Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (28 page)

Ella nodded without answering, and leaned against the wall as I backed away. She wasn’t going to watch me leave. Again, I had the nagging feeling she wasn’t telling me something, that she’d thrown up her wall to shut me out. But I could also tell she didn’t want to talk about it right now. With effort, I turned my back on her, then made the mistake of one last look over my shoulder. She had her face buried in her hands.

It took everything I had not to run to her, but I knew that would just make things worse. I went to grab my gear without turning back because this was what she wanted. It was time to forget.

I narrowly escaped another smothering from Mamie and Mom and boarded the Blackhawk. Once we were airborne, I unpacked the knife from its metal case. Game face time. Would all my work be for nothing or was I ready to face the mission head on? Balancing the blade flat across my palms, eyes closed, I strained to listen.

Soon.

Nothing else came through. Soon for what? Soon it would tell me what to do next? Or soon for something else, something unpleasant? Absently, I pulled my dog tags out from my collar and let them swing from the chain; it made me think of Schmitz. I wouldn’t fail this time. I owed him that much.

“Dude, you all right?” Will asked, his mouth full of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Millicent, thinking we were bound for Berlin on a school trip, had packed him a goody bag for our trip.

“Yeah.” I put the knife in its sheath, then stole the cookie bag from him and helped myself to three. “I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it. Now give me back my cookies, butthead.”

“You can share.”

He tried to swipe them from me but we were sitting across from each other and I held it out of his reach. I took three more before giving him the bag. After eating nothing but grilled chicken, whole-wheat bread and steamed broccoli since I got back from D.C., those oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies tasted like magic.

“These must have crack in them or something. I can’t stop eating,” I groaned before cramming two in my mouth at once.

Will laughed. “Now you know what I feel like during two-a-days when Dad’s making me drink wheatgrass juice and protein shakes. Millicent stocks up on baking supplies, waiting to save me from the horror.”

“Dude, I’d hurl if anyone made me drink wheatgrass juice.”

“It’s not that bad. But a steak would be so much better.”

We were still in a good mood when we landed at Fort Carson. I tried not to get too hopeful—this mission would suck in more ways than one. I was more centered now, though. Maybe that would be enough.

Chapter Thirty

I
took a deep breath of
summer-scorched air. The midday sun turned the tent’s walls a weird grey-green, and I tossed on my cot, unable to get comfortable. For a place that got as cold as Mamie’s best glare in the winter, it didn’t seem fair Afghanistan’s summers were this hot. We’d only set down two hours ago and I felt like I could spontaneous combust at any moment.

“Archer!” The tent flap flew open and Patterson stuck his head inside. “The colonel needs you in command.”

I groaned and rolled off my bunk. “On my way, sir.”

Will got up, too. “I can’t sleep in this heat. Think I’ll wander around camp. Maybe I can scrounge up a snack.”

Putting on my BDUs was a crime to my overheated self, but I couldn’t run around unbuttoned. After I tied my boot laces, I ran my hand over the knife’s handle. Three days since its message on the helicopter, and nothing new. This silence was different, though. I felt a faint, familiar hum in the back of my head almost constantly now. Like she was searching for something and didn’t want to be bothered with my questions. I chuckled under my breath; maybe she was using me as an antenna. Matt Archer—cell tower to the spirit world.

Camp had been set up on a rocky plateau fifty miles from nowhere. When I asked, “Why here?” Colonel Black told me there were several caves in the area for Parker to search—only he hadn’t turned up anything.

Eight tents, each capable of holding six cots and gear, along with the outdoor mess tent, formed a circle around the center of camp. Everyone we passed on the way looked dog tired. Lieutenant Johnson sat on an overturned crate outside his tent, singing “Brick House” while he cleaned his rifle. He added some lyrics I was pretty sure didn’t belong, and when he came up blank, he hummed. As we crossed camp, Johnson spotted us and asked us to come sing. I made a break for it, leaving Will high and dry. He shot me a woeful look, but I had orders to report to command.

Besides, in some situations, it’s every man for himself.

Uncle Mike, Colonel Black and Parker were going over the large onscreen map Sergeant Davis had rigged up on a board near the back of the tent.

When he saw me coming, Davis blocked my path. How in the world did the guy keep his BDUs pressed and his hair buzzed to exactly a quarter-inch while in the field? Even his glare was high and tight.

“You break it, you buy it,” he said.

Yeah, my reputation with him hadn’t improved since my tech training at Fort Carson last year. At least he had to look up at me when he said it this time. Another reason to be glad for the unnatural growth spurt.

To humor him, I skirted all the tables and watched for loose cables so I wouldn’t trip. Eyes narrowed, Davis followed every move I made. I blew him a kiss, grinning when his face turned purple in the glow of his computer monitor.

“Quit antagonizing the sergeant, Archer,” Colonel Black said. “I’d like to keep my electronics working if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry, sir.” I wasn’t, but whatever. “Anything?”

Parker shook his head. “My leads have been dead ends, but the major found something interesting.”

Uncle Mike called, “Davis, can you throw up the most recent attack chart?”

Yellow dots popped up on the map. Most of them were clustered in the northeastern corner of the country, in the mountains. Mike pointed at them, saying, “This is from the last month or so. The Takers have focused on this area alone, leading me to believe their lair is around here somewhere.”

I started to ask if anyone had a theory about why they’d suddenly picked a favorite spot, when a voice whispered,
map.

“What about it?” I asked.

Mike perked up when he heard me talking to myself. I wasn’t ready to call it good, though. One word conversations didn’t exactly mean the spirit had full directions.

A delighted laugh echoed between my ears.
Let’s play darts.

I started for the paper map set up on a long table behind us, but she said,
No—the biggest one, the one with light. I need the light to help me see.

She meant the electronic map? “No way. I’ll get in trouble. The paper map’s good enough.”

The knife buzzed in its sheath and the spirit snapped,
Darts!

I closed my eyes, knowing there wasn’t a way around this. The knife-spirit had her mind made up. “Colonel, can you ask Davis to step outside, please?”

Davis made an offended noise behind us and Colonel Black raised his hand, looking weary. “Sergeant, we need the room.”

After a dignified sniff, Davis walked out and Uncle Mike asked, “What’s up?”

Wow, how did I do this without looking like a moron? I pointed at the LCD screen. “Um, I’m supposed to fling my knife at the map.”

“The $2800 flat-screen monitor map?” Colonel Black asked, eyebrows raised.

I laughed; it sounded a little psycho. “Congress spends more than that on toilet paper in a month.”

All of them stared at me.

“Look, do you want to spend the next three weeks wasting time trying to find the Takers’ base, or do you want some help? Is a flat screen worth more than that?” I asked, spreading my hands wide as I tried to sound reasonable about throwing a knife at a big-ass TV.

Colonel Black muttered something about “Gonna lose my pension,” and walked a few steps away before nodding.

Uncle Mike grinned. “I have to admit it—I want to see you short this sucker out. Partly because it’ll be cool, but partly to see what Davis does to you later.”

“Thanks for the support, Major,” I said, rolling my eyes.

The three of them gathered behind me. I pulled the knife from its sheath and whispered, “You better not be messing with me.”

The handle vibrated in my hand. Right, get on with destroying property of the U.S. Army.

“Why aren’t we doing this with a paper map?” Parker asked in hushed tones. His knife buzzed him a good one—so loud we all heard it—and he yelped.

“I asked the same thing and mine said something about how she needed the light,” I said, gripping the knife’s handle. “Guess they like how it shines or something.”

I stared at the map. The northeast quadrant, with Kabal in the bottom corner, glowed onscreen. Yellow dots. Kill zones. Dead kids and crying mothers. People who couldn’t sleep at night.

Throw.

My hand moved before I told it to and the knife plunged into the TV. Before the display sparked and burned out, I saw it—a point not far from the country’s northern border, deep in the mountains. I ran to the small paper map on the table, breath hissing through my teeth. Our camp was seventy miles from where we needed to be.

I pointed at the spot. “Here.”

“That’s northern Samangan Provence. Not much out there,” Parker said.

Uncle Mike tapped a spot higher up. “But it’s due south of Balkh.”

The colonel whistled. “Why, yes it is, isn’t it?”

“What?” I asked, totally confused by this ESP thing Uncle Mike had with Colonel Black.

“Balkh is one of the oldest cities in the world. Over time, it was taken over by Greeks, Mongols, Buddhists—anyone in this part of the world who had power wanted Balkh. A little piece of nearly every ancient culture ended up there; that is until the desert reclaimed the land,” Uncle Mike said. “More importantly, Balkh was the cradle of Zoroastrianism.”

“I can’t even pronounce that, let alone having a clue as to what this Zoro…thing is,” I said.

“It’s a pre-Persian religion. Very influential in its time,” the colonel said. “It’s still practiced today, just not to a large degree.”

Pre-Persian…where had I heard that before? “Wait, Mamie said something—”

Uncle Mike grunted. “We know. Julie got an email from her months ago that put us on the trail. We had an entire team of NSA specialists working on this for more than a year, and Mamie finds the answer first. I swear, that girl could run the world with just a laptop and an internet connection.”

“She certainly is tenacious,” Colonel Black said. “Anyway, the Zoroastrians believed in an all-powerful god of light who battled a dark lord—a fallen-god—who reigned over demons.” He grimaced. “Winged demons.”

That definitely rang a bell. “The Takers.”

“Maybe,” Uncle Mike said. “But the most important concept of the religion is free will—some credit Zoroaster with creating the idea that everyone has the freedom to make their own choices. Their lore says the fallen god apparently had the capacity to be good, but chose not to be.”

Huh. Just like Mamie said—it would destroy everything, because that’s what it wanted. “Yeah, but how is it you two are able to spout facts at me about this stuff in the middle of the desert?”

“Julie’s been doing some hard-core research about the region and its history. She’s just as driven as Mamie when it comes to studying,” Uncle Mike grinned. “She was also a little bored when we pulled her off active duty. Research kept her busy.”

“You have to admit,” the colonel said, “some of this does make sense. Maybe we’ve found Zoroaster’s dark god.”

“But why now?” Parker asked. “If this thing has been dormant for thousands of years, why is it acting up now?”

The knife-spirit made a rueful sound in my head and I froze. “What is it?”

Her voice was sad when she said,
Invite in the light, and dark will follow. The Maker couldn’t have known—he just knew war was coming and sought our protection, just as his fathers foretold—but binding us to the knives left a door between our world and yours.

Goosebumps rose on my arms. It was
our
fault the monsters were appearing? Worse—it was
Jorge’s
fault?

“Matt?” Parker said. “What’s up?”

I couldn’t put off telling them; this was too important. “It’s the knives, Captain,” I said. “When Jorge made them, he must’ve opened a magical door somehow. That would explain all the activity we’re seeing.”

Everyone stared at me, looking gut-punched, while they digested that new wrinkle. I couldn’t blame them. How would Jorge take it when he found out? Or did he already know? It would stand to reason that he knew things we didn’t. Either possibility—that Jorge didn’t know, or that he did and didn’t warn us—was pretty unsettling.

Finally, the colonel said, “It makes sense.” He let out a long breath. “The one thing we needed to protect ourselves is the same thing that caused the war.”

“Maybe we sped things up, but the war was coming no matter what,” I said firmly. “And none of this changes our mission here, right?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Uncle Mike said. “We have to tackle this thing one battle at a time.”

I nodded. “Okay, now that we suspect what we’re up against here, I’m guessing the mode of attack hasn’t changed—we go to the caves to flush this dark god out?”

“Yes,” the colonel said, snapping out of his daze. “Getting there’s going to be a tough trek, especially with equipment.” He went to the tent door, bellowing, “Davis!”

“Sir!” Davis entered the tent, took one look at the TV and stumbled backward with a hand clapped to his chest. In accusing voice, he growled, “You!”

I meekly retrieved the knife. “I’ll be in my rack if you need me.”

Then I ran.

Every man for himself.

Colonel Black summoned the team to the center of camp after dinner. As he started the briefing, the buzz in my head became more pronounced. The spirit didn’t say anything, but the tips of my fingers and toes tingled. Parker caught my eye. His hands were clenched into fists, and they were shaking. Seemed both of us were being put on alert.