My Brother’s Keeper

Episode 2
 

by John Mack
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Story is copyright© 2001 by John Robert Mack.

All rights reserved.

No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever for financial gain.
Copies may be printed for personal use only,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The following characters and their physical descriptions are owned by Mattell corporation:
Big Jim, Big Jeff, Big Jack, Big Josh, Big Jim’s PACK, Dr.Steele,
The Whip, Torpedo Fist, Chief Tankua, Warpath, Professor Obb, Dr. Bushido.

They are used here exclusively for non-profit purposes.
 
 

For further information contact:

John Mack
PO Box 1597
Leander, TX 78646

jack
 
 
 

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My Brother's Keeper
 

Episode 2

The printout in Jim’s lap told him everything there was to know about the man named John Zebadee.  Several salient details stood out in his mind:
The man was 35 years old—the same age as Jim.  His birthday was within two months of Jim’s… and the date was a guess.  John Zebadee had no birth records, and that didn’t mean that Jim didn’t have his birth records… it meant that such records did not exist… anywhere.  If they did exist, Jim’s intelligence expert, an Apache man named Tankua, who had been with Jim since the formation of the Pack, would have found them. When Jack’s efforts had come up almost empty after an exhaustive search of his police department resources, Jim had set Tankua on the trail.  Tankua’s file had ten times the information of the “official” records, but still did not go all the way back to John Zebadee’s birth.
His life started at the age of about two months, when he was left on the doorstep of an orphanage in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he had been given his unusual name.  John lived there for just six months before a wealthy family adopted him, and then almost immediately moved to California, where John’s mother took a job as the personal assistant to some big-time movie director.  When Jim asked Steele if he’d ever heard of the director, his friend just shook his head and chuckled.
Zebadee had been a bit of a troublemaker in school… nothing bad enough to earn him a criminal record, but enough for his parents to enroll him in a gymnastics program in an effort to channel his energy.  John won state three years in a row, and, instead of going to a University, he enrolled in a school for stuntmen, which is what he ended up doing for a career.  He worked pretty steadily, made good money… and didn’t have so much as a savings account.
This last detail bothered Jim.   The guy made a lot of money but had no savings, no checking, no credit cards… not even an e-mail account.  Apparently, he paid cash for everything and rented both his house in Arizona and a condo in California.
And…
Most of his records had been quietly expunged over the last ten years.  There was nothing obvious, no trail of vanishing records for Tankua to follow, but the intelligence expert had pointed out to Jim that most of the information he had uncovered should have been easily tracked down by someone who was as thorough as Jack, who got along with Tankua much better than he did with Steele.  Tankua had gone back through Jack’s own search and had discovered that someone had systematically and with great patience erased nearly all of John Zebadee’s files, one at a time, over several years.  As far as 99% of the world was concerned, John Zebadee did not exist.  Jim was fortunate to have someone like Tankua working with him—someone who was part of a very select 1%.
The photos Tankua had tracked down were almost frightening.  They showed a boy, a young man and an adult who was a carbon copy of Jim every step of the way.  Zebadee’s hair had been a little longer in junior high, a little more purple in high school and a little more shaved for one professional headshot, but every photo Jim saw was a funhouse mirror that altered his appearance just enough to be scary.
“I guess he really exists,” Jack said, drawing his friend’s attention away from the folder.
Jim’s dark eyes flicked briefly to his friend’s concerned face, then landed on the woman on the other side of the glass.  Sing Zebadee was talking with Steele.  They were in the same room Jim had seen on the computer monitor a very fast helicopter ride ago.  Jim sat with Jack in the adjoining observation room on the other side of a one-way mirror.  Steele had taken the liberty of pushing the table out of the way and of having more comfortable chairs brought in.  He had borrowed Jack’s police uniform shirt, which was a perfect fit, but he was still barefoot, as usual, an incongruity which seemed to amuse him.
In person, Sing was quietly beautiful, with deeply intelligent eyes, strong features and hair so black it reflected blue.  Her hands rested in her lap, palms up, thumbs touching, in what Jim realized was a Buddhist meditation posture.  Jim had noticed a subtle change in her manner when Steele arrived, almost like someone who is wondering if she has missed her bus and then sees it coming around the corner.  It was an observation Jim was unable to explain.
The voices that came over the sound system in the observation room were almost inaudible to Jack and Jim.
“But what about her?” Jim asked at last, connecting with Jack’s eyes for a moment.
Sing Zebadee’s file was empty.
Tankua took it as a personal affront that he hadn’t been able to find anything.
“She’s sitting right there,” Jack mused.
Jim nodded.  “Not so much as a bloody social security number,” he muttered.  “Not a marriage license.”  He listened to the conversation.  Steele was getting some details on the area where her husband had said he was going to be.
“It can’t be a coincidence,” Jack said… then added, “Can it?”
Jim shook his head.  “I don’t know, Jack.  I don’t think so…”  He turned away from the window and faced his friend directly.  “Help me on this... pretend it’s not me involved.”  Jack was the only friend Jim had who wasn’t a part of the Pack but who still understood Jim’s line of work.  As a policeman, Jack’s own career mirrored Jim’s in many ways, and he had been an invaluable help on several cases over the years.  He had a great instinct for putting together seemingly unconnected pieces of evidence.
Jack nodded and sat back in his chair, coffee colored arms folded across the white t-shirt he had been wearing under the uniform shirt Steele now wore.   He stretched his long legs in front, and crossed them at the ankles.  “Shoot.”
“Okay,” Jim started, “She’s got to be in deep cover.  She’s been an operative long enough to erase herself completely.”  Jack nodded his agreement.  “So she decides to get married…”
“Which is not such a great idea for someone in her line of work…” Jack added with a sardonic grin.
Jim raised one eyebrow to say, I thought we were being professional here? which just brought a bigger grin to his friend’s face.  His teeth flashed a brilliant white in the semi-darkness and against his dark skin.  Jack, married and with two kids, was always teasing Jim about his perpetual bachelorhood.  Jim had originally wanted Jack to be a part of his team, but his friend had known from the beginning that international espionage wasn’t conducive to raising a family.  “No, it’s not,” Jim said aloud.  “So she takes her time erasing him, too… just enough to make him hard to find, but not enough to wave any red flags on anyone’s system.  He’s been in the system too long to safely erase him completely.”
There was a pause while they both thought through what might have happened next.  “So,” Jack began at last, “The husband turns up missing and she goes to the police for help?”  He shook his head and turned his back to the scene in the next room.  “I don’t buy it.  If she’s an agent of some kind, why doesn’t she find him on her own?  Or why not use her own agency, whatever it is?  Wouldn’t that be more effective?”  Jack was very aware of the limitations of working within the law, especially for those who were used to working outside of it.
“She’s risking a lot coming here,” Jim added.  “She knows she’s being taped… she knows there’s a file on her, now, and she’d have to get in here physically to get her hands on that.  Why risk it?  After all she’s done to erase herself?”
“She knows she can do it again?”
Jim shrugged.  “Why bother?  That kind of thing is a lot of work.  Why involve the police at all?”
Silence fell over them again as they worked it over in their minds.  Jim hoped that Steele was learning something with his questioning.
Movement in the next room drew his attention.  Steele was rising to his feet and shaking the woman’s hand.  “I’ll have one of the officers show you out and set you up with a hotel, Mrs. Zebadee,” he said.  Jim and Jack exchanged a puzzled look.  Hotel arrangements hadn’t been discussed.  “Thank you for your time.”  Jack chuckled.  Jim knew how amusing it was to Jack to see Steele playing gracious.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Sing said with a slight bow that Steele returned.  “Please let me know when you hear anything.”
“I will.”  Hed the door and gave some quick instructions to the officer outside who nodded and led Sing away.  She nodded once more and was gone.  Steele let himself turn and look directly at Jim through the mirror.  His face was grave.  His eyes were guarded.  Then he turned and left the room.
“I don’t like that look,” Jim said.  He felt Jack’s eyes on him.  “That look always means trouble,” he explained.  “He knows he missed something, but he couldn’t press.”
A moment later the doord and Steele joined the other two men in the observation room.  His hand found the light and flicked it on as he entered.  He shut the door solidly and faced them, his arms crossed over the police uniform shirt.  “Shit,” was the first word out of his mouth.
“Bad?” Jim asked.
Steele shook his head.  In his eyes, Jim could see that his mind was working a mile a minute.  “Too many questions,” he said, his eyes locked onto Jim’s face.  “You’ve never met this woman?”
“No.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes.”
Steele shook his head.  “She knows you,” he told them.
“What?  How?”
“That’s where it gets fuzzy,” he admitted, then shook his head and stepped closer to the window, where he could stare at the room he had just left.  “Okay, okay, okay…. let me think out loud.”  He sighed and was silent for a moment.  Jim was glad that Jack was not asking a hundred questions as he usually did.  Steele had his own way of doing things and, as annoying as it sometimes was…. it worked.  “She is definitely an operative.  I don’t know with whom, and that pisses me off.  She listed the missing person because she knew that Jack would see the photo and contact you.”
“What?” Jack said, finally unable to contain himself.
“I’m sure of it,” Steele insisted.  “She knew who I was, knew that I worked with Jim, and wanted to be sure that Jim knew about her husband.”
“Wait,” Jack said, “How did you get all that out of her?”
Steele shook his head.  “I didn’t get anything out of her.  She’s good.  Very good.  I can’t explain it, Jack.  You’ll have to watch the video. She offered me this information, and never once said any of it directly.”  Jim thought about his own impression of her as a woman waiting for the bus.  Apparently, she had been waiting… but for him.
“Why didn’t you just ask her?” Jim queried.  Steele was usually rather direct.
Steele shook his head again.  “I couldn’t,” he admitted.  “Okay…. she’s an operative.  She wants us to try to find her husband, who happens to look exactly like Jim, who happens to also be an orphan, like Jim, who happens to also be almost the exact same age as Jim, and who has this goofy Biblical name that also connects him with Jim.  She doesn’t want the world at large to know she’s an operative, but she makes sure we figure it out.  She won’t tell us anything directly except where he was last known to be, which is a little broken down cabin in the desert in an out of the way corner of Arizona.”
“She held onto the fasting thing?”  Jack asked.
Steele nodded.  “Said he’s Buddhist or something.”
Silence fell over the trio of men as they all stood staring into the stark questioning room, as if the answers to their questions would suddenly materialize before them if they waited long enough.  Jim kept running through the information in his head and kept coming back to the same answer time and again; it was an answer he wanted so much to be true that he refused to believe he could possibly be right.  He struggled to maintain the professional detachment he had worked so long to achieve.
As if reading his thoughts, Jack asked, ”Could this guy be your brother, Jim?”
Jim felt both pairs of eyes on him, now.  He knew it was something they had all been thinking, but had all been afraid to say out loud for fear of striking too close to Jim’s cloudy past.  The fact that he had grown up in foster homes and had never really grown any roots had always helped Jim in his line of work…. his enemies didn’t have any easy targets to go after… but that same fact had left thousands of unanswered questions and gaps in Jim’s life.  The fact that this John Zebadee might be the answer to some of those questions was as frightening to Jim as it was exciting.  Jim’s friends knew the struggle going on inside him, and had let the possibility go unsaid until it was impossible to avoid.
After a long silence, Jim finally told them, “It’s possible… but if it’s true, it just raises more questions than it answers.  And it only make’s this woman’s behavior more unexplainable.  If she wants my help, why doesn’t she just say, ‘Hey, my husband’s your brother, and he needs your help?’  Why the mystery?  Wouldn’t anyone help out his brother in a tight spot?”   The rhetorical question hung in the air until Jim realized it wasn’t really rhetorical. He had no idea how someone would act towards a brother.  His friends knew his history.  They let him work it out in his head.  Another long silence ended with, “Why didn’t you push her, Doc? What was it?”  Jim focused on the reflection of his friend’s face in the window.
Steele shook his head and unfolded his arms to crack the knuckles of the one hand.  “I don’t know, Jim.  Something in her eyes.  What she didn’t want me to see is that she’s genuinely afraid…. and not of us.”
“Any idea who?”
“None, but someone that good is scared, I know better than to push.  She’s risking something by involving us, and I don’t know what, and that’s what bugs me, so I figure we keep her around for a couple of days while we try to get some more answers.  I don’t think it’s a set up.”
Jim nodded mutely, which worried the other men.  Jim wasn’t verbose on the best of days, but the guarded silence in which he had wrapped himself was excessive, even for Jim.
Finally, Jack asked, “Do you want this guy to be your brother?”
Jim stared at Jack for a long time before answering.  “I’m not sure, but I think I understand how lucky I’ve been not having a family.  Just the possibility that this guy might be some kind of long lost brother has me questioning my judgment.”  They all knew how dangerous any sort of hesitation was in Jim’s chosen profession.  He stepped towards the door.  “We need to move on this.  If this guy is in trouble, we can’t waste any time.”
“And if it’s a set up?” Jack asked.
“If it’s a set up, old friend,” Jim said with the first smile Jack had seen on his face that day, “Then they’ve already had all the time they need to plan things out, and no amount of preparation is going to help.”  He dropped a hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “If someone’s trying to set me up, they’re more likely to get sloppy if they think I’m being impetuous.”
“Are you?”
Jim managed to laugh.  “Who knows… I’ve come this far on my instincts, we’ll just have to hope they hold out.”
Steele clapped him on the back with his natural hand.  “That’s what I like about you, Jim,” Steele joked, “Your complete lack of reason in the face of adversity!”
“Keep an eye on her, buddy?” Jim asked.  “Where she goes.  Who she sees.  Who she calls… who calls her…  Chances are, anything she does from here on in, she wants us to see, but everyone slips up some time, no matter how good they are, and if she does…”
“If she does I’ll be there,” Jack interrupted.
Steeled the door.  “And we’re going to do a little hiking in the desert, right Boss?”
Jim nodded.  He didn’t know who this strange double was, but he had a strong feeling that many of his answers lay in the Arizona desert. The only problem was that Jim wasn’t sure what the questions were.
Steele was already unbuttoning the borrowed shirt as they walked down the hall back to the helicopter.  “At least I won’t have to wear this monkey suit in the desert.”
“I don’t know, Doc,” Jack joked.  “I think the look suits you.”

Somewhere over the Arizona desert:
The helicopter was silent.  It sped over a landscape whose most interesting feature was the occasional armadillo.  The man Jim called Torpedo Fist was at the controls, his one good eye trained on the Arizona desert below them.  The other eye was covered in a black patch that Jim always thought made him look like a pirate.  The unlit, half-smoked cigar that was almost always clamped between his yellowed teeth helped perpetuate the image, as did his hair, which was bleached from the sun and always looked windblown.  He was the oldest member of the Pack and ten years Jim’s senior.  Jim sat in the seat beside him.
Jim’s other men were behind them in the helicopter’s main bay: Steele, Tankua, who the other men called “Chief,” and the “Whip,” who was the team’s weapons expert.  All five men were staring across the blinding desert, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
Tankua was a year younger then Jim.  He wore jeans, an old leather vest that was tied across his chest and combat boots.  His straight, black hair was braided and fell halfway down his back.  The Whip was only twenty-five, Sicilian and tried to pass himself as older by sporting a moustache and dark, scraggly beard.  Steele was shirtless, as usual, and much happier for it.  He liked the impact he usually made with the dragon tattooed on his chest.
With a quick movement, Tankua pointed at a spot on a rock that was already gone by the time Steele and the Whip could turn their heads.  “There,” he said quickly, then snorted.  “Never mind,” he said.  “Just a stupid rabbit.”
“What?” the Whip asked, looking from Tankua to the receding hillside the Apache had indicated.  “You can see a rabbit from up here?”  he demanded.  Tankua raised one eyebrow at him.  “Oh come on,” the Whip protested.  “You’re yanking my chain, right?”  But Tankua remained impassive.  The Whip nudged Steele.  “You believe he really saw a rabbit going this fast?”
Steele’s eyes were still trained on the scrub speeding by below.  “Jackrabbit, right, Chief?” he asked.  “Brown?”
Tankua smiled and nodded.  “Absolutely.”
The Whip looked incredulously from one man to the other.  Their faces were completely unreadable.  “Come on….” he said at last, starting to feel a little outclassed.  “No  way….”
Steele shrugged.  “Europeans just don’t have the eyes, I guess.”
“What??!!”
Finally, Tankua’s stoic façade cracked.  His smirk turned to a grin.  “Poor near-sighted white man,” he chuckled.  Steele chuckled, too.  The Whip kept up a tennis match, looking from one to the other.
“Oh….” he said at last, realizing that he was the butt of a joke.  “Oh, I get it.  This is a racial thing, isn’t?  This is funny to you two.”
“They make up for their poor eyesight with a vast intellect,” Tankua muttered.
Steele chortled, and when the Whip settled into a sulk, the good Doctor cuffed him and threatened to throw him off the helicopter if he didn’t lighten up.
In the cockpit, Jim listened to the banter of the men behind him, and it comforted him as he searched the approaching mountains.  Whip had joined the team a little later than the other men, and he was still occasionally teased like a freshman; the other members of the Pack liked to take advantage of the younger man’s naiveté, which made him seem even younger than he was, and which contrasted so sharply with his intellect and expertise in his field.
Beside Jim, Torpedo chewed on his cigar.  He pointed ahead and said, “There.”
Jim raised his binoculars and observed the cottage through them.  Increasing the magnification, he was able see the little wreck of a place clearly.  “Heads up,” he called over one shoulder.  “We’re there.”  And his three comrades crowded forward into the cockpit to see.
“That’s it?” the Whip asked.
It looked like a one room shack with holes in the roof, nestled against the face of the mountain.  From their angle of approach, Jim could see two walls, both of which had one window, both of which had glass that was cracked.  The door was simply an old Mexican blanket covering an otherwisedoorway.  The sheer face of the cliff was only twenty feet behind the shack.  There were no signs of habitation:  no vehicles, no hanging laundry, no people.
“It fits Sing’s description,” Steele said.
Jim said nothing… just nodded.  It was hard to believe that he was so worked up over such an unimpressive building.  The helicopter approached the place in a wide arc, coming at it from the North. “Don’t get too close,” Jim said. “I don’t want the helicopter blowing anything away.  It’s all dust and sand.”
“Roger,” Torpedo said and broke off his approach.
Jim turned to the men behind him who were watching him expectantly.  “Tankua’s with me,” he told them.  “Whip and Steele take the top of the cliff and watch our backs.  Torpedo will stay with the helicopter in case we need to scram.”
“Got it,” Whip said as the helicopter rose to the top of the cliff.
“Scram?” Steele asked.  “In case we need to scram?”  He chuckled.  “Where’d you come up with a word like ‘Scram,’ old friend?”  Jim gave him a sour look, but Steele’s cocked head and raised eyebrow brought a smile from Jim.  He held out his left hand to Steele to shake, then repeated the gesture with his right for the Whip.
“Keep your eyes Gentlemen.  This could be a trap.”
Both men nodded.  The helicopter hovered at the edge of the cliff, throwing sand and dust into the air.  Torpedo kept it almost perfectly still as Steele and the Whip jumped out.  They landed easily and moved quickly away from the helicopter.  Steele turned and waved quickly before finding a position in the rocks near the edge of the cliff.  The Whip already had binoculars out and was scanning the horizon by the time the helicopter dropped away.  Steele raised his wrist to his mouth and said, “You read me, Jim?”
As the helicopter landed, two hundred yards from the house, Jim’s wrist communicator spit out Steele’s words.  Jim raised his own wrist and replied, “Loud and clear, Steele.  Whip…. you there, too?”
“Yes, sir,” the Whip replied.
Jim nodded and lowered his wrist.  Tankua chuckled.  “Whip’s so darn polite.”
Torpedo spoke over one shoulder to him.  “He’s Texan, Chief,” he said around the cigar.  “They make’em real polite-like down there.”
Jim realized that he probably knew Whip the least of all his men.  The younger man kind of kept to himself.  He was wicked with a pair of knives and had saved Jim’s neck on more than one occasion, but he kind of did his own thing on their down time.  It was a choice Jim respected, but he realized that he needed to spend some time with the junior member of the team.
“Do I cut the engine, Boss?”  Torpedo asked, interrupting Jim’s thoughts.
Silently, Jim reprimanded himself for getting lost in his head.  He considered.  “Go ahead and cut it and watch the shack,” he decided.  “I think I’ll need your eyes more than your wings.”
“Check.”  Torpedo cut the engine and began to extricate himself from the controls.  Jim and Tankua climbed into the back of the helicopter and jumped down.
The three men stood facing the shack for a moment.  Jim studied the rocks and cacti in the area.  Tankua was studying the cliff.  Torpedo was fitting a rather sophisticated-looking piece of hardware around his forearm.  “What’s that?” Jim asked.
Torpedo smiled and held his arm up for inspection.  “New toy the Whip helped me rig up,” he said.
Jim gave the thing a cursory examination.  “Rocket launcher?” he asked.
Torpedo nodded and grinned.  “The kid knows his stuff.”
Jim nodded and turned his attention back to the cottage.  “You stay with the helicopter, Torpedo, and watch the lower cliff.  Any sign of trouble….”  He paused to think about what he did want Torpedo to do.  “Any sign of trouble, just wait until I tell you what to do, okay?”
Torpedo nodded.
Jim and Tankua walked to the shack, both pairs of eyes searching and searching, without really knowing what is was they sought.  Jim thought there should be signs of a struggle, or some indication of where John Zebadee’s car had gone.  As they approached the shack, Jim spoke into his wrist communicator again.  “Sound off,” he said.
“Torpedo Fist here.”
“Steele here.”
“Tankua here.”
“Whip here.”
“Jim here,” Jim said.  “Keep your eyes men.  We have no idea what we’re looking for.  If this is a rescue operation, we might not have much time.  If this is a set up… we’ll have even less.”
As they reached the shack, Tankua started searching the ground for tire tracks and footprints.  Jim circled the shack slowly, took out his gun and disengaged the safety.  The only sounds were the wind and the call of an occasional bird.  The sun was high in the sky and scorching hot.  From his position several feet away, Jim wasn’t able to see into the cottage.
There was a second blanketed door in the back, facing the cliff, and no window on that side.  The south wall was the same as the north, with one small window of cracked, dirty glass.  The cliff rose high above them, but because of it’s position in the west, it wouldn’t shade the shack until late afternoon.  Jim shaded his eyes with his left hand and peered up the side of the cliff.  A hundred feet above him, he saw a tiny flash of sunlight on metal that was Steele waving at him.  Jim waved back.
“Anything interesting?” Steele’s voice said over the radio.
“Not yet,” Jim responded, “Unless you really get into rocks and cacti.”
“Not much up here, either,” Steele told him.  “Just a couple of eagles.”
“What kind?” Tankua asked over the radio.  Jim looked over and saw him crouched down close to the ground, examining the sand.
“Golden, I think,” Steele told him.
“Hm.”
“Is that a good sign?” the Whip asked eagerly.
Jim saw Tankua smile mischievously.  “How should I know?” he asked.  “I was born in New York.”
Jim could practically hear the Whip blushing over the radio.  He made his way to Tankua’s side and crouched down beside him.  “Anything interesting?” Jim asked.
“No trace of anything,” Tankua told him.
“Nothing?” Jim asked, disappointed.
Tankua shook his head.   “Not a thing,” he affirmed, “Which means foul play.”
Jim watched his comrade’s scowling face.  “It’s too clean?”
“Way too,” Tankua affirmed.  He pointed at an area of loose sand.  “It was swept east to west,” he said.  “The wind goes north to south, here mostly.  The direction is wrong.”  He sat back on his haunches and looked the area over.  “There are no animal tracks more than one day old…. none.  This whole area was swept clean yesterday.  Somebody doesn’t want to be followed.”
Jim scanned the nearby rocks.  “Are they any good?”
Tankua shook his head,  “Not too great.  If they had known what they were doing, they would have swept with the direction of the wind and they would have just swept away their own tracks, not everything.  They must not have been certain they could find all their own tracks.”
“Does it look like anyone we know?”
 There was a short silence, broken only by the calling of an eagle.  Tankua raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into the radio at the exact time Steele’s voice said, “Bald eagle.”
“Time to get your eyes checked,” Tankua added, then turned to Jim.  “It feels familiar, Jim, but I’m not sure who.  Let’s check inside.”
They rose and moved toward the little shack.  Tankua had his gun ready as well.  While Tankua held a position a few feet away, Jim peered into a corner of the window.  It was too dirty to see through.  Jim gestured Tankua to take a position on the other side of the doorway.  They stood for a moment, facing each other on opposite sides of the door, listening.  There were no sounds from inside the shack.  Jim nodded and Tankua pulled the curtain aside, there was a moment’s wait, then Jim slowly peered into the darkness of the shack, gun leading.  He slipped inside and took in the single room with one quick sweep.  There was no one inside, and there didn’t seem to be any place to hide.
He took a step away from the door and examined the place more carefully.  Tankua was at his shoulder, doing the same, keeping one eye on the back door the whole time.  Jim scanned the floor for trip wires or light beams and kicked at the dirt floor to scatter dust into the air.  No beams seemed to be crossing the space.  Jim looked at Tankua, who nodded his agreement that the place was uninhabited and safe.  They let their stance relax a little.  “Place is clear,” Jim said into his radio.  “We’re going to do a little exploring.”
“Check,” said Torpedo Fist.  “All clear out here so far.”
“Looks good up here,” Steele added.
The place was almost empty.  There were no footprints on the floor, which Jim could tell had been swept very recently.  There was no furniture in the place, and only a bare mattress in one corner.  A rough wool blanket was wadded up in the corner.  Jim lifted the blanket with his free hand, but there was nothing under it.  With his gun ready, just in case, Jim lifted one corner of the ratty mattress.  Nothing but bare floor.  He lifted the mattress completely, and Tankua checked the floor under it.
“Nothing.”
There was a postcard pinned to the wall near the back doorway. It was a picture of a Chinese Buddha, sitting cross-legged with his hands resting on his corpulent stomach.  The photo was faded and the card was wrinkled at the corners.  Jim pulled it from the wall and turned it over.  Tankua was at his side, looking over his shoulder.  The card was addressed to John Zebadee, and there was a Hollywood address.  “He’s a stuntman,” Jim muttered.
Dear John, read the card.  You have to come with on the next trip.  The temple is amazing!!!  Love, Sing-Song.
“Sing-Song?” Tankua said quietly.
“Must be a nick-name.”  He looked for a postmark.  It had been sent from Korea.  He glanced at the brief description on the back of the photo.  The writing was Chinese. “Weird,” Jim said at last.  Tankua, who had wandered over to a window was at his side again.  “You read any Oriental languages?”  Tankua shook his head.  “I’m not sure, but I think this card was purchased in China, but she sent it to him from Korea.”
“Maybe she knew he wouldn’t know the difference,” Tankua suggested.  “I wouldn’t have noticed.”
Tankua had a suspicious nature, which was one of the many things Jim liked about him.  He nodded and stuffed the card into his shirt pocket, but was kept from responding by Steele’s excited voice over the radio.
“We have company, Jim…. coming in fast.  Get the hell out of there, now.”
Jim heard nothing, but knew better than to question Steele’s judgment.  Tankua was already heading for the front door, but something in Jim’s gut said to go for the back. He grabbed Tankua’s arm and pulled him in that direction.  “It’s a stealth chopper coming in way too fast and out of nowhere… Move it, Jim!!!”
As they left the shack, Jim could hear the faint hum of rotors and then several gunshots fired off by his men.
“I’m on it, Jim,” Torpedo fist shouted.
“No,” Jim shouted into his radio.  “Get down and invisible, now.”  There was no way that even Torpedo could get into the air fast enough.
Jim and Tankua jumped over a boulder and huddled together behind the rocks at the same moment Jim heard the puff of ignition and the subtle whine of a rocket that had just been launched.  They covered their heads as the little, tumbledown shack vanished in a violent fireball.
High above them, Steele and the Whip stood impotently, watching the chopper wheel around and make ready for a second pass.  Steele could tell that their own helicopter would be its next target.  He saw Torpedo Fist under cover behind a large boulder a hundred yards from the exploding lumber that had once been a cottage, a few yards from the helicopter he had been unable to completely abandon.  In the next half-second, as the attacking chopper angled forward to make it’s run, Steele understood why Jim had ordered Torpedo away from the helicopter.  He would have been a sitting duck.
Steele also remembered Torpedo Fist’s new toy.
“Can you take it out?” he screamed into his radio.  The fact that Jim had not given any orders in the three seconds since the explosion meant he was in no position to give orders.  Steele was in charge until Jim returned radio contact.
“I think so,” Torpedo answered, knowing the question had been directed at him.  “It’s not much, but I’ll give it a try.”
“Do it, man,” Steele called out.  “Do it!”  The chopper had started moving forward, nose angled down for speed.
Steele hit a button on his wrist radio thatd the channel to a broad spectrum that could be picked up by the attacking chopper.  “Break off attack, now,” he said calmly.  “I repeat… break off your attack or we will be forced to return fire.”  From his vantage point high above the action, Steele watched Torpedo Fist leap from cover and run to the middle of the space between the helicopter and the burning shack.   The helicopter was bearing down.  Steele was glad they were ignoring his warning.  Torpedo raised his arm and aimed it at their attackers, steadying the rocket launcher with his other arm. He braced his feet wide apart for stability.
It didn’t make a sound, and Steele couldn’t even see the tiny rocket that Torpedo Fist fired, but he saw Torpedo’s shoulder jerk back from the recoil.  A second later, a blinding flash of light swallowed the helicopter.
“Jesus Christ!” Torpedo shouted as he dove for cover again.
Steele grabbed the Whip by the shoulders and pulled him down behind a boulder.  A second and third explosion shook the landscape, and a wave of heat swept over Steele’s bare back as debris flew over their hiding spot.  Steele closed his eyes and counted to five.
“Sound off,” Jim’s voice said over the radio, and Steele let himself breathe again.
“Steele here,” he said.
“Whip here,” the Whip said and wriggled himself out from under Steele.
“Torpedo here.”
“Tankua here.”
“What the hell happened?” Jim demanded.
“It was rigged to blow,” Torpedo insisted.  Steele and the Whip got to their feet and moved to look down the cliff.  Jim stood at the base of the cliff, twenty feet away from the smoldering ruins of the shack.  Tankua was nearby exploring the rocks.  Torpedo Fist was trotting towards them, picking his way around the tiny pieces of burning helicopter that dotted the ground.  “Even if I hit their fuel tank, it wouldn’t have gone up that big,” he said into the radio as he made his way to his leader.  “It had to be rigged to blow.  Somebody didn’t want it searched.”
“He’s right, Jim,” the Whip added.  “I helped him make up the launcher, and it would have taken the helicopter down, but not like that.”
Torpedo Fist came to a stop in front of Jim.  “You okay, Boss?”  he asked.
Jim nodded.  “Fine,” he said.  “Thanks for the warning, Steele,” he said into his radio.  “I owe you one.”
“Just doing my job, Boss,” Steele returned.  “You find anything?”
Jim thought about the postcard in his shirt pocket.  “Maybe,” he said.  “I need you to take a look at something, but I think we should get out of here for now.”  He gazed from the smoldering remains of the shack that had belonged to John Zebadee and across the blackened bits of helicopter and helicopter crew that someone had completely destroyed rather than having them fall into Jim’s hands.
“What did it look like?” Jim asked the others.  “You recognize them?”
But before anyone could answer, Tankua spoke up from somewhere behind the boulders at the base of the cliff.  “Boss,” he said, and the tone of his voice told Jim that he could hardly believe what he was looking at.  “I think you need to come take a look at this.”