The eye of the lion

The girl stared at me while I stretched out my hand and touched my face. I tried in vain to recognize her, but my eyes refused to focus on anything they saw. Her words echoed like drums in my pained head, as though she were speaking from the interior of a large metal tank.

“Sir... sir, can you hear me now?”

I opened and closed my eyes several times. I raised my hand and touched hers. It was a girl. I tried to focus.

Jessica.

“Do you feel ok, sir?” asked the girl, her face looming close. My eyes returned to normal.

“You’re alive...” I managed to say as I observed her. Her expression was one of contained pain. There was blood on her T-shirt. I looked and found a tourniquet on her leg and her jeans tattered and drenched with crimson liquid.

“You’re wounded, girl!”

“I’ll be fine, sir,” she reassured me, with a gesture that she intended to convey certainty. “It’s you and Randall we’re worried about.”

I noticed that we were inside the van, moving.

“We?” I asked, looking around us. Randall was lying on the carpeted floor, covered with a bedspread. He looked really bad. I looked towards the cab, and much to my surprise, I saw Mark driving. His face was black and his clothes were half burned. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror and I could see that he was in pain.

“Are you feeling better, sir?” he managed to ask. A movement of the van made him cry out. I realized we were going down a rural road.

“I think I’ll live,” I replied looking out of the van windows. “Where are we?”

“On a secondary road which few people use. It will bring us close to Randall’s cabin...” affirmed Jessica looking at a crumpled map next to her on the seat. “The highway wasn’t safe yet.”

“The others?” I asked fearfully. “What happened to them?”

Mark looked at me in the mirror and shook his head. There was rage and pain in his voice.

“They’re dead.”

“It was Kratz...” added Jessica. This was the first time I’d seen tears in this brave girl’s eyes since I’d known her. “Kratz and his men. They set a trap for us.”

I looked at her, disconcerted, and then at Mark.

“Men?” I stammered. “What men?”

The road was getting worse. I lifted Randall up with Jessica’s help so that he would be in less pain.

“The son of a bitch had it all planned out,” replied Mark, his voice trembling. “There were explosives planted all over the place, waiting for us to arrive. After I opened the door of Waiss’ office so that you could get in, the explosions started. I was with the guys in the fiber-optic tunnel when everything blew up.” His lips were trembling. “I should have died in that tunnel too, but Johnny’s body covered me and saved my life. When I managed to drag myself out of the tunnel, a man in black appeared and shot me.”

“Are you badly hurt?!” I asked, worried. I looked at the guy and saw blood on his abdomen and hands. He shook his head.

“The bastard thought I was dead, and he left... When I was lying there, trying not to faint, I saw two others dressed in the same way running towards the refinery.”

I looked at Jessica, still shocked by what Mark had said. She nodded.

A guy dressed in black came to where I was hiding in the van. He tried to kill me too.”

“What happened?” I asked. “What did you do?”

“I was faster,” replied Jessica, looking at the wound in her leg. “But not fast enough.”

I brought my hand to my fore-head and covered my face with exhaustion. Things were starting to make sense. Now I understood what Kelly was referring to when he talked about his “brothers” who had saved him, and Kratz and his famous “group of historians”, or whatever it was. Now the Colonel’s words were starting to make sense too. And his pursuers, his disappearance. Fouchet’s death.

My head was spinning. I felt as though we were plunging into a hole. A deep, bottomless pit like “Alice’s” and that something sinister was waiting for us at the bottom.

“What happened with Waiss?” inquired Mark, looking at me in the rear-view mirror.

I looked at him for a few seconds before responding.

“He died. He was crushed to death.”

Jessica observed my expression with expert eyes; she’d known me for so many years and felt there was something more.

“What happened?” she asked, taking my hand.

I looked at her, remembering all that had happened, and I

answered simply,

“Kratz’ mission was to kill Waiss... and destroy his work, his investigations.”

Jessica and Mark looked at me. They knew there was more.

“Edward Kelly was with him,” I added.

Jessica looked at me, confused.

“Impossible,” she murmured. “Edward Kelly is dead.”

Mark in the mirror was looking worried.

“If he was dead...” I commented, “I doubt he would’ve left me this souvenir in my arm.” And I showed her the wound that Kelly’s bullet had given me as I was about to jump out of that damn window with Randall.

“God, let me see that,” said Jessica, coming close to look at my injury.

In that moment, Mark slammed on the brakes and sent Jessica flying, so that she landed up sitting by my side and caused tremendous pain to my shattered ribs.

We turned to see what had happened.

Mark had gotten out of the van, leaving the driver’s door open and the engine running.

Jessica knelt up, tense, and looked worriedly out of the window. Her hand went to the back of her pants and grabbed her 9mm.

At that moment I remembered that I was unarmed, and that worried me. I thought that in our condition, and with only one weapon between us, we wouldn’t be a match for anyone.

We heard voices outside the van. “At least they’re not shots,” I thought. “Or shouts. I’ve already heard enough of those tonight to last me a lifetime.”

Jessica was looking worriedly out of the window, gripping her gun, but the road was very dark and it was starting to get foggy, so she couldn’t see what was going on.

“I’m going out,” she announced.

“No!” I replied, grabbing her arm. “Wait.”

She looked at me doubtfully for a moment then complied.

She brought her hands behind her and put her pistol back beneath her pants. As she was doing so we heard voices and footsteps drawing closer.

At that moment, the sliding door of the van opened.

Mark looked at us calmly. By his side, a black girl stood with her arm around a white girl whose head was bleeding and who looked exhausted.

Jessica and I didn’t fail to notice that she was pregnant.