The Thirteenth Skull

“It’s a tracking device?”

“That’s one of its functions, yes. It has another. Inside Special Device 1031 is a tiny pellet, no bigger than the lead of our metaphorical pencil.”

He scooted forward in his chair and held the black box about a foot from my nose.

“The blue button arms the pellet. The red button begins the detonation sequence. Thirty seconds.”

“And the keypad?”

“A failsafe. If the correct code is entered before the thirty seconds expire, your headache is nothing that two hundred milligrams of ibuprofen can’t handle. If not . . .” Now whispering: “Boom.”

I watched as the pad of his index finger mashed down on the blue button. The red one lit up.

“You will cooperate, Alfred.” His finger now hovered over the red button. The red light lit up the grooves of his fingerprint. “And abandon any foolish notion of escape.”

He pressed the button. The number 30 popped up in the display window right above the keypad. It seemed to switch to 29—then 28—then 27—faster than a normal second lasted.

“It may seem cruel—even diabolical—but it’s really quite humane. Your head will not literally explode, like you’re imagining right now. It really takes very little explosive to kill a human being. The only outward sign usually noted is a distinct reddening of the eyes, as blood pours into the ocular cavities.”

15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . .

“The code,” I whispered. “Punch in the code, Nueve. I know you won’t do it.”

He went on like he didn’t hear me. “Although some test subjects did bleed profusely through the ears and nose . . .”

8 . . . 7 . . . 6 . . .

I lunged for the box—like that would do any good. He scooted back into the chair and his fingers flew over the keys.

I couldn’t see what numbers he punched, but the red light went out.

I fell back gasping. My imagination was working overtime; I thought I could really feel it in the middle of my brain, the tiny explosive pellet, red hot and pulsing.

I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. His voice had no playfulness when he spoke again. It was as hard and sharp as one of Dr. Mingus’s diamond-bladed scalpels.

“There is no place on earth you can hide. Run from us, and we’ll find you. Try to have it removed, you’ll die. Defy us, and we’ll literally blow your brains out. No heavenly being holds your fate in the palm of his hand, Alfred Kropp. I do. I am your guardian now and, like the angels themselves, I am above the laws of men. Beyond remorse, beyond pity, beyond judgment, beyond all moral consideration. From this moment forward, if you wish to pray to anyone, I suggest you pray to me.”

03:04:01:20

I lay on the bed for a few minutes after he left. I knew I wouldn’t be alone for long.

It was probably a good idea bordering on a great one, while I still had a little privacy, to figure a way out of Camp Echo.

I gave myself a little pep talk.

“Okay, okay, the main thing is don’t panic. This isn’t so bad. You’ve been in worse situations. Fighting against a sword that can’t be beaten. Battling sixteen million unkillable demons in the middle of the desert. Falling from thirty thousand feet without even a freakin’ parachute. This is nothing. This is cake. Held hostage by ruthless secret agents. Separated from civilization by hundreds of miles of hostile, unfamiliar terrain. A tracking device implanted in your skull. And a bomb that literally blows your brains out with a touch of a button . . . Is that it? Is that the best they got?”

I sat on the edge for a minute or two, holding my head in my hands, rocking back and forth, as if to restore equilibrium to my flip-flopping thoughts.

“What is the mission? What must be done? That’s what Samuel would say. What’s the thing-that-must-be-done? Samuel, where are you? You’re going after the wrong guys. Jourdain just wanted to burn down my house, take all my money, and kill me—these Company guys really want to mess with me.

“Forget about him; forget about Samuel. Samuel isn’t here. Abby isn’t here. Ashley’s here. What are they going to do to Ashley? Kill her. But why would they kill her? Because she knows. She knows the plan and she’ll rat them out to Abby. But Ashley’s not dead yet. If she was, Nueve would have told me. He’d enjoy telling me.

“So Ashley’s alive. I can’t escape without Ashley. But I can’t escape anyway. He’ll just track me down. Well, I’ll have take that chance . . . Maybe if I get a head start on them. . . The transmitter is tiny, the size of an eraser; its range can’t be that great. With a good head start maybe . . . maybe . . .

“So I’ve got to get Ashley. Then we’ve got to get out of this valley. Then we’ve got to get out of Canada. Then we’ve got to get . . .”

Where?

Where in the whole world could I hide from them? Where would be safe?

“I’ve got to find Sam. He put the thing in my head; he’ll know how to get it out.”

I pushed myself off the bed and swayed, holding my arms out from my sides like a tightrope walker for balance. Dr. Mingus must have drained half my blood the day before. What did OIPEP plan to do with my blood? They had taken it before to fight the demons, but they had the Seal now—why would they need my blood to fight demons they could control with Solomon’s ring?

“Something else,” I muttered, closing my eyes, but that made the dizziness worse, so I opened them again. “Not demons. Something really evil. Mingus is a genetic engineer. . . . Cloning! They’re cloning Kropp to make a . . . make a what? A clone army? Army of the Kropp clones? Man, that’s sick.”

Sick . . . and senseless. The power of my blood didn’t make me invincible. It wasn’t like holy armor or anything.

Thinking of armor reminded me of the Knights of the Sacred Order. I never saw one of them in armor, but I did see a suit of it in a closet once, at a little Hansel and Gretel type house in Pennsylvania, where the mother of one of the knights lived. I wasted a few seconds trying to remember her name. I could see her face in my mind’s eye, and the house set back in the woods. The house was close to a state park whose name I also couldn’t remember near a little town not far from Harrisburg . . .

He flew into Harrisburg two nights ago, where he rented a car and drove to a tiny hamlet called Suedberg.

Jourdain Garmot went to Suedberg, where the knight named Windimar had lived. Why? What was he looking for?

The last knightly quest . . . for the Thirteenth Skull.