by Weston Ochse
“Who could do such a thing?” Holmes asked.
“Pretty much anyone with algorithmic capabilities and a laptop. These days, this kind of thing is being taught in community colleges.”
“I thought you said it was sophisticated?” Holmes asked.
“I should have probably used the term ‘elegant.’ Although there are a lot of folks out there who could do it, doing it this way, with almost no footprint, was elegant. And to answer your question, no, I don’t know who made this.” Musso handed the tablet back to Jen. She nodded at him and he returned to his computer.
“Comments?” she asked.
The room was silent for a moment. Then Laws spoke. “Remember the mission to Myanmar? Remember how it was all a lure? I’m getting that same feeling.”
“I am, too,” Holmes said. “People are giving us a reason to press forward, but I don’t know to what end.”
“It doesn’t have to be complicated,” Walker said. “It could be as straightforward as ‘let’s get rid of the world’s toughest group of men so we can have open season on the United States.’ Ramon might be full of shit on some levels, but when he briefed us about the cartels, I got a lot out of it. Nothing more important than each of them has a reason to be pissed off at America and would do pretty much anything they could to make our lives miserable. What if several of them have banded together?”
“What if all of them banded together?” Yank added.
Everyone turned to the new SEAL.
Holmes let out a slow whistle. “I don’t even want to think about such a thing, but it could be possible. Perhaps the cartels held a Star Chamber meeting and decided to work together just this once.” He turned to Jen. “Okay, let’s try this. Have your techs get with counterparts at the Drug Enforcement Agency and Central Intelligence Agency and see if we can do link analysis on calls. I want to know who’s talking to whom outside the cartels. My guess is we already have such a capability; we just need to be included in the conversation.”
“Done. What next?”
“Any results from the beeper?”
“It’s on Highway 150, heading south at high speed.”
“What’s south on 150?”
“A hundred small towns and villages.”
“Is Mexico City one of them?” he asked.
“It eventually leads there,” she said.
“Can we get eyes on? I can have GAFE standing by.”
Jen shook her head. “It’s not like a smart phone that constantly communicates with nearby cell towers as it changes position. This is a dead device that only comes alive when called.”
“What if we plot the route of travel and try and predict the location, then have someone in the air call and coordinate contact?” Walker asked.
“Nice. Let’s do that,” Holmes said. “But if we call the beeper too much it might get destroyed by whoever’s carrying it. That they still have it supports the idea that it’s still going to be used, so we need to be careful. They could have the senator’s daughter with them.”
“Done. What next?” Jen asked.
“What do we have on Mexico City?” Holmes asked.
“I can tell you what’s not in Mexico City, and that’s a lot of Zetas,” Jen told them. “We’ve been trying to make a connection with the Zetas and it just isn’t working. I understand what Ramon said, but it doesn’t jibe with what we have thus far.”
“So what’s in Mexico City?” Laws asked.
“What’s under Mexico City is the newly excavated capital of Aztec civilization, Tenochtitlán.”
Yank and Walker exchanged a look. “Now we’re back to the lepers.”
Jen offered Walker a professional smile. “Among many other buildings, a temple created for the worship of Xipe Totec was uncovered as part of the excavation. Archeologists have found more than eighteen hundred bones and fifty skulls at the site, all dating back to the fifteen hundreds.”
“So that’s it, then. We’re off to Mexico City.”
“Even if they want us going there? Even if it might be a trap?” Laws noted.
“Even so,” Holmes said. “Knowing in advance that it might be a trap puts us at a significant advantage, unlike in Myanmar. Everyone be ready to go by seven. I’m arranging transportation. Stay inside, please, and watch where you step.” Seeing the questioning looks on the faces of the others, he added, “These Knights have their own secrets. We can leave them alone. Let’s respect their privacy. So that means no going into the catacombs. Got that, Laws?”
“Yes. Got it.”
“Okay. Dismissed. I’ll be down shortly.”
Laws gave Yank and Walker a perplexed look, then headed out. Walker and Yank followed, knowing that the rest of their time would probably be spent recovering the equipment from the last mission.
36
KNIGHTS’ CASTLE. WITCHING HOUR.
Instead, Laws had taken Walker away to do something mysterious, leaving the youngest and newest of the SEALs to recover the equipment, which was just fine with him. He found the task relaxing and enjoyed the mechanical movements of breaking weapons down and putting them back together. But while his hands were busy, his mind was free to go where it wanted. Yank had never had the discipline to just turn things off. Normally, when his mind began to work or remember something, he just let it go. Like now, when the day his mother died replayed itself for the thousandth time in his mind’s eye.
It was the crash of breaking glass that brought him awake. At first he thought it was from across the street, but then the sound of a car’s tires biting into the street before they peeled off brought him to a sitting position. Then he heard a whoompf and shot to his feet. He wobbled unsteadily for a second. He’d been dreaming of something with that girl from school, Shawna, a talking pumpkin, and an Italian restaurant. And then he saw the telltale orange glow of fire, like what might have come from a living room fireplace if they’d had one. He rushed to his door and stuck his head out just in time to see the couch turn into a gush of living fire. He stood transfixed as it sent long fingers creeping up the walls to the ceiling. Wherever the fingers painted a line of flame was created, until the front wall was covered with what could only be the art of an invisible pyromaniacal monster, intent on eating his house alive.
Then he remembered his mother. He forced himself to turn away from the fire and rushed down the hallway. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, cracking the fake wood.
“Mom, wake up—fire!” he cried, each word capturing his desperation and fear.
But she lay unmoving. He scanned the bedside table and saw her glass of gin, half full, where she’d left it before passing out, just as she had every night for as long as he could remember. She claimed it was for the leg pains she got from cleaning floors on her hands and knees.
He rushed over and shook her shoulder. She moaned something unintelligible but didn’t wake. He shook her again, this time hard enough to dislodge the wig that made her look sort of like Whitney Houston.
“Mom, wake up! Fire!” He was beginning to feel the heat from the front room blasting through the doorway. He glanced at the windows. Like all of them, this one was barred to protect them from the outside. Their only way to get out was through the front or the back doors.
He shook her again, hard this time, and in his fear, pushed her hard in the shoulder, a half push that was as much a punch. He felt scared to hit her. He felt scared not to. She wasn’t reacting. He grabbed the side of her head and shook it. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Uhnn. Shonn.”
“Mom, please wake up! The apartment’s on fire!”
Her head lolled and she sighed, expelling a cloud of noxious gin fumes that snapped him into action. He grabbed her by her shoulders and heaved. Her wig fell askew and he fought the urge to fix it. His back was beginning to sting. He wished he was big and strong like his cousin or the other boys, especially Lebron. He’d been left back two years and was the strongest of them all.
Yank managed to jerk her off the
bed. Even when she hit the floor, she didn’t wake up. He fought back a sob. He glared through tear-prismed eyes at the half-full glass of gin and juice, and in that moment knew that it had killed her.
He was pulling her through the door when a piece of the ceiling fell on him.
He screamed as his face and hair caught fire and his entire existence was consumed by a pure, crystal moment of pain. Then he was pulled and grabbed. He heard people yelling as he was screaming. Then he was outside, red lights strobing the world as white men pointed at the orange glow behind him.
His screams became sobs as he was rushed to an ambulance and a white woman with a ring in her nose and a tattoo of a hummingbird on her neck began to work on his face. She laid him down. He sobbed and let her turn his head. Then he realized he’d somehow held on to his mother’s wig. The edges were singed and slightly smoking. As his face was caressed by what felt like razor blades, he tried to let go of the fake hair but his fingers wouldn’t follow his commands. So he held it as the sirens screamed and his mother was cremated along with any chance of him living a normal life.
37
KNIGHTS’ CASTLE. EARLY MORNING.
Walker and Jen lay in her single bed, blankets twisted around them. Jen’s head lay in the pocket of Walker’s shoulder. Their breathing was still quick. Sweat shone on their skin from the light coming through the window.
“I wish I could stay like this forever,” Walker said.
Her barely audible words were spoken directly into his ear. “Then why don’t you?”
“Because we’d get hungry eventually,” he offered.
She punched him in the chest. “Seriously.”
“Because I’m a SEAL,” he said simply.
Jen didn’t need any more explanation than that. She got it. She knew. Just like every other woman who’d dated a SEAL, she’d hoped she could change him. Part of Walker wished she could. But another part—the part of him that needed to be at the center of everything—demanded that he be a free ship in the patriotic storm.
“Still, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Will you, now?”
She was quiet for a while, then asked, “What took you so long?”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Not that, silly.” She punched him again. “I meant getting up here. Where were you?”
“Laws wanted me to help him with something down in the catacombs,” he said. “I hurried as fast as I could.”
“I thought Commander Holmes said not to…” She looked at him. “Oh. It was one of those.”
“One of those?”
“You know, the ‘I’m telling you not to do something in order to make it clear I want you to do that.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.
“Sure you don’t.” She snuggled closer and pulled the sheet tighter.
“Part of me wishes you weren’t even here,” he said.
“Thanks a lot.”
“You know what I mean.”
She pretended to have a deep voice. “‘I’m not a big tough Navy SEAL so I might be in danger.’ Is that sort of what you mean?”
He chuckled. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“But I’m safe now.”
“We don’t know what’s gonna go down in Mexico City. We might even be hijacked on the way. There are things going on with the cartels we don’t understand.”
“I’ll make sure I stay behind and out of trouble.”
Walker knew better. He understood the vicissitudes of combat much better than she did and knew that there’d be at least a moment during the next few days when this woman he loved was in the crosshairs. He just had to hope that when that happened he would be there to keep her safe.
They both lay still, staring at the play of light across the ceiling and listening to the celebrations from the streets.
“Do you think YaYa is going to be okay?” she asked.
“He seems fine.”
“But is he really?” Her voice was on the edge of sleep.
“There’s no medical procedure I know of that can tell if a person is possessed. The priest says he’s okay and so does YaYa. My own little fucked-up radar hasn’t been going off. I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye on him.”
Her breathing became regular. He looked down and saw that she was asleep. He should be so lucky. He was worried about YaYa more than he was willing to let on. He knew how a demon could lurk inside a person, then creep forward to assert control. For all his comments about the power of mind over blood, part of him was worried it still might happen again, even after all these years.
As he fell asleep to the gentle breathing of his girlfriend, he thought about dancing naked and peeing on the old Filipino man. It was always the Filipino man. It was as if his repayment for his mistreatment was to haunt Walker’s dreams. So it was that Walker fell asleep with the gnarled old man grinning at him, possessing the knowledge of what had been done, his look carrying condemnation through eternity.
38
KNIGHTS’ CASTLE. MORNING.
Walker woke when someone burst into his room. He scrambled to a sitting position, the sheets like pythons trying to hold him down. Startled, he looked around for Jen, but she’d left sometime in the night. Sunlight shot through the windows.
“Get dressed and downstairs,” Holmes commanded. “We have a problem.”
Walker stared bleary-eyed for only a moment, then surged into his gear. He slipped on his shorts and shirt, pulled on socks and boots, then ran downstairs. As he hit the bottom of the staircase, one of the Knights pointed down the hall. Walker ran until he saw a room filled with people. They parted as he entered to let him get a view of what they’d placed on the table. A naked body. Headfirst toward him.
Black skin. Jagged cut at the neck. Bloodless because it had been done hours ago. So deep he could see the spine and the suppurated edges of the esophagus. Above this stood a diamond-shaped soul patch, obstinate in death. And above the face’s rictus grin and the hollow, milky eyes sprung a head of yellow Afro.
J.J.
Walker became aware that people all around him were talking at once.
“I knew we couldn’t trust him. Fucking bastard, Ramon!” Laws said, spittle flying from his mouth. Walker had never seen him so furious.
“We don’t know that it was Ramon.” Holmes turned to Vega. “Tell us again how he was found.”
Vega gestured to a slight man, dressed in the robes of the Knights. His face was weasel-slender but his eyes remained intelligent and focused as he retold what he’d seen.
“He headed south out of town in a car he’d taken,” the man began.
“You followed him?” Laws asked.
The man glanced at Vega.
“I ordered it,” Vega said with a shrug. “We like to know what’s going on in our town. Now can my man continue?”
Holmes nodded.
“At Piedra Blanca, he pulled into a cantina. The man, Ramon, was already inside. They sat with each other and spoke.”
“How did they interact?” Laws asked. “Was it like an interrogation? Was J.J. angry?”
“Not at all. They seemed to be friends. They smiled several times. They even laughed.”
Walker exchanged a worried look with Yank, YaYa, and Laws, while Holmes stared hard at the body. The meaning seemed obvious, but Walker would wait until someone else said it. To do otherwise seemed a desecration of the former SEAL’s friendship, even if it was for another purpose.
“They laughed?” Holmes asked.
“Yes. Several times.” The slight man watched Holmes warily, as if he might explode.
“Go on,” Holmes finally said.
“They spoke for about half an hour. Then Ramon went to the back. I figured he was going to use the water closet. I waited, knowing that it was your man I was concerned with. Fifteen minutes later, your man also went to the back. I knew then that I’d been made. I hurr
ied around and that’s where I found him.”
“And Ramon?”
“No sign of him.”
“He gave you the slip,” Holmes stated.
“Completely.”
“You’re telling me that you were able to track them to this place and then you completely lost Ramon?”
“Sí.”
Holmes launched himself at the slight man, grabbing him by the fabric covering his chest, and slammed him onto the body on the table. Everyone began shouting as Laws tried to stop Holmes and protect him from the others at the same time. The remaining SEALs pushed and punched their way through the crowd of Knights until they had their backs to the table, protecting their own as hands came forth to punch and grab.
Hoover leaped atop the body and snarled ferociously, snapping at anyone who was stupid enough to get their hands near.
Walker was hit twice, once in the eye and once in the jaw, but he held his ground, punching one Knight square in the face and sending him back into the crowd, then catching another in the groin so hard his target’s eyes crossed.
Beside him, Yank was a one-man pain delivery mechanism, his hands and feet firing outward in precise movements that were almost faster than the eye could track, catching Knights in knees, hips, kidneys, and the pressure points beneath the armpit and on the sides of their necks.
More Knights came from the hall and poured into the room. For a moment Walker flashed to a vision of the Three Musketeers hopelessly outnumbered by the men of Cardinal Richelieu. The press of men became such that he couldn’t even get a punch off with any power. He was in danger of his arms being pinned to his chest by the weight of the man in front of him. He felt his breathing begin to constrict as the mass of Knights pushed into him, pressing him against the table behind him. Just as it seemed as if no more bodies could fit into the room. Holmes fired a pistol into the ceiling. The yelling, the screaming, and all the movement suddenly stopped.
