Dark Light--Dawn

by Jon Land

  “To what?”

  “Love,” Vicky said, with no hesitation at all. “Think about it.”

  “I have,” Red said, scowling in derision, clearly not buying into Vicky’s conviction. “And you’re not leaving me a lot of choices here, Doctor. First priority for the United States government is to find Max Younger. Our second priority is to make sure the Russian or Chinese don’t. If I don’t have you helping with Priority one, I’ll have no choice but to go with Priority two,” Red said, not leaving much doubt as to his true intensions.

  “Right,” Vicky said, flashing a smirk equal to Red’s, “good luck with that.”

  “Think about what you’re doing here, think very hard. Our global enemies won’t be nearly as hospitable, if they find him before I do. I don’t pretend to have all the details here, but I’ve got enough to know Max Younger isn’t like the rest of us. He’s got powers and abilities that defy explanation and, in the wrong hands, could inflict terrible damage.”

  “That would make you the right hands?”

  “Everything’s relative, Doctor. I know you want to find him as much as I do. I’ve got the resources but I’m missing what it will take to draw him out.” With that, Red leaned forward over the foot of the bed again, interlacing his fingers before his face. “This is the best way to keep him safe, keep both of you safe, believe me. He needs to be among friends.”

  “You’re not his friend, and Max can take care of himself.”

  Red moved around to the side of the bed, drawing as close to her as the rail allowed, letting his anger peak through the thin veil disguising it. “When you’re talking to me, you’re talking to the whole U.S. government. You don’t want that as your enemy, you don’t want me as your enemy. Trust me on that, Doctor.”

  “I know my rights,” Vicky said, refusing to break his stare. “I can’t help you and I don’t have to help you. Trust me on that.”

  Red nodded stiffly, and backed away from the bed. “We’re not going to stop looking for him, Doctor. And we’ll be watching you, listening to you, following you. Welcome to your new life, Doctor. Get used to having company around you all the time.”

  Vicky lay all the way back down in the tangle of bedcovers. “I’ll make sure to add them to my Christmas card list.”

  EIGHTY

  The Vatican

  Pope Anthony I rode through St. Peter’s Square in an open-air vehicle, offering blessings for the multitude of worshippers who’d gathered to celebrate his installation. Hands stretched out, straining toward him. Cameras and cell phones clacked away, taking pictures under the watchful eye of the papal security force that operated in comparable fashion to the American Secret Service. The white vehicle, embossed with the papal crest, crawled on, through cheers so loud that when the gunshots came, few heard them.

  Father Pascal Jimenez, dressed in civilian clothes, had met the gaze of the former Josef Martenko an instant before opening fire with his 9mm Beretta, certain enough that his bullets had found their mark, even as a barrage of shots fired by the papal guards punched into him. Jimenez fell to the pavement, dying in a pool of his own blood, but not before glimpsing the new pope’s brains splattered over some of the guards whose gunfire had struck him.

  “Go with God,” Jimenez whispered, facedown on the pavement, as the world turned dark around him, clutching the gold pen that had belonged to his father. “Go with God.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  Rome

  Mohammed al-Qadir enjoyed thinking of himself as Cambridge again, especially after so many years of denying himself all the pleasures and luxuries he was free again to partake in. That included staying at the elegant Hotel Michelangelo just a few minutes away from the Vatican. His luxurious room offered a beautiful view of St. Peter’s dome and, after so many years spent living like an animal in the desert, he had come to rejoice in the simple joys of things like air-conditioning and room service.

  Being fluent in Russian, thanks to his Chechen background, allowed him to slip effortlessly into the identity of a Russian businessman, an identity he’d created just for this eventuality, although he still had to memorize the name imprinted on his new passport. He’d shaved his beard and cut his hair back to the length it had been when he was still known as Cambridge, back to a disguise that had served him well for so many years, until he’d met the man now known as Pope Anthony for the first time back in Nigeria more than a generation before.

  They’d both come a long way and had plenty further to go. Together. It would take time to fashion a new plan out of the refuse of the old. The former Father Martenko’s new position afforded a far greater platform for them to realize their mutual goals. So al-Qadir was here in Rome, awaiting word of where and when to meet the new pope.

  He heard a sudden hail of sirens screaming from the streets beyond, and moved to the window. Staring out through the French doors leading onto the balcony, he spotted what looked like an armada of police and rescue vehicles tearing down the streets in his view, converging, it seemed, on the Vatican.

  A deep-seated sense of unease had struck al-Qadir at his very core, when a knock fell on the door, signaling delivery of the room service meal he’d ordered. The blare of sirens and feeling of foreboding had stolen his appetite from him, but al-Qadir still went to the door.

  The room service cart crashed into him, as soon as he yanked it open, propelling him backward. Stealing his breath as it slammed him into a wall and pinned him there. He slumped all the way to the carpet when the waiter jerked the cart backward, rattling its contents further. Then al-Qadir looked up and saw the same dark, empty eyes he’d glimpsed in al-Raqqah, before managing to escape. And the man attached to them was holding a silenced pistol against his forehead.

  * * *

  “Get on your knees,” Max ordered, holding his pistol in place.

  He sneered, refused to break Max’s stare.

  Max yanked him up to his knees. Then he aimed his pistol downward, straight for al-Qadir’s face.

  “Now close your eyes.”

  Al-Qadir shut them, with a smirk, as if still seeking the upper hand. Max moved behind him, withdrawing a knife he pressed against al-Qadir’s throat.

  “Looks like your God isn’t here,” Max continued, into his left ear. “Or maybe he’s taking the day off. If he is here, ask him to give us a sign and I’ll let you live.” He stopped to let the words sink in. “Sound familiar?

  “You’ve caused so much pain, so much suffering,” Max resumed. “And now you’re going to experience what your victims have experienced. All their humiliation, pain, terror, heartache…”

  With that, from behind Max laid his palm bearing the same mark as his father upon al-Qadir’s forehead. The skin reddened under Max’s touch, then spread downward across his face, onto his arms and torso.

  Al-Qadir started to rock back and forth, then tremble, his mouth gaping for a scream that never came, the breath seeming to catch in his throat. His eyes snapped open, rolling back in his head to reveal only the whites. His expression stretched into a mask of twisted agony, shaking violently under Max’s touch. Then his eyes started bleeding, followed by his nose, mouth, and ears.

  Max left his hand in place. “Death won’t end the pain either. Welcome to your eternity, every bit of suffering you’ve ever visited upon the innocent, visited back upon you. What you feel now is just the beginning, death for you is just the beginning of the horror you’re going to experience in your blessed afterlife.”

  Frothy blood began spilling out of al-Qadir’s mouth, as he twitched and shuddered. Finally, he keeled over, racked by writhing spasms.

  “Because, for you anyway, it turns out hell is real,” Max said, as al-Qadir gasped for a final breath.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  Newark, New Jersey

  Max knew something was wrong, as soon as the jet stopped short of the Jetway and remained on the tarmac. Moments later, commandos stormed the plane from the rear.

  “Nobody move! Nobody move!” Max heard so many
voices shout at once, that they melted into each other.

  He could tell they were pros, wearing the uniforms of the New York City SWAT team, their spacing and the way they held their weapons showcasing their prowess.

  The passengers, including Max, tucked low in their seats, forcing the commandos to check row by row. One of the SWAT team members jerked a teenage boy seated behind him brutally into the aisle, foot pressed against the back of his neck, when Max rose with hands in the air.

  “It’s me you want,” he said, and then they were on him.

  * * *

  “We’ve got him, sir,” Max heard the man he took to be the leader say into a throat mic. “Acknowledged. ETA forty minutes, depending on traffic.”

  The man looked up, Max’s gaze following his to a helicopter circling overhead before he was rousted into the back of a black truck and chained to the floor by both his hands and feet. Six of the commandos joined him in the rear, all with M4 assault rifles trained on him.

  Then the double doors were slammed closed and the truck pulled away, led by one SUV and trailed by another.

  New York City

  The last thing Dale Denton wanted to do was return to Houston after all that had befallen him and Western Energy Technologies in Cape Horn. That disaster had not only destroyed the multi-billion-dollar facility, the flooding he’d narrowly escaped had done incredible damage to the island itself. At best, being investigated for his part in an international catastrophe would keep him in court for the next ten years, complicated all the more by criminal charges he was potentially facing at the hands of the Chilean government. At worst, WET would have to file bankruptcy well before that.

  Denton had been holed up in the Park Avenue penthouse apartment he’d never sold for almost two weeks now under heavy security. But he’d only shared the possibility that Max Younger might be coming for him with Spalding, and he wouldn’t feel safe until the lone child of his late business partner was dead or in custody.

  Today his heavy security accompanied Denton to the building WET also still owned and his office on the sixtieth floor, where he’d be meeting with a team of lawyers this afternoon. The press was after him, WET’s board of directors was after him, his top investors were after him. And, worst of all, Max Younger might be after him.

  The stories coming out of the Middle East were as explosive as they were confounding, impossible to tell where the line between real and tabloid journalism was. One thing they all agreed on was that Navy SEALs had saved the day. And, as soon as he heard that, Denton felt Max Younger had most likely played a big role in that and had managed to survive.

  Something had long been afoot that defied any rational explanation. Denton hadn’t cared about that when it served his needs, starting all those years ago down in the Yucatán. Now that it didn’t, though, he found himself wishing he hadn’t tried to tame nature in the form of the rock he remained convinced was behind all of this.

  That rock was gone now, either sucked into the late Professor Orson Beekman’s black hole, or lying at the bottom of the ocean. Never to be seen again, either way. Pursuing that object had defined Denton’s life, his ambitions, for almost thirty years now. In the ultimate irony, those same ambitions, behind all his wealth and achievements, had conspired to destroy him.

  But he wasn’t done yet.

  * * *

  The man who called himself Red followed the convoy the whole way from a police helicopter tracking it from above, never taking his eyes off the black truck sandwiched between the pair of SUVs, led by a parade of New York City squad cars with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  Then again, nothing about Max Younger was simple. Red had exhausted every intelligence research he’d developed over the years in tracing Younger to an Alitalia flight from Rome that connected in London before continuing on to Newark. Maybe it had been a bit too easy, but he figured Younger was desperate, finally showing his hand.

  Either way, Red had him, planning his next move when the convoy disappeared into the Holland Tunnel. He felt his pilot slow the chopper to a hover, waiting for the three vehicles to emerge on the Manhattan side.

  But they never did, Red watching the cars that had entered the tunnel after his convoy emerge first, no flashing lights to be seen.

  “Shuttle One, come in,” he said, into his headset, continuing when there was no response. “Shuttle One, Shuttle One, do you copy?”

  Still nothing.

  “Shuttle One, report,” Red resumed, his voice quickening. “Shuttle One, do you read me.”

  Dead air.

  “Set us down!” Red ordered his pilot. “Set us down!”

  There was a cleared, fenced lot not far from the tunnel exit that made for a decent landing pad, and Red leaped out of the chopper just as it touched down. He sprinted through traffic, to the screech of brakes and blare of horns, followed into the tunnel by the two former Force Recon Marines who were his best, and most ruthless, operatives.

  Good thing, because he was about to need them.

  Red found the convoy an eighth of a mile into the tunnel, the three vehicles squeezed into a construction zone, along with the six police cars escorting them with lights still flashing. As Red approached, palming his own pistol, he could see the patrol cops seated stiffly in their squad cars and the SWAT team members looking out blank-faced from the SUVs.

  None of the men acknowledged Red, when he moved straight for the black truck and threw open the double doors, thrusting his pistol into the breach.

  The first thing he saw was the chains that had bound Max Younger lying on the floor. Next, he saw the six SWAT team commandos, plus the driver, with flex cuffs lacing all their hands behind their backs. None of them were gagged and they looked at Red in confusion, like they’d just woken up from a deep sleep and had no idea where they were or what they were there for.

  “What happened?” Red demanded, already knowing no answers would be coming. “What the fuck happened here?”

  And he really didn’t need to ask, not anymore.

  Maybe it had been a bit too easy …

  Of course it was, because Max Younger had used him to get into New York City.

  * * *

  Dale Denton arrived under armed guard to the office tower that had served as WET’s original headquarters, and from which Ben Younger had plunged to his death through Denton’s own office window. That office had been under constant guard both inside and out. No one had come or gone, as confirmed by Spalding who personally ushered Denton inside an hour ahead of his upcoming meeting.

  The giant closed and locked the door behind him, leaving a dozen former special operators armed with assault rifles and submachine guns in the reception area beyond. Denton settled behind his desk in the spray of the sun streaming through the windows to prepare for the coming meeting.

  * * *

  Max entered the lobby of Western Energy Technologies’ original headquarters to the accompaniment of canned classical music playing in the background, not a single one of the veritable army of armed guards paying him any heed whatsoever. Neither did the men standing on either side of the elevator that had opened on the sixtieth floor before what looked like a SEAL team in civilian tactical clothing.

  Max looked at them, holding their stares as they briefly seemed to note his presence, reaching for their guns, before their gazes went blank, and they looked away, as if he wasn’t there at all. He walked right through them, drawing not a motion, a gesture, or even a blink, Max continuing to stare into eyes that did not stare back.

  Max glided toward the big double doors ahead with a piece of classical music just reaching its crescendo. It felt as if he was moving through time, slipping through some folded-over flap of it that allowed him to slip through time and space, without actually being there in the physical sense.

  The entrance to Dale Denton’s office was locked, but the knobs twisted easily in Max’s hands, and he pushed through the double doors, feeling them close behind him.

  “Shoot him!”
he heard Denton cry out. “Kill him!”

  And a big, bald man drew his pistol, aimed straight for Max, but he couldn’t make his finger pull the trigger. Sweat pouring off his face bent in desperate determination, as Max approached calmly. Max stripped the gun from the big man’s grasp and hammered him in the skull with it. Once, twice, three times, until he felt something crack, and the big man crumpled to the floor unconscious.

  “It’s been a long time, Dale,” Max greeted the man behind a big desk with a clear top.

  Denton looked toward Spalding, sprawled between his desk and the door. “What … How did you…”

  “It’s complicated,” Max responded.

  Denton reached beneath the sill of his desk to trigger the panic alarm. “I still have photos from that night in the cabin. I’m still a witness to you murdering three men in cold blood. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  Max took a step closer to Denton’s desk. “I should have killed you too. But that wasn’t the way this was supposed to go, didn’t match the plan.”

  “What plan? Whose plan?”

  “Think about it.”

  Denton looked Max up and down, as if trying to make sense of what he was seeing. “What the hell are you?” he asked again.

  “The end of days, Dale, yours anyway.” Max hesitated. “Go ahead, push your panic button.”

  Denton did, but nothing happened. His security team didn’t appear.

  “Guess they’re not coming,” Max told him. “Maybe there’s a short in the wiring somewhere.”

  Denton jerked a 9mm pistol from beneath the clutter atop his desk and aimed it at Max.

  “Go ahead,” Max said. “Pull the trigger.”

  Denton’s finger wouldn’t move, started to quiver inside the trigger guard.

  “Come on, kill me.”

  Then the gun was heating up in his hand, scalding his flesh. He let go of it, and the pistol rattled atop his desk, his hand scarlet and blistering through the palm where he’d been holding it.