I didn’t think we were going to be on the ride that long. It took about two minutes to figure out that what I thought it was, wasn’t, and what it was going to be, was indiscernible. It was a rollercoaster of ups and downs, lefts and rights, loop backs and double talk, and the end it was all that mattered. Did I care? I wanted to. There’s a part of me that was doing this for the cause, however small. But they should have known they had the wrong guy.
They came to me because I am the wrong guy. Not because I fit the bill. A fortunate son would have been sniffed out a mile away. They came to me because I needed a downpayment that I didn’t have.
There she was. Maybe 12, tops. She had on this backpack that was rigged to blow if she knew the end was near. It would take out her and her would be assassins in a 500 foot radius. Which, in all likelihood, hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that I was probably always going to be in that range. I guess I’ll just have to live with that. It’s a nice farewell after all, a final fuck you to the fascists.
I got used to calling them that being around these guys. You call them anything else and they look like they wouldn’t think twice about ending you right there. Truth is, I’ve been around a long time. I’ve seen all kinds of would be rebellions and lived in occupied territory. I haven’t seen anything to make me think that whatever anyone else can think of is any better than what we got.
Of course I’m not telling them that.
Especially not my recruiter. She never trusted me. Not like you ever trust anyone who does this type of work, but me? Even less. She didn’t trust that I breathed if I wasn’t in the room. Still, I talk as though I had a choice. I didn’t. She was the kind of no nonsense person that took whatever sense you thought you had and twisted it until you said what she was saying. What she was saying was bad news for everybody, or at least that’s the way she wanted it to sound. She fed me the bait from her regular line, when that didn’t work she used the heavy duty stuff and the good scotch, before she eventually broke out the barbed wire. She must have felt she landed a 200lbs common goldfish.