Reign of Evil - 03 (22 page)

They made their way down the lane with Trevor on one side and the SEALs on the other. They’d traveled halfway to their objective when they passed a house that was under construction. They checked for security, but there wasn’t any. In fact, the front door was unlocked. The serendipitous find would serve as their forward observation post.

Walker and YaYa each carried a small plastic case containing a PD-100 Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System. Comprised of two micro-unmanned aerial vehicles called Hornets, a base station, a recharging station, a remote-control unit, and a seven-inch screen by which to watch the footage.

The Black Hornet was little more than a camera molded into a tiny helicopter, weighing less than sixteen grams. It was invisible at ten meters, almost completely soundless, but lacked the ability to film in night vision. The smallest FLIR camera weighed twice as much as the entire Hornet. Even without night vision, what the three-inch UAV would do was allow them to get up close to the house and surrounding compound and see what was going on without being seen.

At least that was the plan.

Trevor placed infrared trip wires at both the front and back doors downstairs and on the stairwell. If one was tripped, a signal would travel to the receiver in his pocket, which would then vibrate in series, with the number of repetitions corresponding to whether it was from number one, two, or three.

It was about ten at night and snow just had begun to fall when YaYa and Walker were ready. They’d chosen a second-floor bedroom to use as their launch bay. The glass in the window had yet to be put into place, so the space was open to the elements. Walker could already feel the cold seeping into his fingers as he prepared the tiny UAVs.

He launched his first Black Hornet by sitting it on the ground and remotely controlling the minute helicopter blades, enabling it to rise. It was hard not to control the UAV while looking at it. Instead, he forced himself to use the small monitor, forcing himself to become the Black Hornet and shrinking his universe to what could be viewed by the nose-cone camera.

Tunnel-visioning in, he found himself rising, then moving forward. White snowflakes fell like down feathers. He could feel a slight crosswind and had to adjust by turning into it. The result of this was that in order to travel in a straight line, he’d have to aim the camera slightly left of his target. He found it tremendously difficult to do that and stay online. Thankfully, the wind subsided and he was able to point his nose at his goal. The downside of having a MUAV was that wind was its kryptonite.

He negotiated the Black Hornet through tree branches, which were already beginning to be covered in the Christmas Eve snow. He passed over a backyard occupied by a dog staring woefully into a warm-lit living room where a family was huddled around a cozy television. Then an empty lot. Then the compound.

He rose to an elevation of fifty meters so he could see the whole area. The backyard was enclosed by a wall. People were outside around several bonfires. Judging by the people, the wall was ten or twelve feet high—high enough to hide activity from outside view, especially since there were empty lots on either side. It seemed as if every light was on inside the home, creating a nimbus of warm orange light. In addition to the bonfires, four floodlights mounted on poles in the four corners of the wall shone inward.

He counted twenty-seven persons in the backyard. Walker moved the Black Hornet closer to resolve the images of the people. The wind began to pick up and he found his ability to focus severely constrained. He fought to keep the MUAV still for several minutes, but to no avail. He cursed and heard YaYa swearing beside him too as he tried to control his own MUAV.

“I’m going to find a place to put it down,” Walker said.

“What about the corners?” YaYa asked. “We can put them in the protective lee of the poles supporting the floodlights.”

“Good call.”

Walker manipulated the MUAV until it settled on the northwest corner post on the side of the light pole opposite the wind. He adjusted the aim of the camera, then turned off the blades. To anyone looking, the MUAV would just look like a black blob the size of a dragonfly sitting on top of a pole.

“Take the northeast corner.”

YaYa rogered and soon after landing the other MUAV they were looking at a complete feed of the entire backyard. The area was so well lit, their lack of night vision wasn’t going to be an issue.

Now that they were close enough to see the images of the people, what they saw made their eyes go wide.

Trevor leaned in to look. “Are they—”

“Naked. Absolutely.”

“And what the hell is wrong with their faces?”

“I have no … idea.” Walker couldn’t help but bring his hand to his own face and touch his lips with his cold fingers. Where his lips were warm and smooth, the lips of the seven naked women they counted in the backyard were scarred and sewn shut by an inexpert and vicious hand. Other than their lips, their faces were free from any mark and would have been beautiful, had they not been so gaunt. The women’s hollowed-out faces, prominent cheekbones, and bulging eyes made them look like victims of a famine. But once Walker was able to take in the totality of their appearance, he understood what was going on; he just didn’t know why.

“See their rib cages? I bet they don’t weigh even a hundred pounds.”

Trevor’s voice was low and reverential. “They’re being starved.”

Each woman stood beside an outdoor heating element that rose half again as tall as they were. On occasion, a man dressed in a suit would walk by and place his hand on a woman’s crotch or lean down to kiss her breast. The women remained unfazed, their faces blank as if they were in another place.

“They’re stoned. Someone drugged them … thankfully.” YaYa made a fist with his prosthetic hand. “I suddenly want to kill every one of the fuckers who did this.”

“Something tells me we’ll get the chance.” Walker tore his gaze away from the women and regarded the yard. He counted twelve men dressed in expensive suits and cloaks. Servants circulated among them with trays. Three figures were clothed completely in red robes, their faces hidden behind masks, and a conical matching red hat that rose several feet. They looked like scarlet KKK robes. These three were treated with clear deference.

“Wish I could get close enough to hear what they’re saying.” YaYa stared at the scene for a moment, then shook his head. “I still can’t get over the women. I get they’re starving, but how can they survive without water? They have to drink.”

Walker shrugged. “I’m sure they’ve figured it out. They’ve been starving for a while. Let’s get back on mission. Trev, you still watching our six?”

Trev replied from his sentry position in the hall, “And seven and eight. Roger.”

“I don’t see the woman who took the photos.” Walker prepared a second Black Hornet. “I’m going to check out the windows on the second floor.”

It took him a few moments, but he was soon controlling a second MUAV, flying it well above the trees and bringing it in over the top of the Tudor house. He could see the party in full swing down below. He decided to check the front of the house first.

If he thought he’d seen it all in the backyard, he was terribly mistaken. The view into each room was a different study in debauchery. Men on men. Men on women. Some were tied. Some were being taken violently. In all cases, their faces were covered by brightly colored carnival masks.

He moved around the eastern side of the home and found a room where several men and women were putting their clothes on. Walker figured this for a dressing room and was rewarded with the sight of two men dressed in masks and nothing else entering into the room. They removed their masks and could have been the most normal people one would encounter. They glanced at each other, their gazes lingering for a moment, then went about putting on their clothes.

That’s when Walker noticed that one of the women was staring directly into the camera.

She couldn’t possibly have seen the Black Hornet, but just in case, Walker backed it away from the window. But she came closer and began to point.

He swung the camera north just in time to catch a flash of light from high up on Glastonbury Tor, as if there’d been an explosion. He glanced out the window, to where he could see it in real time, but the light was gone.

The feeds on all the cameras began to static.

It dawned on him what was happening about the time the camera on the northwest pole winked out.

He directed the Black Hornet to pull up and head south of the area, hopefully getting far enough away to be out of the disturbance zone.

YaYa took a knee and stared out the window, now that the feed on his screen had gone blank as well. “Do you think it’s the Hunt?”

“What else could it be?” He let the craft hover and put in a call to Holmes, using his MBITR Bluetoothed to his cell.

Holmes answered on the first ring. “We’ve been watching.”

Walker peered into the night but couldn’t see anything. He focused on the view from his remaining Black Hornet, but the Tor was too far away for him to see much of anything except blobs. “Then you can tell us what the hell is going on.”

“Sassy says it’s the Carnival of Fools. They’re using sex magic to pool power.”

“You can get magic like that?” YaYa asked.

Sassy got online. “Jack, it’s the collocation and derivation of energy. Magic is all about gathering and transmitting energy. By the looks of it, they’re creating enough energy that were I on the astral plane, I’d be able to see it from here. Think beacon.”

“Well, I think the beacon is working. Looks like the Wild Hunt is coming.” Walker strained to see, but the images were too grainy.

Laws joined in. “They’ve been busy. We have seven more reports of missing persons, including an entire population of Basques who’d established a sheep farm in Wales. MI5 is keeping everything quiet, but the Prime Minister is raging.”

Holmes returned, “Stay put. Looks like we may have found their headquarters.”

Walker rogered out. If they were going to stay put, he could at least see how close he could get. He began to ease the Black Hornet forward. He was at about two hundred feet and the wind was buffeting him pretty badly. As soon as the camera found the yard below, it would turn away. The view was akin to looking through a porthole on a small boat on high seas.

YaYa wondered aloud, “I wonder which one of them it is.”

“Which one of who is what?” Walker realized his sentence was an egregious violation of the rules of grammar, but in context it made sense.

“Which one of them is the Lord of Misrule,” YaYa said. “If this is the Carnival of Fools and they’re celebrating Saturnus, then someone has to be the Lord of Misrule.”

Walker was finally able to get low enough on his bucking MUAV to get a glimpse of the backyard. Several hounds from the Wild Hunt were climbing over the wall. No one seemed disturbed by them. He saw one of the hounds approach a naked woman, leap at her, only to disappear inside of her. The woman arched her back—

Then the feed blacked out.

Walker felt a moment of panic. The last thing he wanted was for the MUAV to fall into the yard where it could be found. So he turned the MUAV south, or at least he was hoping he had, and he powered it out of the area. Only the feed never came back on. He continued powering it away, praying every second that he’d get it back. He really had no way of knowing if he was powering anything.

Finally, he gave up and slapped the remote control into his lap.

“We have entry from the front door.” Trevor moved to the doorway of the room. Then he whispered, “We have entry on the stairs. Prepare yourselves.”

CHAPTER 33

GLASTONBURY TOR, GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND. SECONDS LATER.

YaYa stayed by the window while Walker stacked behind Trevor, who’d assumed a kneeling position, his pistol locked in front of him. They slid their NVDs in place and dialed up their familiar green universe.

Walker reminded himself to be careful. It could be anything from a cat or a dog to maybe a couple of teenagers looking for a private place to do something frisky. He’d be mortified if they gunned down some kids by accident. But they didn’t have to worry about that.

The first sign was the sight of a rifle barrel. Walker immediately recognized it as belonging to a submachine gun, which meant the barrel was very short.

“Let me.” Walker’s voice was a hint of a whisper over the MBITR.

A balaclava-covered head appeared. Walker gave twin trigger pulls and sent a pair of suppressed 9mm rounds ripping into it. The man fell flat, his face planting on the top step.

“Watch for grenades,” Trevor whispered.

Walker didn’t like not knowing their situation. “Anything outside?”

YaYa responded, “Negative,” and Walker ordered him to prepare the fourth Black Hornet and to deploy it around the front. While Walker wasn’t sure if they’d have time, they might, if the man was either a singleton or paired. There was only one way to find out. He ordered Trevor forward to retrieve the body, an effort that would put the Section 9 man’s hand and arm at risk for as long as it took for him to grab and jerk.

Trevor held his pistol in his right hand at high ready as he squat-walked to the head of the stairs. He peeked around the corner fast, then turned and held up his fingers showing two.

Walker held out a fist, which meant to halt operations.

Trevor flatted himself against the wall.

Walker moved forward, his P229 at low ready, repeating his mantra, “Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.” He counted to three with his trigger hand, then put his finger back on the trigger and smoothly twisted his barrel round the corner. He put eight rounds into the two men, but only one fell.

When he pulled back, Trevor had grabbed the dead man and was pulling him into the room.

Walker backed to the door of the bedroom and took up position.

“YaYa, give me something.”

“Launched. Moving over the top of the house and—shit.”

“What is it?”

“One of those girls is standing out there along with two of the red-cloaked things. Uh, Walker?”