by Jon Land
But this one was—he countered with a combination series of fists that pounded Khan’s right cheek and jaw. Khan realized the awful splintering sounds in his ears were his own bones breaking. Yet he was able to jump back to make time and distance his allies. The figure before him was considerably smaller than he was, which perhaps accounted for why he hadn’t been able to finish Khan off when the advantage was his. Well, he’d had his chance and missed it. Khan bellowed and unleashed the fury of his sticks in a blurred frenzy.
The disciple named Thaddeus elected to hold his position. He had been expecting more of the giant Mongol than this. There had to be some sport, some enjoyment. He would bait him, let him have his chance to use the killing sticks.
Thaddeus stood his ground as Khan charged. The Mongol’s half-swollen face held no expression; the sticks twirled nimbly in his hands as he made his charge.
Khan lunged in with sticks crisscrossing the air in a vortex of death. Thaddeus caught the hands blurring through the night in midmotion. He twisted the Mongol’s arms together at the elbow and jerked them mightily. A snap as loud as a gunshot sounded, and one of the arms hung limply by the Mongol’s side.
Khan still had one stick left, which he sent into motion a breath before he saw the stick he had lost was in the hand of his opponent. The last thing he remembered was switching his motion to a blocking form—too late—as the enemy’s stick slid under the defense and bashed into his nose, driving the bone backward through his brain.
Khan stood there briefly before he crumpled, and Thaddeus wondered how it could have been so easy to kill a man of such reputation.
Fox was finished with the whole damn business. His first few kills had come smooth and sweet and then everything had fallen apart. Targets impossible to reach, or even to find. The wrong man killed on the most recent occasion. Messy, very messy, and Fox hated mess above everything else.
Well, fuck the albino Japper and his mother, too.
Fox hit his home turf of Boston running, making straight for the bank that held his safe-deposit box. He’d clean out the cash and jewels and disappear for a while. The Jap fuck wouldn’t know the difference, and his whole plan was gonzo anyway.
Fox had just finished emptying the contents of his safe-deposit box into his black leather briefcase when the lights in the cubicle died. The silenced Beretta was in his hand a second later, while the other hand found the doorknob and twisted it open. The whole damn, windowless box area was pitch-black. A power failure now. If that didn’t beat fuck all…
Fox heard the sound just before he started to head in the general direction of the exit door. Someone else was with him in the darkness. Not another customer, obviously; he was alone when he came in, and no one had entered since. The guard, then, perhaps…
The sound came again, not made by a guard at all, because a guard would have spoken and wouldn’t have tried to conceal his presence.
Fox fired a silenced round in its direction.
Another sound sprang from the opposite side of the twenty-foot square room filled wall to wall with safe-deposit boxes. Fox fired again, and this time the bullet ricocheted madly.
I know you’re in here, fucker.
The sound of rushing footsteps sounded to his right, and Fox shot that way. More footsteps came from the left, and he wasted two more bullets.
There’s more than one of them, he thought. There’s gotta be. Well, that suits me just fine!
Fox slid away from the door to the cubicle and pressed his back against the middle row of safe-deposit boxes against the far wall. Muzzle flashes would give him away sure as shit. He’d keep his ass calm and make sure he had something to fire at next time before he shot. Better yet, better yet…
Fox holstered the Beretta and pulled out a killing knife courtesy of cool, blue Vietnam. The separation of sounds told him three figures were in the darkness with him. Just like the good ol’ days as a tunnel rat, squeezing his big frame into the passageways dug by gooks and slitting their throats as he passed them along the way. Yup, darkness suited him just fine.
Fox moved away from the boxes and joined the darkness. He owned the fuckin’ night in Nam, and he would own the asses of the men who had invaded this darkness. If he couldn’t shoot them, they weren’t about to shoot him, which placed the odds in his favor.
I’m gonna get you, motherfucka!
Fox figured the enemy was shittin’ their pants trying to find him in the pitch-black, when he walked straight into a gun barrel. Nothing behind it he could feel, just cold steel touching his forehead.
“Hey!”
Fox had time to scream that as he whipped his blade out at a target as untouchable as gas. Funny thing was he heard the gun go off, actually heard the shot that blew the brains out the back of his head.
The disciple named Peter did not need the light to see. Yes, the darkness kept him from seeing shapes, but auras showed up plain as day, and he decided to taunt this one before finishing the job. All in all, it was boring, disappointing.
There had to be someone out there who could provide a bit of a challenge.
Somewhere.
Part Five
Vision Quest
The bunker:
Thursday, December 5, 1991; 7:00 A.M.
Chapter 30
EVEN THOUGH THE BUNKER’S conference hall was huge, those seated at the table felt cramped and uneasy. Only the shape seated in the shadows at the front of the room remained immobile as always, apparently unfazed by the exchange of words that had been going on for some minutes now.
“I’m telling you, it’s out of control!”
The voice of Virginia Maxwell, droning into the hall through an unseen speaker from Gap headquarters in Newport News, had a desperate ring to it.
“Nothing is ever out of control.” These words emerged from the shape at the front of the room.
“This is an exception, and I am not the one to blame for it,” the head of the Gap said. “I did not lose McCracken in Brazil.”
“But you were the one who insisted we involve him in the first place.”
“I had nothing to do with the series of failures that followed. Using him for our own best interests was the best track to take. If everything had gone as planned, he would have eliminated the six killers and led us to Takahashi himself.”
“But it didn’t go as planned, did it?” said Pierce. “Your Mr. McCracken—and the people working with him—ended up dangerously close to the truth, and now all of them have vanished.”
“I’m doing my best to correct that,” Virginia Maxwell said.
“How?”
“McCracken, Belamo, and the Indian have been red-flagged, marked for immediate execution. Shoot on sight, is the old terminology. Every intelligence agency in the book has gotten the word.”
“Your voice is not exactly brimming with confidence, Miss Maxwell.”
“I’ve done what I can.”
“But it isn’t enough, is it?” Pierce challenged her. “McCracken’s been red-flagged before and all it did was make him madder, more determined. I don’t like having him as an enemy.”
“That’s why I came to you with the problem.”
“You came to us because you are no longer capable of handling it!”
“What is it that you want?” the darkened shape asked from the front of the hall.
“He’s going to come after me,” droned the voice of Virginia Maxwell. “I want to let him.”
“Fine with me,” muttered Pierce.
“To set a trap,” the head of the Gap continued.
“Have you come for our blessing?” This question came from the shape.
“No. For your help.”
“You have the resources of an entire organization, an entire intelligence community, behind you.”
“They’re no match for McCracken. I want to draw him out, but once he surfaces I’ve got to be sure he can be taken.”
“Yet by your own admission…” The shape broke off his own words. “Yes
, I see what you’re getting at.”
“They alone can stop McCracken and his Indian friend.”
Pierce got to his feet. “They? Are you suggesting we use the disciples against a pair of men!”
“The security of this operation may well depend on it,” Virginia Maxwell insisted.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Think of the risk involved if we do this!”
“Think of the risk involved if we don’t.”
Pierce’s eyes fell proudly on the huge wall map dotted with red lights to denote the targeted nuclear power plants. “Our operation is less than two days from activation.”
“There may not be an operation if McCracken remains at large. I submit to you, gentlemen, that he disappeared in Brazil because Takahashi reached him before we could. That means he knows everything—and knowledge in the hands of a man like this is the most dangerous weapon of all. Don’t you see? If he met with Takahashi, he has the list! He knows our names, our identities, all of us. Even if our operation is successful, he will hunt us down.”
“He could not know the location of these bunkers,” the shape told her.
“He’ll find them. He’ll find us. It’s what he does. We’d be playing right into his hands.”
“You sound very certain of all this, Miss Maxwell.”
A sigh preceded Virginia Maxwell’s next words. “I’ve been in the intelligence game for over two decades now. The operatives I haven’t worked with I’ve read about, and McCracken stands apart from all of them. He’s not the best in any single facet of the game, but he’s the best by a long shot when you consider all of them together. Goddammit, he killed a disciple. He killed someone we made to be unkillable.”
“You’re sure he’ll go after you and not one of the others on the list?” asked the shape.
“Absolutely.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows I’m still available, and he’s already familiar with the logistics involved.”
“That being the case,” said Pierce, “it’s conceivable even the disciples won’t be able to help you.”
“Just give them to me and let me worry about the rest.”
“We’d be risking the entire operation if we did.”
“You’d be risking it even more if McCracken is left at large.”
The shadow projected behind the shape showed the semblance of a nod. “I want to hear your plan first, Miss Maxwell. If I approve of it, we’ll do as you say.”
The car was an ancient Yellow Cab pockmarked with rust. “Ain’t much, but she runs,” said Sal Belamo, slamming the driver’s door with a creak.
“Always nice to travel in style.”
“Good to see you, too, McCracken,” Belamo said, and scooted around to open the door for Patty. “Scuse my manners, but being red-flagged tends to stress me out. You ask me, I’d be better off taking up boxing again and hoping Carlos Monzon comes outta retirement to finish the job.”
After leaving Takahashi, Patty and Blaine had left Japan on a commercial airliner. No way, McCracken figured, could every flight coming into the country be watched. As a further precaution, on the chance the enemy knew of their brief stay in Japan, they changed planes at Heathrow and boarded a flight bound for Chicago. The last leg was a nonstop to Boston’s Logan Airport, where Sal Belamo was waiting. With the hours lost to plane changes and time zones, they arrived late in the morning on Thursday, forty-eight hours before the disciples would begin their deadly work.
“You get ahold of Johnny?” Blaine asked Sal.
“We’re on our way to pick him up now, boss. Things ain’t been great for him, either. Had a bad experience in Philadelphia, where one of the six killers got himself dead in a bad way.”
“Aren’t many good ones.”
“Even fewer worse than this. Somebody twisted his head like a bottle cap. Johnny said it was one of those Thunder whatevers.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Then check this out. Four of the other killers are toast, too, and the last one is probably floating in some river. That surprise ya?”
“Not in the least.”
Sal honked the horn in frustration. “When you plan on telling me what the fuck went down in Jap land?”
“After we pick up Johnny.”
Wareagle met them in a rest area just north of Boston, as planned. As soon as he got into the back of the cab, Blaine could feel something wasn’t right. He couldn’t explain exactly what; the big Indian simply felt, well, different. In all the years they had known each other, Johnny had been unflappably measured, existing on a keel so even it was maddening. But today an uneasy edge hung about him, something sharp and new.
“Hey,” Sal Belamo broke in as their stares held, “you ask me, this tub doesn’t make for our best route of travel south. Not exactly inconspicuous, if you get my drift.”
“We’ll find the nearest shopping center and make a change.”
“Big Lincoln if I can spot one?”
“Sounds good,” Blaine replied. “Give me a chance to tell you boys about our unscheduled trip to the Orient….”
“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Sal Belamo muttered after Blaine had finished detailing the incredible story of the Children of the Black Rain. “This goddamn albino hires six icemen to whack a bunch of people the Japs planted as babies?”
“All grown up now and holding the fate of this country in the balance.”
“Not them alone, though, is it? Shit, that we could handle. They got your Omicron legion in their corner, and that changes the odds.”
“In our favor, maybe.”
“You got an idea, chief?”
“The makings of one, anyway.”
“What comes next?”
“We ride south.”
“Washington?”
“Not quite.”
“I’m not afraid of you. I want you to know that.” Abraham looked up from the fire he was kneeling in front of in Virginia Maxwell’s study that night. The flames lent their color to his straw-colored hair and glistened off his ice-blue eyes.
“Nice of you to say so,” he replied.
“The others will be arriving at the rendezvous point shortly. You, of course, will be there. I leave it to you to brief them on what they will be facing tomorrow.”
“You’re that sure you can predict McCracken’s actions?”
“He has no choice,” Virginia Maxwell insisted. “This is the only course of action available to him, under the circumstances.”
“Yes,” Abraham said, with a smile Maxwell did not understand. He rose and stood there in front of the fireplace. “Is this the way you treat all your people?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t come within eight feet of me since I arrived, Ms. Maxwell. I had hoped our first meeting would have been more pleasant.”
“This is business.”
“Everything is business to me.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “I can understand it coming from the others, but I expected more from you.”
“We have a task before us and nothing more.”
“No, Ms. Maxwell. You are scared of me, because you don’t understand me. And what you don’t understand, you can’t control. Would you like me to tell you about myself? Would you like to hear about the feeling that rushes through me when I kill? I live for those opportunities, Ms. Maxwell, and when they are not provided, I create them. This bother you?”
“Er…no.”
“The Indian understood me. I saw it in his eyes. He understood me because we’re the same. It’s the same with McCracken. I can feel it. That is not good.”
“They’ll be there together.”
“I know.”
“You’ll have your chance.”
Abraham glided close enough to Virginia Maxwell for her to see his lean face clearly for the first time. “And perhaps then you’ll understand me and the others. Without McCracken and the Indian, we’ll be all that is left.”
They checked into the Days Inn-Oyster Point in the center of Newport News; they would be using it as a base. Patty Hunsecker retired to her room for a bath, and Sal Belamo went out for supplies, leaving Blaine and Johnny alone.
“What gives, Indian?” Blaine asked Wareagle, who was staring into the mirror suspended over the room’s dresser. It was too small, of course, to accommodate him, and he had to bend slightly at the knees to look into his own eyes.
Wareagle said nothing.
McCracken spoke again. “When you got into the car, you felt different, Indian, like I never felt you before.”
Wareagle turned his gaze toward McCracken. “Look in the mirror, Blainey, and tell me what you see.”
“Let me open the blinds and turn the lights on first.”
“Without the light.”
“A pair of outlines without much detail, Indian. Yours is bigger than mine.”
“Before facing his Hanbelachia, such is the true warrior. A figure from a child’s coloring book before any shades have been added between the lines.” Wareagle turned slowly from the mirror and looked at Blaine. “Facing Abraham across the sky in Philadelphia should have faced me with the Hanbelachia that is my fate, but instead it faced me with something else.” Johnny turned back to the mirror. “I looked into his eyes and I saw a looking glass, I saw myself. I realized that my shape had been filled in by the will of others.” Wareagle turned his gaze hard into McCracken’s “The Wakinyan are what the country made us into first.”
“Or tried to.”
“No, Blainey, succeeded. We were trained and tempered, and then the hellfire forged our souls in an image that has held us hostage ever since. We hide behind the illusion we are doing right, but that is only from the perspective they gave us.”
“What about justification?”
“Each act finds its own. The doing provides the context, but in the end the act is the same.”
“You’re saying we’re no better than the disciples are?”