“They already took down four,” Ruiz says. “Too late for that.”
“You heard what he said.”
“I heard what was broadcast, yes.”
“They’ll get the hostages killed,” Marcelin repeats.
“If there even are hostages,” Wallford says. “We have no confirmation.”
“You can’t take that risk! I can’t take that risk!”
“The demands are bullshit, pardon me, Mr. Marcelin,” Ruiz says. “If the time frame was longer, I would accept it as plausible. As it stands, twelve hours is impossible, and whoever put this together, whoever had the wherewithal and technical expertise to mount this operation, to spoof the botulinum attack, they have to know that.”
Marcelin meets Ruiz’s gaze. “Then they have the technical expertise to hide a dirty bomb in my park, too, Colonel.”
“In which case,” Ruiz says, “my two shooters are the only people who can make certain that device, if it exists, never goes off.”
“If you’re wrong-”
“If he’s wrong, we are thoroughly and completely fucked,” Wallford says. “And that’s all there is to say about that.”
Chapter Fifteen
Compared to a nuclear device, even a pocket nuke, a dirty bomb is still heavy, and this means Gabriel Fuller is lugging serious weight into the heart of WilsonVille. He’s on coms from the command post, listening to the updates from Hendar, and when the call comes that one of his teams has met the deputy director of park safety, Jonathan Bell, with a group of three kids and one Friend, he’s almost relieved.
“Pick him up,” he tells Hendar. It’s not because the man’s management, though that may prove useful. It’s not because, apparently, Jonathan Bell killed Stripe with his bare hands and then got out of the building without them noticing, though that marks him as far more dangerous than Gabriel had any reason to believe WilsonVille security might be. It’s not even because Gabriel is angry at Jonathan Bell for bringing Dana into the park today, something he knows is irrational yet feels nonetheless.
It’s none of those things, and all of them, and the feeling he had when looking down at Stripe’s corpse. This is going to be trouble. This man, he’s going to make things hard.
When he hears the gunshots, then, he knows. As the echo fades in the park, before Hendar is squawking into his radio, Gabriel Fuller knows. He was right.
“Fuck!” Hendar says. “Fuck, that guy, he and another one, they just took down Bravo.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re splitting up, he and another guy, some black guy, they’re heading west, north of the river. The rest of them are running for the gate, ten of them. I can pull from Charlie to intercept.”
“How many are we holding?”
“Alpha and Charlie have reported. Holding twenty-seven.”
“Negative.”
“Say again?”
“Negative. Charlie proceeds as ordered, let the ones heading for the gate go.” Gabriel hops down from the platform beside the parked roller-coaster cars. The shots came from the east, and where he’s standing, he can just catch a glimpse of the fleeing hostages before they vanish from sight. He turns northward, but rides and buildings are blocking his view, and even if they weren’t, the foliage bordering the Timeless River would prevent him from seeing anything more. He moves to the control booth for the ride. “Track the other two, I want to know where they go. Are they leaving?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Track them. Keep me posted.”
“On it.”
Gabriel stows his radio, stares down at the control panel for the coaster. It’s idiotproof, a battery of meters and monitors reading the status of each train of cars, their speed and positions, a handful of switches and one lever to control release and pace and movement. One large red button, marked for emergency stop. He reaches for the lever, ready to release the first train, then pauses, goes for his phone instead.
The Uzbek is answering before the first ring has sounded. “Status?”
“We have a problem,” Gabriel says. “We have hostiles in the park, two of them.”
“Do you indeed?”
Something in the Uzbek’s tone makes Gabriel hesitate. “They just took down Bravo element.”
“You’ve placed the device?”
“I’m about to run it up.”
“How many hostages are you holding?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Break them up into smaller groups. Pick one, put a bullet in his head, and dump the body outside.”
“We separate the groups, I’ll have to break up the elements.”
“I am fully aware of what it means. Give the order, and then take who you need and solve your other problem.”
Gabriel doesn’t speak. Solving his other problem-he understands that, he has no problem with that. There’s no choice, and this Jonathan Bell and whoever is with him, they’ve got to be stopped before they can do more damage to the operation. But shooting a hostage, he can’t help it, he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to do it.
“Matias? Is there a problem?”
“The hostages, they’re mostly women and children.”
“That is not a problem. That is a benefit.”
The Uzbek hangs up.
Chapter Sixteen
There are fourteen of them in here, not counting the men with the guns.
There’s Mom and Dana and the rest of the class, and a half dozen other people-three kids and their parents and someone dressed as Xi-Xi, the panda that Lilac, Lily, and Lavender made friends with when they visited China. All of them are sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, and everyone is scared, though Mom and Dana are maybe doing the best at trying to hide it.
Athena can tell, though. She would be able to tell anyway, even if her mom wasn’t holding her hand so tight and so hard that it hurts.
It’s hot in here, too, no air-conditioning, even though there’s this big machine that’s been vibrating nonstop since they got here. They’re inside Hendar’s Lair, back in the Wild World, where they’d started the day, though Athena and the others hadn’t actually gone on this ride. It’s supposed to be a kind of interactive haunted house, except it’s not a house but a cave, and it’s not even really a cave because it’s Hendar’s Lair, which means it’s decorated for some reason like a cross between an Arabian prince’s tent and an old dungeon.
The man who shot Mr. Howe led them in here, just pushed the Friends Only door open and then the three other men with their duffel bags filled with guns herded them all inside. They came in through the back, Athena thinks, past all these crates and boxes of equipment and supplies, and then into the heart of the ride, where Hendar’s got his bedroom with all the gleaming treasure and silks and so on. Up close, she can see that the glittering treasure is Mylar and glass, and the silks are made of plastic.
They all had to stand in a line then, and the man who shot Mr. Howe searched them while the others pointed their guns. He took wallets and purses and bags but he didn’t seem to care about the money, only cell phones. He wasn’t nice about it, and Athena thinks he likes them being scared of him.
When he searched Mom, Mom tried talking to him. She saw her lips, knew she was trying to explain that Athena and Joel and Leon and Lynne and Gail and Miguel, that all of them were deaf. Dana tried, too, but whatever the man who shot Mr. Howe said in return made them all stop speaking. He finished searching Mom and pushed her, pointed to a space on the floor, and Athena found herself moving forward without thinking about it to push him back, but Dana caught her arm. Mom just shook her head, sitting where she’d fallen by the big fake bed that isn’t as soft as a real bed should be.
Then the man who shot Mr. Howe gestured to the bed, and he must’ve said something, because the other three with guns laughed. He stepped closer to Athena, and Dana still had hold of her arm, and her fingers tightened on it. Athena didn’t look away, trying to see this man’s eyes behind the mask, but the light inside this little cave and the glass or plastic or whatever it is that covers his eyes made it impossible. She could feel her heart racing and she knew she was scared, but she was angry, too, and she wouldn’t look away. Then he put his hands on her, to search her, and they weren’t kind, and he touched her in places that she’d never let anyone touch her before. When he put a hand between her legs, he must have said something else, because Dana moved, then, just enough that Athena could read her lips.