The Unification Chronicles

18: Mother and Invention

“Have you seen this man?” Jack asked. He was in a diner just off Inter­state 95, the four­teenth such diner he’d stopped at that after­noon. On the the­ory that they had gone north on 95 from DC to Bal­ti­more, he just kept going north, stick­ing to cities big enough for Richard­son to mask her sig­nal if she tried to upload another video. He was stopped in south Philly and start­ing to think he was work­ing a dead end. Maybe they headed west instead.

“That guy?” the host­ess said.

“Yes, ma’am, the man in this pic­ture.” Who else would I be talk­ing about? Jack thought.

“Yeah, now that you men­tion it, I seen him,” she said. “He was in here with some geezer and a brunette for lunch. Took up a cor­ner booth for two hours, thought we’d never turn that over.”

“He was here?” Great, now it was his turn to ask stu­pid ques­tions. He hadn’t got­ten much sleep.

“Yeah. They took off after the chick started mak­ing a scene, yelling at the geezer. Thought I’d have to sep­a­rate them, but they left just after.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“Nah, once they went out­side Bert dropped a tray of orders and we had to clean stuff up.”

“Thank you,” Jack said.

“So,” she said. “Is there some kinda reward for information?”

He flashed her his ID. “Just the thanks of a grate­ful nation, ma’am.”

“Yeah, that and a buck fifty’ll get me a cup of coffee.”

Jack walked out the door and was about to call Dante just as his phone rang. It was Dante.

#

“Daniel! Oh my God, son, where are you?”

“I can’t tell you that, Mom. I just wanted you to know I’m okay.”

“Daniel, there were FBI men here yes­ter­day.” Daniel imag­ined her stand­ing in the stock­room of the store she and his father ran in Oak­land. It was just a neigh­bor­hood gro­cery store, lit­tle more than a con­ve­nience store with pro­duce, really, but it had been his home grow­ing up. His fam­ily lived above the store and Daniel and his sis­ters had all spent as much time there as they had in school. That was where his par­ents had drilled into him the unlim­ited promise of Amer­ica, the drive to excel and the work ethic that got him through med­ical school and work­ing as an ER surgeon.

For all the good that did him.

“I know, Mom.”

“Daniel, they said you were a ter­ror­ist.” She nearly hissed the word, pro­nounc­ing it with vehe­mence she usu­ally reserved for Kim Jong Il.

“I’m inno­cent, Mom.”

“Then why don’t you turn your­self in?”

“It’s com­pli­cated, Mom.”

“Pah!” she said. “It’s not so com­pli­cated. You did noth­ing wrong, you turn your­self in. Your father, he wor­ried about you.”

Wow, Daniel thought. Her gram­mar didn’t start to slip unless she was really upset. His mother took great pride in becom­ing flu­ent in Eng­lish, and worked very hard to speak it with­out much of an accent.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Daniel said. “Not yet.”

“Why, Daniel? Why can’t you tell me?”

Because the FBI is almost cer­tainly record­ing this con­ver­sa­tion, Daniel thought. “I wish I could, but it’s going to have to wait until the next time I see you.”

“If you keep run­ning, they arrest you? When do I get to see you then?”

“I’m inno­cent, Mom,” Daniel repeated. “But there’s more to it than that.”

Daniel heard his mother sob, and instantly, his eyes began to well up. Shit, he thought.

“Daniel, please turn your­self in, so you can come home. It wasn’t your fault, that night at the hos­pi­tal. No one blames you. You don’t have to run so far.”

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her that he was being chased by more than just the FBI. He couldn’t tell her that an immor­tal mon­ster was try­ing to kill him. He def­i­nitely couldn’t tell his mother, a devout Chris­t­ian, that he was being hunted by a demon from the Book of Enoch. So what could he do?

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Daniel said. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Daniel.”

He hung up.

#

“Talk to me, Dante,” Jack said.

“The tap on his parents’s phone paid off,” Dante said. “He called them.”

“Num­ber?” Jack asked.

“Didn’t tell us any­thing,” Dante said. “It’s a pre-​​paid disposable.”

“Dammit!” Jack said. How many of those did Cho have?

“But we were able to locate it.”

“And you didn’t start with that bit of infor­ma­tion why?”

“He’s in north Philade­phia,” Dante said. “In a res­i­den­tial neighborhood.”

“Any known con­tacts in the area?”

“None, but I’m not sure how much that means. If he was stay­ing with some­one, he could have used a land line.”

“Unless he knew we had a tap on his fam­ily line.”

“He’s a smart guy, sir. He prob­a­bly fig­ured that out. I’m think­ing that’s why he used a disposable.”

“So he’s not still talk­ing to them?” Jack asked.

“No sir, it was a short call. After he hung up he turned off the phone and we lost the lock on his loca­tion. I’m send­ing a tran­script of the call to you by email, and I’ve got the lab going over the record­ing to see if we can pull out any back­ground sounds that could give away what he’s up to”

“Good,” Jack said. “Let me know if he turns on the phone again.”

“Will do, sir.”

Jack hung up the phone and got in his car. He was close, and he was right about them com­ing up to Philly. He could get them today, tonight at the latest.

Only, some­thing had been nag­ging at him all day. What if Cho was right? Jack knew Cho had been right about some of it. He’d seen Hen­driks with his own eyes. Some­thing was going on that he didn’t under­stand. What was Hen­driks? Why was he try­ing to kill Cho? Was Cho right that he, Richard­son and Frankel wouldn’t be safe in fed­eral cus­tody? And how would Jack pos­si­bly explain what they needed to be pro­tected from?

He shook his head. None of that mat­tered right now. First, he had to cap­ture them. What hap­pened after that was for some­one else to decide.

He started the car and pulled into traffic.

#

Batarel checked his face one more time in the hotel bath­room mir­ror. The wound had healed, of course. It had healed before he even left Bal­ti­more. Some­thing still felt… off… some­how. Maybe it was just that that the annoy­ing lit­tle speck of a human had pushed him recently, forced him to regen­er­ate more than he had in a thou­sand years. Well, nearly a thou­sand years. That sec­ond Cru­sade was a bitch.

He ran his hand through gin­ger hair and sighed. Cho had no chance to kill him, but last night had almost been worse. To be cap­tured, and cap­tured with proof of his true nature stick­ing out of his God damn head, that was just too much to risk. It was worse than his death, because it threat­ened the cause. For­tu­nately, no one other than Cho and his com­pa­tri­ots sur­vived to tell the tale, and they’d be dealt with soon enough.

They’d bet­ter be. This was drag­ging on too long, and he wasn’t going to be able to dodge Zagiel much longer.

He strode into the liv­ing room and looked out the wide glass doors at the cityscape of Philadel­phia laid out in front of him. He was in a four star hotel, using one of his spare iden­ti­ties. It felt good to get out of the muck for a while, to treat him­self to a lit­tle lux­ury. He damned well deserved it.

He walked out on the bal­cony, let the sum­mer evening breeze brush past him. He couldn’t quite fig­ure why Cho was giv­ing him so much trou­ble. He’d learned some valu­able lessons from the expe­ri­ence, true. He knew he had to get bet­ter with firearms. He hadn’t really prac­ticed with a hand weapon since the cross­bow. And he needed to get bet­ter at online track­ing. He’d had absolutely no luck thus far in track­ing down Richard­son online, not in any way that would lead to her, and thus Cho’s, phys­i­cal loca­tion. And now he’d been thwarted in Bal­ti­more, he didn’t want to use his con­tacts in the Church here in Philadel­phia. It would not do for him to look weak, and no one talked like priests talked.

He knew they were here. He felt it. They’d stayed in major metro areas so far, never stop­ping for more than sup­plies in small towns or rural areas. They were stick­ing to I-​​95, head­ing relent­lessly north, like they were look­ing for some­thing. He wasn’t sure what that could be, and he was half tempted to let them find it.

But no. This had to end, and it had to be tonight.

#

“Penny for your thoughts,” Susan said.

Daniel was sit­ting on the hood of the car, watch­ing the sun set over west Philadel­phia. The sky was a beau­ti­ful mix of orange, red and indigo above. He turned and looked at her. “Peo­ple always say that,” he said. “But then you have to put your two cents in. Somebody’s mak­ing a penny.”

“Steven Wright,” Susan said. She’d heard that joke before.

“Yeah. Weird how stuff like that stays with us, even in times like this, huh?”

Susan hopped up on the hood next to him. “I’m sorry about the diner this morn­ing. I don’t know why I snapped like that — “

“You snapped because you were exhausted and ter­ri­fied. We all were. Still are, really. It’s okay, I prob­a­bly over reacted.”

“You didn’t. I could have got­ten us caught.”

“Well, you didn’t. And hope­fully, after tonight, it won’t mat­ter.” He reached down beside him and grabbed a pis­tol, one of the ones Jeff bought in Bal­ti­more. He pulled the top part back and it jerked for­ward with a “chickt” sound. He started mess­ing with some­thing on the side of it.

“Do you know how to use one of those?” Susan asked.

“I had a friend in col­lege who was a gun nut. He took me to the shoot­ing range a few times. I know how to fire a pis­tol, but my accuracy’s noth­ing to write home about.” He put the pis­tol down on the side away from her, and then picked up the sword he’d used in D.C. “Speak­ing of writ­ing, how’s that going?”

“I have a draft writ­ten about today and what we’re plan­ning to do. And I’ve got the cam­era ready for tonight, all the space freed up for new footage.”

“Good,” he said, inspect­ing the blade of the sword. “We need this doc­u­mented in as much detail as pos­si­ble. If Batarel isn’t the only one of his kind, the way Jeff says, then we need to know every­thing we can about how to destroy them.”

“Do you really expect to use that?” she said, point­ing to the sword.

“God, I hope not,” Daniel said. “It’s really not designed to be used one-​​handed, and I can’t hold it with my left hand [make sure the break and cast is on Daniel’s left arm]. But it was effec­tive in slow­ing him down a cou­ple nights ago — “

“Oh my God,” Susan said.

“What?” Daniel said. He put the sword down and grabbed the gun again.

“No, nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just can’t believe that was only two nights ago. Four nights ago I was in my own bed, try­ing to fig­ure out how to track you down for an inter­view. It seems like a lot longer.”

Daniel put the gun down and laughed. “Yeah, and less than a week ago, I was just some nobody para­medic try­ing to dis­ap­pear. Now I’m a nobody para­medic try­ing not to get killed by an immor­tal demon. It’s been a rough week.”

Susan started laugh­ing, and she found she couldn’t stop. Once she started snort­ing, Daniel broke out laugh­ing too, and before long they were both dou­bled over on the hood of the car, try­ing to catch their breath.

Jeff walked up from behind the car, where he’d being going over their sup­plies in the trunk. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

This got Susan and Daniel going again in a whole new bout of laughter.

It was a nice moment. It would be quite a while until they laughed again.

#

“We’ve got him, Agent Harris.”

Jack strug­gled to fit the ear­bud in his ear so he could talk with­out hold­ing the phone up to his ear as he drove. “Where?”

“Feed­ing the GPS coor­di­nates to your car now. He just turned on the phone, but he hasn’t placed a call yet. He’s not mov­ing either. It’s another res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood, not far from the other one,” Dante said.

“So they’ve set up a base of oper­a­tions here, but he moved away from it to call his par­ents? Why would he turn it on now and stay still?”

“I don’t know, sir. Looks like you’re about three miles away.”

Jack accel­er­ated and hoped for the best. If he was lucky, he’d catch them unawares. “Talk me in, Dante.”

Dante relayed instruc­tions to him, which matched the lit­tle arrow on the GPS screen in his dash­board. He still wasn’t used to fol­low­ing those and keep­ing his eyes on the road at the same time. The depart­ment just got them six months ago. Finally, Dante directed him onto a res­i­den­tial street.

“He’s four houses up, sir, but that’s about all we can tell. It looks like he’s on the left side of the house, but that’s well within the mar­gin for error in the GPS triangulation — “

“Got it Dante, thanks. Can you get a posi­tion off my phone?”

“How do you think I’ve been direct­ing you, sir?”

“Right. Okay, I’m parking.”

“You’re right in front of the house. My best guess is that he’s in the back yard on the left, but again — “

“Mar­gin of error. Right. Okay, I’m going in.”

Jack got out of the car, strapped on his bul­let­proof vest read­ing “FBI” in huge yel­low let­ters, and then started in. “You’ve got backup vec­tored in on my posi­tion?” he whis­pered into the phone.

“Com­ing in silent, but yes, local PD is on the way. They’ve been briefed on the situation.”

“Who’s the homeowner?”

“Leroy Jenk­ins, no pri­ors. No evi­dence he’s ever even heard of Cho.”

Jack saw that around the left side of the house, there was a six foot wooden fence. The gate was pad­locked. “Pad­lock on the gate, but you say the cell phone is on the other side, right?” he hissed.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s prob­a­ble cause in my book.”

He looked for some­thing to help him climb. The next door neigh­bor had some steel garbage cans on the side of his house. That’ll do, Jack said. He pulled one of the cans over to the fence as qui­etly as he could. He stepped up on to it, then peeked into the back yard.

“Noth­ing there,” he told Dante.

“We’re still get­ting the sig­nal,” Dante said.

“Fine, I’ll get a closer look. How far off is that backup?”

“Five min­utes, maybe.”

Jack really didn’t want to risk los­ing them. “Going in alone. Radio silence until I say.”

He held on to the top of the fence with his left hand, and while hold­ing his pis­tol in his right hand, vaulted a leg up to the top of the fence. He rolled over the top and dropped to the grass on the other side. Care­fully, he stepped around the cor­ner of the house.

Simul­ta­ne­ously, he saw two things. One, he saw the phone, lying alone in the mid­dle of the yard, clearly tossed there. And two, he saw the two Rot­tweil­ers growl­ing at him from the patio.

And of course, Jack thought, they’re not on chains. Thanks, Cho.

#

[Some­how, they lure Batarel to the power sta­tion. Yes, I’m skip­ping a whole scene. I can do that, because this is a rough draft. And rough drafts be slip­pery, pre­cious, slip­pery indeed…]