* * *
I SUSPECTED WE WERE two decks down. We walked in the direction opposite the torture compartment and could hear the screws turning louder and louder under the hull. We found no armory, only a refrigerator unit and two compartments full of canned goods and a ladder at the end of the passageway. I went up first. As I got to the top, I saw a man twenty yards away, his back to me. He was dressed like a ship’s officer and seemed to be guarding the entrance to a cabin. I ducked down below the level of the deck.
What? Clete mouthed.
Bogey at twelve o’clock, I answered.
He hooked his hand in the back of my belt and tugged gently, then squeezed past me up the ladder, the syringe clenched in his right hand. He paused briefly, then sprang down the passageway, garroted the sentinel, and jabbed him in the throat with the needle. I motioned for Carroll to follow me.
Clete opened the hatch to the cabin the ship’s officer had been guarding. Father Julian was sitting on one bunk and Leslie Rosenberg on another. Elizabeth lay on a third. The word “angelic” would probably apply to Elizabeth, with her blue eyes and golden hair, but I don’t like to think in those terms. We dragged the unconscious sentinel inside the cabin and closed the hatch behind him.
“Y’all doin’ all right?” I said.
“What the fuck does it look like?” Leslie said.
“You know how to say it, Leslie,” I replied. “How about you, Julian?”
“I think Leslie put it well,” he replied. The purple and yellow bruises and lesions and burns patterned on his face by Delmer Pickins were still there, but he actually managed to laugh. I take back my comment about the use of words such as “angelic.” I think there are people who have auras that could light the darkest dungeon on earth.
“No one saw y’all kidnapped?” I said. “You didn’t get a message out?”
“You think we’d be here now?” Leslie said.
“Bingo!” Carroll said. He was squatted down next to the ship’s officer. He held up a .25-caliber semi-auto, then eased back the slide to confirm that a round was in the chamber. He felt in the officer’s other coat pocket and found two spare magazines, both loaded.
“How many people are on board?” Clete said.
“We were blindfolded,” Leslie said.
“Why does Shondell want y’all?” he said.
“Tell him,” Julian said.
“He believes I’m growing in power,” she said. “He thinks I’m working in concert with Father Julian to ruin his name.”
“How are you going to acquire more power?” I said.
“I’ve already explained that, but you refused to hear,” she said.
“Don’t start that stuff again,” Clete said. “We keep it simple. We take it to them with tongs. Right, Dave?”
But Clete was fooling himself. He knew we had little control of our fate. And he did not want to accept that we were dealing with preternatural forces.
“There’s something we haven’t told y’all,” I said. “About Shondell’s collectibles.”
“What collectibles?” Julian said.
“Instruments of torture,” I said. “He was about to put us through the grinder. Except someone tore his machinery apart—someone who could twist iron wheels like licorice.”
Leslie looked into Clete’s face. “Do you remember me, Mr. Purcel?”
“What, from the Quarter?” he said.
“During your torment in the Keys. I saved you.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “No thanks, no help wanted, no more green monsters in my life or archangels flying around.”
Leslie sat down by her daughter and stroked her hair. “If you can be kind to Gideon, you will change American history.”