"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves,
but rather give place unto wrath:
for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine;
I will repay,' saith the Lord."
Romans 12:19
Sophia glanced at her cell phone and swiped the screen.
"Hey, Dad. What's up?"
"Hi, hon. I know it's late, but… . Are you OK?" retired Judge Stanton Kern asked.
"Er… sure! I'm going over a case one more time. Have to be in court at ten tomorrow."
She stuck reading glasses into her hair and stretched. Except for the desk lamp's pool of light, her home office was dark and quiet.
"What's going on? Is Mom… ?"
"Don't worry. Your mom's fine." A long pause, then a nervous chuckle. "Just chalk it up to a father checking on his little girl."
Sophia stood and started pacing.
"Come on, Dad. You haven't called to check on your little girl, since I was in college. What's going on?"
"Well," the judge began, pausing to clear his throat. "Did you watch the late news?"
"No. Like I said, I've been prepping for court.
"Metro logged another fatality," Kern said. "Two cops shot a kid over at the Summerlin Ho's."
"Where Erik was murdered?"
The lawyer returned to her desk, grabbed a pen and hunted for a legal pad.
"The same." Another pause. "The victim was that Taseer kid. The Ho's undercover-security guy."
"The shit-bird who fingered Erik?" she exclaimed.
"Correct. And right after Taseer was shot, the entire Ho's warehouse store collapsed and burned. On-camera, in front of the TV crews."
"Because they were on-site, covering the Taseer shooting?"
"Right. Damnedest thing… . A horrendous noise seemed to emanate from the building, then it honest-to-God shook apart and collapsed!"
"Good grief!" Jotting down notes, she added, "You heard about Woody Ryns and the two deputy DAs, right?"
"Of course. Very sad. And quite strange, wouldn't you agree?"
"Definitely," she said. "Ah. That's why you called, isn't it? Woody, Purvis, Moore and now, Hajji Taseer. They were all connected to Erik's murder."
Another long pause. "You don't know about the others?"
"What others?"
"Steele's killers. Krupa and Akaka are dead, too. And the third one… . What's his name?"
"The third shooter? Malovic?"
"Yes. He's disappeared."
"You think somebody's taking 'em out, and you're concerned I might be on some whack-job's hit list."
"The possibility had occurred to me," Kern said quietly. "This is Las Vegas."
Tapping her legal pad, Sophia scanned the list of names.
"No way, Dad. These guys were either guilty of killing Erik, or intimately involved in the cover-up. I'm on the other side.
"Besides, I'm sure there's a logical explanation. How many other people died in the same period?"
It sounded absured, even to her. The odds of all those intimate players being killed in a short period were astronomical.
The line was quiet a long beat. "Don't be so sure, counselor," Kern said. "There's another corpse in the morgue, too: Antone Galocci."
"Galocci? When? How?"
Another pregnant pause. Her father was being circumspect, as if somebody were eavesdropping.
"He was killed today. In his office. He… . A window apparently exploded. Witnesses heard some horrific banshee-like noise, and Antone… . Well, it sounds crazy, but he basically melted! There wasn't a solid bone left in his body, Sofie!"
Shocked, she struggled to make the bizarre image in her mind find a logical pigeonhole. The only mental slot, though, was far away in time and space—a locked-and-compartmented corner marked Classified. She hadn't accessed that cyber-safe, since leaving military service.
"Dad, I was never briefed on the specifics, but, back in the nineties, acoustic-wave weapons were being developed that might explain what you just described. That's all I can say, though."
"Because it's 'black?'"
"Mmmm… . Damn-sure Top Secret, at the least."
"That would mean 'government,' though. Why would the feds kill innocent police officers, lawyers and a corporate executive?" Kern asked indignantly.
"Dad! Those Metro asses weren't innocent! They murdered Erik Steele! The DAs conspired with Metro to cover it up. And Galocci? Geez! You defended that prick! He was anything but lily-white innocent!"
The line was silent for a tense moment. "That's irrelevant. Antone and several cops are dead. Then, tonight, an admittedly perverse young man, who was directly responsible for Erik's death, was shot and killed. You were very close to the Steele case, and… ."
"You think I might be a target," she interrupted. "Because I had to drop the Steeles' case?"
"Hon, I'm worried about your safety! What if Win Steele's behind these extraordinary fatalities? He was not happy about having to drop the lawsuit."
"No way!" she scoffed, tossing the pen aside. "Sure, Win was disappointed, but he's not killing these jerks! How could he possibly make a Mob boss 'melt,' or take down a huge Ho's warehouse store?"
"Sofie, you don't know that guy," Kern cautioned. "He's hardly some innocuous reporter-turned-author. He was an engineer in the Air Force and had several tours in the 'black world.' There are significant gaps in his background, too. We don't know what he did—or who he knows."
Sophia laughed. "You're watching too much TV, dad. Win Steele is no Jason Bourne spy. Yes, he has superb contacts in Washington, but he's retired and on the sidelines.
"Whoever's whacking Metro cops and, maybe, your former client, has nothing to do with Steele the elder."
Kern sighed. "I hope you're right. An old father sees associations and worries. Just be careful, baby."
A few minutes were devoted to more benign topics, then Kern bid his daughter goodnight.
Sophia propped a foot on an open desk drawer and spun the pen, thinking. How did her father know about Erik's killer-cops?
She was wired into the Vegas judicial system, and had reliable sources inside Metro's headquarters. But not a whisper about Krupa, Akaka and Malovic.
The mind-boggling deaths of those dick-head assistant DAs, and Woody Ryns being leveled by a brain fart, had caused a huge public stir, of course. But citizens didn't know about the three cops.
The sum of these fatalities and their ties to Erik's murder was very interesting. She was baffled by Galocci's demise, though. Antone had been a vicious Mob boss, who ran the Strip with an iron hand and controlled the city's power brokers.
Was he somehow connected to Erik's murder?
And how did Dad know so much about Galocci's freakish death?
* *
"How soon can you get that Gremlin back in the air?" asked Gray Manor, rubbing his temples. He was exhausted, but debriefing the night's multiple missions was critical to ensure all data and lessons-learned were captured.
A handful of Gremlin crew members, supervisors and Lawhead's chief test pilot, "Bud" Rusk, ringed a gray-topped, government-issue conference table, their attention focused on Manor. All were surprisingly alert. They obviously were accustomed to working "graveyard," thanks to the Groom Lake norm of flight-testing "black" aircraft only at night.
Not so for the Checkmate director, who was nursing his fifth cup of coffee to stay awake.
"We'll be ready to launch within the hour, sir," replied Julie Tanner, the remotely piloted aircraft's crew chief. "The payload change-out is complete, and we're ground-checking the Holo and Commando TV systems. Then we'll refuel and preflight the bird."
"Any problems?" Manor asked.
"So far, we're good," Tanner said. "Our Gremlin's landed CODE ONE for six straight flights."
She was justifiably proud of her experienced, dedicated maintenance crew, which was keeping their Gremlin in top condition, despite a grueling flight schedule imposed by Operation Gold Shield.
"Great. Tell your people they're doing damned fine work, Julie."
Manor slapped the table top. "Folks, this old Marine's flaming out. I'm going to grab some snooze time, before we initiate the next phase.
"Park the Gremlin over Vader's hacienda and blast it with both Holo and that Commando TV video," he ordered. "Greel's coming unglued, and I want him really spooked, before we hit Metro. He and the whole damned Tower are reeling in total confusion. We'll keep them off balance, then take the entire chicken coop down.
"Stay on Greel as long as you can. At daybreak, move the Gremlin over to Metro headquarters." Manor stifled a yawn. "We'll reconvene at oh-seven-hundred."
He headed for Rusk's office. A couple of hours on a folding Army cot would revive him enough to get through one more day and night. Flawless execution of this terminal phase was absolutely essential. He had to be on top of his game.
* *
Captain Mikey Greel removed his boots, flopped on the king-size bed, and closed his eyes. He was too tired to twitch, but deep, dream-rich sleep wasn't in the cards for Fatal Familial Insomniacs.
His primary care physician had become a depressing annoyance: "There's no cure for FFI." And every doctor he'd consulted for second opinions had been useless. Because FFI was such a rare disease, nobody knew much about it.
Greel had scoured the Internet, hoping an obscure researcher had discovered something, anything to give him hope. But he'd found only discouraging articles spouting dire prognoses, such as one in the New Yorker:
"Victims of fatal familial insomnia lose control of muscular function, existing in a merciless limbo between sleep and wakefulness, until they die of exhaustion. For half a century, prion diseases have baffled scientists… ."
In the final stages of FFI, Greel could scarcely walk, his weight had dropped dramatically, he looked like death itself, and he couldn't string three coherent thoughts together. Deadly prions were eating holes in brain tissue—and he was totally burnt out.
What a hell of a way to go, Greel grumbled. He swept the TV remote off the bedspread and jammed its power button.
"Hey, Mikey! How's it going, killer?"
Greel jerked upright, eyes flicking about. There, by the window.
It was him again!
The Metro captain's heart pounded, as a ghostly, smiling image of the late-Erik Steele drifted through the bedroom, about three feet above the floor. It hovered over the foot of Greel's bed, slowly raised an arm and pointed at the ashen officer.
"Your butchers with badges murdered me, Vader. Then you covered for them. Very unprofessional, Mikey. For manufacturing false 'evidence,' lying and intimidating witnesses, you will be held accountable."
"Leave me alone!" Greel cried. He cowered at the headboard, knees tucked under his chin and one arm extended to fend off the apparition.
"Get out of here! Please!"
A tiny camera and microphone embedded in a bumblebee-size micro-air vehicle relayed imagery and audio of everything Greel did and said. Perched at the base of a ceiling-mounted light fixture, the MAV was communicating in real time with a black-skinned Gremlin orbiting overhead in the wee-hour darkness.
"Sure! I'll leave, Mikey. But you're not going anywhere," said Steele. The ghost's voice seemed to echo inside Greel's head.
"God has big plans for you, dude! You think you're dying of FFI, but there are things worse than death. What if you can't die? What if you're doomed to hang on for years, steadily losing control of all your muscles? No longer able to move or speak or think? Trapped in a frail, useless body that's confined to a bed twenty-four-seven? Wearing a diaper and enduring the humiliation of having some pretty young nurse wipe your butt and feed you through a drip-tube?"
"No! No! I can't live that way! I won't!" Greel blubbered, tears streaming across gaunt, yellow cheeks.
Not hearing a retort, he shot a hopeful peek at the foot of his bed. The semi-transparent phantom had vanished.
"Over here, Vader!"
Greel spun to his right and screamed. The translucent specter was in a reclining position, hovering above the bed sheets, two feet away.
"Oh, knock it off!" the wraith commanded, disgustedly.
"What do you say we catch the news. I hear there's a breaking story that's one hell of a lot more interesting than discussing your sorry-assed future. Two bits says you'll forget all about little ol' me!"
The grinning phantom pointed at a big-screen TV on the far wall.
Greel recoiled in shock. A closeup of him, Mikey Greel, was on-screen, turning to his right! The image was tinted green, with sparkles of light dancing across the display.
Infrared or night-vision, he flashed.
The camera panned, revealing a stocky figure walking away. Greel raised a semiautomatic pistol and fired into the man's head. The guy collapsed, pitching forward. Zooming in, the TV was filled with dark blood and brain gore. A firearm appeared in the frame, aimed at the disintegrated cranium on the ground. It hesitated, then disappeared.
An in-the-flesh Mikey Greel was incapacitated, watching his greenish avatar shove Loring Malovic's body into a pit's black abyss. The final image was a full-face view of Vader looking up, directly into the overhead camera.
Greel stared openmouthed, while a Channel 7 reporter recapped what millions of Las Vegas viewers had witnessed—a senior Metropolitan Police Department officer killing another cop and disposing of the body. A banner declared, "Captain Michael Greel–LVMPD Chief, Homicide & Robbery."
"Wow, Mikey! Academy award-winning performance!"
The wavering, ghostly image beside Greel was grinning broadly. Maybe laughing. Mikey couldn't tell. The pounding of blood in the officer's ears had blanked out other sounds—even Erik Steele's voice.
In a trance, Greel slowly swung his feet off the bed and opened a nightstand drawer. He withdrew an H&K USP Tactical .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun from a metal box of cash, jacked the slide, and verified the hammer was cocked.
His tormented mind vaguely marveled that he was holding the second sidearm stolen from Erik Steele's condominium, shortly after Steele was gunned down.
Greel turned the pistol 180 degrees, gripped it two-handed and stuck the barrel in his mouth. With a thumb, he pushed the trigger, blowing a massive crater in his skull. Bedsheets, headboard and off-white walls were instantly sprayed with bright red, oxygenated blood, bone and gray matter.
* *
"Shit! The fool shot himself!" yelled Tron.
Via the remotely piloted vehicle flying over "Vader's" home, the sensor operator had been remotely controlling the Holo system, inserting DNA-tailored imagery into Greel's mind and providing the real-time "voice" for Erik Steele's apparition.
Tron also had manipulated the Commando TV system, taking control of Greel's big-screen television and inserting a previously captured video of the Metro captain shooting Malovic.
"What in the hell… ?" asked the Gremlin pilot, gawking at his own flat-panel screen. Seated to Tron's right, the pilot had looked away momentarily, double-checking fuel projections.
"Greel just pulled a gun from the nightstand and shoved it in his mouth! Shit! I think I pushed him over the edge, man," Tron yelped.
He was freaked out and losing it, the pilot decided.
"Hey, Tron! Go get Manor! He'll have to see this," the pilot directed.
The sensor operator stared at the horrific suicide scene, frozen.
"Come on, dude! Snap out of it! Go!"
Tron leaped up and bolted from the room. His face was drained of color.
* *
Gray Manor slid into the operator's well-padded crew chair and studied the flat-panel's image.
"Good Lord," he whispered.
The bumblebee-like MAV's minuscule camera lens distorted the scene, giving objects a warped, fish-eye appearance, but there was no mistaking the carnage in Mikey Greel's bedroom.
"What the hell set him off?"
Tron recounted the mission's events, concluding, "I had Erik say, 'Wow, Mikey! Academy award-winning performance!' Then the cop grabbed a gun and ate it! God, I overdid it… !"
Manor glanced at the sensor operator. "You followed the script, as we briefed. There was no way to predict how that dipshit would react."
He squirmed from the seat and accepted a fresh cup of coffee. "We had other plans for Captain Cover-Up, but he saved us the trouble. I'm not wasting worry-energy on Mikey's demise. You shouldn't, either.
"Greel chose his own crooked path, and it was bound to end ugly. Forget it. Secure the Holo and Commando TV systems, and reconfigure the bird for real-time surveillance."
The Checkmate chief glanced at his pilot. "You boys have done a superb job—and you're wiped out. Move the Gremlin over to Metro headquarters, establish an autopilot orbit and activate the visual-camouflage system. Then grab some rest. We're not done yet."
Manor left the Gremlin control room, eyeballing a wristwatch. His boss, Todd Bright, was probably in the air by now, but would have to be informed ASAP, about Greel hosing himself.
Manor had bet Vader was too chicken to take his own life, and would die of FFI. At least Checkmate now had one less brown-shirt terrorist to deal with.
News of Greel's spectacular exit would trigger another shock wave of fear, doubt and disruption among the enemy. To fully capitalize on it, though, Manor had to act quickly.