The Harbinger of Change Read online

  Luis knew the legend in their neighborhood, as his Padre was left fatherless and was the subject of much cruelty as a result. That was the reason his Padre was so against any kind of life where one stood out. He would roll in his grave if he saw his son go from Private to General in the course of fifteen years. Most parents would have been proud, but not his Padre. He would have been sure this was a sign he was about to die.

  His Papa had taught him to keep his head down and stay out of trouble, so Luis was never allowed to fight. His nickname from the other children was gallina, but he was no chicken, he was just handcuffed. Luis could still see his father’s peaceful face in his casket, a victim of a bad heart, taken when he was just over fifty.

  His legend really grew from there, and it revolved around him being so angry, so hostile toward the world. His first day back at school, he had gotten into his first fistfight. A kid that had been bullying him his whole life bullied him no more. The rest of his youth was spent going from one fight to the next until he met Octavio.

  Octavio had announced himself as an independent contractor when they had met in a bar in Lima. Luis had been going to this bar for a year, as it was the same bar where his grandfather’s life had ended. He had been standing his “angry ground,” looking for something he could not define. He couldn’t count how many fights, but it was always the same. He would profess his love for the concept of the Shimmering Way and someone would object. Then he would fight that person.

  But not that night, that night he met someone who agreed with him and actually did some work for the group. Luis was floored when the man said he could introduce him to some of them. His path was finally set.

  In his sixth year, Luis got his moment to rise. They had taken several setbacks from the Army, as the U.S. was coercing the Peruvian Government to go after the growers in the Huallaga Valley. The Americans had also coerced the Ecuadorians into letting them use their air base at Manta for anti-drug operations. The pressure had really been on, and he had been thinking he might soon be joining Gomez in prison.

  Then he got the news: he had to go back home to Lima because his mother was having surgery. It was there that his sister told him that his cousin Ignacio had been promoted to Sergeant in a special drug enforcement unit. Sometimes life just happened that way.

  He had gone to Ignacio, and thus the arrangement had started. It had started with a few men in the know. It had soon stretched to practically everyone.

  The U.S. had placed the Shimmering Way on the list of known terrorist organizations, and had pledged to help the Peruvian Government fight the cocaine trade. The only problem for the U.S. was that most of the Peruvian Military was on Luis’ payroll. Planes loaded with cocaine left for Colombia even though the army base was just a few miles away. Nothing was done. The Shimmering Way did not decrease their production: they just got smarter about how they did business.

  Not all the cocaine was sent by plane. Some of it was sent by car, some was sent as cargo, and some smugglers employed things as diverse as submarines to move their cargo. Some was simply sent by mules to one of Ecuador’s many border cities. With all the heat coming from other countries, sometimes a good old pack mule line got the job done just fine, and was nearly impossible to intercept.

  * * *

  Julio had made friends after some time in Quito, but they were the type of friends that could either get one killed or make one rich—flip a coin. One thing was for sure: he was one of them now.

  He was told they were going to the City of Gualaquiza. He was still processing this information when Francisco handed him a machine gun and asked him if he knew how to use it. All he knew about weapons was that a machine gun was “pretty darn heavy.” So he was taken to the basement of the warehouse and shown the range. After a small instruction period, he was allowed to shoot. It took several clips, but soon he was hitting the target with some accuracy. This pleased Francisco. Julio was allowed to go armed, but he didn’t dare ask why.

  * * *

  The walk down the corridor and back into the lab felt like an eternity, mostly because Vera realized that the exterior exit and guard shack would still have to be negotiated if she made it out of the building. Damn, how the hell did it happen? What variable took place that caused this? It must have been some god-awful blown tire situation that just fucking happens. Damn it! Then she was in the lab; no more time for grousing.

  She ducked in and grabbed her keys. But instead of placing them in her ninja-like satchel (which was now was placed across her shoulder for rapid movement), she instead opted to keep them in her nervous hands. There was no need to try to put everything in the briefcase, because according to the new plan, she wouldn’t need it.

  Her watch told her that thirty seconds had passed, and by now, the alarm in James’s vault room was resetting. She exited the lab at a hurried pace. The lab rats she worked with were all in their own underground cubed worlds, oblivious to the changing face of the wider world happening right in front of them. She breached the stairwell door into the main lobby after a spirited stair sprint, which reminded her of something: her work shoes were useless for running.

  Immediately in front of her was the bank of glass doors; the security counter was slightly to the left; and the employee exit was still left of that. Employees were required to only use the designated employee door as a means of entering and exiting the building. All employees were inspected every day, both coming and going. Employees were not allowed to exit via the main doors.

  * * *

  Brian Franklin had seen her a thousand times, and a thousand times he could not believe what a beautiful woman she was. It was so hard to remain professional around her, as she was not only completely intoxicating; she was also so damn nice. God, I love her. He wasn’t always on the front desk, sometimes he did her security check, and every time he loved it, because he got to soak in her aroma as he inspected her things. Her smell absolutely melted him.

  Brian desired her essence and sought it out, but could never quite pinpoint it. The closest he could come was Ciara. He seriously thought something was wrong with himself the day he bought that perfume even though he didn’t have a woman to put it on. Little did he know that her perfume was invented by the man who masterminded this whole thing, right down to the security guard falling in love with her.

  Once Pablo had obtained a unique scent from his greenhouse (some of his orchids could be found nowhere else), he had added the pheromones, and had instructed her how and when to apply this love spell. So every day, whether Brian knew it or not, he was being programmed to want her, to know her every movement, to never stop thinking about her. He had her life timed to the tee. So it was quite mystifying to see her come out of the stairwell and start heading for his desk with what appeared to be a satchel of some kind swung over her shoulder.

  His normal defenses were down, of course, or he might have spotted the small trail of blood that she hadn’t noticed on her dress. That might have led him to being suspicious when the time was right for suspicion.

  * * *

  Vera came out of the stairwell with her heart in her throat. Then she saw Brian was at the desk and she drew a breath of relief, because she knew this guard Brian was under her spell. Her charms didn’t work on all the guards. She figured some were gay, because even the married ones hit on her, but those few didn’t. Some were women too, of course, although one of them was under her spell as well. So she locked eyes with Brian and right away he was tractor-beamed in, and came around the desk to greet her. As she got within five feet from him, he started saying with incredulity, “What are you doing here?”

  Then, the hammer fell.

  Immediately, the building’s alarms started going off, and the seal process began. The steel door slowly shut, as a loud alarm blared and red lights flashed. Just like in the goddamned movies! She had one chance. As she approached him, she feigned a look of shock and bewilderment about what was happening. Without warning, her right hand shot out in a backhand chop, hitti
ng Brian in the throat and instantly giving him something more to worry about than the alarm or her presence at a weird time.

  Martial arts and self-defense moves were also something Pablo helped her to master. She kept up with her training via video and self-training. The chop was brutal and exact, partially crushing Brian’s windpipe. As she ran past, she saw the look of absolute shock on his face. He wasn’t a stupid man, and she bet that he had it figured out by the time he hit the floor. She wasn’t sure he was going to live, though, having felt a sickening crunch with the chop.

  * * *

  Brian believed this to be his luckiest day ever. He had no idea what she wanted, but this meant he got to see her three times today! He didn’t know why, but aside from the satchel, she looked different. As they approached each other, he went to ask her what she was doing here. Then simultaneously, the Homeland Security Alarm went off and he saw her chop his throat, lightning-quick.

  At first he thought it was a joke, because she had the same pleasant smile she always had on. But when the blow struck and it had the immediate impact of a trained martial artist, he knew it was no joke. He went down, and went down quickly. His immediate need was to get air, which suddenly wasn’t a given anymore.

  Flaying, clutching, scared out of his mind, Brian was completely befuddled by the cacophony of sound and movement of the terribly loud alarm and the rushing personnel. To call his last thirty seconds surreal would have been the understatement of the year. It was the second time in one day that strange phenomena had occurred in the same building. Right before he passed out, he got the most beautiful beaver shot ever, as she deftly penguin-slid right under the steel door like she was in some Indiana Jones movie.

  Plus she was barefoot, that’s why she looked different, he was thinking as a choking, terrifying, blackness came. He noticed one last thing before he lost consciousness: a set of keys was lying inside the door—keys that didn’t make it out with her.

  * * *

  As Vera looked into his face, she could see the confusion. Why did Nancy just throat-chop me? Why was the alarm going off? Then she was past him, and the door was halfway down with twenty feet to go. She had already stowed her shoes in the stairwell, realizing that women’s work shoes were worthless. Her running shoes were in the car.

  She wasn’t going to make it at her current pace, so she kicked it into high-gear, and when the timing was right, she slid head first through the opening that was now two feet, at the most. By the time she got to her feet, the door had closed and she was now between the steel door and the bank of glass doors. From her training, she knew that the glass doors were also now locked down and reinforced.

  She immediately went to work on the last glass door to the right. Taking off her necklace, Vera opened the locket and removed the tiny foam earplugs inside. The inside lid was a timer and it was counting down from thirty. In the locket was the compound called Octanitrocubana. Pablo said that using it was a calling card. Whatever that meant?

  He didn’t always explain what he meant. Blind faith was what it took to get her here and to get the job done, and she had no problem with blind faith to a man like her Pablo. He warned her that once she activated this locket and stuck it to the doorframe, she should get to the other side quickly, place her earplugs in, and duck and cover. “This is not the Movies,” Pablo had told her. “Anyone in proximity of this blast will lose their eardrums, or at the very minimum, their hearing will be obscured by unbearable ringing.”

  She already knew what to expect because Pablo had decided that she needed to feel the blast too, beforehand. “It’s like shooting a gun,” he had said. “Once you get past the shock that a contained explosion has gone off in your hand, you learn to harness it. No one masters weapons,” he taught her. “We harness them, they’re in control, and we must play by their rules or we die. Never forget that.”

  He had taken her to a quarry that he had purchased. It was the perfect way to test the many weapons he was working on without detection. God, he was so brilliant. Vera loved how Pablo saw things that no one else could see, how he really was different.

  Then he had shown her how three ounces of something James had taught him to make sounded and felt like when it exploded. The effect of the blast was deafening. It shook her bones. It literally moved her flesh in a sonic wave that was absolutely terrifying and it destroyed a solid block of granite!

  When planning the explosion, Pablo had told her that she would be wearing this destructive compound around her neck on her last day of work, and she needed to know what she was dealing with. The explosion the locket created was exactly as she had remembered at the quarry. It blasted a massive hole in what used to be the door frame and glass door.

  The debris field was blasted out like a shotgun discharge all the way to the fountain. The facade of the steel security door was blackened, but not breached. She immediately removed the small foam protectors from her ears. Then she bolted along the inside entryway and exited the ruined doorframe of the glass entrance door, being careful not to step on any debris. That would ruin everything, she thought.

  And then it hit her. My keys!

  Vera knew she’d had them in her hand when she came up out of the stairwell. What did I do with them? Then she remembered. She had placed them in the open pocket of her dress as she was walking up to Brian. She had done it unconsciously when she decided she was going to chop him. So she had stowed them, and now they were gone, probably on the other side of a door a tank couldn’t penetrate! Fuck! Way off the Grid now!

  * * *

  Bill Westinghouse was heading to lunch at one of his favorite digs. The place was called Buck’s, and it was nestled in the foothills just over Highway 280 above San Carlos. He liked it so much because of its contrast to the area in which it resided. A few miles of rolling hills away, there were houses that were more palatial than residential, and yet there Buck’s sat.

  With its nondescript roadside building look, it would have almost seemed a cheesy place if one had just walked in off the street and weren’t really paying attention. But its theme was anything goes in Americana, as long as it’s interesting and fun. There were toys from Cracker Jacks dating all the way back to early 1900s, each stuck and adorned to the walls. There was the scale model sub used in the movie Das Boot, sleds that NASA had used to test monkeys, and of course, the Star Wars figures abounded. So there was this odd place that served great food, nestled in one of the richest areas in the world. While eating a hamburger, one could have very well been sitting next to the two gentlemen who scrawled out the idea for Google on a napkin.

  Buck’s also had this blonde waitress who made Bill feel twenty years younger when she hit on him. Of course he tipped her a twenty for lunch once a week, which might have had something to do with it, but she always had something kind to say. Today, Bill needed it.

  She dropped his food, asked how his day was going, and then showed him what the perfect ass walking away looks like.

  Halfway through his half Reuben and salad, Sandy Burroughs appeared and sat down, uninvited. Actually, he had been invited. It was the reason Bill had left for lunch today. But nonetheless, Burroughs just sat down without the customary mannerisms.

  Sandy was a San Francisco tax-attorney who had been hired by James Haberman to act as an intermediary in case an emergency came up. He was a squat man, in his early sixties with strikingly, gray hair, coke-bottle glasses, and a dull gray suit that should have been retired in the Sixties. Bill knew that he was also the tax lawyer for many a millionaire over on Russian Hill, although his reputation was not supported by his looks. What Bill didn’t know was that Sandy and James’s father had gone to Harvard together.

  “Bill, how are you?”

  “Not so great, Sandy. I’m afraid I need you to pass a message on to our friend. It will be short and sweet.”

  He handed the lawyer a letter. It read, “Sabbatical over. STOP. Time to click the heels three times. STOP. Wolves are at the door. STOP.” He told Burroughs th
at aside from its obvious connotations, James would get the meaning, as it held an inside message for them both. As the man contemplated the note, Bill could see his little wheels turning.

  “I’m under no obligation to deliver this note,” Sandy finally retorted. “I was hired by James for one reason, and one reason alone. He’s only to be contacted if it’s a matter of national security. That is the only reason I am ever to leave a message by our designated method. This is not a matter of national security. Do you want to elaborate a little more?”

  “We worked together for many years. He knows me as well as any human on earth. Trust me when I say there doesn’t have to be any more words.” Bill, like Sandy, was not able to discuss his work, or the fact that it could become a national security matter rapidly. “Do you really think I would waste my time bothering to talk to a puke lawyer like you if it wasn’t a matter of national security? Now get your J.C. Penney suit-buying-ass going and do your job.” Bill rose to his full height of six feet to tower over Burroughs for emphasis. He dropped his lunch money on the table, not forgetting the usual tip.

  Burroughs watched him leave, looked at the bills, and removed ten dollars from the tip pile. Over-tipping was an annoying habit. As he picked up Bill’s leftover sandwich and took a bite, he wondered, What the hell is going on?

  Bill left the restaurant more than annoyed at the arrogance of that little bastard. He felt like delivering a backhanded slap when he rose, just to make sure that puke got moving expeditiously. He loved the new sound system he had put in his Hummer and was currently playing “Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty at a pretty high volume. He was listening way too loudly when he cleared security and headed for his prime parking spot adjacent to the fountain plaza.