The Second Ship Read online

  Dinner passed in pleasant conversation, bedtime arriving almost reluctantly to call her up to her bath. Still, the hour was surprisingly late and church service was early in the morning. By the time she had bathed and pulled on her nightgown, warm robe, and fuzzy slippers, Heather felt so sleepy she could hardly wait to slide between her sheets.

  “Good night, babe,” her dad called out as she stepped into the hallway and headed toward her room.

  “Night, Dad. Night, Mom.”

  “Good night, sweetheart,” her mother called out from her bedroom. “Sleep well.”

  Heather smiled to herself as she turned the knob on her bedroom door. They might as well be the Waltons.

  She was still smiling as she stepped into her room. Before her hand could reach the light switch, a strong arm clamped around her, lifting her off the floor and clamping her mouth shut. Heather screamed, but the sound came out as a tiny, muffled squeak, not loud enough to be heard over the Leno show now playing in her parents’ bedroom at the far end of the hall.

  As she tried to claw and kick, she was thrown facedown on the bed, her head tilted to the side in a quick movement as the man jammed a piece of cloth in her mouth and covered it with duct tape. The tape covered part of her nostrils, and Heather struggled to breathe. Jesus, he was strong. Maybe as strong as Mark. Despite her thrashing, she quickly had her hands and feet also bound in loops of duct tape. The man’s hands worked so quickly and with such strength that Heather found herself completely immobilized before the shock of the attack subsided.

  Then the strong hands grabbed her shoulders and rolled her faceup on the bed. To her horror, she beheld the sunken eyes and insane grin of the Rag Man as he straddled her body. She screamed again, this one producing even less sound than the last. The Rag Man’s grin widened.

  He moved again, grabbing her like a very small sack of potatoes and tossing her over his shoulder. Moving to the window, he opened it and leaped out, catching a branch with his free hand and swinging himself out and down, landing on the ground from a height of fifteen feet as lightly as if he had just stepped off the porch.

  Then, reaching up to pat her gently on the butt, the Rag Man jogged out of Heather’s yard, crossed the street, and disappeared along the wooded trail beyond.

  59

  Night. The bright headlights of cars passing by as they headed off into the black void, destination unknown. How many times over the years had Jack moved along dark streets, momentarily blinded by that glare as he prowled, a lone hunter in the darkness?

  Two hours ago he had found Harold’s telephone company van parked along a side street in White Rock, apparently undisturbed since Harold had left it, indicating that Harold had left on foot to go somewhere. The odd thing was that his street clothes were left neatly folded on the passenger-side floorboard.

  So Harold had been wearing something that he expected to change out of upon his return—a sweat suit, perhaps. It wasn’t like Harold to go jogging from a location where he had parked for surveillance. And his weapon was gone. That meant the jog was strictly business.

  Harry, old man, where were you jogging to?

  Jack parked his car several blocks away and then returned to Harold’s van on foot. This location would have given Harold access to the houses of several of the Rho Project scientists, as well as a couple of the technicians, so it made a good spot to do a little telephone line snooping.

  Jack ran through the list in his mind. The closest houses were the least likely to have been of interest: the McFarland and Smythe homes, which were only a couple of blocks from where the truck was parked. Normally he would have ignored this line of inquiry.

  But why had Harold gone for a jog? He must have been tailing someone whom he knew would have been jogging. The McFarland and Smythe houses sat very near a spot where several trails led off into the woods.

  Of course Harold could have been jogging along city streets, but that wasn’t likely. If he was tailing someone, he would have stood out like a sore thumb in these close-knit neighborhoods as he followed along behind a local. This was no hotel district where a stranger could go unnoticed.

  Jack glanced at his watch. Pressing a button on the side sent off a faint indigo light from the digital readout. 23:24. A little over thirty minutes to midnight. He moved off the road, cutting through a gap between houses, and entered the moonlit woods. Jack wasn’t quite sure what he hoped to find, but he had stayed alive this far through his instincts, and right now his inner voice said this was the place.

  A sudden movement where the trail crossed a meadow, several hundred feet from where Jack stood, caught his eye. His head swiveled like an owl spotting a field mouse. The person moved fast, disappearing into the woods on the far side of the clearing in seconds, but those seconds were long enough to get Jack moving. The running man had been carrying a body over one shoulder.

  Jack ran swiftly and silently through the semidarkness, every sense attuned to his surroundings, his nerves so finely monitored that he felt like a tuning fork struck by a rubber mallet. His body hummed.

  For over half an hour Jack gradually closed the distance between himself and the man running ahead of him, and in each spot where the moonlight made its way through the trees, Jack could clearly see sign of his quarry’s passage, periodically spotting him through the gaps.

  At first he thought perhaps it was Harry’s body over the man’s shoulder, but it soon became obvious it was much too small. The body appeared to be struggling, although with little effect. Anger had bubbled up within Jack at the thought that the man had killed Harry, but the suspicion that now arose within his mind clouded his vision with a red haze. As time passed, his intuition told him the man he chased was the one the McFarlands had called the Rag Man. That left little doubt as to who was draped over his shoulder. Although Jack had already been racing along the rough trail, he pressed himself, jacking up the pace another couple of notches.

  Suddenly Jack came to another of the clearings, and he slid to a stop as he gazed out at the broad, open space. There was no sign of the Rag Man. Glancing down, Jack carefully examined the ground all around the spot where the trail exited the woods. There were no tracks, no broken twigs, overturned stones, or twisted blades of grass to indicate that anyone had passed this way within days.

  Jack reached into the pouch strapped firmly beneath his left shoulder. From a spot just below where his 9mm Berretta hung, he extracted a set of goggles. Not the bulky night-vision goggles that were standard soldier issue. These were top-of-the-line, barely larger than sunglasses.

  He flipped on a switch by his right temple, and the scene around him shifted colors. Another switch shifted the view to black hot as he began walking back down the trail the way he had come. In his left hand he held something that looked like a penlight, although the beam from this one was invisible to the naked eye. With the special lenses, the surrounding ground looked like it had been bathed in a black-light search lamp.

  It did not take Jack long to find the last spot where the trail showed signs of the runner. Unfortunately, despite his skill, there was no sign at all of where the Rag Man had gone from here.

  Jack cursed inwardly. To find the trail again he would have to cut a wide circle through the woods, spiraling outward until he crossed it. If he didn’t get very lucky soon, the crazy perp was probably going to kill that sweet girl before Jack could get to her.

  Taking a deep breath, Jack began moving outward in a wide spiral around the spot. It would be all right. He would find them. He had always had a knack for this kind of thing, and he wasn’t about to start doubting that knack now. And when he found them, Jack was certain of one thing. The Rag Man would never bother anyone ever again.

  60

  Mark slept fitfully, his muscles twitching involuntarily in accompaniment to the REM movements of his eyes. Soundless words formed on his lips, the same words over and over and over again.

  “Mark! Please help me!”

  With a final massive contraction o
f his muscles, Mark landed on his feet beside the bed, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “Heather.”

  Mark grabbed for his sweats and running shoes, throwing them on his body as he moved through the door into the hallway. As he stepped out, he saw Jennifer’s terrified face looking at him.

  She clutched at his arm. “Something terrible is happening to Heather.”

  “I know. I can feel her in my head.”

  “We have to help her.”

  “You stay here. I’m going to go get her.”

  “But how will you find her?”

  “I don’t know how exactly, but I can feel her out there. It’s like she’s pulling me. I’ll find her.”

  As Mark finished sliding on his second shoe and released his hold on the banister, Jennifer noticed he had crushed the wood railing beneath his fingers. Then he was down the stairs and out of the house.

  Mark’s feet moved with a speed he had never imagined humanly possible, propelling him down the dark street and into the woods as if he were slung from a catapult. All conscious thought stopped as his mind focused on the directional pull tugging him. It was getting weaker now as Heather’s strength ebbed, or perhaps it was her life force that ebbed. A shudder passed through Mark’s body as he pressed himself to the limit.

  He no longer followed the trail, moving directly toward the spot from which he felt her call emanate, leaping boulders and deadfalls, crashing directly through the smaller bushes, as tree branches and thorn bushes clutched and tore at him in vain attempts to impede his progress.

  As he reached a steep slope and scrambled down, Heather’s call faded entirely. Mark stopped, casting his gaze around in a desperate attempt to identify landmarks in the direction he had last felt it. Suddenly, he became aware of a pale flickering light about a hundred feet down the slope and to the right of where he stood.

  Mark resumed his movement, although now he went quietly forward. As he came within view of the spot, he saw the entrance to an unknown cave, the flickering light spilling out of the opening. As Mark prepared to rush across the remaining distance and into the opening, a voice rang out in the darkness.

  “Freeze!”

  61

  Jack Gregory stepped out of the darkness and into the lighted cave entrance, his weapon locked on a spot in the middle of the Rag Man’s head.

  “Freeze!” His command rang through the still night air like the tolling of a church bell.

  The Rag Man froze, then turned away from Heather’s limp body, which hung like a rag doll, suspended by her cuffed wrists, chained to the wall in a way that reminded Jack of cramped Al-Qaeda torture cells in the Middle East. Hanging on a meat hook beside her was Harry’s broken body.

  “Slowly, now, step away from the girl and drop the knife.”

  As the Rag Man completed his slow turn, Jack could see that the tip of the knife rested against the jugular vein on the left side of Heather’s neck. Insanity shone brightly in the depths of the recessed eyes of the Rag Man, his grin revealing teeth so rotten that Jack expected to see flies swarm from the man’s open mouth.

  The Rag Man nodded toward Harold’s corpse. “So you must be the one that guy called ‘Ripper.’ You know, I worked long and hard to make that Satan spawn tell me your real name so I could track you down, but he went back to the dark lord’s arms with the secret still clenched in his teeth. But the true Lord’s power is not to be denied. He has seen fit to deliver you to me anyway.”

  “Drop the knife.”

  “Well, no. I don’t think I will. You see, even if you manage to shoot me, I will cut this young sinner’s throat before your bullet reaches me.”

  Jack calculated quickly. “Yes, but if you’re right and God has seen fit to bring me to you, then you will have failed to do what he desires. You will be dead, and I’ll still be alive. Perhaps we can work out a deal.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ll toss away my gun if you agree to deal with me first, then the girl.”

  The Rag Man’s grin widened. “I agree. Toss the gun.”

  “Do you swear on the Lord Almighty that you will not hurt that girl again until after you deal with me?”

  “I swear it, in the name of the Almighty Father.” The Rag Man’s carnivorous grin widened.

  Jack tossed the gun out of the cave.

  62

  Mark froze. A man clad all in black had run into the mouth of the cave, pulled a gun, and given the command in a voice that cracked like a whip.

  Mark moved to his left a few yards, so he could see inside the cave from the bushes where he crouched. As he looked inside, he barely managed to stifle a horrified cry. Heather hung from chains on the far wall, unconscious or dead. The man they called the Rag Man leaned against her body, having just finished sniffing or licking her neck.

  Beside Heather, a dead man’s body hung from a meat hook, his limbs twisted like taffy on a stretcher. The corpse’s face was a horror. The skin had been sliced open in great slits like bloody gills. The nose had been cut off, and the eyeballs had been carefully pulled from their sockets so they dangled down the cheeks by the optic nerve.

  “Slowly, now, step away from the girl and drop the knife.”

  Mark recognized the voice. With a sudden start, he realized the man in black was their parents’ new friend, Jack Johnson. At the moment, he bore little resemblance to the fun-loving man Mark had met at the McFarland house.

  Mark’s body almost started moving forward of its own accord, something he managed to stop only with a supreme effort of will. As badly as he wanted to help Heather, it was clear Jack was a professional. For now, at least, Mark would let him handle the situation.

  As Mark watched, the Rag Man turned toward Jack, the knife in his hand pressed firmly against Heather’s throat. Time moved in slow motion as Jack worked to get the man to drop the knife. Mark barely managed to control his breathing as his heart hammered his chest.

  Then, Jack calmly tossed his gun out of the cave into the dirt and rocks near the entrance. Mark felt his heart stutter in shock.

  The Rag Man closed the gap between himself and Jack in an instant, the hunting knife in his hand sweeping into the spot where Jack’s throat had been. But as fast as the Rag Man was, Jack was quicker. That wasn’t quite right. Jack didn’t move as fast as the Rag Man; he just seemed to anticipate where his opponent’s move was going to end up and countered it.

  Mark thought he was getting very good at aikido, certainly far better than the local black belt he had watched in town, but Jack made him feel like a novice. As the Rag Man’s blade swept through the air, Jack shifted his weight, adding his own force to the maniac’s forward momentum. The Rag Man’s body arced through the air, flipping head over heels as it slammed into the nearest wall.

  Almost simultaneous with the impact, Jack closed with the Rag Man, his hand suddenly filled with a wicked-looking knife of his own. But again, the Rag Man reacted with insane speed, kicking off the wall and propelling himself back at Jack. Metal clattered against metal as the knife blades brushed against each other on their way to their prospective targets. For several seconds, the two fighters whirled around each other, shifting, darting, hammering with knives and feet.

  Suddenly the Rag Man stumbled backward, a look of dismay on his face as he gazed down at the gaping wound in his stomach, a gash that extruded several feet of entrails. Jack was also bleeding from a long cut down his left arm, but he continued to glide about easily, almost lazily, as he moved toward the dying man.

  As the Rag Man’s knees buckled, Jack’s foot moved like a striking snake, snapping the Rag Man’s knife arm and sending the hunting knife spinning out and away.

  The Rag Man sagged and then raised his eyes heavenward. “Lord. What is this? Am I not your new Gabriel?”

  Jack kicked him in the stomach, reaching in to grab a handful of small intestine as the Rag Man fell. With a couple of quick swirls, which reminded Mark of a calf roper dallying around a saddle horn, he wrapped the i
ntestine around the Rag Man’s neck and pulled, his knee driving forward into the small of the man’s back.

  “Shut the fuck up, you crazy son of a bitch.”

  The Rag Man’s body quivered and twitched. Then, with several final spasms, it lay still.

  Ignoring his own wound, Jack fished through the Rag Man’s pockets until he extracted a key ring. It took him only a couple of seconds to cross the room and unfasten the handcuffs from which Heather hung and then lay her gently on the floor. Jack worked quickly but confidently, checking the pulse at her neck and then wrapping her in his large, black shirt.

  Beneath his shirt, Jack had some sort of shoulder pouch fastened along his left side, not quite a shoulder holster. From where he crouched, Mark couldn’t tell its purpose. Jack also wore a dark gray T-shirt, which he now ripped off, quickly tearing it into strips with which he bound his wounded arm. With that done, he picked Heather up and carried her from the cave.

  As Jack moved out through the entrance, Mark received another shock. The firelight played across Jack’s bare chest and back, revealing a crazy quilt of scars, the like of which Mark had never imagined. Then he was gone.

  Suddenly Mark remembered what he had forgotten to do for some time now. Breathe. As he stared off into the darkness in the direction in which Jack had disappeared, he muttered to himself, “Who the hell are you, Jack?”

  63

  Jack hit speed dial on his encrypted cell phone as he jogged through the darkness, Heather’s unconscious body cradled in his arms.

  “Yes?” Janet’s voice in his ear sounded good.

  “Alert the rest of our team that we need a cleanup at the location I just uplinked before this call.”

  “I’ll get them moving. Harry?”