DARK MESSIAH

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

  portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance

  to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright (0 1990 by Martin Caidin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

  book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P. 0. Box 1403

  Riv,erdale, N.Y. 10471

  'ISBN: 0-671-72022-8

  Cover art bv Ken Kelly

  First printing, Novem-ber 1990

  Distributed by

  SIXION &- SCHUSTER

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, N.Y. 10020

  P@iiited in the (Jnited St@ife@ tSA,nP,i,,,

  This book is for

  Vicki 01offson

  PART ONE

  Chapter I

  He spoke to her silently. Not so much as a grunt or

  any sound of verbalization. His eyes spoke for him,

  commanding, piercing as cold steel in soft mental flesh.

  His eyes and the look of his face, the communication

  that flashed between animals, four-footed or bipedal.

  Doug Stavers looked at the woman in spiked heels and

  patterned seamed stockings, the mockery of a skirt, full

  breasts squeezed and pushed to pink globes. Yet her

  entire presence changed from the neck up. Whore and

  prostitute and anything else she might be, her face told

  a thousand unwritten and unspoken tales of some other

  time past. A touch of quality showed, the eyes not

  entirely dimmed by indeterminate and senseless and

  countless fuckin-a and unmeasured quantities of drugs

  swallowed, inhaled and needled directly into what had

  been a body young and nubile and owned with pride.

  For this timeless moment the whore, rock-Ing back and

  forth on her spiked heels, her voice the bare whisper of

  a crooning moan, knew the veil had been penetrated,

  that this strange man before her saw through the makeup

  and the whoring and the drugs and time itself. For this

  moment, only this moment, she felt the clean with

  which she had once clothed herself. Her eyes seemed

  to brighten a hint as she took, in more months than she

  could recall, a serious look at this john before- No;

  tie's no ordinary john. This is something special. This is

  , God, it's so hard to think. What's so different about

  this one? A smile hazed about the corners of her mouth.

  Everything about this one is different. I ivant to please

  4 Martin Caidin

  this one. Love him. A snort of self-derision came unbid-

  den from her throat. Love? I'm a fuck machine. A suck

  machine. What the hell is love? I don't know anymore,

  but . . . She edged toward the unmoving, stolid man,

  staring at her with eyes burning into her.

  I love him. I ... I adore him. I want to worship him,

  please him. Oh, God, let me suck his cock, lick it,

  please him, bring him to ecstasy. I'll do anything. He

  doesn't move or speak. He doesn't have to. This is . @ . I

  don't know what this is. He's ... shit, he's like a god. I

  don't understand this feeling ...

  She had been too far gone, for too long a time, to do

  more than feel and sense and respond to the power

  aura flowing from Doug Stavers. Her mind, sodden

  with drugs and with alcohol and unknown diseases danc-

  ing through her system, functioned at barely half its

  former capacity. What she experienced as a total sense

  of awe might in earlier days have been recognized as a

  very real, powerful aura emanating from this man, un-

  questionably devastating in its effect, but still recogniz-

  able. Not now. At this moment the sex machine moved

  almost as an automaton. Fuck for the cash, suck for the

  ,glittering dust, do anything for the transport to the

  higher somewhere absent of pain and longing and where

  she curled wonderfully, protectively, so safely within

  the arms of her-mother? Father? Lover? No time to

  waste on questions; enjoy. Bliss, wonder, safety, warmth

  through and through, floating and dreaming and-

  The needs that lived on her shoulder with bared

  fangs nudged her. It was coming on again, the gnawing

  hunger, the crawling pain, the jibbering and screeching

  still onlv the faintest hoarse whispering of sometime

  ago. But it would accelerate, it would grow like the true

  nightmare it was and it would try to consume her.

  Don't let this one get away. There's something so spe-

  cial here. Blow him. Lick his ass. This one's a god. Do

  it NOW.

  Some other time, some other place, she might have

  seen the real Doug Stavers, and had her senses and

  true fears still served her, she., would have known a

  DARK MESSIAH 5

  have fled for her very life. Either capitulated totally and

  freely and with adoration, or sensed an--evil? Do the

  gods bring evil with thern? No matter. Not now. Her

  true senses, her strong family upbringing, the sturdy

  morality, the dedication to the future; that all belonged

  to some strange woman in some faraway and strange

  land served only by memory blurred with shards of

  broken promises.

  She never tried to see beyond the heavy leather

  jacket, the woolen cap, the strong trousers and massive

  buckle, or the steel-tipped boots and the beautiful gloves

  that gave not a hint of the knuckle-molded steel within.

  The woman moved forward, her hands reaching down

  for the full groin, shaking as they sought cloth and

  zipper and the bulging firmness within.

  The man did not move.

  Why, he mused silently, do we gods always walk

  through garbage?

  Three men watched the tableau of the stranger and

  the whore moving closer with hands reaching for his

  groin. They clustered at the far end of the alley off

  Eighth Avenue, three blocks from the huge bus station

  of downtown Manhattan. Three blocks is a relative dis-

  tance. On a sunny tree-lined residential street it is a

  delightful walk, a view of snug hornes and green lawns

  and driveways bustling with children at play. But that is

  another planet.

  Three blocks from the Manhattan bus station is a

  plunge into dank, fetid scumminess, The three men

  were longtime residents of the city's alley slime, A

  burly figure in western garb, as outlandish as the stubble-

  face@ brute with blackened teeth and the smell of a

  dead wet goat, nudged a friend. "What the fuck's the

  matter with the bitch?" he complained. "Just look at

  Rita. She swooning or sumpin?"

  "Ahh, she's on the shit again."

  "I'll kill the cunt. I told her she don't get juiced until

  after we hit the mark."

  The third man- tall and lankv and cadaverous, his

  6 Martin Caidin

  face a lunar map of pits and craters, gestured instinct-

  ively. "Better take care of that guy first."

  Two men turned as one to look at Preacher. "What

  makes you say that? He's just one more fuckin' idiot.

  Anybody comes into an alley around here for ass is just

  a crazy fucker. Using his dick for brains."

  "Yeah," grunted their companion.

  "Shut the fuck up, Scumbag. Nobody asked you."

  "Hey, I just-"

  "Zip it, Scumbag."

  Scumbag took no offense at the name. That was his

  name. Virtually toothless, skin a greasy sheen with all

  the look of old latex that had earned him his name, and

  a raging homosexual, he had only one saving grace. He

  wielded a straight razor with the finesse of a surgeon.

  Or a swinging butcher. That was his mark. No simple

  stab of a sbiv for him. No blade in the ribs or the heart.

  Scumbag left his trademark on these brainless dicks

  who penetrated his territory. He made hamburger out

  of people. For the moment, Scumbag lapsed into si-

  lence. Preacher and Hog were his only real friends in

  the whole world. Besides, Scumbag was getting mad

  now. He planned to do a real number on that prick

  with Rita.

  For an instant time froze. The sanie scene revisited

  once more. Deep in the jungle of concrete and alleys

  and garbage strewn before the storin of daily hustling

  life. A slab-walled jungle; four of its feral creatures

  gathered in

this alley of greasy underfooting, of over-

  flowing garbage cans and dead rats and bustling rats, of

  roaches and broken hypodermics, of crushed bags once

  holding sweet and deadly powder, empty boxes and

  tins once filled with pills and tablets and capsules.

  Dried blood, spittle and vomit and old beer and the

  stink of urine and feces hanging everywhere in its famil-

  iar cloying mist. Four predators. Rita, once beautiful,

  long dead in her brain from the tumbling flow of drugs

  into her body. Rita with the willing lips and flashing

  tonaue and silicon-swollen

  globes and the vagina with

  its pustules and red slashes hidden froin view. Rita, the

  DARK MESSIAH 7

  Scumbag, licking his lips, the straight razor for this

  moment within its scabbard within his pocket, caressed

  by his hands, eager and jaggedly waiting for its fleshy

  target. Hog, big and brutal and wholly amoral, trembling

  with the excitement of bones breaking beneath his great

  cement-like fists and his adrenalin rush of smashing and

  hurting, And, Preacher. Different from the others. In-

  telligent, swift of mind, a derelict fleeing from a church

  school in Kansas where he had succumbed to the lure

  ofpink little boys and had committed sinful, lust-driven

  crimes against their bodies. Preacher, who fled into

  oblivion, who brought with him dim memories of other

  times when he had been a soldier and a biker, a man

  superbly drilled in sArift and professional killing. Preacher,

  within whose old leather jacket lay snugged a long-

  barreled .38 Smith and Wesson, who wore around his

  waist a deadly chain for flailing, with knives sheathed in

  the small of his back, in each old engineering boot;

  Preacher with a dozen killing implements about his

  body. Preacher, who paid his penance every day and

  every night with self-imprisoninent in this filthv rotten

  jungle.

  Preacher, who despite the rotgut whiskey and the

  occasional plunge into a drug-crazy world, still answered

  to instinct.

  Preacher looked down the alley at the man, before

  whorn Rita slowly sank to her knees, ready to release

  his great member and bring it fully within her mouth.

  Somehow, Preacher knew that would not happen.

  Preacher felt the cold wind blow through his leather

  Jacket and laugh along his suddenly icy skin. And

  Preacher was afraid in a way and with a fear he had

  never before kno,,vn.

  Time remained firozen ...

  Doug Stavers felt the steelmesh container lashed by

  flat steel cabling to his chest, snugged tight, impossible

  to remove without powerful cable cutters. The cables

  ran about his chest and across his back and over his

  shoulders and finally about his waist, as much a part of

  lii,z rii(mprl koriv nK hk OWn 6110-1V ATICI MIII;Clt-@ ATId

  8 Martin Caidin

  flesh. Within the steelmesh rested the great yellow

  diamond, the huge flawless stone that had raged and

  ripped and torn and killed through more than two

  thousand years of riotous history. The Stone of God.

  The Rock of the Lord. The Messiah Stone. For a fleet-

  ing moment Doug Stavers, his weight resting on mus-

  cles coiled like great springs, thought of the African

  tribe that had worshipped this very stone that fell from

  the heavens. And had died for that stone when a great

  winged machine landed in their midst and the men in

  the huge airplane struck the tribe with machine guns

  and poison gas and terrible explosions. The stone that

  had been cut by a genius into its present shape. The

  stone with the aura that overwhelmed human senses,

  that magnified the mental and emotional and instinctual

  strengths of a man.

  The Messiah Stone. Tens of thousands of human

  beings had died for and because of it, and most of them

  had died at the hands of this inan who now wore the

  great yellow diamond within its steelmesh, so tightly

  wrapped about his body. Doug Stavers looked at the

  diseased eyes and face and body before him and again

  he had that sorrowful thought. @Vhy do we gods always

  walk through garbage?

  He had a phantom look at a face raced by his mem-

  ory. Adolf Hitler had murdered uncounted thousands

  to gain and to wear this very diamond, With its powers

  Hitler had almost-

  Stavers pushed away the thoughts. Stay with it. Stay

  sharp. It's coming down to the wire now. They'll move

  in. They're like a pack of wild dogs. He thrilled to the

  thought of the struggle he knew i-nust take place within

  moments. He knew no fear, hosted no concern. Three

  tvo-legged dogs against him? They were vastly out-

  numbered.

  He could feel tin-ie pulsing about him. These mo-

  ments came more and more frequently to him. The

  longer he wore the great yellow diamond, the greater

  his ability to seem removed from everything about him,

  to leave it all in stasis while his thoughts raced with

  ,@jmprhnrn@4n -zn@orl flire-al, 1,i- -;-] All @]-- 1,;-

  DARK MESSIAH 9

  whatever was happening moved with incredible slow-

  motion. And be accepted the thoughts in his tremen-

  dons acceleration of tinie for himself, knowing the world

  and its inhabitants about him dragged so slowly they

  seemed frozen in sludge.

  He knew what The Organization had said about him

  less than a year before. A time when he did not have

  the Messiah Stone. A time when he lacked knowledge

  of its existence. A man named Gibraldi had spoken to

  his associates. Gibraldi and his group, ah, they knew of

  the mysterious great diamond with its fabled powers.

  And they hired the professional mercenary, Doug

  Stavers, to get it for them. At any cost. For any price in

  money or lives, None of that mattered.

  Gibraldi had spoken almost in awe of Doug Stavers.

  "Even in the Legion we knew of him," he had told his

  group. "He is a mercenary and yet he is more than

  that. He is a soldier of fortune but on the highest

  levels. He deals with governments. He has an uncanny

  ability to lead men, to bring men to follow him without

  reason, with blind fkith.- Gibraldi paused with his

  thoughts of Doug Stavers, and he smiled humorlessly.

  "He is more than a killer. He is a devil. I've never

  known a man like him. Death is his friend, It never

  touches him. He has a reputation of never having failed

  to get what he wants. "

  Gibraldi's partner, one of The Six, felt his eyes widen.

  Kovano,Mcz's world was the global underworld of spies

  and espionage. He joined then in memories with

  Gibraldi. "if he is the sairte one, then he is the man

  w@o killed the KGB's entire assassination team in Ber-

  lin." He laughed harshly. "He was wounded, again and

  again, but he refused to die. He seemed to gather

  strength from those wounds. A modern Rasputin. A

  killing machine without peer."

  Gibraldi and Kovanowicz, and the rest of their group,

  hired Doug Stavers. They paid him millions. He ful-

  filled his contract. He left a swath of death about half

  the planet and he returned to Nevada with the great

  gleaming, flashing yellow diamond. He killed Gibraldi

  and Kovanowicz and their oartners, because now Douv

  10

  Martin Caidin

  Stavers knew how much more powerful he was than

  any such group.

  Before he held the magnificent stone of the gods in

  his hands he had been as close to invincible as any

  mortal might ever be.

  That was then. This was now. And everything he had

  been before was infinitely stronger.

  He felt that silent, almost indefinable click in his

  mind. Time picked up its metronome beat.

  Rita's fingers brushed tremulously against the fabric

  of his trousers, Her tongue wet her lips. An instant

  later her tongue shredded into pulped red ineat, a

  moment before her teeth tore from their sockets and

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51