The Watchers (20 page)

“Forgive me,” she managed to tell her new acquaintance. “I do not feel very strong all of a sudden.”

But Sister Abedago seemed quite agitated at Abby's collapse. Her regal glow instantly transformed into an expression of sharp concern. Looking around her with questioning eyes, she finally turned to Lloyd. “Should we still proceed?” she half shouted against the continuing blast of the offending chopper.

He only frowned and shook his head in response. “We've always known Abby was in precarious health. We're only here because of her sheer conviction that she's been sent by God himself. And if that's true, then I suppose she can drive out in any condition.”

“Go, please,” Abby said faintly. “I want to go
now
.”

“Sister Abigail,” her host said, leaning in to her, “you have come to a place of miracles, at a time of miracles. Let us take you and claim a healing for you. Will you let us do that for you?”

Abby nodded and allowed herself to be lifted into the lead Humvee.

Colonel Shawkey jumped up snarling, grabbed a machine gun from one of his nearest men, and unleashed a single blast into the air—a warning shot to the media bird still roaring overhead.

The aural onslaught sent Abby into a convulsive shudder of mixed fear and shock. “Who are they?” she asked, too weak to shout but strong enough to point upward.

“News media,” said the colonel. “They already know you're here. There's been a leak!”

Abby returned to full awareness a moment after the Humvee clunked into gear and the wind of a headlong rush struck her in the face. As difficult as it was to keep her eyes open, she found it just as difficult to close them, for the sights flowing past on either side proved simply stunning.

The first reason was speed—the colonel's armed contingent concerned itself neither with speed limits nor the safety of other motorists. The four military vehicles roared down the tarmac like a sovereign's bodyguards in a royal motorcade.

The second reason was the incredible cityscape before her. Her first locale was the airport tarmac. As exhilarating as it had been to watch the Gulfstream weave its way through ground traffic after landing, she found it now doubly thrilling, although terrifying as well, to weave around the huge wheels of a departing jumbo jet, then race forward, narrowly escaping not one but three smaller propeller planes, execute a death-defying turn around a decrepit hangar, then rocket toward a side gate at the speed of an Indy Pace Car.

Soon afterward, however, it was the unrelenting squalor and humanity of outlying Lagos that kept her staring about in amazement. Granted, the daredevil driving had hardly ended; they were now on a regional highway the colonel's convoy treated as a personal racetrack. They flew on, oblivious to speed laws, blinking their headlights and honking their horns, and the few motorists who did not anticipate their passing, by pulling off the road, soon found themselves treated as highway cones in an improvised slalom derby.

But even through the vertigo and dizziness, Abby was transfixed by the row after row after row of unending shacks stretching out in slums so vast and desolate that she felt her soul shrivel at the mere sight of them. The lanes between them were jammed with people, and it was the sight of them which kept the young woman from growing totally demoralized.

They seemed, despite their surroundings, a remarkably energetic and lively people. Even as they skirted or jumped over trenches of raw sewage that transected every single lane, she saw folks laughing, saluting each other, children running barefoot with the same joy as kids back home. Men in sharp suits navigated precarious moat tops on rickety bicycles, and yet despite their tenuous balance, found the temerity to look over and wave at her out of sheer friendliness. It seemed the cameraman could not bring himself to stop filming.

“Lagos is rumored to be the second largest city in the world,” Paula commented in her ear. “Official sources say tenth. But it has no sanitation whatsoever. No garbage pickup, no sewage system.”

“I gathered that,” Abby said.

“The people are amazing, though. They don't let any of their country's problems get them down. They have such spirit, such optimism. Mara fell in love with them when she was here.”

The infernal drive did not relent for a second. But what kept Abby thankful for the Humvees' excessive speed was the stench, which, even with highway winds snapping about her, assaulted her nostrils with a strength and pungency that rivaled Manila. Beyond that came the assault of thick, heavy humidity.

For the second time, they approached a barrier of vehicles and vicious-looking, rifle-brandishing men who jumped aside at the last second for them to pass. “Who are they?” Abby whispered into the ear of Sister Abedago.

“A gang of local boys, asking for
dash
,” she sighed. “An ordinary motorist cannot go more than five miles without being stopped at gunpoint and asked for dash. That's our name for a bribe, which is one of the most common daily facts of life here. The richer you look, the more pressing the request. The more serious the consequences for not paying. Another good reason to thank God for the colonel.”

As they sped by, Abby glanced at the cold sneers directed at their camera and shivered. That smell of danger returned, more pungent than before.

“Are you seeing it again?” Lloyd asked in a concerned voice.

She nodded wearily.

“Tell me what you see,” he said.

Sighing, Abby closed her eyes. “I don't really like to talk about it. But I will. The evil spirits are so ugly and terrifying that I'm not sure I have the language for it. I don't even know what's worse about them—their distorted, reptile-like appearance or the sense of hatred and hunger that seems to just reek from them in this awful stench. They're all different yet share the same qualities, or should I say distortions. Huge, leering eyes, mouths lined with limbs and fangs and dripping with some kind of caustic substance, everything backward and bloated and a grotesque mockery of the human body. The worst part is to see a human being walking around with one of these beings perched with its huge mouth halfway over its soul, its spiritual body. The person believes they're just walking through life and yet they're already half consumed.”

Lloyd shivered. “But you see angels too, right?” he asked, as though considering such a prospect for the very first time.

“Oh yeah. And you've probably heard more about the true appearance of angels than of demons, just by being in our culture. What the stories and statues don't capture is how it feels to actually see one. Your body just comes alive with chills. I mean, to have one appear and know it's not a weird dream or a hallucination, and then realize all at once that your seeing this means everything about God and His Son and the Bible was true all along.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Lloyd said thoughtfully. “But I suppose you're right. You can't have angels without having confirmed the rest of the story too.”

“Exactly. Everything just falls into place.”

“And you're sure you've seen them,” he said, more of a doubtful question than a statement.

“Yeah, I have,” she answered with a good-natured chuckle. “Lloyd, it's kind of refreshing to talk with someone who hasn't read my story. Everyone else I've met in the last two weeks knew more about my strange condition than I did.”

“The price of celebrity, I suppose.”

Lloyd—or his real name, the assassin Dylan Hatfield—turned away from the young woman and, for the first time in years, found himself in the unlikely battle of fighting to maintain his composure.

First of all, he had never spent this amount of time with a mark just prior to killing him. Or
her
in this case, which was one of the other sticking points. In fact, he had never spent any time with
any
mark. But her being a woman, and a woman this disarming, made things even worse.

But surely, he told himself, if he had ever done this before, it would never have come down like this. He had gone into this operation without the usual internal reassurances that he was truly neutralizing a righteous target. That, despite the fact that this particular one warranted more information than ever. He had lowered his standards for various reasons, which now struck him as trivial and beneath him—fatigue, intimidation, greed, resignation, blind faith.

But now, sitting here after hours in this young woman's presence, the questions throbbed so powerfully that they seemed poised to rip the breath from his lungs. How could, as Shadow Leader had so emphatically asserted, this beautiful girl and her ethereal Sight be such a threat to all humanity? The proposition seemed contrived and exaggerated at best.

Bottom line?
It didn't feel right
.

And it always had before.

Even if he'd been given a clear formula to how she threatened the world, killing her now would prove quite difficult. He'd grown to like the girl. She was down-to-earth, self-effacing, despite her beauty and sudden fame, curious and humble and funny at the same time. A real
girl
.

Had he met her in the course of his ordinary life—that is, the transitory and artificial cover identities he adopted between assignments— he surely would have been knocked out. But would he have had the insight to cast his eyes away from promiscuous models, and see what Abby had just now revealed to him?

He shook his head to dispel the thought.

This was madness. He would have to dispatch this girl with a bullet in the head within the next several hours.

The prospect brought her descriptions suddenly back to him.
Angel or demon
. Regardless of whether it was all true, he pondered a question in his mind that came whole and was utterly compelling.

Which one are you, Dylan? Which side do you serve?

He truly
felt
evil, insinuating himself into this girl's trust and loyalty under the falsest of pretenses. And yet his expressions of concern and interest had not felt like pretense. Because he wasn't pretending at all. He genuinely cared about the girl, and
that
not only made no sense but violated every operational philosophy he knew.

As the drive continued, he could sense their destination approach by the moment. The place where he would have to decide, once and for all, not only what kind of operative he was but what kind of human being. He tried not to think of it, but instead to return to the moment at hand. For the very notion made him want to vomit.

He shivered and looked aside, down into the squalor of the Nigerian suburbs.

Anything but to glance at Abby.

The lethal procession had rocketed away from the city's center for a solid half hour, with their straightaway speeds blurring in Abby's mind to some unthinkable velocity somewhere north of eighty miles per hour. All of this had produced the unforeseen benefit of reducing the beleaguered Lagos ghettoes to an eye-numbing stream of dried mud and refuse.

Abby had uttered her third prayer for safety when Lloyd whirled around in his seat next to her, holding up a pair of the colonel's binoculars. The cameraman swiftly followed suit. Curious to see the source of all the dismay, Abby forced herself to turn as well.

The horizon behind them resembled a scene from
Apocalypse Now
or
Black Hawk Down
. Its grayish smog was thick with the pursuing silhouettes of no less than a half-dozen helicopters, cameramen hanging dangerously from their sides.

Lloyd lowered the scope and shook his head angrily. “They're catching up! How in the world did they find out about us?”

Sister Abedago leaned forward in her seat and made a sad face. “I am afraid that even as we prepare for a healing of Sister Abby,” she said loudly, “the word may have gone out a bit too far.”

“It was inevitable,” Paula added flatly. “We can take precautions, but even Mara always knew it would come out. That's why we have the colonel.”

Then Abby saw Lloyd's arm stretch out straight, pointing to the highway's edge.

There bobbed a large, crudely lettered sign.

Welcome Sister Abby! Be Healed!

The placard was being held by two adorable little girls wearing plain flowered dresses, who waved and jumped wildly at their approach. A woman who appeared to be their mother stood to one side waving, aglow in a piercing blue smock.

Church clothes. Just for her.

Replaying in her mind the little girls' smiles, Abby found it hard to rue the obvious evidence of being known by everyone. Instead, she felt herself fighting back tears at their spontaneous and selfless display of love.

Just then, Abby's Sight returned with a vengeance. She realized she was grimacing and groaning in horror before the vision fully registered on her conscious mind—impressions of beings in all shapes, sizes, colors and shades of black or white, grappling with each other in a vast orgy of mortal combat.

Then the truth of it struck her. This was not a purely demonic display. Here were angels: large, bright, humanlike beings in similar numbers to the evil ones. That was why the fighting was so fierce and deadly, precisely because combatants from both sides contended for this city in near equal strengths.

As though reading her mind, Sister Abedago leaned to her and offered, “Sister Abby, did you know that the world's largest churches are here in Nigeria? The Lord is doing a wondrous work in our country. In spite all of its darkness and problems.”

Of course
, Abby realized even as she nodded her understanding. Without even trying to appear complimentary, Abby could see that the nation's Christian population had indeed brought to their land a spiritual potency unmatched anywhere in the so-called
First
World.

That was when all of Abby's careening emotions, her pain and the horror of her Sight seemed to gather themselves into a single, magnanimous cloud, which floated above the squalid and beautiful sights around her. And it struck her with an emphatic drumbeat that
yes, this is where I need to be
. Here was an adventure, regardless of its outcome, worthy of her last days on earth. A journey bold and desperate and far-flung enough to easily warrant the discomforts of leaving her deathbed to reach it. Suddenly the smell and the slums' hopelessness no longer oppressed her. She felt at one with the passing grandmother asleep on a woodpile and the man hawking peanuts from a two-legged street stand and the pair of boys throwing stones at an outraged rooster.