by Blake Banner
He was croaking as he struggled to breathe, and trembling badly. It was easy to see that he was not a man accustomed to pain or violence. I put my finger to my lips. He nodded. I said, “Have you got a better understanding of the situation now?”
I removed the Sig from his mouth so he could answer. He was still gasping for breath, holding his thigh and staring, goggling at the shattered bloody mess that, only a few seconds earlier, had been his knee.
“Ogden, look at me. Look at me and listen to me. You can still come out of this with just an attractive, interesting limp. But the next time you say no, or make any kind of negative statement, you lose both your legs from the knee down. That won’t be attractive or interesting. It will be pathetic. I want you to think about that for a moment.” I paused.
He stared into my face. He looked yellow and he was sweating profusely. He nodded.
I said, “You are going to give me the complete list of twenty-four names.”
His face crumbled and he began to sob. I stood, took hold of the laptop on the workstation and carried it over to the coffee table. I opened it and switched it on. I said, “Password.”
He stared at me, sobbing, hesitated and I pointed the Sig at his right knee. “No! No, wait, please, capital ‘G’ gamma, oh, eight, oh one, nineteen sixty eight.”
I tapped it in and got through to the desktop. I opened Word and put it in front of him. “Write the list.”
He stared at me. “How do you know I’m not going to lie?”
“I don’t. But I already have one list, Ogden. The one my father gave me just before he died. If I compare them, and they are different, I will take you downstairs to your lab, extract your brain from your skull and shove it up your ass.”
He was half-crying, shaking his head. “If you already have a list, what the hell do you want another one for?”
“Because I can’t be sure that he was telling the truth, can I? But when I compare his list to yours, then I can be sure. Start writing, Ogden, I am running out of patience.”
“For God’s sake, Lacklan. The pain. I can’t…”
I took aim at his right knee and he started typing, sobbing and grunting as he did so. When he had reached the end, I said, “Don’t save it. Print and delete.”
A moment later the printer hummed and spewed a sheet of A4. I got up, took it and examined it. I went cold from head to foot. It was so obvious: so obvious that I had missed it all this time. I heard myself whisper, “Holy shit…”
Ogden’s head had flopped back. He had lost a lot of blood from his knee. It had saturated the chair and the rug under his feet. He looked feverish. I took the laptop from him, switched it off and stuffed it in the backpack. Then I shot him in the head, scratched his name off the list, folded the piece of paper and put it in my back pocket.
I pulled back the French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. The first traces of dawn were turning the eastern horizon gray, but the sky overhead was still a deep blue-black. I thought long and hard about what to do next. Then I saw the lights. There was a line of them. Three vehicles moving fast, maybe half a mile away or a little more, coming down the driveway toward the house.
I pulled the headband camera back out of the backpack, switched it on, fitted it in place again and inserted the earpiece. I went and looked down at Ogden. I heard Gibbons say, “Jesus Christ, Lacklan! What have you done?”
I said, “We can discuss that later, Gibbons, right now we have a situation. There are three cars approaching down the driveway. They will be here in a matter of seconds. I am going to call the Sheriff’s Department. I suggest you and your friend from the Bureau get off your asses and get here on the double, with a search warrant, because I have information you do not want our visitors to retrieve. Get here. Over and out.”
I switched off the camera, put it back in the backpack and went out to the terrace again, to look over the parapet. Below there was a fringe of garden, with shrubs and bushes. They looked like bougainvillea. I swung the backpack over and dropped it into the nearest bush. Then I went back inside, made two quick phone calls, one to the sheriff, and put something in Ogden’s pocket. After that I sat and waited for them to arrive.
It didn’t take long. I heard the boots tramping up the stairs, voices shouting and then eight men with body armor and assault rifles burst in. They took a moment to assess the situation: Ogden lying in his chair with what was left of his head thrown back, gaping at the ceiling. Me sitting opposite him, with the HK433 across my knees, watching them.
They trained their weapons on me and waited.
Then two more men came in, these wearing suits. One of them I knew: Ben. For the first time in all the years that I had known him, I could see true rage in his eyes. He was fighting hard to conceal it, but it was a losing battle. He said simply, “You killed Gamma.”
I nodded. “You told me once I couldn’t hurt you, Ben. Do you remember that? You said the most we could do was cause you an annoyance. I’m curious. Do you still feel that way?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were bright. I knew he was struggling to make a rational decision about what to do next. He wanted to kill me. He wanted that very badly. But he knew that if I was sitting there, talking to him, it was for a reason. I had some kind of insurance policy.
I said, “Who’s your friend?”
I was looking at the other guy. He was well-dressed, blond hair with a hint of copper. Blue eyes, a faint spray of freckles.
I smiled. “Let me guess. It’s Michael Donnelly, champion of the underdog, fearless warrior, protector of our ancient liberties. Am I right?”
The guy frowned. Ben said, “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have you killed right now.”
“There are quite a few to choose from, Ben. The first and most obvious is that you don’t know what I have done with all the footage and photographs of your labs in the basement, the people you have been experimenting on and the documents you kept in the office downstairs, that corroborate the experiments.”
He snapped, “Take him down to the basement! The operating theatre.” Four of the guys in body armor advanced on me and dragged me to my feet. One of them snatched my weapons. There was no use resisting at that point, so I allowed myself to be shoved across the room. Meanwhile Ben was shouting at the other four men, “You two, get this damn place cleaned up! You and you, confine the students to their dorm, and get Dr. Patel! I want him down in the basement in ten minutes! Do it!”
We moved down the corridor while the two gorillas started the cleaning up job on Ogden. I had only used a quarter of a tablet, stuffed into his back pocket, but it was more than enough for the job. It was a simple detonator, set to be triggered when they lifted his body. It took out the room and killed the two men, which was two less for me to kill, but more than that, it gave me the opportunity I needed.
The detonation was loud, the explosion shook the top floor of the building. The four guys escorting me, Ben and the guy I guessed was Donnelly, all cowered and covered their heads with their arms. I didn’t waste the opportunity. I spun and smashed my instep into my nearest guard’s crotch. As he doubled up I took hold of his head in an arm lock and twisted savagely until I heard his neck snap. As he went down I took his sidearm and shot the other guy in the face. Then I vaulted the banisters and ran down the stairs, taking them four at a time. I scrambled into the elevator, turned the key and watched the doors slide closed as Ben and his remaining thugs came rattling down the stairs after me.
As I went down I tried to plan ahead. If I wedged the door open, they would not be able to recall the elevator. That meant they couldn’t get to me, but it also meant I could not escape, and sooner rather than later, they’d override the safety mechanism, recall the elevator and come down in force—with body armor and automatic weapons. It was not an ideal situation. But as Sergeant Bradley was fond of saying back in the day, “It could be worse, lads! We could be fuckin’ French!”
I stepped out, dragged one of the dead guards halfway into
the car to obstruct the doors, and set to work. I had a lot to do.
SEVENTEEN
My first priority was the labs. I pulled all the mobile—and movable—scanners and pieces of IT hardware into the lab where the CAT scanner was and piled them on top of each other. Then I ran to the operating theater, pulled one of the unoccupied gurneys to the middle of the floor, locked the wheels and jumped up on it. I did some work on the ceiling, which I calculated to be beneath the dining room, jumped down, and pulled the two occupied trolleys into the corridor.
There I tipped them on their sides at an angle to the elevator doors, with one of the bodies laid in front. It wasn’t as good as a barrage of sandbags, but it was something. I set up the other body behind the gurneys, apparently holding an automatic weapon. Again, it wasn’t perfect, but it might fool them for a few crucial seconds. Then I collected up all the dead guards’ automatic weapons and stashed them in the operating theater. Finally I dragged the bodies of the dead guards over and laid them in front of the elevator doors, so anyone attempting to exit in a hurry would have a difficult, unstable surface to walk or run on. That was going to be my primary killing field.
By the time I’d finished, fifteen minutes had passed, and there was nothing to do but wait. But I didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later I heard the elevator winch kick in and the car began to rise. The body I’d laid across the entrance, to keep the doors open, slipped off and fell with an unpleasant thud onto the other corpses below. The doors stayed open.
I took up a position in the corridor, slightly to the rear of the elevators. I heard the winch stop. Then the tramp of feet entering the car on the next floor. I estimated four pairs of boots. That left two, plus Ben and Donnelly. The engine kicked in again and the car began to descend. I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do. I figured they were hunkered down with their weapons ready, and as the floor of the car descended below the ceiling, they would open fire and spray the area with bullets.
I wasn’t wrong. They opened up in a hail of fire, and it didn’t take them long to see the gurney barricade, and the body holding the automatic rifle. So the random spray became focused on that target. When they were three feet from the ground, I pulled the pin on the flashbang and dropped it on the bed of corpses, just outside the doors of the elevator. It detonated as the elevator stopped.
I heard shouts and screams. I stepped out and sprayed a burst into the car. I heard another scream, this one of real pain, and somebody shouted, “Mother fucker!” I jumped behind the gurney, let off two more bursts and backed into the corridor. I could hear one voice whimpering and swearing.
Then the charge came. Three guys piled out. I took one of them with a double tap to the head, but as his head exploded, the other two dropped to their knees and opened fire. I backed up along the corridor with bullets whining and spitting around my head. I emptied my magazine in a long, unfocused burst, felt a searing, burning feeling in my shoulder, and fell through the door into the operating theater. I was hit.
There was no time to think about the pain. I pulled the pin on another stun grenade and tossed it into the passage, then grabbed one of the guards’ weapons. The grenade detonated. I leaned out and opened up with a short burst. There was nobody there. I heard the winch start up again and the elevator began to rise. I had taken out one, maybe two of them. There were four more upstairs, and I was hit. That was bad news. I was in trouble. My plan was not panning out and I had very few options.
I stepped across to the lab opposite, dropped to one knee in the doorway and lined up my sights on the corner where I knew one of them was waiting. I heard the elevator stop and boots tramp in. I was expecting two pairs, but there were four. They were all coming down. Logic dictated that as soon as the elevator stopped, the two guys down here would open fire into the corridor to cover the occupants of the car as they poured out. It was a standard beachhead operation. I had one chance, and one chance only.
The elevator stopped. I had two grenades left. I lobbed one at the elevator door and rolled the other toward the gurneys, where I knew the two guys were hiding behind the corner of the passage. I heard the shouts of, “Stun grenade!” a second before the explosions. I opened up with two controlled bursts but there was still nobody there.
Then two men rolled out of the elevator across the corpses, but before I could take aim the two who were waiting at the head of the passage leaned in and opened fire at me. I ducked in just in time, because next thing, all four of them were raining fire down the corridor. My rifles were in the other lab, across the passage, and my magazine was half empty. I was as screwed as the virgin at a pagan solstice.
The firing stopped. I had a half empty M16 and I was up against six men with automatic rifles, an unknown amount of ammunition and absolute tactical superiority.
I heard Ben’s voice. He was close.
“Lacklan, I will not pretend that my love for your father carries any weight anymore. What loyalty I felt towards you on his behalf died when you betrayed my trust after the United Nations fiasco. I will be honest with you, as I always have been. I want you dead, more than I want anything else at this point.”
I called out, “The feeling is mutual, Ben.”
“However, we may have some room to negotiate.”
I laughed out loud. “Really? I don’t think you have anything I want anymore.”
There was a moment’s silence, then his voice, with a smile in it. “What about your life?”
I shrugged. “I can take it or leave it. And you know very well, Ben, that if I die today, I will make damn sure you come with me, all the way to hell.”
“I have five men here who say that isn’t going to happen, Lacklan. And three dozen more in the dorms upstairs who are prepared to back them up if needs be. You are, finally, out of options.”
I was quiet for a bit, backed up against the wall, trying to think. I could see Sergeant Bradley in my mind’s eye, with the firelight on his diabolical face, and the Afghan night behind him, saying, “You’re never out of options. All you ever run out of is imagination.”
That I had run out of, too. I called out, “OK, Ben, what have I got that you will exchange for my life?”
I heard the shuffle of boots moving down the passage, then Ben’s voice again, a little closer this time.
“Information, Lacklan. It’s always information, isn’t it?”
I trained my gun on the door. Whoever came through first drew the short straw. “What information, Ben? I have a lot of information, you know that.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I need to know, precisely what information do you have, and, with whom you have shared it?” There was a moment’s silence. Then he went on. “This soldier beside me, Lacklan, he is holding a grenade. It’s not like your grenades, that make a lot of noise and light, but don’t actually kill people. This is a real grenade. He has extracted the pin, and, as soon as I give him the nod, he will toss it against the wall facing you. It will explode and you will be dismembered, and the whole Lacklan Walker legend will come to a sticky, messy end.”
“You have my attention.”
“An armed man is going to step in now. If we hear gunfire, a grenade will follow. And make no mistake, Lacklan, I have grown very, very weary of you. I really want to kill you. So my advice? Don’t offer me an excuse.”
A guy stepped through the door with an automatic rifle at his shoulder, trained on me. I dropped my weapon. He looked out through the door and nodded. Another guy came in, also training an automatic rifle on me, then two more, then Ben and Donnelly.
Game over.
Donnelly stood leaning against the doorjamb, frowning at me. Ben looked around for a chair, found one and pulled it over. I was sitting on the floor, with my back to the wall. Ben narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
“I have really, really grown to hate you, Lacklan. There was a time when I felt a kind of family love, as though we were estranged brothers. I hoped that you would one day grow to appreciate that, an
d take your place in Omega. But that has gone, long gone. I hate you deeply. You are violent, bloodthirsty, grotesque.” He looked around and smiled. “But I have to say, I retain a kind of awed admiration at how fucking destructive you are!”
I smiled at him. It was the first time I had ever heard him swear. I eased myself into a slightly more comfortable position. The pain in my shoulder was beginning to throb in my head. Ben went on talking.
“You’re like an incarnation of Kali. You destroy everything in your path. You destroyed your home, you destroyed your father. You destroyed the only woman you ever loved, Marni. If you had made a home with her when she proposed to you in London, none of this would ever have happened. Now you have destroyed Senator McFarlane’s home too, and Senator McFarlane.” He paused, staring at me in apparent fascination. He gestured at Donnelly, still leaning on the jamb. “She and her husband were happy, they had a good life and a good future. They had a position secured for them and their children in the New Eden, whenever that may come. But you, in your relentless destructive rage, have destroyed their lives and their future.” He spread his hands, looking around him. “And now this! You are incredible! You have to be destroyed! For the good of the world!” He leaned forward, his eyes wide, half smiling. “You have to be destroyed because if you are not, Lacklan, you will destroy the last best hope of humanity!” He sat back and laughed. “I mean, what are you like? Everything you touch, Lacklan! You destroy everything you touch!”
I sighed, “What can I say, Ben, we all do what we’re good at. I’m good at destroying things.”
He smiled, then chuckled. “You are very, very good at what you do, Lacklan. And it is a shame we wound up being enemies. You can’t deny I tried, and I was very patient. But you have pushed me too far, much too far.”
“So where do we go from here? You going to bore me to death?”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Really?”
He sighed. “Yes. You are thinking that the one thing—the one person—I have not mentioned in the list of things and people that you have destroyed, is Abi… Abi and her two children. The very attractive Primrose and the boy, Sean.”
