Age of Blood

by Weston Ochse

  Yank, Laws, and Walker all began talking at once, but Holmes made a chopping motion with his left arm that shut them up. He embraced Navarre once more, then closed the door behind the Mexican after he left. Holmes didn’t say anything. Walker wanted nothing more than to hear in detail what was happening, but he had to wait for Holmes. Finally their leader spoke.

  “It turns out the C-130 can’t be a crime scene and that the State Department had no right to impound it.”

  “How’s that?” Jen asked.

  “It was a Mexican military craft on Mexican soil. No way were they going to turn it over to the Americans. The crew chief ordered it airborne. They landed it at a military base nearby and unloaded all of our gear, which is now sitting in Room 303.”

  “No shit?” Walker asked, more than a little stunned.

  “No shit,” Holmes answered. Then he pointed at Walker and Yank. “You two get cleaned up and get down to 303. Yank, I want a complete inventory list in thirty mikes. Walker, find out what Rosencrantz and Guildenstern want from their stuff and bring it to them. Now that they have access to their high-speed techie magic crap, I expect they’ll be very happy.” He glanced at the techs, who were all smiles.

  “Finally,” Laws said with more than a little joy in his voice. “We got a fucking plan.”

  Holmes smiled tightly. “The world works better with one. Now get over here and let’s talk courses of action.”

  Walker went into the other room to clean up, leaving the two senior members of Triple Six to plan. He had to admit that knowing they had their stuff back made more difference than he’d thought it would. It gave him back the confidence he hadn’t realized he’d lost.

  45

  HOTEL MAJESTIC, MEXICO CITY. DUSK.

  Jen spent the next ten minutes in the bathroom, staring into the mirror, her hands trembling as she splashed cold water on her face. She couldn’t get out of her mind the insanity in YaYa’s eyes as he’d fired his pistol point blank into Pete Musso’s stomach. Why had Pete tried to save them? He’d never showed any sense of valor before. Not that in suburban San Diego he’d had the chance, but Pete was an analyst. Her eyes filled with tears again as she relived the moment over and over, the worst part being the agony and fear on Pete’s face as he’d fallen to the deck of the plane, his hands clutching at his stomach as blood pulsed out of him.

  She shook her head to get rid of the image. Dwelling on this wasn’t helping. Maybe Walker had been right. Maybe she should never have come. Maybe analysts weren’t needed on the scene.

  She gave herself five minutes, then wiped her face, washed her hands, and left the bathroom. She passed Goran and Patrick, who had set up their systems and settled on the sofa by the window. Alexis Billings was already sitting there, too, leaning on her left side, her hand supporting her head. She stared off into space.

  After a few moments, Alexis spoke. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know,” Jen said a little too hastily. “I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but I’m the one who brought him down here.”

  “You had no control over what happened,” Alexis said in a monotone.

  “It doesn’t mean I’m not responsible,” Jen said.

  Billings sighed.

  Jen looked at the other woman, who was now staring at the floor.

  “Do you want to know who’s responsible?” Alexis asked, her voice rough with emotion and barely above a whisper. “I’m responsible. This whole mess. Me. I’m the one.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself?” Jen asked.

  Alexis chuckled hoarsely. “If only. The bottom line is that I chose them.”

  “Who’d you choose?”

  “The SEALs. YaYa, Holmes, Walker—all of them. I knew what we were getting into. The senator told me more than once I was playing with fire and I didn’t listen to him.”

  Jen didn’t know where Alexis was going with this, but her curiosity was piqued. “What did you do?”

  Alexis shrugged. She reached up and released her long hair, shaking it out. “I did what I was supposed to do. I chose these SEALs for a reason, you know. I knew we had to have someone special. I knew we had to develop a more modern mechanism to recruit SEALs into our unit.” She turned to Jen and held her with wide eyes. “Do you know how they used to do it before? They held séances. They read Tarot. They even threw bones, for God’s sake. They’d have entire rooms full of these ‘magic’ people doing juju over files and pictures of our best U.S. Navy SEALs.” She laughed again, this time tilting on the edge of her own craziness. “When I took over I changed all that. I turned the magic into a science. We now have PhDs in game science, neurology, and statistics at the core of our team. Psychologists interact with each recruit prior to attending SEAL training, so we can establish a database of supernumerological scores for each and every recruit. We rack and stack these based on their statistically manifested abilities and keep them ready, like they’re weapons in an arms room.”

  Jen shook her head. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

  Alexis gave her a stern look. “Do you think for one minute that Navarre coming at the last minute with our equipment was by chance?”

  Jen thought it was odd that Alexis would have used that particular phrase—“by chance.” She didn’t know where this was going, but she wanted to find out. “I thought it was lucky, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Exactly!” Alexis snapped her fingers. “Luck. Holmes was tested and he was found to be extraordinarily lucky through our game-design tests. In fact, did you know that he’s not allowed to set foot on the gaming floors of Vegas casinos? The word was out on him long before he became a SEAL. He was raised in Vegas and can’t even go into a casino. They think it’s because he counts cards.”

  “Are you saying Holmes was chosen because of his luck?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. During game play, whether it was cards, board games, video role-playing games, first-person shooters, or even MMORPGs, he showed an unexplainable ability to not only not die, but to win in the end. On a consistent basis he accomplished the statistically impossible. Which is one reason he’s been in charge of Triple Six for so long.”

  “Then I shouldn’t worry—they won’t die?” Jen asked, still trying to get a handle on what Alexis was saying. While the information was beyond interesting, its relevance to the present seemed tenuous at best.

  “You’d better worry. His luck is his luck. He has a better chance of surviving alone than he does on a team. His luck might extend to the others, but it is his talent.” She got up and grabbed a soda from the counter and popped the top. “Of course, he could run into a null. We had one of those before, during the Roosevelt presidency.” She sat back down, then added, “The first Roosevelt, that is.” She drank deeply.

  “When you say a null, you mean—”

  “Someone who takes away luck. Like a cooler. Casinos employ them. There are those who can make people unlucky. Say someone’s having a run at a table, then the casino will have this cooler touch or bump the person and watch how much they lose after that.”

  “Alexis,” Jen said, “this all sounds a little far-fetched.”

  “You’d think so, right? And just in case you don’t know, but this is strictly a special access program, so you can’t share it with anyone.”

  Jen leaned back and crossed her arms. “Great, thanks. But what does this have to do with blame?”

  Alexis crossed her arms, holding the soda in her right hand. “I chose YaYa, too. I chose him because he’s a font.” Seeing the look on Jen’s face, she explained. “Some people call them polymaths, although that’s not the right term either. Ever meet someone who seems to fit in perfectly wherever they go? If you watch them closely, they’ll take on the speech and demeanor of the group they’re trying to fit in with. They don’t do it consciously. It comes naturally. What we’ve discovered is that the same is true for the supernatural. They are drawn to it and it is drawn to them. So we c
all them fonts. But instead of providing something, fonts provide a space for something, like holy water fonts at the entrance to Catholic churches.”

  “So you knew this was going to happen?”

  “Of course not. How could I have—”

  Jen shook her head, cutting Alexis off. “I mean that he could be inhabited.”

  “The term is possessed,” Alexis said without any sense of humor.

  “Possessed then. Did you know?”

  “We knew. We counted on it.”

  Jen’s mouth dropped open.

  “Now do you see what I mean? This is absolutely my fault. The idea about a font is that we could capture an entity, then use it somehow, study it perhaps.”

  “And did YaYa sign on for this? Does he know that this is his special talent, to go out and unwittingly capture spirits?”

  Alexis stared hard at Jen for a moment; then her face softened. “No. He doesn’t know. And neither does Yank. He doesn’t know his talent either.”

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  “No. And neither are you.”

  Jen heard the unspoken addition if you want to keep your job loud and clear. She should shut up now, but she had one more question for which she needed an answer. “Was he going to get any training in his font ability?”

  “Eventually. We were assessing him. He wasn’t ready yet.”

  Now it was Jen’s turn to give a bitter smile. “What you mean is that you didn’t know how he’d react once he found out. Does that about sum it up?”

  “It does.”

  Jen stood and smoothed out the wrinkles in her slacks. She took a moment, then faced Alexis. “Listen, I don’t know how much of the blame you should really take. These are U.S. Navy SEALs who happened to have some talents which made them suitable for Triple Six. If YaYa is so wide open, it could have happened any time. It might have even happened before and we don’t know it.” She could see Alexis begin to appreciate her comments. Now it was time to bring her back down. “But you should let them know their talents. Otherwise it’s like giving a pistol to a three-year-old.” She shook her head. “If you want to blame yourself for something, blame yourself for that, because I know if you saw a three-year-old reaching for a pistol, you’d run into the room and do whatever you could to stop the inevitable.” Then she turned and walked out. She stepped into the other room in time to see Walker and Yank returning with two Pelican cases.

  “Hey, gal. What’s up?” Walker asked.

  Even with all the bullshit, she was glad to see him here and it made her heart warm.

  46

  HOTEL MAJESTIC, MEXICO CITY. LATER.

  Yank was thrilled to get his equipment back. Going into battle with only a pistol and a knife made him feel like a samurai attacking Godzilla, especially in light of recent events. Without their weapons and equipment, defeating the homunculi wouldn’t have been so easy. Likewise, the QuadEye and the HKs had contributed significantly to their complete domination of the crazy leper people. Their ability to communicate and attack in a synchronized fashion was integral to their success. He’d always believed that if the Crips, Bloods, or MS-13 of his hometown Los Angeles had even a modicum of SEAL training, they would have taken over L.A. long ago, instead of firing from car windows like overgrown Shriners in spoke-wheeled clown cars.

  Downstairs they’d found all of their gear, plus some appreciated ammunition and pyrotechnics courtesy of GAFE. The Pelican cases of computer gear were brought up first so the techies could begin their search for the mystery vehicle Holmes believed YaYa had taken. Personally, Yank felt it was an incredible leap in reason to assume that YaYa had stolen a car. He just as easily could have had an accomplice. Didn’t they say there’d been a phone call right before YaYa had begun acting strangely?

  Yank felt a surge of goose flesh flow over his arms. If the call had “activated” YaYa then they had a chance of targeting whoever was controlling him. Even money was on Ramon, but Yank wasn’t so sure. Ramon was a werewolf or skinwalker. Did he really have the power to control someone over the phone? It just didn’t feel right.

  So then who?

  They’d been back and forth from Room 333 to their own on the seventh floor three times. On the way back down, the elevator stopped on the fifth floor. A white family with a little boy and a little girl stepped into the car. Behind them came two Hispanic men, both dressed in suits. Yank looked for it and saw the bulge of a weapon underneath the left arm of each of them. They stepped aboard but didn’t make eye contact. Yank let his gaze slide to the floor, and searched for a bulge at the ankle. The taller of the two had one, but the other man didn’t.

  Yank exchanged a quick glance with Walker. He’d seen the same thing.

  Yank and Walker were back against the rear of the car. The family was probably getting off in the lobby, starting a day with coffee, juice, and cinnamon churros in the plaza. Yank had already depressed the button for three. Now he wished he hadn’t. Whatever was going on, they didn’t want to show these people the location of their weapons cache.

  So when the car stopped, the control panel dinged, and the door opened, he and Walker remained motionless. For a few uncomfortable moments, no one moved. Then the blond-haired little boy turned around and stared at Yank. The kid seemed about to say something, when his father turned him around and hugged him to his side.

  The door closed. Yank glanced up and saw that the taller of the two men was looking at him. Yank gave him a gentle smile, even though he felt anything but gentle on the inside, then resumed staring into space, all the while keeping everyone within his peripheral vision.

  The car began to descend. When it reached the lobby, one of two things would happen. Everyone would get out or the two men would keep Yank and Walker from leaving. Yank’s fingers itched to pull the knife from his right cargo pocket. In close quarters, it was the perfect weapon.

  Yank let his gaze stray toward the shorter of the two men. The haircut didn’t have the spit and polish of an American agent. For that matter, neither did the suit. On closer inspection, it was ill-fitting and looked more like what an insurance agent would wear rather than a businessman.

  The ding of the elevator was followed by the door opening onto a bustling lobby. First the family got out, then the two men, then Yank and Walker. To stay would bring more attention to them than they needed. The men went straight to the counter. Yank made for the restaurant. Walker followed close behind.

  As Yank moved through the crowd, he became aware of how unlike everyone else he and Walker were dressed. Had they paid attention, they wouldn’t have left the room looking like road-worn military contractors, the modern mercenary, or tactical Mormon missionaries. With their military haircuts, boots, tactical cargo pants, and sweat-stained T-shirts tight over well-muscled chests, they looked like anything but tourists. What they needed to blend in were shorts and flip-flops. Realizing that they were being noticed by several people of unknown origin, Yank opened the door to the stairs and they ran up the three flights.

  Thirty seconds later they were in Room 333.

  “Who were they?” Walker asked.

  “Don’t know.” Yank put the privacy chain on the door, then ran over to check the lock on the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. “One thing is for sure, though. We shouldn’t be seen out in public unless we have a change of clothes.”

  Walker looked at the equipment spread over the two beds in the small room. “And we shouldn’t leave this room unguarded. The last thing we need is a maid coming in, or worse. I’ll take the first shift. Why don’t you go up and tell Holmes.”

  “I’m sure he’ll concur.”

  “Maybe see if someone can’t go out and buy us some clothes.”

  “Good idea, but that might depend on the plan.”

  “You mean Holmes’s plan?”

  “None other.”

  “A little light on details, though, wasn’t it?”

  Yank grinned. “It’ll come together. I’m pretty damn sure o
f it.”

  47

  BENEATH MEXICO CITY.

  The barking wouldn’t stop.

  Loud, then soft.

  Savage, then timid.

  Rapid-fire, then monotonous.

  A growl came now and then, but it was always the barking. No matter which bark, it rang hollowly in the darkness, the immense space magnifying the sound and smashing it against the stone walls, where instead of being shattered, it bounced back even more powerful.

  They’d chained him to the steps. The chain was thick, tasted cold, and bit into the skin of his ankle. Where it touched, he was already bloody. He didn’t know why the chain was there. He was their dog. He’d been their dog for a while, the thing inside him recognizing the thing inside the master. Both of them were from the same family. Both had been old when man first broke wood to make fire.

  They’d told him to stay.

  They’d told him to guard.

  They’d told him he was a good boy for bringing them the senator.

  He stopped barking for a moment and ran on all fours to a bowl of water. He lapped both furiously and happily, vaguely aware how strange it was for those two emotions to be so intertwined. He snapped at the water and watched it splash on the stone beside the bowl, darkening the stone, making it almost black. Then he saw himself in the water. He recognized everything and nothing. For a moment he remembered a time when he’d stood upright and he’d been called by a different name.

  Then he struck the water with his hand, destroying his image.

  He turned and ran the other way to the length of the chain and began to bark once more.

  Barking. Always barking. It felt so joyous to do so.

  48

  HOTEL MAJESTIC. LOBBY. NIGHT.

  Three hours later Walker was wearing flip-flops and shorts. What had started out as a joke had become reality, except that he now had a knockoff Hard Rock Mexico City shirt and pink sunglasses, and was sitting in the lobby with Jen, pretending to study a tourist map, but really watching the frenetic population of the hotel lobby. American, Canadian, and French families wore garish clothes and dragged along tired children and small, ratlike dogs. Men in stylish suits commanded small groups of thugs in cheap suits who stood around glaring at each other. A small army of staff wearing charcoal-gray clothes and red-and-white name tags moved to the gravitational pull of everyone’s needs, most happy when they were crossing the lobby, their eyes on problems yet to be reported.