• • •
The helicopter Avery was in had open doors on either side. The noise was too loud for the passengers to speak. Avery wore a headset for communication. Avery offered a Mountain Dew to the door gunner. The soldier ignored him and panned his machine gun across the desert floor. Avery shrugged and opened the can. Avery took mental notes of the interior of the helicopter. He’d long assumed this would be the type of machine that the black-ops units would use when they came to arrest him. He thought it was ironic that he was now traveling in one on behalf of a foreign government.
“Once we get your laptop from the bus,” Cesar said through the intercom to Avery, “we’ll head straight for Monterrey.” Avery nodded. “I need you to narrow down the location for us,” Cesar continued. “I have a contact there who may be able to help, but after we got so close to the Padre last night, I’m worried he might decide to completely disappear. I’m relying on you, Avery. We can’t let the Padre disappear.”
Avery nodded in understanding and took out the Padre’s laptop. He opened the calendar. He wanted to take a closer look for clues.
“Door gunner,” Avery shouted into his intercom. The gunner turned to him. “If you see any vicious-looking beasts with glowing red eyes heading north toward the Texas border, I suggest you shoot them.”
• • •
Ziggy had walked as far as his bony legs would carry him. He was seriously dehydrated and beginning to mildly hallucinate. Of course, this may or may not have had anything to do with his hydration issues. Ziggy randomly hallucinated all of the time. It was payback for a lifetime of his particular chemical habits. All of a sudden, he heard the beating of helicopter rotors. Looking up, he saw two helicopters flying low and fast across the top of the canyon.
“Like, hey, man!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Like, down here, dudes! Down here, dudes!” The helicopters roared over the canyon and continued on their way. Feeling ultimate dejection and complete loneliness, Ziggy lay down and closed his eyes. He wasn’t walking anymore. Curled up, he made peace with the universe.
• • •
General X-Ray and his men sat in the back of a military transport truck headed toward the border crossing. The General looked at his dejected men. Fire Team Leader Bravo stared blankly out the window. Private Tango looked at the floor. Their morale was completely gone. The General knew he’d let them down. He’d lied to them. His family wasn’t full of military heroes. His family was full of bakers. The truth was, he’d never even served in the military. He couldn’t do more than a couple of pushups and could only tread water for less than a minute. When he tried to enlist, he was disqualified for having exceptionally flat feet.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the army doctor had said as he tried to slip a piece of paper under General X-Ray’s arches. The General had founded STRAC-BOM after reading about civilian militias in the paper.
“If the military won’t take me, I’ll start my own,” he had sworn. It was pretty easy, actually. No paperwork involved. Everything he knew about the inner workings of a military unit, he’d learned from watching old war movies. The General had seen the movie Patton about a hundred times. He knew every line by heart. The men he’d recruited to join the Southwest Texas Revolutionary Armed Confederate Border Operations Militia had bought his story hook, line and sinker. As for the men, they weren’t all that into military maneuvers — they just liked being away from their families for a few weekends a month. The camping out, drinking beer, and blowing stuff up was a bonus. Once General X-Ray had formed STRAC-BOM, he realized the one thing he desperately needed was an enemy. What’s an army without an enemy? He finally realized the desperation that his hero, General George Patton, felt when WWII ended. So General X-Ray did the only logical thing: He invented an enemy. He lived close to the border, so Mexico was the obvious choice. Besides, he didn’t have the financial resources to fly north and fight the Canadians, which he would have preferred. Also, immigration was the headline issue in West Texas at the time. Thousands of undocumented people were streaming across the border every year. He’d never really had a personal problem with it before. On the contrary, he actually liked the fact that a pickup truck full of Mexican men would knock on his door every Sunday and offer to mow his lawn for ten dollars. It saved him a lot of time, and they did a really good job. Not like the lazy dope-smoking teenagers from around the neighborhood who didn’t bag the clippings or edge the sidewalk. Still, a real general needs to declare war on somebody. The Mexicans were perfect. So Mexico it was. As a bonus, running around in the desert at night protecting his country’s border made him and his men feel important. He constantly claimed victory to anyone who would listen, even though the local press was reluctant to report his victories. Over time, he really began to feel he was doing the right and patriotic thing, but the truth was they never actually apprehended anyone. The tricky thing about a lie is that if you tell it long enough, sooner or later you actually begin to believe it yourself.
“Jesus,” the General muttered as he looked at his hopeless band of men. They sat with forlorn looks on their faces as the truck hauled them closer to the border. The simple truth was they were financially broke and had failed their last mission, losing a civilian in the process. General X-Ray felt like a complete failure. He felt tears welling up in his eyes. What would General Patton do? he thought. All of a sudden, it hit him like a piano falling from the top of a building. He wouldn’t quit! Right here, right here in front of him, he had a team of men he’d trained. They were men who would follow him. They were men who looked to him for leadership and direction. And right now, more than ever, they needed a strong leader. General X-Ray decided he would fight on. He wouldn’t quit. All he needed was a new mission, a better one than they had ever had in the past, one that would rally his troops and reclaim their honor. He was as certain of it as anything in his life. Morale was everything for an army, and morale for warriors starts with a clearly defined objective. But this operation would be for good, not evil. That was the only way to fully repair the unit’s honor.
“That’s it,” the General said as he wiped the tears from his chubby face. Operation Skinny was now in effect. He was going after Ziggy, with or without the rest of STRAC-BOM.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Before He Was King
Scraping…scraping…scraping. Rough scraping like sandpaper. Ziggy felt something abrasive drag across his cheek. It woke him from his restless sleep. He tentatively opened one eye. A prehistoric-looking eye stared back. It blinked at him, and then something bit Ziggy’s nose.