ASSET - an Action Thriller: a Brill Winger Thriller Read online

  He was good at shutting it down for the moment, for now, but he could feel it boiling beneath the surface.

  What he needed was an outlet.

  And a chance.

  "Alright, Sir," he said to Simon. "But may I ask for something?

  Simon locked eyes with his intense stare and glared.

  "What?"

  "A recommendation letter."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The house stood at the end of a drive behind a guarded gate.

  Brill tapped the motorcycle driver he had hitched a ride with on the shoulder indicating he wanted to be let off.

  The guard watched him as he approached the wrought iron gate.

  His eyes grew wide as recognition dawned and he stutter stepped to one side and pulled the small side grill open for him.

  "Sir," he said in a small voice.

  Brill nodded thanks and kept moving up the brick paved drive to the double wooden doors at the top of the portico.

  The guard must have phone ahead because as he drew closer, the doors opened and Mr. Van Housen rushed down the steps.

  He grabbed Brill by the shoulders and stared at him with red swollen eyes.

  "They told us you were alive," he struggled to speak. "That you were there...with her."

  "I couldn't save her," Brill started to say and broke down.

  Mr. Van Housen pulled him into his arms and crushed him to his chest.

  The two men held each other as grief shook their bodies, shoulders heaving and clinging as if to a life preserver.

  They stood like that for quite some time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Later, in his study, Mr. Van Housen handed Brill a cold bottle of beer and clinked a twin against it.

  They tipped and swallowed.

  Brill set his down among two others on the table between them.

  "I don't want to know what happened," said Mr. Van Housen.

  He drank almost half the bottle in two swallows.

  "My wife and daughters have gone to the country home," he continued. "I stayed behind. For work."

  Brill nodded as he fished a disc out of his pocket and passed it to the man.

  "I was instructed to give you this.”

  “The job is done?"

  “Yes Sir.”

  Mr. Van Housen popped the disc into a computer at his study desk and glanced over the documents.

  “I can turn this into a PR boon,” he muttered. “We’ll issue a statement. The MPLA attacked the diamond mine to finance their rebellion. Were you there?"

  Brill nodded.

  "Did you get the rotten shits that did this?"

  He nodded again.

  "I wasn’t sure when you would come back,” said the man.

  He looked tired, aged.

  Losing a child could do that.

  “I haven't told anyone in the states that you lived.”

  "Don't," Brill asked.

  "But your parents?"

  "Let them think I died. They wouldn't care. They would rather have the insurance money."

  "That can't be true my boy."

  "But it is. I want the whole world to think I died with her. Because I did."

  He finished his beer.

  Mr. Van Housen studied his face. He had changed.

  The bloom of youth was gone from his young face, the spark missing from his eye.

  He recalled the boy who sat across from him at breakfast just a few short weeks ago.

  That boy was gone, and Brill was asking to erase him forever.

  Mr. Van Housen felt a hitch in his breath, because thinking of the loss made him miss his daughter.

  She had loved this boy, and he had been with her at the end.

  Maybe that comforted her somehow.

  "I can do that," he said.

  "I need another favor," said Brill. "I don't know how to ask. But I need to join the Recce's."

  "The RC Reserve?"

  "Simon said I needed the experience and training."

  “One does not simply join the Recce's,” said Dad. “It can take up to six years.”

  “I'll do the time. I can do it.”

  “It's one of the most elite fighting units in the world,” Dad said. “It's also one of the most difficult to qualify for. Add to that you're American.”

  “Not if you give me citizenship.”

  The Dad bowed his head.

  “It's what Laurette would have wanted?” he sobbed.

  “No sir,” said Brill as he sat across from the Dad. “She would have wanted me in Peace Corp, or Medical School to go work with Doctors without Borders. But I can't do that. I have to make bad men pay for their crimes, I have to make the world right.”

  “Soldier's don't do that, they follow orders.”

  Brill nodded.

  “And I will follow orders too. I just need the training so I can get better.”

  Mr. Van Housen reached out and put his hand on top of Brill's.

  “I can get you in,” he said. “Let's go see a friend of mine.”

  The Adventure continues in MISSION ONE

  SUCCOR -

  After Brill survives an ambush on his Recce team, he goes to Mr. Van Housen to find out what happened. Van Housen gets intel that the Barraque supported the rebels and provided intel to kill his team, and he was just a statistic in a crossfire.

  When someone grabs Mr. Van Housen, Brill has to learn how to blend in, track and hunt in an urban environment, skills that make him a stand out kill.

  "Are you a virgin," she said.

  "No," he answered but he might as well have been. He hadn't known the touch of a woman since Laurette, nor truth be told he hadn't wanted to be with anyone else. There were mostly men around since her, and after what the rebels had done to him, what they made him watch what they did to her, he never felt much sexual desire.

  Sure occasionally he would wake up with a throbbing hardness that pulsed as he drifted in that netherworld between waking and sleep, so he knew he was still capable.

  And now even as this blond sun goddess of surf eased her mostly naked body closer to him he could feel his pulse quickening and a familiar warmth stirring between his legs.

  He wondered what to tell her, if anything, of his past.

  Yet she seemed the kind of person who didn't concern herself with the past unless it was to speak of the waves that morning, nor was she the type to be preoccupied with tomorrow.

  She looked at him in the now, her green eyes flecked with golden spots and a spray of freckles scattered across her thin nose as she licked her thick lips.

  "Then you know what to do?"

  He nodded and licked his lips in return. She darted in and kissed him, pulling back after a moment as if to ask if it was okay what she did.

  His scarred hands found the back of her neck and he pulled her closer to press his mouth to hers and she was on him, her arms wrapped around him, her legs sliding over his, bare skin on skin that tingled with latent electricity.

  He throbbed and pulsed and she pulsed and throbbed with him.

  The first time didn't last as long as he would have liked. She enveloped him with a velvety warmth and he spasmed with an apology that she kissed off his lips, and ignored his weak protests to run her fingers across the scars on his chest, the bulging muscles in his biceps and crevices carved in his stomach.

  Each finger followed a line or seam trailing fire across his skin and he did the same, tickling the tan lines on her back, the triangles patches of white over each rose tipped breast until he was ready again and she was ready for him.

  The second time was better, longer and slower, the hurried rush falling away into a slow melodic rhythm that matched the crest and crash of the surf, moving in crests like the wave.

  She gripped a shoulder in each hand and shuddered, her legs clamping across him and drawing him deep as she held her breath and moaned out a giggle, and then he was done again and collapsed beside her, their sweat mixing and cooling in a soft breeze blowing
through the open back of the van facing the ocean.

  CHAPTER

  "These are very powerful men, Brill."

  "Yes sir."

  "You can't just agree with me and think I'm going to let it go. These men are serious."

  Brill stared across the table at Mr. Van Housen. He looked older, aged since the loss of his daughter the horror inflicted upon her. A hollow man Brill thought, much like he felt.

  "I have learned a thing or two about men like this, Sir," Brill took a sip of tea and set the cup back to saucer with a clatter.

  "They are very strong and very powerful so long as someone else does the heavy lifting. Good at giving orders but unable to do the job themselves."

  "That doesn't negate their effectiveness, or the sway they have," Van Housen argued with a shake of his head.

  "Someone said to me once, there's always a faster gun.”

  RENDER

  Brill is moving up in the Executive Offerings group led by Simon when he's captured by the CIA and brought back to the US.

  “Mr. President.”

  “Hey Senator, damn good to see you.” The President lifted himself out of the chair behind his desk and moved around to shake the Senator's hand.

  “I'm glad you could make it.

  “Thank you sir.”

  “Cut the sir crap, you want an iced tea.”

  The Senator settled into the couch by the fireplace and looked up at the portrait of John F. Kennedy with his head bowed. It normally hung on a wall in the hall in the East Wing, but the President had his decorator move it into the Oval Office so he could capture comparisons to his young predecessor.

  “That sounds good, Mr. President.”

  The Senator had known the man for a long time, but he respected the office enough to know the honorific was warranted.

  The President turned back to the desk and picked up the phone.

  “Can we get a pitcher of iced tea brought in please?”

  He hung up without waiting for an answer and settled onto the couch across from the Senator. He stretched out his long legs and put both hands behind his head, looking confident and relaxed, even though his dark hair had gone gray almost as soon as he took office. A hazard of the job of being the most powerful man on Earth at times.

  “You want to wait or jump right in?”

  “Let's jump right in,” said the Senator. “You remember that boy we sent to South Africa?”

  A frown marred the visage of the President as he massaged up a memory.

  “Smart something, right? First name was Smart.”

  The Senator grinned. The President had a gift for names and never failed to remind them of that talent.

  “Brilliant,” he answered. “Brill.”

  “Brill Winger, that's right. Good old small town boy. He died in Angola right?”

  “That's what we were told.”

  “Is what we were told true?”

  “No Sir.”

  The President sat up and this time massaged his temples. It was a simple off the books agreement between the Senator and a boy they selected to do some reporting back to them prior to him taking the Oval Office.

  In the years since, it might have been called insider trading or corporate espionage, the intelligence gathering they tasked him with, but they felt enough removed that it wouldn't come back to bite them in the ass.

  Especially once he died.

  “He's not dead?”

  “A CIA team picked him up this morning. Same name, same fingerprints in our systems, but he's a South African citizen.”

  “How is that?”

  “The Minister we sent him to spy on reported him dead with his daughter when rebels attacked the camp they were in,” said the Senator.

  “He lied.”

  “It seems so.”

  “And now we have him?”

  “Brill. He was pulled in this morning along with other operators in a sting operation set up by the CIA.”

  “Working with terrorists,” the President crinkled his brow.

  “It was a low level threat to us, so you were debriefed on it several months ago. The CIA acted on a tip and closed the net.”

  “Is he a joint citizen?”

  “He is,” the Senator nodded.

  “Then bring him home.”

  There was a quick knock on the door and it opened to admit the President's secretary bearing a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses.

  The President hopped up and took the tray from her.

  “I'll get this, thank you,” he said to her and placed the tray on the coffee table between the couches. He poured a glass for Shelby and another for himself. They both took their time taking the first sip.

  “Damn that's good iced tea,” said the Senator.

  “I have the water flown in from home,” the President smacked his lips. “Seems like it might be a waste til you taste it.”

  “Nothing like our water,” Shelby agreed.

  He set his glass down on a coaster.

  “So we render him Mr. President and bring him in for questioning.”

  “I spent some time worrying about that boy,” said the President. “I'd like to find out what he's been up too.”

  Brill meets with the President. He's still wearing jeans and topsiders no socks.

  "Do you want to tell us what happened?"

  "No Sir."

  "We got reports. Rebels took the camp and kidnapped you and the girl. They killed the girl but you managed to live."

  "I did."

  "Records from the South African army nine months later, moving you up to their Special Forces Group. Then attacked by Rebels again, your platoon massacred, the rebels massacred, and no body."

  "Is that what it says?"

  "Did you kill all of them?"

  "Just the rebels Mr. President. They killed my men."

  "All of them?"

  "Yes Sir."

  The President slapped a hand on his knee.

  "Hot dog I knew you were something special the day Shelby brought us together."

  "I'm no one special Sir."

  "Damn that you aren't. How long have you been with that group?"

  "Two years."

  "I want you with us."

  Brill sat back further into the plush sofa.

  The President noticed his hesitation.

  "Executive Offerings, that ship is about to sink son. The Hague is on to them, and their CEO is dealing with terrorists. Trust me when I tell you it's over. That chapter in your life is closed. I don't make this request lightly, but it's time for you to come home."

  "Of course," said Brill. One did not argue with the President especially on a personal plea.

  "Shelby wants you in the CIA. Operations Group."

  "Yes sir."

  Brill wondered if he could meet with the former Senator again. And he needed to make a phone call. The President smiled and pumped his hand as he pulled him off the couch.

  "Excellent," said the President.

  "They'll take you to hotel, and the Director should send someone for you in the morning to get you started."

  "Thank you."

  "Brill," said the President as he stared at the boy with piercing blue eyes. "You scared us when you disappeared. We assumed the worst. We're just glad you're home."

  Brill bowed his head and nodded thanks. He wasn't used to displays of emotion.

  Brill goes to the hotel and has to reaclimate to America.

  Brill goes to CIA training camp, but he's groomed for a different job.

  Brill is a hired killer sent to do the bidding of the government.

  Brill learns he's working for corporations who control the government.

  Want to Stay in the Adventure?