WINGS OF VENGEANCE
BY
CAPTAIN ADAM HAMEDI
Copyright 2011 Adam Hamedi,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0396-0
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
CHAPTER ONE
At 2:00 a.m., Austin was still outside the theatre in London. He had been waiting there since 11:00 that evening, and now he was getting nervous, wondering if anything had gone wrong. It was unusual to see a derelict in this area of London, and the coppers would certainly drive him out if they saw him. This was not like his native country, the United States, where criminals and derelicts have more rights than the normal law-abiding Joe, all thanks to the excess number of lawyers trying to make a killing suing everyone and everything in sight. Here, if you didn’t belong, you had no right to be there, and the cops, or just ordinary people, told you so. Austin was in his late thirties, six feet tall, black hair with a hint of gray. He had hazel eyes that captured the attention of women. He was well built and very attractive. Daily workouts left him in great shape, with the female persuasion wanting his attention. Today however, he had a three-day growth of beard and looked like a down-on-his-luck derelict that reeked of alcohol. Not that he was actually drunk; he only wanted to give the impression of being so.
He had arrived at London Stansted airport three days earlier and checked into the Swallow Hotel in the town of Waltham Abby in Sussex, just an hour’s drive from London proper - if the traffic was cooperating. Every morning he got in his car and drove to the big city, parked on Regent Street and walked around to kill time. The first day he had stopped at an Army-Navy store and bought an old wool overcoat and ski cap. He did not purchase items at stores on Regent Street. The shop owners there remember their clients, and that was something he was trying to avoid. He always wondered how they were able to remember a customer they only saw briefly some months earlier. He did acknowledge, however, that it was a skill that made customers feel good and continue to visit their establishment.
Austin was careful not to draw attention. For lunch he walked down the street from Piccadilly Circus toward the theatre district to a McDonald’s restaurant - if that’s what they called it - ordered a big Mac, french fries and a regular cola, although he really wanted a diet cola, but that might draw someone’s attention to him, for it was mostly Americans who would order such a fattening meal and try to wash it down with a diet drink. He certainly didn’t want to be recognized as an American. He also avoided any conversations, for that would also give him away as an American.
He pulled up his collar and held it close to his neck. It was getting colder and harder to remain stealthy. He couldn’t wait much longer. He felt the cricket bat under his coat, yesterday’s purchase at a sporting goods store. He would have preferred a baseball bat, an instrument he was very familiar with, but again it would have drawn attention to him, and with cricket being the second most popular game in England, he decided to buy the cricket bat.
There was one consolation about all the time he had to kill until he had to play his part outside the theatre. London was a wonderful place to visit. He saw Madame Toussaud’s wax museum along with the Tower of London and he even visited the Tower dungeon, where many Londoners were tortured. After lunch he took in a movie and walked some more. He didn’t want to be in position outside the theatre until late evening.
What could have gone wrong? The conductor usually came out at 1:00 a.m., and that was an hour after everyone at the Theatre had gone home. He was sure of that. He had done his research like always; he never wanted to leave anything to chance. He had been there three nights in a row. He could have done what he intended to do any one of the previous nights. That would not have been very smart, however. It was unfamiliar territory and one piece of advice kept echoing in his head every time he wanted to act prematurely: “Be smart, Austin. Always be smart”. The weather was worse than the previous two nights. It had drizzled the whole time he was there and he was chilled to the bone. If this took much longer, he would not be able to return to his hotel without getting caught. The CIA had an agent by the name of Hamilton who had been dogging him for a while now and he could sense that he was getting too close for comfort. On the first day, he could swear he saw Hamilton following him in London. He even thought an Arab-looking man was on his trail. He chalked that up to his imagination. After that day he took extra care to be invisible and never saw either one. It took a lot of effort to leave the hotel undetected. He had to wake up real early in the morning and leave through the service entrance and avoid the hotel lobby. And just in case they were watching his car, he parked at a different place every night. He was glad he had the vision to purchase a vehicle and leave it at the hotel in England. The original idea was the amount of money he would save by having a car ready, instead of renting one every time he was here. He loved coming to London and spent many days here.
What Austin did not know - he was not imagining things – is that he was being followed by an Arab and he would have been shocked to know that if Hamilton had not been there, in all probability, he would have been dead.
Hamilton was very much interested in finding out what Austin was doing in London, but before he started following him, he noticed the other man. He knew him, or knew who he was. He wondered what an Al-Qaeda operative wanted with Austin. He also wondered what Austin could have done to warrant an operative from such a dangerous organization to tail him. Only the best of the world’s intelligence agencies knew how dangerous this organization was. When Colonel Oliver North mentioned their name and the name of their leader, Osama Bin Laden, during the senate interrogation investigating the Iran-Contra affair, no one paid attention to it and it was hardly mentioned in the press. But he knew, and he knew very well, how dangerous they were. What was that man up to and why was he in London, and why was he being tailed? Questions Hamilton had no answers to. He knew it would be soon when he would have to come to a showdown with Austin; he was not sure, however, whether the showdown would be a friendly one or if he would have to kill this man. But for now his attention shifted from Austin to the Arab.
The Arab was getting frustrated with the American he was following. He had no idea what his name was and why his superiors wanted him tailed. He knew that the man had suspected something; otherwise, why would he be trying to evade detection? He had no idea that someone else was following the same guy. All he knew was that he was not about to lose him again. He had lost him once in Amsterdam and he had to sit in a Goddamn hotel lobby for over a month waiting for this American to reappear. He had followed the man to his hotel in Amsterdam but never saw him check out. He thought the man must have done so while he had to use the bathroom or something, and when he reported losing contact after a couple of days, he was ordered to stay at that hotel and sit in the lobby until he appeared again.
He really hated this American. He had to wake up very early every morning and spend the whole day sitting in the lobby waiting to see him again. He had missed seeing his family for such a long time and couldn’t believe his eyes when the man appeared again. He would have loved to know how he did it. He never saw him check in, but all of a sudden, there he was checking out and now he was about to lose him again. Even though he had no orders to kill the man, he was going to. He knew his superiors would not be very upset with him. After all, the man was an American.
When
