“Does he speak?” Patrick said.
“Not more than a few syllables—one of them being ‘Kek.’ But he understands speech and he signs.”
Kek released Patrick’s hand and turned to the two men on the floor. Ponytail groaned and stirred. Kek bent, grabbed the man’s hair, and slammed his head against the floor.
“Easy, Kek,” Romy said. “We don’t want to scramble his brains.”
“Whatdo we want to do?” Patrick said.
Romy said, “Zero,” to her PCA, then smiled. “That’s what I’m about to find out.”
4
Every muscle in Luca’s body wound tight as he let himself into the foyer of Romy Cadman’s apartment building. Something had gone wrong. He didn’t know what, couldn’t imagine what, but Palmer and Jackson weren’t answering his calls.
They’d been flown in from the Idaho facility especially for this op—both of them experienced men who’d return there immediately after they completed their work. The chance of Cadman or Sullivan ever seeing either of them again was nil. They’d called in when they’d set themselves up in the apartment; they’d responded when the surveillance team in the car outside let them know that both the woman and Sullivan were on their way up.
But that had been over an hour ago. No one had heard from them since. No one had entered or left the building since Cadman and Sullivan’s arrival.
He couldn’t help remembering the first time he’d run an op against these two: a humiliating failure and two of his men dead.
Not again, he thought, almost a prayer. Please, not again.
But the previous op had been a complicated outdoor job, with innumerable variables; this one was in a small apartment, a limited, controlled field of operation that Palmer and Jackson had secured beforehand. What was wrong? An hour was more than enough for a pair of armed pros to deal with two unarmed civilians, juice them up with Totuus, and record the answers to a few questions. Like, who do you take instructions from, where do you get your money, and so on.
Luca had wanted to be there, and would have been if termination had been in the plan; but since Cadman and Sullivan were going to be released, he couldn’t risk showing his face.
He hurried up the stairs. Key in hand, he pressed his ear against the door to 3A and knocked. No sound from within, not a whisper, not a rustle. He knocked again, same result.
Steeling himself for what might lie within—visions of Ricker’s and Green’s smashed skulls from the last time flashed through his brain—Luca unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Empty silence. Quick dodges in and out of the rooms, another circuit to check out the closets, and then back to the center of the front room, to wander in a slow, baffled circle. Where the hell was everybody? Could he be in the wrong apartment?
And then he spotted white fragments and powder on the carpet in the corner. He stepped closer and recognized it as plaster. A quick look up and he found a deep pock in the wall. Bullet hole. Fresh one. Looked for more but came up empty.
He felt his pulse kick up. Someone had got off a shot, but only one. That confirmed that he was in the right place. But where did everybody go? He stepped to the window and looked down at the small rear courtyard. No way out here—the fire escape was in front. They had to be hiding in another apartment—the only possible answer. He’d keep the building under surveillance. Sooner or later they had to show themselves.
But what if they weren’t here? What if they’d got away clean?
He pulled out his PCA and called down to the surveillance car across the street. “Anybody leave since I’ve been inside?”
“Negative.” Snyder’s voice. He and Lowery were on watch. “Saw a grayish van pull out of an alley half a block down right after you went in, but that’s about it.”
A van. Could that be…?
“Did you get the plate number?”
“Yep. You want a read back?”
Luca closed his eyes. Thank God for Snyder. At least someone was on the ball. “No. But don’t lose it. It might be important.”
And then again, it might not mean a goddamn thing.
Luca Portero dried his sweaty palms on his coat sleeves. Two more men gone, and he knew no more now about who was behind Cadman and Sullivan than he did before.
How the hell was he going to tell Lister?
5
“You know,” Patrick told Zero after they’d pulled into the West Side garage and the door had closed behind their van, “I could get used to this. And that worries me.”
The cascade of emotions from the threats and the violence had faded now, leaving him oddly exhilarated. But it had been harrowing.
When Romy had called Zero they’d learned that he had an escape route all worked out. Following his instructions, they’d taken the stairs to the roof—Romy in the lead, Patrick bringing up the rear, Kek in the middle carrying their two attackers, one over each shoulder. Romy’s was the second of four joined buildings. They’d walked across two neighboring roofs to a ledge where a fire escape led down to an alley. After a short but nerve-wracking wait, Zero’s battered Econoline pulled up and they’d all climbed aboard.
Patrick had handled the driving on the way back, with Zero in the passenger seat, and Romy in the middle. That was when his mood had begun to change. They’d done it! They’d faced murderous opposition and—with no little help from Kek—overcome it. They were wheeling away with no one in pursuit, no one even aware that they’d turned the tables.
As soon as they’d reached Manhattan they found a deserted spot under the FDR Drive where they leaned Duke’s corpse against a steel support. Throughout the night anyone who saw him would think he was passed out drunk; in the morning light they’d think differently. Patrick then piloted the van across town with Duke’s unconscious partner.
Masked as usual, Zero stepped out of the passenger door and regarded Patrick through his dark glasses. “Yes. It’s the high of victory. Not a good thing to get too used to. You can’t expect to win all the time.”
“I know.” Patrick opened his door and hopped out. “But after all the bad news, after being pushed around and running into wall after wall, this feels very, very good. It’ll feel even better if it turns out that one of these two poisoned my clients.
“And maybe,” Romy said, taking the hand he offered to help her out of the van, “he’s one of the SLA creeps who butchered the globulin farm sims as well.”
“Wouldn’t that be sweet.”
Zero leaned back inside and spoke toward the darkened rear section. “Kek. Tape the man into the chair by the wall.”
They’d brought everything along—the tape, the inoculator kit, the silenced pistols. Neither man had carried any identification.
Poetic justice, Patrick thought as he watched Kek get to work. Bound with his own tape, injected with his own truth drug.
He looked around, noticing how his senses felt heightened. Despite the low light in the garage, he seemed to see everything with day-bright clarity. The tang of gasoline and the heavier odor of DW-40 were sharp in the air; the ticking of the van’s cooling engine was like a ball-peen hammer rapping an anvil.
Zero was away from the van now, moving to the darker shadows of a corner. Why wouldn’t he let anyone see his face? What was he afraid of?
Patrick followed him, but not too closely. “What is he and where did you find him?” he said, pointing to Kek.
“In Idaho. Last year.”
“Idaho?” Romy said. “You never told me that. I thought you’d found him around SimGen.”
Zero shrugged. “Sorry. It never came up. And it didn’t seem to matter until you saw that Idaho license plate on the SimGen campus.”
“I wondered why you were so psyched about that.”
“How do you just happen to ‘find’ something like him in Idaho?” Patrick asked.
“Don’t you remember hearing reports of people claiming they’d spotted Bigfoot in Idaho last winter?”
“Vaguely. I try not to devote too many memory cells to that sort of thing.”