The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination by R.F. Bright Page A

to his feet. “I can’t even say that word.” He sat back down, head shaking in disgust. “Looks nice in a history book. The Great Withdrawal!”
    MacIan wondered if these outbursts were typical.
    “I see a gap here,” the commander said flatly. “There’s no mention of your posting anywhere until Quantico a few months ago. Take a little vacation, did ya?”
    MacIan braced himself, “No. Sir.”
    “Where were you?”
    MacIan grew even more rigid, cleared his throat, and said pointedly, “I was over there.”
    The too-familiar taste of embarrassment filled the Commander’s mouth. “Oh . . . Ah, I see. Ah, well ah. We need not go into that, now do we?”
    “No, sir,” said MacIan with a reassuring smile.
    The Commander could feel little beads of sweat forming at his hairline as he stared blankly at MacIan’s folder. MacIan was alive, so ‘over there’ meant POW, and no one in their right mind asked about that. Ill feelings about the Great Withdrawal clouded every aspect of American life.
    The Commander perched on the corner of his desk. “Then I have to believe you were sent here for a good reason,” he said with muted curiosity. MacIan didn’t know how to respond. Unfortunately, the Commander mistook MacIan’s silence for agreement. “Then I’m not alone,” he said.
    MacIan tried to explain. “I’m just a pilot. A glorified bus driver.”
    Konopasek tossed him a cynical wink that said, I knew you were going to say that. “Um hum. Why do you think Bedford was spared?”
    “No idea, sir. Just got here.”
    “The NPF chose Bedford for a very strategic reason. There’s something here they need. And I know what that is.”
    “What would that be, sir?”
    The Commander’s eyes flared. “Nothing!”
    MacIan shifted uneasily in his seat.
    “There’s nothing here. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. So they can do whatever they want and no one will see them do it.”
    “Who?”
    “Your bosses. The guys who run the NPF. Admiral Carson and that bunch! The only ones with autonomy. The only ones not bought and paid for. The independent operators. The only fuckin’ men left.”
    MacIan had never considered what ulterior motives his superiors, especially the vaunted Admiral Carson, might have. Maybe he should. He looked to Commander Konopasek with sincere interest.
    Commander Konopasek seemed to sparkle. “And now they send me . . . you.”

    * * *
    M acIan followed the smell of alcohol and chlorine through the lower floor’s gas-chamber green corridors and soon found the morgue. He stepped through its double doors and heard, “Yo! Too Tall. Over here!” A small man with coffee and cream skin and a rim of gray hair warming his ears waved from a large porcelain table, his movements restricted by a huge rubberized apron. The man pulled a latex glove from his right hand and stretched the hand out to MacIan. “Otis,” he said, stepping back and looking MacIan up and down. “You one big stack of pancakes.”
    MacIan released the hand, which floated to the top of Otis’s head and bobbed up and down, gauging MacIan’s height. There was at least a foot between them. “Where you find this guy?” He pointed to the naked body on the porcelain table and pinged MacIan’s metal nameplate with the heel of his scalpel. “Trooper Mac.”
    “In the mountains. Up by Lily. Know where that is?”
    “Lily? North on #53 Lily? Something about a whorehouse, or something. Right?”
    MacIan frowned. He had a very high opinion of Lily. “Two hunters found him about ten miles north of Lily, frozen to a rock.”
    “Ten miles north — there ain’t nothin’ ten miles north of Lily.” He waved the scalpel over the deceased.
    MacIan winced. “You gonna cut him open?”
    Otis spread his arms over the body. “Ain’t no reason to open this poor bastard. He froze to death. I seen it a hundred times. No holes. Nothin’ like that.” Otis pushed his glasses into place on his nose. “Died of natural causes. Cause nothin’