Strannix drank, and Sam watched him drink.

For Sam Gerard, it was rare to lose control of a situation, and this time was no different. He could hold his liquor just as well as his brother, but had slowed at bottle number four of the beer that he and Bill had been retrieving from the cellar, one by one, since earlier that evening. Somehow, he’d managed to slide most of the bottles across the table to Strannix, who drank them more easily as time went by. He hadn’t realized it at first, but he’d figured out that, by the time Strannix was nearly blind and talking fluidly about most anything that came to mind, he was looking for traces of the boy that had been his brother Eliot.

Now, the table was well stocked with empty and full bottles alike, and the poker cards were gone. Strannix was drinking solemnly, his eyes focused on the back of his mind, somewhere in the dark, anywhere but in the little cabin. Sam’s chair creaked as he leaned back in it, a warm, half-drank beer in his hand. He was loath to break the silence. There was something about it that seemed to keep his own memories quiet.

“I don’t remember much. What I do is broken into pieces. I have these crazy dreams. I don’t even know if they’re true. Flickerin’ candle light an’ knives an’ some old Hindu man tellin' me t' be still while his son cuts me up..." Strannix took a long, thirsty drink and finished his bottle. "It won't let me alone."

"What does Deb think about it?"

"Hell... she don't know nothin' about 'em. 'S why I stay downstairs s'damn much."

"I thought you were--"

"Yeah, Dawg, I still do some work here an' there. Mostly for *your* bosses. But since ol' Georgie W. hit office, it's been funny 'round work these days. He's been briefed, just like all the other pres'dents 'bout what our office's all about, but all he wants t'do is send my boys off on wild goose chases. Hell, he sent an operative t'go to China t'pick up that pilot of the plane that knocked into the Chinese passenger plane. That's not our fuckin' department! Waste of good resources 'n time! Hell, he wants t' send *me* off on some of 'em, but I've been declinin'..."

Sam noticed that Strannix hadn't answered the question he'd posed to him earlier, about the funny looking scar on his abdomen. He wasn't sure if it was a deliberate attempt not to answer the question, or if it was the liquor leading him in strange directions.

"Now he wants t' send me to New Delhi, over some mundane shit or another, an' hell..."

"Not sure that you'd want to go back to India?" India being where Strannix had sustained his scar, he knew that much.

"No, not that. I ain't afraid 'a nothin'." Strannix popped another beer open and took a healthy draught. Sam shook his head, suppressing a grin.

"I wanna take the Punk," Strannix continued, and stopped.

"Why in hell would you want to--"

There was a flash of light, quick, across his line of sight, and then a thin, red line blinked across Strannix' throat.

"Down!" Strannix shouted and kicked Sam's chair, throwing him to the floor as the window above their heads exploded, and he swore later he could hear a phone ringing in the distance. Pain roared through Sam's head as it connected with something behind him, then everything went dark and out like a light.

"Shit!" Through clenched teeth, Cole spat. Both his targets had been sitting in his line of sight for hours, and he'd waited until they both looked drunk enough to be slow to react to his shots. Not that a man of his expertise needed any help, he could fire two rounds in the space of a second and a half, but one never took chances when you took this long to set up the kill.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature usually throws into the mix and gives you a kick in the ass, just to make life interesting. Tonight was one of those nights.

Two quick shots to the head apiece. Quick, clean, efficient, quiet. And he'd be free of his contract, and of the man who had threatened to destroy him so many years ago.

Ruined. By a goddamn bird, who had decided that his head was an effective place to settle for the night. It had scared the shit out of him, and he had missed his shot. Not only that, he'd alerted his prey of his intentions. They'd seen the laser sight, and he'd shot reflexively. He thought he might have gotten one of them, but this meant that he needed to move. Now.

But quietly. He didn't want to make himself a target. And who knew who was out there, doing the same?

"Just about right," I said. There was really nothing else *to* say, but I knew I had to for Jade. She'd never been to Bill's house in Lubbock.

"What? What are you talking about? It's a damn arsenal in here!" Jade was in the adjoining room, likely pouring over Bill's collection of weapons. I'd only seen the mess once, and I'm sure I hadn't seen them all.

The unfinished sub-basement of Bill's office was eerily familiar to me, and would have been to Beth, as well. Four computers sat on a crowded c-shaped desk. Only one was running, and I figured it was the mainframe. A phone with several open lines rested between it and the next machine in line. Fluorescent bulbs glowed overhead. A small refrigerator held bare necessities: bottled water, a wedge of slightly moldy cheese, and a couple of bottles of Heineken. An army cot with a solitary pillow and blanket completed the scene.

Damnit, he'd been sleeping down here.

Not that I hadn't figured that out. But I had pictured him sleeping on his couch in the office above, or snoozing in the big leather chair at his desk, or...

Well, damnit, anything other than this shit.

Not that I was pissed... I didn't know what I was.

"Deb, come in here!"

I followed Jade's voice into the next room. Even though I'd seen Lubbock, it still stunned me when I saw the crates of well-oiled guns and stacks of boxes of ammunition.

"Deb, I've never seen so much..."

"Yeah, I know. You'd swear to God he was waiting for a war to erupt."

"No... the money..."

Oh yeah, the money.

A tall metal cabinet in the corner held the money. Not only piles of US currency, but deutche marks, yen, franks, pounds, and a mostly worthless pile of rubles among others I couldn't hope to identify.

"Typical."

Jade finally turned to me. "Really? But you said you didn't know this was down here."

"I didn't know, but it doesn't surprise me. He had a basement like this in Lubbock. This looks like a larger version..."

The phone rang, and I jumped. Not the one upstairs, but the one on the desk, in the room.

"Shit. Exit stage right... right?" Jade started past me, but I stopped her.

"Hold on. I know who it is... I think..."

"Deb, no way, it could be Boris Badinov, or George W., or... well, goddamnit!"

"Strannix Sanitarium. May I commit you?"

"Deb!" Jade hissed. She was making desperate cutting motions with her hands.

"Punk! Goddamn it--"

I calmly set the handset into the cradle and grinned to Jade.

"It's okay. I've done this before. He'll be fine..."

Strannix had been in a black mood since the night of the snowstorm. They’d been seated across from one another at the kitchen table, talking trash, comparing scars. They’d been … groping… for the common ground they shared as men, as brothers. For a time, Sam had been ready to believe they might have been close to finding it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sam had noticed a tiny red dot flash briefly across Bill’s throat. Nobody’d had to tell either one of them what a laser sight looked like on the business end. Strannix had kicked Sam’s chair out from under him and rolled across the kitchen. Sam had slammed his head on the oven handle and gone out like a light. When he came to, the wind was whistling through a neat hole in the living room plate glass, and Strannix was gone.

Sam moved slowly towards the window, to block the hole. It had annoyed him. What was this bullshit, you took a smack on the back of the head and your entire body acted like it wanted to punch out. He’d been able to think of a time not so very long before when such a fall would have been just about enough to piss him off. He’d have bounced off the floor like he was spring loaded, ready to tear someone a new asshole.

Strannix had returned a short time later, jeans wet to the knees, hair plastered to his head. He’d flung off his jacket and kicked his boots into a corner. Strannix had said nothing. When Sam offered him a blast of Jack, he’d refused in a curt voice. Something about it had been almost nervous, so Sam had tended to ignore the shortness of his reply, in hopes that the other man would relax. But it hadn’t happened.

It was a talent Eliot had always had, the ability to button his lip and keep it buttoned no matter what. Sam could only imagine how he’d had to refine it to survive in an NVA camp, but even as a boy, Eliot had always been the one to have along when you were doing questionable shit.

Sam took a moment to lean on his shovel. It was getting toward dark and the trees on the mainland had begun to meld into one line of blackness dividing the white snow and the deepening blue of the sky. The snowmobile was nearly free of its snow bank and when it was, they could leave. Bill sat on the other snowmobile, alert, a high powered handgun resting on his knee. And silent.

Sam thought back to when he and the smartass behind him were kids. Eliot had always laughed at him, kicked his ass, called him a boy scout, George Washington. Sam wasn’t the guy you took along if you were going out to County Road 27 to see how fast you could take the curves, or if you were going to try out your fake ID in Columbus, or to go to Kentucky to buy M-80’s which you would light and toss into the old rock quarry to blow up fish. It wasn’t that Sam didn’t like to drive fast or get shitfaced, and the last thing he was worried about was a bunch of trash fish, but the adults in their lives frowned upon those pursuits. They all knew who to ask about it. Confront Samuel P., that fine young man, and he would sing like a canary.

Eliot, on the other hand, could be trusted with anything. He was no more a liar than Sam. He just never talked.

Sam looked behind himself at Eliot-Bill, now. Still close-mouthed, utterly trustworthy. What had happened to his *brother?* Where had Eliot gone?

Sam recalled one episode particularly. He’d been fifteen, Eliot just turned fourteen. The two of them had been with the usual gang of idiots, crouched in a clearing behind a field of new wheat, watching that useless fuck Bobby Morris light farts. After a while Jeff Stern decided he could let one off better than Bobby, and pretty soon everybody was at it.

Phil DeMarco had happened on them and, happy assholes that they were, they’d all insisted he join them. Phil had been known for more than just size and stamina on the football field. Big Phil was the guy who could fart on command.

Phil had burned the hair off his ass. Stu Johnson had said something stupid about a flamethrower and then they’d noticed that Phil’s incredible blast had set the wheat field on fire.

The wheat was green and there had been a lot of smoke. Most of them had been busy trying to drag Phil’s fricasseed ass into the underbrush and Eliot had been the only one to try to contain the flames. Ultimately the farmer had summoned the fire department and, as the water truck pulled into the field, Eliot had ditched along with the rest of them. But he’d been seen, and since everybody knew the Gerard boys, it hadn’t taken the Chief of Police and the Chief of the Fire Department long to show up at their house.

They’d sat there for two hours, Eliot standing in front of a tribunal consisting of the two chiefs plus the man Eliot was really worried about, Michael Gerard. They had asked, demanded, begged for, threatened, yelled, and still Eliot had refused to give up the names of those involved. It stood to reason that one skinny teenager, who admitted he’d been in the clearing lighting farts, couldn’t have burned up an entire wheat field, got his pants up in time to try to stamp the fire out and still try to run away. The Police Chief knew it, the Fire Chief knew it, Michael Gerard knew it. But Eliot wouldn’t crack, and finally they all gave up. The was nothing anybody could do to *make* him talk and nothing anybody could do to punish him once he’d set himself on a course.

Satisfied with his work, he thrust the blade of the shovel into the snow bank, then slid into the saddle. The engine started easily, purred. Strannix started his own, settling his polarized goggles over his black eyes.

One last try. "Who in the hell is out there?"

"No one. Hopefully."

Strannix gunned the engine and took off. Sam kicked his own into gear and followed, keeping a sharp eye out for the unknown baddies that his brother was, for better or for worse, determined to guard him against.

Cole forced his eyes open against the glare of the snow and the sun above his head. His entire body was freezing, and he could feel the pain crawling through his body like an ancient lizard that hides in the crevices of his bones. Hello again, little man...

Strannix had tracked him, hours passing as they slid through the snow on their bellies, guns cocked and all senses sharp and attuned. Cole had doubled back around where he thought Strannix would have been, on a crevice above the other man, and had been rewarded with the dark shape of a man below him. Through the scope, he had just enough time to see Strannix roll over and see Cole as well, caught at cross-purposes. They both fired and rolled, and Cole had no idea if he hit the other man. He didn't know that he'd been hit until he'd tried to move, and subsequently had passed out.

Now, lying on his back, staring up through the trees, the sunlight biting his eyes in half, he knew Strannix had departed. The sun had moved by several hours, and it had to be mid-day. He was still alive, and it was bone dead quiet.

He closed his eyes, and the sun jumped again. Evening, and his bones were ice. He could smell dogs.

Dogs. Men. Feet packing the snow. A beam of light moved over his body, then settled on his face. The shape of a man floated above him. He could smell the leather of the man's boots, and the blood on his clothing.

"Fucked up again, didn'tcha Cole?"

TO BE CONTINUED...