Age of Blood

27

After dressing in the local style of cotton shirts and slacks loose enough to hide their body armor, Walker and Yank made a circuitous route, traveling on the back alleys and side streets, to their final destination, the abandoned asylum believed to house the cult that wore other people’s skin.

They hadn’t received too many looks, probably a benefit of the pending religious holiday. Any other time, a blond-haired gringo and a young black man might have received a modicum of attention, but the locals were too busy celebrating or trying to make money at their open-air markets to care.

Each of them carried packs. Walker’s held a broken-down SR-25 and Yank’s held a broken-down HK416. When they finally found the asylum, it was a two-story building at the end of a street called La Esperanza on the very edge of town. The nearest buildings were two homes, a farmhouse, and a tractor garage. These were to the west of the asylum and none of them offered a decent prospect for surveillance. Forest grew to the north, east, and south edges of the asylum, making those directions even more difficult to surveille from. Their only hope was to move back to a higher location.

A five-story building sat at the corner of Quinta del Rey and La Unidad. The first floor was a farmacia, but it was closed for the holiday. They didn’t hear anything from the other floors and had to assume they housed some sort of businesses as well. They waited for the right moment, then scurried up the fire escape, pulling it up with them as they made their way to the top. Once on top of the building, Walker checked for possible avenues of countersurveillance, but didn’t find any place high enough to observe them as they were watching the asylum. They established an observation post with Yank providing security.

Once that was done and they’d checked in with Laws, they settled in for a long wait. The target building was L-shaped, with the leg of the letter pointing toward the west. This created an entryway that had an overhang. The front doors were chained shut, meaning there must be a different avenue of ingress and egress, probably from behind. Half the windows had been busted out. A third of the ones left had been boarded up. Walker began the task of dialing in the windows at full magnification to see if he could detect any movement from within.

“Know what’s been bothering me?” Yank said, breaking the silence.

“What’s that, noob?” Walker had the bipod in place to support the barrel. At these distances, even the smallest shake would throw his vision off by meters.

“Ramon and that Juan Carlos guy. I forgot to tell Holmes or Laws, but they were fast.”

“You shouldn’t forget those things. Still, Ramon is a lycanthrope. Maybe that makes him faster than normal.”

“What about Juan Carlos? He wasn’t a lycanthrope.”

“How do you know?”

“If he could change into something, then why’d he let himself get caught? Why’d he let himself get killed?” Yank asked.

“Yeah. And him getting killed bothered me, too,” Walker said. And it had. The idea of killing the informants went perpendicular to his idea of right and wrong. “Either Ramon or J.J. killed those men. If I was to bet, it had to be Ramon.”

“Well,” Yank said, drawing out the word. “We don’t know a lot about J.J. either, but I’m with you. I’d trust a former SEAL before I would a mafia-hit-man werewolf any day.”

Walker thought he saw movement in a window. He zeroed in and stayed there a moment. Yeah, there it was again. Nothing specific, just something moving across the interior. He held the scope in place to see if he’d be able to get a better picture.

“When you say fast, how fast are we talking?”

“Comic-book fast.”

“What do you know about comic books?” Walker asked.

“What? Can’t a black kid from Compton collect comics?”

“I have to admit, I find it hard to believe. There is a stereotype, you know.”

“Yeah, no shit. The way LAPD profiles, I know all about stereotyping. Just the same, I did read my share.”

Walker laughed. “Where? In juvie?” But he noticed that Yank wasn’t laughing. He took his eye off the scope long enough to glance at the other SEAL. Yank had the look of a killer. “Whoa. I didn’t mean… were you really in juvie?”

“Three weeks.”

“What for?”

“Part of the Scared Straight program. My parent, the one who gave me my name, decided I should go to jail for a little while so I could see how bad it really is. He arranged this before I’d even lived with him for a day.”

“Seems like it worked out.”

“Oh, it worked out all right. Scared the shit out of me. The way the program worked was that I’d only be in general population during meals. The rest of the time I was in my cell. It just so happened that the only thing they had I could read were comics. Not the cool Marvel comics, with the X-Men and all their shit, but some old DC comics. Not even good ones like Batman and Superman.”

“Don’t get me started on Superman,” Walker said. “You talking Wonder Woman, The Flash, Rubberband Man… those?” He turned back to his scope and found his sight picture again.

“Yeah. There were a couple of Lobos in there. I liked him. Got to love it when they make a brother an alien and he gets to beat up on Superman.”

“Lobo isn’t black,” Walker said definitively.

“What… because he’s blue-skinned you decide he’s white and not black?”

“No, idiot. I’m just saying he’s not black. He’s blue.”

Yank shook his head as if the secret of the universe had been laid out in front of Walker and he’d missed it. “You’ll never understand. Being a brother is something you get on the inside. Lobo is a brother. Pure and simple.”

There it was again.

“They also let me read a Green Arrow and about a dozen Swamp Things.”

“Which version?” Walker asked as he tried to will whatever it was to stop by the window so he could pinpoint it.

“Alan Moore version.”

“That was early eighties. Good stuff.”

“How’d you like Swamp Thing?”

“At first I was like, what do I care about some tree with legs that talks and roams about the swamp. It just didn’t interest me.”

“Yeah. Swamp Thing is like that at first. But then it grabs you.”

“With both hands. It was the whole idea that there were all these superheroes everywhere, but it was Swamp Thing who knew that there was this little girl who was the Antichrist and was going to destroy the world.”

“The quintessential underdog.”

“Man, he was underneath the underdog.”

And finally, there it was. The figure of a man standing by the window. He seemed to be almost looking at Walker. He stepped closer to the window and Walker could make out features. It was a man, but his face was all wrong. It was as if he were… wearing someone else’s face and it was a little lopsided.

“Got them. I see one. Radio it in to Laws.”

Now it was Walker’s chance to see if he could find some more. He wanted to know which rooms they were using. He also wanted to know if there was a concentration of them, or possibly where the girl was being held. He spied another seven figures over the next hour and managed to locate a central area on the third floor that had the most activity. But that was as good as he was going to get from his vantage point.

It was time to get a little closer and see what was on the other side of the building. Plus it was getting dark, which would be to their advantage.

“Ready to play a little Swamp Thing?” he asked Yank, as he stood.

“What? Oh, we going to go peek into windows?”

“Something like that. You game?”

“Definitely.”

“Work your way to the south and then behind. We’ll be in contact the entire time and I’ll make sure your way is clear.”

Yank decided to leave his HK topside. He was out of place enough being himself. Carrying a combat rifle would probably raise even more suspicion. He rechecked his coms, made sure his do-rag was covering it, then hurried back across the roof. He was over and gone in less than a minute.

Walker watched as Yank moved across the street and down the lane. When he got to the intersection that led straight into the asylum, he turned right, then ducked behind the tractor garage. Walker scoped the way clear and let Yank know he could move to the tree line.

“Nice and easy. Pretend you’re a lost Mormon instead of a U.S. Navy SEAL ready to hurt someone.”

“Never seen a black Mormon before,” Yank said softly as he strolled toward the tree line.

“Must be two or three,” Walker said, intent on ensuring Yank made it unnoticed. “Maybe even four or five.”

The foliage wasn’t thick. A combination of acacia and some sort of evergreen made for something just thick enough to camouflage a person, if not hide them completely. Someone looking close could see the outline of a human form, but then again no one should be looking that close. If they were, it would finally give Walker a chance.

“Okay. Move slowly. Don’t disturb any of the outer branches.” Walker doped the scope for a closer look at one of the windows in the asylum. He only had a view of the edge of the side windows and couldn’t see inside, but he was almost certain he saw— “Stop!”

Yank halted about six feet into the tree line.

“Step a foot to your right. A little more. Good.” Walker swung the scope back to the window. Did he just see what he’d thought he’d seen? He silently begged the person in the window to show himself, but whoever it was had some decent discipline. “Okay. Move carefully now. You might be watched from the window on the second floor. Third from the right.”

Yank took a few more steps, careful to always keep a trunk between him and the building. “Someone in the window. Shit—they have a bead on me.”

Walker thought quickly. First of all, anything they were about to do would absolutely destroy any element of surprise. But that paled in comparison with getting Yank hurt, or worse. Walker had three choices, four if you counted doing nothing as a choice, which he refused to consider. Yank could either move away slowly, move away quickly, or move closer.

“Talking about the speed again. You said Ramon was running at comic book speed. Was it like the Flash?”

“What? Yeah, definitely like the Flash. Or in the movies when someone runs so fast that it can’t possibly be real? It’s like that. Are you sure now’s the time to talk about this?”

“Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to be the Flash. Not like the Flash, but become the Flash. Zero to sixty in less than a second.”

“Which direction?”

“Toward the building.” He heard the silence and knew Yank wanted to ask a question but knew better. This was all about trust. “Wait until I say move, then don’t stop until you’re kissing the wall. Roger?”

“Wilco.”

Walker sighted in on the window. He let his fingers flit near the bullet drop compensator knob, but decided against it. The range was close enough where the feet per second would make up for any drop before the round reached the target. If only he had a target to shoot. He sighted in, ready to fire.

“Ready. Set. Move.”

Yank shot out of the woodline toward the building faster than Walker would have thought possible.

A sound suppressor appeared from the window. As it tracked Yank’s movement, more of it showed, until a clear half of the rifle barrel was visible. Problem was that it couldn’t keep track of Yank. That is, until Yank stopped moving. As Yank hit the wall, the shooter leaned out to take a shot. That’s when Walker sent two rounds into the target’s face.

“Catch,” he said.

The shooter dropped the weapon, a Soviet-era Dragunov. Yank managed to catch it, then stepped out of the way as the shooter toppled to the ground next to him.

“Pick up the trash and bring it here,” Walker said. “Move.”

Yank tossed the man over his shoulder and ran back into the woods. With the long rifle in one hand and his other holding the dead shooter in place, there wasn’t any way to hide what he was doing. So he made the best decision possible. He buried the rifle beneath some brush, then adjusted his grip on the dead man so it looked as if he was helping home a drunk friend.

As if on cue, a car approached on the road and drove by the pair. Walker watched through his scope, aware that if needed, he could reach out and silence whoever it was who would raise an alarm. But those in the car merely glanced at Yank and the dead man, then kept going. Once they passed, Yank crossed the road with one of the man’s arms draped across his shoulder. Never mind that blood from the dead man’s chest wounds had soaked Yank’s shoulder.

When Yank reached the bottom of the fire escape, Walker left his post and went down to help him bring the body to the roof. By the time they’d pulled the man over the lip and onto the hot tar, both he and Yank were breathing heavily.

They laid the man out on the roof and examined him. About six feet tall, he wore black dickies, black combat boots, and a black T-shirt beneath an untucked gray button-down shirt. A shock of black hair rested above a youthful face. Partially hidden by the collar were several tattoos, each of them a stylized Z.

Walker and Yank looked at each other.

“Zeta?” Yank asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Walker said. But what was he doing in a building suspected of being a hideout for an Aztec cult believed to be holding the senator’s daughter? “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah. Where’s Ramon?”

“We need to report this. Holmes is going to want to know.”

Yank removed a camera from his cargo pocket and took pictures. They couldn’t take the body with them, but the tattoos could indicate who the man was and who he worked for. He snapped photos of each of the tattoos; then they removed the man’s shirt, where they also catalogued another dozen tattoos, many of which sported a Z of some sort. When Walker was finished, they waited for J.J., who was coming to replace them. It took twenty minutes, but once he arrived, both Walker and Yank bugged out, making their way back to the home of the Knights and prepping Laws over the MBITR as they went.