Dog Warrior (13 page)

“Ukiah Oregon.”

“Like the town?” Atticus had asked. “Ukiah, Oregon?”

Atticus groaned. Ukiah had told him his name—he just hadn't realized it. “Did you run a priors on him?”

“There was a missing person's report filed on Sunday by a Samuel Anne Killington of Pendleton, Oregon—I'm not sure what
her
connection to him is—but other than that, he's clean.”

Atticus sagged back in his chair. Clean. What the hell was he supposed to make of that? A Dog Warrior who wasn't wanted?

“According to the report,” Kyle continued, “Ukiah had been in Ohio when he disappeared. There was another explosion in that area—a farmhouse leveled Sunday night—and another bonfire site found on the land yesterday morning. The owners of the farm are missing, presumed murdered. Dental records on the human remains found at the bonfire site are being checked.”

Okay, the cultists were vicious little bastards, all the way around.

Ru made notes on his PDA and eyed them now. “So it looks like Ice fled Pittsburgh for Ohio, and Ukiah followed. The cult and the Pack fight, Ukiah is killed, and the cult heads back to home turf.”

“Looks like.” Kyle nodded his consensus.

Atticus frowned. “We'll skip over ‘how does the cult know he'll come back from the dead.' After talking to the Iron Horses, it's obvious that my healing abilities are not as secret as
we
thought they were. But why did the cult take Ukiah with them?”

“Maybe they were going to ransom him,” Kyle said.

“Maybe they planned to hold him hostage against the Pack,” Ru guessed. “The Pack certainly seem like they'll plow through anything to get him back.”

That would be more gratifying if it hadn't been
him
that they had plowed through. This led Atticus back, however, to the need to stay ahead of the Dog Warriors.

“There's two things here,” Atticus said. “First is that the cult might be our shooters. We need to run through the DVD, pull out mug shots of our perps, and compare them to known cult members. Just to be thorough, we can check against the Pack too, but I didn't see a match.”

“Check,” Kyle said.

“The second is seeing what the state police, the FBI, and any other organizations have on the cult in the Boston area. They might have returned to an old haunt.”

Ru nodded and made a note.

“My finding my brother doesn't change anything. This drug is a poison killing everyone coming in contact with it. We've got to shut it down fast.”

Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham
Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Framingham proved to be a sprawling industrial town with a heavy Brazilian population. Leaving Kyle to dig through databases, Atticus and Ru used the Jag's GPS system to thread through the heart of the town to the women's prison.

Like the state of Massachusetts itself, MCI Framingham was small and orderly. Screened from the road by a stand of cattails, the prison was a modern redbrick facility with pale gold bricks highlighting the windows. Exercise yards winged the buildings, and a triple row of concertina wire shimmered bright silver in the weak sun. Storm clouds scudded across the sky, cloaking it with gray.

There was a bite of winter to the brittle morning. Atticus's breath frosted as he locked the Jag, and he remembered with a flash of remorse that Ukiah had spent the night out in the cold with a shattered arm. It seemed like his brother was never far from his mind. It had taken ruthless determination last night to ignore all the answers on Ukiah they might find in Kyle's data flood and focus instead on the cult activities in the Boston area.

As he and Ru stopped to sign in, they found David Brukman signing out. They had worked with the ATF agent a number of times; drugs and guns were a common mix, with one often used to buy the other.

Atticus nodded to Brukman, letting Ru do the shaking of hands and the friendly greeting, while he occupied his hands with signing in. If he could, he avoided pressing flesh with people.

“What are you doing here?” Ru effortlessly made small talk.

“I was transferred up to Boston last year.” Brukman took back his gun from the guards. “Pittsburgh FBI field office notified us Monday that a gun-happy religious cult just moved back into the area and they bombed the hell out of Pittsburgh when they left.”

“Temple of New Reason,” Atticus guessed.

“You here for Ascii too?” Securing his gun, Brukman knew them well enough not to push for a handshake from Atticus. “We heard you took a hit in Buffalo but no details. Who went down? Anyone I know?”

Ru glanced to Atticus. The DEA was sitting on the information to protect Atticus's team. If the ATF was after the Temple of New Reason, though, they might be caught in the crossfire between the cult and the Pack.

“It was Scroggins' team,” Atticus said quietly. “All three dead.”

“Shit.” Brukman's gaze hardened. “The Temple were the shooters?”

“We don't know yet.” Ru dropped his voice to a whisper. “Scroggins' team was set up to buy a drug that we've since traced back to the cult. They're using bikers as go-betweens.”

Brukman nodded, glancing about to see if anyone was listening.

“The shooters are heavily armed and ruthless,” Atticus warned. “No ID on them yet, but we just found out that the Pack is going to war against the Temple.”

Brukman surprised Atticus by admitting, “The Pittsburgh FBI field office gave us the heads-up on that. I don't know what the hell the Temple was thinking, except maybe they
didn't know anything about the Pack. You don't fuck with them.”

Atticus laughed at the truth of this, but Brukman misunderstood.

“Don't try anything with them, Steele. I know your team is good, but the Pack has spotted every undercover agent we've ever tried to get close to them and we've lost a lot of good people to them—one way or another.”

“What do you mean?” Ru asked.

“Usually they disappear without a trace.” Brukman shook his head, seeming confounded. “But sometimes—and this never makes sense, no matter how many times I say it—they join the Pack.”

“. . . a couple dozen can take the walk in the woods with the Pack, maybe one will come back out changed, one of them . . .”

Had the Pack somehow transformed the ATF agents? Made them inhuman? Made them . . . werewolves?

“What do you have on the Temple?” Ru changed the subject away from the Pack.

“Not much,” Brukman admitted. “We were just starting to investigate them earlier this year when they dropped off the face of the planet. Homeland tracked them to Buffalo but they moved again; FBI says that the Temple grabbed a Homeland agent and maimed him.” Brukman made a
snick
noise while chopping down on his left wrist. “They've reattached the hand but—you know—it's never the same.”

Perhaps the cult didn't understand Ukiah's nature if they routinely kidnapped and brutalized people.

“Any idea where the cult is now that they're back in this area?” Ru got a shake of Brukman's head. “What did you find out from Ascii?”

Brukman shook his head with a look of disgust. “So far she's clammed up tight to everyone; no one has been able to get her to say anything past her name and some Temple of New Reason rhetoric.”

“Who all has talked to her?”

“Me, the state police, and an agent from the Pittsburgh FBI field office. Special Agent Zheng. Oh, there's a real number for you. Very cool. Very collected. You get the impression ice wouldn't melt in her mouth.”

“Ouch.”

Brukman glanced over Atticus's shoulder and jerked his chin up to indicate someone walking up behind him. “Speak of the devil.”

Atticus turned to follow the gaze.

Agent Zheng wore FBI black with stylish perfection. She came only to his shoulder, but there was nothing fragile about her; under the black silk of her expensive pantsuit, she had a trim, athletic body. Her hair was perfectly straight, glossy black of Asian stock, but her eyes were gray and only vaguely Asian in shape. She looked at him with a gaze that gave nothing away about what she was thinking.

“Agent Steele,” Agent Zheng greeted him. “They told me I could find you here.”

They must have given her a very good description of him, though he supposed there weren't a lot of Native American federal agents in New England.

“Agent Zheng,” he said to prove that she didn't have one up on him.

“The DEA wants a go at Ascii.” Bitch though she might be, Brukman seemed eager to please the FBI agent.

“I heard.” Agent Zheng kept her gray gaze on Atticus. “I need to speak to you about that. Can we talk privately?”

“In regard to?” Atticus wondered how she had heard when they had told no one.

“To be quite frank, I believe you're the only one who has a chance of getting anywhere with Ascii, but perhaps only in the first minutes of your discussion. Considering that you'll be able to ask only a handful of questions before she shuts down again, I would like to see that advantage be utilized to the utmost.”

“Meaning?”

Agent Zheng flicked her gaze to Brukman, who was listening to their conversation. “I mean that in all probability, I can answer any question you may have, and there are questions of vital importance regarding things you know nothing about that need to be answered.”

“While the FBI might think itself the fount of all knowledge, I doubt very much you know the answers to my questions.”

“You might be surprised.”

Frankly he was getting sick of surprises. Certainly there was one piece of information he knew that she didn't.

“The biker jacket in the truck of the cultist's car—do you know what they did to the Dog Warrior who wore it?”

“Yes,” Agent Zheng said.

He should learn not to play word games—a case of going unarmed to battle. Atticus waited for more information, but none was forthcoming. Prosecuting attorneys must love her on the stand.

Ru took pity on him and asked, “What do you know about Pixie Dust?”

Agent Zheng flicked a look at Ru, and then returned her focus to Atticus. “Invisible Red?”

That was what Ukiah had called the drug.

“Yes,” Atticus said.

“I know that the cult is manufacturing it,” Zheng said. “And selling it to the Iron Horses, who are in turn redistributing it up and down the East Coast.”

“How do you know that?” Atticus asked.

“I have my sources. If we're going to continue this conversation, I suggest we move to a more private place. We could walk outside.”

She leveled a cold look at Brukman.

The ATF agent took the clue and saved face by glancing at his watch. “Well, I've got to run. Have fun, kids.” With a wink, he took off.

Just beyond the parking lot was a small pond with Canada geese and a fence to keep out visitors. Zheng led Atticus and Ru around the prison to a country road that ran behind the prison. Across the road were horse pastures and well-kept barns. A sign identified the farm as the home of the National Lancers, and a memory attached to the bright sound of marching bands told him that they were a mounted honor guard.

“What do you know about Invisible Red?” Atticus asked Agent Zheng.

“The cultists raided a stash of bioweapons and stole four machines.” Agent Zheng took out a pencil sketch and handed it to him. “This is a drawing of the machines. They're identical except for this design here.” She pointed out an odd symbol in the center of the machine. “This is Loo-ae—Air Death. The other one”—she pointed out a second symbol in the corner of the page—“is Hu-ae—Little Death.”

“Let me guess,” Ru said. “Hu-ae makes the sex drug.”

“Yes,” Agent Zheng said.

“What language is this?” Atticus asked. “Who made these machines?”

“Let's stick to basics,” Agent Zheng said. “Their names and what they produce are all you need to know about the Ae.”

“I'm sick of being in the dark.” Atticus thrust the picture to Ru to study. “I want to know where these machines came from.”

Agent Zheng sighed. “About two hundred years ago, an alien spacecraft entered our solar system. It was a seed ship for a race called the Ontongard. Its sole intent was to land on Earth and replace all life here with its genetic code. Due to a rebel in their ranks, most of their force was decimated, but some survived and are in hiding among us now. They brought the Ae to Earth. The Temple of New Reason believes that the Ontongard are demons and are on a holy
crusade against them. By wiretapping the aliens, the cult learned of the Ae's existence and stole the Ae from the Ontongard and, after years of study, have managed to get Hu-ae to work.”

“W-w-what?”

“Shall we go back to the basics?” Agent Zheng asked. “There were four Ae. Two have been destroyed. Hu-ae makes Invisible Red. Loo-ae produces a deadly airborne virus that could kill every man, woman, and child on the planet. It's vital that we find this machine and destroy it before the cultists manage to use it.”

“That sounds fairly basic to me.” Ru handed the sketch back to Agent Zheng.

“We also need to find out what the cult intends to use as a key,” Zheng said.

“Key to what?”

“The Ae won't work without a genetic key. The cult kidnapped five children in Pittsburgh, whom they were going to use as blood sacrifices. I want to know if the rescued children are still in danger from the cult.”

“You haven't asked Ascii yourself?” Atticus asked.

“I've asked her,” Zheng said. “She wouldn't answer me.”

“Why do you think she'll talk to me?”

“Because she might mistake you for your brother.”

How did she know about Ukiah? Was she here in Massachusetts because of Ukiah's jacket? If so, why was she chasing after his brother? How was Ukiah involved in the cult? And what did it mean for Atticus now that the trail led to him?

“Aliens and demons,” Atticus scoffed. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Why not, Agent Steele? You are a half Ontongard, created by them to be a breeder. You were to be their tool for taking over the human race—only they misplaced you.”

It took him a full minute before he could breathe again.

“Yesterday,” Atticus countered as calmly as he could, “I was told I was a werewolf.”

Why had it been so much easier to know that the bikers considered him inhuman? Because they couldn't truly inflict harm on him?

“Lately I've been keeping an open mind about old legends.” Stunningly, Zheng seemed neither afraid of him nor hostile.

“What does the FBI plan to do about me?”

“Nothing,” Zheng said. “The FBI doesn't know about any of this. Not about the Ae, the Ontongard, or about you and your brother. Only I know about this.”

For a moment he was relieved, and then annoyed.

“You've got a group of madmen with a bioweapon they could set off in a city with a population of half a million, and you haven't reported it to your superiors?”

“I've let the FBI know that I suspect that the cult has biotoxins, type unknown, origin unknown. I've let them know that Boston is a possible target.”

“You know a hell of a lot more than that.”

“What am I supposed to say?” Zheng's voice went brittle with anger. “That the cult has stolen a device from aliens that they think are demons and are trying to prevent the Second Coming?”