The Vengeance of the Tau (11 page)

“Thank you, Sal Belamo.”

“Hey, just Sal, okay?”

“Yes. Sal …”

“This gotta be the first time you and me ever talked, McCrackenballs wasn’t around. They got me manning a desk now, you know. Watchdog, overseer—some bullshit job like that. Not my style at all. I like it better out there with you boys. Hey, if you’re calling for McCracken, he left for—”

“No. I’m calling because I need you.”

“Wow, this must be something! What can I do for ya, big fella?”

Wareagle told him about the murder of drug lord Ruben Oliveras in Chicago.

“Yeah,” Belamo said, “I read about that. You ask me, it’s first-class fucking-A weird.”

“I need to know if there have been any other killings like it, Sal Belamo. Anything familiar that’s been reported any time in the recent past.”

“Check it for you pronto. And hey, big fella, just Sal, all right?”

Billy Griggs pulled his car up to the corner and looked at the pay phone he had been instructed to go to. A handwritten out-of-order card was taped across its front, covering the touch-tone buttons. Billy turned to the boy sitting in the passenger seat, reached over, and smoothed his hair.

“I won’t be long,” he said in the gentlest voice he could manage.

Then he grabbed the thick blond locks and jerked the boy’s head backward.

“Make sure you don’t go anywhere. Okay, sweetie?”

Billy let the boy nod.

“Very good,” he said, and stepped out of the car.

Normally he might have used a gentler approach, but he hadn’t been in a very good mood since plunging four hundred and fifty feet off the Golden Gate Bridge. He still ached everywhere. It was the first time, ’Nam included, Billy Boy had ever considered he might die. He had hit the water with legs in a half spread to slow his plunge, but it had still taken forever to claw back to the surface. He’d taught himself how to hold his breath for maybe four minutes in ’Nam; had to, or the gooks would have sliced his balls off and fed them to him. Down in the black of those tunnels they could hear you if you breathed, so you held it. Simple as that. It all came back to him when he hit the water, the tunnels all over again. Don’t panic,
never
panic. Billy was starting to lose it just before the surface, but he held on, thought of the scores he had to settle. Never mind that McCracken was the best. Billy had had everything in his favor and the big bearded fuck had still bested him. Billy wanted revenge.

He moved to the pay phone and stood by it patiently. It rang within seconds.

“Yes,” he said, receiver pressed against his ear.

“Your failure was regrettable.”

The voice didn’t sound human, because it wasn’t. It was channeled through a digitalized transfer device which totally obliterated all voiceprints. What Billy was hearing was a machine’s interpretation of human speech, only the words remaining the same.

“Hey, I explained all that.”

“Your explanations are meaningless to us.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be McCracken. No one told me it was going to be McCracken.”

“You fear this man?”

“Billy Griggs doesn’t fear nobody.”

“Too bad. Fear can be a worthwhile ally. It prevents overconfidence. It promotes reason. Perhaps if you had been scared of this man, he would not remain at large.”

“I’ll get him. You just find him for me and leave everything else to—”

“No.”

“What?”

“Do not mock me, Mr. Griggs. I have read about this man since your report reached me. He is exceptionally dangerous. He could bring us down.”

“One guy, okay?”

“Mr. Griggs, you are trying my patience. Your work for us has been most acceptable up till now. Please do not spoil it.”

Billy Boy Griggs squeezed the receiver tighter. “Hey, all I’m saying—”

“If you know as much about McCracken as you claim to, then you know what I speak is the truth. We cannot afford to have him on our trail with the attainment of our ultimate goal so close to being realized now.”

“So what do you need me for? You already said I wasn’t up to the job.”

“You are going to coordinate the assignment with some outside contractors who we feel may be the only ones who can get the job done.”

“Who?”

“The Twins.”

“Oh, Christ …”

“You’ve heard of them, I see.
”

“I’ve heard they’re not human.”

“Most proficient, yes. That proficiency is needed now.”

“I won’t be responsible for their actions.” Billy wondered how obvious the reluctance was in his voice.

“You are merely their guide and our conduit. We will direct you to them and then point you toward McCracken.
”

“You know where he is?”

“His options are limited.”

“Just make sure the Twins understand the score, okay?”

“Your tone disturbs me. I expected as much. Look at this as a second chance. You won’t get another. I could have made your punishment far more severe.”

“What punishment?”

“Do not underestimate the scope of our power, Mr. Griggs.”

“
What
punish—”

Click.

The line was dead.

Billy Griggs glided from the phone back toward his car.

The Twins. The goddamn fucking Twins. …

For just an instant, Billy considered ditching this whole business. Get behind the wheel and take his boy-toy somewhere they’d never find him. Kid was a winner. Last him a few months, anyway, and then he’d find himself another.

Billy climbed into the driver’s seat and locked the door behind him. The boy-toy had slumped against the passenger door, passed out with his head low against the window. Billy had been too generous with the dope.

“Hey,” Billy said. “Hey, I’m talking to you. …”

He jostled the boy-toy’s shoulder. Kid slumped like a loose sack of rags. Billy gasped. The only thing propped against the car’s door was the boy-toy’s trunk.

His head was gone, sliced clean off while Billy had been on the phone right here in public. There was blood everywhere. Billy could see it now, splotchy in the darkness.

My punishment,
Billy realized, as he lost his breath and stepped from the car.
My punishment. …

Chapter 10

THE GUARDS BEGAN SWINGING
open the gate at first sight of the car heading down the dirt road late Wednesday afternoon.

“You’re late,” one said to the driver, as the car inched through the entrance.

“She’s waiting, then.”

“For hours. You’ve thrown off her routine.”

“Couldn’t be avoided. The messenger was running behind.”

The woman drove the car into the kibbutz and parked it next to the memorial to the war that had seen Israel take the Golan Heights. The memorial was an old tank, still functional and well-maintained, but covered with roses, violets, and daffodils. The planters enveloped the entire bulk of its frame. The turret alone gave away what it had once been, and the contrast was intentional. On top of this battle-scarred land, an entire people had built a beautiful nation. Israel would live with the dichotomy of beauty and force forever. The symbol of the tank was enduring.

The woman climbed out of the car and took with her a hefty stack of newspapers from all over the world: major dailies from the United States, Germany, France, and England through that very day; Austria, Switzerland, and Italy through three days before. Holding the stack in both arms, she moved in a fast walk toward a cottage isolated in the commune’s rear. The pair watching over the old woman today motioned the visitor toward the wrought-iron table where the figure in the wheelchair was seated, turned away toward the trees. She plopped the stack down atop the table and straightened it.

“I’m sorry for being late.”

The figure in the wheelchair did not turn. “Leave me.”

All too glad to do just that, the woman turned and was on her way.

This kibbutz looked much like the other self-sufficient communes that were scattered all across Israel. Large fields of crops dominated the setting. Farm animals were corralled in a number of areas. The squawk of chickens could be heard for a considerable distance. Cows looked up from their grazing to utter an occasional sound. Dogs sauntered lazily about or lay in the shade of large cedar trees and the kibbutz’s numerous buildings. Many of these were small, cottagelike structures that mostly held families. A number of larger structures were actually dormitories that housed the children. Still more buildings contained offices and classrooms for the children’s daily lessons. The largest was the cafeteria where the kibbutz members took all their meals. The synagogue could be found in the second largest.

This kibbutz would also have seemed at first glance to be like all the others in terms of the residents going about their daily chores and duties. Routine provided security, not tedium. For the residents, discipline was everything.

But a closer look revealed something odd about this kibbutz’s residents: each and every adult was female. Men were nowhere to be seen. In addition to that, this particular kibbutz enjoyed no formal registration, nothing whatsoever that provided proof of its existence. All mail was delivered to a single post office box twenty miles away to be picked up every day, or sometimes every other. To those in the government aware of the commune’s existence, it was referred to simply as “Nineteen.”

The women of Nineteen could call it home for as long as they desired. Many of the residents were war widows who came to escape the violent world that was the Israeli way of life. There was ample time to get on with their lives later. For now, their spirits needed to mend, and they stayed as long at Nineteen as necessary to see this come to pass.

It was similar for female soldiers who came to Nineteen with nerve strings frayed to the very edge. Though it had been twenty years since Israel had been attacked, and a decade since she had invaded Lebanon, limited engagements and skirmishes were a fact of life. These, too, exacted a price from those who fought in them repeatedly.

Still more of the kibbutz’s residents were widows as well, but of a different sort. Spanning the scope of ages, they had lost husband or children to terrorist attacks or the Intifada. They came to Nineteen with a rage that could be calmed but never vanquished. These would spend portions of each day on the commune’s gunnery ranges firing at black cardboard silhouettes they imagined to be the ravagers of their lives, trained by the very female soldiers who had come here to put their guns down. Contradictions at Nineteen, as in life, were everywhere. There were no easy explanations. The staccato bursts of gunfire here were no different than the clucking of chickens or laughter of children. They were accepted. Part of the routine.

And the founder of all this, of Nineteen and everything it encompassed, was the old woman who lived apart from everyone else and spent much of her days scanning newspapers from all over the world. Her cottage was the only one featuring a screened-in porch. Instead of stairs leading up to the entrance, it had a ramp for her wheelchair. A pair of neat grooves were worn into either side. The wrought-iron table had been set beneath a tree in front of the cottage, and it was here that the wheelchair rested most of the day.

“Can we get you anything?” one of the guards asked after approaching tentatively when the old woman had remained still for too long.

The old woman, half-blind in one eye, her head crowned by a cloud of silver hair, adjusted the blanket over her useless legs and spun her wheelchair so it faced the table. Her hand shakily grasped her glass of mint iced tea and drew it to her lips.

“No,” she answered, placing her other liver-spotted hand atop the pile of newspapers just brought her. “Leave me.”

The guard reslung her Galil machine gun over her shoulder and backed off. It was hers and another’s day to watch over the old woman, and this was not a task any on the kibbutz took lightly. Some knew her name, but not many. Her daily chores consisted of nothing more than going over her newspapers, in search of what, nobody knew.

The old woman set her unfinished glass of tea down and began paging through her papers in the same deliberate fashion as always, while her two guards continued their silent vigil. Had the guards been watching the old woman more closely, they would have seen her lean forward when she came upon an article on page one of the Wednesday
New York Times
headlined “Exiled Island Leader Javier Kelbonna Slain in Bizarre Execution.”

Her hand trembled as she rapidly turned through the front section of the paper to where the article was continued. She flipped quickly through another two newspapers before an article on the fourth page of the German daily froze her. An industrialist named Friedrich Von Tike had been found murdered last night in his office.

Bizarre circumstances again.

When she moved on to the Tuesday edition of
The Times,
there was no need to turn the pages at all. What she sought was right there at the top of page one: a picture of Ruben Oliveras placed just beneath the headlines on the bottom half of the page: “Reputed Drug Lord, Guards, Slain in Chicago Stronghold.”

“No,” she muttered, too softly for her guards to hear. “No! …” Louder this time, loud enough to make them turn.

The old woman brushed the entire contents of the wrought-iron table to the ground in a single swipe. Her glass of mint iced tea smashed on impact, dousing the discarded papers and making her guards go rigid.

“It can’t be,” she moaned. “They’ve come back. God help us all,
they’ve come back
!”

Chapter 11

“
SAYIN
HAZELHURST!
”

Kamir’s call stirred Melissa Hazelhurst from her stuporous vigil before the video monitor.

“There is a jeep approaching,
Sayin
Hazelhurst!”

Melissa rose stiffly and emerged from the cover of the canopy down in the excavation. “How many men?” she called up to Kamir.

“Just a driver,” Kamir returned, hands cupped before his mouth to make sure he could be heard.