by R. K. Syrus
In Bryan’s original home country, he had been the zeru son of zeru parents. He was only known as Shetani Zeru: Satan’s own ghost. He never had a real tribal name. What he did have by birthright was value measured in hard currency: the price for his select body parts. The hands and feet of albino infants, the younger the better, were the main ingredient of a hideously precious magical stew.
He and Elahaj had kept in touch as much as their very different lives allowed. Chats always drifted back to that night. The night the two of them had escaped the anger and appetites of the Ghost Eater. The story, repeated and pondered on by the involuntary workings of his mind, had matured into a legend for Sergeant Bryan.
Elahaj had carried Bryan, then a newborn albino, away from witch doctors into the hands of other doctors. An odd pair of scientists brought them to the capital. Some quick thinking and con artistry on Elahaj’s part brought him to North Carolina.
Elahaj always swore he would never come to America. He was afraid its complicated hugeness would swallow him whole and spit his clean bones into the sea.
The older Elahaj got, the more superstitious he seemed to get. Elahaj always talked of the corpse-feasting ghoul like it was real, as though to this day it was still out there somewhere. After more than thirty years, the thing they had narrowly escaped and left hungry, whatever or whoever it was, it must surely be dead. Still…
Still it squatted there. In a corner of Bryan’s waking and unwaking mind, it waited. Between visions of ice zombies and Texas serial murderers with chainsaws. The Eater lived in Bryan’s deepest thoughts and ideas about Africa.
In dreams, he witnessed the progress of a slow, poisonous stream. It inched along, slopping its length into a hole. On its foul banks, mud oozed over two pale feet. The skin covering those feet was a shade grayer than his own. That skin looked like a translucent plastic bag holding something that had liquefied as it rotted.
In the mud banks along the oozing slop, long worms poked out. Their heads had no eyes and were dominated by gripping teeth arranged around sucking mouth parts. Always hungry, even these bottom-feeding omnivores declined to bite the toes of those feet. Those toes were tipped with something other than nails. The ichor that pulsed through those arteries was something other than blood. Those fat carnivorous wrigglers wanted none of it.
It was the only thing that truly frightened him, other than the thought of harm coming to Sienna. Only one of those fears was logical. Sienna was real. The Ghost Eater was not.
Logic and science notwithstanding, Elahaj claimed to have faced the wily savannah ghoul in the flesh. Details changed over time and with each telling. It always ended the same. With an apology.
Elahaj invariably ended by saying he was sorry for not finally killing the Eater. Despite all his bluster that night, despite the power the Tree Spirit loaned to him, everyone knew that was impossible, he explained. Even with fire.
Bryan had told himself a thousand times: “There’s no such thing.”
Yet on that lonely dark road outside the post on his way to Sienna’s house, he felt the skin on his neck rise and bunch. He looked left and right, stared hard with his brightly burning deep-spectrum vision. Wherever he looked, night shadows melted into violet twilight. He felt foolish. Suddenly he felt a flash of pain through his head.
He bent over, hands on knees till it passed. It was his eyes, again. They were the product of his genetics. Through his pale irises he could see ultraviolet like a falcon and infrared like a vampire bat. Burning so bright, they were wearing out. Soon he would be stuck at a desk when he could no longer pass the Army’s annual physical.
Maybe before then he would get lucky and get seriously wounded. That way he could pull down WIA benefits. Benefits denied to Sienna’s mother, Dr. McKnight, and her widow. The inconsiderate bomber who killed her struck a Worldwide Help medical relief site, not a US convoy.
Theodora had been on leave helping civilians at an NGO hospital when she died. The government gave Annalies her spousal pension, but nothing else. Bryan wanted to give Sienna everything she deserved, and as she grew up it became clear that those things cost money.
A sound. A rustle in the trees.
It blasted through the steel vise clamped around his temples. Bryan froze stock-still.
Movement.
Something just beyond even his full-spectrum radar.
Head hurting and spinning, an old fear welled up. The old fear. Cold, moist breath exhaled on the back of his neck. Inhuman feet slopped over a fetid creek, toward him. He forgot about the revolver in his boot holster. Shetani Zeru’s teeth bared in a primal snarl. He looked for a rock that would fit his hand.
The moment passed.
Making sense of the jumble of shapes through the trunks of poplar trees, he saw the moving figure was a man. Stealthy, capable, and athletic. But only human.
The figure crept by the wall of a barn. Bryan was closer now. He hadn’t been seen, he was sure. At the edge of the trees, he jumped over a drainage ditch.
As he got closer, he was annoyed. The guy was peering through a milspec night scope at a house three hundred yards away. The McKnight house. The intruder actually had the gall to be spying on Sienna as she sat reading in her swing chair under a porch light.
Why can’t weirdos just stay in the city?
The barn was the only cover with a line of sight to Sienna’s house. Bryan sidled up slowly. He wanted to catch the guy in the act. Horses snorted and breathed inside. He came around the corner. The figure was gone.
A fist rocked his face. The unexpected blow sent Bryan stumbling outside the door of the barn. It was almost a relief.
At least the trespasser was not a fanged demon and, for now, was fighting fair. It had been a while since he’d had a good throwdown with a worthy opponent, one who wasn’t trying to shoot or stick him right away.
The dark figure followed up the punch with a vicious knee aimed at his head. This might have ended the excitement right quick.
Though rattled and annoyed someone had snuck up on him while he was sneaking up on them, Bryan still had enough game. He stepped into his unknown opponent’s stance and took the solid blow on his crossed arms, a much better place than on his nose.
In clinch-grappling position, he grabbed his opponent’s waist and drove him into the barn. Small tufts of hay rained down. They struggled for an opening to strike and for better footing. They yanked on clothing.
The tricky bastard went for a gi-style choke. But Bryan’s shirt was old, and the collar ripped before it cut off his oxygen and blood.
Bryan went for underhooks to get judo-style leverage for a throw. The guy swiveled under. Finally, Bryan got an elbow in.
“Oomph!”
Bryan was rewarded with a twofer, the technical term for inflicting multiple concussions at once. The bouncy impact of his elbow on the man’s forehead was followed by the dull thud of the guy’s head thumping off wooden flooring.
He felt his opponent go slack for an instant. Very quickly the fellow recovered.
Special forces training, no doubt about it.
Something else. A smell, weirdly civilized.
Lavender?
Huh?
Either him or his clothes.
NOT one of our guys.
Most def not. When the male soldiers did begrudgingly wash, it was always with government-issue soap. This was different.
The other man had been silent except for the sound of deep breaths and the occasional sharp exhalations through clenched teeth when he punched or kicked.
Bryan drove his closely shaved head into his adversary’s ribcage, trying to get hip control for a throw. Wrong move. Strong arms grabbed him around the waist.
Oh naw! Bryan felt his feet lift off the ground.
Two hundred and thirty-five pounds of lean albino fighting machine got hefted up through the cool night air in a suplex slam.
Bryan’s landed on his back with a WHUMP!
In the stalls, a couple of the horses snorted
, startled by the sound. Bryan lay on his back with his wind knocked out, feeling in all ways as though he had really fallen off a turnip truck.
This guy is strong and tricky.
Bryan slid sideways and tried to grab the guy’s leg, mostly in defense. They were not at the groin-kicking stage. Yet.
He had the man’s left leg tied up, but he refused to fall down like he was supposed to.
“Psst,” Bryan said during a small stalemate. “Be more quiet. Horses. Sleeping.”
After a pause, “Uh, sorry mate. I’m trying to knock you out quietly.”
Aussie or some kinda Limey. What’s up with tha—
Bryan’s pondering on the man’s nationality was interrupted by a rain of hammer fists and a headbutt. The strikes also forced him to let go of the leg hold to protect his face. His opponent freed himself and dashed for the opposite end of the barn. He was fixing to get gone.
No midnight jog for me.
The fellow had to have some transport hidden close by. If he got to it, he’d be down the road back to the highway.
Bryan had one advantage yet unplayed. He knew the setup of the stables. There were heavy rolling doors at either end of the structure, and these were controlled by switches on a central panel. Bryan flicked the correct one. Both doors came down before the figure could get out.
They had been fighting by the light of the moon that streamed in from one side and the wash from a halogen paddock light coming in from the other. Now both were cut off.
Trapped ya. Unless you’re part bat like me, I’ve got all the cards.
Even Bryan could not see well enough to box in total darkness. Thankfully, some tiny allies had been disturbed by the ruckus. Blue Ghost fireflies hovered. Each was about the size of a grain of rice. Dozens of them circled up from hay bales stacked in the barn. They gave off a faint violet-tinged luminescence. By it, Bryan’s albino night vision could just make out soft fleshy targets for his fists and elbows.
After a couple payback thumps, the other man dropped to one knee and raised his hand.
“Okay, mate, okay, I give. I… only wanted to see her.”
Bryan flicked on an overhead light and pulled his boot gun. Best way to accept surrender from a stranger. He leveled it in as gentlemanly a way as you could.
“Now, if you’re tellin’ me you’re some kind of pervert,” Bryan said, cocking the five-shot revolver, “we may have to disturb the horses after all.”
In the stark overhead light, Bryan saw a sandy-haired man. He was broadly built and about thirty years old. Sitting on a bale of hay, he blew blood out of one nostril with practiced ease, not getting any on his shirt.
“Good Lord, man, no.” The lavender-scented guy spoke with a weariness Bryan surmised was only partly a result of their tussle. “I’m her father.”
• • •
Bryan had taken a bit of convincing before he could take stock in this exceptional revelation. He was still not fully convinced after ten or twelve minutes of polite and methodical explaining. The fellow said he was named Ranulph Oliphant.
Has to be real. Who would make up that name?
Oliphant reached for his back pocket.
“Hold up there.”
Bryan motioned with his gun.
“Relax! It’s only a snap.”
Seeing the old newspaper photograph convinced Bryan. He had to be Sienna’s birth father. In it, a seventeen-year-old version of Ran was being pushed back by airport security. In the background, thugs were hustling a pregnant Hamida into the diplomatic-flight boarding zone.
This was the same woman Bryan had almost shot in Afghanistan barely a month after that picture was taken. It was the same stricken and dying woman who had crawled too close to the gate post of 90 Charlie. The one Bryan had let live despite everything his training and instinctive fear told him to do.
For a moment, as he had held that picture, the only sound was the breathing of a half dozen horses. The only movement was the upward drift of barn dust motes, and alongside these, the powered flight of tiny brown specs—the fireflies—both rising upward to the single bare light.
Bryan’s voice was empty and small.
“Where the heck have you been?”
Ran told a tale that began with two deaths and ended with three more. A tale told by a man who felt burdened and hurt by each word he spoke.
The authorities told Ran that after she got home, Hamida was killed by a group of tribesmen. He assumed her cousin was behind it. The same one who attacked her in Cambridge. Asrah Qazi had disappeared from England shortly after she was deported. Reports Ran got back from a social worker, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, said Hamida died before she could give birth. Ran couldn’t face going back to school. He quit and joined the Royal Marines.
For years, Ran never looked back. Not until his second great tragedy, one that came on the heels of a windfall of wealth. When he looked more closely into Hamida’s final days, he was astonished. It was nothing short of a miracle. Bryan had to agree.
“That ain’t all, is it?” Bryan said. “Otherwise why sneak around like this?”
“The aircraft explosion,” Ran said haltingly. “The one that killed my wife, Elena, and my girls. It was no accident. That thermite bomb was meant for me.”
The two men agreed then and there that only Bryan could be in Sienna’s life. Ran had to stay distant. Being a McKnight was her only protection from the terrible forces Ran had stirred up against himself and anyone he cared for.
Now it was Bryan’s turn to sit down, tuck his weapon back in his boot, and feel for any loose teeth in his lower jaw. As his head throbbed, Bryan tried to fill in some blanks.
“You’re not regular Marines?”
Ran shook his head. “Three Commando. Been out a while.”
“You still got some. Not enough tonight, but close.” Bryan smiled. “So what now? What about Annalies? Can I let her know anything?”
Ran shook his head again.
“Only you. I wasn’t planning on taking on any partner in this. But I’ve read your file. I checked anyone close to her, career Sergeant Shetani Zeru Bryan. You’ll do.”
Ran roused himself from his hay bale and walked slowly over to a crumpled package on the floor. Bryan had burned through his adrenaline, and now he was feeling the effects of the down-home thumping.
“Say, Ran, you don’t mind if I verify your story, do ya?”
The other man smiled.
“You’ve got enough of my DNA on you. Go right ahead.”
A parcel lay on the ground, crushed during the fight. Ran picked it up. Inside were yellow flowers.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.” Ran looked disgusted with himself. “Bought these on the way up. No way I could give them to her, just as well they’re all thrashed.”
Bryan looked more closely at the roses.
“There still one that looks okay. I can give it to her if you like.”
He picked up the lone floral survivor of Ran’s travels and the carnage in the stables.
“Maybe we can do that every year. You Limeys are big on tradition, aren’t you?”
Ran grimaced. “I’m Scottish, and one of our traditions is we don’t like being called Limey.”
A few minutes later, Bryan and Mr. Oliphant had established basic contact protocols. Any connection that might be discovered between them would look as though Ran were trying, unsuccessfully, to recruit the experienced Army sergeant into his personal security force.
When they walked outside, the light on Sienna’s porch had darkened. As Bryan suspected, Ran had hidden a motorcycle in the brush beside the paved access road up to the Post. He helped him uncover it.
“Say, that seeing-in-the-dark thing you do. Neat trick. I guess no way to learn that?”
Bryan shook his head. “Hyper sensitivity. In a few years it’ll mean the end of my active duty days. Nothing the Army docs can do. It’ll be okay. I’ll get to spend more time here looking out for Sienna. Beating down the odd stalker.”
/> Ran expertly angled the bike down the hill, coasting silently until he was a hundred yards away before kicking in the engine. Then, with a rumble that sounded like a distant memory, Sienna’s father was gone.
35
NOW
GREECE
The Navy Osprey that took them off the aircraft carrier Lee approaches Greece to refuel. Inside, Bryan itches to try his hand at hijacking again.
Every mile the noisy but sturdy plane has taken them from the Lee has made Bryan believe they’ve finally gotten away from Captain Bobblehead. But they’re headed to the wrong place.
Ramstein Air Base is in Germany.
Sienna is in Khorasan.
They should be there, on the ground, trying to link up with whatever ground elements Ran Oliphant has been able to scrape together on short notice. Every mile closer to Ramstein means they are still sidelined.
He has to suck it up and act like it’s all part of the plan. The only other thing they could do is overpower and threaten their pilot, who is not a bad guy.
“Please fasten your harnesses. I hope you’re all hungry for sauerkraut, sausages, and beer. Next stop: Ramstein Air Base.”
Anis, the girl they rescued from a terrorist, is sleeping between Snakelips Ortiz and T-Rex. He has to make sure this girl is safe before he goes back to get Sienna.
• • •
The next breath of open air Bryan takes is in Germany. The first one off the plane, he scans the area with every gizmo they crammed into his cybernetic eyes. All looks calm. Tall evergreens border the runway. Mist like cotton candy clings to their tops.
Snakelips unbuckles Anis’s flight harness.
“It’s your turn, Nobu, get on the juvie detail.”
Anis, perhaps bored, is fascinated with Jane Bowie. Sienna’s pink-handled knife hangs from the corporal’s belt.
“Oh, don’t play with that, pequeño. That’s a blade for adults,” Snakelips says. “I’m sure Uncle Nobu has some nice preschool weapons for you.”
It’s been a few years since Bryan passed through Ramstein. Back then, it already had the largest US military installation on foreign soil. It has grown since. The newer parts of the base are encroaching on the nature reserves to the south. Cranes stand in the bogs and flap their wings in territorial displays.