The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (17 page)

Never before had she seen the symbols, but she knew them to be as devastating as the professor claimed. She started to explain.

“This first symbol here.” She pointed, immediately regretting not putting her white gloves back on. The touch of the petrified wood under her finger sent a wave of nausea through her stomach until it threatened to tighten her throat, making speech difficult at best. “It’s rough and burned very deeply into the ancient wood.” Her finger moved away as she found she could not touch the symbol.

“According to the ancient Hebrew texts I’ve studied, it symbolizes the names of all of God’s archangels as one entity, a very rare symbol, and one I have never seen depicted in any form outside of mere guesswork by scholars. But these other two next to it symbolize one particular archangel rarely mentioned at all in the Bible. Usually when God has to kill, he will call upon the angel Gabriel, a chap we have learned throughout biblical history to be very adept at killing. But when the Lord has a task that is devastating in nature, he could never trust one archangel to perform it. He needed all. Michael, Rafael, Gabriel, Simon, and the rest. According to Hebrew scripture, when they are called, a piece of each is used to create this one archangel to finish the untasteful job, and that is this name here.” Her fingers came close, but she could not bring herself to touch the stone. She pointed at the second symbol.

“This is the name that is never to be used or said aloud. A name synonymous with death. Not like the children’s tales made to frighten them into behaving. It is the name of the angel of death, and it is his job to see the curse through. God wanted this mountaintop protected, and he’s sent his best soldier to do it.”

“Every schoolchild knows about the specter of the angel of death, Madame. The scythe, the hooded robe, very frightening indeed.” Stanton snorted, even though looking at the symbols left him with an uneasy feeling. And in these times the subject of death had numbed the secretary of war.

“Every schoolchild has been lied to,” Ollafson said, breaking in. “The angel of death is so much more than a scary image. He is sent when the killing is on a mass scale. I have seen how this darkness works.”

“The last symbol?” Lincoln asked as his eyes took in an unbelieving John Henry who had remained silent since the rebuke from the president.

“The name of the Angel of Death?”

“Yes,” Seward asked with almost childish curiosity.

“Azrael,” Claire said almost as a whisper.

“Yes, Azrael,” Ollafson repeated. “And I have seen him.”

“Yes? I would be most interested to know what he looks like. We may have seen him in Washington,” Seward half-joked. Ollafson wasn’t.

“Just step out into the night, Mr. Secretary. You will see his image.”

“And that is?” Seward pushed.

“Blackness. The dark, the night killed my colleagues, and that blackness has teeth, gentlemen.”

The looks around the table were cold but remained neutral. Lincoln looked at Thomas.

“Colonel Thomas, it looks like your expedition’s roster has grown by two names.”

Thomas looked from Lincoln to Ollafson, and then his eyes found the woman. She sat silently looking at the plank of petrified wood. She finally looked up and that was when John Henry knew this woman wasn’t bluffing. She was truly frightened.

“Now, one last bit of business,” Seward said as he pulled out two envelopes. “Your second-in-command—it’s about time you know who it is and where you can go to find him. He may be a familiar of yours.”

FEDERAL CONFEDERATE PRISONER OF WAR CAMP, FORT LAFAYETTE, NEW YORK

Colonel Jessop Taylor looked at the moon as the first of the dark clouds started to move past. He knew there would be rain soon and that was nothing but good news for he and the men he planned to lead out of the camp that very morning. He lay on the louse-infested bunk and turned his head.

“Time, Sergeant Major?”

The gruff old soldier rolled onto his side and looked at the colonel in the darkness of the wooden barracks.

“Sorry, Colonel, I left my pocketwatch in my other suit.” He snorted.

“I meant the time of the guard’s last walk-through,” Taylor hissed.

“Ten minutes.”

Taylor slowly rose from his bunk and then lightly tapped on the cot’s wooden frame three times. Silently several men rose in the darkness and made their way to the shuttered windows. All but the one through which Taylor observed the moon were secured. Five of his healthiest men waited by the large double doors of the barrack. Their dress was in a state that guaranteed they could not walk the streets of Brooklyn without immediate discovery, so at this juncture of his plan the men started to strip their tattered uniform coats and shirts. Jessop Taylor nodded at the youngest of his men, Private Wilcoxin, a devout boy of seventeen from Wheeling. The boy produced a wrapped brown-paper package and snapped the white string that held the large bundle together. Taylor nodded when he saw the freshly cleaned wash that had just been returned from Fort Hamilton across the way. They were Union enlisted men’s uniforms.

“Not exactly my favorite color, Colonel,” a ragged corporal said as he held up the Union-blue jacket of a private.

“Hell, I’ll take anything that doesn’t house the entire louse population of the north,” another said as he quickly donned his jacket.

Taylor accepted his absconded uniform jacket from the private. He winked, acknowledging the boy had done well in stealing the laundry that afternoon.

“Guard,” hissed one of the men at the doorway.

Taylor finished with the last brass button and then nodded at the largest of his men, Anse Poteet, a sergeant from Georgia. The giant stood at six-foot-six and had worn out more cavalry horses than an entire troop during the three years of war his men had seen.

Poteet opened the rickety wooden door an inch and then waited. When the boot falls came close he opened the door with a quickness that would only be expected from a much smaller man. The ham-sized fingers quickly closed around the guard’s neck and without a sound pulled the man inside. With eyes wide in terror, the guard looked around frantically when the giant hand closed around his mouth. Poteet looked up at Taylor, a knife in his free hand, but Taylor only shook his head. Poteet nodded and then brought the knife’s hilt up and then down upon the young man’s head with a thump. He immediately went limp.

“We’re not going to get too far if we allow mercy to come between us and that gate, Colonel,” the sergeant major said quietly as he glanced out the open doorway.

“We only kill those that need killing, Ezra.” Taylor nudged the unconscious guard with his worn boot toe. “This isn’t who I want,” he said with finality.

“Wait a minute. You’re not comin’, are ya?”

“Your job now is to get as many as you can to the harbor. Corporal Yulee can handle most anything with a sail. That’s all, Sergeant Major. Get my men out of here.”

“And what is your grand design?” the small sergeant asked angrily, as the colonel had not bothered to share this part of the plan with him.

Taylor looked at his men gathered at the door.

“I have a man to talk to for a while. I’m going to hold that cowardly bastard while you get those boys free. As long as I have Major Freeman, the rest won’t be able to blow their own noses.”

“No!” the sergeant major said as loudly as he dared and even reached for the colonel’s sleeve as he slipped out the door and into the rapidly developing storm.

“Goddamn him,” the sergeant major hissed. “Well, you heard him, let’s get to the stables, Private.” He turned to look for the young man who had delivered the uniforms. “Get the other boys together and wait by the doors until we signal. Hey, where did Private Wilcoxin go?”

The sergeant major cursed as he glanced around for the boy, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Well, hell, we can’t wait. Hope he catches up.” Sergeant Major McCandless left the protection of the barracks and started through the rain toward their goal.

*   *   *

Colonel Jessy Taylor watched the southern guard tower and saw no movement. The soldier normally manning the post must have been hunkered down as far away from the rain-washed edges of the covered box as he could get. Taylor knew the soldier was an old man by the name of Jennings, a leftover from the Mexican war and one not very affable to discomfort. Taylor had specifically picked this night because of the rainstorm and the fact that they had all the right Union staff on duty. Lazy men, volunteers for the prisoner of war camps that allowed them to serve but not to fight. Cruelty was the order of the day and these men, roughs and toughs from the boroughs of New York for the most part, loved their duty and followed Major Nelson Freeman’s orders to the letter.

Taylor signaled to the barracks and the sergeant major moved the first of the men toward the fenced section of the compound where the stables and the armory were located. The four-man guard unit was huddling under the eave of the roof’s overhang. Taylor saw they were laughing and slapping rainwater onto each other. They figured, and rightly so, that the men inside Lafayette were so weakened by disease and malnutrition they couldn’t even walk, much less escape.

Taylor watched the first sixteen men, in their newly cleaned Union jackets and a few borrowed Billy Yank caps, move toward the four men, who didn’t notice their approach. He grimaced when the men were jumped. He didn’t want the guards killed. That was a point he had made with McCandless—they would not lower themselves to the Union camp commander’s level and kill for no reason if the guards gave up, which he suspected they would when faced with the angry men they had been abusing for over a year.

More men moved forward from the barracks when the sergeant major gave them the all-clear. They would place as many men as possible inside the four wagons allotted the post and then simply escort them out with a small unit of riders. That was the plan, anyway.

Taylor looked up and saw the dim light coming from the commandant’s office and private quarters. With a look back at his men who were now moving into the stables and the large stone barn, he saw the first flash of lightning. He quickly used the white light to view the parade grounds now filled with windblown waves of mud and water. It was clear. He moved to the stairs and ducked underneath. He knew an orderly would be on duty, but Taylor suspected the man had his boots up on the desk and was napping, as was his habit at night.

He waited for the signal from the barn. He knew he had not been able to get as many men to escape as originally thought. He would only move out thirty-six. These were the healthiest. He would remain behind with the others—if he survived Freeman’s wrath. His duty on this dark night was clear. He would remain and hold Major Freeman, and then stand trial for it and the escape. He would do this to protect those that came after him, to draw attention to the conditions at Lafayette. The man in charge of the camp was insane and he had to end this.

He moved out from under the wooden stairs and then crept silently upward. Another streak of lightning and the view changed as his eyes moved to the barn below. The rumble of thunder shook and rattled the windows around him, and then the nightmarish reality became clear. The thunder had not been the only sound heard. Gunfire had erupted inside the barn. He quickly turned and burst through the commandant’s door. He immediately saw that the orderly was not at the desk and he most assuredly was not sleeping. He was standing next to Freeman’s private quarters with a shotgun pointed his way. The dreamlike sequence was made real when Taylor saw the Union corporal smile. He raised the weapon and took aim at Taylor’s chest as more gunfire erupted from below. Taylor closed his eyes and listened to the falling rain, knowing his chest would soon be exploding out through his back. That was when the door opened and Major Freeman stepped out with six men behind him. Another soldier went to the wall and sent the brightness of the lamp to full.