Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance Page 3

  Remember, when the Black Caps not only kidnapped my parents but also when they found us in Ojai, they broke into my father’s lab and stole all of his research.

  What was Hugh Greenwood working on that scared the Caps into taking so big a risk? And what had Hobbes and his people done with them since?

  Two weeks after the plane crash, federal officials claimed they’d identified the bodies in the wreck as those of Will’s parents. Will knew better than to believe them because a few days after the crash he’d received a painfully hopeful text message from his missing, and presumed dead, father. And because of a coded message inside it, Will never doubted that Jordan West had written it. He felt less hopeful about his mother’s survival, especially after he’d seen her infected with a Ride Along, the mind-control monster that was one of the Other Team’s most hideous weapons. His mother might be gone, and he’d come to grips with that over the last few months.

  But he believed one hundred percent that his father was alive, and that belief alone kept him going. Will had never breathed a word to his roommates about this devastating truth. He was afraid of the many unknowns that might come back to hurt them when they’d been through too much trying to help him already. He couldn’t blame them if, just as he had, his roommates had decided to push all this insanity into the background, concentrate on their schooling, go along with the Center’s explanation that the worst was behind them, and hope like hell it was true.

  But with Will’s reawakened attitude, he knew better: TROUBLE’S COMING BACK WITH A VENGEANCE, BECAUSE THIS TIME I’M TAKING THE FIGHT TO THEM.

  He’d start slowly, with Ajay. They’d follow up on their earlier investigations and then formulate a strategy on how to proceed.

  And that’s how things went, until 9:14 p.m. on June 3, the last day of their sophomore year.

  JUNE

  After his last final exam of the year, Will returned to Pod G4-3 in Greenwood Hall, tossed his backpack aside, and was about to enter his bedroom when he spotted a letter, addressed to him, propped up on the dining room table. Hardly an everyday occurrence these days. Postmarked five days earlier, from a handwritten return address in Palm Desert, California, below the name N. DEANGELO.

  Will took it into his room, propped up his school notebook, and sat at his desk. His syn-app appeared on the screen of the device, watching curiously as Will opened the envelope and unfolded a single-page letter written in the same neat, feminine hand as the address:

  Dear Will West,

  I must apologize for how long it has taken me to respond to your letter of last November. You see it was sent to my former address in Santa Monica, where I haven’t lived in over twelve years, and I’ve moved twice since then. It’s only through the admirable persistence of our much-maligned postal service that it finally reached me two weeks ago.

  Will flashed back to the letter he’d written last November to a Santa Monica address that Nando had helped him find. But that was to a woman named Nancy Hughes, a navy nurse who Dave had told him he’d known in Vietnam just before he died.

  Your letter certainly got me thinking. I’m at an age now, recently retired, where you spend a lot of time remembering things. I thought the best way to answer your out-of-the-blue question—“Did I know a man during the Vietnam War named Sergeant Dave Gunner?”—would be to send you a photograph I’ve kept all these years.

  Will found the photo attached to the back of the letter with a paper clip. An aging snapshot, in close-up, of a tanned and shirtless Dave reclining on a tropical beach, holding his sunglasses up with one hand and winking, while giving a thumbs-up with the other. Wearing a devil-may-care grin, like he had the world by the scruff of the neck.

  Looking exactly like the Dave Gunner Will had known, same guy, no question about it. The only difference: no disfiguring scars on his face from the chopper crash. That was yet to come, and apparently soon.

  As you probably know, Dave didn’t survive the war. In fact, he was killed two days after I took this picture. I was just a kid then, and we only knew each other a couple of days but he certainly made an impression. That’s the kind of guy he was. So full of life he could hardly contain it. If anyone had met Dave, then I’m sure they’d never forget him, and his dying when he did, even with all that unimaginable violence going on around us, hit me hard as something senseless and tragic.

  “I hear that,” said Will softy.

  One more point. This is an even harder thing to describe, Will, but since then, more than a few times during my life, hard times, I’ve had a strong feeling that Dave was nearby. In a good way. I don’t know if that sounds too awfully strange to you, but there it is, for what it’s worth. It was a long time ago, and I’m married now, happily, to a really great fella, so I’ll say no more about that.

  But I did hang on to this photo for a very long time, didn’t I?

  Anyway, I hope I’ve answered your question.

  Sincerely yours,

  Nancy (Hughes) Deangelo, RN, retired

  “Yes, you did, Nancy,” said Will. “You sure did.”

  Will went into his bedroom, sat at his desk, folded up the letter, and looked at the photograph of Dave again.

  So full of life he could hardly contain it.

  As he stared at the photograph, he felt a strong vibration issuing from his desk. He opened the top drawer, where Will kept the pair of “black dice” that Dave had given him. Of course, when Dave used them, they functioned as some kind of holographic database that projected information he requested into thin air, but ever since he’d thrown them Will’s way, they’d stubbornly resisted looking or acting as anything other than ordinary dice.

  But now the dice were oscillating in place so rapidly he could barely see them, and his whole desk was shaking.

  “What’s going on, Will?” asked Will’s syn-app, looking up from the screen of his notebook, seated at a virtual version of the dining room table, which was also shaking.

  “I don’t know, Junior. It started after I opened this letter.” Will had grown so comfortable with the constant presence of his miniaturized/computerized double that he’d started calling him Junior.

  “May I see it please, Will?”

  Will stood, picked up the notebook to stop the shaking, then held the letter up to the screen. “It’s from that navy nurse you found the address for last year.”

  Will held up the photograph, too. Junior stood up and appeared to study them, while analyzing and scanning them into memory.

  “That is the same guy, right?” asked Will. “In the other picture you found. That’s Dave Gunner.”

  “Yes, it is, Will. I can definitely confirm that,” said Junior. “It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. It really, really does.”

  “I wonder what Nurse Nancy looked like way back then.”

  “Knowing Dave, it’s a safe bet that back in the day she looked pretty doggone good.”

  “I’ve made a note of her current address,” said Junior. “If you ever need to contact Ms. Hughes again.”

  “Thanks, Junior,” said Will.

  As soon as he put the letter away, his desk stopping shaking. He opened the drawer to look at the dice, as ordinary as a pair from a Monopoly game again. It suddenly seemed like a good idea to carry them around, so he picked them up and slipped them into his pocket.

  He heard the front door slam in the other room and moments later an urgent banging on his door. Will got up and unlocked the door. Ajay rushed in, huge eyes wide, his tiny elfin frame bursting with animated energy.

  “Great galloping ghost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt!” said Ajay. “Have I got something to show you.”

  Ajay swung his immense backpack onto Will’s bed, its weight pulling him with it.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” said Will. “What’s the rush?”

  Ajay ripped open his backpack and
rummaged through it, searching for something. “When all that material vanished from the Rare Book Archives about the Knights of Charlemagne, I still felt certain I could put my hands on the information we needed—where did I put it?”

  In January, Ajay had finagled a pass into the Rare Book Archive of the Center’s library, where they’d hoped to find more about the Knights of Charlemagne, but all references to the Knights had vanished from their physical and digital records. They also checked the field house locker room, where they’d earlier discovered a network of tunnels leading all the way to the island in the middle of Lake Waukoma, but access to them had been sealed off; the door that led down there now ended in a broom closet.

  “Put what?”

  “No one has even dreamt of the firewall that can keep me off a server, but finding an object that has been removed in its purely physical/analog form is a more difficult nut to crack—”

  “So what did you find, Ajay?” asked Will, moving over to join him.

  “Just before all the trouble started, Brooke had located a few articles about the Knights in the school newspaper.”

  “Ancient ones, from like the 1920s.”

  “And one from the ’30s,” said Ajay as he finally fished out the slender folder he’d been looking for. “They’ve already been plucked from the archives as well, but you’ll recall that Brooke showed a single photograph from the library to us when we were online with her, just before Lyle hacked into the call.”

  “I do remember that,” said Will. “A picture of the Knights at a dinner. With some famous politician, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s it! Henry Wallace, the United States’ secretary of the interior, who was less than four years away from becoming Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president,” said Ajay as he opened the folder and took out an 8 x 12 black-and-white photograph. “This is the image Brooke held up to the screen while we were watching.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “Well, I’m such a first-class nincompoop, a digital record of the call was backed up on my private server this entire time. When this occurred to me, I went back in, ran a quantum-level search, and found that image on the recording, but it was in appalling shape, terrible resolution, grainy and obscure, so I ran it through a few enhancement renders—”

  “Let me see it!”

  “There’s a lot more detail in my version than the one Brooke showed us,” said Ajay, laying the glossy black-and-white photograph on the table. “Someone else was at that dinner.”

  It was the same 1937 photo that Brooke had briefly shown them online, but Ajay had completely restored it: the twelve Knights of Charlemagne hosting a fancy dinner in some unidentified dining room for Interior Secretary Henry Wallace.

  “Look at it with this,” said Ajay, pulling out a magnifying glass.

  Will’s eye scanned the table until he settled on one of the young men making a toast to Wallace and smiling for the camera—a young student, one of the Knights. The same student, when Will had first seen the photo, that he thought he’d recognized but wasn’t able to identify.

  “Do you see him?” asked Ajay.

  He could now. Solid, built like a linebacker, with unmistakable piercing light blue eyes.

  It was the Bald Man, the leader of the Black Caps.

  “Oh my God, Ajay, you’re right,” said Will. “That’s Mr. Hobbes.”

  “That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” said Ajay. “I’d only seen him on Ronnie’s video that one time so I didn’t want to lead you to it. That is him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, this is Hobbes, I’d swear it. He’s got hair here, and he’s younger obviously.” Will scrutinized Hobbes through the magnifying glass. “But not that much younger.”

  “I couldn’t help but notice that as well,” said Ajay, folding his arms. “So let’s ask ourselves, my friend: How is that possible? This picture was taken over eighty-five years ago.”

  “You remember what he looked like when I saw him through the dark glasses Dave gave me,” said Will.

  “Of course I do: solid bony exoskeleton, red eyes, like a reptile covered with human skin,” whispered Ajay, recoiling from the memory. “Even if I could forget details, those aren’t the sort of details one forgets.”

  “He isn’t human. Not completely, anyway.”

  “He’d have to be well over a hundred by now, which should disqualify him for any physical activity more vigorous than shuffleboard.”

  “Hobbes is some kind of hybrid from the Never-Was. Normal human limits don’t apply to him.”

  Ajay gripped Will’s arm. “Now you see why I’m so excited? This is the hard evidence we’ve been looking for, a connection between the Black Caps and the Knights. Hobbes is both.”

  “So Hobbes was a student at the Center, a senior in 1937, and a member of the Knights,” said Will, looking at the photo thoughtfully.

  “Which means I should be able to cross reference his image in existing school records and find out his real name,” said Ajay excitedly. “Surely they can’t have erased all traces of him as a student. And once we have a name, that may lead us to everything else we need to know …”

  As Ajay was talking, Will noticed something even stranger in the picture. Ajay must have seen the astonishment on his face.

  “What is it, Will?”

  Will recognized a second student in the photograph, seated across the table from Hobbes. Staring straight into the camera, like the others, raising his glass and grinning. Grabbing the magnifying glass, Will looked closer, and the closer he looked the more certain he became. The photo had been taken before he’d been changed or altered into the twisted, miserable wretch they knew now, but it was him, no doubt about it.

  “Hold on to your huevos rancheros, Ajay,” said Will, then pointed to the other student and held the magnifying glass over him. “We know this guy, too.”

  Ajay leaned in for a look and then looked at Will, with his eyes open wide, and they both knew he was right.

  The second student was the men’s locker room attendant:

  Happy Jolly Nepsted.

  “We need to talk to that man,” said Ajay.

  RULE #29: YOU COULD ALSO THINK OF COINCIDENCE AS SYNCHRONICITY.

  “We need to find Nick,” said Will.

  “So what do we think this means?” asked Ajay anxiously, struggling to keep up with Will.

  “It means my instincts about Nepsted were right all along,” said Will, keeping his voice down. “He knows a whole lot more about this place than he says he does—it means he knows who Hobbes is, for starters, and that’s the biggest break we’ve had.”

  They were hustling through the quad, heading toward the field house, where Nick had returned their call to say he was finishing a workout. The campus thrummed with early-evening activity, everyone animated by the summer weather and flushed with end-of-the-school-year fever. Flocks of parents had descended for graduation or to pick up their kids for summer. Will and Ajay kept their heads down and avoided any eye contact.

  “I’m with you, but this is too important to accept without applying anything less than the most exacting standards of inquiry,” said Ajay quietly. “For instance, shouldn’t we consider that this might be one of Nepsted’s ancestors in the photo? Because, like Hobbes, whoever that is would have to be at least a hundred years old by now as well.”

  “I can’t tell you why I’m sure it’s him, Ajay. It’s more than just what he looks like. It’s the look in his eyes,” said Will. “And the first time I ever talked to him he said something curious: ‘I’m older than I look.’ ”

  Ajay almost moaned. “And it’s been so agreeable around here lately. No paranormal calamities, nothing going bump around campus in the night. I’d almost convinced myself we were just normal kids enjoying high school.”

  “Come on, what fun would that be?”

  “Easy for
you to say. My palms are sweating and I have that shaky feeling all through my knees and quadriceps again,” said Ajay, rubbing his hands on his shirt. “Even my breathing is starting to constrict. I feel I could black out at any moment.”

  “You just need to burn off some adrenaline,” said Will. “Let’s run.”

  As they cleared the crowded quad, Will broke into a trot and Ajay fell in alongside him. “Of course, this wretched timing makes sense. I met the most fantastic girl recently, and I was just beginning to think that she might find me equally interesting.”

  “Why haven’t I heard about this?” asked Will.

  “You know I don’t like to put my carts in front of my horses, Will. I prefer to lie in wait, an enigma, ever so patiently. Let her grow to believe I’m difficult to reach and deeply mysterious, and then, once she’s ripe for the plucking, strike like a cobra.”

  Will glanced sideways at him. “So she won’t talk to you, huh?”

  “Wrong, wrong, one hundred percent wrong,” said Ajay, offended. “We’re exceedingly friendly, and there’s little doubt in my mind that we’re also one hundred percent pheromoneally compatible.”

  “So what’s the holdup?”

  “I’m still in the intelligence-gathering phase. A wise general plans his campaigns with the utmost care before committing any resources.”

  “I don’t know how to break it to you, Ajay, but advice from Sun Tzu is not going to help you with romance.”

  “I respectfully disagree,” sniffed Ajay.

  “Yeah, well, for one thing, Napoleon, your timing stinks. You’re about to not see her for three months.”

  “Ah, but you see that’s where you’re wrong, oh ignorant one. She’s interning at the science lab during summer school, just as I am.”

  “Perhaps I underestimated you, Mr. Bond,” said Will as they approached the field house. “So who’s the target of ‘Operation Mongoose’? What’s her name?”

  “Robyn Banks, from Cincinnati, Ohio. She’ll be a sophomore this fall.”