Tears of Abraham

CHAPTER NINE Bad Neighbors

KEY WEST, FLORIDA

Suzanne finished loading her convertible Mercedes, wishing at that moment she’d chosen a more practical vehicle. There wasn’t enough space. The trunk was loaded down with yellow five-gallon water jugs, canned food, and boxes of Little Debbie snacks, which had a shelf life of about a thousand years. The shelves at the stores were picked clean. She was lucky to get what she had. The front seat was crammed with bags of dog food for Beowulf and as much medicine as she could get from the local Walgreens pharmacy. She had antibiotics, painkillers, dressings, and a variety of topical ointments. She felt grossly underprepared.

She pulled onto US 1, waiting for the US Navy sailor who was directing traffic to give her the go-ahead. Sailors and marines had emerged from the base, armed with assault rifles and wearing body armor, to provide security for Key West. There were soldiers and police officers at the stores to stop looters and try to prevent price gouging.

Suzanne turned on the radio, hoping to catch some news, but instead “Born in the USA” came on, and that was all right with her. It took her more than an hour to make it home, and by the time she pulled into the crushed coral driveway, the sun had gone down. She saw that Bart had been busy. The metal hurricane shutters were bolted over the windows on the front of the house.

Mary, Bart, Ginnie, and old Bobby Ray helped to unload the car.

“We’re in good shape for now,” Bart said. “We’ve got enough water to last us a couple of weeks, probably, if we’re careful. I’ve filled the boat with fuel, and I’ve got some extra tanks filled up. The house is fairly secure. I’m thinking we should stick together here, if that’s all right with you.”

“Sure, Bart. I was kind of assuming that.”

For one thing, Bart had old wooden hurricane shutters in his hundred-year-old home. And from Suzanne’s they could utilize the boat to catch fish or get away if they had to. Bart and Mary had purchased their historic home with the idea that Mary would run a bed and breakfast. That never happened.

They were all eating steaks hot off the grill at the dining room table when the power went out. Suzanne and Bart lit candles, and they resumed the communal meal.

“This is fun,” Taylor said. “It’s like a party.”

“Yeah,” Suzanne said. “A birthday party.”

They laughed and joked, but beneath the levity, Suzanne was afraid. No more running water, no more toilets that flushed. With the windows shut, the house became hot and the air was stale and sweaty before the night was over. They heard cracks outside that might have been fireworks or gunshots. They couldn’t be sure.

After dinner, Bart called for a group meeting.

“From here on out, we need to set watches,” Bart said. “Twenty-four seven. That’s how it’s got to be. We’ll rotate in four-hour shifts. No one goes anywhere alone. We’ll split the watches between Suzanne, Bobby, and me, for now. Ginnie, I’m going to teach you to shoot tomorrow so you can help.”

“Okay,” Ginnie said. She looked afraid.

“The base would have been better,” Mary said.

“I know,” Suzanne replied. “I tried. Like I said, they would let me and Taylor on base, but no one else. My father isn’t there, I guess. I left word for him.”

“Suzanne,” Bart said, cutting his eyes at Mary, “we’re grateful you decided to stick together. Really.”

“No worries,” Suzanne said.

“Now look,” Bart went on, “I’ve got a bug-out bag set up by the back door. There’s food and water, one .38 revolver with extra rounds. If we have to leave by boat, we take that and go. When I say it’s time to bug out, nobody better argue. Got it?”

None replied, but Suzanne nodded along with the others, faces dancing with warm candle light and dark shadows.

“I think we should all sleep in the living room. We can pull mattresses from the beds and use the sofa and love seat. If the house gets breached, head for the laundry room. There’s a loaded 12-gauge behind the door.”

“Um,” Suzanne said, “that’s not a good idea. Not with Taylor here. No loaded guns where she can just pick them up.”

“Damn,” Bart said, looking sheepish. He got up and walked out of the room, returning moments later.

“I put the shotgun in the chest freezer.”

“That works.”

“What about the booze?” Bobby Ray said.

“As of now, you’re no longer a drunk,” Bart said.

“Do what?” Bobby Ray said, eyes wide and weathered face more wrinkled than normal. “That can’t be good,” he muttered.

“That’s how it’s gonna be, old friend. Sorry. We’ve got a bunch of rum. But we may need that to trade, or if worst comes to worst, we might need it for medicine.”

“Well,” Bobby said, a wry smile, “I need my medicine.”

“You’re going to have to figure out another way to cope, I’m afraid,” Bart said. “I don’t like it either. But we can’t have a member of our team passed out, not even once. If you fall off the wagon, people could get killed. If you don’t want to do that, then you can go find some other folks to hole up with. We won’t be offended. But I’d consider it a kindness if you’d stay here. We can use your help.”

“Well, I guess,” Bobby said.

In the wee hours of the morning, Suzanne heard voices outside the front door. She’d just taken over the watch from Bobby.

Bart had nailed a piece of plywood over the window on the door, so there was no way to look outside. They would have to do something about that. It sounded like two people, just outside.

Suzanne considered waking everyone up, but decided to wait. The Beretta in her hand felt solid, a reassuring heaviness to it. She’d learned to shoot as a child, one of the few things she did with her father on a regular basis when he was around. She walked up to the door and held her breath, straining to listen.

“…other houses,” she heard.

“…saw her with…” Suzanne heard only bits and pieces, but it was enough to know that these guys were casing her home. She felt violated and indignant at the same time, and with that there was anger and a bit of recklessness. She recognized it, felt the adrenaline pumping in her.

One of the things she had learned from Henry was that if there was going to be a fight, it’s best to hit first. You proceed with violence and do not stop until the threat has ended.

Beowulf stood behind her, looking intently at the door, but neither growling nor barking. Malamutes were not prone to barking.

Suzanne knocked back the dead bolt and flung the door open with her left hand, holding the Beretta in her right.

There were no streetlights, no house lights, but the stars and moon were bright under the clear winter sky and she saw the two young men standing surprised a few feet away from her. One of them held a crowbar in his hand and the other one had a baseball bat, bringing it up as if to swing.

“Whoa,” one of the men said, taking a step back and dropping the crowbar. It clattered on the marble tile outside the front door.

“Get the hell off my property,” Suzanne said. She kept her voice low, daggers in it.

“Hey, now,” said the guy with the bat. He was short and wiry. He had not dropped the bat.

“Last chance,” Suzanne said. She shifted her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger itself.

The bat fell to the ground and the two men ran away into the night and Suzanne stood in the threshold breathing hard. She wasn’t shaking, exactly. It was more like she was vibrating, her whole body tingling and amped up. It was like the way she felt when she was swimming with sharks, but even more powerful, a kind of euphoria and the feeling of being completely alive.

What worried her, standing there in the cool night outside her home, was that she saw in herself the propensity to kill another human being. Worse, she knew that a part of her had wanted to kill that man with the bat.

“For the love of God, wake me up next time that happens,” Bart said from behind her.

Suzanne jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to face him. She could not see his face, but she heard the smile and tension in his voice.

“There could have been more of them,” Bart said. “They could’ve had guns. Don’t do that again.”

“Okay,” Suzanne said. But still, she felt good. She felt like she had faced down fear and doubt within herself and come away knowing something vital. “You’re right.”

She finished her watch and then tossed and turned until dawn. She wondered where Henry was, whether he’d gotten the divorce papers. She prayed he hadn’t, that he still loved her and would be coming home to her and Taylor.

The sound of jets tearing the sky kept her awake, and then Taylor was asking for breakfast and why she couldn’t watch Elmo on TV, and Suzanne pushed herself out of the couch and decided sleep would have to wait.

HOUSTON, TEXAS

Reince Blackaby felt his confidence coming back. The Directors seemed to be willing to cut him some slack, or perhaps they merely wanted him to finish damage control; either way, he was still breathing, and that was a little surprising.

He had assured “Mr. Smith” that any incriminating information had been erased. Blackaby wiped his hard drives, shredded paper documents. The colonel that had become a security risk had been eliminated, along with the rest of that particular unit.

Blackaby issued the orders to commence operations himself. The two Wolf Pack units, Alpha and Bravo, were one of Blackaby’s strokes of genius. The Directors had required a way to control certain things within the United States utilizing methods that exceeded blackmail and media persuasion and public policy. Sometimes, boots on the ground were a necessity.

Blackaby had exerted the full influence of the Directors to form the two units right under the noses of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and every branch of the military. The government itself did the hard work for him; the military provided recruiting, training, and physical assets, believing that the Wolves worked exclusively for them. It was a shell game of magnificent proportions, taking advantage of the cumbersome bureaucracy and convoluted chain of command. In fact, the majority of the operations conducted by the Wolves were legitimately ordered by the government. It was perfect. This was also part of the problem, though, because the dogs seemed to have turned on him. A little too smart for their own good.

Now, Blackaby could see through his satellite feeds, that the Directors were once again making money hand over fist in the international exchanges. His failure to contain the situation in the US had a potential silver lining. They would be dumping US dollars, buying Chinese yuan, and signing defense contracts for overseas production at a feverish pace. With zero oversight from Congress, there was no telling what the Directors could accomplish within a short amount of time. When the dust settled, they might net trillions of dollars. They would make money rebuilding the country. In a few months, they would start buying US currency again and make even more money when the dollar increased in value. He hoped his superiors would look at it that way. They’d taken a hit, but in the end, they’d make a killing.

Reince considered trying to contact his wife, who would be in Canada by now, but he decided against it. The cabin in Ontario contained a satellite phone for emergencies only. If the Directors were tracking Reince, one phone call could potentially give away her position, and he did not want to give them the leverage. His plan now was to disappear.

He’d stockpiled enough money in offshore accounts to last him and his children and his children’s children. He was done playing Master of the Universe. He used his radio to contact his pilot, who was waiting on the roof with a helicopter.

He stood and swept his gaze around his office for the last time, bidding farewell to his life’s work. The skyline was beautiful around him and the sun was golden and clear reflecting from the glass on the downtown skyscrapers. Reince Blackaby blinked one last time before everything went dark and he never heard the shot, never felt the round that spattered his brains across the window in a mist of pink and then there was the sound of the metal balls clicking back and forth in a perfect and predictable display of action, reaction, and the transference of energy.

Jack Stryker unscrewed the suppressor from his weapon and holstered the 9mm under his suit coat. The pompous windbag he had just terminated lay facedown behind the desk. Stryker walked around the desk and turned the man over with his boot. The round had entered at the base of his brain and exited through the jaw, leaving a mangled mess, then ricocheted from the bulletproof glass.

Stryker sat down and began to cull through Blackaby’s computer files. Wiped clean; no surprise there. He rifled through Blackaby’s suit coat and pockets, hoping to find a flash drive, but there was nothing. The leather briefcase contained a burner phone and a yellow legal pad with rows of handwritten numbers on a single page. He planted tiny charges on each of the computer drives. Stryker grunted and grabbed the briefcase in his left hand and made his way out of the office, headed toward the stairs and the rooftop.

Stryker felt nothing. He was neither satisfied nor remorseful, and he was self-aware enough to understand why. Jack Stryker knew he was a sociopath, and he was at peace with that. He did not go out of his way to inflict harm upon others, was not a sadist like some of the men he worked with. Taking a human life meant no more to him than stepping on an ant or closing a door. Stryker thought of himself as a survivor. He was a predator when he needed to be.

He had been an outstanding soldier, but had washed out of Delta Force selection when he failed a battery of psych tests. When a general contacted him out of the blue with the opportunity to work with the Bravo Pack, Stryker had been almost, but not quite, happy. He had been with the Bravo for five years; for the first three he was a squad leader and SAW gunner, carrying out missions primarily in the Northeast. He laughed and joked with the men, fought bravely and competently, and faked his way through in the way he always did. There were those on his team who considered him a brother, not knowing that Jack could not possibly reciprocate the feeling. He was a chameleon, adept at blending in while always being somehow apart. There was an essential stillness about him that some found unsettling. They had nicknamed him “Frost.”

Jack Frost, Frosty. Iceman. That’s me.

Jack Stryker had long ago given up on humanity, both within himself and the world as a whole. People were bags of meat walking around waiting to die. There was no purpose, no hope, no sadness. Existence was everything. His back bore the scars of an orphan who has been in scores of foster homes. There were cigarette burns on his arms and legs, craters on the surface of a smashed soul.

He’d realized he was broken after he killed an older foster kid, and at first he worried about it. For some reason, any time he did a job, he would think about that kid even now, a memory unbidden flashing before him. Paul Hewes, a name Jack Stryker would never forget, was a stocky seventeen-year-old, perverse and cruel and twisted. Jack was only twelve when he shoved his nemesis from the top of an abandoned rock quarry. Jack went back to the house, feigning tears and telling a tall tale, waiting to be discovered.

What happened after that, after Jack confessed to his priest, broke him irrevocably. There was blackmail and coercion and unspeakable pain and guilt. Jack could not smell incense without gagging even all these years later. The priest was the next person Jack Stryker killed; he was fifteen by then.

For two years now, Stryker had been an assassin, and he found this suited him. He worked alone, answered only to disembodied voices on the phone or computer.

Of late, the Directors were giving Stryker an increasing amount of authority and latitude. He was beginning to understand his employers, and with this knowledge came admiration. They were like him, albeit more influential.

He considered this mission a success. His primary objective was to eliminate Reince Blackaby. Stryker had been monitoring Blackaby’s communications for a day, hoping to find some evidence that he had betrayed the Directors, but the man was careful and smart.

On the roof, Stryker nodded to the pilot and stepped into the waiting bird. Using his Integrated Infantry Combat System, he linked to command and control.

“It is finished,” he sent. “Awaiting orders.” He kept the notepad to himself. He had a feeling it would become important.

The helicopter lifted from the rooftop and Stryker headed east and a small part of him wished he could feel something other than the vibration of the aircraft.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Leon Smith hunkered down in his dark one-bedroom apartment all night, afraid for his family. The gunfire just beyond his doors continued all night long. He heard the boom of shotguns, the crack of pistols, and once, a burst from an automatic weapon. That these things were technically illegal had no effect on the gangs.

He’d slept in his easy chair facing the door, the revolver from his dead boss in his hand. Leon’s children and his wife slept fitfully, all piled up into one bed. He could hear them tossing and turning.

Leon hadn’t heard any police sirens. There were no rescue vehicles coming to help people. This part of Lower Antioch was a place that the cops avoided to begin with. It seemed they’d written it off entirely now. There were just screams and shouts and the sound of gunfire and things breaking and shattering.

A Laotian gang had taken over this sprawling apartment complex last year. The Blood Spiders, they called themselves. A bunch of teenagers and twenty-something kids with nothing to live for but drugs, violence, and the tenuous brotherhood of being a part of a pack.

The sun was coming up, and Leon knew he needed to get his family out. He had nowhere to go. His world was contained within these walls, everything and everyone who mattered. His wife had a sister in LA and a brother in Atlanta, but Leon had no intention of trying for either of those cities. He wanted to get out into the country. Maybe drive for the Rocky Mountains. The more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded to him.

He put the weapon in the waistband of his jeans and began to pack in the semidarkness of his meager apartment. He picked up a teddy bear, Little Eddie’s favorite possession.

Leon felt the kind of shame a man cannot show, and the threadbare couch and bare walls and the gunfire outside accused him of being failure as a husband and father; in his most important job, to provide a safe place for his family, he had fallen miserably short.

Clutching the tattered bear he’d won at a fair for his boy, Leon knew he’d let everyone down. He raged against the poverty and the racism and the feeling of being stuck in quicksand from the time he got out of bed in the morning until the moment he shut off the lights. His children deserved better; they deserved a chance, and it seemed they would never get one. This complex was a shithole before the country started to kill itself, and he hadn’t been able to find a way to extricate himself from it. There was never enough money. There were not enough jobs. He had been living hand-to-mouth since he’d gotten out of the army, and they’d all been drowning in slow motion, gasping for air and hope.

From the unit next store came a sudden burst of shouts and the sound of a door being kicked in. A woman was screaming. Leon knew the matriarch in passing; a kind, churchgoing lady raising her grandkids. The two older boys had dropped out of school. The young girl, Leisha, played with Leon’s boys. He heard the child howling through the thin walls, the grandmother yelling for intruders to get out. Leon guessed it was some kind of gang-related thing. Retaliation or a drug grab or guns. The kind of thing that went on with frequency in poverty-stricken areas all over the country and got ignored by the media because it was not sexy violence. If a pretty white woman kills her husband, that’s national news, and the trial will become a media circus. But when poor minority kids kill each other, no one cares beyond the grieving families.

Leon put the teddy bear on the easy chair, checked the .357, and went outside.

“Where they at?” one punk was saying. He was small, wearing a red bandana on his head. Pants sagging halfway down his butt. He and another kid, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty-five, were standing just inside the doorway to Leon’s neighbor’s apartment.

“I don’t know. They ain’t here. Now you get on outta my house. Go on GIT! Both of ya.” Leisha was screaming in the background.

That might have been the end of it. Maybe they would have left on their own without hurting anyone.

One of the gang members held a sawed-off shotgun. He turned to face Leon.

“Mind you business, old man,” said the young man. His mouth curled into a sneer. He pointed the shotgun at Leon’s chest. “Unless you want some of this.”

“Put a cap in his ass,” said the other punk. Eager. It was all a joke. A video game.

Leon stepped forward until the shotgun was almost touching his chest. He looked down at the dark-skinned man-boy in front of him. One of the Spiders.

“I’ll blow a hole through you, Army. You don’t scare me. Now give me your piece. I know you strapped.” He laughed, a high-pitched, girlish laugh. Leon wondered if he always laughed like that.

“You leave that man alone!” said Grandmother.

“Go on outta here,” Leon said. The gun in his waistband. He hadn’t come out the door holding it because he was afraid of what the gun would do in his hands.

“Shoot him! He crazy!”

“Leave. Now.” Leon bored into the kid with his eyes. He’d do it. Right here, shoot this damn kid in his big, mean mouth.

“You see this gun? Right?” The stubby barrel touched Leon’s chest.

Maybe it was because he had already killed a man, or maybe it was the feeling of failure that was in him. But Leon, at that moment, did not care much about anything. Maybe that’s how the punks felt too.

Leon moved with unhurried fluidity, drawing the revolver from his waistband and placing the barrel of the nickel-plated .357 against the punk’s forehead. He put his left hand on the stock of the shotgun and pointed its muzzle away from his body. The punk stood staring at him in surprise and fear.

“That’s what I thought,” Leon said, taking possession of the shotgun. “If I see you again, I’ll drop you on the spot. I don’t give a damn if your momma was a crackhead and your daddy whipped your ass with coat hangers. You got no excuse being the punk-assed bitch you are.”

Leon pressed the barrel against the boy who claimed to be a man’s temple. “You mess with me or anyone around here again, I’ll find you. You send your ‘posse’ or your ‘crew’ or your ‘spiders’ or whatever the fuck you call yourselves because you’re too much of a pussy to do it yourself, you’d best hope they kill me. ’Cause I’ll find you. You get me?”

“That dude’s crazy,” one of them muttered as they scurried down the hall, grabbing sagging pants so they didn’t fall down completely, trying not to trip over themselves as they slunk away.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Grandmother said. “But thank you.”

“You should leave,” Leon said. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Where is there to go?”

“To the mountains.”