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.”
Hall looked at his tormentor as a stream of smoke funneled his way from the hole of the mouth behind the black hood.
“Who are we, you
