Alpha

Chapter Twenty-seven

Eighteen minutes left, and Bell tells Amy, “I need you to stay here, stay with Michael and his family. Don’t let them leave, nobody leaves until someone comes for you.”

Amy says, “Freddie is right, Jad.”

It knocks Bell out of his stride for a moment. “You’re going to give me operational advice, Amy? Really?”

She simply stares up at him, what she thinks and what she feels all too apparent to Jad Bell. Then she turns away, down the hall, back to the conference room. She doesn’t look back and she doesn’t wish him luck, and that’s no different from any other time he’s gone on mission. Personal and professional kept separate, a distracted soldier is a dead soldier, keep your head in the game, all the cliches and watchwords run through his head.

He moves back through the command post, where everyone is gearing up. Ideal deployment would be a squad of four targeting each hostage group, primary shooters with secondary to sweep and clear. That is impossible here and now, and Bell’s original intention was to pair Bone and Board, Chain and Angel, and take the group holding Athena by himself. The admonition echoes, makes him doubt, and that is enough, because if there is doubt, there is no doubt.

Much as he wishes it could be so, he cannot ride to his daughter’s rescue alone. In point of fact, he shouldn’t ride to his daughter’s rescue at all.

“Freddie, Isaiah, you two take Group Three,” he says. “Nuri and I will take Group One, Jorge takes Group Two.”

Freddie Cooper, Cardboard, looks Bell in the eye and nods once. “Right call, Jad.”

“We’ll bring her home,” Chain says.

Nuri says nothing, any objection she has to being paired with Bell not one she wishes to share with the room. Instead, she finishes checking the MP5K that Bell brought back with him from Wild World along with his wounds, then throws a glance to the surveillance bank, to the increasing number of charcoal-blank screens. She checks the Spartan again.

“Anything?”

“Dick-all,” she says, and Bonebreaker laughs.

Bell finishes his check, surveys the team, reads their commitment. Even Nuri has brought her game face, and Bell once again wonders what she’s capable of. The CIA lies, it’s their job, and they’re good at it. She killed an armed man who had taken her by surprise in his office with her bare hands, he reminds himself. She can put the bullets where they belong.

“Time to go to work,” Bell says.

Without the need to avoid surveillance there’s no reason to use the tunnels. The confusion of WilsonVille: at this time, on a normal day, going underground would be the only way to cross the park quickly, efficiently. Today, with the landscape barren and hostile, Bell and Nuri cover the distance from the Sheriff’s Office to the border between Wild Horse Valley and Pirate Bay in just over four minutes. With crowds, it would have taken four times as long, easily.

Bonebreaker runs along with them, keeping pace. The two target locations are relatively close together, and even though Jorge has studied the map, Bell wants to guide him to target as best he can. At the bridge west of Nova’s Tower, Bell puts up his fist, and they all slow to a stop.

“That way,” Bell tells Bonebreaker, pointing south, past the Race for Justice. “There’s a bridge, crosses from Terra Space north into the valley.”

Bonebreaker nods. “And if I get lost, there are signs.”

“Don’t get lost. Call it in when you’re good to go.”

“Roger that.”

Bonebreaker takes off, weapon in hand, and Bell begins moving again, feeling the weight of his own pistol in his grip. Bone and Board brought a resupply, and with knowledge of the map, with determined points of entry, this is a by-the-numbers operation. They do what they do, and it should come off without a hitch.

That nagging doubt again, and Bell knows it isn’t going to be that easy.

“You did the right thing,” Nuri says.

They’re skirting the Old WilsonVille Railroad, where the original steam engine that used to run on the track circumscribing the park was decommissioned. Now it’s an attraction of a different sort-a restaurant, a shop, and a play area. Heading north, toward Fort Royal, and Bell can feel the humidity in the air, rising from the man-made Pirate Bay.

“The right thing is doing this, now,” Bell says. “There isn’t anything else.”

Bell pulls into cover behind the ticket booth at Royal Hunt. They’re in the shade from Mount Royal, the sun now having descended far enough to be blocked by the imitation Everest. Nuri stacks close to him, almost touching, and he feels her turning, covering their back.

“It was a hard call, that’s all I’m saying,” she says softly. “I can’t imagine having to make that choice.”

“What choice?”

“Between your job and the people you love.”

Bell looks at her, suspicious, unsure if he’s being mocked and truly not in the mood for it. Instead, he finds that she’s watching him, her expression somber. There’s sympathy, and something else, and for the first time in almost two months of knowing this woman, Bell can see something aside from the professional demeanor, the park mask.

“My whole life has been that choice,” he says.

He leans back against the kiosk, peers out, checking his lines, seeing nothing. Ahead of them, to the north, is Fort Royal, built to resemble a seventeenth-century Caribbean fortress on one side and an early pioneer trading post on the other. This side, facing south and the Wild Horse Valley, is the more rustic. He starts to turn to Nuri once more, to give her the run, direct her where she should go, when he sees movement. One hand goes to her, pulls her back with him, presses her into cover at his side.

The service door on the southeast side of the fort swings open. As Bell watches from cover, two figures emerge, immediately followed by two more. Then three, and another two, and by his count that’s everyone who was in Fort Royal, now all outside. They move in a cluster, staying close, and almost as one begin walking, heading in their direction.

Bell doesn’t move.

Nuri slips his arm, looks past, says what Bell is thinking.

“Shit,” she murmurs.

“Move,” he answers, and they retreat from the kiosk, back toward the wall bordering the Royal Hunt. She goes over it first, Bell after, dropping into the fake foliage, landing between an animatronic gorilla and its mate. Each listening, and each hearing nothing. Nuri begins picking her way carefully through the overgrowth, following the wall, stops after a dozen yards or so, dropping to one knee. Bell leans over her, can see the walkway through a gap in the wall.

Bell brings his left hand to his ear, is about to activate the earbud, but Chain beats him to the punch.

“We have a problem,” Chain says. “They’re mobile, and they’re concealed. Repeat, we cannot identify the Tangos.”

“Same,” Bell murmurs.

“Same,” Bonebreaker says.

“Hold.”

The group is beginning to pass them now. Walking close together, almost touching one another, and all of them, every single one of them, is in some costume or another. They’re not perfect fits: a Gordo whose cuffs drag on the ground, a S.E.E.K.E.R. Robot with one hand out on the back of a fully armored Valiant Flashman. A Pooch; a Rascal with his tail wrapped around his middle like a belt; a Clip Flashman in full encounter suit, including visored helmet; two dressed as Betsy, one in the soccer player costume and the other in traditional cutoffs and a plaid shirt; and finally a Lola, the oversized toucan, wings dragging alongside.

With only a couple of exceptions, Bell can’t see their hands. Sleeves hang empty at the sides of costumes, sway disturbingly with each step. No way to tell who’s armed, who is pointing a weapon, and who has their hands perhaps bound inside the confines of their outfits.

No easy way to tell the good guys from the bad, despite what each costume may say.

The procession passes them by, and not one head turns, not one costume looks their way.

The dead Tango’s radio on Bell’s hip crackles to life.

“Mr. Bell.” It’s the same soft-spoken man, the same voice. “Let’s talk about how this is going to work.”