S.1 E.1: Tuesday, 04/16/2019—Operation Phoenix
The 1st episode of The Inevitable introduces our antagonists, who are out for revenge!
Episode 1. Preview
Fergus Mackenzie, our villain, a new prisoner awaiting arraignment at Rikers Island, secretly communicates using a burner phone by calling his protégé, Lorry James. She activates "Operation Phoenix" at their underground club: The Five Iron. He also orders her to take revenge on the man who got him arrested—our hero, Dr. Andrew Beck.
Reader note:
The links on the character names will bring you to the Meet the Characters page, which summarizes each character in The Inevitable.
Proditor – British English – A traitor, a person guilty of treason or treachery, in betraying friends, country, a cause or trust, etc.
Edmond Dantès – A fictional character and the hero of the novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844–1845) by Alexandre Dumas père. When Dantès is imprisoned as a young sailor because of the treachery of four acquaintances, he spends the rest of his life plotting and then carrying out plans for revenge against his betrayers.
Berwick, Stirling, Perth, Newcastle – The four cities William Wallace’s body parts were displayed to discourage treachery against the crown of England.
A bulky inmate at Rikers Island Prison walked quickly across the catwalk, the prisoners inside their cells blurring together. He bore an Irish flag tattoo on his neck, with the words “Erin go bragh” tattooed underneath the flag. Both hands were buried deep in his green prison jumpsuit, and he held something firmly in one hand, doing his best to hide its rectangular shape.
When he reached the open cell, he saw a six-foot, slim, broad-shouldered man in his mid-fifties leaning up against the top bunk of his cell in a tan jumpsuit. He mumbled to himself as he stared at the wall and rubbed his neatly shaven blonde head soothingly with his hand that had blood dripping from his knuckles. Beneath the man lay another man, also in a tan jumpsuit, unconscious and his face a bloody mess.
“What the hell happened here?” Shamus McGrath asked in an Irish accent.
Fergus Mackenzie replied in a deep Scottish accent, “He asked me one too many questions.”
“Well, how many fucking questions did he ask, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“One.”
McGrath pulled the small black rectangular object out of his pocket, stepped over the unconscious and bleeding man, and looked over his shoulder as he slid the object into Fergus’ hand.
Fergus received the burner phone, gave the man a quick nod, and looked back at the empty beige cinderblock wall.
“If you need anything, Mr. Mackenzie, the boys and me are around. Do you know when your arraignment is?”
Fergus didn’t answer. He opened the flip phone and started typing a text.
“Right, well, I’ll leave you to it.”
On Mercer Street, about halfway between Grand and Howard Streets, there was a nondescript steel elevator at street level between a glass door of a boutique at 28 Mercer and a red brick building at 26 Mercer. The elevator looked harmless enough, except for the protruding camera that looked menacingly out at passersby. Once inside the elevator, there was a brief descent into a devil’s playground called The Five Iron.
The Five Iron was a posh speakeasy owned and operated by Fergus Mackenzie. The street-level elevator took its patrons two floors underground, where the members gambled illegally. High-stakes poker, sports betting, and other vices suited the rich but decadent patrons of Fergus’ exclusive club.
The club was ornately decorated, with chaise lounge chairs and plush Louis XVI-style chairs in various shades of red and deep crimson. There was a central area with black parquet dining tables. In the north corner was a sports book area with two plush brown leather couches, U-shaped with an ornate but modern square coffee table. Recliners bookended the couches, and each set had giant 85-inch screen TVs flanked by two smaller 64-inch TVs on each side. This set-up gave viewers five screens to observe. Some additional monitors displayed the sports betting odds for every sport imaginable. The screens flashed and changed like the departure schedule at an airport.
At the far end of the club, there was an elevated platform, accessed by four steps, that housed several poker tables. Each poker table could be individually enclosed by draping velvet and crimson curtains that encircled each table to give the players privacy or kept open for spectators to watch Texas Hold’em tournaments. This decadent underground club could be seen entirely from the mezzanine level, which was reached by a grand white staircase with a red carpet. At the top of the stairs, to the right, was a long hallway lined with a 42-inch high white balustrade railing that ended at a large red door with a large brass knocker in the center of the door. It looked like something from an English manor house. No one went up to the mezzanine except for Fergus and Lorry James.
Lorry James was Fergus’ protégé and head of operations and security. Lorry was a fiery red-headed Scottish woman in her early thirties. She was five feet seven inches tall, and her mind moved as she did: quickly, silently, and with a mathematician’s precision. Lorry had a steely veneer, and her emotions didn’t betray her. Her standard uniform was a black pantsuit with a pair of Doc Martens Vondas lace-up boots embroidered with red roses up the sides—the feminine touch to her badass self.
Just a few hours before The Five Iron opened, Lorry was on the floor giving orders. She hadn’t heard from Fergus for hours, which was highly unusual, and no one knew where he was. Then her phone buzzed. She quickly retrieved her phone from her pocket, but the text was from an unknown number. It read “Jack Short.”
Lorry's stoic face turned to horror as she glanced at her watch, which read 17:49:42. She raced from the floor, knocking away two of her security staff, up the stairs two at a time, and turned right to run down the balustrade-lined hallway to the big red door with a brass knocker to Fergus’ office. She did not bother knocking and slammed the door behind her. The force of the door closing threw the knocker up and down with a loud pang!
There was a large white marble fireplace behind Fergus’ desk; it was unlit, but it had wood in it, neatly stacked. Oil paintings on the large office walls depicted various outdoor, hunting, and nature scenes. The rising triangular hills depicted in them were the Scottish Highlands. The male figures wore traditional Clan Mackenzie blue and green tartan kilts with leather sporrans and wool Tam o’ Shanters that flopped over the right side of the wearer’s face below the ear. The office was spartan and neatly furnished; nothing looked out of place. Above the marble fireplace was a mounted golf club. It was an antique with a wooden shaft, and the silver five iron club head had turned blackish with age and possibly use.
Lorry went to the fireplace and shoved her hand under the marble mantle, feeling for something. When she felt a wooden box, she pulled it down. It was a brown box for a bottle of 30-year-old Glenturret Scotch from the Scottish Highlands of Skye, where Fergus was from. Inside the box was not a bottle of the $1,800 caramel-colored single malt but an Iridium Extreme 9575 satellite phone of almost the same cost.
Lorry pulled out the satellite phone and turned it on. It took a minute to fire up, and she mumbled for the phone to start faster. Sweat fell from her neatly braided red hair and down her high cheekbones. She looked at her watch: 17:52:33. The phone had a signal, and her gaze was fixed on her watch, glued to the seconds ticking off. At precisely 17:52:42, the satellite phone rang.
Lorry answered, “Berwick, Stirling, Perth, Newcastle.”
Fergus replied, “Edmund Dantes.”
“Proditor?”
“What?”
“You heard right, lass. Follow the protocol.”
The phone clicked, and Lorry felt her chest tighten. She was short of breath and sat in Fergus's leather office chair—something no one had ever done. She pounded the brown leather-padded arm, cursing to herself. She fought back the tears forming and choked down some air. She took three deep breaths and let them out forcefully.
Lorry stood up, pulled the sleeve of her jacket over her hand, meticulously wiped off the seat and armrest, and slowly slid the chair back under the desk. Lorry quickly exited Fergus’ office and raced down the stairway, looking over The Five Iron.
“Everyone, on me!”
The staff stopped hustling and circled her.
“We’ve had a critical breach. Fergus has been arrested. We can assume the police will be here in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I’m invoking Operation Phoenix.”
The staff gasped as they looked at each other with grave concern.
Lorry continued. “All staff and all shifts will be called in. Senior staff, get your teams ready. We are racing against the clock here, people. If anyone tries to leave, you will get some personal time with our Sergeant at Arms, George. And nothing pisses off George more than a coward. Let’s roll!”
The staff scattered in different directions, game faces on everyone as Lorry stood, hands on hips, trying to loosen the vice grip on her chest that would not stop squeezing. She had only felt this way once before, and it was a long time ago, the day she bid farewell to her mother, Katy James, and Scotland, the two things in life she loved the most.
She resisted the urge to put her hand on her chest to comfort herself. Her staff could not see her this way—not now. She buried the feelings deep in her gut. She could breathe again. She pulled out her phone and typed a text message: “Stay away from here.”
But before she hit send, she erased it slowly, backspacing on each letter. With every letter erased, she paused. It was as if someone was poking her in the belly with something sharp. Despite the pain in her gut, she finished erasing, shoved the phone back in her pocket, and hurried off amongst the staff, who were crisscrossing in all directions.
Click here for Episode 2:
Tuesday 04/16/2019—Walk The Walk
Dr. Andrew Beck sits in the Central Park South Penthouse office of Beck Sports Psychology. He admits his gambling problem to his wary assistant, Gina Perez, a former World Cup Soccer Team Co-Captian and recovering alcoholic. Gina wants to know who the man was that she watched get arrested. Andrew is reluctant but tells her the gangster Fergus Mackenzie was blackmailing him, and then his tearful confessions emerge.
Author’s Note:
I am so delighted to launch my first serialized fiction work here on Substack! Woo hoo!
A special thanks to my internationally-based Advanced Reader Team: Mike (USA), Ernie (USA), Shelly & Gareth (UK), Marsha (Barbados), Will (USA), and my editor, Jill (Barbados)! Your feedback and insights have been invaluable in getting this out!
Since I will be releasing three episodes every week, I thought I would send you the first episode via normal distribution (i.e., email) and then links to the other two episodes in the document to prevent your email box from being filled with separate emails for each episode. Also, there are buttons to take you to the table of contents at the beginning and end of each chapter.
Let me know if you have other ideas to make reading and distribution easier. I have not done this before, so I am open to suggestions to make your reading experience as pleasurable as possible.
Thank you,
Chris K. Jones
Just got to this now, Chris...really enjoyed Episode 1!