Day of the Delphi

by Jon Land

  Indeed, it looked more like a prison.

  Had Traggeo simply left the cells of one for the cells of another? No. No spotlight scanned the spacious grounds. A pair of watchtowers were unmanned. A small complement of armed men patrolled the desert turf within the fence, but that was all. Other than the departure of a patrol jeep through the complex’s entrance an hour into his vigil, there was no other activity to indicate this facility was even operational.

  Whatever had gone on here seemed to be long over. Conversely, it might be a building still waiting to be used; a building now empty but poised to fill a future role. Either way, the token security force on the premises must have been stationed here to protect whatever secrets the complex held, among which Johnny hoped would be Traggeo’s present whereabouts.

  Johnny had begun to turn his attention to gaining entry to the complex when a blast erupted from the direction where the jeep had sped several minutes before. He could see an orange glow indicative of a fiery explosion in the flat distance. All at once, the complex came alive. A piercing siren went off and men scrambled in all directions under a sudden wash of light. Two more jeeps tore out of the complex’s entrance, backed up by a truck packed with troops. Both jeeps were equipped with .50-caliber machine guns.

  The thick spread of light gave Johnny his first clear look at the complex and what he would have to cross to reach it. His eyes catalogued the terrain, potential obstacles, and places of concealment en route to the fence enclosing the perimeter.

  Using the fortunate distraction to his own advantage, Johnny started forward into the night and began his approach.

  “Right on time,” said Sal Belamo, his binoculars lingering on the explosion while Blaine followed the progress of the convoy out of Sandcastle One toward the origin of the blast.

  Sal had wired the explosive charge to the jeep to ensure a bright display in the desert dark. Both he and McCracken had learned long ago that nothing aided an unwarranted entry to a secured base better than a distraction which lured security personnel away from it. As it turned out, Sandcastle One was another two miles from the spot where the jeep had confronted them. After stowing the two guards a safe distance from the coming explosion, they drove most of that distance with lights off and then sprinted the last stretch. They took up a position within the cover of a rock formation four hundred yards in front of Sandcastle One just two minutes before the timer charge was set to go off. The night gave up virtually nothing until the explosion brought the expected flurry of men and vehicles out the main gate through the spill of lights. The last of the vehicles had barely passed out of sight of the gate when McCracken abandoned his binoculars and grasped the pack.

  “Let’s go,” he told Belamo.

  CHAPTER 25

  Inside Sandcastle One, the hair that was not his own bounced raggedly atop Traggeo’s head as he hurried along the corridor leading out of Cellblock B. Though muffled by the building’s double concrete construction, the explosion from beyond had been easily recognizable to one familiar with the sound.

  He was almost to the control center when the siren began to wail.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck!”

  He tore the hair of the kid he’d killed in the motel from his head and flung it against a wall. Pieces of glue and the kid’s rotted scalp stuck to his flesh and left it a patchwork of dark, grimy splotches. He hadn’t had time to chemically treat this scalp properly and was looking forward to the replacement that would be his very soon. Of course, he wouldn’t wear the woman’s full locks. He would style and fashion them into the braids of his people—a headdress and trophy at the same time.

  The first scalp Traggeo had worn had been the straw-colored hair belonging to the Indian who had tracked him to Miravo. How that Indian had managed the feat Traggeo would never know. Nor did he know exactly the nature of the operation he had been a part of since his release from prison had been arranged. He had managed to recruit several other members of Salvage Company to join him, careful to leave himself the only officer among them. He held the rank of platoon staff sergeant the day he scalped three Vietcong collaborators to set an example. Such news traveled fast through the Delta villages. All he wanted to do was make a point.

  The blessing of it all was that Salvage Company had allowed him to explore and come to grips with his true nature. The regular army was all protocol and regulations. Salvage Company just got things done. Brutally. Efficiently. Much to Traggeo’s liking.

  He knew no Indian blood flowed through his veins; it was a spiritual thing. He could feel the spirit of a great warrior reborn inside him, guiding him on. He saw the warrior in a dream vision and took on his likeness, fashioned his very appearance after what the vision had shown him.

  But it wasn’t enough. The warrior in his dream vision could not achieve the greatness he longed for so long as another stood in the way:

  Johnny Wareagle.

  The huge true-blood who had shared the war with Traggeo was more myth than man. A legend Traggeo knew he would have to overcome if he was to achieve what the warrior of his vision prescribed for him. The wearing of his victims’ scalps was intended as a means to swallow their energy, absorb their auras into his own, so that he would be up to the task when the day came for him to meet Wareagle.

  For now, though, there was a job to do, a task to perform. Traggeo took great pride in being trusted. He wanted to prove to those who had freed him to his destiny that they had chosen well, wanted to show himself to be worthy. Whoever had arranged his release from prison must have known of his work with Salvage Company. While those years had helped hone his physical skill, though, this tour of duty would allow Traggeo to hone his spirit, fashion it in the image he desired.

  He reached the control center and entered the proper combination into the keypad. The door slid open. He charged through it and moved straight for the chief of security.

  “What’s going on?”

  The security chief held one earpiece of his headset in place as he spoke. “We’ve lost contact with the patrol jeep.”

  “The explosion, you fuck!”

  “Our men are almost to the scene now.”

  Traggeo reached over and grabbed the man by the shirt. A name tag that read CAROSI went flying. “You sent them out?”

  “I-I-I had to.”

  “Damn it!”

  Carosi’s headset had come half off and Traggeo could hear a garbled report coming out through the earpiece. The control center overlooked the front of the place known as Sandcastle One, and he could see the day-bright glow cast over the yard.

  “Turn off the lights!” Traggeo ordered.

  “But—”

  Traggeo lifted Carosi up and slammed him against a wall composed entirely of darkened television monitors. “Don’t you see what’s going on here? We’re being set up. Turn off the fucking lights!”

  Johnny Wareagle had reached the fence on the complex’s eastern side an instant before the lights snapped back off. His Gerber M-2 knife sliced through the steel links like putty, and he was inside within seconds. Before pressing on, he refastened the ruined portion of the fence as best he could to hide the fact that the base had been penetrated from anyone with the sense to look.

  Turning back toward the darkened grounds, Johnny saw the remains of the security force was beginning a careful sweep of the area. He recognized the black, awkward-looking devices strapped around their faces as AN/PVS-7 night-vision goggles. But the men weren’t looking for him.

  They were looking for whoever had set off the explosion down the road. Another party, perhaps significant in number, was attempting to gain entry to the complex. Johnny had become so obsessed with catching Traggeo that until now he had totally failed to consider what sort of plot the killer might be involved in. Clearly it involved a force with sufficient resources to either construct or commandeer this facility. And this force’s enemies had arrived at the same time Johnny had, something he could make work in his favor.

  Wareagle lay flat
on the ground and began smoothing handfuls of the desert upon his flesh and clothes. When he once again started to move forward, his frame was indistinguishable from the ground itself. As the complex had melded into the desert, so had Johnny. He pulled himself on with his feet and elbows, lost amidst the sagebrush and tumbleweed, unseen even to those who looked directly at him.

  Belamo and McCracken used wire cutters to get through the fence. The lights died again just after they were in, and Blaine reached over to stop Sal from pressing onward.

  “Someone knows we’re here.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s why they turned the lights back off.”

  “First bright thing they’ve done, you ask me.”

  “Absolutely. An assault team would use the light to pick off the guards one at a time. The dark keeps everything equal.”

  “Or them ahead, they got that night-vision shit.”

  “Right.”

  “So what d’we do?”

  “Change the rules.”

  “Boss?”

  “They were expecting an assault team, Sal. They weren’t expecting us.”

  “I’ve called in our status,” Carosi was saying, the headset refastened over his ears. “Reinforcements are en route as a precaution but it’s going to take some time … . Sir?”

  Traggeo didn’t even turn the man’s way. Instead he continued to strain his eyes out the window in Sandcastle One’s control center toward the grounds beyond. The glass had been treated to appear opaque on the other side, making it impossible for anyone below to notice him. The night gave up nothing besides the occasional shape of one of the guards shuffling about in search of intruders.

  “It was the patrol jeep, all right,” Carosi resumed after accepting the report from the group that had reached the scene of the explosion.

  This time Traggeo did turn his way. “Order the men back here.”

  “We still have two missing, unaccounted for.”

  “Either they’re dead or they might as well be. Order the men back. Fast.”

  Carosi swallowed a thick gulp of air and again did as he was told.

  Traggeo swung back to the window.

  “Do your men on the grounds have walkie-talkies?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Ask them to report in. Ask all of them to report in.”

  “Why?”

  Traggeo’s eyes blazed cold fire. “Because I can’t see them anymore.”

  McCracken and Sal Belamo had split up to deal with the immediate threat of the patrolling guards. While permitting sight even on the darkest of desert nights, the AN/PVS-7 night-vision goggles the guards wore came with severe limitations. For one thing, their bulk precluded rapid twists and turns. For another they reduced peripheral vision to almost zero. These two limitations were easily taken advantage of by those who understood them.

  While trying to find a way to enter Sandcastle One, Blaine had come upon four guards wearing the goggles. All four had been easily and quietly subdued, no weapon required to incapacitate them. McCracken figured it would be different for the ones who crossed Sal Belamo’s path. The pug-nosed ex-boxer had learned his trade on the streets and continued to practice it in the same deadly manner. He had no trouble using a silenced semiautomatic in place of savvy, if it meant facilitating matters and saving a few seconds.

  Instead Blaine was surprised to come upon a pair of guards hidden in the low brush of the grounds who were unconscious instead of dead. He might have suspected that Sal had finally discovered subtlety if it weren’t for the fact that Belamo, according to plan, should have been on the opposite side of the complex. McCracken shrugged the anomaly off and continued on as the headlights of the returning convoy burned through the last stretch of road back for Sandcastle One.

  “I can’t raise any of the perimeter guards,” Carosi said dumbly after putting out the call yet again.

  “Because they’re not there anymore, you fuck!” snapped Traggeo.

  A red light began to flash on the main security console, accompanied by a chirping beep. The status monitor flashed two words in rhythm with the beeps:

  UNWARRANTED ENTRY

  “We have a penetration!”

  “Where?”

  “First-floor window. Southeast quadrant, sector one-one—”

  “Where the fuck is that?”

  Before Carosi could respond to Traggeo’s question, a second light and fresh chirping commenced. The status monitor’s message changed only slightly:

  UNWARRANTED ENTRY

  UNWARRANTED ENTRY

  “Second penetration!” Carosi managed, almost in a gasp. “First-floor door. Northwest quadrant, sector—”

  “Just tell me where, goddamnit!” Traggeo demanded.

  Before the security chief could oblige, the lights of the convoy streamed toward the main gate.

  “I want them deployed inside,” Traggeo ordered. “I want them to shoot anything that moves!”

  The gate opened electronically and the first jeep had barely cleared it when the explosion sounded. The jeep’s carcass was hurled into the air in a burst of flames. It was flung backward and crashed into the second jeep immediately behind it. The personnel truck bringing up the rear swerved to avoid a deadly collision and was caught in a second explosion that twirled it about like a top and then tumbled it over. A third blast caught the fuel tanks of all three vehicles, the result being a massive fireball that lit the whole of Sandcastle One in its glow.

  Because he was standing by the window, Traggeo’s skin was tinted orange. His expression had remained unchanged through the chaos that had scrambled the other occupants of the control center behind him. He could feel, could taste, every breath. The calm of battle had taken over. His thinking was clear.

  Sandcastle One had been penetrated in two places by an undetermined number of men, who had also secured the perimeter. His primary task now was to contain the damage to the overall plan. There was nothing in Sandcastle One’s on-line systems that could give up any hint of what was coming. But there was a prisoner inside who could provide far more than merely a hint.

  Traggeo knew what he had to do.

  He moved to the control center’s door and pressed the proper code into the keypad. Nothing happened.

  “It seals automatically when the complex is penetrated,” the security chief explained.

  “Open it.”

  Carosi swung back to his terminal. The door slid open with a hiss.

  Johnny Wareagle was creeping along a first-floor corridor of the complex when the explosions sounded. Ordinarily he would have thought the other force that had shown up here was launching an all-out attack, but that didn’t feel like the case to him. His thoughts were jumbled, confused. He had come here strictly for Traggeo. This other force had obviously come for another reason altogether.

  Blainey …

  Wareagle shook the feeling off as quickly as it slipped into his mind. A distraction was the last thing he needed now, much less one involving the man who had fought next to him so often that he could no longer enter into battle without expecting to see McCracken by his side. But tonight he was alone. No matter what the mystery force’s purpose or allegiance was, he was alone, his own purpose singular:

  Traggeo.

  Johnny turned a corner and walked directly into a blanket of darkness, forcing him to feel his way. The earlier corridors he had traversed had been lit by the dull glow of recessed ceiling lights. The walls and doors, the floor tile too, were off-white in color, not quite cream. Though there were no bars or visible locks, the suspicions Johnny’d had outside were confirmed: this place was a prison, its cells presently unoccupied but fully prepared to take on inmates.

  Yet something felt wrong here. Wareagle had been involved in enough rescue missions inside Vietcong prison camps to know the feeling of futility they brought with them. He knew the hopelessness, the despair of their very settings. The feeling here was different, though equally ominous and foreboding. There was a pow
erful enemy at work as well. Johnny could feel that enemy in the walls, could feel it in the awful purpose this place had been constructed to fulfill.

  The complex was part of something terrible. The spirits grabbed Johnny’s ear and he heeded them. He understood at once why his search for Traggeo had been so important. That was how the spirits had lured him here to take up pursuit of a far greater enemy the madman had joined up with.

  Wareagle stopped in his tracks.

  Traggeo was here now! Traggeo was coming!

  Johnny stopped in his tracks, as if an invisible thrust had shoved up against him. His senses sharpened. Up ahead he could see light beyond the next bend in the hall.

  Wareagle pulled his knife from its sheath.

  The rapid series of explosions had drawn Kristen to the door of her cell, ear pressed against it to listen for more hints of whatever was going on. But the hollow sound of approaching footsteps was all that reached her. Kristen lunged backward.

  The monster was coming to kill her.

  She understood what David had seen. What he had known, she now knew. That information could not die with her.

  A weapon! She needed a weapon!

  Her eyes fell on the bed frame. Tear one of the steel support rods free, and at least she would be able to mount some sort of defense. Kristen yanked the mattress off and overturned the bed frame. It thumped hard to the floor.

  The bed frame was constructed of solid wood.

  Beyond, the footsteps had stopped.

  Click.

  Her door had been electronically unlocked. The knob began to turn.

  “No!”

  The word had started as a scream and ended as a rasp. The door came all the way open.

  Kristen shrank back against the wall and watched the huge figure enter. Not the man monster, though. Before her stood a giant Indian whose head barely cleared the doorway when he stepped part of the way in.