Part 1 (2/2)

”Watch your language, son!” the coach hollered above the terror-filled frenzy, but no one paid any attention. It seemed the team as a collective let loose with enough profanities to put a s.h.i.+p full of navy men to shame.

Shaun Huntington forgot about his unspoken vow to spend the ride home sulking about the colossal unfairness of life. With that one burst of flame he forgot how Jana Cooper dumped him to get back together with Rhett Pollard, the team's star running back. But he'd spent plenty of time until that moment wallowing in the sorrow of his existence.

Shaun was just a minnow in the big football pond. He was only on special teams. Girls wanted to be able to say their boyfriends were quarterbacks or running backs or defensive backs. They didn't want to have to follow their explanation of ”my boyfriend's on the football team” with ”yeah, he plays special teams.” Like he was on the r.e.t.a.r.d squad or something. Like ”special teams” should ride the short bus to the game and be happy their parents have a few seconds to snap a photo every time a ball gets kicked-off. He was barely a step up from trainer-that dreaded position of unfortunates who didn't even get to warm a bench.

Seriously though, could Jana have possibly been any more of a b.i.t.c.h? Granted, she and Shaun weren't getting married or anything, but they'd gone out a couple times, and while the words ”going steady” never crossed either of their lips, he figured it was implied. They'd made out a couple times, been to dinner and a movie. h.e.l.l, he'd even felt her t.i.ts under the bleachers as she writhed in supposed delight while pressing a hot kiss to his lips, inserting her probing tongue. He'd been stupid enough to delude himself into believing that she'd done something special for him, letting him touch those t.i.ts. Now he knew that her phone number scratched into the rusty metal of the s.h.i.+tter stall with the phrase ”for a good blow” etched under it was probably true. d.a.m.n it if he didn't get to stick around long enough to find out.

d.a.m.n you, Rhett.

He guessed, even after all that, he was surprised to see her show up for the game tonight. She drove all the way to Greenville to see them play. He pretended not to see her, because he was intense like that. Shaun was painfully aware every time Rhett made a big play and the stands exploded into applause, that on special teams, opportunities to get cheered were few and far between. The occasional run-back can stir up the crowd, but you're seldom making the big play. Still, every time there was a kick off, Shaun jogged out with the rest of the special teams squad, carrying himself like a proud stallion, hoping, G.o.d, hoping, he'd catch the big one and run it all the way in. It never happened, but she was still out there, and he didn't do anything stupid like trip over his shoelaces and eat dirt, so that counted for something. Their team, the Millward Christian Saints, won by a margin of fourteen points for a respectable win.

After the game was over, Shaun continued his charade about not being too excited that she was there. He took a moment on the bench, stalled while grabbing his helmet, and chatted with a teammate. Then he was going to walk onto the field and say h.e.l.lo to her, to Jana, and he turned just in time to see her run to Rhett Pollard, throw her arms around his shoulders, and kiss him long and deep. Rhett moved a hand to cup her little a.s.s, lifting her off the ground as he did so. Shaun stood there, stunned, watching Jana's perfectly curved leg fold behind her as they kissed, and then she took Rhett's hand and they went to her car and beyond, presumably, to have all the s.e.x Shaun only dreamed of.

Now, riding the bus in a daze, listening to his mp3 player, staring out at the night, all of that suddenly-thankfully-went away when the airplane exploded in a fiery blast above the bus.

Maybe some shrapnel would fly through a window and take out Rhett, he thought. Divine justice and all. But probably not. He'd never been that lucky.

Shaun pushed his way to a window, climbing up behind Collin and another kid, Juice Hayman. He looked out, catching the tail end of the explosion, roiling clouds of orange and black s.h.i.+ning like the morphing face of a demonic Jack-O-Lantern in all the glowing colors of Halloween.

A secondary blast, smaller than the first, but nearly as brilliant, lit the night again. One part of the plane continued its deadly flight, while two other pieces went off in their own directions. The team watched the flaming airplane break completely apart and fall in a scatter of flaming wreckage. The bus turned a corner headed over a short road taking them to I-30 and then home. The entire bus tipped dangerously. All the kids howled.

”Hey, sit in your seats, guys, c'mon!” the driver shouted over the excitement.

Coach Middy started barking at the guys to sit and to simmer down. Meanwhile the driver got on the radio, nervously recounting for dispatch the details of the explosion. Shaun heard the dispatcher reply with a squawked promise to call the police. Didn't really matter though, not for whoever was in that airplane. That metal bird was toast and so was anyone unlucky enough to have taken that flight to h.e.l.l. Shaun bit his bottom lip as he made his way through the bus aisle, sliding into his seat, all thoughts of Jana and his own piddly existence fading quickly in light of the night's developments.

CHAPTER 2.

Darkness fell across the parking lot of the North Star Motel and Truck Stop on Interstate 30 just outside of Greenville, Texas. The streetlights from the frontage road cast an orange glow over the scene. Aside from the thumping of the occasional big rig speeding by, the night was quiet.

The motel section of the North Star Motel and Truck Stop was a two-level building in the shape of a U with twenty units. In the center of the U was a swimming pool that had fallen into disrepair, the once bright tiles and lawn chairs faded by the sun, the concrete deck broken with weeds, ant hills rising from the cracks. The pool shone a sickly green, the rippled water reflecting in the scant illumination of the few outside lights. Asphalt around the parking lot was broken, ashen from years of dry, hot summers without a re-surface, potholes and fissures making an uneven, multi-leveled web of the ground. Three patrol cars parked in a V in front of room number five. Two more cars arrived for backup, thus exhausting the city's supply of Sheriff's deputies. The lights atop their vehicles strobed red and blue across the grime of the motel's exterior walls.

Officers rushed from their cars toward the door of the hotel room, one of the larger men taking the lead. When they reached the threshold, the lead deputy, Sergeant Groves, lifted a handheld battering ram, slamming it into the cheap metal door handle, splintering everything in the general vicinity. The door burst inward. Three of the cops ran inside, yelling, ”Hands up! Police!” and ”Freeze!” Dogs barked in the distance amidst the crackle of police radios requesting updates on the situation.

The hotel room was old; worn wood paneling on the inside dated the decor back to the late 1970's or early 80's. The carpet was brown and filthy. The single bed was slept in but half-heartedly re-made. The backsplash for the nearby sink was cracked, hanging an inch and a half away from the wall, pipes exposed beneath, topped with a few travel-size toiletries. The faucet dripped, water tinkling down the rusted drain.

At first they thought the room was empty. There was a lot of shadow, and the darkness seemed to move at once.

”What the-”

A second deputy joined in. ”I saw that.”

The shadows s.h.i.+fted, as if the darkness in the room was not only fluid, but an ent.i.ty. The black in each corner grew deeper, while everything at the edge of the shadow seemed tense, ready to lash out.

”Step out of the shadows,” Groves shouted. ”Now!”

They tensed, somehow expecting several men to materialize from the pools of invisibility, where only one appeared: their quarry, Bal Shem.

Bal Shem was dressed as if he were going to a business meeting with the devil himself: double-breasted suit, high dollar, not one of those cheap warehouse specials that came with a thin, free s.h.i.+rt. The red satin of his crisp tie glowed brighter as the red of the police lights cut through the dark of the room and washed over him in a burst of color. He stood, calmly and silently.

”Get out here where we can see you,” Groves commanded.

Bal Shem walked toward the light of the door, between the officers who parted like a biblical sea to let him pa.s.s.

”Where should I stand, gentlemen?” Bal Shem asked in a velvet voice, thick with the accent of the Middle East, tooled with the inflection of a London university. His polished Western appearance gave no hint of his primitive, cave-dwelling upbringing, nor did he appear the terroristic zealot who regularly relied on forced human s.h.i.+elds to protect him from the bullets of his foe.

”Stop where you are!”

Bal Shem did as told, dropping his arms to his sides, not making any sudden movements that would give the deputies cause to fill him full of Texas lead. Groves muttered into his radio that the prisoner was secured. Bal Shem smiled a thin, tight grin.

”Check him out, Digger,” Groves said to the deputy on his right. Groves's gun was leveled and held steady a few feet from Bal Shem's forehead. He didn't trust himself to not accidentally trip and separate Bal Shem from one of his toes with a stray bullet. The more Groves looked at this child-killing b.a.s.t.a.r.d, the more he wanted to wring his suave neck with his bare hands. An image of his own hands wrapped around Bal Shem's throat, interspersed with flickering footage from news broadcasts of sprawled children, gutted and swollen in the dusty streets of some rural village, flashed through Groves's mind. Nothing the U.S. government would do to this stinking b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be punishment enough for the atrocities Bal Shem had committed in the name of his G.o.d.

Digger, who looked eighteen if he looked a day, sidled alongside Bal Shem and quickly patted him down.

”He's clean.” Digger gave Bal Shem another uneasy once-over with his eyes and stepped aside with an eagerness to be as far away from the prisoner as possible. Bal Shem stood motionless, just waiting.

”Of course, I'm clean, Mr. Digger. Only a moron would stand before-” he looked around as if counting the officers present, ”several men of the law waving guns in my general area with a weapon on his person.” His lips smacked a little when he talked, dryly as if he needed a drink of water.

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