Fall of Night: A Templar Chronicles Novel

by Joseph Nassise

  “They won’t.”

  Stan seemed pretty convinced that they’d be okay, but Gabrielle wasn’t so certain. The whole idea sounded a bit preposterous, in fact. If it was that easy, illegal immigrants would be crossing the border by the car load rather than hiding out in specially built vehicles or paying coyotes to sneak them across the border on foot.

  Stan must have seen the conflict playing out on her face for he reached out and gently touched her arm. “It will be okay. I promised I’d get you across and I will. Trust me. Please.”

  Trust is in short supply these days, Gabrielle thought, but she really didn’t have much choice in the matter. Unless she wanted to swim the Rio Grande and hike across Texas on her own, Stan was the best chance she had of getting back to the States.

  “All right then,” she said, leaning back in her chair, “let’s do this.”

  # # #

  It took them half an hour to reach the bridge leading to the United States.

  “‘Bout time you made yourself scarce,” Stan said, as they pulled onto the bridge and began the slow crawl through traffic toward the border crossing on the far side.

  Gabrielle patted him on the arm for luck and then slipped between the two seats into the sleeper portion of the cab, pulling the thick curtain shut behind her and using the clips along one edge to seal it closed.

  Here we go, she thought.

  The truck rumbled forward for another five minutes or so before the loud hiss of the air brakes reached her ears as Stan brought the big rig to a halt.

  Gabrielle heard the window go down and then the ring of someone’s boots outside.

  “Morning,” Stan said, to whoever it was.

  “Papers, please.”

  There was a moment of silence, no doubt while the border guard examined Stan’s passport. Gabrielle sat on the edge of the bed, not daring to move and doing her best to breathe as quietly as possible.

  “What’s in the rig, Mr. Greenville?”

  “Diesel fuel pumps. I’ve got a full load bound for Chicago.”

  “Would you mind opening it up, please?”

  Gabrielle’s heart skipped a beat.

  Relax, she told herself. Examining the cargo is probably standard procedure.

  But Stan’s next words told her it wasn’t standard at all.

  “Is there something wrong with the paperwork?” he asked.

  The guard ignored his question. “Please open the back of your rig, Mr. Greenville,” he said.

  There was no mistaking the man’s “I’m being patient but don’t fuck with me” tone.

  Stan apparently heard the warning loud and clear.

  “All right, all right. Hold your horses,” he said. “I’m a comin’.”

  Gabrielle heard the door open and the cab rise slightly as Stan stepped down to the road. A few moments passed and then the squeal of a heavy door in need of lubricant reached her ears from the back of the trailer. She sat on the bunk in the sleeper cab, tense, straining her ears to hear what was being said back there but there was too much metal and distance between them for her to make out anything clearly.

  The door clanged shut.

  For a moment Gabrielle thought it might be over.

  Then she heard the guard and Stan talking again right outside the cab.

  “I’ll need to see inside the sleeper unit as well.”

  Inside the sleeper unit? Shit!

  Gabrielle glanced around frantically, looking for somewhere that she could hide in the now-seemingly tiny compartment. She knew she had only seconds before that door opened and she couldn’t be here, in plain view, when it did.

  Unfortunately, there was nowhere for her to go.

  The space beneath the bed was occupied by a set of built-in drawers. The mini-closet was just that – mini. It was located above the far end of the bed and barely had enough room to hold the handful of shirts and coats currently hanging inside it, never mind the fact that it didn’t have a door she could pull shut behind her. If she slipped through the curtain to the other side, she’d no doubt be visible to anyone standing outside the vehicle.

  She could crawl beneath the bed sheets she was sitting on, but the border agent would have to be blind not to see her lying there.

  She was trapped!

  Panic brought her to her feet, but it was too late. Even as she turned about, seeking a solution that simply wasn’t there, the door to her left opened and the immigration officer stuck his head inside the sleeper cab less than three feet from where she stood.

  He was young, in his mid-thirties was Gabrielle’s first guess, and dressed in the dark green uniform of the U.S. Border Patrol. Her gaze traveled from his face, down to the pistol holstered at his side, and back up again. His gaze locked with hers and Gabrielle waited for him to sound the alarm as the moment stretched for what felt like hours.

  Then, without a word or even a visual acknowledgment that he had seen her, the officer stepped back down and shut the door, leaving Gabrielle staring at its blank surface.

  “Paperwork is in order; you’re good to go.”

  Gabrielle stood there, shaking, stunned at what had just happened.

  Good to go?

  “Thank you, officer,” Stan said, as he climbed back up into the cab and slammed the door behind him. “Have a good day.”

  The engine rumbled into life and Gabrielle had to grab for the bed behind her to keep from falling to the floor as Stan put the rig into drive and pulled back onto the road.

  Gabrielle sat there in disbelief, shaking from the adrenaline that had dumped into her system, until Stan said, “We’re clear. You can come out now.”

  She opened the curtain and climbed into the passenger seat just as the “Welcome to the United States” sign flashed by along the side of the road. She’d never been happier to see five little words.

  “How on earth…?”

  Stan grinned and waved his fingers in her direction. “These are not the droids you are looking for.”

  Gabrielle had no idea what he was talking about. Her blank stare must have informed him of such, for after a moment he gave an embarrassed chuckle and said, “Sorry. Just ignore me; sometimes I’m too much of a geek for my own good.”

  “Okaaaay, but that still doesn’t tell me how we got past that immigration officer.”

  Stan shrugged. “Would you believe blind luck?”

  “No.”

  He nodded thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “I’ve been running this route for a lot of years now. From time to time I try and help out those in need. When I do, my friends in the Border Patrol look the other way.”

  Gabrielle stared at him skeptically. “What? Purely out of the kindness of their hearts?”

  “Well, that and a few crisp five hundred dollar bills in their pockets.”

  Now things were making a bit more sense.

  No wonder he was so convinced they wouldn’t have a problem, she thought. He already had that squared away.

  “So, where’s the money come from?” she wanted to know.

  “Most of it comes out of my own pocket, but sometimes like-minded folks chip in with a donation here and there to keep things running smoothly.”

  “Strangers give up their hard-earned money just to help those who can’t help themselves?”

  He nodded. “Yep. That about sums it up.”

  To Gabrielle’s surprise, she believed him. The fact that he didn’t try to justify any of it, that he didn’t offer some long-winded explanation designed to win her over to his point of view worked in his favor and gave his words an undercurrent of authenticity that would have been lost otherwise. In the end, she came to the conclusion that Stan was exactly what he claimed to be; an honest man going out of his way to help others in need.

  Just as he was doing.

  “Well, then, you have my thanks.”

  He glanced over at her and smiled for a second before turning his attention back to the road. “You’re quite welcome,” he said.

 
They were quiet for a time, just letting the tires eat up the road as they headed north through Texas, each lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, Stan turned to her and said, “I’m headed north, up through Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri, then on into Illinois. You’re welcome to ride with me as far as you’d like or I can drop you off anywhere along the way.”

  Gabrielle nodded. “I appreciate that,” she said. “I’ll let you know once I’ve figured out what I’m going to do.”

  “Take your time; no rush. We’ve got a lot of miles to cover before we get to the end of this journey.”

  Truer words have never been spoken.

  Gabrielle leaned back against the seat and, staring out the window at the lightening sky, considered her options.

  Her first order of business was getting in touch with her husband, Cade. She knew that much, at least. But just how she was going to manage it? Well, that was another thing entirely.

  For one, she had no idea where Cade was or what he was doing. Heck, she didn’t even know if he was still alive, for heaven’s sake!

  No, wait, she thought. Scratch that. She did know; Cade WAS alive. Of that she was certain. It didn’t matter how full of holes her memory might be; if Cade were dead, she’d know it all the way down to the depths of her soul. She loved him too deeply for it to be any other way. He was out there, somewhere. She was sure of it.

  So where was he?

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  That vague notion that she should be traveling northeast was still with her and she concentrated on that for awhile, wondering where it was coming from and what it meant. The more she tried to force it, the faster understanding seemed to recede. Frustrated, she blew out a breath and let it go, focusing instead on the memories of her husband. She called his face to mind, remembering how quick he’d been to laugh and the way he would reach up to push his long hair off his face even after he’d cut it away to meet uniform regulations…

  Gabrielle’s eyes popped open in surprise as the memory of the way her husband had looked in his dark uniform surged to the surface.

  Cade had been a…firefighter?

  No, a cop, she realized.

  And not just any cop, but a member of the Special Tactics and Operations Team, a real type-A go-getter when it came to fighting crime and going after the bad guys. She remembered joking with him once, telling him he would have been that lone Sheriff facing off against a gang of gunfighters all on his own if he’d lived in the Old West and he’d laughed, asking where he’d left his white horse.

  She felt her pulse quickening at the memory. Mentally calling up a map of the eastern seaboard, she ran her finger up the coast, hoping the names might jar something else loose.

  Baltimore?

  Philadelphia?

  Newark?

  New York?

  None of them felt quite right.

  Then memory stirred once more and her mental finger moved further east along the map, sliding up through Connecticut, Rhode Island and into Massachusetts until it landed on the city of Boston.

  The image of her husband standing tall in his uniform rose within her thoughts and she remembered rubbing her fingers across the brass just above his pocket as she leaned in for a kiss before he left on patrol…

  BPD.

  Boston Police Department.

  That was it!

  She grinned like the Cheshire Cat, her satisfaction at having actually remembered something important only slightly tempered by the fact that Boston was a long way off.

  So be it, she thought. Better a far destination than no destination at all.

  Gabrielle glanced at Stan’s cell phone, sitting upright in the cup holder between them. She thought about using it, just picking it up and placing a call to the department switchboard, asking to be connected to Officer Williams, but she didn’t need to be thinking clearly to understand that was a bad idea. What was she going to say? Hi Cade, it’s your wife, Gabrielle. Long time no talk, yeah? She didn’t think so. Primarily because she knew it was true; it had been a long time since the two of them had spoken. Her memory was spotty as hell, but she knew that much. Just calling him out of the blue was going to make him think someone was trying to mess with his head and that certainly wouldn’t end well.

  If by some miracle he didn’t think her call was some kind of cruel prank and hang up in her face, she would have an even bigger hurdle to face in explaining where she had been all this time.

  Especially since she didn’t know herself.

  No, she thought, best to get to Boston and decide out what to do from there. Finding Cade was the first step. She’d figure out how to approach him once she’d tracked him down.

  Decision made, Gabrielle turned back to staring out the window at the scenery flowing past. Eventually, the monotony of the landscape and the rumble of the big rig’s engine lulled her to sleep.

  The visions came almost as soon as she closed her eyes.

  A man in tattered clothing stood on a rocky crag, sword in hand. A pack of horrid creatures surrounded him, their multi-legged bodies moving with sinuous grace as they tried to pull him from his perch, but the man was holding his own for now, slashing and stabbing with his sword to keep them at bay. As the man moved about, Gabrielle caught a look at his face, including the long scar that bisected one half of it, stretching from just above his ruined eye to down along his jawline…

  Men in dark fatigues carrying submachine guns race through the growing dark, with those in the rear occasionally stopping to fire back in the direction they had come. Gabrielle can’t see anything there beyond the growing darkness that was covering the land in their wake, but she knew from the expressions on their faces that they were frightened of whatever it was that was back there, but, like soldiers the world over, they were doing what needed to be done regardless of that fear…

  A delegation of four men and one woman, all dressed to the nines, enter an audience chamber through a set of oversized double doors. A loud voice announces their arrival in a language Gabrielle doesn’t understand nor recognize. The delegates ignore it, their attention focused on the figure seated atop a dais at the far end of the audience chamber. As they draw closer, Gabrielle is able to make out more of the details and what she sees makes her breath catch in her throat. The throne the individual is sitting on appears to be made entirely of skulls, human skulls no less, their empty eye sockets staring in accusation at the approaching delegation. The figure seated on the throne of skulls is equally disturbing; tall and gaunt, with eyes of solid black set within a face of dusty grey, his teeth filed to fine points. The men in the delegation stop at the foot of the dais, but the woman continues until she stands directly in front of the throne. The room around them is utterly silent as the seated figure rises to his feet, towering over the woman. He reaches for her hand and pulls her close. Massive wings, ash grey in color, expand from the man’s back, their tips dragging on the stone floor, and fold around the duo.

  Gabrielle shouts, “No!” and rushes forward as a muffled cry of pain reaches her ears and a thin trail of blood begins to seep out from beneath the tips of those dark wings…

  “Hey! Wake up!”

  Gabrielle started awake with Stan’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her. When she turned in his direction he pulled his hand back quickly, as if afraid of what she might do, and she noted with dismay that his lower lip was starting to swell.

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” she said, sitting upright. With another guilty glance in his direction, she asked, “Did I do that?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry about it,” he said, touching his lip gingerly with one hand and laughing in amusement. “I should have known better than to startle you awake after what you’ve been through. You okay?”

  Gabrielle nodded, then, realizing he was looking at the road again, said, “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Bad dream, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  As a dream it was bad enough, but Gabrielle wasn’t sure that was all there was
to it. Like the vision that had swept over her in the hospital, the images she’d just seen had a sense of presence to them, a depth of reality that made her think she was seeing future events that had not yet come to pass. The very notion terrified her.

  If that was the future, she wanted no part in it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Early the next day, just a few short hours after Gabrielle had crossed the border, a Catholic priest pulled up behind the wheel of a dusty black sedan outside the hospital in Juarez. He parked in the first available parking space, conveniently ignoring the fact that it was reserved for the handicapped, and then sat behind the wheel for several long moments watching the crowd gathered by the front entrance before getting out of the vehicle and heading in that direction.

  When he reached the mob he began shouldering his way forward, pushing people out of the way when they didn’t move fast enough and ignoring the looks that he received in return. A few thought to do more than just look, intending to pay him back in kind for his roughness, but as they raised their hands and moved toward him something made them abruptly change their minds. Maybe it was the clerical garb he was wearing or the sense of wrongness that wafted off him like the stench of a garbage dump on a hot summer day. Either way, it allowed the priest to force his way through the crowd and reach the front doors of the hospital with little delay.

  Two security guards were waiting on the other side of the doors, a metal detector between them. Just beyond, the lobby was filled with more of the same crowd the priest had just forced his way through outside.

  The priest didn’t hesitate. With his arms at his sides he stepped into the metal detector, sketching a complicated pattern against his thigh with his right hand as he did so.

  If either guard saw him do it, they didn’t mention it as they waved him through and on his way, the 9mm pistol stuffed into his belt at the small of his back remaining undetected in the process.

  Access to the elevators appeared to be as tightly controlled as entrance to the hospital; security guards where checking the names of those waiting for the elevators against a list of approved visitors sent over from the registration desk. The priest walked forward and, with another wave of his hand, passed through that checkpoint with a minimum of fuss and delay as well. Those waiting for the elevator chose to take a different one when he stepped aboard, leaving him to head upward to his intended destination without company or hassle.