Project Aura

12

Valika spun about, pistol clearing holster as she moved.

“That won’t do you any good,” Raisor said.

Valika could see through his form, to the other side of the chamber. Slowly she put the gun back.

“Who are you?” Cesar had not moved at the sudden apparition.

They were in the Aura operations center, Cesar in his chair, Valika behind him, and Souris hooked to her computer, projecting the field that allowed Raisor to take his form.

“They told you who I am.” Raisor’s voice had an echo to it, as if coming through a speaker. He was looking at his hands, as if seeing them for the first time, slowly rotating them in front of his face.

“They told me a name,” Cesar said. “Perhaps I should ask what are you?”

“First, I want an answer,” Raisor said. “Where is HAARP located?”

“I thought you were American,” Cesar said. “You told Valika you were CIA. Surely you know about HAARP.”

“I am-was-CIA, but I never heard of HAARP.”

“Tell him the location,” Cesar ordered Souris.

Her voice echoed out of a speaker on top of the computer she was facing. “ Alaska. In the middle of the Wrangell Range.”

Raisor walked right through a chair until he was opposite Cesar. “How is HAARP different than Aura?”

“It has greater power but is fixed in place,” Souris said. “Aura is smaller and transportable but has less power. Aura also is directional.”

“Why should we trust you?” Cesar asked, signaling for Souris to be quiet.

Valika wasn’t sure what exactly Souris was seeing. Although the American scientist’s eyes were open, they had a vacant stare.

“You don’t have to trust me,” Raisor said. “We just need to work together. I can give you information you need. For example, the Americans know some of the men on their Special Forces team are alive, and they know where they are being held. At your villa. In the basement.”

“How are you aware of that?” Cesar demanded.

“Call your villa,” Raisor said. “Have them check the bodies in the freezer. You’ll discover that they’ve been removed from the meat hooks and covered. One of the American Psychic Warriors did that.”

“ ‘Psychic Warrior’?” Cesar repeated. He signaled for Valika to make the call. She left the room.

Souris answered. “The program is called Bright Gate and headquartered in Colorado. A program that sends avatars into the virtual plane-like we’ve done here with Aura-but also allows those avatars to re-form on the real plane at a distant site.”

“Why did you not tell me about this?” Cesar demanded of Souris.

“It was only in the first phases when I left the States,” Souris answered. “I was not aware that it had gone operational.”

“If you could get the master computer from Bright Gate,” Raisor said, “and use it in conjunction with what you’ve developed here, you would have the same capability.” He indicated his form and then reached out and put his hand through a chair. “This is just an apparition with no substance. With Bright Gate I would have a real form here that could affect the physical world around me.”

Cesar reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a cigar. He cut the tip off and lit it as he considered what he had just been told. Valika came back and simply nodded once.

“What do you want out of this?” Cesar finally asked.

“I want my body back,” Raisor said. “They cut me off, separating my connection with Bright Gate.”

“Who is ‘they’?” Cesar asked.

“My government.”

“Why did they do that?” Cesar asked.

“I was betrayed.”

“Why?” Cesar pressed.

“I wanted to have revenge on the person who betrayed my sister.”

Cesar could understand family loyalty coming before all else. “Why was your sister betrayed?”

“She was investigating HAARP. Someone didn’t want her to do that.”

“What are your capabilities right now?”

“I can travel anywhere in the world on the virtual plane.”

“You don’t need Aura to support you?”

“No. I only need Aura’s power to appear like this-to come into the real plane as an image. And if I was to accomplish something other than watch, I would need its power.”

Cesar pointed the tip of the cigar at his scientist. “ Souris says that with Aura’s power she could enter a computer system. See it from the inside. Can you do that?”

Raisor nodded. “Yes.”

“Could you manipulate the computer, change the programs, the data?”

“With Bright Gate I could. I imagine I could with Aura’s power.”

“Good.” Cesar stood. “Then I have a job for you. To test your loyalty. Then I will help you in turn.”

Dalton wiped embryonic fluid off his face and tossed the towel into a basket. Jackson and Barnes were doing the same, both of them shivering, the aftereffect of the isolation tube freezing still clinging to their bones.

“Report.” Kirtley was standing in front of the control console, arms folded on his chest.

“We found seven of the men still alive,” Dalton said. “At the villa. In the basement.”

“I want you to come up with a floor plan diagram,” Kirtley said. “And a complete report for forwarding.”

“Forwarding to who?” Dalton demanded.

“Task Force Six is going to help us mount a rescue mission.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dalton said.

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Kirtley said. “Just do it.”

“There’s something going on,” Dalton said. “We sensed a presence at the villa. On the virtual plane.”

“What kind of presence?”

“I don’t know,” Dalton said.

“The Russian SD-8 program is shut down,” Kirtley said.

“It wasn’t like Chyort,” Dalton said. “Something, or someone, different.”

“Write up your report.” Kirtley turned and walked away.

Dr. Hammond was behind the console. As soon as Kirtley was gone, she came around and stepped in front of Barnes. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“Where did you go? I tracked you splitting off from the others.”

Dalton stepped between them. “Does Kirtley know?”

She shook her head. “No. What are you up to?”

“We’re looking for our teammates,” Dalton said.

Hammond ’s eyes shifted to the door where Kirtley had gone and then back. “And did you find anything?”

They all turned to Barnes. “No-” He paused. “But just before I jumped to come back, I also picked up a virtual presence, something-I don’t know what it was. Something happened-” He shook his head, confused.

“There’s more going on than we’re being told,” Dalton said.

“Or than anybody knows,” Jackson added.

“Kirtley asked me what happened to my predecessor,” Hammond said. “Why would he do that? Dr. Jenkins died in an accident.”

“No, he didn’t.” Dalton had everyone’s attention. “Raisor told me he killed Jenkins because he cut off the power to Raisor’s sister’s team. Do you know why Jenkins did that?” he asked Hammond.

“I never met the man. When I got here to replace him, I was told the cutoff occurred because there was a programming glitch in Sybyl that had been corrected. That it was just a tragic mistake.”

“I doubt that.” Dalton pulled on his fatigue shirt over the black suit. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“There’s something else-” Hammond began.

“What?” Dalton demanded.

“I think there was another Psychic Warrior team. One before the CIA team with Raisor’s sister.”

That announcement was greeted with a long silence.

“Why do you think that?” Dalton finally asked.

“I’m finding information in Sybyl’s data files that doesn’t fit the other two teams. Someone obviously tried to clear all records before a certain date, but some of those records are tied to programs that couldn’t be deleted without crashing the entire system.”

Dalton asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. “What happened to this team?”

“I haven’t been able to find that out.”

“Your predecessor, Dr. Jenkins, never mentioned a first team?” Dalton asked.

“That’s another thing,” Hammond said. “I don’t think Dr. Jenkins was the original scientist in charge of Bright Gate. I’m finding information from someone before him-this Professor Souris that you asked me about,” she said to Dalton.

Dalton turned to Jackson. “You mentioned something while we were out there. The Dropa or something like that?”

“The Droza,” Jackson corrected. “It’s a story my mother told me.”

“And?” Dalton prompted.

“I don’t want you laughing at me if I tell it.”

“There hasn’t been much to laugh at since we’ve been here,” Dalton noted.

“I’ve been thinking about it a long time,” Jackson said. “Ever since I was assigned to Grill Flame years ago.” She looked at Dalton and Barnes. “Even when I was just remote viewing, I could occasionally sense other presences on the virtual plane. I know now one of those was Chyort, but there were others. Ones I couldn’t identify. Then when I came here and was part of Psychic Warrior, I could still sense those presences but I could never see them. Like they were hiding from me.”

“Or they were in a place on the virtual plane that you couldn’t see,” Hammond said. “We don’t know exactly the dimensions or physics of the virtual world.”

Dalton couldn’t help but wish that Hammond had been more forthright about what she didn’t know when he had first arrived at Bright Gate with his team. Things might have turned out differently and some people might still be alive. He pulled a chair out and slid it over to Jackson. She sat down as Barnes and Dalton grabbed other seats and gathered round her. Hammond remained at her place behind the console. Kirtley and his team were in the prep room, running final checks on their fittings.

“There’s a legend among my people, among the Roma, the Gypsies, as they’re more commonly called,” she said. She briefly told Barnes and Hammond the same thing she had told Dalton, about her background and her mother, before continuing her story.

“I tried to get as far as possible from the Roma, but I think I went in a circle.” She waved her hand about the room. “My mother would have loved this-Psychic Warriors, remote viewing. Even Chyort. She would have found him fascinating. The devil that she insisted existed.” Jackson ’s eyes darkened as her mind went inward, into her memories. “She wasn’t so big on talking about heaven or angels, though-just the dark, scary stuff.”

Barnes opened his mouth as if to say something, but the confused look crossed his face once more and he snapped his mouth shut.

Jackson continued. “She told me many stories when I was a child. They were the tales her mother had told her when she was a child. And her mother’s mother on down the line through the ages. The Roma are not fond of writing things down. Everything passes by word of mouth. It is an integral part of our culture and one we do not share with the gadje.

“The stories were entertaining and interesting but I thought they were fiction.” She glanced over at Dalton. “But now we know the virtual world is real in its own way, right?”

Dalton didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the thread her mind was unraveling.

“My mother told me the story of the Roma and of those the Roma came from. I promised her only to tell it to my own children, but I think it is important I tell you this now, given all that has happened. It might mean nothing, but-” She shrugged.

“What you tell us stays with us,” Dalton promised. He looked at Hammond and Barnes. “Right?”

Both nodded their agreement.

Jackson rubbed her palms over her eyes for a moment. “Mom-she said that the Roma were special. I told you earlier that the rest of the world calls us Gypsies because a long time ago it was believed we came from Egypt. But we actually came from India. Far northern India on the border with Tibet, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Even that place, though, wasn’t where we originated from. My mother told me that much at least, although where we came from before there, she could not-or would not-say. Other than to speak of a people called the Droza. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but let me work from what I know to what I’m guessing about.

“We-the Roma-were outsiders there, of different background from the others. Long before Hinduism swept through India and divided all the people into castes, my people were despised and threatened. We learned to survive by making ourselves useful. We made up a large part of the Ksnattriya-the warrior class. We fought and died for others, so much so that there were those among us who realized something had to be done.

“Some advocated rebellion. We were warriors after all. Others pointed out how terribly outnumbered we were and espoused escape. In the end, that was the decision that was made. The Roma left the lowlands and went into the mountains. They knew they had to find land no one else would want-someplace desolate and remote.

“They found the isolation they sought high in the Himalayas. They did such a good job finding what they were looking for that in just a few generations, there were few Roma left, given the harshness of the land. Then they met the Droza.

“Even my mother could not tell me if they were real. She told me about them as if it were only a story, a legend.” Jackson closed her eyes as she remembered. “In the high mountains of Kharta Changri the Droza came down from mountaintops. Our people ran and hid from them for a fortnight, but when it was clear that the strange ones meant no harm, our people came out of their caves.

“The Droza let my people know that they came from a special place they could not mention. And that they could not return from whence they came. They were trapped here. With my people, they built a new place to live. Their homes they hid underground, a great city called Agharti. The Roma were given a fertile valley hidden deep in the mountains near Kharta Changri called Shambhala.” Jackson opened her eyes, returning to the present. “I think this is where the modern legend of Shangri-la comes from.”

“What do the Droza have to do with the virtual plane?” Dalton asked, disturbed by this talk of creatures from the mountaintops and underground cities. He had traveled all over the world in his military career and seen many strange things, the Psychic Warrior program being foremost among them, but this was stretching the boundaries of reality too far. He immediately corrected that thought-he had no idea what reality was anymore.

Jackson searched her memory for the words her mother had told her. “The Droza were mostly like us, but different in some key ways. They had a strange power. Vril it was called. The power to see things that they could not see with their own eyes; to see places a long distance away. To know things that they should not have known. To see the thoughts of others. To see parts of the future. And they taught the Roma some of this. As much as my people could learn and do.

“The two groups intermarried until there was just one people-the Roma. Even with the help of the Droza, though, it was still a very harsh life in the mountains and food was scarce. The men wanted to launch raids to the south, but many feared this would bring enemies into the mountains to hunt us.

“While all this was happening, the women, who had for centuries stayed at home while the men went off to war, had been focusing their energies inward with the help of the Droza, into their own minds and souls, and they began to develop an ability that we now call being a psychic, working on the vril.

“The women saw a path out through the mind. Most of the men would have none of it. They were warriors and believed in the power of the body, of the sword. Except they swore they would never fight for anyone else ever again, but rather, would make others fight for them.

“This time the Roma fragmented and the parting was bitter. Most of the men, with some women, left to go to the west and gain power in the real world. Most of the women, with a few men among them, went even further into the Himalayas to dwell there, to perfect the path of the mind.

“A small segment, eschewing either path, scattered, determined never again to place down roots in land, but to preserve their sense of self in the group, not in the country they happened to be living in. This last group, the ones my mother drew her lineage from, are what you call the Gypsies.”

“And the other two groups?” Dalton asked. “What happened to them?”

“That, Sergeant Major, is a very good question. I think it might be possible that the one group that stayed in the high mountains of the Himalayas might still exist, might still be living in Shambhala, or Shangri-la, and it might be their spirits that we sense on the virtual plane at times. Or-” Jackson paused.

“Go on,” Dalton prompted.

“Or maybe we are sensing the Droza. If they ever did exist, then they still might. Maybe not all of them intermingled with the Roma. And the pure vril‘they have is the power to be on the virtual plane.”

Dalton checked the faces of the others who had listened to Jackson ’s story. Barnes was shaking his head, seemingly having none of it. Hammond looked thoughtful, which surprised him.

“If there are others on the virtual plane,” Jackson said, “they seem to mean us no harm.”

“As far as we know,” Dalton said. “And let’s remember that what we know is far outweighed by what we don’t know. Here’s the deal. We’ve been lied to, and we’re being used. I tend to look at those things in a negative light. Regardless of what’s out there in the virtual plane, we have a real problem here in the real world, right here in Bright Gate. Add in the fact that someone has planted a bug in Sybyl and has been monitoring the computer and I would say we have to be very careful. I think we need to make a plan to cover our butts in case something goes wrong.”

“What kind of plan?” Hammond asked.

“One of the first things we do in Special Forces when we plan a mission is make up an E & E plan,” Dalton said.

“ ‘E & E’?” Jackson asked.

“Escape and evasion,” Dalton said. “There’s an official one that we turn in to the commander taking our mission briefing just before we go, but we also make up a team-member-only plan that we have just in case we get abandoned.”

“A little paranoid, don’t you think?” Hammond said.

“I think we need to be getting paranoid,” Dalton said. “Don’t you? Or are you going to go with Kirtley? Do you trust him? You didn’t tell him about Barnes breaking off from the mission or what you learned from checking Sybyl, so I have a feeling you don’t feel very comfortable with Kirtley.”

“I don’t think Kirtley feels very safe either.” Hammond rubbed her face with her hands. “He told me he has a contingency to take care of me if his team is cut off on the virtual plane. Why would he be worried about me doing that?”

“I don’t think it’s you he’s worried about,” Dalton said.

Hammond sighed. “I just wanted to make this work, to do what no one had done before. To make it better.”

“You’ve done that,” Dalton said. “But you’re not indispensable. Jenkins wasn’t, the first team-the first team we know about,” he corrected himself, “wasn’t, my team wasn’t, and we’re not.”

“But…” Hammond was shaking her head. “What can we do? Kirtley runs everything now. He’s in charge here.”

Dalton had been thinking about that. “Didn’t you tell me there was a backup for Sybyl?”

“The computer here is technically Sybyl IV,” Hammond said. “Fourth generation. Sybyl I and II were prototypes. Sybyl III was the first one that worked projecting avatars into the real plane.”

“Where is it now?” Jackson asked.

“Off-line and in storage. All of the first couple of generations of equipment are here.”

“Show us,” Dalton said.

Hammond led the three of them to a double-wide door on the side of the control room. “This is the freight elevator that accesses all levels.” She entered a code on the keypad. The door silently slid open, revealing a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot elevator with a twelve-foot ceiling. They followed her on board.

“The storeroom is on the lowest level, where the generators are.” She punched the button and they descended for fifteen seconds, before coming to a halt. The doors opened, revealing a large open space. The hum of generators producing power echoed through the cavern. A half dozen large tanks supplied fuel to the generators.

“There’s Sybyl III.” Hammond was pointing at a large crate.

“When is Kirtley’s team doing their first orientation mission in the tubes?” Dalton asked Hammond.

“This evening. Eighteen hundred hours. Why?”

“We’re going to set up an E & E plan and execute the first preparatory phase then.” Dalton turned and got back on the elevator. “I have some calls to make.”

Publicly the Pentagon was listed to have five floors, only one of them below ground. In reality, there was a subbasement below that basement which connected with access tunnels leading in various directions, including one that ran to the Capitol and White House. The entire system was designed for emergency use only and had been sealed since construction, with only one access point from the building above. The entrance was occasionally used by maintenance personnel. The floor plan for the subbasement was the exact same as that for the basement, with the five main corridors with rooms branching off on either side. The center, which was a large courtyard on the surface, was made up of strengthened concrete twenty feet thick. Under it, two hundred feet below the subbasement, was the War Room, which was the nerve center of the United States military. One could not access the War Room from the subbasement, only through a single large elevator on the main level of the Pentagon, thus further isolating the subbasement.

Except for a few selected individuals and maintenance personnel, knowledge of and access to the subbasement was forbidden. Roger Killean was one of the select few and he’d been ordered by Mentor to go to the Nexus Pentagon command post to tap into the War Room traffic and begin preparing contingencies for scrapping the shuttle launch with CS-MILSTAR. With the death of Mrs. Callahan and the disappearance of their agent who had picked her up at Andrews Air Force Base, Killean was the sole surviving member of Nexus in Washington.

Killean was a high-level member of the State Department, and the Pentagon was not his assigned province, but with the death of Eichen there was no choice. He had the proper clearance to get into the Pentagon. The elevator entrance to the subbasement was located behind a locked door with a Custodian sign hanging on it. He waited until no one else was nearby and then boarded the designated elevator and put his key in the slot below the buttons.

There was no designation for the sublevel-because it didn’t exist for the majority of the people in the building-but the key automatically took the elevator down, below the basement. The doors slid open and he removed the key and walked out.

The corridor before him was bare concrete. The subbasement was unfinished, a relic from the original plans during the hasty construction during World War II. The contract for the Pentagon had been awarded on August 11, 1941, and construction begun a month later. The building was finished in January 1943, a blistering pace for such a large job.

The subbasement had never been designed as office space, but as a buffer between the main building and the wasteland, swamps, and dumps that the land had been before construction began. Over forty thousand concrete piles had been driven to support the subbasement. The ceiling was low, about six and a half feet, and the corridor was crisscrossed with pipes, cables, and phone lines. Widely spaced fluorescent bulbs provided only dim light.

Killean turned right and walked down the long corridor. There were seventeen and a half miles of corridor in the upper five floors of the Pentagon and he estimated another three miles or so down here. He didn’t think anybody knew the entire layout. He’d been down here with Eichen on several occasions, and he knew the way to the Nexus Command Post that had been established during the last year of Eisenhower’s administration. After several hundred feet, he stopped in front of a steel door. His key fit in the slot and the door slowly swung inward. As he stepped in, he turned to the left for the light switch.

He felt the slightest of breezes on the back of his neck and reached up with his left hand, saving his life as the garrote came over his head. It caught on his hand, jamming it against his throat, the wire slicing deep into the skin, but saving his jugular from being severed.

Killean pivoted, feeling the garrote cut deeper into his left hand, while he slammed with his right elbow into the chest of the man behind him. The pressure on the wire lessened and Killean dropped to a knee, freeing himself, pulling his left hand back, feeling skin peel away with the metal wire. He dove into the corridor, got to his feet, and prepared to sprint back the way he had come.

A bullet creased his cheek, a burning line of pain. He spun about and dashed in the opposite direction, into the labyrinth of the subbasement. As he ran, his mind kept going back to an experiment he’d conducted many years ago in college as part of a physiological psychology course. Rats in a maze. Now he knew how the rats had felt. He could feel wetness on his cheek and he knew it was blood. The pain from his hand was a steady scream. He could hear running footsteps behind him and he picked up the pace.

He came to an angle turn to the corridor and paused, peeking around to see if anyone was waiting. For a thousand feet the dimly lit corridor was empty. He turned the corner and began running again, hearing his shoes slap against the unfinished concrete floor and the sound of his heavy breathing loud in his ears.

Killean thought of the twenty-three thousand people who were working in the building above him, yet he knew that he-and those hunting him-were the only ones on this floor. He’d started carrying a pistol when he heard about Eichen, but he’d left it in his car in order to pass through the metal detectors to get into the Pentagon. Obviously his hunters had been able to circumvent the security of the building with their weapons.

The bullet hit his left thigh a split second before he heard the shot. The impact sent him spinning about before he went down.

He was surprised there was no pain when he looked down and saw the blood pulsing out of the wound. His hand actually hurt much worse. But from the squirts of blood coming out, he knew the artery had been hit.

He could hear someone coming. He held his head up. Two men, one with a rifle. He pushed with his good leg, crawling away from them, his good hand scrambling in his jacket and pulling out his SATPhone. He flipped it open. Nothing. The signal couldn’t get through the floors of concrete and metal above him. He kept pushing back until a boot came down on his chest, pinning him to the ground.

Killean knew he had lost a lot of blood. He felt very weary, the pain from his hand more distant now, his wounded leg just a dead weight below his waist. The phone dropped from his hand.

A man leaned close to him, holding something in his hand. In the dim light, Killean could make out jewels and diamonds sparkling. An elongated cross.

The man picked up his SATPhone. “Is there someone left alive to call here in the States?”

Killean spit at the cross.

The man laughed. “That’s the most effective thing Nexus has ever done against us.” He put the cross away and held the SATPhone in front of Killean. “Who is left?”

Killean heard the voice as if from far away as his head slumped back on the concrete. He knew they’d taken down Eichen. And the agent who had made the contact when they killed Callahan. If the Priory was asking, that meant they didn’t know about Mentor.

The man put his foot on the thigh wound and ground the heel, but Killean felt nothing.

“Who is left?”

If Nexus was not much of a threat, why was the Priory so concerned about wiping them out? Killean wondered. It meant the Priory was afraid. He felt a slap across his face and he blinked.

“Who is left?”

It was Killean’s turn to smile. And that was how he died.

Luis Farruco was thirty-eight years old and had survived sixteen years as a member of Cesar’s cartel. He’d risen in the ranks not because of intelligence but rather through ruthlessness and, more importantly, the fact that he had lived so long in such a dangerous occupation.

Since Cesar had begun spending more time at Saba, Farruco had taken over more of the operations in Colombia. Right now, he was pacing back and forth in the master bedroom of Cesar’s villa, the naked women on the bed of little interest to him.

The door to the room swung open and two of his men came in, holding a third between them. The man’s face was bloodied; his fingers twisted where each had been snapped one by one.

They threw the man onto the floor. The two women made no attempt to cover themselves; indeed they edged closer to the scene, predatory eyes watching, sensing Farruco’s blood lust.

Farruco squatted in front of the wounded man. “Alonzo, tell me the truth.”

Alonzo lifted his head. “I have!”

Farruco reached forward and grabbed Alonzo’s jaw. “You were the one responsible for guarding the bodies. No one can get in that freezer unless they go down the corridor that was your post. So why are you lying to me? Did you leave your post? Tell me.”

“I did nothing! I did nothing! I was there. I swear on my mother. I never left.”

“Take him to the balcony,” he ordered his guards.

He followed as they pushed Alonzo up against the steel railing overlooking the extensive front lawn. The two women were right behind Farruco.

Farruco held a hand out and one of the guards gave him a sawed-off shotgun. He pushed the large barrel under Alonzo’s jaw, jerking his head up. The man’s eyes bulged and he tried to speak, but the pressure of the steel under his chin only allowed him a garbled plea.

Farruco pulled the shotgun back slightly. “Tell me.”

Alonzo was sobbing. “I swear! I was there the entire time. No one passed.”

A line furrowed Farruco’s brow. He’d seen enough men beg for their lives, and he realized that Alonzo was telling the truth.

He pulled the trigger. Alonzo’s head exploded, spraying blood, brain, and bone out over the lawn. The headless body collapsed. Farruco indicated for the guards to toss it over the railing-he didn’t want the carpet in the bedroom to get soiled.

Even if Alonzo had been telling the truth, for the other men to see him sobbing and begging meant his effectiveness in the organization was over. Farruco handed the gun back to the guard as his cell phone buzzed. The two women were at his side, running their hands up and down his body.

“Yes?”

He stiffened as he recognized Cesar’s voice, and pushed the women away roughly. He listened and then acknowledged the order he had been given.

Flipping the phone shut, he shouted orders to his guards. Then he went to the large gun case on the wall nearest the balcony and opened it. He surveyed the various weapons inside. He could hear shouts now from the lawn as his men brought the Americans out and lined them up.

He chose an American-made M-16, enjoying the not so subtle irony, and walked out to the balcony. Looking down, he could see the prisoners squinting in the bright sunlight, most of them mesmerized by Alonzo’s body in front of them, then slowly noticing his presence above.

“Who is in charge?” Farruco yelled.

For several seconds nothing, then one of the men stepped forward. “I am.”

“Your name?”

The man said nothing. Farruco shrugged. “It does not matter. Pick one of your men.”

“For what?”

“To die.”

The man blinked. “What?”

“I am going to kill one of you. You have thirty seconds to pick who it is.”