Alpha

Chapter Twenty-eight

Gabriel was so worried about Dana recognizing him in the Pooch outfit that he almost missed the obvious.

The pretty, strawberry-blond deaf girl, in the shorts and the Hollyoakes T-shirt. From inside the headpiece, looking past the black grille that serves to hide his eyes inside Pooch’s nose, Gabriel stared and wondered where he’d seen her before.

Then they were all getting into the costumes, and Dana was interpreting, moving along the line of kids, and she got to that girl and handed her the mask. The girl signed something, and that was what did it, maybe, the intuitive leap.

An overtime authorization on Jonathan Bell’s desk for Dana Kincaid.

A photograph, framed, on the corner of the desk.

Jonathan Bell, his wife, his daughter.

Strawberry blondes, both.

Jesus Christ, Gabriel thought. Oh Jesus Christ, it’s his daughter.

He thought, then, that he had damn well better be sure nothing happened to her.

Then a part of him he didn’t like, a very old part of him, that once lived in Odessa, wondered how he might use this knowledge to his best advantage.

From the top of Gordo’s Flying Ball, Gabriel Fuller has a pretty good view. It’s not the highest point in the park by far, but below, he can see Vladimir as Kurkur and the others, Sonny and the other one and Dana in the Betsy costume, all of them in a group, waiting at the edge of Yesteryear Ballpark. He can see the approach, the wide walkway from Town Square heading this direction.

He can see them, and he can see the two men who have now stopped just between the Wilson Restaurant and the Sweets Emporium at the northwest corner of Wilson Town. Inside the giant baseball, Gabriel can see them, but they can’t see him.

He keys the radio in his hand. “First thing you’re going to do is tell your men to lay down their weapons and fall back.”

“Why am I going to do that?”

“Because I’m looking at them right now, Mr. Bell, and they’re looking at a bunch of people in costumes. Unless they are very clever and very quick, they don’t know which of them are hostages and which of them aren’t. I’m sure you’ve figured this out already. Tell them to fall back.”

There’s a pause, dead air on the radio. Gabriel adjusts his position, staying low in the ball. The ride is a simple one: guests climb a set of stairs, or, if they’re handicapped, take a gantry-style elevator up to the giant hollow baseball where he’s now crouched. They buckle up, hold their breath, and the whole thing drops in a free fall, only to bounce up and down, swaying back and forth. This, Gabriel understands, is supposed to be fun.

The two men set their weapons on the ground, two M4s and their pistols, then raise their hands and begin to back away.

“Done.”

“Thank you. Call them back. Call all your people back, wherever they are, tell them they need to form on you.”

“Form on me.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You’re military.”

“What I am doesn’t matter, Mr. Bell. What I can do, what I want you to do, that’s what matters. You see where we’re going with this? Do I need to spell it out?”

“Why don’t you do that? I’d hate for there to be a misunderstanding.”

Gabriel can’t keep himself from laughing, but there’s no mirth in it. “God, no, we wouldn’t fucking want that, would we? Not at this point, no, we wouldn’t want that.”

“I’m listening. Talk.”

Gabriel shifts. The Pooch costume is hot as ever, bulky in the confined space of the giant baseball. With the headpiece and gloves off, there’s some relief, but not much. Not nearly enough.

“You can’t tell us apart, you understand that, Mr. Bell? Everyone is in a mask, everyone is in a costume. Some of the men are dressed as women, some of the women as men, you understand me? Even the deaf kids, it’s mix and match. You don’t want to take a shot you can’t take back, that’s what I’m saying. Someone starts shooting, hostages are going to end up dead. That’s not a threat, now, that’s just a fact.”

“I understand,” says Bell.

“You ever gone on the Terra Space ride, Mr. Bell?”

“Haven’t had the opportunity.”

“No, I imagine you’ve been busy. Once you have your people with you, you’re going to head to the Terra Space ride. You’ll take it up to the Lunar Platform, and you’ll wait there. Once you’re up top, we’ll line up at the bottom. I’ll start sending people up, two at a time. You won’t know who’s a hostage and who isn’t until we’re done, understand? You won’t know if I’m sending my people up along with our prisoners or not. And if you move, if any of you comes off that platform before we’re finished, you know what I’ll have to do.”

“Yeah,” Bell says, and Gabriel swears the man actually sounds bored, if not annoyed. “I get it.”

“One more thing, Mr. Bell. I see that your men here, they had long guns with them. I see any of you with a long gun, I don’t care who’s on the platform and who isn’t, I’m going to start shooting. You have fifteen minutes to be there, or I start killing my hostages.”

“Did you kill Vesques?” Bell asks.

The question takes Gabriel by surprise, so much that he loses his next words.

“You did, didn’t you? Had to be you.”

“We’re not talking about me, this is not a confession. You want to listen to me. Get your people up on the Lunar Platform. You have fourteen minutes.”

“No,” Bell says.

“You don’t want to fuck around.”

“You’ve got to give me something here. A good faith gesture, something.”

“I’m going to give you the bomb.”

“Not enough. I let all of you walk, that’s me having a very bad day, here. You’re asking me to fail. You’ve got to give me something.”

“What I have is your daughter,” Gabriel says. “And that’s what I’ll give you if you do what I say.”

He shuts off his radio before he can hear the response, stuffs it back inside the front of his Pooch costume, hooking it onto his belt. Carefully, he climbs out the open door at the side of the giant baseball, makes his way down the steps, feeling naked and exposed, his eyes on Dana in the Betsy costume the whole time. Her back is to the attraction, to him, and he wills her not to turn, not to see him. He’s almost at the bottom when the giant head begins to swivel, and there is a horrible moment when Gabriel thinks it’s all lost, it’s all for nothing.

Then her head tilts, dips, and even in the costume, Gabriel can see her fatigue and her fear, and that is almost worse.

Almost.

He drops off the stairs, recovers his headpiece and the gloves. Vladimir as Kurkur looks his way, and Gabriel gives him a nod. Vladimir, and Sonny in a Gordo costume and Oscar in an original Clip Flashman outfit, nudge the rest of the group forward, and together, they begin making their way toward Wilson Town.

Gabriel pulls his headpiece back on, tucks the gloves into his costume, falls into line at the back. He’s behind Bell’s daughter, dressed up as Agent Rose. She’s walking beside the Dread Flashman with the bandanna over his face. Gabriel can feel his submachine gun pressed against his side, where it’s hanging from its strap over his shoulder, feel it digging into his hip, trapped by Pooch’s ample padding. Dread Flashman is walking a little slowly, and Jonathan Bell’s deaf daughter now puts a hand out to help him, and Gabriel opens his mouth to tell her not to do that, to keep her hands hidden, but stops himself. She’s deaf, she wouldn’t hear him anyway.

But Dana can. Dana could.

He moves up between them, forcing them apart. His ungloved left hand settles on Bell’s daughter, her shoulder, and she looks at him from behind her own mask and beneath her fedora. He can see her eyes, and the hatred in them, and he doesn’t care. Uses his other hand to push Dread Flashman along, forcing both kids to keep pace.

If everything works right, if everything works the way he has envisioned it, then Bell and his people will be forty feet off the ground and almost three hundred feet from where Gabriel and the others will line up. Three hundred feet and no long guns, anybody takes a shot, they’ll have to be damn sure and damn lucky. Bell and his others will be out of play. He’ll send Dana up in the first group, to keep her safe, then the rest of the hostages, leave Bell’s daughter for last. Then it will be just his people, Vladimir and all the rest.

Then Gabriel will shut down the ride, trapping Bell and the hostages up top for as long as it takes them to make their way down the ladders. By the time they’ve done that, Gabriel will have his own people out of there, into the tunnels. He’ll do a head check, tell them to get out of the costumes. When they’re all doing that, he’ll take the submachine gun digging into his side, and he’ll shoot each and every one of them dead.

He’ll ditch the Pooch costume with the bodies, leave it behind for the last time, and head north. Even if Bell is telling the truth about his team and how they entered and their vehicle and all of it, Gabriel isn’t interested. Too risky, too easy to be tricked, and Bell lied, anyway, Gabriel is sure of it. So Gabriel will head north, and come out near Lion’s Safari, and he’ll wait until it’s clear, and then he’ll just walk out of the park much the same way the others walked in. Exit to the northeast employee lot, and get as far away as fast as he can.

That’s his plan, and he believes in it. Despite everything, he believes in it.

He still believes in his dream.