John Hawks - The Traveler

“And that’s all?”

She smiled and began to walk out of the room. “It’s a start.”

Gabriel pulled off his boots, lay down on the cot, and stared at the four Hebrew letters. He couldn’t read or pronounce them, but the shapes themselves began to float through his mind. One letter looked like a shelter from the storm. A cane. Another shelter. And then a small curving line that looked like a snake.

He fell into a deep sleep, and then he was awake or half awake-he wasn’t sure. He was looking down at the tetragrammaton drawn with red-colored sand on a gray slate floor. As he watched, a gust of wind blew God’s name away.

GABRIEL WOKE UP covered with sweat. Something had happened to the lightbulb in the dormitory and the room was dark. A faint light came from the corridor that led to the main tunnel.

“Hello!” he shouted. “Sophia?”

“I’m coming.”

Gabriel heard footsteps enter the dormitory room. Even in the darkness, Sophia seemed to know where she was going. “This happens all the time. Moisture seeps through the concrete and it gets into the electrical connections.” Sophia tapped her finger on the lightbulb and the filament lit up. “There we go.”

She walked over to the cot and picked up the kerosene lantern. “This is your lantern. If the lights go out or you want to go exploring, take it along with you.” She studied his face. “So how did you sleep?”

“It was okay.”

“Were you aware of your dream?”

“Almost. Then I couldn’t stay in it anymore.”

“All this takes time. Come with me. And bring that sword with you.”

Gabriel followed Sophia out into the main tunnel. He didn’t know how long he’d been sleeping. Was it morning or still night? He noticed that the lightbulbs kept changing. Eighty feet above them, wind was rattling the leaves of the Joshua trees and pushing the blades of the windmill. Sometimes the wind blew strongly and the lights burned brightly. When the wind faded, the only power came from batteries, and the bulb filaments glowed dark orange like embers from a dying fire.

“I want you to work on the seventeenth path. You brought along that sword, so it seems like a good idea. This path was invented by people in Japan or China: some kind of sword culture. It teaches you how to focus your thoughts by not thinking.”

They stopped at the end of the tunnel and Sophia pointed to a patch of water on the rusty steel plates. “Here we go…”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Look up, Gabriel. Straight up.”

He raised his head and saw a drop of water forming on one of the arched girders above them. Three seconds later the drop fell off the girder and splattered on the steel in front of him.

“Draw your sword and cut the drop in half before it hits the ground.”

For a second he thought that Sophia was teasing him with an impossible task, but she wasn’t smiling. Gabriel drew the jade sword. Its polished blade gleamed in the shadows. Holding the weapon with two hands, he got into a kendo stance and waited to attack. The water drop above him grew larger, trembled, then fell. He swung the sword and missed completely.

“Don’t anticipate,” she said. “Just be ready.”

The Pathfinder left him alone beneath the girder. A new water drop was forming. It was going to fall in two seconds. One second. Now. The drop fell and he swung the sword with hope and desire.

After the confrontation at Michael’s apartment building, Hollis went back to his martial arts school on Florence Avenue and taught a final day of classes. He told his two best students-Marco Martinez and Tommy Wu-that he was turning the school over to them. Marco would teach the advanced students and Tommy would teach the lower ranks. They would split the costs evenly for the first year, and then decide if they wanted to continue the partnership.

“Some men might come here looking for me. They could be real police officers or maybe they’re using fake identification. Tell them I decided to go back to Brazil and rejoin the fighting circuit.”

“You need money?” Marco asked him. “I got three hundred dollars back at my apartment.”

“No. That’s okay. I’m expecting a payment from some people in Europe.”

Tommy and Marco glanced at each other. They probably assumed that he was dealing drugs.

Hollis stopped at a grocery store on the way home and wandered up and down the aisles tossing food into a shopping basket. He was starting to realize that everything he once thought was a big decision-leaving the church, traveling to Brazil-had only prepared him for the moment when Vicki Fraser and Maya walked into his school. He could have turned them down, but that wouldn’t have felt right. He had been preparing for this battle all his life.

Driving down the street to his house, Hollis kept looking for strangers who didn’t fit into the neighborhood. He felt vulnerable when he opened the driveway gate and parked his car in the garage. Something moved through the shadows as he opened the back door and entered the kitchen. He jumped back, then laughed when he saw Garvey, his cat.

By now the Tabula realized that a black man had fought three of their mercs in an elevator. Hollis figured it wouldn’t take long for their computers to come up with his name. Shepherd had used Vicki to meet Maya at the airport. The Vast Machine probably had the names of everyone in the local Jonesie church. Hollis had broken with the church several years ago, but the congregation knew that he taught martial arts.

Although the Tabula wanted to kill him, he wasn’t going to run away. There were practical reasons for this-he needed to receive his $5,000 payment from the Harlequins, and remaining in Los Angeles also matched his fighting style. Hollis was a counterpuncher. Whenever he fought in a tournament, he always let his opponent attack at the beginning of each round. Taking a punch made him feel strong and justified. He wanted the bad guys to make the first move so he could destroy them.

Hollis loaded his assault rifle and sat in the shadows of his living room. He kept the TV and radio turned off and ate breakfast cereal for dinner. Occasionally Garvey would wander in with his tail in the air and give him a skeptical look. When it got dark, Hollis climbed onto the roof of his house with a foam-rubber pad and a sleeping bag. Concealed by the air-conditioning unit, he lay on his back and gazed at the sky. Maya said the Tabula used thermal imaging devices to look through walls. Hollis could defend himself in the daytime, but he didn’t want the Tabula to know where he was sleeping. He kept the air conditioner on and hoped that the heat of the electric motor would obscure the warmth that came from his body.

The next day, the postman brought a package from Germany: two books about Oriental rugs. There was nothing between the pages, but when he cut open the covers with a razor, he found $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills. The person who paid the money included a small business card for a German recording studio. On the back of the card, someone had written a Web site address and a friendly message. Lonely? New friends are waiting for you . Hollis smiled to himself while he counted the money. New friends are waiting for you. Harlequins. The real thing. Well, he might need backup if he had another encounter with the Tabula.

Hollis jumped over the wall and talked to his backyard neighbor, a former gang leader named Deshawn Fox who sold custom tire rims. He gave Deshawn $1,800 to buy a used pickup truck with a camper shell.

Three days later, the truck was stored in Deshawn’s driveway with extra clothes, canned food, and ammunition. While Hollis was searching for camping supplies, Garvey got into the attic crawl space. Hollis tried to tempt the cat down with a rubber mouse and a dish of canned tuna, but Garvey stayed hidden in the rafters.