“Those weren’t cops,” I gasped. I had a very weird taste in my mouth, and I wondered if I’d discovered the flavor of cow poop.
“Who weren’t cops?” a deep voice intoned.
We looked up. Two people on horseback towered over us, an old man and a kid about my age.
“This is a national emergency,” Nueve said to the old man.
The old man glanced toward the burning wreckage of the downed chopper. “Sure looks like some kind of emergency.”
“We need to commandeer your horses,” Nueve went on.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the muddy shallows where I stood, shivering, in my summery frock.
“You need to what our horses?”
“Commandeer. Take them,” Nueve said pleasantly. In the distance, over the crackle and pop of the smoldering chopper, you could hear the sirens of the phony cops’ bikes, and the sound was getting louder.
The kid barked a laugh. “You and what army, Tinker Bell?”
Nueve answered with a sarcastic echo of the kid’s laugh, then pulled a weapon from his jumper. It was shaped like a gun, but it looked more like a blaster from Star Wars or those shiny metallic pistols from Men in Black. He pointed it at the kid’s head.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” the old man said, matching Nueve’s calm, pleasant tone. A revolver had appeared in his hand, and the revolver was pointed at Nueve’s head.
Some of the color returned to the kid’s face. I was still a little tense myself, and my mind barely registered the fact that the world had gone very quiet—no more sirens, just the sound of the burning chopper and cows lowing in the distance.
The kid’s eyes grew wide as it dawned on him. “Hey, Granddaddy, that ain’t no girl—that’s some ol’ boy in a dress!”
He started to laugh and as he laughed a jagged hole appeared in his jeans, just above his left kneecap. He screamed and fell out of the saddle, clutching his leg and writhing in agony in the poopy mud.
“Sonny!” the old guy cried.
Nueve leaped forward and hurled the grandfather from his saddle. The old man’s gun went off as he went down, but the muzzle was pointed toward the sky.
“I told you it was an emergency!” Nueve hissed at him. He swung into the saddle with the grace of an accomplished horseman.
“Come, Kropp!” he cried.
A bullet flung up a clod of mud an inch from my left foot. I felt another rip through the hem of my dress. I heaved myself onto the other horse with a lot less alacrity than Nueve.
“I don’t know how to ride!” I shouted.
“An excellent time to learn!” Nueve shouted back and flung the reins into my lap.
And then he was gone at full gallop, riding toward a dense stand of trees fifty or so yards from the pond.
I scooped up the reins and gave one quick snap against the horse’s neck while popping his sides with my heels, like I’d seen in a dozen movies. It worked. The horse bolted forward, nearly hurling me over its bouncing rump. I clung hard to the reins, yelling at the top of my lungs, not trying to steer or guide it, just employing the Kropp method of dealing with disaster: hang on for dear life and pray you don’t get killed.
I was almost to the trees when I heard the motorcycles. I risked a glance over my shoulder: two of them, coming up fast on big Harleys, wearing the standard-issue black jack boots and tinted visors. Only these weren’t cops; they were agents of darkness, and that meant one thing: they wouldn’t stop until they were dead—or I was.
I wasn’t sure how much horsepower a Harley had, but I figured it was more than what I had. Nueve had disappeared into the trees, leaving me totally defenseless, and what kind of rescue mission was that? A trail snaked through the winter-bare trees, and I hit it at full gallop as bullets hit the trunks on either side, peppering me with five-inch splinters and chunks of wooden shrapnel.
The trail widened and suddenly Nueve was riding beside me. I guessed he had pulled off to wait.
“We’ll never outrun them!” I shouted over the thundering of the hooves and the roar of the killers’ bikes.
“I’m drawing one off!” he cried. “Here!”
He tossed the shiny weapon he had pointed at the farmer into my lap. “Wait till I’m clear,” he called. “The rounds are heat seeking!”
And then he was gone, whipping the horse off the trail and into the trees, riding with his cheek practically laid on the horse’s neck to avoid being knocked off by low-hanging branches.
A bullet whizzed by my ear. I twisted around and pulled the trigger without bothering to aim. The gun kicked in my hand and I saw a tiny contrail stream from the muzzle toward the rider no more than twenty feet back.
There was a soft whumph! on impact. The bullet tore through the bike’s gas tank. The rider was close enough for me to see my reflection in his visor as the Harley exploded into a fireball, hurling his body forward, a fiery human projectile that came straight at me.
I goaded the horse’s flanks and snapped the reins against its neck, and he answered with a burst of speed. The burning rider missed hitting my horse’s rump by a foot.
Nueve and the other rider were nowhere in sight, but I didn’t pull up and I didn’t slow down. The trees were thinning out and I could see open pastureland ahead. Now what? Just keep riding or stay in the trees?
With ten yards between me and the naked sky, I yanked the reins hard to the right, and my horse lunged off the trail. He must not have liked dodging trees at full gallop any more than I did, because all at once we were back on the trail—or it may have been a different trail; I was very disoriented by that point.
Same trail or different trail wasn’t the thing that mattered though. The thing that mattered was the dude on the Harley coming straight at me at fifty miles per hour.
I raised my weapon. Even without the heat-seeking rounds, I don’t think I could have missed, we were that close.
My finger tightened on the trigger as he spun the bike around, waving an arm over his head frantically before yanking back on the throttle and spraying me with dirt and slimy dead leaves from his back wheels. I noticed then he wasn’t wearing a helmet and the back of his head looked awfully familiar, but it was already too late: I’d pulled the trigger.
Spitting smoke, the round took off toward the back of Nueve’s head.
The Spaniard had guts, I’ll give him that. He waited until the mini bomb was almost on him, then dove off the bike into the trees. He didn’t fool the missile though. It veered away from the bike and toward him, hitting the tree trunk he dived behind and exploding on impact. The tree jerked, swayed, then tumbled down across the trail, the sound of its branches cracking and splitting very loud in the cold air.
I dismounted by the fallen tree and walked unsteadily to where Nueve lay curled in a ball. When I bent over to check his pulse, his hand shot up and grabbed me by the throat.
“I told you to be careful, Kropp. You could have killed me!”
I lost it. It really was too much, after all I’d been through that week, to have this jerk scold me like I was some little kid.
I hadn’t asked for any of it—in fact, I had wanted the exact opposite, and here he was acting like I had dragged him into this crap.
I grabbed his wrist and tore his hand away, and then I hit him as hard as I could in the jaw. He fell back onto his butt with a startled expression.
“Maybe that’s my problem,” I snarled at him. “Maybe that’s why I can’t extract myself from you nutcases—I keep killing the wrong people! You knew who Jourdain Garmot was the whole time, didn’t you? You knew he was Mogart’s son, didn’t you?”
“Does that matter?” he asked, rubbing his jaw, but somehow smiling his annoying ironic smile.
“You’re damn right it matters! You knew who he was and where he was, and you could have stopped him!”
I pulled my fist back to pop him again. He scooted backward and rose to his full height.
“I am authorized to kill you if I have to,”
he said.
“Really? Well, that’s where I’m one up on you. I don’t need anyone’s authorization!” I raised the handheld rocket launcher and took dead aim at his little Spanish smile.
“Do that and you will never reach the airport alive,” he said.
“How did you find me at the warehouse?” I asked.
“We followed Vosch, of course.”
“Jourdain said they weren’t followed.”
Nueve shrugged.
“What is the Thirteenth Skull?”
He stared at me, stone-faced.
“Jourdain needs it so Michael will return the gift. The gift is the Sword, isn’t it? Jourdain’s after Excalibur and he needs the Thirteenth Skull to get it.”
He didn’t say anything. He just shrugged.
“Don’t shrug,” I said. “Don’t ever shrug again in front of me, understand?”
“It is only a shrug.”
“Don’t change the subject either.”
“I didn’t. You changed the subject.”
“Stop it. It doesn’t matter who changed the subject.”
“Then why tell me not to?”
“Yes or no, you knew the whole time Jourdain was behind all this.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because you could have stopped him!”
“Have we not done that? Are you not still alive? Have I not saved your miserable las nalgas more times than either of us can recall?”
“So why didn’t you stop him?”
“Do you still understand so little about the Company, Alfred Kropp? We are not a private security company. We are interested in only one thing as it relates to you and that one thing is not your personal welfare. And if you fail to deliver that one thing, we shall leave you to your fate at the hands of Mogart’s son.”
He brushed past me and righted the motorcycle. “Now come, you ungrateful little drag queen; they are waiting for us at the airport. I’ve had my fill of this godforsaken town and more than my fill of you.”
I climbed onto the seat behind him.
“Give back my weapon,” he said.
“I think I’ll just keep it, thanks.”
He started to say something, seemed to think better of it, and then opened up the bike full throttle. I clung to his waist, closed my eyes, and hung on for dear life.
05:02:34:26
Nueve took us straight to the airport. I didn’t know if any back roads existed, but I wish they did: Alcoa Highway is one of the busiest streets in Knoxville, and at every stoplight more than a few drivers stared at the big kid dressed like an old lady on the back of a mud-spattered police motorcycle. And I worried we might run into a real cop. What clever cover story could Nueve invent to explain this?
I closed my eyes, pressed my cheek against Nueve’s back, and tried to organize my thoughts. That was an exercise I struggled with even in the best of circumstances, but I gave it a try anyway.
Mogart had a son. A son who, like me, had no idea what kind of business his father was wrapped up in until he was dead. Then somebody brings him his father’s head and tells him a kid named Alfred Kropp chopped it off with the sword of the Archangel Michael. So Jourdain comes to Knoxville looking for a little payback . . . or something else called the Thirteenth Skull, because somebody promised if he got it he’d get Excalibur back . . . Or did killing me have anything to do with the Skull and Excalibur at all? But if killing me didn’t have anything to do with it, why tell me about the Skull in the first place?
What did he say? She has promised me and I believe her.The gift shall be given again to the true heir of Camelot, but not before the Thirteenth Skull is borne home.
The gift of Saint Michael must be Excalibur, and he must have been referring to himself as the true heir of Camelot, but who was this she he was talking about? The Lady of the Lake?
According to some accounts, Sofia is the Lady of the Lake who brings Michael’s Sword to Arthur.
Sofia. Sam had said her name in his sleep and later argued with Nueve about her. Did Sam know Jourdain was after me? Did he know the whole time and, if he did, why didn’t he tell me?
At the airport, Nueve drove to a hangar set off by itself in the corner of the airfield and surrounded by a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A couple of big guys dressed in blue jumpers with 9mm Glocks strapped to their waists patrolled the compound. They met us at the padlocked gate, and one hit the button on his radio.
“Alice is up from the hole,” he said. “Repeat, Alice is up.”
He unlocked the gate and Nueve rolled the bike into the compound. I walked beside it with rubbery legs and an aching butt from the horse ride. I wondered who “Alice” was, me or Nueve. I was pretty sure who though.
Nueve walked rapidly toward the hangar. I lagged behind. I was tired.
“Come, Alfred Kropp,” Nueve said without looking back. “Journey’s end.”
“She’s here,” the guard huffed at Nueve. “And she’s not happy.”
The pedestrian door to the hangar was padlocked and the guard fumbled with the keys.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
He popped the padlock and pulled open the door for Nueve. He gave me a look as I followed Nueve inside.
“What?” I asked.
“Thought you’d be prettier.”
A black Learjet sat facing the hangar doors. Guys in gray coveralls were messing all around it, getting it ready for takeoff, I guessed. Just a couple more flights, I told myself. Three tops, and then I’ll never fly again.
A woman approached us, the click of her cherry-red high heels on the polished concrete echoing in the vast space. She was wearing a pin-striped business suit and her blond hair was piled on top of her head.
It was Abigail Smith, the director of OIPEP, and the owner of the most magnificent orthodontics I had ever seen.
“Alfred dear, so good to see you again, alive if not particularly well.” She was beaming. She kissed me on the cheek. She turned to Nueve and the beaming went away. “Another botch, Nueve.”
“Would not a botch be defined as Kropp’s demise?”
“We’ve been busy enough with the hospital attack and the incident on the interstate. Now Medcon has a downed Company chopper to deal with.” Medcon was OIPEP-speak for “Media Control,” the part of the Company that invented cover stories for its operations.
“Unavoidable,” Nueve said archly.
“I don’t want to interrupt,” I interrupted. “But do you think maybe I could change my clothes before we leave?”
Like the sun bursting through the clouds, Abby’s brilliant smile returned. “Of course, Alfred. This way.”
She put her arm around my shoulder and we walked toward the back of the hangar. A wooden staircase led up to an office suite with a large window that overlooked the bay.
“I understand you’ve had quite the time of it since I saw you last,” she said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said.
“You’ve made a wise decision, Alfred. At least in regards to the Seal—but I wonder about the wisdom of your asking price.”
“I made a mistake,” I said.
She turned to me at the top of the stairs.
“Before I sent him back to the Holy Vessel,” I went on, “the demon king showed me this vision . . . He offered me what I’m asking for now, only I told him no, because the price was too high.”
“What was the price?”
“His freedom.”
She gave me a long, quizzical look. “That’s it, isn’t it, Alfred? Freedom.”
I nodded.
“Nueve won’t play straight with me, Abby, but you always have. If I give you guys the Seal, you’ll keep your promises, won’t you?”
She smiled, and this time her smile was of the sad variety, and then she put a hand on my cheek.
“As long as I am director,” she said, which was as ironclad a promise as I was probably going to get.
She opened the door and I saw Mr. Need
lemier’s bald head rushing toward me, his stubby arms flung wide. He bumped Abby out of the way and buried his chubby baby face into my chest.
“It’s okay, Mr. Needlemier,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Thank God!” he cried. “When they lost contact with the helicopter I feared the very worst!”
Nueve stepped into the room, his dark eyes lighting up at the sight of Mr. Needlemier.
“Ah, the lawyer. Excellent!” He turned to Abby. “The plane is ready, Director. We can affect the exchange.”
“In a moment,” Abby Smith said. She was still aggravated with him. “Alfred is changing first and meeting his extraction coordinator.”
“My what?”
“This way, Alfred.”
“I’ll wait right here,” Mr. Needlemier whispered.
Abby led me into another room. A girl with skin the color of copper, blond hair, and huge blue eyes was sitting on the sofa. She stood up when she saw me.
“Ashley?”
“Hi, Alfred,” she said, and then she hugged me. I smelled lilacs. I looked down and there were those enormous blue eyes looking up at me.
“They told me you’d changed,” she said.
“The dress wasn’t my idea,” I said.
“I don’t mean the dress.”
She stepped back—the hug had lasted about four seconds too long.
“I thought you quit,” I said.
“They made an offer I couldn’t refuse.” She glanced toward Abby.
“Ashley agreed to return to the Company on the condition we assign her as your extraction coordinator.”
“Oh,” I said. “What’s that mean?”
“It means Ashley is in charge of coordinating your extraction from our interface.”
I looked at Ashley. “I hate OIPEP,” I said.
She laughed. “Why don’t you change, Alfred? I’ll meet you outside.”
She left, a bouncing swirl of golden-haired blondness.
“Bathroom over there, clothes in the closet beside it,” Abby said. She looked at her watch. “We need to leave in the next fifteen minutes to stay within security parameters.”
She patted my arm and started to go.
“Abby, wait,” I called after her. “About Samuel.”