Infernal_ A Repairman Jack Novel Part 17

"For double sure." Here was a chance to impress Jack. "Frankie and me made us a few friends in the PD over the years." He made a motion of slipping his right hand into his waistband. "You know what I'm saying. That's how I found out about the cyanide bullets. They're keeping me posted. Seeing how much me and Frankie paid them over the years, they d.a.m.n well f.u.c.king better. Time those meat eaters earned it by doing something more than looking the other way."

A smile twisted Jack's lips. Just a little. Just for a second.

"You sound like a good guy to know. They telling you anything else?"

"They hear the Homeland Security people are pretty sure the shooters had inside help."

"Pretty sure?" sure?"

"Well, they don't know who yet, but they say someone at the airport had to be helping the f.u.c.ks. First off, they came and went through an 'Employees Only' door. Second, they got away so clean, they had to have inside help."

Jack shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Look at me. I got out, and no one was helping me."

"Yeah, that's right. You were there. But why didn't you just-?"

"Long story. But back to our problem: Who, what, and where is Wrath of Allah?"

Joey shrugged. "Gotta be somewhere. I mean, we know know they exist." they exist."

"But they may not be calling themselves Wrath of Allah. In real life they could be calling themselves Seventy-five Virgins Here We Come, but they use a different name when they call the media."

Joey closed his eyes and squeezed the neck of his Rock until he thought it would break.

"The slick f.u.c.ks."

He relaxed his grip, opened his eyes, and stared at Jack.

"How do you stay so cool, man?"

He watched Jack's jaw muscles work.

"Cool? Who's cool? I'm so burned I want to throw something. Or break something. If the owner wasn't a friend I might be going for a twofer and toss this table through a window."

"You hide it well, man."

"Years of practice."

Joey leaned back. "So... what we do we find these faccio di stronzones faccio di stronzones?"

"We'll cross that bridge-"

"Hey, I know it's a long shot, but what say we get lucky? What we gonna do? Call nine-one-one and tell them where they're hiding? As if. Don't know about you, but I don't wanna see them sit in jail for a couple years waiting to go to court, then get traded for some hostage somewhere. Or get sprung on some technicality. Blood demands blood, Jack. Know what I'm saying?"

This scary look pa.s.sed across Jack's face, then it was gone.

"Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. I can hear my father's blood screaming."

"Okay. We find them, we waste them. Deal?"

Jack hesitated, then nodded.

They sat and sipped in silence for a moment or two, then Jack cleared his throat.

"How're you doing without Frankie?"

Joey didn't answer right away. Couldn't. How to explain? He hadn't lost a brother, he'd lost a piece of himself. He'd be less torn up if it had been the old man.

When he finally spoke, he had trouble getting the words out. His voice sounded thick.

"It's tough, Jack. Real tough. I miss him. We was always together. Maybe that's why we fought so much. Like a couple gavones gavones, y'know? But the fighting never meant nothin'. When it was over it was over and we'd go grab a beer. I loved the guy, Jack, and now... I'm tellin' you, Jack, I'm gonna waste those f.u.c.ks. I swear on Frankie's grave, I get the chance, they're dead meat. I..."

Joey felt his eyes filling and heard a soft sob. When he realized it came from him and that he was going to start bawling like a baby, he got up and turned away.

He managed, "Gotta go, man. Talk to you later."

And then he was heading for the door, keeping his head down so no one would see him crying.

7.

Gia snuggled up against Jack as they watched the six o'clock news on the TV in the Sutton Square sitting room. He lived for moments like this.

"Have you given any more thought to helping Tom?"

"A little."

"And?"

"I don't know."

She squeezed his arm. "Jack, if he goes to jail, how will you feel, knowing you could have helped him and didn't?"

The old saying, Don't do the crime if you can't do the time Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, came back to him, but he bit it back.

"I don't know."

She gave him a concerned look. "This isn't like you. You're usually so... so decisive."

He sighed. "To tell the truth, I don't feel like me. This thing has me turned inside out. Dad... I mean, somewhere in the back of my head was the idea that he'd always be there. Stupid, I know, especially after what happened to my mother, but-"

"Not so stupid. It's the same with my folks. If your parents are in decent health, I think we all feel that way."

"Well, anyway, he's gone." Jack snapped his fingers. "Like that. My mother died in my arms. Kate died minutes after I let the EMTs take her from me. And my father's body was still warm when I found him. Too much deja vu. It's got me all twisted up."

"That's why you should go, Jack. It's not a long time, but it'll get you out of this city, away from the airport, the constant reminders. A little time at sea doing next to nothing might help you get a new perspective. Maybe you'll come back right-side in."

He knew she was right, as usual. But he wanted that time away with Gia, not Tom.

He wished he felt different about Tom. He wished he had the kind of relationship Joey had described with Frankie.

But Joey no longer had his brother. And Joey had said that blood cries out for blood.

Tom was blood... maybe Jack owed Tom the chance.

Joey had the ball now and he'd be running with it. If the gun guys decided to talk, they'd only want to talk to someone connected. That meant Joey.

And that meant Jack would be something of a fifth wheel for a while.

He didn't like that. He preferred to do things on his own. His business was the sole-proprietor type. He never worked with anyone, didn't know if he could. And Joey... he didn't know Joey all that well.

But what choice did he have?

Gia had said she'd be fine for the four or five days he'd be away, and he knew she was right.

And it would be at least four-five days before word filtered down from the outfit and Joey got anything going.

And Dad would have wanted him to help his brother.

Jack sighed. Maybe it was time to call Tom.

Cadiz, Spain, March 6, 1598

Brother Francisco Mendes, member of the Society of Jesus, wound through the bales of fabric, the barrels of food and water and grog, the milling crowd of workers and pa.s.sengers and animals until he found the Sombra Sombra.

He paused at the gangplank and looked her over. A black-hulled, three-masted nao nao with the typical elevated stem and forecastle. Francisco knew all about her: three-hundred and fifty tons with a seventy-five-foot keel and a twenty-five-foot beam. Very much like the galleon he had piloted with the first Armada, but much less heavily armed. with the typical elevated stem and forecastle. Francisco knew all about her: three-hundred and fifty tons with a seventy-five-foot keel and a twenty-five-foot beam. Very much like the galleon he had piloted with the first Armada, but much less heavily armed.

Saying a prayer that he'd be successful in his deception, he strode up the gangway.

As he stepped upon the deck he looked around for a familiar face. He spotted an older man in his forties-perhaps ten years older than he-with a stubbly beard and a mild limp moving toward him. Francisco was startled to recognize Eusebio Dominguez. He looked so different with a beard.

They'd met a week ago. Eusebio had been sent by the Vatican and was to be their man among the crew. Francisco knew nothing about him other than the fact that he had been a seaman in his younger days. As for his present circ.u.mstances, for all Francisco knew he could be a cardinal or a chimney sweep.

Francisco was glad he had not been a.s.signed the role of a sailor. He was too slight of build to pa.s.s for one. His neat black clothes, his shaven cheeks, and long black hair better suited him to the role of navigator.

As arranged, Eusebio gave no sign of recognition. Instead, he made a show of a smirk and a surly tone as he eyed Francisco's Valencian clothing.

"What do you want?"

"To see your captain."

"Do you? And who shall I say is calling?"

"Your navigator."

The smirk turned into a grin. "You are on the wrong ship, sefior. Sergio Vazquez is our navigator." He shrugged. "Of course he has been ill-"

"Senor Vazquez died in his sleep in Compano last night. I have been sent by the ship's owner to replace him."

Now the smirk disappeared. "Vazquez... dead?"

Nearby, two seamen paused in their labors and looked up, echoing Eusebio.

Francisco feigned losing patience. "The captain?"

"He is ash.o.r.e but he will be back soon. You can wait outside his cabin."

He followed Eusebio up the steps to the aftcastle.

"Here," Eusebio said, pointing to a spot in front of the door to the officers' quarters. Then he wagged his finger. "Not inside."

"Very well."

"As soon as he gets back I will tell him you are here."

Francisco nodded and placed his belongings on the deck: a cloth sack with his clothes and personal items, a mahogany box containing his astrolabe-which he would not need until they were out of sight of the coast-and his oilcloth-wrapped portolano.

He gazed out over the main deck, bustling in the dawn. Three masts, naked now, but soon to be rigged square and lateen. But what lay belowdecks interested him more: a secret nestled among the cargo bound for the New World.

It was that secret that had brought him here.

It had to do, in a way, with King Philip, old and sick and not long for this world. Perhaps it was the humiliation of three failed attempts to invade England, the most recent just last year when the third Armada was turned back by heavy seas. Philip ruled the most powerful nation in the world, yet his heavy taxation threatened Spanish hegemony; he would be leaving his successor an empire in crisis.

Perhaps Spain's day had pa.s.sed. The thought saddened Francisco. He had sailed in her navy as a younger man, and had piloted the Santa Clarita Santa Clarita in the first Armada. Could it have been only a decade ago? It seemed like a lifetime. in the first Armada. Could it have been only a decade ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

His small galleon, the Santa Clarita Santa Clarita, had escaped Drake's fireboats but had been driven north with the rest of the fleet. Francisco had guided the ship through the stormy Orkney isles north of Scotland and back to Lisbon. His ship was one of only sixty-seven out of the one hundred and thirty of the original fleet.

Despite his failings, Philip remained favored by the Vatican as a loyal member of the Catholic League in the wars against the Huguenots, and as a staunch defender of the faith against the rising Calvinist threat.

This was why the Church was maintaining the utmost discretion as it dealt with the theft of a valuable relic from its proscribed vault deep below the Vatican. The cardinals still did not know how the thief had eluded detection by the Swiss Guard and gained access to the vault, but there was no doubt about his ident.i.ty: Don Carlos of Navarre, King Philip's beloved nephew.

Six weeks ago his Holiness Pope Clement VIII had summoned Father Claude Aquaviva to the Holy See. There, behind the locked doors of the innermost sanctum of the Vatican, the Father General of the Society was charged with the retrieval and disposal of the purloined relic, with no harm to Don Carlos in the process, and no connection to the Vatican. In fact, if the object's loss appeared to be an act of G.o.d rather than man, so much the better.

Francisco found it astounding that an honor of this magnitude would be bestowed upon such a young order. A former soldier named Ignatius Loyola had founded the Society of Jesus fewer than six decades ago, but since its inception it had proved a magnet for some of the best minds in the civilized world.