Oppose Any Foe

“God is great,” said one of his men.

Brown winced. As a rule, he frowned on religious talk. And beautiful was a relative term. These trucks were two of the ugliest war machines Brown had ever seen. But they would pack a wallop – that much was certain.

“You like?” Brown said to Jamal.

Jamal nodded. “Very much.

“Then let’s see the money.”

The man with the heavy satchels came forward. He dropped them from his shoulders and onto the stone floor of the warehouse. He knelt and unzipped them, each in turn.

“A million dollars in cash in each bag,” Jamal said.

Brown gestured with his head to his other man, the bald one.

“Mr. Clean, check it.”

Clean knelt by the bags. He pulled random rubber-banded stacks of money from various sections of each bag. He took a small, flat digital scanner from his pocket and began to remove bills from each stack. He turned on the scanner’s UV LED light and placed the bills on the scanner window one at a time, revealing the UV security strip on each bill. Then he ran a light pen over each bill, revealing the hidden watermarks. It was a cumbersome process.

As Clean worked, Brown slipped a hand inside his jacket, touching his gun there. He made eye contact his man Jones, who nodded. If something funny was coming, it would happen now. The body language of the Arabs didn’t change – they just looked on impassively. Brown took that as a good sign. They were really here to buy the trucks.

Mr. Clean dropped a stack of money on the floor. “Good.” He picked up another stack, began riffling through it, checking bills with the device. Time crawled by.

“Good.” He dropped that stack and picked up another one. More time passed.

“Good.” He kept going.

After a while, it started to grow boring. The money was real. In ten minutes or so, Brown turned to Jamal.

“Okay, I believe you. That’s two million.”

Jamal shrugged. He opened his jacket and pulled out a large velvet purse. “Two million in cash, two million in diamonds, as we agreed.”

“Clean,” Brown said.

Mr. Clean stood and took the purse from Jamal. Clean was the money and valuables expert on this little team. He pulled a different electronic device from his pocket – a small black square with a needle tip. The device had lights on the side, and Brown knew it tested the heat dispersal and electrical conductivity of the stones.

Clean began to take stones one at a time from the bag and gently press the needle tip to them. Each time he did one, a warm tone would sound. He had done about a dozen before Brown said another word to him.

“Clean?”

Clean looked at Brown. He grinned.

“They’re good so far,” he said. “All diamonds.”

He tested another one. Then another.

Another.

Brown turned to Jamal, who was already gesturing to his men to pull the tarps and board the trucks.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Jamal.”

Jamal barely glanced at him. “Likewise.” He was preoccupied with his men, and the trucks. The next part of their journey had already begun. Getting two mobile nuclear missile launch platforms with missiles included to the Middle East was probably not an easy proposition.

Brown raised a finger. “Hey, Jamal!”

The thin man turned back to him. He made an impatient hand gesture, as if to say, “What?”

“If you get caught with those things…”

Now Jamal did smile. “I know. You and I never met.” He backed away toward the nearest of the two trucks.

Brown turned to Mr. Jones and Mr. Clean. Jones was on one knee, stuffing the money back into the heavy bag. Clean was still testing diamonds from the velvet bag, handling them one at a time, the needle device still in his hand.

They had made one whale of a score. Things were looking up finally, after the fiasco that had run Brown out of his own country. He smiled.

All in a day’s work.

And yet, something about the scene here disturbed Brown. His guys were not paying attention to their environment – they were distracted by all the money. They had let their guard down, badly. And so had he. On a different operation, that could come back to bite them. Not everyone was as trustworthy as Jamal.

He turned to look at the Arabs again.

Jamal was there, near the truck, holding one of the Uzis. Two of his guys were with him. They stood in a line, pointing their guns at Brown and his men.

Jamal smiled.

“Clean!” Brown shouted.

Jamal fired, and his men did the same. There came the ugly blat of automatic gunfire. To Brown, it seemed like they were almost spraying him with a fire hose. He felt the bullets piercing him, biting into him like stinging bees. His body did an involuntary dance, and he struggled against it, to no avail. It was almost as if the bullets were holding him up, pinning him in an upright position, making him jitter and jive.

For a moment, he lost consciousness. Everything went black. Then he was lying on his back, on the concrete floor of the warehouse. He could feel the blood flowing from him. He could feel that the floor was wet where he lay. A puddle was spreading around him. He was in a lot of pain.

He glanced over at Mr. Clean and Mr. Jones. They were both dead, their bodies riddled, their heads half gone. Only Brown was still alive.

It occurred to him that he had always been a survivor. Hell, he had always been a winner. There was no way, after more than two decades of combat, madcap adventures, and narrow escapes, that he was going to die now, like this. It was impossible. He was too good at his job. So many men had tried to kill him before now, and failed. His life wouldn’t end like this. It couldn’t.

He tried to reach inside his jacket for his gun, but his arm didn’t seem work right. Then he noticed something else. Despite all the pain, he couldn’t feel his legs.

He could feel the burning in his gut where he had been shot. He could feel the ringing pain in his head where he had smacked it on the stone floor when he fell down. He swallowed, then lifted his head and stared down at his feet. Everything was still down there and still attached – he just couldn’t feel any of it.

The bullets severed my spine.

No thought had ever caused him such horror. Valuable seconds passed as he saw his future – rolling in a wheelchair, trying to climb from the chair to the driver’s seat of his handicapped accessible car, emptying the colostomy bag that drained the shit from his useless digestive system.

No. He shook his head. There was no time for that. There was only time for action. Clean’s gun was above his head and behind him somewhere. He reached back there – it hurt just to raise his arms like that – but he couldn’t find it. He started crawling backwards, dragging his legs after him.

Something caught his eye. He looked up and here came Jamal, swaggering toward him. The bastard was grinning.