Covenant

by Brandon Massey

  He entered a command to access a listing of area MARTA stations and shopping malls, a popular place to find parked vehicles to steal. In a few seconds, he received several results.

  He looked at the map again.

  “I think I know where Thorne is going,” he said.

  43

  At Anthony’s direction, Lisa exited the highway at Abernathy Road, in Sandy Springs. She braked for a traffic light at the bottom of the exit ramp.

  “My old stomping grounds,” she said. “Why are we coming over here?”

  Before they had married and moved to Grant Park, she had lived in a condo in Sandy Springs. At least three times a week, he would make the long trek from Decatur to pick her up for dates. Over time, he’d learned the area well. Perimeter Mall, a popular metro shopping destination, was in the vicinity, and a large MARTA station was nearby.

  It was the perfect setting for the strategy he had in mind.

  “I want to go to your old condo,” he said. “We’re going to leave the jeep in the garage.”

  “Ah, gotcha. Good idea.”

  When the light turned green, she made a left. They took an underpass beneath the highway they had exited. Corporate parks bordered the road on either side, dark, glassy, modernist buildings pointing like stakes toward the swollen sky.

  Farther ahead, corporations gave way to retail: strip malls full of chain businesses and restaurants, all of them still closed. She turned right, and after a quarter mile or so, Heritage Condominiums rose into view on the left, the community fronted by tall elms and pines. Entering the parking lot, they rolled down a blacktopped slope toward the entrance for the underground parking garage.

  The wide door hung open.

  “They still haven’t fixed this door,” she said. “All that damn money I paid to the homeowner’s association the years I lived here, you’d think they would’ve used some of it to repair the door.”

  “I was sort of counting on them not having fixed it yet,” he said. “Nothing as trustworthy as good ole’ bureaucracy.”

  The garage was a cavernous, dimly lighted space, perhaps three-quarters occupied. Spaces were assigned to residents by numbers painted on each spot.

  She cruised slowly down the aisle. “Any preference for where I park?”

  “See if you can find a spot in the back. Why make it easy for them?”

  At the far end of the garage, in the corner, there was a vacant slot between the cinderblock wall and a black Harley motorcycle adorned with orange flames. She parked, cut off the engine.

  He had already placed his duffel and their suitcase on his lap, and stashed the .45 in his waist-band holster.

  She grabbed her purse, and they got out of the truck. The slamming doors echoed through the garage.

  “Now what?” she asked. “Are we going to steal a car here?”

  He shook his head. “That might take too long. I don’t know how much of a lead we have, and I don’t want them to catch us while I’m trying to boost a ride. First, we need to drop off their radar and put some distance between us.”

  “We’re going to the MARTA station,” she said.

  “Married folks’ telepathy is for real, isn’t it?” He glanced at his wristwatch; it was twenty minutes to five. “When do trains start running on Saturday?”

  “They start around five am, every day. I remember that well. When I was working at the firm downtown I’d catch the first train every morning.”

  “Then let’s go. I want to be on that five o’clock.”

  They hurried to a stairwell in the middle of the garage. He motioned for her to hang back. He pushed open the door, hand resting on the butt of the revolver.

  The stairs were deserted, the only noise the patter of rain. They ascended the steps to the first level, the courtyard. An awning sheltered them from the elements.

  “Is there a back door out of here?” he asked. “I don’t like the idea of walking out through the front gate.”

  “There’s a rear entrance. Follow me.”

  They threaded past condo units, patios full of plants and furniture, stairwells, and around a large swimming pool, the rippling surface reflecting the sky. As they prowled through the complex, they saw not a single resident. It reminded him of being in a war zone, where locals stayed indoors for fear of encountering enemy soldiers.

  At the fence at the back of the courtyard, there was a lever-activated gate. They went through, and descended steps to asphalt and the rear entryway. Unlike the front, this vehicle entrance was secured by a white cross arm that lifted whenever a resident swiped a card through the reader.

  He edged in front of Lisa and stepped around the arm. The adjacent road was draped in tall trees that overhung the pavement and shed droplets of falling rain like tears. Across the street, woodlands dominated.

  “This is mostly a service road for some stores and restaurants around here,” she said. “If we go left, it’ll take us toward the MARTA station. It’s only a few blocks away.”

  He checked his watch. “It’s a quarter to five. We’d better double-time it.”

  They started off down the road at a jog, keeping close to the curb. No vehicles passed by. A streetlamp ahead was the only relief from the darkness.

  “When this is all over, I’m going to sleep for three days,” she said, breathing deeply of the cool air. “I know I’m tired, but I’ve stopped feeling tired, and that must be bad.”

  “You’ve crossed the threshold,” he said. “When the crash comes later, it’s gonna hit you hard.”

  “Do you think these people chasing us ever sleep?”

  “They didn’t seem tired at all to me. My guess is that they do this sort of thing all the time, probably at night, mostly. Also, they might have a backup team to relieve them.”

  “So the longer this drags on, the better it is for them. They can wear us down.”

  “In theory,” he said. “But I don’t plan on slowing down at all until we’ve found the truth.”

  The cover of trees began to thin. They paused in the shelter of an oak.

  He surveyed the area. To the left, several hundred yards away, there was a strip mall with a gigantic parking lot. Beyond that, the MARTA station stood, a multi-level parking garage attached to the building.

  A few vehicles traveled back and forth through the area, headlamps aglow, but none of them were Suburbans. There were a handful of vehicles parked around the strip mall, but none of them were the fanatics’ vehicle, either.

  But that didn’t mean they weren’t conducting surveillance from afar. What if Cutty had set up his rifle somewhere nearby and was waiting for them to emerge in the open? He remembered how close the guy had come earlier to nailing him.

  “I don’t like this scene,” he said. “We’ll be too exposed walking to the station. This was a mistake on my part.”

  “We don’t have time to go back. We don’t know how much of a lead we have on them, like you said. We’ve gotta walk by faith.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Lisa, faith doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “You’re wrong—faith has everything to do with it. Why did you go talk to Bob in the first place?”

  “That was different.”

  “Was it?”

  With that, she started running toward the strip mall. He caught up with her and tried to grab her arm, but she increased her speed, eluding him.

  “Dammit, Lisa! Stop! This is crazy!”

  She ran on, purse knocking against her ribcage. Slowed by the duffel and suitcase, weighted down by his body armor vest, firearm, and ammo, he struggled to keep up with her.

  Legs pumping, they sprinted across the parking lot, shoes clapping on the blacktop and sloshing through puddles. They cut around the strip mall, plowed across a sward of grass, ran under the boughs of a line of trees, and neared the road that fronted the MARTA station.

  Close by, tires squealed. The Suburban careened around the corner, headlights glaring.

  Lisa had run acro
ss the street and reached the revolving doors of the station. She waited for him.

  “Get inside!” he shouted.

  Seeing the Suburban drawing near, she pushed through the doors. Half a block away, the SUV shrieked to a stop. The passenger door sprang open, and Cutty leapt outside, hand underneath his jacket, undoubtedly caressing a pistol.

  Heart in his throat, Anthony raced up the stairs and shoved through the revolving doors so fast he almost fell down. When he hit the other side, Lisa beamed at him.

  “We made it,” she said. “They won’t follow us in here. We’re safe.”

  But Anthony was looking over his shoulder.

  “Not over yet,” he said, gasping for air. “He’s coming in.”

  44

  Only a smattering of people filtered through the MARTA station, most of them burdened with suitcases and dressed in t-shirts, halters, shorts, and sandals, like travelers bound for trips. With the high price of gasoline, taking the train to the airport south of the city was an increasingly popular choice.

  A couple of burly policemen wandered the lobby, but they gave Lisa and Anthony only a casual glance. Anthony realized that with the bags they carried, they looked like airport-bound people, too. But they were toting firearms and ammo in their luggage.

  He pulled Lisa around a corner. There were men’s and women’s restrooms nearby, and farther ahead, a stairwell that led to the boarding platform, and the trains.

  He handed her the suitcase. “Go downstairs and wait for me. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Nodding, she took the luggage and scurried down the steps. He looked around the corner, into the main corridor of the lobby.

  Cutty had pushed through the revolving doors at the front of the building. He had his hand inside his jacket. He attempted to appear non-threatening, but his eyes were deadly blue points as he scanned the station.

  Anthony ducked inside the men’s restroom. Vacant. Above the trashcan, there was a red emergency phone mounted on the wall, used to summon MARTA security.

  He quickly ran down his options. He had plenty of firepower, and might be able to win a gunfight with Cutty, but a shootout in a public place would put the lives of innocents at risk. No good. Do something else.

  He picked up the handset and pressed “0,” according to the posted instructions.

  After two rings, a tired-sounding woman answered. “Good morning, MARTA security. How may I help you?”

  “A man just entered the Sandy Springs station,” Anthony said. “Blonde, short, wearing a dark raincoat and a black tracksuit. He’s armed with a gun and plans to board a train.”

  “Sir, can you please—“

  He hung up. Gaze on his watch, he waited, one hand underneath his shirt and resting on the butt of the revolver.

  After two uneventful minutes, he stepped outside the restroom. The MARTA police officers were escorting Cutty out of the station. Cutty was protesting furiously, face tomato-red.

  Anthony scrambled down the steps to the boarding area. He found Lisa beside a MARTA BREEZE card vending machine, rocking nervously on her heels, suitcase beside her.

  When she saw him, relief passed over her face.

  “I saw that guy, Cutty,” she said. “As soon as he came down the steps, two cops stopped him. Did you have something to do with that?”

  “I told them he had a gun. Boarding a train with a firearm is a big no-no these days.”

  “But we’ve got guns, too.”

  “They don’t know that, though, do they?”

  Shaking her head and smiling, she swiped a BREEZE card through the turnstile, passed it back to him, and he slid it through. They dashed across the concrete platform to the southbound train, and boarded the passenger car at the end. He wanted to see every person who walked onto the platform.

  Lisa sat on one of the seats facing forward, but he remained standing, gripping a hand strap for support. Watching.

  “We’re safe now, baby,” she said. “You can relax.”

  “Not yet.”

  A young husband and wife dressed for a tropical vacation boarded, laden with luggage. Anthony glanced at Lisa, and read the same thought in her eyes: they both wished they were heading to the airport to fly to some far-flung, relaxing destination.

  He returned his attention to the platform. Even after the doors whooshed closed, and the releasing brakes sighed, and the train began to crawl forward, he still watched.

  “We’re safe,” Lisa said.

  The train pulled out of the station.

  “Sit.” She grasped his hand, tugged him. He finally sat next to her, placing the duffel between his feet.

  “There’s no way they can find us now,” she said. “We’re off the radar.”

  He nodded. But when he noticed the surveillance camera mounted in the upper corner of the compartment, his gut tightened.

  45

  Cutty slammed the Suburban’s door so hard the entire vehicle shuddered.

  “Goddamn cops!” he said. “They wouldn’t let me get near the fucking train ‘cause someone told them I had a gun! I know it was that goddamn Thorne! Shit!”

  “Si,” Valdez said in a calm tone. “No can carry guns on train. Is law.”

  “It’s not God’s law! We answer only to God—not a couple of prick cops! I should’ve killed them both!”

  He punched the dashboard, bruising his thick knuckles against the console, and nevertheless bashed it again, and again. Valdez watched him quietly, as if he were a child throwing a temper tantrum and she was the responsible adult. That condescending look of hers put the lid on his rage. She was the rookie here; he was the veteran warrior. He needed to act like it.

  After all, God was always watching, always judging, and would not approve of his childish behavior and foul language. He would need to seek forgiveness for these transgressions.

  But this mission was testing him. He’d flashed his U.S. Marshal badge at the dolts, a fake that looked as credible as the genuine article, and the assholes had insisted that he wait in their office until they confirmed his identity. He’d given them the number to call to validate his ID—a number that would be answered by a member of their organization—and the dickheads had said they would follow their own confirmation procedures, thank you very much, sir, come with us, please, at which point he had stormed out.

  The cocksuckers. They were supposed to obey without question. They were supposed to be on his side.

  Although he’d come close to blowing the cops away, in hindsight, killing them would have caused more trouble than it was worth. Their organization had high-ranking servants and powerful contacts in law enforcement, making the police agencies invaluable allies. Gunning down two officers in cold blood would have damaged those relationships and raised the ire of the Director, who would have been responsible for cleaning up the mess. The Director had ordered him to eliminate Thorne and anyone who stood in his way, but that command didn’t include a license to murder honest cops.

  His throbbing knuckles were bright red. He gently massaged them.

  “Okay?” Valdez asked softly.

  “I know I’ve said this before, Valdez, but I get so fired up with holy passion, so caught up in doing God’s will, that I lose my head. I’m not making excuses for my behavior, and I will seek penance later for my angry words . . . but my Lord, I’m positively obsessed with God’s thirst for justice. That’s the kind of man I am. You understand?”

  “Si. Is okay.”

  “It is?”

  “Si.”

  Her eyes were so warm, so empathetic. He had the sudden and almost irresistible urge to kiss her. It was only by the grace of God that he resisted. When one was at a moment of weakness, Satan offered the temptations of the flesh.

  But a film of cold sweat had beaded on his forehead. He used a handkerchief to wipe it

  away.

  “We’ve got to get on Thorne’s trail again,” he said.

  “They go south, to city?”

  “Probably. Let’
s see what I can dig up on Gen.”

  He dragged the keyboard onto his lap and accessed the MARTA rail schedules and routes. The southbound train would make over a dozen stops, the last one being the airport, south of Atlanta. But there were also trains running east and west, and north.

  Too many possibilities. He had to dig deeper.

  He instructed Gen to tap into the rail security network. Like most mass transit systems across the country and throughout the world, MARTA utilized surveillance cameras on their trains, and in the stations, too. Gen could invade the network by stealth, slip into those cameras, and show him what they were recording.

  At five o’clock in the morning, there were only a limited number of trains running across the metro area. He first checked surveillance video on the southbound line.

  Each passenger car was equipped with a camera. He toggled views from one car to the next.

  “Got ‘em,” he said. “Get on 400 South, right now.”

  Valdez rocketed away from the curb.

  The camera was located in the upper corner of the car, and transmitted images in black-and-white, in real-time. He clearly saw Thorne and his wife sitting together near the back of the compartment, talking. He would’ve liked to pick up audio, too, but that wasn’t a component of the system.

  Thorne suddenly glanced up at the lens, as if he sensed Cutty observing them.

  Thorne’s awareness of the camera was proof that he worried Cutty might be watching. He obviously was discovering the awesome powers of the Kingdom that he’d dared to defy, and perhaps he was beginning to realize that he’d aligned himself with the wrong side.

  Cutty pressed a button to split the screen into two equal-size panes, shifting the passenger car view to the left-hand side of the display. On the right half, he scrolled through a list of available surveillance cameras posted at the stations along the train’s route.

  As soon as Thorne and his wife disembarked, he would get a visual of the boarding platform they would have to walk to leave the station. They didn’t have a vehicle to facilitate their escape, and few cabs and buses were operating at that hour.