Guardian (18 page)

 

Chapter Twenty-­Eight

M
ike was on his knees, watching Nassir Fahd, trying not to puke. This was not good. Not good at all. They were still on the Israeli side of the Golan. That much he was sure of. The only reason Nassir would have risked entering Israel would be because he believed a prison was buried somewhere near here.

If they found one and opened it, the carnage would not spread east or north. No, the population areas were scarce compared to what lay west. A fallen angel looking for bodies to possess would head straight for Haifa.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Bile burned up his esophagus. He swallowed before it reached his mouth. Over a million ­people in and around Haifa. If most of them started killing each other, the Israeli government would respond with only one option. And Joseph knew Nassir was behind it all. Damascus could be glowing in the dark real soon.

Not good. I should never have come.

Mike kept his face passive even as his thoughts and mental images fired on all cylinders. How the hell was he going to get out of this? He hoped Kitra was still tracking his movements.
When she realizes they haven't left Israel, she should spring into action.

Should. Then again, maybe Garlic Breath and his cronies scanned him and found the GPS chip. Maybe they cut it out while he was out.

Shit.

Stop it,
Mike told himself.
Keep your shit together and figure a way out of this mess and hope Uriel comes with the cavalry soon.

Sure, easy enough.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Caldwell,” Nassir said in well-­spoken English. “You are not feeling well, are you?”

“You actually concerned, Nassir? Or are you just being polite?”

“Oh, your health is very important to me for now.” Nassir turned to Garlic Breath. “This is the correct mountain.”

“This is where the prison is,” Mike said.

“You do not seem surprised to see me or know my intention.”

Mike shrugged. “You're just a crazy well-­dressed Hadji from the looks of it. But looks are deceiving, aren't they? I'd call you something else but I'm not sure what the fuck you are.”

“Ah, resorting to insults already. I thought you would be more polite.”

Mike spat bile. “You mean after sending your demon to kidnap me and then having your bitches here beat me? Sure, I must be crazy to be rude.”

“I see your point. And it is interesting you think it was a demon that caught you.” Nassir's eyes passed from him to his men and back again. “Perhaps my men hit you too hard on the head.”

“Black cloud full of bugs. No, I'm pretty sure it was a demon. Which makes you either a sorcerer or . . . something else.”

Nassir smiled. The way the corners of his lips ticked up while his eyes narrowed stirred a little bit more unease in Mike. Considering the battle raging in his guts, that said a lot. It was a look a confident executioner might give to a death row inmate.

“You are a smart man, if a bit blunt and emotional,” Nassir said. “I am surprised you chose to pursue Kharija. Once you escaped him the first time, I assumed you were lost to us in the short term. Then I remembered who we were after and I realized the solution was simple. I knew exactly what it would take. A weak spot you couldn't ignore and Kharija as real bait. What was it he hit that lit the fire in you to find him?”

“The guy was a dickhead,” Mike said, and spat in the dirt. “Killing ­people I knew. Someone had to stop him.”

“Yes, yes. Killing ­people you knew. But not ­people you cared about.” Nassir took a step closer to him. “I read your file, Mr. Caldwell.”

Mike returned Nassir's stare. “You've got a file on me, huh? Not an all-­knowing being trapped in that body, huh?”

“You know much, but so do I.” Nassir stroked his beard. “Where do you think Kharija received all his information on your recent acquaintances? I was able to locate a great deal of information about you. More than even Kharija saw. And one thing I learned about you, Mr. Caldwell, is that you have a hard time severing emotional ties when it comes to death. Not healthy for a skilled killer such as yourself.”

“Yeah, I've heard that before.”

Nassir chuckled. “American wit. Marvelous. But can you turn that wit on yourself? Can you tell me how I knew you would chase Kharija?”

“You got me figured out, you tell me.”

“When someone close to you is killed, you take it personally. And you take it upon yourself to right that wrong. It was all there in your file. Your Achilles' heel, so to speak. Illustrated in your handling of Greg McDaniel's death.”

Mike broke his stare-­down with Nassir and focused on a rock nearby. He swallowed another mouthful of vomit.

“Those ­people Kharija had killed did not mean that much to you, did they? Not like McDaniel did. Not enough to excite you into a hunt. Yet here you are. So I can only assume there was something personal that lit the match within.”

Nassir turned his back to Mike. “You are divorced, according to your file. Nothing indicates you could remotely maintain a healthy relationship with a woman. So you are not here to protect a lover.”

Nassir turned back around and squatted in front of Mike. His smile was gone. “But a father would hunt Kharija if it meant protecting his child.”

Mike ground his teeth and refused to meet Nassir's gaze. He tried to rip his hands free of the Flex-­Cuffs.

“Your file did not indicate you had a child. But information can disappear. A father's love for his child does not. And if I had to guess, I bet it is a daughter. Daddy's little girl.”

Mike lunged and tried to head butt Nassir, but the Syrian stood and stepped back and Mike only hit the ground. He lost control of his insides and vomited bile into the dirt.

“Humans are so predictable.” Nassir chuckled again. “Like I said, blunt and emotional.”

Two of the goons scooped Mike up and pulled him back into a kneeling position. He looked up at Nassir and flashed his own smile. “I'm going to kill you.”

“You should know that is quite impossible,” Nassir said. “But rest assured I will kill you once I am finished with you. Then maybe I will hunt down your daughter, have seven of my men rape her for a week or so. Then I will cut her up, piece by piece. Feed her to a dog.”

Mike spat at Nassir but missed. “Fuck you.”

“There is the wit again. Very American.” Nassir turned to his men. “Take him. We have a hike ahead of us.”

Nassir's men pulled him around and marched him toward a goat path on the other side of the van. Nassir took the point, leading them into the darkness.

Come on, Uriel,
Mike thought.
Or Kitra. One of you, please be on your way.

 

Chapter Twenty-­Nine

T
he helicopter bucked hard, dropped, and then corrected and returned to normal flight. Kitra leaned forward, hands on her knees. She keyed her headset.

“How much longer, Captain?”

“Ten minutes, depending on the weather. Winds are picking up. Looks like a storm is rolling in.”

“The forecast made no mention of inclement weather. The night is supposed to remain clear.”

“Well, the forecast has changed because I am looking at a massive front and it's moving west to east very fast.”

Kitra looked out the window. The moon was not bright but cast enough light that she could see thick clouds rolling over the mountain peaks to the west. A storm for sure.

There was something odd about the clouds. Or maybe it was a trick of light from the moon. But Kitra swore she saw a fine white mist swirling amidst the dark thunderheads.

T
he hike was up a steep incline on loose dirt and rocks. Mike slipped several times, only to be caught and pushed back up by his two arm-­holding companions. The footing didn't help, but something else caused him to trip. The higher they climbed, the more fatigue ate away at his energy. Or maybe it sucked it out of him. Either way, the more they climbed, the worse he felt. His head drifted, his stomach rolled even more, his chest fluttered. He wanted to lie down and sleep. God, he was tired.

Snap out of it,
he told himself.
Stay focused. Find a way through the weakness. A way out of this mess.

But nothing came to mind. No brilliant idea. No escape plan. Not even a way to kill Nassir before his men took him down. He had to face reality. Right now he was along for the ride. Uriel was right. Damn it, he was right.

Great.

The guys not helping carry him up the mountain carried shovels and pickaxes. Mike wondered if they were for digging up a prison or his grave. Based on the way they left Kharija, he figured they were for the former.

Nassir looked over his shoulder at him. “Feeling okay, Mr. Caldwell?”

“Peachy.”

“You will let me know if you start to feel unwell, will you not? I mean more unwell than you already feel.”

“I could use some Pepto if you've got any.”

“Still the sarcasm even in the face of certain death. Commendable, really.”

Mike kept his mouth shut and swallowed a mouthful of bile shooting up from his gut. He could feel sweat breaking out on his face. The accelerating wind swirling around the mountain met the perspiration and chilled him. A shiver ran from his neck to his toes.

Lightning streaked across the sky and thunder boomed. Mike looked up. Large dark clouds slid toward them from the west. The wind howled.

The next ­couple of minutes passed in silence, with the exception of the occasional burst of thunder. The aches in his stomach increased to full-­fledged cramps. He wanted to double over but refused to let Nassir see him in any discomfort.

When they reached the top, the headache sprang. It felt like a spike being hammered between his eyeballs. Mike winced and shook his head but that only made it worse.

“Move toward the center,” Nassir said.

They dragged Mike into the middle of a clearing, surrounded by trees and boulders. With each step, the skull-­splitter ratcheted up another notch. The pain cut serpentine trails down the back of his neck into his spine. He couldn't hide his discomfort anymore, biting down and groaning around his teeth.

“It is up here,” Nassir said. “Just as I thought. As I hoped.”

“Where?” Garlic Breath said.

“Keep walking him around.”

They did, dragging him to the other side of the clearing. The pain abated a bit.

“Try over here,” Nassir said.

They moved him to another section, by a pile of rocks. The pain came back but nowhere near as bad.

“Here,” Nassir said.

Again they moved Mike. He didn't bother to shift his feet, letting them drag him through the dirt. His head hung and he breathed slow, trying to regain some energy between the spikes of discomfort.

Overhead, multiple bolts of lightning zig-­zagged across the sky. A thunderclap immediately followed. The concussion shook the mountaintop.

“There. Try over there by that large tree.”

As they pulled him to the newest test spot, Mike's brain felt like it folded in on itself. He screamed and arched his back. The sudden jerk caused his companions to lose their grip and he fell and hit the ground. His insides cramped and his muscles twitched.

“Get him away from there,” Nassir said.

Mike could barely hear. Nassir sounded muffled and distant.

Then the pain faded. Mike coughed and heaved and threw up. He opened his eyes and found he was on his side on the other side of the clearing. Nassir stood thirty feet away, gazing at the tall tree.

“It is here,” Nassir said, touching the tree trunk.

“How can you be sure?” Garlic Breath asked.

“He bears the mark.” Nassir turned to his men. “Start digging.”

“How deep?”

“Until we find it. Now dig.”

Mike watched as Nassir's men tore at the soil around the tree with shovels and pickaxes, too weak to even mumble at them to stop.

“T
hese winds are beating the hell out of us,” the pilot said. “We either need to turn around or put you down.”

“Put us down,” Kitra said. “We will proceed on foot.”

The helicopter descended and hovered twenty feet above a dirt road. The side door opened and one of the crewmen lowered a rope.

Kitra did not say anything, only nodded. Ehud went first, sliding down the rope. Isaac followed. Then Simon and Abu.

Before Kitra went, she keyed his headset. “Stay close, Captain.”

“We will. Just need to get a little lower. The downdrafts are too much this high.”

Kitra removed the headset, leaned out the door and gripped the rope, squeezing it between her hands. Then she pushed out, clenched the rope between her feet and slid down.

Two seconds later she hit the road and let go and signaled up to the crewman above. The rope rose and the helicopter banked left and down away from the mountain.

Isaac and Simon and Ehud stood with their backs to her, forming a defensive perimeter, rifles raised and night vision goggles on. Abu crouched within the perimeter, unarmed.

Kitra looked at her through his own goggles. The Arab frowned, staring into the night.

“Here,” Kitra said, and pulled an extra set of goggles from her pack. “I do not want you tripping and falling down the mountain.”

Abu took them and pulled them over his head and flicked them on. “Thank you.”

“How are your wounds?”

“Not bad. I think I tore a stitch or two on the way down. But I will live. What about a weapon?”

“When I think you need one, I will give you one.”

The frown did not disappear from his face. Kitra ignored it and fished out her handheld GPS. “He is not far away. Proceed up this road.”

N
assir's men had managed to dig down about two feet when the deluge started. The wind no longer gusted. It blew at a constant speed, fast and firm. The treetops bent and never sprung back.

The rain fell so hard it felt to Mike like thousands of needles pricking his skin. He rolled onto his stomach to protect his face. The dirt turned into flowing mounds of mud within minutes.

The men tried to pull themselves out of the hole.

“Keep digging,” Nassir yelled over the tempest.

“We can barely see,” Garlic Breath said. “It is filling with water.”

“I said keep digging.”

They kept digging, splashing their tools through the small pond they were creating. Nassir just stood there, watching, as if he could not feel the rain and wind.

“Why did you need me?” Mike asked.

Nassir turned. “Excuse me?”

“If you knew it was somewhere on this mountain, why did you need me? Why not just start digging until you found it?”

“Because I did not know what mountain. I suspected it was one of these mountains within a certain radius. But it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. No, I needed you to put me in the right spot. And now your job is done.”

“So you're going to kill me now?”

“No. I think I will open the prison and watch you and my men beat each other to death.”

“Of course you'll be unaffected, since you've been stripped of your spirit and all. Made . . . what's the word? Corporeal. Trapped in human flesh, whatever the fuck you are. Bet that pisses you off.”

Nassir nodded. “It does and I will not grant you a merciful and quick death, so you can stop trying to provoke me. However, I am interested to know who has told you all this information.”

Mike had to squint to keep the spattering water and mud from his eyes. He could still see well enough, though. Nassir's men had lit the site with battery-­powered lamps. But then those started to dull. He thought maybe they were fading due to the moisture but then he noticed something else.

“Maybe you'll get to ask him yourself,” Mike said.

Around the lights a thin white mist swirled, growing denser with each passing second. It spread from the lights around the tree and the diggers and Nassir until it blanketed the entire clearing.

The men stopped digging, staring at the mist through the rain.

“Keep digging!” Nassir yelled.

Instead, the men stopped digging and stared at the mist. A ­couple mumbled what sounded like prayers. The others stood silent, mesmerized.

Mike stared, too. There was something about the mist. Something unusual. Then he realized what it was. The wind still roared and the rain still pummeled but the mist just hung, like it existed in a separate climate overlapping the storm but not a part of it. Two pictures, one layered over the other.

Impossible.
But there it was, a fine white mist surrounding them all while the storm continued its onslaught.

Nassir seemed to notice it now. He moved from the tree to the center of the clearing, sweeping his hand through the mist, cutting paths, only to see the mist refill them. His face was stern, eyes wide and full of rage.

“Uriel,” Nassir said.

Shit, he knows Uriel.
That scared the hell out of him.

Nassir rocked his head back, looked to the sky and shouted in a language Mike neither understood nor recognized.

The sky responded with lightning and thunder.