Blood & Tacos

Issue 1

Spring 2012

Published by Creative Guy Publishing

ISSN 1929-011X

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents:

- From the Desk of Johnny Shaw

- The Silencer Strikes

- The Most Penetrative Game (review)

- Longhair Death Farm

- Battleground U.S.S.A.: Texasgrad

- Raker: A Review (review)

- Bonds of Blood

- Ben Slayton: T-Man or He-Man? (review)

- Blood and Tacos

- From The Publisher

From the Desk of Johnny Shaw

Hello, friends.

Thanks so much for buying BLOOD & TACOS.

Here's how it all began. I wrote a story inspired by 1970s men's action serial paperbacks titled—you guessed it—"Blood and Tacos." I was going to write a blog about it and pass it off as a chapter of a book I found in my garage and then every once in a while "discover" new paperbacks. Not really a hoax, but an opportunity to write in a unique voice and have some fun.

But why should I have all the fun? I decided it would be even more fun to ask other writers to do the same thing. To "discover" stories of their own. Pick an era, create a person and a hero, and write a story.

The "pulp era" generally refers to the time from the 1920s to the 1940s when pulp magazines were at their height. The "pulp" paperback soon followed, taking over the tradition in the 1940s and really hitting their stride into the 1950s and 1960s.

But where did the pulps go after the 1960s. I would argue that the descendent of the pulps in the 1970s to 1990s were the men's serial adventure paperbacks. Mack Bolan, Remo Williams, Nick Carter (but only in the era when he is known as Killmaster), etc. ushered in the revival of the "pulp hero" (It is no coincidence that pulp heroes like Doc Savage, Conan, and the Shadow all gained a resurgence in the 1970s).

These were fast & fun books, feverish first drafts full of entertainment value. But if fast & fun is the base, there is a greater goal to be achieved. What I like to call the "ridiculously awesome."

When a book opens with the hero fighting an albino with a spear-gun (see THE HELLFIRE CONSPIRACY (Agent for COMINSEC #4) by Ralph Hayes), one's first reaction might be, "that's ridiculous." But on closer examination, that reaction will turn to "that's awesome." Bingo! Both of you are right. Ridiculously awesome!

These books were the B-movies of literature. Written quickly, tongue-in-cheek, and with the potential to be fun as hell.

But while that explains why I enjoy reading the stories, why write new stories?

It's the challenge. To write in a different voice. To write outside one's comfort zone with the safety net of a pseudonym and a goofy history. To write in the voice of a fictional person from another era, writing within a hack factory (or hacktory) sounded like so much damn fun, I couldn't resist. And I was lucky that a couple of writers agreed with me.

So many of the books from this era depict a world where either America (or 'merica to my 'merican friends) is on the brink of destruction, not to mention the post-apocalyptic sub-genre that runs rampant in the Reagan Era. A world view where men with mustaches bring order to chaos. And women, minorities, youth culture, foreigners, and every other "other" are treated with fear and a punch to the jaw.

Writing "Blood & Tacos" I got the opportunity to write from the point of view of Brace Godfrey in 1972. Who is Brace Godfrey? You'll have to wait and find out.

The opportunity to write in a different voice, maybe slip in a heavy dose of satire, comment on the era in which the book is written, and blow some shit up. Now that's what I call a good time.

BLOOD & TACOS is just starting and we're kind of making it up as we go, but the one thing I guarantee you is that we'll work hard to make it great. And when it's all said and done, it will be ridiculously awesome.

Special Thanks to Michael Batty, Roxanne Patruznick, and all the authors for their participation and support!

Excelsior!

March, 2012

The Silencer in: THE SILENCER STRIKES

By Mal Radcliff

(discovered by Gary Phillips)

No one could have shown more enthusiasm than GARY PHILLIPS did when we brought up the idea of Blood & Tacos. In his words, "I got a Mal Radcliff story no one's ever read, baby! The Silencer, baby!" We know we don't have to tell you who Mal Radcliff is. We tried to contact Mr. Radcliff, but due to gambling and other debts he has not maintained any address for too long since his heyday. Either way, you can enjoy this 1975 masterstroke by a true legend.

Booker Essex, now known as the Silencer, grabbed the hood in the fedora with an arm around his neck just as the second hood let loose with a burst from his Thompson machine gun.

"You goddamn moulie," were the hood's last words before bullets from the chopper ripped a diagonal up from his stomach across his chest — his body jerking at the impact of the high speed .45 rounds.

As those rounds tore through the crook's body, Essex was already moving. Crimson spread like ink blots on the dead man's custom-made dress shirt as his corpse collapsed onto the floor. Returning fire to drive the other two torpedoes back, Essex had shoved the body aside and dove through the swing door into the kitchen.

"Hold on," the machine gunner said to the third hood next to him who began to advance. "Looks like this fuckin' jay-bo ain't gonna be easy pickins like we figured."

The third member of Laugher Graziano's gang nodded briefly. He carried a snub-nosed .38 revolver in a hand with a diamond pinky ring in a gold setting. The two separated some, each slowly approaching the kitchen door of the Fuzzy Feather Gentlemen's club. The metal rear door was locked and they heard no gunfire indicating their quarry was trying to exit. But they figured he wouldn't leave as they had the bait.

"We'll deal with you after we take care of this mook," the one with the handgun whispered. He shook the barrel briefly at a woman in a short robe tied-up on the stage. She was a stripper in the club, on her side, bound and gagged, a colorful silk tie around her mouth. Her eyes were wide not with fear, but with defiance. Her blonde hair was tangled and unruly. To the side of the stage, a staircase led to the VIP section on the second floor. A steam room and curtained alcoves were available there.

Now the gunmen were on either side of the swing door, the Thompson man looking through the portal-style window. The lights were on inside but Essex wasn't visible. There was a long counter with stainless steel pots and pans suspended above on hooks, and they assumed he was low behind that.

"You'd think it being all white in there the jungle bunny would stand out," the other hood cracked nervously.

The stripper, who did the bump and grind as Ginger Strawberry, swore at them but it came out muffled.

The machine gunner eased the swing door open with the muzzle of his magazine-fed Tommy gun, hoping the Silencer would show himself to take a shot. Nothing happened. He reared back and looking at his partner. They reached a silent decision. Together they both crashed into the kitchen. The Thompson handler laid down a barrage to keep the Silencer crouching, while the other hood's goal was to round the counter and blast him.

But a step away from the counter, the lights went out and there was a hiss like the quick release of air from a truck's power brakes. Then cold silence. Diffused spill light came in through the portal window illuminating little.

"Tony," the snub-nosed man ventured. Tony was the now deceased Thompson gunner. "Tony," he repeated. Again no answer and he backtracked out of the kitchen in a hurry. He took hold of the trussed up woman and sliding her off the stage, got her to her bare feet. He dug the business end of the gun into her cheek.

"Okay, hotshot, better show yourself or your girlfriend here gets got," he called out. There was no movement from the kitchen and he repeated his threat. He undid the tie over Ginger Strawberry's mouth.

She began, "Why you lousy low life, scum–" He struck her in the face with the pistol. This elicited a groan as he intended.

"That's enough," Essex said from the kitchen doorway. He had one hand holding the swing door open, the other one out of sight. His voice was sibilant, shadowy, as if talking was an effort. It was not the voice he'd always had.

"Throw your piece out," the remaining hood demanded.

"Don't do it, Book," the woman advised.

He did as ordered. The gun was a modified .32 semi-auto machine pistol with a 20-round magazine and was fitted with a stubby sound suppressor on the muzzle. Twin tubes lead from the suppressor back into the body of the weapon.

"That's something," the hood said admiringly of the gun. He gestured with his revolver, using the woman as his shield as Essex had done with the first hood. "Now come all the way out with your hands up."

The Silencer did as ordered again. He wore a jean jacket over a ribbed turtleneck and flared slacks that broke just so on his Nunn Bush boots. His Fu Manchu mustache glistened with sweat. Though unlike the current style, he didn't sport an afro, rather he kept his hair boot camp short.

The gunsel wore a checkered leisure suit, his shirt open to expose his hairy chest and a heavy gold chain over the thicket. He smiled. "The boss is gonna be happy to have your magic gat," he said, referring to the specialized weapon. So-called silencers really weren't silent like in the movies. It muffled a gun's retort, but you could still hear it, just quieter. Essex's weapons were truly mere whispers when they went off.

In a flash the thug took the gun from the side of the woman's face and as he squeezed the trigger to kill Booker Essex, he was quite surprised to feel a sting at his temple. He hadn't heard a thing.

"What the fu…" he muttered then fell face first onto the plush carpeting of the Fuzzy Feather — the body dying as his brain ceased function.

Essex crossed the distance and set the wobbly Ginger Strawberry in a chair.

"How'd you do that, Book?" she asked.

"Ever see the show, the Wild, Wild West? How ol' Jim West had this derringer on a slide mechanism up his sleeve?" He held his arm such so she could see the end of what looked like a small rectangular box with four holes in the end of his sleeve.

"Your version of that," she said. "Always cooking up a gadget."

"Better get your stuff and let's get out of here before the fuzz come pounding through the doors."

"Good idea. I've got the cassettes too." She stood and the robe flapped open, revealing her sculpted nude torso and sequined G-string. Essex looked away, his face warm.

Strawberry, whose real name was Marcia Mathers, noted this with a wry smile. She came over to him, pressing herself against his back. The blonde put a hand on his shoulder. "I know women don't scare you, Book."

He looked sideways at her. "It's not that, Marsh. But you're Bobby's sister."

"I'm also my own woman. And we're not kids anymore."

"Ain't that the truth," he agreed.

She kissed him on the cheek and went into the dressing room to get her clothes on and retrieve her purse and items. Thereafter the two left the club by a side door to Essex's three-year-old 1972 Ford LTD. The vehicle had a pristine Landau top and mag wheels, with a big block 460 Brougham engine under the hood. There were special items Essex had also built into the car besides further souping up the motor. He brought the machine to life and Mathers wasn't surprised she could barely hear the thing running.

"Living up to your name, huh?"

"Guess so." He turned on the heater and a police scanner hidden behind a fake grill in the dash.

Tires crunched over gravel as he drove off in the dark of post-three A.M. from the strip club. The place was a few miles out of town off the highway, mostly industrial facilities around, large structures made of metal sidings and low roofs. The trees were bare, their limbs pointing up to the wintery sky as if accusing the weather of indifference.

Paul "Laugher" Graziano, sometimes called the Laughing Man by friends and enemies, wore slacks and slippers, an athletic undershirt underneath the silk robe he'd tied around his trim waist. He was pushing sixty but maintained a regime of racquetball, swimming, and athletic sex with young women his daughter's age. His nickname was derived from a childhood incident when he was eleven.

He and a friend were running from a copper after robbing a blind newshawker at his sidewalk stand. They ran into the street and Graziano was struck by a street car, causing nerve damage in his face. He was caught and sent to reform school. The other kid, Benny "Bean Pole" Mathers, got away. Thereafter the left side of Graziano's face drooped, and he learned to talk out of the other side of his mouth. His melancholy appearance earned him his opposite sobriquet.

He prided himself that he pretty much weighed the same as he did when he played basketball at Theodore Roosevelt High. They were the Rough Riders. That is before he was kicked out of school for taking bets on the games. The same school some years later that Booker Essex, Marcia Mathers and her now deceased brother Robert had attended as well. Less than a year after they graduated, Essex was drafted and Bobby Mathers volunteered for Vietnam.

Laugher Graziano puffed on his thin cigar, looking out the window from the study to his backyard and the pool he better cover soon. A few ducks swam about in the water, quacking happily. What did it mean to be happy, he pondered as he turned back to Loomis Kassel, his Bill Blass-dressing, Yale-educated, half-German, half-Italian consigliore.

The time was just past dawn and both men were aware of what had gone down at the Fuzzy Feather a few hours before. Indeed Kassel had already dispatched a crew to clean up the mess. Due to having a homicide cop named Bert Chastain on the pad, he'd gotten a call from the detective and with his help, was keeping a lid on the matter — for the moment.

"I know," Graziano began unprompted. "I should have listened to you and not given in to my weakness. But who the fuck checks on the background of these broads? They all use a made up name strippin' and hookin' on the side." He shook his head. "Who could figure that chick would be undercover snatch?" He laughed sourly at his joke.

"We not only need to deal with her, but this colored gentleman."

"I need to color him red "

Kassel adjusted his Yves St. Laurent-designed frames. "I have a solution, only it's going to cost."

The Laughing Man spread his arms wide. "Doesn't it always, Loomis? Doesn't it always?"

Ever since physically recovering from the fire resulting from the bomb, the Silencer had gone underground. With Chastain, Graziano's gang, and the self-styled revolutionary Rahim Katanga and his bunch all crowding him about making deadly inventions for them, he had little choice. But before it all changed, he and Bobby Mathers had managed to make it back to the world from ‘Nam and opened their auto garage. It didn't hurt that both men had earned a few medals and were welcomed back as hometown heroes.

At their Danang Drag Motor Specialists shop, they repaired everyday cars and customized those who could afford something special. Life was good then.

He looked toward the sound of water coming from what had been the boss' office and the private bathroom and shower within.

In there Marcia Mathers was finishing up and turned off the hot and cold faucets. Leave it to Booker, she noted appreciatively, to be able to bootleg electricity and running water into a place that went belly up months ago.

She pushed the pebbled glass door open and stepped out of the shower, taking off the rack one of the large towels Essex had provided. Drying off next to the portable heater, she stood in the compact office area he'd converted to a kind of bedroom with a cot, lamp sans shade and numerous technical books on a makeshift shelf. There was a photo taped to the wall of Essex and her brother as soldiers in a jungle clearing in Vietnam. Both had vacant smiles on their faces — the smiles of men who had seen and done too much over there.

There were no pictures of Charlotte Sumlin about. There was though a charred piece of what had been the hand painted sign over their garage. The fragment leaned atop some of the books and Mathers picked it up, looking at it wistfully. She vividly remembered that terrible day. She'd just gotten off the phone with her brother and it would turn out to be the last time she'd speak to him.

Mathers learned later that afternoon about how a bomb had gone off in the garage. Her brother, the police surmised, must have been talking to Charlotte Sumlin who'd stopped by to see Essex. Essex had been away to pick up a part and was just driving up when the blast went off. From his eye witness report, Sumlin had been in the open bay of the garage, waving at Essex. Bobby Mathers was behind her, wiping his hands on a shop towel. Then there was the orange-red flare that filled his vision and the boom of the exploding sticks of dynamite. His windshield shattered into his face from the concussive force.

She put the fragment down and taking the towel from around her and unwrapping the other one from her wet hair, she got dressed. Marcia Mathers came into the kitchen area – mostly a jury-rigged stove that had been thrown out and a coffee maker — where he was preparing breakfast for both of them. Her hair was wet from her recent shower and she smoked an unfiltered Marlboro. She wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a sweater top.

"Hash and eggs," she said, chuckling. "Some things don't change."

"I've added paprika," he said, turning off the fire as he stirred the concoction in a skillet.

There were two plates on the one small table and she picked them up so he could spoon out food onto them. There was toast and fresh coffee, too. Essex had turned this corner of the once-thriving refrigerant coil factory into living quarters and more. There was a work bench nearby with parts and tools strewn on it, a blueprint tacked to the wall above it as well. Also hanging on the wall were three different shoulder holster rigs with specialized silent handguns in each.

Sitting and eating, Essex said, "I got a wig for you and some padding to make you look less, you know."

"What?"

"Voluptuous," he got out. "Recognizable I mean."

"No, I meant what the heck are you talking about?"

"So I can get you out of town," he said.

"I'm not leaving."

"But Graziano's on to you, Marsh."

"He's on to you, too."

"I'm prepared."

"Then prepare me. We both loved him, Book. I want to get his killers, too."

He was going to argue but could see she was in no mood for the hassle. He allowed too that a smart sexy woman who on her own did a gutsy thing like infiltrate the strip club, knowing it was owned by the Laughing Man, then making sure to insinuate herself to him to learn a few of his secrets, well that was certainly not someone you sent packing given the firefight was about to light shit up.

"So what's out next move, sarge?" she said, chewing on the hash and eggs.

"You know that waiting ain't my bag, but they'll make a move. Soon. That smart boy of Graziano's, Kassel, he's like those West Point greenhorn lieutenants we had to suffer in ‘Nam. He's read up on his Alexander the Great and von Clausewitz. He's going to bring in the heavy hitter and draw us out to trap us."

She regarded him. "Always thinking and always prepared."

"Let's hope so," he said dourly. "But in any battle, there's always the unexpected factor, that turn of bad luck or roll of capricious fate you didn't account for."

"Seems we're both pessimists." She got up from her seat and picked up her plate and his even though neither had finished breakfast. She put them on the stove as there was no sink.

She turned back to him and her intent was clear in her eyes as she took off her shoes using her feet.

"Look, maybe this isn't such a good idea," he hedged. Because of vocal cord damage from the fire, his voice was coarse and whispery. And at the moment, he was so caught up in conflicting emotions, he could barely talk at all.

"Maybe," she said, unzipping her jeans and stepping out of them. "Most times you've thought of me as a sister. And me, you're my other brother. We've known each other since junior high, Book. The two white trash kids, miserable thief for a father, and that goofy black kid who always had his nose, appropriately, in a book. We've known too that we've gone back and forth in our feelings for each other." She paused, a solemn look settling on her face, then added.

"Charlotte isn't coming back. But don't misunderstand, I'm not pretending I'm her. I'm not trying to take her place."

"I know."

She was close on him now and he leaned forward and gently kissed her mound encased in her lacy black panties. She caressed the top of his head. He looked up at her, his hands on her thighs.

"This might be our one and only time. We might not come out of this whole or alive," she said, her voice as hoarse as his. She touched a tear at the corner of his eye, the scars from the fire on his face. She undid his zipper and straddled him. They made love as the Laughing Man and Kassel planned their executions.

"How is it you call yourself a cop, Chastain?" former petty street thug Ronnie Brownlee, who now went by Rahim Katanga, growled. As leader of the Ministers of Praxis, names were everything.

The beefy cop spread his arms wide. "Hey, I'm doing my job here, Ronnie boy."

There was bristling from the other members of the Ministers of Praxis, MPs for short. The two uniformed officers with Chastain, one black the other white, reacted too. Their hands went toward the hilts of their tethered nightsticks.

The plainclothesman continued. "It's a known fact your little troop here has had run-ins with them Reds," he gestured with his hand as if conjuring up the name. "The Luxumberg League," he finally said, snapping his fingers. "Them."

"They wouldn't kidnap our youth, Chastain," a woman with a bubble afro said.

Chastain gave her an up-and-down, like sizing up a double cheeseburger slathered with bacon and onions. "Y'all say four kids went missing after they attended your propaganda class."

"After school program, policeman," a tall MP emphasized. "We help them with their math and reading skills."

Chastain pursed his lips, biting back a sarcastic comment. "So anyway, these four don't make it home afterward." He consulted his notepad. "But these are teenagers, between 13 and 16 you said." He looked up, a sincere expression on his face. "They could be off smoking reefer or grabbed a car to go joy-riding, doing who knows what they get into at that age."

"Jesus," the woman exploded. "We're calling your boss, Chastain."

He laughed hollowly. "You call on us oinkers only when this kind of shit allegedly happens and you expect the department to be at your beck and call. But any other time you're spitting on us and cursing us out."

"How about you just do your job, man?" Katanga said.

"We're on this," the black officer answered.

Chastain shot him a withering look. "This matter will be dutifully investigated. Starting with me grilling their parents, a couple of whom, single mothers and all, have records." He and Katanga glared at one another then Chastain exited the storefront office. He was followed by the two uniforms who looked embarrassed.

"I'm calling Councilman Ricks," the woman with the large afro said, stalking toward a dial phone.

Katanga had a different idea.

As a youngster, Graveheart, not a family name, was fascinated by TV western shows like Have Gun Will Travel and The Rifleman. This was not unusual for a red-blooded American male of that generation as kids were given cap guns modeled on their favorite lawman's six-shooter or bounty hunter Josh Randall's tricked out sawed-off rifle from Wanted Dead or Alive. It wasn't the delivery of frontier justice that fascinated him but the power those masters of the gun wielded on such shows. Seems whatever bit of folksy wisdom they dispensed had more import given their handling of shootin' irons.

Of course the fact that these actors were the leads and therefore the script was tailored to show them as infallible and stalwart, seemed lost on Graveheart. Or more likely he'd long ago learned to ignore such realities. Ever since he was big enough to hold a gun he had. Not only learned to hold them, but use them quite well.

The limestone quarry was at the opposite outskirts of town from where the Fuzzy Feather strip club was located, though both off the same highway. The facility was owned by a middle-aged, country-club-going, married church deacon who, in cliché fashion, had tumbled hard, for one of the big-breasted strippers at the Fuzzy Feather. Laugher Graziano had some compromising photos and thus he had no choice but to let his facility be used for the nefarious undertaking underway there this weekend.

The trap was simple. The kidnapped teens were in a van wired with dynamite in the quarry pit. The instructions were relayed by several dope fiends and other such riff-raff along the underworld grapevine. The Silencer was to appear at dawn or the youngsters would be sent to Kingdom Come.

His LTD drove up on schedule and he exited the vehicle. It was cold and he was wearing a full length Super Fly-style patterned coat and broad, flat-brimmed hat with a buckle headband. He had on shades too.

"How do you know you won't be cut down as soon as you step out of your car?" Mathers had asked. "Somebody with a rifle and a scope. What do you call ‘em, a sniper?"

He was cleaning one of his guns and looked over at her. "You've read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man?"

She had a hand on her hip. "At your urging, yes," she answered sharply.

"There's a few soul brothers and sisters, skycaps at the airport, housekeepers at a couple of the swank hotels and what have you that I make sure to put a few extra twenties in their Christmas funds each month."

Essex derived income from several patents he owned or had sold for goodly amounts. One of his innovations had been a prototype for a miniaturized walkie-talkie, a kind of phone the size of a cigarette case you could put in your jacket pocket — inspired by those episodes of Star Trek he watched as a kid. He started to re-assemble his weapon. Essex had invested his monies in such enterprises as a childhood buddy's black hair care products line and an auto parts chain.

"Yeah?" she said, interested.

"So white folks see them as part of the furniture. They're there, but not there, dig?"

"What're you getting at, Book?"

He smiled. "Figuring some newcomers might be coming to town, I spread extra green around and got the lowdown."

"Yeah?" she said.

"Yeah," he answered.

"You know what they say, Silencer," Graveheart was talking, "I thought you'd be taller." He stepped out from the girders of the elevated office shed made of corrugated metal. Several massive dirt haulers and crane trucks were parked about as well.

"Ain't no stress." The other man was unbuttoning his coat. A slight breeze came up, exposing the shoulder holster underneath, strapped over his black turtleneck. Sweat dappled below the edges of his sunglasses.

The two were about 25 feet apart. They stood down each other on the edge of the main pit, the van with the captured teens at the bottom. The wind ceased. Graveheart, all in black including his Stetson, a six-shooter strapped around his waist gunslinger fashion, spread his boots a bit further apart. He was in his shooting stance.

"This is how it works, hombre," he said. "You live, the kids go free. You die, they die."

"Let's get to it…honkey."

The Silencer took a step to the right and time slowed as the two readied themselves for the showdown. It was only seconds that went by but each worked to keep their heart from thudding too loudly in their ears. Each took the measure of the other, each with eyes on the opponent's hands and then in the time it took a dog to flick its tail, the guns came out. Both men fired, the Silencer's round zinging past Graveheart's torso.

Conversely, the Silencer dropped his modified gun, clutching his chest as he went over onto his back. Graveheart had grouped two dead center mass.

The out-of-town hitter had assumed he'd feel more elated but it was what it was — killing was becoming as blasé to him as going to the corner store for a carton of milk. How sad. He raised his hand to signal for the toggle switch to be flipped, transmitting a radio signal to the dynamiter to blow up the teens. But nothing happened. He looked over to where two of Laugher Graziano's men were supposed to be crouched down beside the huge tires of one of the big haulers.

He couldn't see them from where he was, but why hadn't they stood up once the Silencer was put down? Smith & Wesson in hand, he advanced. Both hoods were proned out, dead. The remote control device was gone. The Silencer had struck.

"Holster your piece and let's settle this for real, Graveheart," Booker Essex called out. He wore no fancy coat or hat, but was in sans-a-belt slacks and a similar black turtleneck Rahim Katanga, as his stand-in, wore. His gun in its shoulder holster.

Graveheart knew better than to try and spin around, firing. He was fast but not inhumanly so. He'd be dropped in a blink. From above he heard a sound, and glancing up, saw a female head with a puffy afro atop the raised office. In the clean light of morning, he could easily see the glint off her rifle. She'd slept up there through the night.

"I'll be more fair than you," Essex continued as the gunman stepped away from the truck. "You win, you walk away."

Graveheart didn't waste energy or risk distraction with a response or gesture. His hand trembled slightly from excitement. Every sense was breathlessly on edge in him. It was as if each millimeter of his skin were receptors for all the atoms swirling about him. He'd never felt this alive before. This was a challenge.

Nothing happened, then simultaneously both men drew their guns and each fired a single bullet. The bang of Graveheart's pistol was the only one audible. They gaped at one another and Graveheart worked up a crooked smile as he wheeled about and fell over, exhaling one last time.

The teenagers were freed and Katanga and his Ministers of Praxis started to leave. The militant paused and looked back at the Silencer. "You did good, brother."

Essex nodded and they went their separate ways. He still didn't know which of the three had been responsible for the bomb. He wouldn't rest until he found out.

Bert Chastain had a big grin on his mustachioed face as the foxy blonde lead him by his erect penis to one of the happy alcoves after his steam. After the deaths here at the Fuzzy Feather and the subsequent newspaper investigation, Laugher Graziano had been forced to sell the establishment. Not much was known about the buyer but he'd retained a number of the girls who'd worked their under the old management – and re-opened the upstairs VIP section as well. One of those chicks was this knock-out called Ginger Strawberry who had his stiff johnson in hand leading him.

"Baby, I can't wait to get down with you."

"Me either," she grinned, looking back at him.

In the alcove the blonde sat him down on a built-in bench. He now sat on the towel he'd had around his waist. She kneeled before him, Chastain's erect member quivering. That feeling and his hard-on faded fast as an arm went around his neck and the cold muzzle of a modified .32 pressed against his temple.

"Essex," he wheezed.

"Listen to me, asshole," the Silencer said to the suddenly uncomfortable and vulnerable nude man. "I knew sooner or later you'd come around for your usual taste," he began.

"I'm a cop, Essex, if you kill me they'll hang your black ass for sure."

The Silencer squeezed harder, choking his captive. "Don't kid yourself, Chastain. As shitty as you are, won't too many of your fellow blue on blues get too worked up about your demise."

"Look, I already told you," Chastain said, his voice cracking some. "I had nothing to do with planting that bomb."

"Shut up. For now you're of value to me. Make sure you let the other scumbags like you, the vice cops on the make, the robbery-homicide boys getting their cut, that the Fuzzy Feather is open for business. Let the word go out to the crooked city council members, judges, all of them, got me Chastain? Tell ‘em they get a discount."

"What the fuck are you up to?"

"What my loot in country would have called reconnoitering."

Chastain understood. "You want dirt on them. You got this joint bugged."

Essex released his hold and tapped the bent cop twice, hard, on the cheek. "Now you're getting smart. And just in case that rat brain you call a mind is thinking of crossing me, you should know I'm just taking over what the Laughing Man started."

If it was possible, Chastain's eyes got wider. He'd done all sorts of activities and had certain conversations over the years at the Fuzzy Feather — activities that could get him fired and conversations that would get him federally indicted.

"Looks like I got no choice. I'll be your Huckleberry…for now."

"Good boy," Essex said, disappearing into the passage behind the trick panel in the wall he'd come out of to surprise the cop.

Marcia Mathers had stood before the two in her short robe and heels, though she'd tied the robe shut. "I'm the manager here now, so you'll report to me. We clear?"

An uppity, devious colored and a broad had him by the short and curlies. What had he done to deserve this? "We're clear."

She walked out and after getting dressed and back outside in the wintery evening, Chastain pulled his coat close. Despite being a stone killer, the idea of not knowing when the Silencer would strike next made him uneasy — very uneasy.

THE END

Among discoverer Gary Phillips' latest is another short story, "Feathersmith's Excellent Plan," in the Dead of Winter e-anthology, and a collection of his previously published short stories, Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers, is out from Perfect Crime Books.

The Most Penetrative Game

By Jimmy Callaway

Anyone who's spent even a few moments browsing in a used bookstore has seen them: rack upon shelf upon rack of men's adventure novels. Most prominent is The Executioner, created in 1969 by Don Pendleton. Pendleton's protagonist, Mack Bolan, an Army vet who takes the law into his own hands, is the star of hundreds of novels.

Hundreds.

Can you even imagine? I mean, I am an avowed comic book nerd, and the big name superheroes I so adore have probably each had a comparable number of adventures. But there's something about these adventure novels that boggles my mind. Maybe it's because there are no pictures or something, I dunno.

Anyways, we're not here to talk about the Executioner series, but its progeny. In the 1970s, when the backlash to the hippie counterculture was at its highest, there were many, many Executioner knock-offs to be found in the spinner racks at your local A&P. The Destroyer was a series of kung-fu novels; The Butcher was another vigilante who moonlighted at a deli. Or maybe not, there's not a whole lot written about these lesser Bolans, aside from a few largely unreadable fan sites. One of the more popular series of the '70s was The Penetrator, who starred in over fifty novels between the years of 1973 and 1984. The fourteenth Penetrator novel was a little ditty with the delightful title, Mankill Sport.

It rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Mankill Sport. I dunno, I love it. Unfortunately, the title is the best part of this book, although I have certainly read a lot worse in my time.

Mark Hardin (any similarity to Mack Bolan here is, if not intentional, surely not accidental) is a Vietnam veteran who has come home from the war only to find the freedoms he fought so hard for in Southeast Asia to be taken for granted. Hardin becomes a one-man army, just like Bob McKenzie in Strange Brew. Or I guess a two- or three-man army, since he has backing his war Professor Willard Haskins, in charge of intel, and Hadin's trusty Cheyenne sidekick/mentor, David Red Eagle, also in charge of intel, but in a much more spiritual sense. But nothing sissy, y'know, more like a Bruce Lee spiritual.

Mankill Sport, of course, needs a villain, and it has a doozy with the perfectly named Johnny Utah, drug overlord of Detroit, MI. The book opens with Utah brazenly executing two police officers. Granted, they're crooked police officers, but still. Pretty ballsy, Utah. Utah's M.O. is he runs Detroit, but since he technically lives out in the ‘burbs, the city cops can't bust him since he's bought off the soft, doughy Bloomfield Hills P.D. This seems a bit flimsy on the face of it, but having lived in suburbia all my life and dealing with the fat, mustachioed cops therein, I can believe it.

After this brash display of cop-icide, the Penetrator makes Johnny Utah his next project. Hardin (any similarity to "hard-on" here is, if not intentional, surely really creepy and gross) tracks Utah up into the great white north, which is apparently a beauty way to go (Boom! Two McKenzie brothers references! I'm on fire, don't put me out!)(Okay, you can put me out now). The suspense builds, but if you've been paying any kind of attention and slept through less than two-thirds of freshman English, then you'll likely guess that we're gonna get a rehash of Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game."

Sure enough, the Penetrator angles it so he's captured and held for Utah's most private game reserve, where the eating is good and the hunting is for humans. Naturally, Utah figures he's got the Penetrator right where he wants him, and naturally, he's never been more wrong. The Penetrator overtakes and kills all of Utah's customers on the Bloodlust Ranch, freeing the other captives, and doling out justice to Johnny Utah…Penetrator-style!

All in all, this is a little ring-a-ding dose of post-'Nam soldier-of-fortune fantasy, written most likely with guys like your dad in mind. It's a fun way to kill an afternoon, and at the very least read it for the unintentionally hilarious sub-plot with the Penetrator and his lady love, ex-model Joanna Tabler, as they discuss marriage and the possibility of a future together in a world that still needs so much justice. It's a lot of laughs trying to wedge some kinda feminist commentary into the series. Well, for me, anyways.

Jimmy Callaway lives and works in San Diego, CA, where he edits and writes for Criminal Complex among other things.

The Albino Wino in: LONGHAIR DEATH FARM

By Clifton Wetzel-Bulinger

(discovered by Cameron Ashley)

This time...they've hunted the wrong albino!

Special thanks to CAMERON ASHLEY for contacting Clifton Wetzel-Bulinger directly. A lot has changed since this story was published in 1978, and we appreciate Mr. Wetzel-Bulinger's bravery in agreeing to reprint the story, considering that he is now the Poet Laureate of the Isle of Man (best known for his villanelle "Alabaster Rainbows"). Look for the subtle social commentary that marks all his work, as well as his trademark albinocentric underpinnings.

Bronte Fox slid a pale couple of fingers through the fencing that divided them and stroked The Albino Wino's head. "They hurt you," she said.

The Wino sat up, pulled away from her touch. He inspected his swollen face with his own large, rough hands, and, noting his split lips, he spat out a viscous glob of blood and mucous-flecked saliva upon the straw that lined his cage.

How long had it been since his arrival here at this death farm? Weeks, easily. His hands shook. He needed a drink. Outside of a homemade Merlot that Theseus Jones, the leader of the longhair cult that kept him prisoner, shared with him right before his thrashing, he had gone pretty much sober.

There was a small minibar bottle of cheap rum he kept against his genitals in times of true emergency. And as true emergency was undeniably now, he pulled it free from its hiding place and drained half of it. It was nowhere near enough, but the rum's warmth spread down his throat and into his belly. He lay down in the fetal position (as close as he could get to a full stretch in this welded-together coop) and thought back to how it had all began.

He remembered being sick and tired of the city: Vietnam protestors, music gone to shit, the vestiges of Flower Power clinging more tendril than blossom to the culture at large. Concrete so hot it seemed to sweat. Being rousted from shady spots by cops who had more booze on their breath than he did, traces of whores' smeared pink lipstick on their crotches, bad intentions in their baton swings.

He remembered a brawl with The Silver Dragons, an Oriental street gang from Chinatown who picked on the homeless both for fun and to practice their roundhouses. The ensuing fight, ten-on-one with the one handily winning, was broken up by a big side of beef of a cop who saw the chance to vent some aggression on a stone drunk albino man just trying to get by.

The back-alley brawl was already won, silver satin-jacketed youths sprawled everywhere, their mean streaks punched out of them, at least for now. The cop saw The Wino standing at alley's end, blood dripping from his skinned knuckles, a butterfly knife stuck clean through a segment of thigh. A filthy circus freak, grubby as a pit fighter, pale as the Angel of Death. The cop went straight for him, nightstick swinging like a rotor blade. Little did he know that The Silver Dragons weren't the only cats in town who knew some Kung Fu. The Wino had learned much in his years on the road.

The Albino Wino blocked the first attempt at a braining, grabbing the cop's wrist, snapping it, and peppering his body with palm strikes and chops. The cop staggered back, snarled and scooped up the fallen nightstick with his good hand. The Wino grabbed it as it swung towards him. He snatched it from the cop's grasp at the very same moment he pushed the big cop back with a front kick.

The wino snapped the nightstick over his knee in a hopeful display of don't-mess-with-this-super-whitey and said, "Stop."

The cop shouted, "Screw you, pinky!" and pulled his gun. The Wino hurled a sharp shard of nightstick – he aimed for the gun barrel, but his aim was off, brain fuzzy from some strikes taken in the brawl with the Dragons.

The shard of nightstick buried itself in the cop's jugular. The cop cried out and dropped the gun. He pulled the stake-like piece of wood from his throat. Arterial spray graffitied the alley walls and he fell dead.

The Albino Wino knew he had to split. When the establishment and the anti-establishment were as bad as each other, all a man had was himself, his American know-how, his fists, and his will to survive. The world was going to hell. It was no place for one as distinctively snowy-haired and as alien-eyed as he.

The wino pulled the knife from his thigh. Just a flesh wound. He bound it tight with two tied-together bandanas and looked around for Chalky.

Chalky sat on a trashcan, the bloodied-up corpse of an alley rat in his mouth. As usual, when The Wino found action, Chalky had to have some, too. The Wino scooped up the albino cat, who purred at his touch and closed his eyes, one sky blue, the other emerald green, contentedly as The Wino wrapped him up in his bindle.

The Wino pulled a bottle of something cheap from his mid-size knapsack and took a healthy pull. He came up for air then went in again and drained the bottle.

It was time to hit the road.

It was whimpering that woke him. At first he thought it was Bronte Fox, but even in the half-light he could tell that the beautiful albiness was not the source.

It was the man in the third cage.

Bronte crawled to the cage wall that separated her from the Wino. "You passed out. It's Johnny. They took another piece."

In truth, all the Wino wanted to do was stare at Bronte, luminous in the moonlight that filtered through the cracks and gaps in the barn. She was unearthly and elven in her beauty, full-lipped and armed with eyes a hypnotising streak of light blue. Her hair seemed spun of stars, cascading over her slender shoulders.

Johnny cried again and the Wino wrenched his eyes off Bronte and focused on the whimpering mess on the floor of the third cage. The Wino knew little about Johnny. He was the first captured of the three; that much he knew and he knew it only because Bronte had said as much. He didn't care for Johnny, who was a bearded longhair himself – belonging more to the obsolete tribe of hippies refusing to give up their naive dreams of transcendental trips and free love than to the clan of the outcast albino. The Wino knew that there was no place but the here and now and that absolutely nothing was free. Johnny hadn't done himself any favors either, for when the cult members came for him, he begged off, pleading with the shotgun-wielding longhairs to take The Wino first, or Bronte, if only they would spare him. He returned hours later, unconscious and minus an arm.

The other arm had been taken this time. And a foot. Soon there would be nothing left.

As Johnny tried to push himself up off his piss-stained straw with nothing but stumps, The Wino cracked a smile.

Bronte looked at him. "Why are you smiling?"

The Wino playfully put an index finger to Bronte's nose. "Honey, we need something to toast with. Champagne would be perfect but I'll quaff the fumiest, most blindness-inducing hooch from the filthiest inbred-owned still if that's all we could get."

Bronte's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"They're savin' us, honey. They're savin' us for later. We got time to make a plan. Maybe not a lotta time, but we can get outta here."

Now it was Bronte's time to smile. "We?"

The Wino touched her hand. "Yeah, we. You may be just some rich albino girl gone off the rails, but I ain't letting something as beautiful as you end up in some crazy hippie's stew."

Bronte placed her forehead to the cage bars, her lips poked succulently through the metal lattice. The Wino rinsed his mouth out with a swig of rum from the minibar bottle, thought about spitting it out, but swallowed instead. As his lips met hers, the chanting started from outside – the longhairs were feeding.

"You're special, man, don't ever forget that. What you got, what you are, man, the universe has blessed you, man." That was what the male longhair said to The Wino shortly after he and his girlfriend picked him up.

The Wino was adverse to hitchhiking, but he needed to split the city and split it quick. The car picked him up ten miles outside the city limits, passing him at first, then stopping and eventually reversing back to where The Wino walked along the roadside.

It was the girl who convinced him to take the ride, strawberry blonde and braless. If longhairs did one thing right, it was that their women didn't mind showing what they had and sharing it around. The girl could've filled out a sweater two times larger than the one she wore. She smiled and beckoned to him and told him they were going more than halfway towards where he wanted to be. Still, The Wino was suspicious. It was the cop car that tore past, sirens blaring, heading right back from where he'd come from that convinced him, finally, to accept the ride.

It was the biggest mistake of his life.

They gave him beers and called him "man" and asked about his life.

They mocked the war, they mocked the establishment, they mocked the President, they mocked all but the place where they were headed.

The Wino, beer-buzzed, felt his lips loosen, felt a rant coming, felt the urge to tell them that their side, their bullshit "counterculture" side was just as bad as The Man was, that the only way out was to be alone, was for a man to forge his own path, seize control of the universe by the throat and punch destiny in the face until it yielded.

But he made not a peep, which was strange because he wanted to.

And then things blurred and went spacy and for a moment he thought that maybe they were right, these hippies, maybe, just maybe, there was something more, something other, something beyond. But, no. It was just the Mickey Finn the dirty, cheating longhairs spiked his beer with.

And then, he woke up caged. A beautiful woman next to him, a whimpering, spineless geek on the other. Each of them "special." Each of them caged. Each of them afflicted with albinism.

And then, he met Theseus Jones.

Theseus Jones was tall and thin and had a pock-marked face indicative of childhood chicken pox or acne so bad it would make the world itself blush for you.

The Wino was brought before him by two longhairs so put together, they clearly were on a diet of more than just lentils, an observation that proved apt once Albino Wino learned what it was, exactly, that went down here.

He didn't see much of the compound's property on the trip up to the main house, thrown into the back of a pick-up truck, one Longhair Charles Atlas driving, the other in the back with him, pointing a sawed-off in his face, just that it was as large and unkempt as the armpits on a longhair dude's old lady.

The main house was just a large, open space. Naked couples lay on cushion-covered floors, intertwined, locked at the genitals. The Wino's albino eyes struggled to adjust as he was dragged past the armed guards at the door, through the squirming masses, to Theseus Jones himself, who sat on an oversized wicker chair that looked like some abominable longhair throne.

The big longhairs dropped him at Theseus' feet. The Wino looked around, waiting for his eyes to focus, waiting for what seemed to be one huge, moaning, soft-skinned, writhing organism to cease its amorphousness and bleed out into separate shapes. Once it did, he looked up at Theseus who wore a crooked-toothed grin. A woman was on her knees before the cult leader, fellating him. She groaned as though hypnotised by the swollen organ between her jaws.

Theseus introduced himself and then said, "I like you. What's your name?"

The Wino replied, "They call me The Albino Wino."

Theseus chuckled. "Kooky handle, man."

The Wino shrugged. "It fits."

Theseus leaned across the arm of the wicker throne and produced a wine bottle. He uncorked it and handed it to The Wino. "Try it. Homegrown."

The Wino shook his head even though the urge was strong. "Had enough of your booze in the car. I'm all napped-out, thanks very much."

"It's not drugged, I assure you, man." Theseus himself drank heartily. He held the bottle out for The Wino, who took it on this second offering.

Drinking deeply, The Wino said, "You gonna tell me why I'm here, or we just gonna sit around and get drunk? That's cool with me, but if you're looking for me to participate in…this," he gestured at the longhairs humping like animals on the ground in more positions than he knew existed. "You gotta know, I ain't no swinger."

Theseus went to speak, but stopped himself. "One moment," he said right before he ejaculated furiously.

The Wino went to avert his eyes, but there wasn't many a place to avert them to.

The woman in front of Theseus got up off her knees, wiped her mouth, and winked at The Wino as she passed. It was the longhair chick from the car, the one who spiked his beers and bewitched him with her breasts, now on full display, slapping together meatily with each footstep.

"You're next," she said, winking and running her fingers through the curling flaxen thatch between her legs. She disappeared through the copulating masses, a naked, golden-haired apparition treading lightly amidst a vibrating minefield of flesh.

The Wino drank deeply from the bottle. Good hooch. Not that he'd admit it to Theseus. "Okay, what the hell is going on here?"

Theseus laughed some more and tucked his member back into his linen trousers. "All in good time, man. First I need some medication…" He snapped his fingers and a young girl appeared, maybe fourteen at most. Timid and flushed, she was dressed in a sheer white, diaphanous dress. She held a large tray, lines of powder expertly placed upon it. Alongside the lines, a small, hollow tube, carved from wood and stained near-black. Theseus patted the girl on the head, picked up the tube, put it to his nose and snorted up the lines.

The Wino shook his head. "Coke? That shit'll rot your brain."

Theseus wiped his nose, beckoned the girl to leave. He said, "That's not coke, man. That's bone. Grade-A albino bone."

The Wino almost dropped the wine. "What?"

"That's right," Theseus pointed at The Wino. "Your kind, you got the magic in you, brother…"

The Wino lunged for Theseus, managing, just, to get a hand to the cult leader's throat before the big guys came back. The Wino went to fight, but the drugs were still residually with him and his reflexes were off. It didn't take long before things went black again, this time far more unpleasantly.

Time passed and became something slippery. Counting the minutes was like grabbing fistfuls of running water. His minibar rum bottle emptied, here came the Delirium tremens – nausea, trembling, fever. Unable to hold down the plates of gruel and boiled vegetables.

The tale unfolded in a fever-dream, at times narrated by Bronte, at other times narrated by Theseus himself who may or may not have actually come to visit. Theseus as African Missionary, sent to save, finding only superstition and black magic. The myth of the albino as something magical, possessed with healing powers.

The Wino saw African albinos brutally slaughtered, their flesh consumed, their bones ground to powder and ingested. A lifelong migraine sufferer, Theseus was offered the services of an albino girl. He took her and was healed. He still wore the girl's powdered thumb bone in a vial around his neck.

A powerful speaker, a charismatic man, Theseus founded this longhair death cult, hopped up on the bones of American albinos, hunted and captured by roving teams, prepared by jaded ex-hippies burned by Vietnam, by Manson, by Altamont, their dreams soured, fighting the awfulness of the new America with a greater awfulness. All of them warped through indoctrination and cannibalism. There was no denying their health, however, this Bronte could attest to, as every second night, she was sent to "cure" some ailing cultist of his "affliction" through sex magic she had no idea she possessed.

One day, Johnny, little more than a bobbing torso by this point, did not return. The Wino knew that he and Bronte would have to make good on their escape plans.

He looked deep into Bronte's eyes and said, "This here horrible shit can no longer stand."

The weapons at The Wino's disposal:

The empty minibar bottle he still kept nestled against his genitals so that he could inhale the dwindling fumes and transport himself to seedy big city bars.

And:

The uncanny, almost alien sexuality of Bronte and, apparently, his own uniquely musky brand of rugged albinism.

It was the couple who had picked him up and drugged and captured him that showed the most interest. She had made her own curiosity and arousal known at The Wino's first meeting with Theseus. Her boyfriend, or whatever you would like to label him, was clearly enraptured with Bronte. He had had his share of her, Bronte told The Wino, but so taken was he that he spent more time stroking her ivory skin, her alabaster hair than he did penetrating her.

The Wino couldn't blame him. Bronte was a mesmerist, unaware of the extent of her own loveliness. Should they escape this death farm, The Wino fully intended to probe whatever magic lay beneath the colorless cloud of her ghostly pubic hair.

The couple came essentially unarmed. She with a kitchen knife, he with a pitchfork. They stood nervously in front of the cages, lit by twilight cascading in through the open barn door, a young, stoned, sensual, hippie version of the couple in Grant Wood's American Gothic.

The Wino pleaded with them for booze – so drained was he from withdrawal that the only way he could sexually perform was with a spiritual fortification that had less to do with Jesus or Budda and more to do with Jack Daniels and Johnny Walker.

So eager were the couple for extended healing sessions that they complied, smuggling in cups of some feral moonshine that tasted of potatoes, oranges and bakery goods. Whatever it was, it did the trick – The Albino Wino was shortly restored.

The initial escape was easily done, after three nights of not at all unpleasant copulation, the four of them loosed upon the barnyard dirt. Freed from their cages by the longhair male who, it turned out, was some sort of trustee – possessed with a set of keys to everything on the farm – bewitched into rule-breaking sexual sessions through Bronte's longing, lingering gazes. On the third night of these clandestine moonlight rendezvous the girl let their fate slip.

"Thank you," she said, "for spiritually fulfilling me and healing my debilitating hepatitis with your seed."

The Albino Wino fumbled for his pants while the girl played with the fine gossamer of his chest hair. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

The girl rolled off of him and turned to her side, her back to The Wino. "Tomorrow," she said sadly, "Theseus will take your arms for the ritual…"

The Wino rubbed his face. "Tomorrow…"

Bronte, feigning sleep, visibly stiffened in the moon glow. She and The Wino exchanged a glance, a nod. The Albino Wino rolled, uncovered from a clump of hay the smashed top half of the minibar rum bottle and grabbed it by its stubby neck. Springing to his feet, he leapt upon the longhair male and raked the jagged edge of the bottle across his throat. Bronte gave a short shriek as the blood spray painted her bosom and face, streaking her hair pink.

The longhair girl fell agog at the sight. Bronte Fox, bloodlust and, yes, possibly envy, building up inside of her, called for the girl's blood. Bronte fell atop her like a snowy blizzard. The girls, both naked still, writhed upon the ground until Bronte plucked an old horseshoe from the hay and bludgeoned the girl to death with it.

Covered in gore, but semi-clothed at least, the duo snuck out of the barn. The night was cool but clear and under the moonlight The Wino and Bronte seemed as though one with the stars, beautifully iridescent, a constellation of two – The Vengeance Seekers, perhaps, one day to rise above this mortal coil to sit beside Orion the Hunter.

The Wino clutched the longhair male's pitchfork, Bronte the girl's kitchen knife. The lights in the compound's main house glowed in the distance. Theseus would be in there, fornicating and snorting the bones of their pale brothers and sisters.

They met little resistance on the way to the main house, and what resistance they did meet they dispatched like spear-hurling primitives, pitchforks rocketing javelin-like into jugulars and sternums. Their opposition, conditioned by spiritual nonsense, to believe that these beings in all their albinistic glory were something other than human, were defeated at the mere sight of them as they creeped like pale spectres through the scrub.

The most troublesome were the two large longhairs who had given The Wino his beatings. But by the time The Wino and Bronte encountered them, they had firearms. The Wino shot out their kneecaps and left them writhing on the ground, giving them something to think about. With each cult-sentry dispatched, so did their arsenal increase, inevitably to the point where so burdened were they with weapons that many they left with the dead.

Cultists, roused by the fighting, fled through any available exit. The Wino and Bronte shot as many as they could. Vengeance is a black and murky beast that clouds judgment and dampens all sense of kindred humanity at the best of times, but The Wino felt no kinship with these cannibals; the world would be better off without them. The chaos, the storm of people fleeing, helped protect them from the gunfire of those remaining. The Wino lost his right earlobe, torn free by a lucky shot. With blood trickling down his pulsing neck, The Wino unloaded with return fire, blowing the shooter's brains out the back of his head.

By the time they discovered Theseus Jones, sleeping still in some drugged stupor, a trio of buxom beauties by his side, The Wino and Bronte were surely fixed to fight an army of trained killers, never mind this lot of beardy, tripping rabble.

The women fled screaming, but were gut-shot by a grim-faced Bronte, the red mist far from settled in her eyes.

"I can make you a God," Theseus said upon awakening to find The Wino poking the barrel of an AK-47 in his face.

The Wino shook his head. "I don't want control over no man, no institution, or no cause," he said. And with that, the great Theseus Jones closed his eyes, clasped the vial around his neck and was turned into a bloody, chopped-up cadaver in a hail of righteous gunfire.

They found the still and The Wino drank deep. Having had their fill of killing, they let the remaining cultists run free. The little girl who served Theseus his bone powder caught The Wino's eye. She mouthed the words thank you and was gone before The Wino could respond.

Bronte shared a drink with him, coughing the moment the shine hit her lips. The Wino laughed and drank some more. With breath like gasoline, the couple headed off into the night.

Some ways down the trail that led to the highway, a mewling was heard.

"What was that?" Bronte said.

The Wino shushed her with a pasty index finger to her lips. A blinding flash erupted from the scrub, leaping into The Albino Wino's arms.

"Chalky!" The Wino exclaimed. "Drawn by the scent of the poisonous hooch on my breath, no doubt. Thanks for waiting around for me, buddy."

Chalky, apparently none the worse for wear from waiting weeks for his master, purred and nuzzled The Wino's snowy beard. The Wino turned to Bronte, "You ain't got no allergy to cats, I hope? This little guy's been with me through hell and back and I ain't about to throw him over for some piece of sweetmeat."

Bronte Fox answered by scratching Chalky under the chin and passionately kissing The Wino on the mouth. Tongues doing the Watusi together under the full moon, The Wino finally pulled free. He said, "I swiped us some cash from some dead longhair fool. Let's you, me and Chalky find us a place we can get us something good to drink."

With that, the trio headed for the highway, on to bigger adventures and deadlier foes.

THE END

Keep an eye out for the magnificent return of The Albino Wino in his next white-knuckle adventure: A PALER SHADE OF WHITE!

Cameron Ashley is the editor in chief of Crime Factory. His most recent fiction can be found in D*cked, Noir at the Bar and upcoming in The One That Got Away. He lives in Brunswick, Melbourne. This one's for Nette.

Battleground U.S.S.A.: TEXASGRAD

By Max Auger

(discovered by Christopher Blair)

CHRISTOPHER BLAIR found this Reagan-era classic at the Coos Bay Swap Meet on the coast of Oregon. Even among survivalist training manuals, Laser Tag accessories, and tarnished throwing stars, the embossed mushroom cloud and hammer and sickle on its cover were hard to miss. Very little is known about the author Max Auger; we do know that this is his first printed effort and a prime example of the '80s post-apocalyptic sub-genre of men's adventure.

That sign's in Russian!

At first, Capt. Mike McCreary thought the binoculars were playing tricks on him. He pressed himself further into the rich Texas soil and leaned forward into the dry grass like a crouching lion. He blinked and looked again.

It was too much to take in. Less than a mile away lay his hometown, its neat, clean buildings untouched by the Russian and Chinese death that had streaked in a year before. In fact, the town looked just the way it did when he'd left Sunny here to be safe. There it was, just west of the school: the little house they'd bought with his promotion pay. Sunny was in there. Waiting for him, but thinking he was dead.

Every fiber of his body wanted to run to her, to tell her that he'd survived. But his military training told him to stay put.

The farms and fields encircling the town of Wrangler Plains looked like a pale green quilt. He saw the workers and tractors and clouds of dust, working together to bring in the harvest, the familiar motions of bending and lifting, of wiping honest sweat from an honest man's brow. He knew that his childhood friends were down there, the ones who'd stayed home, just a few minutes' sprint from the gentle rise where he now lay.

If not for the sign, printed on a bright piece of plywood planted on the shoulder of Highway 27. In bright red letters:

And printed in smaller letters:

McCreary handed the binoculars to Spec. Charles Whitefeather, crouched beside him like one of his Comanche ancestors stalking a buffalo. Whitefeather shook his head politely. "No thank you, Captain." McCreary cursed his insensitivity: Of course, Whitefeather wouldn't need the binoculars. Not with his hunter's eyes.

Instead, he handed them to Private Billy LaRoy to his left. Next to LaRoy, Spec. Brad Hawker, the sniper, took it all in through his scope.

"I don't understand, Cap," LaRoy said, "Why are all them R's backward? I may not be no college boy, but I know when letters ain't right."

"That's Russian writing, Private," McCreary said. "It looks a little like ours, but it ain't."

Whitefeather hit the dirt next to McCreary. "Tanks!" he hissed.

McCreary grabbed the binoculars from LaRoy, just as Hawker muttered, "Five of ‘em. No six. No, seven! To the right of the church, off the main drag."

Son of a bitch: Seven tanks were rolling across Hank Steinhoff's alfalfa field. Suddenly, they stopped about fifty feet from the First Church of Christ, a row of fat iron turtles. In unison, their turrets began to swing. Even a mile away, the squad could feel the tanks' metal rumbling in their bellies.

"This doesn't make sense," McCreary muttered. "The Reds weren't supposed to this far north. Intel said we stopped 'em at San Antone."

"Those tanks are huge," Whitefeather said, "I ain't seen nothin' like that this close. Not even doing Black Ops in Europe. I feel an ill wind blowin', Captain." He paused, then added: "This is bad medicine."

They all knew the truth. Only LaRoy, as always, clung to the bright side. "Maybe they're PT-76′s on a scouting run. We have to get back, tell General Pearce that the Russians are coming."

"They're not 76′s," McCreary said. The dread in his voice was thicker than Texas tea. "They're not scouts. Those are T-80′s. Seven T-80 main battle tanks. The Russian's aren't coming." He ran his hands through his thick black hair. "They're already here."

McCreary looked at Whitefeather. The big Comanche had closed his eyes, smelling the breeze coming in from town. What secrets did the air hold? It was best not to ask Whitefeather when he went to… that other place.

"Hawker," McCreary said. "You speak some Russian. What does that sign say?"

"Welcome … to Wrangler Plains … Texas," Hawker recited. "Population… 1,845." McCreary felt a stab of annoyance. He didn't need some grunt with a Russian grandmother to tell him the population of his hometown. It was 1845, same as the date Texas joined the Late Great United States.

McCreary swung his binoculars back to the tanks, parked close to the church where he'd married Sunny Summerville. There, a mere feet from the menacing T-80′s, were the front steps where he'd worn his dress blues and held Sunny's hand next to Pastor Joe.

Hawker continued: "The rest of it says: Soon to be renamed… Fertile Worker… Fertile Worker … something… Fields! Fertile Worker Fields! …"

McCreary squeezed the binoculars when he saw the distant form of Pastor Joe. The reverend sprinted down the steps and ran toward the tanks, waving his hands. The hatch on one of the turrets popped open. A gray-suited Russian tanker appeared. The Russian lifted his arm. It held a pistol.

"…renamed… as soon as our comrades … free themselves…"

McCreary watched Pastor Joe, unafraid, stop shy of the lead tank. He held something up in his hands. McCreary couldn't make it out, but he knew he held a Bible. The same one that he and Sunny had laid their hands on to become man and wife. But as blessed as it was, no Bible could stop a bullet.

The Russian tanker fired his pistol. Whitefeather whispered something sacred and sad in his own language.

"…free themselves… in their minds and hearts … from capitalist oppression!"

As if on cue, the tanks fired over Pastor Joe's crumpled body. Licks of orange erupted from their barrels. The church exploded silently, slats of pure white wood spinning in godless flame.

Three seconds later, the sound arrived at Lonestar Tactical Unit 1 and shook them to their very souls.

McCreary slept the fitful sleep of a fighting man. He dreamed, as he always did, about the week before the attack. He'd known something was afoot. Troop movements in East Germany. Chinese maneuvers in the Formosa Strait. Soviet maneuvers near Turkey, practice amphibious landings in Egypt, just miles from the Israeli coast.

He hadn't talked to Sunny in three weeks. Command had canceled all leave, and McCreary hadn't been out of Silo J-47 long enough to make a single phone call. Not that he'd have been able to, anyway, with everything locked down. Hours in the terminal he shared with Lt. Jansen. As Jansen blabbed once more about the whole thing being a Communist plea for attention, the Squawker had jolted them out of their routine.

"Juliet! Juliet-Four-Seven! Priority Message Charlie!"

He and Jansen had sprung into action, confirming the missile codes. They'd just inserted the keys when their station, buried two hundred feet under the frozen North Dakota plains, began to rock and shimmy. The lights flickered. Surely they had seconds to live. All thoughts of conscience and doubt were swept away as he and Jansen turned their keys.

On their command, in silos buried all around them, five Minuteman III's breathed dragon-fire and arced into the sky, bound for glory.

"They're away!" Jansen yelled. "That's what you get for stabbing us in the back!" He turned to McCreary, "It's been an honor serving with you, Captain."

Then, the lights went out and the bunker shook. A great roaring rip in the walls and ceiling. The smell of cold and earth. Everything around them collapsed. Somewhere up there, the world exploded and North Dakota—and America herself—was bathed in an unholy nuclear fire.

The Chinese—McCreary later learned—had initiated the plan's first phase: introducing a program into the Defense Department's computers that replicated itself, like a disease. Almost like a computerized… virus. And like a virus, it had spread over the newly installed Inter-Network that the technocrats had insisted would keep America safe. Instead, their newfangled computers had given the Communists their gateway. Linked and spreading the contagion, every weapon that carried a nuclear tip—from bombers to missiles—was rendered inoperable. Some Asian wiseacre had added the final indignity: Whenever a command was given to launch a plane, or a missile, the intercom played a tinny alien tune that only a handful of the crews recognized as the Chinese national anthem.

Then, the Chinese launched Phase 2: Sending their fifty Long March rockets high over the United States, to detonate two hundred miles up. The explosions fried every electronic circuit in the country. The Chinese hadn't tried to flatten the cities and the missile silos.

That part of the plan had been the Russians' job.

For reasons that he never figured out, only McCreary's silo—representing just five missiles out of thousands—had managed to go aloft that day. Whether they reached their targets, McCreary doubted he would ever know.

But the dreams only touched on that part of the story. Whenever he slept, his dreams always eventually led to Sunny—her long honey-colored hair, her narrow waist, her virtuous smile. Her delicate hands that could squeeze a trigger and pick off a jackrabbit at a hundred yards.

It was Sunny, the cheerleader who'd waited for him after football games. Sunny, who wore that frilly skirt, who loved him enough to let his hands roam, but loved God and her virtues enough to make him wait. Sunny, who wore his ring as he went into Air Force Pararescue. Sunny, who talked him through it on the phone after he told her he'd washed out. Sunny, who told him to come home and marry her. Sunny, who didn't get mad after their honeymoon to Corpus Christi, when the Air Force decided that they still owned him and stuck him in the ground in North Dakota.

And of course, it had been Sunny who compelled him to claw his way out of a crooked elevator shaft and to survive everything afterward.

General Pearce studied the reports on the card table he'd been using as a desk since Omaha. Sweltering in the General's tent, McCreary stood at attention, while his men—LaRoy, Whitefeather, and Hawker—stood behind him.

"This report you filed," Pearce said. "It doesn't make sense. The First Cav and the rest of III Corps stopped the Russians and Mexicans at San Antonio."

"How do we know for sure, General?" LaRoy blurted out. "We've had spotty radio traffic from that sector since last week!"

McCreary winced. LaRoy had never learned when to shut it.

"I don't remember asking you a thing, Private!" the general barked. He shot to his feet and glared at McCreary. "Once again: An Air Force flyboy and his ragtag squad of enlistees are trying to tell me how to link up with III Corps."

"With all due respect, General," McCreary began. "This ragtag squad of enlistees and I have been the eyes and ears of this brigade since Omaha. We're telling you what we saw. An entire Russian tank battalion has taken over my town. I need to go back there."

"No," the general said. "We can't risk it."

"Can't risk it? We need intel!"

The general waved his hand over the card table. "We have intel! You've done your job. No need to put your squad—and the rest of us—at risk. So far, the Russians don't know our exact location. We've tied up their air assets over New Mexico, which is why they haven't spotted us."

"You don't know that!"

"McCreary, if these Commies catch you, they'll know we're moving south with brigade strength. At the very least, we wait for the 101st. Their radios are working. They're in Mississippi and heading this way."

"General, if I may be so bold—" McCreary began.

"No! That's my decision," Pearce said. "I'm sorry about the Russians in your town, Captain. I am." He added, with a soft tone that did nothing to assuage McCreary's worst fears: "They may be godless cowards, but I'm sure your wife is alive. You'll see her soon. Just be patient."

"General, please—"

"Dismissed!" The four men stood abruptly at attention, and in unison, turned and banged through the door into the hot Texas sun.

The four of them—McCreary, Whitefeather, Hawker, and LaRoy—entered their tent and dropped their gear on their bunks. McCreary fumed. He had made certain assumptions on returning from their scouting run: Certainly after reading their report, Pearce would authorize another trip south.

But he hadn't.

Usually McCreary respected the old man's caution. It had held them at the Missouri River, just before a squad of Russian-made Mexican Hind helicopters had swooped in and wiped out the 173rd, waiting to rendezvous on the other side. The general's instincts had kept five thousand men from leaving what remained of Lincoln, Kansas—just avoiding the swarm of radioactive twisters south of Wichita Falls.

But now, the general was being too cautious. McCreary and his men were the whiskers of a lion that was meant to pounce. Not cower in a scrub forest west of Waco.

Behind McCreary, Hawker disassembled his rifle. "I'm sure she's all right," he said.

"You know it, Cap" LaRoy chimed in. "That Sunny of yours sounds tough as nails. Don't you worry about all the things them Russians do to womenfolk whenever they take ov—"

"That's enough, Private!" Whitefeather barked with uncharacteristic ferocity. The dreamcatcher above his head swayed from his voice.

But McCreary heard none of this. His complete focus was on his bunk. Lying on his bunk was a sheet of paper. A string of words formed a row, neatly typewritten.

In Russian.

"Hawker," McCreary said in a voice he barely heard in his own ears. "I need you to read something for me."

McCreary and his men hunkered behind the same rise where they'd spied Wrangler Plains the day before. Fall was coming, and the faint trace of their breath rose above them in the chill, dawn air.

"You men don't have to be here," McCreary said. "We're defying orders. If you double-time it back to base, they might not notice you're gone."

"Too late now, Captain," Hawker said. "You know we'd follow you to hell and back."

"That's right, Cap," LaRoy said. "Ain't no Commie bastards gonna rape your town, no sir."

Whitefeather breathed a patient sigh. "Don't worry about your wife, Captain. We're on my former hunting grounds now. The earth speaks to me. The Great Spirit will keep her safe."

McCreary was moved beyond words. But it wasn't time for emotion. They had a job to do: to rescue Sunny, and, God willing, to kill some Ivans in the process.

"Captain!" Hawker hissed, squinting through his scope. "A work detail! Ten… no, twenty civvies!"

McCreary raised his binoculars. A couple dozen people walked out to Bill Dolan's wheat field. They carried scythes and hoes. Old-fashioned tools. McCreary thought he recognized a couple of them. There was Ida Grange, who'd owned the diner on Route 283. She wore a plain gray dress, the likes of which McCreary had never seen. And Bill Dolan himself, dressed as strangely in drab clothes, like something out of Fiddler on the Roof. He wore a wool cap. McCreary could only make out a faint red shape, front and center on the cap.

A star.

"Captain," Whitefeather said, squinting into the distance, "Company."

McCreary moved the binoculars back and forth. "Where?"

"Five guards," Hawker said, "To the right? See ‘em? … Mexicans. And two Russians with 'em."

Sure enough, a squad of five Mexican soldiers, unshaven, their fatigues crumpled and disheveled came into view. Fifty yards away stood a pair of Russian privates, distinguished by their light blue shirts, shouldering their AK's, smoking cigarettes and laughing.

"Backstabbers!" LaRoy muttered.

"Let's move into position," McCreary said. "Whitefeather, you and LaRoy circle around. You handle the Mexicans. Hawker and I will take out the Russians."

"I don't know," Hawker said. "It's not the objective. If we shoot and miss—"

"Then don't miss," Whitefeather said. "When the Mexicans start to dance, sir, that'll be your cue." The big Indian and LaRoy were already moving through the tall grass like a couple of leopards.

McCreary and Hawker had plenty of cover as they moved. A rusted combine. Three boulders. A pumphouse. Before too long, they crouched unseen only five yards from the Russians, who chattered away in their dirty, oily language. Beyond them, McCreary could see the Mexican guards, lounging next to their truck. One had his hat down over his eyes. The others leered at a group of teenage girls. The biggest soldier, with a huge, black mustache, catcalled one of the girls in Spanish. She didn't look up, only hoed the ground faster.

McCreary raised his M-16 and aimed it at the Russian on the left. Hawker had his rifle up, peering unnecessarily though the sight. At this range, Hawker would have been automatic with a blindfold. Maybe he was just being cautious.

The big soldier moved toward the girl. "¡Señorita!" McCreary heard him say. "Eres hermosa. Venir aquí!"

His last words. The soldier's head silently exploded. The sound arrived a half second later. The Russians jerked to attention like startled antelope.

Then, everything happened fast.

The big Mexican fell to the ground like a headless sack of tamales. His men jumped to their feet. Two of them grabbed for their rifles—then began their silent, jiggling dance of death. The remaining two ran toward town.

McCreary drew a bead on the nearest Russian's chest and fired. The M-16 kicked against his shoulder with a reassuring thump. The Russkie was dead before he hit the ground. A millisecond later, Hawker fired at the Russian on the right—and missed.

The scrub oak tree behind the Russian split in two. Hawker's Russian looked around with big, cowardly eyes. He could see neither McCreary nor Hawker—and turned to run.

Goddammit, Hawker! McCreary thought. He raised his rifle and dropped the Russian with a single shot to the back of the head. McCreary felt the slightest tug of sadness. The Russian kid had looked all of nineteen, and now he lay dead in the dirt, with the front of his head replaced with an exit wound.

McCreary tried to quash any regret: They invaded my home. Not just my country. The Commies are in my home town. Sorry, Ivan: You had to die.

Across the field, Whitefeather and LaRoy chased down the remaining Mexicans. LaRoy tackled the slower one and drove his Ranger's knife into the back of his head. He jiggled in the dirt like a beetle in some sadistic kid's bug collection. Whitefeather had caught the other one. McCreary, far out of earshot, knew what was happening: The big Comanche was drawing his knife across the Mexican's throat, but whispering words of a hunter's respect into his ear as blood flowed from his body like a sacred stream.

"I'm sorry, sir," Hawker said. He looked seriously dejected. "I've never missed in my life. Too close quarters, I guess. But that's no excuse."

McCreary patted him on the shoulder. "It's all right. I never make mistakes, you know?"

"You're a good man, Capt. McCreary," Hawker said softly. "I won't let you down again."

"I know you won't," McCreary said. "Let's join the others."

Whitefeather and LaRoy were already at the girls. "It's all right," Whitefeather said to the tallest one. "We're Americans, like you!"

"That's right, miss," LaRoy said. "Head up that road. There's an American base not ten miles away. They'll take you in and keep you safe. You'll see!"

Here came Bill Dolan, running toward them, with Ida Grange on his heels, holding her skirt up from the ground. They'd dropped their tools and looked relieved to see them. Actually, that wasn't right. They didn't look relieved. They looked scared.

That wasn't right, either. They looked angry.

Dolan and Ida yelled incomprehensibly. LaRoy tried to calm them.

McCreary arrived at the group. Sure enough, that was a red star on Dolan's cap. And why was Dolan yelling at them… in Russian?

"Chto vy delali?" Dolan cried out. "Eti soldaty byli nashi druz'ya! Vy uzhasno bandity!"

"This doesn't make any sense," Whitefeather said, drying his knife on his fatigues.

Just then, fifty Russian soldiers rose from the summer wheat, surrounding them. Each soldier brandished an AK-47. The rifles' magazines curled toward McCreary's team like black fangs. A faint breeze blew, hissing through the grain menacingly. McCreary felt awash in an ocean of dread. Even the wheat had turned against them.

"Captain McCreary," an accented voice said from behind a tree. They all turned. Out stepped a tall, Russian officer. He wore plain, pressed olive-colored combat fatigues. Only the three pale stars on his shoulders betrayed his rank. "Thank you for joining us on such a fine morning as this."

"Who the hell are you?" LaRoy asked.

"I am General Yuri Azov of the Soviet Army," the general said. "And you will do well to check your tone with a superior officer, Private LaRoy, of Lewisburg, West Virginia."

"How do you know my name?" LaRoy asked.

The general ignored him. McCreary dropped his M-16 on the ground as the general and two soldiers approached. He motioned to the others to do the same. They obeyed—except for Hawker, who kept his sniper's rifle slung over his shoulder. Good old Hawker, McCreary thought. A sniper to his dying day.

"How I know is not important," the Russian general said. "Not nearly as important as the honors we will bestow upon Lieutenant Hawkerov … of the KGB."

The sniper that McCreary had known as Hawker clicked his heels, stood at attention, and gave the general a crisp salute.

"Lt. Hawkerov," the general said, "thank you for bringing Captain McCreary to enjoy the benefits of our worker's paradise. And thank you for delivering my note, as well! Such a brave, loyal son of Kiev!"

"Hawker!" McCreary cried softly. The sniper glanced at McCreary for the briefest of moments. What was that in his eyes? Was it shame? Were Communists even capable of such an emotion?

"I am happy to do my duty for the Motherland," Hawker said in English.

"As am I," the general said.

Azov raised his pistol. McCreary recognized it as a Nagant M1895. A seven-shot, gas-sealed revolver, issued only to the top Communist Party members. Azov was the real deal. And he demonstrated it by shooting the sniper in the chest. Hawker—Hawkerov—crumpled like the traitor he was.

McCreary's mind spun. "W-why?" he asked, just as a rifle butt struck the back of his head.

McCreary regained consciousness, pain glowing bright yellow in his skull. He tried to move his arms, but couldn't. They were stretched behind his back. He opened his eyes to sunlight streaming through tall windows. McCreary recognized the office of Mayor Todd Houston. Same oak paneling, same fancy desk the size of a Mississippi River barge. But the walls were adorned with posters, of proud workers facing the sky under the same backward Cyrillic letters that Hawker had translated the day before—

Hawker. Goddammit, Hawker!

Whitefeather and LaRoy were similarly seated, their arms tied behind their chairs. They were awake. LaRoy had two black eyes. The scrappy little private had apparently tried to fight them off. Whitefeather didn't appear to have a scratch on him. The Russians probably knew better than to tangle with the big Indian.

Other than two Russian guards at the door, they were alone.

McCreary scanned the room. His eyes stopped on a huge oil painting, five feet high and three feet wide, hanging on the wall behind the desk.

The painting looked like something out of the 1700s. It showed a blonde woman in a blue dress, her hair tied behind her head, standing in a field of flowers. A basket of blossoms hung from her elbow. In the distance, a Russian church with three onion domes sat under yellow clouds and a red, setting sun. McCreary couldn't take his eyes off the woman.

Sunny!

The door to the office opened. General Azov wore a more ceremonial uniform, whatever it was that the Russians called their Class A's. His boots shone and thumped on the old oak floor, every step a gunshot.

"I see you're awake, Capt. McCreary," the General said.

"You seem to know me quite well," McCreary intoned. His skull throbbed with every syllable.

"I've known all about you for years." Azov said, pulling an olive-colored folder off his desk and opening it. "Captain Jacob McCreary, United States Air Force… born on March 2, Texas Independence Day … Eagle Scout… joined the Air Force's Pararescue division for training, but forced out with a knee injury obtained when rescuing a comrade from a tangled parachute line. … Reassigned to the 91st Missile Wing, where you performed with distinction."

"Hey, how do you know all that?" LaRoy asked.

Azov continued. "Before assuming command of this glorious invasion of your … doomed empire, I was second-in-command of the KGB. It was my job to know about every American missile officer. I know every detail, Capt. McCreary. I've followed your career. And your personal life. I was amazed at the similarities of our ambitions. Of our character. And most importantly, the fact that our wives appeared so… identical. So naturally, I studied you. And her. With great interest."

"What's that supposed to mean?" McCreary asked.

"Oh, Captain. We shall deal with that soon enough," Azov said, "We are discussing a clash of civilizations. Mighty empires, meeting on the field of battle! Our Chinese allies, tired of being a third-rate power. Mother Russia, impatient that it has taken seventy years to bring capitalism to its knees. And so, we have Chinese Plan Chang Alpha 7. To erase the threat posed by the American nuclear arsenal. And it worked with 99.9999 percent accuracy."

Azov walked to Mayor Houston's liquor cabinet. McCreary remembered the cabinet from the day he'd made Eagle Scout at 17, the day Sunny had given him that chaste kiss on his cheek. That day, the Mayor had toasted young Jake McCreary with a shot of whisky. The Russkie general had replaced the mayor's Kentucky gold with bottle after bottle of Stoli.

The general poured himself a glass. "Our plan was foolproof, except for you. You, Capt. McCreary, commander of the only American nuclear assets that were able to leave their silos on time. You, who drilled your men to check and recheck their systems at all hours. You, whose computers were constantly resetting themselves, as per your orders. And when our blessed day arrived, it was your men who possessed the necessary reaction times." The tone of his voice darkened. "Still, of the five Minuteman III missiles that you launched, four were destroyed by our laser-based missile shield—"

"Missile shield!" McCreary muttered. "You got Washington to sign ours away in that last treaty!"

"Backstabbers!" Whitefeather said. "We Americans always honor our treaties!"

"Be that as it may, gentlemen," Azov continued, "The only surviving Minuteman III missile—serial No. 8534-Dash-A—was enough to destroy its target: my village of Fertile Worker Fields, fifteen kilometers east of Kiev."

"That's ludicrous," McCreary said. "Americans never target civilians. The Dash-A was aimed at a radar station—"

"—less than a kilometer away from my village—" Azov turned and gazed at the oil painting above the fireplace "—and my beloved Svetlana."

McCreary lowered his head and studied the planks between his boots.

"The day I assumed command of our hidden forces in Laredo," Azov said, "waiting for our orders to invade the United States, I learned that our motherland had escaped unscathed—except for the missile that you launched. Imagine having everything you loved wiped out by the treacherous, glowing heart of an American atom."

Azov, still holding his glass, walked slowly across the floor to where McCreary sat.

"When I heard from a minor KGB operative, Lt. Hawkerov, that you had survived the strike on your base, I was seized with anger, a thirst for revenge—and a clarity I have not known since I was a young man. I made it my duty to take from you what you took from me."

"No…" McCreary whispered.

"Conquering this sector of Texas was easy," Azov said. "I was then able to locate your hometown, Capt. McCreary. To find your beautiful wife. To make her and all of the members of this … beautiful community… the beacon of Socialism that my home had been!"

"You Communist bastard!" McCreary spat.

Azov chuckled. "Do your American friends working in the fields not look happy? Do they not look fulfilled? A little hypnosis here, a little torture there… but at the heart of it all, Communism is simply a fancy word for ‘sharing.' And you have been sharing your beautiful Sunny—or should I say, my Svetlana—with me for the past three months."

His voice dropped further, into an oily and sultry tone. "Her skin… so very soft on these … lonely Texas nights."

"Nooooooo!" McCreary screamed.

"If my Moscow command knew what I was doing in this town," Azov said, "they might strip me of command. All they know is that I have taken Wrangler Plains—I mean, Fertile Worker Fields—as my command post. A staging ground for a thrust into the breadbasket of the future United Socialist States of America. But the inspired loyalty of our new comrades, my taking of a field wife—this is my personal effort."

"And of course, you had to destroy the church," McCreary hissed.

"We are not animals, Capt. McCreary." Azov said "We waited. And when Lt. Hawkerov let us know that you were en route, I decided that the church would be the perfect demonstration. The perfect incentive for you to visit us again."

"You've disobeyed orders," McCreary snickered. "Your own superiors can't trust you."

"As you disobeyed orders to come here," the general said. The ice in his glass clinked. "We're not that different, you and I, Capt. McCreary. We love our countries. We love the warrior's path. But at the end of the day, we are men who live by our own rules. "

Calm down, Jake old boy, McCreary thought. There's a way out of this. Don't let him get to you.

And in his calm, McCreary's plan gelled. He could taste its humble brilliance. It tasted like freedom.

"That's where you're wrong, General," McCreary said. "I'd never take another man's town, much less his wife. I'd never engineer a sneaky invasion of another country. That's not the American way."

Azov drained his glass and leaned forward toward McCreary. "You Americans," he said, "always so idealistic."

"Yes," McCreary said, "idealistic—and very good at untying knots. Especially us Eagle Scouts."

Azov's eyes twitched in recognition that he'd made a grave error. Rope flew and McCreary's fist circled in from the right and smashed the good general's cheekbone. Azov crashed into the desk and crumpled to the floor. McCreary stood over Azov, fists ready.

"Get up, you Commie sonofabitch!"

The Russian guards at the door had already pulled their sidearms and had them leveled on McCreary. "Ostanovit!" one of them cried. "Ostanovit, vas kapitalisticheskaya svin‘ya!"

McCreary turned to them. "Go ahead. Do it," he said. "Shoot me, you godless puppets! I haven't got all day."

The arrows that pierced the windows of the mayor's office hit the guards' chests so quickly, it appeared to McCreary that they'd burst from their hearts. Both Russians slowly sank to their knees.

Still tied to his chair, Whitefeather let out a shrill cry. "It's my brother warriors, Captain! They heard my call on the spirit winds!"

Outside the mayor's office, three sets of dissimilar sounds rose: Russian cries of alarm, sporadic AK fire… and a hundred Comanche war whoops.

McCreary had the big Indian untied in seconds. Azov was struggling to his feet, but the general collapsed again, moaning, struggling to unholster his Nagant.

"That was some punch, Cap!" LaRoy cried. "Look at that Mongol bastard! He can't even stand!"

Whitefeather untied LaRoy. They each took one of the guard's sidearms. "You better do the same, Captain," Whitefeather said. But McCreary was way ahead of him. He grabbed Azov's pistol from the general's weakened grasp.

Outside, the battle raged. Through the windows, McCreary caught glimpses of action: scrambling Russian soldiers, flashes of gunfire, mounted Comanches in deerskin and full regalia, chasing them down. Gunfire. The twang of bowstrings and the thud of tomahawks. Screams of panic and pain.

McCreary pulled the dazed general to his feet.

"Leave him!" Whitefeather said. "The sacred battle is joined!"

"No," McCreary said. "You and LaRoy go. The general and I have someplace to be. Don't we, General?"

LaRoy was beside himself. "Let's go, Whitefeather! I always wanted to be an Indian brave! Whoooooop!" And out they went, leaving McCreary and the General.

"On your feet," McCreary said grimly. "Take me to my house."

McCreary's homestead lay to the north of town, away from where the battle between the Russians and the Comanches was playing out. McCreary had to resist the urge to shoot Azov, rescue Sunny on his own, and sprint out of town. But he couldn't leave his men, and bringing Azov back alive might be the only thing that would keep Gen. Pearce from court-martialing him on the spot.

As McCreary moved Azov through the abandoned streets, they saw only flashes of action through streets and windows. Tanks rumbled. Russian APCs sped along, surrounded by bands of jogging, terrified soldiers. None of them seemed to notice that McCreary had their beloved commander at gunpoint.

They neared McCreary's home. There was the mailbox, painted bright white. There was the same grass. The same picket fence. The same gate, the last thing McCreary had made before shipping off to North Dakota. The only thing that was missing was the American flag that always hung from a bracket off the porch.

"She'd better be alive," McCreary said.

The general had said nothing since leaving the mayor's office. In fact, nothing since McCreary had socked him. But now, the general seemed to perk up.

"Oh, she is alive, Jacob," Azov said, as he walked through the gate. "If things had gone as planned, she'd be baking bread like a good Russian wife. Waiting for her husband, me, to show up. To enjoy a good meal. Then enjoy her, afterward."

"Careful, General," McCreary said. Through the windows, McCreary could see that everything in the house had changed. Gone were the photos of his family, of Sunny's family, the oil painting of Jesus that Sunny had painted for the state fair. Instead, McCreary could make out mostly bare walls, adorned only with the occasional image of Marx, Lenin, and old Papa Joe himself.

Azov opened the front door. They walked inside. There was no smell of bread.

"Where is she?"

"In our bedroom."

McCreary responded by shoving the barrel of the Nagant between Azov's shoulderblades so hard that the general staggered toward the stairs. Up they went, one step, two, the steps creaking. In the distance, a tank fired. The house shook.

"My Svetlana!" Azov called out. "I have brought you a guest. He is… so… very eager to see you."

They reached the top of the stairs. Down at the end of the dimly lit hallway was the door to their bedroom. Where McCreary and Sunny had learned about the sacred covenant between man and wife.

"You'll be happy to know, she's been very resistant to my charms," Azov said, a few feet shy of the door. "It's taken much… persuasion to even get her to look at me, but never without distrust in her eyes. And I must admit that she has resisted even my more… skilled methods."

"Shut up," McCreary said. "Open the door."

The General obeyed.

The bedroom McCreary had shared with his wife had been stripped down to three things: a four-poster bed, a Soviet flag hanging from a six-foot staff in the corner, and Sunny herself. McCreary's wife was unconscious and pale, tied on the bed, clad only in the virginal white nightgown she'd worn on their wedding night. Her hair was a curly blonde halo around her sleeping head.

He couldn't restrain himself any longer. McCreary shoved the general aside and raced to Sunny's bedside. "Sunny! … Sunny, it's me! It's Jake!"

Sunny opened her eyes. They were sunken and tired—from what, McCreary didn't want to know—but they were the same bright blue. They lingered on his. He saw a flicker of recognition—and a flash of red in their reflection over his shoulder.

Instinct. McCreary turned and fired. Again, and again, and again. McCreary barely registered the sight of Azov, brandishing the Soviet flagstaff as a sharpened weapon. It was a sea of red—flapping fabric, and the general's blood.

Azov staggered backward. Blood poured from his surprised mouth. But somehow, the general lurched forward again. McCreary fired twice more. And again. Then, remembering that the Nagant held seven rounds, he saved the final shot for a spot right between Azov's dark, beady eyes.

Azov's dying body lurched backward, his shiny boots clattering against the hardwood floor. Back he flew against the window, and through it, shattering the glass, and tumbling to the yard below.

Sunset. McCreary carried his wife's limp form across the high school football field. He could barely take it. The unholy lines that passed on the turf at his feet. Those aren't yard lines, he thought. The goddamned Reds turned this Texas high school football field into a soccer field. Soccer!

Suddenly the sound of hoofbeats erupted. McCreary turned. Here came Whitefeather, astride a brown and white paint, with streaks across his face, the color of Russian blood. Behind him was LaRoy on a gimpy palomino and no less than a hundred Comanche warriors. In prewar life, they'd been proud working men and boys on the Reservation, content to do whatever it was Indians did. But now, they proudly had revived the spirits of their ancestors.

"The battle is ours, Captain!" Whitefeather cried. "The Russians didn't quite know what to make of this outfit."

"Well, a fitter bunch I never did see!" McCreary said, happy but weary.

"Captain, look!" LaRoy held aloft a long knife. "They made me an honorary Injun!" McCreary nodded, his eyes drifting to the dark, dripping mats that hung from their saddles.

McCreary didn't want to know.

"We have to get moving," Whitefeather said. "The Russians retreated, but you know they'll be back. We have to get back to General Pearce and tell him what we know." The big Indian turned and raised an AK-47, and let loose a war whoop. The warriors behind him responded in kind.

McCreary turned and hunkered down to his wife. "Did you hear that, Sunny? We have to get going. … Sunny! Sunny?"

Lying beautifully on the grass, Sunny opened her eyes.

"Sunny! Did you hear me?"

His wife smiled faintly.

"Da," she said.

THE END

Christopher Blair is a teacher, freelance writer, and former crime reporter. In addition to being raised on ten-for-a-dollar used paperbacks, he grew up on a nutritious diet of comic books, Stephen King stories, and pure cane sugar. "Texasgrad" is his first published short story.

Raker: A Review

By Thomas Pluck

He knows what proud America stands for, and he'll fight for it.

After reading RAKER by Don Scott, I'm still not exactly sure what that is. Raker works for The Company. But he's strictly freelance, not some government stooge. They call him when no one else can do the job. He's tall. He's white. He's blond. And he is not homosexual. Raker is Hitler's wet dream, and when white cops are being gunned down in the ghettos, he's let off the chain to mete out justice…

Published by Pinnacle, who gave us the immortal Destroyer series, Raker is Remo's very pale and blond shadow. The Destroyer destroys. Raker, well, if ungrateful minorities are the leaves, Raker is the gardening tool the Company uses to tell them to shut them up and be glad they're allowed to be Americans. Whether they're homosexuals, suspected homosexuals, blacks, Chinese, or Jews- I'm sorry, I meant liberal pansy radical lawyers with "large features"- Raker hates them and wishes they would stop their whining and work harder so they could be rich and white someday.

Raker lives in New York and hates everything he sees except the Statue of Liberty. And he doesn't even like her as a work of art, but the idea of her. "Because of the idea of her, he sometimes had to kill people." How can you not love a line like that? If Don Scott had run with that, instead of going off on racial tirades about how the Chinese were a hard-working people until the Reds took over and made them run drugs, this could've been a good fun read. Instead, it's like drinking with your crazy racist uncle, except you can't leave or call him a jackass. You can only throw the book at the wall so many times.

Raker works with a black man named Lawson, who's a "real Oreo, black on the outside, white inside." A Harvard grad who can talk jive, he's Raker's eyes and ears on the streets. In fact, Lawson does all the work, really. Raker just shows up when someone needs killing, or he gets bored and poses as a mugging victim to karate chop some street thugs. He takes a nap while the cops are being killed, his sources are shotgunned in the nutsack for sleeping outside their race, and his Company flunky is murdered for trying to help. Raker shrugs it off. He doesn't even care much that the cops are getting killed, just that some black radical group has the temerity to do it. Raker's kind of an asshole, really.

But he's the perfect protagonist for a story about black radicals, led by a Jewish lawyer, killing white cops to incite a race war. They have to steal a supercomputer to do it, to figure out what cop cars have white cops in them. It's kind of like a James Bond novel written by the Illinois Nazis from The Blues Brothers, and felt about ten years out of date for its 1982 release. By then we had Reagan in office and were scared shit of Arab terrorists, not black radical groups.

Raker only made it to two novels, but I'm almost eager to read the second one, Tijuana Traffic, to hear what crazy shit he has to say about Mexicans.

Thomas Pluck writes unflinching fiction with heart. His stories have appeared in Plots with Guns, Pulp Modern, Crimespree Magazine, Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled, Shotgun Honey, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Utne Reader and elsewhere. His work will appear soon in Hardboiled, Needle: A Magazine of Noir and Crimefactory. He is working on his first novel, and is co-editor of Lost Children: A Charity Anthology.

Tiger Team Bravo in: BONDS OF BLOOD

By Lance Matrix

(discovered by Matthew C. Funk)

MATTHEW C. FUNK has been a lifelong fan of Lance Matrix's Tiger Team Bravo stories, one of the great mercenary team series. If they ever decide to revive it, no one knows the canon like Funk. A quick warning: if you ever get the chance to see Funk's mint-condition complete TTB paperback collection, don't touch. That is, if you prefer your ass unkicked. Thanks to Mr. Funk for choosing this gem from 1976.

The Tiger leapt the ramp, caught air snarling, all four tires smoking, soared over the jeeps of the Colombians. Met the highway still gunning it. Stacked shocks ate the impact and the car shot for the big-rig ahead.

Banzai Billy Takamura smoothed a hand over his pomade hair. Relaxed into the waft of Marlboro and fuming rubber. Gave Colonel Professor a nod of his mirror shades.

"Ramp was just where you said it'd be."

Colonel Professor didn't look up, eyes fused to his homemade transponder. "Kill point's in five minutes."

Banzai ground snakeskin boot into the accelerator. Highway vanished. The Cartel big rig loomed—a white chip in the shimmering blank of Texan desert.

Gunfire from the Jeeps behind. 9mm slugs tapping on the 2-inch steel plating Banzai had welded to the Tiger. A sound that echoed the heavy pour of Khe Sanh rain to both men.

Colonel Professor tilted out the window with his MP-40 and let the machinepistol yell at the Colombian gunmen.

Banzai launched on. The Tiger closed to 200 yards on the big rig. Two more Jeeps pulled alongside the truck from the front. Slowed by its flanks to cut off the Tiger.

The Tiger's rear-glass spiderwebbed with dozens of bullet prints. Ricochets kicked the tires. Banzai caught a whiff of sweat through the leather of Professor's bomber jacket.

He stuck the Marlboro in his lips; stuck out the empty hand to Professor. Colonel Professor filled it with the MP-40.

Banzai ripped the wheel left. The Tiger spun. Professor worked the brake.

Banzai stuck the MP-40 out the window.

Tires shrieked over V-12 engine roar. The MP-40 firing was a bright white line of noise. Banzai's aim honed to pure fate behind mirror shades.

Professor cancelled the brake. The Tiger spun on. The two Jeeps spiraled off the road loaded with two dead drivers and two dead gunmen.

Banzai wrenched the wheel in line with the big rig. Gunned the Tiger deep into the red line. Professor watched the dying Jeeps flip behind.

"Couldn't have just shot them aiming with the rear-view, Banzai?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Four minutes until Kill point."

Kill point—the moment when the mission failed. The instant both men had been outrunning since Tiger Team Bravo had been abandoned in the Cambodian jungle to march their way out of a war that had cancelled their existence.

Neither man frowned to think of it. They hadn't frowned since they'd been orphaned to that long march from enemy lines with Captain Teague and their other teammates left for dead behind them.

Outrunning that moment was what they did. It was who Tiger Team Bravo was.

Banzai kept it in the red and Professor kept the blank expression on his slate black face. He'd worn it since he smelled the pre-historic flowers and burning fuel ofVietnama decade ago.

"Three minutes, thirty."

Banzai had his own clock: Seven seconds before the Jeeps alongside the truck trailer would reach its rear.

He punched nitro. The Tiger's roar sliced into a scream. Asphalt disappeared.

Five seconds. 100 yards between the Tiger and the Cartel trailer's rear.

Three seconds. Banzai lifted the MP-40 again. Sneered to ash the Marlboro.

One second. Banzai jerked the wheel right.

The Tiger's front bumper clipped the rear of the Jeep to the right just as it dropped past the trailer. Slammed the smaller vehicle into a skid. The coked-up Jeep driver panicked; the skid became a spin.

Banzai balanced the MP-40 on his arm, sent a cloud of 9mm parabellum into the Jeep on the left. Opened the driver's skull like a can of creamed corn. Sent the gunman sprawling.

The Tiger pulled straight. The two Jeeps joined the others twisted aside the nameless desert highway.

"Three minutes." Professor lifted the M79 grenade launcher from the roof rack. Rolled down inch-thick bulletproof glass with his other hand.

The target held more than 300 kilos of Colombian flake. The Cartel used it as a mobile command for its drug shipments: Always moving, shifting the routes of its drug runners to dodge State cops and Feds.

It had taken Tiger Team Bravo three months for their source, Baretta, an ex-Army Intel joker they knew from MACV-SOG to worm his way into the Cartel enough to cough up one of the big rig's routes.

It would be worth it.

The brain-trust of Cartel trade in the South, the big rig held the records of all Cartel border runs.

As Banzai brought the Tiger to within 50 yards of the 18-wheeler's rear doors, the big rig showed it held some secrets too: The doors blew wide to show a cage of steel plate sprouting a .50 heavy machinegun.

Banzai tore the Tiger to the side as the .50 opened up, noise shaking the windshield. Slugs designed to chew up aircraft metal like rice paper chunked the road.

Professor had no choice—he leaned out the window with the grenade launcher.

The gold-toothed Cartel gunman tracked them with the 600-slugs a minute coming from the red hot barrel of the .50.

Banzai nodded at the road ahead. "Looks like your calculations were a bit off this time, Professor. Tunnel's coming up in two miles."

Professor aimed the grenade launcher. Slugs bigger than his hand sang around, creased his beret with violated air.

"One minute to the tunnel." Banzai said.

Professor replied with the cough of the M79.

The grenade soared over the big rig's profile. It dipped. The shell slammed into the roof.

Smoke billowed rot-yellow from the big rig.

"It's all part of the plan." Professor ducked back into the Tiger. The sound of a descending plane rumbled through the window as he rolled it up.

Banzai glanced up as he braked the Tiger. Jasper was dive-bombing the Cesna out of the invisibility of the high, powder-blue sky toward the yellow smoke trail. Vaquero already clung to the landing gear, tassels snapping from his red-and-white calfskin jacket.

The Cesna's shriek grabbed the highway. The Cartel gunner tilted the .50 up to greet it. Tracers ribboned the air.

Tilting and swinging like a gut-shot crow, the Cesna wove between the blazing slugs. Jasper pressed his arsenal of crooked teeth toward the windshield, put the prop plane into a straight dive.

The Tiger followed to watch. It was Jasper's show now.

The Cartel truck shot into the tunnel. The Cesna shot after it.

Jasper tilted the wing of the plane and coasted into the opposing lane.

The tunnel was dark and tight as a snare around the plane. Nothing new to Jasper. The run through the tunnel would only take him a minute. Buzzing the triple-canopy tree lines ofIndochinahad lasted five years.

"Keep it steady, hombre," Vaquero yelled to the massive Cajun pilot.

"Steady as a coon hunter's rifle," Jasper hollered back. Spiced his words with a laugh. Saw the gold-teeth of the drop-jawed Cartel gunner as the plane pulled alongside the trailer and only grinned wider.

Jasper touched the Cesna's wing with a bit more tilt. Vaquero tensed on the landing gear, an arm's length away from the trailer's roof.

A Buick station wagon's headlights stabbed for the Cesna from the oncoming lane.

"Hold onto your linens, Vaquero!" Jasper yanked the stick. The Cesna soared over the Buick. Left wheel caught some camping gear and sent skis skittering on the tunnel floor.

Jasper dipped back.

"Intensity Level Bravo!" Jasper matched smirks with Vaquero.

"All the way!"

Vaquero jumped.

His fingertips met the edge of the trailer roof, clamped instantly, destroyed friction. Landing and hauling himself up was a single motion. Flung his spidery body onto the roof with hands still Mojave dry.

Jasper whirled a wave goodbye that went unseen. Vaquero dashed doubled-over for the trailer's rear. Tunnel ceiling scythed a foot above his head. It did not slow him. Such fear did not exist for this man who had spent half a decade charging Vietcong in lightless passages below the surface of the earth.

He reached the trailer doors as the gunman was pulling them closed. A twist of his body and Vaquero went through the closing gates like a lance. His two snakeskins cracked the gunman's jaw in four places.

The trailer's interior glowed blue phantasmal in fluorescents. Vaquero spared no moment to take in the shock of the four Cartel men and their jefe. He dove into them with fingers hooked and lips drawn as a garrote.

One drew his .44 Magnum fast. Vaquero splintered his wrist with a one-hand twist. Flung him into the next fastest. Wet snaps as his human missile landed.

A third cocked the action on an AK-47. Vaquero slid forward, took his legs out with a spin kick. The same kick widened, clutched the falling man's neck perfectly tooled to snap bone, broke him.

The fourth man spun his rifle on Vaquero. An instant of hesitation was all Vaquero needed. A wrist-throw tore the gun from his grip, an arm bar blasted his shoulder from its joint, a palm to the throat slammed it shut to any air.

Now Vaquero looked around. The jefe was a man with a trimmed beard and a false beauty mark on one fat cheek. He was diving for cover under a bank of computers.

Vaquero dove on top of him. He snatched the drive of the computer and tucked its suitcase-sized bulk under one arm. A last glance around confirmed there were no other records—only cheap furniture and a fortune in cocaine.

Vaquero spun and ran for the trailer doors.

The jefe lifted a Colt .45 in a trembling, four-ringed hand.

Vaquero leapt from the trailer without stopping.

He landed on the hood of the Tiger, dead-center on its tiger paw logo of red-and-black stripes.

The sound of the Cesna dropping a barrel of napalm at the head of the tunnel sent the jefe to his knees in the trailer.

The Tiger sped to keep Vaquero balanced. He seized the curve of its hood. He held tight as Banzai slowed to avoid the inferno opening ahead.

The truck could not slow in time. Hydraulic scream muffled by the explosion of napalm. The trailer jack-knifed into the cab.

The cab sheared into the flames that choked the tunnel.

The Tiger spun. The glow of the exploding big rig cloaked it. Banzai gunned it.

Jasper cackled on the Tiger's radio. "Feeling that Bravo mojo?"

It was time to head home.

Home was many different things for these men.

The war had bound their fates.

First in the silent pines and starvation of Green Beret survival training atFortBenning.

Then the five years "in country," suffering and dealing suffering in a jade-and-clay land, so vastly strange and horrible it often seemed only the stitching of the red-black Tiger stripe patch of the 5th Special Forces Group they shared held them together.

Then the message, received inCambodiaover their stained and fading radio fromDa Nang, disavowing them and condemning them to fight their way back to a civilization they no longer understood.

Tiger Team Bravo was bound together as orphans of war.

They belonged somewhere, though. They had families.

Vaquero's home was a duplex inScottsdale. He pulled up outside in his Ford Bronco, bought with cash and rebuilt with his wife's help.

He took notice that the building's paint was already fading under the stiffArizonasun. Another chore to see to. He liked that.

He grabbed his duffel from the truck bed. A new tool set clicked inside—a Christmas present for Alexandra, his wife. It held other things he carried at all times:

The yin-yang symbol from his sensei that Alexandra had made into a keychain. The survival knife from Benning. The pair of taxidermy rattlesnake heads, dried into a fanged snarl, for luck.

Vaquero smiled at that luck as he took the stairs to his apartment two at a time. He was fortunate enough to have a simple life. Work and love were easy when unquestioned.

He never questioned, never suspected, what he found when he opened the door.

Jasper's home was not a building, but a land. He knew every copse of pine and ball cypress he drove by on that last stretch into Bayou Lafitte.

He thought of all the places that this one place contained: The flatboat docks with their twelve-foot poles where he could wile away a pair of days just drinking and trawling. The floating bars strung with Christmas lights and the hoot of zydecko music.

Today it would be a visit to his old man, though—to the stilt house cradled in the roots of the banyans he'd climbed as a kid. It was a special occasion.

That it was the holidays was incidental. Today was special because the Cartel job had won him enough money to buy his Pa his own shrimping boat. No more seasons having to put up with Buford Clemens as a sloppy, stuck-up skipper.

Jasper left the Cartel cash out in the Dodge. He took into the stilt house what he always had on him: Pair of dice. Deck of Tarot cards fromNew Orleans. Black Leatherman tool.

He had a six-pack of Abita in hand, too. He damn near dropped it at what he found inside the stilt house.

Banzai felt as at home atLong Beach,Californiaas he did anywhere else. He stepped off the bus and walked to where he could see the waves. The waves understood him and he, them.

Life and home to Banzai was like a tide: Surface and motion ever-changing, substance always the same.

Childhood had been one place after another—Sacramento, where his mother's grave was while his father was busy dying in the 442nd during World War II. ThenOmaha,Kansas City,Pittsburgh, as his grandparents fled the memories of internment inCalifornia. Then back toCalifornia, to here inLong Beach, as they returned to make peace with those memories.

He glanced around the edge of his mirror shades at the dormered houses packed close alongOcean Boulevard. His grandparents were in one—they were his constant.

Banzai carried little up the flagstone path, flanked by Zen rock gardens, to their house. No identification. No cash. Only his shades and a set of needlenose pliers, useful for hot-wiring, lockpicking, stabbing.

This, he thought, was a useful life: Constantly ready for motion, with love of family as core.

After seeing what their house held, Banzai wasted no time rushing to a payphone to call Colonel Professor.

Colonel Professor had madeComptoninto his home. It had taken work.

He piloted the Tiger down Imperial, one eye on green lights popping on and off along the dashboard. Each green light meant the security measures he'd installed every one-hundred yards around his house were still alive and unviolated.

It gave him calm. Knowing his girls were safe meant the world to him.

When he had returned fromVietnam, they had become his world. Their mother had abandoned them to him. She claimed it was out of disgust over what he had done overseas. He doubted that. Why abandon the girls if that was the case?

But things were what they were. Life went according to plan.

Colonel Professor did the best he could to make it go according to his plan.

He had to. Above all, for the sake of his girls—Marsha was on her way to nursing school. Angelica hated a lot about 9th grade, but gymnastics and flute were passions that saw her through the lack.

There was too much lack, too much loss in this life, for him to fail them.

He clicked a button on the Tiger's ceiling to open the iron gate of his driveway. Another button on the dash disabled the traps in the yard. A final button opened his garage.

Motion sensors along the rose-circled house's perimeter sent data by radio to the Tiger's homemade screen.

The pale-green read-out told him what he would find inside.

Colonel Professor gave himself fifteen seconds to hunch over the wheel, face split in grief, sobbing.

Then he cut himself off. He checked inside to confirm what his machines had told him. After he had seen, he picked up his phone and dialed to send out a code to his team: Threat Level Bravo.

Colonel Professor knew, even before they called back to confirm the meeting site, that his team had something else in common now.

All their families were gone.

Tiger Team Bravo assembled in the parking lot of Johnie's Coffee Shop. Even Jasper looked as grim as Colonel Professor always did.

"So cough it up, egghead." Jasper spat a brown string of dip. "Who stole our people?"

"I have some leads."

"Thought we were dead on paper, hombre," Vaquero said, shaking his head, boneless with sorrow. "Who would know enough about us to come after our families?"

"Our list of enemies is long," Professor said. "Private mercenaries operating on US soil tends to draw attention. In the two years since we escaped the war zone together, we've brought down crooked cops, Mexican gangs, industrial tycoons."

"Baretta knew," Banzai said. "He's about the only one who does. Maybe Cartel surveillance could pick up Vaquero's wife…"

"Her name's Alexandra, hombre. Use it."

"But my grandparents?" Banzai went on. "I've only visited them twice since we got back."

"Same with my pa," Jasper said. "He don't even have a phone or power."

"Like you say, Billy," Professor said, "Only Baretta knew enough about our families to put an enemy on them. Especially so quickly after the big rig went down. It makes sense that kidnapping our loved ones is retaliation for stealing the Cartel records."

"Well, there you go," Jasper said, nodding eagerly. "Plain as the Ace of Spades. Baretta."

Professor scowled up at the coffee shop's sign, its curving letters blinking against the brown-and-orange blaze of theLos Angelessky.

"It's when things make sense that you've got to worry," Professor said.

They found Baretta in his French Quarter loft, his high-tech ransacked into a glittering mess around him, holes through his head. The bullet had punched from one temple through the other. They left his eyes intact to bulge like the note stuffed in his mouth.

Jasper pulled it out, spread the wadded paper. He read it as Professor examined the bullet holes.

"It's in Mexican," Jasper said. He handed it to Vaquero. "You read it."

"I'm Brazilian." Vaquero frowned. "We speak Portuguese."

"Well pardonez-moi. Do you read Mexican or not, cowboy?"

Vaquero shrugged as he scanned the note. Banzai paid no heed, lost in the sepia of a photograph—one taken of his grandparents when they were in the Internment Camp inCalifornia.

"Outlaw thugs, it says," Vaquero read, "I guess that means us. Return what you have stolen and we will return your families."

Professor traced the angle of the bullet hole to the wall: A nest of splinters held a gold wad. He plucked it free, weighed it in his palm.

"Then it gives a time and place for the drop." Vaquero finished. They all looked to Professor. He displayed the slug on his hand.

"A solid gold bullet."

"Manuel Segura," Vaquero said.

"The one that got away, huh?" Jasper said, swatting Banzai on the shoulder. Banzai kept his mirrors fixed on the photo. Jasper turned from being ignored, spat on the floor. "Knew we should have smoked that greaser when we had the chance, ‘stead of just freeing all them chicas he had locked up in his plantation."

"At least we know where to find him," Vaquero said.

"That's what bothers me," Professor said.

All of them watched him. He led them out the rainbow screen of beads curtaining the loft's exit.

"How you figure?" Confusion crushed Jasper's expression. "Who else uses gold bullets for his executions? Got to beSegura."

"Think about the angle of the bullet," Professor said, voice a rasp below the hollers of the French Quarter crowd as he led Tiger Team Bravo into the swelter ofNew Orleans' streets. "Where have we seen that before?"

"Only in ‘Nam." Vaquero was quick to answer. "In one temple, out the other. That's how the ARVN used to do in the captured Cong."

"Well, other than that little hitch in our giddy-up," Jasper said, "Makes sense that it'd beSegura. He deals with the Cartel and has a grudge."

Professor answered only with the deepening of the worry lines in his dusky face.

Manuel Segura's antebellum mansion sat on a sprawl ofLouisianaland abandoned by the census to the teeming of the bayou. But even before its moss-draped ivory columns were raised, pirate maps had been drafted in Indian ink by smugglers shuttling slaves and tobacco into the Colonial territories.

Those maps were ash now. Their embers still glowed only on the tongues of the Cajuns, passed down through generations.

Government forgot those weedy canals, but to Jasper Babineaux they were vivid as the lines in his palm.

Tiger Team Bravo glided up their mystery in a flatboat, skin shadow-torn with black camo, night vision crisp as jungle cats.

The channel ended in the green gum of undergrowth, fifty yards from a grove of spruce by theSeguraplantation's slave quarters. Vaquero took point, slipping them through roots gemmed with blue lichen, past wire snares laid bySegura's hired trappers, into the heart of the plantation.

They clipped through the chain link gate bordering the mown lawn.

They fanned out around the house, adrenaline prickling at the absence of guards.

They encircled the manor, its wedding-cake height lit sparingly on all floors, a ghostly orange watched by Banzai as he waited at the tree line to deliver covering fire at an instant's demand.

Doors were forced at the same moment. Vaquero led Professor up the back porch. Jasper stormed the kitchen's side door with sawn-off shotgun goring ahead.

No gunshots came to Banzai's pitch-perfect hearing. Only the grumble of bull frogs and the rippling of gar in the bayou. He dashed to join the others.

Their room-to-room took five minutes. Colonel Professor spent half of that watching out the windows. He didn't need to say what was written in his scowl:

This was a trap.

When the shapes of men with rifles drifted like smudges of cinders from the plantation's borders, Professor keyed his radio.

Jasper was already on it, calling in from the third-floor bedroom.

"FoundSegura. He's got and in-and-out hole through his head."

"Incoming Tangos," Professor whispered back. "Move to the upper floors to lay down fire."

"Eighty-six that idea, chief," Jasper answered. His boots thumping down the stairs were the only sound. "Head to the basement."

"We'll be blockaded in there," Professor answered.

Jasper bounced down the last step, slapped his commander on the shoulder, and flashed a crooked grin. "Just trust me."

They dashed for the cellar as machinegun fire shredded the silence. Glass popped. Wood clattered with a hundred dashes of lead.

Tiger Team Bravo fled into the cellar door with puffs of butchered furniture behind them.

Banzai slammed the cellar door. He shot the iron bolt home. A leap brought him onto the soil of the basement floor with his comrades.

He found Professor staring at the central support beam.

"I don't hear them comin' in," Jasper yelled above the snarls of gunfire overhead. "No boots or nothing."

Professor clicked on the flashlight affixed to his combat webbing vest. The light shone on a bulk taped to the beam, amidst the clutter ofSegura's pinball machine collection.

Atop a column of compound explosive, a clock's third hand sped away the final thirty seconds. Professor's jaw went tight as his haircut.

"Time bomb."

"Well, don't that beat all," Jasper said with a smirk. "Should have figured something like that."

"You figure how we get out of this?" Vaquero said.

The clock spun past twenty seconds. The gunfire above faded as the hostiles withdrew. Professor sized up the bomb: Four pounds. Enough to atomize the house.

"Better figure it fast," Professor said. "Fifteen seconds."

Jasper angled a thumb at a colossal wooden armoire against the wall. "Then we better duck behind that, pronto."

They ran for it, with ten seconds ticking away faster than even Professor could keep up.

After Manuel Segura's mansion vaporized in a bright-red ball, the squad that had surrounded it spread back into the bayou.

The plan was to disperse, check in with Commander Delta to confirm the mission's success, then lay low for a few days.

Sergeant Bear Collins hunkered in the brown-green stew of an inlet, listening to his teammates call in on the radio. Bear was last to key his transmitter.

"All clear here," he said. "Hell of a job, Tiger Team Delta."

Unlike the times in the past he'd said it, Bear didn't smile. This mission felt even more sour than his first. He'd thought nothing could be worse than the slash-and-burn jobs he'd done outside ofHueCity. Knowing otherwise made him sick in his gut, and Bear hardly ever lost his appetite.

That gut dropped as he heard a branch shift behind him.

Bear swung around his M-16. His aim found only darkness. He kept his sights on it a second longer to be sure.

A second too long. A bayonet pressed to his throat from behind.

"Y'all look like you got plenty of dumb ideas in that hairy head of yours," Jasper said, pressing the blade closer. "Don't pay ‘em no heed. Just drop the gun."

Bear weighed his options. Jasper cut them down to one by sinking the knife enough to draw blood.

Bear's rifle splashed to the ground.

Vaquero stepped out from behind the tree that had stolen Bear's attention. Colonel Professor followed. Banzai circled to Bear's side with a pistol to his head.

"How the fuck did you manage it?" Bear blurted.

"Just some local know-how," Jasper said.

"Local know-how ain't enough to survive being blown to smithereens."

"It is when it tells you that these old plantations have secret tunnels out to the slave quarters, so that the masters could have their nightly fun."

"Well fuck me sideways."

"We'll get around to that," Colonel Professor said, shark-dead stare fixed on Bear as Vaquero watched the perimeter of the grove. "Tell us who's behind this."

"You tell me this," Bear said. "Would you give each other up if you were in my position?"

Professor just stared.

"That's what I thought," Bear said. "Same rules apply."

"I figured that," Professor said. "So why's he doing this?"

Tiger Team Bravo showed Professor the same puzzled look. Bear smiled.

"Same reason as got us all into this mess in the first place," Bear said. "He's following orders."

At a snap of Professor's fingers, Jasper brought a pistol butt down on Bear's skull. Bulk splashed into the bayou. Professor turned the knocked-out soldier over to keep him from drowning.

"You want to explain all of that to us?" Jasper said.

Professor looked to Vaquero. He got a nod.

"I know what you're thinking, jefe," Vaquero said. "That the Ozark shipping address in the Cartel's records is making a lot of sense now."

"Ozarks?" Jasper said. "You mean…"

"It means," Professor said, "We have a call to pay on an old comrade. Captain Teague has some explaining to do."

"This is a real end run, amigos." Vaquero said, giving a sour look to the map Jasper spread.

"Not like we don't know the field." Jasper flashed a smile.

It was true. The Ozark forest they hunkered in, a spot on the edge of the map they gathered around, even smelled as they remembered. The decade of time since they trained here had changed so much in their lives, but the rhythm of the scissoring wind, the pine and soil aroma thick as gravy, even the rustle of animals in the mist, remained.

"Shocked to my spurs you didn't recognize the address on the Cartel list at the first glance, Professor." Vaquero glanced at Professor Colonel, crouched nearby keying a long-range radio. "Getting old?"

"Been old since I was young." Professor lifted the transmitter to the rim of his beret. "No, I didn't suspect the address until we found out Teague's Tiger Team was involved. It's not like I'm an authority on secret Special Forces training grounds' street addresses."

That sobered Vaquero. He tugged a jacket tassel. "Think Teague's behind this? Some kind of revenge thing against us?"

Jasper didn't look up from his study of the map's clouds of green and tributaries of yellow, the rises and vales of the secret training ground. "Maybe he crawled out ofIndochinawith some Golden Triangle heroin connections."

"We'll know soon enough, cowboy." Professor said to Vaquero.

They held each other's stare, Vaquero's demanding certainty, Professor giving only confidence in reply. Vaquero dropped his head first, shook it. "A real damn end run."

"Nobody knows these woods better than us." Jasper tapped the map's right border. "Now look here, y'all."

"I'm looking, I'm looking," Vaquero said. "You looking, Banzai?"

"I'm always looking. You just can't see it."

Jasper grinned big enough for Banzai and him both, then traced their infiltration route. The wind gusted and ebbed, shuttling eddies of mist through the rearing pine. As the radio clicked in answer to Professor, he spoke.

"Hello. Been awhile."

Jasper walked his fingers along a narrow yellow slash—a dead-end valley—on the map. "Right here's the draw where we set up that ambush, back in the day. Wiped out them weekend warriors on our war game finals, you remember?"

"Hard to forget," Vaquero said, smirked, rubbing his sun-ripened neck. "Though I don't remember much about the week celebrating that came after."

Jasper whistled. "All's I got to remember from that's the tattoos, myself. Anyhows, that there draw's got a defilade up on its south ridge we can slip through, right into the heart of the training ground forest."

"Okay, but how do we get to the draw?"

Professor squinted at the dusk bruising the spine of the mountains, spoke evenly into the radio. "Understood. I don't owe you anything either. It never was about owing. You know that."

Jasper skittered his fingers along the yellow of the map, then skipped them into a green patch in its center. "Well, we just march right up this private road until we can see this here elevation, about 800 yards shy of it, and cut into the woods bearin' north-northeast from there."

Vaquero frowned. "What if Teague's people have advance snipers covering the road?"

"They don't," Jasper said."

"What if they do? What if they shoot us?"

"They won't."

Vaquero sighed. Wind and birds held their breath, and the only sound was the rumble of a monotone voice on Professor's radio.

It paused, and Professor was quick to answer. "That's right. This is about honor. That you can trust in."

His Tiger Team exchanged dismayed looks at his answer. Jasper was first to shrug it off and started circling his finger around the green patch, the target, on the map.

"Once we make it through the draw," Jasper said, "they'll have pickets around the main site."

"And, we can guess," Vaquero said, rocking on his snakeskin boot heels, "a house where they're holding Alexandra and your families."

"Right." Jasper couldn't smile at that. "We just slip in through the pickets, then make contact at the back of the house."

"Easy as that." Vaquero's tone was flat as a folded flag.

"Easy as that." Jasper said.

"I know we're putting our lives in your hands. Like I said, it's how it's always been. We'll see you soon." Professor keyed off the radio and turned to the stares of his men.

"Got the uniforms?" Professor Colonel asked Jasper, sending him rummaging in his Confederate-colored rucksack.

"How'd you get those anyway, Jasper?" Vaquero slipped off his jacket.

"I'm a person who knows people." Jasper snapped on a grin. "Besides, since the war, this stuff's just been collecting mold down inMississippi. Easiest thing in the world to pinch a few for the price of a case of beer."

"Let's suit up and hit it," Professor said.

Jasper was first to put his fist out. His voice had a heavy sobriety to it for once. It didn't weigh down his smile. "Intensity Level Bravo."

Professor nodded and held his knuckles to Jasper's. "All the way."

The others joined, completing the circle of fists. "All the way."

As countless times before, they broke ranks, suited up and marched into the woods as though they belonged to them.

Captain Teague turned from watching General Parkinson burn the ledgers in the trashcan. He stared at the mellow spill of Ozark forest out the bay window of his three-story lodge. Past the reflection of his glower, one eye slashed by a long-scar fromHanoishrapnel, the sight of mist-ringed trees rolling down the mountain soothed the disgust rising in him.

These dense and gauzy forests were a familiar sight. Teague chose this place as his hideaway after the war because of that familiarity. Their resemblance to the Central Highlands ofVietnammade living inAmericafeel less like being on an alien planet.

"Rotten cocksuckers," General Parkinson said, inspiring a nervous glance from the three MPs clutching M-16s by the study's doorways. "Can't even clean up a simple mess."

The sight of burning records brought a different familiar feeling to Teague. He kept it to himself. Telling Parkinson of how he'd watched Dial Soapers—rear echelon officers—burn records of the Tiger Teams at 5th Special Forces Command beforeSaigon fell would be wasted on the general.

"I told you they'd be a hard target," Teague said, still standing sentinel at the window.

"Your team was supposed to be harder still," Parkinson snarled at him, dumping more files stuffed with Cartel payments and cocaine distributors' names into the trashcan blaze. "Fight fire with fire, right? You were supposed to beAmerica's best."

"We are," Teague said. His shoulders couldn't get any straighter. "But so are Tiger Team Bravo."

Parkinson scraped ash from his hands onto his dress greens. Gave Teague his worst Fort Bragg scowl. "I'd hoped the millions of dollars your Tiger Team Delta is tasked to protect were incentive enough to prevail."

"Millions in drug money."

"Don't play the innocent." Parkinson wadded his swollen features into red contempt. "Whether it was heroin from the Golden Triangle inLaosor coke fromColombia, black ops cash has to come from somewhere. Nothing changes."

"No," Teague said, turning from the window. "Nothing does."

Teague's radio buzzed. He answered it.

He listened, Parkinson staring fixedly at him. "That was Tomahawk," he told Parkinson. "They caught Tiger Team Bravo just outside the rear perimeter, trying to slip through disguised as Guardsmen. He's bringing them in"

"That's more like it." Parkinson shoved the grill of medals on his chest out to match his grin. "We'll get them to tell us where the Cartel records are. Then we'll liquidate them and the hostages and move out."

Parkinson looked around for a way to extinguish the burning files. He picked up a decanter of Glenfiddich ‘37, considered it, and then put it down. "Find me a way to put out this fire."

The study doors parted and Tiger Team Bravo were marched in at gunpoint. Flanked by four MPs, carrying their M-16 carbines, the team looked shaken and weary in shabby Guardsmen uniforms. Teague neither smiled or frowned to see them.

Parkinson stood astride Teague's Buddhist prayer mat, beaming.

"Well, you dumb son of a bitch," Parkinson said to Colonel Professor, who glowered back from below his skewed beret. "Got anything to say for yourself?"

Professor didn't reply. Parkinson's smile went fish-bone thin.

"You can start by telling me where those Cartel records are."

"I have only one thing to tell you," Colonel Professor said.

The smile didn't shift, but Parkinson's eyes readied some venom. It slipped into his tone. "What's that, Colonel?"

"It's time for some Bravo mojo."

Parkinson only had time to wrinkle his nose. The MPs that brought in Tiger Team were already tossing the carbines to them. In a single smooth motion, as if both teams were one, Tiger Team Bravo caught up their rifles and set them on Parkinson while their MPs drew sidearms and aimed them at Parkinson's men.

Parkinson's MPs dropped their hands from their holsters. Parkinson dropped his jaw.

"What the fuck is this?" Parkinson said.

"Fine work, Tiger Team Delta," Teague said to the MPs allied with Bravo.

From behind Banzai's left shoulder, Bear tipped the MP helmet he wore at his commander. "Our pleasure, boss. Good to be back on the right side."

"Get the greenhorns out of here," Colonel Professor ordered. At Teague's nod of agreement, the counterfeit MPs led Parkinson's men away with their white gloves raised high.

"What are you doing, you traitorous cocksucker?" General Parkinson roared at Teague, tone sour as the cigar scent staining his liver-hued lips. "Kill them all!"

He spun to find Teague holding Parkinson's own ivory-handled Colt on him. His gaze floated between his lost pistol and Teague's scowl as if deciding which was deadlier.

As Banzai shut the study doors, Tiger Team Bravo clustered around Parkison. Colonel Professor nodded at Teague.

"Captain," he said.

"Colonel," Teague replied in his coffin-groan of a voice. "I would say it was good to see you, but given the circumstances."

"Understood. Seems it's always that way, Captain."

"Yes it does, sir."

"Traitor," was all Parkinson could spit.

"This the fucker who stole my Pa?" Jasper poked the chill of his rifle barrel into Parkinson's neck.

"As if his kind hadn't already done enough to my grandparents," Banzai added, the burn of his glare showing even through the mirror shades.

"Traitors!" Parkinson bellowed. "All of you. Betraying your country."

"By surviving?" Colonel Professor held out his hand to Teague.

"By not betraying each other?" Teague filled Professor's grip with the General's Colt.

Parkinson's laugh had a disease in its cough. Stare stuck to Tiger Team Bravo like Agent Orange. "No, you fucking grunts. By not letting the war end when we told you to. By not doing as you were fucking told."

Colonel Professor put the Colt's sight on Parkinson's temple. His stare in reply, cool and heavy caliber. The Ozark wilderness outside a perfection of silence packaged in mist and memory.

"If there's one good thing we took from your war, General," Professor said, "it's each other."

Parkinson's lips split to speak. Professor saved the silence with a bullet through the general's skull.

The shot sped through both temples and out for the forest to keep. Parkinson's body shook the ash of the burning files as it fell. It sprawled stiff on the prayer mat, frozen to be forgotten on the floor above where Team Tiger Bravo's families waited to be joined.

THE END

Matthew C. Funk is an editor of Needle Magazine, editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a staff writer for Planet Fury and Criminal Complex. Winner of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has online work indexed on his web domain and printed work in Needle, Speedloader, Off the Record, Pulp Ink and D*CKED.

Ben Slayton: T-Man or He-Man?

By Nick Slosser

The year is 1982. Terrorist plots riddle the front pages of newspapers across the globe: The 15 May Organization detonates a bomb on Pan Am Flight 830. The Red Brigade kidnaps U.S. Brig. Gen. Dozier and holds him captive 42 days. Carlos the Jackal instigates numerous bombings and a rocket attack on the Superphénix nuclear power station. At such a time the world needs a hero…a hero like Ben Slayton, T-Man.

Apparently 1982 is a time when treason comes cheap: a mere $10,000 will buy a U.S. Senator, such as Willard Parfrey (even though in 1982, U.S. Senators pulled down salaries of $69,800). For ten-grand Parfrey will deliver to known terrorists the travel itinerary of the President of the United States. The only possible reason for wanting this information is assassination, and the Senator knows it. Suffering doubts, Parfrey reminds himself that "the present Administration was unable to move effectively against inflation, social disparity, and economic strife," and comprise "a bunch of mealy-mouthed, candy-ass bureaucrats." Which is enough to rationalize selling out his country and scampering off "to Rio de Janeiro with a wallet bulging with C-notes."

Of course, Parfrey will never get to Rio, because he's thrown in with terrorists of the most venomous breed: "Right-wingers," Slayton affirms, "completely bananas." Like Colonel Kurtz, these ex-Special Forces men have gone off the reservation to carry out their own radical campaign and adhere to no recognizable morality. These are Slayton's opponents in a game where Death holds all the cards. But the seasoned T-Man is no babe-in-the-woods. So when Bambi, a streetwalker with everything to lose, joins Slayton and gets herself brutally murdered, the icy-veined super-agent has only this to say: "Just another casualty of war, I guess."

And make no mistake, war has been declared. Using a highly specialized explosive device, the terrorists stamp their first message on the back of Lincoln's statue, calling for "all-out revolution without partial solutions or constructive change".

To further demonstrate our nation's impotence, the terrorists strike America right in the metaphoric groin: the Washington Monument. But that very display of alpha-masculinity highlights the terrorists' true weakness: they are lesser men; their pseudo-machismo falls flat.

While the terrorists are busy assaulting a symbolic phallus, Ben Slayton gets busy with his actual phallus on one gorgeous, blonde reporter named Wilma Christian, as if warming up for the contest to follow. "Penetrating her from the rear while she lay face down, panting…Slayton propelled her slowly around the bed in a circle until they both collapsed in a pile of sweating, satisfied flesh and savaged bedding." Because that's how a real man loves.

The year is 1982. While the world hosts its first International Day of Peace, terrorists run amok. Not only does the world need a hero, but more importantly, that hero needs to be macho…truly macho…like Ben Slayton, T-Man.

Nick Slosser is a writer. However, he is not a man who returns his emails promptly, so I am forced to write this bio for him. Um, he writes short stories and is definitely working on a novel, because I've heard him talk about it. He seems like more of a dog person than a cat person, but that might be me projecting. He likes pizza.

Chingón, The World's Deadliest Mexican in: BLOOD AND TACOS

By Brace Godfrey

(discovered by Johnny Shaw)

This is the story that started it all. JOHNNY SHAW found this 1979 exemplar while cleaning a recently deceased uncle's attic. Amid a shocking amount of strangely specific pornography was a box of Brace Godfrey books. Godfrey, known as "The King of the Three Shots," wrote over 200 novels and penned numerous series, but none of them ever got past the third book. Some of his best remembered series include Codename: Black Belt, The Expunger, W.E.R.E.W.O.L.F. Squadron, and of course, Chingón.

Chingón stood in the shadeless, dusty road in front of Mesa Verde's only cantina. He squinted up at the blazing sun without blinking, practically daring the fiery orb to blind him. Chingón had lived in the heat of the Mexican desert all his life. If it thought it could best Chingón, it had another think coming. The sun had done its damnedest in its effort to burn him, but only managed to tan his skin to the texture of fine Corinthian leather.

Looking back toward the eight motorcycles parked in front of the cantina, Chingón thought back to his meeting with La Boca and the rest of the Brown Panthers. Their reputation was solid and word was that nothing got past their network of gardeners, Mexican restaurant mariachi musicians, and border informants.

According to La Boca, The Red Devils were heavy into the white slavery market, usually transporting and selling unlucky Mexican and South American chicas to sweatshops and underground sado-brothels. But according to the vid de uva, at that moment, they were holding a white girl. One that wasn't for sale.

The information that La Boca had given him better be righteous. The last thing Chingón needed was to charge into the building and fail at getting the girl back. There was no reward money for a dead U.S. Senator's daughter and he was running out of time.

If Chingón failed his mission, Senator Gray, one of the staunchest anti-crime lawmakers around, was going to make a statement announcing that he was dropping out of the Presidential race. The man didn't want to—he was the frontrunner—but that was the kidnap demand. Drop out of the race or your daughter dies.

Chingón and Senator Gray agreed that the most likely person behind this dirty trick was his opponent, the lily-livered, anti-gun Governor Deutsch. But there was no way to prove it. And Senator Gray wasn't willing to risk his daughter's life over his political career.

Senator Gray couldn't go to the authorities. He couldn't go to the Secret Service. He couldn't go through regular channels. So he had found Chingón.

The man was scheduled to give his abdication speech on Wednesday at noon. It was Tuesday and Chingón needed to get lucky.

He lit the stub of a cigar and walked toward the cantina. One minute of thinking was too much for a man like Chingón. He was a man of action. A man of violence. A man.

Chingón kicked open the saloon doors, splintering wood and shattering the door from its hinges. Sneaking in back doors was for weak men and Canadians.

The eight drunk and leather-clad men squinted as they lazily turned. A motley band of bearded and leathered pendejos, thought Chingón. No sense of style. No hygiene. No knowledge of mustache wax. No class.

"You must be the one they call Chingón," Branigan, the leader of the Red Devils, said. He was the biggest of the bunch with a face that sported a cobweb of scars and arms blue with tattoos. "They say you're the World's Deadliest Mexican. Is that true?"

They knew he was coming. That was not good.

"Many have been curious about Chingón's deadliness, gringo," Chingón said, "Most of them are muerto. Dead and buried. Because I killed them. Killed them until they were dead. Dead and buried."

"If you want a drink, I can't help you. This bar has gotten some standards. It's become civilized. It no longer serves mud people, particularly Mexican'ts." Branigan said, scratching the Swastika tattooed on his neck.

"Chingón just wants the white girl. She's here. Do not try to bullshit Chingón," Chingón said.

"What is it with you Mexicans and blondes? Can't you stick to your own kind?" Branigan laughed.

"Chingón did not say that she was blonde," Chingón countered.

"Either way. There ain't no white girl here." Branigan glanced at a side door for just a moment, but it was enough for Chingón. He knew where she was.

"She is here. And she better be unhurt and unraped," said Chingón.

"She's unhurt, but I can't make any promises on the other. My men have been known to have their fun," Branigan said, his smile revealing half a mouthful of black teeth.

"Chingón will settle for alive. From the photos I know that chica is un tamale caliente. Some temptations are difficult to resist." Chingón smiled.

"The girl is not for sale. Not until tomorrow. However, we have a limited selection of darker meat." Branigan's voice started to show some irritation.

"Let's not continue this game. You know who she is and why Chingón is here," Chingón mirrored the biker's irritation.

"Maybe." Branigan glanced around the room at his men.

"Her family hired Chingón to get her back. And once Chingón has been paid, Chingón never backs down. Chingón never surrenders. And Chingón never compromises," Chingón said about Chingón.

"Twenty thousand dollars. Double what we were paid. That's what it will cost. Pay the money and you can walk out of here with her," Branigan said.

"Why should Chingón pay one centavo, when you are going to release her for nothing?" Chingón confidently stated.

A voice from the back of the cantina cut the silence. "Let's throw the beaner out already. That is, unless he would like to clean our toilets before he goes. I know how much Mexs like to get on their knees and scrub white men's shit."

The voice came from the shadows beyond the pool table. Chingón recognized the camouflage-clad man that walked out of those shadows as Walker. Unlike the others, he was not a biker, nor a member of the Red Devils motorcycle gang. Walker was a mercenary, a gun-for-hire, and the second-best knife fighter in the world.

This wasn't Chingón and Walker's first encounter. They went way back. (Editor's Note: You can read about their epic knife fight in Highline Publication's earlier Chingón: The World's Deadliest Mexican adventure: OAXACALYPSE.

"The only toilet in here that needs cleaning is your mouth, Walker," Chingón said, "And Chingón would clean that for free, pendejo. With his fists."

"I'll get the plunger," Walker hissed, whipping a butterfly knife from his sleeve and putting on a show of steel and speed. He made the deadly blade dance in the space just in front of his body. The sound of the metal slicing the air cut the silence of the still bar.

After the show was over, Chingón slowly clapped his callused hands. "Impressive. But does it cut as well as it dances?"

"It's about time you and I answered that question, once and for all." Walker took two steps forward, blade at the ready.

"That's enough," Branigan barked. "You sound like women. I'll make it easy for everyone. We'll all kill the Mex bastard. Lazarus! Wolfe! Red Devils!"

Branigan swept his eyes around the bar. As he made eye contact with each man, they stood and turned to Chingón revealing weapons that ranged from heavy chains and pipes to very powerful firearms. One of them had a trident.

Chingón smiled through gritted teeth. "Be careful, Branigan. There are only eight of you. You're outnumbered, cabron," Chingón said. He threw his poncho over his shoulder, revealing his infamous bullwhip on one hip and a bandolier of grenades across his chest.

Chingón was known by many names: The Matador of Mayhem. The Caballero of Catastrophe. The Hermano of Hurt. The Patrón of Pain. And the admittedly less-inspired, Jefe of Internal Injuries.

There was no doubt that he truly was The World's Deadliest Mexican.

Feared for his prowess with his bullwhip Marta and his deadly accuracy with grenades, like a snake charmer or a lion tamer, Chingón had learned to tame man's most dangerous weapon into something he could massage and control. His reputation was spread by the few that had seen him in action. Very few. Most of the others had exploded. And the explosions had killed them.

Branigan reached for the pistol in his waistband, but Chingón beat him to the draw, throwing a grenade in the big biker's lap. With his knowledge of angles and precise placement, he was able to focus the blast. Branigan exploded in a burst of blood and gore, staining the ceiling and the mirror behind the bar. Only his blood-filled boots remained.

Without hesitation, Chingón had Marta out and cracked the whip loudly, pulling the trident from the hands of an advancing biker. He grabbed the biker by his vest and dropped the bearded man with one well-placed haymaker to the temple.

The large biker crashed to the ground with a loud crash.

"Now it's a fiesta!" Chingón screamed like a madman.

The six remaining men opened fire, the shots just missing Chingón as he dove over the top of the bar. Ricocheting bullets pinged from wall to wall, creating a violent orchestra of death, a symphony played in lead major.

"Caramba," Chingón said to himself, plucking two fresh grenades from the bandolier. He waited for a lull in the maelstrom, and then lobbed the two grenades in the direction of the charging men. He grabbed a bottle of tequila as he ducked back behind the bar.

The explosions shook the cantina. Chingón almost spilled his tequila. He looked up at the bar for a lime, but found none. He would have to settle for the Mexican firewater neat. And as uncivilized as it felt, the burn of the alcohol steeled him for the second half of the battle.

By his count, there would only be three men left alive, but one of those men was Walker, the only real threat to Chingón.

The silence that followed the explosions was deceptive. They were waiting for Chingón. He knew there was more fight to come. It was quiet. Too quiet. He waited as patiently as one can.

But Chingón wasn't the kind of man that was going to wait all day. Two minutes was long enough. It was time to act. Mexican standoffs were for a different breed of Mexican.

Chingón stood up from the bar, grenade and whip at the ready. The roar of a machinegun belched fire and lead. Blood erupted from Chingón's shoulder, knocking him down.

"Aaaaaaahhh!" Chingón screamed, holding the wound and falling back behind the bar.

It hurt, but Chingón had lost count of the number of times that he'd been shot. The bullet hadn't hit anything vital—most likely ricocheting off another bullet still lodged in his body—but there was a lot of blood.

His heart said attack, but the smart thing to do was retreat. Chingón hadn't survived a thousand battles by being stupid. He had survived them by exploding people.

He remembered the door that Branigan had glanced at. The one where the girls were stowed.

If he could get to it, he could wrap his wound and return to the melee. He made a run for the door, pulling its latch as bullets dimpled the plaster near his head. He tossed a grenade at the gunfire without his usual deadly accuracy and dove into the room, closing the door quickly behind him. The explosion shook the door, but held.

When he turned, he was in a dimly lit room with no furnishings or windows. On the floor in front of him were four naked women with their arms and legs bound. Three of the women were Mexican nationals and the other was Amanda Gray, the youngest daughter of Presidential candidate, Senator James Gray.

Looking up with her soft doe eyes and a surprising strong voice, Amanda Gray said, "Who are you?"

"I am Chingón. Your father sent me," Chingón said, already cutting through the ropes that bound the women.

Chingón draped his poncho over Amanda Gray's nude body, admiring her alabaster skin. "Do not worry. It's not the first time four nude women have needed Chingón, mamacita. Although the circumstances the last time were quite different. Do you know how to use a gun?"

"I was the captain of the Carrie Chapman Catt Academy for Girls' skeet and target shooting team," Amanda Gray said proudly.

Chingón tossed Amanda Gray an automatic pistol and handed the three Mexican women the throwing knives that he kept in his boot. They appeared to be comfortable with their nudity. And the throwing knives. Chingón liked that.

"Shooting men is a lot different than clay pigeons or paper targets, chica." Chingón said.

"They are not men. They are animals," Amanda Gray said, "And it's animal season."

Amanda Gray loudly racked a bullet into the chamber. The last time Chingón had seen a woman with that look in her eye, he had almost lost a testicle to the business end of a pitchfork. This girl was fight-ready and blood-lusty.

"Now you sound like Chingón," Chingón said, sounding even more like Chingón than Amanda Gray did.

"What's the plan?" Amanda Gray asked.

You don't need a plan when you have angry Mexican women on your side.

The two remaining bikers didn't stand a chance against the naked fury of the naked furies. Nobody stabs quite like an angry senorita. Let alone three of them. Chingón and Amanda Gray were relegated to the sidelines while the three women went carniceria on their former captors.

Chingón's only disappointment was that Walker had already split. Running away with his tail between his legs to report back to his master like the dog that he was.

No matter to Chingón. He had the girl and now it was just a matter of returning to Los Angeles to deliver her. And receive his money.

When the carnage ceased, the Mexican women—now wearing the leathers of the dead bikers—offered their bodies to Chingón. As tempted as he was, Chingón was on a schedule. And when he was with three ladies, he preferred to take his time.

Chingón and Amanda Gray walked across the road to Chingón's lavender 1964 Chevy Impala. Riding Astro Supremes with 5.20 whitewalls, Chingón's ride was barrio beautiful. The crown jewel being an airbrushed image on the hood of a topless woman wearing a sombrero, riding a comet, and pulling the pin out of a grenade with her teeth.

"That was anticlimactic," Amanda Gray said, "I didn't even get to shoot anyone."

"Be careful of what you wish for, mamacita," Chingón said, "This day isn't over."

While Chingón preferred to drive the Impala low and slow, now was not the time for cruising. Grabbing the scorpion-in-polyester-resin knob of the shifter, he slammed the Impala into gear. They hit the highway in a cloud of dust and gravel spray.

"I never thanked you for saving me back there," Amanda Gray said, watching the desert blur past her. "Thank you."

Chingón grunted his response. He glanced at the girl. Maybe sixteen. Old enough. He liked the way the tattered leather vest she had found looked against her pale skin. And the way she was sitting, he could see one of her perky breasts underneath. Chingón liked that, too.

Seeing that young flesh brought his thoughts back to his own youth and his life before he became the World's Deadliest Mexican.

It seemed so long ago that his wife Juanita was murdered by those drug-runners. How he had gotten his revenge. Bathed in blood and mad from grief. How he had found each link in the chain until he destroyed all the men responsible. No matter that they were villains or vaqueros, politicians or policemen, they had scheduled their execution when they had killed the only person that Chingón had ever loved. And would ever love. It was impossible for Chingón to remember the humble campesino (farmer) that he once was.

The shattering of the back window jolted Chingón from his memories.

"Coño!" Chingón shouted, "My Chevy."

Looking in the rearview mirror, he eyed the two Jeeps on his tail. One driver and one shotgunner in each vehicle. The smoke from one of the shotguns still exiting its barrel. Walker sat in the backseat of one of the vehicles, picking his teeth with his knife and grinning like a bastard.

"Get down," Chingón said, but Amanda Gray wasn't going to miss her second chance for a scrap. She turned in her seat and aimed the pistol out the window, firing three quick rounds at the Jeeps.

Three holes in the Jeep's windshield later and in the most undramatic of fashions it slowed to a stop with the horn blowing full volume and two dead men looking asleep, save for the holes in their foreheads.

The other Jeep kept on, gaining ground and returning fire. Chingón hit a switch on his dash, setting the hydraulics in motion. The back end of the Impala lifted, taking away the angle on the back window.

Chingón eyed the road ahead. And the curves into the mountains. This was going to get loco.

"Grab the wheel," Chingón said.

Amanda Gray grabbed the small chain steering wheel, as Chingón pulled four grenades from his bandolier, two in each hand.

The gunman in the Jeep had swapped out his shotgun for some kind of machine gun. He opened fire, lacing a row of puckered holes in the side of the Impala.

"Pinche pendejos," Chingón proclaimed. And like the image of his dead wife on the hood of his car, he put the pins of all four grenades in his mouth and pulled.

"Let's dance, bitches," Chingón laughed, as he dropped the grenades one by one out the window.

The Jeep darted out of the way of the first grenade, the explosion just missing. Weaving to miss the next grenade, it overcompensated and spun out. Ultimately, the error saved their lives as the other two grenades exploded in front of them.

While Chingón had meant to end the battle there and then, he would take the delay as a victory and put some distance between the Impala and the Jeep.

Taking back the wheel from Amanda Gray and driving like a madman through the windy mountain roads, he just missed a semi on a blind corner. The tiny wheels just held onto the tarmacadam.

"Do you see them?" Chingón said, eyes focused straight ahead.

"They're about three turns back. What are we going to do?" Amanda Gray said.

"Chingón is tired of running," Chingón said.

He slammed the brakes and expertly slid the car behind a gigantic boulder. He jumped out, pulling at two more grenades.

Standing just behind the boulder at the side of the road, he pulled the pins on the grenades, closed his eyes, and waited. He listened to birds' wings miles away, the wind brushing the mesquite, and the approaching tires of the Jeep.

Chingón threw the two grenades in a high arc almost straight up in the air, and then walked into the middle of the road to face the oncoming Jeep. As it rounded the turn, the murder in Walker's eyes was revealed for only a moment.

"Adios, cabrons," Chingón said.

The arcing grenades made their descent and with perfect timing landed in Walker's lap.

"Motherfu—" Walker said.

The Jeep exploded.

The burning metal carcass flew over Chingón's head and off the steep cliff behind him. He lit his cigar on the burning hulk as it passed and walked back to his Impala.

Running his finger along the line of bullet holes in the side panel, Chingón said. "Puta madre, I wish I could kill them again."

He got in the car and turned to Amanda Gray. Chingón said, "I think that's enough adventure for one day. Let's get you home."

On seeing his daughter alive, Senator Gray was overjoyed. So much so that he paid Chingón double the asking price. That was on top of the bonus that Amanda Gray had given him on the ride back. Not money, but mouth sex.

Chingón shook the man's hand and said, "And while I did this for the money, I also did this for what is right. No woman should be stolen by any man. Men cannot make their own rules. They must follow the rules made for them by other men. And as long as people do not abide by those rules, Chingón will be there to punish them with the lash of his whip and the explosion power of his grenades. Because there are no rules for Chingón. Chingón follows no man, but enforces their rules, for money. And men best follow those rules. Because they are the rules. And rules must be obeyed. Rules."

"I agree," Senator Gray said, "Now, I must go. I have an election to win."

And with that, Chingón turned and walked to his Chevy Impala. He usually left politics for men with bowties in their dresser drawers, but he was going to make an exception for Governor Deutsch. He thought he'd pay him a visit and see where he stood on the death penalty.

FIN

Along with his role as editor of Blood & Tacos, Johnny Shaw is a screenwriter, playwright, and the author of the novel Dove Season: A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco. For the last dozen years, Johnny has taught writing, lecturing at both Santa Barbara City College and UC Santa Barbara.

From the Publisher

I like titles. Not the gentry type, though those are ok too. No I mean book/story/movie titles. Where there are folks that will judge a book by its cover, I'm more inclined to judge by its title. You can tell this is true with a quick look at what I've published in the past – books with …odd, perhaps, but distinctive titles: Stays Crunchy in Milk, Installing Linux on Dead Badger, Amityville House of Pancakes – I mean, come on.

So when Johnny was in the process of getting himself all set up as a real honest-to-god author of a novel (never mind that he'd already put more words to paper than Moses) and was tossing around website domain ideas and names, along with a healthy dose of badgering from me about how important a web presence was, the phrase "Blood and Tacos" came up.

It was love at first hear for me.

I tried, believe me, begged, cajoled and browbeat, to get him to call his author website Blood & Tacos, as differentiated from the domain itself – URL it what you will, says I, Blood & Tacos is a fantastic TITLE. And the domain is open, you know, in case you wanted it!

No go – in some ways my old chum is kind of traditional, and stuck with "JohnnyShawAuthor.com" but I kept up the badgering to not let the name Blood & Tacos die.

And so here we are. As the one-time owner of the website ClassicPulp.com you can imagine I'm pretty thrilled with what Blood & Tacos has become – perhaps even more than if it were an author site. Even more thrilled that I've done precious little of the work, but still get to hang my name on it. At any rate, thanks for coming along for this first ride, and look forward to seeing you a couple more times this year.

Pete S. Allen,

Creative Guy

Table of Contents

From the Desk of Johnny Shaw

The Silencer in: THE SILENCER STRIKES

The Most Penetrative Game

The Albino Wino in: LONGHAIR DEATH FARM

Battleground U.S.S.A.: TEXASGRAD

Raker: A Review

Tiger Team Bravo in: BONDS OF BLOOD

Ben Slayton: T-Man or He-Man?

Chingón, The World's Deadliest Mexican in: BLOOD AND TACOS

FIN

From the Publisher