The Fraternity of the Stone (8 page)

Drew gagged. The crack of the lightning still reverberated in his ears. Dizzy, he shook his head and squinted through double vision toward the top of the clearing, toward the glowing smoke that rose from the shattered base of a tree ten feet from the now shredded nylon sheet. The smell of ozone drifted heavily around him. Lightning formed a rictus in the sky.

He shuddered, again peering down toward the man he'd killed. When he'd entered the monastery, he'd sworn that the killing had come to an end. And now?

He could have justified killing the man in anger - for the monks, if not for Stuart Little. Anger was a natural human fault, an innate weakness. The legacy of Cain. But he hadn't killed in anger. He'd passed far from anger, descending into an even more basic motive, survival. And the years had made no difference. He still retained the instinct, and his training had been so effective that even now he was capable of unleashing death automatically - as a knee will jerk when the hammer taps.

If I'd killed him by chance, I wouldn't care. But I did it reflexively. Because I was better at it.

Oh, Jesus. He prayed, recalling with horrow what he'd done with the crucifix. Have mercy on this sinner. I didn't want to become what I am. It was forced upon me. But I should have had more control.

While rain streaked down his face, mingling with tears, he bowed his head toward the man he'd killed and struck his breast. Through my fault. Through my most grievous fault.

He wanted to vomit.

Still, he had no choice. He had to keep himself in control. Bitterly he stood and took off his robe and hair shirt. His naked body shivered in the icy rain. He stripped the dead man, putting on his clothes. If he was compelled to reenter the world, he couldn't expect to survive by attracting attention in a habit. He had to take precautions. This man had not been alone; others were out there, waiting to kill him. Why? He didn't know. But a new understanding had come to him. His motive had passed beyond the need to avenge his fellow monks. A base emotion, necessarily dismissed. For now that he'd killed again, he'd put his immortal soul in jeopardy, and whoever was responsible had better have a damned good reason.

Chapter 24.

His enemy's clothes fit Drew badly, everything too loose. He had to pull his own socks over the dead man's in order for the hiking boots to feel firm. The jeans sagged as if he'd been on a diet, which in fact he had. If not for the padded vest on top of the heavy outdoor shirt, Drew might have looked as if his chest had caved in. He put the handkerchief that contained Stuart Little into a pocket of the vest and tied the skipping rope around his waist. He retrieved the photographs from his robe and slipped them into the other pocket of the vest. Then he stalked up the slope toward the tripod, rifle, and infrared scope.

Rain drenched him. Glancing around, he focused on the knapsack that his opponent had wedged in the crook of a tree. He opened it...

A Mauser pistol. He checked it, making sure that it was fully loaded, and shoved it behind his jacket, beneath the belt at the base of his spine.

Two magazines filled with ammunition. He put these in the pocket with Stuart Little.

A large plastic bag containing chocolate bars, peanuts, and dehydrated fruit. Starting with the peanuts, wanting their salt, he chewed them slowly, hungrily.

No time. What else could he scavenge before he left? He forced himself to think. What else would he need to confront the world? What had he formerly taken for granted but learned to live without?

One item occurred to him, and he reched for the hip on the jeans he wore, removing the dead man's wallet. He opened it, squinting to protect his eyes as lightning flashed, and saw several twenties and fives. All right, then, he had what amounted to another weapon. In a compartment of the wallet, he felt several plastic cards, which he assumed would be a driver's license and credit cards. All the statistics on them would be fake, of course. A professional would never go into an operation with bona fide I.D., the purpose of the documents merely to avert suspicion if the man were inadvertently involved in a traffic incident or forced to spend a night in a motel. But the fake identity would survive offhanded scrutiny, and Drew could temporarily use it.

What else? As he glanced around, debating, he suddenly heard a voice behind him. He crouched, spinning, his palms raised to defend himself. Despite the shrieking wind, he heard the voice again - ahead, to his left, strangely muffled, loud yet distant.

"George?"

Drew frowned, suspicious, scanning the woods.

"George, where are you?" The voice sounded amplified, vaguely metallic. Static crackled. "George, what the hell are you doing, taking a leak? You're supposed to check in." More static.

Drew relaxed, feeling the urgency drain from his muscles. He approached the sound of the voice. The walkie-talkie hung near the knapsack on the tree, formerly sheltered by the nylon sheet but now exposed to the rain.

"For Christ's sake, George. Check in."

Drew almost pressed the send button, strongly tempted to answer - not to pretend to be George, however, for Drew had no idea of whether George's voice was high or low, whether George had a distinctive accent or even a cold. It was highly unlikely that the man on the other end would be deceived. But Drew nonetheless wanted to answer, to imagine the shock that the man would feel if an unfamiliar voice came over the walkie-talkie and suddenly announced, "I'm sorry. George can't come to the phone right now. He's dead. But can I take a message?"

Get control, Drew thought. When you start imagining jokes like that, you're close to the edge.

He restrained the impulse. But already he knew more than he had a minute ago. The spotter had not been out here alone. Somewhere close, the spotter had a partner.

He assessed the possibilities. This hill above the monastery was the best spot from which to study all the exits from the compound. But was it practical to put two men up here? Did it make more sense for the men to work in shifts, taking turns so that they each had a chance to get out of the cold and sleep?

Sleep where? Did the surveillance team have a vehicle in the area? As much as Drew wanted answers, he also needed transportation, but he didn't have much time to look for it.

"George, what the hell's going on?" the crackling voice demanded from the walkie-talkie. "Quit fooling around! Are you okay?"

Before the man on the other end became sufficiently disturbed to search for his partner or else drive away from the area, Drew had to find him. And if Drew's logic was valid, he had a good chance by searching along the road.

He left the trees, pushed by the rain, descending the gloomy slope. But coming to the dead man, he stopped abruptly. He'd asked himself what else he would need to survive in the world. An object on the naked corpse, the only thing that Drew hadn't thought to remove, attracted his attention. Totally artificial, completely unnecessary for the past six years, it suddenly seemed essential.

He knelt in the rain and took the wristwatch from the body.

Buckling it on, he felt a change come over him. Yes, he thought with immense sorrow, tears again flowing. He'd rejoined the world now.

Time had begun again.

Chapter 25.

At the bottom of the slope, Drew angled right, shifting quickly through another stretch of forest till he came to a section of the high chain-link fence that enclosed the land around the monastery. The noise of the storm persisted, hiding the jangle that the fence made as he climbed it. The moment he dropped to the mud on the other side, he assumed an instinctive defensive crouch. He'd crossed yet another threshold. Like the watch on his wrist, the fence was one more shift from the peace of the monastery toward the turmoil of the world.

But he couldn't allow his regrets to disturb him. He had to reach the Church, specifically Father Hafer, his contact, his protector. He had to accept the conditions that had been forced upon him, to go where necessity took him. The answers, the dead monks in the monastery, they were what mattered. Not his reluctance.

He proceeded through the storm down the next wooded slope until he reached the road. A flash of lightning revealed that, as he'd remembered, it was paved. Rain glistened off it. After the difficult landscape through which he'd struggled, the smooth, unobstructed surface invited him. But he didn't dare show himself; he'd have to creep through the undergrowth along its border.

He paused to assess his location. The monastery was now to his left. Farther to his left, several miles away along corkscrew winding turns, was the nearest town, Quentin. He tried to imagine the strategy of the death team. If he was one of two men they'd left behind to check the monastery - he wouldn't want to be camping in the woods. Too damp and cold. He'd want a dry, warm place in which to sleep and change, clothes and get something to eat while his partner took his turn on the hill. But he'd also want mobility, the chance to leave the area in a hurry if he had to. That combination of requirements suggested a vehicle large enough to hold equipment and a bed - a camper-truck, for example, or a van. And he certainly wouldn't park it where the authorities might drive by. Its probable hiding place would not be along the portion of the road that led toward Quentin. Instead, it would be on the opposite side of the monastery. On Drew's right. Where the road led toward the maple syrup factory, and after that, scenery, little else.

He found a van fifteen minutes later. On the far shoulder of the road, just before a curve would have made it impossible for an occupant to see the entrance to the lane up to the monastery. The position was logical, Drew thought. The only sure sign that I escaped would be a lot of vehicles arriving at the monastery -ambulances, cops, the coroner. Who else could have warned the authorities except a survivor of the killings? As soon as the team felt confident that I wasn't in the area, their back-up pair could pull out. Conversely, the longer the authorities failed to arrive, the more suspicious the team would be that I hadn't escaped.

But he had to verify that the van wasn't parked here simply because of a breakdown or an innocent sleepy driver. He crawled farther through the undergrowth along the road until he faced the rear of the van - no windows along the side but a bubblelike window in back. Ducking to keep from being spotted through that window, he sprinted across the pavement to crouch beside the rear right tire. The convex back window could have been designed to deflect the heat of the sun; on the other hand, it could have been designed to keep an outsider from getting an undistorted view of the interior. Perhaps the window worked only from inside to out; or perhaps it had a pull-down blind. The glass might even be bullet-proof, the body as well reinforced against attack. These possibilities were hypothetical, of course, unverifiable except by assault.

Nonetheless, there was one easy test to find out if a seemingly ordinary vehicle had been designed to go into combat. All Drew needed to do was sink to the pavement and peer beneath the chassis. In the dark, he had to wait for lightning to reflect its gleam off the asphalt, but even with the brief illumination, he saw what he needed. The van had no visible gas tank.

The conclusion was obvious. Mounted inside the back compartment of the van, the fuel tank would be as protected as the vehicle's occupants. There wasn't any question now. He had to believe that the van was armored. To get into it, he'd need a weapon considerably more powerful than a Mauser pistol.

But even Goliath could be defeated. A reinforced vehicle was designed to survive an attack while it was moving. Stopped, it became more vulnerable, especially if the enemy got close to it. He knelt to feel the right rear tire, concluding without surprise that the rubber was extra thick and no doubt layered with metal. A bullet from the Mauser would do little damage, not enough to prevent the driver from speeding away.

The trick was to convince the occupant - already distressed because he couldn't raise his partner on the walkie-talkie - that he had another and more immediate problem: the rain's long-term effect on the gravel shoulder of the road. Even a bullet-resistant tire had to be inflated, or to use that logic in the reverse, it could also be deflated. True, by letting air from the tire, Drew wouldn't be able to drive the van away, but this well-equipped vehicle would surely have a spare.

Feeling along the gravel shoulder, he found what he needed. The van's designer had not anticipated that an attacker could get this close. The caps on the air valves didn't have a lock. Drew hurriedly unscrewed the one on the right rear tire, jammed a chunk of wood inside it, and heard a hiss of air.

The van began to list in Drew's direction, slowly sinking onto the rain-soaked gravel shoulder. He yanked the Mauser from behind his belt at his spine and scurried back to position himself with a good view of the rear door and both doors in front. His tactic was based on the assumption that as the occupant felt the van tilt beneath him, he'd conclude the rain had weakened the road's shoulder to such an extent that the van was sinking into the mud, listing toward the forest.

Would the driver come out to check?

A door banged open.

Drew rolled to the ditch and lay in frigid muddy water, waiting for the driver to check the listing side of the van.

But the driver did something else. Already nervous because he couldn't contact his partner, he bolted. Drew heard footsteps charge across the pavement toward the forest on the other side, and lunged to the top of the ditch. On his stomach, unable to reach the man, he fired the Mauser through the space beneath the van and the road, shifting his aim toward the sound of the rushing footsteps, clustering his bullets.