Empire of Dust (43 page)

"I think you're right," said Laika. "That could be good."

Then LaPierre's men started to appear at the top of the kiva entrance. The first one up was Richardson, the man who had been with Bowman when they were first captured. When his feet were on the ground, he pointed his flamethrower at LaPierre's troops and unleashed its fire. The flames shot out, enveloping several men in orange fire and nearly touching the agents tied to the cross. Laika could smell the pungent odor and feel the heat.

"
Or
," Joseph said, "that could be
bad
."

By the time the rest of the soldiers came up from the kiva, both photographers on the surface and four of the troops had been torched by Richardson's weapon. One man was standing only a few feet from Laika, and she saw his uniform burst into bright flames. He screamed, but the scream was quickly cut off as the fire surged down his throat. He stood there for a moment after the flame had passed over him, his flesh blackened, his hat still burning, looking like a giant candle. Then he toppled over, smoldering and stinking of charred skin.

When the men above realized what Richardson was doing, they opened fire on him and shot him down. But now the ones who had been below savagely began to attack the others, some of whom had also begun to turn on their comrades. It was pure chaos. No one could be sure whether the man next to him was friend or foe, and Laika saw men turn on each other a second after they had been firing at some common enemy.

The bound operatives, however, seemed to offer no threat, and so far had been ignored by the combatants, when suddenly the earth seemed to lurch beneath them, and there followed swiftly the sound of a faraway explosion which they felt rather than heard. The cross to which they were tied loosened in the earth.

Rocks at the top of the canyon's walls crumbled from the shock, and huge stones fell, striking the warriors, wounding and crushing some of them still unharmed by the flames and bullets of the general melee. Those untouched strove to aim their weapons once again, and the sound of gunfire reclaimed the canyon for a moment.

But then a roar louder than that of the flamethrowers or even the explosion sounded in their ears, an ever-strengthening pulse that not only buffeted their ears, but shook the ground beneath them. The water was upon them all even as they saw it burst from the narrow canyon that opened to the north.

It was a solid wall that reached nearly to the top of the hundred-foot canyon. The bottom of the wide bowl of stone in which stood the warriors and their vehicles and the kiva and the operatives bound to their cross filled up in only seconds with violent rushing waters that plucked up men like dried leaves and swept them away, into the instant whirlpool that the round canyon had become, or out the narrow opening to the south,

Laika was aware only for an instant of the bodies of men, dead and alive, being lifted and tossed away. From the corner of her eye she saw one man slammed against the sandstone, bursting open, leaving a splatter of red that was instantly washed away.

When the water first hit her, she was afraid it would cover them and they would drown, lashed to the cross. But she had not reckoned on the power of the water. It wrenched the heavy wooden upright from the earth like a man plucking a flower, and spun them away into the maelstrom.

Though the cross twisted and turned in the moving waters, Ezekiel Swain's bulk provided its center of gravity. His weight, heavy with fluids, flipped the cross so that he was on the bottom and Laika was facing the sky, with Tony and Joseph flanking her. At first she had no problem breathing, even as the waters swept over her, and she could hear Tony and Joseph catching breaths as the cross bobbed up and down in the swells. She couldn't hear Swain breathing at all. Perhaps, she thought, he didn't have to.

They circled the canyon once, the upright ends and the crosspiece of their holy raft taking most of the impact as they struck the canyon wall. Then they were swept through the southern mouth, down into the narrow slot canyons through which they had previously driven.

What followed was a nightmare of water and rocks, of striking against stone while water rushed over and around her, pouring down her throat while she lay on her back, making her turn and cough it up, burning through her throat and nose, blinding her. And always the constant battering of their craft against harsh stone, the ceaseless pummeling, the scraping of wood and sometimes flesh against the unforgiving rock.

Then, over the sound of water slapping her ears, she heard either Joseph or Tony yell, "Christ! He's grow—" The words were smothered by another torrent, and Laika heard the speaker choke and cough.

She turned her head, flinching against the expected surge of water, and from the corner of her eye could see past the gasping Joseph, could blurrily see Ezekiel Swain's head and the top of his body. Whoever had shouted was right.
Swain was growing
.

His head was the size of a beach ball. His eyes were nearly popping from their sockets; his tongue, a fat red sponge, protruded from his mouth; and the cheeks were Gillespied out to the size of babies' heads. His upper torso had become nearly twice as distended as it had been before.

He's soaking it up
, she thought in horror, as another wave smacked the side of her face so that she looked front again.
He's soaking up the water
.

The passage ahead of them narrowed again, and they slowed momentarily as the water gathered force. Then it shot them through the opening so that for an instant they were airborne, above the water. The cross hung upright in the air, jagged rocks close on either side. Then it twisted so that Laika was turned to the left, while the back of the cross, with the filled-to-bursting Ezekiel Swain bound to it, smashed against the sandstone wall.

He exploded like a water balloon. There was a loud bursting noise and shards of Swain's flesh peppered the rolling tide like hail, while the water and fluids that had filled him shot past Laika's eyes like a pink cloud and were instantly swept away by the flood. Ezekiel Swain was gone, his corporeal body dissolved by the waters so thoroughly that he might just as well have been still buried beneath the desert sands.

T
he flood rushed on, but Laika noticed that her bonds had loosened, and suspected that contact with the rough stone had finally sawed through the tough cord. At the same time, she became aware that the waters were slowing, and soon they were moving through the canyons with no greater velocity than that of a steadily flowing river.

"Tony?" she called. "Joseph?"

"Here," she heard Tony gasp, and Joseph muttered, "Yeah. . . ." They were alive.

They drifted for a while longer, the current continually slowing, the flood continuing to divide itself among the labyrinth of canyons, until Laika finally felt the wooden cross begin to scrape against the canyon floor. At last it stopped upon sand sodden with the water's passage, while snakelike rivulets still ran past them, seeking the lowest ground, creeping until they could go no further, then sinking lifeless into the soil.

For a long time the three simply lay where they were, now tied but loosely to the wood, breathing hard, letting their tense muscles relax, getting used to being on land again.

Tony was the first to move, sliding his body down toward the bottom of the upright until the cords around him dropped off the end. Then he worked at the nearly torn through section of Laika's bonds and freed her, and together they helped Joseph get loose. Weak, shaken, but whole, they stood uncertainly on their feet and looked around.

"We came through here," said Laika. "I think the mission is through that passage, and a bit further on."

"If that's true," Joseph said, "I take back everything I ever said about there being no God."

Laika's memory had been correct. After a half-mile walk, they reached the mission. The helicopters and vehicles were still there, but the guards who had been left behind were nowhere to be seen. The old building, on its slight rise of land, seemed to have been spared the ravages of the floodwater.

"Where'd the guards go?" Tony asked. "You think up the canyon after the flood hit?"

"I don't know," said Laika. "But before we do anything else, I suggest we arm ourselves from the Blazer, if they didn't already confiscate the guns."

They made their way quickly to the vehicle, but the weapons in the back had all been removed. "Let me just see," said Tony, reaching up under the front passenger seat and removing a loaded Glock. "Thanks, Popeye," he said. "Never knew a Company wet work man yet who didn't stash one more piece." He pushed back the slide and snapped it forward, putting a shell under the hammer.

"Let's go," said Laika. "We'll check the mission and then get back to that kiva. The waters must have subsided by now, and I want to know what the hell happened to whoever or whatever was down there."

As they walked up the rise to the mission and the ground in front of the door came into view, they saw what had happened to the guards who'd been left behind. Three fatigue-clad bodies lay in puddles of blood. No weapons were near them. Then the heavy front door of the mission drifted open, and Joshua Yazzie walked out of the shadows, pistol in hand.

"Where's your Fury?" asked Laika.

"Oh, I parked around back after I got done talking with these fellas. They didn't give me a very friendly reception." His tone was flat and dry. "Another funny thing—I found three dead priests and another one of those dried-up bodies inside. Maybe you'd like to fill me in on what's happened."

"This is beyond you now, Officer Yazzie," Laika said. "And we're not on the reservation anymore. So I suggest you drive away and forget all about this and all about us. And I mean right now."

Yazzie shook his head slowly. "I don't take my orders from you, Agent Harris."

Agent Harris?
Laika drew in a sharp breath.

"That's right. And Agent Stein and Agent Luciano, too. I know who you are and who sent you. And I've got people who want to know what the hell this is all about. You've been within U.S. boundaries doing black ops, but the game's over. You lose."

Laika took in the situation. Yazzie's pistol was trained directly on Tony, the only one of them holding a gun, and that gun was down at his side. She didn't know who the hell Yazzie was with, but she felt certain he could fire that pistol before Tony brought his up.

"All right," she said. "The way I see it, it's a standoff. Now we're going to go and get in that Blazer and drive out of your life. You're welcome to whatever you find here."

It was half true and half a bluff. As she turned her back on him, and Tony and Joseph followed suit, she was half hoping that he would call it.

He did. "Stop," he said. They kept walking. "If I have to shoot one of you to make the others stay, I will." She knew it would be the one with the gun, and so did the others. She kept walking.

"If you don't stop immediately, the next sound you hear will be a gunshot." He wasn't lying.

From the corner of her eye she saw Tony start to turn, but not in surrender. He was bringing up his Glock. Yazzie fired and Laika saw the bullet strike Tony in the chest. As he fell backward, the Glock continued to rise automatically, and Tony's finger pulled the trigger before Yazzie could get off a second shot.

Tony's bullet hit Yazzie in the center of the forehead.

Yazzie's head jerked as though someone had slapped him. Then he fell to his knees and over onto his side, dead.

Laika and Joseph rushed to Tony, who was lying on his back, breathing hard, his eyes staring at the sky. Laika knelt next to him and ripped open his shirt so that the buttons popped off. A large bruise, turning purple as she watched, suffused his chest, and blood oozed from his flesh where the sharp edges of Miriam Dominick's metal cross had cut into it. But that same metal had stopped the bullet.

"Jesus Christ," said Joseph, as Tony pushed himself up on his elbows. "You are one lucky bastard . . . LaPierre could've put this one in his
book
."

"How do you feel, Tony?" Laika asked.

"Chest hurts like a sonofabitch, but it didn't penetrate." He took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet, but stayed bent over. "Yazzie?" he asked.

"You didn't see?" Joseph said. "You're a goddamn amazing shot, Tony. Right above the eyes. Why didn't you go for center mass?"

"I didn't go for anything. He shot me first, and I just pulled the trigger as I went down." He smiled without humor. "Yeah, lucky shot. Another miracle. Or a third—that's twice a cross saved my life today." He straightened up and hissed with the pain, rubbing his chest.