Meltdown Read online

  The boys looked at Sweeney with wide eyes. “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Army Rangers! Yeah!” The boys bolted out the front door, making machine-gun sounds.

  “Don’t encourage them, Robert!” his mother barked from the kitchen. “Lawrence, tell your son not to talk to them that way!”

  His father looked up from his easy chair. “You heard Mother. All we need is to turn them into a couple of warmongers!”

  Sweeney was formulating a sarcastic comeback when another voice interrupted from the hall. “Aw, Dad, it’s okay. They’ll want to be something else by next week anyway.”

  Sweeney turned to see Stuart grinning at him. His older brother was taller than his own five-foot-ten-inch frame and had always been skinnier, except he’d gotten sort of pudgy since the last time Bobby saw him. Stuart gave him a manly hug. “Hey, bro. Saw you come in. That’s a nice bike.”

  “Thanks, Stu. How’s the accounting business?”

  Stuart sucked in a breath and ran a hand through prematurely thinning hair. “Slowing down now that tax season is over. But with all the craziness we’ve seen in the market, my business has exploded in the last six months.”

  Sweeney chuckled under his breath. “Yeah. Mine too. Where’s Darrell?”

  “Down at the chapel, going over the wedding music for the tenth time. Momma says supper will be ready in an hour.” He winked at Sweeney, lowering his voice. “So you know they’ll be home by then, or they’ll hear about it.”

  Sweeney grunted. “I’m sure. Been hunting lately?”

  “Nah, I don’t get to do that sort of thing very much now that we’ve moved to Birmingham.”

  “I got a new pistol. Wanna go shoot it?”

  Stuart’s eyes lit up, then flicked toward their father, who was buried back in his newspaper. “I’d love to.”

  “Great.” Sweeney turned toward the door. “Let’s go practice our warmongering skills.”

  Lawrence pretended not to hear, but Sweeney knew he had. The screen door banged behind them as they went outside.

  “He didn’t mean it like that, you know,” Stuart said.

  Sweeney waved him off. “Yeah, whatever. I quit caring a long time ago. You ever hear anything from Shane Patterson? I haven’t seen him since my first leave after basic training.”

  Stuart smiled, shaking his head. “I hear he’s still in town. Works down at Napa Auto Parts, I think. We were holy terrors, the three of us, weren’t we? You remember the time we snuck onto that golf course and almost got arrested?”

  “Yeah. We thought Momma was going to be mad when we came home all muddy from hiding in that storm drain.”

  “Ha! I’ll never forget the look on your face when Deputy Harris showed up at our house.”

  “She must have worn out a half-dozen wooden spoons on our backsides after he left.” Sweeney walked to the motorcycle and pulled a pistol case from his bag. “I bet Shane will be there at the wedding. Anyway, here’s my new Glock 37.” He opened it and handed the composite black handgun to his brother, grip first.

  Stuart let out a whistle. “Nice. Nine millimeter?”

  “Forty-five.”

  “Wow. Is this a laser sight?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Bet those come in handy.”

  Sweeney nodded. “I can honestly say one of these saved my life.” Though not in the way you might think. Images of Panama clouded his mind for a split second.

  “Wow,” Stuart said. “Guess you can’t talk about it, huh?”

  Sweeney grinned as he retrieved a box of ammo from another pocket of his bag. “Not unless you agree to have your mouth surgically removed.”

  The two walked down the path that led to a mostly dry creek bed sheltered by pulp pines. After a moment, Stuart said, “I’d hate to have to keep everything a secret all the time. Especially if I was doing exciting things like you are.”

  A shrug lifted Sweeney’s shoulders. “No sense talking about it. Most people couldn’t understand anyway.”

  “Don’t you have a chaplain or something?”

  “No.”

  “Must be hard.”

  “What?”

  “Not being able to talk to anyone. I mean, you, me, and Shane—we used to talk about everything.”

  Stuart had a point. The three of them had been inseparable as kids, spending hundreds of hours stalking squirrels, and anything else with fur, along this very creek bed. They never kept secrets from one another nor wanted to do so. But these days, he didn’t feel like talking, most of the time anyway. Sweeney just shrugged again and jumped down into the creek bed.

  “So, any women in your life?” Stuart handed Sweeney the pistol and jumped down himself.

  The image of a certain female CIA officer flashed in Sweeney’s mind. Whoa. Where did that come from?

  He shook his head. “Not really. I haven’t been on the same continent long enough to meet anybody since 9/11. Besides, if I spend money on girls, my Harley gets jealous.”

  His brother laughed, and the sound brought back happy memories. Sweeney wrestled a log up against a sandy bank. He found a few sticks and an old milk jug and propped them up on it, then set about loading the pistol’s ten-round magazine.

  He straightened and looked at Stuart. “So what’s this girl like that our kid brother roped into marrying him?”

  Stuart pursed his lips as they walked back thirty yards or so from the log. “Met her at Bible school, I guess. Not that long ago. She’s a quiet little thing—Darrell seems to think she’ll make a fine preacher’s wife.”

  “God help her,” Sweeney grumbled.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Ha! You grew up in the same house I did. Have you forgotten what that was like?” Sweeney slapped the magazine into the butt of the pistol and racked the slide.

  Stuart looked a little sad. “Sure, I remember.” He looked up at Sweeney. “But having kids of my own has made me realize that even when you do your best, sometimes things still get crooked. Dad and Momma weren’t perfect, but we knew they loved us.”

  Something that had been simmering under the surface of Sweeney’s emotions suddenly hit a rolling boil. “Sure, they loved us. Loved us enough to beat the stuffing out of us whenever we forgot to close the screen door. Loved us so much they never let us go to a movie or listen to any of that eeevil country music. Loved us so much that to this day I can’t drive by a church without hearing Reverend Lawrence Sweeney pounding the pulpit!”

  He turned and rapid-fired ten shots that made the plastic milk jug dance an Irish jig.

  As the handgun’s thunder echoed away through the pines, Sweeney dropped the gun to his side and turned back to face his brother. “Yeah. That’s love, all right.”

  Stuart held both hands up like he was surrendering. “Okay, okay. You have a point. But I finally realized that being mad at our folks for the way they raised us wouldn’t make my life any better. And despite Dad’s legalism, now I know that there’s a whole lot more to the Bible than the Ten Commandments. At some point you just have to get over it.”

  “I am over it.” Sweeney dropped the magazine and inserted a fresh one in one quick motion. He then passed the gun to Stuart. “Now shut up and shoot.”

  Forty minutes later the two of them were back indoors, seated around Granddad’s old chestnut table, Bobby holding hands with his mother on one side and his burr-headed nephew Moose on the other. Seated across from him were his thin, bookish little brother Darrell, with fiancée in tow; his father; and Stu and his family. Grandpa sat at the head of the table, his one remaining tuft of hair smoothed neatly over a shiny white pate that rarely saw anything but the inside of the old man’s straw hat.

  Grandpa spoke up, his voice shakier than Sweeney remembered it. “Let us bless God for His provision and thank Him for tomorrow’s ceremony of holy matrimony between Darrell and his lovely bride.”

  They bowed their heads while his voice rose in volume and intensity.

 
“Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee this day for our many blessings and pray Your forgiveness for the many ways in which we have sinned against Thee.”

  With his eyes closed, Sweeney was transported back to the front row of the Land of Beulah Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, listening to his father on a gorgeous Sunday morning when all the lucky fourteen-year-olds were outside playing baseball or hunting rabbits or doing anything besides sitting in that stifling country service.

  As Pastor Lawrence T. Sweeney droned on in his prayers, he would occasionally forget that he was supposed to be talking to God and would go back to preaching—proclaiming dire warnings about the unspeakable horrors that awaited sinners who did despicable things like play cards, listen to “worldly” music, and have lustful thoughts.

  And as the prayers/sermons extended in his memory, young Bobby Sweeney started thinking that if playing cards was all it took to be excluded from heaven, he didn’t stand a chance. Maybe nobody else knew the images that sometimes flashed upon his mind when he thought of some of the girls at school. Maybe nobody but Stuart knew about the pack of cigarettes hidden out behind the barn. But surely God knew.

  Granddad finished his prayer, one that had mercifully been shorter than usual, and Sweeney jumped at the chance to chase the painful memories from his mind by reaching for Momma Sweeney’s chicken-fried steak and biscuits.

  “Hey,” Moose cried, pointing at Sweeney’s tricep. “What’s that funny writing on your arm say?”

  Sweeney suddenly wished he had worn long sleeves. “Uh, that’s Arabic writing. It says, ‘Infidel.’”

  “What’s a infidel?” Bubba asked, his mouth full of mashed potatoes.

  “It’s a—”

  “The Bible says tattoos are a sign of spiritual slavery,” Darrell cut in.

  Sweeney cast him a sideways glance. “Yeah. Or maybe they just look cool.”

  “You boys stop your fussin’.” Momma’s scowl was etched in stone. “You’re setting a bad example for the little ones. Isn’t that right, Lawrence?”

  Sweeney’s father looked up from his chicken-fried steak. “Er, yes, dear. It’s a bad example.”

  Grandpa chimed in. “‘Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.’”

  “Leviticus nineteen twenty-eight,” Darrell mumbled before stuffing a forkful of green beans in his mouth.

  Sweeney sighed, willing himself not to respond. It won’t do any good. Instead, he changed the subject. “So…anybody know if the Pattersons will be there tomorrow?”

  Momma reached for a biscuit. “Heavens, no. We don’t want nothin’ to do with their kind.”

  Sweeney was confused. “Their kind? The Pattersons have been family friends since before I was born! Dad, you and Mr. P. have been hunting together since high school! What do you mean you want nothing to do with them?”

  Stuart wiped his mouth with a napkin. “I think it’s because they left the church.”

  Lawrence got a sheepish expression, shooting a glance at his wife before speaking. He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t say—”

  “That’s exactly right,” Sweeney’s mother said. “They ran off and joined that new church on the edge of town. Calls itself nondenominational.’” She spit the last word out like it was made of sewer sludge.

  Grandpa raised his fork. “‘For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.’”

  Darrell nodded. “Second Timothy, chapter four.”

  Sweeney couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you didn’t invite them to the wedding because they changed churches?”

  Darrell looked at him as if he was a slow child. “We wouldn’t want sinners at our holy matrimony, now, would we?”

  Sweeney blinked, then threw his napkin on his plate. He stood up. “Well, I suppose that leaves me out too.”

  Before anyone could reply, he grabbed his coat and stomped out the door.

  When the screen banged shut this time, no happy memories came with it.

  A six-paneled teak door swung shut behind Michael Lafontaine as he entered his hotel penthouse. He set his briefcase down with a sigh, then stopped breathing altogether when he heard a thump come from the direction of the bedroom.

  For a second, he wished he was carrying a pistol, but that was something James Bond did when he was in a foreign country posing as an American businessman. Lafontaine actually was in a foreign country as an American businessman, and he hadn’t carried a gun in decades.

  He looked around for something with which to defend himself, but before he could find anything, a stooped old man emerged from the bedroom, pushing a small handcart.

  The man looked up in surprise. “Oh, very sorry to be disturbing you, sir.” The man’s white turban and smock and tapered gray beard made him look like a genie, but the singsong accent made it clear he was from India. Michael guessed him to be a Sikh. “I am just to be arranging your bedroom for the night. I am told you will be leaving soon. I trust your stay has been satisfactory?”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you.” Lafontaine smiled, shrugging off his initial surprise. “Do you think you could ask the kitchen to send up a caesar salad and some coffee?”

  “As you wish.”

  The servant was thorough and polite to a fault, traits that were hard to come by anymore. He pulled the door open and held it for the old man, retrieving a folded ten-dollar bill from a money clip in his pocket. He enjoyed the glint in the man’s eye when he handed it over. “Your English is quite good. Tell me your name, sir.”

  “I am Nagar Singh,” the man said. “If I can ever be of service again, please feel free to ask for me by name.”

  “I just might do that,” Lafontaine said. He had been looking for a new household manager, though that might be more than the old man had in mind. He committed the name to memory nonetheless as Singh shuffled out.

  When the door closed behind him, Lafontaine tugged off his suit coat and hung it in the closet by the door. He might be a billionaire, but he still wasn’t the kind of man who would toss an eight-hundred-dollar Darren Beaman suit coat on the couch.

  People thought that money made everything easy, but that wasn’t his experience. Money was a multiplier—and it multiplied problems as surely as it multiplied possibilities, and both took time and effort to manage. The real trick was to turn the first into the second.

  Which brought him back to the purpose of this trip. A recent chain of events had threatened to interfere with his plans, but with quick and decisive action, he had turned the problem on its head.

  He loosened his tie and picked up the television remote. The flat screen on the wall flashed to life, and he flipped channels until he got to BBC News—the first station he found in English.

  “…made arrests during yesterday’s demonstrations in London’sfinancial district,” the serious-looking blond anchorwoman was saying, “where several thousand Arabs were marching to protest comments made recently in a speech by Fenton Abrams, president and CEO of Barclays Bank in London. In the speech, Abrams referred to radical Islam as a ‘barbaric belief system that is costing the British people billions of pounds a year.’ In the ensuing riots, several cars were overturned and burned, and shop windows were broken before police moved in.”

  Lafontaine scowled at the television. Unbelievable. These people have no sense of irony.

  The anchorwoman continued, her sultry voice making the mayhem sound like an ad for cologne or makeup. “The United States Congress was back in session yesterday after their spring recess, debating a resolution to stop using the term ‘terrorist,’ as many believe it to be too divisive.”

  Idiots. Lafontaine fought the urge to hurl the remote at the screen. He was so tired of pansy politicians with fewer guts than a troop of Brownies on their first campout. Since when did defending freedom become synonymous with appeasing those who would destroy it? He’d
recently come to the realization that no matter how much money he waved in front of these drooling morons, one simply couldn’t buy backbone. And it made him physically ill.

  There had to be another way.

  He’d tried everything short of lighting himself on fire to convince the namby-pamby politicos to live up to their oath to defend the United States, and while he got lots of pasted-on smiles and promises over lunches that cost more than his first car, he had yet to see one senator or congressman dare to risk offending those who were, by their nature, perpetually offended.

  Not one politician or general, especially in the current administration, had the stones to publicly advocate the kind of take-no-prisoners stance against terror that would be required to chase the jihadis back into their caves for good. Instead, the Pentagon brass and politicians insisted on endless investigations into whether our troops were being gentle enough with the savages who were out to murder them. To Lafontaine, that kind of behavior wasn’t just cowardly, it was treasonous.

  The time had come to hit these craven critics where it hurt—in their ratings. Normally, Michael despised the press. But maybe it was time to make use of the fourth estate, to get more public in his calls for a change in the status quo.

  He reached down and fished his mobile phone from the pocket on his coat. As much as he preferred to work behind the scenes, the time had come to step onto the stage. Perhaps he would even run for office himself.

  A knock at the door jolted him away from his plans. Mr. Singh must have forgotten something. He turned and moved to the peephole. A young man stood in the hallway, shifting from one foot to the other.

  Lafontaine was not used to uninvited guests. This had better be important. He swung the door open.

  The boy was perhaps in his late teens, with black hair that was carefully combed as if he was on his way to school. The boy’s striking blue eyes went wide, and he cleared his throat. “Colonel Lafontaine?”

  “I am. What can I do for you, son?”

  The boy seemed to falter a bit, as if he suddenly wished to be somewhere else. “Sir.” He swallowed hard. “I am sorry to bother you. But would you happen to remember a woman named Mia Saldana?”