A Life Worth Taking (Tom Greer Thrillers Book 1) by C. G. Cooper

Author:C. G. Cooper [Cooper, C. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. G. Cooper Entertainment
Published: 2018-03-06T22:00:00+00:00

Baxter

Where did we go wrong? That's always the question, right? We look back on the inexplicable - some mistake, a right turn when we should've taken a left. We explain it away as bad luck, a poorly made decision. Sometimes we can't even remember when the misstep happened.

For me, it was the fourth of seven targets, but I'll get to that in a minute.

In the afterglow of my success in Beijing, I kept my head down. I was never a partier, and despite what you might think of openly celebrating, the death of another human being is still my limit.

Don’t get me wrong, I felt that same inner peace that justice had been done, a wrong righted, a smear on humanity wiped from the Earth. But I wasn't jumping up and down, buying rounds at the bar. No, I did what I always did: I planned for the next mission. Part of me wondered what I would do when it was all over, when all seven were gone and I was left with just the memory.

No time to dwell on that now.

That's like Patton thinking about what life would be like after defeating the Germans, not that he made it that far. And now that I think about it, it's an interesting parallel. General George Patton had been bred for war. He was willing to do whatever it took to win. And in many ways, I’d been raised the same way. I enjoyed my career as a pilot, but it was a long way from jumping out of airplanes and fighting in the shadows.

But there’s a deeper reason for why I felt the way I did about all this. You can judge for yourself whether it’s valid.

Let me tell you a quick story. Remember what I said to Baxter when I first met him and told him about a sushi joint in Tokyo, and how I was “only in it for the noodles?”

There’s a reason for that.

Some years back, I found myself in an obscure part of Tokyo eating at some high-end sushi place. Different place than the one I recommended to Baxter. This place was posh; a little something for the well-traveled businessman/adventurer looking for a something of a thrill. Leather booths. Blue mood lighting, like some forbidden den of vice. Ten kinds of Saki parlayed into as many eclectic cocktails, garnished with stuff you could only find in this part of the world.

Next to each booth was a tankful of fish darting back and forth in that oblivious way that fish do. My guide, a millionaire Japanese tech guy I’d met on a flight who’d taken a shine to me and invited me out, showed me how to order off the top of the menu in a place like this. He called the waiter over and pointed to a fish in the tank next to us.

“That one,” he said in Japanese.

A moment later, an arm dangled a net into the water and scooped up his choice. The sushi chef carved a choice piece out of the critter’s flesh, then tossed it back into the tank.

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