Warren Murphy Destroyer 129 Father to Son

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list.
It might have given another man satisfaction to have been right. Not Mark
Howard. Pride at such a time was inappropriate. After all, a man was now
dead.
Not that Mark objected to killing. Not when it was necessary. But the taking
of a fellow human life was far too serious a thing to allow self-serving
emotions to intrude.
Mark knew this from experience.
Although he did his best not to think about it, men had died thanks to him.
When he first came to CURE, there had been a patient at Folcroft by the name
of Jeremiah Purcell. Purcell was a man with special psychic gifts. A
psychotic, a murderer. The patient had manipulated Mark's receptive mind on a
psychic level the assistant CURB director couldn't begin to understand. Mark
had unwittingly freed him from his confinement. And people had died.
Although Mark hadn't been in control of his actions, that didn't lessen the
guilt in the days and weeks after those terrible events. The patient was still
at large. Purcell had gone silent after his escape from Folcroft. But there
were probably others dead. All thanks to Mark Howard.
Those deaths had been at a distance. Other hands had done the actual deed.
Maybe he could have lived with that. Gotten over the guilt. But they weren't
the only dead.
Mark had killed. Personally. With his own two hands.
Only one man. Not that "only" could dismiss the horrible significance of such
an act.
It was justified. The man with the gun on that cold December night had been
about to shoot Dr. Smith. But that didn't matter. The guilt afterward had
swelled to a point where it threatened to consume Mark. He had fought to hide
it, to control it. But for months through spring and summer the anguish was
almost more than he could bear. He came to work, did his job, went home. No
one, not Dr. Smith, not anyone had guessed the crushing burden Mark Howard
lived under all those months.
And then he stopped it. Just like that.
He remembered the day. September 10, 2001. Mark had finally gotten his
nephew's drawing framed. He had just put the small frame on his desk. As he
sat there in the yellow afternoon sunlight, he thought of the tiny hand that
drew it, of the life of joys and heartaches that had not yet been explored,
and of the lurking forces that threatened that young life, and the lives of
all Americans.
Mark thought of his job at CURE. A frustrating, ugly, dangerous job. And a
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necessary one.
Guilt over what he had done, over what he had to do, was a small price to pay
to help ensure the safety of those lives. And in that moment of realization,
guilt was replaced by cold determination.
There were terrible events that took place the next day. Events that changed
the world and America forever. But in a quiet moment the day before the world
turned upside down, Mark Howard had already changed. The events of September
11 only helped to codify that resolve. Since that time, Mark had come to his
small Folcroft office determined to toil and sweat and worry to the best of
his abilities so that his fellow Americans did not have to.
For the moment his regular CURE duties were on hold.
Mark logged the death of the French assassin. The man joined the two English
Source agents who had been reported dead earlier that day. He wondered briefly
what country would be next. Most likely Germany.
Mark was pulling up his list of the best-known German killers when the phone
at his elbow jangled to life.
It was the outside line.
Puzzled, he glanced at his watch. After 6:00 p.m. Mark had recently convinced
Dr. Smith to relax his schedule. Now, two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays,
the CURE director went home from work at 5:00 p.m. These days Smith's
secretary generally left around the same time. After they were gone the calls
were routed to an answering service.
This was the public line, not the one used by family or friends. Confused,
Mark scooped up the clunky old phone.
"Folcroft. Mark Howard speaking."
The noise that issued from the earpiece was so loud, Mark immediately had to
yank the phone away from his ear. For an instant it sounded like the
electronic shrieks of an Internet connection. For a second he held out the
phone, unsure if it was some sort of malfunction.
He was about to hang up when he heard a series of distinct sobs amid the
horrible shrieks. Only then did Mark realize that the noise wasn't phone
static. It was the sound of a woman in distress.
He drew the phone tentatively back to his ear. "Hello?" he asked uncertainly. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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