“The same reason there aren’t any cameras in the tunnels.” Gabriel stops for a moment, steps out from the theater a couple of steps, into the sunlight, looking around. The sun beats down so hard it feels like his hair is aflame. “The cameras are for the guests, not the Friends.”
“The Friends?”
“Employees. Staff.”
Hendar chuckles, says, in Russian, “Fucking Americans.”
“Keep it in English,” Gabriel snaps. “Tell Alpha Two to move into camera range. We need to see them.”
“Understood.”
“Just two guys,” Betsy says, stepping up beside him and flicking his butt away. “You’re too tense. Just two guys, we can take them.”
Gabriel gives him a look that says exactly what he thinks of this unsolicited opinion. Betsy shrugs.
“We may have a problem,” Hendar says slowly.
“What?”
“Second Alpha element…they’re not responding.”
Immediately, Gabriel starts running, cutting between the Wilson Restaurant and the Sweets Emporium, Betsy close on his heels. “Get them on radio!”
“That’s what I’m fucking trying to do!”
Betsy stays close at his heels, following as Gabriel vaults the turnstiles at Cannonball Plunge, runs alongside the waterfall, feels its spray on his skin, feels the water evaporate almost instantly. Cuts between two concession stands, submachine gun in his hands, legs pumping. Hendar is silent in his ear, the whole park silent, and he realizes he hasn’t heard gunfire, no shots, and for a moment he can allow himself to believe this is just a coms error, a clusterfuck breakdown. It could be perfectly innocent, if innocence still manages to reside anywhere within WilsonVille.
This doesn’t have to belong to Jonathan Bell.
Then he hears the gunfire, the reports rolling through the park, distant, its direction impossible to determine. But he knows where it’s coming from, he knows where it has to be. Just as he knows the source, and the reason.
“Still no response,” Hendar reports. “Nothing, not a thing-”
“Watch the perimeter!” He’s rounding the cluster of giant mushrooms that house the toilets between the two live animal shows, realizes he doesn’t know which one he’s heading for. “Where are they? Exactly!”
“The animal show, they’re-”
“There are two of them!”
Hendar says “Shit” in Russian, shouts to Gordo. There’s another battery of shots, this time quicker, a three-round burst, and Gabriel immediately cups one of his ears, closes his eyes. A breath later, a single report, and he thinks it’s south of where he’s standing now. Sets off again as Hendar comes back, still no idea where, why the hell aren’t there cameras backstage?
“Watch the perimeter,” Gabriel says. “Watch the fucking perimeter, I don’t want any more surprises!”
Then he’s threading the chain-marked queue at Wild World, half spinning as he comes through the entrance at the side of the amphitheater. He pauses here, presses himself against the wall just outside the seats. Benches rise along one side of the bowl, allowing an unobstructed view of the stage below. There’s no movement, no motion that he can see. With his left hand, Gabriel signals to Betsy, orders him to move around to the other side, to take a flanking position. He hears an echo, faint, the source lost in the acoustics of the amphitheater; metal clanging on metal, then nothing more.
“Tell me you have something,” Gabriel hisses to his radio. His hands are perspiring around the submachine gun, and he shifts his grip, wipes his palms against his T-shirt. “Tell me you have something.”
“Nothing, no movement.”
Across the bowl, opposite him, Gabriel sees Betsy raise a hand in signal, in position. He raises a fist in response, indicates the direction he wants Betsy to take. Settles his grip on the submachine gun, begins to advance in parallel, both men working their way down the aisle, toward the stage. Closing, he catches the scent of the animals, hears them in the distance. The radios have gone silent, no traffic, and Gabriel feels the same adrenaline apprehension he would feel on patrol, in the dust and scrub. Search and destroy, and the environs have changed, but he realizes the mission is the same.
They flank the stage, holding at the stairs on either side for a moment, each of them again checking their surroundings, listening and looking. Only the sound of the animals, and even they seem subdued now. Another exchange of hand signals, and together they mount, turn, weapons raised, advancing to the scrim, splitting off at the wings, and still there’s no one and nothing, and they come around into the backstage together, overlooking the depressed holding area, the curtained cages, and Gabriel knows they’re too late.
One dead man on his back, with a dead snake to keep him company. No weapon, no radio. Parted curtains and an open, empty cage. Broken glass and another body, likewise missing his gear. A jaguar with a bloodied muzzle, watching them with yellow eyes as it lies beside the torn form of a gazelle.
“Fuck,” Betsy says.
Gabriel pulls his radio. “Anything?” he asks Hendar.
Hendar doesn’t respond.
“Delta One, respond,” Gabriel says.
Dead air.
Betsy is looking at him.
“Coms check,” Gabriel says. “Alpha One, respond.”
“I have you,” Vladimir answers. “Loud and clear.”
“Stand by. Delta One, respond.”
And nothing.
“Could be power, maybe?” Betsy says. “They would cut the power to the park, right?”
“Park’s on its own generators.” Gabriel shakes his head. If this was a bank, something else, sure, the authorities would have cut the power long ago. But WilsonVille can’t afford a power outage, not when hundreds of people may be on roller coasters and inside haunted houses when a blackout occurs. WilsonVille has its own power.
Hendar isn’t responding, and it’s not because coms have gone down.
Then the phone in his pocket begins to vibrate, and Gabriel Fuller knows the Uzbek is calling.
And he doesn’t know what to tell him.
Chapter Twenty-one
Matthew Marcelin is back from his second press conference, gulping water from a bottle while one of his assistants tries to apply another powdering of makeup in preparation for his third. Looking past his shoulder to the television, Ruiz sees the man again, standing outside and in front of this same building, behind a WE! podium. The volume is muted, but his concern and his competence are both loud.
“Trouble,” Wallford tells Ruiz. “Incoming.”
Marcelin’s office has become, to Ruiz, the war room, and to Matthew Marcelin, he imagines, the crisis management center. Junior executives and personal aides scurry in and out, the flat-screen monitor on the wall now fixed on one of the cable news networks, more telephones than people, and more noise than Ruiz would like. Warlock in his ear, giving him the bullet: two more Tangos down, Chaindragger and Angel have secured the command post, and he is escorting the hostages through the tunnels for evac.
And the ribbon on the package.
“They have my daughter,” Bell says.
“I have the rest of your unit joining me, fifteen minutes,” Ruiz says, watching as Eric Porter enters the room. Coming up on four hours since the park was taken, this is the first time Ruiz has seen the director of park and resort safety, and the part of him not evaluating just how compromised his team leader has now become has to wonder just what the hell Porter has been doing in that time, and where exactly he’s been doing it. There’s a flush to Porter’s cheeks, a sheen of sweat, and maybe it’s the forty pounds of extra meat the man carries on his frame, and maybe it’s the stress, but Ruiz wonders if he’ll be smelling whiskey on Porter’s breath in just another few seconds.
“They have my daughter, Colonel,” Bell says again. “I am securing my wife in the command post, and then I am locating my daughter.”
“That is ill-advised, Master Sergeant. Hold for the rest of your team, we will move to free all the hostages together.”