A prolonged silence, then Perry said, “You also said there was one more thing.”
Darin’s face was impassive, all business, the only expression on it one of boredom. He said nothing.
“Before you let me go,” Perry added. “You said you had one more thing to do before you let me go.”
“Yes, I did, but there’s really no point discussing any more of this.”
“Darin—”
“In case you hadn’t guessed, my name’s not Darin. I’m sick of hearing it already.”
He picked up the candle and lit the blackened tip of the middle finger. He moved toward the bed and held it out, placing it directly between them.
“And as for that ‘one more thing,’ all I can say is, talk to the hand.”
CHAPTER 3
A LIGHT-SKINNED BLACK GUY IN A DARK BLACK COMMANDO sweater answered the door. Black cloth pads sewn on the shoulders and elbows. Black pants tucked into black boots. Hair high and tight, shaved on the sides well above his ears. A little taller than Hatcher, with long limbs and bulky hands. He had an HK model 93 hanging from his shoulder, also black, with a collapsible stock. Finger not quite on the trigger but not far from it, either. He eyed Hatcher with a smug familiarity, as if he knew him but was getting a good look for the first time, then stepped back and cleared a path.
It was a small beach motel room with twin beds. Dorm style, intended to be cheap and efficient, designed for tourists on a budget. The wall next to the door had an AC unit with a top vent beneath a single window overlooking the breezeway. Simple watercolors of sand dunes and starfish set beneath robin’s-egg blue skies and orange suns adorned the other walls that had once been a powder-puff blue but now just seemed a dingy shade of drywall white.
On the left, a man in a tan gabardine suit rose from a chair. He was short but sturdy, with hair a chalky gray color so intense it was hard to imagine another ever covering the same head. He wore a bone-colored shirt open at the collar, exposing a tuft of more gray at the bottom of the V. It reminded Hatcher of a scarecrow with stuffing about to escape.
The woman was seated across the small circular table, closer to the bed. What she was doing there, Hatcher couldn’t fathom.
The man held out a hand. Hatcher hesitated before raising his. It was hard to refuse to shake hands with a major general.
“You’re one hell of a warrior, son,” the man said, slapping his palm into Hatcher’s and giving it a firm shake. “One hell of a warrior.”
The words carried a solemn tone of enthusiasm, but were spoken more like an observation than a compliment. Delivered like someone trying to make a point.
When Hatcher didn’t reply, the man added, “I’m Bill Bartlett. Given your background, I’m guessing you’ve heard of me. I believe I was in your chain of command at one point.”
Hatcher’s gaze drifted to the woman. A silver crucifix dangled from her neck, but nothing else about her suggested the nunnery. Blonde, legs crossed, hemline just at the knee. He realized he was staring, but figured no one would think it unusual. She didn’t get up. It had been a while since they’d last seen each other.
Vivian Fall looked right at him, held the eye contact. Exactly what was going on behind those aqua blue eyes was hard to divine. The anxiety was easy to spot, but it was mixed with something else. Could have been suspicion, could have been concern. Maybe even a little resentment thrown in. She may have been happy to see him; he couldn’t think of a reason for her not to be. But she didn’t look happy to be there, that was for sure.
“I believe you know Ms. Fall. She, of course, owes you a debt of gratitude for saving her. She’s left her order, in case you didn’t know.”
“I need to use your bathroom,” Hatcher said.
If Bartlett was surprised by the lack of acknowledgment, he didn’t show it.
“Certainly.”
The general gestured across the room, giving a directional nod. Hatcher crossed toward a recessed area off the back wall. There was a sink adjacent to a separate bathroom. He turned on the water and bent over to rinse his hands and splash his face.
The cold was bracing. He raised his head to look in the mirror, rivulets running down his face and dropping off his chin. His cheeks were still a bit flush. He had several scrapes around his jaw. A cut on his forehead, a bump on the bony corner over his left eye. A smear of blood coated one of his ears, not quite dry yet. There were red marks on his throat. He could almost make out the imprint of Sherman’s hands.
He rinsed his hands again, splashed water on his face a few more times, and toweled himself dry. His skin left dark streaks on the cloth. He noticed tiny bits of gray gravel in the sink.
There was a knock at the door. Hatcher watched in the mirror as black sweater guy opened it and Mr. E walked in.
“Street’s clear,” E said. “Parking lot, too.”
Bartlett nodded, his gaze shifting over to Hatcher. Hatcher tossed the towel onto the counter and stepped back into the main part of the room.
“Sorry for all that,” Bartlett said. “I trust you’re no worse for the wear.”
Hatcher took another couple of steps, stopped next to the guy in the sweater. He narrowed his gaze for a passing moment, eyes on Bartlett, then shot his arm back in a tight arc.
The side of his hand knifed against sweater guy’s throat, just a hair below the Adam’s apple. He followed it up with a palm strike to the face, this time with the right arm, rotating his torso into it. Without pausing, he grabbed the rear end of the HK’s leather strap with one hand and ripped the buckle open, yanking the weapon away as the guy in the sweater doubled over and made hacking noises. Hatcher snapped the rifle up and aimed it at Mr. E’s head, freezing him in place.
Mr. E already had an arm cocked back behind his ear. Knife loaded between his fingertips, ready to be launched.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Bartlett said. “Just calm down now!”
“You lured me into an ambush,” Hatcher said, eyes still locked on E’s. “Served me up to a homicidal maniac lying in wait. Color me unhappy at the moment.”
“I understand,” Bartlett said, patting the air in front of him. “You have a right to be upset. But you need to hear me out. Hear us out.”
Hatcher raised the rifle slightly, lining the sight up directly between his eye and E’s. “I’m listening.”
Bartlett shook his head sympathetically. “We can’t talk like this. Put the weapon down. No one here meant you any harm, soldier. You have my word. Surely, the word of a general officer still means something to you.”
As if it ever did, Hatcher thought.
“Tell Mini Mack the Knife to lose the blade.”
Bartlett looked over at Mr. E, who shrugged. He slowly lowered his arm. His hand disappeared behind the edge of his vest, and when it emerged the knife was gone. He wiggled his fingers for emphasis.
Hatcher was about to tell him that wasn’t good enough, but realized the guy could have a dozen other weapons stashed on him for quick access. Probably did. He’d already seen one stashed up the man’s sleeve. He wasn’t in the mood to do that dance right now.
Or was he? Worn out as he felt, he could also tell part of him wanted the little shit to try something. Just so he’d have an excuse.
“There,” Bartlett said. “Edgar won’t start anything if you don’t. On my honor, one soldier to another. Now . . . do you mind?”
“Tell him to stand down.”
Bartlett gave Edgar another little nod, pursing his lips and knitting his brow as he did, and the smallish man moved across the room, giving Hatcher a long look on the way to the back. He leaned against the counter near the sink, half sitting on it. His expression seemed like a collection of reactions to small amusements, but there was definitely anger swirling behind those eyes.
The guy in the sweater was on all fours, sounding like he was trying to dislodge a hair stuck in his throat. Hatcher glanced down at him, then over to Bartlett. The general stood his ground with an avuncular easiness, an ex
pectant cast to his face, a calm patience to his bearing. He might as well have been waiting on a free refill. There was cool, and then there was cool. Something wasn’t right.
“The weapon,” Bartlett said. He held out an arm. “Hand it over, son, so we can talk. Please.”
Hatcher watched him, studied the man’s posture. Open, trusting. Confident. His gaze drifted off Bartlett and over to Vivian. She wasn’t happy—eyes a bit wide, staring intently—but she didn’t look terrified. If he sensed anything coming off of her, it was something like shame.
He shifted his attention back to Bartlett. Hatcher lowered his arms and let the muzzle of the HK tilt toward the floor.
“How many years were you on active duty, General?”
“Thirty-three.”
Hatcher nodded. “Most of your commands were of combat regiments and SF teams, right?”
“Most of them, yes.”
“Oversee any psyops? Fourth Airborne, maybe? JTF? Delta Force?”
Bartlett grimaced. “I’d prefer we have this discussion after you lay down arms, soldier.”
“Yeah, I bet you do.”
Hatcher looked down at the HK, then spun around, jerking the barrel in the direction of Mr. E. He squeezed the trigger.
The firing mechanism made an audible click as the pin slammed into place. But other than that, nothing else happened.
The room was quiet except for the persistent hacking of sweater guy. Then Bartlett coughed a little laugh into his hand, shaking his head.
“How did you know?”
“The tactics were sloppy, and you don’t have a rep for sloppiness.” He dipped his head to the guy on the floor. “Your man here gave me too much of an opening. Bad positioning, let me get too close. He wouldn’t be on your personal detail if he was that lax.”
“Very astute, Hatcher. Anything else? Or is that your entire after-action report?”
“Knife boy over there seemed to be holding back a chuckle. Some inside joke.”
Eyes on him, Mr. E hitched a shoulder. He seemed mildly entertained, but mostly apathetic.
“Let’s see if I can follow the script,” Hatcher said. He tossed the HK onto the closest of the two beds. “You have one of your guys deliver me to a psychopathic freak for some kind of test, to see if I can take him. You arrange a stadium view, want to see firsthand how I handle myself. Then, figuring I will be more than a little pissed about being the evening’s main event, you give me a chance to blow off steam, prove a point in my head, feel like I made a statement. And in doing so, you establish a basis for trust, a chance for me to see you empathizing with my anger, then show good faith by complying with my demands. You demonstrate you care, ask me nicely for the weapon like you expect me to live up to a bargain, and I’m supposed to come away from this believing you’re someone who prefers to play it straight, and who has confidence in my character and understands me. Confidence I’m then supposed to feel obliged to prove worthy of. Am I close?”
“You can’t blame me for wanting to avoid getting things off on the wrong foot.”
“Things got off on the wrong foot when you tried to feed me to Roidzilla out there.”
“Calvin”—Bartlett dipped his his head toward the one on the floor still trying to get up—“the man you just took some of your anger out on—had a clean shot. He was instructed to end it if it got out of hand.”
Hatcher started to ask what the hell his definition of getting out of hand was, but said nothing. Instead, he looked down at Calvin, who was trying to pull himself up off his knees, his body too distracted by the coughing and wheezing to make much progress. That was enough to prompt Bartlett to wave a hand toward Mr. E, who crossed in front of Hatcher and helped Calvin to his feet. Hatcher had given the man a nasty chop to the windpipe. Blow like that probably warranted medical attention. He wondered if maybe he should have tried something less harsh.
On the other hand, he thought, resisting the urge to rub his own throat, fuck him.
“You don’t have enough information to understand,” Bartlett continued. “Yet. But the long and short of it is, I had to know.”
“Had to know what?”
“Vivian insisted I give you a chance.”
“Okay, that’s it . . . I’m walking out that door if you don’t tell me exactly what this is all about. And I mean, right now.”
Bartlett held Hatcher’s gaze for a prolonged moment, clearly a man not used to being spoken to in such a manner. The muscles in his jaw made tiny fists at the edges. Then his face seemed to relax, and his mouth formed a happy shape that looked something like a precursor to a smile. His eyes dropped to his fingernails as he checked them.
“Are you by any chance a student of World War Two?” he asked. “Did you ever study it?”
“A little. In school.”
The man’s eyebrows squirmed slightly, like furry worms greeting each other. “Ever hear of Operation X-Ray?”
“No.”
“Few people have. It was an example of thinking outside the box, a plan to attack Japan that was being tested roughly around the same time as the Manhattan Project.” The general paused, looking directly into Hatcher’s eyes. “I’m sure you’re familiar with that one.”
“I know as much about it as the next guy. If the next guy knew what they teach you in junior high.”
Bartlett nodded. “Compared to Manhattan, X-Ray was rather low tech. It was thought up by a dentist, of all people. The plan was to unleash canisters containing thousands of bats—to drop bat bombs, if you will—over Tokyo. The bats were to have tiny incendiary devices attached to their legs.”
Hatcher shot a glance over to Mr. E. He was leaning back near the door, poker-faced. Calvin was in a chair, still holding his throat.
“I can’t say I understand where this is heading, General.”
“I’m getting there. The idea was simple. Once the bats were loosed, they would immediately seek shelter in crevices and crannies, in attics and under eaves, anywhere dark they could insinuate themselves. Tokyo was made mostly of wood. The trickiest part was designing a workable mechanism to start the combustion. Once they had one, the army tested the plan on a deserted mining town in Utah. They set the delay on the devices for two hours. Within minutes after detonation, the entire town was up in flames. But before X-Ray got the green light, they pulled the plug on it. The A-bomb had been successfully tested. And that project was a lot more expensive. They weren’t going to waste all that money and all that science in favor of dropping bats.”
“Fascinating. But I still have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I know what you did, how you fought to keep Demetrius Valentine from fulfilling a prophecy of apocalyptic proportions. That you saved Vivian here from being . . . violated by the demon prince known as Belial.”
“I killed some bizarre animal Valentine had engineered, or whatever. That’s all I know for sure.”
“Yes, well, you certainly don’t need to affect an air of skepticism with me.”
“I’m not ‘affecting’ anything. I killed a creature grown in a lab by a rich nut case. You can read the police report.”
“That would be like directing someone to the Warren Commission findings for the truth about JFK’s assassination. Are you really going to stand there and tell me you don’t believe that what you encountered, the thing you killed, was a demon hybrid inhabited by Belial? Don’t get me wrong. I can see why you wouldn’t want to. She also explained the price you paid for protecting her. And that means you’d also have to believe that in touching it, in having contact with the crown prince of Hell, you’ve rendered yourself unclean. Damned.”
“Look, General, I’m tired. My neck feels like somebody used a blood-pressure cuff on it. My head felt better the time my M9 exploded and the slide ricocheted off my face. Just tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”
Bartlett let his gaze linger on Hatcher for several moments. Then he dipped his head toward Vivian. She reached down next to the bed and li
fted a canvas satchel. The bag rose slowly, twisting as she floated it over the bed, sagging in the middle from its weight. Vivian turned it over and dropped its contents onto the mattress. Something hard tumbled out. It sunk a couple of inches into the comforter with barely any bounce. She pulled back and set the empty canvas on the table.
“I don’t suppose this means anything to you,” Bartlett said.
It was a piece of engraved stone, a corner section of something larger, maybe a foot across and eighteen inches long. At least a couple of inches thick. Rough and jagged where it had been broken off, but flat and squared at the bottom corner and along the unbroken edges. The surface was dark and smooth. There were symbols carved into it.
Hatcher stared at it. “Should it?”
“No, but it was worth asking. This is a plaster cast of something I came into possession of about six months ago. Don’t ask how.”
“What is it?”
“The real one is a sandstone tablet, dating back two, but more likely close to three, millennia.”
“Millennia?”
“Yes. The composition of the stone is consistent with other relics that have been unearthed around excavation sites near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There are even gold flecks embedded in it, something that suggests it was in the temple itself for some time. The inscriptions are in what is known is lingua malitia . Do you know what it says?”
“I’m sure I would, if I had any idea what that meant.”
“It’s the language of demons. Similar to Enochian. Very few humans have ever even heard it. The only known person to have spoken it was Solomon.”
“The Solomon from the Bible?”
“That Solomon.”
“And you think I can read this?”
“No, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. We’ve had a hard time translating it.”
Hatcher looked at the engraving. There were symbols and characters carved into rows of text. To his untrained eye, it looked like a combination of Greek and hieroglyphics.
“So?”
“Best anyone can tell, it talks about the creation of a gate. A portal.” Bartlett pointed a finger, swept it over the some of the markings. “It references a being banished to Hell, then coming back. A Hellion.”
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