Monday, October 27th, 2011
1:03 PM, North Brother Island
Every previous quality attributed to NoBro changed subtly once they were standing on it with the patrol boat cruising at low speed a hundred yards out in the middle of the East River, beyond quick and easy return. Most notable of those alterations was how, minus the somewhat loftier perch from the boat's main deck, the hunkering effect Beckett had previously attributed to the place was gone. On level ground, it loomed. It wasn't hiding at all.
Half a century of unchecked rampancy had produced formidably dense walls of verdure. The raw beauty of it all was undeniable. Deciduous varieties ruled almost exclusively, mostly maples which towered in a few variations of the parent species. Those were intermittently mixed with a number of stoic white oaks, a stand of slender birches on the north face of the island, and others elsewhere that Beckett couldn't readily identify. The mildness of the season had seen fit to grace most specimens with nearly the entire fullness of their respective autumnal mantles—yellows, reds, and orangish blends of the two.
Kudzu and other killing vines strung many of the trees like so many leafy green constrictors. The undergrowth around and between it all was thick and hearty bush. Some were squat and unassuming while others sprawled upon snakier stems that bristled with serrated thorns like viper fangs. Ferns managed to eke out more graceful presences here and there.
For all the blush of life available and the way the tumultuous sky lent that flora greater vibrancy by its bruised contrast, the place also pervaded with its own special brand of brooding dimness. Diffused radiance shone through the cloud cover. It bent faint shadows from all the living things. So too did it creep outward from the imposing edifices of dead or dying buildings. The sight called to mind Kate's grandmother telling her about the exodus her family had made from Belgrade to ill-fated Kragujevac during World War II. Some of the abandoned houses they came across during that fifty-mile trek had been razed to the ground with fire by their former inhabitants. It does no good, Pile, to leave a place bereft of its purpose. Better to start clean than to forget and become lost, for it will never again be the same place. Within the almost funereal silence on NoBro, a writhing demise of purposefulness had certainly been wrought. Barely discernible swaths of darkness stretched from each structure's desiccated moorings as if their existences had already been distilled more into those cancerous shades extending blindly outward in the desperate seeking of something hopelessly beyond their grasps.
Kate swallowed thickly and shifted the suddenly confining weight of her backpack. PTSD...not now, please. Please. She ushered deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Her left hand curled and loosened in measured, repetitive clenches at her side. Her joints began to ache in protest.
"It's so quiet," Lanie emitted from close behind her, hardly above a whisper, but it made the investigator jerk in surprise where she stood. The predictable gap of conversation among the other people present after hearing such an observation being made only drove the observation home more firmly. It felt like the twenty-acre landmass itself was holding its breath alongside its fresh interlopers, but for darkly different reasons.
Rick's voice arose more deeply at a similar volume, which was like a soothing balm upon the detective's hot and ragged nerves. "If it were business as usual for the city, you'd be hearing the almost incessant roar of planes coming and going from LaGuardia." Harbinger had grounded all flights for at least the next couple of days. "This is the island's normal voice—the flow of water at its edges and this steady psithurism. The birds that North and South Brother play host to during the spring and summer months aren't species which do much calling. Anything non-native that lived here when there were inhabitants like rats, frogs, or certain insects—they're all long gone. Not even the ants that were tracked in survived our absence."
"What a cheerful thought," Ethan Dickson grumbled. "Let's cut the chatter, huh?"
"It's good to know," opined the less familiar tenor of Joseph Hawkins. The somewhat nasal quality of his voice was threaded through with snippish disapproval. "A limited supply of scavengers will affect whatever timeline might be attributed to the victims later. Please don't interrupt our guide, Lieutenant. The history of this place may prove relevant in any number of useful ways. Understanding this environment is as much of a necessity to us as alibis and witness reports are to you."
A turn at Kate's waist to regard the pair presented the sight of Dickson's sneer towards the younger, skinnier, ebony-skinned CSU member. "Yeah, that's great, Urkle, but it won't do us much good if flapping our gobs gets us shot by some asshole hiding in the bushes."
Joseph adjusted the thickly glassed lenses upon his nose and said, "It's Hawkins. What's an Urkle?"
"Jesus Christ."
"Ah, now that's a name we colored folk know and love," Lanie jabbed. "We also would've accepted our lesser lord and savior, Colonel Sanders."
"Lanie!" Castle gasped. "Don't speak that name on preservation ground."
"You guys," Beckett inserted mildly while facing forward, "dial it back a notch."
"Shh. Don't make Mom mad," Logan hissed at a stage-whisper. The others tried and failed to stifle their giggles.
She shot a scathing glare backward and in the process caught a fleet glimpse of Ethan and Joseph grinning helplessly at one another. Oh, the strange bedfellows' apprehension makes of us.
Kate blamed this place. It was already bothering everyone, not just her. She expected more cutting remarks or gallows humor via resistance to that grim influence, but it didn't come. Perhaps because only moments later the sweeping spread of their ESU accompaniment returned in pairs into a closer cluster where the others stood at the shore near the old, upside down U-shaped support which marked the ferry landing. By expression and posture, none of the agents telegraphed having encountered anything of note in their explorations of the immediate area.
"Not shit to see," Kirkland unknowingly confirmed aloud. "Not even any tracks, which is..." He didn't finish, but instead glanced up at the stubbornly sporadic pattering of rain and adjusted the set of his helmet by its abbreviated brim. "This isn't gonna last. We're gonna get dumped on." His bearded guise lowered to its neutral plane and swept over the modest assembly. "We stick to the plan already discussed: make a counter-clockwise track down and around to the Teeth of Seven Sorrows using what's left of the old east and south roads."
That was the closest approximation they had of the route Finch might have taken during his visit. It went without saying that an absence of images from his camera didn't preclude the possibility of the urban explorer having diverted anywhere along that path towards whatever encounter brought about his untimely end. All they could do was make their best guess according to the pictures and the timeframe Harbinger was willing to allow.
"Mr. Castle," the Lieutenant went on, "I'll need you close to the front with me, please. The rest of you watch your footing and try to maintain the stagger and distances we set between each of you. We don't want you bunching together or thoughtlessly following along in the footsteps of the person ahead. I know you guys aren't used to hauling around gear like this. I'm sorry you've gotta shoulder the bulk of it, but I need my people as light on their feet as they can be. Speak up if you see something you want to investigate or if you need to take a break. I mean it now," he stressed. "It's better to stop for a few minutes here and there then it would be to exhaust yourselves and lose any alertness we might all benefit from later." The speaker paused until a series of nods were given in reply. "Good. One more thing: unless it's urgent, keep the op-freq clear for ESU while we're moving. In fact, it's fine to turn the receiver off for now and talk amongst yourselves as we go—your voices won't carry any farther than the clamor of your footsteps on this terrain. That can't be helped, so, walk normally. Don't waste the energy trying and failing to be stealthy. Just keep the chatter low and off the radio."
He paused again to assess the group. No one raised any questions.
"Alright then. My people—call it as you see and clear it. I'll divert you to tasks as Mr. Castle and myself identify them along the way. Conquer the gaps in your perimeter as that happens. Let's move."
Equal surges of dread and relief assailed Beckett as they began moving. She stepped into line after Rick and John, wanting to be close to her shadow's back. Logan, Lanie and then Joseph followed after her, respectively, with Ethan bringing up the rear. ESU was a bristling wall of armaments around them, three on each side and two at each end. Ulan and Eamon towered as the true guards on their six, both outfitted with carbines that dripped with menace in each Irishman's all-too-capable looking grips. Those arranged along the flanks bore MP5 submachine guns. One of the figures on each side bore ballistic combat shields on their backs while two others were strapped with combat shotguns. John and a smaller female officer—Bielsa, Kate's memory provided—also carried carbines at their fore.
Logan wore a dual nylon harness housing what she could now discern were matching, flat black Five-Seven USG pistols, a brand favored by members of the Secret Service. In his hands, the detective thought any gun might well qualify as a goddamn weapon of mass destruction, let alone one loaded with that ammo type and magazine capacity.
The other noticed her observation and cocked an eyebrow in wordless inquiry.
"Are you ambidextrous?"
The mercenary stared back at her for a few ticks. Those gas-flame blues seemed to harbor laughter somewhere behind them. Maybe it wasn't meant to be at her expense, but the detective didn't appreciate what was glimpsed either way. "Was that a question or a statement?"
Careful, Katie, jeez. He's no dummy. She turned back around, irritated with herself for engaging in the first place.
The group paused as a whole while three members of their ESU team diverted together to circle around behind and clear the red-brick morgue and coalhouse which stood nearby. Watching them slip through the undergrowth broadcasting blatant threat and with little sound to mark their passage was a bit chilling. It made Beckett feel that much farther away from her murder board and espresso machine. The trio returned within two minutes. All appeared normal. Sure enough, the trek forward resumed.
The east road, as Kirkland had called it, was barely worthy of the term. Some patches of concrete were visible in pale grey swaths along the way, but most of it was buried under years of scattered soil that had since settled. Various plants had thrust their roots into the cracks time had yielded and made quick work of swallowing that stamp of civilization whole. The only other detail which lent the designation of their path some legitimacy was the fact that no trees had managed to carve out similar beds for their taproots. Their party moved beneath outstretched boughs along a ten-foot swath of clear forest floor, a leafy tunnel roofed, walled, floored with nature's fireworks display.
Luscious outdoorsy aromas made the city itself feel more distant than was literally the case.
"You don' like me much, do ya?"
Maybe it was the tone the mercenary used. A thrumming of becalmed, honest curiosity. It was echoed in his patrician features when she looked back again. He wasn't wrong, but her reasoning for harboring that dislike was admittedly weak. She went with the also truthful, "I don't like what you represent."
"As in how mah allegiance belongs to a corporation as opposed to a nation's flag?" She nodded stiffly. "Better write yah congressmen quick," Logan replied amusedly, "because yah country is swiftly growing dependent upon contract warfare. Ten more years an' y'all won't be able to fight a war abroad without it."
"This isn't war," she grit in reply. "Hence you not belonging within a mile of this operation."
The other shrugged, unfazed by her condemnation. "Ah'm here in mah capacity as a certified ballistics specialist, not as a hired gun. Ah came 'long in case any ah o' the poor folk waitin' for us died from GSWs. Just so happens that ah can do the job while also lookin' after mah'self. That had some appeal for yah bosses, mah dear. Gotta speak with them 'bout it."
My dear?! Oh, hell no you didn't.
"Don't call me that," the detective snarled, which evoked only a flashing, infuriatingly appealing grin from the man. It didn't even present as mockery. He just seemed...genuinely tickled by her. Damn it. She claimed a fortifying breath and lowered her tensed shoulders to their rightful slants. Getting upset would only provoke him to further mirth. "You, uh, went to school for that?"
"Yes, ma'am. Bedfordshire University, 'cross the pond ov'ah in England."
"Huh." Kate didn't know what else to say to that. The accent was horribly misleading. It didn't scream 'worldly academic' in her mind. That was probably a sad commentary regarding personal bias. More to the point, it was decidedly unhelpful. Shame they couldn't teach you how to stress your 'er' sounds. That seemed a bit petty to mention. She was determined to at least attempt being a lady, not a mean girl. Yeah, Mom, you taught me better. I'm trying. But c'mon. Look at this fucking guy. Um. Frickin' guy.
Commenting proved unnecessary. Logan glanced over her left shoulder and tipped his chin indicatively. She turned forward in time to slow and stop a short ways from Castle and Kirkland's backs. A narrow glimpse between the two revealed a pair of ESU agents ahead investigating a gaping opening right in the middle of the forest floor. It was an irregular oval about four-feet in diameter at its widest point. One of the men was crouched with his sidearm in-hand, shining in a bluish LED flashlight beam while the other covered him, weapon raised. The light-bearer checked around inside the hole carefully. Within half a minute he stood and holstered both the torch and Glock. He nodded at the Lieutenant. All clear.
"Watch your step up here," Kirkland called at modulated volume with a glance back at them all. He and Rick diverged from one another in a wide berth around the hole.
The sheer incongruousness of the thing was too bewildering a sight to resist glimpsing closer up. As Beckett approached she slowed warily. Vines and roots enshrouded the circumference of the ledge. Vegetation yielded some to glimpses of the cracked cement underneath which had been poured a foot thick and reinforced with rebar. The layers of soil below that soon yielded to cement again in the curved arches of an underground pathway. Egresses vanished into the black at both the left and right. Feeble midday light spilled down in, providing a clear enough view as she edged close enough to see the bottom fifteen feet below.
Someone stared unblinkingly back up at her.
It all happened so quickly. Too terribly fast. There was a fleeting impression of a starkly beautiful countenance. A mother's elegance and etherealness by nose, cheekbones and lush mouth wed flawlessly to a father's crueler notes of masculinity by brow, chin, and jaw. She glimpsed the slope of a pallid, bare right shoulder and saw light reflect along a curve of deeply dark crimson hair—red like freshly spilled blood. Long. Shoulder-length or more. But, God-in-heaven, the eyes. Instantly arresting. Pools of soul-piercing pale grey shot through with splintered striations of rich violet that stabbed up into her like a thousand blades.
The sheer, staggering shock of the sight rocketed Kate into a windmilling retreat with an involuntary, clipped outcry of surprise. She collided into Logan even while peripherally noting the others ahead whirling in unison. Her weapon appeared in her grip through an automatic muscle response. "Th-there's someone—"
"Circle-up! Flash it!" Kirkland snarled before she could even finish the warning.
"Hey!' she heard Lanie protest shrilly as the other agents forcibly pushed the group closer together into a more easily defensible formation. They faced outward, crouched and leaning into the butts of their weapons, poised to unleash calamitous splashes of molten hell if even a leaf had twitched.
Two of them were already charging the hollow from either side. Beckett saw flash grenades being hurled in at opposing angles, heard the clatter of them striking and rebounding against the stone below. Above ground, Officer Bielsa began sprinting toward the opening with a flashlight and sidearm drawn, her expression blanked out with lethal commitment and pale with tamped-down panic. "On me!"
Dual blasts, though occurring in the subterranean level, could be heard for their jarring emissions over one-hundred-seventy decibels and seen for the glaring curtain of white light which blasted up from the mouth of the jagged opening brighter than the meager daylight. Concussive force shook the detective right down to her bones with a single, violent ripple that elicited a wordless gasp of agony. She felt Logan flinch. If he hadn't been gripping her vest she might've stumbled back forward and tumbled right into the damn hole.
The stun grenades had barely concluded their painful displays before Bielsa dove forward, sliding through dead leaves and plunging straight down into the yawning gap as sleek and agile as a kamikaze feline. The pair that had tossed in the flashbangs heeded her prior outcry for aid by snatching her vest at the waist and back, arresting the fall and keeping the woman aloft while she hung upside down, twisting dexterously one way and then swiftly the other with her beam cutting through the darkness. The woman rotated several times, but never fired her weapon. Seconds crept along as if the hands of the clock had become a muddied murk sucking at all attempts at progress.
"Clear," she called aloud moments later, sounding shaken. Then in a somewhat calmer tone, "Get me the fuck outta here, compañeros." Her fellows carefully hoisted her up, grunting with the effort, and deposited the agent onto solid ground where she assumed surer footing amidst gulping breaths. The light and pistol were jammed into their respective placements. Her guise shifted to Kirkland and she shrugged. "Nada, Lieu."
The image of those eyes was stamped in so deeply it was difficult for Beckett to think past the recollection of them. She felt naked. Vulnerable and indecently exposed. Even violated, which didn't make a lick of damned sense, but it prompted a swirl of revulsion in her guts for being touched which made her tug away from Logan and stand apart on shaky legs. Her lips worked twice without effect before she managed to convey, "There was someone."
No one seemed doubtful of her claim. Indeed, everyone was eying the opening as it were about to spew forth far worse things than their teammate's upper half.
The spattering of rain picked up its pace and became a steadier light shower.
"O-okay," Kirkland finally began with a gusty exhale moments later. "We knew there might be people here. This doesn't change the plan—it only increases the necessity of seeing it through."
"But who was that?" Joseph asked, ill-at-ease. "A victim or suspect?"
"Gotta be an enemy if he's running around free," Dickson mused aloud.
"Not necessarily," Lanie countered mildly, her eyes still wide from the encounter. "It's an island. There's no escape. You'd only have endless games of cat-and-mouse to keep you ahead of any potential pursuers."
"That was a cat," Beckett assured with grim conviction, thrusting off the lingering shock and strangely clinging sense of intrusion into her being. "Fuck that—worse."
"A man or woman?" Castle asked at her side. She hadn't even noticed the approach that brought him to her. He looked strangely collected under the circumstances. Not unafraid, but not panicked either. It took seeing his grip on her left shoulder to fully register its welcome warmth and pressure.
"I…" She closed her eyes and saw the stranger's pair again too vividly. It awoke an ache in her scars. "Yeah, definitely male. Young. Uh, there was an adult's maturity in his face and physique, but he looked young. Slender build, long red hair, and..." The words simply wouldn't come forth to describe those goddamn eyes.
"And what, detective?" Kirkland rumbled.
"Calm. Icy calm," Beckett selected to share at length instead. "There wasn't even a fucking lick of fear visible. There wasnt...anything at all." A frown made a home for itself upon her lips even while that detail was recalled and spoken of within the same breath. What...who the hell was that?
"What the fuck," Dickson issued with his gaze shifting to the opening ESU was still covering. He grimaced and holstered his sidearm with clear reluctance.
Castle looked from the silent, enigmatic sinkhole to their general surroundings. He moistened his lips. "You said earlier that you didn't see any tracks, John."
Kirkland shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah. You'd expect we would have at least found some from Finch. They were wiped clean."
"Probably not by natural causes, hrm?"
He eyed the others as if expecting the answer to cause them some alarm. "Probably not." It did to some degree, regardless of the answer already being suspected.
"That doesn't really sound like an effort someone would go to if they were planning a getaway, does it?" The writer looked around their group, eventually ending while fixed on their tactical team leader again. "I, uh, think we should keep moving, Lieutenant. I think the sooner we're off of this island the better."
No one argued that sentiment.