WYD Wish You Dead: Red 45

By Dan Andersen

Investigative reporter Trace Scott may be caught up in a web of bringing back time. Has an ex-spy found out how to bend karma, or has Dr. Curtis found out how to unshackle the past? Is the master race as simple as one woman? No one cheats time without paying for it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228847991

Dan Andersen

An entrepreneur-turned-author after 40 years of business experience, including a patent in aviation. Now he has turned his focus to writing. Andersen has a passion for family, fast cars, comedy and music. He is truly an anomaly with his ability to persevere. He has never been scared to enter uncharted waters. His diverse, eclectic knowledge will take you places where other writers rarely venture. He writes with a raw, straight-from-the-heart, gloves-off approach to reach his readers.

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WYD

Wish You Dead

Red 45

Dan Andersen

WYD Wish You Dead

Copyright © 2021 by Dan Andersen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-4878-3 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-4800-4 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-4799-1 (eBook)

Contents

1 - Bring Back Time

2 - Balloon

3 - No Stars, No Stripes

4 - Baby Jag

5 - Real Ring

6 - Good Lookin’

7 - Rough Crest

8 - Time to Dry Off

9 - Driving Lessons

10 - She Shoots, She Scores

1

Bring Back Time

An ambulance is racing down the rainy highway in the mountainous area of Mason. It is a beautiful city situated in the Naramada Valley. One hundred thousand people live here in wine country. The drizzle turns to sheets and the rain falls angrily on the metal roof of the ambulance.

The passenger EMT calls out, We have two women with gunshot wounds. One in her late fifties, a wound to the upper chest, and one in her forties with multiple shots through her shoulder. Both are critical but stable . . . ETA, ten minutes.

No response is heard from either the hospital or the dispatch centre.

What the hell? the driver says, squeezing his fists on the steering wheel. We’ve got a roadblock up here; two white Ford trucks have barricaded us in.

The ambulance driver slams on the brakes, bringing the ambulance to a squealing stop, as an arrow pierces the driver’s-side headlight. Two masked men dressed in military fatigue walk up to either side of the ambulance with crossbows, and two other men follow to the back and quickly remove the patients, carry them to the backs of the Ford trucks and drive away. The ambulance attendants, frozen in fear, remain positioned with their hands in the air until the assassins have left. A deep-grey Mustang displaying STEPCHILD on its rear deck lid sits idling in the middle of the highway. It’s rough rumble taunts all who would dare approach. Slowly, the driver’s-side door opens. A tall woman with long blond hair steps out, dressed head to toe in black leather. She stretches in the falling rain, looking up to the sky. She leans backward and lets the rain uncurl her long locks and sticks her tongue out to capture the moisture from the clouds. She pauses, then bends over slowly and grabs a cowboy hat out of the back of the Mustang. She methodically starts walking over to the ambulance, but halfway there, she starts to skip and then slows her gait. With her right hand, she reaches behind her back and pulls out a gun, and with her left hand she reaches behind herself and pulls out a silencer. Ten feet away from the ambulance she starts to screw on the silencer. She arrives at the driver’s side of the ambulance with the windows rolled up and looks at the attendants with both her hands in the air. She gently raps the gun’s muzzle on the glass and gestures at them to roll down the window. The male ambulance driver reaches down slowly with his left hand and presses the button to lower the window and then returns his hand to an upright position.

Isn’t this a great night? I can smell everything in the air when it rains like this. I also love the smell of death, the woman says as she taps the revolver’s muzzle on the top of the driver’s head.

The attendants in the ambulance are shivering with the cold and shaking with fear.

The woman with the gun continues in a phony Southern drawl, You know, my associates back there, they’re kind of primitive . . . they like to use archery equipment. Not me. I prefer the cold, impersonal approach of this here revolver and the heat that comes off of it after it’s fired. She backs up six feet, putting her revolver at her side, and continues in a near growl, I’m gonna get you to step out of your vehicle and take your pants off.

The ambulance driver turns and looks at the attendant with terror in his eyes and then turns back. He opens the door slowly and steps out into the pounding rain.

The lady takes her calculated time and commands the man in an eerie tone, I’d like you to remove your shoes, your pants, your socks and your underwear, and throw them over in the bush.

She can hear the faint sound of movement and smell the fear coming from the back of the ambulance: another EMT has not yet been accounted for. The driver discards his wet clothing, but then pauses, shivering in the street next to his vehicle while wearing nothing but a pair of blue boxers.

Okay, fuckhead . . . they come off, too, and if you waste any more time I’m going to kill both of your coworkers right here, right now, she says as she pulls the gun up and aims it at his coworker in the passenger seat.

He reaches down with both hands and removes his underwear and leaves them in a puddle in front of his toes.

Just then, there is a commotion from the rear of the ambulance as a person bails out of the back and runs down the road. She turns and fires quickly. Two shots and the person falls to the ground and rolls into the muddy ditch. The attendant in the front seat screams and begins to cry, bringing her hands up to cover her face.

The assassin shifts her focus back to the man and states clearly, Turn around, bend over the seat and grab your partner’s hands.

Shaking and wet, the goosebumps on the man now surpass the size of the raindrops that are bending the branches on the trees. The rain makes the large man feel minuscule as he turns and slowly walks back to the ambulance. He reaches across the seat and the attendant removes her hands from her face and takes his wrists. The next twenty seconds feels like tomorrow’s headlines in both their minds as their eyes lock in cold reality.

The man yells out, My God! and then his head bobs up and down as tears escape from his eyes. His face contorts and the attendant looks away.

She pulls the trigger. Click. She backs up and fires one round into the trees and brings the barrel back, pinning his testicles to the side of the seat, searing his manhood like a plastic spoon on a hot barbecue. She backs up again and fires two rounds into each one of his butt cheeks from less than five feet away. The attendant releases the man’s wrists and he collapses in a pile outside the driver’s door and rolls down the embankment into the ditch.

The woman with the gun walks up to the open ambulance door, reaches down slowly into her front pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. She tosses it across the seat toward the attendant and says calmly, Here are their real names and what they really are. He’s a pedophile from Austin, Texas, who has been wanted for more than two years and she’s his partner. She’s wanted on animal cruelty charges all the way back in Bolivia. You can load them up, run them into the city and ask for Dr. M.C. at the hospital. But you cannot speak of this to anyone. Just tell them bandits knocked you out and when you came to, this is what you found. And you can tell MC, ‘The Quiver’ sends her regards.

She unscrews the silencer from the gun and places both gun and silencer in their respective holsters behind her back under her jacket. She walks back to her car. Halfway there, she turns and brings her right hand up and nods to the attendant as rain drips off the brim of her black cowboy hat. A set of headlights from a large black semi flash twice a quarter mile up the road. She drives off toward the semi and the loud rumble of the grey Mustang suddenly becomes a memory.

Eleven months goes by. Esme is working as a janitor cleaning bathrooms at City Hall. Her face is battered and bruised due to an altercation with her inbred boyfriend.

Janice Breaker, a striking, athletic woman, fifty-five years old, with medium-length dark hair, hazel eyes and high cheekbones, is drinking a caramel macchiato on her way to her Detroit office. She stops her clean, black, 5 Series BMW at a traffic light. She puts the coffee cup in the front holder. She touches the screen on her car to activate the incoming phone call. The female caller—Tour Guide—states, How’s the coffee?

Janice rolls her passenger side window up, still sitting at the traffic light. She looks around to see if she’s being watched or followed. She smiles smugly, and replies in a cautious tenor, I’m not drinking coffee anymore. Don’t you know that shit’ll kill you?

The light turns green, and the not-so-friendly motorist behind her in a pewter GMC truck honks his horn.

She drives ahead slowly and the voice on the other end says, You always were a lying bitch. You tried to scrub me clean, so when you’re done choking on that coffee, I’ll send you some details.

Driving away from the light and picking up speed, she checks in her rearview mirror, her peripheral vision alerted as she says, I thought you were dead. Am I ever going to get rid of you?

Listen here, you . . . you useless, impetuous twat, the answer to that is, and always will be, am I ever going to get rid of you? seethes the voice on the other end.

Click, the call ends.

Janice drives and pulls into the underground parking stall reserved for her at the office. She swirls her coffee in its cup, which is almost empty. It’s weighty still, and there’s a clunky feel to the cup.

Curiosity comes over her. With her right hand, she slowly takes off the lid of the coffee cup. She holds back a scream from her chest as she looks inside to see a human tongue bent up in the bottom of the cup. She slowly puts the cup in the cupholder of the car and grabs the steering wheel at the bottom and squeezes tightly, as she closes her eyes and tries to control her breathing.

Six thousand miles south-west, the warm north winds from the Amazon have calmed, and the cool air from the Andes has arrived in the lush forest mountains of Paraguay. A small, one-hundred-year-old, half-timber, half-stone farmhouse sits in the middle of the mountains. The distressed home rests facing east, halfway to the crest. A faded garden hose attached to the house is looped over the railing and dripping. On the porch sits a wrinkled, one-hundred-and-seven-year-old woman named Anna, with her small, old mongrel dog. An old galvanized pail is between her legs, full of vegetables less the two tomatoes that tumbled to the ground and rolled across the rickety plank floor to come to rest against a man’s dress shoes.

The woman looks up.

The man says in a regimented tone, Deeper . . . deeper. Dig deeper in the bucket, old lady.

Without saying a word, the old woman slowly pulls one vegetable at a time out of the pail. The bottom of the pail is full of blood. The full sun overhead illuminates the hairs on her hands. A cool breeze blows across her back.

She pulls a discoloured human tongue out of the pail. She lets the human organ drop through her fingers onto the floor. The tongue makes a thud as it hits the wood. The elderly woman looks up at the man and starts to shake. A putrid smell rises between them. Six men in fatigues approach from different angles around the house.

A tall man tracks through the blood on the floor up to the woman. The blood seeps through the cracks of the planks. The eerie sound of it dripping below resonates.

The old woman starts to cry tenderly. The man walks up to her casually and raises his left hand slowly toward her.

As his fingers touch the top of her hair, he says, I just—

From the north, a twenty-inch arrow pierces the back of his skull and two inches of the arrow protrude through his mouth. He falls straight to his knees and then lands face down.

A multitude of arrows ring out, whistling through the air, taking down the men who were approaching the farmhouse.

The elderly lady watches as the men fall like dominoes. She stands up as she is approached by a man dressed in tourist attire.

He is a short man. He is wearing sunglasses and has a well-groomed chinstrap beard.

You came for me, says the woman in a shaking Español voice, as her tears turn to relief. She walks into the house very slowly and leaves the bloody tongue and the vegetables on the plank floor of the porch. A radio is playing some soft Hispanic music in the house, with very little bass. Sounds of barnyard animals and a cow with a bell on its neck are now heard, echoing from the south.

The man who approached her pulls out a cell phone with his left hand while holding a crossbow in his right, and pushes the number three on the keypad.

He replies to the person on the other end, She’s been here and they’re gone, ma’am . . . Red 45.

Meanwhile, six thousand miles north-west, it’s a hot and sticky Monday morning in the middle of the Mason Valley. Odan Harrison and Hayden Sorensen are sitting underneath a sycamore tree that’s growing through the courtyard patio, enjoying some wings and a bottle of WYD tequila at Odan’s restaurant, The Wet Spot.

The restaurant is made of stone and timber. It caters to families and professionals. Tall nine-foot doors made of glass and copper greet you on the way in.

The Wet Spot servers are scrambling, getting ready for a big lunch party reservation. Four staff are setting matte black silverware on the maroon tablecloths.

Three carpenters are outside on the deck where they were repairing the arbour and gazebo. They are packing up their power tools, smiling as guests pass by. The smell of fresh cut oak and lilac lingers, drifting through the open Nanawall doors that span the whole side of the restaurant. One of the carpenters gives a small piece of carved wood to a young girl passing by dressed in a teal-and-white summer dress. The little girl smiles.

I have a lot to be sorry for, but trust me when I say this, it doesn’t compare to the years I’ve missed with you, Haydensays as he looks at Odan

Odan states in a comedic tone, I don’t know what to call you, ’cause I don’t think I should call you Dad or Pop or any shit like that. I’m kinda out in left field when it comes to this. I’m an old bugger, so what are you? Are you an archaic old bugger?

They both chuckle and Odan notices Hayden look over Odan’s shoulder. Well, if I would’ve known that my son was going to turn out to be some kind of wannabe Hollywood star asshole, I probably would’ve pushed for an abortion, says Hayden with his devious smile.

People are filing into the restaurant, and a group of seven pass by Odan’s table. The oldest of the men, very well dressed, puts his left hand on Odan’s shoulder and asks, Who is your brother?

Don’t start that shit with me. This old guy is not my brother. The group gathers around to hear Odan’s further remarks. Folks, I’d like you to meet Hayden. He’s kind of a close friend and he’s kind of a family member. In fact, he’s my long-lost sperm donor.

The people gathered around appear shocked, and one of the women among them steps forward and stares openly at the two men for a moment.

So, are we going to get the lowdown or do we have to sit at a table over there and gossip for two hours like a bunch of schoolgirls? she asks.

Well, we got a lot of catching up to do and probably a couple bottles to finish, Odan states to the group, as his eyes pan from left to right over them.

All the members in the group shake hands and they file over to the round table in the north-west corner of the restaurant that leads out to the Nanawall doors by the deck. Two men congratulate Odan on the purchase of the airplane boneyard, before heading out.

Wow, to think you have friends, but then again, you don’t have many who are . . . alive, says Hayden in a smug humorous tone.

They both look out through the glass gate that separates the patio from the parking lot.

A grumbling sound is heard. A silver Spyker convertible rolls into the parking lot. The car’s tires chirp as it comes to a quick stop, dislodging small stones from the asphalt. An attractive brunette woman with her hair blown over her left shoulder sits in the now parked roofless car. Her thin-rimmed sunglasses are resting low on the bridge of her nose. Her head moves back and forth to Day Tripper, playing loud enough inside the car to be heard in the restaurant.

Hayden says, Don’t look now, but your girlfriend is here.

What are you on? She’s not my girlfriend and never . . . says Odan.

Finish that sentence, I dare you. And you can’t say that . . . I’ve seen the way you guys look at each other, states Hayden with a catfish smile.

Odan’s cell rings. Hey, Dad, you got a minute? the voice on the other end asks.

Yes, Leif? What can I do for you this morning? says Odan in a very cavalier tone.

Well, it’s kinda like this: I can’t get into the project site . . . b-b-because I can’t find the keys. I don’t know if you’re gonna find this funny, but, I don’t know where I left them, and . . . Kelly won’t answer his cell phone, says Leif.

I’ll give Kelly a call as soon as I’m done here. We can go from there. Is it an emergency? says Odan.

Dad, if I can’t get in, I can’t get started and if I can’t get started, I can’t finish and if I can’t finish, you’re not gonna pay me, Leif says.

Too funny, Odan replies, now almost chuckling, looking across the table at Hayden.

What’s so damn funny? So I’m not good with keys, says Leif.

You got it all wrong. The funny part was you thought I was gonna pay you, snickers Odan.

Well, quit beating around the bush for Chrissakes! Can I come by and pick up your set of keys or not? asks Leif. Odan puts the cell phone on speaker and leaves it on the table in front of him. Dad . . . Dad . . . Dad . . . I—I know you can hear me, so what’s it going to be?

Sure. You have to pay for the cost of the keys being cut, and I’m gonna dock you half a day pay for running around, says Odan. And he pushes End on his cell phone.

Trace walks in wearing a very short sleeveless white sundress. Her hair is pulled over to one side and left natural. Her two-inch black-and-deep-rose-coloured earrings coordinate with the laces of her sandals. She strides to the table with her eyes wide open, biting her lip on the left side while looking at Odan. A small six-by-four-inch matching handbag is in her right hand, which has a pocket for her cell phone on the outside of the bag. She gets to the edge of the table and neither of the men move over to accommodate her. She carefully stares at the men for a time.

Finally, both of the smart-ass men move over. Trace slides in beside Hayden giving Odan a dirty stare while she’s getting settled.

Didn’t know you’d be joining us today . . . in fact, I don’t recall inviting you, Odan says, trying to keep a straight face.

Don’t be so hard on the girl . . . she doesn’t know, says Hayden.

Her big mouth almost got me killed, Odan says as