Don Pendleton: Devil's Bargain

The act sticking to the script, he knew he was still live and in color, coast to coast. He was a star right then, and shine he would.

Another tap of the trigger, and he glimpsed a bright red cloud erupt out the back of the standing rental, bodies thrashing and hacking their way out of the tear gas. Tracking on, he dropped Rental Number Three as he staggered to his feet, a headshot, leaving no doubt. With only seconds to wrap it up, exit stage left, Acheron swung his aim stageward. The kid bleated out what sounded a plea, the star shrill next in demand his life be spared, silk-suited arms flapping. Acheron blew him out of his seat.

Rolling toward the raised platform, Acheron found the LIQ glued to his chair, hands raised. What the hell? Obviously the guy had gone soft, a civilian life of fame and small fortune dulling the edge of former killer instincts and battlefield reflex. Where he remembered the LIQ once lean and hard, Acheron saw a double decker chin, coiffed hair, pink manicured fingers, a goddamn walrus in Armani, he thought.

The former CIA assassin drew a bead between wide eyes, flipped the calling card on the table.

Fat quivered under the man’s jowl as he looked up from the ace of spades with a death’s-head. “You?”

“With all due kiss my ass—you’re a dirty rat bastard, Captain Jack.”

“Wait!”

“Waited more than ten years already,” Acheron said, and squeezed the trigger.

FRAMED IN SOFT LIGHT, they stared back, a living malevolence, it felt, mocking sleepless nights, telling him they would come for a day of reckoning.

“The rebel angels have risen from the pit.”

How could it be possible? he wondered. Another shot of whiskey, and the courage he chased kept running away, an evanescent ray of light in the shadows of his living room.

Over ten years had passed since he and several colleagues hatched the dread warning phrase they hoped none of them would ever need to pass on. Already one of them was dead, the national audience bearing witness to murder, and live on television, for God’s sake.

It was happening.

Still, Timothy Balton wanted to believe it was some grotesque prank by former colleagues, perhaps envious of his early retirement, that he carved himself a slice of peace and quiet, or maybe angry he turned away from them after a life of service and dedication to national security. Unfortunately there was this blight—off the record—on his career, haunting them all for more than a decade.

Their deaths had been confirmed—sort of. After those two covert debacles, which never came to the attention of any Senate committee on intelligence or counterterrorism, even the President of the United States kept in the dark, the rumor mill churned, casting spectres of grave doubt and fear over the headshed in the loop. The best forensics teams the NSA and the CIA could marshal stated, off the record, they couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain the burned remains were those of Alpha Deep Six. Then there were the slush funds for black ops in secret numbered accounts, twenty million and change whisked into cyberspace following their supposed demise. Well, the horrible truth behind the vanishing act leaked out when the headshed’s cover-up was launched in dark earnest. A few crumbs of intel, however, tossed their way, here and there, by followers deemed nonessential personnel and cheated by Alpha Deep Six of their own payday only magnified the enormity of the agenda. As former head of the DOD’s Classified Military Aircraft-Classified Military Flights—CMA-CMF—he discovered, during a yearlong follow-up investigation, low- and high-tech jets, cargo planes and helicopters were vanishing from CIA, DIA and NSA bases and installations from Nevada to Afghanistan. The bodies of personnel responsible for guarding such aircraft began stacking up so fast, no witnesses, no clues, not a shred of evidence as to the identities of the assassins left behind, it struck him as if…

What? That all of them had been executed by murderous phantoms?

Trembling, he poured another dose from the half-empty bottle. Down the hatch, hands steady moments later, enough so he felt confident he could aim and fire the Taurus PT-58 with deadly accuracy. He pulled the CD-ROM from the desk drawer. Say they did come? What then? Hand Alpha Deep Six the gathered intelligence on all secrets known about them? Give up the details, hoping they would spare his life, about their disappearance and purported resurrection, what they had allegedly initiated as part of an agenda so horrific he now considered it the evil of the ages?

Evil, he knew, that he was, albeit indirectly, responsible for loosing on the world.

He stared at the picture on his desk. Choking back tears, he wondered if he would soon join his wife and only son.

He flinched, wind howling outside, pistol up as he pivoted toward the curtained windows, something banging off the wall. Shadows, it looked, danced in the night world. Could be, he thought, just moonlight shining through scudding clouds. Wind, he knew, often gusted over the plain, stirred south from the Badlands.

He hesitated, then laid down the weapon. One more shot, he told himself, he desperately needed sleep, if only for an hour. He was thinking he should check the alarm system one more time, recon the ranch and perimeter when—

“So I understand you want divine knowledge.”

Balton froze. He felt them, no need to turn, he discovered, three shadows flickering over the wall. His hand shook as he reached for the pistol. He felt a strange urge to laugh, amazed and terrified at how easily they breached his security net, but knew they had the technology able to burn out the guts of a warning system, laser beams melting alarms and motion sensors to molten goo, no matter how complex. It was over, he knew; it was simply a question of how it would end, how soon, how much pain he would endure.

“Cramnon,” he breathed.

“Richard Cramnon’s dead, remember? I am Abbadon.”

“What?”

“I have been raised up from the dead as Abbadon. That would be ancient Hebrew for ‘destruction.’ I am the bottomless pit, consuming the damned in eternal fire. I am the abyss that vomits forth the dark angel to spread plague and death across the earth.”

“You’re insane.”

“No. I have never been more right.”

Balton felt his heart skip a beat, a rumble of cold laughter striking his back.

“Don’t look so puked out, Timothy. We just came by to say we love you.” His laughter echoed by the others, Cramnon went on, “By the way, I was real sorry to hear about your wife. Breast cancer, huh. Pity about your boy, too. Heroin, was it?” He laughed.

“You rotten son of a—”

“Drugs, modern-day scourge, I always said, the invisible foreign invasion. Hey, they say it’s a real heartbreaker, a father having to bury his own child. What do you think it was that pushed the little punk over the edge? Kid couldn’t live up to your high standards?”

Balton squeezed his eyes shut, heard Cramnon laugh beyond the roaring in his ears.

“Too much pressure from the old man, not enough love and affection? Big shot that you were at DOD, too caught up in work, family always on the backburner. Bet you hated and blamed yourself when you stared into his coffin, huh? Wonder still how such a tragedy could happen? Wish to God you could have it back to do over. Thing about that, Timothy, human beings always wish they could do it over, make it right, the old ‘if I knew then what I know now.’ Being a little more than human these days, well, I had a long chat with God while I was away. He told me, among other things, human beings would commit the same damn mistakes even if they could turn back time. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about you, asked God why even bother to create your son if the punk was going to cause you such grief. God, He tells me humans are always crying, ‘why?’ when they should ask ‘how?’As in how to fix, how to find a solution. That’s why I’m here…the disk?”