I could not let the security of my family lie in the hands of CIA handlers, even those like my war hero in two wars control officer. The move to have Marlow incorporated and then included in active DEA missions was inconclusive to me. He had to be motivated to get out of New Mexico and the rest of the USA, too. He had to be thousands of ‘checkable’ miles away for me to be comfortable. If he were killed on U.S. soil by me, or it was alleged to be by me, then my life would be over, and my family left derelict.

I called Weatherby and ordered the 30 caliber 378 Magnum. I ignored the over four-thousand-dollar price tag. The phony CIA Amex card, somehow connected to the U.S. government, cleared the over-high-priced charge almost instantly.

`My intent, when the specialized rifle arrived, was to attract Marlowe back to the desert to make a second attempt, but that attempt, if I could arrange it, would be a much more effective and deadly attempt than the one he’d so amateurishly set up for me. I ordered a 50-millimeter Unertl spotting scope, fully understanding now that a spotter, who could only be Nguyen, was absolutely required to make analytically based and unemotionally charged decisions about taking such a terminal shot. The box of ammunition was Remington factory load, and it would do as I wasn’t expecting to break any long-distance sniper records in bringing Marlowe into some sort of distant terminal control.

Allen Weh was a different player in my life game (a thought process conclusion I wasn’t happy or comfortable with, considering what was going on all around me) and handling him was going to require a whole lot more examination and diligence, all secret, with nothing like the tactile reaching out toward Marlowe across the hot desert sand to ‘motivate’ him.

The office wasn’t a quiet place on the day after Christmas. Quincy was there, and then Nguyen and Kingsley showed up as well. No staff or insurance business was going on as it was the day after Christmas. Although it was a Monday, nobody would be working again until Tuesday. But Allen Weh was in his office, as his car had been there when I pulled in. The man was an enigma. I left Quincy, Kingsley, and Nguyen in my office and walked through the double doors leading to Weh’s CSI, charter services international private air company. Nobody was occupying any desks in his offices as I walked through. His door was open, so I went through the opening.

Allen was on the phone, so I took a seat on his luxurious leather couch. I examined his Marine Corps medals and décor that were in a shadow box up on the wall over his head. He was real, at least from what was up on his wall. Silver Star and Purple Heart from Vietnam service as a Marine officer. We should be brothers, but we were anything but, and I had so far not been able to improve our relationship. Somehow, he’d wormed his way, using his Charter Services Air operation as an entrée to what he no doubt had to believe was a nearly unlimited spigot of invisible and untraceable cash.

Weh hung up the phone and looked over at me.

“Heard you had some trouble out in the desert,” he said with a knowing smile.

“Wonder where you heard that,” I replied, “and also why it’s of interest to you.” I could not help myself.

The man brought out the worst in me, even when I was trying to fix the rift in our relationship. I decided to back up and start again, but never got the chance, as he opened up a broadside attack.

“You’re bringing danger to this place, your own people, and even our families with whatever you’re really doing, which nobody seems to care, know, or talk about.”

I controlled my breathing and my anger before replying.

“We’re both working in intelligence, you in the Defense Intelligence Agency for the Marine Corps, and I in the CIA. Why is it that we can’t find a common ground? We’re both Marines for God’s sake, both fought in Vietnam, and both came home wounded and highly decorated.”

“Except I’m real,” Weh shot back. “I can’t find any record of your supposed CIA career anywhere, and I should be able to. Your decorations from the Nam are merely a buffer to block the exposure of what you really did over there. Even your spotty record since we came back with the Corps is a mystery. Are you still in? Active duty, like your card says, or are you in the reserves, or retired, or what the hell?”

“You’re getting a government contract because of me. You might access my records; what records exist with the Agency, but it’s very likely you won’t remain in the DEA if you do. My decorations from my time in the A Shau have no reality to them, so I agree on that. My conduct was reprehensible to me, but here we are. My medals are up on the wall of my garage along with my son’s swimming medals. I don’t know about yours, and I don’t care. Let me use your phone for a second,” I said, as I finished and stood up, and held out my hand.

Weh shrugged, shook his head, and handed me the phone, which I found a little funny. It was a princess phone, one of the small slim ones, not like my secure line at all. Weh didn’t even rate a secure line in his office. I dialed my own number at the office. Nobody answered, as I expected. After the fifth ring, the line went to the answering machine. I waited for the message before speaking, knowing that all three of my people were sitting in wait inside my office for my return.

“Come to see me,” I instructed, and then handed the phone back to Weh.

“All drama and no substance”, Weh said with a sneer.

A minute later, there was a knock on the wall next to the open doorway to the office we were in.

“Enter,” I said.

Quincy, Kingsley, and Nguyen walked, only Nguyen slinking aside to the wall near to open door.

“What’s this, your idea of a show of force?” Weh asked.

“No, not at all. You are really asking for some truth so that our relationship can be on firmer ground.”

“And how do you expect to do that with this display?”

“Tactile, if necessary,” I responded. “I need your support and your condition in supporting or allowing that is vital to the mission.”

“What mission?” Weh smirked.

“Are you asking me to hurt you?” I said, my voice going flat and low, which should have been a sign of danger to Weh, but I didn’t think it was.

“Hurt me? In what way?”

“Look at these men. Do they look like insurance agents to you? Do they resemble some kind of choir group or Christian fellowship? If you need me to, then I’ll instruct them right here and now. I almost got killed only a few miles from here, near my home, close to my family. Do you remember back to those days and nights? You are replaceable and you are very fragile, and I’m in no mood at all to take up the words of Chief Joseph and ‘fight no more forever.’

“Oh, yeah, you hurt me? No, you going to bring in your knuckledraggers to do that for you?”

“I’m an officer and a team leader, and these are my men. I do what an officer is supposed to do, and they do what combat Marines are supposed to do. The question remains on the table here. Do you need me to re-articulate the situation here and reorganize your physical positioning to better suit the mission? It’s your call right now.”

“I’m not afraid of you or the strange way you talk like that,” Weh replied, but he didn’t keep a quiver from appearing in his speech.

“You said that once before, but things are different now. I’ll leave your office if that makes you feel better, but when I leave, everything in your life is going to change in a way you should be able to comprehend from your background.”

I looked at my three friends, who only stared at Weh, not back at me. Nguyen angled his head back and forth as if examining a side of beef in order to cut it in the right places to get the best steaks. If Weh wasn’t afraid, then he didn’t have the background I’d assumed. I got up from the couch to leave, ready to instruct that Weh be disabled in such a fashion to be left mostly functional but in need of medical and therapeutic attention for some time to come before he might resume what he thought of as normal life for himself again.

“Shit,” Weh breathed out. “I said you were dangerous to all of us, and here you are, proving my point. No, they’re definitely not insurance agents. I don’t know what they are, or what you are for that matter. What do you want?”

I waved my right hand ever so slightly. In seconds, my friends were gone, silently slipping through the door with Kingsley closing it carefully and noiselessly behind him. I sat back down.

“Wraiths,” Weh breathed out. “Where do you find creatures like them?”

“You know what I want,” I replied, “what I have to have.”

“I’ll tell you what I said,” Weh said, without responding to my request.

“I know what you said,” I replied. “Your offices here are bugged. Your cars are bugged and traced. I don’t care what you said, or they said. If you’d had a part in what happened out there, then we’d be having this little talk back out there. Do we understand one another?”

“Alright,” Weh answered.

“Tell me that you don’t want me to hurt you,” I said, staring unblinkingly into his eyes and waiting.

“Alright,” he finally said.

I got out and walked to the door.

“This doesn’t mean we can’t be friends,” I said, over my shoulder as I opened the door and left. I heard nothing from him from behind me as I left and headed back to my own part of the building.

When I got to my office, I went to the phone and called home. Mary answered on the first ring. I started to tell her our plan to head out in the desert and pick up a piece of material, but didn’t get more than a few words in.

“Will you go to the window and look outside?”

I walked to the window, giving me a view of the parking lot, but there was no parking lot. There was only a wall of gray avalanching snow coming down.

“Understood,” I murmured into the receiver. “We’re on our way up. Please see what you can do to accommodate Kingsley and Nguyen, as I don’t think this mess may break up anytime soon.” I hung up without waiting for her reply.

Mary was a trooper and always came up under pressure or a crisis, although the days following that could be pretty tough for her and the rest of us when she was recovering.

The snow came down in blowing sheets from rolling gray clouds that seemed trapped and turning up against the nearly eleven-thousand-foot Sandia escarpment that served as a backdrop up behind my home. Nguyen had fortunately made it in just before the unexpected storm hit, and Kingsley had made it to the office as well without incident or warning. None of the three of us had any expectation of heading west back out into a desert that was fast becoming a blizzard of dense, blowing snow and ice. It didn’t bear discussing as the storm was now in control of just about everything.

“Let’s get to the house,” I said, moving to close down the office. “The Range Rover can handle any of this, the problem being trying to find our way through a blizzard and make it all the way up the side of that mountain. I shut down the office, and we made our way to the Range Rover, the conditions being so bad that all of us had to guard our faces from the blowing ice.

“Fister,” Kingsley said, “what they call a blowing ice storm in Sweden.”

We all clambered in, both Kingsley and Nguyen climbed into the back seat, Kingsley tossing in his backpack and Nguyen his small suitcase.

I started the Rover and gave the engine some gas. The high-performance aluminum V8 roared lustily, but even so was hard to hear over the noise of the hail hitting the car all over. The wipers brushed the mess away, set to high while the rear blade gave me some little visibility behind.

Even after ballooning with Kris Anderson and studying meteorology at Fort Sill, I wasn’t prepared for just how ferocious a high desert storm, especially one trapped up against the side of a high mountain range, could be. Fister sounded like too weak a word.

I eased the Rover out of the parking lot but immediately understood that traction was probably not going to be the major problem. Visibility was. How could it be so dark during daytime hours, when normally the New Mexico sun beat down too mercifully to be out not wearing polarized sunglasses was another surprise.

The Rover eased west on Rio Grande Boulevard as I kept the speed well under twenty miles per hour. Even at that, and the intensity of the snow and ice fall building up on the road, the only way I could proceed forward was by looking to both sides, where bushes and trees grew up to be vaguely visible.

I pulled the rover to what appeared to be the side of the road and stopped.

“In the back,” I said, turning to face both men. A black metal case. Pull it out and come to the front seat. I didn’t specify who should do what, just figuring they’d know. I peered out past Kingsley’s bent-over body to watch what I could see of the road behind us. The real danger, sitting where we were, in a white car in the middle of a blizzard, was being rear-ended by accident. The Rover’s emergency blinkers were on, but I wondered to what effect, as the storm was so overpowering.

“Got it,” Kingsley said, pulling the small but heavy case over the back seat and then climbing awkwardly into the front. He opened the six clasps and then turned on the Rover’s interior light.

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked, pulling what appeared to be a sturdy set of binoculars from the box.

I reached over and gently took the device into both hands. “This is a new Army combined night vision, like the Starlight scope and thermal imaging device, extremely tough. It’s a full-featured night vision set. The housing is billet-machined from aircraft-grade aluminum and designed to handle real-world stuff. During drop testing, the housing survived falls onto bare concrete from heights beyond what lenses and image intensifiers could handle.” I strapped the set to my head, adjusting the lenses carefully over my eyes before hitting the push button on the side and lighting my world up.

“Turn off the interior lights,” I instructed, as I switched the headlights off at the same time. “The big problem might be that nobody can see us now, although we can quite possibly see them. Once the lights were out, I opened the small cage-like guard placed over the thermal switch and clicked it on. My field of view changed again.

The world around me was gray and white, but I could now make out both sides of the Rio Grande and a good distance ahead of us.

“What can you see?” Kingsley asked.

“I can see we’re going to make it home,” I replied, “and quite possibly in one piece.”

“Where did you get this night vision device?” Kingsley asked. “I had no idea that the technology had come so far.”

“It’s actually already outdated, so Tony got me a set as I told him that we’d need these to look for what they think is out here in the desert. I love the technical toys, and they cost then thousand dollars too, which means that someday, if they don’t want them back then I can sell them.”

I drove slowly up Montgomery, only discovering that I had had lights behind me for some time, climbing the mountain that I’d ignored while talking to Nguyen and Kingsley.

“We’ve unbelievably got company behind us, unless I’m wrong,” I said quietly. “I’m turning right on Juan Tabo and heading into the parking lot of the grocery store to come around.”

The Rover took the turn easily, although the snow was fast rising in depth. I wondered how long I could continue if the stuff kept coming down like it was.

“What have we got?” Kingsley asked, staring out the back window at the headlights that had turned with us.

“Hell, I don’t know,” I replied truthfully, getting the Rover turned to face whoever was coming.

“No, I mean, what have we got in here to meet them with?”

I stopped the Range Rover, the wiper blades scraping and thudding lightly on the front windshield and the rectangular back window.

“Under the rug behind the back seat,” I said, as Nguyen sinuously went over the seat into that open space. “There’s a Spas 12 automatic or pump shotgun loaded with three and a half inch slugs.”

I heard Nguyen working the gun out from under the rug and getting himself and it into the back seat again.

‘You don’t have to jack a round into the chamber. There’s already one ready to go and eight more in the tubular magazine.”

I reached down and pulled the drawer I’d made under the driver’s seat and brought out the Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum, hot loaded to 77,000 cupric pounds of chamber pressure, and with the tungsten core penetrators, one I fire the first shotshell and then a hollow point out of the cylinder.

“It’s pretty dark in here, and we need to know what’s going on,” Kingsley said, bringing me out of action and into rational thought.

“Sorry,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the burbling V8 at idle. “The SPAS is a shotgun. Safety’s a push button on the upper left side of the receiver. Nguyen’s got it in his hands. I’ve got this .44 Magnum four-inch, which will deafen us even worse if I fire it in this space than the twelve gauge. The drawer under your seat at the front holds a .22 Magnum derringer. Get it out, but carefully because there’s no safety, and it only has two chambers.”

“Got it,” Kingsley said a few seconds later.

“Can you see movement out there with the Starlight?” Nguyen asked, speaking for the first time since arriving back in Albuquerque and still using the old name for night vision devices as we’d used in the A Shau Valley.

“We’ve got two headlights facing us about twenty meters dead ahead,” I replied.

“We can wait,” Kingsley said, but neither Nguyen nor I answered him, all three of us armed to the teeth and staring through the front windshield as the wipers thumped back and forth like a metronome.

Kingsley’s analysis and conclusion in one word was a good one. We were in the United States, not some war zone, in the middle of a blizzard and ostensibly not under attack…but still. The assassination attempt was ever on my mind. The only person I could think of who might have been tailing us before the storm hit and we hadn’t picked up on was Phil Marlow. Was Phil coming to finish the job? The last thing I wanted to do was lead him home if it was him.

“What now, lieutenant,” I whispered to myself.

The storm was unbelievable, not because it was daytime without much light but because the air was so filled with ice and snow that almost all visibility was lost.

I pushed the button to turn the radio on. A Christmas music disk began to play, and I went back. No snow, no ice, no light, just soggy wet jungle, rain, mud, and the smell of death. I had been one in the valley with the earth, the river, the valley walls themselves, as I’d been one with the water on the Hawaii mission, and now I was one with my present circumstance. I breathed in and out slowly and relaxed down, slowly turning to work the derringer out of Kingsley’s hands and replacing it with my magnum. Kingsley would take the right flank and Nguyen the left flank. Two bases of fire when they went out into the snow. It was my time to move into danger and not run away. I’d brought both the wonderful men to where I was and exposed them. It was time to face the fire. I turned up the volume.

Bing Crosby began to sing his signature Christmas Carol, one of the most successful and listened to songs in the world: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” played out strongly through the interior of the Range Rover as I prepared to give the orders for us to evacuate from the flanks and go into combat.