“Coast Guard commander, this is Navy Command at Pearl Harbor. Your pilots are obviously incompetent. I want them under my command right now or it’s your ass.”
Brotz leaned into the monitor and examined the icon for the activated buoy, then he snatched the radio to the Navy. “Check it for yourself, Admiral, it should be on your screen. My pilot pinned it at sixty-three knots and climbing. Since the only bad decisions made here today were made by Navy command, I think I’ll hold on to this one.”
“Commander, there’s a Navy vessel missing—”
“And a Coast Guard vessel and a merchant ship.”
“But the Harding is a Navy ship,” the admiral insisted. “Its priority outweighs a merchant ship or even a Coast Guard cutter.”
Commander Brotz hung up on the admiral of the Navy.
“I’ve spotted the Harding!” radioed the helicopter copilot. “She’s moving like you wouldn’t believe, but she’s afloat.”
“We’re getting interference,” Brotz said. “Is there any visible cause?”
“Nothing, Base. The Harding is being pulled stem first. She’s flopping all over the place. That nut thinks he can get free—he’s rocking his thrust on the props.”
Brotz barely made out the words behind the worsening static. On the monitor, the pair of icons for the helicopters flickered, as if the aircraft were dematerializing. “Pilots, pull out now.”
“Negative, Base. There’s no danger up here. We see something ahead.”
“That’s an order—turn around.”
There was no response from the helicopters, ever, and their traffic blips blinked out.
On the other side of the world, a man was gasping for air.
“Mark, wake up.” The young woman shook him gently. The man’s eyes went wide and he crawled away from her, against the metal bars of the head board.
Sarah Slate never forgot the look. For a moment, Mark Howard didn’t know who she was—or even what she was.
Then he saw her, remembered her and remembered himself. “Oh.”
“What was it?”
He concentrated. “I don’t even know.” He looked at his hands. “I was something else. It was dark. The world was moving me and there was a light. It was going to—consume me.”
“Eat you?”
“There were others, all of us being—channeled into the light. We were food.”
“Food for what?”
The door rattled on its hinges with such noise and racket that Sarah turned, expecting an army to come pouring through it. It was a heavy old hospital door, and it remained closed.
“Open at once!” a voice squeaked from the outside.
Sarah rushed to the door and yanked it open, and was pushed aside by a figure no larger than a child. He was, however, unbelievably, old, Asian and dressed in a brightly colored robe. Close behind him came a slapping of wild wings, and a purple bird as big as an eagle flew into the room.
“Say not the name,” warned the old man, addressing Mark Howard as the bird settled on the blankets.
“What name?” he asked.
“That of the thing of which you dreamed.”
“Were you eavesdropping?” Sarah demanded.
“Forgive me, young Slate. It was something that I believed must be done. I was on guard for just such a happenstance. I did not pierce the veil of your words until I heard the tumult of the Young Prince’s awakening.”
“What happenstance?” Mark asked.
“The tumult,” the old man said. “The dreams come.”
Sarah was peeved. “You just happened to wake up at two in the morning and just happened to hear us?”
“You did not awaken me. It was the others.”
“What others?” Sarah demanded.
The old man shot out a finger so fast she couldn’t see it move, and the finger pressed against her lips to shush her. He held it there as silence fell.
But there was no silence, after all. There were shouts, cries and screams.
“Oh, God,” Sarah said. “It sounds like half the hospital. What’s happening?”
“Half of half, but that is a sufficient number of people in terror. The dream thing affects them, those with a particular bent and balance in their mind’s landscape. It is the thing of which you dreamed, Prince Mark.”
The man was listening to the cries from far away.
“Heed, Mark Howard,” the old man said. “It may discover you and exert its will. Say not the name.”
“I don’t know its name.”
“It may choose to tell you. Turn your thoughts away from it. Give it the least of your attentions.”
“What is it?” Sarah asked. “Why would it afflict Mark?”
The parrot chuckled harshly. “An adept mind in dangerous company,” it croaked, then looked surprised at itself.
“Quiet, bird,” the old man scolded.
“Who is dangerous?” Sarah Slate asked, and she didn’t offer the leeway for no answer.
“Remo.”
“Remo’s in Europe,” Sarah pointed out.
“And me,” the old man added. “I attract its attentions.”
“And wrath,” the bird added.
Chapter 4
“I’m acting under the direct orders of my supervisor,” Remo told the emperor of Sicily. “And I never disobey an order.”
“It is a million dollars. Surely you can disobey one small order in exchange for a million dollars.”
“Listen, Burpescusmi, I just shrugged off a career in the Extreme Naked Athletics for a million bucks.”
“What?”
“On the other hand, I could have been the best Crocodile Outback Marathon runner that there ever was. Another easy million. Or ice-wall climbing. I could have done that blindfolded. Another million.”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” said the emperor of Sicily. “Please talk slower because of my English.”
“Did I mention my TV career? Way more than a million bucks, bucko, and I would have got to bag more sleazy celebrity teenyboppers than you could shake your stick at. But I gave it all up.”
“Why?”
“My father. He would have been irked. Now, you want to know who’s really irked? Me. Why? Miguel Jackon.”
“Ten million dollars,” the emperor said. Even crazy men had their price, right?
“Not bad. If you had it. Which you don’t. Did you hear about Miguel Jackon? The whole business with the star in Hollywood. That was me. I moved it. But it’s not what I wanted to do. You know what I wanted to do?” The American began snapping imaginary bones in his hands. They weren’t especially powerful-looking hands, but the wrists were thick as the drive shaft on a piece of construction equipment.
“I can get you ten million U.S. dollars by daybreak.”
“If I cared, which I don’t. I’m already rich, see?”
“No government agents are rich. Except in my government.”
The American’s smile was made all the more chilling by the malevolent brown eyes. “What you call a government I call organized crime.”
“Yes, we are organized, yes, and now official, too. We have the legitimacy of statehood.”
“You think because some slimeball mafioso declares himself king he really is king?”
“Yes, that is true,” declared Don Bertilescessi. “Sicily has always been under the oppressive rule of the mainland Italians. Too long have they dictated their will to the Sicilian people. Until now there has been no man with the strength of will to take a stand against the dictators of Rome.”
“Doesn’t make you legitimate.”
“We have been recognized by other heads of state! This makes us legitimate!”
“Just because a bunch of other international criminals say you’re not a criminal doesn’t mean you’re not a criminal. You know how many innocent people have been killed during your reign of power? One for every rice grain in my breakfast bowl.”