The Five (43 page)

“No.”

“Ever been in the military? Ever served your country?”

“Served my country?” Nomad’s voice had taken on a defensive edge. “Like how? Getting killed so a contractor can make big bucks and the flag-maker’s stock goes up on Wall Street?”

True lifted his gaze to Nomad’s. The agent’s eyes were sad. “Don’t you believe in anything?” He directed the question again, to all of them. “Don’t any of you believe in a higher calling than…what you’re doing?”

“A higher calling?” Terry asked. “I believe in God, if that’s what you’re—”

“I’m talking about service to your
country
,” True emphasized. “To the fight for
freedom
. Not just here, but around the world.” His gaze fixed again on Nomad. Maybe he was still feeling a little light-headed and stupid from the Jack, but he had to get this out. “You can say whatever you want to about Jeremy Pett, and I’m not going to defend him for what’s he done, but that young man…that young
Marine
has served his country to the best of his ability, and no matter what he’s done or what he’s planning to do, no man who refuses to be a Blue Falcon can be all bad.”

“A Blue Falcon?” Ariel asked, frowning. “What’s that?”

“A military term for a soldier who leaves a wounded buddy on the battlefield. It means Buddy—” He just couldn’t say that word, it was undignified. “Effer.”

It hit Nomad. Hit him hard and square, right in the brainpot.
Our
barracks sergeant
, Berke had said.

“You never told us where you were a cop before you joined the FBI.” Nomad’s voice sounded thick. “You were in the military, weren’t you?”

True’s gaze did not waver. “Military Police. United States Marine Corps.” He had joined right after college, knowing the MP experience would put him on the fast track for the job he really wanted.

Nomad saw the whole picture, even as it came clear for the others. “This isn’t about saving us. It’s about saving
him
.”

“That’s right,” said True.

“
Shit
,” was Berke’s caustic response. She leaned toward him in full attack mode, her teeth clenched. “You’re
hoping
he’ll try to kill us?”

“Planning for it,” True corrected.

True is False, Nomad thought. “Our road manager,” he said, the old familiar rage growing in his heart, “wants to save his boy. His little wayward nutbag Marine. Doesn’t matter if one or two or
all
of us get drilled. Is that it, Gomer?”

“Not exactly, but close.” True again stared at his shoes. He liked to keep them well-polished. He liked everything neat and clean and polished, but unfortunately life had a habit of getting very messy. He could feel, of all them, the girl staring at him with hurt on her face. He liked the girl. Really, he liked everyone in this room. Life had a habit of getting so very messy. “No one wants any of you to be injured,” he said, keeping his face lowered. “I knew there was a chance Pett might come after you at Stone Church. Every possible precaution was taken.”

“Yeah, except for one fucker getting in with a pistol.” Nomad’s voice was a whipstrike.

“Every possible precaution, except metal detectors. And, yes, I was hoping he’d show. I was hoping he’d try something when we stopped on the highway.”

“Christ!” said Berke. “Are we
that
worthless?”

“With the gear they’ve got—what you’ve seen and what you haven’t seen—my men only need a single shot from the dark to pinpoint a location. I’ve already told you how good a sniper Pett used to be. He set up that shot on Mike Davis with some of his old precision, but he didn’t hit with the first bullet. Did he?” True watched Chappie pour herself another drink. Her hand was slightly trembling. True waited until she was finished before he went on. The way the girl was looking at him—he could see her with his peripheral vision—made him wish this hour had never arrived.

“So Pett’s skills have diminished,” he told them. “It’s unlikely he can make a kill with a first shot, unless he gets lucky or close, which he doesn’t want to do. You knew you were bait when you agreed to do this. I believed then and I believe now that if Pett is still in this country, if he’s still following us and he wants to kill any one of you, he’ll try again. It doesn’t matter where. You go back to Austin and call it a day…guess what? It’s
his
call.” True aimed his cool blue eyes at Nomad, whose mouth was twisted with disgust. “But you’re absolutely right, John. My first priority in this situation is capturing Pett alive and getting him the help he needs.” He paused long enough for Nomad—for all of them—to absorb that. “That’s why
I’m
here, and not an agent from the office who wasn’t a Marine. Let’s just say, veterans look out for each other. For
life
. Or let me say…they
should
. What this young man has gone through, both in Iraq and here after he was discharged…that’s a tragedy I’m not willing to let continue by having someone shoot him in the head and drag him off like a piece of filth. Which he is
not
.” True felt the heat rising in his face, and maybe it was the Jack or maybe it was because he was just plain effing angry.

“I want to get this straight,” said Berke. “You’re saying you value his life over ours? And if he pops up somewhere, your people won’t shoot to kill?”

“My men are well-trained in what I expect them to do,” came the answer. “I want him in a mental hospital, getting the best possible care. Not in a cemetery.”

“Our government in action,” Chappie said, with a bitter smile. Her eyes had gotten small. “Fuck the people!” She lifted her glass in a toast.

Nomad had finished his own drink. He wondered how quick the old man’s reflexes were, and if he could dodge a glass thrown at his skull. “If your men sighted Pett before he could get off a shot at any one of us, they wouldn’t try to put him down for good? They’ve been
ordered
not to kill him if it comes to that?”

“Pretty much,” True said. “Yeah.”

Ariel got up from the sofa and carried her empty glass to the kitchen. True avoided looking at her, and she did not immediately return.

Silence filled the room. Or, rather, it hollowed out the room.

“You don’t understand,” True said, with a harsh note of steadily increasing anger, “what those young men have gone through. You don’t understand what they’ve seen. You
can’t
understand, because you take everything for granted. Everything you have. You’ve never fought for anything worth dying for, have you? Answer me!”

“Who gets to say what that is?” Nomad fired back. “
You
? The President? Some corporate chairman who’s got plans to build a shopping mall and a megaplex in the middle of Baghdad?
Who
?”

“See?” True gave a crooked smile, but his cheeks were flushed. “You don’t get it. Some things, like freedom, are worth dying for whether you think so or not. If everybody turned their backs on their responsibility, where would they be?”

“A lot of them,” Terry said, “would be alive.”

“Easy to sit here and not have to
do
anything. Nothing required of you. Just sit and take.” True almost got up and put an end to this, because it was about to get very messy and it was not going anywhere, but he had something important to say. Something he wanted John Charles and everyone else to hear, whether they wanted to hear it or not. He was aware that Ariel was standing in the kitchen doorway. Good. She should hear this, too.

“What you don’t understand and can never understand is that the young men and women over there are fighting for
you
,” he said. “For your
future
.”

“Oil for my car?” Nomad returned a ferocious grin. “Is that what you mean?”

“That’s part of it. Our way of life, until we can get other energy sources going. But you don’t get that Jeremy Pett and young men like him went over there with courage and purpose, to do a job they were obligated to do as soldiers in the service of this country. It didn’t matter if they wanted to go or not; they weren’t asked, and they didn’t want to be asked, because this is what they were
trained
to do. And I can tell you, Pett’s training as a sniper was far harder than most. It’s incredibly difficult, and only the best of the best pass through. You couldn’t qualify to carry his socks.” A stabbing finger drove that point. “So he’s the best of the best, doing what he’s been trained to do, and then something terrible happens to him there and at home and the spirit drains out of him and leaves him basically a broken shell. But he has no serious and long-lasting physical injuries, and maybe he can cover up his psychological wounds because he’s been trained to be tough and to deny pain, and his own father has taught him a lot of that, so nobody follows up on Sergeant Pett. No, the VA hospitals are understaffed and overworked, so solid, tough guys like Jeremy Pett are given a certificate that says how much the Marine Corps appreciates their service. Maybe they’re awarded a medal too, like Pett was, so they can remember what sets them apart from men like
you
. Then this broken young veteran who’s been trained to kill people at over eight hundred yards goes out into the world looking for
work
.” True’s blue eyes were no longer cool; they were aflame, and they dared Nomad to interrupt him.

The dare was not taken.

“Well, it’s a tough world out here,” True continued. “We all know that. We use whatever skills we have, don’t we? And there’s so much competition for jobs, and people having to take whatever they can get. And maybe, if you were Jeremy Pett, you’d had plans set out for your entire life, that you were going to work harder than anyone else—I mean bone-hurting, back-breaking hard—and earn yourself and your family a home in the Corps. But you know, plans sometimes just don’t work out. Little things go wrong, here and there. Oops, sorry. Here’s your certificate, and this fine medal for you to look at and remember the day you were
somebody
. But now, you need to go out in that world of civilians and find yourself a job, you with your training to be the best of the best and to kill people at over eight hundred yards.”

True leaned forward in his chair. “And maybe in time…after you keep hitting a wall that will not move…and after you realize you live in a world that can’t ever measure up to what you once knew…you start trying to find a new enemy, because only a battlefield makes you feel worth living.” True nodded. “I think that’s his story, and I won’t be another bastard who’s kicked him to the curb. If it’s within my power, I’m going to save his life.”

True stood up, with the shotglass in his hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Fisk. I’m going to bed now.” The couch in the den, he meant. “I’ll set my alarm.” There was no need to set his alarm, he woke up at whatever time he decided to awaken the night before, but he wanted them to have confidence that he would not oversleep. He never overslept. He headed for the kitchen, to place the shotglass in the sink, and Ariel retreated to give him room.

Before True entered the den and closed the door, Nomad said, “One question, man. What if Jeremy Pett aims the rifle at
you
first? Still figuring to save his life if that happens?”

True didn’t answer. The door closed at his back.

Near six in the morning, True’s cellphone buzzed. He was on it at once, his eyes bleary and his mouth tasting like wood shavings from a barroom floor but his senses already sharpening.

< >

Good morning, Truitt,” said the familiar voice. “I’m sending you an email attachment. It’s something you need to see
post haste
.”

“What is it?”

“Connor Addison started talking around midnight. It’s all on the video.”

“Okay.” True rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Send it over.”

“Go ahead.”

“We’ve got a few dozen Pett sightings to go through, but there were two yesterday in Nogales. Made within hours of each other. One by a local policeman. We’ve got some people asking questions down there, strictly unofficial and very low-key.”

“Alright. Good.”

“He could’ve made it over,” said the man at the office in Tucson. “You know, we might need to talk here pretty soon about cutting back. This is taking a
lot
of resources.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

“A lot of manpower. I’ve got other things going on.”

“Sure, I know,” True said. He had slept in his clothes. Every part of him felt wrinkled.

The question came, as he’d known it was going to: “Can you make do with one team?”

True sighed. Heavily, so it could be heard.

“Just asking. Would you consider it and get back to me?”

“Yeah,” True said. He worked a tight muscle in his left shoulder. “I’ll get back.”

When the caller had finished, True put his laptop on the desk and turned it on. He checked that all the lights were where they were supposed to be on the den’s wireless cable modem, and then he yawned so wide his jaw muscles cracked and he went to work.

TWENTY-FIVE.

True didn’t like their two rooms at the Days Inn Motel on West Sunset. He thought the windows were too open to a parking lot on the east side of the building, and though the teams in the Yukons would be sitting out there taking turns on shift with their day binoculars and night goggles he just didn’t feel good about it. He had their rooms changed to the west side, where the windows were blocked by another structure. Then he went to his own room down the hall, unpacked his gear, splashed some cold water in his face from the bathroom tap, and lay on his back on the bed while he called his wife and asked her how her day was going.

Everything’s good here, he told her. California sunshine. Traffic wasn’t so bad. The band’s doing a remote interview from the Cobra Club—yeah, that’s the name of it—with Nancy Grace this afternoon, you might want to watch that show tonight. You remember the talent agency guy I was telling you about? Roger Chester? He set it up. Greta van Susteren’s people are supposed to call me. We’re doing a couple of radio interviews before the gig. Do you like that word? So, anyway, it’s shaping up to be another mad minute like yesterday.

Her phrase: mad minute. A period of chaotic activity where you just put your head down and held on like a cat in the curtains.

He told her everything was under control. He had what he needed. Yes, he knew he’d forgotten his fish oil supplements, he’d left them on the vitamin shelf. His clothes steamer wasn’t working like it should, he thought they’d gotten a bum one from that whole stack of them at Target. But he had what he needed. He told her there were palm trees lining the boulevard outside just like in the movies, and she would go crazy to see the huge Off Broadway shoe warehouse that was almost right across the street. He said for her not to worry, he was going to find a place with a good salad bar.

He didn’t tell her about the IHOP across the way, because she knew how he liked to mix syrupy pancakes, crumbled-up bacon and yellow-drippy eggs into a scrumpdiliumptous feast that laughed a hearty big fat man’s laugh at Omega-3 pills, but he didn’t have that very often. Only when there was an IHOP within range.

Love you, she told him.

Love you, he answered. I’ll call tomorrow.

Needless to say. He called her every day he was out of town.

Be careful, she said.

Always, he answered.

Their ritual, their touching of hands over distance.

He put the phone down and lay back on the bed, and he stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling and wondered if and when he should do it.

Before their sound check? After the gig?

Should he do it at all?

Would he want to know, if he were one of them?

This was one of the decisions they paid him to make. It was his call. Those young people up the hall were adults. It wasn’t right, keeping this from them, but then again…what good
did it do, to show them?

He asked himself another question: if he was the
father
to any one of them, would he want his son or daughter to know?

He lay there a while longer, turning his decision this way and that to give himself an out if he wanted it. Then he got up, took his laptop and left the room.

“Mr. True,” said Nomad when he answered the knock. “How do you
do
?” The air had been a little tight today, a little frosty on that drive up from San Diego, but True had survived tighter and colder climates.

“I have something to show you,” True said. “While I set up, would you go get the girls?”

“The
women
,” True corrected.

When everybody was in the one room and True had the laptop powered up, sitting atop a writing desk that had never seen a pen put to a letter, he asked if all of them could see the screen clearly. It was displaying the white seal of the FBI against a black background.

“What is this, show and tell?” Berke asked, sitting cross-legged on a bed.

“Yes.” True guided the trackball pointer over the shortcut to his image program and clicked. He hit the Browse All Images and a series of fifteen color thumbnails came up. He had gotten these pictures in a secured email attachment from Tucson yesterday morning, when he was at the field office in San Diego. “These are graphic,” he warned, and found himself looking at Ariel.

“I think we can handle
graphic
,” Nomad said with a hint of a sneer. His eye was mostly green today, and he could see out of it. He was still burning about that mess unloaded on them last night. To tell the honest truth he was deeply and bitterly disappointed in Mr. Half-True.

“Okay. First picture.” He clicked on a thumbnail and an image filled the screen in high resolution.

They didn’t know what they were looking at. From his chair, Terry asked, “What is that?” The image showed what looked like…pale, freckled flesh? And on it was…what? A shiny brown tattoo of some kind? The depiction of a wine glass with an ‘X’ at its center, and a ‘V’ at the bottom under two curling tails?

“It’s a brand,” True said. “It would be right about here.” He touched an area just above his left shoulder blade. “Those who know this kind of stuff say it’s a portion of the seal of Lucifer from a book called ‘The Grimorium Verum’, printed in the 18th century.” He clicked on the next image. Again there was a shiny brown mark against pale flesh, but the flesh was puckered by long ragged scars.

“Somebody’s been using a whip on him,” True said before he could be asked. “Somebody who
really
likes to use a whip. This symbol is supposed to be an all-seeing eye, again as related to Satanism.”

“
Hold
it!” Nomad had been sitting on the other bed, next to Ariel, and now he stood up. “What
is
this shit?”

“These are brands, the scars of several different kinds of whips, razor slashes, wounds made by fish hooks and broken glass—and other implements the experts haven’t figured out yet—on the back and chest of Connor Addison. They found them when they took him to the medical trailer after that melee. The Tucson police took these pictures.” True clicked on the third image, which showed in closeup more scars, these crisscrossed as if inflicted by the furious digging of a small metal object in the shape of a sharp-tipped, five-fingered claw.

“Je…
sus
,” Berke breathed.

“On his lower back, right side,” True said. The images were tagged with the locations of where they’d been found on the body.

The next image caused Ariel to shrink back, Nomad to narrow his eyes and Terry to whisper, “Oh, man.”

It was the brand of a large downward-pointing pentagram, with the head of a half-animal, half-human goat at its center, the eyes completely blackened burn marks, the horns outlined and quite artfully decorated in burn, a ‘666’ burned across the forehead, everything done with detail and obvious passion and creativity, if working with red-hot irons and electric pyrography chisels was the artist’s joy.

“This one is at the center of his chest,” True said. “You can see that his nipples have been burned off, as well.”

“I can’t look at any more.” Ariel put her hand up and averted her face.

“Okay, we don’t have to go through all these, but I wanted you to see a few.” True closed the image program and navigated to another file. “Now…this is Connor Addison speaking to the police around midnight, last night. He suddenly wanted to talk, so they wanted to hear what he had to say. You ready?”

Nomad was still on his feet. He’d moved between Ariel and the laptop as if to shield her from these hideous images of tortured meat. “Why are you showing this to us?”

“Because you need to know what’s out there,” True replied calmly.

“We
already
know, man!” Terry said.

“No,” said True. “No, you don’t.”

He double-clicked on the video file, and it began to play.

The scene was a view of one of those small interrogation rooms from every reality cop show on the planet, taken from a camera positioned in an upper corner. Two men, a gray-haired dude in a white shirt with a red-patterned tie, the other in a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sat on one side of the table. The gray-haired cop was rubbing his eyes, as if it had been a long hard slog to midnight. The man in the blue shirt had short-cut brown hair and was husky, with the broad back and shoulders of a wrestler. A notepad, pens and what looked to be a voice recorder was placed between them. On the other side of the table sat a thin, pale young man wearing the eye-shocking orange jumpsuit that Nomad had known and loved so well. Addison’s hands were folded on the table in an attitude of prayer. His neatly-combed blonde hair looked damp, as if he’d just taken a shower before coming clean.

Time and date stamps sat down on the lower left of the frame, and a frame counter on the right. The time was twelve-oh-nine.

“Let’s get started, then,” said the older cop. He had a radio rumble of a voice, like the bass presence was turned up a little too loud. “You can state your name.”

“Apollyon,” said the young man. He spoke with composed authority, in a soft voice that suited his looks but not the raging nightmare under his jumpsuit.

“Say ’gain?” asked the second cop, who sounded like a hardcore cowboy type:
careful there, feller, I got five beans in the wheel.

“Apollyon,” the soft voice repeated, and then he spelled it out.

Cowboy wrote it down on the notepad.

Radio’s fingers tapped the tabletop. “And what’s your home address?”

“You know all that,” said the young man, Connor Addison or Apollyon or whatever he was calling himself.

“We’d like to hear it from you.”

The young man looked up directly at the video camera. He had a black and swollen left eye. A bandage covered his chin and his lower lip was puffed up. Nomad suddenly felt awfully proud of himself, though he knew most of the damage had been done by the Nazi Six.

“Call me Apollyon,” said the soft voice to the camera. “I am not from this place.”

Cowboy tore the page off the notepad and started to leave his chair.

“I can tell you what it means, you don’t have to go look it up on the Internet.”

Cowboy paused, thought about it, almost went anyway because his horses were restless, and then he sat down again, smoothed the page out on the table and stared across at Apollyon.

“I am the destroyer,” said the pale young man. “I am everything you fear, and I am everything you would like to be.”

“That so?” Cowboy asked, and he looked down at his piece of paper.

“That is so,” said Apollyon.

“Would I like to be in jail facing a very serious charge of attempted murder, Connor?” Radio rumbled.

Apollyon looked up again at the camera, and his battered face beamed. “They need their ears checked here.”

“Okay, then.
Apollyon
.” The way Radio said that, he could be announcing an ’80s hair band. “You wanted to talk, so we’re listening.” His chair creaked as he leaned back. He spread his arms out, palms open. “Let’s hear it.”

“I’d like a candy bar. Something sweet.”

“After you talk to us. Let me start you out a little bit, with a question. Why did you intend to commit murder on Thursday afternoon? That
was
your intention, correct? To shoot as many people on that stage as you could?”

“That’s three questions,” said Apollyon.

“Answer the first one, how ’bout it?” Cowboy directed.

“I’d like a Snickers. Really, anything chocolate.”

“Okay, let’s stop this foolishness.” Radio stood up. “Come on, we’re through here.”

Apollyon didn’t move. After a few seconds, he said, “The seventh mansion the Furies possess.”

“What?” Cowboy asked, straining to understand.

“I was told to go to Stone Church,” said the young man. He folded his arms around himself, around that thin body bearing the savage multitude of scars and burns. “I saw the ads on TV. I saw who was going to be there. That band the sniper’s after. Playing on Thursday afternoon, at three o’clock. One show. I looked them up on their website. I looked up the website for Stone Church.” Then he stopped speaking.

“Go ahead,” said Radio. He sat down once more, but he perched on the edge of his chair ready to jump up and rattle the sword again if he needed to.

Apollyon remained silent.

Cowboy tried his hand: “Who was it
told
you to go to Stone Church?”

Apollyon began to very slightly rock himself back and forth. He had a fixed smile on his face. Looking at it, even from this distance of time and space, made Ariel’s flesh crawl.

“Who was it
told
you to go to Stone Church, Apollyon?” Cowboy repeated.

The young man said something. It was so soft they couldn’t make it out.

“What was that?” Radio asked. “
Who
?”

Apollyon spoke a little louder. A name, spoken quickly. Spoken like something that even a destroyer should be afraid of.

A girl’s name.

True froze the video.

“Bethy was—” he began, but Ariel interrupted him because she already knew.

“His sister,” she said. “His raped and murdered sister.”

True stared at her as if seeing something in her face he’d never seen before, or hearing in her voice a firm certainty that he didn’t quite understand, and Ariel was aware of the others staring at her too, and she didn’t fully understand her own feeling either, but watching this video—seeing this young man’s sick smile and hearing his eerily soft voice speaking the name of a dead little girl—made her aware of places in this very room where the light did not completely settle, and where a shadow seemed to shift and shudder at the edge of the corner of the eye.

“This kid’s a lunatic,” Nomad said. “A fucking nutbag.” Even as he made that statement, he was wondering about the lunatics and fucking nutbags who’d decorated Apollyon’s body with fire and blood.

“There’s more,” True told him.

“Show it,” Ariel said.

True clicked on the small circle with the Play arrow in it.

“Who’s Bethy?” Cowboy asked, proving he hadn’t fully done his homework, but as Apollyon sat silent and motionless Radio wrote something on the pad. He slid it in front of his partner, and Cowboy read it and gave a brief nod.