The Impaler

by Gregory Funaro

  Bradley Cox had read all about Vlad and his victims on the Internet, and knew damn well what Edmund Lambert had in store from him when he returned. And there was no doubt that Edmund Lambert would return—the blood, the stinging pain in his chest where the Impaler had carved him up made that abundantly clear.

  That had been another lifetime ago, it seemed, and the pain in his chest was nothing compared to the pain in his left wrist where the leather strap bore into it. But Bradley Cox had himself to blame for that. He’d been twisting and pulling on it for hours now; and as he gave his wrist another strong tug, the young man felt his thumb pop out of its socket.

  He howled in agony, but paused only briefly to catch his breath before he began pulling again, twisting and squirming as the wounds on his chest cracked open. He could feel the blood trickling down to his naked groin, but rather than cry out, Bradley Cox began to laugh.

  “How could you think? How could you think?

  Tell me how could think I ’d let you get away?”

  Perhaps he was going insane; perhaps his senses weren’t as sharp as he’d thought they were. But through all the pain, he could swear the strap around his wrist suddenly felt looser.

  Chapter 77

  It was almost eight o’clock when the black SUV pulled into a spot in front of Sam Markham’s apartment building. The General recognized it as the same make and model as Andrew J. Schaap’s, but only when it came to a complete stop and the driver emerged was he sure it belonged to Sam Markham.

  The General recognized him immediately—thought he looked shorter in person than in his picture, and felt a surge of excitement at the thought of what he and the Prince had in store for him.

  In this Sam Markham they had found the ultimate soldier. Someone who feared the Prince as much as those who had worshipped him in the old days. Someone who understood the inevitability of the Prince’s return almost as much as the General himself. And surely this Markham was a gift of destiny; surely his delivery to the Prince via the randomness of the FBI agent’s lists was no accident. It was almost too good to be true; and the thought of the power the Prince would draw from this man’s service made his doorway tingle beneath the bandages.

  Yes, the wound between the 9 and the 3 was already healing up nicely.

  The General followed Markham with his binoculars until he disappeared into the apartment building. It had grown darker, but the General would wait a while longer. He lowered the binoculars and gazed down at Andrew J. Schaap’s BlackBerry. At that moment, his own cell phone began ringing on the seat beside him. He picked it up and read the name on the screen: Cindy Smith.

  The General answered as Edmund Lambert. “Hi, Cindy.”

  “Hi, Edmund. How’s your aunt doing?”

  “Fine. Still a bit shaken up, but she’s sleeping now. My uncle is here, too, so I’ll be taking off shortly.”

  “That’s good news.”

  “Yes, it is. Any word on Bradley?”

  “No,” Cindy said. “No one’s heard from him all day. Looks like he just bolted after last night’s show—car is gone and everything. I hope he’s okay.”

  “I hope so, too,” Edmund said. “Did the show and the photo call go well?”

  “Yes, but it was weird playing opposite George Kiernan. The show ended up being pretty good, actually. We even got a standing ovation, but the whole thing seems like a dream. Everything, I mean—the show, me and you, what happened the other night. You think we can talk about it?”

  “Of course. How about I give you call when I get settled back at the house?”

  “That’d be awesome, yeah.”

  “But it might be late, okay? I still have some things I need to do.”

  “Okay. Talk to you later.”

  “Yes, you will. Good-bye, Cindy.”

  Edmund picked up the BlackBerry and held it up next to his cell phone—stroked each of them with his thumbs and smiled. He was the General again.

  “Sam Markham has no idea his partner is even missing,” he said. “If he did, Ereshkigal would have told us.”

  Chapter 78

  Markham sat at his kitchen table with the lists spread out before him like a big flower. He’d grown frustrated with the sheer number of suspects—knew that Schaap had to be working from a more specific list—and had just picked up his BlackBerry to call him when the theme from Rocky sounded off in his hand. He looked at his watch—9:12 p.m.—and felt a wave of relief when he saw the name on the BlackBerry’s screen.

  Schaap.

  “Finally,” Markham answered. “Where the hell are you?”

  “Watching you from the sky, Agent Markham,” said the voice on the other end.

  Markham froze, his stomach dropping into his shoes.

  “Schaap?” he said weakly, but the man on the other end only laughed and said:

  “His body is the doorway.”

  The voice was deep and thick with a Southern drawl, and even as Markham’s mind began to spin with “Dark in the Day” and the thousand reasons as to why this couldn’t be happening, all at once he knew that Andy Schaap had stumbled onto the Impaler.

  “Who is this?” Markham asked, wincing at the futility of his question.

  “I am the three,” said the man on the other end, “but you are the nine. Will you know him when he comes for you, Agent Markham?”

  Markham felt his words stick in his throat—managed to squeak out, “What have you done with Schaap?”—but the man on the other end only laughed.

  “His body is the doorway,” he said, his inflection like a child’s. Markham felt suddenly as if he would vomit. He swallowed hard, was about to speak, when the voice in his ear said: “But there’s still time, Agent Markham. If you hurry, if you truly understand the equation, you’ll be allowed to touch the doorway, too.”

  “What have you done to Schaap?!” Markham screamed, but got only the blinking call timer for an answer.

  And then he was moving.

  He ran into the bedroom and grabbed his gun—punched a number on his BlackBerry and put on his Windbreaker.

  “This is Markham,” he shouted. He was back in the kitchen now, gathering up the lists. “Andy Schaap is in trouble. Get the tech unit to put a trace on his vehicle. Get them on his cell signal, too, and get the plate number into the local systems ASAP. I’m on my way back to the RA now.”

  Markham hung up and slipped the paperwork into his briefcase.

  He was out the door in a streak; dashed down the front steps and reached his TrailBlazer in a matter of seconds—when out of nowhere he felt a searing pain shoot across the back of his skull.

  He watched his BlackBerry and his briefcase fall from his fingers in slow motion; saw himself stumbling sideways as the cars and the streetlights and the shadows swirled about him and grew blurry.

  But Sam Markham stayed on his feet long enough to see the man in the ski mask stuff the smelly rag in his face.

  “Textbook,” he heard Alan Gates say somewhere far away.

  Then everything went black.

  Chapter 79

  By ten o’clock that evening, the two blocks of Lewis Street between Third and Fifth had been cordoned off. The residents were ordered to evacuate, and the parking lot across the street from Bradley Cox’s apartment building was completely surrounded by marked and unmarked vehicles.

  A SWAT team leader gave the signal, and he and two other officers, weapons drawn, cautiously approached the black TrailBlazer in tactical formation. They looked first into the rear window, then into the front seat. And after a tense thirty seconds, the officer on the driver’s side called out, “Clear!”

  A collective sigh of relief was heard as the members of the SWAT team lowered their weapons.

  Looking on from across the street, just a few feet from Bradley Cox’s front door, an FBI agent from the Greenville Resident Agency said to his partner, “Call it in to Raleigh.”

  The other agent began dialing as the SWAT team leader tried the door handle. It was locked. Another
signal, and a local police officer with a Slim Jim rushed up to the Trail-Blazer and slipped it down into the driver’s side door.

  “The car’s clear,” said the FBI agent into his BlackBerry. “But there’s still no sign of Special Agent Schaap.”

  The FBI agent listened to the tech specialist on the other end. Something about Schaap’s BlackBerry being off the grid; something about it taking time to get the tower records.

  Then he saw the TrailBlazer’s door open.

  Even from where he was standing he could hear the series of loud clicks across the street. The tech specialist had gone on to say something about Sam Markham being unreachable, too—when suddenly the explosion sent the FBI agent’s BlackBerry flying from his hand.

  Chapter 80

  Cindy was just stepping out of the shower when she felt the tiles rumble beneath her feet. A thunderstorm’s coming, she thought, and dismissed the distant boom at once.

  Fifteen minutes later she was in her pajamas, lying on her bed with her biology book, when her mother knocked on her door.

  “Yeah?”

  “You need to see this,” her mother said, entering. She was dressed in her nurse’s scrubs—graveyard shift this weekend, Cindy suddenly remembered.

  “You’re going to be late,” Cindy said, and was about to complain that she needed to study, when the look on her mother’s face changed her tune at once.

  “What is it, Mom?” she asked, but her mother had already clicked on the TV atop her dresser—immediately changed the channel from VH1 to a local station and sat beside Cindy on the bed.

  “This happened near the Theatre building,” she said. “Over on Lewis Street.”

  Cindy listened in shock as the reporter, a pretty woman with blond hair, recounted what the press knew thus far: something about a missing FBI vehicle, a parking lot, and an explosion; unconfirmed reports of at least four people dead, more people injured, shattered windows, a nearby resident said this, a nearby resident said that—

  “Bradley Cox lives on that street,” Cindy said suddenly.

  “The boy playing Macbeth?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t think this has anything to do with him not showing up today, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” Cindy said.

  “I need to get moving, honey,” her mother said, rising. “I’m late, and if what they’re saying is true, they’re going to need me in the emergency room. Promise me you won’t go down there, will you?”

  “I promise.”

  “I love you,” said her mother, kissing her forehead.

  “Love you, too,” Cindy replied absently, eyes glued to the T V. She didn’t hear her mother leave; had no idea how long she’d been sitting there watching the news report, when her cell phone startled her from her trance.

  She reached for it, saw that the call was from Amy Pratt, and let it roll over into voice mail—waited patiently for the ding, then listened to Amy’s message. Typical Amy blabbering and nothing more to add than what she’d already learned from T V.

  “Edmund,” Cindy muttered. “I wonder if Edmund knows.”

  She dialed his number—let it ring and ring—and felt her stomach sink when the call went into voice mail. She left him a message—sent him a text, too—and began pacing her room, faster and faster as the minutes ticked away with no reply.

  She had to get out of there; couldn’t bear the idea of being alone and wanted nothing more than to watch the news with Edmund Lambert by her side. Something was wrong. The explosion of the FBI vehicle on Bradley Cox’s street, the young actor’s disappearance—it was all connected. Cindy could feel it.

  “Fuck this,” she said, and changed out of her pajamas into a pair of jeans and a Harriot T-shirt. She was downstairs and ready to go in less than a minute—grabbed her keys from the kitchen table, her denim jacket from the den, and dashed outside to her car.

  Once inside, Cindy accidentally dropped her keys, cursed herself for being such a klutz, and ran her hand back and forth between the seat and the shift column. She reached under the driver’s seat and found them—inserted the Pon-tiac’s key into the ignition—but the car refused to turn over.

  “Come on, Daddy’s piece of shit!” she cried, turning the key and pumping the gas until finally the old Sunfire’s engine sputtered to life. She didn’t wait for it to warm up, just threw the shift into reverse and backed down the driveway.

  As she drove out of her neighborhood and headed for the highway, Cindy felt not the slightest bit guilty about breaking her promise to her mother.

  After all, she’d only promised not to go down to the scene of the explosion.

  She’d said nothing about going to Edmund Lambert’s.

  Chapter 81

  The General had just pulled Sam Markham from the Mustang’s trunk and hoisted him over his shoulder when he felt his cell phone buzzing in his back pocket. He’d already destroyed the FBI agents’ BlackBerrys and tossed them along with Markham’s briefcase in a Dumpster on his way back to Wilson. They wouldn’t be able to trace anything to him now—at least not until his work in the farmhouse was finished.

  The General let the call buzz into voice mail. Other than the alarm company, only two people had his cell phone number now. And since he couldn’t imagine why Doug Jennings would be calling him at this hour, he knew the call had to be from Ereshkigal.

  The General closed the trunk and carried Markham from the horse barn—chained the doors from the outside with one hand, then reached into his pocket. He was about to check his message when the incoming text told him everything he needed to know.

  Something’s happened, it read. On the news now, an ex- plosion near Bradley’s apt. Please call me back asap. I’m worried and need 2 talk. Cindy

  The General smiled.

  The FBI had found Andrew J. Schaap’s TrailBlazer and the little improvised explosive device that the General had rigged for them—courtesy of the101st Airborne and almost ten months in Tal Afar learning from Iraqi insurgents. Even if the bomb hadn’t gone off, its discovery would have made the news anyway. But how fitting, he thought, that Ereshki-gal should be the one to notify him. After all, hadn’t the Prince told him that Ereshkigal was part of the equation now?

  Ereshkigal will help us, his mother had said, too—but the General could not preoccupy himself with that part of the equation now. He mustn’t let on to the Prince that his mother was still the center of it all, mustn’t even think it. He had to keep up appearances; had to put all his energy into serving the Prince. The answer as to how he would save his mother would come to him eventually—just as the real reason for the IEDs had come to him eventually, too.

  The General had actually built the IEDs the previous fall: a pair of small but powerful hydrogen peroxide–based bombs similar to the ones used in the London terror attacks of 2005. The General wasn’t sure why the Prince had originally wanted him to build the bombs after learning of the terror attacks, and had since stored them in the old horse barn. Back then, the General still had to decipher the Prince’s messages without the doorway and the lion’s head—from the newspaper and Internet articles and his research in the Harriot library. And until this business with Markham and the FBI, the General had planned on detonating the bombs with his home security system—after the Prince had returned, of course; a little surprise for the authorities once he had no more need of the farmhouse.

  But then Andrew J. Schaap entered into the equation, and the General understood almost immediately why the Prince had him prepare the IEDs so far in advance. The Prince most certainly must have foreseen something like this occurring. Yes, the General thought, the Prince never ceased to amaze and terrify him with his power. And more than ever now, the General understood that he must never underestimate or second-guess the Prince again.

  It hadn’t taken the General long to rewire the homemade detonators to the TrailBlazer’s battery and then rig them to be triggered by the SUV’s electric locking mechanism. There had been no need to hide
the bombs, either, and the General just left them in a pair of black duffel bags on the floor behind the front seats. The TrailBlazer’s black interior and tinted windows would camouflage them nicely. Pretty amateurish by today’s standards, he thought—a tape-and-bubblegum hack job at which most Iraqi insurgents would probably thumb their noses.

  But now all that didn’t matter; and, now that the General had Sam Markham, the little warning he’d given himself was moot. He didn’t have to worry about the authorities surprising him and spoiling his plans just yet. The explosion, the disappearances of Schaap and Markham and Cox should keep the FBI busy long enough for the General to finish his business at the farmhouse. After that, the Prince would tell him where to go and what to do next to complete the nine.

  The General returned his cell phone to his back pocket and made his way toward the house. He would call Ereshki-gal later—after he had consulted with the Prince.

  And, of course, after he had finished with Sam Markham.

  Chapter 82

  What are you going to do if he isn’t home? asked the voice in her head. Are you just going to sit in his driveway and wait for him like the desperate stalker you are?

  “Shut up,” Cindy said. But another voice—a voice that sounded a lot like Amy Pratt’s—replied, Maybe I will.

  The real question, said the first voice, is what are you going to do if your handsome soldier is home?

  Cindy had no answer.

  OCD stalker, chimed both voices in unison, and Cindy pumped up the volume on the radio. It was a Led Zeppelin song. Cindy couldn’t remember its name. All their titles have nothing to do with the lyrics, she thought, and began racking her brain for the answer. She became irritated when she couldn’t find it, but was nonetheless thankful that the voices in her head were finally silent.