Black_Tide (3 page)

Another pause, then, "Excuse me?"

"I just got home, and haven't seen much of my wife or boy these past weeks, so I'm thinking I'll take the weekend and go ahead show up in Millington say, eight a.m. Monday?"

"That's unacceptable."

"Tuesday, then." Matt listened to Smith about gag on his phone a moment, then continued. "Last I checked, UMS Operations Division didn't take orders from SACLANT, and my former division is in shambles. With no one on top of ICAP that ain't dead or behind bars, even with the STB designation I'm pretty sure we didn't just become a division of the Navy, or the Coast Guard. So while you figure out if you've got the authority to give me orders, send on over the files and I'll read up on whatever's got you so bent out of shape."

A pregnant pause, then, "Monday, Mr. Rowley. Eight hundred hours."

He hung up and pulled out onto the road, a content whistle on his lips.

His phone blipped eight minutes later, just as he loaded a jumbo package of diapers into his shopping cart, next to five pounds of crab meat, and a pork loin bigger than his arm. He committed the operation's credentials to memory and deleted the message, then headed for the checkout.

*   *   *

Monica pushed her way inside past Ted, who didn't quite get out of the way. Matt sat at the computer, brow furrowed in concentration, scrolling the mouse with his middle finger. Amy read on the loveseat, Adam in a dark blue onesie at her feet. He dropped his toy and grinned wide, just like his daddy.

"Hey there, little man."

He reached up as she approached, and she scooped him into her arms. "He good?"

Amy shrugged. "Sure. No problems at all, Mrs. Rowley."

She nodded toward her husband. "How about him? Any big diaper changes necessary?"

"Nah." Amy shook her head. "He ran out to the store for a bit, came back and got right on the computer. Ain't moved since. I'm pretty sure I could have had a string of cute boys over and he'd never have noticed."

Monica frowned. The only things that occupied that much space in her husband's mind were house repairs and mission parameters, the former coming in a distant second.

She handed Matt their son, whom he took without looking up, peeled a pair of twenties out of her purse, and handed them over. "Thanks, Amy. Same time next Saturday?"

"I'll have to check. I have cheerleading but it might be later in the afternoon . . . ."

Monica tuned her out and showed her to the door, distracted by Matt's distraction.

She turned and watched him, Ted now asleep at his feet, Adam drooling on his shoulder, eyes closed. In the months since she'd given birth, Matt had spent three months in the hospital, and a miraculous six in physical therapy before they'd called him back to work to destroy a fallen angel named Arakiel. Two months later his scars had disappeared, he'd doubled his muscle mass, and while he couldn't bench press a car anymore, he'd still obliterate your average NFL player in a fight. Your average ninja NFL player. And his NFL ninja friends.

During his recovery he'd done little things here and there, nothing too serious until Ramiel. With three defeated egregoroi under his belt, Matt had become the worldwide expert on dealing with weird shit crawling out of the woodwork—even though he didn't know much more than anyone else. Add to that his augmentations, and left to the government's whim he'd be out of the country every week until it killed him and left her a widow.

He worked, oblivious to her presence, and she let him. Instead she plucked Adam from his shoulder, set him back on the floor, and turned on the TV.
Downton Abbey.
Perfect.

*   *   *

Blossom Sakura waited at her sleeping daughter's side and tried to ignore the chemicals pumping death into Kazuko's frail body. Other drugs waited nearby, plus a bag of blood to fight the marrow-killing effects of the chemotherapy. Only nine years old, and the Mayo Clinic used poison and radiation to combat her illness.

Kazuko had been fine. Her daughter dying at six, Sakura had given her second-generation regenerates with ICAP approval. At seven, Kazuko had shown full remission, and an utter fearlessness borne from being her mother's daughter and from the power of near-instantaneous healing from anything that wouldn't kill her outright. Then Matt Rowley had destroyed Gerstner, and within weeks Sakura's daughter had become an eight-year-old girl doomed to die in pain and misery instead of up and playing with the other children, working at her studies, drawing and painting and—

She glared at her ringing phone and answered it.

"Sakura Tsuji."

"Miss Sakura?" The pleasant male voice recited the day's verification codes, then prattled too long before getting to the point, a new mission for the Special Threats Bureau.

"Yes. I will meet him Monday at eight a.m. Thank you. Goodbye."

Kazuko murmured, and Blossom ran a hand gently over the hairless dome of her head. Kazuko's eyes fluttered open, a dark brown mirror of her own. "Are we done soon?"

"Yes, my Kazuko. Soon."

*   *   *

After a fantastic dinner—pork chops, baked risotto cakes, and a huge salad—they made love in the bedroom and then Matt let Monica nap on the couch. Once sure she'd fallen asleep for good, he pulled up the video that had come with the mission files and popped on his headphones.

Black waves glinted under a cloudy night sky. Salt crusted the ship's railing, painted some dark color Matt couldn't make out.

Men babbled in the background.

"I don't hear nothing," a man said, his accent Texas coast.

More waves, more silence.

"D'you hear that?" Another man, more frantic.

Someone cried out in the distance, high-pitched and desperate.

"There it is! There it is!"

"I heard it that time," the first man said. He raised his voice. "Are you okay?"

"Starboard, Ricky. Fuck!"

The camera swung and focused on a pale dot amidst the choppy waves, black water topped with white froth. "I got it!"

The image rocked in time with the boat, losing and regaining the object in the water, haphazardly spotlit from off to the left. They approached at low speed, and a girl's piercing voice rang out.

"HELP ME!"

"We're here!" one of the men hollered. "Just hold on!"

The camera dropped to the deck but kept recording.

"Josh, rope."

"Knot it?"

"Yes, put a fucking knot in it! Honda, with a stopper."

The girl yelled again. "HELP!"

"Ricky, man the fucking camera."

The camera swung back up. The shape resolved itself into a chunk of yellow raft, half-shredded foam sticking out from shredded rubber. A Caucasian girl, maybe ten years old, clung to it, her dark hair plastered across her face.

Someone threw the rope past her, then dragged it back with a casual expertise so that it fell right into her hands. She clutched it with white knuckles, muscles straining in near panic.

"Now climb in the loop and grab that ball."

She did as told, sputtering desperately as she lost her grip on the remains of the raft, but they pulled it taut as she put it around her thighs like a swing. She grabbed the stopper knot with both hands. They hauled her fifteen feet up, over the rail and onto the deck.

"Are . . . are you okay?"

She squirmed out of the rope to her hands and knees, coughing. Her white dress hung in wet curtains from her body. A man in overalls kneeled next to her and put a hand on her back. She coughed again and again.

"Ricky, get her a glass of—"

Vomit erupted from her mouth in a bright red river that splattered the deck and the man's legs. He scrambled back with a cry and she vomited in a continuous stream, far too much bloody fluid for a little girl. Too much for an adult. She looked up into the light, revealing black eyes, not just the pupils and irises, but everything.

"Holy shit!" The cameraman—Ricky—stepped back.

She grinned and opened her mouth and more blood dribbled out, leaking down her chin and soaking her dress. Her lips moved and words formed, every language and none, a thousand voices making an incomprehensible one. She spread her arms in defiant confrontation, black eyes blazing with un-light, and she rose from the deck, first one foot, then the other, hovering inches from the wooden boards.

"Join us." Her child's voice reverberated with a thousand more.

A metal object slammed into her head, and she tumbled to the deck.

The camera zoomed in to the crumpled form, a little girl covered in bright arterial blood, a huge bruise already forming on her temple.

"Holy shit, guys. Holy SHIT."

"Turn that off, Ricky."

She twitched, and more blood leaked from her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.

"I SAID TURN THAT FUCKING THING OFF."

The screen went blank.

"What was that?"

Matt whirled around, the movement tearing the headphones from the computer. He stared wide-eyed at his wife, who stood behind his desk in one of his VFD T-shirts, her face raw with worry.

"We don't know. Yet. I've got to head out Monday for an eight a.m. briefing."

"Oh." She took a step back, hand to her mouth. "That's not . . . not a movie?"

He blinked, at a loss for words, and shook his head. "No, Mon. It's real."

"My God, Matt. You have to help that girl."

He cleared his throat. "I know."

*   *   *

Matt kissed his wife and son goodbye, scratched Ted on the bridge of his nose, and stepped out into chilly darkness. At four a.m. in mid-October the Appalachian Plateau frosted his breath and sent goose bumps up his naked arms. He almost turned back for a jacket but had already faced one worried goodbye too many. As far as deployment timelines went, "I don't know" sucked more than any other.

He fired up the sedan—he'd leave the truck for Monica in case the weather went south—and pulled out onto the winding country road. Fresh gravel pinged off the wheel wells, and the frozen air didn't quite smother the petrochemical stench of oil and tar. He turned on the radio, dialed in KIX 106, and cranked the country music as loud as the speakers could handle.

He analyzed the mission while his tires ate up the road. Eighteen men had quit their jobs and moved to a mobile home park in Cuevas, Mississippi within six months of each other. Upon arrival, every one had been hired to work on the same drillship. Twelve had abandoned their families without so much as a note. The other six had no families to speak of. The mechanics and plumbers made some level of sense, but the IT guy, the accountant, the two waiters, and the three in retail had no skills related to the job. Thirteen white, three Hispanic, two black, none with criminal records. The intel weenies hadn't uncovered anything they had in common.

Cypriana, a Greek energy company, owned the drillship and a dozen just like it scattered across the world in search of oil and natural gas. They kept their nose clean—as clean as any multinational corporation—and their paperwork in order. This ship, the
Imperator
, boasted state-of-the-art technology, a thirty-thousand-foot drilling depth, and a habitat suite complete with hydroponic gardens. Though flagged out of Vanuatu, the crew of 125 came for the most part from Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece.

Since the American men had joined the crew, nine young girls from the Cuevas area had "run away," all of them while the men were home on leave. Sara Vallimont had turned up two hundred miles off the coast, clinging to a shredded piece of a life raft, speaking in tongues and vomiting enough blood for three people.

And hovering.

Matt threw a light on top of his car and blew through the stoplights headed into Nashville. He pulled into the Estes Kefauver Federal Building and Courthouse Annex lot just before five a.m., parked across from the church and killed the motor.

Images of Sara Vallimont flashed in his mind, superimposed with his son. He'd seen terrible things while deployed in Iraq, and the charnel house in Conor Flynn's basement still haunted his dreams. Possession or madness or garden-variety fanaticism, it came back again and again to the same place.

He looked in the mirror at the pale brick church, the stained glass black under the sallow security lights. "Don't make me kill any kids. A possessed kid, forget it. Find someone else to do your dirty work."

He got out, unsure whether God heard him, or cared.

A swiped badge, a wave to the guard, and an elevator ride took him to his office, the door still emblazoned with the eye-and-thunderbolt of the International Council on Augmented Phenomena. Almost everyone in ICAP management had died the moment Gerstner had stepped off the machine, and the Augs had lost their abilities, but in the spirit of government bureaucracies everywhere, ICAP just refused to go gently into that good night.

Matt frowned at the door. His abilities had returned, and his alone. Hundreds of Augs labored in hospitals, bodies pushed beyond their limits now that supernatural muscles had faded to mortal mass, hooked to machines that pumped blood and oxygen in a parody of Gerstner's living death. Their bodies lay shattered because of him, and the righteousness of saving their souls—at least from Frau Gerstner—faded against the stark realities of their existence.

He shook off the dark thoughts and entered his office. A withered cactus slumped in a pot on the windowsill, the faint sweet tang of fermentation rising from it. He dropped the plant into the garbage, pot and all, and sat.

A sparse desk and two guest chairs that hadn't seen use in months, and aside from the electronic paperwork generator the room contained only one thing of use. He unlocked the center drawer, jerked it open, and pulled out his secondary credentials. He sighed at the smiling face that stared back at him.