Chronicles of War
Part 1: Way of the Storm
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"Zap the son of a bitch again!"
- Guns & Roses, "Coma"
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Chapter 22: Synthesis
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Ed stared at the innocuous panel and its flashing lights with a look of
strenuous concentration. He longed for it to reveal its secrets, to give
off some sign that it was okay to touch it, or even push some buttons,
flip some switches, without the bombs it was surely wired to blasting
him and his friends to kingdom come and back.
He stared until James nudged his arm and held out his left wrist--bereft
of a watch, mysteriously--like a signboard. "Today, please."
Ed sighed and shook his head. "I'm not really the guy to ask about
this."
James looked like a boy who'd just killed his pet hamster. "But you knew
how to make homemade dynamite in high school! You made the television
speak in the tongues! You made a detonator out of a pocket watch and
cafeteria food! I thought you'd be the expert...shit!"
The guard shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry, dude."
"No, no, it's okay."
Kat finally managed to stop staring mutely at Ed and force words out of
her mouth. "You knew how to make dynamite when we were in high school?"
Sheepishly, "Yeah."
"Right on, dude!" Carl exclaimed, pumping his fist. Ed exchanged high
fives with the Marine.
James looked at the woman over his folded arms. "Lay off him, Kat. Those
were hard times for all of us."
Kat managed to erase most of the surprise from her face. "You're right."
That's been happening too much, she thought. "Ed, I'm sorry."
"No offense taken, Kat."
"But what do we do now?"
"I have," James paused dramatically, staring over the top of Jimmy's
head as if looking into the future. "A plan!"
"Is it better than this one?" Jimmy asked.
Kat turned on the radio and brought it to her ear. "This is Kate, how
are things going there?"
A wavering voice answered hesitantly. "This is...is Cynthia. We're
fine."
"No terrorists?"
"No, none," Cynthia replied.
Kat looked at the small box, finding little good to say about it. "We've
found the bomb. We'll be heading back in just a few minutes."
"Yeah, this field trip sucks," James quipped.
Kat rolled her eyes as she made an addendum to the woman over the radio.
"You sure it's been quiet?"
"No. No sign of a-anything. Except for the...for the gun sounds, it's
like the place is deserted."
Kat's brow developed a small crease. It was indistinguishable from the
dozen other small creases that sat around it. "I understand. Thank you,
Cynthia."
"Y-you're welcome."
"At last, my ambitions bear fruit," James announced as Kat clipped the
radio to her jeans. Every eye turned from the bomb's magical box of
wires to lock onto the assassin.
"You planned to eliminate them all from the start, didn't you?" Jimmy
said, as if he were peering directly into James' brain. "Tapping into
the cameras just made that task laughably easy."
Carl switched his gaze of shock to Jimmy, turning it into a look
reserved for lawyers circling an accident victim. "He's going to
liquidate them."
"Actually," James paused and pulled out his phone. "I'm going to call
the police."
"Oh no you don't," Kat barked, "I want an explanation."
James leaned into her personal space. "Don't you mean a justification?
You already got your explanation."
"Then give me a justification," she said, standing resolute.
"I'm a murderer. Can I get on with my call?" he said simply.
Kat felt like grinding her teeth together. Her fists were so tightly
clenched that her bones felt like they were fusing under the pressure.
"I'll take that as a yes," said James.
He dialed.
----------
Limbaugh activated their recording equipment and nodded to Dan. The
negotiator answered cheerfully.
"Hello, is this James?"
"One and the same, Dan. Listen, the Bon Marche is clear."
"Clear? What do you mean?"
"Why does--does everyone need a damn--look, I killed the terrorists in
here, okay? They're all dead."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, we're all fine. We found the bomb too, and we're not going to
touch it. We're going to leave it right here and go get the rest of
them."
"You're going to get the rest of them?"
"I don't mean to offend, Dan, but these guys aren't here to negotiate.
I'm hunting them down, flushing them out, and executing them. Once
they're out of the way, we stand a much better chance of disarming the
bombs and living to see the sunset."
Dan ignored the sensation of two ice-cold fists closing around his
stomach and forced his mouth to move. His vocal cords sounded like he
was trying to throw his voice to the surface of the moon. "It's still
cloudy out. Nobody can see the damn sun."
"Yeah," James affected a tone of mock-sadness. "Some days it just
doesn't pay to get out of bed. So, we're going, okay. If your guys see
anyone back in the Bon, ring me. Got it?"
"I got it. We'll be in touch, okay?"
"Tell the FBI I said hi." He hung up immediately, not giving Dan a
chance to fling back a fitting response.
Questions were circling Dan's mind like sharks in a kiddie pool. How had
James known about the FBI agents? Had he seen them from inside the
store? The snipers hadn't reported anything.
Before Limbaugh started asking for his impressions of James' sudden
about-face in tone and mood, before the Chief barged in and the FBI
agents started writing miles of notes, Dan took a moment for himself. A
second, really, he spared to wonder just how James knew what he did,
when he did. He wasn't sure who the man really was now, and he wasn't
sure what the man was capable of, but damn if he didn't want to know.
----------
James hung up the phone, a goofy grin on his face. "Man, I'm pumped! I
should call, someone. I dunno, maybe mom." He stared his phone,
concentrating. "Nope, still can't remember their number."
"James?"
James turned to the security guard. "Ed?"
"The expo area, where the new construction is...it doesn't have any
cameras." Ed looked thoughtful.
"And?" James gestured for him to continue.
Ed's eyes swept knowingly over the disaster of the lower floor. "Where
are they hiding the bodies?"
Carl looked around like he'd just fallen off of the mango truck. "Holy
shit. How many of these guys did you ice?"
"They left them in the fishing tank." Jimmy said out of the blue.
"Dude, don't scare me like that!" Carl barked.
"He's right," said James. "If not in the tank then under those curtain
things the booths are separated with."
"By," Kat corrected.
"Whatever. Carl, Jimmy, when we get to the music store, you guys trench
in. Ed, Kat, how about a threesome?"
Kat groaned. Ed stared, too much residual adrenaline in his system to
support a blush. James grinned like a maniac, but that was hardly news.
----------
When James and the foursome returned to the music store, he was greeted
with a pack of guarded smiles. A hundred people screaming his name and
their thanks breathlessly, pushing at one another to shake his hand in
appreciation would not have had one tenth the impact of this quiet
greeting.
He raised his hands to get everyone's attention, then announced his
plans for the next fifteen minutes. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are almost
through this. There is a serious problem which we have identified and
needs to be corrected. Myself, Mr. Flemming, and Ms. Dogson will be
attending to it shortly. We have the locations of three bombs nailed
down with certainty, and have identified the general location of the
fourth. Two to go, and it's only a quarter to twelve."
Dim smiles rose to the surface, blossoming across panic-stricken faces
like the dawning of the sun.
"So," James continued, some random dust or something making his eyes
water. "Jimmy and Carl are going to be on guard, and everybody else is
going to sit tight. Everything will be all right." He turned away before
the 'dust' got the better of him and made a few marks on the counter.
"A serious problem?" Ed asked. "Why is...you-know-what, a serious
problem?"
James met his friends eyes and saw simple, honest confusion there.
"Weapon stockpiles, military-grade wireless encryption and transmission
equipment, a collection of cables that tap into the various cameras
around the mall. What do you think I found in the Bon?"
Ed looked like he's swallowed a week-dead raccoon. "Their base?"
"In a manner of speaking. I think the military calls it a beachhead, but
what the fuck that mean, I have no idea."
"Forward base," Carl supplemented from behind James.
"Thanks. We're eliminating their forward base."
"The cops don't know about this?" Kat asked.
James affected the depressed air of a teacher whose word was never
heeded. "They aren't military experts, Kat. They think a bunch of rag
heads are in here waving around AK's, but what are we facing? A bunch of
the 'gold of boys' and 'decent god fearing people' trained up to their
eyeballs in special tactics, wearing quartermaster-fresh uniforms and
wielding the advanced weapons on earth. For the umpteenth time, I know a
professional when I see one, and these guys might as well have giant
neon signs over their heads just screaming it." His voice dropped to a
silky whisper. "These guys are on a mission, and there's more to this
than just snatching some guy named Rick. He had to have done something
unbelievably huge to piss these guys off. They'll flay the lot of us out
there in the parking lot with the news cameras rolling if we so much as
ask them what he's done."
"That is the one question I can guess you haven't asked them," Kat said
in a matching whisper. "But what did Rick do?"
James shrugged helplessly. "Cured cancer? Finally rid us of our
dependence on foreign oil?"
"That would explain the FBI," Jimmy remarked dryly.
"He would have found a cure for liking country music," Carl said in awe.
"Because the FBI is only domestic concerns."
Kat prodded James. "Why doesn't the CIA step in if the cops think these
are terrorists."
"No positive identification; and as long as you don't know a foreign
government or person was in some way involved, the CIA can't be called
in. The FBI can ask for consultation about some specialized shit, like
where the weapons came from if they weren't bought in the U.S., but
that's pretty much it." James answered.
"You certainly know your stuff," Kat replied.
"Personal experience," James said proudly, then blinked. He looked
around like the cat with canary feathers sticking out of its mouth. "I
didn't just say that out loud, did I?"
"Your secret's safe with us, dude," Carl said, "Go get 'em."
James took in the Marines as they flanked the doors, guns at the ready.
He threw a jaunty wave at the hostages and grabbed some freshly reloaded
guns on his way to the doors.
Ed and Kat followed like scolded children, each too worried about
surviving the next ten minutes to wonder if the place would still be
here when--no, if--they came back.
The expo area was only a few dozen yards away, and James faced it and
began marching without waiting for the other two to catch up. About
halfway there, he came to a sudden halt, though. "Guys," he said,
"There's something I need to tell you."
"What?" Kat asked. She seemed to be speaking for the pair.
"Another old school friend, Dave Handleton, he's in on this now. I gave
him the call a while ago and he should be here by now. I don't know how
else to put this, but I have something important to discuss with you
guys and the two Marines, and it's going to have to happen soon."
"Why? What's going on? How does Dave fit into this?" Kat asked, holding
half of the trepidation on her face while Ed's displayed the other half.
"We have a phone number set up, an anonymous one eight hundred number,
that's untraceable and can't be connected to either of us, that lets the
other know exactly two things. First, the shit has hit the fan. Second,
we're bringing more people into the fold."
Kat gestured wildly. "You have a phone number just for that?!"
James shrugged. "We figured it would come in handy."
Ed finally broke rank and raised his hand. "What if only shit hits the
fan?"
"That's different a number, but I've never used it. 'Shit hitting the
fan' usually means the events in question will wind up on the evening
news, in which case Dave already knows."
From Kat, "Already knows?"
"Dave's in the habit of knowing things. It kept us alive for two years.
Hell, it's keeping us alive now. I bet you a million bucks that man
could get the serial number of the engine powering the bus I was sitting
on before we get out of here if I asked him for it right now. Actually,"
James pulled out his phone. "You wanna ask him for it now? It's a pretty
cool trick." He ignored the shocked faces that watched him. "Never got
it to work as a good party trick, but usually we skipped the bad dancing
and got straight to the booze and sex. Ah, those were the days." He put
the phone away.
"I have no idea what you're getting at," Kat announced.
James sighed. He hated being direct; it seemed like every time he was
direct, good people died in bad ways. "It means I'm going to walk away
from this and assume someone else will take care of the problem. I'm
going to get revenge, and I'm going to ask you guys and several other
people for help. Just watch, help get us out of this situation, and you
can think about it later."
They would think about it later. They would think about it for a very
long time, and mostly, they would wonder what 'revenge' entailed.
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