David Golemon - Ripper

“Good God,” he mumbled as he pushed a selected number from his address book and hit it. He had to do it twice as he lay with his face to the sun. He couldn’t stop the shakes from making the simplest of tasks so daunting. Finally the call went through and a phone on the other end was answered.

“Yes?” answered a firm voice.

“Señor, I did as our contract asked for and tailed the subject from her hotel in Laredo. She crossed the border just as you said she would.”

“And the main target?”

“He was not among the two men that accompanied her.”

“That is not very good news,” came the reply.

“Señor, they are all dead,” said the man as he removed the small gun from his pants, fumbled it, and then finally caught it and held it to his chest.

“Explain that. The woman you followed is dead?” asked the voice, this time without some of its confident manner.

“Señor, the three women are alive, but all of the men are dead. They were killed by other men who arrived in cars.”

“Who are these men?”

“There is only one man in all of Mexico that kills with such abandon, señor. It had to be the work of Juan Guzman; no one else would dare such an attack in his territory.”

“I know this name, yes I know it well. I have done business with this rather unstable gentleman in the past. He has some silly nickname down there if I remember right.”

“Señor, the man you wanted me to find was not among the dead, but the woman I was asked to follow hoping she would lead me to him has been taken by the most brutal man in all of Mexico. What am I to do now?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. It lasted for a full thirty seconds until the shaking man thought he had finally lost the signal. He tried to press the gun into his chest to assist in stopping the shakes.

“You still have my business card?” the voice finally asked.

“Si,” the man answered as he rose partially to his knees and looked around to make sure he wasn’t to be the next target of the murdering men from below.

“Good, I now want you to wait for two hours and then go to see this Guzman and tell him an old acquaintance would like to discuss some business. Relay to him that I am most particularly interested in hearing about his Anasazi Indian collection. Tell him my opening offer is twenty-five million dollars, which should at least get you in the door. Once there explain that I am on my way to meet with him. Is that clear?”

“Are you insane señor, I will be killed!”

“Do this and I will wire transfer one million dollars into your San Antonio bank account. Now do this or do not come back to the States, or you will discover that the truly ruthless men do not only reside in Mexico.” The phone connection ended.

“Madre di dios,” the man said as the cell phone fell to his chest where he allowed it to lay. He looked at the business card he had pulled from his pocket.

The man moaned at the thought of traveling thirty miles north to Nuevo Laredo and presenting himself to Juan Guzman, the Anaconda, just like a lamb to slaughter. First he was contracted out of his agency’s offices in San Antonio to follow this small American woman. He was then told that this McIntire woman would eventually lead him to the man that his employer sought — a Colonel Jack Collins. Now he was to be sacrificed to Juan Guzman for a reason he knew nothing of.

The man slammed the business card to his chest and cursed the one-million-dollar bribe the man had offered. He sniveled and then looked at the card once more. It was one of the expensively printed business cards you can only pick up at the best stationery stores — Mr. Hanover Jones, Antiquities Acquisition and Auction House, New York City — London — Paris.

The man placed the card back into his pocket and knew he would follow orders as he sat up and took a deep breath. After all, a million dollars could buy a very nice funeral.

Two thousand miles away Colonel Henri Farbeaux, the man known as Hanover Jones to the legitimate world, calmly hung up the rented office phone and then slowly stood and furiously tipped the desk he was sitting behind upside down. Not only was he not to kill Jack Collins, he now learned that the only woman he admired outside of his dead wife was being held by a murderous scum.

Farbeaux stood and looked at the phone on the floor with the broken desk tipped beside it. He took a deep breath and then forced calmness into his body. Nothing could infuriate him more than the thought of Collins, the man responsible for his beloved wife’s death, still breathing, but nothing could ever match that feeling more than the thought of little Sarah being hurt. He reached into his expensive coat and brought out his cell phone. While he hit the number he wanted, he kicked absentmindedly at the broken phone upon the floor. His eyes were blazing in anger.

“Have my plane ready with a flight plan to Laredo, Texas.”

The director of Department 5656, Niles Compton, sat on the small set of bleachers and watched the flag football game that was being played between the nuclear sciences division and the security department. The second in command of security, who was quarterbacking the muscular and far more physical team of security personnel, Captain Carl Everett, was starting to look frustrated as the larger men and women could not seem to shake the much smaller but far more agile scientists of Assistant Director Virginia Pollock’s nuclear sciences department. The former SEAL kept looking at the clock and was seeing that time was running out on their three-point lead.

The underground complex was built to house the greatest historical treasures, objects that had a defining moment in either the history of the United States or, more importantly, the world. Department 5656, known to a select few in the federal government as the Event Group, was tasked to find parallels in world history with the events unfolding in modern times to avoid the same pitfalls of our shared past. The artifacts stored in the Event Group’s ten thousand steel vaults represented spectacular finds in archeological history. Most would eventually find their way into the public domain after study, while others would be forever kept secret from the people of the world, due to either political, religious, or military sensitivities. The judge as to what constituted a top secret find is the president of the United States.

The massive complex was an underground labyrinth of naturally formed caves far beneath Nellis Air Force Base. The complex was built by President Roosevelt during World War II after the original site had been moved from Arlington, Virginia. Department 5656 is the darkest department of the American federal system and is solely answerable to the president of the Unites States. It had been that way since its inception in 1863 through to its official charter in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson, who brought the Event Group into legitimate being.

Director Niles Compton smiled as he was nudged by the computer sciences director, Pete Golding, who nodded at the clock as it continued to run down. The intramural games played by the sixteen separate departments were a needed relief used by the six hundred personnel inside the massive complex that ran eighty-nine levels beneath the desert sands of Nevada.

“Looks like the security force dominance may be finally coming to an end if Virginia’s people can get the ball back,” Pete said as he watched Everett and the rest of his offense take their time lining up for the snap in an attempt to take as many seconds off the clock as possible.

“Can you imagine the look on Jack’s face when he hears his department’s unblemished record could possibly be in jeopardy? God, I wish he were here,” Niles said as he watched Everett pointing to his favorite wide receiver, Lieutenant Will Mendenhall, who had thus far caught everything thrown his way.