Scott Tuplin

Written from the first person perspective of ex-military/contract killer Simon Teale - Home tells the tale of a freelance job which brings him, and his recent trouble with an international crime outfit, to his home town in England. What follows is a juggle between a life he swore never to reveal to his family and protecting them from that very same threat.


RAF SCAMPTON, ENGLAND
Saturday, 23rd December 2007

I had no idea which of the two girls on the plane had come across something they weren’t supposed to see, but they were paying for it now. We were to escort them from the airfield to the city they’d be living in for the next few months, ‘we’ being myself and a guy called Nick who I’d worked with before in several different countries on several different jobs.
We stood by the Range Rover, which had been courteously supplied to us by the Company, and waited for the small private jet to come a stop. On board there were two girls who had been lifted off the London streets two days earlier, three Company men who had taken care of security during the flight from Heathrow to Scampton, and two pilots who had no idea where their passengers had come from or where they were going. It was best that way. They would receive a big chunk of cash for their troubles, and never be any the wiser.
Apparently the two girls, Jan and Tina, were students making their way through computer programming degrees at Oxford, paid for by the odd freelance computer job for the Company. Best I could figure, from what we’d been told, they had stumbled upon some information about a job in the Middle East and gotten dumb. They’d held the info to ransom, tried to get the Company to buy it back and threatened to release it to the press if they didn’t. Now they were going to spend some alone time with the Company’s best ‘persuaders’ in a secluded house on the opposite side of the county. I’d have felt sorry for them if I was getting paid any less, but at the moment I was very comfortable.
The door to the back of the jet had been opened and a brute of a man was making his way down the steps onto the tarmac. He stopped at the bottom, nodded at me and turned to shout something back into the plane. The girls appeared, both looking shaken, and were ordered to walk slowly over to us. The two other men we had been told to expect followed behind them.
“Teale?” Brute Man said as he got close. I nodded, shook his hand and introduced him to Nick. I could see that one of the girls had been crying and the left side of her face was bruised, she’d probably gone a couple of rounds with one of the men and lost. Badly. I opened the back door to the jeep and gestured the girls inside. They didn’t argue. We’d flicked on the child locks so that the doors would only open from the outside, and the wires for the electric windows had been ripped out so that neither of them could attempt to push themselves out if we came to stop at any time.
Nick would be driving all the way, since most of his time in the Company had been spent driving vehicles of all kinds he was the obvious choice. If any friends decided to try a half-arsed rescue mission for the girls, Nick would be able to get us out faster than I could. My skill was firearms, something which I’d been glad to have on many occasions. Being able to draw a gun and shoot it better than an opponent was often a lifesaver.
Brute Man handed me a manila folder that was full of profiles on people who may attempt a rescue, but most of them were marked as unlikely. They were university students, not secret agents. There was also a map marked with the route we would be taking to the safe house, but Nick and I had spent the week driving back and forth checking out every possible ambush point. It was always best to be prepared, something I had learned in the SAS and never given up.
Once we’d squared off with how the girls were doing and how well-behaved they had been, the three men retreated back to the plane to wait for their pick up and we made our way back to the main road from Scampton to a place called Sturton By Stow. It was one of many villages we would pass through before finally reaching our destination.

If this gets enough positive replies, I will continue to post new parts as they are written. If not... no worries.

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Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow

Industrial

This piece has potential. I thought it was poorly organized but somehow you still kept me reading and still had a involving plot.

The grammar and structure errors or minimized by the type of piece that it is. It reads like it truly is from the perspective of a ex-military member.

I overall liked it. I still think it needs some serious reworking.

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The Backward OX

One of my fundamental rules for enjoyable reading is that the story must be believable; that at a pinch I might be able to see myself in the story. On this count, when stacked up against many other posts on this site, you win hands down. Your work is like the clichéd breath of fresh air brushing aside all the unbelievable rubbish with which so many so-called writers infest this site.

10/10

Ps No idea about the technical aspects of your writing. Didn’t look closely; didn’t want to spoil the feeling.

Pps Ok, there is one wee nit. You're a Pom. Why did you use the word "gotten"? It's bad enough we have to put up with McDonalds, without adopting their language as well.

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How Beautiful it is to Do Nothing, and then Rest Afterwards . . . . . Spanish proverb

Scott Tuplin

Thank you. I've never been very good at proof reading. I don't know why, I just seem to miss a lot of my own mistakes. Anyway, that is hopefully something I can improve with practise, and will definitely be attempting to tighten this piece till the wee hours of the morning

You've just voiced the exact feel I was going for, so thank you very much. I didn't want to start writing a piece that portrayed this character as James Bond in a different shell, so you'll never know how happy I was to read your comments on realism.

I apologise if I'm about to make myself look extremely stupid, but what is a Pom? lol

__________________
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow

Otto Ray Sing

I really like what you've written so far, but I do agree that some grammer work is in order. You've got this reader sitting on the edge of his seat. You are going to make sure that they don't have an uneventful trip, aren't you? I do like your details of the locked doors and cut window wires.

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We grow too soon old, and too late smart.

The Backward OX

Clearly you’ve never attended a Test cricket match at Headingley or Old Trafford or The Oval or Trent Bridge or Edgbaston, between England and Australia. Pom is short for Pommy (or Pommie), and clearly you’ve never heard the Aussie supporters shouting “Useless Pommy bastard!” every time an England fielder drops a catch.

Pommys are Englishmen. When they drop catches they’re “useless Pommy bastards”, when they move to Australia most of them become “whingeing pommy bastards”, although the ones we take to our hearts are simply “pommy bastards.”

Pommy is the modern way of rendering P.O.M.E., the acronym stencilled on the government-issue clothing of the first Australians – Prisoner Of Mother England.

So now you know.

You need to get out more.

ps As you're only a Pom I'll make allowances and forgive you the use of 'lol'.

__________________
How Beautiful it is to Do Nothing, and then Rest Afterwards . . . . . Spanish proverb

Scott Tuplin

... kthnxbi

__________________
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow

Scott Tuplin

Just a small part this time, I've been real busy lately and not had much chance to get down to this. More soon, promise.

Reminder to self: title has changed - Bullets For Being

Neither Jan nor Tina said much in just over an hour of driving. Nick had dialled through several radio stations, finally deciding on one that played incessant dance tunes back to back. Most of them I recognised from the early nineties, but I wasn't really listening to any. It wasn't my kind of music.
Instead, I busied myself watching out the window, picking up the landmarks I had memorised in three weeks of recce work on the route. Head office of a building contractors - Gelders or something - followed a few minutes later by a level crossing that we hadn't needed to stop at yet. Tonight was different, as we seemed to be just in time to meet a train carrying large gas tanks.
Nick brought the Range Rover to a slow stop, pulled up the handbrake and turned down the volume on the radio. Maybe he was so busy concentrating on the road that he wasn't listening to it either? I pulled down the sun screen, on the belly of which I had fixed a mirror, and checked out the girls in the backseat. They were both looking equally terrified, and kept sniffling, but they didn't seem to be making any effort to talk. Fine by me.
The last car of the train passed by and the gates began to swing open slowly. Shifting into first gear, Nick let off the handbrake and we began moving again. As soon as the crossing was cleared, we came by a sign that informed us we were now entering Marton, and a row of bungalows came into view on our left. To our right - nothing except empty fields. The road we were on dipped into a steep hill right on the edge of the village centre, and led us down into the most densely populated area. No one was around.
We came to a crossroads and, down the road to our left, a pub with its downstairs lights on was the only sign of life. Out here in the country, not many people seemed to stay up beyond midnight. Nick turned the vehicle right and, seconds later, we were headed back out of the village and into a very small, very communal suburb of a kind. There was no roadsigns or welcomings, but the map I had been studying all day told me we had just entered Gate Burton, and would be leaving again in just over five hundred meters. I also knew this was the last settlement we would pass through before arriving at our destination, but we were going to have to avoid the main roads now, meaning a diversion over dirt roads and seemingly non-existent trails through dense woods. This was the part I wasn't looking forward to.

__________________
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
- E.L. Doctorow