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55

Headline News
Atlanta, GA, May 6  

April economic figures are mildly encouraging. For the second month in a row, unemployment has held at 24 percent. The May level is expected to be down, as new public works projects get under way. The number of businesses failing decreased again. Economists are generally in agreement that the more susceptible businesses had already failed.
 

Meanwhile, people continue to make adjustments. The number of families living with relatives or friends reached 40 percent, 2 percent higher than in March. The number of rental vacancies was up again. Meanwhile, the federal moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures by lending institutions has kept many other families in their homes.

* * *

This just in. A light plane made an emergency landing this morning near Hartsburg, Ohio. It carried a footlocker loaded with explosives and fitted with a detonator. When the pilot refused to dive into the federal building, his passenger shot him, then shot himself. After radioing authorities, the pilot managed to land on a country road. He has been hospitalized in serious condition. His passenger was pronounced dead on arrival at the Hart County hospital.  

 

The new Mossad had moved its headquarters to another Riverside warehouse. There the Wrath had called in six of its soldiers, including Rafi Glickman. He didn't want to go. The old Mossad had been vital to the morale and survival of Israel. The new was a malignancy, a festering abscess of psychosis. Two members no longer attended. Rafi assumed the Wrath had had them killed.

He'd suggested to his "true" organization that he be pulled out of the Mossad. Turn in the Wrath to the FBI, and the outlying groups would wither. But they wanted him to stay, hopefully to learn who supported it financially, and see them bagged, too. The FBI, they believed, could never get the information out of the Wrath, and it was doubtful they'd get anything out of the Wrath's computer. Probing would cause a system meltdown.

At any rate, there he sat. Reports and assignments were made. Aside from skinheads, most of their victims now were Jews—both refugees and American. Jews, two as distant as London, with whom the Wrath was angry. They were easy targets, and their deaths were intended to intimidate other Jews.

The phone rang. It was Moishe Baran who answered. "Yes?" he said, then listened intently. "Good!" Smiling, he disconnected, and looked at the other two of the Wrath. "The bird has flown," he announced.

The statement jerked Rafi, though he sat as motionless as before. He felt sure it referred to the Ninja Junior. He'd heard nothing more of the cruise missile since the dry run on that soggy winter night, but that needn't mean the Wrath had given up on it. Personnel were often switched at different stages of a project. His greater uncertainty was whether Ngunda Aran was still the target, though that too seemed probable.

The meeting returned to business. After a minute, Rafi stood. "Excuse me," he said. "I need to use the restroom. A touch of the flu."

A potent word, "flu." Yeshua Ben David scowled. He had a phobia of germs, sufficient that the Wrath had ceased to meet not only during the Green Flu, but for two weeks afterward. "Go," said Ben David. "Then go home."

Rafi stood, nodded, and left. He had not even hoped for that last command. What he planned to do would soon be attributed to him. He would go home, throw things into a suitcase, then make his own call to the FBI's informant line, and leave. Leave Riverside; leave California.

He did go first to the restroom, however, stayed there for two or three minutes, flushed, then left. The door guard held him up for a few seconds while checking with Baran on the intercom, then saluted Rafi through.

As he crossed the cindered parking lot, Rafi was struck with a sudden determination. He would not sneak away like a sick cur. After starting his car, he switched on its phone and called up the directory assistance menu. A minute later he dialed the Cote.

The night receptionist there connected him promptly with Security. He reported what he knew, even telling them he was a mole in the New Mossad. Gave his apartment address, and the address from which he was calling, to convince them that this was no prank.

Finished, he replaced the receiver. As he reached for his stick shift, he looked through the windshield and saw Baran running toward him not thirty meters away, an Uzi in his hands. Others followed. Slamming the shift into low and hitting the accelerator, Rafi jerked the car forward, aiming it at Baran. But the elderly car was not a drag racer. Baran jumped aside and fired a burst. The Honda careened into a large forklift, Rafi unconscious with three gunshot wounds, one of them through the brain.

In the absence of quick medical help, that one would have killed him soon enough. But Baran was not satisfied. Pulling open the driver's door, he fired another burst into Rafi's head.

* * *

Every phone in the Cote rang simultaneously. Almost as quickly, the company's security van began quartering the village streets, red light flashing on its roof, bullhorn bellowing instructions. In less than ten minutes everyone was outside, hastily dressed, bundled against the freezing spring night. Most staff families had cars. Those who didn't, climbed in with others. Millennium vans and buses loaded guests, there for processes or training. A truck cruised to pick up possible stragglers. In less than twenty minutes, everyone except certain Security personnel sat or stood waiting half a mile north of the Cote. The fire truck and ambulance kept their motors idling.

A little more than forty minutes after the warning call, they saw the incoming missile, then the blast, the brief fireball, followed quickly by the roar. And stared.

* * *

The Wrath's debugged guidance program, coded to the planetary matrix, had worked perfectly. The missile had gone through Ngunda's roof and blown the house apart. The explosion blew out hundreds of windows in the Cote, and glaziers were promptly contacted in Pueblo, Walsenburg, Trinidad, even Colorado Springs, to replace them. Ngunda was installed in an unoccupied staff cottage.

* * *

Before leaving the Cote, Art Knowles had burped the recording of Rafi Glickman's message to the Riverside office of the FBI. Agents reached Rafi's apartment before the New Mossad got there, and their search came up with the solo debriefs Rafi had recorded from time to time as backups.

Ben David was found two days later, dead of a coronary thrombosis. One of the female soldiers betrayed Moishe Baran, who would be killed in a shootout with federal marshals. The least of the Wrath, Chaim Plotkin, was wounded in the same shoot-out, and shortly afterward told all he knew. It was enough.

* * *

Within a week, the National Security Agency had provided the Mid-American and West Coast surveillance satellites with new programs. Among other things, they would specifically report intrusions onto the Ranch. The agency's director wondered who had the necessary influence with the White House.

* * *

Two days after the missile strike, the staff was mustered in the cold and drafty auditorium, its large windows not yet replaced. There Lor Lu assured them that further missile dangers were essentially nonexistent. They took his word for it. He repeated his reassurance in the school auditorium, and the kids cheered. The guests were reassured by Ngunda himself. Art Knowles, who was paid to "worry," knew the steps the government had taken, and even he felt assured. In his business you didn't think in terms of absolute safety; there was no such thing. But this felt as safe as he could hope for.

 

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Framed