by Seeley James
Below me, Ms. Sabel approached the perimeter wall and waited for another attack by the Brothers to distract the Knights nearest her.
Directly below me was the center of the Knight’s fortress. With Miguel keeping them occupied, I lowered myself an inch at a time.
Then the wind buffeted me at the same time my fingers slipped from an icy ledge. I fell fifteen feet, landing on my back on stacked gear. My rifle flew off my shoulder and landed ten yards away. For a few terrifying seconds I couldn’t breathe.
A Knight ran to me, his rifle aimed.
I played dead.
A bullet whizzed by the man’s ear. He returned to his assigned position.
I rolled off the stack to my hands and knees and took a deep breath.
Directly in front of me stood a man in ninja-black with a smooth and shiny scalp. Mr. Baldy stretched a sick grin across his face and raised his silver Scorpion.
CHAPTER 64
We glared at each other over the iron sights of his pistol as he brought the barrel up. When the alignment was right, his finger squeezed the trigger. And I rolled right. I spun three times, trying to get my knees under me. Dirt puffed next to me on each turn.
My escape attempt ended when I rolled to the legs of a large, angry Knight. He picked me up by my arms and dragged me to standing. He held me in front of him in a bear hug. Mr. Baldy had lost his angle, having been too deep in the cave to follow my roll. But his grin returned when he stepped out.
He lined up his shot more carefully this time. As the barrel aligned to my eye, a strange look came over him. Instead of pulling the trigger, he ducked. Blood and brains from the man holding me sprayed out in several directions, his grip slackened, and he fell to the ground. I turned to see Brother Mark standing fifty yards away.
Mark gave me a quick salute. I nodded thanks, pulled my pistol, and chased after Mr. Baldy. At the edge of the cave, I peered around the wall hoping to get a look inside. Instead, rock fragments exploded in my eye. I spun away and let tears wash out the debris. I felt Ms. Sabel’s soothing hand on my shoulder. She returned fire while I was blinded.
Karst caves are formed when the softer sandstone erodes away from harder limestone. In this case, remnants of the softer stone formed a flat gravel floor. A more solid layer of rock formed an angular ceiling, giving the cave a triangular look. I hadn’t examined the back, but a large boulder filled the space forty feet ahead. Whether that was the end of it or not was hard to tell. But it gave a serious advantage to Mr. Baldy.
Even though the snow was coming down fast, there was still more daylight outside than in the cave. Any peek I could take would be backlit. I’d make a perfect target.
Mercury leaned over my shoulder to look inside. What would Sitting Bull do, homie?
I said, I’m not at that level of bravery yet. What would Crazy Horse do?
Mercury said, He would ride in, frontal assault, preserving his ammunition and aim because that’s the scariest way to do it. Of course, back in those days, soldiers were poorly trained, and officers insisted on firing their revolvers single-handed, so he had that going for him.
I said, Thanks. Not helpful.
Mercury said, No need to get saucy, bro.
I reached my pistol around the entrance and fired blindly inside. With no hope of hitting him, my intention was to keep Mr. Baldy from coming out. I ran back to where I thought my rifle landed when I fell. It wasn’t there. One of the Knights saw me as a rear-guard threat and started shooting. I dove and rolled. Ms. Sabel covered me, firing back at the man. I would stick with my pistol.
I scrambled to my feet and ran back for the cave. When I got to the entrance, I repeated my firing blind method before rolling in on the gravel.
Mr. Baldy was waiting for me. I felt one round hit my armored shoulder as I stopped my roll in a prone position. There was no sign of him. I flipped my visor to high-sensitivity thermal and found heat rising from behind the boulder at the back. It appeared to be a fallen section of the roof with a crawl space to the left. There must be a chamber behind it.
Pinging a couple bullets through the small space made the heat signature retreat. Enough space for him to move around, but trapped? I could only hope. If there was an exit on the back end, he hadn’t taken it. That didn’t mean I had him cornered. I’d have to crawl in or talk him out. Crawling in would be braver than Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse combined.
Ms. Sabel landed on the ground next to me. Outside, the fighting reached a fever pitch. More rounds than ever were being fired. To me, that meant Miguel was storming the barricades. He would never risk lives without absolute confidence in winning.
“It’s over, Mr. Baldy,” I called out. “Crawl out with your hands up and I’ll let you touch the Freedom Stone.”
“You are the worst, Jacob Stearne.” His breathing was irregular. “You are a tool of the overeducated elite. They lie to you and still you do their bidding.”
His ragged breathing tipped me off to a problem. I looked around at the gravel, curious if he’d been wounded. I didn’t see any blood. I said, “I’m here on my own.”
“When will you realize that democracy is a lie? Only a strong individual can rein in the forces that attack police and let terrorists roam the streets.”
“You killed Jenny Jenkins. You’re the terrorist.”
I heard scrambling in the gravel. The son of a bitch was getting away. I had to crawl through the tight space. No option.
Ms. Sabel pushed to her feet and ran out. I didn’t know her plan, but I was confident she had a good one.
Crabbing to the crawl space, I realized little of my battle rattle would fit through. I stripped off all my gear except for the body armor and an extra magazine. I pushed my 9 mil into the space and fired three rounds.
Bad idea. The ricochets pinged around furiously. I barely got my hand back without a hole in it.
“You believe the lies you see in the media?” Mr. Baldy’s voice had risen an octave and echoed more.
The echo meant he was in a second chamber.
“I’ll believe double-confirmed reporting curated by professional editors with their reputations on the line over some clown with a Twitter account making baseless accusations.”
“Your country has been invaded—”
While he waxed poetic about his personal paranoia, I crawled in.
It was a cramped, dark space. The visor did little to reveal the confines. It felt like a rock coffin.
Feeling around, I determined the gravel floor ended under my knees. The exit Mr. Baldy took was up a slick piece of stone and to the left. I knew spelunkers were contortionists because Mother Nature didn’t make caves like Disney rides. I would have to repeat all my dangerous maneuvers again on the other side of the narrow passage.
At any moment, he could push his pistol through the opening and fire blindly. Since he hadn’t done that, I guessed he had moved deeper into the cave.
I reached the top of the slick part and felt an opening smaller than the first. Mr. Baldy waited on the other side with the clear advantage of knowing my entry point. I pushed my 9 mil in and fired off a couple rounds. This time, no ricochets. But Mr. Baldy let out a scream.
Fake or real? A seasoned veteran often makes a wounded noise to fool an amateur into charging in.
I pulled out my new monocular, a gift from Miguel to replace the one I gave Pavard. I aimed it at the opening and got a look at the other side. A large domed space with a flat floor waited four feet below the opening. On the left, indirect daylight lit a corner. On the right, Mr. Baldy cowered with his shiny pistol. I put away the clever device and positioned myself to somersault into the cave.
Two more rounds brushed him back. I could hear him scrambling.
I rolled in, landing on sharp gravel as Mr. Baldy fired in my direction. The shots were wild and went wide.
He was running for the source of the daylight. Getting away. He rounded the corner into what looked like a doorway that had been hacked into the rock just for th
is purpose.
Instead of disappearing outside, just as he stepped through the exit, his head snapped back quickly.
He fell backward and landed on his ass.
An extended fist appeared silhouetted against the light. The owner of the mysterious arm moved forward cautiously. Ms. Sabel.
She stepped through the opening and gave me a nod.
I ran to Mr. Baldy and pressed my weapon to his forehead. He relinquished his Scorpion without a word.
Ms. Sabel stood next to me. After a silent moment, she said, “Remember Viktor Popov?”
I recalled watching her shoot the murderous Russian monster nine times with a sickening but satisfying coldness. I said, “Yes, I do.”
She took my pistol and kept it trained on Mr. Baldy.
I checked out his Scorpion. It was the competition model. An odd choice for operations. Not exactly practical but one slick-looking weapon. In the end, he was just a showman. I checked his pockets and came up with a second magazine, still full.
Ms. Sabel took a step back.
Mr. Baldy rose to his feet.
“There are many more chapters of Knights,” Mr. Baldy held his hands up. “They will—”
I fired the first round into his left shinbone. I said, “That’s for Hidalgo.”
He groaned and clenched his jaw to stifle his pain.
“I didn’t know the names of the others,” I said. “But you executed them.”
I fired another round into his right shinbone. And then another in his left. The pain was too much. He fell on his back and screamed.
When he got his pain under control, he asked, “Are you the kind of man who shoots an unarmed man when he’s down?”
“Normal, no,” I said. “But this is a special occasion.”
I slowly fired a pattern into the flesh of his legs for a total of fifteen severe, but not deadly, wounds.
The pain overwhelmed him. He stopped screaming. He rose on his elbows and stared at his shredded legs. He looked up at me with hate in his eyes.
I checked the magazine. Four left. I slapped it back in. “This is for Zafar, one of your own.”
I shot him in the abdomen. He screamed again.
“This is for Danny.” Another hole in his belly blossomed blood. One more punctured his lung. “That was for Fiona.”
I squatted down next to him, getting as level as I could with the worm. I pulled his face to mine and held his gaze.
He couldn’t take it. He turned his eyes to Ms. Sabel, tears streaming down his cheeks. He said, “Please! Help me!”
“No.” Her voice made even me shiver.
Mr. Baldy dropped back. I yanked him upright by his coat. I put the barrel between his eyes and watched him look at it cross-eyed. I pulled it back to make it easier for him to focus. I wanted him to see the bullet leaving the muzzle. I said, “And this is for Jenny.”
CHAPTER 65
Ms. Sabel and I walked out into a blizzard and made our way over rough ground to the Knight’s fortress. It was a scene of carnage.
The Brotherhood lost three; the Knights lost twelve. The remaining Knights had surrendered and were pressing their bare hands to the Freedom Stone. Miguel stood in line with one hand on Dhanpal’s shoulder. I wondered if it would turn him back into the friend we’d lost or someone else altogether.
The Austrians arrived and began taking over operations.
Ms. Sabel and I sat on a case of equipment to watch.
I used to think life followed a formula. You serve your country, follow the rules, they give you a medal, you get a wife and one-point-nine kids, you keep following the rules, you keep getting the good things in life, and you grow old in a suburban bungalow. Neat and tidy and orderly and safe. It’s a lie. Nothing about life is safe. I’d finally found the woman I could spend a lifetime with—and that fragile dream was destroyed in an instant. Few things are as shattering as losing your future.
I glanced at Ms. Sabel’s stoic profile. She knew more about loss than I. At the age of four, she’d watched her mother strangled. She’d been adopted and raised by Alan Sabel, only to watch him get shot in the head while she was strapped to a chair. All the connections to her past had been violently ripped away. Despite having sixty thousand adoring employees, she was alone in this world. Despite having a loving family, I felt the same.
Ms. Sabel was all I had left. And I was all she had left.
She reached over, took my hand, and held it. We didn’t look at each other. We didn’t need to. We understood each other. Not like star-crossed lovers, more like fragments of the same falling star. We sat in silence. Our hearts pounded with grief and anger while the snow fell.
We watched Miguel talking to the Austrians some distance away. They were barely visible through the piling snow. We lost track of Dhanpal.
After a while, she took a deep breath and said, “Why do you want to leave?”
“You keep stringing me out,” I said. “You shot me. You publicly fired me. You’ve let me take the risky missions all the time. Why?”
She breathed. Then she said, “To save the others.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve walked through explosions and war zones and firefights and come out unscathed. Every time. You’re immortal, Jacob.”
Mercury tried to push his way between us. I shouldered him out. He said, Say what, homie? You’re immortal? Oh, she’s got that wrong. You bleed like the rest of them—if I let them touch you.
I said, No.
Mercury said, So introduce me.
I said, No.
Mercury said, You owe me one.
I said, No.
Mercury said, You promised you were going to tell Jenny.
I looked him over and said, No.
Ms. Sabel squeezed my hand. “It’s like, I know I shouldn’t. I know it’s unfair. But when I took Cody on one mission, his leg was shot to pieces. He almost died. If I’d taken you into that warehouse with me, you would’ve killed them all and walked away without a scratch. Even though I know it’s not real—and your mythical god is a cute story that helps you get through the day—I can’t help thinking, ‘Jacob can get it done without getting killed so he should do it.’”
Mercury slapped my shoulder. Whoa! Dude. ‘…a cute story that helps you get through the day?’ You’re letting her trash talk me like that? Speak up, cuz there could be a lightning bolt in this blizzard. One word from me and Jupiter tosses one on ya.
I said, I’ve talked to her. She built a temple for you back at Sabel Gardens.
Mercury said, Yeah, she did. And put a statue of a wimpy-looking white dude what looks like a ballerina in the middle. You gotta TELL her about me.
“You mean…” I squeezed her hand back. “He who can, must.”
“Exactly.” She looked at me.
“That’s what Jenny said when she grabbed the bomb.”
A tear formed in her eye. “She wasn’t immortal.”
“She taught me something that will last with me forever.” I took a deep breath, trying not to break down. “I can’t do it alone. I work best with a team. She was going to be my team.” I choked. “I don’t want to start my own company anymore. Not without Jenny.”
Ms. Sabel hugged me.
CHAPTER 66
Ms. Sabel preferred to walk the cobblestone streets of the Montmarte neighborhood in Paris. We got out of the limo and headed up the hill. Major Pavard’s address was two blocks off the tourist-packed approach to Sacré-Cœur, the famous basilica on a hill overlooking the city. We passed a postcard stairway, a mouth-watering boulangerie, and two sidewalk cafés on the cobblestone Rue des Trois Frères before the street turned more residential.
Up two flights of stairs we were welcomed by the Major’s wife Delphine. Plump, white-haired, and babbling her native language as if I spoke it, she ushered us into a tiny apartment filled with friends. She made a big deal introducing me. The small gathering applauded. I did my best to smile and wave. I hoped to pull it off as bashful
and not depressed.
Life without Jenny had little meaning.
Ms. Sabel had stayed near me—or kept me near her, I’m not sure which—ever since the funeral. It felt like she had me on a suicide watch. I wasn’t that distraught. There was a hole in my life where Jenny used to be. It hadn’t healed. The pleasures of life meant nothing. Food was tasteless, odorless, useless stuff. Music sounded like chirping insects. Friends felt like distant relatives. Every day was overcast.
For a while, I distracted myself by tracking Joe Griffith’s movements. Just to send a message, Miguel and I set charges on all his bedroom door handles under the noses of his personal guards. We blew them at 3 AM when he had “guests” locked inside. We called the police for him.
Even that brought little more than a short-lived smile to my face.
Delphine Pavard poured wine and brought out cheese and crackers. We chatted. I hoped my contributions were amicable. From the look on Delphine’s face, I was failing miserably. She kept trying to tell me jokes but her English was worse than my French.
A knock on the door allowed me a moment to myself. I told myself to perk up, if for no other reason than to make the Pavards happy. A man at the door handed Delphine a huge bow attached to a ribbon trailing down the stairs behind him. It was a surprise gift from Ms. Sabel. The Pavards started rolling it up. Their friends followed them down the steps.
Mercury grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to the balcony. He said, I got a message for you.
I said, I don’t want to hear it.
Mercury said, It’s from Jenny.
I said, C’mon. Don’t be yanking my chain like that. I’m not in the mood.
Mercury smacked the side of my head, Dude, I’m the messenger of the gods. I took her across the river. You listening to me now?