The Omicron Legion (27 page)

John Lynnford coughed out dust and dirt when Blaine reached him. His face was mined with cuts and lacerations.

“Where’s Patty?” Blaine demanded.

“They saw us under here,” Lynnford muttered, “so she left. To save me.”

“When, dammit?”

“Four minutes ago, maybe five. She went in the direction of the fun house.”

Patty regretted her strategy instantly. It wasn’t just dark in the coffin, it was black—and the figure’s poorly kept wax smelled like death itself. The coffin trembled slightly. Footsteps, lots of them, were thundering into the chamber. There were voices, too, rising in muffled fashion over the chamber’s sound effects. There would be no chance of escape at all, if the enemy lifted the coffin’s lid.

Frantically Patty began to feel about in the blackness for a weapon, but all she could come up with was the screwdriver she had used before. She took it from her pocket and held it tight with a sweat-soaked hand.

The footsteps were coming closer. The coffin trembled a bit more. She willed the lid not to open, but the lid began to rise, slivers of half-light puncturing the blackness of her tomb. She froze for a moment, then plunged the screwdriver outward at the blurring figure. A steellike hand grabbed her wrist in midair as the coffin opened all the way.

“Hope you don’t mind if I wake you up, Countess,” said Blaine McCracken, Zandor the strongman was peering over his shoulder.

Blaine helped a trembling Patty from the coffin, who then embraced him.

“I liked you better as a blonde,” he said, easing her away. “Tell me, what brings you to Rio?”

“Information, McCracken, and none of it pleasant. I found out what the victims all had in common. They were all adopted, each and every one. And many had extensive dealings with the Japanese.”

“Including your father?”

“Most certainly. But that’s not all. I asked the system to generate a list of potential victims based on the profile. I remembered that’s what you asked for.”

“Why is it I think you found some names I’m not going to like hearing?”

“Because I did, McCracken. One, anyway: Virginia Maxwell.”

Chapter 26

“HEAD OF THE GAP,”
Blaine muttered, all the levity gone from his expression.

“I told Sal, and he tried to warn her. Next thing I know he’s calling me at sunrise to tell me someone tried to kill him and I’m next on the list. I just made it out.”

“I should have known, dammit. I should have caught on…”

“Caught on to what?”

“Later. Once we’re out of here.”

McCracken’s face was grimly set as he led Patty through the fun house.

“Sal sent me down here to tell you. He said you’d know what to do.”

“I’ve got a few ideas.”

“What’s it all mean, Blaine? What’s going on?”

They emerged into the night air, and Patty saw John Lynnford being carried across the midway on a stretcher. She rushed over to him.

“You’ve looked better,” she told him, taking his hand.

Lynnford grimaced. Bandages soaked with blood were wrapped tightly around his shoulder.

“Keeps me from thinking about my leg, anyway,” he joked, managing a weak smile. “That’s a first in quite a while.”

McCracken caught up with them and checked Lynnford’s wound. “Bullet passed straight through. Minimal bone damage, by the look of it. You’re lucky.”

“And you’re Blaine McCracken.”

“Ah, once again my reputation precedes me!”

Lynnford’s eyes swept the midway. “All of it deserved, apparently.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lynnford propped himself up on his good arm. “For what? You saved my circus. You saved her life.”

“All in a day’s work.”

“You’ll still need help getting out of the country. Even more so now.”

“Suggestions will be entertained.”

“I’ve got a few.” Lynnford winced in pain. “Just let me get patched up a little.”

“No sweat,” said McCracken, his eyes falling on Reverend Jim. “I’ve got someone else I’ve got to see.”

Reverend Jim met him halfway. They both looked at the cluster of his boys gathered around a pair who lay still in the night.

“We lost two,” Hope said sadly. “Edson and one of the older ones.”

Blaine’s stomach sank. “Both dead, thanks to me.”

“It wasn’t your fault. If they had done what you said—”

“It
was
my fault, all of it. They were doing fine in your world. They weren’t ready for mine.”

“Can’t say I ever met another sort who was.”

“But that didn’t stop me from using them, did it?”

“It was what they wanted, governor.”

Blaine started toward the boys, but Reverend Jim cut him off. “You could help them better by makin’ off with yourself and the lady, so this won’t be for nothing. Time’s a wastin’, governor. You read me on that?”

“I’ve got to do something.”

“Getting the people behind the bullets’ll do just fine.”

“Not for me, it won’t. Oh, I’ll do that all right—But I’ve got something else in mind.”

“Save it, governor.”

“Yes, Reverend, save. I’m going to leave you a contact code so you can reach me. Start using it in a week and then every day after. When my business here is finished, we can talk about paybacks.” Again Blaine’s eyes drifted to the children. “I want to send you some money to help set this straight—to set
them
straight.”

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

“Nobody had to. Believe me, I have to do this. I’ll send you a hundred thousand dollars to begin with. That should be enough to get them out of the
favela.
After that, I’ll send you as much as you need to keep them from ever going back.”

Reverend Jim’s eyes were bulging. “Where’d a man like you get that much cash?”

“Friends in the right places, Reverend,” Blaine replied, staring into the distance. “All over the world.”

“What happens now?” Patty asked him as he started the engine of the car John Lynnford had left in the mall parking lot.

“We follow John’s plan and hope it works,” Blaine answered, stowing the directions to the airport Lynnford had had written out for them in his lap.

The route would make as much use as possible of back roads, steering clear of major arteries, where more of Da Sa’s men might be concentrated. Of course, this also meant that traditional means of escape couldn’t be used. A letter signed by Lynnford would hopefully provide the alternative here. The Orlando Orfei Circus frequently required the use of cargo services to bring animals and equipment into the country. Sometimes the proper papers were nonexistent, and cash was exchanged in their place. The letter presented to the carrier Lynnford most trusted should guarantee Blaine and Patty passage on the next cargo flight out of the country. The destination didn’t matter. The general direction of the United States would suit Blaine just fine.

“Finish what you started to say back at the carnival. I want to know what’s going on,” Patty said as the circus disappeared behind them. “I want to know what’s really going on.”

“I was hoodwinked.” He looked at her. “You were, too.”

“Make sense!”

“I can’t. Not yet. Virginia Maxwell solicits my services and then turns out to be a potential victim of what I’m supposed to stop. But when Sal warns her, she tries to have him killed. What does that say to you?”

“I don’t know. If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.”

McCracken squeezed the wheel. “Okay, we’ve got these successful Americans, all adopted and all suddenly on a hit list.”

“And the Japanese link—don’t forget about that. Which reminds me about the men…”

“What men?”

“The ones waiting for me at your hotel. All Japanese. They knew I was coming. Do you think Maxwell sent them?”

“No way. She’d never have dispatched any group that stood out that much.”

“Who, then?”

“Good question. Wish I had an answer. The thing is, there’ve been two groups operating in this all along. Your father and Virginia Maxwell are part of one. Whoever sent out the six killers is part of another. But where does that leave the disciples?…”

“The
what
?”

“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

Patty thought for a few moments as the car drove on through the night. “Who was it that was after us at the circus?”

“A crime lord named Da Sa got himself killed, and I got blamed. Whoever really killed him made sure of that…and then made sure to link you with me.”

“The Japanese?”

Blaine shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “The thing is…”

“I’m listening.”

“No, it’s too crazy.”

“Nothing’s too crazy at this point.”

“Okay, try this out. What if one of our forces was behind the placing of all these adopted babies? Your father, Virginia Maxwell, every last one of them.”

“Toward what end?”

“They grew up to be rich and powerful, didn’t they?”

“What are you saying, McCracken?”

“I’m not sure yet, Hunsecker.” Patty turned away and gazed out the window into the night. “What about my father? Maxwell tried to kill me, and you’ve drawn a link between—”

“I haven’t drawn a link between anything. I’m just playing with the facts, seeing how they fit together. Anyway, Virginia Maxwell is still alive.”

Patty shifted in the passenger seat and pressed herself against the door, staring at her dim reflection in the window.

“I killed a man tonight,” she said, with strange matter-of-factness.

“Who would have killed you if you hadn’t.”

“Save the dime-store philosophy for somebody else, okay? In that moment I think I understood you better than I ever have, McCracken. I understood what it’s like to be cornered and have no choice but to fight back. I understood what it’s like to kill someone and not feel anything about it.”

“Because you had no choice.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. I look back and I want to be sick, feel sick, but I can’t. All I feel is…nothing. That man doesn’t have any meaning, like he wasn’t real.”

“He was real only in the sense of trying to kill you, Patty. That’s what Johnny Wareagle would say, and he’s right. You saw him in the context of what he was, and that context is the only meaning he had to you.”

“You don’t understand. The context is the problem. I could shoot a man, I could do everything I’ve done these past couple weeks, because of my father. Except now I find out maybe my father wasn’t the innocent victim I thought he was. Maybe he was part of something I didn’t know about that got him killed, and maybe, too, he wasn’t such a nice guy after all. You see, McCracken, if his life was a lie, then so is mine. None of it means anything anymore.”

“Wrong. The meaning’s just changed. John Lynnford could have kept you safe and hidden at the circus, but you insisted on coming with me instead because it still means plenty.”

“I can’t wait to find out what!” she said, half sarcastically.

“Exactly. That’s what keeps you going. That’s what keeps me going, and Johnny, too. Like
Hanbelachia.
”

“What’s that?”

“A vision quest, an Indian rite of passage ceremony. Johnny told me he was still waiting for his, and I’m beginning to think mine’s gonna come at the same time.”

Patty’s eyes lost some of their sadness. “You’re really starting to sound like him.”

“Mostly because I’m starting to really listen to him. He makes sense, Hunsecker. And when all is said and done, he’s probably the only man I know who does.”

Patty shifted again and sighed. “Well, from my perspective, it’s—”

A quick
pop!
ended her words an instant before the car swerved violently out of control. Blaine struggled to right the wheel. He was turning into a skid when a second
pop!
sent it whirling into a wild spin.

“They’ve shot out the tires!” McCracken shouted.

Blaine twisted around, trying to unfasten his seat belt and go for his pistol at the same time. Incredibly he managed both before the car came to a complete stop. He started to shove the door open when the bright lights blinded both of them. A number of figures stormed forward, guns marking their paths.

“Drop your weapon!” a voice ordered, and when Blaine didn’t, gunshots peppered Patty’s side of the car.

“All right!” Blaine let his pistol slide to the soft ground off the road.

“Now step out of the car with your hands in the air!” the voice continued. “Both of you!”

Blaine looked at Patty and nodded. He kept his hands in view while he kicked the door open the rest of the way in order to climb out. Patty followed him out the driver’s side, and saw his shoulders stiffen just before she saw the faces of their attackers in the spill of light.

They were Japanese, each and every one of them!

Chapter 27

“WHERE TO?” THE CABBY
wanted to know.

“The city,” replied Johnny Wareagle.

“Sure, but where in the city? Uptown? Midtown? Downtown?”

“Downtown,” said Wareagle, his massive frame scrunched in the backseat.

Johnny had reached Philadelphia unsure of what awaited him there. He got into the taxi because he knew it was the city itself where he was needed, where he would meet the foe who had visited him in his dreams. Beyond that, Johnny knew nothing. He was relying on the spirits to guide him—and on his ancestors to ensure that they did. He did not question the mysticism that so dominated his life. It had been a part of him for as long as he could remember, but not clarified until he had passed into his teenage years.

Johnny had grown up on a Sioux reservation in Oklahoma, where the old ways had been miraculously preserved. On the eve of his
Hanbelachia,
the tribal shaman took him aside.

“Do you understand what you are,
Wanblee-Isnala?”
the old man had asked him.

“I am a Sioux, greatest warrior tribe of the plains.”

“Not what
we
are, what
you
are. You don’t, do you?”

Johnny shook his head.

“You feel strange at times.”

Johnny searched for the right word. “Different.”

“From your peers, from your friends. It is time you knew why. There is different blood in your family. Every other generation of your grandfathers have been shaman for their tribes. I replaced your father’s grandfather, who died when you were an infant. He and the others were gifted in ways that have been lost over the years, lost but not forgotten. Know this,
Wanblee-Isnala:
You have great powers, but not in the same way as your grandfathers. Your fate is that of a warrior. You will face many enemies.” The shaman saw the young Johnny Wareagle’s face set in determination, his thoughts easy to read even for one not blessed with the gift. “Know this, though. Your
Hanbelachia
will not take place with the others of your year.”