The Rift (20 page)

He turned off the engine and rolled the windows down. He leaned his head out and peered up at the power lines. They were a long way up.

But doable.

Then he heard an airplane engine, the roar familiar: C-130.

He nodded. Of course they were here. He had expected the Nightstalkers to be coming. Burns cocked his head to the side as he examined that thought as much he seemed capable of examining anything.

Had he?

Or had he been told they’d come?

He wasn’t quite certain of anything, except the mission that had been imprinted on him. That he had to do. There was no choice.

The sound of the 130 faded into the distance and Burns considered the power lines because he needed those to deal with the Nightstalkers.

They’d do, but something was nagging at him, touching on the edge of his consciousness. Something was ahead. Just past the underpass. Something that was drawing him with more subtle urgency than the electricity overhead. More than the mission imprinted on him. He started the car and drove left onto Tooles Bend and through the underpass. The road was narrow and winding and took a sharp left up ahead, but Burns slammed on the brakes as he sensed the strange feeling off to the side.

Not sound. Not sight.

The echoes of the past. Of emotion. Of anguish.

Burns looked to the right. A dirt road ran off into the darkness through the trees. A pair of chain-link gates were padlocked together and a half-dozen
NO TRESPASSING
signs were hung on the gate and trees.

As if.

Burns turned the wheel and hit the gas. The car burst through the gates, leaving them hanging forlornly on their hinges. He drove along the dirt road.

He didn’t need night vision goggles.

Burns tried to figure out what was drawing him. But as he went down the road, it got more powerful. He came out of the trees. An open field was to the left, sloping down to the Tennessee River. Burns peered in the direction as he stopped the car. The ruins of a large ominous-looking building lurked in the darkness. Smashed windows peered out like empty eye sockets, wide double doors in front yawning open, not inviting but threatening.

Do not enter here, for bad things await.

Burns kept his eyes on the ruins as he reached for Neeley’s phone. He gripped it and accessed the Internet, trying to ascertain what this place had been.

It took a while, as if someone had been trying to hide the history of the locale, but eventually he uncovered it: This had been the fieldwork outbuilding of the Lakeshore Mental Asylum in Knoxville. Patients had been shuttled out here for “therapy” in the fields and on the river.

It was not therapy they’d received, Burns could sense.

The place was long since shuttered and closed. A minor mystery for investigators of the paranormal who claimed it was haunted by ghosts of patients drowned in the river and murdered in other nefarious ways.

It
was
haunted. Burns could feel the souls of those who’d passed through here. The torments of their twisted minds. He felt a kinship. He got out of the car and walked into the field. The dirt beneath his feet screamed their anguish.

Burns started twirling, slowly at first, then faster and faster. His long coat with the suppressed pistol in the pocket spread out from his side, becoming a cape. His hands went up into the air as if pleading.

Terrible things had been done here. Evil people, both captor and prisoner.

He tumbled to the ground, dizzy.

He lay there for a few moments staring up the sky, his eyes normal.

Then they regained their golden tint.

What had he been doing?

He sat up. Then got to his feet and walked over to the car and got in.

Burns sat for minutes, even with the throb of electricity running through those power lines not far away, a siren’s call for his mission.

Finally, he started the car up and headed back for the power.

Moms and Scout snagged the supply pods first, racing up to each one on a Sea-Doo and using a hook to grab them and then using a tow rope to drag them behind.

Scout was better at it than Moms, who was learning how to operate a Sea-Doo for the first time. Scout snagged five of the seven pods and tied them off at the dock. By that time, Mac, Kirk, and Eagle were swimming upriver, in their direction.

Scout skidded up to Eagle with a spray, stopping just scant inches from him in the water. “Hey, Eagle!”

“Impressive driving,” Eagle said as he grabbed and pulled himself on board. “Mac and Kirk are coming, but they’re younger and can swim longer.”

Scout laughed as she roared back to her dock, passing Moms, who’d recovered the last two pods and was heading for the other jumpers. She quickly found both Mac and Kirk.

“Where’s Roland?” she asked as they both climbed on board behind her.

Kirk unsealed his night vision goggles and slid them on. “Oh frak.” He pointed over Moms’s shoulder upriver.

Roland’s parachute was clearly visible draped over the power lines. His large body dangling below it was silhouetted against the stars.

“That’s about as pretty a picture of Roland we’re ever gonna get,” Mac said.

“He knows not to complete the circuit?” Kirk asked as Moms gunned them toward the dock.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Mac said.

“He does,” Moms said with complete confidence.
Fake it till he makes it
, she thought.

She pulled up to the dock a little too quickly, hitting the Sea-Doo against the rubber bumper.

“Where’s Nada?” Scout asked.

“He’s coming,” Eagle said as Mac and Kirk scrambled up to the dock.

“I’m going for Roland,” Moms said, roaring off before anyone could say anything else.

“I’m helping,” Scout said, leaving the three alone on the dock. They watched the two Sea-Doos head upriver toward the electric jumper and then began to fish the pods out of the water and onto the dock.

“If I’d wanted to swim, I’d have joined the Navy,” Nada complained as the helicopter descended to five meters above the Tennessee River.

“We’ve got power lines around the bend,” the pilot said. “So you need to cast in about thirty seconds.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nada muttered as he looked between the two pilots, trying to get oriented. “What the hell?” he muttered as he spotted the chute tangled in the power lines and the body below. “Fraking Roland. He better not complete the circuit.”

Burns parked underneath the power lines, just off of Tedford Road. Wires looped overhead and the forest had been clear-cut in both directions underneath the power lines. He reached back to the rear seat and retrieved the Gateway laptop.

He exited the government car and was going to head fifty meters to the nearest tower when he paused as something occurred to him. He went to the trunk and opened it. An assortment of automatic rifles, pistols, and grenades were nestled in their slots. Along with body armor and MOLLE gear. Typical Fed field setup.

Burns shrugged on the body armor. Then chose a .45-caliber pistol; an MK-17 CQC SCAR assault rifle, chambering the larger 7.62-mm rounds; a bag full of grenades; and a MOLLE vest into which he stuffed ammunition for the weapons.

He felt much better and grounded. Old habits died hard.

Familiarity bred contentment.

He shook his head in confusion.

Geared up, he headed toward the base of the closest tower.

“Roland!” Moms called out as the Sea-Doo came to a halt, bobbing on its own wake.

“Yo!” Roland answered, dangling in his harness eighty feet overhead.

“Don’t drop your lowering line and complete the circuit,” Moms said.

“Duh,” Roland replied. “Mac asked you that, didn’t he?” He was fiddling with something that Moms couldn’t make out in the dark.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting out of here,” Roland replied.

“It’s too high,” Moms said. She could hear a helicopter coming in behind them. “Maybe we can do something with the chopper.”

“Like what?” Roland asked in a calm voice. He reached up and looped his thumbs through the cutaways for his main.

“Roland, don’t!”

Roland pulled the loops and freefell toward the water. As he fell, he pulled his Gore-Tex wet weather jacket over his head, the arms tied into his gear in the back. It was a makeshift parachute that might have helped if Roland was a Ken doll being tossed from a building.

But he was two hundred forty pounds of Roland.

He hit with a solid thud less than ten feet from Moms and Scout. He promptly disappeared into the dark water.

“Roland!” Scout cried out in alarm.

Nada scooted his butt closer to the edge of the cargo bay and watched Roland fall. “Just great,” he muttered. Then he shoved himself off, immediately linking his hands behind his neck and tucking his chin in as he’d been trained for a helicast. Feet and knees together, braced for the impact of hitting the water.

He fell from only ten feet and the water was hard when he slammed into the river.