by Sussman, Ben
Someone honked their horn behind him, bringing Matt back to the present. He pulled forward as his Blackberry chirped. Matt allowed himself a smile as he saw the name and answered.
“Ashley Kane, what are you doing working this late?”
“It’s only seven o’clock. That’s the middle of the day for me, Matty.”
“I asked you not to call me that,” Matt grumbled. It had been a nickname Katie had used occasionally and was thus considered sacred in his mind.
“I know, that’s why I still do,” she answered sweetly.
For two years now, Ashley had been Matt’s main competitor. If he had to admit it, she was his only serious competition at all but he would never give her the satisfaction of knowing that opinion. He and Ashley’s company consistently went after the same corporate clients, with Matt having always managed to retain a slight lead on the number of closed deals.
“I heard about your heroism today at the beach,” she said. “Very impressive.”
Matt flinched in annoyance. “They weren’t supposed to say anything. How did you hear?”
“As I repeatedly remind you, I’ve got friends all over this town. My eyes are everywhere.”
Matt signaled for a left turn, approaching his street. He spotted a bus bench on the corner sporting a newly plastered ad with Ashley’s face on it. Blonde hair and intelligent blue eyes smiled out at him.
“Your eyes really are everywhere,” he muttered.
“Oh, you must almost be home. I just had to get that bench the second it opened up.”
“Listen, Ashley, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a home, a life – you know, the things you so desperately crave.” He smiled at the irritated exhale she made at the dig. “Speaking of things you so desperately crave, I closed Iwahita Tech yesterday.”
“What? How? I have a meeting with them tomorrow!”
“Not anymore. Have a good night.” He clicked off, a chuckle escaping his lips.
Within a few minutes, Matt was walking through the door of his home. Ana exited the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
“He’s in the living room,” she said to Matt. “Finished his dinner about an hour ago.”
Matt thanked her, waved as she gathered her purse and headed out. He found Luke sprawled on the leather couch in front of the plasma screen. Super Mario Kart blasted its noises from surround sound speakers.
Matt watched him for a moment, a swell of emotion hitting his chest. Maybe it was the events of the day but he felt the usual protective urge to grab Luke and hold him tight, not letting anything hurt him. Guilt over snapping at him earlier made Matt want to apologize. As hard as he tried to fight it, Matt could feel the distance growing between him and his son, one which he knew would only deepen with the arrival of teenage years. Katie would have known how to handle it but Matt was at a loss.
Instead of apologizing, he took the seat next to his son, thinking that actions speak louder than hollow words. Luke paused the game.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, buddy. Everything alright?”
“I’m about to break my record.”
“That’s my boy.” He reached for the other controller. “Let’s see if you can beat me, too.”
Across the street from the Weatherly house, Colin Nemec’s killer adjusted the long-range microphone he had aimed at the living room window. His vantage point from the surrounding shrubs provided a perfect view for his small nightvision binoculars. He watched and listened as Matt playfully mussed Luke’s hair, then paused. Placing a hand against the boy’s cheek, Matt said, “You feel a little warm.”
“Ana took my temperature. Said it was a little bit above normal.”
“Must be the flu shot,” Matt reasoned.
The killer smiled.
The boy was running a temperature.
That meant all was going to plan.
Four
Sergeant Eric Hollander ducked as a rocket-propelled grenade screamed past his ear. It planted itself in the dunes directly behind him, sending a geyser of sand into the air.
“Stay down!” he yelled into his throat mike.
Cutting his eyes to the left, he saw the rest of his Army Rangers lying flat on the ground, suddenly just mere shadows in the night. Two more grenades lofted above and landed behind them, detonating loudly but doing no bodily damage.
Hollander offered up a silent thanks to his maker for not having his head taken off a moment ago and then shook off the religion. There was a job to do here and he would be damned if these bastards were going to keep him from doing it.
“Gonzalez, you flank left. I’m gonna take Kowalski and Hackman and move right. Watch out for mines.”
“Roger that,” a voice answered in his ear. He watched as Gonzalez, a mere patch of darkness shifting on the moonlit sands, moved out from behind the dirt mound he was lying behind and led another soldier forward.
“Good man,” thought Hollander. Gonzalez had proved his mettle in other missions so Hollander trusted him as second in command. He knew he would need a man of his caliber for such a classified operation.
Headquarters had received the intel a week ago. A drone plane with heat-seeking signature capability had done a sweep over this lonely desert stretch of border between Pakistan and Iraq. Dotted with rocky mountains and outcroppings, it was an ideal location for Al-Queda or another group to set up a secret camp. The drone had nearly completed its flying pattern when something popped on to the radar screen back at the desert command camp the Rangers were stationed at.
“Sir!” a young techie watching the monitor had called out.
Hollander had been in the room chatting with his Colonel at the time and joined him to walk over and peer at the screen.
“We’ve got signatures,” the techie said, grabbing a nearby joystick and toggling it to control the plane. It banked left and executed a silent U-turn to slowly track back over the location. “I’m grabbing photos right now,” the young man said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
The colonel stepped to a printer in the corner and pulled out a series of colored pages. He slapped them down in front of Hollander.
“Looks like there’s five of them,” Hollander said, stabbing his finger at one of the papers. On it, the edges of a room were visible, creating a rectangle in which the fuzzy forms of a cluster of people stood. He looked at the next printout, another boxy room, this one with several round tables.
“Bomb factory,” the colonel grumbled.
Hollander nodded his agreement. He met the colonel’s eyes. “Flush them out?”
“Absolutely. Go in strong but quiet.”
Hollander took his usual team: Gonzalez and three other Rangers. None of them spoke a word of objection when he told them where they were going. Operations that included death was a distinct outcome were simply part of their day-to-day existence, even though most of them had barely edged into their twenties.
The desert was illuminated by a half moon and star-splashed sky as the team’s Hummer jounced across the sand. A few miles out, they caught their first site of the mountainous ridge looming in the distance. Holes pocked its surface.
“Those will be their entry points,” Hollander said over the whine of the engine, pointing to the shadowy crevasses.
“Which one?” Kowalski asked.
Hollander smiled, “Hell if I know. Guess we’ll find out the hard way.”
An hour later, as he dove behind a dun-colored boulder, Hollander cursed his previous flippancy. Bullets chopped up sand where he had stood a second before. He thumbed his throat mike.
“We’re pinned down, Gonzalez. Watch for the muzzle flash and give us an assist.” He did not need to wait for the reply, trusting his team member. Hollander nudged himself out from behind the rock, squeezing off three shots towards the ridge which lay fifty yards away. They were answered instantly by another spew of bullets in his direction. The moment they ceased, there was a short burst of fire from the ground.
A scream echoed
across the desert as a body toppled from the rocks above.
“Got him,” Gonzalez’s voice said in Hollander’s ear. “Looks like there was only one.”
“Let’s move.” Hollander waved his other two men forward, zigzagging across the ground with no interference until they reached the base of the rocks. Gonzalez and his comrade met them.
From one of his pockets, Hollander withdrew a smooth plastic ball. Pressing a button on its side caused a series of clicks and whirs. He hurled it at the mouth of the cave where the sniper had fallen from.
Flipping down a small screen from his helmet, Hollander’s eyes filled with a new sight. He was looking into the cave itself. The ball he had thrown was filled with embedded video cameras that provided a live feed directly to the screen in front of his face. It continued to rotate, making Hollander slightly dizzy, until righting itself in a corner.
“It’s a square room,” Hollander told the others. “Empty. Hallway leading off on the right.”
The team fanned out in practiced formation. Two of the Rangers split and pulled collapsible steel ladders from their packs. Extending them, the group swiftly climbed and entered into the cave.
Hollander whispered into the murky darkness, “Hackman, Kowalski. Take position at the-”
The room was lit up by gunfire.
A trio of guttural yells filled the room as three men with bandanas covering the bottom half of their faces blazed from the hallway.
Kowalski and the soldier behind Gonzalez took bullets to the chest, blood spraying. The other Rangers dived to the side, returning fire. Bullets pinged off the close-set walls, the stench of cordite filling the air. In a moment, all fell silent again as the bullet-riddled bodies of the Al-Queda fighters sprawled across the hallway entrance.
Hollander stood and surveyed the scene. Two of his men lay dead, leaving him, Gonzalez and Hackman.
“Jesus,” Gonzalez whispered through his teeth.
“No time to mourn. We have to move,” Hollander said. “The drone counted five heat signatures. Four of them are down now.” He found the plastic ball filled with cameras and picked it up.
The team clipped lights on the end of their Heckler & Koch’s, stepped over the bodies and streamed down the hallway. After a few minutes, it emptied out into a small antechamber with two other tunnels leading in opposite directions. Hollander withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. On it, the picture taken by the plane provided the information he needed.
“Take the left hallway,” he said to his men. As they moved ahead of him, he turned and tossed the plastic ball down the other tunnel. Might as well take a look, Hollander mused.
Before he had a chance to flip down his screen, Hackman’s voice called, “Sir! We’ve got something!”
Hollander sped down the tunnel, following Hackman’s voice. At the end, a steel door was embedded into the rock, propped open. He could see shadows moving beyond. Entering, he caught his breath.
Behind him lay the ancient innards of the mountain. This room, however, was firmly rooted in the current century. Pristine whitewashed walls formed a perfectly square room. Gleaming metal racks lined them, stocked with a combination of steel canisters and glass tubes filled with colored liquid. In the center rested a round metal table with computer equipment that was unfamiliar to Hollander.
“Sir,” Hackman’s voice snapped him back to attention. He and Gonzalez were in the corner, both their rifles pointed at a tall, thin man with his hands in the air. He wore a white laboratory coat and wire-rimmed glasses.
Hollander stepped up to him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
The man simply shrugged. “No English.”
“Yeah, right.” Hollander moved over the table, inspecting its contents. He pulled out a digital camera the size of a credit card that was clipped to his belt. Snapping pictures, he hit a green button on its back to begin transmitting. The pictures would be instantly uploaded to the command center twenty miles away. Everything here had the appearance of a chemical weapons lab but something seemed off to Hollander. He bent down to take a closer look at the table.
“Syringes,” he wondered aloud, finding a collection of them nearby. Straightening, he turned back to the man who was their prisoner. “What are you doing here?” he asked again.
“Bomb,” came the answer, after Hackman prodded the man in the chest with his gun.
“Suddenly you speak English,” Hollander frowned. “What kind of bomb?”
The man stared back defiantly. Suddenly, Gonzalez cracked the butt of his rifle across his skull. “Talk,” he commanded. The man stumbled forward, a gash opening up where he had been struck.
“Stand down,” ordered Hollander. He stepped into the bleeding man’s face. “Either you start talking or-”
Something caught his eye on the rack in the corner.
He moved forward, peering closer. A row of four syringes stood with their needles pointing into the air, clear liquid resting inside of them. It was obvious, though, that there should have been five, for there was an empty hole where another syringe should be.
Yet none of that was what gave Hollander pause. At the bottom of the rack holding the syringes was a white sticker. Upon it was printed, “Property of the U.S. TOP SECRET. RX-17.”
He whirled, pushing into the scientist’s face. “Where did you get this?” Raising his fist, he punctuated the question with a jab to the man’s wound.
“An American sold it to us. He said he only needed one for himself.”
Before Hollander could ask anything else, voices echoed from beyond the steel door. Remembering the camera ball, Hollander flipped the screen down.
“My God,” he breathed.
Several pairs of dust-covered boots thundered down the hallway.
“There’s more here than we thought!” Hollander shouted. He sprang towards the door, grabbing its thick metal handle. He yanked but it wouldn’t budge. Shouts caused him to look up. A dozen insurgents with guns were rushing down the hallway. With another strong pull, the door began to move. Hollander ducked behind it as the first of a hail of bullets struck the steel. He dove back into the room as the door clanged shut.
Fists pounded from the other side.
“Command, do you copy?” Hollander said into his microphone, switching to a different frequency.
“Go ahead,” came the colonel’s voice.
“We’re cornered in the lab, sir. Can you send air support?”
He heard the colonel confer with someone. “Affirmative,” he finally said. “We’ll get it there as quickly as we can.”
Suddenly, there was a muffled blast and the center of the steel door folded inward. It held in place but Hollander knew that it would not for much longer, certainly not for the time he needed.
“There’s something you should see, sir.” Hollander said into his throat mic as he stepped over to the rack of syringes and snapped a picture of it. “Transmitting now.”
Behind him, he heard the door wrenched off its hinges. The last few seconds of Hollander’s life were a blur of noise and confusion.
Gonzalez and Hackman opened up with their guns but were cut down immediately.
The scientist shouted something to his comrades, waving his arms.
Hot slugs slammed into Hollander’s back, toppling him forward. He watched as bullets chewed up everything in the room, including the liquid-filled tubes that filled the wall racks.
A giant rushing sound filled Hollander’s ears as his world was consumed by white.
Twenty miles away, the techie shouted across the command center to the Colonel.
“Sir, there’s been an explosion at the mountain!”
The colonel crossed the room in an instant, leaning over the young man’s shoulder. “Where?” he demanded, scanning the empty screen. “Show me the damn mountain!”
“I am, sir,” the techie replied, earning a perplexed look from his superior. “It’s gone.”
“Dear God.”
The techie
looked back at the colonel, surprised at the man’s blanched face. He realized, though, that it was not the sight of the vaporized mountain that had filled the commander’s face with terror. He was looking at the monitor to the left of it, where the full image of Hollander’s transmitting photo had at last popped up.
Where the letters “RX-17” were on the screen.
Five
Campanile was a yellow stucco restaurant with Moorish arches and tiles, accented with sleek modern updates. Built in the 1920’s to house Charlie Chaplin’s production company, the Little Tramp was forced to instead surrender its ownership in the divorce from his second wife. Aside from its superb risotto, Matt also enjoyed its location on busy La Brea Avenue, straddling the neighborhoods of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The only downside was their sluggish valet parking, which he found himself impatiently waiting for after lunch.
He sighed, glancing at his watch. Nearly three o’clock. The repast had been leisurely, something that was necessary for Matt to woo the client he was entertaining. The restaurant had held its lucky streak for him, though. There was a contract with ink drying on it in the leather portfolio clutched in his hand.
Just when he was about to complain to the head valet, his black Porsche Panamera swung into view. He could not help but smile upon seeing it. Despite appearances, most of Matt’s income went into IRA’s and savings accounts for Luke’s future. The Porsche was one of the few luxuries he permitted himself. It was one of his rare joys to push the fine-tuned engine to its limits on the city’s streets whenever possible, as evidenced by the pile of speeding tickets he had amassed since its purchase.
The valet popped out from behind the wheel uttering profuse apologies. Matt muttered that it wasn’t a problem, handing the man a ten dollar bill. He climbed inside and shut the door. As he eased the shift into drive and pulled forward, he noticed something on the passenger seat.
