Misdirection.

A diatribe on life.

Endings are not always predicted by beginnings…

An Old Poem.

After Colonel Simmons recovers following awaking from the five=month coma, he asks to speak to someone close to the president. He had gradually become aware that the nation had fallen for the ruse of the Muskets, and that if it were known, America would become the laughing stock of the international community. President McKay and General Brody were stunned.

Musket leaders meet with their benefactors in Yemen and encountered a strange combination of individuals and personalities. Eric and Tiffany arrive a day later after the others have left for the Amran hills. Eric meets the mysterious Persian cleric, Fahad, and encounters Spritz, who had been flown in separately. During the meetings, operation Milk Truck is planned in detail, and a working paradigm is established between the Americans and their international collaborators. This segment deepens the character study of Spritz and Eric in particular, but of all protagonists generally.

Continued from PART IV

In this segment, Eric and the other national leaders of the Muskets devise a plan to abduct the informant and the FBI agent responsible for Blevin’s arrest during a Sting operation by making it appear they are needed for a covert operation. The FBI had for a year sought leads about a “ghosted” national leadership, so he persuaded the hesitant informant to go. The plan succeeds, and the agent and informant are taken to a remote mine in Montana, where they are instructed to mix “a new kind of explosive” which is actually a mixture of plutonium, cesium, technetium and a sulfur compound. Afterward, the agent and informant are ceased and Kicks Iron interrogates the agent by threatening his wife and children. What follows is dramatic indeed.

Following through on the plan she and Doreen, the investigative reporter from the Houston Chronicle, had developed, Nancy Herrick conspires to obtain samples of Ted Gangley’s handwriting to provide evidence of corruption involving him and city officials. One careless mistake causes Gangley to become aware of her plot to destroy the Convention Center deal. Gangley sends her home for the day, but when she arrives, she finds Muff with a knife in his throat and the house in deliberate disarray. She narrowly escapes with her life.