The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (20 page)

It was four hours past nightfall and Kimberlain was dozing when the door eased open to allow a trio of figures to enter, the middle one dwarfed by the ones flanking it.

Tap … tap … tap …

The sound of a cane marking the blind man’s path forward reached Kimberlain’s ears. The darkness of his hospital room was broken only by the spill of street lamps sneaking through cracks in the blinds.

“I could come back in the morning,” Zeus said, after the Ferryman had reached above him and switched on the light.

Kimberlain sat up. “I think I can stomach you better after my evening pain shot.”

The old man gave him a knowing grin as his two giant bodyguards went to stand by the door. “Ah, but this time it was you who called me.”

“Because we seem to have something in common. That doesn’t change the way I feel.”

“Necessity heals all wounds.”

“Not the old ones, Zeus, not the old ones.”

“You mentioned the Hashi when you called, Ferryman.”

“Somehow they figure into what I’ve been working on.”

“The murders?”

He nodded. “They’re almost certainly behind them, and with the theft of those explosives fitting in so neatly in terms of the timing …”

“You sense a connection, eh, Ferryman? Never were one to pass anything off to coincidence.”

“I think the C-12
plastique
might have plenty to do with something I’ve stumbled on accidentally.” And he proceeded to relate to Zeus all the day’s events, repeating in the end the threat rasped at him by the dying Hashi killer.

“The contradiction in terms is interesting,” Zeus told him. “One million will die and then fifty million.”

“No, Zeus, you’re interpreting the words wrong, specifically one word: ‘before’.”

“Of course! In front of.”

“So it could mean one million will die
in front of
fifty million witnesses.”

“Television?”

“Yes,” Kimberlain acknowledged. “A huge event of some sort, with one million people on the scene.”

“And these one million are to be murdered then and there. The explosives! Of course!” The old man didn’t bother to restrain his smile. “A challenge for us, Ferryman, requiring our best efforts if it is to be successfully overcome.”

“This isn’t a game, Zeus.”

“We need to be allies here, Ferryman. The past must be put behind us. What forced us apart in earlier times were errors in interpretation, not intention. You believed I left you in the jungle to die because of my fear of what you might do, and, accordingly, my actions forced you to make the very move I feared the most. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Kimberlain said nothing.

“After the dissolution of The Caretakers, I was transferred to another role that was important but infinitely less rewarding. Security for a collection of secret installations. They made me a night watchman, Ferryman, however glorified. You see, we’ve both had to make adjustments in our lives.”

“Let’s get back to the subject at hand.”

“Fear not, Ferryman. The best minds in the network will be on this by midnight.” Zeus smiled. “You’ll also be pleased to know that all charges against you have mysteriously vanished and the file containing the investigating officers’ report has disappeared.”

“Sounds like you’re not entirely helpless after all, Zeus.”

“We’ll talk in the morning.”

But it wasn’t morning when Kimberlain awoke next. And by all rights he shouldn’t have awoken at all. The room was just as it had been when Zeus had left. Nothing to raise him from his slumber except …

A shape stirred, straddling a pair of chairs at arm’s distance from the bedside, a monstrous silhouette set against the room’s darkness.

“Hello, Ferryman,” said Winston Peet.

Chapter 18

I’M STILL ALIVE,
Kimberlain thought.
That’s something, but it might not be much.

He stifled the instinct to reach for the call button, knowing that would only summon more victims for Peet.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” the giant said, moving not an inch.

“That’s considerate.”

“I owed you that much.” Peet shifted and the chairs creaked.

“How’d you find me?”

“At The Locks you mentioned the messenger man had brought you in on this just as he brought you into the chase for me. Finding him in New York was simple. He led me to you.”

“Good old Hermes.”

Peet regarded him calmly. “You don’t have a gun, Ferryman. If you did it would be out by now.”

Kimberlain just looked at him, fighting with his mind to regain control of his body. If Peet lunged, he had to be ready. If he could fend off the giant for a few moments, the commotion would attract help. He found himself wishing Zeus hadn’t dismissed the police posted by his door.

And then Peet stood up, just a foot separating him from the ceiling. Kimberlain flinched and drew back. A pair of IV pouches smacked against each other.

“Back in the dark times, Ferryman, I thought I had come to grips with what I was and wished to be. The killing beat back the great flames that raged inside me. But then, on the day of my rebirth, you stood over me with gun ready. The traditional bullet never emerged, but a spiritual one did. The dark part of me was slain, and for that I owed you a debt I waited all those years in The Locks to repay. I knew the time was coming when I wrote you the letters, and I knew the time had come when you visited. I saw death in your eyes, Ferryman, your own death, and I alone can prevent it.”

Then you’re not going to kill me
. Kimberlain might have said it out loud if the giant hadn’t continued, bald head glistening in the thin light.

“I could have escaped anytime I chose; a dozen different ways were available. But until you came and I saw your eyes, there was no reason. You gave me reason, just as you gave me life with your spiritual bullet. I must save you because it is through this that my final cleansing will take place.”

Peet smiled, and the gesture sent chills through Kimberlain. He wanted to pull the bed sheet up high over his eyes like a child hiding from imagined monsters.

“Back in The Locks, Ferryman, I said we were the same because we can feel disturbances in the great field of energy that surrounds and binds the world. In the jungle, the hunter is alerted by the trail. In our world, the hunter is alerted by vibrations that don’t belong, neither good nor evil but simply anomalous. All those years ago, you felt me in that town, knew I was there, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And when you tracked Quail you knew he was out there too. You had no evidence of his existence, no less his true identity, but you felt the truth and nearly caught him.”

“Where is this leading?”

“He’s a part of this now.”

“The Dutchman?”

Peet nodded. “Out there as we speak. The disturbances in the layers of
ki
I am attuned to alerted me, and I must be the one to stop him.”

“This is starting to sound very personal.”

“For me there is no personal, Ferryman. My soul and spirit have been given up to something much greater. All the personal died back in time to your spiritual bullet. It is more that my reborn soul cannot rest peacefully so long as he is out there; the part of me I seek to be rid of clings to life in his person. Just because I vanquished it in myself does not mean it is gone. It merely fled into another soul, which must be crushed if I am ever to end the flux within me. That my path will cross Quail’s is our certain common fate. Either he will kill me or I will kill him. If I don’t try, then your life will end by his hand.” Peet backed up a step, drawing a hard swallow from Kimberlain. “I will leave you the phone number of the room where I am staying.”

“I could give it to the authorities,” Kimberlain said, trying to sound as though he meant it. “Have you picked up.”

“But you won’t,” Peet told him. “Because you’re going to need me.”

Danielle accepted the report without surprise.

“We can make no sense of the note,” came the voice from across the ocean. “The man is something else again. Are you sure it was—”

“Yes, I’m sure. The Ferryman.”

“And the Hashi tried to kill him in Mendelson’s office?”

“
Along
with Mendelson.”

“Then whatever the Ferryman is pursuing led him to Mendelson as well.”

“His pursuits have somehow intersected with our own,” Danielle added. “There is more involved than he expected, just as there must be more involved than we did.”

“If your conclusions about the submarine and the Antarctic oil installation are correct …”

“The Ferryman may know nothing of them; he probably doesn’t. But he does know something else, another part—a different part— perhaps the one that will make sense of what we have uncovered.”

“To understand the whole,” the man said, “we must have all the parts.”

“Then we need Kimberlain.”

“Can you find him?”

“Finding him will hardly be sufficient.”

“All our resources are at your disposal.”

“Against the Ferryman, they might not be sufficient either.”

The special reinforcements sent down at Kimberlain’s request to St. Andrew Sound by Dominick Torelli arrived on the mainland at Crooked Bluff at eleven
P.M.
As ordered, the island’s cabin cruiser had been sent across to pick them up. A patrol launch would have been a more logical choice, but no two were large enough to comfortably accommodate all twelve of the extra commandos necessary to double the guard around Lisa Eiseman.

Crooked Bluff was located thirty miles down a lonely road off Route 95 as it cut through southern Georgia. The name was fitting, since the bluff was actually a ragged peninsula jutting out toward the islands in the sound like a set of gator teeth ready to close. Torelli’s island lay apart from the others, invisible from the mainland. For two generations the Torelli family had utilized its easily defensible position as a refuge in threatening times.

The island enjoyed a natural fortification of powerful rocks reaching out from beneath the surface to slash boats attempting to land on its shore. One the size of the cruiser would have its bottom torn out if it dared venture within a hundred yards. Thus a mooring was relied on to hold the cruiser in place, and a dinghy was utilized to shuttle passengers back and forth from the dock.

The skipper left the dinghy tied to the cruiser instead of mooring it and hadn’t even noticed his error until he was well out into St. Andrew Sound. There was no sense in going back now. The effort would make him late, and his orders had stressed the importance of time.

As it was, the reinforcements were already standing on the dock at Crooked Bluff when he eased the cruiser toward them in the darkness. They stood side by side mechanically and might have been exact clones of each other if not for their different clothes. Some wore sports jackets and slacks, others jeans, and some even wore fatigues from their tours in the Special Forces. Their mixed bag of clothing indicated they’d been sent down on very short notice. The skipper wondered what made the woman back on the island so important that Torelli would go to such measures to ensure her safety. Christ, what did he think was coming?

The men looked impatient as he tied the cruiser down. He noted that the choice of weapons had been left to each one as well, a few hoisting gun bags or satchels with promised death inside.

“Your taxi is here, gentlemen,” he said, immediately sorry for the humor when it produced no effect on the commandos. Speaking no further, he set off.

The night currents were slow, and the driver was glad for that much, for it made the journey quick and smooth. He reached the soft beacon over the cruiser’s mooring in thirty minutes and tossed the line over to it. His passengers’ eyes were on the rope as it looped over the mooring to anchor the cruiser, so none of them noticed the soft splash as a black figure slid over the side of the dinghy into the chill water.

Chapter 19

THE ISLAND’S COMMUNICATIONS CENTER
was in a second-floor den, a fairly elaborate setup that connected the man on duty with all patrolling guards as well as the cruiser.

“Come in,
Italia
,” he tried again. “
Italia
, do you read me?”

Forty minutes earlier the cruiser had called to say it had picked up the reinforcements and was proceeding back. Since then there had been no word. The radio had been on the fritz not too long ago, so the man behind the console wasn’t worried. The plan was for the
Italia
to call in for pickup by the Land Rovers after mooring up. If her radio was out again, maybe the passengers had just started walking.

“Patrol one,” the man called to the jeep driver on duty by the fortress’s front gate.

“I hear ya.”

“Go down to the docks and check for the cruiser. She’s overdue.”

“Roger. Call you when I know something.”

The man started his jeep down the island’s single road, which wound its way through the brush straight to the waterfront. The best speed he could risk at night on the booby-trapped route was fifteen miles per hour. The road had been specially constructed to help ward off an attack from the beach. A vehicle trying for a faster speed would shred its tires on the jagged rocks deliberately placed on both edges of the narrow way. Even a vehicle driven slowly by someone unfamiliar with the terrain would be disabled.

The night was moonless and dull, and the man able to see little in front of him as he pulled onto the wooden planks that formed a pathway down the beach to the small pier overlooking the sea. As the planks gave way to the rickety wooden structure of the pier, he caught sight of the cruiser
Italia
tied out on its mooring.

“What the hell…”

Could have just arrived now, the man figured, shifting his jeep into neutral as he picked up the binoculars on the seat next to him, put them to his eyes, and turned the focus wheel.

There were dark shapes bobbing in the water.

There were more of them on the cruiser’s gunwale and spread across the deck.

All dead, ten bodies at least.

Choking back his terror, the man went for his mike and had torn it from its stand when the hand latched on to his wrist. He tried to pull away, going for his pistol with his other hand, but the black figure that was suddenly over him pulled harder, and he felt the agony drive through his entire frame as the tendons and cartilage connecting his hand to his wrist snapped.