by Judith Lucci
Yassar was a tall man, a Syrian, powerfully built and a rising star in the Al Qaeda terrorist group. Yassar, a child of privilege, had been educated in London and Princeton. He hated Americans, hated the West, and had committed heart and soul to jihad and the destruction of the West.
He stared at the metal that was so cold it froze and stuck to his fingers through his thick work gloves. He visualized it as it penetrated unsuspecting American flesh. He removed his gloves and blew on his fingers for warmth and muttered, more to himself than his companion, “I’ve never seen weather like this before. I never will again,” he added caustically, as his voice became loud. He pulled his light weight corduroy jacket around his broad shoulders and put his gloves back on his frozen hands.
Yassar was normally mild-mannered, but today he was in a foul mood. He hated the US and he hated cold weather. He turned to Stark and said, “When we march victorious through Washington, D.C., I will command the forces in Florida and I will never be cold again. I will never set foot in this cold, dismal place again,” he hissed, his body heated by hate.
Former CIA agent Jacob Stark ignored Yassar’s diatribe, laughed easily, and said, “Hey, man, it’s not so bad. They’re only predicting a foot or so of the white stuff. Where I’m from, this piddlin’ amount doesn’t even count. Besides, we’ll get out of here before it gets much worse. Did you hide the truck outside the perimeter?” Stark was a big man, tall and powerful like Yassar.
Yassar glared at his companion, his voice impatient as his dark eyes flashed at Stark. “Of course I did. It’s down behind the lake in a grove of trees. I covered it with a green tarp. But, I’ve got to get some gas. The tank is almost empty.”
Stark jerked around and looked at him, “Empty, what the hell do you mean? How could the tank be empty, we topped it off last night,” Stark retorted, his voice confused and incredulous.
Yassar’s posture was defensive, his upper lip pulled into a snarl. “Yeah. The tank was full, the important word being was. Now it isn’t. I’ve got to get gas and get back here before the people arrive … or we will never get out of here. So, traitor,” he snapped, “why don’t you flex your muscles and move some of this metal?” His voice was tinged with sarcasm as he threw a heavy piece of lead into the container.
Stark stared at him, but said nothing. He shook his head, “Just be careful. One misstep or movement could blow the mission, and I assure you if that happens, your reputation as a rising star in the brotherhood is over. Finished. History. Curtains. Now get movin’.”
Yassar grabbed his weapon, his face livid. “I’ll be back after I get the petrol. I’ll put the truck back in the trees where they will never see it. They will never know. The infidels think they’re so smart, living like monkeys in the trees. How stupid they are. Do they really think we do not know they are up there?” He spat his disrespect into the accumulating snow as he heaved a huge piece of shrapnel into the crate.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Stark warned, his blue eyes bright against his tanned face. He raised his hand in cautionary warning, “Don’t underestimate them. They are sharp and well trained,” he advised. “One of the agents served with me in Afghanistan and nothing gets by him. You must be careful. There are police and SWAT all over this place and I promise you, these guys can hear an ant crawl ten miles away. One of them has super sensitive hearing,” he warned.
Yassar held his tongue. He didn’t like criticism or instruction, particularly from someone he considered inferior. He sneered at Stark and turned his back in disrespect.
Stark said nothing, but clenched his teeth tightly. He was a traitor and it was cutting him into pieces. It sickened him to work against men who were like brothers to him.
Stark tapped Yassar on the shoulder and said, “I’m serious, Yassar, this farm has state of the art security and there are cameras, optical scanners, sensors, audio, and whatever else you can think of. One wrong move and they’ll send up a drone, take a couple of images, and you’ll be in Gitmo before you can spell ‘jihad’. Mark my words, dude, I’m serious.”
Yassar gave him a bored look. “Americans are stupid traitors. Isn’t that true, Stark? And they speak of morality and ethics to us! What a joke. I would never consider defying Allah and turning against my brothers,” he goaded Stark.
Jake Stark was silent.
Yassar capitalized on the silence. “Men like you, who are cheap and can be bought for money, are the downfall of the West and make it easy for us to win jihad.” Yassar’s mood had become ebullient as he thought about the results of the mission. “Death to America! Soon we will triumph and the entire world will worship Allah.” Yassar raised his rifle in a salute to his cause.
Stark had had enough and spoke sharply, “Shut your pie hole, Yassar. Get the gas and get the hell back here so you can finish loading shrapnel. Watch yourself. I don’t want you getting us caught and ruining this mission. I don’t want to die today,” he ended, as he looked at Yassar.
Yassar shot him a dirty look. “I don’t need you, traitor. I have enough fire power to blow you up, all of your friends, and most of this farm.”
Stark was done talking and said, “Get out of here, Yassar. Get the gas and get back. Don’t get caught and blow the job.” As he watched Ahmid disappear into the tree line, he heard a crackling of tree branches and Yassar’s boots tromping through the snow.
Chapter 3
It was a beautiful snowy New Year’s Day and Alex loved snow. Wyndley Farm was quiet, as it should be after the night of revelry that celebrated the ending of confirmed bachelorhood for NOPD Commander Jack Francoise. Alex yawned and stretched as she snuggled lazily into her grandmother’s recliner and watched the pristine snowflakes fall softly on the barren fields around her.
The sunroom was three sides of glass and offered Alex a magnificent view of the North Anna River that ran behind the main house. She could see the tree line behind the river and the fields on either side where three of her grandmother’s prized racehorses were lazily munching hay. The view was serene and reminiscent of all that was beautiful and wholesome in America.
For the first time in over a year, Alex felt at peace. As she continued to watch the gentle snow blanket her childhood home, her thoughts turned to the evening before. She smiled dreamily to herself as the images shifted through her mind. It had been a beautiful wedding.
Monique had looked exquisite in her lovely ivory wedding gown. The gown, designed by New Orleans designer Yvonne LeFleur, was magnificent and timeless. I thought I would never get all of those buttons buttoned. How in the world could any dress have that many buttons?
Jack had looked equally debonair in his black tuxedo with the matching ivory cummerbund. For the first time in his life the enormous, burly police commander looked at ease and comfortable in his ‘monkey suit’, as he preferred to call formalwear. I think Jack must’ve lost some weight. He looked really good, Alex smiled to herself.
Robert had looked equally dashing as he stood beside Jack as his best man. Alex had to admit that her former husband, Dr. Robert Bonnet, was a pretty hot catch. Nope, I’m not thinking about this today. I’ll figure out what to do about our relationship later, but not today. Her mind returned to the wedding.
Historic Fork Church located in Western Hanover County had provided a perfect location for what Robert had called the wedding of the century. No one in New Orleans had ever believed the decidedly single, often brusque, short-tempered police commander would ever wed, much less snag a beauty like Monique. Until very recently, Jack had only been married to his job, but the beautiful, dark-haired, fragile Dr. Monique Desmonde had quickly changed his mind. The two, friends since high school in New Orleans, had begun dating in the summer of the previous year.
Alex continued to think about the previous evening. Fork Church, the home church of Patrick Henry, had been decorated in colonial style for the wedding. Live wreathes of pine, holly, and evergreens adorned the windows and the scent of burning bayberry candles permeated the air. The c
hurch was packed as a hundred or so of Jack and Monique’s numerous friends had journeyed up for the nuptials.
Many of New Orleans’s finest were in attendance. The men in blue under Jack’s command had formed a sword arch under which the newly wedded couple passed. There had also been representatives from the FBI and CIA. Several members of Congress had attended as well, some because they knew Jack and some because they wouldn’t miss Adam Patrick Lee’s New Year’s Eve party for all the appropriations they wanted for their constituents in Congress. And, of course, the reception had been beautifully planned and orchestrated by Alex’s infamous grandmother, Kathryn Roseau Lee, who was easily identified as the best hostess in D.C. and Virginia.
It had been wonderful time. And, in just a few short hours, her Grandparent’s Traditional Bloody Mary New Year’s Day Brunch would begin and that was always an enormous hit in the countryside of Virginia.
Alex glanced at her watch. It was still early, a little after 07:30. It would be three hours before any guests arrived, hopefully four hours. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her beloved horse, Dundee, race toward the fence with her ears up in an alert stance.
On a whim, Alex rose from her recliner, headed toward the pantry, picked up a five-pound bag of apples, pulled on her boots, and decided to go to the barn. As she zipped her down vest, she wondered if she needed her Gore-Tex down pants, but decided she didn’t. She shivered when the first blast of cold air hit her face. Boy, it is cold out here. I better put additional blankets on the horses.
As she walked down the lane in front of her grandparents’ home, her home as well, she felt a deep sense of contentment as she inhaled the smells of winter. The apples she carried scented the air and she inhaled the aroma of wood fires burning in homes around her. She loved Virginia and she loved her grandparents’ home.
She looked around at the estate, remembering all of the great childhood times she had experienced. The swimming pool and waterfall, now winterized for the season, had been the backdrop for many birthday parties. A glance to the left revealed the bunkhouse, which provided many nights of sleepovers with her girlfriends. Now the bunkhouse housed wedding guests from New Orleans and Washington, D.C., and was as full of guests as the big house. Her grandfather had recently completed an additional guest cottage to house the eighteen Secret Service agents assigned to him for protection after the jihad had threatened his family in the fall.
Alex thought she heard a voice and turned her head to the left. Seeing nothing there, she continued her walk. Who is that calling me? I know I hear something. Once again she slowed her pace and stood, listening intently to the whistling wind. Then she saw Belle, a tragic young ghost who’d roamed Western Hanover country since the Civil War searching for her husband.
Belle turned and stared at Alex, her dark eyes wide with fear. She appeared more ghostly than usual, with snowflakes dotting her hair as the wind and snow whipped her cloak around her face. She was paler than the snow falling all around her. Belle was practically translucent. She looked at Alex, shook her head, and pointed to a grove of trees on the opposite side of the farm. At that very moment, her mouth opened wide in fear and Alex imagined the sound of a scream.
Alex’s eyes traveled across the road where Belle was staring and saw hundreds of birds soar into the air. I wonder what spooked them. It must be someone hunting illegally. As she turned to look for Belle, the young woman was no where in sight. Oh well, I suppose whatever spooked the birds scared her as well.
Alex felt a sudden wrenching fear in her heart taking away her sense of comfort and contentment. What had spooked the birds? Where had Belle disappeared? Why was she so frightened? Her feelings of dread only increased as she made the quick decision to follow Belle. She knows something and I need to know it too, Alex convinced herself.
Chapter 4
Jacob Stark hated himself at that moment. Nausea crept into his throat as he stood packing metal into a container which would, within a few hours, detonate, killing his friends and a lot of innocent people. He sighed to himself. He never thought that he would ever turn on his country, and the agony of his own betrayal weighed heavy on his heart.
Jacob had spent most of his life protecting America and those less fortunate than himself, first as an Army Ranger, then as a CIA agent, and finally as a civilian contractor who had become unemployed at the end of the war in Afghanistan. He’d lost his medical insurance and had accumulated almost a million dollars in medical debt. He allowed his mind to wander back for a moment. If only Helen hadn’t gotten sick, if only her cancer hadn’t been so rare, if only they hadn’t needed the experimental drugs. He had taken her all over the world in an effort to save her life … and, so far, he had. If only, if only, if only, he thought, reflecting on the past few years and the times his wife had almost died. He pondered how he could fix such a very wrong situation.
A crackling sound in the air snapped Jacob’s mind back to the present. He turned and peered through the blinding snow into the dense woods. He saw Seth Farmer, an old friend and Secret Service agent, moving quietly through the woods. Stark smiled to himself as he remembered his years with Seth.
Seth was a genius with electronics and surveillance systems. It was postulated that his electronic abilities were unsurpassed by anyone in the West. Besides that, Seth was a great guy. Stark felt a fleeting tremor of fear, momentarily believing the security system at Wyndley Farm was impenetrable. Then he relaxed and smiled to himself. I’ve got this covered. There is no need to worry. But, I do need to check up on Yassar. Check the metal building and make sure everything is set. Be sure the tractor device is in place.
Stark continued to load shrapnel into the container and allowed himself to return to his own thoughts once again. They centered on his family and why he had turned against his country -- Helen. His beloved wife, Helen, and the horrible disease that was slowly, but surely, consuming her, robbing her of her youth, her beauty, and her very existence. The cruel and unforgiving disease that was robbing Haley of her mother, and him of the love of his life. He’d needed money badly to pay for Helen’s cancer treatment.
Five years ago, while he was in Rome finishing up a mission for the Mossad, an Egyptian doctor approached him in a café at the Palazzo de Vento. The man told Stark they shared mutual friends who had told him of Stark’s skill sets. He said his friends, members of an unnamed extremist group, had long coveted Stark’s talents and had offered to pay him one million U.S. dollars for one mission, a mission yet to be determined, a mission for the future.
Strangely enough, the double agent, now dead two years at the hands of Mossad, was a village physician Stark had met in Afghanistan. Stark had suspected he was a terrorist. The physician told Stark the best medical treatment for Helen’s rare cancer was in Israel. Research confirmed the physician’s claims and Stark, desperate for money to treat his wife’s illness, had agreed. One million dollars for one small mission. Surely he could do that. He could work his way around one small mission. He knew he was denying the inevitable, but he desperately wanted Helen to have a chance to live, to get well.
Stark had sold his soul to the devil. But, to him, it was worth it. His beautiful, frail wife was still alive four and a half years later and while she wasn’t doing well now, they’d had four great years and his beloved daughter knew her mother.
His heart quickened at the thought of returning home later in the afternoon to his small, modest home in the Shenandoah Valley, just a few short hours from the Lee Estate in Hanover County. He would relieve the day nurse and spend a quiet evening with Helen and their five year old daughter, Haley. He would grill seafood, and share a bottle of Virginia Viognier wine with Helen, and watch cartoons with Haley. Afterwards, he would put his precious daughter to bed, and then he and Helen would sip wine and watch the snow and, if she felt well enough, make love. Perhaps, they would put on their favorite music and dance. They would lie in each other’s arms for hours and all the while he would try to forget that he had betrayed his countr
y and killed hundreds of people.
Chapter 5
Belle stood down by the creek bed and watched the tall man load metal into a container. She remembered the man from the night before when the lights had gone out. She’d seen him over by the generator and knew it was his fault that it was broken. She’d seen another man too, a man that she knew, in her ghostly wisdom, was evil. That man had driven a big truck into an old building, the building down near the dancing tent, when the lights were out. She had watched the whole thing and wondered what they were doing. Why did they make the lights go out on the farm on New Year’s Eve when the Congressman and Mrs. Kathryn were having a wedding party?
Belle decided to go down and look inside the truck. It was big and she wondered what was in it. She was scared, terrified, and had a sick feeling in her stomach. This feeling was worse than when they had taken her husband prisoner many years ago and she’d never seen him again. This was war. War had come to her home again, the home where she had lived for 150 years.
She entered the building and looked around. It was dark. She peered into the back of the truck and saw dozens of crates lined up. There were maybe a hundred or more. She struggled to get one open, but they were nailed shut.
Chapter 6
Digger Stildove prayed for patience as he stood by the gas pump at the local Quik Stop. It was so cold that the pump wouldn’t warm up so he could fill his truck and gas cans. Damn pumps are slow as molasses on a summer day. This could take a half an hour, he thought impatiently as he shuffled his feet back and forth and warmed his hands in his pockets.
Digger rarely noticed the heat or cold, but today he hugged his deerskin jacket closer as he stared at the pump and willed it to hurry up as it slowly groaned and pumped gas into his pick-up. He pulled his rabbit fur cap down around his head and studied the sky.