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made those bastards come up three flights of steps to the attic.  Those horny sons of Satan – they went right for her skirt like rabid dogs after fresh kitten.”
    More gunshots.
    Jose prayed frantically.
    “And I’ll be danged if that girl didn’t take out the entire top story of that house and ten of Bashar’s men with her,” Cody said.  “The only thing they found left of her was her skull and her spine lying in the front---”
    The sound of a crash, bright and glassy, caught Cody’s attention.  He jerked on the cuffs, pulling Jose over onto the ground, dragging him back just as shards of glass came crashing down onto the sidewalk in a shower of glitter.  He looked up.  Fred was being dangled above the sidewalk by two men, each one holding onto one of his legs.
    “Serves him right,” Cody said. “He and that Chamber of Commerce wanted cheap labor, asked for a thousand Syrians, and that was that.  I told ‘em, didn’t I?  I warned ‘em.”
    Jose struggled to his feet.  “Let’s just go, man.  I don’t wanna to see this!”
    “Well, what do you know?” Cody said.  He took out his keyring and removed the cuff on Jose’s wrist and then from his own.
    Jose started for the door to the café.  Cody grabbed his arm and swung him around.  Jose looked up.  Bashar’s men were pulling Fred back through the window. 
    “I ain’t never seen that before,” Jose said with relief.
    “So, Fred finds himself caught in the middle of something,” Cody said.  “Bashar must want him alive.”
    “You know Bashar – go ask him,” Jose said.
    Cody grinned sardonically and said, “I couldn’t care less about what he does with Fred.”
    “Let’s just go,” Jose said, “Or they’ll beat the hell out of us, too.”
    “Give it a minute.”
    Cody could hear Bashar’s men tripping down the hollow, wooden steps from the second floor of the Greenspan building.  A second later, there came a crash: someone had just swung the two front doors open against their hinges. Two of Bashar’s men, with their unusual rifles slung over their shoulders, and with Fred between them, stepped out onto the sidewalk, dragging Fred with them.  They loaded him into the back of the Fed Ex van.
    “Looks like Fred got two of those bastards,” Jose said.
    “Three,” Cody said, smiling.  “And that means there are some nice guns up there somewhere.”
    “We’ve got a few minutes before the meat wagon pulls up,” Jose said, his eyes alight with the fire of probable profit.  “You wanna go through the front door or through the basement tunnel?”

{ 5 }
    They waded through the algae-filled water, Tracy Graham and her men moving silently through the river with the water up to their necks.  Tracy had led them to an old waste water drain emptying into Stones River just behind the Golf Course Camp.  Raw sewage, fresh and powerful, made their heads reel.  She’d canoed here as a child.
    “Now, I want you to have an open mind,” General Williams had told her two days earlier at her 0530 briefing.  She’d just stood there at attention and listened, staring straight passed him while trying to keep her tired eyes from rolling into the back of her head.  By 0535, she’d heard enough to shock her into wakefulness.  “I’m sorry, Tracy – but there’s nobody else who can make this work.”
    “And I’m supposed to marry this guy, Zafar Katila?” she’d asked him, while she shook her head.
    “He’s got a wife and kids back in Valdosta, he’s a devout Christian, and he knows his business and ours,” General Williams had told her.  “You’ll have free reign of the town – at least as long as Bashar’s in control.  How long that will be, I don’t know.  But you need to tell Zafar what to look for, get the information he gives you to our guy, and play the part of the---”
    “I know, I know – the faithful wife,” Tracy had said.
    One of Tracy’s men found a tree branch stuck into the bank with a piece