by Dan Simmons
Well, thought Hansen, fornicate that. No more games. Let Frears and Kurtz have the photographs. Let them do their worst. Time to leave. Time to leave the train station. Time to leave Buffalo. Time to leave all of this behind.
Myers and Brubaker were crouched behind the bench with him.
"Time to leave," Hansen whispered to them.
"We get to keep the money?" Myers whispered back, his breath hot and fetid on Hansen's face. "Even though it wasn't Kurtz?"
"Yes, yes," whispered Hansen. "Brubaker. Five yards to your left is the stairway to the front door. Wide stairs. Just twelve of them. The doors and windows down there are boarded over. Clear the staircase while we give you cover. Kick the boards off the door or window. Shoot an opening if you have to. We're getting out of here."
Brubaker hesitated a second but then nodded and scuffed to his right and down the staircase.
Hansen and Myers stayed behind the bench, muzzles swinging to cover the mezzanine levels across the rotunda, then the opposite main-staircase doorway. Nothing moved. No shots from the front staircase. Hansen heard Brubaker kicking the hell out of the boarded door and then the shout "Clear!"
Hansen had Myers cover him while he shuffled to the staircase and then covered the fat man while he wheezed and panted past him and down the stairs.
Outside, the night-vision goggles were almost too bright. It was still snowing hard, but the drifted expanse of the parking lot glowed like a green desert in bright sunlight. The three detectives abandoned all pretext of proper SWAT procedure and just loped away from the station, running flat-out across the parking lot. Each man ran hunched, obviously half-expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades. But as they reached a hundred feet from the tower, then two hundred, then a hundred yards and better, they began to relax slightly under their heavy flak vests. It would take a master marksman with a high-velocity rifle, night-scope, and much luck to get off a good shot at this distance, in this snow.
No shot came.
Panting and wheezing loudly now, they passed the low boulders blocking access to the lot and came down the slippery driveway. The goggles gave them a view of everything for sixty yards in each direction. Nothing moved. No other cars were visible. The only tire tracks in the driveway, mostly drifted over now, were those of the Cadillac Escalade, which had accumulated two inches of new snow in the forty-five minutes or so they had been in the station.
"Wait," panted Hansen. He used the remote to beep the Cadillac unlocked and they checked the lighted interior before approaching. Empty.
"Myers," said Hansen between gasps. "Keep your goggles and vest on and keep watch while Brubaker and I get out of this gear."
Myers grumbled but did as he was told as the other two detectives tossed their heavy vests, rifles, and helmets into the back of the SUV.
"All right," said Hansen, pulling the .38 from his coat pocket and standing guard while Myers divested himself of his tactical gear. There was enough light out here to allow Hansen to see the fat man's grin when he was free of the heavy equipment. Despite the cold and snow, Myers wiped sweat from his face.
"That was fucking weird," said the heavyset detective.
"How many times have I asked you not to use profanity?" Hansen said, and shot Myers in the forehead.
Brubaker began groping in his jacket for his gun, but Hansen had plenty of time to fire twice—hitting the man first in the throat and then in the bridge of the nose.
He dragged the bodies out of the way so he could back the Escalade down to the street and then went through their jackets, pulling out the two envelopes of cash.
Breathing more easily now, Hansen looked back at the distant tower and train station. Nothing moved across the wide expanse of snow. If Mickey Kee had ever shown up, he was on his own in there now. Settling into the big SUV, Hansen felt a twinge of regret—he'd probably never know what game Joe Kurtz and John Wellington Frears had been playing. But he no longer cared. It was time to leave it all behind.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
« ^ »
Suddenly Kurtz knew that he was not alone on the mezzanine.
It had been a long, cold wait for Hansen and his pals, first waiting at the broken window of the front mezzanine office. The parking lot had been dark, but Kurtz was sure he could see any moving figure against the snow, even though his view from the third-floor window was partially obscured by the large steel-and-plaster ornamental awning directly beneath his perch.
When Marco had broken squelch twice on the radio, Kurtz had slipped the earpiece into his pocket and moved as quietly as he could—the floor was littered with broken plaster and glass—to the rotunda mezzanine outside the office. From there he didn't have long to wait until Hansen and the other two detectives showed up and blasted Rafferty to bits.
Kurtz never had a clear shot with his pistol. The rotunda got more light than most of the rest of the train station's interior, but it was still too dark for Kurtz to see anything clearly, even with his eyes adapted to the dark. One of the men had turned a flashlight on briefly when they were inspecting their kill, but Kurtz had only a brief glimpse of SWAT-garbed men more than eighty feet across the circle of the rotunda. Too far for a shot from the .40-caliber SW99 semiauto in his hand or the .45 Compact Witness in his coat pocket Besides, even that brief glimpse of the men—he couldn't tell them apart in their black helmets and SWAT vests—showed that their body armor would stop a pistol shot.
Then the three had gone down the front stairway and battered their way out the front door and Kurtz had scuttled back to his place by the shattered window.
The entrance canopy below blocked his view until the three running men were again out of range, then lost to the darkness and falling snow of the parking lot.
Kurtz didn't even try following their retreat He sat with his back against the wall and slowed his breathing.
There was the slightest hint of noise from either the mezzanine outside the office or the rotunda below. The whispering-gallery effect worked both ways.
Marco? He didn't think the unarmed bodyguard would be stupid enough to come toward the sound of automatic weapons fire. Could Rafferty still be alive and stirring? No. Kurtz had seen the wounds in the few seconds of the flashlight's inspection.
Getting silently to his feet Kurtz raised the pistol and crossed the littered floor as quietly as he could. Glass still crunched underfoot.
Pausing at the doorway, he stepped out onto the mezzanine, pistol ready.
A shadow against the wall to his right moved with impossible speed. The .40 S&W went flying out across the railing and Kurtz felt his right wrist and hand go numb from the kick.
He leaped back, pawing with his left hand for the .45 in his peacoat pocket but the shadow leaped and a two-footed Jack caught him in the chest, breaking ribs and throwing Kurtz backward into the office.
Rolling, Kurtz got to his feet and lifted both arms in defense even as the shadow hurtled at him and three more fast kicks numbed his right forearm, smashed another rib, and kicked Kurtz's feet out from under him. He landed hard and felt broken glass rip at his back even as the wind rushed out of him.
Hansen? No. Who?
Kurtz staggered to his knees and grabbed for the extra gun again but his peacoat had been torn open and twisted around by the fall and he couldn't find the pocket. Maybe the gun had been knocked free but Kurtz couldn't see it in the dim light through the broken window.
His assailant came up behind him silently, grabbed Kurtz by the hair and pulled him to his feet.
Instinctively, Kurtz threw his left hand up tight to his chin—the right hand was useless—and felt a long blade cutting his forearm to the bone rather than severing his neck. Kurtz gasped and kicked backward as hard as he could.
The man danced away.
Kurtz was reeling, barely able to stand, feeling the shattered rib where it had cut into his right lung. He was bleeding badly, right hand dangling useless, legs shaky. He had only a few seconds he coul
d stay standing, maybe thirty seconds before he lost consciousness.
His attacker moved to his left, a shadow in shadows.
Kurtz backed toward the window. A tall shard of sharp glass stuck upward from the windowsill. If he could maneuver the man toward the…
The man-shaped darkness leaped from the shadows. Kurtz abandoned the window-glass strategy, tugged his coat around with his bloody left hand, and reached for his pocket just as there came a blinding flash of fight.
The figure, who had kicked him in the chest again, was not distracted by the light. The man body-blocked Kurtz with a sharp shoulder, lifted him, and threw him backward through the window even as Kurtz's left hand became entangled in his own coat pocket.
Kurtz was dimly aware that he was somersaulting through the cold air, looking up at the dark rectangle of window fifteen feet above, his assailant's face white against the blackness there. Then Kurtz hit the solid canopy with his back, smashed through the rotten plaster and lathing and rebar, and fell another fifteen feet to the snowy pavement below.
A hundred yards away through blowing snow, snug in the driver's seat of the Cadillac SUV, Hansen heard none of this. He turned the ignition, heard the V-8 roar to life, set the heater to maximum, and flipped on the halogen headlights.
He had just raised his hand to the gearshift when there came a soft tik-tik and thirty-two pounds of C-4 explosive rigged under the floorboards, in the engine compartment, behind the dash, and especially carefully around the 40-gallon fuel tank, exploded in tight sequence.
The first wad of explosive blew off Hansen's feet just above the ankles. The second batch of C-4 blew the hood a hundred feet into the air and sent the windshield flying. The main packet ignited the fuel tank and lifted the two-and-a-half-ton vehicle five feet into the air before the SUV dropped back onto burning tires. The interior of the Cadillac immediately filled with a fuel-air mixture of burning gasoline.
Hansen was alive. Even as he breathed flames, he thought, I'm alive!
He tried the door but it was buckled and jammed. The passenger seat was twisted forward and on fire. Hansen himself was on fire. The wood-and-polymer steering wheel was melting in his hands.
Not knowing yet that his feet were gone, Hansen lurched forward and clawed at the dashboard, pulling himself through the jagged hole where the windshield had been.
The hood was gone; the engine compartment was a well of flames.
Hansen did not stop. Reaching up and over with hands of molten flesh, he grabbed the optional roof rack of the Cadillac and pulled his charred and burning legs out of the wreck, twisting free of the interior, dropping himself away from the flaming mass of metal.
His hair was on fire. His face was on fire. Hansen rolled in the deep snow, smothering the flames, screaming in agony.
He crawled on his smoking elbows farther from the wreck, rolling on his back, trying to breathe through the pain in his lungs. He could see everything clearly, not knowing that his eyelids had fused with his brow and could not be closed. Hansen held his hands in front of his face. They hurt. He saw in a surge of disbelief bordering on a weird joy that his fingers had bloated like hot dogs left too long on the charcoal grill and then burst and melted. He saw white bone against the black sky. The flames illuminated everything in a sixty-yard radius.
Hansen tried to scream for help but his lungs were two sacks of carbon.
A silhouette walked between him and the burning vehicle. A man. The dark shape knelt, leaned closer, showed a face to the flames.
"Hansen," said John Wellington Frears. "Do you hear me? Do you know who I am?"
I am not James B. Hansen, Hansen thought and tried to say, but neither his jaws nor tongue would work.
Frears looked down at the burned man. Hansen's clothes had peeled off and his skin hung in greasy folds, smoking like charred rags. The man's face showed exposed and burned muscles like cords of slick red-and-yellow rope. Hansen's scorched lips had peeled back from his teeth, so he seemed to be caught in the middle of a wild grin. The staring gray eyes could not blink. Only the thin column of Hansen's breath rising into the frigid air from the open mouth showed that he still lived.
"Can you hear me, Hansen?" said Frears. "Can you see who I am? I did this. You killed my daughter, Hansen. And I did this. Stay alive and suffer, you son of a bitch."
Frears knelt next to the charred man for several minutes. Long enough to see the pupils in the monster's eyes widen in recognition and then become fixed and dilated. Long enough to see that the only vapor rising into the cold air from Hansen now was no longer breath, but steam and smoke from the cooked flesh.
Distant sirens rose from the direction of the lighted city—the habitat, John Wellington Frears thought, of the other men, the civilized men. He rose and was ready to walk back to the Lincoln parked a block away when he saw something that looked like an animal crawling toward him through the snow of the parking lot.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
« ^ »
Mickey Kee stood at the open window for a minute, staring down at Kurtz's body through the hole in the metal canopy and then glancing up at the vehicle burning in the distance. He was curious about the explosion, but he hadn't let it deter him from his work.
His charge from Mr. Gonzaga had been—kill Kurtz, then kill Millworth. In Mr. Gonzaga's words, "Any fucking cop crazy enough to hire me to kill somebody is too fucking crazy to be left alive." Mickey Kee had not disagreed. Mr. Gonzaga had added that he wanted Kurtz's head—literally—and Kee had brought a gunny sack on his belt to transport the trophy. Mr. G planned to give Ms. Angelina Farino a surprise present.
Kee had been mildly disappointed twenty minutes earlier when Millworth and his two sidekicks had come into the station like the Keystone Kops shuffling along in body armor. He'd followed them to Kurtz, knowing that the time was not right to take care of Millworth, that it was too risky with all of that firepower in the hands of clowns. Now this explosion. With any luck, Millworth was no longer a factor. If it hadn't been the homicide detective's pyre, then Mickey Kee would drive to Millworth's house and take care of things there. The evening was young.
Moving silently even over broken glass, Kee circled the mezzanine and went down the stairs, across the rotunda, and out the front door. Kurtz's body had not moved.
Kee slipped his Beretta out of its holster and approached carefully. Kurtz had made a mess coming through the overhang. Rebar hung down like spaghetti. Plaster and rotted wood were scattered around the body. Kurtz's right arm was visibly broken, the bone visible, and his left leg looked all twisted out of position. His left arm was pinned under his body just as he had fallen on it. There was blood soaking the snow around Kurtz's head and his eyes were wide and staring fixedly at the sky through the hole he'd made in the overhang. Snow-flakes settled on the open eyes.
Mickey Kee straddled the body and counted to twenty. No breath rising in the cold air. Kee spat down onto Kurtz's open mouth. No movement. The eyes stared past Kee into intergalactic space.
Kee grunted, slipped away the Beretta, pulled the gunny sack from his belt, and clicked open the eight-inch blade on his combat knife.
Kurtz blinked and brought his left hand up and around, squeezing the trigger of the Compact Witness .45 he'd pulled out during his fall. The bullet hit Mickey Kee under the chin, passed through his soft palate and brain, and blew the top of his skull off.
The .45 suddenly grew too heavy to hold so Kurtz dropped it. He would have liked to have closed his eyes to go away from the pain, but Kee's body was too heavy on his damaged chest to let him breathe, so he pulled the body off him with his left hand, rolled over painfully, and began crawling on his belly toward the distant flames.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
« ^ »
John Wellington Frears drove Kurtz to the Erie County Medical Center that night. It wasn't the hospital closest to the train station, but it was the only one he knew about since he'd driven past it seve
ral times on the way to and from the Airport Sheraton. Despite the storm, or perhaps because of it, the emergency room was almost empty, so Kurtz had no fewer than eight people working on him when he was brought in. The two real doctors in the group didn't understand the injuries—severe cuts, lacerations, concussion, broken ribs, broken wrist, damage to both legs—but the well-dressed African-American gentleman who'd brought the patient in said that it had been an accident at a construction site, that his friend had fallen three stories through a skylight, and the shards of glass in Kurtz seemed to bear that story out.
Frears waited around long enough to hear that Kurtz would live, and then he and the black Lincoln disappeared back into the storm.
Arlene made it through the weather to the hospital that night, stayed until the next afternoon, and came back every day. When Kurtz regained consciousness late the next morning, she was reading the Buffalo News, and she insisted on reading parts of it aloud to him every day after that.
On that first day after the murders, Thursday, the carnage at the train station almost crowded out the news about the blizzard. "The Train Station Massacre," the papers and TV news immediately christened it. Three homicide detectives were dead, a civilian named Donald Rafferty, a petty criminal from Newark named Marco Dirazzio, and an Asian-American not yet identified. It was obvious to the press that some sort of straight-from-the-movies shoot-out between the crooks and the cops had taken place that night, probably while Captain Robert Gaines Millworth and his men were working undercover.
By that afternoon, the chief of police and the mayor of Buffalo had both vowed that this cold-blooded murder of Buffalo's finest would not go unavenged—that every resource, including the FBI, would be used to track down the killers and bring them to justice. It would, they said, be the largest manhunt in the history of Western New York. The vows were made in time to be picked up by the prime-time local and network news. Tom Brokaw said during the lead-in to the report, "A real—and deadly—game of cops-and-robbers took place in Buffalo, New York, last night, and the body count may not be finished yet." That odd prediction came true when the authorities announced late Thursday that the dead bodies of Captain Millworth's wife and son, as well as another unidentified body, had been discovered that morning at the captain's home in Tonawanda. One city alderman was quoted during the late news saying that it was inappropriate for a captain of Homicide on the Buffalo Police Department to live in Tonawanda, that city law and department policy required residence within the city limits of Buffalo for all city employees. The alderman was largely ignored.
