by Jeb Bohn
“And then he told me to go fuck myself. What can I say, the man’s a wordsmith? I decided to give him space. He’s a close-mouthed bastard, but when something’s really eating at him, he reaches out. Always has.” Ray drew from the bottle again, emptying it before setting it back on the desk. “Until now. I mean suicide? Never in a thousand lifetimes would I have thought he’d go this far.”
Agitated, Ray got up from the chair and paced back and forth before walking to the window. The Tall Man was about to speak when Ray continued his contingent. “What a kick in the nuts. The fuckin’ guy that was hired to kill him ends up stopping him from killing himself. I’d laugh if it wasn’t so god damned bleak.”
“The great cosmic force has a habit of finding the most scenic path by which to bring people together,” the Tall Man said with a grin.
Ray’s expression was a tug of war between a stroke and severe rage. For resolution’s sake he held it back.
“I figure he’ll be out until morning,” the Tall Man said, throwing a finger towards Herman’s sleeping form. “So we’ve got time to figure out what to do when he wakes up.”
Ray shot a glimpse at the empty bottle on the corner of the desk. “We’re gonna need more bourbon.”
Got ‘Em
“How the hell much farther is it?”
“We’ll be there in an hour, now will you please shut the fuck up?”
The two men were heading south on I-25 into New Mexico from Colorado, their destination a QNI facility outside of the unincorporated community of La Cueva. The impatient passenger was Brian Hayward. The ill-tempered driver was Joe Irbe. Their job was to reach a hill located a half-mile from the facility and watch for any signs of activity. They would report their findings to Greg Schultz and hole up in a cabin on the outskirts of Ribera, a small town some thirty miles to the East.
“That’s it.” Hayward was pointing to an old and rotting wooden fence. “And there’s the farm road.”
“This thing works, ya know,” Irbe replied, his right index finger tapping the GPS unit that was attached to the dash.
The gap opened onto a pitted dirt road that ran alongside an old sorghum farm. The house and the land it sat on had been foreclosed upon years ago and the period of neglect showed. Loose shingles gave way to tattered felt paper and bare wood sheathing. Shutters were askew and several of the widows were destroyed, the unfortunate targets of drunk teenagers with too much beer and too little sense. What had once been a house filled with a family and hope now stood as a stark reminder of the thin line between prosperity and destitution.
The SUV bounced along the earthen path, moving past the house and a series of storage buildings until it crested a hill that overlooked a steppe, in the center of which sat the inoperative research center. Irbe killed the lights as he guided the vehicle to a stop next to an old chinkapin oak. The two men exited and made their way to the rear of the vehicle, removing a large plastic case before placing it on the ground. Inside the case was a telescope and binoculars, each equipped with night vision capabilities. The men took the optical instruments and set up a perch under the tree.
For three hours they watched the desolate grounds, keeping lookout for any unexpected movement. The only sign of life that they saw was the night guard taking an occasional stroll out of his shack to stretch his legs or take a piss.
“Okay,” Irbe said, breaking a long stretch of silence. “Time to pack this shit show up and get out of here.”
“Thank God. I need some coffee.”
“The fuck? You see that?”
“Man, I ain’t seen shit all night. Let’s get going.”
“Shut up. I mean it, I saw something moving around out there.”
“Okay, so what the hell did you see?”
“Looked like two big fireflies, only they were blue.”
Hayward erupted into a raucous bout of laughter, resting his hands on his knees for support as he doubled over. “Oh man,” he said, breathless and wheezing. “You’ve been staring at all this nothing for too long. Blue fireflies? Holy shit.”
He continued laughing, albeit a bit more subdued than before.
Suddenly, Hayward’s face froze. “Fuck me,” he uttered, little more than a whisper.
“I told you so, asshole.”
“Should we go check it out?”
Irbe replied without taking his eyes off of the strange lights. “No, let’s load up and get the hell out of here.”
They packed their gear back up and loaded it into the SUV. Irbe pulled out a cheap flip phone and called Schultz, detailing the lack of activity that they had witnessed. He did not mention the strange, blue lights. Once the call was completed, he joined his partner in the cabin of the vehicle, keyed the engine, and completed a three-point turn before heading back towards the main road. As they closed to within a hundred yards of the dirt path’s end, their headlights illuminated a sheriff’s car parked perpendicular to the track they were on. A uniformed man stood beside the vehicle, his hands upheld instructing them to stop.
“Shit,” Hayward muttered. “The fuck is he doing out here?”
“Probably asking himself the same about us,” Irbe said in an agitated tone. “Just keep your mouth shut and let me handle it.”
Hayward scoffed but didn’t offer any argument.
The SUV rolled to a stop ten feet from the cop. Irbe put the transmission in PARK and rolled down his window to accommodate the coming conversation.
“Evening fellas,” the deputy said. “You mind tellin’ me what you’re up to out here?”
“We’re with QNI,” Irbe said with a mix of condescension and arrogance.
“Is that so?” The cop was unimpressed by the answer or the attitude. “You know, the entrance to your facility is half a mile up the road. This is private property.”
“I’m sorry.” Irbe changed his tact in an attempt to curry favor with the lawman. “We were up on the hill surveying the area. Company’s thinking about expanding and wanted us to take a look around before they put in a bid on the land. I didn’t realize that we were trespassing.”
“Surveying?” the deputy asked in a don’t bullshit me manner. “At two in the morning? You boys wouldn't happen to have some ID that'd corroborate your story, would ya?”
“Yes, sir, we sure do.”
“Make with ‘em, nice and easy.”
Irbe flipped the visor down, removing two counterfeit QNI employee badges and handing them to the cop. He looked them over and returned them to the driver.
“I’m gonna need to see your license and registration, Mr. Irbe.”
“Is that really necessary? We have a long drive ahead of us.”
“I’m afraid it is. License and registration, please.”
Irbe produced his driver’s license and the registration card, delivering them to the officer.
“You boys sit tight, I’ll be right back.”
“Of all the goddamned bullshit,” Hayward said.
“Relax. The paperwork’s legit, we’ll be on the road in five minutes.”
Hayward turned to face the driver. Just as he was about to speak, his eyes grew wide and filled with a terror that was reserved for guilty men who were set to face judgment. “Oh shit!”
Seeing the fear in Hayward’s eyes, Irbe shifted in his seat and turned to look. There were six of the odd, blue lights in a line in front of the old farmhouse. They were eyes. Three men in black suits stood in formation, aiming semiautomatic weapons at the SUV.
“Drive!” Hayward screamed, his voice cracking as its pitch rose.
Irbe slammed his foot down on the accelerator, intending to plow through the police car.
The engine revved wildly.
He had forgotten to put the transmission in DRIVE. As he reached up for the lever, a torrent of bullets exploded through the vehicle, tearing into the two men inside. Their bodies shimmied and danced like grotesque marionettes to the score of gunfire.
The black suited specters began marching in lockstep to
wards the SUV, continuing to fire until their ammo ran out. The cruiser backed up a few feet before turning onto the path. The deputy eased its front end against that of the stricken vehicle, parking and exiting the car. “All right,” he said to the gunmen. “Let’s wrap this up.”
He walked back to the driver’s window, tossing the license and registration inside. He then unsheathed his sidearm and shot each man in the head twice. Two of the assassins had retreated around the far side of the farmhouse, returning moments later with containers of gasoline. They set about dousing both the SUV and cruiser, inside and out. They discarded the emptied containers and headed back towards the house as the third gunman used a road flare to ignite the pyre. As the fire intensified, a black sedan rolled out from beside the decrepit house, stopping long enough for the deputy and arsonist to enter before disappearing into the dark New Mexico night.
◆◆◆
A single mother, on her way to work at a nearby truck stop, spotted the smoldering remains of the two vehicles just before daybreak. She knew that the abandoned house served as a playground for aimless teenagers, so her first instinct was that they had gotten a little too wasted, had a serious misadventure, and burned up two cars. While entirely plausible, this theory vanished once she noticed a police style light bar on top of one of the vehicles. She eased onto to shoulder and pulled her cell phone out to call the police. She had barely begun speaking to the dispatcher when she saw the two roasted corpses in the burned out SUV and began to scream.
A Santa Fe County deputy was writing a citation for an expired tag in the nearby town of Glorieta when he received the call. Ten minutes later he was pulling up behind the woman’s car in front of the old house. Due to the extent of the fire, neither man in the SUV could be immediately identified. The vehicle itself was registered to QNI, the research company which operated the facility that stood less than a mile away. The deputy later questioned the security guard who had been on duty overnight, who stated that no one had come in or out in weeks. Security footage from the site corroborated his account.
The cruiser provided a very troubling wrinkle by its very existence. It was a decommissioned unit from the Nevada Highway Patrol and had been sold at auction six months prior. Deeper investigation showed that the man who purchased it, Steven Terry of Los Cerrillos, died two years ago of a heroin overdose. The light bar and Sheriff’s Department decals had been added to create a facsimile that was close enough to fool most people, especially at night. Who, exactly, had been driving the car and what role they played in the death of the two men in the SUV remained a mystery. The same could be said for why one vehicle was riddled with bullet holes while the other was not.
◆◆◆
While the deputy was busy being stumped by the scene at the farmhouse, his fraudulent counterpart was standing alongside the Pecos River near Lake Sumner, some 150 miles southeast. He was finishing up a phone call when he summoned the three black suits to join him.
His name is Michael Conacher and he is a mercenary who has known countless bosses. His current employer is a shell company several times removed from QNI. He was hired to protect their remaining facilities and neutralize the forces seeking to destroy them.
At least that’s what he was told.
“Yeah, everything is on schedule. I’ll be back tonight, unless you come up with anything else for me to do.” He nodded; placing the phone is his pocket as the other men joined him. They stood in a triangle formation with Conacher dead center. “Well, fellas, looks like this is the end of the line.”
The three men each drew their sidearms in unison.
“Godspeed, gentlemen.” He walked between two of the men, heading in a straight line towards his car without pausing or looking back. The men raised their guns, each aiming at another’s head so that they were all covered. They squeezed the triggers in concert before falling lifelessly to the ground. A small flock of curve-billed thrashers took flight from a tree near the bank of the river.
The imposter keyed the car’s engine, taking a service road away from the river and heading towards 84 west.
The three bodies were found a few hours later, none of them bearing any sort of identification. The initial consensus of the authorities was that a drug deal had gone bad. They surmised that the guilty party who had absconded with the contraband and cash left the tracks that led to the service road.
Just like the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department, they had no real grasp on what had transpired. Higher ranking agencies would be brought in and, while there was little doubt they would make more headway than the local fuzz, they would be hard pressed to find anything concrete that pointed towards the truth. The most damning piece of evidence, a strange metallic alloy present in the brain tissue of each of the men, would dissolve before an autopsy could be completed. The imposter thought about all of this with a smile, but realized that none of it really mattered.
There were much bigger things to come.
◆◆◆
Greg Schultz was sitting in his desk chair examining blueprints when his phone rang. It was Damian Hodges. Hodges was in Ribera, New Mexico, where he was to meet up with Irbe and Hayward to hammer out details of their next target.
“How’s everything looking?”
“They’re dead.”
Schultz felt his heart drop as a searing pain cascaded up his spine and through the center of his head. “Come again?”
“When four o’clock rolled around and they didn’t show, I headed towards the facility. There were fucking blue lights all over the place.”
“What happened?” There was a thinly veiled anger building in his voice.
“Their SUV was shot to shit and burned. They were pulling two bodies out. There was a burned out cop car too. Real clusterfuck.”
Schultz pulled the phone away from his face, squeezing it tightly and gritting his teeth. When he spoke again his furor was barely tethered. “Don’t go back to the cabin, we’ll meet at our secondary site in two days.” He ended the call before Hodges could respond, walked to the doorway of his office and called out to Melanie. She came around the hall corner a moment later, stopping in her tracks when she saw his face.
“What’s wrong?”
He turned his head towards her, the look in his eyes causing her to take a step back.
“Greg, what’s wrong?”
“We’ve been compromised. Irbe and Hayward are dead.”
“Oh my god! What happened? Where’s Hodges?”
“It looks like someone ambushed them. Their truck was shot up and burned.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Every ounce of blood drained from her face.
“Apparently there was a police car involved, too.”
Melanie’s eyes narrowed. Schultz nodded and continued.
“It was burned, just like their truck. Hodges is fine, he’ll meet us at our next post.” He stopped for a moment, placing his hands on her shoulders and looking her dead in the eye. “Right now, I need you to let everyone know. Tell them to be packed and ready, we’re heading out in an hour.”
Melanie nodded before setting off to round up the troops, an embryonic terror growing in her gut like some parasitic worm. She had heard stories, both from the men in the group and from several others who had refused to join, regarding a covert faction of the QNI security team. These bastards weren’t the run of the mill guards who spent eight hours a day inside a little shack. They were trained, either in the military or law enforcement, a well-rounded army and much better prepared than the ragtag company she was with.
That, however, wasn’t what frightened her the most. Typically humans can be reasoned with, assuming they’re not completely insane, and it was possible to persuade them to not act on their more violent ideals. The powers that be had eliminated that possibility by introducing a substance into the brains of these men that rendered them controllable and void of free will. If someone with QNI wanted you dead, they could send a platoon of murder puppets to ensure that you were properly ventilated f
or your trip across the River Styx. The ultimate showcase of the company’s deranged hubris was that they had intended to pump the same substance into the water supply of a very large swath of Florida.
The magnitude was such that Melanie could not wrap her mind around it. It was a comic book villain scheme (almost) brought to life. Greg had told the team about it, as well as his involvement, warts and all. She had been weary about trusting him, considering his in-depth and intimate association with the project and his willingness to go as far as he did. More than a few of the first batch of Schultz’s recruits had walked out because of that and Melanie had been ready to join them when he dropped the bombshell about what had been done to his family.
Greg (she always thought of him as Greg when dealing with personal matters and Schultz when tackling business) had broken down while relaying the story of his wife and kids being locked inside their house as it burned to the ground. Her heart hurt for him and to this day she could see his eyes, filled with tears of agony, whenever she closed hers. There was another, more sinister way in which his eyes were burned into her psyche; when he was describing how he wanted to bring QNI down, the pain and sadness were burned away by a burgeoning madness. She had originally chalked it up to grief, but she had seen that look a few times since, most recently the night they attacked the Colorado facility.
Melanie had thought about leaving at least a dozen times, and every time she remembered the pain in Greg’s voice. She remembered those eyes, so full of pain and regret. It was the same look she had seen in the mirror after Dennis’ death. He was her big brother, her constant protector, although she had outgrown any need for him to protect her since she had been twelve. They had been Army brats, never sticking in one place long enough to establish any meaningful roots, but they always had each other.
She developed a hatred so powerful, thoughts so vile, that she felt as if she were trapped inside the mind of a lunatic. She didn’t want to kill the people who were responsible. She needed to. The problem that she had met with was that she was so blinded by grief and rage that she could not focus for long before snapping. Then came Greg, his story of loss, and his blueprint for revenge. He had recognized her pain and her need for revenge. He had also appealed to her ego by recognizing the talents that a career in demolition had given her, and she had agreed to join the cause.