The Terminals Read online

  “She gets her mission! She’s been here twenty-four hours. Three months I’ve been here. Three months!”

  Francis grabbed at the Indian’s naked wrist, balancing a pizza slice on the tips of his other hand’s fingers.

  “At ease, Corporal,” I said, hitching my pants higher. “You’ll be allowed to scream at me after you have earned a few more stripes.”

  He sputtered, but sat down.

  “Doctor Deeth doesn’t consider Sundarshan terminal yet,” Morph whispered to me, “figures he has a little over six months to live. Not like us.” She winked before placing her eye to the cup of a retina scanner. With a click, the door swung inward, and I entered Purgatory.

  The door opened on a brightly lit hall, and I was surprised when Morph waved me forward with a finger at her lips. From behind the first doorway on the right hand side, a man asked a steady series of questions. The second threshold on the right stood dark, but I sensed movement within. Morph kept an eye on it as she shuffled forward, pausing at the first door.

  Inside a room painted half-black and half-white, lay a man on a bed. A barrel-chested black man wearing a doctor’s coat blocked my full view of the patient. Also with his back to me, another younger man slouched in a chair and studied a crystal doorknob.

  “Is that Attila?” I asked, deducing that the third man in the room must be the Terminals’ psychic medium.

  “Sure is,” Morph said in a hush. “Not one of us, though. He’s not sick. Weird guy. Whenever you ask him anything he just stares at you, sips from his black coffee mug, and sneers.”

  I shrugged. I supposed he could do as he pleased. Without him, the unit was nothing more than a bunch of dying soldiers.

  “Why the Yin-Yang décor?” I asked.

  “Not Yin and Yang.” Morph shook her head. “It’s a Rom tradition that white is reserved for mourning. As the terminal passes away,” she indicated the man on the bed, and I gulped, “Attila moves from the black side of the room to the white.”

  “And the other man asking all the questions is Deeth?” He wasn’t what I’d expected. Maybe a small bald man with beady eyes rubbing his hands together, or a skeletal figure, but not an NFL lineman.

  “Doctor Deeth,” she replied. “He’s administering a lie detector test.”

  I looked around for our commander. “What’s the general like to work with?”

  She glanced to the next room and tilted her head further down the hall. I followed.

  Along the left hand side were six doors spaced equidistant apart. All were closed, and Morph fumbled for a key as she skipped past the shadowed doorway and stopped at the last threshold at the end of the hall.

  By the time I reached her, unable to keep pace with even her slow progress, she presented to me a narrow room furnished with a hospital bed, table, dresser and closet. My boxes were stacked in a corner.

  “It’s not much,” Morph apologized. “I should know, after a year here myself.”

  “A year?”

  “Yeah, I’m a veteran in terminal terms. They’ve held on to me as long as they can,” Morph said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m Muslim. A real prize. Not many veterans are Muslim, and they need a lot of us of late.”

  I wondered whether I’d ever acted on intel gleaned from a terminal.

  While I inspected my personal effects, Morph prattled on. She sat on my bunk and was either desperate for someone to talk to or avoiding my question about the general, which I hadn’t forgotten. The tape I’d used on my boxes remained intact, and I piled them inside the slender closet, knowing by weight that nothing was missing. I saved the lightest box, opening it and pulling out a picture of my old German Shepherd, which I set upon the dresser. Once satisfied that all was right in my new eight-by-ten, windowless world, I turned my attention back to the strange little yellow woman.

  “How long has the general commanded?” I asked.

  Morph stopped mid-soliloquy about Attila’s espresso fetish. “The man refuses to die,” she replied. “Fifteen years, he’s had the same heart disease and if that isn’t bad enough, he’s pickled half the time.” She leaned in and added in a conspiratorial whisper. “I think he gets off on it. Anytime he speaks about a terminal case—anytime someone is going to die—one corner of his mouth lifts and his eyes clear …”

  The general’s eyes shone now as he stared at Morph from the doorway. He gave no indication of how much he had heard. Morph swallowed.

  “General.” I broke the silence for her.

  He nodded curtly. “Follow me, Colonel. I have your first case.”

  Chapter 4

  “Eleven children missing, killer knows where, killer’s dead,” the general told me as he handed over a thin manila folder. “Go get him, Colonel.”

  Eleven children to save. And I’d killed eleven men.

  Something in General F. Aaron’s expression suggested a leer. I tensed all of the muscles in my arms but failed to suppress a shudder. We had followed the general through the shadowy second door in the hall, and now stood in a room that doubled both as his office and an observation deck for the operating theater, which lay beyond one-way glass. Standing before his desk, it still took a minute to process the surreal order.

  “So if I agree to be a handler, I’d need to convince someone to die early and track Hillar the Killer, and this terminal can’t even tell their loved ones.” My brow knitted.

  “Beats putting a gun to your head, doesn’t it?” he said.

  I brushed a stray lock of auburn hair from my face—with the bandages removed from my cheeks, I felt self-conscious. Anyway, I hadn’t put the gun against my head; it had been in my mouth—blowing out the back of your skull was always fatal. Always. When it came to intent, I had nothing to prove.

  “Slow down, there’s a lot I don’t understand. What about the cops? Say I do find the info they need, aren’t they going to ask where it came from?”

  Each pore of the general’s nose held a column of oily dirt, and his close-cropped gray hair showered dandruff when he scratched at it. I smelled death on him like the memory of my grandfather’s pipe smoke. A heavy, silver crucifix hung on a chain at the general’s breast, and his hand kept wandering up to thumb it.

  It wasn’t only the general that made me uncomfortable. Everything was happening too fast. On the top floor of New York’s Veterans Hospital, the general’s office stank like someone had left a used colostomy bag on a radiator to cook. Pill bottles littered the desk. A bottle of scotch poked out from behind folders on a filing cabinet. An old television stared blandly on. The atmosphere was one of indifference, like no one expected to have to clean up after the party. And it all made perfect sense. Why should a group of people waiting to die give two shakes about a dirty office? But fifteen years of crap was fourteen-and-a-half too many in my opinion, and as far from a military run unit as I can remember.

  “You’re not going to tell the police anything, Christine,” Morph said from where she leaned against the doorframe. “And we normally work with the CIA, Homeland, and FBI, not the police. Man, do they get pissed at us for withholding information. But the agencies are used to knowing nothing and saying everything—know what I mean?”

  I turned to Morph. “I think that’s know everything, say nothing.”

  “Sure.”

  “We stay out of the limelight, Colonel,” the general added. “But one person to watch for is Leica Takers; she’s a whack-job freelance journalist who is on to us.”

  “Why isn’t the Terminals run by the CIA or FBI?” I still struggled with the chain of command. “I mean, wouldn’t they like being able to commune with the dead?” I waved through the office window at the marshalling area for the terminal agents on mission.

  “Damn straight,” the general said. “But the CIA doesn’t have a ready supply of terminals, whereas our veterans are of an a
ge, and no soldier likes to take final orders from the CIA or the FBI.”

  “Besides,” Morph added. “The unit was conceived at the time of the biggest fuckup in their joint histories. The president wasn’t about to reward them for it.” The tone of her skin was set off by her black head covering. In the sordid office, she floated untouched by the flatulent atmosphere. Dark, glassy eyes danced left and right and she wrung her hands, flashing the needle tracks as she did.

  “Looking a little doped up there, Morph,” I said.

  “Can you blame me, MoH? Liver disease sucks.” Although only about forty, her teeth were stained and rotting.

  “Mo?” I asked.

  “M. O. H. Medal of Honor.” She knuckled my shoulder, her touch light despite the effort she threw against it. “Not often we get a terminal who can walk and talk, let alone with that kind of hardware. Doesn’t that mean the general has to salute you?”

  “I’ll salute her, right after I see Deeth’s needle in her vein,” the general replied, and then swore.

  Beyond the one-way mirror, which separated the general’s office and the operating theater, movement drew my attention.

  In Purgatory’s heart, a wiry man with grayish skin and a sparse scalp lay on a bed. He was looking at Doctor Deeth, the immense black man who, having completed the administration of the lie detector test, now took up a large syringe. If the man on the bed had appeared agitated before, he now began to back up against the wall, nearly standing on the bed and peering down the beak of his nose with sharp, black eyes. On a silver chain hung about his neck swung a twin to Attila’s crystal doorknob.

  The psychic’s lip curled and he scratched his mop of brown hair. Aside from the gold hoop earrings in each ear, nothing identified his background or his psychic prowess. In his brown linen pants, T-shirt and leather vest, with a little soul patch beneath a feminine lip, Attila looked like a dirty, wannabe urban prophet. But despite desperately needing a shave and a bath, I had to give him some credit. Anyone can talk to the dead, but according to the general, Attila could actually hear them respond.

  “He’s a glorified fortune teller. Don’t let him forget it,” the general ordered. “Even I can tell a terminal their fortune.” He smiled with a camaraderie I didn’t share. “I see … I see … death. Death very soon.” The comment was trailed by laughter that broke into fits of coughing.

  The general moved to the intercom as Deeth swore at the leather straps from which the man had freed himself.

  Unlike the general, who seemed to feed off of death like a zombie, I didn’t like watching people die. To distract myself, I inspected the manila file he’d handed me. Paper-clipped to it was a photo of Hillar McCallum, a.k.a. Hillar the Killer, case number 11024. His religious affiliation: Gnostic (Borborite).

  “I’d need a … what?” I looked to Morph. “We have a Gnostic terminal on staff?”

  Morph’s red-painted lips spread wide.

  “Nope—”

  “Life sucks,” the general said, but didn’t take his eyes off the agent in the next room.

  “Then you die.” Morph finished for him.

  I snorted. “You always this giddy?”

  Morph suddenly glowed, and the jaundice from her disease augmented the effect. “I’ve got my case, Christine—my terminal case—I’m going in!”

  So that was why they needed to bring me in so soon. I tried to hide my disappointment. I had wondered if we’d become friends. But I knew she wanted this—Christ on a bike, I wanted this!—and I tried to be happy for her.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Suicide bomber in Jakarta, intelligence says it was a distraction, and we need to know what for.”

  “All those virgins, right?” I said lightly.

  “That’s just an urban myth.” Morph laughed. “My paradise is gardens fed by streams. I’ll have a Euth for you soon.” She shuffled out of the office, the slow movements reminding me just how sick Morph was.

  “A youth?” I called after Morph.

  “That’s E. U. T. H. As in euthanasia,” she answered over her shoulder. “If you’re on the team, you’re a terminal, if you’re a civilian—you’re a Euth.”

  “I haven’t said that I’ll do this,” I told the general.

  “Cases come in all the time,” he said. “Do the job and you’ll have your chance.”

  “Whether my kidneys heal, or not?” I asked.

  “Listen, I’d rather you go terminal than eat a bullet.”

  Photos of the crime scenes filled the folder and I struggled with the thought of fresh faced innocents having Hillar the Killer’s modus operandi applied to them.

  The general grumbled at his reflection in the glass, his thumb on the red intercom button, but not pressing it.

  “After the needle you will … begin your mission. There won’t be any pain.” In Purgatory, Doctor Deeth tried to calm the agent, whose eyes rolled like a camel’s that had just set off an IED. The general turned up the volume on the two-way and leaned in to the receiver.

  “Speak into the crystal, mind on the crystal, it will be your link to me,” Attila explained.

  “Is he another Euth?” I asked the general, pointing at the man who continued to shake his head at Deeth. The man didn’t look military.

  “Cult in Texas believes in Egyptian myth. They’ve made a suicide pact. Professor Siam here has a doctorate in Egyptology.” The general reviewed the case. “The cult leader committed suicide early to show his followers he meant business—they’re supposed to wait for a sign and then follow him. We need to know what the sign is, or some two thousand people are going to drink poison.”

  “What’s Siam got?”

  “Lung cancer—six months, maybe a year.”

  “Wow.” Evidently, despite the colors of the room, the decisions were anything but black and white. “How’d anyone convince him to—?”

  Blotches on the general’s face alternately went white and red.

  “I convinced him, Colonel …” he turned away and looked past his translucent reflection at Siam. “Everybody has a reason why they don’t want to die yet … find it, resolve it, and they’ll accept the honor of the task. That’s the handler’s job.”

  “And what was his price?” I asked, trying to dull the sarcasm in my tone.

  “Siam has six kids by three marriages and his life insurance was invalid—a missed payment or two. We fixed that—six million—and here he is.”

  Six million. A lot, considering I was willing to die for free.

  “No—” Siam shouted. “I’ve decided I don’t want to do it. Six months—that’s a lifetime if you think about it,” Siam philosophized in a pleading voice to the psychic, who looked blandly on without replying.

  “You’ll be saving thousands,” Deeth said.

  “Too late for this shit,” the general said and depressed the intercom button. “If you don’t, no insurance,” the general snapped, and Siam stared at the window. Despite his side being mirrored, his eyes met mine and I flinched.

  “What happens to the education of your children?” the general demanded. “Who’s going to pay the mortgages? The medical bills. You’re a burden on them now, Siam. Better off dead.”

  Siam slid back down on to the bed like a boxer on to the mat. After a moment, looking less like a fighter ready to enter the ring than a defeated man, he accepted the referee’s ten count. Deeth strapped the leather bonds over Siam’s wrists and ankles.

  As Morph entered Purgatory, she managed to look cheerful despite the drag of her feet. She held two phones; the first she offered to Siam.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the general.

  “Getting confirmation from his lawyer regarding the insurance.” The general didn’t look at me.

  The phone slipped from the man’s hand and Morph collected it, swinging around to give the thumbs up to the
mirror and then came into the office.

  She waved the other iPhone before me. “I found your Euth. He’s not actually Gnostic, but he’s an expert on the subject who has even consulted on Hillar the Killer’s case—how cool is that?”

  “That was quick.” My surprise was immediately followed by a flush of dread. The prospect of convincing someone to die wasn’t one I looked forward to. I had thought they’d all be military. Orders were easily followed if one didn’t question them. In the field, death was something you lived with—

  I caught that thought—you lived with it to a point. I’d had men die under enemy fire, and that I could handle, but four weeks ago I might as well have shot each of the men who died in the head myself. Mistakes like that required recompense.

  “Save the kids,” Morph said, her eyes shining.

  I considered the man through the glass.

  “Please. I can’t do this,” she added.

  “One case,” I whispered. “Just this one.”

  Morph patted my back and I stiffened.

  “Just a prick,” Deeth said to Siam. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  Even Morph sobered and stared through the glass. The Rom was standing rigid as a statue. All eyes were on the man about to die.

  “I miss my wife and children.” Tears rolled down Siam’s cheeks. I wanted to look away, but could not. I was spellbound as the man in the adjoining room was murdered in front of us all.

  “Just a—”

  The general hammered the intercom with his palm. “Just put him down.”

  Siam’s back arched, and his wrists pulled at the restraints. After the injection, he relaxed, and his eyes closed. His bowels would be loosening. The heart rate monitor flat-lined, and Attila nudged the alarm off, opening his palm to stare at the doorknob he used to scry. Deeth shot another vial of fluid into Siam’s arm. Finally I managed to look away, only to see the general staring at Siam with ferocious intensity. Smiling at the dying man.

  Chapter 5