The wailing spiralled up through the old familiar stages.
Horror.
Denial.
Rejection.
Pleading.
Shock.
Then the abject surrender.
All in less than two minutes.
There was no way of knowing if the screamer was Luperico. A quick recon of the former police station confirmed the position of two guards outside: only half dressed in uniform, sipping some sort of drink - probably coffee - under the portico. She thought she could even smell the brew.
Hard to get good coffee these days … She made a note to snag a bag of beans if the opportunity availed itself. Black tea with milk and sugar at four in the afternoon with a fistful of cucumber sandwiches just didn’t cut it. She was sure the guys on her extraction chopper wouldn’t object to a little extra cargo.
So, two men outside, at least four inside. Possibly six. Plus the three prisoners that intel said were inside, only one of whom was of interest to her.
All of Caitlin’s training, all of her experience, everything told her to wait this out, to lay up until nightfall, then strike under the cover of darkness. But she had reason to ignore the training and experience. Somewhere down there was Ramon Luperico, the man who had released Baumer from imprisonment in Guadeloupe. A prisoner now himself, it was a righteous certainty he could tell her how al Banna had effected that release from his custody, possibly even how he then came to control the pirate gangs and jihadist militia that had infested Manhattan back in April ‘07.
She did not fool herself that Luperico would know how or why Baumer had chosen to reach out and lay his malign touch on her family, but that hardly mattered. She was here because Echelon had tasked her with securing whatever information she could extract from the target. The coincidence of her personal and professional interests created an impetus towards immediate action.
The South American Federation was little better than a mafia state, but it was the only reliable authority south of the Panama Canal Zone. It would no sooner collaborate with Seattle than its self-proclaimed President for Life, Roberto Morales, would present himself in The Hague to answer the many charges of crimes against humanity that now stood against his name. In the anarchic, violent world that arose in the wake of the Disappearance, such diplomatic impasses proved less frustrating than they had once been. The states that survived tended to be those that acted to secure their interests directly, expediently and swiftly. It was a perfectly complete return to Hobbes’s state of nature, and Caitlin Monroe, a survivor and a killer, was an instrument of that universe.
She crouched down, motionless and unseen in her hiding spot on the small rise overlooking the crossroads, and resolved to give herself one hour to gather as much intelligence about the situation on the ground here as she could. And then she would act.
2
NORTH KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
‘Drinking coffee? Perhaps the least of your sins, woman! But Elohim punishes all, and you have given him -‘
Whatever the man had intended to say was choked off as Miguel Pieraro’s fingers closed around his throat. With one thrust of an arm, the former vaquero threw Maive Aronson’s tormentor from the stoop. A thin, wiry man, with the severe intensity of a fanatic sustained almost entirely by his beliefs, the Mormon witness flew backward on a slight angle - luckily for him. His bony ass landed on the soft turf bordering the hard concrete path that wound from East 23rd Street up to the front door of Maive’s small home.
‘Oomph!’
The impact punched all the air out of him and rolled him onto the grass in a tangle of muddied elbows and knees. Miguel moved quickly to drive a boot into his guts, intending to kick him a considerable distance back towards the pavement from where he had come to torment the poor widow.
‘Miguel, no,’ she said in a sharp voice. ‘You’ll hurt him.’
‘Yes, I shall,’ he replied. But Maive had him by the arm, digging her fingernails into his bicep, pulling him back towards her.
She seemed unsure of what to do with the cup of coffee she’d been drinking when the witness knocked on the front door. Miguel hoped she might throw it over him now, scalding the crazy bastard, but that was not her way. Once the Mexican had made it clear that he was not about to launch himself at this fool, Maive carefully balanced the cup on the wooden rail running around the small, decorative porch. She left Miguel on the top step, clenching and unclenching his fists, as she hurried down to help the man to his feet and out of the gate.
The Mormon doorknocker shrugged her off, cursing her sinfulness, her muddy lawn, her coffee and her offer of help. He scowled briefly at Pieraro and looked as though he might like to curse him too, but the prospect of more rough handling saw him scurrying down the path and out onto the street.
A light rain was starting to fall, beading icily on Miguel’s face. The cowboy watched him make his way towards North Kansas City High School, just a block down the road. Once the man had disappeared around the corner, he relaxed a little, although the high school did remind him of another difficult matter, prompting his temper to flare again.
Sofia.
It took him another deep breath of cold morning air to douse the fire in his breast.
Maive stood with her back to Miguel, watching the Mormon go. Her shoulders began to hitch and he could hear her fighting for breath as the tears came. He wanted to place a hand on her shoulder, merely so that she might feel the reassurance of human contact. But it would not be right. Not with both of them still mourning. Instead he clasped his hands together and stood on the ridiculously small front porch waiting for her to regain her composure. He felt hemmed in here, and awkward, as though he might knock something over at any moment. The lack of space was made worse by a wheelchair ramp that Maive obviously did not need. It had probably been fitted for the benefit of the previous occupants. There was barely room for the two of them to stand in the drizzle and wind. He could see fog condensing on the window behind the screen door, a sign of the warmth awaiting them inside.
The day had dawned bitterly cold, although ‘dawn’ was a poor way to describe the wet, freezing, almost funereal grey shroud that seemed to blanket Kansas City in the morning at this time of year. Dawn here did not feel like the start of something new and vital; more like a case of the night having simply exhausted its darkness and passed.
Miguel was dressed for the damp chill that pressed against him like a blade. He’d arrived not long before the Mormon caller. It was almost as if the man had been waiting, watching. He was most unlike the Saints he and Sofia had travelled with through Texas. Altogether more … what was the word? Biblical - that wasn’t right, and yet it seemed right.
With his sunken, staring eyes and haggard demeanour, the man looked like some sort of disturbed prophet from the Old Testament. He had been hounding Maive Aronson for the better part of a week now, wearing her down. Miguel was furious when he’d found out just yesterday, and had reacted with intemperate rage at the first opportunity. That is, a minute earlier, when he’d first laid eyes and hands on the parasito.
There were more of these Mormons in town every week, as they made their way to Kansas City to reclaim lost land and property. Maive told him the community in KC had been second only to Salt Lake City for her people. That was a pity, he thought, very quietly. Not all of her fellow worshippers that he’d encountered of late seemed to have the same, good common sense of Cooper and Maive Aronson, William D’Age, Ben Randall and the others. So many were like the fool he had just ejected from her stoop. Touched by fervent madness.