45

            Cutty slammed the Suburban’s door so hard the entire vehicle shuddered.

            “Goddamn cops!” he said.  “They wouldn’t let me get near the fucking train ‘cause someone told them I had a gun!  I know it was that goddamn Thorne!  Shit!”

            “Si,” Valdez said in a calm tone.  “No can carry guns on train.  Is law.”

            “It’s not God’s law!  We answer only to God—not a couple of prick cops!  I should’ve killed them both!” 

            He punched the dashboard, bruising his thick knuckles against the console, and nevertheless bashed it again, and again.  Valdez watched him quietly, as if he were a child throwing a temper tantrum and she was the responsible adult.  That condescending look of hers put the lid on his rage.  She was the rookie here; he was the veteran warrior.  He needed to act like it.

            After all, God was always watching, always judging, and would not approve of his childish behavior and foul language.  He would need to seek forgiveness for these transgressions.

            But this mission was testing him.  He’d flashed his U.S. Marshal badge at the dolts, a fake that looked as credible as the genuine article, and the assholes had insisted that he wait in their office until they confirmed his identity.  He’d given them the number to call to validate his ID—a number that would be answered by a member of their organization—and the dickheads had said they would follow their own confirmation procedures, thank you very much, sir, come with us, please, at which point he had stormed out.

            The cocksuckers.  They were supposed to obey without question.  They were supposed to be on his side.            

            Although he’d come close to blowing the cops away, in hindsight, killing them would have caused more trouble than it was worth.  Their organization had high-ranking servants and powerful contacts in law enforcement, making the police agencies invaluable allies.  Gunning down two officers in cold blood would have damaged those relationships and raised the ire of the Director, who would have been responsible for cleaning up the mess.  The Director had ordered him to eliminate Thorne and anyone who stood in his way, but that command didn’t include a license to murder honest cops.      

            His throbbing knuckles were bright red.  He gently massaged them. 

            “Okay?” Valdez asked softly.

            “I know I’ve said this before, Valdez, but I get so fired up with holy passion, so caught up in doing God’s will, that I lose my head.  I’m not making excuses for my behavior, and I will seek penance later for my angry words . . .  but my Lord, I’m positively obsessed with God’s thirst for justice.  That’s the kind of man I am.  You understand?” 

            “Si.  Is okay.”             

            “It is?”

            “Si.”

            Her eyes were so warm, so empathetic.  He had the sudden and almost irresistible urge to kiss her.  It was only by the grace of God that he resisted.  When one was at a moment of weakness, Satan offered the temptations of the flesh.

But a film of cold sweat had beaded on his forehead.  He used a handkerchief to wipe it

away.

“We’ve got to get on Thorne’s trail again,” he said.     

            “They go south, to city?”

            “Probably.  Let’s see what I can dig up on Gen.” 

            He dragged the keyboard onto his lap and accessed the MARTA rail schedules and routes.  The southbound train would make over a dozen stops, the last one being the airport, south of Atlanta.  But there were also trains running east and west, and north.

            Too many possibilities.  He had to dig deeper.                  

            He instructed Gen to tap into the rail security network.  Like most mass transit systems across the country and throughout the world, MARTA utilized surveillance cameras on their trains, and in the stations, too.  Gen could invade the network by stealth, slip into those cameras, and show him what they were recording.

            At five o’clock in the morning, there were only a limited number of trains running across the metro area.  He first checked surveillance video on the southbound line. 

            Each passenger car was equipped with a camera.  He toggled views from one car to the next.

            “Got ‘em,” he said.  “Get on 400 South, right now.”

            Valdez rocketed away from the curb.

            The camera was located in the upper corner of the car, and transmitted images in black-and-white, in real-time.  He clearly saw Thorne and his wife sitting together near the back of the compartment, talking.  He would’ve liked to pick up audio, too, but that wasn’t a component of the system.

            Thorne suddenly glanced up at the lens, as if he sensed Cutty observing them. 

            Thorne’s awareness of the camera was proof that he worried Cutty might be watching.  He obviously was discovering the awesome powers of the Kingdom that he’d dared to defy, and perhaps he was beginning to realize that he’d aligned himself with the wrong side.

            Cutty pressed a button to split the screen into two equal-size panes, shifting the passenger car view to the left-hand side of the display.  On the right half, he scrolled through a list of available surveillance cameras posted at the stations along the train’s route. 

            As soon as Thorne and his wife disembarked, he would get a visual of the boarding platform they would have to walk to leave the station.  They didn’t have a vehicle to facilitate their escape, and few cabs and buses were operating at that hour. 

            They would, at last, have nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide.