Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

Her bullet blew the sniper’s head apart.

  Below, the cab rolled away and vanished into the Timișoara night. There were no yells or whistles, no sirens. The sniper’s shot had missed and, in the confusion, gone unnoticed. Had Joe Ledger noticed? She thought so, from his body language and how fast he’d gotten out of the line of fire. How fast the cab had moved off.

  Joe Ledger must think he was lucky or that the shooter had misjudged. That was fine. He was not a lucky man—not in most ways—but he had some good fortune. He was lucky in his friends. Lucky to have people who loved him.

  “Be safe, Joseph,” murmured the woman. Even Ledger did not know her real name. Like most people, he called her by a nickname. A code name. A combat call sign.

  Violin.

  The cab was gone now. Violin packed up her weapon, and then she, too, faded into the darkness to where Harry and Toys waited for her.

  CHAPTER 142

  THE PLAYROOM

  UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

  NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

  Sunday called Kuga late in the evening.

  “Jesus,” growled Kuga, pawing his eyes clear so he could see the caller ID. It was an icon of a coyote. “Why are you calling at this hour? Is something wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, my friend,” said Sunday smoothly. “Just calling to see how you are.”

  “I’m drunk and tired is how I am,” growled Kuga. “And this is hardly the time for a little chitchat.”

  “I wanted to tell you three things. First, I closed the deal with our militia friends in Florida. That makes fifty groups now. A complete set.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes, indeed. The incentives and product samples did the trick. And they said that they are very much on board for our little party.”

  “Okay, that’s awesome. But you could have told me this tomorrow.”

  “It is tomorrow,” said Sunday.

  “Technically, but I just got into bed. What’s the second thing?”

  “HK is shipping the support materials out.”

  “Again, that could have waited until tomorrow.”

  “This last little bit of gossip can’t wait,” said Sunday. “Joe Ledger is on a plane to these United States. His flight left not five minutes ago.”

  Kuga was completely awake now. He sat up and swung his legs off the bed.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Isn’t that interesting? Clearly, he knows something, and I wonder how he could have gotten wind of anything related to our little venture. Tell me, Kuga, who all knew about that?”

  “Just you, Santoro, and me.”

  “Yes,” said Sunday. “I find that very interesting. You didn’t blab, and I know I didn’t. I wonder … I wonder how Ledger got wind of this?”

  Kuga got up and walked to the window. The mansion was huge and the night outside vast, but suddenly, it felt like all the walls were closing in on him.

  “Where’s Stafford?”

  “I sent him after Ledger in your fast little jet,” said Sunday. “It’s what Rafael should have done.”

  PART 7

  PATRIOTS

  But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

  At midnight in some flaming town

  —ALAN SEEGER

  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria mori.

  —WILFRED OWEN

  CHAPTER 143

  TIMIȘOARA TRAIAN VUIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  I found a quiet place in the airport and made a call that I didn’t want to make.

  No, not Junie. I was still too much of a coward for that. Maybe I’d never find the courage. Maybe I wouldn’t live long enough to have to.

  God, what Rudy would make of that thought. Me thinking that death was an easier, healthier, better choice than calling the woman I love. What a hero.

  So, the call I actually made was to Church. His private line. Last thing I wanted was to have the call broadcast over the speakers at the TOC.

  Church answered right away, and his voice was, understandably, cautious.

  “Outlaw,” he said.

  “Boss.”

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “A bit.”

  “The intel you sent has been quite useful.”

  “It’s scaring the hell out of me,” I said.

  “There’s some of that around here as well. How secure is this line?”

  “It’s a burner. Never used before,” I said, “and I’ll trash it after. I’m in a place where no one can hear me, so we can talk.”

  There was a last-call announcement for a flight.

  “You’re at the Brandenburg airport,” he said.

  “Yeah, but that wasn’t my flight.” I paused. “Look, I don’t know how much you’ve been able to piece together. You have a lot of what I’ve learned, but not all of it. I think we need to compare notes.”

  He said, “Cybernetically and chemically enhanced Fixers with superior body armor, some in fighting machines. The Fixers are driven by a compound called R-33, which is a mix of a new generation of eugeroic therapies code-named Relentless. The latest version is mixed with the Rage bioweapon. There is something called the American Operation, possibly code-named G-55, in which those Fixers intend to stage an attack resulting in mass casualties.” He paused. “How am I doing so far?”

  “You got all that from what I sent?”

  “From that and from the materials, samples, and data files recovered from Croatia. Am I missing anything?”

  “Do you know about Mr. Sunday?”

  “Yes, the sales director for Kuga. Bug is trying to find a way into his presentations on the darknet.”

  “ShowRoom,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I have no other intel on him.”

  “What else do you have?”

  I was near a window, looking out at the big planes landing and taking off. I saw a bunch of the same night birds standing in a line on a disused in-flight-catering truck. Maybe sixty of them, and I swear they were watching me.

  “Do you know about the militia groups?”

  “No, that’s not in our materials. What have you learned?”

  I told him what the Cat told me. It wasn’t much.

  “That’s new,” said Church. “I’ll have Bug put people on it.”

  “I’m going to follow up some leads of my own,” I said. “I’m on my way back to the States. But look … I don’t want backup and I don’t want a crowd scene. Let me do this my way.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “The guy who told me about the militia thinks they’re going to hit a stadium. Maybe a sports game or concert. He didn’t have details but thought it was going to be sometime in the next month. Sorry I can’t be more precise.”

  “You’ve given us a lot, Outlaw,” said Church. “If it hadn’t been for your actions, we would be considerably behind the curve.”

  “Maybe we still are.”

  “Or maybe now we have a chance to react in time when something happens. At the very least, we’ll be able to make contact with some of my friends in the government and elsewhere and give them a heads-up.”

  “Yeah, but our challenge is always that we’re by nature a reactive organization. That’s why I’m following these leads. I can’t just sit and wait.”

  “You don’t need to justify your actions to me, Outlaw.”

  “Boss,” I said, “I know you meant well sending Toys after me, but don’t do that again. I’m … I’m not entirely stab
le. I think you know that. He’s probably told you what I did.”

  “It came up in conversation.”

  “I’ve done a lot of … questionable things.”

  “Would it comfort you at all to know that I, in my time, have done much worse?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m about a long mile from real perspective.”

  “Give it time, Outlaw. You’re doing better than you think.”

  “I want to ask you something, and I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot or that I’ve gone completely off my rocker.”

  “Try me,” said Church.

  “You know about a lot of supernatural stuff, right?”

  “I’m familiar with the scholarship and traditions of the larger world.”

  “What do you know about flocks of black birds? Not just crows but all kinds, flocking together?”

  There was a pause. “Tell me,” he said, his voice devoid of all emotion, “are they by any chance particularly ragged-looking? As if they’re all molting or windblown?”

  I looked at the birds. Now there were more than a hundred. “Yes,” I said.

  “Tell me where you’ve seen them.”

  “My flight will be boarding soon.”

  “Tell me.”

  So I told him. And as I did so, I realized that there were more incidents than I’d been consciously aware of.

  “And these night birds have been following you since Croatia? They first appeared after the incident in the basement?”

  “Yes. What did you call them? Night birds?”

  “Two words: night birds.”

  “How scared should I be?”

  “Very,” he said, and now there was a new note in his voice. “Not of them—no, definitely not of them—but of who it is they hate.”

  “I … have no idea what the hell that means.”

  “Outlaw … Joe … listen to me, the night birds are omens. They warn people of certain kinds of threats. There is a great deal of literature about this. But what you need to know is that they have often been reported during times when a certain person is awake and alive in the world.”

  “‘Awake and alive’? You just went all Bram Stoker on me. Who are you…?”

  And my words trailed off because I realized exactly who he was talking about.

  “No,” I said. “No fucking way. You killed him.”

  “I never said I killed him,” said Church. “I merely stopped him. For a time.”

  “You’re saying Nicodemus is involved in all this?”

  “Yes,” said Church. “I’m sorry to say that he is.”

  CHAPTER 144

  PHOENIX HOUSE

  OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE

  Church set down the phone, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. Old scars on his skin flared with remembered pain. Deeper wounds that ran all the way to his heart ached with fear and weariness.

  “Nicodemus,” he said to the soft shadows in his office. “Too soon.”

  Then he picked up the phone again and began making a series of calls.

  The first was to Lilith. To tell her and suggest she warn Violin.

  “Ledger is seeing night birds?” she asked.

  “He is.”

  “That means he is very close to the veil,” she said. “He is more in death’s kingdom than this one.”

  “Yes.”

  “You may never bring him back, St. Germaine. Not this time.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  His next call was to Bug, to make sure his people included the new information from Ledger.

  “Militia guys?” asked Bug. “Is he sure?”

  “His source was sure.”

  “Okay,” Bug said, sounding as comprehensively tired as Church felt. “I’ll spin this up. And Joe wants us to look at something in the next month or two?”

  “Yes, but my gut tells me that this will happen sooner than later.”

  * * *

  He called Scott Wilson.

  “I was just about to ring you,” said Wilson by way of a hello. “We just heard from our team at the Pavilion.”

  “What’s happening there?”

  “Seems as if our bad guys are loading some of the combat tech for transport. The feed from Bunny’s cam was clear, so we have visuals and a license plate number. I’ve already instructed Andrea to put a drone on that truck.”

  “What is the drive time to East Texas? Same question for Fort Lauderdale, Florida?”

  “Twenty-eight to thirty-two hours to that part of Texas. Forty-five to fifty for Florida. More, if you count stops for food, fuel, and sleep.”

  “Assume this is straight through. I want routes plotted, and make sure there’s a backup to the drones.”

  “Very well,” agreed Wilson.

  “Two more things,” said Church. “First, Ledger is inbound. Not sure which of those two locations he’s heading for. Check flights from Brandenburg leaving anytime from right now to four hours out.”

  “Easy enough. What’s the other thing?”

  “There’s a new player in this.”

  “Friend or foe?”

  “Definitely foe,” said Church. “Nicodemus.”

  “God save the queen…”

  * * *

  Church called Toys.

  “I was rather expecting you to call,” said Toys. “Violin just had a rather disturbing call from her mum.”

  “No doubt. Put this call on speaker.”

  He gave them all of it, including the intel from Bunny.

  “We’re on our way,” said Violin. “At the airport now.”

  “Hurry,” said Church.

  CHAPTER 145

  FORT LAUDERDALE–HOLLYWOOD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA

  I tried to sleep on the plane. Tried being the operative word. Much of the flight was a blur, though. Not because the Darkness owned my ass again—I don’t think that happened. No, it was more that I was tired beyond words, jacked to the eyeballs with caffeine, heartsick, and scared.

  Scared of Nicodemus.

  Scared of what I had become, especially if that meant I was a puppet and Nicodemus had his hand up my ass.

  Scared of what Kuga was about to do.

  Just plain scared.

  Now that Church was up to speed with everything, I probably should have felt comforted, but …

  Ghost was on the seat next to me, and in his sleep, he moaned. It sounded like he was in pain. When I put my hand on the nape of his neck, he shuddered and settled into a deeper place in his dreams. The place where the mind is vulnerable and the fear can’t escape even through involuntary sounds or movements.

  We flew on.

  When we landed in Fort Lauderdale, the wheels hitting the tarmac jolted me out of a doze I wasn’t aware I was in. Ghost yipped, and I realized that in my surprise I’d squeezed my hand on his ruff.

  “Sorry, boy,” I said.

  He gave me a withering look.

  We deplaned, and I did my trick of going into the bathroom and changing clothes from what was in my carry-on. And switched Ghost from emotional support to “just a dog.”

  We went to Enterprise, and I used a fake ID to rent a bland white Ford Edge. Once in the car, I drove us out of the airport and to a grocery store. Loaded up on dog food, dog treats, a new rubber ball—also for the dog—and a handful of items for me. I also bought a tourist guide to the area and four burner phones. The clerk raised an eyebrow at those, and I gave him a ninja death stare until he looked away. He no doubt thought I was in the drug trade.

  Packages in hand, we walked to the Edge, which I’d parked next to a whitewashed stone wall.

  A man stepped out from between my car and a white panel truck parked next to me. He was roughly the size of Godzilla and had a face like an eroded wall and wore a DON’T TREAD ON ME ball cap and a windbreaker with a tattered American flag on the right chest. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw another man, thinner and with flaming red hair like the c
omedian Carrot Top, come up on my right. A third, wiry and fit, covered with tattoos of snakes coiling around swastikas, came around the front of the truck.

  Godzilla had his hand inside a nylon windbreaker.

  “Joe Ledger,” he said, smiling.

  That’s the moment when you’re supposed to freeze, look shocked beyond words, maybe say something like a stuttering, “Wh-what?”

  From Godzilla’s shit-eating grin, it was clear he was ready to milk that kind of reaction.

  I threw the shopping bag hard at his face and heard the meaty thunk as six cans of Alpo caught him on the mouth, but I was pivoting left, reaching for Carrot Top as Ghost went in and left and slammed into Snakeman.

  Carrot Top was quick and tried to raise the gun he’d held down behind his thigh so it would be out of sight of witnesses. Fast, sure, but I’m faster. I hit him on the bridge of the nose with the side of my balled-up fist. His nose exploded, and the force knocked his head back, exposing his throat. So I pivoted and whipped him across the Adam’s apple with the left forearm.

  He went down, gurgling and thrashing, while I spun back to Godzilla, whose face was bloody and already beginning to swell. The impact had spoiled his draw, and the big Glock snagged on the inside of the jacket. I used my left palm to pin his wrist against his chest and caught him across the point of the jaw with my palm. If you do it just right, moving your hand in a sharp, very fast circle, the blow spins the jaw all the way around, much faster than the body can deal with. The result is a sprained neck, dislocated jaw, concussion, and a total disruption of the synovial fluid in the inner ear. He staggered and collapsed back against my SUV. I boxed his ears and kicked his kneecap loose, but before he could fall, I tore his jacket open and took the Glock.

  I whirled toward Carrot Top, but he was down, no longer making sounds. No longer breathing.

  Ghost had Snakeman on the ground, and titanium fangs had turned the man’s throat to ground beef.

  All of it in three seconds. Maybe two.