Hell To Pay

by Andrik Rovson

  “So, nothing there, to be learned,” which got a quick nod, “Okay, we fly back, and thank you,” he reached out to shake his hand, wanting to verify the connection he felt with this magical, vital man. Henry took a necklace off his neck, then dropped it over Jabo's head, holding his shoulders for a moment, seeing him off on his quest.

  “From my Grandfather, for protection. Both grandfathers, yours and mine, tell me you'll need it more than me – where you're going.” His smile was warm and a little creepy, like the line was out of a Horror movie or the Twilight Zone. “Go in peace brother, we shall meet again, in my lodge where you'll talk to your ancestors and sing of your great battles and ...” he looked at Cathy, fixing her in his loving stare, “You will have three sons, two will be good, one will never be happy, the one you'll love the most.”

  “Oh,” Cathy wanted to say something but the session was over. He'd turned and was was walking quickly back to the truck. She fell in alongside of Jabo as Ball hurried up to join Henry, the two of them sharing stories and laughing quietly, obviously friends of a different kind, catching up.

  “Is he for real?” she felt he was, but needed Jabo to tell her she was right, feeling what she did inside. Everything told her that Henry, the tall uniformed man in cowboy boots, jeans with a pair of long thin braids hanging down his back, tied off with small strips of red wool, was a man of God.

  “Scary ain't it?” she stopped to look in his eyes, thinking Jabo was going to say something very serious or lofty, to clear up the part about the unhappy son and Henry's ethereal manner.

  “What?” She was ready to cringe, her body twitching with curiosity. Was she wrong? Had this all been an elaborate joke or tease?

  “You and me having three kids,” he kissed her, “that's a lot of babies.”

  “Jabo!” but he was walking past her, feeling her ready to pound his back, hating it when he got her going then made it all a joke. He'd always been unhappy as a kid, driving his mom crazy, but he'd worked out alright. What was there to be worried about?

  After they'd lifted up, Jabo asked Sargent Ball to fly around the crime scene, to give him an overview. They hovered at a thousand feet, drifting in a circle around the check blackened border station. There were at least ten police cars with spinning lights, each from a different jurisdiction. The ghastly spectacle reduced local traffic to a single lane. Always sparse, it didn't back up as people slowed then drove on, horrified or silent.

  The burned out swath of devastation reminded Jabo of a hellfire missile or napalm. There were outlines on the sooty concrete where the bodies had been found and a lighter space where the truck, his grandfather's, had sat, stopped under the canopy which was rounded up, showing the power of the explosion it had contained and deflected. He could see the small, dry stream bed where Alcazar had fallen, hidden and safe, to wake up wracked with guilt that she hadn't died, hadn't saved the others.

  “Can we fly south, then hover for a bit off to the side of that rise, where the shooter was?”

  “I can't get too low, it'll blow shit around and mess up the crime scene. How about over the road, or maybe a little West of that – okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” he had him work South until they were looking down over the rise, assessing the shots he'd made, seeing what he had, the range wasn't great, something he could do, but not with only a second between each precisely aimed shot, never missing. The bullets, one of which wasn't deformed around the base, would let them match up with the rifle, but it was likely a custom build, match grade, modified after it was delivered. As they rose he tried to trace the path the killer had driven that night, from the new subdivision only a few miles north of the checkpoint, then South, where his grandparents had picked her up, returning to the check point and their deaths.

  “Then, you bastard, you drove away, going home, job done, thinking you'd be safe there. Bad idea asshole, you're mine.” He hadn't clicked the switch so Cathy could hear him grumbling to himself. She watched him as he looked out over the crime scene, saying goodbye to his Grandparents one final time. His final burning stare filled her chest with odd feelings, then turned her stomach – it was too much. She saw Jabo as he was, an angry warrior and resolute killer, what he normally hid away from her and others – as her new husband spoke directly to the man who'd wreaked so much death and destruction on his family.

  When they met he this man they were tracking Jabo wouldn't bring her along. This he'd do alone, tracking him until he could look him in the eyes. Her job would be to bring him back to ground afterward, maybe with Henry's help, their new spiritual adviser and guide. The gift of his treasured necklace was priceless and showed the depth of his heart and caring. She would do anything for him, for helping out, for sharing the desire to protect Jabo now and in the future. Where had people like this been all her life? Her love for Jabo, her new husband, kept growing. She was awed by the respect shown by others, by his imposing presence. He'd brought her so she could contribute, be part of his life – her deepest desire. When his revenge was over she'd take this burden from his heart.

  Her phone chirped and it was her mother . She killed the call then texted her, 'Not now mother' then took Jabo's hand. She'd find time for the two of them, to feel what their first night had started, on the way. Henry was right, Jabo was a Bulldog who'd caught the scent of his prey. Was she pregnant? Three boys, a sad one? It was so fulfilling, having a husband, a life, and lots of mystery with enough danger to make it all more than interesting or diverting, as her married friends described their suburban lives. She felt alive, feeling him squeeze her hand, connected but looking off, out there...

  Money had always made life easy, now she was finding out that life was far more compelling when it was hard, scary, mystical and impossible to predict.

  Chapter Seven

  He was wise, simple, direct and ruthless.

  Admiral Arleigh Burke, U.S.Navy C.N.O.

  They landed back at the National Guard field in El Paso and the two Balls returned to their work – dismissive, like the rapid jaunt out to the crime scene and back hadn't happened. Sargent Ball was not a man of many words, distrustful of all officers, especially ones of such lofty rank, but Jabo had snuck under his radar and a grudging respect had arisen in his doubting mind. He wouldn't mind if the man who'd been so diffident and off hand came back to ask for another ride, but he still wouldn't befriend him. For Ball, officers were beyond the pale.

  Ducking into the Major's office to offer his thanks, Jabo asked if he could use an empty room with a secure land line.

  “We don't have any fancy stuff like that, just a regular phone, that works most of the time, and this,” he patted his new computer, “mine, eight processors, 8 gigs, faster than...” he caught himself as Cathy looked at his machine appreciatively, while his technical description went right over Jabo's head, who was more into hardware that shot things or produced explosions.

  “This'll do Major, may I?” Cathy sat down before he could respond, stuttering out his agreement after pondering the military protocols for letting a civilian operate Army owned machinery, which a computer was considered to be, no different from the helicopters outside or a dump truck.

  Ignoring the men looking over her shoulder, she entered her father's server, going through several levels of authentication from memory. She looked over at the Major's land line, which got a millennial shrug for its relative antiquity, although transmissions over copper were far less able to be casually intercepted than wireless ones using a cell phone.

  The phone rang as she looked at it. She turned, giving the Major another look, asking if she could answer it, implying her typing on the computer to log in on her father's system had generated the call. He nodded, shaking his head at his intruders, wondering when they'd leave and if he'd get in trouble for being so friendly. He'd already written off the fuel they'd burned up, calling it an engine check ride, since most of their work was keeping these aging birds air worthy for the weekend warriors who showed up expecting their fu
n and games to go smoothly, earning their flight pay, buzzing the local ranchers then jetting home back to Austin and Dallas, returning to their normal lives with some fresh air time on their logbooks and smiles on their faces.

  “Neil, Cathy, yeah, that was me, long time eh? Authorize me for the next,” she looked at Jabo who raised his eyebrows, not knowing how long they'd require to talk to Albert then follow up what leads he'd found. He held out three fingers, for three minutes. “Three hours, can do? Great, thanks, and text me back my temporary password, great, I see it, that way I can log back in quickly if we lose my connection. I'm sort of out in the boonies, no, can't say where, thank you, marriage is...” she looked at Jabo again, “fun, ciao.”

  She dropped the ancient phone in its cradle, rolled her eyes again at the museum quality of military equipment. Her father's company had an entire division tasked with surveying the coming things, to find the best technology, test it rigorously, then generate and execute plans to replace what had grown obsolete in the last five or ten years. It never stopped and she was sure the programs and methods she'd used when she was in charge last year were already half gone. She looked at the land line phone, trying to remember when she'd seen one before this, outside of a black and white movie or a cafe out in the desert, built before the big one, along route sixty-six which had become just another two-lane out in the desert.

  “I'm sending an email to Albert, telling him to use the hotlink to reach out to me, sort of a super encrypted Skype channel, with video and sound, but impossible to break into.”

  “Oh Skype, yeah, what we used when I was deployed?”

  She gave him a patronizing smile, knowing he wasn't interested in what she'd just done or said, only that it would give him a secure way to talk to Albert and through him, perhaps to his real boss, the elusive Mr. Brooks.

  “Oh, here we are, let's go full screen, and bingo!” She clicked the small camera icon and Albert looked back at them, scowling, his first few questions to Cathy were about the program they were using, then he agreed with her, reluctantly, that they would be safe talking on it.

  “What have you found out about Missange and his former employer, the last one that doesn't show up on any normal records.”

  “That was interesting, those guys in WitSec weren't into sharing any details so I had to go back channel, call in some favors, that kind of stuff. What I have is spotty but clear. First off, look at this,” the computer dinged as a picture was copied in at his end then showed up as a spinning circle for a few seconds until it appeared as a reduced image in the lower corner. A click made it fill the screen – a company name and logo – an outlined red star above a DNA helix, with a sky blue background.

  “LazaRuss Labs, heard of them?” Jabo couldn't speak, focused on the twin spirals of the Logo, hearing Anna's hazy recollection in his head, describing the design she'd seen on the girl's socks, like a tornado, intertwined spirals – DNA. The Red star was pure Russian ego, since the very secretive, very cutting edge genetics research and engineering company was one of the most advanced in the world. They were cutting edge, responsible for extending the species capable of regular cloning. It was rumored they made new strange cross breeds from single celled organisms up to mammals, the most advanced genetic entities and the hardest to modify or clone. It was a deadly business, for the living things they worked on. Most of their experiments were failures, leading to the deaths of the animals. It required a mildly psychopathic outlook, ready to slaughter living creatures, experimental cannon fodder on the battlefield of research, all to find a product that would make the company Billions in license fees.

  They had created a super pig that grew to harvest size in six months with minimum feed. It was starting to change the pork market, enough it could compete with beef, stealing more than their fair share, or so the cowboys thought, enough the cattle ranchers were demanding they get a super steer next.

  “They have a facility down in San Marcos,” Cathy said, instantly recalling the solid concrete walls, all painted their distinctive sky blue color, thrown up in the last four years as they expanded in Texas. The once quaint small town of San Marcos, with it's central square lined by single story businesses with a municipal building and park filling the large, open block. They were near the growing, Texas version of Silicon Valley, radiating out from the UT campus. The collection of large, high tech firms had become more important than the state Capitol in recent years. It was beginning to rival Dallas Fort Worth as a economic boom town, where startups flourished and large companies relocated, loving the no state income tax environment and mild weather, as well as the Texas 'can do' attitude, all under a blue sky that went on forever.

  “I bet Missange worked there, in San Marcos.” She thought back to her own first forays into her father's booming enterprise, making computer equipment used in large Data centers, frames to hold the computers that were now self contained on a single long board that plugged in to get power and information lines that dropped off the back, leaving a simple interface in front that indicated if it was working, a few sockets for testing, and little else.

  “Dell got there ten years ago, one of the first to see that San Marcos was close enough to Austin to enjoy it's available highly trained workers and the computer and technology companies based there, while being cheaper if they wanted to expand and hire on more workers. They led the way and they're one of the biggest employers, next to my dad's company, with a lot of clout.”

  Albert and Jabo had let her ramble on, then Albert cut her off, “if we can move on from the Chamber of Commerce presentation,” his eye roll made Cathy feel small, understanding she was moving in a different world, one that didn't care about what she knew, only its relevance to future plans.

  “Sorry,” she moved her chair back, then to the side so Jabo could take over, sensing the two men were going to share their ideas and didn't need her now.

  “Cathy?” Jabo looked at her, pained, then raised one eyebrow, a signal she'd seen before, thinking it was cute at first, then it changed to what it was now, a silent request for her to go outside and amuse herself for a while. Her lack of a top clearance was becoming a real pain in the ass, for her.

  After she closed the door shes spotted the Major who commanded the small National Guard facility and asked him for a tour. He agreed quickly, annoyed he'd lost his office by offering them his computer, but pleased to spend some time with the charming and extremely beautiful young woman. You never know...

  “Can we get into their computers, the ones at San Marcos?” Jabo wanted to do something, tired of all this investigation shit, crawling around on the edges when they prize was now in sight. It was the link he'd needed to start climbing up the backside of the people who'd killed his grandparents without any concern about blow back. Now they'd find out what fucking with the Bowie clan, in the state of Texas no less, would mean.

  “Not easy, from outside, however, from the inside, yes, with some tricky technology, get a worm in their computer brain, but we have to physically penetrate their network, which means going inside their building.”

  Jabo had visions of him tearing into the roof, then dropping down into a high tech room, with a single screen, the password box blinking on the giant LCD, awaiting his input as he hung from ropes, wearing skin tight suit that made him invisible to the various alarm sensors lining the room's walls and embedded in the floor.

  “So we break in?” He was a bit worried, not a computer geek like Albert or the vast majority of his generation, including his new wife. It had never been a problem before, in the teams, where technology was normally a radio or a laser to guide in air support and their smart bombs and missiles. He'd left other computer stuff to the men trained to operate the simple laptops they carried in the field, used to display information, maps or satellite images usually, and little else.

  “Nothing that dramatic,” Albert smiled, knowing Jabo's tendency to make everything into a fire fight or, recently, a James Bond movie. They'd need his skills in th
at arena soon enough, but not for this little caper.

  Jabo and Cathy retired after their short meeting, the end of a long, tiring day. They enjoyed a night of sex and sleep, but mostly sex they both used for mental release. They were both plagued by tensions and disturbing emotions, generated as they followed up the gruesome murders. Immediately they rekindled their burning passion, what had infused their interactions during the day – when his role as an officer made even holding hands impossible in public, but not now. They rolled apart, sweating and laughing at their animal sex, athletic this time, banging each other hard, so much he kept asking her if he was hurting her, urged on by her groaning demand for more.

  Her smile had said 'no' but now, resting as Jabo emptied himself in the bathroom, her hand kept returning to feel her aching cunt, tender once more from the sex she'd wanted for years with this loving, playful man whose eyes made her melt each time he turned on that internal charm machine.

  He came back, checking her naked body out for the millionth time, never tired or jaded by her display – his private treasure.

  “This,” she patted her pubic mound, now more alluring, shaved, the fashion for the last decade, which he didn't comment on. It made her look like she'd just entered high school, instead of two years out of a tough double major graduate degree in stuff he didn't understand when she tried to explain it in any detail – management science and control systems. She'd always seen herself working for her father on the factory floor or somewhere else, hands on, doing highly technical stuff that was hard to master yet fun when you had it going right.

  “Is made for this,” she tapped his penis as he sat on the edge of the bed. He was half erect and rising quickly at her light touch, always ready for more, unlike her at the moment. “However, not as much or as long or as hard as we've been doing it.” His look of concern and worry was hard to separate, from fears he'd have to slow down or cut his hours in the saddle short Was she suffering from the pounding he gave her, what she seemed to beg for?