“Then his life is making a difference,” the boy observed.
“Yeah, it is.” Maddie stood up without warning and ground out her cigarette on the steps. She walked silently to the schoolhouse door and opened it. Standing in the entry, she stared down at Zach who remained motionless. Opening the door wider, she said, “Well, don’t just sit there. Are you coming inside or not?”
Chapter 19—Final Dissent
Chopper Bowdeen locked his table tray in place and leaned back in his seat. Although his eyes were shut, he remained alert to the conversations going on around him in the plane. He savored the inconsequential small talk of the stewardess and passengers because it made a nice change from what he’d just left behind. Six months holed up in one freaky compound or another all across Europe and South America training Abraham Metcalf’s Nephilim Ninjas. No matter what country he visited, the compounds always looked the same. Cold, sterile places where everybody spoke in whispers if they spoke at all. He was so hard up for companionship during his time overseas that he’d begun cultivating a friendship with Metcalf’s son Joshua. The spymaster always showed up after Chopper finished a round of weapons training. It was his job to indoctrinate candidates earmarked for the intelligence arm of Metcalf’s operation. Chopper had secretly started calling them God’s Gestapo.
The captain came on the intercom to inform them the plane was making its final descent into O’Hare Airport. Chopper felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach that matched the plane’s loss of altitude. He’d soon be having a face-to-face with Metcalf. His dread had nothing to do with his job performance. He’d given the old man no cause to be displeased with his work. The marksmen could generally hit what they were shooting at. Surveillance cams were set up at all the compounds with a competent staff to man them, and Joshua had been given lists of names for espionage work. It was Chopper’s future employment, not his past accomplishments, that fueled his anxiety.
The mercenary realized he was indulging in wishful thinking if he imagined that Metcalf would stop short of having the entire Nephilim brotherhood trained. Even though the Americas and Europe were wrapped up, there were satellite compounds on other continents unaccounted for. The cult’s recruiters had infiltrated every corner of the globe. Bowdeen wondered if he’d have the nerve to say “Hell no” if the diviner had a mind to send him to those outposts. He couldn’t afford to tick Metcalf off and find himself on the receiving end of a bullet from one of his own trainees. He hoped it wouldn’t come to a confrontation, but his queasy gut told him not to rely on hope.
Chopper couldn’t shake the conviction that Metcalf was planning something more sinister than simply beefing up the Nephilim’s defenses. Of course, the mercenary’s theory amounted to nothing more than paranoid speculation since he didn’t have any proof. Joshua hadn’t been very useful in supplying any facts that might allay Chopper’s suspicions either. On the plus side, the spymaster seemed to be in as big a sweat as Chopper himself to find out if the old man had a secret agenda. Maybe if they joined forces, they could suss out what was really going on behind the scenes. If it looked too dicey, Chopper was prepared to bail. Money had lost its charm as an incentive for him to stay on. The problem was that he was still too much in the dark to know if the time had arrived to cut and run.
The mercenary thought back to his last conversation with his old army buddy Leroy Hunt. Aside from Joshua, Leroy was his only other potential source of information. When he’d tried to pry some intel out of the cowboy before, it had gone badly. Chopper now realized his mistake. He’d been too direct when he should have taken a more subtle approach. Hunt could be slick as a greased weasel when his guard was up, so Bowdeen needed to lower his old buddy’s resistance. Luckily, Leroy had a weakness for the bottle. After the whiskey started to flow, the cowboy tended to run off at the mouth. It was possible he’d let some tidbit of information slip. Maybe he’d heard or seen something that might fill in a few pieces of the puzzle.
Bowdeen found it ironic that for somebody doing intelligence work, there was precious little information circulating in his direction. One thing he did know for sure. After training was completed at the rest of the compounds, Metcalf would be in a position to mobilize his Nephilim Ninjas and aim them at the target of his choosing. Chopper had no intention of becoming a casualty of friendly fire.
Chapter 20—Burning Questions
Ever since Cassie had found out that her team was flying to Kochi to meet a trove keeper, she’d been eagerly anticipating a glimpse of an Indian cache of artifacts. Her imagination ran wild conjuring a pastiche of images from Indiana Jones movies. She expected to see an eight-armed statue of the goddess Kali with a gigantic ruby in her forehead. The statue would be hidden, of course, in an ancient crypt accessible only through secret tunnels which were guarded by thuggee assassins. When their plane touched down on the very modern tarmac of the very modern Cochin International Airport, Cassie got her first inkling that they were light years away from the Temple of Doom. For starters, there was the city itself. Some called it Kochi; others called it Cochin. Either way, it didn’t look ancient. It didn’t even look particularly Indian. Set right on the Arabian Sea, with a tropical climate, a marina, and miles of high rises, it looked and felt like Fort Lauderdale.
