Judgment Stone (9781401687359)

by Robert Liparulo

  But who else wanted to attack the place?

  Maybe she’d decided to go for more than the woman. Maybe it was payback time: Owen may have been at the controls, but it had been he and Jagger who’d caused the airplane crash that’d hurt them so badly and stopped them from fulfilling their mission of wiping out that city of sinners.

  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas . . . Man, if that wasn’t an invitation to sin, Toby didn’t know what was.

  Nevaeh had talked about how taking Beth would be like spearing two bodies with one thrust: she’d get to debrief Beth while nailing Jagger with a retaliatory blow where it would hurt him the most. She may have decided that wasn’t enough, that she wanted to make him bleed.

  Toby carried the phone to where the outcropping ended, leaving an opening from which he could look down a rocky slope at the monastery.

  She’s going to want to know who’s attacking, he thought. And what am I going to say? Gee, I thought it was you.

  He had to get a closer look, do everything possible to have answers for her questions. He looked down at his boots. Why not? He slipped the phone into a pants pocket and buttoned the flap. He leaped onto the slope, scree sliding out from under him. The boots adjusted instantly to stabilize him, at the same time boosting his efforts, springing him forward. He could barely feel the impact of each step as the magnetorheological fluid cushioned his feet, then nanoseconds later hardened over the firing pistons.

  He bounded down the mountain in eight-foot strides. He jumped to a boulder and sprang from it, putting twenty feet of treacherous terrain behind him before touching ground again, heading for the rear wall of the compound.

  It was breathtaking. He wanted to whoop, but he held it in and concentrated on not tumbling ahead of the boots. He thought about what would happen if they suddenly lost power or a leg brace seized up. It’d be like spilling out of a speeding car onto razor-sharp rocks.

  The wall was coming up fast, a flat blackness before him, and he had to decide where to make his leap. The Southwest Range Building rose above the entire length of wall, except on the ends, where it stepped down to lower buildings that were almost even with the top of the wall. So there, one of the ends. He saw a large boulder close to the left edge of the wall and aimed for it.

  He leaped onto it with both feet and sprang up, feeling the boots’ pistons blasting down to shoot him up. Right away he realized his mistake: by leaning forward, the boots gave the pistons in his heels a little more oomph, putting him on an upward and forward trajectory—great for hurdling cars and fences, not so hot for reaching the top of a wall.

  He slammed into the wall halfway up, smacking his knees, arms, and head. He dropped straight down, instinctively keeping his feet under him so the boots would cushion his fall. It still hurt, and he crumpled on the ground. Rubbing his fresh bruises, he got himself up and started back up the mountain. Another great thing about the boots was their ability to power uphill treks without taxing your muscles.

  A dozen long strides later he turned and made another run at the wall, bounding onto the boulder with flat feet. He shot nearly straight up, but not quite high enough to land cleanly on the wall. He punched into the edge with his stomach, leaned his upper torso onto the top, and pulled himself up.

  He rolled onto his back and breathed hard. He stared at the stars for a few minutes, listening to gunfire reverberate off the compound’s buildings and walls. Then he stood to see what he could see.

  [ 5 ]

  The robots didn’t pause after mowing down Luca and Bardas. They spun, looking for more targets. The smoking barrels of their machine guns turned past the alley where Jagger, Leo, and the other three monks hid, peering out. The bots pivoted back toward them. Their wheel systems, miniature versions of a tank’s, propelled them forward. Jagger and the others pulled back.

  Jagger had read about these things—technically called Unmanned Ground Combat Vehicles, UGCVs. Human operators, probably just outside the wall, directed them remotely, using video-game-like controllers equipped with monitors. He poked his head around the corner, and both robots fired. He jumped back, knocking into Leo. The monks were scrambling to get away. The wall on the other side of their position erupted in dust, chunks of stone, and ricocheting bullets.

  The gunfire stopped. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr—growing closer.

  He’d have thought these mini-Terminators would have come out of DARPA, the US military’s invention division, responsible for everything from the computer mouse to aerial combat drones. But if these buggers were the ones Jagger had heard about—appropriately called Cobras—they were Israeli made, armed with modified Uzis—nine millimeter, rapid-fire killing machines. They were equipped with night vision lenses and infrared, letting their controllers track the heat of their prey’s footsteps. They could slip through two-foot-wide openings, climb flights of stairs, and accelerate up to ten miles per hour, faster than the average man could run.

  “Go! Go!” Jagger yelled, shoving his hands into Leo’s back. He glanced over his shoulder, a futile move: no doubt the Cobras would start firing as soon as their targets were in sight. Rrrrrrrrrr. Their shadows slid into view along the stones.

  “Into the tunnel, the tunnel!”

  The monks jabbered in Italian, Greek, and something else, in panic each reverting to his native tongue. They bounded into the black opening of a tunnel that would bend and turn, preventing the Cobras from getting a straight shot at them—at least for the next ten seconds or so.

  The monastery was such a jumbled mess of buildings on top of buildings, tunnels, cubbies, and walls—Jagger didn’t know if the chaos would help them escape or pin them in a maze that guaranteed capture.

  The monastery was nearly square. The apartments—where Jagger’s family lived on the third floor—were pressed against the back half of the “garden wall,” on the other side of which bloomed an oasis of trees and lush plants. Administrative buildings clung to much of the front wall, which also hosted the main gate. Chapels and monk cells lined the east wall, beyond which lay the archeological dig. And running the entire length of the back wall was the impressive Southwest Range Building. Directly inside the front gates were the bell tower and the basilica. Behind the basilica, as near the northeast corner as the rectory and monk quarters would allow, was the burning bush, supposedly the very bush through which God spoke to Moses. Packed into the rest of the interior were storage buildings, monk cells, the mosque—near the garden gate—and other structures, forming a warren of walkways, terraces, and tunnels. Scattered throughout were a myriad of small courtyards formed by buildings or walls on all sides.

  Jagger knew how to get from his apartment to the front gate. He could also make a circuit around the interior for security purposes. But the details of the place still eluded him. Tyler, who’d spent long days exploring, knew the layout best and had once presented his parents with a detailed map of his own making. Jagger wished he had it now.

  He suspected their assailants would not be content to merely chase them away—why stop there? If they gunned down the men guarding the compound, the attackers could waltz in and take whatever they wanted at their leisure. Or worse: what if the plan was to wipe out everyone inside? It wouldn’t be so difficult; besides the five of them scrambling through the tunnel and the two downed monks in the courtyard, the monastery housed only thirteen more people: Beth and Tyler, the lead archaeologist Oliver, the abbot Gheronda, and nine other monks. Jagger wouldn’t be surprised if the Cobras were capable of battering or blasting their way through doors.

  “Wait, wait,” Jagger said. The group stopped where a dim bulb illuminated a Y-split in the tunnel. The right branch wound toward the back corner of the compound, where the Southwest Range Building met the main apartment building; the left branch would take them to the burning bush. “We have to get around them, come at them from behind,” Jagger said.

  “And then what?” Leo asked.

  Jagger shook his head. “Jump on them . . . shoot their engines.” He grab
bed Leo’s arm. “We can’t just run from them. Or hide. They’ll catch us, find us . . . or someone else.” He was thinking of Beth and Tyler, coming out of the apartment to find out what was going on, running into those things.

  The Cobras’ humming engines and whirling tracks echoed from the blackness behind them, close.

  “All right then,” Leo said. He brushed past his monastic brethren, headed toward the burning bush, and was engulfed by blackness, as though he’d plunged into a pool of oil. The others followed. Jagger grabbed the strip of leather around Father Mattieu’s waist and let himself be guided as he fast-walked backward and watched the lighted intersection behind them. When the group rounded a bend, cutting off his view of the intersection, he released Mattieu’s belt and edged back until he could see the intersection again.

  He extended the gun, using RoboHand to steady his aim. The first Cobra rolled into the pool of light, turning toward the tunnel, and he pulled the trigger. Again, again, again. His bullets sparked against a dome above the Cobra’s gun—what Jagger took to be a camera housing—but nothing shattered, nothing broke.

  The Cobra let rip with return fire, loud, echoing in the tunnel.

  Jagger pushed against the wall, slid around the bend. The stream of bullets blasted against the opposite wall, chest high. Chips of stone slapped his cheek. He dropped to the ground, shifted his gun into RoboHand, and thrust it around the bend. He fired blindly. Before his second shot, the chaos on the opposite wall lowered and he felt a bullet ping against his pistol. Another knocked it out of his hand. The Glock clattered on the stones, spinning, and stopped in the center of the tunnel. He reached for it, and a bullet slammed into his hook, like a club. He yanked his arm in, pulled it close to his chest, and watched the stone floor spark and kick up dust as bullets pelted it.

  He glanced at RoboHand. The bullet had dimpled the metal where the thumb-like hook pivoted to form a grip against the larger hook, which formed a T at the tip to provide a larger point of contact. He flexed his arm and back muscles to operate the smaller hook. Instead of its typically smooth opening and closing, it popped and stuttered, stopping a quarter inch from the larger hook.

  He pushed away from the bend and stood. The bullets kept coming. The sound of gunfire grew louder; the Cobra was advancing, firing as it came. He calculated: an Uzi’s rate of fire was about 600 rounds a minute. One Cobra could easily carry at least that many rounds, giving it a full minute of firepower. Assuming he could retrieve his gun, he wouldn’t have a chance to shoot at it again before it reached him. Not that he believed his bullets would stop it, even if he could hit it. He waited another few seconds—trying to think if there was any reason to stay, listening to the deafening roar of the constant barrage getting louder.

  He pushed off the wall and ran to catch up with the monks.

  [ 6 ]

  Nevaeh parked her rented car on the cobblestoned street in front of the Sana Sesimbra Hotel. As soon as she opened the door, the smell of cooking fish—grilled, sautéed, en papillote, with butter, saffron, garlic, lots of garlic—engulfed her. She looked up the street at all the restaurants, most with outdoor seating, still bustling at half past eight. She locked the car and crossed Av. 25 de Abril to the beach. The sand was yellow and soft; she could have been walking on a foam pillow. It would be warm, she knew, if she stripped off her boots and socks, but she wasn’t here as a tourist to stroll through the surf, bask in the sun. It was too late anyway: the sun was nearly touching the wet horizon, turning the Atlantic into undulating black velvet.

  Heading northwest, the ocean on her left, she pulled her mobile phone from a pocket, switched off the ringer, and dropped it back in. People were still on the beach, mostly families whose kids refused to call it a day and couples who hadn’t yet started the transition from sand and waves to cocktails and dubstep in the many clubs that filled the town.

  As she walked toward the harbor she realized the music had already started. She looked back across the street; past a palm tree-lined promenade was a glass-and-steel building wedged between older, stuccoed facades. Blue and red light pulsed against the inside of the windows, in time with the thumping of a bass beat.

  She shook her head. Things had changed a lot in the century since she’d last set foot in Sesimbra—anywhere in Portugal, for that matter, except for the occasional refueling stop in Lisbon on the Tribe’s way to mete out justice wherever in the world it needed meting out. Sesimbra was once a small fishing village, where it was easy to forget that the rest of the world was rushing to find new ways to destroy itself, physically and spiritually. Now it was a resort destination for the young and rich: at least half the beachfront buildings were dance clubs or white-tablecloth restaurants; mud mask-treated faces had replaced the old toothless and weathered ones; condos, apartments, and hotels—one, stark white with a grid of terraces, looked like a grounded cruise ship—fanned out from the ancient town center. They climbed the foothills of the Serra da Arrábida mountains, almost to the old walls of the Castle of Sesimbra.

  Her eyes lingered on the castle, its tall, perfectly square keep and matching watchtower. During the Middle Ages it had defended and fallen to a succession of invading Moors and Castilians. Epic battles—in one of which Nevaeh herself and the entire Tribe, twenty-eight strong at the time, had fought atop those high ramparts. She missed those times, the camaraderie of armies united for a just cause, the intimacy of death, the clarity of right and wrong. Modern “civility,” under the flags of tolerance and politeness and humility, clouded moral confidence, making men weak. Just once she’d like to see a modern preacher hack apart a sinner the way Samuel did Agog, king of the Amalekites. But no, it would never happen. People turned a blind eye to sin, or expected authorities to step in . . . or left it for the Tribe to do their dirty—albeit godly—work for them. Spineless sissies.

  Nevaeh slipped her hand beneath her calf-length leather trench coat—fashion in complete contrast with the location, as were her S.W.A.T. boots and jumpsuit, all black, but what did she care? She touched the material over her outer thigh and felt the hilt of the short sword in the special pocket stitched there. She imagined a day when everyone carried one, ready to slay sinners in the name of God. No trial, no evidence but one’s own eyes and knowledge of God’s word. It would be a slaughter, until all sinners were wiped from the face of the earth.

  Keep dreaming, she thought and continued walking. She approached the Fortaleza de Santiago, a stone fort built right on the beach in the seventeenth century as a first line of defense, then later to keep pirates from pillaging the surrounding communities. What made the village ideal for fishermen and their families—deep water, an inlet that kept the sea calm, a crescent of mountains that protected the land from winds and wanderers—also appealed to invaders.

  The fort was so near the surf that high tide brought the water up to its foundation, severing the beach in two. But the tide had come and gone, leaving a swath of moist, patted-down sand. Nevaeh ran her fingers over the fort’s rough stone as she strode past. Last time she’d seen the place, it had been a prison.

  Memories rushed her like lunatics out for blood, howling and frantic, and she slammed a mental door on them. If she tried hard enough, she could luxuriate in the pleasant memories of her time here—the last time she thought maybe, just maybe she could live somewhat normally, with an abundance of sunshine and a dearth of slaughter, at least for a while. But the malice of the world and the burden of who she was—what she was—shattered that dream too quickly and too abruptly, as they always did. Would she never learn?

  A beach ball bounced against the wall, and Nevaeh caught it before it pelted her in the face. A boy was running toward her. She smiled and tossed it to him. He caught it and stared at her over the ball, certainly dumbfounded by her attire. If he were half a dozen years older, he’d be staring at her for an entirely different reason, trying to hit on her despite her costume. She winked at him and walked on.

  As she approached the harbor, she was pleased
to see it full of small fishing boats, rising and falling slowly on swells she couldn’t see, their flamboyant colors dim in the twilight. She’d been afraid the fish sizzling for out-of-town diners were themselves from out of town, Setúbal or Azoia maybe. But apparently the yuppies or preppies or whatever they were had not yet pushed away all the rugged men who pulled their livelihood from Sesimbran waters. Somewhere among the expensive villas and resort buildings were the vestiges of the small village she had once loved. She wished she could stay till the morning, when the nightclubs had closed and the tourists were fast asleep; that’s when the true residents would appear, shuffling out from the glitter and glam to mend nets, splice lines, fill their bait boxes. They would be the great-grandchildren of her onetime friends and neighbors, but she knew in her heart they would bear the same scruffy appearance and laid-back attitude—not lazy, not slackers, just—she searched for the right word—philosophical, wise about what mattered in life and content with their station.

  Her visit, however, was intended to be quick, in and out. Any longer would be dangerous.

  She traversed the beach beside the harbor and moored boats, first the glistening yachts, then the fishing boats—poised and pedigreed show dogs and junkyard mongrels sharing the same pen.

  She was away from the nightclubs and fancy restaurants now. The odor of raw fish guts and the milling about of the men who’d gutted them acted as a natural defense mechanism to repel predatory developers. Only a few low-end souvenir and beach paraphernalia shops on this end of town. And a little farther on, where the sand met the foliage as it began its climb up the hills, was the villa she was looking for. Salmon-colored stucco with a partially covered flagstone patio. Three gray columns delineated the end of the roof and added to the place’s Mediterranean feel. It was small but appealing; situated by itself on the edge of a popular beach resort, it could probably fetch a million euros or more.