25
Room Raider
The wall heater struggled to stay alive, thunking and heaving along in its duty to keep pumping warm air. The lodging at this latest motel boasted an even more uncomfortable bed than The Cozy Clam — if that was possible — and a semi-working bathroom. Ethan had yet to sleep in the beds of the rooms he’d rented over the last couple days, opting instead to doze in the chairs. The consequent neck and back aches were the cost to be paid for anonymity and no questions asked. Thank God it was dirt cheap, because his immediate cash flow was beginning to run dry.
After several hours of attempted code cracking, Ethan had barely made progress on the combinations that lay before him. The trashcan was filled with failed attempts at the decoding process. But he kept going, feeling the importance of the alpha-numeric sequence. There were always one or two letters accompanied by a number. The first letter or two were the starting point, which according to his gut instinct represented a numbered quatrain. The following number represented a number as well, but perhaps that number designated which word on the page. If that was the case it would be a simple enough code, but the problem for anyone else who held the code was that no ground could be covered if they didn’t know which book was its partner.
The last few days of pouring through countless unsolved mysteries worldwide that shared similarities to the Somerton Man case were beginning to reap dividends — albeit small ones. He still had yet to figure out what ‘TAMAM SHUD’ meant in correlation with the original coded lines. The only information he’d learned so far was that Tamám Shud, translated to ‘The End’. The end of what? And it was curious to him why someone would keep a torn page from an old book in a hidden trouser pocket.
But none of that mattered right now, because Ethan felt like he was close to cracking the latest code he’d found at St. Jeremiah’s. He paged once more through the aged copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, circling the indicated word and searching for the next.
A message was finally beginning to take shape. He jotted down the words: ‘Red’, ‘Hand’, ‘Is’, ‘Victorious’. The next letter was ‘M’, which would equal thirteen on the numerical scale. After another quick glance through The Rubáiyát, he was staring at the thirteenth quatrain. He checked Patient 3944’s code; the number ‘21’ followed the ‘M’. He scanned the page in search of the twenty-first word.
And then the room went dark.
Ethan sat frozen in the black and placid silence, blinded by the sudden loss of light. He waited for his vision to adjust, hoping that the meager light seeping through the edges of the drapes would be enough to guide him. Out of habit he searched for the bedside clock to check the time, only to remember a second later that the power outage meant the clock was useless. When he’d last seen the time, it had been closing in on 2 a.m. and the hourly renters had long since left for the night; which explained the significant lack of outraged patrons in the hallway.
Where had he put his gun? Still unable to see, Ethan felt along the surface of the table and eased out of the chair. He’d probably left the gun over by the bed. The power outage was no coincidence, of that he was sure. The events of the past few days — the attack at his uncle’s estate, the undercover saplings at his downtown apartment and the firefight that ensued there, Fredericks being shot down right in front of him, his uncle’s missing body — wouldn’t allow him to draw any other conclusion.
He couldn’t waste time fumbling for a gun when precious seconds were ticking away. Ethan stood up, moving carefully along the wall for the door where he’d left his boots. He put them on, not bothering to tie the laces. Then he pulled open his door and peered out into a hallway that was scarcely brighter than his room. There was only one window at the end of the corridor, but it didn’t provide sufficient lighting to illuminate his path well. On the opposite end was the loud and ancient elevator that had given him little confidence it would make the rise to the fourth floor when he came up earlier.
Ethan took measured steps toward the elevator and by the time he was halfway there, his eyes were beginning to adjust. Near the elevator doors, he could see that just to his right was a door for the stairs and roof access. He moved to cross the void when the door squeaked open, and he jumped back behind the wall.
A red laser light split the blackness, the beam jerking with dangerous movements as the handler scanned the area. Ethan held his breath, feeling the pressure build in his lungs until he saw the barrel of a machine gun emerge from around the corner.
He launched himself at the wielder of the weapon, smashing into the mystery commando and grabbing onto the body and barrel of the gun — which felt like an M16 beneath his touch. He struggled furiously to lay claim to the weapon, but the man pulled back and they both grappled for more leverage on the firearm.
The man was covered from head to toe in a thick military looking Kevlar suit: chest, shoulder, knee pads. And then there was the helmet; Ethan had seen it before at his uncle’s house, but up close it broke the steel reserve of his usual calm. It wasn’t a helmet in the normal sense of the word, more like a complete face covering made of solid metal or something similar, with screws holding it in place. It was the eyes that unnerved him the most: circular insect-like sockets emitting a dull green glow.
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing the view from his mind and straining to overpower the man. After wrenching and pulling at the weapon, he realized it was slung around the commando’s shoulder and torso and couldn’t be pried away with brute force.
Ethan’s opponent pushed back, slamming him into the wall. His lower back collided against a metal railing, and he gritted his teeth against the shock to his spine. He managed to smash a knee into the man’s inner thigh and felt grim satisfaction at the muffled grunt of pain it produced. This slight advantage wouldn’t last long, and Ethan’s own body was still throbbing from the pain in his back.
He shifted his right hand from the stock of the gun and pressed the magazine release. The cartridge clanged to the floor and Ethan managed to push the barrel away from his body. He got his thumb on the trigger and pushed, firing off the remaining bullet in the chamber. The man’s grip released on the now useless weapon and he reached for his side arm instead.
Ethan held on to the empty rifle, twisting it underneath the commando’s right arm. He kicked the back of the man’s leg, bringing him to his knees. This gave Ethan the opportunity to yank the M16 up behind the man’s back, spinning it again, and cinching the commando into a choke hold with his own weapon. He kept squeezing and pulling, grimacing with effort. This man was no lightweight, and it had been years since Ethan trained for hard combat. He was almost surprised he’d made it this far.
With his right arm pulled up by the gun strap, the commando tried to grab at his side arm again with the other hand, but the attempt was awkward from such an angle. Then his survival instinct overrode his attempt to get the secondary firearm and he began trying to free his neck. His gloved hand clawed helplessly at the makeshift noose but finally his body went limp. Ethan let the man fall.
He removed the commando’s thigh gun from it’s holster. It was too dark to check, but he trusted there was a round in the chamber, given the man’s apparent military training. He stuffed the gun behind his waistband at the small of his back and searched the man for some form of ID or other weapons.
He heard the faintest sound of static in the quiet darkness and stilled, one hand on the man’s side pocket. What was that? He leaned forward and heard a voice coming from a receiver inside the man’s helmet.