Dealing with the Devil

By Vic Williams

Kidnapped then torn free, alone, Mike is scoured. His own ongoing 911. A nebulous they still have his family with brutal control of his connections. Pressured, he goes with the flow, working for them, while grasping a tech response. Fast-grown tech that grows playful killer edges. Tech that leaps out of control, jostles our world, then turns to wreak havoc on the hidden controllers.

As the USA retreats inward, individuals have to take matters in hand. Raw power has docked in port, so traditional forms of control, terror, blackmail and kidnapping, roam freely. A few people gather under the covers, grab micro-tech from the stilled push button warriors, then provide hands-on responses. The battles openly blend furtive sunbursts with the dark of night.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vic Williams
• Release date: Oct 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465742940

Vic Williams

I'm a coach - trainer - writer, from Vancouver, Canada, with some years experience in China. I like to start things, to grow things and people. Gardening. The gardening grows into mapping, of some kinds. Scenarios, design thinking, strategy, and such. Part of growing things is improving them. Please suggest improvements at: [e-mail] Thanks, Vic

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Dealing With the Devil

Published by Vic Williams at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Vic Williams

October 7, 2011

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Contents

Chapter 1 Amok

Chapter 2 Cooking things up

Chapter 3 Some cultures clash

Chapter 4 Partners beyond crime

Chapter 5 Notching things up

Chapter 6 Two can play the game

Chapter 7 Sizzled, try again

Chapter 8 Bagging the cat

Chapter 9 A Big Hack Attack

Chapter 10 Charred, off the leash

Chapter 11 Hell on wheels

Chapter 12 Popping into visit

Chapter 13 Awry

Chapter 14 Ending. Devil as trickster

Chapter 1 Amok

Retreating through a wild Pacific storm

. . .

No! It’s a half-awed and half-exasperated squawk.

This is too much!

He’s already worn out from fighting the storm, and now something ugly has thrown itself onto his radar screen. The ugly has come right out of nowhere, and it’s coming in very low and fast. Disbelieving, Ted irritably rubs at the radar screen. He scowls suspiciously as the blip zooms in. Then as the trawler rises on a wave top, he stares out through splattering foam into the maelstrom surrounding him.

He silently mouths, pathetic. When push comes to shove, he hates being reliant on techno-crud like radar. At least you can still trust your eyeballs when things go wrong. He looks down and peers closely at the fast-moving blip again, examining it like it was some kind of bug or phantom.

What the hell is it?

The goofy screen still says something huge is zooming across the sea at him and his trawler, The Prancing Zelda, right in the middle of this hell-storm.

He considers its behavior. It’s very fast and it’s popped over the curvature of the Earth like one of those fighter nuts screeching his jet fighter along at sea level. Only this thing is way too big, and the fighter jocks only play on sunny days. Or high in the sky at night. He scowls at the blip as it zooms in, trying to figure it out.

His eyes widen as the stupid blip adjusts course for a perfect interception. Not good. His eyebrows pop-up and down, then he mutters, it’s coming right here!

No!

Panic’s hit, and he has to act. Defiantly sputtering, still disbelieving the radar screen, but instinctively fighting for survival, he whips the old trawler’s steering wheel over to take whatever it is head-on.

His head snaps up, snarling in denial and disbelief as the radar screen suddenly blossoms a whole new screen full of data. Everything’s going bonkers! He stares wildly outside, fighting an urge to hop-up and run. He still can’t see anything out there, but it’s here!

Whaa! His seat belt has caught him as his chair tried to throw him out. His eyes momentarily pop wide open as the boat continues to turn onto its side. He grits his teeth, knowing this mistake was a killer, and the sea doesn’t forgive. The storm is taking advantage of his having turned the boat sideways to the wind and waves, and it’s turning The Prancing Zelda over. Trapped, and anguished that things have gone downhill so fast, he sucks in his breath and fights to control himself. The boat sluffs down the side of a wave and rolls half over between two waves.

Hanging sideways, mentally frozen, his eyes pop wide open as a huge multiple-engine jet plane splats into the sea. His jaw opens stupidly as the jet cartwheels around. The jet disintegrates as it flings itself over his boat, just as the stupid boat starts to right itself. One massive engine inhales his mast and rigging with a horrendously shaking growl. It shoves at and half-turns the trawler over again as it howls past.

The sea strikes again before the boat gets a chance to right itself. A huge wave sweeps over the battered mess, pushing it down. Thrust sideways and under the sea, everything goes black all around him as the boat drops. Hunched forward, gripping the boat’s instrument panel for support, he’s chilled as he notices the quiet. They’re descending below the storm.

Water is gushing in from a variety of new stress cracks in the damaged deckhouse. He scowls sickly, hesitates as he thinks it over, then stops the engine. Then he looks around, waiting and watching seawater squirting in all over the place.

Will they keep going down?

Did he stop the engine before it flooded or broke the air intake system?

He gulps and burps uneasily, it’s too quiet and too still. Unreal.

Will something else break and flood the ship? It normally does, on most ships. Mostly it’s a one way trip. Two separate flood alarms start yowling and screeching from the engine room, then abruptly stop.

. . . Waiting . . .

He blinks twice, then closes his mouth and licks his lips. He snorts, really just a quiet laugh, being able to feel his lips means he’s still alive.

Another wave hits but everything outside is now lightening to greenish black. Tensed and quivering, he senses that the trawler is lifting itself back up out of the blackness inside the sea. As it rises, it fully rights itself once again.

The odd quiet drops away as the trawler rises and the wind hits. He laughs in relief and disbelief at the thought of quiet in this storm. Maybe he'd just been temporarily deafened. As it sinks in that death just scraped over him, he decides that deafness doesn’t matter. However, he definitely needs a drink.

Thrashing dull green storm seas start to roar all around as The Prancing Zelda surfaces again. He pats the control panel fondly, then starts the engine. A whole bedlam of alarms immediately yowl, hoot, and screech at him. Ignoring them as techno-crud, he looks all around, even though he realizes that the plane has to be gone, past and down. He blinks uncertainly, it’s like it was some kind of a storm phantom. Peering through the wind-blown foam, he looks at the now wondrously welcome seas. As the boat rises on a monster wave, he jerks his head back and forth, blinking furiously as he looks all around again. Carefully searching the sea around the boat to make sure.

No. There’s nothing but nothing all around. No lifeboats. No jackets. Nothing orange. Nobody got off. He frowns. There isn’t even any wreckage. Not that one can see much in such conditions anyway.

He figures that it was a big plane, with a sizable crew. But he might as well forget about it.

It’s gone . . . They’re gone.

Then he abruptly realizes that The Prancing Zelda has settled back to normal. He checks, the compass even indicates that the boat’s back on course. Without even thinking, his habits have taken control. He grins as he checks, of course he’s holding the wheel for best advantage. Even the alarms are stopping again as the flood pumps catch up to the flooding.

What was it?

The apparition shrieks it at him, just inches away. He recoils back, jerked half off his chair by this sudden additional jolt, with its almost oily eye watering reek. Remembering and rapidly adjusting, he studies Mohammed’s face. He’s deathly sick looking, and his seasick reek and hair are roaring out in every direction. His eyebrows still raised at such new found mobility, Ted shouts back, a B-52 bomber!

Mohammed's eyebrows pop-up in surprise and disbelief. Even his ears seem to flare out as he says, what? Then he smiles, triumphantly reaches out, and grabs Ted’s travel mug from its swinging holder and downs a slug of rum. He thinks to himself, more likely a 747. I downed a 747 airliner. We scrubbed a whole planeload of them!

As Mohammed sputters at his first ever gulp of rum, Ted takes his cup back and squints down into it, and then at Mohammed. The adrenalin burst from the near miss is now seriously reaching out. It’s making his heart thump and his hands shake. He snarls, I thought booze was against your religion. He’s certain that this Muslim jerk left puke in his drink.

Mohammed’s caught the meaning more than the words, being well practiced after days reading Ted’s lips and body language in the roaring storm. He triumphantly reads Ted’s still alarmed and disbelieving body language. He grins as he yells back, this is food. I need to think.

Minutes later, as the adrenalin continues to thump through his system, Ted’s mind is starting to put things together. It even laughs at him as he starts to see how they arrived here. He’d had enough. He was mentally and physically exhausted after four days fighting heavy, North Pacific seas. He had been working his fishing trawler toward shelter.

He frowns, he still needs rest, more than ever. Despite the stupid contract and all the money, despite Mohammed, he had to head for shelter after days of fighting to keep his boat in one place.

He sniffs sourly, he needs that break, and he needs a real deckhand. He’s had too many days with Mohammed inertly sprawling on the deck. A useless mess in the midst of his own seasick mess. Mohammed may be a good contract dictator and an electronics wizard, but . . . He sneers. Mohammed’s a deckhand who spends his time mostly out of it, or protectively curled over his carefully lashed down super duper laptop computer.

Of course super and goofy fits right in with the rest of this secret and totally weird trip. A trip spent throwing weird electronic noises into the sky from those ugly, top-heavy antennas on the mast. Fishing with electronic noises, while fighting to hold the position dictated by Mohammed’s stupid Global Positioning System.

He finishes his drink off and reloads while still thinking about Mohammed. Despite his being badly battered by the storm, Mohammed has argued that their contract keeps them at the specified fixed coordinates at any cost. He’s Gibraltar-firm that they will keep The Prancing Zelda in place for the full week. Yes, even if it is very dangerous, a waste of time, and in the middle of nowhere. Despite himself, Ted is intrigued at the way Mohammed remains doggedly, almost fearfully, steadfast, despite his sea sickness and the appalling weather and sea conditions. He appreciates Mohammed’s toughness, so rare in someone so young, so landlubber, and suffering so much. He quite likes that toughness. It’s a toughness that continues even though both of them foully savage each other through their lack of sleep. He starts to grin, but he forgets and inhales, and sniffs that awful days-old seasick reek yet again. Choking and shuddering, he recoils and masks it with another sip of rum.

Ted nods as Mohammed marks the actual crash location on the nautical chart. He then ponders about the radar going bonkers and changing its range setting from ‘close’ to ‘far’ just before the B-52 hit.

Both independently note the crash location from the residual image on the frozen radar screen. The dead screen even still shows the mountains ahead on Vancouver Island. Mohammed scowls when he works out that Ted has deliberately taken the boat away from their assigned position. His eyes narrow as he realizes that Ted was taking advantage of his sickness to hunt for shelter from the storm.

Ted then notices that Mohammed's laptop computer has independently marked the crash location on the chart on its screen. He can see that it’s used data from its Global Positioning System (GPS). His lips purse, a little pop-up window is reporting that it’s just tried, unsuccessfully for the third time, to make a satellite call somewhere. Naturally it failed, having had its satellite dish eaten by that jet engine. Ted grins, thinking for about the sixth time in three days, that it’s nutty that anyone would try full two way satellite communications from a such small boat. It’s truly nutty to try to focus on some little spot in the sky during a storm that’s wildly flopping the boat around in the sea. He figures that its typical newfangled junk, looking around for a purpose. But then he notes that despite the loss of the antennas, the laptop’s GPS is still managing to track their location. His eyes widen as he gradually realizes that it’s their best remaining navigation aid. That GPS has suddenly become a very precious asset.

Ted has also noted Mohammed's obvious surprise at what has happened. He's grimly amused at Mohammed's display of ignorance at such a dramatic display of the reason for their presence out here. Even partially polluted by his daily rum intake, he can see that somebody sent Mohammed on a suicide mission to attract that plane right smack dab into the two of them in this trawler. Obviously, someone’s software was sending some kind of signals with those antennas that were mounted on the mast.

On one hand it makes him feel cold inside, on the other he admires a plan that would crash the plane at a known location, and simultaneously eliminate the witnesses.

He decides not to feel lucky to have escaped yet. Just by glancing around he can see four places where the deck house is now damaged and leaking. He blinks and frowns. With the mast and the antennas gone, they have lost both radio and radar capability. Worse yet, there is scary potential for any remaining mast support cables tangling with the ship's propeller.

He sucks his lips in and his eyes narrow as he remembers all the additional steel tethering cables for that weird electronic hardware that they mounted high on the masts for this expedition. It will be all over if even one of those cables is hanging down under the ship, and swings into the propeller. Without the propeller to maintain way they will lose the ship and their lives. He frowns, suddenly looking years older. It was a miracle that they came up last time. He looks outside at the storm and shakes his head, there won’t be any rescue in these conditions, even if they could call for help.

He briefly considers going out with the axe to hack at any dangling cables. However, he knows that only some kind of nut would leave the deck house in these conditions. He looks down at Mohammed, inertly sprawled on the deck again. He sniffs, then laughs at himself for even thinking of leaving him at the wheel while he scrambles about in that bedlam outside.

He grimaces as he decides that they will just have to take it slow and easy. Without their radar they are now basically blind and will be until the storm leaves. Or until they see some bit of land that they can identify and use to reach shelter in some inlet on Vancouver Island. His grimace deepens: bumping into shore or some reef wouldn’t be a good thing.

He reaches up and adjusts his cap, then smiles. He’s very fond of the cap he’s wearing. It’s a memento of another storm. He got on a beach just last year from the middle of a kilometer of strewn and battered boat remains. Nobody ever found any part of that boat’s crew. Except he found this lucky cap. His face develops a form of serenity as he takes another sip of his drink. They have many hours of extremely rough slow going to reach shelter, and any of these worrying problems could become fatal if not handled carefully, but it’s a good challenge. He touches his cap for luck, thinking that a stupid move now will most likely leave just enough debris to make some beachcomber happy. He knows that this cap has already had more than its share of bad luck, and it's on the upswing.

But then his mouth opens, his thought completes and he jerks his cap tight down on his head. He sourly twists his mouth to spit out a comment. Instead, he just glares down at Mohammed. He has just realized that the plan was to cause the plane to crash at a known location, and that means that someone will want to go to that crash site to get something. Whoever it is won’t want any witnesses to disturb the effort.

Who?

To get what?

At that depth? He snorts in disbelief.

He doesn’t like the bit about eliminating witnesses.

For his part, Mohammed has now, after a slow start, put the pieces together in his mind. He, for the first time, now fully realizes that he was given this task for his well recognized technical skills, but even more as a final task. This is a task to make up for his bad bombs.

Two of his fellow people in the Izzedine al Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, have prematurely blown themselves up delivering bombs he designed and built. Even more embarrassing for many, one of the bombs took out the United Nations aid station the bomb car was temporarily stored alongside. His best bomb design, the ‘Sharif’, is still traveling around inside two reconditioned Israeli tour buses. The buses are each carrying enough built-in plastic explosive, disguised as replacement heat insulation, to take out a whole city bus station. He nods proudly to himself, even all the stupid pigeons. According to all expectations the buses should have blown up and left big holes in the road three months ago. He’s still hoping that it’s just a matter of cooler weather, and the drivers not yet needing to use the secondary air conditioning in the buses. His best dream-hope now is that the Israelis will have one of their periodic practice mobilizations and someone will flip the switches on two busloads of reservists. He grins, for the hundredth time, at the idea of such an explosive way to show his value to his people.

He looks over and down at his laptop computer. He checks that it’s still nicely strapped down to the deck. A deck now covered with streams of seawater from the various leaks in the battered cabin. His eyes narrow as he checks, yes the leaks are all still going past it.

He admires how his laptop automatically reset the boat’s radar to the ‘far’ setting just before the impact. One of those black boxes must have programmed it to detect the rapidly incoming plane. It may even have had some kind of electronic conversation with the plane before it reset the radar to reach out for the backup location reading from the mountains. He narrows his eyes as he works over the idea that in better weather and calmer seas the laptop and radar could detect the incoming aircraft much earlier.

He grins to himself, the computers on the plane could probably tell the laptop the plane's location, and the laptop could have compared locations. In any event, the computer then reset the radar to the far setting. The stupid thing even tried to send a location report out to home via a satellite despite the impossible conditions.

He sighs as he mentally completes his calculations, the whole process was all timed to complete before the plane struck, given better weather. He decides that the designer probably assumed a more mild climate. He grins again as he decides that it’s likely that nobody felt able to tell the designer where his creation would be used. They probably tested it on a truck driving back and forth across some field. The ‘need to know’ security rule crippled the project.

Except, his whole face lights up this time, having a man in the loop saved the day yet again.

Pulling his mind back into this cold, drunk driven, old boat, he flickers his eyes over at Ted. His new problem. He doesn’t like Ted, but he has gained a great deal of respect for this drunken old tyrant’s capability and casual seabred toughness. He appreciates the man’s tolerance and even handedness, continuing even after days of dealing with a useless deckhand such as himself. However, the plane crashed in the wrong location.

He grits his teeth and scowls. Something on that crashed plane is vitally important. He doesn’t know what or why, or have the need to know. If all had gone well, and the airplane had obliterated them, there would have been no witnesses. He grimaces. He himself is a witness, and so is Ted.

He sighs as he nods to himself. He now has to adapt. As an agent, he has to become more active, not just an engineer. He’ll be sure to make it fast for Ted when the time comes.

Two days later, a badly battered The Prancing Zelda enters Zeballos harbor. She crudely bounces along the dock, reverses, then stops. Anxious locals waiting on the dock, gather around the deckhand, obviously one of those smelly unshaven immigrants, as he ties the boat to the dock.

Where's Ted? One finally asks, carefully assessing both the knot and the man.

For all of the locals, both the odd way it entered harbor and the flaky docking procedure scream that Ted's missing or hurt. Two of them stand blinking and muttering, looking back and forth between the battered rigging and the torn stump of the aluminum mast. It’s hard to see how the upper part of the boat has been so rudely scalped. Shaking their heads in wonder, they mutter irritably as they clamber aboard looking for Ted, and signs of Ted. They obviously know the boat and the owner well.

Mohammed has uncomfortably noted all this and finally finishes his knot. He stands erect, looks the man in the eye and says, I think he slipped off the back of the boat when he was taking a piss. Sometime after we got into Espinosa Inlet during that storm.

He shrugs, obviously very tired, he was tired and drunk and relaxing. He shrugs again, I don’t really know. I was below, sick in my bunk.

One pulls Mohammed's already packed suitcase from the boat. Three of them then escort him into the village for a shower, fresh food, and pointedly disbelieving questioning.

In turn, Mohammed's first request is for a telephone connection. He wants to use his laptop to email a message home to his mom in Lebanon. He wants to tell her that he’s alive, just in case she’s worried. She may have heard about this storm. He tells them that he’ll report a whale sighting just to mollify her.

Four hours later, fed and clean, in newly washed clothes, he hitchhikes a ride in a truck delivering live-seafood to Vancouver. The marine chart marked with the crash site, whale sighting, is carefully folded inside his now locked suitcase. He’s quite proud of himself. The deliberate redundancy, email and personal delivery, is part of his belt-and-braces engineering approach.

As he travels, he keeps wondering who is planning to return to that crash site.

How are they going to sneak down into the sea to get whatever it is?

Why?

Who and how?

. . .

A couple weeks later - On family holidays in Europe

. . .

Last out the door, Mike Caldwell puts down a suitcase and watches his wife and daughters carry other luggage across the cobbled courtyard to the rental car parked by the canal. He grins and turns to listen when a cock crows in the distance.

Live chickens in the city?

Then he raises his nose and sniffs the fresh early morning Delft, Netherlands, air. He nods. It even smells like country air. He smiles in appreciation, savoring the idea that it’s a European pocket city, still close to its country roots.

Turning back to the hotel door, he inserts the massive key and starts turning it to lock the door. He smiles as he rotates the key five times around to crank the ancient bolt into place. This is definitely Europe. He nods as he hears the car start, it’s good that someone is warming its engine up. He winces as the noise from a tiny radio-controlled plane scrapes at the air.

Why wake the whole town?

Bemused, he shakes his head, and says, women!

However, he still smiles fondly as he hears the plane sweep around for an advantageous airborne video recording of the hotel, the courtyard, and the surrounding area. She will have exceptional holiday videos!

He finishes with the lock, lifts the flap, and returns the key through the slot in the wall. Intrigued at the size of the slot, it’s easily big enough to reach inside and grab things, he bends over and peers inside. Bent over, peeking in the slot to see what all is in there, he jerks his head up and blinks in surprise as three men close in on him. He completes straightening himself up, just as he hears the key thump back against the wall next to him. His eyes widen as he hears it continue down onto a shelf, someways below the slot. He tries to imagine its route, it must have slid someways in, then dropped and zigged back, on opposing ramps.

Mr. Caldwell?

It’s a tall, heavily built, man. He presents what appears to be police identification. Mike turns to face him. Distracted, exploring the idea of it being designed for someone to be able to deliver something like a hot meat pie through the same slot, he squints at the man. Something is not right. These men don’t look right or act right. Reacting further, as they close around him, maybe quite a few things aren’t right!

Hey!

He turns further, and yells indignantly, as he notices that two big black cars have now blocked off both ends of his rental car. Four dark skinned and black-haired men are gathering to escort the three women into one of the black cars. As he steps ahead to see better, one of his daughters ducks ahead into the back of the black car and pokes the micro airplane’s control box into the car’s back window.

Hey! He says again, his voice rising, what the hell’s going on?

One man is holding up a photo and comparing it to him, apparently to make sure that he is the correct person. The man’s eyebrows quiver and he nods. This is the right man.

Just then the roar of the microplane, abruptly torqued up full throttle, snarls at them as it sweeps down, forcing two men at the cars to abruptly duck. It turns straight up, flips over, down at one man, then suddenly jinks into the back of the head of the man forcing Mike's wife into the car. As that man drops on top of his wife, Mike gasps forward. A handgun has been thrust hard into his stomach. Again. As he slumps forward, they grab his arms and hustle-drag him toward one of the cars as it approaches.

Racing along, just a few minutes later in the three cars, they turn right and start to follow the road up onto a dike, right alongside a canal. Then, when they are halfway up, a truck and trailer rig rolls in from an unseen side road at the top of the dike and screeches to a dusty stop. The instant barricade blocks their route.

Two light machine guns, obviously just now set onto pre-positioned stands on the top of the dike, cut savagely into the rearmost car, the family's rental car. It jerks right, smashes, then scrapes noisily along a stone retaining wall. One machine gun immediately switches to the front car, hacking at the engine compartment and the front tires. With blown tires, the car's driver fights to stay in his lane, and to drive through the steam cloud now boiling off the smashed engine.

The remaining car, untouched and obviously loaded with the three captive women, explodes past, through the steam and first smoke. It then roars, full throttle and full tilt, right under the trailer. After a big bang and the squeal of tortured metal, it emerges, torn roofless, smashed and clawed down to a crawl. Its exhaust system is banging along in clattering pieces, exploding sparks as it scrapes along the road surface. Still moving, the car jerks blindly from side to side on top of the dike beyond the trailer. Two dark headed girls’ heads pop up and look wonderingly back at the trailer, and what used to be the roof of their car lying crumpled under it. No one shoots as the girls turn and look at each other. The driver's bloody head finally pops up, furtively looks around, then hunches back down. As the driver settles in, facing ahead, he savagely booms the wreck back up to full throttle. Now properly guided, it quickly builds up speed and clatters away in a growing cloud of greasy blue-black smoke.

In savage recovery, both machine guns switch to the front seat area of the steaming front car, just as it jerks to a halt. They riddle that entire area with 7.62mm rounds. Then, in sniper mode, they chew into the last two kidnappers, on each side of Mike in the back seat.

Dogs are now barking wildly in farm yards all around, as the truck and trailer back clear of the road. There's a roar from top of the hill as a van squirts out from the same dike top side road, chasing after the roofless wreck.

From the area of one of the machine guns, two masked men take turns zigzagging down the side of the dike to the cars. They pull everyone showing signs of life out of the cars, shooting as necessary.

Blindfolded, Mike doesn’t know what’s happening, but it becomes very personal. The wounded man next to him is pried off him while screaming for mercy. Mike distinctly hears the thump when the man is dropped on the road, a three-round burst, then silence. When hands roughly yank at him, Mike fights them through his handcuffs and blindfold as they pull him clear and drop him onto the roadway . . . . But nobody shoots.

Another van arrives, just as one man, wearing a blue mask, kneels down next to Mike. He tells Mike to relax as he unties him.

How is my family? Mike is desperate. He has heard and felt the gunfire, heard the crashes, odd traffic noises, and way too much bloody screaming.

The blue masked man shrugs, then recognizing that Mike can’t see though the blindfold, that car escaped.

What?!

Half-guiltily he jerks off Mike’s blindfold.

They both snap around as the other masked man starts to tidy up by blasting two rifle rounds through the head of every kidnapper outside a car.

A blond masked man carrying a camera and a first aid kit pops out of the van. He asks Mike where he's hurt and roughly examines him. He binds Mike's two leg wounds and a shoulder gouge. He ignores Mike's bleeding nose and glass cut head.

Another masked man emerges from the van, puts away a cell phone, then yells at the man with the rifle, that’s too noisy. He waves the man away. He and the blond masked man then trot around with a small caliber handgun pumping two rounds into the head of each body left in the cars. The man with the rifle switches to using the camera.

They all ignore the now pervasive fuel vapor fumes, despite the smoking cars.

The blond masked man, now more apparently the leader, comes over and says, we did what we could, Mike. He shrugs, then stands next to Mike for psychological support.

The photographer combs the site, recording everything, especially facial shots of every kidnapper. Twice he forgets where he is walking and has to wipe gore off one of his shoes. Each time he does, the leader leans over and offers Mike a swig from a flask. Each time Mike automatically sniffs first. It’s some kind of a rum mix.

As two others start putting salvaged bits and pieces, everything from credit cards to guns and gloves, into their van, the leader says, the Dutch cops will be here in a few minutes. He drags Mike to a sitting position up against the rock wall.

The photographer arrives and drapes two dead men’s coats over Mike. He gently pats Mike on the unwounded shoulder. His voice grins through his mask as he says, sorry, no smoking. His voice rises as he sniffs and he follows up with, I guess that you can sniff gas though.

Hey! That's my computer. They're taking his laptop!

He can tell by the change in the masks that all three are grinning at him. Not only that, their body language is chortling that they already knew it was his, and want it in any case.

Jerks!

They clamber into the van and race away, as the first sounds of sirens rise through the still frenzied dog barking.

. . .

He snaps his head up from a slump. He’s heard something. Again!

He’s heard the sound of a bout of retching spewing out from the rental car.

It repeats. He thinks about it. They are all dead. Head shot by pros.

Only someone isn’t.

He frowns, blinks, sniffs, licks at a driblet of blood, and thinks it over.

It’s most likely the man the radio-plane brained. Even brained, he’s one of these terrorists that have just taken his family. He definitely wants his family back, and he doesn’t expect much from the cops. Even worse, he can’t remember anything good about Dutch cops. Hell, the country has its own drug heaven in Amsterdam. If anybody is going to do anything worthwhile, he will have to do it himself. He shrugs, judging by what’s happened so far, anything goes. Grimacing, yelping, and cursing angrily to himself, he struggles up and works his painfully wrecked legs over to the car.

Yes, it’s the right man, propeller gouged and minus an ear, and the visible black eye is open and blinks. Mike looks down at his own legs, then gently squats and firmly reties the bandage on the leakier one. Good. The leak is smaller now. He rises, gasping quietly to himself at the pain, sniffs then breathes in. He sighs, then, we need to talk about my family. He drags the man out to sprawl darkly protesting on the road. He jerks, involuntarily flashing back to his own experience landing on the road a few minutes ago. And no family. Now sniffling quietly to himself, he croaks, through his own pain and trauma, boy, are we lucky your head already looked shot!

Heaving on the man's jacket, he inverts it over the man’s head, then maddened by his own pain, he flips the man onto his back. Growling in pain and loss, he drags the man across the road and down into a thick stand of bush just above the water's edge. The brush emits yells and some grunts, then Mike reemerges with ripped chunks of most of the man's shirt. He carefully wipes and scuffs out most of the signs of his man-dragging. Looking in the rental car for a last time, he notices the tiny wrecked airplane with its video camera and grabs it. He works his way, yelping quietly as his legs yell in pain at his activity, down into the brush. He is well hidden and already poking questions at the man by the time the police and ambulances arrive on the road above.

. . .

Five days later, one of some decapitating incidents worldwide

The Hummer sprightly turns the corner along the beach road. All three people inside are hugely enjoying the base commander's morning drive along the seaside road. They brace themselves for the brisk cold air now that they've come around the corner from behind sheltering trees.

Crash! Something has smashed the engine!

They start to react, but a series of near-silent heavy machine gun bullets pound them and the vehicle off the road onto the