Red Eye - 02 (34 page)

The knife was still in his other hand. Somehow he hadn’t dropped it.

He reached across and sliced down through the soldier’s knuckles. Severed fingers flew in all directions. The man screeched and tumbled away from the bus, his immense bulk landing on the Hummer’s bonnet with an thunderous
whump
.

The Hummer braked sharply. With the soldier sprawled on its bonnet, it fishtailed on the snow, coming to a halt sideways across the road.

The bus lumbered onward. Redlaw, with tremendous effort, eased his legs through the doorway, then swung the rest of him inside. He hauled the door shut and lay in the aisle, panting and wheezing. His side, where he’d been kicked, throbbed. His neck felt mangled. His windpipe seemed to have been reduced to the diameter of a drinking straw.

“Redlaw!” exclaimed Tina. “God. Are you okay?”

“Never better,” Redlaw croaked.

She helped him to his feet. “Looks like you did it. You saw them off. They won’t be coming after us again in a hurry.”

“Don’t you believe it.” Redlaw hobbled to the front of the bus. “Miguel. I’m back. You’re relieved.”

They performed another rapid changeover. Redlaw stiffly took the controls while Miguel collapsed into the nearest seat.

“About time,” he gasped. “I’ve pretty much gone blind.”

It was no exaggeration. The skin around his eyes was seared black, and his eyeballs themselves were stippled with blisters, the irises opaque as though afflicted with severe cataracts.

“You did a great job,” Redlaw reassured him. “Can’t fault it.”

“We haven’t stopped them, though.”

“Afraid not. Paused them, given them something to think about, but no, they’re hardly out of action.”

“Damn. I guess it was too much to hope.”

We’ve also lost Jacobsen’s gun,
Redlaw thought.

They had gained a reprieve. And some ground.

The chase, however, was far from over.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

B
ERGER AND
G
IACOIA
helped Child into the back seat.

“Goddamn sonofabitch motherfucking
motherfucker
!” Child was clasping his fingerless hand to his chest with his forearm.

Also on the back seat was Abbotts. He had both hands cupped over his groin, holding a wad of blood-soaked surgical dressing in place. A shot of morphine from the first-aid kit had blunted his pain. One side of his face was a lattice of criss-crossing wound closure strips.

“What’re
you
bitching about?” he snarled at Child.

“Asshole took my fingers off.”

“Yeah? So what? He blew off one of my nuts. My fucking nut!”

“Not as if you need it. Ugly-ass cracker motherfucker like you, never get laid anyway.”

“Yeah, well, you ain’t got no right hand to speak of any more,” Abbotts shot back. “Can’t even jerk off now, bruh.”

“Don’t you ‘bruh’ me.”

“What, you’d prefer ‘dawg’? ‘My nigga’? How about ‘boy’?”

“Now listen up, you inbred piece of—”

“Enough!” Berger snapped. “You two stop the baby-whining. You’ve both got boo-boos, we get it. Now man up, shut the fuck up, and listen. Maintain pressure on those wounds. You’re going to live. But we can’t afford to take you to a hospital right now and get you seen to. We do, and we lose Redlaw, maybe for good. Doctors’ll have to wait. You sit tight while we see this thing through. Got that?”

Child and Abbotts nodded.

“Good. Lim, morphine Child up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Berger slid back behind the wheel of the Hummer and reversed at full tilt. The rear fender banged into a parked car, setting its alarm whooping. Berger yanked the wheel hard round and sped off after the school bus, still just in sight.

Berger watched the Hummer narrow the gap between it and the bus. If Redlaw’s intention was to escape from Manhattan and do it fast, then he was on the wrong side of the island. The exit routes along the West Side were all tunnels until you reached the George Washington Bridge way up in the upper hundreds.

A bridge was a pinch-point. A tunnel even more so.

Pinch-points were where escapees got caught.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

10.15AM E
ASTERN
S
TANDARD
Time. Late night in Japan. Farthingale hated himself for phoning Uona now, at his home. He knew how pathetic it looked.

“
Moshi-moshi
,” said a woman, sounding sleepy and unimpressed.

Uona’s wife. What was her name again?

“Izumi. Howard Farthingale. Good evening. I’m sorry for—”

There was a string of Japanese from Mrs Uona, the tone shrill and irritable. He couldn’t tell if it was directed at him or not. Then he heard the sound of a phone receiver changing hands.

“Howard,” said Uona. “If you have forgotten the time difference between the East Coast and Tokyo, let me remind you. We’re ten hours behind. Or fourteen ahead, allowing for the date line. Either way, it’s gone midnight here.”

“Yukinobu, please, I’m in real trouble.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“Before I turned in for the night, I received information from certain sources that your Red Eye operatives have—how to put this?—disenfranchised themselves and gone independent. I’m also led to understand that your chief executive has washed his hands of you.”

“He’s going to throw me to the wolves.”

“That would seem likely, yes.”

“You knew all this, and you didn’t get in touch?” Farthingale tried to keep the hurt out of his voice.

“What would have been the advantage in that?”

“You could have offered to help.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Somehow. At least showed some support.”

“Do you wish me to help?”

“Yes! Why the hell else do you think I’m ringing you?”

“But what can I do?” said Uona. “Your part of the world. Your people. Your pet project. I’m seven thousand miles away. It’s a whole different day here. Your today is my yesterday. Do you expect me to wave a magic wand from such a distance and make everything all right again? I am not your fairy godmother. Your mess. You clean it up.”

“You’re not uninvolved in this,” Farthingale said. “You have interests. Shares in my companies. As I do in yours. I go down, you go down too.”

“Oh, Howard. Hasn’t our experience with Nathaniel taught you anything? We profit from one another’s gains, but also from one another’s losses. A catastrophe for you would be a prize opportunity for me.”

“You vulture. Would you really—”

“I’m sorry, Howard, but this conversation is over. I have a very upset Izumi in bed beside me. She does so hate having her sleep interrupted. I shall be soothing her for the next half-hour at least.”

“Yukinobu...”

“Don’t beg. It’s undignified.”

“Yukinobu, please. There must be
something
you can do. Go on, throw me a bone.”

A continent and an ocean away, Uona appeared to be thinking.

“Anything at all,” Farthingale went on. “Picture me prostrating myself in front of you. Humiliating myself.”

“And losing all face,” Uona said.

“I’m a
gaijin
. We don’t have any face to start with, do we? Not as far as you’re concerned.”

“Reverse psychology. Doesn’t always work.”

“How long have we known each other?”

“Nor does appealing to commonality.” Uona seemed to soften, taking pity on him. “I will give you something. How useful it will be is up to you. Check your email inbox shortly. But remember, Howard, whatever happens to you will not automatically happen to me. I am far ahead, already moving on. I repeat: your today is my yesterday. It’s always been thus.”

F
ARTHINGALE MONITORED HIS
inbox obsessively, waiting for Uona’s address to pop up in the new-email window.

Come on, come on
.

He was seething about the way Uona had treated him—the sheer callous indifference—yet he was also desperately hopeful that his Japanese colleague would prove to be his saviour. They were peers, but Uona was older, wiser, marginally wealthier. Perhaps he had a right to look down on Farthingale.

One thing Farthingale was certain of. If Uona ever came crawling to him asking for a lifeline, he would sure as hell think twice before throwing it.

That was assuming he managed to get through this whole clusterfuck intact. Which was far from guaranteed.

A soft ping. The email finally arrived.

No covering message. No attachment. Just a link.

Farthingale clicked on it.

He was taken to a site called Tick Talk.

Home-video footage of vampires. So goddamn what?

He nearly closed the window. Was this some kind of joke? Was Uona having a laugh at his expense? Sticking the knife in and giving it a good twist?

Almost on a whim, he played one of the video clips.

And another.

And then another.

Holy shit.

Redlaw. And Colonel Jacobsen. And the rest of Team Red Eye. And not just any bunch of vampires but the very ones Red Eye were pursuing.

There was somebody with Redlaw, then, filming his exploits and posting them online for all to see.

Meaning either Redlaw was the arrogantest, biggest-balled bastard on the planet, or he was unaware that the footage had been broadcast.

All the evidence suggested the latter.

So this woman, this Tina Checkley, she behind the camera, was a kind of spy in the enemy camp. At the very least, a conduit linking Redlaw to the outside world without his knowledge.

An asset.

And assets could be bought. They invariably had a price.

Farthingale, for what felt like the first time in months, grinned.