Alpha (22 page)

GABRIEL DOESN’T
know why they’ve stopped at first, only that they have, and Vladimir half turns, calls back to him, voice muffled behind the Kurkur mask.

“I don’t see them,” Vladimir says, using English. “Something’s wrong.”

He thinks that means Vladimir just can’t see the two other groups, Charlie One and Charlie Two, and Gabriel takes another few steps forward then. He is aware of Bell’s daughter in front of him, looking at her friend in the Flashman costume, but beyond the front of their group, where Dana is positioned beside Oscar, Betsy and Clip Flashman side by side, his vision is impaired. It’s hard to see extreme distance through the Pooch headpiece, and Gabriel wants to remove it, the same way he wants to answer Vladimir. Again, he keeps his silence, afraid of what his voice might mean to Dana.

“They’re not here.” Sonny, dressed as Gordo, anxious, nervous. Oscar starts to turn back his way. Just at the edge of Gabriel’s vision, fuzzy through the grille, he can see Charlie One coming in from the north. He moves his hand, thinking to reach into his suit and pull his radio, to ask Jonathan Bell just what he thinks he’s doing, if he really wants to do this, to play games with the lives of so many, with the life of his daughter.

Then it all goes to screaming hell.

“Contact!” This in Russian, Vladimir shouting, and Gabriel can’t tell where the shots are coming from, only that Oscar is going down, Clip Flashman helmet bursting into shards as a round finds his face. The reports echo across pavement and bounce from buildings, the rides, from the heavens, it seems, all of them muffled, confused, inside Pooch’s head.

The girl, Bell’s daughter, has fallen, or maybe she’s diving, knocking down the Flashman boy, and Vladimir is turning, freeing his submachine gun, but the others are only now beginning to respond. In the back of Gabriel’s mind he understands, intuitively, how this is happening, how Bell and his team are picking their targets, at least in part, at least in front of him. How can they tell who is a hostage and who isn’t? The last ones to move, those are the hostages. The last ones to move, because they are the last to understand, because they are deaf. They cannot hear the shots.

Sonny is falling, and just in the edge of his vision, Gabriel sees Vladimir with his weapon out, laying down fire. Gabriel starts forward, wanting to reach Dana, to protect her, but stops himself, instead steps back. Tears at the front of the Pooch costume, reaching for his own submachine gun, still trapped against his side.

Then the weapon is in his hands, and he swings it right, fires off a burst toward the spinning bowl ride, shooting blindly. Bell’s daughter is on her knees, screaming for her father, and he can see that Dana in the Betsy costume is trying to protect the kids, trying to pull them close to her with oversized arms, to pull them down.

“The girl!” Gabriel points at Bell’s daughter. “Vladimir! The girl, get the girl!”

He looses another burst, same direction as before. The fucking Pooch head has killed his peripheral vision, and what he can see as he moves comes stuttered, like broken film. He tries to back up, almost trips over his own paws, sees a man amid the bowls coming forward, pistol in his hands, firing at him. Something punches through his mask, creases pain along his scalp, and he lays on the MP5K again, watches the man jerk backward, fall out of his line of sight.

Bell’s daughter is still on her knees, the girl in the Smooch costume flat on the ground in front of her, and Gabriel can hear her still screaming for her father, screaming bloody murder. Vladimir cuts into his vision, reaches down for her, pulls her up and against his costume armor. Gabriel raises the MP5K, puts another burst downrange, the direction of Charlie One, begins backing away again.

“Tunnel!” His voice is too loud in the mask, makes his ears throb, but he’s shouting anyway. “Back! Toward the theater!”

Vladimir adjusts his grip on the girl, lifting her under one arm, goes on his trigger with the other, firing in the direction of the ball pit. Then he’s pivoting, the girl shrieking incoherently, kicking and clawing, and Gabriel sees Vladimir bash the barrel of the SMG along the side of her head, and the girl stops struggling.

Gabriel fires again, almost randomly, lets Vladimir get behind him with Bell’s daughter, checks over his shoulder to see they’re making their retreat. Turns back and then he sees him, sees Bell, or at least he thinks he does, distorted through the mask, a hundred feet or so away. Starting to run toward them, and Gabriel brings the gun up again, lays a burst at him starting up the sloped path in their direction. The man cuts right just as Gabriel fires, throws himself into cover against the curving wall along the pathway. Gabriel lays down a second burst, close after the first, still backing away.

Retreat is the only thing that matters now, salvaging this is the only thing that matters right now. That, and Dana, and Gabriel sees she’s huddled on her knees, big Betsy arms around two of the costumed kids. Head bowed, and he doesn’t think she’s been hit, can’t see if she was, prays that she wasn’t. Prays that Bell and his people take better care of her than he’s managed to.

Gabriel runs, chasing after Vladimir. Yanking the Pooch head off with one hand, feels a new shock of pain along his scalp. Whoever shot him must’ve hit high on the mask, just skimming his skull. He lets the mask drop, feels blood running through his hair and down his neck.

“This way!” he shouts, leading, running as fast as the Pooch costume will let him to the
Friends Only
door alongside the Dawg Days Theatre. Hits it with his shoulder, costume cushioning the impact, knocking it wide and then covering their backs as Vladimir, still half carrying, half dragging Bell’s daughter, crashes through past him. Gabriel takes a last look, sees nothing, nobody chasing, and steps fully into the little courtyard, allowing the door to fall closed.

Vladimir has dropped the girl, is yanking at the Kurkur costume, and Bell’s daughter is still for a moment, holding her head in her hands where she was clubbed with the gun. Then she’s on her feet with a burst of speed, and Vladimir, his arms caught in his costume, tries to reach for her, misses. She’s coming straight at Gabriel, trying to get past him, and he catches her with his arm across her chest, sends her bouncing back. She tries again.

Gabriel brings the MP5K up, both hands, barrel straight at this teenage girl’s face. She stops herself, mouth in a scowl, eyes full of the same hate, stares at him, and for a flicker of a moment, Gabriel actually thinks she’s daring him to do it, to shoot her, and he wonders if it’s courage or rage or both that’s fueling her.

Then Vladimir’s out of Kurkur and his hands are free, and he’s grabbing the girl from behind, spinning her around. Before Gabriel can speak, before the girl can react, Vladimir is punching her, swearing in Russian as he does it, once, twice in the stomach, then in the face, and the girl collapses, broken, and Gabriel is shouting.

“Stop it! Stop it, we need her! We need her!”

Vladimir rounds on him with a snarl, catches himself, catches his breath. There is a silence, broken only by the sound of Bell’s daughter, a soft, keening noise that she’s making. She’s fallen from her knees to her side, one hand guarding her stomach, the other to her mouth. When she looks up, Gabriel sees blood coming between her fingers.

He moves closer to Vladimir, into his face, hissing in Russian. “We want her alive.”

“You care too much about them. They’re meat, to be used.” Vladimir spits off to the side, then turns away, retrieving his own submachine gun. Without looking at Gabriel, he asks, “Now what?”

Gabriel reaches down, offers Bell’s daughter his hand, and she recoils. He reaches again, and she tries to hit his hand, and he has to reach a third time before he can catch her arm. He pulls her to her feet, points at the flight of stairs leading down into the Gordo Tunnel. Vladimir grunts, starts down the flight of stairs, and Gabriel follows, hand still on the girl. She comes docilely now, more slowly, head down. Blood is running from her mouth, her lip already beginning to swell.

At the bottom, a view of the tunnel stretching north, bright and vacant. Vladimir, not more than ten feet ahead of him, turns to look at him.

“Which way are we going?” Vladimir asks.

“Straight to the junction, then right,” Gabriel says. He’s pulling at his own costume now, trying to shrug out of it.

“To do what, Matias?”

“To get the fuck out of here.”

“What about the device?”

“Fuck the device!” His raised voice echoes, bounces off the finished concrete surfaces all around them. “Do you want to do that Uzbek fuck’s bidding or do you want to live?”

Vladimir turns without a word, shaking his head slightly, begins walking down the tunnel. Gabriel kicks the Pooch leggings free, then gives Bell’s daughter a shove, and she offers no fight, stumbling along, and they are moving slowly, steadily, ten paces, twenty. Vladimir looks over his shoulder once, shakes his head again.

He has to do it now, Gabriel realizes. Now or it’ll be too late. Kill Vladimir and Bell’s daughter both, and then run for it, just run and run until he is out and free and clear. Dana is safe now, there’s that, at least, and with her safe, he still has hope.

Then he hears Dana’s voice, and hope, along with what remains of Gabriel Fuller’s dream, dies.

BELL PUTS
two rounds into Pooch, and another two rounds into Soccer Betsy, because he’s certain; he puts one round into the S.E.E.K.E.R. Robot’s leg because he isn’t, and there’s always time for apologies later. Chain chattering in his ear the whole time, traffic overlapping, Bonebreaker repeating the message from Athena, relayed via sign.

“Kurkur, Gordo, Clip, and Pooch.”

Bell swings his weapon left, up and away from Soccer Betsy, tracking. Identifies White, Angel is moving forward, firing at the Tango in the Lola costume.

“Tango down.” Her voice is hoarse.

Tango down, Angel advancing.

Continues tracking, swinging about, eyes on Green, furthest away, over a hundred feet, bad range for a pistol shot, he has no shot. Hearing the gunfire as he starts to advance.

“Tango down,” Cardboard saying.

Rip of gunfire, still advancing, Bonebreaker echoing Cardboard. New cascade of shots and then his daughter’s voice, calling for him, and he feels a new rush of adrenaline, is sprinting up the path, climbing the lazy slope. Sees Pooch, sees the weapon, hears Athena screaming for him, hears Chain in his ear, urgent, all of it at the same time.

“Bonebreaker, Bonebreaker,” Chain says. “Bonebreaker, respond.”

Training trumps passion. Bell shifts, throws himself to his left, against the retaining wall along the side of the path. Can smell the flowers planted there, feels his pulse thrum, the .45 in his hand. Bonebreaker isn’t responding.

“Cardboard!” Bell says.

“I’m pinned, Bone is down,” Cardboard comes back immediately. “No shot, no shot.”

Bell moves to break cover, hears another burst of shots, hears rounds whine past as they skip high off the ground.

“Bonebreaker is down,” Chain says. “Bonebreaker is down. Angel, do you have the shot?”

“No shot, I have no shot. Two Tangos moving back, they have a hostage, they have—”

She cuts off, another fusillade, the echo off the wall beside Bell disorienting, making it seem as if the shooters are somehow behind and above him. Chain swears in his ear.

“Warlock, move, move, move,” Chain says. “I have eyes on Tangos, go, go, go.”

Bell pushes away from the wall, sprinting forward, pounding his way upslope, pistol low and ready in both hands. More shots, the rattle from the MP5Ks, and Cardboard curses. Bell crests the rise, finds eight figures lying on the ground, and back toward Wilson Town, he sees Kurkur the Unending disappearing around the side of a building, Pooch chasing after him.

Eight figures on the ground, blood pools, soaks a Gordo, saturating his costume. Clip Flashman lies dead, his helmet in fragments around his head. Smooch face down, his trunk trapped beneath his body, and Bell hears a girl sobbing from within the costume. A Betsy is struggling to get out of her own outfit, her hands already free, a Hollyoakes student on either side of her, and she’s using ASL. He sees Dread Flashman, the same boy whom Athena was flirting with hours before, lying with his arms around his belly. Cardboard is coming up on Bell’s right, Angel behind him, already out of her helmet.

He doesn’t see Athena, he doesn’t see his daughter, and he knows what that means.

“Chain,” Bell says. “Track them.”

“On it, looks like they’re going for the tunnel at Dawg Days.”

Cardboard is moving past, toward the bowls of Rascal’s Tailspin. “Bonebreaker!”

The woman in the Betsy costume is moving now, pulling masks from more of the students, pausing in between to struggle out of her costume. Frightened faces blink up at them, some recoil, some try to hide, and Bell scans them all, and still, he cannot see his daughter.

“Got him!” Cardboard calls.

“He okay?”

“He’s a lucky motherfucker.”

Bell spares a look, sees Cardboard is helping the larger man make his way out of the ride. Three distinct tufts of Kevlar curl from Bonebreaker’s chest, the material white and willowy against the black fabric covering it. The vest held.

“Ribs,” Jorge manages to say. “Fucking ribs.”

Bell nods, pops the magazine from his pistol, replaces it fresh, readies the weapon. Looking over the students, his eyes finally settling on the woman now out of the Betsy costume.

“Angel,” Bell says. “Take the tunnels, swing around to Gordo from the north.”

Angel is kneeling by Dread Flashman, and she looks up at him. All around them, the Hollyoakes class minus his daughter is signing in a flurry, too fast for Bell to hope to understand, the shorthand the deaf use among themselves. Tears and relief and fear.

“This kid’s hurt,” Nuri says. “He’s in shock, I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Tunnels,” Bell repeats. “Go.”

She nods, getting to her feet. Bell looks down at the boy, the boy his daughter was walking with. His skin has taken an ashen cast, his lips touched with gray, pinpoints of perspiration on his forehead, his cheeks, his upper lip.

“Top,” Cardboard says.

Bell ignores him, turns to the woman who isn’t Betsy. “Dana Kincaid? You are Dana Kincaid?”

She’s signing to three of the kids at once, stops abruptly, looks at him in alarm. “I am. I’m…you’re Mr. Bell, aren’t you? You’re Athena’s father.”

“I am.” He extends one hand to her. “I need you to come with me. Now.”

“What?” She looks confused, on the verge of despair. “I don’t understand. I need to stay with the kids, they need an interpreter—”

“You know Gabriel Fuller?”

“Gabe? Yes, I know Gabe, he’s—”

“Your boyfriend has my daughter hostage,” Bell says. “You’re coming with me, now.”

He doesn’t wait for her agreement, steps in, puts his hand on her back, turns her with him.

“Top,” Cardboard says.

“Help the others.”

Bell and Dana Kincaid move into Wilson Town, together.

Dana Kincaid tries to keep pace with him as Bell jogs along. She opens her mouth to speak, but Bell raises his hand to silence her, listening to Cardboard in his ear.

“One of these kids is hurt,” Cardboard says. “He’s decompensating. We need a medic.”

“On it,” Chain responds. “HRT is at the front gate, waiting confirmation to breach.”

“Tell them to fucking move it.”

“I’m coming down,” Chain says.

Cardboard says, “Top, Brickyard wants status.”

“Keep HRT out of Town Square,” Bell says. “Going to try to talk a surrender.”

“Good luck with that,” Chain says.

“Surrender?” Dana Kincaid asks. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand, what’s going on? Why do you want to know about Gabe?”

“Gabriel Fuller has my daughter.” Bell keeps one hand on the woman’s back, the pressure as light as he can manage, guiding her.

“No. No, that’s not right. Stop that!” She twists, turns out of his touch, stopping in front of him. Confusion on her face, masked with defiance. “No, you’re wrong.”

“Then you’ll prove me wrong. Do you love him?”

She stares at him, taken aback by the question.

“Do you love him?” he asks again.

“I—yes! What…he isn’t, he…” She falters, trails off, and there’s a new look in her eyes, and Bell sees the realization. “He plays Pooch. He plays Pooch, there was a Pooch, he never said anything.…”

“Gabriel Fuller is involved in this, in what has happened today. He is involved, Dana, and he now is holding my daughter. And I will kill him to get her back, I will do that, do you understand?”

Dana Kincaid opens her mouth, but cannot find words. She nods, just barely, then nods again.

“If you love him, if you do not want that to happen, you will talk him down.” Bell is staring into her eyes, forcing the eye contact, giving her nowhere to look and no way to escape. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” She swallows, nods again. “Yes, I understand you.”

“Good.” Bell starts moving again, and she stays close by his side now, and he can see she’s processing what he’s said, still grappling with it, but she knows it is true, and he can see that as well.

They reach the double doors at the entrance to the Dawg Days Theatre. Bell stops, looks to her.

“Does he love you?”

She doesn’t pause, and answers with confidence. “Yes, he does.”

“Don’t let him forget that,” Bell says. “Stay close to me, move when I tell you. Don’t speak until I tell you.”

Bell goes through the doors, weapon up and ready, into dim light and air-conditioning that has made the empty theater too cold. The sound effects of a cartoon playing on a loop, the squeak of a mouse, Pooch’s unmistakable bark. He drops one hand from his weapon, reaches back for Dana Kincaid, finds her hand. She returns the grip, and he leads them into the seating area, advancing as quickly as he dares, up to the lip of the stage. He hears a voice, loses its words behind the sound track.

Up, Dana Kincaid’s hand still in his, and Bell scans the arc of the stage, gun leading, then pushes through the curtains. Seeing nothing. Another voice, another man’s, and he advances toward it, deeper into the backstage and toward the door at the rear of the theater, the one that leads into the little square courtyard that leads, in turn, to the mouth of the Gordo Tunnel. The door is ajar, left open during the evacuation.

Bell takes the wall, releasing Dana Kincaid’s hand, breathing through his nose. Trying to steady himself. If he has the shot, he will take it, but when he ducks his head forward to peer through the gap, he sees nothing, just the empty courtyard, the discarded pieces of Kurkur and Pooch, the top of the flight of stairs that leads down to the tunnel.

He looks to Dana Kincaid. “Call for him.”

She nods, takes a deep breath, raises her head.

“Gabriel?”

There is no response, but Bell didn’t immediately expect one. He pushes the door farther open, thinks he hears the echo of movement from the stairs, the entrance to the Gordo Tunnel.

“Gabriel, it’s Dana. I’m here with Mr. Bell. I’m here with Mr. Bell, he says you took his daughter. He says you’re involved in this, in everything that happened today. I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe him.”

Still no answer, nothing, and Bell pushes the door farther open, then slips back, pausing, before moving again, stepping through and out. Gun high, quick scan, and the courtyard is clear. He holds back, not wanting to expose the top of his head to the bottom of the stairs, freezes in place, listening. The park is still silent, but he can hear a distant helicopter, wonders how much longer the no-fly zone is going to last.

Dana steps through the doorway, and Bell moves a hand to catch her, to hold her back. She presses against him, not trying to get past, he thinks, but rather using him as her excuse to not move.

“God, please, Gabe,” Dana Kincaid calls. “Answer me, please! Are you there, baby? Please, this isn’t you, this was never you. They made you do it, your friends, those people you were meeting. I knew something was wrong, I knew it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

There is no answer, no noise at all. Just the distant sound of the helicopter coming closer.

Then, from the tunnel, he hears his daughter scream.

He hears shots.

He runs.