“Sing me his praises another time,” said Church. “Right now, I’d like you to tell me what he said.”
“Okay, but you need to understand that I don’t think anything was ever put into play, because it wasn’t long after that the Kings were torn down by your lot. And now Hugo and the other Kings are all dead.”
“Understood.”
“Well, Hugo said that a strike at a sports arena would be hugely successful. Security is never as good as they think it is. Materials and weapons could be brought in any of a dozen ways. Hidden in parts for an industrial air conditioner, for example. Like that. He said if you did it right and planned ahead, you could manage it quite easily. And then it would be a matter of picking the right event. Hugo favored baseball over any other sport because it’s known as the national bloody pastime. It’s more American than hockey. Even more than football, as he saw it. And opening day would mean a greater sentimental attachment and better media coverage. His second choice would be the World Series, but since you couldn’t know which teams would be playing, it would be more difficult to plan ahead.”
“I see,” said Church. “And it’s your opinion that someone has taken Hugo’s idea and put it into play?”
Toys laughed. Short and ugly. “Junie told me what you think of coincidences. I never thought much of them, either.”
“Is there anything else?” asked Church.
“Nothing specific, but … if someone’s taken Hugo’s idea, doesn’t that mean they have access to Seven Kings’ information? I mean, I know Hugo’s island was destroyed, but Sebastian and the others were clever bastards, and they were bloody paranoid. They could have made duplicates of their records, contacts, research … Someone could do a lot of harm with even a fraction of that.”
“Yes,” said Church dryly, “that had occurred to us.”
He glanced at me as he said this. I’ve spent a lot of the last few years of my life hunting down groups that had been using pieces of the Kings’ science and fragments of their infrastructure. They’re a bit like genital herpes. They never quite go away.
“Look,” said Toys, “I’m sorry that I don’t have something more concrete. I left that all behind, and Hugo shut the doors pretty heavily after the Ten Plagues Initiative. All I bleeding well have are suspicions and a few things I remember. Would you rather I didn’t call?”
“Of course not,” said Church mildly. “And we do appreciate this information. Truly. Did Hugo say how he planned to make that attack? Would he have used drones for this attack?”
“Not exactly. Not back then, anyway. Drones weren’t that practical back then. The technology’s come a long way since he told us about it, but he did say that one of these days drones would be the primary weapon of terrorism. He said that they’d be practical.”
“Practical,” echoed Church.
“His word.”
“Thank you, Mr. Chismer. Let me know if you remember anything else.”
He disconnected the call.
I glanced up at him. “And you’re absolutely sure Hugo Vox is dead?”
He didn’t answer. A few years ago, Church said that he’d personally killed Vox. I doubted Church would make a claim like that unless he was sure.
Even so, I felt like Vox’s ghost was standing just out of sight, laughing at us.
Chapter Sixty
UC San Diego Medical Center
200 West Arbor Drive
San Diego, California
March 30, 5:45 P.M.
“They’re bringing him up!” shouted Lydia, and immediately Junie and Toys burst from Circe’s room and ran to the elevators. The doors opened as they got there and a team of nurses and doctors came hurrying out, pushing a gurney on which Rudy Sanchez lay moaning and bloody. DMS Agent Cowpers was with them, his sidearm drawn but held down beside his leg. He stepped out and waved everyone back to clear the way.
“Rudy!” cried Junie, reaching for the injured man’s hand. Rudy flapped his hand at her, clawing the air as if trying to tear through some envelope of pain in order to reach her. Their fingers met, entwined, and then she was running alongside the gurney, holding his hand. They rushed to the empty ICU room next to Circe’s.
Lydia Ruiz and Sam Imura grabbed Cowpers and pulled him aside, and Toys was bemused to see that the agent was thrust against the wall with no more force than Lydia had used on him.
“What the fuck happened?” demanded Lydia. A nurse tried to tell her to watch her language, but Lydia fried her with a glare.
While Cowpers began recounting what appeared to be a contradictory story about an empty chapel and a surprise attack, Toys ghosted up to stand outside the ICU room. He watched as the medical team began examining Rudy. From what Toys could see, the injuries did not look too bad. Some cuts and bruises on his face and what looked like burns on his hand. But Rudy thrashed and moaned as if in great agony. It was clear that he was delirious and maybe on the edge of a psychotic break. His eyes were wild with shock or madness.
Junie tried to soothe him, and she had to fight to keep her place beside him. The nurses did not seem able to shake her. That amused Toys. He always liked Junie, but his respect for her strength was growing.
Fierce little bitch, he thought. A good match for that thug, Ledger.
Then his attention was torn away from thoughts of Junie, of Ledger, of anything. A word hung on the air as clearly as if it had been painted there. A word. A name. Something Toys heard only as an afterthought as Rudy Sanchez, in his delirium, mumbled it.
Toys reeled.
Rudy said it again.
And again.
That same name.
That dreadful, impossible name.
He watched Rudy’s bloody lips form it again. Speak it again.
“Nicodemus … Nicodemus…”
Chapter Sixty-one
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 30, 5:47 P.M.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“For the moment, nothing. Because of your concussion, the doctors want you here for at least another day.”
“The doctors can kiss my—”
The door jerked open, and Brick hurried in without waiting. “Boss, turn on the TV. Shit is hitting the damn fan.”
I snatched up the remote and hit the button. It wasn’t necessary to ask Brick which channel, because there was only one story and it was on every channel. As soon as the screen came to life, we all looked into listless, dead eyes. The reporters were yelling. Actually yelling. They were that excited.
Brick and I looked at Church, expecting him to be as rattled as us. We should have known better. He sighed, removed his glasses, cleaned the lenses with a handkerchief, put his glasses back on, and then folded the handkerchief and tucked it neatly back into his jacket pocket.
“It is not generally my policy to say, ‘I told you so,’” he murmured, “but I did advise the president to disclose this and make a full statement to the nation.”
“Too late now,” I said.
“Yes,” said Church. “Months too late.”
“What’s going to happen?” asked Brick.
Church shook his head. “A witch hunt. And very likely criminal charges. The CIA in its present form will be finished. Done. There’s no way they can recover from this.”
“Will the president?” I asked.
Church gave a small shrug. “If he’d revealed this within hours of Echo Team hitting the Resort, he’d have come out of it as a hero. A sure thing for a second term. Now … his only chance will be to throw the CIA under the bus and hope that his delaying of this information doesn’t result in impeachment.”
“Will it?”
Church nodded. “Oh yes. He’s done, too. And the previous administration may face criminal charges. Some members certainly will, though some people may fall on their sword to keep the former president from having to take any direct blame. Plausible deniability is elastic.”
“Damn,
” said Brick.
“What’s our play in this?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Our play? We have no play, Captain. We did a very specific mission, we accomplished as many of the goals of that as were possible, and we turned all of the evidence and materials over to the White House, the NSA, Homeland, and other relevant authorities. We were out of it once your team left the island. We have no part in this. And, quite frankly, I can’t waste much time on it. I made my recommendations when there was time to do this all the right way.”
He said it with a note of inflexible finality. Brick and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised. He mouthed the words, “Oh boy.” Shaking his head, he went back out into the hall.
“Got to ask, though,” I said to Church. “What do you think of the timing of this? The video being released today, while all this is going on.”
“Seven Kings,” he said. “Without a doubt.”
“Is this the other shoe you thought they were going to drop?”
“Hard to say. It’s a considerable punch. There will be shock waves around the world. Embassies will need to be put on high alert, and some will probably need to be evacuated. We’re fortunate that the attack at the ballpark happened on a Sunday rather than a business day. The president was able to keep the market from opening. I only hope POTUS is cautious enough to keep the stock exchange closed for the rest of the week. This could crash the economy.”
I nodded. “But is this it? Is this the endgame for the Kings and does that mean we’ve lost the whole damn fight? The attack in Philly and then this to take down the president. I mean … this is bad. This could do more damage to the economy, world opinion, and our standing in the global community than the fall of any dozen towers. I’ve got a bad case of the shakes happening here because it looks like the Kings picked the kind of fight the DMS isn’t set up for.”
As if in answer, Church’s phone rang again.
He looked at the display and walked out into the hall to take the call. I could see him stiffen as he listened. Then he spoke very quietly for several minutes. His body looked incredibly tense. Beside him, Brick looked on with growing concern. Brick shot me a brief, worried look.
Few things worry Brick.
Church ended his call and spoke with Brick for a moment. Then the big soldier went hurrying off. I watched Church take a moment to compose himself before reentering my room. He is not a man who rattles easily. Or, like, at all. But he looked rattled now. You had to know him to tell, though. He came in and sat down, crossed his legs and drummed his fingers very slowly on his thigh. That’s his tell. He only does that when he’s been pushed out of his calm space. He does it very slowly and deliberately, as if each tap hammers another nail back into his calm. I said nothing, waiting him out, and dreading what he was going to say.
Finally he took a breath, exhaled, nodded as if agreeing with a thought. “That was Chief Petty Officer Ruiz. There has been an incident at UC Medical Center in San Diego. Doctor Sanchez has been attacked.” He held up a hand to stop me from jumping out of the bed. “Hear me out. Doctor Sanchez is alive and is not in danger. He has a concussion.”
“How’s that possible?” I demanded. “You told me you had a man on Rudy. Cowpers, right?”
“Agent Cowpers escorted Doctor Sanchez to a chapel at the hospital where Circe is staying. He cleared the chapel before letting Doctor Sanchez enter. However, he heard the doctor cry out. And when he went back into the chapel, he found Doctor Sanchez unconscious on the floor between two pews. He had been beaten by a man dressed as a priest. He has a head injury and some burns.”
“Burns?”
“On his hand.”
“Who did this?” I demanded. “Who the hell is this priest?”
“When he was brought upstairs, Doctor Sanchez was semiconscious and murmuring a name.” He paused to take a steadying breath. “Nicodemus.”
Chapter Sixty-two
Over Nevada Airspace
March 30, 8:46 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
The little camera on the wall of the black woman’s townhouse captured everything.
The silver flash of the knife as it moved.
The intense and lovely red of blood. Always darker than people expected. Rich.
The slithery sound of steel stabbing through clothes and deep into muscle and organs.
The piercing shriek of pain.
Boy watched it all and felt her pulse quicken. She felt herself get wet and ached to touch herself, to stroke herself to orgasm as the murder unfolded before her on the big-screen TV.
Chapter Sixty-three
27 Eighth Avenue
Park Slope, Brooklyn
March 30, 5:48 P.M.
“Taking a long time,” said Kang. “She’s usually in and out.”
“You want to tell her she’s wasting our time?” asked Tank.
Kang snorted. “No thanks. I like my nutsack attached, thank you. I was just saying—”
They suddenly turned at the sound of shattering glass. Tank’s gun was in his hand before he completed the turn, and he looked up to see the bloody figure fly outward from the second-floor window. It fell, trailing a comet’s tail of glittering fragments and shreds of curtain as Kang and Colby both cried.
The body slammed down on the roof of the Escalade with enough force to blow out the windows. Tank spun away, shielding his eyes from the safety glass.
“Auntie!” he bellowed.
The body had landed solidly and was sprawled like a broken doll in a crater of black metal. The head hung down over the cracked windshield. Eyes vacant, mouth open. Throat cut.
It was a man.
Had been a man.
Now it was meat.
Through the open second-floor window, Tank heard a shriek of terrible agony. And then two gunshots.
Tank charged up the steps and threw his shoulder against the door, which splintered inward with a huge crash. Colby and Kang were right behind him.
They almost tripped over the body at the foot of the stairs.
This one was a woman.
She wore black clothes and a ski mask. Her broken right index finger was twisted inside the trigger guard of a .22 automatic pistol. A knife was buried to the hilt in her eye socket.
There was a third shot from upstairs.
A fourth.
“Federal agents,” bellowed Colby, but Tank saved his breath for running. He jumped over the corpse and took the stairs three at a time. The entire second-floor landing was painted with blood. On the floor, on the walls, splashed over the big painting at the top of the steps.
There was a third body there. His arm jagged to the right, and a vicious compound fracture had sent the ends of his humerus through the meat of his biceps. His throat looked wrong. Flattened. As if the entire trachea and hyoid bone had been crushed.
The left-hand hall was empty. But a trail of blood led to the front bedroom, and inside were the sounds of a violent struggle. Screams and curses. Tank and the others barreled down the hall and burst into the master bedroom. Two figures stood locked in a deadly struggle. A man dressed in the same dark clothes as the other assassins, and Aunt Sallie.
Both of them were hurt. Both were bleeding. The handle of a knife protruded from Auntie’s lower back, and blood streamed from both nostrils and bubbled over her lower lip. She had one hand locked around the wrist of the man, and his hand held a smoking pistol; his face was a torn mask of ruined flesh. One eye was gone, burst and dripping, and his nose was shattered, but he had Auntie’s throat in his other hand and was driving her toward the smashed-out window. The figures were locked in a terminal dance.
Tank reached the man in two long strides. He grabbed the wrist of the gun hand and tore it out of Auntie’s grip, clamped another hand around the back of the man’s neck, and, with a savage grunt, dragged him backward. Tank lifted him into the air and slammed him down as he quickly knelt. The man’s spine struck Tank’s knee and broke with a sound as loud as any gunshot.
With a grunt of
fury, he shoved the man aside just as Colby and Kang were lunging to catch Aunt Sallie before she fell out the window. Kang muscled in between them and scooped her up.
“Call 911!” he roared.
In his arms, Aunt Sallie’s face was knotted with pain.
Then her eyes rolled high and white and she went totally slack.
Chapter Sixty-four
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 30, 6:31 P.M.
The day was far from done with us. Just as Church finished telling me about Rudy, his phone rang again. I could tell that he didn’t want to answer it. His face was a stone mask.
He listened, and I saw the color drain from his skin.
It was bad. Worse than bad.
“Is she alive?” he said.
Those are not good words, no matter who they’re attached to.
She.
There are a lot of women in my life. In Church’s. All of them are precious. All of them, in one way or another, are family.
There was pain on Church’s face, in his eyes. He listened.
Then he said, “I am initiating a Level One-A-One security protocol. Alert all stations. Activate the Red Blanket. Do it now. Call me when it’s done.”
Church lowered the phone and sagged back.
“Christ,” I said, “what happened?”
He had to take a moment to collect himself. Whatever the news was, it was hurting him. “There has been another attack on our people,” he said in a ghostly quiet voice.
I tensed, actually gripping fistfuls of the sheets as if they could keep me braced for what was coming.
“Aunt Sallie is in critical condition with a knife wound to her right kidney,” he said slowly. He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting, getting a grip on his emotions. “The emergency surgeons are not optimistic.”