The Librarian Her Daughter and the Man Who Lost His Head Read online

  AMAZON REVIEWS FOR SAM LEE JACKSON’S

  THE GIRL AT THE DEEP END OF THE LAKE

  This book has great swag. It’s like a cool screenplay already

  I rarely finish a book any more. I read this in one sitting.

  Run—do not walk—to buy this book!

  Wonderfully developed colorful characters without going overboard with super hero powers.

  Great read - humor, action, good stuff! Buy this one!

  The Librarian Her Daughter and the Man Who Lost His Head

  SAM LEE JACKSON

  Copyright © 2017 SAM LEE JACKSON.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Piping Rock Publications

  3608 E Taro Lane, Phoenix AZ 85050

  www.samleejackson.com

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, my thanks to my editor Ann Hedrick of UC Davis, who keeps my writing from looking like an eighth grade essay. And, of course, to the amazing Mariah Sinclair for the outstanding cover design. And, a huge shout out of appreciation to fiction readers everywhere. If you don’t read, you will only live one solitary life.

  DEDICATION

  For Carol always.

  And, for Amanda who never quits, for Lance, whose reach will always exceed his grasp. And for all those across the world who won’t bend honor or principle, and always ask “Why not?”.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  Did you enjoy The Librarian, Her Daughter and The Man Who Lost His Head?

  1

  They set the girl on fire.

  I swore under my breath.

  I broke the glass out of the window with the Israeli Ace 32 assault rifle I had been given, and threw the concussion flash grenades as fast as I could. Which didn’t seem very fast. The broken shards of glass, still in the window, hampered my action. The delay gave the two guards inside a split second, and they began firing toward me.

  Blackhawk fired through the other window as the flashbangs exploded, and the guards went down. As they fell, something blew through the wall and kicked my foot. I almost went down. I regained my balance and looked at my foot. Half the prosthetic was gone. Damn it. I’ve had bad luck with that foot. Prosthetics are expensive. The fact that I lost the foot a couple of years ago was the primary reason I was here in the first place. Here was the middle of a jungle somewhere in Guatemala. I had been enjoying a balmy day on my houseboat with Blackhawk, his girl Elena and Detective First Grade Boyce. Boyce had taken a bullet meant for me, and we were enjoying the convalescence. At least I was. Then the Colonel had called, and he had some work he needed us to do.

  Back in the day I had belonged to a covert team of specialists, commanded by the Colonel. Ten of us, code named Adam through Jackson. I was Jackson. Blackhawk was number two. Then I stepped on an IED and that screwed the pooch.

  And then, I was a civilian bum living on an old scow of a houseboat on Lake Pleasant, north of Phoenix. The disappearance of a young girl got me involved with a couple of bad news drug cartels and I called the Colonel for some intel that only he could dig up. That’s when he told me Blackhawk now owned a nightclub in south Phoenix. I enlisted his help with my problem, then I met Boyce who was assigned to the Phoenix P.D. gang-squad. And, I’m sorry to say, that’s why she took a bullet meant for me, thus saving my life. The least I could do was wine and dine her on the boat while she recuperated.

  The Colonel and most of the team were now out of that old life, but the Colonel had kept most of his old contacts and picked up occasional jobs in the civilian sector. They paid a hell of a lot more than Uncle Sam.

  And, a week after I left Boyce sunbathing on the houseboat, I found myself here. Mosquito heaven. With half my foot shot off. Now I was hobbling as fast as I could around the corner to the hutch door. Blackhawk was faster. He had already kicked it open and was inside. Both guards were down, and our package was shackled to a cot in the corner. The unconscious girl was across the room from the package. Her hair and dress were smoldering. There was a rank smell in the room.

  The package was a gaunt and hollow-eyed man, who looked to be in his forties. He had been a prisoner for over a month. It didn’t look like he had been fed that whole time. Blackhawk and I reached him at the same time, and as Blackhawk took his arm, he began to sob.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he blubbered.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Blackhawk said as he pulled him up by his arm so I could get to the blanket underneath.

  I yanked it loose and hurried to the corner. There was a bucket with liquid in it, and I couldn’t tell if it was water or piss, but it was wet. I dipped the blanket and started putting the girl out. Her eyes fluttered and she began to moan. Luckily, her damage looked mostly superficial, but I didn’t know what they had done to her. She had blood and bruises on her face. One eye was a deep saffron and purple. I couldn’t tell how old she was, she was so small. Most of the Ixil women natives were small.

  She was groaning, and I ripped her smoldering clothes off her, and wrapped her in the vile-smelling blanket. Blackhawk had rifled the pockets of the dead guards and found the keys. He freed the man. He looked at my partial foot.

  “You take her, I’ll take him,” he said.

  We heard the sudden report of the high-powered sniper rifle manned by Fabian, then another shot from Echo on the other side of the compound. Two more members of the old team the Colonel had recruited.

  “We have to go,” I said.

  I took the girl’s body, and slung her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I started hobbling ou
t the door. Blackhawk lifted the sobbing man as if he were no more than a package of potato chips.

  I touched the button by my ear and loudly said, “Coming out! Have the package, and coming out!”

  “Roger that,” Echo’s voice echoed in my ear.

  I followed Blackhawk as he raced across the open compound. I know we both had that little itchy spot in the middle of the back where the cross-hairs would be. No shots came. Our guys had successfully neutralized the bad guys. Despite the half prosthetic, I made good time. A couple of years wrangling the prosthetic makes you dexterous.

  Our team had been named Black Mamba. We never knew anyone’s real names. They didn’t matter. A is Adam. B is Blackhawk. C is Charlie. D is Dakota. There were ten to a team, and I never knew how many teams there were. Specially selected men and women who had survived the toughest training the military had to offer. Seals, Rangers, Delta, whatever.

  The dropout rate for Seal training was huge. The ones that couldn’t handle it, and it was usually a mental toughness thing, rang the bell. Then they were out. The rest of us morons kept pushing. Too stubborn to quit. Then one day you graduated, and it was the greatest day of your life, and you got drunk. And, then you waited for your orders.

  And you waited. And you watched the others called up and pack their shit and leave, and you waited.

  Then you receive a strange order. Get on a plane with nothing but the clothes on your back. You followed orders. You got on, and it was a long flight. No one spoke to you. At the other end, there was a car waiting on the tarmac. There was a man in a suit with the car. He drove you to a non-descript industrial building and took you inside. Other men met you. They asked for your wallet. They took your identification. Then they guided you through an impressive array of detectors and stuck you in a plain, drab room. The only furniture in the room was a plain wooden table, and a chair, and a camera high up in the corner. Then a colonel came in. A colonel you had never seen before. He shook your hand, and in his deep baritone, told you that you had been chosen for a special team.

  Then the real training began, and you thought the other was bad? Not just physical, but very intense covert skills training. Intense problem solving, technical training and fierce hand-to-hand. They taught how to use ordinary objects to kill people. A toothbrush, a rolled-up magazine. They didn’t ask if you would kill people, they just assumed you would.

  One time they put me in a dark room with a blindfolded instructor, who had his hands tied behind him. They ordered me to beat the shit out of him. He kicked my ass with just his legs and feet. They taught every form of survival training. Desert, swamp, mountains, ocean, taught it all. There was no set timing on the training. It depended on you. It was how the trainers thought you were doing.

  Finally, the end came, and the Colonel explained you were now ready. Oh, by the way, you had been discharged from the service, and your records had been expunged. You were a civilian. Plausible deniability. If something went wrong you were just a fool in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then he introduced me to my team. One of the first things I learned was that no one in Black Mamba had family. That naive orphaned kid that had joined the service was long gone. Black Mamba was family now.

  But now, Echo and Fabian were covering our backs until we reached the hole in the fence we had snipped earlier. Blackhawk went through, and I handed off the girl. The blubberer wasn’t functioning well so I had to literally stuff him through the opening. Once through the fence we turned and covered the open compound, where the hutch was going up in flames.

  Echo and Fabian came skittering across the open ground, but no bad guys showed their heads. A second later they were through the fence, and we were hot-footing it down the jungle path to the river.

  We had come up the river in the dead of the previous night. We had chosen, or rather, the Colonel had chosen, a moonless night. Charlie had lost the draw, and was left behind with the boat. The boat had been equipped with a very powerful electric motor that made no noise. Charlie had used it to push us through the dark river water the last mile. We had silently eased up to a spot a hundred yards down from the path that led to the compound. We went over the side, silent as snakes, into the water. We didn’t make a ripple as we silently swam the rest of the way. It was completely dark before we had climbed out of the water and settled into the underbrush. We waited till light.

  The target was a journalist. Or, at least, he was down here in the guise of a journalist. He was really a negotiator for a mega-billionaire by the name of Glick. H. Walton Glick owned any number of rightwing rags and cable networks. Glick was all about less government. Which, to him meant no taxes. In fact, he would be happy with no government at all. Except maybe the government he had in his pocket. Mayan rebels had disrupted his plans by kidnapping his man. Bad timing for Glick. It was just as the man was about to make a deal with the country’s strongman. A deal worth a billion to Glick. Unfortunately for Glick, real journalists began reporting the man’s disappearance. Glick hired the Colonel to get the man out before he opened his mouth. Of course, Glick thought no one knew all this backstory, but Glick didn’t know the Colonel.

  Charlie had the boat on the bank, and we all piled in. He looked at the girl, then at me.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Blackhawk pushed the blubberer into a corner. He turned to Charlie, “Just go.” Charlie looked hard at Blackhawk but knew not to push it. He started the motor. Soon we were roaring back up the river to where the MH-47G Chinook was waiting to hoist us up and away.

  2

  Two days later I was back. I came through the dock gate and looked down the line of moored houseboats to the end. Down to where I called home. Home is Pier C, Slip 32, Pleasant Harbor Marina on Lake Pleasant. The lake is located north of Phoenix. Home was a tired old scow I purchased after I had been laughed at by the realtor. She was amused at the figure I gave her. The amount of money I had saved to buy a place. She had kindly told me about the houseboat. I could afford it. The original name, Tiger Lily, is still on the stern. I get teased about it but I’m too lazy to change it. Now it just seems natural. The gilded lettering is just a little more faded, chipped and worn.

  Walking down the dock, the boat looked shuttered and empty. The letter was on the galley counter. It had Boyce’s familiar scrawl. After the number of phone calls Boyce didn’t answer, I wasn’t surprised. That didn’t make the feeling in the pit of my stomach any better. I knew what it would say before I opened it.

  Boyce didn’t like her first name, so she was just Boyce. I only called her by her first name once. Once was enough. We had spent the last few months together on the boat as she convalesced from the bullet wound. The bullet had been meant for me. The months had been idyllic. Sun and rare good beef, and fine drink, and slowly getting the body back. Swimming and exercise, and lots of sun. But now, I guess, she needed to get back to her life. She was a cop through and through.

  I lifted the blackout curtains and opened doors, bow and stern, for a cross breeze. She had left the boat tidy and spotless. It was also stuffy and warm. It was the time of year when the nights had begun to cool, but the highs during the day were still in the 90’s. I kicked on the air unit.

  I unpacked my small ditty bag, completely stripped down, unhooked my foot and slipped into swim trunks. I took a beer from the locker and drank it. Not for thirst. For therapy. I set the alarm that would warn me if someone stepped aboard, and lay back on the oversized yellow couch. Several hours in the air and several time zones do things to a body and although it was only mid-afternoon Phoenix time, I was soon asleep.

  When I awoke, I hit the button on my watch that illuminated the face. The watch was a gift from Blackhawk’s girl, Elena. She couldn’t stand that I didn’t have one, and did not understand that I usually didn’t give a rat’s ass about what time it was. She was really appalled I didn’t have a television on board.

  The two glowing hands on the watch told me I had slept for almost twelve hours. It was dark out, w
ith the ghostly dock lights providing the only light. I turned on the soft lights that were in the stove hood. I made coffee and took a frozen bagel out and toasted it. I slapped butter on it, and went to the stern. I sprawled in one of the chaise lounges. The air temperature was perfect. I sipped the coffee. I munched the bagel. I waited for the dawn.

  I tried to think of the Chicago Bears and Walter Payton, and how such a great player had led a very short life. I tried to put together an all time, all Bears team. But, try as I might, the thought of Boyce came slowly slipping in. And with it, a slow ache in the gut. I gave up on Walter. As usual, Boyce took over.

  I had never felt this before. She was my first. Not first woman, but first woman I had let inside. First one that had gotten by the defenses. And while I was trying to wallow in this exquisite sorrow of memory, this bittersweet sense of loss, I could feel that other thing. I tried to hold on to the delicious sorrow as long as possible, but then the other thing kept coming. At first, a pinprick of discomfort. Like the pea under all the mattresses. It was a tiny sliver of unease that kept peeking out from under the pain. I pushed it back. It returned. I pushed it back. Back it came. Finally I gave up. You win. I eased it out, I turned it over, and studied it. And there it was. It was guilt. I didn’t like it. Guilt is self-induced. No one can make you feel guilty unless you are complicit. You do it to yourself. I didn’t like it. I tried to think of Boyce. Beautiful Boyce. Boyce topside, sunbathing nude. Boyce’s nose covered with zinc sunscreen. Boyce in the galley in a pathetic attempt to cook. Boyce’s green eyes appraising me over the top of a book. Boyce fixing appletinis. But the guilt got larger. The guilt started making noise. The guilt started shaking the tree. Hey there, fella. You can’t ignore me.