Where Tall Trees Grow

WHERE TALL TREES GROW

By Bob Gabbert

Bob Gabbert e-Books

http://www.bobgabbert.com

Publisher: Smashwords, Inc.

ISBN:

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by Bob Gabbert

All rights reserved, except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission by the publisher.

Bob Gabbert e-Books

http://www.bobgabbert.com

Visit our website for more information.

e-Book Edition: August 2015

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

About the Book

Sage Collins is a tiny woman of five-feet three-inches. She is knocked about most of her life. The one anchor she has is her father, a Marine captain. He is killed when she is nine years old, setting her life adrift. Her mother is too busy with her friends to bother with the kid.

Sage runs away and joins the Marines when she is 15. They discover her true age and kick her out. She lives on the streets of Los Angeles selling the only commodity she has to buy drugs until she realizes that she will not live long on the streets.

She goes home to Arcata, California, by freight train and tries to gain control of her life. She gets a GED high school diploma and enters the only school that will have her—a divinity college, where she excels in languages.

Still trying to following in her father’s footsteps, she enters the Naval Academy only to be kicked out months later. That’s when she comes to the attention of the CIA.

Her small size and language skills make her perfect to be an undercover agent in Saudi Arabia. The CIA trains her in languages and undercover-agent skills that include assassinations.

She falls in love with a Saudi Prince where she is working undercover as a servant. It’s the first time in her life that any man has interested her, but the relationship is short lived when she is ordered to assassinate someone close to the Prince following the 9/11 attacks on America.

After escaping from Saudi Arabia with her life, she thinks that is the end of it, but the Saudi Crown Prince sends Colonel Al-Dali after her to bring back her head. He searches first in Israel thinking she is a Mossad agent, but the determined Colonel Al-Dali finally arrives on American soil. He kills anyone blocking his path to find Sage.

Table of Contents

Title Page

About the Book

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Other Novels by the Author

Chapter One

When Sage Collins was born prematurely, she was so tiny that no one could imagine that one day she would become an undercover agent for the CIA, or that foreign agents would scour the country trying to find her, so that they could kill her.

She was always the smallest in her class, but that was not what made her feel different. Her father, James Collins, was a spit and polish Marine officer who moved her and her mother around from station to station forcing her to leave friends and classmates behind several times over her young life. The one consistent anchor she was able to hold onto through those difficult times was her father whom she adored. She was nine when her father was killed in the Grenada invasion that took place in 1983. His death ended the center of her universe.

Her mother, Wanda Franklin, met and married Marine officer James Collins her senior year in high school. She was 17. Right after the wedding, he took her far away to the Futenma Air Station in Okinawa, where Sage was born two months early, in March of 1974.

Three years later First Lieutenant Collins was transferred to Camp Pendleton, California, and two years after that he was transferred to the Naval Amphibious Base at Little Creek, Virginia, where he was assigned to the USS Saipan, LHA-2.

It was while he was assigned to the USS Saipan that Sage got her first exposure to life without him. The ship would be at sea for weeks and sometimes months. She was five years old and didn’t understand why he didn’t come home at night. She would wander aimlessly from room to room searching for him and crying when she couldn’t find him. Her mother was too busy having fun with her friends to help Sage through this difficult time.

Sea duty finally ended for Captain Collins when Sage was seven, and he was transferred to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Once again Sage had to leave all of her friends behind. Wanda Collins also left her friends behind, but her friends were other Marines and a few sailors who became Mommy’s friends we don’t tell Daddy about. But Sage did tell Daddy.

Why don’t you like Mommy’s friends, Daddy?

What friends are you talking about, honey?

Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy and Uncle—

Captain Collins slammed his fist through the wall. Sage ran from the room screaming and wailing, because she thought she had done something bad. He went to her and put her on his lap to console her.

I didn’t mean it, Daddy! I’m sorry.

Don’t cry, baby. Daddy’s not angry with you. You’re my sweet girl—my baby. I’ll always be here to take care of you, no matter what happens.

Two years later he was gone forever. Where once there was his warm caress and his soothing baritone voice, now there was only an American flag with medals pinned to it in a clear-plastic case. Not long after that, even the plastic case went into a drawer and out of sight, because Wanda’s friends kept asking questions about it.

Sage felt abandoned and alone. She went into a tailspin that her poorly educated mother didn’t have a clue how to solve. She set fires, hit other children, and stole things. The parents of other children stopped allowing them to play with her, and she sank further into her desolation.

Wanda married Bart Sinclair because, He has a good job, Sage, and he’ll take good care of us. Within months, Wanda caught Sinclair molesting 10-year-old Sage. Wanda flew into a rage not so much for the molestation, but because she felt betrayed. She filed for divorce.

As they packed to leave North Carolina, Wanda threw out all of the things that had belonged to Captain Collins. Sage kept the case with his burial flag and medals, and an eight-by-ten framed photograph of him. Sage, we can’t take those things on the bus. We barely have enough room for our clothes. Besides, they don’t mean anything. He’s gone.

But they’re all I have left of Daddy, Sage said, and she began to cry.

All right, but you’ll have to take care of them. If I find them in the way, I’ll throw them in the garbage!

When the bus left Jacksonville, North Carolina, Sage had her face pressed against the back window. She felt as if she were abandoning her father. Daddy, I have to go, but I promise I’ll be back real soon.

Wanda had been a heavy smoker since high school, and she had the yellow stains on her fingers and teeth to prove it. After she filed for divorce from Sinclair, she also began to gain weight.

The endless days on the bus took them all the way across the country to Arcata, California, where Wanda grew up. She was constantly arguing with the bus driver or other passengers who kept trying to get her to stop smoking. By the time the bus reached Arcata, Sage was very tired of her mother and her constant smoking and bitching.

Arcata, California, has three distinctions that set it apart from other cities in Northern California. Bird watchers come by the thousands from all over the world to the marshes of nearby Arcata Bay. It is also a college town with Humboldt State University, College of the Redwoods, and Simpson College, but most important of all is its close proximity to the Redwood National Forest where the tallest trees in the world grow. The Redwood Highway—US 101—runs through the middle of Arcata and then north directly to the park.

A few days after they arrived in Arcata, Wanda rented a trailer house in a trailer park just off of the Redwood Highway, for them to live in. In the back of the small trailer was one bedroom where Wanda put her things. Up front, there was a combination kitchen and living room with a sofa bed, and a tiny bathroom that doubled as a laundry and closet. The fold-out bed of the living room sofa became Sage’s bed.

Space was so limited that the sofa bed couldn’t be opened unless the dining table was put away. On several occasions Wanda didn’t get around to cleaning up until the next day, so Sage had to sleep on the sofa. She quickly learned that if she wanted to sleep in a bed, she had to clean off the dining table, do the dishes, and put away the table by herself.

Wanda got a job as a waiter at the Redwood Café from 3:00 to 11:00 PM. The café was a hangout for tourists who came to bird watch. When Wanda realized that Sage would do the chores if she left them long enough, she turned over all cleaning responsibilities to Sage. Listen, kid, I put food on the table; the least you can do is keep things clean.

She didn’t see much of her mother after that. When she came home from school, her mother was already at work, and when Wanda came home, Sage was usually asleep.

Sage missed her father most of all on those long lonesome evenings. She’d put his picture on the dining table and talked to it while she did her homework or ate a TV dinner or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If she felt really lonely, she’d take his burial flag out of the case and hug it to her chest and cry.

The weekends were usually the worst of times. Wanda would bring home some half-drunk tourist, and they would drink and talk loudly in the kitchen, before going to the bedroom. If the tourist recognized that her daughter was sleeping nearby, Wanda would brush his concerns away by saying in her drunken stupor, Don’t worry about her. She can sleep through anything. And then she would giggle and start to disrobe. Let’s get more comfortable.

But of course, Sage didn’t sleep through it. The walls of the trailer were paper-thin, so she had to listen to the moaning and groaning and bed-squeaking coming from the bedroom. She’d put both hands over her ears and shut her eyes tightly, and pretend her father was holding her.

Sage never got over his death. When she was 15, she ran away from home looking for the love and security she had longed for since his death. She had grown into a tiny version of a very beautiful young woman only five-foot three-inches tall. She had short, dark brown hair and striking brown eyes. With her slim, almost skinny figure, from a distance Sage looked more like a teenage boy than the woman she was becoming. A person close enough to see her beautiful brown eyes might have seen her intelligence and sadness, but she kept everyone at arm’s length, and very few people got close enough to know her well.

If Sage couldn’t have her father, then she was determined to follow in his footsteps. She lied about her age and joined the Marines. She served five months, before they discovered her true age and sent her home. Instead of going home, she stayed in Los Angeles and became a part of the drug scene, living on the streets.

Most women will remember the man who took their virginity—good or bad—for the rest of their lives, but Sage was in a drugged stupor when some john took hers. She would have no memory of the event or who it was.

Most of the street kids hung out with other druggies on a side street just off of a busy boulevard near Los Angles International Airport. Men came from all over the city looking for young girls and boys. Because of her young age and small size, Sage was very popular with the johns who came there. Drugs helped her ignore what they were doing to her body, and if the drugs weren’t enough, she learned to tune out the world until it was over. She didn’t allow herself to think about her father during those times, because she knew he would be ashamed of her.

One evening shortly after turning 17, a foul-smelling man was using her body, and it was the last straw. She hopped rides on freight trains and went home to Arcata.

Wanda was living in the same trailer with a man who was drunk most of the time. She stayed one night, before her mother threw her out. You left here two years ago. There’s not room for you now that Bill is here.

Sage found a room in a boarding house that rented rooms to college kids. She cooked her food on a hotplate and used the bathroom down the hall. She needed drugs to keep her hands from shaking and her stomach from feeling like it was eating her alive, but she knew she had to quit. She bought jars of peanut butter and jelly and bread, and locked herself in her room for two weeks, sweating, vomiting, and shaking as she forced herself to withdraw from the drugs.

The rooming house where she lived served mostly young men and women going to college, and it had a positive affect on her. She got a job in a café and bought used books and studied for her high school GED, earning it just after her eighteenth birthday.

She wanted to go to college but didn’t have enough money, and she knew her mother wouldn’t help. She tried to get scholarships from colleges all over the state, but the only college that offered her one was Simpson College right there in Arcata. The only problem was, Simpson was a divinity school. She hated the divinity classes, but she couldn’t afford to go anywhere else.

There were only two things that Sage really loved about Simpson College, chess—she was intramural champion her last two years—and languages. Language classes opened up new worlds and cultures, and she excelled in them. Latin and Italian were mandatory, and she added Hebrew as an elective. In 1997, she graduated summa cum laude from Simpson College. She was 23.

The desire to follow in her father’s footsteps never far from her mind, Sage applied to enter the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Because she was so small the Selection Board didn’t want her, but Captain Collins was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for valor, and they felt obligated to let his daughter in.

In the fall of 1997, she entered her plebe year, but she only lasted five months. Academically, she was among the top in her class, but she rebelled against the rigid and strict discipline that was the very nature of the academy. She was constantly marching off demerits for various infractions, but demerits accumulated faster than she could march them off. After five months, a discipline board of her peers recommended she be dropped.

In the spring of 1998, just after her twenty-fourth birthday, she entered the Marine Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. It was a 10-week course that culminated with a commission as a second lieutenant.

Two weeks before she would earn her commission as a Marine officer, the CIA came calling. She laughed out loud. Me, a spy? You have got to be kidding.

The recruiter didn’t smile. Sage, I’ve studied your history. You have two very important attributes we need. You’ve been knocked around pretty badly most of your life, but through hard work and sheer determination, you are about to become an officer in the United States Marine Corps like your father. We need people with that kind of determination and dedication. You also have shown a talent for languages having mastered Latin, Italian, and Hebrew in the divinity school.

Daddy, they must be crazy to want me to become a CIA agent. Are you pulling strings for me up there? She smiled. No, thanks. I’m going to serve my country like my father did. Besides, look at me. I had to cheat to qualify for the height requirement at the Academy and even here at OCS.

Sage, you would also be serving your country with us, and we don’t care about your height. In fact, we like your small size. It will cause people to think you’re incapable of hurting them, and that can be an important advantage to an agent.

You’re serious about this, aren’t you? Sage asked incredulously.

I’m serious enough to offer you a starting salary that’s about three times what you’ll make as a second lieutenant.

Wow! The money’s good, and I would be serving my country. What would I have to do?

If you accept our offer, we’ll transfer you to the FBI Academy which is right here at Quantico. They train our agents in law enforcement, the use of weapons, and all of that. If you make it through, the firm will conduct the rest of your training.

I’m only a couple of weeks from earning my commission. Will you let me do that first?

Yes, of course. Marine officers join the firm all the time. We’ll arrange for your transfer after you get your commission.

Chapter Two

In 1998, when Sage was recruited, the CIA had two major areas of concern, the drug cartels in South and Central America, and rising radicalism in the Middle East as a consequence of the Gulf War.

When little Second Lieutenant Sage Collins joined other trainees at the FBI Academy, even women who were struggling with their own physical training, laughed at her. She had heard it all before. She finished eleventh in her class, and three positions higher than any other woman, and no one laughed anymore.

After she graduated from