Without Wrath (Harbinger of Change Book 3) Read online

  Once they started getting him to rationalize, he realized they were running a “by the numbers game” on him, just like the ones he ran on unfortunates that he had caught who refused to sign the confession. That’s when the mind games would begin. Rationalizing is the number one way to break down emphatic denial. It’s also the number one way to convince the population of a country to try to take over the world—just ask the Germans.

  He knew Ray Callahan was sincere, but there were some things that just couldn’t be fixed. So he became “the pretender.“ He played the game well; he always had.

  Jan snored and rolled to the other side that Jon Jon was on. No matter their intensions, no one could make someone right who had done what he had done. He went from never having killed anyone to having killed over fifteen people in a little over two years. Ray might be the greatest mind Matt had ever known and for sure he was the reason Matt had come as far as he had today, but regardless, he couldn‘t fix this. This was one of those things that couldn’t be fixed by words. This morning’s awakening was right on schedule and he was beginning to think maybe even time would never fix this.

  Matt couldn‘t stop the night terror wake ups. Every night his dreams put him in Vera’s bed and every night she woke up terrified and brought him out of his dream sleep. He held her crying and sobbing and pleading “não mais.” He couldn’t even begin to think about the horrors she had endured—even in his dreams. Then, as it did every night, his mind went back to the control room. He was there with the gun and her angry and confused face filling his thoughts. She was defiant and crazed and he couldn’t get through to her, even though he tried so hard.

  He could usually get through to her, even when she was angry, but not every time. Once, when they were shopping in Quito some taxi driver bumped into their car. It was one of the few times they had ever gone out without a security detail. She wanted to go shopping for new clothes and talked Matt into the excursion. They had a wonderful day until the incident with the driver.

  The taxi driver tapped their SUV and because he wouldn’t make eye contact to apologize, Vera became incensed. Then the guy made the big mistake of dismissing her as a puta. He actually laughed at her, and the next thing Matt knew she was out of the vehicle.

  The Taxi Driver was trapped in traffic as were they and couldn’t pull out, so he tried to roll up his window. That cost him a punch in the face from a trained martial artist. Enraged he opened his car door and tried to get out, but no sooner had his foot hit the ground and his shoulder was breaching the upper frame than Vera kicked the door forcefully, breaking his leg for sure and probably causing some major damage to his shoulder. He was screaming in pain and she swung the door open on him.

  The driver realized it wasn’t over and went for his glove box, no doubt to retrieve his pistol. That move cost him a punch in the balls and when he sat up from that, a good face clawing. By the time Matt pulled her off him, he was a 911 call. But the most disturbing part was Vera’s eyes, wild and crazed, he didn’t know how to get through to her. She nearly attacked him too before she came out of it and they got the fuck out of there by employing the sidewalk as a means of escape.

  That’s what he was faced with in his dreams every night—that face, that crazed face. Matt could still feel the tension of that moment in the room, just as he had when he was there, just as when it was life or death. He continued to see it in slow motion, Pablo’s hand reaching for the button. It is said that in the flash of life or death, one can relive an entire lifetime in that wink of an eye, and indeed, that’s what happened to Matt that day.

  As the shot he fired in the dream rung out he was ripped from his sleep every night. Often a new perspective came out of it, but it was the same hell every night. It might be just a new thought or word that was missed, nothing ever earth shattering. It was a never-ending cycle of sleep torture.

  Vera had endured such a tragic life. Added to that, Pablo had enlisted her captors as his followers, so she had this constant reminder of that horrible chapter in her life.

  He slipped out of bed and went to the living room computer, fired it up, and logged into his group, “Where’s my America?”

  His login was El Conejo and his avatar was a Rabbit. He was borrowing a little from his former captors, but also knew he was destined to have this moniker by a much higher authority. Today’s topic was the former Occupy Protesters. The room was always diverse, there were people from all walks of life, but Matt knew the regulars, as they were his online friends.

  Collectively they lived all over the United States. Phillybob74 was an obvious give-away as was BostonMike1. Matt learned that Picomann was from Los Angeles and TimberJustin12 was from his neck of the woods in Seattle.

  His boss, Chase Viana, had moved him to Seattle at his request. Eric Barnett, Director of the CIA, was more than shocked when Matt turned down a job as an analyst, a job that would have fulfilled a lifelong sleuthing dream of his. But a visit from the President changed all that in a heartbeat.

  Matt remembered he was asleep in the hospital, soon to be released, when he became aware of someone in his room. He accepted the fact that there were frequent intrusions in such an institution; it was a part of his life at the time; but usually not at that hour.

  He turned and saw the newly elected second-term President. He was with a man that looked familiar, was he an Actor? “Hey Matt, how are you? This is Chase Viana, a friend of mine.”

  Chase leaned in and said, “It is my very special pleasure to meet you, Matt Hurst.”

  Caulfield spoke again, “Chase is one of the very few people who knows about you who’s not in the Government.”

  “I see,” was Matt’s reply.

  Caulfield pulled up a chair, as did Viana. In a more hushed tone, the President explained that Chase ran a clandestine organization, one that the President approved of, but not one on the books of the U.S. Government. Matt then became one of just a handful of people who even knew what TJAC meant. They were an Agency, but they were also a Paper Tiger. Sure they could hire outside resources to get certain jobs done, but that was a messy business rife with possible fallout. What they needed was an agent provocateur and seeing Matt had let Ray know he was choosing career and not the “lecture circuit,” they thought they could offer him something a little better than an analyst job.

  Matt pondered the moment. Back then, according to Chase, the President had been his biggest detractor but had subsequently become his biggest fan. They promised to wait and instructed him to turn down the Agency job. They handed him a packet that held his new identity. His new name was to be Thomas Mathew Holsinger; Jan and Jon would stay the same except for the surname.

  The President put forth that the Federal Government would pay for some minor plastic surgery and put them into protection. The surgery would soften his features. His mother would recognize him, but probably not his third grade teacher. The offer was there and he took it, never hesitating for a moment.

  Little did he know that his recovery would take this long. They seemed to know this ahead of time, but he was too stubborn to listen to anything he was being told. Chase figured it would be a year or more, while, of course, he expounded, “it would be more like a couple of months.” Such hubris—that was a year and half ago.

  Phillybob74 just hammered some newcomer for saying something he disagreed with. If one were outside his circle, Philly was an ass, his conversations were always aimed at all the conspiracy theory stuff.

  Ecuador was returning back to the twenty-first century communications-wise, but there were still many questions to answer. The U.S. and Ecuadorian Governments were still dealing with all the ecological disasters caused by the sinking of the fleet and the resulting low-yield nuclear depth charge that had been fired in their coastal waters. Luckily the trade winds and currents spared the Galápagos Islands, but the coasts of Ecuador and Panama were not so fortunate.

  Philly was having a very long field day with all the world madness, so the Occupy topic was not
what he wanted to discuss. “They’re no better than the zealot Sheep,” he pontificated. Which, of course, sent the topic off in a million directions. Matt wanted to get it back towards the Occupy people, and fortunately, so did the rest of the room, so they ignored Philly’s rants.

  All agreed that the One Percenters were out of control, but no one could figure out a solution that they all could agree on. Pablo Manuel had taken the most extreme route—they all did agree on that—but what would have been the alternative?

  Matt was creating these forums and think tanks trying to fulfill a destiny he didn’t really believe in. Although this was no super educated bunch, they weren’t stupid either. If you discounted Philly’s incessant idiocy, the group was just a group of guys venting.

  Picomann said that although he was Hispanic he thought there are too many illegals and that they were taxing the system to the breaking point.

  TimberJustin12 thought we needed to legalize soft drugs and tax them, which Matt agreed with, but that idea was generally shut right down by the rest. Matt was talking about how he respected the Occupy people for at least having a cause, but they weren’t in touch somehow.

  And then it rolled out—Matt had been trying to connect the dots for a long time and then it just happened—he was able to articulate why they wouldn’t succeed. He had the room as BostonMike1 egged him on to continue through Philly’s rude comments on the Hispanic thing that was like ten minutes ago.

  Matt commented, “When I worked in retail I observed a disturbing trend. The profit the store and company were expected to make was always more every year and it never seemed to have a ceiling. That’s the problem,” he furthered. “If you keep raising the ceiling, it’s unrealistic. Everything has a ceiling. So the shareholders ask for more and some bean counters decide to trim some jobs, but the following year, there are no more jobs to trim here to reduce costs, so they move the factory abroad.”

  PhillyBob74 said, “How’s that a solution, dipshit?”

  Picomann then took a few minutes to tell Philly what a scumbag he was and how he was going to have Tom, who happened to be the site administrator, remove him. That finally got Philly to behave.

  Matt, under the guise as Tom continued, “I understand it wasn’t the answer Philly, but it is our doing that this all happened, we drank the Kool-Aid. That’s why the Occupy people were sure to fail, because the One Percenters could care less if you’re out there freezing your ass off for whatever cause it is you believe in, unless, of course, you are doing something to get their attention, something like, getting their quarter profit chart to drop.”

  BostonMike1 chimed in that, “We do this all the time. Talk, talk, talk, but we never do shit about it, we are dickless.” He put an angry face on the screen. “Why don’t we ever get out there with them and make it a really big movement, we just sit here and do nothing. Look at what Manuel did, he got moving and people who liked what he stood for followed. Really people, look at the millions of Sheep he was able to enlist.”

  “That’s the reason they will fail,” said Matt. “People aren’t smart. America is dumbed down, and with two working people in every family, who has the time to protest? This isn’t the Sixties where people had the job security or the wherewithal to protest. Pablo Manuel was successful because he was able to connect with a lot of people in a way no one has ever done before. Here’s my theory, gentlemen, and it won’t be popular, but I think seeing that we know that Special Interests are in the pocket of every politician and our immigration policies were made by these same politicians, it would not be a huge jump to say it was a planned policy to factionalize our country. Hell, who’s to say that these Special Interest pukes representing a conglomerate are not foreign nationals! Who knows?

  “The obvious plan is to divide us up and speak different languages to slow us down. Someone else has had this same failed plan and his name was God. He had this thought at the Tower of Babel and apparently our dear friends in the One Percenters agree with the strategy. Think about it? It makes it so much harder to rally the troops when we can’t talk to one another. My thought is, the reason the Occupy protesters were sure to fail is that our country is so factionalized, polarized, and partisan minded, that nowadays it’s impossible to rally the troops. I believe the ‘powers that be’ had a reason for this and I think you’re seeing it unfold before your eyes.”

  “So we’re fucked is what you’re saying,” said Picomann.

  “Well, maybe not Pico, maybe we could find a way to get their attention. All we have to do is talk. There are people in society called ‘connectors’ and these connectors bring all sorts of people together from all walks of life. If we got a few of these people on board, real key ones, then it could start a groundswell. That’s all any concept is really, just groundswell—enough people hitting ‘like.’

  “All we have to do is start a website dedicated to the concept of an organized boycott. We could call it “Boycott is Power.” You can’t tell me that if we got everyone to stop buying Nike for three months that the Nike executives wouldn’t be more open to talking about bringing some jobs back. WE CREATED THESE BEASTS!”

  SASPURSRULE29 came back with, “wouldn’t that just run into the same problems? You still would have the ‘whole factions’ thing to deal with.”

  “Yes, Spurs, that’s true, but we could get a select few minorities to join early on to help spread the word. All of us have minority friends, if we’re not one, who we know and trust. It’s just a matter of finding the right connectors to get past the tipping point. Once that happens, it will be like all other fads, it will catch fire. Don’t forget, every empire that’s ever fallen has done so because they failed to see the change at the bottom. Face it gentlemen, we’re the bottom. Demographics is destiny and the former middle class has the numbers.”

  Matt took a break to crack his knuckles. “Here’s the funny part and it’s spelled out everywhere for us. I just watched the kid’s movie, A Bugs Life with my son and I was stunned to see this same concept played out in a kid’s movie! Spoken from the lead bad grasshopper in the movie, “If those Ants ever figure out they have us outnumbered a million to one, then our way of life is over.” Matt typed one last thought, “It’s there for us people. We just have to talk to make it happen.”

  TimberJustin12 broke in, “Deep, Tom.” Matt always had a hard time remembering he was Tom now. Sometimes people would call him and he didn’t respond, like the guy at the tire center who must have thought he was stoned.

  He continued his thoughts online, “All we have to do is research a new target every three months and do it. At the end of the three months, they might want to come to the table, if not, another three. Corporate America is out of control, like a spoiled ten-year-old girl crying desperately for her parents to straighten her out.

  “Don’t forget guys, in the Fifties, if you would have tried this shit they’re doing today, they would have been hung by the highest flagpole! What they’re doing to us is the old boiling the frogs experiment. If you drop a frog in hot water his ass will jump out, but if you slowly increase the heat and boil him, he acclimates too easily and there is no more frog. Maybe quoting McCarthyism is a bit extreme, but not really, because the one thing that gets swept under the carpet in all this is the traitor aspect of this outsourcing.”

  For once, no one was bickering; they were listening, so he continued. “Since when is it okay to fuck over your country so you can make a buck? If you look up the definition of treason, it clearly states that anytime your actions help another foreign sovereignty prosper, especially to your own country’s detriment, you are guilty of treason and that surely would have been true in any other era other than in this time of deregulated madness we are dealing with. We need to take back Washington and kick out the Special Interests, but that is going to be a near impossible challenge.

  “So the one thing we can do now is target the corporations that think not having a ceiling is okay; that taking away our jobs, destroying our middle class, a
nd having unrealistic margins is somehow okay because it’s in the name of Capitalism. Maybe it is Capitalism, but it’s Capitalism without conscience and the billionaires that make it run have now hedged the rules politically in their favor to allow for it to drain us like leeches. Irresponsible corporations have to be taught that they can’t do anything they want without repercussions, that irresponsible Capitalism will be noticed and punished.

  “We created it and we can stop it, all we have to do is start talking to each other and stop arguing. For me personally, the arguing is the worst part because it’s what they want us to do. While we’re all pointing fingers and standing our political ground, they are gaining ground.

  “They have figured out that our parents had about thirty percent disposable income and they’ve targeted us to make sure we don’t. We’re under siege and too ignorant to see the elephant in the room. And gentleman, make no mistake about it, they are succeeding.”

  That set the room ablaze and the conversations went wild, but Matt noticed something, his core group was on board and did not enter the fray of thirty people going round and round.

  Philly spoke next, “Tom Holsinger, I believe you are the true messiah, your words so inspire, how can I serve you?” It was PhillyBob74 being his usual flippant self, serving only him, “Seriously, Tom, how may I serve you?”

  He wrote this about forty more times until Matt had enough and told him. “Okay, Philly, you want to help? Create the website of what we just discussed. Create a Mission Statement, make me the CEO, and make you and the boys the Board of Directors.” He knew this would shut him up. “Just start caring about something other than yourself for a change.”

  TimberJustin12 slammed Philly with the old schoolyard, “Yeah big-mouth, do it, put your money where your big fucking mouth is.”