Reckoning

by James Byron Huggins

It required men who could unleash devastating carnage through almost incomprehensibly violent attack, but who could, in the next breath, shut it all down in order to initiate complex technical procedures that required a surgeon's emotional detachment.

  It was never more difficult for Gage than it was in this moment. But he slowed his mind, focusing, doubling his efforts to ignore everything but the tactical action he had to perform.

  So deliberate, so still was his slow lean that he could have, degree by degree, eventually stepped fully into the darkened room, exposing his entire profile without ever appearing to have moved at all. But that wasn't necessary. Before Gage had exposed more than an inch of his face, he found his man.

  There …

  Across the alley.

  Crouching and moving in shadow.

  Clearly the sounds from inside the townhouse had carried over his headset and alerted the man but he hadn't yet decided what action to take.

  Gage eased back around the corner and closed his eyes, calculating.

  ... Forty yards ... 9mm won't drop at all ... Contact at point of aim ... Plate glass probably won't sprawl the round ... First, get Malachi ready to move ... The noise might bring backup from the front ... Run across the alley on the shot, close on him ...

  Gage removed the visor, tried to loosen with a few deep breaths, and went back up the hall. Malachi uttered a brief, choked shout when he jerked open the door. He reached down to help the old man rise to his feet.

  Malachi stood unsteadily, his aged legs stiff from kneeling in the closet. He grasped Gage's shoulders strangely with his hands, as if confirming that Gage was, indeed, alive.

  "You alright, professor?" Gage whispered.

  "Yes, yes," said Malachi, obviously stunned by the momentum of events.

  Gage leaned forward.

  "Listen carefully." The burning emotion of the last conflict made his voice harsh and coarse. "I have to take out a man guarding the back, then I'm going outside. Come running when I wave. But you'll have to move quickly. Do you understand?"

  Malachi nodded. "Do what you must. We shall settle all this with the proper authorities at the appropriate hour. But we have no time to waste."

  Despite the tension of the moment, Gage was impressed by the solid balance of the old man's words. Without reply, he turned and moved back toward the kitchen. He put on the visor, extended the MP5 stock, and raised it to a shoulder position. Then, slowly, using the night visor to align the iron sights, he eased the tip of the barrel around the corner.

  The man was still crouched across the street, still moving.

  Trying not to think, Gage flipped the selector to single shot and lined up on the man center mass, just as he had done at the mansion earlier in the night when he had killed the guard to reach Simon. For a moment he held the sight-picture alignment, allowing his eyes to accommodate the lack of depth perception caused by the visor. Then he took a deep breath and pulled himself into his sniper mode, closing off his mind so that nothing would disturb his concentration. He held the sights steady, melding his mind and body to the weapon to release half the breath and hold again.

  He gently squeezed the trigger.

  The plate glass exploded at the impact of the silenced round, and the man screamed, falling backwards, clutching. Gage was out the back door and crossing the alley before the last shards of glass had landed.

  Wheezing, the man was sprawled in the shadows, holding a hand over a shoulder wound. As soon as Gage stopped he knew that the wound wasn't serious. The round had splintered on the glass, sprawling, to hit the man in smaller pellets. Reflexively, Gage raised the MP5, centering, and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  Wide-eyed, the sentry stared at him; a muscular, massive man dressed in black. Gage knew him for what he was—a shooter, a career criminal who was good at murder, hired to do a job on Malachi Halder. But the wounded man was an amateur at this game, and it was not a game for amateurs.

  Gage felt the instinct, the heat; it was kill or be killed, leave nothing alive, finish it, finish it because only the strongest, the purest, the meanest would survive. It was his old world, the world he had dominated, ruled, and terrorized by the power that was his.

  His hand trembled.

  No!

  Not again!

  Gage shook his head, reached down, and snatched off the man's headset, kicked away the rifle. Then in a swift movement he took the man's automatic, a Colt .45, ejecting the chambered round and clip and tossing the gun into the darkness. Quickly he searched the man for a backup weapon; ankles, back, found none. Then he rose and stepped away.

  Five seconds lost because of mercy.

  And now the man would come for him again one day.

  Something inside Gage told him he wasn't strong enough for this game anymore.

  Gage didn't listen.

  He turned and waved to Malachi, who was out the door and down the steps with surprising agility. In seconds the old man was beside him. Leaving the wounded man on the pavement, Gage led Malachi across a maze of alleys and lots. Malachi followed without question and with remarkable stealth. Within minutes they were standing beside a dark blue LTD, parked on a street that had far more traffic than the one outside the townhouse.

  "Get in," Gage ordered.

  Without question Malachi got into the passenger side. Gage started the car on the first try and pulled slowly away from the curb, blending into traffic. After a minute he increased his speed. He automatically checked for following cars, watching the side streets. He made several turns, doubling back again to confirm that they were alone. Then he drove steadily south, eventually merging onto the noisy, glaring traffic that crossed the Hudson River through the Lincoln Tunnel.

  As they descended into the darkness, Gage felt the rush: It was the game again. He knew the rules, had once accepted them. But he had changed. He was different now.

  And he could no longer live by the rules.

  *

  EIGHT

  It was only a shadow, a faintly darker shade that was there, and then it wasn't. Sarah's eyes locked on the open doorway, the brightly framed entrance to the basement of Saint Matthew's Hall of Ancient Languages.

  She didn't realize what she had seen, what had drawn her eyes to the entrance.

  There was nothing.

  Strangely disturbed, she continued to watch, a faintly alarming sensation awakening deep within her. But, vaguely as it had come, it was gone, leaving behind a ghostly awareness that caused her heart to beat more quickly.

  Dimly she recognized the quickening as a warning, the instinctive arousal of some half-forgotten survival mechanism. Jade green eyes narrowed as she watched the door.

  But, still, there was no sound. She had heard no one descending into the basement for several hours and had assumed she was alone. But now she continued to watch.

  Uncertain.

  Stretching her long arms and legs, Sarah Halder leaned back in her chair, staring at the empty door. After a moment she sighed and something prompted her to rise and walk to the door, to look into the hallway. But even as she considered it, she realized how tired she was and resisted the impulse. Wearily she shook her head, sweeping her long, dark hair, even darker now against the paleness of her skin, back from her forehead with an unsteady hand.

  It occurred to her that she had spent most of her life in these halls. Much of what others had enjoyed most in life had slowly but steadily passed her by. But, she thought with a slight lift of spirit, she was still young – only 33. There was still time for what she had missed most of all.

  She had tried several times at love but relationships were always hampered by the life she had chosen. In truth, her intellect and beauty were largely useless at attracting anyone because she had spent a large part of the last 15 years in libraries or isolated archeological excavations, concealing herself in shadows and tombs. But she knew she was still attractive.

  Tall, almost five-nine, she had the sleekly proportioned, panther-like body of an athlete.
Years of walking over sunbaked hills, of digging in desert ruins, had burned her down, conditioning her with long and smooth muscles. Yet the scorching work and long hours of study had aged her, too.

  She thought of the stray gray that thinly specked her raven-black hair, the white strands starkly noticeable against the natural midnight blue-black. And her skin was dryer now from the harsh conditions she had endured, and faintly wrinkled around her eyes. She wondered how much more of her life would pass before ...

  A memory came to her, soft and cherished, a memory of the man, and the one moment in time they had shared. She felt again the soft gray eyes that seemed to see her as she truly wanted to be seen, the quiet gaze that seemed to always understand, to know.

  She remembered how he had listened to her every word, however simple, and how he had studied her every move as she nursed him back to life. And she had known even then that what his eyes had spoken was far more than gratitude. His eyes had simply expressed what he was afraid to speak aloud. But she had been slow to understand his gentleness because even then she had known he was the hardest of men – the hardest of soldiers.

  But from the very beginning she had found only tenderness in his voice, sensing something kind and beautiful and forgiving within him. Though some things were frightening, as well. For as she sat beside him as he healed, watching the fevers come and go through the desert nights, she listened to his dreams, heard him speak to the dead men, to those he had killed and to those who had died at his side. In the long nights she came to understand the pain in his voice, felt his guilt and regrets and remorse, wept beside him; he in his delirium, she in her sadness at such pain.

  After they had smuggled him back into the country, and after his wounds were healed, he had risen one day to say a quiet good-bye.

  She had never seen him again.

  "Gage," she whispered. "Why couldn't you say anything?"

  A control rose up and Sarah shut her eyes, tight. With a deep breath she brought herself back to her surroundings, glancing absently toward the door.

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes, suddenly more aware of the burning, deep fatigue. She had stayed here too long, she realized – too long studying an ancient text that had, so far, revealed nothing significant.

  Before her, photocopied sheets of the writings of Theophylact of Greece lay haphazardly on the table, and she tried to bring her mind back to the work.

  For an entire week she had sat translating the half-readable text and found that, in essence, it agreed with the testimony of Euthalius of Alexandria. But the poor condition of the parchment prevented definitive interpretation and she was forced to recreate Theophylact's sequence of thought in passages where words were lost, continuing the logical process of the revered philosopher's reasoning and language despite the obscured lines, capturing his intent.

  "I'm too tired for this," she whispered.

  Too tired for ghosts. Too tired for games.

  She stared again at the page in front of her, leaned forward to focus on the almost unreadable line. Just finish this, she told herself. Just finish this and go home.

  Even beneath the magnifying glass she could not discern Theophylact's Greek. He seemed to be discussing a Semitic letter written by Alria of Samaria which said that the biblical book of Hebrews was originally addressed to the ... the...

  "What ... is he saying?"

  Sarah's whisper was unnervingly loud in the dead silent hall.

  Theophylact's lettering was all but obliterated at the point where he analyzed the intent of Hebrews' unknown author. Sarah leaned closer over the page, focusing intently on reading the mind of someone lost to the world for 1600 years.

  Something was visible, something she could faintly discern – a fragment of a single Greek letter that stood six spaces away from the last word of a shattered sentence.

  She closed her eyes, reading the memorized text again in her mind, becoming one with the long dead philosopher who had penned the letter in 300 A.D. She began to write with him, appreciating the use of his now-dead language, understanding the direction of his thoughts and purpose of his words, even as she understood their brutality, withholding moral judgment in order to more accurately understand a lost world.

  Sarah opened her eyes and stared at the page.

  "Of course," she said faintly, feeling the solid rush from her heart.

  Quickly she scanned past the lost segment, reading further, finding letters, dots, and swirls, building the parchment in her mind. She continued the intricate thoughts of a man long lost to the Earth and saw the faint fragments of letters exactly where she had expected them to mark the page and then it was there, as it was from the beginning.

  With her magnifying glass Sarah bent closely over the page, putting each Greek letter in place with her mind, watching them merge with the faint outline.

  "Written to the inhabitants of Palestine, and then to the Jews who have fled ..." she said softly, laughing. "I knew it ..."

  Instantly she was on her feet, moving to the phone beside the desk. She dialed and heard a singsong voice answer on the other end.

  She laughed. "Barto, listen. Yes, it's Sarah. Listen, I've figured it out. Yes, I'm sure. Come on over. Uh-huh. I'm in the library. Alright. See you in a few minutes."

  She set the receiver down and turned.

  A shadow in the doorway moved.

  Sarah dropped the phone, breath catching, staring straight at the doorway, vivid with fear.

  Her gaze focused on the faint darkness on the tile floor in the entrance. It moved again. Except this time the shadow did not immediately recede but lay across the white floor for a long moment. When it moved backwards she moved with it, picking up the phone instantly.

  A rasping sound behind her, feet shuffling.

  Screaming, Sarah spun around, glaring frantically in the darkened library as she dialed. Something banged against a desk.

  Inside the room?

  She listened and knew.

  It’s inside the room!

  Sarah's scream shattered the silence as the horrifying, hulking man emerged from the shadows beside her. He moved forward, smiling, his black-gloved hands clenching, unclenching in anticipation. She continued to scream and tried to frantically finish dialing. But then, looking blindly toward the doorway, she saw a second man. Bald and as large as the first, he watched as the smiling man moved toward her.

  Sarah picked up the phone to hurl it at the dark form but the man lifted a burly arm, batting it aside, and then he was on her. She raised her arms to ward off the blow that knocked her to the floor.

  Sarah landed across the tile floor.

  Fighting, kicking frantically, she struggled to her feet, moving back, but the man grabbed her as she rose, slamming her against the bookrack. Shelves dug into her back. She opened her eyes, blood fast and hot.

  The man's fetid breath touched her skin, cruel eyes studying her. His face had a deathly pallor but the eyes were smart, cunning and calculating. Sarah clenched her teeth and moved her head as far back as possible against the bookrack. Hands locked on her arms with inescapable strength and held her in place.

  "It'll be quick," the man whispered.

  Sarah felt something within her soul spiraling out of control. Screaming, she tore violently away but he tripped her as she moved. The hard floor struck her across the face as she fell, but still she tried to rise. He snatched her up again and slammed her against the bookcase, lifting until her feet were no longer on the floor.

  "Finish it!" the man in the doorway shouted.

  "You do your job and I'll do mine!" the big man shouted back.

  Sarah felt her upper arms being crushed in an iron grip.

  Violently Sarah raised a knee into his groin and her nails raked the pallored face. For a brief second the grip lessened, and she fell to the side. She struggled to keep on her feet but she crashed clumsily across the floor with the man wiping his face and coming towards her again and the doorway was empty ...

  What? ... W
here did he go?

  Her attacker came at her and she kicked, screaming, but the man brushed her fighting aside, lifted and slammed her hard against the wall.

  "Ah..." she gasped, her scream cut off by the numbing impact of the rack against her back.

  "I'm gonna break your neck for that!" the bloody face whispered.

  Enraged, he hurled her to the floor again and Sarah seemed to lose balance within herself as her senses reached a pain-shock overload. Numbed by the pain, she tried to crawl away before she collapsed. She shook her head and weakly raised a hand to plea.

  Suddenly a dark arm snaked around her attacker's neck from behind. The big man shouted wildly and reached for his throat, tearing at the arm.

  Sarah scrambled back in a daze and registered that a third man, a stranger, had grabbed her assailant from behind and held him in some sort of headlock.

  Bellowing, her attacker spun wildly then surged backward to smash the stranger into the bookcase. Shelves and plaster shattered at the thunderous impact, scattering books and wooden splinters chaotically along the wall.

  A falling shelf painfully struck her shoulder.

  With a violent surge the stranger pushed off the wall with his feet, spinning her attacker back around. The big man screamed, cursed, arms flailing wildly in futile attempts to pull the stranger from his back.

  Sarah watched, mesmerized, as they swayed above her. A high-pitched whine escaped her attacker's imprisoned throat. Gasping, the man's malevolent face twisted as the stranger's grip overcame, closed, and endured. Her attacker ceased pulling at the arm around his throat and fumbled frantically beneath his dark coat, tearing at an object, struggling to pull something free.

  At the movement the stranger twisted violently to slam the big man into the wall. He spun him around again and Sarah saw a dark object, a gun, clatter across the floor to her feet.

  By reflex alone she screamed and scrambled back, avoiding the darkly polished steel. Then she looked up to see that the stranger had finally gained a distinctive advantage in the struggle; the hulking shape that had attacked her was weakening while the strong arm encircling his neck tightened. After a long suspended moment the library echoed with a startlingly loud crack.