Predator One (61 page)

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-eight

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

April 1, 4:13
P.M.

Lydia hit the floor hard. She could barely see through the bursting white lights in her eyes. She saw Boy raise a foot to stamp and forced herself to turn. The kick clipped her hip but struck only the floor. Lydia rolled into the leg as hard as she could and sent
the Cambodian flying face-forward.

The woman caught herself with a skillful front fall and then stabbed out with a counterkick to Lydia, catching her midthigh. Lydia rolled away and got to toes and fingertips and started to rise, but it was a fake; the Cambodian jumped high to intercept, and Lydia flattened and dove low, catching her around the thighs and bearing her down. It made the woman sit
down hard on her tailbone. The shock snapped the woman’s teeth together and dimmed the lights in her eyes.

It was Lydia’s doorway back into the world. She fell on her side and chop-kicked the woman in the face, knocking her onto her back. This time the woman fell badly, rapping her head on the ground. Lydia reached over and clawed her way atop the Cambodian. She shimmied forward and dropped her
knees onto the woman’s biceps, trapping both arms.

Lydia could have wasted time pummeling her. She could have broken her own hands by hammering at the woman’s face with her fists. But Lydia wasn’t stupid. That kind of fighting is for ring competition, where there are rules. Instead, Lydia grabbed the woman’s ears, used them to pick her head up and them slam it back down. Then she slapped her
left palm flat over Boy’s face, drew back her right hand, folded it into a half fist, and punched down with her secondary knuckles. Once, twice. A third time.

With each blow, the shape of Boy’s throat changed.

After the last punch, there was no useful shape left to it.

“
Besa mi culo, puto,
” she snarled and then spat into Boy’s face.

Gasping, nearly spent, Lydia toppled off of the thrashing,
dying woman.

Immediately, something brushed her face, and she swung a punch, but her knuckles brushed something soft, and a dark blur passed above her. She gaped at it.

Banshee. Covered in blood, foam flecking her muzzle, racing for a fresh kill.

Lydia turned to see that behind the hound lay a dozen bodies that had been torn to red ruin.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-nine

Tanglewood Island

Pierce County, Washington

April 1, 4:15
P.M.

The two Blue Diamond guys were the closest. They tried rushing me while going for their guns at the same time. I shot one, but the other one body-blocked the guy I shot, so they collided into me. We all hit the edge of the doorway. Ghost went after the second security thug, got his titanium
teeth locked into the guy’s wrist, and pulled him down for some fun and games on the floor.

That left the grad students. I wasn’t sure what or who they were. I was hoping they were computer nerds or part of the tech team. But from the enthusiastic way they rushed me, I knew that wasn’t it.

The guard I’d shot had a death grip on my gun arm, and as he fell his two-hundred-plus pounds tore the
Sig Sauer from my hand. I had to let it go or fall with him. I let it go and danced sideways as the first of the grad students slashed at me with a double-edge British commando dagger that he produced from God knows where. The thing was razor-sharp and cut through the top shoulder strap of my Kevlar.

I backpedaled and then jumped back as he darted in, quick as a cat, with a second and third slash.
The little bastard was good. In and out.

The other kid began circling to my right, and as he did so he snapped his arms toward the floor, releasing a pair of weapons that fell right into his hand. Not knives. Scalpels.

I don’t like knives at the best of times, but there is something appallingly frightening about scalpels. They glide through whatever they cut, and in the hands of an expert they
are dreadful. From the way he moved, I could tell he was an expert with them. His weight was on the balls of his feet, knees bent and springy, elbows bent and tucked close to protect his body, blades up to protect his face and throat. He moved like a dancer, gliding across the floor.

I began moving with him, retreating in a broad circle so that I moved to Surgeon’s left and away from Boy Commando.
They followed and immediately began adjusting to my retreat.

In combat, the worst thing you can do when fighting multiple opponents is to retreat in a straight line because it allows them to get closer to each other while creating an aggressive wall in front of you. Circling helps, but if they know that trick and are used to working together, they can make a lot of small, quick shifts to cut
you off.

“That’s Ledger,” yelled the man in the bed. He had an English accent, clipped and cold. “Be careful.”

The grad students only smiled. Their confidence was disheartening.

Ghost was having his own time of it. The Blue Diamond guy was tough, and he had clearly been trained in how to fight a dog. Maybe the King had all of his best guys here.

I would much rather have had to deal with the
Marx Brothers or a couple of the Stooges.

Suddenly another explosion shook the room. Dust puffed down from the ceiling. Now it was my turn to smile.

“Hear that, your highness?” I said, continuing to circle. “That’s my team breaking this place apart.”

“Who cares?” he said. “Let them come.”

Surgeon darted into me with a one-two lunge that was so goddamn fast that, even though I spun out of the
way, I trailed blood from a pair of burning cuts on my arm. No idea how deep they were. Blood welled through the slits in my sleeve.

He lunged again, but as I shifted to avoid him, Boy Commando made his move. He whipped his hand high, turned it into a fake, checked and slashed a vertical line down that would have severed the femoral artery in my leg if he’d connected. He missed by maybe a quarter
inch.

Then Surgeon was in again, using my evasion as his opening in exactly the way an expert would. He used a right-left-right jab combination and then went for the long reach to try and take me across the eyes. I couldn’t counterslash him, but I used my left to punch upward into his arm. I caught him wrong—hitting elbow instead of triceps, but it knocked his arm high. It was a tiny window,
but I took it and threw myself at him, hitting the exposed rib cage with my shoulder and barrel-slamming him ten feet across the room. He hit the edge of the bed and cried out in pain as the steel rail punched him in the hip.

I could hear Boy Commando rushing up behind me, so I grabbed Surgeon and spun him. I felt something bite me in the side and knew it was one of the scalpels. Pain exploded
beneath the right side of my rib cage.

But Surgeon screamed.

We were face-to-face at the end of my spin, and when I saw the horror in his eyes, I knew that my timing had been good.

Good for me.

Totally sucked for him.

He was pressed all the way back against Boy Commando, and over his shoulder I could see his partner’s eyes bug wide as he realized what had just happened.

The double-edged
British fighting knife is excellent for slashing, but it also makes one hell of a hole on a straight thrust. Boy Commando had tried to drill me in the kidney, but instead his blade was buried to the hilt in the Surgeon’s back.

My knife was free.

I let go of Surgeon, reached over his shoulder, grabbed the back of Boy Commando’s head with my left, and used my right to bury my knife into his left
eye socket. I corkscrewed half a turn and tore it out, then buried it again, this time in the center of his throat.

They collapsed together, locked in a terminal embrace that seemed somehow intimate. As they dropped away from me, I felt something jerk at my side and looked down to see blood trailing from the scalpel that was still clutched in Surgeon’s dying hand.

That’s when the pain hit me.

Enormous pain.

He’d gotten me good. Beneath the ribs. Maybe in the liver.

I was bleeding inside and out, and I knew it.

The clock was ticking.

Ticking.

I wheeled around to see what was happening with Ghost.

Ghost stood panting by the wall. There were parts of things around him that probably added up to one Blue Diamond guard.

Ghost looked past me to the man on the bed. He snarled with all
the primitive ferocity of a wolf. With all the hatred of a member of my tribe.

I leaned on the bed frame and looked into the face of the man who had orchestrated so much harm. The face I looked into showed no fear. Only disappointment at the failure of his men to kill me. If there was compassion for their deaths or their suffering, none of it showed on this man’s face.

He was hideous.

His face
had been melted away by some terrible blaze. He had no legs and only one arm. One eye was a boiled egg white in his skull; the other was filled with a kind of calm hatred that I’d never seen before. As if he had no fear of whatever I might say or do. Or threaten.

His mangled lips wore a contemptuous smile.

“Somehow,” he said, “I knew it would be you. Joe Ledger. Thuggish captain of Echo Team.”

“I like it,” I said, hissing a little with the pain. “I can put that on my business card.”

“Please do. Truth in advertising.”

“You know why I’m here,” I said. “Mind if we skip the banter section of this and go right to the point where you take it as read that I own your ass and you give me what I want?”

“Let’s not.”

“Dude,” I said, “not sure if you’ve taken inventory yet, but the Kings are
dead; your men are dead or dying.”

As if to emphasize my point, there was a rattle of gunfire from down the hall. A man screamed. Pretty sure it wasn’t one of Echo Team.

“I don’t give a fuck about them,” said the burned man. “And I don’t give much of a fuck about you, Ledger. You’ve invaded the island fortress of the mad scientist. Bravo. You’ve killed the villains and all the supporting characters.
Now you are going to threaten to kill me. Or torture me.”

“I’m open to it. ’Specially the last part.”

“To what end?”

“Reset codes.”

“Ah. And would you like the password to access Davidovich’s Web site? That way, you can save the world just like that.” He snapped the fingers of his good hand.

“That would be nice. It would save you a lot of discomfort.”

He smiled at me. “No,” he said. “Of
course … no. There’s nothing you can do to me that you haven’t already done. You’ve ruined my life over and over again. Well, here’s the kicker, Ledger—I’m already dying. I have enough diseases and conditions firing all at once that I’ll be dead inside a week. And if you torture me, all you’ll do is hasten the inevitable. You see, you have no leverage. I get to watch you fail, and I get to go to my
grave knowing that I destroyed you and that I destroyed this country.”

“Why?” I asked. “You’ve got a real hard-on for me. Who am I to you? What the fuck have I ever done to make you this pissed off? I mean … if you want me to suffer, shouldn’t I know that much?”

He cocked his head to one side.

“Seriously?” he said. “Even now, you don’t recognize me?”

“Nope. You look like a can of fried SPAM.
Somebody cooked you over a nice slow flame. Makes it hard to figure out who the hell you are.”

He flinched. Ever so slightly at that.

“Hugo said that you were tough but stupid.”

And I think that’s when it all went
click
. A lot of little clues, a lot of floating pieces. It all fell into place right there. He watched my face, and from the delighted smile that he wore, I could tell that he knew
that I had it. That I finally recognized him.

You see … we’d never actually met. He was a photo in a case file, a body in a piece of video. And he was supposed to be dead.

I had to take a breath, because there was no air in my lungs to speak his name.

But I said it.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re …
Sebastian Gault
.”

Chapter One Hundred and Sixty

UC San Diego Medical Center

200 West Arbor Drive

San Diego, California

April 1, 4:15
P.M.

The elevator doors opened again, and Rudy staggered out.

There were more bodies scattered around, but the fighting still raged. Montana Parker had a collapsible metal rod in her hand and was smashing at a Kingsman with a knife. Sam Imura sat on the floor with his hands
pressed to his stomach and blood trickling from his mouth and nose. Lydia Ruiz stood above him, firing an AK-47 that had bloodstains on it.

But across the hall was the worst of it.

Toys stood in the doorway to Circe’s room battering at Kingsmen with an empty gun. Five feet away, the massive wolfhound, Banshee, was tearing at their throats and groins.

Twenty feet way, closer to Rudy than to
Circe’s room, stood Nicodemus. He was looking the other way, yelling at his men, directing the relentless attack. In fact, for the moment, no one was looking at Rudy. Everywhere he looked, people—Kingsmen, police, Homeland agents, the last few members of Echo Team, even Toys—were trapped inside their own fragments of this drama. A sea of violence separated Rudy from his wife and their unborn child.

Rudy bent and picked up a gun. It was another AK-47, dropped by a dead Kingsman. Rudy had no idea if it was loaded, or how to check that. He simply hooked his cane in the crook of his arm, raised the gun, pointed it at Nicodemus, and opened fire.

The gun bucked heavily in his hands, and fire burst from the barrel, sending a dozen rounds into the crowd around the priest. Kingsmen spun like dancers,
collapsed like dolls.

And then the bolt locked back, the magazine spent.

Nicodemus turned toward him. He extended his hand and pointed a withered finger at him.