“Before the day is out,” Villaverde told Schibl, “there’s a good chance we’re going to need you to ask your men to take that shot. But right now, I think we do need to balance the need for action with the benefits of restraint.” He turned to the hostage negotiator. “Hand me the comms link, will you? Let’s try calling him again.”
Edwards dialed the number then held out the handset to Villaverde, who gestured toward me.
“You want to take this?”
I nodded and took the handset. After about twelve rings, someone picked up. Edwards’s face lit up with anticipation, and the comms operator nodded to signal that the call was being recorded.
“Ricky,” I spoke into the silence, “my name’s Reilly. I’m with the FBI.”
“Are you one of them, too?”
It was Torres. He sounded agitated, desperate, and absolutely terrified.
“One of who, Ricky?”
“Those things.”
“What things? I’m with the FBI, Ricky. Is everyone okay in there?”
“Just keep those things away from me, man. I saw them outside the entrance. I won’t let them take me, whatever they do, you hear me? Any of them come near me, I’ll blow their fucking heads off.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was obviously having a bad trip, and was far more scared than someone who still had the chance to give themselves up before the shooting started. It was pretty obvious which tack I needed to try.
“Listen to me, Ricky. Whatever it is you’re scared of, we can protect you. We wanted to protect Wook, but they got to him before we did. We know who you and the rest of the Eagles were working for. Guru told us. We just need you to help us find them. Then we can lock them up and keep you safe.”
“Guru?” he blurted. “Guru’s gone, man. How’d you talk to him? You’re lying. You’re one of them, aren’t you? You want me to come out so you can sink your claws into me. Well fuck you, man. Fuck you all to hell.” Then he hung up.
“The guy’s totally lost it,” Schibl said.
I had to agree. Which didn’t bode well for Torres. Not with a SWAT sergeant who was itching to fast-track him to join up with the rest of his biker buddies.
I, on the other hand, wanted him alive and talking. But I didn’t think I was going to get that chance.
At the westernmost edge of the parking lot, under cover of a line of trees, Navarro and his two surviving pistolerossat in the air-conditioned cool of their Toyota Land Cruiser. They had doubled back after releasing Torres into the wild and taken up their surveillance point just as he had disappeared through the mall’s main entrance.
Navarro had a pair of binoculars trained on the area of the parking lot that had been overrun by the police, and a slight grin tugged at his cheek as he tried to imagine what kind of hell Torres was probably going through. The drug, a gray powder that he’d rubbed into Torres’s open wound, was a particularly insidious one. He’d been taught it in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, by a shaman with a fully tattooed body who was referred to as the Black Vulture. Navarro had used it on several captives over the years, and it had never disappointed him. It would scour its victims’ unconsciousness, dredge up their deepest fears and paranoias, and bring them bursting to life in heightened, surreal ways, turning the most mundane settings into the stuff of Wes Craven movies. Left unchecked, it had the uncanny ability to send one’s soul spiraling into self-destruction in the most unexpected ways, something that never failed to entertain Navarro, although this was one implosion he knew he wouldn’t be able to enjoy in person.
He watched Reilly and Villaverde dash out of their car and into the melee, and the sight caused him further disappointment. He’d been expecting them to arrive separately. This was a twist he’d thought possible, but he’d been hoping things would work out differently.
Still, he knew that they had a good opportunity to put the rest of his plan into action. It was obvious from the spectacle that was now unfolding at the other end of the parking lot that the first half of his plan had gone exactly as he had imagined it would. That was another thing the blind Peruvian’s drug had taught him. What was real in the imagination—whether under the effect of drugs or not—was just as real as what you held in your hand or put in your mouth. Maybe more so. He had imagined himself as the sole dispenser of a drug that no one would be able to turn down. And soon—after years of waiting—it would be true. The thought didn’t excite him unduly, as he’d known that this moment would come, sooner or later. He had imagined it, and soon it would be happening, for real. Indeed, who could say that the imagining was not as real as the events that it brought about?
He inclined his head toward the gunman in the back, who was watching live coverage of the siege on a 3G-enabled tablet.
He nodded to the man.
The pistolero nodded back, set the tablet down, and climbed out of the car.
53
Torres waited nervously as the pharmacist hunted through the meds behind the counter. He’d already given Torres a couple of codeine-laced painkillers, but they only seemed to have made things worse, and he was now hunting for some antibiotics.
Torres raked his eyes back and forth across the store. He knew the place was far too big for him to control for any length of time. He just had to hope that the rest of his unit would come and rescue him before the creatures tore him to pieces. He felt lost and confused, unsure about whether the insurgents were being controlled by the monsters, or if they were simply one and the same. His head felt like it was going to burst open, and his skin was so itchy he wanted to slice it off. The pain in his stomach had eased off a bit, but his shoulder was now hurting so bad it felt like he’d only just been shot.
The pharmacist returned from behind the counter carrying a square cardboard box, from which he removed a strip of pills. He pressed out two into his palm and offered them to him.
“This is the strongest penicillin we have. Take them. It’s still the best thing for infections.”
Torres reached out to take them, but as his fingers were about to touch the pills, he saw that they weren’t pills at all, just two shiny beetle-like insects with serrated legs ending in vicious-looking hooks and long antennae that waved back and forth trying to feel their way toward him.
The pharmacist stared at him. “They’ll help. Trust me.”
Torres blinked, but the beetles were still there, squirming around in the palm of the pharmacist’s hand.
He swatted the man’s hand away viciously and reared away from him.
“You’re trying to get those inside me?” he screamed. “So they can eat me up from the inside? What did you give me before?” He swung his gun into the pharmacist’s face. “Is that why my shoulder hurts so bad? Have I got them inside me already?”
The pharmacist raised his hands to calm him, and Torres saw the yellow eyes, the twisted and sharp horns, the long fangs, and the shimmering skin that he knew was the way that all of them really looked. The beast was coming right at him—
And he pulled the trigger and just watched as the monster’s head exploded, spraying blood across the pharmacy counter.
A ripple of panic spread across the lot, and the pistolero didn’t know what had caused it. The news crews had sprung to action, talking animatedly on live feeds, while cops and agents were moving to and fro with a sense of renewed urgency.
He guessed that something must have happened inside the mall. This was good and bad. Good, because it provided him with a measure of diversion, distracting everyone around and making his task potentially easier. Bad, because it could mean that the situation his boss had engineered was coming to a head, which could lead to his window of opportunity closing sooner than expected.
It wasn’t a problem. He didn’t need that much time.
He picked up his step marginally, making sure he didn’t attract attention, and kept moving through the tangle of parked cars.
Twenty seconds later, he was by the SUV he’d seen the agents arrive in.
Screams erupted from the other side of the store, the noise cutting deep into his head as he staggered backward, waving the guns wildly from side to side.
“Stop! Stay back! Keep away from me!”
His throat was parched and burning now. He still hadn’t had a drink. He’d meant to have one when he first entered the store, but he’d forgotten. He couldn’t seem to keep a thought in his head.
“Someone bring me some water. Please.”
No one moved. Why wouldn’t they listen to him? He wasn’t being unreasonable. He just wanted some help. Wanted the searing pain in his shoulder to stop. Wanted his head to stop throbbing. Wanted his mouth to stop feeling like it was slowly filling with sand. Wanted to stop sweating like he was in Nasiriyah. He couldn’t work out why no one would help him and was suddenly overcome with violent rage.
“Bring me some water. Now!” He waved the guns around to reinforce his point.
After a few seconds, an older man approached him. He must have been at least sixty. He was holding a bottle of water.
“You a soldier, son?”
The man sounded friendly. Like he wanted to help.
“I was,” Torres replied, shivering now. “Not now. Not anymore.”
The man took a few steps toward him, holding out the bottle as a peace offering.
“My brother was in the army,” he told Torres. “Got himself killed in Kuwait in ninety-one.” He held the water just a few inches from Torres’s hand. “Here. Drink this. You look like you need it. Just don’t hurt anyone else, son.”
Torres stared blankly at the bottle. After a long moment, he took it. He unscrewed the lid and raised the bottle to his lips, but as he was about to drink, he noticed a weird black shape inside the bottle near the bottom. He held the bottle up to the light and saw a snarl of black snakes writhing around in the water. They were grotesque, with bulbous eyes too big for their bodies and sharp spines along their backs. One of them thrashed against the side of the bottle and hissed at him.
They were trying to poison him. They’d do anything to get the creatures inside his body so they could rip him up from the inside.
He hurled the water across the room and pointed both guns at the old man, who nonetheless took a step toward him.
“Give me the guns, son,” the man said, calmly. “You need to give me the guns so you can get the help you need.”
He knew the man was lying, trying to trick him. He was going to take his guns, then drag him to some dark basement where they’d cut him up and feed on him. Is that what they did? He couldn’t make sense of it anymore. It was all jumbled up in his head. Was he back in the army, or was he dreaming? Monsters weren’t real. He knew that. But there was one standing right in front of him. And no way was he imagining this. It just was there, yellow eyes and fangs staring back at him, drool oozing over its bottom lip, talons outstretched.
He realized he had to get out before they ate him alive. There were too many creatures for him to defeat alone and he was locked in here with them. He had to leave. To run the gauntlet and escape. Shut in with the creatures, it was only a matter of time before they devoured him. Outside, at least he had a chance. And maybe they wouldn’t want to lose any more of their number. He’d soon find out.
He backed away from the treacherous monster and made for a small group of the creatures that were still pretending to be human. He grabbed a young woman around the neck and dragged her over toward the main entrance, pulling the keys from his pocket. He unlocked the doors and maneuvered the woman so she was in front of him, then opened one of the doors a few inches and peered out into the plaza.
“I’m coming out,” he shouted. “Let me go and I won’t kill this one.”
The mall was empty other than for two of the creatures waiting for him about sixty yards down the main plaza.
Torres took a step forward, but then he felt his hostage’s weight shift, as though it were trying to stop him from going any farther. He turned toward the creature. Giant razor-edged bones were breaking through the skin of its neck. Elongated talons were sprouting from the ends of its arms. Feathers were covering its body. Its face was melting as a serrated beak burst through the flesh. He let go of the disgusting creature, raised his gun and fired. Or he thought he did. He’d definitely meant to pull the trigger, but somehow he hadn’t managed to. Maybe it was something to do with the darkness flooding his head.
He felt his legs buckle underneath him.
The floor felt like quicksand under his boots, and as he fell, he wondered whether now, finally, he would be allowed to sleep.
I held my breath as I watched Torres go down on the feed from the lead marksman’s helmet-mounted video camera. The bullet hit him square in the side of the head, just in front of his right ear. The woman he’d been using as cover only seconds before was hysterical, but alive.
Which was the prime objective.
I had no idea why Torres let go of her, but in doing so he had given the sniper a clear shot. A shot he’d had to take, since it was clear that Torres was about to kill his hostage.
I was fully aware of the probability that the siege would end with Torres dead. But knowing it didn’t make things any better. Navarro had yet again caused a bloodbath, and our only lead to him was dead.
I wondered why Navarro had opted to send an armed ex-Marine on a bad trip into a crowded mall. But then going from everything I’d learned over the past few days, it was clear that Navarro enjoyed the chaos and death that he caused. And that this almost certainly wasn’t going to be the last of it.
54
Tess hadn’t slept well. She was all wired and angry, with a horde of powerful emotions warring inside her. It didn’t help that she also felt like a caged animal, straining against the confines of the safe house, unable to go out for a jog or a therapeutic cup of coffee.
She’d already called her mom and spoken to Hazel and to Kim, too, putting a gloss on what was really going on before asking them to keep an eye out while trying not to alarm them too much. She failed, of course, and she knew it. It wasn’t the first time she’d got herself into a sticky situation, even though this one wasn’t through any fault of her own. Still, she was glad the call was behind her. It needed to be done.
Jules was with Alex in the living room, keeping him busy. She’d hit gold by signing him up to Club Penguin on her laptop. Given his giggles and squeals, he was having a blast. Tess had left them alone after breakfast, feeling a need to some time on her own, and was out in the back garden of the house, sitting on the grass with her back against the trunk of a lone sycamore tree, deep in thought.
She was still reeling from what Reilly had told her the night before. At first, she’d been horrified by it, no matter what spin she put on it. Then she’d spent a lot of the night trying to put herself in his place, reliving it from his point of view, wondering what it was like and what she would have done in his place. And what she’d realized was that she couldn’t know. She knew it was easy to come to a rash judgment, as a passive outsider. It was very different from being there, on the ground, in the thick of it, with bullets flying and men intent on killing you swarming around you and the pressure of having to make a split-second decision weighing up your own moral instincts against a threat to the greater good. It wasn’t about excusing what he’d done. It was about trying to understand it, knowing that in his line of work, in the kinds of situations he willingly put himself into in the line of duty, impossible choices sometimes had to be made.
She was also locked on one other thought. She knew that, sooner or later, McKinnon would have been killed by Navarro. She knew this was a self-serving rationalization, but she still found some solace in it. Then she reminded herself of something else that had given her a small uplift. After they’d talked late into the night, she’d asked Reilly if there was anything else he hadn’t told her. I
f there would be any more bombshells to rock their world. He’d assured her there weren’t, and she believed him.
Her thoughts migrated to the reason all this was going on, and to Alex. She found herself wondering about the drawing, about what his teacher had told her, about what he’d said about the plant. She went back inside, picked up her iPad, grabbed the firewalled cell phone Jules had given her to replace her iPhone along with the piece of paper on which she’d scribbled the number Reilly had given her, and went back outside.
She called the number in Berkeley.
The phone went to voicemail, its standard message informing Tess that she’d reached the office of Dean Stephenson, that neither he nor his assistant, Marya, were available, and to leave a message.
She waited for the requisite beep, then introduced herself and said, “I’m calling for Professor Stephenson. It’s about Alex Martinez. It’s . . . I really need to talk to you. Alex’s mother has . . .” She hesitated, unsure about how much to say on a cold message. “She passed away, and I was hoping to talk to you to find out what we can do to help Alex through this difficult time.” She ended the message by asking him to call back, leaving her phone number, and thanking him.
The call made her uncomfortable, but she wasn’t sure why. She focused instead on moving on with the other question that was on her mind: what Alex had told his teacher, and her, about the plant he’d drawn.
She brought up Safari and Googled “Brooks,” the name Alex had mentioned, along with “plant” and “heart.” She got more than thirteen million hits, and after trawling through the first couple of hundred of them without coming across anything that struck her as relevant, she decided she needed to narrow her search and try again.
She tried it again, spelling the name with an “e” this time—Brookes.
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