The Holocaust Engine, page 20
After we got back, Wisdom plucked them out for him with a Leatherman tool, and Plunkett saved any tears for later. The group said one of the choppers hovered over our vehicles, and for a moment everybody thought they might shoot.
Thus ended our search and rescue.
We spent the last three hours taking a statement from the porter. This guy is seriously screwy about our killer SEAL. According to him, we’re all slow-cooking here, just waiting to die. He said we might as well dig our own graves right now. I asked him for a physical description, and he said we’ll know him if we ever get a good look, because this guy has been writing stuff all over his skin with a tattoo gun—even his face.
June 10
When we went back to the gates at the base, I got another package, but didn’t even open it. If Tisdale thought I would put the apple back on my head and go looking for his boy, he’d lost his damn mind.
Let him row ashore and do it.
I left it on the stand next my mattress And that’s where it sat, still in the package, when it began to ring.
I couldn’t resist. I tore it open and answered.
“Captain, don’t hang up. This is not Admiral Tisdale. I’m not going to tell you my name. It wouldn’t do you any good if you knew it.”
He sounded younger than Tisdale, his voice strong and confident—the kind you wanted to believe—but I still had my doubts.
“I was hoping you guys thought I was dead.”
“We saw you and your friend walking back to your compound.”
I shook my head in disgust. “Damn drones. All right, what do you want? What the hell time is it, anyway?”
“Just past 0300. I’m sorry about the hour, but I do think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”
“Thrill me.”
“Gene Cauthron.”
“The SEAL.”
“Lieutenant Gene Cauthron, and he is simply the most dangerous man I ever met.”
“I saw a bit of that earlier. He’s kind of gone off of the reservation.”
“He has Bontrager’s, Captain.”
“I promise you, he does not. Nobody with his brain getting liquefied could have done what that guy did. He set us up, walked us right into a trap, and got us to take cover in a room where he’d rigged a pressure plate to a brick of C4 stuck up under the sink. He cut the carpet so carefully, you could barely see the seams. When we tripped it, he ran. Does that sound like a guy who can’t remember the day of the week to you?”
“I’m not a doctor, but I’m telling you I knew Gene Cauthron—knew him well. The man I knew would never kill an American citizen. He’d never kill anyone unless need or duty arose.”
“How about three floors full of hotel guests?”
He took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m calling. Whatever has happened to him has done nothing to diminish his abilities. I know you may not accept this, but you need to find him for us. You need to find him and tell us where he is, so that we... can neutralize him. I can’t say that it won’t be like today, or that you won’t find yourself in the line of fire again. If you locate him, you want to call it in and get far away. The upper brass wants him gone in the worst way. You would simply be collateral damage.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that impression. Well, Mr. Voice-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Night, I have some pretty spiffy ex-military guys of my own, so if you don’t mind, we may just handle this one ourselves.”
“That would be a mistake, Captain.”
“Oh, I figure two good, highly decorated ex soldier-boys, plus a few highly trained tactical guys, should equal one war hero.”
“We’re not talking about a war hero, Captain. Alvin York was a war hero. Chris Kyle was a war hero. Gene Cauthron is a god,” he said, and just breathed into the phone for the longest damn time. Finally, he said, “And as long as he’s still active, you and everyone on your island are in extreme danger.”
“Hey, wait... how do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t. I’ll try to get back in touch with you if I have something that might help. Sleep light.” He clicked off.
Then I just lay there, thinking, and never went back to sleep.
I kept wondering if maybe his training, his discipline, and all that stuff he was writing all over his body, had made this Cauthron guy into something different.
Not just a psycho.
Something truly deadly.
The High Cost of Survival
Grand Key Hotel, New Town
Reagan Castaneda’s left eye opened first. Something was wrong with the right. The lid resisted, twitching madly.
Thoughts and impressions rushed to the surface of Reagan’s thoughts. He needed to get out of bed. Something was happening—fighting, a battle—and he desperately needed to get back into the fight. They were all in danger—terrible danger. He had been wrong... wrong about everything. The girls were not safe. Everyone at the hospital was in danger.
Light. Through the shutters. Twilight. Is it morning or evening? Where am I? Lying in a bed. Not the air mattress. Big. By myself. A room of soft oranges and pinks. Television set on a dresser. Painting of sail boats on the wall. This is a hotel room. Where am I? Why am I not at the hospital? I have to get to the hospital and warn the girls.
He looked down to see he wore only a pair of boxer shorts. His body, which couldn’t decide if it was hot or cold, had been sweating. The bed sheets lay wadded into a pile by his feet. He was bandaged—his left hand, his left leg, and a single oversized pad covering the left side of his abdomen. His heart sank. He couldn’t fight like this. His ears were piping radio static into his head, and it was leaking out of his skull, down to his fingers and toes. He tried to speak. His mouth opened, his lips cracked, and he made a sound, but not enough.
He had to get up. Everything depended on this. A battle seemed to be raging just outside the room. His friends were dying. They were in danger. They were all in danger, and they didn’t know it yet. Someone important needed him.
Someone? Mother?
Mother. I won’t let her down again.
Reagan gritted his teeth and gripped the sheet with his good hand, but he couldn’t lift himself. He could shrimp, though. Shrimping... what Coach Morris called the arching posture that could get another wrestler off of your chest. He shrimped to the edge of the bed, his whole body shaking from the effort. He would have to set his left foot down, and somewhere in his thoughts, he knew it was going to hurt. No matter. She was in danger. She needed him.
Now!
The door opened then, and someone ran in dressed like a maid. “Help! Lois, help me!”
Another one entered.
Damn it! I do not need room service. I need my gun!
“I’ve got his legs. Lift him up. Goodness, he’s heavy. Get the girl! Go get the girl to give him the shot. He’s going to pull out the IV.”
IV? Reagan fought against the pain. What’s happening? Think. Think. What do you remember? Make yourself remember! Images of a building made of corrugated aluminum. Ricky about to cry. A tattoo-covered man. Agonizing pain.
Soft, womanly arms held his head now.
“Mother? Mother?”
A soft, womanly voice shushed him. “It’s okay, baby. You’re going to be okay. You got hurt, but you’re going to be okay. We’re going to make you better.”
“...Don’t understand.”
Soft, womanly lips kissed his eyelid.
“...In danger.”
Someone took his other arm, and he felt a pin prick, but it was nothing against the warmth and comfort that now surrounded his battered head. His left hand had bandages over the palm, but the trembling fingers were free and they could touch the cheek of the woman who held him. He touched her neck and her chest, and when he touched her breast, she lightly moved the fingers away, but when they returned, she left them in place, and he kneaded at her softness with the ends of his fingers.
“You need to sleep,” the voice whispered. “We’ve given you medicine. We need you.” Her warm breath caressed his head, and another kiss came. “We need you to get better. It’s going to be okay, baby.” Soft, womanly arms laid his head on a pillow. “You just saw the devil, that’s all.”
The door closed, and he was alone again. He felt his breathing slow as he tried to focus his gaze on the wall. It started to move, and textured paint seemed to flow around plateaus of dry plaster.
“The devil.”
His right eye flickered madly, and his left eye settled into sleep.
In his dream, the night crew had set up outside a mechanic shop. Reagan didn’t want to go on this one—he needed a night off—but the day crew needed the truck, and the truck needed a new fan belt, and the shop was just south of Highway 1—Momma’s territory. Reagan hadn’t seen Momma Chic since the failed attempt to cross the channel, but he still ran into the boys occasionally and knew most of them; they all knew him. They would probably parlay. At the very least, he would give them a moment’s pause.
The op had gone wrong from the beginning. They crossed the highway in front of strip shops and signaled for the spotter. Nothing. They waited and tried again. Still nothing.
In the dream, Reagan felt no wind, the air hot and still, like the inside of a glass jar left sitting in a windowsill.
Ricky stood next to him, breathing heavily.
Reagan gave the kid a hard time, like he always did. “You okay down there? You want up on my shoulders?”
The boy looked up, frightened. If he’d understood, he gave no sign. His fear revolved around the south side of Stock Island, and the feeling that the entire area had been sucked deep down into a hot, dark cave, never to be heard from again.
They used caution, checking doors and windows around the strip shops, and stayed put while Reagan scrambled down the street to get a view of the body shop. A light was on—not bright, just a weak glow that came from deep inside an open roll-up door.
They came wide around from the north, Reagan and Ricky sweating, with Derrick Adisa and his father Louis right behind. Fragments of a conversation came back. They’d been talking about the two gunships they’d seen the night before, circling south of the island, in the open water just east of Cow Channel. Both ships had turned on their spotlights as they went round, and round, and round. Someone must of have been trying to get out with a scuba tank.
But Chance Crawley, who lost his right leg below the knee in Afghanistan, and who refused to leave the island during the riots because it was his first real vacation since he got out of the army—and he had no intention of letting a little thing like a mass panic cut it short—had pointed out in his rapid monotone, gunny-sergeant voice, “Nobody smart enough to track down a scuba tank this late in the game would be stupid enough to swim south.”
“Maybe they thoughts their chances were better under the water than above it,” said Doty Emfinger, a pint-sized, wind-up doll of southern angst who’d worked as a mate on one of the island’s charter boats. “Found it in the garage.”
“Or maybe the ‘Tragers can swim,” said Mickey Jones. He was tall and broad, with huge hands that might have crushed footballs or fought MMA, if they’d not belonged to a soft-spoken computer programmer with an unkempt beard and a list of medical ailments that Reagan strongly suspected were mostly in his mind.
“Let ‘em swim,” said Louis, in his thick Jamaican Creole, which had everyone who mimicked him say ‘mon’ every third word, although Louis Adisa rarely said it himself. “Swim out there and become Navy’s problem.”
“And spread and turn the whole world into Lower Key craziness,” said Mickey.
In the dream, they talked about the world outside the cordon, including school and road closures reported on the radio. Bits of conversation floated through his mind while the scene kept shifting from the inside of a fishing store, where they’d expected to find the Momma’s boy, then back to the side of the mechanic’s shop, where they looked at each other and gestured back and forth.
Inside the store, Derrick sucked his teeth at something Doty had just said about the quarantine ending. “Nah, ain’t gonna be like that. They all gonna be sitting out there thinking this shit is contained, and then one day we all gonna look out over the water at some big-ass mushroom cloud filling up the sky. The Navy, figuring they had everything under control ‘cus they could sit around an island, is gonna be like, ‘What?’ Reagan knows what I’m talking about.”
Reagan knew, indeed. Derrick could be self-absorbed dick, but he was like Reagan—they both understood how the world worked. One day you were going through life like you always did, and then, poof, it was all over. Everything you’d worked for was gone, and every one of your dreams just went up in mushroom-cloud smoke. You’re bug-out car was sitting in a storage unit in Jacksonville, with its maps and water filters, and you were stuck inside a government quarantine. Shit happens. Just when you think you have it all sorted, it rears up out of the water and grabs you and pulls you down into the crushing depths.
Reagan could feel his own breathing, could feel his chest tightening.
They’d sent in Ricky, and Crawley covered from behind a Mazda in the parking lot with an AR-15 that was running out of bullets.
In his mind, Reagan was shouting to Ricky, even though his mouth was not moving and no sound came.
Get out! This isn’t what it looks like. Run!
The boy did come out. He appeared in the entrance, his steps robotic, and stopped, his little body absolutely still except for his chin. Crawley clicked on the flashlight mounted on his rifle, a low-power light from forty feet away, but now Reagan could see Ricky in the soft light. He looked out into the darkness, straight ahead, never turning to Reagan or the others. Whatever he’d just seen inside had the little boy’s entire body hanging limp. The corners of his mouth had turned down, and tears filled his eyes. He appeared utterly defeated, like a child just scolded by a viciously demanding parent.
Doty let out a stifled laugh.
Reagan was already moving. Now out of his body, looking down from the dream of the parking lot, he could see that Reagan Castaneda’s body had coiled into a sprinter’s start. Powerful muscles surged forward—a tenth of a second, a quarter of a second.
Not enough time. Not enough time. The boy is about to die. You have to move faster!
He had to make himself move faster.
Get him out of there! He screamed at his own body.
Two charging steps and he made contact. Now back inside himself, his mind held the frame as he looked into the open door. He could see cars, one of them up on a lift, and a shadow with a rifle.
Make yourself look. Make yourself.
He held Ricky in his arms as they dove for cover, their bodies spinning through the air.
Got it. Hold the frame. There. Not big. Average. Caucasian. Short blonde hair. Black shirt and BDU’s. Tattoos. Like the biker you fought, but not like him. Words. Patterns. An Etch ‘n Sketch done by a child.
Reagan mentally zoomed in on the face, a composite of the initial glimpse and the later battle, complete with blood flowing freely from its broken nose. In the beginning, its eyes had been mad with anger. Now, in the light of the auto shop, the bloodshot irises appeared calm. Lips purple, so no question of full blown infection, yet dead calm, a cyborg bent on eliminating its targets with the smooth efficiency of a computer program.
Reagan was sitting up in bed when Mary Stratton brought him his lunch, a bowl of seafood soup that had rapidly become one of the staple meals. Her hair was pulled back in a brown and gold head band, her face a portrait of a woman trying her best not to look worried.
“What are you... doing here?” Reagan sputtered.
“I’m checking on you.”
“Not safe.”
“I came with part of your day crew in the black van, and it’s a short drive. Should you be up like that?”
He answered slowly, every word a struggle. “I think it’s okay. The only thing that really hurts is my hand.”
“Did you eat anything this morning?”
He nodded. “What about... everyone?”
“The hospital? Ricky still isn’t speaking—”
Reagan shook his head. “Everyone.”
Her voice nearly cracked from worry. “We’re okay.”
“I need Morenz.”
“He’s going to come over this evening.”
Now, Reagan shook his head with fury and frustration. He winced and reached for the bandage at his hip.
Mary went to him, took him in her familiar arms, and helped him onto his back.
“Not at night,” he managed. “We can’t go out at night anymore. I have to tell him what to do.”
“Maybe tomorrow afternoon.” She again delivered her words with the same PTA-mom rhythm that never showed fear, as if making physical contact with Reagan had somehow slowed her heart rate, but still her chin wrinkled with strain. “Did you... did you kill it?”
Reagan shook his head.
“Well, don’t worry about it. The others are doing all the worrying right now. Trust me. It’s all they’re talking about. They’ll figure out what to do.”
“Only one thing to do.”
“Reagan, you lay back on that pillow. Right now. I mean it.” She smoothed the sides of her flower-print dress while sitting on the edge of the bed, then took a long minute to compose herself, and reached behind her and brought out a stack of odd papers. “I’m going to read you some get well cards while the soup cools. Then we’ll see if we can’t get you propped up enough to eat. It has big pieces of fish, but you let me help and you move slow. We can’t have you hurting yourself anymore.”
She flicked on a soft wall lamp and read the cards written out in pencil and crayons, on manila and printer paper. “Look what he drew.” Her voice filled the room with gentle affection. “This is from the little Hamilton girls, Angel and Karas. They wanted to come and see you so badly.”
When she finished, she set them upright on the night stand, eased him up against the head board, and then spooned the soup into his mouth. Finally, she asked, “More?”
