Alpha

Chapter Six

Dana’s working float in the Wild World, either assigned to the lines at Gordo’s Yesteryear Ballpark, Soaring Thyme, Cannonball Plunge, or working as an usher during the Flower Sisters Mystical Show. She’s on call as an interpreter, too, so Gabriel sees her, if he’s lucky, maybe once or twice during the day, and only for a few minutes. Most of the time they spend together, it’s after hours. They rented an apartment at the beginning of summer, here in town so they don’t have to commute to and from Los Angeles every day. Nights, they’re both so tired they have dinner, curl up to maybe watch a video, find the strength to make love, and then pretty much pass out.

Thursday morning, though, Gabriel has an e-mail waiting from the Uzbek, and Thursday night, he has to make an excuse.

“I’m going to be late getting back tonight,” he tells her. “Couple army buddies are in town; I’m going to meet them for drinks.”

Dana smirks. “No girls allowed?”

“Beer and bragging,” Gabriel agrees, answering with a grin. “I love you too much to ask you to sit through that.”

“I think maybe you do, too.” She leans in, runs her fingers through his hair, then kisses his mouth gently. “You do what you have to do. Have some fun.”

When they talk about such things, Dana makes no secret of what she thinks of the U.S. fighting so many wars in so many places for, in her opinion, oil and nothing but. But she’s never let her opposition to the conflicts become an opposition to soldiers, and there are times Gabriel thinks she is, perhaps, proud of him for his service. Times like that, he thinks that he is, perhaps, proud of his service as well.

So it’s Thursday night and Gabriel is going to meet the Uzbek at the DoubleTree near the business park, the place called the Irvine Spectrum. There’s a lot of tech located there, including some major computer game company that, apparently, has more money than God. Gabriel wonders if the Uzbek’s already trying to find a way to get a slice of that pie, too, if he hasn’t already, and thinking that he realizes he’s nervous, that he’s not looking forward to this.

He parks his Prius, moves from the fading day’s heat into the air-?conditioning of the lobby, then straight to the elevators. Nobody gives him a glance, asks to see his key, asks if they can help him. It’s ten minutes of eight, exactly, when he knocks on the Uzbek’s door.

He hears a bolt turn, the door unlocking. A moment, then it’s opening. The Uzbek backs up, allows Gabriel inside, and then he’s got the door locked again, slipping past him, moving to the desk. There’s a laptop open, and the Uzbek shuts it.

“It will be this weekend,” the Uzbek says, turning to face him. His English is accented, but only just. “It will be Saturday.”

“What do I need to know?” Gabriel asks.

It’s almost one in the morning when he gets back to their apartment. Quiet and dark, Gabriel stands in the main room, just stands there. His thoughts tumble, chase each other about in conflict, and he thinks these are the last days of his dream, can feel it fragmenting and tearing, dandelion fluff whipped away in a storm. He can remember a boy with a tire iron, and he does not know who that boy is, where he came from, or where he went.

He’s still standing just like that when he realizes that Dana has come out of their little bedroom, is watching him. He didn’t hear her and he didn’t see her, but he knew she was there, holding herself in the doorway. She’s wearing a tank top and panties, what she wears to sleep in most times before they both end up wearing nothing at all. Lavender is on the tank top, the irony of the words Friendship Is Trust printed in faded lettering beneath the character. She brushes hair back from her face, tucks it behind her ear.

“Are you okay, baby?” she asks.

Gabriel nods, moves to her. Sets his hands on her hips, and she’s warm and solid and tangible, not a dream at all, and when he kisses her she wraps her arms around him.

“You’re sure?”

“Let me show you,” he says, and he lifts her up, and she wraps her legs about his hips, and he takes her back to their bed.

“When’s your next day off?” he asks as they’re driving into the park the next morning, Friday.

“Tomorrow,” Dana says. “Then Tuesday. You?”

Gabriel hides his relief by checking his mirrors, changing lanes. “Monday and Tuesday, but they’ve got me in costume all weekend.”

“I could see if someone wants to swap with me. Maybe get Monday in exchange.”

“Nah, don’t do that.”

“It’s no fun having a day off without you.”

“Crowd Saturday is going to be massive,” Gabriel says. “Fourth of July weekend bad. If I could get out of it, I would.”

“Talk to Eduardo. Maybe you and he can swap?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll ask him.”

Friday night, Gabriel uses the same excuse, is almost out the door when Dana stops him. “These are the same army pals?”

“Yeah.”

She gnaws her lower lip, eyes searching him, concerned. “You’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s just, last night. You know.”

“It brought up a lot of memories.”

“I figured that was it. I figured that was what happened.” She steps closer, puts a hand on his chest, palm over his heart, earnest. “You know I’m yours, right? If you ever want to talk, if you ever need anything. I’m yours.”

Gabriel smiles, kisses her mouth lightly. “I know.”

“Breaks my heart when I see you sad.”

“Am I sad?”

“You seem it. I think your friends made you sad.”

“Old friends can do that,” Gabriel says.

“Motherfucker!” Vladimir shouts. He’s using Russian, grabbing Gabriel in a bear hug, and hoisting him off his feet. The transition from one language to another creates a lag, leaves Gabriel briefly disoriented. Vladimir sets him down. “Motherfucker, Matias! Look at you, you cock!”

There’s an awful moment of vacancy, Gabriel looking at this man, this person he knows he knows, unable to remember him, to place him. Then the language clicks, the memory locks, and Gabriel laughs, genuinely surprised to see him, this brother in arms, here, in this place, at this time.

“Vlad! You son of a bitch!”

They’re down in Laguna Beach, another business park, but no hotel this time. The recession is still a deafening echo here, and driving in tonight, Gabriel passed storefront after empty storefront, sign after sign offering lease and rental. It’s a good place to hide, a good place to stage, the spaces big and private and nondescript, and maybe this one they’re in now was used for gymnastics or something like that, because aside from the darkened front office, it’s nothing but a great cavern here, a giant cube of poured concrete with rubber mats covering the floor, six long folding tables set against one wall. Rucksacks, sleeping bags, and the smell of pizza and beer to round it all out.

Along with Vladimir and the Uzbek, there are another fifteen, all of them with the looks of hard men from back home. It’s been six years, but some of the faces, Gabriel thinks he recognizes them, men on the periphery of his old crew, perhaps, or men he’d crossed paths with somewhere along the line. All of a kind, and even Vladimir’s got it, too, and Gabriel realizes they’re soldiers, every last one of them.

Vladimir himself, damn if he doesn’t look the same. Maybe a little older, a little harder, a little more muscle. He stands relaxed, and there’s a difference to his posture, too, not the cocky in-your-face-I-dare-you stance of youth, but now it’s more controlled, as if he’s proven everything he needed to prove to himself, and in so doing has proven it to others. All that, but the grin on his face, the eager expression-that’s the same.

Vladimir jerks a thumb back at where the Uzbek is standing, watching them. “He didn’t say anything about you, Matias! This is your thing? This is what you’ve been doing all this time?”

“It’s my thing. It’s good to see you, Vladimir.”

The Uzbek clears his throat. Gabriel, Vladimir, the rest, all of them turn their attention to him. Then the Uzbek makes them wait, removes his glasses, begins cleaning them. Holds them up to check the lenses in the weak light. Puts them back on. Then he looks at them, taking his time, eye contact with each in turn, all but Gabriel, until the end.

“Gabriel-Matias-has command,” the Uzbek says. “You are now operational, and on the timetable. From this moment forward until conclusion, you follow his orders without question, without hesitation.”

General assent from all the voices, and Vladimir is beaming, happy.

“There is a plan in place, this much you know. You know your parts within this plan, but you do not know the whole. Gabriel knows the whole. Remember this: his decisions are my decisions, and my decisions come from…”

The Uzbek grins, letting the statement dangle. A ripple of laughter, the joke understood. We do not speak of That Man, the One to Whom We All Now Answer. The Shadow Man, the Man of Silence, and it’s not a long walk from such names to call him a demon, an agent of darkness, or, worse, the Devil Himself. Gabriel hears these men laugh, Vladimir and fifteen other hard men, and he hears the truth behind it, too. These are powerful men, dangerous men, and this man whom-as far as he knows, at least-none of them have ever met can make their balls climb into their bellies and their cocks shrink to nubs.

Gabriel sometimes wonders if this man the Uzbek works for exists at all, in fact. If the Shadow Man, this Lucifer, isn’t some fabrication, a blind for others to hide behind. But knowing what he knows, knowing what lies in the metal case on the table behind the Uzbek, Gabriel doubts this. Whomever the Uzbek answers to, he is real enough, and Gabriel knows with the certainty of a penitent’s faith that as much power and as much strength and as much skill as stands in this room now, the Shadow Man must hold a hundred times again that much, if not more.

The Uzbek motions Gabriel over to him, turns to the metal case. The other tables have weapons and equipment arrayed upon them, almost twenty pistols and eight submachine guns, ammunition for all of them-radios, NVGs, MREs, binoculars, flashlights, gas masks, and white Tyvek suits. This case sits on a table alone, a gunmetal gray cube with a handle at the top. It is the kind of case one uses to transport camera equipment, perhaps; used for the movement of something delicate, sensitive, precious. The Uzbek uses a key to unlock it.

“Sourced from Iran,” the Uzbek murmurs as he lifts the lid. “Two ounces. Assemble it once you’ve secured your perimeter, placement as discussed.”

Gabriel looks at the tiny lead-lined container, the symbols and red-painted warnings. He nods, raises his eyes to meet the Uzbek’s. The other man has never been easy to read, and this time is no different, but Gabriel thinks he sees, perhaps, the hint of a question, the touch of doubt.

“No change?” Gabriel asks the Uzbek.

“No, as we discussed.”

Gabriel looks back at the contents of the box, this seed that can be watered, coaxed to bloom and spread a pollen of illness. Carried by the wind to leave its touch wherever it might fall. Right now, only potential-and it is that potential, more than anything else, that has concerned him, confused him. The instructions here are clear, and yet, through their clarity, indecipherable. Gabriel does not understand.

The Uzbek senses this, puts his mouth to Gabriel’s ear. “Place. Do not arm.”

“Place, do not arm,” Gabriel echoes.

The Uzbek straightens. “Do not concern yourself with the reasons. Concern yourself with the execution.”

The Uzbek shuts the box, locks it once more. Gabriel feels the eyes of sixteen men on him as he takes the key. He turns to Vladimir, asks, “You’ve been briefed?”

“We’ve all been briefed.”

Gabriel Fuller looks at the box holding the makings of a very dirty bomb. He looks at the Uzbek, and at the sixteen men once more.

“Let’s go over it again,” he tells them.