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  When the call came in from the trading desk, he answered his cell phone quickly.

  “Jimmy, my main man! I hope you’ve got some good news.”

  “Hey, Robert. Things are really dicey down here, brother. I’ve got sell orders stacked up from here to Cleveland, and no buyers in sight.”

  “But you got me out, right? You sell it all?”

  “That’s just it,” there was a harried edge to the other man’s voice. “I can’t move shit right now. Fat cats are three rungs ahead of me on the trading ladder, front running like crazy. I’ve got banks, insurance companies and fund managers hogging the wire. Every time I key something I get a bounce. These buggers have the whole system damn near locked up. And this is just a two hour special trading session. The big Boyz have the inside track.”

  “What do you mean locked up? Come on Jimmy, I‘ve got too much riding on this. I need to unwind this shit right now!”

  “Hey, man. I’ll do whatever I can, but this is some serious fuckin’ shit going down here this afternoon. Never seen anything like it, not even when Lehman got thrown to the wolves. Gotta go, man. Somethin’s up!”

  Robert heard a chorus of pit shouting just before the line went dead. He sat there staring at the screen on his cell phone, stunned. If he couldn’t unwind this position he was definitely going to crash and burn. He’d lose everything!.

  He awoke that morning, safely cocooned in his Quantum Sleeper, but the bad news was still filtering through the stereo speakers, through the endless commercials interlaced with the constant flow of advertising that never seemed to stop, and it had finally hit home.

  His pit trader friend never called him back. Jimmy let him down. The news that Goldman had failed spread like a toxin, and fund after fund had taken staggering losses, some losing 90% of their nominal value in a matter of hours. The near two thousand point drop in the markets that followed further decimated Robert’s meager stock positions. As the radio announcer yammered on about one special offer or another, he found himself simply losing himself in the media stream, the commercials washing over his weary mind one after another like old familiar friends…

  Still ahead! The biggest little sale of the year… Final clearance! No payments and interest until February. Free delivery, usually in 4 hours or less! Don’t wait call now! And now this…Aqua Fresh whitening power is even better! Use every day for whitening teeth… Then...Tonight--A distillation of the very best, the weirdest, the wildest on NBC…

  The commercials piled one on top of another, with one presenting a saccharine pastoral scene of a grandfather playing with a toddler and dog while a voiceover intoned a litany of horrific drug side effects for the latest concoction being foisted on the public. What happened to the simple, direct interrogation of the dairy industry commercial, he thought. It was just two words—Got Milk? A quiet tone interrupted the commercial stream, and the volume lowered 30%. The digital messaging system in the Quantum Sleeper had a message for him from the other room.

  “Good morning,” the voice intoned in the smooth, soft tones of a fresh young co-ed, and quietly announced that there was a fault reading on the central AC unit in the basement. “A quick service call should take care of it today!” the voice concluded. The Sleeper was hard wired to a device that checked on all his major appliances, letting him know when anything needed attention.

  “What would you like to do?” The girl asked with sweet exuberance. “Press one to initiate a service call… Press zero to cancel.”

  Robert didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to forget the AC unit, the advertising, and the fact that he was now basically bankrupt, with every nickel of his retirement flushed down the toilet of Wall Street.

  “What would you like to do?” The girl persisted in the same voice. “Press one to initiate a service call… Press zero to cancel.”

  Harried and angry, stormed into the bedroom and reached in to press the zero button on the overhead input panel.

  “Thank you,” said the girl. “I’ll be sure to remind you about this situation tomorrow. Until then, have a wonderful day!”

  Up yours, thought Robert, though that was a real push-pull for him. The girl’s voice was so sweetly compelling that if he awakened that morning to find her next to him in the Sleeper instead of Liz he would have taken out his frustration by other means. But she was only a digital recording, one he had chosen from a panel of six different voice options, all for just $4.95 extra on his Sleeper monthly service package.

  The radio came back up to volume, and the inevitably conservative slant on the show featured a commentator selling the new government bailout of AIG as good for business. “These assets will recover in time,” he pronounced. “The government may even stand to make money on this deal. Let me be clear—this time AIG will not be obligated to Goldman Sachs for any and all insurance swaps written to protect the derivatives the Chinese and others have repudiated. We should be turning the corner on this situation in a matter of weeks, and things will be improving soon.”

  Robert couldn’t agree. The crisis might be over for AIG, defaulting on its swap obligation just as the Chinese had defaulted on the trash Goldman sold them, he thought, but it’s not over for the rest of us, by any measure you could find. People were going to see virtually every last nickel of “equity” evaporate from their home, phantom wealth that was used as collateral for home consumer loans to buy new appliances, granite counter tops, plasma TVs, cars, vacations—now nothing more than a massive debt liability. So much for the dream and the false perception of benefit from home ownership, he thought. He suddenly realized that he never really owned anything but the debt related to the things he bought! The bank owned their home from the day he and his wife moved in, and then passed on the lien to some investor in Asia. Robert bought a place to live, and a massive debt. They could have rented a similar place to live at half the rate of home ownership, avoiding property taxes, maintenance, and all that interest!

  What was happening to the world he had taken for granted for so very long? He knew there were millions of people like him waking up to the same bad news, the same despair, as the realization that all they had now was a paycheck if they were lucky enough to still be employed, a meager checking balance, and a little open space on a few credit cards finally sunk in.

  Then something odd occurred to him…So what? The friggin’ Chinese were going to war in the Pacific, the Russian were going to war everywhere else, the Iranians were blasting the Persian Gulf with missile after missile. What did his mortgage payment matter? Did he actually think there would be a bank waiting for it in 30 days or a pointy headed banker pouring over his account as he contemplated foreclosure? Hell no!

  Now it was coming down to just three things, he realized—food, fuel and security. That was it. He’d be swiping the cards at Ralph’s Market and putting all the gasoline on his Mobile card he could find—that is, if the banks didn’t decapitate the credit lines before he got to the front of the line at the pumps.

  “Christ almighty,” he breathed. Depression chased the optimism he had started the day with. He had no idea what to do, and hung on the news channel, thinking about that food and gasoline. Tonight he would join his wife in the Quantum Sleeper, he thought. Safer there with shit like this going on.

  He was making a mental list of things they would need, food items, water, extra batteries. Somewhere he had a list of the hundred things to disappear first, and oddly, toilet paper was one of them. The once called it “mountain money” when they would go camping, one of those little necessities that you never gave a second thought. What else was he overlooking? Should he take the pistol with him when he went out? Where did he keep the ammo?

  He sat down in his office, dejected, flustered, and beset with the feeling that he had a thousand things to do and too little time to get any of them done. Think! He imposed a moment of quiet on his mind. Sit down and think this through. What do you really need? It wasn’t Zest, or that new power shaver. It wasn’t Aqua Fres
h, those 50 unforgettable getaways or a mid-sized sedan. It wasn’t a new iPad or HDTV. All those desires had been swept away in a single moment in his mind.

  It was just three things now: Food, Fuel and security.

  Day 5

  “I came into a place mute of all light,

  Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest,

  If by opposing winds 't is combated.

  The infernal hurricane that never rests

  Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;

  Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.

  When they arrive before the precipice,

  There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,

  There they blaspheme the puissance divine.”

  Dante Alighieri, The Inferno - Canto V

  Part V

  Night Stalkers

  “Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men—some more fluently than others.”

  ― John Vaillant, The Tiger

  Chapter 13

  They crouched low, waiting. The sound of voices came to them in the night, edged with frustration. One voice was louder, sharp and demanding, obviously the officer in charge of the NKVD column upset over Sutherland’s handiwork on the bridge. Haselden looked over at his mate and winked, giving him a thumbs up. But what would the Russians try to do now?

  Then they heard it, a low growl of motors in the still air, faint and far off, but drawing closer. Haselden craned his neck, looking over his shoulder, eyes puckered to see anything in the murky darkness. The sound of bullfrogs and other night creatures seemed to rise in a frustrating chorus before he heard the distinctive rumble of trucks on the road behind them.

  “Hold on Cobber,” he rasped to Sutherland. “We’ve got company—behind us on the road!”

  They could now hear another truck column coming up, and Haselden thought he could make out a line of squarish shadows on the thin track of the road. ‘Bloody hell!” he said sharply. “This is no damn good. Who would have thought we get traffic on a road like this. They’ll come right up on our ass.” He leaned out of his cover, clicker in hand and snapped off a signal to Sergeant Terry on the other side of the road—abort—abort—abort. The Sergeant wasted no time, and half a minute later he was rushing across the road, crouching low, Bren gun in hand.

  “Unexpected company,” Haselden whispered when he arrived, his face set and serious.

  “Now what?”

  “It’s no good here. We’ll have to get down there and take cover in those reeds. Make sure you don’t leave anything. Let’s get moving!” He turned his head. “Nice and quiet like now.”

  “Right-O, Jock. Always did like a midnight belly crawl with the frogs.” Sutherland winked at him, and the three commandos crept silently away from the road, seeking better cover in the reedy fringes of the marshland to the east. The bridge they had selected as a choke point was right at the narrowest neck of the Terek River as it flowed east to the Caspian. They had to move about a hundred yards to the reeds, but once there they found good concealment. Behind them there was nothing but murky, wet ground descending to marshland now.

  The fens fell off to a wide lake, festooned with reeds and floating muck. It separated the river from a long spit of sandy ground beyond it that pointed to the north like a great finger, marking the place where Corporal Severn waited on the coast with the swift boats. Haselden had radioed him earlier on the wireless and told him to move south that night under cover of darkness. With any luck Severn was due east of their position by now, though he wondered how things would play out from this point.

  “This is no good here,” said Sutherland. “We’ve no decent field of fire. Sergeant Terry’s Bren won’t do us any good at all down here.” They could see the trucks coming up the road to the very place where they had been concealed just moments ago, and then slowly maneuvering to turn about. Sergeant Terry shook his head, unhappy.

  “How in the world did I find myself lying here in a muddy bog on a night like this,” he muttered.

  “You were most likely a troubled youth,” Sutherland jibed. Then they hushed, heads low as they watched the trucks pull up. Haselden was fishing about in his jacket for the map, and the wan gleam of moonlight gave him just enough light to read it.

  “Nothing behind us, mates. Just a whole lot more of this muck and mire. That there is the delta of the Terek, six bloody miles of it to the coast.”

  “They’ll get cross that river in half an hour and onto those trucks. This must have been arranged,” Sutherland whispered.

  “Right you are. The only question is what do we do now? We can’t move south on their flank from here. The damn road is going to skirt the edge of that marsh lake behind us for a good eight miles, and we’d be easily seen. We could wait here and then follow them south, but they’ll leave us well behind them in no time.”

  “Then we’ve no choice,” said Sutherland. “They’ll have to turn all those trucks about and will most likely load up. We’ll have to jump the last one in the line. Maybe we’ll get lucky and our man will be riding that one.”

  “Maybe not,” said Haselden, “but I don’t see any other way now, Davey. Let’s work round to the right a bit. Good cover in these reeds but move slow. Fix silencers and it’s pistols and knives now. We can keep our Stens, but that Bren isn’t going to do us any good in a situation like this, Sergeant. I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it.”

  Sergeant Terry nodded grimly, and was already looking to find a spot to conceal the weapon and ammo belts in the reeds. Now it was coming down to stealth and subterfuge, not firepower and ambush. Their faces were painted black beneath their dark berets, and each man lightened his load, keeping nothing more than food, water and ammo. Haselden handed off his Sten and numerous ammo clips to Sergeant Terry to compensate him for the lost Bren. “I’ll lead with pistol and knife,” he whispered. “Let’s move.”

  They worked their way slowly through the reeds, careful not to let them rustle and move as they passed. It was move, wait, listen, move again, slithering along the damp ground like snakes, but in this way they were able to get to a position on the Terek, very close to the bridge that Sutherland had blown. Now he saw that his demolition charges had only damaged the bridge itself, and the span remained largely intact. There was a gaping hole in the wood of the bridge bed, but still enough room to one side for a man to edge by and carefully cross. The NKVD were rigging ropes to provide additional hand holds at this spot, and they were sending the women from the column across first.

  “Must have had a dodgy charge,” Sutherland whispered.

  “Hush up, Davey. I count five men there, and there’s probably that many or more with those trucks. See that tall fellow? I think that’s our man. Look, there he goes now.”

  They could see a tall, stocky man making his way over the bridge, with two NKVD soldiers following behind him. Haselden strained to see him as he crossed, and noted that he continued on past the last truck. Just our luck, he thought. Now we won’t know which truck the man is in. But he decided not to curse his luck just yet. It remained to be seen just how this situation would develop. There would certainly be soldiers assigned to the last truck, but how many?

  “Look, lads,” he said quietly. “When we move it will have to be quick and dirty. “There will be men for that last truck, and we’ll have to get them all, and quiet like. What we don’t want is for one of those bastards to fire his weapon and warn the others up front, so I’ll want to move just as the last of this lot begins to mount that truck. Move on my hand signal.”

  The other men nodded, realizing this was perhaps the most dangerous moment of their trek thus far. Yet it was their stock in trade, as each man was a highly trained expert in close combat, and ready for the job
at hand. They were settling down on instincts born of training, reflex and adrenaline now, an ancient language of muscle and nerve. Another part of their brains took over, and they became low, stealthy prowling things in the night, their senses keened up to a razor sharpness, eyes moving, minds calculating without words or logic; limbs ready to spring for the kill.

  The soldiers had herded all the women forward, waiting for all the trucks to slowly back and turn themselves around on the narrow road. One man was issuing loud commands, pointing at men and gesturing. They loaded five or six women in the back of each truck, seven vehicles in all, and then two NKVD men boarded to keep watch on them. The officer walked forward, obviously to take up a position in the first truck. There were three men left over.

  Haselden tensed up, hearing the engines gunning as the lead trucks in the column began to move out. The last of the three men had come from the bridge, a cigarette hanging from his lips as he hefted his rifle onto his shoulder. Two others were getting ready to mount the tailgate of the truck. It was now or never. The noise of the other trucks would provide perfect sound cover. He moved.

  Haselden just crawled up onto his knees, stood up and casually walked to the back of the truck. The man with the cigarette turned his head, dumbfounded. The British Captain was holding out a pack of fresh cigarettes, smiling as he stepped up to the man. Then that moment of confused surprise became a blur. Haselden drove the base of his hand right into the man’s nose, thrusting up in a hard blow. A second soldier had one knee up on the tailgate and a swift kick took out the support of his other leg. Both men were down and Sutherland was up next to the Captain now, easily handling the third soldier, parrying the blow of his rifle butt, slipping inside and getting the man’s neck and head in a hold that saw him go slack in no time at all. A swift chop to the neck settled the man who had fallen with Haselden’s kick.