Cast No Shadow: Memoirs of a Modern Day Assassin

Google Images

Introduction

Cast No Shadow is a story told in the first person by Robert “Rob” Abernathy Jr. a fourth-generation assassin who does clean-up work for the government. Like his forebears they adhere to a strict code: no women or children, never question orders or the authority behind them, and always remain invisible, among others.

This cadre of killers consider themselves to be patriots, soldiers fighting an invisible war against those who would do our nation harm. However, beginning in the last decade of the 20th Century, Rob begins to sense that something is amiss. The targets are changing, becoming more political, indicating that a power struggle is going on within the government. It continues until the present as we witness current events and the murders of many high profile people through the eyes of an assassin.

The story begins when Rob inadvertently opens a large manila envelope that came in the mail addressed to his dad, an event that changes the course of Rob’s life. Up until this event, Rob’s loss of innocence, he lived an idyllic life in suburban Maryland with his sister Jackie, and his mom and dad, the owners of a store that sold and repaired office machinery. As the story unfolds, Jackie goes on to become a supermodel while Rob becomes immersed in the family business, trained by his father and others to become a killer, whose expertise runs the gamut from long-range firearms to the use of sophisticated poisons and hand to hand combat.

Chapter 1

I’m A Kid

It all started about a month or so after my 11th birthday when I opened a large manila envelope marked ‘Confidential’ addressed to my dad. Don’t ask me why I did it this time, it was identical to others that showed up from time to time. I guess it was just one of those stupid decisions that you make as a kid. Now that I look back, it probably wouldn’t have changed things much, what transpired afterwards was bound to happen anyway I guess.

Forgive me for not introducing myself; my name is Robert M. Abernathy Jr. although back then everybody just called me Bobby even though I was getting too old for that and was becoming ‘Little Bob’, while my dad was ‘Big Bob’. He was my hero back then and I guess he still is to some extent. He was not only the best dad in the world but the leader of my Scout Troop – this was before the Scouts were taken over by what he calls the fags and diddlers.

My dad and mom ran a store, our family business, that specializes in office supplies and machinery, both sales and repair and now that personal computers have become popular, them too. As my big sister and I got to be in our teens we worked there too in hopes that we would take over one day. My sister went on to college where she got discovered by a modeling agency leaving me to run both family businesses by myself, but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

I’m really a pretty normal guy, all in all, I live in a modest home like my mom and dad, drive a minivan, have a wife and two kids, the only real difference is that I kill people for a living – what my dad called “taking out the trash for Uncle Sam.” According to him, we were invisible soldiers, patriots, fighting an invisible war to protect our country. I guess you could say that I come from a long line of assassins, me, my dad, his dad, and my great-grandfather before him. That’s what I learned from my dad after opening that manila envelope marked ‘Confidential’ that summer I turned eleven.

My dad didn’t bring me into the business that summer of course, but he did begin taking me to the shooting range to acclimate me to guns and to test my aptitude for shooting. He also taught me some of life’s most important lessons that summer: Things like to never cast a shadow, in other words to blend into your surroundings and not be noticed. This was to be one of our secrets, the beginning of my secret life.

He taught me that most of the people that do what we do come from a background in Special Forces, former military operatives, but that’s kind of obvious. What makes us special is that we’re the people who cast no shadows, anonymous, invisible, mundane people that no one would ever suspect.

That year of my 11th birthday saw many other changes as well. My older sister, Jackie, became a major focus of conversation among my prepubescent friends, my friend Patrick in particular. Patrick was kind of a fat kid with red hair and freckles and was my best friend, through childhood to the present. It was always Jackie this, or Jackie that, followed by “she’s so hot,” or “she’s so beautiful,” accompanied by “I’d like to… (you can fill in the blanks yourselves).” As far as I was concerned she was still just an annoying older female sibling that seemed to endlessly monopolize the second-floor bathroom we were forced to share. Patrick was hopelessly in love with Jackie ever since his hormones began to change and probably still is to some extent although he’s happily married with children of his own.

Beginning in that 11th summer and extending through my teenage years my training for my avocation intensified. From the very beginning my young mind was full of questions and my dad answered, always patient, always loving. I struggled to put the things my father told me into some kind of context, but lacking life experience little of it made sense until I grew older. We would go on father and son excursions out to the Maryland countryside to shoot. I always looked forward to these because it gave us a chance to be alone and talk and I bombarded him with questions.

“Does Mom know?” This was one of the foremost questions on my mind.

“No one knows but you and me,” he replied patiently. “There’s a passage in the Bible that says to never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. You’re growing up fast Son and I have to know that I can depend on you.”

“You can depend on me Dad,” I said, my heart brimming with pride in his confidence. “Always.”

“I know that Son,” my dad replied solemnly, “if I didn’t I would never have told you. You must never tell anyone, your friends, your mom, your sister Jackie, anyone.”

“I won't’ Dad,” I replied, trying to be equally solemn.

My 13th summer I was no longer ‘Little Bob’ but now the more mature Rob, a name I kept for good. This was the summer that I began martial arts training with Mr. Nakanaga, an instructor that taught a particularly lethal form of martial arts from Okinawa that included the use of various weapons including the katana and tanto blade. I even learned the kyoketsu, a Japanese knife attached to a long cord, but most of my training was in hand to hand combat.

Mr. Nakanaga was the real deal. He had developed his own style by combining traditional Okinawan Uechi Ryu with the deadly Silat from Malaysia and Ninjutsu, the style utilized by Ninjas. The combination was quick, effective and deadly. By the time I was 16 I had managed to become proficient enough to hold my own against practically anyone. Mr. Nakanaga didn’t run a dojo like most instructors, taking on only one or two students at a time. This way he could focus on providing the best possible service turning his students into very proficient killers.

Under my dad’s tutelage I had also become proficient with a number of firearms including the long rifle, pistol, and a number of other weapons. At school I focused on chemistry and used what I learned to study poisons on the side. One of the things my father imparted to me was that often it was necessary to make my hits look like accidents or suicides. Because we mostly targeted high-profile people, this was crucial. While my friends were enjoying baseball, football and other team sports I was learning to kill, not that I didn’t have my moments. I was pretty good at baseball and hockey which I really enjoyed, but most of my focus was on martial arts.

I also learned the code by which we lived which included never targeting women or children and to never, ever to question orders. These were two of the rules that I came to live by. When I asked my dad about them he said: “We’re not in the business of making moral judgements, that’s for people much smarter than we are – we’re just soldiers doing a job.”

It was also in my 16th year that my dad decided to take me along on one of his business trips. It was the early 80’s and “the Gipper” was president. My sister had just graduated and was going off to college in the fall. I was graduating a year early putting me only a year behind her, so I would soon be heading off to college myself. First, however, it was time to get my feet wet so to speak. Although I would not be participating myself, I was to be a witness to the “suicide” of a man who someone had deemed bad enough to dispose of.

The target was a man who lived alone in a large house just outside of Philadelphia. My dad was disguised as a delivery man. When the man answered the door my dad held a chloroform rag over his nose and mouth and once he was unconscious I helped carry him inside. My father took a length of rope out of his bag and strung it from the second floor balustrade putting a noose around the man’s neck. We hoisted him up and my dad put a chair on its side near the man’s feet. He would strangle to death before he ever recovered from the chloroform. The lack of a suicide note may cause the police to question what had happened but we would be safely back in Maryland before any suspicions arose.

I don’t know what this man was supposed to have done but I believed him to be an enemy of America. After it was all done I had a good feeling about what we had accomplished. I was a patriot doing a patriot’s duty and I admired my father even more than usual. Before I go off to college and continue with my story, I want to make something clear. This wasn’t something we did every week or so. We received the manila envelopes perhaps four times a year, five at the most. The money was good, deposited into a numbered Cayman Island account, but the money wasn’t why we did what we did. Like I said before, we were soldiers, patriots, fighting in an invisible war to protect our country from the forces of evil that would do us harm. We made enough from the store to live very comfortably, we did what we did because we believed in America and wanted to keep her safe.

At college I majored in computer science. Computer languages were like a second nature to me, they just made perfect sense the way they were structured. I made some extra money constructing websites although the internet was still in its infancy. Everything back then was still dial-up and incredibly slow but anyone with half a brain could see that this was the future. I started putting my extra money into shares of Apple and Microsoft, something that would pay off later on. I also became interested in computer security and began writing programs that would protect my computers from interference from anyone.

It was at college that I met my Ginny, Virginia Russell, an auburn-haired beauty that I fell in love with the first time we met. She was not only beautiful but incredibly intelligent with a quick wit and a scathing sense of humor. She also reminded me a lot of my mother, she was a throwback, an anachronism. My mom was a product of the turbulent sixties but had the values of a woman of the 40’s or 50’s, dedicated to her husband and family never questioning anything. I’ve always suspected that she knew about what my dad was doing but she never said a word or let on that she did. Ginny was like her in many ways but also a product of her time. I would have to trust her with my secret for our marriage to survive.

I considered getting a masters or Ph.D in computer science but Ginny was pregnant with our first child and my dad was getting older so I was needed at home. It was time to pass the reins; my dad would stay at home and mind the store while I took over our responsibilities elsewhere. Ginny, also a computer programmer, would work from home as well as at the store. She fit perfectly into our family.