NOMINEE - a Brill Winger action thriller

CHAPTER ONE

The phone trilled on the nightstand.  3:00 A.M.

Brill rolled over and scooped it up without seeing who it was.  There was only two people who had this number and only one who called him this early in the morning.

"I thought you would be running," said Carver.

His deep melodious voice sounded like it belonged on a radio or television announcer, his South African accent muted but clipped after many years in his adopted country.

"Another hour," Brill answered.

He had planned to do heat training today, eighteen to twenty four miles that put him under the noon sun at the hardest part of the run when the willpower was sapped and the sweat stopped running.  This was the way he tested his body over and over again, working on that part of the mind that begged him to stop, begged him to quit and sharpened the senses of his bulletproof will.

Carver knew he wasn't an early morning runner, so it was a constant joke between them.  Brill wondered if his business partner ever slept, since the man ignored all propriety of time boundaries.

"We've been hired," he said.

Brill sat up on the edge of his bed and rubbed his eyes.  The room was lit by ambient light leaking in through the double paned windows casting the room in an unearthly glow.  Normally he wouldn't be this visible through unshaded windows.  As an assassin he had completed many assignments from great distance hitting targets through windows.

The first shot would shatter the glass, the next shot would finish the contract.

But he had double paned windows that were tinted with reflective material.  He could see out and no one else could see in.

It allowed him to look out over the back of the property with a clear field of view, and anyone trying to look inside might as well be looking in a mirror.

"What's the job?" he asked and wondered if he would be able to train.

"Have you been following the election?"

Carver didn't bother to ask if he watched television.  That particular habit Brill never picked up.  He did enjoy an occasional movie, but only from the back row and only if he could put his back against the wall.  He never watched television, preferring to exercise and read, and sometimes just sit in silence alone with his thoughts.

He did keep up with current events though, especially political races since so much of his previous work was courtesy of the men and companies in charge of hiring the politicians.

"I don't do bodyguard work," he said into the phone.  "Not since the Senator."

He referred to a previous job Carver contracted for them.  He had been tasked with recovering a kidnapped Senator from a homegrown terrorist group in Florida.  The White Knights of the dumb Ass Rednecks thought they could advance their agenda with a ransom.  They reaped a fate worse that what they planned for the woman.

"It's detective work," said Carver.  "Intel gathering.  Our specialty."

Brill stood and dressed with one hand. slipping into running shorts and shoes. Intelligence gathering could wait for a couple of hours while he notched up another run and quick workout.

Getting older sucked, and it was harder and harder each year to maintain his edge.  The abuse heaped on his body over some rough years was beginning to take it's toll, despite the constant exercise, yoga and mostly plant diet.

Still some days hurt less than others, and this day running in the pre-dawn seventy degree weather would get his blood pumping before they met to discuss operational details.

"What time?" he asked Carver.

"Opening," he said.  "Meet you there."

His partner hung up and the clock was ticking.  He had just enough time to run to the Town House, a restaurant in downtown Oviedo they used as an impromptu office and meeting place.  First one there got the gunslinger seat.  Second to arrive picked up the check.

He slid a prepaid card and phone into a running belt, set the lock on the door and took off at a seven minute mile toward the Cross Seminole Trail.

Meeting at Town Center

CHAPTER TWO

Brill arrived last.  The run across Seminole County had been good, but the light was against him when he crossed the street and a short line of cars held him up.  He saw Carver's truck as he jogged across the parking lot.

The Town Center was open, but just barely.  Brill grabbed a towel hanging on a bike rack by the front door and wiped down his face, arms and legs.  The Florida heat and humidity made sweating as expected as afternoon showers from July through September, but Carver had considered his companion and left a towel for him at the door.

He crossed inside and settled into the seat with his back to the door.  Carver smiled with huge white teeth.

Peg strolled over with a fresh pot of coffee and poured two cups without asking.

"Morning boys," she yawned.

"It is a good morning," Carver winked and blew steam off the thick mug.

He watched Peg saunter away.  There was no need to order.  The two men were regulars and ate the same meal each time.  It made serving them a breeze and Brill always left a twenty dollar bill on the table as a tip, no matter who paid the bill.

Brill took a swig of coffee and settled back in the chair. He fought the urge to glance over his shoulder at the door, but tilted his head so his right ear was aimed more in that direction.  He could hear the door open if anyone came in.

Carver watched the microchange in his posture and smiled even wider.

"You should have ran faster my friend," he beamed.

"You got lucky," Brill took another sip. "Next time."

"I am feeling particularly ravenous this day," said Carver. "Perhaps I'll order a second breakfast."

"You're getting soft in America."

Carver patted his rock hard belly.  While he didn't run or work out as much as Brill because his field work days were far behind him, he did maintain a strict regimen that kept him in fighting form.

"I must start working on my soft belly," the South African grinned.  "I need it to fit in with you."

Brill lounged in the chair and looked anything but soft.  His average features were offset by an athletes body, more visible in running shorts and shirt than he normally allowed.  He was built like an endurance athlete, or a Spartan warrior from the movies, though his abs weren't airbrushed on.  The muscles in his arms and legs were etched like a marble statue, and he worked hard to maintain it. He was an elite runner with several dozen one hundred mile or longer ultramarathons on his resume, but chose to hide behind clothing most of the time.

It kept people guessing.

Average man, average height, average face.  Until they saw his eyes.

Carver was used to them.  He knew they sparkled sometimes and belied a sense of humor that was a dry as the Gobi Desert and tended toward gallows humor.

He stared into the black shark eyes now and let the smile slip from his face.

"This situation we find ourselves in," he said and set the coffee cup down. "The pay is good, but you may want to turn down the job."

Brill took a sip of coffee.

"When have I ever turned down an offer you vetted."

Carver nodded.  Brill was right, their partnership worked well.  He found the jobs, Brill executed them.  Sometimes literally.

"This came to me through our Senator friend," Carver continued. "Someone has threatened to kill one of the candidates.  Someone is blackmailing that same candidate and the man he hired to find the blackmailer was murdered yesterday.  She sent him our way."

"Which candidate?"

"The Green one."

Derek Greene.  He had been on the Board of Directors of Barraque, a Defense Contract company Brill had worked for in the past, and had direct connection to Shelby Johnson, former Senator that he had butted heads with on leaving the company.  Their paths kept crossing across the globe though.

Brill gave a fleeting thought to fate and the whims therein.  He felt a little like Michael Corleone because once he thought he was out, they kept trying to pull him back in.

"Do they know it's me?" he asked.

Peg came back over with two plates of food.  Two omelettes, four bacons per plate and fruit for each of them.  The same meal, prepared the same way.

"Salt and pepper," she nodded toward the back of the table next to the napkin dispenser even though they knew where it was.

She almost counted the four shakes each Brill put on his plate and on Carver to line them up again at equal angles.  Regulars.

"She has shared that with the campaign," Carver answered as he tucked in.

Both men took small deliberate bites in an orderly fast fashion.  They treated food as fuel and acted accordingly.  Each had been jungle trained, and MRE's or tins of beans cooked over a wet campfire gave them matching palettes.

"Did he talk to Shelby?" Brill asked.

His relationship with the former Senator was contentious at best.

"She didn't say who he spoke with, but if he was in that company he will be aware of you."

"And they still want to hire us?"

Carver reached down on the seat beside him and slid a folder across the laminated table top.

"We're borrowing the plane to get there," he tilted his head toward a printed itinerary. "I've booked a hotel under your alias, and you've got a ten o'clock appointment with the Greene."

"Damn politicians," Brill sighed and scraped the last bite of egg off his plate.  He finished the coffee.

"The ones here aren't as bad as the men from my country."

"They're all the same," said Brill.  "Power does that to people."

"We have power my friend," Carver reminded him.

Indeed they did. Part of their business was the power to change worlds. It was something they both considered often.

"Another day," said Brill.  He raised his coffee cup in a toast which Carver returned.

It was their code to talk more about it later, a philosophical debate that required cold bottles of beer and quiet places to contemplate their actions.

Carver pushed back from the table and stood.

"I'll drive you to the airport."

Brill motioned Peg over and handed her two folded twenty dollar bills.

"You going on a trip?" she asked.

He winked with a smile. He and Carver were going to have to review operational security in their cafe discussions.  A great thing to talk about on the drive to the plane.