The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken (48 page)

Sandy held up
her hands and said, "Let's keep it to just him.  I don't want innocent
blood on our hands.  How does extreme torture then death by jackhammer?"
All of the women agreed.

Sandy opened
the door and called in Jack and Hendrick, two of the single South African
mercenaries.  "We want him tortured and then killed by a jackhammer in the
ass.  We'll pay two million US dollars.  Do you want the job?" 

Jack said,
"For you, we would do it for free, but two million plus expenses is good,
too." 

"We would
like to come back here to work again afterwards," said Hendrick.

Sandy said,
"That's not a problem.  No one outside of this room ever hears a word of
it, right?"

Jack said,
"Of course.  You have a deal."

Hendrick said,
"Tell us what we need to know about him."

PANAMA CITY

MARCH 6
^th

Julie and Helen
had slipped into the local Kunoichi building unobserved.  They had invited the
Costa Rican reporter, Alicia and her cameraman, Raul, to spend the day with
them monitoring the news, waiting for word to come through about statehood.  In
the previous weeks voting, the only holdout was El Salvador, which would remain
a territory loosely governed by the United States. 

Reporters and
friends of the company were invited to a reception thrown at the building and
security was tight.  When the announcement was made that all of the territories
except for El Salvador had been accepted as states, the entire southern half of
the continent erupted in one large party.

Helen, Julie,
and Matt took that as their cue to travel upstairs to the party, which was
already well underway.

When they
walked in the room, things went from being lively to being completely
ballistic.  The cheering went on for several minutes, before they were able to
get the room quiet enough to talk.  

Julie said in
Spanish, "My fellow Americans!"  The crowd roared.  "You now
control 24% of the US Senate and I don't even know yet how much of the House.
Congratulations, my friends!"

Pausing for the
guests to quiet, Helen said, "It's long past time for you to have a voice
in world affairs. 
You now have a very loud voice
!"  The cheers
were deafening.

Helen
continued.  "Enjoy your celebration.  You have earned it many times over. 
With your help, we will reshape the entire continent for the benefit of all. 
Thank you for placing your trust in us.  We will do everything in our power to
make sure that we never let you down."

Julie held up a
glass of sparkling cider masquerading as champagne and said, "To the
glorious new states!  May they prosper and thrive always!"

They made their
rounds in the party and left for the airport with Alicia and Raul in a
helicopter.  Taking a jet from the airport, they were soon landing in San Jose,
Costa Rica.  They again were transported by helicopter and were dropped off on
the pad at the top of the Kunoichi building. 

The next party
was well underway.  They repeated their performance and left again after an
hour or so.   They repeated this pattern several times in order to make
appearances in as many of the new states as possible while giving interviews on
the plane in between cities.  Each stop was broadcast live.  For the states
they couldn't make it to, including two of the three new states in Mexico, they
made live video appearances.   

By the time
they ended the evening in Cancun, the revelers were good and truly lubricated,
making Helen thrilled beyond belief with their decision to only drink
nonalcoholic beverages that evening. 

Alicia stayed
with them until Cancun, where she and Raul met their producers and turned over
their video for editing.

Helen said to
Julie, "You realize that we just made Alicia the top Spanish speaking
reporter for the next few decades."

Julie kissed
her, and said, "I think we've become indispensible."

They were both
sound asleep seconds after their heads hit the pillows.

NEAR RAWLINS, WYOMING

Kemp was
relieved to find his cache had not been discovered.  He opened the hidden door
covering the mine entrance to reveal the two cargo trailers that were hidden
within.  The four Tomahawk missiles inside the larger trailer appeared to be
functional.  The other trailer's boxes of cash and the briefcase he had left were
still there. 

He spent the
day checking and prepping the launch systems.   He knew where the congressman's
home was in Casper and targeted it with two of the four missiles with a programmable
launch delay from the time he would give the fire command.  The other two he
set for the conspiracy's headquarters in Colorado and the last of its missiles. 
Now it would just be a matter of waiting for Larson to go home. 

He left the trailers
in the tunnel and closed the camouflaged doors into the side of the mountain
for good measure.

Kemp used the
internet over a satellite connection to check the congressman's website.  There
were two events scheduled in his hometown on March 12th and 13th.  He would
launch the missiles on 13th, very early in the morning. 

He spent the
evening hours uploading hard drives from the briefcase onto several laptops. 
He had already loaded the cipher onto the computers so that the data would be
accessible.  The data contained the complete conspiracy and incriminate all of
the major players involved.  It would incriminate him, as well, but at this
point there was nothing to lose. 

He had six days
to wait.  He'd like to leave and come back, but it was too important to risk. 
Good
thing I brought some decent books,
he thought
.  Besides, this is cake
compared to that abandoned mine in Montana.    

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

MARCH 11th

Larson was in
the best mood he'd felt in years.  The Columbian assassins he hired were in
place and would eliminate the president and vice president in a little over 72
hours.  He felt downright gleeful.  He would be the president three days from
now and nothing could prevent it. 

It is
moments like this that make life worth living
, he thought, cheerfully.  He
could almost hear the rifle shots already. 
Goodbye Jim and Rob
!                               

NEAR RAWLINS, WYOMING

MARCH 12th

The time had
come.  Kemp used the motor home to pull the trailer out of the mine just after
dark.  He placed it in position, leveled it, and turned on the hydraulics to
lift the front of the trailer into firing position.  Next he placed the
external hard drives and cipher in the brief case and left it in the tunnel,
closing the outer doors behind him. 

Whoever came to
investigate would find it, he was sure.

He set the
launch time for the missiles to 03:00 hours.  He had done everything he could
to make sure it was ready, now it was time to move to the next step and not
worry about it. 

After attaching
the smaller cargo trailer full of boxes of cash, he slowly drove the motor home
on the dirt road back toward pavement, then East on the I-80 toward Cheyenne.   

Once in
Cheyenne, he rented a hotel room with internet and connected a laptop to the
net.  It would stay connected and start emailing files at 03:30. 
This will
be fun
, he thought with a chuckle.

Kemp drove to
pick up the cargo van he had stashed.   It took just a couple of minutes to
transfer the cargo trailer over to it and throw his bags into the van.  He left
full gas cans on top of the counters and set and incendiary device inside to
burn at 06:00. 

When he looked
at his watch, it was past 11:30 PM.  He drove a half hour and stopped at the
secluded area he'd marked on the map.  Pausing only for a quick bathroom break,
he pulled the Kunoichi Shipping magnetic logos out of the back of the van and
placed them on both sides.  20 minutes later, he had carefully loaded the boxes
into the van, dropped the trailer, and was back on the road.

CHEYENNE, WYOMING

MARCH 13
^th

Just after 3:10
AM, Senator Larson's security woke him.  "Sir we have to go
now
!" 
They dragged him out of bed and to the waiting SUV.  They were a half mile down
the road when the missiles hit Larson's home. 

Larson's
immediate thought was,
Kemp!  Just you wait till I track you down.  You're
going to pay for this, you bastard.

His thoughts
were interrupted by the driver's head disintegrating into a fine mist as the
.50 caliber round passed through it.  The other two agents suffered the same
fate an instant later.  The driverless SUV crashed into a tree and Larson
remembered nothing more.

He woke briefly
as he was bound and thrown into another vehicle.  A low, booming voice said to
him, "Hello, Senator!"

"Who the
hell are you?!"

"I'm the
Reaper
,
and I've been waiting for this a very long time."

Larson wet
himself.

Will laughed wickedly
and said, "I see you've heard of me."

Larson felt a
painful injection into his right leg and a sinking feeling as he drifted to
sleep over the next couple of minutes.

The last thing
he heard was the
Reaper's
voice telling him, "I'm going to make
sure this lasts for years."

DENVER, COLORADO

Just before two
in the morning Kemp drove into Denver.  He refueled the van, took care of
necessities and soon was on his way again, this time taking the I-25 south.  He
had debated staying in Denver, but wanted to put more distance between him and
Rawlins before things went haywire. 

Before long, he
found himself in the middle of a convoy of Kunoichi trucks that were flying
down the freeway.  He sped up and joined the progression all the way to Pueblo,
Colorado, where he stopped at a truck stop to refuel with them.

While gassing
up, one of the Kunoichi drivers walked over to him and said, "I didn't
know we were running van service yet."

Kemp shook his
hand and said, "It's a direct private delivery to New Orleans.  I don't
know about you, but my ass is glad to get out of that seat for a while. I'm
George Anderson."

"Good to
meet you George.  I'm Bill Jackson.  Hey, have you met Luke and Jamie
yet?"

"No,
they're here?"

"Come on
over and meet them.  They're a couple of amazing kids."

On a whim, Kemp
grabbed one of the remaining laptops and its case from behind the seat and
walked with the driver over to another of the trucks.

Bill saw Luke
standing with Jamie and said, "Hey, Luke!  I want you to meet George
Anderson!"

Luke looked at
him with eyes that seemed to look right through him and said, "You have to
have lunch with Jamie and me, George.  Our treat."  Luke's smile wasn't
quite a smile.

Kemp knew he
was stuck and agreed. 

Over diner food
that was better than Kemp expected it to be, Luke said, "We appreciate
what you did last night, but I have to ask, why Flagstaff.  And please keep
your hands above the table." 

Kemp almost
choked on his food.  He could tell that Jamie had a gun on him under the table. 
He thought for a moment.  He had been made and there was no way out.

"I didn't
know that Larson had the targets reprogrammed, probably by his guy, Lance
Foster," said Kemp.  "I had them set for Iran.  I launched them as a distraction
to let me get away while taking out the last of the bastards who killed my
family.  I'm very sorry about your friends."

"It's
pretty obvious that Larson was setting you up.  You know you missed him, don't
you?  It was a clean strike but he had just left after someone warned him."
Luke paused to let that sink in. "Unfortunately for the senator, my friends
were waiting for him.  The official story is that he died in the explosion. 
The truth is that he'll wish he had."

After a few
more seconds, Luke continued.  "The strike on his headquarters exposed his
current plan to take out my dad and uncle. He probably would have succeeded
this time."

Kemp considered
that for a time, relieved.  He said, "That's why I had to come back.  Your
family has done an impossible job and done it well.  Larson would have
unraveled everything.  I brought this for you."  He handed over the laptop
case.  "It's just a laptop with all the data on Larson's conspiracy.  It's
the same as I left in a hotel room in Wyoming, except with a little more."

Luke asked
Jamie, "What do you think?" 

"The
plastic surgery is good.  We wouldn't have recognized him if we hadn't been
taught what to look for.  If we let him go, he's gone for good."

Luke asked
Kemp.  "Is that accurate?  If I let you go, will you be gone for good?  
Never to set foot on United States soil again?"

Not yet daring
to hope, Kemp said, "That is a given."

"But is it
an agreement?"

Kemp said,
"It is." 

"You know
how bad it would be for you to be caught."

Kemp looked at
Luke and Jamie and realized how formidable the pair would be, despite their
youth. "Of course.  One question?  Who put up the
Kilroy was here
sign?"

Luke laughed
and said, "Thank you for having lunch with us.  I'd say you should be out
of the country in no more than twenty four hours.  The Kunoichi logos will get
you through almost anything, but don't take chances.