Chronic Fear (22 page)

Scagnelli pulled up behind the car he recognized from the Morgans’ driveway.

He’d made good time, thanks to the two dumbass agents who’d stored the cabin’s address on the stolen laptop. He’d also learned a National Clandestine Service agent named Gundersson was monitoring the couple, but he didn’t have a way to check out whether Gundersson was in the loop. He’d lost reception since entering the mountains, one of the pitfalls of cheap, prepaid cell phones.

So, while he expected the Morgans, he was not expecting the black SUV that was either official government or else trying damned hard to imitate it.

Fucking CIA is making their play
.

Both vehicles were empty, and he had no idea how far the hike up the rutted road was. He debated pulling around and driving on to the cabin, but the first gunshot stopped him. He killed the engine and pulled the Heckler & Koch from the passenger seat. He’d intended to use the sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, clearing the cabin with just a few rounds, but if a battle had already started, he couldn’t count on close-range work.

Another shot came from the woods to the south, and he judged it to be from a couple hundred yards away, although the topography was tricky here, with ridges, rocky dells, and gullies pocked with thick undergrowth and high hardwood trees. He scanned the treetops just in case someone had the road under surveillance, and then checked the two vehicles. The front doors to the Morgans’ car were open, but he didn’t see anything of value and he didn’t have time to search.

The black SUV was locked, and its interior was empty except for some rolls of vinyl that could have been tents or body bags.

Someone was planning ahead.

Scagnelli smiled. Maybe the mess would take care of itself, or at least he could let someone do half the dirty work before he moved in to mop up.

But a flurry of shots inspired him to head for cover in the forest. Someone was using automatic weaponry, which meant professionals were taking care of business.

Getting the job done. I like that.

He stuck near the granite ledges that protruded from the ancient soil, choosing safety over speed, and nearly stumbled over the old man, who was sitting huddled in a gray, moss-covered cleft.

“Mr. Forsyth,” Scagnelli said. “Sorry about what happened in Chapel Hill. I guess I’m not the only one who underestimated Mark Morgan.”

Forsyth’s eyes glistened and he looked past Scagnelli to the gaps in the forest canopy. “Babylon has fallen, Mr. Scagnelli, and there’s an angel sitting on the sun. Do you see him?”

The white-haired man’s hands shook, and the tremors radiated throughout his body. One of the hands was clenched into a tight fist.

“Whatcha got there?” Scagnelli asked.

Another shot sounded, this one farther away. The battle was spread out, which meant its scope was larger than he would be able to handle with a submachine gun.

Forsyth didn’t react, so Scagnelli bent down and pried open the man’s fist.

Pills.

The vial was about a third full, but it was impossible to know how many pills it had originally contained. “What is it?” Scagnelli asked. “Doesn’t look like the speed you’ve been giving me.”

“It’s the seventh vial.”

“We’re not in church or in front of the cameras. Talk to me straight.”

The old man’s eyelids twitched spasmodically. “Satan owns the world, Scagnelli, and he won’t be vanquished in this season. Not while Seethe lives.”

“How many of these did you take?”

“It is done,” he rasped.

Forsyth slumped forward and Scagnelli caught him, gently pressing two fingers against the carotid artery in his neck. The man’s pulse was weak, firing out of rhythm before galloping toward the next lull of heartbeats.

“So this is Seethe, huh?”

Forsyth didn’t answer, foam appearing around his lips.

“Damn, I’m tempted to try one myself, but you don’t make such a good advertisement for it,” Scagnelli said. He was turning away to head up the slope when the old man’s fingers wrapped talon-like around his wrist, nearly pulling him to the ground.

“Those…are…
mine
,” Forsyth wheezed. “We have a…purpose.”

Scagnelli didn’t want to waste a round and give away his position. Forsyth’s circulatory system couldn’t handle such a strain for much longer, anyway. This particular job was taking care of itself. Scagnelli bent back one of the wrinkled fingers until it snapped, and the vice-presidential candidate and former Congressman whimpered in pain but didn’t scream.

“Burchfield said to tell you you’re off the team,” Scagnelli said.

The old man’s eyes clarified and burned with such pure hatred that Scagnelli fought a surge of alarm. He had to break two more fingers before Forsyth let go, and then Scagnelli slunk away, expecting the crazed old man to scream or curse or damn his soul to the everlasting fire.

Scagnelli wasn’t worried about the next life, because there would be dirty work waiting on the other side, too. People like him always had a job to do.

And this job was shaping up nicely, because he had Seethe, and it looked like Forsyth had taken himself out of the running.

I could book it with this shit and make my fortune, but, hey, I promised the senator five pelts. One down, four to go
.

Another burst of shots sounded, and he headed for the rocky ridge slightly north of them so he could look down on the valley and sort things out.

Sweet. Maybe the CIA will finish the job for me.

The automatic-weapons fire should have changed Mark’s tactics.

In basic training, they’d mostly drilled in one-on-one confrontation, and the instruction was geared toward safety and restraint instead of killing.

But Mark didn’t give a damn about training, or Frady, or the little happy rule book. And he sure as shit had no use for restraint. The sickness surged through him, but it was also
joy
, the best high he’d ever felt. If this was what Alexis had been trying to bring into the world, he didn’t understand why he’d tried to stop her.

The world needed Seethe. Or Halcyon. Or whatever the hell it was.

Or maybe the two drugs were twins, the yin-yang of psychopathic biology, the Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole of the soul. One side makes you crazy and one side makes you stupid.

He wanted to climb one of the protruding boulders and scream his rage and pleasure across the mountains. He’d never felt so alive, and if all he had was one moment of it, he’d take that. Gladly. No matter the price.

But one face swam up from the sea of red, one beacon of purpose in the turbulent storm of sick self-indulgence.

Alexis.

She needs me. She needs Wendy and Roland. The original monkeys, together again.

A burst of gunfire rippled across the hills. Soon the cops—the real cops—would be responding to reports of multiple gunshots. The area was remote, but the roads were passable enough.

We need to get them and get out of here
.

Sweat painted his skin, even though the air was cool and dry. The base of his skull tingled as if someone were striking a small flint and hoping to spark a fire.

He heard a gurgling and moved toward it, then saw a creek tumbling away across a sheet of rocks. He used the white noise to disguise his descent as he skidded in the moss and mud. His senses were heightened and time seemed suspended, and he was able to focus on each detail around him, his predator’s instinct sharpened to a keen edge.

Mark spied the second black jumpsuit about a hundred feet from the cabin, the man wriggling on his belly under a dense stand of laurels. Mark’s impulse was to empty his clip in the man’s general direction, screaming as he did so, but the deeper predator instinct overruled.

Mark waited until a shot sounded—this one emanating from the cabin—and hurried forward to level his pistol grip in the twisted crook of a limb. The man in the jumpsuit was blond, youngish, a guy who would have looked more at home on a soccer field than in paramilitary gear.

These idiots have even less training than I do. Or maybe they’re killing for a reason, while the best killers need no reason at all.

Killers like me.

Mark waited while the man flipped the bipod legs of his gun, apparently planning to set up and spray the cabin, which Mark could only barely see through the thick leaves.

Shooting a man in the back was cowardly.

But bravery was an abstract moral concept, lumped in with the honor-duty-courage triumvirate that the powerful had always used to manipulate fools.

Mark didn’t need a goddamned reason.

From eighty feet away, he fired three times in rapid succession. If the man had been moving, Mark probably would have missed all three, but at least one of them hit the target. The man’s head flopped forward without a sound.

The clap of a single shot issued from the cabin, the bullet whistling through leaves overhead.

Roland, you crazy bastard. I’m here to help you.

But Roland was likely just firing in the direction of the shots. In Roland’s position, Mark would attempt to keep the attackers away from the cabin, because if they all rushed it at once—depending upon how many there were—Roland wouldn’t be able to cover all the windows.

The SUV couldn’t have held more than six passengers, and with two down, the odds were a little better. From the location of the shots, though, Mark believed there were only three attackers.

So the job was nearly finished. If only Roland didn’t kill him before he had a chance to finish it.

Mark didn’t bother checking his latest victim’s pockets. Instead, he worked his way to his right, through a section of old pines and maples where the creek cut through the rotted stumps and ancient black dirt.

A stone bounced free behind him and he spun, Glock leveled, and if it wasn’t for the soft, feminine whimper, he would have cut loose with half a dozen rounds.

She stood there between the scabbed trunks of two white pines, the AR-15 limp in her hands, dirt streaked across her face, blonde hair stringy with sweat. A long red weal, moist with blood, ran up her forearm where she’d been scratched, and her bare knees were muddy.

“Lex. I told you to stay in the goddamned car.”

“You’re Seething, Mark. Darrell Silver was working on Halcyon but—”

“Keep your voice down. The woods are full of killers.”

“Don’t you understand? You’re not yourself.”

“When have I
ever
been myself?”

Her eyes were heavy and sad and her tears sickened him. “I can help you.”

“Yeah, you and Briggs and CRO. Let’s all just hold hands and follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

“I…” She shucked her backpack from her shoulder while Mark glanced around the perimeter. “I have something.”

“Where’s Forsyth?”

She waved the barrel of the rifle vaguely behind her. “Back there.”

Another burst of gunfire sounded from the ridge opposite them, and a couple of shots responded from the cabin. Mark glanced around, waving his wife into the protection of the pines.

“Mark, you’re sick,” she said. “That wasn’t Halcyon in the vial. It was Seethe.”

Her words hit him like a mag clip. “The fuck you talking about?”

“Forsyth set us up.”

She leaned her rifle against a tree trunk, knelt in the mud, and unzipped the backpack. She brought out a bottle of water.

Mark laughed and waved the gun at the rushing creek. “I’m not thirsty.”

“It’s Halcyon.”

“No one has Halcyon.”

“No one has Seethe, either. But how do you
feel
, Mark?”

He felt pretty damned good. He had a warm Glock and a full clip and some people to kill. Life couldn’t be better.

She moved closer. “Like in the Monkey House, right?”

She was saying “Monkey House” like it was a bad thing. She didn’t understand.

“I’ve been treating you with this,” his wife said.

“Treating me?”

“You’re losing it, Mark. You’ve been slowly falling apart since the Monkey House.”

“Shut up about the Monkey House. I’m fine.”

She thrust out the plastic bottle. “You need it.”

“You never had Halcyon.”

She looked away, but then stepped forward and gazed into his eyes, filling him up, leaving him no place to escape. “I lied. I had to do something to save you.”

“Lied?” Mark fought the wash of red that threatened to sweep over him like the water sluiced over the rocks. He didn’t want to kill her.

But he had to. Seethe demanded it.

Sometimes a guy just got in a killing mood. And now he even had a reason.

“No, Mark,” she shouted, backpedaling and tripping on vines that grew in tangles along the creek bank. She dropped the bottle and it bounced off a stone, tumbling to Mark’s feet. He picked it up.

“You did this for me?” he said.

“Yes,” she hissed. “I love you, you bastard.”

She’s a liar, but she’s the only one I can trust. Love is crazier than Seethe and Halcyon put together.

And his choice was to trust her or kill her.

He twisted the cap from the bottle and was about to put it to his lips when he heard a voice yell, “Don’t move or I’ll give you a third nostril.”

Killers without and killers within.

If Harding’s background digging had any merit, then the two people in the cabin with Gundersson were unstable and sociopathic. He had personal proof of Wendy’s traitorous nature, as her scent still clung to him and her whispered passion and sweet lies still swirled inside his head. But her response had seemed simultaneously robotic and disturbed, as if she were following a compulsion she didn’t quite embrace.

And Roland had displayed his homicidal bent several times, snapping from dutiful and even dull husband to a ranting, destructive force. Harding’s research had revealed Roland’s troubles with alcohol, but Gundersson hadn’t seen so much as a drop in the cabin. No, this anger made its own sauce.

Whatever had happened inside the Monkey House, three people had died there, and Roland and Wendy survived.

Through whatever means.

So he was afraid to turn his back on them, which made it difficult to keep from getting his ass shot off by the mysterious gunmen.

But he couldn’t watch all the windows, and the bursts of automatic weapons had grown more desperate, spraying the cabin until the windows held only the most stubborn shards of glass.

So his choices boiled down to making a deal with the devil, or just trusting the devil to help him out simply because he already owned Gundersson’s soul and didn’t much care one way or another.

“Roland, where are the bullets for your revolver?” he shouted from the south window.

The couple was huddled on the floor by the couch, Wendy clutching her rolled canvas to her chest as if it were a rare and precious artifact. Roland said, “I dumped them outside because I didn’t want to kill anybody.”

Just my luck. I get the world’s first psychopathic killer with a conscience
.

Like many agents, Gundersson carried a backup weapon, a SIG-Sauer P232 that was a popular conceal-carry weapon. He fished it from the inner pocket of his vest, hammer-dropped the safety off, and held it behind him without breaking his surveillance of the window.

“Seven shots, just pull the trigger,” he said.

The forest had been quiet for a couple of minutes, and he wondered if Mark Morgan had taken out a couple of the black jumpsuits. Harding had told him about Morgan’s cop training, but it was hard to imagine a trainee tackling guys who were by all appearances professionals.

If Morgan’s on Seethe, then maybe the rules don’t apply. No wonder so many people are willing to kill for this stuff.

He felt the fingers on his wrist and the SIG pulled away. Wendy whispered, “Your gun’s cold and short.”

Bet you say that to every man except your husband.

“Just go to that window across the room and fire a round every couple of minutes,” he said. “Try not to be too predictable or they’ll know you’re a decoy.”

“I’ll do it,” Roland said, although he still sounded groggy.

“Do you want to risk your wife banging you in the head again?”

A staccato burst peppered the side of the cabin, a couple of rounds flying through the window above their heads. Wendy scrambled away on her hands and knees and Gundersson couldn’t help looking at her undulating rear.

These people are going to get me dead, one way or another.

“Roland, can you yell something to Mark?” Gundersson said. “Let him know you’re still alive in here?”

“He won’t be able to yell back. It would give away his position.”

“Have you considered the possibility that Mark is on
their
side?”

“Yeah. And I’ve also considered the possibility you’d pull that trick to make me paranoid.
You
might be on their side, too.”

“Yeah, like I’d fake playing a firing-range dummy? Or give a loaded pistol to Wendy? We’re beyond that, Roland. We’re just going to have to trust each other.”

Roland sat rubbing his head. Across the room, Wendy had reached the window and crouched beneath the ledge. She said, “Should I shoot now?”

“Yeah,” Gundersson said. “Just squeeze the trigger once.”

Wendy fired and the interior of the cabin thundered. Sheet rock dust snowed from the ceiling.

“Uh…I think he meant for you to point it outside,” Roland said.

“Call Mark now,” Gundersson said. “Tell him Wendy’s shot and you’re alone.”

Gundersson stood and peered around the edge of the window. A shadow darted between the trees, but he didn’t fire. He couldn’t risk hitting Mark or any other innocent bystander.

Though at this point, he didn’t think anybody was truly innocent.

Gundersson glanced at Roland, who had unrolled Wendy’s painting. He recognized the basic form of the figure she’d been working on the day before, but it was shot through with connected lines and letters. The new graffiti was smeared a little, as if the acrylic paint hadn’t completely dried before the canvas was rolled.

The images clicked into place, pulling him back to high school chemistry, the periodic chart, and Mrs. Stallworth’s chalkboard.

A chemical compound.

The one people were dying over.

Hidden right in front of his eyes.

This was the secret she’d whispered of, the reason she’d seduced him in exchange for his help.

He glanced at Wendy, and saw that she knew he’d put it together. A cold smile crossed her face, a ghost of the expression she’d worn the night before. It was a reptilian face, shaped by survival and the Monkey House experiments.

“It’s like a living thing,” Wendy said. “An organism. Seethe wants to survive, and it will do whatever it needs to do. Kill whoever it needs to kill.”

Gundersson had never gone in for Good versus Evil debates. He’d accepted his work for the government as Good, because the United States had a moral role as leader of the free world. And his work helped the country remain free.

At least, that’s what he’d always told himself. Or it could have been the Captain America comic books he’d read as a kid, the wearing of the red, white, and blue as a badge of honor.

But was saving Seethe really in the country’s best interests? Was his idealism blinding him to the terrible damage the substance was already inflicting?

And what if it fell into terrorist hands? What if it crept across the globe, and the madness and mayhem proliferated a billionfold?

“Shut up, Wendy,” Roland said, reaching the window beside her.

“Once it’s in you, it never gets out,” Wendy said.

“Shut up,” Roland repeated.

“You can water it down with Halcyon, but—”

Roland covered her mouth with his palm, and she struggled to break free.
“I told you to shut the hell up!”

Gundersson was so fixated on the sick drama before him that the nearby burst of automatic weaponry seemed a normal part of the mad tapestry, the perfect syncopated soundtrack for the end of sanity. The reverberation deafened him, bullets spraying across the interior of the cabin as the walls erupted in pocks and scars. A framed painting above the mantel fell from its perch, and an oil lantern shattered.

Then the shooter filled the frame of the window, sweeping machine-gun fire and stitching the walls, but he’d sprayed too high. Gundersson reacted, lifting his Glock and squeezing off five rounds. The face disappeared in a gout of blood and the corpse flopped backward.

The man must have rushed the window while Gundersson wasn’t watching, perhaps growing desperate when he realized his comrades were being picked off from behind.

Which meant this wasn’t a mission designed to capture.

It was all or nothing.

He’d told Harding most of what he knew. And if his own government was willing to kill all involved to suppress Seethe, then Gundersson’s idealism was shot to shit.

Freedom, like Seethe, would destroy you in a heartbeat and never mourn your loss.