Son of Cerberus (The Unusual Operations Division Book 2) (17 page)

“We’re getting the fuck outta here,” Stephen said. “I heard what you said about Stewart, too. If he’s not dead, he’s going to be soon.”

“I agree,” Marcus said, catching Henry’s eye. Between coughing fits, he looked up and smiled. The older man even had enough in him to wink before Marcus broke free and jumped in the cab of their ride out of the jungle.

Henry was much worse off than he had led everyone to believe. His arm was obviously hurt, thanks in part to one of the guards being too rough and because he had tried so hard to get loose. He had gulped a lot of water down his throat, meaning he was coughing and vomiting most of it back up. On top of that, he had a concussion that made everything he said rather confusing. Marcus was sincerely hoping he had not suffered a stroke.

They made it across the country and back to the airport by morning, stopping as few times as they possibly could. Luckily the truck had enough gasoline to get it where it needed to go and with the help of map overlays from Washington D.C., they were able to sidestep every village in between.

The airport was close, but the private jet that the UOD kept on retainer was primed and waiting for them. They hopped aboard with the help of some very friendly locals, some of which stared a little too long at Cynthia and her ripped clothing. She didn’t bother with shyness anymore, especially in front of the team. Once the doors were closed, she ripped her clothes off along with the rest of the team and changed into something much more comfortable—clean civilian attire.

Henry tried his hardest to stay awake, but the trip had been long and hard and his head was starting to throb painfully. He fell asleep before the wheels were off the ground and no one blamed him for it. Even with his twisted wrist cradled to his chest, he seemed to be comfortable enough to sleep through the entire flight.

“We made it.” Marcus grinned as he addressed the members of his team. The fog of utter exhaustion hung heavily over his vision.

“Mostly,” Stephen said in his thick Irish accent. “Where’d that Stewart guy get to? Last I saw him, he had been blown full of holes. I distinctly remember him falling face first into the rocks.”

“That’s a good question,” Marcus groaned.

“Are you sure it was him?” Cynthia said. Her bare feet were kicked up high against the window and her chair was reclining nearly all the way back. She rubbed incessantly at her gloved hand and forearm.

“I didn’t stop to check his I.D.,” Marcus said sarcastically. “But I am willing to bet a month’s wages and my bonus that it was him.”

The four individuals traded skeptical looks with one another, contemplating just what the implications would mean. There was no logical reason for Stewart to fake his own death and nearly kill Marcus unless the men that had occupied the village belonged to him. That would mean far more than a man who wanted to take over a mining operation. It would mean he was partially responsible for everything that had been going on since the beginning of this case.

The mobile teleconference platform started chiming, alerting the team that someone back in D.C. wanted to have a word with them. Marcus already knew who it would be. Gregory didn’t sleep—ever. He also didn’t care whether other people slept. The most important thing to him was that a case was closed, as it had been since he joined the military so many years ago.

“Pucker your ass,” Marcus said before hitting the accept call icon on the large television. His eyes were instantly surprised by that of a very attractive Brenda. Her beaming smile told Marcus she was happier to see Stephen than he was to have accepted the call.

“I would greatly appreciate it if you could stop almost being killed,” she said to the group as a whole, though everyone knew it rang especially true for Stephen.

“You’d rather me just die?” Stephen retorted. “Maybe I can arrange that.”

“It would be better than constantly worrying about whether or not you
are
going to die. At least this way I’d have some reassurance.”

“Just be happy you sat this one out.” Stephen smiled. His bright teeth shone especially well against the extra grime and dirt his face had picked up. “What’s the news back stateside? Have you guys found the girl yet?”

“No,” Brenda said, being careful not to let on that she knew something. “We do have a pretty solid lead, though. I’m going to be headed out in just a few hours, as a matter of fact. Police up north are investigating a murder that took place this afternoon. It might be something important.”

“How so?” Marcus was all ears. He had nearly forgotten about the girl and the kidnappers who had taken her. In fact, he didn’t really want to think about the young woman. Instead, he would rather try and wrap his head around a certain Stewart character and his part in the case.

“Well,” Phillip slid in from the side of the screen and pushed Brenda away. “The man who reported the murder claimed he was attacked by some demonic entity. He didn’t realize he had stabbed his best bud in the stomach until police showed up on the scene a few hours later. He’s being held on a pretty steep bail and his friend is as dead as dead can be.”

“So you’re assuming the hallucinations are the same as the ones caused by the box instead of a quarrel between friends, or a bad acid trip?” David was lounging back in his seat, but he was listening just as intently as everyone else. Marcus was happy David’s regular shyness was starting to lift around the members of his team.

“Not assuming,” Brenda said. “We measured a large spike of electricity being drawn into an old abandoned sawmill there. Local police say that there were definitely some visitors to the area, but they were gone long before they showed up.”

“So what are you going to investigate?” Marcus asked seriously. “Why go out of your way to talk to anyone about this when you already know all the details?”

“I want that witness,” Gregory said from a separate view screen. “If he’s been affected by that machine, I want to know about it. I want to know what he was doing up there, where he was going, and what it felt like when he thought he was defending himself against some monster-demon-thing.”

“So you can’t call him?” Marcus hated sending one employee alone for anything, even if it was just to investigate a witness.

“I’m an intel analyst,” Brenda said flatly. “It’s what I’m best at. I’ll be interrogating the witness, or murderer. If he’s innocent, we don’t want him rotting in jail for the rest of his miserable life.”

“Good point,” Marcus said. “Just be safe.”

“I will be safe—we’ve got a few police officers that will be following me around. Besides, it’s only a stateside job in a jail cell.”

“Anything else new?” Stephen inched forward in his seat.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Brenda said, pulling the analyst, Sheila, into the screen. After a brief introduction and a lot of muttering, the team was filled in on all the gaps they had missed while nearly being killed in Nigeria.

“So you’re telling me that Lambert, our old pal,” Marcus said sarcastically, “knows a guy who bought the patent to a machine that does exactly the same thing as this machine back in the fifties?”

“Close enough,” Sheila said. “But that’s just the start. I’ve also uncovered some other, possibly coincidental news you should know about. It turns out the man who purchased the patent died of somewhat natural causes in the seventies. Upon reading the autopsy reports, I saw that he had strange, pre-aged intestines.”

“Much like our mystery man from the yacht that sailed in,” Brenda added. “Now that the analysts have a torch to light the way, they’ve been very busy. We’ve found some more anomalies as well.”

“This strange intestinal anomaly has been reported since World War 2,” Sheila said, cutting in. “It’s more common than you think. There have been dozens of cases throughout the world of men and women dying early, from seemingly curable sicknesses. Once they’ve been autopsied, they end up having these bizarre deformities.

“I would say it’s enough to consider a pattern.”

Marcus rolled the ideas around his head. There had been similarly strange intestinal issues since World War II, and somehow they seemed linked to the creation of the machine. Though there seemed to be no evidence that directly correlated the two, Marcus knew better than to blame something so serious on coincidence.

He wondered briefly whether the machine could be used as a recreational drug. Perhaps, like a fine scotch, one simply had to become accustomed to the anomaly before enjoying it. He couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying that, but then again he couldn’t really imagine anyone enjoying a bad acid trip.

He decided to test it out against all the other idea that might be floating through everyone else’s heads.

“So a few drug users have died over the course of a few decades?”

“Not necessarily,” Sheila said. “We’ve done extensive toxicology reports on the dead guy we found in the yacht. He is, for all intents and purposes, clean of anything harmful.”

“Maybe this thing is the drug?” he said, gauging what the others would think. No one seemed particularly convinced, though it did provoke thought.

Marcus was truly stumped. He couldn’t correlate the men who had died from these mysterious causes, but knew that something might relate them in the future. He decided to brush it off and move on.

“So do you think the girl is related to the others?” Stephen beat Marcus to the question. “You think this might be some hereditary trait?”

“She’s Spanish,” Sheila shrugged. “She might very well be from the same town. I don’t know yet, honestly.”

“So why don’t we start investigating Frederickson,” Marcus said. “He has to know what’s going on with that asshole Stewart. Maybe he can tell us why his good friend and investing partner died back in the seventies. Also, maybe we should find out what else that guy left to Lambert. I’m starting to feel as if he might not be the great guy we thought he was.”

“That’s a good idea,” Gregory said. “See if we can dig up any dirt on Lambert and find out how it correlates to his dead partner. We also need to worry about getting this girl back before she’s sold as a sex slave or subjected to that machine any more. I want Brenda to go investigate the witness and see if she can make any headway on the case up north. The rest of you need to get back here and start debriefing so I can send you out again soon. If anything at all comes unburied in our search for clues, you’re going to be headed out.

“I know Lambert has helped us in the past, but if he really did send you to Nigeria with a rogue agent he’s going to have one of two choices: help us with every single thing we ask of him for the next twenty years of his life, or go to prison instead. You guys try and get some sleep. We will be working our butts off to ensure you don’t get any sleep when you get home.”

Everyone scattered to different part of the aircraft, hopeful they could find an area away from one another. Marcus was content to sit back and relax for the remainder of the long flight. He hated that Henry was hurt, but seeing him resting peacefully made everything better. He knew somehow they would piece together all the missing parts. Though he hated jigsaw puzzles, he had a feeling this one would paint quite the picture.

Pushing his seat down as far into the reclining position as it would go left him stretched out nearly horizontally. From there, he pulled out his personal tablet and flipped it on. The picture that popped up was of a smiling Julie, someone he hadn’t thought of much today. Her face was bathed in sun and surrounded by people at a local D.C. bistro. Marcus took a moment to reflect on all that they had been through and wondered how in good conscience he could drag her into his crazy life. She knew his secrets, some of them at least, yet she never ran.

There was his previous life she knew about. How the pickled scar on his chest represented a love that he’d had to bury. She had been taken from him in cold blood. He wore the scar like the unwilling bearer of a brand for traitors, or thieves—he had failed to protect her.

There were also his tattoos and strange affinity for God and all things supernatural. She didn’t mind his mystery, even when it bordered on weird. Even his dark meditations with the pure white sand and candles that looked more like a séance, she didn’t mind much.

She accepted him and loved him for his faults. Even once, after he had suffered the crushing loss of his friend Bishop, she had held him up. Marcus had offered her the secrets to his work in his moments of weakness. He offered to give her everything. She knew he was vulnerable, though, and steered clear of asking questions that might impact their lives. It had shown Marcus just how devoted she truly was.

He pecked a few buttons on the screen with his finger and a call started. The onboard Wi-Fi meant that he could use any number of video chat applications, but he chose one they both had. A flashing icon bearing Julie’s face told Marcus she was being hailed from thousands of miles away. Her face replaced the icon, smiling yet concerned. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a high pony tail. The black, very slightly horn-rimmed glasses, sat just below her perfectly pruned eyebrows. The blue-green eyes and ruby red lips she smiled at him with made his heart feel warm.

“Hi,” he said, sheepishly.

“You look like you’ve had a rough day,” she said, suddenly concerned with his appearance. Marcus hadn’t realized how awful he looked. Though he had run some water over his face, he still had scratches and a bit of mud that he had missed entirely.

“Not as bad as you, I’m sure,” he joked. “What are you up to?”

“I could ask you the same. I’m at work, typing up some papers on a big case we’ve been working on.”

“Sounds boring,” Marcus said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “Are you going to be home tonight? I think I’ll get to see you.”