"I like to be ready," Buddy said.
"This plane could hit a wind shear and one of these things could discharge. Put 'em back empty," he said, his hands visibly shaking again, wishing he hadn't decided to come.
Buddy did as he was told, and put the unloaded weapons back in the locked cabinet. In that instant, Cris had somehow placed himself in charge.
The plane headed southeast, across Arizona and New Mexico, then down to Texas. On the way, Stacy filled Buddy and Cris in on everything they didn't know about what had happened at Vanishing Lake and Fort Detrick, ending with Admiral Zoll's weird behavior at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters. Then she showed Buddy the picture of the silver-haired man who had ambushed the soldiers on the baseball diamond and who Cris had seen murder two soldiers in cold blood on the high plain above the lake.
"Who do you think he is?" Buddy asked. Cris sat up straighter and explained about the legendary hobo priest and his army of F. T. R. A. murderers and religious fanatics, who had captured Dexter DeMille.
After two hours, they began their descent. Cris Cunningham had fallen asleep on the couch. Stacy and Buddy had played two competitive rubbers of gin rummy, at the end almost breaking even on points.
When they heard the wheels come down, they woke Cris, then landed in Texas, at the Waco Regional Airfield.
Buddy had already asked the pilots to call ahead for a four-wheel-drive vehichle, and a big Chevy Blazer was waiting for them at the Executive Jet Terminal.
"You wanna take the guns?" he asked.
Cris nodded without speaking. He seemed strangely troubled, and that upset Buddy. If a Silver Star winner was worried, it must be much worse up there than they had confided.
They loaded the weapons and extra ammo into the back of the Blazer. Cris felt dull and listless as he helped transfer the guns. He hadn't eaten in hours. He was weak and ravaged by years of alcohol. He prayed he wouldn't be called on to react. He wasn't up to it.
Once the jeep was loaded, Buddy told the pilots to stay on the beeper; he'd notify them when they'd be returning.
"Do you think this is really dangerous?" Buddy finally asked, as he pulled the Blazer off the field and took the highway west, toward the Black Hills. He sure didn't want to meet the commandos who had stolen his son's body, and he certainly didn't want to come face to face with a silver-haired murderer and his band of freight-train-riding fanatics.
"I don't think it's dangerous, not anymore," Stacy said. "The whole place caught fire. I think the people from the Devil's Workshop are gone."
Buddy nodded, and the freeze in his stomach thawed. Maybe he could regain his self-respect without getting himself killed. After all, he was stepping up. He was driving into a threatening situation, risking his life. If nobody was up there, that wasn't his fault. He hadn't chickened out. He'd put himself in harm's way. Would that allow him to reclaim his outlaw persona? he wondered. Thank God Cris Cunningham knew what the hell he was doing.
A hundred miles to the east, Fannon Kincaid, Dexter DeMille, and forty heavily armed members of the Christian Choir and the Lord's Desire jumped off the slow-moving freight where the tracks passed a mile from Vanishing Lake. They walked down a wooded incline toward the burned-out village at the far end of the lake.
"We'll need to get a boat," Fannon said. "There's probably some still down by the dock." His white hair was billowing wildly in the breeze, making him look more and more crazy, Dexter thought.
They marched him resolutely toward the burned-out fishing village, near where the Pale Horse Prion was waiting in the deep.
Chapter 27
SNAKE EATER
In Special Forces Recon, they always said Cris Cunningham was best after dark. They said he came alive at twilight, like a coyote. He could find an enemy as if by magic. It was uncanny. He would be on reconnaissance patrol when suddenly he would just point right and there would be a bunch of unfriendlies dug in some hole, ass down in the mud and completely out of sight. On more than one A. A. R. (After Action Report), under Initial Enemy Engagement it stated, "Captain Cunningham smelled them."
As they approached the town of Vanishing Lake, Cris felt the same uneasy prickle on his neck. He felt his body tense in the eerie blackness. "Turn off your headlights and pull over," he instructed Buddy.
"We're not there yet."
Cris leaned over and pushed in the headlight button. "Get on the shoulder over there!" he commanded.
Buddy reluctantly pulled over and parked.
"What is it?" Buddy asked.
"I don't know," Cris said, his senses tingling.
There was a tense silence in the car as Stacy and Buddy waited for him to tell them what he was doing. Cris sat with his nerves jumping, feeling stupid. Then, to cover his embarrassment, he opened the door and got out.
"What the hell is it?" Buddy whispered impatiently.
"I don't know. Sometimes I get hunches," Cris said, feeling lame and unsure, but Buddy easily accepted it as wisdom. It was like John Wayne in The Green Berets knowing Charley was hiding up in the hills without ever seeing them.
"I'm gonna go take a look," Cris whispered, and moved away from the car. He was now almost sure that what had caused the "combat sensation" was his alcohol-shot nervous system. He wandered a short distance away from the car and unzipped his pants to take a leak. He froze again. This time the sensation was more pronounced. His instincts were screaming at him. He stood absolutely still and listened. He strained to filter the multiple sounds of night: Wind? Bugs? Nightbirds? Mansounds? What was it that had alerted him? He didn't know. Then he emptied his bladder. In "Snake Eater" school, when they were in survival training, he had been taught that sounds carry a long distance over water. So he quietly zipped his fly and moved cautiously down toward the lake.
He could feel the old Recon training kick in as he descended, but it was like looking at something through a gauze curtain. His senses were muted and sluggish. It had been eight years since he had called in an air strike on his own position. He had been on Recon with Sergeant Tom Kilbride, with orders not to engage. They were hopelessly lost when they stumbled into a Republican Guard unit, bivouacked on the desert. Cris ignored his orders and wormed up close, dropping a homing package, then backing out and calling for an Alert-5, Fly-by-Wire air strike with a ten-minute E. T. A. A scant two minutes after their request, six F-i6s were catshot off the deck of the Constitution. Cris and Tom had still been trying to retreat out of the fire zone when the F-16 ground pounders came in low, three minutes ahead of schedule. The Falcon pilots zeroed out their position and fired before Cris and Tom could get away, so they found a hole in the sand and dug in. The Republican Guard unit panicked, running in all directions. Cris and Tom opened up on the confused troops as the F-16 missiles targeted on the ground package. Tom Kilbride had been blown away when one of the Iraqi soldiers machine-gunned him from ten feet away, before Cris was able to shoot. The way Cris saw it, all he had done was get Tom Kilbride killed. He had put that damning self-evaluation in his A. A. R.
That night he got roaring drunk. He had a bad case of survivor's guilt over Kilbride's death, but the war needed heroes, especially ground troops. He got the Silver Star for gallantry under fire and Kilbride got a battlefield grave.
He hated the medal. He refused to wear it, and had thrown it in the trash. His father wrote the Marines, got it replaced, and hung it in his bar, right next to the picture of Cris scoring the damn touchdown. These had been Richard Cunningham's victories. They defined him, but left Cris empty and confused.
As Cris moved out of the trees, the lake came into view. His hands and senses were tingling as he crouched down at the water's edge and looked out. He slowly swept his gaze 180 degrees, looking for anything that seemed out of place: a glint of reflected moonlight off distant metal; a sound; a smell. Anything that might point to an enemy position. As he sat there, he again distrusted his alert system. He felt foolish squatting in soft sand wearing dress loafers, trying to convince himself
that despite three years of drunken malnutrition, he still had combat sharpness. Then, almost without thought, he was moving slowly along the perimeter of the lake. He moved in total silence, stepping light. Then again, without knowing why, he suddenly froze. Something was wrong. He remained still, his head pivoting, both ears straining. He could smell the minty-green scent of pine needles. This patch of ground had escaped the devastating fire. He could smell the deep, fragrant richness of moist earth. He could hear the slight, rippling sound of water lapping against the shore. He remained very still for almost a minute, identifying nothing out of place, wondering what the hell it was that had alerted him. Then, after a moment, he sorted it out. It wasn't something that he had heard; it was something he hadn't. A distant chorus of night insects had suddenly stopped keening, causing a slight change in the background sounds he had subconsciously set his ear to monitor. Something, some foreign sound, had frightened them. It was only when they started up again that he realized it.
He moved slowly, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, choosing safety over speed. After he had traveled almost four hundred silent yards in the sand by the edge of the lake, he heard a distant soft tapping sound, metal on metal. This was not a sound made by wind against a loose door. This was a man-made sound, a controlled tapping with a rhythm. Again, he moved forward, then went to his stomach, snaking along the ground. In the pale moonlight, he could see the burned-out dock that had once fronted the Bucket a' Bait restaurant. He could see the burned-out husk of the coffee shop, with its few remaining cedar posts poking up at the sky, charred reminders of that night of insanity. He inched toward the shoreline and slipped silently into the lake.
The cold chill of the mountain water soaked through his clothing, freezing his skin like the promise of death. He reached down and scooped handfuls of dark mud off the bottom and quietly rubbed it all over his shaved white head. He rubbed it on his cheeks and chin, then submerged silently to his shoulders. He grabbed handfuls of moss in the shallow water and pulled himself quietly along, with only his mud-caked head above water, being careful not to send out a wake of moonlit ripples. He was still desperately trying to regain that sharp combat edge from years ago. That feeling that he was no longer a visitor in the environment, but part of it. Instead, he felt like a clumsy intruder, slow, loud, and easy to spot. He sank down to his ears, giving up his ability to hear in favor of better water camouflage. Now only his nose, eyes, and mud-caked head were above the water, moving toward the burned rubble that had once been the restaurant pier.
As he got closer, he saw that the metal pounding sound was coming from a man standing in a small boat tied to a piece of dock on the far side of a low piling. The man appeared to be tapping a small hammer on an outboard engine. He had the engine cowling off and seemed to be trying to dislodge something that had damaged the engine, perhaps a piece of flying debris from one of the dock explosions. Cris stopped moving and slowly brought his head up to clear the water from his ears. Suddenly, he could hear several men whispering in the dark behind him. Shit! he thought. I completely missed them. He had gone right past their position, overshooting them in the dark. A blunder he would never have made during his Ranger days.
"Okay, I think I got it," the man with the hammer whispered.
"Good," a man on the shore replied. "We're coming out." Cris was trapped between them.
Without warning, four men crashed into the water directly at him, not ten feet from where he was. Quickly, he submerged, cursing himself.
As one of the men moved to the boat he kicked Cris in the side. Cris heard the man call out, "Whaaa? Fuck!"
Cris reached up, grabbed the man's belt, and yanked him under. He had been trained in U. D. T. (Underwater Demolition Teams) and water combat. At one time he had had excellent underwater combat survival skills. He pulled the man under and tried to roll on top of him, but the man got his feet down and, using the bottom, reared up, bringing Cris with him. As they broke the surface the man hit Cris full in the face with a pistol gripped in his right hand. Cris momentarily blacked out, but the impact of the blow somehow knocked the gun from the man's hand. Cris hung on to him to keep from falling down, and the gun got pinned between them.
They struggled in four feet of water, thrashing awkwardly, as several other F. T. R. A. S ran to help their comrade.
The gun was slipping down between their bodies. Cris put his hand down and miraculously caught it, coming away with the stubby automatic. He turned and fired two shots at the charging men, then quickly hit the man in the face with his own gun. Cris grabbed the stunned man and yanked him under again. He could hear his victim choking through the water. Over his head, Cris heard voices screaming, but he could not make out any of it. He concentrated on taking his captive farther and deeper into the lake. Cris was now operating completely on instinct. The man was gaining consciousness, and began to struggle fiercely. Cris momentarily lost control, and the man shot up to get air. As he broke surface, he choked out, "Help me! Help me!"
Cris reached up and pulled him down again. In U. D. T., he had once stayed submerged for three and a half minutes. Back then he was in terrific shape; now he was a physical wreck. He wasn't sure how long he could stay under. Then, thankfully, he felt the thrashing of his victim turn to spasms, but his own lungs were exploding. Finally, Cris came up, rolling his mouth across the surface as he'd been taught in U. D. T., taking in a breath without completely breaking out of the water. He could hear chaos in the boat near him.
"He's got Cleve!" somebody yelled.
Then Cris dove again, keeping Cleve pinned under him, pushing him down lower and lower.
Cleve was not moving now, buoyant, unconscious below Cris. Cris wanted him alive, but was afraid if he surfaced, he would be target practice for the men in the boat. Then he heard the outboard starting. Cris was five feet under. The engine was a muffled whine, the prop stirring water and moonlight in a bubbling silver froth, as the boat slashed across the lake above him. Then the whine of the engine faded. After the boat left, Cris dragged Cleve to the surface, pulling the unconscious man toward shore.
He was exhausted as he pulled Cleve up on the sand. He tried to sling his captive over his shoulder, but didn't have the strength, so he just flopped him onto his back.
First Cris cleared the man's tongue, then he rolled him onto his stomach and tried to pump water out of him. Nothing. Cris rolled him onto his back again and began mouth-to-mouth. He blew air into Cleve's lungs. He felt the man's heart sputter and stop. Cris banged his fist on Cleve's breastbone, trying to shock the man's heart into starting.
"Shit," he whispered between breaths.
The CPR went on for almost five minutes. It seemed futile, but Cris continued. Then, unexpectedly, the man groaned. Encouraged, Cris kept going, blowing more breath into Cleve's lungs. It took Cris almost ten more minutes before he heard Cleve exhale, but the man still hadn't opened his eyes.
"Don't go brain-dead on me, asshole," Cris whispered. "I need you alive."
Cleve didn't open his eyes. He didn't twitch or move. It was then that Cris suspected that the groan, and later the exhale, was just his own breath coming back out. The man was dead. Cris lay back against a tree, exhausted. He tried to catch his breath. He knew he was incredibly lucky to be alive.
Chapter 28
MUD DEMON
Fannon Kincaid heard Cleve Robertson scream and saw him thrashing in four feet of water. Then, almost like a creature rising from the slimy lake floor, something reared itself out of the water, caked in black mud. The apparition attacked the Reverend's Acolyte like a monster from the deep.
Fannon pulled his nine-millimeter and aimed it at the roiling bodies, but couldn't make out who was who. So he held his fire, looking for a clean shot.
"Something's got Cleve," someone behind him shouted.
Then he saw the bald mud man clearly. His mouth was open in a silent scream, and he looked like a vision from hell. Blood was streaming down his face onto his shirt; an angu
ished look was on his face. Fannon finally had a clean shot. He squeezed off a round, but the gun didn't fire because the chamber was soaked with lake water. Then the bald man fired two shots in their direction, and Fannon panicked, afraid Dr. DeMille would be hit. "Get him in the boat!" the Reverend screamed at his men.
Dexter DeMille was wallowing along clumsily in shallow water, making no headway. He screamed when the gun was fired. One of the Choir grabbed the skinny scientist by the arm and dragged him. They clambered up onto the one small piece of dock that remained from the inferno. The section was held in place by a concrete piling that had protected the wooden float from the blast. An eighteen-foot metal boat was tied there. Fannon pushed Dexter into the craft, then jumped in along with the three surviving Choir members he had brought with him on the mission. "Let's go," Fannon shouted, deciding in that instant to leave Cleve to the mud demon that had risen from the watery depths and grabbed him.
"We can't leave him!" Randall Rader shouted, looking off at the area where the fight had taken place. Now there was no sign of the combatants. They had disappeared under the water's surface.
"He's in the hands of God. Move out, R. V.!" Fannon screamed at Robert Vail in the stern.
R. V. was the man who had been tapping on the engine. Despite his ropy build and long, stringy hair, his most distinguishing features were his two facial tattoos: "Fuck You" on the right side of his forehead and "Eat Shit" on the left. R. V. pulled the starter cord and the engine caught on the first try. Holding the handle of the seven-and-a-half-horse Evinrude engine, R. V. steered the boat right over the place where Cleve and the bleeding bald apparition had been struggling.
"Race and Faith!" Fannon shouted at the bubbles in the water as they sped away.
They were soon out in the middle of the lake. Fannon wondered who, or what, had risen from the water's depths to capture Cleve. The bald man had not resurfaced. Fannon had pulled the nine-millimeter, firing a shot directly at the mud-demon from the lake. But the gun had refused to discharge. Was it a sign? Was this the devil of the mud races rising from a crater lake that stretched deep down to the gates of hell? Fannon believed that signs were messages from God. The taking of Cleve was a message. The mud man in the lake was proof that God's enemies from the mud races were trying to destroy Fannon's mission. He was being told by God to hurry. He now pushed these thoughts aside and turned his attention to the shivering scientist huddled on the middle seat of the boat.
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