The Impaler

asap. I’m worried and need 2 talk. Cindy

The General smiled.

The FBI had found Andrew J. Schaap’s TrailBlazer and the little improvised explosive device that the General had rigged for them—courtesy of the101st Airborne and almost ten months in Tal Afar learning from Iraqi insurgents. Even if the bomb hadn’t gone off, its discovery would have made the news anyway. But how fitting, he thought, that Ereshki-gal should be the one to notify him. After all, hadn’t the Prince told him that Ereshkigal was part of the equation now?

Ereshkigal will help us, his mother had said, too—but the General could not preoccupy himself with that part of the equation now. He mustn’t let on to the Prince that his mother was still the center of it all, mustn’t even think it. He had to keep up appearances; had to put all his energy into serving the Prince. The answer as to how he would save his mother would come to him eventually—just as the real reason for the IEDs had come to him eventually, too.

The General had actually built the IEDs the previous fall: a pair of small but powerful hydrogen peroxide– based bombs similar to the ones used in the London terror attacks of 2005. The General wasn’t sure why the Prince had originally wanted him to build the bombs after learning of the terror attacks, and had since stored them in the old horse barn. Back then, the General still had to decipher the Prince’s messages without the doorway and the lion’s head—from the newspaper and Internet articles and his research in the Harriot library. And until this business with Markham and the FBI, the General had planned on detonating the bombs with his home security system—after the Prince had returned, of course; a little surprise for the authorities once he had no more need of the farmhouse.

But then Andrew J. Schaap entered into the equation, and the General understood almost immediately why the Prince had him prepare the IEDs so far in advance. The Prince most certainly must have foreseen something like this occurring. Yes, the General thought, the Prince never ceased to amaze and terrify him with his power. And more than ever now, the General understood that he must never underestimate or second-guess the Prince again.

It hadn’t taken the General long to rewire the homemade detonators to the TrailBlazer’s battery and then rig them to be triggered by the SUV’s electric locking mechanism. There had been no need to hide the bombs, either, and the General just left them in a pair of black duffel bags on the floor behind the front seats. The TrailBlazer’s black interior and tinted windows would camouflage them nicely. Pretty amateurish by today’s standards, he thought—a tape-and-bubblegum hack job at which most Iraqi insurgents would probably thumb their noses.

But now all that didn’t matter; and, now that the General had Sam Markham, the little warning he’d given himself was moot. He didn’t have to worry about the authorities surprising him and spoiling his plans just yet. The explosion, the disappearances of Schaap and Markham and Cox should keep the FBI busy long enough for the General to finish his business at the farmhouse. After that, the Prince would tell him where to go and what to do next to complete the nine.

The General returned his cell phone to his back pocket and made his way toward the house. He would call Ereshki-gal later—after he had consulted with the Prince.

And, of course, after he had finished with Sam Markham.

Chapter 82

What are you going to do if he isn’t home? asked the voice in her head. Are you just going to sit in his driveway and wait for him like the desperate stalker you are?

“Shut up,” Cindy said. But another voice—a voice that sounded a lot like Amy Pratt’s—replied, Maybe I will.

The real question, said the first voice, is what are you going to do if your handsome soldier is home?

Cindy had no answer.

OCD stalker, chimed both voices in unison, and Cindy pumped up the volume on the radio. It was a Led Zeppelin song. Cindy couldn’t remember its name. All their titles have nothing to do with the lyrics, she thought, and began racking her brain for the answer. She became irritated when she couldn’t find it, but was nonetheless thankful that the voices in her head were finally silent.

Cindy took the back roads and turned onto Route 264 just outside town. She already knew the way to Edmund Lambert’s house—had unconsciously memorized the directions from all the time she spent staring down at his property on Google Earth. If she hurried, she figured she could make it in about half an hour.

But what would she do once she got there? And what was it about this Edmund Lambert that made her act so crazy; made her drive out, uninvited, to his house in the middle of nowhere so late at night?

Again, Cindy had no answer. Only a scene from an imaginary movie: a modern-day Gone with the Wind in which she saw herself rushing down a flight of stairs into Edmund Lambert’s arms— spinning kisses and rustling petticoats, then mad, passionate lovemaking on an Oriental rug as the music swelled around them.

The Led Zeppelin song fit perfectly.

Led Zeppelin? asked Amy Pratt in her head. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler doing it to Led Zeppelin?

Impulsively, Cindy changed the station—old school hip-hop, Naughty By Nature’s “OPP.”

Cindy let out a laugh and pumped the volume louder. It had to be fate, she thought—Bradley Cox, the explosion, Scarlett O’Hara all at once a distant memory of a role she once played back in Greenville.

“You down with OCD?” Cindy sang. “Yeah, you know me!”

Oh yeah, Cindy Smith was beyond obsessed.

Chapter 83

The General laid Markham on the kitchen table, pulled back his eyelids, and studied his pupils. Still unconscious—Will be for a while, he thought—but best to bind his hands and feet and leave him in the workroom while he attended to Cox.

True, the young man hadn’t been in the chair as long as the other soldiers, but the General hoped he would understand and be ready to accept his mission nonetheless. If not, the General would have to make him understand. Unlike the others, there wasn’t enough time now to indulge his limited intellect.

The General smiled as the song transitioned beneath his feet, and set his handgun on the kitchen counter next to the pair of Glocks he’d taken from the FBI agents. Then he tied Markham’s hands and feet together with the length of clothesline he’d set on the table before leaving.

Be a good boy and carry that rope for me, okay?

C’est mieux d’oublier….

Everything was going according to the Prince’s new plan; and when Markham was secure, the General washed his hands and splashed his face with cold water. He could feel the wound on his chest had split open again; could see that it had bled through the gauze and was beginning to spot his light-blue button-down shirt. There would be more blood, yes, but still he would have to change into his priestly robes. The ceremony of things demanded it.

The General toweled off his face and crossed to the cellar door—a heavy, steel door with recessed hinges and two dead bolts that he had installed himself. He unlocked them, the music instantly louder as he opened the door—but something was off; something about the light on the stairs was—

And then the naked man was coming for him.

Bradley Cox, smeared with sweat and blood, rushed up the cellar stairs shrieking like a cat—his left hand