Ansel V

United Nations Disengagement Observer Force Zone (UNDOF), Golan Heights, Israel.
30 miles south of Anjar.

Field Agent Robert Hall leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up against his desk, reading over the police reports collected from the Lebanese Law Enforcement concerning their probe into the charter ship. One attempted date rape, one missing Italian fugitive, and one head sized crater in the wall of one of the ship’s compartments.  Hall skipped reading and just looked at the pictures. The first was a picture of a blond haired, blue eyed bombshell from Uppsala, Sweden. Olga Sundvik.

The next picture showed the head sized crater that had a spider web of impact cracks in the drywall. The next three pictures showed the actual metrics of the crater. An off camera hand was holding a barely readable ruler up to the hole in an assortment of angles. About six inches wide, four and a half inches deep. Faceplant.

The next picture was a pencil drawn police sketch of the would-be rapist, Nico Coscarelli.

Lt. Colding and Agent Eric Fichtner walked into the office.

“That was a bust,” Colding said, sitting down on a sofa and burying his head in his hands.
“Is that the dossier from the charter ship?” Agent Fichtner asked.
“Yeah,” Hall said, handing the folder to still standing Fichtner.

“Oh! Hello, damsel in distress,” Agent Fichtner said, looking at the pictures. He said nothing as he flipped through the pictures of the hole in the wall.

“This must be the story’s bad guy,” Fichtner said as he saw Nico’s picture, then flipped to the next police sketch.

“And this must be Prince Charm-…” Fichtner cut himself off, stunned by the pencil drawn sketch he was looking at. Fair hair, fair skin, the angular face.

“Hey, Ice,” Fichtner said to Colding who still had his head in his hands, staring at the coffee table.
“Isn’t this the guy we saw in the back of that hearse?” Fichtner asked as he placed the police sketch on the coffee table.

Dead as Latin.

                               *     *     *

Ansel awoke from his sleep. Having been awake the entire day prior in addition to the two nights, he was due for a full day’s rest. With a stinging stiff arm, he pushed open the coffin’s lid. It didn’t open all the way due to the fact that he was still in the back of the hearse, but it was open just enough for him to slide out. He grabbed his trench coat and shemagh from the foot of the coffin, where he’d stored them.

Ansel stooped inside the hearse, his head occasionally hit the ceiling, and the rest of his body either brushed the coffin or else the interior walls of the vehicle. It was more cramped outside of the coffin than it was inside of it.

The vampire inched his way to the back of the hearse, popped the hatch and crawled out of the vehicle. Ansel donned his black trench coat and threw the shemagh loosely about his neck. He took a deep breath of the clean, night air as he shook off the rigor mortis.

It was a short climb up the nearby mountain range, only two miles to the Syrian border. Then another twenty miles to Damascus, and, hopefully, Cabal.

Ansel rewrapped the rosary around his hand as he looked up at the night sky full of stars. The night was young. He would walk, he would pray, and he would hunt.

                                 *     *     *

Lt. Grant Colding and the five SEALs assigned to him quickly donned their combat gear. Slipping black tactical hoods over their heads, the operators looked reminiscent of ninjas- ninjas that also wore desert Battle Dress Uniforms and tactical helmets.

Grant cinched his black helmet to his head, then checked his microphone.
“Check, check, am I coming in clear?” Colding said into his throat mike.
 An assortment of ‘Hooyah’s and ‘Roger that, sir’ came from his team.

Lt. Colding inserted a full magazine into his Sig Saur 9mm pistol, racked the slide, then holstered it on his thigh. He then grabbed the pump action 8 gauge shotgun from the weapons locker and checked the chamber to make sure it was clear, then inserted a single beanbag round and cocked the weapon, then inserted four more flechette rounds. Most shotgun shells were filled with a small handful shot, or slightly larger balls of lead that would spread out in a widening cone when fired. Flechette rounds were basically filled with small nails. If the beanbag round didn’t stun (or kill) their target, Grant would be playing for keeps.

The SEALs jogged out of the building into the night, and then ran full on for the black hawk helicopter out on the helipad, its rotors already spinning up.

                                 *     *     *

The Anti-Lebanon mountain range separates Lebanon from Syria, and Ansel had only a little more than a mile to reach the top of the peak. Syria was just beyond that peak. Another seventeen miles to Damascus, and hopefully Cabal. The view of the stars was obstructed in large part due to the mountain and its steep rise. Ansel could have run the distance with great ease and made it to Damascus in a matter of minutes, but he seized opportunities like this to clear his mind and meditate. He was damned, and he considered the slow walk up the mountain a minor penance.

Ansel paused briefly and stared up at the heavens. It was a wonder to think of man’s history of looking at the stars- the more he knew, the further they were. Men of the 12^th century couldn’t fathom distances in terms of light years, let alone billions of light years. Back then, through the eyes of simpler men in simpler times, the stars were closer. Seen through modern eyes, the heavens were impossibly far. Heaven had itself become impossible.

 Ansel looked away from the stars and the mountain’s peak, casting his gaze briefly on his feet, and the dirt he tread. Heaven and earth, seen through Damnation’s eyes.

Ansel perished the thought and continued his ascent.

                                 *     *     *

Everything was green and fuzzy.
Lt. Colding adjusted his night vision, double checking to make sure the equipment was working properly. His team mates, as well as the rest of the world, were awash with green and yellow and black in the infrared goggles. Grant toggled the infrared night vision off while toggling the thermal imaging function.

Everything warm was a pale gray, everything hot was white. The rest of the world was black. The general form of the inside of the helicopter was gray, punctuated by white bodies of humans inhabiting the cabin and cockpit. Grant turned his equipment on standby and lifted his goggles, letting his eyes readjust to the night.

The helicopter was cruising low to the ground at an easy 160 miles per hour. Patches of white snow reflecting pale moonlight raced by the open bay doors on the helo’s port side. The mountain air was crisp and clean, and Grant relished the relative calm of the moment.

Grant steadied himself as he got up and approached the cockpit. Standing between the pilot and copilot, Grant surveyed the helo’s dash as well as the upcoming terrain. For a moment, the brightly lit grid panel of instruments reminded him of seeing a city at night. He tried to not let that distract him.

“There, set us down there,” Grant said pointing a cluster of rubble on the mountain side.
“You sure about that sir?” The pilot asked, thinking this slap-dash mission was hair-brained at best.
“Positive,” Colding said. He wasn’t.
“Roger that, setting us down in 5…” the pilot said.

Grant turned around and instead of going back to his seat, stood at the starboard bay door and grabbed onto the hand hold in the ceiling.

“Go North ten clicks after you drop us, then circle back to get us when activate the I.R. beacon!” Colding said.

“Roger that,” the pilot said again, agitation building in his voice.

The helo slowed and came to a still hover over the landing zone, then descended to a few feet above level ground. Shotgun at the ready, Grant and the rest of his six man team jumped out onto the rocky terrain and jogged to the rubble pile while the helicopter thundered off into oblivion.

Grant used hand signals to spread his team out into ambush positions. While from the air the location looked to have been merely a pile of rocks, on the ground the pile more closely resembled Roman ruins. In the green and yellow fog of night vision, Grant could easily make out the repeating structural arches, broken columns and half destroyed stone block walls.

Lt. Colding and Petty Officers Kyer and Gosling took up positions near the western perimeter of the ruins. Petty Officers Hernandez, Gosling and Wasnick spread out just beyond the ruins, taking cover behind boulders. They knew their target was moving West to East and would be coming down the nearby summit. If he comes up over an unexpected path, they may need to relocate in order to intercept him.

Grant Colding and his fireteam waited in their ambush positions, breathing in the cool night air with calm anticipation.

                                 *     *     *

Ansel had reached summit, and the sky had opened into a wide expanse of brilliant diamonds twinkling in the tar of black night. Before him, far below, was the country of Syria. At the foot of the mountain was a quilted patchwork of farms and fields, and beyond them was city of Damascus, almost as brilliant as the night sky.

                                 *     *     *

There. Through his night vision goggles, Grant spotted a figure of a man at the mountain’s peak. Due to the distance and his goggles’ poor resolution, the figure was almost rendered as a shrub or a small tree. Grant activated the InfraRed beacon to signal for the helicopter’s approach. While the beacon could not normally be seen by the unaided eye, the whole world seen through the green and yellow of night vision pulsed with the IR beacon’s seemingly yellow !FLASH!-!FLASH!-!FLASH!

Squinting, and also distracted by the beacon’s flashing, Lt. Colding lost track of the figure at the top of the mountain. He switched to thermal imaging and was no longer distracted by the beacon’s flashing. In the blackness he saw the hot white silhouettes of his team mates staked out in the ruins and behind boulders. Looking up the mountain side, however, there were no heat signatures. Nothing. What the hell? The low, dull sound of *whump*whump*whump* could be heard as the Black Hawk helicopter came in on a fast approach.

Frustrated, Colding switched back to infra-red, rendering the world once again into a hazy green mire. His target was nowhere to be seen on the mountain. He simply disappeared. No way he could’ve closed that distance.

Grant didn’t dare say a word. Instead, he clicked his throat mike on and off three times in quick succession, causing everybody’s ear pieces to cut in and out of static. It was a signal for a pre-arranged plan to spread out and quietly hunt down the target.

The helicopter was much closer and much louder now, the *whump*sounded more like thud-thud-thud-thud. Were it daylight, the chopper would probably be clearly visible.

Lt. Colding watched as his fireteam had begun to spread out. As he tried to take a step forward he felt an arm reach from behind and hook around his throat, yanking him back. He couldn’t yell, he couldn’t breathe.

Though slung to his body, Grant’s shotgun fell to his side as he threw his body backwards into his unseen assailant and slammed his right elbow into his chest. The helicopter was over head now, its rotors generating a perpetual thunder in the night. The pilot turned on the nose mounted spot light and pointed at Lt. Colding and the dark figure that he was fighting.

“Goddammit!!!” Grant shouted as the helicopter’s blindingly bright white spotlight overloaded his night vision equipment. In under a second, Grant ripped his night vision equipment off, tossed it aside and shouldered his shotgun, pointing the barrel at Ansel’s face.

The pupils of Ansel’s eyes didn’t contract like a human’s would. They narrowed into slim, black vertical slits, like a cat.  His blond hair was being whipped about by the wind of the helicopter’s rotors.

The rest of the team surrounded Grant and Ansel, training their rifles on the vampire. Over the thunderous din of the helicopter, a single BOOM was heard, as Grant shot Ansel in the face.

Ansel IV

The Port of Beirut passengers’ terminal was packed with travelers. Lieutenant Grant “Ice” Colding rubbed at the month-and-a-half-old beard on his chin and cheeks.

“Any visuals?” Colding asked his collar microphone, scanning the room.
The two other SEALs in the terminal said nothing, but made what passed for eye contact with black sunglasses on.

Petty Officer Gosling’s voice crackled in his ear piece, “Negative, Sir.”

Petty Officers Gosling, Hernandez and McGill were outside the terminal building, surveilling the cargo off-load, as well as watching individuals entering and exiting the charter ship and Port Terminal building.

All six men in Lt. Colding’s intercept team wore video cameras hidden in the bridge of their black sunglasses. Additionally, two CIA drones were circling the port city of Beirut, and a geosynchronous satellite provided complete over-watch of the region. All of the electronic visual surveillance was relayed both to a CIA safe house in Lebanon as well as to CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

The bustling terminal was awash with the cacophony of multiple languages, primarily French and Arabic with a little bit of Anatolian Turkish thrown in.

The mission was ambitious. The goal was to circumvent possible nuclear arms smuggling by searching for a man whose affiliations are unknown and hasn’t even shown his face. All they had to go on was the man’s height and attire. Of all the passengers leaving the ship, none were wearing black trench coats, and most of them had shemaghs either thrown loosely around their necks, or carefully wrapped around the crowns of their heads.

This is impossible, Colding thought, next to impossible, he corrected himself.

Among the noise of the crowd, Colding heard the clinking chains of handcuffs and the hissing squabble sound of walky-talkies. Colding furtively turned his head to see two Lebanese police officers in khaki uniforms pushing their way through the crowd toward the charter ship.

One of the Lebanese officers passed Lt. Colding a look of suspicion as he made his way to the ship’s quarterdeck. He realized that he looked out of place. None of the SEALs were in uniform and didn’t mill about like the passengers. Grant was wearing cargo pants and a black t-shirt with a white Punisher skull on the front of it. Colding only gave a slight smile and remained in place.  He made sure he got a good shot of the officer’s face with the hidden camera in his sunglasses.

“This might have to do with our man,” Colding said into his collar mike, and made a mental note to have the CIA look into the Lebanese Law Enforcement’s involvement on the charter ship.

                               *     *      *

In Langley, Virginia, Agent Greitens watched the multiple screens of the live intercept/surveillance operation in Lebanon.  Three of the screens were from the SEALs inside the Port Terminal building, another three were the SEALs outside watching multiple points of egress.  Two were aerial drones and one was the dedicated geosync satellite.

Greitens saw the Lebanese police on Colding’s screen, then looked at the footage from one of the aerial drones to see if there were law enforcement vehicles outside of the building, and found none. The officers must be stationed at the port.

“Agent Hall,” Greitens said into the microphone on the table, “you and Fichtner will need to have a follow up with those officers.”

“Copy that, Sir,” Agent Hall responded all the way from Lebanon.

Greitens continued scanning the video surveillance screens. It was going to be impossible to find their faceless, shemagh wearing target amongst the throng of travelers. Greitens glanced at Hernandez’s screen watching the cargo offload, and saw a man using a handtruck to offload a coffin.

Coffin, Greitens thought, then had the sudden inspiration, nuclear arms smuggling.
Greitens keyed the table microphone again, “Hall, track that coffin with one of the drones’ thermal cameras.”

One of the aerial drone’s screens adjusted its bird’s eye view and zoomed in on the dock workers handling the coffin, then the color screen turned black and white. All of the warm vehicles and moving bodies were a hot white on the field of black and gray.

Agent Hall’s voice crackled in the speakers, “You think our guy’s in the coffin?” Hall asked.
“No,” Greitens said, “If the target is smuggling fissile material it should be warm enough to show up on thermals.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s anything warm in the box, sir,” Hall said.
Greitens surveyed the thermal imaging. The coffin wasn’t white like the vehicle engines or human bodies that milled about the city. It was as black and as cold and as dead as the rest of the cargo being hauled from the ship.

                              *     *     *

From the start, Ahmed had not trusted the deal, but it was too good to pass up. One hundred thousand Euros to drive a hearse from Beirut to Anjar. If traffic was light, one way would be an hour and a half. Traffic was typical, so Ahmed expected two hours.

Ahmed adjusted the radio. For the last 10 minutes it’d been giving him static, the radio periodically cutting in then out of reception. This always happened passing through the Lebanon mountain range, and he always felt he had to do something about the static.

As the Lebanon Mountain Range gave way to the Beqaa valley, hissing static on the radio gave way to the news. Ahmed turned the volume back up.

“…war in Syria continues as a mortar strike kills ten students and injures twenty nine others at the Engineering campus of Damascus University. The United Nations estimates that the uprising has claimed 70,000 thousand lives si-”

Ahmed had become anxious and turned the radio off. His mind was racing; everything was wrong with what he was doing. He was paid 100,000 Euros to drive a hearse to Anjar, a town that was 10 miles from the Syrian border and less than an hour’s drive from Damascus.

The sky had become a riot of red and gold as the setting sun disappeared behind the mountain range he had just driven through.

Ahmed’s mind turned to the deal in Beirut. He didn’t even see the man’s face, he’d completely wrapped it with his shemagh. Why couldn’t he do it himself? What was in the coffin? Drugs? Ahmed thought of the uprising in Syria. Weapons? Ahmed swallowed at the thought of driving a car bomb. I shouldn’t have taken the deal…

Ahmed tried to psych himself down. He sighed as he took in the expanse of farmland, passing field after field. Another three miles and he’d be in the city of Bar Elias. And from there it’d be only another three or four miles to Anjar. The stars would be out and he would go home. He’d be done with this soon enough.

Ahmed’s heart skipped a beat as he saw a police road block ahead. Ahmed wiped the sweat off his forehead, then put the hearse in neutral to begin decelerating. Easy, act natural Ahmed thought as he gradually pressed the brake.

Two police vehicles and a Humvee. Three uniformed officers carried black rifles. They were accompanied by two individuals in plain clothes.

Ahmed’s heart was racing as he brought the hearse to a full stop. The window was already rolled down, an officer and one of the plain clothes individuals approached the hearse. The cop wore the expected uniform with the addition of a black tactical vest. The other individual wore cargo pants and a black shirt with a white skull on it.

“What’s in the back?” the officer asked.
Ahmed’s mind drifted to the coffin in the back of the hearse, and then said, “Garbage,” with a smile.

“Open it,” the other individual ordered. His Arabic was not very good. Ahmed wiped the smile off his face.

Ahmed killed the engine and got out of the driver’s seat, walking to the back of the hearse. Heart pounding and keys in hand. The police officer and the skull t-shirt bearded man followed.

Ahmed felt like he was walking with lead boots. He stood before the back of the hearse, paused, then opened the hatch and slid the coffin half way out on its rails.

Insh’Allah, please don’t be drugs, please don’t be bombs… he prayed silently in his heart.

“Open it,” the foreigner ordered again.

Ahmed took a deep breath, thinking it may be his last as a free man. Or even a breathing man. He glanced straight up into the heavens, only briefly, and saw two, maybe three dim stars beginning to come out in the night sky.

Ahmed opened the coffin.

Inside was a European man. He had blond hair maybe three inches long with a slight wave. His skin was as smooth and as white as ivory. His arms were folded on top of his chest. One hand clutched and was wrapped in a string of brown, wooden beads. He wore a black shirt and a black tie.

Lt. Colding stood over the coffin. Night had fallen and he was still wearing his sun glasses. Colding looked at the body, then looked impassively at Ahmed.

“Garbage huh?” Colding said to Ahmed, then turned back to the coffin.

Lt. Colding pressed two fingers against Ansel’s jugular vein. No pulse.

“Dead as Latin,” Colding said in English. Ahmed didn’t understand.
Colding closed the coffin and slid it back into the hearse, then slammed the hatch shut.
“Sorry to bother you,” Colding said in Arabic.

Ahmed got back in the hearse and started the engine.
“Thank you Allah for giving me that dead man…”

Ansel III

“Mehmed al-Shehhi was found dead at 0730, local time- Istanbul,” Agent Greitens said, navigating the power point projection on the wall.

The image on the screen showed Mehmed al-Shehhi’s face as he had left the mosque, Agent Greitens clicked forward to the next picture. In the next image al-Shehhi was lying dead on the pavement, the right half his neck slick with blood.

Agent Greitens clicked to the next image, and everyone in the room groaned from the grotesque sight. It vaguely reminded Deputy Director Burrows of when his grandson would take a multiple colors of play-dough and roll them together into a ball. What had used to be a hand, and what used to be a Glock .45, was now crushed and fused into a ball of twisted flesh and metal and fingers snapped off an inch passed the knuckle.

“Every bone in al-Shehhi’s right hand was found broken,” Agent Greitens continued, “along with the trochlea near his elbow- indicating that his arm was violently twisted…” Greitens clicked to the next image, “by this man, whom our recon team refers to as ‘Trench Coat’.”

“Are there any images of his face?” Deputy Director Burrows asked.
Greitens clicked to the next picture of Ansel, completely concealed in shemagh and trench coat.
“No,” Greitens said, “and our friends in the FBI don’t have any leads on this guy. Neither MI6 nor the French DCRI know anything about this kill. Same with the Israelis.”

Everyone in the room was silent.
“So what motivated this killing?” Admiral Harker asked, “What does this guy want?”
“Al-Shehhi has ties with Bin Laden,” Director Burrows said, “as well as with Sharif Hazaa. We think al-Shehhi was getting close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
“Good God,” Admiral Harker said, “How close did he get?”

Deputy Director Burrows threw a glance at Ansel’s image on the screen, then looked back to Admiral Harker, as if to say How close do you think?

“So, what, this mystery guy’s not al-Qaeda, but he wants a nuke, too?” Harker asked.

Deputy Director Burrows didn’t know what to say.

“We have drones committed to following Trench Coat’s movements,” Greitens said, “He’s left the country.”

Wants a nuke. Burrows thought. Offed an al-Qaeda operative- Left the country.
Admiral Harker leaned toward Director Burrows.
“I think we need more than drones on this guy. We need to give him his own goddamned satellite,” Harker said.
“I agree,” Director Burrows said.

“By what means has he left Turkey?” Admiral Harker asked.

“Surveillance suggests our new target has left for Lebanon via charter ship,” Greitens said as he clicked to an image of ships docked in the Bosphorus, then clicked to a close up shot of workers loading cargo into a passenger ship.

“We need to know exactly what this guy is up to,” Director Burrows said, “Round up your SEAL team surveilling this guy and follow him in Lebanon.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Admiral Harker replied.

The image on the screen still showed Turkish longshoremen loading cargo into the hold of a ship. One parcel being hauled on board stood out from among the others, as it was longer than the rest. A coffin.

                              *      *      *

Ansel sat alone in the darkest corner of the ship’s lounge, staring out the window and surveying the night sea while tracing his fingertips over the top of his wine glass. He thumbed through the beads of the Rosary in his pocket until his fingers touched the crucifix.
“Pee-yeh Yeh-sue, Dominé,” Ansel half sung, half whispered.

Ansel didn’t drink the French cabernet sauvignon that he’d ordered, he merely enjoyed smelling the wine’s rich bouquet. The one drink in the lounge that Ansel really wanted was at the bar and smelled like O Positive.

The two at the bar had been talking for an hour and a half. The woman was unmistakably Swedish by the way she spoke. Ansel was a native of Denmark, and while the Danes and Swedes spoke two different languages, they were so similar that the two peoples still understood what the other was saying.

The man took a sip of his wine and continued to speak broken German to the Swedish woman. His jaunting, salient accent- his olive colored face, everything about him seemed Italian. The man traced the tips of his fingers up the woman’s arms then touched her blond hair.

“Nico,” the woman said, blushing, “I’ll be right back”.
Ansel watched Nico watching the Swedish woman.  The Italian grinned as the woman disappeared into the lounge’s lavatory. Nico reached into his jacket pocket and dropped something into the woman’s glass of Riesling. The little white tablet sank to the bottom of the glass, causing the honey colored wine to fizzle before the tablet disappeared.

Ansel stayed in his dark corner, still tracing lazy circles around his wine glass. The Swedish woman returned from the lavatory and sat down at the bar, crossing one leg over the other. Nico raised his glass of red wine in a toast, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Happy trails,” he said.

The woman clinked her glass to his and looked away from him as they both drank. Nico never took his gaze off her as they drank. Ansel watched them both.

“I think I better call it a night,” the woman said in German.
“I’ll walk you back to your cabin?” Nico said.

The woman hesitated at the offer, then merely said, “Ja.”

The two made for the swinging doors out of the lounge. The tall, elegant Swede looked like a Valkyrie next to the Italian. There must have been an eight inch height difference between the two. Nico pushed open one of the doors with his left hand as his right touched the small of her back, leading her out to the hallway.

Ansel waited for the double door to stop swinging, then got up from his chair and followed them out down the hall. Just as he’d made it through the door, Ansel saw Nico and the woman take a right down the hall. Ansel followed.

“That’s not…” the woman slurred.
Nico now had his arm around the woman’s torso, keeping her up.
“Shhh, mi amoré,” Nico said.
“Wrong way…” the woman said in Swedish.

Ansel heard a nearly inaudible laugh in the back of Nico’s throat as they’d passed a laundry cart that room service had left in the hall.

The two stopped halfway down the hall in front of one of the cabin doors. With his free hand, Nico reached into his pant pocket and retrieved his room key and opened the door. The woman in his arms was slumped in his arm. She practically sleep walked with him into the room.

Kicking the now unlocked door open, Nico carried the woman into his room and let the door close behind him as he took her to bed.

Olga stared up at the ceiling.
Nico stood over her. She was still awake, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t cry out. She couldn’t even move her eyes.

Please God, no, she thought.

At the bottom of her field of vision Olga could see Nico, a devilish grin on his face. She couldn’t see his hands. She didn’t want to see his hands.

Suddenly another face appeared next Nico’s, and her panic had arisen to even greater heights. There was a familiar, angular beauty to this man’s pale face. Ansel smiled, showing his two long canines.

Reaching with both hands from behind, Ansel grabbed Nico’s left collar bone and the back of his head. Nico’s eyes widened into two full moons as Ansel picked him up and planted his face into the cabin wall out of Olga’s sight.

Ansel’s long, slender fingers delicately grasped Nico’s shoulders from behind. Ansel leaned in and whispered into Nico’s ear:
“Happy trails,” Ansel said before biting into his neck.

Nico’s scream was almost completely muffled from inside the wall.

Olga continued staring up at the ceiling, only guessing what future horrors may be in store this night.

It wasn’t Nico. It was the new face. Wasn’t he pale before?

Ansel rested his thumb and index finger lightly on Olga’s chin. A hot, wet tear rolled down the side of her face and stained the bed sheet.

“Watch this,” Ansel said, smiling at Olga as he gently tilted her head to give her a look out the window.

                              *     *     *

Ansel whistled “Inverness March” as he pushed the laundry cart through the hallway past the other passengers’ cabins. He rounded a corner and a room service woman gave him a perturbed look as she saw him pushing a laundry cart. Ansel continued to whistle as he flashed his eyebrows at her, the corners of his lips drawing up into a repressed smile as he continued whistling.

Ansel felt a mischievous glee knowing that the room service lady couldn’t tell that the laundry cart he was pushing currently weighed an extra 165 pounds.

                              *     *     *

Time ticked by meaninglessly for Olga. She couldn’t tell if a minute had passed, or an hour. For all she knew she was stuck in an endless circle of time, looking out at the dark Mediterranean sea beneath a field of stars.

Her heart jumped as she saw Nico outside. He had an anchor chained to his feet as he sailed through the air.

Olga heard a splash, and Nico was gone.

Ansel II

Hernandez was lying prone on the stone floor surveilling the streets of Istanbul far beneath, trying to get a clean shot of his target. His spotter, Dan Gosling, A.K.A. “Goose”, tracked their target’s movements with binoculars. The two man team was all too familiar with the height advantage offered by a minaret tower. Mujahideen snipers in the first gulf war had taken an unfair share of American lives from such a vantage point.

“Target just finished praying,” Gosling said, staring down his binoculars. Hernandez adjusted his scope to get a clearer shot.

“Looks like we’ve got an interloper,” Goose said, spying a man in a black trench coat, his head was completely concealed in a tan shemagh.
“I don’t think this guy was praying with the rest of them,” Goose added.
“I should probably get him, too,” Hernandez said.

Far below in the mosque’s courtyard, Mehmed al-Shehhi had arisen to his feet from his morning prayer and had begun to walk inside.

“If you want to get a good shot, you should probably take it now,” Goose said.
Hernandez , canon in hand, squeezed the capture button, taking three successive pictures of Mehmed al-Shehhi’s profile.

“That wasn’t very clean,” Hernandez muttered, wiping the sweat from his brow.
“It’s too late to get another one,” Goose said, “he went inside. He’s being tailed by Trench Coat, get a shot of him!”

Hernandez squeezed the camera’s capture button once again, the camera responded with a mechanical click-click-click as he took a handful of pictures of “Trench Coat”.

Goose brought the thumb and index finger of his free hand to his throat microphone.
“Control, this is bravo-two,” Goose said, “our target is being tailed by an unknown person. Standby for upload.”

Hernandez focused his attention to the computer that was linked to his camera via firewire, and hit the “send” button in the uplink window, then returned his attention to the camera.

“You think it’s Bin Laden?” Hernandez asked.
“No,” Goose said, “he’s tall, but he’s not Bin Laden tall. Might just be another courier.”
“Courier my ass,” Hernandez said, “judging by how Matrixed out he is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he shot up the whole mosque.”
“You don’t think he’s hiding a bomb under his trench coat?” Goose asked.
Hernandez said nothing.

A hiss of static and a calm voice crackled in both men’s earpieces.
“Bravo, this is control. The subject tailing our target does not match any current profiles. Try to get a clearer shot of his face.”
“Roger that control,” Hernandez said into his throat mike, then “no shit,” after he let off of the microphone.

A few minutes had passed when Mehmed al-Shehhi reemerged from the mosque’s interior.
Hernandez took another three shots of his face, this time full on. Then he took another three shots, then another.

Al-Shehhi was walking briskly into the streets, mingling with the hundreds of other pedestrians and a dozen or so vehicles.

“And here comes Trench Coat,” Goose said.
Hernandez took a handful of shots of the interloper, then refocused on al-Shehhi.
“He knows he’s being followed,” Goose said, smiling, “Where’d he go? Did we lose him?”
“I think he went due South into the alley,” Hernandez said.
“Yeup. That’s where Trench Coat went, too,” Goose said.

A small cloud of dust and sand whipped through the streets and briefly obscured the view of the alleyway. Hernandez and Goose felt the gust of wind swirl around their bodies, heard the rush in their ears. Then the wind died down and vision cleared.

“We didn’t lose them this time did we?” Hernandez asked.
“No, that alleyway’s a dead end,” Goose replied.

The distant sound of a single gunshot echoed up from the streets. Both men tensed.

“Ya think Mehmed shot him?” Goose asked.
“No, my money’s on Trench Coat,” Hernandez said.

Moments later Ansel returned from the alley, blood staining the bottom half of his shemagh.

Hernandez took a dozen more pictures.


          *          *          *










Sharif Hazaa eyed the Romanian sitting across the table from him. Though he’d met Vlad before, perhaps a dozen times, he still couldn’t nail down why he’d felt so apprehensive around him. The manner in which he had so abruptly entered his life was alarming. The fact that Vlad so richly poured money into Sharif’s operations made him wonder if all of their meetings all added up to CIA sting.

Vlad smiled without revealing any teeth, seemingly in response to a conversation that only he was aware of.

Vlad started to speak in broken Arabic, “I understand you may be feeling apprehens-” but Sharif cut him off.
“I expect compensation for sacrificing Mehmed,” Sharif said, an edge in his voice.
“Of course,” Vlad began, “