Vanishing Point: A Warner & Lopez prequel novel

by Dean Crawford

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Ethan said, trying to stay out of sight behind the boulder. ‘You must know that.’

  Shilo shrugged, his white shirt visible in the darkness as he closed in on Ethan’s position. ‘Everybody dies. I just want to be able to complete my work here, and for that, you must die.’

  ‘All lies lead to the truth,’ Ethan shot back, crouching lower out of sight. ‘You’re only delaying the inevitable.’

  ‘A delay is all that I require, but it’s your end that is truly inevitable.’

  Shilo stepped around the driftwood and lunged forward past the boulder, the gun pointing out in front of him as he aimed at the spot where Ethan was hiding.

  Shilo froze as he saw that the spot behind the rock was empty, the cold blue–black image of the sand and the rock devoid of human presence.

  Ethan leaped at Shilo with every ounce of force he could muster, the Mylar sheet wrapped around his body completely concealing him from Shilo’s infra–red vision. He plowed into Shilo’s side and sent the cult leader crashing to the ground as Ethan grasped for the pistol and felt the cold metal against his hands.

  Shilo rallied and twisted away from Ethan, trying to prise the gun from his grasp. The cult leader’s unnatural strength was too great for Ethan and he felt the pistol slip from his fingers as Shilo twisted and slammed an elbow into Ethan’s stomach. Ethan felt his guts convulse as the breath rushed from his lungs and his vision starred.

  Shilo scrambled free and got to his feet, standing back and aiming the pistol at Ethan as he brushed sand and grit from his eyes.

  ‘Nice try, Warner,’ he grinned. ‘Night night.’

  Ethan scrambled to get to his feet and yank the Mylar sheet over him again but he knew it was futile, there was no way he could reach the treeline before Shilo fired. He made a single pace and then he heard the gunshot as though it were right beside his head. Ethan dropped to his knees and his hands scrambled to find the wound, but he felt nothing and turned to see Shilo limping away at a low run, one hand holding his own belly and his pistol discarded on the beach just a few yards from where Ethan lay.

  Ethan yanked the Mylar sheet back over himself and slid silently away to crouch amid the driftwood, certain that the soldiers had caught up with them. He lay flat and silent against the sand in the blackness, and then saw a woman walk from the treeline. She was armed with a pistol that she kept aimed at Shilo’s fleeing form as she stepped out onto the beach and then reached down. She picked up the discarded pistol and made it safe before she slipped it into her jeans and surveyed the beach.

  Although he could barely make out her face, Ethan recognized her walk and the arrogant set of her shoulders. In the darkness Ethan knew that Lopez could see nothing, and the Mylar sheet helped conceal him from the infra–red goggles of the soldiers he could hear crashing through the undergrowth somewhere behind her.

  ‘Ethan,’ she whispered. ‘You there?’

  Ethan opened his mouth to answer, but then held his silence as the soldiers burst onto the beach.

  ‘Stand still, hands in the air!’

  Lopez obeyed. ‘Civilian, I’m with the Sheriff’s office!’

  The troops encircled her, focused on Lopez and entirely unaware of Ethan’s presence mere yards from where they were.

  ‘We tracked someone else here,’ a soldier demanded. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘He went that way,’ Lopez indicated with a nod of her head toward the water, which was now black and silent. ‘I think he’s injured but I didn’t get a good look at him.’

  The soldiers kept their weapons trained upon her as an officer advanced and took both of the pistols from Lopez, then backed away from her again. A silence followed, and Ethan realized that the soldiers were deciding what to do with Lopez. There were no words, an ominous warning that she could be neutralized right there and then.

  Lopez, true to form, didn’t hesitate to take control.

  ‘You got a choice,’ she said carefully. ‘Either create more mess to cover up, or hand this over to the Sheriff’s office and let them process the cult members. By the time they’re done with the crap ton of paperwork this will create, you guys can be out of here.’

  The soldiers did not respond, and Ethan got ready to move. About all he could do was hurl the Mylar sheet over Lopez and hope that the soldiers’ shots missed.

  ‘You’re not in a position to give orders to…’ the officer began to reply.

  ‘The hell with orders! You’ve got a hundred or more missing people on this island that are now with the Sheriff’s Department,’ she snapped, ‘and no amount of covering–up is going to hide that now after the godamned circus you boys just whipped up out here! There’s a Cairo Police Officer laying dead out there in the woods and that’s his pistol. The other pistol is evidence in a homicide investigation. People are gonna want to know what happened here, and I get the sense that you fellas don’t want to be in the picture when the sun comes up. Your best bet is to get everyone shoreside and into the hands of the Sherrifs, then clear this whole site up before some idiot rings the National Guard and you’re all on Fox News. Agreed?’

  The soldiers exchanged glances, and then the officer radioed in using callsigns and abbreviations Ethan had never heard before. A brisk and scratchy reply came over the radio, and the soldier made his decision.

  ‘With us,’ one of them instructed Lopez. ‘You were never here and you never saw a thing.’

  Lopez did not reply but she turned with them as they marched back up the beach. Ethan peered from beneath the Mylar sheet and saw her glance back out across the deserted sandbar for some glimpse of him.

  Moments later, they vanished into the darkness of the forest.

  ***

  XXVII

  ‘What the hell is going on out there?’

  Sherrif Jonas McBride stood with his hands on his hips, scowling as he looked out over the water of the Mississippi Channel to Angelo Towbar, where he could see a number of unmarked vessels anchored just off the island’s far shore.

  The Sheriffs had successfully detained, or rescued, depending on how one looked at it, almost one hundred cult members who had flocked to their line as the soldiers opened fire in the forests of the towbar. Panicked and confused, they had willingly handed themselves over, only to find themselves under arrest for potential involvement in two homicides, that of their fellow cult member Dwayne Austin, and of Cairo police officer Robert Henley.

  The ships had arrived pre–dawn, cruising silently into position off the shore of the towbar. Lopez had seen them as first light revealed a dull fall morning of grey overcast and mist that lingered over the river’s languid waters.

  ‘We’re not going to find out about it any time soon,’ Lopez replied as she watched several former members of the cult being treated by paramedics.

  The arrival of military helicopters had been followed within minutes by their equally rapid departure, along with the troops that they had deployed. Within an hour the ships had arrived, not large vessels but certainly big for this part of the river, and Lopez had been able to see things being loaded aboard in the dim light of day.

  ‘That island contains evidence of what happened here,’ McBride insisted.

  Beside the Sheriff stood Lopez’s lawyer Honor Creston, who had worked overtime on an heroic scale to bring in federal agencies to prevent the military from simply mopping everything up before justice could be done. Unfortunately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not due to arrive at the scene until the afternoon, and Lopez felt certain that the ships and the personnel would be long gone by then. That, she also felt certain, was no coincidence.

  Lopez turned to McBride.

  ‘Shilo Devilgne, the cult leader, he was armed with a pistol,’ she explained. ‘There should be DNA on the weapon that you can match, but the soldiers took it. It’s my guess that the weapon is the same one used to kill Dwayne Austin, and if ballistics confirm that to be so, the weapon can’t have been in Ethan’s possession when Aust
in died. Shilo, or at the very least one of his cult members, should be identifiable from the CCTV on the bus or the local area, confirming the set–up.’

  McBride glanced down at her.

  ‘If everything pans out the way you’re saying it will, the DA will almost certainly drop the charges against Ethan Warner. I ain’t sayin’ his coming down here will help his case though, it should have been left to us to figure out what was happening.’

  Lopez smiled, managed to bite her tongue.

  ‘I’m sure you would have done. He only fled because he knew that there wouldn’t be enough time for the Sheriff’s Department to solve everything without him having to rot in a cell for a couple of years. My lawyer has got cell–phone and banking evidence linking Shilo Devilgne to Dwayne Austin’s bail and also calls from the Greyhound bus Austin was travelling on before he died. Shilo did his work well and has probably killed before.’

  ‘Which is what gripes me the most,’ McBride scowled. ‘We had any sign of him yet?’

  ‘Nothing,’ another deputy confirmed. ‘Warner’s missing as well.’

  Lopez glanced at her lawyer.

  ‘Is there any danger that the DA would see that as a sign of cooperation? Ethan’s not anything to do with this cult, but they might play that card to keep him on the hook.’

  Honor Creston shook her head.

  ‘Ethan’s off the hook, no doubt about it,’ she assured Lopez. ‘After what happened down here, even with the military clean up, there’s too much evidence pointing to corruption and a set–up for any prosection to take the case on. Ethan didn’t kill Dwayne Austin, we know that now. The footage of the caller from the Greyhound looks like a match for the same cult member whom you said killed Officer Henley. The Sheriffs have recovered cell phones from the cult members, and if one of them matches, the case will turn against the cult rather than against Ethan.’

  Lopez looked again at the island. Before anybody had been able to enquire just what the hell was going on, the military had put up signs warning of a hazardous chemical spill of some kind, reportedly from an old storage tank buried on the island. An exclusion zone had been set up and she could see armed soldiers in military power boats cruising the channel, ensuring that all vessels gave the towbar a wide berth.

  ‘Ethan might have decided to slip away once the military showed up,’ Lopez surmized. ‘He didn’t know about them, so he would have considered them hostile. I’m damned certain I heard his voice out there somewhere, before I caught up with Shilo.’

  McBride spoke quietly, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Did you, er, take a shot?’

  Lopez raised an eyebrow. ‘I fired into the air, Sheriff, honest. Caught him off guard. I thought he’d roll up but he didn’t and fled down the beach, dropped the pistol on the way. I don’t know what happened to him and frankly I don’t give a damn. My only concern is for my partner, and I’m hoping to hell that he’s not been kidnapped by the soldiers who stormed down here last night.’

  McBride thought for a moment.

  ‘Well, for now we’ll call off the manhunt against your partner, given the weight of evidence presented here that his role in Dwayne Austin’s homicide was a set–up. Ideally, that’ll give him a reason to bring himself in and we can clear this whole thing up for once and for all.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Lopez said as she felt the tension finally drain away from her shoulders.

  She hadn’t slept in two nights and felt unsteady on her feet as she turned and walked back up the shore to the parking lot at the old fort. Officer Henley’s body had been recovered from the woods before the military could get hold of it and by now would be in storage at the morgue until a coroner could confirm the cause of death. Lopez knew of course how the officer had died at the hands of the occultist, who was now in custody. She knew also that she had to be involved in that process, as she was the only witness to Henley’s death, one that had hit her hard. He had been a good man with a promising career, and had she not sought his help he would probably still be alive.

  She was walking back to her car when she saw three men packing away cameras and other equipment into their vehicles. She quickened her pace and called out to them.

  ‘Hey?’

  The three men whirled and threw their hands in their air, wide eyed and terrified.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ one of them screeched.

  Lopez slowed, her hands out and open to show them she wasn’t armed.

  ‘Take it easy, nobody’s shootin’ anyone. I just got some questions.’

  The three men cautiously lowered their hands as they watched her.

  ‘Sorry,’ one of them said, a bearded guy wearing a Star Trek T–shirt beneath his jacket. ‘We just got grilled by the military and all our footage got taken.’

  ‘You were filming here last night?’ Lopez asked them.

  ‘Sure was,’ came the reply. ‘Got some awesome shots of a craft out over the towbar, bright lights, spinning disc, the whole nine yards!’ His excited face collapsed as he recalled what followed. ‘Then the soldiers show up, then the military, and everything got seized.’

  Lopez thought for a moment.

  ‘Don’t suppose any of you boys were smart enough to have an off–site back up?’

  The three men looked at each other.

  ‘Damn it Jeff, I told you we shoulda set that up last year!’

  Lopez rolled her eyes as she listened to the three men start arguing, each blaming the other for their oversight.

  ‘Guys,’ she said. ‘GUYS!’

  The three men fell silent.

  ‘Listen, an officer was killed on the island last night. Is there anything you can tell me about this place, anything at all, that might help me figure out what the military are doing down here?’

  The three men calmed, and the taller, bearded guy spoke out.

  ‘Most all places that have UFO activity have military people around, although we’ve never figured out why as the government swears blind that it has no interest in the phenomenon. The locals said that we should stay away from the towbar, that folks don’t much go out there. Shoulda listened I guess. I wonder what happened to that guy from Chicago who went out there yesterday?’

  Lopez locked eyes with him. ‘Guy from Chicago?’

  ‘Yeah, tall, a little rough looking. You know him?’

  ‘Kinda. What did he say?’

  ‘That he was goin’ out to the towbar to see what the lights were.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I guess about eight o’clock last night, we never saw him again after that.’

  Lopez nodded and looked back at the towbar. Lindsay had helped Ethan get out to the island at dawn, and he didn’t appear to have come back afterward. Whatever had happened out there, Ethan had either died a part of it or escaped into the night. If he had escaped, then for some reason he didn’t want to be found.

  ‘Thanks guys.’

  ***

  XXVIII

  The water north of the towbar was rough as it entered the channel, but a little further down it calmed, the channel itself just a hundred yards or so from the forested shore of Cairo.

  Ethan slithered out of the water on his belly, up the shallow wash and into the cover of the trees. His clothes were stuffed with reeds and grass to help break up his outline, but as soon as he reached the cover of the trees he tore off the foliage and tried to warm himself.

  The water of the channel had been icy cold and now he shivered as he made his way east toward the Levee Road. He had not been able to use the row boat to return to land, afraid that it would be too visible from the shore, and so had been forced to swim instead.

  There was no traffic at this early hour, especially in a town as thinly populated as Cairo. He crossed the road and followed a dusty trail that crossed old railway lines overgrown with weeds, until he saw the first of Cairo’s houses crouched low along a treeline ahead.

  There was no way that he would be able to make it to Linds
ay Trent without being seen, that much he knew for certain. Cairo was quiet but it wasn’t a true ghost town, at least not yet. Ethan scouted along the treeline for some way into the town that provided him with cover, following the natural contours of the earth and the woodland to keep himself out of sight.

  He was exhausted, having only been able to grab a couple hours sleep during the night. The Mylar sheet had kept him warm and safe from infra–red prying eyes, but now in the light of day the silvery material was a liability. Ethan needed warmth, shelter, rest and water. Although famished, food was last on the list right now.

  Ethan hurried along through the gray mist hanging in diaphanous swirls around the trees and was almost at the main road when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. In an instant he saw the faint outline of a soldier hidden in the undergrowth, and before he could move three more emerged like ghosts from their laying–up points and surrounded him.

  ‘With us, move, now!’

  Ethan made no attempt to escape the soldiers as he was jostled down the lonely track, this time heading away from Cairo. He was guided north for a few hundred yards until they reached a pair of white vans with blacked–out windows. The vehicles were parked out of sight of the town, concealed behind trees and foliage near the Levee Road.

  Ethan was prodded to a spot alongside one of the vans. A sliding door was yanked back by someone inside and Ethan found himself staring at a gray–haired officer in standard disruptive pattern material combat smocks that bore no unit insignia.

  ‘Inside,’ the officer snapped.

  Ethan climbed in, his boots squelching with cold water as the door was slammed shut. Ethan found himself handed a towel and a steaming cup of coffee that the officer poured from a flask.

  ‘You lasted a long time,’ he observed as he handed the cup to Ethan.

  Ethan cupped his hands around it and sipped gratefully. He’d been caught, but right now he was so damned cold and tired that he didn’t much care.