Agent for a Cause (The Agents for Good) (3 page)

She’d been on the verge of selling her body and losing pieces of her soul, and then last night had happened. Her gentleman killer by day and stalker by night was turning out to be a blessing in disguise.

Her hands folded together over the manila envelope and she started to pray. She prayed that this upswing in her life would continue as well as for the safety of her boyfriend wherever he was.

Chapter Three

Vigilante Justice

The noise of the rain forest was almost deafening in its intensity. I sat as still as a rock, sweat beading down my face adding to the messy camo face paint I had smeared across it and my arms. I watched the figures moving around the outside of the cocaine factory, which was tunneled underneath the rain forest floor.

I was waiting. Waiting for the peasants to be gone for the day. My private war didn’t include them. They had little to say in being forced to do the labor they were. The drug operation I intended on busting up today wasn’t going to change anything in the bigger picture. The flow of drugs out of Latin and South America would go on virtually unchecked. Whatever damage that I, as one man, could wreck would be minimal at best, but justice would be served on some today, who richly deserved it.

An Escalade pulled into the damp mud of the compound and a richly dressed cartel lord got out laughing about something. I stared at him in utter distaste of the hypocrisy of his existence. There were many like him and I hated them all.

He had seven children, a beautiful wife and a great big mansion on the hill an hour’s drive from here. After he finished checking up on this facility he would head back to his palace of a home in time for supper. He’d get there early and be greeted by his wife, who was genuinely enamored with him, perhaps even in love with him.

She of course knew what he did and the kind of man that he was, but she didn’t care about that. The children of America were far away and out of sight and thus out of mind. What was important to her was that her kids were safe and living in a utopia like setting.

In worshipful seduction she would greet her husband in a revealing dress and likely lead him away for a private exchange before dinner meant to secure her continued status, as number one in her husband’s eyes. She knew he had a woman in every city he visited, but that didn’t matter overly much, as long as she held onto the lucrative and secure position of being his wife.

Refreshed after a shower, the cartel lord would saunter out onto his immaculately maintained lawn, and throw a baseball with his son for a while, complement his daughter on the proficiency of her attention to her riding instructor’s advice, as she practiced on top of a several million dollar horse in the south paddock.

Finally it would be time for dinner. His children would be dressed in their finest, as liveried servants brought out a feast prepared by private chefs. The cartel lord’s wife would lean on her husband’s arm listening to his every word, as the twin oversized globes of her chest, living testimony of a plastic surgeon’s creation, threatened to spill out of her several thousand dollar dress, that had been flown in from Paris, especially for her.

They would all cross themselves as properly practicing Catholics did and then eat the feast prepared, while the peas
ants in the nearby village starved or got by on half rations, because their output of refined cocaine was low for the month.

Despite this imposed hardship on the poor, the family was blessed regularly by the local priest, because after all hadn’t they put a new roof on the mission building and gave generously of their pocket change every mass. After dinner the cartel lord would beg leave of his family claiming business in town as the reason.

He’d choose one sports car out of his collection of twenty seven and motor leisurely to where his lieutenants were holding a man accused of stealing something from him. They’d beat the man for hours, until he would confess to anything just to escape the pain of the next hit.

A lieutenant would step forward and slit his stomach open and in horror the tortured man would watch his entrails spill out onto the floor as those in attendance of his last moments alive would laugh and make fun of his look and cry of abject horror, as the man watched himself die.

It was never really a matter of the man’s guilt or innocence, but rather just a reminder to the lower peasant class of the abject power and influence of the cartel’s leadership. The message of the cartel’s heavy handed tactics, ‘they could do anything they wanted to so don’t get in the way and do as they said and you might die anyway, because your life is not your own and isn’t worth much anyway’.

The cartel lord would wash up and head back to enjoy his children’s evening theatrical recital followed by a night of enjoying his expensively put together wife. In the early hours of the morning he would bumble about online trying to figure out how to invest his latest installment of drug money best and worry about the rise and fall of his stock options. In the morning another body would lie in a roadside ditch unreported, even as the victim’s family was kept from openly mourning for the loss of their loved one.

Somewhere in America a concerned couple would step into a hospital room and find their former honor roll student lying on a bed an almost unrecognizable pile of bones and skin, as she clings onto a life of lost opportunities and broken dreams.

They’d had no idea this was happening to the daughter they both loved. Who would do this to their precious daughter?

The answer, the daughter did it to herself. She’d gambled her future for a temporary feeling, while the cartel lord who had helped to steal her innocence decided on the color of number twenty eight of his sports car collection, as his wife lay spent on the bed behind him worn out from her efforts of pleasuring him.

To such men, fear of them is everything, even his wife was not immune to it, as her efforts in part to please him constantly was a statement of her own fear of losing him to another woman. Such a man is often untouchable by law, as money speaks louder in the courts of men than the need for justice and those not busy pleasing him find themselves in too much fear of him to do anything to stop him.

That’s why I was here. Such monsters, as the one walking around in front of me didn’t deserve to continue enjoying their pleasurable existences forged on the backs of countless suffering individuals.

The big man on campus got back into his Escalade and cruised off into the jungle. Soon thereafter the peasants were released for the day. It was time. I shifted my position, as I swiftly crept through the thick undergrowth up behind an unwary guard.

I pulled him down into the vegetation, as I buried my knife in his back. He gasped against my hand and then lay still. I moved on to the next guard and then the next. Finishing them all off the way I had the first one.

I went down the steps and into the underground facility. There were five men gathered around the table laughing. They stopped laughing when they saw me and reached for their guns.

I shot all five and as they were still falling I swung my backpack off and put it on the table. I zipped it open and punched the timer. While my pack was loaded with explosives, the purpose of it wasn’t a big explosion, but rather a searing explosive blaze.

The bags of white powder stacked to the ceiling all around me would never make it to market. I left the underground bunker slinging my rifle up as I reached topside. Guards from further out were running to the compound because of the sound of the shots. More were coming in jeeps from a barracks down the road. I only waited around long enough to eliminate the guards in my path with several bursts of fire from my rifle.

I let the greater force coming up the road from the barracks get a good look at me before I lit out into the forest. The bomb in the bunker exploded and a fireball gusted out of the bunker’s opening shaking the ground under me with its concussive force. Smoke began to pour out of the bunker as the fire grew intense. That was one smoke cloud I wanted to avoid at all costs!

I stopped in brief intervals to fire back at the herd of gunmen that had taken out after me. My return fire temporarily sent them ducking for shelter along the way. The sound of automatic gunfire rocketed through the forest as bullets sliced through the understory vegetation both far and near to me. I looked for my marker trees as I began my dance of death over hidden tripwires. I cleared the field of minds and continued on.

They hit the tripwires full tilt and the forest shook and lit up from the mine explosives going off in the gloomy understory of the forest. Three latecomers rushed up to the seen as the smoke cleared. They stood there dumbly surveying the scene of carnage and I picked off all three in rapid succession.

There were no survivors in the forest. I pulled a detonator switch from my pocket and pressed it to the tune of immediate distant explosions, which signaled the rest of the cartel’s facilities going up in smoke. They’d be out of action for a while until new leadership took over.

Cut the head off the snake and it seemed to grow another one quickly. Some would say what I was doing was a pointless exercise in futility, as the cartels would just rebuild and start over as long as the money was there. To some however, what I was doing wasn’t pointless, instead it was the only form of justice that they would ever receive.

The evening wore on until it became night. Mr. Cartel Owner, after screaming dire threats to anyone and everyone unfortunate enough to be near him for hours on end, retreated to his palace bedroom to beat up on his wife.

She lay unconscious and nearly naked across the bed. The master of the house stood on his balcony glaring out into the night reflecting on all the damage that had been wrecked upon his small empire all in one day.

It was going to cost a lot of money to get back up and running. Worse than that was the money he would miss out on in the meantime on the product he could have sold, but was now ashes. He gritted his teeth and pounded on the railing, “I’ll work those peasants into the ground to get back up and running!”

He declared angrily at the night as if it had defied him. I walked up behind him and flipped him forward until he was perilously hanging over the side of the railing. He screamed, as he scrambled for a purchase of some kind to catch a hold of and pull himself upright with.

I grabbed one of his flailing arms and pulled it up only to jab a hypodermic needle in and press the plunger down all the way. I let go of the man and stepped back. With great effort the man pulled himself back up against the balcony railing as I stood there calmly waiting. Dizzily he sat back down with his back against the railing. He felt at his arm and looked up at me.

“What did you do?”

“Let’s just say you’re going to experience the joys of what it’s like to O.D on your own product. Enjoy the rush.” I turned to go.

“Who sent you?” He mumbled out.

“No one sent me. I’m just a concerned citizen who doesn’t like the services that you provide.”

He mumbled something in Spanish, and I recognized it as the name the cartels had for me. Below the border the name was loosely interpreted as, ‘Death Angel’ in English.

They could call me whatever they wanted to as long as I caused them to have a little of their own medicine back in return. Screams of hysteria erupted behind me, as I made my way down the ground staircase as the cartel’s recovering wife found him on the terrace.

I was on my way across the marble floor of the front vestibule, when small caliber bullets began to ping off the floor and wall ahead of me, but I just kept walking. At the front door of the house I turned back.

The wife still half naked, her body bruised and her face swollen from her husband’s mistreatment, stood on the upper stairway balcony a pistol gripped in her hands as she breathed hard. I reached my hand down to my left side and it came away with blood from where one lucky bullet had cut a groove.

“For that you can find a new place to live lady.”

I pulled two phosphorus grenades out and pulled the pins and tossed each into adjoining rooms to either side of the grand foyer. Shrieking the woman fled back the way she had come.

I stepped out into the cooler night air as the windows to either side of me shattered as white-hot flames shot through them. The mansion was well on its way to being engulfed in flames by the time I reached the extensive garage.

Number sixteen looked good so I got in and started it up. It gave me a throaty purr as proof of life and I floored it with a screech of tires.

The vintage Camaro bolted forward smashing through the garage door even as I dropped another grenade out the window in my passing. The purchase of number twenty eight would have to wait along with the goal of reaching one hundred cars.

I peeled out onto the road leaving rubber driving like I had stolen it. My legend would only grow after tonight. Unfortunately so would the hatred of the cartels for me, which would spur them on in their quest to capture me. I didn’t need the extra intensity, but that was all right I was living on borrowed time anyway.

Chapter Four

Date Night

I hadn’t intended on returning to Philadelphia for quite some time prior to my confrontation with Anna. Instead I had been looking forward to spending some peaceful down time at my home, but that was off for now.

I stepped into the bar an hour earlier than usual and made my way to my seat. I hadn’t seen Anna yet and I was beginning to feel alarmed, when she suddenly appeared by my side.

I looked at her in surprise, “Aren’t you working?”

With a curve of her lips and a telling smile she said, “I asked for the night off when I saw you come in. I thought we might go out on a date.”

She’d completely taken me by surprise yet again! With an impish smile she tugged me off my seat towards the door. I was the source of envious male stares as we made our way to the door.

We stepped outside into the muggy evening air. I was in a near panic of indecision as to what to do, so much so that I slightly stuttered as I asked, “I …..ah. Where do you want to go?”