Predator One (21 page)

He did not. His line of bullshit and resistance only went so far, and then it was he and I in a small room, and we both knew I could make his last minutes on earth last for a thousand years.

He said five words. One short sentence. One name.

The sentence was eloquent in its simplicity.

“It’s too late.”

And then he
clamped his jaws shut. I heard the crunch and knew it for what it was, what it had to be.

Bloody foam bubbled from between his lips. It smelled like bitter almonds.

Hollow tooth.

Suicide capsule.

Cyanide.

Shit.

He went rigid and then collapsed back.

Dead as dead will ever get.

“It’s too late.”

As much as those words terrified me, it was the name that made it all so much worse.

The name
hung burning in the air. Two words that explained everything and told me nothing.

Two words that scared the living hell out of me.

Two terrible words.

“Seven Kings.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

National League Baseball Opening Day

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 29, 2:37
P.M.

I staggered to my feet and began hunting through the room, looking for something very bad. Something with a timer.

I tore open every cabinet, every closet, every drawer. I upended the table. I slashed the sofa cushions and smashed the doors on the trophy case. I looked everywhere
a bomb could be hidden.

And found nothing.

Then I started going through the clothes of each man.

That’s when I found the device.

Not a bomb. In the pocket of the dead cop, I found a compact and very powerful jammer. Ultrasophisticated. The kind that would link to many smaller relay stations that were probably placed all around the stadium. In trash cans, stuck to the undersides of seats. Didn’t
matter where they were. They were here and this device controlled them.

On the front of it was a digital counter. A timer.

Ticking down from 305.

304.

303.

Ticking down to what?

I held the device out so Ghost could sniff it, but he had no reaction. If it was a bomb, he’d make a certain small whuff. So, it wasn’t a bomb.

It was a jammer.

Which is another way of saying that it was a transmitter.

Icy sweat began running down my spine. When it reached zero, it could do a couple of things. The only good thing I could imagine would be for it to cancel the jamming signal.

I did not believe for one second that this would do only that.

It could also blast out a signal to explosive devices planted in the building. Secondary bombs.

Or …

The SWAT guys came crashing through the door, guns out,
screaming at me to drop my weapons, to get down on the ground.

“No!” I yelled. “Federal agent. There’s another bomb.”

They weren’t even listening. Two of them grabbed me and slammed me down onto the floor. Ghost began barking, and I had to scream at the top of my voice to keep him back. To order him to lie down. If he didn’t obey at once, they would have killed him. Guaranteed.

Ghost looked
like he wanted to take them all on. Maybe it was shock or doggy adrenaline, or maybe he was as batshit crazy as me.

“Down!” I shrieked. “Ghost—down now.”

He finally sank down. Two SWAT shooters had guns on him, ready to kill. A bad day could have gotten a whole lot worse if they tried.

“Federal agent,” I said, over and over again, raising my hands. “We don’t have time for this shit.”

“Shut
up,” snapped one of them and kicked me in the ribs. Hard. Ghost nearly came off the ground at him, but I bellowed him back. Then I craned my head and snarled at the man who’d kicked me. “There’s a fucking bomb about to go off, asshole. If it does and anyone dies, I’m holding you responsible for it. I will fucking kill you, do you understand me?”

If he was impressed, it was impossible to tell
through the mask, goggles, and helmet.

An officer suddenly pushed his way into the room. He knelt in front of me.

“What’s your name?” he barked.

“Captain Joe Ledger,” I said. “Your name is Hooper. You were told about me. Listen to me, lieutenant. There is another bomb in this building. See that device? That’s a timer. It’s counting down. We have to stop dicking around and find it.”

He gave
me exactly one second of appraisal, and then he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet.

“Where is it?”

I snatched up the timer. It said 58.

57.

56.

I said, “I don’t know. We have to find it.”

The jammer was still working.

Their radios were as dead as mine.

We all left the room at a breakneck run.

But we all knew that we were already too late.

We tried.

We really tried.

I don’t actually
remember the blast. They call it traumatic amnesia. The effect of traumatic shock on the brain. My only splinter of memory was of something white. Just that. A big, white nothing.

I closed my eyes to avoid the glare.

When I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital.

Chapter Thirty-nine

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

March 29, 3:19
P.M.

Toys saw Junie Flynn at the end of the hall. She was in an ICU unit, behind a big pane of tempered glass, standing beside a hospital bed. There were two soldiers standing guard outside the room. Toys recognized one of them.

Chief Petty Officer Lydia Ruiz.

Lydia recognized him,
too.

She said something to the other soldier and then came hurrying down the hall to intercept Toys. She had a rifle slung on her shoulder and a look of complete contempt on her face. It turned her pretty face into something ugly and ferocious.

“Lydia—” began Toys, but she cut him off with a vicious two-handed shove that slammed him in the chest and knocked him against a wall.

“
Chingate,
” she
snarled. “
Yo cago en la leche de tu puta madre
.”

Lydia got right up in his face. Her hot spit dottled his cheeks and mouth.

“Listen to me, I—”

“B
é
same el culo, maric
ó
n.”

“If you’re going to call me a faggot,” he said, “at least have the courtesy to do it in English so there’s no misunderstanding.”

Lydia grabbed two fistfuls of his shirt, pulled him off the wall, and slammed him back again.
She was very strong and very fast. In another time and place, when Toys was a different person, he might have risen to this challenge. He might have wanted to make her eat her words. To make her earn the power she was trying to show him. Toys was a pacifist now, but he had been a killer for most of his life. Ruthless, efficient, and cold.

Even now, he had to fight to keep his balled fists down,
pressed against his thighs, shackled by will so that he did not commit another sin. Even the sin of defending himself.

“Lydia!” called a voice, and they both turned to see Junie Flynn hurrying down the hallway, her face grave with concern. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” said Lydia with a nasty smile. “I’m thinking of dragging this
pinche puta
in the stairwell to see if I can bounce him
all the way down to the first floor.”

Junie reached out and caught Lydia’s wrist. “Don’t.”

“You got other business, Junie,” said Lydia. “Let me—”

Junie stepped very close, forcing enough of herself between Lydia and Toys so that the DMS soldier had to look at her. “I am ordering you to let him go.”

Lydia blinked at her. “Ordering? Excuse me,
Miss
Flynn, I know that you’re the captain’s lady,
but this is a DMS matter.”

“No, this is a FreeTech matter. I am the director of that company. Toys works for me and with me, and that is by a special arrangement made by Mr. Church. I know that Joe disapproves, but this is no more his call to make than it is yours. Toys is under
my
protection. Let him go right now, or I will have you removed from this detail.”

Lydia stared at her. So did Toys.

In the space of a few seconds, Junie Flynn seemed to grow to fill the hallway. Her voice was no longer the soft, almost passive and conciliatory one she generally used. Now it was filled with authority. It was filled with command. And with an absolute confidence in that command.

Lydia Ruiz held her stare for three full seconds. Then, with a grunt of disgust, she shoved Toys away from her. The
young man thumped into the wall and nearly fell, but Junie darted out a hand and caught him under the armpit. She pulled him upright but then shifted her hand to the front of his shoulder, holding him gently but firmly against the wall.

Then Junie turned more fully toward Lydia. “This is a misunderstanding. A difference of opinion. Tell me, Lydia, are we going to have a problem between us now,
or are we done with it?”

It took Lydia a few seconds to orchestrate her response. She sighed and stepped back.

“No, ma’am.”

“Don’t give me that ‘ma’am’ crap,” said Junie with half a smile. “I don’t like being called that any more than Aunt Sallie does. I’m asking you a serious question, and I would like the courtesy of an honest answer. Are we done with this?”

Lydia nodded slowly, then said
it aloud. “We’re done with it.”

“Good. And … thank you.”

She pulled Toys off the wall and gently pushed him toward Circe’s room.

Lydia Ruiz stood her ground and watched them go. Then, after a moment, she followed.

Chapter Forty

Tanglewood Island

Pierce County, Washington

March 30, 11:52
A.M.

“You need to rest,” said Pharos as he bent over the bed to check the tubes and wires.

“Leave me alone, damn you,” snapped the Gentleman. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

“I dare say,” murmured Pharos, “but unless you’d rather that be sooner than later, you’ll rest now.”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. This is over
for now.”

“Over? Over?” The burned man tried his best to come out of that bed. To grab his doctor by the throat. To throttle the man. Instead, he twitched and wheezed, and his grasping hands closed around nothing. He sagged back, gasping, sweaty, defeated, but still filled with anger. “It’s not fucking over. He’s still alive. Christ, what does it take to kill one man? We’ve killed thousands.
Tens of thousands. We brought down the sodding Towers. Why can’t we kill him?”

Pharos pulled his chair close to the bed and sat down. “So we had a little bad luck. Let it go. I mean, look at what you’ve accomplished today. You’ve struck them above the heart. You’ve hurt them so deeply. This is the kind of injury that will never really heal. Do you think there will ever be a ball game, a concert,
an event in which the echo of this won’t be felt? Metal detectors, heightened security, paranoia, a loss of fun, a diminution of innocence and cultural arrogance. You’ve carved your mark into them. They will be talking about this day for a hundred years.”

The Gentleman spat. He tried to spit in Pharos’s face, but he lacked the lung capacity for that kind of velocity. The lump of yellow phlegm
landed on the Gentleman’s chest.

Pharos sighed, took a tissue from the dispenser on the bedside table, and wiped it up.

“You are going to win,” he said as he crumpled the tissue and dropped it into a waste can. “Don’t you realize that? You’re going to win. That’s your genius, my friend. That’s why we all love you.”

“Win?” the burned man stared at him, half smiling. “I sometimes wonder which
of us is more insane. I’ve been through trauma, so at least I have an excuse. What’s yours? Is this some congenital thing or have you been taking some of Doctor Rizzo’s special cocktails?”

“I—”

“How can you think, after all this time, that I give a tinker’s damn about winning? Look at me. What good is winning going to be for me?”

“I—”

“Sure, some of you will win. You’ll stroll off with billions.
So will any of the senior management who are still alive when it’s all over. And how bloody nice for you. If that’s what you mean by ‘winning,’ then please have the sense and courtesy not to include me in it. It’s rude, and it’s insensitive to brag to a dying man that you’re going to spend the rest of your life—the years and years you have in front of you—spending all that lovely money. Buying
yachts. Getting laid by models and movie stars. Living big. And note that the operative word is living, you miserable prick.” The burned man shook his head. “That’s your victory, and it doesn’t matter one drop to me. How can you not know that? More importantly, how could you have worked for Hugo Vox and the Seven Kings for so many years and not understand what this is?”

Pharos was silent for
several moments. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

But the burned man only sneered. “I don’t want your apology, Pharos. And I sure as shit don’t want your pity. All I want from you is understanding.”

Pharos rubbed his eyes and nodded. “I do understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then say it. Tell me what I want from this. Tell me what I need from this. Tell me what I will have from this.” Spit flew from
the melted lips with each word. “Say it, goddamn you.”

Pharos said it.

The word.

The single word that meant so much to the Gentleman. A word that had meant nearly as much to Hugo Vox, and to so many of the Kings.

A single word that was the ugliest and most damaging word in the entire dictionary of global politics. A word that must beat like a drum inside the head of creatures like Father Nicodemus.
An insane word that held only horrors for Pharos but that meant everything to this dying lump of burned flesh.

He said, “Chaos.”

Chapter Forty-one