Rick stared at Lacy, as if by force of will he could compel her to look at him and come clean. “You know about it.”
“Yeah,” at length she met his gaze and said.
“I just told her before we left Hawaii,” Knight said.
So that was why she’d left Rafferty behind, Rick guessed. In a way, she did believe in the importance of this trip to Nebraska. Except she believed in Knight’s and the Pentagon’s plans for what needed to be done next.
“I’m confused,” Charlie Foster spoke now.
Rick noticed the fear in his wife’s eyes as she tightened her grip around their two children.
“Taos,” said Rick, “and some of these other places are where our military friends think they can attack this…these…things. Whatever they are.”
“Attack them?” Cornelia said. “So…oh, my God! Have those people, those…?”
“The conspiracy nuts?” Knight cut in. “Have they been right all along? No! Nobody knew. They first put two and two together after people like Kwan. After the hum.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Cornelia replied as Knight’s voice trailed off. “The hum sensitives. But put what together?”
Knight took a deep breath. “These places, like Taos and Bristol and the others, well, they’ve had a history—long history—of some people sometimes hearing an inexplicable hum. Hell, it’s been studied for years. With the same results Murakami got from Kwan and all the others in Hawaii. Absolutely nothing. So they made a guess that Taos might be some kind of…I don’t know. OK? Nobody actually knows. They’re all guesses.” Knight paused and gave Rick a hard look. “What did your little glowing buddy tell you about them? What are these places? Portals to where ever they come from? A gateway to their alternate dimension? But it was one hell of a good guess, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was a good guess,” Rick said. “And now you’ll have to contact them—who is it? Robinson? The Pentagon?—and tell them to call it off, whatever they’re planning. Is Markwell a part of this too?”
Knight laughed and shook his head. “Do you think Markwell would be let in on this? You can not be serious. As much as I defended him, now I’m sure there’s at least one thing those holy rollers got right, trying to force him out of office.”
“That’s the one thing they got right, Dan?” Rick shot back. “It seems they’d want to destroy these beings as much as you do.”
“Wait a minute!” Cornelia cut in. “Just wait a minute.”
Both Rick and Knight looked at her.
“Destroy them?” she asked. “How exactly do they think they have any chance of destroying this?”
“If places like Taos are portals,” Knight said with a shrug, “the portals must be opening a lot. And if they open, we can send things through. Like weapons. Missiles. A nuclear warhead.”
“I don’t believe this!” Cornelia almost yelled.
“Yeah,” Charlie Foster gasped. “That’s…that’s….”
“Completely insane?” Cornelia completed the thought.
“And it can’t happen!” Rick said.
Lacy was the first to reply, even though Rick could see Knight about to come back with a retort. “Why not?”
“Yeah,” Knight said with a bitter, rueful little smile. “Why not?”
Rick was stunned that a man he had been working with so closely for the last several months could go off the rails to such an extent. “Because there are more of them, that’s why. And you can’t destroy them. It wouldn’t work. Except to piss them off and force a retaliation we won’t soon forget.”
“How do you know?” Knight interjected suddenly. “Did that thing tell you so?”
Rick saw the knowing, crafty look on Knight’s face as he stumbled into giving an instant reply. “Come on! Just listen to yourself! And whose insane idea was this? To try and attack even if Taos and these other places are portals to their world? Does anyone seriously think they have a chance in hell of succeeding? Can they imagine the technology it takes to put these globes here? Do we stand any kind of a chance against that?”
“I’m actually more and more convinced that we do,” Knight said.
“You can not be serious.”
“If these things are all-powerful,” Knight came back, “why are they even asking you to call off the attack anyway? Why don’t they—I don’t know—make all the missiles and weapons fall out of the sky harmless?”
“And why do you want to provoke them?”
“And why don’t I accept their good will? Here, come on, trust us! Trust our good intentions. That we’ll treat some of you special and give them favors and save their lives. And we’ll treat others like dirt. Let them die. Let them suffer.”
With each word out of his mouth, the fury built inside Knight. Rick could see the ferocious set to his eyes, veins thickening along his forehead and neck.
At the same time, Rick also noticed Rosemarie Foster’s posture stiffening, her hold on her children tightening.
“Because it’s all a part of something much bigger that you can’t understand?” Knight continued spitting one angry word after the next. “No! No way! I won’t do it.”
“Then what’s the alternative?” Rick demanded, his voice also rising.
“To make a stand,” Lacy said. “He’s right. I won’t wait for these…things to just put us under their thumbs—”
“There’s no reason to believe that at all,” Cornelia added.
“You honestly don’t think so?” Lacy asked, her voice getting as hard as Knight’s now. “Come on! Let me do what I want to you, and in the end even the hardships will have some deep important meaning…except you will never be able to understand it. Bull! Shit! I’ve heard that line with every flag-draped coffin coming back from Afghanistan, from Iraq…with everyone I knew who died. No more!”
“And you’re willing to sacrifice the world for your suffering?” Rick asked, his voice hard, angry, but feeling at the very same time like a hot, searing blade was being shoved into his chest. It was Lacy’s pain he was feeling, he knew full well. He understood her, knew the fury driving her, yet he knew how wrong she was in the stand she was taking.
“I won’t let this sadistic, cold-blooded thing that treats our lives like some kind of a game excuse my suffering,” Lacy hissed.
“Well, thank God it’s even asking. It’s giving us a choice,” Rick replied.
“Exactly,” Cornelia asked. “We’re given a chance to end all this.”
“And then what?” Knight asked.
“That’s right,” Lacy said. “And what comes next? Did they tell you that?”
“Yeah,” Knight fired off a question before the last word even left Lacy’s mouth. “What’s all this leading up to?”
Rick couldn’t help shaking his head. “Look, I don’t know….”
“Because he didn’t say, did he?” Knight answered. “Well, I’m calling bullshit on his good intentions.”
“Things like this don’t have good intentions,” Lacy said.
“I can’t believe you two,” Cornelia cried, and sprang to her feet now. “Look at what we’re up against,” she yelled, and waved her hands toward the now-empty sky. “You seriously think beings like this can just be fought…?”
“And what’s the alternative?” Lacy replied, her words acidic with anger and condescension.
“Exactly,” Knight said. “And can’t you two realize what this is all leading up to?” He, too, stood up now and pointed at the Fosters. “That’s what! That girl. People like that. Just have faith. Don’t question.”
Then he turned and stalked out of the gazebo. As Rick also sprang to his feet, he was sure Knight was going to march over to Dorian’s Lamborghini and attempt to leave the Foster property immediately. Out of the corner of his eye, Rick noticed Lacy rising as well.
Except Knight spun around and stoppe
d. With his right hand he reached into his jacket and pulled out a bulky-looking object. “Satellite phone,” he said with a nasty, leering defiance. “This connects us back to Travis. Back to Robinson. Back to the fighter squadrons and bombers on alert now and ready to head to Taos. And that call your best pal from the Twilight Zone wants us to make is not going out.”
“Robinson, all the others, they trusted you to come with us and find out what’s going on, didn’t they?” Rick yelled at him. “So you’re going to lie to them?”
“No. Because they want the same thing.”
As Rick approached Knight, he saw the old man’s knees slightly bending, his center of gravity just ever so slightly lowering. It was a fighter’s stance, Rick knew. “You don’t know that,” he said. “You’re withholding vital information here. They’re trusting you to tell them everything that’s happened here.”
Knight shook his head, the look in his eyes still defiant. “I’m not telling them shit about any of this, do you understand? The call is not going out.”
So Rick dropped his gaze and shook his head. His entire posture loosened, he hoped he telegraphed a look of exasperated defeat….
Until he balled his right fist and lashed out at Knight with as much speed as he could. The punch connected with Knight’s face, stunning him, but not quite throwing him off balance. So Rick struck again with a second right jab, this time making the old man catch a few steps backward to keep from spilling onto the grass.
“The world…,” Rick hissed as he followed up the two right jabs with a left one. “Is not…,” he spat as he attacked with two right jabs again, this time to Knight’s midsection. “Going to end….” Two left shots to the midsection again. “Because little Danny Knight….” A hard right hook to Knight’s cheek that snapped his head to the side, forcing him to spew ropelike gouts of saliva-mixed blood through the air. “Is angry at life’s hard knocks!” Then a left hook that snapped Knight’s head back and finally threw him off balance.
Dropping the satellite phone, Knight reeled backward and sprawled onto the ground.
Gasps of surprise, revulsion, and random shouts of “Are you insane?” “Jesus Christ!” and “Stop it!” came from behind Rick.
On the ground, though, Knight stirred surprisingly soon. In fact, he was attempting to elbow his way upright within seconds of going down.
“Oh, shit…,” he gasped after rolling onto his side, then pushing upright, and spitting out more blood. “You feel strongly about it, don’t you, Junior?”
Rick looked around, trying to find where the phone had been tossed in the darkness. “Make the call…,” he began, except Knight’s recovery really was much faster than expected.
Knight had pushed off the ground and lunged at Rick like a football player making a tackle. Getting Knight’s head and left shoulder rammed into his midsection, he stumbled backward, then went down on the ground hard. Knight, in turn, was following up on the attack immediately, keeping him pinned down while driving his fist into his abdomen and chest, one vicious blow after the next.
As hard as Rick fought to tighten his abdominal muscles, he knew he would be winded very soon, all breath beaten from his lungs if Knight got the chance to land a few more of his battering-ram punches. So Rick kicked against the ground and twisted his body, rolling over Knight, then rolling over him once more, grappling, pushing, and clawing to free himself from the old man’s hold.
Once the hold was broken, it was a race against Knight to get upright first. But it was a race Rick won, giving him the chance to lash out again, taking a swing at Knight’s face but catching him only on the side of the head.
Blinding pain, in turn, shot through Rick’s right hand. It reminded him of why the boxing glove was invented and why old-time bare-knuckle matches used to go on for dozens of rounds. Hitting someone in the head or face tended to cause more pain to the puncher than the one on the receiving end of the blow.
Knight, in fact, barely reacted to the punch, coming back with a lightning-fast swing of his own. The strike angled from down to up, an attempted uppercut to Rick’s chin. It was a shot that, nevertheless, missed its mark, glancing off his cheek.
“You can bow down and obey,” Knight rasped as he came at Rick again, throwing a hard left jab that hit him in has chest. “Do what this damned thing tells you. Back down like you always do.”
When Knight attempted a right-handed swing at Rick, he was able to block it with his left forearm and retaliate with a jab to Knight’s midsection. What Rick had hoped for was an upward blow to Knight’s abdomen, a shot which, if placed at just the right spot, would knock the old man’s diaphragm upward and force the air from his lungs. That would, Rick hoped, stun him enough to end the fight.
Except that Rick, too, missed his mark, delivering a useless punch to Knight’s chest.
Indeed, Rick’s mistake earned him a left hook that had him seeing a field of stars and expanding splotches of light shower across his field of vision. The effects of the shot were nearly blinding, but not completely so. He could catch the blur of Knight’s right fist coming at his face and was able to duck it.
With the shot evaded, Rick went on the attack again, battering Knight with a round of punches to his chest, abdomen and sides, driving him backward. Rushing after him and seeing Knight’s legs start to sag and wobble, Rick hoped to take him out of the game with one well-aimed fist to his face. As he was about to lunch his last assault, though, shouts and screams from somewhere behind him, somewhere perhaps close to Cornelia’s position, distracted him just for a fraction of a second long enough to mistime his strike and make it land just far enough off target to compromise its effectiveness.
Pain bolted through Rick’s right hand again as he caught Knight on the forehead. Although the hit staggered him, Knight was able to fight back with a right fist to Rick’s midsection, then a left one to the face, then a winding series of blows to the abdomen again that completely robbed Rick of his advantage. In fact, the game-ending shot to the diaphragm had suddenly become Knight’s, exploding into the middle of Rick’s body and staggering him so hard that all air, all oxygen departed his lungs. Gulping, staggering, struggling for any amount of oxygen to replenish his exhausted, battered body, Rick had become completely ineffective in the fight. Knight could actually hold him, pull him upright, then deliver a head-butt to his face that was close to a complete short circuit, then reboot, of his brain.
When the reboot was complete, however, Rick found himself flat on his back. At first he saw the field of stars of the night sky in front of him. He could feel—and almost choked on—blood in his nose flowing back through his sinuses and down his throat. More blood trickled out the side of his mouth, and his right hand hurt so much that he was certain more than one bone had to have been broken. And then the field of stars was blocked.
Dan Knight suddenly blocked Rick’s vision, towering over him, his hands raised, clutching something, and a fiendish, revenge-crazed glare in his eyes.
“Die, you bastard,” Knight seemed to whisper through a raspy, subhuman hiss. Blood dripped from his own lips, nose, and the lacerations on his lips, cheeks, brows.
And Rick recognized the object in Knight’s hand. It was a rock, about the size of a soccer ball and painted perfect white. Rick had seen them lining the driveway. And now Knight was going to use one to kill him with it.
“Die…. Die…. All of you…,” Knight kept wheezing, but his body seemed to be frozen in place.
Then, as he kept still, glaring at Rick, the maniacal focus in his eyes slowly gave way. Something like recognition and horror took the place of hate and rage. It was almost like he was waking up, Rick recognized. He looked, Rick thought, like a man who had allowed his own demons to run rampant for a while, and now was frightened, ashamed of the thing he had temporarily become.
But as Knight’s posture loosened, his arms shifted as if he was ready to throw away the roc
k, a gunshot cracked across the night.
Knight appeared to be startled by it so much that he looked like he lost his grip on the rock. The object shifted and wobbled wildly in his grip.
No! Rick’s mind screamed. He’s come to his senses, but now my brains will be bashed in because he was startled.
He invested his last ounces of energy into shifting to his right, and managed to move just far enough to evade the plunging rock by one lucky split instant. The massive object impacted the ground exactly where his head had been a fraction of a second ago.
Then Knight melted to the ground, wheezing and gasping for air.
Has he been...?
Knight spat out another mouthful of blood. “You’re good, kid,” he stammered. “No street fighter, but you’re OK for a cop.”
So he wasn’t shot, Rick thought with some relief, and pushed off the ground, looking around frantically, trying to figure out what happened.
Back at the gazebo, he saw Cornelia gripping Lacy’s hands and forcing them skyward. Lacy held the stainless steel Beretta.
Soon enough, though, she dropped it. Then, as Cornelia released her, she melted to the ground and soundlessly sobbed.
“So everyone’s come to their senses,” Rick mumbled, spat blood, then fell back down into the grass.
When the field of stars in front of his eyes vanished, it did so because it was overtaken by a flood of burning white light rather than the figure of anyone bent on murder.
9.
Rick could see the abrasions on his knuckles, tasted the blood in his mouth, smelled it, and felt the cut on his lip. Yet the pain itself had diminished. As he moved the fingers of his right hand, all he felt was something like a dull, throbbing ache.
“Is it healing me?” he mumbled as he looked around, trying to discern anything in that white plane of energy he had been transported into again.
“It can help you somewhat,” the being’s voice sounded in Rick’s mind more than in his ears. It sounded the same, however. It was still as youthful as it was before, with that self-effacing quality hiding behind its words.
Confirmation Page 32