Alpha

by Greg Rucka

  He should have just surrendered then and there, Gabriel thinks. He should have just given up when Penny Starr saved his life, just as he should have given up when he heard what Dana was saying to him.

  Everything he had, he realizes, is now gone.

  His phone is ringing.

  His hand shaking, he pulls it from his pocket, puts it to his ear.

  “Arm the bomb,” the Uzbek says.

  Gabriel’s pulse is beating so hard he feels his temples throb.

  “Vladimir told me everything, Matias. It was his job to tell me everything. I can get you out. You need to arm the bomb.”

  “You can get me out?”

  “We put you in,” the Uzbek says. “Of course we can get you out. Out of the park and out of the country and out of this pretend life you’ve been living. But you must do your part, and you must do it quickly. I am watching the news, and they have heard the gunshots, they are coming. You are almost out of time.”

  “How?” Gabriel swallows. “How will you get me out?”

  “Helicopter.”

  He closes his eyes. A helicopter.

  “Put the device in position, arm it, and we will lift you out. It will be…” the Uzbek pauses, then continues. “Eight minutes. You have exactly eight minutes. Can you do it?”

  Gabriel looks back down the stairs, to the bar, the open door leading back into the tunnel. To where Vladimir, who would have killed him, is lying without his brains. To where he repaid Penny Starr’s rescue with murder. To where Dana has been abandoned, and with her, this life he has deluded himself into believing is his own.

  To where Jonathan Bell is surely coming for him.

  “I can do it,” he says to the Uzbek. “Eight minutes.”

  “I will see you soon, then. Good luck.”

  Gabriel closes the phone, then tosses it away in a fury. He pushes open the door, steps out into the early evening of the park. He knows—he knows—the Uzbek is lying to him. There is no helicopter, there is no escape, there is no return to the old life.

  But he doesn’t care.

  His life has ended here in WilsonVille, and his only hope for a new one is in choosing to believe the lies. In choosing to believe that somehow, some way, if he does as ordered, the helicopter will come.

  If he does that, he can believe he will live.

  If that means killing WilsonVille, so be it.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  BELL RACES down Flashman East, hearing broken bursts of static in his ear, the transmissions all but murdered by the layers of concrete and steel that make up the tunnels.

  At first, he thought that Fuller was trying to escape, to get out of the park, but that would’ve required sticking to Gordo or at least looping back around to it at the first opportunity. Cutting beneath the river, perhaps, hoping to come out on the north side of the park, the employee lots. He’s at the juncture of Flashman and Pooch when he hears something clattering, plastic meeting wood, and he zeroes in on it, advancing up Nova, finds himself at the entrance to the Speakeasy once again. A cell phone on the floor, abandoned, and he picks it up, pockets it before climbing the stairs and stepping cautiously outside.

  Fuller is nowhere to be seen, but immediately, he can hear Chain in his ear once again.

  “—lock respond, Warlock, please respond.”

  “Go for Warlock.”

  “You get him?”

  “Negative. Nobody’s seen him?”

  “Nobody has eyes. Could be he’s out.”

  “Could be.”

  Bell turns in place, scanning, thinking. Gabriel Fuller, alone. Gabriel Fuller, who promised him his daughter’s life, who promised him the dirty bomb, if only they would let him go.

  “He’s going for the device,” Bell says.

  “We have no eyes, no contacts,” Chain says. “Bone has been evacuated, I’ve got Board with me. Where do you want us?”

  “It’s a DB. Where do you place a DB to do the most damage?”

  “Highest point, best wind dispersal of the fallout. You’re damaging property, people are incidental.”

  “Highest points in the park.” Bell turns in place, looking at the WilsonVille skyline he’s been living within for almost two months. “Cardboard, take Mount Royal, west side of the park. There’s a ride goes up to the summit, you should be able to reach it via service ladders.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Chain?”

  “Terra Space,” Chain says. “Would make sense, that’s where he wanted us to stage, the top of the Clip Flashman Rocket is almost as high as Mount Royal.”

  “Go.”

  Bell stops, staring at the big wooden roller coaster smack in the heart of WilsonVille. Pooch Pursuit, the fastest, tallest wooden roller coaster in the world.

  There’s a single train of cars parked at the apex, at the very top of the ride.

  Bell looks to the east, toward Soaring Thyme, sees none of the chairs on the line, all of them presumably parked. He looks west, and sees the same is true at Nova’s Tower, and as he does so he remembers that all the rocket sleds at Terra Space were likewise grounded. His eyes go back to Pooch Pursuit, and the single train, motionless, at the top.

  He’s been stupid, he realizes.

  He starts running for the fastest, tallest wooden roller coaster in the world.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  IT TAKES Gabriel two minutes and forty-three seconds by his watch to reach the control room at Pooch Pursuit. The same idiotproof console still on power, registering Train One locked at the top of the lift hill, at the summit of the first peak. He looks out the Plexiglas window of the booth, and, yes, the cars are there—224 feet above the ground.

  It’s going to be a long climb.

  He raises the MP5K, fires a burst into the console, killing the controls. Glass shatters and metal tears, sparks spit and fly. He lowers the weapon, moves to exit, crossing the platform and jumping over the parked cars, one to the other, until he can drop down onto the wooden track. It’s a gradual slope at first, wooden coasters not as radical or tolerant of extremes as their metal counterparts, and the first forty feet or so are an easy ascent, enough for Gabriel to remain upright.

  He’s at sixty feet, and the going is becoming rougher, when he glances down and sees Jonathan Bell on the platform, coming after him. Gabriel swings the MP5K off his shoulder, into his hand, drawing the strap taut, trying to sight him. He fires a burst, and the man jumps down between the parked cars. Gabriel takes the opportunity to climb again, fast as he can, and the slope is now more cruel, more than forty degrees, and he has to let the submachine gun dangle from its strap, needing both his hands.

  “Gabriel!” Bell shouts at him. “Gabriel Fuller! Stop!”

  He keeps climbing, swings out to the edge of the track, reaches around to pull himself into the snarl of support scaffolding. He can see Bell starting to climb the track after him, but now Gabriel has cover, and he leans out, freeing a hand and firing once again. The man drops prone on the track, and for a moment, Gabriel believes he may have hit him, but then Bell is up, coming after him still.

  Gabriel pulls himself back into the scaffolding, reaches up, uses his arms, then his legs. It’s a faster ascent this way, but more perilous, like climbing a ladder. His lungs are beginning to burn with the effort, sweat starting to spill down his back. He swipes his hands on his shirt one at a time, keeps climbing. When he looks, Bell is still on the track, now scaling hand over hand, perhaps no more than eighty feet below him and off to the side. The wooden slats provide cover, but that works both ways, and neither man has a clear shot.

  Gabriel climbs. He climbs, and he wants to laugh.

  Because this is madness, and to participate in it, he must be mad. And he knows he is, he knows he was. To ever have imagined a happy ending to this day, to ever have imagined that the Uzbek would let him go, that the Shadow Man would release him. To ever imagine that the boy from Odessa who murdered Old Grigori with a tire iron could ever keep and hold Dana, and
make a life that didn’t need death to pay for it.

  Sweat stings his eyes, blisters form on his palms, and still, Gabriel climbs.

  And Jonathan Bell, damn him, is climbing with him.

  Gabriel reaches, and suddenly there is nothing more for him to grab. He’s at the top of the lift peak, his arms aching, his legs trembling from the effort, and he pulls himself the final inches, grabbing hold of the side of the parked car, and heaves himself inside. Gasping for air, and the duffel and the device are exactly where he left them, and he pulls the device from where it has been waiting on the floor, moves it onto the seat beside him.

  He looks for Bell, can’t see him because of the angle. Frees the MP5K from his shoulder, leans out and forward, trying to locate the other man.

  From beneath, Bell’s arm shoots out, up, grabs hold of the weapon, twists, pulls. Gabriel feels the gun tear from his grip, almost taking his index finger with it, as the weapon is yanked free. Then he’s lost it, and Bell has tossed it away, straining to reach the side of the car, to pull himself the rest of the way up.

  Gabriel leans back, kicks at Bell’s fingers, a bandaged hand, once, twice, a third time, and the man’s grip slips away, vanishes, leaving a bloody smear on the side of the car. He hears something clatter beneath them, leans over to see Bell hanging on to the scaffolding fifteen feet below.

  His attention goes back to the duffel bag. He runs the zipper open, shifts the device into his lap. Slides his hands along it, searching for the wires he has to connect to the battery. Finds the first, wraps it to its post, securing it, then the second, repeating the procedure, and the timer face suddenly lights up, blinking at him. Gabriel is surprised to see that it’s set for one hour, a full sixty minutes. More time than he imagined the Uzbek would have given him, and even as he thinks that, he knows that what the clock is telling him may well be a lie.

  He hears a helicopter, looks up, and is shocked to see one circling the park, coming in lower.

  The thought occurs to him that he might live through this.

  He’s turning his attention back to the device and Bell is there, coming up over the front of the car all at once, one hand pulling him up, the other bringing his gun into line. Gabriel lashes out blindly, the duffel falling back into the footwell as he tries to get hold of the weapon, manages to just knock it askew as it goes off. The round sears his shoulder, cutting a furrow in his skin, and Gabriel roars with a new fury, smashes Bell’s wrist against the edge of the car again and again until the gun is gone from his hand.

  But he’s still coming, still pulling himself up, and Gabriel punches at him, hits him across the nose, feels it give. Blood splatters, and still Bell won’t let go. Gabriel punches at him again, and again, and again, and then Bell has caught his fist, yanks, twisting, and Gabriel has to push himself back with his legs to keep from toppling out of the car.

  He falls backward, into the next set of seats, struggles to right himself, to get his feet beneath him again. The helicopter above swings in closer, lower, the roar from the rotors deafening, buffeting Gabriel with downdraft. Bell is in the front car now, bloody nose, and shouting at him, something that’s lost in the engine whine. Gabriel scrabbles backward into the next car, nearly loses his balance, nearly falls again, manages to swing himself around.

  Bell doesn’t pursue, reaching for the device.

  Gabriel goes for his pocket, finds his knife, the same knife he used when he was Pooch and had to kill that man. Draws it, flicks it out, and Bell is still hands-deep in the duffel, and Gabriel lunges, cutting at him. The other man sees it at the last moment, jerks back, catches the blade across his forearm, and Gabriel feels it dig deep.

  Then Bell’s grabbed his wrist, forcing the blade free from his arm, and both their hands go for it, and Gabriel screams, rage and fury and desperation, throwing all his weight forward. Bell topples backward, doesn’t let go, pulling Gabriel down with him. Hits the front of the car, and Gabriel is on him, literally, trying to shove the knife in and up, and Bell is holding him back. Gabriel can feel it, gravity, so much gravity, and it’s on his side, and he can feel the older man’s strength giving way a fraction at a time, knows it will take just a moment more before it breaks, and steel will slide home between flesh and bone.

  Then Bell kicks, rolls, and Gabriel feels gravity betray him, sees a dusk-lit sky and the helicopter swinging around. Feels himself sliding free of the car, losing the knife, bouncing off the edge of the track, wooden slats digging into his back.

  He sees the helicopter, and now he can see someone leaning out the side. Someone leaning out the side, with a television camera at his shoulder.

  The Uzbek lied.

  Gabriel Fuller closes his eyes.

  Gabriel Fuller falls.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  THE MAN who received half a billion dollars to plan and execute the events at WilsonVille, the man whom no one will or can name, stares at the Uzbek’s image on his monitor, and considers all things. What the news has reported around the world, and more, what it has not. What the Uzbek has told him and what, he suspects, the Uzbek has not. As objectively as he can, the man no one can name considers the events of the last day, and views them in an ever-​expanding context.

  Mistakes were made. The Uzbek has acknowledged as much. The basic, fundamental miscalculation in regard to Gabriel Fuller, that he had been allowed to go native, though the man who refuses to be named wonders if that could have been prevented. It is the risk with all long-term sleepers, that they will become who they pretend to be so thoroughly that, when the time comes for them to awaken, they will do so without their full measure. This is not a new problem, but it is one to which he feels closer attention should have been given.

  So much time, so much patience, so much effort, all to waste.

  The sleepers will have to be monitored much more closely, the man decides. Wherever they are, they will now be subjected to closer surveillance, and perhaps occasional in-person meetings with their handlers. So they do not forget whom they work for. So they do not forget their purpose. So they do not forget who owns them.

  In that, then, the operation was a failure. Gabriel Fuller and all that he was—and, more, what he would have been—are lost.

  The man no one can name types:

  Can he damage us?

  On the monitor, the Uzbek shakes his head. “There should be no means of connecting him with me or with any of our other assets. Any investigation into his life will reach a dead end. We are secure.”

  The man sits back in his chair, reaches for a glass of very hot, very sweet, very strong tea, and sips at it. He likes how the glass burns against his palm, grips it tighter while thinking past the pain, now considering the success they have achieved.

  They are half a billion dollars richer. They have made a mark, and shown exactly the extent of their reach, their power, their cunning. There are those who will notice. There are those who will seek them, and seek their services.

  He sets the glass down again, carefully and slowly, forces his fingers open. He types again.

  Confirm contact with client remains sterile.

  The Uzbek gives this due consideration before saying, “Yes. He is arrogant, and spoke with arrogance, but we knew this about him from the start, his bluster. He is an ideologue, with an ideologue’s ego. But I was never anything less than absolutely cautious, and even, in the worst-case scenario, if he should somehow find his way back to me, it is impossible that he would then find his way back to you.”

  The man types immediately, quickly.

  Nothing is impossible.

  He pauses, then adds:

  Vosil.

  Watches as the Uzbek reacts to the use of his name. Watches as the Uzbek shakes his head.

  “I would die first.”

  Yes. You would.

  The Uzbek shifts, repositioning himself in his chair perhaps. He opens his mouth to speak, then stops. Removes his glasses, and sets them carefully aside, out of the view of the monit
or, the camera. He looks directly at the man no one can name.

  “What would you have me do?”

  This is a very good question, and the man in front of the keyboard has given it much thought already. He has thought about eliminating Mr. Money, though that seems like an excessive gesture at this time, for two reasons. The first is that doing so would not guarantee their security, and, in fact, could quite possibly compromise it further. There is no way to know what Mr. Money has on them. Killing him will silence the man, but there is no telling what traces or trails he may have left behind. The man no one can name must trust that the fear they have engendered will preserve silence.

  So that is the first reason. The second is more pragmatic. Just as the Uzbek represented the man who sits at the keyboard now, he knows that Mr. Money represented others. Men of like mind, and like money, and like power. They have seen what was accomplished, and the man no one can name is certain they will be back, asking for more, and willing to pay.

  Your work is finished for now. Return home. New orders await you there.

  The Uzbek leans forward slightly, reading the words on his monitor, squinting slightly without the aid of his glasses.

  “You may rely on me,” the Uzbek says.

  I have, the man at the keyboard thinks. I have, and you have succeeded, and yet you have failed. You are not a pawn, but you are not the king, or even the queen.

  The man at the keyboard kills their connection, takes up his too hot, too strong, too sweet tea once again. There was one thing he and the Uzbek did not discuss. One thing that the man now sipping his tea has been considering among all other matters.