The Chronicles of Benjamin Jamison: Call Sign Reaper (2 page)

Ben looked behind him a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t being followed. After the first mile, he started to relax. He guessed the sheriff had probably picked up the troublemakers. It was dark with only the light from the night sky. He was looking down at the road about 10 feet in front of him, lost in thought. The insect life on Anubis made night sounds. It was as if it spoke to him. There should be no predators around. In the jungle a couple of hours away, of course, it was a different story.

About the time the adrenaline and the alcohol wore off during his walk, someone cleared their throat about 20 feet in front of him. He looked up into the blackness. His eyes adjusted to the dark so he could see an outline of a person standing directly in his path.
What the shit is going on tonight?
he thought to himself.

The person started walking towards him. After a few steps, he knew it was a woman. His brain and body went on full alert. He knew this wasn’t right at all and that she might not be alone. He looked around, scanning the darkness. She took a couple more steps and spoke.

“You have had a busy evening, Benjamin.” He picked up on the amusement in her voice.

“And how do you know that?” Ben asked.

She took a couple more steps and now was about 10 feet away. He could tell she was dressed in black. He looked at her from bottom to top. Black combat boots, black leather pants. A black lightweight long-sleeved shirt with a black leather sleeveless vest over it. It all fit her perfectly. She had shoulder length jet-black hair. He could not see her eyes yet.

She moved like a predator and made almost no noise. Ben felt himself getting distracted just watching her. She had curves in all the right places. Her long-sleeved shirt was tight on her arms and he could see they were toned and muscular. He needed to say or do something. He felt himself getting distracted again.

“Look, lady, I can’t afford you. Can’t you walk on the other side of the road?” he said.

She stopped dead. Ben stopped also. They were about seven feet apart now. She broke the silence with a laugh. It had a nice tone to it.

“Is that why you think I’m here? If it is, I have misjudged your intelligence by light years,” she said.

“Lady, I don’t know why you’re here,, but the fact that you are is just wrong.”

She took two more steps. She was five feet away now and he could see her face clearly. She was smiling. She was confident. He knew he was screwed.
Time to try something else
, he thought.

He was tired of the cat-and-mouse. He took four quick steps and stopped a foot in front of her. She didn’t budge. He could see her ice blue eyes now and a small scar on her jaw line. She was closer to perfection than any woman he had ever met. He decided to ruffle her feathers.

“Now, are you going to get your ass out of my way so I can go home, or am I going to have to move you?” He tried to sound tough. A smile slowly making its way across her face told him he was in trouble. Her hand shot up like a snake and her palm hit him in the chest, knocking him down flat on his back.

It felt like a mule had kicked him. He knew it was not her punch. She had a repulsor glove on. It had small metal circles up and down the fingers and on the palm. Flexible fiber wires went up the sleeve of the shirt and around to the back where they were attached to the power pack. He knew those were not available to the public. Only certain special ops and secret operatives had them, at least legitimately. He also knew she had it turned down to stun. On the higher settings, it could knock a person through a brick wall.

He could hear her footsteps, and he saw her step over him and kneel down. She was straddling him, sitting on his diaphragm and making it even harder to breath. She leaned forward, pinning his arms down and lowering her face about an inch from his. He didn’t try to resist. Her proximity like this would have made it hard to breathe even if she hadn’t knocked the shit out of him. He still had no answers. He thought he would keep trying the smart-ass questions and comments. She was staring in his eyes, just looking at him.

“Look lady, I’m all for a little rough stuff, but couldn’t we go back to my place and find something softer to lay on? I’ve already got road rash on my back from your little love tap.”

He could tell now her shirt was the thermal-controlled undershirt a soldier would wear in battle armor. He was getting little clues as to her identity.

“We do need to get off the side of the road.” Before she could say anything else, he raised his head and kissed her on the lips. There was no response at first. Then she kissed him back, forcing his head back down against the dirt road. He was just starting to enjoy it, when...

She pulled away quickly and jumped up off him. “Get up.” Her attitude now was one of authority. “We need to get moving.”

Ben struggled to get up. He could feel the little stones stuck in the back of his arms and he brushed himself off. She did an about face and started walking up the road in the direction of his place. She was ten steps ahead of him and he heard her talking to someone. About 20 seconds later, he saw headlights coming down the road toward them.

“Hey lady!” he said. She kept walking. “Hey lady, what do I owe you?” She stopped. He knew he was in for it.

She stormed back toward him. “Stop calling me lady. I am Major Andrea Andersen.” Ben was smiling. Finally, he had some kind of answer to the weird shit that had befallen him.

An all-black hover car pulled up to them before he could say anything else and she said, “Get in.”

“No, I think I’ll walk,” he replied.

Two men wearing black got out of the car. The driver was shorter and looked to be Asian, and the passenger was a large black man. Ben knew enough now to guess they were military trained. He decided to get serious. He walked to the back door of the car and opened it. “After you, ma’am,” he said, gesturing to the major and then to the open door.

He was also looking around for a way to escape. There were fields on both sides of the road and a creek about a hundred yards away with thick foliage along the banks. It meandered across all the farms. Parts of it were deep and there were places he could hide. They must have thought he was cooperating, because all three got in the hover car. Ben slammed the back door on the major and made a run across the field towards the creek. He heard the hover car lift up behind him and give chase. He hadn’t studied the car enough to know if it had armament, but he was sure the people inside were armed.

The waist-high crop made running a little slower but gave Ben some cover to drop down, belly crawl in a different direction, get up and run again. He was about ten yards from the end of the taller, thicker plant cover when he heard the hover car behind him. A second later, a blue flash hit the plants next to him. He knew the car was to his left so he broke to the left to reduce any angle of fire. In only a few seconds, he was in the tall cover. The major and the passenger were firing at him from the windows. He made it to the denser growth along the creek and slid quietly into the water.

Who the hell are these people?
he thought.

Ben heard the hover car following the creek, searching for him. There was an area where the trees and plants uprooted during the last storm had collected in a bend along the bank. He took a deep breath and dove under the water, grabbing the limb of a submerged tree and holding on. He was looking up through the branches and plants as the car’s lights passed over the area then moved off on down the creek, still searching. He eased up to the surface to take a gulp of air then dove down again to his spot under all the brush and plants. He decided that he wasn’t going home. Gus’s place was two miles back and if he stuck to the fields, he could get most of the way there without getting in the open. He started wondering if his old C. O., who hated him, had put out a hit on him.

He had done nothing to the man but save his life. Who would think that a person’s ego was so big he couldn’t stand having his life saved?

Ben had been convicted on trumped-up drug charges and dishonorably discharged. He had an exemplary record with numerous commendations and medals. He was framed for being a hero.

The drugs were planted in his duty bag in his locker. It was an open and shut case. That was 10 months ago.
Why would he send a kill squad after him now? On second thought, they didn’t seem like a kill squad.  Ben decided to let that all stew in the back of his head while he worked on getting somewhere safe for the night.

In the hover car, the major was cursing. Her driver and passenger were smirking and hoping she couldn’t see from the back seat. They headed for the farmhouse where they knew Ben rented a room from the Vander Hoyts. They wouldn’t bother the oldsters, but they were going to look around the farm.

The driver said to no one in particular, “They said he would be a handful. He was the best of their unit. Railroaded as he was, wouldn’t exactly warrant friendly cooperation towards us. We really didn’t need to test him. We should have just approached him and offered him the job.”

The major knew they were probably right, but it had been her idea to test him. She wanted to see how he reacted out of the comfort zone. The passenger was saying something but her mind was drifting elsewhere thinking about a kiss.
How had that happened? Why did she even put herself in a position for that to happen? Benjamin Jamison was dangerous, she knew that for sure, but not in the way the men in the front seats thought him to be. She would have to be damn careful.

Arriving at the farmhouse, the hover car parked 200 meters away so they could approach and observe without being blind-sided by a pet or alarm system.

Ben crawled out of the creek after coming up for air and listening for a few minutes, figuring they must have moved on down the creek or headed for his boarding house. He took off in a jog through the field, listening and watching the sky as he made his way back to Gus’s bar. He knew it was only about 1 am, and being a Friday night, with the added excitement they had had tonight people would still be sitting around there talking. He was winded when he got to the back door. He was also wet and dirty and his clothes were ripped in places.

The night cook was startled for a second when he saw Ben. Then a light went on and he said, “Man, what happened to you?”

“I wish I knew.” Ben asked him to get Gus while he stood at the back door. The night cook went up to the bar and whispered to Gus, whose eyes lit up. He called Cindy over to watch the bar.

Gus saw Ben by the door and a concerned look came over his face. Ben took Gus out the back door and gave him a generic version of what had happened after he left When he finished, Ben asked, “Do you think I can crash here for the night?”

“Sure, I have just the thing. There’s an apartment up those stairs,” Gus replied. “It’s been empty for a few weeks.”

He told Ben the last tenant had skipped out on him but left a lot of stuff, and he could use the apartment and anything else he found in it. Ben asked Gus if he would have the night cook make him a cheeseburger and fries, and he would be down after he cleaned up to eat. He realized he had missed dinner in all the excitement during the evening.

Back in the hover car, the major got on her com and asked if they had found or seen anything. They both replied with a negative. She told the sergeant major and Gunny to meet her at the car. The short Asian man was Sergeant Major Mathew Kim and the large black man was Gunnery Sergeant William “Bill” Smith. The two of them had worked with the major since she was a second lieutenant. They had both been mid-rank NCOs at the time.

The major decided to regroup. “Let’s go find the sheriff’s office and see if we can bail out those slugs I hired and get them a ride back to their ship. We’ll turn in after that and meet for breakfast at 0700,” she said.

Bill called up emergency services on the hover car navigation. That got him the sheriff’s department as well as the hospital. He wasn’t sure if the sheriff would get them medical attention, and he thought they owed them that. As long as they didn’t push their luck with the major, she would probably take care of them.

Ben found soap in the shower and a new toothbrush in a drawer in the bathroom.
Gus wasn’t kidding; they left a lot of things behind
, he thought.
Clothes, furniture, towels, bedding.
Whoever the man was, he weighed about as much as Ben but was shorter. Gus provided the washer and dryer for the apartment, so Ben threw his clothes in. He found a pair of scissors and made shorts out of a pair of pants that fit him in the waist but was four inches too short.

The shower felt so good. The hot water and soap washed off the dirt and smell of the creek. His cuts and scrapes stung and his busted lip was swollen and throbbed a little, but overall Ben was feeling a lot better. He dressed and put on some sandals he found in the closet and went downstairs to get his cheeseburger and fries. His food was ready and in a basket. It smelled wonderful. He asked the night cook if he would take his money up to the bar, pay for his food, and get him two beers. Gus came back a minute later with two beers and his money.

“It’s on the house from here on out.”

“Thank you but you don’t have to do that,” Ben said.

“Yes I do. You stepped up and helped when I needed it,” Gus replied.