The Tango dies, blood pouring out of him and down Jad Bell’s arm. He goes to dead weight, and Bell wants to stop then, wants to stop there, hurting and breathless and aching, knows he can’t.
Because there’s one more Tango, and he thinks there’s Amy, too, thinks he can hear her voice calling for him.
He hears the cobra warning him again, angry, and Bell shoves the dead man off him, toward the snake, struggles to his knees. More broken glass on the ground and no weapons but for the knife on his person, and he’s about to go for that when the cobra rises, swaying, swings toward the curtains that are suddenly sweeping apart, reacting to the sudden motion. The remaining Tango, another MP5K, searching, seeing them.
In one move, Bell grabs the cobra above the tail, flings the snake at the Tango even as the creature tries to arch, to snap back at his hand. Flies through the air, a writhing length of cord, the Tango panics. His weapon hits the ground, hands coming up, trying to shield and catch and backpedal all at once, through the curtains. Bell dives, finds the submachine gun with both hands, sliding forward, beneath the edge of the curtain. Sights and fires, a three-round burst that lands groin, gut, thorax.
The remaining Tango drops, still holding the cobra, the snake’s fangs latched at the man’s collar, pumping venom into a corpse. Bell thumbs the selector down, aims, and takes its head with a bullet.
There is an aching, awful silence, broken at first by his ragged breathing.
He hears Amy.
“Jad! Jad! God, please, Jad! Answer me!”
Bell knows what she’s going to say next. Knew it the moment he saw her, but didn’t have the time to realize it. What has to be, because she’s here, knows it the same way he knows that these two Tangos thought putting the hostages in the gazelle’s cage, and putting the gazelle in with one of the jaguars, made perfect sense.
Makes perfect sense.
“Oh, God, Jad.” Amy, hidden from view, and her voice, trying to stay steady even as the words themselves betray her. “They have our baby, Jad. They have Athena.”
Chapter Twenty
When they lost them at Valiant Keep, Gabriel considered going into the tunnels in pursuit, but he didn’t consider it for long. He’d spent too much time beneath WilsonVille already, and the thought of a gunfight down there wasn’t just stupid, it was suicidal. He’d either end up playing cat and mouse, or pouring his people into a fatal funnel. Less than three hours into the operation already, and he’d lost five of his men. He didn’t want to spend any more of them unless he was certain of the result. Army tactics: engage the enemy on your terms and your grounds, pick your battle.
Fighting fair gets you killed. So you don’t fight fair.
That meant waiting, hard to do already, harder still after he’d heard the gunshot, after he knew that one of the hostages had been killed. He was making his way back to the command post, Hendar still on coms, Gordo and Betsy still on surveillance, watching for a sign of Jonathan Bell and his friend, but after the execution, Gabriel had to ask.
“Who was it?”
“Some woman,” Hendar said. “Dressed like one of those bears, you know, from China?”
“Xi-Xi.”
“Whatever.”
Whatever, Gabriel thought. Whatever.
And then he thought that maybe he knew this Xi-Xi, maybe they had exchanged words in some changing area, or backstage at some show. Shared a joke, a drink of water, maybe bitched about management, and he stopped that line of thought as quickly as he could.
Not quickly enough.
Not knowing where Jonathan Bell might emerge, Gabriel has Betsy join him outside Dawg Days Theatre. He’d have preferred to draw another shooter off one of the remaining teams, thinks he can probably afford to do it, but he doesn’t like the idea of leaving any of the hostages under weak guard, especially now that Alpha and Charlie have been broken into separate elements. Up until now, he’s kept the faith in the Uzbek’s plan, trusting that both he and the Shadow Man know what they’re doing, that there is a purpose to everything they have asked Gabriel to do.
Now, for the first time, Gabriel Fuller is beginning to have doubts. Seventeen men to take and hold the park? A dirty bomb that might or might not be real, that might or might not be armed? Almost thirty hostages, but no orders to ransom or release them, and one of them already murdered for display?
It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. He doesn’t understand.
And the nagging, persistent, and now growing fear that the egress plan isn’t much of a plan at all. That despite the Uzbek’s assurances that Gabriel is too valuable to leave to die here in WilsonVille, his escape is anything but assured.
All these things, and this variable, this Jonathan Bell and his friend in the Star System Alliance Defense coveralls. Friends and Management, bullshit. They were in the park, they were armed, they took down Bravo before any of Gabriel’s own people could fire a shot. That means only one thing.
That means someone knew they were coming.
There was never supposed to be opposition inside the park. All the things they accounted for, all the details they covered, and they never considered opposition within the park, because that was never, ever, supposed to happen. They were to clear the park, hold it, use the hostages as a deterrent. They were to place the device, not arm it. They were to take the command post to monitor any approach to WilsonVille, any effort to breach the walls, and they were to shoot dead anyone who got too close. Then they were to wait until the Uzbek contacted Gabriel to say their demands had been met and to tell him to prepare the egress.
Thus far, Gabriel has done everything right, everything the Uzbek ordered. He’s done everything right.
But it feels like it’s all going wrong.
The only thing to do, then, is to kill Jonathan Bell and his Star System mechanic friend, and hope that puts the plan back on track. But he’s down five men, and he can’t spare any from the hostage groups, so finally he orders Betsy to join him, and tells himself that, when the time comes, they’ll have the element of surprise.
Don’t fight fair, Gabriel Fuller reminds himself. Fight to win.
They wait in the foyer of the theater. Betsy has brought the submachine gun that Stripe was using, has one of his own. Gabriel watches as the other man leans back against the wall, beneath a painting of Willis Wilson with his arms spread wide and welcoming, pulls a pack of cigarettes from a pocket, and knocks one free. Betsy lights it, then offers the pack to Gabriel, who just shakes his head, thinking that there’s no smoking allowed in the park.
He keys his radio. “Any movement?”
“Nothing. No sign of him or the other one anywhere.”
“Check the teams. I want their status.”
“Hold on.”
Betsy flicks ash onto the royal blue carpet, squints out the open doors at Town Square, sunlight kicking back off the bronze heads of Gordo, Betsy, and Pooch, where their statues stand at the heart of Wilson Town. Gabriel shifts the submachine gun in his hands, looking down at the weapon, not quite seeing it. It was the same when he was in Afghanistan. The waiting is always the worst.
“Charlie has broken into two groups,” Hendar says. “Six and seven hostages each. Alpha’s the same. Have three of the elements on camera as well, so we can monitor.”
“Why only three?”
“Alpha Two, the one that took the panda, they’re holding their group in one of the backstage areas of some animal show, out of camera. Why the fuck aren’t there any cameras backstage?”