Coquitlam
Rachel Kidd examined her reflection in the mirror, eyes rising from long blue skirt to Red Serge tunic to troubled black face. The Ball would be an ordeal, but she had to go. Like falling off a horse, you must climb back on, or time will eat at your nerves till you can't face your fear.
A knock on the door.
Dermott Toop.
Vancouver
Brittany Starr had bleached her hair blond for the Ball, donning a sheer scoop-necked gown that clung to every curve, lips and nails painted the same tint as Red Serge.
Brittany Starr had never been to a formal dance, having quit school at fifteen to turn Lolita tricks. Now one of her Johns saw her as Cinderella in Pretty Woman, treating her to a similar whirlwind shopping spree, repeatedly assuring her she'd turn every head at the Ball.
Brittany Starr hefted her breasts to get the cleavage right.
A knock on the door.
Her Red Serge date.
* * *
Struggling with crutches and a full-length dress, Alex half hobbled, half crawled into Nick's car. "Every guy aboard will envy me/' he said, while Gill positioned Hunt's cast along the back seat.
"Whose tunic?" Alex asked.
"Mine," Nick replied. He held up his sleeve so she could see the dime-size patch cut from its cuff by the Lab. "Knight got it released from court."
"I hope there's a polka," Alex said. "I'm in the mood to dance."
The limousine crested Lions Gate Bridge on its way to fetch DeClercq. "You're quiet, Eric," Sally Chan said in back.
k4 Am I? Sorry," her husband said. "Something on my mind."
"Forget work," his wife chided. "Tonight we relax with friends."
His bowels were packed with two and a half pounds of plastic explosives. Wayne Tarr had reserved a hotel suite above Canada Place, from the balcony of which he could watch the Good Luck City, sleek and white against the dark chop of the harbor below. Here, he had flushed his bowels with the enema kit, a gurgling high-colonic bloat that bulged him like a pregnant male. Next he had squeezed the C4 tube every few inches, until it resembled a chain of sausage links. Naked in the bathroom, a hand mirror on the floor, he had straddled the image of his butt like the Colossus of Rhodes. Lubricating the first link with K-Y jelly, he'd squatted in the stance of a sumo wrestler to push the bulb of C4 plastic into his anus. Then link had followed link like a train into a tunnel, snaking this way and that within his abdomen. Tucked into the last link was the radio detonator. Now only the aerial stuck from his ass like an obscene tail.
Wayne Tarr felt the urge to take the mother of all shits.
Threading the receiver wire up between his buttocks, the rogue cop taped the aerial along his spine. Then he waddled out to dress.
Keep a clear head, he warned his reflection in the bed-
room mirror, buttoning his Red Serge tunic down the front.
But it was hard to keep his eyes off the bottle of Scotch.
North Vancouver
The stench from Tipple's burned heart lingered in the juju room of the Lions Den high on Grouse Mountain, while in the harbor far below the Good Luck City set sail.
The club, the bayonet, and the pouch of bones were gone from the Rorke's Drift box.
Evil Eye had taken them to the Red Serge Ball.
THE TERRIBLE ONES
Africa
Sunday, March 6, 1994
The Garbage Line Spiders were coming for Zinc.
Though in their late fifties, the Gray were tough men. Three-two Battalion had seen to that. Recce Wing was led from the front, so NCOs had to pass muster with their grunts, a grueling ordeal designed to flush limp boys from hard men. Preselection phase: a 15-mile march in full gear in six hours carrying a rifle with a 66-pound sandbag; a 4-mile run in 45 minutes with rifle and kit; 40 push-ups, 8 chin-ups, 68 sit-ups in a set time; 40 seven-yard 90-second shuttle runs; then a clocked 45-yard swim. Selection phase: three days of ration/water/ sleep deprived survival in the bush; endurance and body building through speed marches 10 miles in full kit and around the parade yard holding a 55-pound marble weight above the head; free-fall and HALO (high altitude, low opening) parachute jumps; rappelling, diving, and commando training. Crunch phase: a forced march of 18 miles with food and ice-cold drinks offered as in-
centive to stop; rations waiting at the end inedible from contamination by diesel fuel; then a surprise order for an additional 14-mile march, again with food enticements to give up; capped by being taken "prisoner" by terrorists and forced to solve mind-boggling puzzles without sleep and meals. The Gray—though age now claimed its toll— had passed.
Three or four times a week Zinc worked out at the gym: a few weights, a few laps, a basketball game, then a 1-o-n-g steam to sweat away the sweat, not the man he used to be, but then who is? Working the farm as a teen for Pop had developed his physique, but the shot in the head in the Cutthroat case and knife in the back in the Ripper case had set him back.
Tough tag team versus tattered loner.
The White wore night vision goggles and his Ka-Bar knife, in one hand a .458 Winchester Magnum Browning A-Bolt fed Barnes Super-Solid Monoliths, enough rifle to drop an elephant, in his other hand a Walther P38 9mm semiautomatic with a sound suppressor, eight rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, backup mags in the skeleton webbing over his chest, enough pistol to Swiss cheese Zinc. The Black had the same goggles, knife, and Walther, but instead of a rifle carried two roped meat hooks and 'The Croc."
Ferocious firepower versus Pop's knife.
The Garbage Line Spiders were coming for Zinc.
The plane Zinc heard yesterday afternoon was the Dane landing the Gray on an island upstream. Experience from years of hunting Delta crocs evident in how they balanced the boats, from there the two had poled mekoro through the swamp, camping three sandbars away until dark. Now they beached the boats on the far side of the island with Zinc's camp, and stalked across the landing strip toward his tent.
The Horseman poking his unwelcome nose into their affairs had forced the Gray to pull the assassination forward. Killing the Zulu king the day before the April election would be ideal, but now was as good a time as any for bloody civil war. In Africa, hacking machetes and headless bodies in the river lurk behind volatile tribal rivalries. All it takes is a well-timed tinder spark.
Today Zinc.
Tomorrow the Zulu king.
How the Mountie died had to buy time. Killing him in Harare, Vic Falls, or Chobe would alert the cops in force, might as well let him show their picture around. That's why the White had warned Zinc: "No phones where you're going," so he'd phone home to say he was venturing into the bush, bush which in Africa means watch for claws and fangs. Death here is natural, not suspicious. Death here is the Law of the Jungle.
Time would pass before the Canadian was overdue. Time would pass while they inquired where he went. Time would pass while they dogged his trail. Time would pass while they determined what happened here. And that was more than time enough to kill the Zulu king. In the end, even if they spoke to "Nigel Hammond," Chandler's death would be attributed to crocodiles.
The Croc would see to that.
The surefire way to kill Zinc was creep up on the tent, then on the silent count of three, pfffft pfffft pfffft . . . fire both Walthers. Slugs would rip the canvas in two lines, one from the White's spray, the other the Black's. Each man would reload before they yanked back the flap, and entered, pfffft pffffty for the coups de grace.
But that meant bullet holes.
Instead, they would haul Zinc half asleep from the tent to greet his last dawn, and string him up stripped of clothes by hooks through both palms, hanging from a tree branch feet just off the ground on the riverbank, scream, mate, scream, howl as much as you want, lots to scream about with each bite of The Croc, teeth clamping his genitals and tearing them off, teeth ripping chunks of meat from his body, bite, twist, tear, bleed, tossed in the river, The Croc feeding crocs drawn by blood to the island.
The Croc was a weapon that had served the Gray well, resembling a pair of pliers two feet long, the size and shape of gardening shears. The jaws of a real crocodile lined the vise grip, yawning or snapping as the handles moved, so real croc teeth clamped, tore, and left their mark. When Zinc's remains were found by cops flown here by the Dane (the Gray's boot marks broom brushed away), what they'd recover was what remained of a reptile feed.
By then the Zulu king would be dead.
id the Gray, retired, would have $2,000,000 US to spend.
Seen through night vision goggles, the terrain was green. Green dust puffed about green boots crossing the landing strip, by Zinc's green footprint stomped with a green lion's paw, green gloves parting greenery black without the goggles. The Gray knew the swamp from their croc years, and how to pole mekoro through the reeds. Zinc was alone at the End of the Earth with nowhere to go, the only boat a Bushman's boat that took years to learn how to pole. Stand astern and he'd overturn in seconds.
The first hue of dawn pinked the sky to the east.
There was the camp.
There was the tent.
There was the path to the river.
Guns aimed, the Terrible Ones flanked the zippered flap behind which the Canadian Mountie had bedded down for the night.
African bushmen versus mapless tenderfoot.
The Garbage Line Spiders were coming for Zinc.
RED SERGE BALL
Georgia Strait
A chill wind blew from the west, slave-driving the sea, lashing the hunched backs of the waves while flapping the flags of the ship. The Good Luck City sailed into the teeth of the gale, under Lions Gate Bridge joining the mountains to Stanley Park, from Vancouver's inner harbor into English Bay. There it swung starboard past Bowen Island and along the Sunshine Coast, heading northwest up Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the Mainland to the right.
The darkening sky was a chessboard of star patches and clouds, scudding in crosshatched pattern across the
pockmarked moon. Each time the lunar face donned a different veil, the silver haze encircling it foretold oncoming death.
One death.
Two deaths.
Three deaths.
Four. . .
Brittany Starr laughed so hard Gill Macbeth feared her eye-popping breasts would burst free from her plunging gown. Mad Dog Rabidowski, hand on the hooker's thigh, winked at Alex when her gaze dropped to the jiggling caused by his joke.
"What's so funny?" Gill asked.
"You don't want to know," the Mad Dog said between sips of single malt. "I was telling Brit about our last baseball game. A bitch in the Force complained ours was an all-male team—Hell, we been playing ball together for eight years—and demanded we sexists let her cover first base. I balked, so she recruited a Dickless Tracy team."
"What possible reason could you have for not letting her play?" Gill frowned at Alex, still awed by Brittany's grand canyon.
"Principle," the Mad Dog said. "She told me what to do."
"No one makes Eddie jump hoops," Brittany giggled, "except bare puss in garters with a cat-o'-nine-tails in hand."
"Hussy," snarled the Mad Dog, plying her with more champagne.
"The joke?" Gill pressed.
"You don't want to know."
"I'm a big girl. I'll decide that. So, yes, I do."
"You heard the lady," Rabidowski said to the rest of the table. "Against better judgment, she won't leave it alone."
At the next table, Colin Wood aborted a joke while the decanter of port passed from hand to hand, Mounted tradition being the bottle can't touch the table until every glass is full. Rachel Kidd—as she'd predicted—was shunned by those in Red Serge, the fate of Mounties who botch an attempt to turn on one of their own, caste
as an untouchable no matter what color your skin. She and Toop were sitting with civilian techs from the Lab, unaware Special 0 had secret eyes on them. Loyal Toasts to the Queen and to the Force completed, Wood drained his port and asked, "Where was I?"
"A zebra died and went to Heaven," Rachel said.
"Right," the DNA expert nodded. "This joke's worth a glass."
Toop passed him the decanter, which Wood emptied to its dregs.
"Zebra, says Saint Peter, who mans the Pearly Gates, you look like a beast with trouble in mind. Saint Peter, says the zebra, I'm puzzled by a question. Am I white with black stripes, or black with white? Whoa, says Saint Peter. That's a touchy issue. If you want an answer, the Big Guy's around the corner. So off trots the zebra to speak to God.
"Rounding the bend, he sees a burning bush. God, asks the zebra, approaching head bowed, am I white with black stripes, or black with white? A voice booms from the bush, You are what you are.
"Back at the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter asks, Did you get a satisfactory answer? Yes, says the zebra. White with black stripes. Whoa, says Saint Peter. That can't be. The Big Guy's wisdom always cuts both ways. What exactly did he say?
"You are what you are, the zebra replies.
"How does that tell you you're white with black stripes?
"Because"—Wood locked knowing eyes with Toop— "if I was black with white stripes, he'd have said, You is what you is."
Prick, Rachel thought.
Across the sea of Red Serge under swirls of smoke, Chan sat beside DeClercq at the head table. "Toop and Kidd look miffed," he whispered, leaning close. "Think Wood said something off-color to them?"
"We'll know soon when Special 0 reports. Pass wind at that table and it feeds hungry ears."
"I wish I'd brought binoculars," Chan said with a sigh. "Rabidowski's date could breathe new life into three-D."
"Three-D?" DeClercq said. "Forty-three D's more like it."
Sally Chan had switched seats to chat with Corrine Baxter. Switching back, she nudged her laughing husband in the ribs. "What's so hush-hush, Eric? Why the tete-a-tete?"
"Sorry, dear," Chan said. "This tit-a-tit's for CO eyes only."
The RCMP Band was founded in 1874, a pair of tent pegs thumping a large tin dish on the Great March West to crush Fort Whoop-Up. Added to morning "Reveille" and "Lights Out" ending the day, every change in Force routine had its bugle call. The first "organized" band was struck at Swan River Barracks in 1876, debuting on May 24, for Queen Victoria's Birthday. The "official" band was established in 1938, premiering at the Royal Visit of King George VI. Growing to forty-six Members in two ensembles—the Concert Band of big band sound and the eight-piece Bison—it performed 300 gigs a year until funding ran out. Recently disbanded, tonight marked the last waltz of West Coast players, amid ugly rumors the Musical Ride was next. When the band launched "Corrine, Corrina," the Big Joe Turner/Phil Spector/Ray Peterson hit, Sally Chan spurred DeClercq, "That's your cue to dance."
Meanwhile, at the table drawing sideways glances, Ra-bidowski, arm around Brit, puffed a phallic cigar. "I told her, women don't have what it takes to play ball like men."
"Bullshit," Gill said.
"Her reply exactly. Said she'd make me eat those words, and challenged us guys to a may-the-best-sex-win game."
"Better sex," Gill said. "Unless you know something I don't."
"Whatever." The Mad Dog shrugged, tapping ash on the floor.
"Need I ask who won?"
"We did," Ed replied. "To show grace in victory, I sent a box of donuts to the girls' changing room. We always top a game off with donuts and beer."
Alex caught a peek of nipple when Brittany howled, marveling again at the science-fiction dimensions of her bust.
"What's so funny?" Gill asked, back where she started.
"Before sending the donuts, I snapped a Polaroid. Like I said, women don't have what it takes to play ball like men. Satisfaction is, she ate my words."
"Gave her the sweat off his balls," Brittany added lightly.
From his tunic, Rabidowski withdrew a photo. In it a team of naked men kneeled behind a bench, each penis poked through one of a dozen donut holes lining the be
nch like wheels.
"You showed her the photo!" Gill choked.
M Course not," the Mad Dog scoffed. "Never give a humorless bitch grounds for a sex harassment suit. Hey, babe"—he squeezed Brit—"let's make the two-backed beast."
The sergeant, steroid muscles straining the fabric of his tunic, and Brit, no panty line to spoil the cling of her gown, bumped their way to the dance floor, to do what . . . The Dog?
"That man has a raw, unrefined, retrograde charm," Gill said dryly. "He's the sort who thinks 'harass' is two words."
"Assure me that isn't Brit. It's silicone," Alex begged.
"If so, that's the best tit-job I've ever seen. Oh no," Gill groaned. "Her gown's slit to her waist."
"Gosh, such a fine, formal affair with historic pageantry, and what's got us clucking? Brit and her boobs."
"You'd rather talk about the cost of Medicare? The South African election? What The New York Times thinks of Trudeau's Memoirs'? Sharon Stone sheds her panties, and instantly she's a star. Madonna makes headlines off her breathless voice? Nothing gets highbrows, lowbrows, and brows in-between tittering quite like someone baring her taboo."
"Birth of two Barbie dolls."
"You wish, Alex. It's because we're not built like Barbie and she is, that Brit's got us ogling like wean-bruised men."
"Speak for yourself," Alex said, puffing out her chest.
"Not even close," Gill said sadly, cracking up her new friend.
In one of the cabins below deck, Wayne Tarr (without a date) drank Scotch straight from the bottle. He was counting the minutes he had left to live. At 9:30, both walking bombs would meet by the dance floor, where Evil Eye would press the button to blow the Mounted to hell and gone.
Serves you fuckers right for blackballing me, Tarr thought.
Since no search was done of Members going aboard— paranoia like that would surely mean canceling the Ball—there was no need for the rectal pack. Tarr, however, was a martyr out to make a statement, so stuffing his butt with C4 was his symbolic act of mooning the entire Force in its smug face.
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