Black_Tide (4 page)

"Once more into the breach."

He relocked everything and trotted up the stairs two at a time.

On the roof the AH-64 Apache sat idle, lights out and pilot absent. Matt wandered over to the edge of the building and looked south, toward White Spruce and a wife and child and bed he'd rather not have left, but saw only Nashville. A sea of streetlights over a sleeping town, only the occasional car broke the silence—retail workers and security guards working early shifts, or C-shifters heading home to an early-morning dinner and a visit with the kids before school. The air held a sharp tang of cold with an undertone of exhaust and smoked meat.

The roof access door banged behind him, but he didn't bother to turn around.

Someone cleared his throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Rowley?"

Matt smiled at the tentative greeting. An aggressive and battle-hardened pilot, Ben Marks couldn't be described as anything other than timid on the ground.

"Are we good to go?" Matt said.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Rowley. Sorry, I had to take a—use the bath—the restroom."

Matt turned and extended his hand. "Good morning."

Ben reached out, pulled his damp hand back and wiped it on his pilot's jumpsuit, then put it back out and gave Matt a limp, dead-fish shake. "Morning."

Matt flashed his secondary credentials, an unnecessary formality made necessary by bureaucracy. Since ICAP's disintegration, the attack helicopters had reverted back to Army use, except when they didn't. They walked to the chopper. Ben fired it up and got the rotors spinning while Matt strapped himself in. Matt put on the headset and closed his eyes.

"We should land in Mid-South early. You'll have time to kill."

Matt gave an "aye-aye" and fell asleep to the muted sound of thrumming rotors.

*   *   *

Matt stepped off the helicopter, ducked under the whirling blades, squinted against the whirlwind and the rising sun, and smiled at Sakura. She didn't smile back, and he didn't expect her to.

"How's Kazuko?"

"Resting."

Sakura had a knack for processing information quickly, and ICAP had taken advantage of her talents to make her the fastest human being ever. Since Gerstner's death—or defeat, if Ramiel spoke the truth—Blossom had slowed to human-fast, instead of supernaturally-fast. Her low levels of musculoskeletal augmentation had been replaced with a punishing workout regimen that left her in the top tenth of a percent for human physicality and a sluggish shadow of her former self.

A hardened Yakuza-hunter with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, she'd served undercover as a teen and handled massive task forces through her twenties and thirties. As an ICAP agent she'd helped him bring down a global conspiracy and destroy the greatest threats to mankind since the split atom. She'd also poisoned his pregnant wife to save her daughter's soul, something he'd forgiven but couldn’t forget.

Intensely private, she'd never ask for or expect forgiveness, nor offer any for any slight perceived or real. She lived without compromise or qualm, and either didn't know or didn't care that others didn't share her stoicism.

He walked with her down the stairs into one of the Naval Support Activity Mid-South's massive buildings. A small base on the Mississippi, it served as the center for recruitment and personnel for the US Navy. Matt presumed that SACLANT had a reason for sending him here instead of directly to the Gulf, but couldn't fathom what that might be.

"What can you tell me?" he asked her.

"Sara Vallimont has undergone surgery to drain blood from her brain, a massive hematoma caused by the wrench you saw in the video. Examination reveals physical and sexual abuse, dehydration, malnutrition. Her eyes are still black, they induced coma for the next eight days. I ordered quarantine of sailors and medical personnel, and have confiscated cell phones, tablets, and laptops."

Matt raised an eyebrow. "Why are we here?"

"You're to infiltrate the
Imperator
. I'm to provide operational support."

"But why are we still in Tennessee? Shouldn't we be on the coast?"

She shrugged. "UN Allied Naval Command decided to use the naval base as start-off point, knew you prefer to work local."

"But if I have to get to the ship . . ." He sighed.

"It's your military. You make sense of it."

"Fat chance of that."

"I don't understand."

"Never mind."

*   *   *

Janet LaLonde sat at her desk at home, flipping through the grimoire she'd acquired for far too much of someone else's money. The skin had half-rotted, and mold obscured too many of the markings from an ancient stylus.

Amazing that such an artifact could survive this long. She wiped each page with a bleach-soaked cloth, committing the Uruk proto-cuneiform to memory. Blood leaked from her eyes, the dark knowledge she'd consumed stealing tears she had long refused to shed in pain or grief.

A malevolent presence pulsed behind her eyes, but she abjured it with word and ritual older than the Christ's magic by three thousand years. It shrieked and wailed as she bound it and thrust it back into the Pit. Her brother's voice pleaded, her mother's, the girl she'd kissed at a party in eleventh grade, her college lover Paul. All of them and none, she bound them and buried them under the swirling winds of death and hate and all-consuming hunger.

Dammit, brother. Where are you?

She reached back and unclasped the gold chain from around her neck, and drew out the perfect blue orb, the lapis lazuli stone writhing under the surface. The white mist inside swirled and battered at its cage, its mewling, unheard whine a dagger to her brain.

She stroked the stone with one finger, and blew on it. "Yes, I will free you, I will."

It cooed and shuddered in a hope too long buried.

"But first you must do something for me."

She sliced her palm with a fingernail and let her blood dribble onto the stone, where it disappeared inside. She chanted, and a web formed in her mind, a tangled, shifting skein of consciousness, a billion interconnected points, twisting through time, through life, into death.

"You will find my brother. By our mother's blood, follow where you must, to the edges of oblivion, but find Dawkins and bring him to me."

*   *   *

Jason Rees gasped awake, bright blue motes fading from his vision. He sat up, blurry-eyed, and fumbled for a bottle of Maker's Mark he'd poured down the drain days before. Head pounding, he shivered despite the heat of the rectory and lay back, pulling up the simple brown comforter that enveloped his twin bed.

He stared at the crucifix on the wall, a garish thing of mahogany and brass, polished to an unreasonable shine by diligent church ladies for most of a century. The Christ stared down at him, face twisted in suffering offered up for all men.

Or something like that.

His thoughts swirled with the events of last year, Matt Rowley and Dawkins and Gerstner, and above all Monica, smiling down at him with eyes bluer than they should be. In his mind she blinked, frowned, and flitted away, her departure a taut string in his mind that snapped under too much scrutiny.

He sighed and looked at the clock, red letters stabbing 4:24 into his brain.
Close enough.

He stood, stumbled to the bathroom, and ignored the bloodshot, haggard eyes that stared back at him from the mirror. St. Martin's Early Bird Weekday Mass started at six a.m., and he needed to look presentable.

Matt looked up at the decrepit fishing boat, wrinkling his nose at the fetid, stomach-churning aroma of rotting fish and stagnant diesel fuel. He rolled his eyes to Lieutenant-Commander Roger Smith, who stood at ease next to a black sedan with government plates and leather seats. Smith's impeccable uniform could have been more out of place on the riverside wharf, but Matt couldn't quite imagine how.

"Really, Roger?"

The small, immaculate man winced. "That is your transportation. It will take three days to reach the rig, at which point you will insinuate yourself amongst the workers, determine the nature of the threat, and if possible eliminate it."

"I don't know the slightest thing about working on an oil rig."

Roger stiffened. "Your skill set is in your dossier. I was informed that you utilized infiltration techniques to access Ramiel in Syria."

"Sure, of a sort. I know my jihadis well enough to walk by, but I don't know oil, and undercover work has never been my specialty. I mean, I'm an Appalachian country boy, so I might be able to pull off some good fishing—"

"Your flippancy has been noted, Mr. Rowley. This vessel contains two CIA men already hired as fill-in crew for the
Imperator
. They will guide you in your infiltration and cover for your ignorance. You're under orders. I have the authority to place you under arrest if you disobey."

Matt snorted without taking his eyes from the boat. "The authority, but not the ability."

"Mister Rowley—"

"Shut up, Roger."

Roger continued, but Matt refused to listen. Instead he approached Roger and bumped up against his chest, looking down from a good nine inches above. "Rog, I'm not a violent man by nature, but I don't shy from it. And let's be honest, if it comes to consequences only one of us isn't replaceable. So when I said 'shut up,' it wasn't a suggestion."

Roger's jaw clacked shut.

It didn't seem fair to take his frustration out on LC Smith, but on some small level it felt good to cut the officious little prick's legs out from under him. As much as Monica needed it—as much as he needed it—he shouldn't have taken the weekend. Sara Vallimont had a family, too, and someone needed to decipher this mess. His power, his burden.

He picked up his duffel bag—clothing packed courtesy of the CIA—and walked up the boarding plank.

Two men greeted him at the top, both overweight, both bald, both in jeans and flannel, one clean-shaven and the other sporting a giant red beard.

"Greg Faherty," red-beard said, hand outstretched. He hauled Matt aboard and nodded to his companion. "Jim Chambers. We're here to help with your infiltration under whatever parameters might fit. Let's talk."

They shook hands, and the spooks led him to their cabin. The dark, cramped room boasted four bunks, each no larger than a cot. And it stank. The combination of sweat, salt, and stale cigarettes scoured his enhanced senses of anything pleasant.

He wrinkled his nose, set his bag on the one made bed, and turned to his companions.

"Who's our fourth?"

Jim shrugged. "Mark Talmer. Canadian, hell of a cough, keeps to himself."

The implication rang out: Talmer wasn't part of the op.

"Fair enough." Matt sat on springs too soft and too squeaky, a cheap mattress that should have been replaced many years prior. He ran his hands over the clean but threadbare sheets, pilled and abrasive. "So what now?"

Greg raised his hands to encompass the cabin. "Relax. We've all been hired to work on the
Imperator
until hurricane season picks back up. A few days transit, and boom."

"Boom?"

"If it works for you, your cover is Matt Cotton, apprentice pipe-fitter from Memphis. You work for us, mostly grunt work so far, which explains your lack of training. Your old lady Monica left you while you served in Baghdad and Fallujah, taking your son Adam with her back home to her parents in Tennessee." He grinned.

Jim didn't. "Trust me, whatever you think you're good at, you suck at this. We like to keep things slipup-proof even for experienced operatives. You say the wrong name, mention your wife or son, it sounds like a legitimate slip. Let me see your hands."

Matt held them out, and Jim grabbed them, twisting them back and forth to examine his fingers.

He sighed and looked at Greg. "A baby's ass." He looked back at Matt. "You need some calluses."

Matt raised an eyebrow. "I can't get calluses."

"What do you mean?" Greg stepped forward to look at his hands.

Matt pulled them back and held them up. "My skin's pretty tough, and any damage I sustain heals pretty fast. No scars, no calluses. No dandruff."

Greg gasped, and whispered, "You're an Aug? I mean, still an Aug?"

"Yup. The last one, far as I know."

"But . . . how? They're all gone!"

"Nobody knows." Matt hid his unease behind a shrug.
Ramiel might know.

Jim's doubtful look poisoned the room.

Matt sighed. "Do you need proof?"

Jim spread his hands in a defensive posture. "Hey, man, your thing is your thing. Our job is to get you there and help you maintain cover. They haven't even told us why, and chances are we don't need to know."

Matt considered the value of theatrics and decided against it. "In that case, what do we do about calluses?"

Greg grimaced. "Try not to shake hands?"

"Shit," Jim said. "That's not going to work at all. You have to hope no one notices."

"I'll try a firm grip," Matt said.

*   *   *

Monica cranked the faucet on the wash sink, and a bare trickle came out. "Shit."

Matt hadn't been gone half a week, and already she just wanted him home. She checked the basement shelves for water filters and couldn't find any, so she bundled Adam into a red jumper and hauled the car seat out to the truck. The massive diesel motor turned over on the second crank. She put it in gear, drove to the end of the driveway, and turned right.

A charcoal-grey Chevy Cobalt eased down the road behind her, and picked up speed as she did.

That's odd.
Only the Franklins lived farther down Turkey Vulture Lane, and from there the road split into dead-end dirt roads that wound through the mountain forests to various fields and hunting retreats.

She tried to put it out of her mind except as a traffic concern as she headed into White Spruce. It fell back as she sped up to sixty-two in a fifty-five, then gained ground when she hit the speed zone and slowed to thirty-five. The town unfolded before her, a main street without a stoplight that boasted a grocery store, bait shop, Wilcox Lumber and Hardware, and Big Bear Automotive Repair. A dozen houses completed the picture of smaller-than-small-town America.