Blaine propped himself up as best he could. His hands were wrapped in thick bandages, and his face and neck looked as if he had a severe sunburn.
“You’re talking about a society that has never been able to grasp the ‘live to fight another day’ credo,” he explained. “Plenty of our POWs learned that the hard way in the war. Maybe this is poetic justice, or karma. The Children of the Black Rain got fucked by the very principles that led us to drop the bombs in the first place.”
“They didn’t miss by much. If those nuclear plants had gone up, the country could only have rebuilt itself by depending on the Japanese-owned stockpiles the Children controlled.”
Blaine smiled. “Sound familiar?”
“My God,” Patty realized. “Japan in the aftermath of World War Two.”
“Yup, except with the roles reversed. Again, they didn’t heed their own lessons. They rebuild our world and sometime down the road everything’s set right again, maybe even more so.”
Patty suddenly looked sad. “Not for everyone.”
“How are your brothers?”
“I…haven’t told them yet.”
“Want me there when you do?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether you plan on staying.”
“I didn’t think that was your style.”
“Well, things change.”
“I don’t.”
“Is that a warning?”
“Just an assurance, kid. You know me well enough to count on that much.”
“Better than ever,” Patty acknowledged. “I never really understood you until I faced my father in that bunker. That someone I loved could have fooled me that much…” Her eyes gazed into his knowingly. “It’s why you exist alone, isn’t it? It’s why the only people you let into your life are the same as you. Like Johnny and Sal.”
“And you, Hunsecker?”
“Before — no. Now, yeah, I think so.”
“Uh-uh.”
“What?”
“I said no, kid. I can never remember being anything but the way I am now. If you can remember something different, then forget it. You’ll slip back. My world’s a dark one, where it’s okay to hide for a while. As soon as you start feeling for the light switch, it’s time to go.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. We are what we are, Hunsecker, and it’s crazy to try to pretend otherwise.”
Tears filled Patty’s eyes. “So — so what do I do?”
“You go back to your brothers. Maybe you take them out on the ocean for a while. That’s your world — the best place for you to make them understand and accept. Then you ease them back into theirs.”
“Like you’ve done for me…”
He looked at her proudly. “You’re learning, Hunsecker.”
“I had a good teacher.”
“You look restless, Blainey,” Wareagle told him two days later.
“The doctors won’t even let me go outside until I heal up. I miss the sun.”
“There are other places to seek light than beyond the window. Look inside yourself.”
“Plenty of blown bulbs.”
“And plenty that aren’t. New ones burn as old ones are extinguished.”
“Your vision is better than mine, Indian.”
“Because I know the right places to look. Your focus is elsewhere.”
McCracken held Wareagle’s stare for a long moment. “We didn’t get all the Wakinyan, did we, Indian?”
“We killed all of those whose inward view finds only the dark.”
“Which we were able to do because we’re no different than they are. Better maybe, but not different.”
Johnny’s stare grew reflective. “In the old ways of my people, Blainey, a young warrior must drink the blood of his first kill. My first kill was a wolf that attacked our livestock. But I was not allowed to drink its blood because the blackness of its murderous heart was not worthy to taste. Its death gave nothing to the world because it had nothing to give.” Wareagle’s huge hand touched McCracken’s shoulder. “That is the difference, Blainey.”
“Why do we do it, Indian?”
“Hanbelachia.”
“But now that Abraham’s history, you’ve finally passed yours.”
“No. I was wrong, Blainey. The vision quest is not one event, but a continuous series. We keep growing and changing. And each phase we pass into requires its own Hanbelachia. The shaman had tried to tell me as much when I was a boy, but I did not realize the truth until my slaying of Abraham left me feeling no different than killing the wolf had. A means to something that has no end.”
“So we keep going.”
Wareagle moved to the window and turned opened the slats on the Venetian blind. The sun streamed through and made McCracken raise a hand in front of his face. Wareagle adjusted the slats so the light aimed harmlessly downward.
“The light can be controlled, but not the sun that brings it, Blainey.”
McCracken smiled. “That says it all, doesn’t it?”
“It says enough.”
“No more Omicron legions, Indian. We’ve got to make sure of that.”
“Before your flesh feels the sun again, Blainey.”
The explosions occurred over the next two days, a dozen in all. They created no publicity and were felt only as tremors deep in the earth’s underbelly by the few bystanders who strayed too close. Nature would cover any signs before long, the secret bunkers entombed by rubble and the final fall of the Black Rain lost forever.
A Biography of Jon Land
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He wrote techno thrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain our security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.
Recently, RT Book Reviews gave Land a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction. Land is currently writing his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong — a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The first three books in the series — Strong Enough to Die (2009), Strong Justice (2010), and Strong at the Break (2011) — have all garnered critical praise with Strong Justice being named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, tells the story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will be released in 2011.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.