Last Exit for Reality

It's now January 11, 2010 and I've been clean from Oxy drugs for four days. The days are OK but the nights are another thing. The only way I can get to sleep at night and beat the withdrawal is to take Valium and wash it down with shots of Tequila. I hope this process doesn't last very long.

The year was early 1990 and I was on vacation with my wife on a boat going south through the islands. That's when I received a call that a CIA agent had been kidnapped. A military brief case was also taken. He had been inside a Tampa base on the west coast of Florida. The word was that they were on their way to the island of St. John. Since I was on my way to St. Thomas, which is the next island over from St. John, I was ordered to help.

My wife and I arrived in St. Thomas on a Monday morning. I was told that the CIA agent being held would arrive on St. John Wednesday by sea plane. I've been to St. John many times looking for and capturing killers and thieves so I knew the area pretty well.

I met six other agents at the docks in St. Thomas early Wednesday and we headed out towards the other island. We had a lead that they going to land on the west side of the island facing St. Thomas. Three of us went to that side of the island to waited while the other three split off and went to the south end of the island.

The sea plane landed just off the docks where we were. We watched the men be picked up by a large boat with more men and a few women on board.

I was watching the boat when I noticed that one of our agents, Tom, didn't look well. He was leaning against the wall. I moved over to him and asked him what was wrong. He told me he had cut his leg a few days ago and had taken some pain pills for the pain. Problem was he couldn't remember how many he had taken and when. This was not good news. He was not thinking clearly and the boat was coming in to land at the dock. I called the other agents. Thank God they had seen the plane coming in and would be there in two minutes.

The boat came to the dock very slowly and they tied the boat to the cleats. Two men came off the boat holding the CIA agent in front of them and headed towards the parking lot. I also noted three other men standing on the boat with guns. Two things were happening at the same time. I knew we couldn't let them leave with the CIA agent. Our other Agents were coming into the parking lot. I knew our job was to take out the men on the boat so the other Agents could rescue our guy.

I grabbed Agent Tom and the other agent and went out of the house to take out the guys on the boat. The other Agent and I went first with agent Tom following. We got a drop on the three men on the boat and they all dropped their guns.

Then I heard Agent Tom yell "gun". I turned around and saw Tom laying on the ground on his side and his automatic rifle firing into the side of the boat. He must have emptied almost a full clip into it. Then I heard automatic fire up at the parking lot. Then the yelling and women screaming started. I looked around trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

The other Agents had two men on the ground and the CIA Agent was rescued. We had two of the three men on the boat also on the ground. Agent Tom had shot one of the men on the boat as he fell to the ground.

The women on board the boat were still crying and yelling. Two agents went into the boat to check out the commotion. I went over to Agent Tom to see how he was doing since he was still laying on the ground. He had tripped over some iron bars on the dock and hurt his injured leg so badly that he couldn't stand up.

I looked over at the boat and one of the Agents came out shaking his head saying oh shit over and over. When Agent Tom fell and his rifle opened up he had killed a women and her child hiding inside the boat, not just the man who was getting ready to shoot us.

When things like this happens it's something you think about for a long time. You think to yourself if Agent Tom wasn't on drugs would he have slipped and discharged his rifle? Would those two innocent people have been killed? If he hadn't fallen and shot the guy on the boat would we be here? Were the innocent mother and child just in the wrong place at the wrong time? And why were they on the boat in the first place? A few hours later I flew back to St. Thomas to be with my wife.