Sin smiled. “I like your actions as well, Ms. Rajani.” He kissed her more fully, and she did not pull away. “I’m falling for you, and falling hard, you know.”
“I know. I felt attracted to you when Natch and I broke into your suite in Japan. Just from the impressions you had left in the room, I knew you to be strong and kind and wise.” She looked down for a second, then glanced up mischievously. “That’s why I took your cufflinks. They became a connection to you.”
“As you used them to get to me and save me when the Galactic Brotherhood wanted me dead, I’m very glad you took them.”
She caressed the left side of his face. “I share your feelings, Sin, and I share your doubts. We both must question if what we feel is genuine or part of the pressure cooker we’re living in. With the threat to our lives that exists in Pygmalion and Fiddleback, it is natural to want to cling together, to want to fight off death together.”
“You’re right, it is natural. It’s also natural that you and I are closer to each other than we are to our parents.” Sin leaned forward and kissed the side of her throat. “For me, it’s because my father is a jerk who’s uniquely suited to use Preparation-H as a body lotion. For you, well, your father has become something more than mortal. He cannot know the same fears we do, nor can he view them the way we do.”
“I wish I knew of a way to let him know I still love him.” Rajani looked up at Sin. “Do you think he knows that?”
“I think it’s something he carries proudly in his heart.” Sin kissed her on the tip of her nose, then looked down as his stomach rumbled mightily. “As for me, I’m running on empty.”
“Are you done here? Can you go for food?”
Sin leaned back, freeing Rajani’s legs, then looked over at the computer. “Yeah, that monster will be crunching numbers for a couple more hours. We can go for Mexican and you can fill me in on what PsyOps has put together on Pygmalion.”
“Done, but only if you put going to bed on your schedule.”
Sin raised an eyebrow at her.
Rajani smiled. “Telepathy is not needed to read that thought, Sinclair.” She stood and pulled him up off the couch. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she laid her head on his chest. “I actually meant you needed some rest, but given what we’re facing, security, love and happiness are not things I would deny either one of us tonight.”
Chapter 14
Damon Crowley did not let the two days he needed to heal up in the Titan’s dimension go to waste. In between his periodic checks of Coyote’s progress and the occasional scouting missions to the surrounding proto-dimensions, he worked hard. Using a small knife, he cut a cross into the nose of each any every .45 caliber bullet in his Mac-10 clips.
When he finished the last one, he surveyed his work. He saw it was good and he smiled.
He made one last check of Coyote’s cave. After the first day, Coyote had ceased needing the oxygen, which turned out to be fortunate because it ran out soon thereafter. The intravenous drip proved equally unnecessary within the first day. Coyote’s regenerating body sucked it dry, then attacked and expelled the needle as a foreign body.
Squatting down so he could look closely at Coyote’s legs, Crowley stripped the blanket away from them. In the half-light, he saw a number of reddish lumps dotting the man’s legs as if he had the measles. Passing his hand above them, Crowley could feel the heat as the body worked the bits and pieces of grenade shrapnel out. At the rate with which Coyote seemed to be progressing, Crowley assumed his body would be free of debris inside a week.
Crowley rose up and looked at the stump protruding from the left arm of the hospital gown. Already the stitches that had closed it had been consumed by Coyote’s body, and the livid red scars had all but disappeared. The stump had already grown past the mark on the cave wall that Crowley had made to measure it, and he thought he could see a bud at the end that looked akin to a fetal hand. Before long, the occultist had no doubt, the arm would again be whole and healthy.
“The coma. That will be the tricky part.” Crowley concentrated and tried to pick up Coyote’s thoughts, but he got nothing. Coyote’s brain still functioned, and had even exerted itself when the bed almost crashed, but since his arrival in the Titan’s proto-dimension, Coyote had shut down.
Crowley smiled. “I understand that, my friend. Recover quickly. We need you.” He tugged the gray blanket up to Coyote’s neck and headed back out of the cave. At the entrance, he rolled a couple of small rocks over the opening. The irony of blocking a cave in a Mediterranean setting with stones and hoping for the resurrection of the one inside did not escape him, though Crowley was more than willing to grant Coyote in excess of three days and was willing to have him return as nothing more than a man.
Flexing his left arm and finding it completely healed, Crowley reached out and ripped a gaping hole between the Titan’s dimension and the Earth. He stepped through into the Terran dimension in a wooded courtyard in the heart of Eclipse. Looking up through the leaves of the trees, he saw the black steel and plastic panels that sucked energy from the sunlight and fed the vast desert city of Phoenix. Existing in a little box-canyon created by City Center, Crowley’s home recalled a time when sun- light freely fell on the city.
Two huge canine beasts came out of the two-story house and stood at the top of the stairs on the back porch. Colored like Doberman pinschers, but with the size and wiry pelt of Irish Wolfhounds, the red-eyed dogs bared their fangs and growled a menacing caution at him. Each dog tensed, ready to spring and tear him apart.
Crowley remained rooted in the midst of the white-stone ocean that dominated the courtyard. “Kara, Amhas, it is only me.” He did not move, but let his voice reassure them.
The two dogs sniffed the air, then leaped from the porch and landed in a spray of stones. As they bounded forward, Crowley dropped to one knee and greeted each dog with a hug. Thumping them heavily on their flanks, he stood and let them escort him to the back door. He opened it, not being surprised that it was unlocked and that his belongings had remained unmolested in his absence. The last trespasser to enter his property had done so on a dare from another gang member. He escaped with his life, but earned the nickname “Kid Alpo.”
Crowley quickly descended the stairs to the basement. He opened a utility closet then hit a hidden switch at the rear of it. The back wall withdrew into the ceiling to reveal a collection of weapons both comprehensive and deadly. From the spot above the Mac-10’s outline, he took down the heavy, cylindrical sound and flash suppressor and screwed it into place. He also fitted the gun with a laser-targeting beam and slung the weapon over his shoulder by the sling he clipped into place on it.
He pulled the Mac-10’s holster from the web-belt he wore and replaced it with a more slender holster fitted with a silvery cylinder. He pulled the foot and a half long baton out and switched it on to check the battery monitor light. Satisfied that the modified cattle-prod was fully charged, he turned it off again and reholstered it.
He studied the rest of the weapons, but decided he was satisfied with what he had so far chosen. Almost as an afterthought, he pulled on a pair of black leather gloves that both had bladders filled with lead shot sewn into the backs and knuckles. He snapped his right hand out and slammed his fist into the plasterboard wall. He left a dent, then rubbed the plaster dust off his knuckles.
Closing the closet, he retreated to the center of his basement. He drew in a deep breath and centered himself. He worked his mind down beyond the Damon Crowley identity and approached his true core. A blue-gray pearl tinged with green, it expanded outward to greet him. Once again feeling true to himself, he allowed himself a brief smile, then set about his grim task with cold efficiency.
The first thing he did was to visualize the Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance headquarters. Because of his interest in the city, and his association with the current Coyote’s predecessor, he knew the location well and had even helped the other Coyote with a soft penetration and reconnaissance of
the site. They had gotten in and out undetected, but Crowley had not forgotten what he had seen and felt and smelled.
Reaching out with his mind, he sought to make his current surroundings match his mental image of the Warriors’ lair. He added detail after detail in a carefully calculated equation that brought him through a nearby dimension and back into Earth at the site he had chosen. He materialized within the Warrior stronghold with an agonizing sloth, but remained undiscovered.
As he had planned, he appeared in a darkened comer of the garage area. For all of the time it took him to check his Mac-10, he regretted not being cloaked in the shadowform he affected when away from his home dimension. A second after the birth of that idea, he killed it because he knew that what he had come to do was a job that had to be done by a man, not a shadow.
Two tall, blond Aryan men bearing MP-7 submachine-guns paced the catwalks surrounding the garage’s upper level. Crowley stepped from the shadow and snapped two quick shots off at the man on the far side of the area. One slug took him in the chest, and the second blew through his stomach. The Aryan slammed back against the wall and slid down on a red slick before falling to his side on the catwalk.
The second guard saw his friend fall. He started to turn toward Crowley, bringing his gun up. The 240-grain bullet the Mac-10 coughed out completed the spin for him as it entered his thigh and powdered a four-inch-long segment of his femur. The slug exited up and to the right from the entry wound, drawing blood, tissue and bone after it. The Aryan grabbed at the catwalk railing to slow his fall, but before he could scream, two more bullets pierced his body. One popped a lung like a balloon, and the other pounded his right cheekbone back out through his brainstem, spraying blood and gray pulp against the wall. He flopped unceremoniously on his back and shuddered once before lying still.
Crowley waited in silence, listening for any sound beyond the hissing of air escaping from rapidly deflating lungs. The scent of blood and feces reached him through the cordite. He’d smelled it before and often allowed it to trigger regret in him, but this time he forced it away. He did not want to acknowledge those he had killed as human beings, because they were not. They wore the flesh and hid within the shell. They could do the walk and do the talk, but they could never truly pass for human beings. Their ideas took them beyond humanity, turning them into monsters.
There was nothing to regret about killing monsters.
As if the biblical avenger out to destroy the first-born of Egypt, Crowley moved through the Warrior headquarters razor-sharp and whisper-quiet. The two Aryans with their eyes glued to the external camera monitors died without warning. Six more Hitler Youth died as they slept dreaming about the White Empire their leader had promised them. Another three, including the two who had attacked Natch and Coyote, met death while singing off-key in the communal shower facility. Crowley found four more in the canteen and killed three with a single shot each. The fourth died when she learned through two quick examples that a coffee-urn, though opaque, is not bulletproof.
Reloading as he moved up the stairs to the second level, Crowley found no one in the two classrooms at the southern end of the building. Wary of a trap, he cautiously approached the open doorway at the northern end of the corridor that ran the length of the second floor. From outside he could see what appeared to be a relatively unobstructed room covered with thick pads on the floor and walls. Kneeling in the shadows at the far end of the room, he saw a slender man.
Ready for an ambush, Crowley entered the room on cat’s feet. He stepped quickly out of line with the doorway, but discovered the kneeling figure was the room’s only other occupant. Inside the room, he saw an honor gallery of portraits with a huge painting of Adolf Hitler surrounded by smaller images of Evan Mecham, Tom Metzger, David Duke and Pat Buchanan.
He kept the man covered with the Mac-10, but the man’s utter lack of concern about the gun surprised him.
“I sensed you coming.”
“Did you?” Crowley’s green eyes narrowed. “Then you will have sensed why I came.”
The small man nodded solemnly. “I have been expecting someone, especially after Loring disappeared from the hospital. I had people watching — the snatch was good.” He canted his head to the right. “I had not expected you — rather, I had expected they would send the Polack.”
“I did not give him that choice, Heinrich.”
“Of course you didn’t. You are of a superior race Mr.... Crowley, is it?” Heinrich straightened his head and sat a bit taller, “It is a pity that an operative of your skill will die having been tricked by the Zionists to betray your own race. Did you leave anyone alive down there?”
“They were too stupid to live. They followed you, did your dirty work, so they died.” Crowley held up his left hand with the index finger pointing up. “And just so you know, I’m doing this solo — I’m no one’s tool.”
Heinrich laughed heartily, but a bit too long. “No? I think you are. I would guess, for example, that you believe in the fiction of the Holocaust?”
“I’m not a moron to be tricked into denying history.” Crowley shook his head but never took his eyes off the Aryan leader. “The Nazis killed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Slavs, gays and any communists they could get their hands on. Stalin did that and more. Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Democratic Kampuchea, Kurds in Iraq and the slaughter of innocents in Latin America — all of these are historical facts. You can debate numbers and quibble about methods, but no one denies the results of the sort of hatred you preach. The ignorance and bigotry you promulgate kills people.”
Heinrich smiled. “This from a man who has just murdered over a dozen people.”
“No, Heinrich, you don’t get me that way. You’re the moral equivalent of a bacillus. You are intellectual Black Death, but there is no immunity to you. You have to be eradicated, and I’m here to do the job.”
Heinrich gained his feet in one smooth motion. “Do you know anything of aikido, Mr. Crowley?”
“This has some bearing on our discussion?”
“It does.” He bowed slightly. “A master of aikido, such as I am, cannot be shot with a gun. Even as you think about pulling the trigger, I will see you visualize a bullet in your brain, and I will dodge.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Betting your life on this, I take it?”
“No, your life, actually.” The Aryan smiled coldly.” I just want you to understand how I am going to be able to cross the room and kill you.”
Crowley snapped a quick shot off at Heinrich. The Aryan slipped to the side as the bullet whizzed past and ripped into the wall padding amid a cloud of feathers.
“Ten steps, Crowley, now nine.” Heinrich feinted right, then cut diagonally forward to the left. “Eight.”
Crowley popped another shot at him, but Heinrich sprang out of the way and into a cartwheel that carried him wide to the left.
“Give it up, Crowley. You’re as good as dead.”
“Am I?” The occultist’s eyes narrowed. “You know what they say, Heinrich. For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to do nothing. Do you know that statement’s corollary?”
The Aryan side slipped forward another step. “You’ll tell me, of course.”
“The triumph of good requires good men make sure that evil men do nothing.” Crowley let the gun track Heinrich, then he punched the trigger. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The bullet blasted Heinrich’s left kneecap to bone splinters before it continued on, shredding ligaments, mutilating cartilage and all but severing his leg. Screaming frantically, the Aryan leader fell back on the mats. He clutched at his knee with bloody fingers, desperately trying to deny what had happened.
He stared up in wide-eyed terror as Crowley walked slowly toward him. “That’s impossible. You couldn’t have shot me. I saw nothing.”
“That’s right, little man, you saw nothing. You saw bullets before because I let you see them.” Crowley smiled cruelly. “You intruded at my sufferance, and now you s
uffer.”
Heinrich pushed off with his right foot and clawed at the padding to pull himself away from Crowley. “It won’t matter. There are others. They will come back here. They hunt you down. You can’t win.”
“I’ve already won, Heinrich. If there are others, I will destroy them, and no one will mourn your passing or theirs.” The occultist stepped around the bloody streak on the padding and stabbed the gun’s muzzle to Heinrich’s forehead. “No one cares if you live, Heinrich, so now you have to die.”
He stroked the trigger once.
Heinrich lay staring dead-eyed at the ceiling, his head surrounded by a black halo of blood. A tiny rivulet wormed its way out of the hole in his forehead. It flowed down to the bridge of his nose, then split in two and slowly filled both eyes with blood. When those shallow basins brimmed over, the dark fluid ran like tears down both sides of Heinrich’s face.
As Crowley looked down at the small man’s twisted body, he decided Heinrich had been right about at least one thing in his life. There were other Warriors — stupid, homicidal bigots — who would return. They would find their dead comrades. They would swear vengeance. And, if they ever learned who had hunted down their friends, they would come after him.
Crowley smiled. He knew that crew would need a big clue to figure out the identity of the culprit. He decided he’d give it to them.
He slipped a new clip into the Ingram.
He sat down to wait.
Chapter 15
Will filled a Styrofoam cup with what passed for coffee in Turquoise. He skirted a knot of men sitting in a circle in the center of the mess tent and found a folding chair that looked strong enough to support his weight. The second he sat down, the sharp legs of the chair dug into the earth and started to tip, but he righted himself without spilling a drop. Shifting the chair around to more solid ground, he sat back and put his tired feet up on a table.
He blew on the coffee for a second, then carefully sipped it. it tasted better than it had the day before, or at least seemed to taste better. He put it down to a real improvement instead of just wishful thinking, as a couple of the workmen had actually volunteered to take responsibility for things like coffee and meals. The daily influx of supplies usually brought with it some surprises that made living in the blue wilderness an enjoyable, if stressful, adventure.
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