by TR Kohler
An impatient movement finally calling Arief to action, the young man moving forward and taking it from him.
Unfolding it slowly, he retreats a few steps and displays it to the young girl.
“The one that got shot twice and didn’t even flinch?”
Chapter Forty-Nine
“Did you know?”
There is no greeting to the call. No salutation made for the purposes of identification or to ask Kari Ma how she is doing.
Given the amount of angst packed into the voice, if not for the caller ID on the phone’s screen, there would be no way to even know who was on the other end of the line.
“Did I know?” Kari repeats.
“That’s what I asked,” Mike replies, every word sounding to be shoved out through gritted teeth. “Did...you...know?”
Rising from the chair behind her desk, Kari uses her free hand to grab for the cane leaning against the wall. Using it for balance, she makes her way across the office floor and out into the hallway.
A quick scan in either direction to make sure that nobody else is around. Not staff from the kitchen or one of the ranch hands having stepped inside for a late lunch.
Certainly not one of the trainees, nobody outside of Doc privy to the conversation she imagines is set to ensue.
Seeing no one, Kari retreats inside. Swinging the door shut behind her, she retraces her previous steps.
“Like I told you the other night, I only discovered the existence of your daughter-”
“I’m not talking about that right now!” Mike snaps, cutting her off before she can even get the rest of the sentence out.
A response that initially causes Kari’s venom to rise. Ceasing her return to her desk, she stands in the center of her office. One hand clutching the top of her cane, her molars come together.
Anger that brings with it a handful of immediate retorts.
Sharp barbs shoved aside an instant later. A quick transition from the inappropriate delivery to the substance of what was actually just shared.
“Did I know what?” Kari asks.
“Firash,” Mike replies. A single word that manages to push aside whatever lingering annoyance she might harbor, replacing it with confusion.
A cleft appearing between her brows, Kari recalls the file she put together before going to visit Mike. The research regarding his upbringing, his football career, and his time in the service.
A military stint that ended abruptly after an incident three years prior.
“I know he was the one that brought down that building in Thailand three years ago,” Kari replies. “Killed himself, caused you to walk away for good.”
Leaving it at that, she doesn’t include the fact that it was that instance that confirmed her supposition of Mike having special abilities. A blast that would have been difficult to survive on his own.
Impossible to have endured without so much as a scratch.
“I don’t mean that either,” Mike replies. Words with a bit less bite than before, preceding a long sigh. “Did you know he was in Jakarta?”
Rooted in place in the center of her office, Kari’s left hand tightens on her cane. Her jaw sags slightly.
Working with the Department of Defense for nearly the entirety of the two decades since leaving the field, she’s familiar with the people that have presented the most problems over the years. Names that have come up time and again, connected to acts of terrorism.
Few having arisen as often as Firash.
A man that nobody shed a single tear over after believing he passed years before.
“Firash is alive?” Kari asks.
“So that’s a no?” Mike replies.
Blinking quickly in order, Kari clears the shock of a moment before. Giving her head a quick shake, she says, “I had no idea. Are you sure?”
Again, he sighs. “Sure? No. But if it’s not him, it’s a direct disciple.”
The first time Kari has spoken to him in hours, the last time she heard Mike’s voice was when she called to wake him up and inform him that the President’s Deputy Chief of Staff had just called. Another bombing to a prominent American manufacturer, this time with the added detriment of casualties.
A timeframe that tells her he has likely spent the last several hours onsite. Time to scour the place. Talk to people. Collect evidence.
Things that have led him to this belief, him being able to speak of Firash better than just about anybody else.
Something she cannot imagine him doing lightly.
“What are the odds of a disciple having waited this long to get started?” she asks.
“Non-existent.”
Chapter Fifty
After their initial report from the blast site earlier, Arief knew it was better to wait outside. In no way did Firash visibly lash at him, but his every mannerism gave the distinct impression that whatever had been shared had struck a nerve.
Not from what happened with Intan. That much he had received with his trademark stoicism. Agitation, perhaps. Definitely a bit of growing impatience.
But nothing that would rank outside of the expected range of reactions.
Something that changed immediately at Eka’s mention of the man that had chased them. Her insistence that she had seen and heard Intan fire on him, the man shrugging off the shots without so much as a flinch.
The very last thing Eka saw before fleeing.
Disappearing immediately into the house, Firash had been gone for several minutes. Time that allowed the initial trepidation Arief had felt about returning to the jungle with the bad news to largely dissipate.
Time enough even that some lingering bit of curiosity had flooded in.
Curiosity that only heightened as Firash eventually returned with a printout in hand. A rough black and white image that looked like it had been through hell. Creases that were just barely hanging together, as if the paper had been folded and refolded countless times before.
Smudges of dirt and grease and whatever else marring the white space around the edges. The result of being handled and stared at too many times to remember.
In the center of the paper was a single image. A picture of a Caucasian man with receding hair cropped close to his skull. Someone that, even if he wasn’t wearing camouflage pants and a plain olive-green t-shirt, would still be easily identifiable as military in an instant.
A person Arief is completely positive he has never seen before, even now after having spent the last twenty minutes racking his brain trying to place him. Time after Firash retreated inside again, leaving him and Eka both standing outside, leaning against the front of the van.
Time when not a single sound was heard from inside the shack. No noises at all save the omnipresent din of the jungle around them.
Palm fronds swaying overhead. Birds calling to each other in the canopy above.
A stretch that ends with Firash pushing back out through the front door. A reset on the entire visit, with him rolling out and assuming the same spot on the porch he has a couple of times already.
Unlike those previous times though, gone is any trace of emotion. No hints of anticipation, wanting to hear about what took place at the General Motors plant earlier. No frustration as he returned with the printout in hand.
Nothing but the same detachment that Arief so often sees from him. The look that denotes he is in planning mode. Looking ahead to the next task laid out before them.
Pushing himself up flush to the railing lining the outside of the porch, Firash looks at each of them in order. Slow and methodical before saying, “The man’s name is Joseph Robert Myschalski. I’ve come up against him before.”
Turning to the side, he stares off for a moment. A quick look away as a ripple of something passes over his features. An instant when something else seizes hold of him before quickly passing.
“His presence changes things.”
Rotating back, he again looks at each of them.
“Come inside. We’ve got work to do.”
&
nbsp; Chapter Fifty-One
The piece of shrapnel Mike dug from the wall at the General Motors factory is technically evidence. A direct link between the device that obliterated everything within a twenty-foot diameter and the man Mike knows to have constructed it.
A special signature that should have been pointed out and turned over to the authorities, but instead is currently stowed in a plastic bag tucked deep in the front pocket of his jeans.
A counterpoint to the two slugs that slammed into his abdomen earlier occupying the opposite side.
With each stride, Mike can feel it pressing against his thigh. A constant reminder not only of what he found, but of the man he thought he left buried beneath a mountain of rubble three years earlier.
Somebody that, whether it is him now or – however slim the odds - one of his direct underlings, Mike is not about to trust the local police force in bringing him to justice.
Propelled onward by that conviction, Mike is more forceful in flinging open the door to the observation room overlooking the interrogation chamber than intended. Jerking it wide, his sudden arrival is enough to snap Tania Lynch’s focus over his way.
Instinctively dropping into a crouch, her right hand eases back toward her hip, her left extended before her. A post not unlike Mike’s on the curb after she came tearing up on him the previous day. A classic defense posture held long enough for recognition to set in before she slowly starts to unfurl.
An act that brings about a scowl as she flicks a glance to the one-way glass beside her.
“What the heck?” she asks by way of greeting.
In no particular mood for getting into another back-and-forth with her, Mike mutters, “Sorry.”
An apology he hopes will be sufficient as he steps inside, pulling the door shut behind him. Giving Tania nothing more than a quick glance, he turns his focus toward the window. Arms folded across his chest, his gaze lands on the young man seated before them.
Someone whose cocksure manner has only seemed to grow in the last couple of hours. Everything from his posture in the wooden chair to the crooked grin he wears seeming to intimate that he thinks he is in control.
“Has he said a word?” Mike asks.
“Nothing useful,” Tania replies.
Having expected as much, Mike merely nods.
The idea in his leaving earlier to head out toward the blast site was to collect evidence. Give himself somewhere to aim the growing animosity within him, knowing that staying in the observation room and watching the kid enjoy toying with them would only end badly.
How, exactly, he didn’t know.
Only that it without question would.
A poor eventuality that he hoped to derail by spending a couple of hours in the field. Time to allow himself to cool down, his hands and mind both active on something else.
Something that would give them a clear heading. A way to find out who the young man is or who he works for or even what his goal might be.
Perhaps even something to be used as leverage to get him talking.
Every last bit of which was obliterated by the object currently tucked away in his front pocket. A tiny piece that simultaneously makes the vitriol he feels climb higher and brings infinitely more questions to the fore.
“You?” Tania asks. “Find something?”
Focused still directed toward the glass beside them, Mike nods once. “I’m going in.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
The reaction plays out exactly as Mike expected it to. A two-part sequence that matches what he would probably do if placed in the chair on the opposite side of the table.
The first is the quick pivot from expectant to surprised. The transition from the self-assured grin on his face to the widened eyes of seeing Mike standing in front of him, bringing with it raised brows and a sagging chin.
A look he maintains as he moves on to the second part of the show, his gaze tracking to Mike’s torso, registering the two holes cleaved into the front of his shirt and nothing more.
“Shouldn’t you-”
“Where the hell is he?” Mike snaps, cutting off any attempt at the man saying another word. Finishing a question Mike has no interest in Tania Lynch hearing.
Even less in actually answering.
Slapping at the edge of the door behind him, Mike flings it shut. A movement meant to impart full velocity on it. One that ends with the echoing din of wood-to-metal contact ringing out, reverberating from the brick walls encasing the room.
A sound that Mike allows to completely die away before repeating the question a second time. “I said, where the hell is he?”
The combination of Mike’s arrival, his being fully okay despite taking two rounds earlier, even the slamming of the door, lingers on the man’s face for a moment. Fleeting seconds with his mouth and eyes all formed into circles.
Instants as he tries to process what he is seeing. Attempts to force his mind to put things in order.
A visible progression that manages to elevate the feeling Mike arrived with a moment earlier. An outcome he refuses to allow as he pushes across the space from the door to the table. A quick sidestep that closes the gap, ending with him slamming his open palm down on the metal tabletop.
“Where?!” he screams, the two new sounds echoing out. Bouncing around the enclosed space, enough to cause the young man to visibly recoil.
Keeping the young man on his heels, Mike digs into the front pocket of his jeans. Fishing out the plastic bag taken from the General Motors plant, he slaps it down on the table between them.
“And don’t you dare think about giving me some smartass answer like you’ve been giving my partner all afternoon,” he seethes. “I know the work of Firash when I see it.”
Hearing the name out loud, the young man’s eyes widen further. Large enough to now make their mismatched sizes more apparent, the left half of his face beginning to swell.
The skin there still crusted with blood.
“What I don’t know, what you’re going to tell me, is where he’s hiding. How he’s still alive. Why the hell he now has some pissant like you out doing his bidding.”
Frozen stiff, Mike can see the young man’s mind attempting to process what was just shared. The initial surprise of seeing Mike enter, viewing his physical condition, compounded by mention of Firash.
The man behind the curtain long thought to be dead.
The one nobody was supposed to know exists, mentioned so forcefully.
A thought process that lasts nearly two full minutes before the man’s features clear. The mix of fear and surprise fade, giving way to the same demeanor he was wearing when Mike first entered.
On cue, the crooked grin returns as the young man asks, “How are you not dead right now?”
A question that pushes Mike up from the table in a flash. Driving off his left foot, he cocks his right hand back, using his momentum to propel himself forward. Twisting his body to the side, he coils his arm like a piston. A machine waiting until the opportune moment before unspooling.
A vicious shot driven straight ahead from the shoulder.
An incoming blow that the young man registers just an instant before it lands. Enough time to process the impending impact, his features shifting once more.
A reverse of just moments before, his face crinkling in fear.
Not that it saves him in the least from the bludgeoning blow. A shot that knocks him straight back, sending the chair he sits in toppling over.
A hard landing on the concrete floor as his head lolls to the side. Blood begins to drip from the newly opened gash on his cheek, disappearing into the bed of dreadlocks beneath him.
A sight that is nothing short of satisfying for Mike to see as he snatches up the shrapnel from the table and exits the room.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Firash?” Tania Lynch asks the instant Mike exits the interrogation room. Not even bothering with the observation chamber, she is standing in the hallway. “Like, Firash Firash?”
Still fuming from the encounter with the man a moment before, Mike swings the door shut in his wake. Much like his initial arrival into the interrogation room, it sends the sound of wood hitting metal reverberating the length of the hall in either direction.
“Yeah,” he mutters.
If there is any concern of the punch that was just thrown, Tania does nothing to show it. Brows high on her forehead, she stares at Mike in disbelief, her entire focus on what was just shared.
“I thought he was dead?”
Shoving an angry sigh out through his nose, Mike paces away from her. Several quick steps with a hand raised to the back of his skull, scratching at his scalp. A few needed moments to let the intensity of the encounter inside the room die away.
To let the satisfying impact of the shot to the man’s cheek recede.
Same for the desire to dive down after him, using his helpless position on the concrete floor to finish what was started on the street earlier. A fight that this time will have the twin differences of Mike not holding back and the young prick not having a gun in hand.
Making it over half the length of the narrow corridor, Mike turns back. Dropping his hand away, he looks up to see Tania still rooted in place, an expectant expression on her face.
“So did I,” Mike replies.
“I mean, we all heard the stories about how he was trapped under a building-” she begins.
“I’m aware.”
“Brought down by his own design-”
“Yep,” Mike says.
“No survivors-”
“I know,” Mike snaps, bringing the barrage of rapid-fire questions to a halt.
A moment of silence in which Mike takes in a deep breath. Rocking himself back a few inches, he closes his eyes, holds his hands before him.
“I’m sorry. Between that punk in there and...”
Opening his eyes, he lowers his hands. Pushing the left one back into the same pocket as just a few minutes earlier, he reaches for the plastic baggie tucked away inside.
