“Major Cooper? Major Jillian Schelly.”
The major stood in front of me.
“Major Jillian Schelly,” I said to give myself some time to frame an intelligent response. “At last we meet.”
“At last.”
“Back when I was incountry, I tried to put a face to the voice,” I said.
“How did you go?”
I examined the spray of freckles across her nose and the full heart-shaped lips. I thought, out of ten a solid eight-plus, but I said, “I think I pretty much nailed it.”
“This is Professor Kiraz Başak,” Schelly told me, introducing the exotic creature in a fitted black pants suit standing beside her. No uniform, so therefore a civilian. “The professor worked on this with me.” Amend that to CIA, or maybe Defense Intelligence.
“Major Cooper,” she said.
“Professor,” I replied and took her proffered hand.
“It is a pleasure and an honor to meet you,” she said, which took me by surprise.
I might have mumbled something because what do you say to something like that when you know you don’t deserve it? I defaulted to, “Good of you both to come and pay your respects.”
“How are your wounds healing?” Schelly asked, her eyes searching my head.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Whoever did your ear has done an amazing job. You’d never know.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” Maybe Bo missed his true calling. “Are you going to the wake?” We could have just the one drink and have a chat, or maybe have the whole bottle and all leave together. This was one handsome couple. As I said, it’s a funeral but you still take note of these things and it would be difficult not to note either the major or the professor.
“No, I don't think so,” said Schelly. “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry about Sergeant Baker.”
“He was a good man, a good solider. I liked him.”
“I wanted to visit you when you were in hospital,” Schelly said, “but I couldn't get away.”
“I wasn’t lying in bed asking myself, ‘Now where’s Major Schelly?’”
She smiled. Nice smile.
I have a radar that’s sensitive to body language and it was telling me Schelly wanted to say something, but was finding it difficult.
“I’ve seen your file, Vin. I feel I know you really well, but of course you don’t know me at all.”
Not much I could say to that.
“I just wanted to say that you and your team did an incredible job,” she continued. “I … we … the professor and I … We just wanted you to know that.”
“Yes, incredible,” the professor reiterated.
“Thanks,” I said. Sure you don't want to go have that bottle? We started to walk down the hill, towards the vehicles, most of which were leaving. “There something else you wanted to say, Major?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve got something on you mind. At least, I think you do.”
“Yes,” she said, real awkwardness taking over. “I just thought you might have questions.”
I did. “The Phoenix team that pulled us out. A woman led it. Major Sam Nanaster, according to the guys in my unit. What can you tell me about her?”
“Not much,” Schelly replied with a glance at the professor. “Except that you’re asking the right question.”
“A Phoenix team would make her CIA.”
“Yes.”
“A straight answer,” I said. “I could get used to those.”
“I’m sorry, Major. It’s classified. I think you know the drill.”
I did. “I’d like a photo of her, see what she looks like. I think I remember her face, but I might have been dreaming.”
“You know that’s against the rules, Vin,” she said with another glance at the professor. We stopped at my car. “This yours?” She asked. “I like old cars. A ’68 Impala, right?”
“You know your old shit beaters,” I said. “I had a Canadian Pontiac Parisienne. Swapped it for this baby.”
“Good trade.” Something seemed to prick her memory. “Oh, I wanted to ask you …” She produced an envelope from the leather satchel under her arm, opened it and extracted a photo of the dusty white BMW, the one the Scorpion had stolen. She had a question. “Did you do this?”
“Who’s asking? The insurance company after me?”
“No. But you did that?”
The Scorpion called himself a religious leader just like the pope. His ride had a name, so I figured Al-Aleaqarab’s wheels needed one too. I looked at the photo again, the words scratched into the paintwork with a ka-bar went all the way to the metal – “Assholemobile.” I said, “Keying a car isn't as easy as it looks, y’know. The s’s are tricky, hard to get the curve going.”
She smiled again. It was still nice. “I thought you might have done that.” She handed me the envelope. “Anyway, souvenir.”
“Is that what you wanted to ask me?”
“Yes.”
Really? That’s it? I doubted it, but I had the impression that now we were done because she held out her hand to shake.
“Thank you, Vin, and good luck.”
“Thank you,” said the professor. Another handshake.
Final smiles and goodbyes from Major Jillian Schelly and the professor and they walked off together towards a burgundy Cadillac.
I got into the Chevy, fired her up, put the radio on, and called up the address for the wake on my phone. The news was playing on the radio, the craziness still unwinding from The-End-of-Days-When-The-Dead-Shall-Rise-And-Walk-The-Earth. I couldn't believe folks actually fell for that shit. Proving my point, the Sheriff from Macon, Georgia, was giving a press conference. A group of kids from Georgia State University had been charged with “trespass, vandalism, and criminal mischief” for the desecration of graves at the Macon Cedar Ridge Cemetery. Other charges of “conspiracy to commit criminal mischief” were pending. Seems the kids from Georgia State had used Facebook to organize attacks of similar nature on an international scale, at cemeteries from New Jersey to Surrey, in England. They were members of some global zombie club, according to the sheriff, and were inspired by the apocalyptic mythologies in the Qur’an. Apparently the kids thought that what they’d done – instigate the “End of Days Phenomenon” – was cool.
I was sure their bravado vanished when they heard there was a massive fine to pay as well as the threat of imprisonment in a federal correctional institution hanging over their heads.
I punched the button a couple of times until I found a tune I liked, in this case Fogerty singing about a bad moon rising. Seemed appropriate. It was about then that I noticed the envelope with the photo of the Beemer sitting on top of it wasn’t empty, the edge of another photo poking out beneath the flap. Curiosity got the better of me. I pulled to the side of the road and a burgundy Cadillac drove on by. I shook the photo onto the passenger seat. It was a head and shoulders shot – Major Sam Nanaster standing beside a desert patrol vehicle. It was not a great shot – grainy, and a little out of focus. Even so …
“Jesus,” I said aloud, took a deep breath and then let it out. Was it possible?
The moment in the ambulance came back to me. Lying on my back, my head ringing, when I opened my eyes and saw her face. I thought later that maybe the memory was the figment of a brain addled by a bullet’s graze. This photo suggested otherwise. Maybe the Sheriff of Macon had gotten it wrong. Could be that at least one person had risen from the dead after all.
Epilogue
Ronald V. Small @realSmall
Nobody in the history of this country has ever been better at the military than me. Nobody. No one. So amazing.
“’If anyone here objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace,” said the celebrant.
Crickets spoke up, which didn’t count.
A few more words, the ring, a kiss, and it was done. Marnie Masters, Anna’s sister, was now Mrs Marnie Wayne.
Weddings. Put it this way, I like them a
lot more than funerals.
The bandages had been off a month. My hair had pretty much grown back. The sun was shining. And my toes were digging into the sand lapped by the warm waters of St Bart’s.
“Here,” said Natasha, putting the drink in my hand. “Is vodka.”
Of course it is. “Thanks.”
Natasha? Yeah, we were doing each other. She looked me up when I was in recovery. Go figure. A pain in the ass in Syria and here she was, a long way from being a pain in the ass. And now we had two weeks on this island together to discover that it was never going to work out between us. So far those acts of discovery were taking place three times a day.
With the wedding ceremony over and the temperature rising, dresses were coming off and swimsuits were getting pulled on. Beach weddings beat the hell out of church weddings. Natasha peeled off the elegant blue sheath she had wriggled into this morning and, lo, beneath was a sheer, backless one-piece, also blue. We’re talking dynamite. Care for a little more discovery?
She handed me her drink and said, “I go in. You come too. We swim out past boat and do it like fish.”
Now there’s bait you don’t often get to bite – we were clearly on the same wavelength. “Give me a minute to finish my drink and I’m there,” I told her.
“Hurry,” she said, and we kissed, a kiss that tasted of vodka, which I could get used to.
Natasha skipped down to the water. It was hard not to stare. It was also hard to believe she could kill someone as easily as sneeze. She grabbed Marnie’s hand on the way through, and Marnie grabbed Arlen’s, and the three of them ran into the water.
“Vin!” Arlen shouted. “C’mon!”
I waved, fully intending to join them, until I noticed that the person who had been watching the wedding ceremony from the old boats stacked under a tree over yonder was still watching. There can be too much watching. Now that I was focused on this person, I could see it was a woman. The wedding party was in the light and she was backed into the shade, so that made her hard to see, on top of which she wore a wide brimmed hat, increasing the shadow coefficient. But, somehow, I had a feeling she’d placed herself just so, knowing that I’d see her and that curiosity would bring me over.
My heart started to race as I came nearer, and for a few reasons. She was sitting on an upturned dinghy, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a Redskins cap. Reason one, that’s my team. Reason number two, her hair was tied in a ponytail, but it fell over one shoulder and I’d recognize that hair anywhere. Reason number three, there was a bottle of Glenkeith beside her. And everyone knows that’s my brand, right?
I climbed up on the boat, sat beside her and tossed the vodka in my glass onto the sand. She replaced it with a couple of shots of single malt. I needed it.
“She’s gorgeous,” the woman said.
“Marnie’s a beautiful bride,” I replied, deflecting. “And the short blonde bob really suits her.”
“Yes, it does, but I mean your girlfriend.”
“Yeah, she is beautiful, but she has a problem with articles.”
“That’s Russians for you,” she said.
“Are you jealous?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, but I also know I have absolutely no right to be.”
“No, you don’t.” I took a mouthful of single malt and embraced the burn. “You died,” I told her.
“Did I?”
“Maybe you don't remember. I was holding you in my arms at the time. And then I went to your funeral.”
“Me too. It was nice.”
“There has been a lot of talk about the dead rising. Did you get to meet Jesus? What’s he like?” I took another big mouthful of Glenkeith, the pulse racing in my temple, and hoped my drink wasn’t shaking too noticeably.
“Vin—“
“You have a lot of explaining to do, Major Nanaster. You know that, right?”
“Yes. I promise you, it’s a hell of a story.”
“It had better be.” I polished off my drink. “So…is there a Mr. Nanaster?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I told her honestly. “What do I call you? Major Nanaster? Sam? What?”
“No, Vin. You …” She took my spare hand and turned to look at me, I figured so that I could see how much it meant. “You can call me Anna.”
About David Rollins
David Rollins is a former advertising copywriter and creative director who decided to try to dig his tunnel out of that game by writing bestselling novels. Advertising is a long way behind him now, but he is still digging. And there are plenty of people who’ll tell you he’s still trying.
David lives in Sydney, Australia.
Also by David Rollins
Special Agent Vin Cooper series:
Death Trust
A Knife Edge
Hard Rain
Ghost Watch
War Lord
Standoff
Collision series:
Field of Mars
Warrant Officer Tom Wilkes series:
Rogue Element
Sword of Allah
Stand-alone:
The Zero Option
First published by Critical Mass in 2018
This edition published in 2018 by Critical Mass
Copyright © David Rollins 2018
davidrollins.net
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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Kingdom Come
EPUB: 9781925579949
POD: 9781925579956
Cover design by William Heavey, Bold Fox Designs
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Kingdom Come Page 40
