For Mike, Katie, and Matt. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

CHAPTER 01 Into the Fire

Our surveillance van sat upon a service road half a klick uphill from the target house.  The sides of the van groaned from a stiff October wind.  Four hours past sunset, a waxing crescent moon accompanied a clear sky of stars.  Bright light shone from every window of the target house.  Otherwise, it would be invisible against the dark West Virginia hills.

The surveillance techie brushed long curls of red hair from her face as she pulled up a new file.  She and I huddled near the front of the van, studying and analyzing screen after screen of data and images.  In the back of the van, FBI agent Jack Bonewitz held his hand to his ear, listening to reports from his team in the field.

A pair of headlights on a side screen caught my attention.  I clicked the buttons that called up a full-spectrum scan of an incoming truck.  What I saw made me sit bolt upright.  I slapped my hand to my earpiece and yelled.

“Crosby!  Get out of there!  Now!”

The techie put her hand over her earpiece and turned abruptly to look at me, eyes wide, before looking toward Agent Bonewitz.  It was Bonewitz’s operation, a joint FBI/ATF sting, and

in the briefing beforehand he’d made it damned clear his voice was the Absolute Word of God.  With a finger point in my direction, and a swipe of that finger across his throat, Bonewitz signaled the techie to cut off my comms. 

“Belay that order, Crosby,” he said, glowering at me.  “Malleus is incoming.  Hold position.  We’ve got him.  We’ve finally got him.”

We all wore earpieces with voice-activated microphones––all of us except Agent Crosby.  His microphone and receiver were tiny, effectively invisible, planted deep in his ear canal by the same techie who’d just cut me off.  He was inside the target house, undercover as a member of the Blue Panzer Militia, a secret cabal of police officers with ties to white supremacist groups.  Ten Panzers were assembled for a war meeting inside the house, and we had them surrounded.  ATF agents were listening on laser microphones.  They’d been recording the meeting for hours.  We already had enough to put them all away for years, but we didn’t have Malleus yet.

“What’s wrong, Thom?” came the voice of Wendell “Dell” Nguyen in my earpiece.  He was our NSA link, on loan to us for the operation to assist with research and intelligence.

“Dell, can you still hear me?” I asked.

“Yeah baby, still reading you,” he responded, simultaneous with the techie looking my way and giving a thumb’s up.  She had only cut me off from the ATF and FBI agents.

“The heat signature from the incoming truck is all wrong.  I can’t tell if anyone’s in it.  Can you see it?”

 Many screens were mounted within our van, I pointed to the one synched to the discrete array of cameras we’d installed along the only approach to the house.  It was reading infrared heat signatures and using real-time image processing and facial recognition to identify the incoming.  It was how we knew the identities of every Blue Panzer on site.  Nearly everyone we expected had already shown up.  Everyone except for Malleus, the one who called the meeting.

Now one more truck had just passed the array, with windows tinted so heavily we couldn’t see its interior on the normal visual spectrum.  Bonewitz believed it to be Malleus, which would ordinarily be a reasonable assumption.  But while the engine block was registering red hot, there were no detectable body-shaped heat signatures inside the cabin.  No sign whatsoever of a driver or passengers.  Surely Dell could see the same thing back in his office.

Bonewitz paid no heed, not even looking at the screen.  His withering glare was a reminder that he was tolerating my presence under protest.  He leaned over my chair smugly, putting his face in mine until I had to look away.  He snatched the ID badge off my breast pocket and read from it with a tone of condescension.  “I’ve had just about enough of your bedwetting and false alarms for the night, Doctor Thomas fucking Vale.  I don’t know what analyst cubicle you crawled out of, but you better scurry back there before you get my boot up your ass!”

I scooted my chair back and turned away.  Malleus.  No one had ever seen him, at least not that we knew of, yet he’d been on the FBI’s radar for years.  This mythical organizer of militias and hate groups, using the dark web to organize domestic terrorism.  I’d been working with Dell to track him.  Months of exhaustive research and analysis.  Tonight was the night where, for the first time, we were expecting him to show up somewhere in the flesh.  And Bonewitz had jumped all over it, taking complete control and the glory of the collar.

“Ahem.  I see what you mean, Thom,” Dell interrupted.  “That’s really weird.”

“If you can see it, then warn Crosby!”

“I can’t do that, but…quickly for the record…run it all by me again?”

I repeated the quick version as Bonewitz turned toward a large screen showing the target house.  The headlights of the approaching truck glimmered on the edge of the picture, already past the only other house within a mile.

“Teams, hold positions,” Bonewitz ordered, commanding the two dozen ATF and FBI agents in the nearby woods, surrounding the house.  “Do not move in until I give the order!”  His agents were positioned in the woods, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice.  First with a power cut, then flash-bang grenades.  The whole nine yards.

A confident sneer curled on Bonewitz’s lips as we watched the car approach the house.  But moments later, his jaw dropped.

The truck didn’t slow down.

It sped up, screeching past several parked trucks, bouncing wildly on its axles.  It swerved off the driveway, accelerated more as it clipped a garden lamppost, and finally crashed squarely into the front of the house.  The truck left a gaping hole where the double door had been and disappeared inside.

 Only a second later, the screen before us flashed brightly, the target house engulfed in light.  A second-and-a-half after that, the sound of the explosion reached us.  The van shook, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the force of the blast or from all three of us instinctively crouching low.

The techie gingerly climbed back into her chair, her breathing fast and shallow.  “Oh my God!” she gasped, her voice cracking.  “Crosby!”

Bonewitz threw open the van door and stepped outside.  In the distance, the sight seemed surreal.  The target house was an inferno, white and yellow flames pouring out every window of both floors.  He grabbed at his hair for a moment before slapping his hand over his earpiece.

“Agents, fall back!  Fall back and hold!  Report casualties!  Backup is on the way!”

I stepped outside next, and couldn’t believe my eyes.  A biblical pillar of fire rose before us in the night, its flames quickly turning orange in hue and giving off billowing black smoke.  I shivered from the cold wind, but more so from the sight. 

“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”  Dell’s voice in my earpiece snapped me out of a stunned stupor.  “Was it a suicide bombing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, wringing my hands together.  “Did anyone jump out of the truck?” 

“Impossible to tell from that angle.”

The air smelled of pine needles, and clouds of my breath floated before me.  I was only distantly aware of my fingers picking open old cuts on my thumbs as I hyperfocused.  It was stimming behavior, a side-effect of my autism.  Self-inflicted pain that grounded me in the moment.  What should I do?  What are the variables?  What’s the problem?  How do I solve it?

Solve it now.  Solve it!

Bonewitz looked at me.  His face was expressionless, except his cheeks just below his eyes were tensed.  One corner of his mouth twitched downward for the briefest moment.  Anger and disdain.

“Stay here where it’s safe,” I told him, and his expression switched to confusion.  I turned and ran down the slope, toward the flaming house, his curses in my earpiece.

“Dell, have you got a contour map of the area?  Which direction would be downhill from the house?”

Thick trees seemed to spring up from the ground as I sped downhill.  A thousand feet of Appalachian forest stood between me and the clearing around the house.  But I grew up in the mountains.  The moon was merely a sliver, but the light of the distant inferno helped, and it was all the light I needed.  The occasional stray pine limb scratched my arms or face, but I was still making very good time.

“Downhill from the house would be southeast,” Dell answered a minute later.  “You think someone might be fleeing?”

“If someone jumped from the truck before impact, they’d try to escape.  Downhill is easiest.”  I was huffing and gasping too much from my sprint to go into further detail.  If a jumper knew the house was surrounded by agents, downhill would also be the best direction to minimize contact.  Agents generally prefer surveilling from level or higher ground.

“Gotcha, baby.  But you might want to circle around the perimeter, to avoid the ATF guys.”

“Copy that,” I said.

I changed my vector slightly outward and kept running, narrowly dodging tree after tree.  The smell of the forest, the bobbing and weaving through the trees, the wavering light, and the feel of my heart pounding in my chest.  I soon became disoriented, as though the trees were spinning around me.

“Southeast of the house,” Dell continued.  “It’s not just downhill.  A rain gully starts not far from the house.  It twists around for about a mile and then leads to an old logging road.  Might be a getaway route.”

I spun around, lost.  Tired and gasping for oxygen.  The glow of the inferno gave me a sense of the distance and direction to the house, but I had lost track of my compass direction.  The trees stood all around me, towering over me.  They stared down menacingly, branches reaching out for me.  Trying to stop me.  Warning me.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  Reopening them, I noticed a break in the woods nearby, and jogged that way.  There was a clearing in the trees, and the night sky glittered above.  I found my favorite constellation, Orion the Hunter.  The rightmost star in his belt, Mintaka, rises almost exactly in the east.  I fixated on that direction and made a few mental calculations, took another deep breath, and began running again.

Several more minutes passed as I completed circling around to the southeast of the house, and I found the long gully.  I stopped for a moment, and only then realized I hadn’t heard from Dell in a while.  I was about to update him on my location when an odd crackling sounded in my ear, followed by a loud feedback squeak which made me wince and stopped me in my tracks.

“Jesus, Dell!”

“Thom!  They cut me off from you and I had to hack my way back in!  Bonewitz ordered his men to expand the perimeter and arrest anyone they see!  Watch your back!”

            I turned toward the house and saw the glow of the inferno above the tree line and bleeding through the trees.  The forest was silent and still, as though waiting in anticipation.  A subtle movement in the distant underbrush grabbed my attention.

            At that moment, something very hard and very fast slammed into my abdomen.  I staggered backward, gasping for breath, seeing no one around me.  A high velocity bean bag, or rubber bullet?  In the dark, it was hard to be sure.

“Wait!  I’m on your…”

The next whatever-it-was struck me in the sternum with sledgehammer force.  I finished that sentence lying flat on my back, looking dizzily up at the stars.  What should have been words came out more like a bad case of whooping cough.  Before I could fully register what was happening, camouflaged ATF agents were controlling me.  My head was shoved down hard on the ground.  A coarse rock scraped me under my left eye.

I was soon lying face down with my hands ziptied behind me, still gasping for breath.  It didn’t help that an agent was kneeling on my upper back, dangerously close to my neck.  I heard Dell’s concerned pleas for an update, but couldn’t answer him.  A flashlight was set on the ground, beaming directly into my face, at which point they finally noticed I had an earpiece like theirs.  It was yanked unceremoniously from me, and seemed to be the topic of a whispered conversation between a huddle of agents.

“One suspect subdued,” reported an agent on his comms.  “Armed with a handgun in a right-handed lower back holster.  No other contacts.”  And then he paused, undoubtedly listening to a response that I couldn’t hear.

The light in my eyes was too intense.  My face shoved into the dirt.  The cold.  The noise.  My body began to convulse involuntarily.

“Stop fighting me!” the agent yelled, kneeling on me harder.  Additional flashlights in my face.

My eyes squinted closed, bright light still beating its way through the lids.  Don’t have a meltdown.  Don’t have a meltdown.  My legs kicked the earth behind me.  I couldn’t stop them.

“Stop it, right now, or I’ll mace you,” the agent screamed in my ear.  “Stop it now!!!”

Body out of control.  Where am I?  Shaking.  Pain and pain and pain.

Suddenly the pain stopped.  I was dimly aware of high-pitched screech.  The agent on my back stood up quickly, cursing, and I was able to turn by head away from the lights.  The agent threw his earpiece on the ground near my head.   The fact that I could then hear the screech louder and more clearly told me that it was coming from the earpiece.  The earpiece then spoke.

“The man you’ve detained is Thom Vale, of Homeland Security.  He’s the guy you heard trying to warn Agent Crosby.  Stand down.”

It was Dell’s voice.  I don’t know how he’d managed to break into comms against Bonewitz’s orders and against the techie’s control, but I felt profoundly grateful.  I tried to tell him I was OK, or thank him, or anything, but I was still coughing out my syllables, my mind too foggy to realize he wouldn’t hear me anyway.  I rolled onto my back and my lungs gulped the cold air.  Breathe.  Just breathe.

The sky and the treetops were spinning.  Several ATF agents in camouflage stood around me, discussing me.  I couldn’t absorb their words.  All I could do was remember the breathing exercises my therapist had taught me.  Dr. Jasiri Stallworth.  Just breathe.  Calm.  Focus.  Don’t have a meltdown.

“Attention!  This is Jack Bonewitz!  Do not release the suspect.  He is wanted for questioning.  You will disregard the rogue broadcast you just heard.  Bring Vale to me!”

CHAPTER 02 Out of the Woods

The sound of distant fire engine sirens grew louder as an ATF agent knelt behind me.  He introduced himself as “Skobel” as he cut my hands free and grabbed his earpiece off the ground.  He made several quick hand signals to the other three agents as I clambered awkwardly to my feet.

“My Glock?” I asked.

“We’ll hold on to that for now.”

The agents stood between me and the inferno, which was approximately two hundred yards away.  Their silhouettes were black against an orange glow that permeated the trees and reflected off their body armor and tactical gear.  I had to assume at least one of them was watching me at all times, not that I was planning an escape.  Two of the agents’ heads were on a swivel, looking back and forth between me, their leader, and the blazing house.  Skobel put his hand to his ear.  I wondered what orders or information he was receiving.

“How about my comms?  I need my earpiece back.”

None of the agents responded.  Or at least, if they did, I couldn’t register it.  I felt overwhelmed by the cacophony all around.  The whistling wind, multiple sirens, crackling of fire, and groaning of flaming timber.  And worst of all, my own heart pounding in my ears.  I fought to calm myself.  I was completely on edge, every sensation magnified.  My body trembled, but not from the cold.

Through the woods, sporadic flashes of red lights told me the fire engines had arrived.  Probably local police and an ambulance too.  Bonewitz had his hands full.

“Did Crosby get out?” I asked.

Whatever the four agents had been discussing, their attention suddenly focused on me.  Agent Skobel moved toward me so quickly that I reflexively tensed, ready for a fight.

“Who the hell are you?  Why do you have comms and what are you doing out here?”

“I’m an analyst with Homeland Security, on loan for this op,” I said.  “I tried to warn Crosby, and Bonewitz cut me off.”

Skobel turned back toward the other three for a moment, and then they all stepped forward.  Skobel’s eyes clearly held no love for Bonewitz, or probably the FBI in general.  His eyes darted back and forth between looking me in the eye and looking down and to the left.  Remembering.  Something I just told him was different from what he already knew, and he couldn’t resolve it.

“But you did warn him,” Skobel finally answered.  “We all heard you.”

“What did you hear?  Me yelling to him to get out?”

“That.  And then just before the explosion, you said it didn’t look like there was anyone in the van.”

My jaw dropped for a moment, but I quickly put two and two together.  The techie had cut off my microphone, but she hadn’t cut off Dell’s.  When I asked Dell to warn Crosby, he wouldn’t do it because he didn’t want to step out of line and be cut off as well.  But somehow, he patched me through temporarily using his own commlink.  That’s why he told me to repeat what I saw.

“So Crosby heard it too?”

“Must have,” Skobel said.  “We had men set up behind the property.  They reported that when the house went up, Crosby was lighting a cigarette right in the frame of the back door.  Guess he made an excuse to step outside, but didn’t get that far.  The blast threw him halfway to the tree line, on fire.  That’s who the ambulance is for.”

“He’s alive?”

Skobel nodded, but with a solemn chin.  Alive, but not out of the woods.

I breathed a sigh of relief.  You don’t call an ambulance for a dead man.  There was hope, and I could see it on the faces of the other agents.  But Skobel still looked perplexed, probably wondering what I was doing out of my van.  I avoided the question.  He didn’t need to know everything about me.

Even Bonewitz was unaware I’d been trained at The Farm by the CIA for clandestine operations, nearly a decade ago.  Or that I’d been dismissed before completing the program when they realized I was autistic, with what used to be called “high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome” back when the autism spectrum was less understood.  To him I was just a button pusher.  A numbers geek.  An annoying moneyball schemer and civilian bedwetter.  The man was quite proficient with his alpha-male jargon.

Of the assembled crew, only Dell knew my full background, and only because we’d been working together for months through encrypted channels.  I still hadn’t met Dell in person, but I’d spent hundreds of hours online with him, sometimes in my university office at Carnegie Mellon, other times in my home office on the southside of Pittsburgh.  We’d been tracking suspects’ internet communications, phone histories, chat room logs, and everything else we could find.  My handler, Avery Hamlin, had paired us up.  Surely Dell had alerted Hamlin about tonight’s turn of events.

“Back toward the house,” Skobel commanded.  “Bonewitz wants a word with you.”

Two agents walked on either side of me and two trailed behind as we walked back toward the house.  As fewer and fewer trees stood in our way, the image of the blazing house became clearer.  I couldn’t stand to look directly at it, and lowered my gaze to the ground as we marched ahead.  As we reached the clearing around the house, the first jets of water from a fire engine sprayed its roof.  Clouds of thick, black smoke soon swallowed much of the night sky, and the air smelled like tar and ash.

The ambulance was parked in the back lawn, silent with its lights flashing.  Crosby lay prone inside its cabin, another agent by his side.  An EMT closed the back doors and ran around to the driver’s side.  We paused our march to keep the way clear, and soon the ambulance circled slowly around, rumbled carefully back onto the pavement, and its siren switched on as it sped down the road.  At least a dozen other armored agents stopped what they were doing for a few moments, silently watching it drive away.

The driveway was still full of the Blue Panzers’ trucks.  Three detainment vans sat unattended, parked just up the road with their side doors open.  The plan had been to detain all the Blue Panzers and take them away for interrogation, but that plan was going up in smoke.  The van drivers, also armored agents, could only stand outside their cabins and stare, the same questions swirling around their minds as the rest of us.

We walked further.  Beyond those vans, one other lone house stood in the distance.  It was quiet and its windows dark, but the fire and sliver of moonlight revealed a subsistence-sized farm surrounding it, with a small barn beyond it and a cornfield only half harvested.  Past the farm, two headlights approached along the road.  It was Bonewitz’s surveillance van, with the techie at the wheel.  She parked in front of the other vans.

“Yes, sir, the area is secure,” Skobel spoke into his earpiece.

Bonewitz burst from the passenger side door, and stomped around it and toward us.

“Why is that man not in handcuffs?” he yelled at Skobel.

“Sir, this is Thomas Vale of Homeland…”

“I know who the fuck he is!  And he sure as hell ain’t one of mine.  Restrain him in the van.”

Bonewitz turned and stormed off toward a large group of agents gathered closer to the fire, some of them investigating the trucks parked in the yard and driveway.  Skobel looked at me, with a stern jaw but sympathetic eyes, and directed me with an arm gesture toward the van.  I climbed in and sat with my back against the interior wall.  He cuffed my hands behind me, a second chain linking the cuffs to a reinforced steel bar.

“Sorry about this,” he said, as he slid the van door shut with me inside.  He forgot to put on the ankle cuffs.  Or perhaps it had been deliberate.  As much of a protest as he could manage.

Being locked in the windowless van was probably the best thing that could happen to me.  The bright light of the inferno felt less intense from a distance, visible only through a mesh cage and the front windshield.  The noisy clamor of the fire fighters, local police, and federal agents was muted.  I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths.  Before long, my nerves calmed, and I felt like I had my mind back.

I wished I still had my earpiece, or any other way to talk to Dell.  Was he still in the loop, or had Bonewitz cut him off too?  Probably the former.  It was me who Bonewitz found irritating.  Specifically me.

Bonewitz didn’t know my background, but he knew why I was here.  My job was to analyze data, see patterns, and give tactical advice.  That never goes over well with people who see uncertainty as a sign of weakness, or questioning as a form of insubordination.  Hamlin had placed me in the van despite Bonewitz’s protests.  Now Bonewitz was finding a use for me.  Standard operating procedure in a fubar operation:  find an outsider to blame.

It had been Dell’s brilliant idea to track the spread of alt-right hate memes in social media to determine their sources.  He and I created a few fake ones and tracked their spread, comparing their viral patterns with memes spread by Russian internet trolls.  We’d not only rooted out some of the trolls this way, but also discovered a Blue Panzer leader who was in contact with Malleus.  A search of his chat logs revealed tonight’s meeting, called by Malleus himself.

I’d been in Bonewitz’s van since sunset, recording and announcing details on every truck and driver that drove up to the house.  Dell had been on the other end of the conversation, hacking away, confirming or denying my every suspicion.  Every truck parked in front of the house had brought one or two Blue Panzers from our “guest list.”  We’d checked off the entire list except Malleus when the final truck appeared.

A flickering of shadows obscured my vision of the fire for a moment.  Moments later there were voices outside the van.  The sound was too muffled for me to make out words, but the angry tone left me no doubt who was outside.

Bonewitz flung open the door, bringing the smell of smoke back into the van.  He just stood there, looking at me.  An FBI agent flanked him on either side, one of them shining a flashlight on me, the other holding a notepad.  Their suits were dark-blue, featureless, and forgettable, and only Bonewitz’ graying hair and glasses distinguished him from the other two.

I shifted uncomfortably as his agents entered the van and sat down on either side of me.  Bonewitz stood outside, leaning into the door.  One of the agents flipped a switch that turned on interior lights.  The agent stared at me with a stern scowl, eyes seeming to look through my forehead to the back of my skull.  A crude attempt at intimidation.  It accomplished nothing except to lay bare their intentions.

“Who the hell are you working for?” Bonewitz began.

“Homeland Security.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit!  You knew that last truck was full of explosives.  How else could you have warned Agent Crosby of the danger unless you knew it was coming?”

“I didn’t know what was in the truck.  All I knew was we couldn’t detect a driver, which was really suspicious.”

“But you didn’t tell Crosby it was suspicious,” Bonewitz said, after a pause.  “You went right ahead and told him to get out of the house.  How did you know he should get out?  Am I supposed to believe you’re a psychic?”  He leaned back slightly with the faintest trace of a smug smirk, like a chessmaster expecting his opponent to lay down his king.

“We didn’t have much time,” I said.  “And you cut me off before I could explain.  Or at least you thought you did.”

That pissed him off.  His eyes tensed and his nostrils flared as he stepped up into the van.  He reached forward, pointing at me, finger trembling with anger.

“I will deal with Mr. Nguyen’s insubordination later.  Right after I figure out which hole in Guantanamo I’m gonna bury you in.  Crosby’s dead, and I want some damn answers!”

A slight twitch below his right eye.  His left shoulder dropped almost imperceptibly, the sort of thing you would only notice if you’d been trained to look for it, as I had been.  A half-shrug, indicative of a person who doesn’t really believe what he’s saying.  I already knew Crosby wasn’t dead.  Bonewitz had just unwittingly given me a baseline deception reading.  I’d picked up on his tell.

“You want answers?  What did Hamlin have to say?  You were just talking to him, right?”

Bonewitz flinched, and he glanced involuntarily at the fed on my right.  His shoulder drooped in another half-shrug.

“No one’s coming to bail you out of this one,” he lied.  “You knew the truck was full of explosives.  Explain that!”

“The truck had no driver in it, not as far as we could tell,” I continued.  “Two possibilities, then.  More likely it’s a self-driving truck or remote controlled somehow.  Much less likely is the Panzers possess a technology that blocks our heat sensors, something super expensive and not available to the public.  Either way, something weird and potentially dangerous was happening.”

“Bullshit!  You expect me to believe that!?”

“You saw the screens yourself,” I said.  “Explain it some other way.”

Bonewitz clinched his jaw, spun, and stepped back out of the van.  His clenched fist thumped against the van as he stood and looked toward the fire for several seconds.  His eyes seemed to follow the motion of something moving, probably agents or a vehicle.  Finally, he turned back toward me, eyes still ablaze.

“You had no authority whatsoever to leave the van.  Your job was to observe and assess the Blue Panzers as they arrived, and to analyze the surveillance recordings.”

“And then they all blew up.”  I paused for emphasis.  “Leaving me nothing to surveil except the possibility of a bomber trying to escape.”

“You had no business going rogue.  If there was someone out there to catch, that’s not your job.”

“Then whose job was it?” I said.  “No one was doing it.  I don’t think anyone else even thought of it.  You ordered your men to hold position, and you left them hanging there for two minutes before you gave them further orders.”

Bonewitz tensed at that, but bit his tongue.  He waved his agents out of the van, and they shut off the interior lights as they exited, leaving me still cuffed to the rail.  Bonewitz looked back at me once more, one side of his face dark, the other dimly flickering, lit by the distant flames.

“I’m going to nail your ass to the wall for this, Vale!  That’s a personal guarantee!”

He slammed the van door shut, leaving me in dark silence again.

CHAPTER 03 Dark Adapted Eye

Hours passed as I waited, trapped in the dark van.  The light seeping in from outside changed gradually over time.  The firetrucks were winning their fight against the inferno, and tall halogen work lights mounted on poles replaced the light of the fire.  Every so often came the sound of a car arriving and car doors shutting, and each time it got my hopes up.  I knew Hamlin was on the way.  So far, every car had brought someone else.

Bonewitz was undoubtedly calling in reinforcements, and soon the forensic experts would arrive, including post-fire and post-explosion specialists.  The investigation would continue for days.  Was it tomorrow yet?  Without a watch, cell phone, or view of the stars, I could only guess that it was.  Even still, the fact that Bonewitz hadn’t bothered me for hours told me that, at the very least, Hamlin had contacted him and gotten him to back off.

At this point, I decided there was a better chance I’d see Hamlin or some other friendly face before seeing Bonewitz again, so it was time to free myself.  I slipped the fingers of my right hand under my belt and worked loose one of the short, stiff wires

concealed on its inner surface.  Behind my back and with patient craft, I folded it once, then twice, and twisted it into the desired thickness and firmness.  A few carefully placed bends with my thumbnail and the lockpick was ready.  It took a few minutes, and several tries to shape the pick correctly for regulation metal restraints, but then only seconds more before the first cuff popped loose.

Once free, I stepped forward to the steel mesh separating the driver’s seat from the cabin.  It briefly crossed my mind that I could easily steal the van and just drive off.  Bonewitz would shit himself.  It was an amusing but childish thought, and I dismissed it.  I was here to solve problems, not create more.

The view I had through the windshield was uninformative––nothing but silhouettes of agents walking between trucks or talking in small groups.  I quietly opened the back door and stepped out.  With the entirety of the operation in the front of the van, there was no one back there to spot me.

I closed the door as quietly as I could and took a deep breath of cold air.  I zipped my jacket up to the collar.  The artificial lighting created a long, dark shadow behind the van which rendered me nearly invisible.  The air smelled of pine trees and charcoal, and the hissing of burning wood and steaming water filled the valley with white noise.  Above, the moon had set, and Orion had rotated far through the sky.  It told me the time was approximately three o’clock.

The distant tree line swayed in the wind.  The longer I stood outside, letting my eyes adjust, the clearer it became.  The nearby farmhouse was still completely dark.  Something about that bothered me.  I stared at the house, trying to understand, and gradually saw more detail through dark-adapted eyes.  Only half of the corn in its field had been harvested.  There were four outdoor doghouses and a well halfway between the house and a small barn.  An old Dodge truck sat in the driveway, but it was too dark to discern its color.

Headlights appeared up the road, signaling the impending end of any decent night vision I’d developed.  It was some sort of sedan by the look of the lights.  I thought about getting back in the van before being noticed, but decided I’d rather be back in the game, at least for as long as Bonewitz permitted.  I stood my ground, leaning back against the rear door, and waited for the incoming car.  It seemed as though it was about to pass, but then braked hard, stopping even with me.

Avery Hamlin stepped out of the passenger’s seat with a surprised look on his face.  Well-tanned, scruffy-brown hair, a cheap suit, and old but well-polished shoes.  Even in this light, he looked as much as ever like somebody’s Dad from a teen beach movie.  After he closed the door, the sedan proceeded ahead and parked.

“Dell told me you were detained.”

“I was,” I said, patting the back bumper.  “And I’ll probably get thrown right back in here the second they notice I’m out.”

Hamlin shook his head and stepped into the shadows with me.  He peeked around the van and looked back toward the fire.  He murmured something under his breath and wrung his hands.  Couldn’t blame him.  It was a lot to take in.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, heading toward the fire.  I didn’t bother to peek around and watch him.  I knew what he was doing, and was grateful he’d come.  About twenty or thirty minutes passed before he returned, after a quick stop at his sedan to say something to his driver.  He handed me my gun, which found its way into my back holster, and then handed me my cellphone and an earpiece.

“You still there, Dell?” I asked.  “I want to thank you for helping me earlier.”

“Wouldn’t miss it, baby,” he replied.  “And this time it’s just you, me, and Boss Man on the channel.”  Boss Man?  It took me a moment to realize Dell was referring to Hamlin.  “And I know it’s on your mind, so let me just get it out of the way.  Crosby received third-degree burns over portions of his back, but he’s stable and expected to recover.”

Relief coursed through my body with a noticeable shudder.

“I’m bringing you out of here on my authority,” Hamlin said, “so don’t worry about anything.  But let’s hear your side of it.”

I told them everything I knew, but it turned out Dell’s account was much more informed.  Hamlin brushed some grass and dried mud off my jacket as I told him about my run-in with the ATF agents.  I assured him I was fine.  Hamlin told me he would back my every analysis and decision, and that I shouldn’t let Bonewitz’s threats bother me.

“I’ll tell you what’s really bothering me,” I said, turning and pointing to the farmhouse.  “Look at that.”

Hamlin turned and looked at the distant farmhouse.  Several seconds ticked by in silence.  He tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

“I don’t get it.  Look at what?”  he finally asked.

“That farmhouse up the road.  It’s been dark there all night, and quiet.”

Hamlin raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

“Must be no one’s home,” Dell chirped, the clickety-clacking on his fingers on a keyboard accompanying his voice.  “Gimme a sec, I’ll do a little digging on the owner.”

“Truck’s in the driveway,” I said.  “Field is half harvested, this late in the year.  Odds are the farmer plans to do the rest soon.  And see those doghouses?  Four big dogs by the look of it, maybe more.  Doesn’t seem likely they’d just take off for a few days right now and bring four dogs with them.”

Hamlin started to nod imperceptibly, eyes shifting in thought.

“No lights turn on in the house all night,” I continued.  “An explosion this big just down the road, and no one notices?  No one comes out to look?  No dogs bark?”

“Like Dell said.  No one’s home,” Hamlin said.

“I sure hope not.  But we need to check.”

Hamlin at first nodded in agreement, but then his face went pale.

“You’ve got a piece, right,” I said, pulling out my Glock and clicking off its safety.  When he didn’t answer, I didn’t make an issue of it.  Hamlin was a Langley lifer, and the majority of CIA agents never receive the combat and tactical training I’d had.  Mostly, they’re taught to drop everything and run in the event of trouble.  Hamlin was no exception.

“What do you say just you and me go in this time,” Dell chimed in, breaking an awkward silence.  “But let me go in first, in case it’s a trap.”

“Copy that,” I chuckled.  Hamlin muttered something about luck as I began a slow, gun-drawn walk across the freshly harvested field.  My eyes began to readjust, and the sound of a car door opening and shutting told me Hamlin was back in his bulletproof car.

My approach was deliberately slow, scanning the house continually, letting my eyes adapt to the dark.  It would be another few hours before the first morning light would appear in the east.  Hamlin spoke a few times, just to indicate that no one from the ATF or FBI seemed to notice what I was doing, which was unsurprising.  It was so dark out in the field that they might not have detected me even if they were looking.

The acrid odor of farm soil and chemical fertilizer in the field.  The windblown rustling of distant pines.  The chill in the air making my hands feel cold.  I wiggled my fingers slightly, every few seconds, trying to keep them warm and loose.

“Got some info on the homeowner,” Dell broke in.  “John W. Robertson, 63, veteran, widower.  Marine, several tours.  Special Forces.  No kids.  No social media or email, at least not that I’ve found yet.  I don’t think he has any immediate family either.”

“Sounds like it’s just him and his dogs.  Did anyone look into him before this op?”

“Doubt it, baby.  When you’re planning a surprise raid on a house, you don’t exactly warn the neighbors.”

About twenty yards from the front porch, I stopped.  No movement from the truck, and I was close enough now to see the driver’s window was rolled down.  There’d been no movement in the house windows as far as I could tell.  I held my breath and tried to reach out with my senses, listening for anything at all from the house.  Nothing.

I took three fast, deep breaths to frontload some oxygen, and closed the remaining distance quickly.  Took three porch steps in a single leap, stopping just to the side of the front door.  Complete silence.  My own heartbeat pounding in my ears, but no other sounds.

The screen door hung slightly open.  I reached in and tried the doorknob, and it turned easily and quietly, unlocked.  I pushed the door inward and slipped inside, keeping low, and froze once more, listening.  Nothing.  Silent as death.

“State police!” I yelled as a bluff and heard nothing in response.  The wall behind me had a light switch, and I slowly rose, two hands aiming my gun, using my back to nudge the switch up.  The living room lights clicked on, and what I saw made my stomach queasy.

Four large golden retrievers lay in a pile in the middle of the floor, limp and dead, bodies twisted in unnatural angles.  Foam and blood coated their mouths.

My chest and shoulders tensed and tightened, movements becoming mechanical, emotions shut off.  I crouched lower and crept stealthily toward the next room, Glock pointed forward, eyes shifting back and forth between the next room and a staircase going upward.  Still no sounds or motion.  I walked into an empty dining room and flicked on more lights before turning toward a small kitchen.

Blood was sprayed and spattered on several walls of the kitchen, and a body lay in a pool of partially-coagulated blood on the floor.  The gun trembled in my hands, as though it was trying to shake itself loose.

“Multiple dead bodies,” I finally spoke.  “I think I’m alone.  Wait until I clear the house, and then you need to see this.”

Clear the room, clear the next room.  Keep to the walls, low when possible, eyes front.  Not having a flashlight to hold parallel with my gun changed my posture slightly and forced me to turn on house lights as I advanced.  The main floor, the second floor, the basement.  It took quite a while before I was satisfied.

“Clear.”

“What’s going on, guys?”  Dell said,

“They’re all dead.  Robertson.  His dogs.  Dead.”

The rest didn’t need to be said.  Unless my assessment of the timeline was way off, there could be no doubt these killings were related to the explosion.  The same killer or killers were behind these deaths and the deaths of the Blue Panzers.

I holstered my gun and squatted next to the dogs.  The blood in their mouths seemed to be from them biting their own tongues, and one of the dogs’ eyes had also bled before it died.  Poison?

The screen door swung open and Hamlin walked in.  The sight of the dogs made him turn his head away.  His attention diverted to several shelves on a wall, filled with medals, pictures in frames, and a few newspaper clippings.  Several American flags were folded up on the bottom shelf.  The top shelf displayed one of the largest varieties of U. S. Military coins I’d ever seen, displayed in a beautiful wooden box with velvet lining.

“What the hell happened here?” Hamlin said, in a graveled whisper.

“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it happened in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Jesus, who would do such a thing?” he said, looking back at the dogs.  I could only shake my head, and then beckon him to follow me into the kitchen.  He turned his head away again upon seeing the body on the kitchen floor.

I knelt as close to Robertson’s body as I could without disturbing the pool of blood.

“Dell, same question as earlier.  What direction would be the best escape route if someone were to flee this house?”

“On it, baby.”

Without gloves, touching anything in the kitchen would potentially contaminate the scene. A quick look around was the best we could do.  As soon as Bonewitz realized something important had happened here, that would be the last of my involvement, and even Hamlin wouldn’t be able to fix that.

It didn’t take a coroner to tell Robertson had died from multiple knife wounds.  There were several defensive slash and puncture wounds on his forearms, a deep slash on the inside of his right thigh, and a very deep slash on the left side of his neck, deep enough to sever muscles and tendons.

There were no discernable bloody footprints or similar markings on the floor.  Surely whoever committed the murder had gotten blood on himself, but knowing that wasn’t helpful.  The tell-tale spatter and spray of blood on the walls was another matter.  I stood up and took a few moments to inspect the arcs of several thin stripes of blood.

“Well?” Hamlin said.

“He defended himself against a man with a knife or tried to.  Ex-marine, Special Forces…probably put up a good fight.  I think the slash to his femoral artery is what killed him.  The cut on his neck, it’s too deep to have happened in a fight.”

“How else could it have happened?”“At the end,” I said, “when the fight had gone out of him.  It was the coup de grace.  His murderer was…making sure.”

“Robertson was in shape, and a trained warrior.”

I nodded and pointed toward the patterns on the wall.

“I know.  And his attacker still dismantled him.  Efficiently.  And I think I can tell you some more about him.  See this arc of blood here?  That’s from a right-handed inward slash.”

I positioned myself in the appropriate spot and slowly mimicked the motion, illustrating to Hamlin how it happened.

“OK, then he’s right-handed,” Hamlin said.  “That doesn’t seem helpful.”

I shook my head, and pointed to a different arc of blood, high up on the refrigerator.

“This one is from a left-handed slash, inward and upward.”

“You think there was more than one attacker?”

“No,” I said.  “This kitchen is barely big enough for two men to have a fight, let alone more.  I think the attacker had a knife in each hand.  Or, possibly, he performed a knife switch in the middle of the fight.”  I paused a moment to let it sink in.  “Either way, the attacker was highly skilled.  A professional.”

“And you’re wondering about his escape route,” Dell interrupted.  “Well, there are no easy downhill runs from that farmhouse.  Assuming the attacker was still there when we were setting up the op … best escape would be to just head into the trees, on foot.  You’d get to the next road in about three to five miles, depending on the vector.  It’d take him a while, but he’d be long gone by now, for sure.”

“Malleus?”  Hamlin asked aloud.

It was practically a rhetorical question.  There was no way to know for sure, but none of us could imagine it differently.  Malleus himself had been standing in this very house, only hours before, watching his plan unfold.  Watching our reactions and procedures.  Probably exactly as planned.

“Let’s head to the car, Thom,” Hamlin said.  “I’ll inform Bonewitz and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

The first light of the new morning glowed in the eastern sky.  We walked back through the living room and out the front door, where we were met by Bonewitz and the same two FBI agents who’d accompanied him earlier.  All three of them drew firearms as we emerged but lowered them upon recognizing us.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” he yelled, glaring directly at me.

“Leaving.”

“The hell you are!  I demand an explanation.”

“I’m sure as hell not one of yours, remember?” I said.  “But I’ll make sure you get a copy of my report.”

Bonewitz advanced angrily, but Hamlin stepped forward quickly, blocking his way.  I took off my earpiece and walked past the men, who didn’t follow.  I left Hamlin to explain and negotiate with them.  My eyes were sore, and my muscles ached.  In the distance, men in hazmat suits explored the black, smoldering shell of a house.  Days of investigation lay ahead in what was now a valley of death.

I got in the back of the sedan and nodded to the driver, who reciprocated.  I looked back at the tree line.  Somewhere beyond it, a killer was laughing.