The Unification Chronicles

15: Req­ui­si­tions

Jeff was almost done with his shop­ping. He liked Bal­ti­more, and wished he’d spent more time here over the years. They had the best crabs on the East­ern Seaboard, and he’d had a great lunch before he started shop­ping. He had most of the essen­tials for the plan he and Daniel had come up with while Susan wrote her arti­cle. He had blan­kets, net­ting, rope and a small anchor. He had all of these loaded into a col­lapsi­ble cart he used for shop­ping, and pulled it behind him as he headed to the last shop on his list.

He opened the door to the mil­i­tary sur­plus store and felt like he was home. Olive green and camo as far as the eye could see, along with the smell of beaten, often repol­ished leather.

“After­noon,” said the man behind the counter, fortysome­thing with a beer gut, but still a hint of mil­i­tary bear­ing. Prob­a­bly served dur­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. Jeff sup­pressed a shud­der. “Help you find anything?”

Jeff pulled his cart up to the counter. “Look­ing for a few things to round out a hunt,” he said. “Pre­fer to stick to what I know.” He didn’t want to be redi­rected to a WalMart.

“Sure thing, old timer. You in ‘Nam?”

“I was. ’67-’70.”

“I’m hon­ored to help, sir,” the clerk said. Jeff had seen these guys and reassessed his assump­tions. The clerk prob­a­bly never served, but not for lack of try­ing, and idol­ized peo­ple who did. He could use this.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Rus­sell, sir.”

“Rus­sell, I need two of the best K-​​bar knives you have.”

The clerk reached under the counter and pulled out two large knives, slightly curved blade on the bot­tom and ser­rated on top. The metal hafts were hol­low, and should con­tain a col­lec­tion of util­ity tools: matches, a wire saw, etc. The hilt was a small ball com­pass. Jeff picked up each blade and exam­ined them in turn. The edges were sharp, and well-​​maintained.

“These will do nicely,” Jeff said. “What do you have in rifles?”

“Over here,” Rus­sell said, and led Jeff over to a rack of “hunt­ing rifles” that were more com­monly used by snipers. Jeff picked through a few of them before find­ing a [viet nam era sniper rifle] that looked to be in good condition.

“I can pick this up today?”

“Yes sir. When’s your hunt­ing trip?”

“We’re leav­ing tonight, so this is kinda last minute,” Jeff said.

“I’m happy to help out, then,” Rus­sell said.

“What about hand­guns? As a last resort.”

Rus­sell looked like some­one just pantsed him. “Well, I have a few, of course, but you couldn’t just buy one. There’s a cool down period.”

Jeff tried to look as con­spir­a­to­r­ial as he could. “I won’t tell any­one if you won’t, Russell.”

“It’s not like that, sir,” Rus­sell said. “I really wish I could help you.”

Jeff looked down, feigned sur­prise and knelt down to tighten his shoelaces, mak­ing sure Rus­sell got a good long look at the steel he had instead of a shin­bone. “Sorry,” he said. “For­got to check the laces on this thing before I strapped it on.”

He stood back up, and saw that Rus­sel had gone pale. “Rus­sell, please. Help a vet out here. We’re hunt­ing black bear. You ever been on a bear hunt?”

“No sir.”

No sur­prise there, he’d prob­a­bly never been more than five miles out of city lim­its. “They can move fast, espe­cially when they’re hurt. I’m an old man, and well…” he knocked his knu­cles against his calf, and the metal­lic clang was uncom­fort­ably loud in the oth­er­wise empty store. “I need backup. In case that rifle doesn’t do the job.”

“Is there any way, maybe,” Rus­sell said, look­ing for a way out, “you could delay your trip for a few days?”

“Rus­sell, my buddy and I have been plan­ning this for a year, and already had to move it up. The chemo’s kick­ing his ass, son, damn that Agent Orange.” Jeff won­dered if he was lay­ing it on too thick, but Rus­sell was eat­ing it up.

“Oh my God.”

“I know. Sam’ll be with the Lord soon enough. Be we wanted to go on one last bear hunt, some­thing to bring back the broth­er­hood we felt in ‘Nam, you know?”

Rus­sell looked over at the shop win­dows as though inspect­ing an ATF inspec­tor to walk in the door any minute. When he looked back at Jeff, Jeff knew he’d won.

“What do you need?”

#

“Make me happy, Dante,” Jack said.

He was in his car, parked in one of the outer lots of Bal­ti­more Wash­ing­ton Inter­na­tional Air­port. Given that they were in Sil­ver Springs when they bolted, he bet Frankel drove them north of the Dis­trict, rather than loop­ing around and going down into Vir­ginia. He’d been watch­ing the YouTube video again on his phone when Dante called.

“I have good news and bad news,” Dante said.

“Dante, you know I don’t need any more bad news.”

“The bad news is that I still can’t find Richardson’s PC, and the bank records I could find for Frankel were yes­ter­day, when he cashed out his account here in DC. Over fifty grand.”

“That’s impos­si­ble,” Jack said. “The PATRIOT act makes it ille­gal to carry more than ten thou­sand dol­lars in cash.”

“He must have sweet talked some­one. He got it all in one lump. They’re cash in hand, and if they live lean, they could stay off the radar for quite a while.”

“That’s not mak­ing me happy, Dante.”

“I do have some good news, though.”

“And what’s that?”

“The lab emailed me their ini­tial find­ings on that blood from the crime scene. It’s weird.”

“Weird how?”

“The blood cells them­selves seem nor­mal. But there are tiny par­ti­cles in the plasma,” Dante said.

“Par­ti­cles? What the hell does that mean?”

“No one knows. They’re try­ing to get time with a SEM to get a closer look.”

Jack ran a hand through his hair. Why did this kid make him feel so stu­pid? “Great. What’s an SEM?”

“Scan­ning Elec­tron Micro­scope. Should give them a look at it at a higher mag­ni­fi­ca­tion than the optics can get to.”

“And how long will that take?”

“They don’t know.”

“So your good news is that there’s some­thing weird in blood that may or not have come from Hen­driks, and we have no idea what it is, why it’s there, if it’s a con­t­a­m­i­nant from the scene, or what it means?”

“I’m a glass is half full kind of guy.”

Jack pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a sec­ond. Then he heard Dante talk­ing again.

“ — you going to be doing?” Dante asked.

“Fol­low­ing a hunch. We know they didn’t fly out of BWI, right?”

“No one match­ing their descrip­tions in the last twenty four hours, no.”

“Then I’m head­ing up to Bal­ti­more. You said if they were in a rural area, they’d be track­able, right?”

“Not nec­es­sar­ily track­able,” Dante said, “but it would be eas­ier to nar­row things down. If we were rea­son­ably sure they were in rural area, we could look at data upload pat­terns and fil­ter out the peo­ple likely to be upload­ing video. With a small enough group to fil­ter through, we might be able to zero in on them before they fin­ish the upload. In a big city, there are sim­ply too many peo­ple upload­ing large files at any given time to rule enough of them out before they drop off the radar again.”

“And would Richard­son know this?”

“Any­one with access to Wikipedia could fig­ure it out pretty quick. If she knows to use the Tor net­work, she’s prob­a­bly bright enough to know about traf­fic pat­tern filtering.”

“So they’re going to stick to big metro areas,” Jack said. “She won’t get online in some Podunk town along the way. She needs the traf­fic of a big city to hide in, right?”

“That makes sense, sir.”

“I’m going to ren­dezvous with Bal­ti­more PD, then. Send them pic­tures of Cho, Richard­son and Frankel, what­ever you have, and ask them to put out a BOLO. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Because that’s worked so well for us so far?”

“You’re catch­ing on, Dante.”

#

Batarel walked into the Bal­ti­more Basil­ica, inhaled deeply to smell the wood and mar­ble, and strode past red vel­vet pews down the cen­tral aisle. He needed answers, and he knew they could be found here. Mar­ble pil­lars tow­ered to the domed ceil­ing, a paint­ing of Jesus ascend­ing to heaven painted on the dome. He smirked at that. The humans needed their heroes so dearly.

He stood before the wide gray mar­ble of the Altar of Sac­ri­fice, and bowed his head. He didn’t remem­ber where he and his kind had come from. It seemed they had always been here, would always be here. He didn’t believe in any of the human gods. He sup­posed it was pos­si­ble that they had been cre­ated by some supreme being, but hav­ing no mem­ory of it him­self, he didn’t put much stock in it. Instead, his peo­ple had tra­di­tion, car­ried down through thou­sands of years, and they had the mis­sion. The mis­sion was why he was here. It was not their mis­sion alone.

He stepped off to the side, paus­ing briefly to look at the statue depict­ing the Archangel Michael. In truth, the statue looked noth­ing like him. The chin, in par­tic­u­lar, was all wrong. He also found it oddly grat­i­fy­ing that while the Archangel stood over a slain demon — which, of course, looked noth­ing like a demon, either — the statue’s sword had bro­ken off and dis­ap­peared some time ago, and no one knew where it went. Batarel enjoyed the sym­bol­ism, con­sid­er­ing how impo­tent the angels were in the twen­ti­eth and now twenty first cen­turies. Their influ­ence had waned just as his own organization’s had risen, with more and more of the pawns fol­low­ing their way. The true way. The right way. The only way to sur­vive in a hos­tile world.

He con­tin­ued on down­stairs, past the mas­sive red brick inverted arches that sup­ported the tow­ers upstairs, and into the much more pri­vate, much more dis­crete, chapel in the under­church. The walls were mortared red brick, dat­ing back to the found­ing of this human nation. Here he would meet with his contact.

A priest scur­ried up to him. “How may I help you, my child?”

Batarel pulled a card out of his suit pocket. “Take this to the Arch­bishop,” he said. “He’s expect­ing me.”

The priest looked at the card, con­fused. “This isn’t in English.”

Batarel lev­eled a gaze at the inso­lent human, and the priest drew him­self up to his full height. “I will do as you ask.”

The priest hur­ried off, and Batarel ran his fin­gers over the brick arch­ways. They’d held up rather nicely over the cen­turies, he thought.

The Archibishop of Bal­ti­more approached him. “Silim-​​ma he-​​me-​​en,” he said.

“Silim,” Batarel replied. “I require your assistance.”

“You have but ask, my Lord,” the Arch­bishop said.

Batarel stepped into a shel­tered alcove in the chapel, near the orig­i­nal tombs. “Crea­tures of the defiler have entered your city,” he said. “I need you to find them for me.”

“Our resources are yours, as always.”

Batarel handed the Arch­bishop pho­tos of Cho, Richard­son and Frankel. “They are trav­el­ing in a camper, and are almost cer­tainly here some­where. I need only know their loca­tion. Do not allow your scouts to be noticed. If I am to remove this scourge, I must take the beasts by surprise.”

“Of course, my Lord. Is there any­thing else?”

“Yes,” Batarel said, smil­ing. “My usual diver­sion, while I wait.”

“At once, my Lord.”

#

Daniel looked up as the door banged open and Jeff poked his head inside. “Danny!” he said. “Get out here.”

Daniel stepped out­side into the late after­noon sun. Jeff looked exhausted, yet oddly happy, given their sit­u­a­tion. Behind him was his metal col­lapsi­ble cart, filled with what Daniel pre­sumed were all of their sup­plies. The entire stack was cov­ered with blankets.

“Come on, we got to get set up and on the water before dusk.”

“You know how to do this?” Daniel asked.

“Danny, I was sail­ing the [viet namese] river before you were born. Just do what I tell you and we’ll be fine. Get Susie, too. Make sure she brings her lap­top and the camera.”

Daniel turned to relay the sum­mons, but Susan was already step­ping out of the RV, lap­top bag over her shoul­der and cam­era in hand. “Way ahead of you, Jeff. Daniel told me what you have in mind.”

“And?”

“And I think you’re both cer­ti­fi­able, but I don’t have any bet­ter ideas. May as well film it for posterity.”

Daniel grabbed the cart as Jeff led the way to the pier. “How are the bat­ter­ies on that thing?”

“It’s all dig­i­tal, no mov­ing parts. I can record for hours,” she said, point­ing the cam­era at him as he pulled the cart. “Why don’t you tell the folks watch­ing this at home about our plan?”

“Well, it’s pretty sim­ple,” Daniel said. “We’re going to go out on the water, now that Jeff’s been out all after­noon both get­ting sup­plies and leav­ing clues to our where­abouts. If we’re lucky, the clues will tip off Batarel, and he’ll come out to get us. When he does, we shoot him, tie him up while he’s regen­er­at­ing, tie an anchor to him, and pitch him overboard.”

“And if we’re not lucky?”

“Then the FBI gets to us first, and we get to try to explain what’s going on and hope they put us in pro­tec­tive cus­tody. Per­son­ally, I’m not hold­ing out much hope on that score. I’m not going to feel safe until the demon is dead.”

“Okay,” Jeff said as they stepped on to the pier. “You guys wait here. I’ll be right back.” He walked over to talk to the harbormaster.

“Hon­estly,” Daniel said, “if we’re lucky it will be over one way or another tonight. I want to get back to my life.”

“Yeah, I know the feel­ing,” Susan said. “It’s like the last two days I haven’t really been me.

“Do you really think drown­ing him is going to work?”

Daniel leaned against the cart. “We know phys­i­cal dam­age doesn’t do much more than slow him down, so injur­ing him is only a delay­ing tac­tic. If we’re going really take him out, we have to stop the regen­er­a­tion process. And the best way I can think of to do that is to deprive him of oxy­gen. That’s what drown­ing really is. Suf­fo­ca­tion because you can’t process the oxy­gen in the water like you would with air.”

“I keep for­get­ting you’re a doctor.”

“Yeah, well, I’m try­ing to for­get it too.”

Susan turned the cam­era off, and Daniel breathed a sigh of relief. “Daniel, you know lots of doc­tors make mis­takes. You don’t have to — “

“Yes,” he said, grab­bing the cart again. “I do.”

Jeff walked back over to them. “Okay, troops, let’s do this. I got us a boat, the Mary Anne. Lit­tle har­bor scooter, really, just a fif­teen footer, but it should be enough for our needs.”

“Is it a fast ship?” Daniel asked, fol­low­ing Jeff to the slip.

Before Jeff had a chance to answer, Susan replied, “A fast ship? You’ve never heard of the Mary Anne? This is the ship that made the Kessel Run in 3.6 parsecs!”

Daniel broke out laugh­ing, and Susan joined in. Jeff looked at them both like they were crazy, and maybe they were. They were being chased by an unkil­l­able demon, and they’d decided to kill it. It didn’t get a lot cra­zier than that.