| "Where Can I Go From Your Presence" | ||
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Newton Bar 2145 hours, 18th of May, 2008 Eric sat brooding over his drink in the bar. He'd only sipped at it before largely forgetting in the cloud of numbing emotion that assailed him. It wasn't that the emotion was overwhelming, but that, in his effort to suppress it he felt nothing at all, could not feel, could hardly think. He simply sat and tried to ignore everything. Nor did he drown his sorrows in his drink, non-alcoholic as it was. He knew better than that, given his inherited weakness to the effects of the drugs. He certainly wasn't happy with his situation, but what he did feel about it, he could not say. To even consider what he felt would take too much effort. He'd had enough frustration already. It might have been the job, the cover job with National Geographic, that was. He was on his third assignment with them, his first two articles having been satisfactory. All he'd had to do on them was take a few pictures, write down some observations and comments, interview some people. He'd done all the same a few times before in the Special Forces and Section 1 training, but these times no one seemed to mind. He was, essentially, among friendlies. It was easy work, not unpleasant, and left his mind free, free to brood. Eric brooded on many things, primarily Paige, her safety, and whatever it was she wanted him to "stay out of." She seemed genuinely concerned for HIS safety, should he get involved, which caused him to worry all the more for hers. He felt compelled to learn what was really going on, what was causing her paranoia and other instability. Even if she was not in physical danger, her mind was clearly at risk, and he knew he'd be unable to live with himself if he let anything happen to her, especially mentally. He followed her when not working, managed to set things up so at least one of the Owl's Brood was off work and tailing her at all times. That lasted for a week before they convinced him that she was not under any immediate physical threat after all, and he let them pull back, only checking on her every couple of hours. Still nothing, yet she continued to seem disturbed. She still guarded her French doors, pistol in hand, for an hour at a time. The multiple locks remained on her doors. She hurried from place to place, attempting to ignore whatever threats her mind created, IF they weren't real. The fact that Eric and the brood had not encountered any threats to her didn't mean they weren't there, cleverly hidden, or so obvious as to be ignored by those searching for them. More frustrating, perhaps, than anything, was not knowing, yet believing there was something to know. Something had invaded and compromised Paige Flannigan's life mental health sometime between her departure from Section 1, and her reunion with Eric, and it perturbed him more than anything had before other than the loss of his daughter. Then there was Joshua. Not Eric's concern, what Paige did with him, as long as he didn't hurt her, and he'd shown no sign of any such intention that Eric had been able to detect. Still, concerns with him nagged at Eric's mind, along with everything else. They might have been the result of simple jealousy, the man had Paige's . . . attentions, at least, and Eric did not, but he desperately needed to believe it was something more than that. He really was concerned for Paige, not just for his own eventual possession of her heart, mind, soul, and body, and Joshua was, after all, from the monster of the Sections under the great evil of oversight. He wondered dully why the attacker that had brought them down as far as they were brought, couldn't have done a better job of it. He didn't have enough information or resources, however, to do the job himself, and couldn't trust anyone else enough to bring them in to work with him against the evil. Perhaps if he had Paige and Alpha, which he understood included Sara and Jordan, but there was little to no hope for that. As long as Joshua was in good with Paige, she could not be trusted with information that might compromise him. Effectively there was nothing for him to do about any of it but to keep looking, and looking grew frustrating when there was no sign of progress. If it had only been Paige that concerned him he'd probably be sitting in his SUV outside her place, brooding, right now. But then there was this most recent assignment on the cover job. Finally it was, at least, something that might be meaningful to someone. If he pulled it off well, the article might make it into their primary publication rather than the regional one he'd written for the last two times. It concerned a decommissioned naval base and the cleanup mandated by Congress. The problem was that, not only were there suspicions of foot dragging on the part of the naval authorities and work crews, but locals had also complained of outsiders dumping something or another in what was to be a park and wildlife preserve within the next five years. Needless to say, it would make good reading if there were any substance to it, but just as obviously, one did not want one's investigations to become known to either party. They'd decided he needed help, and sent along two others to "assist" him, one a writer with law training, and the other a field tech who could operate the equipment, freeing Eric to do the mental work. In reality, he'd spent the last week training them, trying to beat them into shape and discipline, only they had none to begin with, and he couldn't beat them. They were civilians, and had no respect for authority. Just getting them to shut up and concentrate, to avoid getting caught, had taken a day and a half. What did they care? Then the pressure came down to get the material for the article, so they'dhad to get into the field and reconnoiter the base, still majorly wet behind the ears. Eric was exhausted, just managing them, and had only gotten a couple hours worth of productive investigation done, or so it seemed. Now, he no longer considered these things. His mind was too fatigued for any such exertion. He simply stared through a point on the floor beyond the edge of his table, occasionally lifting the glass of prune juice to his lips. A door slammed, a shotgun pumped. Eric's training took over, as he grasped the small, serrated steak knife sitting beside his loaded plate, such that the blade lay along the inside of his wrist, hidden from view by the hostiles, and he slowly spared a lazy glance in their direction. "Everybody FREEZE! This is a hold up. Do like we say and nobody gets hurt!" Ring, as Eric named the obvious leader, for the obtrusive ring on his Left index finger (did that mean something?), was a large man, primarily fat, though there might have been muscle beneath it at some point. He used his size to intimidate and gain obedience, but had little to recommend him otherwise. Ring shouted another order. "Take out yer money and valuables, and lay them on the table in front of you!" Mistake number one, contradicting his first order. It would cause confusion among his intended victims, making his job more difficult, if what he really wanted was the money and valuables. No, make that mistake number two. An unnoticed glance to the back door revealed toEric that it was not covered by the tangos. Nonetheless, he slowly pulled his wallet from his front pocket-he'd never carried it where pick-pockets first grabbed, as the false ID's and other items in it were too valuable to lose- and lay it in front of him. "And keep your hands on the table wheres we can see em!" Pinky, as in Pinky and the brain, stepped out from behind Ring to deliver the third order. Mistakes number two, three, and four. Pinkyhad swept his weapon behind Ring's head on his way into the pub, now stood beside him not having covered the corner to the right of the door as he entered, and then detracted from Ring's perceived authority by giving an additional order. Even so, Eric's hands remained on the table, his right covering the knife. The two men were clearly amateurs, probably desperate to make a little money to pay off gambling debts, or support a new drug habit. They didn't worry Eric. He'd managed to remove the really useful items from his wallet before placing it on the table, and they were safely hidden. He didn't care if they stole the rest, and he certainly wasn't going to expose himself or break cover. Not that he didn't want to. People like this irked him to no end, and being unable to do anything about them, as they were no longer combatants, left Eric with a great deal of pent up aggression waiting to be released. He'd just sit here and obey them for now, however, hope the whole thing blew over quickly so he could go back to his staring at the floor. Pinky snatched Eric's wallet, threw some disparaging racial slur at him as he hurried off to the next victim, heading to Eric's left and behind him. Eric ignored him. Ring rounded the other side of the table, now in front of him and to his left, reaping the harvest at a table there with his back to Eric. Mistake number four or so. Eric ignored him for a moment, until he raised his voice in anger, addressing a petite woman cowering across the table from him. She protested, clearly petrified beyond reasonable thought, and the large man moved around toward her, raising his weapon as though threatening to strike her with it. She whimpered. Eric rose smoothly from his chair with hardly a sound, and stood motionless. Ring continued to yell. Eric moved two steps closer. A lunge, and he could bury the knife in the man's kidney. "Hey YOU! Freeze, Sit back down!" Pinky approached nervously from the left, clearly much more upset by Eric's disobedience than Eric was about any of this. Eric ignored him, taking another step, such that Ring's body partly obscured his own from any shot Pinky might attempt, and spoke. "I would not speak that way if I were you." Ring noticed him, turned toward him, shotgun coming down and around to aim at Eric's left shoulder. "What do YOU want, INJUN?! You'd better sit down before I blow your **** head off!" Eric responded in a conversational, but deadly serious voice. "I want you to apologize to the lady and give her back her things." "**** you, you **** hero wannabe. I'm gonna kill ya both!" Another man at the table, taking heart upon seeing Eric's actions, stood, and ring backhanded him across the face, sending him reeling, before taking aim at Eric and preparing to fire. Clearly, though the man had not been planning to hurt anyone before, he was capable of it, and would, later if not sooner. More drastic counter-reaction was called for. "You can't kill me." "Why the **** not?" "Your safety's on." "Wha?" He glanced down involuntarily, only for a moment, but it was all Eric needed. He stepped forward to the inside, on to his right foot, pivoting on it to grasp the shotgun in his right, and slam the outside of his left hand, backward into Ring's soft throat, partially crushing the trachea and causing a great deal of pain. At the same moment he slammed his left foot down on the man's left in-step, pinning it to the floor, and with his weight still on it, hauled the man around, shotgun first, to aim at Pinky. Pinky, nervous as he was and afraid to hit friend, fired one shot wide, shattering an overhead light behind Eric. Eric took careful aim and fired one shot into Pinky's lower torso. At this range it wouldn't spread enough to cause severe damage, if he were tended to soon, but it would stop the tango from moving forward. Combatants often continued to fight with shoulder wounds, so pelvic shots were more effective when it came to stopping power. Pinky collapsed slowly, in shock, holding his bleeding abdomen. That threat averted, Eric rotated his left fist upward at the elbow, slamming it backward into Ring's nose, knocking the stunned and un-breathing man away from him and the shotgun, which Eric had easily wrested from the man's grasp. He chambered another round and turned about, looking for other threats, even as Ring slowly toppled backward. This wasn't supposed to come to this. Normally, as an operative, he'd kill them both and call housecleaning, but this wasn't a normal situation, and he wasn't an operative, now. Instead, keeping the two hostiles in his peripheral vision, he retrieved his wallet, gave the lady back her valuables, and strode over to the counter where the excited proprietor waited to thank him. Eric silenced the man with a gesture and a dower look. "Wait two minutes and call an ambulance. You did not see me, not well enough to give a description. None of you did. " Turning toward the other patrons, sweeping the weapon past them to make his point. "Got that?" Fervent nods were the reply all around. He fished out a five dollar bill, deposited it on the counter, emptied the weapon of shots, wiped it of finger prints, and set it on the counter. As sirens were heard approaching, he strode around the counter, through the kitchen, and out the back door. A moment to ensure that no one followed, and he slid into the wood. He'd have to lie low for the next few days, till the case was more or less abandoned. A plausible excuse would be to take the nerds, as he'd taken to calling the two National Geographic assistants, on a camping trip neighboring the naval base. One had to do what one had to do, and a few days in the boonies with nerds wouldn't be as bad as a night in the pen before dealing with a perturbed Gray. The action, the crisis, and the resulting adrenalin rush, minor though they had been, had lifted his spirits a little. Now as he trudged along the hiking trail heading north, generally toward his place, it dropped off and he returned to thinking, unpleasant a pursuit as that was. He'd return home, the wrong place to go if the cops were searching for him, but hopefully the people in the bar would be smarter than to send them after him, at least for a day or two. Get a few things, make a call to the brood, get his SUV and pick up the nerds. Back to the daily grind, as civilians tended to say. The call would occupy most of his thought. He felt amiss in his search for answers concerning Paige's problems. He'd determined to go on the offensive, and then continued simply to watch and wait. He was tired of it, and would do what he could. First, he'd set Timothy to work digging up whatever he could on Joshua and his activities in the last month or so. It would be tough, yet another under the radar incursion, but industrial sized bottles of motrine and no-doze, boxes of pop tarts, and a good sized wad of cash ought to be persuasive enough. He might have to take some of that motrine himself. Eric had been going, thinking, trying in vane to accomplish things for the last 17 hours, and his head hurt. Maybe, having made sure he was not pursued and all alarms and snares were set around his place, he'd take a nap. The idea of a good night's sleep was inconceivable. Such was . . . two lives, as it was two lives Eric Schweig and the Snowy Owl had to live together, he guessed. Return |
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