OMEGA SERIES BOX SET: Books 1-4

by Banner, Blake

  I slipped over to the other window and looked out. All you could see was the dark driveway, the thrashing trees, and sixty or seventy yards up the path, a black bulk that was darker than the darkness around it. I said, “A Dodge RAM.”

  “Probably, hard to tell from here.”

  “I’m guessing Jackson and Ivory sent the boys in ahead to make sure we were dead.”

  “Back at the Full Moon? Yeah, makes sense. I thought we’d picked up a tail. I wonder how long they’ve been here.”

  I shook my head. Then, something caught my eye and I sighed. “Look at the hood of Carmichael’s Jeep. It’s been opened. If we leave here, we leave on foot. What the hell do they want?”

  “Carmichael.”

  “What for? What do they want him for?”

  Simone’s voice came like a drop of acid. “Their cut…”

  I turned and looked at her.

  She went on, “They want me, too, you know? But they want him alive.”

  “The original will is with your attorney?”

  “Yes, and they know it’s authentic.”

  “Your attorney is in Baton Rouge.”

  She nodded. Bat glanced at me and finished my thought. “They get rid of her, and raid the offices while the security services are stretched too thin to respond. Destroy the will and Carmichael has no challenger.”

  I grunted. There was still plenty that didn’t make sense to me. I said, “That’s going to have to wait. Here’s the plan. You go out the back and circle ’round through the woods. I’m going to count to three hundred, then I’m going to draw their fire. Give me the rifle. You use the Sig. I need one of them alive, but incapacitated.”

  “That’ll work. Any preference?”

  I looked at Simone and noticed in passing that Carmichael was still asleep. I asked her, “Which one is most useful?”

  She shrugged and looked disgusted. “They’re both in it up to their necks.”

  I turned back to Bat. “Jackson might have more information. Kill Ivory, keep Jackson.”

  “OK. Start counting?”

  I nodded and he made for the back door at a run. He wrenched it open and the sound of the gale and the torrential rain was suddenly deafening. Too loud. It was like being on the beach with giant breakers crashing at your feet. I watched him stagger back a few steps into the room, then grab the door and pull himself forward again. The house was creaking badly. Carmichael opened his eyes and looked around. Bat struggled out onto the veranda and I went after him. That was when I heard him shout over the wind, gripping the wooden banister.

  “Holy fuck!” He turned to look at me, blinking in the wind. “Holy fuck, sir! You have to see this!”

  I dragged myself out. The gale had increased in power and almost lifted me off my feet. I gripped the rail next to him and looked out. We might have been on a boat on the ocean. Sara Bayou had burst her banks and the water was lapping at the decking on the veranda, four feet above the lawn. The steps down were underwater and a powerful current, dragging the water down into the river, was making huge eddies around the house. Bat pointed and shouted, “Look! Your weird motor!”

  I looked and saw the Zombie, half submerged, slowly twisting and inching toward the bayou. Bat tried to look at me, with the wind battering his face. “I’ll never make it, sir! I’ll be sucked away by the current!”

  A creak and a groan of timbers, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the water and the screaming and whistling of the wind, confirmed what he was saying. Then the house shifted. It may have been a few inches, or a foot. But it was a clear, powerful shift of the entire structure. The soil was saturated, and the combined power of the wind and the sucking current was shifting the foundations of the building.

  We had a problem.

  I jabbed my finger at the door and shouted, “Get inside!”

  We dragged ourselves in and slammed the door closed. We needed to make some decisions, and make them fast. I spoke without thinking.

  “We can’t go back, we can’t go to the sides, we can’t stay where we are. We haven’t got time to make a plan. We have to go forward.”

  “Loaded down with two prisoners…”

  “We can’t leave them in the house. You got the keys?” I crossed the room toward where Carmichael and Simone were watching us. I kept talking to Bat as we went. “Cuff Carmichael to me. Let Simone go. Here’s the plan…”

  I spoke as Bat released Carmichael from his chair and cuffed him to me, then released Simone.

  “The bayou has burst its banks. The house is about to get either washed away or blown away. We have a truck up the path which probably has Jackson and Ivory in it. We have one chance of survival. This is how we play it. Simone, you go left into the trees and circle through the woods up to the gate. Carmichael, you and me scramble to the tree cover here on the left of the door. Bat, I’ll cover you with the rifle. You head into the trees on the right and circle behind their truck. Plan as before. Take out Ivory. Disable Jackson but don’t kill him.”

  “What if there’s more than one of them in the truck?”

  He wasn’t doubting or fearful, he just wanted a plan. I gave him one. “Kill them all. We’ll have them trapped between two fields of fire.”

  Simone spoke with real venom. “This plays right into your hands, doesn’t it, Charles? It eliminates your witnesses and gets you off the hook. Now you’ll only have me to worry about.”

  He shook his head. “You’re mad, Simone. You’re out of your mind.”

  “We haven’t got time for this. Everybody clear?” They all nodded. “Simone, wait for us at the gate. Within ten minutes, we should have a truck. We’ll go back to the hotel.”

  I hunkered down and eased open the front door a few feet. The wind was coming from the southeast, so at the front door, we were in the lee of the house and the gale was not so bad. I spoke to Simone as she prepared to slip out. “Crawl on your belly until you get to the trees. They will protect you from the wind and should keep you invisible at this distance.”

  She slithered out and crawled left along the veranda. After a few moments, she had disappeared from sight.

  “OK, Bat, now you. When you get to the end of the decking, we’ll go. Ready?”

  He nodded and slipped out, and within seconds he’d vanished.

  “OK, Carmichael, let’s go. You do anything stupid and I’ll kill you.”

  We couldn’t crawl with our wrists cuffed, so we stepped out and crouch-ran to the left. Then, we scrambled down the steps, ran a few yards to the trees, and took cover behind a large oak.

  I took aim at the large, black bulk, where I estimated the windshield to be. My spare ammo was at that moment drifting gently toward Sara Bayou, so I kept my fire to a short burst of three rounds. I let off three bursts and paused a second. It was hard to tell for sure, but I thought I could hear shouting. Then, there were flashes of flame from the shadow, and reports like firecrackers, which were whipped away by the wind.

  I hissed, “Move!” and dragged Carmichael forward six paces, belly-flopped and let off three more bursts. I saw four flashes from among the trees beyond the Dodge, scrambled to my feet, and ran another six paces. I was about to drop and fire again when a noise, like the Earth ripping open, tore the night in half.

  A powerful gust of wind knocked me to my knees, dragging Carmichael with me. There was a screech and a grinding of timbers and the house seemed to fold in on itself, slide to the left and collapsed in a massive heap. As it did so, the clapboards on the walls came loose. The wind gathered them up and hurled them into the air like spray, followed by the slates from the roof.

  Then things went really bad. The headlamps on the Dodge came on and the wheels ground on the wet gravel, kicking up stones and mud. I opened up at the engine and the windshield, spraying them with bullets, and from the trees, Bat did the same. But the Dodge was moving, the wind was insane and we were unstable on our feet. If any of the rounds found their mark, they didn’t kill the driver, whoever he was. The tr
uck spun on a dime and hurtled up the hill.

  I screamed at Bat, “Simone! Simone!” and we took off after the truck. But Carmichael was a lead weight on my arm, and it was a good five hundred yards from the house to the gate. In that gale, the mud and the rain, it was an impossible task. My only hope was that she had not got there yet, that they would get there before her.

  We sought the cover of the trees on the left of the drive, and half-ran, half-marched. Even at that pace, it took us a good five or six minutes to get to the gates. They stood gaping, wet, iron stencils against a wild, inky sky. There was no sign of Simone. I went in among the trees, screaming her name above the whistle and howl of the wind and the deafening sigh of the branches, but there was no trace of her, no sign of her anywhere.

  Finally, Bat and Carmichael grabbed me and pulled me toward the gates, shouting that the only chance to get her back was to get to town, to the Soniat. They hadn’t killed her. That meant they wanted to use her, to trade her in exchange for Carmichael.

  We tried to keep the forest between us and the wind, but even so it was not easy. The gale was strong, gusting at times to hurricane force, I was sure. It tore branches from the trees and hurled them across the road. It set up powerful eddies and twisters that lashed rain with such force, you felt it would tear your skin from your face. It took us almost twenty minutes to walk the four hundred yards from the gate to the bridge that spanned Sara Bayou on Tunica Road. When we finally got there, what we found was no more than what we had expected, but still, my heart sank at the sight.

  The bridge, made of solid, riveted iron, had been completely overwhelmed by the swollen river. The good news was that there was no way that Jackson and Ivory had driven across that bridge. They would have been forced to turn back and head north, to cross further upstream, giving us more time. The bad news was that we ourselves had maybe one chance in a thousand of making it across alive. If the water didn’t get us, the wind would for sure.

  I gathered Bat and Carmichael close in a huddle and shouted in their ears. “Our belts!” I pointed at the rail that ran along the bridge. “All three of them! We loop our arms through and give each other support! We stay on the near side! The bridge protects us from the wind, and the water pushes us against the frame!”

  They nodded that they understood. We removed our belts and looped them around the rail so that together they formed a strong anchor to the bridge. We stayed on the windward side, so that the frame of the bridge gave us some protection from the gale; and at the same time, the current of the engorged river, rather than dragging us away, crushed us against the iron parapet.

  The bridge was one hundred and seventy-eight yards long, and crossing it, even with the provisions we had made, was one of the most exhausting and painful things I have ever done. The pressure of the water against our legs was enormous, and it hammered our bodies, painfully and relentlessly, against the hard iron of the bridge’s frame. The three of us had to take each step huddled together, so we could all keep a grip on the three belts, the only thing that stood between us and almost certain death. Each step had to be coordinated against the wind and the current, and taken together, with the lashing rain in our faces and the gale screaming through the iron arches of the structure.

  It took us a full fifteen minutes to cover one hundred and seventy-eight yards, and when we finally got to the far side, we had lost the protection of the forest and the furious wind lashed and whipped us with steel needles of rain. Clinging to each other for support and added weight against the gale, we struggled to the nearest hedgerow and collapsed in its shelter.

  From there, by stages, we made it at last to Dauphin Street and the shelter of the stone buildings. The street lights were out and the roads were rivers, a foot deep in water. There was nobody to be seen but us. Only a mad person would be out on a night like this.

  Finally, at four AM, we arrived at the hotel and collapsed through the door, drenched, bruised, and exhausted. I hammered on the bell at the reception desk and yelled for Luis. Then I turned to Bat. “Organize some coffee and toast. Don’t let this son of a bitch out of your sight. I’ll be down in five minutes. Then you two can get dried.”

  I dragged my aching body up the stairs, toweled myself dry, and changed my clothes. Every part of me was screaming out for rest and sleep, but I was not done yet, not by a long way. For what I was going to do, I needed the cover of the storm, and I needed to do it before Jackson and Ivory got back.

  When I got down, I found Luis in his dressing gown, fussing over Carmichael and Bat. There was a large pot of coffee on the table and a stack of hot rolls.

  “What happened? What happened to you?”

  I snarled, “We fell in the bayou. We are going to need more coffee and more rolls. Go!”

  He scurried away back to the kitchen. I turned to Bat and Carmichael.

  “Go get dried. Carmichael, I may be wrong about you, and if I am, I apologize in advance for what I am going to do. But it has to be done. You are under arrest, you understand? I am putting you in the care of Bat Hays and David Hirschfield. If you try to escape, Bat will kill you without hesitation.” I turned to Bat. “Do not let him out of your sight, not to sleep, not to go to the can. He is under lock and key at all times until I get back.”

  Carmichael was shaking his head. “Lacklan, do not listen to that woman! She is evil!”

  Bat interrupted him, talking to me like I was insane. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Baton Rouge, into the storm.”

  Twenty SIX

  It’s a matter of principle with me. If my life is on the line and somebody asks me where I am going, I lie. It makes good economic sense.

  I borrowed a large rain-mac from Hirschfield and went back into the gale. I’d seen what I wanted earlier, as we were approaching the hotel. It was one block away in the parking lot outside the mall. It was a big Dodge RAM weighing in around eight metric tons with an engine that could scale mount Everest. I hammered the small blade of my Swiss Army knife into the lock, fiddled around with it, and after ten seconds I was inside. I twisted the fat red to the thin red and gently stroked the green, and we were in business.

  I had told Bat and Carmichael I was going to Baton Rouge, but I had no intention of doing that. I was pretty sure that, even if the documents I was looking for were at Wilberforce’s offices, it would be almost impossible to lay hands on them in the time I had available. There was a much easier, more direct route to what I wanted. Wilberforce himself, and I was pretty sure I knew where he was.

  I took the longer route, via the Full Moon and Jackson, because the shorter way, through St. Francisville, was going to take me deep into the storm, and in the end it would take longer—if I made it at all.

  The truck had a range of spotlights on the roof and powerful headlamps, it was heavy, and it gripped the road like it had talons, even in the torrential downpour. I hit fifty going south on Route 61, though I slowed after the crossroads because I had the wind on my right and it kept threatening to blow me off the road whenever I got over forty miles per hour. Even so, I made it to Wilberforce’s stack of cuboids within the hour.

  I turned in at his drive and it didn’t surprise me to see light coming from his windows. He was the kind of man who would have his own generator. I pulled up outside his entrance—you couldn’t really call it a door. It was more like an elaborate construction of boulders and mossy banks under an arched, organic portico with a massive, oak doorway set in the middle.

  When I climbed out of the cab, I could see him silhouetted in one of his vast, plate glass windows, holding a glass and watching me. I staggered to the shelter of the porch, then rang the bell and hammered on the door with my fist.

  It was eventually opened by a guy in a white jacket, with white gloves on. He frowned at me like I was crazy. Before he could say anything, I told him, “I need to see Mr. Wilberforce right now. It is very urgent. I know he’s here.”

  He looked at me like I was everything that was wrong with
the world and said, “Please wait. I’ll see if he is in. What is your name?”

  I put my hand on the door and smiled a smile that was designed to freeze his blood. “I will not wait outside, pal. Take a look at the weather. Come to that, I won’t wait inside. I’m not in the mood to wait. He’s in. I told you he’s in. And my name is, The Guy Who’s Going to Break All Your Bones If You Don’t Take Me to Wilberforce Now!”

  He stepped back.

  I stepped in and slammed the door behind me. “Where?”

  He swallowed hard, turned, and led the way up a broad flight of wooden stairs encased in a glass tower, onto an expansive landing and through a vast set of highly polished blond wood doors into a broad room with parquet floors, a large copper fireplace in the middle of the floor, and an entire wall of glass, looking out onto the madness of the tempest that was Sarah.

  Wilberforce was standing, watching me, with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a drink. He said, “Stephan, who is this man?”

  Stephan began to babble an apology. I smacked him in the back of the head with the butt of my Sig, and as he went down I pointed the business end at Wilberforce. He didn’t look fazed.

  “Who are you?”

  “That isn’t important. I haven’t much time, and you should know that I have killed at least five men tonight, and I have lost count of how many I have killed in my life. Right now, you are part of the solution. That’s good for you. The moment you become part of the problem, I will kill you. But what is really bad for you, is if you are both. Because then, I will do very bad things to you. Do you understand me?”

  I have to hand it to him. He was cool. When he spoke, his voice was steady and even.

  “Of course I understand you. It is perfectly simple. What do you want?”

  “Papers. I want all the documents relating to the sale and/or development of Charles and Sarah Carmichael’s properties.”

  He lifted his chin and stared at me. “Ah…” He strolled away from the window, toward the fire. “You represent Simone D’Arcy.” He looked down at his shoes, chewing his lip.