The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (21 page)

The pain slowed his reach for the gun. In the end he found its handle only when a second gloved hand jammed up under his chin, snapping his neck upward and back with enough force to tear it free of the vertebrae holding it. For one brief moment the man was aware of his head bobbing about like that of a top before the darkness closed over his eyes and the figure was forever lost from view.

“Patrol one, do you read?” asked the man on duty in the communications center.

“Cruiser’s coming in now. Almost to the mooring,” came the slightly garbled reply.

Damn radio again, thought the console operator. “I’ll send the cars down.”

“That’s a roger,” said Dreighton Quail.

Quail’s battered Chevy had made Macon, Georgia, by dawn Friday, easily within range of the coastline by midnight or even an hour or so before. The journey east from Alabama had taken him down dozens of roads and freeways he had never used before, and the thrill was exciting, refreshing. Worried about time, he had actually driven an hour past the dawn, all the windows in the old Chevy sealed tight for fear some awful winged daylight creature would soar through and attack him.

The Dutchman wondered if the legendary Peet had taken most of his seventeen victims at night. Perhaps he had torn all the heads from their shoulders with the sun bearing witness. Either way, Quail was determined to go that one better.

He liked tearing his victims’ hearts out. Using his hands. Always the hands, fingers being the key. Stretch out those hardened fingers and squeeze them together and they were as sharp as steel.

But not sharp enough yet. To better Peet, tearing a heart from a corpse’s chest wasn’t sufficient. Quail wanted to be able to drive his fingers straight into his victim, cracking ribs en route to the heart to be torn from the sinews restraining it while it was still beating and alive. Peet had waited until his victims were dead to twist off their heads. The Dutchman intended to go for the heart as the instrument of death itself, yank it out with the chambers still pulsing as if to move blood around.

Maybe tonight. Maybe the woman.

The Dutchman had reached Crooked Bluff not long after ten- thirty, already figuring that stealing a boat would be his only chance to reach the island. And that plan would have been carried out if Quail hadn’t seen the large group of menacing-looking men standing impatiently on the dock when he arrived in the shadows. He blessed his fortune, not just because it was obvious that these men were here to be transported to the island, but also because it would provide an opportunity to kill such a large complement of the woman’s guards in a short amount of time, a challenge that appealed to him.

He lowered himself into the water at the first sign of the cruiser’s running lights, chose the moment when the soldiers were easing themselves from dock to deck to shift his frame over the dinghy, and covered himself with the tarp. The bumpy, uncomfortable trip bothered Quail very little, engaged as he was in considering his next moves. He had been told to expect upward of a dozen guards on the island, and this group doubled that number at the very least. If he could make use of the opportunity presented by having the passengers clustered so close together, though, the opposition’s number would be halved again.

Quail would know what to do when the proper moment arrived. He had no use for guns. The only weapons he ever utilized other than his blessed hands were ones convenient enough to keep in his pocket, often fashioned by himself. He waited in the covered dinghy as the
Italia
slowed and her engines switched off, with the mooring coming up fast. Quail eased himself out of the dinghy and swam beneath the surface around to the cruiser’s bow, where he poked his head over the gunwale.

The soldiers would travel to shore in the outboard dinghy in two shifts. The Dutchman was confident he could dispose of the first group of six and then the other before they even reached the island. In fact, he had to, because it was as a group clustered closely together that they were the most vulnerable.

The skipper was drawing the dinghy toward the cruiser by the attached rope when the Dutchman pulled himself onto the
Italia’s
bow in a crouch. The toughest part would be to slither silently atop the precarious toeholds around the cabin to the deck where his victims lay.

Quail glided nearer the cabin in silence and pressed himself against its side. Six was going to be a tight squeeze in the dinghy, and three of the men had already lowered themselves into it. With six on board, space would be too cramped and the small boat too rocky to allow for any defense at all in the time he would give them. The key again was timing, to move between seconds, between the breaths and motions of others. Take the first six by surprise and then turn proximity against the six crowded into the dinghy.

As the sixth man started to step into the dinghy, Quail pounced. His leap carried him to a spot between the two soldiers at the rear of the deck, and before his feet had so much as gained purchase, he had a head grasped in either hand. Quail brought the two heads together hard enough to splinter both their skulls. There were no screams, but the deafening
crack
made some of the others left on board turn, and in the next instant Quail had already closed the gap, lashing out with a blow that shattered the windpipe of one. He spun next to snap the neck of the fourth man while still in motion.

The final pair still on the deck were smart enough to go for their guns instead of charging. Quail knew his quickest of lunges couldn’t reach them in time, and there were still the forces in the dinghy to consider. As he rushed forward, his hands pulled from his pockets two small gray objects and hurled them at the two remaining soldiers. Like homemade arrowheads the objects were, his own unique variation. Miniature blades that were all edge.

One sank into a throat.

The other drove through a forehead.

The two men dropped in their tracks as Quail charged between them for the gunwale and the dinghy beyond.

The total assault had lasted barely seven seconds. Even fortune had proved his ally tonight, for the final man stepping down from the cruiser to the dinghy had lost his balance and fallen atop his fellows. The small boat’s cramped confines allowed almost no space to maneuver, and the few soldiers who were able to draw their guns could aim only at a dark blur. The few shots that were fired struck nothing, and suddenly Quail was among them.

He had managed his landing in such a way as to ensure that the overloaded dinghy would collapse. As it started to turn, dumping the occupants into the water, the men’s guns were spitting futile fire at nothing. The next moment all were thrashing about in the jet-black water, Quail’s to take as a shark would.

The Dutchman had trained himself to hold his breath underwater for far more than a normal stretch of time. He dragged his first two victims down to finish them off the quick way, with a hand compressing each throat. When he resurfaced, he found himself attacked by another pair. He pushed one beneath the water and held him in a viselike grip between his legs. The other’s skull he cracked with a single blow.

He saw the skipper’s body floating near the cruiser and knew his head had been smacked by the overturning dinghy and he had drowned, which left two more soldiers alive. Both had chosen to flee, but neither was a strong enough swimmer to escape him. Quail caught the first easily and held him underwater until he stopped struggling and went limp, an easy kill. The second he caught only twenty yards from the dock and dispatched as quickly as possible because he knew the men from the fortress could be arriving at any time. He swam rapidly in and climbed atop the dock, saw there was no lookout, and turned to survey his triumph. A dozen killed in, how long? Two minutes maybe? Let Peet try to best that, just let him, Quail thought as the approach of the jeep forced him to shrink back into darkness to formulate the next stage of his plan.

Now he returned the microphone to its stand and propped the driver’s body up in his seat so nothing would look strange to the drivers of the Land Rovers en route to pick up the arriving commandos. Two more men about to die, leaving ten perhaps.

A few more, a few less. It mattered not at all.

Lisa didn’t know what it was that woke her, only that the digital clock on the night table read 12:06. For some reason she looked at the bedside phone as if expecting it to ring. Her mind slowly cleared, and memories were rekindled of the awful late-night call that had informed her of her father’s death. The phone had rung, and she had known it was bad news on the other end, had resisted answering as if that might make it go away.

Now that same feeling returned to her in the coldness of this strange room where she was a prisoner. She shivered and tried to tell herself it was just the lingering effects of the nightmare Jared Kimberlain had saved her from—saved her but not eleven employees she had watched die. Their ghosts lived in her memory, stole her sleep, and threatened her sanity. So much violence, and so senseless. They had died for nothing, and it was the feeling that she was to blame that plagued her above all else.

But tonight there was more, though she couldn’t have said precisely what. Outside her door Dom Torelli had stationed a gentle brute named Chaney who could bend steel bars. Beyond him were a dozen family soldiers, with at least that many more due in tonight and maybe already on patrol. She should have felt safe.

But she didn’t.

With the two Land Rover drivers dead back on the beach, Quail’s next step was to reach the grounds of the fortress. Clearly his best bet was to make use of one of the Rovers to gain access.

Reaching the heavy steel gate fronting the wooden mansion would be a simple chore, since the dark road led directly to it. His preliminary reports had included nothing about the jagged rocks lining both sides, but his sharp eyes spotted these obstacles before he had driven more than a few yards. After stopping to inspect them, he slid along at ten miles per hour, allowing himself a bit more speed only in the brief straightaways.

He was sweating horribly, and the layers of scar tissue he wore for a face were sticking to the fibers of his chalky latex mask. The mask could pose a real problem for him now. The guards at the gate would know he didn’t belong as he approached, would know it even before they saw him, when they realized there were no passengers in the Rover.

What then?

“Rovers One and Two, what the hell’s taking you boys so long?” the now familiar voice of the radio operator squawked through the microphone.

Quail employed his seldom-used voice to grunt something about a mechanical problem in return.

A mechanical problem …

And with that he had his answer. The front gate came into view fifty yards ahead, and he flicked on the Rover’s high beams to effectively blind the guards gazing outward. Next he probed under the dash and tore out the vehicle’s ignition wires.

The Rover sputtered and ground to a halt, crunching hard gravel. Quail turned the key. The engine sputtered again, not even close to catching. But it made noise, and that was all he needed. He located the hood release and popped it, high beams left on to continue to blind anyone who approached.

He climbed down from the Rover and hurried to the hood, opening it all the way and crouching a bit so his vast size wouldn’t be noticed until it was too late. He lowered his head way in toward the engine to further disguise himself and then waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. The footsteps made crunching noises on the gravel. Quail didn’t turn until the crunching had almost stopped, until the man was within easy reach. He had to wait for him to get right under the hood.

“So what’s the tr—”

Quail’s hand lodged in the soft flesh between the man’s collarbone and throat, shutting his voice down and turning his face into a grimace. The pain made him scream; Quail wanted him to scream.

The man wailed again.

“Help!” the Dutchman blared now, sounding desperate.

The move achieved precisely its desired effect. The guard remaining at the gate rushed forward to provide assistance. Someone had been hurt, and hurt badly. Nothing else could account for that scream.

Meanwhile, Quail had slid his thumb over to the screaming man’s windpipe and crushed it as soon as he was sure the second man was en route from his post. He timed his turn to coincide with the approach of the footsteps crunching gravel, timed it to perfection, smiling slightly as he grasped the horrified guard’s head in one of his monstrous hands and smashed his face against the cooling engine. In the next instant, his free hand had brought the hood down on the back of the man’s neck, and the crunch was almost as loud as that of the gravel compressing underfoot.

Two more dead, and Quail judged that there were perhaps six left.

He knew his time was limited. The screams would have drawn attention from those within the courtyard, who then might have relayed their suspicions to the communications center. But the night winds were his allies, camouflaging the direction of the sounds. Moving with those winds, the Flying Dutchman headed for the gate.

Lisa threw back the four bolts on the heavy wooden door. Pulling it open, she found the huge bearded figure of Chaney on his feet, his ear cocked.

“I thought I heard a scream,” she told him, not caring if he saw her in the thin nightclothes she was wearing.

“Probably nothing. I’ll check it out.”

“You heard it too. That’s why you’re standing up.”

“I heard something.” And he started off.

“You won’t go far,” she called after him.

“I’ll just go check things out. Won’t be long. Bolt the door again. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”

Lisa wanted to tell him not to go anywhere at all, but instead she bolted herself back behind a ten-inch-thick solid wood door a grenade couldn’t penetrate and tried to feel safe.

Quail wasn’t going to enter the grounds through the gate. If the screams had drawn attention, that’s where the remaining guards patrolling outside would gather, and he would be most comfortable entering through another route and then circling back to take them from the rear. The key was to keep them separate. A hundred men could be killed that way as easily as a single one if done so that one death did not warn of the next.