Diabolical (31 page)

“Don't be stupid.”

He heard a vehicle pull behind him, throaty engine, the scraping crunch of tires loud as it circled close.

The voice behind him said, “You've got two weapons trained on you.”

He knew that voice. He thought back to the first time he'd heard it, at the bar. First inclinations tend to be right, he told himself.

“Why do I picture you counting them on your fingers with your lips mouthing the numbers?” he said.

“Turn around slowly and get in, smart ass.”

Hatcher turned. Edgar came to a stop a few feet to his right. A black Hummer idled directly ahead.

The back door of the Hummer opened, and General Bartlett leaned out, beckoning him in with a wave.

“Will you please just get in, before someone spots us?” the general said.

Hatcher scratched his neck, glanced over at Edgar. He was aiming a Beretta nine mil, with laser grips. He dropped his eyes to his shirt, saw the red dot hovering over his sternum. Another dot scribbled below it. A sniper, hidden in the darkness.

“I'm not sure being spotted would be such a bad thing right about now,” Hatcher said.

Bartlett dropped his head, let it swing from side to side. “Good Lord, Hatcher. Do you honestly think we want to kill you? We could have put several bullets in you and driven off before you even knew you were dead. So please, just get in the damn car.”

Hatcher shot a look at Edgar and stepped forward. “Since you said please.”

The inside of the Hummer smelled like cologne. Hatcher slid into the rear passenger seat. Edgar got into the front on the same side. The driver was little more than a kid. Blond, clean cut. Hair cropped tight in a way that screamed military.

The Hummer pulled around the parking lot, heading away from where Hatcher had parked, and left on a different street.

The general gestured toward Hatcher's lap. “Please, buckle your seat belt.”

“I'm good.”

“I must insist.”

Hatcher watched Edgar stare back at him from over the headrest. He knew that Beretta was aimed at him through the seat. The belt was just a way of making sure he couldn't move too quickly.

Fine,
Hatcher thought, pulling the belt over his body and latching it.
I can be patient.

“Where are we going?”

“There's something I want you to see.”

They drove in silence for over twenty minutes. Hatcher stopped paying attention to the route after the first few. Fernandez's phone had a GPS map. And since they weren't blindfolding him, he could just remember the street and number later, if necessary.

When they arrived, he decided it wasn't going to be necessary.

The driver pulled into what Hatcher took to be an abandoned warehouse; plain cement construction, industrial windows, a faded sign for a furniture company Hatcher had never heard of. Formerly abandoned, he realized.

Inside, it was bustling.

The interior was an open layout, two stories high. Six more Humvees, reconstructed military surplus from the looks of them, were parked inside being worked on. The far corner was caged off with reinforced wire mesh and a steel-grate door, housing racks of automatic weapons. Crates were stacked high against the walls. At least two dozen men in battle dress trousers and khaki shirts were tending to various tasks, working on creepers beneath the vehicles, cleaning weapons on tables, taking inventory of supplies. Four of them were on a set of mats, practicing hand-to-hand drills and knife work.

Hatcher realized a number of these were probably the same men he'd seen at the cave.

Edgar got out first. He opened the door for Hatcher to do the same. When the general followed, the men all stopped what they were doing and stood at attention.

Bartlett waved a hand in the air, a gesture that looked almost affectionate. “As you were.”

Hatcher followed the general to a door on the opposite side of the vehicle. He realized they had parked next to an artificial wall about ten feet high, running the length of the warehouse. Not just a wall, he realized, a large enclosure. As he drew close, he could smell the paint, noticed the surface still had that clean, moist look. The whole thing had probably been constructed within the last few weeks.

On the other side of the door was an office space. PC workstations, printers, a copier. No frills, no personalization. The upper half of the interior wall of the space was partition glass, revealing what lay beyond. No question what it was. He'd seen many in his time.

A war room.

The set up was functional. A large conference table rimmed with laptops dominated the center of the room. Five flat-screen TVs were arrayed across the top of the far wall, each running satellite news feeds from different networks. A pair of lecture hall dry-erase boards were mounted to the wall below them, names and times listed on one side in marker. An enormous map of the continental United States dominated the wall to the right, covered in a clear panels of Plexiglas peppered with handdrawn arrows and circles and numbers. To the left, blown-up satellite photos of mountain topography hung like posters. Red Xs marked certain locations, with numbers inked next to them that looked like longitude and latitude designations. To the right, a map of L.A., with four Xs. Hatcher could tell one of the Xs was the house on Mulholland. He assumed another was where he was standing. He wasn't sure about the other two.

A tall black man in fatigues was standing in front of one of the posters, holding a digital tablet in his hand and speaking into a headset. His neck was bandaged. Hatcher recognized him as the guy from the motel room, the one he'd given a shot to the throat. He had to think for a moment before he could come up with a name. Calvin, the general had called him. Calvin glanced over and made eye contact when Hatcher entered. Considering the blow to his Adam's apple, Hatcher thought the man didn't look especially upset to see him. But he didn't look thrilled, either.

Hatcher let his gaze drift the room, ran it over the walls as the general strode past him toward the head of the table. He gestured for Hatcher to have a seat.

Looking at the map of the U.S., Hatcher said, “Are you planning a coup?”

Bartlett bristled, then forced the kind of smile a parent might give a petulant child. “This is serious business, son.”

“What business are we talking about?”

“That's what we're here to discuss.” He waved his hand toward a nearby chair. “Please.”

After considering his options, Hatcher pulled out the chair and sat. Edgar took a seat a few chairs away. Calvin remained standing a few feet behind Bartlett, like an adjutant.

“Why don't we start with why Vivian is dead.”

Bartlett's eyes jumped to Edgar. Hatcher shifted to face him. Edgar shrugged and shook his head.

“That one has us stumped,” Bartlett said. “But the truth is, she had her own agenda.”

Hatcher wanted to react with anger, but the general's voice was too sympathetic. He scanned the man's face for signs of deception. There was some guarding, for sure. A definite attempt to control his nonverbals. But Hatcher couldn't say the man was lying. Then again, it was very hard to tell with some people, especially outside of an interrogation.

“What kind of an agenda?”

“None of us is sure, but we believe it had something to do with you. We know she had contacts with the Carnates that she didn't report.”

Hatcher said nothing. Could Vivian really have been up to something? Something he knew nothing about? His mind sifted through a sudden flash of recollections. There had been some signs, he had to admit. But it was difficult in the extreme to read someone you were involved with. The emotional nature of conversations tended to mask indicators, and you tended to ignore tells, unconsciously if not consciously, wanting to give the person the benefit of the doubt. Wanting to believe them. Failing to spot things you otherwise would.

“Why don't you just tell me what's going on?”

“What I told you before is mostly true—”

“Mostly.”

“Yes. Mostly. What I told you about a portal to Hell being opened, what Vivian told you about your brother likely being involved. But there are things I left out.”

“What kind of things?”

Bartlett swiveled his chair slightly, looking to Calvin.

Calvin stepped forward. “The Carnates are the ones trying to open the passage.”

“What a shocker. Why didn't you want me to know that?”

“Because Edgar has managed to gain their confidence. They believe he's working with them.”

Hatcher looked at Edgar. “Is that so?”

“That's so,” Edgar said. “They love me.”

“I have no idea what the hell is going on, but you're bat-shit crazy if you believe that.”

Edgar started to protest, but Bartlett silenced him with a hand. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I can't see a Carnate trusting anyone. They playact. They pretend. But they don't trust. And they only love you the way a stripper loves a guy who keeps feeding her C-notes for lap dances and buys her eighty-dollar bottles of white wine and ginger ale.”

“I see,” Bartlett said, nodding. “Edgar, why don't you explain the situation?”

“They don't trust me in that way. They think they've co-opted me.”

“Co-opted you. Let's back up.” Hatcher shifted back to face Bartlett. “What do you have going on here?” He waved a hand, indicating the room. “What is all this?”

“This is our operations center.”

“For what kind of operation?”

Bartlett leaned back in his chair, pressing his fingertips gently against one another over his lap. He looked to Calvin.

“Our objective is to find the gateway and destroy it.”

“How did you even know about it? About the Carnates?”

“Let's just say, I heard a message,” Bartlett said. “From above.”

Tongues, Hatcher thought. He remembered what Vivian had told him. How he'd heard someone speaking in tongues. The fact it was probably true didn't make it seem any less weird.

And it created questions of its own.

“I have a hard time imagining the government okaying a covert military op to destroy a portal to Hell based upon you telling them God spoke to you.”

“The government? Hardly. This operation is privately funded.”

“Privately funded? From the looks of it, you've got a small army. Fully outfitted. They have to eat, and I'm sure they're not working for free. That's got to mean millions. A general's pension may be good, but it's not that good.”

“Well, it's actually more than just a small army,” Bartlett said, a look of something like pride stretching his cheeks. “And you'd be surprised at how many interests out there would invest in something like this. There are still many powerful people of faith in this country. For now.”

“What about the boy? You planning to kill him? Murder an infant?”

“Don't be ridiculous. That's something Vivian told you to motivate you to find him.”

Hatcher paused. “Where is he?”

“He's safe.”

“I want to know where he is.”

“The Carnates have him,” Edgar said.

“You mean, you had him, and you just gave him to them?”

“Calm down. I had no choice. It was all part of keeping their trust.”

“Worth sacrificing a baby, you sick son of a bitch?”

“He's not in any danger,” Bartlett said. “Not right now. They need to keep him alive and healthy.”

“So they can kill him.”

Bartlett tightened his gaze. “We won't let that happen.”

“All right,” Hatcher said, his eyes bouncing from Bartlett to Edgar, then back again. “I don't get any of this. Why didn't you just tell me what you were up to?”

“Would you have let them take your nephew? Plus, we knew of your . . . relationship with Vivian. We had concerns about her from the beginning.”

“You're telling me you think she was working for the Carnates? She was a nun, for Christ's sake.”

“I'll thank you to watch your language, soldier. All I can say is something strange was going on. Like I told you, she had her own agenda. Besides, by not telling you, we could allow you to interact with the Carnates without the risk of them figuring out what we were up to. You of all people should understand that.”

Hatcher held Bartlett's stare for a few seconds, then looked away in disgust. He understood all too well. The best person to perpetuate a lie was someone who thought he was telling the truth.

“I don't like being used.”

Bartlett nodded grimly. “When the stakes are high, we often have to do things we don't like.”

“So why do they need him? What are they up to?”

Bartlett tilted his head toward Calvin.

“Experts in the occult believe there are seven points on Earth where the spiritual plane is close enough to the threshold of damnation for a portal to be established. They are known as the Seven Gateways to Hell. No one is precisely sure where they are. Many urban legends claim one for their town, but it seems likely each is located beneath the surface of the Earth.”

Hatcher thought about that. “And one of them is here, in L.A.”

“Apparently.”

“So why haven't they opened it already?”

Bartlett shifted forward in his chair. “It doesn't work that way. The portal can only be opened under certain circumstances, with the proper artifacts in place.”

“How does the boy fit in?”

Calvin took a breath, made eye contact with his boss. “We believe that they intend to sacrifice the boy to open the portal.”