Chapter 15

Allen woke to the same feelings of frustration and helplessness that had accompanied him to sleep the night before. Margaret had managed to pull together a barely competent auxiliary group to accompany Kevin and the others, which made Allen more, not less, nervous for the group’s prospects out in the desert. The Raven had also agreed to go along, which did make Allen feel a little better, but only a little. The Raven was a wildcard, plain and simple, but despite that Allen trusted him. Well maybe trust wasn’t the right word. Allen thought he just might understand the Raven. More than the others did anyway.

After this bit of foreboding news it had been nothing but a continuous stream of equally worrisome updates through the night and into the morning. Ellis and Benjamin had been rerouted on the fly somewhere in the deep south and things didn’t seem to be going well for them. Their plane had been held up before take off and the pilot had chosen to make an unplanned stop to check what he thought might be faulty equipment. This had kept Kevin and the others, including the noticeably non-human Raven, hiding out in yet another seedy motel room while they waited. By the time the two others had arrived, the sun had set and Kevin had called off the mission until morning. Luckily Margaret had not protested.

The entire team had then bunked down for the night only to wake and find that the Raven had gone. Besides the obvious dilemma this created not just for the ground team, but the entire EDTF organization or whatever they were, there was the odd fact that the Raven seemed to have stolen a number of the team’s personal effects; nothing of value and no weapons of any kind, but a strange development nonetheless. Checking his phone, he found that Hughes and the others had set off towards the crossover site. Now that things were in motion, Allen suddenly felt that they should not be.

“You up?” he asked the form lying next to him in the hide. The constant buzzing of their phones had kept both of them half awake since they’d first tried to sleep the night before.

“I am now,” Jomo yawned, sitting up. “News?”

“Call your boss, I’m pulling the plug. She won’t argue as much with you and I’m not asking.” Allen had made up his mind after he’d spent the last few hours reading all of the update messages on his phone. If some hikers got killed because they chose to regroup, that was all very regrettable, and in this case it should have been preventable, but better them than any of his people. A harsh reality to accept and act on, but they were his genuine feelings nonetheless. This had all gone too far already and someone needed to pump the brakes.

“Don’t get cold feet now Allen,” Jomo said, trying to calm him and very plainly not taking out his phone. “Things are already in motion…”

“If the Raven were with them I might feel differently,” Allen said, “but if he’s cut and run, we can’t risk him going rogue or setting us up. I want everyone to regroup for a sensible redeployment that takes this new development into account. This is starting to feel a little too much like last time for my liking.”

“Margaret isn’t going to let them come back without the Raven,” Jomo said. “The minimum she’ll expect is some sort of attempt to find out where he went. Kevin will check in once he reaches the crossover site, which should be soon. These things don’t seem to stick around long once they’re here, so you’ll get to make a more informed decision then without putting the field team at risk. Just try to see this clearly Allen.”

“I told you I wasn’t asking,” Allen began, trying to remain firm without being threatening, but he stopped as he heard something drop into the water behind him with a noise reminiscent of summer times at the local pool where he and his schoolmates had spent hours doing cannonballs into the deep end.

“Did you hear that?” Jomo asked.

“I did,” Allen said. “We need to find out if something came…” Allen stopped short as a familiar, shrill beeping emanated from his pocket for the second time in twenty four hours.

“There’s our answer,” Jomo said, rushing to the hide’s ladder.

“Where are you going?” Allen said even as he followed the man out of their perch in the hide.

“We need eyes on that thing. Now,” Jomo said, popping open the trunk of his car and removing a run of the mill hunting rifle. “We lose that thing in this much water and it’s over. Next time we hear about it will be when it maims someone.”

Knowing the other man spoke the truth, Allen grabbed his own rifle from where he’d left it against the base of the tree that held their hide. “No need to panic yet,” Allen said, though he was feeling a bit panicky himself at the moment. Jomo was right about losing this thing if they didn’t move quickly. “Might be like Florida. Those things popped out somewhere that they shouldn’t have and it hamstrung them. Could happen again, you never know.”

“I hope we’re that lucky, but we can’t bank on it,” Jomo said as he set off towards the lake’s edge.

Acknowledging that the man was right, Allen followed him. “And Jomo,” he added, “it’s time to call your boss.”

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Olivia was on high alert as she trekked into the desert with the odd group of men Wynters had sent with her to Tucson. No one had told her or Noah much of anything yet and Atticus had been conspicuously out of touch the last few hours. Before the call from Kim, she and Noah had been driving in shifts through the night to get as far away from Doumont as they could before they absolutely had to sleep. Margaret’s assistant had then redirected them to a private airstrip just slightly off their original route. It had felt weird to leave Hayden on his own, but their pilot’s wife had promised to look after him until he was good to drive on his own. One complicated and unexpectedly extended flight later, and they had reached Tucson to find none other than Kevin Hughes, Hector Morales, Micah Talbot, Father Jabari and the Raven holed up in a motel room uncomfortably like the one they had just fled in Louisiana.

As if this hadn’t been an unsettling enough start to their new mission, they’d woken up to find that the Raven had not only skipped out on them, but robbed them to boot. As they hiked briskly through the desert morning, she was actually a little shocked this whole thing hadn’t been called off. They were already far closer to a major city than ever before and while to her that seemed ample reason for more caution, Wynters and company seemed to be using it as an excuse to do the exact opposite. Why Allen or Atticus would allow this was beyond her, but she’d gotten the same alert on her phone as the others and understood what was at stake. She could articulate her problems with how all of this had been handled later; now she just needed to make sure they all got home ok.

“Just ahead now,” Hughes growled. He had been in an understandably terrible mood from the start. Olivia wouldn’t have wanted to lead this shitshow and doubted she’d have reacted any differently than Kevin was now. “Another half mile and we should be right on top of it.”

“You check out Jabari?” Noah said in a low voice from just behind her. He had been hanging towards the back of their group with Olivia since they’d set out this morning. Of everyone here, he was the obvious choice for least qualified and Olivia worried that he shouldn’t be out here at all. The others obviously agreed with her; they hadn’t even given him a real gun. While Olivia had a small, fully automatic sub-machine gun hanging from her shoulder, Noah still had only the standard issue military pistol Allen had lent him after he’d returned his previous firearm with his badge in North Carolina. For his part, Noah didn’t seem bothered, which in Olivia’s mind made him either very brave or very stupid. The verdict was still out on that one.

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“Not very priestly in his new digs is he?” Olivia said back. The priest had obviously not donned his robes out into the desert, but she was still surprised to see him in field gear. Instead of looking out of place, like Rigali would have, he looked positively menacing. In the black robes he had donned at the motel, his massive frame made him look voluminous, portly even, but now with his rock hard gut and barrel chest fully exposed, he looked more like a secret police interrogator than a man of the cloth.

“I bet he was not a fun guy to be on the wrong side of back in the day,” Noah agreed. “Hard to believe they just tossed him a rifle and brought him along.”

“They didn’t just toss him a rifle,” she laughed despite herself, “he’s ex-military. Harder to believe that Allen isn’t here for this. Something must have happened.”

“Michigan maybe?” Noah asked.

“We had that covered. No, it’s something else. My bet is bullshit with him and Wynters,” Olivia said.

“You think?” Noah said. “Allen doesn’t seem like the buck the system type.”

“Margaret is used to being in charge of everything, not to mention being the smartest person in the room no matter what room she’s in,” Olivia said. “She probably hasn’t been out of her element like this in decades and my impression is that she isn’t adjusting well.”

“Where’d you get that from?” Noah said.

“Just a hunch,” Olivia shrugged as Kevin slowed to a stop and threw up a hand to halt their advance.

“We’re here,” Kevin called back from the head of the group. “Come look at this shit and tell me I’m not losing my goddamn mind.”

Olivia and Noah picked up the pace to join the others and found them all gathered around some very familiar looking objects. “My book,” Olivia said, recognizing the battered paperback instantly.

“My wallet,” Hector said, sounding relieved and stooping down to pull it out of the odd pile.

“It’s all of our stuff,” Micah nodded. “Question is why did he take all of our shit to just leave it here?”

“To let us know he didn’t bail,” Noah shrugged as he picked up the small blue tube that held his toothbrush. “I know he has that gift of understanding thing that helps us understand him and vice versa, but I don’t think that translates to writing. Maybe this is his attempt at getting us a message.”

“Doesn’t exactly seem like a warning or a threat, does it,” Jabari said, picking up his rosary from the ground and putting it in his vest pocket. “I think Mr. Benjamin might be correct.”

“Could be,” Kevin said. Gazing down at the cracked ground around their small pile of trinkets. “Two groups of tracks. Larger group heads north, a good thing I’d say, and the other goes off east. Looks to me like the Raven went after the smaller group.”

“You want to split up?” Hector asked.

“Not in the fucking slightest,” Hughes spat. “We go after the big group first and deal with the Raven later. If he’s on the hunt, it might save us time. If they are friends of his, well, we’ll deal with that if and when we have to.”

“Should we call Allen or Wynters before we head out?” Micah asked. “Allen did tell us to keep him in the loop.”

“Fuck that,” Kevin said. “I’m done doing this shit via committee. Wynters put me in charge and I say we get this done and go home.”

No one had any arguments against Kevin’s plan so they headed north, trusting in their leader’s tracking abilities as they followed him farther into the desert. Olivia hadn’t been out this way often and she didn’t think she liked it much. The sand and brush was quickly giving way to towering rock formations and menacing looking cacti. Worse, the absence of water was palpable in a way Olivia had never experienced before. This place was clearly not meant to support life, not theirs anyway, and being out here suddenly seemed foolish in the extreme and the feeling only grew the further they got from their vehicles and the road that would lead them back to civilization.

After a few hours they seemed to be making their way towards a large group of red rocks in the distance. Seven distinct spires could be made out from among the towering body of stone, all the bases joining together in a large mass that made up the bulk of the formation. It was impossible to see from here, but Olivia guessed that the base of this structure was not solid but chock full of narrow crevices, tunnels and arches. In other words, the perfect place for something to hide. “Twenty bucks says that’s our destination,” she said to Noah, indicating the seven spires looming ahead of them.

“Shady at least,” Noah panted. He wasn’t dragging behind too much yet, but this was clearly not a pace he was used to and while the temperature was actually pretty comfortable, the desert sun still beat down on them relentlessly.

“You doing ok?” she asked him, tossing him her canteen.

“Not sure what I’m doing out here to be honest,” he said, wiping his brow and swigging water carefully, “just don’t want to slow everyone down. I’m not totally useless with a gun though, so we’ll see how it goes once we get wherever we’re going.” He said all this like things going wrong didn’t mean death or maiming at the hands of god knew what. If she didn’t know the opposite to be true, she’d think he was simply ignorant of what they were up against.

“You watch my back, I’ll watch yours,” she said, taking the canteen back. “Though I’m guessing these gorillas have it handled. We’re just here to pad the stats and make the guys back in Nebraska and Michigan feel better.”

“Kind of what I was thinking,” Noah said.

They didn’t talk much after this, mostly because Noah couldn’t spare the breath, but Olivia was ok with that. It was undeniable that the mass of stone she had noticed before was their ultimate destination. While it was possible that these things had gone around the sandstone peaks or merely passed through, Olivia had a strong feeling they were still there.

As they reached the base of the towering formation, Hughes held them up. Now that they had finally reached the structure, they could see that the tracks had all split and entered the maze of stone at various places. None of these entrances looked appealing and it seemed like once they got inside, there was a chance things could get even dicier. This was not going to be quick or easy.

“Multiple targets went through here,” Hughes said, pointing to a split in the rock to the east. “Then two lone targets entered there and there,” he added, gesturing to a low archway off to the west and another nearby split in the rock in turn. “We also had a big fella who went through there,” he said finally, pointing to the most obvious set of tracks that made a noticeable trail into the largest opening into the rock wall just before them. Whether the tunnel that lay beyond this largest opening passed through the entire mountainous feature, it was hard to say, but it seemed possible. “Looks like it’s going to get real tight in there no matter how we go in, so I think we should split into two groups. Hector, Micah and the priest can go after the group that passed through the eastern opening and I’ll take Ellis and Benjamin after the loners. Not going to be easy to get to each other if things go south, so watch each other's backs and don’t put yourself in a spot you can’t get out of. Once we’ve handled these smaller ones, we can regroup and go after the big boy. Understood?”

“You sure about this man?” Hector said.

“Not one fucking bit,” Hughes said grimly, “but there’s no turning back now. Stay safe in there.”

“You too,” Hector said, patting his friend on the shoulder before leading Talbot and Jabari through the narrow split in the rocks and out of sight.

“Want to slide through the sandy arch or squeeze through the rugged crevasse?” Kevin asked sarcastically. “Hard to choose when your options are this appealing, I know.”

“My vote’s for the arch if you can still get that low, old man,” Olivia said, smirking at Hughes.

“I can still get as low as I ever could,” Hughes said. “Arch it is. Ladies first.”

Olivia knew he was kidding, but she strode forward anyway and was down and through the low lying arch in seconds flat. Waiting for the other two to scramble after her, she looked around at her new surroundings, gun at the ready. The air was open above her, but the rock walls to her left and right created a narrow path forward that gave them a single route to follow. If something was in here, it wasn’t going to be hard to find.

Noah came through next, with Hughes close behind. “This would be pretty damn cool if there wasn’t something trying to kill us in here,” Noah said, looking up at the crumbling spires of rock above him as he dusted himself off.

“Whatever you say kid,” Kevin said, knocking Noah aside as he made his way back to the front of their group. “Now keep your mouth shut from here on out. All I need from you outside of that are two very simple things; stay close and kill anything that fucking moves.”