by Mack Maloney
“Two out back?” Robinson suggested to the four cops. A pair of them wordlessly broke off from the pack and ran around to the rear of the decrepit building. Robinson gave them a minute to get in position; then he and the other two walked up to the front door. They had a battering ram with them, but they didn’t need it. The door was not locked. Robinson easily pushed it open with his foot.
It was dark inside the entryway. Dark and very quiet. Robinson looked back at the cops with some trepidation. They would all have rather come in with a bang — forced entries tended to scare the bad guys inside. Being sucked in quietly was not the best way to enter a trouble zone.
But enter they did. It was their job.
The hallway smelled awful — and it was not just the garbage piled up to the ceiling. The stink of burnt gunpowder and cordite was also in the air. Robinson and the cops inched their way through the foyer and into the first room. It was dark, filled with smoke, but empty. Down the hallway another six feet to the second room. Here the cordite was especially thick, but this room was empty, too.
Next came a set of stairs that led up to the second floor. Robinson could see a candle flickering up there, somewhere. He went up first, his Glock out, front and center. The two uniforms had their M16s up, too. They were vets at this sort of thing, though this sort of thing rarely went the same way twice.
They reached the second floor and were naturally drawn to the bare light of the candle. It was in a bedroom to their left. This was where they found the first two bodies.
Both had been shot multiple times — lots of bullet wounds in the arms, shoulders, kneecaps, and groin, with one massive wound in the stomach. The candle had been positioned at the feet of the victims. Whoever did the killing wanted the two victims to suffer first. And they did, greatly. A message was being sent here; that was obvious. But it got stranger. Both dead men had something very odd stuffed into their mouths. At first, Robinson thought it was entrails, as repulsive as that sounded. Only by bending down and looking closely did he see what it really was: handfuls of raw, bloody bacon.
He looked up at the two cops who just shook their heads, baffled. “What’s up with that shit?” one asked in astonishment.
The two dead men were mosque members. Despite their gross wounds, Robinson recognized them both from his previous visits here. They were of Middle Eastern descent. Both were named Abu.
Robinson and the two cops moved on. Several other rooms were thick with gun smoke but empty. Instinct told Robinson that more bodies were to be found. There was a ladder leading up through the ceiling to the roof. Ladders were not a preferred means of movement among cops, especially in a situation like this. But again, duty called.
Robinson went up first, chunky in his suit coat and tie, waddling in his heavy vest. It made for hard climbing. Three steps up, Robinson lost his balance. Without ceremony, one of the cops behind gave him a mighty push on the rump, propelling him up through the open trapdoor and onto the roof itself.
He found two more bodies up here.
They, too, had been shot. They, too, had had their mouths stuffed with bacon.
The two cops followed him up the ladder. Jets landing and arriving at nearby O’Hare made it hard to talk, hard to think. But they were as baffled by the scene as he. Next to one of the bodies was a suitcase — or at least what appeared to be a suitcase. Closer inspection by Robinson proved it was not something clothes would be packed in. It appeared to be more of a carrying case for some kind of computer tool or electronic device.
The case had to be dusted for fingerprints, so Robinson placed a small yellow marker next to it letting the CIS team know his intentions.
Meanwhile, one of the other cops noticed something else unusual. The roof was flat and covered with tar, a typical cap for buildings in this area. Playing his flashlight along the widest part of the roof, the cop had discovered a long, thin indentation that appeared to be newly made.
He called Robinson over, and they both inspected the strange imprint. Incredibly, it looked like tire tracks.
“On a roof?” Robinson said out loud.
They found another, similar indentation about eight feet away and very close to the edge of the building. Two tire tracks, made by something heavy, embedded deep in the tar.
This made no sense.
At this point, the two cops watching the back arrived on the roof. As it turned out, one of them was ex-Army aviation. He studied the tire marks and just shook his head. He recognized the mark of a helicopter wheel when he saw one.
“A good-size chopper was up here,” he told Robinson. “You can bet on it.”
To reinforce his theory, he pointed to a series of strange scrapes along one side of the building’s metal-pipe chimney.
“See? This is where the tips of the copter blades hit,” the cop said, also noting an ancient clothesline rope was ripped to shreds nearby. “But it was a very tight fit. Whoever was flying this thing knew what they were doing. Or they might just be crazy.”
The ex-Army cop took one long look around and concluded: “Whoever iced these guys came and left in a helicopter.”
Robinson was more baffled than before. Dead mutts with bacon stuffed in their mouths? Helicopters landing on top of tenement buildings? An American flag, left behind, rippling in the wind?
Robinson just shook his head as a jet screamed overhead on its way to landing at O’Hare.
“Whatever happened to drive-by shootings?” he asked.
Near Danson, Nebraska The next morning
Donny Eliot had just sat down to breakfast at the All-Star Diner when his walkie-talkie crackled to life.
“That’s about ten minutes too early,” the waitress joked, pouring him a cup of coffee. “They must be on to you.”
Eliot was the head ranger at nearby Great Mesa State Park. It was a natural preserve, more than 50 square miles in area, perfectly square, flat prairie, most of it, and as such practically indistinguishable from the rest of Nebraska. Except for two things, that is: The park featured one of the state’s few mountains — or sort of a mountain, anyway. It also had an airport, a big one, right in the middle of it.
It was not a commercial airport, but one that primarily serviced cargo planes, bringing in farm supplies, feed, fertilizer, and sometimes even moving livestock out. Cargo that was the lifeblood of this farming area, things that for whatever reason had to be here quicker than a truck could bring them in. A former SAC base, these days the airport was called Lee Field.
The walkie-talkie buzzed again. Eliot knew it was his boss, the park supervisor. He called Eliot every morning, just to make sure he was on the job. But the boss was definitely early today.
Eliot took one long slurp of his coffee, then hit the respond button. The supervisor didn’t say hello. He was already in the middle of a sentence. But his words were breaking up. “ … something weird … people up near … Lee Field … do you copy?”
“I’m here, boss,” Eliot replied. “But I only copy half of what you said. Say again, please?”
“Goddammit!” The supervisor was yelling now, but the reception had got worse. “Something … Big Rock … Lee Field … hurry!”
Eliot yelled into the walkie-talkie, “Boss, I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up!”
But only a storm of static came back to him.
Then the walkie-talkie went dead.
* * *
Five minutes later, Eliot was in his truck, roaring up Route 213. Before him was Great Mesa, the 700-foot formation of rocks and ledges that gave the park its name. But strangely, the mesa wasn’t really a mesa at all. Not in this part of the country. It was simply an extraordinarily large stacking of huge rocks that rose up from the otherwise flattened plain. Most people just called it the Big Rock.
Lee Field was just beyond, about a quarter-mile away, down inside a natural bowl that gave the huge rocky formation an even further illusion of size and height. Anytime he saw it, Eliot always thought the same thing: Flat as hell for hundreds of
miles and they build an airport next to the only mountain in the state.
Eliot was at the foot of the Big Rock a minute later. He leaped from his truck, ran to the first wall of boulders, and looked up. The highest point of the mesa was a flattened outcrop that stuck up about 150 feet above the northern face. This must have been why the boss had called him. A group of people was up there — four young men, Eliot could see them clearly. They had a telescope with them, or at least they were looking through some kind of tube. Each man had a beard and a great tan.
“Christ,” Eliot breathed. “Hippies, again?”
It was the bane of his existence that a local group of pot-smoking, weed-hugging kids had decided the Grand Mesa was actually a holy place. A place of harmonic convergence. A place that UFOs visited. Take your pick. It was high, and usually so were they. Eliot was forever shooing them off the summit.
He was about to try his walkie-talkie again, to raise his boss and report in, when he heard the rumbling of a large jet taking off from Lee Field. It distracted him for a moment, because when the wind was blowing right the big jets took off directly over the faux mesa. This plane was definitely heading in his direction.
He turned back to the rocks. Up on the peak, the hippies were raising their telescope, or whatever it was. One had it up on his shoulder now. And that’s when Eliot realized that these people were not wearing the ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts the hippies usually wore. In fact, two looked like they were wearing suit coats. And the two others were dressed like soccer players. Strange ….
The jet flew over a moment later. It was a FedEx plane, its red, white, and blue color scheme making it hard to miss. It went over the highway and climbed steadily toward the peak. Suddenly Eliot saw something that made no sense: a helicopter, a big white one, had come out of nowhere, and soldiers in black camouflage uniforms were jumping out of it and on top of the four young men on the mesa’s summit. Then, even over the roar of the big cargo jet, Eliot heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire.
That’s when he saw an explosion of red and yellow flame erupt from the top of the peak.
“God damn!” Eliot screamed. What the hell is going on here?
Before he could take another breath, he saw a fiery trail rise up from the peak but then suddenly change direction, as if one of the men jumping from the helicopter had knocked it off-course at the last possible instant. The FedEx jet went over the mesa a moment later. Two seconds after that, something corkscrewed its way through the air and impacted in a wheat field back down near Lee Field’s main runway.
Eliot was stunned. He just couldn’t comprehend what was happening simply because it was all happening so fast. Were those fireworks? The Fourth of July was but a week away. He’d had the wisdom to bring his binoculars with him. He trained them on the peak and saw a huge fight was now in progress. The people from the helicopter were absolutely pummeling the young bearded men. Even amid the chaos, Eliot could hear them shouting, screaming, crying. Above it all, the helicopter had not landed but was hovering just a few feet above the summit.
Eliot wasn’t sure what to do. For some reason, the soldiers didn’t look like real soldiers, and the helicopter certainly wasn’t brand-new. And he couldn’t get out of his head that the people on the peak of Big Rock were just local kids, just fooling around, maybe with bottle rockets or something. But one thing was certain: all these people were on State Park property. And for some crazy reason, Eliot felt compelled to find out what was really going on. So, he ran down the highway embankment and, reaching the bottom of the rocky formation, began to climb.
“What am I doing?” he yelled to himself. The peak was 700 feet nearly straight up, and Eliot was not a tiny man. He was instantly bathed in sweat. He was screaming at the top of his lungs for the people above him to stop. “Stop fighting!” But of course, they couldn’t hear him.
He surprised himself, though, by how fast he climbed. He’d never done anything like this before. The Big Rock’s southern face was a much easier approach, but every place he found his feet now was a solid stepping-stone to the next foothold. His hands, too, were gripping all the right places. In seconds, he was going up the side of the formation like he was Spiderman.
During his quick ascent, he managed to look back toward Lee Field. He could see vehicles with flashing red lights rushing toward the near end of the runway. They’d obviously seen the fiery impact, but that was as close as they could get. Eliot was really the only one who could see the strange goings-on at the top of the mountain.
How long did it take him to climb the peak? A minute? Or five? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was by the time he was two-thirds of the way up, the fight up on the summit had reached its climax. He could see the soldiers in the camos still viciously beating the young men, the helicopter still hovering in perfect position above. Eliot could read the lettering on its fuselage now — but this just added to the mystery.
“United States Coast Guard?” he yelled to no one. “What the hell are they doing here?”
Only a long slope of rocks separated him from the summit at this point. He started running up this slope, still astonished at his strength and surefootedness. The soldiers on the peak spotted him. As he shouted at them to stop, he saw them pick up one of the four young men they’d been beating, throw him into the helicopter, and then climb in themselves. Then the chopper started moving. It dipped slightly, then gunned its engine and rocketed away, at amazing speed. Strangely enough, Eliot could barely hear its engines.
That’s pretty quiet, for a helicopter, he would recall thinking.
By the time he reached the peak, the copter was nearly out of sight, heading north. He found all three of the men up here dead, obviously beaten to death. That’s when he realized for sure these were not local kids. These three men were very dark and not as young as he’d thought. Two were wearing suit coats. One was in a soccer uniform. Eliot pegged them right away as being of Middle Eastern descent.
That’s when it all came together for him.
Terrorists … he thought. Up here?
It was the only explanation that made sense.
He examined the bodies closer, not wanting to touch them, of course. All three looked like they’d been flattened with a sledgehammer. Bones and skulls, fractured and bleeding. And what was that in their mouths? He looked closer. Was that bacon?
And flapping in the breeze nearby? A small American flag, hastily adhered to a small bush, the only vegetation of any kind at the top of the Big Rock.
At that moment, his walkie-talkie crackled to life, scaring the hell out of him. It was his boss again — and this time, he was coming through loud and clear.
“Donny! What the crap is going on up there?”
Eliot pushed the respond button but then just collapsed to the seat of his pants.
“Boss,” he said, finally out of breath. “You won’t frigging believe it ….”
Saint Helena, Nebraska Two hours later
The only bar in Saint Helena was packed. This meant just about thirty people were jammed inside the Eastside Tavern, and just about all of them were drunk. This meant nearly half the population of Saint Helena was currently intoxicated.
It was early Monday afternoon. Summer school had been dismissed and most people had taken the afternoon off from work. A special occasion had been planned for this date; that was the reason for the unofficial holiday.
A foreign soccer team was scheduled to come to town and play a goodwill game against the county’s youth soccer club. The match had been in the works for about two months. As the county seat, Saint Helena had the only regulation soccer field this side of Danson, Nebraska, which was 100 miles to the south. Downtown Saint Helena, which consisted of the tavern, a drugstore, and Casey’s Cafe, had even been adorned with red, white, and blue bunting, small American flags, and hundreds of balloons for the occasion.
The problem was, the foreign soccer team never showed up. Practically the entire town had turned out at the nearby soccer field, d
ozens of people in folding chairs and umbrellas, picnic lunches at hand, kids running, playing, adults swatting the cow flies away. It was the end of June. It was hot. And the town had been looking forward to this for some time.
But the foreigners were supposed to be here at 10:00 A.M. By noon, the crowd had begun to wilt. By twelve-thirty, the kids had scattered, and the women had left, leaving the menfolk to their own devices. The Eastside Tavern was packed shortly before one.
Darts was the game of choice these days in the Eastside, this ever since the mechanical bull fell into disrepair. Fueled by cheap Larry’s Home Brew on tap and the occasional drag of some skunkweed out back, a huge match began. With a lot of money on the table and people making side bets everywhere, the darts really started flying. The match grew so intense, no one even blinked when a huge thunderstorm rolled over about two, dousing the town and its balloons and bunting with two inches of rain in less than 15 minutes.
The match neared its peak by 3:00 P.M. Ten teams had been whittled down to just two — and there was $500 on the table. That’s why everyone was so shocked when Charlie Ray, the town’s 95-year-old minister, burst into the tavern and announced “Someone just told me the foreigners are here!”
Everything froze inside the bar. They were here?
“Actually,” Reverend Ray corrected himself, “Joey, the janitor, called me and said all of us better get back over to the soccer field darn quick.”
* * *
The field was behind the four-room Saint Helena’s elementary school, about a quarter-mile down the road from downtown.
The rain had let up considerably by now, but the sky was still very dark. Almost as dark as night. This was real tornado weather, but the revelers piled into their pickup trucks and old Fords anyway and proceeded back down to the grade school.
They met Joey the janitor in the small parking lot. Joey was not a very bright bulb, but he seemed very agitated when the townspeople arrived. They had expected to see the bus that had carried the foreign soccer players here parked in the lot, but no such vehicle was there. Only Joey. And he was almost crying.
