Welcome to this short story which could be read in isolation but is really part of the a Series titled Action, Reaction and Consequences. For those that have been following it and commented I've decided to take one of the characters and write a lot more regarding the back story. This is the back story behind Mr. Jones and for those following the story you already know he's a walking hand grenade with the pin pulled.
At the end of Chapter five I did say we would open with Tanya's story from the point she walks away from her husband at Lyon Airport but I hope you see that this leads us quite nicely into the next few scenes that are going to play out.
Mr. Jones partner Mr. Smith will have a little back story down the line, but that will be introduced at the pertinent time in the story. Next up will, I promise, be Tanya's story from Lyon airport until she walks away from Matt after drugging him.
I hope you enjoy this next segment as we roll towards the end.
Couple of last points I'm a Brit. so it's written in English, English so to speak. I'm not involved in any of the professions that are encapsulated in the stories but hope I've made a good enough job for the average reader to feel it's realistic enough.
There is some sex here but once you read through I've tried to leave large parts of those scenes for your own mind to fill in the details. Some readers will, some of you won't.
And please, please remember - this is fiction! :)
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Eleven-year-old Paulie Tomlinson sat at the family dining table trembling. His eight-year-old sister sat at the table looking vacant as if she was already trying to block out the inevitable. Paulie's mum was frantically dishing up the Sunday dinner she'd been so desperately nursing for over an hour on the stove since it had been ready to serve. The sound of the battered Ute arriving followed by the slamming of doors signified his dad had finally arrived home.
He stood swaying drunk as his vile slurred words fell from his mouth.
"What's this you dumb bitch; do I need to give you lessons on telling the time now? I said I expected my Sunday dinner on the table at 3pm. So where the fuck is it? Is there one thing in your pathetic life you can get fucking right!"
"Bill, I've tried, look it's 4pm not......"
She never finished her statement. Bill walked across the kitchen and punched his wife in the kidneys hard. She collapsed to the floor, dropping the glass jug she was holding that shattered into a million pieces.
"Not only are you a dumb bitch, you're a clumsy one too! Now get off the fucking floor and sort this mess out, feed your starving family and be a proper wife and mother for once in your life!"
Shelia Tomlinson gingerly got up from the floor. The pain from the punch was excruciating and she saw a trickle of blood from her ankle from a glass cut but she knew what she had to do. She quickly served the dinner, leaving hers whilst she swept up the broken glass from the floor. She felt the shattered jug summed up her marriage -- something that was once whole and useful but now smashed into thousands of small sharp nasty pieces which can hurt and cut. Unlike the glass she was sweeping up to put in the trash bin, she couldn't escape so had to live on as a piece of broken glass.
They lived on a farm out in rural Australia and she was alone -- so very alone. Her own family were hundreds of miles away and her husband's family were spread across the area that they lived in. Once, and only once, she took council with Bill's sister over her husband's behaviour and what she should do. That resulted in a beating so bad she thought she was going to die. She so desperately wanted to run, but she couldn't. No money, no car and two small children that she couldn't leave behind made it an impossible dream that she longed to turn into reality one day.
After dinner Bill Tomlinson walked over to his son, ruffling his hair as he spoke to him.
"Paulie, I've just given you an important life lesson. Never, ever, let a woman tell you what's right because the minute they think they've got the upper hand there'll be no turning back!"
The statement didn't really sink into Paulie at the time, but in later life the toxic household he was living in would help create the monster steadily breeding deep within his soul.
Not long past Paulie's sixteenth birthday he came home one evening to find his mother sitting dazed on the kitchen floor. A missing tooth, two half closed eyes and a bloodied face. He started walking towards the sound of shouting from the living room to find his dad screaming at his sister that she was as much a useless cunt as her mother whilst he had her pinned against the wall by her throat, her feet frantically kicking at the void below her where he had lifted her up.
Paulie picked up a tall standard lamp and smashed it across the back of his dad's head instantly sending him crashing to the floor. He promptly kicked him hard in the torso winding him. His dad looked up putting his hand up to signal Paulie to stop but he didn't. All those years of watching the physical and mental torment that the monster inside him had digested showed themselves as the real Paulie his parent's had created.
He promptly started to severely beat his own father in a rage that blanked everything out. Long after his dad became unconscious, he was dimly aware of his mum and sister pulling him back screaming at him. As the rage subsided, he looked into his mother's face. Even though her eyes were almost closed from the beating she had received he saw fear, fear far greater than he had ever seen in her face from all the times she knew she was about to face yet another beating. But the fear wasn't because of her husband's actions, it was because of her son's actions. She stumbled away from him, pulling her daughter with him. If she had lived fearful of her husband then the young man standing before her simply filled her with utter terror. She knew then he was set on a life of causing people to suffer at his hands and she vowed to find a way to send him as far away from herself and his sister as she could.
Within months Paulie was shipped out and into the Australian Army and with it, left his family behind forever. The discipline, way of life, knowledge that he could wield power let him flourish within the army and by twenty-six was a sergeant in the elite clandestine Special Air Service Regiment Squadron four. He found himself in his element, deployed in Afghanistan on operations that the public would likely struggle to stomach, but they were simply just one more piece of unpleasantness that war brings.
His four-man team were on a mission to make contact with a supposed informer but walked into a trap. As they arrived at the handful of ramshackled buildings it was quiet, all that was noticeable was a young girl in a burka sat playing with a toy doll. As they walked up to her, she looked at them and smiled then dropped the doll, pressing the detonator she had in her hand that was connected to the explosives on her small body belt.
There was a flash, bang and a roar which threw Paulie to the floor. Standing at the rear of the group he saw two of his colleagues' bodies go up and over him landing several yards behind him dead. The fourth Team member had been knocked down as well but, like Paulie, was already bringing his weapon around for whatever was going to follow. Five men charged from one of the buildings, Kalashnikovs spitting bullets towards the two fallen SASR soldiers. Between them the cut the five men down in a hail of fire. When it all stopped Paulie crawled over to his fallen colleague- he was dead, a bullet had hit him in the face.
Paulie started to quickly take stock of the situation. A woman was on the floor clutching the remains of the doll where the young girl had sat moments earlier and four small children were crying, pulling at her burka. A handful of women stood in the doorway of a building wailing at the scene before them. Paulie put another clip into his SIG-Sauer MCX then stood up. Calmly, he levelled the gun at the lone wailing woman and cut her and the children down in a short burst of gunfire. The remaining women shrieked in horror as they retreated in vain back into the building.