The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (44 page)

Up ahead the means to accomplish this rose like a beacon in the night. Smiling as best he could, Quail charged on.

Peet had gained some ground but not enough. The Flying Dutchman had all of the dark force inside him now, and it was a powerful force indeed. Peet had learned that himself through all the years he had accepted it lurking within him. Killing had not been enough. The dark force had made him twist the heads off his victims after their lives had been effortlessly snuffed out. The act shouldn’t have been possible, even for him.

He had done it, though. Again and again.

And to slay this dark force that had once owned him, he also had to slay Quail.

He saw the Dutchman veer for a massive shape that stretched for the sky and cast lengthened shadows in the November sun. Barely thirty yards back now, he watched the Dutchman disappear through the revolving-door entrance of the Empire State Building.

Working on the holiday wasn’t Bob Mackland’s idea of a good time, but triple-time pay was hard to refuse. Besides, reconstruction of the observation deck on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building now threatened to lag well into the holiday season, and that couldn’t be allowed to happen. The building had agreed to close the deck down for a week, and Mackland agreed to have his crew work the holiday, with a two-hour break between eleven and one. It seemed fair.

The last to leave, he had ridden the express elevator down from the 80th floor and was looking forward to meeting his family for Thanksgiving lunch at a restaurant with a view of the finish line of the Macy’s parade. Couldn’t ask for much more than that, and triple time to boot.

The elevator doors slid open in the lobby. Mackland had started out when a huge hand grabbed him by the throat and hurled him against the wall with a force that cracked his skull as darkness swallowed him.

Quail got his hand in the elevator doors just before they slid closed. He flung himself through them with only one thought: to reach the observation deck so he could witness the results of his pressing the detonator. He wanted to enjoy the moment, savor it. A million deaths, all at his hand.

Quail stripped off his ridiculous elf’s mask to reveal the form-fitting latex one beneath it, chalky white in all areas except where sweat had started to soak through. He kept pounding the
CLOSE DOOR
button along with the “80,” knowing Peet was close. The doors started their slide and were almost closed when a massive arm clothed in bright green snaked through. The doors bounced back open and Peet lunged inside the compartment. Quail came forward to meet him, and the first impact between them was dizzying, neither man giving an inch, arms intertwined as they grappled in the compartment’s small confines.

The doors closed once more and the elevator began to ascend the eighty floors that would take them almost all the way to the Empire State Building’s observation deck.

The monstrous figures whirled about, and Peet managed to maneuver a bulging forearm up under Quail’s throat. Peet had the Dutchman by six inches in height—his only clear advantage, and one he intended to make use of. The leverage it provided allowed him to keep the arm tight beneath the Dutchman’s throat as the faceless man thrashed wildly, many of the blows connecting to Peet’s midsection with enough force to disable any normal man. Peet, though, grunted the pain down and shoved Quail back against the compartment wall, the whole shaft shaking at the impact.

He knew he had the Dutchman, knew if he could keep the pressure up, maybe increase it, Quail would pass out in a few more seconds from lack of oxygen. But Quail didn’t panic. Instead of struggling to break free, he snaked both his arms beneath the wedge formed by Peet’s forearm and went for the bald giant’s throat. Peet deflected one of the hands with his free one and locked with it. The other, though, closed on his windpipe and began to squeeze. He felt the breath bottlenecking in his throat and knew in that instant that Quail could finish him before he could finish Quail.

Peet gazed to his left, toward something red, and lashed his hand from Quail’s throat for it. The emergency button depressed beneath his palm and drove the elevator to a sudden halt that upset enough of Quail’s balance to allow Peet to pull free. Peet cracked the Dutchman with a savage thrust to the head. Quail blocked his next strike and came up with a knee which Peet blocked with similar agility.

The arms of the two giants intertwined again, each grappling for the neck of the other, trying for a snap that would end the fight quickly. They spun, and Peet’s back slamming against the control panel deactivated the emergency button, causing the compartment to sail upward again.

Quail was big and strong but not patient, as Peet had learned to be. Peet held his own against the strength that was equal to his own, waiting for the opening he knew would come. Finally Quail went for a quick move up and under his outstretched hands which would have snapped Peet’s neck in an instant if he hadn’t been ready for it. The end result was to place him in an infinitely superior position. Using one of the Dutchman’s arms for leverage, he wrapped his other hand around Quail’s chin and began to pull them in opposite directions.

Peet felt all of Quail’s muscles tense against the force being applied to his chin, the twisting certain to snap the neck if the Dutchman let up in the slightest. He flailed and kicked, but Peet maneuvered him about so he couldn’t strike. In that moment it all came back to the bald giant, the feeling of tearing his victims’ heads from their shoulders back when the demons had run rampant through his being. That memory was enough to paint his mind with a vision, and the vision filled his thoughts as he continued to twist.

Quail tried for Peet’s eyes, but the bald giant kept twisting, spinning, throwing off Quail’s sense of timing. For the first time in the life that he could remember, the Dutchman saw his own death. The next spin cracked his side against the elevator wall, and he felt the detonator jockeying about in his baggy pocket.

The detonator! If he died here and now he would fail to achieve the ultimate climax of his life’s work. That he could not allow.

Peet felt the surge of strength an instant after Quail felt it. The Dutchman was suddenly scalding to the touch, and Peet imagined that if he gazed at his fingers the flesh would boil off them. Still he held fast until Quail twisted his upper body at an angle that seemed humanly impossible. He realized his grip was sliding off in time to reverse his direction before Quail’s deadly blow could find him. The Dutchman missed, and a portion of the elevator’s wall bent inward. Peet tried for him again, but Quail ducked under his outstretched arms. Peet felt his skull being rammed hard against the wall once, twice; felt himself slumping to the compartment floor as the doors slid open on the eightieth floor and the Flying Dutchman bolted for the stairs that would take him the final six stories to the observation deck.

The trash barge’s diesel engine roared like a dragon and continued to belch gray smoke. It ran the length of two subway cars and was coal-black from stem to stern. In fact, the beast had the look of a huge, elongated mouth that was all muscle, jaw, and teeth. Its front grille was composed of a steel alloy that could push anything in its path without giving, a feature that gave it the appearance of a gentle scowl not unlike the one made famous by comic Oliver Hardy during his infamous battles with his sidekick Stan Laurel. Add to this the grille’s curvature, which looked very much like a mustache, and the name “Ollie” indeed looked fitting stenciled across the barge’s side.

O’Brien led Kimberlain to the cab, where the driver was more than happy to relinquish his seat.

“Ever drive anything like this before?” he asked the Ferryman. And when Kimberlain said he hadn’t, the driver proceeded to provide a two-minute course in how to manipulate the various levers and gears to shift Ollie at the proper time and stop him when the need arose. “You’ll feel yourself slow down when you pick up the trains in front of you, but Ollie’ll pick up speed again real quick so long as you …”

The Ferryman followed it all as best he could and climbed into the seat.

O’Brien leaned in after him. “Sure you don’t want me to come along?”

“I work better alone.”

O’Brien nodded reluctantly. “Well, after you pass through the Wall Street station, the East River tunnel comes up real fast. It’s just over a half mile in length, so if you hit it at twenty miles per hour you’re looking at less than a two-minute trip tops. Want to start easing off the gas real quick to make sure those cars don’t push themselves across to Brooklyn.” The transit engineer backed away. “Good luck, pal.”

Kimberlain’s watch read 10:39 as he eased Ollie forward.

The cold came with the men through the door. It seemed to Danielle that they had dragged the storm in with them as she dove downward and stripped her pistol free. A trio of white-clad, ice-encrusted gunmen were charging forward. Her dive carried her over Farraday to where she could shield him as she pounded out three shots from her pistol, the only three she would get before the mechanism jammed from its prolonged exposure to cold.

She saw one of the gunmen go down and the other two struggle to fasten fresh clips. Danielle rose to surprise them with a rush of her own, using the butt of her pistol like a hammer on the forehead of the first she reached while the second abandoned his rifle in the close confines in favor of a knife. His first slash made a neat slice across her stomach. Danielle screamed from rage and pain and counterattacked furiously, locking a hand on the wrist with the knife and using her booted feet against the man’s knees.

She felt one of them buckle as he gasped, and twisted to better her position. She saw the man she had downed with the pistol butt struggle to his knees with blood gushing down the center of his face. Blindly he felt about on the floor for his freshly loaded rifle. Danielle tried to kick it away from him, but in so doing the man she was grappling with tore his knife free and sent it plunging toward her rib cage. She managed to deflect it, but by then the second man had recovered his gun and was bringing it up for a clear shot. She was powerless to do anything.

Suddenly the figure of Farraday, muscular above the waist but withered beneath it, threw himself atop the gunman from behind. The maneuver forced him to the floor, where they were reasonable equals, Farraday using his upper-body strength to gain the advantage. In the same instant Danielle deflected the knife blade a second time and managed to gain control of it. She jammed both hands onto its hilt and turned its force back into the man’s gut. He stiffened and fell, frozen as the wind whipped through the open section of the station and gunfire continued above.

Danielle started to drop when another figure managed to rush through the door, gun blazing. Farraday grabbed the fallen man’s rifle and pounded the new intruder with its fire as a second door at the opposite end of the corridor exploded and more Hashi entered.

The nearest staircase was just behind them. Danielle started for it and helped Farraday along, tossing his arm around her shoulder so she could drag him. The stairs came hard, the commander’s legs thumping up one at a time. Above them they could hear the containing fire of the Marines, who were determined to halt the rush of more of the enemy into the complex. For his part, Farraday was struggling with his free hand to steady his walkie-talkie at his lips.

“Pull back!” he screamed to whoever was listening. “Pull back and barricade all doors.”

They might succeed in denying access to the outpost through any entrance except the front, but that was all the Hashi needed. Danielle and Farraday reached the top of the second staircase and passed through a door onto the third floor. She eased him gently down and took his keys to lock it behind them. Knowing the invaders possessed explosives, she knew that neither this lock nor any other would hold the Hashi back once the Marines’ fire from somewhere on this floor failed to keep them pinned outside.

“Christ,” Farraday moaned. “They’ll be everywhere.”

“No,” she countered. “There aren’t enough left. One more assault is all they’ve got left in them, and it won’t come until they’re absolutely sure of success.”

She helped Farraday toward the rec room that he had ordered many of the occupants of Outpost 10 to seek refuge in. She opened the door and looked inside. The room was empty.

“They must have pulled back farther when the shooting started,” Farraday realized as more of the Marines’ gunfire sounded.

A door crashed open at the other end of the corridor and the Marine sergeant, bleeding badly from a head wound, lunged forward with rifle ready.

“Sorry, sir. I thought you were—”

“Yes. How bad you hurt, Sergeant?”

“I’ll get by.”

“Where are the people?”

“Sent them as far back as they could go, sir. Sent them to the pump room.”

“I’ve got one man left keeping the rest of the bastards pinned outside,” the sergeant explained. “We’ve got position on them, but our ammo’s down.”

“Pinned outside,” Danielle echoed. “How many?”

“I counted ten.”

“What about inside the complex?”

He shook his head. “None other than the ones you must’ve taken care of. They’ve backed off. They know we’re low.”

Danielle knew the installation would be theirs to take once the two surviving Marines’ bullets ran out. A thought suddenly struck her.

“Commander, the hoses we used to form ice over the oil pit, where do they run from?”

Farraday looked up at her, confused. “The pump room. We ran them through ventilation shafts.”

Danielle’s mind was working frantically. “Sergeant, can you and your men hold out for another fifteen minutes?”

“Give it a damn good try, ma’am.”

“What about us?” Farraday wondered.

“We’re going to the pump room,” Danielle told him.

Kimberlain was coming fast toward Wall Street at 10:49. Fourteen minutes remained until detonation, and Ollie had behaved brilliantly through the entire trip. The toughest moments came when impact with the second stalled train at Christopher Street had slowed Ollie to a crawl he seemed powerless to lift himself from. The Ferryman fought against panic and shifted up and down until the trash barge gathered itself for the last leg of its journey and the final train, which stood in its way at Fulton Street beneath the famed fish market.