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us all down with no questions and no mercy. Your man did right. If we let ‘em live they would have killed other people along the road. That’s a fact.”
     
    Later I was to realize that was about a month’s work of talking out of Ed.
     
    I remember how quiet we all were that whole night around the campfire.
     
    I didn’t blame Mick. He knows that now. Back then I was in such shock I couldn’t talk to him. I was shocked because I had never seen a violent death before. I had thought my whole world had been turned upside down by the flash/bangs.
     
    No, this is when it really started to sink in.

Chapter Five

     
     
     
    It was mid-summer and Manny felt the days were slipping past him, he was running out of time. He could smell his own stink as he stood taking a break in the shade. Sweat had soaked not only his shirt tight to him, but also his tan pants. He felt like his clothes were trying to strangle him. His lank curly hair was growing out long and dark. It was also soaked and smashed against his skull and cheeks. His body was as long and lank as his hair. He looked he was about to tip the scale into starving prison camp inmate.
     
    Just a little more to go and it would be deep enough.
     
    This was the eighth cache he had created. Each one about 4 feet down and 5 feet long. In them all were weapons of all kinds, a little gold, a little dried food and a pair of boots his own size. The Big Shit was going to hit the fan soon. If they could pull it off. He wasn’t part of them anymore, but he had known more of the language than they thought. Well, he could understand it, not speak it.
     
    Manny had spent 6 months that spring in Pakistan. He had been sent over, all expenses paid by Brambo, the mid-sized drug lord in eastern Columbia. Brambo wanted to be a big drug lord. He figured that guards were great, but he wanted a few well-trained guys who would know how to make bombs, know how the Taliban kept ahead of all the forces hunting them; and could share that information with him. Brambo sent over 4 young boys. Manny was 16, the other 3 were 15. So he had become the defacto leader of the training troops.
     
    Brambo had paid a chain people very well to get the 4 boys over there and an interpreter to walk along with them everywhere. They learned enough. Supplies, weapons, bombs and how to code communications. How to find abandoned buildings, set up perimeters. But it was what Manny overheard that at first frightened him, and then feed the seed of his vision for grand power.
     
    The Taliban was planning a huge attack on Germany, France, Greece, Spain, the U.S. and Canada. Included would be bombs, biological warfare; all set to go at the same time all around the world. Every single person who had any connection to them was going to be given instructions to do something on that day. It was going to happen in late summer.
     
    When Manny got back to Columbia, he did not tell Brambo any of this. Just strutted around with the other 3 boys and showed off what they had learned. But whenever he could get time away, Manny had started to steal weapons and the other things he figured he would need to build his own army. It was easy since he was basically a general or whatever for Brambo. If those rag-heads could pull off crippling the stinky U.S. then he was going to be ready to take Brambo out and take over here. He could do it right now, but Manny knew if he did that, then the other drug lords would figure he was not solid enough in his power and come right away and wage war on him. If he waited until the whole world was off balance, he would have time to off Brambo, get firm in his command over the little army right here and then use all of his training to move out and take over the entire country.
     
    He would have marble floors, he would have large black cars, he would have beautiful girls following him around and too afraid of him to reject him when he forced them to have sex with him. He was going to go after the tanks