Chronicles of War Part 1: Way of the Storm ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, And you have strengthened the feeble knees; But now it comes upon you, and you are weary; It touches you, and you are troubled. Is not your reverence your confidence? And the integrity of your ways your hope?" - Job 4:4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 7: The Straight Dope ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "So now what?" Kat asked rhetorically. Fifty people, average man-or-woman-on-the-street types dressed for the biting cold outside, backed up her question with pleading, fearful stares. "I would like to say 'now we wait,' because I could use a fucking break, but now we review." James said, taking up his position on the figurative soap box. "Do we have time for that?" Jimmy asked. "If we don't, we're pretty well up the log without a condom." While everyone else tried to figure out what secret code James was communicating in, the engineer plowed ahead with his analysis. "Now, what I saw inside Sears was--" "Wait, can we call the cops for help?" Jimmy offered. "Hmm..." Said James, scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner. "That _is_ on my to-do list, but you need to hear this next part. Kat, another, if you please." Kat had the pack out and ready to go. With a flick of the wrist, a new coffin nail was presented to James, who readily took the offered tobacco cannon and promptly lit up. "The next one will cost you." She cautioned. "Don't worry, I keep a little spending money on hand." He smiled a bit, winking at her. "Now, we have a serious problem on our hands. Um... I'll talk with the cops about the C-4 and triggers and shit. Consider this the Reader's Digest version of what happened." James quickly explained the events in Sears, avoiding any real details of his fight. He concluded it with a description of the bomb and how it was found by trashing the place. "We only tore up a bit of the store." Were his exact words. Kat was the first to pop the expected question. "Six hundred _pounds_?" "Yeah." James said. "Way, _way_ more than necessary." "Fuck. And there's mercenaries trying to bag you?" Carl put in. James had shared with the assembled his theory that the trained killers had been ordered to take him alive. The gunshot wound to the leg, the point-blank attack. It all fit nicely. "So who'd you piss off?" James didn't answer the question right away. All eyes were fixed on him, expecting, waiting for him to deliver the truth. He smiled contentedly, blowing out a cloud of white smoke and stubbing out the remains of his cigarette. "Insert witty response here." He said. Stares abound, James fixed his attention on the cellular phone he'd been given. Affluent in technology, as his profession (occasionally) demanded, James didn't much care for the things. Given a few years, they would be smaller and more useful, but for now the newly popular cell phone was still too heavy and too expensive to be useful to the common man. Besides, it was too damn expensive to replace the old brick. James himself _had_ made great use of them years and years ago, but... that was the past. A distant past, best not dwelled upon. The police department's receptionist picked up. James give his information and was forwarded--in several steps--to the city's Chief of Police, who happened to be standing just a few hundred feet away from the mall James was still trapped in. Oh, the wonders of technology. The man's voice was straight no-nonsense. He lacked the over-acting of a TV cop, and the presumptions of an arrogant boss. James liked the guy after three full words were out of his mouth. "This is the Kennewick Police Department, Chief Jesse Cameins. You're Mr. Rahn, I presume." "Call me James. I'll call you Jesse, agreeable." "Agreed. What's the situation in there?" "I'll make it quick. Fifty hostages, I repeat, _fifty_ hostages inside. Myself and one security guard make fifty two good guys. The guard's name is Ed Flemming. You talk to Mike?" "The Security Chief? Yeah, I talked to him." *Smooth.* Thought James. The man gave nothing away, waiting for James to make the first move, feel him out. "Yeah, we knew each other in the late eighties. Anyway, Ed's helping me out, and I trust him. Anything that comes from him, treat as if it came from me." "And can I trust you?" It had occurred to James that the cops just might, _maybe_, think he had taken the hostages deliberately, as if this were all his idea. It made good sense. It was damn wrong, but it made good sense. Such things were common in James' world. "I'm an engineer by profession. Look up my degree with the University of Reno, Nevada, if you want confirmation. Listen, some fuck planted a third of a ton of high explosive in here, all real professional work. He's gonna call me on this phone. He hasn't said if he wants to kill me or not. For now, it just sounds like he wants to frame me and take me alive." "Okay, we have all of your conversation recorded. Are the hostages all right?" Recorded? That was hardly new. "Shaken, but okay. Listen, you know when these things are going to go off, and diffused or not, I'd rather not be in the same zip-code come one o'clock, okay? For now the plan is to find the bombs." "Find the bombs? We have a team of experts out here more than willing to help you, James." "That's awesome. Have them tear this place apart--metaphorically speaking. Make a list, check it twice and all that. I'll call you back in a little while. There's... there's been a complication." James said. "The assailants." The Chief supplied. "You guys are funny sometimes, with all those cute words. They're fucking murders! Government trained murders by the looks of things... dammit! Do me a favor and put Mike on, I need to talk to him." "I'm right here, James." "Good. Mike, how does this mall rate for pot spots?" "Good. Like most malls." "What if no one's around to mind the back rooms?" Pause. "Fuck. Fuck!" "That's what I was thinking." James said. "James, I'm sorry." "Don't be. It was a living. I _will_ call you two back." "Wait!" Jesse yelled. "James, don't hang--" "And the word from on high is..." Ed said. James put the phone on his belt and rested his palms on the counter. He exhaled as if to drive the demons from his mind, and fixed his eyes upon every man and woman in the store. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have several small problems. Taken together, they are a major problem. I am... or, rather, used to be a professional assassin. I do have a degree in engineering, and that is my current--and preferred--profession. Nonetheless, I have killed a lot of people in my time, and consider myself quite knowledgeable in the field. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are not facing merely the mental prowess of a skilled bomb maker, but the cunning of an army of trained killers-- soldiers. They're here for me. I've made a lot of enemies in my time, and I've always known that sooner or later I would have to take responsibility for my actions. Now, I am sorry you are involved, but let's try to make the best of this. I don't care what these people want, or why. They're in my way, and they won't mind killing any of you--it may even amuse them. There will be no negotiation. Only interrogation, either preceded or followed by numerous forms of killing. I suggest you keep your heads down, and your eyes and mouths closed. "I would take this time to apologize for wasting your time solving my own petty problems, but frankly, I don't much care for you all myself, and this is _my_ problem. It's pretty damn serious to me." He paused and stood tall. "And uh, let's disarm those bombs or whatever. I'm really bad at ending speeches like this. Any questions?" He smiled sheepishly. Several hateful glares hit him from the crowd. Ed stared in disbelief. Kat's expression was a mix of amazement and fear. Jimmy looked mildly impressed. Carl would need a shovel to get his jaw off the floor. Near the back of the crowd, Helen Hunt shook her head as if this were all a bad dream. James looked over the crowd and took a nervous breath. The audience was nicely stacked against him now. *Nice going, James. You've brought down the house. The peasants hate you, Ed is scared, Kat is obviously outraged, those guys in the back are kinda stoned, Helen Hunt is holding her head in her hands, about ready to cry. And what's the guy in the suit doing? ... Stop. Back up. Helen Hunt? The star from that one TV show with Paul whatisname?* James shook his head. "Dammit. Now I'm seeing things. I really should have gotten more sleep last night." Stepping off the proverbial soap box, he looked to his new partner in crime--Ed. "Time to move, tall stuff. We're hitting the... are you okay?" Ed's face was the picture of gut-wrenching shock. His eyes fixed on James like targeting sensors. "You're an assassin?" "Was." Ed didn't respond, going instead into Pause Mode, waiting quietly for his answer. "I am an assassin." James finally said. "You fucker! How could you!" Kat yelled, her voice panning from James' right to the center of his vision as the woman stalked up to him and stood directly in his line of sight. "Jeeze, it's not like I killed people... well, I did, but--" Kat decked him squarely across the jaw, mid-word. James' head twisted sideways, and was pulled back almost immediately by the tendons in his neck. "_Maybe_ I deserved that." He said. "You killed people for a living." She whispered, her voice a tangle of hate, fear, and sadness. The store was utterly silent. Tears shined the corners of her eyes. His voice dropped in pitch and lost what little inflection remained from his last answer. "Yeah. So?" Time hung around them, the torn tapestry of their history draped over thoughts and emotions like dead skin. James didn't want to tell anyone, but he had realized at some point (about two steps inside the mall), that his "little secret" might come out. The whole set up stunk to high heaven. He wasn't sure who was after him, and he had the nagging feeling that these people--whoever they were--had come after him thinking he was someone else. He'd never used an alias of Rick Genoni, yet the soon-to-be-dead fuck on the phone insisted on calling James that. The sorry-excuse-for-a-human-being sounded certain that was James' real name, and seemed determined to remind the assassin of that 'fact.' Mysteries and more mysteries. Now Kat and Ed were giving him the ninth degree. Ed with the cold stare, still focused on James. Kat had started with a scalding glare, then escalated immediately to physical violence. There was something going on here, and against the caution of wiser and older men, he had to go on. Through the reactions of his friends and beyond the trigger-happy killers hiding around every corner of the mall, he had to go on. He needed just one answer, two parts, in the form of a name. He needed to know who was responsible so he could kill them. "If you'll excuse me," He said to Kat, who was still up in his face. Kat stepped back from him, shaking her head. "Now you're... you're going to kill again...." She said. "The situation here is one of life and death." James said curtly. "You can debate the balance of one life against another with God." That snapped everyone out of their fugue. Carl and Jimmy exchanged glances. For the first time, the weight of what was going on was finally sinking in. Ed gave James a "we have things to discuss" look. Kat shook her head, as if finally giving up on a fruitless quest. It was always this way, James thought. He'd learned a lot during his stint as a murder of men and women. One thing that had never changed was that a question and its answer could be as complex or simple as one wished them to be. Things weren't black and white, they were grey, but that grey had no more depth to it than black or white did. ---------- James pulled Ed aside, near the front of the store. A quick look around assured them as much privacy and safety as practical, given the circumstances. "The cops aren't going to call back?" Was the first thing Ed asked. He had calmed down greatly in the last minute, his demeanor once again all business. "Not for a bit. They probably think I'm angry or something. Besides, disarming bombs is most definitely not something they'd want to interrupt." James waited for Ed to nod his ascent. It made a twisted kind of sense, like 'battlefield logic' and 'military intelligence.' "This is all just damn weird and damn scary, James." He said. "You do know what you're doing, right?" "Of course!" James said with a big smile and a dismissive wave. This did not help Ed's blood pressure. James finally got serious. "Okay, okay. Here's the plan. Something I do remember from when I lived here was that there's this shop that has a rear section with an false-wall door. You know, a door that blends in a pattern or someshit along the wall?" Ed nodded. "Yeah. The place is called Hot Tommy's now." "Hot Tommy's? That's it? That's what they fuckin' named it?" Ed shrugged. "It's one of those popular clothing stores." "And the fuckin' named it Hot Tommy's?" "I didn't pick it out." "What a bunch of fuckin' morons!" Ed looked nervously at the staring crowd. "Uh... James?" "That's just plain crazy. I mean, I've come up with some dumb names in my time, but there was always someone around to veto shitty ideas like that. What kind of twisted, brain-less mother fucker with no imagination what-so-ever would come up with a _stupid_ name like that for their store? Who let them put up the letters?" "James...." Ed pleaded the word. "KILL the letter-hanger!" James shouted, a fist raised into the air. Ed smiled at the crowd in a placating fashion, as if that would actually calm them down, then glared at James. Before he could open his mouth to verbally blast his friend, James adjusted his plaid shirt and stepped up to the doorway. "Okay." James said. "I'm pumped. Let's go kick some ass--if we don't, we'll get killed." "Dear God," Ed prayed. "Please don't let James get me killed." He then quickly joined his nutty friend at the store's entrance. "Nobody fall asleep while I'm gone." James said over his shoulder, sternly. The two were off. Shortly down the hall, James opened his mouth. "You know what they say about God?" James commented. "What?" Ed asked. "God loves us all the same: Not at all." Ed shook his head as he walked beside the assassin, his massive shoulders all but quaking in fear. "Right James. Whatever you say."