"What are you going to do now, Pat?"
He shrugged. "Go home… back to Balboa, I mean, not Botulph. Bury what I have of my family… first haircuts and things… then… hurt a lot. Drink a lot. Eventually die."
Annie grasped at straws. She did not want her cousin to die, nor even to hurt. She did not want to mention, or even let his mind dwell on, what the fireman had told them near the wreck of the TNTO earlier in the day, namely that it was unlikely that much in the way of remains would ever be recovered. She asked, instead, "What about the company? The trust?"
Again, he shrugged. "What do I care? The only good thing about Bob changing the will is that Eugene won't have the money to send to 'Save The Whales,' 'Meat is Murder,' "Fur is Forbidden,' or the World League. For the rest? Eh? Who cares?"
"Actually," Annie said, "he seems to have acquired a taste for swarthy men, of late. I'd expect a lot of the money to go the People's Front for the Liberation of Filistia. And, Pat? It's a lot of money."
He just looked at her, so much as to say "can't buy me love."
Herrera International Airport,
Ciudad Balboa, 18/7/459 AC
David Carrera, Linda's brother, was waiting at the Aduana, the airport customs office. Although a lieutenant in Balboa's "Civil Force," the successor-such as it was-to the Balboa Defense Corps, itself a successor to the old " Guardia Nacional," still David wore civilian clothes.
Eyes scanning the thickening line at the Aduana, David finally caught sight of his brother-in-law. Sallow skin and bags under his eyes; Jesus, Patricio looks like crap!
Moving forward to the officer in charge of Customs, David flashed a badge, pointed and spoke a few sentences. Rank had its privileges. The customs man smiled assent, then gestured for Hennessey to come forward.
Waved through after a very cursory inspection, Hennessey passed Customs then stretched out a hand to David.
David smelled alcohol, a lot of alcohol, on Hennessey's breath. He decided to ignore it, asking only, "How was your flight, Cunado? "
"It was all right." He shrugged. "Right up to where I nodded off to sleep and awoke screaming. The stewardesses were upset with me; bad for passenger morale I suppose, especially these days. On the plus side they fed me booze until I fell asleep again, that time without dreaming."
The two walked without further words to where Hennessey's car waited. At his mother's insistence David had taken a police flight down to the airport to drive Hennessey home. Before turning the keys over to David, Hennessey removed his jacket, opened the trunk, and put on a shoulder holster bearing a high end, compact forty-five caliber pistol in brushed stainless. Then he put his light jacket back on.
Trees, rivers, bridges, towns; all flashed by without comment or conversation. Only once on the long drive eastward did Hennessey make a sound. That was when he inadvertently drifted off to sleep and awakened, as usual, screaming. He did not say of what he dreamed. He didn't need to; David knew already, at least in broad terms.
At length the car passed into Valle de las Lunas, then up the highway toward Ciudad Cervantes, the provincial capital.
Just before reaching the city, Linda's brother flicked the turn signal to head down the gravel road that led ultimately to Cochea, the Carrera family ranch, and the house Hennessey had shared with Linda.
"No," said Hennessey. "Take me into town please. I need to go to the liquor store."
David sighed, nodded, flicked off the turn signal and continued straight ahead into the city.
Hennessey heard it as a warbling cry, coming from hundreds of throats. He recognized it immediately; he had heard it in the very recent past.
As little emotion as he had shown, now his face became a cold stone mask. "Drive towards that sound, please, David," he requested.
Again with a sigh, David turned the wheel of the car to bring it in the direction of Parque Cervantes, the practical center of the city. The park was square, with a bandstand in the center, surrounded by broad, paved streets. Stores fronted the streets, facing the bandstand.
Traffic slowed as they neared the park. Reaching the southeast corner, David merged into the traffic and did one complete loop around the square.
IV.
While David watched traffic, Hennessey watched people. There, in the middle of the park, around the bandstand, stood a fair mob, certainly several hundred, perhaps even a thousand. Though as swarthy as Balboans, they were not Balboans. Hennessey would have known this from their signs-"Death to the Federated States," "Allah smiles upon the Ikhwan," "Long live the Salafi Jihad," and such-the women's tongues flicking back and forth in a Yithrabi victory cry; and the happy faces of people celebrating as though it had been themselves who had struck against a great and infinitely evil enemy.
"There are a lot of damned wogs here now," David commented. "They call themselves Salafis and are nothing but trouble."
"Salafi means those who follow Islam's oldest ways… or think they do," Hennessey explained.
"What's the difference?" David asked.
"Well… for one thing, I think Mohammad probably had a pretty fair sense of humor. The Salafis don't." To himself he whispered, "Then again, neither do I now… and I follow the old ways, too."
His finger pointed, "Pull over and park, please, David… in behind the car with the green bumper sticker."
Tanned from years in the Balboan sun, with hair naturally dark where it wasn't tinged with gray, only Hennessey's gleaming blue eyes might have given him away for the gringo he was. No matter; he kept his eyes narrowly slitted as he emerged from the car, leaned against its side and watched the local Salafis at their victory celebration. No flicker of emotion betrayed what he was feeling over people celebrating the murder of his wife and children.
Even as the celebration began to break up he did not move from the car on which he leaned, arms folded nonchalantly.
He smiled broadly as a group of six men walked toward the car just ahead of his own; the one with the green bumper sticker that said, in Arabic, "There is no God but God."
The Salafis joked and played amiably among themselves as they came closer. Hennessey's smile broadened even more.
CLICK.
He said, loudly and in adequate, if badly accented, Arabic, "Your Prophet was a sodomite and a liar. Your mothers were whores. Your fathers were their pimps. Your wives specialize in fellating barnyard animals and all your sisters came from sex change operations. You are fools if you think your children are yours."
David looked questioningly at Hennessey; the Balboan had not a word of Arabic. He needed none, however, to understand the import of what was said. This was as plain as the wide-eyed rage and hate on the faces of the men who now ran toward them waving signs like clubs and shouting their fury. One young man, in particular, outdistanced the rest.
For a moment David knew fear. He need not have. Lightning-fast, Hennessey's left hand pulled back his light jacket even as his right sought to draw the pistol.
Hennessey's right on the pistol, his left swept up to block and deflect the sign that the nearest of the Salafis sought to brain him with. Whispering, "Bastard," at the same time, he drew the pistol and smashed its muzzle once, twice, three times into the area of his enemy's solar plexus. Every blow felt like the lifting of a burden. The Salafi's breath left his body in an agonized whoosh.
One down, five to go. Before gravity could pull the first one to the ground, Hennessey had brought his focus to the main body of his assailants.
The gang attacking Hennessey could see in his eyes that this one was not going to run. They could also read that their intended victim intended to kill or maim as many as he could before he went down. They could see from the gun that he had the means to do so. Like any street gang, anywhere, these were no heroes. While they all would have advanced confidently on someone who showed the slightest fear, when faced with a target like Hennessey they stopped cold.