"I do. And I've got scores to settle."
"You will not kill me then?"
"Only if you get in my way. My beef is with the 0 and the guy who was behind the wheel."
"Is that why you killed him?"
"Who?"
"The 0."
Jack felt as if he'd been punched. The Oculus… dead?
"Christ! When did that happen?"
"This afternoon—shortly after you left me—and left that bullet."
The Starfire. He'd forgotten all about it. Damn. But he'd had only one thing on his mind at the moment.
"Why would you think I did it?"
"Miller does."
Yeah. Miller. Figured.
"I was racing to Second and Fifty-eighth. Care to guess why?"
Zeklos hung his head. "I am so sorry."
"What are you guys going to do without an Oculus?"
He looked up. "Oh, but we have one. We have the daughter, Diana."
"She becomes the Oculus—just like that? What about her eyes? Hers were blue and her father's—"
"Hers are black now."
Jack tried to imagine how she'd look. The picture he conjured creeped him out.
Zeklos said, "What are you going to do?"
"About your pals?"
He nodded.
"Well, I was going to wait in that little room in the hospital until I knew whether my ladies were going to live or die. But I can't do that now, can I. Your rotten yenieeri friends have made that impossible, because they'll keep trying. Am I right?"
Zeklos looked down again. "I do not know."
"You do know. Miller won't let this go."
Zeklos didn't reply.
"Your people leave me no choice. I've got to make sure no one else tries to finish your job."
"You will kill Miller?"
"And anyone who gets between me and him."
Zeklos rose. Jack raised the pistol and backed away a step. Never let anyone get too close.
"You must not! We fight Otherness!"
"You know, at this point, I don't give a rat's ass. And what do you mean, 'we'? They demoted you to the farm team."
"It does not matter! I am still yenigeriV
With the last word he leaped. Jack had been half expecting him to do something stupid, but the little man's speed surprised him. He got under Jack's arm, grabbed his wrist, and threw his right side against him while trying to twist the Kahr free. Jack chopped at him with the edge of his left hand but Zeklos was well padded in his winter coat and kept his head down, giving Jack no angle. He'd locked Jack's pistol hand in a death grip.
"Don't be an idiot!" Jack said.
"You attack one yenieeri, you attack us all!"
"You're going to lose this one. Back off."
"No!"
Slowly, inexorably, Jack rotated Zeklos's body to the right and angled the little pistol leftward until it pressed against the little man's chest.
"I'm not looking to kill you." True. Zeklos wasn't one of the bad guys. "So don't force my hand."
With that Zeklos bent and sank his teeth into Jack's wrist.
Jack pulled the trigger. Zeklos's coat muffled the report. He sagged to his knees and toppled over onto his side. His eyes were open. Jack could see his breath puffing into the air.
Jack stood over him. "What'd you have to go and do that for?"
The puffing stopped. The little man's dark eyes remained open.
"Shit."
So goddamn unnecessary. Just like everything else that had gone down today.
He pocketed the Kahr and looked around. No one in sight. He needed a place to hide the body—didn't want the yenigeri to know just yet.
When they heard no news of a hospital shooting, and Zeklos didn't show up or report in, they'd suspect he'd lost his nerve and bailed. At least that was what Miller would think, and he'd sell it to the others. Zeklos turning up dead would put them on guard.
The park with its locked gate and pool and spiked fencing would be the perfect spot—not exactly a busy place in January—but that meant carrying the body over the FDR. Too risky. Yeah, he might make it unseen, but the odds were against it.
Then he realized he was standing just a few feet from an almost-perfect spot. He slipped his hands under Zeklos's arms and dragged him into the darkest, most sheltered corner of the alcove. He'd keep there at least until morning, maybe longer. He emptied his pockets of everything, especially anything that might identify him.
Jack noticed his crushing weariness had faded. Adrenaline, probably. Or maybe it was having a purpose again. He'd been drowning in helplessness, unable to do anything for Gia and Vicky. Now he could. Now he had to. It might be an empty exercise. Maybe the outcome would be the same whether someone pumped cyanide-tipped slugs into them or not. But he couldn't let that happen.
Jack took the walkway back to 78th Street and headed for York Avenue to catch a cab home. He had four pistols on him now. He wanted to dump two before going back to the hospital. He'd bring back a pad and pencil, sit in the family lounge as before, and start making plans.
3
Jack stood between the beds, arms stretched to either side so he could hold their hands. A one-way hold—theirs lay limp in his. He was standing there, staring at the oscillating dials on Gia's respirator, listening to its rhythmic wheeze, when Vicky's hand moved. He turned and gasped.
"Nurse!"
Her back was arching and dropping, her arms thrashing about, her legs kicking in violent spasms.
A heavyset, late-shift nurse bustled over—Jack didn't know her name and didn't give a damn at the moment—took one look and called to the desk.
"Three's seizuring! I need five of diazepam stat!"
Jack stood frozen, horrified, helpless as he watched Vicky convulse. Finally he shook off the paralysis and went to grab her arms so she wouldn't hurt herself.
The nurse put out an arm to block his way.
"Please, sir. You'll have to wait outside."
"But I can—"
"You'll only be in the way. For the sake of your child, please get out of the way and let us do our job."
For the sake of your child…
Jack couldn't argue with that. Feeling useless, he backed toward the doors, watching until they closed in front of him.
4
"What are we going to do with the bodies?" Miller said.
Cal looked up from his checklist. He needed to be sure that anything that could give a clue as to who they were and where they'd gone was removed.
They stood by the security console on the first floor. The air still reeked of blood. All around them the yeniceri combed every crack and crevice for anything that might connect them to this place.
The bodies… he'd been wrestling with what to do about them.
Portman squatted at the rear of the space, moving from corpse to corpse. He'd been assigned the distasteful task of emptying the pockets of the dead. Not of just what might be used for identification—everything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential.
"Got to leave them. I don't see that we have a choice."
Miller shook his head. "Never leave anyone behind. It's the code. You know that."
"Never leave anyone living behind."
"You interpret your way, I'll interpret mine. But either way, the 0 and those guys deserve a decent burial."
Cal felt a spike of anger. The stress of being in charge of this move, making sure every i was dotted, every t crossed, was eating him alive. But Priority number one was moving Diana—the Oculus—to safety ASAP.
"You think I don't know that? Don't you think it's tearing me up as much as anybody to have to walk out on them? But what choice do we have? We can't risk driving up the Connecticut Turnpike with seven mutilated corpses in our cars."
Miller looked down. "Still… it's not right."
Cal slammed his hand on the counter. "Then you come up with a plan! You figure out how we can get them upstate, dig seven graves in frozen ground, and still protect Dian
a. Go ahead. Tell me. I'm all ears."
Miller sighed and said nothing.
"Here's what I think we can do," Cal said. "What we have to do. They stay here, but only temporarily. We turn off the heat—and turn off the water too, in case the pipes freeze—and leave them. The cold will preserve them. Pretty much like being in a cooler at the morgue. When we get settled at the new place, some of us come back and bury them."
For centuries the MV had owned a hundred acres of wooded land upstate in the Putnam County wilderness. The final resting place of all the New York yenieeri.
"But right now, soon as we're packed up, we're out of here. I want to catch the first ferry out tomorrow morning. That means we've got to be in Hyannis before nine."
"All right, then," Miller said. "But I'm coming back—for them and for him. Some day, some way, he pays."
5
Jack sat in his car and rubbed his burning eyes. The wan dawn light drove knives into his brain. Good thing it was overcast. No telling what direct sunlight would do.
He hadn't been able to sleep since Vicky's seizure episode. It had taken a while for the nurses to calm the convulsions. But she needed so much medication to keep them under control that they had to put her on a respirator as well.
Gia and Vicky were safe until the yeniceri learned Zeklos had failed. So about an hour ago he'd roused himself and headed for Red Hook where he'd parked again along the park, facing the warehouse. His plan was to wait and watch and see who came and went. He wanted to see Miller leave. Wanted to follow him. Wanted to settle a debt.
A drive-by wouldn't do it—for a number of reasons. On the practical end, too many chances for someone to see it go down and report his license plate. On the personal end, it wouldn't satisfy Jack. He needed a face-to-face confrontation. Needed to look in Miller's eyes before he put a bullet between them.
But… something not quite right here.
He rubbed a hand over his chest. The rakosh scars felt cool, numb. None of the itching and burning sparked by proximity to the building in past trips. He'd driven by this morning and felt nothing.
He opened his shirt and checked. The three ridges of scar tissue were their usual pale white instead of the angry red of the last time he'd been here.
Was that because the Oculus was dead? But Zeklos had said they had a new Oculus in the daughter. Had they evacuated the place?
He'd have to sit and wait.
Jack hated to wait.
6
Almost eleven o'clock and Jack hadn't seen one damn person enter or leave.
Between calls to the trauma unit—no change in either of his ladies—he received an incoming call at quarter to eight: Abe. He'd seen the papers and was almost speechless with grief. Anything he could do, any way he could help, just ask. But Jack had known that. He'd said he'd get back to him.
To kill time he scanned the FM and AM bands. Heard a lot of crummy music and learned the weather forecast by heart: Big storm in the south, coming up the coast, scheduled to slam the city with a blizzard late Thursday or early Friday.
Yeah, well, so what? Couldn't come close to the winter in his heart.
During the wait he'd realized that Gia's folks out in Iowa didn't know about any of this. And Jack didn't know how to get in touch with them. He'd have to go back to her place and see if she'd written down their number somewhere. Most likely not. She talked to her mom a couple times a week, so she didn't need it on paper.
Part of him hoped he'd never find it. Calling her folks… telling them what had happened to their daughter and grandchild… and how grim the prognosis…
The prospect made him ill.
Call me a coward, he thought, but I'd rather go mano a mano with Miller than have to relay that kind of news.
And worse, his husband-and-father cover would be blown at the hospital.
He refocused on the warehouse. Still no sign of life. The yeniceri had either taken off, were entering and exiting by a different route, or knew he was out here and were waiting for him to make a move.
The second possibility seemed remote—from what he'd seen they'd focused all their security on the front door. The third seemed equally remote—unless they'd all spent the night there.
All of which left him with no recourse but to make a close reconnoiter on foot.
He grabbed Zeklos's keychain from the passenger seat. He'd found it in the dead man's pockets and had brought it along for the ride not knowing whether or not it would come in handy. If the rats had jumped ship, it would.
He removed the Glock from its SOB holster, chambered a round, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. With the grip in his hand and his finger on the trigger, he stepped out onto the sidewalk. He blinked as his eyes teared in the icy wind. Bundled into anonymity, he kept to the opposite side of the street as he walked past the three-story building. He looked for the same itching, burning sensation across his chest as before. No show.
At the end of the block he crossed the street and walked back until he came to the door. Even now, standing directly in front of it, his scars remained impassive.
This was risky—maybe stupidly so—but his gut told him the place was empty, and he'd learned to trust his gut. So he kept the Glock in his pocket aimed toward the door as he rang the bell once, twice, three times. No answer.
He pounded on the steel door. Same response.
Okay. Time for the keys. About a dozen of them on the ring. He began trying one after the other in the top lock. Number four fit and turned. Inside, an alarm bell began to clang. Only inside. Nothing outside. That meant the alarm was to warn the inhabitants, not bring help. Which meant it wouldn't be hooked up to a monitoring service. He couldn't see the MV getting involved with outside security.
After that it was quick and simple since all three were neighbors.
Now…
He stood to the side, turned the knob and pushed the door open. He peeked in. Nothing moving.
He stepped inside. As he did a quick four-wall scan he saw the smashed computers on the floor. Either someone had tossed the place or the yeniceri were burning bridges.
The space smelled strange and felt empty. And cold. The heating had failed, or maybe been turned off.
Didn't look like they were planning on coming back. He closed the door and, keeping his eyes on the ransacked room, keyed the three dead bolts shut.
No sense in letting someone surprise him from behind.
The ringing of the damn bell was getting to him. He stepped to the monitoring console to look for a button or a toggle labeled BELL OFF or KILL THE GOD-
DAMN BELL but stopped when he spotted the smears of dried blood. He spotted more on the floor near his feet.
What the hell had happened here?
Before finding out, he had to stop that bell. He found nothing that mentioned "Bell" but did find a RESET button. He jabbed it.
Silence… the blessed silence of a…
He turned and spotted the sheet-draped figures lined up against the far wall.
… tomb.
Zeklos hadn't mentioned any other deaths beside the Oculus. Looked like the yenigeri had wound up on the wrong side of a massacre.
Jack's first impulse was to check out the bodies, but he made himself search the lounge area and upper floors first. The building might feel empty, but it never hurt to be sure.
The O's office stank of dried blood. It splattered all four walls, but was especially heavy behind the desk. It pooled so thick on the desktop that it wasn't completely dry yet.
He checked the personal quarters and found two closets. One full of men's clothes—the Oculus's, no doubt. The other was mostly empty except for a couple of feminine shorts and a halter top.
The third floor sported its share of blood too, but no corpses.
He relaxed a little. He was the only living person in the building. No one around to catch him by surprise.
He hurried down to the first floor and approached the sheet-wrapped figures. He squatted and uncovered the fir
st one. Despite the blood-spattered face, Jack recognized him. Didn't know his name but had seen him around.
Where had the blood come from?
He pulled the sheet farther down and swallowed when he saw the hole in the man's chest. Yeah, he had a heart, but it had been ripped from all its vessels.
Who the hell had done that? And how?
He had a pretty good idea.
He pulled the sheet down to knee level. He'd intended to search the clothing for some hint as to where the surviving yenieeri had fled, but when he saw the out-turned pockets, he realized someone had preempted him.
He worked down the row and found each corpse in the same condition. By the time he reached the last he'd grown used to the human carnage, but the eighth was something else again: the Oculus—with an empty inch between his head and the base of his neck. He'd been savagely decapitated, not by a blade… his head had been ripped off.
Jack walked a meandering path through the carnage, stepping around the smashed computers as he looked for something, anything that might offer a hint as to where they'd gone. He picked up a battered hard drive that had been all but flattened across its middle. He didn't know much about computers, but he couldn't see this giving up anything.
But he collected all the drives he could find anyway. He'd give them to Russ Tuit and see what he could do. Russ was something of a cybergenius but Jack doubted even he could squeeze anything out of these.
He turned in a slow circle and wondered where in hell they'd gone. He combed his memory for some dropped remark that might offer a clue, but came up with nothing but Idaho, and that seemed unlikely. They'd want to keep their Oculus in the Northeast.
Their Oculus… Diana. He had an idea… the thinnest shred of a hope… but if it was to come to anything he'd have to find her.
How? A secret organization, used to clandestine operation, on the run. They wouldn't leave a trail. Maybe the FBI could track them, maybe not. Jack knew he couldn't.
What to do? Gia and Vicky would be safe until the yeniceri realized Zeklos had failed. Then they'd try again. Jack knew he might not be so lucky next time.
He saw only one option: Divert them from Gia and Vicky by giving them another target they'd want to hit even more.
Hardbingers rj-10 Page 24
