The Crusader

1

T H E C R U S A D E R

by R. Vincent Riccio

S m a s h w o r d s E d i t i o n

Copyright 2009 — R. Vincent RIccio

ISBN: 0595351794

* Action - Adventure Series *

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PROLOGUE

I'd enlisted in the Military when I was young. I hadn't wanted to, but circumstances made it so that I had to - at least in my mind. I tested fairly high for intelligence; that, and the bitterness and burning hatred I brought with me, earmarked me as a perfect candidate for special operations duties - that is, covert operations and assassination.

You could hardly argue any longer that there was a need for assassinations, that was well-known by all the western world intelligence services, and their allies, well before Nine-Eleven. Intelligence agencies in the U.S. had been fairly gutted during the Nixon and Carter years. They were not the James Bond affairs they used to be prior to that. During the Cold War, when we worried whether the Soviet Union and United States might mutually nuke themselves into extinction, there was felt a great need for spy work. The FBI, the CIA, and all the military branches, each had their spy networks, operating undercover to keep the world from eradicating itself.

It's a dirty business, produces many casualties, on both sides, but it has to be done. No one has ever liked to talk about it, but since Nine-Eleven, people have become more concerned with intelligence work, covert operations, and the need to eliminate some of the worst people, like Hussein, Bin Laden, and others like them. With a planet full of terrorist people out there whose sole purpose in life is to kill - both themselves and others, for some incomprehensible group of reasons - the world has come to know there is a need for people who operate outside the standard laws of civilization. The other side does not play by the rules, and neither do those of us whose job it is to deal with them.

It's easy to see the need to eradicate people such as those who planned and caused Nine-Eleven - suicide killers - and the host of other terrorists who plan and perpetrate similar activities across the globe, as they've been doing in Iraq as it becomes a democracy. The civilized world has finally made it its primary task to extinguish these sources of terror, and all who advocate it - any way we can. And we do. Much more goes on than is ever made public, naturally, since the essence of such work is that it be kept clandestine.

Yet, even for those of us who are toughened and cold, there comes a time when the killing becomes too much. That, and other practical considerations, are why you don't find a bunch of sixty-year-old spies running around the planet.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Most of the agents, spies, or Special Ops people, however they're titled, try to find productive positions when they leave the field. They manage, they consult, they teach, they advise. I'd become too visible - known to too many people in too many places, having done too many jobs. I needed to get out; but I'd been working on very high-profile assignments. They didn't want me to leave; then they wanted time to debrief, and de-program me. I didn't want that. I knew a great deal, and the powers-that-be didn't want me leaking it anywhere, either for or against our interests. I would never work against American interests, but those people who administrate our activities aren't convinced of that, unless they can control you for the rest of your life; if you're not somewhere handy where you can be easily manipulated, or eradicated if you become troublesome, they worry. Paranoia is a natural state in this business.

I told my superiors that I would stay on in government, as a special consultant for National Security, a job that would now be handled within Homeland Security, and so I was out of the Service - formally. After six months, I bolted. They weren't happy, and chased me around for awhile. I thought that was finally all over.

There were people on all sides that knew me by my work, if not specifically who I was. I wouldn't be hard to find if I stayed in government service. Despite the fire that still bitterly burned within me, I wanted my own life, to try finally to make something of myself other than a killer; but it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

Circumstances conspired to keep me in this business, despite not working for government any longer. I found that civilian life contains as many demonic and terrorist personalities as there are in the military sector. Police departments and our justice system are overwhelmed, and generally incapable of handling such intelligent, well-organized, and evil people. Finding and convicting them becomes a difficult, and often impossible, task for our plodding judicial machinery; it might catch Martha Stewart with her hand in the cookie jar, if you can believe that, but taking down highly motivated and structured criminals or terrorists is a task it is nearly totally inept at handling. When civilian justice fails, and evil begins to triumph over good, people need something else, something more. It's a paradox, I realize, but I came to understand that sometimes human beings and society required what I can do for them.

I chronicle my relevant activities here, for my own purposes, to provide some perspective and meaning to my existence, and to help explain and quell the bitterness and hatred of injustice that has always plagued me. Specific names and places will be changed to conserve my anonymity, which is crucial.

If and when this is published, it may be a benefit to others who might better understand the world which surrounds us, and the passion some of us have for saving it. It's not an easy task. Whoever does publish it will be far enough removed from me - by someone who knows people who knows people who I know - and will not know me personally. In that names, dates, some descriptions, and places must be changed, and events sometimes extreme, it will be told as fiction, although it is all based in fact.

* * * * * * * * * *

CHAPTER ONE

I was a light sleeper, the small fraction of the day when I actually slept. Living solitary, and in a deep wood, you get to know the sounds of the forest: the owl hoots, the critter footprints, the sporadic, roaming Coyote crackling the leaves and twigs looking for a furtive meal, even the rustling of the leaves through the trees when the occasional wind kicks up.

I'd built most of the house myself, with my own two hands, taking about a year - a skill left over from my younger days when my Dad was still alive. The work had been cathartic, I found, and I'd learned a lot in the process. I did utilize a few roving subs to help with the more technical parts of the job, like plumbing, foundation, and electrical work, but the carpentry was mine.

This one night, Thursday, a day when usually nothing of import ever seemed to happen, the sounds were different coming through the partially opened windows. Too much of something, not enough of something else. I couldn't put my finger on it, but the woods sounded different. In the woods, different is a bad thing. Every animal knows it, thus the sounds change as they listen and watch more intently, to glean whatever it is.

I hoisted myself up on one elbow as I lay on my bed, feeling the hair on the back of my neck rise. It was suddenly too quiet, and instinctively I rolled off the bed onto the floor, just as the first shots blasted through the door and window. It was machine gun fire, sounded like Uzi's. I'd heard it before, in the Service.

I'd hoped I'd insulated myself adequately from this kind of thing, but I'd learned that I had to be on guard all the time if I wanted to stay alive. It was why I knew I couldn't stay in this profession forever.

Crawling on my stomach, close to the floor, I made it to the doorway to my dropped cellar, bullets whizzing over my head. There was crawl space under the house, which led to a tunnel I'd built into it that went for a couple hundred feet into the back wooded area. It had been easy to dig with a rented backhoe in the beginning, a few feet below the surface, and I'd simply laid some thirty-inch storm drain pipe down. I'd hoped I was being overly cautious, but as it turns out, I could never be too careful, not with what I do.

There was a cap which rose up at the end, with about eight inches of dirt and grass over it; it hadn't been opened for the year I'd lived there, so it was hard to push up and climb out. Finally, after several heaves, I forced it open enough to look out. I could still hear the gun fire a ways back. They were making sure nothing walked out of that house alive. By now it was riddled with holes, the plumbing had burst, electricity was flying everywhere; it would collapse soon.

I had only one last thing to do, and that was push the switch in the small box at the end of my escape tunnel. That would set off the explosives I'd built into the floor of the house, and hopefully take all of those guys with it.

The forest area lit up like 4th of July, with this huge orange and red ball of fire in the middle. The house simply disappeared in the flames. I saw it just a fraction of a second before I heard the deafening boom catch up to it, and immediately I was blown out of the pipe I was in and thrown several feet back into the woods. I'd forgotten that the explosion would naturally go down the pipe, too. Fortunately, it had lots of other space to go, so the concussion in the pipe wasn't that bad. Maybe I used a little too much C-4. I'd have to remember that for the next place I built.

Meanwhile, I was out of danger, just a little bruised up, and it didn't look like there was anyone around. The concussion appeared to have gotten everyone within twenty-five feet of it, so I didn't think anyone survived. Either way, at least they'd think I was dead for a while, which was some consolation.

This had become a part of my life, and was why I knew I needed out soon, regardless of the powerful reasons that had brought me into it. Government and terrorists had long memories - it could be both of them still wanted me - but I thought by now there'd been enough time and administration changes to forget me. I was small change. Obviously someone was still concerned enough to use major muscle to take me out. Eventually, I'd have to find out who that was - if I ever wanted a life beyond this. Right now, there wasn't much I could do about it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My life, as it is now, started when I was a kid - which seems like ages ago. I never knew exactly how these people in authority knew, but they did. There were people out there, people with files and agendas for changing the world, people whom I never met, but people who knew what I was, what I was capable of, even before I did. To my young mind I would have been an unlikely candidate. But there I was, years later, at the only job that pays you for extinguishing a human life.

Those individuals who are in the business of recruiting employees like me know the type. I was scouted at a very young age, despite the fact that I went to Catholic Schools until I graduated Cum Laude from High School. But I got tired of the rigors and confinements of religion and spent six years at State Universities down in Florida collecting my BA in Sociology; there was a bit of irony. My long range plans were to perform social work eventually, help people somehow, maybe teach, and do a little research. The irony got thick, I know; yet I've always believed I've provided society with help that it wasn't getting anywhere else. There are many people, with many different names, who do this work - government agent, spy, vigilante, Special Forces soldier, Army Ranger, Navy SEAL, private investigator, crusader - whatever name you put on it, the job is much the same.

This came to be my life. I didn't want it that way in the beginning, but circumstances forced me into it, and after many of the things I'd seen close hand, I wasn't able to step out of it. In the Service or Government, you're fighting and killing for nations. In civilian life, you're working for individuals; the work doesn't change. Once I came into civilian life, I found too many people needed serious help, and there were too few others able to provide it. If some folks ever wanted to see any justice at all, they needed something more than the ordinary. It won't happen by luck, magic, or praying; and too often it doesn't happen by the ponderously slow, inefficient mechanisms of our justice system.

I was trained to be good at what I do - which is even more important now, if I want to stay alive. The difficult part, naturally, is managing to keep several steps ahead of both the bad guys and the authorities. If there's any killing to be done, or justice to be metered out, the government types are the only ones who want to be able to do it - their way, on their terms. Often that doesn't help someone with a serious problem. As we saw on Nine-Eleven, it didn't even help the country. The people who planned that should have been taken out way beforehand, or shouldn't even have been here in the first place. If you want to insure the peace, effect some justice and balance, you have to do more than establish Commissions, you have to take some of the bad people out, there's no way around it. Finally the civilized population is beginning to see that; it's unfortunate that everyone's not a well-meaning saint, but that is the real world.

Police agencies collar as many innocent folks for crimes as they do guilty, and, as I've already stated, the truly guilty degenerates, the criminals with the most power, money, and organization, always manage to escape - if not completely, at least with minor consequences. I'd concluded that this was where someone like me entered the fray, to try to balance the scales. As we've recently seen, terror does not happen only on a massive scale; often it lives in a microcosm, confining itself to a very small number of people, even an individual. A man who beats and abuses his wife and children is a terrorist; as is a mother who kills her children, or a priest who perverts and debases his youngest parishioners. Our justice system seldom deals appropriately with them; it's handicapped by itself.

In addition to the normal danger associated with my profession, I now had this added problem - lurking in my shadows, sniffing at my distant footsteps - the existence of people who knew who and what I was. If they found me, they'd destroy me. Doing what I do, I can't be completely invisible; and every now and then my enemies get close. It's one more thing constantly on my mind. I always loved the danger of my profession, although that's not why I do it; it's a perk. Still, if I was ever going to have an attempt at a normal life some day, I had to find a way out of this. I don't want to be doing it at sixty! I was always running: on the one hand to perform my work, on the other, to find a healthy way out. I hadn't yet. If I stopped cold what I was doing, taking up some nondescript residence in the country, I just might; but I wasn't able to do that yet. Bitterness and hate still burned inside me; and when I saw people in desperate need of help, or a miscarriage of justice, I'm forced to continue as I am.

Why I do what I do is a long and unfortunate story; but everyone has their problems. This is how I reacted to mine.

There's little negotiation on the price for my services. My reputation has preceded me - and all of us - so that by the time the offer gets to me, it's usually in the right price range. When someone wants a person eliminated, it's not like buying a Ford. I might have to add more on occasion for expenses due to the complexity of the job, but beyond that, the money is usually there. Many times the job has been something like a small town politician or official who is known to be corrupt, or has hurt people, and then there's an offer for twenty-five to a hundred grand for his/her liquidation. Those are quick, fairly easy and trouble-free, with a low danger quotient; most of them I won't touch.

There was a job done in Texas, accomplished by another, that I was able to witness. That's occurred a few times in my career. An offer had been made which I was beginning to investigate. However, they wanted it faster than I was able. Easy job or not, I always thoroughly investigate a situation to meet all my requirements before I go through with it. Someone else grabbed the job, and I was held as second if he failed. There was a Judge on the take from big business that had been too harsh on too many of the locals, so the story was, and a couple of those locals ended up dead in jail, having been rather quickly and arbitrarily shuttled in there. The Judge was taking large payoffs to find a pile of problems in the local small businesses and halt their operation in favor of larger, more lucrative players. When the local folks protested in court, he found them in contempt fairly quickly and threw a bunch in jail; somehow, a couple wound up dead there. Nothing worse than a traitor; the Judge was apparently working against the interests of his own community. Certainly that's the way the locals looked at it. They weren't happy.

A group of the small-town business people got together and ordered the hit for fifty G's. Not tremendous money, but it seemed like it to them, and it was easy. Since the Judge did a lot of solitary fishing in one of the small lakes, it was cake to find him and do him in. The contractor strolled out of the woods, bid him a pleasant day, shot him twice in the head with a .22 Hollow Point, likely a Magnum due to the big noise, and walked back into the woods, later collecting his money and returning home. Simple. I knew who took the job during my own examination of the conditions, and in my observations of the Judge was able to watch it happen. I stopped all of my investigating right after that, naturally, so I don't precisely know what I would have done; but there didn't seem like enough of a reason for me to take it. It was mostly business.

Once again, crucial to being able to execute my career successfully, and remain alive, is staying invisible. No one in your life can know what you do. This creates another problem in the form of what it is you're supposed to be doing for a living, since you have to display some kind of normal career behavior which is reasonable and innocent. You also need a place to put your money that is not suspicious, not to people, police, or the IRS; additionally, you must have a source for its existence. To that end I sell real estate and I gamble - after a fashion - which allows me theoretically to put large sums of money in local accounts and not have it be unusually suspicious, plus enables me flexibility to accomplish whatever I need to do. I report the income I put in my bank and I pay taxes on it. On the surface I'm a normal guy, and, in all respects other than my profession, I'm fairly ordinary.

One has to understand that there is much more that comprises this job than the actual killing. There is the considerable research which goes into each particular situation, the planning of how each case will come about, what method and weapon will be used, when it will happen, where, how I will get in and out cleanly; and, most importantly for me, there is the story: what's going on, why I would take the case in the first place. The actual execution of the plan, and the elimination, is anticlimactic - generally. It's not what I live for. I don't actually LIKE killing, and if I could beam the bad guy out to a planet far, far away, I'd just as soon do that. I'm looking to effect balance, not commit serial murder. Many times, as when poisoning is used, I'll never see the person actually die, but will read about it later, or otherwise follow it up long distance; so it's not as if I get off over it or anything - quite the contrary.

The gambling I do is in reality minimal; you don't gamble on anything in this occupation, if you want a long life. But it does give me an excuse to say I win here and there in private games and ventures. I put it on my tax returns that it's what I do. And I sell some pieces of real estate, plus the occasional art objects and trinkets. I have a leisurely exterior, and the few people who actually see me believe I'm a successful businessman, and that's the end of it. It's enabled me to invest over the years and put money into things I want, as well as other businesses, so my financial life is comfortable. However, it does come at a cost, and currently that cost is getting too high. I know I'm pushing my luck, but so far I've been unable to stop. I know it's neurotic; someday I'll quit. But not quite yet. It's not the money, I have enough of that stashed away; it's still the job, to correct an imbalance between right and wrong, justice and injustice - that's what drives me. I know that seems strange to all those who want the world to just work out. It just doesn't.

For me, there must be a compelling reason for me do go to work. I have to know what's going on in detail. It's how I work, it's why I work. I don't like seeing dead people or even thinking about them. I don't even like going through hospitals where people are ill, and I get sick to death in a morgue; but this is a job I have become committed to, and so I continue to perform it.

* * * * * * * * *

CHAPTER TWO

I had a relatively normal childhood through my high school years. I learned a sense of self-discipline from Catholic schooling, which I attended from sixth through twelfth grades. I was studious, an altar boy, got good grades, studied enough to get A's and B's, played baseball, basketball, shot a mean game of pool, and read a lot in my late night spare time. My Dad always told me to get to sleep, but he was always buying me new books and putting them on the bureau. One Christmas he built me a bookcase against a wall - wasn't much he couldn't do around the house, we all loved him. Before that I had to put the books in a box in my closet. My sister, who was two years older than I was, had her dolls in her room, and a house, crafted by Dad, to put a lot of them in. I got books; but they cost as much as sis's dolls, so it was even as far as the gifts went.

My father was proud of me and wanted me to have a good education. We grew up in New England, in southern Massachusetts. It cost big money to send us both to Catholic schools, and Dad had a second job in order to get us paid up. Mom had a small sewing business where she sewed emblems and designs on all kinds of things, and did a little tailoring for people who came over to our house. We struggled, and everybody worked, but we got by and didn't want for anything necessary.

Holidays were great. Mom and Dad were big on them, a real family thing. During Christmas they decorated the heck out of the house, inside and out. We visited everyone in our family. Sometimes they came to our house, other times we went there. Met with all the cousins, had a great time. But as Dad was the oldest of his clan, he orchestrated most of the holiday doings.

Summers we went to the beach as much as possible. My parents took a cottage by the ocean for two weeks each summer, and I got the hots for boats and girls in bathing suits. I have to say that's never changed. I met many of my friends at the beach during my life; someday, maybe I'll have a cottage there, close to where the family used to go. Your roots make you feel comfortable.

Things were pretty normal in my early life; then I graduated from high school and went down to Florida to college. My Dad thought I might go into law. It was a possibility in my thoughts. Especially if my father believed it was a good idea. He was a good man - a very good man. Mom worshipped him, and he loved her a great deal, too. As I say, we all thought Dad was great. He always had time for us, for work, for odd jobs, for helping the neighbors, for PTA, for Scouts, for fishing and camping, for all the things that you love a father for.

I came home one year for Christmas vacation when I was a Junior in college. Dad and my sister, let's call her Christie, were out Christmas shopping and Mom was decorating the house when I pulled in by bus. It was snowing and was actually quite beautiful outside. Anyone familiar with New England weather knows when you get one of those beautiful snow storms. A few inches or so on the ground, not too cold, about 30 degrees, not much of a wind, and it's quiet and calm, except for the falling of pure white flakes. Very pretty. It makes people smile as they walk in it. Kids are laughing and occasionally shouting in it. It doesn't happen that often, but you do get those kind of snows, and it's really quite attractive. This was one of those times. Kind of makes you feel that all is right and good with the world as you take a deep breath of clean air and watch it waft away while you slowly exhale.

Mom was glad to see me, naturally. I could smell the mulled apple cider simmering on the big gas stove as I walked in the door. I ran upstairs in our colonial house and threw down the pack I carried, which accommodated my books and clothes to clean and change, then went back down stairs to pour some of the mulled cider mixed with a little spiced rum. Tremendous. I can still taste it now. I helped Mom with the decorations, stringing up some holly and making wreaths for around the house. It was always one of the most fun times in my life.

We got supper cooking, since Dad and Christie would be home soon. We figured they'd be a little late due to the slow traffic and the snow. Mom had a pot roast cooking in the oven, and I poured the juice over it a few times. Smelled great.

We had the tree up, but were waiting for