Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo: Vengeance

By Aria Creek

Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo / Vengeance: A hard-hitting Vengenance/Thriller.

Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo, ex-CIA operative, is the assassin chosen to avenge the violent murder of Ben Latimer: one of the best the CIA ever had.

With her former partners, Elana Davian and Tom Alleyn, Prime creates and delivers a ma

• Language: English
• Publisher: IANOM Press
• Release date: Dec 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088078396

Book preview

This Printed/ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only; and may not be resold or given away to other people. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this Printed/e-book, or portions thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo

Vengeance

Copyright Aria Creek 2011

All Rights Reserved

Prime Hollingworth- Suazo, Vengeance,  is an independently published Book/eBook, All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Cover Illustration & Design by Aria Creek

Published Independently by IANOM Press

https://www.ariacreek.com

ISBN: Trade Paperback 9781088077566

First Edition: 2023

Forward

The large bald-headed man, tending towards fat, wanted the name of a soldier: someone who was tech genius and ruthless.

The man was the Secretary of Defense. He wanted a tested operative; one that he could count on to do the right thing … to terminate the AI … that is if this new AI down at the Rhuhampton labs could not be controlled? 

He summoned 5-star General Kevin Bellwether, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who tossed the ball to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice Admiral Macelby who went to the Director of the CIA.

The answer came back up the line in the form of a sealed folder, stamped ‘Top Secret’.

Secretary Brett broke the seal and opened the folder. He then leaned forward in his chair, pulled his reading glasses down off his forehead, using his thumb and the middle finger of his left hand to adjust them on his nose, and began to read.

After turning the last page over he closed the folder; setting it squarely in the center of his organized desk.

He’d removed the last page from the packet placing it next to the classified file. Someone had hand-written the word– Adrasteia in red ink –diagonally across the page, from the bottom left-hand corner up towards the top-right hand corner.

Adrasteia: In Greek mythology translated into inescapable retribution.

He pushed his glasses back up onto his forehead as he leaned back in his chair. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, and then picked up his secure phone.

The Director of the CIA was expecting this call. He picked up on the first ring. He was the person who’d sent the file up the line, stamped Classified – Top Secret - Secretary Brett – Eyes Only.

"Tell me about Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo. Tell me about Adrasteia."

1

The sky is big. Well enormous to be precise.

If you’re standing on rock-solid terra firma, legs akimbo, body rigid, head thrust backwards and thus looking upwards, you can’t see the whole of it. Like you can’t see all the danger that lurks just beyond your peripheral vision. Danger that can bleed you out tortuously without a drop of mercy.

This bit of sky minutia could be totally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, she thought.

Or maybe not?

Maybe this bit of sky minutia is of great importance.

Maybe it’d saved her butt more than once?

As this battle of esoteric sky minutia struggled for dominance, she adjusted the array of large saucer-shaped lights looming directly over the state-of-the-art operating table.

The walls of the disinfected surgical theater, where she was standing, were stark white slabs; as nondescript as the hospital grade flooring beneath her feet.

Off to the side, stood resuscitation equipment, on alert, ready to be instantly activated in case of a life-threatening emergency.

In various strategic positions around the room, rolling tables held everything from scary looking instruments to bland gauze pads.

▬

The target was a scant ten minutes away.

▬

2

The human target of the mission, known for his wealth and envied for his power, had been out of the political limelight for two years now.

Back then, he’d been known for his unbridled influence.

Today he’s better known as a traitor - as big a traitor as a person can be. It was not just his country that he had betrayed, everyone did that nowadays.

P. James Hardington had betrayed humanity itself. In fact, he had tried to wipe-out half the world’s population: as far as they could calculate such a thing.

▬

The target,

who was now nine minutes out,

heading into a death spiral of vicious precision.

▬

3

The large silent digital clock, embedded in the austere clinic wall of the surgical theatre, was ticking off time by the hundredth of a second.

The clock, plus all the other accoutrements, from front desk clerks down to the aspirins, were part of a complete package offered by the Charning Clinic. An exclusive boutique medical facility owned by a for-profit LLC. It was a place where specialty doctors plied their skills by the hour.

From the outside, the facility appeared to be an ordinary upscale Federalist home with a meticulously landscaped entrance.

Standing guard on either side of the front portal were elegantly sculpted potted trees, set back in their own niche.

The horseshoe cobble-stoned driveway, leading up to the elegant facade, was reserved for their special clientele.

Tucked away behind the building, surrounded by a high green-wall, was a large black-top parking lot. The rear door, where the hourly parade of patients entered, was a plain clear-glass affair.

-

Inside the hushed surgical theater A, the operative made a click with her tongue.

A voice came into her ear with an update.

As she listened, she wondered, not for the first time, whether she was still sane.

She can’t remember a time now when the ominous shadows stalking the dark edges of her dreams hadn’t been there - pushing their way in, turning those dreams into nightmares.

The nightmares jolt her awake from the violent shaking they cause: afterwards the night sweats begin. During these episodes, the line between reality and spiked terror blurs.

Maybe I’m mad? Maybe I’m totally bonkers? Maybe I walked into the scary-crazy world of the Mad Hatter and stayed for tea? she thought, while saying, Six minutes doctor.

Thank you, nurse, the doctor responded, looking up at the wall clock to confirm the time, then retreating into the electronic paperwork on his desktop.

▬

The target was now five minutes out,

getting closer by the second.

▬

4

She wondered again while staring at the digital clock: Do the simple folk, those lacking awareness or those lacking just a little bit of good judgment take a somewhat circuitous route to understand this sky wisdom?

Why do some people ignore the lesson, right from the start? Tumbling down the sink-hold of no return.

Why do others go straight ahead, pay attention - learning this bit of important sky wisdom?

Information that needs to be permanently embed into a person’s visceral memory bank. That knowledge being - that something evil, or someone wicked, can always creep up on you, unseen, doing you harm. Always!

-

In the world the operative moved through, of smoldering cinders and sharp poisonous objects, you honed your instincts and learned to twitch when evil or malice was near; that is if you planned to stay alive.

To do this, you were trained to pay close attention to the chaos in the world around you.

This outside world is not just as big as the sky, it’s dangerous, cavernous and sometimes lethal and always inscrutable. Furthermore, you can’t see the whole of it either.

Out here in real time, there are always amorphous shadows, fuzzy cracks and foggy bits to trip you up. Out here in the field, your life depends on your ability to go 360 in a flash while bobbing and weaving to avoid the bullet with your name on it. Out here in the field life can be treacherous.

▬

The target was four minutes away.

The operative was holding her pain tight in her grip.

She hadn’t realized how hard her fists were clenched,

until her palms started to sting

from the pressure of her nails digging into the flesh.

She forced herself to straighten her fingers,

placing one of her hands, palm down,

on the cold instrument table in front of her;

with her other hand,

she gave each instrument, on the table,

a miniscule adjustment.

▬

5

Another thought rumbled like discontented flash cards across the millions of miles of synapses in her head, execution or assassination?

Was there a difference in how you carried out the death sentence?

When the outcome was the same?

That being the ending of a person’s life?

And what would it be called if that ending is premeditated and calculated to be painful, long suffering and humiliating? Not bullet short, or bomb express to oblivion.

Would it be called tormenting, causing deliberate agony, causing undue distress, maybe inflicting pain or just plain old fashion torture? For some reason this didn’t bother her, but it should have.

It had bothered her once, a long time ago, before she found herself wandering in and out of extreme crevices of pain and heartache.

But not anymore.

▬

The target was now four minutes away.

She could feel her limbs tighten in anticipation

and demanded them to ease up.

Time nurse? the doctor asked,

not looking up from his screen this time.

Just under four minutes doctor.

▬

6

Out in the real world, where the operative used to function (which to her seemed like a lifetime ago) there were people who took umbrage with groups or individuals who engaged in partial or total Armageddon activities.

Somewhere in that other lifetime, these people also took umbrage with individuals who used anyone or anything to facilitate this end.

This was a good thing, in its way, she thought. Maybe, if there had been enough people who took umbrage, who didn’t want humanity decimated and destroyed with radioactivity or chemicals – maybe they’d have made sure that nuclear or chemical weapons weren’t dropped or even contemplated on being dropped on nations. Nations that weren’t the flavor of the month at that time.

-

The operative had stopped believing in everything. But there were still enough people outside of her world of pain who took umbrage. Seven to be precise, the Director of the CIA, the Deputy Director of Operations, the President and the four other members of the Op team. All of them took umbrage with what Phillip James Hardington had tried to do.

The Operative on the other hand, sought vengeance, for who he had murdered to do it.

The decision to approve Hardington’s death sentence had been unanimous. No paper trail, no emails, no audio, no visuals. It took a silent nod of the head by the D and DO and then another nod between the Director and the President and then the last nod between the Director and the reinstated operative leading the team.

Once, a long time ago, the operative might have been in it for umbrage; but that life was drowned out in pain and sunk in agony. Today, Prime Hollingsworth-Suazo, was in it for - brutal raw revenge. It was so pervasive, so inundated throughout her entire being that she was almost blinded by it.

When Mary, Tom’s wife, first heard what Prime intended to do, her danger antenna went up. Tom, I’m not comfortable with torture.

Neither am I.

What about Elana?

We don’t talk about it. It’s what it is.

What if Prime cracks up?

She won’t Mar. Anyway, this is not about what I would do. We’re a team. We’ll always be a team. You know that Mar. Prime said she has to do this and Elana and I have to watch her back. There’s no other way.

But you’ve been behind a desk for a year now.

I know Mar.

And Elana is a Police Chief for god’s sake.

We know Mar. Elana and I’ve talked this out a hundred ways and it keeps coming back around to the same thing. We need to watch her back. We’re a team.

Please, oh please be careful, Mary pleaded.

Always am. Tom pulled his wife close, burying his face in her sweet fragrant hair.

She held onto him as tight as she could. She was afraid. The target was powerful in a way that could frighten the sturdiest of hearts. He also was a viciously cruel man: a terrifying combination.

7

P. James Hardington, was one of the broken people. Those shattered souls who’ve been irreparably wounded in their youth; from physical or emotional abuse, or poverty, or hopelessness, or all of the above.

These broken children grow up to become irreparably damaged adults.

Almost every single one of them continue the Pavlovian pattern of damaging those in their sphere of influence with the ferocity of a virulent air born disease.

And like millions of his ilk, who become unwillingly addicted to the physical abuse, he helplessly spreads the pain from his ruptured psyche to those weaker than himself.

P. James Hardington was sixty-two years of age, tall with a slight hunch caused by a collar bone, ecumenically broken, then set improperly.

He possessed middle-American good looks, a striking photogenic profile, and sported his own triple by-pass scar - which reminded him that money and influence could even hold off the grim reaper.

And if the millions he was filtering into the Frontier Institute for Research and Development, achieved success, as it appeared to be doing, the actuation of technology to grow body replacement parts would mean that Hardington and his associates would have priority access.

The goal of this research, as they viewed it, would be to replace whatever they needed replaced, whenever they needed it replaced; bringing them to the very doorstep of immortality.

At first glance, if you didn’t know any better, P. James Hardington could pass for any other high-powered exec you’d come across at the White House or in a power restaurant in the Washington DC area.

But P. James Hardington was not your ordinary run of the mill power-type; this man was the father of all narcissistic sociopaths, and that’s saying a lot since Washington is the spawning ground for such men.

They come as yeoman fledgling egocentric tadpoles, looking for their place in the halls of power and privilege. Some, like Hardington, thrive in the elitist swill that permeates Washington. A world which either feeds on the unsuspecting or swallows them whole.

Another thought skipped across the operative’s synapses: was Hardington a sociopath or a psychopath, or could he be both but at different times? Did it even matter? she wondered as she once again clicked her tongue for an update. Or was he brackish green pond scum? No. He was worse. Next to him festering puke green fuckin slimy pond scum was fragrant ambrosia.

▬

Three minutes to go.

Both wall clock, and her update, were synced

to the hundredth of a second.

Tom Alleyn and Elana Davian had made sure of that.

▬

8

Without her cue, the voice came over the operative’s earpiece, all clear. Subject arriving on time.

Check scrubs: O.K. Prime told herself.

Check equipment: O.K.

Check surrounding activity: No suspicious activity, all looks normal. O.K.

She prompted herself for the last time. Do what people expect to see you doing. O.K.

Everyone ready? the doctor asked as he looked up at the wall clock.

A small chorus of ‘yes doctor’ followed.

The doors would be opening soon, and the curtain would rise.

▬

Two minutes to go.

▬

9

The specialized boutique medical facility consisted of four stat-of-the-art operating-rooms. W1 and W2 on the west side of the building and E1 and E2 on the east side. The interior of the whole facility was rather like an upscale two-family side-by-side with a lavish central foyer.

The well-appointed commercial establishment’s waiting/reception area, decorated in trendy hues of maroon and gold could hold fifty people at any given time.

Patients sat in silence, on cushioned chairs, waiting for their names to be called; after which their relatives or companions sat knitting, reading, working their cells or staring into space. No one smiled. No happy chatter permeated the large room.

On their most productive days, eight doctors, each working a six-hour shift, saw one patient after another throughout the twelve hours the facility was open. When functioning at full capacity, each section could process up to twenty-five patients a day.

On their busy days, there was the incessant movement of doctors going from one theater to the companion one, from one patient to the next. On a good year they grossed forty million plus.

Hardington had chosen this facility because it gave him the privacy that a large hospital couldn’t. To accomplish this, he purchased the entire building for the duration of the primary morning shift. All the non-essential personnel were to arrive four hours later than normal that day which left the building silent and stripped of prying eyes.

10

Boutique medical businesses were cropping up around the perimeters of hospitals at an alarming rate, driving real estate prices up and homeowners out. You could get lens implants in one facility, which specialized in eye surgery, go home, and the next day go to another facility that did gastrointestinal testing. The day after that you could get a bit of a tuck here, and a bit of a tuck there, and go home once again.

These hubs of human altering enterprises were privately owned multi-million-dollar LLC’s. They required low security, while operating on a high assembly-line format; making them hedge-fund profitable.

Even with a few added security measures, which Hardington thought necessary to ensure his safety, the facility was easy for an operative to slip in and out of - without raising a red flag or making a blip on any screen.

-

Hardington’s procedure required a mild sedative, similar to a blast of laughing gas at the hands of your local dentist. The procedure also required a medical doctor and a licensed assistant.

The operative was the assistant.

The doctor was the real thing.

Hardington was the patient.

Because it was Hardington, a top-notch doctor of anesthesiology was in attendance. He didn’t need any assistance from the operative or anyone else for the simple task required of him.

▬

One minute and counting.

Prime gritted her teeth behind her mask -

staring at the doors.

After all the months of preparation,

to entrap her target, and place him center mass,

he was now almost in her grasp.

When the clock ticked off the number seven,

with four zeroes following it,

the doors opened.

▬

11

P. James Hardington was rolled in on a gurney.

Good luck, Tom relayed through the almost invisible comm earbud they were using for the op.

Prime clicked twice in acknowledgment.

12

P. James Hardington had arrived precisely twenty minutes earlier, with his full entourage in tow.

His colonoscopy was planned for 7a.m. sharp.

As planned, he was the lone patient in the facility that morning.

He quickly followed the male admitting nurse into the antechamber for Theaters W1 and W2.

He changed into the appropriate garments.

He took the prescribed meds.

He was placed on the gurney.

When he was rolled