Crevier smiled mirthlessly. “Already knew how it worked, Lieutenant. Doesn’t mean I’m enjoying it.” They turned back to the others when Crevier stopped short. “Where’d the chink get to?”
• • •
JEAN SHIFTED restlessly in the hospital bed and tugged at her sheets. Despite her exhaustion she couldn’t rest, her entire body aching furiously. They had bandaged up her right hand and feet but were waiting for a blood transfusion before they went about cutting out the glass wedged into her flesh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been in this much pain, though she wasn’t certain if that was due to the blood loss or because this sort of thing seemed to happen so frequently. Such were the risks of vigilantism. If that was the right word… Or a word at all. She shook her head. At least she was thinking clearly again, or at least, near enough to understand things had gone from bad to worse.
The curtain around her bed slid open as Tsarong slipped into the room, a subtle smile on his lips. A small leather satchel was slung over his shoulder. “Good evening, Miss Farrell,” the diminutive Tibetan said with a slight bow of his head. He looked older somehow, looking like he had aged a decade since she had last seen him.
Jean smiled wanly. “Heya, Tsarong. I’m pretty sure I overheard the doctor saying I wasn’t permitted guests.”
Tsarong tucked his hands into his sleeves and walked over to her bed. “I’m sure he did… You’ve looked better.”
Jean coughed out a laugh. “Jethro really needs to teach you some Western manners. Next thing you’ll be asking me my age.”
“I have no need to ask, Miss Farrell. You’re twenty-four.” He pulled over a stool and sat at her bedside. He reached into his satchel and placed a pair of shoes and several articles of clothing on the small nightstand. “I brought you a change of clothes, what little I could grab from the penthouse before it—‘Western manners…’ Does that mean I should start wearing a six-shooter?”
“Different kind of Western.”
Tsarong pinched his eyebrows together. “Is it? I can never tell. It seems everyone is so eager to shoot each other in this country. But, I digress… How are you feeling?”
Jean shrugged. “Oh, you know, like shit.”
“Is that Western manners?” he asked with a sly smile.
“Six shooters and all,” she said with a small smile before growing serious. “Where’s Jethro?”
Tsarong frowned. “I don’t know, Miss Farrell. We were hoping you could tell us. We believe the man who took you kidnapped him as well.”
Jean shook her head. “I wasn’t exactly allowed visitors.”
Tsarong looked away and sighed in defeat. “No, I suppose you weren’t.” He moved over to her bandaged hand. “Would you mind?”
Jean shook her head and Tsarong began to carefully unwrap the bandaging. She winced at the sight of her black and purple fingers. Tsarong then walked over to her feet and did the same. Jean let out a sharp hiss as the last of the bandages was pulled away, the dried blood crackling like popcorn. Several bits of glass were jutting out like serrated blades, though most were wedged deep beneath the skin. Tsarong looked over the wounds placidly and tutted to himself. “I wonder why I ever let either of you out of the house.” He reached into his satchel and retrieved a small metallic case. Clicking it open, he retrieved a small glass vial full of opaque liquid and a syringe.
“Tsarong… What are you doing?”
“Helping, Miss Farrell, however little I can,” he replied, as he uncorked the vial, drew the liquid into the barrel, and pushed out any remaining air bubbles. “I don’t always keep these on me, but with events playing out as they have, I thought it best I bring them, should need arise.”
“What is it?” she asked even though she already knew the answer.
Tsarong gave her a sagacious look.
Jean let out a stuttering breath. Her fingers curled, bunching the sheets into her hands. “Doesn’t he usually drink it? Like a tea?”
“Yes, but if you’ll excuse me, Miss Farrell, we are short on time.” Tsarong slid forward, pushed up her sleeve, and found the vein on her arm.
Jean found herself pushing away, feeling like a child at her first visit to the doctor. Beads of sweat prickled up on her brow. “No, I mean, I’m all about being efficient, but I’m not sure I—”
“You need not worry, Miss Farrell,” Tsarong said, placing a hand on hers. “I wouldn’t give the enhanced salts. These are the normal batch, heavily diluted. Your body wouldn’t be able to handle them otherwise.”
“While I’m incredibly happy to hear that, Tsarong, I’m not sure I’m okay with this.”
Tsarong carefully scooped his fingers into her right palm and lightly gripped her hand, his old eyes staring into hers. Jean’s heart jumped against her chest. She never realized how ancient Tsarong really was. Those weren’t the eyes of a man in his sixties, seventies, or eighties—they were the eyes of a man who had crossed centuries. “Miss Farrell, do you trust me?”
Jean cleared her throat and weakly wrapped her fingers around his hand, his thin skin crinkling like wax paper. “Always,” she whispered. “But, Tsarong… I don’t deserve this.”
Tsarong gave her a thin smile. “You deserve it more than anyone else, but I will not give this without your permission.”
Jean took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”
Tsarong pressed the syringe against her skin. “This will burn, but only for a moment.”
Jean pinched her eyes shut as the syringe broke into the vein. She felt a distant burning sensation echo up her arm, quickly followed by the sizzle of electricity suddenly coursing through her blood.
Bloody bits of glass plinked to the floor.
• • •
SHRIEKS OF PAIN filled the facility, echoing through the mountain. Black spots formed in front of Gamma’s eyes, twirling into one another like drunken amoebas. He tried to push himself off the floor, but found his knees gelatinous and he crumpled back down, the side of his face wet. He touched his cheek and brought his fingers back red with blood. He blinked and tried to remember how he had ended up on the floor. He heard someone shout his name in the distance, beneath water, through a wall.
“I’m right here,” he whispered. Or maybe he screamed.
A shadow face appeared above him. “Gamma!”
“Omega. Yes. I see you.”
The operative grabbed Gamma by the arm and pulled him upright. “What the hell happened?!”
Gamma shook his head and looked blearily into the ether. There was a sound like an explosion, something that shook the very atoms of the world. “A scream,” he eventually managed. “I heard someone scream.”
• • •
BETTY DALE had entered this mess a lot later than she was normally comfortable with. Some people would call this whole mess an adventure, but by every measure, this was as far from an adventure as possible. Standing in the far corner of the hospital waiting room, she mentally transcribed everything for the article she would never write. She watched Caraway pace the room, looking more and more like a pit bull testing the end of his leash. She could never forget the night beneath the streets of New York and the darkness that found its way behind Caraway’s eyes, no matter how hard she tried. She supposed that was why she found the lieutenant’s usual pit bull demeanor so much more comforting. Ken Clayton leaned against the wall at the other end of the room, puffing furiously at his cigarette. There was something different about the actor since the last time they had met—if talking over the Green Lama’s super-secret hidden phone counted as “meeting.” Despite the circumstances, he seemed loose, his stride more confident, almost proud. Detective Crevier, who had gained the reputation as the police department’s “crocodile”—a bad, but not completely inaccurate description for the Cajun’s propensity to latch onto a crime until he solved it—looked like the new kid in school, unsure of his status amongst the other students but working hard to fit in. And Tsarong…
Where was Tsarong?
Of all Dumont’s seemingly ever-growing legion, Tsarong was the only one Betty didn’t fully trust, which she acknowledged probably put her in the minority. It wasn’t because he was Oriental—though it certainly didn’t help—but because out of everyone, Tsarong seemed to be the only one who knew of her private relationship with a certain secret agent and the Hidden Hundred, a relationship that, were it made public, would destroy her career.
“Red?” Betty heard Clayton intone.
Torn from her reverie, Betty spun around as Jean Farrell hurried into the waiting room. Betty had met Jean Farrell only briefly and knew the girl from Montana was made of stronger stuff—but not this strong. Farrell looked somehow taller, stronger. Her red hair was vibrant, her green eyes sparkling, her skin clear of any blemish. For a moment, Farrell didn’t seem human.
Caraway opened and closed his mouth. “Wait, shouldn’t you be… You know, bedridden?”
“Probably,” Farrell said with a shrug as she continued toward the exit without losing her step, “but we’ve got places to be, vigilantes to save.”
Betty glanced back to the emergency ward to find Tsarong standing in the doorway, hands tucked inside his massive sleeves. Their eyes met for the briefest moment, and Betty caught the subtlest raise of his brow. She looked to Farrell and nearly gasped aloud, feeling as though the world had suddenly shifted beneath her feet.
Before she stormed out the door, Farrell glanced back at the others and flapped her arms at their slack-jawed expressions. “Well? Are you coming or not?”
• • •
THE ENTRANCE to the injection room was twisted open, three layers of tempered steel crumpled up like little more than tissue paper. Omega wriggled his fingers into the crooked breach and tore open the doorway. Smoke filled the room, pillaring up from the center of the room. Electricity popped, sizzled, and sparked out of exposed wires, giving the room its sole source of illumination. The machine, once a towering glory to science was now a twisted mess, looking as if it had been crushed by the hand of God. Omega squeezed himself through the opening and took a tentative step in, covering his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow, the smoke singeing his lungs. The shadows seemed deeper somehow, covered with velvet and painted with midnight.
“Pelham!” he shouted, his eyes on fire. He climbed on a shattered chunk of metal. “PELHAM! Where are you?!”
Several moments passed before Omega heard the soft whisper from beneath the wreckage. Following the sound, Omega pulled aside a fallen beam and found Pelham curled up on the floor, his ears and eyes bleeding.
“Omega…” Pelham whispered. “Omega, there you are.”
Omega grit his teeth. “What did you do?” he hissed. When Pelham didn’t respond, Omega reached down and grabbed the mad doctor by the collar and lifted him off the floor. “Franklin, what did you do?!”
“You tried to take him from me,” Pelham said with a bloody grin, his crimson eyes rolling back in his head. “You tried to rob me of what I had rightly earned. After so many years, I wasn’t going to let you.” Pelham’s mouth open and closed several times before he managed a sound. “I didn’t—Didn’t want you to spoil my fun.”
“Where’s Metchnikoff?”
Pelham tittered a laugh and nodded over to the ruins of the control panel. “He was too close… His mind couldn’t handle it.”
Omega dropped Pelham and climbed over to the control panel. He found Metchnikoff’s body on the floor, blood flowing from the Russian’s ears, eyes, mouth, and nose in torrents. Omega grimaced and cursed under his breath.
“What of Dumont?” the operative asked. Pelham had sat up and hooked his arms around his legs, rolling back and forth like a child. “Where is he?”
“Success,” the doctor replied, nodding toward the pillar of smoke.
Moving over to the dark cloud, Omega felt no heat and saw no evidence of flames. He waved his hand in an effort to clear the smoke and found Dumont’s hunched form on the raised operating table. A black spider’s web of distended veins spread across Dumont’s neck, pulsing in a staccato rhythm. Omega cautiously reached forward and tilted Dumont’s head back. Black tears poured from Dumont’s milky eyes, down his cheeks and off his chin, staining his tattered green robes. In the center of his forehead sat a twisted pitch-black wound surrounded by a blood red triangle within a crimson circle.
Chapter 18: Stormfront
“HE REFUSED to see a doctor, no matter how much we tried to coax him,” Wayland said as he and Caraway helped Heidelberger into a chair. “Said he wouldn’t do nothing until he spoke to you.”
“Tough little son of a bitch,” Caraway murmured, eyeing the blood-soaked rag pressed against the young officer’s ear and the small roll of papers clamped in his right hand. The others were watching from the kitchen, while Helen and Evangl had taken the children to bed. Only Jean had risked staying in the living room, despite Caraway’s silent objections. He knew better than to argue. “Did he say what happened?”
Wayland shook his head. “Like I said, wouldn’t do nothing ’til he spoke to you.”
Caraway kneeled down in front of Heidelberger. “David. David, buddy, I need you to focus.”
“Mm right here, boss,” Heidelberger mumbled as he worked to screw his eyes open.
“David,” Wayland said. “I need you to tell the lieutenant what you told me.”
Heidelberger shook his head slowly. “Not sure I can. My head. It don’t feel right.”
“I know, David, but you gotta focus,” Caraway said, carefully placing his hands on Heidelberger’s shoulders. “Keep your eyes open, we ain’t got time to nap.”
“Okay. Okay.” Heidelberger’s eyes began to droop shut. “He said… He said, the man on the phone… Dr. Valco and the other… They said, ‘bring an army.’”
The back of Caraway’s neck tingled. “Bring an army where?”
Heidelberger looked down at the papers crinkling in his fist as if he was seeing them for the first time. “I wrote it down,” he whispered, offering the pages to Caraway but not releasing his grip.
Caraway and Wayland shared a concerned look before Caraway gently teased the papers out of Heidelberger’s grasp. He gently unrolled them to find the sheets covered top-to-bottom in a rambling list of directions, complete with seemingly nonsensical symbols. “Thank you, David,” Caraway said solemnly with a thin smile. He moved to stand when Heidelberger suddenly snapped his hand around Caraway’s wrist.
Tears welled up in Heidelberger’s eyes. “Boss, he’s screamin’,” he hissed.
Caraway looked to Jean, then to Wayland. “Get him to the hospital. Quick as you can.”
Wayland nodded and helped Heidelberger up from the chair and out the door. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you some help.”
Jean silently shut the door behind the officers and turned to Caraway, already shuffling through Heidelberger’s notes.
“It’s directions,” he said in response to Jean’s unasked question. “Very specific directions.”
“Directions to where?” Jean asked as she began pacing the room.
“Someplace called the ‘facility’.”
“Well, that’s original.”
Caraway flipped over to the next page and stopped short. “Jesus, it’s inside a mountain.”
Jean looked at Caraway with a baffled expression. “Bullshit.” She held out her hand expectantly.
“You know, Jean, you have the worst mouth I’ve heard outside the force,” he said, handing her Heidelberger’s notes.
“Yeah, well, I try to defy most social norms,” she replied as she read over the directions. “Speaking of which, last I heard only dragons with big piles of gold live inside mountains. ‘South Grand?’ Where the hell is that?”
“I read an article about something like this in the Sentinel back in the day,” Caraway said, shaking his head, “but I never thought… This isn’t possible.”
“Please,” Jean scoffed, “our list of what isn’t possible grows shorter everyday.” She
shifted through the pages. “And this is from Valco?”
Caraway nodded. “According to Heidelberger.”
“What the hell is Valco doing there?”
“He didn’t say, but my gut says he’s with the same people who took Gary and Jethro. Probably kidnapped before we knew about it.”
“That’s a guess. And you trust him, Heidelberger, I mean?” she asked, skeptically holding up the pages to him. “You’re sure he’s not working with these bastards?”
“You’re asking if I trust Heidelberger,” Caraway said with an arched eyebrow. “David Heidelberger.”
“You’ll excuse me for being paranoid,” she replied, “but I’ve been through a bit the last few days. So, when I get directions to a super secret hideout hidden beneath a mountain, I’m going to ask questions. We have no idea what we’re up against.”
Caraway waved it away. “Look, if Heidelberger tells me Valco called up sayin’ he’s hidden beneath a mountain, no matter how insane that sounds, I’m gonna believe him. What we gotta figure out is where the hell is South Grand?”
“It’s on the south west border of a small town called Black Rock. Just north of Norton and Tanner.” Jean looked up from Heidelberger’s notes and found Evangl standing in the kitchen doorway. Her hands shook as tears welled up in the corner of her eyes. “It’s not too far from my—from our farm,” she added with an ironic small smile. “Right under our feet the whole time.”
• • •
OMEGA SLID the cell’s metal door open, ignoring the cold sting against his fingers. His breath misted from his nostrils like dragon’s breath. He hated coming down here, into the bowels of the mountain. All around him he could hear the other test subjects shifting inside their cages as hunger gripped at their blackened minds.
Dumont, his unconscious form hanging limply over Omega’s shoulder, moaned wordlessly.
“There, there, Mr. Dumont,” Omega said softly. “You’ll be right as rain very soon.”
Omega stepped into the cell and dropped Dumont unceremoniously to the ground before propping him up into a seated position so that his head rested back against the cage. Omega quickly ran out of the cell and moved to lock the door, hesitating only long enough to briefly to study Dumont’s shattered visage.
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 30