SURVIVE

By Victor Williams

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2011 by Victor Williams

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance of characters to actual persons, either living or dead, shall be deemed as pure coincidence. The author owns exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is strictly prohibited

https://speedxxcircuit.blogspot.com/

THE INTICATE CIRCUIT SERIES

SURVIVE- book two

To Stella and William

Prologue

Half of my future survival potential gets struck from the list of my imbalanced background complexities and my inherent moral secondary ruptures on some military informant giving it mouth that my dad had been taken down in Moscow by some unknown sniper. I then decide to engage myself in the contest of survival to potential and finite elements of ravage on behalf of my very own spices and identities. And my escape from the military training camp in Saigon Vietnam, creates new worries in me of how the defensive interpretation of my non-descript arrival in Munich might have to mean to the civilian too. Months fly like mad and I am abducted by a five-man commando and flown down to Kundus Afghanistan for advanced combat training under the authority of one Mr. Steven Blame Sergeant Howard green’s youngest brother, the brain child of this so called Shrine Tango Movement. I am informed that I was needed to succeed some guy called Simpson who had been blown up a little after the third stage of the X-Files chain. Hardly was it possible to express with what acuteness I felt myself dismayed by the fact that, prior to my deployment in the X-Files case, I had been hired to kill!

CHAPTER 1

Munich, 17 August

Somehow, I found myself lying about the cold floor of a dark van. How, I couldn’t tell. But, that it was about 1.00am in the middle of a night so chilly, I could tell. I remember, at about 7.00pm, I had a Hamburger a block below at Macdonald’s next to Munich central station. And it took me a fifteen minute walk to my apartment at Senefelder Street just close to Deutsche Bank. I recall how fast I had dosed off before I could read a letter that had been delivered direct to my mail box seven blocks downstairs. To the best of my recall, the envelope had the initials Hotel Schweinstein at the top left side, typed in red—in lower case. There was a signature too. At the bottom left. Perfect nourishment to the suspicion in my present adrenaline kick!

It took me about ten minutes to realize that the dark van, in which I was lying, was moving. I was cold.  I couldn’t move. Not an inch. My arms were strapped onto about four steel bars that ran across the floor of the van. So tightly, my legs were tied together, right from the hips down to the feet. I thought they were also strapped down onto the floor at around ankle level or…or knee level for, I couldn’t lift my limbs an inch. My hands felt numb. I couldn’t speak for, my mouth was shut with rolls of tape. It took me an extra five minutes to realize that I was under heavy guard.

Two gentlemen sat on my right, three on my left. And although I couldn’t see their faces clearly, I could sense them as men of steel. Not only from how tightly I felt myself strapped down onto the floor of the van, but also from how they silently submerged themselves into the darkness of the van… ready to finish me anytime they wished. I vowed that I should just not try to be cleverer than anyone of the five. Otherwise this might have cost me nothing less than my brains.

2.00am, the van still rolled. I rolled along in it. I had to. Why, I had not the slightest idea. I just had to for, I was in it anyway.  It was necessary that I shouldn’t bother myself about where I was being taken. I therefore settled my head onto some flat iron bar and starred emptily at the bonnet of the van. I had to. I had to, especially because I had turned thirty-three three days ago and would have wished so much to celebrate my thirty fourth birthday some day in the near future.

I felt that I should have sought for some divine intervention. I did not though for, I thought that it might have casted some even stronger spell upon the dormancy of my current quality as a soldier. I settled that I was in demand. But what for? And why? The answer was hidden out there in the silence…in the silence within the deepest depths of the darkness of the van. Burning like a secret. Like a fever.

I could not tear my aching eyes away from the tiniest edges of this darkness in search of any clue. In search of some hint…or an answer. Not even for a little while. And I lousily reset my mind for a settle that every birth of an idea was a worthwhile clue.

My memory, as was true, claimed that I had had half a bottle of Vodka at my apartment just before taking a shower. Two before I went to bed. Brilliant! I acknowledged it. I should have actually gone out of my mind, now, were it not for the fact that I was a little tipsy. Though I felt myself as behaving a little oddly, I appreciated the fact that my smartness helped me hold my manners before the five white gentlemen in black. 

And five hours later I was exchanged for cash at a cable warehouse and later tossed into a container at the rear of a moving truck.  I noticed from my brief encounter with open air that the weather was miserably raw.  I was afraid. But I didn’t know what I was afraid of for, my fears were altogether confined upon me by a small note that I received somewhere between the warehouse and the truck. Hardly was it possible to express with what acuteness I felt myself dismayed by the fact that I had been hired to kill!

My worry was that the next track into which I was tossed seemed to have got me off the rolls of tape and finally endorsed a very painful stiff jaw.  I realized though that I wasn’t just in company of my very own self for, I noticed not all together without pleasure, that I might have to enjoy the company of about four other guys with whom— at the moment, I felt I should be sailing in the same boat. A very stable anchor in mind settled down with the necessity of addressing them collectively as the other guys. I thus observed as I sought for a safer means of disabling its stability.

My reactive mind rose up to embrace the certainty of my current observation that its pyramidal active neighbor beheld that each of the guys held some small white piece of paper of exactly the same size with the one I had. Two of them sat on my immediate left so that, directly opposite, the three of us faced the other two. And by the fact that each one of them had a white piece of paper in the hand was a clear indicator that they, just like me, might have been tossed into that very same track for the very same reasons that I had been.

The kind of truck that we drove into and the manner in which we had been arranged into it reminded me of my military training period in Saigon Vietnam. I wasn’t any more a stranger to such old huge trucks or long, boring and silent drives. And I had begun to enjoy these long journeys with Mr. Warm my personal trainer as company— a guy who, within a period of only six months, had transformed me into a very ruthless fighting machine. Although I could understand German very well, his military jargon seemed not to rhyme very well with the language. That was 2005. I was the best!

The best of the best!

And I loved it. That was all that I was…all that I ever wanted.  The best!

I had tapped onto the most important string of my psychological discovery. And, by simply and critically understanding my inner-self and by learning how to modify my military engine and maintain it to dampen certain melancholic ripples to considerable levels, I had gained incredible confidence and power over how accurately i would vanquish my stress levels into tiny bits of nothingness. It might have been vague or ill-defined to my conscious self whether I realized it or not.

It troubled me much that we were in company of about five men but I fancied the security that my conscious auditor enjoyed. Two black. Three white. Calcasian.  Three at the fore and two at the back of the track, all in military combat uniform. There was this pale one, extremely shaggy and with a beard that might have suggested some very unnecessary bush. His smile was strained…impish and his face lethal. I strained my eyes a little and discovered the name Captain Eliot etched just above his left breast pocket. I smiled at him and said hallo. He stared straight into my eyes and answered me back. I could not have spoken one word, and I felt safer in that station even with my recognizing his style as being very similar to my society of demons.

When his lips parted, and had shaped some words that I hardly comprehended, I realized his hesitant moral to inform me that I had been chosen to succeed some guy called Simpson who could not make it in the third stage of the X-Files case. We drove for hours. How long I couldn’t tell exactly. But I knew I wasn’t at all tired for, I was used to sleep deprivation in Vietnam.

Dark was what it was. A little more than any other night in the past. It was cold too. Only a little warmer as one thrust deeper along A8, Munich-Berlin Highway. At about 5A.m, we thrust into a dark underground tunnel. Twenty minutes. Thirty. A very long passage that one—cold too.

We eventually emerged between lines and lines of Pear trees that traversed along the entire perspective that described the final bits of the highway. Here, daylight struck and I noticed that we had found our way into Wielheim Street 7B just within the outskirts of Berlin City.  From a distance, it seemed as though Berlin lay shrouded into a gorgeous haze of smoke, seemingly impervious to the generous efforts of the monthly crescent with respect to Easter Sunday. No highway cops.

Why?

I hardly had any idea.

 It was only known that the city was there, entirely by means of entertaining a certain notion that there could hardly be such stuffiness in the atmosphere without some additional prospects of an existing city. There was a certain skepticism that would have been expressed to the fact that the inner contents of this particular city were only designed to appear a little wet.

Now.

 Distinctively entertaining certain very contemptible doubts to the character of the current clumsy distinction in the precipitation. Now. There would have been plenty of room, though, to acknowledge the fact that Berlin people were not as hard working as any other creatures upon whom rain would drop.

By shear curiosity I managed to strangle the names of each one of the muscle men off their throats. Captain Eliot, Mr. Constance, senior private Clifford, Captain Jacob smith and Mr. Henry Bull, a short stout man in a velvet bullet-prove jacket and two automatic rifles. He appeared docile…with a mild temperament. Very conservative. A jungle concentrant!

Five hours. Six. Seven.

In silence, we drove for some time. Whether I had slept within this particular period I couldn’t tell. But I felt that, indeed, I might have attained certain very unique credentials from the slumber land.

Captain Eliot smiled, took a deep breath and… stretched-out himself. From Stuttgart we now drove to Strasbourg France-Germany border. And at Schillerstrasse a checkpoint that opened right into the northern section of France. Here we were drugged. Five hours from Schwabing police post. Almost 500km away.

 Once again Captain Eliot smiled, and he breathed deeply into the night air, almost uncaring that most of the scents were less than delightful. The smell of fish offal and the fresh aroma of night Tilapia fries distinctively endorsed a traditional way of life of a less civilized country side environment. A way of life that seemed so secluded miles and miles from the denser Berlin. Away from suspicious gestures, away from a more civilized atmosphere of speed and haste. An atmosphere upon which he himself would never have given his oath of loyalty. Not then. Not in his current situation.

A dosing Mr. Constance grunted, shifting his sitting position to untwine the tired bulk about his torso. A warrior more experienced to the surprising dangers of such kind of missions might have been worried by the repercussions of missing a single signal on his Radio as a matter of urgency. Constance wasn’t. He seemed not to have been cut out like so. But then, having missed two consecutive calls from the headquarters in Afghanistan, he now found less comfort in trying to dose himself off.

‘Conce!’ came a voice over his Radio.

Constance in short.

‘Conce.!’

 The squawk once again.

That was Mr. Steven Blame’s voice. The echoes erupted into the truck like double voices of two little imps. Terrible squawks!

‘Charlie, Omega, Nimbus, Charlie, Echo!’

The voice pierced into the dawn like cracks of deafening thunder. Like clashing coins in the pocket!

‘S.B. Charlie, Omega, Nimbus, Echo…over,’ Constance replied.

Charlie, Omega, Nimbus, Echo stood for the initials C.O.N.E, the name of this particular commando. The initials S.B stood for Mr. Steven— Mr. Steven Blame, Howard Green’s youngest brother and the brainchild of Shrine Tango Movement…S.T.M as they preferred to call it. It was to be concealed like so. The Shrine Tango Movement.

‘Charlie, Omega, Nimbus, Echo…don’t use Delta-foxtrot. I repeat, don’t use Delta-foxtrot.’

Apparently, Delta-foxtrot meant German-France border point via Schiellerstrasse, Strasbourg. Of course there was no way they would have crossed the border without passports. Not legally.

‘You do not have what it takes… I repeat you do not have what it takes. Don’t use Delta-foxtrot. The bastards!’

‘Okay. What’s the game plan?’ Constance replied.

‘Find a fake. Move down south. Delta-Sierra entry point.’

Then there was silence. The silence. Constance understood. The instruction was clear. Clear as crystal. A fake!

Switzerland-Germany entry point. Delta-Sierra.

‘Charlie, Omega, Nimbus, Echo! You still there?’ the voice of Mr. Steven blame pierced into the air. Once again.

‘Sir,’ Constance promptly replied, brushing his eyes onto a sigh post on the right side of the road.

Five-kilometers to the Germany-France border, the first suggested. Seventy two to Switzerland-Germany border, the second assured. We were close. Very close. And Constance waited. Eager of Steve’s response. As time wore on, an impression settled heavily upon him that it might take long. And I drowned myself into the lousiness of the corresponding squawks; I picked out one very clear one. And I heard a clear voice, one that was followed by a hushed clatter. And with its growing louder and louder with time, my mind immediately registered a problem with the reception. This time, Steven’s voice came loud but unclear.

Constance angled slightly to the left. Then he dragged himself along the seat about two steps forward. His friend Senior Private Clifford joined him. About five feet to the driver—five feet from Captain Jacob.  And slightly, he retrieved the aerial of his walkie-talkie and took a strained glanced at his watch.  6:00 Am. Alarmed, he sprung up and faced Jacob.

‘Forty five minutes late! We should be at least a kilometer into France according to my time schedule. Steven is certainly not going to be impressed.’

Silence.

‘Drive!’

As the signal on his Radio flickered on, I found my feet, brushed the hood off my face and headed for the back door. I grabbed the door-lock and pushed the door outwards. Trying to open it. It wouldn’t. Shit! I pulled it inwards. Fuck! It wouldn’t open either. I was trapped. Constance sprung onto his feet and dashed towards me.

The other guy surged with the barrel of his rifle. I brushed the idea of trying-out my combat skills here so he opted not to use it. Instead, he held me by my hair and smashed my head onto a metal bar. I went silent, i went limp. Constance might probably have done what he always did best.

‘Come on do it again,’ I arrogantly replied with a fake smile.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me you piece of shit!’

I did not see it coming. He angled himself a little to the left. And his elbow landed straight onto my left eye. For a moment I thought I had finally lost one eye. He dragged me and stretched me out onto a number of canvass bags on the floor of the truck. And he eventually propped me against a plastic bin. I tried not to resist for, I opted meanwhile, to enjoy the comfort of the canvass bags rather than screw my life about into a card game.

Then I saw him. Bull. Approaching me.

I arrogantly spat at Constance and shouted, ‘is that your best shot?’

Constance turned, restraining Bull. 

‘Everything is taken care of,’ he assured him.

Three times I laughed. So loudly and with such mockery that the rest of my colleges joined in the laughter.

‘Come on, do it again asshole…come on show me what you’ve got!’

I then faced Bull. Smiled and…and laughed. And laughed! And laughed! And laughed again!

‘So let me ask you something Bull...surely is that his best shot?’

I laughed once again and lay my head onto a heap of canvass bags…relaxed. Very relaxed.