Background
The McClelllan brothers camping trip goes wrong. Cody stumbles onto a hit, is injured and Jack manages to get them out of the state park. Now, at the hospital, are they really safe? A Christian thriller, dealing with both survival and faith.

"Nice to see you two have grown up so well," Rachel teased. "I'd send one of you to your room, but it seems a bit late for that. Call me if you decide you actually want something, even if it's just a shake." She looked sternly at Jack. "I'll probably be at least an hour. Keep it quiet, Jack. Let him rest." She smiled as she pulled the door shut behind her and added, "I love you both."

"She looks tired."

"She is tired." Jack ran a hand over his moustache and collapsed heavily into the chair his mother vacated. "We pretty much camped out here last night." He frowned at his choice of words.
Cody watched Jack settle into the small, uncomfortable-looking chair. "'Thanks' doesn't' seem to be enough," he started. Exhaustion was etched into his brother's face.

"Thanks is plenty enough. Hit men are nothing compared to the wrath of Mom. If I would've left you up there and tried to explain to her why ..." He whistled quietly, shook his head and ran a thumb across his throat, his expression telling it all.

Cody smiled in agreement and started to look around the room. He winced, gingerly rolling his head from side to side. "Man, my neck is stiff," he complained. "Whiplash, I guess."

"Hill-lash," Jack corrected. "You're lucky it's not broken."

"I guess..." Cody examined himself. His right arm was heavily casted, held above his bed with an IV pole and sling assembly. What little he could see of his fingers looked ominously discolored. Someone had elevated the foot of his bed, and Cody could remember one of his knees hurting so badly that he could barely move his leg. But now he couldn't remember which knee it had been. In fact, he realized, he didn't feel any real pain at all. Except for an ache in his shoulder and arm and the stiff neck, the only thing he could attribute to the previous day was a serious case of tired.

Jack watched him. "Are you hurting?"

"Looks like I should be, but..." He shook his head.

Jack leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, "Good drugs."

Cody laughed and groaned. "Ouch! No more joking, Jack." He paused. "Let's beat the doctor to the punch. Am I okay? Everything end up in the right place?"

"More or less."

"That's a little ambiguous. Which part more, which part less?"

Jack grinned. "You're okay," he assured his brother. "Tore some ligaments in your knee, broke some ribs. Really busted up your wrist. There are two or three doctors who bust in here periodically who assure us it'll heal, but they're going to have to pin it, and it's going to take time and physical therapy. Your right hand's pretty messed up." He paused, remembering the look on Cody's face as he pulled the wrist bone into place. "Looks like you're going to be left handed for a while."

"I'm left handed now, Jack."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot. Your brain's in backwards." Jack reached for one of the coffees, took a swig, made a face at the heat and put it back on the table. "Other than that, it's cuts and bruises. Got some stitches in your face, but..."

Cody reached up to find the cut on his face but stopped, hand in mid-air as Jack burst into laughter. "What?"

"Your vanity's showing."

Cody gave Jack a level look, letting him know how funny he wasn't.

"Anyways, I'm supposed to keep you quiet and still."

Their mother had been wrong, Cody decided, watching him. Jack did know 'serious' when it slapped him. "Why?"

"You lost a lot of blood yesterday; way too much. And the bullet is still in there."

Cody frowned. "Why didn't they take care of that yesterday?"

Jack hesitated, looked away from Cody and cleared his throat. "We came nearly close to losing you yesterday, Code. It was pretty bad."

Cody looked into Jack's eyes, seeing the darkness of that memory cloud everything else out. He looked away. His children could have become orphans yesterday. He swallowed hard to regain control of his voice. "Did they get the shooters?"

Jack shook his head. "No. And they had people there before we even got here. All they found were an old couple on, like, their zillionth anniversary and some high school kids skipping school, smoking pot. Didn't find your camera either, by the way. Guess the bad guys took it in case you got pictures."

"Yeah, well, if I'd gotten pictures, I wouldn't have stumbled into the middle of them." Cody watched Jack closely. There was more, he knew. Jack was trying to tell him something without telling him anything. "I guess I'm lucky I didn't eat the thing the way I fell down that hill."

"Yeah..." Jack looked at the door and then back to Cody. "Look, Code, there's someone who wants to talk to you. He's in the hall. Your doctor says not today, and Mom ... well, Mom's still pretty worried about you."

"I assume it's not the preacher," Cody said dryly.

"No. He wants to get information as soon as possible. You know the drill; while it's still fresh in your mind.

A slight frown creased Cody's forehead. If it were someone from the force or a state trooper, Jack wouldn't be playing cat-and-mouse with him. Whoever it was had thrown Jack, either because of who he was or what he told him. "Bring him in."

"You sure?" Jack sounded relieved. "I mean, if this messes you up any, Mom'll serve me up for dinner."

"Then I won't let it mess me up any. I want these guys caught."

"Me, too." Jack stepped to the door, opened it slightly and said, "He says come on in, Frank."

A man, tall and blond, entered the room. His appearance caught Cody off guard, and he blinked, inhaling sharply.

"Hello, sir." The man flashed a smile at Cody, more of a stiff lifting of his lips, almost nothing genuine in it. "I'm sorry to meet under these circumstances, Mr. McClellan, but I'm hoping you can help me with a case. I'm Special Agent Frank Aulers. I'm with the FBI and I'd like to ask you a few questions about what you saw in that park yesterday." As he spoke, the Special Agent produced a badge from his inner suit coat pocket and turned it toward Cody.


Cody examined it, knowing he wouldn't know a real FBI badge from a fake. He nodded anyway. He let his eyes linger on the eagle and the embellished words 'Federal Bureau of Investigation'. Jack would've already checked this guy out. "What can I do for you?"


Aulers pulled an 8X10 color photo from his briefcase and handed it to Cody. "Do you recognize this man, Mr. McClellan?"


Cody looked down at the picture. "Sure . It's Senator Arriaga --" and memory returned in a rush. This man, on his knees in a clearing, tears staining his dirty face; hope lighting his eyes at the sight of Cody. "Oh, God." He exhaled, still staring at the photo. "Jack, this is him."

"Who?" Aulers leaned forward, as if his next breath hung on Cody's response.

"The guy in the clearing ... the old guy," Cody answered softly. "The one .... The one I guess they shot."

Aulers produced a tablet, preparing to punch in the information as he got it. "I need you to tell me everything you can about the other men you saw. Anything you remember, no matter how trivial it seems to you."

"There were four of them. All blond." Cody closed his eyes, trying to create a mental image of the hit men. He felt his stomach lurch at the memory of the men turning their attention from their intended victim to him. Cold smiles. Soulless eyes. 'All right,' one of them said, lifting a weapon toward his chest ...

"Cody?" Jack had risen from his spot on the foot of the bed, alarm clouding his face. "Code, you okay?"

Cody looked at Jack, blinking away the image and nodded slowly, still caught in the pull of that moment. "Blond" His voice had grown so quiet that Aulers inadvertently leaned forward to hear better. "Blue eyes, maybe. Or at least, light colored eyes. They looked enough alike that I think they were probably related. Tall; at least 6'4 or 6'5, and built like barn doors. Broad shouldered, thick necked."

Aulers looked up. "How tall are you, sir?"

Cody looked at the agent for the first time since he began his description. Chills ran over him again. "I'm 6'1."

"Is it possible that you're remembering them larger than they really were? That the situation made them appear--"


"No, sir. I wasn't FBI, but I was trained to make clear-headed observations, regardless of the situation"




Aulers eye ticked, almost imperceivably, and he looked up from his tablet. "Okay. Sorry. Anything else?"

Cody hesitated. "They looked a lot like you, actually."

Surprise, or at least a hint of surprise, flickered in the agent's face and Aulers stared into Cody's eyes, as if trying to assure that he was in no way connected to the men he pursued. After a brief quiet he continued the questioning. "Scars? Any distinguishing marks or characteristics?"

"One of them had a dark place on his cheek. A birthmark, or maybe a bruise. I'm not sure which."

"Which cheek?"

Cody shook his head mutely. So much for clear-headed observations, he thought.

"Speech patterns or accents?"

"Yeah ... they were southern. But not from around here. More like Georgia, I think. You know ... the deep south."

Aulers nodded as he typed notes. "Anything else?"


"Nothing I can remember."

"Well, alright, then. Thank you, gentlemen, for all your help." He stood to leave.

"I'm sorry I can't tell you more," Cody said. In just the few minutes of conversation his voice had grown noticeably weaker. His brain almost hurt with the effort

The agent paused, seemed to lose a little of his trained demeanor. "From a professional perspective, so am I. But personally, I wish you hadn't seen anything. These guys are bad news, start to finish. They've never left a witness alive until now. This is actually the most physical information we have on them."

"Then how do you know these are your guys?" Cody asked. He thought he saw Jack shoot Aulers a 'keep quiet' look from his perch on the end of the bed. Aulers missed it.

"Signature."

Cody knew, somewhere deep inside of him, that he didn't want to know, but asked, "What's their signature?"

"They practice the next hit after they finish each contract."

Cody swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. "Practice?"

Aulers nodded, looking old and tired, although Cody guessed him to be about his own age. "Before they leave the city, they practice their next hit. Within about twelve hours of the contracted assassination, a kid gets snatched--usually a boy, twelve to sixteen years old. They ... practice." He paused, running his thick hand through thinning blond hair, looking less like a federal agent now and more like a man unable to find a way home after the longest work day of his life. "These guys seem to concentrate on prominent minorities, or on people working within the civil rights arena. Basically, they're killers with a cause. God help us all. Before Richard Arriaga, it was a civil rights lawyer in Seattle, shot to death waiting at a red light during morning rush hour. That afternoon, they grabbed a fifteen-year-old kid on his way home from football practice. They took him out into the woods and shot him once in the back of the head. Just like Arriaga, except no interruptions. There was no reason for that; this hit should have been a no brainer for these guys"

Cody frowned. "Jack and I both have boys," he told Aulers quietly. "Twelve year olds."

"Jack told me. Mine are thirteen and seventeen." The agent sighed deeply. "We've been after these guys for a long time. I can't tell you how many nights I've laid in bed, wondering what will happen to Karen and our kids if I start getting too close. I want 'em caught. More than you can even begin to imagine." Aulers walked to the door.

Jack took a long look at Cody and then stood, as well.

"Agent Aulers," Cody said as the agent opened the door, "Have there been any boys reported missing here?"

Aulers stood looking at Cody, a combination of too much information and not enough lining his face. "No. And they're overdue. We've informed the police that they should expect ... something. But, no. Nothing yet ..." He shook his head.