Dalton speaks into a microphone. ‘Leader One from Base: is he alive?’
‘This is Leader One — that’s a negative Base. Target is not alive.’
‘Shit!’ Dalton remembers Owain’s request to have ‘quality time’ with their former colleague. ‘And Fallon?’
The team leader swings his head so the camera shows her. Mitzi’s chair is upturned. She’s lying on her back. Her knees point at the ceiling. The operative moves close.
Dalton hears the American’s voice. ‘About freakin’ time. Help me off this damned chair. Get me a phone, or by Christ I’ll make an even bigger mess than you just did.’
161
Eleonora Fracci has Mitzi in mind as she guns up the Crossfire and burns rubber out of San Ramon. Specifically, it’s the moment they met in the squad room and Fallon showed them a framed shot of her daughters at Disney. She’d never seen anyone look at a photo as proudly as Mitzi had. More than anything, she wants to see a new frame there — one showing Mitzi and the girls with Mickey. Hell, she might even go with them and take it herself.
She drives with one hand and finger-punches the address of San Joaquin Hospital into the sat-nav stuck to her windshield. The display tells her she’s fifty miles and fifty minutes away. ‘Idiota!’ She’s confident she’ll do it in thirty. The old six-speed Chrysler has a three-litre turbocharged V6 under its brilliant red hood and its limiter has been removed.
By the time she hits the 1-680, she’s topping a hundred and fifty. San Ramon Central Park. Bishop Ranch Open Space. Athan Downs and Dublin Hills are all just a smear against the Crossfire.
Then the traffic backs up.
At the Donald D. Doyle Highway, the road becomes a parking lot. Drivers hammer horns. Local radio says there’s a pile-up on the intersection with the Arthur H. Breed, the freeway she needs to use.
Eleonora flips on her sirens and lights. Traffic is fender-to-fender. It takes ten minutes for her to get off at Dublin Boulevard and run a road parallel to the blocked freeway.
There are stacks of red tail-lights up ahead. Others seem to have had the same idea. She hits the lights and sirens again. The sat-nav says she’s coming to the end of the Boulevard and needs to re-join the freeway in less than a mile.
Eleonora picks up her radio and calls Donovan. ‘I’m stuck in traffic. It’s really bad.’
‘How bad is really bad?’
She looks again and flinches. ‘I could still be half an hour away. You best get a local cop to the hospital until I fight my way through this.’
Donovan doesn’t answer, but Eleonora’s certain she hears her boss swear, just before she slams the phone down on her.
162
Chris Wilkins is counting seconds.
His instructions from Marchetti were very clear. Take the girl to the hospital and wait there. If he didn’t get a call within half an hour, kill the kid and get Tess to do the same with the other one.
Not that he minds.
Murder had always been on the cards. He’d just never imagined doing it in a hospital in Stockton.
He pumps a hospital vending machine for coffee and checks his watch.
Two minutes.
If he doesn’t get a call in one hundred and twenty seconds he’s going to walk back into ER, find the girl and put a bullet in her head. He’s already dumped his hired sedan in case they get a trace on it and has broken into a car on the staff lot and left it ready to hotwire.
Sixty seconds.
The coffee tastes like crap. He drops it in a trashcan and heads to a washroom. He goes into a stall, takes a leak and removes his black flight jacket. It’s a reversible one. Once he turns it inside out, it’s red and looks strikingly different.
The digital watch on his wrist beeps.
Time’s up.
He checks his gun and steps out of the stall. There’s no one else in the washroom. He calls Tess. ‘It’s me.’
‘Hi.’
‘No call. Do it.’
She hesitates. ‘Okay.’
The mirror over the taps throws back the reflection of a hardened killer. One who’s wasted plenty of people. But never a kid.
He tells himself there’s a first time for everything and heads out the door.
163
Tess Wilkins looks across the shack’s open lounge to the young girl bound and hooded on the sofa.
She knows what she has to do and knows the risk of not doing it. Dead captives tell no tales. Live ones cause trouble.
She goes into the crummy bedroom and gathers what little stuff she and Chris have in there. She jams clothes into a rucksack, then walks to the bathroom.
Toothbrushes, paste, soap, hair dye, shaving gear and hairspray get swept into the bag as well.
In the kitchen, she empties the pedal bin onto the floor. There isn’t much in it, just some fast-food packages and hand wipes. Under a microscope, though, there’d be enough DNA to send both her and her beloved to the Big House. Tess spreads everything out, then goes to the five-gallon jerry can that Chris left by the door. She pops the cap, hauls it as high as she can manage and sprinkles gasoline.
Tess sloshes the fuel liberally in the kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom and then pauses as she enters the lounge area. There’s an order to things and she doesn’t want to mess up.
She puts the can down, takes the rucksack outside to the RV and throws it in the passenger side of the cab. She slips the keys into the ignition and pauses for a second to think of anything she’s missed.
There isn’t.
She plans to walk back inside, put a cushion around her gun, and then shoot the kid in the head. After that, she’ll empty the rest of the jerry, light a match and torch the place to get rid of any forensic traces. While the shack’s burning she’ll be driving. Before it’s even extinguished she’ll be at the airport. With any luck, by the time they start asking the serious questions, she’ll already be back in LA mixing a cocktail for Chris.
All she has to do now is go back inside and pull the trigger.
164
Sandra Donovan has no choice but to call Stockton’s Chief of Police. What she’d most like to do is locate whatever squad car is nearest San Joaquin Hospital and get the officers sent over there as fast as possible. But there are protocols and chains of command to respect.
The chief assures the assistant director that he fully understands the urgency of getting officers there until her agents arrive. As soon as she hangs up, he stresses the very same point to his deputy, who in turn undertakes to get on the case straight away.
The deputy calls his watch commander who then alerts his two strategic operations commanders. And so, fifteen minutes after Sandra Donovan’s call, a cruiser eventually rolls out of Police HQ in East Weber Avenue bearing senior patrolmen Darren Ratcliffe and Tony Emery.
As they hit the freeway they are less than fifteen minutes away from the hospital, more like ten if Emery puts his foot to the floor, like he usually does. Only yesterday, he got a reprimand for driving too fast and dangerous, so he’s not going to be dumb enough to make that mistake again.
165
Two of the tac team carry Mitzi out of the apartment block and into a private ambulance.
Dalton rides with her and calls for a clean-up squad to put the building back the way it was, before they sprayed it with thunderflashes and bullets.