An R.J. Godlewski and Right Truth Blog Exclusive
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Chapter Five
Room LL35-36, The Pentagon
Seth Carmassi chewed on his lower lip as he gazed upon the ramshackle office. After twenty-five years of chasing terrorists all over God’s cursed planet, he thought to himself, this was his reward – a drab, yellow office with a three-legged metal desk and a chair that was missing its back. Even the filing cabinet leaned aggressively to one side.As several of the fluorescent lamps flickered chaotically above his head, he fought hard against the desire to head back upstairs and out of the screwy-shaped building once and for all. “You should’ve taken more prisoners.” he mumbled to himself.
Special Operations operative Seth Steven Carmassi knew that he had just entered a new plateau of his career – that in which the over-achieving are quietly excused from their role in order that others more complacent with their personal expectations aren’t shown up. More specifically, Carmassi’s notion that dead terrorists meant more live Americans cut deeply across the grain of political and diplomatic courtesy.
When the U.S. Government handed him a rifle and said to kill terrorists, he never realized that Uncle Sam was winking at the time of the statement. So, being young, innocent, idealistic, and a bit too aggressive, perhaps, he set about to kill terrorists. Lots of terrorists. The second-youngest son of seven children made a name for himself by going after the thugs wherever they resided. On more than one occasion, international incidents erupted because Carmassi chased terrorists into someone’s home and shot them dead before seeking permission to enter the premises.
His superiors frowned upon his action, but everyone knew precisely why he was so aggressive in his hatred of global terrorists. Carmassi’s father, Benjamin, was brutally executed by Islamic terrorists in the early 1980’s and the son promptly swore a blood oath for revenge. His reasoning was that, although he could never bring his father back to life, he could at a minimum do whatever he could to prevent other children from experiencing what his family had been through. And Seth Carmassi took that seriously – very seriously.
Like all complicated personalities, Carmassi represented a range of conflictions. He was dynamic, energetic, and possessed a sense of humor that made its way into his Navy service record because of its “dissimilar” nature. In spite of this, he remained caring, religious, and a bit too interested in redheads between the ages of twenty-four and thirty. Unlike most people, however, Carmassi didn’t dwell within the netherworld of pastel colors; his life focused on the black and white issues of reality. His life therefore resembled a coin; whether he was a charming if somewhat promiscuous individual or a savage and brutal counterterrorist agent rested primarily upon which side one were gazing upon at any particular moment in time and he could go from one side to the other faster than the coin itself could be flipped.
Carmassi absolutely hated terrorists and this is what caused him to be hated in return. That he served his country both honorably and professionally did not change that one bit and so he just knew his banishment to the tiny office located in a largely unmarked section of the Pentagon was merely a compromise between those who wanted to appease him and those that wanted to appease everyone else.
Standing squarely in the middle of the small office, Carmassi spun around slowly as if his mind had somehow missed the whole purpose of his being there in the first place. Everything in the office seemed to be a reject from a Salvation Army store; nothing was useable in its present state. In fact, the sailor-turned-operative-turned-whatever felt as if he had just been confined to the cooler.
He looked once again towards the flickering lights which made the dilapidated furnishings appear even more villainous. “Great. Terrorists, they set free; me they torture.” It was a sentiment that seemed far too close to being real for he knew that as long as he was sitting there in the otherwise useless office his nation’s terrorist enemies were out in force trying to destroy the planet.
Chewing a bit more on his lip, Carmassi considered that he had been given no instructions on what to do or even a telephone with which to call for assistance. He retrieved the letter once again out of his coat’s breast pocket. For the fourteenth time, it stated the same thing – that he was to “organize a new effort to evaluate ‘future’ threats against the United States and its allies through data and information cataloged previously.” Double-speak.
Carmassi’s instructions simply made no sense whatsoever. First, he was not an intelligence officer. In fact, he wasn’t even an analyst. He knew their functions and even carried out some of their duties but that was out of necessity and not his primary reason for existence. Second, he didn’t work out of offices – never had. He’d spent time in Thailand, the Philippines, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Burundi, Rwanda, Russia, and places too numerous – and infamous – to mention but not once did he find himself glued to an office chair. Especially one that needs to be glued just to remain together.
Just about middle-aged, Carmassi began to suspect that this was the beginning of the end; that his career was now entering that phase where the afflicted either capitulated to the younger crowd or simply blew their brains out in some dark, parked car somewhere convenient for the police to locate. Damn, Seth. You’re too young to die and too old to change careers now.
Swallowing a lump in his throat seemingly the size of Gibraltar, Carmassi walked over towards the backless chair and carefully settled into its seat, agonizing a bit over the metallic clank that emitted as the chair finally accepted its charge. He gazed around, half-expecting to miraculously locate some orders directing him to his purpose. Nothing appeared. He looked again to locate at least a telephone with which to call in his resignation. Even the wall receptacle where the telephone should’ve been seemed to ridicule any attempt at communication with the outside world.
“Damn. Even the Amazon had wireless Internet.”
Losing confidence with the rickety chair, he stood up and walked slowly over to the lone filing cabinet as if a bit superstitious to his new surroundings. It took three powerful tugs before the top drawer released its corroded grip and flung open amidst a loud cry uttered when a sharp panel sliced through his exposed thumb. A quick kick into the offending cabinet deadened the pain from his hand a bit and the resultant glance caught a couple of file folders lying within the drawer.
Necessity being the mother of invention and depression being the mother of suicide, he decided to split the options and retrieved the folders more out of idle curiosity than whether he expected that they would contain some semblance to function. To his surprise, he discovered that the second folder contained a remarkably up-to-date catalog of U.S. Navy ship dispositions. The second folder contained various nautical charts and port images, mostly of Chinese shipyards and the like. Not exactly Gospel revelation as to his mission but perhaps interesting reading nevertheless.
Being an ex-sailor, his first instincts were naturally drawn to the vessel disposition folder and he quickly thumbed through the pages of antiquated ships awaiting destruction to see if, perhaps, any that he had served upon were identified within the documents. None were, but one came intriguingly close: the former submarine tender U.S.S. Samuel Maxwell McCaide. The McCaide had been decommissioned several years previously and was resting out the remainder of its life outside Norfolk, Virginia where Carmassi had been stationed and he knew the old tender quite well.
This particular vessel was quite modern as decommissioned ships go and there was no indication that it would end up at a ship breaker’s yard as was often the case with former military ships. He noticed from amongst the material, that several U.S.-based charities had been petitioning the government for donation of the vessel to their cause – listed as something of a combination between a floating museum to be based within New York harbor and a youth training vessel. The scope of the project required massive funds and this led to the charities banding together in order to make their application more attractive.
Who these particular charities were, he could not fathom a guess, but one sounded too similar to one that he knew operated within the United States under the support of the Saudi Government. Strange, he thought. The Saudis were more content to focus on massive luxury yachts than archaic naval vessels. It was nothing he assured himself as he flung the folders back upon the desk and held his breath until he realized that the piece of wobbling furniture wouldn’t turn over in the process.
At that particular moment, why exactly a bunch of camel jockeys wanted to fund the restoration of an old U.S. Navy ship was most definitely not a concern of his; he simply wanted to discover his new purpose in life and, if possible, orchestrate his extraction from his basement-level prison.
Carmassi glanced at his wristwatch which he kept strapped to the underside of his left arm. It was 9:45 A.M. An entire day to go yet and not a moment to value. He decided to give it until ten sharp before he decided that no one would be forthcoming enough to inform him as to his purpose and therefore he would venture out of his little cubby hole and find someone willing to oblige him; preferably someone not too short, with nice legs, a great ass, and fiery red hair.
At least it was a plan; what worked against him was the knowledge that he beheld a full fifteen minutes with which to occupy his time. He had spent a quarter of a century dealing with the Government’s dictum of ‘hurry up and wait’ and he was growing a bit cranky in his years. No longer a kid who thought that he was indestructible, he realized that now more than ever he had to literally prove his worth just to keep on par with those who were given every courtesy if not respect.
Carmassi was fit and very agile-minded, but years of injuries and the brutalities of combat ensured that his body swore testament to its decline upon every approaching storm or damp condition and this office was more than damp enough to aggravate his joints. Accordingly, he decided that he needn’t wait until 1000 to depart his semblance of an office; he would leave anytime that he found a need to do so and that it was as good a time as any to venture out and search for instructions – or redheads.
At the Patient Evil Homepage the Synopsis, Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, and each chapter will be available in pdf after they are published here at Right Truth.
Synopsis at Right Truth
Prologue and Chapter One at Right Truth, Chapter Two , Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five,
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