Chapter 42: Answers...

Five minutes... An eternity to someone who was waiting to act. It seemed even longer when someone as action-oriented as Jamie kept looking at her watch, waiting for the sounds of the train she had to board. Her hands were sweating profusely as she maintained a firm grip on the only handhold the bridge’s side provided, her feet, or rather her toes, perched on a ledge mere inches deep.
Her mind turned to her next moves and how important the timing needed to be on each step, and how there could be no mistakes. There would, of course, be unexpected circumstances, but she had to react to them the right way every time, or it would all be over. It was this fear above all that kept her hands gripping the rough stone to stay upright.
A horn sounded in the distance and Jamie chanced a glance over her shoulder at the signal lights, watching the light for her train turn green. It was time. Brakes hissed as the train slowed down to enter the yard and change sidings, the vibration of it noticeable even through the thick stone of the bridge. 
Jamie looked down at the rails and watched the locomotive rush by beneath her, mere feet away as the pantograph sparked across the lines it was changing over. She counted the cars in a whispered voice and used it to work herself up to the task- a bit of self-encouragement that lasted up until the moment came and she pushed off of the bridge, spinning ninety degrees and slipping between the high-voltage lines that ran above the track. For a moment she thought she could feel the aura or E-M field of the three-thousand volts as she slipped past, but she landed on top of the boxcar unscathed and uncooked, grasping the spars in the roof to keep from sliding off. There was an access hatch on the corner, unlocked even, and she crawled to it, ever mindful of the wires above, and slipped inside.
It was the car she wanted, just as planned. Inside were a dozen large machines, all covered with tarps, and which Jamie knew were only shells for the contraband stored inside them. She flipped on her light and crawled under a tarp, pulling open an inspection plate of the machine and reaching inside. Her hand found something soft and pulled it out, having a pretty good of idea of what the plastic bag of hard, crystal-like rocks was.
She put the bag back and closed the cover, and then moved on to the next machine. There was a distinct smell under the tarp that she recognized as cosmoline, the source being multiple crates of Soviet era weapons that were housed in the bottom end of the machine. 
The next one held various electronics, all stolen of course, and mostly restricted on where they are supposed to be exported. GPS jammers, American night-vision units, the list went on. 
And so it went as she quickly gathered an inventory of the items, until the last shipment made her pause. Then entire crate was filled with pirate-production music CDs. 
“Aerosmith, Guns N Roses, The Who, The Beatles, Ted Nugent, The ‘Stones...” And that was just a glance. The crate was worth a lot of money.
“Drugs, guns, rock and roll... Hell, they’re more American than I am.” She could only wonder why they were moving what they were, but the train was slowing to drop off the car she was in and she had to get into the place she needed to hide.
The part of the yard the train was passing through was poorly lit and with the trees and noise wall as a dark backdrop, Jamie was nearly invisible as she climbed out of the roof hatch and dropped to the ground, the sound of the brakes and couplers covering her landing from the ears of the yardman and conductor on the other side. The train came to a stop, allowing her to sneak under the car and fasten herself to the bottom with a clip on her belt, trusting in the darkness to keep her hidden safely.
The yardman decoupled the car and motioned for a yard locomotive to move up and push it into its spur, the one leading inside the warehouse. The doors were opened and the car moved slowly into the recessed dock, the concrete level with the freight door of the boxcar and high enough that Jamie was hidden from view. There were numerous voices, however, and leaning her head back allowed her to make out the butt of a rifle that was rested on the concrete floor. Several pairs of black boots represented the guards that were overseeing the delivery’s security.
The car finally came to a stop in the bay and the yard loco exited, the doors to the warehouse closed and secured before the boxcar was opened. Jamie could feel the forklift rolling into the car to offload the machines, the wood slats flexing under the weight and shaking dust from the cracks right onto her face. The particles stung her eyes and tickled her nose, and she had to start into a breathing cadence to suppress the impending sneeze. The guards were right above her on the dock and the forklift was at the far end of the floor, making for just enough quiet for any sneeze to heard and give her away.
The wait was excruciating, but she held on until the lift returned and then sneezed as it bumped loudly over the metal dock plate, effectively masked by the noise.
As time passed, Jamie realized how Michael had developed such patience. She could only hold and wait until she had an opening to move, and suffer until that moment.

“ ‘There is no plan that survives contact with the enemy’. If there is one thing you keep from my pearls of wisdom, Michael, it is that.”
Michael replayed Tanya’s words in his head; sobering, if somewhat forgotten, words from experience to neophyte. 
“I thought that was Helmuth von Moltke.”
The moment of levity had broken up a tense period in his training in Prague. Though seemingly angry at the time, Tanya had understood the need for a less-strict atmosphere between them and things had quickly become less tense in training.
It was this relaxed atmosphere that gave him the basis for Jamie’s training since that revelation almost six months earlier on the range. It was forgotten somehow in his desire to teach her, but had ultimately made a difference.
“Thank you, Tanya...” His whispered words broke the monotony of silence as he waited in the shadows of an alley, his trench coat concealing a suppressed M-4 carbine that was slung from his neck. A check of his watch coincided with the sound of the arriving train, and both showed him that the countdown had started. Jamie was already in motion, working her way to her target, ready to improvise on a moment’s notice. 
Amazingly, Michael was not worried about her. His mind was firmly locked on his own role and how he was going to try to pull it off. It was daunting, having to draw the attention of the larger part of the guards, including the elites that Amherst had surrounding him. It was crazy, and suicidal. But even as he thought about it, a part of Michael’s mind relished the challenge and absolute risk the move represented. 
With all risk, however, there is the possibility of failure, and Michael did not want to be hampered by the possibility of regrets. To that end, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number, his thumb pausing over the send key as he debated whether to do it or not. It really did come down to his fear of regret and the phone was ringing before he realized his thumb had moved.
“’Allo?”
“It’s me, Emmy. Are you safe?”
“Yes, Michael. We’re almost ready for our next move to secure things.”
“That’s good to hear. Listen...” He paused, fighting for the right way to say it. “I’ve caught up with him and it’s going to happen tonight. I wanted you to know, just in case.”
A long pause came from the other end of the line, and he was about to check his phone to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped when she finally found the words. “Don’t die, Michael. I don’t think I could take mourning for you as well.”
He thought he heard something in her words, perhaps a bit more than friendly concern. Then again, they had never had anything more than a well oiled work relationship between them. “Emmy, I’ll buy you dinner when I’m finished here.”
“I’ll hold you to that. Be careful.”
“Ciao.” 
Emmy knew him well enough to keep things short and to the point, so as not to spoil his focus any more than necessary. That focus made him check his watch again only to find that more time had passed than he had thought, and set the plan in motion at last. His trench coat was shrugged off and the rifle slipped up into line, the Aimpoint CompM4S sight centering on the guard furthest away from the gate.
The muted pop of the sub-sonic round firing was loud in the narrow confines of the alleyway, but the lack of flash bouncing off of the walls allowed Michael to engage the second guard before he had a chance to turn around to investigate the thump of his colleague hitting the ground. The guard jerked backwards out of the light from the overhead lamp, making Michael’s attack all but impossible to be noticed by innocents passing by. 
He quickly slipped his coat back on and stepped out onto the sidewalk, moving up the hill a dozen meters before crossing the street and making his way back to the gate. The few passersby had not noticed anything amiss and Michael hardly paused as he pulled the gate open and passed through, slipping a chain and padlock on it after he closed it. It was a four-meter security fence, topped with razor wire, and short of cutting the lock and chain; no one was passing through it that night without his key... And they’d have to take it from his cold, dead hands.
The drive went downhill, almost to the level of the rail yard, and turned a little to the right, the trees obscuring him from the sight of the guards patrolling the outside of the warehouse. Michael paused in a shadow to toss off his coat and slip his earpiece in, keying his radio. 
“Two.”
The single word was unintelligible to outsiders even if they had a device to unscramble the radios’ signal. Their initial moves were choreographed and numbered in stages that they would use as code phrases. Everything else was ad-lib and trusting in each other’s moves and understanding of tactics.
A double-click was the only response from Jamie’s radio, indicating that she was ready and was standing by. Michael crept forward in the shadows, hunched over behind his sights and treading silently towards the vehicles parked in front of the building, moving carefully and only when the guards were looking away. In only a few minutes he was alongside a box truck, no more than thirty feet from the guards and checking out his surroundings with a practiced eye. Stealth was desired but not entirely necessary. In fact, he was tempted to make a little noise to get the ball rolling and allow Jamie to work her magic.
Tempting, but not tactically sound. It was his eagerness to end this war of fate that was trying desperately to make him screw up. Any errors would be fatal to Jamie and his self, and could not be allowed due to simple lack of judgment. To help with that he did as he had taught her, taking a silent deep breath and exhaling it slowly as he counted in his head, relaxing slightly as the fog in his brain lifted and let his senses go back to working together.
The guards had turned and moved closer to the truck, chatting calmly about what sounded like sports. They had unknowingly entered a dangerous zone, Michael reflected. As he gently slung his rifle and slipped his knife from his belt, the lessons hammered into him from day one at The Farm came back to him, making him smile softly. 
Twenty-one feet... One and-a-half seconds. An assailant armed with an edged weapon can cover twenty-one feet in the time it takes an officer to identify them, draw down, and place two rounds to the chest. Thus it was important to keep the draw time down below the average of one-point-five. Michael at one time had it down to less than a second, but that was on the receiving end and knowing the threat direction.
The men before him had their guns slung loosely across their chests, each with a hand on the grip, ready to fire in maybe two seconds at most. Their more ready state was offset by the element of surprise. It was this that gave Michael hope for a silent attack. He flipped the knife around and held it blade-down, securing the end of the handle under his thumb in anticipation for the moves he planned on unleashing. 
The guards had turned and took two steps back towards the other end of the dock, allowing Michael to slip around the end of the truck and into the light, slowly at first, but quickly dashing as hard as he could the twenty feet, tossing all efforts at stealth to the wind. He counted his steps, measuring them against his running stride and figuring he had made the average strike time. 
The knife swung upwards slicing the left-most guard across is right rotator cuff and deltoid muscles, making his gun arm nearly useless, and stopping next to his head before swinging down point first into the chest of the right guard, who had begun to turn in response to the movement between them. 
Michael’s left hand balled into a fist and slammed the left guard in the ear in the same motion, knocking him off balance and stunning while his right hand pulled the knife out of the other guard’s chest and stabbed the blade sideways between his ribs twice more, finally pushing down on the handle to lever the embedded tip upwards inside the chest cavity, carving a huge swath of destruction through the lung and pulmonary artery, ensuring the man’s eventual death. Michael never paused, however, grabbing the man by the throat and pulling his feet from under him, knocking him unconscious on the pavement with a hard drop.
The other man was still screaming from the pain of his slashed shoulder and the ringing in his ear, so he barely had time to react as Michael swung the freed knife around and drove it into his chest with both hands, stabbing a massive wound in his right lung and cutting the Superior Vena cava. His scream was silenced by a flick of the knife across his throat, the burbling gush of air from the lung being the last sound heard before the silence of the night took over once again. 
Less than ten seconds... Two lives had been shuffled from the mortal coil in less time than it took to pour his coffee, and somewhere in the back of his mind Michael Christiansen was proud of that fact. It was the culmination of everything he had trained physically and mentally for, and there was simply no other way to receive it at that moment. 
The night was still young, however, and there would be more bodies soon enough.
“Three,” he said into his radio, getting the two clicks in response.

It was going to be a long night.

Jamie could barely hear the singular scream from outside the warehouse, cut off after only a few seconds by what was undoubtedly Michael’s knife. There was no sign from the guards that they had heard what she had, and she could only reason that it was because of her better ears and total focus on the many sounds she could discern. 
Her closed eyes clamped tighter as she strained to hear the guards that had split up and begun walking their rounds, her mind working hard to track the two sounds on each side of her head as they became quieter. A door opened and one pair of boots disappeared entirely, just as the other pair turned with a distinct swishing sound of rubber on gritty concrete, and began walking back towards the boxcar. 
“Three.”
Michael’s voice indicated the next phase. Things were going to get exciting.
The forklift was returning, arriving just as the guard stepped to the ledge, tossing a cigarette to the floor beside Jamie. She pulled up and unclipped herself from the car, dropping into the shadows as the lift started to move into the car. The guard was facing away and Jamie poked her head up to scout the surroundings, seeing no one else. The lift shifted inside the car, dragging a pallet with a screeching sound, giving Jamie a chance to make her move. 
Her hands clamped onto the man’s ankles and jerked his legs from under him, laying him flat on his face onto the concrete. Before he could react, Jamie’s knife was buried in the back of his skull, severing his spine and killing him almost instantly. By the time the forklift was back at the door, the guard was dragged into the relative invisibility of the undercarriage, tucked away for some cop to find the next morning, well after it was all over.
The forklift left for the other end of the warehouse and Jamie slipped onto the dock, crossing to the wall and following it down the aisle to the door that the other guard had gone into, labeled personale. She listened through it for a long several seconds before she ducked back against the wall, preparing to ambush the person she had heard on the other side. 
The door opened inward, but she had noticed the opening direction and had resolved her attack accordingly, striking the guard as he stepped out, still drying his hands with a paper towel, effectively disarmed. Her palm-strike caught his head squarely on the side and smashed it into the steel doorframe, cracking his skull and knocking him out. Jamie’s other arm caught the falling body and dragged him inside the door again, a scant moment before the forklift turned around.
There were signs in the break room that they were dealing with a considerable number of people. Coats and packs were piled against the lockers and in the corners of the room. A large number of cigarette and cigar butts were in the ashtrays and the vending machine was empty of all but the diet soda. A quick dig through the contents of a few packs showed them to belong to paramilitary types. Everything was neat and orderly, but clustered in a way so as to take up the least amount of space so they could cram more in.
“Thirty plus... We’re a little over our heads.” 
Michael’s plan was for twenty or so guards.
“I’m inside.”
“Copy that. I read thirty plus, minus two.”
There was a noticeable hesitation, a sign that he was actually reconsidering. After a few moments, he came back, his voice determined.
“We’re still go. Buy us some insurance.”
“I copy. I’m going to look around some.”
“Just don’t forget why we’re here.”
A chill from the air conditioner breezed across her skin and the smell of the cigarettes flashed her mind back to Paris, her skin feeling the knife once again.
“That’s not likely.”
“Then continue with three. Out.”
Jamie dug a few bottles of cleaner from under the sink. The typical gallon of bleach was there, as was a large bottle of lemon-scented ammonia. A quick search located several medium plastic storage tubs with lids. Moving fast, Jamie filled three of the tubs with ammonia and poked holes in the lids before closing them. Two tubs of bleach were left sealed and all were wrapped in a heavy plastic bag and closed tightly before being placed in the microwave. A quick fiddling with the timer made sure things would happen a little later and a press of the start button sealed the deal. 
Jamie locked the body inside the restroom, rigging a grenade she found in a bag to go off when the door was forced. The gas trap in the microwave was going to be interesting to watch, but she had to be elsewhere. Explosions and gaseous clouds were but amusements for the shallow minded. The real business was going to be happening elsewhere in the building and she had to be there before Michael lit things off.
She followed the back stairway up into the office section, creeping quietly on the aging carpet, her suppressed pistol in her right hand, the knife in her left. Two men were in a security office, their attention on the television to the right of the main monitors, and a soccer game distracting them from the many camera images. Their laziness had allowed her to slip past three cameras and proved that Fate was on her side tonight. Two shots from the Walther ensured they would continue helping her. As the bodies slowly slumped forward, Jamie turned off the cameras and ripped the controller’s wires out, then disabled the remaining hardware with carefully places shots. A quick magazine change was her last act before continuing down the hall, her mind focusing on the sounds and listening for any threat. 
A right turn into another hall brought her face to face with a man in urban camouflage, his submachine gun slung loosely at his side. His surprise at the intruder was short lived, though, as Jamie slammed her right fist into his stomach, the powerful blow doubling him over. Her left hand grabbed the SMG and twisted the sling, jerking it hard and crushing the man’s throat as her right hand slid up the leads and tightened the cinching point against flesh. 
His hands came up to force her hands to loosen, but Jamie’s strength was more than he could hope to fight against. Her arm was locked tight, a position the guard’s strongest hits against her elbow could not change, until the focus of his eyes on hers drifted away, the last choking gasps coming as his body sagged to the floor. 
Jamie held the cinch for a full minute after she felt the life leave the body. Her wrist flicked, unwrapping the sling from the body, and she checked the weapon to make sure it was ready. She was probably going to need it soon. It was only a matter of time before someone stumbled on a corpse and started following them to find her.

Michael found the door Jamie had unlocked in her wanderings, slipping inside the office section and locking it again. His task was simple: to find Amherst and either kill him or drive him into Jamie’s sights. He had a feeling, though, that something was amiss. It was just a feeling, but given the back and forth they’d had in trying to catch each other, it might have simply been his own expectations frustrating him. Things had been going wrong, so it must be true this time.
“Stupid thinking... Deal with what comes.”
The whispered thought helped calm him, letting his mind focus on his field-craft, stepping silently and checking his corners as he made his way to the end of the building. The blueprints said the next area was a two level storage area, constructed heavier than one would expect a run-of-the-mill company to do. It reminded him of something he’d seen before, the realization hitting him only after he had stepped through the door and noticed the kinds of crates stashed within in their sorted stacks.
Ammunition. Lots of it, and plenty of guns to fire them. 
The blueprints had shown walls similar to the design of storage bunkers, and given the number of stacks, Amherst was in town to bring off a major sale or purchase of weapons. A careful dash between stack shadows brought him next to a stack of Semtex crates, all with similar lot numbers to those the agency had been coming across. The one next to it was the more temperamental high explosives: TNT and ANNM in sealed containers.
Michael wasn’t certain why they had ammonium nitrate/nitro-methane mixed and in sealed containers, but he knew it wasn’t the smartest idea. It was touchy stuff, much more so than ANFO, and only a hard enough impact or concussion was needed to set it off. Live, unstable explosives in a storage area full of ammunition were a recipe for disaster.
He moved in the shadows of the wall to another stack, stopping there to wait. Michael’s mind raced to process all of the sounds he was hearing, his breath catching as the sound of Amherst’s voice approached the doorway on the second level above and across from him. The man was talking with a high-ranking lackey; authoritative but relaxed, as if there wasn’t a care in the world aside from business. 
Of course not, Michael thought. There’s no way two people could slice their way inside his hideout and hunt him down. Jamie was on her way and he already had eyes on target. Michael listened to the conversation echo across the distance as his hands slowly started to bring his rifle up, moving less than an inch per second in an effort to avoid spooking the game. He was nearly invisible in the shadows, but any sudden movement could spoil it.
“No, I want everything ready when the buyer gets here. We’ll turn the facility over to him, pull out, and then burn it down. Everything gets closed out tonight, and that includes the loose ends. Southeast Asia sounds like a fine place to set up a new shop.”
The sights were almost up into firing line, but Amherst’s words froze Michael solid. The man was really insane. He was going to blow the whole place up after taking the money. It was almost cartoonish in design. 
Amherst started to walk back through the doorway, spoiling Michael’s chance to kill him quickly, but then stopped, freezing in his tracks as if he could feel the cold hand of death staring at him through the scope. He turned slowly and peered into the darkness beyond the railing, his eyes scanning the depths in order to find what his instincts were telling him were there. The only thing Michael could do was freeze in place, scarcely breathing as the eyes passed over him three times, pausing for a moment to look straight at him before continuing to the next patch of space. 
Amherst shook off the feeling and passed back out of sight, barking orders at someone, and Michael started breathing again. Amherst was expecting a buyer, which meant that Michael’s plan had them inside too early. Things were about to go very bad again.
He tapped six times on the radio transmitter, the danger signal that would tell Jamie to stop everything and begin working on a way out... Only there was no response.  She was supposed to key back three times or otherwise acknowledge her receiving it.
“Jamie?”
It was time to start thinking about leaving, and chances were pretty good that he would bump into her on the way. He crossed between stacks again, crouching for a full minute in the shadow of the high explosives. There was only one stack between him and the door now and he took two steps out into the gap.
“MICHAEL!!”
Jamie was there in the doorway, her eyes locked on something above and behind him, her lips twisted between panic and anger. She dove behind the stack he was heading for just as the lights came up to chase the safety of the shadows away in an instant. He was caught with his pants down, safety two feet behind and twenty feet ahead of him, both of which might as well have been a mile.
“Michael Christiansen... You never learn, do you?”
Michael slowly turned to see what Jamie’s owl-like eyes had seen from the doorway; the bulk of Ian Amherst’s guards on the catwalks and warehouse floor, all aiming weapons at him. Amherst himself was smirking from the catwalk by the door he had stepped into.
“Finally...We meet face to face. I can’t say that I’m sorry we’re at this point. Your friend there ruined my surprise but I can hardly be upset about that. I have you where I want you and that’s that.”
Michael eyed the guns on him, knowing they were accurate enough to hit him at that range, and wondering why Amherst was going to wait until he was at the door before firing. The answer was at his feet in the crates of explosives that were primed and ready to go off at a thump’s notice. He could now afford to play things up a bit.
“You have me here, Ian. You don’t have me where you want me, otherwise your men would have fired by now.” He caught a questioning look from Jamie through the corner of his eye and nodded to the crates beside him in order to help her along. “It’s pretty risky leaving stuff like this lying around.”
“Yes, well I wasn’t expecting an extra complication.”
“I’m everywhere, Ian. I’m going to hunt you until your dying breath.” He tensed to move out of the open at the first sign of an opening.
“That’ll be hard to do if you’re dead before me.”
Jamie popped her arms up and sprayed a burst from her submachine gun at Amherst, a moment Michael used to duck back behind the crates of explosives. It was enough, and Michael watched helplessly as several guns sprayed the relatively harmless crates of guns that she was hiding behind. Amherst was quick to stop the shooting before a stray round ricocheted and hit the explosives.
“I’m not dead yet! And you’re a fool if you think I’m going to make it easy for you.”
A lackey spoke with Amherst and from between the crates Michael could see a flash of anger in his eyes, just before the controlled personality took over again.
“It seems you’ve been working faster and harder than I anticipated. My client just called to cancel our meeting, stating that the locked gate and dead guards were a deal-breaker.” There was an audible sigh from the catwalk; enough of one that Michael chanced popping his head around the corner of the crate. “You’ve cost me a considerable amount of money on this one, Christiansen.”
“I’m sure your buyer will thank me properly once I tell them how you planned to butcher them with a convenient fire and explosion.” Michael pointed to the door that Jamie had come in, indicating that she should cover it. His mind had already thought ahead of Amherst to a point and was quickly trying to think up an escape plan. 
Jamie leaned out a bit and spotted two gunmen in the hallway, armed and ready to cut them in half with machine gun fire if they tried to get out that way. Things had once again gone very awry, and it was only the calm and collected aura that Michael was projecting that kept her from making a panicky move. Michael had to have a way out, right?
Michael couldn’t think of anything. He tracked the few possibilities in his head and played them out to their expected conclusions only to find that there really wasn’t any way to survive it. It couldn’t be, though. His instincts were telling him there was a way out. Then again, maybe it was just his natural expectation after all of the years of luck he’d had. Maybe his luck had finally run out.
“I’ll be honest, Ian... I think you got me on this one. Like an idiot, I walked right into it. Hiding next to high explosives... What was I thinking?” Michael slipped a hand into his pocket, slipping a concussion grenade from it and pulling the pin. A glance at Jamie found her watching him with wide eyes, not believing what she was hearing or seeing. He could only shrug in defeat, sealing his plan with a wink at her. They were going to end Amherst the hard way. 
“You sound ready to surrender to your fate. That’s not very characteristic of you.”
“Maybe it sounds that way...” Michael stood and stepped into view, the grenade gently clenched in his right hand, right next to the explosives. “But though it’s a bit of a shock to the system, I can accept my fate so long as I make sure you die with me.”
That drew a frown from the man, and a few of the rifles wavered, showing just how unhappy the idea of being blown to pieces was.
“But before we die, I want to know why you’re as fucked up as you are. What made a solid member of the Queen’s Special Air Service suddenly lose his marbles and start cutting up children for fun and profit? What trick of Fate warped your mind?”
The question seemed to drive Amherst into a seething rage, his fists slamming down onto the railing of the catwalk, rattling the joints all along the structure.
“It wasn’t Fate that mad me this way: It was you.”
“Me?” Michael wasn’t prepared for that. Up until the whole thing had started, he had never seen Amherst.
“Yes, you and the rest of you fucking Americans. Your dumb-ass President chose to invade Saddam’s personal sandbox and what do you get? A protracted war that you have to drag your NATO allies into. So I suddenly find myself in a hellhole of heat and sand, running escort for some UN inspectors. Everything is going fine up until some stupid American pilot noses his thunderbolt over and strafes our convoy. My men and the inspectors are dead around me, and I’m bleeding from leg and chest wounds... and all I hear is the laughter of the pilot over the radio, thinking he had killed some rag heads.” 
Michael thought about the file he had read on Amherst. The details of the method of injury had been left out but the results weren’t. ‘Numerous wounds to the chest, legs, and groin’ from the shrapnel of the vehicle in front of his. It didn’t take much to figure the rest out.
“You’re pissed off because you got your balls shot off!” Michael’s voice was incredulous, not so much at the injury, but that it could cause such a change in the man before him. 
“And I didn’t even get the pleasure of seeing the pilot punished for his error. That kind of thing drives a man slowly insane, so I took up a hobby to try to keep my sanity. Oh, how little people understand my art.”
Michael looked at Jamie and saw a look that spoke volumes of what she thought.  A petty man with grievances decides to take things out on the weakest among us. If he didn’t have such a dangerous enthusiasm for it, it might be worth pitying him. 
“Well... I’m not much for politics, so I just have to say that I think you’re off the deep end. Killing people the way you do just because you’re a casualty of a war? I can’t really say that I don’t sympathize with the injury, but you went way the hell into left field after that.” It wasn’t the answer Michael was expecting, but it was something. It also said that the man was truly a lost cause. 
“That’s your opinion, Christiansen. Others find my art worthy of a god.”
There was a sound from the hallway behind him, but Michael ignored it, diving deep for the courage he needed to end this insane game of cat and mouse.
“You’re not a god. You’re not even a man anymore. You’re just a plague among many in humanity, and I’m your cure. God’s going to owe me some Brownie points for this one... So here we go.”
Michael’s hand tilted and relaxed, the spoon of the grenade flipping out and pushing it from his palm into the air, falling in slow motion as everyone’s breath caught in their throat.
Jamie stared at him, her mind screaming for her to do something, her soul accepting her fate, and her body frozen stiff in shock, entirely unable to move. Worst of all, Michael was smiling defiantly; his eyes locked onto Ian Amherst’s and proclaiming the final victory in the war that had been raging since that seemingly endless night in Paris.
The gunmen arrayed along the catwalks flinched, waiting for death to claim them, and perhaps even feeling foolish as to having allowed someone as insane as Amherst to lead them to this point. The faces froze in numerous different looks as final thoughts flashed through their heads.

Michael’s eyes observed it all, and that was why he was smiling. He was leading a crowd of fools into Hell by wielding the power of life and death over them. Maybe this was why Amherst was the way he was.
Maybe he was just as insane.

The grenade bounced twice on the concrete and rolled halfway over to rest against the crate of explosives. The game was over.