Hell, the medical bay was as well-equipped as any high-tech hospital. Their ultrasound, X-ray, CAT scan, and MRI machines were all the current incarnations within an ever-changing technology. And from what he’d seen of the lab— Which reminded him . . .
“They find anythin’ in Brendan or Benji’s bloodwork?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Wolf.
They’d scanned the children for microchips or implants while he’d been waiting for Faith to return from the last round of testing. According to Amy, they hadn’t found anything inserted into her sons’ flesh . . . however, following a routine blood test, they’d found an anomaly in the red and white blood cells.
They’d taken the boys to the lab for additional testing.
A grim shadow fell over Wolf’s normally taciturn face. “A genetically modified biological isotope was found in their blood cells. This compound appears to have bonded with every cell in their bodies.”
An engineered biological compound?
“They’re usin’ this compound to follow the kids?”
“It appears so,” Dr. Kerry said. He sighed and scrubbed at his forehead. “The isotope is siphoning off the cells’ electrical impulses and using them to power a high-frequency signal. If the people who injected the compound know the frequency the isotope emits, theoretically they could locate and follow it.”
Considering how quickly their camp had been attacked after the kids’ arrival, there was nothing theoretical about it.
“Sweet Jesus.” Rawls’s throat tightened. “They’re just kids. What’s wrong with those people?”
You didn’t target children. You sure as hell didn’t fill their bodies with experimental chemical shit. If the isotope was hijacking the electrical output, the cells would break down much faster. As more and more cells failed, the health of the host would decline.
Those Goddamn bastards had effectively condemned two children to a prolonged and likely agonizing death.
He took a deep breath and forced the rage back. There had to be a way to counteract the compound they’d been injected with.
“Can the isotope be neutralized?” Rawls asked.
“We’re looking into that.” Kerry’s gaze shifted back to the MRI of Faith’s heart on the monitor. “Along with other possibilities.”
Wolf dropped a heavy hand on Rawls’s shoulder. “Walk with me. There is much to discuss.”
“Such as?”
“Your biitei.” Wolf’s hooded black gaze dropped to the leather cord circling Rawls’s neck.
“The hiixoyooniiheiht seems to be holdin’ it at bay,” Rawls said, feeling the slight burn of the colorful amulet beneath his T-shirt.
Faith fixed determined eyes on Wolf’s face. “These charms are fascinating. I understand only the person who mak— creates them, is aware of how they work. I’d like to speak with whoever this person is. Perhaps—”
The shoulder Wolf turned on her was answer enough, and she stumbled into silence.
Rawls remained silent, but he had questions as well. Wearing the thing triggered the strangest sensation, not just the scratchy burn, but the way it vibrated every now and then. When it quivered, the burning intensified, never enough to prove painful, but enough to be noticeable. He hoped that meant it was working and Pachico’s reign of frustration was officially over.
Wolf turned back to Rawls. “This biitei took orders from your enemy. Is this not true?”
“He worked for them, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”
“Then it carries answers to many of our questions.” Thick black eyebrows rose in a quizzical expression. “Does it not?”
Rawls shrugged. “He’s not exactly forthcomin’ with what he knows.”
Hell, Pachico had bled out without giving up any of his knowledge. And death hadn’t softened his disposition. Why would he answer their questions now, when they had nothing with which to entice him or hold over his head in threat?
“Even if the biitei”—Rawls said the word carefully—“decided to answer our questions, we couldn’t trust what it tells us. He wasn’t much help alive; he’s even less help dead.”
Wolf’s smile was slow and deadly. “Your biitei will answer the questions you put to it and speak with truth.”
“How can you possibly promise that? It just has to say no thanks and vamoose,” Faith protested.
Wolf shrugged, his gaze never leaving Rawls’s face. “The binding ceremony will give it no choice. It will answer your questions. It will speak the truth.”
“The binding ceremony?” Faith repeated with interest in her voice. “Is that along the same lines as this?” She nodded toward the amulet beneath Rawls’s shirt.
For the first time, Wolf looked uneasy. It reminded Rawls of Jude’s expression in the cavern when he’d quizzed him on how the amulet worked.
“It is best not to speak of such strong medicine,” Wolf said. He turned back to Rawls, his expression flat. “The elders are preparing for the ceremony. You will call the biitei once the circle has closed.”
Yeah . . . Rawls had no idea what the guy had just said or whether this binding ceremony, whatever it was, would work—but what the heck, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Besides, Wolf and his people certainly knew a lot more about the workings of ghosts than he did.
“Fine. When do you want to do this?”
“Soon. I will return when they are ready for you.” With that announcement, Wolf pivoted and disappeared out the swinging door. When the door swung back open, Zane came through it.
He paused just inside the viewing room and nodded at Faith, but his flat, unreadable gaze never budged from Rawls’s face. “You got a minute?”
Faith caught Rawls’s gaze, her own eyes soft and filled with sympathy. No question that she’d picked up on how much he’d been dreading this moment.
The fallout from his admission had been postponed by Wolf’s arrival and the withdrawal from the hub. But it had been clear a reckoning was in his future. This seemed hardly the time to settle things. But the confrontation was upon him and he wasn’t going to bail on it.
Rawls gave Faith’s hand a squeeze and let it go. He followed Zane out of the control room and through the medical bay. The electric entrance slid open and then closed behind them with an airy whoosh, expelling them into a diminutive, gun-metal gray parking area of maybe twenty by twenty-five feet. Most of the striped parking slots, which were barely large enough to accommodate the facility’s golf carts and ATVs, sat empty beneath the sputtering glow of a malfunctioning fluorescent light. Zane paused to scan the deserted backdrop before swinging around to face him.
Rawls braced himself.
“Mac wants to huddle.”
Okay, that wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “When?”
“Tonight. After we’ve had a chance to look things over. Keep your eyes open, and your ears sharp.”
Rawls simply nodded. The order was redundant. By now, years into their careers, it was impossible to turn their scrutiny off. Hell, his eyes were open and his ears sharp while snacking at a company barbeque.
“This is why you’ve been climbing the walls? This ghost?” Zane abruptly asked, his face neutral. Voice calm.
And there it was.
“Pretty much,” Rawls admitted, holding his LC’s eyes steadily.
Zane frowned, shook his head, a glint of anger sparking in his eyes. “You forget who the fuck I am?”
Rawls pulled back, opened his mouth. How was he supposed to answer that?
“For Christ’s sake, you ass. You’ve trusted my visions for years. Trusted me without question, without corroborating evidence, without proof—why the hell wouldn’t you give me the same benefit of doubt when it came to what you were seeing?”
Rawls’s mouth slammed shut. He grimaced. Rolled his shoulders. “It’s not the same thing.”
“Bullshit.” There was a glint of anger in Zane’s eyes as they touched his face.
“It isn’t,” Rawls pointed out tightly. “Your visions
happen. There’s your proof.”
“You didn’t know that the first time you acted on them,” Zane snapped back. “You trusted me. I trusted you. That’s what saved our asses back then.”
Fair point. But still, Pachico was different. The whole situation was different. “You knew what you were seeing was real. Was about to happen.”
Zane cocked his head, reined the anger in. “And?”
“I didn’t. Hell, for days I was certain I’d had a psychotic break. Certain the bastard was a product of my broken mind.”
The anger faded from Zane’s face. He ran a hand over his hair. “You should have told me.”
“Hell no,” Rawls said flatly. “You’re my LC. You’d be obligated to relieve me of duty. Report the incident up the chain. You’d have no choice but to turn me in. I’d lose my spot in the beach boat. Lose my spot on the teams. And you know damn well I’d never get the okay again, even if Pachico had disappeared before I stepped in the headshrinker’s office.”
Zane’s sharp crack of laughter echoed between the concrete walls surrounding them. “Has it escaped your notice that we don’t currently have a damn chain of command to report to?”
That stopped Rawls, but just for a moment. “When we’re clear—”
“Have you been paying any attention to what’s going on at all? It won’t matter if we’re cleared,” Zane broke in, frustration and anger throbbing in his voice. “We’re on fucking national television. Our faces everywhere. When we’re cleared, the story will be even bigger than it is now. We’ve lost any fucking chance of getting back to our squads—period. We’re fucking done.”
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
* * *
IT DIDN’T OCCUR to Rawls, until he was sitting in the motorized cart across from Wolf, that Zane hadn’t said whether he believed in ghosts. Or more specifically—Rawls’s ghost. The conversation had gotten off track, and then their private little chat had been disrupted by a shift change at the medical bay.
Zane had left, without much more said, but they both knew the discussion wasn’t over—merely shelved for the moment.
Wolf showed up an hour later to escort him to his first séance. Not that they called it that, but hell, they wanted to summon a ghost . . . wasn’t that exactly what a séance did?
He didn’t bother to ask any questions as Wolf drove. His escort had proved—repeatedly—that he wasn’t much of a talker, let alone an explainer.
Instead, he took the opportunity to check Shadow Mountain out. Not that he could see much. The landscape was comprised mainly of shiny black walls, with embedded caged lights. The corridor Wolf took was wide—two lanes separated by a solid yellow line. White-striped paths to the right and left were designated walkways, or so he assumed from the volume of people they passed walking along them. Corridors branched off the main street, because that’s what it was, a damn street—underground, inside a mountain.
They passed a wide section with defined parking spaces along the sides and a wide, almost translucent section of the wall that slid open every few seconds disgorging a steady stream of people, along with the rich, thick scent of cooking. Rawls’s stomach growled loud enough to catch Wolf’s attention, reminding them both they’d lost dinner and breakfast.
But Wolf pressed on.
They passed a good two dozen golf carts identical to the one Wolf was driving, as well as others twice as long, and then a few with rows of seats for extra passengers.
As one would expect from a facility this size, it bustled with men and women, although far more of the former than the latter. The ages ranged from midtwenties to midsixties. Most wore jeans and T-shirts or sweatshirts. Some wore overalls, others basic green fatigues. The lack of uniforms was a dead giveaway that the place wasn’t military.
The army, navy, and air force were damn proud of their regalia.
Nor were all the people he saw Native American—although most looked like they were.
Slowly the maze of corridors grew narrower, and they ran across fewer people. Eventually they reached a walkway the golf cart couldn’t navigate and Wolf parked along the wall.
This section of the facility looked old, ancient even, the path carved from damp stone. Rawls followed Wolf in silence. A hundred feet in, his escort suddenly took a hard right and disappeared through the rugged rock wall. Rawls blinked, but he didn’t see the narrow, irregular gap in the wall until he was right next to it.
It was a tight fit squeezing his body through the opening, which meant Wolf must have scraped off a layer of skin forcing his considerably larger frame through the hole. More of those caged lamps burned along the walls of another narrow corridor. He could just make out Wolf’s big shadow ahead and increased his stride.
The rock passage wound from left to the right, but after the fourth bend, it opened into a large cavern. Rawls stopped in the mouth of the cave and stared. Caged lamps ringed the walls here too, but several were dark. Flickering shadows twisted and twined along the stone, highlighting faded white-and-red images of stick animals and stick people and strange prehistoric symbols that reminded him of cave paintings he’d seen in National Geographic.
They looked old, thousands of years old. Reluctantly, he dragged his gaze from the walls to check out the rest of the room. In the middle of the cave, large white rocks, identical in size and color, had been placed next to each other, so close they were touching, and then curved into a perfect circle. Outside the circle of white rocks were four split logs. Each log was braced on more of the white rocks to form a bench.
Rawls slowly stepped into the room.
In front of each bench burned a small fire ringed with smaller white stones. The scent of smoke hung heavy in the air and stung his eyes.
“Come,” Wolf said from his left, and Rawls turned.
His escort was standing beside four men with graying braided hair and a patchwork of wrinkles carved into their leathery faces. Each of the elders wore a poncho-type garment made out of hide. Etched on the front was the same layered sunburst symbol that was woven into the hiixoyooniiheiht.
Like the amulet that had been given to him and the one Jude carried, each of the elders’ ponchos was embossed with dual colors, but in varying combinations.
The elder closest to him wore a sunburst of deep red and vivid yellow. The elder closest to Wolf carried colors of forest and pea green. Another, blue and yellow. The last, flat red and vivid green. Rawls sensed that the colors had some significance, but doubted he’d be told what it was. It wasn’t until he got closer that he noticed each of the elders carried a leather pouch with a sunburst matching the design on their garments.
Once he was in front of them, Rawls stopped and shifted uncomfortably. Should he offer a greeting and handshake? Or would touching them be considered an insult?
“They are ready to begin,” Wolf said, taking the decision out of Rawls’s hands. “Give me your hiixoyooniiheiht.” He waited until Rawls had removed the cord from around his neck and handed the weaving over. “You will stand beside me until they give you leave to summon your biitei.”
Rawls nodded his understanding. The elders started to chant, their voices lifting and waning in unison. In a straight line, led by the man with the red-and-yellow sunburst, they began a slow, rocking path to the circle of white stones. As they traveled the outside edge of the circle and slowly rocked a chanting path around the white rocks, their hands would dip into the pouches hanging at their sides and toss whatever they removed into the circle.
And sweet hell, with each toss from the pouches, the small fires burning so sedately in front of the log benches would erupt into spitting, hissing, ferocious flames. After two trips around the circle, the elders stopped and shouted. Whatever they said was in Arapaho, so Rawls couldn’t understand it, but Wolf did. Stepping forward, he handed Rawls’s hiixoyooniiheiht to the leader wearing red and yellow and then took three huge steps back.
The elder held the object up and the chanting resumed. The rocking, chanting
parade continued with two revolutions to the right, at which point the elders pivoted and did three more to the left. And then suddenly, when each elder was in front of a bench, they simply stopped. Silently, three of the men sat behind their small fires, leaving only Red Poncho to stand and chant. After a few more seconds of chanting and rocking—standing in place this time—the elder dropped the corded amulet into the flames at his feet.
The fire spat, flames leapt, devouring the weaving instantly. Once the fire had settled back into its sedate glow, the elder motioned Rawls over.
“It is time,” the man said in perfect English. “Summon your biitei.”
Yeah . . . how did one go about summoning a ghost? That wasn’t something taught in SQ training.
Wolf picked up on his uncertainty. “Call it by name.”
“We didn’t know his name,” Rawls said, running a hand through his hair. “He was usin’ an alias. And he hasn’t felt like sharin’ his real name since turnin’ transparent.”
“Did the biitei offer you a name before it crossed over?” the elder asked.
“It called itself Pachico. Took a local cop’s name,” Rawls said.
Red-and-Yellow Sunburst nodded, as though the matter was settled. “This is the name it offered to you, this is the name you will summon it under.”
Okay . . . Rawls shifted uncomfortably.
Ah, what the hell. Squaring his shoulders, Rawls lifted his head.
“Hey, Pachico,” he said in a loud voice, and waited.
Everyone stared expectantly at the circle, but nothing manifested in the middle. Well . . . he was assuming it was supposed to show up in the circle. He took a slow turn, surveying the rest of the cavern. Nothing. He waited a bit longer.
“Again,” the lead elder said. “Concentrate. See his image in your mind and summon him to you.”
Feeling foolish Rawls closed his eyes and tried to visualize his ghostly stalker’s thin body and bald head. Didn’t it just figure that the one time he wanted the asshole to show up he’d turn all contrary?
Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) Page 25