The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  Lonnie stared down at the paper and pen, then worked his arms to get them in the correct hands. He had to loop one through the armrest to reach. After a minute or so, he let his pen rest and looked up.

  “Now, read it back to me.”

  He read it.

  “Okay,” she said, picking up the phone. “We're going to make that call.”

  She raised the gun so it was pointed directly at his eyes. Nothing deceives like the truth. “And if you say any of those words you just wrote, other than 'I' and 'back' and 'now'—” she tilted the pistol slightly to indicate it. “I will leave this room hard of hearing for the next few hours.”

  Chapter 13

  The access drive was off a narrow road about three miles from the highway. There was a mountain range in the distance, dark ridgelines against the purple night sky, but nothing else visible in any direction but large silhouettes of cacti that looked like bendable figures posed to say hello and goodbye, and patches of brush that looked like shadows of coral. Smaller cacti with green spiked paddles lined the road. Every plant she saw in the wash of headlights had something sharp about it, knives and spears for limbs or thorns and spikes ready to take on all comers.

  Lonnie pulled off the road onto the paved drive. It was cracked and uneven and coated with a layer of sand that rose in phantom swirls in the car's wake. “Lady, you have to listen to me,” he said as they approached a small, square building in the distance. “You're going to get one or both of us killed. Just cut this stuff off me and take the car. Get out of here. It's not too late.”

  “Pull up where you normally would. If you do anything out of the ordinary, I don't need to tell you what will happen. I've told you enough times already.”

  Lonnie lowered his eyes and took his foot off the gas. The car slowed, coasting the last few hundred feet. He pulled up along the side of the building next to another car. Behind the building, the cast of the car's lights reached far enough that Amy could see a rectangular metal framework covered by camouflage netting. Beneath the netting were three large vehicles with a military mass to them. Humvees, maybe, but she couldn't be sure.

  The main structure was smaller than she expected. Boxy and plain with an imposing set of metal doors in the front. Off a considerable distance, maybe a football field, was a flat expanse of concrete several feet high and dozens of feet across. A Humvee was backed up to it, dormant. It seemed an unlikely place for a sentry.

  “You mentioned cameras,” she said.

  “Yes. But nobody really monitors them unless the motion detectors are tripped.”

  “You have motion detectors?”

  “Yeah. Coyotes and deer are always setting them off.”

  “I'm not happy with the direction this is taking, Lonnie. I get the feeling you don't think I mean what I say.”

  “Whoa, now, lady. Calm down. I told you, nobody looks at the cameras unless the motion detectors go off, and they'll be expecting them to go off because they know I'm coming in. It shouldn't be an issue. Don't be getting all paranoid on me.”

  “You just better hope this goes as planned.”

  “Yeah, some plan. You're going to walk in there with this, uh, terrorist bomb thing taped to my skull. Then what? There are three dozen men down there with weapons.”

  “I know. You told me. I guess we're going to see how expendable you are, and whether any of them are anxious to see you die for their cause. They do as I say, I leave and you all get to carry on and play war games another day, minus one prisoner.”

  Amy looked down at Lonnie's cell phone, pressed the button so the display screen lit up. Military time, 21:27. Three minutes.

  She told him to slide toward her as she got out of the car. She moved slowly, opening the door and inching out. She had no choice, since her left hand was covered in duct tape and attached to the back of Lonnie's skull.

  The moon was almost full and glowing a light shade of orange, high enough to scale the darkness in shades of navigable gray. They walked in tandem to the front of the building, Lonnie just ahead of her. She alternated between watching the doors and staring at the back of his head. The configuration was strictly utilitarian. Two wraps of tape around his forehead, two below his jaw, lots of wraps around the can of sterno pressed against the can of hairspray, with a mound of wrapping covering her fist down to the wrist.

  She looked down at the cell phone as they arrived at the door. One minute. She stuck the phone in her purse, moved the other sterno-hair-spray-duct-tape device around so it was easily reached. She adjusted the purse over her shoulder and drew the Glock from her fanny pack, the flap already open. Carrying the purse was a pain, but she only had one available hand and no useful pockets.

  Light as it was, the Glock started to feel heavy after twenty or thirty seconds, so she let it drop to her side. A minute was a long time when your hand was taped to a makeshift bomb on someone's head.

  Lonnie cleared his throat. “I need to scratch my nose. Can I take my hand out of—”

  “Shhh!” Amy cocked her head, listened. A metallic scrape, followed by a clunk. Then the door opened with a creak. She raised the Glock and pointed it at the side of Lonnie's head.

  Two men appeared in the doorway, one behind the other. Both had weapons drawn and ready and aimed in her direction. They wore intense looks, but if they were surprised at what they saw, neither of them showed it.

  One of them shouted, “Drop your weapon!”

  She rushed to get the words out, clearly and forcefully, just as she'd rehearsed them in her head. “I have a dead man's switch under my thumb, beneath all this tape. My hand goes limp, his head goes boom.”

  One of the men crabbed out the door, his compact assault rifle beaded on her face the whole time. He slid around to the side of her, but kept a reasonable distance. The other one took a few steps back.

  “Move!” the one nearby said. He was well-muscled and rawboned with a tapered flat top, trimmed tight. He gestured once with the barrel of his weapon, an efficient flick to the doorway. The rifle was black and sturdy and had a retractable stock that was pressed hard against his shoulder. She noted he kept the length of it even with his sight line. Not sloppy, the way Lonnie had been.

  “Inside, now!” the man said.

  “I die, so does he,” she said.

  “She means it!” Lonnie said.

  Thank you, Lonnie.

  “Move!” the man repeated.

  Her ribcage howled as she sucked in a breath without considering her bruised ribs, but the adrenaline muted the intensity. She let the air rush out though her mouth and nudged Lonnie forward.

  The entryway terminated about fifteen feet past the door into a wide set of stairs penetrating down into the earth. There were doors to the side, metal slabs with riveted edges and enormous locks. The ceiling was a stretch of exposed pipes and vents and metal beams. A deep hum filled her ears as she passed by the doors.

  The man ahead of them was lean with a tribal tattoo of curves and sharp edges down one arm. He backed up to the edge of the stairwell and stopped. He slapped a button on the wall beside him and a distant bell pealed for several seconds. She could hear the clunk of heavy locks disengaging from somewhere down the stairs.

  A poke in the back with the rifle – she supposed he couldn't resist – and they were moving again, descending the stairs, the tattooed one in front rapidly covering several yards, stopping to train his weapon and watch, then repeating, until they reached a landing and another set of doors, this one marked with a red shield, an image of a missile framed by two lightning bolts in the center. He hit another button, eyes on her, and the door opened.

  Beyond the door, the space widened. Two more men, all dressed the same in desert camo trousers and khaki t-shirts, stood on opposite sides of a grated elevator door, pistols raised. The one who'd led them down the stairs lowered his weapon and pulled on the grating, sliding
it open.

  They stepped into the lift. The guys that had met them stood one on each side, facing them. Amy kept the Glock close to Lonnie's head. She wasn't sure why, but it made her feel better.

  She told herself to keep calm. She knew she was walking into a military compound, knew it had to be underground. What the hell did she expect?

  Cowgirl up!

  The lift stopped and they stepped out, rawboned guy first, then her and Lonnie, then tribal guy. They were in an industrial space of some sort, enormous machinery of indeterminable purpose lined the walls, exposed coils and large metal squares and cylinders with conduit and electrical panels behind chain link mesh. Their two escorts pressed them forward, through a set of double doors that opened to a large rec room. It had to be at least fifty feet wide, maybe a hundred feet deep. Two pool tables, three long dining tables, a giant flatscreen TV on the wall. And around two dozen men, all dressed similarly in t-shirts and baggy tan camo trousers, standing in two lines forming a rough path to the back. None of them had weapons drawn, but all of them seemed to be armed, hands on hip holsters. Militant eyes, following her step-by-step as she moved into the room, her hand still attached to their comrade's head, her Glock high and ready to fire. Something about their appearance struck her as odd, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it and was far too focused to try to figure out what. She stopped close to where the lines began, near the middle of the gymnasium-like space.

  At the far end of the human corridor, a man stood behind an interior window, looking out through open blinds. He moved out of view before appearing through a side door not far away and walking over to the middle, beyond and between the last two soldiers.

  “I don't suppose I could convince you to simply lower your weapon and remove whatever it is you have going on there from Specialist Nelson's head,” he said.

  “Not until I get what I came for. Who I came for.”

  The man nodded. He was older, in his late fifties at least; compact and rugged, with a trim, sturdy build and short gray hair. He was wearing desert camouflage similar to the rest, but his uniform included a matching jacket top with two dark stars sewn onto each collar.

  “I assume you'd have me believe you're going to do something unpleasant to that young man if I don't comply with your demands?”

  “I have a bomb. My thumb is on a dead-man's switch. I also arranged it so that the police will be swarming all over this little hole in the ground if I don't get back to stop them from being notified.”

  “You're saying that's a bomb?”

  She jutted her chin toward Lonnie. “Ask him, he'll tell you.”

  Lonnie glanced to the side, realized she was talking about him. “It's true, General! I'm sorry, but your orders were clear that I couldn't use my weapon! I didn't know what to do!”

  “It's not your fault, son. I was expecting Ms Wright here to show up. That is your name, isn't it? Amy Wright?”

  Amy blinked. The pressure in the room seemed to shift, like she needed to pop her ears. She swallowed to clear her throat. “You know me, and I know you. So let's cut to the chase, Bartlett. You have to also know why I'm here.”

  “Ms Wright, look around. If I wanted to do you harm, you'd already be dead. Please, lower your weapon at least. People waving around firearms make me nervous. Unlike most, I've seen what happens when they're wielded in anger. More times than I care to recall.”

  She narrowed her gaze, then let it slide to the Glock. “This isn't what you have to worry about,” she said, tilting the pistol. “But if it would make you more comfortable, tell your men to back away and I'll holster it.”

  The general thought about it for a moment, then nodded to a man at the end of the line. He was taller than the others, black and athletic with a tight fade of kinky hair. He barked for the men to fall back, and after a few seconds of milling and humming they started to recede toward the far end of the room, along the side walls, some along the back. None got too close to the general, keeping the makeshift formation rather tight to each side.

  “These two, also,” she said, indicating Rawboned and Tribal. They hadn't moved, rifles still in ready-fire position.

  “This isn't necessary,” Bartlett said. “I don't even believe that's a real explosive device. You don't strike me as the suicidal type. Nobody wants anyone to die here. Not you, not me. Let's sit down and talk things out, shall we?”

  Amy swallowed. She was expecting something like this, the need for a demonstration. She tucked her Glock into the bands of her fanny-pack holster and reached into her purse. Rawbone and Tribal shoved the barrels of their weapons forward, audibly tensing. With slow, deliberate movements, she removed another item from her purse and held it up.

  It was a mish-mash of duct tape, the shape of an aerosol can visible, and a wider disk secured to the bottom, also encased in tape. Something protruded below that, terminating in a taped ball at the end. She held the crude object up and said, “Remember, dead-man's switch!” then she turned and lobbed it high toward the corner of the room not far from where she had entered, the opposite direction from Bartlett and his men.

  The size of the explosion took her by surprise. The sound blasted her ear drums and the fireball sent a scorch of heat through the room. She had to close her eyes and blink several times, flashbulbs going off in her skull. Lonnie dropped to a knee, turning in toward her, away from the blast.

  The movement yanked her arm and she stumbled to regain her balance. Rawbone and Tribal had both turned away and covered their faces with their arms, belatedly. They were trying to regain position, raising their weapons and rubbing their eyes. The other men were down in various forms of crouch, yelling words she couldn't quite make out.

  “Hold fire! HOLD FIRE!” the general yelled. He was charging forward, rattling his head every few steps, arms spread wide.

  Amy looked over at where she'd tossed the bomb. Holy shit. The explosion had knocked a hole in the wall bigger than a person, metal framing studs exposed and twisted, chunks of drywall, some on fire, littering the floor.

  Bartlett stopped a few yards away from her. He was breathing heavily, eyes wide. There was a tense, serious cast to his jaw and brow. “Do you have any idea how insane that was?”

  “I had to make sure you understood. I'm not joking around.”

  “Nobody thought you were joking! For God's sake, determination is not a form of intellect! That little stunt could have easily killed all of us. Not just in this room, either.”

  Amy said nothing. She tried to think, told herself not to show any sign of wavering.

  Bartlett pointed a stern finger in the direction of the hole. “There are propane tanks behind that wall. Not to mention containers containing all sorts of pressurized compounds. Chlorine triflouride, for God sakes. The resulting... you could have killed everyone down here before most would have had the chance to even realize what happened.”

  He shut his eyes, lowered his arm. He took a breath, coughed at the thick odor of burnt plastic in the air, then seemed to regain whatever composure he'd lost. “Don't do anything like that again. Please. You're obviously operating under a severe misapprehension.”

  “Let him go, and I'll gladly leave. Lonnie can call you from wherever I drop him off. Then you can go back to your little paramilitary role-playing or whatever it is you have going on.”

  Bartlett looked at her, tilting his head as if to shift perspective, a field researcher uncertain how to classify a particular specimen.

  “Him?”

  “Just drop it, General, okay? We're past the point of this kind of BS. Hand him over, and I'll leave you alone and let you have your man back. Think of it as a prisoner exchange, if you need it to fit into your military world view.”

  “Look, Miss... I don't know what you know or think you know about me, or my men. But I'm not keeping anyone prisoner.”

  She watched him, took a moment to pr
ocess what he said. “I don't believe you. Lonnie here even let it slip that he knew something about it. Now, where is he? I'm not leaving without him.”

  Bartlett let his gaze drop to the floor and rubbed his ear. He looked at Amy, started to speak, then stopped and turned back toward his men.

  “Calvin, would you please bring out our guest so that we can clear a few things up?”

  The black man at the back of the room who'd ordered the others to fall back earlier, gave a sharp nod and left through the side door.

  Seconds ticked by. The room gradually started to rumble with the din of men whispering and mumbling. Bartlett didn't try to quiet them. He kept his attention on Amy.

  “How did you know I'd be coming?” she asked, the question bugging her.

  Before Bartlett could answer, a hush fell again, moving from the back to the front. Calvin entered the room and gestured to the person following him.

  A woman walked in, confident in her stride if a bit uncertain in her expression. She had coppery locks of thick hair and skin a shade of smooth mahogany.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Miss,” Bartlett said. “But this is the only person down here who is not a formal member of our cause. Just in case you haven't been introduced, Amy Wright, this is—”

  “Sahara Doyle,” Amy said.

  She felt her body slump. If Hatcher wasn't here... she lowered her eyes, tried to reassess the situation. It had to all be connected, but instead of answers she had more questions now than when she'd left New York.

  Bartlett took a step toward her, made a gesture to get her attention. “Now, Miss Wright. Can we please, please, undo your arm – and that contraption – from this young man's head and have that talk?”

  Chapter 14

  Hatcher woke on his knees. He was leaning forward, arms bound behind his back, a large leather strap around his chest supporting his weight and keeping him from falling onto his face.

  His head felt like someone had shoved a lump of liquid metal into the center of it the size of a softball, a weight that sloshed around every time he moved.