Robert Ferrigno - Sins of the Assassin

Leo’s lower lip quivered. “Really?”

“No.” Rakkim stopped the car. Rolled down his window.

There was a moment when the two men in front almost opened up with their guns-he saw it in their expression, their posture-then another man, dressed in a black jumpsuit with white bones on it, said something and they half lowered their weapons. The man in the skeleton suit walked toward the car, a pistol at his side.

“Why…why is he dressed like that?” whispered Leo.

Rakkim peered at the skeleton man. It was a Halloween outfit. Looked like it anyway. Sarah had shown him pictures from the old days, pictures of people dressed as devils and witches and wild beasts. A holiday or something. Kids and adults both took part. People scared each other and then passed out candy, evidently. Halloween had been banned in the Belt since the war. So what was this guy from the ETA doing dressed like a skeleton?

“Howdy.” Skeleton man pressed the barrel of his pistol against Rakkim’s forehead. “Any reason I shouldn’t kill you?”

“I want to see Malcolm,” said Rakkim.

Skeleton man ground the barrel deeper into Rakkim’s forehead. “Does Malcolm want to see you?”

Rakkim watched the others form a semicircle around the car, a grungy group, half starved, long hair matted. Many of them were bare-chested against the chill, but well armed, torsos draped with belts of ammunition, their automatic weapons clean.

The pistol rapped Rakkim’s head. “I can’t hear you.”

“Malcolm’s expecting me,” said Rakkim. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

The pistol eased back slightly as skeleton man considered it.

“You don’t want to be wrong, pal.” Rakkim spun the eye in the pyramid, the metal flashing in the sun. “I’d hate to be you if you fuck this up.”

“Get out.”

Rakkim allowed himself to be tripped as he stepped out of the car, his hands jerked behind his back and wired tight. Leo got the same treatment and a few kicks beside. The kid didn’t cry out, just muttered something in Jewish or Hebrew or whatever it was.

The two of them were pushed and dragged to a four-by-four panel truck and tossed in the back. They landed on a pile of luggage; leather bags and suitcases, overnight duffels and a red leather makeup kit. The worst was a couple of kids’ small suitcases festooned with stickers from Florida Fiesta-Land. Nobody else in the back of the truck, though. No prisoners. Rakkim saw Leo fight back tears at the sight of the happy stickers, saw anger in him too, and was pleased. They were going to need that anger in the coming days.

“You comfy back there?” called skeleton man, turning around in the front seat.

Rakkim and Leo stayed silent and skeleton man turned back. They bounced along in the semidarkness for a long time, at least an hour, while the truck climbed steeply, then careened down a long, twisting slope. Rakkim braced his legs against the side of the truck, but Leo slid back and forth, gashed his face on the edge of a plaid suitcase.

The truck stopped, engine idling roughly before being shut off. The back door swung open and Rakkim blinked in the afternoon light, before the two of them were hauled out and dropped onto the ground.

Skeleton man glared at him. “If Malcolm isn’t interested in what you’re selling, you’re mine.”

Rakkim got to his feet, looked around. They were on the edge of a large clearing, a stream running down the ridge. Cannibalized cars, new vehicles, and motor homes were scattered across the site, most of them occupied by armed men. Dozens of jungle hammocks hung from the trees, mosquito netting glistening in the damp air. A bullet-riddled school bus lay on its side. He counted nine men wearing skeleton costumes…officers maybe, or maybe they had just looted an old store of merchandise and liked what they saw. Guns and ammunition were stacked across the site, small arms, mostly, with a few heavy machine guns. A couple of pickups with antiaircraft rail guns mounted on the back were parked near the edge of the clearing. Men filtered toward them from the woods, their faces hostile and sullen.

Leo had to roll onto his knees to stand up, wobbling.

A tall man strode toward them from the largest motor home, a very tall man, at least six foot six, maybe taller, dressed all in black. Skinny as a blade, thick-bearded, his long hair braided with pink ribbons and yellow marigolds. His eyes boiled with a twisted intelligence…the eyes of a starving maniac lost in the mountains after a plane crash and forced to eat the other survivors. And maybe he hadn’t been that hungry when he took the first bite. He looked Rakkim over.

“He…he said he had valuable information, Malcolm,” said skeleton man. “Information you’d want to hear.”

“So you brought him here. He and his soft-bellied companion.” Crews never took his eyes off Rakkim. “What if he’s carrying a bomb? What if he’s been sent by the Antichrist to assassinate me?”

“I frisked him myself, Malcolm.” Skeleton man sneered at Rakkim. “Besides, seems to me the Antichrist could do better than these two.”

“You’re an expert on the Antichrist, are you?”

“No…no, Malcolm.”

A crowd had gathered-hard, disheveled men, faces crusted with dirt.

“What if he swallowed a tracking device?” Crews said lightly. “My enemies might already be on their way, with iniquity in their hearts.”

Skeleton man bowed his head. “Forgive…forgive me, Malcolm.”

“Go and sin no more.” Crews drew a pistol and blew skeleton man’s brains out. As the sound of the gunshot echoed, skeleton man sat down, then fell backward onto the ground. Crews was fast. Fedayeen fast, maybe.

Leo closed his eyes, trembling.

Rakkim kicked dirt on the body of skeleton man. “Well, one nice thing about hell, there’s always a vacancy.”

Shouts from the crowd. Demands for Rakkim and Leo to be skinned alive…and worse. Crews paid them no mind, his attention on Rakkim. A short man wearing dirty glasses squeezed through, wanded Rakkim with a sensor stick. Then Leo. He looked up at Crews, pushed back his glasses. “They’re clean.”

“No one’s clean,” said Crews. “All have fallen short of the glory of God.” The breeze made the flowers in his hair flutter. “Any last words?”

“Come closer,” said Rakkim. “I’ve got something for you.”

Crews watched him. Wolf eyes under a full moon. All pupil.

Rakkim shifted his tongue, slid the silver coin half out of his mouth.

“Something for the ferryman?” Crews snatched the moist shekel from Rakkim’s mouth. His eyes widened slightly as he looked at the coin.

“What is it, Malcolm?” said one of the skeleton men in the crowd. “Malcolm?”

“Untie him,” said Crews, still staring at the coin. “Untie the both of them.”

The short man snipped the wires that bound Rakkim.

Rakkim rubbed his wrists, taking his time. He nodded at Leo, who couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

“You surprise me, pilgrim.” Crews suddenly embraced Rakkim, kissed him on both cheeks. His breath was foul and the flowers in his hair brushed against Rakkim’s neck, their cool, spongy touch like dead fingers. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Rikki. This is Leo.”

“Walk with me,” said Crews. “My flock will take care of Leo.”

Rakkim waved to Leo, then followed Crews into the woods, the two of them slipping into the twilight canopy. No one came after them. Crews was either sure of Rakkim or, more likely, sure of himself.

Crews rubbed the coin as they walked. “You always travel with a Jew, Rikki?”

This whole time in the Belt, Crews was the only one who had recognized Leo as Jewish. The South wasn’t nearly as anti-Semitic as the Islamic Republic, but there were plenty of good Christians who thought the Jews had got what was coming to them. “I travel with a couple of other Jews too,” he said. “Jesus Christ and John the Baptist.”