As Mason exited the mass transit system of a city with a population of almost two million people and walked the heavily populated streets of downtown to the tribune, he could not escape the constant voice he heard.
"Avenge me, brother. Please," the voice of the Serbian soldier with eyes Mason would never forget said. They held terror of inevitable death. The voice was loud, but if the sounds of the world were muted, they would fall on deaf ears. Another shake of his head in an attempt to rid himself of the torment was all for naught. The surrender by the enemy was innocent and as a part of a liberating force, he knew that the rules of engagement had to be obliged. Unfortunately, not all of his Marines followed his lead. They failed to at least acknowledge the surrenders of some as people, as human beings with souls.
"Chandler needs to see you. He has been asking about your whereabouts since he arrived this morning," the receptionist informed Mason as he arrived at the Philadelphia Daily News. He didn’t speak to acknowledge her statement. He only nodded his head as he removed his headphones from his ears and inserted them into his messenger bag. His speech impediment made him so insecure that even the most casual professional interaction was avoided. It made him almost a mute unless it was imperative to speak.
People that knew him were amazed that a man who could fluently speak Russian, Serbian, Spanish, French and Arabic to perfection would have the greatest challenge with his native tongue. His constant stutter was as if his tongue spoke in cursive, but due to his ASVAB score, the United States Marine Corps provided a waiver for this because they could train an assassin who could learn to speak and understand the tongue of the enemy. Unfortunately, his inability to speak English without the verbal barricades limited him the confidence to speak regardless of how dire the situation.
People were always curious of him. They only knew that he was a well-dressed and properly groomed veteran who was slightly odd. Since he never spoke, it was always a wonder. “So who was this Mason who sat in a small office near the stairwell and bathroom on the 4th floor?” they would ask.
"You needed me, Mr. Chandler?" Mason was barely able to speak as he nervously laced his hands behind his back. He was nervous because Mr. Chandler never requested to speak to writers of his level. This made him nauseous. He burped up the taste of orange juice causing bile to burn the back of his esophagus.
"I don’t need you for anything; understand that right now," Mr. Chandler said in a low, baritone growl.
Mr. Vernon Chandler was the Editor in Chief at The Daily, a tall man with a muscular stature. His eyes were low with scrunched eyebrows to match his scowl. His age could only be identified by his mustache that was salted with gray.
"I’m s-s-sorry sir," Mason expressed. When he was nervous, he stuttered but when he was scared, he was incomprehensible.
“I don’t want your life excuses, Mason, and I sure as hell don’t need them. I had you come see me for a reason. So sit your ass down and shut the hell up," Mr. Chandler said as he pointed to a chair in front of his desk.
Mason had no idea what was going on, but he knew better than to interrupt Mr. Chandler with a question. Instead he did what he was told.
"I have the inside track on a story that I want you to cover; the operative word here Mason is “want.” I want you to cover the murder of a Marine killed in the Pennsauken Township who was shot execution style, once in the back of the head and then shot twice more on each side of his temple. I can’t believe one of our nation’s finest warriors could be murdered this way. Some crazy fuck has no regard for human life, the sick son of a bitch! I want you to cover this story, and I want you to get out there now."
Mr. Chandler, a former Green Beret in Vietnam, seemed to take a personal exception anytime a service member was murdered domestically after surviving conflict abroad. It really brought out the patriot in him.
“I want you to get with Orinda Costa once you leave my office, and I want the two of you to make your way to Pennsauken immediately. An investigator will be waiting for you specifically."
Mason wanted to ask Mr. Chandler why he was chosen, but he knew that Chandler’s patience with him was especially thin with everything going on that he wouldn’t let him finish.
"Why are you still sitting in my office, Mason?! Get the hell out of here, and get with Orinda. Now! Straighten up, Marine! As you were!" Mr. Chandler yelled as Mason hurried out of his office.
Many questions were racing in Mason’s mind of which Chandler would provide no answers. They were along the lines of, "Why do I need to cover this story? Why do I have to work with Orinda? Why will an investigator be waiting for me? I’m not a cop. I’m only a writer for a newspaper." All questions would be answered in due time. As Mason walked down the hall making his way to the elevator, he heard a familiar voice in his head again that uttered the same words time and time again. He shook his head to rid the voice of the fallen Serbian soldier, but time and time again the words echoed.
The elevator doors opened to the 4th floor where his desk was located. It was also the floor where Orinda Costa was as well. She sat on the southwest side and Mason the northeast, so they rarely saw each other. They made eye contact a few times in passing but, that was only in common areas like the hallway and the elevator. He always thought she was beautiful with her long, silky, wavy brown hair highlighted with a hint of auburn. She had a voluptuous figure. When she wore heels, she was abnormally tall. She always wore earth tone colors paired with tortoise plastic frame glasses that made her look like a Spanish teacher that Mason had many years back; he could never forget her. She was especially nice to him because he was her best student but also because she felt for him. Other students treated him with such cruelty because he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak.
He was infatuated with her; sometimes he would stay after class and speak Spanish with her clearly as her friends would. Mason could never tell his teacher how he felt but if he could have, he would have told her that he was in love.
"O-or-Orinda?" Mason said shyly as he approached her desk. The smell of brewed lavender filled the air from her flameless candle burner.
"Good Morning, Mason. I see you talked to Chandler," Orinda said. Her accent was as strong and Latin as she was.
“Y-ye, yes I d-d-did. We have to-to work-work toget-ther on an assign-ma-ma-ment," Mason said. His face felt twenty degrees warmer, so warm that sweat began building up on his forehead. He was nervous, he was smitten.
"Yes, we have to head over to Camden County and meet up with a naval criminal investigator at a Pennsauken Industrial Park. They found the body of a Marine who was murdered, and we were called to cover the story. If the Inquirer puts this out first, Chandler will lose his shit. We have to get there before word gets out to the public. Do you want to drive or should I?" she asked turning around in her chair to face him. Mason could barely concentrate because he was in engulfed in her beauty. Her breasts protruded from her chest so perfectly that it caught his eye which also caught hers.
“I don’t have a c-c-c-ar. Is it o-o-okay if you-you drive-drive?” Mason struggled to ask. “Ok great, I’ll drive. Did you get some coffee yet?"
"No I-I-I haven’t, but I ne-need something to calm my ner-nerves. Can I sit d-d-down-down and take my medicine really qui-quickly?" he asked.
"No problem, Mason. It’s a bit of a drive away, and I still have to make a few calls. I will come over to your desk when I’m ready. Is that ok?”
“Sh-sh-sure th-thing, Orinda," Mason said, before he made his way to his desk.
He took off his coat and scarf and placed them on his hand-crafted wooden coat rack and sat with his head in his hands. His head began to pound. The day had not been a good day. In fact, it was worse than yesterday. This week was harder than others because the anniversary of the massacre was approaching. As much as he tried to rid himself of the voices and the guilt, he felt the blood of the enemy was on his conscious. It all could have been prevented if he would have stepped up and saved another man’s life by speaking. Every year as the calendar date neared the same season, the voices became louder and louder, but this year was worse than before.
He opened his desk drawer to get Ibuprofen for his headache and popped double his prescription dosage of Ativan to ease his anxiety. The thought of being alone in a car with Orinda to cover a story in addition to the haunting voices of his past overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes again and saw the torment and destruction of war, the bodies of men that it had claimed.
"Avenge me, brother, please," he was reminded again.
The Ativan needed to hurry with its effect because he was beginning to shiver with anxiety at the most inopportune time. A compilation of fears and confusing thoughts at once began to awaken a new unease within him.
Why Vernon Chandler chose him to cover the story made some sense, but at the same time it made none at all. For 10 years of his life, the Marine Corps was all that he knew. The Corps allowed him to excel when the world told him that he couldn’t. Uncle Sam waived his disability, but in turn gave him multiple others.
After his time in linguist school in Monterey, California, he had the ability to speak in aged tongues in addition to the tongue of America’s greatest adversary. Within months, he was deployed to Camp Lejeune for extensive special force combat training. They trained him to kill the enemy after they taught him how to communicate with the enemy; they trained him in how to extract vital information before the kill. They taught him to conquer his enemy using their weaknesses before they taught him to kill. They taught him how to blindly serve, all the skills needed to make him elite but only when performing those tasks.
The Marine Corps even trained him with real life experiences. Darling imaged President Clinton secretly deployed his unit to the jungle of Guatemala to liberate its people from a notorious drug lord in order to create a bargaining medium with the Guatemalan government. In the brush, US Marines’ secretly combated guerilla soldiers, and that was how Mason was trained to see death. It was the first time that he killed and the first time he saw the power of his training.
He was able to communicate with the enemy, but ultimately death was their only option.
"Somos Estados Unidos Marines. Bajen sus armas o ser derribados por la fuerza!” (We are United States Marines. Put your weapons down or be taken down by force!)
Mason communicated to the guerrillas before his Marines ensued to open fire and take the rebels down. The United States Marines Corps molded him into a killer and taught him how to feel no pain regarding death. This made him deadly, this made him dangerous, but only this allowed him to fit in. When he wasn’t fighting side by side with Marines, he was rejected for the same thing that made him necessary. When not deployed or in a training environment, his impediment became the focus of ridicule and was the reason he was ostracized. It became the reason why he was ignored for his shortcomings and only accepted when he was needed.