Altar of Bones

by Philip Carter

  A split second later Ry saw a grenade sail through the shattered doors to land with a heavy thud on the far edge of the thick Oriental carpet.

  He heard a sharp pfffft and threw himself on top of Zoe. They rolled off the sofa and onto the floor, just as the grenade exploded.

  41

  THICK, CHOKING white smoke billowed around them. Ry’s eyes and throat were burning up, he couldn’t breathe. He choked, then his brain kicked in.

  Not fire. Tear gas.

  Zoe flailed underneath him, coughing, gagging. He rolled off her and up onto his knees. He still had his gun in one hand, and he grabbed her arm with the other, to pull her up with him. He saw her mouth open on a yell or a scream, then she choked and jerked away from him, scrambling on her hands and knees to the nearest armchair, clawing at the rug underneath it, as if she were a wounded animal trying to burrow into a hole.

  He snagged her ankle; she kicked loose. He grabbed it again, tried to pull her out from under the chair. He yelled her name, but it came out in a croak. His eyes felt as if they were burning up inside his head, and every breath was like swallowing ground glass.

  Gotta get us out of here, out of here now….

  Ry figured their attackers would give it another ten, fifteen seconds, at the most, for the tear gas to take full effect, then rush the library.

  Gotta get out….

  He twisted his fingers in the denim of Zoe’s pants and yanked hard. She came up fast and whirled, her eyes swollen, streaming tears, her chest heaving. Then he saw the Glock in her hand, and he finally got it. He must’ve sent her gun flying under the chair when he’d jumped on top of her.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet. “Kitchen,” he rasped.

  She nodded and ran half-blind toward the double doors that led to the foyer. Ry stumbled after her. He could barely see anymore. Ragged coughs ripped through his lungs. It felt as if he were breathing acid.

  He glanced back at the shattered window through the white veil of gas. His swollen, blurred eyes saw a creature rise up as if from the black lagoon—tall and thick-chested, with bulbous, flylike eyes, a snakelike nose, and a long arm with a clawed finger pointing at Ry’s heart.

  Ry fired off a half dozen shots, his aim wild because he couldn’t see. He heard the bullets hit wood and glass. The creature seemed to disappear in the smoke. Was he hit or just diving for cover?

  A split second later a spray of automatic-weapons fire stitched the wall above their heads.

  Not hit, or at least not so badly that he couldn’t shoot. More bullets whizzed by, lower this time, shattering the lintel of the door. Chunks of wood and plaster flew through the air. The clouds of gas seemed to shimmer with the noise.

  Zoe was having trouble with the latch. She twisted around and rasped something that might’ve been “Locked” or “Blocked.” He pulled her out of the way and kicked the wooden panels into kindling with his steel-capped boot.

  The pall of the tear gas followed them out into the foyer. Ry let Zoe get a couple of steps ahead of him, while he ran half-backward, covering their retreat.

  The foyer dead-ended at a staircase, with two smaller hallways leading off on each side. Ry felt Zoe hesitate and he croaked, “Right,” just as the creature from the black lagoon burst through the library’s shattered doors, hitting the floor on a roll, firing his Uzi, but still aiming high.

  Ry fired back as he rounded the corner into the hall and missed again because he couldn’t see anything.

  A swinging door was at the end of the long hall, and Ry prayed that it led into the kitchen. They were about ten feet away when it banged opened as if from the punch of a fist, slamming hard and loud against the wall. A big man wearing a black Kevlar vest and a gas mask, and with an Uzi at his side, filled the threshold.

  For a sharp, suspended second they all three stood stock-still as if caught in a freeze-frame. Then Ry saw the barrel of the Uzi start to come up, but before his tear-gas befuddled and disoriented mind could tell his body to react, Zoe shot the guy right between his big, bulbous eyes.

  The body had barely hit the floor before Zoe leaped over it and was into the kitchen, peppering rounds into the room, shattering crockery and glass in a staccato burst of noise.

  Ry saw a blurred version of the door he knew from his earlier recon led out into the back vegetable garden. He headed for it and almost tripped over the sprawled legs of the housekeeper.

  Her throat had been slit.

  THE COLD, CLEAR February air tasted better than beer and felt almost as good as sex. Ry’s throat was swollen beyond talking, so he tapped Zoe on the shoulder and pointed the way through the apple orchard to the lane that led past the church, letting her lead the way again while he covered their backs.

  They wove in and out of old tomato stakes, dead squash vines crunching under their boots. They were into the apple grove within seconds, and Ry could see through the trees the blurred steeple of the little Serbian church. Behind him, he heard a door bang and a spatter of Uzi fire.

  They broke out of the trees and onto the lane. About thirty yards of open space were before the church and the cemetery’s stone wall, and they crossed it at a dead run.

  Ry got to the wall first, so he could help Zoe over it, but she managed it easily, vaulting on one hand like a gymnast.

  HE SQUATTED ON his haunches and leaned back against the rough stones of the wall, his chest heaving. Zoe knelt beside him.

  She hacked phlegm out of her throat and started to bring a fist up to her eyes, but he grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Don’t rub.” The words rasped out of his throat, which felt like coarse sandpaper. His own eyes were now swollen into slits and so clogged with tears he couldn’t blink anymore. “Makes it worse.”

  The cemetery wall was maybe three and a half feet high and built of stones harvested from the nearby countryside, and from the way it curved out around the church, it was as effective as a hunting blind. With the wall as cover, one guy could keep an army pinned down in the apple orchard. Not forever, but long enough.

  Ry popped up and saw a blurred black figure flitting through the apple trees, then another smaller figure in a maroon jacket behind and off to the left.

  “Two. Still in the orchard,” he said to Zoe, as he dropped back down. “Yasmine Poole, probably, and one of the guys from Paris.”

  “I killed the other one,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “Fucking A, you did.”

  He dug the Beamer’s keys out of the pocket of his cargo pants and put them in her hand. He didn’t want to tell her how badly he couldn’t see because he was afraid she wouldn’t leave him then. “You go get the car while I—”

  Ragged coughs ripped through his chest, stopping him, but Zoe nodded to show she got it. He watched her take off across the cemetery, running at a crouch, weaving among the tombstones, satchel banging against her hip.

  He took another look over the wall, still not seeing worth a damn, but he didn’t need a dead-eye aim to buy Zoe the time she needed.

  He thought about the guy who’d thrown the grenade, then rushed the library from the garden. That guy had fired his Uzi at them, but he’d aimed high, well above their heads. And the other guy, the one who’d been sent into the kitchen to cut off their retreat—he’d hesitated that split second at the door, long enough for Zoe put a bullet between his eyes.

  And that meant Yasmine Poole wanted them alive. Probably because she didn’t dare risk killing them only to find out too late that they no longer had the film on them, that they’d stashed it away somewhere between that apartment on the Île St.-Louis and here.

  Ry smiled to himself because she wanted him alive, and he wanted her very dead. It wouldn’t be enough, never enough, but killing her was the only thing he could do to avenge Dom.

  He ejected the almost spent clip and slapped a fresh one into the butt. He gripped the gun with both hands, then pushed up far enough to brace his forearms on the wall. He waited until he saw another flash
of movement, still in the trees, but closer now. He pulled and held the trigger, laying down a stream of fire, kicking up dirt and rocks, and shredding the weeds that lined the lane.

  The sudden silence when he stopped was like the pall of a funeral home. Maybe five seconds went by, then he got a short burst of return fire. But it was just token fire, reminding him they had guns, too.

  He laid down more fire, keeping them back in the orchard and out of the lane. He figured it would take Zoe three or four minutes to get down the steps and back up here with the car, but she beat his expectations because just then he heard the roar of the Beamer’s engine.

  Two seconds later it came whipping around the other side of the church, spewing dirt and gravel. Ry was over the wall just as it slammed to a stop. He yanked open the passenger-side door and dove in. Zoe gunned the motor. The Beamer’s tires spun, then bit, and they sprang forward so fast the back of Ry’s head smacked against the headrest.

  He looked back through the rear window. He saw a blurred figure in black run out of the orchard into the lane, drop onto one knee, and shoot uselessly at the Beamer’s disappearing tires.

  THE LANE DEAD-ENDED not much farther on, at the front gate of a gray stone manor house. A small road that led up into the mountains fed in from the left, and Zoe took it, taking the ninety-degree turn so fast the Beamer’s back end fishtailed and the steering wheel shuddered in her hands.

  Ry fumbled with his seat belt, taking two stabs to get it fastened because he could still barely see. The road they were on wasn’t even two lanes wide, a backcountry road that hadn’t been paved in decades. Trees whipped by the windows, then they hit a gap and Ry saw the river far below them.

  Zoe braked a little to negotiate a hairpin curve, and Ry heard a sloshing noise, then felt something roll around on the floor at his feet.

  Oh, sweet mercy. A water bottle.

  He bent over, groped around, found it. It was nearly half-empty, but half was better than nothing. He straightened, twisted off the cap, then leaned his head back and poured the water into his eyes.

  “Ah, God,” he said at the soft, cool feel of it.

  He looked over at Zoe, already seeing her a little better now. Her own eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and the skin on her face and hands was red, like a sunburn, but the tear gas hadn’t seemed to hit her as hard as it had him. Funny thing was, although he’d been in a lot of hairy situations in his life, none of them had ever involved tear gas, and that was a really good thing because his corneal nerves and mucous membranes had reacted so badly to the lachrymal agent, he’d almost been blinded by it.

  He opened his mouth to tell her he probably wouldn’t have come even close to making it this far without her, when he heard the squeal of tires. He whipped his head around to look in the side-view mirror and saw a black Mercedes bearing down on them fast.

  “We’ve got company,” Ry said, just as an arm with an Uzi at the end of it popped out the passenger-side window, and the ack ack patter of automatic gunfire split the air. Ry saw bullets hit the tarmac behind them, felt one punch into the Beamer’s undercarriage.

  Zoe was already going too fast for the road, but she gripped the steering wheel tighter and poured even more gas into the Beamer’s roaring engine.

  Ry braced his shoulder against the back of his seat as they whipped around another sharp bend in the road. They were still climbing, and the way ahead of them was full of curves and switchbacks. There was no guardrail, just two feet of shoulder and then a plunge straight down in places, to rocks and thickets of trees, and far, far below them, the river.

  Zoe took a blind curve at seventy miles an hour with a wing and a prayer, and suddenly the road ahead of them was filled with a giant hay wagon. Ry instinctively braced his hands on the dashboard and slammed his right foot onto a passenger-side brake that wasn’t there.

  Zoe didn’t even slow. She jerked the steering wheel hard left, squeezing the Beamer between the hay wagon and a tangle of trees and boulders. One of them knocked off the side-view mirror, and something scraped the car’s side with a shower of sparks. Ry caught a glimpse of the wagon’s driver as they roared past—gaping mouth and wide, white eyes.

  They went into another blind curve before Zoe could get back over to their own side of the road, and Ry prayed they wouldn’t meet another car coming at them head-on.

  He twisted around to look behind them, but the road was too curvy—he couldn’t even see the hay wagon anymore, let alone the Mercedes.

  Suddenly Zoe slammed on the brakes so hard Ry thought his brain had slammed against the side of his skull. He whipped back around and saw the big, black Mercedes blocking the entire road in front of them.

  They screeched to stop, and for the length two heartbeats it seemed to Ry to grow eerily quiet, and the cloud of dust they’d stirred up settled back down like fine ash over the Beamer’s hood.

  Then Ry saw the barrel of an Uzi come up over the Mercedes’s trunk, and bullets suddenly peppered the cracked tarmac around them and pinged off their front bumper and grill.

  “Back up! Back up!” he yelled, but Zoe already had the Beamer in reverse.

  She accelerated, going backward, until she got their speed up. Then she took her foot off the gas and jerked the steering wheel hard left. The car spun, tires squealed, grinding into the dirt and gravel, and the jagged slope of the mountain loomed up in front of them.

  Now, now, now, Ry was shouting in his head, then she threw the Beamer back into drive, hit the gas, and straightened out the steering wheel.

  They shot forward, and Ry looked back over his shoulder to see the maroon jacket come running around from the other side of the Mercedes and jump into the driver’s seat.

  “How in hell did they get ahead of us like that?” he shouted. “There must’ve been a small cut-though, a shortcut, we didn’t see.”

  They were going back down the mountain now, back toward town, only way, way too fast. They headed into a curve, hit a gravel patch, and went into a wild, hard slide. Zoe turned into the skid, but it felt as if their rear wheels were just spinning on air. They kept sliding sideways, getting closer and closer to the edge of the road, onto the shoulder now, and Ry saw trees and rocks and then nothing but wide-open sky and certain death ahead of them.

  Then at last the tires got traction. Zoe pulled the steering wheel hard right, and the Beamer’s front end swung around, back onto the road where it was supposed to be, and all was right with the world again.

  “Jesus God,” Ry said.

  He saw her glance in the rearview mirror, and she said in voice that was crazily calm, “They’re back.” Then she said, “Hang on.”

  They blew through a switchback, an S-shaped set of curves. As soon as they were out of it, Zoe took her foot off the gas, turned the steering wheel a quarter, and at the same time pulled up hard on the emergency brake. The Beamer spun around, tires shrieking and grinding, sending up a cloud of dust. She released the emergency brake and stepped on the gas as she straightened out the wheel, and they were headed up the mountain again just as the Mercedes came down it, whipping through the last curve in the switchback, going so fast it swung out wide, toward the edge of the drop-off.

  Zoe took the inside lane, and the instant they were beside the Mercedes, she twisted the Beamer’s wheel to the right and they rammed it hard.

  The impact sounded like an empty metal drum thrown from a rooftop. The back end of the Mercedes skidded past them, spinning out of control toward the edge of the embankment, and Ry saw a flash of red hair in the driver’s-side window.

  For a single breathless moment, the Mercedes hung suspended, its back end on the road, it’s front end out over thin air. Then it began to fall, almost in slow motion, tumbling end over end over end down the mountainside in a terrible noise of grinding metal, smashing glass, and human screams.

  42

  THEY STOOD at the top of the embankment together and looked down.

  The guy in the passenger seat must not have been wearing a
seat belt. He lay like a broken doll on a pile of boulders, his neck cocked at an impossible angle. Oddly, he still had the Uzi clutched in his hand.

  The Mercedes had been stopped in its downward plunge by a thick grove of live oaks. Its front end was completely buried in leaves and branches, its roof nearly flattened. The stench of burnt rubber and hot metal drifted in the air.

  Ry stared at the wreck for a long moment, looking for red hair and not seeing any. He walked down the road a few yards, until he found a place that wasn’t so steep, then he headed down the embankment, half-jogging, half-sliding.

  “Ry, wait,” Zoe called after him. “Where are you going?”

  “To make sure she’s dead.”

  SHE WASN’T DEAD, but she would be soon. One of the oak branches had broken off and driven downward, through the windshield, impaling her through the chest.

  Her eyes were glazed, emptying, and then they focused on Ry. She smiled, drooling blood. He saw her lips form the words before he heard them.

  “Your brother, the priest … he died begging …” She made a gargling noise, as if she were trying to laugh only the blood was choking her. “Died begging …”

  Ry’s world blurred red around the edges, and he felt the blood shooting though the veins in his arms like tiny electrical currents. “Die, bitch,” he said. “Die now.”

  She died. He watched the life go out of her and he wanted to pull the tree branch out of her heart so that he could ram it back into her again. Kill her all over again.

  From a long way away he could hear Zoe calling his name. “Ry, stop. You can let go now, okay. Let go.”

  He looked down and saw that he was gripping the frame of the windshield, and it was buckled and jagged, and although he couldn’t feel it, he thought he must be cutting himself because he could see blood running out from between his fingers.