“The unfortunate incidents on San Melas change nothing,” the voice began. “You know what you have to do, where and when you have to meet up. Your weapons are ready for you, along with fresh clothes, cash, and additional paperwork where required. Everything becomes routine from here. Just stick to your orders as precisely outlined unless you hear differently from your station leader providing the proper access code. The abort and regroup signals are uniform nationwide to avoid confusion. Please follow your orders in the days ahead exactly. The time is almost upon us. Be ready and stay alert. That is all.” The troops swung toward the doors at the front of the hangar as if on cue, and Blaine swung with them. He was still digesting the shadowy speaker’s words, when his row began to move in single file toward the exit. There was only this door to pass through and he would be free.
He was almost to it when a hand grasped his shoulder and shoved him around. He found himself looking up at the horribly mangled grin of a figure with only half a face and a gun in his hand.
“I’ve been expecting you, McCracken,” said Wells.
Part Four
Newport
Tuesday Morning to Wednesday Morning
Chapter 19
The figure ran through the thickening snow, a furtive eye cast to his rear at regular intervals as if expecting a great beast to pounce upon him. He had run often since coming to these woods years before. His route was never the same, no concrete destination or purpose. He ran mostly when memories of the hellfire grew too near, ran as if to widen the gap separating him from them.
But today was different. Today he ran from a sense of wrongness, a feeling that something was out of balance. He was a huge man but his feet made only the slightest impression in the hard-packed Maine snow and his steps produced barely a sound. The old ones had taught him that anything was possible if one achieved balance, that of the spirit as important as that of the body and the world about. The three existed as one, none set into place unless all were. Today all were not.
Because something was coming. Not a great beast with dagger teeth and razor claws; something less defined but equally deadly. He could liken this feeling only to that which often preceded an ambush in the hellfire. He had survived on those occasions by heeding the sense of imbalance when it came, slight tremors which warned him when Charlie was about to spring from one of his innumerable tunnels.
But there was nothing slight about what he felt now. It reached out for him from the shadows, only to dart back when he swung around. Soon, though, he knew it would show itself.
And he knew he would be there when it did.
“It’s been a long time, Wells. Last time we met I think you had your whole face.”
Wells shoved him hard and all at once a half-dozen men with rifles enclosed McCracken. A van skidded to a halt. One of the men threw open the back doors.
“Get in,” Wells ordered.
Blaine started to, but then turned back to the guards.
“Has Pretty Boy here led you on any massacres lately?”
It went back to ’Nam in 1969. Wells and McCracken had been in different divisions of the Special Forces. Blaine had known the war was unwinnable from his first month in. The Viet Cong had built tunnels under the whole country. Troops appeared out of nowhere and disappeared the same way. Traps, mines, ambushes — it was a guerrilla war, the Cong’s war. But Blaine went about his business nonetheless with as much dignity and honor as the circumstances would allow.
His division had come upon the town of Bin Su in early March, and to this day the sight haunted him. The entire town — women and children included — had been slaughtered. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay everywhere, obviously there had been torture and, most hideous of all, a collection of heads had been staked to fence posts, where they had been used for target practice. Every code of ethics had been violated. Someone had to pay.
Blaine was warned to back off and told the adjutant to stick a Huey up his ass. The Cong was the enemy, but they were also people and there were rules in the field that had to be obeyed. Forget them and something far more important than this war would be lost. It took a month, and the help of a crazy lieutenant who happened to be an American Indian, but he tracked down the unit responsible for Bin Su. It was under the command of Vernon Wells.
Then Blaine made his only mistake. He should have killed Wells instead of turning him in. Or have let the lieutenant scalp him, as he had begged Blaine to let him do. As it was, the whole incident was covered up. The guilty unit was broken up, and Wells himself was discharged to the States. The Indian had never let him live that one down. Blaine seethed, but quietly. He had done everything he could.
The van was moving. Wells handcuffed McCracken’s wrists and made sure all four guards held their weapons trained on him. Light in the van was sparse, but occasionally a streetlamp would spill onto the big man’s face and illuminate the slight grin lurking beneath his twisted features.
“I always knew I’d get my shot at you,” he taunted.
“Didn’t I see you in Phantom of the Opera?”
Wells’s grin faded. “Your impetuousness surprises even me, McCracken. I told them all along that Scola couldn’t finish you. I knew she hadn’t even when the reports said otherwise. And when word came in about San Melas, I knew you’d be on board that plane.”
“I guess I should be flattered. When do I get to find out where we’re going?”
“We’re almost there.”
“You work for Randall Krayman, don’t you, Wells? Or is your hairdresser the only one who knows for sure?”
Wells’s hand lashed out fast; not the one holding the gun, but the other, appearing out of nowhere and knocking Blaine to the carpeted floor of the van. The blow was barely a graze, far more violence restrained than released, yet its effect was dizzying and sharp.
“Can I take that as a yes?” Blaine asked.
Wells remained silent and expressionless.
“Isn’t this when you’re supposed to say I could make it easy on myself by spilling my guts now?”
“Why should I bother?” Wells returned, words slurred noticeably. “You won’t talk now, and you probably won’t talk later. I know you well, McCracken, better than anyone else does probably. We’ve had a half-dozen chances to kill you that no other man could have slipped out of.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Wells looked away as the van turned left and continued on for a mile or so, slowing up when it reached a spacious parking lot enclosing what looked to be a large Newport sports complex. Blaine made out tall, reflective letters on one of the buildings:
JAI ALAI
“We going to the matches?” Blaine asked.
“They’re out of season,” Wells responded. “We’ve had to improvise.”
“Save your money, friend,” Blaine told him. Then, in a whisper, “The sport’s rigged.”
A demonic smile crossed the normal half of Wells’s face.
“It is tonight.”
They pushed Blaine from the van and shoved him along toward the entrance to the fronton. A man inside the lobby was holding one of the doors open. Blaine was led through them, by a row of admission windows, through a set of turnstiles, and into the deserted and dimly lit betting area.