From Out of the Shadows: The Envoy Returns

By Daniel Luther Jackson

An old man with amnesia, an orphaned young girl running from a secret government agency and an ex-soldier recuperating from his war injuries find themselves caught up in a rapid series of events that threaten the very destiny of the planet. A shadowy figure called The Envoy emerges from the shadows of history to bring together a group of strangers to carry out his mission to save the world.
He and his team soon find themselves embroiled in battles between a shadow government known as The Guild, a force of invading UFO's and a rogue extraterrestrial called The Stick Figure Man that was unearthed in an ancient ruin.
Each member of the team brings special abilities to play in the epic battles that take place in this modern saga that chases across America through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado.
Weaving modern technology and ancient history together in one grand story, Mr. Jackson has created a world of ancient mysteries and the incredible hero that rules it. Adult content and language

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781105862793

Book preview

From Out of the Shadows: The Envoy Returns

From Out of the Shadows: The Envoy Returns

By Daniel Luther Jackson

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Luther Jackson

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-105-86279-3

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Cover Illustration by Daniel Luther Jackson

Made in the United States of America

Preface

What you hold in your hands is more than what it appears at first glance. It is a work of fiction that awaits a reader’s avid perusal, of course. It is also my first work of literature in this lifetime and for me it holds a special place of affection in my heart. Mine is a heart filled with shadows that eternally seek the light of truth.

It has been a long and arduous journey to reach the top of this mountain. There were many who said I could never do it. There were just as many who said I would never finish it. Now, with its completion, there will be those who say it was not worth my effort. Let me assure you, that I have done it. I have finished it and it was well worth my efforts.

In this book, you will find a group of people wrapped up in their own lives, oblivious of the real world around them. They are not policemen or firemen or doctors or any member from these traditionally heroic professions. They are the people who live from day-to-day with their habits and pleasures and problems just like the rest of the billions of people who inhabit this planet. They are not pinnacles of virtue nor are they truly criminal in their exploits. The characters here are not out to change the world; they are just like you or me with the foremost question that comes out of their mouths being, What’s in it for me? These people live in their own shadows and rarely come into the light of true enlightenment without coercion due to the effects from the universal forces of fate and tragedy.

My characters are based on real people I have known and met along the way. These characters are not trying to save the world, but in the end that is exactly what they do. They do not come from the ranks of the chaste and religiously pure of heart. They come from the real places where heroes are born. They come from a place where people live and work, just trying to make a living and stay out of trouble as best they can. For those that know me, you may find a name similar to yours and for that take heart. It is because I love and cherish the memory of old friends and my tribute is their vicarious inclusion in my book.

Heroes do not always come from the sky or riding in on a white horse. Often, they come from the shadows in our lives from a place we don’t expect. The value of the personal sacrifice of total strangers is the source of true courage and hope in this world.

This story was born from a time of great loss and sorrow in my life when we suffered the tragic loss of my stepson, Colt in July of 2010. For the months following his death, the morning sunlight had a strange caste for me and I often found myself seeing familiar things in new ways. It was a cosmic time and I found the seed of this story inside of me waiting for me to bring it out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

I still remember quite clearly the morning that I first got the idea for this book. I was driving into Fort Worth one morning and the sunrise was pushing single rays of light through low dark clouds. As I drove by on the interstate, an area was illuminated by a single beam of light shining down through the clouds. In this illuminated area was a single tree stretching its limbs to the sky as if in supplication to the gods to notice its singular plight in the tableau of life. I observed this tree that I had driven by a thousand times or more without any notice of its existence. I thought to myself with wonder, why on this particular day I was privileged to see this tree in a new light. It was almost as if I was the only man on earth to witness the event and maybe in a way I was. I began to wonder at how many other things I took for granted on the road of life, never stopping to notice the beauty along the way.

So began the train of thought that led me to the Envoy and his quest. It started as an idea of a quest by a solitary figure from the shadows of history carrying the means to save a world.

Now, a year later, you hold the result of my efforts before you. I make no apologies for the story here. I quickly came to a crossroads in the process. At its junction, I realized that either I could censor myself as I went or lay it all on the line without restriction. I went with the latter option. For that reason the text is uncensored and politically incorrect. The novel has an adult rating due to the sex, drugs and violence described in the storyline so you are forewarned.

Hopefully you will see it as more than mere words on a page, but also as a way to look at the world in a new way with adventure around the next corner if we are just willing to take that first step to get there.

Finally, let me say thanks for even taking the time to read my novel. It will not be the best writing you have ever read I assure you and I make no claims to my expertise in writing. Beyond the imperfection of my writing abilities, you will find a great story here and if you find yourself laughing, grinning and smiling along the way, then I have been successful in my original goal…to entertain my readers.

Daniel Luther Jackson

Bartonville, Texas

September, 2011

Chapter 1 - - - The Man

The man walked from the dark into the light.

He had awakened only moments earlier in the shadows behind the building he now stood before. There was a dull ache in the back of his skull and his mouth was dry as sandpaper. As he scanned his surroundings he realized he didn't have any clue as to where he was or how he had gotten there.

He stood in the alley behind some sort of brownstone building that ran the length of the block. He could see a street light's circle of light at the end of the alley where it met the street.

He had been lying on his side behind the garbage dumpster between the steel of the dumpster and the cinder block wall that enclosed it. Next to him he had found a gun, a hat and a flashlight. He was also wearing a light black leather jacket. In the right inside pocket was what appeared to be a dead smart phone. In the left pocket he found a pair of eyeglasses in a folding case. The initials, AO were engraved in gold letters on the case.

Under the pocket with the smart phone device was another deeper pocket. In it, he found three extra clips for the gun. Each clip was loaded with different colored bullets. One clip had red casings with copper points. One clip had black casings with silver slugs. The third clip had regular brass casings with some kind of bluish metal he didn't recognize. It was also not a caliber he knew. It looked somewhere between the gauge of a .38 and a .45 caliber bullet.

Mental confusion came over him with a rush of emotion. He tried to remember why he was there but to no avail. Even more disturbing was the fact that his personal possessions seemed strange, even foreign to him. He couldn't even remember his name at the moment.

Fuck, he thought, what the hell is up with this?

He reached for his wallet. It was in his right back hip pocket. The opposite of where he usually kept it. In the process of reaching, he winced from a pain in his hand.  The first two knuckles on his right hand were raw and bloody. Now how did that happen he wondered?

He felt his body up and down for other injuries, but other than the dull ache in his head, he seemed okay.

He felt in his boot and found an evil looking knife sheathed inside it. When he felt the edge of the blade with a fingertip, it lightly cut his finger. It was razor sharp.

What was he doing out here in the bad part of town with this small arsenal of items?

Who am I? He thought.

His head was swimming as he opened his wallet. Inside were an operator’s license for all classes, including limo and motorcycle. He didn't seem to have any trouble getting around, he thought. The name on the license was Alfred Oldman and it had a photo of a middle aged man with an easy smile on it.  In the lower left corner were two small red words. No Detainment they read. Weird, he thought. Behind the license was a black plastic card with a red magnetic strip. It also had red letters on it. They read, AGENT - FULL ACCESS. Stranger and stranger he thought. Other than some loose bills of currency, there was only one other card in the wallet. It resembled a credit card. It was perhaps the strangest of the three. It had the names of two credit card companies on it. There were MasterCard and Visa icons on it and then he saw two more puzzling words. GLOBAL was the first. UNLIMITED was the second. There was no name or number only a metallic laser square for a thumb print.

He put all three cards back in the wallet and put the wallet back in his left hip pocket.  For some reason it just felt like the right position, for now.

His mind was really reeling now. He sat down on the curb with his legs splayed out in front of him. He put his head between his knees and took a few deep breaths. He started to feel a little clearer.

He could feel a lump under his left buttock. When he sat down part of his jacket had slipped under his ass and he had sat on it. When he felt the inside of the jacket he could feel nothing. With closer inspection, he found what looked like a loose string sticking out of a seam in the lining. When he pulled the string a four inch slit opened in the lining. It was undetectable, otherwise. He pulled the string again and the slit whispered shut. He couldn't see even a seam where it opened and closed.

He pulled the string and the slit opened again.

He reached inside the hidden pocket. His fingers closed on a small case. On the outside was another thumb print pad. He pressed his right thumb on the center of it. It snapped open a quarter of an inch. Well it was obviously owned by him, he thought. He opened it all the way.

Inside were items on little trays with compartments holding various sizes of what appeared to be glass vials? There was a bottle filled with pills that looked like aspirin or better.

There was a small wooden box with a cigarette pipe and a substance that looked like a cross between cannabis and tobacco. There were several vials filled with white or brown powder. Another vial contained small green crystals. There was a steel syringe with spare points and a thin tourniquet. The trays slid up and back like a fisherman's tackle box to reveal more things on deeper shelves.

He found something that looked like a laser scalpel. There was a small case with a stylized red cross on it. Obviously, it was a first aid kit.

He saw a small plastic case with what looked like five small firecrackers with fuses.   In the bottom of the case, he found a small electronic device about an inch square with two leads like an ohm meter. Another small case held little black cubes. It was labeled Timers. There were more items beyond any easy recognition as well.

Finally, he came to a small flat stone with a circle etched into its surface. Inside the circle were the words PRESS HERE.

He was, ironically, reminded of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and the small bottle labeled DRINK ME.

He closed the case and returned it to the hidden pocket. He left the small slit in the lining open for now.

And then it hit him, it hit him hard and then it hit him again…

What person or beasts was he so afraid of encountering, that it would require all this lethal force and all these other tools? It was like he was on a military-style mission.  He was packing some fire power, that one wasn’t so abnormal. The rest of it though indicated he was a one man operation. He must be on a mission, he thought. He had obviously blacked out somehow or hit his head.  He felt the back of his skull. He wondered if maybe, he had a concussion and that had caused his amnesia, but he couldn’t find a lump or bump in the area of his headache.

He had been ignoring one obvious fact. He had been going around and around it without quite looking at it. Now he forced himself to look at it full in the face.  He looked down at his mid section. He didn’t see a six pack of rock hard abdominal muscles there. Shit, he thought, he had to be fifty years old if he was a day. This whole mess just didn’t make sense. It seems if he was any kind of real threat and had real military backing, he would be in a little better shape…he kept thinking.

This must mean he was a vigilante, he thought. Nothing else made good logic. That is if he was on a mission with good intentions…but what if his intent was not good, he thought? What if he was some kind of assassin? That would definitely make sense, too. Or even worse, what if he was some kind of sociopath and a mentally twisted serial killer?

The whole train of thought was getting to be a little too much for him to continue. He took a deep breath; followed it with another.

First things, first, he thought, right now, what I really need is a drink.

He put on the hat.

Chapter 2 - - - The Boy

The boy walked across the street. He looked to be about five years old but he was actually a month shy of four. He was tall for his age, so it was an easy mistake to make for even the most observant passerby. He walked steadily, evenly with purpose, looking down at the ground. On his face was a determined look as if he was following something, but what he followed was not apparent.

He paused under a tree and looked around for a moment. Scanning each direction, he actually seemed to sniff the air. He was in front of a city park.  From where he stood there was a long sloping hill that inclined down to a small creek.  There were a dozen picnic tables with grills on steel posts were scattered between him and the creek. Trashcans with lids on short chains stood sentry at each table.

His name was Tristan and he knew he had only scarce seconds before his mother starting calling his name wondering at his whereabouts. Tristan was following something that he had started calling the magic tracks.  He had first started seeing them a few days before.

He had begun to see marks on the ground here lately and sometimes he saw lines in the air that seemed to follow the marks on the ground. The lines he saw today converged in a little hollow behind some bushes. It was shielded on three sides from view of the street.

He walked to where the lines converged and looked around. Faintly he could see the outline of a square that stretched from the ground to a distance about five feet in the air. As he moved to the right he could see it was shaped like a greeting card that was partially open to make a gap in mid-air. It was a doorway, five feet high and three feet wide. From this gap/doorway came a light brighter than the surrounding hollow and its bushes where he stood.

The boy moved until he stood directly before the gap. Through the gap he could see a path that led between two large boulders and then upward through trees with white flowers. As he continued to look upward, he could see low mountains in the distance. A bird called from a tree by the path. He stood transfixed by the scene before him.

Tristan, his mother called from behind him! She had come looking for him.

He turned back and went in her direction.

Chapter 3 - - - Lilith Lynn

Dropping off the radar is a lot tougher than it used to be.

She had been making plans for a while now just in case this sort of thing came up. So it wasn’t like she was totally unprepared. She always had a safe place to go in an emergency and an escape route already mapped out.

She had stashed twenty-five thousand euros and fifty thousand dollars in small bills in a lock box in a steel safe under the shed out behind her house. She had more at several other locations across the country if she needed it.

Along with the money, she kept a backpack filled with energy bars, a six-pack of bottled water and her customary survival knife. Also included was a GPS navigation device, two changes of clothes and a custom blanket.

She lived by her number one rule; if she ever had any suspicions that she may have been discovered, she was gone.  When she heard about the men in black cars today, she knew it was time to hit the road again. On arrival back at her rent home, it had taken her all of five minutes to get the cash and the back pack and get the car on the road.

When they searched her place, they would have some doubts as to whether a living breathing human being had ever even resided there.

The car she was driving was a nondescript model without a recent washing or waxing. Any witness to its passage would be hard pressed later to describe even its model or make. It was devoid of dents or mars in its black finish and any insignia as to manufacturer or car dealer had been removed. She had left her work car, a little Volkswagen, behind at the store where she had been working for the last three months. It would have been an easy mark by the local authorities and easily tracked by satellite, so she had had to leave her little bug behind.

It was just as well. Speed and stealth had been to her advantage so far. It had only been a half hour since she had stepped out for a smoke at work. They were probably only just now starting to come to the realization that she had disappeared. By the time they called the authorities, she would already be in Oklahoma. By the time they started a search for her, she would be in Colorado already and two states away.

She drove along back roads and ranch trails continuing in an ever northward direction to an eventual rendezvous with the Interstate. Once there, she would head straight to the safe house in Colorado.

Her name was Lilith Lynn and she had been on the run since she was fifteen years old. She had been under pursuit by The Guild for the last seven years. If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was an adolescent, and one whose appearance was changing as she developed into adulthood, The Guild would probably have caught her the first year. As it was, they now had only a rough idea of her true appearance. They were more familiar with old her hobbies and interests and so sought her by these means and whatever others they deemed necessary. 

Lilith’s parents had been research scientists. Both had been specialists in their fields. Her father had been working on a project in quantum physics for ten years. Her Mom had been working in robotics. They had worked in a facility that was run by an agency known as The Guild. There was a sign in front of the security fence that read U.S. Technology Corporation, but it was only to hide its real purpose. If any of the property owners that lived near the facility were aware of the top secret work actually going on there; they definitely would not have been happy to be living so near the facility. Everyone that worked at the place had top level security clearances due to the nature of the research that was conducted there. For that reason, Lilith had never really known anything about what her parents were doing at U.S. Tech.

It had been the summer before she started high school. She had gone out to a movie with a couple of her girlfriends one Saturday afternoon. When she got home, her Mom and Dad looked as if they had been waiting for her to get home. She had kind of wondered at the time why they acted so solemn, as it wasn’t any particular date that required celebration or tribute. It had been a typical scorching day in the middle of August. It was the time of year in Texas when no one spent much time anywhere that wasn’t air conditioned.

They had gone to a restaurant on the west side of Dallas called Mercado Juarez. It was styled after a Mexican market with a big open area in the middle with a water fountain. Booths ran along the walls. Tables for larger parties of diners were placed in the open part of the room. They had taken a table near the fountain and she could see goldfish swimming in the water.

They had feasted on warm tostado chips and salsa with big bowls of queso and guacamole dip. They ate beef enchiladas and refried beans with Spanish rice. For dessert, they’d had steaming sopapillas with honey and butter poured over them.

After dinner, her Dad sipped on a frozen margarita and studied her as if she were a lab specimen. Her Mom had set down her glass of chardonnay and said, Well, John are you going to tell her or not?

Tell me what, Daddy, she had asked?

Chapter 4 - - - The Guild Agents

He was a common enough looking fellow. He was just good-looking enough not to be memorable to even the most observant witness. The Guild liked its agents that way. It didn’t want its agents to stand out in the crowd. The Guild preferred to keep a low profile in every way possible. For that same reason, The Guild had espionage and surveillance equipment that surpassed even the most technologically advanced countries on the planet.

The agent’s name was Mike.  Mike was really amazed sometimes at the devices that he had at his disposal.  Especially in the last few years, it seemed like the technology had rocketed to a new level. Some of his tools, he couldn’t even start to imagine how they worked physically.  Sometimes, he felt like the caveman with a cigarette lighter, it seemed like magic, because he didn’t understand it.

Currently Mike was working a case with his partner, Dave.  They had been following their latest quarry for almost a year now. They had inherited the case from another pair of pursuit agents who had followed the same individual for two years already.  Before them, Mike didn’t know who had been following this trail. He just knew that the first report on Lynn’s activities had been almost seven years previous. It was the first report in almost a thousand. The trail had grown cold and gotten warm several times in those seven years. Since Mike and Dave had picked up the case it had been pretty much ready for the cold file, but a few months ago they had picked up a lead down in Texas.

They had set up a group of The Guild’s Surveillance and Espionage computers for a Level 5 covert investigation loop. That meant that the computers would begin monitoring everything from satellite photos of the area to traffic cameras at street intersections. They would hack into local security systems and access department store cameras, ATM machine cameras and any other security systems in the area of study. They would review overall purchasing and receiving of all the retailers in the area and prepare spread sheets for review by the agents. They would review banking transactions of all the financial institutions in the area and look for any characteristics of Lynn’s habits. They would listen in on all telephone conversations in the area for tell tale words that might be in reference to their quarry. They would begin GPS tagging of any vehicles of interest and prepare reports of all activity that met the criterion of Lynn’s psychological profile. If any red flags went up, the computer group began emailing and texting Mike and Dave with directives and would start sending bubbles.

Bubbles were micro drones of The Guild’s design. Their existence was top secret. They were so named because that was exactly what they resembled.  It was an omni-directional camera inside a sphere of specialized Gorilla glass that maneuvered on mini jets of concentrated helium. To the layman, it looked like a bubble randomly drifting on the breeze. The only drawback was that the bubbles required a support vehicle within a tenth mile radius of the surveillance site.

Mike and Dave had