Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  “That grenade launcher’s got to be somewhere.”

  “If it’s got anything left in it, I’ll blow as many of them out of the ground as I can,” O’Donnell said. “Professor, do you want to try for the old man?”

  “I’m afraid it’s gone far enough that that won’t stop things, but yes.”

  Bullfinch readied the sword and stepped through an arched opening, looking for a way up while O’Donnell scrambled toward the tarp.

  A set of shots rang out, pinging into the stone beside her. She ducked and lowered herself into a crouch but kept moving.

  “That’s where his backup went,” Rees said. He finished cuffing his charge then scrambled forward to grab the handgun.

  Keeping low, he returned fire to the men he could see crouching behind gravestones and other debris. Three that he could see.

  “Keep moving,” he shouted.

  His shots ricocheted off the stones as well, but at least that kept them a little busy.

  “On it,” O’Donnell said.

  From the bay, a loud hissing roar rose above the tempest and all else.

  Kaity saw the dropped mobi as the pilot ushered her away from the abbey. There was no shelter close, but he wanted her out of range of the conflict. They’d heard gunshots, and he didn’t want her in their path if he could help it.

  She curved an ankle just slightly, allowing herself to dip. She cried out in a low imitation of pain. While she was on the ground, she scooped up the phone and snagged it, getting it into a pocket before it had a chance to get any wetter. She couldn’t tell at a glance if it was already waterlogged, but at least in her pocket, it would be out of the elements.

  “Over there,” the pilot said. “We’ll stand under those trees. We can hold onto them if we have to, if this wind gets any stronger.”

  She followed. Someone would be interested in the phone later.

  Bullfinch edged along the wall top, placing his feet carefully on the craggy path it afforded. If he was too old to be fighting, he was definitely too old to fall off a wall. He didn’t want to consider the bones that would snap or the agony and time of recovery. If he survived.

  Better to just focus on getting the man on the wall taken care of. If they both fell, maybe it would interrupt the summoning of the serpent thing out there in waves.

  With the sword leveled in front of him, helping with balance, he moved on to the spot near the peak where the man stood, what sounded like gibberish coming from his mouth.

  Bullfinch took a few more paces, squinted against the wind and shouted.

  “Stop!”

  One word should carry the message. Little else would make sense in raging wind and rain.

  Indeed, the man heard it and spun, fiery anger showing in his eyes, which glowed a blue-white. He’d been in some kind of trance, probably taking in energy of his own from the process.

  That meant the staff was probably charged and that he had more strength than a man of his age and stature might usually possess. Both of them might have to go off this wall.

  Bullfinch tried to recall his fencing days and the time he’d had to face an attacker wielding a Japanese naginata while he’d been armed only with an umbrella. He willed the oft-used reflexes to awaken.

  The old man swung at him.

  No time for thinking.

  Action required.

  He blocked the blow with the blade and found his push back deflected better than he’d hoped. It was as if the staff bounced back from the sword. Something to do with the markings, those symbols etched deep in the steel. Rees had been right to hold on to it. Maybe it had belonged to the old Irish warrior Lugh himself. He raised it and forced himself forward. If it could parry, perhaps an aggressive move would be equally charged.

  The old man got the staff in front of him in a lightning-fast move, blocking the sword, and something seemed to hum between them as Bullfinch pressed in with his weapon. The old man clutched the staff in both hands and shoved it back the professor’s way with a resistance that didn’t look possible given his slight form.

  Nothing ever came as easy it should.

  The rain had become blinding as O’Donnell yanked back the tarpaulin. She dragged a sleeve across her forehead and looked at the black case it covered. She began flicking catches. Six lined the lid.

  She flipped it open to find the launcher the man had used secured in form-fitting foam. A round magazine seemed to have six slots. If it had been fully loaded when the man had started, that should leave her four. She searched her memory. Had she been taught the range on one of these, a hand-held? The blasts this had delivered so far didn’t seem to offer the most powerful loads available, but they’d knock sticks off kilter if she could get close enough and allow for the storm.

  She tugged the weapon from the foam and started to move. Shots dug into the wall near her but nothing hit. God, let Rees keep them pinned down.

  She jogged along the wall and past a corner of the ruined building, heading quickly across the rugged ground beyond the abbey.

  The posts were placed at intervals across the grassy expanse that stretched toward the mountain, disappearing into the haze. The blue energy linked them, like a thick fiber stretched from post to post, and the closest seemed to blast a line past the ruins. Another must be very near the sea.

  She ran a few steps, working to calculate the safest distance, then dropped to one knee and lifted the launcher to her shoulder. Aiming upward for an arc amid all this bluster that might put a round in the ground near the first post, she ignored the continuing onslaught of rain and noise. She prayed no bullets would slam into her spine.

  From the bay, what seemed like an abnormal cry rose. The watery tomb was holding its occupant no more. The waterspout fueled by the blue captured lightning was working, and her imagination conjured images of what must exist beneath the shimmering outline she’d glimpsed. A coiling, horrible thing capable of unimaginable chaos.

  This had to work.

  She held her breath.

  She squeezed the trigger then lowered the weapon and squinted through the continuing onrush of rain and wind.

  The cylinder she’d unleashed thudded into the ground near the first post.

  Then the explosion roared, tossing up a burst of orange flame and dirt. The reverberations rattled the ground under her.

  The post where the explosion had hit toppled to the right.

  Hit the ground on top of disturbed clouds and debris created by the explosion and remained at perhaps a 40-degree angle.

  And the blue line was not broken.

  Disturbed but not interrupted.

  It continued at a new slant to the sea.

  The roar behind her continued.

  She hadn’t really managed to affect the flow.

  Picking herself up, grabbing the launcher, she started toward the next post. Maybe one more blast would do it.

  Echoes of gunshots sounded behind her.

  Had one gotten past Rees? She couldn’t tell if a shot whizzed past her or not in this storm. Damn!

  Getting just a few paces closer to the next post, she dropped again.

  Another drifting echo of a gunshot sounded behind her.

  Then blood burst from her left shoulder.

  Bullfinch blocked a swing from the old man’s staff. The sword held as did his balance, but shockwaves reverberated back along the blade, rattling his joints again and sending new ripples of pain through his trapezius muscles.

  The old man might have weakened, but he remained powerful. If he toppled Bullfinch off the wall, he’d just turn back to whatever chants or hand motions were needed to keep calling the unspeakable thing in the bay.

  Bullfinch mentally roused his will and adjusted his footing, readying for another slam. He’d been in tougher battles, hadn’t he?

  Then the cudgel struck the blade again.

  Muscle had torn in the area near O’Donnell’s neck, but she didn’t think a bullet had lodged. She’d patch it in a moment. She needed at least t
o get one more round off before another bullet slammed into her in a more damaging spot.

  Gritting teeth against the pain, she raised the launcher, pointed, couldn’t aim. The barrel was in the general direction of the next post. She squeezed the trigger, hesitated a second and dropped.

  She came down on top of the launcher. That kept her face out of the dirt. She braced both for the explosion and another shot.

  The explosion came. A shot didn’t.

  The blast’s thunder sounded over the noises around her. Dirt and flame again, followed by the stake’s tumble to its side. She watched, letting rain just pour down her forehead into her eyes, ignoring the sting.

  The blue line was broken.

  She looked past the mound she’d created to the next post which seemed to channel its blue stream directly into the ground.

  Good enough.

  It would have to be.

  She shoved herself up, swung, and aimed the grenade launcher behind her.

  A man was running toward her.

  His handgun was cradled against his chest as he rushed for a better position to fire on her.

  She fired first.

  The grenade cylinder slammed into his chest, lodging somewhere near his sternum, striking bone.

  In the next instant he disappeared.

  The staff raised high over the old man’s head, clutched in both hands. He would swing it down in a second, like a hammer aimed at Bullfinch’s blade. The professor worried he might not absorb this one as easily.

  Then the old man froze.

  His eyes instantly lost their blue glow, and in the same second, sound, a rippling ka-blam, reached Bullfinch from behind.

  He watched the old man freeze.

  Saw shock in the eyes.

  Then watched him tumble off the wall, letting go of the staff as he plunged over into the recess that had once been the heart of the abbey.

  He crumpled onto stone at the bottom and lay still.

  Only after looking at the twisted form did Bullfinch turn to see Rees jogging his way, handgun still extended in front of him.

  “One got past me,” he said. “I’ve got to check on O’Donnell.”

  Without speaking, Bullfinch jerked toward the bay.

  It was as if the roiling black cloud had been suddenly cut free of the waterspout. It continued to swirl in the air above the water, but its spout had been cut off.

  The serpent form continued to twist and flail, but seemed not to extend quite as far above the waves now, and if he could read anything from the posture, it seemed less confident.

  The arm-like appendages stretched upward, waving, grasping for something that wasn’t there. It was being sucked back down into whatever vortex held it beneath the bay, probably beneath the floor of the bay.

  Some dark, murky abyss.

  Thirty-Five

  “There’s going to be a bit of a dust-up about explosions near landmarks the entire world holds sacred,” Rees said.

  He pressed his rolled wool scarf against O’Donnell’s shoulder as she sat on a huge stone at the edge of the abbey grounds, waiting for a paramedic to take over. A couple of local medical crews had arrived in ambulances a few minutes earlier, focusing first on the more seriously wounded.

  “I prefer to look at it as keeping the sacred spot from going away entirely, but my old boss will have some choice words,” O’Donnell said. “No one’s going to believe what we saw and what might have happened. No one outside of the Aisteach.”

  “Our report will go in Aisteach records at least. There’ll be some documentation of what went on, and we’re going to have staff swarming the area and diving in the bay for information. I just wish there’d been more opportunity to capture video.”

  “Maybe some tourists or pilgrims had time for that.”

  “I can take it from here,” one of the paramedics said.

  Rees let go and stepped back. The rain had slowed again and the waterspout had disappeared. A couple of fresh Garda choppers had arrived and dispatched officers on foot to start tracing the line on which the stakes had been leveled, dismantling and collecting the posts as evidence. From what Rees was hearing through his earpiece, now that people knew what to look for, some posts stretched back for miles and must have been in place for days just looking like oddities, perhaps advertisements for Irish tourist sites. It would take a while for the uprooting.

  “We’re trying to contain everyone here to see about that and ferret out anyone else connected with the ritual,” Rees said. “News teams are going to be asking questions. Gonna be some work containing panic.”

  “We need to figure out who was behind this,” O’Donnell said. “This handful wasn’t working alone. The grenade guy worked for somebody.”

  “The workmen they’ve found were just doing a job and paid in cash. I don’t think the lead gunman’s going to help much,” Rees said. “Maybe the woman?”

  “Because women are easier to break?” O’Donnell asked, wincing as a swab was applied to her wound.

  “Easy,” Rees said. “Not trying to be sexist. Just hopeful.”

  “I’ll have a go at interrogation when we get back to Dublin,” O’Donnell said. “Maybe my gentle feminine touch will bring something out.”

  The final remark dripped with a heavy coat of sarcasm. Rees only chuckled as Bullfinch approached. A white adhesive strip had been applied above his left eye, but in spite of looking tired, he seemed to be all right.

  “You OK?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Heart rate’s a little elevated but I’m not bad.”

  “Are we out of the woods?”

  “I’d like to know who wanted this. It won’t be as easy to try this again here, now that Mr. Rees’ people are alerted to the issue, but if there are people tinkering with the Ning-Rottman theories, who knows what else might be in store?”

  “We’ve got to get back to Dublin,” O’Donnell said.

  The paramedic had cut her blouse open along the seam at the shoulder and had started to apply a bandage.

  “You need to get this looked at, at a hospital.”

  “Is there a slug in there?”

  “No.”

  “Just bandage it. We have work to do.”

  Bullfinch sat on a stone with his tablet on his knees, communicating with Crease via a text window even though the face of the O.C.L.T. leader appeared on his screen. He didn’t want things overheard.

  “Can you tell anything about the prints?”

  “They come back as a Michael Jaco. Last post was riding a desk. Looks like there was a bit of an issue in Afghanistan that got him sidelined. I can identify with hating the deskbound status. Profiles I’m seeing suggest he took a slightly different path in his departure.”

  Crease had walked away from what had been increasing boredom in Military Intelligence desk jobs for a post with the FBI, before moving full time to the O.C.L.T.

  “Looks like this guy worked private security for a while, then a stint with The Institute, you know, the PMC?”

  “You’re going to have to help me with the alphabet soup,” Bullfinch said.

  “Private military company. Contract soldiers. He went freelance after new corporate masters there implemented a board of directors and some restraints. Remember The Institute had some high-profile embarrassments?”

  “Do any of The Institute’s clients have anarchistic tendencies?”

  Crease let a half-laugh escape at that question. “Try all of ’em. Regulation tends to be anathema to people who hire private armies.”

  “Any sign our friend here peeled off any of The Institute’s clients because The Institute was getting soft?”

  “I can try to get that cross-referenced. We can see.”

  “Anarchist or not, someone bankrolled this and marshaled disparate strands of Ning disciples to assemble the pieces and get this all rolling. If we can determine that, it might come in handy.”

  “I’ll get back to you. You going to get some rest?”

  “I�
�m going back to Dublin for the interrogations,” Bullfinch said. “Aisteach holds the offenders for a while, until counter terrorism — and really this was an act of terrorism — steps in.”

  “Hope you find some answers.”

  “I do as well, my friend. I do as well.”

  Thirty-Six

  O’Donnell walked into the interrogation room wearing a pullover sweater with a cowl neck she’d grabbed in a store on the drive from the helipad to Aisteach headquarters. The loose wool allowed a little room for the shoulder wound.

  She found Freya Harding, as they’d determined her identity, sitting at the table with a paper coffee cup between her palms. Her hands were cuffed at the wrists. Her hair was disheveled. She had a bandage on her cheek similar to Bullfinch’s, and her eyes were as glazed by madness as they were filled with defiance.

  “You ever see any photographs from the U.S. of the Manson girls walking along the hallway to trial?” O’Donnell asked as she slid a chair out and sat down. She let her voice drop low and disengaged formality.

  “Can’t recall,” the woman said.

  “They’re walking along in Sunday dresses laughing and singing, all defiant of the system and thinking Charlie’s gonna make everything all right.”

  She adjusted the chair so that she sat directly across from Freya. Then she looked straight into her eyes.

  “That was a long time ago. Those girls were all devoted to the cause, defiant like you are, sure of themselves. Know where they are now? Still locked up. Every so often they have to go before the parole board and beg to be let out, but it gets them nowhere. All except Susan Atkins. She got out. You know how? By dying. She begged them to let her go die in peace, all swollen from cancer treatment, little skull cap on her head. Couldn’t get up, barely could lift her head. Had to wheel her in to beg on a gurney. Authorities just said ‘sorrrrrry.’”

  She slammed her hands down, palms flat, rattling the table.

  “That what you want? It’s what’s gonna happen.”

  Freya chuckled.

  O’Donnell pushed her chair back and stood, leaning across the table to stare. “Like I said they laughed. Until they weren’t laughin’ anymore. We can find a hole to put you down somewhere. Forever.”