The Terminals (3 page)

Chapter 4

“Eleven children missing, killer knows
where, killer's dead,” the general told me as he handed over a thin manila folder. “Go get him, Colonel.”

Eleven children to save. And I'd killed eleven men.

Something in General F. Aaron's expression suggested a leer. I tensed all of the muscles in my arms but failed to suppress a shudder. We had followed the general through the shadowy second door in the hall, and now stood in a room that doubled both as his office and an observation deck for the operating theater, which lay beyond one-way glass. Standing before his desk, it still took a minute to process the surreal order.

“So if I agree to be a handler, I'd need to convince someone to die early and track Hillar the Killer, and this terminal
can't even tell their loved ones.” My brow knitted.

“Beats putting a gun to your head, doesn't it?” he said.

I brushed a stray lock of auburn hair from my face—with the bandages removed from my cheeks, I felt self-conscious. Anyway, I hadn't put the gun against my head; it had been in my mouth—blowing out the back of your skull was always fatal. Always. When it came to intent, I had nothing to prove.

“Slow down, there's a lot I don't understand. What about the cops? Say I do find the info they need, aren't they going to ask where it came from?”

Each pore of the general's nose held a column of oily dirt, and his close-cropped gray hair showered dandruff when he scratched at it. I smelled death on him like the memory of my grandfather's pipe smoke. A heavy, silver crucifix hung on a chain at the general's breast, and his hand kept wandering up to thumb it.

It wasn't only the general that made me uncomfortable. Everything was happening too fast. On the top floor of New York's Veterans Hospital, the general's office stank like someone had left a used colostomy bag on a radiator to cook. Pill bottles littered the desk. A bottle of scotch poked out from behind folders on a filing cabinet. An old television stared blandly on. The atmosphere was one of indifference, like no one expected to have to clean up after the party. And it all made perfect sense. Why should a group of people waiting to die give two shakes about a dirty office? But fifteen years of crap was fourteen-and-a-half too many in my opinion, and as far from a military run unit as I can remember.

“You're not going to tell the police anything, Christine,” Morph said from where she leaned against the doorframe. “And we normally work with the CIA, Homeland, and FBI, not the police. Man, do
they
get pissed at us for withholding information. But the agencies are used to knowing nothing and saying everything—know what I mean?”

I turned to Morph. “I think that's
know everything, say nothing
.”

“Sure.”

“We stay out of the limelight, Colonel,” the general added. “But one person to watch for is Leica Takers; she's a whack-job freelance journalist who is on to us.”

“Why isn't the Terminals run by the CIA or FBI?” I still struggled with the chain of command. “I mean, wouldn't they like being able to commune with the dead?” I waved through the office window at the marshalling area for the terminal agents on mission.

“Damn straight,” the general said. “But the CIA doesn't have a ready supply of terminals, whereas our veterans are of an age, and no soldier likes to take final orders from the CIA or the FBI.”

“Besides,” Morph added. “The unit was conceived at the time of the biggest fuckup in their joint histories. The president wasn't about to reward them for it.” The tone of her skin was set off by her black head covering. In the sordid office, she floated untouched by the flatulent atmosphere. Dark, glassy eyes danced left and right and she wrung her hands, flashing the needle tracks as she did.

“Looking a little doped up there, Morph,” I said.

“Can you blame me, MoH? Liver disease sucks.” Although only about forty, her teeth were stained and rotting.

“
Mo
?” I asked.

“M. O. H. Medal of Honor.” She knuckled my shoulder, her touch light despite the effort she threw against it. “Not often we get a terminal who can walk and talk, let alone with that kind of hardware. Doesn't that mean the general has to salute you?”

“I'll salute her, right after I see Deeth's needle in her vein,” the general replied, and then swore.

Beyond the one-way mirror, which separated the general's office and the operating theater, movement drew my attention.

In Purgatory's heart, a wiry man with grayish skin and a sparse scalp lay on a bed. He was looking at Doctor Deeth, the immense black man who, having completed the administration of the lie detector test, now took up a large syringe. If the man on the bed had appeared agitated before, he now began to back up against the wall, nearly standing on the bed and peering down the beak of his nose with sharp, black eyes. On a silver chain hung about his neck swung a twin to Attila's crystal doorknob.

The psychic's lip curled and he scratched his mop of brown hair. Aside from the gold hoop earrings in each ear, nothing identified his background or his psychic prowess. In his brown linen pants, T-shirt and leather vest, with a little soul patch beneath a feminine lip, Attila looked like a dirty, wannabe urban prophet. But despite desperately needing a shave and a bath, I had to give him some credit. Anyone can talk to the dead, but according to the general, Attila could actually hear them respond.

“He's a glorified fortune teller. Don't let him forget it,” the general ordered. “Even
I
can tell a terminal their fortune.” He smiled with a camaraderie I didn't share. “I see … I see … death. Death very soon.” The comment was trailed by laughter that broke into fits of coughing.

The general moved to the intercom as Deeth swore at the leather straps from which the man had freed himself.

Unlike the general, who seemed to feed off of death like a zombie, I didn't like watching people die. To distract myself, I inspected the manila file he'd handed me. Paper-clipped to it was a photo of Hillar McCallum, a.k.a. Hillar the Killer, case number 11024. His religious affiliation: Gnostic (Borborite).

“I'd need a … what?” I looked to Morph. “We have a Gnostic terminal on staff?”

Morph's red-painted lips spread wide.

“Nope—”

“Life sucks,” the general said, but didn't take his eyes off the agent in the next room.

“Then you die.” Morph finished for him.

I snorted. “You always this giddy?”

Morph suddenly glowed, and the jaundice from her disease augmented the effect. “I've got my case, Christine—my terminal case—I'm going in!”

So that was why they needed to bring me in so soon. I tried to hide my disappointment. I had wondered if we'd become friends. But I knew she wanted this—Christ on a bike, I wanted this!—and I tried to be happy for her.

“What's the job?”

“Suicide bomber in Jakarta, intelligence says it was a distraction, and we need to know what for.”

“All those virgins, right?” I said lightly.

“That's just an urban myth.” Morph laughed. “My paradise is gardens fed by streams. I'll have a Euth for you soon.” She shuffled out of the office, the slow movements reminding me just how sick Morph was.

“A youth?” I called after Morph.

“That's E. U. T. H. As in euthanasia,” she answered over her shoulder. “If you're on the team, you're a terminal, if you're a civilian—you're a Euth.”

“I haven't said that I'll do this,” I told the general.

“Cases come in all the time,” he said. “Do the job and you'll have your chance.”

“Whether my kidneys heal, or not?” I asked.

“Listen, I'd rather you go terminal than eat a bullet.”

Photos of the crime scenes filled the folder and I struggled with the thought of fresh faced innocents having Hillar the Killer's modus operandi applied to them.

The general grumbled at his reflection in the glass, his thumb on the red intercom button, but not pressing it.

“After the needle you will … begin your mission. There won't be any pain.” In Purgatory, Doctor Deeth tried to calm the agent, whose eyes rolled like a camel's that had just set off an IED. The general turned up the volume on the two-way and leaned in to the receiver.

“Speak into the crystal, mind on the crystal, it will be your link to me,” Attila explained.

“Is he another Euth?” I asked the general, pointing at the man who continued to shake his head at Deeth. The man didn't look military.

“Cult in Texas believes in Egyptian myth. They've made a suicide pact. Professor Siam here has a doctorate in Egyptology.” The general reviewed the case. “The cult leader committed suicide early to show his followers he meant business—they're supposed to wait for a sign and then follow him. We need to know what the sign is, or some two thousand people are going to drink poison.”

“What's Siam got?”

“Lung cancer—six months, maybe a year.”

“Wow.” Evidently, despite the colors of the room, the decisions were anything but black and white. “How'd anyone convince him to—?”

Blotches on the general's face alternately went white and red.

“I convinced him, Colonel …” he turned away and looked past his translucent reflection at Siam. “Everybody has a reason why they don't want to die yet … find it, resolve it, and they'll accept the honor of the task. That's the handler's job.”

“And what was his price?” I asked, trying to dull the sarcasm in my tone.

“Siam has six kids by three marriages and his life insurance was invalid—a missed payment or two. We fixed that—six million—and here he is.”

Six million. A lot, considering I was willing to die for free.

“
No
—” Siam shouted. “I've decided I don't want to do it. Six months—that's a
lifetime
if you think about it,” Siam philosophized in a pleading voice to the psychic, who looked blandly on without replying.

“You'll be saving thousands,” Deeth said.

“Too late for this shit,” the general said and depressed the intercom button. “If you don't, no insurance,” the general snapped, and Siam stared at the window. Despite his side being mirrored, his eyes met mine and I flinched.

“What happens to the education of your children?” the general demanded. “Who's going to pay the mortgages? The medical bills. You're a burden on them now, Siam. Better off dead.”

Siam slid back down on to the bed like a boxer on to the mat. After a moment, looking less like a fighter ready to enter the ring than a defeated man, he accepted the referee's ten count. Deeth strapped the leather bonds over Siam's wrists and ankles.

As Morph entered Purgatory, she managed to look cheerful despite the drag of her feet. She held two phones; the first she offered to Siam.

“What's going on?” I asked the general.

“Getting confirmation from his lawyer regarding the insurance.” The general didn't look at me.

The phone slipped from the man's hand and Morph collected it, swinging around to give the thumbs up to the mirror and then came into the office.

She waved the other iPhone before me. “I found your Euth. He's not actually Gnostic, but he's an expert on the subject who has even consulted on Hillar the Killer's case—how cool is that?”

“That was quick.” My surprise was immediately followed by a flush of dread. The prospect of convincing someone to die wasn't one I looked forward to. I had thought they'd all be military. Orders were easily followed if one didn't question them. In the field, death was something you lived with—

I caught that thought—you lived with it to a point. I'd had men die under enemy fire, and that I could handle, but four weeks ago I might as well have shot each of the men who died in the head myself. Mistakes like that required recompense.

“Save the kids,” Morph said, her eyes shining.

I considered the man through the glass.

“Please. I can't do this,” she added.

“One case,” I whispered. “Just this one.”

Morph patted my back and I stiffened.

“Just a prick,” Deeth said to Siam. “You won't feel a thing.”

Even Morph sobered and stared through the glass. The Rom was standing rigid as a statue. All eyes were on the man about to die.

“I miss my wife and children.” Tears rolled down Siam's cheeks. I wanted to look away, but could not. I was spellbound as the man in the adjoining room was murdered in front of us all.

“Just a—”

The general hammered the intercom with his palm. “Just put him down.”

Siam's back arched, and his wrists pulled at the restraints. After the injection, he relaxed, and his eyes closed. His bowels would be loosening. The heart rate monitor flat-lined, and Attila nudged the alarm off, opening his palm to stare at the doorknob he used to scry. Deeth shot another vial of fluid into Siam's arm. Finally I managed to look away, only to see the general staring at Siam with ferocious intensity. Smiling at the dying man.

Chapter 5

Siam opened his eyes, and
his jaw dropped. Sandstone pillars shot into a night pregnant with stars. Standing before Siam, a woman rubbed at her neck, which gaped bloodlessly. The gods of the Egyptian pantheon eyed him, their backs pressed against each pillar. Behind the columns, walls shone like amber caught in firelight. Deeply etched into their glow, hieroglyphs detailed the
Book of the Dead
; a last chance to cram before entering the underworld to face its threats.

Siam whimpered. He knew exactly where he was; the Halls of Ma'at, the Egyptian purgatory where his heart would be judged. He stood at the end of a long line of dead, last until a dwarfish-man materialized out of nowhere. Upon arrival the man stumped around on shortened legs and inspected his arms as if he'd never before seen them.

A shriek pierced the otherwise silent mortuary temple. The dead shuffled forward. Siam craned his neck in time to see a slender feminine foot disappear between the lips of a creature with crocodilian head, hippo haunches, and the forelimbs of a lion.

“The Devourer,” he whispered, shrinking from the beast.

Anubis, the jackal-headed god, pelt as black as Nut's night sky above, presided over the scales. One scale was dark with dried blood, but empty. Upon the other shone a golden feather.

The next dead man stepped before Anubis, and Siam's breath caught in his throat. He was in luck. The cult leader stood before the slavering jaws of the Devourer, though he was much changed from the picture Siam studied in New York. The heavily muscled cult leader towered above the other dead; shadows flitted across his skin and hid in the hollows of his pectorals. But the close-set eyes and heavy brow ridge were unmistakable.

Siam realized his own form had changed as well. Beneath an Egyptian tunic, his fingers traced over muscles he hadn't felt in decades. He had a full head of hair, and his potbelly had vanished. The age spots which had begun to stain his hands were missing and everywhere skin had tightened—youth retrieved in death.

He remembered the psychic's words: “The hell you know is the hell you'll see. What you feel is what you'll be.” The words suggested Siam's mental representation of himself would transfer to the afterlife. Here, Siam was the same, but looked the age he usually thought of himself as being. However, whatever youth he imposed on himself was nothing when compared to the cult leader's self-image; he was a dark demigod.

In a sudden jab, Anubis plunged his fingers through the demigod's ribcage and hauled out an oversized heart. It thudded on to the scale. Blood splattered against Thoth's linen robe. The cult leader staggered, gaping at the hole in his chest.

Thoth leaned forward, pebbly Ibis eyes evaluating the result of the teetering scales. His stylus scratched at a papyrus sheaf. Osiris, Judge of the Dead, stepped from the shadows of a great portal. One eye gleamed like the moon and the other glared as the sun.

The cult leader's voice rumbled against the walls, but Siam could not hear the garbled recitation. He looked down at the crystal that hung at his neck, seeing only his distended reflection. It cued him to his purpose.

“He makes his confession,” Siam whispered into the crystal. “But I need to sneak closer to hear.”

The crystal hung from a leather thong, a duplicate of the doorknob Attila had fondled—opposite side of the same door perhaps. The crystal didn't respond, and Siam wondered what the lag time was for messages between the dead and the alive—his chest burned with the reality that he'd never see his children, never again touch his wife. Yesterday he'd fished with his son; he could have done the same tomorrow. But here, he was alive still—if only in spirit. One final connection remained to his earth-bound family, and Siam needed to make good on his promise.

The cult leader continued reciting his sins. Siam glanced up into the tender gaze of Isis, her burnished eyes outlined in kohl. He smiled at her as he crept past, coming only to the height of her knees. Horus squawked alarm from across the colonnade, and the baboon-headed god Hapi swept a great golden ankh at him. Siam dodged and hid behind a pillar. The dead in line murmured to one another. He still couldn't understand the words of the cult leader; something rasped across the sandstone floor toward Siam.

He risked a glance around the column. Above him, Hapi's ankh rose and then shot toward Siam's head. He dove to the right and rolled, coming up against the wall. Rock fragments exploded from the crater made where the ankh struck. As Hapi whirled, Siam dashed beneath the golden ankh, whose edge shone keenly.

“I have not committed sin.” The cult leader intoned as Siam caught his breath behind a column, chest heaving. “Nor robbery with violence.”

Siam dared another look. Anubis glared at the confessor as the scales continued to surge too high and too low, not yet settled to a balance. Hapi peered beneath Horus's legs and was rewarded by a shrill squawk.

“I have not stolen,” the cult leader's voice was clear and melodious. “I have not slain men or women.”

Osiris's eye flared, and Hapi's attention shot to the cult leader. Attention momentarily distracted from Siam, he moved to stand behind the reciting man.

“I have not stolen grain.”

Anubis began snarling, and the balance bobbed, heart sliding from one side to the next.

The cult leader stammered and then silenced.

Anubis stated awkwardly through canine fangs, “Truth.”

“Well, I …”

Osiris's sun-eye burst with a ray of light that struck the cult leader's chest. His voice began to drone and took on a nasal, bitter quality. “When I was sixteen, I stole the keys to my ma's car and fenced it for cash. I clubbed the neighbor's dog to death at age seventeen …” On he listed his sins, the petty and the great, until finally coming to the end. “I convinced my followers to commit suicide with the next solar eclipse.”

These last words Siam echoed into the crystal.

Finally, the scales slowed their undulations and settled. The heart tipped the balance, weighted by sin.

“But it is my right,” the cult leader explained. “I am their pharaoh. I am their god.”

Anubis clasped the cult leader's wrist as the Devourer slunk forward.

“My followers are mine. Mine!” the cult leader objected.

Jaws opened and then with a great lunge, the Devourer clamped its mouth over the head and torso of the cult leader and lifted the kicking legs into the air before swallowing him in three chugs, the demigod no more.

Siam pressed his back against the rough column. Thoth's scribing was the only other sound. Hot breath blew in Siam's hair, and slowly, he turned his head. Anubis's snout curled around the pillar. One tooth poked out from under his lip.

Siam shook his head slowly, not yet ready, not wanting to miss his son's graduation, his youngest's piano recital, or his wife's caresses.

“He's listening to the cult leader's confession?” In my reflection, I caught the touch of my wonderment. The gray-blue lips were parted, brown blood-shot eyes wide, and I drew quick breaths.

Within Purgatory, Attila looked at the window and shook his head. “You've got your answer.” He snickered. “All you have to do is stop the movement of the moon.”

“Shit,” the general said. “Kiss two thousand people goodbye.”

“What … sometimes this doesn't work?” I tugged at the general's sleeve, and he jerked his arm away.

“Oh, it worked,” the general replied. “It's not up to us to halt the procession of heavens. We leave that to the FBI.”

In the room, Attila continued to stare into his doorknob and relay what Siam spelled out in level tones: “No … I … don't want to die. No. Ugh.” Attila brought one hand to his temple. “Oh, god, my heart. My heart.” His lack of inflection curdled my stomach, and I had to hold back both vomit and the vitriol I wanted to spew at the man for forcing me to listen. Bile pushed at the back of my throat. I glanced around for a garbage can.

The general pressed the button. “Take the crystal off of him, I don't wanna hear this.”

Attila looked into the mirror where the general stood. “He really didn't want to die after all, General.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I don't pay you for commentary.”

Attila snorted.

“Somebody find me a new psychic, so I can kick this one's ass,” the general muttered.

“I've uploaded the details of your operative to the iPhone,” Morph explained, and it took me a second to realize she spoke to me. “Some monastery in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont. Helicopter will take a few minutes to warm up.”

I held the phone in the palm of my hand and stared at it. What had I just seen? A man had died; that was for certain. But to what end? I didn't care what the general said; it was a failed mission. And it still didn't prove the unit was for real.

“Colonel?” Morph eyed me with concern.

“Sorry, Morph.” I shook my head and placed my hands on her shoulders. “Good luck … with your mission.”

“Ready to meet my maker.” She shuffled on feet shod in white ballet shoes.

“I bet he'll have his hands full.”

A touch of envy curled about my heart, and I relinquished my grip on Morph and turned to the general. I wondered how long I could wait—the chance to save children was the only thing keeping me from shoving the gun back into my mouth. Or had he been so desperate to bring me on board because he knew Morph wasn't long for this world? I refused to be controlled in such a way.

The general's bushy eyebrow lifted and a rheumy eye regarded me. “It would help if you believed in something. Pick one of the majors. We could use more Hindus on the team.”

“You worried I'm gunning for your job?” I asked. “Funny that your case has never come up.”

“Every other veteran is a Christian,” he retorted. “We've got them in spades.”

I looked him up and down and waved my hand toward a bottle of booze.

“Better use yourself before your heart puts you out of your misery ahead of Deeth,” I warned.

The general blanched. “That's the problem with a suicidal; you don't give a fuck what you say.”

“People might think you don't really want to go,” I pressed, enjoying myself.

Anger turned his face florid, and he reached out to his desk, coughing. The fit redoubled and he sidled around the edge to fumble with the oxygen tank. After three deep breaths into a mask, he settled and turned.

“Get the hell outta here!”

As I walked out, I tossed my hair over my shoulder and muttered: “Or what, you'll kill me?”