Michael Walsh Bundle
Page 100
“These are the Last Days,” said Skorzeny.
“And I,” said Devlin, “am Malak al-Maut.”
Mary and Mohammed were drawing closer, losing their material shape and turning into pillars of light in the desert, merging, combining into a single beam—
“No!” screamed Skorzeny, understanding. “You can’t.”
“It is finished,” said Devlin. “Amanda, you don’t have to do this. Come with us. You’ll make it.”
“No,” she said, “I won’t. I can’t. Besides, my place is here with him. In expiation for all my sins. And for his.”
They could feel the heat of the approaching lasers—now under American control—dissipating the chill of the desert. Amanda gestured to Danny, who ran over to her. She drew him close:
“Kiss them all for me. Kiss her for me. Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them . . . tell them I’ll pray for them.”
Danny handed her the picture. “Take this with you,” he said.
Devlin lookd at Skorzeny and Amanda. The man was a liar to the end. He was not dying to end it all. In his own twisted way, he was dying for love. He was just too consumed with bitterness to realize it.
“Let’s go,” said Devlin.
The Black Hawks rose and circled as the lasers met, fused. The Shaheds on the ground exploded as the lasers grazed them. Even at this altitude, Devlin could feel the heat rising. In a vision of heaven, he had unleashed hell.
Maryam clung to Devlin as they watched the awful, inevitable progression....
On the ground, Amanda gazed for the last time at the picture, which was gradually curling in her hands. It burst into flames. But she did not feel the heat. Pain could not harm her anymore. Her last vision was not of hellfire, but of redemption. By the time her skin started to char, she was already dead.
Skorzeny screamed as his clothes caught on fire. His hair burned off and then his skin melted away in the terrible heat. And still he screamed, howling curses at the heavens, unrepentant to the last. The only thing left of him was rage.
He was still screaming when Devlin fired a single round from the Viper into his head. “I am the Angel of Death,” he whispered as he pulled the trigger.
“O Mother,” he shouted, “O Father. You are avenged.”
The Black Hawk wafted upward, as if borne aloft on heavenly hands. Then it turned toward the southeast, the Eisenhower, and home, and disappeared into the night.
TWO WEEKS LATER
EPILOGUE
Los Angeles—the La Brea Tar Pits
He was back where he had started, only this time she was with him, which made the whole thing seem even more like a dream.
They had already walked through the Page Museum devoted to celebrating the bones of the early mammals caught up in the vast oil field that sat, like a black lake, beneath Wilshire Boulevard. Now they were out front, confronting the woolly mammoth, still struggling against his fate and still losing.
“Did it really happen?”
“What?” she said. “Iran? Of course it did. It’s only a matter of time for the mullahs now. Their miracle fizzled and the people are on the march everywhere. Soon it will be my country again.”
“And then you’ll leave me,” he laughed. “Go back to Tehran and turn into a little Persian butterball with a husband and six screaming children.”
She punched him. “Watch it, buster, or I’ll toss you in there.”
“You might be doing us both a favor.” He thought for a moment. “I mean the priest, the cathedral, the cars tailing me . . . Was any of it real? Or did I—” He looked at her. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“You did what you had to do. I would have done the same thing.”
“Would you?”
His eyes scanned the other visitors, tourists mostly, looking for Jacinta. He wondered if he’d recognize her. “You know what they call this part of town, don’t you?” he said.
“Um . . . I give up.”
“Miracle Mile. Do you believe in miracles, Maryam?
“I wrote a prayer to Imam Mahdi at the holy well. So maybe I do.” She reached into her bag and handed him something. Flowers.
Hyacinths.
“What do you pray for?” he asked.
“I’ll never tell.”
“Did you get it?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
“I got you something, too,” he said. “They’re in the car.”
“Give them to me when we get home. Right after you make love to me.”
“We’re meeting the newlyweds for dinner tonight at their house in Los Feliz, remember?”
“So?”
“Good point.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Even the late-fall heat of Los Angeles felt good.
“It will be great to have him on the team,” she said. “For real, I mean.”
“I’ll say. Now I can call him Danny.” He paused, trying to figure out how to say what he was trying to say without sounding crazy. “I was talking about what happened before I left for Iran. About the cattle slaughter, the image on the wall that Danny saw . . . what I saw, in the California desert.”
“And what was that?”
Something, someone, caught his eye across the grounds, on the other side of the tar pits. It couldn’t be . . . a man, walking along, reading a book, probably a breviary. No dog collar, but that didn’t mean anything these days. Padre Gonsalves. To whom he still owed a report. And who owed him ten thousand dollars. Good luck with that. Maybe they should just call it even.
“A doorway in the sky. Her.”
She put an arm around him. “After what we just saw? And you still believe?”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Except that I love you. And I don’t believe that—I know it.”
Maryam smiled. “Then I guess I’ll stick around for a while.”
He started to say something, but then noticed that the man was looking at him. And that he had been joined by a woman.
Skin: light brown. Age: somewhere between thirty and ninety. Height: five feet in heels on a footstool. Weight: don’t ask, don’t tell. Ethnicity . . .
Human being.
“Is it too early for a drink?”
She shook her head. “You’re incorrigible, Frank.”
“My name’s not Frank.”
“So what?”
“Good point,” he said.
They walked to the car, which was parked over on Curson. He didn’t get a ticket. A sign from heaven.
He opened the trunk and handed her the gift. A dozen long-stemmed roses, freshly cut and still glistening with the hint of raindrops.
“They’re beautiful,” she exclaimed. “They’re so fresh—where did you get them?”
He looked back at the Tar Pits, but the man and woman had vanished. Priest and petitioner? Or two ghosts from a past he had not yet met?
“I’ll never tell,” he said.
They got in the car, Maryam holding the roses on her lap. She had never looked more beautiful.
“What day is it?” he said as he turned east onto Sixth Street.
“Election Day,” she said.
And then they were gone, into the anonymity of the city, to join the millions of other ghosts, born and unborn, all of them waiting their moment, however brief, in the sun.
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Hostile Intent
Copyright © 2009 Michael Walsh
Early Warning
Copyright © 2010 Michael Walsh
Shock Warning
Copyright © 2011 Michael Walsh
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