Quick Read (Badger Thompson Book 3) Read online

  Books by Bill Thesken

  The Lords of Xibalba

  The Oil Eater

  Blocking Paris

  Edge of the Pit

  The Catalina Cabal

  Exodus from Orion

  Quick Read

  Bill Thesken

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  Copyright © 2020 Bill Thesken

  First Edition Published 2020

  Koloa Publishing, LLC

  P.O. Box 1609

  Koloa, HI 96756

  www.koloapublishing.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names,

  characters, events, places, organizations are

  either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, organizations or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Book cover designed by

  Deranged Doctor Design

  ISBN 978-1-7329689-1-2

  ISBN 978-1-7329689-2-9

  1.

  The gentle rocking of the boat nearly put me back to sleep. Despite the physical pain I was in, it was comforting to be in the cockpit of the Spice. A self-imposed coma might not be a bad idea at a time like this. But I still had work to do.

  Anchored in the middle of the harbor in Avalon, off the coast of Catalina island I sat propped up on the lounge chair, cushioned on all sides by soft pillows, waiting for the big shot from the CIA to arrive.

  Covered in bloody scrapes, steady throbbing from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, aware of the exact location of every bone in my body. The result of jumping from a speeding truck on the hill above the casino to the right of my vision. My body was busted and bruised, but my spirit was not yet broken.

  Last night I got into a bit of a tussle with a couple of hitmen from China, professional assassins from the Triad based in Los Angeles and I rolled out of a truck before it went over a cliff with one of the assassins still attached to the surfboard rack. Every inch of my body felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat, but that’s the outcome when you tumble over rocks at thirty miles an hour. At least I didn’t keep rolling over the cliff like the other guy.

  I could see the SUV truck, what was left of it, being loaded onto the flat bed of a semi-trailer by a bulldozer. It would be hauled away to the Coast Guard base yard and combed for evidence.

  They’d probably find a few shell casings and bullet fragments. Maybe some leftover body parts from the Chinese hit man that tried to take me out.

  Amber was sitting quietly beside me. Her back towards me, dark hair cascading over her shoulders.

  She was facing north east, away from the truck loading the wreck, gently watching the morning light peeking over the hillside of the island.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked her.

  I could see the side of her face and the corner of her mouth. She smiled slightly without looking back at me. “I’m trying not to think at all. I could be thinking about being at work at the hospital, about how many babies were born last night, who was working the night shift, and if they ever fixed the broken elevator. I could be thinking about what’s on the menu at that restaurant on the dock over there, or how deep the water is underneath this boat, and whether there’s any crabs crawling around on the seafloor. I could even be thinking about how lucky I am that you weren’t killed last night, but that would just bring me out of my happy place. I’m just glad to be here right now, because nothing else matters.”

  “That’s my girl.” I patted her on the back with the tip of a finger.

  Nothing else did matter. I had a close shave last night, but that was in the past. Where it belonged.

  We heard the engines turning over, the deep rumbling of the Coast Guard cutter that was tied to the dock at the center of the harbor. Our quiet time would soon be over. The head of the CIA was coming out to pay a visit.

  The steady rumbling large diesel engines increased in volume, humming now in perfect unison, then it came into view, the silver and orange outline of the fast patrol boat blocking my view of Catalina Island.

  It slowed to a crawl as the engines were put into reverse, then idled as it gently floated towards our stern.

  Lieutenant Myles Johnson called out to us. “Permission to come aboard?”

  If only I was in a better mood and felt a little stronger I would have waved them off and told both him and his passenger to take a long hike down a short pier, but I was in a piss poor mood and it wasn’t going to get better for a few days. I waved them on board with a tilt of my head, the best I could muster.

  Two crewmen on the Coast Guard boat reached out with tender hooks, bringing the two vessels together, side by side. Two men were standing next to Myles and they stuck out like sore thumbs on the boat where all the crew wore crisp blue uniforms. These guys were wearing black pressed slacks, white button down dress shirts and suit coats.

  The CIA was here for a visit. For what I had no idea. The guy who must have been the big deal shook the Lieutenant’s hand thanking him for the ride and the two odd balls climbed over the railing onto my boat by the stern. I could tell by their faces that they were serious men, and the way they looked at my scraped and bruised condition their seriousness doubled though they tried their hardest to hide it.

  The main guy, the bigger of the two reached out his hand, then thought better of it.

  “Pardon me for being blunt, but you look like hell.”

  I was equally sincere.

  “You should see the other guy.”

  “Thanks for agreeing to see us, mind if we sit down.”

  I nodded at the long seat next to the rail. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

  He managed a slight smile. “That’s okay, we know all about your adventure last night. In fact that’s why we’re here. I’m Jack Pellegrino, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and this is my assistant, Bob McCade.”

  I was mildly shocked. I was obviously out of the loop as far as who was running the spy business in Washington these days. “I expected a little scrawny nerdy kind of guy with a bald head and horn rimmed glasses.”

  He laughed. “That was my predecessor, and I appreciate your candor.” When his jacket moved I could see the handle of the gun in a side holster under his armpit. He saw my eyes and explained. “I always carry a gun.” He nodded with no smile. “Always.”

  I nodded. “I also usually try to have one nearby.” I thought twice about it, and then pointed under the chair I was sitting in, what did it matter if they saw my hiding place. “My old man had a saying, ‘It doesn’t cost anything to be ready, but it could cost everything if you’re not.’”

  “I have armed bodyguards, but you need to be able to take care of yourself. In fact Bob here is serving dual purpose as my assistant and bodyguard. Unfortun
ately, the way it is with the world these days, the time might come when you may need to save the bodyguard.”

  Wasn’t that the truth. I was a professional bodyguard and could’ve used a little saving myself last night, though I couldn’t complain too much since I was the only one that was still alive.

  “Why don’t we get down to business,” I said. “I’m sure your time isn’t cheap. This is my fiancé, Amber. We’re getting married in a couple of months and I’d like her to sit in on our meeting if you don’t mind. She’s my designated driver today.”

  “That’s fine, this is all going to be very informal. The way I like to work is to get to know each other first and foremost. Then we can talk business if we still see any point in it. You see even though we’re in the intelligence gathering field, you can’t really get to know a person from a file.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. This was their show. “Myles, I mean Lieutenant Johnson said you were in Los Angeles on business and decided to take a special trip out here.”

  “My Mom’s ninetieth birthday party. That’s why we’re all dressed up. It was a formal lunch at a nice hotel in the city. I was born and raised in Orange County and my mom never moved. She still lives in the same house I grew up in. I try to get out here to California every chance I get, which isn’t often these days. I’m usually chained to a desk in Washington.”

  He was a California boy. I never would have guessed it. Looked like he grew up on a farm in the mid-west.

  He glanced around the harbor and took a deep breath of the salt air and smiled. “This brings back great memories. I love it out here on Catalina.” He continued. “So when I heard your story in this morning’s briefing I jumped at the chance to come out and have a little talk with you. I spent a whole summer out here on the island when I was ten years old with an uncle who had a construction business, fixing up old houses. I’d help him with the small stuff, the drywall and painting, and in the evenings I’d explore the coastline with my fishing pole. And then he passed away and it was too tough to get out here. I tried a few times, caught the ferry a couple of times, but money was tight and the ride out here wasn’t in the budget. That summer is etched on my memory banks like gold bars in Fort Knox, you know what I mean? Timeless.”

  “I kind of like it here myself.”

  “Funny how times change though. Now I can catch a ride out here on a fifty million dollar Navy helicopter anytime I want, only problem is I don’t have any spare time in my life to stay here. Duty calls.”

  “Head of the CIA, how in the hell did you get there from here.”

  He smiled at that.

  “Well, I was a pretty good basketball player in my day. Power forward for our High School team, went to the State Championships all four years, recruited by West Point, graduated with a double degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. Spent five years with the US Army’s Fourth Infantry Division with one of those years in a platoon in a war zone, got out of the military then started an aerospace supply company in Kansas with a couple of patents that I designed, then I went into politics, got elected to Congress and served four terms, and last year the President called me up and asked if I could help out.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “I like to have a full plate in front of me. As Director of the CIA, I oversee a few key tasks to keep our country safe. Intelligence collection, analysis, covert action, counterintelligence, and various liaison relationships with foreign intelligence services both friend and foe.”

  “That’s a big plate.”

  “It’s as big as the whole world.”

  Whatever they wanted from me, I knew it wasn’t going to work out for them, so I decided to lay it on the line right then and there. No need to pussyfoot around, I needed to let them down hard.

  “I like small plates, and my resume isn’t that glamourous. I started running with a local drug dealing gang when I was seventeen, dropped out of high school, then got volunteered into the Army by my Grandpa dragging me to the recruiters office by the scruff of my neck. Spent four years in a platoon which was also in an active battle zone for a year, got out and worked for a big security firm for about another year, till I quit that and started my own little company. I’m a one man band. I’m a loner in a way. I don’t like working for big companies, I get a little claustrophobic.”

  “I understand. We’re one of the, if not the biggest companies in the world.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s your budget, and how many employees do you have?”

  “Classified.”

  “I agreed to see you, but I’ll tell you right now that whatever you’re here to sell me isn’t going happen, I’m not in the buying mood.”

  “Just hear me out. The fact is that even though we are one of the biggest companies in the world, most of our ‘employees’ are loners, just like you. They’re independent contractors, and work on their own. As far as they and the rest of the world is concerned, our relationship does not exist. It has to be that way. For a lot of them, if our relationship was discovered, they would perish. Most times in unpleasant ways.”

  I knew the business model that they ran.

  Most of their employees were in fact hidden in the shadows, gathering information and sending it off to their contacts who in turn sent it farther up the chain. And that information would sometimes be the most mundane facts and figures, things they’d seen or heard. News clippings, or scraps of paper from a waste bin that ended up in the trash. And all the little facts and figures were gathered up and collected into a big vat and boiled till it was a cohesive blob that could be deciphered, and used by the powers that be.

  “You want me to be a spy.”

  He nodded. “Something like that.”

  He watched me for a moment to see it filter in to my brain, then he continued. “I made the special trip out here to see you for a specific reason. I didn’t come out here on a whim, or to shoot the breeze. I think you might be able to help us, and in the process help your country.”

  “What if I say no.”

  “You haven’t even heard my proposal.”

  “I’m just wondering why me.”

  “We know a lot about you.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Do you have a file on me, and one on Amber?”

  “Official policy of the CIA is to monitor and gather information on foreign entities, and we are forbidden by law to gather intelligence on the domestic activities of citizens of the United States, unless those individuals are suspected of involvement in foreign counter intelligence or terrorist activities.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Of course he had a file. It was sitting right there in his assistants lap. Jack reached out his hand and Bob handed him the file. It was pretty thin.

  “We have one on you right here, not on Amber. We ran a check on her, she’s clean, and if not we wouldn’t be sitting with you right now. But you can rest assured that there is a file somewhere on her, just not with me. Badger, I’m going to level with you, and this is something you probably already know. Everyone in the entire country has a file on them somewhere. Me, Bob, Lieutenant Johnson, the guy filling gas at the local station. There are other companies in the information gathering business, and even though their employee base isn’t as large as ours, they have farther reaching tentacles, and use the info to make decisions on marketing, sales. It’s just the way of the world that we live in.”

  Somehow that didn’t make me feel assured. Everyone was either a suspect or a living breathing credit card waiting to be maxed out.

  I took a deep breath and sighed.

  “Alright, let’s see what you have in that file on me.”

  He pulled out an eight by eleven glossy paper with ten neatly sized photos spaced evenly down the length of it. The first five photos were of the Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, I was at the front door heading inside, then I was sitting with my friend, Wang Lei having a discussion. Wang Lei didn’t have a happy face. The next five photos were of
Wang Lei with some other Chinese looking dudes in various locations around the city. At a park, in front of a store, in a car. Someone was staking them out with a telephoto lens.

  “That’s Wang Lei with you. We’re sure you know that. What you might not know is that he’s been promoted to the number two man in a section of a local Triad.”

  “He pulled me out of a building and saved my life last year.”

  “We know that.”

  “I went there a couple of days ago to see if he had any information on the dead girl I found in the water last week. As you can see from the photos he wasn’t very happy to see me.”

  “We know that too.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “We know that one of the assassins that you killed last night was the Triad’s number one hitman, and he was going to be used for a big job. All the chatter we’re hearing is that the Triad is in big trouble, they lost their big gun, and now that he’s gone, they don’t know who they’re going to bring in to finish the job. They’re scrambling to bring in a replacement, they’re distracted and vulnerable.”

  They wanted me to get information from my Chinese buddy.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but ‘ol Wang Lei hasn’t exactly taken a liking to me.”

  “That’s his nature.”

  “You know a lot about him.”

  “We gather intelligence. And we’re pretty damned good at it.”

  Amber was sitting silent next to me, and raised her hand like she was in a classroom. We all looked at her as she spoke up.

  “Umm, excuse me for intruding on the conversation, but since you said it’s okay for me to be here, I have a couple of questions, like how dangerous is this job, potentially, and what’s in it for Badger? And why do you think he can do the job in the first place, whatever it is. And why don’t you ask a Chinese looking person who would fit in and not stick out like a sore thumb?”

  She gently patted me on the hand.

  “Your fiancé has a unique set of skills.”

  He pulled out another paper and read down a list from my Army days and some of the action in the big security firm.