by Greg Rucka
Sonny is over her now, and Athena won’t look away from him, hating him, and that fist is going to fall, she knows it. But he doesn’t hit her, he doesn’t move, frozen, and from the corner of her eye, past him, she can see that Vladimir is speaking, and he looks as angry as she feels. Sonny lowers his hand, grabs her shoulder with it, forces her to turn, and Athena finds herself in line with the others. Joel, ahead of her, still has one arm around his stomach, his jaw flexing, and she thinks he might really be hurt a lot.
Vladimir pulls Dana with him to the front of the line, turns her to face all of them. She’s wincing as he twists her hair, speaks to her, and he’s making his words deliberate now; Athena can read them even before Dana begins to sign.
Follow and don’t do anything else or he will kill you.
Then Dana adds, Just do what he says it will be okay.
Athena has to wonder if she really believes that at all.
When they come out of the tunnel, the sunlight blinds Athena. She blinks rapidly, trying to restore her vision, and the first thing she can make out is Pooch, his giant head and his puffy costume, except he’s standing on his hind legs, like a person. It’s vaguely disturbing, not to mention unexpected, but what makes it all the worse is that his hands are hands, not paws, and he’s holding one of the same guns Vladimir and Sonny and Oscar have been carrying.
The second thing she sees are the costumes, spread out on the ground in front of all of them. There are pieces of Gordo and Betsy and another Pooch, and two of the space suits with helmets from the Star System Alliance, and one of the S.E.E.K.E.R. Robot suits, and Smooch, and Valiant Flashman, and Kurkur the Unending, too. More than enough costumes for all of them, Athena realizes, and she looks from the piles to see that Vladimir has pulled Dana close to him, is speaking in her ear. She’s trying to pull away, and then he shoves her, and when he does that, she sees Pooch with a Gun take a step forward, like he wants to catch her.
Dana doesn’t fall. She moves so that all of them can see her, begins signing. Put on costumes we have to put them on.
One by one, the line breaks apart. One by one, Athena and all the others disappear inside bodies too big for them. Then Sonny and Oscar and Vladimir do it, too, one after the other, until all of them, every single one, is dressed like a WilsonVille character.
She’s not surprised that Vladimir chooses Kurkur the Unending. Athena doesn’t know anything really about the Flashman stuff, but she knows who Kurkur is; he’s the worst of the worst, the only villain to have ever killed any of the Flashmans, and now he hunts down every incarnation of them throughout time and space. He wears a helmet that has horns coming out of the mouth, like an insect’s, and large red eyes, and a big black cloak, and his is the only costume that, once it’s on, looks like it should be holding a gun.
Pooch with the Gun points Dana toward Betsy.
Athena picks Agent Rose.
They’re putting on the costumes, and Dana has half of Betsy on, the lower part, and she moves to help Lynne with the Smooch body. She’s signing when she can, checking with them, Okay? and of course they’re not, how can they be, but everyone nods. When she reaches Joel, she signs Stomach?
Hurts.
Dana tries to smile at him, helps him with the Dread Flashman coat. Athena thinks Joel is looking a little pale.
Then Dana is in front of her, holding the comedy-tragedy mask, and she hands it to Athena, then signs.
Hold on they’ll let us go.
Athena gives her the look that says, Bullshit tell me another one.
Those were bad words you said. Dana tries to smile at her. Where did you learn to swear like that?
Athena grins. Uncle Jorge taught her to swear like that, helped her out, would do it whenever Mom and Dad weren’t looking or listening. Teach her to swear like a soldier, deaf or not, he’d said.
Dad and friends.
Dana grins, helps her put on the mask, then settles Agent Rose’s fedora atop Athena’s head. Athena doesn’t move. She can see just fine through the mask, but her breath bounces back against her face, makes it hot and damp.
Dad coming, Athena signs quickly.
Dana raises an eyebrow.
He will kill them.
Dana throws a quick glance over her shoulder, to where Pooch with a Gun and Kurkur the Unending and now Gordo with a Gun are watching them. She looks back to Athena, pretends to adjust Agent Rose’s trench coat, and signs.
Good.
Chapter Twenty-seven
EIGHTEEN MINUTES left, and Bell tells Amy, “I need you to stay here, stay with Michael and his family. Don’t let them leave, nobody leaves until someone comes for you.”
Amy says, “Freddie is right, Jad.”
It knocks Bell out of his stride for a moment. “You’re going to give me operational advice, Amy? Really?”
She simply stares up at him, what she thinks and what she feels all too apparent to Jad Bell. Then she turns away, down the hall, back to the conference room. She doesn’t look back and she doesn’t wish him luck, and that’s no different from any other time he’s gone on mission. Personal and professional kept separate, a distracted soldier is a dead soldier, keep your head in the game, all the clichés and watchwords run through his head.
He moves back through the command post, where everyone is gearing up. Ideal deployment would be a squad of four targeting each hostage group, primary shooters with secondary to sweep and clear. That is impossible here and now, and Bell’s original intention was to pair Bone and Board, Chain and Angel, and take the group holding Athena by himself. The admonition echoes, makes him doubt, and that is enough, because if there is doubt, there is no doubt.
Much as he wishes it could be so, he cannot ride to his daughter’s rescue alone. In point of fact, he shouldn’t ride to his daughter’s rescue at all.
“Freddie, Isaiah, you two take Group Three,” he says. “Nuri and I will take Group One, Jorge takes Group Two.”
Freddie Cooper, Cardboard, looks Bell in the eye and nods once. “Right call, Jad.”
“We’ll bring her home,” Chain says.
Nuri says nothing, any objection she has to being paired with Bell not one she wishes to share with the room. Instead, she finishes checking the MP5K that Bell brought back with him from Wild World along with his wounds, then throws a glance to the surveillance bank, to the increasing number of charcoal-blank screens. She checks the Spartan again.
“Anything?”
“Dick-all,” she says, and Bonebreaker laughs.
Bell finishes his check, surveys the team, reads their commitment. Even Nuri has brought her game face, and Bell once again wonders what she’s capable of. The CIA lies, it’s their job, and they’re good at it. She killed an armed man who had taken her by surprise in his office with her bare hands, he reminds himself. She can put the bullets where they belong.
“Time to go to work,” Bell says.
Without the need to avoid surveillance there’s no reason to use the tunnels. The confusion of WilsonVille: at this time, on a normal day, going underground would be the only way to cross the park quickly, efficiently. Today, with the landscape barren and hostile, Bell and Nuri cover the distance from the Sheriff’s Office to the border between Wild Horse Valley and Pirate Bay in just over four minutes. With crowds, it would have taken four times as long, easily.
Bonebreaker runs along with them, keeping pace. The two target locations are relatively close together, and even though Jorge has studied the map, Bell wants to guide him to target as best he can. At the bridge west of Nova’s Tower, Bell puts up his fist, and they all slow to a stop.
“That way,” Bell tells Bonebreaker, pointing south, past the Race for Justice. “There’s a bridge, crosses from Terra Space north into the valley.”
Bonebreaker nods. “And if I get lost, there are signs.”
“Don’t get lost. Call it in when you’re good to go.”
“Roger that.”
Bonebreaker takes off, weapon in hand, and Bell
begins moving again, feeling the weight of his own pistol in his grip. Bone and Board brought a resupply, and with knowledge of the map, with determined points of entry, this is a by-the-numbers operation. They do what they do, and it should come off without a hitch.
That nagging doubt again, and Bell knows it isn’t going to be that easy.
“You did the right thing,” Nuri says.
They’re skirting the Old WilsonVille Railroad, where the original steam engine that used to run on the track circumscribing the park was decommissioned. Now it’s an attraction of a different sort—a restaurant, a shop, and a play area. Heading north, toward Fort Royal, and Bell can feel the humidity in the air, rising from the man-made Pirate Bay.
“The right thing is doing this, now,” Bell says. “There isn’t anything else.”
Bell pulls into cover behind the ticket booth at Royal Hunt. They’re in the shade from Mount Royal, the sun now having descended far enough to be blocked by the imitation Everest. Nuri stacks close to him, almost touching, and he feels her turning, covering their back.
“It was a hard call, that’s all I’m saying,” she says softly. “I can’t imagine having to make that choice.”
“What choice?”
“Between your job and the people you love.”
Bell looks at her, suspicious, unsure if he’s being mocked and truly not in the mood for it. Instead, he finds that she’s watching him, her expression somber. There’s sympathy, and something else, and for the first time in almost two months of knowing this woman, Bell can see something aside from the professional demeanor, the park mask.
“My whole life has been that choice,” he says.
He leans back against the kiosk, peers out, checking his lines, seeing nothing. Ahead of them, to the north, is Fort Royal, built to resemble a seventeenth-century Caribbean fortress on one side and an early pioneer trading post on the other. This side, facing south and the Wild Horse Valley, is the more rustic. He starts to turn to Nuri once more, to give her the run, direct her where she should go, when he sees movement. One hand goes to her, pulls her back with him, presses her into cover at his side.
The service door on the southeast side of the fort swings open. As Bell watches from cover, two figures emerge, immediately followed by two more. Then three, and another two, and by his count that’s everyone who was in Fort Royal, now all outside. They move in a cluster, staying close, and almost as one begin walking, heading in their direction.
Bell doesn’t move.
Nuri slips his arm, looks past, says what Bell is thinking.
“Shit,” she murmurs.
“Move,” he answers, and they retreat from the kiosk, back toward the wall bordering the Royal Hunt. She goes over it first, Bell after, dropping into the fake foliage, landing between an animatronic gorilla and its mate. Each listening, and each hearing nothing. Nuri begins picking her way carefully through the overgrowth, following the wall, stops after a dozen yards or so, dropping to one knee. Bell leans over her, can see the walkway through a gap in the wall.
Bell brings his left hand to his ear, is about to activate the earbud, but Chain beats him to the punch.
“We have a problem,” Chain says. “They’re mobile, and they’re concealed. Repeat, we cannot identify the Tangos.”
“Same,” Bell murmurs.
“Same,” Bonebreaker says.
“Hold.”
The group is beginning to pass them now. Walking close together, almost touching one another, and all of them, every single one of them, is in some costume or another. They’re not perfect fits: a Gordo whose cuffs drag on the ground, a S.E.E.K.E.R. Robot with one hand out on the back of a fully armored Valiant Flashman. A Pooch; a Rascal with his tail wrapped around his middle like a belt; a Clip Flashman in full encounter suit, including visored helmet; two dressed as Betsy, one in the soccer player costume and the other in traditional cutoffs and a plaid shirt; and finally a Lola, the oversized toucan, wings dragging alongside.
With only a couple of exceptions, Bell can’t see their hands. Sleeves hang empty at the sides of costumes, sway disturbingly with each step. No way to tell who’s armed, who is pointing a weapon, and who has their hands perhaps bound inside the confines of their outfits.
No easy way to tell the good guys from the bad, despite what each costume may say.
The procession passes them by, and not one head turns, not one costume looks their way.
The dead Tango’s radio on Bell’s hip crackles to life.
“Mr. Bell.” It’s the same soft-spoken man, the same voice. “Let’s talk about how this is going to work.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
GABRIEL WAS so worried about Dana recognizing him in the Pooch outfit that he almost missed the obvious.
The pretty, strawberry-blond deaf girl, in the shorts and the Hollyoakes T-shirt. From inside the headpiece, looking past the black grille that serves to hide his eyes inside Pooch’s nose, Gabriel stared and wondered where he’d seen her before.
Then they were all getting into the costumes, and Dana was interpreting, moving along the line of kids, and she got to that girl and handed her the mask. The girl signed something, and that was what did it, maybe, the intuitive leap.
An overtime authorization on Jonathan Bell’s desk for Dana Kincaid.
A photograph, framed, on the corner of the desk.
Jonathan Bell, his wife, his daughter.
Strawberry blondes, both.
Jesus Christ, Gabriel thought. Oh Jesus Christ, it’s his daughter.
He thought, then, that he had damn well better be sure nothing happened to her.
Then a part of him he didn’t like, a very old part of him, that once lived in Odessa, wondered how he might use this knowledge to his best advantage.
* * *
From the top of Gordo’s Flying Ball, Gabriel Fuller has a pretty good view. It’s not the highest point in the park by far, but below, he can see Vladimir as Kurkur and the others, Sonny and the other one and Dana in the Betsy costume, all of them in a group, waiting at the edge of Yesteryear Ballpark. He can see the approach, the wide walkway from Town Square heading this direction.
He can see them, and he can see the two men who have now stopped just between the Wilson Restaurant and the Sweets Emporium at the northwest corner of Wilson Town. Inside the giant baseball, Gabriel can see them, but they can’t see him.
He keys the radio in his hand. “First thing you’re going to do is tell your men to lay down their weapons and fall back.”
“Why am I going to do that?”
“Because I’m looking at them right now, Mr. Bell, and they’re looking at a bunch of people in costumes. Unless they are very clever and very quick, they don’t know which of them are hostages and which of them aren’t. I’m sure you’ve figured this out already. Tell them to fall back.”
There’s a pause, dead air on the radio. Gabriel adjusts his position, staying low in the ball. The ride is a simple one: guests climb a set of stairs, or, if they’re handicapped, take a gantry-style elevator up to the giant hollow baseball where he’s now crouched. They buckle up, hold their breath, and the whole thing drops in a free fall, only to bounce up and down, swaying back and forth. This, Gabriel understands, is supposed to be fun.
The two men set their weapons on the ground, two M4s and their pistols, then raise their hands and begin to back away.
“Done.”
“Thank you. Call them back. Call all your people back, wherever they are, tell them they need to form on you.”
“Form on me.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You’re military.”
“What I am doesn’t matter, Mr. Bell. What I can do, what I want you to do, that’s what matters. You see where we’re going with this? Do I need to spell it out?”
“Why don’t you do that? I’d hate for there to be a misunderstanding.”
Gabriel can’t keep himself from laughing, but there’s no mirth in it. “God, n
o, we wouldn’t fucking want that, would we? Not at this point, no, we wouldn’t want that.”
“I’m listening. Talk.”
Gabriel shifts. The Pooch costume is hot as ever, bulky in the confined space of the giant baseball. With the headpiece and gloves off, there’s some relief, but not much. Not nearly enough.
“You can’t tell us apart, you understand that, Mr. Bell? Everyone is in a mask, everyone is in a costume. Some of the men are dressed as women, some of the women as men, you understand me? Even the deaf kids, it’s mix and match. You don’t want to take a shot you can’t take back, that’s what I’m saying. Someone starts shooting, hostages are going to end up dead. That’s not a threat, now, that’s just a fact.”
“I understand,” says Bell.
“You ever gone on the Terra Space ride, Mr. Bell?”
“Haven’t had the opportunity.”
“No, I imagine you’ve been busy. Once you have your people with you, you’re going to head to the Terra Space ride. You’ll take it up to the Lunar Platform, and you’ll wait there. Once you’re up top, we’ll line up at the bottom. I’ll start sending people up, two at a time. You won’t know who’s a hostage and who isn’t until we’re done, understand? You won’t know if I’m sending my people up along with our prisoners or not. And if you move, if any of you comes off that platform before we’re finished, you know what I’ll have to do.”
“Yeah,” Bell says, and Gabriel swears the man actually sounds bored, if not annoyed. “I get it.”
“One more thing, Mr. Bell. I see that your men here, they had long guns with them. I see any of you with a long gun, I don’t care who’s on the platform and who isn’t, I’m going to start shooting. You have fifteen minutes to be there, or I start killing my hostages.”
“Did you kill Vesques?” Bell asks.
The question takes Gabriel by surprise, so much that he loses his next words.
“You did, didn’t you? Had to be you.”
“We’re not talking about me, this is not a confession. You want to listen to me. Get your people up on the Lunar Platform. You have fourteen minutes.”