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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Fires of Midnight

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“Everybody’s scared of something.”

“Even you?”

Blaine nodded. “Lots of things. You can’t avoid fear; you just want to make it work for you.”

“How?”

“By channeling it. By turning it into something you can use. You understand?”

Through his jeans Josh fingered the vial he’d produced inside Group Six.

“Yes,” he said, “I think I do.”

S
al Belamo arrived at the reservation an hour after dawn, looking as ragged and dust-covered as the beat-up rental car he was driving.

“Hell of a trip, boss,” he said, stepping out and moving for the trunk when McCracken and Wareagle approached. Blaine’s last call to him before arriving at the reservation had included a well-planned shopping list just in case. “Got everything you asked for. Wasn’t easy getting it here. You ask me, next time call Federal Express.”

“We won’t be needing it,” Blaine said with an eye on Johnny. Belamo had fitted the key in the trunk lock but didn’t turn it. “I hear that right?”

“Rules have changed. So has your role.”

“Maybe you better hear what I got to say ‘fore you make any changes, boss. Two serious-looking dudes were at the airport waiting for another flight to come in when I got there. One of ’em looked familiar. Vietnamese midget used to be called Colonel Ling. Presently associated with a man you made a candidate for plastic surgery, old friend named Thurman.”

“He deserved it.”

“Should have just killed him.”

“I couldn’t; he was too valuable to the network. This was the next best thing.”

“Blainey?”

“One I never told you about, Indian. Thurman was part of White Star, run out of Cambodia. Had a nice thing going on the side with the local drug lords. All well and good until he started using Special Forces detachments to terrorize villages where the stuff was harvested. Some Vietnamese allies of ours asked if I could do something. Thurman took offense to my interference, sent some of his people to pay me a visit. I paid him a visit after I finished with them. Turned out to be pretty good with a knife. Pretty good.”

Belamo took it all in. “I didn’t hang around long enough to see Pretty Boy himself, but while I was there, a third guy shows up in a truck.” Sal looked at Johnny. “An Indian.”

“A tracker, Blainey.”

“Silver Cloud’s vision …”

“Coming true.”

“Time out, boys,” Belamo interrupted. “Somebody mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”

“G
ood to see you up and around, Cub,” Will Darkfeather said after thoroughly examining Josh.

“That paste was yours, wasn’t it?”

“Belongs to the spirits, Cub. They let me borrow it for a while. Good thing. A few more days you’ll be good as new.”

“That’s good,” McCracken said from the entrance to the tepee, “because he’s leaving.”

Josh shot a cold stare his way. “They’re coming again, aren’t they?”

“Somebody is and I don’t want you or Susan around when they get here.”

“You can’t stop them. You can slow them up, but they’ll keep coming.”

“Look, kid—”

“Don’t call me that. You call me kid and”—Josh gestured toward Darkfeather—” he calls me Cub. I’ve got a name.”

“Sorry, Josh,” Blaine relented. “Now, if you’ll let me finish. I can’t afford to look beyond today. You may be right. Maybe we can never stop them from coming. But don’t forget: I’ve been here before and I know the game. Just play along.”

“It’s my battle, too, in case you forgot.”

“And maybe you’re forgetting what it’s all about: Harry,” Blaine finished when Josh shot him a withering glance. “I found you because of him, and I’m doing what I know he’d want me to do.”

That quieted the boy. His voice lowered when he spoke again. “I wish this could be the end of it.”

“Agreed.”

“But it won’t be. It’s never going to be over.”

“We’ll see about that,” Blaine said, as convincingly as he could manage.

“I
ndian’s right on this one, boss,” Belamo said as Susan and Josh moved together for his car.

“I didn’t know we were voting.”

“You know what I mean. Look, I know where you’re coming from.” Belamo’s callused face softened a little, but his eyes remained resolved and sure. “But there are things I can do you maybe can’t.”

“What do you mean, Sal?”

“You know what I mean, boss, and you know it’s the only sure way out of this.”

McCracken gazed at the boy again. “I can’t accept that.”

“Not like you.”

“Like
me
? That’s the problem.
You’re
like me.” Blaine turned briefly to Johnny. “The Indian’s like me. We live for what we do and when it’s over all I can think of is the next time the call comes. If it stops, I stop, because what I am is what I do. That’s all I’ve got to hold on to and there’s nothing behind me to exchange it for. I look at Joshua Wolfe and that’s what I see. He doesn’t fit in any better than me or you or Johnny. He didn’t ask for that, but he’s got to live with it all the same.”

“He is desperate, Blainey, desperate to be understood and accepted,” Wareagle said, drawing up even with McCracken and Belamo. “He acts toward these ends just as we act toward ours. But his are doomed never to be achieved. His desperation will continue to grow, and desperation is an emotion that has never empowered our actions.”

McCracken gazed at the boy’s silhouette through the rental car’s rear window. “He didn’t kill anyone.”

“Not on purpose, maybe,” reminded Belamo.

“He’s not a killer,” Blaine said, leaving it at that. “And I can’t give up on him. Giving up on him means giving up period. I’ve never done that. I don’t know what it’s like.”

“He is like us, you and me, Blainey?”

“Yes.”

“As we are or as we were?”

“What’s the difference, Indian?”

“Plenty. I was lost once in the woods, before you found me and brought me back. You were lost once in exile, before you drew yourself back in. What we might have been capable of then, we are not capable of now. The wrath we were hiding then has been vanquished. The boy’s is a long way from that.”

Blaine was still looking at the car. “I’m telling you he’s not a killer, Indian. Something in my gut tells me he’s not.”

“We are accepting a great responsibility, Blainey.”

“So what else is new?”

K
illebrew again faced the image of Dr. Furlong Gage, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the video monitor in the Mount Jackson communication center. A pair of security guards flanked him on either side. Back in the isolation lab, one had actually readied a pair of handcuffs before seeming to realize Killebrew’s handicap made them superfluous. But that had been hours ago and so far his interrogation had consisted of the same questions being repeated over and over again.

“I am at a loss to understand your persistent silence, Dr. Killebrew,” Gage started once more, his voice tired and strained. “All I’d like to know is whether you have some way of explaining your behavior?”

Killebrew remained silent.

“Were you conspiring with Dr. Lyle? Can you tell us where she is?”

Killebrew swallowed hard.

“You destroyed your data, Dr. Killebrew,” Gage continued. “I would like you to reconstruct it for me. It is vital that you share everything you have so we—”

At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Gage stopped when a blinding flash of light swallowed Killebrew’s image. He passed it off briefly to transmission problems, until the sounds of a horrific explosion rumbled through his monitor’s speaker.

“Killebrew, can you hear me?”

But the transmission died altogether as the CDC’s containment facility vanished into oblivion, its remnants blasted out through the side of Mount Jackson in a huge gush of fiery heat.

THIRTY-FIVE

T
he day had turned hot and dry early. Dust whipped in funnels and sprayed the air. The four cars carved their way through it slowly and warily. Virtually all of the passengers had drawn their pistols or readied their submachine guns at the first signs of the reservation.

“Stop,” said the Indian tracker named Birdsong from the backseat of the lead car.

The driver slowed the Crown Victoria to a halt. Birdsong climbed out before the car had come all the way to a stop, followed closely by Thurman. His boots crunched against the gravel as he walked about the neat collection of small, rustic cabins dotting the center of the reservation.

“What is it?” Thurman asked, drawing next to him.

Birdsong crouched down and sifted some gravel through his hand. A cowboy-style hat hid so many of his features that it was impossible to tell his expression or age. His entire face was bathed in shadows. But his voice, when he finally spoke, belonged to a man past the midpoint of his life.

“They’re gone,” Birdsong reported.

“They’re
what
?”

Birdsong indicated an indented line in the gravel and Thurman followed his gesture.

“Where did they go?”

Birdsong turned back and glanced at him from beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Two directions.” He pointed to the right. “One large group headed north, that way into the fields. Another, much smaller group headed west toward—”

“That’s the one!” Thurman beamed. “That’s the one we want. Now, where did they go?”

Birdsong aimed his eyes straight ahead, where in the distance shimmering hills rose out of the plains. It might have been an illusion, or a picture waiting to become a postcard. “To the west: the Valley of the Dead.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Thurman asked.

“Only if we have to enter it.”

B
irdsong stopped the convoy again when the road began to arch upward, bending toward the hills they had glimpsed from afar minutes ago. They looked far less foreboding now, and yet somehow still distant. He checked the ground in several areas.

“It is as I feared,” he told Thurman. “They have entered the Valley of the Dead.”

“How many?” Thurman demanded.

“Ten, I think.”

“Is the boy among them?”

“He seems to be.”

Thurman advanced slightly ahead of the Indian. “What is this Valley of the Dead?”

“Sacred Sioux burial ground,” Birdsong told him. “Site of a legendary battle where a small group of Sioux braves defeated an army of Pawnee.”

“You’re not Sioux.”

“No,” acknowledged Birdsong. “I’m Pawnee.”

Thurman swung back to the cars. His men had climbed out and were stretching their legs impatiently. They were freelancers the fat man had retained to help his group achieve the varied purposes it pursued, under the command today of Thurman. To avoid questions and possible recriminations, the primary members of the team were all foreigners. The largest, Goza the Bosnian, reached his massive arms for the sky. The tiny Vietnamese Ling stood next to him, dwarfed in his shadow. The Arabs Aswabi and El-Salab stood alongside each other, inseparable as always in their silence, taking in the surroundings like a pair of eager predators. Standing further back next to a South American named Guillermo Rijas were three Russians who had come over from the Wet Affairs division of the KGB. This group had been joined by seven battle-tested American mercenaries hired at the last minute. The fat man made sure they had the arsenal they required: plenty of high-powered stuff, including grenade launchers and heavy-caliber machine guns.

“What are we waiting for?” Thurman asked Birdsong, swinging back his way.

“We are outsiders, not permitted to enter, especially …” Birdsong’s voice tailed off. His eyes drifted over Thurman’s silent, milling troops.

“Especially
what
?” the big man demanded.

“Those who do enter the Valley of the Dead may not bring the tools of the present with them. Machines and weapons threaten the land with desecration. Those who enter must bring with them only the past.”

“Bullshit,” said Thurman. “Back in the car, tracker. Lead us on.” Birdsong gazed up past the sun into his eyes. “You are making a mistake.”

“I’m making a decision.”

T
he road up the hill was no more than a trail, not meant for tires. As a result, the convoy thumped and bumped up the rocky way, clawing for every yard behind revving engines. They traveled in single file, the windshields of all but the lead car paying a heavy price for being in the path of stones being kicked backwards by spinning, grinding tires. Chips of glass were lost to the dust, scarring the windshields by the time the cars reached the crest of the hill.

“Looks like nothing special to me,” Thurman commented as the lead car started down.

Birdsong shrugged and tightened his hat atop eyes that tried to see in all directions at once. Whatever marked graves or warning totems there might have been were long lost to the years. The Valley of the Dead was a stretch of rolling, sloping land that lay enclosed on the east and west sides by hills that steepened as they rose. The north held only a narrow passageway permitting access, helping to explain how such a small number of Sioux had managed to defeat an army of Pawnee all those years ago. The ground flora was surprisingly rich in bramble, vine and tumbleweed, thin trees dotting the landscape like skeletons thrust out of the ground.

The hills standing on the western side of the valley were pockmarked with caverns and craters. Birdsong knew these had been the defensive positions taken by the Sioux braves during a portion of the legendary battle. But he had left that part out in his earlier narration to Thurman. Even now he could not see how access could be gained to them, what footholds the Sioux braves had used to sequester themselves inside a hundred and fifty years before.

The lead car crested over the hill and began its descent, brake pads squeezed and tortured. The dust thickened once more, caking its windshield. The driver sprayed washer solvent and the glass cleared under the force of the wipers, only to brown quickly again. The process became constant and unavailing, Thurman ultimately rolling down his window to better his own view.

The road leveled off. The convoy started across the valley. There was no longer even the semblance of a trail to aid them and the cars bucked accordingly. Shocks strained to their utmost, the cars continued on, passengers jostled, shoved up against the roof and then snapped back down. In one of the trailing cars, the massive Goza held his hands to the roof to cushion his skull.

The lead car’s driver hit a patch of soft earth and felt his tires sink. He revved his engine, rocked the car from forward to reverse and back again until he felt the tires regain their hold and push forward. The convoy settled onto a straightaway, an unimpaired stretch of the valley lying ahead in the blowing dust.

Twenty yards later, the lead car simply sank into the yielding ground, all four wheels dropping at once.

“What the …”

Thurman’s voice was lost as the ground gave way, the whole car swallowed by the earth, lost to the hood line.

“Doors won’t open!”

“Windows, then! The windows!”

The engine sputtered, barely enough power salvaged to drive the windows down. Slowly they descended and finally jammed against the supporting rubber.

Thurman was the first to pull himself out and back to the surface.

“Shit!” he bellowed.

Upon seeing the lead car eaten by the dust, the car immediately behind it had screeched to a halt too fast for the third car to avoid it. A metal-jarring crunch jolted the occupants of both vehicles, who poured out to inspect the damage. The radiator of the third car was hissing gray smoke. The back end of the second was bent inward and lost to a deep bank in the valley floor, nose tipped upward as if to gasp for breath. The fourth car had tried to avoid it all by swerving and had ended up buried in a sinkhole half as deep as the one in which the lead car was mired.

“Get the weapons!” Thurman shouted at the troops scurrying from the vehicles. “Get the weapons!”

Trunks were snapped or pried open, heavy guns yanked out behind the determined pull of powerful arms, while the two Arabs and Rijas swept the ancient grounds with their rifles and eyes, wary of an ambush. The rest of the group rushed to gear up behind the cover of the cars’ ruined carcasses and natural depressions in the earth.

“Birdsong!” Thurman screamed, looking for the tracker through the gathering dust.
“Birdsong
!
”
He shielded his eyes and continued to search, to no avail.

“He’s gone,” Ling reported, pistol in hand.

“Son of a bitch!” Thurman scowled.

He heard a whizzing through the air, a biting sound like the wind cutting itself. He dropped instinctively into a narrow furrow within the pit where the lead car was wedged and readied his M-16. He cautiously raised his head and swept his rifle from side to side.

The first series of screams came from the right. Thurman followed the sound to the men who’d been unloading gear from the trunks. An arrow lay imbedded in Goza’s shoulder and another in the leg of a Russian named Perochin.

A third man tried to duck away, squeezing a load of ammo in his arms. An arrow took him in the hamstring. He crumpled and the ammo went flying, including a grenade separated from its pin.

“Down!” Thurman bellowed.

The explosion blew apart the car with the ruined front end. It became a flaming carcass that spewed chunks of glass and metal into the air when the gas tank ignited. More screams sounded.

Thurman lunged out from the depression that had swallowed the lead car and joined Ling and Rijas behind a pair of boulders.

“Those caverns,” he said, pointing to the pockmarked hillside facing them from the west. “That’s where the arrows came from. Ling.”

The tiny Vietnamese was already zigzagging back toward the heaviest concentration of the team. Thurman watched him disappear into the dust. Seconds later fifty-caliber machine-gun fire split the air, echoing through the valley as it sought a bead on the mysterious openings in the hillside. With fifty-caliber fire covering them, the two Arabs burst up and fired five forty-millimeter rounds each upward. Four of the shots were dead on target with the caverns and four others close enough. Huge plumes of dirt and debris were blown out of the hillside, showering down in avalanche fashion. When the shower cleared, some of the black openings had disappeared altogether while others had become even wider, jagged tears in the hillside’s structure.

Thurman crept off to check on his casualties. The wind sounds mocked him and kept Birdsong’s warnings about defiling the land alive. Thurman stilled his massive frame briefly in a depression and focused his thoughts on the rational. Birdsong had placed at ten the number of opponents who had entered the valley ahead of them. The archers among these who’d been in the caverns had surely been taken by the strafing barrage. So Thurman calculated the opposition had been reduced to seven at most.

His count put his own mobile force at ten now, including Goza, who had somehow pried the arrow from his shoulder. The grenade blast had taken two lives and added another wounded to the other two who’d been shot by arrows. Fortunately their entire arsenal remained intact. The element of surprise that had worked for McCracken was expended. The tables were about to turn.

Staying close to the ground, Thurman bolted out and helped drag one of the Russians to safety, keeping an eye peeled toward the hills at all times. In actuality, McCracken’s forces had hampered them only minimally; Thurman would have posted men at the rear of his group’s advance anyway. Now it would be the wounded who were given that task. He made sure the three men who qualified were well armed and properly placed as Ling readied the remainder of the force to move.

“Cover our rear,” Thurman ordered, before rushing up to join the others.

C
hief Silver Cloud was smoking a long wooden pipe in his tepee when the flap parted and Birdsong stepped through.

“Sit, my friend,” the chief beckoned.

The tracker moved toward him and removed his hat, revealing a shock of graying hair. “I did as you instructed.”

“They went along?”

“Couldn’t get into the valley fast enough.”

“Of course, and their weapons must be many.”

“Indeed.”

“That is a pity.” The old man smiled between puffs.

“I told them I was Pawnee.”

“They believed you?”

“I guess to them,” Birdsong said, “we all look the same.”