The smiling ace stretched like a cat. His knuckles made crackling sounds as he clenched his hands into fists. He approached slowly, smiling confidently. Smugly, really. He had a reason to be smug, the Angel thought. He was still the most handsome man she had ever seen.
“Remember the lesson I taught you before,” he said as he approached. “Now it goes further.”
The sudden sound of the van’s horn startled them both. The Angel whirled to see John Fortune behind the wheel, a determined expression on his face, leaning on the horn and bouncing up and down on the seat as the van rolled over the bumpy sward, bearing down on them.
The Angel leaped away just as Fortune slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel. The van sideswiped the Witness. He didn’t even try to get out of the way. There was the thud of metal slamming into flesh and the van flung the Witness twenty feet in the air where he hit the spreading branches of the pecan tree that was nodding over the nearby graves. Branches cracked and broke and fell along with the Witness.
John Fortune wrestled the van to a stop and shouted out the driver’s side window, “Get in! Get in!”
The Angel responded to the panic in his voice. Her first thought was to check to see if the Witness was still alive, and if he was, to kick his ass as hard as she could. But she realized John Fortune was right. They had to get out of there. Fast.
The sliding door on the driver’s side was crumpled inward, but was still holding on the frame. That was good. The van engine’s was idling at such a high rate that it was threatening to sputter out at any second. That would be bad. She reached the passenger’s side door and pulled it open. John Fortune floored the gas pedal before her butt hit the seat. The van slewed around crazily for a moment, then the tires gripped the turf and they headed for the unpaved road running though the cemetery.
As the Angel glanced back she saw Cardinal Contarini crouched behind one of the monuments, shaking his first at them and screeching something in Italian. The joker looked up groggily, a blank expression on his inhuman face. The Witness was still laying under the broken tree limbs on her mother’s grave.
That was close, she thought, leaning back in the seat. She looked at the boy who, beyond denial, was her savior. He was concentrating on guiding the van over the winding cemetery lane, but he glanced back at her.
“See,” he said. “I told you I could drive.”
She smiled at him. His smile glowed back at her like the shining sun. They left the cemetery, hitting the city streets. The van rattled along making alarming sounds as John Fortune cruised at a sedate thirty miles an hour. The Angel realized that there was no way it was going to get them to Branson. It would be lucky if it got them beyond the city limits. She guessed that this situation could be classified as an emergency, and she reached for her cell phone. She hit The Hand’s number on the speed dial.
“President Barnett’s of—”
“Sally Lou!” the Angel said, trying hard to control her voice so that John Fortune wouldn’t get more worried than he already was. “Let me speak with President Barnett—fast!”
“He’s in conference now,” she said in the snootily superior voice that she liked to use on the Angel.
“I don’t care if God the Father Himself is in there planning Armageddon with him,” the Angel said in a tone that made John Fortune stare at her in surprise. “Connect me with him. Now.”
Pleased when Sally Lou connected them without another word, she barely gave The Hand the chance to say Hello before she blurted out their situation. He took it like he took everything else. With calmness and poise.
“Can you hold out for twenty minutes, honey?” he asked sedately.
“Twenty minutes? I don’t—”
“You’re going to have to,” he said just as soothingly. “Twenty minutes. That’s all. I promise you.”
The Angel took a deep breath. She had The Hand’s assurance. Though he was just a man like everyone else and a sinner as well, he had never let her down. In any important sense, anyway. “All right,” she said. “Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes,” Barnett confirmed. “Where are you, exactly?”
She told him.
“Fine. Get to the highway. Wait by the Yazoo City on-ramp. Don’t move from that spot. Help is on the way. Gotta go make it happen.”
He hung up. The Angel listened to the dial tone than looked at John Fortune, who was gazing at her with a trusting expression.
“Help is on the way,” she told him. Though how in the world it would arrive in such a short time was utterly beyond her.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Ray tried to explain his position as they took the escalator down to the elevator bank in the lobby, but Jerry wasn’t in a forgiving mood. Mushroom Daddy listened with amiable interest while Sascha just listened, as usual.
“It’s not like I lied to you,” Ray said. “Or even wanted to lie. You and Ackroyd made some unjustified assumptions the first time you saw me, and went right on assuming from then to now.”
“And you let us,” Jerry pointed out for the fifth or sixth time. “You let us think you and Angel were working for the government.”
Ray shrugged. “There’s no skin off your nose, is there?”
“No skin off my nose?” Jerry said, just this side of outraged. “It’s a lot different thinking that we were going into this with government backing—or at least governmental knowledge and consent—and then discovering that the ‘government’ in this case was Leo Barnett.”
“Hey,” Ray said, “he was the President once, wasn’t he?”
“Was,” Jerry said. “That’s the operative word.”
Ray shrugged. “Look, you’re an ace. If you call changing your face an ace—”
“I do more than change my face,” Jerry said hotly.
“Yeah, okay, whatever. I’m not saying you’re a deuce, exactly. But you know how it is. The life of an ace is complicated. You can’t tell me you’ve never had a secret or two. Especially if your power is changing identities. Hell, your name’s probably not even Creighton.”
That stopped Jerry cold. Ray was right. Righter than he knew. Jerry’s whole existence was based on shifting identities. On lies he constantly told others. And himself. He was never just plain old Jerry Strauss. Most of the time he was someone else. The Projectionist. The Great Ape. Lon Creighton. Jerry Creighton. Alan Ladd. Butcher Dagon. Everybody but Jerry Strauss.
If Ray realized that he scored, he kept quiet about it. They eventually made it to the elevator bank, and Ray punched the button for the penthouse. The boys were on guard in the corridor. They must have received word of some kind of possible attack, because they had their handguns out and leveled as the elevator doors swished open.
“Hey, man,” Daddy said. “That’s so not cool!”
“Relax,” Ray said to both Daddy and the Secret Service men. “It’s me. You’re safe.”
One put up his weapon with an audible sigh, the other was more hard ass about it. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said, pointing the barrel of his gun to the floor, but not holstering it. “Billy Ray. A blind guy. A hippie—”
“Don’t worry,” Ray said. “I’ll tell them not to kick your ass.”
“We’ve got to see Barnett,” Jerry said. “Is he in?”
“He’s already got company,” the armed agent said doubtfully, “but...”
“I’ll vouch for these guys,” Ray said.
“Even the hippie?”
“He’s undercover CIA,” Ray said quietly as he went on by. The others followed him.
Sally Lou was on the phone when they entered the waiting room. She jumped nervously as Ray and the others tramped in.
“Guilty conscious?” Ray asked.
“Why, why ever would I have a guilty conscious?” she asked.
“Just a joke,” he said. “Buzz the big guy. Tell him we’re coming in.”
“He’s with someone—”
“S
o am I,” Ray said.
Ray led the way. In the office Barnett was behind his desk, beaming. Sitting before the desk frowning was someone Ray hadn’t seen in years. “Fortunato,” he said. He stopped. The others piled up behind him.
“Come in,” Barnett said affably. “You’ve bought some friends, I see. Good, good. We’re just sitting around here chatting, trying to decide who’s gonna go to Yazoo and pick up John Fortune in”—Barnett checked his watch—“just about fifteen minutes from now.” Barnett looked at Fortunato. “Billy Ray would be a good choice, don’t you think?”
Fortunato didn’t look totally convinced, but he nodded nonetheless.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, coffee shop
John Nighthawk and his team sat in the hotel coffee shop, enjoying a late breakfast.
Usher had a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon and ham, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, with toast, and a side of pancakes. He was still of an age when he could eat and eat and not put on an ounce. Magda had a cup of grapefruit juice and toast. Dry. She didn’t particularly worry about her weight, but was of an age when she took nothing joyful out of life, and always would be. Nighthawk had his coffee and donuts. He was of an age beyond caring about his weight. It helped that he had an ace’s metabolism.
He scanned the sports page, noting last night’s box scores. He was pleased to see that the Dodgers were doing better. Hanging at about five hundred, Brooklyn still had room to improve, though as a life-long Dodger fan he had little room to complain about the last thirty-five years or so. Still, with Gooden joining Strawberry in retirement two years ago, the last tie to Reiser’s glory years had been cut and they were casting about for a new leader and new team identity. This Reyes kid looked good. His headlong style of play reminded Nighthawk a little of Honus Wagner.
His cell rang. He flipped it open, listened, and said a few quiet words. He hung up, and looked at his team. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he said. “It starts soon.”
Usher nodded and shoveled half a pancake, loaded with butter and syrup, into his mouth. Magda grinned and started to pray aloud. Nighthawk put the paper down and took a drink of coffee. It was cold. Suddenly, so was he.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Yazoo, Mississippi: the Highway Interchange
The van’s engine chugged like an asthmatic with a smoker’s cough and the door rattled against the frame like a skeleton with rheumatism.
“We’d better stop and switch places,” the Angel.
“Ah,” John Fortune said, “I’m doing okay.”
“Yeah,” the Angel said, “but we’re headed for the highway. I’d better take over. Park it and slide over. Better not turn the ignition off. I don’t know if we could get it started again.”
John Fortune pulled over to the side of the street. He put it in park, and slid over on the seat. The Angel lifted herself up to scoot over him, but suddenly she felt his arms around her, pulling her down to his lap. He kissed her, half on the lips and half on the cheek. His skin was warm, as if he were burning with fever, but dry. He wasn’t sweating.
“John—” she said, pulling away.
“I know, I know. I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Help yourself to a seat over there,” she said, indicating a spot next to the passenger side door. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is neither.”
“Will it be time when we get to Branson?” he asked hopefully.
The Angel bit her lip as she pulled away from the curb. He was her Savior, but he was just a boy. A good-looking boy, but a boy. She felt nothing for him but awe coupled with an instinct to guard and protect that was surely maternal in nature. But she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint him completely.
“We’ll see. Things will be hectic when we get there. You’ll be an important figure, with a lot to do.”
“I’ll always have time for you, Angel,” John Fortune said, and she smiled a smile of genuine affection.
They made it back to the highway in minutes. She pulled off to the side of the entrance ramp, turned off the van’s engine, and checked her watch.
“What’s going to happen now?” John Fortune asked.
The Angel shook her head. She was as mystified as he was. But whatever was going to happen, she knew that it had better happen soon. They waited five or six minutes, and then a dark shadow suddenly appeared on the side of the overpass buttress, though there was nothing to cast it.
“Angel—”
She nodded. “I see it.”
The gate had opened again. Blood and his handler came through the hole in the concrete buttress first. The joker ace lifted his head up to the sky, his snout sniffing. Cardinal Contarini followed, as did the Witness. The Angel’s heart sunk further when a squad of well-armed minions a dozen strong followed. They fanned out and slowly approached the van where it sat at on the highway verge.
Contarini smiled, but there was nothing of good will in it. “I told you that we’d be better prepared this time.”
The Angel clenched her teeth and tried the engine. “Don’t flood, don’t flood, please don’t flood,” she pleaded as she pumped the gas pedal.
“Take your foot off the gas and your hands off the wheel,” Contarini ordered, “or we’ll shoot you down right now.” He gestured and his Allumbrados took braced firing positions.
The van’s engine suddenly caught and purred quietly like a cat. The Angel took her hands off the wheel. She could think of only one plan. It wasn’t much of one, but it was the only hope they had.
“John,” she said quietly out of the corner of her mouth, her lips unmoving. “I’m going to floor it on the count of three. I want you to open your door and fall to the ground. Roll. Roll hard and far away.”
“What are you going to do?” the boy asked. For the first time ever she heard fear in his voice.
“What I have to,” the Angel said quietly.
“You’d better get out of that ridiculous vehicle before I count five,” Contarini shouted.
“Angel—”
“Please.” She looked at her Lord. She loved him like she never loved anyone else, with pure, undying affection, and the taste of her failure was bitter in her mouth. “Please, John—”
“One,” Contarini said.
“One,” the Angel whispered.
“Two,” Contarini shouted.
“Two,” the Angel whispered.
John Fortune looked at her, his face fixed with fear, and suddenly his eyes went wide and his arm flew up, pointing back down to the highway.
“Look!” he shouted.
When The Hand had said it would take twenty minutes for help to arrive, it was one of the few times in Angel’s experience that he was wrong. It took eighteen.
The southbound lanes of the highway were empty but for a roaring wind and flashing lights that had no apparent origin. Suddenly, as if it had broken through a landscape-painted canvas, an eighteen-wheeler pulling a silver trailer just appeared as if it had been placed there by the hand of God.
Perhaps it had, the Angel thought.
It was highballing maybe a hundred miles an hour and it hardly slowed down as it took the Yazoo City exit. It was upon them like an angry behemoth before they even realized it, flashing past the van in a New York minute. She saw a heavy-set man with a cigar clenched between his teeth and a cap on his head behind the wheel, which was on the wrong side of the cab, and she saw Billy Ray grinning like an idiot next to him and then they went by.
Contarini screamed like a woman. Blood pulled away from his handler and was running like a dog from the highway. The Witness stood mute and astonished as it barreled down upon them and Contarini shouted, “Shoot you fools, shoot!” and automatic gunfire split the morning like continuous rolls of thunder, only to whine and ping against the glass and grill of the cab’s front.
The Allumbrados scattered at the last moment as the driver downshifted and fought the wheel with consummate skill, throwing the
truck into a skid that swung the trailer among the gunmen, tossing bodies like tenpins. Only a few escaped. Before the truck came to a screeching halt in a swirling cloud of dust the passenger side door opened and Billy Ray was among them.
The Angel blinked. He moved like a dancer, but his graceful steps brought pain and destruction to his partners in the bloody ballet. He struck with hands and feet, elbows, knees, and head. A single blow to each opponent. That was all it took. Some tried to shoot, but they missed him. Some tried to run, but they weren’t fast enough. Contarini was among the first to go down. The Witness the last. He towered over Ray like a giant. He swung his powerful right arm at Ray, but it moved as if in slow motion. Ray dropped to the ground. He put all his weight on one leg, doubled under him, and lashed out with the other. His foot caught the Witness on the right knee cap and the Witness screamed like a horse with a broken leg, and went down rolling in the dust clutching his leg and shrieking.
“It’s only a dislocated patella, pussy,” the Angel heard Ray sneer.
“Wow...” John Fortune said.
The Angel woke from her trance. “Come on!”
She threw open the door and grabbed John Fortune’s arm and hauled him after her, half dragging him as she ran towards the waiting truck, passing bodies, groaning and silent, that littered the ground. The Witness watched her go with his face clenched in pain. He mouthed gibberish at her and tried to crawl toward her and John, but suddenly Ray was between them.
“Back off, asshole,” he said, and the Witness stopped, groveling in the dust.
Ray looked up at her and she saw his face gleaming like a saint’s in an ancient icon.
“Ray—” she said, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her and covered his mouth with hers. He returned her kiss with equal fervor until the driver shouted out from the cab, “Time enough for that later. We’d best be getting on,” and he gunned his engine for emphasis. He had an English accent.
Ray broke the kiss and looked at her with startled eyes. She looked away, blushing at her terrible boldness. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she did know that she’d savor the memory of that kiss for a long time.