by James Carver
In his dream, he saw himself stand and walk over to Fox’s room. He got into her bed and slide under the cool sheets, up next to her warm, soft, perfumed skin. His large, solid form enclosed around her. Still facing away from Devlin, Fox stirred and drowsily asked, “What’s changed?”
“Everything,” he replied
And without hesitation or a single thought, she turned and melted into him. He felt her hot, sleepy breath as she cradled his face and kissed him deeply, clasping her lips on to his. His hands glided and scrambled over her body, her taught slim thighs, her soft burning belly. She pressed and writhed against his every muscle, throwing herself into him, then straddling his broad body and rising and falling on him. Under night’s protection, they filled up on their desire for each other.
Then Fox was gone and Devlin found himself standing outside, in the middle of the clearing in front of the cabin. The temperature had dropped, and the cold night air bit hard. A little way off, within the woodland that surrounded the cabin, he could see a flickering yellow and orange light. He walked into the trees and toward the light. As he got closer, he could hear the licks and roar of flames and felt an intense heat that caused him to lift his hand and shade his face. Though the heat was blasting, Devlin wanted to see the fire, see its light, and came to a stop within a few feet of a tall, wide persimmon tree that blazed, consumed by violent sprays of fire rushing up to the stars. Out of the fire walked a small man in a woolen hat, a ragged military surplus shirt, filthy jeans, and sneakers without laces. Devlin recognized him as Felix Lemus.
Lemus stood within arm’s reach of Devlin and said, “Are you ready to repent, Father Devlin?”
Devlin did not reply.
“I will ask you for the last time, are you ready to repent, Father Devlin?”
Again Devlin did not reply.
“Then I am here to tell you your true name, the name that has been given to you from this moment forward. It is Azazel.”
Lemus reached out and grasped Devlin’s hand, lifting it palm upward so that he held it flat between them. He spat into his other hand and laid it on top of Devlin’s. Instantly Devlin felt a searing heat, and wisps of smoke escaped from the tiny spaces between their grip. Devlin yanked his hand away and looked at it. A faint pattern had been burned into the dip of his palm: the shape of a tree with a serpent wrapped around the bough.
Devlin wanted to speak to Lemus, to say that he had no regrets or wish to atone, but the intensity of the heat had become too much to bear and his closeness to the fire made his hand throb with pain. He was beaten backward by the growing, scorching heat, away from Lemus and deeper into the woods until he no could no longer see Lemus or the fire and no longer knew his way back.
The farther back he retreated, the thicker and darker the forest became until he did not know his way back and suddenly was afraid he would never escape the forest or the night.
Devlin awoke. He was in his bed in the attic room, alone. There was no noise except for an alarm clock on the nightstand that insensibly ticked off the moments. Perspiration covered his body, and his hands were shaking. He examined his right hand. There were no letters, no circle studded with triangles. But it hurt. Hurt as if it had been burned.
It was still the middle of the night, and morning was a few hours off yet. Devlin threw off his blanket, placed an arm across his face, and waited for the sun to return.
Friday morning.
The last day he would spend in Halton Springs. Whichever way things went.
He understood that now.
52
Campbell had been up early and out at the drop with Packer. He had then traveled back to wait for another delivery of medical supplies that were coming in that morning. At about eight o’clock, a Freedom Medical truck pulled into the ranch and drove up to the cattle lab.
He waved the truck in and helped unload thirty large unmarked boxes. The guy driving the truck offered to help Campbell move the load into the lab, but as always, Campbell was adamant there was no need. He instructed the driver to turn around and leave, and then he started shifting the boxes by himself. It was heavy work, and it took a couple of hours to carefully unpack the contents. When Campbell was finished, he checked his watch. Lazard, his brother, and the two Chinese guys would be due back soon. After they’d worked into the early hours of the morning, the three new arrivals had slouched off to their beds in the ranch house. As one of the select few on the ranch who formed Packer’s inner circle, Campbell knew how critical today was. Once Lazard’s brother and his team arrived, the hard work would really begin and Campbell would be needed around the clock. If he was smart he could catch some z’s.
He switched with Reeves, who began a watch over the lab, and then he headed past the ranch house and the other hands on shift working the barns. He entered the bunkhouse and slumped on his bed looking forward to hitting the hay. But as he began dragging his boots off his aching feet, he heard the sound of a roaring engine in the distance. It built from a distant hum, getting louder and louder to a full-throated deafening rev as a Honda all-terrain vehicle skidded into the clearing and slid to a stop. The driver, Packer, got out and started screaming at the hands to round everybody up. He ran over to the bunkhouse and began banging on the side with his massive fists and hollering.
“Everyone out! Everyone out! There’s a fire up at the bull pasture!” Packer carried on shouting and banging till all the men, including Campbell, had shown themselves and come out of the trailers and barns and gathered in the clearing. They were unsure and bewildered by the sudden turmoil. Packer shouted for them to be quiet and listen.
“We got a fire up in the bull pasture. It’s a line of trees that are burning, and it’ll spread unless we stop it. There’s no way a fire truck could get up there. I need about a dozen men. I’ll take everyone apart from the men working the shop. Load up the pickups with as many water jugs as they’ll hold, and we can use the creek to put it out. But we gotta get it done now! Let’s go!”
They loaded up as fast as they could, then started up the pickups and the Hondas, riding the herd of vehicles out from the nerve center of buildings up to the far edge of the ranch.
Five minutes of relative stillness and quiet passed. Then two figures appeared, climbing over the fence from the highway. Cautiously scanning the area for any ranch workers that had might have been left behind, Devlin and Fox made their way across the rough ground some way off from the main track, skirting around the back of the cluster of barns and trailers.
As they came to the last couple of outbuildings, they could hear noises. The sounds of hammering, drilling, and voices were coming from a large rectangular metal building. Devlin and Fox stopped at the corner of the building and paused. Ahead of them, they could see a rear door that had been left open.
“We’ll have to go past the door,” said Devlin. “You go first. Make it quick, fast, and light and hope they don’t spot us.”
Fox looked at Devlin and then back at the open door. She moved as quietly as she could up to the hinge side and stopped still for a moment, then peered through the doorway and saw two figures at work. One was taking a front tire off a pickup, and the other was drilling into the rocker panel of the same pickup on the opposite side. They both seemed absorbed in their tasks, so Fox took a breath and skipped past the opening to the other side.
Devlin followed in exactly the same fashion and caught up with Fox on the other side of the door. They looked at each other and listened. The hammering from the workshop went on and so did the drilling followed by some more fragments of low-level talk.
“I think we’re okay,” said Fox.
Devlin nodded. “Let’s keep going.”
They had moved past the far end of the workshop and were creeping by the last of the ranch buildings when they heard a voice call out from behind them.
“Hey.”
Devlin and Fox turned to see a dark-haired, gray-bearded ranch hand in his forties smoking a rolled-up cigarette. His skin was brown, lined
and weathered from constant sun.
“Can I help you?” asked the hand. He spoke with a Hispanic accent.
“Yeah,” said Fox, improvising. “We’re hiking and kinda got ourselves lost. Would you happen to know the quickest way to get over to Long Pine?”
The ranch hand studied Fox and Devlin for a moment. Then he said, “You can’t get to Long Pine across here. This is private property. You’ll need to get back on the highway and walk a mile or so toward Halton. You can get on a path to the woods from there.”
“Oh gee, really?” said Fox. “That’s a shame. We’d really like to take a look round the ranch here too. Looks like a beauty.”
“’Fraid not. No public folk wandering about on the ranch. The boss is strict on that.”
Devlin and Fox exchanged a glance, but they were out of ideas for a response. Fox sensed Devlin beside her begin to physically tense, intention and purpose seeming to fill his body. She guessed he was preparing for the next nonverbal phase. And Fox also noticed that the hand had turned his attention on Devlin. He was staring directly at him and frowning, his face growing more serious.
“I know you,” said the ranch hand, pointing at Devlin.
Devlin remained still, expressionless, and replied in a monotone, “I don’t think so.”
The ranch hand took a couple of steps forward to look at Devlin more closely. Devlin’s fists tightened a little, and Fox’s heartbeat quickened as she prepared for all-out conflict.
“Yeah. Yeah I do,” said the hand. “You were down here a few days ago. Talking to one of the new workers here. To Alvarez. You’re the priest, aren’t you?”
Devlin didn’t respond.
“Yeah. You are. You’re the guy who beat the shit out of Earl Logan.”
“Think you’ve got the wrong man, my friend.”
“No. No, I don’t think I have. I got a good memory for faces. And what you did to Earl was all over town and on the news. Nice job you did there.”
“Excuse me?” said Devlin.
The bearded guy’s face transformed in a split second. Suspicion and hostility vanished and was replaced by a grin revealing a row of yellow-brown teeth. “You should have said you were the guy who cleaned that motherfucker’s clocks.” He walked up to Devlin and took a smoke of his cigarette, then flicked it away and held out his hand. Devlin did likewise and they shook. “Well done, Father. You don’t know how much I wanted to work that bastard over myself. He had it coming for the longest time.”
Devlin and Fox didn’t reply for a moment. They’d braced themselves for most eventualities but not this one.
“So…are we okay to carry on?” asked Fox. “I mean, go across the ranch to the forest?”
The hand shrugged. “You do what you like, miss.” He glanced around and then back at Fox and Devlin. “Looks like I’m the only one who’s seen you. And I never saw you. Far as I’m concerned, the man who gave Earl what he deserved can go where he likes.” Then he chuckled and wandered back off, disappearing between the workshop and the last trailer.
“Looks like you got yourself a fan, Devlin. Let’s go before we run into someone who actually liked Earl.”
Devlin and Fox edged to the end of the last trailer, checked no one was about, and darted around the side of Clay’s ranch house, keeping low and moving stealthily.
Behind the ranch house, Devlin and Fox got their first view of the cattle lab. It lay a few hundred feet away and was set in the middle of about four acres of grassland. Directly in front of them, much nearer than the lab, was a small red metal hut with ventilation slits. Devlin guessed it must house the generator that Clay had told him about back when he’d first visited the ranch.
They made sure the coast was clear and snuck in closer to the lab, about fifty meters away. Devlin now had a clear view of the front and the left side of the silver and blue rectangle glimmering in the sunshine. There were black pods positioned on the corners where the roof met the walls.
Devlin pointed to the pods. “Sensors,” he said. “Infrared.”
“Is that bad?”
“Sensors aren’t magic. They have limitations. They can only cover a certain area. There’s a sensor on each corner covering one side of each face of the building. So there is a blind spot we can exploit if we move in a diagonal line to the nearest corner. It helps if we move slowly and keep low; we’ll give off heat similar to the background heat. And the sensors have to be set up to ignore any small animals, otherwise they’d be going off every five minutes in the middle of a ranch.”
The two began edging slowly across the grass and got to the side of the building. Once under the sensors, they slid along the front of the lab to the entrance.
Devlin examined the door. “It’s a heavy-duty lock. Give me the gun.”
“They’ll hear in the house.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We’re about a hundred yards away in open ground. It’s a ranch; gunshots have to be more common here than other places. Anyway, it’s a chance we have to take. I can’t see another way in.”
Fox handed Devlin a Glock that Stevens had given them back at the cabin. Devlin took the catch off, aimed at the lock from a few feet away, and pulled the trigger. The shot ruptured the metal, burning the lock out. Devlin gave the gun back to Fox, lifted his leg, and repeatedly kicked at the door until it flung wide open. Then he peered around into the plant. No movement. No sound.
Devlin and Fox moved warily inside.
The front part of the building was very underwhelming and very ordinary, like a big clean cattle shed. There were runs for the cattle and stalls to hold the bulls and heifers. Along the left side was a lab bench with beakers and other equipment laid out and shelves stacked with glass containers holding different chemicals. Along the right-hand side were banks of canisters in tall metal cages on wheels with the words “liquid nitrogen” stenciled on their sides.
“Well, so far, so normal. And no sign of fifty million dollars,” said Fox.
Devlin walked to the back wall, which was hidden away behind a row of stalls. Set into the wall he found a wide double door without windows, inconspicuous-looking and the same drab brown color as the surrounding painted cinder blocks.
“What’s behind there?” asked Fox.
“Whatever it is it makes up most of this building and it’s worth protecting.” Devlin pointed over to the right of the door. “There’s a finger scanner.”
Installed into the wall was a black box with a blue LCD screen above a numerical keypad. Beside the screen and keypad was a square gap, inside which was a small finger pad that glowed red.
“Oh shit,” said Fox. “We’re never gonna get through that.”
“It’s another challenge, that’s for sure.”
“A challenge? It needs a fingerprint. How the hell can we get through if it needs a fingerprint? I’ve seen these things in films—you need to go and chop some guy’s finger off and then use that to get in.”
“Wait, hold on. It isn’t that bad. They had one of these at Scott Airforce Base in Illinois to control who had access. They’re just like all the other security devices. Doesn’t matter how much money they throw at these things, some new guy turns up and needs to get in and they haven’t done the paperwork and put his fingerprint on the database. So people found a workaround. We discovered that all you had to do…” Devlin bent down and cupped his hands and gently and slowly blew warm air onto the scanner. As he did, a fingerprint impression flashed up onto the LCD screen above the keypad with the words, “Reeves. Access Granted” alongside in green. The locks clicked open.
“How the fuck…?”
“Warm moisture in your breath attaches to the oil and residue left by the last person’s finger,” said Devlin. “They’ve set the fingerprint recognition parameters tight because they think it makes it harder to get in. It doesn’t—it just makes the machine way oversensitive.” Devlin pushed open the double doors and looked in.
Now they were way beyond normal.
53
&n
bsp; “There’s the fifty million dollars,” said Fox.
Both Fox and Devlin thought they might find Alvarez in the cattle lab. Maybe. Neither had been exactly sure in fact what kind of operation lay in the secretive aluminum building. But in their wildest nightmares, they had never expected to find the scene that confronted them now. On the other side of the door, spread out before them in a cavernous, strip-lit space that resembled an aircraft hangar, were twelve beds arranged in an arc, each one occupied by a young man who had been wired up to a bank of monitors. The beds were dwarfed by the inside space and the banks of medical equipment and supplies. The roof sloped about thirty feet above them supported by metal struts. The place was alive with the sound of digital machinery that hummed and chirruped. Spare, unoccupied gurneys were dotted around the edges of the hangar. It looked like an extremely high-tech intensive care unit crossed with an operating theater, but far grimmer, for the suspicion was that this place existed not to stabilize the men and then nurse them back to health but to keep them in stasis.
“I’m going in,” said Fox, bringing the Glock up from her side and readying herself.
“No. I’ll go first,” Devlin hissed back.
“I got the gun—you stay here.”
Before Devlin could get out a reply, Fox had stepped through the door, the curiosity of a journalist overriding any instincts of self-preservation. She stood inside the hangar and gazed in wonder at her surroundings, at this warped Aladdin’s cave. And then, out of the shadows of the chamber, came an unfamiliar voice, and Fox froze.
“Drop the gun, blondie.”
To Fox’s left, standing by what looked like a medical station decked with a bank of monitors, was one of the ranchers, a tall guy with greased-back dark hair and plenty of tattoos, wearing a flannel shirt, slim jeans, and a pair of muddy woodsman boots. He was holding a gun and aiming it at Fox. For a split second she considered trying to swivel and get a shot off, but realistically she knew it would be a shot in a hundred.