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CHAPTER 6



Dammar al Asfan was tense. He knew there was no reason for it. His cover was solid and he never handled shipments himself. Nevertheless, a ton of explosives was a sizeable amount, and there was a risk of discovery. Not everyone at the port was persuadable, not even most. All it would take would be for his pet inspector to be sick. He should call ahead if that happened, of course, but the type of men who needed and took bribes were the type of men one didn’t want to depend on.

Still, there were several cutouts, and things should go well enough. The nervousness was predictable and familiar, so he concentrated on the task at hand and tried to avoid the worry.

He studied his list on the screen again. From here, the explosive had to be split for various destinations. There were the soldiers in Germany, fighting the American pollution. There was the new target of France, now that those filth had prohibited the proper wear of scarves among faithful women. The Balkans always needed some against NATO’s intervention against the efforts to secure Muslim territory there. Then there was a need to ship some to Egypt for the African missions, and a sizeable amount for their brave Palestinian brothers, fighting the Zionist entity.

If it were up to him, some would also be sent to America to fight the Satan on its own soil. But he’d been ordered not to. The Americans were like a nest of hornets, angry when disturbed. That was true. But like hornets, they were a menace that had to be done away with, and one didn’t deal with hornets by being nice. One dealt with them with fire and accepted a few stings. All the better to slaughter Americans now and bring on the jihad they so obviously craved. Let them attack the faithful. Every day they lost more soldiers in Iraq. If every Muslim nation was thus attacked, the Americans would be too weak to defend any of the whole, and would have to accept peace on terms imposed by those Righteous in God.

But for now, those were not his orders. The Zionist pigs had to be punished, Europe had to be reminded that angry Muslims, denied their place under God’s Will, were more important than the filthy money of American corporate and tourist whores.

After blood washed the corruption from Europe, then the end war could begin. And al Asfan was patient and obedient, even as he looked forward to that day.


Kyle and Wade were still bored the next morning, and getting fidgety. After breakfast, they headed back to the room.

“You know, this whole vampire thing confuses me,” Wade said.

“Oh? What specifically?” Kyle found it all confusing and amusing.

“A wooden stake kills vampires,” Wade started.

“Yes.”

“So what about other wooden items? I mean, wood-pulp paper can cause paper cuts . . . could you torture a vampire with a death of a thousand paper cuts?”

“Ah . . . I don’t know,” Kyle replied. Wade was really weird at times. Maybe it was the boredom.

“And then I got to thinking . . .” Wade said as Kyle muttered, “Uh-oh.”

“Diamonds and coal are fossilized trees. So if a woman smacks a vampire with her engagement ring . . .”

“I don’t think myths are supposed to be logically followed through,” Kyle said.

“Obviously. Those wooden bullets got me wondering . . . There’s graphite lube we could use on our bullets. Would that work?”

“Can’t hurt. Though we could use blanks and pencils.”

“And then there’s maple syrup.”

“What?” Kyle asked.

“It’s refined from tree sap.”

“Ah.” That was true. Was there a point? “Would it have to be injected? Or would just eating it be harmful? They don’t have sugar maples here, so I doubt it ever came up.”

“Right. We should try an experiment. On a U.S. Government grant, of course.”

“Uh, Wade,” Kyle interrupted. It had just hit him, and it was so totally ridiculous he couldn’t avoid sharing.

“What?”

“Latex is also a tree sap.”

For a moment there was silence, then both men roared with laughter.

“So assuming it’s a female vampire . . .”

“Always wear your condoms. The life you save may be your own . . .”

“This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me . . .”

They laughed hysterically.

“Snipers shoot holes in myth. Film at eleven,” Wade said.

The time they spent wasn’t totally boring. They reviewed maps of downtown, the city as a whole, the region and of the nation and its routes elsewhere. Romania was poor, largely cluttered and chaotic, and had a large city and plenty of wilderness. Once in Romania, travel to the rest of Europe was easy and relatively paperwork free. It was ideal for what the terrorists wanted.

“If we’re shooting in town, I recommend being inside somewhere,” Wade said. “The field of fire is better from a rooftop, but there are helicopters. Sticky tar, rain, sun, and visibility are problems that seem to counteract any advantage we get.”

“Yeah. If we can find old warehouses, of which there seem to be some. Or vacant apartments we can get access to,” Kyle mused. “I’ll call Cafferty.”

Cafferty assured them there were buildings they could use. “I’ll email you some addresses, you’ll have to look them up on the local maps and place them. Got a printer?”

“No, but we have time to sketch. What about apartments?”

“Enough, vacant even, but that’s another problem. You’ll have to break in, and quietly enough no one comes looking. Then there’s the homeless and orphans using some . . .”

“I get the picture,” Kyle said. It sucked. They’d have to sneak everywhere. “We’ll do what we can. But we’re really better in the field.”

“I’m trying to work on that,” Cafferty agreed. “But you’re likely to see Logadze within a few blocks of that area I marked, if you see him at all. Bye.” The signal dropped.

Kyle clicked off and said to Wade, “Man, he hangs up in a hurry.”

“Likely a CIA thing. Afraid of being traced from back when regular phones were used? Or maybe he’s got some other missions going.”

“That’s possible. We may not be the stars of the show, just the stagehands.”

After a moment, Wade said, “I want to get some video of the area. It helps our cover story, gets us familiar with things, and we can review it for good positions.”

“In turns, or together?”

“That’s a good question,” Wade pondered. “What do you think?”

Kyle thought for a moment. “I’d say in turns right now. I’ll stay here with the car, and can call you if I need to pick you up. You show me what you saw, and I’ll go out later to confirm.”

Wade agreed, “Okay. Just hand me my trench coat and fedora . . .” It was only a half joke. Overcoats were common and practical when rain moved in. He grabbed the camera and gear and turned back to Kyle. “How do I look?”

“Like a geek with a camera,” Kyle said.

“Perfect.” He used the room phone to call and arrange for Cafferty’s taxia to pick him up, drop him in the area in question and circle waiting for him. “Got my phone, I’ll stick to main streets so I don’t get mugged. I’ll see you at dinnertime.” He slipped out the door, camera on shoulder.

Kyle spent the afternoon downloading emailed maps and marking likely locations. It would be better to be together so they could cover and relieve each other, but that would depend on circumstances. They might need to split, with one observing and one shooting from different blinds.

To that end, they needed a radio code that anyone who happened on the same frequency wouldn’t find suspicious. So he made a list of useful signals, then found easy and unsuspicious German words to use. He chose German because their accents would be less definable in it, as opposed to obviously American-accented Romanian spoken in short, innocuous phrases. Also, German was a bit less known here.

Kyle didn’t realize how thoroughly he was engaged until a rattle at the door presaged Wade’s return. He glanced at the clock to find four hours had passed. It had felt so good to be doing serious mission work.

“Whatcha get?” he asked.

“Lots of video, some still, and a wallet.”

“A wallet?” Kyle asked, confused.

“A wallet. Some punk tried to lift mine and snatch the camera. That was his mistake. I didn’t let go. Then I shoved him into the wall and demanded he turn everything over to me. That included someone else’s wallet. So I asked the front desk to ensure it got returned, even though it’s empty of cash. I figure the pictures, ID, and the wallet itself may have sentimental value.”

“We are just magnets for scumbags,” Kyle said, shaking his head. “Okay, you show me pictures, I’ll show you the code I came up with.”

“Okay.”

Wade had useful shots down streets, showing the route he’d taken. Panned shots covered the crowds to give an idea of traffic and entrances to alleys and accesses. He’d also videotaped the fronts of several buildings to give an idea of their suitability, and taken images from corners nearby so as to help calculate fields of fire down to the street.

“Very nice,” Kyle said. If anything, there was too much information here. “We’ll cover this tomorrow when we’re rested. It’s amazing how tiring doing nothing is.”

Wade snickered. “Sorry, you’re right, it just sounds funny.”


There were more emails waiting in the morning, from Cafferty and another user who referenced him. There were leads to several ships and two sightings. The note from Cafferty said, “Just to keep you updated. We’ll get you something soon. Stand by.”

“Soon” was not that day, however. They ate at The Harp and decided it was decent—meat pies and thick-cut fries. They forced themselves to watch local news so as to work on the language. It was easier to recognize patterns in context—weather, politics, and traffic. They both did a couple of hundred pushups in sets of fifty, just to keep fit and burn off calories. Kyle went out and found a couple of DVDs in U.S. format at an only mildly extortionate price, which they could watch on the computer.

The movie version of Starship Troopers sucked, in his opinion. He’d read the book and found it gripping. This was just fluff, and the tactics were ludicrous.

“We didn’t have coed showers when I was a recruit,” Wade said. “I think we should petition.”

“We have leaders who can recognize a threat when they see one. No matter how bad ours are, they’re better than this.”

“Yeah, but this is a movie.”

They fell asleep around 1:00 a.m., after a hefty dissection of the film. It was the only action available. They’d enjoyed it far too much.


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Framed