Blood Oath

by Christopher Farnsworth

  He began to wonder if the Company would have even approved something this badly fucked. This began to smell like a setup to him.

  So when he looked up at the security monitor and saw Cade strolling for the front door, the decision was easy.

  He got up and ran for the back exit, not bothering to hit an alarm. Sorry, Ken, he thought. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.

  Reyes didn’t worry about his soul, but he did worry about his ass. And he decided it was time to get it out of there.

  VIDEOTAPE SUMMARY OF EVENTS, FEDERAL BUILDING

  23:19: Lobby camera shows UNSUB INTRUDER at front door. UNSUB INTRUDER is male, approx. 20-30 y.o., wearing T-shirt, sweatpants and flip-flop sandals.

  23:20: Front doors shatter, triggering alarm. Unknown if UNSUB used some form of explosive device to break down doors. Doors were composed of Lexan-layered glass, with titanium-reinforced frames.

  23:20: UNSUB loses flip-flop. Walks across broken glass barefoot.

  23:21: First security officer on scene, w. ELLIS, engages UNSUB, gun drawn. UNSUB picks ELLIS up bodily and hurls him into lobby wall, breaking his sternum and four ribs. (See appended CASUALTY REPORT.)

  23:22 Corridor Camera One shows UNSUB enter main corridor. Three more security officers—c. GAGE, D. COOKE, s. KURTZ-arrive, guns drawn. No man is able to fire a shot before UNSUB physically attacks. Each man is left with several broken bones and injuries.

  23:23: DHS LIAISON KENNETH BLAYLOCK enters from stairwell, carrying what appears to be a squirt gun.

  23:23:30: The final security officer on shift, G. MORRISON, arrives from opposite hall entry, gun drawn.

  23:23:35: Security officer MORRISON fires three shots from his sidearm. UNSUB is visibly hit. However, he does not fall. UNSUB assumed to be wearing body armor.

  23:23:37: UNSUB knocks MORRISON unconscious with a blow to the head.

  23:23:38: BLAYLOCK pulls trigger on squirt gun.

  23:23:40: UNSUB reacts with extreme pain. Smoke rises from his arm. (Note: DHS has been questioned what chemical BLAYLOCK used on UNSUB. No answer yet.)

  23:23:50: Blaylock moves in closer to UNSUB with squirt gun. UNSUB is on his knees at this point.

  23:23:51: Despite repeated viewings, what happens at this point in the recording is unclear. In one frame, UNSUB is kneeling on the floor. In the next, he is simply not there. Several seconds must be missing from the recording. Diagnostics ordered for camera equipment and digital recording device.

  23:23:52: UNSUB reappears in view, now behind BLAYLOCK. He knocks the squirt gun from sr.AYLOCA’s hands, and physically seizes the agent.

  23:23:53: UNSUB pins sr.AYLOCA to the wall, holding him one-handed by the throat. (UNSUB might have used PCP or other drugs, resulting in increased strength and ability to ignore pain.)

  23:23:57 to 23:25:49: UNSUB and BLAYLOCK appear to talk. UNSUB holds sr.aYLOCA against the wall for the entire time. No audio is available; Corridor Camera 1 is not equipped for sound pickup.

  23:26: UNSUB and BLAYLOCK finish speaking. UNSUB pulls BLAYLOCK from the wall and pushes him toward the stairwell.

  23:26:15: UNSUB and sr.AYLOCA exit into the stairwell.

  Camera coverage ends at this point. DHS LIAISON sr.aYLOCA was later found in Lower Level 3. (See appended CORONER’S REPORT.)

  A GUARD DOG SAT at attention in the corridor leading to the holding cell.

  As Cade got closer, it began snapping and barking, straining at its leash.

  He could smell blood on its muzzle. Zach’s blood.

  Cade had liked dogs when he was human. But they knew what he was, instinctively.

  He shoved the Company man forward, was about to tell him to hold the dog, when Ken dove forward and unclipped the leash.

  He went into a crouch, and screamed, “Tote! Töte!”

  “Kill” in German.

  The dog sprung toward Cade-and then ran right past him, tail between its legs, a black-and-tan streak down the corridor.

  Cade grabbed Ken by the hair and dragged him back to his feet. He was already annoyed by the holy water upstairs. That burned. Now he was angry.

  “I’m sorry,” Ken said. “I’m sorry, I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. Dogs aren’t stupid,” Cade said, pushing Ken toward the cell again.

  “Any more surprises?” Cade asked.

  Ken shook his head furiously. “No,” he said. “I swear. Just remember.

  I had nothing to do with what they did to him. Nothing. Remember that.”

  “Open the door,” Cade said.

  His hands shaking, Ken put the key in the lock and swung the door open.

  Cade saw Zach in the gloom, on the floor. His chest and groin were covered in scratches from the dog, and his inner thigh had a bite that was still bleeding. Burns on his skin from Taser shocks at close range. Bruises. A black hood covered his head.

  There was more, but Cade had seen enough.

  He reached for Ken.

  “I swear, I had nothing to do with it—” Ken screeched.

  Cade snapped his neck with one hand.

  The body dropped like a pile of dirty laundry to the floor.

  Cade entered the cell and removed the hood.

  At first, Zach didn’t know it was him. His eyes were screwed shut. When Cade tried to lift him, he struggled, until Cade spoke.

  “It’s all right now. You’re safe,” Cade said.

  Zach looked at him, peeking almost, as if afraid to see if it were true.

  He looked past Cade, at the body of Ken in the hall, his neck twisted halfway around.

  “Did you do that?” Zach asked as Cade helped him up.

  “Yes,” Cade said.

  Zach kept looking at the body.

  “Good,” he said.

  IT TOOK A WHILE to get Zach’s clothes together—Cade found them in a burn bag outside the cell. Zach dressed slowly, assembling as much dignity as he could.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Now we get Konrad.”

  “Konrad?” Zach said.

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Yes,” Zach said, looking at Ken’s corpse again. “I’d like to kill every one of them.”

  “A little bloodthirsty, now?”

  Zach looked at him with rage in his eyes. Then it broke, and a warped smile took its place.

  “That supposed to be vampire humor?” he asked.

  “I just want you to remember our priorities.”

  Zach nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

  The boy carried himself forward, limping, waving away Cade’s hand. Cade felt moved to add something.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “If we go after Konrad, I’m sure his friends will be close by.”

  Zach didn’t respond right away. As they made their way down the corridor, past Ken’s body, he said, “‘Bloodthirsty’ ... That was funny. You know. For you.”

  Cade’s mouth twitched. “I have my moments.”

  TANIA WAS STILL WAITING outside the building when they exited. She leaned against her car.

  Zach looked her up and down. “You brought a date?”

  Tania flicked her eyes over to him, and Zach felt a shiver of the same revulsion that had gripped him when he first met Cade. He knew what she was. Her eyes went back to Cade, utterly uninterested.

  “You were right,” she said to Cade. “He is funny.”

  She looked Cade over. “I put a change of clothes on the front seat for you.”

  Cade saw the clothing, neatly folded. All black. Designer labels.

  “I bought them while you were sleeping in the hotel. The gift shop had some very fine stuff.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Cade asked.

  “I decided you’ve looked like an idiot long enough,” she said. “You have just enough time to change. Konrad is meeting a cargo ship tonight at the port. Dock 29. I heard him while he was keeping me locked up.”

  She threw the keys, and Cade snatched them from midair.

 
“Better hurry,” she said.

  Zach snapped to attention. “Cade, that’s the container,” he said. “It has to be. Konrad is going to—”

  “I know,” Cade said. He stayed where he was. “I asked you a question, Tania. Why are you helping me?”

  She looked directly into Cade’s eyes, then grabbed him and pulled him into a deep, deep kiss.

  It was a human gesture. It caught him by surprise.

  She shoved him back and gave him a defiant look.

  “Because I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

  She turned and ran. She was gone in a matter of seconds.

  Cade stood and watched.

  “Dude, your girlfriend is weird,” Zach said.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Dylan waited. The smell was starting to get to him. They had grabbed the cadaver parts before embalming. The feces and food in the bodies’ intestines reeked. The stink seeped under his skin, worked its way into his brain. He wondered if he’d ever smell anything else.

  He’d reached his destination a few hours earlier. The pills had worn off, but he had sheer terror keeping him awake now. No way in hell he was falling asleep in the back of the truck. Not with these things in here.

  The corpses. Patchwork men, fitted together at the joints with a metal compound that looked like a shiny kind of mold. Their muscles burst from rotten skin, engorged and too large. They had turned a rainbow of greasy colors as decay set in.

  The soldiers were still missing the heads—that was Khaled’s job, to bring the heads. But they looked formidable enough, even decapitated.

  They lay on metal racks, wires and tubes running from their bodies into chairs, one at each soldier’s side. A bank of equipment filled the rest of the truck, waiting for someone to throw the switch.

  According to Khaled, the yellow fluid in the tanks behind the chairs would bring the soldiers back—even stronger than before. Stringy, dead muscles would turn into something like steel cable. Bones would become harder than cast iron.

  Dylan wondered how it was supposed to work. Then he checked himself. He wondered if it would really work at all.

  Throughout all of this, he’d thought it was a little crazy. But he wanted the money, so he figured, hey, if Khaled thinks it will work, let him, just so long as the final paycheck didn’t bounce....

  But a bad thought kept rattling around the back of his brain. What if—and, yeah, it was crazy, sure—but what if it was all real?

  He didn’t want to believe it, but there was a stink in the back of the truck worse than the bodies. The whole setup reeked of—there was no other word for it—evil. He could sense it. This wasn’t a scam. There was power here. Something tensed and waited, as if just outside the truck, ready for the moment when it could come inside.

  Khaled believed. Dylan had assumed it was just in the standard rag-head Jihad stuff he was always going on about. But what if there was more to it?

  Suppose he believed in something even worse?

  And what the hell were those chairs for anyway?

  Dylan began to hope Khaled would get stopped at Customs. Maybe even if it meant he wouldn’t get paid.

  THE THREE MEN, dressed in medical scrubs and carrying a large cooler between them, stepped off the chartered jet.

  Customs moved quicker than usual, because of the big stickers on the sides of the coolers: HUMAN ORGAN FOR TRANSPLANT-HANDLE WITH CARE.

  The TSA inspector working security that night was named Scot, according to his name tag. He scratched himself behind the ear with the antenna of his walkie-talkie as he stopped the men.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I gotta look inside.”

  The dark-skinned man in the lead frowned, but placed the cooler on the table.

  Scot opened the cooler and peered through the mist as the cold-packs inside hit the air.

  He jumped back, fully awake.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “Satisfied?” the man asked.

  “What kind of operation you guys doing?”

  “Brain transplant,” the man said.

  Scot looked at him for a moment. What the hell, he figured. The paperwork was in order.

  He waved the man through the line. His two companions followed.

  A rented ambulance waited for them at the curb. The airport police were polite enough to let it idle there until the men cleared Customs.

  The ambulance pulled away from the airport, sirens wailing.

  In the break room later, Scot sat down next to one of his coworkers, who was nursing a Diet Coke.

  “You are not going to believe what I saw tonight,” Scot said, grinning. “No shit: a human head on ice.”

  His coworker grunted and drained the rest of his soda. A human head. Yeah. Right.

  FIFTY-SIX

  IT was so easy. That should have been Cade’s first clue. Konrad had been obliging enough to drive his Ferrari to the port and park it in plain sight. The ship in harbor was plainly marked with the Kuwaiti flag and the logo of KSM Holdings, Inc.

  Konrad was standing at a shipping container. Cade saw him clearly from three hundred yards away. He was talking to several Arab men, all wearing jackets that didn’t do much to conceal the weapons underneath.

  “Stay down,” he told Zach, and slammed the BMW’s pedal to the floor.

  Zach ducked below the window as the car executed a perfect bootlegger turn, sliding to a halt a dozen feet from Konrad and his thugs.

  Cade rolled out of the driver’s side. The Arab men—four of them—were still gaping at the car. Cade moved through them like a thresher. Only the last one managed to touch his gun before Cade knocked him into the side of the ship.

  They were on the ground like fallen branches when Cade turned to Konrad. He smirked and held up his hands.

  “I surrender.”

  Cade hit him anyway.

  Konrad went down, and Cade pulled him up again by the lapels of his elegant suit.

  “Where are they?”

  It took Cade a moment to recognize the sound coming from Konrad, a kind of snuffling through the blood streaming from his broken nose.

  He was laughing.

  “Where are the Unmenschsoldaten?” Cade asked, shaking him. “Where?”

  “Sehen Sie für sich selbst, ”Konrad said, smiling with hate.

  Cade dropped him to the ground and stalked over to the container.

  Zach stood, peering over the BMW’s roof. He had a bad moment of déjà vu, back to the moment at the Baltimore shipyard, just a few nights before.

  “Get back in the car,” Cade ordered. Zach did.

  Cade pulled on the handle of the container door. The chain and lock tore like paper.

  There were no corpses inside.

  There was nothing inside at all.

  Konrad’s voice mocked him from behind. “Did you really think I’d plan something so slapdash, so amateurish, as to have a container fail right when your Customs service would discover it?”

  Cade turned. “You wanted me to find the first container?”

  Konrad spat. “You came running, didn’t you? Such a good little bloodhound.”

  Cade tried to make sense of it. “This was just a lure? A trick to get me out here so you could try to kill me?”

  “It was worth a try. Helen seemed quite convinced she would be able to deal with you. Impetuous youth.”

  Cade still didn’t understand. “So there never were any Unmenschsoldaten? This was all about me?”

  Konrad shrugged, smiling. “Did I say that?”

  Cade went into the container. At the back, he stopped, scanned the metal wall—and found something.

  He pulled at a lever, almost invisible in the seam of metal where the corners joined. The back of the container swung forward, revealing a hidden compartment.

  It looked like the cabin of a luxury cruise liner—cramped but still lavish. A compact bed and desk. Lights built into the walls, along with vents for air. A chemical toilet and a minifridge, running off a rack of b
atteries.

  A perfectly hidden escape pod, built to bypass Customs, metal detectors and cameras.

  It all fell into place.

  Oh, Lord, forgive me once again for my arrogance, he thought. I’ve been so blind. So stupid.

  All this time, he thought the Unmenschsoldaten were on their way to Konrad.

  They weren’t. They’d already been here and gone.

  Cade stalked out of the container. He lifted Konrad from the ground again.

  “Where?” he demanded.

  Konrad looked as calm as ever. “Where do you think?”

  For a moment, Cade wanted to rip his lungs out. It must have shown, because Konrad finally looked scared.

  “They’re in Washington, D.C. Right now. They plan to attack the White House. It could be any moment.”

  Cade knew that he was telling the truth. He knew, because he felt it in his bones, felt his sworn duty pulling him away.

  By this blood, you are bound ...

  He had to go. Cade knew he literally could not waste another second.

  Konrad knew it, too. The smile returned.

  “You should let me go. You’ve got more important things to do.”

  ... you are bound to the President of the United States ...

  Cade dropped Konrad, cursing himself.

  ... and to the orders of the officers appointed by him ...

  Cade was behind the wheel before Zach saw him move.

  Through the windshield, Cade saw Konrad picking himself up off the concrete. The scientist was smiling.

  “We’re just letting him go?” Zach screeched.

  Cade had the BMW in reverse, then spun it around in a tire-smoking 180.