by Seeley James
“Not mine.” She shook her head too much. Her eyes darted around while she thought up what to say next. “If they were members of Free Origins or Fair Heritage, I would be surprised. That’s why we brought you in. We need someone who can help us get rid of the worst elements.”
Satisfied with her answer, she gave me the big eyes again. “How am I going to get my team together for our trip?”
I raised her chin with my knuckle. “Well. You know. I guess I could help you. Do you know where Caleb is now?”
“A town called Manresa.”
“Rent him a car, have him meet us in Seville.”
She pulled back a little. “That would take all day. He’d miss our flight. Our reservations are for two PM. How does that help?”
I stroked her cheek with my fingertips and ran them down her shoulder. She smiled and purred. I said, “You’re too beautiful to fly commercial. We’ll fly straight there, no security lines, no need to change planes. After tomorrow’s training session, I’ll take you anywhere you want. Within reason.”
Arrianne’s eyes perked up when I called her beautiful. Then her shoulders sank.
“Uhm.” She looked out the window at the traffic passing in the night while she composed her reply. “That would be too much to ask.”
“No problem. The company jet’s at my disposal for another day. May as well put it to good use. One-way, though. They told me they have to ferry some company execs around the next couple days.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you.” Her voice didn’t match her words. She sounded worried. “Does your company have ties to any government agencies?”
“Very little. Most governments are hardly fans of Sabel Security. They think we’re vigilantes.” I whispered, “We show them up too often.”
“You are indeed a man of action, in so many ways. I wish there were a way I could express my gratitude.”
She let her hand trail down my chest and leg. I felt my nerve endings rise to attention at her touch. I winked at her. Jenny started to recede into the mist.
CHAPTER 22
A human presence at the side of my bed woke me. My eyes focused on an intense face staring down at me. I ran my fingers through my hair. “What’s up, Nema?”
“You protected me from Lugh. I appreciate that.” She looked at her hands, folded in front of her. “You were too harsh. He didn’t do anything to deserve that.”
“Not at that moment, and not because of how he treated you, but bullies like that will go much further in the future until they encounter resistance. My sister had a boyfriend who … What are you doing here?”
“I need help.” She turned away. “There are 942 people arriving for the conference this morning. Eight hundred twelve of them are men. Like you, a good number of them think the wrong thing about me. They assume I’m gay if I don’t flirt with them. If I don’t wear sexy dresses or makeup. And they don’t like homosexuals.”
I tossed back the covers, sat up, and checked out her plaid flannel shirt over jeans and Doc Martens. If she was going with the I’m-not-gay story, her fashion choices weren’t helping. But, not my problem. There was a deep bitterness in her voice, one that had a bigger story behind it. Maybe I did have her all wrong. I asked, “Your brother protected you in the past?”
“How do you know I had a brother?”
It dawned on me that I’d learned her family story from Miguel. “You mentioned him at the Moulin Rouge.”
“Oh.” A skeptical expression squished her eyes together. “He hasn’t been around lately.”
She turned away while I pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that read, “All you need is love—All I need is ammo.”
I said, “You came here because you want something. What is it?”
“Well, I shouldn’t. I don’t want to come between you and Gospeler.”
“Arrianne and I aren’t a thing.”
She spun to scowl at me. “She left here pretty late last night.”
Mercury leaned over her shoulder. You finally seduced Arrianne, bro? Dayam. You were getting downright salty after going a whole four days without getting any. And now you’ve got our little pixie Nema stalking you? Dawg! Are you gonna double dip?
I said, Even together, they don’t add up to Jenny.
Facing Nema, I said, “I don’t know when she left the hotel, but she didn’t come to my room. To be honest, she’s pretty damn persuasive. It was all I could do to use my big brain, but I’m still not in the market for a new girlfriend. And I don’t like being stalked. Nor do I like having a creepy woman staring at me while I sleep. Whatever’s going on between you two, don’t put me in the middle of it.”
She started for the door.
It took me a minute to realize what she was asking.
“Wait,” I said. “You want me to be your guy so the others won’t harass you? What do they call that, the beard?”
“You’ll do it? Thank you.” She ran to me, folded her hands under her chin, tucked her elbows to her ribs, and laid her cheek on my chest. The perfect package for wrapping my arms around. Which I did slowly. She said, “You understand me.”
As much as I loathed hugging a racist, she was warm and smelled good. And she had a tremble of fear that vibrated in her skin. The girl had some scars. We’d been through a bombing together. I couldn’t turn down her request. I held her for a long time. Something about the hug felt right. She’d made an effective appeal for my natural drive to protect others.
At the same time, it felt terribly wrong. She radiated hate. It came off her in endless waves like lava from a volcano.
While holding her, I noticed the hotel’s room phone had been removed. Paladin didn’t want me calling ahead to my flight crew anymore.
She told me Paladin had sent her to collect me. We drove out to the Ooze.
A crowd waited for me at the training grounds. When we stepped out of the car, Nema put on an act that could’ve won her an Oscar. She threw her arms around my neck, puckered up, and planted one square on my lips.
She whispered into my ear, “Be sure to teach them all that stuff about how to identify terrorists. That’s the most important part. We want to know what you look for.”
Mercury said, You have an alternate list of terrorist-identifiers ready, homie?
I said, I’m only telling them irrelevant stuff. The terrorists you see in movies with the mean eyes and facial scars.
Then Nema smiled like she’d won the Spanish lottery, glanced over her shoulder at my would-be students, the Sixty-Four, and skipped up to Arrianne’s house, adding a couple spins with cutesy waves to me as she went.
Mercury watched her dance up the hill. Dude, have you ever considered dating someone who isn’t a total psycho? I mean, let’s examine the evidence here starting two girlfriends back. Sylvia’s in jail for a multimillion-euro art fraud; Jenny’s a murderess who thinks you’re not good enough for her; Arrianne would do you in the street—and who do you hook up with? A gay girl. My divine opinion? It’s not them—it’s you. You’re a whack-job-magnet.
I said, Can we work on your motivational speeches? I’m thinking there’s room for improvement.
I faced the assembled men waiting for me to offer my tips on how to kill people. The Sixty-Four were sixty-three, being short one Caleb, aka Grizzly. When I walked over, Aleksei slapped my back hard enough to knock me into the coffee buffet. I grabbed a large coffee urn to keep it from falling over. He said something in Russian that included Arrianne and Nema’s names. Before I could right myself, he slapped my back again. Everyone laughed.
Lugh stood at the edge of the group, a scowl on his face and a coffee mug extended from his sling. Paladin stood next to him, shining his megawatt smile my way. He gave me a wink and thumbs up.
Nema won that round.
On the hill above us, Arrianne watched with binoculars. Nema appeared at her side. It was hard to tell at that distance, but it did not look like they spoke to each other. Something about their casual attitude tugged at the bac
k of my brain.
Mercury said, Exactly what I was thinking, homeboy. You’re not the kinda guy women fight over—unless it’s which one has to dump you on the curb for trash-day—but shouldn’t those two be sniping at each other right now? Whazzup with that?
CHAPTER 23
The men waited for my words of wisdom at the edge of the Ooze. I started by explaining the training scenarios. I broke them into four main groups containing three teams each. Each team was designated hostage, terrorist, or rescue. They would alternate positions through the sessions so they could see what a rescue scenario looked like from each point of view. I then laid out how we would conduct each raid and rescue. Each terrorist team would be allowed to arrange their defensive positions and hostages as they saw fit.
They moaned when I told them to grab the low-velocity paintball guns.
They wanted live ammo. In a training session.
We started with the first set of Paladin’s sketches. I placed teams in Paladin’s scenario, then walked everyone through a hostage-rescue in slow motion. I moved each player into position, showed them how to cover each other, how to cause a diversion, and the importance of synchronized movements. They weren’t attentive. They kept moving out of position as if the hostages were the targets and not the terrorists guarding them. Actions that confirmed Zack Ames’s theories about the conference.
The town had space to run three scenarios simultaneously. I assigned Lugh, Aleksei, and Paladin to each group as observers. I would observe them all. Everyone wore butcher-paper ponchos for the paint. Observers wore white sashes for easy identification. The penalty for painting one of the observers was sitting out the round. We sent them to take positions. I let Paladin have the honor of sounding the air horn to begin.
As soon as the blast set things in motion, their offensive intent was obvious. Instead of doing what I’d told them, they surprised the guards from behind, forcing those guards to shoot over the heads of the hostages. The morning progressed like this until the participants were pretty good at forcing the guards to kill each other and the hostages. Their mistakes were purposeful. They intended to maximize fear and confusion.
Mercury walked among the bodies covered in paint. Life is strange, right brutha? One day you’re in the US Army, getting medals for defending your country. The next, you’re teaching a bunch of terrorists how to kill people with new and innovative ideas. Your mom will be proud.
I said, How in the name of Minerva am I supposed to figure out what they’re planning from these scenarios?
Mercury pointed to the lane that led out of the village. Have you checked out Saint Paul’s lately?
I crossed to where the graffiti had been a couple days before. It had been painted over in tan and bore a new designation in red lettering. Now it read, “Temple Sholom.” A synagogue name as ubiquitous as Saint Paul’s. The arrow previously pointing out of town now pointed into town, directly at one of the hostage sites. I walked in the direction of the arrow and found another label painted at the base of a wall. It read, “Masjid Abu Bakar.” Its arrow pointed in the direction of the second hostage site.
I said, Masjid, sounds familiar. Seems like I’ve seen that in Singapore or Indonesia.
Mercury looked at it. Means Burning Ash Mosque in Malay. You gotta get word to Miguel and Tania about this. They came in the night to check this stuff out, but this was painted fresh this morning.
I said, I’ll see them when we take the jet to wherever Arrianne is going.
Mercury said, Paladin and Lugh don’t seem to care that you can see this stuff. Yet Arrianne said they don’t trust you. How does that square up?
I said, And they aren’t paying attention to what I tell them. They aren’t interested in my help as an instructor.
Mercury said, You know what that means, homie? They plan to keep you off the streets and kill you as soon as eight hundred witnesses have left IDC.
I said, About those motivational speeches …
The men laughed and fired like they’d rediscovered childhood. The training session broke down into chaos. I strolled through the town. I came across another graffiti marking. It read, “Duomo di Milano” with an arrow pointing to the right. Below it, “Synagoga Centrale” with an arrow pointing left. Another arrow pointed straight ahead and read, “COREIS.”
The sites listed were in different languages, indicating different cities. Were they working out which site was the easiest to hit? Or ranking them for body-count? The most likely scenario seemed to be they were picking the target with the most impact and keeping track of alternates. If Zack Ames was right about these guys, they were evil in every regard.
Without warning, the men poured out of the buildings into the streets and plastered me with paintballs. It was hilarious. For them.
When we broke for lunch, Nema had fresh clothes ready for me. She played the dutiful girlfriend and bitched out the Sixty-Four in English and French. They laughed at her. She took it well, then retreated to the observation deck.
While we ate, Paladin and Lugh disappeared. I followed them down the cobblestone lanes and watched them spray painting over the old graffiti and laying down new directions.
I went to one of the higher points in the village to get a better look at their work. At the top, in a spot not used in any of our previous scenarios was a freshly painted circle with one word in it, “ROSGEO.”
Mercury stood next to me. Dude, Ross Gio is ROSGEO, it’s not a name. What is it, a location? A place? An abbreviation?
I said, They’re looking at a lot of places. Zack Ames said they were planning something like Christchurch or Sri Lanka. I’m thinking this is bigger. Duomo is Italian for cathedral. We saw Malay and English. It could be anywhere in the world.
Mercury said, Maybe you were a little hasty treating the CIA agent so badly.
We looked at each other and cracked up.
I said, Seriously though. They’re suspicious when I ask questions. At least we know how ROSGEO is spelled, but how am I going to figure out what it means? Is ROSGEO a person, place or thing? Which group is involved, Free Origins, Birth Right, or Fair Heritage? And who’s in charge?
I scratched my head. Arrianne planned to leave town this evening. She would be gone a couple days. Nema had stepped in this morning, playing on my instinct to protect her. They tag-teamed me. They made sure I couldn’t contact anyone.
I said, Does that mean they know I’m working with Hugo and Ames?
Mercury said, I can’t read their minds, but they aren’t paying attention to your lesson plans. Which means, you’re already an ex-disciple. A disciple who has gone on to his great reward. You will soon be deceased, passed on, resting in peace, pushing up daisies, shuffling off your mortal coil—
Yeah. I patted his shoulder. Thanks.
I had a stroke of genius for the afternoon session. I limited the participants to three paintballs each. That slowed the mayhem and prevented them from reverting to sixth-grade boys. It also allowed me to walk the streets to inventory the markings.
At day’s end, I walked up the hill to Arrianne’s with Paladin, Aleksei, and Lugh. Nema met me at the door and gave me a peck on the cheek.
I delivered a report I hoped would keep me alive for another day or two. “Your Sixty-Four suck at pretty much everything. If they ever find themselves in a life-and-death situation, they’ll fail miserably. If they’re going to free hostages from real terrorists, they’ll die in short order. I doubt they could save anyone.”
“You were unarmed,” Nema said. “Yet you took down two men with automatic weapons. What makes you so different from them?”
For a moment, I considered telling them that the real problem was Paladin. He only gave praise, never criticism. While it’s pleasant, a real leader knows no one is perfect. Nor does anyone under his command expect to be perfect. Without constructive criticism, people are inherently distrustful of the leader. They have a subconscious fear he’s not telling them everything. But I didn’t want them to improve their
management. I wanted to deliver as little help as possible in case I died before they launched their evil plan.
“First, I take it seriously. Second, watch him.” I pointed to Aleksei with one hand. With the other, I pulled a table knife stolen at lunch from my pocket. While they were misdirected, I pressed the knife hard against Paladin’s jugular. It took a couple seconds before they figured out they were looking in the wrong direction. Everyone except Aleksei jumped and gasped.
“Difference is knowing danger in the heart.” Aleksei grinned and fisted his chest. “I not flinch because he not danger to Paladin. Butter knife. Not sharp. Can see this in instant. Quick eyes learned behavior from many live-fire situations. Jacob is right. Men think is game.”
“They’re your people,” I said. “Talk to them tonight. Get them serious about it.”
I turned to Arrianne. “Are you ready to go?”
Nema’s eyes bounced between us. She screeched, “You two are going together?”
CHAPTER 24
“We got under Nema’s skin, didn’t we?” Arrianne shoulder-nudged me as we crossed to Sabel Three in the hangar at the Seville airport. She wore a business dress made from a uniquely stretchy material. While it covered everything from her shoulders to just above her knees, the geometric lines strained around her curves. When I didn’t answer, she said, “Don’t you want to plant your seed in fertile soil?”
I kept my gaze on the concrete. “‘Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.’ Romans 13:13.”
She shot a dark glance my way, then raised her chin.
Mercury said, Dude, keep it up, and you’re gonna be seeing the fury of a woman scorned.
I said, Most women will bat their eyelashes a couple times, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll announce sour grapes and trash your rep. Yet she keeps coming back for more.
Mercury said, If you’re right and they’re planning to kill you, she’s either gonna be an ally or an enemy. You need to figure that shit out.