“That’s it? Your final word on the subject?”
“That’s it, Warrant Officer Berger.” Farthingale sounded strained. “It’s out of my hands. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not. Thank you, all of you, for your service. I have to sign off now. Over and out.”
BERGER WAITED FOR the green status light on the speakerphone to wink out.
“Where are you going?” she said to Abbotts, who had risen from his chair.
“Uh, the rec room? I thought we were done here.”
“We aren’t. Sit down.”
Something in her tone made Abbotts retake his seat. Immediately.
“So we’re just going to leave it at that, are we?” Berger said. “Suck it up and move on?”
“What do you suggest we do?” said Gunnery Sergeant Child. “Man made it clear. Game over.”
“Jacobsen—the colonel—is dead.”
“And?”
“He was our commanding officer,” said Berger. “This Redlaw person left him out in the daylight to burn. A horrible, undignified death. Does that sit well with any of you?”
Giacoia pulled a face. “It’s pretty cold, I got to say. Sounds like the colonel wasn’t even given a fighting chance.”
“I’m all in favour of a retaliatory strike,” said Corporal Lim, rubbing his sore arm. “I liked Jacobsen. I respected him. He didn’t deserve to die that way.”
“Kyle likewise,” said Abbotts. “Poor bastard drowned in sewage.”
“But,” Lim continued, “whatever we do, it’ll have to wait until we’re Porphyrian-free.”
“Will it?” said Berger.
“You heard the boss.”
“I heard him all right. But was I listening? Properly?”
“You’re saying we should ignore him,” said Child.
“I’m saying if we want to do this thing, and do it right, this is the time. We hang around, Redlaw’s long gone. He’s in the wind. And a week from now, we’ll be just ordinary humans again.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Child with a smirk. “There ain’t nothing ordinary about me.”
“You know what I mean. Unenhanced. We’ll have lost our boost, our edge. Whereas...” Berger looked at each of the other four in turn. “If we go after Redlaw today, all souped up and at the peak of our abilities, we’ll have every chance of catching him and settling accounts.”
“Seriously fucking his shit up,” said Child.
“Precisely.”
“Yeah, but wait one,” said Giacoia. “Jacobsen was a good guy and all, and so was Larousse, I guess, but do we have a right to run around whacking someone just because he whacked a couple of ours? I mean, this isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re not talking about some rabid towelhead terrorist needs putting down.”
“SEALs whacked Osama,” Abbotts pointed out. “And the way I remember it, no one cried. Anyone who kills Americans, especially a foreigner, becomes a legitimate target.”
“But this is different. Sure, we took some casualties. Isn’t that to be expected? Nobody said this would be a risk-free deal. But the campaign’s over now, and we’ve been ordered to stand down.”
“By a civilian,” said Berger, “who made no bones about the fact that he’d be glad to see Redlaw offed.”
“Just so long as it can’t be linked directly to him,” said Lim.
“And that’s another reason to say fuck him,” said Berger. “Let’s use what we’ve got, what Farthingale’s given us, while we still can. We do it today and we do it right. We honour Jim Jacobsen’s memory, and Private Larousse’s. One last outing for Team Red Eye. Maybe with an extra dose of PP-66 in our bloodstreams, just to be absolutely sure. Who’s with me? Show of hands.”
Abbotts’s hand went up straight away. Child’s and Lim’s followed. That left only Giacoia.
“Lieutenant?” said Berger. “You’re CO now. You going to lead this mission?”
Giacoia stroked his goatee. He was rather proud of it; it helped compensate for his receding hairline.
“Shit,” he sighed. “Yeah, seems like I am.”
Berger’s eyes gleamed in triumph.
She didn’t care which of the five of them would be the one to end Redlaw’s life. As long as it happened, and she got to watch.
But if, by chance, she found herself with Redlaw at her mercy—the man who’d killed her lover—she would take her time with him. She would make it nice and slow. There would be ripping, and rending, and tearing, and she would relish every long, drawn-out, blood-soaked minute of it.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
PRECIOUS FEW PLACES to eat were open. Eventually Redlaw and Tina found a 24-hour McDonalds where Tina wolfed down two Big Macs in a row, while Redlaw tackled an Egg McMuffin as circumspectly as though it were an unexploded bomb.
Then they resumed their trek northward, heading into the once shunned, now chic environs of the Meatpacking District. On every street, boutiques selling houseware and handicrafts jostled alongside art galleries and trendy antique shops. Tina aspired to live in an area like this, rubbing shoulders with the rich and fashionable. With what was stored in her camcorder, that goal didn’t seem nearly as remote as it used to.
Not far from where Miguel had said the school bus depot lay, they passed a stationery store. The proprietor, who lived in the apartment above, was unlocking the door and raising the security shutters as Redlaw and Tina approached. Redlaw greeted her and quickly established that she sold black cartridge paper and rolls of parcel tape. He thrust a wad of dollar bills into Tina’s hand.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Tina asked.
“Buy some of that paper and tape. As much as you can get of both. And scissors.”
“What for?”
“Think about it,” said Redlaw. “A big vehicle with plenty of windows. Windows that let in daylight.”
“Oh?” said Tina, and then, “Ohhh. Yeah. I see.”
“Sort that out. Meanwhile, I’ll go and procure our transportation.”
Procure? Tina thought, then realised the store’s proprietor was still in earshot. “Okay. So you don’t need my help for that, then?”
“It’s better if it’s just one of us.”
“Because I’d be a liability. Stupid Tina might do something wrong.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you’re thinking it. I know you, Redlaw.”
“No.” Redlaw lowered his voice. “I’d just prefer it if I have only myself to watch out for. In case there’s trouble.”
“Whatever. Off with you,” Tina said curtly. “Go do your manly thing. I’ll shop. ’Cause that’s what girls do, yeah? Shop.”
Redlaw was already walking away. “Twenty minutes,” he said, without looking round. “I’ll pick you up. Be standing there.”
“Yes, dearest!” Tina called after him, in her best imitation of an upper-crust British housewife. “You bring the Rolls round, once I’ve finished in Harrods.”
The stationery store proprietor shot her a wry smile. “We can’t help who we fall for, can we?”
Tina rolled her eyes. “Eww. Puh-leeze.”
“He’s not your...?”
“He’s not my anything.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry. I just assumed. The way you two were bickering.”
“Like I couldn’t do better than Herman Munster there.”
“But that accent of his,” the proprietor gushed. She was the kind of plump, hippyish woman who seemed born to wear purple. “It’s to die for.”
“Believe me, lady, you think the British are all cucumber sandwiches and garden parties with Her Majesty? They’re not. If he’s anything to go by, they’re the maddest bunch of motherfuckers on the planet. Now, am I buying stuff off of you or not?”
“Of course. Come on in.”
But once inside the shop, a thought struck Tina. Twenty minutes. That was just about enough time.
“Excuse me,” she said to the proprietor, “is there a restroom I could use?”
“Sure. Through that door, in back. You want I should start fetching out that paper and tape for you in the meantime?”
“That’d be great.”
TINA SAT ON the toilet seat lid, camcorder in one hand, BlackBerry in the other, the two devices linked by a USB cable. Using the Media Sync app, she imported data from the camera memory to the BlackBerry and converted the H.264-format files to mpegs. These she uploaded onto her website via email. She subtitled each clip “Raw Footage, Awaiting Edit and Commentary,” then composed a brief post to introduce them:
New to Tick Talk—Vampires of Manhattan
This is some truly cool stuff, straight out of my camera. Check the date stamp. You won’t believe what you’re seeing, but it’s 100% genuine!
She clicked the Publish button and sat back with a sharp exhalation, almost a gasp of relief, as though she’d just given birth.
She couldn’t possibly have held on to the vampire footage a moment longer. It was just too big, too important, too damn shit-hot. It demanded to be shared. Never mind that she’d made a pact with Redlaw not to release a single frame into cyberspace until after he was finished with his business in New York. How much longer were he and she going to be sticking together anyway? Not long. He’d probably never find out that she’d jumped the gun. He was mono-focused on getting his troupe of vampires to safety. So what harm could it do, Tina starting out on her road to fame and fortune a little ahead of schedule?
She returned to the main part of the shop, where the proprietor was busy bagging up several dozen huge rolls of cartridge paper and a stack of parcel tape.
“There you are,” she said to Tina. “That’s everything I’ve got. You’ve cleaned me out. I hope it’ll be enough for whatever you’re planning to do.”
Tina shoved some of Redlaw’s money onto the counter and went outside with her purchases. She checked her watch.
Twenty-five minutes since she last saw Redlaw.
Twenty-six.
She started stamping her feet to stay warm.
He was running late. What the hell was he up to? What was keeping him?
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
REDLAW COUNTED AT least fifty of the yellow school buses, slotted tightly together in the parking lot like pieces of some giant puzzle. All of them wore thick berets of snow.
The fence was easy enough to scale. Chainlink was an odd kind of barrier, in that it provided so many handholds and toeholds for the determined climber to use. Self-defeating, in a way.
Barbed wire was strung along the top, but it had been applied economically, a single strand wreathed round and round the crossbar. Redlaw was able to grasp it with his gloved hands, straddle over and drop down the other side, without snagging his clothes or pricking himself.
The snow cushioned his landing, sparing his knees. Small mercies.
He padded over to the guard’s hut, an aluminium-sided static trailer, and stood on tiptoe to peep through a window. No one inside. As Miguel had predicted, the guard wasn’t clocking on for duty today because nobody else was.
Dozens of sets of keys hung on a rack in the hut. Redlaw cast around for something he could force the door with, a length of rebar maybe.
That was when his gaze alighted on a kennel, nestled nearby between two rows of buses.
A large kennel. With the name Zoltan painted over the entrance.
A large, empty kennel.
He heard the dog coming at the last possible moment. It had sneaked round behind him. It didn’t bark, but its paws crunched heavily on the snow as it stopped stalking him and broke into a run.
Redlaw whirled round to face it. The dog was a huge beast, a bull mastiff. Its jowly mouth hung wide open, its teeth were fearsome, and its bloodshot eyes bore a cruel, murderous glint.
In a flash Redlaw recalled a training module at Hendon: what to do when confronted by a dangerous dog. It was thirty years ago, when he’d been a naïve young police cadet, but the techniques he’d been taught came back to him as though it was yesterday.
Zoltan the mastiff sprang.
Redlaw’s left arm came up horizontally.
Better your arm than your throat. That was what the instructor, a K9 handler, had said. You can afford to lose a hand, but not a windpipe.
The mastiff’s jaws latched on to his forearm. The thick lining of the army-surplus parka saved him from severe injury. The pressure of the bite was intolerable, almost literally like having his arm gripped in a workbench vice, and he felt teeth break his skin, but he knew the dog was capable of much worse. He’d got off lightly so far.
A surge of adrenaline made Redlaw see everything with precision. Every move he must now make was mapped out in detail in his head, a checklist for survival. Get one step wrong and the mastiff would make him pay for it, dearly.
The mastiff dragged down on his arm, trying to bring him to its own level. Redlaw hauled up against its immense weight. The thing was far stronger than him, but if he kept it up on its hindlegs it would be off-balance and unable to utilise that strength against him.
He stuck out his right thumb, rigid, and without hesitation jabbed it into the mastiff’s left eye. He felt a strange kind of clinical detachment as he wormed his thumb deep into the eye socket and twisted it to lever out the eyeball. The jelly-like orb came free with a wet sucking pop, trailing nerve tissue and gristle behind it.
Zoltan the mastiff let out a piteous howl, and all at once Redlaw’s arm was released. The dog reared back, whimpering and shaking its head. The eyeball, still attached, flopped this way and that. Gore striped the snow.
By rights, that should have been that. The shock of having its eye enucleated was supposed to render the mastiff helpless, sending its nervous system into shutdown. The dog might even have a heart attack and die.
Either the bull mastiff didn’t know that, or it was made of far sterner stuff than the average hound.
Recovering its wits, it gave a baleful growl. Its remaining good eye fixed Redlaw with a look of sheer Satanic loathing.
Then the mastiff launched itself at him again.
If all else fails, the dangerous dogs module instructor had said, you need to choke the animal. If it’s large enough, the best way is this... And he had demonstrated the method on a dummy dog, and when all the cadets, including Redlaw, had grimaced, he had said, Trust me, you won’t think twice when it’s your life on the line.
And Redlaw didn’t think twice. He met the leaping mastiff with his left arm outstretched, fingers pinched into a pyramid, and he rammed his hand straight into that slobber-strung, gaping maw.
The mastiff’s impetus knocked Redlaw flat, but also impaled it further onto Redlaw’s arm, past the wrist, halfway to the elbow. Redlaw balled his hand, deep inside the dog’s hot throat, into a fist. The mastiff was on top of him, but his arm was locked tight inside its gullet. Claws scrabbled on his chest. The dog wrenched its head from side to side, trying desperately to dislodge the blockage. Redlaw could feel its muscles straining around his forearm.
Panic lit Zoltan the mastiff’s good eye. Its efforts to free itself weakened. Its whole body began to shudder as oxygen deprivation took hold. All at once it keeled over onto its flank, Redlaw’s arm still inside. Spasms ran through its body, and its legs kicked and twitched. Finally its eye lost that sinister brilliance and seemed to fog over. The dog’s bowels let go, unleashing a torrent of meaty faeces onto the snow. One last mighty muscular heave, and the mastiff lay still.
Redlaw painstakingly extracted his arm from the creature. His parka sleeve was ripped, saliva-sodden, and bloodied, with bits of stuffing poking out all over. Pain began to spark around the bite wounds. His head went woozy. He lay back in the snow and caught his breath and waited for his heart rate to normalise.
“Lord,” he said to the skies, “I know it’s your habit to test people, to try them in the fires of providence so that they can learn what they’re made of and be tempered and become stronger. But this?” He flapped at hand at th
e dead dog. “On top of everything else? Seriously?”
Answer came there none from the heavens, other than the relentless cold white benediction of snowfall.
THE SEARCH FOR something to jemmy the guard’s hut door with proved futile, so Redlaw resorted to breaking one of the windows with the butt of his Cindermaker. He reached through, undid the latch, and slithered inside.
The bus keys were organised according to vehicle size, each with a tag listing a licence plate number. Redlaw reasoned that he didn’t need one of the larger-capacity buses when he had only eight passengers, nine if you counted Tina. Also, a smaller bus ought to be easier to drive, and nippier.
Soon he was behind the wheel of a twelve-seater, with the engine juddering and growling and diesel fumes pluming at the rear. The interior smelled of vanilla air freshener and children’s sweat.
The depot gate was secured with padlock and chain. Both were more durable than they looked, and it wasn’t until the bus had rammed the gate for a third time that they snapped.
When Redlaw rendezvoused with Tina outside the stationery store, he thought she looked disgruntled because he was ten minutes later than promised. But in the event it was the bus itself that offended her.
“The short bus?” she exclaimed as she boarded. “You went and stole the short bus?”
“What of it? We don’t need one of the bigger ones.”
“You have no idea, do you? The short bus is for the special needs kids. The retards and the disabled and the challenged. Did you not notice the wheelchair lift at the back? Nobody in their right mind would be seen dead on the short bus.”
“Well, I’m not going back to steal another,” Redlaw said. “I had a hard enough time getting this one.” He indicated his left arm.
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