Cain's Blood (28 page)

astillo watched the boy fuss with his gas mask, weaving his
tiny head this way and that to counter the weight of the side
respirator, the same type used by British SAS a decade ago.
Castillo figured Ox had paid three hundred apiece for them.
The combat ponchos they all wore weren’t too bad either, would probably work for a quick TI scan.

Of course, thermal imaging was the least of their worries. The
things looking for Jeff wouldn’t be tracking by shape or heat or noise.
They were after blood.
How
exactly, Castillo had no clue. But there was
no doubt that it was how they’d found Jeff and the other boys. Maybe
even how they’d found Castillo all those years before.

What the hell am I doing?
Castillo stopped his assessment. Or, rather,
amplified it.
I’m going to war with the United States.
By tomorrow, he and the others would probably be statistics, relegated to a Wiki page. Another ruby ridge or Waco. They’d talk about
the crazies holed up in South Dakota for guns, drugs, religion, whatever.
Who knew? The real story would never be his to tell. Only the victors
told stories. And Stanforth and the others would surely come up with
something for the news to talk about for a couple of days. It was easy
enough to make everyone vanish. him, Jeff, Ox, and the rest. Maybe
even kristin too, now, if they didn’t pull this off. Like the kid had
warned when they’d first met.
In any case, the truth would never be believed anyway. Cloned serial killers? even more absurd than the notion of the Air force shooting
down flight 93 or Goldman Sachs orchestrating a seven
trillion
dollar
heist off the American people. So much easier to believe that brave
Americans fought terrorists over an empty field or that a Peter-Paul
bailout had been necessary to avoid the next Great Depression. So
much easier.
As lex parsimoniae.
Occam’s razor. It made the whole damn
world go round. Men like Stanforth counted on the principle to pull off
the unthinkable at will. A third of the country couldn’t name the vice
president. Less than half could find Afghanistan on a map. Most people
were plain fucking ignorant.
In a shallow bunker on American soil, Castillo realized that he was
no different. for the last two years, he’d stayed focused on the small
picture.
His
own. The one that was always clearest, made the most
sense. Work. Sleep. fuck. eat. Watch sports. repeat. All the while, tell
yourself you’re one of the good guys. Not like those
other
stupid assholes. Not like those others . . .
“They’re here.”
Jeff’s muted voice broke through his dark reflections, and Castillo
turned to the boy.
“Castillo . . . ?”
he patted Jeff’s shoulder, then tapped the transmitter on his chest.
“Blue 8, message. Over.” The boy shivered beside him. Castillo tried
again: “Blue Team 8?”
“Send. Over.”
“Anything?”
“Nothing yet,” a voice from two miles away answered. A “team” of
one man. There was no reason to disclose their true numbers.
“They’re here,” Jeff said again.
Castillo looked down the ditch-line toward Ox, who shrugged. Castillo shouldered his rifle, a modified G3, and surveyed the obverse field
through the power scope. Nothing. “Gold Team 4?” he tried the scout
hidden on the central bunker’s roof.
“Negative.”
“roger. Out.” Castillo eyed the scope again, and in the ethereal
smolder of night vision and thermal imaging, the ghost world returned.
It was a territory Castillo had long walked in. These otherworldly
shapes and hues, smoldering and lucent like another reality hidden
within our own. how many hours, weeks, years he had traveled here,
he could not say exactly, but it was enough that it was as familiar and
comforting as the real world. Maybe, he allowed, more so. how many
men had he watched from this same spectral perspective? following their every movement, sometimes for hours. Sometimes pulling
the trigger, sometimes not. The thousands of ghosts he’d seen: Men,
women, and children drifting over a dim landscape of green and black
shadow.

The souls of the perished dead assembled forth
from Erebus. Betrothed girls and youths, and muchenduring old men, and tender virgins, having a
newly-grieved mind, and many wounded warriors,
possessing gore-smeared arms. In great numbers,
they all wandered together about the blood-filled
trench on all sides with horrific screams and
clamour.

homer’s words came to mind, but no ghosts moved among his vision. Only the barren extraterrestrial terrain. forsaken. Dead.
They’re
here. . . .
Jeff’s words again echoing.

“Gold Team?” Castillo checked in once more.
“hold up,” the voice crackled back. “Something . . .”
“D2,” Ox’s voice now. “Message all signs. Movement left of the

Castillo knew the old pickup was to his right, but out of his line of
fire. his discipline and trust remained solid. he kept an eye only on his
area. Still nothing. Jeff tensed beside him.

What’s he doing?”
“C2, engage?” Ox asked.
“your call,” Castillo replied.
“G4?” Ox’s voice calling the sharpshooter above. “Alex? you got

him?”
“Ah, affirmative . . . roger. In three, two . . .”
Two shots from the Barrett M107 sniper rifle exploded like a small

cannon. Ox’s automatic fire sputtered in the blast’s echo.
Castillo bumped Jeff softly with his elbow in reassurance.
“Loud,” Jeff said.
Castillo nodded, edged closer. rifle up. Still nothing.
Blue reported in. “B8. Message over. Movement in the south and

west,” the muted voice said from four miles out in the dark somewhere
in his thermal-guarded ghillie suit. “five, six. Ten men. Spreading out.
Setting the perimeter.”

Ten.
Castillo shook his head. That’s all Blue could see. Might be
another dozen covering the back side or to the east. Still, fifty men . . . it
would be the least of their worries. “G4?”

No response. Jeff’s gas mask stared up at him, and Castillo turned
down toward Ox. The elfin man was huddled against the forward trench
barrage, his back turned to Castillo, the Ak74 aimed downfield. “Gold
Team?” he tried again. “Ox?” No point using the handles. These people
already knew who Ox was, where he lived, what he knew. . . .

“Send.” Ox’s voice emerging in his ear.
“Target?”
“Negative. I don’t know . . . maybe. had him dead in my sights. But

“Copy that. G4?” Maybe Wilke, overhead with the sniper rifle, had
a better look at what they’d done. If anything. “Gold four. Come in.”
Castillo fought the urge to turn and eye the roof above.

Jeff mumbled something beside him. Castillo wasn’t sure it had
been words at all, and he turned. The boy stood frozen, hands and arms
out before his own mask. Studying his suit. Tiny splashes, stars, of blood
glistened on his suit. Twinkled almost. A dozen tiny red stars. Castillo
stared in confusion as another appeared. And one more.

The next drops hit him now. Spitting down on them both like dark,
reluctant rain from above. he finally looked up. Jeff, too.
The moist stain started at the top of the concrete building, trailed
unevenly in several distinct rivulets down the side of the wall. An arm
dangled off the rooftop. The sharpshooter, Wilke. Braced by the elbow,
the wrist and fingers sagging and lifeless above them. The blood dribbled slowly, steadily from the dangling hand. They watched as his arm
slid backward, something unhurriedly dragging his body back from the
edge.
“This is Castillo,” he snapped. he grabbed the boy by the chest
with his hand. “red 1, Go.”
The voice came back. “Go?”
“Now!” Castillo roared, pulling Jeff toward him.
The whole night exploded, shook the hilltop. The boom, a long
series of succinct succeeding detonations, heralded an unnatural and
fleeting dawn in the western woods.
Castillo had lifted Jeff with his left arm and was already carrying
him down the line toward the bunker’s entrance. random rifle fire returned from the forest indicated that the lure had been taken. Smoke
rolled like mist out of the forest after them.
Ox and another man waited, providing cover, outside the barred
entrance. They unleashed a hail of ammunition as another series of
explosions shattered the western woodland. “Guess they didn’t get the
hint the first time,” Ox said beneath his mask, unlatching the entryway.
“Come on.”
“Wilke’s down,” Castillo told him.
“Copy.” Ox stepped inside, rifle aimed above toward where Wilke’s
body had been.
“C2 to all: hands Out. hands Out.” Castillo gave the signal to
retreat back toward the shelter in an attempt to keep bringing them
closer, then he led Jeff, Ox, and another man down the long, dim hall.
Thin muted green fluorescent lights lined the descending floor, blurring
into one long line as they filed back together. Jeff shuffled behind him,
knowing that every second counted. Ox and the other man, McLaughlin, fell into step to their rear. More gunfire trailed in ever-softening
echoes behind them. reinforcements, just two men, moved into new
positions against the advancing ATf teams.
At the end of the tunnel, the passageway split into a T-shape, and
Castillo guided Jeff to the left, pushing him into the waiting darkness.
As quickly, he turned back, crouched to one knee. Ox had struck a
similar position opposite them along the top of the T as McLaughlin
wrestled with his harness. Castillo thought about taking his place, then
glanced back down the long hallway.
Through the night vision goggles, nothing. Thermal heat scope,
nothing.
If we’re hard to see with stuff Ox found on eBay, what does this killer
have at its disposal?
The egg that had given birth to Jeff had started as a
single cell from a dead hair follicle. In a world that could do something
like that, how difficult to genetically alter a man into something coldblooded? Castillo’d been spraying his uniforms for more than a decade
with chemicals to reduce his own infrared signature. how difficult to
change the genetic makeup of skin?
Castillo pressed his eye tight to the scope, still picking up nothing
in the hallway.
Will it wait for the others? Did it not take the bait?
“Castillo?” The mask-stifled voice from behind.
“hold on  .  .  .” he gestured Jeff quiet, his other hand still on the
trigger. he poured his whole self into the scope, trying to spirit a form
that simply wasn’t there. Still . . . nothing.
“Castillo . . .” Jeff’s voice again.
Castillo looked down and discovered the boy had slumped against
the wall. he was half curled into a ball, one knee up, hands up and
crossed and bent awkwardly in front of his mask. Protectively.
“Take it easy, kid, we got you,” he said, his voice sounding strange to
his own ears, quiet. Comforting. “he’ll come, but it’s not here yet. We
just have to wait—”
“It’s
here,
” cried Jeff. he was shaking uncontrollably, his fingers
trembling over the hard shell encasing his face.
Castillo swung around, checked again, squinting hard into the
scope—nothing at all, not the faintest blip of life. “There’s nothing
there, buddy,” he began, only to break off his words at Jeff’s nearincoherent moan, the sound thick. Primal. Not a sound any kid should
make. Not a sound any human should make, but one he’d made himself
once in a cave in Iran.
“you picking up
anything
?” he asked the others.
“Negative,” both men across from him replied as one.
Damn it.
Jeff’s fingers had peeled away from his mask and curled into a
quivering fist. A slender finger jabbed into the darkness, shaking and
crippled with fright. “It . . . it’s,” he moaned, his voice a mere whisper of
sound, as if it was being ground out of him by sheer will. he couldn’t
unlock his hand, continuing to stab into the pitch black
.
“Jeff, what?”
The boy said, “It’s standing right there.”
Castillo glanced down at his useless scope, then back to the kid,
a one-human GPS for all that was sick in the world. “fuck it,” he
growled. “McLaughlin! Go.”
The man on the other side of the T jerked around to him, his surprise palpable even though Castillo couldn’t see his eyes. “Go?”
“All of it!” Castillo barked and McLaughlin moved before the command had even finished, the flamethrower belching forth into the dark
down the hallway.
But the thick blazing fire trail had already stopped and erupted in a
hundred directions.
McLaughlin jerked the stream of flame upward. Blinding light,
flames, and heat blasted back at them all.
“fuck!” Castillo fell back, pushing the boy with him. Curses and
shouting across the hallway. The flamethrower had stopped. The hallway glowed warmly, the burning gel still spurted in a line on the floor.
And something else.
Something
was
standing right in front of them. Not three feet away.
Something screaming. And on fire.
A man.
And a shape and presence Castillo recognized immediately now.
Castillo wrapped his hand into Jeff’s collar, below the mask. Pulled
him closer, and then behind.