“Shay,” I said.
“Bobby Mac,” Shay said. “How the hell are you, bubba?”
“Times have been rough recently.”
“What do you need?” he said.
“Block is coming to town. Gunny, too.”
“Damn,” said Shay. “That’s a few clicks beyond rough.”
“Yep,” I said. “You know why I called.”
“I’d have hunted you down if you didn’t?”
“There are times when a man has to be concerned with more than a twenty-five year-old friendship, you know?” I said.
“This ain’t one of those times,” he said.
“I called because that’s what we do,” I said. “But I can’t ask you to come.”
“And I will come because it’s what we do. Without having to be asked.”
“What about Marcia?” I said.
“Marcia’s a big girl,” he said. “I wouldn’t have married her otherwise.”
“You need to know this is one of those deals. The kind we don’t always get a chance on which to renege.”
“D.H. Lawrence said: death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.”
“That’s pretty dark,” I said.
“What do we have to believe in if not the friends who promised our safety to keep?”
“Who said that?”
“I did.”
An informant of mine from years back owed me a slew of favors. His profession had him well-connected in the arms market. Amanda Byrne and I met him at an old warehouse in Commerce City.
“Detective Macaulay,” Joe-Joe Everett said. “Imagine my surprise when you reached out.”
We walked into a room deep in the building, where Everett showed us his collection of weaponry. The man had everything.
“Unfortunately, our shopping list today is likely to go beyond favor boundaries,” I said.
“You kept me outta prison,” Joe-Joe said. “You know what they do to a pretty face like this in the joint? You just let me know when you’re done.”
We loaded two duffel bags with weapons. Half a dozen Beretta M9 semi-automatic pistols, three FN P90 submachine guns, six extra magazines for the M9s, six 50-cartridge ammo box cartridges for the P90s, and a collection of miscellaneous knives, rope, and enough vests for all of us.
Amanda loaded a third duffel with as much extra ammunition as she could carry.
As we were leaving, I stopped.
“You have a China Lake Launcher?”
The China Lake Grenade launcher was developed in the late 1960s and combined a 4-round, pump-action shotgun technology.
“It’s in perfect working order,” he bragged. “Special order for a Mexican friend. As in cartel.”
“They only ever made, like, fifty of those,” I said.
“For the SEALS, yeah,” said Joe-Joe.
“How much ammo do you have for it?”
“Hells Bells, Macaulay, you going to war?”
“How much?”
“Plenty,” he said.
“You’ll get it back,” I said, hoping it was true.
Block, Gunny, and Shay arrived within a few hours of each other, so I made only one trip to DIA. We didn’t talk much on the way to my house. I figured there was no sense in repeating myself when we joined Father West and Amanda.
After introductions, I tried to summarize the best I could on short notice:
“I received a location—GPS coordinates—in an email this morning. I’ve looked up the area on Google Earth. It’s rough country. Fairly easily defended, depending on the numbers we’re facing.”
“We don’t know the numbers?” Mike Shay said.
“I don’t think the challenge here lies in the numbers. These are some bad characters—hard to kill,” I said.
“We need forward intel,” Gunny said. “We need to know where they’re keeping your son.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Block spoke up: “Gunny and I can move in first. Attempt to get eyes on the boy.”
“That leaves three of us,” I said.
“Four,” said Father West. “I’m coming. It’s nonnegotiable.”
“Father—look, Meyer…this is going to be a war,” I said.
“We both know there are facts here that necessitate I be there. Besides,” he said, “I think the sooner we get Cole out of there, the better. And I can get him away as soon as he’s free.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Shay said. “Every able body, and all that.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Do you have any experience with a handgun?”
“I can point and shoot,” West said. “Just make sure I know where the safety is.”
I looked at Amanda.
“We need him,” she said. “I have a feeling we’re going to wish we had more. No offense, fellas.”
Gunny grunted. Block smiled.
“You haven’t said much about what the hell is going on here,” said Shay.
“What does it matter,” said Gunny. “Always overthinking things, you.”
“Forward intel,” Shay said, “is not just a physical thing.”
“Always good to know who you’re up against,” Block agreed.
I tried to explain all that had happened. Cousin Meyer jumped in where he could. As I retold the story, however, it became—once again—more difficult to believe what I was saying. Afterward, Gunny spoke up first:
“You saw what you saw. I’ve been praying to God Almighty since I was a little boy and I have to say he’s never answered me once, at least not with any words. Never seen him. But that don’t stop me from believing.”
“Someone has your boy,” Shay said, playing with Scrabble pieces atop an old newspaper. “That’s all that matters to me. The rest is just backdrop.”
I looked at Block.
“I just want to shoot something,” he said. “Evil is evil, man. We’ve all seen it in one form or another, you know? Let’s save your son.”
We began planning the assault on Calypso’s cabin. Gunny and Block would be ahead of us by twenty minutes and would use the wireless headsets to send back info on numbers, formation of the enemy, and where my son was being held.
Initial plan was to form a bi-directional assault, covering the front and rear of the cabin, beginning at a hundred foot perimeter to net anyone guarding the exterior.
“You said the priest’s name that helped your grandfather all those years—his name was Fic Rule?” Shay said.
“Yeah, he was my grandfather’s mentor.”
“And he died?”
Father West answered: “Yes, not long ago. I was also his student.”
“Kind of a strange name—Fic, I mean. Is that Irish or something?”
“Father Rule’s Christian name was Áine. His mother’s maiden name was McFadden. And young Áine would always mix up the pronunciation, calling his Uncles FcMadden. The young men found it amusing so they took to calling the boy by it. Eventually it shortened to Fic. The name stuck.”
“He tell you that story?” Shay said.
“Aye,” answered my cousin.
“Look,” said Shay, “I’m the least superstitious one here—or at least I’m not all that taken with the demons and whatnot theory…but this is just too damned weird and coincidental.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“This.”
He turned around the newspaper on which he’d been fiddling nervously all night with some Scrabble pieces Cole had left out on the kitchen table.
I lost my wind.
“C’mon. Has to be a coincidence, right?” Block said.
“The man was a priest,” said West. “He was Father Macaulay’s companion from the time he entered the priesthood himself until the day Macaulay died. And I knew the man. A gentler soul I have never come across.”
“First, I ain’t sure what this means, if it means anything,” Gunny said. “You know where I stand on God, so I guess evil comes with the good. Can’t have one and not t
he other. And if you take to the Bible, then you believe in Satan.”
“What are you saying,” Shay asked.
“I’m saying the Lord ain’t the only one that works in mysterious ways. If the Devil is going to appear, he certainly ain’t gonna do it with horns and a pitchfork, now is he?”
“There’s something that Greer said to me—or the thing that was inside her. It said ten thousand years was like the flutter of a heart. Like a heartbeat,” I said.
“Meaning?” said Block.
“I think it was an implication that the five years we spent together—while someone like me, a human, couldn’t imagine keeping up a charade like that for years on end…hell, building a whole damned relationship on it—well, a demon, or Samhain, or whomever…to them, it would be like a few minutes. Or seconds, even.”
Father West just sat there in silence.
“So to Father Rule—if he was a demon, or even the Devil himself,” I said, “a lifetime spent with my grandfather, plus half of one spent with you, Meyer—wouldn’t be any stretch at all.”
That night I woke from a sound sleep. In my gummy brain, I was vaguely aware that something had awakened me. I turned over toward the door and saw Father Rule standing in my room, half-hidden by the shadows.
“Robert Macaulay,” he said, with a thick Scottish brogue.
“I’m dreaming,” I said.
Whether that was true or not, it did nothing to assuage the terror growing in my heart.
“Dreams are but moments the mind cannot face when awake.”
He was tall, slender, cloaked. There was also the priest’s collar.
“I’m surprised you choose to wear that,” I said.
“This is how I appear to you, from what you’ve imagined me to be.”
“After what we learned tonight, I think you’ve missed the mark.”
“Perhaps you’d rather see me as I am?” he said, toying with me.
“No thanks.”
“A thousand questions you must have, laddy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But you do have questions,” he said.
“A thousand and one.”
“Your grandfather—my friend—was weak,” Rule said.
“He wasn’t your friend.”
“This is true. So very true.”
“What happened to Ramzi Ben Younes?”
“I murdered him,” Rule said.
“Ramzi was never possessed,” I said.
“Who was possessed, who was not—it was and is irrelevant.”
“It was relevant to those you slaughtered.”
“Those your grandfather slaughtered,” he said.
“By your hand, Rule.”
“As I said—irrelevant. All things are by my hand. All things here on earth happen according to my will.”
“Your will? You only have a will because God allows it.”
“Listen to ye of gathering faith,” he said.
“Who killed my grandparents?”
“Who do you believe killed them?”
“You know the answer to that question, Rule.”
“Then what good would it do to attempt to dissuade you?”
“No good,” I said.
“What you may wish to know is that I took pity on them.”
“Meaning?”
“Their deaths were quick.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
Father Rule suddenly surged forward, baring horrible, crooked teeth—tapered, thorny, and yellow like the jaundiced skin of a dying alcoholic. He sneered at me, drool forming at the corners of his mouth. His breath was that of the dead.
“Yours will not be,” he hissed.
And with that, Rule vanished.
Or I woke up.
Of which, I’ll never be certain.
Gunny and Block drove Cole’s Toyota to the dirt access road that left the blacktop state highway about a mile and a half out from Calypso’s cabin. Amanda, Mike Shay, and Father West rode with me—along with the extra ammo—in a Suburban I rented for the occasion.
Block took the grenade launcher.
We didn’t know what to expect. The maps showed a logging road that got to within a mile of the cabin, to the north. Gunny and Block would make a bi-lateral approach from a hundred yards east and west of the access road, heading north toward the cabin; the rest of us would come southward, from the logging road, spread in an umbrella formation.
Gunny and Block were half an hour ahead of us, and were to communicate any resistance and, if the plan worked, the situation at the cabin. The two of them had, by far, the most training for covert operations, and therefore the best chance of making it to the cabin undetected.
Our team had just unloaded and begun moving south toward the cabin when a shocking call came through on the headsets:
“Team one has reached the target. Encountered no resistance. Repeat: we saw zero hostiles,” Gunny said. “Over.”
“Roger that,” said Shay.
“Proceeding to surveil cabin,” Gunny said. “Over.”
We fanned out, and picked up the pace. If there was no one guarding the forest to the south, it was possible we would encounter little resistance from the north. A few minutes later, Gunny gave us the good news:
“Inside the cabin we have seen only one subject: the man described as Calypso. He has the boy, who is unconscious, but appears to be in decent shape. Over.”
“Roger,” said Shay. “Zero resistance encountered from the north. Expect to rendezvous at the cabin in fifteen. Over.”
We picked up the pace. I had no idea what was going on, but I felt more than a little dramatic to have called in my own personal assault team to meet alone with Calypso in his cabin.
Outside we regrouped, quietly getting the skinny on what Gunny and Block had already seen.
“It’s just Calypso and my son?” I said.
Gunny nodded. “As far as we can tell. We’ve checked all the windows and seen no one else. The two of them are in the main room. There’s only the one vehicle here, and only two sets of footprints leading up to the cabin’s front door.”
“This makes no sense,” said West. “We were at the man’s bar, in the middle of downtown Denver, and he had three goons shooting at us. He’s going to take us on one versus one up here?”
“He did say for you to come alone,” Amanda said. “I’d never have believed it, but that is what the man said.”
“I should go in, then,” I said. “See what the psychopath is thinking.”
“Agreed,” said Gunny. “The rest of us will surround the building; cover the doors, windows, etcetera.”
“Stay frosty,” said Shay.
I took my weapon off safety. Calypso said ‘alone’ but there was no way I would go through that door unarmed or unprepared.
As I walked into the room, the big Jamaican turned to face me.
“Detective,” he said. “Come in, come in. No need for a gun, I assure you. Come in and talk with me for a moment.”
“The gun stays right where it is,” I said. I cleared the room and motioned to Cole, who lay unconscious on a couch.
“He is sedated,” Calypso said. “But I assure you he’s fine.”
I moved a chair against the wall, where I had vantage of the entire room, entrances, and exits.
“Give me a good reason not to take you down right now,” I said.
“It may be more than a sedative,” Calypso said.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“It’s a sedative that requires an antidote. Or a poison with sedative properties. However you wish to look at the problem.”
“I’m going to kill you,” I said, seething.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But not before your son is made whole again, I would hope.”
“What do you want, Calypso? I told you before, I hate games. And I hate wasted trips.”
“Oh, I can almost assure you this trip will not be a wasted one. Not for you or your friends.”
“My friends?”
“I didn’t tell you to come alone believing you would,” he said. “I told you because it would make what you found seem more palatable.”
“You. Alone with my son.”
“Precisely.”
“Which means…?” I said.
“I told you Hell was already here,” he said.
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” I said.
“You can’t believe I was talking about myself. I’m hardly intimidating enough to be referenced in such a manner.”
“Always speaking in riddles,” I said.
“I enjoy them,” Calypso said. “Who doesn’t enjoy a good riddle? Or puzzle?”
“Or anagram,” I said.
“Aye, lad. Father Rule, priests of all priests. I’m surprised it took you so long. I did say during our first meeting you weren’t much of a detective.”
“So the whole Obeah thing—Samhain—just a hoax?”
“No, no, no. Not a hoax. Very real. But conduits. There will only ever be one great evil, my friend.”
“Satan.”
“The Prince of a Thousand Names.”
“It still makes no sense. Not to me, anyway,” I said. “What did Father Rule think to accomplish?”
“Let me explain it in terms a good old country boy like yourself will understand. You want fish, you can stop by the market. You could also throw a stick of dynamite in the lake and wait for whatever comes to the top, am I wrong?”
“Make your point,” I said.
“My point, Detective, is that the fun is in the sport.”
“So Father Rule fucks with my grandfather for the better part of three decades for, I’m sorry…sport?”
“The Dark One never, ever does anything for sport alone. But it does make the end game—the reaching of the objective—more satiating. And misdirection is never without merit.”
“So I’m confused—this ruse has been going on since, when? When my ancestors were storming some castle?”
“It’s not a ruse. And never forget, Detective Macaulay, the playing field is Earth, but there is no time limit. The clock never runs out.”
“Eternity,” I said.
“Do you have any concept, Detective, how long eternity is?”
Black Beast: A Clan of MacAulay Novel Page 16
