He stared into the woman’s dead eyes. He tried to straighten her head to line up with his, but it wobbled on her neck. He had snapped it like a twig and then, with the woman spasming, had driven his hardened fingers straight into her stomach. Made them rigid and bent them slightly back. Felt the blood soak thick as he probed for a souvenir to take out with him. He locked on something sinewy that resisted at first, but then came free. Abraham had left it there, somewhere in the pool of gore beneath her.
Turning from the corpse, he rose from the bed and moved toward the bathroom. The single light did not work; Abraham regarded himself in the cracked mirror through the darkness. He had to stoop down to get any view at all, since the mirror was positioned for someone considerably shorter than his six foot six. As always, he did not recognize his face. It was not an altogether unpleasant face. It was rather soft, except for the scars that had outlived his several surgeries. A few dribbles of sweat slid down his forehead from his straw-colored hair. Abraham kept it cropped short, brushed straight back.
Only cold water came from the tap, and Abraham washed the blood from his hands as best he could. Even that slight exertion forced the muscles of his arms and shoulders to pulse and ripple. He looked up into the mirror from his bent-over stance and saw his face with the cracks in the mirror down the center of it. The result was a carnival-like impression that should have disturbed him, but didn’t. Abraham felt only then that he was gazing at his true self, and it was a picture he quite liked.
There was a shuffling sound from the corridor, and he spun quickly and tensed. The sound evaporated as quickly as it came, and Abraham found himself facing the door of the dingy room. It was time to leave, anyway. His work for the night was finished. Soon his real work, the work he had been created for, would begin. Abraham looked forward to that with an excitement akin to what he knew in the days before Home Base.
Yes, he reckoned, closing the door behind him in the hallway. Very soon…
The cabin lay in the heart of the woods, blind and isolated. It was simple in design, a two-story structure built against a hillside at the edge of the Rocky Mountains.
A tall man turned from looking out a second-floor window that faced the driveway.
“I can’t see the guards,” he told the others.
“It’s all right,” replied a stout man who was seated on a couch covered in plaid fabric. “They would have called us on the walkie-talkie if there was trouble.”
“What if they didn’t have time?” the tall man demanded. “We could be alone in here, dammit. We could be in danger!” He turned to look out the window again.
“The trip wires would have sent us a signal,” replied the third man in the room, the only one of the three who wore his hair long.
“Trip wires wouldn’t mean anything to them if they got this far. You know that.”
Just then, one of the patrolling guards emerged from the woods and stopped to light a cigarette. The tall man turned away from the window, but did not breathe easier.
“See,” said the stout man on the couch.
“They won’t be able to find us, Benjamin,” said the longhaired man, joining the taller one by the window.
“And what if you’re wrong, what then, Pierce? And don’t try to tell me your security will keep them out if they discovered our location.”
“We’ll be gone from here before they get that chance.”
“Your reassurances no longer hold much weight with me, Pierce,” the fat man said. “Your plan was enacted to guard precisely against this eventuality!”
“And the plan succeeded. To a point.”
“Not a great enough one in my mind. We should strike out at them while we have the opportunity.”
“In time, Benjamin.”
“If we have it, you mean.” The tall man swung toward the stout one seated on the couch. “What do you say to this, Nathan?”
“We have lost track of our pursuers, Benjamin. They could be anywhere now.”
“Stalking us? Searching for us?”
“They have no reason to. You know that as well as I do.”
“All I know is that this hasn’t gone as we expected it to. I refuse to accept anything at face value.”
“Stop whining,” roared Nathan. “You stand there worrying about our lives when there is so much more at stake.” He looked toward Pierce. “We must face the fact that we may have to rethink our entire strategy.”
“All is proceeding as planned, in spite of the setbacks we have suffered,” Pierce responded.
“No,” Benjamin said vehemently. “The final phase has been enacted without proper safeguards, without the very precautions that have dominated our lives.”
“And what choice did we have?” Pierce shot back at him. “I thought we had gotten them all.”
“We all did,” acknowledged Nathan. “But Benjamin is right on that point. The fact is, we didn’t.”
“Could we find him now?” Benjamin asked.
“Eliminating him would not keep the killers from finishing their work. Besides, we have used that very strategy to our own benefit.”
“And how long do you think it is before they realize the truth?”
“Long enough.”
“And in the meantime we stay here. Waiting.” Benjamin looked furtively out the window again.
“We move to our final destination tomorrow.”
“That is supposed to reassure me?”
“I don’t really care whether it does or not.”
Benjamin stormed back from the window. “And what about the door left open back down in Brazil? Are we to feel safe in spite of that, too?”
“On the contrary, we have enlisted the services of a most reliable ally to help us close it.”
“Really?”
“Blaine McCracken.”
Benjamin stood very still and waited for Pierce to explain.
Johnny Wareagle knelt barechested in the cold late autumn air. There may have been a time long past when the chill would have raised goose bumps on his flesh. He actually thought he remembered the last instance. It was a night in the hellfire, when the cold and rain were so bad that the team had to camp for the night. Wareagle took the first guard duty with his waterlogged poncho for company. The cold wetness had brought the gooseflesh.
Then the Black Hearts had come, and the gooseflesh had vanished.
He had never felt it again, he supposed, because his mind associated its rising with the coming of the ambush party that night. Johnny had killed them all himself, before the rest of the unit awoke. Whenever the gooseflesh should have come, his mind retreated into the heat of the battle, and the chill vanished.
The muscles of Wareagle’s massive upper body tensed and relaxed in the breeze. He sought comfort from the trees and brush, from nature, but nature refused him. This was his land, his home, where he came to ground, where the spirits could hold the demons of the past out so he could sample a peace he knew didn’t belong to him. Today, though, the spirits had deserted him, just as they had in Brazil.
Why? Johnny wondered.
The question did not frustrate or perturb him. Their absence implied a lesson he needed to learn. A host of birds landed at the edge of the clearing, and Johnny reached into his pouch for the feed he carried with him whenever he ventured into the woods. He filled his palm and extended it outward, waiting for them to approach and eat from his hand as they always did.
The birds waddled a bit nearer, testing the air, then stopped as if struck by an invisible barrier. They came no closer. Still Johnny held the feed out in his usual way, waiting patiently.
They’re afraid of me.