The King of Plagues (37 page)

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Authors: Jonathan Maberry

BOOK: The King of Plagues
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Starbucks
Southampton, Pennsylvania
December 19, 5:54 P.M. EST
Every cop in five towns and some from Philadelphia descended on that parking lot. The streets were closed off, the airspace declared a no-fly zone except for SWAT choppers.
The cops wanted to bag my team, but that wasn’t going to happen. We had the right credentials, and by the time the first ambulance rolled in Echo Team was already at work on the survivors. Khalid was an actual M.D., so he and Circe sectioned the coffee shop and triaged the wounded. Bunny,
Top, and John Smith went to work patching bleeders, immobilizing injured backs and necks, removing the most immediately threatening glass splinters, and treating people for shock. Then waves of EMTs arrived, as well as a couple of carloads of nurses and doctors from the nearby hospital. As the professionals claimed the scene, we backed off.
I called the DMS but was unable to get Church on the phone, so I told the duty officer the pertinent details and said that we needed someone on the horn to the local chief of police and probably the governor.
Top caught up with me. “Khalid’s got the prisoner stabilized. Want to go have a little chitchat?”
“Yes, I do.”
My nerves were still jangling and I had the jitters and sick stomach that often follows violence and an adrenaline surge. If I had the time I’d throw up, then buy a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and curl up in my room and watch Comedy Central until I passed out. Fat chance of that. My thigh hurt like hell, and blood from the cuts had pooled in my shoe, so I sloshed as I walked.
I went over to the corner where the wounded shooter was being prepped for transport. Khalid had removed the man’s scarf, goggles, and hat to reveal a face that was as American as apple pie. Well, as American as pizza and cannolis. His skin was a greasy gray, and pain had etched deep lines on either side of his mouth. His eyes followed me with glassy uncertainty. An IV bag was plugged into his arm and he was wrapped in bandages. His uninjured hand was cuffed to the stretcher on which he lay.
Ghost sat a yard away looking like he was unhappy to have had his fun interrupted. His white pelt was streaked with blood, but he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt. I stood over the shooter and looked down at him.
“What’s his status?”
Khalid rocked back on his heels. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but we’ve stabilized him for transport.”
“Put him in the back of the TacV. Do not transport him until I say so. I need to ask him some questions, but we need privacy. Is he able to talk?”
The shooter answered that one himself. He glared up at me and said, “Fuck you.”
I smiled at him.
Starbucks
Southampton, Pennsylvania
December 19, 6:03 P.M. EST
While the shooter was being loaded, I popped the lock on my Explorer, found a plastic container of Wet Ones, and did a quick job of cleaning and examining Ghost. He had some minor cuts from flying debris and a splinter thick as a coffee stirrer gouged into his back. I told him to sit and be still and I pulled it out. Ghost whined and even bared a tooth at me, but it was all show. He braved it out, and luckily the splinter had gone in at an angle so it stuck mostly in the rubbery top skin, missing the real meat and muscle below. The cut didn’t even bleed much. I put a pad on it and wound some surgical gauze around his barrel chest.
“You’ll live, fella.”
Ghost used his “I’m dying, please be kind” face on me, so I gave him a couple of Snausages and emptied a bottle of spring water into his plastic bowl. My hands were shaking so badly I spilled half of it.
Ghost licked my hand and looked into my eyes for a moment before he bent and began lapping up the water. Yeah, the best of friends, no doubt.
My phone rang and I sat on the ground to take the call. Church.
“Ten shooters. Nine dead, one in DMS custody, and—”
He cut me off. “How is Circe? Is she injured?”
“No. In fact, she took out one of the shooters.”
There was a long silence. “She killed him?”
“Yes. But listen, there’s more. Your friend Marty Hanler … he’s gone, Boss. He went down in the initial attack. He never saw it coming, and I doubt he felt anything.”
Church was silent.
How did a guy like him process that kind of news? I’ve buried a lot of loved ones over the years and I’ve had to eat a lot of my own pain, but I also have had friends, like Rudy, my dad and my brother, and for a while Grace to help me deal.
Who did Church have?
All he said was, “That is unfortunate.”
Then he changed his tone, shifting into a “business as usual” mode that I found disconcerting.
He said, “Talk to that prisoner. Find out what he knows.”
“I can’t do that with a lot of civilians around.”
“Then do it in the air. I’m sending a Chinook from Willow Grove. Rendezvous with it in Tamanend Park. It’s two miles up Route 232.”
“Copy that.”
“Is the prisoner stable enough for interrogation?”
“Probably, but he’s a pro. He’s not going to talk—”
“Captain,” Church snapped, “I’m not asking for an estimate on how difficult it is for you to do your job. People are dying and he has information we need. Surely some solutions will occur to you.”
He hung up.
Ouch.
I WAS JUST about to climb into the back of the DMS TacV when Circe came out of the ruined Starbucks, wiping her hands with a wad of paper napkins. Her hair was in disarray and there were bloodstains on her clothes. Ghost wagged his tail at her. Guess he forgave her for being a cat person.
“How are you?” I asked. It was one of those insanely lame questions we ask when nothing more sensible occurs to us.
She shrugged, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You did good work back there,” I said.
Saying that caused a visible change in her. One moment she was a doctor who had spent the last twenty minutes struggling to save lives—she had been surrounded by death and blood, but to a degree she was in a known world and in the center of her own power—then my words jarred her back to the moment before she had entered the coffeehouse. She looked down at the powder burns on her hand. Circe had the calluses of someone who spent regular hours on a pistol range, and she’d handled her gun with professional skill and accuracy. Even so, her face went paler still and her mouth twisted into sickness.
“I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why did they do this?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
“I mean … why hit us? We’re not even close to anything yet.”
Her chest hitched as if she was fighting a sob. Or struggling to swallow bile that had boiled up into her throat.
“Where’d you get the gun?” I asked.
“It’s mine.”
“You had it on the plane?”
“Yes. I’m cleared to carry because of my work with
Sea of Hope
. I have to be ready to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice. Hugo Vox and Mr. Church cleared it for me.”
“You learn how to shoot at T-Town?”
She nodded and brushed a tear from her eye.
“Is this the first time you shot someone?” I asked gently.
She nodded again. “I’ve fired I don’t know how many rounds at the combat ranges … but … but …”
Suddenly her color changed from white to green. She abruptly spun away from me, ran to the side of the building, and threw up in a trash can. I tried to comfort her, but she gave a violent shake of her head and I backed off.
Ghost gave me a “smooth move” look and whined a little as Circe continued to cough up her fear and disgust and—if she was as human as the rest of us—self-loathing.
I understood that. No matter how much you hate someone, no matter how justified you are in pulling the trigger, at the end of the day there are only three possible emotional reactions to killing another human being. You either like it, in which case you shouldn’t ever be allowed to touch a gun again. Or you feel nothing, in which case the words “cry for help” should be tattooed on your forehead and they should lead you away to a nice, comfy therapist’s couch. Or you feel like you just committed an unforgivable sin. After the moment is over, as you stand there feeling the adrenaline ooze out of your pores and the cordite stink of discharged rounds mixes with the coppery smell of blood, you feel the enormity of it. You took a life.
Circe had shooter’s calluses. She had to have prepared for this moment.
That preparation saved lives, but you absolutely cannot fully prepare a person for the reality of having ended a human life. But the fact that it appalled Circe was proof of a heart and mind that was not already inured to basic humanity or corrupted by a disregard for the sanctity of all life.
I wanted to tell Circe this, but this wasn’t the time. She wouldn’t be able to hear it now. Right now she needed to survive the reality of the event, and that would add a layer of callus on her soul.
Damn.
“I got this,” said a voice, and I turned to see DeeDee. She closed on Circe and put a sisterly hand on her shoulder. A lot has been said about “brothers in arms.” In the twenty-first century we’re going to have to broaden that view to include sisters in arms. I backed off and then turned toward the TacV, where my suspect waited.
The Milhaus Estate
Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
December 19, 6:04 P.M. EST
On Martha’s Vineyard, police cars and an ambulance were tearing along the winding back roads toward the mansion of H. Carlton Milhaus, CEO of Milhaus and Berk Publishing. The company published, among other periodicals,
The Fiscal Conservative
and
Right Smart
. Milhaus’s eldest daughter, Sandra, was using the estate for a combination holiday party for the company’s executives and fund-raiser for the Republic senator from Massachusetts.
As the emergency vehicles roared through the gates, the officers could see that every light in the house was on. Despite the cold, people in cocktail dresses and dinner jackets were standing outside on the patio and lawn. Many of them had hands to their throats or faces, and all of them had shocked eyes.
The first-in officers knew that everything they said, everything they did, here among these people would be scrutinized. A single misstep, a carelessly chosen word, could crush their careers. They’d seen it happen over and over again to their peers. Their former peers.
The first responders entered with as much haste as caution would allow. The EMTs were a dozen steps behind.
They stepped into a world of elegance and sophistication, of holiday cheer and conspicuous wealth, of shocked white faces and bright red blood.
Sandra Milhaus lay faceup, her feet on the second and third steps of the
grand staircase, her arms flung wide with an inartistic abandon, her green silk gown twisted around her pale legs. Her eyes were open, as was her mouth. Her coiffed blond curls lay in the center of a pool of blood that, by perverse chance, spread around her like a halo and reflected the Christmas lights on the walls and banister. That she was dead was obvious, even from a dozen feet away.
The officers cut each other a quick glance, knowing they had just stepped out of a potential “incident” at the party of one of the richest families on the Vineyard and stepped into a crime scene that would be front-page news, even with all that was going on in London. When they were still five feet away they froze.
Sandra Milhaus was not merely dead. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with lumps like boils. Some of them had clearly burst and leaked blood or clear fluid that was tinged with pink. The others were pale knobs, the color lost from the settling of blood in her body after her heart had stopped.
They stood on either side of her, careful not to step in the blood.
“Who can tell me what happened?” asked Jimmy Redwood, the male officer. “Was she allergic to anything?”
There were a hundred people clustered around. On the stairs and balcony above, in the open doorway of the grand ballroom to their right and the dining room to their left. The officers recognized many of the faces from the news.
Redwood’s partner, Debbie Tobias, turned to the nearest person, an older woman. “Ma’am, do you know if she ate something she wasn’t supposed to?”
The woman shook her head and didn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—answer.
“Please,” said Tobias, pitching her voice for authority but not intimidation, “was she sick before the party?”
The EMTs came hustling in, carrying their heavy equipment boxes.
“What have we got, Jimmy?” the lead paramedic asked Redwood.
“I don’t know, Barney. Looks like allergic reaction.”
The EMT closed on the body. And stopped.
They looked at each other.
This wasn’t anaphylaxis.
“Oh, shit,” said Barney.
His partner, Paresh, cut a worried look at the crowd and then pulled Tobias closer. He whispered urgently in her ear, “Get everyone out of here, but keep them contained.”
Barney was already on the phone, calling in the visible symptoms. Neither he nor his partner made any attempt to touch Sandra Milhaus.
Tobias looked up at Paresh. “What is it?”
But the EMT shook his head. “I don’t know. But for God’s sake get these people contained, Debbie.
Now!
”
Feasterville, Pennsylvania
December 19, 6:05 P.M. EST
Rafael Santoro did not want to make this call. In all the years during which he had served the Goddess and the Seven Kings he had only had to make such a call twice. This was the third time he would have to report not one failure but two.
The King of Plagues answered, his voice mildly distorted by his scrambler.
Instead of a greeting, Gault said, “I’m watching CNN. I’m hearing a lot about an attack on a house in Jenkintown that ended with four dead and two taken. I’m also hearing about a bunch of trigger-happy wankers who shot up an effing Starbucks. I’m hearing about civilian casualties. I’m hearing about a dead sodding writer. Can you guess what I’m not hearing about? I’m not hearing about Amber-fucking-Taylor and her children being spooned into body bags. I’m not hearing about a dead federal agent named Joe-effing-Ledger. Want to fucking tell me why not?”
Santoro took a calming breath. He was deeply ashamed. “I have no excuses.”
“Who’d you send? The frigging Mousketeers?”
“I used local assets on both jobs.”
“Kingsmen?”
“Chosen. Trey Foster and his team out of Philadelphia were given the Taylor pickup. I used Sarducci and his team for Starbucks. That is the Jersey crew I’ve used for three situations for the Kings over the last year.”
“Did they screw those up, too?” Gault’s voice was loud and full of acid.
“No,” said Santoro calmly. “Both teams have done good work for us in the past.”
“God damn it, Rafael.”
“They were unprepared for the arrival of DMS field teams at both locations.”
“What?”
Gault screamed the question so loud Santoro winced and held the phone away from his ear. When the King of Plagues was done shouting, Santoro explained what had happened.
“Such calamities are the price when action is taken without planning, yes? Had I been given more time, I would have scouted the area, set watchers on the perimeter, and listened for activity on our information stream. However …” He let the rest hang.
“Describe them to me,” snapped Gault, and when Santoro finished he said, “That’s sodding Echo Team. They’re Ledger’s team, but what the bloody hell are they doing in Southampton?”
Gault shouted more and Santoro endured it, sighing quietly as he drove. As much as he loved and honored the new consort of the Goddess and even though he would gladly die for this man, as he would for any of the Kings, Sebastian Gault could be a tiresome bore. And he was loud. Santoro, however, was never loud. Loud was crass—except for the loud shrieks and cries of his
angels
in their moment of transformation.
“How bad is this?” asked Gault.
“Nine of the Jersey team are dead, as are four of the Philadelphia team. Three operatives are in DMS custody.”
“Can you get to them?”
“Impossible.”
“What do they know?”
“Nothing of any value. Even under torture they have nothing useful to reveal.”
Which was only partly true. They knew Santoro’s name and that he worked for the Seven Kings, but Santoro did not think that this provided enough of a threat to risk having the King of Plagues lose his temper again.
“What would you like me to do?”
Gault sighed. “There’s nothing you can do. Let the DMS have them.” He sighed again, deeply and for a long time. Santoro could almost feel
Gault’s blood pressure dropping. “Besides … and to be fair, I did ask for this to be splashed across the news feeds. It was. I was hoping that it would reinforce the threatening presence of the Kings … not make us look like imbeciles.”
Santoro did not comment.
“Very well,” said Gault. “We’re going to write this off. Perhaps the Goddess can find a way to spin this in our favor. In the meantime, put a couple of people you can trust on Ledger, and if the opportunity comes up kill the bloody bastard.”
“With pleasure.”
“Meanwhile, we have bigger fish to fry. The Inner Circle should be getting some very bad news right about now. You did good work setting that up,” Gault said grudgingly. “The Goddess is well pleased.”
“It is always my pleasure to serve the Goddess,” said Santoro.
He disconnected and drove randomly through the towns that adjoined Southampton. It hurt him that both of his victims had slipped the punch. Perhaps, if he was lucky and the grace of the Goddess touched his destiny, he would have another opportunity to kill those two. This time, however, he would do the job himself. Not once in his entire life had Santoro failed when he, rather than a team, was the instrument of death. Not once.

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