The Phoenix Affair, Dave Moyer [best ebook reader for surface pro TXT] 📗

too, which was strange since he wasn’t pointing that way. He fired again, nothing. The last guy fired, but low, the bullet plowed up a big dust cloud right in front of him. He fired again, and the guy was on him.

Cameron rolled right, once, twice, three times, and the guy went right over him. He heard him fall to the ground to his left, and then Cameron rolled his feet under him and he was up, throwing the rifle to his left and the big 10mm Smith and Wesson pistol was coming out of the pocket in his right hand.

The guy was also coming back up, and he was close. He saw the pistol, and he swept the butt of his own rifle hard across his front, striking the gun's muzzle before it could come up and knocking it from Cameron’s hand. He stepped in and tried to club Cameron with the rifle butt on the backhand return stroke. Cameron was in overdrive. He stepped into the guy on his right side and threw a hard left elbow into his nose, felt a satisfying crunch, then he continued to pivot to his right as the guy’s rifle butt came down between them. Cameron grabbed the top of the rifle just forward of the breech with his left hand, and punched the guy in the nose again with his right. He felt a little of the strength go out of him. Now he pivoted sharply backward on his right foot, twisting the rifle in the guy’s hands and throwing him down roughly onto his right shoulder. The rifle went off once. Cameron continued twisting, which rolled the guy onto his own front. He removed the rifle from the man’s grip, reversed the muzzle, placed it behind the guy’s right ear, and fired. His head exploded and he lay still.

Cameron looked around. It had gotten quiet, except for the shouts, all in Arabic. His ears were ringing. He felt a little dazed. Without deciding to, he sat down hard on his ass. He wondered about this. Then the world started to tilt, which he thought was very strange, and he landed hard on his right side and shoulder, and that hurt a lot, more than it should. He lay there wondering why for a moment, then closed his eyes and everything went dark.

“Medic! Medic here” Ripley was yelling. He squatted where Cameron lay. Allen got there just after. There was a pool of blood starting to soak into the dirt on the Colonel’s right side.

“Bad,” Allen said.

“Maybe, Maybe not,” Ripley countered. See if you can find where he’s hit.”

They picked sides, Allen the right, Ripley the left. Allen found it, right side low in the abdomen. “Got it,” he said. “Steady flow, not pulsing. Venous bleeding.”

“Through and through?”

“Don’t think so” Allen said. “Too damn much blood, can’t find a hole, just blood everywhere.”

Cameron groaned and flinched away from the probing hand.

“Roll him this way” Ripley said, “Gently”.

They did, got him on his back. It was too dark to really tell anything except there seemed a lot of blood. Cameron was back out, unconscious. “Pressure here” Ripley indicated, stuffing his shirt where he wanted it. “You stay, going for help”.

He stood and ran away fast, Allen pressed hard where he’d been told. “Stay with me, Colonel, stay with me. Dumb ass fighter jock, stupid thing to do. Fucking hand-to-hand unarmed combat against a guy with a fucking AK. Fucking stupid fucking officer…Just hang in there now…” XXV. Epilogue: Northern Virginia

“Blue Line train to Franconia-Springfield,” it was the voice of the train driver over the intercom. The doors of the Blue Line train, Washington D.C. Metro system slid shut with a whoosh at the Van Dorn Street stop in Alexandria, Virginia. Inside the third car from the front of the train, an elderly man sat alone in the seat closest to the front door. He wore a shabby looking corduroy sportcoat with suede patches at the elbows, a tweed wool vest, and underneath a blue oxford shirt and red striped tie, all over a pair of charcoal grey flannel slacks. His shoes were worn-looking brown tassel loafers. His beard was three days old, and his head was covered by a grey tweed driving cap that almost matched the vest. He appeared to be dozing as he leaned into the corner where the seat back met the outer wall of the train, a wooden walking cane pressed against his left thigh, his left hand resting on the pommel.

The rest of the car was nearly empty. Toward the back there was a young black man with retro-afro hair that sprang out 3 inches all around his face, burnt orange 70’s style bell bottoms, sneakers, and a brown polyester shirt, the whole affair capped off by the white earphones in his ears, and an iPod blaring loud enough that anyone could have heard the rap from the other end of the car. About midway back, between the kid and the old man, sat a tired looking junior executive from the looks of his suit. It was a good suit, but not terribly good. The young man wore his hair close-cropped, almost military, and by the fit of the suit one could tell he was rather more athletic than is usual. Probably a recent college football star. At the very front of the car there was an elderly woman, also carrying a cane, with very dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over her forehead. She sat rather hunched, looking a bit afflicted by osteoporosis or some ailment of the upper back. Everyone was silent, except for the noise from the earphones and the iPod.

The train pulled into the Braddock Road station, and the doors whooshed open as the driver recited his litany again, but no-one got on or off the third car from the front. A short two minute ride later, the King Street station came into view, and as the driver began his announcement the old man was first to move, but slowly. He looked as though he’d wakened from a doze, then began straightening his tie with his free right hand, adjusting his cap, and bracing the cane to help himself rise. The doors opened on the left side of the car as it came to a full stop, and the old man levered himself to his feet, waited for the surprisingly quick old woman to pass through the door in front of him, and then walked shakily out himself, leaning heavily on the cane and limping, favoring his left leg. The athletic kid and the black guy stared into space, making no move at all.

The two elderly people made their way separately toward the same elevator, and as they boarded it to share the ride down to street level they made the obligatory nods at each other that pass for elevator etiquette, by unspoken agreement, everywhere in the United States. Neither made any further gesture, neither spoke—the usual contract. When the door opened, however, the old man made a chivalrous gesture for the woman to exit first, which she did, turning to her left where she immediately sighted her ride waiting at the curb. The old man walked straight ahead to the opposite curb, looked left and then right, searching for a taxi. At precisely that moment one appeared at the far entrance to the station parking lot, and seeing him, gunned his engine to arrive in front of the old man just as he began to make a gesture to hail. The car came to the stop, the old man got into the car a little more nimbly than he had a right to do, and in a moment the taxi roared away, East bound on King Street into Old Town Alexandria.

Old Town is an interesting mix of the old and the new, a trendy juxtaposition of 18th century Colonial-era port city, the two hundred year old buildings containing slick modern restaurants and shops, old brick townhouses butted one against the other, some still multi-million dollar homes, others businesses, law offices, and political consultancies. King Street is the center of it all, and in the early evening, which it was just turning to be, it is busy with the well-off, professional, well-connected chic of Washington, jogging, stopping for a beer, or looking for a meal, or just out to see and be seen. Old Town is bisected North to South by the George Washington Parkway, which connects Crystal City, near the Pentagon, to George Washington’s estate of Mount Vernon about 10 miles south along the Potomac. One block West of the GW Parkway, about 8 blocks East of the King Street station, the old man’s taxi stopped and deposited him on the sidewalk in front of the La Tasca restaurant, a modest looking establishment in a nice brick building, the sidewalk tables huddled against the front window under a blue-striped awning, and above that three flags—American, Spanish, and curiously, the Scots national flag adorned with the Royal Lion of Scotland.

The old man limped across the walk and in by the front door. Once inside, his limp immediately disappeared and he stood upright, appearing to gain five inches in height, and he greeted the hostess in a beautiful aristocratic Spanish as he scanned the tables in the almost-empty space before him. He found the man he was looking for right away—athletic looking, dark hair graying at the sides, a long nose, sharp face, and steel blue eyes that were fixed on his own so tightly that for a moment he felt the glare physically, as though something was searching his soul. “Christ,” he muttered aloud, and then turning to the alarmed hostess he said in the easy Spanish, “my dear, I’m meeting this man, would you have someone bring me an Estrella, please?” The girl nodded and the old man walked confidently across the room to take a seat opposite his man.

“Colonel Cameron, I presume?” Randall Anderson said, leaning the cane against the wall and extending his hand across the table. “It’s good to see you more or less in one piece my boy. I heard about your little accident, if you’ll allow me to call it that just here, but it looks like you’re mending nicely. How are you, then?”

Cameron stared across the table at the old man, recognizing him after half a moment, a memory from a very, very long time ago. “You,” he muttered, trying to put it all together . . .

“Yes, me,” Anderson agreed. “So you remember? We have met before of course, at your Company interview, what, twenty-one years ago? You continue to amaze us all, Colonel, yes, you do. I would not have thought I’d have been remarkable at all on that occasion.”

Regaining his wits, the picture of the interview room now firmly in his mind, Cameron smiled. “You weren’t, errr, Sir, not really. I have this occasional curse of a memory is all, pictures that never leave me, damndest thing, and no telling when it will fire off. I did enjoy the interview, though, would have come to work for you guys if it hadn’t been for the war . . .”

“Yes, yes, I know, pity, that, but admirable, admirable.