The Five

by Robert R. McCammon

  “I want to get this straight,” said Berke. “You’re saying you value his life over ours? And if he pops up somewhere, your people won’t shoot to kill?”

  “My men are well-trained in what I expect them to do,” came the answer. “I want him in a mental hospital, getting the best possible care. Not in a cemetery.”

  “Our government in action,” Chappie said, with a bitter smile. Her eyes had gotten small. “Fuck the people!” She lifted her glass in a toast.

  Nomad had finished his own drink. He wondered how quick the old man’s reflexes were, and if he could dodge a glass thrown at his skull. “If your men sighted Pett before he could get off a shot at any one of us, they wouldn’t try to put him down for good? They’ve been ordered not to kill him if it comes to that?”

  “Pretty much,” True said. “Yeah.”

  Ariel got up from the sofa and carried her empty glass to the kitchen. True avoided looking at her, and she did not immediately return.

  Silence filled the room. Or, rather, it hollowed out the room.

  “You don’t understand,” True said, with a harsh note of steadily increasing anger, “what those young men have gone through. You don’t understand what they’ve seen. You can’t understand, because you take everything for granted. Everything you have. You’ve never fought for anything worth dying for, have you? Answer me!”

  “Who gets to say what that is?” Nomad fired back. “You? The President? Some corporate chairman who’s got plans to build a shopping mall and a megaplex in the middle of Baghdad? Who?”

  “See?” True gave a crooked smile, but his cheeks were flushed. “You don’t get it. Some things, like freedom, are worth dying for whether you think so or not. If everybody turned their backs on their responsibility, where would they be?”

  “A lot of them,” Terry said, “would be alive.”

  “Easy to sit here and not have to do anything. Nothing required of you. Just sit and take.” True almost got up and put an end to this, because it was about to get very messy and it was not going anywhere, but he had something important to say. Something he wanted John Charles and everyone else to hear, whether they wanted to hear it or not. He was aware that Ariel was standing in the kitchen doorway. Good. She should hear this, too.

  “What you don’t understand and can never understand is that the young men and women over there are fighting for you,” he said. “For your future.”

  “Oil for my car?” Nomad returned a ferocious grin. “Is that what you mean?”

  “That’s part of it. Our way of life, until we can get other energy sources going. But you don’t get that Jeremy Pett and young men like him went over there with courage and purpose, to do a job they were obligated to do as soldiers in the service of this country. It didn’t matter if they wanted to go or not; they weren’t asked, and they didn’t want to be asked, because this is what they were trained to do. And I can tell you, Pett’s training as a sniper was far harder than most. It’s incredibly difficult, and only the best of the best pass through. You couldn’t qualify to carry his socks.” A stabbing finger drove that point. “So he’s the best of the best, doing what he’s been trained to do, and then something terrible happens to him there and at home and the spirit drains out of him and leaves him basically a broken shell. But he has no serious and long-lasting physical injuries, and maybe he can cover up his psychological wounds because he’s been trained to be tough and to deny pain, and his own father has taught him a lot of that, so nobody follows up on Sergeant Pett. No, the VA hospitals are understaffed and overworked, so solid, tough guys like Jeremy Pett are given a certificate that says how much the Marine Corps appreciates their service. Maybe they’re awarded a medal too, like Pett was, so they can remember what sets them apart from men like you. Then this broken young veteran who’s been trained to kill people at over eight hundred yards goes out into the world looking for work.” True’s blue eyes were no longer cool; they were aflame, and they dared Nomad to interrupt him.

  The dare was not taken.

  “Well, it’s a tough world out here,” True continued. “We all know that. We use whatever skills we have, don’t we? And there’s so much competition for jobs, and people having to take whatever they can get. And maybe, if you were Jeremy Pett, you’d had plans set out for your entire life, that you were going to work harder than anyone else—I mean bone-hurting, back-breaking hard—and earn yourself and your family a home in the Corps. But you know, plans sometimes just don’t work out. Little things go wrong, here and there. Oops, sorry. Here’s your certificate, and this fine medal for you to look at and remember the day you were somebody. But now, you need to go out in that world of civilians and find yourself a job, you with your training to be the best of the best and to kill people at over eight hundred yards.”

  True leaned forward in his chair. “And maybe in time…after you keep hitting a wall that will not move…and after you realize you live in a world that can’t ever measure up to what you once knew…you start trying to find a new enemy, because only a battlefield makes you feel worth living.” True nodded. “I think that’s his story, and I won’t be another bastard who’s kicked him to the curb. If it’s within my power, I’m going to save his life.”

  True stood up, with the shotglass in his hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Fisk. I’m going to bed now.” The couch in the den, he meant. “I’ll set my alarm.” There was no need to set his alarm, he woke up at whatever time he decided to awaken the night before, but he wanted them to have confidence that he would not oversleep. He never overslept. He headed for the kitchen, to place the shotglass in the sink, and Ariel retreated to give him room.

  Before True entered the den and closed the door, Nomad said, “One question, man. What if Jeremy Pett aims the rifle at you first? Still figuring to save his life if that happens?”

  True didn’t answer. The door closed at his back.

  Near six in the morning, True’s cellphone buzzed. He was on it at once, his eyes bleary and his mouth tasting like wood shavings from a barroom floor but his senses already sharpening.

  < >

  “Good morning, Truitt,” said the familiar voice. “I’m sending you an email attachment. It’s something you need to see post haste.”

  “What is it?”

  “Connor Addison started talking around midnight. It’s all on the video.”

  “Okay.” True rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Send it over.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We’ve got a few dozen Pett sightings to go through, but there were two yesterday in Nogales. Made within hours of each other. One by a local policeman. We’ve got some people asking questions down there, strictly unofficial and very low-key.”

  “Alright. Good.”

  “He could’ve made it over,” said the man at the office in Tucson. “You know, we might need to talk here pretty soon about cutting back. This is taking a lot of resources.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

  “A lot of manpower. I’ve got other things going on.”

  “Sure, I know,” True said. He had slept in his clothes. Every part of him felt wrinkled.

  The question came, as he’d known it was going to: “Can you make do with one team?”

  True sighed. Heavily, so it could be heard.

  “Just asking. Would you consider it and get back to me?”

  “Yeah,” True said. He worked a tight muscle in his left shoulder. “I’ll get back.”

  When the caller had finished, True put his laptop on the desk and turned it on. He checked that all the lights were where they were supposed to be on the den’s wireless cable modem, and then he yawned so wide his jaw muscles cracked and he went to work.

  TWENTY-FIVE.

  True didn’t like their two rooms at the Days Inn Motel on West Sunset. He thought the windows were too open to a parking lot on the east side of the building, and though the teams in the Yukons would be sitting out there taking turns on shift with their day bino
culars and night goggles he just didn’t feel good about it. He had their rooms changed to the west side, where the windows were blocked by another structure. Then he went to his own room down the hall, unpacked his gear, splashed some cold water in his face from the bathroom tap, and lay on his back on the bed while he called his wife and asked her how her day was going.

  Everything’s good here, he told her. California sunshine. Traffic wasn’t so bad. The band’s doing a remote interview from the Cobra Club—yeah, that’s the name of it—with Nancy Grace this afternoon, you might want to watch that show tonight. You remember the talent agency guy I was telling you about? Roger Chester? He set it up. Greta van Susteren’s people are supposed to call me. We’re doing a couple of radio interviews before the gig. Do you like that word? So, anyway, it’s shaping up to be another mad minute like yesterday.

  Her phrase: mad minute. A period of chaotic activity where you just put your head down and held on like a cat in the curtains.

  He told her everything was under control. He had what he needed. Yes, he knew he’d forgotten his fish oil supplements, he’d left them on the vitamin shelf. His clothes steamer wasn’t working like it should, he thought they’d gotten a bum one from that whole stack of them at Target. But he had what he needed. He told her there were palm trees lining the boulevard outside just like in the movies, and she would go crazy to see the huge Off Broadway shoe warehouse that was almost right across the street. He said for her not to worry, he was going to find a place with a good salad bar.

  He didn’t tell her about the IHOP across the way, because she knew how he liked to mix syrupy pancakes, crumbled-up bacon and yellow-drippy eggs into a scrumpdiliumptous feast that laughed a hearty big fat man’s laugh at Omega-3 pills, but he didn’t have that very often. Only when there was an IHOP within range.

  Love you, she told him.

  Love you, he answered. I’ll call tomorrow.

  Needless to say. He called her every day he was out of town.

  Be careful, she said.

  Always, he answered.

  Their ritual, their touching of hands over distance.

  He put the phone down and lay back on the bed, and he stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling and wondered if and when he should do it.

  Before their sound check? After the gig?

  Should he do it at all?

  Would he want to know, if he were one of them?

  This was one of the decisions they paid him to make. It was his call. Those young people up the hall were adults. It wasn’t right, keeping this from them, but then again…what good did it do, to show them?

  He asked himself another question: if he was the father to any one of them, would he want his son or daughter to know?

  He lay there a while longer, turning his decision this way and that to give himself an out if he wanted it. Then he got up, took his laptop and left the room.

  “Mr. True,” said Nomad when he answered the knock. “How do you do?” The air had been a little tight today, a little frosty on that drive up from San Diego, but True had survived tighter and colder climates.

  “I have something to show you,” True said. “While I set up, would you go get the girls?”

  “The women,” True corrected.

  When everybody was in the one room and True had the laptop powered up, sitting atop a writing desk that had never seen a pen put to a letter, he asked if all of them could see the screen clearly. It was displaying the white seal of the FBI against a black background.

  “What is this, show and tell?” Berke asked, sitting cross-legged on a bed.

  “Yes.” True guided the trackball pointer over the shortcut to his image program and clicked. He hit the Browse All Images and a series of fifteen color thumbnails came up. He had gotten these pictures in a secured email attachment from Tucson yesterday morning, when he was at the field office in San Diego. “These are graphic,” he warned, and found himself looking at Ariel.

  “I think we can handle graphic,” Nomad said with a hint of a sneer. His eye was mostly green today, and he could see out of it. He was still burning about that mess unloaded on them last night. To tell the honest truth he was deeply and bitterly disappointed in Mr. Half-True.

  “Okay. First picture.” He clicked on a thumbnail and an image filled the screen in high resolution.

  They didn’t know what they were looking at. From his chair, Terry asked, “What is that?” The image showed what looked like…pale, freckled flesh? And on it was…what? A shiny brown tattoo of some kind? The depiction of a wine glass with an ‘X’ at its center, and a ‘V’ at the bottom under two curling tails?

  “It’s a brand,” True said. “It would be right about here.” He touched an area just above his left shoulder blade. “Those who know this kind of stuff say it’s a portion of the seal of Lucifer from a book called ‘The Grimorium Verum’, printed in the 18th century.” He clicked on the next image. Again there was a shiny brown mark against pale flesh, but the flesh was puckered by long ragged scars.

  “Somebody’s been using a whip on him,” True said before he could be asked. “Somebody who really likes to use a whip. This symbol is supposed to be an all-seeing eye, again as related to Satanism.”

  “Hold it!” Nomad had been sitting on the other bed, next to Ariel, and now he stood up. “What is this shit?”

  “These are brands, the scars of several different kinds of whips, razor slashes, wounds made by fish hooks and broken glass—and other implements the experts haven’t figured out yet—on the back and chest of Connor Addison. They found them when they took him to the medical trailer after that melee. The Tucson police took these pictures.” True clicked on the third image, which showed in closeup more scars, these crisscrossed as if inflicted by the furious digging of a small metal object in the shape of a sharp-tipped, five-fingered claw.

  “Je…sus,” Berke breathed.

  “On his lower back, right side,” True said. The images were tagged with the locations of where they’d been found on the body.

  The next image caused Ariel to shrink back, Nomad to narrow his eyes and Terry to whisper, “Oh, man.”

  It was the brand of a large downward-pointing pentagram, with the head of a half-animal, half-human goat at its center, the eyes completely blackened burn marks, the horns outlined and quite artfully decorated in burn, a ‘666’ burned across the forehead, everything done with detail and obvious passion and creativity, if working with red-hot irons and electric pyrography chisels was the artist’s joy.

  “This one is at the center of his chest,” True said. “You can see that his nipples have been burned off, as well.”

  “I can’t look at any more.” Ariel put her hand up and averted her face.

  “Okay, we don’t have to go through all these, but I wanted you to see a few.” True closed the image program and navigated to another file. “Now…this is Connor Addison speaking to the police around midnight, last night. He suddenly wanted to talk, so they wanted to hear what he had to say. You ready?”

  Nomad was still on his feet. He’d moved between Ariel and the laptop as if to shield her from these hideous images of tortured meat. “Why are you showing this to us?”

  “Because you need to know what’s out there,” True replied calmly.

  “We already know, man!” Terry said.

  “No,” said True. “No, you don’t.”

  He double-clicked on the video file, and it began to play.

  The scene was a view of one of those small interrogation rooms from every reality cop show on the planet, taken from a camera positioned in an upper corner. Two men, a gray-haired dude in a white shirt with a red-patterned tie, the other in a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sat on one side of the table. The gray-haired cop was rubbing his eyes, as if it had been a long hard slog to midnight. The man in the blue shirt had short-cut brown hair and was husky, with the broad back and shoulders of a wrestler. A notepad, pens and what looked to be a voice recorder was placed between t
hem. On the other side of the table sat a thin, pale young man wearing the eye-shocking orange jumpsuit that Nomad had known and loved so well. Addison’s hands were folded on the table in an attitude of prayer. His neatly-combed blonde hair looked damp, as if he’d just taken a shower before coming clean.

  Time and date stamps sat down on the lower left of the frame, and a frame counter on the right. The time was twelve-oh-nine.

  “Let’s get started, then,” said the older cop. He had a radio rumble of a voice, like the bass presence was turned up a little too loud. “You can state your name.”

  “Apollyon,” said the young man. He spoke with composed authority, in a soft voice that suited his looks but not the raging nightmare under his jumpsuit.

  “Say ’gain?” asked the second cop, who sounded like a hardcore cowboy type: careful there, feller, I got five beans in the wheel.

  “Apollyon,” the soft voice repeated, and then he spelled it out.

  Cowboy wrote it down on the notepad.

  Radio’s fingers tapped the tabletop. “And what’s your home address?”

  “You know all that,” said the young man, Connor Addison or Apollyon or whatever he was calling himself.

  “We’d like to hear it from you.”

  The young man looked up directly at the video camera. He had a black and swollen left eye. A bandage covered his chin and his lower lip was puffed up. Nomad suddenly felt awfully proud of himself, though he knew most of the damage had been done by the Nazi Six.

  “Call me Apollyon,” said the soft voice to the camera. “I am not from this place.”

  Cowboy tore the page off the notepad and started to leave his chair.