A winter storm was walloping Indiana, but the air outside of Cincinnati lacked the bitter cold that was quickly approaching. He could smell the pine from the bushes next to the entrance, like the smell of Christmas, as he made his way to his Chevy Suburban. He slowed, inhaling deeply. The aroma reminded him of his childhood, which was why he almost missed the man approaching from the south.
The thin man ambling past the long line of cars focused his eyes everywhere but on Eric. He had a pinched face and an Adam’s apple so prominent that it looked like he had swallowed an onion, and he wore glasses with black plastic frames thirty years out-of-date.
Eric did a quick appraisal. The man had no surveillance skills, so he wasn’t a professional. He walked like he had a leg injury, or perhaps a back injury, not with the lightness and bounce of a trained fighter.
The man appeared to be a civilian, but there was something about him, a sense of dogged determination, that pinged Eric’s radar.
Plus, the man’s trenchcoat covered a lot of detail. There was a lot of room for a gun, or even a double shoulder knife rig like Filipino assassins used.
There was no way Eric was going to let the man take him by surprise. He continued on to his Suburban, and when the man passed, he spun around and caught the man by his trenchcoat and yanked hard.
The man slipped, his arms flailing as he tried to steady himself, and Eric took the opportunity to pull a little harder on the bottom of his coat. When the man fell on his back, Eric yanked a pen from his jacket and flicked the button on the side.
A black spike three inches long snicked out, and Eric held the spike against the man’s throat hard enough to pierce the skin, but not hard enough to open the artery in the side of the neck.
“Stop moving,” Eric growled, “or I’ll push a little harder and you’ll bleed to death before anyone can stop it.”
The man went limp and stared up with wide eyes. “What — what’s going on?”
Eric felt under the trenchcoat, checking for a gun or holster, but found nothing. “Who are you?”
The man’s eyes were the size of saucers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please! That hurts!”
The man’s whiny voice grated on his nerves, but there was something about the way the man spoke.
He’s acting. “Last chance. Tell me who you are, or you’re about to have a terrible day.” He pushed the spike deeper, just a few ounces of extra pressure, and the man squinted at him before smiling.
“Very good, Mr. Wise. I’m unarmed. I promise. Let me stand up, and I’ll do as you ask.”
Eric yanked the man to his feet, doing a quick pat-down. True to his word, the man was unarmed. Eric pulled the spike back but kept it near the man’s neck. “How do you know my name?”
The man eyes never left his. “Let me catch a ride with you on your way back to the airport. I’ll explain on the way.”
Eric snorted. “Not a chance in hell I’m allowing you in my vehicle. Answer, or—”
“Or you’ll kill me in the middle of a nursing home parking lot? In the middle of the afternoon?” He lowered his arms and glanced about. “A dead body would cause you problems. Or maybe you think you can disappear me. That’s what your organization does, isn’t it?”
That got Eric’s attention. “Fine. Get in the truck. Answer my questions by the time we get to the airport or I’ll have you detained. Indefinitely.”
Chapter Three
“Who are you?” Eric repeated as he whipped the Suburban through the heavy afternoon traffic.
“Unimportant,” the man said. “To a man like you, that probably sounds crazy, but it is.”
Eric wanted to beat the answers out of the man. “What do you think is important?”
“I’m just one of a faceless horde,” the man said. “We don’t have a leader, really. Not like your group.”
“You talk a lot,” Eric said, “but you aren’t saying much, and you don’t have much time. Get to it.”
The man nodded his head and said, “You’ve heard of the Order of the Dancing Bones?”
Eric sighed. “They’re nutcases.”
The man laughed heartily. “We’re a lot of things.”
“You assassinate people,” Eric said. “You kill the ones you think are a danger to humanity.”
“As does your organization,” the man said blandly.
“We know what we’re doing,” Eric said.
“So do we.”
“We have an official capacity—”
“Oh, please.” The man stared at the passing traffic as they neared downtown. “You report to the president and no one else. You think that gives you the right to do as you see fit without repercussions?”
Eric started to say something about the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens before stopping himself. The man’s point wasn’t lost on him. “We’re necessary.”
The man turned to him and smiled. “Unfortunately, so are we. Let’s assume that I know more about you and your group than you do about ours. How under Fulton Smith, the ‘president’s man’ grew from a single man to an entire organization. I know about your grandfather. Your father. And now, you. Let’s assume that our goals are the same, but where you try to protect the United States, we try to protect the future of humanity itself.”
“By assassinations,” Eric said.
“If necessary,” the man said. “Your intelligence says the Order is less than one hundred years old. We’re much older.”
“You took your name from the Skull and Bones Society at Yale—”
“They took their name from us,” the man said. “Like I said, we’re much older. We must have done something right. Humanity is still here.”
Eric shook his head. “You’re killers.”
“We remove those stains upon humanity before they can destroy us all, and we’ve done a damned good job. Except for…”
Eric swerved to avoid a wrecker pulling a van. “Except for what?”
“Hitler,” the man murmured. “Except for Hitler.”
“The Dancing Bones wanted to kill Hitler?” Eric asked. “That’s absurd.”
“We recognized the threat,” the man said, “and we did nothing.”
The man’s rough voice almost cracked, and Eric reconsidered the man’s story. “Even if I believe you, what’s any of that have to do with me?”
“Fulton made you the director of the OTM.”
“Your point?”
The man turned to stare at him. “The power concentrated in the directorship represents a threat—”
“The OTM isn’t a threat,” Eric insisted.
“I wasn’t talking about the OTM,” the man said. “The OTM is just a tool. The man who leads the OTM is the… unknown variable. Fulton Smith proved to be tolerable. At least, until the end.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” the man said, “that as Smith reached the end, his judgment became clouded. We don’t know exactly what the OTM has been working on, but we worry he might have made decisions that would place him on our list.”
The man raised his hand before Eric could speak. “That includes your promotion. We have an idea of the kind of man you are, but it remains to be seen if your leadership represents a positive or a negative.”
“Is that a threat?” Eric asked, turning right and crossing the bridge over the Ohio River and into Newport, Kentucky.
“Of course,” the man said with a hint of sadness. “I’m violating protocol by telling you this, but humanity is on the cusp.”
“The cusp of what?”
“Of finally breaking free of things like race, and religion, and greed. The twentieth century was almost the end of us, but humanity bounced back. We’re no longer on the brink of extinction. If we can just survive a little longer, I think we may actually…”