Southeastern Plains of Colorado
November 4, 1963
0200 Hours
Out of the moonlit darkness, worn, black combat boots fell silently to earth, quickly followed by black, uniform-clad shins, hips, and upper body.
The man collapsed gracefully onto the ground, completing a perfect “parachute landing fall.” In one effortless, flowing movement, he rolled across his back, thumbed release of his chute, then shot back to his feet. He swiftly collected his collapsing canopy while scanning his silvery surroundings. Hands and face blackened, weaponry barely rattling about him, the Bravo Force operator bunched up his canopy into a tight ball and glanced skyward, eyeing the other shadows descending behind him. He quickly dug a large hole among the Socorro cactus, using a portable shovel, threw his chute and harness into it, then checked his Starlight Scoped CAR-15; he adjusted its strap about his elbow and forearm. Listened to the soft thuds of his comrades as they landed around him, ever scanning the moonlit plains. With silent approval, he noted the tight grouping of his team’s landing. Took a compass bearing. Each man then stowed his chute in the bury pit he created, performed his own equipment and weapon’s check, then also scanned the darkness with his Starlight Scope.
The Bravo Force leader led his face-darkened team forward.
Like specters flying across a ghostly landscape, the team advanced swiftly through the darkness, their objective a lone set of buildings set against the moonlit eastern plains of Colorado, no more than a hundred yards ahead. Reassembling his men, the leader switched weapons to a Beretta .22, as did two other team members. The routine had been well-practiced, but as they pushed forward, the leader experienced sudden, acute anxiety.
Would they make it? Could they complete their mission? Were they biting off more than they could chew?
Signaling the predetermined team of two toward the rear of the house, the Bravo Force leader signaled the others to fan out into position around the building. He took up his own position about fifty feet out from the front door. Looked to his radium-illuminated watch — and its trembling arm. He shook the arm, fingers splayed apart, and internally commanded the jerking still. All trembling ceased.
What was the matter with him? He was a hardened, tested, professional — a goddamned government-trained killer, for Chrissakes. This was bullshit.
Clenching his hand into a tight fist, he narrowed his focus to his watch crystal.
Time… watch the time.
The dog… it would pick them up soon. 0210 hours. Mentally counting, he closed his eyes and steeled himself, burying his growing anxiety.
Where the hell was this shit coming from?
The leader raised his Beretta in both hands before him as if in silent prayer… then smacked himself in the forehead with it. Shaking his head, he quietly grunted as he readied and coiled his superbly trained body…
And charged the door.
He shot out across the darkness, taking note of the position of his team and their targets — those inside the building and unaware of their presence — but as he burst across open space, another resurgence of oppressiveness grabbed hold of his insides like grappling hooks. His breathing, normally calm and relaxed, was now labored and short. The intense sense of dread continued building and now filled every crevice within him. He felt like he was again jumping out of that C-123 into the moonlit night — but this time without a parachute.
As he gained on the door, he once more eyed his targets through the curtain-draped windows, reaffirming their positions. Three of them. He saw the food on their table — as had been briefed — a table full of it.
Who ate like that at two in the fucking morning?
His anxiety increased ten-fold.
Shoulders and upper back painfully bunched into taut, constricting knots, his chest tightened, and it became even more difficult to breathe.
No! Do not do this! a little voice sounded off inside. Abort! ABORT! But he had no choice in the matter; had signed away any such control long ago. This was a job — his job — one that had to get done at all costs. Whether or not he or his team were killed in the process… didn’t matter… just as long as all three targets in that house were neutralized.
Where was that goddamned dog?
Two seconds from the door and still sprinting, the leader again sighted his target — the man at the head of the table — but he also glimpsed, in his heightened state of awareness and through curtains, a picture of forty-six-year-old President John F. Kennedy, displayed on a hutch by the window. Beside that was a book, the title of which he couldn’t quite make out, but knew, in some strange, fucked-up and hyperaware manner, to be The Prophecies of Nostradamus.
The what?
Something wasn’t right, his voices again pleaded, Get out!
Focus.
He reaffirmed his grip on the Beretta. The other two he’d sent inside should already be in position.
Were they also having second thoughts?
Had the dog already sniffed them out?
Without breaking stride, the team leader reached the door and kicked it in. It flew wide and loud, in a hail of splinters and metal, bouncing off the inside wall with a deafening crack and reverberation. He stood, inside the doorway, Beretta swung to and locked on his target’s forehead. Sweat coated the Bravo Force leader’s body.
What the hell were they doing?
What the hell were they thinking?
How many more times could they cheat death?
This was nuts — crazy — you didn’t just off an entire family!
Hesitating, the leader shot a look to his other two operatives, also positioned within the room, their weapons similarly trained on their targets.
He saw it in their eyes.
That same apprehension. Fear. Both were nervous, their focused, hardened demeanor all but drained from their faces. He saw, instead, sweat and uncertainty… eyes that silently pleaded with him.
What were they supposed to do — where was that damned dog?
The leader turned back to the man, still, amazingly, seated at the head of the table, staring back blankly at him. In fact, they all stared blankly at them, as if they’d just been sitting there…
Waiting.
Why hadn’t he moved?
Why’d they all just sit there, staring at them?
Why the hell were they goddamned eating a banquet at two in the fucking morning?
Run, you idiots, run, or you goddamned well deserve to die!
Years passed in their mental landscapes as the three assassins all stood poised, uncertainly, before the family at the two a.m. banquet table, President John F. Kennedy and Nostradamus silently observing from their hutch-side perches.
Why was Kennedy staring at them so accusingly?
The leader’s upper back balled up tighter, thick rivulets of sweat cascading down his back, armpits, and face, stinging his eyes. Focus — that damned dog — focus — where the hell was that frigging animal, and why hadn’t they pulled their triggers?
That was when he heard the deep, throaty growl emerge from underneath the table.
The dog emerged in a savage and unreal slow motion from beneath a table covered in a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth, upon which were napkins, green beans, mashed potatoes, salad, and a hunk of beef that looked and smelled like a roast his mom used to make. By the dark color of the liquid in their glasses — with ice — the leader surmised iced tea (and why did that bother him?).
All this he took in in the instant before he and his team executed their mission.
Through a sheer force of will he was barely able to muster (what would his mom think of him, now?), the leader squeezed his trigger with a clammy, slippery trigger finger — a finger he’d used countless times to point, scratch his nose, or excite his latest one-nighter — and now he was again using it to kill… a family of three. To do… a job.
It was at that moment that the dog, that damned, demon-growling hundred-pound beast, already out from under the table in that slow, deliberate advance that meant business, had coiled its powerful hind quarters to spring into the air like a surface-to-air missile.
They shouldn’t be here! The lead Bravo Force operator’s inner voices insisted.
This was wrong! All wrong!, his men’s glares accused, We can still leave!
They never knew what hit them.
As the dog left the ground, all three assassins were suddenly and forcefully thrown back against the walls—
The lead Bravo Force operator shook his head, sending large beads of sweat everywhere. Blinked stinging eyes.
What the hell just happened?
Nothing.
Not a damned thing.
They had not been knocked back against any wall — they all remained poised and standing where they were, their targets untouched…
But he’d felt…
He looked to the other two, who looked similarly confused.
What the hell was going on?
No more bullshit.
Each assassin squeezed his trigger.
Three .22 rounds found their marks with deadly accuracy, one into each head. The man slammed back in his chair, his wife fell sideways to the floor, and the boy, shot on an angle from behind, slumped forward onto the table.
The German Shepard was now airborne. It headed directly for the leader. With cool precision the Bravo Force leader twisted, aimed and again fired… and removed the dog from consideration. It flew past and thumped lifelessly beyond him.
Each man lowered his weapon and approached his victim.
The leader grabbed the man’s body, ensured no exit wound, as did the others to the woman and boy. No exit wounds. Soft rounds. Each team member grabbed his target and quickly and callously pulled them from the house, just as the remaining team members stormed the building. The support team looked to the shooters, each of whom nodded to a successful operation, and immediately set about cleaning up what minimum amounts of blood had sprayed the table, chairs, or leaked out onto the floor. One of the team members removed the dog, ripping up the floor boards that had become soaked with the canine’s blood. Bloody floor boards where the woman had fallen were also ripped up. The bloodied table cloth was quickly ripped from the table, noisily upsetting the untouched feast. Still somewhat confused, but feeling all his internal fear quickly drain away, the leader collected all of their spent round casings. Four. One for each target, one for the dog.
As the Bravo Force leader dragged his target outside, he looked to the other two who had been inside with him, but they did not return his look. The Bravo Force leader wiped sweaty palms on black uniformed pants, just as all the lights around them went dark.
What had just happened? Why was he sweating?
Off in the darkness came the sound of rapidly approaching vehicles, vehicles that quickly surrounded the house and assaulted them with the glare of headlights. The leader and his men waited for the covered flatbed that quickly slammed to a stop before them, kicking up a flurry of silvery moonlit dust. Two men exited the truck and silently assisted the three with tossing the corpses onto the flat bed, quickly covered them with a tarp, then closed the truck’s rear flap. The two men jumped back into the cab of the truck and sped off into the night.
Other vehicles, including two heavy-equipment transporters carrying bulldozers, pulled up behind the house and barn and immediately set about unloading. An empty troop carrier swung around before the Bravo Force, coming to a stop. Before the Bravo Force leader and his team piled into it, the leader paused to look to the surreal images before them, played out beneath the watchful Cyclops eye of the full moon. He furrowed his brow, narrowed his gaze, and cocked his head ever-so-slightly, bringing a blackened hand to his blackened forehead. Closing his eyes, he forcefully massaged his forehead and temples.
Something just wasn’t right.
Reopening his eyes, he saw to it that his men had loaded into the rear of the truck and hopped up into the cab’s passenger seat…
The vehicle hadn’t driven fifty feet, when a blizzard of quiet weapons’ blasts erupted from within.
It continued to drive off into the darkness.
Another dark vehicle, a Jeep, pulled up on a short rise nearby. Out of it stepped another figure, in similar uniform to the Bravo Force operators, who looked to his radium-illuminated watch then up to the house; to the two additional bulldozers unloading before him, and those set up before the barn. From behind the house the man heard the work already two minutes into completion. Confidently, he surveyed the task and watched as the International Harvester, Ford truck, and a Chrysler parked alongside the house were all loaded onto larger vehicle silhouettes, then quickly covered and removed. Oversaw the telephone poles to the property as they were yanked down, pulled from the ground, then reduced to pieces. Heard the pitch of the diesel engines change behind the house. Again looked to his watch. Observed the dozers as they plunged into the house. Heard the crunch of wood, shatter of glass, and burst of pipes. Utilities had been cut off exactly three minutes ago, and all records of this family expunged from any public and not-so-public departments three hours ago. Water sprayed up from torn pipes, only to fizzle out as the house was quickly and efficiently razed to the ground. To his right the same happened to the barn. Each building was demolished into a heap, then pushed into the hastily dug ditches that had been gouged out behind them. The cut telephone poles, all outbuildings, fences, and wood piles were summarily plowed and scraped into the ditches, then quickly and efficiently covered with earth. In the distance came the on-time approach of helicopters. The dozers completed their tasks and withdrew to their transports, where they were loaded back up. The bulldozer flatbeds quickly departed back into the night. Four choppers now hovered above the graves of the house, barn, and shacks, pausing with their shadowy extensions swinging lazily beneath them. One after the other then made their well-practiced sweeps of the area, depositing eastern-Colorado-specific top soil across the scars below. Completed, they, too, departed back into the silvery night. After the dirt had settled, a handful of men in a pickup truck dashed out and hurriedly planted Socorro cactus throughout the area. When done, they jumped into the back of the pickup and departed.
The lone observer surveyed the nearly completed task with his Starlight Scope. Now, the sweepers pulled up to the dirt driveway, which was the only remaining sign that anyone had ever inhabited this spot of earth, and began erasing all signs of its existence as they drove over and erased any last vestige of human activity. They, too, sped off when complete.
Satisfied after making another Starlight Scope pass, the man turned to reenter his Jeep — when he spun around.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked the intruder, raised his nine millimeter, and fired…