Vanishing Point: A Warner & Lopez prequel novel
Page 13
Lopez helped Henley back onto his feet, but it was clear he couldn’t walk far. Lopez figured he’d either broken his ankle or at the least badly sprained it.
‘You’re not goin’ far like that,’ she observed.
‘So much for the heroic rescue mission,’ he shrugged as he slumped against a tree. ‘I can wait it out here, maybe head back to the shore.’
‘We shouldn’t split up,’ she cautioned him, ‘there may be more of them out here.’
A faint rustling nearby caught her attention and she turned. The darkness was absolute, so instead she closed her eyes and listened. For a moment there was nothing, but then she almost sensed rather than heard the soft pad of someone creeping close in to her right.
Lopez turned and opened her eyes to see two pin–points of red in the inky blackness. The red lights suddenly rushed in closer with a flurry of footfalls as the creature charged toward her. Lopez ducked to one side but the creature turned sharply and plunged into her with enough force to lift her off her feet. She slammed down onto her back in the foliage and heard a sharp crunching sound that for one terrible moment she feared was her back. Then she heard another thump and she realized that whatever it was had attacked Henley again.
‘Robert?’
Lopez struggled to her feet in time to see the sheriff slumped against the trees and the figure rushing at her once more. She struggled to get out of the way but it slammed into her and drove her backwards and down onto the ground once more.
Lopez saw the silhouette of an arm and what looked like a tire iron flicker upwards against the starry night sky and then come crashing down. She threw one arm up and batted the blow aside, heard the tire iron thud into the soft soil alongside her head. With both hands interlocked she punched her assailant across the face and saw their head flick to one side, the vivid red eyes jerking with it as they toppled off balance.
Lopez threw her attacker off, scrambled to her feet and made a break to escape.
The forest was dense and she stumbled and crashed through the foliage, knowing within moments that she could not hope to escape without first hiding from her attacker. She ducked down and then moved silently a few yards to her left, hoping to lose the assailant or at least confuse it for long enough to launch a counter–attack.
Lopez peered out from her hiding place in the brush and suddenly saw the red eyes watching her from the utter blackness, staring directly into her own. In horror, she realized that the man hunting her could see perfectly well in the dark. Suddenly he lunged again and she broke cover as she tried to turn back the way that they had come.
The figure intercepted her, and Lopez twisted from his grasp and slipped by. The man turned to pursue her, as she had hoped, and she whirled to face him. Lopez lifted her flash light and shone it directly into the red eyes as they loomed out of the darkness toward her. In a flare of blue–white light she saw a man’s face twisted as he threw his hands up and cried out in pain at the brilliant light searing his retina.
Lopez jerked one knee up with all of her might and slammed it into his groin. The cry of pain mutated into a growl of agony as the man folded up and collapsed onto the forest floor at her feet.
She lifted one boot and stamped it down on the tire iron, then pivoted around and dropped one knee down between the man’s shoulder blades. The man grunted in pain as he was flattened against the ground, writhing in breathless agony as Lopez pinned him in place before yanking his wrists into handcuffs.
‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘You’re off to jail.’
Then she looked up and shone the flash light at Henley. He had not moved, and she could see glistening black blood running in rivulets down his face from where the tire iron had stove his skull in, his eyes staring sightlessly into the darkened forest. Rage seared Lopez’s guts and she wrenched the tire iron from the man’s grasp and jabbed one end into his neck deeply enough to warp the skin.
‘Correction asshole, you’re looking at thirty–to–life for the murder of a police officer. But before I take you there, you’re going to help me out or I’m going to use this on your skull. Where’s the cult?’ she demanded.
The man twisted his head to look over his shoulder at her, and to her horror his eyes showed the same unnatural glow, as though there was some kind of light source surgically implanted behind his retina.
‘There’s no cult, only family, and I’ll die before telling you anything, so you’d better get handy with that tire iron lady.’
Lopez figured that her captive thought she wouldn’t dare hurt him, and ordinarily she would not have. But her blood was up and Henley was dead. She lifted the tire iron and smashed it down across the man’s temple, snuffing his consciousness out in an instant. Then, she dragged his body across to a nearby tree, sat him against it before uncuffing his hands and then recuffing them behind the tree, fixing him in place right opposite Henley.
‘You can take a good look at what you’ve done when you come around,’ she uttered as she stood back from him. ‘Cause you’re not going anywhere until the police show up here.’
Lopez grabbed the tire iron and her flash light. She was about to turn it on again when suddenly the entire forest was bathed in a brilliant glow. She ducked instinctively, squinting in the bright light as she lifted one hand to shield them. The orb that she had seen earlier was close now and brighter than ever.
Lopez dropped the tire iron, and in the glow from the hovering orb of light she carefully slipped Officer Henley's pistol from its holster and checked the magazine. As her eyes adjusted to the glow, she set off through the forest toward the orb.
***
XXV
Ethan turned in the sudden silence.
The forest seemed unnaturally still, and he could not understand why he could no longer see the police vehicles beyond the treeline. He realized that he could not move easily, that his limbs felt heavy and lethargic, almost as though his mind was no longer quite connected to them. Amid the blackness he sensed that he was not alone, and then he saw the cult members gathered in the darkness, their silhouettes barely visible against the trees.
They were standing in a semi–circle and watching something, their backs turned to Ethan, and suddenly he drew a deep breath as he realized that there was something large and solid blocking the light from the stars sparkling in the night sky.
Suddenly lights appeared once more, glittering like coloured jewels around the rim of a disc–shaped craft that was now hovering a few feet above the clearing. Ethan felt his guts turn to slime as an unnatural sensation slithered through him. It was as though he was both conscious and yet dreaming at the same time, caught in a bubble somewhere between reality and fantasy that he could neither define nor escape.
The flickering lights grew brighter, and Ethan saw one of the cult members standing with his eyes closed and more lights zipping this way and that about his head, like glowing bees humming around a hive. The lights whipped around and sometimes through his head to pop out the other side, and beside him stood Shilo Devilgne, watching with his eyes still closed and yet smiling with something approaching pride, as though he could still see.
Ethan was overwhelmed with the need to escape, to avoid whatever it was that he was seeing. A primal drive powered through his nerve endings to flee, to get away from whatever was happening, for it was not natural. He felt as though he was witnessing some secret of the universe that he should never have seen, a trespasser on foreign land, and despite everything that Shilo and Ben had said he felt compelled to evade it at all costs.
Ethan forced his limbs to move, gritted his teeth and strained against his mental bonds, and suddenly he felt one arm and one leg begin to shift. He looked up and felt dizzy as he saw the forest before him and a hazy, indistinct light in the distance that he recognized as the police hazard lights. They blurred and rippled, fading in and out like a barely–recalled memory, as though he were witnessing two times and two locations at once, caught in the middle.
‘Stop him!’
Ethan saw a piercing light burn his retina and he flinched away from it, throwing one arm up to block the light as suddenly the hum around him vanished and he could feel the cold night air on his face and brilliant light flooding the clearing around him. The hairs on his neck were standing up as he saw the brilliant orb of light hovering before them, and right behind it more lights rushing in at low level over the tree tops. The night air thundered with the beating of rotor blades as helicopters flew in toward the clearing at ultra low–level, skimming the trees below.
The last vestiges of Ethan’s torpor scattered with the wind as he whirled and ran for the treeline. From the corner of his eye he saw the brilliant orb suddenly flare as brightly as the sun itself and launch straight up from the clearing, lights around its rim spinning frantically. The air crackled with energy as Ethan saw the helicopters rear up in their headlong dash for the clearing, the pilots straining to avoid the glowing disc’s sudden ascent. Ethan recognized them as Black Hawk helicopters, their fuselages vivid in the light from the craft but without unit markings as they veered left and right in violent breaks.
The glowing disc suddenly emitted a piercing screech and then to Ethan’s amazement it rocketed straight up into the night sky without making a further sound. The craft shrank from the size of a house to a pin–prick of light in a split second and punched a hole through the scattered clouds on its way.
As the helicopters broke away, Ethan heard a ripple of thunder across the heavens that seemed to come from a tremendous height far above the atmosphere.
‘You!’ Shilo bellowed at him, one arm pointed like a shotgun at Ethan. ‘You brought them here!’
Ethan ignored Shilo and yelled to the other cult members.
‘The military are here! I don’t know what they want but unmarked helicopters and no witnesses means trouble! Run, now!’
The Black Hawks were circling around, coming back in to land, and Ethan could see rappel lines spilling from their sides, just like the ones he had once used years before with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even as he saw the lines so he saw troops burst from the helicopters and slide down the lines, weapons in their hands.
Shilo screamed something unintelligible at them and in an instant Ethan saw the cult leader pull a pistol from beneath his shirt and aim at the nearest helicopter.
‘No, don’t shoot!’ Ethan yelled.
Shilo didn’t hear him amid the roar of the helicopter blades and engines, and Ethan heard a feeble popping sound as Shilo fired up at the Black Hawk, the pistol’s muzzle flash bright in the darkness. Instantly, the troops rapelling down the lines returned fire and the crowd of cult members scattered in panic.
‘Make for the treeline!’ Ethan yelled. ‘Get out of the clearing and into cover!’
Shilo bellowed something about staying put, but the unexpected helicopters and gunfire panicked his followers and the noise drowned their leader out. As they saw Ethan sprint for the cover of the trees so they broke en masse and dashed in pursuit.
Ethan ran hard as a Black Hawk helicopter swung into position somewhere overhead and to his left, trying to cut off the fleeing cult members. The helicopter couldn’t position itself too closely to the treeline for fear of tangling the rappel line, and Ethan was able to sprint into the cover of the trees with half of the cult members close behind him.
‘Get to the east shoreline!’ Ethan yelled at them. ‘Make yourself seen to the police! If they can see you, the military can’t kill you!’
A crackle of secondary gunshots split the air as the helicopters peeled off, and the cult members sprinted past Ethan into the darkness. Ethan saw them go and then turned, searching the treeline for Shilo Devilgne.
He spotted Shilo with the gun in his hand, dashing in the opposite direction of his cult and plunging into the treeline to the north of the clearing. Ethan knew instantly that Shilo was distancing himself from his people, gambling that the troops swarming onto the island would follow the pack and that he could slip through and away into the night.
Ethan didn’t hesitate, and plunged through the forest in pursuit.
***
XXVI
Gunshots echoed through the forest as Ethan sprinted through the undergrowth.
Shilo was ahead of him, having slipped through the net of soldiers advancing across the clearing. Ethan could hear the cult members crashing east through the forest somewhere over his right shoulder as he dashed north, pushing hard to intercept Shilo. Beyond them he could hear the shouts of Sheriff’s as they advanced in line abreast toward the clearing, flash light beams slicing like white lasers through the forest.
The soldiers were equipped with night vision goggles and would almost certainly be able to see all of the fleeing figures in the darkness, but Ethan could only hope that they would focus on chasing the pack. Shilo was playing the same dangerous game and Ethan knew that if he could intercept him and pin him down for long enough, the Sheriffs would eventually arrive and the truth would out.
The forest was thick with growth, all of which was damp and cold and dark as Ethan ran headlong through the forest. Helicopters thundered this way and that overhead, their rotors beating the forest floor like giant hammers, search lights sweeping like glowing fingers through the canopy in brilliant white shafts.
‘Out there!’
Ethan heard the call, figured that the soldiers had spotted him, and hoped that he was far enough in front of them to prevent a clear shot. The dense foliage and thick trees prevented the night–vision equipped soldiers from tracking him easily, and the helicopters overhead would struggle to keep him in sight through the dense canopy.
He risked a glance over his shoulder but he could see nothing. Instead, he pushed on as he heard distant rifle fire. To his right he could see the Sheriff’s vehicles amassed on the far shore. Ethan kept running and eventually he burst out of the treeline onto the islands’ north shore.
The gunshot came from his left and he hurled himself down onto the sand and rolled behind a ragged pile of driftwood. The shot thudded into the old wood nearby, spraying him with chips of timber as he rolled over and over in an attempt to change position without being observed.
‘You cannot escape,’ Shilo said from somewhere in the darkness. ‘I can see you, Ethan.’
Ethan peered over the driftwood and saw two glowing red eyes watching him from twenty yards away. Shilo was walking toward him, and though Ethan could barely see anything in the darkness he somehow knew that the pistol was in Shilo’s hand.
‘You can’t escape either, Shilo,’ Ethan said as he scrambled to his right and hid behind a boulder that was half–buried in the sand. ‘Your cult’s little experiment is over. There’s no way this can be ignored by local law enforcement and…’
‘They’re supporting us,’ Shilo said without concern. ‘They’re on the shore to make certain that nobody makes it out of here except in the hands of the military.’
Ethan felt his guts flip over inside him. It hadn’t occurred to him that Shilo and his cult might actually be assisted by the military. That was how Shilo had survived with his cult all these years, and probably the source of his planning.
‘I know how you set me up,’ Ethan said, seeking some way to delay Shilo and give the Sheriffs a chance to reach them.
‘I’m surprised it took you so long,’ Shilo replied, moving to try to get a clear shot at Ethan.
‘Smart game you’ve been playing,’ Ethan went on. ‘Probably worked for you a few times.’
Shilo said nothing. Ethan kept the boulder between him and the cult leader as he struggled to find some way of escaping, but the beach was wide and open and the darkness was no defense against a man who could see infra–red light.
‘Dwayne was dead long before I boa
rded the bus at Kankakee, wasn’t he Shilo.’
Shilo kept moving, trying to force Ethan from his hiding place as he closed in.
‘Switch and bait,’ he replied. ‘For a supposed gumshoe, you fell for it real easy.’
Shilo and Dwayne Austin were of a similar height and build, and with the baseball cap low over his eyes and wearing Austin’s clothes, in the dark of the night, Ethan had not been able to tell any difference. It had not been Dwayne Austin on the Greyhound bus at all, but Shilo Devilgne.
‘You shot Dwayne and had your goons put his body downstream of the bridge,’ Ethan said. ‘You probably had a trusted member of the cult with you on the bus as back–up to call the police and grab a waiting car, and then he picked you up somewhere and you both high–tailed it into the night. Police arrest me, find the body, assume I’ve tossed the gun.’
Shilo didn’t respond as he moved through the darkness.
‘You only forgot one thing,’ Ethan said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Gunshot residue,’ Ethan replied. ‘There wasn’t any on my clothes.’
‘The police would have assumed you tossed the clothes.’
‘The bus footage would show me in the same clothes I was arrested in,’ Ethan countered. ‘They’ll see through the deception in the end.’
‘By which time, you’ll have been in jail for months and we’ll be long gone. Our government friends will ensure a cold trail, nothing for you to follow.’
Gunshots echoed through the night from somewhere deep in the forests.
‘Your government friends are shooting your followers,’ Ethan replied.
‘They’re herding them,’ Shilo countered. ‘The waters here flow too fast for them to escape, and the Sheriffs won’t have jurisdiction here, they know the score. Stay quiet, and money will keep quietly flowing into Cairo. Shout too loud and the town will cease to exist.’
Ethan knew that Shilo wasn’t bluffing. He cursed himself for not seeing through the façade, and wondered how long Shilo and his people would be allowed to live before the military–industrial complex found their activities too hard to cover up.