The Man With Three Selves: Bruce Highland, #2

Synopsis

A man, Samuel Creed, kills a man who murdered his father in a crime of passion and is imprisoned for it. While in prison, he comes up with an elaborate and seemingly improbable scheme to fake his own death in prison, and escape from the County morgue using the identity of another body, and then escape to Guyana. The scheme works. Along the way to Guyana, he meets Blaine Richards, who becomes his friend and roommate. After a period of time, Richards appears to be dying from a medical condition, and Creed takes him to a Catholic mission in Guyana for treatment. After appearing to die from the condition, Creed decides to use Richards’ identity to start a new life in the States. Meanwhile, the real Blaine Richards does not die, and recovers, remaining in the Mission to recover.

Upon his return to the States, Creed, using Richards’ identity, starts a new life in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He becomes a successful accountant, and even gets elected for public office as the mayor of a new town. Through his connections as mayor, he is able to secure a pardon from the Governor of New Mexico to forgive himself (Sam Creed) for his original crime.

Desiring to clear his name and live a normal life, Creed decides to come back in to society as himself, but in the process, the identity he was using, Blaine Richards, goes missing and Creed subsequently ends up being charged with his disappearance. This leads him on an adventurous escape that takes him to the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, where he befriends a local pilot, Lenny Dicks. When in Vanuatu, he receives news of Blaine Richards survival, and meanwhile Lenny Dicks learns he is about to get fired from his company, so he decides to steal the company’s aircraft and fly it to Brazil for sale in the black market, leading the two on an adventure of South Pacific island hopping ultimately leading back to the United States and Lenny’s home country, Australia. The story is a series of adventures, and is an exercise in actions and consequences as Creed weaves a path toward freedom, ending up in personal redemption.

About the Author

Alex Ryan lives in Northern California and is an engineer, a pilot, an avid cyclist and a former U.S. Army Infantryman. His passion for writing fictional thrillers stems from his love of reading spy and crime novels from an early age.

Forward

This novel is different from the traditional model where the hero is always good, and his purpose is to always win the fight between good and evil. The main character, Sam Creed, has elements of both good and evil, but he’s basically good. This novel is a follow up to a prior book, The Gatekeepers, which features Bruce Highland, who is a private investigator. I made a departure in this book by introducing Bruce Highland, the slated hero in the novel, late in the game with a somewhat diminished role over Creed’s. It has been a fun exercise writing this book, which is based loosely on both personal experiences and research. A note about the cover art - as with the aerial photo in the cover of the book The Gatekeepers, I took the photos personally, formatted them and designed the cover myself.

Prologue

Jackson Creed tied the salt encrusted dark bandana around his head, put his shades on, and stood on the kick starter of his old pan head Harley. It came to life on the third kick. The bike lurched forward slightly with a loud clunk as he engaged first gear. The rider behind him motioned to him and pointed to his right saddlebag. There was a stuffed Koala bear hanging out. With a slightly embarrassed grin, he hopped off the bike, and secured the Koala within the saddle bag. He fell in with the procession as it made its way down a lonely New Mexico road, as the hot evening sun started to go down. You might think Jackson Creed was a criminal gang biker by looking at him. But he was not. If you took off the bandana, you would find an average middle-age guy that has both a haircut and a day job. If you took off his shirt, you would find no tattoos - except for that one on his left shoulder that he had to get in order to ride with the Rovers. He was just another man with a family, a lost childhood and a middle aged crisis that went out and bought a Harley.

He felt bad about making the run today since he knew he’d be late for his boy’s birthday. They reached their destination, which was a small, run down tavern off a rarely traveled gravel road. The band of denim and leather clad bikers parked their Harleys and dismounted their bikes. The leader, Lou Smitty Smith and his two lieutenant/sidekicks approached Creed and handed him a sawed off shotgun.

Jackson, the Rovers are calling on you this time to do us right. The man in there, Fergus, ratted out a couple of our boys, and them niggers ended up killing them in prison. That ain’t right.

Creed looked pale. Damn Smitty, you know I’d do anything for you. But it’s my boy’s birthday today. That don’t feel right.

You made a pledge when you joined us. You remember that? Or did you forget?

Any day but today, Smitty, I swear to god.

Smith was visibly upset. Somebody wanna bail Jackson out here? Smith queried the gang.

A bald headed thin man with swastika tattoos stepped forward, took the shotgun and walked towards the door without saying a word. Surround the place, make sure he don’t run out Smith said.

Two bikers used a large firewood log to break down the front door, which was locked. The bald headed biker entered, and a minute later, the sound of a single shotgun blast could be heard resonating out of the building.

The bald headed biker walked out the front door. There was a brief hand clapping as he handed the shotgun back to Smitty. Smitty turned to his top lieutenant and gave him a nod, the meaning of which only the most senior and trusted member knew. The bearded, long haired lieutenant walked over to Jackson Creed and smiled. Creed himself felt very nervous and uncomfortable. He had broken a rule. Something bad was about to happen. In an instant, he pulled a revolver out from under his denim jacket, and leveled it at Creed’s head. You seem to think our oath ain’t got no meaning. It ain’t a one way street man, we die for you, and we expect you to die for us. We kill for you, and just the same we expect you to kill for us.

I’m sorry man.

Sorry don’t work. The massive desert landscape reduced the sound of the revolver shot to a dull popping noise, as Jackson Creed fell over backward. He carefully wiped off the revolver, and placed it in to Creed’s right hand. Smitty laid the shotgun next to him to make it look like a murder-suicide.

He spoke to the band of onlooking bikers and women, some stone faced, and others with a slightly horrified if not frightened look to them. I know this looks like harsh justice, but he’s probably a fuckin’ narc. He’d rat us out in a second.

––––––––

The seven year old boy woke up in the morning, only to find his mother by the phone, crying. Mommy, is daddy ever coming home?

No Sammy, daddy won’t be home.

He said he’d be here, it’s not fair.

Sammy, come here, I need to tell you something.

What mommy?

Sometimes, things happen in life that are very unfair. And there is nothing you can do, or anybody can do, to make them right. Your daddy loved you, and would do anything in the world for you. But he can’t anymore.

Why?

Your daddy is dead. Some bad people murdered him.

Seven year old boys have a hard time grasping what it means to lose someone close to crime. It was too much to internalize and analyze. All he knew is that the daily routines were pretty much the same as they always were. And it wasn’t like daddy didn’t take long trips, leaving mommy and himself alone. Sometimes it was for work, and other times it was so he could hang out with his motorcycle friends. But over time it began to sink in. As the years progressed, he fantasized about killing the people responsible for killing his father. His anger and rage grew. What do you want to be when you grow up Sammy? I want to be a cop. So I can kill bad guys.

But they say kids are resilient. They are. He refused to let his loss become an excuse for going on a downward spiral of depression, loneliness, alcohol and drugs. Look at Timmy. And Sally. Both of their fathers were killed in the war, someplace called Vietnam. They were doing okay.

Now his mother, Janet Creed, not so much. She took it hard. The payout from the life insurance policy helped, but it wasn’t enough to live on forever. Unaccustomed to being in the work force, she did various odd jobs and stints working in diners and restaurants to pay the bills, and to help Sam get through college. But she drank. Too much. And also acquired a little bit of a cocaine habit, which she tried to hide from Sam but never could completely. In the end, maybe it was for the best, as they say it skips a generation. Maybe, just with a little luck, Sam would turn out okay despite his dysfunctional parents, and possibly because of them.

Chapter 1

The brilliant sun illuminated the white bedroom through the expansive, unshaded window panels of Sam and Nancy Creed’s Modesto home as dawn broke. Sam Creed was nearly finished packing a large suitcase.

Don’t you need another one of these shirts and ties? You’re going to be a full week his wife Nancy said. His job in itself doesn’t require a lot of travel, although occasional Sam will be gone for several days for trade conferences.

Yeah, yeah I guess I better pack another. That will be enough. It won’t be entirely accounting.

That was a stretch. A very big stretch. Actually, there would be no accounting whatsoever. It wasn’t actually a business trip. Sam Creed was slightly over average height with a thin, muscular build. He pulled a tee shirt over his bare chest and gave his brown close cropped hair a quick brush. He didn’t really need a brush, usually just a dry towel after a shower would do a good enough job. He stared momentarily at the stash of after shave lotions and colognes. He used to like them as a kid, but grew to dislike the overpowering aroma of heavily applied perfume and cologne. One of these days he would toss them.

Nancy was out in the hallway running a vacuum. He pulled his nightstand drawer opened and pulled a semi-automatic pistol from under a pile of rolled socks. The heft of the Sig Sauer P226 was reassuring. Should he take it? He didn’t intend to start any trouble. But on the other hand he might run in to some bad elements too. He decided it couldn’t hurt, and placed it under a folded shirt. He didn’t have a carry permit for it. He looked in to getting one, but he didn’t really need it. Hell, he could teach the damn class in handgun defense you need to take to get it.

Finally everything was packed. It took a whopping twenty minutes. When Nancy packs, it takes closer to twenty hours. He threw the bag in the minivan, and gave Nancy a goodbye kiss. Tell your boyfriends to raise the seat when they pee in my toilet he said as he walked towards the door with a sarcastic smile.

Tell your girlfriends not to leave their underwear in your suitcase Nancy said with a laugh. Now that would be a good problem to have, Sam thought.

He looked in the rearview mirror as he pulled away in the minivan. This trip was overdue. Thirty years overdue. The Rovers were all but disbanded. Louis Smith died twelve years ago from cancer. Wayne Levers, the man the cops were pretty sure was the trigger man that killed his father, was still alive and riding with a handful of riders bearing the logo of the Rovers. Oh they knew how it went down, they just couldn’t prove it. Mel Fergus, the victim, was killed by a shotgun blast. Jackson Creed, a Rover, was found outside, dead, with a bullet hole in his forehead and the pistol in his right hand. The boy must have had a beef with the man, and took things in to his own hands, lawd have mercy on his soul. Terrible, terrible thing.

Yeah. Right. Sam Creed really had no idea what his reaction would be when he finally caught up to Wayne Levers, but he knew in his heart, he would pay. Somehow. In his mind, Levers had been killed countless times. With guns, with meat cleavers, with chain saws, with acid chemicals, all with varying degrees of pain and suffering.

Sam’s father had similar demons. He didn’t grow up as a rogue biker. He was actually a fairly successful traveling salesman working for a restaurant supply company. He lost his own parents late in life in a botched robbery, and gradually started drinking, and finally fell off the wagon and joined a rogue biker gang in order to fulfill some fantasy that he would strike back at the criminals that took away his parents. But of course it didn’t work out that way. He was in over his head. Way over his head.

He looked at the disappearing city though the rear view mirror of their minivan. Minivan? Why the hell am I driving a minivan? He thought to himself. It’s so boring. It’s so stereotypical. He sold the Mustang after the doctor told him about the terminal brain tumor. He decided to start living better again, and do things like be a better husband to Nancy, and be less of the wild person he really was inside. But sometimes, he just wanted to be another person. Maybe, just maybe, by trading his self for another, this whole fixation thing with the Rovers would just go away. But it won’t. That’s what the doctor said. That’s what the counselor said. With that, if nothing else, he wanted to close the chapter on his father.

The blare of the FM radio played a pop song he had long forgotten. Mary’s Prayer was the name, he believed. The last time he heard it, he was driving in the other direction on the 40 on his way back from the end of his military service, so he could start a new career. Not just a new career, but a new life. It seemed like starting new lives was starting to become a recurring theme. He knew something was going to be different when he returned; he wasn’t exactly sure how, but somehow the trip would become a life changing experience.

They are all old men now. How long do these bikers live? Most would succumb to an early ending fueled by a lifestyle of drugs and violence, he imagined. Maybe he would get there, find them all deceased, call it a day and return. Nah, at a very minimum, he would locate Wayne Levers grave, chip the words burn in hell on the headstone and smear shit all over it. But what if Levers was still alive? He thought about it a lot. He would probably just let him know that Jack Creed is waiting for him in hell, ready to burn his eyeballs out with a torch and just walk away.

He remembered that dad used to make sales calls and drove this highway countless times. And he did the same on the bike too, once he started it. Why would he go all the way to New Mexico to be with a gang of bikers on weekends? Well it started with just long trips by himself. He’d jump on the Harley and just ride. South, North, West, East. He’d meet different people. He used to tell mom he was using the bike to do sales trips, but she knew that he had already lost that job by that time. Sam guessed he just found some good friends out that way and chose to hang with them. Or maybe they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

––––––––

The drone of the noisy turboprop engines was deafening as the ramp of the Hercules slowly dropped. The plush, green canopy below was now visible. But it was so close! God the plane was flying low. Creed had jumped from minimum jump altitude, five hundred feet before, but this looked lower than that even. The jumpmaster gave the signal to hook up. Then the green light came on. The line of soldiers quickly and deliberately shuffled to the rear of the ramp deck and stepped off. All Creed could see was canopy. What the hell are we jumping in to?

You have to trust at some point, whoever is guiding you, whoever is planning this out, whoever is flying you, has these things figured out. As his chute opened, it became clear that they just now entered the clearing. It was a narrow, risky drop zone, but it was doable. Please nobody get stuck in a tree, this isn’t the time for it. It seemed like he hit the ground almost as soon as the chute fully inflated. That’s one way to remove wind and steering errors out of the equation he guessed.

Goddammit Creed, what did I tell you about doing a standup? This is no place and no time to get a busted ankle! The Lieutenant yelled as he approached Creed.

Sorry sir Creed responded. I didn’t have a lot of time to react. Why the hell did they drop us so low?

See those mountains? The Lieutenant replied.

Yes...

Those are where the Cubans put their gun batteries. You know why we didn’t get shot out of the air?

No sir.

Because they couldn’t depress their guns low enough to shoot the planes.

Lieutenant Frey! The First Sergeant said in a gruff, thundering voice. We need to keep the noise down here. We aren’t in admin mode. Let’s please not turn this into a hot DZ.

You’re right Top.

The First Sergeant grimaced but kept his mouth shut. Yes technically a Lieutenant outranks him but dammit, he does not get to address him as Top. Junior enlisted don’t even get to call him Top. The platoon sergeants do. The company commander gets to. But not damn butter bars. Regardless, this is no place to worry about protocol. There is a mission at hand and a million tasks that need to be performed. Silently he rallied with his platoon sergeants and got a whisper tally as the last chute was gathered. The men quickly moved out of the open clearing in to the jungle. Overall the drop had been a fairly good success; there were only two casualties. One minor, a gash that the medics could dress as they rallied for movement, and one with a sprained knee. That could be problematic. He whispered the report to the company commander, who was kneeling over a map with his platoon leaders and platoon sergeants.

Creed took cover under some lush foliage. It was hot and humid, and the sun was burning down. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then thought for a minute. This is combat. Actual combat. Smoking okay to do? During the briefing, they said absolutely no smoking at night, whatsoever. During the day? In admin mode it was okay but not on patrol or in a movement. A couple of puffs of smoke could be seen coming from below the foliage. Guess it was okay. Smoke ‘em while you can.

This island was tiny. What the hell was this whole thing even about? What was reported in the news, and what was presented in the briefings, seemed to differ significantly. Well this was what it was all about. Time to kick some ass. When he returned, it would be time to rip that stupid Expert Infantryman’s Badge off and put on a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. An EIB is basically a faux CIB earned through qualification, which was the horizontal