He was going into the light. He was sure of it. What he did not understand, though, was why the light was green. Wasn’t it supposed to be white? Purity of heaven and all that shit? Or, considering how many of the commandments he’d cheerfully and repeatedly broken over the years, hellfire red?
Then Harry took a breath and actually felt himself inhale and exhale. Felt the pain in his chest, in bone and flesh. Frowned. If he could still feel the pain, did that make sense? Did the dead and the damned have to feel the pain of the wounds that had killed them? Well… sure. Hell. Everything in hell is supposed to suck, so why not?
He tried to turn away from the light, to look at darkness. Tears leaked out from under his closed eyelids and it made him feel weak, small, stupid. Alone.
Lost.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a tiny voice, directing it to God, to the Devil. Or to anyone or anything who could hear him. “I’m sorry. Please give me another chance. I swear I’ll be a better person. I swear. No more drinking. No Internet porn. I’ll give half my money to charity. Save the whales or trees or some shit. Whatever. I swear. Just don’t let me burn.”
Harry’s whole face scrunched up and he began to sob.
Suddenly Violin slapped him so hard that his eyes popped wide and he stared up at her scowling face. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you just lying there?”
“Wait… What? I’m not dead?”
Violin pulled him roughly to his feet. “We’re wasting time,” she said sharply. “Ghul is getting away.”
“I don’t care,” shouted Harry, then touched his body, feeling body armor instead of a sucking chest wound. “Oh,” he said. “Shit.”
Violin crouched at the top of the stairs, her face a mask of dark concern. “I was hoping Professor Nasser was wrong. I was hoping they wouldn’t find any hidden doorway. I was hoping this would be nothing more than a training exercise for you. Truly, Harry… I never thought they would find…”
Her voice trailed off.
“Find what?”
A sound came from below. A hissing noise and then a rumble of guttural words and growls that Harry couldn’t understand. If they were words, there weren’t enough vowels. It was loud, too. As if blasted from massive speakers rather than from any human throat.
“I ä! I ä! F’ nafl’fhtagn!”
“Goddess, no…,” gasped Violin, and she made a strange warding symbol in the air. The voice boomed out again and now dust fell from between the tightly pressed ceiling stones. The light streaming up from below changed in hue and intensity, becoming a luminescent green. It stung the eye to look at it, and the very sight of it made Harry’s skin crawl.
“Y’ ahor h’ mgr’luh ahororr’e. H’ nwngluii ah mgahnnn.”
“Impossible,” cried Violin. “They can’t be that crazy. They’ll kill us all. Come on, Harry, we have to hurry.” She stepped down onto the top step, then — despite everything — threw him a wild grin. “What’s wrong? Do you want to live forever?”
“Actually,” he began, but Violin ran down the stairs before he could finish.
Harry licked his dry lips, tilted his head, and cut a sideways look heavenward. “Look,” he said reasonably, “if I cut the porn stuff down but not out, you still let me live, right? Is that fair?”
There was no answer from the heavens. Harry saw his gun lying on the fourth step down, picked it up, and went down the stairs.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“He is a criminal and you will surrender him.”
The words were not spoken, they were yelled. And the man yelling them was small, wrinkled, and livid. Red splotches bloomed on his cheeks and his eyes bugged out of his head. He seemed to lean out of the flat screen toward the two people seated at a table in the conference room.
Mr. Church, cool and comfortable in his Ermenegildo Zegna bespoke suit, Stefano Ricci Formal Crystal silk satin tie, and hand-sewn Brunello Cucinelli leather shoes. Beside him, Aunt Sallie — a black woman in her late sixties — wore a Nigerian block-print dress and had colorful beads strung between her gray dreadlocks. A carafe of spring water stood between them and each had a glass. There was a large plate of assorted cookies near the carafe. Auntie had a smaller plate in front of her. Every few seconds she would take an animal cracker from the pile, bite the head off, and drop the rest into a growing mound. Church slowly nibbled at a vanilla wafer. Neither spoke.
When the man ranting at them wound down, there was an ugly silence broken only by faint crunching noises.
“Well,” growled the little man on the screen, “did you hear me?”
“Yes,” said Church mildly. His took his time finishing his cookie: chewing thoroughly, washing it down with a sip of water, dabbing at his lips with a linen napkin, then refolding the napkin and placing it neatly on the table.
“Damn it, Church, I asked you a question.”
“My apologies, Mr. Spellman,” said Church, “I believe that we are still waiting for an answer to our question. Why is there an arrest warrant out for Captain Ledger?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I believe it is my business. If you would like to reread the DMS charter and get back to me, that would be fine.”
Norris Spellman was the attorney general for the United States, but he was a man remarkably unsuited to his post. Nearly as unsuitable as the previous occupant of his office. A political appointee who did not have the kind of credentials appropriate to being the top law enforcement officer in the country. The press knew it, people on both sides of the aisle knew it, and he likely knew it himself. He had not been a very good attorney when he worked as a prosecutor in Arizona, and he had gained no ground at all in a series of escalating political bumps. His genius, if the word could be accurately applied, had always been in backing the right horse, even changing parties to make sure he was on the winning team.
“The reasons for the warrant are sealed by executive order,” said Spellman.
“Captain Ledger works for me,” said Church, unruffled. “The nature of the DMS charter expressly lays out the protocol of action if any of my people need to be detained or interviewed by any other government agency. That is also an executive order.”
“Not signed by this president.”
“Not rescinded, either,” countered Church. “Which means it stands as policy. The actions of the agents today are in violation of that order, which means that they were committing crimes. They are, in fact, complicit in a conspiracy to violate an executive order. This discussion compounds that and calls into question your own level of involvement in these crimes.” During the ensuing silence, he took another cookie and tapped crumbs from it on the edge of the plate.
“You think the president won’t cancel your charter?” sneered Spellman.
“I want you to listen to me for a minute, Norris,” said Aunt Sallie in a voice that would turn burning logs into icicles. “That pickup was illegal. We all know it, just as we know the pickup order is likely a whim or a mistake, and your boss would rather be eaten by rats than admit that he ever made a mistake. I know this puts you in a bind because you’re not being given a choice. If POTUS says ‘jump,’ you have to jump or you’re out like the last fool whose ass polished your chair. No… don’t interrupt me, Norris; you know better than that. The pickup was bogus. If POTUS is going to rescind it, he has to notify us before doing so. That’s the agreement. If he wants to amend it, ditto. Captain Ledger reacted to an illegal act and showed remarkable restraint. If they’d drawn on him, he was legally allowed to defend himself using any appropriate force. The fact that he chose to stay at the lowest possible rung on the force continuum ladder speaks to his integrity as an agent of this government. The fact that he hasn’t filed federal charges against your goons also speaks to an admirable restraint and the best practices of the Department of Military Sciences. Push this, Norris, and he will file charges, and you know that we have judges who will back his play. And, if you don’t know how scary our lawyers are, then you had better ask around, because we can out-lawyer you into the dirt. Now, either you tell us why POTUS issued the pickup order or we are going to start our own investigation. Ask what happens when we take a personal and particular interest in someone.”