The woman slowly descended after him and walked around to the front of the altar, placing the staff before each of her steps.
The robed man stepped over the fallen ranger, discarding the torch, and motioned to one of the Land Service Officers standing guard. The officer shoved Major Briggs towards the altar, where he was snatched by the neck by the robed man. He hauled Briggs backward, leaning him over the altar, his head above the depression carved in it.
Up the stairs, the aged man in the suit watched, arms folded, silently.
"So it comes to this," muttered Hopper, under her breath.
Mackey did not know what ‘this' was, but he was at a loss to see how anything before them could be something that Hopper recognized. They were going to be murdered, he was sure of it. And not only murdered, but killed in some sort of nude religious rite!
Mackey stared imploringly at Hopper, trying to figure out how he could say something to her. She had to have a plan of some kind. She had to have a concealed weapon, or reinforcements, or something. Didn't she?
Using her staff, the woman began drawing a symbol on the terrace, some ten feet wide. A thick black liquid was emanating from the tip of the luminous metal staff, smearing a dark, greasy line upon the ground. She drew the shape of an omega and then, reaching down to the ground, scooped up some of the grease on her hand. She drew the same symbol on her naked stomach.
"Assistant Secretary," Drecker asked aloud. "What is this?" One of the officers gestured towards him with his pistol, to tell him to keep his mouth shut and to stand back. The co-pilot's apparent confusion, and the fear in his voice, did not serve to reassure Mackey in the slightest.
Meanwhile, the woman lay down underneath the front of the altar, her body across the pinnacle of the symbol she had constructed. Arching her back, she yelled out a series of words in a tongue Mackey could not identify, and suddenly the large omega symbol on the ground burst into flames.
On her stomach, in the deepening dusk, the smaller figure she had drawn began to glow blue, the shade of an electric arc. In the rising cloud of smoke, for just one second, Mackey thought he saw the shape of a face appear—but it dissipated. It must have been just a trick of the twilight, or maybe the adrenaline now surging through his body.
The robed man screamed into the flames, "The life of these five people will flow like the semen of Enki, into the womb of Ninkharsag!" He lifted his dagger above Major Briggs.
Drecker shot forward, rushing towards the altar, screaming. Two of the armed men moved towards him, reaching out to grab him by the shoulders and haul him back. The knife came down upon Briggs' neck, piercing through the backbone and out his windpipe, sending a cascading spray of blood down onto the altar, filling the cut channels in its stone surface.
As the blood ran down, dripping from the altar channels onto the stomach of the nude woman, Hopper picked her moment to act.
She launched forward, jumping in the air towards the two officers restraining Drecker, landing on the back of the leg of one of the officers as he bent forward into a step. The leg crumbled from underneath him, and Mackey heard a sickening crack over the wind rushing around the hilltop. As the second officer twisted around to see what was happening, Hopper placed a second kick on the outside of his knee, whirling sideways from her crouching position. There was no sound of broken bone this time, but the officer utter a scream to rival a beast of hell as he went down hard onto the stones.
Hopper moved staggeringly fast, running towards the flames. The two officers near Mackey, still with use of their legs, aimed their guns at Hopper but did not fire, not wanting to shoot towards the robed man and the nude woman who were now in the same line of fire as the charging Assistant Secretary.
The man at the altar was not focused on Hopper's attack, as he was busy dropping the lifeless body of Major Briggs onto the terrace, and was now reaching down behind him to drag the collapsed ranger to his feet.
The woman had seen Hopper and climbed to her feet, the symbol on her stomach glowing as brightly as ever, eyes alight with rage.
At the top of the stairs, the old man approached the edge to see what was going on. Now, in the light of flames billowing up from the steps, Mackey realized he recognized the old man.
From the depths of himself, from a place he could not have identified, Mackey suddenly turned towards the Land Service Officer closest to him, lowered his head, screamed, and charged. Mackey's muscular shoulder impacted the man's solar plexus, driving all the air from his lungs in a sudden, involuntary rush. His pistol fired aimlessly in reflex as he crumbled, tumbling backward off the stone terrace, into the dark brush below.
Mackey turned quickly but off balance only to find the last officer beside him, with his gun against the side of his head. The metal was cold, and he could smell the gun oil, it was so close. He wondered if he would hear the sound of the gunshot or not.
Above the wind, there was a roar. With a blinding light, a dragon appeared over the ridge, swooping low over the stone pavilion with a groaning rage from the pit of its green scales. Except, Mackey quickly realized, it was not a dragon at all, but a strange, thin-bodied helicopter, with a bulbous cockpit in the front and spindly thin legs jutting outward at right angles from its stick-figure spine, like a lizard perched on a rock.
The Land Service Officer, who had stepped back in surprise at the noise of the helicopter, got Mackey in his sights again.
Mackey heard the shot. The chest of the officer opened up, spraying a fine mist of blood across Mackey's suit. And then he was gone, tumbled to the ground, body lifeless and heavy.
He turned and saw Hopper crouched on one knee, holding a pistol in her chained hands. Drecker stood near her holding the other pistol, covering the naked woman and the robed man. One of his arms sagged limp, apparently hit by the shot from the officer Mackey had charged. It hung weakly, chained to the hand holding the gun.
The robed man now held his dagger at the throat of the captive ranger, and was edging towards the edge of the terrace with his hostage.
The murderous priest or magician appeared unfazed, and called to the woman monosyllabically. Slowly, she backed away from Drecker, still dripping with Briggs' blood, taking her staff with her.
When she was behind him, the robed man threw the ranger forward towards the flaming liquid at the edge of the altar, and they both dashed off into the trees. Struggling to find his balance, the ranger tumbled on his feet towards the fire.
Hopper dropped her gun and leapt forward, throwing her small body against the ranger to counter his inertia. They both collapsed in a heap a yard from the fire. Mackey looked for the old man, but he had disappeared.
The helicopter appeared again, shining its spotlight onto the terrace, now almost completely dark except for the dying flames. It came in for a landing in the exposed half of the paved square, its massive rotor blades extinguishing the fires completely as they all crouched low in the rotor downwash.
From the cockpit jumped an older woman in navy blue tactical slacks and a flight jacket, wearing combat boots, with an exotic looking sub-machine gun on a sling around her shoulder.
Hopper looked up from the ground, and immediately broke out into a wide grin. "Mary!" she called. "Your timing, as always—impeccable!"
Mackey pulled the ranger to his feet and was dusting him off as best he could, for what good it would have done.
Using a bit of wire from the helicopter pilot, Hopper quickly removed their handcuffs. Hopper looked Mackey in the eyes as she freed him. "You all right there, Mr. Mackey? That was a nice shoulder check. You continue to validate my choice in personnel with your resourcefulness."
He nodded. "Thanks for being a good shot."
She shrugged it off.
"How's that arm, Major Drecker?"
"I'll live." He was still covering the two officers on the ground with the pistol, both disabled with broken legs. But
Drecker was looking at Briggs' body, collapsed on the stone terrace.
Hopper moved to the body and checked for a pulse, but there was none. The blood that had previously flowed through his veins was now covering the terrace, as it trickled off the stone altar structure. Mackey was still processing what he was seeing. There was really no other way to describe it: this was a sacrifice. What else would it be called?
Hopper closed Briggs' still eyes and moved to the Forest Service ranger.
"Well, friend? Who are you and how did you manage to get into this torrid affair?"
The ranger rubbed his wrists, and then his face, where some bruises were forming. "The name is Thompson, Gene Thompson. I don't know quite what happened, to be honest. I was on patrol in this unit of the National Forest. I came up to the old hill lodge, because I saw some folks up here, and we've had trouble with poachers hunting out of season.
"Next thing I know they had hit me on the head, and there was a woman taking her clothes off, and they told me my blood was needed to stave off the drought or some such nonsense." He rubbed his closely-cropped head and smiled, revealing a row of straight, white teeth. "Who are all of you? Whoever you are, I sure am glad you showed up because it looked like curtains for me."
"All of that in due time," Hopper said. "But for now, I think you ought to come with us. I think the Forest Service might not be the safest place for you right now, until we get a few things sorted."
He nodded.
"Is that wise?" Mackey asked her gently. "Between our encounters with the Weather Service, Census, Fish and Wildlife, and the General Land Service today, I'm thinking that anyone from a Commerce agency might not be the most trustworthy companion right now."
Hopper touched her hat to ensure it was still there, and cleared the Land Service pistol's chamber before stashing it inside her jacket. "I have a good feeling about this one, Mackey. I think he'll be useful." She smiled. "Unless you know something about him I don't."
Mackey shook his head. "Forest Service ranger is too low-level to be included in any staffing circulars. But I did know one of the people from that terrible scene. The old man who was standing at the top of the stairs."
Hopper glanced at the ranger, and then back to Mackey. "Who was he?"
"Nicholas Roerich. I'm sure it was Roerich. But that would make him something like ninety-six years old."
Hopper stared at the remains of the scene. "Roerich," she repeated. "Interesting indeed."
The helicopter pilot interrupted. "I would love to stand and chat, but your man here has a fairly serious gunshot wound, and there might be some sort of regroup happening below us in the dark as we speak."
Hopper turned to the two disabled officers on the terrace. "Surely your comrades will come back for you, won't they?" The men said nothing, and Hopper turned away without another word. The helicopter pilot kept her cold eyes on them, her weapon pointed lightly and yet seriously as the Assistant Secretary gave orders to prepare Briggs to be moved.
They piled into the small crew cabin of the helicopter, along with Briggs' body, which Gene Thompson and Mackey secured in the rear. The two were pressed together, and shook hands in the crowded space, as much to introduce themselves as to mentally bypass the fact that they were riding with a corpse. "What kind of helicopter is this?" Mackey asked.
"It's a skycrane," answered Hopper. "And a good thing you brought it too, Mary. Our jet was disabled and we'll have to pick it up on the way, if that's not too much trouble."
"Not at all." The pilot smiled as she stashed her weapon. "That's why I brought the big beast when Moffett got the call your sub-orbital had been ‘delayed.'"
Call your Congressmen, and tell them to vote YES on HR-17849!
It is more important than ever that public P-car access to the transnational lines be assured, by passing the Rail Passenger Service Act!
Commercial interests across the country want to create private trains on the transnational lines, reserved for paid freight. They would have the ability to deny P-car access, or to place passengers in crowded group carriages, charging rates set based on their own greedy market manipulation.
Since the Postal Administration introduced their transnational P-car carriers, the public's access to ride across the country in the comfort of their own P-cars has been a fundamental part of the American lifestyle. Every year, tens of thousands of Americans get to see their country from the comfort and privacy of their own vehicles, conveniently delivered from point to point.
HR-17849 would enshrine this tradition in law. It would ensure that any private carrier operating on transnational lines offer the same P-car carrier access as available on competing Postal routes.
In America, we believe in competition. It is how we got to where we are. So let's let private industry compete on a level playing field, by holding them to the same high standards of our public industries.
Tell your Congressmen to vote YES on HR-17849. It's what's fair, competitive, and AMERICAN.
Chapter 4
Crystals
The heavily loaded helicopter thumped over the darkened hills, and in the steady wave of noise, Mackey attempted to wrangle with what had just happened.
In the course of an afternoon, he had gone from breaking into a federal facility, to riding in an executive jet with an Assistant Secretary of Transportation, to an intercontinental appointment with the Secretary of the ASTB, to being a passenger in an aerial dogfight, to being threatened with death in some sort of a blood sacrifice, to now riding in a helicopter next to the body of a man he'd seen murdered, with a full sub-orbital jet slung underneath the reptilian body of the flying machine.
It all put the break-in at Mount Weather in perspective. After what he had witnessed this afternoon, Mackey's last care in the world was whatever sort of disciplinary action or jail time the theft of a few files might bring.
His eyes traveled around the small helicopter cabin, vibrating with the rhythmic, pounding lift of the massive rotary-wings above them. Drecker had been shot, and seen his partner killed before his eyes. He looked dazed, holding pressure to his wound with his good hand, on Mackey's left. Perhaps the pain was taking his mind off the shock of the experience. Thompson, the Forest Service ranger, seemed remarkably well put together given that he had been beaten and had a knife against his throat. Despite his superficial injuries, he was feeling well enough to offer to sit between Mackey and Major Briggs' body, a suggestion Mackey thankfully accepted.
The pilot, who Mackey did not know other than as Mary, was concentrating on the aircraft. But she seemed very serious, in control. As she took her seat in the helicopter she had let her weapon retract under her flight jacket on some sort of automatic sling, even as she continued to eye the injured Land Service Officers on the ground, as if daring them to make a move. The way she moved, the way she was dressed, the way she analyzed events happening around her with a sort of cool detachment—it was all very reminiscent of the way Hopper acted. It was no surprise that they seemed to know each other well. They seemed about the same age. Likely she was one of Hopper's "experts."
As for the Assistant Secretary herself, she was as in command as ever, conversing with the pilot over a pair of headphones, relaying information back and forth that Mackey could not hear over the noise. Perhaps this was how she remained so calm and collected. When you saw terrible things, it made everything else diminish in contrast. So long as someone was not being stabbed through the neck, then things were going relatively well.
The helicopter swept quickly across the darkened delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, crossing over dark islands and transiting ships lit by only red and green running lights, passing over the suspension bridges illuminated by architectural lights to form the rear gateways of the San Francisco Bay. The brilliant cityscape quickly rose up to meet them.
Mackey peered down, watching the light from the bridges and skyscrapers glint o
ff the Perspex of cars zipping to and fro across the twenty parallel tracks of the Bay Bridge. He admired the tall buildings of San Francisco and Oakland: blocky, Deco-cut transistors, studding the circuit board pathways of looping tracks criss-crossing the twin-horned metropolis.
As the helicopter flew south over the San Francisco Bay, Mackey wondered if any of the passengers below looked up to see the odd sight of a large, insect-like helicopter gripping a small sub-orbital jet in its angled legs. Recalling all the P-car journeys he'd made in his life, he decided probably not. Although he stared out the window plenty, he always tended to push his vision outward, and ahead. There was hardly ever anything to see looking upward.
Crossing shipping facilities and salt marshes lining the southern banks of the bay, he reflected upon that. To the world of cars below, he was "up," above the traffic, with the view of the larger scene. A good view perhaps, but not exactly the luxurious vantage point he had thought the sub-orbital to be. He could see the jet's disabled wings protruding from the cargo sling below, still glistening white, but in silhouette, a dark shadow against the subtle city glow. As the bulky helicopter with its large load turned into its final approach for landing at Moffett Field on the extreme south end of the bay, Mackey's eyes looked outward again, peering further south, to the lights of the brilliant sprawl extending down Bureaucrat Valley, until the glowing tracklines of express tracks and suburban subdivisions disappeared in the hazy grey night.
They saw Drecker and Briggs' body to the infirmary. Drecker was in bad shape, but the doctors said he would soon be stabilized. Thompson also had a chance to clean up and bandage his wounds. Mackey sat and watched as one of the clinic staff helped clean the shallow cuts on his arms and neck. The man sat very still, not wincing in the slightest at the disinfectant.
Briggs and Drecker, Mackey supposed, would be used to combat situations. Perhaps Briggs never intended to give his life while transporting a Department Assistant Secretary, but the risk of harm would not have been unknown to him. Thompson, the Forest Service ranger, would certainly have been no stranger to the chance of injury, and probably had a good knowledge of field first aid, although perhaps not expecting this kind of violence out in the woods. Hopper and the helicopter pilot—well, he put that out of his mind for now, both of their personal histories falling into the ‘very much unknown' category.
Orthogonal Procedures Page 6
