Wings In Darkness

by Gregory Kay

  “Wow! Thanks!” Johnny beamed, thoughts of Alison taking some of the pain out of the day, “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “Alright. Lets swing by the hotel and see if they’re back yet.”

  “I hope so. I tried to call Allie earlier, but couldn’t get an answer.

  Luke looked at him sharply. Fiona didn’t answer either! He knew there were several cellular dead zones in the rural, hilly county, but still...

  The deputy started to get a bad feeling.

  “Is Fiona Pelligatti in?” Luke asked, and then frowned when he saw the desk clerk’s wide, frightened eyes as she nervously tapped her finger up and down on the desk.

  “No sir; she checked out.” Tap-tap-tap...

  “Checked out? Where did she go?”

  “She...said ‘home,’ sir.” Tap-tap-tap...a little louder this time.

  The clerk was obviously hiding something, and Luke was starting to get pissed off. Surely to God Fiona wouldn’t have left him like that, without a word...unless it was to spare them both the pain...damn it!

  Tap-tap-tap...a little louder still.

  Luke was so shook up, he nearly missed the clerk’s eyes rolling around in their sockets like she was having a seizure and the clue she was desperately trying to draw his attention to. Finally, he looked down at the tapping finger. It wasn’t tapping on the desk, but on a piece of paper lying on it.

  US Department of Homeland Security

  To whom it may concern:

  Under the authority of Executive Order 1233, dated December 4, 1981, and pursuant to US Code, Title 18, you are hereby ordered to provide the bearing officer with any and all information or items he may request concerning the person or persons listed below:

  Fiona Colleen Pelligatti

  Luke’s eyes widened.

  In accordance with Title 18, I certify that the information and items sought are relevant to an authorized investigation to protect against terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities...

  Luke felt like screaming, ‘bullshit-bullshit-bullshit!’ at the top of his lungs, but instead continued reading, sorting through the legalistic gobbledygook.

  You are further advised that Title 18 prevents any officer, employee or agent of yours from disclosing to any person that this agent has sought or obtained any information or items under these provisions...

  Luke knew better than to pick up the document; the clerk was risking prosecution just by showing it to him covertly, let alone overtly, but he still paled at the implications.

  He was dimly aware of his cell phone ringing, and answered it by reflex.

  “Carter.”

  “Luke? This is Russ from over at the towing company. What’s wrong with Miss Pelligatti’s Jaguar? I can’t reach her on her cell, so I thought I’d call you.”

  “What?” That one threw him for a complete loop.

  “Her Jag; I saw it being towed on Route 2. Look, if we missed something when we were fixing it, we’ll make it right with her – no charge!”

  “Towed? Who the hell was towing it?”

  “I don’t know; didn’t recognize him or the company truck. That’s weird, since I know everybody in the business. Must be someone from out of town.”

  “I need to know, Russ; was she or Alison Parks in the truck?”

  “No, nobody but the driver.”

  Although his face was set like a stone, Luke was screaming inside.

  They’re going to make them disappear!

  Then he saw the clerk, without moving a muscle in her body, roll her eyes toward the elevator.

  A man was coming out with suitcase in his hand. Even though the interloper studiously avoided looking at him or Johnny, Luke immediately noticed two things. One was that, despite the individual’s nondescript civilian clothes, he was immediately recognizable as one of the ‘game wardens’ from the TNT encounter; the other was that he was carrying Fiona’s suitcase that she had left behind the night before.

  Luke pretended not to see him, and waited until he got to the door before following him outside.

  You can’t do this! This is a federal matter; you could spend the rest of your life in prison! Let it go! You’re sworn to uphold the law, and, like it or not, they’re the law!

  His common sense was growing increasingly frantic, but over it all he could hear the words his grandfather told him, the day he joined the department.

  Never let the damned law get in the way of doing what’s right!

  Luke didn’t; instead, he accosted the man while he was putting the bag in the back end of a Chevy Suburban.

  “Mason County Sheriff’s Department,” he announced, his Glock already in his hand, “Freeze! That’s not your bag, mister; you’re under arrest for theft!”

  At least, he tried to announce it; before he finished, the man wheeled around with a pistol of his own.

  Luke could have shot him, and wanted to very badly, but he wanted the information the suspect had even more, so the next instant, both he and his target had hold of the wrists of each other’s gun hands, each wrestling and twisting to bring a muzzle into line or to disarm his opponent, all the while kicking, kneeing, and head-butting the hell out of one other in an effort to get the upper hand.

  Abruptly the other man rose high on his toes and yelled; seeing what was happening, Johnny had bailed out of the jeep and kicked him in the crotch from behind for all he was worth, then slugged him in the back of the head.

  “Drop it!” was all he said, or all he had time to say before yet another party entered the fray, and Whitey Walker came out of nowhere to brush past him and hit the outnumbered ‘game warden’ with a full charge that drove him off his feet and into the pavement. Luke went down with him still holding on, and the suspect’s hand holding the Beretta smacked the concrete an instant before Johnny’s heel stomped down on it with bone-crushing force, and Luke snatched the weapon away.

  “Told you I owed you one,” Whitey said with a big grin of satisfaction as he leaned his weight on his victim, keeping him pinned while Luke snapped on the cuffs he always carried, even in his civvies, “I was over at the coffee shop and saw you following this dumb-ass when he left the hotel, and figured you might need some help. What the hell did he do?” He grinned even bigger. “Other than try to shoot you, I mean?”

  “I think he kidnapped Fiona and Allie Parks; at least, they’re missing and that’s Fiona’s bag.”

  “Allie!” Johnny gasped.

  “Those pretty little girls? Son of a bitch!” Whitey repeated, this time with a snarl before raising enough to get some room, and driving his right fist into the prone man’s kidney just on general principles, making his victim stiffen, gasp, then promptly throw up from the agonizing pain. He was still retching when they rolled him over. Seeing his face up close for the first time, Whitey abruptly went pale and took the Lord’s name in vain with great feeling.

  “What is it?” Luke asked him, and Whitey nodded at their prisoner. “This guy claims he’s a Federal Agent.”

  “Federal Agent my ass! His name is Theodore Barnes, and he’s a damned spook! I know this son of a bitch; he’s a private black-ops contractor. He was an interrogator at the same prison where I was stationed; he’s the one who shot my kneecap off!” Whitey spat in the man’s face. “Damn you, you filthy, perverted bastard, I’ve waited a long time for this!”

  “We need to find out what they’ve done with Fiona!”

  They have taken her to the area you call the TNT.

  Luke, Whitey and Johnny all looked at each other with widening eyes; all three had clearly “heard” the words without hearing them with their ears. Their prisoner had shown no reaction, so they guessed he had not.

  “What the...” Whitey began, but the voice sounded again.

  She and Alison are in the same underground facility described to you by Samuel Gordon. They will both be executed shortly and their bodies disposed of through the gate.

  “Gate?” Luke asked desperately, “What gate?”


  Think of it as a gate between the worlds. I have no more time; I must go and see if I can assist Father in helping her from the other side. If you wish to save them, you must do so at once!

  Then the voice was abruptly gone, and Luke felt like the bottom had just dropped out of his stomach. He looked at his friends.

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but it’s my problem. It might be best if you all walked away from this right now.”

  The man and the boy stubbornly shook their heads.

  “Ain’t no way in hell!”

  “They’ve got Allie! I’m going!”

  “The Feds are involved, in some way, at least. I’ve just assaulted and kidnapped one of them, and I’m about to commit an act of terrorism against what’s probably classed as a US military installation.” Looking at the restrained Barnes, he added, “I’m getting those girls back, even if it means I literally have to skin this son of a bitch alive to do it, and if they’ve...they’ve...” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. “...done anything to her, piss on the law! I’m going to kill every last one of them!”

  “That’s why I’m going.” Whitey waved a hand at the prone prisoner. “Bastards like that – bastards just like this – are the reason I am how I am! You think I don’t know how screwed up I am in the head? I’m FUBAR’ed, man! The things they did – we did – things I was made to take part in...God, you have no idea! Men, women, little kids...we were the terrorists over there, and I can’t live with that no more. I just can’t, Luke, not when I can do a little something to make up for it!”

  “They’ve got Allie,” Johnny repeated stubbornly, “I ain’t leaving her to die, and I don’t care if I have to blow up freaking Washington, DC and everybody in it, I’m not going to let that happen!”

  Luke grabbed their hands and shook them.

  “Alright, then. We’ll plan it as we go. Put this bag of shit in his car and we’ll bring him along; he may be our key to get in.” He swallowed hard. “We’ll need more people, but there’s no way the department will get involved in this; the Sheriff would probably arrest me to stop me from trying. I’ll call Joe Parks. I hate to involve him, but Alison is his little girl, so he’s got a vested interest, I reckon.”

  “I’ll call Sam,” Whitey said with a smile that never reached his eyes, “He’s always hollering about wanting another adventure, and he’d kick my ass for sure if I did something like this without giving him a chance to get involved in it. Besides, he’s forgot more of this shit than we’ll ever know.”

  Luke nodded, but suspected that someone kicking someone else’s ass was going to be the least of their worries.

  We’re all either going to go to prison, or more likely die, but I don’t give a damn right now!

  “Call him, then, and let’s swing by my house, get some guns and get going. You got a phone?” When Whitey nodded, he said, “We’ll leave my Jeep and cell phone here; Johnny, leave your phone too. They’ve probably got trackers on all of it by now.”

  “You two ride in front,” Whitey told them once they had their prisoner in the back seat, “and don’t look back here. There are some things we need to know, and this asshole is going to tell me before we get there. They made me learn how to extract information, so trust me; you all don’t want to see this.”

  They heard the clicking as Whitey opened his Leatherman multi-tool.

  “So, Teddy, where do I start? Should I do this by the book, or should I just improvise?”

  Listening to the grunts turning to yells turning to screams as he drove, Luke reflected that Whitey was probably right. He didn’t want to see it...although if he had had to, he would have done it himself...and worse, if that’s what it took to get her back.

  Fiona, baby, where are you?

  Johnny did look back, but only once, and then threw up in his mouth; he tried to block it with his hand but was unsuccessful, and the bile shot around his palm and out of both nostrils.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of, boy,” came Whitey’s voice from the backseat, “I threw up more than once watching sons of bitches like this one work!” There was a pause, punctuated by another scream. “And don’t be feeling sorry for him either! Back in the ‘stan, I had to stand there and watch while this prick raped and then literally butchered an eight year-old little kid in front of her father trying to get him to talk. When I tried to stop him, he shot me. Well, now it’s his turn! Who’s the terrorist now, you son of a bitch? Who’s the terrorist now?” The screams intensified and almost drowned out Whitey’s enraged roaring, and Johnny threw up again.

  At the Point Pleasant Riverfront Park, on the opposite side of the flood wall directly behind the hotel, seventy-six year-old Mike McDonald spared a lazy eye to squint upward at the dark clouds moving in over the sun, then shrugged and took another sip. He knew a fall rain was on its way and would be there soon, but he’d been wet before, so he might as well stay and take it easy as long as he could until it got here. He was fishing, and having no luck at all. He didn’t expect much, really, not this late in the year, but it had been a nice day to sit in a folding chair on the concrete landing with a cold beer concealed by a can wrapper and just watch the river go by.

  Unless they’re having a festival or something, it’s always quiet down here.

  Right at that moment, as it so often does, life proved him a liar.

  He suddenly heard the running feet pounding down the cement stairs behind him, and turned in alarm at the sound, only to see a man he recognized bolt past him with the tails of his black trench coat spread out and flapping behind him like wings. The interloper leaped off the edge of the landing and executed a perfect, headfirst dive into the river, where he disappeared with a splash. If he'd been alarmed before, he grew even more so when the impromptu diver failed to surface.

  “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed as he frantically dug his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. As soon as the operator answered and asked the nature of his emergency, he said, “You’d better get somebody down here at the River Front. I...I think Luke Carter just killed himself!”

  Mike was sure it was the Deputy he saw, despite something looking slightly...different about him. He figured it was the emotional upset that had caused the young man to finally end it all.

  While he waved his arms and shouted into the phone, his own trauma at what he had just witnessed prevented him from noticing the murky waters briefly surge not far out from where he stood, as they rushed in to fill a gap where something beneath them had suddenly ceased to exist, at least in this world. By the time he turned back, the first drops of rain had begun to fall, and the only thing visible on the river’s droplet-dimpled surface was bubbles and a rising plume of disturbed silt from the muddy bottom.

  CHAPTER 27

  Fiona and Alison lay on the bare cement floor, both on their left sides with their hands cuffed behind them. Their feet were left unbound, but out of fear of being Tasered again if they disobeyed the curt orders not to get up, they stayed where they’d been dropped, although they did roll around a little periodically, trying to get comfortable as their bones dug at the unyielding surface. At the moment, they were spooned together with Alison in the rear, and both of them needed the contact, because there was no question in their minds as to what was about to happen; the only question was when, or perhaps rather why it hadn’t already taken place

  “I’m sorry, Fiona.”

  Fiona felt Alison’s words more as breath than she heard them as sound so as not to disturb the soldiers doing something with the computers and other unidentifiable electronic equipment they were working on. They'd been speaking in whispers ever since an impersonal boot had slammed into Fiona’s shin a few minutes before, accompanied by an unemotional command to “Shut up.” Still, the order seemed to be little more than a formality, because, as long as they whispered low enough not to distract their captors, no one seemed to care. Even if they did, it wasn’t likely to make things any worse. The reporter knew very well that, once they had b
een kidnapped, considering who the abductors were and who they worked for, it meant they could never let them go for fear of word getting out.

  They’re going to kill us.

  For some reason, that didn’t matter as much now as it might have before; besides, she’d already cried herself out, and there were no tears left. She’d heard the soldiers talking over an intercepted radio report; they said Luke had committed suicide.

  They made me disappear, and he thought I’d left him without even saying goodbye. Allie was right! Oh my God, why?

  Fiona clenched her teeth and pushed the despair aside by summoning up the anger she’d always relied on, almost lived on. This wasn’t her fault; it was theirs. They had killed him, as surely as if they’d put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. She determined she wasn’t going to die like this, not without hurting them, not without making them pay. She’d fight...some way.

  Twisting her head, she looked around again, desperately seeking something, anything that might give them an advantage, but, as she had already discovered the first hundred times she scanned her surroundings, there was nothing. She didn’t even know what the men were doing

  Whatever it is, it’s centered around that frame.

  The frame was right beside them, and that’s what the soldiers’ attention was obviously focused on, in that it attracted their nervous glances almost constantly. The frame sat on a cement pedestal on one side of the room, so close to where she lay Fiona could have kicked it. About seven feet tall and three wide, something about it reminded her of a door frame, like one might find in an office, but the resemblance was no more than a hint. It was strangely designed and made of some metal, multi-angled and twisted in ways and directions that not only failed to make sense, but almost hurt the eyes to look at, rather like an M. C. Escher drawing of staircases going in impossible angles. The whole thing was wrapped in wire and electronics that gave off a faint humming sound. She supposed that was what affected the space, the ‘doorway’ she guessed, within it, and distorted the air into a black fog with a shimmer to it like a heat mirage.