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THE UZBEK
has been waiting for months, quite literally, to make this call.

It’s almost a quarter past one in the afternoon in this room at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, the television on and babbling with anxious glee about the developing situation at WilsonVille. The information is still confused, but the video has done its job, and the media is, as ever, eager to play their part.

The Uzbek’s been impressed with the government’s response, on almost every level. Local authorities have done an impressive job of cordoning off the area, and already the governor has held a press conference, urging people not to panic, explaining that the situation is fluid, in flux, and there is no reason to believe the claims in the video are true. The White House has released a statement saying much the same thing, assuring the American people that everything can and will be done to resolve this crisis, and adding that under no circumstances will the nation bow before the demands of terrorists. The president is monitoring the situation closely.

Helicopter footage shows, live, the streams of automobiles clogging Interstate 5 and the 405 and the state routes. Most people who are able to seem to be heading east, for the mountains and the desert. There’s been some unconfirmed reports of rioting as well, and the Uzbek has listened to two experts on two different channels talking about dirty bombs, about how they’re not to be confused with actual nuclear weapons, about their limitations. These two experts have tried to use facts, but facts are of little interest in the face of sensation.

The Uzbek’s favorite part, as he eats gravlax and washes it down with a modest prosecco, was when one broadcast was interrupted with live footage, telephoto shots of the front gates of WilsonVille. When two of his handpicked men, long guns slung over their shoulders, still dressed in their Tyvek and gas masks, tossed the body out the front gates. The woman dressed as a panda, who hit the ground heavy and wrong and didn’t move. Authorities had imposed a no-fly zone over the park, but one of the news copters violated it and got footage from above, and it made the statement all the more clear, all the more stark.

When that happened, he imagined boys and girls all around the world looking at their own little stuffed pandas in horror and fear. He suspects his master thought much the same thing when he saw it.

Then the broadcast cuts away to more anxious babbling, and the Uzbek turns the television off. He takes out the cell phone he has purchased specifically for this call. He dials slowly, one-handed, using his thumb, emptying his glass with the other, then rises and moves to the window. He has a view of the pool, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are still several people around it and in the water, oblivious to or uncaring about what’s happening less than a hundred miles to the south. There are several beauties, wearing strips of fabric that are, at best, coy, and as the phone rings in his ear, the Uzbek wonders if he could fuck one of them. Times like this, he wishes he could fuck them all.

The phone rings several times before being answered. “Jamieson residence.”

“I need to speak to Lee Jamieson,” the Uzbek says.

“Mr. Jamieson is unavailable.” The voice belongs to a man, the accent vaguely Hispanic. “I can take a message.”

“Give him this message, exactly. I will call back in exactly three minutes. I am calling to speak to him about a dead panda.”

The Uzbek hangs up, then powers off the phone, tosses it onto the bed. Checks the time, then takes the second phone, also purchased precisely for this call. He opens the sliding glass door, steps out onto the balcony of his room, smells the smog and heat, hears the water and the laughter and splashing below. There’s a blonde lounging poolside, sunglasses and golden tan. Her legs are long and her breasts barely contained by her top, a belly flat and smooth, and he can almost taste her from here. He watches her unabashedly, obviously, and after a few moments she reaches up and adjusts the strap at her shoulder, then lowers her sunglasses just enough to show him her eyes, meeting his gaze. The Uzbek grins at her, and she returns that, too, lazily. Tilts her head to the side, where it lies against the chaise lounge, and he can feel her looking him over.

The Uzbek raises his free hand, shows her three numbers in sequence, his room number. She seems to laugh. The Uzbek closes his hand, opens it again, five fingers this time.

Then he turns away and dials once more. This time, there is only one ring, and Mr. Money is answering.

“Why the fuck are you calling me? You said there’d be no more contact, you Russian fuck! Why are you calling me?”

“I lied to you,” the Uzbek says, not bothering to correct the man. “You have been following the news?”

“Jesus Christ, yes.” The man sounds breathless, as if he’s taken a beating to the stomach. The Uzbek wonders how he’ll sound in just a few more moments. “What the hell are you people doing? This isn’t what I paid for, I didn’t pay for that! That woman, they just
dumped
her—”

“The device is in place,” the Uzbek interrupts, voice mild. If Mr. Money thought that WilsonVille could be taken and held without loss of life, he was actively deceiving himself. He steps back into the room, leaving the door open behind him. “Exactly as you requested. In order to effect the result you commissioned, you understand that the device had to be legitimate, yes? It has to do what we claimed it would do. And it does, I assure you. It does
exactly
what it is supposed to do.”

There is a pause, just a moment, and the Uzbek admits he is surprised at how quickly Mr. Money puts two plus two together.

“You motherfuckers.”

“Hmm.” The Uzbek might be agreeing with him. “You will pay, as before, the same sum, as before, or the device will be armed and detonated. Do you understand?”

“You…motherfuckers.…” Mr. Money is breathing heavily, almost wheezing into the phone. “You would, wouldn’t you? You sons of bitches, you…you would…”

“Of course we would,” the Uzbek says. “You’re the one with an ideological agenda, sir. We are simply a business.”

“I can’t free that sum, not in this amount of time, not…not without it being tracked. You’ll expose me, you’ll—”

“Do you think that concerns us in the least?”

The wheezing stops, the line going silent for long enough that the Uzbek wonders if Mr. Money has suffered a heart attack or some similar event. Then his voice returns, trembling in its rage, or perhaps in its determination.

“I refuse. This isn’t what I paid for; I paid for the statement, the message, not this.”

“I would urge you to reconsider.”

“No, you listen to me. You were paid, your people, they were paid.”

“Your answer is no, then?”

“I wouldn’t even if I could.”

“Hmm,” the Uzbek says. “Very well. I wish you a good day.”

“Wait just—”

The Uzbek hangs up. Purses his lips, checks his watch. It’s coming up on one thirty now. There is a knock at the door. He opens it, and there is the blonde, her towel wrapped about her hips, chewing her lower lip in nervous affectation.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Taylor.”

“Taylor. Please, come in.” He steps back, sweeping his arm and ushering her inside, closing the door after her. She steps in slowly, leaning forward to look about the room, and the Uzbek takes the opportunity to slap her towel-hidden backside. She jumps, squeaks, turning to grin at him.

“You don’t waste time.”

“Nor do you, I think,” the Uzbek says. “Make yourself comfortable. Pour yourself a drink. I have one more call to make.”

“Comfortable, huh?”

He nods her toward the bed, then ignores her entirely. He can feel his erection, already full and determined, and he wonders what is thrilling him more: the thought of fucking this woman who is giving herself up so easily, or the thought of fucking all of Southern California, the United States of America, and that piece of shit, Mr. Money.

He dials Matias’s number, thinking that it’s all fucking the same things.

BELL MOVES
quicker alone, sacrificing stealth for speed, heading back up the Gordo Tunnel and then turning again onto the Flashman Tunnel, heading east. Jogging easily, pistol in his hands, south again at Betsy. Maybe he should’ve kept the rifle, but appearing on camera with a long gun and full combat rig, that would have tipped his hand, maybe even warned whoever was on the cameras that more were coming, geared and ready. With the pistol, Bell hopes to look like the same threat he was before, hopes his presence alone will be bait enough. Trying to remember the camera emplacements above ground, where he’ll be most easily spotted. The highest concentration is, logically, in the zones around the park perimeter, tapering off the deeper one goes into the park.

He wants to be seen, and Bell figures Wild World Live! is probably his best bet; it’s close enough to the entrance that he’ll have cameras, but far enough from the Sheriff’s Office, the command post, that—presuming that’s where the hostiles are staging from—they’ll need to cover some ground to reach him. There’s the added benefit that it’s a theater, backstage areas outside of surveillance, with plenty of cover and room to move.

The mixed scent of the animals greets him as he makes his approach, slowing at the foot of the ramp. Their noise comes next, the anxious chitter and chirp of creatures used to constant tending and near-constant attention, abruptly abandoned. Perhaps they’ve sensed that something has happened, perhaps it’s simply the breakdown in their routines, but they don’t sound happy.

He holds in the shadow of the ramp that feeds into the backstage, checks his watch, and finds it’s nine minutes past one. Chain and Angel should be in position and holding, and he frees one hand to press at his earbud.

“Chain, Angel,” he murmurs. “Warlock, coms check.”

No response, which he interprets to mean they’re still below ground, still waiting on the clock. As they should be, and it’s what he expected, but it was worth a try. He frees his phone next, sees that it has, once again, acquired a signal. Still holding in the shadows, the noise of the animals in the background, he punches up Brickyard.

“Brickyard, go.”

“Warlock. Chain and Angel are in position to take back the CP, ten minutes.”

“We have new information,” Ruiz says.

“Tell me.”

“Confirm hostages on the ground. One has already been executed. Hostiles are claiming they have a radiological device, will detonate if demands not met, will detonate if any attempt is made to retake the park. Bone and Board are en route to my location, estimate deployment fourteen forty.”

Bell leans back against the wall, eyes on the mouth of the tunnel, up the ramp. There’s been no movement, but still, he won’t look away, even as he considers what Ruiz is telling him. A dirty bomb changes things, and changes them radically, but it throws a whole new sheet of doubt up, as well. Whoever these people are, they’re savvy enough to have coordinated taking the park, to have put at least one person on the inside, to have spoofed the botulinum. Bell can believe in their ability to construct and place a radiological device.

But believing its existence and then believing that, whoever these people are, they’re willing to set it off—that’s something else. Unless they’re willing to die for their cause, they’ll be exposing themselves to the same radioactive debris as their targets. Outside of immediate ground zero, a dirty bomb does slow work, attacks economies far more effectively than it does individuals. Contamination from the debris would take years to manage, cost literally billions to clean up, and even then, the park’s reputation would be destroyed. A dirty bomb detonating in WilsonVille would kill the park just as thoroughly as if it were shot in the base of the skull, and would kill Wilson Entertainment with the same slow inevitability as cancer, the same cancer hundreds of thousands might contract as a result.

Death might come slowly, but it would come all the same, to friend and foe alike.

“Are they true believers?” Bell asks.

“They talk the talk,” Ruiz says. “But they’re walking funny.”

Bell wants to grin at that, but can’t bring himself to do it. “The CP has the Spartan. We get it up and running, we can scan for radioactive material.”

“You trust that Spartan?”

“Either that or wait. Are you telling us to hold?”

Ruiz answers without hesitating. “They’re killing hostages.”

“Understood.”

“Out.”

WilsonVille itself isn’t equipped to house the animals who perform in the Flower Sisters Mystical Show and Wild World Live! on-site. Rather, they’re brought into the park each morning, escorted by their staff of handlers and overseen by the chief vet. For every animal used in the show, there’s at least one, sometimes as many as four, left to figuratively—and often literally—wait in the wings. Three separate jaguars are required for Real Live Hendar, for example, none of which are allowed to work for more than thirty minutes a day. A tired cat is a dangerous cat, and, from a management point of view, a lawsuit waiting to happen. The same can be said for the lionesses that perform as Real Live Lavender, though as Bell understands it, there are only two gazelles because, as it was explained to him, gazelles are actually really fucking stupid.

He’s not sure about the snakes.

He’s thinking about all this as he comes off the ramp from the tunnel and into the animal holding area of Wild World Live!, hears the growl from one of the big cats hidden nearby. It’s a wide, sunken space, feeding into backstage, covered overhead by a massive awning meant to shield those below from the sun. The holding areas themselves are separated by sixteen-foot-tall curtains, and he imagines this is done to keep the animals from eyeing one another, though clearly it does nothing to hide their scents. The cat—or perhaps a different cat—growls again, and maybe the beast is smelling Bell, or maybe it’s just pissed off at having been left alone on this scorching day.

It’s a sound that sinks through flesh and awakens primal warnings that evolution has done nothing to dull. It’s a sound that makes his muscles tense, and draws his attention unconsciously from what he’s doing and where he is to the more urgent need to be certain—absolutely certain—that some pissed-off jaguar or indignant and hungry lioness isn’t about to make a meal of him.

This is why Jad Bell doesn’t spot the Tango until it’s too late.

This is what he tells himself later, at any rate.

He’s coming around one of the holding pens, this to his right, the heavy, high curtains blocking the sight lines of one animal to another. The stage is to his left, the literal backstage, and another curtained block lies dead ahead. He hears a snarl, this one unquestionably a warning, a declaration, catches the scent of fresh blood and offal, all suddenly clear; the ammonia tang of urine. He hears what he thinks is the sound of a baby’s whimper.

The curtain beside him flutters, parts. Head turn, a quick flash, a cage, a jaguar, a dead gazelle torn open stem to stern, organs spilling into a burgundy pool on the concrete ground. And the Tango, most important, the Tango: Caucasian, no more than his midtwenties, still in Tyvek, no mask, no gloves, black hair and startlingly blue eyes. A submachine gun in his right hand, and Bell identifies the weapon without thought, an MP5K. The man is grinning, opening his mouth to speak in the moment before he realizes Bell is standing, unexpectedly, in front of him.

Bell pivots, raising his weapon and trying to take a half step back all at once. The Tango is fast, or maybe he’s panicked and
that
makes him fast, but his left snaps up, into Bell’s hands, knocks the .45 out of line and out of his grip, sends the gun clattering to the concrete. Mouth opens, and he starts an inarticulate shout of surprise, but Bell is now stepping forward, snapping his forehead into the Tango’s nose. The cry is stifled, turns to a choke, his nose shattering, and he staggers back.

Bell presses, pursuing, trying to put his fingers through the man’s trachea. But the Tango is swinging the submachine gun up, wild, and the weapon begins to speak and spit even before it’s in line, and Bell throws his left forearm up instead, blocking the swing. He’s inside the man’s guard, drives his right at the Tango’s throat, hits his chin as the other man instinctively tries to protect his neck. Still surging forward, smashing the Tango’s back against the bars of the cage. The jaguar within roars, meal threatened.

The MP5K shouts again, another rattle of shots, wild, deafening in Bell’s left ear. He shifts, moves from the waist, gets his right onto the Tango’s wrist, slips to a finger, twists and pulls, feels bone snap. The Tango shouts as he loses his weapon, pounds his left down, trying to catch Bell at the back of the neck. Misses, the punch just low, hitting the spine and the mass of muscle. Bell grunts, right forearm rising to cross, again going for the throat, and now each man has a grip on the other; Bell can feel the Tango’s fingers clawing at his face, straining for his eyes even as Bell tries to force the man’s head back, tries to crush his windpipe with his arm. The Tango drops his weight, Bell’s purchase vanishes, and he feels half his wind rush free as his back collides with the cage. Punches with his left, hard and fast twice to the man’s midsection, and the Tango takes both punches and is now trying to crush the back of Bell’s head against the bars, through the bars. The jaguar roars again, and Bell feels a searing heat blossom at his lower back.

There is an awful clarity, a pristine knowledge, that comes to Jad Bell then and there. He is getting old, he is getting tired. He is a hard man, a warrior soul, a soldier, but this man, this Tango, is younger and faster and maybe stronger. This Tango, he fights like they taught Bell to fight; he fights dirty, for his life, and to win.

Jad Bell is about to lose this fight.

He strains to move his head against the Tango’s pressure, turns his mouth enough to find the meat at the side of the man’s hand, bites. Tastes sweat, copper, feels his teeth tearing skin, struggling to meet. This time, the Tango screams, uses his other hand to punch Bell in the face, breaking the bite, lurching backward. Bell lunges, again trying to press his small advantage, and the two are grappling again, out of the pen, into the open, clutching at each other, pulling at clothes and flesh.

Tango twists, using Bell’s momentum, trying to shake him, swinging him about. Bell hangs on, lungs burning, gasping for breath. This much exertion, sweat is pouring off him, pouring off the other man. World spins, peripheral information, all the things that fight-or-flight take in when fight is at full. He can discern the velvet-like fabric of the black curtains, sees a new set sweeping wide, revealing another Tango, armed, cage behind him. People in that cage.

He thinks he sees Amy.

Then they’re gone, out of sight, heavy fabric enveloping him, opening, as he and the man trying to kill him spin into a new pen. The Tango brings his knee up, sharp, catches Bell in the hip, frees one hand, follows the blow with another attempt at the neck. Bell shields, catches it on the jaw, light sparking behind his eyes and blood spilling in his mouth, and his grip is gone and he smashes into something hard and smooth. Feels it give way and an instant later, the shattering of glass.

He hits the concrete, feels the abrasion on his cheek, the weight of the Tango falling on him as he tries to roll. Vision clearing, and he snaps an elbow back, catches the other man a glancing strike to the head, too high for the temple. Rolling over broken glass, hearing it snap, and Bell sees dirt and rock and branches spilled on the ground, the cases on their stands, the snakes in their cases.

He’s on his back now, the Tango over him, feels his vision burst again, a rock-heavy impact and another, punched twice more in the face. Trying to bring one leg around, to lock the other man, but he doesn’t have it left in him, there is not enough air, there will never be enough air, and sweat stings, drips off this Tango into Bell’s eyes. Feels the hands at his throat, the cloud pressing into his mind, slowly trying to blind him. He flails, right hand straining amid the debris at his side, broken glass beneath his fingertips.

Something hisses like steam escaping a relief valve, the hood of a cobra spreading in the corner of Bell’s eye. The Tango’s grip loosens for a moment, the man looks, he can’t not, and the shard of glass is cold under Bell’s hand. He feels it cutting his palm as he takes hold, pours all the strength that remains into his right arm, striking up and in, feels the sadly familiar sensation of stabbing a living body. The Tango’s eyes snap wide as Bell shoves the piece of glass into the man’s neck, driving it upward, carotid, jugular, trachea, twisting it to make the wound crueler and quicker.

The Tango dies, blood pouring out of him and down Jad Bell’s arm. He goes to dead weight, and Bell wants to stop then, wants to stop there, hurting and breathless and aching, knows he can’t.

Because there’s one more Tango, and he thinks there’s Amy, too, thinks he can hear her voice calling for him.

He hears the cobra warning him again, angry, and Bell shoves the dead man off him, toward the snake, struggles to his knees. More broken glass on the ground and no weapons but for the knife on his person, and he’s about to go for that when the cobra rises, swaying, swings toward the curtains that are suddenly sweeping apart, reacting to the sudden motion. The remaining Tango, another MP5K, searching, seeing them.

In one move, Bell grabs the cobra above the tail, flings the snake at the Tango even as the creature tries to arch, to snap back at his hand. Flies through the air, a writhing length of cord, the Tango panics. His weapon hits the ground, hands coming up, trying to shield and catch and backpedal all at once, through the curtains. Bell dives, finds the submachine gun with both hands, sliding forward, beneath the edge of the curtain. Sights and fires, a three-round burst that lands groin, gut, thorax.

The remaining Tango drops, still holding the cobra, the snake’s fangs latched at the man’s collar, pumping venom into a corpse. Bell thumbs the selector down, aims, and takes its head with a bullet.