The Perfect Teacher Read online

  THE PERFECT TEACHER

  ------------------

  A LANCE PRIEST / PREACHER NOVEL

  CHRISTOPHER METCALF

  TT Tree Tunnel Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Metcalf

  Kindle Version

  Published by

  Tree Tunnel Publishing, LLC

  Tulsa, Oklahoma

  Cover photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons / By Collections École Polytechnique / Jérémy Barande, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Public Domain

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.treetunnelpublishing.com

  www.christophermetcalf.com

  www.spiesandlies.wordpress.com

  For Quincy

  "One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams."

  - Salvador Dali

  The outdoor cafe simmered in lush life. Tea, coffee, wine, chocolate, lots of chocolate. Belgium is famous for it after all. To the casual observer, they looked like other happy carefree couples enjoying a late lunch on a gloriously warm late summer day. No doubt, they were a striking pair.

  They held hands. Fingers laced together. He brushed strands of hair set free by the light breeze back behind her ear. She leaned her warm cheek into his palm then came close to kiss his cheek. A slow kiss, no rush. She rested her forehead on his shoulder; nuzzled into his neck. He leaned his head onto hers. Lovely.

  "Xièxiè." She whispered. Thank you. The smile on her lips genuine. At least as genuine as Marta would allow.

  "Tā huì shuō zhōngguó rén ma?" He replied, asking her if their now three-year-old daughter spoke Chinese.

  "Yī diǎndiǎn," She answered. A little bit.

  Talking was minimal. Too much to say, but nothing that mattered enough to break the magnificent silence of being together. Just sit, be, feel. He closed his eyes and welcomed the sun's heat from millions of miles away reaching through a dancing mesh of maple leaves overhead. This was his only heaven.

  "Ya sdelal s obedom." She whispered in Russian. I am done with lunch.

  Lance placed a few bills under his teacup. They rose from the table. She brought her lips to his. Their kiss was deep and lasting. They strolled slowly, hand in hand, leaning into each other, two blocks over to the tiniest of tiny and quaintest of quaint hotels and then up to a room.

  The world could wait.

  Seven hours later, Lance was on a train bound for Antwerp. Eighties synth-pop tunes bounced one after another in his head. It started with that one by Berlin about riding on a train from Paris to London.

  In just over 19 hours, he would land at a military airfield in New Jersey. Then nowhere to be found. He would disappear.

  Marta would vanish long before then. She was already gone; disappeared, dissipated into that nowhere void that conceals her and her child from a dangerous and deadly world. A nameless, faceless, placeless ghost for another year.

  These are the rules.

  This wonderful afternoon of shared bliss was the momentary sliver of warmth, the brief life together they were allowed. Once a year lovers, but only for a day. These few hours must tide them over, fulfill their needs, until they meet again at a place and time of Marta's choosing. This is the code of laws he agreed to when she contacted Lance through their secret methods after leaving him in a tiny hospital in the middle of nowhere eastern Colorado in the spring of 1995. He'd been shot and required surgery. But the wildness in his eyes in those violent days after the Oklahoma City bombing only confirmed her decision. She needed to protect her child, their child, from the hurricane that always follows in his wake.

  That was three years ago.

  It was his fault. Is his fault. Forever his fault.

  He created this mess. The necessity for this strict and unwavering policy of secret separation was brought about by his reckless actions. His desire to act, to respond violently, led to this outcome. His perpetual need for ferocious reaction, for chaos, demanded it. He chose this distant life apart for them much more so than Marta. The simple and somewhat bewildering fact she allowed any contact was minor miracle stuff. He could never make this right, not completely. He might never see his daughter in person. He'd given up that right by placing his life, their lives together, in jeopardy.

  Every single day, he envisioned that angel face, those tiny fingers and toes. He couldn't count the number of times his eyes closed and head turned away from the memory, the reality of losing his baby and her unique mother.

  These are the rules.

  Marta deemed it simply too dangerous. Truth be told, and it isn't often by Lance Priest, he agreed with this arrangement. He wanted his daughter and her amazing, awesome, glorious mother safe. Safely away from him and the constant chaos he attracts.

  This once a year reprieve, this fleeting eclipse from blinding reality, this momentary gravitational re-alignment brought about by centrifugal force, would have to suffice. Mere moments with Marta fueled his soul.

  He smiled and gently shook his head gazing out at the passing pastoral Belgian countryside. Closed his eyes and was back in that hotel room with her. Photographic memory both blessing and curse.

  Her face, her neck, her lovely shoulders, hips, back, legs. His procerus, his favorite of the facial muscles, tugged eyebrows together. He shook his head ever so slightly at the delightful images flashing across the movie screen in his mind. He didn't want to say that love was lost. She still came to him once a year. She allowed him a few hours of time, of her. She did still love him for some screwy reason.

  He opened his eyes. Up there in the baggage rack overhead, several rows forward, Preacher lay spread out and snoozing. His head rested on some traveler's beat up duffle bag. He'd been coming 'round lately. Stayed away for a year and a half during which Lance was amazingly productive, amazingly non-violent. Lance wondered lately if it was coming back. The madness. The psychotic break.

  The killing.

  The dark.

  He hadn't murdered a human in nearly two years.

  Talk about minor miracle stuff.

  But. Always a but.

  Before this respite from brutal violence, he killed many. So many. He single-handedly purged key members in the leadership ranks of four of the five Mexican drug cartels and then been forced to go back in for a second round of bloody assassinations when a couple of the cartels didn't get the message. Messy, messy work.

  Blood flowed. But so did money.

  The extremely illegal offshore revenue stream he established during this cleansing already amassed a sum beyond his plans. It was dirty, filthy, blood-soaked money borne of endless and voracious human weakness and addiction. But it would serve a purpose.

  From his perch up there on the luggage rack, Preacher rolled over on his side, his cheek resting in his palm. He winked at Lance. No one needed to tell Lance Priest about insanity. He'd read every available text, research paper, peer-review article and more on the topic of schizotypal personality disorder.

  He fit the clinical diagnosis requirements - being a loner, limited or inappropriate emotional responses, eccentric or unusual thinking, belief in special powers. But he simply didn't know where it came from. It wasn't schizophrenia where one loses contact with reality.

  Schizotypal is usually the result of some horrific childhood trauma or abuse. It is an escape from extreme pain. Lance didn't experience that.
And he refused to believe that placing a gun barrel under a very bad man's chin and blowing the guy's brains out through the top of his head at the age of 12 was the cause. He felt no trauma from that event.

  But still...

  Lance closed his eyes and shot up through the train's curved ceiling and roof and up through the billowy clouds to 75 miles above the spinning globe. From this moving vantage point, he could see most of Europe. England just across the channel. Spain down to the southwest. Russia on the eastern horizon.

  She was down there. Both his girls were. He never looked for them. The rules.

  He shot higher, up to 150 miles, drifting with the satellites. Over Eastern Europe, into southern Russia, across the Steppes, over an arid and rugged Kazakhstan and into the deserts of eastern China, north of the Himalayas. He flew over burning desert and rugged mountains and whitewater rivers and burgeoning cities before coming to a stop over his destination.

  He'd spotted it last year after digging through hundreds of thousands of satellite images in an NSA facility in Maryland. He was looking at a compilation image now. About 360 photos were being overlaid and mixed and matched in his screwy brain to create the collage he was looking at now as he sat with eyes closed on an evening train from Brussels to Antwerp.

  This is the place.

  Later.

  He opened his eyes back on the train. The next 80's synth-pop classic started up in his cranial music repository. That one by Men Without Hats about dancing safely. Lance nodded along to the beat. Preacher snapped his fingers in time.

  Chapter 1

  Heart pounding, lungs rasping, knees exploding, she pushed forward, pressed on. Step after painful step, fighting to keep a semblance of rhythm in her gait. All before her was a whirling tunnel. The edges folded into each other in a fusion of blur and wail. A cacophony of screams and a stampede of pounding feet coalesced to form a deep baritone hum in her ears, a singular yet indistinguishable sound.

  This may never end. All was pain.

  She'd moved beyond surface to structural ache 43 minutes ago. It wasn't that she couldn't feel the hurt. No, she just couldn't differentiate the many pains. Pain had become one with her. It possessed her. Rubbed raw toes, blistered balls and heels of her feet, throbbing knees, stabbing hips with every step. It was all a bit much.

  Only one persistent question existed. Why?

  "Why?" she exhaled.

  No answer came in reply.

  She was on her own in this bitter hellscape.

  The only thing keeping her going was distraction. Despite the overdose of sensations, she was able to keep the problem pinned up in the corner of her mind, the challenge haunting her days and most nights over the past months. The mystery she had been attempting to unravel refused to relent. It was something of a diamond-strength onion with layer upon opaque layer that denied any peering into its mysterious and glistening core.

  She knew she'd get there, get to the truth someday. Abigail would find the murderer; learn the identity of the elusive killer.

  But first, she needed to piece together a few more strides. It was there at the end of the tunnel. She could see it in the distance. The end.

  She was going to make it.

  The crowd gathered around the finish line of the marathon encouraged every runner as they crossed the line at the end of 26.2 grueling miles. Even those like Abbie, coming across the line two-plus hours after the elite racers, got a rousing welcome and a chorus of "Great job!" "Way to go!" "You did it!"

  She tried to step aside just over the finish line, but race volunteers were there to put a hand on a shoulder or under an elbow and keep stragglers moving forward so as not to clog up the area. The woman who stepped up to Abbie welcomed her with a huge smile and a hug around her shoulders. She obviously knew what she was doing as she took the majority of Abbie's weight into her and basically carried her a few dozen steps where they could break off to the side.

  "You did a great job honey. Congrats for making it all the way. First time?"

  Abbie worked hard to catch her breath and tried to speak.

  "Take your time honey." The woman, somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties, squeezed Abbie and let her go so the younger woman could bend over and put her hands to her knees.

  "First one." Abbie finally whispered.

  "The toughest one. We'll see you back here next year." The older woman, obviously a veteran of many races, gave Abbie one more smile and then turned away to head back to the finish line to welcome another lost and staggering soul back to earth.

  "Thanks." Abbie whispered breathlessly after the woman. She bent down to a squat and rested her forearms on her thighs as she gradually took in more and more oxygen with every breath.

  She closed her eyes and she wasn't at the marathon finish line with thousands of others. She was in her office. Well, not really an office; it was a file room with a table in the center. She was seated at the table reading a report about an incident in Moscow several years earlier. The report contained scarce details, but something about it caught her eye and her attention when she first read it weeks earlier.

  Somewhere in the missing parts and pieces of the story was the identity of the mystery woman, a serial killer.

  Abbie opened her eyes and looked down to the asphalt and yellow centerline. She was going to catch this murderer, after she caught her breath and limped home to an ice bath.

  Chapter 2

  Granted, this was bad. Really bad. No words required between the three men and one woman seated around the table.

  Massive explosions at two US embassies in Africa on the same day. Hundreds dead.

  Bad.

  The diagnosis: cancer. The big C. Metastasized. This voracious strain of mutation was spreading, devouring, seemingly unchecked. When the good guys succeeded in wiping out a sick and mutated cell, another sprang up hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away.

  But this, this was different. It wasn't a splinter group, a small cohesive unit carrying out a specific terrorist plot inside a vacuum. No, this thing had gone worldwide, viral, global. It, they, whatever, now had a name: al-Qaeda. The fatwa, issued two years earlier in a London Arab newspaper, was then shared on a thousand Internet sites. The message clear and concise - kill Americans. Do your duty. Kill them all. Drive them from the Holy Land.

  And while at it, kill anyone who dared question the directive. Kill all infidels. Martyrdom awaited those willing to give their lives for this holy cause.

  Most Americans didn't know about the fatwa, this edict; a declared war.

  The four Americans in this tight little room knew. They were aware of the name Osama bin Laden. They knew about the violent roots of his terrorist organization in the rocky and inhospitable mountainsides of Afghanistan. The mujahedeen, rag tag groups of Afghan and Islamic fighters drawn to battle by a higher calling, with a good bit of logistical support and weapons help from the US, drove the Soviet Red Army back over the mountains to Mother Russia. Bin Laden and al Qaeda were direct descendents of the mujahedeen.

  After the conclusion of the Afghan War with the Soviets, he and his merry band of ultra-fundamentalist Islamic misfits rapidly evolved from an army of skin and bone fighters into an organized secret society of franchised business units. Their mission statement was chaos. Destabilize the world. Rid it of infidels, unbelievers. Tilt the globe toward fundamentalism. It didn't hurt that most of the members of this new organization were tough as nails battle-proven war veterans.

  A team within the CIA was assembled a year earlier to track and learn and uncover and monitor and report on all things al-Qaeda. They didn't know much yet, just pieces - the semblance of a detectable pattern of the spread of terror. Afghanistan. Sudan. Azerbaijan. Bosnia. Frankfurt. Paris. London.

  Frank Wyrick realized within moments of the first time he heard the words al-Qaeda that this thing was going to dominate years of his life. This ghastly parade of murder masquerading under the facade of religion was going to be the thing.

 
The thing.

  He could sense it. This chaotic drive toward new world order would push aside Russia and China and Mexican drug wars and the shattering Balkans and a hermit North Korea. These guys were serious.

  Seriously messed up. Dangerous. Deadly.

  The early news coming out of Nairobi was bad and getting worse. Lots of dead, hundreds likely. Thousands more injured. A truck bomb exploded right next to the US embassy. Another bomb outside the embassy in Dar es Salaam went off minutes later. Damn.

  Coordinated. Calibrated. Kill Americans and those working with them. Message delivered.

  All the chatter picked up over the past nine days did indeed point to these twin attacks. But no one was able to piece it together early enough to take action.

  This new war would know no national borders. The enemy cared not for nation or state. Only the holy kingdom of Islam mattered. A new caliphate was the end game.

  It would never happen. Fanatical fundamentalists might topple a teetering regime here and there, but tyrants would not so easily give up their power. But that wouldn't stop the killing.

  Wyrick looked at the other faces gathered around this small table. No smiles. No optimism. This was a long war. The good guys needed to win more battles than the bad guys. He needed this meeting to wrap. Had some calls to make.

  Chapter 3

  Cafford Broley.

  The old fella was a classic. Bald with a horseshoe, sweater vest, reader glasses slung down below his chin, held there by an expandable string running around his neck. The paunch around his middle somewhat kept in check by 30 laps every morning in the pool at the Y.

  In 39 years of dedicated service to his government, Broley conducted himself in a dignified manner each and every day. Caff Broley quite possibly knew more secrets than any human living or dead in the history of United States espionage and information gathering.