‘That’s what I was thinking. Richard?’
‘Yes?’
‘You ever play murder in the dark when you were a kid?’
‘Sometimes with my cousins. They always won.’
Great, Lock thought.
‘OK, in a moment I need you to move. Make some noise doing it. And stay low.’
‘I can’t.’
‘How come?’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Would it help if I told you I am too?’
‘Not really.’
The chatter of light-arms fire struck up outside. Then the boom of what Lock guessed was a thunder flash going off. Or some spare C4. Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t the sound of the President putting pen to paper on any guarantees.
Richard’s voice: ‘Lock?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m ready now.’
‘OK, in your own time.’
Richard’s chair skittered across the floor. The beam snapped from Lock’s face and to his right. Where Khalid should have found Richard, there was only glass.
Lock made his move, launching himself across the room on the line Khalid had established a moment ago with the Mini-Mag. It was as existential a moment as stepping off a cliff.
Lock caught the butt of the M-16 with his stomach, but his momentum carried him forward, tipping Khalid from his chair. A starburst of light broke in front of him as he caught the butt again, this time on the face. He tried not to fall back, to stay as close as he could. He drew back his right hand and short-punched Khalid, glancing off a jut of bone and finding what he guessed from the sudden wheezing was windpipe. Then he did it again, and again, until the wheezing gave way entirely.
He rolled off Khalid’s limp body, and grabbed the Maglite. He used it to locate the M-16, which had spun away a short distance. He kept the light moving, finding Ty gun-facing him and Richard huddled into a ball in the corner of the room.
Richard peered out from between his fingers as the wave of a blast rolled through the room from outside. Mareta? Lock doubted it. You didn’t walk out of all the situations she had just to go meekly to God when there was a chance of escape.
Lock crossed the room and helped Richard to his feet. He clapped him on the back. ‘You did good. Now, let’s get out of here.’
‘Wait.’ Richard crossed to where Lock was. ‘Give me that,’ he said, taking the flashlight. He shone it on Khalid, who was laid out on the floor. ‘Is he dead?’
‘I very much hope so,’ said Lock. ‘Now, let’s move.’
Eighty-two
Too soon. The words had clambered into his mind and refused to vacate. It wasn’t that he’d die alone. Or in agony. No, the worst thing about how this had turned out, the ultimate ignominy, was that he’d die a footnote.
Then, with a loud thump that shook the walls either side of him, he was given a sign that maybe all was not lost. The light went out. A puff of dust caught at the back of his throat, and he coughed. More powder sucked into his nostrils.
He lowered himself down on to the floor and crawled to where he thought the door might be as another explosion shook the concrete floor. His hand slid out from under him and he fell, face first.
He took a moment to right himself, then started to edge along again, using his fingertips to navigate. Cold metal. The door.
He felt his way to its edge. It was at an angle. He could get his hand round the side of it. More than his hand. His arm. Both arms.
He squeezed his way through and into the corridor. The dust had begun to settle back to ground level. The door at the far end was open, light seeping in.
Tentatively, he got to his feet. The door next to his cell had been damaged too, wrenched away from its frame. He pushed at it, and it fell in. He almost fell in after it.
He could make out a man lying on the bed. Stafford Van Straten stepped through and stared down at his father. Two deep cuts bisected the old man’s face in a bloody cross.
‘Stafford?’
His father reached out a hand, but Stafford chose not to see it.
‘The vaccine. You have to find the vaccine,’ he whispered.
‘And then what?’
Nicholas tried to raise his head, but the effort was too much. ‘If you don’t, you’ll die.’
‘Die in prison, don’t you mean?’
He watched as his father tried to wipe away the blood seeping down into his right eye. ‘Then get out of here.’
‘Like a coward?’ Stafford spat. ‘Prove once and for all what a screw-up I am?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’ll never understand, will you? This isn’t about money. It was never about money.’ Stafford fell to his knees so that he was at eye level with his father. Outside, he could hear small-arms fire still echoing round the compound. ‘This is about history, and our family’s place in it. My place in it.’
Eighty-three
Caffrey had just dug a plastic fork into his Holy Mol
burrito when he saw the woman struggling towards him, a crutch under one arm, a cooler in her other hand. ‘Shit.’
He stepped from his cruiser, drew his weapon, an old-school stainless-steel Smith and Wesson 64 revolver, and levelled it at the centre of her chest. ‘Stop right there.’
She kept coming.
He’d heard something at one of the briefings about a woman. He knew she was foreign. Someone had said something about her not speaking English. Or was it that she could speak it? Damn. He should have been paying more attention, instead of texting one of his patrol guys to swing by Burritoville.
‘Lady, stop right there.’
He looked around for back-up but everyone seemed to be pouring, like flies to shit, through the gates towards the buildings.
Still she kept coming. Utterly calm. No sign on her face that she even saw his gun.
A woman. Fresh off the boat. Who maybe didn’t understand what he was saying.
Then she stopped. Maybe ten feet from him. Maybe less. Never breaking eye contact. Never looking at his gun. Tuning it out.
‘OK, that’s good. Now, stay there and don’t move.’
But move she did, placing the cooler on the ground. One hand reaching across her chest.
‘I said, don’t move.’
She was wearing a padded man’s ski jacket, or at least that was what it looked like to Caffrey. Her hand wrenched at the zipper.
He’d have to wait to see a weapon. Couldn’t shoot someone for unzipping their jacket.
‘OK, that’s far enough.’
She kept going, yanking the zipper free at the bottom.
‘Lady, I don’t have time for games.’
‘Neither do we.’ A man stepped from the shadows. White. A young guy. Covered in a thin layer of grey dust that made him look like one of those human statue guys who hung out in Midtown making money from tourists. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Show him.’
Slowly, deliberately, the woman pulled the jacket to one side, and the hand holding Caffrey’s gun stopped working. The Smith and Wesson tumbled to the ground.
Twenty-four years of jumpers, jackers, slashers, stoners, rapists, recidivists, baby killers and crackheads. Twenty-four years of witnessing what was very often the lowest point in someone’s life. Over and over again. A never-ending loop of human failing, which occasionally seeped into evil. Caffrey was sure he had seen, smelled, tasted, heard, touched and, yeah, even sensed it all. But this, this went way further.
She held the jacket open with a stage magician’s flourish and Caffrey stood there, half expecting her to take a bow. But all that happened was that the guy who was standing behind her ran forward to retrieve Caffrey’s service revolver.
Still transfixed, Caffrey didn’t try to stop him.