Force Lines

“How’s that?”

“High explosives tend to incinerate the agent before it can be fully, effectively dispersed.”

Black Dog chuckled, glanced over his shoulder at his men as if he were stuck in the presence of a fool.

Amarshar bristled, his grip tightening around the assault rifle. “You find what could potentially prove a colossal waste of money on my part amusing?” he growled as one of the operatives, his cheek swollen with chewing tobacco, spit on the ground.

“Fear not. The charges have been shaped—engineered, if you will—to prevent just what you fear from happening. What you’ll get is a muffled pop, not much more than a smoke bomb going off, but with just enough force to disperse the agent in a vapor that is nearly undetectable to the naked eye. As advertised, I may add. Now, before your men there,” he said as Amarshar noticed the lid opening to reveal two neat rows of what appeared to be aluminum canisters, “start fooling around with that stuff like it’s nothing more than a handful of dung patties, I suggest you make that call, so me and mine can be on our way. One more thing.”

Amarshar turned as one of his men hustled forward with the portable sat link. He held out a hand, a silent gesture that stopped the warrior in his tracks.

“For the full desired effect, I suggest you figure out which way the wind is blowing before you go lobbing around those canisters.” Black Dog chuckled. “And I’d strongly urge jumping into one of those HAZMAT suits before you go much further examining that merchandise. They’re sealed up good with some state-of-the-art alloy I’ve never heard of, but you never know.”

Amarshar shook his head at the men peering his way. They stood quickly, nearly jumping back two or three feet as if they’d just stumbled onto a nest of vipers.

“That’s right, jump back, Jack. That stuff,” Black Dog said, “is virulent enough to maybe kill every man, woman, child and camel in this country. And, once again, my Iranian friend, that’s just as advertised.”

“So you had previously mentioned. Which leads me to my next concern. What about the vaccine?”

“Well, as I also previously mentioned, once my own agenda is accomplished you’ll get your magic fix.”

Amarshar snorted. “You’ll forgive my suspicion and my impatience in that regard, being as I have already delivered into your hands fifteen of my own warriors.”

Black Dog had to have sensed he was stepping toward the edge of an invisible precipice as he glanced at the armed Iranians taking a step or two closer to his left flank. “Take it easy. You’re asking me when will it happen?”

Amarshar glanced at his men, smiled. “The man is a mind-reader,” he said.

Black Dog’s voice turned to glacier ice as he said, “Soon. It will happen real soon. That’s about all I can tell you. So, I would suggest you keep in touch with your chat room in Mashhad and inform them they’ll want to stay glued to al Jazeera for breaking news.”

Amarshar paused, fighting down his rising anger, wondering just how far he should push this contest of wills. He nodded, grunted, hoping both the gesture and noise came across as a man in charge but who could accept the enemy’s terms in a show of mercy. In truth, he found himself trusting the infidels even less than their first meeting, even less certain now which direction precisely the future as he envisioned it would take, and what that future was. Yes, they were on his hallowed ground, such as it was, they had come to him via cutouts, granted, and he had agreed, more or less, to their terms, but…

But what?

Was he afraid for his own personal safety, now that they had delivered what they had promised, at least in terms of the agent? That much made sense, as he considered how they were holding out on what could eventually prove the ultimate lifesaver, if and when, and where and how he chose to release the agent, and on whom.

Amarshar decided to let the immediate future take care of itself, one way or another, and snapped his fingers for the sat link to be brought to him.

“CRYING RACISM has become the hoped-for trump card of the coward.”

“Who you callin’ a coward!?”

“The race card has become the last refuge of the wicked and the guilty in this age of spineless political correctness and where near everyone in this society seems to be running around bewailing how they are victims of even the smallest perceived slights.”

“Who you callin’ wicked!? Who you callin’ guilty!?”

“You dare on national television inquire about cowardice? You dare ask about wickedness and guilt?”

And Jason Hall groaned, more out of pain from the increasingly persistent nausea and burning knots in his guts than revulsion over the fireworks just getting touched off on “The Bigger Picture.” Some other night, and the former U.S. Marine would be front and center, planted in his easy chair, glued to the television set for the full hour as the moderator, Jim Bright, danced through his charade as peace-maker while upholding his image, the modern King Solomon on the side of right and just, as he nightly self-anointed his role before lighting the fuse to loose cannons on both sides of the political fence. Or, in this instance, lobbing grenades down both sides of the racial-social spectrum.

For another few moments, Hall watched, despite his best intentions. As usual, the thought occurred to him that America had become a land of endless, needless babble, ranting and raving, on and off the television. Fanning the flames of division and hostility by rumor, gossip, detraction and slander, not to mention who could shout the loudest, had become something of a national sport, so much so that it was a rare piece of pure gold when Hall stumbled across one man in a thousand of civil tongue. As a decorated war hero Hall’s personal creed was, “Speak little, endure all.”

Ah, but where to be found such a pillar of decency and courage these days? he wondered. True, it was perhaps easy enough for him to keep in fine-tuned character, living as he did, alone, at the east edge of Flathead Lake, far removed from the bustling tourist traps at Polson and Bigfork. The two-story stone-and-wood home had been built from scratch, due in no small part to his father’s inheritance. No circling buzzard where inheriting the hard-earned life savings of blood was concerned, and unlike several roustabouts he’d known from the service and who had squandered the small fortunes of inheritance on fast-and-loose living, he had charted another, and what had looked to be a wise course.

A personal crusade, in fact, he anticipated would any night now bring the wolves baying to his doorstep.

Hall listened to the wilderness beyond the deck overlooking the placid waters. He thought he heard something, a faint, distant noise that wanted to set off warning bells in tried-and-true instincts. Anything—man or beast—could be out there, he knew, both real and mythical. Something like 128 miles of wooded shoreline, Flathead Lake was the biggest body of fresh water his side of the Mississippi. Rumors abounded in these parts about the Flathead Nessie, in fact locals dedicated lengthy cult ceremonies to this alleged relative of the Loch Ness Monster, though no one had yet to make a sighting of the creature, much less catch even a fleeting shadow of the thing on film.

He shut down his laptop, picked up the Colt Commando assault rifle leaning against the side of his desk, but didn’t budge from his chair. He reached for the remote control, one eye and ear still trained on “The Bigger Picture,” the thought crossing his mind that he was daring fate by not scrambling to his feet, malingering as he listened to the verbal Hellfire barrage.

They were here.

What remained to be seen was exactly who “they” were.

The shorter version of the M-16, bought at a local gun show and modified by his own hand for fully automatic, was up and leading his charge a second before the light show hit the roof. Braking in midstride, he didn’t hear the familiar whirlwind of rotor wash until a few heartbeats later.

Somehow he moved and found the gas mask at the edge of the desk, tugged it on. The suddenness and sheer audacity of the attack told him nothing less than black ops were hitting the roof, as he made out the running drumbeats of combat boots above. Squinting, he slipped the open nylon satchel around his shoulder, the bag stuffed with spare clips and an assortment of flash-bang, tear gas and fragmentation grenades he’d likewise recently collected across a state that had proved itself an arsenal that could just about match anything the United States armed forces had on hand. The rotor wash finally descended, full blast in his ears, providing nasty silent penetration, as it all but covered the enemy’s moves.

At least by sound.

Three, then four shadows, framed against the curtains and armed with subguns clearly nozzled with fat sound suppressors, were crouched and hustling down the deck when Hall hit the trigger and raked the moving silhouettes with a long burst of autofire. For an angry second, as the shadows dropped out of sight, he wondered if he’d only blasted out the windows, shredding fabric. A moment later failure was confirmed as the canister sailed into the study, trailing a fat dragon’s breath of billowing smoke.

He turned about-face, moving for the open door, adjusted his body to hose down the visible armed breaching point to his left wing, thinking about cover, when he sensed their approach from the living room.

Hall had to get the truth out to the world at large. It was something to fight for.

And he would do it his way, the Jason Hall version.

He determined the entertainment stand with stereo and giant speakers made for as respectable cover under the circumstances as he could hope for. He was delving into his war bag for a frag bomb, swinging his aim toward the living room and capping off three or four rounds when something speared deep into his left arm.

He held on, shooting for the ceiling on the fall, bellowing out a curse even as he knew he was finished.

It could have been two seconds or two hours, but he felt the mask ripped off, the weapon and war bag stripped away by angry hands.

So much for his way.

Shadows and voices swirled around him as Hall stared through the mist.

“Where did you find it?”

“Behind his Bible, where you said it would be, sir.”

The CD. They knew, but somehow he’d already suspected as much. Given the sudden disappearance of the others, recalling before their vanishing acts their own dire predictions and suspicions, how all of them were aware what the defenders of national security were capable of…

He was shuddering up on an elbow, ready to fire off a battery of questions when the fever seemed to balloon behind his eyes like a living fire, a sickness so sudden and shocking it was all he could do to manage to hold back the greasy spears of molten liquid ready to burst, one end to the other orifice. He fell on his back, outstretched in a sloppy crucifixion, a groan of pure misery floating away into the white light.

They were still talking, when he made out a pair of black boots and matching pants, heard a lighter clacking, smelled the cigarette smoke. Something then rattled and was dumped on his chest. It was his rosary.

“You’ve got about thirty minutes before what’s in your bloodstream burns out your brain, ten minutes, unfortunately, before you’re swimming in your own waste. Still, that’s plenty of time, Mr. Hall, pain and all the evil filth about to spill out of you aside, to say all five decades before the end.”