“They’ll catch us? Or shoot us?”
“More likely, they’ll never find our bodies.” Duncan offered no further explanation, and Boucher did not press for one. He had resigned himself to certain death when he had insisted on staying behind. The decision to make a run for it instead of triggering the self-destruct protocol had given him reason to hope that he might be able to postpone his rendezvous with the Grim Reaper, but as far as he was concerned, it was all borrowed time from here on out.
Boucher had no sense of where he was in the submarine, but his gut told him they would not be retracing their steps. Duncan might not have been willing to admit that he had a plan, but the man was clearly moving toward a specific destination as he ventured deeper into the sub’s interior. He ducked through the open hatchways connecting one compartment to the next, descending ladders to the lower decks, and Boucher followed. After a few minutes, they entered a cramped space barely larger than a storage closet. One entire wall was comprised entirely of what looked like locker doors.
Duncan tossed his glow stick onto the deck and began rooting in one of the lockers. “Quick. Put this on.” He held out something that, in the eerie green glow, looked like a shadow given substance, but as soon as Boucher felt the foam-like texture, he knew what it was.
“A wetsuit?”
Duncan was already stripping out of his own clothes, stuffing each article into a waterproof bag. “Didn’t I mention that we’re going for a swim?” he said with a half-hearted grin.
“You most certainly did not,” Boucher replied, feigning irritation. He quickly doffed his clothes and then began the somewhat more laborious process of pulling on the tight neoprene garment. Duncan had already finished getting his wetsuit on and was now busy procuring the rest of the gear they would need for the ‘swim’: masks, fins, snorkels and SCUBA gear. When Boucher was finally suited, he followed Duncan through another hatch and into a huge open compartment.
The scant light of the glow stick could only hint at the true dimensions of the space beyond, but it was big by any standards, and positively cavernous situated as it was, inside the submarine. Boucher knew that the Typhoon subs were reportedly large enough to contain swimming pools, and for a moment he thought that was where they were, but the overhead cargo lift suggested that the rectangular opening concealed under large sheets of metal served a different purpose.
“Ridley redecorated,” Duncan explained. “He put in a docking bay for a submersible.”
“Is that how we’re leaving?”
“Yes and no. The submersible is in dry dock, undergoing repairs, but we don’t need it. When we open those doors, we can swim right out.”
“And go where?”
Duncan moved to one side of the opening and retrieved an object that looked a little like a high-tech vacuum cleaner with the handle removed. At one end, a plastic screen shielded what appeared to be fan blades. Duncan handed the device to Boucher.
“This is one of those underwater propulsion units, right?”
Duncan nodded and selected a similar unit for himself and then set about manually opening the doors to the moon-pool. “Top speed is about three miles per hour, which is a lot faster than it sounds. The battery is good for more than an hour, but our SCUBA bottles won’t last that long. Attach your chem-light to the DPV, but try to stay close. If we get separated, we might not find each other again. I already opened the outer door to the lake.”
The metal doors slid back to reveal inky black water that seemed preternaturally still until Duncan sat on the pool’s edge and broke the surface with his swim fins. “Ready?”
There was a resonant thump from somewhere high above. An explosion—probably from a shaped breaching charge, blowing the main hatch wide open. The SWAT team would be inside the sub within seconds.
“Do I have a choice?” Boucher quickly donned mask and fins and buckled into his SCUBA harness, then joined his friend at the edge of the pool.
“Remember. Stay close. We’ll make it out of this alive.” With those words of encouragement, Duncan slipped into the water and vanished. Boucher was right behind him.
40
Mexico
As he watched Beltran organizing the pursuit of the American commando force, Parrish had to resist the urge to laugh. The sight of the cartel leader, who not only towered over Parrish but also outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, tattooed to resemble a demonic Aztec deity, streaked with dust and blood like an escapee from Hell, now shouting into a mobile phone, was so absurd it was comical.
There was nothing funny about Beltran’s rage, though, and as the reports of failure began to trickle in, the cartel leader’s wrath began to grow exponentially. With all of the man’s subordinates already engaged in the battle, Parrish found himself alone with the unpredictable crime lord, and there was nothing funny about that either. Beltran struck him as the kind of man who might easily kill the messenger bringing bad news. If the messenger was reporting from a safe distance using mobile phone technology, Beltran might simply lash out in blind rage at the nearest target of opportunity, and right now, that was Parrish.
Parrish was surprised to discover that his initial impression was wrong. When one of his men reported that the Americans had escaped in a stolen truck, killing or wounding everyone who had attempted to stop them, Beltran did not unleash a tornado of impotent rage. Instead, he appeared to focus that potential energy into a flurry of phone calls, sent out to his network of minions, marshaling them in an all-out effort to block his prey’s escape. It was this juxtaposition—Beltran, an inked monster coolly working the phones like a predatory CEO or battlefield general—that threatened to crack Parrish up, and giving in to that morbid urge would almost certainly be fatal.
I’ve got to get out of here, he told himself. Before this psycho decides he needs more divine help and offers me up to his crazy god.
Getting away however was not as simple as just slipping away into the background. He had no idea where he was, and he had only his own two feet to bear him away. But then, slinking away with his tail between his legs like a beaten cur was not the Bulldog’s style. He stepped in front of Beltran, arms folded over his chest, and stared up into the crime lord’s rabid eyes.
“I need a ride out of here,” he said. His tone was not confrontational but neither was it pleading. It was a simple statement that allowed no room for further discussion.
Beltran stared at him with undisguised annoyance and then simply turned away, continuing his long distance conversation without pause.
Parrish took this as a good sign and pressed the issue. “Did you hear me?”
Beltran glared at him. “You leave when this is finished.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it is finished. Senator Marrs and I handed these guys to you on a silver platter, as promised.” He mentioned the senator as a none-too-subtle reminder of the consequences of ‘killing the messenger.’ Parrish was Marrs’s ambassador, and since Marrs was very likely going to be the next President of the United States, treating his agent badly would have far-reaching implications. “Whether or not you can close the deal is not my problem.”
Beltran said a few more words into the phone and then thumbed a button to end the call. “A car is on its way for us,” he said, with flat indifference. “You can ride with me back to the city. After that, you are on your own.”
Parrish carefully avoided letting his relief show, instead creasing his forehead in a look of reluctant acceptance, but he said nothing more. He had won, but it was a tenuous victory, too easily reversed if he kept harping on the issue. Beltran had already moved on, taking another incoming call, and this time, he spoke in English.
“Whatever it is will have to wait. I’m in the middle of something.” There was a long pause as Beltran listened, and then his eyes went wide with a mixture of hope and apprehension. When he spoke again, it was in an awed voice. “Are you sure?”
All the anger melted from his expression, replaced by a different kind of fire. �
�Where did you say?” He nodded, his lips moving as he silently repeated the reply, as if committing it to memory. “This is excellent. You’ve done well.”
Beltran ended the call then immediately dialed another number. When the connection was made, he spoke in rapid Spanish. Parrish caught enough of it to get the gist. Something was happening in America, something that superseded the hunt for the American commandos.
Parrish did not like what he was hearing. Whatever this new development was, it had completely changed the dynamics of the situation, which put him once more on very uncertain ground. “What’s going on?” he demanded when Beltran hung up.
The cartel lord was unperturbed by the question. “Something wonderful has happened. A seed that was planted has taken root.” He faced Parrish with a broad grin, which looked positively frightening on Beltran’s demonic visage. “Good news for you, Buldog. I am going to America. You can come with me. And when we get there, you will see something wonderful.”
41
Roanoke Island, North Carolina
Beck fired a headshot that dropped the wendigo at the front of the pack. The next creature, close on its heels, stumbled over the thrashing corpse of its fallen leader and went down in a tangle of misshapen limbs. Beck fired again and again, each shot tearing into the pale creatures, but she saw that she would run out of bullets before she ran out of targets.
“Run! Get to the car!”
She glimpsed movement—Sara and Ellen heeding her advice—and fired out the last of the magazine, buying them a little more time. It worked, though that was of little comfort as the three surviving wendigos closed in.
She resisted the almost overpowering urge to run. With their unnaturally long limbs, they would catch her before she got fifty yards. Instead, she darted toward the excavation, snatching up the shovel that had been left behind.
The digging implement was instantly familiar in her hands. A hinged joint at the spade head, and another where the triangular handle met the foot-long metal shaft, allowed the whole thing to be folded up in a neat little holster that could be clipped to a rucksack. In her Army days, she had known it as an ‘E-tool,’ short for ‘entrenching tool.’ While it was usually issued to soldiers to dig fox-holes on the battlefield, it was more frequently used for carving out latrines or as a scythe to hack down weeds, but every soldier knew that it could also be employed as a weapon.
With a loose grip on the handle, Beck swung the E-tool in a lateral swipe that connected with the head of the wendigo leading the charge. It had been a blind swing. A reflex. She had not realized the creature was so close. There was an eruption of foul brown matter as the blade shattered the deformed skull, like a dropped egg.
Beck pirouetted aside as the dead-thing tumbled past, then swung again, lopping off the reaching arm of another. The wendigos, driven by a primal hunger, were oblivious to the lethal potential in her hands. Beck however was no longer mindlessly hacking at the air, but instead timing her strikes, conserving her energy, and whenever possible, checking her six for a flanking attack. The monsters fell, one shattered skull after another, until there were no more. Then she turned in the direction the others had gone, and sprinted after them, the E-tool held out before her like a battle-axe.
As frantic as it had been, the melee had lasted only a few seconds, and she caught up to Sara and Ellen just as they were reaching the car. “Get in,” she shouted.
As she threw open the driver’s door, she caught a glimpse of movement across the roof of the Nissan. More wendigos were charging across the parking lot. She tossed the E-tool into the footwell, then slid behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. “Is everybody in?” she called without looking, focused on starting the car.
“Yes!” Sara yelled beside her. “Go!”
The engine caught and Beck accelerated forward to the sound of hands and bodies thumping against the fenders. For several seconds, the tumult increased, as arriving wendigos outpaced the little car.
The Nissan revved through first and second gear, finally pulling away from the mass of demonic creatures, but more of them spilled out of the woods all around, trying to intercept them. None succeeded, but their sheer numbers were frightening.
Ellen was on the verge of hysteria. “They’re everywhere! You still think this is just a disease?”
“If you don’t shut the hell up,” Beck growled, “I’ll dump you out right now.”
“Don’t do that,” Sara cautioned, as if the threat had been sincere. “We need her to figure out how to cure this thing.”
Beck swerved to dodge a wendigo that was running down the road straight at them. “Hate to say it, but could she be right? We’re miles from the hospital, and there were only a few of these things when we left. Now there are…” Her gaze flicked to the rear view mirror. “A lot. And something tells me this is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“I don’t know how it’s spreading, but it is a contagion. Probably an exotic virus. But that’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“This thing is old. Centuries at least, but something kept it from spreading. It’s like you said, this contagion should have gone global, but it didn’t, and I think the natives who lived here knew how to keep it in check.”
“It’s. A. Curse,” Ellen said. “The only way to remove a curse is to stop angering the spirits who sent it in the first place.”
Beck was about to shout Ellen down again, but Sara forestalled her. “Yes, but how do we appease the spirits? That’s what I need to know. Did they make some special offering? Smoke a certain kind of tobacco in their peace pipes?”
“Peace pipes?” Ellen scoffed. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
Sara twisted around to face her. “About tribal practices? No, I don’t. That’s why I want you to help me understand.”
“The native people that lived here were wiped out by the European colonization. They left very little in the way of permaculture, and passed all their traditions down orally. There isn’t some special book of native secrets.”
“Then where do we start? You tell me.”
Ellen shook her head. “Those things are everywhere. Even if I knew where—”
“Just tell us where to go,” Beck broke in. “I’ll take care of getting us there alive.” She sounded more confident than she felt.
Without an ammo re-supply, the E-tool was their only weapon against the wendigos. Unfortunately, while they had passed at least a dozen surf shops and dive outfitters on the short drive from Manteo, she had yet to see a single gun store.
“Well, I don’t know if there’s anything of real value there, but we can try the Lost Colony Festival Park. It’s billed as a replica of the original colony that you can walk through. They have actors playing the colonists…and the natives.” There was palpable contempt in Ellen’s tone. “There’s a museum there, but the place is kind of a tourist trap.”
“Let’s hope that’s the only kind of trap it is,” Beck muttered, and put the pedal to the floor.
42
Mexico City
Asya strolled, with what she hoped would be perceived as nonchalance, down the sidewalk, glancing in store windows as if idly curious about the wares within, but never lingering more than a few seconds. Reflected in the panes, she saw milling passersby and street vendors, none of whom returned more than a cursory glance.
While she was not exactly inconspicuous in the sprawling cosmopolitan megacity, a light-skinned woman with dark hair, wearing camouflage pants and a brown t-shirt was hardly noteworthy. The plastic shopping bag, clutched perhaps a little too protectively in her arms, marked her as a tourist, and there were plenty of those.
She stopped in front of a sidewalk vendor and bought several t-shirts adorned with silk screened images of tropical birds, archaeological ruins and beer labels. One shirt in particular caught her eye, black with the likeness of a world renowned singer; her brother would like that. She handed the vendor several two-hundred-peso notes, waving away t
he change and stuffing her purchases into the shopping bag before moving on.
Her route meandered back and forth across Mexico City’s famed Zocalo, the public square that was a must-see for visitors. She made several more purchases from kiosks chosen at random, snacks mostly, but also five cheap cellular phones, each from a different vendor. Now loaded with two shopping bags, she made another circuit of the square, and then hailed a taxi.
The driver appraised her for a moment, then asked for her destination in nearly perfect English. She feigned incomprehension, just as she had done whenever any of the locals attempted to engage her in conversation, and she mumbled something in Russian before handing him a slip of paper upon which was scrawled the address of a budget hotel on the outskirts of the city. The ride did not take as long as she thought it would, due in no small part to the cab driver’s aggressive maneuvering through traffic and his complete disregard for safety.
When she arrived at the hotel, she went through the lobby, and after ensuring that no one was watching, she slipped out the back entrance into a secluded alley. There, she quickly changed into a bright red t-shirt, lightweight cotton shorts and sandals before heading out again.
A short trek brought her to a bridge spanning a canal, and after a quick check for spying eyes, she scrambled down the earthen bank and into the shade beneath the bridge. She waited there for almost a minute before a figure stirred from the midst of what looked like a pile of trash. It was King.
“Any problems?”
Asya shook her head and handed him her purchases. “Easy as cake.”
King returned a faint smile, then knelt and began inspecting the contents of the shopping bags. He laid the mobile phones out in a neat row, then delved deeper. When he took out the black t-shirt she had selected for him, he actually laughed. “‘El Vez?’”
“Do you like? I know you are a big fan.”
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