Fury

26

Friday, December 31

John Jojola willed his tired feet to shuffle to the tempo of a dozen hide-covered drums. Sweat dripped into his eyes beneath the elaborate kachina mask of painted wood, leather, and feathers that he wore to represent one of the ancestral spirits of his people. The pounding of the drums reverberated off the rectangular, salmon-colored adobe homes of the Taos Pueblo and throughout his body. As he danced, he prayed to the spirits of his people while the drummers sang to the spirits, asking for their help, the repetitive chanting broken occasionally by a ululating cry.

Jojola became aware that someone was talking to him in the waking world, but he wasn't ready to wake up. He knew he was running a fever; the spot on his shoulder where he'd been bitten felt hot and throbbed with the beating of the drum; the old bullet wound he'd received from Cop in Vietnam ached. He didn't know how long he'd been handcuffed to the old wrought-iron bed in a small alcove just outside of Grale's main hall. Days, he was sure, but it was always night in down-world.

The drummers and dancers had been at it since dawn. Sweat glistened on the bare parts of their bodies in the afternoon sun or ran in rivulets through the layer of dust that covered them from head to foot. He and the other exhausted dancers moved trancelike as they willed the beating of their hearts to become one with that of the drums and carry their tired bodies on into the night.

"John Jojola, can you hear me?"

The voice was that of David Grale. When he'd first come to after being knocked unconscious, Jojola found himself handcuffed to the bed and Grale standing over him. "I'm sorry to have hurt you and that you must now remain my guest," the madman said. "But I'm afraid it's necessary."

Grale had explained how he and the Mole People were preparing for "the last battle." On New Year's Eve, even as the terrorists prepared their bomb, they would attack.

"We have numbers on them and have created several access points behind their lines by loosening the bricks in Mr. Beach's old tunnel so that at the right moment we might surprise them. But I don't hold out much hope for success. They are much better armed and trained. And there is always a man standing by the fuse to the bomb; they rotate the guard, but I suspect that whoever's sitting there with his hand on the lighter has orders to blow it if something goes wrong. Their leader has prepared a well-protected egress from the site, so I suspect that he plans to be gone before the apocalyptic moment-a delay that may be our only chance to reach the bomb before it goes off."

"And if you don't, thousands of people will die," Jojola had replied. "Millions, if your prophecy is allowed to come true."

"It's not my prophecy." Grale shrugged. "It's in the Bible."

He had been dancing since the ceremony began without water or food and was entering the phase when exhaustion, deprivation, and the mind-numbing thudding of the drums produced hallucinations. A kachina in a headdress meant to represent a bear danced next to him. They locked eyes. It was his friend Charlie Many Horses. "Wake up, John. If you don't wake up the villagers will die. I will die because there will be no one to invite my spirit into this life; it will be as though I never lived. Wake up, John."

"Wake up, John," Grale said. "I'm going to give a special mass now. If you'd like to attend and receive absolution before the end tonight, I can have you brought into the great hall."

"You're not a priest," Jojola murmured, still locked in the dream by his fever.

"No," Grale admitted. "But I'm all they've got. I'll stop by before we start tonight and see if you'd like to confess and be saved."

"What day is it?"

"Why, I thought you knew. It's the morning of New Year's Eve day…December 31."

He was back dancing next to Charlie in his bear kachina outfit. "Remember what I said. Remember what the bear said. Remember what I said. Remember what the bear said," Charlie chanted to the rhythm of the drums. "Wake up, John. Wake up, John. Wake…"

"…up, John Jojola," a voice whispered in his ear. Someone fiddled with the handcuff that held his wrist to the bedpost. Then his arm was free. Lifted into a sitting position, he was cradled by someone who spoke rapidly but quietly in a foreign language. Vietnamese? He wondered if his dream, or maybe it was real life, had shifted back to Cop's tunnels. "Charlie?" he asked, opening his eyes.

The light was dim and it took a moment to adjust but the face looking down at him with a half-smile was not Charlie's. But it was a familiar face…from a dream or the here and now?

"Tran?" he said.

Tran Do Vinh, a former schoolteacher, Vietcong leader, and current head of a Vietnamese tong, or crime syndicate, smiled more broadly. "Em vui ve gap lai," he said.

"It is good to see you, too," Jojola said, then winced as someone on his other side stuck him with a needle.

"Penicillin," Tran explained quietly. "Dr. Bao Le, who sometimes accompanies me and my men on these little excursions, believes your fever is due to an infected bite wound on your shoulder. You apparently ignored the Do Not Feed the Animals signs." He laughed, as did the two armed Vietnamese men-one young, one middle-aged-standing guard at the entrance to the alcove.

"You should feel better quickly," the doctor added.

Jojola looked at the young man's face. "Aren't you…," he began to ask.

"Yes, the son of my cousin, Thien, who you may remember from the restaurant-supply store beneath the Karps' residence," Tran answered. "Alas, after our last little adventure together, we felt it necessary to remove our 'operations' so as not to compromise Mr. Karp's duty to uphold the law. But we are still watching out for them, which is how Lucy contacted me."

"Lucy?"

"Yes, the indomitable Lucy Karp became worried when you did not return-apparently with good reason, though she waited almost too long-and she sent me to find you. Fortunately that is not as difficult as it might have been. In the past, we have had dealings with the Mole People; they need such things as medical supplies and clothing, and we find them to be useful for spying on our 'competitors,' as well as the police. We've lost contact since Grale was killed-"

"He's alive," Jojola interrupted.

"What?"

"Yes, he's giving Mass in the big tunnel."

Tran made a motion with his head to one of his men standing guard in the opening to the alcove. The man ran off.

"Hmmm…well, then, I guess more accurately since Grale was wounded, they've grown more secretive. We haven't been welcome down-world, as they like to call this place, but at least we had a good idea where to look."

Tran's man came back and nodded. "He's giving communion but it may not last much longer."

"Yes," Tran said. "We should be going if you're up for it."

"I'm ready," Jojola said. His head felt light and the wound still throbbed, but just the idea of escaping the dark invigorated him. And there was the little matter of…

"There's a bomb set to go off below Times Square tonight," Jojola said.

Tran furrowed his brow as Jojola explained. Helping Jojola to his feet, the bandit chief said, "I don't have the men with me to take on these terrorists, just these two. All the more reason for us to leave this place."

They started to leave when Jojola turned back. "My knife," he said and retrieved the blade from a box in the corner along with his night-vision goggles. He'd turned back around and was looking at Tran's back when one of the other men returned and said, "Cop, the ceremony is over. We must hurry."

Both Jojola and Tran had frozen at the use of the nickname. "Cop…," Jojola repeated it as if he'd just been informed of the death of a child. "I thought I recognized your face last summer…I just couldn't place it. You killed those Hmong villagers and my best friend." He slid the knife from its sheath. "I am sworn to kill you."

Tran didn't turn around. "You are wrong, but this isn't the time or place to debate with you. Kill me, my men will kill you, and this bomb will kill many thousands more. Or leave it until another day. Which will it be?"

Jojola felt the weight of the heavy knife in his hand. He imagined sinking the long blade into the kidney of his old enemy and cutting through his spine to the other kidney. "We leave it for another day."

Tran nodded and headed out of the entrance. Jojola followed, stepping over the body of Roger, who he supposed had been left to guard him. He hoped the Vietnamese had not killed him-his guide had not been a bad man-and took it as a good sign that there was no evidence of blood.

They fled down the tunnel until they reached a ladder that led down into a sewer. There they splashed on for a block before reaching another ladder down which light streamed. Another Vietnamese man waited for them at the bottom of the ladder. He quickly handed them all workman's coveralls and orange hard hats with New York Street Department stenciled on the side.

"Can you climb?" Tran asked after they got into the clothes.

"I could fly if it meant reaching the sun," Jojola said.

They emerged from a manhole in the middle of a street around which a crew of Vietnamese "workmen" had erected a traffic barrier. A white van roared up and its side door slid open. They scrambled in and the van took off, only to screech to a halt again, having very nearly struck a young black man crossing the street.

"What the fuck, dawg! I'm walking here," the young man yelled, then continued on his way without looking back.

Jojola looked at the street signs on the corner. West Forty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue. The van then lurched forward; at Fifth Avenue it turned south.

A block away, Khalif carefully moved down the sidewalk, ready to duck into a store entrance or behind some other pedestrian in case Rashad turned around. He'd just about given himself away shouting out a warning as his friend stepped out in front of the white van. But the screeching of the car's tires and the honk of an irritated cabbie who'd also had to pull up short covered his voice.

A half hour earlier, he'd been at the basketball courts, playing H-O-R-S-E with the Karp twins when Rashad entered the gate and said he wanted to talk. "Away from these two," he'd said, indicating the boys.

When they were out of earshot, Rashad hugged his friend. It was a long hug, accented by strong slaps to Khalif's back.

"What was that for?" Khalif said with a grin. It had been a while since they'd talked much. Rashad was always off with his new friends-Khalif assumed that meant the Arabs-and his anti-American rhetoric had grown until Khalif wasn't comfortable around him anymore. But he still loved Rashad like a brother and was hoping the hug was a sign of a thaw in their relationship.

"Just…just that I'm going away for a while," Rashad said, his voice hitching a little. "And I just wanted to say I love you, man. Whatever happens, I wanted you to know that."

"Now hold on, dawg, you're scaring me," Khalif said. "What do you mean you're going away? And what's this shit about whatever happens? Are you in trouble?"

Rashad shook his head. "No, not anymore," he said. "My trouble, our trouble, is behind us. There ain't nothin' I can do to change the past, but there is something I can do to change the future."

"What in the hell are you talking about, homes?"

"I can't talk about it. At least not now, maybe someday. I got to go, but I just wanted to say…later, my man."

Rashad left the court and began walking north up Sixth Avenue. As Khalif watched him go, the twins came up.

"Is everything all right?" Giancarlo asked.

At first Khalif didn't answer. Then he shook his head. "I don't think so, G-man," he said. "I know that man better than I know myself. He just told me good-bye-like a forever good-bye-and I don't know why but it scares me." He was quiet again, then turned to the boys.

"Sorry, homies, I got to find out what he's up to. I'll catch you on the flip-flop."

Khalif had followed Rashad all the way up Sixth Avenue to Forty-fifth Street and then west across Seventh Avenue at Times Square.

Rashad had continued to a theater under renovation. He looked around and then hurried across the street and up the steps into the building.

Khalif waited across the street, watching from a nearby doorway. Two men in hard hats loitered outside; they didn't do much more than smoke cigarettes and check out the other men, like Rashad, who arrived one at a time and in pairs. In the time since Rashad had gone into the building, seven or eight others had followed him. But the strange thing was that nobody was coming back out.

It was even stranger that Rashad had not mentioned getting a new job with a construction company. And what did renovating a theater have to do with Rashad's statements at the basketball courts? Khalif also thought the mixture of workmen outside and those entering the building was odd. Everyone looked either Middle Eastern, Asian, or black. Not a Hispanic or a white among them.

When Rashad still hadn't come out, Khalif made up his mind to go in. He didn't want to; in fact, he was scared to death without knowing why. But he couldn't abandon his friend to whoever had manipulated him into doing whatever it was that had Khalif so frightened and Rashad sounding like he was going to his death. He owed him.

When they'd been freshmen in high school, Khalif had been the one hanging out with the wrong friends, gang members who wanted to bask in his basketball glory as a status symbol. He'd started hanging out at their crib, where one night he saw some things having to do with drugs and guns that he wished he hadn't. But he was too afraid to leave. Then Rashad showed up-just walked in the door, told Khalif to "stand the fuck up and walk the fuck out of here," and when two members of the gang got in his face, stared them down until they told Rashad "get your faggot friend out of here and don't come back."

He owed him.

Khalif crossed the street, going past the loiterers and up the steps. He had just entered the door, however, when a large, dark-skinned man with an African accent stopped him. "A salaam alaikum," the man said without smiling.

"Wa alaikum salaam." Khalif's response had been automatic. He'd had no idea how he was going to get past the guard so he was surprised when the man nodded toward the interior of the theater and said, "Hurry up, you're late."

Khalif swallowed hard and walked in.

Meanwhile, Zak and Giancarlo crouched behind a car. After watching Khalif follow after his friend, Giancarlo turned to his brother. "So what do you make of that?"

Zak shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

"Oh no, you're not going to-"

"My thoughts exactly." Zak stood up and walked quickly down the sidewalk. The hard-eyed loiterers watched him approach and then start to pass in front of the theater. Halfway across, he suddenly turned and ran up the steps.

"Hey, you, boy!" one of the loiterers yelled, but Zak was already through the doors. He was smiling until he looked up and saw the large guard.

"What are you doing here?" the man demanded.

"I was looking for a bathroom," Zak said. "I've got to go really bad." He danced from foot to foot to prove his need.

"There's no bathroom here, now leave," the guard said.

"Wait!" a man yelled from behind the guard. "Grab him!"

The guard lunged for Zak, who easily dodged him and turned to run out the door. He might have made it, too, except for one of the loiterers, who had run up the steps and caught him just as he was exiting.

Zak launched himself at the surprised loiterer. He stomped on the man's foot and punched him in the groin before being grabbed by the neck from behind by the big guard.

"Get ya' hands off me," he yelled as he was dragged, kicking and punching back, into the theater, where the man who'd ordered the guard to catch him stood. He found himself facing an olive-skinned man with a pockmarked face who looked at him like a snake studying a small bird.

"Let me go," Zak said, swinging wildly at the guard, who held him at arm's length to avoid the blows. "My dad's the district attorney."

The man bent over until his face was inches from Zak's. He smiled-as unpleasant an expression as the boy had ever seen. "I know," he said. "I saw you and your brother at the basketball court."