The Unification Chronicles

23: The Fires of Hell

About an hour later, Jeff pulled into a ser­vice sta­tion near Eas­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia. They’d gone west on US 78, hop­ing to break the pat­tern of going north on I-​​95. About ten min­utes out from the hotel, the car had started miss­ing, the engine surg­ing in an odd way. Fig­ur­ing some­thing in there took a bul­let, they decided to get as far as they could, and it looked like the Lehigh Val­ley of Penn­syl­va­nia was it. They’d lost all of Jack’s weapons and armor, but they still had the sup­plies Jeff had packed in the trunk and of course, Susan still had her lap­top, the cam­era, and a video to post.

Jeff parked the car and popped the hood. Jack and Daniel peered into the engine com­part­ment. There was smoke just start­ing to bil­low up from some­where, now that they’d stopped.

“Oh, that doesn’t look good,” Jack said.

“Nope, not good at all,” Daniel said.

“What do you think?” Jack said. “Engine block?”

“Could be,” Daniel said. “Maybe one of the headers.”

Jeff walked along­side them and looked into the engine com­part­ment. “Do either one of you chuck­le­heads know a damn thing about cars?”

Jack and Daniel looked at each other, shrugged.

“Then step away from the vehi­cle, please!” He stuck his head deeper into the engine com­part­ment. Yep, there it was. Shit.

“Bul­let pierced the radi­a­tor, bounced around a bit, and hit one of the intakes. I can patch it up enough to get us a lit­tle fur­ther, but we ain’t get­ting out of the state unless we replace the engine or swap cars.” The doc­tor and the FBI agent nod­ded sagely, as if they’d been expect­ing that.

“Boys?” Susan said. “Let’s find a diner or some­thing with wifi. I need to get to work.”

Jeff shut the hood and they all fol­lowed Susan down the street. They hadn’t said much in the car, other than Jack’s sug­ges­tion to take 78, and they remained quiet as they walked through the muggy Penn­syl­va­nia night towards a neon sign promis­ing “EATS” and “INTERNET”. Man, truck stops have changed over the years, Jeff thought.

They got them­selves a table next to a power out­let and sat down. Susan had her lap­top plugged in and ready to go before the wait­ress even came by for their drink orders. Every­one ordered cof­fee. It was get­ting close to mid­night, and none of them had slept very well the night before.

Once they were all set­tled in, Daniel started. “Okay, so that sucked.”

Jack gave a sharp lit­tle laugh. “You could say that.”

“How’d he find us so fast?” Jeff asked.

“That was prob­a­bly my fault,” Jack said. “Paid for the piz­zas with my debit card. If their net­work is as far reach­ing as it appears, they prob­a­bly had some­body look­ing for me.”

“I’d put money on it,” Susan said. “They prob­a­bly have bots out on all of us by now.”

“Bots?” Daniel said. “Like robots?”

“Vir­tual robots, but yeah. Once you have access to the VeriSign or some other iden­tity clear­ing house for credit card trans­ac­tions, it doesn’t take much to set up a few auto­mated processes to watch for some­thing spe­cific, one of us using a credit card, say, and set­ting off an alert. I thought about men­tion­ing it at the time, but fig­ured they had no idea to be watch­ing Jack.”

“They’re clearly smarter and bet­ter orga­nized than any of us thought,” Jack said. “And now we’ve learned that the hard way. What do we still have?”

“Just what I have in the trunk of a dying car,” Jeff said. “My lap­top, a hunt­ing rifle, cou­ple of pis­tols, ammo, some blan­kets. Oh and a tire iron should we sink to that.”

“Great,” Daniel said. “Noth­ing like going after an ancient demon with a frig­gin’ club.”

“Espe­cially given that we know bash­ing his head in barely slows him down,” Jack said. “That was a good plan back there, Daniel, way to think on your feet.”

“It bought us one more day, if that. It’s only a mat­ter of time before he finds us again.” The wait­ress brought their food, var­i­ous omelets, and refilled their coffee.

“Still, it was good think­ing. I really expected blow­ing him up to work. I guess we’ve got to kick it up a notch.”

Jeff bit into his omelet. “Good luck with that, Emeril.”

“Besides,” Jack con­tin­ued, “we only had one more day any­way. Espe­cially after Susan posts again. By the way, how much did you get? On camera?”

“Upload­ing it now,” Susan said. “I watched it on the way here. It’s pretty choppy towards the end as we were try­ing to get to the car with­out get­ting shot, but I got a peach of a shot of Batarel stand­ing in the door frame. And I’m sure my edi­tor Stan will be flog­ging this for every cent he can milk out of it. It’ll get around.”

“Good,” Jack said. “We’re going to need that.”

“Why?” Jeff asked.

“Because tomor­row, or later today, depend­ing on how you look at it, is our last shot. After that, our best bet is to turn our­selves in to the FBI. I think I can get you put into pro­tec­tive custody.”

Jeff snorted. “You just saw how deep their net­work of infor­mants goes, their so-​​called ‘min­ions.’ Don’t even try to tell me the feds aren’t compromised.”

“At this point,” Jack said, “I’m inclined to agree with you. Which is why turn­ing our­selves in is such a good idea. It’s the per­fect lure. I have a few peo­ple I can trust implic­itly, help me lay the trap.”

“With us as bait,” Daniel said.

“What bet­ter bait do we have?” Jack asked. “We know Batarel won’t give up. How bet­ter to ensure he attacks on our terms?”

“There’s some­thing I don’t get,” Susan said. “If he’s intent on killing us because he’s try­ing to get us out of the way, make us dis­ap­pear, isn’t it already too late? I mean, every video I post proves their existence.”

“Only to folks like Jeff, Susan,” Jack said. “Peo­ple who already believe. No offense.”

“None taken,” Jeff said.

“To peo­ple who are inclined to believe these things can’t hap­pen, like I was, and Daniel was, until last week, your videos still look like a stunt. Spe­cial effects magic. Most of the net­works are spin­ning them that way. The amaz­ing inter­net prank that has Hol­ly­wood jeal­ous. If we all dis­ap­pear, the whole thing fades away, even now.”

“So how do we prove it?” Daniel asked.

“We don’t dis­ap­pear, for starters,” Jack said. “And we have a bet­ter chance of that in pro­tec­tive cus­tody than we do run­ning around on our own. Even if they have some­one on the inside, they’[ll have to fight their way through a bunch of FBI agents. Safety in numbers.”

“And how do we know you’re not going to just turn us over to your bud­dies in Home­land Secu­rity and ship us off to Gitmo?” Jeff asked, point­ing his fork for emphasis.

“Jeff, are you seri­ous? What about the last twelve hours, man? I’m as far off the reser­va­tion as you are by now. But this is our best shot.”

“I say we do it,” Susan said. “Let’s just get it over with. I’m tired of running.”

“Do it,” Daniel said. “But be care­ful. Make sure you turn us over to the right people.”

“I’ll call my boss first thing in the morn­ing, have him come out here to meet us per­son­ally. And I won’t tell him exactly where to meet us until he gets here. Safe enough?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “That should work. I’m still not thrilled to be at the ten­der mer­cies of the FBI, but it beats the alternative.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. “All that’s left now is to find a place to sleep, and then an emer­gency fall back just in case Batarel finds us first.”

“Hey, Susie?” Jeff said. “Can you bring up where we are in Google Maps?”

“Sure, hang on.” After a moment, she turned the lap­top to Jeff.

He moused around for a minute, then said, “I’ve got just the place.”

#

The next morn­ing Jack got up at six, even with­out his phone to wake him up. Habit, the thought. He and Daniel had slept on the floor, ced­ing the beds in their room to Susan and Jeff. They were in a motel across Route 22 from Lehigh Inter­na­tional Air­port, and just down the road from Beth­le­hem Steel, where Jeff thought they could make a stand against Batarel if need be. The nan­otech­nol­ogy in his blood might be able to over­come a grenade, but Jack didn’t see how it was pos­si­ble Batarel could sur­vive being burned/​melted in molten steel. Noth­ing liv­ing could with­stand that.

Jack took a shower and then put on the same clothes he’d been wear­ing for two days. They’d need to get a change of clothes for every­one later, maybe they could dart over to the mall and do that while he was wait­ing for Lou to get here. He snuck out the door, the other three still sleep­ing off the adren­a­line of the night before.

He walked a cou­ple miles down the road, happy for the quiet morn­ing exer­cise. Besides, he wanted to con­serve what few miles the car had left. He finally stopped at a con­ve­nience store, bought him­self some junk food for break­fast and eyed the ancient pay phone mounted outside.

It was an old model, strictly coin oper­ated, no card slot. Hell, he fig­ured he was lucky to find a pay phone at all any­more. Thank God for small towns, he thought. Beth­le­hem was prob­a­bly just big enough to be called a city, but not by much. A lot in this town prob­a­bly hadn’t changed for twenty years or more. Good, that was exactly what they needed. Big enough to hide in, old fash­ioned enough to stay mostly off the grid.

He picked up the receiver and dialed the oper­a­tor. He said he’d like to make a col­lect call, and gave the oper­a­tor — well, the com­puter act­ing as the oper­a­tor — Lou’s direct office line. His boss was sure to be in the office just a bit after seven.

“You have a col­lect call from,” the recorded voice said, then “Jack Har­ris” in his own voice. “Do you accept the ch — “

“Yes!” Lou shouted.

“I’m sorry,” the robot con­tin­ued, “I didn’t get that. You have a col­lect call from…” Jack sup­pressed a laugh for a minute as Lou tried to get the robot to under­stand what he was say­ing. Finally, it sank in and the robot dropped off the call.

“Jack, where the fuck are you?” What was pretty abrupt for Lou, he must be under a lot of pres­sure. Poor guy. Jack won­dered who had tried to kill him recently. Prob­a­bly not an immor­tal demon. Those were rare.

“Good to talk to you too, Lou.”

“Cut the shit, Agent Harris.”

“I have Cho and his asso­ciates. I also have a damn inter­est­ing story about what they’re run­ning from. If you’ve read Hick’s lab reports, you know what I’m talk­ing about. I want all four of us put in pro­tec­tive cus­tody, and I want it done today.”

“What you’re going to do, Agent Har­ris, is arrest the sus­pects and trans­port them back to DC for trial.”

“I don’t think you’re lis­ten­ing, Lou. We’re doing this my way. I’ll explain myself to the direc­tor after the fact if need be. But I want you to fly into Lehigh Inter­na­tional Air­port today and come get us. I’ll tell you where specif­i­cally when you get here. We’re play­ing this safe and by the book, Lou.”

“By the book is you get­ting your ass back to DC as you have been ordered!”

“Not in a pro­tec­tive cus­tody case, and you know this. Don’t fight me on this Lou.”

“I am your supe­rior offi­cer!” Lou was pissed. Jack thought Lou must be in deeper with his neb­u­lous con­tacts on the Hill than Jack thought.

“And I’m doing this by the book, sir. I require the assis­tance of my direct supe­rior to estab­lish pro­tec­tive cus­tody for mate­r­ial witnesses — “

“Sus­pects!”

“ — in a ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion. Now you don’t want your reluc­tance to pro­vide such assis­tance to become a mat­ter of pub­lic record, do you?”

“Are you black­mail­ing me, Agent Harris?”

“No sir, merely request­ing that you do your job, and by the book. Sir.”

The line went silent, and Jack knew Lou was just stew­ing in being put over a bar­rel. He’d buy the guy a few beers later and smooth it over. After this was all taken care of. Lou would real­ize Jack was just play­ing hard­ball. Hap­pened all the time in DC.

“I’ll be on the first plane out,” Lou said. “Don’t fuck with me on this, Jack.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir. I’ll call your cell this after­noon to vec­tor you in. See you when you get here.” Jack hung up the phone.

Hadn’t gone as smoothly as he’d hoped, but the plan was in motion. He started walk­ing back to the motel.

#

“Let’s get a move on, kids,” Jeff said.

They’d packed every­thing into the trunk of the Crown Vic, and Jack took one more look around the motel room. With any luck, this would be the last one they’d see, and their nor­mal lives, plus fed­eral pro­tec­tion, could begin tomorrow.

They walked out to the car, and all breathed a sigh of relief as it started. Daniel was in the back seat with Susan, who was film­ing the whole jour­ney. Jeff handed a cell phone to Jack, rid­ing shot­gun. “Hang on to this, it’s the last dis­pos­able cell I have.”

Jeff put the car in gear and they drove south a cou­ple miles, turn­ing into the park­ing lot of Beth­le­hem Steel. Jeff pulled around to the load­ing docks and parked the car out of the way, but with a clear view of both the entry to the park­ing lot and the open doors of the steel mill. They all hoped they wouldn’t have to force their way in there, but that was all a mat­ter of who showed up first, Batarel or Lou Gottlieb.

“Okay,” Jeff said. “We’re here. You think he’s in town yet?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jack said. He dialed the phone.

Lou picked it up halfway through the first ring. “Hello?”

“Good to hear your voice, Lou,” Jack said. “Flight was okay?”

“Let’s not drag this out, Agent Har­ris. I’m here. Where the fuck are you?”

Wow, still mad, Jack thought. “We’re at Beth­le­hem Steel, around back by the load­ing dock. Do you need directions?”

Lou hung up.

“Huh,” Jack said. “He’s still really angry.”

“Should we be wor­ried?” Susan said.

“I doubt it,” Jack said. “I’m wor­ried, but more because after this I still have to work for the guy. You guys should be okay.”

They sat there and watched the work­ers on the load­ing docks for a few min­utes, as they offloaded steel I-​​beams onto flatbed eigh­teen wheel­ers. “How much do you think one of those weighs?” Jeff said.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It’s got to be tons, because they need that crane to move them.”

Finally, they saw a sedan pull around the side of the build­ing and head towards them. It looked like a bland rental, but there was some­thing off about it—

“Get out of the car,” Jack said. “Now. Jeff, pop the trunk.”

They scram­bled out and Jack ran to the back, where he started pass­ing out firearms.

“What’s going on?” Daniel asked. “Is that your boss?”

“Yes, but he’s not alone.”

They peeked around the car and watched as Lou parked the car directly in their way, block­ing any attempt they made to drive out with the whole width of his vehi­cle. The dri­ver side was closer to them, and they saw Lou get out. Jack noticed that his boss was also hold­ing a sidearm, his FBI-​​standard 10 mm automatic.

The pas­sen­ger opened his door, got out, and stood up to face them. It was Batarel. His face was still burned from the explo­sion the night before, but a lot of his hair had already grown back. His suit, as always, was spotless.

“I’m going to need you to turn over the sus­pects, Jack,” Lou said. He was prob­a­bly a good fifty meters away, giv­ing him reac­tion time to get back in the car and ram them if they tried to make a break for it. Also too far away for any kind of accu­racy with a pis­tol shot.

Jack watched as Batarel stepped around the car to stand next to Lou. “What’s going on, Lou?”

“Jack, just do as you’re told for once.”

Jack aimed his pis­tol at Batarel, then hissed to Jeff, Daniel and Susan, “When I dis­tract them, run like hell for that load­ing dock. Got it?”

None of them said any­thing, and Jack wasn’t about to take his eyes off the demons, but he saw move­ment in his periph­eral vision he decided to inter­pret as nodding.

“Jack, this is your last chance,” Lou said. “This doesn’t have to get messy.”

“Look at your pal, there, Lou. It’s way past messy.”

Jack heard sirens. Of course, Lou would have called in the locals. That set­tled it. He took care­ful aim, and fired twice at Batarel. A puff of red mist as the demon was knocked back over the hood of the rental car told him he’d hit at least once.

“Run!” Jack screamed, and they all hauled ass for the load­ing dock. Jack peaked over his shoul­der just once to see Lou already back in the car, prob­a­bly call­ing for more backup, the demon run­ning straight for them, and the first of the local police cruis­ers pulling into the park­ing lots, sirens and lights going.

Why did I even think this was going to be easy? Jack wondered.

Daniel and Susan helped Jeff up on to the load­ing dock, and Jack hur­ried them past the con­fused work­men into the steel mill. One of them, a fore­man by the looks of him, made a half hearted attempt to stop them.

“You can’t go in there!” he said.

Jack flashed his ID. “FBI! Need to bor­row this!”

He grabbed the con­trols of the crane and swung the arm out wide, work­ers duck­ing for cover. The three ton I-​​beam jolted out and hit Batarel square, knock­ing the demon through the air.

“You just killed that man!” the fore­man shouted.

“Don’t worry,” Jack said as he ran into the build­ing, “he’ll get up.”

#

Daniel ran, half guid­ing, half drag­ging Jeff along with him. Susan was still film­ing, aim­ing behind them at the chase as much as she looked where she was going. All Daniel saw around them was gray. Indus­trial con­crete, steel pipes, every­thing gray. But he didn’t need to see what he was look­ing for. As they had dis­cussed the night before, he was fol­low­ing the heat.

They rounded a cor­ner and Daniel heard a gun­shot behind them, and then another in answer. They bet­ter find it soon, because—

There! He saw an orange glow ahead, and the heat increased. They raced into the fur­nace room, and Daniel saw a huge basin in the mid­dle of the room, the source of the glow and the heat. Molten steel. He dragged Susan and Jeff for­ward and shoved them towards a metal stair­case that led to scaf­fold­ing above.

“Get them!” shouted Jack’s boss, what­ever his name was. Jack ran into the room just in front of the cops and scram­bled up the stairs after them.

“Keep going!” Jack said. “He’s right behind me!”

Daniel kept the oth­ers mov­ing. The stair­case opened out onto a cat­walk that went across the room above the steel. Daniel could feel intense heat up here, and saw the steel­work­ers below clear­ing out as more cops entered the room.

Then, across the cat­walk, he saw four uni­formed offi­cers block­ing their way. Jack came right up behind them, more cops and his boss right on his ass.

They were trapped.

“Okay, this could have gone bet­ter,” Jack said.

“That’s not encour­ag­ing,” Daniel said.

“We’re not sunk yet.”

“Could have fooled me.” Daniel saw the cops clos­ing in on them from both sides.

“Let me through!” Daniel saw Batarel push his way between the uni­formed offi­cers behind Jack’s boss, who turned to try to pla­cate him.

“It’s okay, sir, we’ve got them,” he said. “They won’t bother you anymore.”

“I know they won’t,” Batarel said, and pushed past him. “Because you’re going to shoot them.”

“You can’t shoot us!” Susan said, still film­ing, bless her. “Not with all these cops here!”

“All the bet­ter fir­ing squad, Miss Richard­son. “And then we can just dump the bod­ies in the steel. You’ve actu­ally solved my prob­lem for me.”

“Let me take this,” Daniel whis­pered to Jack, and stepped between the rest of them and Batarel.

“Ah, Mis­ter Cho. I think you’ll go last. I want you to suffer.”

“Do these cops know what you really are, Batarel?” Daniel said. “Do they know who they’re work­ing for?”

Batarel walked to within a few inches of Daniel, and Daniel could smell a faint odor of cooked meat. Up close, he could see the burn scar­ring in more detail, and if he con­cen­trated, could actu­ally see it heal­ing before his eyes.

“Of course they don’t, Cho,” Batarel whis­pered. “And they won’t believe you no mat­ter what you tell them. But Assis­tant Direc­tor Got­tlieb knows who I work for. He couldn’t wait to hand you over to me.

“And now,” Batarel said loud enough for the police to hear him, “you will be shot as the ter­ror­ist trai­tors you are.”

“There’s just one prob­lem, Batarel,” Daniel said.

“And what’s that?”

“This!” Daniel said, as he dropped to a crouch and made as if to sweep Batarel’s knees. When the demon lunged to the side to avoid the attack — tak­ing him right up against the cat­walk rail­ing — Daniel came up under the demon, grab­bing him by his suit, and pitched him over the railing.

The demon screamed on the way down before pitch­ing into what looked to Daniel like the fires of Hell. The scream­ing changed into a high keen­ing sound as the clothes flash ignited and Daniel could see the flesh lit­er­ally falling from Batarel’s bones. In sec­onds, it was over. There was noth­ing left.

“I wasn’t sure that would work,” Daniel whispered.

Jack put his gun down on the cat­walk, and motioned for the rest of them to do the same. He turned to his boss.

“You sure you want to shoot us, Lou?”

Jack’s boss was still star­ing into the steel, like he couldn’t believe what had just hap­pened. He appar­ently accepted immor­tal demons run­ning Wash­ing­ton DC, but actu­ally killing one, that gave him pause.

“Lou?” Jack said.

Jack’s boss cleared his throat. “Ar — Arrest them,” he said. “They’ll be remanded over to fed­eral custody.”

The police moved in, and Daniel didn’t resist being handcuffed.