Chapter One
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND 2010
Alice Simrock didn’t know in that surreal moment that she was about to die.
Alice was seventy-one years old but could have passed for early-fifties with almost completely jet-black hair and minimal wrinkles. In that surreal moment she felt as alive as any twenty-one-year-old.
1111111A figure was seated in her neighbors’ back yard carefully and systematically removing pieces of their sliding glass door. The exterior patio light didn’t illuminate the yard to enable her to see all the details of the crime. Obviously, the dark figure had disabled the light. The moon was full but blocked partially by surrounding trees intercepting the would-be secondary light source. Alice’s inner twenty-one-year-old grabbed her shotgun with anger and adrenaline surging.
Piss on death, had been Alice’s credo for a long time. She’d survived Vietnam. She’d survived cancer. She’d outlasted her saintly husband. As she filled the chamber with shells, she wondered for only a moment what Julian would say to her right now.
Slow it down, darlin’. Think before you act.
His advice was always sage but contrary to her essence. She was damn sure not going to let The Ghost take down her best friends. She’d kill every last one of the bastards first.
Alice could have done a lot of things differently that night. She could have called 911. She could have put her shotgun down and alerted the cops in the car out front. Instead, she acted, swift and with certainty.
The criminal had no idea what he was up against, but then again neither did Alice. She was behind him quickly and with ninja stealth. He was unaware of her presence until she racked the gun as loudly as she could. He put his glass cutting tool on the ground and raised his hands without being prompted verbally to do so.
Alice hoped the surprise she invoked in him would cause a major emotional reaction. Instead, the criminal was calm.
“May I stand, please?”
She pondered the query. Was he a man of integrity raised by a mother that taught him those manners? Or had he learned them to manipulate, cold and calculated? She knew it was the latter.
“You may stand. But if you make a move, I’ll cut you down.”
“Fair enough.” He stood with slow-motion movement.
“Good. Now turn around slowly.”
He did so, unmoved, sterile. Alice was impressed both by his calm and by his physical prowess in the way one might be by the strangling ability of a python. Like a python, this man could kill her in seconds if he had his thick hands around her. Of course, her shotgun was the ultimate equalizer. As he turned around, Alice could tell he was hardcore in every way – his tight strong body, his eyes. Everything was unmoving and uncompromising.
His eyes. She’d never seen anything like them. He told her he was going to kill her without words. His face was neutral, but his eyes smiled. Alice had a shotgun pointed at his heart yet somehow, he had the power. Did The Ghost instill an immortality into his soldiers’ psyche? If so, she didn’t care. This was her world now.
Alice smiled. Even though it was 2010, she felt just as strong and sharp as she had at age twenty-seven when she’d joined the Women’s Army Corps during Vietnam. She was one of the few eleven thousand volunteer women that wasn’t a nurse. To this day only family members still alive knew of her military service, and no one ever knew the details of her duties as an intelligence officer.
“That’s a big gun you got there, little lady.” The man in black was somehow able to insert a hint of charm in his words.
“Yep. Makes big holes too.” She matched his charm.
“I’m unarmed.”
“I doubt that.”
“You ever shoot a man before, Shotgun Momma?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it sounds like a fun party.”
The man’s eyes continued to smile.
“It’s not a pretty sight. You hit me in the chest and you’re gonna’ see lots of blood. The holes that thing will make in a torso. Hell, you might even be able to see my heart stop pumping.” He paused, studying her. She was just as unmoved as he was. “And a head shot. You’ll see my face explode, baby. Brains will fly out the back of my head and be all over that door behind me.”
“Like I said. Party.”
He studied her more, obviously perplexed by how a tiny woman more than twice his age could exhibit such strength under the circumstances.
“What’s your end game here, Shotgun Momma?”
“One of two things are going to happen. Either you’re going to cooperate and let me march you to those cops out front or you’re going to make a move and I’m gonna’ shoot cha’.”
The man in black smiled, this time with his entire face.
“Neither of those two things are going to happen.”
The sound was like a quick spit of air similar to a BB gun but far more menacing. The sound and the bullet entering Alice’s head happened at the same time. The shotgun fell to the ground carrying her body with it.
A second man in black stood above Alice and slowly lowered the elongated barrel of his silenced Glock.
The piercing swell of the siren didn’t bother the two EMT’s in the back of the ambulance who had heard it bellow hundreds of times in days and months past. Nor did it bother Alice who heard and viewed nothing. She experienced only black and the subconscious dreams and memories amidst it.