A Scream of Angels – Prologue and Chapter One
PROLOGUE
He stared down at the object at his feet with the dawning realization that what they had just uncovered could change the face of the world forever.
It was exhilarating. And extremely frightening.
He would have to decide how to deal with it in the next few minutes or the news would spread all over camp faster than a forest fire in the high Sierras.
They’d been working along the shores of the Dead Sea for several months and the season was just about over. In another week their permits would expire and, with little to show for all their work, it was doubtful that he could gain the funding for a return trip the following season. Never mind the rising violence in the Occupied Territories that threatened to close the borders permanently.
And now there was this.
He turned to the man crouched next to him. “Who else knows?”
The other shook his head. “No one. I’ve been working this end of the trench all day by myself. You’re the first to see it, other than me.”
Maybe, just maybe, they had a chance then.
After another moment of deep thought, he said, “Okay, here’s what we are going to do…”
* * *
Later that night.
His team moved swiftly through the camp and assembled on its far side. The area was quiet and no one seemed to have noticed their passage. With seven hours to go before sunrise, they should have just enough time to extract the specimen, wrap it up, and get it loaded on the truck before their companions discovered what they were up to.
There were five of them. All men he’d known for years. All men he trusted implicitly. They had sworn the same oaths as he and so he had little doubt that they would go to the grave with the secret if it became necessary.
He hoped it would not. He hated to think of what he’d have to do if they were discovered in the midst of their activities.
It was difficult work. The specimen wasn’t too tall, just a hair over seven feet, but the width was twice that and he was determined to remove it in one piece if at all possible. It took them almost four hours just to free it from its ancient resting place. Getting it properly mounted and wrapped took another two. By the time the sky began to glow pink with the coming sunrise, they were working furiously to get the now-secured package loaded up into the back of one of the expedition’s half-ton trucks.
While the rest of his team had worked through the night to extract the specimen, he had reached out to his network and had set other, longer range plans in motion. He’d secured a site to store the specimen until they could decide what to do with it and had arranged for others to meet them a few hours drive north. Smuggling the specimen across the border and out of the country was going to be difficult, but thankfully he knew more than a few places where the border guards would look the other way for the right amount of money. He’d cross that particular bridge when they came to it. For now, he’d done all he could.
The team said their goodbyes quietly and then he climbed up beside the driver for the long ride north. The rest of the expedition’s personnel were just beginning to stir and there was no time to waste.
As they got underway, it occurred to him that he had just organized and carried out the biggest theft in the history of the free world.
And, God help him, it actually felt good.
CHAPTER ONE
MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL
“You have got to be kidding me!” Sergeant Sean Duncan stared in disgust at the hand-held cosmetic mirror that his commanding office, Knight Commander Cade Williams, had just handed to him. “What the heck am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
His comments were greeted with several raucous calls from the other men in the ranks, suggestions that he check to be sure his hair was in place or that he ask it who was the fairest of them all, which only caused the newest member of the Echo Team to scowl.
Cade ignored both the question and its various replies as he finished handing out the mirrors that his executive officer, Master Sergeant Matthew Riley, had managed to dig up. Heaven only knew where he’d appropriated them from, here in the midst of the Longfort Containment Facility, the Order’s most remote prison complex; Cade was just happy that he had. They were desperately needed for what lay ahead.
When he was done, he shot his exec a glance and the big black sergeant called the rest of the team to order.
“All right, that’s enough. Pipe down and pay attention!”
The men were all members of the Holy Order of the Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar, as they were once more commonly known. Long thought to have been destroyed in the fourteenth century, the Templars had emerged from hiding during the desperate days of World War II and had joined with the very entity that had excommunicated them en-masse so many centuries before, the Catholic Church. Reborn as a secret military arm of the Vatican, the Templars were now charged with defending mankind from the supernatural in all its forms.
Williams was in command of the Echo Team, the most prestigious of the elite strike units fielded by the Templars, and was as known for his ruthless efficiency as he was for his unorthodox methods. His command squad was made up of four men; Master Sergeant Riley, Sergeant Duncan and a third sergeant by the name of Olsen. Riley and Olsen had been with him a long time; they had seen and heard things that would make the average Templar soldier sick with fear, but Cade had won them over with his leadership and his dedication to the cause. They would follow him anywhere, no questions asked.
Duncan had only been with Echo for a just a few weeks, having spent several years before that on the Preceptor’s security detail, but in that time the unit’s strange and often enigmatic leader had become important to him. Cade had helped him begin to recognize that his own unique gift was just that, a gift, rather than a temptation or a curse. And though he often had difficulty with Cade’s disregard for the Rule, the code of behavior that every knight was sworn to live by, he had come to quickly understand that he could learn a lot from the other man.
Cade waited until he had their undivided attention and then turned to the smaller man standing rather uneasily off to one side of the group and said, “Warden, if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Very good, Knight Commander.” The warden was a short, stout, balding individual who looked more like a banker from the Midwest than the man in charge of two hundred of the Order’s most dangerous prisoners, both human and otherwise. “As you know, Longfort prides itself on the fact that we have never had a major riot or a successful escape. I say that simply to let you know how unusual and dangerous our current situation is. Since the facility’s construction in 1957, we have done our utmost to keep the beings you bring to us safely locked away from the rest of humanity in a place where they can do no further harm.”
The warden cleared his throat and then continued. “I’m afraid our illustrious history caught up with us last night. Somewhere around eleven p.m. there was an incident in Cell Block D. We don’t know what caused it or even exactly what happened. What we do know is that while a guard was escorting another prisoner back to cell 26, the door to cell 28 came open instead and the Eretiku confined there was released into the main corridor.”
The men were completely silent now, their attention fixed firmly on the warden.
“Things rapidly went downhill. We lost the guard and all of the prisoners along that section of the walk before we even knew we had a problem. When we did realize we had a breach, we responded the way we are trained to respond. We locked down the wing and sent in a squad to try and re-secure the prisoners that had escaped.”
The warden looked out at them and every single soldier in the room could see the regret so plain on his face. “It was exactly the wrong thing to do. We lost the entire squad, never mind a good portion of the prisoners before we understood just what we were dealing with. When we did, we pulled out, sealed off that section of the complex, and called for help.”
Cade took over from there. “We’ve been ordered to secure the cell block and have been given authorization to put down the Eretiku and any of the other prisoners that we feel necessary in order to carry out that order. I don’t need to remind any of you just how difficult this is going to be; Delta lost five men during the initial capture and they were better equipped than we are right now. But we don’t dare delay any longer while waiting for the right equipment to be flown in because if that thing in there finds a way out of the complex we’ll have a much bigger problem on our hands.”
He picked up two stacks of photographs from the table beside him and handed one of them to Riley, who in turn made certain each member of the team received a copy. “This is what you will be facing,” said Cade.
The photo showed an elderly woman in dark clothes and a shawl, her face turned mostly away from the camera.
Several of the men looked up at Cade, to see if he was joking. He most assuredly was not.
“And here is a picture of a guard who was unlucky enough to meet her gaze during the incident last night.”
Riley passed the second stack of photos around. This one showed a man in a hospital bed who appeared to be at the end of a long illness. His cheeks were sunken and hollow, his skin ghostly pale. Large red weeping sores could be seen across the exposed skin of his face, neck, and hands and it was clear that they extended beneath his clothing as well. His hair had mostly fallen out; what was left was thin and lifeless.
“That’s Jason Polnick, age 28. Yesterday he was perfectly healthy.” Cade paused, and then said, “They don’t expect him to live out the night.”
He looked them over, making certain that they understood the implications. “Some of you might not be familiar with the Eretiku. The name is Russian and it refers to a woman who has sold her soul to the Devil and returns after death from the grave to prey on the life-force of the living. Don’t let the old crone appearance fool you. She incredibly fast, incredibly strong, and meeting her gaze infects you with a wasting sickness that makes Ebola look like the common cold. She also has the unique ability to fool your eyes into thinking she isn’t there, hence the mirrors. They’re the only way you’ll be able to see her. They’ll also protect you from her gaze. The good news is that the Eretiku can be killed with ordinary weapons, so once we locate her we shouldn’t have any major issues in taking her down.”
Cade moved over to a wall, where a map of the complex had been tacked up. It resembled nothing more than six pointed starfish, with each cell block arcing out like arms from the central hub. “We’ll station half of you here,” Cade said, pointing to the thick set of blast doors that cut the cell block off from the central hub. We’ll put you on the other side of the door, for if it gets through you we’re all in trouble. A second group will be here.” The blast doors he pointed to this time were deeper down the block corridor and cut the cells themselves off from the guard’s section.
He looked out over the men and made his choice. “Olsen and Callavecchio, you’re with me. You’re the best I’ve got, shot wise, and we’re going to need everything we can bring to the table in that department because we’ll be shooting at a target we can only see in a mirror.”
The two men nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Cade looked over at Riley. “Once we’re inside the doors, the first thing we’ll do is plant some demo charges along the walls, rigged to a set of controls that you’ll have with you. If things go badly for us, and you suspect that thing will find a way out, don’t hesitate to blow the place. We can always rebuild.”
“Roger that,” said Riley, but it was clear that he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the order.
Cade turned back to the others. “We do this by the numbers, people, by the numbers. Watch your backs, keep your eyes open, and make absolutely certain you don’t look at this thing directly. Any questions?”
There weren’t any.
“All right then, let’s suit up.”
