The Thirteenth Skull

“Oh, they’ll give you input on that. Up to a point.” The tears were gone, and that made me feel good.

“One thing I was wondering . . . I don’t know really how to put it, but once I’m like totally extracted and inserted into this new life, would there be or is there ever a circumstance where I’d see anybody from the, um, don’t know what to call it, the ‘old’ interface? For example, does the extraction coordinator do checkups or follow-ups or anything along those lines?”

She was smiling. “Are you asking if you’ll ever see me again?”

I started to say something and then decided that would be a very bad idea, to even try to talk. So I just nodded.

Her smile went away. “Do you know what’s happening back in Knoxville? They’re cutting the headstone. Alfred Kropp is dead now, and the only place I can visit him is his grave.”

CAMP ECHO

SOMEWHERE IN THE

CANADIAN ROCKIES

04:23:36:47

We touched down at a private airstrip nestled in a narrow valley between the snow-crowned peaks of the Canadian Rockies. Ashley pulled two parkas from the overhead compartment and tossed one into my lap.

“Doesn’t OIPEP have any bases in the Caribbean?” I asked her.

I pulled the hood of the parka over my head as we descended the stairs to the tarmac. About a hundred feet away sat a helicopter, engine throbbing, blades slowly turning. The only building I saw was a one-room log cabin, smoke rising and curling from the chimney before being ripped away by the frigid wind. Two men wearing helmets and OIPEP jumpsuits emerged from the building as we walked toward the helicopter, Nueve and Abby Smith in front, me and Ashley taking up the rear.

The two guys from the cabin conferred with Abby before we piled into the chopper. They sat up front, one riding shotgun beside the pilot. We took our seats behind them and, with no warning at all, the engine roared, we shot straight up and then banked sharply to the left, the face of a mountain coming straight at us. We cleared it with maybe ten feet to spare.

It was a cloudless day. For as far as I could see were row after row of mountains, the snow on their peaks glistening in the bright sunlight. I saw ravines and deep river gorges lost in mountain shadow and once, in the distance, a solitary bird soaring, its dark body sharply outlined against the white backdrop of snow.

Thirty minutes later we descended into a wide cleft between two ranges. I could see a lake below, maybe three and a half football fields’ long and two wide, and a cluster of cabins the color of Lincoln Logs, connected by trails to a three-story château on the shores of the lake. The land behind the château was heavily wooded and dropped steeply toward a ravine.

Ashley touched my shoulder. “Company Base Echo!”

The chopper landed and we dove into the cold, hands on our heads to keep the hoods from flying off as we ran to the edge of the helipad. The two guys from the airstrip didn’t get out. When we were clear, the helicopter took off and swooped out of the valley, disappearing behind the jagged peaks. Then it got very quiet, so quiet you could hear our breath as it condensed and boiled out of our mouths and noses.

We hiked up a trail toward the château. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly I was very tired, the most tired I’d been in a long time, and I wasn’t sure I could make it. The trail wound through a dense stand of pine trees, the ground hard and frozen and covered with a thin sheen of ice. I kept slipping. Once I just stopped and leaned against a tree, trying to catch my breath. It felt like my heart was traveling up my esophagus on its way to my mouth.

“We’re almost there,” Ashley assured me.

“The Caribbean,” I gasped. “Or some remote island in the South Pacific. Where’s that Company base?”

“Come on,” she said, smiling. “Lean on me.”

“I’ll knock you over.”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

So that’s how I made it up the last fifty feet of the trail, my left arm around Ashley’s shoulders, until we reached the steps to the front porch and I could use the railing. Abby’s fingers raced over the keypad by the front door, a green light flashed twice, and then we were inside, standing in a huge entryway, the ceiling soaring three stories over our heads. A fire roared on the opposite wall of the great room. A long table sat in front of the fireplace, its top crowded with steaming platters and bowls.

“Food,” I said. “Thank God.”

Abby, Ashley, and I sat down to eat, but Nueve said he had pressing business and disappeared up the staircase. Abby and Ashley exchanged a look, and then Abby dropped her napkin into her plate.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she said quietly, and raced up the stairs after Nueve.

I turned to Ashley. “What’s going on? I heard them fighting on the plane.”

“They don’t like each other,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but the rumor is he wasn’t her choice for the new Operative Nine.”

“I read that section,” I said. “It says the director gets to appoint the Op Nine.”

“The board kind of forced Nueve on her.”

“The board?”

She nodded. “It’s a lot like a board of directors for a civilian company. The board chose Abby to be the new director after Merryweather was arrested.”

“So what does she have against Nueve?”

“I don’t think she trusts him.”

We could hear their voices above us, rising and falling like waves smashing against a seawall, though I couldn’t make out the words.

“I agree with Abby,” I said. “There’s something kind of slimy about Nueve.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s slimy,” Ashley protested. “He just has a tough exterior.”

“Right,” I said. “Like an oyster. And inside: slime.”

“It isn’t easy being an Operative Nine,” she said.

“It isn’t easy being a lot of things.”

After we finished eating, Ashley led me back outside. I felt stronger after my meal and didn’t have to stop or lean on her on our way to one of the one-room cabins. A small plaque was mounted over the keypad by the door: 13 “Oh, good,” I said. “Cabin thirteen.”

“You’re superstitious?” Ashley asked as she punched in the code.

“The number keeps cropping up.”

“ ‘Cropping’? Is that some kind of pun?” She was smiling.