“That would be counterproductive.”
“Still have the guns?”
“Yes.”
“You take the driver; I’ll take Vosch.”
Samuel rolled over and crawled slowly toward the front of the truck. I looked behind us: Vosch had seen it all, apparently, because he was in our lane and coming up fast. When I rose, he eased the bus over the center line and I saw Flat-Face leaning out the door with his rifle. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Samuel swing into the cab of the truck. We whipped back and forth, as the driver reacted to the dude with the gun appearing out of nowhere, and then Samuel must have told him to floor it, because with a belch of black smoke the truck began to accelerate.
Commandeer truck—check. Time for Vosch.
Canvas straps were spaced four feet apart along the span of the stacked two-by-fours. I scuttled across the top as Flat-Face commenced firing, but the angle was bad: I was too high and partly shielded by the stack.
The first clasp gave me some trouble, but by the third I had the hang of it. I left the last two straps closest to the cab connected to give the stack some stability; otherwise it might collapse completely and send me cascading over the edge with it.
If Vosch understood what I was up to, he didn’t let on. He kept within half a car length of our bumper, jockeying first left, then right, trying to give Flat-Face a decent shot.
My target was a little easier to hit.
The first board was an experimental toss, just to test the force needed to hurl it off the stack. It flipped straight up coming off the back, the far end impacting off the pavement, which flipped it again, the opposite end hitting the front of the bus with a satisfying smack. It startled Vosch. His hands jerked on the wheel, which almost tossed Flat-Face onto the road.
I shoved boards off the stack as fast as I could. Vosch pulled into the left lane and began to accelerate.
Smart: I couldn’t just push the boards off the side of the truck, not with the ends still strapped down, and from that side Flat-Face would have a better shot. Or maybe the idea was to take out the driver and send us barreling off the road.
And I had left both guns in the taxi.
No time to undo the two straps. I fell onto my stomach as the bus came beside the truck bed. One of the loosened straps was flapping beside me. I grabbed it. I waited. I knew he’d come. If it had been me, I’d come.
He came. Vosch brought the bus within two feet of the bed, and all Flat-Face had to do was jump onboard. I crouched in the center, like a running back waiting for the snap, left fist knuckle down on the wood for balance, the strap wrapped twice around my right—for Flat-Face.
He came at me like a crab shuffling across the seabed. He had ditched the rifle; I guessed because he needed both hands for the jump. But now, as he came at me, I saw a black dagger in his right hand.
Saint Michael . . . Prince of Light . . . hear my prayer . . .
I didn’t feel the wind. Or the wood beneath me.
Pardon my sins . . . forgive my trespasses . . .
I didn’t see the bus, the truck, the sky, the road.
Prince of the heavenly host, be my protection against all evil spirits . . .
I was in the still place that had no center. And all I had to do was wait for Flat-Face to join me there.
. . . who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.
Three feet away, he paused, his big head cocked to one side, expecting me to run or try to, I guess, but I didn’t budge; I froze, he froze, and then I raised my free hand and crooked my finger at him.
He came into my centerless space, dagger raised. I punched his upraised wrist and pushed off hard, driving my shoulder into his chest. Off balance, he fell back onto his wide butt. I slung the four-inch-wide canvas strap around his big bull neck, whipped it three times around his head, then yanked it tight. Slipping on the loose boards, I hauled him to his feet and drove him toward the opposite side of the truck.
He sailed over the edge; the canvas line played out until it hit the clasp holding it to the truck; and then the strap went taut. Over the rush of wheels and howl of the wind, I could hear Flat-Face’s strangled corpse popping up and down in a series of rhythmic, sickening thuds.
I scrambled away, scooping up the fallen dagger as I went.
Vosch’s turn.
Only Vosch was gone. I looked behind, I looked ahead, I looked over at the northbound lanes—maybe he had crossed the median strip—but the bus was nowhere in sight. I scooted to the front of the bed, dislodging boards as I went, sending them over the side, where they fell with a loud clatter onto the road, until I reached the cab. I pounded on the top to let Samuel know that I had made it, that Vosch was gone, that at least for now we were safe.
Then I looked over the cab and saw the bus, about a hundred yards ahead, not speeding away, not coming back at us the wrong way, but turned sideways, blocking both lanes.
The trucker must have seen it too, because the wheels locked as he slammed on the brakes. He whipped the wheel hard to the right, which sent me hard to the left. I lost my balance and fell onto the jumbled stack of wood, flailing for a handhold in the slipping two-by-fours, while the truck, its wheels still locked tight, slid sideways toward the bus, then completely around, creating a slingshot effect: I flew off the back of the truck on a rollicking raft of lumber heading straight toward the bus.
At the last second I tucked my chin into my chest and flattened my body onto the bucking and bouncing wood that carried me under the bus and out the other side. I saw a flash of muffler and tailpipe before coming to a stop twenty feet later.
I pushed myself up and stumbled around on the lumber like a drunk. I heard sirens wailing in the distance, but I hardly paid attention to them. A man was standing between me and the bus, and that man was pointing a pistol at my head.
“Hands where I can see them, please,” Vosch said.
I dropped the black dagger and raised my hands over my head.
“There’s something you should know before you shoot me,” I said.
“A cliché,” Vosch said. “But better than begging.”
“Samuel St. John is standing behind you.”
“Drop your weapon, Vosch!” shouted Sam.
Vosch didn’t flinch. “Perhaps I’ll kill you first,” he said to me.
But he dropped the gun. Sam rushed forward and twisted Vosch’s arm behind his back and forced him to his knees. He put his gun against the side of Vosch’s head.
“No!” I said sharply. “Don’t kill him.”
“It is the only way to stop him, Alfred.”
I picked up the dagger.
“If you shoot him, I’ll cut myself open and heal him, understand?”
“Actually, I would prefer that you kill me,” Vosch said.
“I bet. Jourdain’s not going to be happy that this went hinky. You might lose your job.”
“And I love my work.”
I looked over his shoulder into Sam’s dark, deep-set, black-ringed, hound-dog eyes. “Let him up.”
“You shot him at the airport,” Sam reminded me.
“Only because I didn’t have a choice.”
“What if I just wound him grievously?”
His right eye was twitching. The hand gripping the gun was shaking.
“What’s the matter with you?” I asked him.
He showed no sign of emotion, other than the twitching of his eye and the quivering of his hand. For the first time since our reunion at the airport, I noticed something odd about his hand: he was missing his pinky finger. I looked at his other hand. The little finger on that hand was missing too.
“You did that?” I asked Vosch. “You tortured him?”
“We considered it a no-brainer.”
That sent Sam over the edge. He twisted his fingers into Vosch’s hair and yanked his head straight back. He commenced to whisper something that sounded like Latin into his ear.
“. . . Per sacrosancta humanea reparationis mysteri
a—By the sacred mysteries of man’s redemption—remittat tibi omnipotens Deus omnes praesentis et futurae vitae paenas— may almighty God remit to you all penalties of the present life and of the life to come. Paradisi portas aperiat, et ad gaudia sempiterna perducat—May He open to you the gates of paradise and lead you to joys everlasting . . .”
“You’re wasting your time, priest,” Vosch said. “I’m not Catholic.”
“And I’m not a priest.”
Vosch acted like he didn’t hear him. “You’re supposed to forgive.”
“God’s business, not mine,” Sam answered.
He started to squeeze the trigger. I brought my hand down hard on his wrist and the gun clattered to the pavement.
“Please let me, Alfred,” he said. He had never begged me for anything before.
“Yes,” Vosch said. “Please let him.”
I picked up the gun and tucked it into my waistband. “We’re getting out of here.”
Sam held on to Vosch’s hair for a second longer. His eyes darted wildly back and forth, from me to Vosch and back again. Sometimes the bloodiest battles happen inside our own hearts.
He drove his knee into Vosch’s back, sending him sprawling onto the pavement. Then he spat on him, took a deep breath, and looked away, finally, from Vosch, toward me.
“It’s good to see you again, Alfred,” he said.
Then he did something he rarely did.
He smiled.
MOTEL 6
HELENA, MONTANA
01:00:06:14
I walked around the building a couple of times to make sure the coast was clear, then knocked on the door to room 101. The chain lock rattled, the dead bolt slid back, and Samuel opened the door. He tossed the gun onto the bed and took the plastic sack from my hand.
“I was about to come after you,” he said.
He threw the lock and fell into the chair by the little table. I sat in the other chair across from him. He fished a deli sandwich from the bag and dug in, eating with his nose about three inches from the table. I took out my meal and slowly unwrapped the yellow paper.
“Corn dogs,” he said.
“I’m superstitious.”
The TV was tuned to a cable news channel. A car bomb had killed some people overseas. Somebody important was going to speak at the UN tomorrow. A car maker was set to announce record losses for the third quarter.
“Anything?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You know that trucker gave a description.”
He shrugged.
“And the taxi driver.”
He shrugged again.
“Those people at the airport.”
He shrugged a third time. What was it with Op Nines and the shrugging?
A pickle slice had fallen from his sandwich and he picked it up and carefully tucked it back in.
I went on. “I’m so popular. Wanted by OIPEP, Jourdain Garmot, and now the feds.”
He shook his head. “The feds won’t get involved until we cross state lines.”
“Oh, okay. What a relief. I was about to panic.”
I scraped the skewer of my dog clean with my front teeth and started on the second one. Deli mustard is best, but the gas station only had packets of regular yellow.
I had brought up the two-ton elephant in the room, but he refused to acknowledge it. So I moved on, reminding myself not to forget to move back.
“It was Needlemier, wasn’t it?” I asked. “How they got you.”
He nodded. “He said he had a meeting scheduled with Jourdain regarding the status of your father’s estate. I should have considered the possibility they were using him—perhaps I would have, but I was eager to remove the threat, driven by emotion . . .”
“Gets you every time,” I said. “Emotion.”
His eyes cut away. “Jourdain Garmot is mad,” he said. Then he started to eat again. “And like all madmen, he fails to see the world as something outside himself. He truly believes that killing you will bring him peace.”
“Like you with Vosch,” I said.
He looked at me hard. “With Vosch gone, there is one less pursuer.”
“But one more gallon of blood on my hands.”
“There is no sin in self-preservation,” he said.
“I don’t care about all the ins and outs of it, Samuel. All the pie-in-the-sky philosophy won’t change the facts. For every Vosch we kill, Jourdain will send five more Vosches to take his place.”
That reminded me. I laid my half-eaten corn dog on the table and went to the telephone by the bed. Samuel shifted in his chair so he could watch me. I got the same recording I got the first time I tried, right after we checked in. I hung up without leaving a message. Samuel shifted again when I sat back down and picked up my corn dog.
“Perhaps Mr. Needlemier doesn’t need us to point out the prudent course,” he said.
“I hope it’s that,” I said. “I hope he’s taken off, gone someplace safe, but what if he hasn’t? What if Jourdain already has him?”
“Then may God have mercy on him.”
I looked at his hands. He saw me looking at his hands. I looked away.
“He doesn’t know where I am,” I said. “Maybe Jourdain will believe him and let him go.”
“He didn’t believe me,” he pointed out.
“Well, one life at a time. One thing I can’t figure out— well, there’s a lot of things—but the biggest thing is how killing me gets Jourdain the Skull.”
He frowned. “ ‘Jourdain the Skull’?”
I nodded. “The Skull of Doom.”
He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me.
“You’ve never heard about the Skull of Doom?” I asked.
“Of course I have. I was an Operative Nine.”
“Well, he told me he was on ‘the last knightly quest for the Thirteenth Skull,’ which everybody knows is the Skull of Doom.”
“That is one of its names, yes. And if that is his ultimate goal, he is doomed to failure.”
“Why?”
“Because the Skull of Doom is a myth. It doesn’t exist.”
“How do you know?”
“I was an Operative Nine.”
“And that means what? You’re all-knowing like God?”
“Far from it.”
“Then how are you so sure it doesn’t exist?”
“Because we could find no evidence of its existence.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a myth.”
He shook his head and waved one four-fingered hand.
“It doesn’t matter. Jourdain believes it exists, apparently, and that’s all that matters.”
“Which is the point I was trying to make! He somehow thinks killing me is going to help him get it.”
“It may be something far simpler than that.”
“Like what?”
“Like revenge.”
I thought about that. He was right, as usual. The why really didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter if killing me had anything to do with getting the Skull. The only thing that mattered was he wasn’t going to stop until I was dead.
“Right. On one side, a madman chasing a myth and on the other a sociopath on a crusade to lobotomize me. So we slip between them and head straight for headquarters.”
He said, “Headquarters.” His eyes cut away. The elephant was back.
“Only I’m not sure exactly where headquarters is, but you know and that’s where Abby Smith is.”
“Who may or may not be in a position to help us,” he said.
“We don’t have a choice.”
“No choice,” he said. He wadded up the wrapping from his sandwich and dropped it into the bag. Then he took his napkin and carefully wiped off the table.
“Why did you do it, Sam?”
He didn’t need to ask what I was talking about. He knew. “I was the Operative Nine.”
“And putting a bomb in my head was the thing-that-must-be-done?”
“
Yes.”
“Why?”
“The reason was classified.”
“Declassify it. Now.”
He nodded. Swallowed. “I wish I had a drink,” he said softly, as if to himself.
I slid my Big Gulp toward him.
“Not that kind of drink,” he said.
“You’re not the Operative Nine anymore,” I said. “You’re my guardian. You owe me the truth.”
“The price for that is very high, Alfred.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
“It won’t be you who pays.”
“Tell me why you did it, Sam.”
He sighed and his voice now barely rose above a whisper.
“Sofia . . . Alfred. Because of Sofia.”
“Sofia. I’ve heard that name before.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I heard you saying it in your sleep at the hospital,” I reminded him. “ ‘Ghost from the past,’ you told me. Then I overheard Nueve and you arguing about her before we left, and Nueve said you were talking about the goddess of wisdom, but somehow I don’t think you were.”
“Hardly,” he said.
“When Mingus had me in his lab, I saw some vials of my blood labeled ‘sofa.’ And I thought that was really weird.
What did my blood have to do with sofas? It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with sofas, does it, Sam?”
“No.”
“So no more hints and half answers and riddles. Tell me who Sofia is and tell me now.”
He nodded. “Sofia isn’t a person, Alfred. Sofia is a thing. An acronym. Special Operational Force: Immortal Army. SOFIA.”
The room was quiet except for the humming of the heater by the window. Suddenly the room seemed very dark. I got up from the table and turned on the floor lamp by the bed.
“Catchy name,” I said. “Who came up with that?”
“The Operative Nine.” He didn’t turn to watch me this time. He sat very still, his back to me.
“The idea being my blood could be used to create some kind of supersoldier . . . ?”
“It was conceivable.”
“. . . An army whose soldiers are instantly healed on the battlefield, whose troops are immune to disease and injuries . . .” I saw it then—the only real use somebody like Nueve would have for my blood. I remembered what I said to Ashley at the airport, We wouldn’t want some kid with the power to heal the world running amok, healing the world, and felt sick to my stomach. “The possibilities are endless, aren’t they, Sam?”