Goon - 1. Chapter 1

He was a goon.

At least, that’s what a lot of people like him were called. All he did, most of the time, was stand in front of the doorways and make sure only people with those pretty little badges went inside. Most people looked at his smooth face, buff body and completely ignored him, but his eyes looked at their face, scanned their badge to make sure the security clearance was appropriate and the picture matched the person wearing the badge and mentally kept a running log of who went in and out.

Micah Jericho was the youngest, best looking member of the lab’s security force and he was never allowed to forget that by the grizzled veterans. Nor did they forget why he was no longer in the Army, nor the fact that he had gotten this job only because of who he’d been roommates with back at the Huntsville Academy. They knew he was a nobody with unusual connections, but he was also good at his job and they gave him grudging acceptance for that.

Like the time a newly demoted researcher tried to sneak into a lab and get something he’d recently been working on and was no longer cleared to touch. Micah had stopped him from going into the lab while the senior guard on duty had done nothing. The older man could have been fired, but Micah fibbed just a little and gave the older man credit for ‘letting’ Micah stop the researcher from his illicit attempt. It was the senior guard who got the pat on the back, and Micah earned the man’s permanent dislike.

Go figure.

Even if only Micah and John Holder were the ones who knew that Holder had screwed up, Micah knowing was one person too many for the older man. He had an ex-wife, a current wife, and four kids in two households to support on a salary barely bigger than what Micah was pulling in with far less seniority. A shill in the accounting office had let it slip what Micah was getting paid, which happened to be more than most of the other men on the private security force, and they still disliked Micah for that despite all his attempts to make up for it. He had no control over the salary they gave him. That came with the deal that gave him this job.

“What do you think is going on?” Haskill, his partner for the day’s duty asked as they stood outside of the Trasker laboratory. It was the most secure lab on the facility, and Micah hated duty here, deep underground and under the eyes of camera after camera. They caught every little movement he made and he had enough ill will against him that even small movements were criticized as unprofessional.

“Today’s the big test, and none of our business.” Micah said, half under his breath and without moving his lips. Haskill wasn’t trying to bait him. Of all the people on the security force, Haskill was the one he trusted the most, who held little animus against him. Then again, Haskill was just one of those guys who was naturally nice to everyone around him.

“No, you’re wrong Bob.” The female voice came on the heels of the sounds of the door opening between them. A familiar figure, Dr. Helena Rodriguez walked out with the senior researcher, the bald, skinny scientist that ran this project and always reminded Micah of the Mad Professor from a favorite cartoon. He even had glasses that would have worked as magnifying glasses for most people.

“Don’t you try to argue with me, girl.” Dr. Bob Trasker said irritably. “If you let the reactor go all the way to its potential, we’d be done by now.”

“No more arguing, Bob, we’re shutting it down until we fix the variance issues.” She said and then she turned to look at Micah, who was standing at ‘attention’ just like as if he was still in the army. The uniform he was wearing was dark blue instead of military camouflage, but it was made of the same material, and the green beret he wore was actually green unlike the one he’d worn when he was really in Army. Her look was very direct, and he knew her words were addressed to him. “As soon as the assistants have completed sealing the lab, no one is to go in or out without my personal approval. Is that clear, Mr. Jericho?”

“Yes, Doctor Rodriguez.” Micah said, turning his face just a hair to look her in the eyes. He knew she expected that as well as his verbal confirmation and she nodded.

“You can’t do this to me, Linda.” Bob Trasker fumed. “My money has built this lab!”

“And I am in charge of it by the direct order of your family and the United States Government.” She countered. “Now, you can either accept my decision and help your assistants shut things down, or go back to your office and start writing your protest letters.”

“You’ll regret this, Helena.” The old man groused as he turned around and went back into the lab. The middle-aged professional scientist stood there looking at the door the old man had walked through and turned to look at Micah again.

“His reactor test failed to even make it to eighty percent today.” The woman said aloud, and to all appearances it looked like she was talking to Micah. This happened sometimes with people like her, and Micah nodded as if he knew what she was talking about.

“Yes, ma’am.” Micah said aloud as she frowned.

“Go in there and make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish.” She ordered him and Micah hesitated even though his instinctual reaction to a direct order was to immediately obey. He’d hesitated before, and although it had cost lives, careers (including his), he knew it had been the right thing to do.

“Ma’am, my security clearance…” Micah said with that hesitation.

“Oh, can it, Jericho.” She snarled at him with what was obvious frustration. “You have as high a clearance as I do. Everyone in this damn facility knows you’re the eyes and ears of the President to make sure we don’t overstep our Charter.”

“Ma’am?” Micah asked with confusion. Just because he was friends with Corey, the President’s son who was now off at college, everyone thought he had a direct line to the Oval Office or something.

“You’re the President’s damn fucking Enforcer, so go in there and do some enforcing.” The woman said with exasperation. “Make sure that idiot doesn’t do anything stupid, do you understand that?”

“I understand that, ma’am.” Micah said, keeping the sensitivity out of his voice. He knew he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. That was something he’d been told by his own grandpa back when he thought cleaning the fish meant taking a bucket of soapy water and scrubbing the fish until their scales shone. Something in his head clicked at the look she gave him and he frowned. “You’re Carlo Rodriguez’s mother.”

“You’re just now figuring that out?” She said with a strong dose of sarcasm and Micah bit back a groan. He was just a security guard, nothing special. “Carlo mentioned you back when your courts-martial was all over the news and was happy enough to see you in trouble to finally admit what he did and your part in that mess. I always wondered why I had to find him another school to go to after his sophomore year.”

“It was his own fault, ma’am.” Micah told her. “He was the one who tried…”

“I know what he tried, but that doesn’t mean I have to like having the President’s personal Enforcer watching over my shoulder.” She snapped. Now a lot of things made sense to Micah.

“That’s not why I’m here.” Micah said. “Corey thought I wanted a job doing this stuff and his old man got me a job, that’s all there is to it. I haven’t spoken with either of them since the courts-martial.”

“Like I’ll believe that.” She snorted. “Well, if I’m saddled with the President’s personal Enforcer I might as well get some use out of you. Go in there and make sure that idiot old man doesn’t blow this whole place up.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Micah conceded with defeat, dreading the look he knew Haskill was giving him. He hated it every damn time someone tried to hint he got unfair treatment from the President. He’d earned what he’d gotten, or he would have let Corey have his father get Micah into West Point instead of going into the Army as an enlisted man.

“Well, get in there!” She said before turning on her high heels and storming down the hallway. Micah sighed and turned to Haskill.

“You better call in the backup to take up our posts.” Micah said to Haskill who frowned at him. Micah thought the man was upset because technically Haskill was the senior man on station. That was why Micah had suggested that he call for the backup.

“You go in there.” Haskill said snidely. The P93 Assault rifle on his chest bumped a bit as he took in a deep breath. “I’m not going in there. No way in hell. That man’s crazy. You deal with him. I’ll stay out here.”

“We should follow the two-man rule.” Micah argued, but he sensed it was a losing argument, and he had been given a valid order. He sighed and shook his head as he considered Haskill. The man was only five years older than him, just barely twenty-six, but he looked older. He knew it was because of years in desert environments without skin care, and he felt sorry for the man. Micah’s mother, a therapist at a Day Spa had taught him how to care for his body as a kid, and his skin looked like it belonged to a teenager even though he was now old enough to drink legally.

“I’m not going in there.” Haskill said firmly, making his reticence clear by this stance. Micah sighed again and swiped his badge over the door’s sensor. Like Carlo’s mother had said, his clearance was high enough to let him into the room and his badge made the door open.

The room he stepped into was huge, with this big cylindrical thing in the middle of the chamber. Everything was metal or blinking lights and he frowned as his eyes tried to adjust to the brightness. There was a distinctive, high-pitched hum coming from the cylindrical thing in the room and steam streamed down from pipes that connected to the thing near the ceiling, four floors up. Off to his right there was a room with a thick door and thicker window. He could see Dr. Trasker on the other side, standing between two assistants who were looking at the computers in front of them.

“What are you doing here, boy?” Dr. Trasker’s voice came over speakers and Micah barely kept from jumping, or grabbing his assault rifle on its ready strap against his chest.

“Dr. Rodriguez wants me to make sure you have no troubles shutting down the machine.” Micah said, hoping that was a decent way to word his orders.

“She wants you to make sure I don’t do something she doesn’t approve of!” The old man spat into the microphone, a look of anger on his face. Micah listened as he walked towards the thick door to what was probably the ‘control room’. He knew a reactor generated power, so he assumed the cylindrical thing was some new sort of power generator. Corey would probably be able to tell him why it was important, but Micah didn’t really care. Unlike his old friend he didn’t care about all that science stuff.

He lived in a much simpler world and preferred it that way.

If he wanted complicated, he would have done more than let Corey give him a few blow jobs here and there over the years. It had taken all he could do to not reciprocate, to not do more than say ‘thank you’ after he’d climaxed into that wonderful, beautiful mouth. He knew all he had to do was say the word and Corey would have been his forever, but he could never bring himself to speak.

Instead Corey had grown angry when Micah refused to return his affections, and had begun to sleep around. Carlo had been one of those who did it so he could get dirt on the son of a rich and powerful U.S. Senator. Corey’s father had called the school, not to talk to his son, but to talk to Micah. After the first Christmas when Corey had learned that Micah’s family wouldn’t pay for him to come home over the holidays, Micah had been a constant fixture at his home and had gotten along surprisingly well with Corey’s parents.

Micah had paid Carlo a little visit, and without laying a single finger on Carlo Rodriguez, he convinced the greedy little blackmailer to keep his mouth shut and destroy the disk on which he’d recorded the video. That hadn’t been the last time a cadet at Huntsville tried that trick, and by the time they graduated Micah had gotten several calls from Senator William Howard Sr.

Something was wrong, and Micah accepted the fact that maybe, just maybe, Carlo had gotten his inherit stupidity from his father. Carlo’s mother had been right to send Micah in there. That much was plain from two simple facts.

First, and most importantly, the door to the control room didn’t open as he approached it and stood there, waiting. The door should open automatically, and he frowned before moving his badge over the sensor that was glowing red. The sensor twitched to green, and the door shuddered as it tried to open. Something was blocking it on the inside.

“Doctor, open the door.” Micah said in a low, dangerous voice as he stepped back far enough to see inside the control room. One of the two assistants had slumped in her chair, and the other, a male in his thirties was staring at his screen in an odd way. This close, Micah was able to identify the oddness as being due to the fact that the man was dead.

The other thing he’d noticed before realizing the two assistants were both dead was the rising hum from the cylinder thing behind him. It was growing higher and higher pitched, and he’d seen enough of Corey’s science fiction shows to know that was probably a very bad thing. Micah didn’t expect the old man to open the door and he frowned as he looked around the room.

Micah had a unique gift that he’d learned to use extremely well while his unit had been deployed to Afghanistan. He saw patterns and noticed when those patterns were changed, even if only slightly. As a kid he’d loved those puzzles in the paper where they changed a picture and had you pick out all the things that were different.

In Afghanistan, it had been this little quirk that had kept him alive. Going down the same streets in a small village, day after day, he picked up when there were differences. The first time he’d stopped a patrol it had saved them from a strategically placed car bomb. When he shot a woman wearing her burkha, he’d been in trouble for all of two minutes until they found the suicide bomb vest on her body.

When they began the house raids, he often found a cache of hidden weapons, drugs, and even five hidden terrorist leaders when no one else noticed anything different in the home. He quickly became something of a legend and when his unit rotated back home, he volunteered and was allowed to stay in country. Micah had his own reasons for the request, but his superiors put him in one of the most dangerous areas and they got results.

They also found out that Micah had his drawbacks as well.

“T3 to control.” Micah said into the microphone at his shoulder. His earpiece didn’t crackle with a response and he frowned at the old man on the other side of the glass who was busy at his controls.

“Won’t work.” The old man said into the microphone. “Interference from the field generator sets up a natural jamming field.”

“Doctor, please, open the door and let me in.” Micah said in a calm voice. He knew better than to shout at someone so obviously mentally unstable.

“I don’t think so, young man.” Dr. Trasker replied as Micah took slow steps backwards towards the door. The man had killed two of his associates and was doing something with his equipment. Micah knew the glass was bullet proof, and he wouldn’t risk a ricochet, if it wasn’t. Who knew what damage his bullets would do to the equipment?

Micah Jericho would never be accused of being the sharpest tool in the shed, but neither was he the dullest.

“Doctor, you don’t want to do this.” Micah said gently. He took another step when the man didn’t look up.

“Don’t bother.” The old man’s amplified voice crackled. “I’ve locked the outer door and your fellow goons won’t be able to get in here, or you out.”

“I’m not a goon.” Micah said calmly and the old man cocked his head.

“You are that Jericho kid, right?” The old man looked away from his panels and gave Micah a myopic stare. “The one who got his superior officer the electric chair?”

“They use lethal injection for executions these days.” Micah said, taking a few more steps backward. His memory was good and he remembered seeing what looked like a junction panel against the far wall. He didn’t want to turn his back on the old man though. It was the opponent you underestimated who killed you, and there were two dead scientists in the other room as testimony to the fact the old man would kill.

“I hate needles.” Dr. Trasker said as he shuddered visibly and pulled a needle out of his pocket, holding it up where Micah could see it. “Trust me, that worked faster than the crap they’ll use to execute that officer. Poor guy, he got you in his platoon and unlike the rest of his goons you wouldn’t lie to cover his ass.”

“Murder is murder, doctor.” Micah said with a shrug. The man was busy doing something and Micah took the risk of turning his back long enough to go over to the junction panel.

“Don’t even think about opening that panel, young man.” The doctor said in a voice that actually quivered.

“Doctor, just open the door.” Micah said. “Don’t make the same mistake Lieutenant Travell made.”

“What mistake was that, goon?” Dr. Trasker demanded as he frowned at something. He was no longer looking and Micah opened the panel and frowned. It was a mess of wires and he had no idea what they did. He had expected, hoped for, circuit breakers.

“What does this junction panel do?” Micah asked and the Doctor looked up.

“I told you not to open that!” The man snarled. “You touch those wires you’ll kill everyone in this facility!”

“What are you trying to do, Doctor?” Micah asked. “What could possibly be worth killing those two in there?”

“They would have stopped me!” The man shouted. “I’m too close!”

“Too close to what?” Micah asked, stalling for time. He had no idea what the wires did, and wouldn’t risk doing anything with them.

“Success, boy.” Dr. Trasker snarled as he saw something he didn’t like. “How did you tell them?”

“Tell them what?” Micah asked calmly as he edged around to another junction box that he saw.

“Your fellow goons are trying to break down the door.” The man snorted. “Good luck to them, it’s three-inch thick poly-alloy that can take high explosives.”

“They probably tried to call me and couldn’t get through.” Micah said in the same calm voice he’d been using all this time.

“You don’t sound worried.” Trasker stated after Micah had been quiet for a moment. He could almost hear the pounding on the door above the whine, but now he was on the opposite side of the cylinder. “What are you doing back there?”

“Looking for a junction box to shut off the power.” Micah answered, figuring there was little the man could do to stop him. What he didn’t expect was the man’s laughter.

“The main junction box is in the floor, about halfway between the wall and the reactor.” Doctor Trasker told him. “Pull the panel and shut off the breakers. That’ll turn off all your lights out there and the power connections used to start up the reactor.”

“You don’t sound worried.” Micah said with a frown.

“I’m not.” The man laughed. “You really are just a hired goon, aren’t you?”

“That’s redundant.” Micah knew that word. Truth was he had a decent vocabulary. He couldn’t be Corey’s roommate without studying together. Corey demanded that, and Micah enjoyed the time together. There were so many could-have-been’s in their lives.

Then again, they weren’t necessarily old, but Corey had long since moved on, and while they were friends, the potential for more had died years ago. It made Micah sad sometimes, but it was probably for the best in the long run. If he hadn’t been in Afghanistan, that entire family would have been slaughtered even though they were innocent, their only crime grieving for a family member that hadn’t been so innocent. He also wouldn’t have been here now, trying to stop the old man from doing whatever he was doing.

“What’s redundant, young man?” The older man asked over the intercom.

“Using the phrase ‘hired goon’ to describe me.” Micah said as he walked back to the one junction box he’d opened earlier. The mess of wires was confusing, and he tried to figure out the labels that were on the inside of the lid. They didn’t make much sense either, but they seemed to be part of the control circuitry. One would think that would all be fiber-optic in a facility this modern. “The term ‘goon’, by definition means a ‘hired thug’, so using the word ‘hired’ in front of it is redundant.”

“You sound like you might have actually had an ed-u-ma-cation.” The man sneered.

“Just a high school diploma from Huntsville Academy.” Micah said. “I looked the word up when I first heard it used here in the facility.”

“Didn’t know what it means, eh?” The man sneered again.

“Doctor, you didn’t know what it meant.” Micah said in a snide tone and moved so he could make out the man’s face on the other side of the glass. The man was glaring in his direction.

“I wish I dared go out there and kill you.” The man said angrily. “How dare you insult my intelligence? You don’t even understand what is at stake here!”

“Doctor, you’ve killed two people who did not deserve to be murdered.” Micah said calmly, crossing his arms over his assault weapon. “You’re more than welcome to come out here and kill me.”

“I heard you were the village idiot.” The doctor groused.

“I’m no rocket scientist.” Micah said with a shrug. “I still got good grades in school.”

“You didn’t go to college.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No.” Micah said as he turned back to the junction box. “Why not fiber? Isn’t it more efficient than these wires?”

“Some things are done better the old-fashioned way.” Trasker groused. “I told that idiot woman that fiber was too efficient. In order for this to work you need the resistance that you get from good, old-fashioned copper wires.”

“How can they hold so much energy?” Micah asked.

“Why didn’t you go to college?” The man asked his question again.

“There are two reasons.” Micah said as he looked at the labels on the box lid. They didn’t carry power, or even information from those computers in the control room. What they did, he couldn’t figure out exactly, but he did guess that they regulated something coming from the reactor cylinder and going into another room.

“What are those reasons, boy?” Trasker asked as he did something that changed the rate of humming. Micah looked back, sensing he was running out of time and noticed a slight glow in the doors to the outside. They were trying to cut their way through.

“My name’s Micah, sir.” Micah said, stalling the conversation longer.

“What were your reasons for not going to school, Micah?” The man asked in what sounded like a bit of frustrated pique.

“You’re trying to stall me.” Micah observed.

“You’re smarter than the average goon.” Trasker retorted.

“Everyone has their own areas of excellence.” Micah said. “I’m not the college type. Yes, I can read a book and understand what I’m reading, but I don’t get off on it enough to enjoy getting a Liberal Arts degree. When it comes to math and science shit like this, I suck big time. What I’m good at is being a soldier, so that’s what I decided to do instead of college.”

“Happy is the man who knows his place in life and fills it.” Trasker said in a way that made Micah think he was quoting someone. He couldn’t stop the reactor from this room, apparently, and from the sound of the humming reactor time was growing short.

“Yeah, well, if you haven’t noticed I’m not in the Army anymore.” Micah said, tamping down the pain that came with the memories.

“What happened that day?” The old man asked. “I saw the headlines like everyone else, but I never got around to reading the papers.”

“I was too good at my job.” Micah said as he tried to remember a lesson from his electronics classes. What would need the resistance of the wires over fiber-optics?”

“Hah!” The man said. “You must not be as good at this job.”

“I’m not.” Micah admitted with a shrug.

“Then why are you doing it?” Trasker asked as Micah bent over enough to take out his k-bar from its hiding place. He liked this model of knife rather than the non-conductive one in his utility belt. The handle was insulated at least, not that he had ever planned to use it to cut wires.

“It’s a job and it gives me something to do besides hang around and watch my best friend get married to a total flamer.” Micah said. Yeah, he knew if he’d let Corey into his life there would be complications, but he had never expected that the gay marriage of the President’s son would ever be allowed to happen. It should have been him, but he’d turned his back on that before he was even sixteen years old.

Like his grandfather had told him that time with the fish, Micah was never the sharpest tool in the shed.

“They put a price on my head after I helped catch one of their leaders.” Micah chose to go into detail about what happened to get him kicked out of the Army. It was less painful than talking about Corey. “This kid thought he could snipe me when our patrol went near his home. It was this big compound and there were over thirty family members living there at the time. He missed and hit the guy behind me. We caught him and as we were preparing to take him into custody, one of the other guys in the squad shot the kid and killed him. His grandfather was protesting and came out of the house. The LT shot him. It nearly turned into a massacre of the entire family when the old man’s wife came running out and she got gunned down too.”

“So two of your fellow soldiers and your officer were tried for murder and you testified against them.” The doctor cackled. “You did the right thing and everyone blamed you for doing that, right?”

“Yes.” Micah said as he took a deep breath. He couldn’t stop the reactor, but he could stop whatever the old man was sending through these wires into the other room.

“Well, you’re too late to tell anyone this time, goon.” Dr. Trasker said with glee in his voice at the same time that Micah stabbed his knife into the mess of wires. The world disappeared in a flash of light, and Micah was hopeful he was right that he’d just stopped whatever the man was trying to do.

When the flash disappeared, he found he was lying on his back and he had the strangest warm sensation building in his groin. Stars floated against his eyes as his entire body shook in an orgasm and he grunted as he realized there was a hot mouth around his dick and he was shooting a load of sperm into that mouth. For a moment his world spun and he couldn’t remember what he had just been doing, although he knew it wasn’t anything to do with a damn good blow job, or an orgasm like one he hadn’t experienced since he was a teenager.

“What the fuck?” He demanded in a voice far higher than he remembered having in years. His vision had cleared and he saw a familiar head of red hair and green eyes looking at him while the mouth attached to the face was curled around his dick.

Now this was confusing as hell.