The Vengeance of the Tau (37 page)

McCracken spun out from the shed directly into the line of fire of two dozen guns, all leveled his way. Dead before him was one of the APCs, its centrally mounted machine gun angled for his head. The command over the loudspeaker fresh in their ears, none of the enemy fired. But Blaine had no doubt they would if he squeezed his own trigger. That was senseless. His only hope for success now was to play along with the owner of the voice that had spared his life, a man who could only be the member of the original Tau behind the group’s return.

Blaine tossed his M-16 away and eased his hands into the air. A dozen gunmen charged him and forced him against the asphalt, pinning his arms and legs. Cuffs were slapped on his wrists and, after a brief pause, irons strapped tight around his ankles. He managed to keep his eyes righted long enough to see a half-dozen of the female commandos, some wounded, being led off as prisoners. He noticed that the wounded Sal Belamo was nowhere to be seen before a heavy boot squashed against his skull and forced his eyes down. His view of what was happening to the rest of his team was cut off. All he could see were a pair of small feet encased in boots shuffling slowly forward. Flanking them were two pairs of far larger boots worn outside identical pairs of precisely creased khaki trousers.

“Let him up,” the voice he recognized from the loudspeaker said.

He was yanked to his feet, and the first thing he saw were the empty expressions on the twins that had barely missed killing him at the hotel in Izmir. Between them stood a much smaller, older man who faced Blaine from ten feet away.

“
Shalom,
Mr. McCracken,” said Arnold Rothstein.

Chapter 34

JOHNNY WAREAGLE WATCHED
the end of the battle from the same hill that Blaine McCracken and Sal Belamo had made their final plans on. The sight turned his stomach. His breathing stopped altogether when a figure he knew was Blaine’s emerged into the killing range of two dozen guns. He took a shallow breath when McCracken dropped his gun and surrendered.

The fact that McCracken was still alive was reason for hope. The Old One had told him that they would be finishing this battle together, and had hinted that they would win. Besides, now that Blue Thunder had gotten him here, the rest seemed simple by comparison. Toothless Jim Jackson’s toolbox had turned out to contain just enough magic to do the job. It took three additional stops along the route north, but somehow he kept the bus sputtering on its way, top speed reduced successively and the grinding of the engine reaching an ear-splitting pitch.

“Looks to me like we be in a heap of trouble,” Tyrell Loon said from Wareagle’s side on the top of the hill. Blue Thunder was parked not far from the bottom, its occupants waiting outside it in nervous expectation. “We goin’ in against
that
?”

It took a while before Johnny responded. “Not we, Sheriff.”

“We got us a job to do, ’case you’re forgettin’.”

“Not anymore.”

“What chance you figure you got alone?”

Johnny didn’t say a word.

“Well, whatever it is, it be a hell of a lot better with us along. You can’t argue with that.”

Wareagle nodded reluctantly. “We’ll need more firepower than what we have with us.”

“Find it in town, you think?”

Maybe, Johnny reflected, in the unlikely event that the stores in downtown Hanover contained the kinds of supplies he required to add substantially to their firepower.

“You forgettin’ we’re still blessed,” Sheriff Loon reminded when Johnny remained silent. “Old One ain’t here, but she blessed me ’fore I left. Made me a kind of luck charm for ya. I got to stay around, got to stay close for her magic to work, she say. We go into town, we find what we need. You can rest assured of that.”

“Then we must go,” Johnny said. He had moved past the sheriff when something on the ground grabbed his attention again.

“What’s wrong?” Loon asked him.

Johnny seemed not to hear him. His eyes traced a path up the last bit of the hill to the position they had been occupying until seconds ago.

“Someone else was up here,” Wareagle said finally.

“Your friend, probably.”

“Besides him, I mean. Here between Blainey and us. Left in another direction just before we arrived. Left in the midst of the battle after he had seen what he needed to.”

“Who?”

Wareagle’s response was to brush past Sheriff Loon and pick up his pace down the hill.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Rothstein said after McCracken had been hoisted to his feet. His leg irons clanged together.

“I’m not. Not totally, anyway.”

Rothstein nodded knowingly. “Ah, my ill-fated attack on the kibbutz, no doubt.”

“Seemed a difficult trick, slipping forty men and eight armed vehicles by the IDF lines. Takes a man who knows the territory—and the weaknesses of its security. You were trying to kill your sister.”

Rothstein didn’t bother denying it. “Besides you and that troublesome Indian friend of yours, she’s the only one left who can hurt me.” He eyed the Twins. “Bring him,” he ordered.

The Twins moved to either side of McCracken and beckoned him forward with their eyes, while a hefty complement of guards kept a safe distance. Blaine walked toward the entrance to the base headquarters between the Twins. The deterrent they presented would have been enough, even if his hands hadn’t been cuffed.

“Ah, Tovah,” Arnold Rothstein said softly, from just behind Blaine now. “So brave and persistent, and yet such an annoyance to my work. I should have killed her years ago, of course, but what kind of man would that make me?”

“Not much worse than the kind of man you are now.”

“You have hard feelings because you have been defeated. But you were up against powers you couldn’t possibly comprehend. You never had a chance.”

McCracken’s mind flashed back to what he had seen in the secret chamber and had learned later from Tovah. “You killed the other three members of the original Tau in the cavern. You stopped them from destroying the White Death.”

“Because even then I saw how much it would be needed another time. Now.”

“What exactly are you planning to do?”

“Join me inside, Mr. McCracken, and I’ll share the future with you.”

“Might be a whole lot better, if you went ahead and told me what was troublin’ you.”

Melissa looked at the old, leathery-faced man who had slid into her booth without invitation. She mustered up a slight smile for him, more ironic than anything else.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“You’d be surprised.” Pop slid a little closer. “You know, we don’t get too many talk like that in these parts. You a Brit?”

“Yes.”

“Then just what is it that brings you here?”

Before Melissa could respond, the door to the bar creaked open, and Pop swung around to see an Indian whose head barely cleared the doorway when he entered. He might have been a giant of a man, but he walked like a jungle cat.

“Is that your truck outside?” the Indian asked him.

Pop gave him a
Who, me?
look and then shrugged. “You hit it or something?”

“Something,” the Indian said.

“Huh?” from Pop, as confused as he was relieved.

“I need your help.”

Pop slid out of the booth and gazed up into the big Indian’s eyes. He’d only seen that look once before, but he remembered it well.

“You’re shittin’ me, right? This is some kind of joke.”

“No joke,” the Indian told him.

“Not again,” Pop followed. He almost laughed because it was the only thing he could think to do. “Not fucking again. …”

Then he realized that the nervous woman had stood up and was staring hard at the big Indian as well.

“Johnny … Wareagle,” he heard her mutter and watched the Indian’s back tense as he turned his gaze upon her.

“Blainey,” the Indian said in what had seemed to have started as a question.

“I know where he is,” the woman followed.

“So do I.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pop said. “Jesus H. fucking Christ. …”

Billy Griggs had seen the Indian enter the bar. Man, was he big! Didn’t even have to look twice to make that fucker.

Wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a truck outside marked NAB. Must have belonged to some big cheese who had something to do with the artillery show he’d seen being set up in the remnants of an amusement park, as he cruised the nearby area in search of his quarry. After the hit team had failed to return from the bayou, the old guy seemed pretty certain that the Indian would be arriving in the area before too very long. Billy’s assignment was to watch for him and report in. That was it. Don’t even think of approaching. Guy was so big and, well, scary, that Billy was glad for the order.

What he’d do now was wait and see what happened when the injun came outside. Anything other than alone just wouldn’t do. So when he emerged between an old man for whom walking was a chore, and a woman Billy recognized as the one McCracken had been with back in Turkey, he knew what he had to do next.

“Help Mr. McCracken to a seat on the couch,” Arnold Rothstein ordered the Twins.

The Twins each grasped an arm and led Blaine toward the rear of the office that Rothstein had appropriated. Not surprisingly, they carried no weapons, nothing McCracken could make use of, on the chance that he got lucky and managed to overpower them. Fat chance. He had witnessed the Twins’ work in Germany. Two minds that thought and acted as one; conceivable to eliminate one all by himself, impossible to take out both.

“You faked your own attempted assassination,” Blaine said to Rothstein, still standing between his captors.

“With the help of the Twins here, it went exceptionally well.”

“You used a stand-in.”

Rothstein shrugged. “Regrettably, of course, my death will be announced in just a day or so. Or should I say
his
death.”

“Effectively closing the book on the man you really are.”

“No.” The old man shot out a finger to punctuate his words. “I have hidden the man I really am for a generation: the man who was born that day in a schoolyard when a classmate took his place before the firing squad. I learned to hate that day. I learned how powerful a motivator it can be.”

“And you haven’t stopped hating since,” Blaine said sharply. He was pushed into the sofa by the Twins, both pairs of eyes staring fixedly at him.

Rothstein shrugged in concession. “I suppose you are correct, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let the Tau die, because we were meant to serve as the world’s policemen, and that is what we will do. The White Death gives us the means to stop evil, to stamp it out before it has a chance to spread its venom.”

“How?”

“You must understand the background first. My sister was conservative. She and the others did not wish to acknowledge the awesome power the White Death gave us. They refused to even consider using it during the early years of our struggle to found the state of Israel, if you can imagine that.”

“Yes,” Blaine told him, “I can.”

The old man looked disappointed. “I had expected more from you. Right from the time I learned of your involvement, I thought if I could explain it to you, reason it out …”

“What kind of man do you think I am?”

“One who pursues justice, just as I do.”

“Not as you do.”

Rothstein smiled condescendingly. “All I have read and heard about you indicates otherwise. What we did to the Nazis in the years following the war was not enough. Nothing could have been enough.”

“On that much, we agree.”

“Then you’re saying vengeance on the Nazis who had escaped war-crimes trials was justified?”

“Yes,” Blaine responded without hesitation.

“And you see a difference between that and what we have risen again to destroy today?”

“I’m not sure what exactly that is.”

Arnold Rothstein’s breathing had picked up. His eyes glistened with determination and resolve.

“We struck fear into the hearts of the Nazis we did not kill, Mr. McCracken. Those that eluded us knew we would always be out there, waiting, watching. But why stop at the Nazis? There were other battles to be fought, other enemies to put down; there always would be.”

“Obviously your sister and other original members of the Tau did not share your feelings,” Blaine said, feeling the eyes of the Twins locked upon him.

“What choice did I have? I took matters into my own hands. There were enough who felt as I did to begin building the kind of army we needed: a Tau presence in every nation watching, waiting. Ready to be mobilized when the time was right.”

“The killings …”

“Here in the United States and all over the world, justice is being served. The slime is being swept away, dead skin of the world peeled back. As a prelude.”

“For what?”

“The world has seen enough ugliness. The time has come to vanquish it.”

Slowly McCracken realized what Rothstein was intimating. “Large quantities of the White Death distributed all over the world to be released as you deem fit.”

“Not just me, the entire Tau. The time was right.”

“Only because you had finally figured out a way to duplicate the original formula,” Blaine advanced. “But you still went back into the chamber to remove the remainder of the crates. Why?”

“Because the process required to produce the White Death remains painfully slow. To accomplish all that we must, we needed the considerable reserves stored in Ephesus as well.”

“And what exactly is that, Mr. Rothstein.”

“Can’t you figure it out?” Rothstein raised, half challenging, half scorning Blaine. “In centers of the world where crime festers, where evil rears itself on hate, in the breeding grounds for violence that will destroy innocent lives without compunction, the White Death will be released. Look at me, Mr. McCracken, and tell me you don’t approve. Tell me you would not take these very same steps if given the opportunity.”

“Not if it means destroying the lives of others who are just as innocent as those you’re trying to protect.”

“A regrettable, but necessary, sacrifice. Our point will be made before too very long. Just as the original Tau made the Nazis cower and withdraw, our legacy will do the same to the evil that has followed in their wake.” Rothstein shook his head in disappointment. “I thought of all people, you who have seen so much senseless death and suffering would understand. You who have seen the world come to the brink of destruction on so many occasions only to be pulled back by your hand at the last instant. The Tau can at last control these madmen who seek to rule others. That is where I differ from the others you have faced. I do not seek control or power. My work justifies itself, a means
and
an end. Tell me it isn’t tempting. Tell me it doesn’t appeal to you.”