by Mark Alpert
Derek didn’t react, didn’t move. Jenna leaned closer to him. “The Latin Kings?” she whispered. “That gang is still in this neighborhood?”
“Yeah. Bunch of stupid-ass punks.” Derek blinked, and a tear of blood leaked from the corner of his eye. “Never liked them. They’ve been here since I was a kid.”
The leader of the Latin Kings lifted his head a little more, exposing a pencil-thin mustache and a big toothy grin. “Hey, bro, you listening? I know you got a lady friend in there, and maybe I interrupted something you two were doing. But since you and your girlfriend are in my territory without permission, the least you could do is show me a little courtesy, right?”
Derek frowned. Another bloody tear trickled down the side of his nose. “I am showing you courtesy.” He raised his voice just enough so that the Latin King could hear it. “I haven’t killed you yet.”
The gangbanger tilted his head back and laughed. Then he stepped to the side, giving up the protective cover of the statue. At the same time, he lowered his shotgun and laid it on the grass next to the goddess’s feet. “Okay, how’s this? I’m putting down my gun. I’m giving you proof of my good intentions.” He spread his arms wide. He wore black pants, a bright gold T-shirt, and a necklace of black-and-gold beads. “So how about you let me come inside your crypt? We got some business to discuss, man. I think you’ll find it very interesting.”
“You can talk from right there.” Derek leaned forward, thrusting the barrel of his pistol between the mausoleum’s doors. “Go ahead. Say what you want to say.”
The guy laughed again. It was an easy, natural laugh, not fake at all. Then he shook his head. “No, I want a private conversation.” He took a step toward them. “Look, you can shoot me if you want. But then my muchachos are gonna fire back at you. Maybe they’ll hit you and maybe they won’t, but either way they’re gonna make a lot of noise. And that’ll get somebody’s attention. The cops will hear it, those fucking FSU pendejos.” He took another step forward. “Believe me, you don’t want those cops to come up here, brother. They’ve been hunting all over the city for you.”
He kept walking toward the mausoleum, slow and casual. Jenna thought for sure that Derek would start shooting, but he held his fire. She supposed it was a logical choice: the FSU was definitely a bigger danger than this black-and-gold gangbanger. He didn’t even look threatening. He was grinning too much, as if he thought the whole confrontation was a joke.
And yet he had twenty well-armed men following his orders, so he was clearly more than a joker. As he came closer, Jenna felt both fear and hope inside her. This is an opportunity. This guy can help me get away.
Soon he stood right in front of the mausoleum. Derek opened the doors a little wider but kept his gun trained on the gangbanger. The guy stopped grinning and put a serious expression on his face, which was caramel-colored and surprisingly handsome, even with that awful crown tattoo. He was young but not a teenager, probably in his early twenties. Above his bandanna, spiky black hair sprouted from the top of his head.
“Yeah, this is better. Now I don’t have to shout anymore. Let me introduce myself—I’m King Hector of the Almighty Latin King Nation.”
Derek frowned again. “King Hector?”
“Well, my legal name is Hector Torres. But in our Nation, every man is a King.” He raised his right hand and made a gang sign, bending his middle and ring fingers. “Amor De Rey. That’s our motto in Spanish. It means ‘King’s Love.’”
“I’ll take your word for it. What do you want from us?”
Hector ignored Derek’s question and turned to Jenna instead. He dropped the gang sign and bowed slightly in her direction. “Buenas tardes, chica. You’re very beautiful, you know that?”
Jenna rolled her eyes. Her hair was a tangled mess, her nightshirt was damp with sweat, and she smelled like a swamp. She wasn’t in the mood for compliments. “And you’re a bad liar.”
“Hey, I’m polite. Nothing wrong with that. So why don’t you be polite too and invite me inside?” He turned back to Derek and pointed at the gun in his hand. “Believe me, I won’t try to jump you. I’m not stupid, man. I saw how fast you are. Shit, you’re faster than a fucking cobra.”
Derek kept him waiting for a few more seconds. Then he pushed one of the doors all the way open and let Hector inside the mausoleum. Jenna backed up toward the stained-glass window on the far wall, but Derek stayed close to the guy, ready to blow his brains out if he made a wrong move.
Hector turned his head this way and that, as if admiring the marble room. Then he focused on Derek. “I have to be honest with you, amigo. You don’t look so good. Your eyes are bleeding.”
“It’s nothing. I can see you just fine.” He raised his gun, pointing it at the Latin King’s forehead.
Hector didn’t look at the pistol. He was playing it cool, pretending not to notice it. “So what’s your story, brother? Did you used to work for the FSU?”
Derek shook his head. “No. Why would you think that?”
“Because you’re just like one of their cowboys. You know, big and fast and strong.”
“Cowboys?”
“Yeah, vaqueros, badasses. It’s a special kind of officer the FSU has, one for each district. I call them cowboys because that’s what they look like when they’re riding around in their armored trucks. The one in Brooklyn is a big white asshole with a buzz cut. He was there last night, at Bay Parkway, firing that machine gun at the crowd. Then he jumped out of the tower when you went after him with the Stryker.”
Derek said nothing, but Jenna could guess what he was thinking. She remembered the man they saw above the elevated subway tracks, the ghostly figure jumping from the sentry tower. Azrael, the Angel of Death.
She stepped toward Hector. “You know that FSU officer? You’ve seen him before last night?”
“Yeah, almost every day for the past three months. That vaquero pays special attention to the Latino neighborhoods like Sunset Park. He thinks we’re hiding all our illegal cousins under our beds and in our closets. I told my boys to keep an eye on him all the time, wherever he goes. Because he’s bad fucking news.”
Jenna nodded. “We saw what he did at Bay Parkway. How he shot all those people.”
“That’s nothing new for him. He’s been killing people ever since he got here. He and his men bust into apartments in the middle of the night. They arrest women, kids, old people in wheelchairs. And if anyone complains, he shuts them up fast.” Hector grimaced and shook his head. “Let me ask you a question. Where did your family come from? Are you an Arab or something?”
“My parents came from Pakistan, but I was born here. At Kings County Hospital.”
“But the Feds still give you shit, right? They stop you on the street and ask for your ID and frisk you. They assume you’re a terrorist, and that’s fucked up. But wait till you hear my story.” He slapped his palm against his chest, making it thump. “I was born here too. And my parents and grandparents were born here. My great-grandparents were immigrants, they came to New York seventy-five years ago. But they came from Puerto Rico, so they were already American.”
Derek let out a grunt. He sounded impatient. “Is there a point to this story?”
“Come on, man, hear me out. This is a fucking injustice. When that candy-ass in the White House sent the FSU to New York, who do you think they came after first? Whose apartments did they bust into?” Hector’s voice rose. His black-and-gold necklace swung back and forth. “They came after us—the Puerto Ricans, the Dominicans, the Mexicans. We were the main targets for all the raids and roundups. And you know what the cops said when we tried to tell them we were legal? They said, ‘You all look the same to us. We can’t tell you spics apart.’”
Hector was breathing hard, fuming, mad as hell. Derek, though, seemed unimpressed. He let out another impatient grunt, and Jenna suspected he was about to say something insulting. She cut him off before he could. “Hector, can we get back to that FSU officer you were talking
about? Did you ever see him do anything physically extraordinary? Anything way beyond normal in terms of speed or strength?”
Hector nodded vigorously. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. One time, an old fat guy yelled at him in the street, called him a Nazi. Well, the cowboy grabbed him under the jaw and picked him up with one hand. Like this.” He raised his hand and clasped his own neck, just below the jaw. “Then he shook the fat guy around until he broke his fucking neck. He paralyzed the guy. And the cowboy got away with it, because all the other cops backed him up. They said he was acting in self-defense. Fucking unbelievable.”
“And you said there are others like him? Working for the FSU?”
“Yeah, there’s another big asshole who leads the raids in the Federal Service District in the Bronx. I got a look at him last month when I went to a sit-down with the Latin Kings up there. And I hear there’s one in the Newark District too.”
Derek scowled, his impatience boiling over. He stretched his arm and brought his pistol a few inches closer to Hector’s forehead. “I only care about one thing. What’s the name of the asshole cowboy in Brooklyn?”
Hector held up his hands as if surrendering. “Sorry, brother. I don’t know.”
“Are you sure about that?” Derek closed the gap between them and pressed the gun against Hector’s left temple. The pressure from the muzzle creased his crown tattoo. “Are you trying as hard as you can to remember?”
Hector seemed remarkably calm for someone with a gun to his head. His eyes drifted a bit to the left, but he managed a smile. “Don’t shoot me, all right? There’s a reason I can’t remember his name, and that’s because I never knew it. The FSU cops don’t wear name tags or badge numbers like the New York cops do.” He waited for a response, but Derek said nothing. So Hector kept talking, his hands still up in the air. “They say they don’t wear name tags because they’re an antiterrorism unit, and they don’t want the terrorists to know their names. But that’s bullshit. They keep their names secret because they’re the fucking secret police.”
Jenna waited a few more seconds, but Derek didn’t lower his gun. He was weeping blood again, the red tears sliding down his cheeks. She started to worry that he’d do something stupid, maybe even shoot Hector, so she stepped toward Derek and got his attention. “You think this FSU officer might’ve been in the army? One of the soldiers in your unit?”
Derek nodded. Reluctantly, he withdrew his gun, pulling it away from Hector’s temple. “Yeah. I just don’t know which one. There were a dozen big white guys who volunteered for the injections. And they all had buzz cuts.”
Jenna turned to Hector, who’d lowered his hands. “Let me ask you another question about that officer. Did you ever notice if he suffered from any side effects? Like what Derek has—bleeding eyes, mottled skin? Or anything else that looked unusual?”
Hector didn’t answer right away. He turned his head slightly, his gaze shifting back and forth between Derek and Jenna. “Okay, now I get it. The army gave drugs to the soldiers? To turn them into vaqueros?” He pointed at Derek. “But the drugs fucked you up, right? And now you’re pissed at the government?” Hector nodded, confirming his own guesses, his face jumpy and excited. Then he pointed at Jenna. “And you’re part of it too, chica? You sound like you’re a doctor or something. Like you know all about it.”
Jenna frowned. She hadn’t realized she’d revealed so much. Hector was smart, no doubt about it. But maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she could make an arrangement with him. “Hector, how many Latin Kings are there? Just the twenty who came with you? Or are there more?”
He grinned again. “Oh, a lot more. The muchachos I brought with me are just my personal bodyguards. We got five hundred Kings in Sunset Park and another seven hundred in East New York.” He stuck out his chest, preening. “And I’m building alliances too. With the Crips in Flatbush, the Bloods in the Bronx, the Trinitarios in Manhattan. We even got a headquarters, at the Triborough Houses in East Harlem.”
“Alliances? To do what?”
“What do you think? To fight the FSU.” He raised his hand and made his gang sign again. “Before those pendejos came to New York, we were doing stupid shit, beefing with each other, breaking up into a million little sets. But now we’re working together. We got a common enemy.”
“Well, I want to join your alliance. I can fight too.”
Derek turned his head and glared at her. His red tears came faster now, as if his raging heart was pumping them out. He kept his gun trained on Hector, and Jenna was very grateful that the gangbanger was there. If she and Derek had been alone, he definitely would’ve shot her, at least in a nonessential part of her anatomy. “You think I’m an idiot, Jenna? You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
Hector held out his hands. “Hey, hey, calm down, brother.”
Blood streamed from Derek’s eyes. It sheeted down his cheeks and trickled into his mouth and dripped from his chin. He had two gaping wounds where his eyes should’ve been, but somehow he could still see Jenna, still glare at her with cold fury. “I know why you’re being so friendly with this punk. You don’t want to cure me. You’re trying to get away from me.”
Jenna steeled herself. Derek needed to know the truth. “Look, you’re asking for the impossible. I can’t cure you, at least not by myself. The damage to your DNA is too extensive. We’re gonna need a whole lab and a team of researchers to fix it. But maybe Hector can help us with all that.”
“Hector?” Derek’s voice rose. The truth was enraging him. “How can he help?”
“It’s like he said—we need to get everyone behind us and fight the FSU. First, we have to shut down Palindrome and free all the detainees. Then we have to get the government to take responsibility for treating you and all the other soldiers they experimented on. It won’t be easy, but if we work together, we can—”
“This scumbag won’t help us!” Derek thrust his gun again at Hector’s head, pressing the muzzle against the black-and-gold bandanna. “He just wants to use me! Just like the army did!”
Hector winced. “No, brother, I—
“Shut up! SHUT UP!”
He was going to pull the trigger. Jenna was sure of it.
But before he could fire the gun, she heard the sound of glass breaking. Something crashed through the stained-glass window at the back of the mausoleum. It landed on the marble floor and bounced with a metallic clang. It looked like a hugely oversized bullet, about three inches long and two inches in diameter.
Derek lowered his pistol and charged toward her.
“GRENADE!”
TWELVE
Frazier pulled the trigger of the M320 launcher attached to his rifle. The grenade shot out of the muzzle and sped toward the mausoleum at two hundred miles per hour. But Frazier’s eyesight was so good that he could clearly see the stubby projectile in flight, arcing over the dead grass and gravestones.
It was beautiful. And so was the sound of it smashing through the stained-glass window at the back of the tomb. But the best part was the anticipation. In exactly half a second the grenade would detonate on the mausoleum’s floor and vaporize the motherfuckers inside.
Time slowed down for him, creeping almost to a halt. That was one of the effects of the injections: if Frazier put his mind to it, he could decelerate the flow of images streaming into his brain and study them like the frames of a film reel. He saw the stained-glass window shatter into a thousand shards, all of them falling in a brief, brilliant shower. He saw his soldiers advance from their positions, rising from behind the headstones they’d been using for cover. And he saw them aim their rifles at the punks from Sunset Park, the stupid kids with their gold-and-black necklaces and bandannas, crouched behind the monuments on the other side of the mausoleum.
Then the grenade exploded. A white-hot flash lit up the empty window, and a tenth of a second later Frazier heard and felt the blast. It hammered the mausoleum’s stone walls, shaking the whole structure. The noise echoed across the cemetery, and a
hundred birds scattered from the trees.
Frazier’s joy was so intense, he closed his eyes to savor it. He imagined Powell dying, his huge body ripped apart. He pictured the Khan girl too, pulped inside her nightshirt, and that Latin King gangbanger drowning in his own blood. They deserved it, all three of them. Powell was a traitor, the worst kind of criminal. The others were accomplices, collateral damage.
And then, while his eyes were still closed, another image emerged from the darkness. He pictured a woman running through the woods of southern Missouri. It was a memory of something that had happened when Frazier was fourteen, a week after his little brother died. He saw himself with a hunting rifle in his hand, chasing a grown woman through the woods. The woman was short and fat and wore loose, green scrubs that snagged on the bushes as she tried to get away. She was the nurse from the emergency room, the one who’d refused to treat Andy.
But something was wrong. Someone was coughing.
Frazier opened his eyes. Black smoke billowed from the mausoleum’s window. His soldiers were outflanking the Latin Kings, maneuvering behind the dumb punks and cutting them down. But beneath the noise of the gunfire and the still echoing explosion, he heard a man yelling in Spanish and a woman coughing and gasping.
It was impossible. The blast should’ve killed all of them. And yet somehow they’d survived. The sounds were coming from somewhere in front of the mausoleum, out of Frazier’s view, but he could picture the three of them still alive, still breathing, and he could guess what had happened.
Fucking Powell! He’s screwing me again!
Frazier raced across the grass. He wasn’t going to lose another fight to that motherfucker. He was going to end it right now.
THIRTEEN
It happened so fast. In one instant, Derek came rushing toward Jenna, his right arm hooked around Hector, his left clamping around her waist; in the next, they hurtled through the doors and crashed face-first to the ground in front of the mausoleum. And in the instant after that, the grenade exploded.