Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense

by Carter Wilson

  He has told Jonas where to find Anne. He no longer has use for him, knowing Jonas would never have come back to complete the ritual of the burial once Rudiger is dead. No matter. There is no need for a cave burial, Rudiger knows, not with him. He may be on the cross for hours or for days, but on the third day the inevitable will happen, no matter where his body is.

  The room is silent like a womb. Sidams and Stages are done, ain’t no confusion about that. They didn’t last long, but shock will do that. Rudiger doesn’t feel shock, but he does feel the pain. Pain like never before. Pain like glory.

  He shifts his feet and sucks in a breath. Feet struggle to stay balanced on the small ledge. When they buckle, he will fall. When he falls, his arms will tear and his chest will threaten to rip open. He won’t be able to breathe, and then that’ll be that. He’s alive as long as his legs can hold.

  He’s been near death before. So many times. But never where he had time to contemplate it. Before he had a chance to live. Now he only has the chance to die.

  His arms are on fire. The slightest movement sears them further. But the sweat on his face, running down and stinging his eyes, somehow that’s worse than anything else. Feels like a thousand flies crawling on his forehead.

  Rudiger bows his head, looks at the floor. Sees the blood, spread out like a canyon river on the floor. Sees the hole where the base of the cross disappears.

  “I thirst,” Rudiger says. This is true, but it’s not the reason he says it.

  The silence grows louder.

  He waits. Waits for something that he should feel. Something he should hear. Something. Anything. Minutes pass, but they could be days. His body shakes, just a quiver. Rudiger is getting cold.

  His legs grow weak. Shifts his weight again. He can feel his muscles starting to cramp. Could spasm at any moment.

  A small doubt pierces him. It’s tiny at first. A single bacteria, barely noticeable. But it starts to multiply. And again. Larger it grows. The doubt starts to take root.

  He knows the source. Preacherman is the source, because Preacherman is the root of every dirty thing that has ever touched Rudiger. And now he’s back.

  Rudiger hears him laugh now.

  He sees his yellow, rotting teeth. Smells his breath. Smells like a dead animal, left in the sun.

  Can’t believe you really did it. Didn’t think you were so goddamn stupid.

  Rudiger shuts his eyes, but in the dark is where Preacherman shines the brightest. He opens his eyes and Preacherman fades, but only a little.

  Rudiger speaks. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” They are the final words. The words will save him. He feels his left leg buckling.

  Boy, you are a fucking idiot. You let me do it, didn’t ya? You killed me, and now you let me kill you. Pretty damn impressive, me being able to kill you from the grave. But here you are. Time to jump, boy. Jump and feel the pain.

  More laughter. Rudiger tries to fill his ears with something, anything. But nothing drowns out the laughing. It won’t stop.

  “You didn’t kill me,” he says, knowing these are not the words to be said on the cross. But he has to say them. He has to convince Preacherman he is wrong.

  The laughing stops. Rudiger feels hot breath in his ear.

  Go on, boy. Keep quoting scripture. Keep thinking you’re the fucking Messiah. Let yourself go. Let’s see if the ground splits open and the earth shakes when you die. Go ahead.

  “I’m the One,” Rudiger says. His left leg bends and his right arm tears. Pain pulses though him like electricity.

  Ain’t no One, boy. Never was and never will be. Hell, I’m a preacher and even I don’t believe in that shit. You just hopin’ for hope, and look what it’s done for you. You just minutes from nothingness, boy. Minutes from eternal nothingness. And in that nothingness, I get to fuck you all over again.

  “It’s not true,” Rudiger says. He says it and no one hears. True and you know it. You’re just a monster like me, boy. You don’t kill for a reason. You kill because it’s just what you do. It’s your nature. You are the scorpion on the back of the frog. You just

  can’t help yourself, but you sure try to justify it, don’t you?

  “No. No. I was told to do what I did. I was commanded.”

  Commanded by who? Me and Jesus? Boy, if you weren’t so fuckin’ crazy you might just step back and see how crazy you are.

  It’s not true, Rudiger thinks. It’s not true. I have a purpose. A reason to be here, on this cross. I am the One. I am the resurrection.

  Sweat drips like rain.

  His legs cramp. He can’t hold much longer.

  You killed me boy. And now you die. I’ve been waiting years for this. Welcome to hell.

  Rudiger disappears inside himself. When he returns, he opens his eyes and stares out at the hanger walls. The light over the fat man’s cross illuminates the articles he’s put up. He sees the interview with his daddy, the one that triggered his memory. He tries to recall it. That time on the beach. In the water. But now it doesn’t feel like the way it did. Did it even happen at all? He looks at the words in the titles, the words in large bold print. He tries to rearrange the letters in his mind, but nothing happens. The words are meaningless. Gibberish.

  The doubt explodes in his mind.

  Preacherman laughs but says nothing more. The laughing continues and Rudiger suspects it probably will until he is dead.

  Rudiger finds strength in his legs and pushes himself upright.

  He looks up at his left wrist and to the spike coming from within it. He steels himself and takes a deep breath. He pushes his arm outward, so the bone in his wrist pushes against the spike.

  He nearly faints from the pain. But the spike moves. Just a bit.

  55

  JONAS DROVE as fast as the U-Haul van and the laws of physics allowed. The van had been parked outside the hanger, keys still in the ignition. Jonas had no idea where the hell he was, but he could see the mountains in the distance, and that meant west.

  The van tore down the dirt road, kicking up a cloud of dust and flying rocks in its wake. Jonas frantically searched for a radio, anything to call to anyone, but there was nothing. It was up to him. He had to get back to the hotel.

  Rudiger had said Anne was in the cargo area of an identical U-Haul on the fourth level of the hotel parking garage.

  Jonas’s hands were covered in Rudiger’s blood. He tried to erase the image of what he’d just done to the man from his mind, but he knew that image would be part of him forever, tattooed on his brain.

  There. Downtown Denver. The buildings rose in the distance. That was where he had to go.

  Jonas finally reached an asphalt road, and when his tires made contact he pressed down on the gas pedal. The van lurched and screamed st1o1ight ahead.

  56

  TWO COP cars—sirens blaring, lights flashing—tailed Jonas as he sped to the hotel. They weren’t escorting him. They were chasing him.

  Jonas tried to remain calm. Think this through, he told himself. Don’t get killed trying to save Anne. You’re driving the same van Rudiger had, and you’re driving it full speed toward the hotel. For all you know, they think you’re him, going to back to blow up the building. The back of the van could be loaded with a fertilizer bomb.

  Stop short of the Hyatt. There will be cops waiting at the hotel. If you try to drive down into the parking garage, they will start shooting. Guaranteed.

  Jonas wove around two cars on the one-way street in downtown Denver. He had spent at least fifteen minutes getting here from the airplane hangar, but it had felt like years. And as frantic as he’d been, he had to pay attention to where he’d come from. Sidams could still be alive, and he would have to lead a medical team back to the hangar. As soon as Anne was freed.

  Please God let her still be alive.

  Jonas saw the hotel ahead. There was a swarm of emergency vehicles out front, their lights dancing all together.

  Jonas swerved the van to the side, narro
wly missing smashing into a Lexus. Horns blared around him. Jonas pulled up onto the sidewalk and pedestrians leapt out of the way.

  Jonas stopped the van and got out.

  Someone screamed from behind him. Cursing.

  The police cars skidded to a stop and the first cop to get out immediately drew his gun. The man was huge.

  Jonas raised his hands.

  “Get on the ground! Now!”

  “There’s a woman in the hotel! She’s dying!”

  “Get on the fucking ground! Now!”

  Jonas went to his knees and laced his fingers around the back of his head. He saw the cop from the second car get out and flank Jonas, gun aimed at his chest, unwavering, the whole time.

  “Please! Listen to me. You have to radio Agent Difranco with the FBI. I’m Jonas Osbourne, and I’m with her. There’s a woman in a van just like this one on the fourth—”

  The knee hit him on the back and Jonas collapsed face first onto the ground. He felt his arms being yanked down and the cold metal of handcuffs biting against his wrists.

  57

  TEN MINUTES.

  The longest ten minutes of his life.

  Sitting in the back of the squad car, the handcuffs still on. No one to talk to.

  Jonas had told any officer who would listen who he was and to call Difranco, but there was so much noise and so much movement he had no idea if anyone bothered to listen. Burly Cop—the one who had cuffed and shoved him into the back of the squad car—stood in a small group of fellow officers and conferred while Jonas waited.

  The rock-hard backseat smelled like hot plastic with a faint tinge of vomit. Droplets of sweat ran down Jonas’s face, tormenting him, but he could not wipe them away.

  He thought of Anne.

  Dying.

  But was she really? Was she really running out of air?

  He thought back to the brief night-vision video he’d seen of her on Rudiger’s phone. She was in the dark, and the shot was so close it suggested she was in a tight, confined space. Rudiger said she was in the back of a van, but she must be in some kind of container in the van. A chamber? And how much air did she have?

  Rage swelled within Jonas. The minutes he was spending in the back of the squad car may be the exact same minutes Anne had left of air. The cops were doing their job—keeping the suspect away from the hotel and the delegates. But they weren’t listening. Goddamnit, they weren’t listening.

  He shouted through the glass. Burly Cop turned his head, just enough to say, Yeah, bitch, I heard ya. I’m just not going to do anything about it. Then he turned away.

  Jonas stared at the car window. The thought of smashing his head into it suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea. He wouldn’t break the window, and even if he did, he’d end up hurting himself. But it would force them to pay attention. They would come over.

  More than anything else in the world, Jonas, right now, needed someone to pay attention to him.

  Anne was dying, and no one would listen.

  Electricity seemed to surge through his body as he leaned away from the door. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. He was going to use momentum from his body and then use the side of his head as the primary impact point. He hoped he would only have to do it a couple of times, but he would do it as long as it took for them to come over. He only hoped that he wouldn’t knock himself unconscious in the process.

  He steadied himself. For a moment, he thought of himself standing in the Beltway, watching the car about to smash into him. Then he thought of his father, who wanted nothing more than to preserve his own mind, and here Jonas was about to self-inflict a concussion.

  On three, he told himself.

  One...two....

  Then, from the corner of his right eye, he saw Agent

  Difranco. She was running toward his car.

  58

  “WHERE? WHERE did he say? Exactly.”

  “He said she was on the fourth level. Like I said.”

  “Where on the fourth level?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jonas and Difranco led an ad hoc team of four other officers on a footrace through the parking garage. Throngs of people had surrounded the evacuated hotel, most of them law enforcement or firemen, and the press were clearly not going anywhere, even if the building collapsed around them. Red lights flashed through the area like tracer fire. Radios spat out bursts of commands. Debris from the small explosion at the hotel littered the street.

  The Mog flashed through Jonas’s brain. That had been completely different, yet the feeling was the same. The sweat. The urgency. The uncertainty of what the next second would bring.

  Difranco opened a path through the emergency personnel, flashed her badge and a spewed a few choice words to the cop in charge of maintaining that section of the security perimeter.

  Seconds later they were running down the concrete stairwell of the parking garage. Difranco first, then Jonas, and the four cops in the rear.

  Burly Cop was among them, and now he was Jonas’s best friend. As they descended the stairwell to the fourth floor, Jonas heard someone radioing for a medical team and a group of rescue workers with any tools possible. Anne could be in a locked gun safe, for all they knew.

  They reached level four. Difranco yanked open the metal door with such force it slammed against the wall behind her. The six of them spilled into the parking garage and looked in every direction.

  The garage was full. Jonas forced himself to take his time, knowing he could easily overlook the van.

  “He said it was the same as the one I just was in. U-Haul. Ten footer.”

  “Nothing,” a cop said. “Nothing up this way either.”

  Chatter over the radio. A medical response team was on the way.

  Jonas took off running up the parking ramp, scanning the cars as he went. He looked back and saw the others do the same, fanning out. The garage seemed massive, infinitely large. As he ran, and as he saw nothing, he couldn’t escape the thought that Rudiger had lied. That Anne was already dead in some location they would never find.

  No van. There seemed to be every other type of vehicle ever manufactured, but there was no goddamn ten-foot U-Haul.

  “Over here!”

  From below. Difranco.

  59

  THE U-HAUL was parked between an Xterra and a F-150. A thin coat of grime covered it, making the white paint a dusty gray. Fingerprints were clearly visible in the dirt near the base of the back gate, and Jonas wasn’t surprised.

  Rudiger no longer cared about covering his tracks. Rudiger wanted to be known.

  Was this even the right van? Had to be, Jonas thought. Had to be.

  He stared at the padlock securing the back gate.

  “How do we get this off?” he asked, turning to Difranco. “A fire crew is on the way,” she said. “They’ll have something.”

  “There’s no time,” Jonas said. “Goddamnit, there’s no time.” He raced to the passenger and driver’s doors, each of which were locked. Didn’t matter—there was no access from the cab to the back of the van anyway.

  “Shoot the lock. Or something. Just...can’t we shoot it?” Burly Cop shook his head. “Too risky. Bullet could ricochet. Or go inside and hurt her.”

  “Damnit, we can’t just wait.” He slammed his palm into the side of the U-Haul cargo area. “Anne! Anne! Can you hear me?”

  Silence.

  He hit the side of the van three more times. “Anne! Are you in there?”

  Difranco touched his arm. “Jonas, calm down. We’ll get her out.”

  Jonas turned to her and tried to control the panic he felt washing over him. “I saw her picture. She’s in some kind of container in there. Tight space. Rudiger...he said she was running out of air. We have to get her out. Now.”

  “Jonas, they will be here any—”

  “We don’t have time. Why won’t anyone listen to me? Please, just shoot the fucking lock, will you? Give me your gun. I’ll do it.” He stepped t
oward Burly Cop.

  Burley Cop put a hand on the butt of his gun. “You need to calm down and step back. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “I’m begging you.”

  A hundred feet away, the stairwell door opened. Jonas turned and saw three firemen emerge. One carried an axe.

  Goddamn. Yes.

  “Over here!” he shouted. “Here! Hurry!”

  They turned to Jonas and ran the best they could in their gear.

  As they approached, Jonas pointed at the padlock. “Please, get that thing off. Please hurry.”

  The fireman holding the axe said nothing as he studied the lock and steadied his footing.

  Everyone else reflexively took a step back.

  The fireman lightly tapped the lock three times with the edge of the blade, like an executioner confirming his reach. Then he lifted the axe above him and brought it down with a smash of metal against the lock. A small flurry of sparks lived for half a second before dying. The neck of the lock split open.

  Jonas lunged for the back of the truck. He grabbed the handle of the gate and yanked. The gate rattled like a thousand dried-out bones as it lifted.

  There was only one thing inside the back of the scratchedmetal cargo container.

  A silver coffin, wrapped in nylon cords.

  60

  JONAS LEAPT in the cargo area and tried to yank the cords looped around the casket, but they were on so tight he couldn’t even get his fingers beneath them. He rapped against the metal cover.

  “We’re here, Anne. We’re getting you out.” Silence from within. Sweat fell from his forehead and slid down the smooth casket lid.

  He turned to all the faces staring from outside within. “A knife. Hurry. I need a knife.”

  Rather than handing him a knife, a fireman jumped into the back of the truck and motioned for Jonas to move out of the way.

  Jonas watched as the fireman pulled a folded rescue knife from his utility belt and unlocked the blade. He wasted no time in sawing the serrated teeth of the blade against the nylon cords of rope.