IV
Morgan could still picture their faces. Doc and Malcolm openly appalled; their expressions conceding his hopes, but seemingly unable to forgive his intentions. Lightholler offering an oddly impassive smile.
He’d told them that he simply had no choice in the matter.
When the major reached for his own coat, there’d been mutinous protest. He’d turned matter-of-factly to Doc, saying, “We’ll be back, with or without him, in two hours. Martin will stand watch.”
Malcolm had said, “Don’t go out there,” but there’d been no force behind the words. As if the deed itself was an accomplished fact.
“We leave in just under three,” was Doc’s last cold pronouncement. “With or without you.”
They stood on 59th with the crumbling wall of the park behind them. A light drizzle pattered the street.
“First thing I want to do is slap some sense into Morgan.” The words were out before Morgan realised their import.
Kennedy gazed at him, saying nothing.
Morgan hesitated before continuing. He found it difficult to curb his anticipation. “I know,” he said, “the plan is to stay out of sight.”
Kennedy fixed him with a cheerless look. “There is no plan, Darren.”
They were both similarly garbed; heavy coats concealing their stained uniforms. The tilted brims of fedoras covered fugitive brows. Morgan felt the bulk of the pistol, an awkward lump, in his armpit.
The occasional car slid up 59th. A Japanese couple, pushing a baby carriage, scurried past. Morgan found himself tipping his hat.
It felt like the weekend.
Kennedy stepped into the street. Morgan, surprised, hurried after him.
A blue Yamamoto braked to a halt before the major’s stern figure. Kennedy walked around to the driver’s seat.
“What day is it today?”
The driver, a middle-aged man with hawkish features, peered curiously back at Kennedy. “Sunday.” His tone held the indulgence one might offer a slow learner.
Kennedy leaned into the vehicle. “And the time?”
The driver, more alarmed, said, “It’s just after ten.” He started to wind up the window.
“Wallet and keys.” Kennedy inserted his Mauser into the remaining small gap. “Now.”
The driver was fumbling for his effects.
Kennedy turned to Morgan, who was struggling with his own gun.
“Leave that,” Kennedy growled. “He’s at Kobe’s.”
Kennedy muscled the driver out of his car and examined the licence. He handed the pistol to Morgan and withdrew five sturdy bars of gold from a pouch at his waist. He handed them over to the terrified man. Casting the Yamamoto an appraising glance, he said, “Next time, buy American.”
Kennedy drove. Morgan felt sick. His hands shook, he needed to go to the bathroom. Strange wheels were in motion. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
V
Lightholler ran down Second Avenue. The rain, heavier now, had cleared the street.
He’d donned a coat and some equipment and left Malcolm, Doc and Shine at the carapace. They couldn’t have stopped him if they’d tried. Somewhere out there, three grey men in grey suits were driving him to Queens, to a dark appointment with the dread Agent Cooper. Somewhere out there, a killer, cold and heartless, lurked in shadows.
He was looking for a Hotspur with one headlight.
He was looking for answers to a question that everyone else had forgotten.
He was looking to meet his saviour.
Kennedy figured they had a ten-minute window. That was a rough estimate of the time it would take Hardas to complete the journey from Kobe’s to the Lone Star on foot.
It was hard to keep his thoughts lucid. He found himself considering the disposition of his men and had to remind himself that his ghost dancers were nine days and many miles behind ... ahead ... one or the other...
When had he last slept?
The windshield wipers beat an inviting rhythm before his exhausted eyes.
They passed Stuyvesant Square and he was already scanning the streets, looking to see how much detail he could distinguish through the driving rain. Damp lanterns, unlit and forlorn, dangled from the telephone lines, announcing their arrival in Osakatown. Then it was 12th Street and Kobe’s was coming up on the right.
I’m in the desert, dying.
He turned on to 12th.
I’m in the Lone Star, waiting for Lightholler.
Morgan, beside him, was hunched forwards and leaning on the dashboard. They rolled towards Third Avenue slowly, windows down, the rain a refreshing tingle against his face.
A carriage horse stamped on the corner opposite Kobe’s joint. The windows, veiled beneath a wide awning, reflected the dreary street darkly. Kennedy pulled up beside a phone booth and peered into the storefront.
“He’s not in there.”
Morgan said, “He might be further back inside.”
“Never.” Kennedy slipped the Yamamoto into first gear. “He’d be watching the street.”
They turned down Third and doubled back along 11th Street. A white Ford was parked opposite the squalid rear entrance to Kobe’s. It had two occupants. The street was otherwise empty.
“Which way would he have gone?” Morgan’s voice had a hysterical edge to it.
“Best bet is to make for the Lone Star. Catch him before he goes in.”
“What if he’s already there?”
“Then it’s over.”
Morgan gave him a pleading look.
“For God’s sake, Darren...” Kennedy was studying the street. “The Lone Star was full of people that day. How do you think we—not to mention everyone else in there—are going to handle our arrival?”
“Who gives a shit? That’s not our problem,” Morgan replied. “The question is, how badly do you want him back?”
Kennedy gave the rear-view a swift glance. He tried to imagine the confrontation.
The Lone Star was six blocks away. He floored it and dodged through sparse traffic. The rain-swept streets were barren. Just over a block away he spied a figure closing in on the café’s entrance. Hardas.
A white Ford pulled in ahead of him, sending a spray of muddied water onto the windshield. He slammed the horn.
Morgan was already on the street and running.
The white Ford.
Kennedy was out of the car.
Two grey suits spilled out of the Ford. Bureau agents.
Morgan was halfway down the block.
The agents broke into a run.
Hardas gained the café’s entrance and was lost from sight.
Kennedy called out to Morgan, who skidded to a halt and turned back to face him, his expression lost in the rain. The agents were almost upon him. Probably figured they’d deal with Hardas and the others after taking him down. That was Cooper’s crew for you. That was Wetworks.
There’d be no confrontation in the Lone Star. No paradox to deal with. Kennedy had the Mauser in his hand. He drew a bead. He felt sickened. He pictured Patricia and told himself, I have to remember to drop the piece when I’m done here.
He squeezed the trigger.
The lights were out. The tunnel stank of automobile fumes and horse manure. Wet tyre tracks, lit by the bright cones of passing headlights, left runes on the asphalt.
Lightholler raised the collar of his coat against the cold and fastened his air filter mask. He tasted sand and felt his face twist into a peculiar smile.
He stood behind a pylon and waited.
Kennedy and Morgan were on their way to Kobe’s to rescue Hardas. They were also waiting for him at the Lone Star.
He stood in the shadowed twilight of a tunnel.
He sat squeezed in the back of a Hotspur.
He was due back at the carapace.
This dark knowledge he pursued was insane.
He turned to leave, and had gone twenty yards when a red light, somewhere overhead, began to
flash, casting the tunnel in hellish hues of scarlet. He looked back to gaze down the vacant, shit-strewn lane of aristocrats. In the distance, the single headlight of a white Hotspur bobbed into view.
He pulled up behind a pylon, his heart in his mouth. The last thing he needed was to be seen by the guard or his younger, foolish self, for that matter.
The Hotspur slowed down. He tried to remember how it had felt. The fear, the impotence of it all. That vague spark of hope when they were slowing down. Agent Collins would have his cash out.
Where was his saviour?
The Hotspur rolled to a halt.
This dark knowledge...
Lightholler stepped out into the beam of its headlight.
VI
Kennedy swung the Yamamoto onto Lafayette and hooked left onto Bond. He took another left at the Bowery and then cut back along 14th. No one was following.
Morgan said, “You left the gun?”
“Of course I left the gun. How the hell else is Patricia going to think I was framed.”
“How long do we have?”
“Three-quarters of an hour.” He tossed Morgan a look. “We’ll make it.”
The rain fell in sheets. One of the sedan’s wiper blades was faulty. It scraped its remorse on the scored windshield.
He turned up Fifth Avenue. It was a straight run to the park from here.
“Are you okay, Major?”
“I think so.”
They covered the next few blocks in silence. Morgan fiddled with the radio briefly. He strummed the dash.
“What do you think would have happened if we’d walked on in there?”
“Let’s not play that game, Darren.”
“You think Hardas would have come with us?”
Hardas’s loss was a yawning pit in his gut. This wasn’t helping.
Kennedy said, “There might have been more agents in the area. They were Wetworks. We’d be in body bags right about now.”
“I’m just saying, what do you think would have happened? Would Hardas have come with us?”
All Morgan needed was the right answer.
“I think so,” Kennedy replied. “I just don’t know how I could have left any of them behind.”
Morgan nodded dolefully.
“Except for you, of course.”
“Huh?” Morgan was examining his face.
Kennedy permitted a curl at the edge of his lips.
“Come to think of it,” Morgan said, “two of you is more than I could handle.”
Kennedy laughed outright. The park appeared ahead.
“I’m sorry, Darren. About Hardas.”
“I know.”
They left the sedan on 58th and walked the block to the park. They scaled the brittle brickwork and began working their way through the undergrowth to the glade.
“What are you going to tell Patricia?”
“You saw the look on her face when we were leaving.” Kennedy slowed his steps. “I think she already knew.”
“Does this mean we’re going to fail?” Morgan asked.
“If there’s anything the last few days have taught me, it’s this.” Kennedy reached over and squeezed Morgan’s shoulder. “Nothing is set in stone.”
They pressed on through thickening brushwood. Kennedy, somehow attuned, felt the carapace’s presence before sighting its alien bulk crouched amid the dripping green. Patricia and Shine sat on a spread of canvas beneath its squat carriage. Doc was examining one of the struts. Kennedy could see that the surface of the machine was scorched black in places, perhaps caught in the backwash of Lightholler’s rocket-launcher.
It was fifteen minutes till extraction.
Malcolm gazed up at him with mournful eyes. “Are you okay, Joseph?”
Kennedy nodded. “You aren’t surprised?”
She blinked slowly. “No.”
He couldn’t repress the next question. It left him bare and raw. “Do you hate me?”
She shook her head but her lips were pursed in anguish.
He cast about the gathering, adrift. “Where’s Lightholler?”
Malcolm said, “Think about it.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Morgan swept the group with his eyes. “Oh, crap—the tunnel.”
“Why would he want to go back there?” Shine asked.
“To find the shooter,” Morgan said. “To see who intervened.”
“Don’t you get it?” Kennedy spun on him. “He is the shooter.”
“I think I’ve heard enough.”
Someone was crashing through the bushes.
“John?” Kennedy turned, trying to form the words of consolation. He stepped towards the trees.
“No, not John.” The figure gripped two Dillingers in his gloved hands. He tilted his head back to reveal narrowed eyes beneath the brim of his rain-soaked fedora. His delicate features, otherwise composed, might have brought to mind a painter or a musician. He stepped into the sward.
“Fancy meeting you here, Agent Malcolm.”
She hissed her reply.
He looked to Kennedy and said, “Don’t even think about it.”
Kennedy’s Mauser lay on the streets of Osakatown. He let his hands fall to his sides.
“All of you. I want you over there.” He indicated a clearing to one side of the carapace.
They moved like the dead. He eyed the carapace and said, “Cute. What does it do?” He stepped closer and said, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” His eyes flicked from Kennedy to the carapace and back. “You sneaky little shit.”
Kennedy couldn’t muster a reply.
“Webster wanted it dry, but what you just pulled in Osakatown wrote me a blank cheque, Major Kennedy.”
Kennedy edged towards Malcolm.
“Any way you like it, lovebirds.”
The Dillingers barked twice.
Shine toppled to the ground.
“So much for the scariest man in New York.” He turned back to Kennedy. “That was the best you had to offer?”
“Yes.” Kennedy was smiling now.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“You have a knife blade sticking out of your chest.”
Cooper glanced down at the sliver of metal embedded between his ribs. “Fuck.”
He glanced across the clearing. An empty handle sat in Shine’s lifeless hand. “Fuck.”
He coughed up blood, staggered forwards and said to Kennedy, “You’re coming with me.”
Kennedy was hurled to the ground by the blast, his chest a searing explosion of agony. He raised his head from the muck to eye his killer.
“You’re coming with me.” The assassin dropped to his knees as if relishing this final exchange. There was another blast and he pitched forwards into the mud.
Lightholler stood behind him.
“You took a shot to the chest, Joseph. I’m hoping that blue shirt of yours lived up to its name.”
Kennedy clutched at his chest. The armour had held. He felt the puckered gap where the material had torn. The skin below was a raised, mottled area of darkest blue.
He turned to look at Shine. He looked away.
Lightholler rolled the Confederate’s body over with his toe. It made sucking movements as the mud relinquished its hold. “Who’s this?” he asked. He’d pocketed the Mauser and stood with his arms folded over his stomach, as if suddenly cold.
“That,” Patricia spat hatefully, “was Agent Cooper.”
“Strange. I had an appointment with him tonight in Queens.”
Kennedy gaped at him with wonder.
“I’ve put Lightholler in a cab. He should be catching up with you at the Lone Star any time now.” Lightholler coughed. Blood spilled between his lips. “I told him he’s a marked man.”
Kennedy’s wonder turned to horror. He stumbled towards Lightholler.
“Never occurred to me,” Lightholler rasped, “that one of those agents might have got off a lucky shot.” His hands parted, revealing a darker stain on his shirt. “The p
rairie might be big and wild, but that tunnel didn’t leave me much room to manoeuvre.” He reached for Kennedy. His hands groped at the torn blue armour. “Wish to hell I was still wearing mine.”
He went slack in Kennedy’s arms.
VII
Insertion
The screen was a patina of burnished green and bronze.
Shine was dead. Lightholler was fading fast. Kennedy turned to face Malcolm with empty eyes. She placed her hand on Lightholler’s wrist. She looked back at him, shaking her head.
“Doc?”
Gershon was making some adjustments on his keyboard. His reply was laced with grief. “Give me a minute. If I don’t stabilise our insertion, no one is going anywhere.” He typed rapidly as he spoke. “Get him out of the chair. Lay him flat. Darren, get my medi-pack out.”
They all scurried about the cabin, as if haste might serve as a cure.
Malcolm eased Lightholler out of the chair. He slid to the floor heavily. A sticky pool of blood had formed beneath his seat. Morgan had the pack open. They emptied it hurriedly, littering the floor with rolls of bandages and syringe sets. Kennedy, out of his seat, cradled Lightholler’s head.
Doc, at his console, grunted his frustration.
Lightholler’s eyes opened. He said, “Are we in the desert?”
Morgan, bleak, replied, “Almost, John. Why?”
“’Cause I’m fucking freezing.” Lightholler let out a blood-flecked chuckle. He looked up at Kennedy’s eyes, which were dark beneath quivering lids. “Whole time I was running around with you I was dying.”
“You’re not dying,” Kennedy said.
Lightholler winced. “I’m so fucking cold.”
“Doc.”
He was at their side. “Major,” he spoke through gritted teeth, “we have to get out of here right now. I can’t get a decent fix. The carapace is going to slingshot out of here, and I can’t stop it.”
“Slingshot where?” Kennedy’s gaze was fixed on Lightholler.
“Nowhere we’ll find.” His voice dropped. “And not in any condition we’ll recognise.”
“Are we here?” Morgan asked.
“Briefly.” Doc’s eyes flitted from Lightholler to Kennedy, then he was up. “We have to move now.” He had the hatch open and was already flinging their bags onto the sand below.
The Company of the Dead Page 60
