp hands on the opened pages, and stifled a laugh. It had opened to an article on "Power Napping Made Easy."
As they headed across the lobby to the elevator, Maureen detoured through the hotel's gift shop for that resupply. When they were all finally in the elevator with the doors closed in front of them, the elevator shaft echoed with the girls' giggling laughter as they rode up to their floor together.
The girls kept trying to mimic hitting each other, asking Phillip, "Where did you learn to do that?"
Phillip grinned at them and winked, but said nothing.
***
Sipping a cold bottle of Spanish beer thirty minutes later, he sat alone on the couch in the girls' living room of their shared, two-bedroom, diminutive suite. He was waiting for them to change for the beach, a second time.
Phillip was looking out the open balcony doors, daydreaming of the ocean waves rolling up onto the sun-drenched beach below, when Maureen and Tara, still giggling, slipped down on either side of him wearing only their string bikini bottoms. They were both grinning as they snuggled their bare breasts against Phillip's arms, each stroking his chest seductively.
Maureen was first to whisper softly in his ear, "We want to show you just how much we appreciate what you did for Tara this morning."
All his thoughts of the beach disappeared.
***
Two days and nights later, Phillip and the girls parted ways at the Barcelona International Airport. The girls headed home to the United Kingdom on a 7:00 AM flight, but not before he promised Maureen he would look her up the next time he was in London. And Tara, well, what could he say about her? She just gave him a sexy grin, holding her thumb to her ear and her little finger near her mouth, signaling call me as she waved her good-bye.
As for Phillip, he was soon in a taxi on his way from the airport to the train station; he had a meeting Monday morning with a gentleman whom he had not been formally introduced to yet.
Earlier that morning when he checked out of the hotel, the desk clerk handed him a sealed envelope, one without postage on it. It had been addressed to his room number, and the words "The American" were written on the front of it. Opening it, he found the envelope contained a short handwritten note, 7,000 Swiss francs, and a first class, one-way train ticket to Luzern, Switzerland. The note, printed on quality stationery and embossed with ICC PLC, read simply, "Impressive. Meeting requested Monday morning, 9:00 AM. Car will be waiting at the Luzern train station / Herr A. Mueller, VP, International Security Affairs."
It was now 7:30 AM, Saturday morning.
