man wanted, fame without fortune. It seemed to be his calling in life. Nothing went as he thought it should.
When the next news cast spilled on to the air the details of his life were given. His home, his family and what he did at the metropolis of Beaver Dam. How in the world they gathered all this information was beyond understanding; they must have had scroungers who dug in the annals of history to get all these facts or, guessed the facts.
The big man came back, “are you ready to leave this sweet place?”
“Am I ready to leave, I wish I never came.”
“You need to be ready for a crush of reporters.”
“Reporters, why?”
“You are all of a sudden famous and it’s not what we wanted.”
By the time the big man escorted him calmly from the depths of the concrete world he was facing buzzards of the press with hundreds of microphones and cameras crushing around him, slamming questions from every direction. It was a cacophony of noise and lunacy.
The big man and two other escorts pushed their way through the attacking press and into a waiting black SUV, there were two others in the vehicle, one in the back and one driver, ready to go, one of the escorts jumped into the front seat while the other tried to fend of the piranha surging about the SUV. Braydon had seen these things in movies and on television but he had never imagined being part of a spectacle like this, but such actions did not always bode well for the hero’s in the show.
He was feeling rather giddy with all the excitement spilling over him, after all the Rangers and Seals rejected him, now he had become a hero and saved his country from terrorists, someone would surely want him now. He knew they would be clamoring to get him to sign up. What greater honor could there be than to serve your country and to do it the way that you wanted. The black express spirited him off. He had no idea where he was headed.
“Wait a minute, what about George? I left him in the parking lot.”
“That has been taken care of.” The big man said flatly.
“I want to make certain George is taken care of. It’s not pretty but we have been together quite a while.”
“George?” he questioned him.
“Yes, that’s what I named it after George Washington. Don’t ask me how I related the two. So, where is George?”
“Don’t worry about it, everything is taken care of.” That’s all there was to that.
Aggressive reports tried to pry microphones into the window, forcing the guards to take ape like responses, shoving the cameras and microphones back into the faces of the reporters. It was unbelievable that they would run alongside the SVU until Braydon disappeared from the raptors and was swallowed up by the black windows of the SUV. The press was not satisfied with how their hero had left them, they wanted more. Braydon did not reappear for the trailing press and swiftly disappeared off the grid. There were unhappy reporters. They had no idea who had stolen their lead story.
The hungry reporters went out of their way to give every detailed account of what happened to the papers. Radio and television reports were launching a man hunt to find Braydon. They reported, as best they could, about the events and about Braydon. The information reached the terrorist group and inflamed their fears and hatred that rang through the clan. This should never have happened and was quite unexpected especially as well thought-out as the plan had been. They had thoroughly plotted and laid out everything perfectly until this, would be hero, messed it up. Now two of their members were being retained by cowardly government dogs! The grinding in the leaders gut was whether or not the captive’s associates would talk and reveal the entire plans to bring the government to its knees.
“Do you think they’ll talk?” he asked the man at the table with him.
“No. They would never give in to the government pigs.”
The hostility and desire for blood only enhanced their feelings to retaliate.
The leader wasn’t quite so optimistic of the strength of the detainees; he knew his people and they were tried and true. He felt that it would be hard to break them but not impossible. Throw the threat of terrorist treatment at them and it might happen.
He now had to prepare for eventualities. First they must let the people of America understand the plight they were in and that his group was the guardians of God giving them his support in this time of need. They also had strong financial backers from Europe which would heal America’s wounds. Anyone or thing that interfered with the ultimate goals would pay the devil’s price for their attempts. “Freedom is not free,” he muttered to himself.
“What did you say Sir?”
“Nothing: just thinking out loud about our next step.”
“Mr. Delany has to learn and learn fast, as does the rest of the world, a terrible lesson from God himself to remind those who oppose his will there is a penalty. After all, this was similar to a holy war, a jihad of you would; some innocent lives would be forfeited for the good of many. The cause would not collapse for any trivial thing like human life.” He was on his box preaching again. He loved to incite the troops.
As shadows of the mountains crept across the valley of northern Arizona, concealing the moon behind the peaks, two figures belly crawled across the grimy desert toward a single house about 200 meters from the closest neighbor. There was no doubt about their military training, they were invisible to everything but the keen eyes of the owls and hawks that swirl above craning their necks to see what was going on.
The silence was deafening as the soldiers of God closed in on the house. The back packs they carried, rubbed against the sagebrush, and whispered past the attachment on their backs into the night wind.
After hours of silence the desert exploded into volcanic eruptions spewing spears of debit slicing through the air while flames lite the night as the two men evaporated in the desert, while debris was crashing into the desert, not obliged to warn of the direction it penetrated.
Soon the desert was alive with people rushing to see the inferno and wondering what had happened. A few sprinted forward, in vain, to see if they could rescue their friends and neighbors. There was nothing left to rescue, only pieces of wood and flesh, mangled together in an unrecognizable heap with fires flaming all around.
The Highway Patrol was there in minutes roping off the area with yellow crime scene tape. It took all they had because of the range of the debris. There was nothing to do now but to wait for the light of the sun and keep gawkers away. Interpreting the scene and looking for clues would be the job of professionals which they had sent for Las Vegas.
Daylight brought sorrow and pain for the little town. Nothing like this had ever happened in their memory and it would last in their hearts and minds forever. They had lost Mr. and Mrs. Delaney and their son Braydon. His thing was unrecognizable but had a rudimentary shape and was parked in the area of the house in which it was usually parked. The loss was almost too much for them they had been friends for so many years. People died on I-15 all the time in car accidents but they were strangers, these were neighbors and friends and they had known most of their lives and now they had evaporated in an unexplainable eruption fire of which they had no idea what happened; there was nothing left of them or their house. There was nothing to remember