Ancestor (19 page)

Colding could hear the sincerity in Gary’s voice—the man hated carrying the weapon. “So if you don’t like the gun, why work for Genada?”

Gary nodded toward the Humvee. “My dad has lived on this island for fifty years, man. He’s not leaving. This is where I’ll wind up burying him. I need to be here for him, you know? And if I work for Genada, well, then I get
paid
to be here for him. I make crazy money, and all I do is drive this beautiful boat and bang tourists. Once or twice a year, Magnus and Danté come around. I say
yessir
and
nosir
and take them wherever they want to go. Maybe I’m not a gunslinger, but this is more like a permanent vacation than a job.”

“But you’ll use that gun if you have to,” Colding said, his voice low and
serious. “If my people are in danger and I call you out here, you’re prepared to do what I tell you?”

“My dad is now one of
your people
. I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him.”

Colding extended his hand. “Gary, I think you and I see eye to eye.”

Gary’s easy smile came back. They shook. “Anything you need from the mainland, just use the supersecret megaspy radio in the security room. Dad will show you how to get hold of me.”

“Thanks. Oh, and Magnus had a message for you. He said to make sure his snowmobile is ready.”

“It is. It’s in that shed with mine.” Gary pointed to the black metal shed at the foot of the dock. “I keep it there so when we’ve got five feet of snow, I can get to the mansion and back to the docks.”

“Five
feet
of snow,” Colding said, and laughed. “Whatever, dude, I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Gary just smiled his stoner smile and nodded.

Colding stopped laughing. “Wait, you’re serious? Five feet?”

“Sure,” Gary said. “If it’s a mild winter.”

The Humvee’s horn blared.

“Can you two stop grab-assin’?” Clayton shouted from the vehicle. “I’ve got work ta do.”

Gary threw his dad a snappy salute, then untied the boat and hopped in. He climbed up a ladder to the flying bridge. Seconds later the Sharkcat’s engines gurgled to life—they sounded big and powerful. The boat had plenty of room, easily enough to evacuate the entire staff if it came to that.

Gary waved to Colding and shouted to be heard over the engine. “Good luck, chief. I’m just a call away if you need anything.” With that, Gary gunned the engine, trailing a strong wake as he headed out of the harbor.

Colding walked back to the Hummer and hopped in.

Clayton stared after the boat, then shook his head. “Such a show-off, that guy. I love him, but it’s hard when your son is a fairy.”

“A
fairy?”
Colding said. “You think your son is gay?”

Clayton shrugged. “He’s got an earring, eh? Pillow-biter for sure.”

“My
word,”
Sara said. “An earring on a man? Well, he’s
got
to be one of them there homosexuals.”

Colding rubbed his eyes. “Clayton, you are truly a man of culture and learning.”

“Ain’t that da truth,” Clayton said. “Okay, let’s get this shit finished so I can get on with my day. I get paid for maintenance, not for being a fuckin’ taxi driver.”

The term
salt of the earth
didn’t go far enough to describe Detweiler. More like the rock on which that salt might crystallize. “Clayton, I think you need to relax.”

“Ya? Well, think about this, eh?” Clayton leaned onto his left cheek and ripped off a loud, barking fart. The rotten-egg smell immediately filled the Hummer.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Colding said as he leaned his head out the window. Sara let out a gagging noise, but she was laughing as she rolled down both the backseat windows.

“Oh, Clayton!” she said, breathing through her shirtsleeve. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

Clayton’s shoulders bounced up and down in a chuckle. He breathed in deeply through his nose. “Oh, that was a good one, eh, Colding? Welcome to Black Manitou, city boy.”

“Just take us back to the mansion,” Colding said. “I want to see the security room.”

Clayton backed the Hummer off the foot of the dock, then drove over the sand-covered pavement and crested the dunes. He was still laughing when he drove onto the road leading to the mansion.

INSANITY. TIM FEELY had worked with Jian for two years, so he felt confident knowing insanity when he saw it. And all of this? Yeah, insanity.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Erika Hoel had been licking single-malt scotch out of his belly button. Slowly. That was good. That was hot, and fun, and sexy. Sure, being stuck on a frozen island for months on end was crap on a cracker, but being there with a wild-ass Dutch cougar made it a tad more palatable.

Since then? Explosions. Sabotage. Brady Giovanni burned extra crispy. That same wild-ass Dutch cougar nearly choking out Jian with a fire axe. Colding all bloody. A gigantic plane and a secret frickin’ base filled with “Yoopers.” It was like a James Bond movie featuring inbred hicks.

And, perhaps worst of all, being awarded Erika’s duties.

He needed a drink. Maybe somewhere in this mansion he’d find one, and hopefully before he found a gun—because if he had to listen to this way-too-happy woman with the curlers in her hair for one more minute he was going to shoot himself right in the face.

“This is my favorite view on da whole island,” Stephanie said. “It’s da back porch.”

“Really?” Tim said. “I guess that’s a good name for a porch on the back of a house.”

Stephanie laughed. Her ex-jock husband did not. He shot Tim a glare that clearly said,
Watch it, asshole
. Guy wasn’t as big as Brady had been, but he was big enough. Tim decided he’d watch it.

Hangover or no hangover, the view from the sprawling veranda simply took Tim’s breath away. The mansion was a jewel atop a crown of snow-spotted golden sand dunes that sloped gently toward the shore.

Flecks of sand and snow blew across cut-stone steps that led almost to the beach. Whitecaps frosted the water all the way to the horizon. Hundreds of frothing spots stood stationary against the roiling waves—ship-killing chunks of granite. Two hundred yards out from shore, a
towering rock rose sixty feet out of the water before it seemed to fold over on itself. “What’s that big rock that looks like a horse head?”

“That’s Horse Head Rock,” Stephanie said.

Of course that’s what they called it. Black Manitou Island, a place of poetry.

“Come on,” Stephanie said. “There’s so much more to show you!”

A wide, floor-to-ceiling picture window stood at the back of the veranda. French doors led into an expansive lounge filled with leather furniture and expensive-looking tables. A long mahogany bookshelf packed with old-leather tomes surrounded a large flat-panel TV. A matching mahogany bar with a marble counter and brass trim dominated the room. Behind it
oh thank you, Lord, thank you!
sat a well-lit, glass liquor cabinet filled with hundreds of bottles.

Tim walked straight to the cabinet. Lonely glasses were lined up on a long white cloth, just waiting for a friendly handshake. He grabbed one and started looking through the bottles.

“A little early for a drink, isn’t it?” James said.

“There’s always room for Jell-O, big fella.”

Tim saw that one brand of liquor dominated, taking up an entire shelf. “You’ve got enough Yukon Jack to last through the second coming. Assuming, of course, that Christ likes to drink till he Yukes.”

“I’d leave those alone,” Stephanie said quietly. “Those belong to Magnus.”

Ah. Magnus. Well, Tim would just go ahead and leave those alone, then.

“Oh my,” Tim said as he pulled out a bottle of Caol Ila scotch. “Come to Poppa.” He poured a glass and drained it in one go. Burned going down. The first glass was just hangover medicine, really. The second glass was for taste.

“Mister Feely,” James said. “Do you mind? We’ve got work to do.”

Tim left the bottle on the counter. He followed James and Stephanie out of the lounge. The rest of the building reeked with turn-of-the-century high class. The twentieth century, mind you, not the twenty-first. Teak paneling, mahogany trim, every room sported a crystal chandelier. Back in the day, this place must have been the hotness.

But all the style and warmth couldn’t quite hide the building’s age. The floor dipped here and there, some teak wall panels didn’t quite line up. Every hall and room held the visible signs of minor repairs—decades of settling had taken their toll.

“Thirty guest rooms,” Stephanie said. “Dining room kitchen all that stuff. Da basement has all da old servants’ quarters, which are pretty much storage now, eh? Also houses da security room but we can’t get in ’cause only Clayton has da door’s secret code. We’ll show you your room, then take off.”

His room. Perfect. Nap time, and not a nap in some godforsaken air force chair designed by the Marquis de Sade. A couple more drinks, then delicious slumber. He drained his glass.

“Mister Feely, I need you!” A gruff German accent—the voice a dagger in Tim’s ear. His heart sank as if his parents had just caught him looking at nudie magazines. He turned to see Claus Rhumkorrf, hands on hips, standing in the hallway.

“Mister Feely! Are you
drinking?”

Tim looked at the empty glass in his hand as if he was surprised to see it there. “What, this? Why, I just found this lying about and I’m being a good citizen. Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know.”

“We are ready to start implantation,” Rhumkorrf said. “Come with me back to the plane.
Now.”

Rhumkorrf turned and stormed down the hall. Stephanie shrugged and held out her hand, palm up. Tim gave her the glass, then followed Rhumkorrf.

COLDING FOLLOWED SARA and Clayton through the mansion’s halls and down a stairwell.

“Jack Kerouac used to vacation here, ya know,” Clayton said. “I used to drink beers with him all da time.”

Colding threw Clayton a doubting glance. “You drank with Kerouac?”

“Ya. Hell of a guy. Farted a lot, though. He could clear out da entire bar when he got going.”

Colding tried to imagine one of America’s greatest literary figures ripping off a loud one in a bar full of Yoopers, but the picture just wouldn’t register.

“What about Marilyn Monroe?” Sara asked. “I heard she stayed here. You drink with her, too?”

“She liked to drink alone mostly, eh? I banged her, though. Nice tits.”

The utilitarian basement showed far less ornamentation than the two upper floors. There wasn’t a speck of dust on anything. Clayton stopped at a door with a small keypad and punched in 0-0-0-0. A heavy deadbolt clicked open inside the door.

“Wow,” Sara said. “Pretty crafty password, Clayton.”

The old man shrugged and walked into a completely modern room, white walls with fluorescent lighting set into a white suspended acoustic-tile ceiling. A row of security monitors sat on one wall, mounted above a white desk that held a familiar-looking computer. The computer screen showed a slowly spinning Genada logo.

But the desk wasn’t what caught Colding’s attention. What held his eyes and made him instantly nervous was the three-shelved weapons rack that took up the center of the room.

“This here is Magnus’s toy chest,” Clayton said.

Colding stared in amazement. He ran his hands along a row of assault rifles: three German Heckler & Koch MP5s, two Beretta AR70s, a British SA80 with a thick nightscope and a triple magazine, four Israeli Uzi nine-millimeters and a pair of Austrian Steyr 69 sniper rifles. Below the rifles
hung a rack of Magnus’s favorite handgun, the Beretta 96.
Ten
of them. Boxes and boxes of magazines and ammo occupied the lower shelves. Two sets of Kevlar bulletproof body armor hung from the end of the rack.

There were some other supplies: first-aid kits, MREs, four propane canisters with blowtorch nozzles, four lighters and fifteen Ka-Bar knives still in their white cardboard boxes.

“What is all this?” Sara said, concern heavy in her voice. “Is Magnus going to war or something?”

Clayton shrugged. “Something ain’t right with that boy.”

Colding noticed three small, wooden ammo crates on a middle shelf. He felt his stomach do a flip as he gently pulled out the box, opened it and saw the contents. “Demex? Fucking
plastic explosives?”

“And detonators,” Clayton said. “Doesn’t exactly make me happy to have it in my mansion.”

Colding saw one more thing. On the bottom shelf, a long, black canvas bag. He unzipped it. Inside was a five-foot-long case, painted a drab military green. Four metal latches held the case shut.

“No way,” Sara said quietly. “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”

Colding flipped the latches and lifted the lid to reveal a five-foot-long metal tube, blocky on one end, all of it painted olive green. A handle stuck out from the blocky part. In front of the handle, Colding saw a metal rectangle that folded out into an
IFF
antenna, an acronym for
Identify Friend or Foe
. A useful feature, considering this weapon could blow just about anything out of the sky.

“It’s a Stinger missile,” he said.

“I told you not to tell me,” Sara said. Her voice sounded alarmed, not a surprising reaction for a pilot looking at a plane-killing weapon. “Anyone want to tell me why Magnus needs a surface-to-air missile?”

Colding didn’t know the answer. He zipped the bag, slid it back into place, then stood and walked over to the desk and its bank of security monitors. The setup was identical to the one they’d left behind on Baffin Island.

“Clayton, what’s our video coverage like?”

Clayton walked to the counter and started pushing buttons. A series of views flashed across the screens: the outside of the mansion, the harbor, the ballroom, guest rooms, the kitchen. It surprised Colding to see the ease with which Clayton worked the controls—the old man obviously knew his way around the security systems.

“Good coverage,” Clayton said. “We even have that crazy infrared crap. We got regular video all over, including everyone’s rooms.”