Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  “When did he come to you?”

  “Monday. In Cuba.”

  “Cuba?”

  “I was working down there. Harry pulled me out like he did maybe a hundred times before, lots of years ago.”

  “In Vietnam.”

  “Right.”

  “He talked about it a lot. Used to tell me how much he missed it. Said it was the only time he was really happy.”

  “I don’t know, I think he was pretty happy when you were around.” If that made Josh feel better, he didn’t show it. “Because he was able to pretend it was real.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “It … wasn’t supposed to be.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. He took me fishing. We did things.” Josh paused.

  “Harry used to talk about you a lot, too. Told me stories. He said you were the toughest guy he ever knew.”

  “Second toughest; he knew Johnny, too. He tell you I ask a lot of questions?”

  “No.”

  “Here’s one for you: had you ever heard of our friend Dr. Haslanger before you ended up at Group Six?”

  “Not by name. I knew somebody was in charge of what was going on, but I never really cared who.”

  “In charge of what?”

  “Me, I guess. The way they moved me around, placed me in special schools and kept changing so nobody would take special notice.” The boy’s expression changed. “Funny thing is, at Group Six they denied anything to do with it.”

  “Haslanger denied it?”

  Josh nodded. “But if it wasn’t him, then who … I mean, somebody had to be behind the Handlers.”

  “Handlers?”

  “That’s what I called the men who were always around, watching, checking up. Making arrangements. I never asked their names and their faces changed all the time. I didn’t really care. Harry and I ever needed anything, they took care of it.” The boy smiled thinly. “But we always had fun sneaking away from them.”

  “Like when you went fishing.”

  “I never got a damn thing.”

  “Did Harry?”

  “Nope. It was still fun.” Almost a laugh. “Once we stopped at a fish market on the way home. A couple carloads of Handlers were waiting for us, and Harry plopped the fish straight in the lead one’s lap.” Josh sighed. “You were Harry’s best friend.”

  “That means a lot to me.”

  “It would mean a lot to him that you’re doing this, that you came after the people who …” Josh lost the words and let them go, choosing new ones. “Revenge, right? That’s why you were going after Haslanger.”

  “Sometimes, kid, it’s the only thing we have left.”

  “Does it make you feel better?”

  “Good question. I’m not sure ‘better’ is the right word. Maybe ‘worthy’ is more like it. You’ve got to stand up for the people who have stood up for you. Without Harry, I would’ve been dead a dozen times over. I owed him, and when you come right down to it, sometimes that’s what the closest relationships are based on—debt.”

  “Would you have killed Haslanger? Will you?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “But you found him. You found him through me. Is it true what Colonel Fuchs said? Is it true Haslanger created me just like he created the thing that tried to kill Susan?”

  “You saved her life.”

  “You’re avoiding my question.”

  “Not my style. I just wanted you to know what you did counts for something.”

  “Then answer my question.”

  “Yes.”

  Josh seemed surprised by Blaine’s honesty. “Most people would have qualified their answer.”

  “Not my style, either.”

  “He doesn’t sleep, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Haslanger. He doesn’t sleep, hasn’t for a couple of years now ever since it almost killed him. He told me he couldn’t handle the ghosts anymore. He doesn’t sleep because he knows the next time he does that’s when they’ll get him and he’ll never wake up. I think I’m getting to be the same way. The whole time I was out after the shock hit me, I didn’t dream. But I know the nightmares will start again anytime I nod off now.”

  “Everybody’s scared of something.”

  “Even you?”

  Blaine nodded. “Lots of things. You can’t avoid fear; you just want to make it work for you.”

  “How?”

  “By channeling it. By turning it into something you can use. You understand?”

  Through his jeans Josh fingered the vial he’d produced inside Group Six.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think I do.”

  Sal Belamo arrived at the reservation an hour after dawn, looking as ragged and dust-covered as the beat-up rental car he was driving.

  “Hell of a trip, boss,” he said, stepping out and moving for the trunk when McCracken and Wareagle approached. Blaine’s last call to him before arriving at the reservation had included a well-planned shopping list just in case. “Got everything you asked for. Wasn’t easy getting it here. You ask me, next time call Federal Express.”

  “We won’t be needing it,” Blaine said with an eye on Johnny. Belamo had fitted the key in the trunk lock but didn’t turn it. “I hear that right?”

  “Rules have changed. So has your role.”

  “Maybe you better hear what I got to say ‘fore you make any changes, boss. Two serious-looking dudes were at the airport waiting for another flight to come in when I got there. One of ’em looked familiar. Vietnamese midget used to be called Colonel Ling. Presently associated with a man you made a candidate for plastic surgery, old friend named Thurman.”

  “He deserved it.”

  “Should have just killed him.”

  “I couldn’t; he was too valuable to the network. This was the next best thing.”

  “Blainey?”

  “One I never told you about, Indian. Thurman was part of White Star, run out of Cambodia. Had a nice thing going on the side with the local drug lords. All well and good until he started using Special Forces detachments to terrorize villages where the stuff was harvested. Some Vietnamese allies of ours asked if I could do something. Thurman took offense to my interference, sent some of his people to pay me a visit. I paid him a visit after I finished with them. Turned out to be pretty good with a knife. Pretty good.”

  Belamo took it all in. “I didn’t hang around long enough to see Pretty Boy himself, but while I was there, a third guy shows up in a truck.” Sal looked at Johnny. “An Indian.”

  “A tracker, Blainey.”

  “Silver Cloud’s vision …”

  “Coming true.”

  “Time out, boys,” Belamo interrupted. “Somebody mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”

  “Good to see you up and around, Cub,” Will Darkfeather said after thoroughly examining Josh.

  “That paste was yours, wasn’t it?”

  “Belongs to the spirits, Cub. They let me borrow it for a while. Good thing. A few more days you’ll be good as new.”

  “That’s good,” McCracken said from the entrance to the tepee, “because he’s leaving.”

  Josh shot a cold stare his way. “They’re coming again, aren’t they?”

  “Somebody is and I don’t want you or Susan around when they get here.”

  “You can’t stop them. You can slow them up, but they’ll keep coming.”

  “Look, kid—”

  “Don’t call me that. You call me kid and”—Josh gestured toward Darkfeather—” he calls me Cub. I’ve got a name.”

  “Sorry, Josh,” Blaine relented. “Now, if you’ll let me finish. I can’t afford to look beyond today. You may be right. Maybe we can never stop them from coming. But don’t forget: I’ve been here before and I know the game. Just play along.”

  “It’s my battle, too, in case you forgot.”

  “And maybe you’re forgetting what it’s all about: Harry,” Blaine finished when Josh s
hot him a withering glance. “I found you because of him, and I’m doing what I know he’d want me to do.”

  That quieted the boy. His voice lowered when he spoke again. “I wish this could be the end of it.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But it won’t be. It’s never going to be over.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Blaine said, as convincingly as he could manage.

  “Indian’s right on this one, boss,” Belamo said as Susan and Josh moved together for his car.

  “I didn’t know we were voting.”

  “You know what I mean. Look, I know where you’re coming from.” Belamo’s callused face softened a little, but his eyes remained resolved and sure. “But there are things I can do you maybe can’t.”

  “What do you mean, Sal?”

  “You know what I mean, boss, and you know it’s the only sure way out of this.”

  McCracken gazed at the boy again. “I can’t accept that.”

  “Not like you.”

  “Like me? That’s the problem. You’re like me.” Blaine turned briefly to Johnny. “The Indian’s like me. We live for what we do and when it’s over all I can think of is the next time the call comes. If it stops, I stop, because what I am is what I do. That’s all I’ve got to hold on to and there’s nothing behind me to exchange it for. I look at Joshua Wolfe and that’s what I see. He doesn’t fit in any better than me or you or Johnny. He didn’t ask for that, but he’s got to live with it all the same.”

  “He is desperate, Blainey, desperate to be understood and accepted,” Wareagle said, drawing up even with McCracken and Belamo. “He acts toward these ends just as we act toward ours. But his are doomed never to be achieved. His desperation will continue to grow, and desperation is an emotion that has never empowered our actions.”

  McCracken gazed at the boy’s silhouette through the rental car’s rear window. “He didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Not on purpose, maybe,” reminded Belamo.

  “He’s not a killer,” Blaine said, leaving it at that. “And I can’t give up on him. Giving up on him means giving up period. I’ve never done that. I don’t know what it’s like.”

  “He is like us, you and me, Blainey?”

  “Yes.”

  “As we are or as we were?”

  “What’s the difference, Indian?”

  “Plenty. I was lost once in the woods, before you found me and brought me back. You were lost once in exile, before you drew yourself back in. What we might have been capable of then, we are not capable of now. The wrath we were hiding then has been vanquished. The boy’s is a long way from that.”

  Blaine was still looking at the car. “I’m telling you he’s not a killer, Indian. Something in my gut tells me he’s not.”

  “We are accepting a great responsibility, Blainey.”

  “So what else is new?”

  Killebrew again faced the image of Dr. Furlong Gage, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the video monitor in the Mount Jackson communication center. A pair of security guards flanked him on either side. Back in the isolation lab, one had actually readied a pair of handcuffs before seeming to realize Killebrew’s handicap made them superfluous. But that had been hours ago and so far his interrogation had consisted of the same questions being repeated over and over again.

  “I am at a loss to understand your persistent silence, Dr. Killebrew,” Gage started once more, his voice tired and strained. “All I’d like to know is whether you have some way of explaining your behavior?”

  Killebrew remained silent.

  “Were you conspiring with Dr. Lyle? Can you tell us where she is?”

  Killebrew swallowed hard.

  “You destroyed your data, Dr. Killebrew,” Gage continued. “I would like you to reconstruct it for me. It is vital that you share everything you have so we—”

  At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Gage stopped when a blinding flash of light swallowed Killebrew’s image. He passed it off briefly to transmission problems, until the sounds of a horrific explosion rumbled through his monitor’s speaker.

  “Killebrew, can you hear me?”

  But the transmission died altogether as the CDC’s containment facility vanished into oblivion, its remnants blasted out through the side of Mount Jackson in a huge gush of fiery heat.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The day had turned hot and dry early. Dust whipped in funnels and sprayed the air. The four cars carved their way through it slowly and warily. Virtually all of the passengers had drawn their pistols or readied their submachine guns at the first signs of the reservation.

  “Stop,” said the Indian tracker named Birdsong from the backseat of the lead car.

  The driver slowed the Crown Victoria to a halt. Birdsong climbed out before the car had come all the way to a stop, followed closely by Thurman. His boots crunched against the gravel as he walked about the neat collection of small, rustic cabins dotting the center of the reservation.

  “What is it?” Thurman asked, drawing next to him.

  Birdsong crouched down and sifted some gravel through his hand. A cowboy-style hat hid so many of his features that it was impossible to tell his expression or age. His entire face was bathed in shadows. But his voice, when he finally spoke, belonged to a man past the midpoint of his life.

  “They’re gone,” Birdsong reported.

  “They’re what?”

  Birdsong indicated an indented line in the gravel and Thurman followed his gesture.

  “Where did they go?”

  Birdsong turned back and glanced at him from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Two directions.” He pointed to the right. “One large group headed north, that way into the fields. Another, much smaller group headed west toward—”

  “That’s the one!” Thurman beamed. “That’s the one we want. Now, where did they go?”

  Birdsong aimed his eyes straight ahead, where in the distance shimmering hills rose out of the plains. It might have been an illusion, or a picture waiting to become a postcard. “To the west: the Valley of the Dead.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Thurman asked.

  “Only if we have to enter it.”

  Birdsong stopped the convoy again when the road began to arch upward, bending toward the hills they had glimpsed from afar minutes ago. They looked far less foreboding now, and yet somehow still distant. He checked the ground in several areas.

  “It is as I feared,” he told Thurman. “They have entered the Valley of the Dead.”

  “How many?” Thurman demanded.

  “Ten, I think.”

  “Is the boy among them?”

  “He seems to be.”

  Thurman advanced slightly ahead of the Indian. “What is this Valley of the Dead?”

  “Sacred Sioux burial ground,” Birdsong told him. “Site of a legendary battle where a small group of Sioux braves defeated an army of Pawnee.”

  “You’re not Sioux.”

  “No,” acknowledged Birdsong. “I’m Pawnee.”

  Thurman swung back to the cars. His men had climbed out and were stretching their legs impatiently. They were freelancers the fat man had retained to help his group achieve the varied purposes it pursued, under the command today of Thurman. To avoid questions and possible recriminations, the primary members of the team were all foreigners. The largest, Goza the Bosnian, reached his massive arms for the sky. The tiny Vietnamese Ling stood next to him, dwarfed in his shadow. The Arabs Aswabi and El-Salab stood alongside each other, inseparable as always in their silence, taking in the surroundings like a pair of eager predators. Standing further back next to a South American named Guillermo Rijas were three Russians who had come over from the Wet Affairs division of the KGB. This group had been joined by seven battle-tested American mercenaries hired at the last minute. The fat man made sure they had the arsenal they required: plenty of high-powered stuff, including grenade launchers and heavy-caliber machine guns.

  “What a
re we waiting for?” Thurman asked Birdsong, swinging back his way.

  “We are outsiders, not permitted to enter, especially …” Birdsong’s voice tailed off. His eyes drifted over Thurman’s silent, milling troops.

  “Especially what?” the big man demanded.

  “Those who do enter the Valley of the Dead may not bring the tools of the present with them. Machines and weapons threaten the land with desecration. Those who enter must bring with them only the past.”

  “Bullshit,” said Thurman. “Back in the car, tracker. Lead us on.” Birdsong gazed up past the sun into his eyes. “You are making a mistake.”

  “I’m making a decision.”

  The road up the hill was no more than a trail, not meant for tires. As a result, the convoy thumped and bumped up the rocky way, clawing for every yard behind revving engines. They traveled in single file, the windshields of all but the lead car paying a heavy price for being in the path of stones being kicked backwards by spinning, grinding tires. Chips of glass were lost to the dust, scarring the windshields by the time the cars reached the crest of the hill.

  “Looks like nothing special to me,” Thurman commented as the lead car started down.

  Birdsong shrugged and tightened his hat atop eyes that tried to see in all directions at once. Whatever marked graves or warning totems there might have been were long lost to the years. The Valley of the Dead was a stretch of rolling, sloping land that lay enclosed on the east and west sides by hills that steepened as they rose. The north held only a narrow passageway permitting access, helping to explain how such a small number of Sioux had managed to defeat an army of Pawnee all those years ago. The ground flora was surprisingly rich in bramble, vine and tumbleweed, thin trees dotting the landscape like skeletons thrust out of the ground.

  The hills standing on the western side of the valley were pockmarked with caverns and craters. Birdsong knew these had been the defensive positions taken by the Sioux braves during a portion of the legendary battle. But he had left that part out in his earlier narration to Thurman. Even now he could not see how access could be gained to them, what footholds the Sioux braves had used to sequester themselves inside a hundred and fifty years before.