DARK VISIONS

by James Byron Huggins

  “Is that what Joe’s doing?”

  “I don’t think Joe even knows. But Poe knows.”

  “How does Poe know?”

  “Poe just knows.”

  “How?” Marvin pressed.

  “Personally?” Jodi cast a glance. “I think it’s spiritual.”

  They reached the pavement as Marvin said, “As far back as history goes, ravens have always had a reputation for things like death or resurrection. According to the Bible, a raven was the bird that god used to feed Elijah when he was in the desert. A raven is also the bird Noah sent out from the ark to find land after the flood.” He grunted softly as he added, “The Egyptians used a raven to symbolize resurrection. And the Cherokee thought a raven was death itself. The raven is always used to represent either death or a new life.”

  Jodi asked, “What do you think?”

  “Poe saved our lives, so I don’t care if he’s a spirit or just a real smart bird. Saving my life is enough for my respect.”

  Jodi walked into the street and hailed a cab.

  As they opened the doors, Marvin got into the front seat and smiled at the surprised driver. “I like it up front,” he said.

  The driver melted into traffic, and in a half hour they caught a bus. In another hour, they were a half mile from the professor’s home. Then they spent an hour walking before Jodi looked around and said, “Okay, I think we’re clean. They may be dedicated, but they’re not that smart.”

  “Let’s get back,” said Marvin. “Joe needs to know about all this.”

  “He already knows.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He just knows.” Jodi found herself walking with her head bowed when she finally added, “Like I know.”

  Marvin was watching her. “What do you think you know?”

  “I know Joe is going to die. And so am I.”

  Marvin grabbed her shoulders and turned her, angrily glaring down. “What does that mean, Jodi!”

  She gazed up. Blinked softly.

  “It means that what’s always been coming has finally come,” she said. “It means I’m not in control of my life. It means I never was.”

  ELEVEN

  A thunderous, flowing black cloud of crows commanded Jodi’s attention when they were still a quarter-mile from Professor Graven’s sprawling home, and when they arrived she merely stood and stared at the hypnotic rising and diving.

  “Let’s go to the patio,” she said. “Joe’s out back.”

  Marvin draped an arm over her shoulders as they rounded the corner of the home , and she immediately saw Joe Mac sitting at the small glass table with Poe perched before him. Joe lifted his head as they neared, and he said, “Have some trouble?”

  “A little,” Jodi said casually.

  “Kill anybody?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “Not yet. You all right?”

  “First time for everything.”

  “It took you long enough.”

  “You been hanging fire for something?”

  “Just … a little worried.”

  “Well, I’m fine. Thanks for the concern.” She took a seat and extended a hand to Poe who crept over and lowered his head. “I got bad news. Mr. Chamberlain is dead. They killed him, and they probably killed that woman, too. But we still managed to get the stuff.”

  Joe Mac sighed, “All right. Well, I’m thinking that maybe I need you in a command center. I don’t need you in that cave.”

  “I’m going in, Joe.”

  “You’re lettin’ me down, kid.”

  “To repeat myself: You don’t need me in any ‘command center,’ Joe. You just don’t want me going in there because you think I’m gonna get hurt or killed. But I’m going in. It’s too late, as they say in the song, to turn back now.” Jodi stared more seriously. “If I back out now, Joe, I’ll never be a real cop. And you know it.”

  “Not everybody’s meant to be a real cop.”

  “I am.”

  Upon the table, Joe Mac’s hand clutched, fingers curling as if they held the main strength to crush stone. Finally, he nodded, “All right, then. We all go. But I want you loaded up with all the ammo you can carry. And stick close to Marvin and the captain. Don’t stay close to me. No matter what.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll be close to the professor.”

  She glanced through the sliding back door and didn’t see Professor Graven as she curiously asked, “Is there something I should know?”

  “Just stay away from me and him. It’s gonna be a dangerous place to be.” Joe Mac blew out a breath. “The most dangerous.”

  Poe jerked his head to the side and spread his gigantic wings with a shrilling caw as the door opened and Brightbarton stepped out holding an M-4 – a short-barrel version of the AR-15. He slammed in a clip as he walked forward and appeared totally relaxed as he stated, “You ready for this, rookie?”

  “Are you?”

  “I was born ready, kid.”

  Joe Mac mumbled, “Just like ‘The Wild Bunch.’”

  “I sure hope this has a happier ending,” said Brightbarton.

  Joe Mac stood.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Jodi narrowly cut her eyes to catch Marvin’s worried gaze and didn’t waste a second understanding more than that. She stood and followed Joe Mac into the house where they began to arm themselves.

  Marvin used the time to prepare each cloak. He decorated them with beads, shrunken heads, iconic talismans and anything else he’d lifted from the shop before the shootout shut them down. He also made subtle slits in the sides of every cloak so they could covertly reach within it to grab their weapon without laboriously dragging the one-piece drape over their heads and off their bodies to fight. When Marvin was finished, they were able to appear fully covered, yet they had access to any weapon.

  Brightbarton also had the much-appreciated prescience to bring bullet proof vests with solid steel shock plates in front and back. The ballistic vests weren’t bulky because they were composed of interwoven Mylar, a material not unlike a stiff blanket. But the solid steel shock plates, while guaranteeing protection from any bullet that might hit them at any range, added considerable weight.

  Jodi had worn a vest every day in uniform, but, like most officers, she didn’t carry the extra slabs of steel. Twenty extra pounds of high carbon steel was simply too much weight to haul around in the burning sun for eight hours. Tonight, however, she snugly fit the slabs in place and resolved to live with the added stress.

  Each of them had their own preference for how they wanted to carry their weapons. Jodi elected to carry the Glock and extra clips in the front of her belt; it would be her only weapon, and she wanted fast access for reloads. She decided to forego any hand grenades since she would probably be carrying Tommy Childers, and she ultimately didn’t trust the unpredictable pattern of shrapnel.

  Joe Mac used the simplest preparations. He just jammed three .45s in his belt and slid extra clips in the front pockets of his pants and shirt. He did elect to wear one of the vests, but he declined the shock plates – a decision that worried Jodi but she remained silent.

  Marvin took the deadly M61 grenades and shoved the levers into his stiff leather belt so that his entire waist was a solid line of hand grenades. When he was done, he was bearing a solid arsenal of M61 grenades and three stun grenades. Then he made room on either thigh for a .45 and put extra clips in every pocket. He also resourcefully stuck extra clips for the .45s in the top of each boot. Last, he taped three clips together for the M-4 so that he only needed to eject an empty clip, flip it, and slam in another without searching for the extra magazine. All in all, the M-4 setup provided him with 90 uninterrupted shots and when that was done he would just drop the weapon and pull the .45s.

  Brightbarton was old school; he only carried his duty pistol and the M-4. He stuffed clips for his Gloc
k in every pocket and stuck magazines for the M-4 inside his belt front to back. Then he pulled on a steel-reinforced vest. Last, he dragged the Druid-robe over his head and, like Jodi, spent ten minutes walking around the room developing a technique for surreptitiously grabbing his weapons.

  Jodi was certain she could put her hand on her Glock without moving suspiciously, especially in a half-shadowed environment. She wasn’t quite as confident about her ability to find the extra clips. And she had a nagging fear that, once the fighting started, she might become so entangled in the cloak that she’d be forced to haul it over her head and fling it aside.

  There was an upside and a downside to keeping or losing the robe. The upside of retaining the robe was that it would at least temporarily confuse the Druids. In the chaos of combat, the priests would have to wait for Jodi to fire to determine whether she was an enemy. The downside was that the huge cloak was not at all congruent to battle; agility was severely compromised and lightning-fast speed was out of the question.

  At the last, Jodi glanced over the room and tried to gauge the emotional temperature; Joe Mac was easy to read. He seemed the same as he always seemed. He could have been preparing for a funeral or a wedding – no difference. Brightbarton was a bit tighter with micro-expressions hinting at anger or, perhaps, dread.

  But Marvin was the most difficult to decipher. His movements were slow, methodical, deliberate, and careful. He appeared neither eager nor reluctant. Rather, it was as if he were simply preparing another doctrinal dissertation on some archaic civilization. But most encouraging was the aspect he projected of being merciless without being cruel. While he did not seem to loath killing, neither did he exude the aura of a man eager to shed blood. Instead, he was behaving as if this was just business as usual.

  When they were finishing, Jodi glanced at Joe Mac.

  “Any last-minute advice, b’wana?”

  “Yeah,” Joe Mac answered gruffly, “shoot until the aggression stops. It don’t matter if you have to shoot him a hundred times. Don’t worry about that. He could be wearing a vest, too. You just keep shooting until he goes down. Second, don’t let yourself get tunnel vision. Keep your eyes open to what’s happening on all sides. And always keep moving forward and turning, so nobody can sneak up on you from behind. The trick is to not have a blind side. And if somebody rushes you, rush them back. Don’t’ retreat. Ever. If someone comes straight into you, you go straight into them. And if you get shot, get up. Don’t think you’re gonna die or you probably will.

  “Now, listen up, kid. If it gets bad – and it will – go straight into it. Don’t ever run. Not ever! If he charges at you, you charge at him. If you’re gonna die, you get it in your mind that he’s gonna die, too. ‘Cause the most important thing in a gunfight ain’t your gun: It’s your mind. You gotta be willing to get shot to pieces and know that you’re still gonna kill whoever this is trying to put you in the dirt. You can’t let your fear cripple you. You can’t let fear cripple your thinking. It don’t matter if you’re shot or if the situation is absolutely doomed. Yeah, maybe you do die. Maybe we all die. But, by God, he’s gonna die, too. And you stick that in your mind because your mindset is gonna be worth more than all the training in the world. Got it?”

  Jodi nodded, “Got it.”

  “I’ll be watching your back,” Joe Mac added. “But if I go down, you keep moving. You’re gonna have the little boy with you. Your priority is getting that boy clear of that place. I can take care of myself.”

  “All right.”

  When they were ready, Professor Graven descended the stairway dressed in what Jodi could only summarize as the ultimate safari wardrobe. He wore a sleeveless leather vest with bullets already packed, khaki shirt, cotton pants, and knee-high leather boots that looked to be ridiculously expensive if not downright unaffordable. He walked forward, lifted the double-barrel Weatherby, checked the chambers, and shut the breach.

  “How many cars are we taking?” asked Brightbarton.

  “Two,” said Joe Mac. “And we ain’t driving either of them.”

  “We ain’t?”

  “No, I got the Kosiniski brothers dropping us off at the graveyard. Then they’ll stay close, and we’ll call ‘em on the cell phone when we get out. I don’t want our cars on that road. Might make somebody suspicious.”

  “Don’t you think there’s gonna be plenty of cars on that road?” asked Brightbarton. “We ain’t the only ones gonna be using that graveyard.”

  “Nothing wrong with caution.”

  “Caution!” exclaimed Brightbarton. “If we were using caution, we wouldn’t be going out there at all! We’d let SWAT do this.”

  Joe Mac shook his head. “Our security’s compromised. I don’t know if it’s Rollins or somebody else. But that’s how they hit us at the park. Somebody set us up. And I’m not gonna run that gauntlet again.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. We got a fox in the hen house. But don’t bring up ‘caution.’ If I was using caution I’d be sitting on a beach. Not following you into a showdown that’s gonna make the Alamo look like a Billy Graham tent revival.”

  “Everybody check your throat mic,” said Joe Mac, and they did a series of counts. “All right. We’re good to go. Each one of us will hear every word you say, so if you get into trouble just talk like you’re talking to anybody else. Give your position. Stay calm. And somebody will come. Okay?”

  Nods.

  Graven asked, “Any last-minute changes?”

  “Same plan,” said Joe Mac. “You stick close to me. When you see this high priest, you put me next to him. Then I’ll grab him, Jodi will grab Tommy Childers, and we’ll make our way out of there. If anybody looks sideways at you, kill him.”

  Movement caught Jodi’s eye as she was loading a clip and she noticed Poe perched on the fireplace mantle watching each of them with lightning-quick attention. Then something prompted her to look to the patio, and she saw a hundred crows and ravens perched on the fence, the table, the chairs, the deck. With a curt laugh, Jodi spoke to Joe Mac, “Looks like Poe brought friends.”

  “Yeah,” he raised his face, “he knows what’s happening.”

  Graven had followed Jodi’s gaze. “Do you truly believe that that … bird … understands the gravity of the situation?”

  “He understands a whole lot more,” said Jodi. She reached out and Poe fluttered from the mantle, landing on her hand. She brought him close and kissed his forehead before softly adding, “Don’t ya, big guy?”

  Joe Mac slid a third .45 into his coat and stood for a second with both hands shoved deep in his pockets. He turned his face to Poe and the raven cawed softly. Then he lifted his chin in Jodi’s direction. “You loaded?”

  “All I can carry.”

  “Got your vest on?”

  “Yep.”

  Joe Mac tossed his cell phone. “Keep that ‘till it’s over. Just hit ‘one’ when you need to get picked up. But the Kosiniski brothers will be thirty seconds out, so be prepared to hold your ground for thirty seconds. Think fast. Move fast. Kill anything that even looks at you.” He paused to take a deep breath. “Let me ask you a question, Detective Strong. How do you fight a thousand men?”

  Jodi blinked. “How?”

  “One at a time.”

  Jodi bowed her head. “Yeah …”

  Brightbarton lifted the M-4. “You ready?”

  Joe Mac chambered his last .45.

  “I reckon so.”

  * * *

  In the shadow of midnight Jodi could almost hear the doom, doom of drums as she stared upon the shadows of gravestones – shadows that reached to the very edge of the dark tree line, but no further as if even shadow was afraid of touching what this forest held.

  Wearing the dark robes of the priests, they had stood within the blackness of the jungle gloom watching people emerge from the cemetery trail to silently enter the crypt
and disappear into the hidden tunnel. They had watched for hours without revealing their position and Jodi had begun to wonder what sign Joe Mac needed to decide that it was time. But she had said nothing. She had only occasionally glanced into the Cimmerian darkness of the triple canopy of trees hearing the soft caw of Poe.

  Yes, Poe had followed them from the house, as always, but this time it was different. The magnificent raven had not come alone.

  She had glanced back as they traveled here.

  Behind them the sky had been lost to innumerable black wings that followed with that familiar shrill Poe used when he sensed danger. To even make an intelligent estimate of the raven and crow would have been foolish. Safe to say they were as numberless as the grains of sand in the sea. And they had followed them down that now familiar trail from the dirt road to the cemetery, and the entire forest had bent beneath the weight of wings when they settled on every branch.

  Joe Mac asked quietly, “Jodi, has anyone entered the tomb in the last twenty minutes?”

  “No,” she whispered. “Nobody.”

  “Remember what you know.”

  “I will, Joe.”

  “All right, then. Let’s do it.”

  In seconds they reached the tomb and Joe Mac mounted the long granite steps with Marvin’s hand on his elbow. Jodi led the way with both hands wrapped around the grip of the Glock – a grip that now brought a familiar comfort.

  She had borne her weapon every day, on duty and off, for three long years and yet she had never found comfort in it. Rather, every time she’d drew it, held it, cleaned it or even qualified with it on the range she had been afraid of it. But it was wrong to say she had hated the gun. Rather, she had hated herself for her lack of commitment … or courage.

  Now her weapon was her friend, although she knew her truest, most dependable, most spiritual friend was perched above her in a tree watching the whole night with that supernatural prescience she had come to trust with all her heart.