Nightworld (Adversary Cycle/Repairman Jack) (40 page)

So Jack thought about his conversation with Gia—his last for a while. She hadn’t liked the idea of him taking to the air in all this, but seemed to realize that he was the only one for the job. The good news was that everything was fine in and around Abe’s bunker. That was a load off his mind. His ladies were safe—he couldn’t have made this trip if he’d had the slightest doubt about that.

He tried the radio. A lot of stations were gone, nothing but static in their slots on the band, but a few DJs and newsfolk were hanging in there, still playing music, still broadcasting the news, keeping their listeners informed to the best of their ability as to what was fact and what was merely rumor. He had to hand it to them. They had more guts than he would have given them credit for.

He clicked it off. Not in the mood for music.

“So, Bill,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the backseat. “How are you going to handle Renfield back there?”

Bill turned from the window and fixed Jack with a stare.

“Don’t make fun of him. He’s an old friend and he’s a victim, just like a lot of other people these days.”

Jack instinctively bristled at the sound of someone telling him what to do, then realized that Bill was right.

“Sorry. I didn’t know him before he … before he went down into the hole.”

“He was brilliant. Hopefully he’ll be brilliant again. A mind like a computer, but a good heart too.”

“Bit of a spread in age between the two of you. How’d you meet?”

“I was his father for a few years.”

When Jack shot him a questioning look, Bill went on to explain about his stint as director of a Jesuit orphanage in Queens, and how a certain little boy had died and how he’d spent years on the run as a result.

Jack was shocked to realize he was sharing the car with the kidnapper priest who’d been all over the news years ago, the object of a nationwide manhunt—still hunted.

The story fascinated him. He’d been seeing this guy every day lately and never guessed what kind of a man he was, or the hell he’d been through. How could he? Bill seemed to have built a wall around himself, as if he were practicing being a nobody.

But now that Jack had got a peek over that wall, he decided he liked Bill Ryan.

And besides, the story made the trip pass faster. Here they were in Monroe, on Shore Drive.

Ba must have been watching from one of the windows. He stepped out the front door as they pulled in the driveway. He approached the car with only a Macy’s shopping bag dangling from his hand. The Nash lady, Doc Bulmer, and the kid, Jeffy, were all clustered at the front door to see him off, like the Cleavers sending an Asian Wally off to war.

Jack got out, waved Ba toward the car, then trotted to the front door.

“Glaeken wants me to
urge
you folks—his word—to come stay with him in the city. He says it’s going to get a lot worse out here.”

“We’ll be okay,” the doc said. “We’ve got our own protection.”

Jack glanced around at all the steel storm shades. The place looked like a fortress.

“Maybe you do,” he said, nodding. “But I promised him I’d ask.”

“You’ve kept your promise to Glaeken,” the Nash lady said softly, and Jack thought he saw tears in her eyes. “Now keep one to me: You bring Ba back, okay?” Her voice sounded like it was going to break. “You bring him back just the way he left, you hear?”

“I hear you, Mrs. Nash.”

Jack was touched by her show of emotion. No doubt about it, she genuinely cared about the guy. Maybe he’d misjudged her. Maybe she wasn’t quite the hard case she pretended to be.

“Either we both come back,” he added, “or neither of us comes back. You’ve got my word on that.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” she said, her eyes steely blue.

As Jack hurried to the car he figured he’d damn well better get Ba back safe and sound.

The sign atop the hangar read
TWIN AIRWAYS
in bold red letters. Tension coiled around Bill’s gut as they bumped toward it along a rutted dirt road. Where were they? Somewhere off Jericho Turnpike was all Bill knew.

And the Ashe brothers. Who were they? He’d never heard of them and didn’t know a thing about them and yet he was going to get into a jet and let one of them fly him across the Atlantic. And why? Because this fellow named Jack—who had maybe a dozen last names and an immediate avoidance response to anything labeled
Police,
who carried two or three pistols and God knew how many other weapons at all times—had said the Ashe brothers were “good guys.”

Glaeken, old boy, he thought as they skidded to a halt beside the hangar, I hope this trip is worth it.

Two reed-thin, blue-eyed men with fair, shoulder-length hair came out to meet them. They might have been mirror images had not one of them sported a stubbly beard and the other a long, droopy mustache. Both wore beat-up jeans so low on their hips they looked ready to fall off; the bearded one wore a purple paisley shirt tucked in behind a Jack Daniel’s belt buckle. The one with the mustache had on a fringed buckskin jacket over a Gov’t Mule T-shirt.

“They look like holdovers from the sixties or seventies,” Bill said softly out of the corner of his mouth.

“It’s okay. They sort of think they’re the Allman Brothers. Not really, of course. I mean, Duane being dead and all. But Allman soul mates, so to speak. They
are
from Georgia and they do like the blues, but trust me: You’re looking at two of the best damn pilots going. Not a place in the world with an airport they haven’t been.”

Jack introduced them as Frank and Joe. Joe had the beard and the JD buckle and he was going to be Bill’s pilot. But Bill’s flight was of secondary importance. The big concern seemed to be getting Jack and Ba into the air as soon as possible. After payment was made—a sack of gold coins transferred from the Crown Vic’s trunk to the Ashe brothers’ office safe—Joe left Bill and Nick in the tiny office while he went out to help install the high-power shortwave radio Jack had insisted on bringing along.

Twenty minutes later, Bill heard the Gulfstream’s jet engines whine, then roar off into the western sky.

“Shouldn’t we be hurrying too?” Bill said when Joe returned to the office.

“I reckon,” he said with a heavy drawl. “But it ain’t as critical for us as them. If Frank hustles his ass he’s got a damn good chance of staying in daylight a lot of the way to Hawaii. Not us. We’re heading east—right into the dark. It’s ’bout six
P.M.
in Romania now. Already past sunset.”

His expression showed how little he relished the trip.

“How did you wind up with us?” Bill said.

“We flipped a coin.”

“And you lost.”

Joe Ashe shrugged. “Six o’ one, half dozen t’other. We’re talking round trips here. Frank’ll have to fly east on the way home while we’re flying west.” He frowned. “Maybe I should say it’s four o’ one and half dozen t’other. We’ll have a shorter daylight window on the way back.” He grunted. “Shit. I
did
get the short end of this stick. That Frank’s always trickin’ me. Boy’s my evil twin, he is.”

Great, Bill thought. I’ve got the slow one.

“You want to back out?” Bill almost hoped he’d say yes.

Joe Ashe grinned. “Nah. Said I’d do it and so it’s a done deal. Unless o’ course you’ve changed
your
mind.”

Bill shook his head. “I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other.”

“Guess so. But what about your friend there? He’s lookin’ right poorly, I’d say.”

“He’s … he hasn’t been well lately.”

“Bummer. Maybe you oughta leave him behind. Things could get a mite hairy on this little jaunt.”

“I know. I wish I could, but I need him along.”

“Y’don’t say.” Joe studied Nick’s blank face a moment, then turned to Bill. “What the hell for?”

“I don’t know yet.” But Glaeken assures me I will.

Joe let out a soft, low whistle through his teeth.

“Okay, pal. You’re the boss. Let’s roll. I’ve got the flight plan all worked out. Got a ten, eleven-hour trip ahead of us, and a seven-hour time difference between here and Ploiesti.”

“Ploiesti? I thought we were going to Bucharest.”

“Ploiesti’s a little further north, closer to the Alps where this pass you’re headed for is supposed to be—couldn’t find it on any of my maps.”

Bill handed Joe the packet Glaeken had given him.

“You’ll find it on these.”

Joe took the packet. “Good. I’ll check them out on the way. Get your friend there moving now. Time to rock ’n’ roll.”

The Horror Channel’s Drive-In Theatre—Special All-Day Edition

Beginning of the End
(1957) Republic

The Last Days of Man on Earth
(1974) New World

The Monsters Are Loose
(1965) Hollywood Star

Fear in the Night
(1947) Paramount

Horror of the Blood Monsters
(1970) IIP

Destroy All Monsters
(1968) Toho/AIP

I Drink Your Blood
(1971) Cinemation

Jaws of Death
(1976) Selected

Night of the Blood Beast
(1958) AIP

The Day the Fish Came Out
(1967) International Classics

Target Earth
(1954) Allied Artists

The Blood Suckers
(1971) Chevron

Over the Atlantic

Flying east, night came especially early. As darkness engulfed them, the sky cleared, became an onyx dome set with the foreign face of the moon amid alien constellations.

Bill left Nick sleeping back in the passenger compartment and headed forward to take the copilot’s seat next to Joe. As he gazed out at the night, he was glad for the lack of clouds and excellent visibility in the moonlight. He could find no sign of the air leviathans he’d seen swooping from the Central Park hole Saturday night. No sign of anything in the air, but the water below seemed
alive.
It churned with shadows and swirled with phosphorescent flashes.

He turned back to the stars, studying them, trying to make sense of them, or find a familiar pattern.

“Where are we?” he said, wondering aloud as he glanced at the dead GPS screen.

“Over the Atlantic,” Joe replied from his left.

“Thanks. I mean where in space? The sun’s fading away, the moon’s been turned around, and the stars have been shifted into new formations.”

“Not just new formations,” Joe said, stroking his beard as he craned his neck to see the sky. “Notice there’s
fewer
stars up there? And ever’ night there’s even less than the night before. I wonder if some night soon I’ll take a peek and find there ain’t no stars at all.”

The stars did look kind of sparse.

“Almost as if the planet’s been moved to a different part of the universe.”

Joe’s eyes widened. “Cosmic, man. Maybe it has.”

“No. That would be too logical an explanation, and easier to accept than what we’re going through.”

“Magnetic north’s changed too,” Joe said. “Compasses been pointing anywheres they damn well please the past couple days.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard that.” And then something occurred to him. “If the stars are changed and compasses no longer point north, and the GPS satellites are out, how do you know where you’re going?”