Red Eye - 02 (38 page)

“Shows how little you know,” said Giacoia.

“Yeah, well, Redlaw bought it anyway. Plus, I think he thought having a witness around might be a good idea.”

“Why so keen to come, though?” said Berger. “You got a death wish or something?”

“This is a story, my story,” said Tina flatly, “and I want to see it through to the end.”

“Spoken like a true journalist,” Farthingale said, and a couple of the soldiers, hearing this, nodded sagely. The girl was a journalist, yes. That went some way to explaining her actions. They’d met journalists while serving. Crazy people. Certifiable. Soldiers went to war zones because they were ordered to. Journalists went because they got a perverse kick out of it.

“But also,” Tina said, “I’m here on account of him.” She gestured at Farthingale. “Your boss is my boss, now, too. He’s offering me work.”

“Come now, Tina,” said Farthingale genially, “don’t undersell me, or yourself. In return for all you’ve done today, I’m offering you a position with a national news network. Any position you like—back-room, editorial, behind camera, in front of camera. You only have to decide where on the ladder you wish to start, how high up the pecking order. I’m confident that, wherever you set out from, a glittering career awaits you. I hardly know you, but from what I’ve seen, I can tell you’ll go far. It’s my pleasure to be the one who gives you your big break.”

“See?” Tina said to Berger. “There’s my real motive right there. I knew if I forced Redlaw to take me with him, there might be a chance for me to really prove myself to Mr Farthingale. And when Redlaw turned his back on me down there by the jetty, I saw my moment and I grabbed it. Me and my trusty Taser. So...” She placed a hand on the barrel of the Cindermaker and gently but firmly pushed down. “Kindly get that damn thing out of my face, bee-yatch. Stop treating me like I’m a prisoner of war. I just did what none of you guys, with all your weapons and training and amped-up vamp powers, could. I took down John Redlaw. I think that earns me a little damn respect, don’t you?”

Berger scowled, but she had to concede that this pinch-faced, feisty girl had a point. She gave Tina a grudging nod, and Tina answered it with a beaming smile that said simultaneously
thank
you
and
fuck you
.

“You do realise what’s going to happen to Redlaw?” Berger said. “What you’re partly responsible for? It’s not going to be pretty.”

“The man’s a wackjob,” Tina replied blithely. “He scares me, and that’s no lie.”

“But you’ve been with him a while, am I right?”

“He’s not my friend, if that’s what you’re driving at. He’s just the story—part of it. We’re not attached in any way. If you ask me—setting journalistic impartiality aside—Redlaw deserves what’s coming to him. I mean, siding with vampires over humans...” Her face showed how offensive she thought
that
was.

“And that’s the least of it,” said Child, holding up a heavily bandaged hand. “Dude needs a serious reassessment of his values.”

“Damn fucking straight,” agreed Abbotts. He pointed to his face, then his crotch. “Bad enough he messed up my good looks, but to ruin another man’s junk...”

He delivered a swift, contemptuous kick to the body in the snow.

“Gonna return the compliment, Redlaw,” he spat. “And I won’t just take the one like you did. I’ll take ’em both, and I’ll shove ’em down your throat. Make you choke on them.”

“You’ll get your turn, private,” said Berger. “We all will. First things first. Let’s get those clothes off him. He won’t be nearly so dangerous when he’s freezing half to death.”

Lim and Giacoia stripped Redlaw down to his underpants. This revealed a body that carried more than its fair share of scarring. All over were the traces of wounds received in the line of duty, ranging from sets of deep parallel slashes to an ugly-looking gouge on one shoulder that had cost him a large chunk of flesh. It was a map of violence, etched out in macabre contour lines and puckered valleys of pain, and it had been added to very recently in the form of angry red bite marks on his left forearm.

Child let out a low whistle. “Shee-it. Vampires done all that to him, and now he’s their best bud?”

“Amongst Britain’s SHADE officers,” said Farthingale, “Redlaw had a reputation for being unusually dedicated to his job.”

“Well, there’s dedication and then there’s just plain stupid,” said Giacoia. “A GI with half those injuries, he’d have been invalided out, taken off active duty and given a nice cosy desk job.”

“Pretty fit-looking for a guy his age,” Lim observed.

“Yeah. Fancy crucifix, too,” said Child. “You could throttle a bull with that chain.”

“Can we stop admiring and start tying up?” Berger snapped. “We don’t want him coming round on us before he’s properly secured.”

“Sure thing.” Giacoia pulled Redlaw’s arms behind his back and lashed a plastic zip tie around his wrists. He tested the zip tie with a few hard tugs. It didn’t budge. There wasn’t a millimetre of slack. No way was Redlaw breaking free.

“Now wake him up,” said Berger.

One-handed, Child hoisted Redlaw into a kneeling position. Giacoia slapped his face several times, increasingly hard.

Redlaw groaned. His eyelids fluttered. Snapped open.

“Good evening,” Berger said to him, almost chirpy. “Welcome back to the world. How’re you doing?”

“Just super,” Redlaw replied hoarsely.

“Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” Berger looked at Giacoia. “LT. You get first dibs.”

“Hey, no fair!” said Abbotts. “The loot’s not been injured by him. How come he gets a go before any of the rest of us?”

“Ranking officer,” said Berger.

“But in that case, I’ll be last. There won’t be anything left by then.”

“Look at it another way. You get the privilege of delivering the
coup de grâce
.”

“Oh, yeah.” Abbotts was mollified. “That’s true. Just make sure he’s still alive when my turn comes, everybody.”

Giacoia lined himself up in front of Redlaw, fists clenched.

Farthingale looked on from the terrace, hands braced on the balustrade. He knew then how it must have felt to be a Roman emperor at the Circus Maximus, watching the Games that he had laid on, suffused with pride and a sense of his own greatness. Below was a man—a Christian, no less—who had been thrown to the proverbial lions. His life was forfeit, and it was all Farthingale’s doing. Farthingale had brought him to this predicament. Farthingale was now going to preside over his slow, torturous death.

All the money in the world couldn’t have made J. Howard Farthingale III feel any more sublimely powerful than he did at that moment.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

G
IACOIA PLANTED HIS
feet and landed three solid, chunky roundhouses on Redlaw’s cheek. The lieutenant had done a bit of amateur boxing as a kid, and his technique was still good—pivoting off his back foot, his arm a rigid L-shape, most of the force of the blows coming from the twisting of his upper body. Redlaw’s head snapped sideways with each blow.

Giacoia stepped back.

“Hit him again, loot,” Abbotts urged. “Harder. Like you mean it.”

Giacoia came at Redlaw again and drove a fearsome uppercut into the underside of his jaw.

Redlaw recoiled. He shook his head like a tiger clearing water from its whiskers.

“Your colleague’s right,” he said. “Your heart’s not in it, lieutenant. You’re not comfortable with this at all. I can see it in your eyes. You think it’s wrong.”

“Shut up.” Giacoia punched him again. “Shut your mouth.” And again. “That’s for Jacobsen.” Again. “And that’s for Larousse.”

Redlaw spat blood. “Revenge is such a petty motive. So shallow.”

“Sergeant Child, hold the rat-bastard still.”

Child put an arm round Redlaw’s neck, and Giacoia thumped him repeatedly in the abdomen.

Child let go, and Redlaw was left bent double, wheezing and gasping.

With an effort, he raised his head once more.

“After I’m dead, all you’ll feel is empty and guilty,” he said. He was starting to shiver with the cold, his lips turning blue. “And it won’t go away. It’ll never go away. You’ll feel like that for the rest of your life. All of you will.”

“What does it take to make you stop talking?” Giacoia said.

“More than you’ve got. I don’t mind being martyred. I’ve done what I believe is right and I can go to my grave secure in that knowledge. I wonder how many of you could say the same.”

With a cross between a grunt and a scream, Giacoia slammed his fists into Redlaw a dozen times more. When the onslaught was over, blood was trickling from a cut to Redlaw’s forehead. One side of his mouth had begun to swell up. One eye was puffing shut.

“Uh, if I could just say something...”

All eyes turned to Tina. She had a hand tentatively raised, like an anxious pupil in class.

“Hate to butt in when you all are having so much fun,” she went on, “but there’s something you ought to know.”

“Can it wait?” said Berger.

“Kind of not really. You see, Redlaw didn’t come here alone.”

“Yes. You were with him.”

“No, apart from me. Others. That’s why he’s so calm.”

“Others?” said Farthingale. “What others?”

“Who do you think? His vampire pals. The ones he shtrigas for. They crossed over the ice, too. Secretly. Behind us.”

“What!? What for?”

“Backup. Redlaw’s worked out this whole plan with them. He told them to follow behind us at a safe distance. In case something like this”—she pointed to the kneeling, beaten-up Redlaw—“happened. It’s his insurance policy.”

“Judas,” Redlaw growled.

Tina shot him an apologetic but defiant look. “I’ve started down that road. Might as well go the whole way.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Berger. “Vampires are en route to rescue him?”

“Yup.”

“And you only just thought to mention this fact?”

“Yeah. So? I forgot.”

“Hell of an important piece of information to
forget
.”

“Look, lady, a lot’s been going on,” Tina said hotly, “including you holding a gun to my head when you didn’t have to. In all the confusion, it slipped my mind. I’m telling you now, aren’t I? You still have a fair warning.”

“So how many of them are there?” said Lim.

“Not many. A handful.”

“What’s a handful?”

“Six or seven, thereabouts.”

“And are they dangerous?”

“Of course they’re dangerous. They’re vampires. Probably not as dangerous as you, but still...”

“Okay,” said Berger with resolve. “New intel, change of plan. Giacoia, Lim, go down and run a sweep of the island perimeter. Look for these vampires. Flush them out. Terminate on sight. Got that?”

Giacoia could have resented having orders barked at him by a junior officer, but in the event he seemed relieved to be assigned a new task. Anything so as not to have to keep hitting a trussed-up, helpless human being.

As he and Lim loped off down the hillside, Berger turned to Farthingale. “Sir? Maybe you should think about going indoors, bunkering down. At least until the vampire threat is negated.”

“No,” Farthingale replied. “I have faith in you and your men. I feel perfectly safe. Shall we get on with teaching Redlaw the error of his ways?”

“As you wish,” said Berger. “Guess I’m next.” She flipped the Cindermaker round, holding it by the barrel. “A pistol-whipping with your own sidearm,” she said to Redlaw. “That’s going to hurt in more ways than one.”