Extraordinary Retribution

1

By the time he reached the razor-wire, the Syrian landscape had shrugged off the delusion of the irrigated greenery around Damascus. Here, the Old Man, the desert, could not be hidden and refused to be banished. Cold even in the oppressive heat, crueler than the scalped links fencing out trespassers, the sands smiled sadistically, remembering centuries of slaughter and dreaming of future screams of anguish.

For the man in the truck, gazing across the landscape, the screams returned to him now. Howling, gasped, panicked. His own and many around him. Images of dank stone, blood and waste-soiled cells. Eyes. Faces. Tormentors and their hideous tools. The weeping of grown men echoed inside his mind as the winds stirred the dry sands around his vehicle. He squeezed the steering wheel tightly, refusing their summons, determined more than ever to rise above their damage and demons. He had come too far to be defeated now.

He stepped out of the begrimed pickup truck and slammed the door. Glancing over the barren land, he followed the fence line to the horizon. The entrance was at a large distance around the perimeter of the compound, hidden in part by an outcropping of desert rocks. His well-paid sources had been accurate: an entrance from the rear would likely go unnoticed. And what madman would ever break into this place? He did not expect vigilance.

He moved around to the back of the truck and untied a dusty canvas covering the bed. Underneath were several heavy crates. He opened each, removing weapons and explosives, strapping them to his body, and moved to the passenger side of the vehicle. From the glove compartment, he removed a map, glanced at it fleetingly, and pocketed the ruffled pages. It was memorized.

Night fell quickly in the deserts of Syria. In the darkness and desolation, short metallic clips sounded and fell mute on the empty sands. As a shadow, he passed through an opening cut into the gray outlines of the fence and vanished into the blackness.

Through the sandy winds sweeping across the compound, lights twinkled from a handful of incandescent bulbs. Near the gated entrance, he left a guard inside a small shed, seeming to doze peacefully, the unnatural angle of his neck observable only at close range. Before him, a desolate stone structure was dimly outlined by the band of the Milky Way, a single window of light visible in the darkness. Voices could be heard, at times loud and rude, spilling clumsily from the room. Harsh, staccato bursts of laughter confirmed the presence of the prison guards inside. He darted past the window and pressed himself flat against the compound walls. He slid along the rough surface toward the door, arm raised, his hand ending in an extended, metallic cylinder. He made no sound until he spun and kicked in the flimsy wooden door.

He saw four men around a small table, cigarettes in their mouths, pornography and cards strewn haphazardly across the stained wood. As the door swung madly on its hinges and smashed into the wall, they jumped, confused, turning toward him. Even that small pause meant death.

He fired several shots in the confined space. The explosions were amplified and echoed throughout the stone chamber, spilling down the poorly lit hallway opposite to the gunman. Two of the men arched, their heads snapping backward as the bullets blew open their skulls. The whitewashed walls were sprayed red. As the other two men lurched upward and towards him, he spun, his right foot arcing like a sledgehammer coming down, whipping the nearest man backward onto the table. Glasses shattered, and cards dispersed as the guard rolled roughly and fell hard on the stone floor. The intruder channeled the momentum of the spinning motion, and his gun hand came whirling around toward the second man, who now stood unprepared, barely having obtained a fighting stance. His attempted blow was smashed aside, and his jaw shattered as the man’s gun arm brought the metal crashing downward. All four guards now lay still around the table, two dead, two unconscious.

The assailant aimed his weapon at the guard near his feet, firing directly into his head. He then turned and aimed at the other prone figure, rendering a similar judgment. He studied the faces carefully. “At night, five remain once the others leave for the day. And Mahjub works late.” He didn’t need to be told this by his informant. Yes, he knew Mahjub worked late. He would never forget. Nor would he forget his face. Mahjub was not in this room. He must be….below. He had been busy, perhaps. But not now. By now, he would have heard the shots. He would be afraid.

The assassin smiled.

Two floors below, buried deeply in the Syrian sands, a long hallway with numerous cells ran its begrimed course. Broken men were locked behind stone-walled enclosures with iron doors. The cells were like graves: shallow pits scraped into the rock, devoid of light or even the space to stand. At the far end of the hallway, opposite the stairs, was a small room without a door. Inside Mahjub Samhan clutched a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. Both hands shook as he cowered behind an upturned table in the middle of the room. He cried out in a high-pitched voice.

“Kamil? Saif?” There was only silence. “Bassam? Nadeem!” He wiped the dripping sweat from his eyebrows and tried to focus toward the stairs. A solitary bulb dangled limply from exposed wires in the middle of the hallway. His left leg began to shake. “Answer me! Who is there? What is happening?”

Suddenly, before he could focus or react, a shadow seemed to leap from nowhere, an explosion slapped his ears, and the bulb burst. Shards of glass rained on the stone floor like small bells. A terrible darkness blotted out his vision. In panic, Mahjub screamed, firing shots wildly into the blackness.

A bright light leapt from across the darkness, blinding him. A sizzling rod landed only a foot away from the table. Momentarily confused and distracted by the fire, Mahjub stared down at the stick burning beside him. Explosive? Too late, he turned his weapon toward the sound of rushing footsteps from the hallway, the searing afterimage of the flame obscuring his sight.

A gunshot rang. His right shoulder exploded in agony. His knees buckled, and he fell backward against the wall, releasing a howl of pain as he slid to the floor. He dropped the knife from his left hand and reached over to hold his injured shoulder, grimacing as he felt the warm blood coat his arm and fingers.

He squinted against the light as it was raised above his head. He saw a tall, dark shape behind the flare, a gun in one hand aimed at him. In a swift motion, the table was righted and the flare violently wedged into the rotting boards like a candlestick. The figure crouched beside him.

“You always were a coward, Mahjub,” spoke the voice in accented Arabic. Trying to block the pain, Mahjub strained to place the origin. Saudi? Pakistani? He stared at the face partially concealed in shadow. He had never seen it before. Light hair, blue eyes…American? Nothing made sense. Had the Americans turned on them after all this time? Did they need to bury this operation so completely? With all the chaos in the nation, did they care so much now?

“You don’t recognize me, do you, Mahjub?” the figure asked, almost with amusement. “How fitting, to lie here in pain, your death awaiting you, and not know the first thing about your tormenter.”

Mahjub felt the panic well within him again. “Sir, please, don’t kill me. Whatever we have done wrong, we can fix. We will not speak. We will disappear. Please, not like this.”

Mahjub’s eyes widened at the sound he heard. The man with the gun laughed. Laughed at him! “Mahjub, how do you live outside this place?” The Syrian only looked at the gunman in distress.

“I mean, when you buy fruit at the market, mixing with decent people, or entertain your mother-in-law, do you think about breaking men’s fingers? Sodomizing them? Do you think of blood and vomit when you stir her coffee? =Do their screams, their pleas for mercy keep you awake at night?”

“Sir, no, please, I don’t know…”

“You know,” said the man, his blue eyes seemingly glazed over, frosted, utterly cold. The shadowed form whispered ominously, “See, I know what you do, what you are.” Mahjub felt his blood run cold.

“These poor men here,” said the pale man, gesturing toward the hallway, “they don’t know who you are, but they know what you are.” The man spoke with such venom, a snake’s hiss. “It took some time to track you down.”

Mahjub began to cry, clutching his blasted shoulder, grime and blood on his hands and face. A man with such power over others, now powerless, weeping like a child. “Please….”

There was no pity in the cold blue eyes before him. “Consider me more merciful than you ever were.”

The man stood up and aimed the weapon.

“No!” Mahjub began to scream, but a final gunshot ripped through his throat, silencing his cry as he fell against the wall. He gasped vainly for breath, his healthy arm at the gurgling wound, his eyes swimming, his feet kicking madly as he drowned in his own blood. It was over in less than a minute.

The assassin spat on the dead man, turned, and carried a set of keys from the room. One by one, he unlocked the doors along the hallway as he walked toward the stairs. He spoke loudly. “They’re all dead! Leave now, if you can. God soon brings fire to this place!”

Soft sounds of bodies stirring could be heard within the cells. The hinges of one door ground behind him. When he reached the first step, he dropped the large keychain and ascended to the upper floors.

The truck made a startling sound in the desert night as he turned the key. Twenty minutes. That was enough. If they had not escaped yet, they were as good as dead anyway. He stared down at a small radio transmitter on the seat next to him. A red light blinked at the upper-right corner. He pressed the button underneath, and a bright orange glow flashed before him in the darkness. Several seconds later, the sound arrived, the rumbling blast from an explosion as the compound was blown into the sky, rubble and embers raining down on the dark sands.

The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

He doubted Jesus had meant it that way. He shifted gears and raced away from the inferno.

It had begun.

2

“Are we online?”

The voice was impatient, clipped, and embedded in the background white noise escaping from the small speaker. A young, athletic man was hunched over a monitor, the screen showing as much visual static as emanated from the incorporeal voice. He was seated in the cramped interior of a van, the windows covered with thick, polarized glass that rendered the stale space as dark as early evening.

“I want to have visuals on this,” came an impatient voice over the speakers.

The young man suppressed a sigh and glanced to his right at the woman seated in front of the other monitor. She shook her head and gestured to her shadowed clothes.

“Almost there, Nexus. Mantis getting dressed and the camera’s on her broach.”

“The old bastard’s not done yet? Didn’t know he could keep it up that long. Mantis should get overtime for this job.”

A status window appeared on the monitor, a blue bar marching across the screen. “She’s activated the camera. Connection’s coming up.”

Lights and numbers flashed across the monitor, and suddenly there was a poor color image of the inside of an expensive-looking hotel room. Centered on the screen was a tall, thin man with a crown of full, white hair like a lamp atop his dark business attire. He was straightening his red tie in front of a mirror, his words just discernible through the transmission.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay longer, darling,” he said, turning towards the camera, smiling. “This is an important meeting and then I’m off to LA.”

The camera approached the figure, and two slender, tanned arms reached outward and hung around his neck. A feminine voice lilted coyly.

“Yes, George, first an important meeting, and then your other mistress in LA. I think we’re competing more with each other than with Mrs. Sapos.”

At the mention of his wife, the man’s face tensed. “That wouldn’t be a lie,” he said, stepping backward, running a hand through his hair. His hand shook slightly. “I need a cigarette. Where are those damn patches the bitch makes me wear?”

“I’ll get them,” came the warm voice. The camera turned abruptly away from the figure and entered the bathroom. The hourglass figure of a long-haired brunette appeared in the mirror, a ruby broach affixed to her tight black dress. Her hand reached up to a box labeled “NicoDerm” and pulled out a packet, somewhat larger in size than the others.

Nexus spoke over the transmission. “She has the right one?”

“Yes, that’s it,” said the woman in the van. “It’s as close in appearance to the real thing as we could manage, but it had to be modified for the desired dosage, which—”

“Yes! Quiet!” barked Nexus over their speakers. “Let it play.”

The camera view had by now re-entered the room, and the white-haired man opened the plastic around the dermal patch, his eyes hungry. “Couldn’t find the stupid box last night.” He yanked his shirt over his upper arm and applied the white circle. Seconds later, he had rolled down the sleeve, slipped on his coat, and was at the door with his briefcase. He paused in the frame. “I’ve got to run. Think about Paris next month, Roberta. I know some special hotels. There’s no one quite like you.” The door closed behind him.

The young man at the terminal spoke. “The meeting is on the third floor of the hotel. He’s late already. We’ll switch to the monitors we have set up.”

“This crazy idea better work. I told you I want to see this.”

The young man wiped beads of sweat from his brow. “Yes, sir. It should work. It’s a modified version of FLAME with the surveillance modules installed. We infected his laptop as well as the smartphone of the lawyer from the ACLU.”

“What damn good will the phone do?”

“We can at least get audio if we can’t commandeer the laptop. But the laptop should be ours. FLAME reported back; it’s there. The hardware is nothing weird, so we should be able to control the camera and microphone. Should be easier than what they were able to do in the Iranian enrichment plants.”

“Should, should, should is all I hear! This bastard has done nothing but work to ruin everything we’ve struggled for. There are too many variables in this operation!”

“Lophius wanted it that way!”

There was a short period of static over the speakers. The woman gazed straight ahead with a shocked expression. Nexus finally spoke. “Careful using that name at any time, Sentry. He gets it his way, of course. He wanted this to be an accident, so it will be. Nothing to trace back to us. Especially not with what we’ve been hearing about recently.”

The young man swallowed. So, it was true. We’re being hunted.

The woman waved her arm. “FLAME signal! We’ve got the laptop. Feeding the video stream. Now!”

The screen lit up with the familiar image of the older executive, the hotel trimmings replaced with a well-equipped conference room. A smart screen was embedded in the wall behind him, and it displayed an image of a prisoner in orange clothing surrounded by armed soldiers. He stood with his back to the image, staring down at the laptop, a perplexed look on his face. “Odd, the camera light’s activated.” He smiled with an embarrassed expression, looking past the camera. “Sorry, gentlemen. And gentlewoman! Damn technology isn’t my forte. You can be assured I’m not recording you, and the camera will be on me the entire time.”

The executive paused a moment, putting his fingers up to his neck, as if checking his pulse. He looked almost seasick.

“He’s showing signs of poisoning,” came the woman’s voice.

“Explain,” said Nexus.

As if forgetting that she interacted with someone located elsewhere, she leaned forward and gestured to the monitor, tapping places as she spoke. “Discoloration around the fingers, his breathing is labored, and he is sweating. There is a beginning of pallor. Disorientation will set in next.”

“Will it be enough?”

“Without a doubt,” she said clinically. “Nicotine is one of the most poisonous pharmacological substances known. It’s ten times more toxic per unit mass than arsenic. We’ve given him a dose of two hundred milligrams of the modified compound. One hundred cigarettes worth. It will enter his bloodstream very quickly with the transdermal penetrants we’ve spiked it with.”

“Does the modification reduce toxicity?”

“No, as long as it’s fresh. It severely decreases the half-life in the blood. But Mantis would have prepared it this morning. She was well briefed. The compound is maximally active right now, entering his system. In four hours, it will have broken down into smaller compounds, none of which are tested for. He’ll be dead way before that. There will be an elevated nicotine score in the lab results from what hasn’t hydrolyzed, but nothing high enough to cause suspicion.”

One the screen, Sapos resumed speaking, sounding as if he had just come up a flight of stairs. “As you know, we’ve been working to use our money for some good in this country. I personally have had enough of these rights violations in the name of national security.” He paused, wiping his brow and catching his breath. He seemed to sway slightly in place. “Invasion of privacy, indefinite detention, enhanced interrogation — they are practices for North Korea, not the United States of America.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, dragging it across his wet brow. A voice from behind the camera came through. “Mr. Sapos, are you feeling OK?”

Sapos smiled wanly. “Must be coming down with something. Feeling a little under the weather all of a sudden.”

“He’s still standing!” clipped Nexus. “It’s not going to be enough!”

“Wait!” said the woman. “It takes a few minutes for the levels to reach the lethal dose. He’s panting. His respiratory functions are severely compromised.”

The executive continued, his words beginning to sound slurred. “So, I have gathered you here — representatives of the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch — to make an announcement. A generous gift.”

He stumbled, steadying himself on the chair in front of him, his eyes beginning to swim in their sockets. “A gift for you….to continue…. the fight. Dear God, what’s wrong with me?”

Suddenly, the figure was gone from the screen, a dark blur plummeting to the floor. A loud thud sounded, along with gasps and anxious chatter erupting from others in the room. Several figures swarmed the region in front of the camera, bending down to the floor.

“He’s going into convulsions!” yelled one.

“Damn it! Someone get paramedics here right now!”

One set of eyes focused in on the camera, the head cocked to one side. The face drew in closer.

“We might be blown, Nexus!” said the man in the van.

“I see it. Trigger the FLAME erasure module. Burn it from the hard drive and the smartphone!”

There was a flurry of keys clacking and an emphatic smack as Sentry struck the “enter” key. “Command sent! Protocol engaged.”

The screen flickered and suddenly went dark. All the commotion and sound from the conference room ceased. The interior of the van was suddenly still and silent.

“You’re sure he’s dead?” asked the voice over the speakers, the static pops jarring in the new quiet.

The woman nodded. “Very high probability. We’ll know for sure soon. He’s too important for this not to get out quickly.”

“Not important anymore,” said Nexus triumphantly. “Top-flight work, both of you.”

“And Mantis,” said the woman. “She played him like an artist.”

Nexus laughed. “And she’ll be well paid. As will the chemists.”

A cell phone buzzed, and the young man pulled it out of his suit pocket. He scanned the number and then starred at it, horror-stricken. “Jesus. He’s calling.” His voice quavered.

“Who?” hissed Nexus. The woman in the room looked over confused.

“Him,” whispered the man, as if the unanswered phone could hear. “Lophius.”

“Answer it!” cried the woman, her eyes large.

The young man pressed the touch screen and entered a code. He cleared his throat. “Sentry speaking.”

A faint mumbling sound could be heard from the phone, and the woman leaned slightly forward, her body tense as a rod.

The man looked up and spoke to the microphone. “Nexus, he wants to know why you aren’t picking up.”

“The secure connection doesn’t allow it from this device! Tell him that, and tell him the mission was a success.”

“He says he hears you.” The man’s eyes widened. “He also says to break everything down. Immediately.”

“Everything?” came a surprised voice over the speakers.

The young man looked terrified as he recited. “Yes, everything! All queued missions are aborted. All assets to go underground. Maximal threat. He’s says you’ll know what to do.” He starred at the phone and put it on the desk in front of him. He pulled his hand back like the device might burn him. “He hung up.”

“What else did he say?” asked Nexus.

“That it’s the worst. More confirmed kills. And…and that the program may be terminated.”

There was a long silence in the van broken only by the tense breathing of the occupants. The woman leaned over to the microphone. “Nexus?”

“Lophius is the boss. We’re no longer on offense, people. Time to circle the wagons and hope to God we weather this storm.” Neither person in the van spoke. “Do as he says! Break it down and disappear. You’re on your own until we contact you again.”

“What do we do until then?” asked the man, a bewildered look in his eyes.

“See if you can manage to stay alive.”

Static broke out over the speakers. The voice did not speak again.

3

Miguel Lopez tossed clothes and other items into a duffle bag almost violently, tearing shirts and pants out of the closet, ignoring his wife’s pleading.

“Miguel, please!” she shouted, following behind him as he darted to the drawers, continuing to throw things into the two bags open on the bed.

“What’s going on? Dear God, Miguel, talk to me!”

He bent over and zipped one of the bags, his athletic frame moving in a fluid motion. He paused and turned his head toward her, speaking softly. “There isn’t time, Maria.”

“Isn’t time?” she asked incredulously. He resumed his frenzied packing. “Isn’t time to tell me why you’ve suddenly gone crazy on me? Packing up like you’re leaving me? Is that it, Miguel? Are you leaving me? Is there someone else?” Tears flowed over her cheeks as she began to cry.

“I wish it were that simple.”

She stared at him, half crazed. “Simple as leaving me for another woman? What on Earth are you talking about, Miguel? You can’t do this!”

“Yes!” he shouted, silencing her with a look of such intensity that she felt suddenly estranged from him, as if another, far more threatening man than her husband occupied the same flesh. “Yes, Maria, I can. I must. I’m sorry. God knows, I’m sorry for so much.”

Shaking her head slowly, she backed out of the room. Crossing the threshold of the doorway, she turned and ran down the hall. She’s flooded, thought Lopez as he multitasked, zipping shut the second bag, turning, and closing his bedroom door. Quickly, he stepped into the closet, reached above the upper shelf, and removed a wooden panel in the wall. Reaching into the open space, he pulled out an unusually wide briefcase, rotated it, and dropped it on the bed.

Kneeling down, he entered a combination, and popped the case open. Inside, metallic surfaces glinted, reflecting the lights of the room. Two weapons occupied the lower portion of the briefcase, gleaming in the black velvet. On the right was a standard government-issue Glock .40 caliber: a lightweight, polymer-framed, workhorse firearm. On the left, occupying fully two-thirds of the case, was an MP5K submachine gun, less than five pounds, able to fire fifteen rounds a second up to twenty-five yards. Ammunition magazines were embedded in the upper side of the briefcase. He pulled out each weapon, checked them over quickly, and returned them to the case. They would have to do until he reached the safe house, until he was better equipped.

He stood up and turned back to the closet, reached again into the recessed hole in the wall, and removed a black shoulder holster. Behind it, sheathed in leather scabbards, were several large hunting knives. One would be enough.

“Oh, my God.”

His wife stood in the doorframe, her tear-stained face frozen as she stared at the open briefcase. Her lower lip trembled, and she sought his gaze. Their eyes locked, but he said nothing. Slinging the holster on, he fastened it tightly, removed the Glock, slapped a magazine into place, and holstered the weapon.

“Miguel, who were those men?” Her voice was flat, emotionless.

He turned back toward the briefcase and closed it. He picked up a light jacket from the bed and slipped it on, concealing his firearm.

“Those men you were reading about yesterday, Miguel. In the paper!” Her voice suddenly rose in pitch and tone. “I saw you reading the article. You just froze on the photograph. And then — this! Who were they, Miguel? Oh God! Why are you taking guns?”

He slung one bag over his shoulder, grabbed the other in his right hand, and took the briefcase in his left. Moving toward the door, she stood in front of him, blocking the way.

“Not like this, Miguel. You can’t just leave like this.” Again tears were forming in her eyes. “What will I tell the girls? Please! They’ll be back from school in an hour!”

“I love you, Maria,” he said, his eyes toward the ground. “Tell the girls I love them, too.”

Grimacing, he brushed her aside and moved quickly down the hallway.

“Miguel!” came her low and agonizing cry. The primitive call dragged on as he walked out of the house, scratching into his mind as he approached a black four-wheel drive SUV.

The door squeaked open and then slammed shut, and Maria Lopez sank slowly to the floor against the wall, weeping uncontrollably. Outside, the SUV coughed, the engine turned, and her husband screeched out of their driveway and down the road.

4

Father Francisco Lopez placed the chalk down by the blackboard and dusted off his hands. Diagrams of regular three-dimensional solids decorated the board, along with several neatly written equations. He placed his hands on the back of the desk chair and looked out toward the students in his class.

“Make sure that you have the right limits on these — remember, the idea is that the volume of the solid will be swept out by the two-dimensional surface that runs through its length. In this example, of course, it’s a circle running through the length of the cylinder. Some of the other shapes might be a little more tricky.”

Students shifted restlessly in their seats. Few eyes were turned toward him.

“Any questions?” He scanned the young faces of his classroom. There was only silence. “Fine.” No questions either meant he was a rare genius lecturer or they were tuned out. With a suppressed sigh, he assumed the latter — surfing the net on their smartphones under the desks, text messaging, or just daydreaming. Did students simply daydream these days? He hoped so.

“Finish the practice set for chapter seven, and I want you to read once through chapter eight before the next class. All of this is AP test material, folks. It’s important.”

Students began to stuff their backpacks, engage each other in conversation, and generally begin the hustle to their next class.

“These integrals will be on the final, too!” Lopez shouted over growing din. “Math Team practice has been moved to Wednesdays! Don’t forget!”

He gave up and let the tide sweep through the room as he began to erase the board. As the diagrams disappeared, he felt his own energy drain as well, the distraction of teaching now giving way to the host of concerns swirling through his mind.

It had been a difficult week — his usual teaching load, a marriage, two funerals, and tonight’s coming mass. He had already met twice with the local city council, pleading a case for Hispanic families who felt terrified by the new Alabama anti-immigration laws. US citizens, he thought bitterly, who already were becoming second-class citizens because of the fears of immigrant workers. And the laws were achieving their goals. Fields were full of rotting harvests because no Americans wanted the jobs, schools with dropping enrollments, and businesses sucker-punched in a recession as the workers took their pay to other states. Meanwhile, he had to physically restrain a third-generation Mexican-American mother of four who practically attacked the mayor after her sons were picked up for “driving while spic.” Papers, please.

Hanging over everything was the constant reminder that his Catholic school was bankrupt. The Church had decided to close it down. They protect pedophiles in their ranks and turn children out on the street! He felt like a heretic once again, crossing himself as he stacked his lecture notes. Have we failed you, Lord?

He tugged absentmindedly at his thick salt-and-pepper beard, then rubbed his eyes. In his early forties, he felt older, even if he didn’t look it. He still had a full head of lush black hair from his Aztec ancestors, but his beard had begun to gray. His broad shoulders were hunched as if from the emotional weight he carried. These days, his eyes were often bloodshot, a product of sleepless nights worrying about his school and parish. His body was exhausted from serving as the parish janitor, maintenance man, and, recently, construction worker as he had rebuilt substantial portions of the aging dome. By himself. Budgets cuts, one after the other, had forced him to shoulder more each year. Stamina was at an all-time low.

He held out his hands, the muscled forearms accentuated by his dark skin, his palms broad and fingers thick. He knew he looked more like the stereotyped Mexican laborers than an ordained priest and mathematics teacher. He could see it in the mirror after a shower, his naturally thick musculature broadened additionally from years of performing a majority of the manual labor around the church. He could also see it in the eyes of his white neighbors, the double takes when people realized that he wasn’t the hired help. He wondered how many more years he would be able to rebuild the parish when it fell into decay, and, when he could no longer, if there would be anyone left in the church to replace him.

He tried to shake off these worries as a midlife crisis, a product of seeing half his life gone by and the second half perhaps filled with a litany of sorrowful events. The Catholic Church was struggling. He was struggling. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He felt his hand playing with the rosary in his pocket. Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Amen.

His cell phone rang, startling him. Exhaling, he disentangled it from the rosary beads and entered the passcode. “Father Lopez.”

His adrenaline spiked. “Maria?” he said, trying to speak over the shrill shouts coming through his small speaker. “Wait, wait! Slow down a minute. He’s gone? Gone where?”

His eyes narrowed as the voice continued, hardly less shrill.

“What do you mean you don’t know? I don’t understand.”

Again the shouts over the phone, and Father Lopez could only shake his head. “Maria, hold on. You’re home? Can you wait? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The drive felt surreal. He had raced out of his office to the raised eyebrows of several nuns, threw his bag and disheveled stacks of papers into the backseat of his rundown Toyota Corolla, and likely gave the impression of a drag race start as he flew out of the parking lot.

The Catholic Church does not have the presence in Alabama that it does in other parts of the country, but his parochial school in Huntsville was still sequestered on a large parcel of land. He was driving quickly, however, and it didn’t take him very long to be out on the parkway, then to the interstate, flying toward Madison ten miles an hour over the limit, hoping he wouldn’t fall afoul of some particularly exuberant state trooper. They love to nail a priest. The early spring greenery of the countryside flashed unheeded in his peripheral vision.

He tried hard to focus on the road but was assaulted instead by the words of his brother’s wife, her panicked voice and unbelievable narrative. Miguel fleeing home? Armed? It was crazy. His older brother was the hero of the Lopez family. Football star, soldier, consultant for the government. Superman, Lopez thought, experiencing again the ever-present sense of failure. Always in your shadow, Miguel.

When his brother had returned home from Washington, he had left the power and intrigue of the Northeast Corridors to settle back into the slower rhythms of the South. Father Lopez had hoped other things could be left behind as well. He had hoped it might mean a new start for his brother, for the family. A new start for both of us. Even if Miguel had avoided speaking with him, at least both Lopez sons could be present at family gatherings. It had been a start, one Father Lopez had hoped would lead to reconciliation. Perhaps a slow one, but time did heal many wounds.

Suddenly, one panicked phone call seemed to threaten all that, and he prayed to God that something terrible hadn’t happened to Miguel. Time had been forced into a wild overdrive, like the wailing engine of his rundown car racing down I-65. We always stumble and stall, and then stand shocked when the bell tolls. Horns blared as he roughly steered to the right lane and took the turnoff toward Madison and his brother’s house.

Maria came running across the lawn even before he had set the emergency brake. Even after several children, her stunning figure was intact. Lopez had watched men of all colors and stations follow her as she walked: tall, statuesque; a refined Basque face accented with long black hair and a Flamenco dancer’s stride. The glances were often envious toward his brother when the two were together.

Today, she was a wreck, her normally well-coiffed hair was in disarray, her face was pale. Her eyes were red and raw. She crashed into him, holding him tightly, hot tears running into his shirt.

“Francisco, I’m sorry,” she wept. “I didn’t know who else to call. Something’s terribly wrong.”

“Maria, let’s go inside.”

They sat in the sunroom. The kids had been sent off to her mother’s place. Maria Lopez sat still and composed, her emotional outburst now tightly under control. He watched her intently, listening to every word, as she recounted the events from earlier in the day.

“After he left, I didn’t know what to do. I told the girls they would be spending the night at their grandmother’s house. I came back, hoping to God I’d find him here again, that he’d say he had overreacted. Francisco, I’m so scared.”

“It’s going to be okay, Maria. He’s just likely working through something right now.”

Her face hardened. “I know what you’re thinking, Francisco. It’s what I thought at first, too. But it’s not that, it’s not an affair. I’m sure of it.”

Francisco Lopez only nodded, although the thought had crossed his mind as well. He thought he knew his brother, whatever their past differences. The Miguel he knew was still very much in love with his wife and would never have abandoned his family. He was sure of that. But the Miguel he knew would not have packed up in a day with loaded weapons and left his wife in tears. He wasn’t sure what to believe anymore.

“Has he talked about anything? Things bothering him?”

“No. Lately, he’s been so strangely silent. But I’m his wife. I notice things. He’s been obsessed with the news, with the obituaries. He tried to hide it, but I’d catch him poring over the obituaries in the paper. I found hundreds of trips to papers’ obituary sites in the web browser history.”

“Was someone he knew sick?”

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing up her arms. “He never mentioned it. Why would he have to be scouting for deaths in thirty different papers across the country? But that’s what did it, what set him off today.”

Lopez merely raised his eyebrows in confusion.

She leaned in close to him, her face earnest. “He found a name, a death. After that, he started freaking out, packing! I went to his computer and looked it up. Nothing much, just a small notice of a pilot in Maine whose plane went down last week. In Maine. No one I’ve ever heard of. But that was it. He was searching for a name, or something, and found it. It’s like it pushed some button. Francisco, we have to find him.”

Lopez sighed. He didn’t know what to do. “We should call the police, explain to them what happened, and see what they recommend.” She only nodded, a desperate look in her eyes. “I’ll stay with you until we got this a little more mapped out, but tonight I have the special evening Mass. I have to be there.”

“Yes,” she said sadly. “I always hated missing it. Miguel hasn’t set foot in a church since we were married.”

Father Lopez nodded but said nothing.

“I’ve never seen him quite like that. When he left. Hesitant. Uncertain. Questioning everything he was doing. I’m not sure how to describe it.”

Father Lopez waited as she lost herself in thought. Suddenly, she looked toward him, her expression utterly certain.

“He was scared, Francisco, I could see it. He tried to hide it, but I know him.” She shook her head slowly, in disbelief. “Miguel scared. Francisco, when was the last time you remember him being afraid of anything?”

He sat quietly. It was hard to believe. Miguel Lopez was a man who had run over people on the gridiron, “that Mexican boy” who could bend a metal bar with the strength of his arms. He had likely killed many men in Kuwait and yet had come back from that conflict without a scar. No post-traumatic stress syndrome. Nothing. He had never even spoken of it. His brother had been a slab of granite. Did he finally break? Was it all inside him for so long, and these deaths triggered it? Were those deaths soldiers he knew?

It didn’t seem to scan. Could he have been so deeply wounded while functioning so normally for years on end without some sign? There had to be another explanation.

What in God’s name could have scared you, Miguel?

5

The last tendrils of light faded as dusk blanketed the well-manicured lawns of an unremarkable suburb of Washington, DC. Children spilled by on bicycles or in small groups laughing and running across familiar lawns, the first insects beginning their chanting as the sky turned slowly from orange to deep red and purple.

A BMW pulled into the driveway in front of a medium-sized colonial on the corner of the block. The garage door in front of the vehicle opened automatically, and the car pulled inside. A trim man in a business suit stepped out and walked briskly onto the pavement leading to the front door of the house, clicking the remote, and closing the door to the garage. He approached the mailbox and reached in, removing a handful of catalogs and thumbing through several envelopes as he inserted the key to the door and stepped into his home.

As the door closed behind him, he paused for a second, staring straight ahead, then placed the pile of mail on a small table. Inside the house, it was nearly dark, the outside illumination faded, but he did not turn on any lights. For several seconds, he stood immobile, only a raw tension in his body indicating that he was alive.

With a sudden motion, he lurched to his right, removing a firearm concealed in his suit. A shadowed blur from the left caught his arm before it could aim, and a knee from the darkness was driven into the man’s stomach. With an expulsion of air, he dropped the pistol, bringing a fist up in a blinding jab toward his assailant. The shadow pivoted and moved closer to the man so that the strike missed just behind the head, the arm deflected by the free hand of the attacker. The shadow twisted the man’s arm downward, tearing ligaments and inducing a gasp, and then pushed the man backward. Shaken from the damage to his arm, the man stumbled but quickly planted his back leg and assumed a fighting stance.

The living room was filled with a blur of hand motions, as if hundreds of bats had suddenly appeared and began to noisily flap their skinned wings. Fists and open-hand attacks darted and jutted forward and from the side, each assailant parrying and countering, the blocked blows sounding short but crisp slaps. Panting breath and gasps accompanied the sounds of impact.

But the injured man was handicapped, his damaged arm slow in both attack and defense. Soon he was overwhelmed, and the intruder penetrated his defenses with a sharp jab of fingers to the neck followed by a kick to the side of the knee as the injured man grabbed his throat, emitting choking sounds. The kick to the knee was solid, the joint popping. Instinctively, the choking man took most of his weight off the injured leg to preserve balance. The intruder dropped like a weight to the floor, catching himself on his hands, and then brought his leg around like a propeller. He kicked out the good leg from under his opponent, and the man flipped backward, losing his balance completely and plummeting to the ground with arms flailing toward the ceiling. He crashed loudly through a glass coffee table in the middle of his living room.

As his assailant advanced, the man rolled over the shards of glass towards his kitchen, cutting his forearms, and climbed quickly to his one good knee. He reached toward a set of large knives hanging over the counter.

A powerful kick caught him in the ribs, several snapping from the impact, and he was thrown onto his back, stunned as his head hit the floor. In the seconds it took for him to regain focus, the shadow had moved over him. A weapon was aimed at his head.

The shadowy figure pushed a chair between them, simultaneously drawing the shades in the window and glancing outside. Satisfied, he sat down, his face only partially visible in the darkness. He kept his attention sharply focused on the bloodied man groaning on the floor.

“You didn’t run like the others.”

“What good would it do?” grunted the man, trying to prop himself up on the nearby wall, partially succeeding, then sliding down toward the floor again, his battered arm and broken ribs making it impossible to support himself for long. Giving up, he lay there with his head at an angle against the wall, appraising his assailant.

He saw the outline of a man of medium height and enormous strength — wiry like a martial artist, yet sizable and imposing, broad shoulders perched above a solid chest and narrow waist. His facial features appeared almost delicate in the poor light, high cheekbones prominent, the elfin features belying the muscular form below. His hair was very light, perhaps blond. His eyes, so visible in the close-quarters combat, were a strange blue of a hue he had never seen before. In this darkness, they almost appeared to shine like those of a cat.

“You didn’t call for help.”

“We’re all alone now. Isolated. No one would come.” His breathing came in short spurts, the pain of his broken ribs constricting his efforts. “We don’t exist. Nothing we did ever happened.”

“But it did. And this time, there are consequences.” The wounded man stared in bewilderment. “You don’t know who I am.”

From the floor, he strained in the dim light, staring at the fine features, the light hair, cat’s eyes, and shook his head. “No. They’re calling you the wraith. Whispering about you in the halls at Langley, and much more among us outside. The shadow that kills.” He coughed again, a rattling in the airway that indicated a serious injury. “But now that I see you,” he managed at last, “you are only a man.”

“A man once, really a boy, who did not know you, or why you took him in the dark of night, or where he was going. Hangar No. 3. That boy saw the sign, right before you placed a bag over his head. That boy didn’t know what would happen to him, and when it did, why. A journey that changes a person, Agent Stone.”

The man looked again at the shadow behind the gun. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I would have remembered you. You don’t even fit the profile.”

The blond man smiled. “Not anymore.”

“I’m not going to know who sent you, am I? Or why.”

The response was cold. “No.”

The assassin’s words struck him like another blow. He had at least expected to know why his life would end.

“The others were more afraid.”

The man on the floor coughed roughly, a trickle of blood on the side of his mouth. A lung had been punctured.

“I’m plenty afraid. But it’s been too long in this business. I’ve done too many things. I figure I’ve got it coming.”

The blond man stood up from the chair and aimed the weapon. The enormous silencer on the end gave the gun an almost obscene appearance.

“Yes, Agent Stone, you do.”

Three sharp spits sounded in the small kitchen, and the form slouching against the wall slid heavily to the floor. The blond man stepped away from the body and walked into the dead man’s study. On the desk was an open case into which he placed the weapon. He turned to the man’s computer and powered it up. As the machine booted, he quickly removed the outer casing, his progress rapid despite the black gloves he wore. Within seconds, he had access to the motherboard, and he returned to the case and removed a small device alongside the weapon nearly the size of a portable hard drive. With a set of connectors, he linked the device to the board and returned to the monitor.

As the login prompt waited for input, he flicked a switch on the device. For several minutes, the small machine sat perched like a tick on the motherboard of the dead man’s computer, while a blur of characters swept through the login and password fields. Suddenly, a green light appeared on the tick, and the assassin had access to his victim’s files.

In a short period of time, he had what he was looking for. Two addresses appeared on the screen, and he checked them against information on a smartphone he carried.

Lopez, Miguel. 1904 Westmore Ave, Huntsville, AL. 14 Mountain Brook Rd, Gatlinburg, TN.

The wraith’s targets had been particularly close. He had done his research. Stone would be his friend’s undoing.

He closed all applications on the computer, shut it down, removed his device, and replaced the cover. He returned to the kitchen and stepped over the pooling blood on the floor, flipping the light switch on his way out.

Everything was moving according to plan.

6

The last of the parishioners exited St. Joseph’s, and Father Lopez released a suppressed sigh. Lord, forgive me, but I’m tired today. My heart isn’t in it. Switching off the main lamps, he left only the dim candlelight near the altar to illuminate the marbled statues. Whatever confusions were boiling inside him, he did love his parish church. An unusual design, harkening back to ancient times, perhaps, with a more curvilinear shape and few windows or open spaces. Now it feels like a catacomb. He tried to imagine the early Christians worshiping, hiding from Roman and Jewish persecution. Those were saints. He put away some of the prayer books that some parishioners had discarded haphazardly and inhaled deeply. What have we become?

His eyes were caught by something across the pews. In another tribute to older ways, he saw that the stone by the confessional had been moved. He stood up straight. At this hour? But there was no denying it. He saw a shadow within.

Father Lopez left the prayer books for later and walked over to the booth. He entered the side reserved for the priest and sat down. “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He awaited the petitioner.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been thirty years since my last confession.”

Father Lopez gasped. “Miguel? What—”

“Francisco, just do it.”

Lopez paused a moment, shocked at the turn of events. His missing brother, here? His brother hadn’t been to church since they were children. Why was he here?

“Miguel, I think another priest would be a better choice. Talk to me outside as your brother. Maria’s worried sick.”

“I can’t go to anyone else, Francisco. That’s impossible.”

His brows furrowing, Father Lopez leaned forward. “Why can’t you go anywhere else?”

The shadowy figure on the other side let out a sigh. “Look Francisco, I know I gave you hell for your choices in life. I know this is hard for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all that. I really am. I was young, and I thought you were a fool.” A grim laugh coughed through the divider. “Lessons are often taught harshly.”

“Miguel, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t go anywhere else, Francisco. I can’t talk to anyone about this. I shouldn’t even be here. I’m probably putting you in danger.”

Danger? What in the world was his brother talking about?

“Some things should never have been done, Francisco. Whatever the fear.” His brother paused, and Father Lopez could almost feel the weight under which the words were spoken. “The world seemed to be falling apart. I just wanted to protect us all, Francisco,” came an intense whisper and then a deep breath. “We crossed lines.”

Confession wasn’t supposed to be a transference of guilt, but it felt as if he had always absorbed the transgressions of others. He felt part of the confession and shared in the torment of their soul. Perhaps it was a small taste of what the Lord had known on the Cross. Father Lopez felt the weight of his brother’s sin descend upon him.

“I can say we were following instructions, because we were, but I know that’s a cop out.”

Father Lopez had always wondered what his brother did working for those contractors in Washington. Everything was top secret; at family gatherings the older Lopez child was the source of constant guessing games. Some thought Miguel simply played the security-clearance card because of ego. Father Lopez had disagreed. He had grown up with his brother. He knew when he was lying, when he was honest. Before seminary, when Father Lopez had been an idealistic young man unsure of his path, the brothers had fought vehemently. They had polarized themselves and mocked each other’s pursuits, almost defining themselves in carving out opposing lives. The priest. The soldier. God or country. On so many issues, the two seemed in conflict.

At this moment, he felt no triumph at what his brother was confessing. Miguel, what have you done?

Miguel Lopez shook his head. “We had choices. Like anyone. I can’t run away from that.” He laughed grimly. “Looks like there is no running away now. At least I drew one line in the sand.”

“What choices, Miguel? What actions? What line in the sand?”

“There’s not much time left, Francisco. I had to come. To tell you — you as a priest, in case there can be some forgiveness for me. And, finally, to tell you as my brother.”

“To tell me what, Miguel?”

The shadowy figure coughed the words out, forcing through pride or tears, Father Lopez couldn’t tell. “That you were right, Francisco. In the end, after everything, you were right.”

The door to the confessional swung open abruptly, and footsteps rapidly moved away. Father Lopez rose and exited, but not quickly enough. His older brother was too fast. A dim shape shrouded in a flowing coat was all he could see exiting the church. By the time he reached the church doors panting, the lot was empty, and his brother was gone.

The stars shone coldly. He felt a chill, like a cold voice whispering, telling him that the figure would not be coming back, telling him that what his brother had really come to say this evening was goodbye.

7

Miguel Lopez noted that the air was thinner and that the vegetation had begun its subtle change from pure deciduous to a mixed pine character. The mountains around Gatlinburg, Tennessee were not very high, but even at this altitude, he could sense the changes — changes in the air, the smells, the soil and rock, trees and game. Miguel Lopez was unusually good at sensing his environment. It was what had kept him alive for so many years when others had died. In street fights, in war, and in many dangerous circumstances ruthlessly concealed from public knowledge.

His shiny SUV rested in front of a dilapidated gas station. Two young attendants waited on him. They flashed him hostile looks as they filled the tank and cleaned the windshield, telling him more than the camouflage pants and Confederate flag on their caps. For men like this, his Central American good looks were anything but welcome. For them, I should be pumping their gas, he thought with a chuckle. That’s why he always insisted on full service.

His professional eye had already canvased the station. The men were armed, but the shotguns were racked inside the building, foolishly displayed like trophies. Given the overall disarray of the place, he doubted they were loaded. It would likely take them five minutes to find the shells if they needed them. Clueless boys who fancy themselves hunters. Miguel Lopez had often been a hunter, and at times, prey. But never fleeing such a deadly predator.

Closing the door, he cranked the ignition, shifted and pulled quickly out of the station. He had been on I-75 for most of the day, then taking short skips on small roads to US-441, which had brought him into Gatlinburg. Normally, it would have taken him only four or five hours to make the journey from northern Alabama. But he had definitely not traveled anything like the crow flies.

Yesterday had been spent in a long diversion, countless back roads, quick turnoffs, constant observation. He had to make sure he hadn’t been followed. If he had been, he might have attempted to lose them, or better, turned the tables and set an ambush. Become the predator. But he had seen nothing. He was alone.

Turning northeast, he finally began the drive toward the old cabin. It had been in the family since before he was born, and as very small children, he and Francisco had spent many vacations there. His father, an immigrant engineer who had been recruited right out of Mexico City to fill the growing staff of Huntsville’s Marshall Space Flight Center during NASA’s heyday, had done well in his adoptive country. He had loved America so much, disregarding the prejudice and difficulties everyone of his heritage faced. Lopez did not fool himself. His father had been an elite, a near genius who had helped build the space shuttle orbiter engines, working with international teams of physicists and engineers from Europe, Asia, and America. He was well paid. And he had done all he could to fit his young family into the strangeness of American life. He had even bought a cabin in the Tennessee mountains.

But it had been abandoned — too old, too far, and too much trouble once his sons had grown. His father had never even bothered to sell it. Or maintain it, he thought and smiled. It had cost him a lot of work and money to bring the cabin to the condition he required of it. He had told no one. Why he thought there was a need for a safe house had no rational answer. It was that part of his mind that had kept him alive, the part that sensed vulnerability and constantly sought ways to reduce it.

The large vehicle strained as the grade of the road steepened. He reflexively glanced in the rearview mirror, saw nothing, and returned his gaze to the road in front of him. The family’s mountain cabin was the perfect solution. He had nearly rebuilt the entire structure, to a different set of specifications. The walls were reinforced with thick steel, the windows of bullet-proof glass. Security systems spread like a web from the cabin into the neighboring woods: cameras, microphones, and motion detectors, all feeding back into a centralized control module in the cabin itself. Underneath the floor, he had built a storage room that housed an armament of weapons from high-powered assault rifles to grenades. Somehow, some part of him sensed that it would all be needed someday. That day was now.

He didn’t know why this was happening. That it was could not be denied. The victims, one after the other, were all known to him. They had run the secret operations together. They had handled the cargo as a team. They had followed orders. Orders from above that told them that this was necessary, that this would save the lives of potentially thousands of Americans. This was a war, even if the form and manner of its execution was unlike anything ever seen before. In war, you followed orders; that much he knew from the battlefield. But sometimes, things went wrong.

He knew “Why?” was a dangerous question. There were often no clear answers in the land of shadows, where programs hidden from the rest of the government, devoid of accountability to the American public, were formulated, established, and put into motion. He knew better than to seek any help. He was alone.

But he was not ready to die, not with a family he loved and that depended on him. Not now.

Let them find me in the mountains. Let them come to the cabin.

He stepped more firmly on the accelerator, the SUV shifted into an angry overdrive, and jumped forward along the road as it climbed into the forest of pines.

8

The ride back from Huntsville was mostly quiet. Father Lopez piloted the vehicle through the rush-hour traffic. His brother’s wife sat in the front passenger seat, her face a valiant effort to conceal the weariness she felt. For two days, they had called friends and relatives, followed up on every contact in their address book, and fired emails to Miguel Lopez’s several accounts at work, Google, and Yahoo, hoping that he would check. If he did, he did not respond. No one had seen or heard from him. He had simply vanished.

Maria Lopez had pulled the young girls from school for the remainder of the year. With only a few weeks left, it didn’t matter anyway. Not in the context of her husband disappearing. Not when she felt her family was falling apart. Her daughters were staying with her mother once again. There were questions — so many questions. Questions she didn’t have any answers for.

Today they had made the rounds of several police stations in the local towns. They had even made a trip over to the FBI Resident Agency in Huntsville. The story was the same there, as well. They couldn’t file a missing person report, couldn’t launch an investigation on an adult unless there was a clear indication that he was a danger to himself or others, or that he’d gone missing under conditions that indicated a danger to himself. It didn’t matter that this was completely out of character or that Miguel had loaded himself with weapons. He had gone voluntarily, and they weren’t going to be able to make a case that a Southern man who had taken firearms with him was in a dangerous mental state. One of the police officers had laughed it off, said that maybe her husband needed some “man” time in the woods hunting. It was ludicrous. They were on their own, completely dependent on Miguel himself contacting them.

“He’s being cruel,” Maria said almost to herself.

Father Lopez grimaced. He didn’t know what to say. But he had to admit, his brother seemed to be acting with little regard for his family. “We don’t know what’s going on, Maria. Miguel’s always done his best for you and the girls. Maybe he’s messed up right now, I don’t know. But I’m sure whatever state he’s in, he thinks that he’s doing what he can for you.” He didn’t sound convinced of that even to himself. “You should go up and stay with your mother. Being alone in the house is going to drive you nuts.”

“I can’t, Francisco! What if he comes back and I miss him? I’ve got to wait there.”

He didn’t want to tell her that he thought very much that Miguel would not be coming back until this was completely sorted out. Whatever this was.

“Where would he go, Francisco? I mean, let’s assume he’s not running out on me, or something. What if he were afraid of something, of someone, maybe. What if he went into hiding? Where would be safe for him?”

“I’ve been asking myself that for the last few days,” he said, pulling off the highway, and entering the manicured suburban sprawl of Madison. His brother had few friends. He never spoke of favorite locales, vacation spots, or hideaways. Miguel Lopez was not one to dream out loud.

“Wait a second.” The priest pulled the car to a stop in front of a large field. “Vacation spots.”

“What was that?” asked Maria.

Father Lopez felt far away in thought as he spoke. “When he was a kid, Miguel just loved this old cabin my family used to go to.”

“The one in Tennessee?” she asked. He nodded in agreement. “He mentioned it a few times.”

“We haven’t been back there in over twenty years. I don’t know if the place is still standing. I don’t think Dad ever sold that off, though.” He shook his head. “It’s crazy. Why would he go there?”

His brother’s wife looked out over the field. “It’s the only idea we have, Francisco.”

“Yeah, and a five-hour drive up into the Smoky Mountains on a wild goose chase.” She turned to him, and he could see the desperation in her eyes. “But, maybe one I should make, just to check it out.”

“Would you, Francisco?”

He smiled and patted her on the arm. “Of course.”

Two hundred miles away, sequestered in the green mountain massifs of Tennessee, a decrepit Ford Mustang pulled up to the Pine Ridge Motel. The vehicle matched the run-down establishment, its rusted metallic contours blending with the unpainted wood and corroded iron structure, the busted taillights a cousin of the broken-down “No Vacancy” sign that hung at an angle from the side of the building. The door of the Ford opened slowly, and a blond man in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt stepped onto the gravel lot. He seemed broad enough to be a lumberjack from one of the local logging companies, and he ambled into the reception area like a fatigued veteran of long hours with a chain saw and heavy pines.

Impatiently, he rang a small bell on the counter. A middle-aged man of about the same height but twice his weight ambled into the room and placed himself on the other side of the counter.

“Can I hep ya?” he said with a powerful drawl.

“Got any rooms?”

“Jist you?” he said, looking behind the man, expecting to see someone else, hoping to see something as well built as this man, but of the other gender.

“Yup.”

“All right. It’ll be forty a night, an’ we don’t ‘quire no credit cards.”

The blond man smiled. “That’s good. Ain’t got any.”

The visitor pulled out a fifty and dropped it on the counter. The clerk threw him back a ten with the room key, staring a moment as the visitor grabbed the keys and money.

“Looks like ya burned yer arm good.”

The man looked down to where his sleeve had moved up on his arm, revealing a brown region of skin above his wrist. It looked like a burn of some kind or a severely discolored birthmark.

“Fixin’ my engine.”

The man behind the counter nodded. “Number 8. Cable’s out, so there ain’t no TV. We got hot water in the mornin’s. You want breakfast, there’s Mary-Lu’s up the road.”

“Thanks.”

The visitor walked back outside to his car. He opened the trunk and removed what appeared to be a heavy suitcase, as well as a large tool case. Closing the trunk, he carried the cases to room eight, unlocked the door and stepped inside.

It was what he expected — filthy, broken down, and bug infested. An ugly sore and contrast to the beautiful vacation resorts that dotted the area. The mirror in the bathroom was cracked, and the toilet looked ready to be condemned by the health inspectors. But it was out of the way. Invisible. It would do.

He shut the door. His shuffling gait altered dramatically and took on an intensity and quickness uncharacteristic of the role he had just been playing. Leaving the cases on the bed, he opened the suitcase and removed a small leather satchel. He carried it into the bathroom and placed it on the begrimed sink. Reaching inside, he grabbed several bottles, as well as a large white tube. Uncapping the tube, he squeezed a toothpaste-like cream onto the discolored region of his arm, and rubbed the material over the brown spot until it was full covered. He then washed his hand. Removing a spool of plastic wrap from the bag, he cut off a clear square and taped it over the treated region of his arm. He then returned the materials to the satchel. Rolling up his sleeves and unbuttoning his shirt, he examined his skin carefully. After several minutes, he shook his head nearly imperceptibly and buttoned his shirt. He had waited too long this time.

I’ve been busy.

Bending his head to the mirror, he examined his scalp. He combed through with his fingers, eyeing the roots carefully. There was no discoloration. His hair grew slowly.

He grabbed the bag and returned to the bed, leaving it beside the large suitcase. Reaching inside again, he removed a large plastic box, resembling those that fishermen use to carry tackle, and placed it on a table by the window. He pulled the shades together and then sat down and opened the case, revealing an assortment of devices and tools, as well as what appeared to be white putty wrapped in clear plastic. He looked over the detonators, counting them, and estimated the quantity of Semtex. More than enough.

He took the large box from the table and placed it back on the bed. Reaching into the suitcase again, he removed a laptop computer and a box about a foot wide in each dimension. He powered up the laptop, connected it to the box, and tapped into a classified satellite linkup. On the web browser appeared a screen for logging into a secure site of the Central Intelligence Agency. He smiled.

Passing through their security, he was soon interfacing with operations software. A real-time satellite image of the Gatlinburg area appeared on the screen, the data fed to him through the CIA surveillance network. He zoomed in on a cabin in the mountains. Once again, he was impressed with the resolution of the images. Good enough to read the nearly faded and damaged name on the mailbox — LOPEZ.

Over the next two hours, he mapped out the area around the cabin, noting the telltale signs of security cameras and motion detectors. The cabin itself looked ordinary, but he did not fool himself. Miguel Lopez had gone to a lot of trouble to secure this location, and he doubted that anything except for armor-piercing ammunition would make its way into the inside. He would have to get close, get through the security and defenses arrayed. It would require significantly more reconnaissance than this crude satellite feed before he would be ready. Up close and in the flesh, which carried its own risks.

There was much planning to do with a target this prepared. This would not be like the others. He might get bloody. He walked back to the brown satchel and removed a first aid kit. Bandages, sutures, disinfectants, needles, and more.

He’d likely need them.

9

Miguel Lopez scrolled through the news article online.

Miguel Lopez closed the browser window, and stared off into space. Am I being paranoid? He assumed that the program born in CTC was still active, and still invisible. But with agents dying, would they have conducted an operation? Could it have been Sapos? The billionaire’s name was on the list. He matched the criteria: powerful and disruptive of the Agency’s covert plans. But Lopez had refused to participate in the broadening of the program. He did not learn what names had been kept for termination. Even if it was an assassination, they could not keep this up. They were likely all running for bunkers now. Just like I am.

It had been several days of preparation, stocking up on food and other supplies, and then enduring the long and tension-filled moments of waiting. Minute by minute, hour by hour, the light outside the polycarbonate-laminated glass weaved its slow way through the range of intensities from dawn to dusk. He longed to see his family again, to speak to his wife and daughters, but he dared not risk any communication. He knew himself to be the target. They were to be left out of this in all ways possible. He also sensed it was unlikely that he would wait for long. He and Miller were the last. A reckoning was coming.

He sat near the window without fear. The polarization was designed to render the glass nearly opaque when viewed from the outside. The composite material was four inches thick, and would likely stop, or at least slow, anything reasonable aimed at it. But what was reasonable in all this? The hunters who had brought down so many of his colleagues appeared invincible. Who knew what they would bring with them? Who were they?

The events refused to be suppressed and played constantly through his mind. The pattern was unmistakable. The deaths were centered on personnel from the missions out of No. 3. But why? Who? His first thought was that the possibility of discovery and scandal had turned rogue elements of the Agency against them. It was not so hard to imagine that they could resort to murder to hide their tracks. Lopez knew now too well what they could resort to.

We crossed lines. He had, and others had crossed still more. There were always reasons at the moment. But afterwards, when the trials had begun and newspaper articles were published, their judges would not always understand those reasons. He had even come to question those reasons himself. A scorched-earth policy would sterilize such messes.

Perhaps it was something else, something external. He wondered if terrorist networks in America could have gleaned information about their program and had sought to hamper their efforts, destroy the infrastructure. The CIA’s successes over the last ten years had screened out all but the best terrorist cells. Those left had begun to raise their game considerably. Natural selection.

But it still seemed too high a skill level for them. Lopez didn’t believe much in that possibility. The hunters were professionals; that was clear. Highly trained at the level of their best operatives. Who had the depth and experience to produce such trainees? The Russians? The Chinese? With multiple hits in the US, risking international incidents? That didn’t make sense either. It was an enigma.

A box attached to his phone emitted a low alarm, and a red light began to flash on the device. They’ve targeted communications. Lopez crossed the room to the phone and lifted the receiver. It was dead. He knew it was not a random failure; someone had cut the lines.

He pulled out his cell phone. There was no signal, although there had been an hour ago, and the area was well blanketed with cellular towers. The signal’s being jammed. He smiled ruefully. Whoever they were, they were thorough. But he was not blind.

He walked into the study, sat down in front of an enormous flat-screen monitor, and punched up the security program. Nine camera images of the surrounding forest were shown as separate squares that filled the screen. At night, the cameras would switch to the latest autogated night vision. He next called up a screen showing the crisscrossing grid of motion detectors. Between the camera images and the overlapping layers of motion sensors, he would know when they came, from where, and how many there were. Knowledge was power, but it wasn’t everything. He would then have to stop them.

One of the motion detector grid points began blinking. There you are. It was near the edge of the grid, down the hill toward the stream that ran near the cabin. Lopez glanced at the cameras — few were setup in that difficult terrain. He would have to wait until they moved into range. It would not be far, as the camera positioning was such that very little of the grid was left uncovered.

Three of the squares feeding video footage suddenly went dark. Goddamn! Not now! He had checked each device when he arrived.

The entire southeast quadrant of the motion detection grid, the stretch beside the river and moving upwards nearly to the cabin itself, suddenly failed, sending an error message to the software. A minute later, the video feeds, one by one, went dark, followed by a complete failure of the grid.

Lopez stared at the screen in disbelief. These were no equipment failures. Someone had systematically deactivated his entire security system. To do this in so short a time, to know to move up the stream where coverage would be minimized; it was as if they had studied blueprints of the entire setup. They had known! The layout, the weak points, the blind spots. It was impossible to comprehend. How could they have known?

He suddenly felt very cold. Now he was completely blind. His opponents had outmaneuvered him, turned his safety system into a trap. The walls of the cabin suddenly began to appear less protective. They felt far more hostile.

To hell with them! He would not go down without a fight.

The power suddenly wavered, but the sounds of the backup generator clicked in, and the electricity held. Didn’t think of everything, did you? Lopez slid a floor panel to the side, opening a hole in the middle of the living room floor. He descended down a ladder, and a minute later climbed up decorated in combat gear: bullet-resistant vest, automatic weapons on each arm, large handguns holstered on his belt. He hung several grenades off his flak jacket and positioned himself some distance from the front door.

There was only one entrance they could use. The chimney was too tight, the bullet-proof glass too thick to break through. It would be the front door. He overturned the sofa and angled it to provide shelter from the door. Kneeling down, he checked the magazine on his machine gun, and then aimed it in the direction of the door, its barrel resting on the side of the overturned couch. He heard movement outside the cabin, sounds, scrapings, and dull thuds against the walls. They were here.

Come on in, you bastards.

10

For Father Lopez, the drive into Tennessee was an unsettling one. Mixed in with the passing wilderness were the crazed events of the last few days and the dream-like memories from his childhood. As the miles raced by, he would see himself walking through the woods with his father, coming upon the small log cabin after an unsuccessful hunting expedition, smoke rising from the chimney and indicating that a warm fire and Mom’s cooking waited within. But just as he began to smile, remembering wading across the small stream behind the cabin, he was jarred into the present by competing images of his brother’s wife in tears and his own imaginings of Miguel carrying loaded weapons out of his home.

Could Miguel have headed to this old and forgotten house in the middle of nowhere? If so, what would drive him to such a place? There were too many questions, and nothing in the way of answers.

As he approached the town of Gatlinburg, passing more signs than he could count advertising skiing, resort hotels, and restaurants for the vacation minded, he fought to stave off a growing dread that was descending on him. This strange sense of urgency, this irrational sense that something was wrong, that time was short, made him want to scream.

It wouldn’t go away, no matter how much he fought. He struggled to remember the way to the cabin, pulling out maps and engaging his GPS, overcoming the frustrations of old southern roads that were poorly documented in the navigation systems. Despite all the activity, this feeling only grew, refusing to be ignored. He found himself pacing his breathing as he approached the turn to the driveway of the cabin. The stone walls marking the overgrown roadway stirred memories. They mixed roughly with the untamable adrenaline coursing through his veins.

The car hopped and skipped over the rocks and holes in the old roadway, the path badly neglected. No one’s been here for years. He laughed out loud, almost nervously, as if part of him didn’t believe his own reasoning. Of course, this was a stupid goose chase. There was no way Miguel would be here.

Except that he was. Lopez slowed the car as the road opened up, revealing a clearing. In the center of the clearing was his family’s cabin, the layout and geometry suddenly meshing with the faded outlines of memory. But he saw immediately that this was not an abandoned cabin as he had supposed.

It was new looking, renovated, and maintained. After more than twenty years of supposed neglect, he expected to find a rundown home desperately in need of work. But work had been done. The cabin was clearly very well cared for and even modernized in many places. Recently. Did it belong to someone else now?

His question was quickly answered when he saw his brother’s SUV parked off to the side of the cabin. Miguel Lopez was here. He felt all the carefully constructed lines of deduction collapse in his mind as he stared at the sight. Miguel was here in a newly renovated and outfitted cabin. His brother had obviously put this work in motion some time ago, and yet had kept it secret. It was to this place that he had come when something frightened him enough to abandon his family.

The terrible anxiety in his stomach reached a fevered pitch now, and he looked down to find his hands shaking. Damn! Couldn’t he keep his feelings and fears under tighter control? So, Miguel had come here — so what? Perhaps it was an escape, a retreat he needed to rethink his life. There was no reason to think anything else. No reason to assume something dark and sinister was at work.

Lopez noticed that smoke was rising from the other side of the house. The chimney. The memory was warm and clashing badly with the anxious feelings coursing through him. He focused on the chimney. A fire in the fireplace! Miguel was there and he was all right. He shook his head and smiled. How I hate overreacting. He stepped forward and began to walk around the cabin. Even in early May, it was cool as evening approached in the mountains. He wouldn’t mind sitting by the fireplace. Talking to Miguel. Finding out what all this was about.

Turning around the corner of the house, Father Lopez walked into a nightmare.

He came slowly to a stop as the back side of the cabin came into view, his feet becoming rooted to the earth, his arms dangling at his sides. His mind struggled to make sense of the scene presented to him by his eyes, but the shock of it, the absurdity of it, defied him. The rosary he had subconsciously grasped fell onto the ground beside his shoes.

Roughly a third of the cabin wall — a wall made out of solid timbers, and, from what he could see, reinforced inside by thick steel rebar — was gone. Not removed. The charred and fragmented edges testified that something horrific and violent had ripped the wall apart. Part of his mind noted that the smoke he thought was from the chimney gushed from the smoldering remains of whatever had caused the explosion in the first place. It was amazing that the entire structure had not burned to the ground.

Shards of glass and splinters of wood littered the ground around him, crunching loudly under his shoes. As his eyes passed over these remains, he also noticed metallic pieces. Bright shells in the dirt and grass. Lopez had hunted with his father in his youth. He was familiar with ammunition casings from several rifles and some handguns. These were larger. He assumed military grade. There are so many. It was as if a war zone skirmish had been picked up from some other part of the world and dropped recklessly into Tennessee. At his parents’ old cabin. Near his brother’s car.

Some detached part of his mind signaled that he could be in danger, but at that moment, it didn’t register with the rest of him. He moved deliberately into the cabin through the smoldering hole blown through the wall. The signs of violence were everywhere. The well-tended wooden interior was pocked with remnants from the explosion, as well as large imprints from the bullets that had been housed in the casings he saw outside. Furniture was overturned, lamps smashed. He followed the train of destruction from the entry area and living room into the kitchen and bedrooms. Blood was splattered on portions of the walls and floor, a red handprint on the side of a doorway. Miguel’s?

He followed the trail of destruction along the floor, his eyes pausing on a shattered glass case, the shards piled around a small triangular object made of stone. The Cherokee arrowhead. The ancient markings of the Indian warrior were still visibly etched in the sharp rock. The arrowhead pointed forward to the back bedroom. To a human shape on the floor.

“Oh, God.”

The glass crunched under his feet as he entered the death chamber. It looked as though his brother had fought off his assailants for some time, finally being pushed into this corner of the cabin. It was here that he had put up his last stand. Here that his time on Earth had ended.

“Oh, Miguel.” Father Lopez fell to his knees beside his brother’s body. He wept.

11

Lopez sat on an old stump near his car, blood clotted on the inside of his palm from the sharp edges of the flint rock. He still gripped the arrowhead tightly.

His mind seemed to be unable to settle between the past and the present. One moment he would be talking to the officer, the next, seeing his brother’s body, and then the next, recalling the day long ago that as children they had found the Cherokee artifacts.

“I was too small, too scared to climb the cliff,” he whispered, his gaze distanced. “Miguel brought it down to me. I’d forgotten we’d left it out here.”

“I’m sorry, sir?” The officer looked perplexed.

Lopez shook his head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. What did you say?”

In the midst of his emotional fog, he was surprised at how fast the police arrived. Or was it that he could no longer track time properly, his brain misfiring, his body misfiring, just as his legs hardly seemed able to carry him? Yet, they were here, seemingly instantaneously after he called them, and he had to function, had to give logical facts and coherent statements. He had to be rational in hell.

The body of his older brother lay shattered on the floor of his parents’ cabin. One look had been enough. The damage to the form was beyond what he would have imagined, even in a fight to the death. It took all the control he possessed to describe it to the police.

“Yes, I found him like that,” he said, after the officer repeated the question.

“Did you disturb the body? Move it? Check to see if he was alive?” the officer asked as his partner walked through the cabin. The light had almost faded outside, and the officer squinted at his notepad as he wrote.

“God, no,” said Francisco, emphatically. He felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. “I didn’t need to check him. I could see part of his face. The rest, his head, his torso—God in heaven, it was all over the walls.”

The police officer coughed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lopez — ah, Father Lopez. I know this is difficult, but it is necessary. So, you saw nothing, no one on your drive up or afterward in this area, acting suspiciously?”

“Nothing. There was nothing. Just this,” he said, gesturing toward the cabin.

“Did your brother have any enemies? Recent fights? Anyone who would want to harm him?”

Father Lopez paused. “No. No one.”

The officer looked skeptical. “Are you sure?”

“He’s been acting very strange of late.”

“In what ways?” Father Lopez felt officer’s eyes as sharp knives, inquisitive, cruelly intense in his concentration on the answers.

“It’s hard to explain. Like he was worried about something, terribly anxious, almost hysterical at times. He was talking about strange things, what his life was amounting to, that sort of thing. His wife said he was obsessed with the obituaries, reading them online even from many different newspapers. Then, he left in a hurry one day, taking weapons, and came up here. To a deathtrap.”

“It sure doesn’t seem like a robbery,” agreed the officer. “Any history of mental illness?”

“No.”

“Did he mention any names recently? Call anyone unusual?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“OK, sir, that’s really all we can do now. We’ll have forensics up here very soon. This is an official crime scene, and we will have to ask you to vacate the premises until the investigation is complete.”

Lopez shook his head. “I don’t want to stay here anymore.” He continued grimly, “When can we have the body, for the funeral?”

“That will depend on forensics, and an autopsy is mandatory in a homicide investigation, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I want the monsters who did this caught,” he said with a vehemence and anger that frightened and surprised him. Until now, he had felt devastation at his brother’s death, shock and horror at its manner. When contemplating the murderers, suddenly, there was rage — powerful, irrational, and hot. What scared him the most was that he felt completely unrepentant about it.

“So do we, Father Lopez. This kinda thing doesn’t happen around here. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.”

Lopez nodded, too consumed with his own emotions to reply. The officer’s partner picked that moment to exit the cabin, and the two men spoke out of earshot. Lopez stared at them, not caring so much what they said, but that he felt they shared his desire for justice. They were in their mid-thirties. Old enough to have been around and young enough to carry on active duty. In fact, both were trim and athletic, in contrast to the many local and state troopers Lopez was used to encountering — Dunkin’ Donuts shareholders. They were unusually intelligent, he was glad to see. These were probably the two best detectives in the area, and he felt fortunate that they would be handling the investigation.

The policeman who had taken down his testimony returned.

“Sir, I suggest that you get some rest. There’s nothing you can do now except get in the way of the investigation. Go home to your family. I’m sure this will be difficult news, but it’s better you are with family at this time. Believe me, I’ve seen this before.”

Father Lopez nodded. Family. He had only an empty house to return to. And his brother’s widow. Dear God, how am I going to tell Maria?

He looked toward the house a final time. The memories of childhood were blotted out, erased, burned away with fire. The cabin had transformed into an evil thing, a monster that had consumed his brother. It looked more like a mausoleum than a vacation home. The arrowhead was all that was left to him. It was an artifact of violence.

I’m so sorry, Miguel. God have mercy on your soul.

Forty miles away a rundown Ford Mustang lurched recklessly into the parking lot of an emergency room in Knoxville. The driver had remembered that the University of Tennessee Medical Center had the only level one trauma center in the area. Somehow, he had remembered this, despite losing dangerous amounts of blood and struggling to maintain consciousness on the drive from the mountains. The Gatlinburg hospital might have done the job properly, or maybe not. He had stemmed the bleeding the best he could and taken a calculated risk to place expertise before expediency. He knew it might cost him his life.

Queued patients and family members stared in growing concern as the car rolled past the circular drive and onto the sidewalk, barely coming to a stop before plowing into the entrance of the ER. Their concern turned to dismay as the car door opened and a creature from a horror film stumbled forward. Covered in blood, perspiring fiercely as from a great fever, the zombie shuffled through the automatic doors. Several people screamed, and orderlies and nurses turned and darted toward the injured man. As the first staff reached him, he collapsed forward, barely caught by a stocky male nurse who struggled to break his fall.

“Martha! Katherine! Get a gurney over here now! Trauma patient, massive blood loss, severe injuries! Now!”

The patient groaned, and the nurse stared in surprise as a fist was raised near his face, the crumbled remains of a sheet of paper within it. He dislodged the paper, and the man’s hand dropped. Unfolding it as the other physicians sped to help, he read out loud what he saw.

“Shrapnel leg and back. Potential spinal damage. Gun shot, right shoulder. Penicillin allergy. Blood type O+.” Several faces stared at him and the paper.

“Cut the shirt open!” he yelled.

Another nurse slit open shirt along the back and pulled the fabric to the sides. She inhaled sharply. “Jesus.”

“Sir, can you hear me?” the male nurse asked the man. There was no response. The bloodied figure was unconscious.

12

Father Lopez stared forward, his dark hair matted and dripping, his thick eyebrows furrowed and beading with water. He took the incense from the altar boy, swinging it in the downpour, going through the motions with coals that were now extinguished and drowned. The censer seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. The earth itself seemed to pull with greater intensity, the gravity belonging to a supergiant like the planet Jupiter, and even his priestly robes seemed to be made of lead. He glanced over at the casket they would soon lower into the mud. How will they hoist that thing? He shook his head. I’m going mad.

The weather decided to mirror his emotional state with four straight days of showers, including the day of the funeral. He had been rocked from one heartache to another, finding his murdered brother, breaking the news to his destroyed wife and children, and discovering himself as the organizational center for the family’s grieving. His brother’s wife was not capable of handling the arrangements, and his parents were too old. It fell on his shoulders, and the weight was a heavy one. It was one thing to carry the sorrows of others second hand. Now he had to be mourner and priest. Not for the first time, he questioned the Church’s stance on celibacy. Not because of sex; he had learned years ago how to channel that drive into other actions. But because of something far more difficult to control. Each night he returned to an empty house, stale and still. He ached to have someone to go home to when the sun fell. You can’t hold prayer in your arms.

The funeral was well attended. His brother had been a local hero in the Hispanic community, and he had won admiration and friendship in all his endeavors. Besides the family, there were old high school classmates, war veterans, neighbors, and even the odd local politician. All were soaked in the downpour, struggling in the strong wind to hear the words of the service.

Father Lopez had called a priest friend to assist. He had given up trying to carry that load by himself. As the second priest spoke, he looked over the scene: his brother’s casket, family, friends, and others. Lopez knew every face: Madison, Alabama was not a big place. Faces old and young. Many heads were bowed from grief or weather. Forms huddled together, playing out a ritual to the dead that archeologists had shown was shared even by humanity’s Neanderthal cousins. Irrational. Emotional. Superstitious. Pagan, thought Father Lopez. Did not the Church teach that death was only sleep? Did he not believe in the Resurrection? If so, why the grief? Why the black colors of mourning? Damn the theology, it was necessary.

At the edge of the mourners, like a light in a sea of dark gray, a pair of bright eyes flashed toward him. Such intensity. There was a magnetic pull deep inside him, but all he could see at first were the eyes, the face and body shrouded under a raincoat and hood. He felt nearly in a trance, the eyes drawing him in like some spell.

Lopez struggled with himself and turned away, but before a minute had passed, he found himself drawn back toward the form. He looked over quickly to make sure he was not deceived. Still there! Still staring! He could see the shape a little better now, the hood slightly pulled back, a thinning in the clouds brightening the day subtly. It was a woman, young, pale in appearance, a cyan glint hopping across her burning gaze. This was a face he did not know. And yet, her eyes engaged his, a personal space was violated across the distance separating them. She was seeking him! Sending a message.

What message? It seemed so inappropriate, so out of place at this time, during this ceremony. But still she stared, refusing to look away, pursuing him with her eyes. Demanding.

He tore his gaze away and resolved this time to ignore this strange and disturbing woman. Whoever she was, he didn’t know her, and a pair of haunting eyes was not going to make him try to change that. He wanted this dreadful ceremony over, the priest to shut up, and his brother’s body to be given the rest it deserved. He wanted to go back home, pull out his thirty-year-old bottle of Springbank scotch, and get good and drunk. He’d just as soon kill a million brain cells and forget this day. Forget the emptiness. Forget the ghostly blue eyes.

The last stragglers were coming by and paying their respects. The rain had abated somewhat and now seemed more a fine mist in the air than precipitation. Father Lopez accompanied his parents to their car, along with his brother’s widow. He forced himself to look at her daughters, his young nieces, to give both a faint smile and hug, and try not to fall apart in front of them. Relief swept over him as he closed the door and the car pulled out. The tires dropped into a pothole and splashed a wave of muddy water over his shoes. It didn’t matter.

He walked slowly back to his car, the gravestones around him dotting his peripheral vision. In the midst of it was his brother’s grave, the ground bare and the dirt fresh. The headstones gave him a chilling impression of a dead army, rising, closing in on him. Images of bone and flesh like the terrible prophecy of Ezekiel flooded his mind; he forced them away. Never again did he want to see what he had seen on the floor of the cabin in Tennessee. He reached into his pockets and retrieved car keys, fumbling with them in some growing, irrational panic. Trying hard to see only a warm bottle of eighty proof at home.

“Father Lopez!” cried a voice. He jumped, dropping his keys into the mud.

“Mother of God!” He spun around toward the voice, straightening up. It was the pale woman from the funeral.

“Who are you? What do you want?” he asked with visible irritation, scooping his begrimed keys from the ground.

“Losing our Southern manners, Father?”

She dared mock him now? “Look, I’m tired. I just buried my brother. You scared me half to death with that yell. How can I help you?”

“I want to help you.” Her blue eyes were still very bright.

Father Lopez suppressed a sigh. “Why do you think I need any help?”

“Because you’ll need answers soon. Answers to your brother’s death that you won’t find alone.”

Francisco Lopez became very still. He didn’t know whether to hit this woman or just walk away. “Heck of a time to be talking like this.”

“I’m sorry. There isn’t a good time.”

“I’m not going to need your help, because I’m not going to be asking any questions. I’m an overworked parish priest, not a detective. The police are handling this. They can do much more than I ever could. Go talk to them if you want to help.” He turned back to his vehicle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, if I can get this damned key in the slot, I’ll be getting home.”

“You can’t trust the police.”

He sighed, the key missing and scratching the paint. “They seemed competent enough to me.”

“They’re compromised.”

“Oh for God’s sake, woman!” he found himself shouting. “Compromised? Are you some kind of nut?”

She stepped forward, her hood sliding down and revealing her high cheekbones and gleaming golden hair. Her blue eyes were intense, focused, and undisturbed by his shouting.

“My name is Sara Houston, Father Lopez. I worked with Miguel for many years, before he returned here. I know things that you don’t. There is a larger context to his death.”

She was standing very close to him, her face nearly touching his. Lopez was unnerved by the pulse of life in her. “Larger context? What on earth are you talking about? What does Miguel’s work in Washington have to do with this?”

“Your brother was certainly murdered, but it was not a random crime. You can’t trust the police; they’re blind pawns in a much bigger game. Soon you’ll understand that, and then we’ll talk again. You’ll need my help. Remember that, when the time comes.”

She pulled the hood fully over her head again, concealing most of her features, and turned, striding away from the car. It was like a light had been turned off, her piercing, unusual gaze and bright hair snuffed out, her white face turned away, replaced by the dark gray of her hood.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Lopez. “You can’t just say something like that and walk off!”

But she did not heed him or give any indication that she had heard. Lopez stood rooted in the mud for several moments, debating whether to pursue her or let her go. Who was this strange woman? How could she be trusted?

Lopez watched her silhouette merge with the mist and struggled to prevent himself from following her. It was preposterous. He wiped the rain from his face as if to clear his vision. He had seen the police take up the case aggressively before he left Gatlinburg. He had met the officers. He trusted them. What was he thinking to go after her? He shook his head and got into the car. He would not be talking with that woman again.

Lord have mercy!

13

“A robbery? What are you talking about?”

Father Lopez sat dumbfounded in front of a Gatlinburg police detective. This wasn’t one of the officers he had met at the cabin. This was a different breed entirely. The man’s disorganized room — paperwork, half-filled coffee cups, litter — mirrored the confusion of his thoughts. The patronizing tone of the detective had begun to infuriate him.

“Detective Summers,” Lopez began again, trying to keep his voice under control, “I discovered my brother’s body. I walked through a giant hole blown into the wall of a mountain cabin with enough used shells on the floor and bullet holes in the wall to qualify as a war zone. My brother’s body was riddled with holes, his upper torso half blown away by something. Robbers don’t break into a cabin with dynamite. They don’t pull out automatic weapons and spray bullets around. They don’t blow people’s heads off!”

“Mr. Lopez, please, you are hysterical.”

“You are ridiculous!”

The man adjusted his eyeglasses and pulled on the knot of his tie below his neck. He looked like a man who felt he had been far more than patient with an unruly citizen, and it was beginning to try his nerves.

“Mr. Lopez—Father Lopez, the Gatlinburg police are far from ridiculous. If you wish to see ridiculous, you need to look no further than yourself.”

Lopez stared disbelievingly. “Is this fourth grade?”

“I am serious, sir. I’ve tried to be reasonable with you. Your brother was killed during a robbery. That has been the conclusion of this investigation. You were unfortunate enough to have discovered his body, and it appears to have clouded your judgment.”

“Clouded my judgment? Detective, I didn’t imagine a six-foot diameter blast hole in my family’s cabin!”

“Are you so sure of that?” asked the detective.

Francisco Lopez laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, I’m one hundred percent sure of that.”

“Well, Father Lopez, I’ve seen the photographs of the cabin. There is no hole.” The detective tossed several glossy prints toward Father Lopez, who leaned forward again and quickly scanned the images.

“There’s some mistake,” he said in disbelief. It was impossible. The photos showed no damage to the structure. The cabin was certainly his family’s, the location and design easily recognized. But it looked untouched. Every angle showed a well-maintained house in the woods. “When were these taken?”

“The day after the report was filed. These were taken by forensics officers. There is no mistake.” The detective sighed. “Father Lopez, there is counseling available for family members of victims. I suggest you look into this option. You are obviously traumatized by this incident.”

“Traumatized….” Lopez stared uncomprehending at the photographs.

“As for our department, the investigation is closed.”

“Closed? There are killers out there! Even if this is a robbery, someone killed my brother. You can’t just close a murder investigation a few weeks after the crime!”

“The decision’s been made, Mr. Lopez. Lack of any significant leads, I’m afraid. It was my superior’s choice. There is nothing I can do.”

“I want to talk to him!”

“I’m afraid that’s out of the question. I am your contact at the station. We can’t let distraught family members harass those in charge.”

“Then I would like to speak to the officers assigned to the case that day. They were sure it wasn’t a robbery.”

The detective removed his glasses, his face grim. “I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr. Lopez.”

“Why? I demand to speak with those officers!”

“You can demand all you want. It won’t do any good. You can’t see them.” He sighed again, more heavily. “They’re dead, Mr. Lopez. They were killed a few days ago when their patrol car went over the edge of one of the mountain roads. A terrible accident.”

Lopez suddenly felt very cold.

He stepped out of the police station like a man drugged. He was not crazy, that much he knew. Those photos were fakes. He could prove it. He would return to the cabin and examine the scene of the crime himself. Take his own damn pictures. Confront these idiots with the truth. He forced himself to believe this, because he needed the sense that something could be done. He needed the sense that order could come of this chaos. Otherwise, this feeling would overtake him, that something darker and more evil even than his brother’s murder was present. He could be swallowed up in that irrationality, where there was no clear path, only shadows and echoes of shadows.

Half-dazed, he stumbled down the stairs leading away from the station toward the street where his car waited. These new smartphones recorded everything about photos — date, time, location. Perfect evidence. He would document the damage, and then bring the photos back to these idiots. He could think of nothing else to do.

As he neared his vehicle, he glanced up the sidewalk and saw her. She stood with her arms folded across a dark car coat, a crisp spring breeze tossing her yellow hair about. Her expression was serious.

“We can talk here,” she said, placing a small black box on the restaurant table. “This device will scramble directed microphones. Talk softly; you weren’t followed, but we don’t need to advertise anything at this stage.”

The crowd at the Tennessee diner seemed to have gotten over their initial surprise at seeing a black-clad Mexican priest enter with a young woman who seemed every bit the fitness model from her physique. The drone of conversation picked up again, eyes returned to their own tables. Two coffees were placed on the table.

“Ya’ll orderin’ anythin’ else?” came the irritated voice of the waitress.

Houston answered assertively. “Not for now, thank you.” The waitress rolled her eyes and turned to other customers.

Lopez shook his head, staring at the device Houston had placed on the table. “What on earth have I gotten into here?”

Houston eyed him carefully. “How much do you know about what your brother did with the government, Father Lopez?”

He felt unnerved again by her sharp eyes. “Not much, actually. Besides the troubled relationship we’d had for some time, he was pretty tight-lipped about it all. No one knew. He worked as some consultant on issues of national security he wasn’t allowed to talk about. Had top-secret clearances. Seemed to pay well.”

“What if I were to tell you that he was not a consultant.”

Lopez squinted at her. “Not a consultant? What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Miguel never worked as a consultant in D.C. That was a cover.”

“OK,” began Lopez cautiously, “so what the hell did he do? Did he even work for the government?”

“Yes, he did.” She stared into his eyes. “He worked for the CIA.”

“The CIA?” Lopez nearly spilled his coffee. “Miguel was some kind of secret agent?”

“Miguel was a CIA agent, Father Lopez. A highly trained specialist at CIA. He was under deep cover because he performed some extremely sensitive missions.”

“I’m about to fall down the rabbit hole. I can feel it.” Lopez shook his head. Secret Agent Miguel Lopez. Under deep cover performing sensitive missions. What the hell? “And you’re here because you think that his death had something to do with those missions.”

Her expression was grim. “I don’t know. But I suspect. What did the police tell you?”

He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. They said it was a robbery. Let me tell you, Agent Houston — ”

“Sara,” she said, touching the top of his hand fleetingly with her finger, breaking his concentration, breaking through the normal protective barriers spacing strangers.

He corrected himself and tried to refocus his thoughts. “OK. Sara. Then you call me Francisco. So, Sara, I saw a hole big enough to drive a car blown through the cabin wall. Enough bullets and casings for a combat zone. There is no way that was a robbery. I don’t know what it was, besides murder.”

“Elimination. Assassination.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Murder, however you want to label it. And that detective showed me photos, doctored photos, showing the cabin was fine! Claiming I’d made the whole thing up!”

Houston shook her head. “They might not have been doctored.”

He pushed away from the table. “Look, I know what I saw.”

“I’m not questioning what you saw, Francisco. But I’d put money that if you return to the cabin today, you’ll see some work has been done.”

He sat very still. The implications were insane. Paranoid. Major conspiracy theory material. “Do you know what you are saying?”

She nodded. “I’m saying that someone wants what happened to your brother buried deeply and forgotten.”

“Someone? Who?”

“We’ll get to that later.”

His fist slammed down on the table, spilling coffee and turning heads. “I need answers, now!” His anger and frustration shocked him. Eyes darted in their direction.

“I’m sorry, I can’t give them to you now. Not here,” she whispered sharply. They were both silent for several minutes until the patrons turned away once more. She laughed softly. “Miguel said you had a temper. And a hell of a left hook.”

Father Lopez closed his eyes. “Fights. Miguel was with me in many. As a teen, before I embraced the Church, it was the only thing I was good at. Two dark Mexican boys in junior high in Alabama? You can imagine. Once I got angry, it came naturally. Too easily.” He sighed and opened his eyes. “Look, two cops saw the wreckage. Saw the body. Saw the scene. Now they’re dead. Am I to think something suspicious about that?”

Houston leaned in closer. “What cops? When?”

“They came right after I called 911. Two young guys. They combed the scene, examined my brother’s body. Asked me a bunch of questions. Wrote it all down. They looked a hundred times more professional than anyone else around here I’ve dealt with.”

“Oh God, Francisco. Those weren’t police.” She looked at him pityingly.

“What do you mean they weren’t police? I saw them! They had uniforms, badges, police vehicles.”

“Police showing up instantly on a mountain road? Walking around a crime scene, potentially contaminating it? Ruining evidence?” She shook her head. “Whatever you saw was a carefully planned ruse to deceive you. They weren’t police, Francisco. And they’re not dead.”

“The detective said the officers were dead, died in an accident.”

“I’m sure the real officers are dead.”

His expression was a shocked mask. He didn’t know if he could absorb any more of this madness. “Who were they then? These killers?”

“I don’t know, Francisco. They’re part of this. Whatever this is. There’s a lot I need to explain, and a lot I can’t, because I don’t know myself. But your brother’s death is not the first.” She exhaled slowly. “I came here to warn your brother, Francisco. There have been a lot of deaths from my old division. I worked with many of them. I worked with Miguel.” Her face tightened, and she looked away. “I’m here unofficially. The CIA will not officially recognize what is happening. There is a web, of dirt and lies, and I don’t know who is tangled in it. I just knew that Miguel was in danger.”

“You cared a lot about him,” said Father Lopez.

She glanced out the window, her face set. “Yes, Francisco, I did.”

Who is this Sara Houston? Lopez eyed her closely, a determined look on his face. “Then, maybe you want what I want. Maybe, you can help me.”

Her blue eyes locked with his. “To do what?”

Lopez worked hard to control his voice, his emotions. He fingered the arrowhead underneath his shirt, hung now as a pendent alongside his cross. “Find his killers. Bring them to justice.”

14

Still and silent, three men sat at a table in a dimly lit and dusty room. The walls had the appearance of years of neglect, and a musty smell drifted upwards from the floorboards. A fine mist of particles hung in the air like a fog, screening out the faint light from a cracked window across from the door. The men stirred, turning their heads toward the doorway as a fourth man entered, a look of suspicion on his anxious face.

“I was followed, but I lost the tail before entering the packing district.” He was lanky, in his mid-fifties, with gray, thinning hair trimmed close to his scalp. He wore an expensive suit completely at odds with his surroundings, a contrast echoed in the dress and mannerisms of the other conspirators. Looking across their faces, he could barely make them out in the dim light. Better that way, he thought cynically. We’re only ciphers now.

“You’re sure, Farnell?” asked the shadow on his right.

He glared at the man. “I know what I’m doing, Phoenix. And no names. We’re in the middle of nowhere, in this godforsaken dump, but we must never slacken protocol. Handles only.”

The shadow nodded, chastened. “Yes, Nexus. Play the spy games to the end.”

“That’s why we’re alive, you fool.”

Nexus removed three thumb drives. “The latest reports, gentlemen. It’s not pretty.”

A nasally voice came from a dim form on his left. “Stone?”

“Dead,” said Nexus. “Lopez, too. Our men were too late.”

A third man with a baritone spoke. “Lopez was our best.”

Nexus sighed. “Yes, he was, Bravo. Too idealistic for what we really needed him for, but unmatched. We didn’t know about his safe house, or we could have been there sooner.”

There was a silence in the room until Bravo added flatly. “Our wraith.”

Nexus simply nodded. “Assets posing as police were there just after his brother arrived at the scene.”

“The priest?” asked Bravo.

“Yes. He had no useful information. Said Lopez had acted strangely, left his family in a panic. Nothing we didn’t know or couldn’t guess.”

“Who’s left?” asked Phoenix.

“From the Removal Unit? Only Miller. He’s gone into hiding, we can’t locate him.”

Bravo sounded grim. “The wraith will. There is no hiding.”

Nexus stood up and paced the small room. “We’re trapped, gentlemen. This was our baby, and it’s come back to eat us. We can’t call for help. No backup, no reinforcements. Our program was black, buried, and must stay that way. It goes much too high and is much too hot. We’re alone.”

The nasal-voiced man coughed. “Do you think it will end with these deaths?”

Nexus chuckled. “Afraid for your own skin, are you, Zulu? Well, we all ought to be. This isn’t over. Whatever this is, whoever is behind it, they have eliminated nearly all the operatives of that SRU mission. They have been systematic. They clearly have resources. They know. No, gentlemen, I don’t think this is over at all.”

The man on the right sounded panicked. “Langley isn’t going to help us?”

“We’ve been over that,” clipped Bravo, dismissively.

Nexus paused. “Lophius has other resources. He’ll make them available.”

“The assets? Who are they?” asked Zulu plaintively, looking between Bravo and Nexus.

“They are well-trained. All of them are former employees. Decommissioned when the pansies came into office. We’ll trap the wraith, you can be assured of that. Our biggest worry is keeping this from the light of day. There are more important things than our hides to protect.”

“There are complications.” It was the baritone.

Nexus raised an eyebrow. “Continue, Bravo.”

“The Houston woman. It’s confirmed. She has spoken with the priest.”

“Damn!” Nexus ran his fingers through his wispy hair. “She could blow this entire thing open.”

“Or lead us to the wraith,” added Bravo.

Nexus eyed the shadow and nodded. “We’ll assign two assets full-time to her, and this priest, if he gets involved. Watch for now.” The lanky man glanced out the cracked window, the weak light giving his face an unearthly paleness. “But if this gets out of hand, we’ll have to terminate them both.”

15

The time had come. Leaving now was risky. He wasn’t close to fully healed, and an escape could end before it really began. But he had to go underground again. He could not remain so exposed and vulnerable. Too much time had passed.

The physicians had seen. It would be in the reports. Nurses, too. Too many. He sighed. He would not eliminate them: his was a pursuit of justice, and he would not taint his quest by killing innocents unnecessarily. But it would not be long before they were questioned. Even the slow minds at the CIA would figure it out, eventually.

I’m running out of time.

He had accumulated an extraordinary stash of items from the hospital: gauges, first aid kits, antibiotics, steroids, plasma, needles, supplemented protein powder, stimulants. He would need them all. Feigning far more disability than was real, he had distracted the medical staff. Besides, they were too busy with endless trauma to check the many recesses, drawer bottoms, and other hidden places that existed in a hospital room. Eventually, they would.

I’m running out of time.

He raised himself from the bed, his back screaming in pain, reminding him that the injuries were very real. He had slipped the painkillers under his tongue and spat them out later. He needed to be fully alert. The pain would be suppressed.

The lights were out, the hospital staffed minimally in the predawn hours. He had memorized this trauma center’s rhythms, its personnel. He knew the guard was flirting with the late-shift nurse about now, both often breaking the rules and smoking outside by the emergency stairway. He would need to be quiet when he passed the exit door to the parking garage underground.

He donned the surgical scrubs he had lifted the night before from the laundry cart — his pants and shirt were ruined. He filled a laundry bag with thousands of dollars of medical items, put on his shoes, and limped slowly out of the room.

Each night, he had walked repeatedly to build stamina, but such efforts could only go so far. He felt dizzy after a few flights of stairs. He set the bag down and caught his breath. My hematocrit is absurdly low. He would have to eat dramatically over the coming months to build his body back to performance level. Then there would be the hours of torturous rehabilitation. He grunted as he picked up the bag and continued to the lower level.

The parking garage was utterly deserted and still. His footsteps softly reverberated as he stumbled across the concrete towards a beige four-by-four. He smiled to see a shotgun in the back and hoped there were shells in the glove compartment. He drew a deep breath. This would take a lot out of him.

Ten minutes later, covered in sweat, he pulled out of the garage in the hot-wired vehicle. He came to a stop by his car in the outside lot. He would take what he needed and keep the truck. Where he was going, it would prove useful, and no one would look for it deep in the mountains. He opened the door and stumbled out of the truck.

“And just look at you.”

The voice came from behind him. He turned around quickly, preparing to engage, but his efforts demanded too much of his damaged body, and he tottered, stumbling forward into the solid shape in front of him. A pair of muscled arms caught him, and lowered him slowly to the ground. Why isn’t he attacking me?

“Who are you?” he croaked out.

“Who am I?” scoffed the voice. “I see your appearance, what you have done to yourself, what others have done. I should ask, who are you?!”

The voice was deep, gruff, full of command. It reminded him of desert sands. And combat. He felt his consciousness fading.

A hand slapped his cheeks and his eyes refocused. The voice boomed. “Not yet, you fool! I have to get you out of here. This is your car, I know from the transmitter inside that called me.”

“Called you?” Everything seemed a blur.

“Yes! We had agreed. You arranged it. I knew you must have been in trouble to activate the rescue call. I told you in Israel that you wouldn’t survive this madness.”

“Rescue call. Israel. “ It sounded familiar. Plans and counter-options spun in his mind.

“Derrmo! You are delirious. First, we get you up and into that nice truck you have stolen. Then, some of these nice American discount stores dotting the roadways. You need clothes, food, other useful things.” The shape dug a hand through the hospital bag. “You have quite a collection, you thief. We will need all of this and more. You have to heal.”

Heal. Yes, he had to heal, and rebuild his shattered body. He knew that hard road. He had done it before — that he remembered. When he had healed, then he would remember who this man was and why he was helping.

The shape pulled him to his feet and helped him into the vehicle. He felt himself dissolve into a rough sea of consciousness, dreams weaving the real with the imagined. He saw before him an extended plain, a battlefield divided in two. Like an eagle, he swooped in front of an army and planted his claws in the trodden grass. Across the divide, there screamed a legion of monsters, demons risen from the depths of hell, but their grotesque bodies possessed the faces of men! His winged arms held a broadsword and a shield. Blood dripped from the tattered flesh of his back.

He would finish this war. Those who had orchestrated the great injustice would pay dearly. He raised the sword in defiance of his enemy’s howls.

I am your death!