he called out in little more than a whisper. Even the effort of doing that was incredibly painful.
Before he could call out again, the barn door was pulled open and two men stood in the doorway. With the light behind them, he couldn’t see who they were, or what they looked like.
‘Well, son, this is your lucky day. Fortunately for you, your little brother was quite cooperative…eventually,’ said one of the men in an accent unfamiliar to Merc. Italian, he guessed not being acquainted with any one of Greek descent, like the speaker.
‘Do you recognize this?’ the Greek asked, waving a memory stick under Merc’s nose although Merc couldn’t see it clearly because blood was getting in his eyes.
Merc, petrified with fear and wracked with pain, couldn’t speak.
‘No? Well, let me help you out, son. This is a memory stick with pictures from a cell phone that you and your late little brother stole from a friend of mine. Ring any bells yet?’
Merc just nodded. He couldn’t speak. Did he say "my late brother?" Noah dead? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Now we have gotten ourselves a little problem, son. You see, we have this here memory stick, and we know that someone who likes to keep records took a video of a certain car,’ the Greek said. ‘Now, your little brother told us, before he prematurely expired, that a certain Dion Elpis transferred the video clip to this here memory stick, and then deleted the video clip from his computer, his cell phone and your cell phones but not from my friend’s cell phone. Am I right so far?’ the man with the false Greek accent asked.
Merc nodded; it still hadn’t sunk in that Noah was dead. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe it. Everything seemed so surreal. A bad horror movie in which he was the central victim.
‘So, in a nutshell, boy, the problem I have now is this: Your little brother didn’t tell me where I can find my friend’s cell phone. And I need that phone,’ the Greek yelled at Merc. ‘You see, son,’ he continued quietly, ‘I need that phone to eliminate any loose ends. You with me, son?”
Merc nodded.
‘Good, good, that’s very good,’ the Greek said, suddenly all sweetness and light. ‘So, where is it?’ he screamed.
‘I…I don’t know. Noah had it, and you…you...SOBs have killed him, so you’ll never find it…never…’ Merc yelled back, hoping that, before these monsters killed him, Noah had done what they had agreed he should do with the cell phone.
‘That’s a real shame, son, a real shame. Say hello to your brother for me,’ the Greek said, taking a gun from his coat as he was speaking.
Merc screamed.
The Greek pointed the gun at the young boy’s head.
Merc passed out.
The fake Greek and his companion cut Merc down from the hook, and then spent the next hour rearranging the barn. They knew that the owner was miles away. In any case, not many people visited that isolated part of Virginia.
**
Fitted with the latest high-resolution video cameras and cell phone location and surveillance technology, one of the FBI’s many Cessna spy planes followed the Potomac River south into Maryland. Carl Rutter sat in the back of the cramped aircraft with his eyes glued to a screen. Next to him, a technician was similarly engrossed.
‘Why the hell is the White House so wound up about a missing van?’ Joe Faskind, the technician, asked.
‘I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,’ Rutter replied, laughing. ‘Truth is, we haven’t a clue what the White House is up to.’
‘Yeah? That’d be right. So why are we searching the Potomac? It’s not deep enough in most places to lose a van in.’
‘Where we are headed, parts of the main channel can be eighty feet deep at high tide,’ Rutter explained. ‘But at low tide, it can drop to thirty feet.’
‘Gotcha! I was wondering why you insisted that we came at low tide. What made you think of it?’
‘That’s one of the problems with this job; you start thinking like the villains,’ Rutter replied.
‘Where are we?’ Rutter then yelled at the pilot through the microphone in his headgear. All he could see on the screen was the river beneath them.
‘We are just coming up to Fort Washington on the left,’ the pilot called back.
‘Hold it!’ Joe yelled.
‘What do you mean, “hold it”? This isn’t a ghetto-bird,’ the pilot called back and laughed. ‘I’ll go about.’
‘There!’ Joe said excitedly. ‘That shape could be a submerged van.’
‘Sure, could be, and they seem to have missed the deep part of the channel. Where the hell are we?’ Carl Rutter asked again.
‘Just off Mockley Point where Piscataway Creek flows into the Potomac,’ the pilot advised him. ‘I’ll call it in. How the hell did they get it there?’
Chapter 8
My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, my left is wavering. The situation is excellent. I shall attack!
Marshall Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch:
French WWI Supreme Allied Commander.
I had to go and find him, of course. If Poseidon was on the mountain, I simply had to talk to him. I needed to find out what he was up to, and whose side he really was on.
I left KK to guard the girls because I was secretly afraid that the stories of Posey being on the mountain might be a ploy to separate me from Demeter and Persephone. Unfortunately, my search turned out to be a complete waste of time. Nobody I spoke to had laid eyes on him, or, if they had, they were keeping it to themselves. Fearing that it was a ploy after all, I raced back to the apartment.
The place was deserted, or so I thought until I saw KK lying in a dark corner. On a side table lay an opened, bright-red box of chocolates; only four had been eaten. I resisted the temptation.
‘Here, KK,’ I called out, clicking my fingers.
Unusually, there was no response from the giant dog. I walked over to him; he still didn’t stir. I was worried now. Normally, KK would have heard my footsteps, felt tiny vibrations of the floor caused by my body weight, or picked up my scent, yet he seemed to be in a very deep, hypnotic sleep. I bent down to pat him, and only then did I realize what was wrong: KK had been turned back into stone – or Candia Red Greek marble, to be precise. There were not too many gods or goddesses on the mountain who were capable, or even daring enough, to pull off such a stunt on my dog – the dog of the god of gods! I made a mental list of the possibilities.
If anything had happened to Demeter or Persephone, I would never forgive myself. Never! My revenge would be cataclysmic. And somebody, or some group, would discover to their cost just what the wrath of old Zeus could do.
I
