Intrusion: A Keeno Crime Thriller

By Réal Laplaine

The federal law enforcement agency of Canada is called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP, one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the world, and one which is famous for several notable things:
Their motto, "We always get our man".
Their famously red riding jackets, black yellow-striped pants and blackjack boots and western style hats, mounted on big horses, which they still use to this day.
And lastly, if you are stupid enough as a terrorist, domestic or otherwise, to cross their paths, they probably won't hesitate to put a bullet in you - essentially, a no-tolerance policy when it comes to such threat levels.
The Keeno Crime Thriller Novels follow in this tradition, minus the riding outfits and horses of course, and are based on a special unit of the RCMP called the ATU or Anti-Terrorism-Unit, headed by Keeno McCole. This small team is called into play as point-man when it comes to taking on domestic terrorism or large-scale criminal rings.
Keeno McCole is a maverick crime-fighter, rarely listening to authority, but certainly no less passionate about getting his man as the saying goes.
He's deadly with a throwing knife, which never leaves his side.
He wears blue jeans and cowboy boots to work.
He drinks copious amounts of coffee along with bear claws.
He loves one woman, and none other.
When it comes to crime fighting, he is fearless to a fault, testimony to that fact are the large number of scars covering his body.
Along with his crime-fighting partner, Jake Williams, and two brilliant forensic and think-tank team members, Janene and Kelly, the ATU is relentless in searching down and removing the criminals on their radar - where ever that takes them in the world.
In Intrusion, the first book in this series, a viral pathogen is released in Toronto, one that starts killing off thousands of people in just days. Keeno and his team are called into play and the road they follow, a twisted and convoluted one, takes them deep into the Canadian tundra, to America and China, and back, eventually leading them to the ultimate weapon which has been developed, and would, if released, threaten the free world. As the clock ticks down, they not only have to find a way to stop the viral attacks, but more importantly, find and stop the people behind another, more potent and dangerous attack against our very freedom.

The other books that follow in this series are:

Quantum Assault: Book II
The One: Book III
The 9th Divinity: Book IV

"Calling this book a page-turner does not do it justice. The author takes what WE would all think is impossible and makes it not only possible....but probable." - Yankeelin

"Author, Real Laplaine, without being apologetic tells a suspenseful tale with dialog as raw and true as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police characters, who attempt to thwart a plot of international proportion." - Nancy Lee Canfield, Author of A Rose for My Mother

• Language: English
• Publisher: Réal Laplaine
• Release date: Apr 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370000913

Réal Laplaine

I write in several genres; crime thrillers, speculative fiction thrillers (some would call it sci-fi but I prefer speculative fiction because my themes are more possible than not) and geopolitical thrillers.I have written a few books which classify as literary fiction - novels with an inspirational edge.My focus has always been on writing very contemporary novels, which, while entertaining, pull no punches on the state of the world we live in, or the potential futures facing us, thus, the speculative fiction aspect of my works.In the bookstore at www.reallaplaine.com you will find my books in eBook formats (ePub/PDF) which are instantly downloadable to your computer, smartphone or other device. Links are provided for each book if you prefer to order Kindle, Nook, paperback or other formats from other book retailers.You will also find a number of my short stories which are cost-free.Some of my titles are now in audio book format - more are coming.Abolishing nuclear weapons:In 2014 I published a book, Twilight Visitor, a geopolitical thriller about China invading Iran for its oil, wherein Iran retaliates by firing a nuclear warhead at Beijing. The book has garnered tremendous reviews, comparing it to the best of Dan Brown and other similar authors, but what is important is that the story impresses on the reader that nuclear war is just a button away. In several of my subsequent geopolitical thrillers this thread also weaves through the stories, to help raise awareness on this existential threat to the future of our kids.Please take a moment to visit the page entitled B.A.N. or Ban All Nukes at www.reallaplaine.comRéal LaplaineAuthor of Break Out Bookswww.reallaplaine.com

Book preview

INTRUSION

A Keeno

Crime Thriller Novel

Copyright © 2015 by Réal Laplaine

Book cover design by Cindy Anderson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2011

Second edition: 2016

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflects the reality of any locations or people involved.

INTRUSION

A Keeno Crime Thriller Novel

by

Réal Laplaine

Other Books by Réal Laplaine

Quantum Assault – A Keeno Crime Thriller Novel

Twilight Visitor

The Deception People

The Buffalo Kid

Dead but not gone

See Me Not

Finding Agnetha

Earth Escape

Dedication

To Eva Lena who supported the starving artist and believed that my writing would amount to something, and to my many friends and readers who encouraged me to keep writing with their feedback and enthusiasm.

The Canadian Shield (Present Day)

Background information: The Canadian Shield is composed of igneous (volcanic) rock resulting from its long volcanic history – covered by a thin layer of soil. It stretches north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada; it also extends south into the northern reaches of the United States. Human population is sparse and industrial development is minimal, while mining is prevalent.

The elderly man stumbled out of his small, ramshackle home, gripping his left arm as he did. He felt overwhelming anguish as pain filled his chest, like a sledgehammer being repeatedly smashed into his heart.

He tripped and fell to his knees as he staggered over to his run-down Ford pickup. He fumbled to get his key from his pocket as the pain gripped him and finally slipped it into the ignition. The battered and dented vehicle chugged to life, emitting a gray plume of exhaust. He leaned into the steering wheel and pressed his forehead against it as he fought against the torment. All he could think about was making it to the hospital in time – but that was over thirty kilometers from where he lived on his piece of desolate rock.

He put the truck into gear, swung it recklessly in a wide arc, knocking over several garbage cans as he did, and then pulled onto the dirt road. Ahead of him was a roughly hewed cut through the Canadian Shield, heading for the small town that girded the inlet on Hudson Bay.

He fought back the overwhelming desire to simply shut down and slip into unconsciousness, where he wouldn’t have to endure the pain anymore. Instead, his survival instincts pushed him forward. He pressed down on the gas pedal and the old truck lurched and sped down the dusty road, throwing up a cloud of dirt as it did.

Unfortunately, Old Man Time showed up at that instant, as he eventually does, informing the elderly man that his allotment of days on earth had just come to an end. The man’s eyes watered with tears as he cherished the precious moments of his life with his family and friends – all of it passed before him in the flash of a few seconds. And then his heart, buckling under the brutal attack, suddenly stopped pumping and the man slumped back in his seat, dead.

The truck lurched to the right and flew off the road. The sound of it crashing into the embankment was swallowed up in the vast empty wilderness.

The wind howled and screamed as if in mourning for his passing.

It wasn’t until some hours later that another local drove by and saw the truck lying on its side with its engine still chugging and idling. He called it in to the local police and within the hour, a solitary police car arrived, followed by an unmarked white van. After the man was thanked for his help and given leave by the officer, two people from the van stepped out and walked over to the truck. Inside, they found the old man, his face wedged into the steering wheel and blood oozing out from several deep lacerations. They took him into the van and after informing the police officer that they would take care of the matter, they abruptly drove off. The officer was more than happy to leave it to them so that he didn’t have to do the paperwork. He made some quick notes on his pad and called for a tow truck.

The report that was filed by the Coroner’s office later that day was that fifty-eight year old Etsen Nakolak, a local indigenous Inuit, had lost control of his vehicle, swerved off the road and had suffered multiple fatal injuries to the head. No mention was ever made of the fact that he had endured a massive coronary meltdown, and certainly nothing was ever mentioned in the report about the micro-chips implanted in his left arm as well as the right side of his torso.

It was a ruthless land, challenging and demanding, and death was not an uncommon occurrence. Then again, no one would have known that Etsen Nakolak was a test case, a human guinea pig, and that his heart attack had been intentionally induced with both malice and forethought – as part of a scheme that was about to be unleashed on the nation.

1

(Thirty years earlier)

Every night it started the same way. The young four year old boy was alone in his room, sitting in a dark recess while staring at the crack of light that filtered underneath the door from the hallway outside.

He would purposely slow his breathing, taking short shallow breaths so as not to be heard. Inside was the omnipresent and growing anticipation and fear, the agonizing pain of knowing what was about to happen.

Nearly every night the same scenario would unfold, a living nightmare, a brutal reality that morphed a young boy’s impression of the world and taught him that there were monsters out there; ugly people, who did ugly things.

Often he would sit there for an hour, sometimes two, huddled in his dark corner next to the door, with his knees pulled up to his chin. He would listen for every sound as the fear grew and became tangible, so real that it felt like a solid block in the center of his stomach. With it came the acid taste of terror. He couldn’t describe it, but he knew what terror tasted like.

More nights than not, the shouting would start, first with their voices rising in anger, then followed by insane, violent, irrational screaming that would shake him to the core. Finally, there would be the sound that sickened him; it was the dull thud of a fist landing against her body, or the sharp smack of a hand, followed by her muffled and agonized sobs. The man’s voice would bellow through the house, as if announcing his superiority. Then the brutal silence would ensue, broken only by the faintest sound of his mother whimpering.

Each morning the young boy would wake up, waiting in suppressed agony until his mother stumbled from her room, her eyes black and swollen from the beating the night before. He shuddered at the thought of what the rest of her body might look like. She would smile weakly, trying to hide her pain and humility while preparing his breakfast.

The drama had happened so often that by the age of four he could no longer distinguish reality from his nightmares.

On the very day of his fourth birthday, his step-father staggered into the house, drunken and crazed, as usual. The mother told the boy to go to his room. The ensuing argument quickly morphed from screaming to beating.

He stood motionless in the middle of his room, his small body shaking, not from fear but from raw anger this time – because something inside of him had snapped. Some dam had burst, and the young boy was suddenly transformed from a passive victim into that of an aggressor.

He stepped from his room and snatched the scissors from the nearby bathroom.

From the kitchen he could hear the man screaming insanely at his mother. You fucking bitch, I’m gonna kill you!

The boy moved without a sound, entering through the kitchen door, where he saw his mother pressed back against the sink with blood streaming from her mouth. The man was hunched over her with one hand squeezing her throat and the other hand holding a knife poised above her. He screamed and ranted, saliva spitting out of his mouth as he did.

The boy closed the distance between them and without hesitation he drove the scissors into the man’s right thigh, pushing and twisting on them with all his strength.

Blood gushed out, spilling onto him and onto the floor.

The man howled and screamed like a wounded animal and fell back against the kitchen table, which then collapsed under his weight. He thrashed madly at his thigh, trying to pull the scissors from it.

His mother gasped as she took a breath. The skin on her throat was red and swollen where his hand had been choking the life from her. She stepped over the man and then drove the heel of her shoe into his head and screamed, If you ever touch me again, I’ll kill you, and then she ran from the house with her son.

The police arrived only moments later, as fortunately, a neighbor had already called for help. The man was carted away but not before he had emitted a stream of obscenities and threats at the boy and his mother.

It was the last time the boy saw that man. It was also the last time he ever thought of him as anything but an animal, and he continued to have nightmares over the next years as he relived the incident over and over again.

The vision of his mother nearly dying at the hands of this monster became a part of his personal fabric, so much so, that it morphed him into someone that would one day become the criminal’s worst nightmare.

2

After the incident the young boy and his mother moved away from Toronto to a small unadorned apartment in Kingston, on the northern shores of Lake Ontario.

The boy had nightmares most nights – haunted by the vision of the man attacking her.

His mother would hear her son crying to himself and even screaming in terror sometimes – and she would go and lay with him until he fell to sleep.

The incident had changed her son. She knew it. His mood had changed because the world had changed around him. It was no longer safe.

She had hoped by moving away that she could give him back a sense of security again, but the ghosts continued to haunt him and it broke her heart.

The boy’s name was Kenneth Caliman McCole. He never liked his name and even at his young age the precocious boy announced that he wanted to be called Keeno McCole. She objected but finally conceded to the strong-willed boy who was determined to keep it in spite of her challenges.

Keeno’s actual father, who had died shortly after his birth, was a full-blooded Metis, the First Nation of Canada – part indigenous Indian, part French and then some. Because of this, Keeno had also been accorded a ceremonial Iroquois name by his father’s family, one that translated to Storm Bringer. It seemed that the Iroquois people had some insight into where the boy was heading in life.

Shortly after his fifth birthday his mother sat down with Keeno and explained that she had to move back to the big city in order to make money so she could buy their own house and that in the meantime he would be staying on a farm with his uncle.

Keeno wasn’t happy with the arrangement but he trusted his mother implicitly.

Uncle Lou was his dad’s brother and he lived in the middle of nowhere, and from Keeno’s perspective, it really was NOWHERE! In the ensuing three years he rarely saw another human being. The closest town was an hour’s drive away, and the nearest major city, Ottawa, was a good three hour’s drive east.

Uncle Lou lived a reclusive life on his two hundred acre plot where he did nominal cropping each year, raised and tended to a small covey of pigs, chickens, a few milk cattle as well as a couple of horses. He was completely self-sufficient and only ventured to a store once a month to purchase tobacco, cigarette paper for his rollies – and of course, a few cases of beer. He would always return with some candy treat for Keeno, and a few more books to add to his dusty library.

From the day his mother dropped him off at that desolate farm with tears in her eyes, Keeno began to rise to a level of maturity that most kids only experienced in their early teens.

The lifestyle on the farm was stark and provided no luxuries whatsoever. There was no television. No telephones. The house was heated by an old turn-of-the-century wood stove in the kitchen and a wood-burning fire place in the small common room. In the winter it was colder than anything he had ever experienced and much of his time was spent huddled around the fire place, trying to stay warm while reading whatever book he could find from Lou’s library. That smell of burning wood remained with him for years after that, as if his cells had imbibed the odor.

They got their water from a well outside, and the shitter was a small shack behind the farmhouse – literally a flimsy wooden structure built around a hole in the ground. Unless you have ever sat on a frozen plank of wood, with a hole cut into it, with your ass bared to the cold winter wind while trying to take care of your business, the experience leaves one a little speechless.

Keeno had left behind the luxuries of civilization and had entered into a world that was completely devoid of any of the soft culture.

Uncle Lou introduced him to farm life, told him the schedule and what was expected of him, and from that point on he was up every morning at 6:30 a.m. hefting a shovel and a pitchfork, doing his share of the chores. It was a lifestyle which quickly transformed the small gangly kid into one with a strong back and a finely tuned physique.

He came to admire his uncle and saw him as a good man. Although he was a loner, having lost his wife to a disease some ten years earlier, he had a quiet wisdom about him. He never spoke much and was known sometimes to say less than ten words in an entire day. Nevertheless, he became a mentor to the young Keeno.

Keeno learned most everything by watching and mirroring Uncle Lou. He followed him into the forest and learned how to hunt, how to track game, how to ride a horse bareback and most of all – how to handle his life in the wilderness of northern Ontario. His uncle showed him which wild plants he could eat and which ones would make him sick or even kill him. He showed him how to build a lean-to in the event of sudden storms, and how to survive in the forest with just a knife and his wits.

The lifestyle suited Keeno just fine. He enjoyed solitude. He’d had enough of human violence and insanity in the first four years of his life.

As to his uncle, he was a tall thin man, with sinewy arms and legs, toughened by a lifetime of hard physical labor. His face was a sea of deep crevices, skin that had been weathered, like old leather, by sun, wind and cold. Despite his age, his head was still covered in a shock of black hair, with gray tinges – and he possessed a set of deeply inset eyes. With those eyes he merely had to look at you to make you feel as if he was scouring your very soul.

Uncle Lou had a distinguishing characteristic which Keeno found fascinating, although he had no desire to emulate it. Whether working the fields, milking a cow, shoveling shit or even shaving, the man always had a rollie cigarette dangling and burning precariously from his lower lip. It seemingly defied the laws of gravity as it hung there with no apparent means of doing so.

He soon came to discover that Uncle Lou was a master at throwing knives. One day he watched in awe as the man pulled a slender double-edged knife from its sheath, flipped it several times catching it precisely between the tips of his calloused forefinger and thumb, and then with surreal accuracy, he let the knife fly where it thudded into a distant tree with a reverberating twang. From that day forward Keeno decided that he too would become a master at handling knives.

Keeno used much of his spare time to practice knife-throwing. One day, after countless failed attempts, Uncle Lou stepped up next to him with an admonishing look in his eyes. He spoke with a strange kind of Canadian rural dialect, one which Keeno had never heard before coming to the farm. He never said the words you or your, but instead he bastardized them into ya and yur.

I reckon that yur the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, he said lamentably, his rollie bouncing up and down on his lower lip as he spoke. Ya just won’t give up on throwing that damn thing the wrong way. He pointed a large finger into Keeno’s face. Yur tryin’ to throw a knife like it’s somethin separate from ya. It’s not. It’s just like yur goddamn hand. Ya don’t think about using that – do ya?

Keeno shook his head.

Good. Stop think’n so much! Look at the damn tree, make an X somewhere on it and throw it like ya mean it and to hell with all this other stuff goin’ through yur head.

Lou stepped off to the side, struck a match and lit up the short stub of his cigarette and inhaled on it. A cloud of white smoke oozed from his lips and nostrils and formed a cloud above him.

Keeno turned and faced the tree. He cleared his mind of any thoughts, focused on a spot and let the knife fly. He watched as it spun, as if in slow motion, hilt over tip. Even before it struck, he sensed the dynamics and the power in it – a sort of kinetic bond. It was as if he himself was moving through the air on the same trajectory. The blade sliced into the tree with the ease of going through hot butter.

Lou chuckled, Now ya got it, boy, and he walked away.

By the time he was seven years old, his uncle had shown him how to load and fire a Winchester pump-action shotgun, a 33 Remington rifle, a Colt 45 handgun and a 22 caliber rifle – all of which he became proficient at using. In fact, Keeno could hit a tin can at a thousand meters with relative accuracy.

To his dismay, Keeno had not yet mastered throwing a knife with complete accuracy. Which is only to say that nine out of ten times he struck his mark. That 10% miss haunted him – in the same way that his nightmares still haunted him some nights.

Keeno’s passion for knife-throwing had been born from the realization that with a weapon in his hand he was no longer defenseless. But that meant he had to be perfect – because only with perfection could he be certain that no monsters would ever get near to him or his mother again.

One day Keeno walked out into an open field with a large oak tree some twenty-five ahead. On this day he was determined to prove to himself that he was a master.

It was a warm sunny day. The sky was a deep azure with only a few white cotton clouds floating by and the faintest hint of wind rustling the leaves. The only other sound was the call of a distant crow.

Keeno’s sense of hearing, an acute awareness to any deviation in the ambience around him which he had developed over the past two years, suddenly alerted him to a sound – that of a subtle footfall. He turned to see Uncle Lou watching him in the distance. The old man was leaning against a fence post with no particular expression on his face. It was the same old picture he had seen countless times before, but this time it was as if an artist had caught the moment on his canvass. Uncle Lou’s old wrinkled visage, tall frame encased within baggy work clothes and a battered and worn baseball cap perched to one side. And of course, as always, and probably to follow him to his grave, was that stub of a cigarette dangling from his lower lip as a thin trail of smoke snaked its way up the side of his face, forcing the old man to squint his left eye.

Lou nodded at him with a click of his eye. He knew how much Keeno had been practicing – and somehow, he sensed that the boy was putting himself to the final test. It was an important day, and decidedly, he had come to watch.

Keeno turned back to the big oak, pulled back his right arm and let his knife fly. The first throw was true to the mark. He walked over and pulled it from the tree and then repeated each successive throw with unvaried accuracy, until he had nine out of nine successes.

How many times have I reached this point only to fail on the tenth? He thought.

He tried to convince himself that he didn’t have to take it as defeat if he missed on the tenth throw, nine throws was still accurate and spectacular in itself. But no matter how he coated it, the truth was that he had challenged himself; that on the day that he could throw a knife ten times out of ten, without a miss, he would be a master and not a day before.

He stole a quick glance at his uncle, who, with a small smirk on his face, raised both hands to display nine fingers. He had been keeping count.

Keeno spun on his heel and in one swift motion he let the knife fly. It sliced the distance with silent beauty and cut into the tree with a thud that reverberated in the wide open space. Ten out of ten – he’d done it!

He turned to meet Uncle Lou’s smile.

3

(Present Day)

They sat around a small, ornate wooden coffee table carved by craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century.

The posh hotel room where they met was of similar design and quality. Located in Brussels, Belgium, it was a perfect meeting place. A special suite accorded only to the very wealthy and influential. It cost a meager five thousand Euros a night. Each pot of coffee delivered to the room was valued at two hundred Euros, and the small pastries they ate with their coffee were hand-baked by the best pastry chefs in the country, costing about ten Euros a bite.

The men in that