The Goat Eater - Sample

John Sparks sat in his office just after midnight in a non-descript office building in Virginia.  It had been a frantically paced few days since he was named Region Chief, Latin America.  He glanced at his email one last time before heading home for the evening.  There were several emails but none of them flagged as urgent.  Most of them were either congratulations or introductions due to his promotion. Only one stood out as different.  There was no indication that it was urgent and deserving immediate attention.  He stared at it for a moment.  He could only see the identity of the sender and the title.

Raul Ancic, a high-level operative, he had first met years ago on an assignment on the Chilean – Peruvian frontera region.  The driest desert in the world . . . The Atacama Desert.  He remembered his time there and how each breath robbed his body of its life given moisture.  He remembered the feeling of the massive dehydration process starting the moment he stepped off the plane all those years ago.  The Atacama was never a place of much action, at least since those Maoist rebels, the Shining Path, started to dissolve some 20 years ago. 

He had glanced at the title - ‘Ancient Mystery Solved’ and concluded that this item could wait until morning.  He thought, ‘Raul, I don’t have time for shit like this now. I am the South American Region Chief.  I have to focus on the present, interpret inputs and allocate resources . . . to protect the United States and its interests in the region.  I don’t have time for the past.’  He logged out of his computer, packed his things, went through the security protocol required to secure his office before he left the building and headed home.

On his drive home, he thought back on his time in the Atacama, the thin ribbon of land sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes.  The region was full of corpses in various stages of mummification . . . The desert claiming whatever form of water dropped on its surface.  In the case of dead animals, the desert took its water and left perfect mummies, windows into the mysteries of the past.  The revelations of an archeological find, an Incan shaman or someone else of lesser Pre-Colombian status, could certainly wait for morning.  If he had just opened that email and its attached file for a quick scan, then he certainly would have endured his first sleepless night in his new position. 

Instead, the email remained unopened for another 12 hours.  John got one last night of good sleep.  He returned to his office the next morning with a cup of coffee, sat at his desk and began his day.   His assistant entered his office and asked him if he had seen Raul Ancic’s email sent the previous evening.   He said he was just sitting down to check email.  She looked at him, ‘Mister Sparks, Mister Ancic has called 3 times already this morning.  You might want to look at his email immediately.’  John thanked her and opened Raul’s email.  The email was short and concise, ‘Bill Stevens found.  Please review attached file and call me.’

Bill Stevens, a former Latin American Region Chief, had disappeared 20 years ago.  No trace of him was ever found.  He had been a bit of a rebel and an avid outdoorsman with a taste of solo adventure.  The Agency had done a preliminary investigation and found nothing of interest.  The investigation led to the Northern region of Chile, a place where a gringo is remembered.  A Chileno rancher was found that had provided Bill a ride to a trailhead with a llama outfitted to carry Bill’s supplies.  Bill was using his vacation time for some relaxation and adventure at the end of a region visit.  The only problem was he never returned.  Three weeks of searching yielded nothing.  It was assumed that Bill had an accident in the wilderness.  No one knew where he was headed when the rancher dropped him off.  No one knew where he was until yesterday.  The Atacama eventually gives up its mysteries albeit slowly and so it was with Bill. 

The file outlined the discovery of a corpse that set the academic world on its ear.  A joint archeological venture of Chilean and US universities began to work a new area of the Atacama.  New discoveries were found almost immediately.  The perfect hybrid mummy composed of a man’s head sewn to a herd animal’s body.  Nothing had ever been seen like it ever before although two more examples were found in close proximity to the first within days.  The paleo-forensic investigation revealed the secrets of the mummies and re-introduced Bill into the concerns of the modern world.

First, the investigation revealed that the goats were a modern European breed.  Thereby, any Pre –Colombian linkage and the discovery of archeological significant artifact fell to the wayside.   Second, the modern dentistry of the human head turned this archeological find into a ritualized murder.  When asked by the Chilean police, Raul had provided a path to US dental records and Bill reappeared.  It might have been written off as a satanic murder ritualization by some backwater religious sect, an example of a gringo in the wrong place at the wrong time, but not for the note found stuffed in the perfectly preserved nose. 

Prior to the analysis of Bill’s head, the rest of his body was found sewn to two other goat carcasses.  The first specimen had the upper torso of a man with the head and hindquarters of a goat.  The second specimen made Bill’s body inventory complete.   Goat bones were found equidistance from the man-goat creations.  Perfectly assembled anatomically from the 3 separate goats used to complete the hybrid corpses.  Analysis of the bones revealed that the composite skeleton had been expertly butchered and the meat removed from the location.  With the discovery’s transformation from archeologically significant to a hideous murder, the academics turned over the evidence to the Chilean police with the nickname ‘The Goat Eater’.  Why go to the trouble of butchering out the unused portions of goat unless a meal was needed?  Someone had a nice meal of goat . . . ‘Obviously the ‘Goat Eater’ provided sustenance and delivered a message all in one action’, John muttered softly to himself as he finished the report.  He opened the other attached file containing the scanned note.  Once it opened, he read it and called Raul. 

He stared at it as the phone rang.   ‘Americano Americano, Entonces Perdióle Es.  Dónde Está Su Tribu?  Hoy, El Fin Empieza.’  (American American, How lost you are.  Where is your tribe?  Today, The End Begins.)  Raul picked up on the third ring.

A phone rang out in Rocinho, a favela adjacent to the upscale Ipanema neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.  The poorest and richest neighborhoods, in economic terms, in Rio . . . separated by only a street and elevation in physical terms, but not even in the same universe with respect living conditions. 

A hand reached out from luxury Italian sheets to pick up the phone.

The caller spoke in Spanish, ‘He has returned to them.  They know that we exist. Well, at least they know we existed 20 years ago.’  Fernandinho did not respond immediately.  The transition from Portuguese, the language of Brasil, from a dead sleep always took him a second.  Although he learned Portuguese after Spanish, he preferred to speak Portuguese.  He collected himself and responded in Spanish, ‘It is about time.  The gringos are not as smart as they once were.’  When the Goat Messenger was left it was believed that it would be found within a year, certainly within two years.  Bad estimate.  ‘I will tell O Dono that they finally have the messenger.  I feared that he would have the time needed to realize his vengeance against them.  Twenty years to find a simple clue resting in the open on a treeless plain.  They gave us a head start in building an organization tailor fit in a new world structure while they were saddled with an organization perfect for a world structure from decades past.  These 20 years have given us the advantage as it is hard for the charging elephant to change his path.  It will be over before they even know what we are.’ Fernandinho paused, ‘He will be happy that finally his wait is over.  The gringos will come.  They will see what was built while they lived in their dream.  Reality will be tough on them.  Thanks, my friend.  We are brothers in this.  We are the NWO.’ 

Fernandinho hung up the phone.  He rose from his bed looking out over his spectacular view of the ‘ A Cidade Maravilhosa’  (The Marvelous City) from his observation post far above Rio.  He lacked for nothing.  He had the security of the favela, which he controlled.  He protected those that lived there and they protected him in return.  It gave him a certain confidence that they would never touch him even if they could unravel the strings of their web.  Coffee was brought to him and he watched the morning start up in the other Rio at his feet.  He picked up the phone and made arrangements to get to the South, quickly without drawing attention.  This message needed to be delivered in person to O Dono.  He knew that his announcement would be well received.  With that he set to getting his things in order for the trip as he was leaving to meet the transport within the hour.

As John Sparks hung up the phone, he was lost in his thoughts.  He had talked to Raul for almost an hour and he saw nothing more than an unrealized manifesto of war by an unknown entity in Latin America coupled with a brutal murder of a friend and work associate.  Where to start?

Within the first minute of the conversation, he had suggested that the note needed to be analyzed to see if Bill might have written it.  Raul told him that he had sent it to the crime lab for analysis but he did not expect anything to come back in a hurry.  Crimes from 20 years ago were given little urgency.  John told him he would see what he could do to expedite the whole matter being that it happened in his region.  He and Bill had been close since John joined the Agency.  Raul and John talked of what they knew of the discovery, the political situations of today and 20 years ago.  How this event aged 20 years fit into the region today was beyond their current understanding.  John asked Raul what he thought of the whole incident . . . a murdered associate, the head of the region, discovered 20 years after the fact. 

Raul answered without hesitation,  ‘I was here when Bill disappeared.   I was straight out of college in the USA and Agency training in Virginia.  I returned to Chile, the home of my family.  Life was easier than it is now.  You knew who the bad guys were or at least had a good idea of who they were.  Codes of conduct were followed.  There was violence, but there were limits.  The Colombian Cartels were the first to step outside the respect constraints with their Colombian Neckties, political assassinations and kidnappings for nothing more than money.  But when lines were crossed, the offenders were targeted and eliminated unless they served some other purpose.   Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel were a perfect example.  You could overthrow a government covertly. You could kill someone to get what you wanted, but you did it cleanly as you could.  Bill’s disappearance was a tragedy.  This discovery transformed it from an accident into something completely different.  This was just pure hate and evil . . . even at today’s escalated levels it is shocking.  I fear the intent of the message.  I fear that a beast was born over 20 years ago.  It has been waiting for us to find this declaration before he made his next overt move.  I fear that we have released the beast with this discovery.’

John was quiet.  He pondered the concept of a beast and he hoped that this beast was dead, unable to find a ecological niche in which to propagate.  If it found the appropriate niche, he feared what the beast may have become since Bill’s death.  He  pondered how strong its lineage was today.  ‘Lets just hope that the beast is dead or mellowed with age or close to death now, Raul’, John continued, ‘I will call you when I get the results of the handwriting analysis.’  With that John bid Raul goodbye. Raul reciprocated and added ‘ My preference is that the beast is dead.  Twenty years is a long time.  If he was able to focus, evade detection and grow in individual strength and create progeny  . . . I hate to think what we face now.  I don’t believe we could recognize it until our fates were sealed.  I look forward to the handwriting results.’

John hung up the phone and the cold pallor of evil enveloped him.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

O Dono woke up to the sounds of the Atlantic Rainforest awakening with the sun.  He raised the blinds and saw the men loading the trucks with his prized rodeo bulls for transport to São Paulo state for the Brasilian Rodeo Championships in the early ground fog pierced by the early morning light . . . the next iteration of the Brasil’s bull riding elite would be crowned as a result of riding his behemoths prior to invading the American Professional Bullriders Association . . . displacing Americans from yet another arena that Americans believed they would dominate forever.  He laughed a little at the thought . . . he was already winning a war that did not realize they were in.

The scene let him reflect on his childhood on the ranch . . . to a morning like this . . . to the morning his parents were murdered.  Across the field in the early morning light and mist, he saw them crossing the fields, surprising his parents and the sound of gunfire.  The stolen tractor-trailer rushed away as he ran across the fields to them.   He arrived seeing his mother crossing over death’s threshold while clutching the cooling hand of his dad. He never got the chance to say that he loved them.  He never got the chance to say goodbye to them.  He stood up and felt the sun’s light chasing the darkness of night into his soul and the concealing morning mists into his psyche . . . that was the beginning of his journey.  A journey that had delivered him to this place 5500 miles from the land he was born to.

Fernandinho’s voice broke his silence of introspection, ‘O Dono, I arrived in the sleeper of the first livestock transporter from São Paulo this morning.  I received notification from our operative in the Atacama that the Goat Messenger has finally delivered his message.’  Fernandinho waited for a seeming eternity for O Dono’s response in the posture of a warrior waiting for his general’s orders.

O Dono turned around to face him, his blank expression punctuated by his response,  ‘Take your normal room.  You will be staying for 3 days.  We have much preparation before we implement the plan.  Make calls to make sure your duties are delegated and completed in your absence.  We will work after dinner.  Get some rest and let me collect my thoughts.  Twenty fucking years . . . Twenty fucking years . . . Speed to impact was required to deliver an effective blow of limited scope when the Goat Messenger was dispatched . . . but twenty fucking years makes the all the difference.  Capable now we are of killing their whole tribe and their herders . . . All we need to do is to let them live in their delusion of being the global orchestrators.  They will lead themselves and their associates into our kill zone and never see it coming.’ 

‘Yes, O Dono’ replied Fernandinho.  With that he turned and left the Dono to reformulate his 20-year-old plan . . . from a plan to remove the Agency from tiny pockets of influence to a plan to remove them effectively from all global regions.  As he reached the end of the hall, O Dono announced ‘Barbacoa de Chivo will be served at 21:30 . . . in honor of the goats that died long ago in other lands.’

‘Director, sir, do you really want me to speculate on who this sick fuck, your words not mine, known as ‘The Goat Eater’ is?  If he is still alive?  And where he is?  John Sparks stood in front of Director of the Agency, asking rhetorically.  ‘Sir, until this morning we did not even know he existed when Bill Stevens vanished 20 years ago.  How can I know if he exists today when, outside of this single act, there is no evidence that the Goat Eater ever existed?  I know one thing with certainty, sick fucks like this don’t appear from nothing.  They are created.  They fester and break out.  I have to investigate this single clue of his existence to find a portion of the string if I have any hope of answering any portion of your request.’  With that John got the rest of the week to compile a full report on the Goat Eater, a man capable of waiting 20 years for a message to be delivered . . . A message declaring the beginning of the end . . . but the end of what remained a mystery.

John retreated to his office to gather his thoughts and tried to remove that image of a man’s head, a man included in his list of friends, staring up from the mummified goat –man form, which was cast into the desert waiting to be found.  The ring of his phone intruded to pull him back into the surreal environment introduced by a simple email less than 24 hours ago. 

The handwriting analysis was complete.  It would be delivered to John’s office in 5 minutes but the analyst was delivering a courtesy call to summarize the findings.  It was the opinion of the analyst that the note had been written by Bill Stevens.  The ink analysis was revealed an organic compound consistent with human blood, consistent with Bill Stevens’ blood type.  DNA testing could be used for a final confirmation.   John thanked the analyst for his work and hung up the phone.  The Goat Eater had no respect for Bill or any entity that Bill was perceived to personify.  John was certain that the later was the correct interpretation . . . no man could put another man through this unspeakable horror without remorse, if the Goat Eater was capable of remorse, unless he was attacking a greater evil that any single man could possibly contain.    

He sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and contemplating the words of the note:

American American, How lost you are.  Where is your tribe?  Today, Your End Begins.

Who composed it?  What was it intended to reveal?  It was obvious that Bill wrote it but probable he had been forced to write the message as the Goat Eater’s scribe.  It was one of Bill’s last actions.  So what of the content?  If the content was not Bill’s, then certainly it was the words of the Goat Eater’s.  Questions rushed in. ‘Today, Your End Begins’, whose end was beginning?  John pondered that point.  Bill’s end was done.  This End was just beginning with the discovery of the message.  It was time insensitive.  The tribe . . . the lost tribe . . . the lost American tribe was in danger now.  The Goat Eater would begin to dismember the American tribe now . . . if he survived the years.  John hoped the Sick Fuck had died in some third world backwater and that his vendetta had died with him. 

John stood up and walked down the hall, he needed the help of the psychologists and profilers.  He needed to get into the head of Goat Eater.  As he walked down the hall, his cell rang. 

‘John, Raul here.  I have been thinking.  The Goat Eater . . . he killed Bill 20 years ago.  He was in his 30s and in the prime of his life . . .  Maybe older, but not younger.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  Bill was a dead man walking when he loaded his llama and walked out into the Atacama.  Bill was not a normal man.  Bill was a spook, a field operative early on during the 50s.  His guard was never allowed to drop.  John, the Goat Eater is a spook too.  It takes a spook to kill a spook.  Just more one thing, while it takes a spook to kill a spook, spooks don’t leave calling cards.  Spooks just leave corpses. ‘ 

John was silent.  He felt the evil pallor revisiting him.  ‘Spooks don’t leave calling card unless he does not fear retribution.  Spooks don’t tell you that more will come, unless he knows that you can not stop him.  Spooks don’t wait twenty years, unless he is busy with preparation or timing does not matter to him.’  John let out a sigh with the last word.  ‘Raul, we are at war now.  More is coming and we know little, if anything.  If you are right, and I think you are, then he is in his 50s or older now.  Men of that age do not enter into a solitary war.  Timing would have mattered if the element of surprise was needed or made him weaker.  He used the time to become more lethal.  He has built an army.  He has trained an army.  He is the general and he will direct his troops.  But how could they do this and why don’t we know that this organization exist?’

Raul interjected, ‘John, he is one of us.  Only an insider, or a madman, would not fear us.  I bet he went off the reservation with a plan to hurt us.  He needed time so we might forget him.  Time would give him that too.  We need a listing of our lost spooks and the lost spooks of other organization we helped train.  I hope we have an idea of who he is before he launches his offensive.’

‘Raul, I hope we have the time but he will attack now rapidly.  He gains nothing by waiting now.  He will execute now.  He has staged for this day.  There will be little time for us to prepare.  The Goat Eater is hungry.  Twenty years is a long time to wait for a meal.  I am getting the profilers involved.  I will be heading to Lima when I am done here.’ 

‘I will meet you in Lima.  The image of Bill’s form haunts me when I close my eyes.’  Raul said, the last sentence becoming almost inaudible. 

‘Me too, Raul.  The sick fuck must know psychological warfare.  Let it go. Bill was gone years before the discovery.  He was intact when he was killed.  That bastard wants our attention diverted from the task at hand.  See you in Lima.’  With that remark, John hung up the phone and walked into the realm of the profilers.

The roar of panic was flooding his head but nonetheless he remained calm.  To become sucked into the panic was to die.  He remained emotionless, as he was trained to be, he moved like a man on a mission and that was exactly what he was.

It seemed as all of Saigon, as he knew it, was going down a drain . . . all of this world was coming to an end and the chaos of it was spinning around in an organized vortex . . . he just needed to navigate his way to its center and gain access to the drain . . . to get to the gate of the American Embassy.  It was the only exit from the coming Hell.

Twice already he made a turn down the wrong street and viewed the chaos of the city filled with refugees, the violence that accompanies panic with the expectation of Hell’s arrival.  The Viet Cong had circled the city and were pressing to claim their victory with their Soviet tanks.  He knew the end was near.  He might be the last American living outside of the Embassy compound in all of Saigon, but if he did not make it to the gate in time he might be the last American killed in Vietnam.  To the end of the block, a right turn and then navigating through a crowd grasping at him to help gain access to the compound and missing the coming Hell.  There it was . . .  he would make it.

He had been out in the city herding his tribe of goats, his operatives . . . doing his part in his last official action in Southeast Asia . . . Operation Goat Tender.  His was a particular tight tribe of goats.  He told them to get to the Embassy, to bring their families.  They would be the lucky ones to get out before the communists took over the Embassy after the last helicopter evacuated all those that mattered to US Naval ships offshore.  They would be miss the purge and re-education the communist would certainly start when the Americans were gone.  His final order hit him like a hammer, ‘Get on the copter, time is out.  This is the last one out.’  He looked into the face of his handler with outrage.  “Yes, sir.” He responded then he turned back to the Embassy building instead of the helicopter.  He saw his oldest goat and closest friend in Vietnam. He looked into his eyes and spoke in flawless Vietnamese, ‘I have been ordered to board the helicopter.’  His friend responded, ‘You have come to get us.  We will board with you?’  He looked at the ground, ‘I was told to board the helicopter immediately. There is no room for you, any of you.  Get the hell out of here. Those found here risk torture before death.  I am sorry my friend.  I would stay with you but I would stand out for what I am.  I wish it were different.  Survive and I will do what I can.’  He turned and ran to the helicopter LZ.

As his helicopter lifted away he looked back at the Embassy.  All the families laid dead at the feet of his friends.  Apparently, they found a cache of abandoned weapons and taken their fate into their own hands.  His last vision of Saigon was a mass goat suicide . . . the death of his friends.  They had done everything he asked.  He had done everything his handler had asked.  He had promised them refuge from the communist storm.  The handler promised him refuge for himself and his tribe.  He had lied to them as he had been lied to.  He knew it was over, his time with them, but he said nothing of his disillusionment.  He walked off of the helicopter, off the naval transport in Hawaii, off the jet in the USA.  He was visible for only another day or two.  He collected his things and destroyed the rest.  He walked into Tijuana at 10:00 pm on a Friday night.  He intended to never return to the USA unless there was no other alternative.  He had nothing to return to . . . no family, no friends outside of the agency, an agency that could not be trusted . . . nothing to hold him in the USA, especially now that he felt like nothing more than their pawn.  It would be years before he came back clandestinely.  He would have the shock of his life when he did.