The Soul Collectors

71

'First,' Darby said, 'tell me how many people you have on this plane.'

Sergey checked his watch and then leaned back, hands stuffed in his pockets. He shut his eyes and bit his bottom lip, hissing in air.

'Could be… maybe twenty-five or so.'

'That number include Secret Service?'

'No,' he said. 'Doesn't include support staff either, like the pilot.'

'I'm going to need to examine each person on this plane to see if they have this tattooed symbol. And we should check the bodies in Florida, the Secret Service agents — '

'Okay.' He ran his fingers through his hair. 'Okay, Jesus, I'll set everything up. We'll do it here in the conference room.'

'You should call the pilot too. Tell him to warm up the engines.'

'Where are we going?'

'Connecticut,' she said. 'We need to search the woods.'

'You think these people are hiding out in the woods.'

'This group has been moving around the country for several decades. The bulletin board shows that they're somewhere here in New England.'

'No, we believe they could be somewhere in New England. The New England kids who disappeared, they're the youngest family member, which adds them to our working list.'

'Fine. What we do know is that they have to be holed up someplace close by. They came to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and after they blew up the house they waited around the area to follow me. They killed John Smith. They planted Mark Rizzo's body at his old home, along with Sarah Casey's finger and the USB drive with the listening device. To do all this, they have to be somewhere in the area. Southern Connecticut is about two, two and a half hours away.'

'And you think they've got, what, some little cottage somewhere near that transmission corridor?'

'No, I think they live underground.'

Sergey glared at her, his eyes dry and bloodshot. Casey's gaze had narrowed.

'The tracking chip in my arm,' Darby said. 'Could you get a signal if I was somewhere underground?'

'Depends on a number of factors. How deep you are, if the walls are shielded.'

'Anything new on Taylor or Sarah Casey's signal?'

'Still quiet.'

'So maybe you can't track them because they're somewhere underground.'

'Or maybe this group discovered the tracking chips and removed them.'

'Where were they installed? Left-upper arm?'

Sergey nodded.

'I think they're still in there,' Darby said. 'On the video, I looked at their arms and didn't see any type of lacerations that would indicate the tracking units had been removed. Another thing I noticed were the walls. They're made of uneven stone. Boulders and rocks, all shapes and sizes. The kind you find in the ground. Common rock, in other words. And the walls in both rooms, the stones were smooth, not shiny. No dampness.'

'I'm not following you.'

'Water, even a small amount, if it gets into a basement, what happens?'

'You get mould.'

'Exactly. Basements are sealed tight with OPC — Portland cement. It's made primarily of concrete, mortar and stucco. Seals in any type of moisture. You've got blood in a basement, you're going to get mould. The walls in the video had cracks and fissures in the mortar. Perfect places for moisture to come through, but the stones were dry. That means another type of mortar was used.'

Casey said, 'Lime.'

Darby nodded. 'Lime mortar was used in Ancient Rome and Greece. It wicks away any dampness from the wall and it evaporates. But if you get a lot of dampness, over time, it creates an irregular, almost mottled appearance — what's called "limewash". You find it in old cellars in England but not here in the States. Taylor and Sarah Casey are locked inside the basement of some old building.'

Sergey said, 'That happens to be sitting in the woods.'

'We might find the remnants of, say, an old church, but I doubt it,' she said. 'This place is hidden. It has to be. The people I met at the blast site? The ones I saw crawling around the crater and the thing I tied to the tree, the one missing its tongue? You think they're living in a suburban neighbourhood? Going to the grocery store and the movies?'

Sergey pulled out his chair and sat, casting a weary glance at Casey.

'And then consider what they did to Mark Rizzo,' she said. 'Those puncture wounds on his back — he was tortured first.'

'Using what?'

Darby showed him empty hands. 'Don't know. But Ellis completed his autopsy, so I can tell you at least this much. Rizzo's stomach was infested with spiders — the smaller ones. Ellis found at least two dozen, each one of them poisonous.'

Sergey blanched. 'How… How is that even possible?'

'Mark Rizzo had multiple abrasions and cuts on the back of his mouth and throat. My guess is that they shoved a tube down his throat. That's the only way the spiders could have entered the man's stomach.'

Casey showed no reaction. Sergey, swallowing, looking like he was trying hard not to vomit.

'My point is,' she said, 'if they tortured Rizzo first, what better place to do it in than some underground cavern or basement located in the woods, where they didn't have to worry about anyone hearing them? I'll guarantee you something else. Wherever this place is, they buried the bodies not far from it.'

'What bodies?'

'This group has been collecting kids. Either they're killed or they die naturally. You've got to dispose of the bodies someplace. What better place to do it than a mass grave site surrounded by miles and miles of woods?'

'So you want me to fly to Connecticut based on a bee sighting.'

'A rare bee,' she said. 'One that's believed to be extinct.'

'Agreed, but that bee could've just as likely come from someplace else — someplace closer to Boston. You heard Wright. He said one was sighted here in Needham.'

'Back in '27.'

Sergey looked at Casey and said, 'I'm leery of flying out to Connecticut now. I want to see what develops here with the radio frequency. I talked with our tech guys onboard, and they said we don't have the tracking equipment we need. So I called the Boston office. Their tech department does, so I sent the USB drive over there.'

'How long?' Darby asked.

'It's going to take some time.'

'We need to go to Connecticut.'

Sergey rubbed his face.

'Okay,' he said, through his fingers. 'Okay, let's say these people have some underground place where they're hiding. That Taylor and Sarah Casey are there. We take off right now for Connecticut and then drive to the woods, it's still going to be dark. How do you suggest we search the woods?'

'Call your Connecticut field office and ask them to get us a helicopter with thermal-imaging equipment that can penetrate the ground.'

'And if they hear a helicopter, panic and decide to cut their losses and start shooting?'

'It's a risk. I realize that. But the circumstances don't change whether we leave now or in the morning.'

'And if something happens here — '

'You have people — trained people — who can handle the situation,' Darby said. 'If something happens while we're in the air, we can always turn around. But if there's a chance that Sarah or Taylor Casey or any other victim is somewhere out there in those woods, we need to act on it. Now.'

Sergey drummed his fingers against the pad of paper.

Casey, stoic through the whole discussion, cleared his throat.

'I agree with Darby,' he said, sounding surprisingly calm. 'We need to go.'

Finally, Sergey stood and called the pilot. Casey kept his gaze focused on the table, his face a waxy pallor under the bright lights.