Jericho Falls, VA…

     United 457 arrived at seven-fifteen p.m.  

     Timothy Williams moved through the concourse toward baggage claim, scanning the crowd for other than friendly faces.

     COMMEX had taken every conceivable precaution to protect its agents. Still, there had been ‘accidents’: Delaney Curtiss, Beirut, stuffed into the trunk of his Saab, three bullets to the back of the head; Guy Tomasik, Hamburg, garroted in a hotel room; Gregory Jacobs, Tunisia, found in an alley outside a nightclub, his spinal cord severed.  Other than himself, there were but two left from the days of Delta Team Shadow Company–Jerrod Martin and Brady Thomas. Jerrod was stateside, somewhere in the southeast, but Colonel Thomas had all but disappeared.

     He grabbed the satchel off the conveyor and exited the terminal.

     “Marriott, Downtown.” He glanced from the cabby’s face to the driver’s license on the dash, then back at the man’s face, his hand tucked inside his blazer caressing the butt end of a .357 Magnum. Couldn’t be too careful. 

     The cab pulled up to hotel minutes later.   

     He leaned in through the side window and handed the cabby a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change. And there’s another fifty in it if you’re back here tomorrow morning, five-fifteen sharp.”

     “Yes, sir.”

      Williams strode up the steps and into the lobby.

     “May I help you, sir?”

     “I have a reservation: ‘Michelson, Anthony’,” he said, using an assumed name.

     She checked the computer, confirmed the reservation. “And, how long will you be with us, Mr. Michelson?”

     “Just tonight.” He gave her a tired smile, aping perfectly the road-weary look of any number of salesmen who waltzed through the hotel.

     Minutes later, he opened the door to his room, palmed the pistol, and entered. He checked the entire room, double locked the door, unpacked and walked into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. 

     Before leaving for dinner, he stretched a two-inch length of self-sticking, clear monofilament line from the base of the sliding glass door that led out onto the balcony to the metal casing surrounding it.

     Once in the hallway, he locked the door to his room and stretched a piece of clear line from the base of the door to its wooden jamb and then walked down the hallway. With telltales in place, no one could get into the room without his knowing it.

     He requested a corner table where he could monitor restaurant activity, ordered a Dewars on the rocks and a medium rare filet. The S&W .38 strapped to his leg was an easy reach.

    He finished dinner and ordered a Brandy. Relax, old boy, he thought. All our fabricated itineraries are transferred to and from the field via a sophisticated new program conjured up by Prescott’s team of programming wizards. Should someone backdoor the system, break the code and access the files, they’d end up searching for me sometime tomorrow in Albuquerque. Damn clever, those COMMEX boys. He chuckled and ordered a second Brandy.

     Christian Richards sat across the room, camouflaged by a mahogany bar. He laughed with the men at the table, dealing with a wrap up of the day’s business activities and dinner and drinks with his company’s newest franchisees.  His spiritual, disciplined self monitored Agent Williams’s every move.  

     Richards sized up his prey. He loved to watch them live out their paltry, feckless lives. It provided a perverse satisfaction knowing he held their destiny in his hands.

     Williams beckoned the waitress and ordered a third Brandy, a tired smile creasing his face.

     Sit back, relax Richards thought. He’d witnessed it many times, these displays of ignorant confidence. Williams’s defenses would soon break down and he would lose his combative edge. And these were Prescott’s finest? Why, they barely presented a challenge. The ultimate engagement, the final encounter, would come when the overture he’d orchestrated was complete. “Soon, now, Kenjisan,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Very soon!”

     Richards finished his tonic and lemon, excused himself, and walked to the bar. He put his arm around the waitress’s shoulder, a charismatic smile on his face. “Pardon me, Miss?”

     “Sir?”

     “Would you please get us another round when you get a chance?   The group right there.” He pointed toward his table.

     She turned her head and Richards moved his hand over the snifter of Brandy. The top of the onyx ring on his little finger sprang open and a thin stream of blue-green powder trickled into the drink, dissolving instantly. Visible for a moment, on the inside of his forearm, just above the wrist, was a tattoo, a crimson crescent, a miniature wounded moon.  

     “Sure, just let me deliver this drink and I will be right with you.” 

     Richards returned to his table, bid his new RichCo associates good evening and then went up to his room.

     An hour later he stood, stripped off his robe and walked into the bathroom where he donned a black bodystocking, a pair of black slippers and applied a thin layer of jet-black to his face.

     A pouch, attached by Velcro to the back of the bodystocking, held a pair of rubber surgical gloves, a long, flexible strip of stainless steel, a fifty-milliliter syringe and a small vile of clear liquid. To this cache, he added a roll of white surgical tape and three round, smooth objects that resembled the leather golf balls popular in the late eighteen-hundreds.

    He checked his watch: eleven forty-five. 

    He exited through the sliding glass door and dropped down minutes later onto the balcony outside Williams’s room. He rolled into a darkened corner, sat up and peered through the glass.

    Williams was asleep atop the bed, the drug having overcome him before he’d had a chance to strip off his clothes and crawl under the covers.

    Richards slid the flexible metal strip through the space between the double doors, pried the safety bar from its latch, tripped the lock switch and slipped into the room.

    He found a vein, injected the antidote and Williams’s eyes popped open. 

    Richards grinned, watching the man fight to focus on a world gone hazy. “Do you know who I am, Mr. Williams?” 

    He shook his head no, but his eyes said differently.

    “Yes,” Richards muttered. “Then, you also know why I am here, don’t you?”

    “Please.” The words were slurred through drug-numbed lips.

    “Don’t beg,” he said. “It’s unbecoming. Besides, you knew the risks going in.”

    Richards found enormous exhilaration in having the power of life and death over another human being. The greatest thrill did not always come from acting on that power, it came from simply having his foes live with his dominion over them. Unfortunately, this was not one of those times. 

    Williams shook his head, his eyes swollen orbs of fear.

    Richards cast him a cold-blooded smile. “Let’s get this over with.” He pulled one of the small, round objects from his pouch and attached a ten-inch length of waterproof fuse to its center. He spoke throughout the procedure, softly, reassuringly, much as a surgeon would speak to a nervous patient. “We call these little beauties Yak-Paks. A device my father taught me to make when I was a child. You do remember my father, don’t you?”

    “No.” Williams’s voice squeaked with fear.

    “No? Well, let me refresh your memory. Does Nepal ring familiar?” He stripped off three, six-inch lengths of surgical tape, attached one end of each strip to Williams left cheek.

    “The Mezzhandi?” Williams uttered.

    “Ah, yes, The Mezzhandi. You also remember the ‘Druid’, do you not?” Richards’s grin turned feral. “Well, I am Azrael, his son, and I have sworn a blood-oath to avenge him, to dispose of all those responsible for his death and destroy your precious COMMEX.”

    Williams struggled against his imminent demise.

    Richards cradled a Yak-Pak in the tips of his fingers. “We wrap the equivalent of one-third of a stick of dynamite into the dried and waterproofed skin of a yak. The seams are sewn together with gut. They are a powerful weapon, easily made and just as easily concealed. Now open wide.” He spread his hand across Williams’s face, his thumb and index finger applied vice-like against the pressure points of the jaw hinge.  

    Williams’s mouth dropped open and Richards stuffed the Yak-Pak home. He ran the fuse out of the corner of the man’s mouth and then stretched the tape tightly across his face, sealing the charge within its newfound womb. He stood and looked down into Williams’s eyes, his voice flat and indifferent. “It will be quick and painless, not like it will be with your Mr. Thomas.  Oh, no, he will suffer. I guarantee it.” He picked up a book of matches, struck one and lit the fuse. 

    Williams tussled with his ties, fighting the impending launch into the hereafter.

    “You have fifteen minutes to make peace with whomever or whatever it is you worship.”  

     Richards walked out of the room onto the balcony, climbed up the side of the building onto the roof and moved off cat-like to the opposite side of the hotel where he dropped down safely onto his own balcony. 

    Ten minutes later, he sat in the lounge, dressed in a beige running suit, sipping Tonic and chatting with the bartender.

    Moments later, the Yak-Pak detonated and Williams’s head exploded like a ripe melon.

    Specs of blood and bone and thick silky ropes of mucous painted the bedroom walls as the decapitated body convulsed on the crimson-stained bed.

    “Christ-in-the-night.” The bartender held onto the edge of the bar as the building seemed to sway on its foundation. He grabbed the phone, dialed the front desk. “What the hell was that?” 

    Richards smiled. A COMMEX agent’s life was cheap and pointless. Still, each successive killing left him feeling more liberated, more powerful and invincible. That, my friend, he thought, knocking down the last of his Tonic and lemon, is the resounding thunder of revenge. 

    As sweet as ever.

CHAPTER 1

Sedona, AZ…

      J. Brady Thomas jerked bolt upright in bed, heart pounding, blood sluicing through his veins and wiped away runnels of icy sweat that wet a three-day growth of beard.  

      He scanned the recesses of his Spartan cabin, knew well he’d find nothing more than personal demons lurking in the shadows. 

      “Sweet Jesus.” His throat was was dry, his voice raspy.

      Though he and Elizabeth Creighton had shared many warm and wonderful memories, Hilton Head Island was the dream he dreamed most often, the nightmare that had pervaded his nights, week after week, month after month, for over a decade. 

     The bomb that claimed her life had been meant for him alone; Liz but an innocent victim of his sordid past, of his association with the covert black ops team at COMMEX. Thank God she’d felt no pain. The coroner’s report stated that she had died immediately, feeling little more than a dramatic increase in air pressure and a moment’s searing heat as she was launched off the balcony into the cavernous maw of eternity.

    Within the month, he had burned his bridges with COMMEX commander, Colonel Tyrone Prescott, and moved to Arizona’s Oak Creek Canyon, a partial fulfillment of a shared dream.

      But what he could do nothing about was the never-ending goddamn guilt. If only he’d not stopped for the wine he might have been back in time to do something, anything for chrissakes. He might even have died with her, which he often considered infinitely preferable to the life he led without her.

      An hour later, he sat outside on the front steps, a cup of coffee in hand, and fought to shake off the effects of an on-going nightmare wherein he is always running toward her, trying to warn her, to save her. He still sees her as she was that night, as she will always be in the asylum of his mind, young and alive, filled with hope and dreams reborn.       

     At times like this, he felt only emptiness and silent resignation.

      He finished his coffee, drew heavily on a cigarette and leaned back on his elbows, his face turned toward a brightening dawn sky, his red-rimmed eyes squeezed shut.

      “I miss you, Elizabeth,” he said, her name a keepsake knotted in his throat.

#

      He eyed Brady, began a silent approach, moving cautiously out from the safety of the trees, his almost super-natural ability to elude and endure bred into him by centuries of persecution. 

      He was a formidable creature with bright yellow eyes, the kind of eyes that loom large in the darkened corners of childhood fantasies. He closed on the cabin in an ill-defined pattern, stopping briefly at predetermined points along the invisible perimeter of his territory, never once taking his eyes off the man sitting on the front steps.   

      The muffled sounds did not go unnoticed. “Morning, Lobo.” Brady opened his eyes and stared straight ahead, refrained from cocking his head toward the Mexican Gray wolf that stood twenty paces from him.  

      It had taken quite a while for the wolf to accept his presence in the valley. It had been a mere pup, likely an orphan, its parents killed by poachers, when he’d first spotted it.   

      The pup had proved early on to be a survivor. Brady often found it snoozing in the mid-morning sun beside picked over jackrabbit bones. He’d never attempted to care for it, nor had he tried to domesticate it, opting instead to let the wolf remain forever wild and set the guidelines for their symbiotic relationship.

      Now, on those occasions when his predatory companion dropped by, Brady found himself talking to it, speaking openly to it of those things kept long buried in his heart. And the wolf appeared to almost listen, to somehow understand.

      Lobo eyed him, and a low, raspy growl escaped its throat.

      Brady turned slightly, cast the animal an expressionless glance. “Come to visit for a while?” He spoke softly, not locking eyes, purposefully maintaining a posture that displayed neither dominance nor submissiveness. 

      They sat for a while in silence, two Alpha males of distinct species who shared a common bond: they had each lost a soul-mate. Brady had seen neither the female nor the pups for months. It occurred to him that both he and the wolf were destined to live out the remainder of their lives alone, as Alpha males are considered monogamous creatures, known to mate for life.

      Moments later, his shiny, black nose pointed skyward, Lobo trumpeted a series of short, ear-piercing howls, then turned and sauntered off into the trees.

      “Not today, huh?” Brady whispered. “See you next time, my friend.”

Safe house, Apache Dance, Az…

Jake Slaughter walked out onto the cabin’s deck for a few minutes of solitude after the long flight back from Quito.

He had already put the death of de Alvarez in Ecuador behind and it was time to move on. This was his stand-down, a momentary liberty from his covert black ops Delta team and the operational control of the Joint Special Operations Command.

He breathed deeply the cool night air and drew hard on a Sam Adams longneck.

Wine-red alpenglow washed the crenelated peaks of the Tucson Mountains and the vast Saguaro forests of the Sonoran Desert. The renowned Desert Museum was visible from the house perched high up Golden Gate Mountain, south of Gates Pass Overlook.

“Aphrodisiac for the senses,” he muttered, his husky voice the upshot of an arid climate and one too many rum-soaked cigars. “Surely the Almighty scooped out this place on one of his better days.”

He scanned the open vista, the stands of desert scrub, Saguaro and Cholla cacti crowded into the valley below as he listened to the melodic hum of nectar-feeding bats, the din of Hawk moth and other foraging insects. In the distance a Javelina or Coyote ran down an evening meal, as myriad bird species burrowed into the safety of their nests for the night. His eyes crinkled above a smile and he finished off his beer. 

His personal phone slapped him out of a sound sleep at seven the next morning. He sat up, his cracking knees a bitter reminder that he was aging by the minute, the pounding in his head an indicator that he was getting a bit long in the tooth to down a half-dozen longnecks and still function at peak proficiency the following day.

“Hello.”

“Jake? It’s Michael in New York, did I wake you?”

 “You’re nothing if not consistent, Mikey.”

“Hell, it’s ten o’clock here in the real world, been at it for three hours already.”

“Right.” Michael Franks was Jake’s long-time book editor at Simon and Schuster in New York. “What’s up?”

“Got your message about heading off to Beaufort. I received your photographs and sent them off to be scanned, but can you get the final written draft of the book to me before you go?”

In his precious spare time, Jake made photographs, dozens of them over the past couple of decades. The book in question was the third in a series of six, all showcasing intimate landscapes of the western desert and the southeast Atlantic coast.

The books both entertained and informed, qualities his readers especially liked. He normally tripled his advance, a quality his publisher relished.

“I’ll have it on your desk by the end of the week, Mikey, will that make you happy?”

“Wish all my clients were like you, Jake.”

“No, you don’t. You put up with me because I make you a crapload of money.”

“I thought I just said that.”

Jake chuckled. “Goodbye Michael.”

“Look Jake, I have to ask one more time. Have you given any further thought to the book signing tour? It’s been a long time since your east coast fans got a peek at your mug.”

Jake rubbed a fingertip along the scar on his stomach. “I don’t handle crowds very well, you know that.”

“Understood, but do me a favor and at least think about it, okay.”

“All right, Mikey, so long.” 

What the hell, he was going to head home for a few weeks to check out the new family digs, first time is some years, so maybe a tour wasn’t a bad idea.

Outside he heard a car pull up and its doors open. He looked down and waited. The envelope slid under the door and the car sped off moments later. “Damn,” he muttered. The envelope would contain an encoded and encrypted flash card detailing his next assignment.

He poured a cup of coffee and walked out the back door, the early morning air redolent of musk, sandalwood and honey. He pulled the invitation he’d received out of his jeans pocket:

It’s time, Beaufort High’s class reunion, June 7-9 at Lancaster Hall, downtown Beaufort!

Regrets only, please!

“Regrets? Hell yeah, I’ve got a few.”

    CHAPTER 3                      

South Carolina…

Jake was going home.

He crossed the border into South Carolina, stopped for gas and then continued south on I-95 toward the coast, toward Beaufort and the Lowcountry, toward the family home on the Morgan River.

Six PM and the mid-June sun cast biased shadows across the flat expanse of highway. The driving was effortless and he sang along with the 60’s oldies on 98.5, The River, out of Beaufort.

Ninety minutes later, he motored through downtown Beaufort, fingers tracing the scar on his stomach and recalling fellow writer, Robert Fulghum’s, words: ‘A high school reunion is not a reunion with other people as much as it is a reunion with yourself. Daily, we reunite with self in the mirror. The high school reunion is an invitation to look into a larger mirror’.

He parked and locked the car and walked through the door of Plum’s, a popular sandwich and ice cream bar.

He glanced around and at the eclectic mix of nautical motif and rock and roll memorabilia that still decorated the place: Shrimp nets shrouded the walls and sea shells, starfish and horseshoe crabs sat on worn lobster traps. Plastic Elvis, dressed to the nines, legs askew and head bobbling still occupied center stage atop an old-fashioned Wurlitzer jukebox. 

 “Jake?”

He turned, his mouth turning up at the sight of his old friend. “Hey, Gary.”

Gary Stanton, like his father before him, was the Slaughter family lawyer, the keeper of the keys and the captain of finance and real estate holdings. He was Jake’s age, a close friend throughout high school, but looked ten years older, with a round jovial face, thick gray hair and bushy eyebrows pasted over intelligent brown eyes.

“Good to see you again.” He pumped Jake’s hand. “Been too long, twelve years or so, right? For your folks thirtieth anniversary? You’re still looking good, tan and fit.”

Jake smiled. “You as well, Gary, but like me a bit heavier and a touch of gray.”

Gary spread his arms in a conciliatory gesture. “Goes with the territory. Hell, we’re all just grown-up versions of who we once were, right? You’re going to see that up close and personal at the reunion.”

Jake grinned. “Thanks for all you’ve done while I’ve been away. I mean it.”

“Hey, that’s my job and you’re my friend, Jake. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It had been Gary to whom Jake had sent money, a lot of it over the years, and his instructions had been specific: Buy up, using a nom de guerre, waterfront parcels along the rivers in and around the lowcountry and then enlarge and remodel the family’s compound to his parent’s liking. As a result, the Slaughter’s real estate holdings had increased substantially over the past decade.

“Well, Gary said. “Give me a minute to hit the restroom and we’ll be on our way.”

Jake nodded, ordered a cup of coffee and then looked around the restaurant. Teenagers laughed and kissed and hugged in the booths, hands running over faces, through hair and fanning south toward intimacy. He tried to remember the last time he’d felt that young. Part of him envied them, setting off down the road on the great adventure that stretched out before them.

Another part didn’t, for he’d often found that road strewn with speed bumps and hurdles.

“Right, then.” Gary returned. “All set?”

They caught up with each other during the ride out to the Slaughter compound, enjoying the warmth of the late-June evening laughing and joking at shared memories from their youth. Gary didn’t mention Jesse and Jake didn’t ask.

“So, have you heard from your folks, yet?” Gary said.

“Last week. Should roll in around the Fourth of July.”

“Going to be nice having the Slaughter clan home again. How about your sister, Sharon? Still up in Indianapolis, isn’t she? Heard from her?”

“She, Tom and the kids will be here for Thanksgiving.”

They rolled through the gated entry to the compound twenty minutes later.

Gary shut off the car and turned in his seat. “Okay, here are the keys to the beach house. Sarge would have been here, but he’s still up in Charleston and won’t be back until tomorrow. I had the place freshly painted and stocked with a few staples. Oh, and there’s Cabernet and Chardonnay in the cupboard, Sam Adams and Coors longnecks in the fridge and a bottle of twelve-year old Macallan on the kitchen table.”

Jake smiled. “Thanks for everything, Gary.”

“Anytime, my friend. I’ll see you at the reunion, then?”

Jake nodded.

The Slaughter Family compound, located on the northeast tip of Dataw Island, consisted of a five thousand square foot main home, a carriage house, two exquisite guesthouses and three hundred feet of surf, sand and foam bordering the deep blue of the Morgan River and St. Helena Sound.

Then, there was the beach house, Jake’s house. The home in which he’d grown up had been expanded and redesigned over the past ten years, with spacious, open rooms, airy cathedral ceilings and an exquisite floor-to-ceiling flagstone fireplace.     

His eyes lit up as he walked toward it, a lone sentinel on the point of a thin tongue of sand jutting out into the river.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps, regarding the graceful wrap-around porch, and in the dying light saw himself as a child growing up beside the river, complete with its still-life summer scenes of golden marshes and brilliant sunsets. Living here as a child had always turned to boating, shrimping, fishing and relishing the pristine Lowcountry vistas that still captured the hearts of painters and photographers alike.

Beaufort and its surroundings held a special kind of magic for him and he felt inclined to be captured all over again.

He walked up the steps, turned the key, opened the massive oak door and walked in.

The large loft bedroom, as he’d instructed, overlooked the great room and faced a massive stone fireplace. He went upstairs, unpacked, glanced around and smiled. The place looked damn good, just like he’d envisioned. Felt damn good, too.

Downstairs, he poured two fingers of Scotch over a single ice cube, then walked outside, strolled down to the beach and out to the end of the long, wooden dock.

Moonlight glittered on the jet-black water and the air smacked of summer: brine and earth and the tang of ebb tide. He sat down, feet dangling in the tepid water, sipped Scotch and listened to the evenly paced rhythm of his heart. 

The cool evening breeze still whispered only one name: Jesse Cochrane.