Chapter 4 - The Shadow of MACV-SOG
"Dad!" Ethan shouted, springing out of his leather chair in complete horror. "What the hell is happening to you?! Are you having a stroke?!"
Victoria screamed, pressing a silk handkerchief against her mouth as she backed away from her husband in disgust and panic.
Richard remained doubled over, gasping for air, cold sweat pouring off his forehead and dripping onto his silk tie. He was shaking so hard his entire body rattled against the plastic wastebasket.
He slowly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes staring at Uncle Jake not as if he were looking at an old mechanic, but as if a resurrected demon from the deepest pit of hell had just stepped into the room.
"You..." Richard choked out, his voice a raspy, terrified whisper that barely made it past his lips. "You... you're... the Spectre."
Uncle Jake didn't answer. He took one slow, deliberate step forward.
His heavy work boot clicked against the floor.
With every inch Jake advanced, Richard shrank further against the wall, his hands raised in front of his face in a blind, instinctual posture of absolute surrender.
"Please..." Richard wept, his voice completely stripped of the grand, billionaire authority he had carried for forty years. "Please... it was forty years ago... I was just... I was just following orders from the directorate... I didn't know..."
"Dad, what are you talking about?!" Ethan yelled, grabbing his father by the shoulder, his own face contorting into a mix of confusion and building panic. "Who is this old bastard?! He’s just a broken mechanic from the South Side! Tell him to get the hell out of here before I call security!"
Richard suddenly spun around and slapped his son across the face with terrifying, desperate force.
SNAP.
The crack of Richard’s palm hitting Ethan’s cheek echoed through the small room like a pistol shot.
Ethan stumbled back, holding his face, completely dumbfounded. "Dad?!"
"Shut your mouth!" Richard screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, hysterical shriek. "Shut your mouth, you fool! You idiot! Do you have any idea who this man is?!"
Richard dropped to his knees right there on the hospital floor, his three-thousand-dollar tailored suit gathering dust, his hands clutching together in a desperate, pleading gesture toward my uncle.
"He isn't a mechanic, Ethan..." Richard wept, cold sweat running down his neck. "He was the commander of Team Black-Omega. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group. He was the man the Department of Defense sent when they needed an entire criminal syndicate buried in the jungle without leaving a single paper trail!"
I opened my eyes slowly.
I looked at my Uncle Jake.
For twenty-five years, I had known him as the quiet man who changed my oil, fixed my brakes, cooked chicken noodle soup when I had the flu, and read late-night history books in his small kitchen.
I knew he had served in the military. I knew he had a limp and shrapnel in his knee. But he had never, not once, spoken about his service.
Now, looking at the absolute, paralyzing horror in Richard Collins’s eyes, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place with cold, terrifying precision.
"In 1988," Richard babbled, his eyes darting frantically between Jake and the floor, "when my father's defense contracting firm was investigated for smuggling weapons through the Subic Bay naval yard... three men from the Inspector General’s office disappeared in Manila. The man who uncovered the offshore accounts... the man who executed the classified tribunal behind closed doors..."
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Richard looked up at Jake, his eyes wide with an absolute, haunting dread.
"It was him," Richard whispered. "He's the reason my uncle died in a federal military prison. He's the reason five executive directors resigned in a single night. He doesn't go to court, Ethan... he dismantles entire families from the inside out."
