The Watchers

by Mark Andrew Olsen

  He took the blade and pressed it against her neck. Seeing no wound there, he frowned. “Hey, where are you injured?”

  He raised the machine-gun barrel to Abby’s quivering forehead. Then he raised the scythe. . . .

  “No!” Dylan bellowed, his voice thundering through the chamber.

  He threw himself forward—the sacrificial plunge of a secret-service agent rather than a special ops man, and a reckless diversion intended to draw the bullet his way instead of harming the protected target. But it also had dim roots in the training of years past, when his Delta Force instructors had taught him that a bold, multisensory surprise would confuse the human brain for at least three seconds, rendering a coherent response unlikely during the interval. It wasn’t much time, but enough for a skilled warrior to close the gap and engage the enemy hand to hand.

  Only one caveat. This had always assumed that the enemy was marginally trained and unaccustomed to the savagery of tactical situations.

  Shadow Leader screamed. Ripped a wild volley from his machine-gun hand. In a moment Dylan would later revisit in the agonizing, slow-motion replay of his mind, he twisted in midair and missed the bullets by so little, he felt their fiery path pierce the air along his left forearm and flank, then zip past him into the cave’s far corner.

  He struck the wall, winced in pain, and realized in a wrenching instant that he was a breath away from utter failure. His leap had missed contact with Shadow Leader, and Abby was no safer than before.

  That was when, at the back of the chamber, Sister Okoye rolled sideways. Shadow Leader shot wildly in her direction, but she dropped down, throwing all of her weight onto a crude lever Dylan had fashioned there.

  It was Dylan’s great idea, the last bastion of his defense.

  In the seconds that followed, the four hammocks, which had once hung lazily from the ceiling, now flung themselves from their restraints into an improvised catapult. At the center of this suspended web was the heavy cooking stone, hurtling through the air now at a stunning velocity.

  Dylan shouted, Abby flattened herself on the ground, and the stone rocketed into Shadow Leader’s midsection with a sickening crunch. His machine gun still scattering a spray of wild, random rounds, the enemy was hurled back out of the cave’s entrance like a circus performer shot from a cannon. He landed stiffly along the rampart’s rim, several yards beyond the start of Abby’s blood trail.

  “Stay here!” barked Dylan, and he bounded from the chamber to where the man lay.

  Shadow Leader, aka Peter Sonnenberg of McLean, Virginia, now lay in a bloodied heap, disfigured, and in a state only vaguely resembling human consciousness.

  In the physical realm, he was actively dying.

  In the spiritual, he was being devoured.

  The sight of his wounds, even dimly glimpsed through the alternating patterns of his uniform, was nearly impossible for even Dylan to look at. So was the sound of the man’s voice, which came out pleading and frantic and drowned in a horrific gurgling sound. But even more unbearable was the presence of evil festering all about him. Dylan found himself barely able to stand it. The sensation oppressed and weighed upon him with an almost physical weight, and he felt something deep inside him recoil as though he were ingesting poison.

  “There they are,” Shadow Leader gurgled. “There they are. Liars, liars . . .”

  “Who are the liars?” Dylan asked.

  “They told me our masters were beautiful . . . sad and tormented, too beautiful for words.”

  “You’re right. You served a liar,” Dylan said.

  “ ‘Our masters are beautiful,’ they said. They lied. . . . Oh, they’re so ugly! You repulse me! Get away from me! Get back. . . !”

  Animated by the strange, unexplainable strength of the dying, the man reached up and began to grapple his arms against some invisible foe. He opened his mouth, but only half a scream emerged.

  “Get them away, Dylan!”

  “There’s only one way to do that. You have to cry out to God.”

  “No way!”

  “Everything you were told was a lie. Didn’t you just realize that? God loves you! He loves you more than you know.”

  “Not me! No way!” The man’s eyes flew open now, wide and staring in terror at some unseen apparition. “You don’t know all I did against Him!”

  “It won’t stop Him. He’ll forgive you.”

  “All the people I harvested! All the killing! All the bloodshed!”

  “He shed His own blood just so you could be forgiven of all that.”

  “No! It must be wrong! It’s gotta be wrong! Get away from me! Oh, get away! Leave me alone—”

  His eyes rolled to the back of his head. His arms fell to each side.

  Dylan sighed heavily. For several long moments he sat staring at the fear-wracked death mask. Finally, he reached down to close the man’s eyes and, despite having just fought him to the death, felt a thick knot of sadness take shape within him.

  It struck him that there was no greater tragedy than the moment he had just witnessed. No matter how loathsome the man’s existence had been, Shadow Leader had still been a fellow human, a deluded soul who had placed his trust in the wrong voices. Followed a horrific path and heeded its fellow travelers unthinkingly.

  Saddest of all, here was a man so ingrained in his habits that even when he glimpsed the truth near the end, he had squandered his final chance rather than admit his mistake. He chose, however unknowingly, an eternity of torments over the humility of one moment’s contrition.

  Suddenly Dylan found himself fighting an overpowering surge of emotion—an equal mixture of sadness, relief, and awe. Maybe it was because, looking down on the destroyed man, he thought he could see himself. This was the path he could have embarked on, save but for the choice he made only two days before. He felt so eternally grateful for having been spared of his former direction that tears welled up in his eyes.

  He looked back and saw Abby sitting at the entrance, shielding her eyes. He remembered. She could see for herself every revolting beast the dying man had been screaming at.

  Only then, seeing the pain on her face, did he realize the truth. From the perspective of the Sisterhood, and of the Savior he now followed, this man’s death had not been a victory at all. A narrow escape, maybe. But nothing to celebrate. Nobody had won, least of all Dylan.

  His enemy’s death was only a victory for the entity now in possession of the man’s soul.

  He stared back at Abby for a third time. She was gone, disappeared inside the chamber.

  A howl of pain filled his ears.

  Dylan would not remember running down the top of the rampart and throwing himself into the cave. He would only remember the pathetic image of Sister Okoye’s body limply cradled in Abby’s arms. And the incredibly poignant, full-throated grief of this young woman as she held the remains of yet another fallen mother figure and shouted out her rage to the four winds.

  Then there was Sister Okoye’s face. The life within it was fading rapidly, though her eyes seemed aglow with the dawn of a different world. Her pupils appeared focused on someplace else. Her mouth smiled at someone—someone clearly beloved, yet not in this chamber. Her lips moved faintly, slowly.

  “I’m so sorry,” Dylan mumbled, barely coherent. “I failed you. I didn’t listen . . .”

  Dylan bent closer, and her gaze seemed to settle back on him, delicately.

  “You did not fail, my son. Please listen. You did not fail. This is gain for me, my son. My son in the spirit . . . remember.”

  A sudden tide of maternal love surged through him such as he had not felt since childhood.

  “I will remember, I promise,” he whispered into her ear.

  Yes, without a doubt he knew it. This was his mother in the faith. The woman who had nurtured him and labored through his second birth. His spiritual family tree would forever begin with her.

  Now, hard on the heels of realizing this, came the hammer blow of losing a mother once aga
in—just as he had his earthly one only a few years ago.

  Why—why did I let him get off those shots? he lamented.

  “No grief, Dylan. Abby. This is my day of victory. Never forget.” She reached up and, trembling, cradled his neck, then hers. “Walk with Him, and I will see you both. . . .”

  The arm and her head fell limp.

  For a long moment Dylan’s world went gray.

  Abby finally looked up from the sister’s face, and her own features suddenly illuminated with the very same glow.

  “What is it, Abby?”

  She looked at him with blank incredulity. “You mean you don’t see them?”

  “No, Abby . . . forgive me,” he replied. “I don’t see them, whatever them is.”

  She scooted back as though allowing a new arrival the room to proceed forward. “Oh, I wish you could. They’re right there, two of them.”

  She turned to him, eyes wide with wonder.

  “They’re taking her, Dylan. Two angels I’ve never seen before. I think they’re escorts. They’re being so kind, so gentle. They’ve both reached out a hand and eased her from her body. And oh—you should see Sister Okoye. She’s free of that body, and she’s so radiant . . .”

  For Dylan, the moment was a bracing mixture of the wondrous and the unbearably bitter. Every inch of him could feel that something incredible was taking place all around him, although any outward evidence was confined to faint cues like the slightest warming of the light, in the temperature, on his own forehead. A faint but distinct quiver in the hairs along his forearms.

  He looked down and told himself it could have been the guttering of the candle, which was finally beginning to burn out.

  But no. He knew better, far better, by now.

  At the same time, his heart still ached at his own failure, his self-directed guilt at Sister Okoye’s fate. How could it not be abject defeat when he had not listened, not waited for God, but just thrown himself forward in some fearful reflex?

  And the hardest irony of all—that if not for the heroism and sacrifice of the same woman he had imperiled, they would all be dead by now.

  CHAPTER

  _ 49

  JERUSALEM

  She reared up like someone who had been struck across the back—her eyes wide open, her mouth gasping for air.

  A nearby nun hurried over, ready to administer aid, but the stricken sister did not require physical intervention. She looked like someone who had just awakened from a heartbreaking nightmare.

  “Are you all right?” pleaded the nun. “Shall I get you some water? A spot of food, maybe?”

  “No, thank you,” she answered, as always. “But what happened? Was there a disturbance while I slept? A car bomb? Gunfire?”

  “No, not anything, Sister. It has been a peaceful night.”

  “Not in the spirit. Somebody just went to be with our Lord. A sister of mine, somewhere. I have no idea who, just yet. But someone vital. A precious member of the Sisterhood.”

  “Was she close to here?”

  “I feel it dimly, so I do not believe so. I believe she was from quite far away. If only I knew how far, perhaps some of my questions might find answers.”

  “So many who are known to you are praying without ceasing right now. I receive so many messages of support and concern.”

  “Please”—she tried to pull herself upright and in the process lost her breath—“tell them that God is showing me so many things. Good things. Promising things. I am very hopeful, my Sister, believe it or not. Ask them to share any unusual sightings with the rest of us. Will you do that?”

  “I will, Sister. But please. Rest and be careful. Do not neglect your physical self, do you hear?”

  The sister smiled again, indulgently, and closed her eyes once more.

  The heat created by a hundred-acre swamp fire, burning against the contrasting backdrop of a thousand square miles of cooling nighttime jungle, did not go unnoticed for even fifteen minutes. The NSA satellite, operating in thermal mode, immediately registered the anomaly and began to burn images. Chromatically adjusted photographs were digitized and e-mailed along the army’s private Intranet to the Scythian Brother sitting in Benin City, Nigeria, coordinating the vast search for Abby Sherman and her two companions.

  The man called over a Nigerian Army official and arrayed the images before him.

  “Look at these secondary signatures,” he said, pointing them out to the man. “Are there combustible materials in the Eredo Rampart?”

  The officer thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Those resemble weapon concussions. Grenades. RPGs.”

  “That’s what I thought,” echoed the Scythian.

  “How many did your solo man go in with?”

  “Three, I believe.”

  “One, two, three . . .” began the Nigerian, poking his finger at the photographs before him.

  “Can we get some helos down there to check out the area? Right now, I mean?”

  “I can authorize it. But you have to say please.”

  “Please.” But the word did not include the inflection of a question, and the Scythian’s eyes went cold as he said it.

  Dylan and Abby fell asleep, both exhausted from grief and the stress of battle, near the spot they had occupied since their sister’s passing. Her body lay not far from them, lovingly wrapped in wool blankets.

  Drifting up from a troubled sleep, Dylan felt his eyes flutter open. His muscles, still wired to their former training, snapped taut for a split second. A presence hovered just before him. Someone less than a foot away. He saw light, faint and trembling, and nudged his mind into awareness. Was this the first spark of dawn?

  The next second showed him it wasn’t. Undulating in the tiny flickers was a face, male, perfect and totally at peace.

  He heard words. It would not matter in the days ahead whether they had been audible or merely spoken into his spirit. In either case, he could no more deny their reality and power than that of his own speech.

  Dylan, be free of regret and go forth in power. Your enemy is not yet vanquished. Bury your sister and leave this place at dawn to rejoin the battle. I will send you rescue.

  Four Huey approaches had thundered overhead by the time Dylan and Abby—who stood huddled beside the fresh grave Dylan had prepared inside the chamber—saw a rainy dawn lighten pale and fresh against the earthen walls.

  Ever thankful for the shelter of the hidden chamber, Dylan knew that their concealment was a godsend. At night, all the pilots would pick up was a cooling body on the ridge and maybe a couple of explosion signatures.

  However, he also knew that come dawn there would be company. Lots of it, flown in and dropped from belay lines all around their current location. By midmorning they would be prisoners.

  And yet, when he had told Abby of his ethereal visitor, she had readily agreed that they should wait for help. Dylan’s residual instincts continued to resist this, eager to prod them into leaving their perch and putting as much distance as possible between them and the rampart before daybreak. But every time he remembered his otherworldly encounter, all resistance left him. He was too impressed with God’s track record in their lives to risk fouling it up.

  He has to fail us sometime, Dylan thought at last in the morning’s wee hours, half deluded with pain and fatigue.

  Abby had no idea how God intended to save them this time. She only knew that according to her “word from Him,” they only had to wait and find out.

  “Fine,” he’d relented. “We’ll see.”

  At first light came the sound of an approaching aircraft, and Dylan awakened at once, awash in disappointment that his darkest misgivings had actually prevailed. He glanced at the young woman, who leaned beside him fast asleep, her head resting on his shoulder. He would have liked nothing more than for this to continue, but being a man, he simply had to go and see for himself.

  He carefully extricated himself from his companion, only partially waking her before tiptoeing warily toward th
e entrance. He began to frown even before reaching its aperture, for did modern armies still use propeller planes? He didn’t think so. And yet the sound in his ears was now unmistakable. Not to mention baffling.

  He stuck his head outside. The floatplane was a bright yellow, flying low just above the treetops and with astonishing skill. It was indeed a prop plane, which bore the bright red marking His Wings Over Africa.

  “Abby!” he shouted. “Come here!”

  The floatplane flew closer, then banked. Dylan saw an arm extend from an open window and wave. Then its wings dipped sharply, right then left. A greeting.

  Friends!

  Dylan looked at Abby and laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding!” he said.

  After circling back, the floatplane began another approach toward them, this time even lower.

  “No way!” Dylan said with a rush of astonishment, for he realized what the pilot was planning to do. “No way!”

  Abby turned and gave him a smirk, whose meaning he translated right away. So, are you through doubting yet?

  The moat, nestled up against the Eredo Rampart, might have been swollen from the recent rains, but it still was barely wide enough for even the most compact aircraft to use as a landing strip. And yet it was certainly the only place for a fixed-wing aircraft to land in many, many miles.

  There simply was zero room for error.

  This time, both of their mouths moved in the utterance of frantic prayers as the floatplane dropped and then lined up with a rapid series of nimble course corrections, gracefully flared its descent, and set its floats on the water dead center in the channel. To make things more difficult, the moat did not follow a perfectly straight line, forcing the pilot to continue adjusting even as he feathered the engines and steered furiously to bring the craft to a safe stop.

  Sure enough, as the craft began to slow, its near wing clipped one of the rampart’s edges, sending a dirty colored rockslide into the water. The plane then overcorrected a bit, shearing off a generous palm frond and sending it into the moat as well.