by Ethan Cross
She looked at him with skepticism written across her squinting eyes and furrowed brow, and then she reached for the phone on her desk.
He said, “I can’t allow you to call in your BIA colleagues. They are not privy to knowledge of this operation.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to stop me. I should have come clean before now.”
She picked up the receiver, retrieved a card from her desk, and began to dial the number.
Ackerman said, “Now is not the time to be stubborn and naive. I shared the details of my former life with you so that you may better understand that my threats are not idle ones. If John Canyon doesn’t return my little sister within the next three hours and twenty-nine minutes, then I’m going to let the demon in me come out to play. And if you don’t put down that phone, you’ll be the first to glimpse what’s coming.”
Liana’s finger hovered over the last number. A few seconds passed, and finally, she set down the receiver. “Your friend was here. I was filling out some arrest reports and playing receptionist. The walls of Captain Yazzie’s office are paper thin. We can hear everything that goes on in there. I don’t think Yazzie even realizes it.”
“And what did you hear through those paper thin walls?”
“Nothing. She asked him a few questions, standard stuff. Then she took a phone call—which was strange since cell reception here is usually pretty bad. And then she left. There were no tough questions, no disagreements. Just a friendly chat, and then she left. She was still talking on her phone when she walked out the door.”
“She didn’t ask him any questions about John Canyon?”
“My guess would be that she was leading up to it, but then the call she received must have been more important than talking to Yazzie. I would suggest that you look for the person on the end of that call.”
“We have. It was an untraceable burner phone, which was purchased with cash at a store with no cameras.”
Lowering her voice to a whisper, as if they were forming some sort of secret alliance, she said, “You talk an awful lot like a cop for being some psycho killer. You can drop the act with me. I want to help make things right.”
“You think I’m faking? That I’m some sort of cop merely pretending to be menacing? I find such an assumption to be downright unsettling. I propose we play another game so that I may redeem myself.”
“There’s no need. I don’t—”
“No, no. Don’t speak. I’ll just ignore you anyway. This is a simple game that I’m sure transcends cultural barriers as being a staple of childhood. I wouldn’t know of such things firsthand because I was being tortured and witnessing terrible atrocities during most of my youth. The process did succeed in my father’s goal of metamorphosing me into what is basically another species. An abnormal mutation. But from what I’ve gathered from observing normal human development, this would most assuredly be a universal childhood game. I’m going to hold up a group of fingers on my right hand. You guess the number I’m holding up. If you’re correct, then you win. Otherwise, I win.”
“You want me to guess how many fingers you’re holding up behind your back? Why? What does that prove?”
“Come on, you’ve been a good sport so far. What’s the harm in guessing a number?”
His hands were already behind his back and cuffed, and so he didn’t need to move in order to play the game. At least, not yet. Ackerman said, “Go ahead. How many fingers.”
“Two.”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Yes, two.”
And then came the moment that Ackerman had been drawing out with delicious deliberateness. He raised his right hand in front of his face and said, “You lose. It was three.”
Liana’s eyes went wide, but Ackerman guessed her shock was not at her defeat but rather at the open handcuff which dangled from his right hand. Then, before Liana could recover, Ackerman leaped into action, heading first in the direction of Officer Pitka.
13
The bars of the small cell were exactly what Ackerman would have imagined as having existed in the old west. He wondered if that was where the remote station had acquired the materials to build their drunk tank. It was only another small step to conjure images of such famous outlaws as Jesse James or Billy the Kid staring out through the same bars. And if that was the case, it would also be fair to say that they may have reached through the bars and grabbed hold of some famous lawmen of a bygone era. In the fictional history he had projected for the bars of the cell, he was about to join esteemed company who had once possibly spilled blood on the same iron that Ackerman was about to.
Having already choreographed and mentally practiced the maneuver—which he prepared as he distracted the normals with words—Ackerman rammed his arm through the bars. One ring of the handcuffs was still attached to his right wrist, but the other side of the cuffs hung free. As he had predicted, Officer Pitka had hesitated to fire. Maybe it was a second, maybe much less. But Ackerman knew from experience that the time it would take for Pitka’s brain to process the proper reaction and for his finger to slide from the trigger guard to the trigger itself would be more than sufficient.
With a twist of his arm, Ackerman swung the open ring of the cuffs at Pitka’s wrist. The metal loop snapped closed, and Ackerman yanked the shocked kid toward the bars.
Caught off balance, Pitka slammed into the bars headfirst. Somewhere amid his plunge, he released a blast into the ceiling, but he dropped the Glock when his head collided with the iron.
Ackerman had made special note of the pocket of the utility belt where Pitka had placed the key to the cell door. Liana was screaming for him to get down, but any shot she may have had was blocked by her partner. Yanking again, he slammed the young officer’s body into the bars to keep him positioned as a shield. Then, with his left hand, Ackerman keyed the cell’s lock and opened the door. As the latch disengaged, he tore his right hand free of the cuffs. The pain from the skin he left behind was like a cool breeze against his face.
The handcuffs were now free from his wrist and still attached to Pitka’s. Twisting the kid’s arm up at an awkward angle, he snapped the cuffs latched against a rung of the cage. Stepping to the other side of the bars, Ackerman pulled the Taser free from Pitka’s belt.
Liana was still yelling something and trying to get a clean shot. She was wearing body armor, which would make an effective shot with the Taser unlikely. Instead, he flicked his wrist and tossed the weapon like a boomerang directly at Liana’s forehead. It collided with a thwack, and Liana reflexively pulled back from the pain, which gave him the chance to rush forward and disarm his impetuous new friend.
Ackerman heard the screeching tires of a vehicle in front of the station house, most likely Canyon and Captain Yazzie having heard Pitka’s wayward pistol discharge.
Lucky for them, further violence wasn’t necessary. He felt his point had been made.
Instead of fighting back, Ackerman returned to the cell, leaving the gun behind, and laid down on the cot.
To the figure of Thomas White watching from the corner of the cell, he said, “Happy now.”
His imagined father released a low chuckle and replied, “Poetry in motion. Although, you should have killed them both. That would have sent a much better message.”
Leaning back and closing his eyes, Ackerman said, “See, right there. That’s how I know that you’re only in my mind. My real father would never allow me even that much of a compliment.”
14
John Canyon had seen a lot of frightening thing. Headless corpses. The charred remains of children. During his second tour in the Persian Gulf, he bore witness to terrible atrocities inflicted upon the Kuwaiti people by the invading Iraqi soldiers in what was essentially organized rape and murder. He had faced enemies with hearts full of the worst kinds of depravity. Even then, he had never faced an enemy that frightened him like the man in the cage.
Canyon sat in front of the bars and watched his enemy watching him. H
e was reminded of a tiger he had once seen behind glass. This man, Frank, seemed to be a predator of equal magnitude, a powerful force of determination and skill.
His instincts told him to unload the shotgun into Frank and let the chips fall where they may.
With no preamble, he asked, “Is my son already dead?”
“No. He’s alive. For now.”
“I don’t know what happened to your missing agent. You’re declaring war on the wrong man.”
Frank leaned forward, the old cot protesting beneath his shifting weight. “You still don’t understand, Mr. Canyon. This is not a war. This is an extermination. But then again, I suppose the termites being sprayed with poison would feel that they are at war. To the exterminator, it’s just another day at the office.”
“You seem a bit overconfident for a man behind bars.”
“Please, look at your officers.”
Canyon glanced over to the other side of the station where Yazzie was dressing a small wound on Liana’s forehead.
Frank continued, “I could have killed them both. In the old days, I would have had some fun with the girl. She has fire. I bet she would surprise herself with how strong she could be. The other officer I would have probably just killed outright. He bores me. And I don’t like his name. Pit-cuh. What’s his first name?”
“Ernie.”
“That’s terrible. I would have killed him for sure.”
“This is all just a big game to you, isn’t it?”
“When viewed in a certain light, life is always a game. One with no rules, but definite winners and losers.”
“It’s the middle of the night. And I’m sitting here listening to fortune cookie philosophy from a guy who kidnapped my son. In most instances, I would be of a mind to start cutting on you until you answer my questions, but I get the feeling that you would never talk. I can see from your scars that you’re no stranger to pain. So what do I do with a man who I can’t force to talk?”
Frank shrugged. “It is a dilemma, and your only real option is to acquiesce to my demands. Return Maggie Carlisle to me, and you’ll get your son back.”
Canyon shook his head. “Would I? Even if I knew what had happened to your friend, why would I trust that you to hold up your end or that those boys are even still alive? No, I think I do have one other option.”
Standing and crossing the room, Canyon retrieved his shotgun from where he had rested it earlier. Yazzie called from the other side of the station, “John, what are you doing?”
“What I should have done from the start,” Canyon said, heading toward the prisoner.
He raised the gun to fire at a spot between the iron bars, but before Canyon could take aim, Frank launched himself across the cell and collided with the back wall of the makeshift prison. Frank was a large man, and he appeared to be aiming straight for the part of the wall damaged by the earlier shotgun blast. Dropping his shoulder and balling up, the prisoner broke through the paneling, the two by fours of the wall, and the fiberglass shell of the station.
Canyon stood dumbfounded as the man called Frank disappeared into the night through an exit of his own making. Trying to recover, he fired three volleys of lead into the back wall of the station, hoping to get lucky. But as he peered through the hole in the wall, he saw no bodies outside.
Turning to the three officers, who had drawn their weapons but seemed unsure of what to do now, Canyon screamed, “What the hell are you waiting for? You have a prisoner escaping!”
Coming to his senses, Yazzie barked orders to his two underlings, and the four of them trailed the man called Frank into the night.
15
As Ackerman burst free from the building—after having cannonballed himself at the least structurally sound point of the wall, where the shotgun blast had been centered and where he had aimed his previous kick whilst educating the children—his first thought was: Find the closest darkness. The quote was from a childhood memory in which his father had been instructing him in ways of escaping pursuers. His father had elaborated, “Darkness is our friend in nearly every instance, Junior. Why is that?”
“If you seek the deepest darkness, then you will be able to see them coming by their light.”
Now, as he hit the ground with the balls of his feet and rolled away, his first thought had been his father’s teaching of embracing darkness. His second thought was that an exquisite pain had bitten into his arm, probably a cut from the metal or building materials of the cheaply made outpost. Either that or Canyon got lucky with one of his shotgun blasts.
Ackerman knew that John Canyon had been a decorated soldier, and his skills were obviously still sharp. Canyon had responded almost instantly to the escape. Perhaps not as fast as Ackerman himself would have performed, but the speed of Canyon’s reactions spoke to Ackerman of a soldier who was years from a battlefield but still looking for a war.
The surprise had led to a piece of either buckshot or shrapnel to become lodged in Ackerman’s back and side. He mostly ignored the pain as he hit the ground running and passed by the officer’s parked vehicles, up a small rise, and down and up two more.
It was at this point that he allowed himself to enjoy the pain. The tendrils of cold fire had spiderwebbed out from the point of the wounds. The faster he ran and the harder he pumped his arms, the more the pain burrowed inside like a rat fleeing fire.
The pain didn’t slow him down, however. It rejuvenated him, refreshed him.
He listened for the sound of feet slapping dirt, and using echolocation, he surmised that the officers were clinging to the perimeter of the station’s pole light. That was good. It meant that none of them had witnessed the direction into which he had fled. But the officers would soon find his tracks and retrieve flashlights to mount a search.
If they stayed on foot, then he would have no problem outpacing any of them for any amount of time. The issue was that they would take to their four wheel drive vehicles and try to cut him off, a pincer maneuver placing armed officers at his back and armed officers at his front. He couldn’t outrun a truck or a bullet. He had tried to do both on multiple occasions to no avail. Although, he had yet to be killed by either, so maybe he was being too harsh on himself.
As Ackerman half-stumbled down a hill of jagged rock, which was barely visible in the sparse light of the moon, Thomas White appeared beside him, matching his pace and stride. Ackerman said, “Yet another example of how you differ from my real biological father. He could never hold a candle to me physically.”
“Perhaps, but mentally there is no question of his superiority.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Really, which one of us spent half their life in a cage and which one of us operated under the radar for years, killing and never being caught. The police even believing him to be long deceased. Thanks for your help on that, by the way.”
“The important thing is which one of us is in the cage now. You may have been the most prolific murderer in history,” Ackerman said, “but who cares if no one will ever know a thing about it.”
White laughed and said, “You can’t keep the devil chained forever, Junior. Just ask John the Revelator.”
“As if you believe in any of that. And you’re not the devil. You’re just a sick and broken man who spent so much of his life in crippling fear that the only way he could function was to let that fear and pain flow out onto others.”
Changing the subject, White said, “They’re going to catch you. This is all open desert and rocks out here. You could try for the mesa and find a cave or head for town and maybe take a family hostage. But unless those four are entirely incompetent, they should be able to run you down out here with a couple of officers on foot and the others in vehicles.”
“You always did underestimate me.”
“Or perhaps I drove you to be even better than we both could have imagined. But they’re still going to catch up to you within a matter of minutes. Hell, they could be waiting for you over this rise.”
“I haven’t heard any engine noise or seen headlights, so that’s pretty unlikely.”
“When they find you, there’s only one thing you can do… You have to kill them all.”
“Oh, dad, that’s what you always say.”
“I’m serious. You’re only way out is through. Canyon will shoot you on sight. I suppose when the moment comes, I could just take control and dispatch them. I certainly can’t allow your stubborn refusal to take life result in the same being done to us.”
“There is no ‘us.’ You’re just a figment of my imagination. Nothing more than a minor and likely temporary glitch in my programming. You cannot ‘take control.’ You don’t exist.”
“I exist within you, just like you exist within you. I don’t see why I couldn’t take the reigns for a bit.”
And then Ackerman heard what he didn’t want to hear: the sound of tires rolling over dry ground and rock. A vehicle was approaching, and he had nowhere to go.
16
Liana felt like she was wandering through a bad dream. Her world grew more terrible by the moment, and yet, she just kept moving forward, kept pretending to do her job. She felt like a puppet being pulled in a thousand different directions. And yet, somehow, she kept moving forward, sweeping her flashlight over the dirt and scrub-brush, checking for tracks or hiding places.
One of her puppet masters, John Canyon, did the same twenty yards to her left. She had to fight in order to match his pace as he ascended a rocky outcropping and sprinted his way to the summit of the next rise. Out of breath, Canyon paused for a moment at the top, shining his light into the small valley below.
Liana joined him at the top and matched his actions, thankful for a chance to rest, even for a second. Not that she was out of shape. Yazzie had instituted his own regulations in regard to fitness at their small outpost. Despite being over twice her age, she knew that the captain was surprisingly strong and fast. Still, she wasn’t surprised when Yazzie elected to take one of the trucks up ahead to cut off the stranger. She had been surprised, however, when John Canyon threw the keys of his truck to Pitka, grabbed a flashlight, and reloaded his shotgun. Canyon had to be close to the same age as Yazzie, yet he seemed to be imbued with a warrior’s fire where Yazzie was acting like his usual dreamily indifferent self, despite the dangerous circumstances they faced.