The Vengeance of the Tau (30 page)

Another pair of black figures spun away from the blown door toward Johnny. One had a dark, egg-shaped object clutched in his hand. In the instant it took him to aim the Sterling, Wareagle realized that the blindness-inducing aerosol would be released as soon as the egg-shaped housing shattered. He fired his next bullet at the figure wielding it.

The Splat lifted the figure into the air and slammed him against the wall, his blood spewing in all directions. The egg-shaped housing shattered with a
poof!
within the outer room.

The third and final figure turned away from the blown door and lunged at Wareagle. Johnny got his barrel righted and went for the trigger.

Clang!

The thud of something smashing down hard on the rifle’s barrel weakened his grasp. In the next instant what felt like a vise grasped the weapon and tore it away. Johnny wavered, and before he could fully recover his balance, the figure had rammed the rifle’s butt under his chin. Johnny staggered backward through what remained of the door into the inner room.

One woman lay dazed on the floor, partially pinned by the first of the figures Wareagle had killed. A second woman, ancient, sat cross-legged in a corner, undaunted by what was happening.

The dark figure stormed forward and lashed at Johnny with one of its black steel hands. Johnny lurched from the hand’s path, and the steel sliced through his Kevlar vest and nipped at his flesh. The burst of pain made his back arch. He saw the next strike surging toward him like a spear. He twisted sideways and blocked it downward, but the move left him open for the figure’s second hand, which sliced upward.

Johnny turned again, and the blow scratched against the left lens of his protective goggles. He backpedaled and faced off against his adversary, thinking that Joe Rainwater had not been granted such a chance. The black figure lashed at him with his right hand and followed up quickly with a swipe from his left. Johnny deflected both blows, then ducked under a sweeping side-mounted double strike and dropped into a roll. He snapped quickly to his feet, shaking the wall he came to rest against. Above him something that had been hanging there dropped onto a nearby dresser. Wareagle stole a glance at it.

It was a cat-o’-nine-tails.

Johnny grasped the ancient whiplike weapon and sent it swirling outward, just as the figure spun into another attack. Enough of the cat’s tails raked across his face to draw blood and a gasp. Wareagle swung his weapon in again and the figure, on the defensive now, blocked it with one of his steel hands.

He tried to grab it with the other, which opened up his midsection for Johnny’s feet. A kick landed squarely in his groin, and he bent into an agonized hunch. Johnny drew the cat back and around, the tails catching his assailant in the right shoulder and spinning him into the wall.

The dark figure retaliated by surging forward again, Johnny’s throat his target. Johnny let him think he had it and whipped the cat-o’-nine-tails out with a snap at the last possible instant. Air surged by Wareagle’s throat as the cat tore down across the figure’s face.

And eyes.

The man’s scream was bloodcurdling. It was barely a breath in length, but a breath was too long. His hands whipped down from his ravaged eyes. By then, though, Johnny had come in fast and to the side, the cat whistling through the air ahead of him. The tails swirled together and sliced into the black figure’s exposed throat. Wareagle felt warm blood splatter him, as the figure’s breathless scream gave way to a wet gurgle. The figure collapsed, writhing and twitching. Johnny backed away, and his eyes fell on the old woman who had remained seated calmly through it all.

“I was waiting for you, warrior,” she told him, her mouth squeezed between thick layers of wrinkled flesh. “What are you called?”

“Wareagle,” Johnny replied, breathing hard.

“Yes,” the Old One said, showing a glimpse of a smile. “Yes.”

Across the room, Heydan Larroux moaned and stirred.

“My lady,” from the Old One.

Johnny lifted the corpse off the woman he sought. She was still groggy, but had recovered her senses in time to hear the Indian-looking figure call himself “Wareagle,” and recalled the Old One’s vision of a bird of prey painted with the colors of battle.

An eagle.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, accepting the giant’s help in getting to her feet.

Johnny then crouched alongside the figure he had killed with the cat-o’-nine-tails. After removing the goggles the Israelis had given him, he pulled the corpse’s strange-looking headpiece off and regarded the face curiously. He knew the face of a killer when he saw one; death could not take that look away.

Wareagle’s eyes scanned the man’s upper body where the cat had shredded his body armor and shirt. There was a mark on his left shoulder, partially covered by blood that Johnny wiped away.

The mark was a tattoo, a swirly line stretched across the top of a slanted one.

It was the Greek letter tau.

“His boot,” the old woman said from the corner, pointing. Wareagle realized that she was blind. “What you seek can be found in his right boot, warrior.”

Johnny crouched down next to it and ran his hand along the boot. He squeezed the thick heel and felt it move a little. A harder pull snapped it off and revealed a secret compartment containing a state-of-the-art pager complete with miniature LED screen. Johnny switched it on. The screen remained blank.

“Nothing,” he told the old woman.

“Its secrets remain within.”

“Told and gone.”

“No, warrior. Not for one who knows the box’s ways.”

Johnny almost handed it out toward her. “You?”

He watched the old blind woman smile. “No. Another we will meet soon.”

“Where?”

“Where we are going, warrior.”

“There could be more of them,” Johnny Wareagle told her, as he slid the sleek pager into his pocket. “We’d better be fast.”

The old woman turned Heydan Larroux’s way. “Tell him of the boat, child.”

Heydan couldn’t take her eyes off the giant Indian. “There’s a raised platform built onto the underside of this house. A boat is stored upon it. Not much, just a small outboard …”

“It will do,” said Johnny.

“You will make it do, warrior,” the blind woman said quite assuredly.

Heydan instructed Wareagle to pull up the throw carpet from the center of the floor. When he did so, a small hatchway was revealed. He yanked it open, and the black water of the bayou glistened beneath him. He could see the rigging holding the boat to the platform. A hand crank resting just to his right would lower it onto the water ten feet below.

It took a full minute of turning before the outboard’s bottom kissed the surface. The boat wobbled under Wareagle’s bulk when he dropped down into it. Steadying himself as best he could, he stood up and raised his hands toward the hatchway.

“Let me help you,” he said to Heydan.

She slid her feet over the edge and felt a pair of powerful hands lock on to her ankles and accept her weight. Then she watched as the warrior named Wareagle lowered the Old One into the swaying boat as well.

“The engine,” Heydan said, shifting toward it.

Wareagle had a guide pole already in hand. “We won’t be using it.”

“We’re miles from anywhere,” she protested. “Without the engine, it’ll take us hours, even—” She stopped when a feeling of incredible stupidity swept over her. “I’m sorry. If we use the engine, of course, they’ll know where we are.”

“They already know where we are,” Wareagle told her. “I want to hear them if they come.”

Johnny pushed off with the guide pole and eased the boat out from beneath the house and whatever security it provided. A sea of still, black glass, blistered by the overgrowth from the shore and draped by the overhanging foliage, welcomed them. Johnny’s motions were smooth, and the boat rode the
currents easily, his rhythm broken only when his guide pole lodged in the
soft bottom.

Heydan was transfixed by the subtle power of his motions. She tried to speak several times but didn’t until the big Indian’s eyes at last met hers.

“You came down here for me.”

“Because I knew they would be returning.” Wareagle paused. “Because they must be stopped.”

“
Who
are they?”

“I do not know.”

“Yes, you do, warrior,” the Old One said suddenly. “Back in the house you saw something that told you.”

“On the arm of one of the killers,” Johnny acknowledged. “A letter.”

“What letter?”

“Tau, from the Greek alphabet.”

The Old One squeezed her face up tight in consternation. “These men represent a cause, the true scope of which is not yet clear to me. But there are many, many more of them. And what they seek stretches far beyond these dark waters. That much, warrior, is clear.”

Wareagle stiffened his grip on the guide pole. “And what of our route to them?”

“Where we head now is the right direction, warrior. Partly over land. Known by few. My home long ago.” She turned her dead eyes on Johnny. “The first stop in a journey that will reveal to you the answers you seek.”

Part Five
The Tau

Nineteen: Saturday, eleven A.M.

Chapter 28

MELISSA FOUGHT FOR SLEEP
during the long journey through Friday night and into Saturday morning. It came in fits and starts, brief moments of repose inevitably broken by the need to switch to another mode of transportation. Both speed and security were taken into consideration by the woman who had gone from savior to escort.

The woman had said virtually nothing through the trip’s duration. Her few words were mechanical, instructions given and warnings handed down without benefit of explanation. That would come later, she assured, once they reached Israel and this place called Nineteen.

The last leg of the journey was made in the back of a truck that had picked them up at a small military airfield in Israel. Melissa had not thought that civilian air traffic was permitted to use such fields under any circumstances, which made her wonder exactly who it was she was being taken to see.

Rich in archaeological treasures, Israel was a country Melissa knew well. Not only had she accompanied her father on a number of digs here over the years, but part of her own schooling had been an internship with some of the team that had unearthed Jerusalem’s Christian relics.

Their truck’s rear flap had been tied down, yet her escort did not seem to mind Melissa peering out through what chinks she could fashion for herself. A half hour into the ride she knew exactly where they were:

The Golan Heights.

She could see numerous guard stations and missile batteries dotting the landscape as they made their way through. There was no sign announcing their arrival at the place called Nineteen. The truck simply rumbled through a guarded gate and into what Melissa recognized as a kibbutz. The truck came to a halt, and the back flap was thrown open. Her escort helped Melissa climb down.

The scene around her in the bright sunlight was much as she would have expected it to be in the late morning. People went about their chores, limited on this day, the Jewish Sabbath. Most others she saw were out strolling or lounging. Children ran and played in a nearby field. The scene spelled normalcy, except for one thing:

Melissa could not find a single man in the kibbutz’s population.

“She wants to see her immediately,” an armed, uniformed woman said to Melissa’s escort tersely. “I will take her.”

The armed woman grasped Melissa’s arm.

“Thank you,” Melissa called to the big woman who had saved her life back at the nursing home when they started off.

The woman didn’t so much as turn to acknowledge her, and her armed replacement led Melissa through the large expanse of the kibbutz in silence. Structurally it was comparable to any of the many others she had visited over the years. But she continued to be dumbstruck by the total lack of males other than among the children.

A clearing appeared, in which a small cabin stood by itself in the shade. Before it, beneath a vast leafed tree, an old woman in a wheelchair sat behind a wrought-iron table. She turned slightly as Melissa approached, but did not acknowledge her. Not far into the clearing, her armed escort stopped.

“Go on,” she instructed, after Melissa had also come to a halt.

Melissa moved toward the old woman slowly. The pounding of her heart had slowed, anxiety giving way to exasperation. She had been hoping, expecting, an audience with someone who could explain everything she did not understand about Ephesus, about her father’s death. Could it be this woman? Had she been the one responsible for having her life saved?

Melissa stopped just to the side of the wheelchair.

“Sit down,” the old woman instructed. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand up to greet you.”

Melissa sat in the chair opposite her and pulled it farther under the table. She noticed that a second chair rested against the table between hers and the old woman’s.

“Are we expecting someone else?” Melissa wondered.

“Yes, we are. Any minute now, I trust.” She leaned forward. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”