AFFA

That’s odd, he mused to himself. How would a piece of metal get way up here? Maybe something fell from an airplane. Certainly, no one would carry a thing like that on the long hike it took to get here.

Maybe it’s a metal briefcase full of drug money someone threw from a plane to escape being caught with it, his mind began going rampant. He’d heard of such things happening before.

Wouldn’t that be something to be able to go home with a satchel full of money that nobody knew about, his fantasy continued. That’s the stuff dreams are made of. Almost everybody fantasizes about something like that happening to them. Then they go on to plot what they would do to keep it secret from the authorities. Especially the Internal Revenue Service.

Kelly’s curiosity became thoroughly aroused. He temporally forgot about the deer and set out to investigate the flash of silver that caught his attention. The object appeared to be about halfway back to where he’d first reached the canyon, then fifty feet down from the canyon rim. He couldn’t see it as he worked his way along the rim to where he figured it should be. Loose shale covered this section of the canyon. He studied it intently looking for what he’d seen.

A person would have to be absolutely nuts to go crawling around in those loose rocks, his mind told him. Maybe he’d be better off to forget the whole thing and go looking for the deer instead.

He knew he wouldn’t though, so he started working his way very carefully down through the loose rocks.

"What in the Goddamn hell do you guys know about this," the President ranted to the assembled group that included his Chief of Staff, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, the Head of the Central Intelligence Agency among other cabinet level people.

"Just look at this," he threw down the newspaper with headlines about Judge Malloy’s dogs, "and this," pointing to the headlines of the Livermore explosion. "In addition here's a video tape showing the carnage caused to the property of Branson and Carter."

"Now look at these reports," he went on shoving papers across the table. "Nothing. I say, we’ve got absolutely, nothing. Not even Kelly Branson knew the formula we were after. You’re no closer to what we went after than you were before. All your great agents have failed to produce the goods. The only thing you’ve succeeded in doing is proving some gold happened to be panned in some damn river in California, and pissing off one very determined individual."

He looked around the assembled group of men. "Anyone who is smart enough to lay their hands on that invention and take the approach he has up to now, isn’t going take this lying down. His telephone message is a clear indication of that."

The President started pacing back and forth instead of sitting with the group. "I’m more confused about who knows the formula right now than ever before. He’s the only contact we have and your knuckle heads go in and rip up his home and shop like you were on some kind of a drunken orgy. You kill his dogs to gain access to his factory. It seems to me you could have accomplished the same thing by only tranquilizing them, but no, you gotta kill them. He reacts by flying his IPT over and dumping them on the Federal Judge you ordered to seize his assets, Mr. Attorney General."

Not waiting for an answer, he continued. "We all know he flew that IPT to deliver the dead dogs. Only the people in this room know that right now, outside of Branson and his sidekick. I’ll tell you one thing, there’s going to be a lot of interest in the Malloy dogs. The public loves that kind of a mystery."

"Branson knows exactly where this whole business originated," the President spoke softly for effect. "He knows what caused the explosion at Livermore, and what’s more he can duplicate it any time he wants to, should he need to prove that point to anyone who might doubt what he’s saying."