by Basil Sands
“You don’t want to do that. I will kill you before you can even get it out. Besides, you're being promoted.”
Blue held his hands up in surrender. Kharzai knelt down and wiped the knife on Snake’s pant leg.
“Nice knife. Lost mine earlier today, so I’ll keep this one, thank you very much.”
Snake quit screaming, his face strained against the waves of pain that coursed through him, life visibly draining out of him. Kharzai looked into his bulging eyes.
“In case you are wondering, this was partly because you tried to rape those two women. While I hate rapists with a passion, and think that men like you should have their minuscule little-boy penises shredded with a cheese grater, the main reason I have killed you is because you gave away our position to the other side. You let your tiny pee-pee do your thinking and now have jeopardized our entire mission because of it. I am putting Blue in charge, and am quite certain he will understand the deeper implications of your foolish deeds.”
Kharzai rose to his feet. Blue stared wide-eyed, his mouth half open.
“So, now you know. Blue, you are in charge. Do you feel empowered?”
Blue nodded.
“Good,” Kharzai said as he handed him the package of bills. “Here is twelve thousand dollars. I need you to get a total of four of your most faithful men and bring them to this address.” He reached into his pocket and handed him a small piece of paper. “Tonight at seven. If they do what I ask, each man will get four bundles just like this one. That’s forty-eight thousand dollars each. All for a few hours of work.”
Blue took the package, his attention no longer on the nearly dead Snake.
“Only get men I can trust to be diligent. Or you will end up shedding your life like the Raunchy Reptile here.” Kharzai motioned toward the man who was sucking his final few breaths in short, sharp gasps that kicked tiny plumes of dust up from the ground in front of his face. “Speaking of which, take his body somewhere and dump it. I am sure you have places like that somewhere around here.”
Chapter 21
Providence Hospital
4:45 p.m.
The emergency room at Providence Hospital was very busy. Summertime activities provided no shortage of sprained ankles, broken bones, and other assorted injuries, many the result of mixing alcohol with activities like mountain biking or riding four-wheelers or jet-skis. Marcus and Mike walked in and found Hilde waiting for them amidst a crowd of people with ailments ranging from broken limbs to invisible sicknesses that could be anything from the imaginary to the deathly contagious. Marcus hated emergency rooms—his body visibly tensed as they walked through the doors. Hilde saw them enter and moved toward them, tears in her eyes. At the sight of Hilde, a lump formed in Marcus throat, preventing him from speaking.
“Is she all right?” Mike asked.
Hilde nodded quickly and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“She’s fine. No physical damage, but she’s been through a lot. It was pretty bad.”
Hilde motioned to the security officer, who buzzed the door open and let them through. They walked down a short hall, their shoes clicking on the tiles like a clock counting down. They turned and went down another hall, passing several small exam rooms until they came to Lonnie. A look of relief rapidly spread across her face as Marcus entered the room. He breathed an audible sigh at the sight of her alive, then sucked a sharp gasp as she turned toward him. A bruise colored the right side of her face, and her lips were swollen on that side. A bandage covered the cut across the side of her neck, and several large Band-Aids covered her forearms and the backs of her hands.
“Dear God, Lonnie, what happened?” Marcus asked as he crossed the room. He stood in front of her and gently examined the wounds. “Who did this to you?”
“I met an old friend,” Lonnie replied through puffy lips.
“I’ll kill the bastard.”
“Too late.”
He put his arm around her, resting his hand on her shoulder. She winced at the pressure of his touch and he pulled away.
“The baby?”
“Baby is okay. The doctor is coming in with an ultrasound to verify, but the way it’s kicking, I am pretty sure the baby is fine. Tough kid.”
“Like Mom.”
“Marcus, Kharzai was there.”
“Kharzai did this?”
“No, he saved me.”
Hilde stepped forward. “He wasn’t there when I came to find you.”
“He crashed into the van. He’s the one who killed the driver.”
“You saw him?” Mike asked.
“No. Just a flash as the taxi backed into the van. It was so sudden. But I am certain it was him.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“No, and the crazy thing is with all of that violence, there were no other witnesses.”
“No one?” Marcus asked.
“The street was totally empty,” Hilde replied.
“Maybe we can get something on the surveillance cameras.”
Hilde shook her head. “I checked into that. The hotel only has one camera in that back alley. A raven was sitting on it the whole time. There was only a tiny window of view beneath the bird’s tail feathers, and there was nothing but pavement in that area.”
Marcus let out a humorless grunt.
“What?” Hilde asked.
“Remember I told you that native mythology says that ravens are spirits that love to play pranks on mortals. I guess there’s something to it.”
Mike let out a breath. “And we know whose side they’re on, too.”
A crash at the door drew their attention. An overweight nurse stood in the doorway, her scrubs stretched tight at the belly, butt, and thighs. She was in her early thirties, rebellious brown hair in a barely controlled ponytail pulled back from a fleshy face which was plastered with too much makeup and too blue a shade of eye shadow. She wheeled in a portable ultrasound machine. The nurse paused as she looked at the four people in the room, too many for the tiny space if they expected her to be in there too. Mike and Hilde moved back against the wall to let the nurse pull the machine past them, then they headed toward the door.
“We’ll go back to the hotel,” Mike said, “and get hold of Tonia and Warner to let them know what’s going on. See you back there.”
Marcus nodded, and they walked out of the room. The nurse drew near to Lonnie with the machine and began to uncoil the ultrasound wand. A name tag hung awkwardly from her left breast. It dangled when she moved, as if it were not correctly attached to her shirt. The name “Nellie” stood out in bold black letters on the white plastic tag. Beneath the name was her title, “Nurse: OB/GYN, Prenatal, Delivery”.
“Are you the father?” She looked up at Marcus and smiled flirtatiously at him. He was taken aback and flustered by her brazen look.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “She’s my wife.”
“Hmmm…you got a good one there, Mrs. Johnson. He’s a hottie.”
“Yeah, he's been getting that reaction from a lot of women lately.”
“Well, it looks like he got that reaction from you too.” She winked and flashed a smile toward Marcus, her chubby cheeks balled up on the sides of her face making her look like a Cabbage Patch Doll with clown makeup.
Marcus was uncomfortable near her. He moved to the other side of the bed, putting Lonnie between him and the rotund nurse. Lonnie lay back, barely stifling a burst of laughter. The nurse reminded her of the secretary on The Drew Carey Show from the nineties. Marcus’s reaction to her was almost as funny as the woman herself.
“Okay, let’s get started here.” Nellie grabbed a tube of lubricant from the shelf under the machine and squirted some into her rubber-gloved hand.
“If you could pull your shirt up, honey, just over your belly. Don’t need Mr. Stud there to get too much of an eyeful.”
She slid her hand onto Lonnie’s belly. The baby jumped at the contact.
“Oh, boy—the baby’s certainly alive, ain’t it? The lotio
n is going to be a little cold, honey, but it makes the wand work a whole lot better.”
Nellie rubbed the lotion over Lonnie’s belly until it was evenly spread, then switched on the wand and put its tip against the lower part of her distended belly. The screen on the ultrasound machine immediately lit up. Marcus looked at the image, a smile stretching across his face. A clear picture of the baby’s face came into view. The baby stretched as if craning its neck to get a better view through the window of the machine. It was sucking its thumb, the other arm wrapped around its middle.
“Wow,” Marcus said, a look of wonderment on his face, “it looks like it is alive already, like I can just hold it.”
“Well, that’s because it is alive, silly man,” Nellie replied. “That right there is a totally viable, totally alive, ready-to-conquer-the-world baby. You want to know the sex?”
Marcus looked at Lonnie, and she looked back at him. They paused for a moment, then Lonnie turned back to Nellie.
“Yes. We do.”
“All righty, then.”
Nellie slid the ultrasound wand to the middle of Lonnie’s belly. All they could see was the baby’s hip. The baby had turned as if suddenly being modest.
“Okay, baby, now just roll over a little bit,” Nellie said. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. Just a little peeky-weeky.”
The baby rolled over at Nellie’s urging.
“Well now, there we go.” She smiled up at Lonnie, then turned to Marcus. “Now you know what color to paint the baby’s room, eh?”
Chapter 22
Farrah’s Rented House
Goldenview Drive
10:00 p.m.
“Thank you all for attending.” Kharzai slid his eyes over the group of four tattooed men in the garage, noting that none of them, other than Blue, had been at the rail yard debacle. His lips stretched in a serpentine grin that would have made a mongoose bristle. He crossed the cement floor to a metal tube leaning at a steep angle propped up on a bipod.
“This is the tool with which you will each earn your money.” He stopped by the mortar tube and scanned across them. “I don’t suppose any of you happened to have served in the military and know how to use one of these.”
“M-224, 60mm Lightweight Mortar,” a voice said, then continued. “Infantry portable smooth bore, muzzle-loading, high-angle-of-fire weapon. It can be fired from a bipod, or handheld position in close-in support of ground troops.”
The voice was that of a young man in his mid-twenties whom the others called Bones. Tattoos swirled in Celtic patterns across his face and down his neck and arms, accentuated with three-dimensional demon faces and a few swastikas. On his right wrist was a detailed ink of the Marine Corps Eagle Globe and Anchor emblem. A red slash, drawn like a gaping wound, marred the symbol. An angry fist jutted its middle finger into the wound. Around his neck hung a string of knuckle bones. Among the mix of adult-sized bones were interspersed some that had come from very small fingers.
Kharzai looked coldly at the man, his eyes barely containing hatred that boiled. In all his years of killing people, he'd made it a rule that no children, even if they actively fought for the other side, would be intentionally hurt. This bastard obviously did not follow that credo.
“Very knowledgeable answer,” he said, burying his emotions. He motioned toward the tattoo. “You were in the Marines, huh?
“I was a mortar man. Two tours in the suck,” the man said with a smirk, “as we used to call Iraq.”
Kharzai glanced at the tattoo, then back up at the young man’s defiant face. “Unhappy time in the service, I assume?”
“Yeah,” Bones replied. “Turns out the Corps doesn’t really like killing people as much as you’d think—at least, not as much as I do. Contrary to popular opinion, some of us are not part of that 'Once a Marine, Always a Marine' bullshit. There really are some ex-Marines out there. I know ‘cuz I got nothing to do with those cock suckers. They busted my ass right out of there just for taking a few trophies.”
He jangled his bone necklace.
“Yeah,” Blue said, “that and the little girl you told me about. What was she, like six?”
“Like I said,” Bone’s face stretched with an evil grin, “trophies. Tight, smooth little trophies.” He held his hands out in front of his mid-section and thrust his hips forward in a crude sexual gesture.
Kharzai gritted his teeth into a grinding rage-filled grin. No matter how hard a country, any country, tried to keep its military clean, monsters somehow always found their way in and made a mess of things. Like this ex-Marine-turned-gangster, they were a blotch on the face of humanity. Murderers and child rapists were not the type any real military wanted around, especially the military forces of a country trying desperately to make itself out to be the good guys. They usually recognized and caught them quickly, but sometimes one got through until they had committed a heinous act that crossed the line between the warrior code and savage barbarism.
Kharzai made a serious effort not to let his emotions boil over. Years of living a life of violence, of covering his true feelings around evil people, had worn him thin. The veil that kept his emotions in check grew more and more transparent each day, like the skin stretched over an old celebrity’s face as they try to disguise their age. Kharzai felt as though his veil would soon tear through and he would no longer be able to maintain the façade. The monster within him had become restless. It waited impatiently near the surface, barely contained.
“Well then, I suppose you will know what to do with this.” Kharzai looked across the rest of them. “For the rest of you, pay attention as you learn how to use this weapon, or you may not live to collect your payoff. These little babies are not forgiving toward the stupid.”
The group circled around the mortar tube, and Kharzai led them over its features and capabilities. He assigned them to two two-man teams and gave them the basic information they needed to fire the weapon. They ran through setting up and tearing down the equipment. Once he felt comfortable with their skill level at that task, they practiced getting range and elevation, and ran dry-fire drills.
“When do we get to do some live rounds?” asked one of the men after three hours of training and practice. The entire length of his arm displayed a tattoo of a naked woman with a huge snake coiled from her legs up and around her torso. Its head jutted between her breasts, where it flicked out its forked tongue to touch her puckered lips.
“We can only practice dry fire here for obvious reasons,” Kharzai said. “There’s not exactly a place we can set these off without drawing attention. You only have to put two rounds on target. So just be ready to not be surprised by the noise when they take off. It’s louder than a shotgun when it fires. Once you’ve fired two rounds, pack it up and boogie out of there.”
“What about the money?” Blue questioned.
“How’d I know you’d ask? You’ll each get two of those nice little stacks tonight. The day of the event, after I hear all four pops, I will text message each of you the location of the other half of the money.”
“Wait a minute. You’ll do what?” said the tattooed ex-Marine. “We need to get paid up front. I ain’t going to be running around trying to collect afterwards.”
“You don’t have a choice really,” Kharzai said. “You’ve already agreed to be here, and therefore you will do as you’re told. Otherwise, you can choose to walk away now. If you are fast enough, you might actually get away.”
“What, are you going cut me like you …”
Mid-sentence his words became a loud puff and wheeze as Kharzai’s foot drove into the soft flesh of his belly. Bones instantly crumpled to the floor.
“You might think you're tough because you rape little girls, and you might think you are a bad ass because you wear a necklace of finger bones, but let me explain something to you … Bones.” Kharzai put his foot on the punk’s throat. His arm stretched toward Bones’ face, a pistol pointed at the man's eye. None of the others had seen him draw the weapon or reali
zed he was even carrying one, and none of them dared make a move to intervene. Bones grabbed Kharzai’s ankle, but relented when he found himself looking into the barrel of the nine-millimeter Makarov semi-auto.
“I have shown you my secrets. You have agreed to take my money. You try to run, you try to escape, you try to cross me, and you will die a horrible death unlike anything even a pathetic child molester like you can imagine. I have made my living hurting and killing people since before your mother crapped you into this world. I do not need to wear my victim’s bones as trophies. I do not need to brag about my kills, and I do not need to hurt little children. Because I am bad enough to know that there is no man on this earth who can defy me and live.”
Bones’ face darkened to a purple shade of blue. Kharzai removed his foot and took a step back, glancing around at the others. They all averted their eyes, staring at the floor or the mortar tube, anything other than his fiery stare.
“Anyone else want a turn at negotiation?”
Chapter 23
FBI HQ Washington DC
Wednesday, June 22nd
9:00 a.m. Eastern Time
The phone on Undersecretary Paul Hogan’s desk rang twice before he was able to get it off the hook. He didn’t move as fast or as accurately as he used to. Hogan had recently been promoted to the office of FBI Undersecretary for Terrorism Interdiction, a new and little-known division that actively sought and eradicated terrorist threats on US soil. It was a job with which Paul was intimately familiar. Eighteen years in the United States Marine Corps Special Operations detachment ended with him medically discharged just short of retirement after a Taliban RPG ripped up his legs and shredded his baby-making apparatus near the end of his third tour in Afghanistan. Those injuries had granted him a rating of 70% disabled, according to the VA, U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs, providing a monthly stipend just more than half the amount he would have been able to make if he'd survived two more years in the Corps to full retirement.
