The Last Sword Maker

by Brian Nelson

  “I’d like you to put yourselves in my shoes for just a moment. It will help you fully grasp your situation—and trust me, this will be of interest to you.

  “If I deliver you to my employer alive, I will be paid ten million dollars US, but if I kill both of you right now and quietly walk out that door, I’ll still be paid three million.

  “Now, what should I do?” He raised his eyebrows as if to coax an answer. “Two bullets. They’ll make less sound than a hammer hitting a board, and much less than a clap of thunder.” His eyes drifted to the windows and the storm outside. “Then I take a few pictures, and I walk out of here three million dollars richer. It’s the easier choice, is it not? And it saves me the hassle of getting you off the base.”

  He pursed his lips as if scrutinizing the problem. “Decisions, decisions.” Then, apparently having made up his mind, he began slowly screwing the silencer onto the gun barrel.

  Eric stared wide-eyed, his mind racing for a way out of this.

  Then the Englishman gave them a contagious grin that started at one side of his mouth and grew across to the other. Eric began to smile back reflexively, then checked himself.

  “Don’t worry, boys, I intend to deliver you alive. After all, I have my reputation to uphold. It is only your own actions that will cause your, um, premature deaths. If you try to escape or seek help in any way, I will put a bullet in your head. Please remember that I am extremely good at what I do. I can shoot a man’s eye out at fifty meters, be it your eye or that of one of the marine guards on base. So have no illusions, please. No one will be coming to your rescue. In fact, calling to anyone for help will simply mean that I kill them and you.”

  The man seemed so professional and cool that Eric believed every word. He had made his case clear: the difference between three million and ten million dollars meant little to O’Lane, while the difference between breathing and not breathing meant a great deal to Eric.

  “Now, if you can agree to cooperate, I can untie you.”

  Eric and Ryan glanced at each other, then nodded.

  O’Lane gently pulled the tape from their mouths and cut their flex cuffs. “We are going to relax here for a little while,” he said, “until I feel that things are quiet enough. Then you will accompany me to my car.

  “So, boys, tell me about yourselves.”

  At first, Eric and Ryan were nervous about sharing anything with the Englishman and gave only short, noncommittal answers to his questions. But soon they began to relax, in part because O’Lane himself was so open and at ease. Speaking to them as if they were old friends, he was cheerful and encouraging and calm, even thoughtful. And he seemed to know everything. He asked Ryan about his research in AI, and his questions were so insightful that Eric assumed he must have a degree in computer science. But then he began asking Eric about nanotechnology, and he was equally well versed.

  While they talked, the storm raged outside. Flashes of lightning occasionally flooded the room, and the wind pushed and flexed against the glass and whistled along the outer wall.

  All the while, O’Lane, calm and undisturbed, talked freely about his life, his upbringing in Wales, his parents, Cambridge, his first girlfriend, and his decision to go into the military. But it was to his three combat tours in Afghanistan that he kept returning. He explained how the war had been doomed from the start.

  “Afghanistan, with its ethnic groups and tribes, is best governed by a federalist system like the US, where each province or state enjoys a degree of autonomy and can determine its own fate. But NATO and the US imposed a centralized government on Afghanistan, where all the power was concentrated in Kabul, so the isolated areas of the country were just as forgotten as always. And those areas, of course, were where the Taliban was able to grow strong again.”

  Eric found himself marveling that this man, who seemed so far removed from his notions of a criminal, was a mercenary. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  O’Lane thought a moment before he replied. “I live in a world that’s very different from yours—a world that I imagine you have trouble understanding. I’ve seen things …” And here he paused as if shocked by the images his own mind had just conjured. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.

  “In Afghanistan, I saw whole schools full of nothing but land-mine victims. Classroom after classroom: one leg, two legs, one arm, and dozens and dozens of lost eyes. I’ve seen whole towns that the Talibs wiped out. They liked to run spears through people, up their arses and out their mouths—anyone they considered an infidel, which could be anyone they wished, of course. Afghanistan is a place where life means next to nothing, where everyone is numb from so much death, where parents don’t cry anymore when their children die.”

  He paused as if searching for a way to make himself understood, then seemed to pick a new direction. “It was the attack on the girls’ school, in 2008. That’s when I really changed.

  “The school was run by Afghans and had nothing to do with coalition forces, but that didn’t matter to the Talibs. They surrounded the school, blockaded all the doors, then set it on fire. When a few of the girls broke through the windows with their clothes on fire, the hajjis shot them. Whooping and calling ‘Allahu Akbar!’ the whole time.

  “By the time we got there, twenty-four girls were dead. Three were still alive, but just barely. I pulled a lot of strings to medevac them to Germany, but only one survived.” Here O’Lane stopped and looked at them. “You cry a lot more when the innocents die. I wept for four days, but on the fifth day, I got my special-ops teams together. I was a lieutenant colonel by then, with a battalion of five hundred men under my command. I had my boys hunt down every one of those Talib fighters—even the teenagers paid in poppy. You see, I’m not a cultural relativist. I don’t believe in tolerating the intolerable just because someone’s religion or ideology says it’s okay. Some things are absolute. Twenty-six young girls were murdered. That’s all I needed to know. I had my men take spears with them. Wherever they found one of the Talibs from the girls’ school, they ran ’em through.

  “After that, there was no more violence against the girls’ schools in my district. And for four years, we had some peace.

  “But the coalition forces withdrew in 2014, and we all know what happened next—the Taliban retook most of southern Afghanistan, and there was a terrible backlash against all the reforms that had been made since 2001. The girls’ schools were wiped out. Those that tried to operate clandestinely were gassed, burned, or the girls scarred with acid. So what did I accomplish? After all we tried to do, I can’t even say that I saved the girls in my own district. I only managed to postpone the inevitable. I failed, because the tide of history was stronger than me and my men.

  “And that is why I am here. America’s time is over. You had your age—all of the twentieth century—just as Great Britain had hers before that. Now the tide is with Asia. You must see how she is rising, pulling all the world’s resources to her needs. It is irresistible. She can make the tough decisions, the brutal decisions, that your government cannot. She is not gridlocked by feckless politicians controlled by corporations. And because this is so clearly China’s age, there is no reason to fight it—or, in my case, no reason not to profit from it. If it were not me holding a gun to you right now, it would be someone else. Lucky for you, it’s me. Anyone less would have executed both of you already.”

  There it was, Eric thought. They were going to China. He had suspected it, of course, but now it was certain. He and Ryan would be flown quietly out of the country, to Tangshan, where he would become a slave, laboring day after day. They would have no reason to release him—ever—and if he didn’t do what they asked, he would be disposed of. Thinking it through brought on a sudden dizziness.

  Ryan was apparently thinking the same thing. “It’s so cruel,” he said. “So inhuman. How could they do this?”

  “Yes, it’s cruel,” he agr
eed. “But then, I work for a government that sells prisoners’ organs for profit, a government that makes tens of thousands of political dissidents magically disappear every year, a government that lethally injects babies at birth because it considers them ‘illegal.’ So this”—he nodded to Eric and Ryan—“simple abduction, well, I’m sure it was an easy decision for the Central Committee, especially considering the stakes involved.”

  Ryan tucked his head between his knees. Soon he was trembling, quietly weeping. Eric put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You can still play an important role,” O’Lane said. “As long as you don’t resist, they’ll treat you well enough. And you’ll still get to do the work you love.”

  It was then that Eric remembered something very important. In his fear and shock, it had completely slipped his mind. Did he really have it on? Yes, he could feel its warmth against his skin. He looked down at his chest just to make sure. Yes, it was there—a foolhardy decision that he was now thankful for. He began to play with fantasies of grabbing the gun, saving the day. But each time, the fantasy ended all wrong, with O’Lane subduing him again or with Ryan dead. Trying to be a hero could easily get both of them killed. His elation dissipated as quickly as it had arrived.

  The Englishman looked at his watch. “Gentlemen, I think we can go. Take a minute to collect yourselves, and then we’ll be off.” He stood and slid the pistol through the double breast of his captain’s coat. Then he escorted them out the door.

  As O’Lane had predicted, the corridors of Levering Hall were largely deserted. A wall clock read 10:15 p.m. They saw no one as they stepped into the main hall. Low-wattage night-lights created regular cones of brightness. Down a side corridor, Eric saw the twins, Nipa and Bhavani, two Indian girls with matching white lab coats and cups of coffee. It did not occur to him to call out. On the contrary, for their own good he pretended not to notice them.

  * * *

  Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the parking lot wet and black. Eric felt unnaturally awake and alert, keyed up with adrenaline. He was noticing everything: the cold sweetness of the poststorm air, and the beads of rain that sat like scattered jewels on the car hoods.

  A thick fog had settled over the base, muting the lights over the parking lot. The air was so heavy with moisture that Eric’s hair was soon dripping wet.

  O’Lane led them to an amber Cadillac SUV. He extended his hand courteously. “Dr. Hill, won’t you please sit up front with me. Dr. Lee, you may sit behind Dr. Hill.”

  They eased out of the parking lot and down Yorktown Drive. The fog was so thick, the headlights shone on a wall of white. Eric couldn’t even tell where they were. Then a break in the fog revealed the main gate about fifty yards ahead, still blurry, like the image in an unfocused camera. Only when they were right up on it did it come into focus.

  Eric was struck by a sudden panic. This was their last chance. If O’Lane drove through that gate and off the base, it would all be over.

  A marine leaned out the window of the gate house. It was Corporal Davis, the marksman who had helped him test the shirt.

  “Corporal,” Brock O’Lane said cheerfully, his accent suddenly gone.

  “Good evening, Captain,” Davis said. Then he caught sight of Eric. “Hey, Dr. Hill.”

  Eric could only nod.

  Straight ahead, directly in front of the SUV, a massive orange and black metal barrier big enough to stop a tank jutted out of the blacktop. Davis would have to lower it before they could drive out. Behind Davis, in the guard post, was a rack of M-16s. If only Eric could enlist Davis’s help somehow. The corporal was such a superb shot, he could easily kill O’Lane.

  The voice in Eric’s head grew more insistent: Do it now! Shout. Say something before it’s too late. But he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t move. It was happening too fast, and too many things could go wrong. He couldn’t just tell Davis to shoot O’Lane. Davis was a marine, with years of training and indoctrination. He wouldn’t shoot a captain just because some civilian told him to. He would hesitate. And that would give O’Lane all the time he needed. The more Eric thought, the more he could see it was folly. O’Lane was ready to draw his pistol, but the marine wasn’t—he was just spending another boring night in the command post. And the shirt? It might save him, but not Ryan. And there was a final reason he couldn’t move, one he hated to admit. He was afraid. The smell of his fear was all over him, wafting up from his wet lap.

  O’Lane seemed to sense Eric’s thoughts, or at least his own vulnerability, and casually brought his hand to the middle of his chest, near the pistol, as if scratching an itch.

  “Is everything in order, sir?” Davis asked.

  “Absolutely,” O’Lane said. “We decided to wait out the storm. It was something, wasn’t it? You weren’t stuck in this box the whole time, were you?”

  “Yes sir, I was. And I’m very happy my ass wasn’t blown clear to Ocean City.”

  O’Lane laughed a comforting laugh, and that made Davis smile. The captain thought Davis was funny.

  “How long do you expect to be gone?” the marine asked. The question was directed at Eric and Ryan—the guards always kept tabs on the scientists when they left base.

  Eric fumbled for an adequate lie. “Uh, just a little while. We’re going to the Chart House for some drinks.”

  O’Lane nodded, validating the plan.

  “All right,” Davis said. “Have one for me, then.” And his hand went to the console, to the button that would lower the barrier. It seemed to happen so terribly slowly. Eric tried to think of a solution, a way out, but saw none. Coward, his other voice said.

  At just that moment, light flooded the interior of the Cadillac as a pickup truck came toward them.

  Davis hit the button, and with a hydraulic whir, the barrier began slowly sinking into the pavement.

  The incoming truck—an old Chevy with a roll bar, KC lights, and a long CB antenna—rumbled up to the gate. Admiral Curtiss leaned out the window. “Corporal.” He waved casually at Davis. Then he glanced over at the Caddy.

  Admiral Curtiss and Brock O’Lane locked eyes.

  O’Lane, thought Curtiss, his adrenaline surging.

  Curtiss, thought O’Lane, fear clenching his guts.

  The barrier locked into the pavement with a loud thud.

  O’Lane stomped on the accelerator.

  Curtiss drew his sidearm.

  The Caddy lurched forward, slipped on the barrier’s top plate, and fishtailed, then caught its footing and surged forward, churning up white smoke and filling the air with an acrid burn.

  Simultaneously, Curtiss fired the Five-seveN. It should have been an easy shot—the fucking limey was only ten feet away—but the unpredictable movement of the SUV made it impossible for him to lead his shots. Two bullets blew out the back window of the Caddy, showering the interior with tiny cubes of safety glass, the bullets passing diagonally through O’Lane’s headrest and toward Hill. Curtiss fired again, but the Caddy’s rear end swung sideways again and the round only grazed O’Lane’s forehead.

  The Englishman’s head jerked reflexively and he shivered in pain, but he willed his eyes on the road, hands white on the wheel as the blood trickled down the side of his face.

  Then they were away, the massive engine roaring as the Caddy shifted into second, then third.

  Eric spun around in his seat, stealing a glance at the command post. He saw the young marine vaulting into the back of Curtiss’s truck bed, his body momentarily spread-eagled, an M-16 in his hand. Then the pickup truck was swallowed by the fog.

  Eric was jolted sideways, and his stomach dropped as the SUV bottomed out on the ramp to the Anacostia Freeway. O’Lane was gunning it full throttle. By the time they left the ramp, the speedometer showed just over a hundred miles per hour. In and out of fog banks they rushed, the black road appearing and disappearing. O’Lane
wiped the blood from his temple with his sleeve, examined it, then wiped it again, considering the blood flow. Just a scratch.

  They entered a long bank of fog. All was white. Driving blind. Suddenly, the red taillights of a car appeared no more than fifteen feet in front of them, seemingly idle by comparison. Both Eric and Ryan yelped, “Watch out!” and braced themselves for the inevitable crash. O’Lane swerved, and the heavy SUV lifted sickly to one side, as if it would surely roll over. The brake lights and license plate of the little car—Taxation without Representation—disappeared under the Caddy’s nose, but somehow they managed to miss it. O’Lane, plowing on through the white fog. Then another set of brake lights and another near miss. Then another, and then another. O’Lane was missing each vehicle by a hair, weaving insanely across the lanes and shoulder, the weight of the SUV heaving left and right like a storm-tossed ship.

  “Slow down, for Chrissake!” Eric yelled.

  But O’Lane, utterly focused on escaping, had tuned out his passengers completely. His eyes darting to the rearview mirror. Expecting. Knowing. “There you are, old friend,” he murmured.

  Ryan and Eric both turned but saw nothing except the heavy blanket of fog. Then it cleared for a moment, and the distinctive high-mounted KC lights of the old truck came into view. Eric felt a rush of hope. Curtiss was trying to rescue them. And as much as Eric didn’t like Curtiss, he was glad, at this moment, that it was him.

  Then Eric’s head was flung hard against his window. He gritted his teeth in pain and annoyance. O’Lane was swerving hard again, but not to avoid cars. Why? A moment later, Eric got his answer as a beautiful orange light streaked out from under the hood of the Caddy and disappeared into the mist. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was. O’Lane swerved again and two more orange beams shot out. They were tracer rounds, gorgeous and enchanting as they cut through fog and darkness.

  “He’s shooting for the tires,” O’Lane said. “For now.”