The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels)

by Jon Land

  “The contradiction in terms is interesting,” Zeus told him. “One million will die and then fifty million.”

  “No, Zeus, you’re interpreting the words wrong, specifically one word: ‘before’.”

  “Of course! In front of.”

  “So it could mean one million will die in front of fifty million witnesses.”

  “Television?”

  “Yes,” Kimberlain acknowledged. “A huge event of some sort, with one million people on the scene.”

  “And these one million are to be murdered then and there. The explosives! Of course!” The old man didn’t bother to restrain his smile. “A challenge for us, Ferryman, requiring our best efforts if it is to be successfully overcome.”

  “This isn’t a game, Zeus.”

  “We need to be allies here, Ferryman. The past must be put behind us. What forced us apart in earlier times were errors in interpretation, not intention. You believed I left you in the jungle to die because of my fear of what you might do, and, accordingly, my actions forced you to make the very move I feared the most. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Kimberlain said nothing.

  “After the dissolution of The Caretakers, I was transferred to another role that was important but infinitely less rewarding. Security for a collection of secret installations. They made me a night watchman, Ferryman, however glorified. You see, we’ve both had to make adjustments in our lives.”

  “Let’s get back to the subject at hand.”

  “Fear not, Ferryman. The best minds in the network will be on this by midnight.” Zeus smiled. “You’ll also be pleased to know that all charges against you have mysteriously vanished and the file containing the investigating officers’ report has disappeared.”

  “Sounds like you’re not entirely helpless after all, Zeus.”

  “We’ll talk in the morning.”

  But it wasn’t morning when Kimberlain awoke next. And by all rights he shouldn’t have awoken at all. The room was just as it had been when Zeus had left. Nothing to raise him from his slumber except …

  A shape stirred, straddling a pair of chairs at arm’s distance from the bedside, a monstrous silhouette set against the room’s darkness.

  “Hello, Ferryman,” said Winston Peet.

  Chapter 18

  I’M STILL ALIVE, Kimberlain thought. That’s something, but it might not be much.

  He stifled the instinct to reach for the call button, knowing that would only summon more victims for Peet.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” the giant said, moving not an inch.

  “That’s considerate.”

  “I owed you that much.” Peet shifted and the chairs creaked.

  “How’d you find me?”

  “At The Locks you mentioned the messenger man had brought you in on this just as he brought you into the chase for me. Finding him in New York was simple. He led me to you.”

  “Good old Hermes.”

  Peet regarded him calmly. “You don’t have a gun, Ferryman. If you did it would be out by now.”

  Kimberlain just looked at him, fighting with his mind to regain control of his body. If Peet lunged, he had to be ready. If he could fend off the giant for a few moments, the commotion would attract help. He found himself wishing Zeus hadn’t dismissed the police posted by his door.

  And then Peet stood up, just a foot separating him from the ceiling. Kimberlain flinched and drew back. A pair of IV pouches smacked against each other.

  “Back in the dark times, Ferryman, I thought I had come to grips with what I was and wished to be. The killing beat back the great flames that raged inside me. But then, on the day of my rebirth, you stood over me with gun ready. The traditional bullet never emerged, but a spiritual one did. The dark part of me was slain, and for that I owed you a debt I waited all those years in The Locks to repay. I knew the time was coming when I wrote you the letters, and I knew the time had come when you visited. I saw death in your eyes, Ferryman, your own death, and I alone can prevent it.”

  Then you’re not going to kill me. Kimberlain might have said it out loud if the giant hadn’t continued, bald head glistening in the thin light.

  “I could have escaped anytime I chose; a dozen different ways were available. But until you came and I saw your eyes, there was no reason. You gave me reason, just as you gave me life with your spiritual bullet. I must save you because it is through this that my final cleansing will take place.”

  Peet smiled, and the gesture sent chills through Kimberlain. He wanted to pull the bed sheet up high over his eyes like a child hiding from imagined monsters.

  “Back in The Locks, Ferryman, I said we were the same because we can feel disturbances in the great field of energy that surrounds and binds the world. In the jungle, the hunter is alerted by the trail. In our world, the hunter is alerted by vibrations that don’t belong, neither good nor evil but simply anomalous. All those years ago, you felt me in that town, knew I was there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you tracked Quail you knew he was out there too. You had no evidence of his existence, no less his true identity, but you felt the truth and nearly caught him.”

  “Where is this leading?”

  “He’s a part of this now.”

  “The Dutchman?”

  Peet nodded. “Out there as we speak. The disturbances in the layers of ki I am attuned to alerted me, and I must be the one to stop him.”

  “This is starting to sound very personal.”

  “For me there is no personal, Ferryman. My soul and spirit have been given up to something much greater. All the personal died back in time to your spiritual bullet. It is more that my reborn soul cannot rest peacefully so long as he is out there; the part of me I seek to be rid of clings to life in his person. Just because I vanquished it in myself does not mean it is gone. It merely fled into another soul, which must be crushed if I am ever to end the flux within me. That my path will cross Quail’s is our certain common fate. Either he will kill me or I will kill him. If I don’t try, then your life will end by his hand.” Peet backed up a step, drawing a hard swallow from Kimberlain. “I will leave you the phone number of the room where I am staying.”

  “I could give it to the authorities,” Kimberlain said, trying to sound as though he meant it. “Have you picked up.”

  “But you won’t,” Peet told him. “Because you’re going to need me.”

  Danielle accepted the report without surprise.

  “We can make no sense of the note,” came the voice from across the ocean. “The man is something else again. Are you sure it was—”

  “Yes, I’m sure. The Ferryman.”

  “And the Hashi tried to kill him in Mendelson’s office?”

  “Along with Mendelson.”

  “Then whatever the Ferryman is pursuing led him to Mendelson as well.”

  “His pursuits have somehow intersected with our own,” Danielle added. “There is more involved than he expected, just as there must be more involved than we did.”

  “If your conclusions about the submarine and the Antarctic oil installation are correct …”

  “The Ferryman may know nothing of them; he probably doesn’t. But he does know something else, another part—a different part— perhaps the one that will make sense of what we have uncovered.”

  “To understand the whole,” the man said, “we must have all the parts.”

  “Then we need Kimberlain.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “Finding him will hardly be sufficient.”

  “All our resources are at your disposal.”

  “Against the Ferryman, they might not be sufficient either.”

  The special reinforcements sent down at Kimberlain’s request to St. Andrew Sound by Dominick Torelli arrived on the mainland at Crooked Bluff at eleven P.M. As ordered, the island’s cabin cruiser had been sent across to pick them up. A patrol launch would have been a more logical choice, but no two were large enough
to comfortably accommodate all twelve of the extra commandos necessary to double the guard around Lisa Eiseman.

  Crooked Bluff was located thirty miles down a lonely road off Route 95 as it cut through southern Georgia. The name was fitting, since the bluff was actually a ragged peninsula jutting out toward the islands in the sound like a set of gator teeth ready to close. Torelli’s island lay apart from the others, invisible from the mainland. For two generations the Torelli family had utilized its easily defensible position as a refuge in threatening times.

  The island enjoyed a natural fortification of powerful rocks reaching out from beneath the surface to slash boats attempting to land on its shore. One the size of the cruiser would have its bottom torn out if it dared venture within a hundred yards. Thus a mooring was relied on to hold the cruiser in place, and a dinghy was utilized to shuttle passengers back and forth from the dock.

  The skipper left the dinghy tied to the cruiser instead of mooring it and hadn’t even noticed his error until he was well out into St. Andrew Sound. There was no sense in going back now. The effort would make him late, and his orders had stressed the importance of time.

  As it was, the reinforcements were already standing on the dock at Crooked Bluff when he eased the cruiser toward them in the darkness. They stood side by side mechanically and might have been exact clones of each other if not for their different clothes. Some wore sports jackets and slacks, others jeans, and some even wore fatigues from their tours in the Special Forces. Their mixed bag of clothing indicated they’d been sent down on very short notice. The skipper wondered what made the woman back on the island so important that Torelli would go to such measures to ensure her safety. Christ, what did he think was coming?

  The men looked impatient as he tied the cruiser down. He noted that the choice of weapons had been left to each one as well, a few hoisting gun bags or satchels with promised death inside.

  “Your taxi is here, gentlemen,” he said, immediately sorry for the humor when it produced no effect on the commandos. Speaking no further, he set off.

  The night currents were slow, and the driver was glad for that much, for it made the journey quick and smooth. He reached the soft beacon over the cruiser’s mooring in thirty minutes and tossed the line over to it. His passengers’ eyes were on the rope as it looped over the mooring to anchor the cruiser, so none of them noticed the soft splash as a black figure slid over the side of the dinghy into the chill water.

  Chapter 19

  THE ISLAND’S COMMUNICATIONS CENTER was in a second-floor den, a fairly elaborate setup that connected the man on duty with all patrolling guards as well as the cruiser.

  “Come in, Italia,” he tried again. “Italia, do you read me?”

  Forty minutes earlier the cruiser had called to say it had picked up the reinforcements and was proceeding back. Since then there had been no word. The radio had been on the fritz not too long ago, so the man behind the console wasn’t worried. The plan was for the Italia to call in for pickup by the Land Rovers after mooring up. If her radio was out again, maybe the passengers had just started walking.

  “Patrol one,” the man called to the jeep driver on duty by the fortress’s front gate.

  “I hear ya.”

  “Go down to the docks and check for the cruiser. She’s overdue.”

  “Roger. Call you when I know something.”

  The man started his jeep down the island’s single road, which wound its way through the brush straight to the waterfront. The best speed he could risk at night on the booby-trapped route was fifteen miles per hour. The road had been specially constructed to help ward off an attack from the beach. A vehicle trying for a faster speed would shred its tires on the jagged rocks deliberately placed on both edges of the narrow way. Even a vehicle driven slowly by someone unfamiliar with the terrain would be disabled.

  The night was moonless and dull, and the man able to see little in front of him as he pulled onto the wooden planks that formed a pathway down the beach to the small pier overlooking the sea. As the planks gave way to the rickety wooden structure of the pier, he caught sight of the cruiser Italia tied out on its mooring.

  “What the hell…”

  Could have just arrived now, the man figured, shifting his jeep into neutral as he picked up the binoculars on the seat next to him, put them to his eyes, and turned the focus wheel.

  There were dark shapes bobbing in the water.

  There were more of them on the cruiser’s gunwale and spread across the deck.

  All dead, ten bodies at least.

  Choking back his terror, the man went for his mike and had torn it from its stand when the hand latched on to his wrist. He tried to pull away, going for his pistol with his other hand, but the black figure that was suddenly over him pulled harder, and he felt the agony drive through his entire frame as the tendons and cartilage connecting his hand to his wrist snapped.

  The pain slowed his reach for the gun. In the end he found its handle only when a second gloved hand jammed up under his chin, snapping his neck upward and back with enough force to tear it free of the vertebrae holding it. For one brief moment the man was aware of his head bobbing about like that of a top before the darkness closed over his eyes and the figure was forever lost from view.

  “Patrol one, do you read?” asked the man on duty in the communications center.

  “Cruiser’s coming in now. Almost to the mooring,” came the slightly garbled reply.

  Damn radio again, thought the console operator. “I’ll send the cars down.”

  “That’s a roger,” said Dreighton Quail.

  Quail’s battered Chevy had made Macon, Georgia, by dawn Friday, easily within range of the coastline by midnight or even an hour or so before. The journey east from Alabama had taken him down dozens of roads and freeways he had never used before, and the thrill was exciting, refreshing. Worried about time, he had actually driven an hour past the dawn, all the windows in the old Chevy sealed tight for fear some awful winged daylight creature would soar through and attack him.

  The Dutchman wondered if the legendary Peet had taken most of his seventeen victims at night. Perhaps he had torn all the heads from their shoulders with the sun bearing witness. Either way, Quail was determined to go that one better.

  He liked tearing his victims’ hearts out. Using his hands. Always the hands, fingers being the key. Stretch out those hardened fingers and squeeze them together and they were as sharp as steel.

  But not sharp enough yet. To better Peet, tearing a heart from a corpse’s chest wasn’t sufficient. Quail wanted to be able to drive his fingers straight into his victim, cracking ribs en route to the heart to be torn from the sinews restraining it while it was still beating and alive. Peet had waited until his victims were dead to twist off their heads. The Dutchman intended to go for the heart as the instrument of death itself, yank it out with the chambers still pulsing as if to move blood around.

  Maybe tonight. Maybe the woman.

  The Dutchman had reached Crooked Bluff not long after ten- thirty, already figuring that stealing a boat would be his only chance to reach the island. And that plan would have been carried out if Quail hadn’t seen the large group of menacing-looking men standing impatiently on the dock when he arrived in the shadows. He blessed his fortune, not just because it was obvious that these men were here to be transported to the island, but also because it would provide an opportunity to kill such a large complement of the woman’s guards in a short amount of time, a challenge that appealed to him.

  He lowered himself into the water at the first sign of the cruiser’s running lights, chose the moment when the soldiers were easing themselves from dock to deck to shift his frame over the dinghy, and covered himself with the tarp. The bumpy, uncomfortable trip bothered Quail very little, engaged as he was in considering his next moves. He had been told to expect upward of a dozen guards on the island, and this group doubled that number at the very least. If he could make use of the opportunity pre
sented by having the passengers clustered so close together, though, the opposition’s number would be halved again.

  Quail would know what to do when the proper moment arrived. He had no use for guns. The only weapons he ever utilized other than his blessed hands were ones convenient enough to keep in his pocket, often fashioned by himself. He waited in the covered dinghy as the Italia slowed and her engines switched off, with the mooring coming up fast. Quail eased himself out of the dinghy and swam beneath the surface around to the cruiser’s bow, where he poked his head over the gunwale.

  The soldiers would travel to shore in the outboard dinghy in two shifts. The Dutchman was confident he could dispose of the first group of six and then the other before they even reached the island. In fact, he had to, because it was as a group clustered closely together that they were the most vulnerable.

  The skipper was drawing the dinghy toward the cruiser by the attached rope when the Dutchman pulled himself onto the Italia’s bow in a crouch. The toughest part would be to slither silently atop the precarious toeholds around the cabin to the deck where his victims lay.

  Quail glided nearer the cabin in silence and pressed himself against its side. Six was going to be a tight squeeze in the dinghy, and three of the men had already lowered themselves into it. With six on board, space would be too cramped and the small boat too rocky to allow for any defense at all in the time he would give them. The key again was timing, to move between seconds, between the breaths and motions of others. Take the first six by surprise and then turn proximity against the six crowded into the dinghy.

  As the sixth man started to step into the dinghy, Quail pounced. His leap carried him to a spot between the two soldiers at the rear of the deck, and before his feet had so much as gained purchase, he had a head grasped in either hand. Quail brought the two heads together hard enough to splinter both their skulls. There were no screams, but the deafening crack made some of the others left on board turn, and in the next instant Quail had already closed the gap, lashing out with a blow that shattered the windpipe of one. He spun next to snap the neck of the fourth man while still in motion.