Dark Angel Before the Dawn da-1

by Max Allan Collins

“Sorry, Max,” was all he said…

  … and he let go of the rope.

  Seth fell silently, bestowing the faintest smile up at the sister who reached yearningly down for him.

  Jared Sterling, on the other hand, screamed and flapped his arms and hands, as if God might suddenly grant him the gift of flight; but the Almighty was apparently in an ironic mood, because all the wealthy fool got for his effort was the briefcase lid flipping open, raining money down on the parking lot.

  Max turned away, before either man hit the pavement, and right now she did not relish her ability to perceive the subtleties of sound on this violent night.

  A voice behind her yelled, “Freeze!”

  But it wasn't Lydecker, just one of the TAC team members.

  “Don't move— show me your hands. Now, now, now!”

  Under other circumstances, she might have smiled, imagining the astonished expression on the squad member's face when she vaulted over the wall, and dropped out of sight, apparently plunging into the night.

  Which she did. The TAC team couldn't see her snare the end of the dangling rope, swing out, then back in, through glassless windows into the restaurant below.

  She landed like the cat she partially was, head up, alert— she had only seconds, now. Lydecker would be sending his men after her, some down the stairs, others down the elevators. She ran over and pushed the DOWN buttons of all three, hoping to at least slow the pursuing team, and hit the stairs running.

  Her brother had given his life to avoid falling back into Lydecker's hands; she would risk hers to escape that same fate, and mourning would just have to wait.

  The observation deck was like a ship plowing through a stormy sea, and “Captain” Lydecker was royally pissed.

  “He jumped over the

  side?

  ” he roared.

  The soldier nodded, decked out in black fatigues with goggles, Kevlar vest, helmet, and MP7A. “But it didn't look like… a

  him,

  sir.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  “Sir, the pictures you showed us. I was at the elevator, and he… or she… was at the wall, a girl, and with all that rain—”

  Lydecker got in the soldier's face. “Mister, how in God's name can you mistake a nineteen-year-old man for a ‘girl'?”

  “Sir, I—”

  Lydecker silenced him with a look, brushed him aside, and strode to the edge of the observation-deck wall, where the carnage below could barely be made out through the slashing rain. This would be one hell of a mess to cover up.

  Then he noticed the rope, flapping in the wind, tauntingly.

  He spat into his handheld radio: “TAC Five.”

  The radio crackled, and a voice from the ground floor said: “TAC Five.”

  “Anyone come down in the elevators?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Watch them closely. We may have another X-Five on the premises. Possibly female.”

  “… Yes, sir.”

  Lydecker motioned with his head to one of the men. “Down the rope, soldier.”

  The man unhesitatingly slung his weapon back over his shoulder and shimmied over the edge and down out of sight. Lydecker was roaming the observation deck now, surveying the casualties up here— half a dozen anyway. Most of them seemed alive, and were coming around, after the kind of beating an X5 could deliver…

  “TAC Two,” he said into the radio.

  “TAC Two.”

  “TAC Two, take half the team and search the building for our man. Possibility of a second X-Five on site, female.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to the team member nearest him. “TAC Three, dispose of the bodies and cleanse the site.”

  The man hesitated.

  “Can't you hear me in this weather, mister?”

  “No, sir. That is, yes sir.”

  “Then carry out your orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lydecker turned and marched back to the elevators, where another six men in combat black stood waiting. Behind him, Lydecker heard a pistol shot, then another and another.

  “What's the problem?” he asked.

  “The elevators, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “The doors closed… ”

  “You might trying pushing DOWN,” Lydecker said through smiling teeth, though he was not at all happy. “They just might come back up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Something tugged in Lydecker's gut. He got on the radio. “TAC Two?”

  “TAC Two. In the stairwell, sir. No sign of anyone.”

  “Keep looking, TAC Two. Time's running short.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The middle elevator dinged and its doors slid open.

  Into the radio, Lydecker said, “TAC Five.”

  “TAC Five. No movement, sir.”

  The other two elevators arrived, and three men got onto the cars at either side, with Lydecker flying solo in the middle one; he went down one floor and the doors opened onto the vacant restaurant— vacant, that is, but for the soldier he'd sent down the rope, who approached.

  “Anything?” Lydecker asked.

  The soldier pointed. “Sir, wet footprints all over the place— more than one set.”

  Lydecker didn't like that; what it might mean made him very unhappy. “Did you search the entire floor?”

  “I followed the prints to the stairwell, sir, but some went up and some down.”

  Exasperated, Lydecker said, “Stay at this position.”

  At the lobby, Lydecker emerged from the elevator to find that the cleanup crew— in yellow TOXIC WASTE suits and carrying no weapons— had arrived. In the parking lot, they were already dealing with the splattered remains of what appeared to be four different bodies.

  Several of the yellow jumpsuited Manticore specialists were scraping up parts and filling body bags. One of them broke away from the group and scurried over to Lydecker, displaying a plastic bag from the thick fingers of a yellow glove.

  “You'll want to see this, sir,” the yellow-jumpsuited man said, his voice muffled by his headgear.

  Holding the plasticine bag up in the rain, Lydecker could see a fragment of human flesh, but nothing significant. He pulled out a Mini Maglite and took a closer look at the bag's contents: a chunk of skin with a series of black numbers, four in a row, and a barcode, the others numbers abbreviated on either end, probably from the impact with jagged concrete that had separated Seth from his head.

  But even a partial number was enough for Lydecker to know they'd tagged another X5… or perhaps the X5 had tagged himself.

  “Good work, soldier,” he said, handing the bag back to the cleanup man. “Lock that evidence away. Top security.”

  Colonel Donald Lydecker checked with the various TAC positions, to see if anyone had spotted anyone or anything else. That young soldier must have been mistaken: that had been Seth who went over the side, falling on his figurative sword rather than return to the Manticore fold.

  His choice.

  Then Lydecker got back on the radio. “All TAC members assemble at ground level— suspect has been apprehended, I repeat, suspect has been apprehended. We're going home, men… Saddle up.”

  Another yellow-jumpsuited man approached the colonel, this time with a wallet in his hand. “One of the deceased looks to be that computer big shot— Jared Sterling.”

  Lydecker shook his head—

  fucking mess,

  he thought— and then, already weaving a new web mentally, said, “All right.”

  The tech returned to the gory parking lot, and Lydecker moved back inside, found a quiet, dry corner and made a cell phone call, filling in another Manticore specialist, finishing with, “Despondent over recent business setbacks, the well-known computer tycoon took his own life last night when he leapt from the top of the Seattle Space Needle.”

  The voice from the cell said, “We can make that happen.”

  “Do it— and filter the money through the usual ch
annels.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They wouldn't take all of Sterling's money— that might raise suspicions among certain reform-minded politicians and their liberal-press lackeys. Just a few million to make it look like things were turning sour for the art collector. Maybe they'd have to plant some drugs or incriminating photos; but the world at large would never question the not-so-tragic suicide of another poor little rich boy.

  Lydecker clicked END and returned to the parking lot, to supervise. The TAC team was coming down now, and he'd get them the hell out of here, before this turned into an incident. Wouldn't do for that Eyes Only to get ahold of tonight's fun and games…

  Thank God the neighborhood was practically deserted, but for junkies, winos, and other riffraff, not the sort of place where anyone would call the cops over a few gunshots.

  Lydecker's thoughts were interrupted by the sound— a few blocks over— of a motorcycle revving, then peeling out. When he turned his rain-flecked face toward the engine roar, Lydecker saw nothing. Something nagged at the back of his mind— that girl, that remarkable girl in LA— but he shrugged. Things were contained. And another X5 could be checked off the list.

  No one would ever know what had happened here tonight. The bodies and the blood would be swept away, like the garbage they were; and the money that littered the parking lot would be taken into custody by Manticore.

  Things in Seattle would soon be wrapped up. They'd be going home…

  … only Donald Lydecker still had the gnawing, nagging feeling that he'd missed something, something important, that for the success of Seth's elimination, an important but unspecified failure had also occurred, making a nasty balance.

  Two days later, back in Wyoming, he called a certain TAC team member into his office— the young man who had seen the X5 dive off that observation deck. Lydecker— having learned that one of the dead men was the Russian he'd aided in the Chinese Theatre massacre— wondered if Kafelnikov's presence indicated also the presence of that extraordinary young woman from the Chinese Clan, that unidentified suspected X5.

  “Tell me again what you saw,” Lydecker said.

  The soldier, Keenan, just a kid himself (from Nebraska), wore simple black fatigues now, instead of his TAC gear. His blond hair was cut close, and he had shown nothing but loyalty to the program in his year and a half of service.

  The boy was obviously considering the question carefully before risking an answer. “Sir, I saw the X5 known as Seth. He had his back to me, and—”

  “No.” Lydecker rose behind his desk, hands on his hips. “Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth— tell me exactly what you

  really

  saw that rainy night.”

  Keenan met his superior's eyes. “I saw a girl, a woman really… with black hair, dressed in black, sir. Leather, I think. Sort of… motorcycle gear.”

  Lydecker's memory replayed the sound of that cycle revving up and taking off, a few blocks from the site. “Did you see her face?”

  “Negative, sir.”

  “You're sure it was a female.”

  Nodding, Keenan said, “Yes, sir, I'm sure. She was… ” And now he risked a tiny smile. “… built like a girl. Woman.”

  “Athletic?”

  “Oh yes, and… nice.”

  Lydecker sighed. “I'm glad your faculties are so acute, Mr. Keenan… well done. Now… this stays in this room… between you and me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Keenan saluted, spun on his heels, and strode out.

  Lydecker sat down, rather heavily, and thought over what he'd just heard. It wasn't completely implausible that the X5s were in contact with each other. But were they

  up

  to something, together?

  He thought about that revving motorcycle and wondered if he'd screwed the pooch. Maybe there

  had

  been two X5s in the Needle that night, Seth and one of the girls… Jondy, Brin, Max… could have been any of them. And very possibly this was the LA X5, over whom so many had died at the theater.

  He would find out, when he caught up with them. He knew that someday he'd catch up with all of them.

  Now, however, he was concerned that if the X5s were all communicating, maybe they were planning something, too. Maybe they were planning on catching up with him.

  Shaking his head, trying to drive away the thought, he went back to work. But the notion that they might be after him as much as he was after them— that the children might come home to take revenge on their father— did not go away easily.

  It never would.

  Epilogue

  RUMINATIONS IN THE RAIN

  LOGAN CALE'S APARTMENT

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019

  Rain battered the windows of the high-rise condo, as Logan stared out into the night, seeing nothing but shapes and blurs.

  Ten days had passed since something had gone terribly wrong at the Space Needle, and— despite what he could only assume were Manticore's best efforts— Eyes Only had managed to piece together only a few details.

  At first, Logan had thought Seth had double-crossed him, had taken the money

  and

  the masterpiece, and killed everyone, then disappeared across the Canadian border; that the boy's homicidal streak had combined with greed and fear to get the best of the X5.

  Then Logan had started thinking about what was wrong with that scenario. Sterling's body had been found in the parking lot, yes; but there'd been no sign, living or dead, of a certain Korean art dealer, and a notorious, ambitious Russian street gang leader out of LA… though street rumors strongly suggested the presence of the latter.

  And what of Sterling's bodyguards? Logan knew Sterling wouldn't so much as go to lunch without his muscle. Had there been a gun battle in which only Sterling himself had gone down? Or, if bodyguards had been combat fatalities (and with the X5, that would seem inevitable), why would Seth leave only Sterling's corpse to be found?

  And the more Logan mulled it over, the more absurd seemed the story of a billionaire's suicide over business setbacks.

  No mention, for example, was ever made of Sterling's car— where was it? Had Seth stolen it? If so, why hadn't it been found? The boy surely would have ditched it by now. And what if Seth

  hadn't

  stolen the car? Obviously, Sterling wouldn't have walked the twenty miles from his house to the Space Needle, just to jump off…

  So— how had Sterling gotten there? Where was his driver?

  Spurred by these inconsistencies, Logan had started digging into Sterling's alleged financial setbacks. At first blush, every column seemed to add up; but the more Eyes Only looked, the more things appeared out of whack.

  Stocks that Sterling lost money on had shown only marginal dips, far less significant than officially reported versions of the dead man's deficits. Businesses that were ancillary to his Internet company had failed, but checking their track records for the previous six months revealed each had been financially healthy until the day of Sterling's death.

  So many people had their own financial woes in the economic minefield that was post-Pulse America that Logan knew no one would look very close at a calamity suffered by the wealthy likes of Jared Sterling. The country was in no mood to pity some billionaire who'd flung himself off a building at the first sign of trouble.

  No, Logan told himself, no one would look into this… except Eyes Only. And Eyes Only knew somebody was cooking the books. The question was… who?

  Logan had far more questions than he had answers, and whenever he spotted that pattern, his mind turned to a cover-up. And when he thought cover-up, he thought government, and when he thought government… in the case of a mysteriously missing X5, anyway… Eyes Only turned to Manticore.

  He knew more about the organization now, but he still had few hard facts. Lydecker's group did, however, seem to have the kind of major clout to pull off a cover-up of this magnitude— swee
ping murders under the carpet, perhaps committing more murders in the process.

  But the question that nagged him was…

  …

  why would Manticore cover up what happened at the Needle?

  For Logan, the inevitable and rather chilling answer was: because Manticore had caught up with Seth.

  This gave Logan a whole new scenario for what may well have happened at the Space Needle on that rainy, windy night… a scenario even more disturbing than his previous theory.

  Initially he'd thought that Manticore had somehow caught up with Seth at the Needle, and captured him. Only, if Lydecker had nabbed his renegade X5, and taken him away, why had Sterling also been killed?

  Not just Sterling, but the other witnesses, the Korean, the bodyguards, and God alone knew how many other unrecorded victims…

  But if Seth had been captured, alive… why kill anyone? These witnesses were involved in a crime; they could be coerced into silence, easily enough. Sterling, Kafelnikov, and the others would have no knowledge of Manticore and the X5 program; to them, Seth would merely be an extraordinary physical specimen.

  The only answer Logan could come up with was that Manticore had tried to intercept Seth in the midst of the art deal going down… and Seth had not gone quietly into that rainy night, and Manticore had been forced to kill its wandering son.

  In front of witnesses.

  Who had to die, so Manticore could cover its tracks.

  The cyberjournalist turned away from the window and moved aimlessly through his rich man's apartment. He could not be sure this scenario was the correct one, but he felt certain he could not be far off the mark. And it made him feel sick…

  Bitterly, Logan recalled how he'd lectured Seth about ethics, and yet… hadn't he ruthlessly, recklessly used Seth?

  No matter how noble Logan's motives might be, in the end, he'd used the young X5 for his own purposes… which had gotten Seth killed.

  If Logan Cale had helped Seth disappear, as the boy had requested, instead of recruiting him to help in the Eyes Only crusade, maybe the young man would be plotting his next revenge against Manticore from somewhere remote and safe, like the small town near the Arctic Circle where he'd sent the lab tech, Ben Daly.

  Logan fell heavily onto his bed, on his back, and took off his glasses, resting them on the nightstand and closing his eyes, pressing a thumb and forefinger to the inner bridge of his nose.