Jerle knew he wasn’t–by any stretch of the imagination–a good man. He was the first to admit it when confronted, and the 46 countries that wanted to arrest him would probably agree. It might have been simply because Jerle was good at his job. Damned good. Whether a single shot from his suppressed pistol, giving his target “flying lessons” from the top of a 20-story building, or the always messy but popular car bomb, he did his work swiftly and efficiently, taking any job that came his way. And even if the pay is superior to working nine to five, being a professional hitman can be a little lonely.
That all changed when he met his daughter, Sarah. Most people in his profession didn’t get to grow old and retire, let alone have a family, but Jerle knew after finishing the contract on her mother that he couldn’t just leave that precious baby to die alone in a cold apartment. A complication came up right as he pulled the trigger, and he had to dispose of the unfortunate babysitter he had carefully arranged to appear guilty. At first, he intended to abandon the child at the doorstep of a kindly older couple, but he knew his involvement in her mother’s death could eventually catch up with him.
There was nothing else to do but adopt her. Despite everything, he didn’t have it in him to end a child’s life. Professional killers have to have standards, after all. Without standards, he wouldn’t be any different than the common thugs, brigands and ne’er-do-wells of the world. But he still had a duty to the Corporation: Never get caught. Never take unnecessary risks.
He retired.
The Corporation didn’t even have a plan in place to deal with a retiree. Usually, an assassin stupid enough to jeopardize their interests ended up dying while performing a contract kill. It was more convenient that way. To have an assassin still alive, just waiting for the FBI to interrogate them, was unthinkable. After dozens of PowerPoint presentations and graphs, they finally came to a conclusion. The final report read, simply, “The most efficient use of resources in regard to the conundrum of a long-term Special Projects operative is agreed to be termination.”
Jerle and his daughter had lived in peace for 12 years in his Havana safe house. He’d originally purchased it to hide from the local authorities, but now the mansion seemed the perfect place to live out the rest of his life and enjoy his hard-earned blood money. He had become a respectable man, trading his gun for a softball glove and attending boring PTA meetings.
Until today. When Jerle pulled into the driveway, he could immediately tell something was wrong. Someone had left his front door open. Relax, he thought to himself. You are out of the business, you don’t have to be paranoid anymore.
But he hadn’t survived 30 years of contract killings or spent all that time avoiding law enforcement by not being paranoid. Jerle reached down quickly and opened the secret compartment in the driver’s seat, retrieving his emergency gun. Checking it and exiting the car in one smooth motion, he quickly closed the distance to the house. He entered his home uneasily, stepping over the bloody corpse of his butler. Sweeping through his own home room by room, quickly and quietly, he was greeted again and again by the bodies of his servants.
Finally, he entered his study to find his computer smashed into pieces and the hard drive missing. Stuck into his desk with a knife was a note, with a photo attached.
Jerle impatiently ripped the letter from the desk and muttered to himself, “Fucking amateurs.”
There she was in the photo, tears streaming down her beautiful face with hands bound and mouth gagged. Glancing briefly at the letter’s content, he rolled his eyes and simply dropped it. The missing hard drive from his computer told him all he needed to know. Only the Corporation knew he was in Havana, and the only reason they would kidnap his adopted daughter would be to erase any evidence of his existence. They wanted to eliminate him.
The letter was full of the usual threats and was dressed up to look like a typical kidnapping for ransom. Reexamining his home more thoroughly, he found more of his things had been rifled through, with certain objects and files missing. How fucking stupid do they think I am? One thing was certain. They’d kidnapped the daughter of the wrong fucking man.
*
Crack. It was the fourth neck Jerle had snapped since he entered the Corporation’s Havana office. The low-paid security staff that guarded the front was mainly for show, and didn’t amount to much of a problem. It was the holding area ahead that was going to have people with actual loaded weapons.
“Drop it, asshole!” A voice roared suddenly from behind.
Fuck me, Jerle thought to himself. I get this far and this rent-a-cop sneaks up behind me? I can’t let it end like this, Sarah needs me!
“You’re here early,” the guard taunted as Jerle turned, slowly. “Does this look like the abandoned warehouse to you?”
“I always was bad at following directions,” Jerle spoke, slowly kneeling to place his pistol on the floor. He suddenly lurched forward, flipping his gun into the guard’s face. The man grunted, low and harsh, at the impact. It sent him tumbling backwards and he discharged his own gun in a panic. Jerle pounced on the man before he could recover, plucking the gun from the guard’s hands and firing it into his chest twice.
Voices began shouting from the next room over and heavy footsteps echoed from down the hall. Jerle didn’t wait to find out what was about to happen. Crouching low to the ground, he emptied the rest of the security guard’s pistol into the wooden door while simultaneously picking up his own weapon. A couple of curses and a shout of pain let him know he had hit his mark, and he quickly sidled up to the door.
After several moments of complete silence, the door creaked open slowly and the barrel of a rifle peeked through the frame. Jerle grabbed the weapon and yanked, throwing the man holding it off balance. With his other hand, Jerle placed a single shot into the surprised man’s forehead, permanently freezing the expression of shock on his face. The man’s collapse to the ground was far louder than the whisper from the suppressed pistol. Jerle stepped into the next room quickly, and saw that his shots through the door had hit the other man twice; once in the shoulder and once right above the heart.
The main security must be preparing the ambush site for me, Jerle thought. If I’m quick, we can be out of the country before they realize what’s happened.
Without further hesitation, Jerle opened a metal security door to find Sarah laying on a plush bed in lavish surroundings. Feeling his heart overflow with sudden joy, he ran towards her and grabbed her in a tight embrace. “My girl, thank God, we have to get you outta here!”
“Why can’t you leave me alone?!” Sarah squirmed and pulled away from him, eyes wide with fear. “They promised me they’d take me away from you forever if I told them where we live,” she cried.
Jerle frowned at his daughter. “Sarah, you belong to me now, you know that. No matter what you do, you’ll always be my little girl.”
Sarah began crying in earnest as Jerle grabbed her by the shoulders and squeezed. He lowered his head to her eye level and began to grope at her chest. “Sarah, I promise no one will ever take you away from me again. But first–it’s time for me to remind you why you do not run away from Daddy.”
For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Chaos Mandy challenged me with “The Love of A Child” and I challenged Diane with “The price of progress is blood.”
