His eyes scanned the cars around them. The people had lost interest in them now, returning to their picnics, phones and books. She could see him calculating. Sex. Here. Now. Itzel turned, giving him better access to her body. She saw the beat of his pulse at his temple as his breathing quickened. Itzel ran her hand down his body and onto his thigh. She stroked up and down as both his hands found her body.
Now.
She reached down into the console and grabbed the battery. Slim, with little weight to it, she knew it wouldn’t do much damage but hoped it would be enough as she brought it up and drove it into the High Priest’s temple. He saw the movement of her hand and his head moved back, so her blow did not hit him true but still hit hard enough to drive his skull into the headrest. She saw the momentary glazing over of his eyes and felt his hand slide from her breast.
Itzel opened her door again and fell onto the gravel. A hundred sharp edges of stone dug into her skin as she pushed herself up to her feet. The first person she saw sat in his car a few yards away, watching her open-mouthed as she lunged towards him. Itzel heard the clunk of the locking mechanism as she tried to open his door. “Help me!” she banged on the window. “Help me!”
He ignored her, his head shaking to deny her plea. Itzel glanced back at the hire car. She saw the High Priest holding his head, looking at her with eyes that glistened like hot diamonds. He moved, opening his door, stepping out.
Itzel ran onto the grass. A family sat at a picnic table. Mom, Dad and two little children. She headed for them as the dad came to his feet.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“I need help.” Itzel stumbled and almost fell. The man caught her arm and held Itzel up.
“Ted? Don’t listen, don’t get involved,” his wife said.
“Itzel?” the High Priest called to her.
Itzel grasped the man’s hand. “I need you to help me. Call the police.”
“Why?” the man asked.
The High Priest came closer. “Don’t listen to her. She’s my sister and suffers from psychotic episodes.”
“He raped me,” Iztel said, her grip tightening on the man’s arm. She could see the doubt on his face. The High Priest seemed so cool and calm. While she dug her nails into flesh and made the man wince.
“Perhaps we should call the cops,” Ted said.
The High Priest held his hands up, palms facing them. “Good idea,” he said.
“Don’t trust him.” Itzel felt the man levering her fingers from his arm.
“Let’s wait for the cops,” Ted said, in a tone that told Itzel he trusted the High Priest.
Itzel turned and walked away. She heard the High Priest call her name.
“Itzel. Don’t do this. I can’t let you go.”
She stopped. “Tell them why,” she shouted. “Tell them why you can’t let me go.”
The world grew quiet. The traffic noise from the interstate faded. Ted and his family looked back and forth from Itzel to the High Priest. Others too; an elderly couple with a chihuahua, the man from the car Itzel first approached now out and enjoying the show, a couple of bikers with long hair and tattoos. They all watched and waited for the next part.
“Tell them!” Itzel shouted again.
“I can’t let you go because you are carrying my baby.”
The silence deepened. Itzel looked up into the sky, expecting to see a god.
“Wait a minute.” Ted frowned. “You said she was your sister. So how can she be carrying your baby?”
The High Priest smiled. “Because I raped her.”
“Oh, my God,” Ted’s wife said.
Itzel heard a sound, like a thousand whispering voices, growing louder with every second that passed. She saw the darkness coming, a wave that contained a million ravenous jaws. “Run,” she screamed.
Too late. The people furthest from her were the first to be swamped. The weight of the creatures that swept out of the darkness crushing them to the ground. From the smallest insect to carnivorous beetles the size of dogs, the creatures swept through the picnic area. The old couple fell, their tiny dog yapping defiance before it vanished in a single mouthful. The bikers running for their Harleys and disappearing under a mass of black, red and grey skinned chitin.
And Ted and his family, the children screaming in fear, their mom pulling them close to her chest as the table lifted from its moorings and slammed her back onto the grass where she vanished beneath a rippling tide. Ted seemed frozen, his legs held by the swarm as they rose up his body. Itzel saw his mouth open in a soundless shout as rapier sharp pincers pierced his flesh and heads burrowed deep to consume him. His body swayed, now engulfed by a mass of feeding insects, that fed upon him until only the skeleton remained. Ted stayed upright, glistening in the sun, until he crumpled to the ground and joined his wife and children.
The swarm ran on in search of more food, leaving Itzel and the High Priest alone. Itzel saw the remains of the dead, bloody strands of tissue clinging to broken, scattered bones.
“You see what happens if you defy me?” the High Priest said. “Call them innocent people if you want, although no Yankee is innocent. They died because of you.”
He came to her, and she returned to the car, not resisting the hand clamped tight around her forearm. The High Priest pushed Itzel onto the back seat, forcing her to lie down. He walked around to the driver’s door. Once in the car, she heard him say, “Rest. It’s good for the child.”
Itzel closed her eyes as tears ran down her cheeks. She’d worshipped this man. She’d worked and killed for him. And now he’d reduced her to nothing more than a vessel to carry his child.
She wanted to die.
Chapter Sixteen
Ben looked down on the rolling plains of Wyoming and made sure that none of the combat ready guys in the Blackhawk’s cargo area could see his crossed fingers. He didn’t mind flying, but low level, at speed, in a chopper piloted by someone who’d probably never heard of risk-assessments didn’t fill him with much confidence they’d reach their destination in one piece. Alongside him, Kramer rested her head on the fuselage, eyes-closed and without a care in the world. He tried to ignore the bumpy ride and growing sickness in his stomach. Blackhawks didn’t come supplied with sick bags, and his only fall-back position would be the helmet he wore. And that would be as bad an idea as asking the pilot to land while he barfed.
Another wobble as wind shear took them fifty feet closer to the ground. Ben gulped a lungful of air. A familiar elbow nudged him in the ribs.
“You okay?” Kramer mouthed the words about the roar of the Blackhawk’s twin General Electric T700 turboshaft engines.
Ben smiled, nodded and gave Kramer a thumbs-up. He received another nudge in reply. “Liar.”
Ben shrugged and copied her by closing his eyes. It didn’t help a great deal, providing a disconnect between his eyes and his inner-ear. He tried to think of anything but flying. The conversation with General Dawson came to mind as Ben and Kramer reacted to the first emergency notification.
“We got lucky.” Dawson’s voice came over the Suburban’s loudspeaker via Bluetooth connection as Kramer drove north-west like all the devil’s in Hell were on her tail.
“Lucky?” Ben asked. “Twelve dead and we got lucky?”
“Maybe the wrong choice of words,” Dawson said. “A trucker had a dashcam fitted, and it caught the suspect vehicle leaving the scene. It also showed the aftermath of the incident and the critters they left behind.”
“Where are they?” Kramer asked, keeping the SUV at a steady one-hundred-miles-an-hour.
“This is where it gets interesting.” Dawson spoke to someone in his office and then to Ben and Kramer added, “We warned off the cops and State troopers. These people are highly dangerous so we’re using an F-15 out of Robins Air Force Base to monitor their progress before I can bring a drone in to track them. As soon as we can, I’m going to leapfrog them with one of our Reaction Teams. They’re still heading north-west on I-80, near Paxton, Nebras
ka. I want you two on their tail.”
“We’re on it,” Kramer said. She disconnected the call.
Ben stared out at the road ahead. “These people are highly dangerous, and we’re the ones chasing them when every cop in between here and Canada has been told to back off.”
“It’s our job,” Kramer said.
“Not for much longer,” Ben muttered under his breath.
Kramer risked a quick glance across. “Enjoy it while you can. As soon as you get behind that desk in some cubbyhole of an office at Langley, you’ll miss all this.”
“If they have me back,” Ben said. “They’ve probably all forgotten me by now.”
“What will you do if they don’t want you?”
“I don’t know.” Ben eased back in the seat. “Maybe I’ll try and write a novel like Pete.”
“As long as you don’t have me as your main character.” Kramer changed lanes to pass a semi-truck.
“Why not? Beautiful, talented, tough. You’d be perfect.”
“Keep going,” Kramer laughed. “You’re saying all the right things.”
“All I’m doing is telling the truth, but don’t let me put you off your driving.”
“Nothing could put me off my driving.”
Ben didn’t want to say anything, but he could think of a few things that would put her off her driving right there and then.
Kramer’s elbow brought Ben back to the present. “Why are you smiling?” she shouted into his ear.
“I was thinking about you.”
“If we weren’t surrounded by guys with guns I might want to kiss you for that,” Kramer lowered her voice a little, making sure the closest troopers couldn’t hear her.
At the last update, the target vehicle still sat on I-80, driving at the posted speed limit. Dawson’s drone loitered at 10,000 feet, its high-definition video providing constant updates to the team back at Fort Bragg. Heat signatures from thermal imaging showed two people on board; one driving, the other in the back. Dawson still hadn’t decided on how to take them down. Ben and Kramer sat in on the discussion via video link while waiting for the chopper to pick them up at Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Ben suggested a Hellfire II air-to-surface missile up the tailpipe but received a ‘No’ from Dawson and Kramer. He shut up after that. If they couldn’t see the obvious, like turning the bad guys into toast, then he saw no need to contribute anything else to the discussion. It surprised him that they couldn’t come to a decision. Part of the reason came down to intelligence. Ramon could provide some, but Dawson wanted more, and that meant taking the woman, Itzel, alive.
The target vehicle, a silver Volkswagen, came ever closer to the Nebraska-Wyoming border. Ahead lay Cheyenne and Laramie and the rolling plains that led to the Rocky Mountains. As far as Ben knew, the Blackhawk would follow, re-fuel, and follow some more. At whatever point Dawson thought suitable they would leapfrog ahead, set up an ambush and seize the vehicle and occupants. They needed Dawson to come to a decision.
Ben leaned close to Kramer and said, “I’m surprised at Dawson, normally he’s pretty ruthless when it comes to taking action.”
“It’s because these people are motivated by something we don’t understand. Whatever this Place of Retribution is, if we kill them stone dead as you suggested, it will still be there. We need to know what it is and where it is so we can deal with it.”
“Yeah, well I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Are you sure it’s not the fact you’re in a helicopter? I know how you are with flying.”
“Flying’s fine,” Ben said. “It’s crashing I’ve got a problem with.”
The Blackhawk didn’t crash. It flew on for a couple of more hours and linked up with a KC-135 Stratotanker from the 173rd Air Refueling Squadron staging out of Lincoln Air National Guard Base to top up its tanks. They continued tracking I-80 until the Volkswagen reached Cheyenne where it turned north, onto I-25. Kramer unfolded a map as best she could on her lap and pointed at the empty lands. “Where are they going?”
How should I know? Ben kept his thoughts to himself. It looked like these guys were from Mexico. Nothing this far north would have any resonance with them or their history. Not like Texas. Go far enough north, and they’d hit Montana. Little Bighorn? Ben shook his head. Why would they have any connection to that? If they headed north-west, the route would take them into Yellowstone National Park. Maybe they’re tourists, and they want to get back at some hotel owner for poor service.
He tried not to laugh in front of Kramer. She’d take it personally. On things like this Joanne Kramer took first prize in ‘keeping things serious’. Ben didn’t; ‘don’t sweat the stuff you don’t understand’ would be his motto. And in the months working for the DSI the stuff he didn’t understand could stretch to the moon and back. If he wanted to be honest, he might miss all this shit when his paperwork processed, and he returned to the Agency. If they’ll have you. He rested his head back again and closed his eyes. What if I’m not welcome at Langley? What do I do? He pushed the idea around. He could stay in a similar field to the DSI. Ben knew of universities that ran paranormal study courses. With his current qualifications and knowledge, he could look at obtaining a teaching license. Ben still had money in a trust fund, that would help him pay for another year or two of study. He wondered what Kramer would think of that.
Of course, Kramer might want to think about babies. She’s always a natural around kids whenever we’ve visited family. What if she wants to stick with her career and ask me to be a full-time dad?
He cracked his eyes open and studied her as she studied the map. Man, life can get complicated without you even knowing it.
They over-nighted out in the wilds, under a cloudless sky with the sprawling starscape making Ben feel very small. He remembered camping trips with his folks when he was a kid. Those nights lying on his back next to his dad, tracing the patterns of constellations and picking out the dull smudges of galaxies were amongst the best memories Ben had. He lay on his own now, fifty metres or so from the camp the troopers set up. A couple of small fires burned but not enough to damage his night vision or ruin the dark-sky view of the Milky Way.
Careful footsteps told him someone approached. He waited until Kramer felt her way to his side. She joined him on the ground with a sigh.
“I wondered where you’d got to,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“I’m enjoying the view.”
“And avoiding all the soldier talk around the campfire?” she shuffled close to him, her body warm in the cool night air.
“Not really.” His hand found hers in the dark. “I used to do this with my dad when we went camping.”
“And would you want to do it with your kids?” the question came right into his ear as she turned onto her side. A hand rested on his chest, and a leg hooked over his body.
“Yeah.”
The hand made circling motions on his chest. “It’s getting cold out here,” Kramer said.
“Maybe we could generate some warmth.” Ben took hold of her hand and lifted it up. He kissed her fingers.
“With a dozen special-ops troops over there?”
“I’ll try to keep quiet,” Ben promised.
Kramer laughed. “They’ve got night-vision glasses,” she said.
“Oh.” Ben lifted his head up to look over Kramer at the camp. “You mean like right now?”
“What else are they going to do at night?”
“Sleep?” Ben suggested.
“You’ve got a lot to learn.” Kramer raised up above him, put a very delicious kiss on his lips and whispered. “I hope they enjoyed that. Now, you and I are heading back into camp before I get too many bruises from this rough ground.”
***
The following morning, they stayed put, kicking up dust and watched clouds chase each other across the sky. The drone did all the work for them, tracking their targets as they continued to eat up the miles. They’d stopped for a few hours overnigh
t and were now on US-26 driving through the Wind River Reservation. Ben began to think the people in the car were heading for Yellowstone. He’d call it a gut feeling. No evidence, just a long, hard look at the map and the realisation that little else existed or them to be aiming for. He used an uplink from the Blackhawk to bounce off a satellite and hook up to an army server somewhere out east. Download time was slow, but good enough that he could search up the National Park and try to figure a link between them and a statuette of a Mayan goddess stolen from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
He didn’t find anything, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. Kramer took a call from Dawson, the General now getting frustrated by the time it was taking the Volkswagen to reach its destination. Ben heard his growling voice from where he sat as Kramer held the phone away from her ear.
“I need answers, not more questions.”
“Yes, sir.” Kramer winced at another tirade that ended with her saying, “Yes, sir,” again and finished the call. She almost threw the phone onto the ground.
“He’s not happy?” Ben asked.
“What gave you that impression?” Kramer came and sat beside him.
“I got scared sitting here.”
Leaning over and peering at his laptop screen, Kramer said, “You’ve been trawling the internet long enough. Can you give me an answer?”
“What’s the question?”
“Where are they going?” Kramer pointed at the pop-up on the monitor. It showed a video image from the drone of a winding highway and a vehicle in the centre of the view.
“Yellowstone,” Ben said.
“Really?” Kramer sounded surprised. “You know that?”
“A guess.” He shrugged. “But it’s a big place, three-and-a-half-thousand square miles.”
“But smaller than the North-West US and most of Canada,” Kramer said.
“Very true.” Ben massaged the back of his neck.
“So why say Yellowstone?”
“Why not? It’s a popular location in their direct line of travel.”
“Is this the famous Scarrett analytical brain coming into play?” Kramer said with a smile.
The Tomb (Scarrett & Kramer Book 3) Page 30