by Will Mosley
Ahead of him, the little brick ranch, black as if draped with a tarp, incandescent orange lit the sheer draped windows of the home in contrast like a Halloween fright house, and inside people sat entranced. Behind him: sand. Acres to oceans of it, bright and hot, bedazzling sunlight forced him to squint. In the distance, a mirage of olive drab clad men with guns approached. “There!” He shouted in his mind, but whispered as he pointed ahead of him, signaling to the men that the danger was ahead of them. “The danger is –,” He turned back to the blacked house, windows blazing, Ken, Mary, mom, dad, Lainy – all mannequins – sitting, waiting for him. Something's wrong. He thought and he ran headlong to the front door, because in his mind, he had heard gunshots bursting through thin wood, but his ears heard nothing.
He drew back his knuckles to knock, but he knew that he wasn't supposed to. Somehow, as if the scene had already played itself out, he knew that knocking would only alert the danger to his existence and jeopardize the lives of his family, though that made no sense at all. I can't simply barge my way in, he thought, and in midair he held his closed fist, debating with himself as the forces of action and civility clashed.
But courtesy was merely a ruse, and this he knew better than his own name, better than anything real or intangible. Within him, his loins lusted for blood as lions do meat, with a ravenous, causeless, inborn desire.
Through the door, he heard in a frustrated whisper,
“No!”
“Then, shut that little bitch up or I'll shut'er up!” And then a cocked gun.
“No! No, I'll quiet her.” Ken said. “Come over here, Lainy.”
“One more time, cop. I'm not saying it again.” The voice said.
In that moment, civility was torn asunder and familiar, blind violence won the day. Tanner slowly noiselessly opened the glass storm door, slid the jam into place, then stood beside the door, reached over with a closed fist and knocked once.
With no delay, three bullets burst through the door, missing Tanner's hand and arm completely. Two female voices gasped in surprise and a girl screamed. He turned the door knob, pushed the door open and squatted beside it. “It's him!” A male voice, not Ken or Lee, shouted.
Someone on the other side pulled door the rest of the way open and stuck their pistol hand out from the doorway and held it there for several moments. Tanner sensed that the man feared stepping further outside, into the night, into the hell torture that awaited him by Tanner's hands.
The arm dropped. “There's no one out there, Greg.”
Tanner shuttered. Greg? Greg Hart?
“You idiot! You didn't go out there far enough! Why is the damned glass door propped open?”
“Well, maybe –,”
“Maybe, shit! You've fired! Somebody's bound to hear that noise and call the cops! Get out there!”
Tanner didn't need to search his mind long before receiving a mental snapshot of long red hair, soulless gray eyes and the malevolent snarl of Greg Hart. He's looking for me. Immediately Tanner felt a fear rise up in him, but it was eradicated with the gentleness of a sledgehammer against glass as the thought of how he would perfectly decimate Greg Hart upturned his lips to a rapacious smile. His muscles churned with boiling aggression, the knuckles in his hands cracked under severe strain as he clenched them into iron balls of retaliation, and drifting slowly like wind driven clouds, blackness began to shallow his vision.
Chapter 28.
The brilliant white discharge and air splitting thunder came from the gun and expelled a myriad of fire roasted pellets, jostling a heap of bodies to her left. At the same moment that stray pellets crackled against the cement wall behind her, several found her thigh, her calf, and seared the muscle within. Heather felt herself flinch, wanting to run – to scream out in pain, but she receded all attention from it and held it in, because through the blast noise, she had drawn her own weapon. The scales were nearly balanced.
Blackness settled. Focus was lost, even silence paused in breathless anticipation. Somewhere in the blackness, only feet from her now, boot soles dragged against concrete and crunched on dirt granules, as if a sandpaper skinned snake slithered near – and the shot gun cocked. The ejected shell hollowly rang against the floor.
“I remember the camp. You know, that Hunt Mining place up north. I remember it all. I remember that God forsaken desert, too. I remember the guys – Phiniker, Santos, Faust, – all of'em. That shit was all a ploy, wasn't it? The mining camp, I mean?”
The easiness of his questions prompted a desire in her to answer. But this was merely a lure, he was baiting the waters, tactically moving because the resonance of his voice was changing, honing her in, seeking her like sonar; sniffing the stale air hungrily as if he could taste her fragrance.
“Anthracite coal.” Xoscha laughed. “A bunch a bullshit! We didn't produce enough to make it worthwhile. 'What did we do over there?' I said to myself. Then, I get to thinking about 'Earl'.”
Earl?
“Who the hell is Earl? I'm sitting there on the computer, like an idiot, searching the internet for somebody named Earl,” With the barrel of the rifle, Xoscha prodded the flaccid bodies close by. “I didn't find shit: A TV show, some kid on the first season of American Idol, Earl Day – Ejay Day – apparently, and that black fella who played Darth Vader,” Gently, Heather turned and trained her gun in the direction of the voice. It can't be this easy to kill him? She thought. I've got the drop, now. Has he lost a step? “Then, I thought, 'Earl? That's just stupid.” He laughed dryly. “It's not Earl. It's ERAL. E-R-A-L.”
Heather's mouth sagged and even if she really believed that she could've ever got the drop on him, this little piece of information made Xoscha's life, in her eyes, precious. Her gun was now a loaded paper weight.
Through the dark, she could almost hear his smile, his lips peeling, sucking moisture as they drew back from his teeth. “That's why you're here, ain't it? We buried something over there in that sand, and ERAL was our own little code for it. Do you know what it is, Heady? Did Thomas Kimble tell you? Did Kaiser Marchment tell you? Shit, they don't know, only five of us know about it.” With a whistling wheeze his clogged nostrils sucked the air, inches away. He opened his mouth and the smell of decomposed fish waifed through her hair, “Hint: The 'E' is for 'East'” Then, he laughed.
“Mills! Please! I need –,” She yelled, but was interrupted by the whipping sound of the rising gun through the air – from his waist to his face in a second. The marble tumbling rattle of buckshot shifted in the shell casing inside of the barrel. Quickly, she ducked and moved away, turning her pistol back at nothing, blasting at nothing, giving away her squat-running position, and could sense the barrel searching for her. It ignited, boomed through the basement and tiny pebbles that felt the size of softballs splashed and burned into her calf muscle. She screamed and collapsed to the floor.
“Xoscha!” She screamed. “Someone help!”
His gun whipped through the air. But it's empty! The thought raced through her. It's useless except as a blunt –. Then she rolled on her side and the gun stock smashed into the concrete beside her. He grunted, drew the gun back up, and it came down. She rolled and the stock crushed her collarbone. Heather shrieked in pain. Xoscha grunted and raised the gun in the air. She coiled her leg and with her own grunt, drove her heel into something she hoped was his groin. As she shoved her foot deeper, receiving no painful yelps from Xoscha, then realized that he was holding her foot back with his own. The stock came down and shattered her other collarbone.
“Damnit! Help!” She screamed and listlessly listened to the gun, being held by its barrel, whip through the air again. Can no one hear me? She thought. Too helpless to move, even roll over to avoid another blow, she weakly whispered, “Blackened.”
The gun stock started to fall for another bone crushing attack, when it stopped.
“Blackened.” She said again. Echo location proved that the gun was no more than a foot from her face.
Xoscha laughed. “I
knew I'd get it out of you. I'm gone keep this gun, and you gone tell me what 'blackened' is. If you lie, I'll bust your head.”
“Here, Xo? Is there no better place to talk?”
He kicked her sharply in the back of her thigh and she yelled. “Get to talking! We ain't got no place to be.”
Heather huffed and figured that, if she was going to die in the black basement, at least one of her guys would know the truth. “Firstly, Xo, how have you been?”
“You want another –,” Xoscha began to yell.
“We were friends once, alright? Give me that, at least!”
“Okay. I'll give you that. I've been messed up. But you know that already. I didn't have no leads, I didn't know where to go. Then, one day, I start remembering stuff... stuff that happened long before we went over there. Even after I remembered everything, there was still a big gap of stuff missing. Little by little, it all started coming back: the dead bodies, the killing, Trojan, that damned sand, the guys – you.”
“To be honest, Xo –,” She said, then grimaced at the pain in her collar. “I – I don't know much about the process besides the name. When you guys got back to the states, I talked to Phiniker. He told me about ERAL before the debriefing.”
“Debriefing my ass. Those bastards.” Xoscha whispered.
“Days later – maybe a week – I came back to talk to Phiniker about it, but he didn't know anything – he barely even knew his own name. Soon after that, PK told me that Whitewash had transferred all five of you to an undisclosed location. I was pissed and started asking questions. I found the doctor's assistant who 'worked' on you guys and he told me that Blackened was a week long process of psychotropic drugs, electrolysis and... other things he didn't make clear, to rearrange, replace, and delete entire memories.”
For many seconds Xoscha did not respond. Then he croaked, “What else?”
“I'm not saying another word until we get in a better setting than this!” She yelled.
“Then I'll bash your skull in.”
“Have at it.”
The shot gun rose above his head and stayed there. Then, he threw it to the ground. “Stupid bitch!” Xoscha reached down and felt for her shirt collar. When he touched it, he wrapped a clump of cloth around his fist, yanked it up and began pulling her along. The cinched shirt squeezed her tender collar and she moaned and latched on to his arm to relieve the pressure.
Xoscha dragged her through the basement, up the jagged edged wooden stairs, which he inadvertently slammed the back of her head against and threw her onto the kitchen floor. Her exposed calf muscle seared with dirt and wood splinters. Xoscha grabbed a chair and placed it between the glass backdoor and Heather's limp body, then sat down.
“Talk.” He said.
“What else do you want to know, Xo?” She moaned.
“I want to know why this was done. We all understood how classified intelligence worked: You sign the confidentiality papers, they lecture you on how sensitive the information is and the punishment for devolving such info, and then they send you on your merry way. Why was this done?”
“Maybe – maybe because of that secret you and the guys have.”
“Heady,” Xoscha rolled his eyes. “No one knows about that but us.”
“About... what?” Heather prodded, grunting in pain. “I gave you... something. You give me something.”
Xoscha thought about her request, and marveled at how doe like she looked. Not that she had any cervine features, she simply looked like she needed to be put out of her misery. “Okay. You did give me something, so here goes.” Xoscha leaned forward so that he would only have to say it once. “We were told to take some bags into the desert. This was long after insertion. He sent nine of us. Since us Trojan guys 'showed the best skills', though he thought it was all by his design, he sent all six Trojan members and three of his own.”
“Nine. Is that how Massimo Fini got killed?”
“No. Our side murdered him during extraction. Anyway, he wanted us to bury these bags and it didn't matter where because he said he could find them – he had locators wired inside for easy retrieval if and when he needed them.”
“You keep... saying 'he'. Was this a deputy minister, or someone else?”
“Does it matter? You need photos, too?”
“If you've... got them.” Heather grunted.
Xoscha chuckled. “Even in defeat, you're a smart ass.” He said. “No. It was no deputy. We took our orders straight from the horse’s mouth: Saddam Hussein. He treated us like his family since he was so proud of how elite we were, and y’all did a damn fine job on our paperwork. The son of bitch wanted to marry his youngest girl to Guillermo – said he looked like a Tikriti was supposed to. Back to the story, we found a spot, but one of the guys wanted to open the bags. I told him not too, but he did it anyway. Once we saw what was inside, we killed his three guys and started plotting on how to get it back home.”
Heather pulled herself over to a chair, grabbed the legs, then the seat and pulled herself up until her torso laid across the seat. She wished she'd had a backup pistol now more than ever. “The trans... mission.” She said, and decided that this position was acceptable.
“Transmission?” Xoscha asked.
“I've got a recording... someone keyed their mic... dammit, Xoscha, you broke my collarbone! This shit hurts!” She lightly gripped the loose flesh where the bone once protruded, and grunted. “What was in the bags?”
Xoscha smiled. “Dreams, Heady.”
“Please, Edgar Allen... let's not... do limericks right now –,”
A shadow perused across the back porch. Then, two more.
Not now, she thought. Of all times, not now. “Xoscha,” She yelled. “What was in damned bags?”
“Heady, when I say that this would change everything –,”
“Xoscha, please!”
Suddenly, a small canister busted the kitchen window sending shards of glass into stacked dishes, bulging the blinds and the black towel covering them. Xoscha was on his feet instantly looking toward the kitchen floor. Underneath the table, Heather could see the tiny device rolling and watched it tumble to a stop. She pressed her eyes shut tight and covered her ears.
“Flash bang,” said Xoscha.
Chapter 29.
Two cars pulled into Kathy Luzader's driveway. Two men, loud and laughing, stepped from one, and one man from the other. But before they could make their way down the driveway to Kathy's front door, a woman in a blue wind-breaker from across the street, yelled, “Hey! Guys! Wait up!” She speed-walked to them and met them near the home's front door. She frantically talked about Heather and pointed to the house next door many times.
“Ma'am, who are you?” Cal Anderson asked.
“Sir,” She breathed hard. “Who I am isn't important. Heather is in that house next door and I've heard gun shots!”
“Gunshots?” Patrick Eisen said. Instantly, all three men went from laughing buddy's to stoic statues of resolve. “You didn't say gunshots before.”
“Is anyone in there?” Pavel asked.
“Yes... I think – I mean, I'm not sure. I think there is. I just don't know.” Jean said, nearly pleading that they accept her indecision as an answer. Pavel went back to the car. She followed him with her eyes.
“Was there a reason for her to be there?” Cal asked. Startled, she turned back to him.
Jean measured the intent of the two men standing before her, knowing that her next words would initiate their action. Cal's eyes were unmoving and read Jean with profound interest. She stilled herself, breathed deep, then spoke. “I have a friend who lives there. Her family lives there. We talked every day. I have not seen her, nor her family in over a week. A couple of days ago, there was a man in there that I've never seen before. He's walked in there with women, but no one ever comes out but him.” Patrick left for the car. Her head turned to follow him.
“Thank you.” Cal placed his hand on her shoulder. “Go home now.”
�
��But – do you work with –,”
“Do not come out. Do not call the police. Please go.” Cal left her and walked to the car.
“Do you work in sales like Heather?” Jean begged.
“Yes. Sales. Now, go home!” Patrick bellowed from over the car. Jean left the driveway immediately.
Cal carried the duffel bag. To his right was Pavel, and Patrick to his left. They briskly walked across Kathy's property and into the Kerlisson's yard. Then, after surveiling the neighborhood with each step, they disappeared around the side of the house, out of Jean's sight.
Cal sat the duffel bag gently against the ground and unzipped it. Each man reached inside and took his own specially modified HK-90. Like surgeons readying their tools, each man inspected his weapon and took a preloaded magazine from the duffel and slipped it into place. Each man cocked his weapon. No man, at any point asked the others about the smell that seemed to seep from the ground, because they had deduced what the smell was and needed to get to Heather before she had her own pungent scent.
“Shhh!” Cal placed his finger over his mouth and Pavel and Patrick stopped. At the same moment all three men heard what sounded like thumping, like someone walking up a flight of stairs dragging a bag of shoes. Then, they heard Heady. A moan. A muted scream as if far off, though only shrouded by a foot of cement. Thump... thump... moaning... Thump...
“It's Heady.” Pavel whispered.
“Why is she over here?” Patrick said and swiped his long hair behind his ears.
“Don't know,” Cal whispered and loaded his weapon. “And don't care.” He slipped a spare magazine into his pocket, then took three small high lumen flashlights from the bag and tossed one each to Patrick and Pavel. Cal pointed to the back of the house, held his closed fist up for them to see, then opened it. At that signal, Pavel and Patrick each took one flash-bang hand grenade from the bag. Then, Cal gave them their order or precedence upon entering the house. Him first, then Pavel, the Patrick. They all nodded. Cal slipped the duffel behind the air conditioning unit and they left.