Chapter 62

Flashback – Ira and Mira – Undisclosed location

We traversed the desert on our motorcycles and arrested forward progress at the edge of a great chasm where Baskerville's tracks terminated. As we removed our cranial carapaces, I digitally illustrated with my hand and remarked, "Mira it appears that Baskerville cleared this chasm with ease."

She answered, "Yes Ira but then with its method of locomotion that is not entirely surprising. What is surprising is that Baskerville did not self-terminate upon impact after its flight."

I informed Mira of our duty, "We must contact Israel immediately and notify them of this current discovery."

Mira argued, "Ira, you may contact our benefactors, however I am pursuing the prisoners. Perhaps the harlequins are still aiding them."

I wanted to confront my sister, but in this case she evaluated our situation correctly. I did not wish to report the terrible insult Baskerville delivered us with its escape and had hopes that if we located and terminated the harlequins, things would appear more fortuitous for our team...

Flashback – Major M – Command and Control

Our satellite followed the two motorcycles to the edge of a canyon where they stopped. My tech said, "Sir, from the track, it appears Baskerville jumped the canyon."

I looked at the canyon and didn't immediately believe it so I asked, "Just how far did that damn vehicle jump?"

My tech answered, "Sir! The distance they jumped was 79 meters."

I did a quick conversion: Shit that was 259 ft! It didn't jump the canyon, it flew over the canyon.

My tech announced, "Sir since we can't find Baskerville, would you like us to follow the motorcycles as they're now leaving."

I shook my head and dreaded the report I had to give the General. He was going to be more pissed than I was about losing this damn mystery vehicle again. I replied, "Yes let's see what the motorcycles are doing."

Flashback – Jack – Undisclosed location

I closed my eyes as I was pressed back into the seat again and made every promise I could think of to God. Things became eerily silent and all I heard was the wind whistling by my ears. The next thing I knew, we hit the ground and I was damn near ripped in two by my harness! I opened my eyes and became aware that somehow we had not only jumped the ravine, we had landed safely.

I yelled at Banzai, "If you ever do that again I'm going to find some way to kick your ass!"

He didn't say anything so I looked over. For the first time ever, his face was white and I actually saw fear written across it.

I asked, "Banzai, are you okay?"

He didn't answer or move! Shit what was wrong with him now?

At least he could still steer this damn Frankenmonster. We continued to roll. As we finally stopped, I reached over, shook Banzai but got no response. Shit it was like he checked out of life or something.

I knew we couldn't stay here so I pried his hands off the wheel, pushed him over to my seat, took the driver's seat and hauled ass into the nearest small ravine. I jumped out of the Frankentruck, threw the camo net over it (and noticed four of the eight manpads which Banzai had strapped to the back of this fucking truck had been fired – no wonder we went so fast, we were on a rocket sled). Then I went back to see what the hell was going on with Banzai!

Flashback – Catatonic Ben

I had survived, high school that is. I took everything the bastards at the school threw at me, all that dad did to me and graduated. I wanted to get the hell out of Leadville as soon as I could, but there was only one problem and he'd been a problem my whole life – dad.

Dad was sick as hell and had been for almost a year. Every day when I came home he was a little worse - he was slowly slipping away. The once proud man that beat 'sense' into me and had taught me in his own harsh and peculiar way to be a man had been reduced to a total invalid. The muscles had all wasted away leaving only skin, bones and the evil disposition.

Oh yeah the evil disposition survived and even thrived in dad's current physical condition. He couldn't torture me physically so he used every chance he had to verbally abuse me. It was so bad most nights I went to bed thinking of ways I could kill him – and I worried about how I was changing. What the hell sort of son thinks about ways to kill his dad? I don't know, perhaps I was becoming as bad as my dad. After all they say the nut doesn't fall far from the tree and if there was ever a nutty tree it was dad.

I walked into the house after graduation and he started yelling right away, "Hey shithead, did you finally come home? It's about time because I have a surprise waiting for you."

Yeah I was still the 'shithead' and I knew what the surprise was: I needed to clean him up and change his bed because once again he'd shit in it. I put my diploma on the table, headed back to his room and this time I was really surprised – dad hadn't shit the bed but somehow he'd found the energy to get up, put on his Army uniform (which hung loosely around his frail body) and was sitting in the chair.