The phone rang twice before it was answered. "Agent Roberts," the man answered with clipped professionalism.

"Do not hang up the phone, Agent Roberts - this is not a prank," he said, aware he probably would.

Stan was sure he heard a chair creak in the background. "Who is this?"

"A friend. If you wish to collect the fugitive known as Ginger Knowles and the stolen prototype named Peacemeal, come to Buena Sierra Estates in Casa Rojas, California right now."

There was a long pause. "Did you say Peacemeal?"

"Don't bother trying to trace this call - this phone has been phreaked." 'Phreaking' was usually the first thing a budding hacker ever managed to do. All you had to do was intercept the radio frequency of a cell phone ( or, back in the olden days, figure out the right 'tones' of a land line telephone ), and then you could make phone calls on someone else's dime. Although land lines could be traceable to a location if not you specifically, phreaking a cell phone would give you that cell phone frequency's point of origin - the frequency, not the phone you were actually on. A beautiful set up. Stan first phreaked a land line - the pay phone outside the 7 - 11 - when he was eleven years old.

"Wait a minute," Roberts said, obviously stalling for time. That was in the F.B.I. handbook. "Why would you give us Peacemeal? What does Knowles have to do with it?"

"Get a move on before she escapes and takes it with her."

There was a pause, and then Roberts said, "Jobson, is this you? Stanl - "

But Stan had hung up, figuring he got the message across.

He shut down the laptop and took it and the phone outside, back to the car. He popped the trunk and pulled out the black leather jacket with the bright yellow accents on the arm and on the hem in the front and back. But it was hot from being in the car trunk all this time, so he didn't put it on, just carried it up front, tossing it in the passenger seat with the laptop, gun, and phone. Maybe exposure to the air conditioner would cool it down to a wearable temperature by the time he reached Santa Monica.

The miles passed in a blur of grey roads and strip mall scenery. At some point, when the throbbing of his head made the sunlight especially brutal, he remembered the speed in his pocket and went for it. He bet he looked like a right pervert digging inside his own pants, but hey, at least the windows were tinted dark.

He dry swallowed the pill, and knew it was starting to work when the ache began to wane, his heart began to race, and he started to see pinpricks of light burst and fade before his eyes. He felt good, his body humming like a live wire, his mind crackling with energy. If the crash wasn't so bad, he could easily see how he could have become addicted to this stuff.

He entered the Santa Monica city limits singing along to "Fascination Street", an old Cure song that reminded him of college. He remembered getting really drunk to that song at a party where he was invited along as a pity case by a girl who felt sorry for the big geek, but liked the fact that he had helped her with her advanced calculus paper. He wondered what happened to her, and if her life had taken a third of the weird turns his had.

He pulled over into the parking lot of a Dairy Queen and retrieved his laptop from the passenger seat, keeping the car running for the air conditioning. "Put on your face, put on your fear, and let's hit opening time down on fascination street," he sang, booting up. Oh man, he was flying. The idea of it made him laugh.

That confirmed he was high.
He searched the net for all the docks - private ones in Santa Monica, through city records. Private or not, they would be listed. Admittedly, only a few people could access those records legally, but fuck, he was a hacker - nothing was off limits to him. He also opened a window to the even more off limits criminal database, so he could cross reference.

There were more private docks than he thought, but he was able to cross several off the list, as the men ( and they were all men ) were on the criminal database - drug dealers most likely. But as he began to go through the remaining names on the list, something nagged at the back of his mind. Santa Monica ... what was it about Santa Monica that sounded familiar?

He had about a half dozen windows open now, and he was typing fast enough that his fingers seemed like a blur even to him - his brain was moving a million miles an hour, and his body was trying its damnedest to catch up.

He called up the online archives of the L.A. Times, and found the article he was looking for, page three, summer of last year : Escort Found Murdered, with the smaller under headline addendum, Dumped Off Santa Monica Pier.
Helga. Where Helga's body was fished out of the water almost a year ago.

They were referring to a public pier, but according to the records he had, the closest privately owned pier was just two and a half miles South of it, owned by a bogus sounding corporation called Heiwa Consolidated.

According to an online translation program, 'heiwa' was the Japanese word for peace. Oh yeah, this was Gabriel all right. He couldn't help but laugh - he'd found the bastard. And, poetically, he had probably returned to the scene of the crime.

He downloaded a map of the most direct route from here to there, and drove off, feeling a sort of pure elation he'd never felt before. It was almost over; all the pieces had nearly fallen into place.

The urge to speed - to catch up to his racing mind - was overwhelming, but he didn't need to be caught by the cops right now. Although it would be ironic.

"Driving faster in my car, falling farther from just what we are," he sang along with the Stone Temple Pilots on the  radio, as he turned down the main street heading for the Heiwa pier. "Smoke a cigarette and lie some more, these conversations kill ..."

He brought the car to a halting stop beside a shut down factory, an old fish processing plant judging by the smell. He shut down his laptop and took out a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, and shoved them in the pocket of his leather jacket. Grabbing up the jacket and Ginger's gun, he got out of the car, shrugged the coat on, and started stalking down the alley, headed towards Gabriel's pier.

He was far enough out that he could peer around the corner of some crumbling brick building - crouching low, so he wasn't at an obvious angle - and glanced around with the binoculars.

Although it was still the afternoon, here the sky was overcast and leaden with the promise of rain,making it as dim as dusk. It seemed appropriate somehow. There was a boat at the end of the pier, a yacht, but very small and almost demure, as if the owner really didn't want anything large or ostentatious enough to draw attention to himself. And that would make sense, would it not? Stan saw tiny black letters spelling out 'Freedom' on the bow.

He searched for armed guards but didn't see anything, making him wonder if this was a set up, or Gabe was really into keeping a low profile, when he saw a pinprick glow of a red flare in the darkness around the dock - a cigarette. Not too stealthy there, but they probably weren't expecting company.

He pocketed the binoculars again, and as soon as he got to his feet, he shoved Ginger's gun in the waistband of his jeans, near his hip. There was no way he was shoving it down the front, near the 'family jewels' - he had no idea how any man ever did that.

He started walking down towards the pier, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, wondering when the Mossad guys would get here, or if they were here already. They wouldn't hit like a hurricane; they were pros, and they would pick their moment.

He was about ten feet from the pier when he heard the click of guns being cocked, and shadows seemed to surge
from the overwhelming darkness cloaking the docks. He smelled bad aftershave, cordite, and tobacco over saline and fish guts as he was surrounded by a half dozen Eurotrash thugs brandishing TEC - 9's and Uzis.

Stan raised his empty hands, and said, "I'm happy to see you guys too, but can you put down the boom sticks? I come in peace."

He didn't recognize any of these guys, but that didn't mean they hadn't been on Gabriel's crew before. Thugs blurred generically into on greasy haired, thick necked organism.

One big guy with slicked back blonde hair and a brown Armani suit that fit him like a sausage casing frisked him violently. "What, you're not gonna buy me dinner first?" Stan asked, amused. Almost instantly the goon found Ginger's gun, and scowled at him like he was being a brat. "It's a bad neighborhood," he pointed out. Just like the thug back at the trailer, he didn't manage to find the gun in his boot. Idiots.

Before anyone could move to pistol whip him again ( they really did like to do that ), he heard the cocking of another gun, and a familiar voice say, "Where the fuck is it, Stanley?"

Standing on the dock, aiming a shiny new Glock at him, was Gabriel - looking like complete shit. He was about thirty pounds heavier than when he last saw him, clean shaven, crew cut hair dyed a florescent blond that wasn't flattering on anyone. He didn't look fat so much as bloated, like a corpse that had finally washed ashore after several weeks in the sea. "Whoa!" Stan replied, chuckling. "Somebody's been hitting the Ho - Ho's big time."

Gabriel continued to glare at him, perpetually unamused. Did the man ever smile - aside from when other people we getting hurt? "You have five seconds to tell me, Stan."

He shrugged and let his hands fall to his sides, never looking away from Gabriel's steel hard grey eyes. "The info dies with me, Gabe. Go ahead and pull the trigger."

Gabriel searched his face, but Stan wasn't bluffing, and he seemed to figure that out. He lowered the gun, looking as sour and mean as a rabid wolf cheated of its prey, and snapped, "Where's Ginger?"

Now he asks. It was nice to see his priorities were in order.  "With Peacemeal. And if you want them both, I suggest we talk."

"He was carrying this," the blond thug said, tossing Gabriel Ginger's gun.

He caught it in one hand and must have recognized it, as his scowl deepened, seemingly collapsing into the folds of his face. He tucked it into his white pants ( not a good choice for a chunky guy ), and motioned with a sharp jerk of his head that Stan should follow him back to the boat. The thugs reluctantly moved aside to let him pass, giving him several varieties of dirty looks. Stan just gave them a cheesy, insincere smile as he walked past them, up onto the dock.

The sea was placid and dark as metal, reflecting the hazy disc of the cloud obscured sun like a low beam headlight seen through a dirty windshield, and he wondered idly how deep the water was here. Deep enough to hide a body for a while? Sink a small ship?

Without looking back, Gabriel ducked inside the cabin of the yacht, and as soon as he stepped on the deck Stan followed, remarkably relaxed considering he was on high grade amphetamines and knew very well that he could die any second - if Gabriel didn't go psycho on him, there was always the chance the Mossad could accidentally take him out, assuming they showed up in time. But he was the man holding the cards, and he felt like he had nothing to lose anymore.

Either way, he was confident Gabriel was going to die here today.

As soon as he ducked down into the yacht's cabin, he felt like he had slipped through a rip in space and entered a dentist's waiting room. A beige on clay color scheme was the motif of the cabin, and it seemed austere for such a small space, with nothing but a sofa and a couple of tables seemingly secured to the floor, and a built in large screen t.v. in the opposite wall. An open archway led to the kitchen/ 'mess' area, and that's where Gabriel was, sitting at a chair facing the rest of the cabin, gun aimed across the table at him. "What's the game here, Stan? I know you won't give me Peacemeal for any price. Think you're gonna kill me?"

Stan smiled weakly at him. "Are you asking me to?"

Gabriel didn't even crack a smile. No sense of humor. "I know you're trying to fuck me, Stan. It won't work."

"Trust me, I have no desire to fuck you. What I want is answers."

Gabriel considered that, while Stan remained standing in the center of the cabin. Time was his to waste. "To what?" He finally asked.

"Why me?"

Gabriel looked uncomprehending, so he continued. "You wanted Phamous - Torvald - but then when he was caught, you went to plan B. Why was I plan B? Out of all the hackers out there, why us? Why me?"

For a moment, he didn't think he would answer. But Gabriel said, without emotion and irony, "Torvald wanted in. He was in it for the cash. Of all the others I considered, you were the one with the most to lose."

Stan wished he was surprised, but he wasn't. "So I was the easiest to manipulate."

"Bingo."

Stan shook his head. "I figured as much." He gestured to the television. "You got a satellite dish?"

"I could have you tortured, Stan. I could cuff a chain to your ankles and drop you overboard. So why aren't you scared?" He asked, and laid his hand ( and gun ) on the table.

"Because we're all gonna die, Gabe. You wanted Peacemeal, you got it."

"Meaning?" No emotion. He probably didn't have any.

Stan gave him a sickly smile, and this situation seemed so anti - climatic he had the urge to laugh. "Meaning I lied. I knocked her out, tied her up, and dumped her out in the desert. I brought Peacemeal with me, and that baby's ready to go."

Gabriel was silent for a long moment, studying Stan like something he'd just scraped off the bottom of his shoe.
"You're lying." Not a shout or a question, just a statement of fact.

"Have your goons look in my car. Carefully."

"You wouldn't kill yourself, Stan," he said, again very matter of factly. "You're not the type."

"Oh, I'm not? Even if my death would guarantee the death of a monster like you?"

Gabriel shook his head, and was starting to look smug. "No. You have too much to live for. You'd find another way."

"What if I couldn't?"

He stood up suddenly, raising the gun once again. "You're stalling for time. Are the Feds on their way? Do you really think they could catch me?"

"No. Don't the Feds still think you're dead?"

Gabriel shrugged, walking around the table, gun still fixed on him. "I don't know. I don't care. Why the stall, Stan?"

He glared at him. "You know everything. You tell me."

Gabriel was not appeased. His lips thinned until they seemed to disappear completely into his fleshy face. "You have sixty seconds to tell me, or I shoot you in the leg."

"What? Don't I at least get a blow job this time? I haven't had a good one in ages."

Gabriel glanced at his watch. "Forty seconds."

Stan calculated the distance between them: Gabriel was smart enough to be out of arm's reach, and he had no doubt he was a quick and accurate shot, but Stan felt completely wired and confident enough in his training that he was sure he could get to Gabriel after a single shot. Where that shot would go was the only question in his mind. He felt like he could move quickly, but he was on speed and knew that was probably distorting his own senses. Still, Gabriel was older, and a beached whale: he had gotten soft, at least physically, while Stan had been busy honing himself into a weapon. As long as there was no gun between them, Stan knew he had the edge.

"There is a bomb about to go off. Not Peacemeal, but hey, I had a specific interest in getting that sucker off the market."

Gabriel shook his head. "Twenty seconds."

"Tell me, why the fat bastard look now? Does that work for you more than Eurotrash swine?"

Gabriel gave him a hard glare for that, and he knew he had probably forced the bastard into shooting him early, when all hell broke loose outside.

It was fiction that guns with silencers made no noise at all; of course they made noise. But it was muffled, the difference between popping a balloon next to your ear and popping it in another room. The sounds of the water lapping against the sides of the boat almost blocked it out, but not quite. Especially when someone standing on the deck over their heads hit it like a fallen bag of doorknobs. And the guys still capable of working their limbs on the dock were starting to shoot back.

Stan knew Gabriel was going to shoot, so he moved fast, dodging to the side just at the moment his ears seemed to register the gun shot, and already aware of his position in relation to his, he blindly spun into a high kick. He felt himself make contact, and heard the gun as it hit the floor, but he didn't stop to look. He just kept moving, taking advantage of surprise. He followed through on the kick by spinning into what his aikido teacher called the 'comfort zone', the few feet people liked to keep away from other people. As soon as he was inside Gabriel's comfort zone, he threw a hard elbow into his puffy face, feeling bone crunch, and then buried his knee in his prodigious gut.

Whatever air Gabriel had in his lungs left him in a whoosh, and he stumbled back, blood spurting from the shattered ruin of his nose, and Stan went for his dropped gun, on the floor beneath the big screen.

"What can I say, Gabe - I lied like a rug," he admitted, aiming the nine millimeter Glock at Gabriel. "You're the only one who's going to die today."

Gabriel straightened up, holding the back of his right hand to his bloody nose. Crimson drops were now splattered on his ill chosen white pants and pale blue shirt, and outside there were panicky shouts among the staccato coughs of bullets, and one exploded through the side of the boat and hit the couch with a quiet little pmmff, like someone had just dropped a throw pillow. Gabriel looked at him with eyes as cold and distant as always, disdainful in spite of the fact that he was looking down the barrel of his own gun. "It's still not going to work, Stan."

"Oh really?" Stan was aware of a burning sensation in his right hip, a feeling of warmth crawling down his leg, and figured Gabriel had shot or at least nicked him, but he didn't bother to look. It didn't matter.

"You're not going to kill me. You don't have it in you."

Stan raised an eyebrow at him, amazed at the arrogance of this cold blooded man. "Oh, so that whole rocket launcher thing was a fluke?"

"That's shooting an object. To look a person in the face and kill them is something else entirely, no matter how much you hate them. You couldn't do it, Stanley." Gabriel turned away, and started back towards the kitchen. Outside, both the shots and the shouts had been rapidly dwindling, and someone had started running across the deck, only to fall with a heavy thud before they reached the door of the cabin. The Mossad contractors were picking off Gabriel's crew like the amateur hour players they were.

"Stop, Gabriel," he shouted, but Gabriel kept walking away. Stan took several steps towards him, and fired the gun. The bullet just went over his shoulder by a few inches, hitting a cabinet in the wall in front of him.

Gabriel did finally stop, back stiffening, but he didn't turn around. "And after I let you and your little brat live."

"For future use," he spat, trying to rein in his anger before it ran away with him.The moment he gave in to emotions was the moment he lost control of this situation. "You think I didn't figure that out? You let me live not only to make your death look good, but just in case you needed my skills again. I had the most to lose, right?"

For a moment they listened to the dying spit of bullets outside, the apocalypse moving from a cacophony to a whisper of wind through dead men's bones. "I knew you were smarter than you looked," Gabriel finally said. "Then again, you'd have to be, wouldn't you?"He started walking forward again.

"I told you to stop," he shouted, as Gabriel continued to ignore him.

Gabriel was opening a drawer, and Stan knew he was going for a weapon. The fucking bastard. Stan aimed and fired, and his right shoulder exploded into a red mist of blood and bone fragments. Gabriel sagged forward against the sink, in shock as much as pain, but after a moment he reached for the drawer again.

Stan knew he was going for a weapon. The stupid son of a bitch - he really didn't think he would shoot to kill. "Stop," he shouted, but Gabriel didn't, so Stan pulled the trigger once more.

Blood seemed to explode all over the kitchen wall as Gabriel jerked and collapsed, first against the sink, then he sunk straight down to the floor. The bullet had punched through his throat, and taken out about half of it. He ended up laying on his back, his head propped up against a low cabinet, staring at him with glazed eyes as blood spewed from the hole where the right side of his neck used to be.

Just like water it poured, spreading over the white vinyl tiled floor, and Stan approached him slowly, feeling slightly disconnected, as if in a dream. Gabriel's lips were moving, and he wasn't sure if he was struggling to speak or just trying to breathe. He could see the muscles twitching, flashes of white bone underneath, and Stan felt his gorge rise in his throat, bile burning his esophagus, but he managed to swallow it back. At least for now. "You were wrong, Gabriel," he told him, his hands feeling cold. "How does that feel?"

The pool of blood was spreading out like a lake now, and Gabriel's lips moved once more, and he took a breath, obviously preparing to speak. And then he stopped; he just stopped. The breath hissed out of him like a leak in a pressure hose, and he sagged, head lolling on the less supported side, the cascade of blood slowing to a trickle down his ruined arm.

He had fantasized about killing this man for what seemed ages, and now that he had, he felt no satisfaction, nothing like he thought he would feel. He just felt numb and vaguely ill.

Stan didn't want to step in the blood, but he had to see what was in that drawer, which was half open. Along with the blood, there was an assortment of kitchen tools, knives, spatulas .. and what looked a metal box about the size and shape of a t.v. remote, although it only had two buttons on it.

A remote detonator. The ship was probably wired to blow, or maybe the entire pier. If he was going to die, he was going to take them all with him, and get rid of the evidence at the same time.

Stan turned, trying not to slip on the gore, and he heard the thunder of boots on the deck over his head, and saw the figures filling the stairway, racing down into the cabin, Uzis and Kalashnikovs held out and ready. He raised his hands over his head, gun held loosely but aimed away from them, and shouted, "Tzedaka!"

The group of seven armed men paused just inside the cabin, and Stan didn't know which of them was the leader. They were all dressed in black, right up to the ski masks pulled over their faces. They looked like stereotypical commandos, but he knew these men had just wiped out whatever goons Gabriel had protecting him - maybe they were typical in wardrobe choice, but they had just taken out some expensive mercenaries in no time flat.

Sure he had a momentary reprieve from getting shot, he quickly said, "He went for a remote detonator after I disarmed him. I had to take him down."

"You knew we were coming?" The closest man on his far left said, his voice betraying a hint of an Israeli accent.

Stan nodded. "The Assistant Director gave me the head's up so I wouldn't pick the wrong side when the shooting started. Can I lower my hands here?"

The man thought about it a moment before giving him an approving nod, but Stan continued to move slowly, so no one got too nervous. "I take it the mission was successful?"

"The action was completed as planned," the leader replied, as blandly as if he was ordering a salad. And none of this did mean anything to him - he was a professional, and this was just a job.

Stan nodded like he understood, and pulled his shirt out of his pants, using it to wipe the gun clean of his prints and hold it as he carried it back towards Gabriel. It was hard to avoid the blood, but he managed to get close enough to press the gun into Gabriel's tepid, dead hand.

"You've been hit," the commando leader noted dispassionately. "Do you require assistance?"

They weren't offering medical attention, just help out of here. He would have laughed if he wasn't about a minute away from throwing up his lunch. He glanced briefly at Gabriel's slack, dead face, his eyes half lidded and cloudy, and Stan thought he was the most pathetic looking monster he had ever seen.

He turned away, and told the commandos, "No, I'm good. It's just a flesh wound." Of course he didn't know if it was or wasn't, but he was just going to assume that until the speed wore off.

He walked past them cautiously, hearing two speak quiet, rapid fire Hebrew, and he knew they might be debating whether to kill him anyways, if only because he was a witness. But he walked slowly up the stairs, braced for a bullet, but it never came. There were two more commandos on the deck, looking out for any further attacks from the water or the pier, but so far it was all eerily quiet. He gave them an acknowledging nod and didn't even glance at the bodies he had to step over, although he thought he recognized the guy with half a head as the thug who frisked him earlier. Even in death, his suit still didn't fit right.

Stan managed to reach the alley leading to his car before he leaned over and barfed up whatever he had in his stomach. Not a lot, but more than he thought, and the bile burned like acid in his throat. He was unable to spit out the taste, so he figured he'd have to stop somewhere and get something strong enough to rinse the vomit out of his mouth.

He got back to his car and sat in it for a long time, doing nothing but staring at the wall in front of him. It was over. It was well and truly over.

So why didn't he feel any better?

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Seattle, Washington - Two days later
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