PROLOGUE
Mission Accomplished


Almost 2 years previous.

His cold numb fingers slowly rose to unclip the black cap from the powerful telephoto lens. Never remove it until the last possible moment, he had been taught. He silently repositioned his aching arm, pins-and-needles screaming from lack of movement – all part-and-parcel of the job he bears. He was trained to feel no pain and no remorse: trained to be a perfect killing machine, and like a machine he accomplished the mission at hand without a conscience; regardless of what was transpiring in the same vicinity.
Debris rained down around him. Fire engulfed nearby buildings. All was in chaos, with screaming mothers holding limp children in their arms. Fathers dragging parts of their sons’ mangled bodies under protective cover. Children running around too numb from shock and searing pain to be able to even scream: a bloody massacre of butchery and ethnic cleansing.
A couple scuttled past him, the man carrying his aged black clad mother on his back. She was silent and unresponsive, her eyes glazed and unseeing.
Men with even blacker skin walked about with weapons blazing; mowing down people as if they were simply cattle: smoking and laughing while doing so. Every now and




then they would toss a grenade as a group of running children, and then watch as appendages rained back down to the ground.
But Special Operations Operative J M. Carter ignored everything, his eyes solely concentrating on the image shown through the rifles powerful lens.
There stood a single outline of a man; a thermal grainy image of reds, yellows and light orange, with one piercing glow that looked like burning magnesium in the sensitive weapons scope; he was smoking a cigarette, while slowly turning to face him straight on.
Carter’s finger slowly slipped around the trigger; squeeze don’t pull, echoed through his head. “Treat it like a woman,” his trainer always said.
The glowing cigarette was now positioned in the centre of the red crosshair. Slowly Carter moved the line up to the mans orange forehead.
“Forgive me father, for I am about to sin,” Carter mumbled, his last piece of joking blasphemy before taking another life.
Softly he squeezed the trigger, and with a reverberating ping the 37.mm bullet soared towards its intended mark.
Carter watched as targets forehead changed from orange to bright red, as the mans blood poured from the gapping hole.
The man jerked backward, landing with a thud that was swallowed by the noise around him, as his men continued to purge the town, not realizing that their commander was now a cooling corpse.
Mission accomplished!

CROSSED WIRES

CHAPTER ONE
Code Blue



On a crisp November morning the locals are putting out the Christmas decorations; Santa Claus is in their windows and flashing multi coloured lights are on the plastic trees. But Carter ignores all of this as he heads off towards the shops, to restock another month’s food supply. He soon passes the sparse houses and heads out through the hamlet.
“Four houses and they have to compete over who has the best Santa,” he mumbles to himself. He has never enjoyed Christmas. Neither has he tried to draw attention to his home by splattering plastic decorations all over it.
Slowly his truck twisted its way through the narrow tall hedged lanes, heading towards the next decent sized town that had an adequate sized shop. Soon the roads broadened out, allowing more than one car to squeeze through at a time. Within twenty minutes of flooring the accelerator he found himself pulling into a mammoth car park of an overly festive shopping centre.
Silent Night was being piped from some hidden loudspeaker resounding above the noise of his crunching wheels on the loose gravel and his purring engine.
Carter pulled into a empty lot away from the shop he did his customary check of the mirrors and a quick visual sweep of the car park before killing the powerful engine. As he does he catches his own reflection in the rear-view mirror.


“Where did all my hair go?” he whispers regretfully to himself.
He pulled the key from the ignition and pockets the key fob while stepping out the door. His build is fit and agile despite his fifty-five years of age - he could still pass as a strapping thirty year old without the benefit of his hair.
Moving swiftly he crosses the expanse of the car park, picks a trolley and mingles with the numerous other shoppers. Why would anyone notice him? He’s just another customer; another single man doing some shopping.
Inside is utter chaos. It is a complete mêlée of frantic people and garbled noise; with more festive seasonal songs pouring from the hidden speakers. The throng of people are buying presents others don’t want, for people they don’t like, with money they haven’t got.
“You gotta love f***ing Christmas,” he chuckles to himself. He can’t even remember the last time he celebrated it?
He pushes and heaves himself around the horde of smiling, jolly people. What is it about Christmas that turns people into juddering idiots, he asks himself? A few weeks a year where people are nice to each other and struggle to get on; but as soon as it’s over they go back to their hating, violent selves, taking back up the arguments with their neighbours who still haven’t returned their bloody Weed Wacker.
Carter eventually fills his trolley to bursting point, while having people constantly bumping into him and saying “Merry Christmas.” He simply smiles and moves off to the next simpleton.
“Have you got a Loyalty Card sir?” Carter looks down at a genetic Jenny, with her friendly jovial voice.
“No!”
“Would sir like a Loyalty Card, it has many benefits. Firstly you get a –“


“No thank you!” his gravely voice cutting through the sticky sweet commercial happiness pouring from the clone Jenny.
The woman stared for a moment before regaining her composure and continuing. Affronted by someone being so rude, even when Christmas was only six weeks away!
“That’ll be £92.57 please… sir.”
Carter couldn’t understand how an individual could be so happy while selling food to someone else; it was beyond his powers of reasoning.
He paid without another word, and headed for the closes exit.
For a moment he stood as if checking his wallet, but his eyes were scanning the surround car park, picking out details and waiting for alarm bells to sound inside his head.
Nothing.
He headed towards his Nissan pick up truck.
The ever present comfort of his dull matt black Glock 9mm was pressing reassuringly against his rib cage. He moved swiftly to his vehicle.
For England his truck was half descent 2004 Nissan. Carter had learned from experience that his truck could be trusted; but there was nothing like the stopping power of a good solid old Chevy from back home. But that was his other life. The life he no longer lived or wanted to think about. The life that now only visited him in his dreams: dark foreboding dreams, bloody vivid dreams, full of death and killing, not like the life he now lived.
Food now unloaded he climbed back into the truck, and then with one final sweep of the car park he headed of back to the beauty and solitude of Dartmoor.
Return to what you know. Years before – in another life – he had trained on these very Moors with the SAS. Subconsciously he had retuned and he knew it.



Carter had been a twenty year old man then, well boy really – truth be told. His mind drifted back to Staff Sergeant Reginald C. Jones, a man of small stature, who when called upon would achieve the most difficult of tasks with the minimal amount of men and equipment, and all within time for afternoon tea – or so he would have you believe.
Carter had once asked Jones what he did up on Dartmoor hen he wasn’t training. He had simply smiled and replied, “We get pissed old boy – completely rat arsed. We would play a game of chess but that’s been banned from the base because it starts too many fights, believe it or not? So it’s either get pissed or go to bed early with the rest of the girls.
All those years ago Dartmoor seemed like the bleakest place in the world. Endless tracks of spindly trees, or spidery bracken or ferns, with never-ending marshes and bogs, with rock hard granite boulders sticking up through the earth everywhere. And wild ponies and have crazed sheep and cows blocking all the lanes, by simply standing stock still and trying to out stare the drivers.
Checking the rear-view mirror, Carter was brought back to the present as he braked
hard and slid the trucks across the narrow road, then coming to a screeching halt.
“DODDAM SHEEP!” he hollered at the oblivious animal as it aimlessly wandered across the road, unaware of its close encounter with the Grim Reaper, and disappeared into the thick ferns.
“For the love of God, why can’t they stay on the f***ing grass?” He allowed himself a few moments to gather his wits. A sly smile then spread across his face, he realized that it was the most action he had seen in almost two years.
Little did he realize that that was about to change.
That’s why he loved Devon, because the most exhilarating thing that happens is a near miss with a four legged lawnmower.


He wedged the gear into reversed and then marvelled that he had come so close to hitting a boulder, which had been laying there, where it fell, for probably thousands of years, after whatever seismic force had moved it, and it still lay, uncaring, all this time later.
Carter drove off across the ever changing green countryside. It was bleak, it was vast and empty with a violent past; and at some levels Carter could identify with that.




CROSSED WIRES

CHAPTER TWO
Surprise



Carter slowly approached his secluded house. To his surprise there was a large British Gas van parked across his drive way entrance.
If there was one thing Jack didn’t like it was surprises.
He reached under his coat and unclipped his 9mm sidearm, slipped it from its holster, snapped back the safety and laid it on his lap.
Then he pulled up then to the van, with the gun pointed at the driver while keeping it concealed under his coat on his lap. If he had to shoot the man he would do so through both the vehicles doors, before the driver was even aware that he had a gun pointed at him.
The river of the van looked up as Jack pulled up next to him. They both simultaneously wound down their respective windows.
“Can I help you at all?” Jack asked in his friendly, but not welcoming voice.
“I’m ah sorry ser?” came the thick West Country accented reply. “Is this ‘ere yer drive? We wuz just stoppin’ for lunch.” He indicated to the other man sat in the passenger seat, as if to back up his story. The besides him then started to wave a greasy Cornish pasty in the air, meat and potato started to fall from it.




“I’m sorry but you’re going to have to eat it somewhere else. This is a private drive and I need to get to my house.” His words came out like a friendly machine gun; quick, firm but not rude.
“All roght, keep ya ‘air on, we’ll move it now.” The driver looked at his passenger as if moving the van was the last thing in the world that he wanted to.
As the driver reached to turn the ignition key, Jack’s hand gripped the gun harder, twitching in anticipation, or nerves Jack wondered? He also knew he never got nervous. In some deep down physiological way he was praying for the man to reach for a weapon so he could return to what was normal for him – killing.
But the engineer simply put his pasty on top the Sunday Sport newspaper and slowly pulled the van out of Carter’s entranceway.
Jack watched until the white van over revved, kicking out way too much black smoke, and then disappeared around the tall hedged corner. Whereupon he clipped the safety back on, but he didn’t re-holstered it after. Normally he would have mocked himself for being completely paranoid, but in his retirement this was the one thing that would keep him alive. Paranoia had become his close friend and ally; one he wasn’t going to start to ignore now.
The drive down his driveway was deliberately windy to make it slow going to get to the house. With low banks on either side which enabled anyone in the house a spectacular view in all directions; while at the same time using trees to obscure the house from prying eyes.
The powerful Nissan rolled over a cattle grid and slowed down as he approached his old farmhouse. The first thing he noticed was fresh new tyre marks. He then saw the police car as it came into view.


He knocked the safety off his Glock again.
The white, blue and yellow car bore the logo: Devon and Cornwall Constabulary in the shape of a large badge on the door. Two officers climbed from the vehicle and placed hats on their heads, straightened their jackets and headed towards Carters truck.
This put Jack in an awkward situation, he didn’t want to go unarmed, but as he was well aware possessing a sidearm in England carried a hefty prison sentence.
One officer walked casually towards the truck, while the other talked via the radio handset, stretching it out through the drivers’ side open window. Obviously he was checking Jack’s vehicles records with DVLA.
Carter slipped the weapon into the doors recess.
“What seems to be the problem officer?” he asked through the open window.
“Please turn off your engine, and then step outside the vehicle please sir,” replied the officer, smiling.
Jack stepped out of the truck, but not until after explaining that the truck had a faulty transmission point, and he didn’t want to turn if off in case he had trouble restarting it.
It was now that he was outside of the protection that his truck offered that his alarm bells started ringing like Quasimodo going berserk. Paranoia kicked in again; but that was the thing with paranoia it wasn’t as much as a sixths sense, just common sense, and it never gave an explanation.
He scanned the two men once more, this time taking in more detail, looking past the uniforms. It was then when he realized what the alarm bells were trying to tell him: the two men were armed! Not obviously so, not to an untrained eye anyway; but as the officer closest to Carter walker his jacket bulged in the tell tale location between the waste and elbow.
“Once again sir, can I ask you to turn off your engine.”


Jack sighed and shook his head in mock protest, while muttering about how they would have to give him a push start when it failed to fire up. But when he stepped back to turn the key he obscured the door with his coat, while his hand reached and gripped the Glock, then twisting and pushing it into his trousers waistband at the back.
“What’s he problem officer,” he asked again, now smiling as the paranoia left him and the adrenalin started to surge through his veins; just like the good old days.
Before the officer could reply the other man grabbed for his gun and pointed it in Carters direction and let off three deafening shots.
Jack saw the move coming a mile off and simply dropped to one knee, while returning one single bullet before even realizing what he was doing. The three bullets imbedded themselves in Jacks truck, one through the windshield and two into the open door. But the single bullet from Jack’s gun hit the mark right in the throat, the body slumped against the car sideways like a drunken rag-doll and slid down onto the ground, both hands up to his oesophagus, blood spurting between clenched fingers, with more bloody bubbles pooping on his lips, he then tipped onto his face.
The noise of the gunshots was still ringing off the distant hills, and the smoke was still snaking out the end of Carter’s Glock, which was now trained on the lead officer who hadn’t had time to react.
Seeing that that officer had realised he was out gunned Jack spoke calmly and quickly while still scanning for an ambush.
“Take off your jacket.” This was an order that the man wasn’t about to start arguing with.
The man was indeed wearing a holster and pistol.
“What’s your name?” Jack demanded.





“Phil,” the man said who was remaining remarkably calm as if this wasn’t the first timer a gun had been pointed at his face.
“Slowly remove your gun, and then toss it over too me. You know how this goes,” mocked Jack. “And you must have heard this one before: if you make one wrong move I will kill you. And believe me it has been a while, but trust me, a man never forgets how.”
Phil gently unhooked his gun.
“A SIG P226, if I’m not mistaken? So you are British then?” It wasn’t really a question, because he knew they weren’t Americans, mainly because there weren’t enough men around; Americans loved to work in large numbers.
“Now hold the gun with your thumb and forefinger. One false move and DAM! I will spread your brain matter all over your dead mate over there. Tu comprehendo mi? Eh Amigo.”
Phil pulled a sour face at having to lose his weapon, but he did it anyway, he had no choice. “Now what?” Phil snapped.
He suddenly spun around and landed on his back next to his gurgling companion, a bullet hole now clean through his shoulder.
“I could have told you I was going to do that, but you wouldn’t have enjoyed the surprise as much.”
The man lay bleed profusely from his shoulder wound, his hand trying to stem the flow of blood.
Jack picked up Phil’s gun and squatted down next to him.
“Have you got any more weapons on you Phil?” he asked in a tone of voice as if asking about the weather.
Rolling in pain and shock, Phil shook his head no.





After patting the bleeding man down he came to the conclusion that he was clean. So he walked over to the other man, and after patting him down he found the other man also had no other weapons or wallet, not even money on him.
He rolled the man over. Blood covered in face and throat, but he was still alive, having just missed the windpipe. Getting sloppy in my old age, Jack thought.
“Who are you? Who sent you and why?”
“f*** off,” came the reply through gritted teeth, blood spurting from trembling lips.
Jack balanced the mans SIG in his hand. “Hmm, nice weapon mate. Good balance, very accurate and deadly over a distance of 3ft. Not much of a test I know, but still I like it, can I keep it?”
“I said fu-“
From close range Jack cut him off with one single bullet between the eyes.
“f*** off, I know, you already said.”
Carter could now hear a van attempting to worm its way down the narrow winding drive.
“Ah, that would be the cavalry then.”
Jack grabbed the man who had been shot through the shoulder and manhandled him into the passenger side seat; and then smacked him hard against the side of the head, knocking him out cold. Revving the engine he then sped off down the lane in the opposite direction.










Moments latter the same Gas van screeched to a stop besides the carnage, and six men dressed in black clad body armour exited the from the back, all sweeping out into a protective pattern around their dead comrade.
Jack dived into the drivers side of the car gunned the engine and raced at the armor



clad men before they could group clipping one of the men throwing him clear of

Nissan and dislodging a headlight, a spray of hot metal erupted from his mp5

Harmlessly into the air. As if replying to this four more S.M.G’s busrt to life spewing

there wares in the direction of the speeding pick up.

Glass, and hot metal sprayed around jacks head as he hauled his truck down the

twisting drive and out towards the narrow lane violently jerking the unconscious Phil

around the cab

“You better not die on me, I wanna know why I just lost my no claims bonus and who

this little charade was a good idea!”

In the past two years jack had taken it upon himself to learn all the narrow dirt tracks

off by heart many of them would not show up on his G.P.S, as they where not on any

map, farm tracks, bridle paths. These roads where like the subways of the moor, you

could get anywhere with out seeing another person. Glimpsing in his rear view jack

realised he was not being followed directly, but had an aphineny this was the last

time he would be here.

“Getting soft jack …don’t get comfortable … its just stuff….who the f*** are they to

try and take it from me!!”


Copyright © 2004


Okay thats it so far, there is more but not ready to read yet lol

let me know what you think
cheers
LJ

Impressive my young Padwan!

ooooo i wanna know what's goin on!!! good job at setting up a mysterious character

i am grinning like a monkey right now thanks mate

Post more!

Very Good, My friend...DID you enjoy the wedding...

i think you did great making the very realistic and believable characters. like cheat said, mysterious, and interesting. and i think you should get a prize for making such a great topic title.

thank you for your encouragement muddy boots i will get some more up soon, and yeah the wedding was great thx fugu

Very nice job, I could picture everything in my head, you gave enough descriptive details to that. I like when I can do that.

will there be more coming?

yes i have another 9 chapters written so i will post another just as soon as i am happy with it, thanks for your comments, tell your friends see what they think the feed back is SO encouraging. thank you

shameless plug to get people to look at this now you know my name a bit better hope you like it

Keep it coming? Like your style…