Alpha

Chapter Thirty-two

Gabriel doesn’t know why they’ve stopped at first, only that they have, and Vladimir half turns, calls back to him, voice muffled behind the Kurkur mask.

“I don’t see them,” Vladimir says, using English. “Something’s wrong.”

He thinks that means Vladimir just can’t see the two other groups, Charlie One and Charlie Two, and Gabriel takes another few steps forward then. He is aware of Bell’s daughter in front of him, looking at her friend in the Flashman costume, but beyond the front of their group, where Dana is positioned beside Oscar, Betsy and Clip Flashman side by side, his vision is impaired. It’s hard to see extreme distance through the Pooch headpiece, and Gabriel wants to remove it, the same way he wants to answer Vladimir. Again, he keeps his silence, afraid of what his voice might mean to Dana.

“They’re not here.” Sonny, dressed as Gordo, anxious, nervous. Oscar starts to turn back his way. Just at the edge of Gabriel’s vision, fuzzy through the grille, he can see Charlie One coming in from the north. He moves his hand, thinking to reach into his suit and pull his radio, to ask Jonathan Bell just what he thinks he’s doing, if he really wants to do this, to play games with the lives of so many, with the life of his daughter.

Then it all goes to screaming hell.

“Contact!” This in Russian, Vladimir shouting, and Gabriel can’t tell where the shots are coming from, only that Oscar is going down, Clip Flashman helmet bursting into shards as a round finds his face. The reports echo across pavement and bounce from buildings, the rides, from the heavens, it seems, all of them muffled, confused, inside Pooch’s head.

The girl, Bell’s daughter, has fallen, or maybe she’s diving, knocking down the Flashman boy, and Vladimir is turning, freeing his submachine gun, but the others are only now beginning to respond. In the back of Gabriel’s mind he understands, intuitively, how this is happening, how Bell and his team are picking their targets, at least in part, at least in front of him. How can they tell who is a hostage and who isn’t? The last ones to move, those are the hostages. The last ones to move, because they are the last to understand, because they are deaf. They cannot hear the shots.

Sonny is falling, and just in the edge of his vision, Gabriel sees Vladimir with his weapon out, laying down fire. Gabriel starts forward, wanting to reach Dana, to protect her, but stops himself, instead steps back. Tears at the front of the Pooch costume, reaching for his own submachine gun, still trapped against his side.

Then the weapon is in his hands, and he swings it right, fires off a burst toward the spinning bowl ride, shooting blindly. Bell’s daughter is on her knees, screaming for her father, and he can see that Dana in the Betsy costume is trying to protect the kids, trying to pull them close to her with oversized arms, to pull them down.

“The girl!” Gabriel points at Bell’s daughter. “Vladimir! The girl, get the girl!”

He looses another burst, same direction as before. The fucking Pooch head has killed his peripheral vision, and what he can see as he moves comes stuttered, like broken film. He tries to back up, almost trips over his own paws, sees a man amid the bowls coming forward, pistol in his hands, firing at him. Something punches through his mask, creases pain along his scalp, and he lays on the MP5K again, watches the man jerk backward, fall out of his line of sight.

Bell’s daughter is still on her knees, the girl in the Smooch costume flat on the ground in front of her, and Gabriel can hear her still screaming for her father, screaming bloody murder. Vladimir cuts into his vision, reaches down for her, pulls her up and against his costume armor. Gabriel raises the MP5K, puts another burst downrange, the direction of Charlie One, begins backing away again.

“Tunnel!” His voice is too loud in the mask, makes his ears throb, but he’s shouting anyway. “Back! Toward the theater!”

Vladimir adjusts his grip on the girl, lifting her under one arm, goes on his trigger with the other, firing in the direction of the ball pit. Then he’s pivoting, the girl shrieking incoherently, kicking and clawing, and Gabriel sees Vladimir bash the barrel of the SMG along the side of her head, and the girl stops struggling.

Gabriel fires again, almost randomly, lets Vladimir get behind him with Bell’s daughter, checks over his shoulder to see they’re making their retreat. Turns back and then he sees him, sees Bell, or at least he thinks he does, distorted through the mask, a hundred feet or so away. Starting to run toward them, and Gabriel brings the gun up again, lays a burst at him starting up the sloped path in their direction. The man cuts right just as Gabriel fires, throws himself into cover against the curving wall along the pathway. Gabriel lays down a second burst, close after the first, still backing away.

Retreat is the only thing that matters now, salvaging this is the only thing that matters right now. That, and Dana, and Gabriel sees she’s huddled on her knees, big Betsy arms around two of the costumed kids. Head bowed, and he doesn’t think she’s been hit, can’t see if she was, prays that she wasn’t. Prays that Bell and his people take better care of her than he’s managed to.

Gabriel runs, chasing after Vladimir. Yanking the Pooch head off with one hand, feels a new shock of pain along his scalp. Whoever shot him must’ve hit high on the mask, just skimming his skull. He lets the mask drop, feels blood running through his hair and down his neck.

“This way!” he shouts, leading, running as fast as the Pooch costume will let him to the Friends Only door alongside the Dawg Days Theatre. Hits it with his shoulder, costume cushioning the impact, knocking it wide and then covering their backs as Vladimir, still half carrying, half dragging Bell’s daughter, crashes through past him. Gabriel takes a last look, sees nothing, nobody chasing, and steps fully into the little courtyard, allowing the door to fall closed.

Vladimir has dropped the girl, is yanking at the Kurkur costume, and Bell’s daughter is still for a moment, holding her head in her hands where she was clubbed with the gun. Then she’s on her feet with a burst of speed, and Vladimir, his arms caught in his costume, tries to reach for her, misses. She’s coming straight at Gabriel, trying to get past him, and he catches her with his arm across her chest, sends her bouncing back. She tries again.

Gabriel brings the MP5K up, both hands, barrel straight at this teenage girl’s face. She stops herself, mouth in a scowl, eyes full of the same hate, stares at him, and for a flicker of a moment, Gabriel actually thinks she’s daring him to do it, to shoot her, and he wonders if it’s courage or rage or both that’s fueling her.

Then Vladimir’s out of Kurkur and his hands are free, and he’s grabbing the girl from behind, spinning her around. Before Gabriel can speak, before the girl can react, Vladimir is punching her, swearing in Russian as he does it, once, twice in the stomach, then in the face, and the girl collapses, broken, and Gabriel is shouting.

“Stop it! Stop it, we need her! We need her!”

Vladimir rounds on him with a snarl, catches himself, catches his breath. There is a silence, broken only by the sound of Bell’s daughter, a soft, keening noise that she’s making. She’s fallen from her knees to her side, one hand guarding her stomach, the other to her mouth. When she looks up, Gabriel sees blood coming between her fingers.

He moves closer to Vladimir, into his face, hissing in Russian. “We want her alive.”

“You care too much about them. They’re meat, to be used.” Vladimir spits off to the side, then turns away, retrieving his own submachine gun. Without looking at Gabriel, he asks, “Now what?”

Gabriel reaches down, offers Bell’s daughter his hand, and she recoils. He reaches again, and she tries to hit his hand, and he has to reach a third time before he can catch her arm. He pulls her to her feet, points at the flight of stairs leading down into the Gordo Tunnel. Vladimir grunts, starts down the flight of stairs, and Gabriel follows, hand still on the girl. She comes docilely now, more slowly, head down. Blood is running from her mouth, her lip already beginning to swell.

At the bottom, a view of the tunnel stretching north, bright and vacant. Vladimir, not more than ten feet ahead of him, turns to look at him.

“Which way are we going?” Vladimir asks.

“Straight to the junction, then right,” Gabriel says. He’s pulling at his own costume now, trying to shrug out of it.

“To do what, Matias?”

“To get the fuck out of here.”

“What about the device?”

“Fuck the device!” His raised voice echoes, bounces off the finished concrete surfaces all around them. “Do you want to do that Uzbek fuck’s bidding or do you want to live?”

Vladimir turns without a word, shaking his head slightly, begins walking down the tunnel. Gabriel kicks the Pooch leggings free, then gives Bell’s daughter a shove, and she offers no fight, stumbling along, and they are moving slowly, steadily, ten paces, twenty. Vladimir looks over his shoulder once, shakes his head again.

He has to do it now, Gabriel realizes. Now or it’ll be too late. Kill Vladimir and Bell’s daughter both, and then run for it, just run and run until he is out and free and clear. Dana is safe now, there’s that, at least, and with her safe, he still has hope.

Then he hears Dana’s voice, and hope, along with what remains of Gabriel Fuller’s dream, dies.