A FORKLIFT hauled the wreaked dud missile onto a long truck. A platoon of the presidential palace guards, the bomb-squad and army soldiers surrounded the operation. President Emmanuel Garcia stood watching as a defeatist from the balcony—and he gazed beyond the horizon where there were bellowing clustered clouds of black smoke, followed with low echoes of explosions. The Americans' prolonging bombarding at the border was a painful sight to bear for the leader.

The voice of a female Mexican colonel interrupted him in Spanish. "Signor President, the van will arrive any time now."

"Prepare the table for my guests."

Emmanuel Garcia nodded while his fingers feeling the smooth skin of his androgyny chin.

He wished he had a Vandyke hirsute like the photos of his late father, Sexso Garcia, the millionaire entrepreneur and politician—a candidate who did not make the presidency like his own son. His father was also a figure he modelled his life on even though he has not known him; Sesco was succumbed by the cursed Medusa virus a month after his mother had conceived him.

The Intersexual President of Mexico saw the truck rolling away from the palace ground with the burnt green metallic dud missile carcass on top, that bore the US Army emblem...

It was a reminder from his intimidating neighbour that he has less than ten hours to deliver the Preacher in his given cognizant deadline—or else there will be the consequences of massive airstrikes and followed by a military invasion into his country by President Cory.

The cleanup crew worked laboriously to restore the damaged ground in the approaching sunset. He distinguished from the balcony of the view of a black van driving in through an alternate palace entrance. President Garcia then proceeded to the banquet hall.

**

Armed palace guards and soldiers surrounded the black van. The door was slide open—three men were with black hoods and hands bound in heavy-duty flexi-cuffs were retrieved out by the Federalists. The Mexican General Miranda instructed the soldiers to cut them loose; the hoods were removed off the clammy Ramirez, Li Chi and Sanchez. They stood looking disorientated and squinting to the bright evening sun.

Doran the fourth prisoner, and was the last to be carried out from the black van. He looked weary and haggard in an unbuttoned shirt with bandages strapped on his belly. He was gently placed on the wheelchair. The four members of One God's Army beheld the sight of the magnificent palace front.

The banquet door opened moments later—and the three able prisoners walked in. The wheelchaired Doran was trundled in by General Miranda herself to a long table with lots of succulent dishes, deserts and fruits. The President was seated at the head of the table. Three Mariachi violinists were playing some light melodies in the background. Emmanuel Garcia invited...

"Welcome my American friends!"

Ramirez and Sanchez then bowed to the President in respect despite being American nationals. Doran was the personage who was wheeled forward and they all heard the Mexican leader who was in good spirits, calling out again. "Come join the banquet—I would be honoured if the Preacher sat on my right and dine with me." He raised an open hand, "yes, the rest of you too, please join me—we have lots to discuss."

A chair was removed by one of the butlers, and the Preacher's wheelchair was moved close to the table on the President's right, Li Chi sat beside Doran. Across the table, Ramirez and Sanchez were on the President's left. Several female butlers begin to serve food on to their plates while their host carried on speaking—as he broached...

"Gentlemen and Padre Doran—you all know why you are here?" Everyone stared speechless before Ramirez predicated with a response in humour but in a slight piqued tone...

"Signor President, is this you are giving the feast of the Last Supper before we are handed to the Snake-woman?" Garcia busted out laughing and tapped the upset Ramirez's shoulder, "I am no Judas either, hombre."

As the Intersexual President spoke; Doran was struggling to retain his concentration; it was the shot of morphine the Mexican army medic had administered before transporting them to the palace—now taking full-effect...

His mind floated and he was back to somewhere he had been before during his isolation periods in the dark prison's hole of Tombscradle—where he had opened the secret gated doorway and following the surreal angelic voices that summoned him to join the Lord at his own banquet table in the heavenly garden with His friends—the apostles. Doran was seated there beside the one named Thomas who used to poke his finger into the side of the roasted lamb in doubt—to see if the flesh was well-cooked or bloody.

Emmanuel Garcia never spoke to the point, and was long-winded prolix with his polity and academic standpoints—he wanted those present on the table to understand where he was coming from. But he was also in full admiration of Doran's achievements—both by the priest-monk's struggles and victories...

"You all were some nobodies in prison in Texas; and you Preacher, you created this monumental revolution from stopping your President from persecuting with her genocide attempts targeted on our New Breed species—whom she has later labelled you all as terrorist outcasts; but yes, the world outside is not blind as she thinks it seems, not noticing her malicious plots and actions!" He laughed with delight.

Doran's rebels present were beaming in their underdog pride discerning of their endeavours in fighting the high-tech US military at their last battlefield...

"When you broke out of that prison in Texas...what's its name?"

Li Chi was the first to voice the correct answer. "Tombscradle."

Emmanuel Garcia laughed aloud again...

"What a fitting name for Cory who is the type that kills babies in cradles— especially our kind—the Sirrah-children of a single generation—for we cannot breed our own future male-species because of what the damned virus did to us." He raised his wine glass...

"But we will prevail and will leave our legacy behind as good men of dignity. By the grace of God Almighty, we will be victorious against the extremist—salute!"

Everyone raised their glass except Doran who remained stoic in silence, looking at his plate. The President clinked his glass onto Doran's before drinking his Tempranillo wine. The drug was then taking deep effect on him—and Doran was not in the appetite for any of the good food, but he was constantly digesting every sentence that the President was uttering...

"Yes, I salute you as I was saying, you broke out of 'Cradle's-tomb' —and later you broke into other prisons to rescue the other fellow-species whom then grew in numbers into your renown God's Army!"

The Intersexual politician glanced at the rebel monk and complimented...

"And Padre Doran, yes, I really admire your spiritual leadership in bringing these many people of races and religions in unity, to stand against the peremptory Cory's evil army of godless killers. May you precede her someday and you will be the next President of the United States!"

All of the surprising rebels in the table laughed out in accord, and they toasted again for that glorious day to come true—except for Doran—he saw Sister Lisa Marie standing behind Ramirez and Sanchez—looking back at him with loving and understanding eyes before her voice spoke only to him...

"You are special, Doran—you will be The Pope someday."

"No!"

Doran's firm reply interrupted and answering to both—those who were gathered at the table and also to the apparition of the nun that just vanished.

Emmanuel Garcia and the others became quiet, listening to the Preacher...

"I have no such ambition to be sitting in such position of authority—I am just a simple soldier of God..."

They all waited for him to say more but the dazed Preacher withdrew and he then remained speechless momentarily. President Garcia nodded to the Preacher's 'modesty.'

Garcia then elaborated his own personal road to his presidency...

"Yes, I am too walking on the same road as you, Padre Doran—but in the capacity of a President. I want to banish the old political system that was sowed with the seeds of crime and corruption; so to let my proletariat people of the future, who will see that we can indeed progress as a nation with a clean government...

That is why I am so unpopular to many here in my own beloved country because I am fighting and eliminating crimes at every level—right from the platforms of our dirty politicians, even to the criminally syndicated churches and right into the path of the Cartel drug-lords—and even right to the lesser criminals on the street whom they for generations, this disease of corruption have made my people weak by immunizing them into their old ways of decadence—and these corrupted systems of the past have fed deep into their spiral addictions...

"Even in the International political arena, I am forced into the corner because they don't approve how I do things differently—and they all keep ostracizing me because I am the first," the young teenaged President paused and laughed...

"...shemale President in the world!"

Everyone laughed at what was said and they toasted with more wine. When the merry moment ended, Garcia now spoke in a lower troubled tone. "Now I am in a tight spot where this Snake-woman has twisted my arm and she is strangling me at the same time. She has been bombarding the Mexican border for the last 16 hours."

Doran looked up and he decisively said...

"Mr President, Madeline Cory only wants me—let my men present here walk away free—and you can then hand me to her."

Ramirez who was inebriated immediately responded his detractor...

"What? No, Doran, we will not abandon you—we will go down together with you!"

Even the self-centred Li Chi who sat beside him, face reddened by the wine, he bolstered and espoused...

"Ramirez is right, we are behind you as our leader—we will all surrender later to that Snake-woman bitch!"

Emmanuel Garcia spoke again to the tight group at the table...

"That will not necessary, and nobody is going down. This impolitic Snake-woman has tested my patience and I have made a stand in this matter. She thinks as a super-power aggressor, she can push the limits of this country—the limits of our people and our Intersexual species—but now I have a plan...

"...a plan where the four of you will walk away free tomorrow!"

Everyone stared in awe at the smiling President Garcia, trying to figure him out. The impetuous Ramirez was again the first to speak as always...

"You have a plan for us, Signor President? Let's hear it, Sir." Garcia nodded but went back to his long-winded manner...

"Well as I was saying, my road to my Presidency was short but really sweet. I campaigned that we the people of Mexico will have equality and live under a corrupt-free government—and then since I came into office, I had used my full capacity to fight crime, especially against the drug-lords...

"I have defeated most of them—and I even have managed to capture their head-of-heads of the present Cartel organization—he is the great and notorious drug lord and bandit from the mountains who is known to many here as The Mad-dog Jesus Salazar!"

The Mexican General Miranda who hardly spoke English, but she stood upright when she heard the bandit's reputed handle...

"I have seized all his wealth and paid forward by distributing it to the people to improve their proletarian lives..." the Mexican President turned his attention back towards Doran...

"...temporarily—as I believe in what you preach, Padre—a good citizen of the faith should be taught how to fish rather than be fed—so he or she can go out in life and catch bigger fish of their own.

"So right now I have about 3000 of the Mad Dog's followers with his loyalist's generals in my prisons system—those criminals who have committed unimaginable crimes for him...

"My Mexican CISEN division is consistently watchful over the tens of thousands of others who are outside prison—those who are waiting to bring this Salazar back to his celebrated dominant days.

"But those 3000 Intersexuals and women whom I have in prison are waiting for trial—most of them deserve the death penalty—but I have kept them alive so far for a purpose."

The four OGA rebels hung into the story—but did not get the point of how it related to them walking away free from Cory at the border the next day...

"Aren't you afraid Signor President that his people will break him out of prison and later create a revolution and overthrow your government?" Ramirez quizzed him back.

It is the same quandary that the Preacher and his OGA rebels were currently doing by wreaking Madeline Cory's administration—but the few on the table wanted to know Emmanuel Garcia's stand as the leader of his country if such a similar situation ascended in Mexico...

Garcia finished his wine and replied evenly...

"Very true—but only if they can find his whereabouts—well in actual fact—he is right here in this palace..."

"You have this Mad Dog in this palace?" Li Chi's jaw dropped.

President Garcia nodded to General Miranda who walked to the closed door. "Yes, I believe in the saying to keep my enemies closer—and yes, I have specially built a prison for him right under this very grand and magnificent palace. The civilized ones will inhabit up above the ground—and there in a dungeon right below these very floors is where that Dog dwells with his top generals." Garcia was pointing down at the marble flooring...

The president was the only one enjoying his last laugh at the table. The rest peered towards General Miranda who signalled two armed guards to open the door—in walked a lean and lanky Intersexual with dark hair, lengthen to his back like a Danny Trejo look-alike. A Mexican Colonel and a few armed guards escorted in the Mad Dog whose hands and legs that were bounded in chains...

The morphine-induced Doran saw his mutilated mother apparition following from the back of the walking prisoner. Her movement was ethereal, seemed like she was gliding. Dressed in her tattered burnt nightgown in which she died wearing on a fiery night when he was her child-prisoner in her cellar. The ghoul woman was laughing in abhor and giving a drum roll introduction of The Mad Dog to her despised son, Doran...

"Meet your match, my abomination son!"

Even Doran quivered a little when he saw the brutal-looking Salazar—recalling one of the demons of underworlds which his mother lucidly described to him as a child, but he can't evoke which one of the demonic fiends—it was her discernment of a biblical bedtime story of Hades that gave him profane nightmares when he had been locked up alone since birth.

The Mariachis stopped fiddling their music; everyone was transfixed to the utterly bloodcurdling sight of the Dog's fear-provoking face. He has darkened tattooed face like the Mask of Zorro—his snake-like piercing eyeballs darted omnipresence at everyone in the banquet...

If it was not for his collar shackle, the lupine-like prisoner would have jumped on the table and sprung to the other end to where Garcia sat—and probably would have snapped his neck with his bare hands.

Jesus Salazar was seated on the head of the table at the other end of the long table, away from Garcia and his guests, with no metal cutleries. A female butler built up her courage to serve food on his plate—and Salazar pruriently grabbed both her breasts. She screamed, causing her to drop the serving dish.

The Mexican Colonel who held the end of the collar shackle chain tugged to keep the Dog in its place. Salazar then laughed at the restraining manacle imposed on him, based on the definitive terror of these Sirrah-Intersexuals and women that were present were around of him.

He snatched an entire Jalapeno roasted chicken in the front, and dropped it on his plate—and like the making of a typical inelegant movie villain, he ripped off the drumstick and sank his teeth into it, washing it down by drinking the wine from the bottle—the others watched the noshing in disquiet.

"The legions of demons inside him are hungry for chaos and destruction. Are your demons hungry too, Doran?"

His disfigured mother spoke only to him, but he needed to silent her—bowing his head down, the priest-monk prayed in silence...

"Sorry about that, gentlemen—I have been busy campaigning against crimes and corruptions; now my future campaign is to teach my people proper table manners." The genteel President was candid and yet blunt...

Jesus Salazar's tattooed eyes peered up sharply at him and he spoke out insults in Spanish...

"Hey you Emmanuel, you sissy-fuck President—speak Spanish, not some gringo monkey language!"

General Miranda stepped up and was about to strike the Dog with a baton for his disrespectfulness, but Garcia signalled her to back off. Salazar picked up the whole chicken and bit off the pointy rump—and spat the 'bishop's nose' at the retreating General's uniform as a mocking retaliation...

The Mad Dog laughed aloud and he turned, looking at Doran, sizing him while he devoured on the whole chicken again. He again spoke Spanish...

"So this is the talk about gringo—well, I see nothing special about this Made-in-America false prophet, other than the fact that he is uglier than me! Now, why is this faggot hiding here in Mexico instead of fighting back against his own bitch-witch President?

"Emmanuel, you are harbouring fugitives into this country while the enemies are out there hitting the Mexican people hard with bombshells at the border. I hope it is worth your while, to see the blood of the innocent citizen in your little girly hands.

"You are going down soon, you coward, you mark my word!"

Garcia and even his Hispanic Chicano guests were silent to his inure accusations—listening to him was like the Devil himself being invited of its presence to give the keynote speech at the Last Supper...

"Now you are planning to throw 3000 of my followers across the US border to be slaughtered too? You think you are cunning monkey but all I see the weakest and the most disgusted President in the entire history of Mexico?"

Salazar threw a half-eaten drumstick bone across the table—and it landed near the President's plate—Miranda had her revenge by clubbing the Dog once at his arm with the baton.

President Garcia covered the drumstick scrap with his table napkin before he admonished out in Spanish...

"Stop, General Miranda! I don't want any violence on the table, not in front of my guests!"

He looked over at the Dog...

"Salazar, I am offering your 3000 followers a second chance in life—either they fight the enemy across the border or they face the death penalty in prison here—so what is your choice?"

"Either way they are all going to burn in hell in serving your cause, aren't they, my charlatan Preacher-boy?"

Doran heard his own wraithlike mother again, in mocking laughter behind him. He remained calm, just like his Master had taught him when they fasted together and prayed in the wilderness...

'...to silence the noise from the true voice.'

The feral bandito grew belligerent in vocal...

"You coward! Why don't you send your own cockless female army across the border to fight those Americans instead of sending my followers to getting them slaughtered by the gringo army—why? So that this bastard Preacher can escape? Where are his own followers—his God's Army of sissy-boys?

Why don't they come over here and rescue him? Have they also cut off their puny little balls like how this cock-sucker Preacher did when he was in prison before?"

Ramirez half stood from his seat and he countered back in Spanish...

"Damn you, ugly dog! How dare you insult our leader? We don't need your help because we are capable to handle our own battles!"

Although the Li Chi doesn't speak Spanish other than the insults hurled by the Hispanics at his triad's outnumbered presence—he recognized that Ramirez was standing up for the God's Army—he has come a long way from the once insulting Hispanic leader across the fence in prison. Where in the past, he condemned and abetted with Warden Graves to stop the Preacher's teaching in uniting the denizens to create a revolution within the prison walls.

Garcia grabbed and shook the agitated Ramirez's shoulder and responded back to him in English...

"Calm down my friend; whether the Mad Dog agrees or not— I have made it final that his people are still going to cross that US-Mexican border tomorrow!"

Salazar in return punched the table again...

"Speak Spanish, you motherfucker!

"You got into this position of Presidency and into this palace without any real struggle. You fucking educated scholar who manipulated the hearts of my people with emotional words of deceit were you tricked them all, and you cheated and got their votes.

"You never held a gun in your life—but here you are now sending 3000 Mexicans over there to their death—you coward rich son of a business woman-whore! You are a girlie-boy son who got everything in life without struggling—yes, everything is handed into your soft tiny girly hands—why don't you come by tonight to my prison cell and use your soft hands and give me and my boys hand-jobs—you can even blow us all too before we do you in your ass!"

President Garcia realized that the now drunk Mad Dog's insulting crude rantings were never-ending; he nodded to General Miranda who immediately delivered a hard blow at Salazar's neck with the baton—knocked him out unconscious. His face fell on the plate in front of him, bumping down the whole chicken carcass that rolled on the floor. Two Mexican soldiers heaved the out-cold Dog by his elbows, leading him out back to his dungeon cell.

President Emmanuel Garcia picked up his glass of wine and noticed the startled looks of his dumbfounded guests on the table...

"Well gentlemen, it is settled—both the God's Army and the Army of the Mad Dog will create a diversion at the Mexican border tomorrow so that the Preacher will get to escape, and continue his mission again in America."

He drank again and laughed...

"Madeline Cory will not know what hit her tomorrow—and may it finally teach her some lessons of Mexican humility when she goes down soon!

"Salute!"