“DeeDee,” he croaked.
She made a soft, hurt sound.
“Talk to me, soldier,” he said as he tried to shift his weight off her. She was a strong woman, but his 175 pounds were smashed down on top of her 130, and at an angle that was doing neither of them any good.
“Can’t … breathe … ,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
Top reached up to grab the steering wheel and pulled his weight away from her. He heard her gasp in a lungful of air.
“Better,” she said, but her voice was weak.
“I’m going to climb out. Got to see what’s what. I’ll be back for you.”
“I … I’m good,” she said without conviction.
Top reached up with his other hand, taking the knobbed wheel in both fists, then set his teeth and pulled. It was like doing a chin-up through a junk-cluttered manhole, and the strain on his muscles was incredible. Particularly on his left side, which had only recently healed from injuries from a mission down in the Bahamas back in August. As he pulled himself up he could feel the burn along the newly healed ribs and barely knit muscle in his shoulder. Top set his teeth against the pain and hauled.
“Top!”
He looked up as a big shadow moved above him, blocking out the sky. Bunny’s face was streaked with dust and lines of blood, but his eyes were clear. He reached a hand down and knotted his fist in the front of Top’s combat vest, then with a grunt like an angry bear reared back and hauled Top out of the Humvee as easily as Top might pull out a child. The huge muscles in the big young man’s arms swelled like ripe melons as Bunny … pulled. Top caught the edge of the frame and hoisted himself onto the side of the vehicle.
“You may be ugly, Farmboy, but right now I could kiss you.”
“Buy me dinner and a movie first, old man.” He wiped sweat from his eyes. Top’s trembling fingers fumbled for his sidearm, but Bunny said, “We’re not under fire, Top. No hostiles. No nothing.”
“Got to get DeeDee out.”
Bunny bowed down and thrust his head and shoulders into the Humvee. “Hey … DeeDee … how we doing down there?”
“Just fine. I’m down here doing my fucking nails.”
Bunny snorted and took the hands that she reached up to him and pulled her out. She and Top hopped down onto the ground, dazed and unsteady.
“Report,” gasped Top.
Bunny crouched atop the Humvee. “We’re not under fire. This isn’t an active attack. Khalid’s winded. I landed on top of him. Smith’s good.” His blue eyes were hard as diamonds. “Top, Ricky and Snake were inside when it blew.”
Top closed his eyes.
Ricky Gomez had been with Echo for three months, the longest active service besides Bunny. He’d proven himself in half a dozen tough assignments. But … Snake. God. This was only Snake’s third day on the job. His first field op.
He was only inside because he lost a coin toss.
“Is Smith on-point?”
“Yeah,” said Bunny. “His weapon was damaged in the blast, but I gave him mine and he’s watching our asses. Sat phone’s toast, but we have team radio. Smith’s on channel two.”
Top spit blood out of his mouth and tapped his commlink to the channel. “Rock to Chatterbox, come in.”
“Go for Chatterbox,” said Smith quietly. The link was bad, full of static.
“What’ve you got?”
“Zero movement, zero hostiles.”
“ETA on fire and rescue.”
There was a pause. “From where?”
“From the main damn building,” Top snapped, but then he caught Bunny’s eye. The big man shook his head, then nodded past the end of the overturned Humvee. Top staggered away from the vehicle and looked past it. The Locust hangar had been at the edge of the complex, the outermost of eleven buildings. Most of the buildings were empty as the base dwindled toward complete decommission, but there was a security shack, crews quarters, and the aeronautics lab. Four active buildings and seventy staff.
Or … there should have been.
Now all there was, as far as the eye could see, was burning rubble and towers of smoke that rose to the sky like the pillars of hell.
Area 51 had been wiped off the face of the earth.
Part Two
Driving Force
How can any act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?
—AUBERON HERBERT
Chapter Twenty
Barrier Headquarters
Agincourt Road, London
December 18, 8:41 A.M. GMT
Mr. Church’s phone rang. He looked at the screen display and saw that it was his aide. Sergeant Dietrich knew that he was in a meeting with Barrier and the Home Secretary and would never interrupt unless it was an emergency.
Church excused himself and stepped into the hall as he thumbed on the phone.
“Boss,” Dietrich said in a fierce whisper, “Lucky Team and Echo Team have been hit.” He quickly told Church about Area 51.
“God Almighty,” whispered Church. “Is there anything to indicate that this is a Seven Kings event?”
“Not so far, but we don’t have investigators on the scene yet. I called the Casino. They’re pretty rattled, but they’ve scrambled some choppers.”
“Notify all stations to go to Level One Crisis Alert.”
“You want me to come get you?”
“Yes, but then we have to pick up Captain Ledger. The situation in Scotland looks like it’s going south on us.”
“Christ. What the hell’s happening, Boss? Three Level Ones in twenty-four hours?”
“The Seven Kings are making their move.”
“But what move?”
Church didn’t answer. Instead he gave Dietrich a string of orders and then hung up.
Church stood in the empty hallway for two minutes as he worked it out in his head. Then he made several calls. The first was to the President of the United States. The second was to Aunt Sallie at the Hangar to apprise her of the situation.
Then he dialed the number for Hugo Vox.
“Deacon?” said Vox. “You get a break on the London thing?”
“We have a new situation, Hugo,” Church said, and quickly outlined the problem.
“Ah … Christ! Is this more of the Seven Kings bullshit?”
“Too soon to tell, but it seems likely.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Has your think tank come up with anything?”
“Nothing useful, but they’re hard at it. Bug’s been feeding us intel, but no one’s come up with a good reason why that hospital should have been targeted.”
“I was hoping for more by now, Hugo.”
“I can go beat them with chains, Deke … but it won’t make them think any faster. We need more data. Can I tell them about Area 51?”
“Yes, but if you do then the team has to be sequestered for the duration of the crisis. That could be hours, days, or weeks.”
“They’re not going to like that.”
“Imagine how much I care.”
Vox snorted. “Okay. Anything else?”
“Yes,” Church said. “Is Circe still at T-Town?”
“No, the good Dr. O’Tree is in London. I’ve had her working on security for that silly boat ride thing for the last couple of months. Goddamn waste of resources.”
“You disapprove of the Sea of Hope?”
“Of its intent? No, of course not, but they’ve asked for so damn much security that every agency is coming up short and my own crew is spread pretty thin. Bad damn timing for all this other shit to hit the fan.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
“And with the Hospital attack, the Brits are not only not thinking of canceling it; they’ve asked for more security. Shit, Deke, the Chinese army couldn’t penetrate that thing. And it’s only rock and roll.”
“It’s an opportunist’s dream hit. It’s the Prince of England and a lot of other celebri
ties.”
“It’s celebrities’ kids. Inbred offspring of the rich and famous. The Paris Hilton crowd. Fucking bunch of privileged silver-spoon—”
“Really, Hugo? We have time for this?”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. It’s a sore spot with me. There’s just too much going on in the real world for me to want expend any consideration for stunt events.”
“Message noted. Now, back to matters at hand. Where’s Circe?”
Chapter Twenty-one
Whitechapel, London
December 18, 9:54 A.M. GMT
“Captain Ledger!”
I turned to see Detective Sergeant Rebekkah Owlstone hurrying along the bystreet toward me. Owlstone was the coordinator for the team to which I’d been assigned. We were doing background checks on the Hospital staff and I was coming out of a house where the family of a dead nurse was lost in the horror of shared grief. The day was bitterly cold, with a raw wind that smelled of salt water and ash. Owlstone waved me toward the lee side of a parked delivery van. It was about a degree warmer out of the wind.
“What is it?” I asked.
Owlstone, a petite and pretty brunette from Hampshire, pitched her voice in a confidential tone: “We have a situation, sir. A pair of our lads—Constables Lamba and Pettit—have been interviewing the families of the janitorial staff, and they found something very curious taped to one of the apartment doors. Lamba took a photo of it with his phone and e-mailed it to me.”
She produced her BlackBerry and pressed a button to bring up a picture of a standard apartment door: beige wood with metal numbers. A crooked sign read: HAPPY CHRISTMAS. Garland and lights framed the door. Owlstone pressed the “plus” button to enlarge the image to show a white index card taped just under a length of bright green plastic garland. A finger, presumably the constable’s, held the garland back so that the note could be read.
In shaky block letters it read:
They are with Jesus. May God forgive all sinners.
“Christ! Have they entered the scene?”
“No,” she said. “They notified me straightaway. I called it in and they told me to fetch you. Everyone else senior is too far away.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
We climbed into her car, with Owlstone crammed next to me and both of us crowded by my hulk of a dog, and drove the three blocks to the apartment building. A constable was outside erecting sawhorse crime scene barriers. The apartment was on the top floor. Most of the doors in the hallway were decorated for Christmas, and more than half of them were ajar, with concerned and curious neighbors looking out at all the policemen in the hall.
A constable, with PETTIT on his name badge, stepped forward to intercept us.
“No one’s touched the door, Detective Sergeant,” he reported. “But the card fell down and there was something behind it that you need to see.”
“What is it?” asked Owlstone, but I looked past the officer and I could feel the Warrior inside my head tense for fight or flight.
Someone had used red and black felt-tip pens to leave a message on the apartment door. A message, or a signature, no larger than a silver dollar. A number 7 overlaid atop the word “KINGS” and encompassed by a bloodred circle.
Son of a bitch.
“Captain,” gasped Owlstone, “is that—?”
“Yes, it damn well is. Evacuate the building. Now!”
Owlstone hadn’t been told to take orders from me, but she didn’t argue. She spun and began shouting orders to the other bobbies.
I dug out my phone and called Church.
He said, “Seal the building. I’ll tell the authorities here and advise that they certify this as a D-notice situation. We don’t want that logo in the press; otherwise gangbangers will tag it on every wall in the country. And I’m sure Barrier will roll a team out to you.”
“I don’t want to wait that long.”
“Then do what you have to do. I’ll clear it so you’re in charge of the crime scene until Barrier takes over.”
Owlstone closed on me and lowered her voice to an urgent whisper: “What the hell’s happening, Captain?”
“Call me Joe, and I think we just caught the first break in the London Hospital case. Barrier is on its way, but I’m in charge until then. Orders to that effect are being cut right now. Call in if you’re uncertain; otherwise let’s get to work. You okay with that?”
There was a flicker on her face that suggested she wasn’t completely okay with it, but she nodded. A lesser person might have tried to fight that, because this was likely to be a career-making moment. Owlstone was too much of a good cop to play politics, and that elevated her several notches in my book.
“Floor’s clear!” called Pettit from the other end of the hall.
I took a digital camera from my pocket and snapped off twenty frames, catching the symbol, the door, and the surrounding hallway. Then I bent and made a close no-touch examination of the door. I had Ghost sniff it, too, but he didn’t give me the signal for a bomb. He did, however, give a quick double bark that he was trained to use when he was searching for missing bodies. Search and recovery dogs are trained to sniff out cadaverine, a foul-smelling molecule produced by protein hydrolysis during putrefaction of animal tissue. In other words, eau de rot.
Something in there was dead.
Chapter Twenty-two
Whitechapel, London
December 18, 10:28 A.M. GMT
“What’s he found?” Owlstone asked, backing away. “Is it a bomb?”
“No,” I said. “He’s also trained to find bodies.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Time’s not our friend, Detective Sergeant. We need to kick the door.”
She nodded, but she looked scared.
“Backup,” I suggested quietly, and she took a steadying breath and waved for Pettit and Lamba to join us.
“Okay, lads,” she said. “Captain Ledger will kick the door; we’ll cover and then clear the apartment in a two-by-two pattern.”
They nodded and drew their guns. I drew back and kicked. The door flew open and I went in and left while Owlstone covered my right. We moved fast, yelling for anyone who was there to lay down their weapons. But no one was there, and we all knew that going in.
“Clear!” yelled Pettit from the kitchen.
“Clear!” yelled Owlstone from what looked like a teenager’s bedroom.
“In here! In here!” yelled Lamba from the doorway of the master bedroom. “Two down. Civilians! Two down. Get a medical team.”
Owlstone made the call, but it was well past the point where medics could do anything. The woman and teenage girl on the king-sized bed were far beyond the need for first aid. Or any aid. Ghost sniffed the air near the bed and gave a brief whine.
Pettit checked the adjoining bathroom. “Gun in here! Plenty of blood, no bodies.”
“Step out, Ed,” ordered Owlstone.
Ghost suddenly whuffed softly and sat down by the hamper, looking from it to me and back again. I froze.
“What’s he found?” snapped Owlstone.
“He’s cross-trained as a bomb sniffer,” I said, and the constables all took reflexive backward steps. “Don’t worry; I don’t think that’s what he’s found.”
I was right. All we found in the hamper—after a very careful search—was dirty clothes. There was one set of coveralls with the name Plympton embroidered on the breast that Ghost sniffed, again giving us the single whuf.
“These must be Plympton’s,” I said, “and there must be nitrates on them. He probably had these when handling the explosives at the hospital.”
Owlstone and her men looked greatly relieved. Me, too. I fished a red rubber ball out of my pocket and tossed it in the air so Ghost could leap up and catch it. He returned it to me for another toss and tried for a third, but two catches was the reward for finding something and he knew it. His tail thumped happily on the floor, though, and that image was grotesquely at odds with what lay on the bed four feet from where the she
pherd sat.
The bodies lay straight and proper. Fully dressed, the woman in a neat red skirt, white blouse, and a vest with snowmen embroidered on it. She had a Christmas wreath pin on her left breast. Her hair was as neat as possible, given the conditions. Beside her was a teenage girl who looked like she would have been beautiful, had time and the cruelest of Fates given her a chance. Her eyes were closed, long lashes brushing perfectly smooth cheeks. She wore the skirt and blazer from an expensive girls’ school, but she had earrings in the shapes of Christmas bulbs.
Both of them had been shot in the head. Blood trails led from the bed to the bathroom, and when I gingerly stepped past Lamba I could see that the ugly work had been done in there. The handgun, an old Webley top-break revolver, sat on the closed toilet lid. The gun was broken open, the bullets removed. The three spent shells stood in a precise line with the three unfired rounds. Bloody fingerprints smeared the casings and the toilet. The precision with which the rounds had been arranged was at odds with the smears of blood. Just as the neat and tidy positioning of the bodies belied the condition of the victims.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Lamba. “What is this? Some kind of ritual?”
“Looks like a professional hit,” said Pettit. “The sense of order is—”
“No,” I cut in. “No … this is pain. I think the husband did this, and I think he made them as pretty as he could so that they wouldn’t suffer any further indignities.”
Pettit cocked an eye at me. “Are you a forensic specialist?”
“No,” I said, but I didn’t care to explain my thought patterns to him. I knew I was right. “There will be another note.”
Owlstone said, “Okay, lads, you two take charge of the hall. No one comes in.” The constables nodded, clearly happy to leave the apartment. I wanted to go with them.
Once they were gone, Owlstone called in to headquarters. She listened for almost a minute. “Yes, sir,” she said crisply, and disconnected. Then she threw a calculating look my way. “Well, Captain, I just spoke to the Chief Superintendent, who said that we are to break investigative protocol and that I was to assist you in an examination of the crime scene.”
The King of Plagues Page 14
