His thoughts drifted back to Patient 3944 and in an unconscious movement, he slipped a hand into his pocket, rubbing his fingers along the rough, green cover of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. He pulled it out and looked down at it with renewed focus. This strange book had been directly connected to his uncle and somehow as well to the code on the wall of the dead man from St. Jeremiah’s.
Now he just needed to crack the damn thing.
The latest sleazy hotel he chose as a hideout was aptly named The Knotty Beaver. The manager sat in a fog of smoke behind the desk and barely looked up when Ethan came in. The transaction for a room was quick, and shortly he was given a room key which boasted a placard in the shape of a beaver’s tail. Ethan cringed at the sight of the man’s crusty fingernails.
He rode the elevator to the fourth floor. The Cozy Clam was like the Ritz compared to this place. When he let himself into Room 408, his throat tightened at the smell of stale cigarette smoke and musty fabric and he knew a headache would be forthcoming. Ethan deposited his items on the grime encrusted table, draped his coat across the chair, and walked to the window. Maybe some fresh air would help. But the window was stuck. Of course it was. He went back to the table and sifted through the contents, assuring himself that nothing had been lost or misplaced.
The strange looking watch caught his eye again and he picked it up for further examination. He took more time with it now, carefully studying the switches and dials and the various lighting sequences they initiated with each press. As before, the word ‘LOCKED’ appeared on the front display without moving and the sharp hooks on the four corners remained motionless. Still, he maintained caution around the hazardous looking barbs, half expecting them to spring around and latch onto his flesh.
He fiddled with the knobs some more and the blue light over the twelve position illuminated. It was strange that the light didn’t shine out on the entire clock face, and Ethan still couldn’t understand the purpose of the feature. From what he could see there also didn’t appear to be a way to open the watch from the bottom to change a battery. More random ideas emerged, but he dismissed them for lack of a clear answer. He lacked a lot of answers lately.
Ethan sighed and set the timepiece aside, allowing the glow to keep radiating from the tiny bulb just to see what would happen, if anything. Maybe it had to stay lit for a certain length of time. Like a self-charging function. It sounded ridiculous, but he was willing to try anything at this point.
His eyes found The Rubáiyát and he picked it up, staring thoughtfully at the book as his mind returned to Patient 3944’s suicide and the strange coded wall message.
Ethan pulled his notebook out of his coat. The man’s ranting had been near incoherent, but whatever damage had been done to his brain in the past hadn’t destroyed everything. What had he said again? “It’s all letters and numbers, quatrains and words. There is a message … a message that needs to be delivered. It’s for me and me alone to know. The code is the key, and the key is the code.”
He shook his head at the jumble of words that had spilled from the crazy man and opened the notebook to look at what he’d copied down from the patient’s wall. He focused on the first string of the cipher:
C-10 F-16 B-5 E-3 D-D-5
“Quatrains and words,” Ethan muttered to himself. Perhaps this coding was different from the one associated with the “Tamám Shud” case. Maybe an alphanumeric one?
“Quatrains,” he said again. Each grouping was broken up with either one letter and a number or two letters and a number. He contemplated the options. ‘C’ would be three in the first grouping and then ‘F’ would be six, and so on. So the ‘D-D’ could be forty-four instead of just four-four.
Ethan ripped an unused page from his notebook and busied himself with parsing the number and letter combinations, mumbling his thoughts aloud in the silent room.
So immersed was he in cracking the code, that he didn’t notice when the small light on the watch face changed to red and began to blink.
24
Knight Glider
Under the cover of darkness and a full moon, far above the New York cityscape, rudders from a nondescript helicopter held the flying beast aloft above murky clouds. Inside the chopper, a gloved hand grasped the lever of the cargo door and slid it back in preparation for the LALO — low altitude low opening — jump.
Moments later, six bodies leapt from the safety of the chopper and fell one by one toward the twinkling lights of a tireless city. Chutes deployed in near silence as the squad descended upon their target. Less than six seconds from the initial release of the parachutes, tactical boots were making contact with a pebbled roof.
Jackman touched down hard, rooftop pebbles crunching under his weight, and simultaneously pulled on the PCU-4P quick release rings. He was already tucking into a roll as the parachute disengaged from his back, the wind carrying it away in billowing folds. By the time the last of Jackman’s troopers had landed at the intended mark, he was in position for the final huddle.
Each of the commandos had full face coverings, including Jackman. The silver metal skull of his tactical helmet shone in the moonlight. The emblazoned image was his trademark, contributing to his call sign: “Reaper”. When his men were in a more talkative mood, they referred to him as “Jack the Reaper”. But now, they were silent as they strode to their lieutenant and hunched down in a circle formation.
Jackman put a hand to his ear, pressed the transmit button, and checked his watch. “COM check,” he whispered.
It was always necessary to assure no one’s equipment was damaged during a hard breach at an insertion point. Jackman listened with satisfaction as five ‘affirmatives’ came into his COM device.
“Sync up at zero two ten, in five, four, three, two, one.”
That routine task completed, they stood with purpose, ready for their next directive.
Jackman glanced down, his skull mask bathed in the luminescent blue that emanated from the apparatus strapped to his forearm. The glare of the light on his face gear made it look even more menacing. “This is simple snatch and grab,” he said. “Let’s make it quick and quiet. Our target is priority one.”
“Zodiac and Hex, you take the east fire escape, split up and check levels five and four. Priest and Tinman, go to the first floor and climb up — make sure he doesn’t double back on us.” Jackman jerked his head in the direction of the last team member, “Worm, you’re with me.”
A hiss came through Jackman’s earpiece. “Reaper, this is Overlord. We’re pulling out. Extraction zone is in the alley behind the lot; ETA ten minutes.”
“Alright, it’s ten minutes to extract.” Jackman repeated the message he’d just been given. “You know your jobs, move out. No mistakes.”
In seconds, each two-man team arrived at their designated locations. Jackman stood by the junction box as Worm opened the electrical panel. “Take his eyes, Worm.”
The commando positioned himself at the ready to flip the breaker.
Jackman transmitted over the COM, “We’re dark in three, two, one.”
He looked at Worm and they nodded in unison as the countdown concluded. Jackman twisted a knob on his helmet, and the lenses over his eyes changed, morphing everything into a hazy emerald glow.