Free C.R. Daems - Kazak 2 - The Unthinkable by C. R. Daems Page A

followed by a short, thin man. He didn't look like what I would've thought a Medal of Honor holder should look like. Of course, I didn't look like what people thought a Kazak should look like. His sneakers, army pants, gray long-sleeved shirt, and army jacket appeared two-sizes too big and had seen much better days. But he and they looked clean. His dark-brown hair looked like it had been recently cut and his long angular face clean-shaven. The lieutenant looked around and settled on the woman and me.
    "Are you Hearn's...friend?" He had obviously been briefed that someone would be waiting at the mission, but judging by his wide-eyed, open mouth expression, not who.
    "Yep. That's me." I rose and walked over to the car. "Hi, Jimmy."
    Jimmy stared at me for a long while. He too had been told to expect someone, just not me. Typical Witton, leave it to me to explain all those annoying details.
    "You're my... Lynn?" He and the Lieutenant stood shaking their heads.
    "But-" The lieutenant began. I cut him off with my hand.
    "Jimmy and I will be fine. You can tell your superior, that his friend will take good care of him." I hooked my arm inside his and pulled him along, leaving the lieutenant and woman speechless, and avoiding more questions.
    "Well Jimmy, where to?" I planned on getting him back to his old routine, since that was where the trouble began.
    "You're my bodyguard? You don't look like a bodyguard." He was a head taller than me and was frowning down at me.
    "You don't look like a Medal of Honor holder."
    "I guess not. I don't think any of us intend to be heroes. It just happens. You're pinned down, your buddies are getting killed and wounded, and you just react without thinking. If you thought, you probably wouldn't do it."
    "I can relate to that. What exactly did you do?"
    "I kind of distracted the Ali Babas by running around shooting and throwing hand-grenades while my buddies withdrew back to the main unit. We were a recon unit."
    "How did you survive?"
    "They left me for dead. They were in a rush to chase after the others. They found me the next morning when the main unit advanced."
    "Did you do something to annoy the gang that put you in the hospital?"
    "Nothing. Wrong place at the wrong time. They were looking for someone to amuse themselves with and found me."
    "Did you hurt any of them?" I asked. He was ex-army and a hero even if he didn't think so.
    "Nah, I didn't try to fight back. There were three of them and one had a bat. I knew I couldn't win and figured it would just be worse if I fought back. I thought they would loose interest faster if I didn't. They would have, but they found my ATM card and dragged me to one of the machines. There is a limit on how much you can take at one time but they didn't understand. So they beat me more thinking I would tell them how to get the rest. I woke up in the hospital. By now there will be no money in the account."
    "Have you canceled the card?"
    "No. I hadn't thought about it until now." He said in a normal almost disinterested voice. I wondered if he had just given up on life and no longer cared what happened to him. I fished out my iphone. Ann Marie answered.
    "Ann Marie, it's Lynn. The gang that attacked Jimmy took his ATM card and knows his password. Can you get his card deactivated and a new one sent to his bank nearest the Bread of Life Rescue Mission in Oceanside."
    "Can do. I hear you're living on the streets now," she snorted. "That's some come down from a visiting dignitary from the Arab world, who traveled first class and had a private plane at her disposal."
    "I'm reduced to the streets because Witton doesn't pay me enough to rent a decent apartment and eat more than one meal a day." I smiled, remembering the grand tour of the United States' major attractions while pretending to be an Arab woman rights activist as a diversion to protecting a major mob informer who pretended to be part of my security detail. In reality, on my salary I could have afforded to pay