Alex Kava: The Soul Catcher

“Shit!”

“It gets even better. This is only a secondary switch.” He showed them the metal box he held. “The real detonator’s off-site.” Then he pointed to the blinking red button and flipped a switch. The light shut off. Within seconds it snapped back on, blinking again like a pulsing red eye.

The men turned and twisted, craning their necks and looking around them. Some of them had their guns drawn. Even Eric’s head pivoted, his eyes suddenly clear and squinting into the shadows of the woods. He didn’t understand. He wondered if David had known about the metal box.

“Where is it?” demanded the big guy with no neck, the one everyone seemed to treat as being in charge, the only one dressed in a navy blazer instead of a windbreaker. “Where’s the goddamn detonator?”

It took Eric a minute to realize the man was asking him. He met his eyes and stared like he had been taught, looking directly into the black pupils and not blinking, not flinching, not letting the enemy win even one word.

“Hold on a minute,” the one named Cunningham said. “Why wouldn’t they want the detonator inside the cabin, so they could control when and how to blow it up? We already know they were willing to take their own lives. So why not do it by blowing themselves and the arsenal up?”

“Maybe they still intend to blow us up.” And there was more shuffling, more worried heads pivoting.

Eric wanted to tell them Father would never blow up the cabin. He couldn’t sacrifice the weapons. Father needed them to fight, to continue to fight. Instead, he simply transferred his stare to Cunningham, who not only held his gaze but bore into him as if his powers could wrench out the truth with only a look. A knot in Eric’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t blink. He couldn’t show weakness.

“No, if they wanted to blow us up, we’d already be dead,” Cunningham continued without looking away. “I think the real targets are already dead. I think their leader just wanted to make sure they did the right thing.”

Eric listened. It was a trick. Satan was testing him. Seeing if he would flinch. Father wanted to save them from being taken alive and tortured. This was simply the beginning of that torture, and Satan’s soldier, this Cunningham, knew his job well. His eyes wouldn’t let Eric go, but he wouldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away. He had to ignore the thunder of his heart in his ears, and the knot tightening in his gut.

“The detonator,” Cunningham said without a single blink of his own eyes, “may have been a backup plan. If they didn’t swallow their death pills, he was prepared to blow them to pieces. Some leader you have, kid.”

Eric wouldn’t take the bait. Father would never do such a thing. They had voluntarily given up their lives. No one had forced them. Eric simply hadn’t been strong enough to join them. He was weak. He was a coward. For a moment he had dared to lose faith. He had not been a brave, loyal warrior like the others, but he wouldn’t show weakness now. He wouldn’t give in.

Then suddenly, Eric remembered David’s last words. “He tricked us.” Eric thought David had meant Satan. But what if he meant…? It wasn’t possible. Father had only wanted to save them from being tortured. Hadn’t he? Father wouldn’t trick them. Would he?

Cunningham waited, watching and catching Eric as he blinked. That’s when he said, “I wonder if your precious leader knows you’re still alive? Do you suppose he’ll come to your rescue, just like he did last night?”

But Eric was no longer sure of anything as he stared at the metal box flashing its strange lights, red and green, stop and go, life and death, heaven and hell. Maybe David and the others were not only the brave ones; now Eric wondered if perhaps they were also the lucky ones.

SATURDAY

November 23

Arlington National Cemetery

Maggie O’Dell gripped the lapels of her jacket into a fist, bracing herself for another gust of wind. She regretted leaving her trench coat in the car. She’d ripped it off in the church, blaming the stupid coat for her feeling of suffocation. Now, here in the cemetery, amid the black-clad mourners and stone tombstones, she wished she had something, anything, from which she could draw warmth.

She stood back and watched the group huddle together, surrounding the family under the canopy, intent on protecting them from the wind, as though compensating for the mistakes that had brought them all here today. She recognized many of them in their standard dark suits and their trained solemn faces. Except in the middle of this graveyard, even those bulges under their jackets couldn’t prevent them from looking vulnerable, stripped by the wind of their government-issue, straight-backed posture.

Watching from the fringes, Maggie was grateful for her colleagues’ protective instincts. Grateful they prevented her from seeing the faces of Karen and the two little girls who would grow up without their daddy. She didn’t want to witness any more of their grief, their pain; a pain so palpable it threatened to demolish years of protective layers she had carefully constructed to hide and stifle her own grief, her own pain. Standing back here, she hoped to stay safe.

Despite the crisp autumn gusts attacking her bare legs and snapping at her skirt, her palms were sweaty. Her knees wavered. Some invisible force knocked at her heart. Jesus! What the hell was wrong with her? Ever since she opened that body bag and saw Delaney’s lifeless face, she had been a wreck of nerves, conjuring up ghosts from the past-images and words better left buried. She sucked in deep breaths, despite the cold air stinging her lungs. This sting, this discomfort, was preferable to the sting the memories could bring.

After twenty-one years, it annoyed her that funerals could still reduce her to that twelve-year-old girl. Without will or warning, she remembered it all as though it had happened yesterday. She could see her father’s casket lowered into the ground. She could feel her mother tugging at her arm, demanding that Maggie toss a handful of dirt on top of the casket’s shiny surface. And now, in a matter of minutes, she knew the lone bugler’s version of taps would be enough to knot her stomach.

She wanted to leave. No one would notice, all of them wrapped in their own memories or vulnerabilities. Except that she owed it to Delaney to be here. Their last conversation had been one of anger and betrayal. It was too late for apologies, but perhaps her being here would bring her a sense of resolution, if not absolution.

The wind whipped at her again, swirling dried and crackling leaves like spirits rising up and sailing between the graves. The howl and ghostly moans sent additional chills down Maggie’s back. As a child, she had felt the spirits of the dead, surrounding her, taunting her, laughing at her, whispering that they had taken away her father. That was the first time she had felt the incredible aloneness, which continued to stick to her like that handful of wet dirt she had squeezed between her fingers, squeezing tight while her mother insisted she toss it.

“Do it, Maggie,” she could still hear her mother say. “Just do it already and get it over with” had been her mother’s impatient words, her concern more of embarrassment than of her daughter’s grief.

A gloved hand touched Maggie’s shoulder. She jumped and resisted the instinct to reach inside her jacket for her gun.

“Sorry, Agent O’Dell. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Assistant Director Cunningham’s hand lingered on her shoulder, his eyes straight ahead, watching.

Maggie thought she was the only one who had not joined the group gathered around the freshly cut grave, the dark hole in the ground that would house Special Agent Richard Delaney’s body. Why had he been so cocky, so stupid?