1 comments/ 5714 views/ 0 favorites Triple Jeopardy By: RC_of_Doom I had always thought my High School creative writing teacher was joking when he claimed to be a hunted terrorist. I actually had no reason to doubt his story, aside from the fact that it sounded ludicrous. He was of medium height, medium weight, medium build, medium rare, with a black beard that barely covered his chin and thin lips; it was more of a ten PM shadow than anything else. His brown eyes held a dry wit that emanated in his voice. He looked Caucasian, with a light Mediterranean tan. He had long fingers, an unintelligible script, and an ID that read: Joseph Sheridan. Born June 9th, 1952. In class, he would tell us in a quick one-liner about knowing how to kill a man with two fingers. When he first mentioned it, he said, "I'm a terrorist, hunted by the FBI for the last twenty-seven years." I laughed, as did we all. In retrospect, twenty-seven years ago from that year was the Yom Kippur war. To tell the truth, I sort of liked him. He took disrespectful students' comments and fired one-liners back at them that were as subtle as torpedoes. He kept his calm at all times, and spoke softly, and a lot. After class one day, when everyone else had gone, I joked, "Mr. Sheridan, why don't you try writing your biography? It would make a good terrorist novel—no one would say it's real. I mean, come on, a terrorist retiring to teach? No one'd believe it." Sheridan smiled and said, "It's an idea." That was the last we talked of it for weeks. A month later he wanted me to read it. It wasn't much: ten, fifteen pages. He had spent his free time writing it. "I wanted to read it to the class in the hopes that they'd learn something," he told me. I smirked. "Ha! That's a stretch. What do you want me to do?" "See if it would catch their interest. Maybe they'd even pay attention." "Ah, you want a miracle, is that all? No problem." It was a detailed manuscript of a quick, one-man strike on an army complex in a made up Middle East country. The character was from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, synonymous in the Arab World with terrorist. I finished the entire thing in twenty minutes; I would've finished sooner if my uncle hadn't dropped by for a surprise visit. My uncle Mike seemed to be a well-built, forty-year-old, blond space case. He supposedly worked with relief aid worldwide, but no one knew the name of the organization, and no one asked. He would often give credible, detailed stories of his journeys to Russia, North Ireland, China, and what used to be Yugoslavia. At dinner that night, I asked him if he knew much about the Middle East. "My knowledge of that area is not inconsiderable. Why?" "Just wondering. A teacher of mine wrote a manuscript, and he wanted me to see if it was credible. I think so, but what do I know?" He smiled. "Too much sometimes. What do you need?" "Is it possible for one man to go into an army base and take it out?" "Depends on what service and when." "Mossad, early seventies," I casually replied as I glanced at the clock. He stopped eating. He stopped talking. His entire body froze into one position for what felt like an hour. Then he locked his eyes on me. I was held in the grip of an iron glare and a wave of paranoia, as though I'd mouthed off to a drug dealer, or a rapper. What the hell was going on? His body relaxed, and I glanced at the clock again. It was only five seconds after I last looked. It had to have been my writer's over-imagination playing with me. "In the early seventies, I guess it would be possible. It's not like the Mossad ever played around to begin with, and in the seventies, they couldn't afford the niceties of being gentle. Israel can only lose once. Your teacher know much about the Middle East?" he asked, glancing at his plate. "I don't know, but he does claim to be a hunted terrorist," I answered, smirking. "Does he?" He grinned. "What exactly does he look like?" I told him, then added, "He once had a beard like a lion's mane that went around his face. I saw it once in the eighty-eight yearbook." "Fascinating. Are all of your teachers this year like this?" "They've always had some quirks, you know that." Each time Uncle Mike had come over, I had told him stories of my teachers, my classmates, and other creatures at Cardinal Archbishop Alois (pronounced "Alloy," prompting the slogan "Alois boys: We're made of sterner stuff"). He'd laugh at the weirdness that went on: classmates who acted like wackos from Waco; brain dead pervs who'd never shut up. The local sociopath who wanted my scalp particularly amused him. He'd always bet that I'd wipe the floor with him, because—while I wasn't Superman—I was creative. "So," he continued, "what's this teacher's name?" I told him. "Sheridan?" he replied "Sounds Irish." "I know. Makes it even funnier. But, in all reality, I'd swear he's the sanest of them all. Him and my homeroom teacher, Moiré Ann Bell. If you believe the rumors I've heard, they're either best friends, sleeping together, or he's her gay friend." Mike gave a short, sharp laugh. "What do they base that on?" I shrugged. "They're always seen together. If they aren't in her Homeroom, they're in his. They spend free and lunch periods together...or so I've heard." "Indeed?" Mike gave me an incredulous look, as if peering at me over glasses he didn't wear. I was the school's invisible man, mistaken for a guidance counselor by student and teacher alike. If something happened in school I didn't know about, I worried. "Yep," I replied. "I've seen them walk out together. It's not like I care what they do outside of school. Speculating on that sort of stuff I leave to the rest of the student body. The only exercise they get is jumping to conclusions." "Ha! Isn't that always the case? Don't worry, you're going to have to live with people like that when you're thirty and working...different professions." He started sipping from his glass when I asked, "Like where you work?" He stopped in mid-sip and swallowed. "When I go abroad it's no problem. My bosses can't get to me except at HQ." "It's like that down in Virginia?" Langley, perhaps? "What makes you say Virginia?" "Just a guess." "Yeah, right." Uncle Mike spoke fluent Russian, and I knew, as he did, that—in Russian—while a double negative was still a negative, a double positive meant a negative. Yeah, right. * The next day, I walked into creative writing dead tired. The rest of the family and I had listened to Uncle Mike's tales of Milosevic's Serbia and various civil war hot spots in South America, especially Columbia. If I had watched the news the week before, I would've learned about the laser targeting paints used to aim cruise missiles at individual floors of buildings in Serbia. I also would've heard about several drug cartel leaders being gutted. "Rough night?" Mr. Sheridan asked as I staggered into class. "Kinda," I answered as I dropped my bag into my seat. "I read your manuscript and spent the night talking with a relative of mine." "Big talker, huh?" "With a vengeance. At least he had something interesting to say." Sheridan arched his eyebrows. "Hm? What about?" "His various trips to the back ends of Europe and your manuscript." "Really? What did he think?" "Credible. He's been to the Middle East once or twice. I figured he could help." "And what does he do? Spy?" he asked with his dry wit smile. He laughed. I didn't. "We try not to ask questions like that." Sheridan stopped laughing and went into a controlled silence, the one he used when he didn't want to show inappropriate displays of affect, usually anger. He's not getting angry, he has no reason to. What's with the silent routine? His dry smile returned. "Sounds like you have story material there." "Story material? What story material?" I told him. He gave a slight nod. We understood each other. At that moment, if someone had told me that I would be looking at this man through a target sight later that week, I'd have laughed... * However, it was the end of the day when I was nearly killed. I stepped off the sidewalk, only to be nearly hit by a black van with no license plates. The toe of my right loafer was flattened, and the toes were spared by a millimeter. The van came to a halt three feet away, leaving me a foot of clearance as the back doors swung open. I was shocked to find men in black suits jump out, not men in ski masks and combat fatigues. Don't these people read novels? "Think fast," I told one of them as I gave my best basketball pass with a Tom Clancy novel into Suit #1's face. Debt of Honor made a very satisfying crack as it broke his nose. Suit #2, on my right, just had his feet touch the ground when I dropped to a crouch on my left leg, slapped both hands on the asphalt, and swept my right leg under his. My girlfriend had taught me that move the week before. The entire ordeal took two seconds, at most. I snatched my novel and took off at a dead run, covering a block in five seconds. I glanced back. Suits one and two were gone, so was the van. What was that about? After I made it back inside Alois, I caught my breath. My best speed blew away the fastest track guys... for all of about thirty seconds, then I was lucky if I could move. The entire ordeal was so fast I could've dreamt it on my feet. Then I looked at my blood-spotted book. Most people in danger do the smart, rational thing, and call the cops. Some people, in my position, would have walked into the Queens Borough command center down in the train station where I walked every day. But I'm not some people. I'm not even most people. So, I made like ET and phoned home. My mother answered. "Yeah, mom, it's Matt. You busy?" I asked. "What happened?" "I nearly got kidnapped by two guys in suits jumping out of a black van." She sighed. "If it isn't one thing it's another. Wait there." Most probably, you've figured out that this wasn't new for us. My High School and—more precisely—me, myself, and I attracted all manner of beings, creatures, murderers and the occasional psycho; and those were just the TAs. My biography already read like a Patricia Cornwell novel crossed with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. I stepped out of the claustrophobic phone booth (How did Superman do it?) into the main lobby of the school. You're wondering whether I had a rational bone in my body. Why didn't I call the police? Or just go home? Think about it. What would I tell the cops? Two yuppies jumped me from a black van with no plates. This would not go over well with New York cops, who dealt with more neurotics than I did. Home? The Suits knew when I got out of school, so they probably knew where I waited for the bus. I had been mulling over those exact same questions when Ms. Bell almost ran me over coming out of the elevator next to the phone booth. I sidestepped in the graceful manner I only possess when dodging in the halls, but lose when dancing. Moiré Bell was only five-three, and weighed a hundred pounds, if that. She was the only person on the staff who could get away with a skirt that barely brushed the tops of her kneecaps. Most of her height was composed of her long, slender legs that were—literally—registered legal weapons within the state of New York. If any of my classmates knew she took kickboxing on top of gymnastics, the perpetual comments they made about her would disappear. Her hair was either dark or light brown, depending on how the light touched it. Her eyes were definitely dark brown. "Sorry," we said in tandem, briefly making eye contact. I glanced up. There was no sign of Sheridan. I smiled. "Have a good day." "You, too, Matt," she replied as she went on her way. When I was sure she was gone, I bounded up the stairs three at a time until I reached the third floor. With my neurotic attention to detail, I know that Bell was usually out of the building by 2:15. Sheridan caught the train five minutes later. I was curious about where he was, and I had time. My sense of curiosity hadn't gotten me killed yet, although it kept trying. I waited to make sure I didn't look winded when I walked by Sheridan's room; I still had the copper taste of blood in my mouth from my previous run. His room was five feet from the stairwell I'd come up. I could see his lights on. Why'd he stay? The last thing on my mind was to pry into anyone's private life, and I'd have just shrugged off any idiosyncrasy in his schedule, had I not almost been hit by a car. After that, everything looked sinister. Besides, there had been only two things that happened out of the ordinary the day before: my uncle's arrival and Sheridan's manuscript. While the manuscript was almost certainly out of the question, paranoia was a plus in these situations. After all, even paranoids had real enemies. Sheridan's door was open. He wasn't at his desk. I turned into the classroom. He sat at his conductor's stand, reading a book he had assigned his freshman class. He held it in his left hand, though he was right-handed. His right was hidden within his blazer. I knocked on the door to get his attention. "Afternoon." His head snapped up from the book fast enough to produce whiplash, and, had I been less observant than I am, I would have missed his right arm tensing for a split second. "Administration isn't letting you out tonight?" I joked. He smiled. "No. I just decided to stay in awhile, take in the scenery." Spring was just setting in, but the trees across the street were still bare. "Yes, I see what you mean. It's a simply be-uutiful view." "So, why are you still here?" he asked, closing the book, putting it on the stand. "Just waiting for my ride. I'd be home by now if that car didn't try to run me down." Sheridan's body turned toward me, and he took his hand out of his jacket. He even took his black reading glasses off. I noticed the buttons of his shirt had a slight pull to the left they didn't have that morning; a pull I once read about in a book by Capt. Dan Mahoney, NYPD ret. It was a way to spot a concealed gun. "Who the hell tried to run you over?" he asked. "Guys in black suits, believe it or not. They even stopped to try to kidnap me. " "Caucasian? Black?" "I didn't notice at the time." Good question, but why did he ask? "You think they'd try again?" "I'm not taking any chances that they won't. I'll just wait inside 'til my ride comes." "I'll wait with you, outside. After all, anyone off the street could waltz right in here." Sheridan came outside, wearing just his suit and carrying his briefcase. The street was devoid of traffic. It didn't look like anyone would come. "You know her?" Sheridan asked me, pointing at the block behind me. The woman he pointed to had legs like Madonna, no cellulite, all sleek muscle, like a deer's, graceful. She had a flat, solid belly and dark, red hair, with fiery blue eyes that made one want to fall into them. She spoke in a nice soft voice and almost always smiled a slight smile, a glorious sight. How do I know this at first glance? you ask. "That's Moira McShane." Moira had been my girlfriend for four years. I'd have sworn she knew every form of Martial Arts, and attended The Marie Louise Academy: Alois' sister school ... let's just say that if that was the sister school, there was a lot of incest going on. She walked up to me with a benevolent smile. "What happened?" Ah nuts. I was supposed to meet her at snob hill. I had finished telling her what I told Sheridan when a black HUMVEE pulled up to the curb. Sheridan noticed it first, of course, and Moira tapped me on the shoulder before I realized it was even there. It wasn't my best day. It dipped lower when I saw Uncle Mike in the driver's seat. * Uncle Mike pulled onto the Grand Central Parkway. "So, that was Sheridan? Interesting looking fellow. He hung around after you were nearly nailed?" "He decided to wait with me. He was staying late anyway." "Not too late. I saw him walk toward the subway after we pulled away." "Must've been intimidated by your RV and left before the rest of the army showed." "What? This? It's a company car." "Generous Company," Moira commented, emphasizing the C. I had told her about what my uncle "did" a few months after we met; a week after I had figured it out. "That they are," I said. "Company car. Company business. Company man. How much would you want to bet, Moira, that the men who jumped me have a similar Company?" "I wouldn't bet on that, if I were you, Moira," Mike told her. "The Middle East has different types of Companies from ours. What do you think, Matt?" "I think the two Suits that jumped me could've been bright green and I might not have noticed." "Would you have noticed a plate number?" asked Moira, always a cop step ahead. "I can't answer that since there wasn't a plate." "Just like the car behind us," Mike said. "You two buckled in?" * Five miles, two road blocks, about 4 clips, and fifty assault rifle rounds later, Mike's HUMVEE pulled into my driveway. It was impossible to see out of the bulletproof back window, it was covered by webbed cracks. Unlike Moira, the bozos who had chased us didn't know enough to shoot for the tires. Stepping out of the car, Mike asked Moira, "Where exactly did you learn to shoot?" "My father's a cop. Where exactly did you get a .45 like that in International Aid?" "It's a hazardous job," he replied. "I go to some real nasty places." I actually managed to finish my homework that night. Don't ask me how, I don't question the imponderable. Even more surprising, I dragged myself into school the next day. I insisted on my carpool leaving earlier than usual, just in case our schedule had gotten predictable. The last thing I needed, however, was what happened next. It seemed everyone decided to not follow their normal routine. I arrived early. Miss Bell and Sheridan went through the cafeteria instead of the faculty entrance, and Keith Mangiere accidentally used one drop of acid too many. Even farther out of routine, one of the Teacher's Assistants actually looked at a student's eyes; Keith's eyes, to be exact. When the TA miraculously put one and three together, he decided to have Keith checked out by the school nurse. Keith, in his LSD-ridden state, didn't appreciate the efforts the TA took and tossed him over his shoulder through the cafeteria window, a yard or two away. At the time, I was coming through the entrance on one side of the window as Sheridan and Bell went through the other, so I had a ringside seat for what happened next. Sheridan wasted no time covering the 20-foot gap between him and Keith, dropping his briefcase as he ran. I don't see how Keith could've realized what hit him as Sheridan's fist blurred into his diaphragm. He staggered back, still standing, when Sheridan's thumb and index finger latched onto a part of his throat, the carotid artery. Keith struggled for five seconds before he passed out. If Sheridan'd held on longer, Keith would've been dead. He could have killed him with just two fingers. * It was an amazing experience to realize that a teacher, one you'd consider a friend, is a terrorist. It defied all laws of logic, reason, and I'm sure one or two state and federal laws, I just couldn't figure out which two. Although—as I thought it over—he wasn't a terrorist, except to people like Yasir Arafat. Mossad were the good guys. But why would a Mossad agent—a good one, if the story was any clue—come to New York and teach in a Roman Catholic High School? It certainly wasn't for the money. He must have pissed off someone real bad. It didn't matter who was after ... him? Me? Us? All that mattered was how to stop them. The NYPD wouldn't buy any of this. The FBI didn't have any reason to take my word. I needed to have a long, long talk with Uncle Mike. Not only did I need him to get me out of this mess, I needed him to explain why men in suits wanted to abduct an 18 year old like me. Triple Jeopardy * "Because they know you could ID him," Uncle Mike explained as we drove home. "There're twelve hundred students in your school, they couldn't grab a kid at random." " 'Kay, but how did they know I could ID him? In fact, how did a different Company even know he's here?" "They had a wire tap on a certain phone in Tel Aviv when I talked with a friend of mine. After that, they only needed a phone call to activate the unit." "And I've been in the parish paper," I concluded. "Did you use his name and mine?" I growled. Mike shook his head. "Only his code name. Sorry. Knowing your record to get into trouble, I should've had a code name for you prepared long in advance." "Just tell me who the hell is Sheridan. He's been out of commission for twenty-seven years. Why would anyone hunt him down after that time?" "It's seventeen years, not twenty-seven—he made up the number—and they've got so many reasons to come after Barak, it's not even close to funny." This was the late 1990s, years before anyone would hear of a Senator named Obama, so I only had two frames of reference. "Barak is the Prime Minister of Israel. It means lightning in Hebrew." "Barak is Sheridan's code name; no relation," Uncle Mike explained. "He struck so fast, Barak was an obvious handle. After he told the Air Force where to take out Saddam's reactor in '82—" "—a year later," I interrupted, "17 years ago, Hussein puts a contract out on him." "No," Mike corrected me, "he added number twenty. Pressure got too high, and Barak had to get out. He'd worked for ten solid years, driving the Middle East crazy, Mossad could afford to be grateful to him. He retired as Captain Joseph Dayan, and went underground." "There's no relation to Moshe Dayan, hero of the '48 war of Independence?" "There is. It's another reason they're out to get him. That region of the world has a long memory, and symbols mean a lot. Killing a blood descendant of Moshe Dayan would be a morale boost to all those terrorists Mossad has been taking out lately." "So you called Tel Aviv to warn them that Sheridan—Barak—had written about the bad old days, worried he had nostalgia. You told them where he worked, that I read the manuscript...you didn't tell them about Miss Bell in that tapped phone call, did you?" "DAMNIT!" he bellowed as the HUMVEE made a one-eighty. * We got to school in time to see the fireworks begin. The idiots were stupid enough to go after Miss Bell. Unfortunately for them, Sheridan was escorting her to her car, which had been parked in front of the school on the other side of the street since construction had eliminated her parking space in the lot. Since I left, another two vans had parked on either side of her car. The short yellow bus that Sheridan and Bell hid behind was already riddled with bullets when our HUMVEE smashed into the back of it. We leapt out of the passenger's side door to join them on the sidewalk. "Hi," I said as I crouched behind the HUMVEE, while Mike waved them over. It took more than a tank to total a HUMVEE, especially a Company car. "Have any weapons, Captain?" Mike asked when they joined us, pulling out his .45. Sheridan nodded, as I asked, "Can't we just wait for the cops?" over the gunshots. "AK-47's would shred police body armor like tissue paper," Sheridan said, opening his briefcase, revealing an Israeli weapon known as the Uzi. This is getting ridiculous. "How many clips have you got for that?" Uncle Mike asked, chambering a round. "Three, plus my .45," Barak answered. "There's only eight of them, but they have more artillery. I have some more weaponry in my classroom; but we need two people to lay down cover fire." I looked at Bell and said, "How fast can you run?" "The HUMVEE would cover them for most of the way," Mike said, nodding at Bell and me, "but it takes too long to unlock those doors. They'd be in the open." After Sheridan fired a burst at the lock through his targeting sight, we ran for it. The last thing I needed that afternoon found us as I slammed the door close. It was TA Frankenstein, the type of thing that bounced his head off the tops of doorframes. I didn't have the time to waste explaining in monosyllables what was happening. I sidestepped and ran around him. He grabbed me, only to have Bell's foot meet his arm. I thought I heard it snap; he let go in any event. I jumped the stairs three at a time, speeding for Sheridan's room before panic set in. Miraculously, after months of construction, everyone had learned to ignore sounds like drills and machine guns. Sheridan's door was unlocked. Obviously he only expected to be gone a short while. He had six tall black file cabinets, but only five classes. His weaponry had to be in one of them. Bell had the keys to the cabinets; we found the stash in the one closest to my desk. "Guns, guns, guns, clips, clips, rifles," I murmured as I searched the drawers. I opened the bottom drawer. "Mother of God." "What is it?" Bell asked. "Do you watch Dirty Harry movies?" I put the LAWS rocket on the window shelf, trying to figure out exactly how it worked. It was a disposable weapon, lightweight, meant to be fired and dropped. I had seen them used in the movies, but I couldn't remember how it worked. I tried pulling at several different parts before I noticed the directions on the barrel. I yanked out the pin as they told me to. The launcher extended to four feet in length. I put it to my shoulder and put my eye up to the sight, pointing it out the window. I remembered there was supposed to be a front sight. Where was it? Once I realized I had it backwards, I swung it around. The first image that appeared in my crosshairs was Sheridan's head. I refocused it toward the guys in suits... they were Middle Eastern, of course. I knew the rocket would've taken out one car for sure, but two? "Miss Bell, is your car insured?" I asked over my shoulder as I saw her car between the two black vans, remembering that a gallon of gasoline equaled 20 sticks of TNT. "Yes, why?" The resulting explosion of her car blew both black vans to both ends of the street, but Miss Bell's car would never play the violin—or any other instrument—ever again. By my watch the entire shootout took no more than three minutes. The police still hadn't shown up by the time we returned to street level. "Mr. Sheridan," I asked, coming down the front steps, "do you usually plan for a war, or is that cache of weapons a contingency plan for the day class discussion takes a turn for the worst?" Captain Dayan, a.k.a. Joseph Sheridan, smiled. "You thought 'Be Prepared' started with the Boy Scouts?" "Somehow I didn't think Mossad came up with it," Ms. Bell noted. I looked at her, my eyebrows arched. "You know?" She smiled. "Who do you think proofreads his manuscripts?" I shook my head to clear it, and, before I could reply, I heard the familiar sound of a gun bolt snapping home. I sighed deeply. "If you would please be so kind as to drop your weapons and hold your hands out by your sides, this will only be a minute," came the lightly accented, deep voice from behind. I turned around as I complied. Somehow, the sight of a man with horn rimmed glasses and a Brooks Brothers suit did not fit my image of the model terrorist hit man. "The AK-47 simply does not go with that suit," Mike told him. "I prefer the H&K MP5K-PDW myself," Sheridan told my uncle. "With a Brooks Brothers, you look like Secret Service." "Are you kidding?" the terrorist asked. "Heckler and Koch is too expensive. These"—he jostled the weapon slightly—"go for a great price from the USSR going out of business sale." I resisted the urge to rub my throbbing temples. Talking about the latest fashions in weaponry wasn't exactly what I had in mind. "Now," the terrorist said, getting back to business, "which one of you is Dayan?" "I am," Mike and Sheridan said at the same time. The terrorist smiled. "This is not a remake of Sparticus, and frankly, you don't have enough supporting cast. The options are quite limited. I could shoot you both and leave it at that, or I can take the real Dayan home with me." I smiled as I saw a head of red hair moving behind the gunman. In one move, Moira grabbed the barrel of the old Russian assault rifle, and pulled down and back, spinning the terrorist and the weapon away from us. She slammed her knee into his kidney, swept the legs out from under him, and pinned him to the ground by holding her foot on his neck. She looked up at Mike. "What is it with your family? Matt attracts psychos. You attract these people. Is it something genetic?" "God, I hope not," I answered. "How did you know to show up here?" "Simple. I called your place, and you were late. Given past experience, it meant you had to be here." She looked back at Mike again. "The cops should arrive in about a minute. What do we do with your friend here?" Mike took out his cell phone and hit the autodial. "It'll be taken care of in two or three minutes, depending on how clogged my boss's switchboard is." I looked at Sheridan. "So, it looks like you get to stay here until they pry the chalk out of your cold dead hand. What are you going to do now? Go to Disney world?" "I hear Belfast is nice this time of year," he replied. "After this week, it might be safer, too."