by Alex Kava
The one called Tully was saying something to him, lips moving, eyes burrowing into Eric’s, but Eric had turned down the volume hours ago. Or was it days ago? He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. He couldn’t remember how long he had been in this cabin, how long he had sat in this straight-backed chair with his wrists handcuffed and his feet in shackles, waiting for the inevitable torture to begin. He had no sense of time, but he did know the exact moment his system had begun to shut down. The exact second his mind had gone numb. It was the instant that David dropped to the floor, the thud of his body forcing Eric to risk opening his eyes. That was when he found himself staring directly into David’s eyes, their faces only inches apart.
Eric had seen his friend’s mouth open. Thought he heard a faint whisper, three words, no more. Maybe it had been Eric’s imagination, because David’s eyes were already empty when the words “He tricked us” left his lips. He must have heard his friend wrong. Satan hadn’t tricked them at all. They had tricked him, instead. Hadn’t they?
Suddenly, the men were scrambling to their feet. Eric braced himself as best he could, closed fists, shoulders hunched, head down. Only there were no blows, no bullets, no wounds inflicted of any kind. And their voices melted together, the hysteria in them breaking through Eric’s self-imposed barrier.
“We need to get out of the cabin. Now.”
Eric twisted around in the chair, just as one of the men pulled him to his feet and started to shove him toward the door. He saw another man, with some weird contraption mounted on top of his head, come up out of the floorboards. Of course, they had found the hidden arsenal. Father would be disappointed. They had needed that stockpile of weapons to fight Satan. Their mission had failed before they could deliver them back to their home camp. Yes, Father would be very disappointed. They had let everyone down. Maybe more lives would be lost, because all the weapons that had taken months to amass would now be confiscated and put under Satan’s control. Precious lives might be lost because they had failed their mission. How could Father protect any of them without these weapons?
The men shoved and pulled at him, hurrying out the cabin door and down into the woods. Eric didn’t understand. What were they running from? He tried to listen, tried to hear. He wanted to know what could possibly frighten Satan’s soldiers.
They gathered around the man with the strange headgear, who brought out a metal box with blinking lights and odd wires. Eric had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the man had found it down with the weapons.
“There’s an arsenal underneath large enough to blow this place to kingdom come.”
Eric couldn’t help but smile and immediately felt a jab to his kidneys. He wanted to tell Mr. Tully, the owner of the elbow in his back, that he wasn’t smiling about them being blown up, but rather at the idea that any of them believed they would ever be allowed into the Kingdom of God.
No one else noticed his smile. They focused on the dark-haired man with the crazy gogglelike contraption now pushed up on top of his head, reminding Eric of some life-size insect.
“Tell us something we don’t already know,” one of the men challenged.
“Okay. How about this. The entire cabin is wired,” the insect man told them.
“Shit!”
“It gets even better. This is only a secondary switch.” He showed them the metal box he held. “The real detonator’s off-site.” Then he pointed to the blinking red button and flipped a switch. The light shut off. Within seconds it snapped back on, blinking again like a pulsing red eye.
The men turned and twisted, craning their necks and looking around them. Some of them had their guns drawn. Even Eric’s head pivoted, his eyes suddenly clear and squinting into the shadows of the woods. He didn’t understand. He wondered if David had known about the metal box.
“Where is it?” demanded the big guy with no neck, the one everyone seemed to treat as being in charge, the only one dressed in a navy blazer instead of a windbreaker. “Where’s the goddamn detonator?”
It took Eric a minute to realize the man was asking him. He met his eyes and stared like he had been taught, looking directly into the black pupils and not blinking, not flinching, not letting the enemy win even one word.
“Hold on a minute,” the one named Cunningham said. “Why wouldn’t they want the detonator inside the cabin, so they could control when and how to blow it up? We already know they were willing to take their own lives. So why not do it by blowing themselves and the arsenal up?”
“Maybe they still intend to blow us up.” And there was more shuffling, more worried heads pivoting.
Eric wanted to tell them Father would never blow up the cabin. He couldn’t sacrifice the weapons. Father needed them to fight, to continue to fight. Instead, he simply transferred his stare to Cunningham, who not only held his gaze but bore into him as if his powers could wrench out the truth with only a look. A knot in Eric’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t blink. He couldn’t show weakness.
“No, if they wanted to blow us up, we’d already be dead,” Cunningham continued without looking away. “I think the real targets are already dead. I think their leader just wanted to make sure they did the right thing.”
Eric listened. It was a trick. Satan was testing him. Seeing if he would flinch. Father wanted to save them from being taken alive and tortured. This was simply the beginning of that torture, and Satan’s soldier, this Cunningham, knew his job well. His eyes wouldn’t let Eric go, but he wouldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away. He had to ignore the thunder of his heart in his ears, and the knot tightening in his gut.
“The detonator,” Cunningham said without a single blink of his own eyes, “may have been a backup plan. If they didn’t swallow their death pills, he was prepared to blow them to pieces. Some leader you have, kid.”
Eric wouldn’t take the bait. Father would never do such a thing. They had voluntarily given up their lives. No one had forced them. Eric simply hadn’t been strong enough to join them. He was weak. He was a coward. For a moment he had dared to lose faith. He had not been a brave, loyal warrior like the others, but he wouldn’t show weakness now. He wouldn’t give in.
Then suddenly, Eric remembered David’s last words. “He tricked us.” Eric thought David had meant Satan. But what if he meant…? It wasn’t possible. Father had only wanted to save them from being tortured. Hadn’t he? Father wouldn’t trick them. Would he?
Cunningham waited, watching and catching Eric as he blinked. That’s when he said, “I wonder if your precious leader knows you’re still alive? Do you suppose he’ll come to your rescue, just like he did last night?”
But Eric was no longer sure of anything as he stared at the metal box flashing its strange lights, red and green, stop and go, life and death, heaven and hell. Maybe David and the others were not only the brave ones; now Eric wondered if perhaps they were also the lucky ones.
CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY
November 23
Arlington National Cemetery
Maggie O’Dell gripped the lapels of her jacket into a fist, bracing herself for another gust of wind. She regretted leaving her trench coat in the car. She’d ripped it off in the church, blaming the stupid coat for her feeling of suffocation. Now, here in the cemetery, amid the black-clad mourners and stone tombstones, she wished she had something, anything, from which she could draw warmth.
She stood back and watched the group huddle together, surrounding the family under the canopy, intent on protecting them from the wind, as though compensating for the mistakes that had brought them all here today. She recognized many of them in their standard dark suits and their trained solemn faces. Except in the middle of this graveyard, even those bulges under their jackets couldn’t prevent them from looking vulnerable, stripped by the wind of their government-issue, straight-backed posture.
Watching from the fringes, Maggie was grateful for her colleagues’ protective instincts. Grateful they prevented her from seeing the faces
of Karen and the two little girls who would grow up without their daddy. She didn’t want to witness any more of their grief, their pain; a pain so palpable it threatened to demolish years of protective layers she had carefully constructed to hide and stifle her own grief, her own pain. Standing back here, she hoped to stay safe.
Despite the crisp autumn gusts attacking her bare legs and snapping at her skirt, her palms were sweaty. Her knees wavered. Some invisible force knocked at her heart. Jesus! What the hell was wrong with her? Ever since she opened that body bag and saw Delaney’s lifeless face, she had been a wreck of nerves, conjuring up ghosts from the past—images and words better left buried. She sucked in deep breaths, despite the cold air stinging her lungs. This sting, this discomfort, was preferable to the sting the memories could bring.
After twenty-one years, it annoyed her that funerals could still reduce her to that twelve-year-old girl. Without will or warning, she remembered it all as though it had happened yesterday. She could see her father’s casket lowered into the ground. She could feel her mother tugging at her arm, demanding that Maggie toss a handful of dirt on top of the casket’s shiny surface. And now, in a matter of minutes, she knew the lone bugler’s version of taps would be enough to knot her stomach.
She wanted to leave. No one would notice, all of them wrapped in their own memories or vulnerabilities. Except that she owed it to Delaney to be here. Their last conversation had been one of anger and betrayal. It was too late for apologies, but perhaps her being here would bring her a sense of resolution, if not absolution.
The wind whipped at her again, swirling dried and crackling leaves like spirits rising up and sailing between the graves. The howl and ghostly moans sent additional chills down Maggie’s back. As a child, she had felt the spirits of the dead, surrounding her, taunting her, laughing at her, whispering that they had taken away her father. That was the first time she had felt the incredible aloneness, which continued to stick to her like that handful of wet dirt she had squeezed between her fingers, squeezing tight while her mother insisted she toss it.
“Do it, Maggie,” she could still hear her mother say. “Just do it already and get it over with” had been her mother’s impatient words, her concern more of embarrassment than of her daughter’s grief.
A gloved hand touched Maggie’s shoulder. She jumped and resisted the instinct to reach inside her jacket for her gun.
“Sorry, Agent O’Dell. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Assistant Director Cunningham’s hand lingered on her shoulder, his eyes straight ahead, watching.
Maggie thought she was the only one who had not joined the group gathered around the freshly cut grave, the dark hole in the ground that would house Special Agent Richard Delaney’s body. Why had he been so cocky, so stupid?
As if reading her mind, Cunningham said, “He was a good man, an excellent negotiator.”
Maggie wanted to ask, Why then was he here rather than at home with his wife and girls, preparing for a Saturday afternoon of watching college football with the gang? Instead, she whispered, “He was the best.”
Cunningham fidgeted at her side, shoving his hands deep into his trench coat’s pockets. She realized that, although he would never embarrass her by offering his coat, he stood in such a way that protected her from the wind. But he hadn’t sought her out just to be her windbreak. She could see there was something on his mind. After almost ten years, she recognized the pursed lips and furrowed brow, the agitated shifting from one foot to the other, all subtle but telling signs for a man who normally defined the term professional.
Maggie waited, surprised that he, too, appeared to be waiting for some appropriate time.
“Do we know anything more about these men—what group they belonged to?” She tried to coax him, keeping her voice low, but they were far enough back that the wind would never allow them to be overheard.
“Not yet. They weren’t much more than boys. Boys with enough guns and ammo to take over a small country. But someone else, someone was definitely behind this. Some fanatical leader who doesn’t mind sacrificing his own. We’ll find out soon enough. Maybe when we dig up who owns that cabin.” He pushed at the bridge of his glasses and immediately replaced his hand into his pocket. “I owe you an apology, Agent O’Dell.”
Here it was, yet he hesitated. His uncomfortable behavior surprised and unnerved Maggie. It reminded her of the knot in her stomach and the ache in her chest. She didn’t want to talk about this, didn’t want the reminder. She wanted to think of something else, anything other than the image of Delaney crumpling to the ground. With little effort, she could still hear the sloshing of his brains and see the pieces of his skull in the body bag.
“You don’t owe me an apology, sir. You didn’t know,” she finally said, letting the pause last too long.
Still keeping his eyes straight ahead and his voice quiet, he said, “I should have checked before I sent you. I know how difficult that must have been for you.”
Maggie glanced up at him. Her boss’s face remained as stoic as usual, but there was a twitch of emotion at the corner of his mouth. She followed his eyes to the line of military men who were now marching onto the cemetery and into position.
Oh, God. Here we go.
Maggie’s knees grew unsteady. Immediately, she broke into a cold sweat. She wanted to escape, and now she wished Cunningham wasn’t right next to her. However, he didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. Instead, he stood at attention as the rifles clicked and clacked into position.
Maggie jumped at each gunshot, closing her eyes against the memories and wishing they would stay the hell away. She could still hear her mother warning her, scolding her, “Don’t you dare cry, Maggie. It’ll only make your face all red and puffy.”
She hadn’t cried then, and she wouldn’t cry now. But when the bugle began its lonesome song, she was shivering and biting her lower lip. Damn you, Delaney, she wanted to curse out loud. She had long ago decided God had a cruel sense of humor—or perhaps He simply wasn’t paying attention anymore.
The crowd suddenly opened to release a small girl out from under the tent, a piece of bright blue spilling between the black, like a tiny blue bird in a flock of black crows. Maggie recognized Delaney’s younger daughter, Abby, dressed in a royal-blue coat and matching hat and being led by her grandmother, Delaney’s mother. They were headed straight for Maggie and Cunningham, and they were about to destroy any hopes Maggie had of trying to isolate herself.
“Miss Abigail insists she cannot wait to use the rest room,” Mrs. Delaney said to Maggie as they approached. “Do you have any idea where one might be?”
Cunningham pointed to the main building behind them, hidden by the slope of the hill and the trees surrounding it. Mrs. Delaney took one look and her entire red-blotched face seemed to fall into a frown, as though she faced one more hill than she could possibly endure on this day of endless hills.
“I can take her,” Maggie volunteered before realizing she might be the worst possible person to comfort the girl. But surely, bathroom duty was something she could handle.
“Do you mind, Abigail? Would it be okay for Agent O’Dell to take you to the rest room?”
“Agent O’Dell?” The little girl’s face scrunched up as she looked around, trying to find the person her grandmother was talking about. Then suddenly, she said, “Oh, you mean Maggie? Her name’s Maggie, Grandma.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I mean Maggie. Is it okay if you go with her?”
But Abby had already taken Maggie’s hand. “We need to hurry,” she told her, without looking up and pulling Maggie in the direction she had seen Cunningham point.
Maggie wondered if the four-year-old had any understanding of what had happened or why they were even at the cemetery. However, Maggie was simply relieved that her only task at the moment was to fight the wind and trek up the hill, leaving behind all those memories and wisps of spirits riding the wind. But as they got to the building that towered over the rows of white crosses a
nd gray tombstones, Abby stopped and turned around to look back. The wind whipped at her blue coat, and Maggie could see her shiver. She felt the small hand squeeze tight the fingers it had managed to wrap around.
“Are you okay, Abby?”
She nodded twice, setting her hat bouncing. Then her chin stayed tucked down. “I hope he doesn’t get cold,” Abby said. Maggie’s heart took a plunge.
What should she say to her? How could she explain something that even she didn’t understand? She was thirty-three years old and still missed her own father, still couldn’t understand why he had been ripped away from her all those years ago. Years that should have healed the gaping wound that easily became exposed at the sound of a stupid bugle or the sight of a casket being lowered into the ground.
Before Maggie could offer any consolation, the girl looked up at her and said, “I made Mommy put a blanket in there with him.” Then, as if satisfied by the memory, she turned back toward the door and pulled Maggie along, ready to continue with the task at hand. “A blanket and a flashlight,” she added. “So he’ll be warm and not scared of the dark. Just till he gets to God’s house.”
Maggie couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps she could learn a thing or two from this wise four-year-old.
CHAPTER 7
Washington, D.C.
Justin Pratt sat on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, pretending to rest his feet. Yeah, his feet were sore, but that wasn’t why he wanted to escape. For hours they had been walking between the monuments, handing out pamphlets to touring groups of giggling and shouting high school kids. They had hit the city at the right time—fall field trips. There must have been more than fifty groups from across the country. And they were all a fucking pain in the ass. It was hard to believe he was only about a year or two older than some of these idiots.
