A Long Time Coming...

I'm sure this news will please some of my readers. I'm recovering from several heart attacks and open heart bypass surgery. They had my heart stopped and packed in ice for over 4 hours before they jump-started me again. I've been told that makes me both undead and cold-hearted. To be honest, I have a feeling of general malaise, I'm uneasy, my dreams disturbed and slightly horrific and I sometimes feel I don't belong here any longer. I guess it is what it is.

============

Spring was full on in Minnesota before there were any more developments in my life. It was late April when I decided to give more cash and leeway to the property management company I had running my properties. I did this in large part because I needed more investments for my cash. Property is much harder to steal or claw back than numbers in an account. That and Amy was seriously banging the head guy running the company. They seemed to be a perfectly matched couple. Amy liked a variety of cocks in her pussy on a regular basis and he liked to watch her get them. Not that they didn't mambo between the sheets themselves, Roger just got really turned on by watching Amy get pounded into mush by some strange every couple weeks or so. Roger had a knack for finding distressed properties that he got cheap and he kept the renovation crews going most of the time. Amy kept him honest.

Did I trust them completely? I didn't trust anyone, including myself that much, but I trusted them enough. I also trusted the CPA I hired to run the books. She was a bible thumping Christian who really disliked Roger and Amy's lifestyle. I was convinced she'd do just about anything to find a mistake made by those two that she could have them charged with and she let them know of her disapproval at every opportunity. Debra is a first class bitch. She made the mistake of showing her disapproval of Zaynab and the girls just once. After Zaynab laid into her for it it was my turn. We made it clear that anything less than total respect and a subservient attitude would result in her immediate termination and my hiring a PI to find her total client list that would be informed of her attitude. As it turned out I shortly learned that the reason she was a one-woman show was her attitude got her canned from 2 other firms already. As for her client list, she had me and 4 others who combined didn't provide her half the income I did. I owned her.

My older brother John had been busy on my behalf as well. He put me in touch with a team of 5 guys who had gotten the bum's rush out of the Marine Corp. They had been very effective in Afghanistan until some Army wienie filed a complaint about how they were operating. I don't understand how an Army Major was involved in oversight of a Marine Force Recon team but he was. Just before they were pulled out and tossed out, the shit hit the fan for these guys, the 5 were all that was left when the dust settled. I made a job offer to them to be my private security team, they reluctantly agreed, the turning point was that we would likely be going back to the sandbox. They really relished killing ragheads.

I set the 3 with families up with freshly remodeled houses, sold to them at very lucrative prices with zero interest loans I provided them. I made the same offer to the other 2 but they chose to find their own places. For nearly 8 months they had very little to do but then we went on a field trip. During those 8 months, they did their best to get me in shape and teach me the rudiments of shoot, move and communicate. By the end of it, they allowed I probably wouldn't be too much of a liability in the field.

John also put me in touch with an "interesting" woman. I call her sweet Mary. She looks like an angel. Nearly 6 feet tall and 145 lbs of jaw-dropping gorgeous. She kills people for a living, usually with a knife. It's 50k a name. I provide the picture, the habits, and the city. Within 14 days there is a funeral. My first name for her was Jafa. Good ole Jafa was in New York City with his entire family, wife and 5 kids. Wifey wasn't allowed to leave the home without his permission, nor were his daughters. When they did leave they were in the company of one of his 2 sons. Jafa was too busy to come home most days. He was thoroughly enjoying escorts and strippers that he brought to his play pad apartment. He spent most nights in a high-end strip club getting lap dances and doing a lot of drinking. This is where sweet Mary found him. Jafa had just paid a stripper 300 bucks for a lap dance in a private room. The stripper passed Mary as Mary entered wearing a halter mini dress. Mary had a lot of "assets" and that dress showed them off to their best advantage. Mary approached Jafa with a big smile and said: "I understand you appreciate a good looking girl."

Jafa was sitting in a chair yet from his lap dance where the dancer could get at him. He said: "Oh I do appreciate a good looking girl, come here and have a seat and tell me about yourself."

Mary approached and straddled Jafa's legs as she sat in his lap facing him. With her left hand, she grabbed him by the back of his head and maneuvered his face between her ample breasts. Thus occupied he didn't notice when she removed her right hand from her bag. In that hand was a Rapala filet knife 5 1/2 inches long and 5/8 inch wide at the base. Mary pushed the razor-sharp, single-edged knife into Jafa's chest with ease. It passed between his ribs on his left side to the left of the left atrium of his heart with the edge towards that organ. with a single push to the left Mary's blade cut thru both upper chambers of Jafa's heart as well as his descending aorta just past the downward curve. As she held his face to her breasts, effectively muffling his single cry, she whispered in his ear, "David Iverson sends his regards and you will be at the gates of hell before I get off your lap." And he was.

Mary waited a few minutes, moving Jafa's head around her chest as if he was nuzzling her breasts until she was sure his heart had stopped. She then pushed his head back and rose from his lap, never taking her hand from the wooden handle of the Rapala. As she reached her feet she bent forward and kissed Jafa on his brow, drawing her blade from him as she did so. As she caressed his face with her left hand she wiped the blade on the inside of his suit jacket and then replaced it in her bag. She turned and left the private room and then left the club. She was over 10 minutes away before Jafa's body started to slump from the chair, nearly 20 minutes before a bouncer found Jafa dead when he looked in to see what was taking Jafa so long to exit the private room. Mary had met Jafa as a blue-eyed blond, she left New York via Laguardia as a green-eyed redhead. The Rapala dropped in a dumpster 2 blocks from her hotel, the wig in the hotel trash and the blue contacts down the commode. She kept the mini dress, it was a designer label piece and matched her Lois Vuitton pumps.

Mary's next assignment was Tony Coldagelli. Tony was working these days as a lobbyist for the Saudi's. It paid better than his old state department job had and he had to do a lot less for the money. Tony was cheap. He lived in Maryland well outside the beltway and took the commuter train to and from work. His life away from work was total suburbia. No real bad habits, he seemed to live to be with his wife and 2 kids. Tony liked to doze on the train. He'd get a window seat, lean back and off to la la land till his stop. It took Mary 3 days to manage to get the seat behind Tony on his way home. She looked like any one of a hundred female professionals on that train, librarian glasses and all. Once Tony drifted off she waited till they had made several stops and the 2 of them were more or less alone at that end of the car. She drew a T handled modified ice pick from her laptop bag. When she was sure no one was looking she struck Tony in the back of the head where the top vertebra of the neck (c-1) meets the skull. The shaft of the pick had been filed and hardened to be brittle at the handle. By the time she had managed to break it off, she had destroyed Tony's entire brain stem. He never even opened his eyes. She got off the train at the next stop and took an Uber to her prepositioned rental car some 15 miles further along the route. She paid cash and ordered the Uber from a burner phone set up with a fake ID.

Her last assignment was in Colorado. Andrew Jacobs had been found wanting in the investigation launched by judge Wilson into David's treatment while in warden Jacob's prison. He had been found wanting enough to be fired. Jacob's wife wasn't amused at his loss of employment and pension so she divorced him and took the kids to live with her folks. Jacobs was working as an associate in the local Walmart when Mary descended upon him. Jacobs had taken to drinking at a dive bar 3 blocks from the efficiency apartment he now lived in. He tended to have 3-5 drinks in the bar then headed home to his daily bottle of cheap vodka. He walked to and from the bar. As he passed a narrow access way between 2 buildings on his way home he was hit with a contact tazer and drug into the unlit access way. Mary used a Buck hunting knife to repeatedly stab Andrew in his chest and both eyes. She then cut his throat to the bone, nearly decapitating him. There was a fair amount of blood this time but she was wearing a hooded splash shield on her head and light-weight black coveralls as well as dishwashing gloves over nitrile gloves. It took her under 3 minutes to strip out of the outerwear she had on over jean shorts and a t-shirt. She left all of these things at the scene, they had been last worn by a Mexican migrant worker who had been arrested some 4 days before and released that day on bail. The bail was paid by a nearly 6 foot, well built brown-eyed woman who might have passed as Hispanic, sorta. Once clear of the blood pool Mary took off the booties over her sneakers and left those behind as well.

Besides being trained by my security detail I spent a normal time with my wife and my girls. There were school functions, doctors appointments, shopping trips and normal every day suburbian life for me and my new family. Zaynab was getting concerned about my fixation with getting revenge but that was alleviated every time I heard back from Mary. Basically, there was only Fahad left.

Fahad's father had died of his cancer about the time Jafa was getting his last lap dance. Saheer had contacted Zaynab with an offer to attend his funeral to which she said no way in hell am I going there. Saheer told her he understood how she felt. Saheer contacting Zaynab on her cell prompted new phones and numbers for everyone. Fahad was allowed to leave his confinement to attend the services. he used that opportunity to escape Saudi Arabia to Syria. There he contacted and joined ISIS. About the time Mary was in Colorado Saheer contacted me to tell me that Fahad had been captured by the Kurds and was being held by them at Saheer's request. Saheer wanted to know if I would be interested in a face to face meeting with Fahad. All I had to do was get to Syria and it would be arranged. My security team had their reservations but felt that they could handle anything that popped up. So with a quiet farewell to Zaynab and the girls, I and the team were off to Europe. In France, we ditched our IDs and picked up some new ones that got us into Turkey. 6 days later and we were at the Syrian border near a Kurdish controlled area. Here we met some of Saheer's people who helped us cross into Syria. Once in country, it didn't take long or really all that much cash to set us up with weapons and gear. A half days ride in a dusty truck brought us to a small village.

I entered the indicated house to find Fahad in a metal cage in a basement room. He was much worse for the wear of the past few months. His right hand was crabbed from being broken and not properly set. His left eye drooped in his face, probably the result of a damaged eye orbit from a beating. Most of the right side of his face and neck was bright red and all the hair on that side was super short. His left foot seemed to be at an odd angle in relation to his leg, another poorly set break I'd say. At first, he didn't recognize me and once he did he said "I'd ask forgiveness from you but I suspect there will be none. I don't blame you for your hate of me Mr. Iverson, I have treated you and your wife very poorly indeed. I have learned over the past few months that I am not favored by Allah. Indeed I suspect I am cursed by him for my actions." I didn't say a word.

I had made arrangements to have a DC arc welder brought to the house. The following day I asked that Fahad be secured to a chair bolted to the floor on the ground level. I had Mike from the security detail fire up the diesel engine that powered the arc welder. I removed the ends from the leads leaving only the 1/2 inch copper cables exposed. With the welder cranked up to max it produced a 3-inch arc that made the copper cables flare and boil away. I told Fahad that it would instantly carbonize any flesh placed between the leads and had demonstrated that by carbonizing to charcoal his left little finger. That's when there was a blinding flash that was my last memory for 2 days.

My security guys filled me in when I came to. I had burns and minor wounds all down the left side of my body. My face was blistered and my left ear was still ringing so loud I couldn't hear anything else from it. Someone had fired an RPG into the house shortly after Fahad started screaming. He took a direct hit from the blast and was basically blown to bits from his waist up. His bits and pieces had painted the room. Right after that Mike had been shot by a sniper and Pete's position had been over-run before they could save him or drive off the attackers. They didn't know if it had been ISIS or if it had been Saheer's people. Saheer's people had disappeared just before the RPG hit so it's likely they knew it was coming.

It took us 3 days to get back to Turkey. It took another week to get out of Turkey and back to France. We spent the better part of 3 weeks in France so I could heal up enough so that I could get thru security without too many issues. The 4 of us landed in Minneapolis to the waiting arms of our respective families. Mike and Pete were the 2 single guys in the team.

I'd been home for 6 months and things were going great. The real estate business was bringing in tons of money. The girls were prospering, doing well both socially and in school. Zaynab was positively glowing, she was 4 months into her pregnancy and couldn't be happier. Amy and Roger were doing well. She was also preggers but they weren't sure it was Roger's kid. Didn't seem to me that it was an issue for either of them. We lost John. He'd been working on his bike in his garage when someone walked up to him and shot him in the head with a .22, I'm thinking it was one of his fellow bikers that he knew and shouldn't have trusted. It was about this time that I got one last call from Saheer. He apologized for my injuries but explained that the crown couldn't tolerate my torturing Fahad to death. After all, he was a member of the royal family...

Epilog...

My revenge against judge Wilson went on for over 5 years. That wasn't intended but that's how it went down. It ended with her granddaughter showing up at her door with 2 kids in tow. The lothario who had lured her into the world of strippers and whores had finally degraded her past her tolerance and she left him. She went home to the judge who then used her influence to make life hell for the ex-boyfriend. Turns out he had kiddie porn in his possession when he got busted for his opioid pill trade. He didn't have a good time inside and didn't make it 2 years on the 10 years minimum he got before he was found dead in the yard one day.

I can't help but feel I have a lot to answer for some day down the line. Monstrous things were done to me and mine and in turn, I became a monster myself. There is a price paid for these things and I don't think I've finished paying yet by a long shot.