He pulled an Ingram machine pistol, a close cousin to the Uzi only more powerful, from the back seat and fit it snugly under his overcoat. Scalia was thin to the point of being gaunt. His straight combed hair was black, as were his eyes. His body was taut and coiled, prepared at an instant’s notice to spring into violent action. He wore tight leather gloves over his hands, perfect for the unusual cold snap, but Trench knew they would have been there even on the hottest summer day.
Scalia looked over at him, turning his mouth into a twisted smile. “You don’t like this work much, do you?”
“I don’t see the point.”
“You don’t get paid to look.”
Trench hesitated. “The girl, Scalia.”
“Yes?”
“You’ll make it fast for her, of course.”
Scalia smiled one last time and climbed out of the car, moving toward the Center.
Charlie, the security guard, heard the bell ring and looked up from his magazine at the TV monitor which showed a sleek, well-dressed man at the front door. He depressed the intercom button.
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
No response. The man just stood there in the cold, hands tucked in his pockets.
“I said, what can I do for you?”
Still no response.
Damn thing must be on the fritz again, Charlie thought, and he hit the access buzzer atop his panel and waddled over to greet the visitor in the anteroom.
“Now, what can I do for you?” Charlie asked, swinging the inner door open so it was still held by the heavy chain.
He saw the black, perforated cylinder jamming toward him but was powerless to do anything but gape. It wedged through the slim opening and a burst burned into his stomach, killing him before he struck the floor.
Scalia tossed his strength behind a thrust at the chained door and sent it reeling inward. Millie the receptionist had just grabbed the phone when Scalia fired a silent volley through her head, blowing her backward.
His primary target was on the third floor. Scalia took the carpeted steps quickly, soundlessly.
Janie heard something downstairs. Immediately, she felt unsettled, but she pushed aside the knobs of fear forming in her stomach. She picked up the phone and buzzed Millie. No answer. She buzzed twice more, then decided a call to the police was in order.
“Put it down.”
The voice came from the doorway. Janie looked up to see a tall man in a dark overcoat standing before her, a small automatic rifle in his hands. A thick tubular extension projected from its barrel. A silencer, she realized. Oh God …
“What do you want?” she managed, knowing.
“Move away from the desk,” Scalia told her.
She did as she was told, clinging to whatever hope she could muster.
Scalia switched the Ingram from automatic to semi.
Janie caught the motion, watched his eyes narrow, and opened her mouth for a scream that never emerged.
The two bullets pounded her stomach. A pair of kicks to her belly, then hot raging pain spreading inside her. She felt herself crumbling but never felt the floor. The agony was everywhere, was everything.
Scalia watched her body twist and writhe, fingers clawing the floor, blood pooling underneath her. Then there was another silenced spit and her head rocked sideways, split open. Her eyes locked, dead.
“I told you to make it quick,” Trench said with restrained anger, gun still pointed at Janie’s head.
Scalia looked at the pistol smoking in Trench’s hand and raised his Ingram enough to make sure Trench saw it.
“You’re a butcher,” Trench said. “I ought to kill you now.”
Scalia raised the Ingram. “Go ahead.”
Trench flirted briefly with chancing a shot. It would take only one but there was the hair-trigger Ingram to consider. Scalia could fire the whole clip with a simple touch even a head shot wouldn’t preclude. So it was a stalemate and both of them knew it.
Trench backed away slowly, wordlessly, eyes speaking for him. He reached the stairs and started down, never shifting his gaze from Scalia, pistol tilted up. Scalia was out of sight by the second level but Trench was still leery, hoping for an attack now and disappointed when it hadn’t come by the time he’d moved outside and walked away from the Center.
Despite it all, Bane held his calm.
His response was programmed, a reflex reaction. He double-parked his car, dashing across the street with no regard for traffic. Horns honked. Brakes squealed. Tire rubber jammed against concrete, bumpers rammed each other.
He knew he was too late even before he found the door was open.
Bane saw Charlie first, a heap of bleeding flesh, head and shoulders held upright by the wall, eyes gazing down emptily at the unloaded gun he wouldn’t have had time to draw anyway.
Bane turned toward the reception area but didn’t go in. The blood-streaked walls informed him of Millie’s fate. His eyes moved to the stairs, knowing what lay up there for him. It was lunch hour. Scalia would have had the Center’s operating schedule and personnel duties down pat. Bane climbed the steps, his stomach fighting its way up his throat.
Janie’s blood had reached the doorway to her office. She lay on her side, face twisted up, eyes still open and gazing at him accusingly.
It’s your fault I’m dead….
Bane leaned over and closed her eyes, though not to hide their accusation because he knew it was justified. This was his fault, all of it. She was dead because of him, because he had involved her and left her alone unprotected.
He made an instinctive mental note of her wounds and felt tears forming in his eyes. Two shots in the stomach would account for just about all the blood, the one to the head — different caliber maybe — had been the killing shot. The first two, by themselves, would have made her linger in agony indefinitely, her death inevitable but slow in coming. What kind of bastard would—
Bane cut off his thoughts because he already knew: Scalia.
He wanted to take Janie’s head in his lap and cradle it but held back. He hated himself for not loving her fully or enough, an empty, bitter feeling spreading in the pit of his stomach. But it was rage that swelled with it more than grief, a rage he recognized from the murder of his father over twenty years before. Again the thirst for vengeance rose in him. People would pay now as they had paid then. He would make them pay.
For now, though, it was time to follow procedure. He was alone, yet he wasn’t alone. He had the whole United States government on his side against the forces of one corporation. The problem all along had been how to convince them COBRA was up to no good. Now that problem was taken care of, three murders at the Center forming the proof he needed.
Bane retraced his steps, heading out of the building now, Browning drawn and ready in case Scalia had left someone in the vicinity. A phone was his first need, a clean line in a booth or box. He moved back outside and down the Center’s steps, his eyes scanning about him. He held the Browning at hip level, just under the flap of his sports jacket to keep it from view; an old, established trick.
He found a pay phone close enough to a building to make him feel safe from that side. It was the box variety instead of a booth which was good because Bane planned on avoiding cramped, difficultly maneuvered spaces at all costs now.
The dime rang through and he pressed out a number locked in his mind from the past.
“Central dispatch,” a voice droned.
“Bane. Disposals.”
“Hold please.”
Then another voice came on. “Disposals.”
“This is Bane. The—”