Ted Bell - Warlord

"Welcome to the suck," he said, pausing for beat before adding, "sir!"

"You got it, Marine," she said, smiling as she pulled his door shut. It was amazing. She had actually gotten accustomed to being addressed as "Sir" by her twelve-year-old son.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, she and Jay had escaped for their annual romantic getaway to the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. They'd left the kids with a babysitter, a seventeen-year-old day student at the Lawrenceville School just across the river. Trevor had clearly wrapped this poor girl, Annie, around his little finger. When she and Jay returned a full day earlier due to Jay's illness, they discovered that Trevor had moved every stick of furniture out of his room. Stored it all in the attic.

He had then covered the bare floor of his room with about an inch of sand he'd bought (having persuaded Annie to drive him to Home Depot) and pitched a pup tent in the middle of his room. Beside his tent was a Christmas tree stand with a sawed-off broomstick mounted in it. At the top, he'd hung an American flag. Models from Trevor's collection hung on fishing line from the ceiling, including B-1B bombers, B-52s, F-16 Fighting Falcons, and Black Hawk helicopters.

Trevor, of course, was first to appear in "mess hall," and Alice was happy to see he was wearing a pair of nicely pressed chinos and a starched khaki shirt. Not perfect, but better than camo. Margaret and Barclay followed shortly and seemed not only to have adjusted to the idea of school, but seemed almost giddy with excitement about it. Everybody wolfed down their breakfast, anxious to make the long trek down through the woods that led to the narrow rural road where the school bus would pick them up at the end of their driveway.

It was about a ten-minute hike, and Alice practically had to run to keep up with her children.

When they arrived at the road, the big yellow bus could be seen in the distance, cresting a hill about half a mile away.

"Armored personnel carrier at nine o'clock, sir," Trevor said, completely serious.

"Hostile or friendly?" Alice asked.

Trevor smiled and said, "Good question, Mom."

The bus finally rolled to a stop just in front of them. Since they were the last house on the route, it was packed with raucous, laughing children. Many of them pressed their faces against the windows and a couple stuck their tongues out, presumably at Trevor because he was sticking his out at them.

"Okay, team," she said, herding them toward the door. "I want everyone to behave, pay attention in class, and try to avoid food fights. I've already got enough laundry to deal with, thank you."

"Yes, Mother," Margaret said, mommy's little angel. Barclay said the same thing, even using her older sister's inflection. Then she reached up for one last hug as the school-bus door hissed open.

"Off you go," Alice said, looking up at the driver for the first time as the kids climbed aboard.

"Where's Mrs. Henderson?" she asked the dark-haired young man at the wheel.

"Called in sick. I'm the new substitute driver."

"Sick? She's been driving this bus since I was in sixth grade. Never sick a day in her life."

"Always a first time," the youth said, pulling the lever that closed the door.

The bus lurched away and then began the long climb up Potter's Hill, the highest point in Washington's Crossing.

She watched the bus moving away with a growing sense of uneasiness. A mother's instincts. She had not liked the young driver. Not liked anything about him. Not the way he spoke to her, the way he was dressed (a little cap on his head), or the way he failed to say "Good morning" the way Mrs. Henderson always did. Nor did she particularly care for the way he smiled at her as he pulled the door closed. There was something wrong with that smile, she thought, something dreadfully wrong.

She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, watching the bus accelerate up the steep hill, wondering if she was actually going crazy. Delusional? Paranoid?

No.

"Oh, my God!" she heard herself cry aloud.

Then she started running after the bus, screaming as loudly as she could for it to stop.

About a third of the way up the hill she simply ran out of breath. She'd been running as fast as she'd ever run in her life, but the hill was just too steep. The bus was nearing the top now, and she knew she'd never catch it. All she could do was stand there helplessly and watch it, praying she was only being silly, getting to be just as paranoid as everybody else in the country seemed to be lately.

When the bus reached the very top of the hill, red lights flashed and it seemed to pause for a moment.

The explosion sent shock waves rolling down the hill, staggering Alice Milne. She looked up to see a massive ball of fire and billowing black smoke where her children's yellow school bus had been just a split second earlier.

Alice Milne started running up the hill.

The blistering heat of the flaming bus seared her eyes as she reached the top of the hill and the roaring funeral pyre that was now reducing her children and her life to ashes.

THE RED CRESCENT SOCIETY AMBULANCE rolled up Islamabad's Peshawar Road, nearing Golra Mor and the newly opened hospital. It was just after midnight. Any time after ten o'clock, the well-ordered, tree-lined streets of Islamabad were empty, save the occasional white cab or two. It was not a town for night owls. The only restaurant open at this hour was a highly controversial Pizza Hut that had opened in a nearby shopping mall.

Up front, the ambulance driver, Imran, and his paramedic first aider, Ali, were smoking cigarettes and talking, what else, politics. In the darkened rear of the vehicle, the occupant inside the heavy-duty dark green body bag wasn't talking at all.

Imran took a right into the wide entranceway of the new Quaid-e-Azam International Hospital. The ultramodern four-hundred-bed facility had only opened recently after endless construction delays, political infighting, and infrastructure difficulties. Something having to do with an underground parking garage was the street gossip. The wait had been worth it, though, most people thought. The radical, blue-mirrored architecture resembled something one might find in downtown Dubai rather than the capital of Pakistan.

A gift from a national hero. A fierce warlord named Sheik al-Rashad.

The ambulance stopped under the covered entrance to the Emergency Room. The two men inside got out in a hurry. They'd been held up at a security checkpoint for more than two hours and both were eager to get home. The driver said hello to the armed security guard as he swung open the rear doors.

The guard, Muhammad, was an old friend to ISI operative Imran, another ISI agent who'd been disgraced and lost his job. This is where the poor bastard had ended up. Driving an ambulance was shitty enough. The graveyard shift at a hospital was the bottom of the barrel. The paramedic helped the driver slide the body onto the bright yellow collapsible gurney.

"Late night, Imran," the guard said in English. "Looks like cold storage for that one."

The paramedic shook his head and whispered to the driver in Urdu, "Now there's a blinding glimpse of the obvious. No wonder they threw this idiot out of the secret service."

Imran said, "How do you know the secret service threw him out? How do you know he's still not working for them? How do you know they are not working for him? Once ISI, always ISI."

"I heard he got kicked out on his ass."

"Did you now? Do not believe everything you hear, brother. You will live longer."

The large-paned glass ER doors hissed open and the EMS team wheeled the gurney quickly past Registration, past the rows of elevator banks. And, finally, through a set of stainless-steel double doors above which hung a sign that read mortuary/restricted.