General Forsythe sat across from him on the aisle, sitting up with his eyes closed. Twitching every so often, as he communed with...something. Gulcher could see a lot of movement under the general's eyelids, like the guy was in heavy REM sleep. A little saliva dribbled from the corner of Forsythe's mouth.
A pilot in civvies was in the cockpit, radio switched off—no radio contact was probably against Canadian aircraft regulations. And that was it, the pilot and Gulcher and Forsythe, no one else in the private jet. Unless you counted the thing that had taken Forsythe over. But then, it wasn't exactly
here.
Gulcher finished his bourbon—cadged from the minibar in the back of the plane—and thought about trying to slip back and get another, while Forsythe was sitting there with his eyes shut. But he'd been told “only one” and—
“You are right as rain to hesitate, there, Gulcher,” Forsythe said suddenly, his eyes still shut. “I told you one thing—you don't want to do another.”
So the general—or the thing that controlled him—was monitoring Gulcher as well as everything else. No privacy left. Nothing.
Should have gotten away faster,
Gulcher thought.
Had a chance...he caught we at the gate—
“You had
no
chance to get away from me,” Forsythe said, turning his head toward Gulcher.
But his eyes stayed shut. The eyeballs wheeling jerkily about under those lids. The face with the closed eyes was turned toward Gulcher as if Forsythe were blind.
“I am operating under limitations, until I can come fully into this world,” Forsythe said.
There was a resonation with those words, in Gulcher's mind...like Moloch's voice. The voice that had come to his mind that day he'd broken out of one prison and into this one—a prison he hadn't known he was in, until lately.
“But those limitations,” Forsythe went on, “don't apply to you and me anymore. I have no need, here, of the one who whispered to you. I am more closely connected to you, now, Troy Gulcher— we've grown together, you and I, over the course of time!”
Gulcher noticed how “Forsythe's” whole way of talking was different, now, when they talked alone, most of the time. Dropping the General Forsythe pretense.
“You are still useful to me,” Forsythe went on. “You're designed to control certain entities with great precision and reach. More reach than you realize.”
Has to be a way to get free.
“There is no way free of me this side of death, Troy,” said Forsythe, in a strangely companionable tone. “Now...” He paused, tilted his head. Eyes still shut, moving under the lids. Looking at what? “We're going to land at a strip not far from our ultimate goal. And we're going to shift over to a helicopter that will take us to the compound. On arrival at the base, soldiers will approach the helicopter with the intention of arresting or killing us. Calls have been made, you see. But you will deal with them. And then, another craft will arrive...and as for that...”
Forsythe's eyes abruptly snapped open.
His eyes had had become the color of phlegm and blood.
“And as for that,” Forsythe went on, perhaps aloud and perhaps not, “consider that it is better to give than to receive, as someone once said.”
***
A
LONG TRIP, FAR to the north.
Loraine sitting next to Bleak, who was by the window in the rattling, echoey military transport plane, provided now by General Swanson. Bleak could feel the atmospheric cold, seeping through the window glass.
Sometimes they talked, almost whispering. Mostly Loraine, telling him everything she knew about Forsythe, CCA...and Gulcher.
The rest of the time Bleak sat staring out the window, down at rugged brown land, flecked with green, studded with gray-black outcroppings, passing far below with illusory slowness. A few twisty roads, the goggle shape of a lake, the occasional snowy peak.
Pushing farther, farther to the north.
The wall in the north,
Bleak thought. At
last.
“Bleak,” she said huskily, as they flew over the Hudson Strait, “I'm sorry I had to shoot him. I just—”
“You know, Agent Sarikosca—it wasn't
overyet,
with Sean...when you did it.” He wasn't sure if it was true, but he had to say it. “I might've found some way to stop him. To stop what was going on. I
might
have saved him.”
She nodded. Her eyes filling. “I know. But I
couldn't take
a chance. He had to be stopped right
then and there...
to be sure. It wasn't just about us.”
“I see that, but...” Bleak shook his head. He knew she'd had a reason. A good reason. But there had been a chance he could have saved Sean—
and
stopped Moloch.
Or perhaps not. He'd never know, now.
The plane pressed on. A stop at a small base, so they could shift to a helicopter. There was no place for a plane to land at the compound.
Almost running, heads down against the wind, across an expanse of tarmac to the new Greenhawk copter. Another takeoff.
It all seemed to take forever. Her eyes were red, as she rode beside him, both of them with their backs to the vibrating inner hull of the helicopter. But she was calm now. Looking miserably resigned.
Bleak knew he should reassure her:
It's not your fault. It had to be done.
But his usual inward command of himself seemed crippled, when he thought about Sean. He felt barely able to speak.
He had been in the same room with his brother, at last. Then...
She had shot him in the head. He saw it replayed, over and over in his mind.
But they flew on, all the time knowing that General Forsythe was ahead of them—had a jump on them, on a private jet—a CIA Gulfstream, then a DIA chopper. The general and Gulcher. How was Forsythe going to use Gulcher?
But Bleak knew. He'd use him as a weapon.
Attempts at calling ahead for Forsythe's arrest had come too late—despite Swanson's urgent request, the Canadian government refused to shoot down the general's jet. It was a hard request to explain.
And by the time they could give the Canadians enough explanation to get more troops, more protection, to the artifact, it would be too late.
Could be just as well. Those troops might well simply die out there, anyway, if Bleak didn't intervene first.
The chopper ran full bore against a headwind, risking a crash on orders from Swanson. The engines roaring in their ears.
How many hours had passed, in just getting here? How far ahead were Forsythe and Gulcher?
***
IT SEEMED TWILIGHT WHEN Bleak and Loraine's helicopter arrived in the airspace near the compound around the artifact, but this time of year it might seem like twilight in the arctic circle for hours on end.
From the air, at about three hundred feet, they could see another, smaller helicopter, the one General Forsythe had used to get here from the airfield, standing near the Quonset huts.
And they saw the bodies of dead soldiers, scattered in front of the main building.
The air force pilot of their chopper, Purvis, was a short but broad-shouldered man in AF flight coveralls, lieutenant's bars. He was one of Swanson's aides—a volunteer and the only man who'd come with them. Bleak had turned down the offer of a marines escort. He didn't see any point in anyone else dying. Before it was necessary.
Purvis glanced back at them, made a sign that they were to land.
And then Purvis's eyes froze. That's what it looked like to Bleak—as if they turned to ice. The pilot pulled off his headset, unhooked his seat belt, and stood up...giving up control of the helicopter.
The chopper began to bob, shimmying, turning wildly in place...in a moment it would start spinning.
“Something's got control of him!” Bleak yelled, over the engine noise. He could see the entity, like a face formed in steam, simmering around the pilot's face, there and gone...sinking deeper into him. Firming up control.
“Gulcher!” Loraine blurted.
The pilot was lurching toward them, his face settling into sheer malevolence.
“I can't fly a helicopter!” Bleak told her, getting up, forming an energy bullet in his right hand.
“I had some emergency training but—”
The helicopter cabin tilted, Bleak staggered—grabbed at the port bulkhead with his left hand as it righted, almost at random. Managed to steady himself, but then the pilot was lunging at him. Bleak aware that Loraine was stumbling toward the cockpit of the helicopter.
Bleak flung the energy bullet, but the wobbling of the chopper threw him off and it only hit Purvis glancingly, searing through the fabric of his jumpsuit, burning into his left shoulder, making a shallow crater of burned uniform material and red-black flesh. Purvis snarled with pain but it didn't slow him down. He lunged, his powerful hands clamping onto Bleak's face and head, thumbs gouging at his eyes.
Bleak wrenched himself back, feeling those steely thumbs prying at the edge of his eye sockets— but then the chopper went into a sickening spin and both men were flung by inertia to the right, onto the deck of the helicopter's cabin. Purvis immediately pitched himself at Bleak, knocking him back onto the deck—and vising his hands on Bleak's throat.
The chopper was steadying, under Loraine's control...but that seemed to work in Purvis's favor, as he used his brawny chest, his weight, and the leverage of his feet against the deck to press down on Bleak with his upper body. His hands twisting Bleak's head on his neck.
He was trying to snap Gabriel Bleak's spine.
Bleak resisted with all the strength of his neck and shoulders. But the pressure was incessant and increasing, making white and blue spots flash across his vision. Slowly his head turned creakingly to the left...and if he stopped resisting, even for a split second, Purvis would break his neck.
Bleak smashed his fists at Purvis but the angle was wrong, he couldn't get any real punch force from beneath. And Purvis was a powerful man—Bleak tried to pry at Purvis's arms but felt no give from muscles about double his own.
His neck muscles were screaming with pain; the pressure was building. He heard a creaking sound in his head. Purvis was going to rupture his spine at the neck. He had no choice....
He slapped his hands onto the lower part of Purvis's head, either side of his jaws, pressed them there, drew energy from the Hidden, forced it up his arms, into both hands, and into Purvis's skull.
Purvis's head began to glow, at first the multicolor shimmer of an energy bullet, as Bleak pumped the power into his skull.
The sparkling spots over Bleak's vision were almost filling his sight. But still he drew the energy from the Hidden, trying to make Purvis recoil from the heat he pumped into him...hesitating to go all the way with that energy.
Yet Purvis's grip never eased. He was under Gulcher's control—would fight to the death. So the only way to stop him...
But Bleak had never gone this far with this kind of power. And this man was an innocent—just a puppet.
He seemed to see that teenage boy in Afghanistan again.
Thisman will die today, Gabriel.
Cronin's voice.
You cannot save him. Send him on, to us. We will care for him. It is not this man you fight against.
Bleak sobbed—and forced full power into his hands.
Purvis's head pulsed with the Hidden's concentrated incandescence, now glowing cherry red. He screamed—
And the pilot's eyes boiled out of his skull. He convulsed, back arching in agony...and let go of Bleak. Tipped over to the left.
Bleak struggled to sit up, gasping, straightening his aching neck...and saw, through the cockpit hatch, the ground rushing toward the windshield of the helicopter. They were coming in at a steep angle...they were going to crash!
“Loraine!” he shouted, trying to get up.
But then the chopper suddenly angled sharply up, and he slid back along the deck, trying to find something to brace against—and felt a crashing thump, then another, loud enough to make his head ring. Heard a prolonged metallic grinding.
The helicopter spun once across the ground.
And stopped, in a cloud of dust and oily smoke.
Bleak lay there a moment, rubbing his strained neck...then sat up, wincing, coughing in the foul air. Loraine loomed through the dust and smoke. Helped him to his feet, telling him apologetically, “I can't really fly one of these things except in the most, you know, theoretical way.”
“You got us down alive.”
“Oh, God...” As she saw Purvis. His face charred, eye sockets empty. “Did you have to?” “I had to. Come on.”
They climbed out of the helicopter—an awkward climb. The chopper was tilted all wrong, the slowing rotors barely clearing the ground on its port side.
They stepped away from the chopper, coughing in the plume of smoky dust, looked around. Men were sprawled in drying pools of blood. Some of them, even in death, still clutching assault rifles.
But one of those bodies lifted up, started crawling toward them. An unarmed young soldier, moaning softly.
Forsythe had used Gulcher to take out the compound's defenses. Probably turned half the soldiers on the other half. But he hadn't quite killed them all.
Loraine and Bleak went to the injured man, about forty feet from the chopper. The man lay on his belly, whimpering. Sensing the soldier wasn't under Gulcher's control, Bleak gently turned him on his back. Loraine knelt beside him.
A young marine. He had a bullet hole in his chest, right side.
“Everybody...” A bubble of blood appeared at his mouth. He was young, blue-eyed, and pale with blood loss. “They just...went crazy.”
“Take it easy, marine,” she told him, taking off her coat, folding it under the soldier's head for a pillow. “We know what happened. Just rest—help is coming. They're getting clearance. Be here in about half an hour. Medical team and everything.”
Bleak looked around for Forsythe—and didn't see him. But he could feel the background signal of the artifact—something he'd felt, most of his life, never entirely sure what it was. It was coming from the dig, down the hillside.