Alpha

Chapter Twenty-two

Chain and Angel moved the bodies before Bell brought the group back to the command post, but coming up the steps and into the room, the group sees that the signs of the killings remain. A battery of surveillance monitors are dark, glass cracked and the screens a smoke-coal shade, the victims of a flashbang that detonated too close to the equipment, perhaps. Still-wet blood staining the carpet, and a handful of spent brass. He can read the room, and he can tell; Chain and Angel never gave the Tangos a chance.

There are five with him, plus Amy.

Amy, who hates him more than she ever has before, because he’s following orders.

Bell had found the keys on the second man, the one he’d shot, pulled himself painfully to the cage where his wife and these strangers waited, looking at him anxiously from behind the bars. His throat ached, the sensation of the man’s thumbs still upon it, a dull throbbing that was too slowly beginning to recede behind his eyes. One forearm soaked with blood and the submachine gun in his hand, more blood flowing from his lacerated palm, and he didn’t blame any of them for the looks they gave. Amy at the front, taking him in, and from her reaction, he knew he was a sight.

“Listen,” he said, fitting the key, voice so hoarse he almost couldn’t hear it himself. Coughed, repeating, “Listen, there are more of them, more of them coming. You will follow me, you will stay right on me.”

He pauses for a breath that hurts to take, that feels like wet concrete in his upper chest. The door unlocked, still closed, and he meets each set of eyes in turn, they have to understand him. An early-thirties couple, husband and wife from their rings and the way they keep their children close, more children, three of them, one only a toddler in arms, a boy, and two girls, neither far into their teens.

“Stay on me, close to me, no talking until we’re in the tunnels. Nod if you understand.”

They did, they understood, and Bell pulled the door open, Amy pausing to make certain everyone else was out first. He recovered his pistol, stripped the radios and the other submachine gun from the bodies, led the way as fast as he was willing to back to the ramp, down into the Gordo Tunnel, out of the heat. Checking over his shoulder, and they were all with him, Amy taking the rear. He brought them north, skipped the turn onto Flashman, then up to the Nova Tunnel, heading west, until he found the service entrance to the Speakeasy. Through the unlocked door and into the empty bar, and he ushered everyone inside, closed it.

“Wait here. Quiet.”

“Who the hell are you?” This from the husband, a short Latino man who reminds Bell fleetingly of Bonebreaker in posture and manner.

“He’s my husband,” Amy said flatly. In crisis, it seems, their divorce is forgotten.

“What’s your name?” Bell asked him.

“Michael.”

“Michael, I am the man getting you and your family out of here,” Bell said. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

He took the short flight of stairs up to the door, threw the silly little spy-hatch slat, looked out, saw nothing and no one. Awakened the earbud and called for Chain or Angel, and it was Angel who came back immediately.

“We have the command post,” she said. “Whatever you did, they never saw us coming.”

“Do you have the cameras?” Bell asked. “Have you located the other groups?”

“We’ve located another thirteen. There may be more, we don’t have all the monitors. Some were damaged in the take.”

“The group of deaf kids this morning, my daughter’s group. Do you see them?”

She paused. “Negative.”

“I’m en route, have six with me. Find those kids, Angel. I need you to find those kids. Out.”

So there are nine of them in the command post now. Angel wrestling with the coms scrambler that was hooked into the park’s network, and Chain trying to master the Spartan. Bell hands over the weapons and the radios, then puts Michael and his family in the conference room. He gives them bottled water and tells them that they need to sit tight here, they’ll evacuate them as soon as they can.

“We’re safe here?”

“This is the safest place in the park,” Bell says. “You’ve got two shooters in the command post and more on the way and no one and nothing is going to happen to you or your family.”

Michael nods, takes hold of his wife’s hand. She smiles at Bell, a wan, weak smile, but it’s there nonetheless, and Bell leaves the room knowing they believe him.

Amy follows.

“They’re at the haunted house,” Amy tells him. “Hendar’s Lair, that’s where they took us. That’s where Athena is.”

Bell yanks the first-aid kit from the wall, heading for the bathroom. “I have orders to wait.”

“It’s your fucking daughter!”

She follows him inside, glares at him in the mirror as Bell opens the kit on the counter, starts the faucet. He’s got bruises rising already on his face, below his left eye, and whatever happened to the small of his back is stinging, the wound still seeping. He unbuttons his shirt, splashes water on his hands and face.

“They have our daughter.”

This, Amy says much more softly, almost inaudible over the water. Bell is ripping open the packaging for a two-by-two-inch square of gauze, stops, feels every ache all together, feels tired.

“I know.”

“You have to get her. You have to get her and the others, Jad. The whole class is there, all of them. This is what you do. Isn’t it?”

“There are fourteen other hostages in the park and there may be a bomb. Jorge and Freddie are on the way, Amy. Soon as they’re here, we’ll move, I swear to God. I swear to God we will get Athena back.”

“They shot Marty.” Amy turns, hands resting on the counter, leans forward. She closes her eyes. “They murdered him right in front of us, right in front of the kids. They murdered their teacher right in front of them.”

Bell is bandaging his lacerated palm, flexes his hand experimentally. The cut is not so deep that it reaches tendon, and he is, at least, grateful for that. He begins wrapping his hand in cling gauze.

“What do they want? Who are they?”

“I don’t know,” Bell tells her. “Help me with this.” He indicates the scissors in the kit with his head.

She straightens, sighs, cuts the cling from its roll, splits the end at the center, tearing down to create two lengths. She wraps them around his hand in opposite directions, ties them together, snug. Bell wiggles his fingers, checks his circulation, but of course it’s fine.

“Still pretty good at that,” he tells her.

“Turn around.”

Bell turns, facing the mirror, watches as Amy lifts his shirt free, makes a face at what she sees. “Looks like you got clawed.”

“The jaguar.”

“New scar.”

“How deep?”

“Lean forward.”

Bell complies, and Amy runs more water, washes her hands, then digs into the kit. Begins opening new squares of gauze, then takes the bottle of Betadine, squirting it over the wound. Bell feels cool liquid spilling over his skin, down the back of his pants. Then her hands, cleaning the injury with the gauze, tossing it away to cover it with fresh strips.

“Tape.”

Bell takes the spool of cloth tape from the kit, hands it back. Watches his ex-wife’s reflection as she tends the wound, the tip of her tongue extended just past her lips in concentration, brushing hair from her cheek with the back of one hand. She uses her teeth to tear strips from the roll. He wishes he still didn’t find her beautiful.

She finishes and Bell rights himself, feels the tape pulling as he straightens. Tucks his shirt back in, turning to face her. Her expression is the same as he remembers, countless training wounds and little injuries tended, the same look when she discovered a new wound, the dark eyes and somber, gentle sorrow.

Amy leans forward, puts her lips to his, soft and dry, the kiss almost apologetic at first. Then harder, and Bell kisses her back, wraps an arm around her waist, pulls her close, and her palms are against his chest; the kiss breaks, and she buries her face against his shoulder. Like that, he holds her, feels her regaining her strength, feels her body tensing.

Then she is pulling away, shoving free, one open palm beating against his breast, then the other, before she lets her hands fall, unable to look at him. Grimacing in frustration, in pain, in fury. Bell understands. Anger at him, at herself, at the world.

“I asked you…” She shakes her head, swallows, refusing to give up tears. “I asked you, on the phone, if this was what you were afraid of. Did you know, Jad? Did you know this would happen?”

He wants to be angry that she would even ask, almost tries to find it within him to be angry. But he’s too tired, and he hurts too much, inside and out, and the kiss, brief as it was, is an ashen memory. That she would think that of him, that he would do this to them, that she could believe him so callous and cold. He understands that there is nothing left between them, the emotional truth of intellectual knowledge six months old finally striking home. She does not love him anymore, because she does not know him.

She does not know him, and she thinks him a monster.

He says nothing. He can’t answer. But the silence damns him.

“You bastard,” Amy says. “If anything happens to her, Jad Bell, if anything happens to our daughter…”

She can’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. She turns away, shoves the door open, leaves him alone in the bathroom, with his injuries and his guilt.