Chapter 4 - good night

Although terrorism had not yet made a mark on Canada, it had sickened him to see what had befallen his historical brothers to the south – the brothers that had rebelled against the King – the black sheep of the family. They were still family though, even if they didn’t know it and acted like a spoiled kid sometimes. Keel had worked with American Special Forces in his past and had made lifelong friends with some of them. They were his brothers in arms and he felt the two countries were brothers as well. Brothers that had a common historical background, even if one had broken away from the empire at an early age while the other hadn’t.

Now was not the time for reflection however. There was work to be done. Work that he considered local terrorism. A man had been brutally murdered and left to be found by his loving wife and young child. Inexcusable. It was not going to go unpunished. The “end man” would see to that.

Upon arriving at the top of the slope and to the left of his target house, Keel took a moment to let the sounds of his surroundings settle. Crouching under a huge hanging tree and amid brush, Keel did a quick surroundings check. Not a sound was heard. The house to the left was coated in darkness. Not a light to be seen anywhere. Not very smart. It literally radiated to anyone wanting to break in that no one was home. The house in question however did have a back patio light on, right above the door.


Keel stealthily glided up to the back of the house. He had no intention of standing out in the open underneath the back porch light. Using his compact night scope, he had previously noted that the left side ground floor bedroom window was slightly open. Opening the window slowly, Keel pulled himself up and into what turned out to be Kevin’s bedroom. A picture of Kevin with some buddies on a beach in Mexico was prominently displayed on top of a dark wood dresser placed against the side wall, next to a queen sized bed.. Ignoring everything else in the room, Keel moved up to the door and listened for any noise in the immediate vicinity. Only a faint, clinking noise reached Keel’s ears. Silently opening the door, Keel slid out and down the hall. There, the hallway opened up into the kitchen.

“Hey Carl. You want a Corona or a Pale Ale”, screamed Kevin Whitewall.

“ A Pale Ale”, screamed back a slurred voice from the basement.

This voice, Keel knew, belonged to the primary target, Carl Bropen. The murderer of Nelson Graves, oil engineer and husband to wife Glenda and father to daughter Lilly. Bropen was one of the Green Men, and one of the most radical. He was responsible for multiple environmentally based attacks on the oil industry as well the softwood lumber industry across Alberta and British Columbia. Until this point, he had been a perpetual irritating pest, like a petulant child. The murder of Graves was an obvious intensification of his radical views.

First however, Keel had to deal with Kevin Whitewall. Although he was not the target, killing him would offer a viable motive to the local police and it would cover the fact that Bropen was the primary target.

Bropen was staring into the open refrigerator. Two bottles of Pale Ale were on the top of the kitchen counter next to an Edmonton Oilers bottle opener. The door opening away from where Keel was standing, just barely visible behind the hallway wall.

Keel moved out from behind the wall and quietly towards Kevin, his back to Keel. Standing right behind Kevin, Keel quickly struck out and wrapped his left arm under Kevin’s chin and using his right arm to brace his left, Keel had wrapped him up in a basic sleeper hold, cutting off the blood supply to his head and rendering him unconscious in a matter of second. Keel then slowly lowered him to the kitchen floor. He then looked around the kitchen, noticing a meat carving knife on the far side of the counter. On the kitchen table was a credit card and a small, 2-½ inch hollow tube. It looked like it was made of ivory. Only the best for Kevin.