by Guy Adams
But he did. Both of them did. Minutes later, lying on the hot tarmac, exhausted and terrified looking at the raging inferno that was all that was left of the harbour. They looked to one another, both still deaf, both still unable to think anything but a white noise of panic. They nodded, a mutual affirmation that, against all odds they wouldn’t die. At least, not today.
By which point, Gleason’s boat was pulling out of the harbour
*
Mr Wynter watched the destruction from a safe distance. He followed Gleason’s boat as it made its way out to sea, watching the two men stood aft through the lens of his compact field glasses.
‘Round one to you,’ he admitted, looking at Gleason’s smiling face. ‘And that’s not something I often concede.’
He had put altogether too much weight on Mr Matheson resolving things back at the Hernandez House. It wasn’t the young man’s fault, he admitted, but nor was it a mistake Mr Wynter would make twice. The next time he cornered Gleason and his men, he would deal with them himself.
As Leonard steered the boat out to sea, cranking up the engine so that they began to bounce along the waves, both Gleason and Mulroney looked back towards what remained of the harbour. The whole place was aflame, pillars of smoke rising into the air.
‘Public announcement number one,’ said Gleason. ‘A proof of our intent.’
Mulroney nodded. ‘What next?’
Gleason smiled, holding out his burned hand in the cool breeze. ‘Public announcement number two.’
Nine months earlier…
‘What are those things with the big heads?’ Terry asked, looking down at his feet, thoroughly sick of clambering through the rubble that was all that remained of the Hub. ‘You know the shiny-skinned fellers, all teeth.’
‘Weevils?’ Barry replied.
‘That’s the buggers,’ Terry agreed.
‘Why?’ asked Barry, walking over.
‘I’ve just stepped in one,’ explained Terry. ‘Half of one anyway. Must have been crushed when the wall came in.’
‘Nice,’ said Barry. ‘Stain your boots, that will.’
‘Smells of Chinese curry,’ Terry noted. ‘One of those cheap ones that come in a tin.’
‘Obviously as classy as you, then,’ Barry said, scratching at his beard and prodding a pile of wet offal with his biro to make sure it was dead.
Terry pulled his boot free and tried his best to wipe off the remains in the Weevil’s dusty hair. He walked gingerly towards the far wall, supported himself with one hand and checked the sole of his boot.
‘It’s all in my treads,’ he complained, shuffling as he lost his balance and grabbing for a metal rod that was sticking out of the concrete wall. The rod swung back revealing a deep compartment.
Barry laughed as Terry fell over, and walked across to see what he’d accidentally uncovered. He reached inside and pulled out what looked like a rifle that had been fished out of the sea, all seaweed and barnacles.
‘What is it?’ Terry asked, getting to his feet.
‘No idea,’ Barry admitted before dropping the rifle in surprise. ‘It gave me a shock,’ he explained, ‘like it was live or something.’
Terry prodded it with the toe of his dirty boot. ‘Get your gloves on,’ he said. ‘Commander Jackson said no risks, yeah?’
‘Risks?’ said Barry, pulling on heavy-duty gloves. ‘They’re not paying us enough to take risks.’ He hoisted the rifle into a thick plastic sack. ‘Look at the state of it – Captain Birdseye’s blunderbuss. Can’t imagine anyone would have much use for it.’
Ten
Jimmy Lane was trying to force down one more tongue-full of ice cream. It was a sun-melted mix of Belgian chocolate and maple syrup, and the odds of him being able to stomach even a single lick more were not good. But what kid of 8 isn’t brave enough to try when ice cream of this quality is at stake?
‘When’s this thing get started?’ he heard his dad ask, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other as he waited for the parade to begin.
‘Any time now,’ his mum answered. ‘They don’t run late here, it’s part of the magic.’
‘Part of the magic, my ass,’ his dad replied. ‘Probably get sued by whatever union people join when they spend their days dressed as cartoon characters. “Unfair exposure to mouse-head heat exhaustion” or “developed mange due to elongated beaver imprisonment”.’
‘Shush, honey,’ his mum said, giving his dad a clip on the arm. ‘Jimmy’s listening.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Jimmy replied, dipping his tongue in what remained of his ice-cream cup but not quite daring to swallow.
‘No, he isn’t,’ said his dad. ‘Besides, he’s not stupid, he knows they’re not real.’
‘They are so!’ said his mum.
‘Christ, Mary, you’re worse than he is.’ There was a long pause. ‘When does this thing get started, anyway?’
‘I told you,’ his mum replied. ‘Soon. They have to wait until it gets dark.’
‘It is dark.’
‘Properly dark. Otherwise the floats don’t look so good.’
‘That would never do.’ His dad scratched at a heat rash on his belly. ‘There’s got to be better things to do in Florida at night than look at lit-up dragons and elephants. We should have gone to one of those mediaeval things like last year.’
‘So you could stare at the serving wenches again? I don’t think so. It was embarrassing. Watching you sat there with a half-boner, face greasy from fried chicken. It’s not my idea of a good night out and that’s for sure.’
‘Jesus, Mary, Jimmy’s listening!’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Jimmy and, true to his word this time, he phased out their lazy argument and waited for the parade to begin.
The air smelled of food stalls, fried onions and cotton candy.
He knew the glossy Americana of the shop fronts and city hall was as false as the characters that populated it. He also knew that the magic castle in the distance was a trick of forced perspective, a castle of the imagination, no more. He was sickly from sweet foods, and his eyes were tired, struggling to focus on the thousands of fairy lights that had sprung to life around them. For all of that, even with his parents still arguing behind him, he found himself ready to believe the night could bring anything.
He was quite right.
‘Can you do it?’ Gleason asked impatiently.
‘I think so, Colonel,’ Leonard replied, flicking between the sheets of paperwork they had removed from the weaponry files. ‘This should definitely pick up the psychic projections and manifest them so everyone can see them. Definitely.’ Leonard shook his head. ‘Who am I kidding? Not definitely. But I think it will.’
‘I need better than “think”, Sergeant.’
‘Sir, I’m trying to hook up two pieces of alien tech using spares from an electrical repair shop. My only guide is the research notes of a lunatic captain, who keeps breaking off from his findings to reminisce about old boyfriends. This isn’t standard field engineering, sir.’
‘Just get it right.’
Leonard bit his tongue and continued to work.
Mulroney walked over, camera in his hand. ‘Ready to make movies, sir?’
Gleason nodded. Mulroney raised the camera and stuck up his thumb to show it was recording.
‘Wise men of America,’ said Gleason directly into the camera lens, ‘who sit behind your desks and decide how best to run this world. Listen and listen well. Because I am here to teach you a lesson.’
The floats began to move, a pre-recorded fanfare drawing a roar from the gathered crowd.
‘Would you look at that?’ said Jimmy’s dad. ‘Finally, they start.’
Jimmy wasn’t listening. He was laughing at the twirling people in costumes, the loud song piped through the hidden speakers – a song from one of his very favourite DVDs as if they had known, as if they had read his mind. The chase of the lights as the electric parade worked its way past him was like a controlled firework displ
ay. It was a complete sensory overload and, mind reeling, he adored every moment. The light sculptures of his favourite characters flexed, and reached out to the crowd. It was animatronics, he knew that really, you could tell by the jerky way they moved. But imagine, he thought to himself, just imagine if it were real. It was the most wonderful night of his life.
Then the ghosts came.
They appeared everywhere throughout the park, all brought back to re-enact their final moments.
Richie Clemens, died October 1979, thrown from the roller-coaster he was riding in celebration of his 12th birthday. Children the same age screamed as he suddenly appeared before them, crashing into the fibreglass mountainside alongside their carriage in a cracking of young limbs.
Angel Collins, died March 1983 of massive cardiac failure. Death has not slimmed her as she twirls amongst the parade dancers clutching at her failing heart.
Shadwell Barrett, thrown beneath the wheels of a parade float by his jealous brother in June of 1994. He bounces there again, his hands snatching at the ankles of the spectators.
Brad Lurwitz, depressed stuntman in the Wild West show, shoots himself in front of the crowd just as he did eleven years ago. It still gets the best response of his career.
Everyone who has ever died within the heavily guarded barriers of this pretend world is back on their feet and dying once more.
The living run. They scream. They chase towards the exits.
The small and the slow are trodden underfoot, many adding to the ranks of the people who died here. This includes young Jimmy, a confused half-smile on his face as if waiting for the moment that the trick reveals itself and the hidden magics become nothing more than concealed levers and tricks of the light.
That moment never comes.
A crackle, as the energies released in the air distort the camcorder footage.
‘We’re coming for you,’ says Gleason, his face filling the frame, his eyes wild and filled with the reflected images of ghosts, ‘and you will give us whatever we want.’
Eleven
‘… and you will give us whatever we want.’
The video stopped and Rex closed the media viewer on his phone.
‘That was in the mail inbox of every Section Chief in the Company,’ said Esther. ‘They wanted attention, they got it.’
‘What’s the party line?’
‘Terrorist gas attack, caused mass hallucination and hysteria.’
‘God bless the Age of the Terrorist,’ said Rex, ‘for, lo, it gives good cover stories.’
‘And, of course, no link with Cuba. As far as CNN is concerned, that was just an anti-Castro demonstration. Fatalities in Florida were surprisingly low and the official line is: we wait until we hear some demands.’
‘And the unofficial line?’
‘Don’t ask me. If there is one – and I’m sure there is – it’s for higher ears than mine.’
‘Which leaves us…’
‘Absolutely nowhere. Broderick wants you to file a report and walk away. Shaeffer’s to report to Special Operations for debriefing.’
Rex sighed. He had known this was coming but it didn’t make him like it any better. ‘Hate walking away, Esther.’
‘I know.’
He hung up and walked over to the bar table he was sharing with Shaeffer.
Eager to get out of Cuba, they had flown back to Nassau on the next available flight and from there to Miami. Now, booked into a small hotel in Virginia Key, they had planned to take twenty-four hours to decide their next step. It seemed their superiors had made that decision on their behalf.
‘I’m not just strolling back in,’ said Shaeffer, after Rex had passed on the details of the call. ‘Debriefing my ass, I’ll be wearing an orange jumpsuit and officially dead within five minutes of entering Virginia.’
‘Get over yourself,’ said Rex. ‘This is the real world not The X-Files.’
‘This from the guy who says he met Old Man Spook himself.’
‘Just some old guy giving himself a rep he hasn’t earned. We don’t kill our own.’
‘Grow up. That’s exactly what we do if the mess is big enough to justify it. And this is one hell of a mess.’
Rex shrugged. He wasn’t going to have this argument; neither of them would win. ‘You think I like leaving it like this?’ he said. ‘It’s unfinished business. The bastard tried to have me killed, hell, nearly managed it. If I could think of a way of hanging on in there a little longer I would. But the trail’s cold, we wouldn’t have the first idea where to start looking.’
‘I do.’
‘Do what?’
‘Have an idea. Look, I worked with these guys for a good few years. I know how Gleason’s mind works, and he sure as hell isn’t going to just sit on his hands for a few days and then issue his demands. There’ll be more fatalities. We know that nobody’s going to just roll over and pay him because he freaked out a few holidaymakers. He knows the standing order: we don’t give in to terrorism. So he’ll keep pushing until he thinks we have no choice. Gleason gets off on it. You saw him in Havana, he’d do this even if he wasn’t after money.’
‘So?’
‘So he kept saying that he’d take the fight to “them”,’ insisted Shaeffer. ‘If you wanted to attack the heart of America where would you aim for?’
‘The capital, you’d go to Washington.’
‘Exactly. But Gleason’s still experimenting with this stuff, he didn’t get to finish in Cuba.’ Shaeffer paused for a moment, remembering the sight of what had become of Mills, that half-wasted creature reaching for him as it dragged itself up the stairs. ‘He needs to know he can control it,’ he continued. ‘He needs to perfect it.’
‘So he needs somewhere to hole up,’ Rex murmured. ‘OK, where?’
‘Mulroney has a place in Colorado. I don’t know precisely where, he played it close to his chest. Never really talked about it. I got the impression it was a bolthole, you know? Somewhere to run if life got too dangerous or he finally went too far.’
‘You talk like he was always planning on doing this?’
‘I think he probably was. Gleason and Mulroney have always been tight, there’s the rest of the unit and them. And they’ve never been what you would call perfect soldiers. They liked it too much. Liked what the power gave them.’
‘Liked the enemy’s fear.’
Shaeffer nodded. ‘It’s part of it, we all know that, play up to it too. You want to scare the enemy. That’s how you control them, how you beat them. You hear stories, like all that stuff in Vietnam, where troops would take over villages, set themselves up as king for a day. A lot of that is bull, the sort of stuff people spread when they want to give the army a bad name. It’s easy to hate the man with a rifle in his hands, easy to think the worst of him. But sometimes it happened. Of course it did. People got a taste of power and it went to their heads.’
‘And Gleason and Mulroney were like that?’
‘Definitely. And they had an eye on profit too. Looting happens all the time, stuff just lies there, spoils of war, but Gleason and Mulroney weren’t just opportunists. Sometimes they would plan around it. You know how much smuggling there is in Afghanistan, the Russian families get rich there through heroin. We were sometimes sent in to bust up a deal or wipe out a plant. There was a lot of money floating around places like that and I think Gleason and Mulroney took their fair share of it.’
‘And you?’
Shaeffer shook his head. ‘I wasn’t perfect. I took plenty of booze and smokes over the years, but I wouldn’t touch drug money. Besides, if there was a chance of that sort of thing, we’d always be kept at a safe distance. Like I say, Gleason and Mulroney were tight.’
‘So you’re saying he had this place as somewhere to run to in his retirement?’
‘Yeah, which means there won’t be an official record of it. The man’s not stupid, you don’t run off to somewhere the government knows about. It must be off the beaten track, somewhere he could spend th
e rest of his days without getting caught.’
‘And it’s in Colorado… You don’t have any more idea than that?’
‘Gleason once joked about him running off to God’s garden. Whether that was a clue or not I don’t know.’
‘God’s garden?’
Shaeffer nodded.
‘Garden of the Gods is a national park in Colorado,’ said Rex. ‘You didn’t know that?’
Shaeffer shrugged. ‘Why the hell should I? Ask me about geography in the Middle East, I might have a chance, but I can’t say I’ve watched much Discovery Channel the last few years.’
Rex fell silent, fiddling with his phone. He brought up a web window and searched for the Garden of the Gods national park. He couldn’t quite believe he was considering this. Though maybe he could get away with a short stopover on the way back to Washington?
‘You know, we can do this,’ said Shaeffer eventually. ‘A couple of days below the radar, you seriously think you can’t cover that?’
‘What’s made you so eager to help all of a sudden?’ Rex asked. ‘Back in Cuba, you couldn’t wait to get as far away from Gleason as possible.’
‘Then I found out what my government has in mind for me. Right now I have a better chance on the road with you.’
‘If that’s true,’ said Rex, ‘then you really are screwed.’
‘So, we going to do this?’
Rex smiled. ‘Why the hell not?’
Twelve
Mr Wynter sat in the private dining room of the Corazon Restaurant and patiently sipped at a glass of water. He looked out of the window at Ford’s Theatre directly opposite. They were advertising a musical called By George! that promised to bring the illustrious history of George Washington to the stage as a ‘madcap, musical romp’. Mr Wynter wondered if he had time to pop over and assassinate the artistic director before his employer arrived. Sadly not, he thought, as the door opened and a nondescript man walked in. His suit was off the rail, his overcoat thinning at the elbows, his briefcase worn at the corners. This was a man who didn’t seem remotely important. Which was as it should be when you’re one of the most powerful men in the country.