at the nearest Hertz, paying cash for the iron monster. He drove to the bar that was the known biker hangout and from the outside found it packed with an unruly crowd of leather-clad drunkards and roisterers. Judging that it would be at least midnight before the crowd began to disperse, Kimberlain bided his time.
He left the bar around 11:30 and drove south. All the bikers lived in a housing development just off Route 15, and he picked a spot in the meager spill of a streetlight to pull over. He jacked up his car and yanked a rear tire off as if it were flat.
Dozens of bikes flew by him without stopping. A few slowed. Obscenities were shouted. Kimberlain started to consider what he might do if the night finished this way.
He didn’t have to consider long. Seven of them pulled up. They had driven by initially, then circled back. It took all his self-control to wait for them to make the first move, and when they did it was over very quickly. Kimberlain killed the first two and the last one with his bare hands. In between he used the .45, connecting on every shot. Inspection of the bodies when he was finished revealed the gang leader not to be among them. Kimberlain returned to the bar and barged into the back room where he found the gang leader meeting with a tall well-dressed man.
“Fuck!” the leader roared when he saw Kimberlain coming.
But it was the well-dressed man, strangely, who drew a gun. By then Kimberlain had managed to grasp the beer-slowed leader and spin him into the line of fire. The biker took four of the gunman’s bullets, then crashed backward against Kimberlain, separating the Ferryman from his pistol. With bullets still coming, Kimberlain tore a chain from around the dead man’s chest and lashed it outward. The jagged edge tore into the gunman’s throat and shredded it. Kimberlain left him there in a puddle of blood, gasping toward death.
Kimberlain left California without giving the bikers another thought and drove the Lincoln straight through without sleep to Fort Bragg, where he confessed to the MPs. Military jurisdiction won out, and he was placed in the stockade to await summary court martial. Hanging was a very real possibility, life in the stockade a certainty. Or it would have been, if the man from The Caretakers had not come calling.
“You have skills that are perfectly suited for a special group I represent.”
“What group?”
“You’ve never heard of us. Very few have. We’re called The Caretakers. Capital T , capital C .”
“And what exactly do you do?”
“We take care,” the man had said. “Of the country.”
And for nearly three years after being “removed” from the stockade, that was what Kimberlain had done. Each Caretaker was expert in the trade of killing, but none more so than he. The enigmatic blind leader of the group who called himself Zeus christened Kimberlain “Charon” after the mythological ferryman who took the dead across the river Styx. The anonym couldn’t have proved more fitting. His first two years were marred by not a single mission failure. All those chartered for passage across the river Styx completed their journey.
But in the end his own ticket had proved one-way. His last assignment culminated with him being left for dead by his own people; by Zeus, by all of them goddamn it! The long days of flight alone through the jungles of Central America crystalized his predicament for him. To destroy evil he had become evil. The Caretakers themselves were evil. By alerting the proper authorities, Kimberlain forced the issue. Having their existence revealed in the wrong Washington quarters was more than The Caretakers could take. They were dissolved as quietly as they had been formed.
He had managed to avenge himself on those who had wronged him. Yet he remained unhappy and unfocused. He desperately missed the action of the field and the purpose it gave him. Despite its falseness, it had at least provided a center for his life, and without
He left the bar around 11:30 and drove south. All the bikers lived in a housing development just off Route 15, and he picked a spot in the meager spill of a streetlight to pull over. He jacked up his car and yanked a rear tire off as if it were flat.
Dozens of bikes flew by him without stopping. A few slowed. Obscenities were shouted. Kimberlain started to consider what he might do if the night finished this way.
He didn’t have to consider long. Seven of them pulled up. They had driven by initially, then circled back. It took all his self-control to wait for them to make the first move, and when they did it was over very quickly. Kimberlain killed the first two and the last one with his bare hands. In between he used the .45, connecting on every shot. Inspection of the bodies when he was finished revealed the gang leader not to be among them. Kimberlain returned to the bar and barged into the back room where he found the gang leader meeting with a tall well-dressed man.
“Fuck!” the leader roared when he saw Kimberlain coming.
But it was the well-dressed man, strangely, who drew a gun. By then Kimberlain had managed to grasp the beer-slowed leader and spin him into the line of fire. The biker took four of the gunman’s bullets, then crashed backward against Kimberlain, separating the Ferryman from his pistol. With bullets still coming, Kimberlain tore a chain from around the dead man’s chest and lashed it outward. The jagged edge tore into the gunman’s throat and shredded it. Kimberlain left him there in a puddle of blood, gasping toward death.
Kimberlain left California without giving the bikers another thought and drove the Lincoln straight through without sleep to Fort Bragg, where he confessed to the MPs. Military jurisdiction won out, and he was placed in the stockade to await summary court martial. Hanging was a very real possibility, life in the stockade a certainty. Or it would have been, if the man from The Caretakers had not come calling.
“You have skills that are perfectly suited for a special group I represent.”
“What group?”
“You’ve never heard of us. Very few have. We’re called The Caretakers. Capital T , capital C .”
“And what exactly do you do?”
“We take care,” the man had said. “Of the country.”
And for nearly three years after being “removed” from the stockade, that was what Kimberlain had done. Each Caretaker was expert in the trade of killing, but none more so than he. The enigmatic blind leader of the group who called himself Zeus christened Kimberlain “Charon” after the mythological ferryman who took the dead across the river Styx. The anonym couldn’t have proved more fitting. His first two years were marred by not a single mission failure. All those chartered for passage across the river Styx completed their journey.
But in the end his own ticket had proved one-way. His last assignment culminated with him being left for dead by his own people; by Zeus, by all of them goddamn it! The long days of flight alone through the jungles of Central America crystalized his predicament for him. To destroy evil he had become evil. The Caretakers themselves were evil. By alerting the proper authorities, Kimberlain forced the issue. Having their existence revealed in the wrong Washington quarters was more than The Caretakers could take. They were dissolved as quietly as they had been formed.
He had managed to avenge himself on those who had wronged him. Yet he remained unhappy and unfocused. He desperately missed the action of the field and the purpose it gave him. Despite its falseness, it had at least provided a center for his life, and without
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