Assassin

ASSASSIN

The Journal of John Robert Lynch (The Opossum)

By

Sharon Iggulden

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 by Sharon Iggulden

All Rights Reserved.

In any conflict, the boundaries of behavior are defined by the party which cares least about morality.

Randy Wayne White

The Mangrove Coast

Table of Contents

Assassin

Addendum

Epilogue

ASSASSIN

The Journal of John Robert Lynch (The Opossum)

January 1, 2006

Remember the disheveled, neglected looking kid with the pasty skin and pale, dull lifeless eyes that looked lost? Remember he was always wearing a too big or too small t-shirt and threadbare jeans, sneakers with holes in them and no socks, even in winter, when everyone else was slicked up in their finest for the school concert? Remember how he was always standing slightly apart from everyone else in some row of every school event and how he was smaller than everyone, even most of the girls and he had longish unkempt hair like straw that looked as if it had been trimmed by a younger sister with palsy? And yes I am aware of just how politically incorrect that statement is. Well, that kid was me. I tried to look proud and defiant, but I’m not quite sure I pulled it off. After the third grade, shame got the better of me and I was always mysteriously ill on concert days. One of these kids is not like the other ones. One of these kids stands alone. I could have easily been one of the mountain people in Deliverance. That was how I fooled them all. They mistakenly assumed that things are what they seem.

We were unimportant people living small meager unnoticed lives and were commonly referred to as hill folk, living on top of a pretty good sized mountain, with one of those dirt roads that go straight up to what seems like oblivion. We never missed school though. Mama made sure of that even if she had to drag us down the road in hip deep snow. We certainly weren’t getting a plow up there. We went to school not because mama had any big commitment to education or small commitment either. She just needed to get most of us out of the house whenever she could. Not the warm and fuzzy type, we had to trudge back home after the bus dropped us off, without any help from her. We got stuck up to our knees more than once and it took a long time to wiggle free. Oddly enough, we never really considered it to be different than how anyone else lived. At least not then.

We didn’t have electricity much less radio or TV or anything, so on those rare occasions when school was closed we never knew it. More than once we stood out there half the day, throwing snow balls at cars, waiting for a bus that never came. By the time we decided to give it up and climb back up the mountain we got home at pretty much normal time. Any day most of us were out of the house was a successful day for ma. She never flinched when we told her the bus didn’t come.

It’s not like we had winter clothes or anything. Sometimes my sister and I would share a pair of boots. That way only one foot got cold. I know, I know it sounds like one of those clichés from some hard luck movie or book where everyone sits around the fire at the end, because they’ve been saved and we can all feel good about ourselves, like we’re personally responsible that it all turned out ok. Well, as far as I can tell, none of us got saved.

We rode a long way to school and shared it with some rich kids that lived just down the interstate in the well to do suburbs. They didn’t particularly like being on the same planet with us, much less in the same room, but they didn’t have much choice in the matter, the distances between civilizations were just too great. The day one of the kids from down the road walked into school wearing an outfit a rich kids family had donated to Goodwill all hell broke loose with name calling and some very ugly laughter. It wasn’t pretty. I never saw the poor kid wear those clothes again. Well, it could just as easily have been me or one of my siblings. Ma always took us clothes shopping at the Goodwill before school started in the fall. We got two outfits each. Only the older kids, my brother and sister, got anything really new, so to speak. The rest of us wore their hand me downs, if there was anything left of them that is. A lot of people wore those clothes before they finally pulverized into basic thread.

The thing is, us hill kids grew up way differently than the rich ones. Ok, maybe they weren’t rich, but they certainly were compared to us. They definitely had a better class of weeds in their perfectly manicured lawns. We always knew evil existed, almost from the womb. Those rich kids only knew far away soft evil. Bad things happened to people who lived in other places. Us hill kids, we knew hard evil, up close and personal, because it lived down the hall or in the living room. We knew that evil has a real face, not just a TV photo of some demented wild eyed guy in an unknown place. We knew that evil cannot be just vaguely acknowledged and then brushed aside. Evil has a living breathing presence in this world, not in a Biblical sense, but a human one. Us hill kids also knew, without any doubt what so ever, that there is a place beneath evil which we have yet to give a name. It is diabolical, monstrous, bestial, fiendish, self-obsessed and soul sucking, yet worse than any of those things. It’s a world where mercy is variable and sympathy is hollow. It’s where the outcasts live.

In the summer, when the seven of us started driving her nuts, usually around 10 am, ma would load us into the back of the totally rusted pickup, whose gears stuck more often than not, and take us down to the Gas and Go by the interstate to make fun of the Yankees who were gassing up on their way to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was just good clean summer time fun for us. I remember one day a father was putting gas into a blue van while his wife and children waited inside. They all looked well fed and well dressed with nice tans and happy grins. Mama cruised around them several times as we all shouted and shook our fists. Get the fuck out of here you damn Yankees. Go home. It was quite the hoot for us all. We laughed at the confusion on their faces and then the terror slowly creeping into their eyes. I watched as the mother slowly locked the van doors, leaving her husband outside to fend for himself if need be. Now there was a woman who understood survival. I thought of her like a muskrat that would gnaw off its own leg to get out of a trap. I guess her husband was the sacrificial leg. She showed the kind of survival instinct I could admire. I still think about her a lot. We all do what we must.

The Gas and Go had a haphazardly attached sort of general store complete with old men sitting outside in the summer, their chairs at an angle to the wall, whittling odd pieces of wood stacked next to them on the ground, totally unaware they were living caricatures. They were rough, pale eyed men who spent most of their time in the woods, when they weren’t getting a good laugh at the tourists that is. They especially liked the scantily clad girls who would drop into the store for a soda or some sort of snack. They got some serious ogling and fanny grabbing in on those days. I learned early on to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut. They never messed with ma though. She was a skinny little bantam rooster of a woman who could pretty much out tough, out hunt, out swear or out spit any man she ever met, except my father. Maybe that’s why she married him, but in reality the man was an outstanding failure. More often than not, in the winter, she’d be gone for days hunting with those men. At least that’s what she claimed to be doing. Ma wasn’t one to explain herself to anyone else. Those hunting absences were the times us kids hated. We had to fend for ourselves and take care of the young ones, not that it wasn’t pretty much a daily occurrence, but the woman did provide some moral support and minimal guidance. We would have to trap squirrels and sometimes rats (same thing really) just to eat. We had dogs, of course, and whatever food we had we shared with them and mama insisted that they always eat first. There’s no better way to summarize my place in the world than that.

Dad was absent most of the time. The official story was that he was off hunting, but we kids knew he was in jail again. We also knew that when he came home there would be a lot of fighting and rutting, usually followed by another baby. Some things were completely predictable. I was a middle child, one of many actually. One more baby wasn’t going to change that or my life in any way. Dad had a fondness for moonshine and burglary. The moonshine was mostly the reason he kept getting caught. Actually, he was in the cell next to mine for a while, a real father-son bonding experience. My eventual incarceration was as inevitable as the sun rise. A sort of family tradition. I will say this for him though, the man could shoot anything with deadly accuracy. A skill he accidentally passed on to me by the crap shoot virtue of genetics. He may have taught me how to hunt and shoot, but for the most part we were strangers.

Since we didn’t have TV, radio, a phone or electricity on the mountain, my first couple of stints in jail were pretty exciting. TV was like finding a new civilization. I mean I had watched movies in school, but they were educational, for the most part. This was TV for pure, unadulterated, mind numbing entertainment. I loved every minute I could get. I couldn’t wait until my jobs were done for the day so I could head to the TV room. It was reason enough for good behavior. I didn’t care what was on or what other inmate had a need to see. I was happy with anything. TV was powerful and mysterious to me, revealing all those lives, both real and imagined, all those places, both near and far. It was magical to me in any form. I guess you could say I was semi-addicted. Most of the time, I had no idea most of the places I saw really even existed. I was culturally deprived, or so they tell me now. I had no connection to the world, no communal allegiance, no real loyalty to anything, not even myself.

There have been dozens of behavioral psychologists, psychiatrists and FBI agents from their behavioral unit in here interviewing me and trying to pin point how I got to be the way I am. Well, good luck to them. I’ve been around me a lot longer than anyone else and I have no idea why I’ve done the things I’ve done. Most of the time it felt good to kill and have that kind of ultimate live or die decision over someone else. I guess it made me feel powerful and gave me a purpose, some of the time it just made me sad. I like to think I was just taking a stab at the American dream: a job, a roof and all the nightmares I could collect. The moonshine helped with the forgetting. Dad gave me that, too. God bless him.

Those people who constantly talk about how we can all be whatever we want never lived in my world. My fate was sealed before I was even born. I left school in the 8th grade. The truth of the matter is, I liked going to school. I was a decent student even though ma could have cared less about my grades and no one ever attended any parent conferences. I liked learning stuff, plus it had the added benefit of being a welcome diversion from all the crap at home. No one messed with me at school, even though I was clearly not quality material. I wasn’t bullied or anything like that, probably because in the first grade I beat the hell out of some little jerk that kept lifting up my sisters shirt, even though she pretty much seemed to like it. I got suspended for thirty days, because I didn’t have any priors. It could have been as long as an entire semester. It was supposed to teach me a lesson about socially acceptable behavior. I spent that thirty days at home taking care of the young ones. Lesson learned.

By the end of eighth grade, I could read, write and do some basic math, so ma figured I was good to go. I didn’t have any choice really, I was a pretty good hunter, with a dead eye aim as we all know, so my labor was needed to keep the family fed, just like my brother and sister before me. I got a GED in one of my many early incarcerations and tested pretty high on some IQ test. I always did like to read and was smart enough to keep my knowledge secreted inside me. There was nothing good that could come from spouting off some inane knowledge to the people I knew.

There were always church people coming up the mountain, trying to give us gifts every Christmas, but ma was always adamant. We don’t take us no charity. Well, we kids would have liked a little charity now and then. A steady diet of squirrel and raccoon gets old after a while. Still, better than no diet, I guess. The deer, in or out of season, were always a welcome change up. I think my body would have openly rejected fruit or most vegetables. It wasn’t until my first prison stint that I got a taste of some things I barely even knew existed, but soon learned were the staple of most diets. Huh. I couldn’t get enough apples and would trade pretty much anyone anything I had for one. Of course, the other guys had a good laugh the first time I tried to eat the core and all. One of the old timers showed me the secret to apple eating. Why didn’t I notice apple eating when I was in school you ask? It was always best not to look around too much in that place or want things you couldn’t have. Us hill kids were sequestered together at a couple of the tables in the back of the dimly lit cafeteria. I guess we just weren’t good enough to be seen in the light of day. Sweet potatoes, also. I make sure I get extra when I’m here. My life doesn’t have many perks right now, but sweet potatoes are my weakness. Some of the guards here think I’ve gotten a raw deal, so getting extra food is usually not a problem. Some of them even call me a patriot. Well, I don’t know about that one. I didn’t have any political motives. I was just doing a job, but I can’t stop other people from believing what they want, though I do think they have some seriously misplaced commitment.

January 10, 2006

I’ve heard that there are people who go to exotic game banquets where they feast on squirrel, raccoon, deer and other stuff. Exotic game, huh? I had to laugh when I heard that. I just called it dinner. I wonder if any of them realized that a squirrel is just a rat with a fluffy tail. A rodent by any other name is still a rodent. What a bunch of pretentious fops. Fops is a pretty good word, huh? I learned it from some book I read. I like it. It has a nice ring to it. I like using it. I get a big charge out of thinking that bankers and stock brokers are bringing themselves down to my level in their culinary pursuits. I can just picture them sitting around congratulating themselves on their bravery and daring for eating Food of the Ozarks. That’s what one of the banquets in New York City is called. Food of the Ozarks. I wonder if rat is on the menu, too. I’d like to see how they enjoyed that culinary delight. The way I look at it these are men that go to the banquet, because they haven’t got the balls to kill anything themselves, but they’re more than willing to let someone else do it for them. I’ll bet they sit in their media rooms with snuff movies and jerk off.

January 22, 2006

Let me describe myself to you. I am a poor childhood nutrition 5’9", about 155, lean, mean and wiry if you will. I like to work the weights and run so I’m in pretty good shape. I once had long sandy blond hair and still have cold Nordic blue assassin eyes. In every way imaginable I am totally unremarkable and completely forgettable, except for the uncanny ability to shoot people from long distances. A guy in here told me we need to be careful of what we’re good at. Well, too late for that one I’d say. I have been told I have an uneasy intensity that makes people nervous, like I’m vibrating at a different frequency than everyone else, but I can turn it off and slip into au shucks bubba mode anytime I want. I’m suspicious of emotion, it always feels like weakness. I have a cult following and am considered a hero by some and vilified by others. For sure, I am no hero, but I don’t believe I’m the Satan some have portrayed me to be either. Sometimes, I’m borderline creepy. I’ve been sailing close to the wind most of my life. I like that phrase, they use it a lot in some of the novels I read, mostly by Brits. It describes me perfectly. Mostly I reside in that very crowded middle ground between good and evil that most of us occupy.

For those of you who are wondering who I am I will introduce myself. My name is John Robert Lynch. I have had some notoriety in the past and have been referred to as the finest sniper in the history of snipers. I started my career as a sniper in the military. They sent me to Iraq where I could do the most good. I was just never sure who the good was for, certainly not for the families of the guys I killed and probably not for me either, but it did give me a marketable skill. I’m still oddly grateful for that. I was always a pretty good shot, worlds above most of the other guys. Then again I’d been hunting most of my life and got good through sheer repetition, and help from dear old dad. I didn’t just hunt, you understand, I lived in the middle of hunting ground so I’ve pretty much always known that every sound and broken branch means something, not just in regard to the animal I was hunting, but for my own survival as well. There were bears in my woods and they weren’t tame, not to mention hundreds of yahoos that would shoot at anything that moved. The army said I had innate abilities and was a natural. That meant I was a stone cold killer. I joined the army when I was twenty. I had already been in some trouble with the law, being an unsuccessful thief due to poor planning and alcohol consumption. If those incarcerations taught me anything it was to plan well and stay sober on the job. Valuable lessons. The judge on one of my cases strongly suggested I try some different scenery. The army was ok, to be honest, better food and living conditions than most of my life to that point.

It was pretty hard to get used to the desert after living in the mountains, but the stars were spectacular, even though the night sky looked like cold, black nothingness. The breeze, when it did kick up, felt like a blast furnace and often materialized into something sinister, like a sand storm. Believe me when I tell you those were not any experiences I ever care to relive. Most of what I learned in the army only reinforced my belief that most of the outside world was bat shit crazy, not to mention totally fucked up. I would have stayed in the military, to be honest. I liked the work, but I got a couple of offers from defense contractors that had military contracts. They said I could make a lot of money and keep my country safe. They always like to try that patriotic crap out on you when they think you’re stupid enough to believe their supposedly noble motives. I didn’t really care about the money, but I did like using my innate and natural skills. Mostly, though I preferred the independence of working alone. I am one of life’s observers, a solo participant engaged in solo activities. The job gave me a certain peace and serenity, especially right before I pulled the trigger. The sense of calm was addicting. It was pretty much the only calm in my life, because once in a while I would really, really wonder why I was taking out some of those people. It was all supposedly about national security, but to me it was just a job that I got kind of swallowed up by, until a college frat boy from Des Moines really made me wonder. He sobered me up pretty fast. I did like the planning and the challenge of the stalk though.

I want to be absolutely certain you understand that I wasn’t any common killer, like those serial murder freaks that keep trophies and do freaky things with the bodies of their victims both before and after they kill them. I had no need to see the light die in their eyes, that would be too creepy, even for me. Nor have I ever had any curiosity about their dead bodies once they were gone, like Jude Law in Perdition. I had higher standards. I have always been about the clean kill. In and out. No messy emotion, moral dilemmas or personal involvement. It wasn’t even remotely personal. It was just a job. A job I freely admit I loved. Shooting and killing were the only things I was ever really good at, so I’m grateful to the army for honing my skill and steering me in the right direction, though I doubt they see it that way now. What did I see through the scope besides a head it was my job to explode? I tried not to see much to be honest. I certainly didn’t want any familiarity or personal connection. What did I learn looking through that scope? All heads explode pretty much the same with negligible (a great word, by the way) difference. One thing for certain, we all die a solitary death that may echo in other lives, but only for a little while.

You may be wondering if I felt bad about killing any of them. I have been emotionally dysfunctional most of my life, so killing them meant nothing to me. They meant nothing to me. They were strangers and not people I knew or could miss. Then again, I’ve never missed another human being in my life. I am a devotee of cause and effect. You pull the trigger and a head explodes. It is certainly swift and arguably merciful. Definitely brutally final. So much for a proud and noble death.

I heard everyone in the military and contractor business is busy disavowing any knowledge of my existence. That’s ok. They can’t hide me forever. Some reporter or hacker will find irrefutable proof and then the merry go round of excuses will begin again. I hope I’m around to see it. It should be fun.

Winston Churchill once said that we sleep safely at night, because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those that would harm us. That was me. I was one of the rough men. I like to think though that it was a simpler time and Churchill believed that the causes would be just. Well, they certainly aren’t any more, if they ever were. I don’t believe anyone knows what they are these days. Sometimes, there’s so much underhanded subterfuge that the cast gets a little confused about what part they’re supposed to play. I may have been one of the rough men, but I never bought into the just cause part. I don’t believe I have ever been that naïve.

The whole concept of power is based on both the illusion and the reality of strength. It’s not always possible for us to be able to tell the difference between the false threat of extinction for some nebulous (excellent word) political gain and the certainty.

Sometimes I wonder if any one person really knows how many guys my military unit took out. I know how many I killed, but it was the fog of war on steroids in Iraq, like that crap in Viet Nam, except in Iraq it was a desert free for all instead of a jungle. It was definitely easier to see than in a jungle, but just as deadly.