The Omicron Legion (4 page)

O’Malley was dead before they could even get started, dead before the conference room doors burst open to allow a pair of security guards to rush through. Heart attack was indeed the initial diagnosis by the medical examiner, one later confirmed under autopsy.

Jonathan Weetz did not learn of the death until the following morning’s
New York Times.
He had injected an incredibly potent and quick-dissolving form of taxine poison into the six limes present in O’Malley’s office refrigerator. No way to tell how long it would be before he used a slice. The specifics, though, didn’t matter.

O’Malley’s death meant three down and thirteen to go, and thirteen was his lucky number.

Chapter 4

“WELL, LOOK WHAT
we have here….” McCracken had seen the burly figure in the Caesar Park Hotel lobby an instant before the voice assaulted him. Now it was too late to turn away.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Always said you meet people in the strangest places.”

Colonel Ben Norseman was wearing the ugliest Hawaiian shirt Blaine had ever seen, a pair of monstrous forearms sticking out from the baggy sleeves.

“I’d like to say you were a sight for sore eyes, Ben, but mine didn’t hurt until they saw you. Who’s handling your wardrobe these days?”

Norseman plucked at the awful red floral pattern. “Hey, when in Rome…”

“I doubt you’re down here as a tourist.”

“Nope. Business. Usual stuff. Right up your alley, if you’re available.”

Blaine shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Hey, what are the odds, the two of us meeting in the same place after so long? Call it coincidence.”

“Call it unfortunate.”

“Hey, fuck you, McCrackenballs. I was trying to be sociable.”

“Hardly your style, Ben.”

The two men regarded each other distantly from a yard apart. Norseman had changed as little in appearance over the years as McCracken. A few inches taller than Blaine at six-four, Norseman’s neck was still creased with knobby muscle that pulsed with each breath. His mustache showed its share of gray, and his dome was now completely bald. It gave a harder edge to the colonel’s face, as if he needed it.

Ben Norseman had been part of the Phoenix Project in Vietnam as well, a Green Beret who’d already put in five years in the jungle when Blaine arrived in 1969. Norseman stayed because he liked it, liked everything about it. He fed off the killing. When the war ended, interested parties in the government made sure it was still there for him. Last McCracken had heard, he and a small elite troop he was running were handling deep cover, strictly top drawer stuff. They were little more than hired killers, but they did their job exceptionally well.

So what was Ben Norseman doing down here? What “usual stuff” had brought him down to Brazil?

“Hey, asshole, our styles are more alike than different. I’ve been keeping up with ya. Heard about what you pulled off in Tehran. Damn good work. You get a mind to it, you know there’s always a place in my bunch.”

“Sorry, Ben. Kicking kittens and steering old ladies into moving traffic was never my cup of tea.”

Norseman’s lips puckered and the veins bulged in his knobby neck. “Anytime you want to settle what we’ve got between us, just let me know.”

“Now would suit me fine. I’d ask you to step outside, but I’m afraid you might use a couple of kids for a shield.”

The bigger man backed off a bit. “I’m on business, like I said. I wasn’t, the two of us could dance right now.” Norseman came close enough for Blaine to smell the spearmint gum on his breath. “Our day’s coming, McCrackenballs. High time somebody gave yours a squeeze. Show you what it feels like.”

“Your hands aren’t big enough, Ben,” Blaine said, and backed slightly away. He waited to see if Norseman was going to move on him. When he didn’t, McCracken slid toward the front desk. “Be seeing ya.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

McCracken watched Norseman move through the hotel doors and approach a white van parked directly outside. Only the driver was visible, but Blaine knew there would be another five of Ben Norseman’s men in the back. Killing machines born too late for Nam and making up for it now, all trained and hardened in the image of their fearless leader. Blaine was thankful for the fact that whatever they were down here for had nothing to do with him. If it had, Norseman never would have initiated the conversation. He was too dumb to play stupid, but he was as fearsome a soldier as Blaine had ever known.

McCracken had other things on his mind now in any event. Johnny Wareagle had supplied the precise location of his cell, along with all the information he had been able to gather about the jail complex itself. Blaine wasn’t worried. This wasn’t a prison, after all, it was a regular jail. Though well fortified, people came and went regularly, and there wasn’t a lot of perimeter security.

He would still require explosives to get the job done, but elaborate charges were a luxury he would have to do without, which left him with no choice other than to utilize those of a homemade variety. A brief discussion in English with the hotel concierge provided him with the locations of area stores where the required supplies might be obtained. After a quick shower and lunch, he was off with shopping list in hand.

It took all of two hours to obtain the goods he needed. Purchases from a pair of markets, a hardware store, and the toy section of a large department store filled his needs admirably. Just before four o’clock, he and his four shopping bags returned to the Caesar Park for the more difficult task of assembling the charges.

Blaine emptied the contents of his shopping bags onto the large single bed and separated them into four piles. His first task was to combine all of the packages of children’s clay he had bought into a single lump and then work the heavy steel roofing nails into the mass by pushing, sliding, and squeezing. The single irregular bulk then had to be separated into the proper shapes, as equally symmetrical as he could manage with only his eyes to guide him. Next he combined his store-bought chemicals and cleaners in the proper proportions, using three standard hotel ice buckets as pots. When this was completed, he poured the contents of all three into the plugged sink. Then he began easing the steel-laiden clay shapes in under the surface, one at a time.

It took nearly two minutes for each to absorb the proper amount of liquid. Blaine set the finished products to dry on towels laid over the double bed and turned his attention to the timing devices. He much preferred working with transmitter detonated charges in such cases, but no such luck—or technology—here. He’d have to rely on the guts of simple travel clocks, all wired to the same moment. The alarm activator would serve as the trigger, set with intervals of just seconds between each blast to maximize confusion.

The only remaining problem was how to gain swift access to
Casa do Diabo
with minimal risk of drawing attention to himself once the charges were set. And the answer occurred to him as he gazed over his balcony at the homeless drunks being carted away by the São Paulo police.

“Come on now! Get a move on!”

The parade of drunks flowed toward the jail door in a wavering stream. In the back, inevitably, a single laggard needed to be prodded on by one of the São Paulo policemen. In the front, just as inevitably, one would stagger and force those behind him to smack together like bumper cars in an amusement park.

“You there, where do you think you’re going?”

Blaine McCracken was lumbering about at the periphery of the small mass, the illusion created that he had once been a part of it and was seeking to separate himself. He felt a pair of angry hands grasp him at the shoulders and shove him sideways, to be absorbed by the group.

“Bastard!” exclaimed the officer.

The pace and surface of São Paulo cannot hide the truth of the awesome poverty and unemployment that fills the city. Many of Brazil’s poor have flocked there in search of what the countryside failed to give them, only to find that the city offers them no better. Accordingly, the drinking problem in the poorer sections of São Paulo and its outskirts is extreme. When confined, the problem is generally ignored. But every night, drunkards venture into the more respectable downtown sectors and are hauled away en masse to sleep off their troubles in the nearest jail.

Casa do Diabo.

The roundups started midevening and continued through the night, providing Blaine with the simplest means to enter the building unnoticed. He had pulled his stolen Ford off the road a quarter-mile from the jail and abandoned it. By a stroke of fortune, he discovered a main power junction on top of a pole halfway to the jail, and planted his first charge there before pressing on. He reached the fence that enclosed the complex and chose the darkest spot to make his climb. He used wire cutters to strip away the barbed wire at the top, then dropped effortlessly to the ground, his sack fastened tight to his back.

He stayed low and crept to the asphalt parking lot at the building’s front. With uncharacteristic deliberateness he approached various cars in the lot and worked into place the remaining dozen homemade explosives he had fashioned that day. The best place to plant them was not near the fuel tank or engine, but beneath the fuel line itself. That way, when detonation came, the fumes would ignite and spread the fury throughout the engine.

Starting at midnight. Show time.

McCracken spread his work throughout the lot instead of focusing in a single sector. Unlike the plastic explosives he was more used to dealing with, his children’s clay facsimiles did not readily adhere to the vehicles’ steel undersides. A roll of duct tape was necessary, and he was careful to make sure the timing mechanism was wedged home tight and set before pressing on.

When midnight came, the explosive clay would spew its roofing nail contents outward and puncture the steel about it. The sheer force would then join the fumes and available gas in the line to create a fireball where a car had been just seconds before. Lots of noise and light. Those inside the jail would think they were under attack.

The parade of drunks was mounting the steps now. Blaine let himself be swept up in the flow, eyes kept low and shoulders hunched. He had covered his clothes with dirt and cheap rum for the desired effect. His thick hair was disheveled and pulled down over his forehead. He had disarranged his beard back at the hotel to give it an equally unkempt look. But he kept his head down on the chance one of the policemen might notice his piercing black eyes. A dead giveaway to a man with experience, a reason for suspicion for a man without.

Once inside the building, the mass did not pause at the front desk for booking. In fact, that station was bypassed altogether in favor of a door leading to the basement section of
Casa do Diabo.
The officer at the front jammed a key into the lock and then swung it open. A second officer led the way; when all the arrested drunks were through it, the first rebolted the door and brought up the rear.

Just two to overcome. Blaine couldn’t have asked for any better luck.

The staircase was dank and cold, lit only by a single bulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling. The mass walked pressed against the side wall for balance. The descent leveled into a wide hall that was more hard-packed dirt than surface stone. Blaine could hear the whimpers and wails of those already incarcerated up ahead. The smell of urine and sweat grew stronger by the step. The raw night dampness down in the jail’s bowels was bone-chilling, the walls shiny with accumulated moisture and layered with patches of green mildew.

When he could see the cells flickering in the dim light ahead, McCracken began to ease his way forward through the drunks. Just six to pass by before reaching the lead officer. He moved gently, unnoticeably, quickened his pace at the last to bring the officer into range. Cells were clearly in view now, hands stretched between the bars, angry or desperate pleas shouted outward in Portuguese.

Blaine threw himself into a lunging stagger that engulfed the lead officer’s legs and took him down. The whole throng reeled backward in a whiplash effect, some tumbling.

The officer was in the process of shouting out when McCracken’s iron fingers found his throat to silence him. With no time to be subtle, he slammed the man’s head against the hard floor to knock him out. The officer at the rear was storming forward by this point. He struck a meaty hand downward to yank McCracken up. Blaine let him, went with the motion, and came up with fists flying. The first blow to the solar plexus doubled the officer over with a violent expulsion of breath. The man was still slumping when Blaine slammed a knee under his chin. Impact lifted the officer off his feet; he slumped down against steel bars infested with curious hands forcing their way out toward him.

The drunks still awake in the cells had gone quiet for the brief duration of Blaine’s work, but now were snouting and cheering as if they expected to be freed. The new lot that had shielded him had begun to back their way down the rank corridor when McCracken showed the gun he’d lifted off the first guard. In his other hand was a wad of keys.

The drunks slowed, then halted, disappointment obvious on their features. Blaine opened the less crowded of the two cells and herded them in. His original plan had been to throw the downed officers in here as well, but the mad eyes of the occupants dictated otherwise. There was a third cell, unoccupied for the moment, and he quickly dragged them into it after locating the proper key. Stripping the clothes off the larger of the two officers and donning them in place of his own was next on the list. The drunks had bunched close together in both cells to capture angles that let them watch. Those with the best view cheered Blaine when he stripped off his clothes and booed him when he put the guard’s on instead. By far the loudest reaction he got came when he exited the third cell tightening his gun belt and moved back down the corridor. The drunks shouted their anger at his not releasing them, then busied themselves with seeing if they could probe through the bars of the third cell to find purchase on the downed policemen.