Finally he came to me. He paused, staring down at me, and his dark eyes seemed even darker in the starlight.
“What?” I whispered.
“Domine, exaudi orationem meam,” Op Nine murmured, upending the flask. “Et clamor meus ad te veniat.” He pressed his thumb against my forehead and I felt the wetness there as he traced the cross. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”
He stepped over to Ashley and I watched him bless her too, as a single drop of holy water (I guessed it was holy water—what else could it be?) trickled down my nose.
He capped off the flask and slipped it into his pocket. Nobody said anything as we pulled the tarps off the foils and folded them up. Ashley would pause every now and then to pull back the strand of blond hair that had fallen from her bun. Her fingers were shaking. I helped her fold the tarp.
“Okay,” I said. “So what was that about?”
She shook her head, almost impatiently, like my question bordered on the cheeky.
“We’re too late,” she said. “Mike’s unlocked the Lesser Seal. They’re free.”
“Who’s free? What did Solomon keep in the Lesser Seal, Ashley? Why did Op Nine just bless us? Is he a priest or something?” I blurted out, though it was hard for me to imagine, a priest being an OIPEP agent. “What’s his deal anyway?”
She grabbed the bundle and stuffed it back into its compartment on the sand-foil. She looked angry and frightened at the same time.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. They brought you here, so you have a right to know. Let them fire me for it; I don’t care . . . Op Nine’s ‘deal’ is demons, Alfred.”
“Demons?”
“He’s a demonologist.”
And that’s how I finally discovered what had been imprisoned for three thousand years in the Holy Vessel of Babylon, the Lesser Seal of Solomon.
“Demons . . . ?” I said. “Demons. Well, that’s great. That’s just terrific.”
20
We climbed back onto the sand-foil and soon the speedometer needle was hovering near 110. We made better time now that the dunes were gone. We were crossing the Sahara, but it might as well have been the flats at Death Valley.
The speaker inside my helmet crackled with agent chatter, mostly from Abby as she reviewed the ATTPRO. I guessed it meant “attack procedure.” It could also stand for “attitude problem,” though I doubted it, given the context.
“Two groups!” Abby said. “First group will feint an attack on the Hyena’s flank to draw off the IAs. Second group is the targeting force who will take out the Hyena and retrieve the Seal!”
Abby made it very clear that Operative Nine had dibs on Mike, I guessed because he was the expert in the group on handling these demons. It seemed to me what they really needed was an expert on handling Mike Arnold.
Then she called out the names in each group. ASSFOR-1 (“Assault Force One,” I was guessing, though the OIPEP shoptalk threw me for a second) would consist of Sam, Betty, Todd, Bill, Carl, and Agnes. All OIPEP people had names like that, never more than one syllable—unless you were a girl, then you got two or even three, if you were really important, like Abigail Smith.
The rest, Bert, Ken, Yule, Ashley, Abigail, and Op Nine, were ASSFOR-2. I assumed I was ASSFOR-2 too, since my big one was hanging off the backseat of Ashley’s sand-foil.
After a while the horizon began to glow that sickening orange color and the chatter inside my helmet died away. My thoughts started to feel like Swiss cheese again, and I wondered how anybody, even a trained OIPEP agent, could fight in these circumstances, when absolute terror ripped through you like a buzz saw.
Ashley slowed the sand-foil and we fell back with the rest of ASSFOR-2. The first group roared straight toward the horizon with its sparks of white light that looked kind of like Christmas lights twinkling. They held the butts of their long 3XDs against their thighs, the barrels sticking up in the air at a forty-five-degree angle.
“Hold until they’re engaged,” I heard Op Nine say in my ear.
We came to a stop. Op Nine was right beside me, the visor on his helmet flipped up so I could see his face in the glow of the demon-fire.
“Where’s mine?” I asked, nodding at the 3XD in his hand. “What’s it shoot anyway—holy water?”
“Something far more powerful, I hope,” he said. Then out of nowhere he added, “It has begun.”
He flipped his visor down. I looked toward the orange glow and now there was red tracer fire from the group ahead arching into it, and when it touched the fire, a black tear or hole appeared, lingered for a few seconds, then closed back up. I didn’t get a long look, though, because we leaped forward suddenly and my head snapped back. The needle jumped to 130 after we executed a hard left. Racing toward the battle, I could see over Ashley’s shoulder that the orange glow came to a sort of point on the southern edge.
The orange had deepened to red when Abby Smith started yelling something over the speaker and we skidded to a stop. About thirty yards ahead I could see a sand-foil lying on its side and closer, crawling toward us, one of the OIPEP agents, clutching the 3XD in his right hand.
Ashley grabbed a satchel embossed with a red X, ripped off her helmet, and ran to the crawling man.
“Ashley!” Abigail called. “There isn’t time!”
He had taken off his helmet. It was Carl, the biggest agent, the tough guy who talked on the plane about blowing Mike away. He was crying and slobbering and cursing, his face caked with wet sand. He cried out when Ashley touched him on the shoulder, cringing like a dog that’s used to being beaten. As we got closer, I could see Carl had no eyes. There were just empty sockets where his eyes used to be.
Ashley realized it at the same time, I think, because she recoiled suddenly with a startled gasp.
“I do not, don’t, won’t—they come, they come, THEY COME!” he bellowed at her. He rolled himself into a ball and brought his hands to his face. When I first got a load of those empty sockets, I thought the demons must have torn out his eyes. But, as Carl clawed frantically into the spaces where his eyes used to be, the truth hit me: Carl had ripped them out.
Beside me, Op Nine said softly, “You see now why I warned you never to look into their eyes.”
21
Op Nine grabbed the first-aid kit from Ashley’s hand and pulled out a shiny instrument. It was the same thing Ashley had used on me in the helicopter.
“What are you doing?” Ashley asked.