Predator One (20 page)

No, it was less than that. They tickled the edges of a fragment of a memory. Enough that it bothered him and kept him watching the news feeds.

He occasionally toggled over to a special search engine called Xenomancer. It was proprietary software used only by the board of directors and senior staff of FreeTech, the nonprofit company run by Junie Flynn. The firm was dedicated to taking military
technologies and repurposing them in humanitarian ways. Hydration projects in draught-stricken areas. Clean water. Renewable clean energies. Sustainable farming sciences. Medical research to eradicate the diseases of poverty. And dozens of other projects. It was an expensive company to run, but private funding kept it going very nicely. Some of those funds were also used for lobbyists, scholarships,
lawyers, media campaigns, advertising, and administration for a network of more than six thousand employees.

Xenomancer had been designed by the computer team that worked for the Department of Military Sciences and was given as a gift to FreeTech by Mr. Church.

Life was so weird.

That thought, in one form or another, flitted through the man’s head a dozen times every day. Usually when he stopped
and mentally stood back to watch what he was doing at any given moment. Writing reports. Attending meetings with administrators of free health clinics. Sending anonymous donations to charities all over the world. Being a good person.

So weird.

He did a lot of his most philanthropic work from that restaurant. The waiters here knew him. He was a regular who tipped very well and kept to himself.
They left him alone even though he often sat at that table—a prime spot with a superb view of the rolling Pacific waves—for hours on end.

None of the staff there—not even the manager—knew that the young man owned the restaurant. They did not know that he owned the whole block and all of its businesses. The fair-trade gift shop, the free animal clinic, the sea-conservation museum and lab, the
walk-in clinic that provided a variety of free services for women in crisis.

The young man made sure that his involvement with those businesses was never connected to him. This same policy extended to more than seven hundred businesses, organizations, corporations, and foundations that he owned or privately funded. Including FreeTech. He took particular pains to remain invisible to anyone who
might want to show gratitude.

Gratitude was something he feared.

Something he dreaded.

To have to accept the heartfelt thanks of an innocent who received his help would kill him. He was positive of it.

It was probably already killing him. He was certain that there was some kind of cancer eating at him in the darkness of his own tainted blood.

That’s how he saw it.

Tainted blood.

When he
went to church, he spent a lot of time on his knees, praying. He never took confession. He feared what the priest would say.

He was certain that any priest would kick open the door of the confessional and drag him out, beat him, and throw him into the street. That the priest would damn him.

As he deserved to be damned.

As he
expected
to be damned.

But he went to church often. Nearly every
day. Mostly Catholic churches because he had been raised in that faith. Sometimes he went to a synagogue. Or a mosque. Or a fire-and-brimstone country revival.

Any church that was open.

Any church that would let him pray in silence.

In none of those places did he beg forgiveness from God in all His aspects.

That, the young man was sure, was an even faster path to hell.

No. He did not want
forgiveness. He believed that it was not his to have. Not even from God.

Because there was no way to actually undo the harm he’d done, he didn’t see how forgiveness of those sins was valid. Not to a person who had done as much damage as he had. The blood on his hands could not be washed off with holy water and some token acts of contrition.

He wanted something much different than that.

Much
different.

He wanted to be of use. To be used. To be useful.

Until he died.

And then he wanted to be forgotten. It was the greatest thing he could hope for.

Now, he sat at his table, his food abandoned, and watched the drama that was unfolding. He listened to the reporters become increasingly ghoulish in their excitement over the disaster and the body count.

It was a bad day in America.

It was another 9/11, they said.

It was another Mother Night Day, they said. Like last year when anarchists set off bombs and released plagues all over the country.

Except that there was something about the attack at the ballpark that made the young man wonder if it wasn’t something else entirely.

Something he’d heard about once. Something very much like this. Drones at a ballpark.

His rational
mind told him that the thing he’d heard years ago couldn’t be connected to this, because everyone involved in that earlier discussion was dead. As far as he knew, he was the only survivor of that group. The only one who was alive to remember the conversation and its grim contents.

Drones.

And a ballpark.

He kept telling himself that this couldn’t be that.

“Has to be something else,” he said
to himself, his voice barely a whisper. “After all, there are a lot of bloody-minded maniacs in the world.”

On the screen, they were bringing out the wounded. Many of them were horribly mangled.

“Bugger this,” he said, and reached for his phone. He debated whom to call. Mr. Church?

No. This was terrorism that used advanced technology, which meant Church and his people would be involved. Getting
the man on the phone was difficult at the quietest of times.

Who then?

His fingers punched buttons as if on their own. The phone rang four times, and he was about to give it up when the call was answered.

“Hello?” said a soft female voice.

“Junie,” he said.

“Oh,” said Junie Flynn, “Toys. Look, I can’t talk right now. Things are bad here.”

“Bad where? Are you in Philadelphia?”

“What? Oh,
no. I’m in San Diego. At the hospital.”

“Why?” demanded Toys. “What’s wrong? Are you—?”

“It’s Circe,” said Junie. “She collapsed. God, Toys, I think she’s in a coma…”

Junie quickly explained about Circe’s collapsing while they were house hunting. Since being brought to the hospital, the doctors had not been able to revive her.

“They’re doing all kinds of tests.”

“The baby—?”

“They don’t
know yet. Oh God, Toys, this is so terrible. Rudy and Joe are in Philadelphia, at the ballpark.”

“Oh my God.”

“Rudy called. He’s okay. Joe’s hurt, but Rudy says it isn’t bad. But they’re so far away.”

“Stay right there,” Toys said. “I’m on my way.”

Chapter Thirty-seven

National League Baseball Opening Day

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 29, 2:34
P.M.

I listened at the door.

Heard muffled conversation. Men’s voices. Low. Speaking quickly. Like people in a hurry.

Not speaking English.

I’m pretty good with languages. I took the door handle and turned it very slowly, met no resistance, opened the door a fragment of an inch.
Listened closer.

At least three people speaking.

Definitely not English.

Farsi.

It was the most common language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan.

Not entirely uncommon in the States. Lot of immigrants here. Melting pot and all that. So it wasn’t the language by itself that let me know I’d found my bad guys.

It was what they were saying.

Like I said, I’m pretty good at languages.

One guy
said, “Your jacket is buttoned wrong.”

Another one said, “Let’s go. The timer is running.”

Then there was the sound of footsteps.

The killer inside my head was growling.

Or maybe that was Ghost.

I whipped the door open and went in low and fast, bringing the little gun up into a two-handed grip, searching for targets. Finding five men, not three.

None of them looked Middle Eastern. No one
was an Arab. No one was Persian. They looked like average Americans.

They were all dressed in uniforms.

Four wore the blue shirts and navy trousers of paramedics.

The fifth was dressed in the uniform of a Philadelphia police officer.

If I’d seen them in the hall, I might have bought the con. If I hadn’t heard them speaking in Farsi. If I hadn’t heard that comment about the timer. Yeah, I might
have bought that they were here to help. That they were good guys.

But … that ship sailed.

Ghost bared his teeth at them. I pointed the gun and yelled, “Federal agent, freeze!”

Knowing they wouldn’t.

Hoping they wouldn’t.

They didn’t.

One of the paramedics grabbed the man closest to him and shoved him at me. As the man staggered forward, the first man yelled, “Kill them!”

I fired. The guy
staggering toward me took the round above the right eye. His head snapped back, but his body continued forward, crashing into me, knocking me back.

I yelled to Ghost, “Hit! Hit! Hit!”

He moved like a white blur, snarling, rising, slamming into the cop. I heard terrible screams as I pivoted to shake off the dead man. But the body shuddered as if punched, and as an aftereffect I heard the pop
of a handgun.

With the corpse still atop me, I reached around and fired at movement.

Another scream.

I shucked the body off me in time to see one of the paramedics sag back, his stomach pouring red, the gun falling from his hand. I fired two more shots. And another man went down, his lower jaw shot away.

Ghost had the cop down and they were trying to kill each other. No idea who was winning.

Then the fourth man was the only uninjured guy left. I fired my last bullet at him, but he was in motion and the round missed him by half an inch. He tore open his shirt and clawed for a Glock.

I hurled my empty gun at him, and as he dodged I came up off the floor and drove my shoulder into his gut, driving him backward. But the son of a bitch was spry. He took my momentum and twisted, whipping
me around his hip. I flew into the wall, rebounded, and crashed down.

The killer dove for his gun, but I snapped a kick out and knocked him down. Then I was on my knees, my right hand going for the rapid-release folder. It was ultra-lightweight and had a small 3.375 blade that popped out with a flick of the wrist and locked in place.

My opponent had a surprise of his own. He slipped a scalpel
out of a barrel sheath and rushed me.

In the movies, a knife fight takes five minutes, and the players dance around each other like they’re extras from the Michael Jackson “Beat It” video. In real life, knife fights are short, brutal, and messy. The better fighter usually wins right away, and the other guy goes down in pieces.

This was different. The guy with the scalpel was good.

Real damn
good.

He body-feinted left and snapped a short circular cut right that traced a burning line from my wristwatch almost to my elbow. Scalpels are wickedly sharp. You don’t need muscle to cut deep. I jerked my arm down in the direction of his cut, letting it push me, but even so blood burst out of the wound. It was so slender a cut that it burned like an acid sting.

I twisted my body and hit his
elbow with my open palm, then whip-changed back and slammed my right elbow into his biceps. A big torsion-driven one-two. He tried to turn inside the combination, but I checked him again with my left and rebounded my right up and over his deltoid for a very fast left-to-right lateral slash.

My blade caught him on the back side of the big tendon in the neck. It was a big, deep cut. I checked again
and corkscrewed the tip into the socket of his throat, punching through trachea and hyoid bone all the way to the spine.

And that, as they say, was the ball game.

He made a terrible wet coughing sound as I twisted my hand to pull the blade free. Just for fuck’s sake, I bent and slashed his right knee tendon, sending him crashing and dying to the floor.

Then I wheeled around.

Ghost stood over
the cop.

What was left of the cop.

From chin to breastbone, there was only a red ruin. Blood dripped from Ghost’s jaws, and in his eyes I saw only wolf. Primal, feral, victorious.

His eyes snapped toward the other two men.

The guy whose jaw had been blown off was thrashing and screaming in a muted parody of a human voice. He might live, but interrogating him was for shit.

That left the second
guy I’d shot.

He lay on the floor, hands clamped to the bullet hole in his gut. There was no exit wound, which meant that the round was still in him. He was in terrible pain. Gut shot. Hurts like a mother. Ask anyone.

My sympathy level for him was a few hundred miles below don’t-give-a-shit. He could see that in my eyes. I could tell, because I could see the fear expanding in his eyes as I stalked
toward him. Ghost crept forward with me, his muzzle wrinkled, bloody drool falling from between his titanium teeth.

The killer knew he was in trouble that went a lot farther down a dark road than a bullet in his brisket. He could see the killer in my head glaring at him. I could tell, because I could see the awareness of it blossom in his eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked.

Not in English. In Farsi.

“Who do you work for? Who did this?”

He licked his lips and shook his head.

“Is there another bomb?” I yelled.

He told me to go fuck a camel. He said it in a way that suggested the camel was also my mother.

I put the tip of my knife against the ragged edge of the bullet wound. Just laid it there, and looked at him while I did it.

“Do you want me to be creative?” I asked.

That’s an inexact
translation. What I said is probably closer to “Do you want me to do magic?”