Cookie Cutter Man (14 page)

“Forget it, but you could have picked a better day to sleep
in.” Jared slid a manila envelope across the table to him. “This is the file.
We managed to get architectural blueprints for the building, and we’ve been
running surveillance all week.”

Daniel looked from Jared to the folder and opened it,
leafing through the pages it held. There were also four black-and-white
headshots.

“They’ll be there?” Daniel asked, holding the pictures up.

“We’ve verified everything Bailey told us,” Jared said. “He
mentioned these four individuals as regulars at the office. Now keep in mind
that there may be between one and five other government agents at the office
tonight.”

Daniel looked up at Jared. “So there could be nine of these
motherfuckers?”

“Possibly more,” Simon spoke up. “But that’s pretty
unlikely, and either way we won’t know until we get there. There should be at
least six of them. And if again, Bailey was correct, then one or more of them
may be Lawrence Wills.”

“Think you people can handle that? Seeing two or three
clones of a guy we all know is dead?” Simon asked, looking at everyone that
would be in the field.

“I killed him once, I think I can manage to do it again.”
Isis grinned wickedly, a sadist at heart.

“Good. Don’t anybody freeze. Shoot first, and we’ll answer
our own questions later,” Simon said. “That is, if we get what we’re looking
for.”

“Which is ...” Daniel prompted.

“Information, Number Six,” Jared said. “There are documents
in that office that will put us ahead another 10 years in our understanding of
what’s going on over on their side, and how to stop it. We got about 12 hours
to kill here, so don’t get antsy. Let’s stay calm, stay focused, do whatever it
is you need to do, and tonight we go to war.” Jared tapped twice on the scarred
oak surface of the table and walked out of the room.

“You nervous?” Isis leaned forward and whispered in Daniel’s
ear. He turned slowly to face her.

“Anxious.” He wondered who gave her the scar that slashed
across her lips and down to a little fishhook curve under her chin. It made her
smile so dangerous; like a tigress in heat, or about to attack.

“Wanna dose?” Ebin held out a tiny black baggie of gel
squares.

“Fucking acid? Are you shitting me?”

“I’m not taking it right
now
,” Ebin said. “I’ll drop
at six, peak about seven, and be ready to
fuck
some people up by nine.”

The five of them – Daniel, Ebin, Isis, Kismet, and Simon –
sat in the meeting room, talking and fucking off just like any other
mid-20-year-olds, trying not to look at their watches or the small clock on the
wall. They tried not to notice the time at all, how it moved both too fast and
too slow with a strange, lethargically flipping speed.

At noon they made themselves lunch. “Eat heavy early, light
later on,” had been Jared’s advice, and nothing spicy. Daniel took special care
in this, but his stomach was still a queasy mess until it was time to go.

Just as he said he would, Ebin took his acid and peaked
right on schedule, at one point becoming a helpless pile of giggles for about
five minutes. But he was different now. Daniel stared at him out the corner of
his eye and found it hard to link what he saw with what he had witnessed
earlier. All the laughter and jokes had left, all the
emotion
had left,
Ebin was cold and detached like a rattlesnake ill at ease, thinking of nothing
except his prey and when he would strike. Isis was sitting in an easy chair,
her legs crossed beneath her, eyes closed. She hadn’t moved in the last 20
minutes. Kismet was, of course, in the corner. At some point he had taken a
50-cent piece from his pocket and had begun endlessly flipping it.

Has he missed, even once? Daniel didn’t think he had. He
had to though; he’d been flipping that fucking thing for at least an hour now.

But had it been longer, forever maybe? Daniel didn’t
understand how they could all be so still. He couldn’t stop twitching his left
leg, tap-tapping like he always did when he was nervous. His fingers beat out a
sweaty rhythm on his thighs.

Jared came into the room at 9:30 exactly, didn’t say a word,
just poked his head in and they all stood as one. Kismet put the coin back in
his pocket and they gathered at the rear entranceway of the house.

Jared addressed them once more. “This is it, this is what
we’ve been waiting for. You guys take the station wagon.” He tossed the keys
down to Simon. Then Jared looked at Kismet and Isis. “Take the Volvo. And come
back, all of you.”

Half an hour later the cars were parked on opposite sides of
the target so the two groups could split upon exiting the low-slung brick
building. Daniel’s stomach had stopped rolling, and he was no longer fidgeting.
The hot wave in his guts was gone. There was nothing now, and it was somehow
very cold.

You’ll die in there.

No I won’t.

But it’s possible.

Yes, I suppose it is.

You’ll kill in there.

That’s unavoidable. Daniel looked down the street at the one
lit window, and then turned to Simon. “How many you think are in there?”

“Rob’s been watching all day. He says there’s between three
and six. No more, no less.”

“There’s one now,” Ebin said as they watched a man in a suit
step out of the side door and light a cigarette. “That’s our way in.”

“Any ideas, laughing boy?” Simon asked, Ebin nodded and
turned on his heel, cutting across the lawn toward the agent. Daniel and Simon
followed.

“What do we do?” Daniel whispered as he caught up to Ebin.

“Just shut up,” Ebin hissed as the three drew near. The
agent was on guard, hand hovering just outside his coat, mere inches from the
large automatic pistol strapped to his chest.

“Hey man, you got a light?” Ebin asked, shaking a cigarette
from his pack. At first the G-man just stood there, hand near his gun. All they
could do was watch him and hope he didn’t draw and open fire.

“Yeah, I do.” The agent relaxed a little and patted his
pockets.

There was a soft
snikt
as Ebin stepped forward, five
inches of cold steel hopping from the ivory-handled switchblade in his hand.

The agent had time to look surprised before the blade sunk
into the side of his neck. He gargled and slapped at the knife and Ebin
wrenched it to the side, cutting his throat almost to the spine.

“Oh, Jesus.” Simon was the only one to talk. Daniel stared
in silent shock as the jugular vein burst and moonlit blood splashed black onto
the pavement. The lifeless head lolled back, and the bitter grin slashed
beneath it opened into a wide, dying yawn. Blood spurted out; it stained their
shoes and pant legs, a thin line of it flicked across Ebin’s face. He didn’t
wipe it off.

Simon got Daniel in action again; he held the door open and
the other two dragged the dead man inside, dumping him next to the wall.

“Nice work,” Simon said and clapped Ebin on the back.

“Isn’t that my knife?” Daniel distinctly remembered taking
it off David Bailey when he’d searched him.

“You want it back?” Ebin grinned and pointed to the blood
slickened handle, all that was visible, jutting out of the dead man’s neck like
a weird tumor.

“I’ll pass, thanks.” Daniel turned to Simon, “Shouldn’t we
go let the others in?”

“Yeah, but we might run into another guard. You got your
silencer on you?”

Daniel did. He dug it out of his pocket and screwed it onto
the barrel of his gun. The three crept through the poorly lit halls like
shadows, silent but for the occasional squeak of the blood between the soles of
their shoes and the tile floor.

Simon peered around a corner, pulling back quickly. He
looked at Daniel, then at the gun.

Daniel closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, racking his
pistol as quietly as possible, then traded places with Simon so he was in the
lead.

The agent’s back was to the wall as he was thumbing through
a magazine.

Hope it’s a good one, Daniel thought. That’s the last thing
you’ll ever read. Gun raised, he crept toward the agent. He was about to stop
and fire when the blood on his shoes squeaked.

“Huh?” The agent turned and Daniel pulled the trigger. There
was the bass-heavy
choof
of the silencer, a flash of muzzle flare, and a
hole just below the agent’s nose opened up. The back of his head spread in a
red fan, followed by the ticking sound his front tooth made, bouncing off the
tile some 30 feet down the hall.

But the agent didn’t fall, didn’t even drop the magazine,
which Daniel would later see was the new fall issue of Martha Stewart’s
Living
.

Daniel raised his gun again,
choof choof choof
, and
three crimson blots spread across the agent’s neatly pressed white shirt as he
dropped to the floor, his hands twitching. Daniel fired twice more and the
twitching stopped.

Now you’re a murderer, little Alex
, the stranger
spoke up as the spent shells clinked to the floor.

“Nice grouping,” Simon said.

Daniel walked forward 10 numb paces and stood over the man
he’d killed. He might have been staring into the face of the agent whose throat
Ebin had cut at the door; they were identical except for the color their eyes
had been before death glazed them over.

That cold feeling that had been in Daniel’s stomach now
pulsed in his veins. It began to fade away soon enough, from everywhere but his
heart. Ebin came up to stand beside him, put his hand on the back of Daniel’s
neck, and squeezed. Simon was beyond such compassion, could never feel warmth
again. He walked past them and let Isis and Kismet in through the front. They
glanced at the body on the floor, but paid more attention to Ebin, whose shirt
was soaked with blood, the thin line of it still across his face.

“Not mine,” Ebin told them.

The lights popped on and the alarm began to sound. Daniel
glanced up at a security camera mounted by the ceiling. Who would be on the
other end, watching?

“Got farther than I thought we would,” Simon might have
said, but Daniel couldn’t understand him through the noise. Isis and Kismet
headed toward the opposite end of the building. There were two stories and two
sets of stairs to this place, one on each end. The plan was to split up and
converge on the room Bailey had told them about. Daniel’s group ran down the
hall into the other stairwell, automatic fire from above shredding the cheap
plaster walls. Simon fired twice and the automatic stopped. Daniel looked down
at the corpse as they entered the second floor hall. The head was gone from the
eyebrows up, but what was left looked like David Bailey.

The three of them came down the hall as Isis and Kismet
entered it from the other end. The third door on the right opened and Daniel
fired twice.

It’s him! Oh fuck me, it’s him!

Lawrence Wills staggered just a little as Daniel’s two shots
ripped through his stomach. But Wills didn’t even seem to know he’d been shot.
All five of them zeroed in on the half man, half cyborg, and their guns sounded
like the end of the world. The firing ceased and Wills2 dropped to the floor,
his body leaking blood, oil, and smoke.

Daniel and Ebin began checking doors, Isis and Kismet doing
the same from the other end. All of them were empty; the five of them that went
into the room Wills2 had been in. Empty.

Simon sat down at the only desk in the room. He opened his
silver case on the table next to him and pulled out some equipment Rob had
given him and plugged it into the computer.

The rest of them searched the file cabinets, looking for
something, anything.

“This is it,” Simon said, the excitement in his voice at a
level they’d never heard before.

“What’d you find?” Isis asked.

“Everything.” Simon copied and then erased every byte of
information on the computer, packed up the equipment, added the four or five
flash drives sitting on the desk and stood. “I hate to sound clichéd, but
mission accomplished.” He snapped the case shut. The others began to
congratulate each other but Simon interrupted. “Don’t start that shit yet, we
still gotta get outta here and back home.”

The group walked through the empty halls, down the stairs,
and towards the front door.

“Should we leave out the side?” Isis asked, gesturing to
herself and Kismet.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Simon said over his
shoulder. He pushed the front door open, walking out in the one careless move
he’d ever made. There was a single shot fired, and suddenly Daniel’s face was
covered with blood and brains.

“Simon? Oh
fuck
!
Simon
!” Daniel grabbed the
collapsing body and dragged it back inside. The half of the head that was left
was rolling lifelessly on its shoulders as death punched three more holes
through the door. Ebin kicked it open screaming, a pistol in each hand, driving
a third Lawrence Wills to cover.

Isis grabbed Simon’s briefcase. “Can you handle this?”

“
Go
! Get that back to Jared, whatever you do,” Daniel
said, still kneeling and trying to shake Simon awake. He couldn’t be gone he—

Kismet put a light hand on Daniel’s shoulder.

“We can’t just leave him here.” Daniel stood and tried to
lift the body. His grip slipped and once again Simon dropped to the ground with
a heavy thud. Daniel wiped stinging blood out of his eyes and was horrified to
see a little grey gelatinous chunk stuck to his palm. He didn’t notice the
angry tears as they cut through the blood on his cheeks.

“Leave him.” Kismet drew the 50-cent piece out of his pocket
and closed it in Simon’s still-warm palm, then turned to follow Isis out the
side entrance.

There was a volley of automatic gunfire. “Gotcha
motherfucker!” Ebin screamed from the door, and then turned to Daniel. “Come
on!”