by Peter Telep
Minutes before two a.m. Dresden had snapped awake, risen to use the bathroom, and then had padded out here, rubbing his eyes and wearing the dregs of a bad dream that had taken him to the frenzied streets of Berlin, some seventy years ago.
As a reward for selling his soul, Dresden would confront the man who had murdered his great grandfather. Beb Ahmose had been flown in from Canada where Senecal had found him. He was being kept somewhere in the city. Senecal had arranged everything, including full documentation of Ahmose’s identity, a translator, and limousine ride in the morning. The knots that bound Dresden to this great injustice had tightened. Now, in less than twelve hours, a lifetime of searching—several lifetimes if he included his father and grandfather into the equation—would end. Finally end.
What would he ask the man? He had fallen asleep with that question hovering in his thoughts and found himself bleeding to death without answers. But then, accompanied by a chill of consciousness, came a revelation. There was nothing he needed to ask the old man. Beb Ahmose was avoiding capture. He had sought revenge for the death of his wife. His motivation was visceral and uncomplicated.
So, to be clear, why was he confronting him? To kill him? Senecal had forced the issue, and it seemed he was garnering amusement from the whole affair. He wanted to prove that Dresden was just as blood-thirsty as he was, and he would, Dresden believed, provide the opportunity and the means for Dresden to commit murder.
But what if he took a different tack?
Dresden would shake Ahmose’s hand, share the story as he knew it, and tell the old man that the conflict between them was over. Dresden would not seek an apology. He would simply ask that they let the incident go. Closure through mutual understanding. Make peace with the past. Surely Ahmose had been tortured by the death of his wife and haunted by the killing of the doctor who had saved his boy. Dresden would have his resolution, even if Beb Ahmose remained silent. And most of all, Dresden would deny his partner the circus of blood he was orchestrating.
“Is something wrong?”
Her voice was thinner and higher than Victoria’s, and for a moment it surprised him. She materialized from the gloom, her body flexing in a kind of primitive dance as she swung the hair out of her eyes. The lights from outside reflected off the sweat on her breasts, and she stood there, shifting her weight between legs like a school girl, biting a nail the way he had taught her.
He wasted no time drawing her into his chest. “I’m sorry to wake you. I have a lot on my mind. A big meeting tomorrow.”
“We had a big meeting tonight,” she cooed.
“We did.”
“When does your wife come back?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Do you think she knows?”
He snorted. “I don’t think she cares.”
“Good. So, I’ve single-handedly restructured your public relations department and your sex life. I think my work here is finished.”
“You’re quitting already?”
She shook her head. “Say my name?”
He frowned. “Susannah.”
“Now say, Susannah, you were the greatest partner I ever had.”
He repeated the words.
“Say: I like the way you punish me.”
He did.
She laughed. “Yes, I know you do.”
“You’re taking notes on all this. You’re thinking this will be the greatest piece of journalism you’ve ever written.”
Now it was her turn to snort. “I’m not here to report on your life. I’m here to be in your life. And to learn everything I can, so that one day I can dare mighty things.”
“Sweetheart, you already are. Now in the days to come, I want you to remember one thing. When you try to characterize a man and his life, you can’t focus on the failures or some final act of defiance. You have to examine a man’s life in its entirety. If you do that, you’ll discover what really lies in his heart. If you do that, you’ll finally get the truth.”
* * *
Rasul’s orders had been to intercept Dr. Ramzi Shammas after the professor’s meeting at Blue Door. He was to deliver Shammas to the enclave in West Virginia. Killing Shammas had never been part of the plan.
However, during the drive down from Pennsylvania, Shammas had argued against those orders, demanding to see Nazari. He said that if Rasul did not comply, he would reveal to everyone at the camp that Rasul was having a relationship with Zerina. Because Zerina was having sex outside of marriage (the crime of “zina”), her punishment would be most severe. She would be buried up to her neck and stoned to death.
Reeling over the news, Rasul wanted to know how Shammas knew of the relationship, and Shammas revealed that he had his own watchful eyes at the enclave. Rasul said that once they reached the camp, he would contact Nazari and share the request. As a driver and courier, that was all he could do now. When Shammas had asked for him to pull over so he could relieve himself, Rasul had seized the opportunity to silence the man forever.
When he arrived at the camp, he explained that Shammas had been a security leak, that he had failed his mission in North Carolina, and that he had tried to escape and Rasul had been forced to shoot him. Four of the men had collected the body from the trunk of Rasul’s car and disposed of it deep within the mountains.
Now, he and Zerina were safe. She was twenty-six, an administrative assistant at Concord University, with long, black hair that shone like steel buffed to a high luster. Her skin was fair, nearly cream-colored, making her arched brows appear all the more striking. Light brown eyes flecked with gold shortened his breath and reminded him of the rolling fields in Iowa, an alluring countryside that made the construct of his life as an engineer seem artificial and insignificant. He wished he could dedicate his life to the exploration of her body, to the unraveling of the secrets that wafted up like jasmine from her neck and shoulders.
During his training at the camp, they had rapidly fallen in love, and he swore that one day he would marry her. Their impatience, though, along with the tempestuous influence of western culture, had driven them too soon into his bed.
The storm had kept him awake, and when it had passed, she had rolled over and slid her hand down his thigh. They made love time and again, and he marveled over the solidity of her back, the way she arched it, answering his every move. They lay there, exhausted, and some time before she drifted off, he made sure that his smartphone’s alarm was set, ensuring her return to her trailer before sunrise... before anyone knew. Then again, someone did. He had not told her about Shammas’s revelation. He had decided, though, that when he discovered who knew about them, that person would be confronted and most assuredly killed. He would do it with a knife, working down into the clavicle to ensure a more immediate and discreet end.
Rasul draped an arm over his head and allowed the darkness to carry him away from the trailer and toward a mountain range whose every summit glowed and pulsated in a deep saffron. The fires rose five hundred feet, the flames enveloping aircraft that exploded and tumbled into thick blankets of smoke. And from there he flew to the cities, their skylines equally ablaze above streets pockmarked with debris, streets leading out toward the highways where miles of cars became the scales of a mechanical serpent who had offered the infidels their apple, and they, of course, had taken their gluttonous bite.
He flew along the length of the serpent toward the next cityscape, where the fires now raged on every corner, roaring from the cars, the building windows, even from the manhole covers that had been blown off.
Settling to the ground, he glanced up—just as a building collapsed on top of him, the pressure from all the glass and concrete feeling more like a hand clutching his shoulder.
“Rasul, wake up!” Zerina cried. “There’s smoke! The trailer’s on fire!”
* * *
Johnny had drawn the gasoline in two canteens, and Willie had gathered the kindling. Corey had quipped that he had forgotten the marshmallows. Josh had commented that a smoke grenade would
have required less preparation but was hardly as clandestine. At the moment, Johnny was under the trailer, fanning the flames, when the front door creaked open, and the young woman wearing her bra and panties and clutching the rest of her clothes to her chest, came dashing down the wooden stairs.
Johnny spotted her through the burning latticework that concealed the trailer’s undercarriage and wheels. “Who are you?” she cried. “Rasul!”
A second later, Corey was on her, strangling the next cry.
While Johnny shifted backward on his hands and knees, the trailer’s rear door flung open, and their target leaped to the ground, barefoot, wearing only his boxer shorts. A drop point folding knife jutted from the bottom of his left fist, with tongues of firelight reflected in the blade’s cheek. The pistol in his right hand lacked a suppressor like the one he had used on Shammas; it was more compact, a concealed carry weapon to be sure, with a smaller magazine of seven, maybe ten rounds, depending upon the caliber. He must have rushed to the front door, seen Corey grappling with his girlfriend, then swung back to fetch his weapons. Now, in his haste, he failed to spy Johnny crawling out from beneath the trailer.
Realizing he could not make a dash for his car, or that he had forgotten his keys, their target spotted the gaping hole they had cut in the fence and sprinted over the mud. Johnny drew his 1911 from his holster and bounded off—with a chill of déjà vu splitting across his back. Behind him, the Skyranger’s four rotors spun up as Josh maneuvered it off the trailer’s roof. The drone soared overhead, tracking their target and escaping before being spotted by the jihadis.
* * *
Willie had packed his Barnes Precision Machine Match Carbine with the Leupold 1x6 scope. His magazines were loaded with 77 grain Black Hills Sierra Match King ammo. While he usually reserved this rifle for competitions like Ant Hill, the weapon felt right in his hands, and given their situation, he wanted nothing to interfere with his ability to put lead on target. It was better to choose a rifle he knew and had trained on than something bigger, louder, but unfamiliar. Train as you fight.
As Johnny had been setting the fire, Willie had fallen back about twenty meters away from the fence, where he had scaled a rock pile about three meters above the forest floor. There, he had settled down and could observe the trailer and the others nearby, with only a few blind spots caused by the trees. He was down on one knee, staring through the scope, as this bearded lunatic in his skivvies came charging into the forest with Johnny about five yards back in his draft. A weak buzzing from above the trees indicated that Willie and Johnny were not the only ones with eyes on the target.
Drawing upon his seventeen years in the Corps and his more recent hardcore training for competitions, he tracked the man and easily had the shot, but he was not sure what Johnny wanted him to do. If it became clear that the man might escape, Willie might go for a round to the leg, and that would certainly test his marksmanship if the target kept moving.
A gunshot rang out, startling him. He pulled back from the scope and saw two more flashes an instant before Johnny threw himself behind a tree.
* * *
Corey wrestled the woman’s wrists together and used some long zip ties they had bought at Home Depot to bind her. Then he duct-taped shut her mouth and jogged with her back to her trailer, where he forced her onto the ground, then zip tied her ankles.
He felt guilty over being so rough, especially since she smelled like expensive perfume and had an extremely hot body. She was nothing like the Muslim women he had encountered in Fallujah, and he could not help but ogle her cleavage from behind his mask.
What she saw, he guessed, was a violent man, probably a redneck Islamophobe who would exploit the anonymity of his disguise to rape and/or kill her. But wait a minute. For all he knew, she could be a black widow suicide bomber in training. Screw her! He stole another look before sprinting toward the fence. Off to his left, lights from the trailers winked on, and more gun shots came with echoing cracks from the forest.
* * *
Johnny had slammed shoulder-first into the pine tree as two more rounds drilled into the bark. Shavings and sap exploded in all directions. He counted seven rounds thus far. He rolled away and took off toward a gauntlet of shrubs and trunks ahead. The sticky-looking shadows deepened as the compound lit up like a Bangkok bazaar, tossing flashes into the trees.
With LaPorte’s death and Shammas’s murder replaying like an old double-feature in his head, Johnny picked up the pace, homing in on the man as he rounded the next tree. Once more Johnny blinked through a needling wave of déjà vu.
Just as the target slowed and rolled back to fire, Johnny threw himself forward, slamming onto a leaf bed draped in a layer of ice. His arms were forced back, and he skidded as though lying face-forward on a sled, competing in a skeleton race. Another double-tap tore through his ghost above, followed by a third round that punched the dirt, blasting particles of sand and ice into his eyes.
Were it not for the massive wave of adrenaline that throbbed through his limbs and dampened the impact, he might have surrendered right there. He dug in with the tip of his boot and launched himself back to his feet, his teeth bared, his pistol raised, his breath like dragon’s smoke in his face.
Within the next twenty meters, the exposed roots and pine needles gave way to scabs of rock. Soon, in probably a hundred meters, they would break into a sharp descent, leaving the summit to plunge across gardens of sandstone, shifting sideways, skidding from tree to tree, wary of patches of ice that would send them tumbling. Johnny knew their target had a better chance of escape if he reached that descent, and their boy knew it, too, veering to the north to lose Johnny before they reached the drop.
As they drew farther away from the camp, their man grew harder to see, and for a moment, the shimmer of his bare back vanished. Johnny reached the next tree, the air warmed by his target’s passage. He froze and pricked up his ears. No footfalls. Just his own panting and more distant cries from the camp. Perhaps someone else running? He was not sure. The acrid smoke billowing from the trailer finally reached him, and the stench bolstered his sense of urgency. And then... the drone approached and hovered, suggesting Johnny was still close because Josh was using infrared to pick up the man’s heat signature.
Off to Johnny’s right, something caught his eye, a dark mass, the lines too even for a pine cone or rock. He drifted a few steps toward the next tree, and there it was, abandoned in the dirt, a pistol with its slide locked back, indicating the magazine was empty.
A man’s ferocious scream broke from the trees, and Johnny whirled in that direction. He cursed as a shadow that better resembled a black bear with claws gleaming sprang from a raft of sandstone and arced in the air.
Johnny lifted his pistol, clutching it with both hands to stabilize the weapon. The man’s face shown through the woven darkness, his eyes glowing as though caught in headlights, his mouth twisted around his canines. The knife, now in his right hand and clutched in a reverse grip, was all of those bear claws forged into a single point homing in on Johnny’s chest. At the same time, Johnny had a clean shot, center of mass.
The bear shape shifted again, his muzzle lengthening, his coat growing long and shaggy. Now he was a rabid sheepdog who had turned on his loved ones. The dog’s face became Daniel’s.
And no, Johnny could not shoot his own brother.
As his finger came off the trigger, Daniel’s face narrowed, his beard darkened, and his eyes resumed that eerie glow. He was the jihadi again, the only man left with answers.
And once more, Johnny could not fire.
In the next instant, he was flat on his back, his hand striking a rock and knocking free his pistol. A guttural hiss spewed from the man’s throat as he straddled Johnny and reared back, the blade framed by a kaleidoscope of tangled limbs. Johnny hands went reflexively for the man’s arm, but it was out of reach, and when he tried to lift his legs and throw off his assailant, pain seared across his back.
The man must have sen
sed that Johnny wore Kevlar plates beneath his jacket, because as he brought down the knife, his aim scrolled to Johnny’s head. With a grunt, Johnny seized the man’s wrist with both hands; now the quivering blade hung a few inches from Johnny’s forehead. As their arms shook against each other, the man suddenly reached forward with his free hand, groping for Johnny’s neck.
In one concerted effort, and with muscles burning like lava, Johnny placed a palm on the man’s bare chest. He sat up, catapulting the man backward.
Before the jihadi landed on his rump, a shot cracked, and blood sprayed from the man’s hip. He collapsed, dropping the knife, his hands reaching toward his leg. He rocked to and fro and began wailing in agony.
Johnny clambered up, grabbed his pistol, then crawled to the knife, folded it up, and shoved it in his pocket. He slammed the man onto his back, wrapped a hand around his throat, then pressed his .45 to the kid’s head. And yes, from this distance it was quite clear—he was just a kid, his gaze bearing a youthful innocence despite his terror.
“What’s your name?” Johnny demanded.
The kid kept moaning. Blood poured out from between his fingers, his body shaking violently against the cold.
“Answer me!”
“I’m bleeding! I’m dying!”
“Yeah, and there’re no virgins where you’re going. Now who are you?”
“My name’s Rasul!”
“You look familiar. Were you in Holly Ridge? Did you kill my brother?”
The kid’s face loosened into a weird smile. “You’re Johnny Johansen. I know all about you. Easy day, no drama.”
Johnny’s mouth fell open.
“And your brother,” Rasul continued. “He was a martyr for the cause. He loved Allah more than me.” The kid sneered, his teeth sketched in blood.
