by Scott McEwen
“Oh yeah. Every last brushstroke.”
“And the room has not been touched in the intervening years?” Pablo asked, voice all sunshine.
“Well,” she said. “That’s not entirely true. I’ve put a few things in there, but nobody’s slept in it. You’re welcome to take a look, long as you don’t mind showing yourself up there and leaving me with the good doctor.” She swiveled toward her old TV, Dr. Phil reruns on mute. She plucked up the remote like she was a six-shooting sheriff herself, snapped a button, and the volume came roaring back.
* * *
Across the landing from a steep, narrow staircase Pablo and Raquel found the room intended for Eldon Waanders. It was indeed filled with a few things, something like a ton and a half of hoarded boxes packed with magazines, candy bar wrappers, and freaky collections of dolls and doll body parts, all stacked to the ceiling and spilling out like a volcano spewing all things weird and junky.
“Do you have a flashlight?” Pablo asked Raquel.
“I have this.” She drew out her iPhone and snapped on the flashlight.
“Thank you,” he said, taking it from her pretty hand and holding the light up close to the surface of the white paint.
It took him a while, but eventually he found what he was looking for. On the inside door of the laundry chute, Pablo discovered four fingerprints. Pablo photographed the prints as a cluster and then again individually. He then used the tip of his penknife to unscrew the bolts from the latch and remove the small laundry chute door from the wall. He tucked it under his arm. “I’m sure the old lady would not mind if we take this,” Pablo said.
“I’m sure too,” Raquel said and Pablo noticed a glimmer of ash swirl in Raquel’s black eyes. “But let me go ask.” Raquel turned and descended to the lower level.
Pablo moved slowly down the steep steps, one arm tightly clutching the laundry chute door and the other holding the wobbly railing, stairs still tricky on his fake leg.
Minutes later, he found Raquel in the kitchen, her back to him, sorting through the cupboard, where she removed a 1960s-era Oster blender. A wad of red and white gristle sat on the cutting board. The old lady was on the floor, shoved under the breakfast table, her ping-pong ball hairdo sopping up a puddle of blood.
* * *
“Buenísimo. Very good,” the Glowworm said warmly, clapping his long, moon-colored hands. “You, my friend, have redeemed yourself. You are back in the inside circle. On the Dream Team again. Come give Daddy a hug.”
Pablo inched forward on the bench and leaned into the Glowworm’s bare chest, feeling the slime that covered his skin and smelling his weird and pungent B.O.—a chemical scent like a urinal deodorizer smothered in CK1. Awkward as the hug was, Pablo felt a surge of pride as his captor patted his back.
“What’s next?” the Glowworm hissed into Pablo’s ear.
“We have almost everything to determine if Eldon Waanders is in fact the prisoner held by the Brotherhood,” Pablo said as the party limo snaked its way back down toward the interstate. “One last stop to be sure. Perhaps on the way, we can buy a shovel.”
CHAPTER 31
August 2017
Camp Valor, en route to New York
With its short runway and sheer cliff walls, the Caldera was always terrifying at takeoff, especially in a jet. The crew, staff, and members of Group-C braced themselves as the Embraer Phenom 300 raced down the runway, went nose up, and climbed, screaming toward blue sky just over the lip of the Caldera.
They leveled off and the captain announced their flight plan, followed by the final in-flight briefing, which was short and businesslike.
Wyatt tried to check in with Dolly. Wyatt of course knew she was the most distraught of the lot, though she tried not to show it. Since the bonfire she had remained stoic and distant. All business.
“Far as I am concerned, you and I helped push Hud out. And as for my sister—” Dolly paused, keeping her emotions in check. “If we get a chance for revenge, I’m taking it. We owe it to Hud and Cass. We owe it to ourselves. Are you with me?”
Wyatt looked her in the eyes. “Yes.”
Group-C was issued detailed plans of the cathedral and drilled on where and when each team member would sit, stand, or kneel. They were issued appropriate clothes for the funeral, fake IDs, cover stories, and, given the data breaches, heavily encrypted smartphones.
As the small jet descended toward Teterboro, Wyatt conducted a final weapons check. He carried a Glock 26 and a Colt Mustang XSP, a knife, a silencer, and four extra clips, and the back of his belt was ringed with two flash-bang grenades, two M67 fragmentation grenades, and mace. It was a lot of ordnance for a funeral, Wyatt thought, but he had a feeling he might need it.
CHAPTER 32
August 2017
Pound Ridge, Indiana
Pablo found the groundskeeper and night security guard at St. Jude’s Cemetery asleep at his desk, a copy of Maxim in his lap and a jar of peanut butter with a spoon sticking out of it on his credenza. Pablo roused him with ten thousand dollars, fanned under his nose. They wanted access to the graves? No problem.
With all the rain, the ground was soft and muddy. Pablo, Raquel, and Fouad did the digging and slinging while the Glowworm stayed in the modified limousine, dialed into the dark net, requesting that the Brotherhood send a copy of the HVT’s fingerprints.
Unearthing the coffin took several hours, and even with the steroids, stimulants, and other drugs coursing through his system, Pablo struggled with the shovel. After all, he was old. He tottered, chest heaving, slick with sweat and rain, peering down into the deep wet hole in the ground, the coffin’s lid visible under a slick of muck.
“Moment of truth,” Fouad said, lowering to his knees. He leaned into the hole, hooked the lid with the edge of the shovel, and pried it open. A fine, dry dust swirled up, into the rain, still slanting down. Fouad swung an LED lamp into the hole, illuminating the soft interior of a mid-grade coffin. Pablo peered over the edge. They had found just what they were looking for—nothing.
Where the body was supposed to have been, there were only three large sacks of gravel, the pebbles spilling out of the old canvas.
Raquel purred. “You were right again. The Glowworm will be pleased.”
Pablo nodded, took off his hat, and rubbed the dirt from his forehead. The bandage on his nose had come off long ago and a trickle of blood ran down the center of his cratered face. “And I hope after this I will have proven myself. I will get to go home.” He looked off in the direction of the groundskeeper’s office, getting an idea. “If you’re going to kill the groundskeeper, we might as well stick him in a coffin before we rebury it.”
“I have a better idea.” A voice came from the darkness behind him. Pablo turned as the Glowworm, naked save for his diaper-like shorts, stalked toward him, his muscles bristling and feeding tube capped.
Pablo had been in the hitman game long enough to know what the Glowworm had in mind—“a two-fer,” as the Americans say. Two bodies, one coffin. And Pablo would be part of the deal.
“But why now?” Pablo asked, backing up to the edge of the grave. “After I have helped you? Why would you do it? You now know beyond any question that I did not kill your father.”
“Yes, you have showed this to me,” the Glowworm said, squaring off across from him.
“Haven’t I repaid the debt to you? Haven’t I been a good servant? Proven my loyalty? Surely my work for you has made up for raising my hand against your mother.”
“Yes. Right again,” the Glowworm said, smiling a weird, toothless grin. “Your debt to me for what you did to my mother has been more than repaid. You are off the hook completely.”
“So then why hurt an old man?” Pablo forced a chuckle, trying to make light of the situation.
The Glowworm wiped rain from his shoulders and looked at his hands before looking back up. “Because I am a killer,” the Glowworm said matter-of-factly, “and both you and my father helped to create me.”
/> He charged Pablo, and the old man could only put up his hands in feeble defense as the thing that used to be Wilberforce Degas flew through the air like a human missile, an all-pro linebacker, slamming into Pablo. The Glowworm’s fingers were already wrapping around Pablo’s throat as the two bodies fell straight back into the grave, smashing into the muddy side of the pit, falling into the open casket.
* * *
Raquel could see the Glowworm needed a little alone time. After severing the last tie to his old life, the Glowworm sat under a tree in a fetal position, pelted by rain, shivering as he unloosed tears and emotion, baggage from youth. Raquel came and sat next to him. An odd pair. A humanoid hacker and his beautiful demon-child.
“I need to ask you a question,” she finally said.
The Glowworm sniffled, and with his unsettlingly large hands, wiped away tears.
“Anything, my dear.”
“Why did you kill him?”
The Glowworm looked up, a little surprised. “What do you mean, why did I kill Pablo? I was always going to kill him.”
“No, I don’t mean why. I mean why now?” she asked. “We have yet to find Chris Gibbs and we have yet to find the camp. I thought that’s why we were keeping him alive?”
“Ah, you are right, of course, in thinking this,” the Glowworm said. “But while I was in the car, I determined the fingerprints are a match. Eldon Waanders is the same man as Chris Gibbs. And Gibbs is the operator captured by the Brotherhood. He will be in our company as soon as a wire transfer goes through. The Brotherhood is bringing him to New York for collection.”
“Ahhhh … that is good,” she said. “But what about the camp itself? How do we find that?”
The Glowworm grinned. “My dear, that is easy,” he said. “You. You’re going to be the light that lures them in.”
CHAPTER 33
August 2017
Shipping Container, Somewhere at Sea
The operator known as Chris Gibbs was pretty sure he’d been smuggled out of Israel by way of Egypt, but in the ten months he’d been in captivity he’d been given very few clues as to his whereabouts. He was moved often, first hidden in basements and bomb shelters, and later a shipping container. He could tell from the movement he was driven in a truck and then loaded onto a boat and then the boat went to sea. He assumed he was kept in a ship traveling up and down the coast of Africa.
He was manacled at all times and guarded by at least two men, who wisely kept their distance and their weapons trained on him. Given the chance, he would have disarmed the men or at least tried. He was beaten for the slightest infraction or for no infraction at all. And he was allowed to take off his hood only to eat. The toilet he used was a bucket that would be emptied every few days. Whenever he took his hood off, his captors would be wearing theirs. Aside from during the gun battle in which he was captured, he never saw their faces.
Still, as a trained operator, he was able to figure a few things out. For one, he’d counted at least six different guards and could identify them by voice and the look of their sandaled feet and hands. Should he live to be a hundred, he would never forget those hands and feet. He would recognize them anywhere. Drawing on the little Arabic he spoke, he quickly gleaned that his captors were part of an ISIS faction that called itself the Brotherhood.
The operator also knew if there was any chance for his survival, it would have to do with greed. The Brotherhood, it seemed, wanted to auction him. To sell him to the highest bidder. Because of this detail alone, the operator felt a measure of reassurance. After all, who could outbid the U.S. government? Of course, there were threats—often made during his beatings—that the Brotherhood would not be bought by American dollars. They’d rather behead the man they all called Chris Gibbs than take a dollar from the infidels.
But this was all bluster. When the operator heard squeals of laughter and cheering and bottles of champagne popping, he knew he had been sold. He would not be killed by the Brotherhood.
His captors hustled the operator out of the shipping container. The hood was kept over his head. Still, he almost wept at the scent of fresh air, even if it was mixing with the smell of aviation fuel. A helicopter waited on deck of the ship, rotors churning. They loaded him on board, the blades whooped, and he was airborne.
Almost immediately, the operator picked up on things that didn’t make sense. For one, the operator had been almost certain he was somewhere off the coast of Africa or still in the Middle East. But the helicopter pilot spoke English with a Latin American accent. The pilot’s headset was set loud and the operator’s ears had become attuned like a blind person’s. He thought he heard the air traffic controllers speak with an American accent. Most telling of all, the operator heard the pilot say they were headed to Greenwich. Was that Greenwich, England? Or were they off the East Coast of the United States?
As the helicopter descended, it was night and the operator could see the rooftops of mansions down below. When they landed, the operator was ushered off, and he felt a soft, well-manicured lawn under his feet, and he could smell distant barbecues and a woman’s perfume—expensive perfume. And could see legs, beautiful young legs with small, delicate, bare feet walking on the lawn next to him. All signs looked good. God, he was happy to be back on American soil. But why was he still wearing the hood?
“Where are we?” he asked and the butt of a handgun slammed into the side of his head. The woman with the young beautiful legs, perfume, and delicate feet had been the one to hit him. She hit hard. Men now hoisted him up.
Weak-legged, he was dragged across a lush lawn and taken into a cellar. It became dark again, almost no ambient light. He was led down a series of passageways until he arrived at a room that smelled of sweat and raw meat.
“Take it off,” a voice said, and his hood was ripped from his head. The operator blinked hard, but the room was so dark that even his eyes, which had grown used to the dark, struggled to see.
“Give this to him,” the voice said.
Then he heard dripping and his hands jerked back when something warm touched him.
“Take it,” said the voice. “It’s just a washcloth. So you can clean your face and hands after your trip.”
The rag, warm and soft, was thrust back into his hands. It smelled clean, like soap. “Thank you,” the operator said, wiping away months of grime.
“Would you like another?”
“Yes, please.”
He was given a new towel to remove another layer of grime. Feeling a little fresher, the operator finally asked, “Who are you? Why am I here?”
“Because you owe me … something. Isn’t that what it’s always about?”
“Owe you what? I can’t see anything,” the operator said, his face and hands still tingling from the soap and water.
“Let me increase the brightness on this monitor for you.”
And then the operator began to see it. Out of the black, a rectangle came to life—first gray against black and then muted colors transformed into a blinking pixilated screen. The words “Donkey Kong” flashed in the center, above a series of best scores. The highest score was still held by Chris Gibbs. The second-highest was held by Wil Degas.
“You owe me the chance to try to beat you,” said the voice, now shaking with laughter. “Why don’t we play?”
PART SIX
CHAPTER 34
August 2017
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Blazing hot day. Muggy. Gray and white summer clouds boiled in the sky. Limousines waited along Fifth Avenue. Dolly, Ebbie, Samy, and Wyatt fell in with the mourners lining up to enter the cathedral. The Old Man, Hallsy, and Avi watched in the surveillance van. Rory lingered across Fifth Avenue, disguised as a skateboarder, tracking the ground team’s movements, scanning for threats. All communicated via inductive earpieces.
Ebbie, Samy, and Wyatt donned somber suits, boxy and ill-fitting to hide their weaponry. Dolly wore a simple black dress, but on her, it wowed. Tucked into a quick-draw compartmen
t in her purse was a silver Walther PPK, a gun fit for James Bond. Loaded with hollow-points.
Yes, they were headed to their friend’s funeral. But Wyatt couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how beautiful Dolly looked, how driven. Revenge looked good on her. Dolly, the only Blue left in Group-C, ran lead on the mission, entering the church first, and Wyatt found himself wanting to catch up, to walk with her.
“Easy,” Samy said, hustling next to Wyatt, touching his arm. “You’re speeding up, man. Hold formation.”
“Check,” said Wyatt, slowing. Trying to clear his mind as he started up the stairs, which were already swarming with mourners, tourists, and even paparazzi snapping photos from across the street.
“Damn, I never would have known,” said Ebbie, shaking his head. “Hud … a rich kid. Never would have guessed it.”
“You kidding me? Looks like he was more than rich,” said Samy. “This is rich and famous.” He shook his head. “My question is, what was he doing at Valor?”
Dolly glared back. “Have some respect.”
Her teammates chastened, she turned, stayed a stride ahead.
“All right, guys, we gotta get our heads straight,” Ebbie said as they approached the cathedral doors. “Game faces on.”
The cathedral was already packed, thrumming with whispers and gossip. A mousy woman with a clipboard, an expensive hairdo, and an earpiece greeted them with a sneer and said, “This funeral is for close friends and family only. How did you know Hud?”
Dolly gave their cover, “Skiing in Aspen. Our parents have homes there.”
The woman’s sneer remained in her phony smile, but she motioned them into the chapel.
“In that case, welcome.” She directed Wyatt and Dolly to a pew. And as planned, the members of Group-C dispersed, slipping into separate pews, each member of the team growing serious, checking in mentally, heightening their situational awareness.
Wyatt sat in the rear right of the church. Ahead, at the base of the altar, he saw a mass of the preppiest human beings on earth, all in dark tones and somber but somehow still shiny. Beaming, in fact. It looked like the entire cast of Gossip Girl, and all the extras had shown up. Beautiful people—buffed, polished, and effortlessly gorgeous. No wonder the lady with the clipboard had stopped them. Even in church clothes, the ruffians from Valor stuck out. Healthy and handsome, sure, but they were like shards of sea glass scattered among pearls. They were broken and polished by friction. Ground into something useful. The New York kids, pearls, alluring by nature, formed in a protective shell. Hud was a black pearl, a crossover. Even Dolly, as beautiful and stunning as she was, lacked the high-gloss affectation easily detectible by the trained eye. She was a stunning MMA fighter, not a ballerina. And Wyatt would have it no other way.