The Infiltrators

This book
is a work of fiction. All names and places are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright
© 2015 by Daniel Lawlis

All
rights reserved.

The Infiltrators
(volume six of the series
The Republic of Selegania
).

Stock photo ©
sidneybernstein

(Adjustments to photo made by Daniel
Lawlis)

The Infiltrators

Chapter 1

Eat your food while it’s
hot!

It had been a long time since Righty
heard those sagacious words issuing from his mother with all the
love and affection of a drill instructor. Once, a scrawny, awkward
kid needed to hear them in order to overcome his lack of enthusiasm
at emptying his plate.

But just as the child had grown to be a
ravenous hulk of a man who could clean several plates with the
alacrity of a tornado, so too had the application of his mother’s
wisdom evolved far beyond its sweet simplicity.

He had murdered the chief of police,
killed two federal agents, dispatched several politicians, and
blown the city’s police station into about five million splinters.
He could almost see the storm soon to emanate from the nation’s
capital, moving towards the city of Sivingdel like a swarm of
locusts thick enough to blot out the sun and ready to devour any
and all responsible for the recent outrages.

Whether he would survive that storm was
not a prospect he himself would have cared to place a bet on, which
meant the next several days might be the last he would ever get to
spend in peace with his family.

Thus, while every instinct urged him
towards commencing the meticulous steps necessary to weather the
merciless tempest headed his way, those ancient words from his
childhood reverberated in his ears, assuring him that he would
forever regret not taking this opportunity to spend a few days of
bliss with his wife and daughter, during which he would store a
treasure trove of happy memories to sustain him during the black
days ahead.

Chapter 2

Many a man has remarked with sullen
perspicacity that few moments live up to the grand expectations
preceding them. An adherent to this philosophy would have sourly
witnessed the replete happiness of Mrs. Simmers, who proudly defied
this unwritten law of human nature.

Absent were the quizzical stares Righty
had uneasily expected from his wife regarding the grandeur of her
and their daughter’s new home. Perhaps his belief in the justness
of this moment’s happiness gave his words an irrefutable conviction
when he explained that the new store in Sivingdel was succeeding so
wildly as to make possible the purchase of this remote estate
without so much as a penny of debt.

A house roughly two hundred times the
size of their measly shack at the edge of Ringsetter greeted them
with open arms, assuring Janie she had not ruined her life by
following her heart into marriage with a savage boxer. The
immaculately kept garden, the gently blue sky, and the proudly tall
pine trees added to the chorus singing to her that she had finally
reaped the rewards of placing her life’s bet on Righty
Rick.

Yet while Janie reflected on the many
signs surrounding her as proofs of the correctness of her life’s
course, Righty appreciated far different aspects of the ranch. It
was no hop, skip, and a jump from here to the nearest town. And he
had previously found time to make clear in no uncertain terms to
the several servants Righty had permitted to stay at the ranch that
not one newspaper was to arrive without his express
permission.

Righty had whisked Janie and baby
Heather away from Ringsetter the same morning the first news of the
unfortunate events in Sivingdel began to reach local ears, so no
troubling questions were to spoil these three days of
bliss.

Righty spent many a moment bouncing
Heather up and down on his knee and listening to her giggles as
gratefully as if they were medicine in acoustic form, traveling
down the corridors of his ears into his soul to remove the
blackness of deeds recently committed.

As he looked into her innocent blue
eyes, he promised her silently that he would one day fix this
situation. He would get out of his current trade. He would cut all
ties with crime. He would be a legitimate businessman.

But he also asked her to understand
that Daddy had made a bit of a mess and even daddies have to clean
up their messes.

Life as a legitimate
businessman will only be possible after far more blood is
spilled.

But he was beginning to formulate a
plan—a plan that would ensure far less blood would be spilled than
what he was thinking just days before. It was in scattered pieces,
but a rough outline was beginning to form.

He almost jumped as he felt his wife’s
fingernails suddenly stroke the back of his neck. He was initially
relieved he had not done so, as this may have caused her to ask
what had him so apprehensive. Then, he felt alarmed at his failure
to detect her approach.

You’ll have plenty of time
for jumping at every shadow soon enough, friend,
a rather unpleasant voice told him.

“I love seeing you happy with her,”
Janie said softly. She looked deep into his eyes. Those were the
looks that had been leading to a lot of amorous exercise the past
couple days, so much in fact he justly forgave his temporary
relinquishment of sword practice.

At this pace, Heather will
soon have company
, he told himself, as he
continued to look into Janie’s eyes.

The thought left him confused more than
anything else. Heather brought him so much joy, but he feared he
would one day cause Heather twice that amount of pain. Could he
rationalize bringing another creature into his world?

“What’s on your mind, babe? Something’s
got you worried,” Janie said, her blue eyes searching his dark ones
tenaciously.

He paused, searching for a
story.

“Is it because this can’t last
forever?”

He couldn’t help looking up at her a
bit abruptly, wondering what was the basis for her uncannily
accurate guess.

He held her eyes, preferring to wait
for her to elaborate, rather than betray his own sentiments while
attempting to extract more details from her.

“It’s not meant to, honey,” she said,
grasping his hand warmly. “That’s what makes this
paradise.”

Her eyes seemed to say much more than
that, reinforcing the display of her firm understanding that Righty
had meant for this to be a special time that they would never
forget, and he almost sensed in her eyes that she knew there were
things he wasn’t telling her but that she would gladly ignore them,
provided he could make her feel the way she felt right
now.

He slid towards her, feeling as if he
were gliding across the stone bench in front of the sparkling lake
before them like some kind of mythical creature. He kissed her
passionately, and it seemed as though she knew tonight would mark
the end of their three days in paradise.

Chapter 3

Harold’s tight-lipped demeanor would
have worried any other passenger perched atop this formidable, yet
beautiful, creature cutting through the early morning sky headed
for Sivingdel. A different passenger may have interpreted the
silence as the icy preface to a cruel death to be bestowed upon the
hapless victim, unless he had the guts to jump and travel several
thousand feet to the ground below.

But Righty was no ordinary passenger,
and to him, under these circumstances, silence was a good thing.
Harold was quick to warn of danger, and thus his refusal to discuss
the current circumstances in Sivingdel meant, at a minimum, things
weren’t half as bad as what Righty had been bracing himself
for.

Harold set him down in the forest of
the city’s small park and then flew off without a word.

Righty was beginning to feel Harold was
overdoing it with the mystery, but he quickly changed his mind as
he found nothing he had expected to encounter. Absent were the
checkpoints every stone’s throw. Absent were the scowling policemen
with suspicious eyes patting down everyone in sight and asking them
their business for daring to move about in a war zone. Absent were
the even more formidable faces of federal agents dashing to and fro
atop large horses with an arrogant smirk on their faces and swords
dangling brazenly from their hips, just waiting for the first
excuse to lop someone’s head off in furtherance of
peace.

Instead what he saw was what he had
seen during every other visit to his beloved city. Men walking
about quickly with business on their faces. Women scanning the
meats and fruits they were buying with the severity of a detective
at a crime scene. Children running about. And an occasional bum
begging for change.

Righty handed a hundred-falon bill to
first one he saw, thinking it only proper to reward the surreal
scene with a surreal tip to a man whose immediately bulging eyes
served the purpose of informing Righty there had been no dramatic
inflation during his short vacation.

With a singular purpose, Righty walked
at a pace that blurred the line with jogging until he reached the
first newspaper stand. He paid for copy of The Sivingdel Times and
marched to the nearest bench, sat down, and began
devouring.

A RETURN TO
NORMALCY

Though a few misanthropic naysayers
suggest Governor Sehensberg should have continued the state of
martial law a bit longer in order to ensure the evildoers be
completely annihilated, the hardworking men of this city have
spoken with their feet and rejected such ludicrous suggestions of
ongoing danger by returning to their businesses and getting this
city back up and running.

The absolute lack of any violence
since the bold mass execution of our city’s foulest criminals
several days ago leaves none but the most inveterate pessimists
thinking that there is any reason to doubt that the governor, with
his muscular yet judicious response, succeeded in stomping on all
of the cockroaches responsible for the dastardly deeds.

The governor promises to replenish the
police force to normal levels as soon as funds are available. He
thinks the city’s surplus can cover most of the cost but believes
Sivingdelians will prove with their wallets that they believe in
their city. Reports of donations have been received, and it is this
paper’s belief that they will only increase, proving to the rest of
Selegania, and to the rest of the world, what kind of mettle we
Sivingdelians are made of.