Well, all I know is, that guy didn't look like any priest I've ever seen.
Ms. Josephine narrows her eyes as she takes a sip of her soda. “Dat man ain't no preist. 'e's a bad man. 'e's da kind of man who will kiss your child as 'e baptizes 'im, and den check 'is pockets for loose change. Dat kind of man doesn't care nothin' about faith. 'e's got an agenda.”
“Well,” Ricky says as he chews through some dry crackers, “we need to keep space between us and them. Those guys might cause us problems later.”
“I'm going to take a look at their church office tonight,” Mr. Green said quietly, and almost like it was planned, Father Pete makes way into the bar with several large, un -priestly looking men on his heels.
I'm sure somebody called him about us. This whole place is wired by these guys. Everybody's just waiting to make a call, tell them what the Canadians are up to.
He makes his way to our table, looking much taller and intimidating than he did earlier. He asks, “May I speak with you for a moment,” but not really asking. He sits and folds his hands in front of him, as his men spread out.
Mr. Blue, Juan, and Mr. Green, I can't see, but I'd bet everything I own that they all have their hands on various triggers right about now. And I'd go double or nothing that if it came to something serious, they would have no problem turning this place into a shooting gallery.
“It's a free country,” Ricky says. “Isn't it?”
Father Pete laughs one of those fake, party laughs where he's really calling you an asshole without saying it. “I was wondering what the nature of your investigation was. Perhaps I can be of some assistance in your search?”
Ricky takes a sip of his drink, picks up a cocktail napkin and dabs the corners of his mouth, silently calling Father Pete a prick in his own way. “Father . . . ”
“Peter Scarcelli, of the Jesuit church La Compañía.”
“Well, padre,” Ricky explained, “we're researching a potential infectious pathogen. Something has been killing children—”
“We don't know that the children are deceased,” Father Pete interrupts.
“Of course,” Ricky half apologized. “How insensitive of me. What I meant to insinuate is that we worry that perhaps these children are just the beginning of an outbreak that may not be containable if it gets past the index cases and area of incidence. Due to several free trade agreements, the Canadian government is doing everything it can to support our research effort.”
Ricky shrugs, “We're just trying to save the children. That's all.”
“You don't know this place,” Father Pete says coldly. “It can be dangerous. Especially for Canadians who don't know their way around. I'm sure we can figure out what is taking these children and deal with it accordingly. But then, who am I to get in the way of your cooperation? If you need anything, please do not hesitate to call upon me.”
Father Pete hands Ricky a card with a number scribbled on it. Then he stands, again looking at each and every one of us. He's doing the whole intimidation thing.
“Stay in Quito,” Father Pete offers. Like he's just one heck of a guy, giving us some friendly advice. “I'm sure there is plenty to research here . . . where it is safe. You know how sensitive people can be when children are disappearing. Strangers might be looked upon with suspect eyes.”
He looks at me, I guess trying to figure out where I fit in. And it seems like he's about to tell me something, but all he gives us is, “Good day.”
And then the smug son of a bitch turns on his heel, marches back through his men, and they slowly filter out of the bar.
I hear the audible clicks of several guns' hammers touching metal.
Well, I say. At least he was pleasant when he threatened us.
66
Hotel Antonio, Quito.
1:37 pm . . .
Since it's fairly clear that father Pete and the rest of his catholic hooligans don't want us to go anywhere near Cotopaxi, or even out of Quito for that matter, that's exactly what we're going to do.
Mr. Green figures the trip will take us about two hours, maybe more if traffic gets ugly. We left the bar after we ate, ascending the creaking stairs to our rooms for a more private atmosphere. Ricky turned on a few small white noise emitters and laid them up against the window and door to disrupt anyone's attempts to listen in on our conversation.
We were now functioning under the assumption that we were under surveillance.
We discussed father Pete's veiled, not-so-veiled, threats. And the thing I don't get is, if they're all catholic emissaries, even if from as far away as Rome, why would they try to stifle our progress? I mean, they're religious bureaucrats. If we actually were some humanitarian aid organization, wouldn't it behoove them to work with us? To all come together to solve this thing?
“Obviously,” Ricky says as he packs his bags, “they have other designs for the Evils.”
Mr. Green, glancing through a small slit in the window curtains, explains, “When you're finished interrogating a prisoner, you have only a few choices to make. You can let him go. You can try and turn him. Or you can kill him. If you choose the third option, you grab the guy, and you take him on a walk . . . alone. Just you and him.”
He turns back to us as we get our gear ready for travel, “See, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. And the jungle tells no tales.”
I'm not sure I follow your semi-frightening analogy. That was an analogy, right?
On speakerphone, Billtruck chimes in, “The Vatican wants to handle this problem in-house. They don't want it getting out. And they certainly don't want any outside interference.”
“Billtruck,” Ricky asks, “did you get anything new on the hot spots when you did a satellite pass? Anything geographically interesting?”
“Everything looks normal. In Quito, the average temperature and rainfall is in accordance with the nineteen-year statistics. The interference could have come from a number of sources: transformers, T-three towers, electric generators I suppose. Hal is looking into it.”
For a while we did everything except mention the child that we all just witnessed. The bite marks and the inhumanity of his blood-drained body.
Finally, Ms. Josephine broke the barrier of discomfort. “Dat young boy, Juan-Carlos, do you tink dat whoever did dis took da effort to bring 'im to da highway and dump 'im? Did 'e escape? Was 'e tryin' to get 'elp? 'ow,” she asked, taking a sad breath, “ . . . did dat poor child get dere?”
“My money says we'll find another child's gone missing,” Mr. Green says. “I figure they don't want to crap in their own backyard, so they'll take the dead out of town and do a swap when the time is right. Dump the kid . . . grab another and head back. When it's convenient.”
When it's convenient , I echoed. How awful is this?
Mr. Green lowered his head, “Sorry. Not trying to be insensitive. Just my nature.”
And then it hits me, “Like at dusk, at some out of the way old chicken ranch? Seniorita Alonzo's place?”
“ . . . Cotopaxi is hot,” Billtruck advises. “The majority of the first missing children were disappearing from around there. Maybe they're branching out. Maybe they're thirsty. And the volcano, it's ornery. Like an angry kid who doesn't get his way. And it's about due to pop it's top . . . so be careful.”
“Alright, then,” Mr. Green concludes. “Everyone put your heads down for a few hours. Try and sleep a bit so we can think with clear minds. We'll leave at dusk, when we have the best chance of beating traffic.”
And the catholic mercenaries, I add.
He nods, “Yeah . . . and the mercenaries.”
We all headed to our rooms to get some rest, quietly considering what lay ahead of us. I set my head down on my pillow and pulled out Angela's letter. I sniff it almost as a matter of habit, and although it's not near as prominent after being in this environment, I can still pick up the faint hint of apples and cinnamon, maybe even a bit of vanilla.
I take my time pulling the letter from the blue envelope, as if this
is the first time I am to read her words. My eyes follow every arch and curve of her letters, savoring every part of this. I'm trying to imagine what she's doing at this exact moment.
Is she thinking of me thinking of her?
Or am I out of sight, out of mind?
Am I the actor, and she the audience, or is it the other way around?
Juan, who I'm sharing a room with, comes back after gassing up the Hummers and checking the more discretionary equipment that we've brought with us. How we ever got through customs with a plane full of weapons I'll never know. Matter of fact, I don't remember the plane even being searched.
Something tells me that with a handshake full of hundred-dollar bills, you can bring just about whatever you could possibly want across the border.
“Son lleno, los vehiculos,” he says.
I guess they're full. This Spanish, I'm picking it up much quicker than I thought I would. I haven't been here a day, and yet I'm finding it possible to understand most of what they're saying.
“Estamos listo para salir.”
We're ready to leave.
“Thanks, Juan. I mean . . . Gracias,” I say as I fold Angela's letter back up. Part of me wants so much to call and talk to her. To hear her voice. To listen to the way her laugh infects her soft voice. But then I might have to tell her what we're actually doing down here, and I don't think I have the stomach for that.
I place the envelope back in the duffel bag next to my bed and let my eyes slowly close. Soon, we will face the worst parts of evil . . . on their own home turf.
“Could be worse,” Juan says as he lays down. “We could be in Detroit.”
I've never been to Detroit.
“Mi hermano, he lives there. Es un giant gutter. Worse than Mexico City. Don't go.”
And those were the last words I heard as I faded out. At least, until the gunfire started.
67
Juan and Jack's room, Hotel Antonio.
7:46 pm . . .
Pop-pop-p-pop!
Pop-pop, pop!
Juan and I wake-up instantly from our restless sleep. I see him quickly scrambling for the floor, so I dive for the wood. I'm following his lead because I have no idea what to do in a situation like this. Only, I don't have a machine gun in my hands like he does.
Pop-pop!
I hear the static-laden voice squawking over Juan's Motorola radio. On the hard floor, both of us are making sure that the shots aren't coming into our particular room. He reaches his free hand to his hip and slides something metallic across the floor to me. I catch it between my knees and lift it up.
Pistola, I say, feeling the rather comforting weight of the gun in my hand.
“Es listo para tirar!” he loud whispers.
It's ready to fire!
He's in a kind of crouched kneeling position with his machine gun pointing towards the window, and he occasionally sweeps across the room to the door to the corridor that links all the other rooms.
On Juan's radio I hear Mr. Green yelling, “No te preocupes! No te preocupes! Son niños en la calle, jugando. Con cuetes.”
Don't worry! Don't worry! It's kids in the street, playing. With firecrackers.
“ Playing with what?” I whisper, “ . . . uzis?”
“Es una procesion de funerario,” Mr. Green comes back with.
Juan lowers his machine gun ever so slightly, “Funeral. The children use the firecrackers.”
I lower the pistol, catching my breath. My heart is racing something crazy.
I start to get up off the floor, but a hand drags me back down.
What? It's just a funeral?
In the dark he waves a finger at me, warning, “Firecrackers is good cover to shoot somebody.”
I raise the pistol back up.
“Vamos a esperar,” he says as he glances back and forth between the door and the window. Everywhere his eyes go, so does the barrel of his gun. And I start to see what he's getting at. Some enterprising assassin might choose to use the noise from the funeral firecrackers as their cover to actually deal with us silly Canadians.
We might hear some noise, run to the window, and . . . bam !
We could run out the door into the hallway . . . pow !
He whispers into his radio, and I can't quite make it all out. They go back and forth for about a minute. I distinctly hear the words, ' La Compañía ' mentioned. As in, the Jesuit church La Compañía. The headquarters for Mr. Anonymous—father Peter Scarcelli.
Hopefully, we'll know chapter and verse on this guy as soon as Billtruck gets back to us. He initiated a background search soon after we left the scene at the side of the highway, earlier.
Finally, Juan lowers his machine gun as he stands. “No problems, now.”
You're sure?
“Si,” he says as he turns on a lamp near his head. “Tenemos ojos alla, mirando la iglesia.”
We have eyes, over there, watching the church.
I stand, extending my arm to give him his pistol back. He takes it, carefully sliding the safety back on. Then he nods at me. “I like you, Yack. Eastas siempre listo para luchar.”
He says I'm always ready to fight .
I hope he's right.
Over his radio I hear Mr. Green, “We're ghosts in fifteen minutes. Traiga todo, vamos a salir!”
Bring everything, we're leaving!
13 minutes later . . .
We're out the back doors of the hotel, scurrying past a small kitchen and some grotesque smelling trash dumpsters. We load our gear and we're rolling before anyone is any the wiser. We're taking a round-about path to the highway so that the catholics don't see us leaving. It might give us a slight head start.
Mr. Blue climbed a telephone pole earlier and installed something to jam the calls going in or out of the church they're at. And as slow as the response time is by the local phone repair men, they should have their phones working again some time around Christmas.
We're all kind of bleary-eyed and quiet as the rhythmic sound of the Hummers ' giant tread tires groan beneath us. I'm in the first Hummer with Mr. Green and Juan, again. Ricky and Ms. Josephine are with Mr. Blue.
A few minutes ago we learned from Billtruck that, surprise-surprise, the name Peter Scarcelli is probably not Mr. Anonymous' given name. There are about a 10,000 Scarcelli's in Italy, Corsica, and the East coast of the United States. But there is no record of a father Peter Scarcelli working for the Vatican.
But then, why would there be?
I always thought of the church as the one place you could go to escape lies and debauchery. I guess I was off on both counts.
On the plus side of all this, that first doctor we talked to at the pharmacy, he's contacted Ricky and given him the name of a family we need to see in Cotopaxi. They were one of the first families to lose a child, and they are willing to speak with us if it helps them or any of the other families get their children back.
With every mile we drive through the warm darkness, I feel like we're getting closer to something vile. As if there's some haunting drum that keeps getting louder and louder. I know that what we are most likely going to find will be horrible.
What I don't know is, if we'll be able to contain it. These things—whatever they are—I'm not sure whether they somehow infect the others, or whether it's some complex scheme to syphon-off their blood or their life-force for some other purpose.
Hal still assumes the number of attackers to be at least four. That matches the pattern of bite marks we've been finding. Another particularly bothering aspect of this is their seemingly careless treatment of the children once they're finished with them. Why leave the kids where they can be discovered? That seems like an incredible risk to take.
Why not just bury the bodies, or eat them, or whatever it is you do when you're done drinking up all their blood? To leave the bodies around only invites curiosity. Unless that's what they want.
And suddenly this twisting cold chill crawls down my back like a cold furry spider. The lower it g
ets, the more I realize what might be happening.
This all might be an elaborate trap set by the Evils to lure us in. To lure me in close enough that they can get their hands on me. Rip me to ribbons so that they no longer have to worry about being hunted down.
It's a bit of a stretch, but not an impossible one. And if it starts to look like that's the scenario, I'll have to go it alone. I can't risk anyone else's life on this safari. I'm already responsible for the death of at least two children, and I know that's only the beginning of it.
Their tiny, uncomprehending souls, screaming in silence as they're devoured by hungry monsters. And that's on me. Because I let these bastards loose in the first place.
“Mr. Green,” I say, breaking the numbness and relative quiet of the road, “I think I need a gun.”
68
Cotopaxi, Ecuador.
Monday evening, 10:21 pm . . .
Cotopaxi is basically a city that has managed to rebuild itself about every 15 years when the volcano spits up violent blasts of hot, molten lava into the air. You can see the volcano from miles away, even in the dark.
The terrain around the mountain's base has many times been destroyed by earthquakes and buried by pumice and ash blown from the crater. And there's a nonstop plume of super-hot steam rising from the crater—which is over 2,300 feet in diameter from the north to the south, 1,657 feet from east to west. The crater's depth is just under 1,200 feet. It's a big, hot mother scratcher !
The mountain itself is surreal in its alternating colors and formations due to the combination of dark-colored lava flows and falls of light-colored ash. It's just waiting to explode and rain down fiery hell on everyone!.
For the life of me I can't imagine why people would build so close to danger.
“Why do people choose to live in New Orleans?” Mr. Green says as we're cruising the outskirts of Cotopaxi on the way to Senior Carlos Gustav Machado's house. He lives with his wife and sister near the base of the mountain, where the landscape is basically grassland.
“ . . . New Orleans,” he continues, “is a city built on a swamp. Every couple of years a hurricane comes in and tears it all to pieces. It's a poor spot for a city. Why do people live there?”
See Jack Hunt (See Jack Die) Page 27