by Mike Leon
“Because if the whole grid collapses, you might need a hardback encyclopedia,” Zap adds.
“For kindling maybe,” Walter says as he runs a patch through his gun barrel. “If the whole grid collapses, a set of encyclopedias won’t be worth a broken condom.”
“In any case, there are shipments of human meat being sent to the company’s headquarters weekly,” Tom says.
“And there’s also this,” Zap says. “The gunships that fired on Graveyard at the slaughterhouse were scrambled from Wright-Patterson Airforce Base, under orders that came down from a General Novak. We… collected the General’s phone records. We found a call from Damien Adams only three hours before the raid.”
“Should I know that name?” Walter asks. He puts the slide back onto the gun and then works it once.
“Not many people do. He rarely leaves the Condor.”
“Fuck.”
Walter picks up the glass of scotch and tosses back the whole thing in one gulp.
The Condor is Henry Krupp’s flying palace – an extended and modified jumbo jetliner that serves as the eccentric cabal leader’s home. It has more square footage than a suburban mini-mansion, and is rumored to house such lavish amenities that it puts five-star resorts to shame. Krupp had the monstrous vehicle constructed in the early 2000s when he read a study that showed moving at fast speeds to contribute to a longer lifespan. For someone with an inexhaustible fortune and an irrational obsession with obtaining eternal life, living in a constantly moving jet-powered palace must have seemed the next logical step.
“How sure are you of all this?” he asks them, as he winces from the burning beverage.
“We want your clearance to relocate General Novak and extract corroborating information,” Zap says. The operator is at his creepiest when he talks in these clinical terms. The bold reality is not nearly as clean. When he says relocate, he means abduct. When he says extract corroborating information, he means he’s going to torture the ever-loving shit out of the motherfucker in ways that would make Satan look away.
“You’re asking for my permission to torture the guy who sent those choppers for us?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I know you have certain, reservations concerning my methods.”
“Not this time. Go do it.”
With that, Zap gives a nod and leaves, taking Technical Tom along with him.
He pours himself another scotch as he thinks about the things Zap will do to the General. Normally he does not fantasize about these things, but this time he will be happy to see that bastard tied to Zap’s chair, or his table, whatever it is he wants to use.
Walter’s desk phone buzzes. Judy’s voice comes over the intercom.
“Mr. Stedman, I have a Dillinger from SAD on line two. He’s very upset and demanding to speak to you.”
Bill Dillinger is Ashley Marjorie’s contact at Special Operations Group, the department within the Special Activities Division of the CIA responsible for covert operations with which the United States government denies association. Walter almost never speaks to this man and cannot imagine why he would need to now.
“Put him through,” he says, rolling his eyes.
He picks up the phone and holds it to his ear. After hearing a ten second barrage of rambling nonsense, Walter interrupts.
“Wait. Slow the fuck down. He was fighting a ninja and what happened?!”
EAGLE NECKTIE
The girl is quiet. The girl is always quiet.
She sits at the table holding a glass of Pepsi between her index finger and thumb, the only remaining fingers on her left hand. With her right hand, she pages through a Cosmopolitan magazine propped against the table edge so that the cover photo of Hayley Williams wearing a skin tight polka dot dress is visible across the table. The giant typeface to the left of Hayley’s flaming red hair reads 75 SEX MOVES MEN CRAVE.
“Should you be reading that?” asks Kill Team One.
The girl slowly shifts her eyes up from the magazine to meet his gaze. She says nothing at all. She just stares straight at him without blinking. Hardened soldiers rarely muster the will to look him in the eye. A girl hasn’t looked at him like that in a very long time, but this girl is different. Her mind is shattered from the horrors she has seen, and it will take more than the reputation of an old man to scare her now.
“Paper says the feds are cracking down on people abusing those Obama phones,” cranks the old man at the counter twenty feet away. “Serves ’em right. Taking tax payer money and using it to give low-lifes cell phones. Reagan would roll over in his grave.”
He speaks to a big haired waitress wearing a white apron over a pink dress with padded shoulders. She looks up from a crossword puzzle just barely long enough to acknowledge that he is speaking.
“Whatever, Frank,” she says, rolling her eyes.
The diner was selected long ago as the meeting place for protocol Eagle Necktie. The execution of the protocol is simple. When given the code word, the Hansen boys are to build a thousand pound fertilizer bomb and detonate it in an empty two storey building owned by Kill Team One on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. The reason for this is that the size and location of the blast will guarantee national news coverage, therefore bypassing the need for traceable interpersonal communication. It is a twenty-first century smoke signal. Once the building is detonated, the meeting time is set exactly thirty six hours later in the corner booth at Sam’s Truckstop, a hole in the wall like a million others – with no connection to the kill team or his sons.
Now it is one minute to go time, and Ivan sits in that corner booth with the young Van Duyn girl across from him. Under the table, he holds a P90 ready to decimate the first unsavory face that comes in through the door. In his other hand, he carries the wooden cane given to him by Walter Stedman all those years ago, and then again behind the Black Omen.
The face that does come through belongs to Shelly Baum. Tall and slender, the girl is among the best looking soldiers the kill team has ever met. Her long blond hair is loose behind her and she holds a pistol concealed in the pocket of a leather jacket. It is obvious to him, even if she thinks it is not. Pass or fail, her attempt at precaution does not matter. The killers at her side will put a quick end to any threat.
Victor grins when he sees the old man. It has been a long time, but Kill Team One knows that grin. It is the look of twisted glee that is Victor’s only show of positivity. He makes that face when he is murdering, fighting, or intimidating someone inferior to him. Victor has never grinned at the kill team that way before.
Sid is more demure. He seems more interested in the surrounding diner than anything else. The boy is bigger now. Taller. Thicker. More scars. Good. Maybe that has made him harder. The younger of his sons was always too soft.
The kill team motions to them and they file into a booth opposite his. He shuffles out of his booth and sits down next to Shelly, across from the boys.
“We had a hell of a time getting here, old man,” Shelly says.
“Is there any chance you were followed?” Kill Team One asks.
“No,” Shelly answers.
Sid looks away for just a fraction of a second. The old man notices. Sid has soulless, black, nightmare eyes like his own – a liar’s eyes. He has never had the nerve to use them. His fidgeting gives away his attempts, but now he is more subtle. He is getting better.
What are you hiding?
“But you didn’t tell me they were going to blow up a god damned building. I wish I had known that just a little sooner,” Shelly says.
Kill Team One looks to Victor, on the outside end of the booth. Victor has blue eyes – the same blue eyes as his mother. The older brother has never been such a cowardly doe as Sid. He lies through his teeth just as fluidly as he tells the truth. Still, there is something wrong with those eyes. Something is different.
“Iron dome!” Frank proclaims from his bar stool, still reading the newspaper. “These jews ought to stick to dentistry and Hollywo
od. Let the damn Muslims kill each other over a bunch of sand.”
“Dick,” Shelly says under her breath.
“So what are we doing here?” Victor interjects. “When do I get to kill somebody?”
“Soon,” the kill team answers, nodding his head.
“Good. I haven’t had my hands bloody or my dick wet in four days. That fat waitress is starting to look good.”
Sid taps Shelly’s shin under the table. He is almost discreet enough for the kill team not to notice.
“What’s a waitress?” he asks her.
“It’s somebody who brings you food in a restaurant,” she says.
“What’s a restaurant?”
“It’s like a mess hall, but nicer.”
“It’s like the place where Kill Team Three tried to kill us,” Victor says.
That seems to satisfy his line of questioning.
“What’s the plan? Where do we go from here?” Shelly asks.
The kill team does not answer. He is looking at Victor Hansen. He inspects the teenager with increasing scrutiny. What kind of restaurants did Victor visit in Afghanistan? Ivan can’t picture Victor sitting down to dinner anywhere.
“What are you looking at, old man?” Victor says.
“Nothing,” answers Kill Team One.
It is his eyes. Something has changed in those eyes. They are deep blue, yes, but they are not the eyes he remembers. They are not Monica’s eyes.
Then Frank lifts his head from the newspaper again to make another obnoxious comment.
“Some asshole crashed a killdozer into the Kabul airport this morning. Barbarians.”
Kill Team One stands from the table and throws two foot-long KA-BAR knives at both of the boys with a fury that cannot be described.
Sid catches the big knife in hand, only millimeters from his throat. His reaction is swift and natural. This is expected. Always keep your guard up.
Shelly squeaks like a mouse. Eek! Her shriek seems to come hours after it is all over.
All eyes turn to Victor Hansen as he spits up a mouthful of red gore. The dark brown leather knife handle juts out from his chest. He raises his hand to pull on it. Kill Team One is already up on top of the table, screaming in his face.
“How long?!!”
“It’s too late,” answers Victor. But it isn’t Victor. His face begins to melt away. His eyes fade from blue to grey. Soon he is someone else. He is John Q.
“They’re already here!”
Kill Team One seethes with rage. He lifts the cane and brings it down like the avenging hammer of an angry god. The force of it cracks John’s skull in one blow, but he does not stop with one blow. He brings it down again. Then again. He turns that nothing face into a wet mass of grey and red pulp.
He looks up from the bloody mess and sees that the double agent spoke the truth. It is too late. They are already here.
“We must go now!” he yells to his comrades.
Sid is already up and moving for the door, the KA-BAR in his hand and a .45 automatic in the other, but he stops at the sight that meets him.
Blood Drinker enters through the diner’s front door. He is clad in the black duster of an SS officer in his human form. Behind him is a column of trench coated lizards. More of them break through the glass storefront. A dozen of them pour in through the broken windows and onto the tables around them. There must be a hundred of the things. They have guns, and knives and body armor. Some of them are fully exposed for what they are – man-sized lizards with razor claws and teeth.
Blood Drinker points a ragged, claw-like fingernail at Sid and roars.
“KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL!!!”
KILL KILL KILL
Victor Hansen cuts the throat of Captain Zahir. Blood splatters the instruments in front of him. He now has control of Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 415 from Kabul to Jeddah.
The killdozer was fun, but it was a distraction. While the big bulldozer crashed through the fence into the Kabul airport and dozed through two luggage carriers and part of a control tower, Victor was scaling the fence on the other side of the complex and dashing for the rubber tires beneath Flight 415. He was up the landing gear, and inside the well, long before the Americans pounded the killdozer with hellfire missiles from an Apache attack chopper. He used a cutting torch to gain access to the luggage compartment before they opened up the killdozer and found what was left of the dead raghead he chained in there wearing a suicide vest. He waited in the luggage compartment for hours while all the flights were grounded. When they were finally in the air, he used a knife to cut a small hole into the galley, into which he placed an incendiary grenade which melted through the floor into the luggage compartment. That alerted the flight attendants, and in turn, the passengers, but there was little they could do when he emerged from the floor of the galley with two P90s, spraying five-sevens down the enclosed tunnel that is the passenger compartment of the 737. With the passengers all dead or dying, Victor made his way to the cockpit. He forced the captain to redirect the plane. Then Victor murdered him. Easy.
Afghanistan was good for a time, but it got boring. The only thing Victor regrets is not killing Ashley fucking Marjorie. That fucking robot did get on his nerves. After his scrape with Kill Team Three, Victor returned to the cave to find Sid and that dumb blond bitch had run off together. Fucking pussies. He went back into to town looking for Ashley with a shoulder mounted HEAT missile and a jackhammer, but all he found was the dead aborigine. More fucking pussies.
So Victor went back to his cave and loaded up the killdozer to take the plane and make his way back stateside for Eagle Necktie. But while he was beating a young Islamic man to stuff in the sealed and armored cabin of the dozer, he had a sudden epiphany: he no longer had to do anything they told him. Sid and that cunt left him. Kill Team Three was mostly dead. The rest of Graveyard was a world away. The old man no longer scared him. Fuck them. Fuck Eagle Necktie. Fuck all of it.
So here he is, for the first time, just doing whatever the fuck he wants to do.
If the captain got out a message, it was only minutes ago – already too late for the Saudis to scramble fighters and get them here. His target is already sprawled out before him, beneath a blanket of bright blue sky. In two minutes it will all be over. He reaches for the intercom mic that dangles from the instrument panel.
“Flight 415, this is the captain speaking,” he says. This is a mockery if there ever was one, as nearly everyone on board is a corpse by now. “Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked positions.”
Then he switches to an open channel because he wants the people on the ground to hear the next bit.
“Sand niggers of the holy city. Muhammad sucks my cock and I’m here to kill your god.”
Some air traffic controller chatters back at him, but all he hears is phlegm sounding baka bakha kabak ahakka khkah kahhkah bkakab. Victor turns the radio off. Fuck these people. They are a disease and he is the cure.
He pulls the plane into a nose dive that brings the city of Mecca into full view of the cockpit window and throttles the engines up. He hopes to bullseye that stupid fucking big black box they all look at when they pray, but he’ll settle for anywhere in the city.
The screaming starts up behind him. A few passengers must still be alive. Not for long, he thinks, as he mashes the trigger for the shape charge he planted on the rear door. He picks up his parachute and runs uphill the length of the cabin, past two crying children, a man screaming like a bitch, and a flight attendant squealing and clutching a hand rail so hard she might crush it.
He stops by the door and points back at that flight attendant. He smiles and winks at her.
“I’d come with you,” he says. “But non-Muslims aren’t allowed in the holy city.”
He thinks she understands, from the look of horror she shows back at him, but he can’t be sure, and he doesn’t wait around to find out.
Victor dives out of the plane. He tumbles for only a few seco
nds before he pulls the ripcord and his parachute opens to slow his descent. Then he watches the show.
It is impossible to say what the plane hits from here. The city looks like one mass of jumbled white buildings between the mountains. The plane vanishes into them and a giant red fireball erupts toward the sky. Thick black smoke billows upwards and Victor knows that many have died.
The sound comes later. From here, the explosion is just a pop. It is hardly louder than a discarded cola bottle crushed under the tire of a sport utility vehicle – a piece of trash run over on the way to something that matters.
Victor feels a sense of calm he has not had before, as he slowly floats to the ground. He watches as flaming jet fuel spread across the crash site continues to burn. It will be hours before the fires are put out. More will die from the smoke and the flames. This is all he wants. He wants to exterminate every last one of them. He wants to choke them, bleed them, shoot them, burn them, blow them up, cut them up, tear them to ribbons, melt them alive and force feed the slime to those remaining before he finishes them too. This is what he loves. He loves to kill rags, and he won’t stop until every last one of them is dead.
ESCAPE
Kill Team One pulls a remote detonator from his coat pocket, and a riot shield from under the table. Around them, a hundred lizards close in, pouring in through windows and doors with their flowing grey coats and automatic weapons. More come from the kitchen doors into the dining room.
The greatest living soldier is everything the legends said he would be. He screams “Get down!” as he snatches hold of the little Van Duyn girl and throws her behind his shield. Then he squeezes the trigger of that detonator.
The wall behind them explodes into smoke and fire. The building rattles on its foundation. Outside, more explosions begin – a chain reaction. The kill team came prepared for this.
Sid dives behind the booth in front of Shelly and she watches as he shoots seven of them in the face without even looking. He just holds a pistol up over the edge of the seat and shoots. The only way that is even possible is if he selected his targets and accounted for their motion in the blink of time he was diving into that booth and then placed all his shots from memory. Even more unbelievable, she’s sure he would have killed more if the gun held more bullets.
