The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  “I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why did they do this?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  “I mean … why hit us? We’re not even close to anything yet.”

  Her chest hitched as if she was fighting a sob. Or struggling to swallow bile that had boiled up into her throat.

  “Where’d you get the gun?” I asked.

  “It’s mine.”

  “You had it on the plane?”

  “Yes. I’m cleared to carry because of my work with Sea of Hope. I have to be ready to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice. Hugo Vox and Mr. Church cleared it for me.”

  “You learn how to shoot at T-Town?”

  She nodded and brushed a tear from her eye.

  “Is this the first time you shot someone?” I asked gently.

  She nodded again. “I’ve fired I don’t know how many rounds at the combat ranges … but … but …”

  Suddenly her color changed from white to green. She abruptly spun away from me, ran to the side of the building, and threw up in a trash can. I tried to comfort her, but she gave a violent shake of her head and I backed off.

  Ghost gave me a “smooth move” look and whined a little as Circe continued to cough up her fear and disgust and—if she was as human as the rest of us—self-loathing.

  I understood that. No matter how much you hate someone, no matter how justified you are in pulling the trigger, at the end of the day there are only three possible emotional reactions to killing another human being. You either like it, in which case you shouldn’t ever be allowed to touch a gun again. Or you feel nothing, in which case the words “cry for help” should be tattooed on your forehead and they should lead you away to a nice, comfy therapist’s couch. Or you feel like you just committed an unforgivable sin. After the moment is over, as you stand there feeling the adrenaline ooze out of your pores and the cordite stink of discharged rounds mixes with the coppery smell of blood, you feel the enormity of it. You took a life.

  Circe had shooter’s calluses. She had to have prepared for this moment.

  That preparation saved lives, but you absolutely cannot fully prepare a person for the reality of having ended a human life. But the fact that it appalled Circe was proof of a heart and mind that was not already inured to basic humanity or corrupted by a disregard for the sanctity of all life.

  I wanted to tell Circe this, but this wasn’t the time. She wouldn’t be able to hear it now. Right now she needed to survive the reality of the event, and that would add a layer of callus on her soul.

  Damn.

  “I got this,” said a voice, and I turned to see DeeDee. She closed on Circe and put a sisterly hand on her shoulder. A lot has been said about “brothers in arms.” In the twenty-first century we’re going to have to broaden that view to include sisters in arms. I backed off and then turned toward the TacV, where my suspect waited.

  Interlude Thirty-eight

  The Milhaus Estate

  Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts

  December 19, 6:04 P.M. EST

  On Martha’s Vineyard, police cars and an ambulance were tearing along the winding back roads toward the mansion of H. Carlton Milhaus, CEO of Milhaus and Berk Publishing. The company published, among other periodicals, The Fiscal Conservative and Right Smart. Milhaus’s eldest daughter, Sandra, was using the estate for a combination holiday party for the company’s executives and fund-raiser for the Republic senator from Massachusetts.

  As the emergency vehicles roared through the gates, the officers could see that every light in the house was on. Despite the cold, people in cocktail dresses and dinner jackets were standing outside on the patio and lawn. Many of them had hands to their throats or faces, and all of them had shocked eyes.

  The first-in officers knew that everything they said, everything they did, here among these people would be scrutinized. A single misstep, a carelessly chosen word, could crush their careers. They’d seen it happen over and over again to their peers. Their former peers.

  The first responders entered with as much haste as caution would allow. The EMTs were a dozen steps behind.

  They stepped into a world of elegance and sophistication, of holiday cheer and conspicuous wealth, of shocked white faces and bright red blood.

  Sandra Milhaus lay faceup, her feet on the second and third steps of the grand staircase, her arms flung wide with an inartistic abandon, her green silk gown twisted around her pale legs. Her eyes were open, as was her mouth. Her coiffed blond curls lay in the center of a pool of blood that, by perverse chance, spread around her like a halo and reflected the Christmas lights on the walls and banister. That she was dead was obvious, even from a dozen feet away.

  The officers cut each other a quick glance, knowing they had just stepped out of a potential “incident” at the party of one of the richest families on the Vineyard and stepped into a crime scene that would be front-page news, even with all that was going on in London. When they were still five feet away they froze.

  Sandra Milhaus was not merely dead. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with lumps like boils. Some of them had clearly burst and leaked blood or clear fluid that was tinged with pink. The others were pale knobs, the color lost from the settling of blood in her body after her heart had stopped.

  They stood on either side of her, careful not to step in the blood.

  “Who can tell me what happened?” asked Jimmy Redwood, the male officer. “Was she allergic to anything?”

  There were a hundred people clustered around. On the stairs and balcony above, in the open doorway of the grand ballroom to their right and the dining room to their left. The officers recognized many of the faces from the news.

  Redwood’s partner, Debbie Tobias, turned to the nearest person, an older woman. “Ma’am, do you know if she ate something she wasn’t supposed to?”

  The woman shook her head and didn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—answer.

  “Please,” said Tobias, pitching her voice for authority but not intimidation, “was she sick before the party?”

  The EMTs came hustling in, carrying their heavy equipment boxes.

  “What have we got, Jimmy?” the lead paramedic asked Redwood.

  “I don’t know, Barney. Looks like allergic reaction.”

  The EMT closed on the body. And stopped.

  They looked at each other.

  This wasn’t anaphylaxis.

  “Oh, shit,” said Barney.

  His partner, Paresh, cut a worried look at the crowd and then pulled Tobias closer. He whispered urgently in her ear, “Get everyone out of here, but keep them contained.”

  Barney was already on the phone, calling in the visible symptoms. Neither he nor his partner made any attempt to touch Sandra Milhaus.

  Tobias looked up at Paresh. “What is it?”

  But the EMT shook his head. “I don’t know. But for God’s sake get these people contained, Debbie. Now!”

  Interlude Thirty-nine

  Feasterville, Pennsylvania

  December 19, 6:05 P.M. EST

  Rafael Santoro did not want to make this call. In all the years during which he had served the Goddess and the Seven Kings he had only had to make such a call twice. This was the third time he would have to report not one failure but two.

  The King of Plagues answered, his voice mildly distorted by his scrambler.

  Instead of a greeting, Gault said, “I’m watching CNN. I’m hearing a lot about an attack on a house in Jenkintown that ended with four dead and two taken. I’m also hearing about a bunch of trigger-happy wankers who shot up an effing Starbucks. I’m hearing about civilian casualties. I’m hearing about a dead sodding writer. Can you guess what I’m not hearing about? I’m not hearing about Amber-fucking-Taylor and her children being spooned into body bags. I’m not hearing about a dead federal agent named Joe-effing-Ledger. Want to fucking tell me why not?”

  Santoro took a calming breath. He was deeply ashamed. “I have no excuses.”
r />   “Who’d you send? The frigging Mousketeers?”

  “I used local assets on both jobs.”

  “Kingsmen?”

  “Chosen. Trey Foster and his team out of Philadelphia were given the Taylor pickup. I used Sarducci and his team for Starbucks. That is the Jersey crew I’ve used for three situations for the Kings over the last year.”

  “Did they screw those up, too?” Gault’s voice was loud and full of acid.

  “No,” said Santoro calmly. “Both teams have done good work for us in the past.”

  “God damn it, Rafael.”

  “They were unprepared for the arrival of DMS field teams at both locations.”

  “What?” Gault screamed the question so loud Santoro winced and held the phone away from his ear. When the King of Plagues was done shouting, Santoro explained what had happened.

  “Such calamities are the price when action is taken without planning, yes? Had I been given more time, I would have scouted the area, set watchers on the perimeter, and listened for activity on our information stream. However …” He let the rest hang.

  “Describe them to me,” snapped Gault, and when Santoro finished he said, “That’s sodding Echo Team. They’re Ledger’s team, but what the bloody hell are they doing in Southampton?”

  Gault shouted more and Santoro endured it, sighing quietly as he drove. As much as he loved and honored the new consort of the Goddess and even though he would gladly die for this man, as he would for any of the Kings, Sebastian Gault could be a tiresome bore. And he was loud. Santoro, however, was never loud. Loud was crass—except for the loud shrieks and cries of his angels in their moment of transformation.

  “How bad is this?” asked Gault.

  “Nine of the Jersey team are dead, as are four of the Philadelphia team. Three operatives are in DMS custody.”

  “Can you get to them?”

  “Impossible.”

  “What do they know?”

  “Nothing of any value. Even under torture they have nothing useful to reveal.”

  Which was only partly true. They knew Santoro’s name and that he worked for the Seven Kings, but Santoro did not think that this provided enough of a threat to risk having the King of Plagues lose his temper again.

  “What would you like me to do?”

  Gault sighed. “There’s nothing you can do. Let the DMS have them.” He sighed again, deeply and for a long time. Santoro could almost feel Gault’s blood pressure dropping. “Besides … and to be fair, I did ask for this to be splashed across the news feeds. It was. I was hoping that it would reinforce the threatening presence of the Kings … not make us look like imbeciles.”

  Santoro did not comment.

  “Very well,” said Gault. “We’re going to write this off. Perhaps the Goddess can find a way to spin this in our favor. In the meantime, put a couple of people you can trust on Ledger, and if the opportunity comes up kill the bloody bastard.”

  “With pleasure.”

  “Meanwhile, we have bigger fish to fry. The Inner Circle should be getting some very bad news right about now. You did good work setting that up,” Gault said grudgingly. “The Goddess is well pleased.”

  “It is always my pleasure to serve the Goddess,” said Santoro.

  He disconnected and drove randomly through the towns that adjoined Southampton. It hurt him that both of his victims had slipped the punch. Perhaps, if he was lucky and the grace of the Goddess touched his destiny, he would have another opportunity to kill those two. This time, however, he would do the job himself. Not once in his entire life had Santoro failed when he, rather than a team, was the instrument of death. Not once.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Crime Scene

  Southampton, Pennsylvania

  December 19, 6:06 P.M. EST

  We crowded into the back of Black Bess. Top, Bunny, Ghost, and me. The others established a perimeter outside and nobody got past them.

  I sat on the bunk opposite the prisoner. Ghost sat on the floor, his head rising above the level of the gurney, his dark eyes filled with predatory intensity. The shooter looked from me, to Ghost, to Top and Bunny and back again. It was evident he didn’t like what he saw in our faces. No reason he should. The TacV was wired for digital recording, and Top gave me a wink to indicate that it was running.

  “Here’s the way it sits, dickhead,” I said to the shooter. “You’re in the shit up to your eyeballs. There are eight dead civilians and nineteen wounded. We’re with Homeland and you’ve been designated as an enemy combatant and a terrorist, so the Patriot Act just got shoved up your ass. That means you have no rights. You don’t get a lawyer, you don’t get to make a phone call, and you are about to vanish from the face of the earth.”

  “Kiss my nut sac,” he said with a sneer. Even with the morphine it was a pretty good hard-guy act. But he was playing to a tough crowd.

  I continued to smile. Bunny, his bulk filling the entire back of the truck, squatted on his heels and chewed gum. Top sat on a metal equipment case just above the shooter’s head, and his face was one that I wouldn’t have wanted to look into if I was this deep in my own crap.

  “You’re going to be on suicide watch, so you won’t be sneaking out of this.” I kept my tone normal, my voice quiet and reasonable. Giving him information, not making threats. Letting him think he had bargaining room. “You’ll disappear into the system. You’ll get the very best medical care. You might even keep that hand. We’ll want you healthy because the stronger you are, the longer you’ll last in interrogation. Understand me, friend, you won’t hold out … you’ll just last longer. We will get every bit of information you have. No question about it.”

  He grinned at me with bloody teeth. “Take your best shot, asshole.”

  His accent was New Jersey. Local boy.

  “Print him,” I said, and Bunny produced a small electronic device.

  The shooter clutched his good hand into a fist.

  Bunny popped his gum. “I can take prints off severed fingers, too, genius.”

  Jersey Boy kept his fist clenched. He was playing this role to the end.

  “Take ’em from the other hand,” said Top, nodding to the swollen tips of fingers that stuck out of the layers of gauze around Jersey Boy’s torn and shattered forearm.

  Bunny left the fingers attached but he used the injured hand to take the prints. It got very loud in the TacV. Ghost broke into a stream of agitated barks, and I let him go for a while, then quieted him with a control word. He settled down, but he continued to stare at the shooter as if he was an unfinished lunch.

  Jersey Boy lapsed into a breathless, panting silence. Greasy sweat glistened on his face.

  Bunny checked each contact scan and then pressed the upload button that sent the high-res digital files to the satellite. MindReader would have them in ten seconds and we’d have a match in a couple of hours.

  “You got one chance to make the rest of this process a lot less painful,” I said. “Talk to me now. Freely, openly, without coercion. You help us and I promise you that we will reward that cooperation.”

  Jersey Boy shook his head. I had to give the guy points for balls—he had a real pair of clankers. No frigging brains at all, though, because I believe he actually thought he was going to tough it out.

  Top must have been reading my thoughts. “Boy’s too stupid to know when someone’s handing him a lifeline.”

  “That ain’t a lifeline, Tupac,” the shooter said. “You want to put me in jail for the rest of my life, go ahead. Put me in Gitmo if you want. Don’t matter a goddamn thing. My man Santoro will have me back on the street inside a month.”

  “You think so?”

  He raised his head and glared at me. “I know so. Do whatever you want. You dickwipes just stepped into a world of hurt bigger than anything you ever heard of. The Seven Kings are going to rip your world apart, Ledger. You and the rest of the DMS. You, that psychopath Church, that cunt O’Tree, these ass clowns here—all of you are alrea
dy dead and you just don’t know it yet.”

  Top grunted in real surprise. “Well, well,” he said, “ain’t that interesting as shit?”

  Bunny blew a big pink bubble, popped it, and continued to chew. His poker face was still in place, but from the way the muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and flexed I knew that he was probably as rattled as I was.

  The shooter had said the name Santoro. That was a nice name. A Spanish name. Very interesting.

  “The ‘Seven Kings,’ huh?” I said. “Why don’t you tell us all about them?”

  “Why don’t you suck my—”

  Without saying a word, Bunny reached out and grabbed Jersey Boy’s shattered wrist, gave it a light squeeze. It wouldn’t have dented a soda can, but the shooter screamed loud enough to hurt my ears.

  Outside I heard the sergeant supervisor yelling indignantly, demanding to be let in. DeeDee’s voice cut him off in mid-protest. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it redirected his outrage from me to her.

  When Bunny released Jersey Boy’s wrist the bandages were soaked through with blood and the man’s face was gray. Without taking my eyes off him, I said, “Top, tell the blues that we’re commandeering this prisoner on the grounds of national security. Have the rest of the team follow. Bunny, you’re driving.”

  “Where we going, Boss?” Bunny asked as he clambered past me into the driver’s seat.

  “Somewhere … quiet,” I said, and gave him directions to Tamanend Park.

  “You’re digging your own grave, Ledger,” said the shooter. “We’re going to kill everyone you ever knew or loved. Your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your dog. You just signed their death warrants.”

  I rose and leaned over the prisoner and bent my face to within an inch of his. I said nothing. No words could convey the outrage, naked fury, and bottomless contempt I felt, so instead I smiled at him. It wasn’t the Cop or the Modern Man smiling. This was the blood grin of the Warrior who crouched inside my head and knew that he was about to be let out to play.