Except that isn’t what happened, because as soon as they stepped off of the elevator the whole routine pattern of the job changed.
There was no cop in the hall.
There was only blood.
“Shit,” gasped Bunny as he dropped the heavy case and went for his gun. Top beat him to the draw.
The hall was empty. They pivoted to cover it, up and down, but aside from the elevator there was only a janitor’s closet, the fire stairs, and the double door to San Pedro’s office.
The closet door stood open, the supplies spilled out onto the floor in a tangle of mops, brooms, an overturned wheeled bucket, burst bottles of cleaning fluid, ruptured cans of spray polish, and a roll of black plastic trash bags that was twisted across the floor like the shed skin of some dark snake.
Bunny immediately ran down to the other end of the hall to check the fire stairs while Top crouched and kept his weapon trained on the doors to the lab. One door was closed, the other was ajar. When Bunny returned, shaking his head to indicate that the stairs were clear, Top nodded to the open office door. There was a clear handprint painted in bright red. A line of blood ran slowly down from it. The two men exchanged a brief, knowing glance. Blood is thick and clots quickly. For it still to be wet enough to crawl down the door meant that this was new.
It meant that this was still happening.
Top gave a curt nod and Bunny immediately shifted to flank the door. There were a few different ways to play this. Go in high and low and shoot the first thing that didn’t look kosher. Go in fast and quiet and let the situation dictate what happened next. Or stay in the relative safety of the hall, identify themselves as federal officers, and demand that whoever was in there lay down their weapons and cooperate with the arrest.
Those were all methods Top and Bunny had used many times.
Sometimes a situation was so thoroughly in motion that they didn’t get to call the play.
Like now.
The door opened and a man stood there. A medium-tall white man dressed almost identically to them. He held a weapon in his left hand. Not a Glock like Bunny or a Sig Sauer like Top.
This was a stubby pistol with three converging metal spikes at the business end. No open barrel. Not even something to fire flachettes like a Taser. It was not that kind of weapon, and both DMS agents recognized it at once. It terrified them both as much as it made them furious.
“Federal officers. Drop your weapon!” yelled Bunny, his own pointed center mass at the man. “Do it now or I will kill you.”
The man smiled at them.
He pulled the trigger of his strange little gun.
It made an odd little sound.
TOK!
The air shimmered and the wall behind Top and Bunny exploded.
INTERLUDE TWENTY
Prospero wondered what it would be like to die.
It was coming.
He didn’t fear the pain. His body felt like it was wrapped in barbed wire. Those dogs… their teeth…
God.
They kept biting even while he was stabbing them to death.
Damn dogs.
It hurt so bad.
The fires, though… that had been worse. Smart as he was, it never occurred to him that running uphill from a burning building was a stupid idea. The winds were blowing steadily from the south and the lawn burned, then the shrubs, and then the trees. Prospero could have outrun it if not for the damn dogs.
Was it a blessing that it had started to rain? Was that a gift from his god? Or was that a punishment, extinguishing the flames so that he could suffer longer?
He did not know and that lack of knowledge screamed in his head.
Now he crawled through the grass and left a trail that glistened like the mucus of a great slug. The slime looked black in the moonlight and was only red when another part of the building collapsed and sent a pillar of fire into the air.
Prospero prayed to his god.
He prayed to the dreaming god who slept beneath the waves.
He begged his god to wake, to stretch out a mighty hand and bring him home. God wouldn’t need a machine to do that. It was only the small, the weak, and the helpless ones like Prospero who needed a doorway. Gods didn’t need anything.
He prayed for salvation. He prayed that God or one of his servants would answer his prayers.
“Please,” he begged as he crawled.
In the woods behind him the sergeants began yelling. They’d found the dogs.
They would be coming soon.
Prospero crawled faster.
Then he heard a sound and froze. Not behind him. This was a soft noise as a foot stepped down on the thick grass. Prospero’s heart sank as he raised his head and looked up, looked ahead.
There, between him and the road, was a pair of heavy old willows, one leaning left, the other leaning right, each one pulled into ogre shapes by their age and ponderous weight. Beyond them was the black ribbon of the road.
And there, idling with its lights off, was a car. The driver’s door was open.
Prospero held his breath and tried not to make a sound. Was this one of the sergeants come up the side road to head him off? What would happen? Would it be more kicks, or more of the cattle prods? Would it be a knife or a bullet?
The knife Prospero had brought with him from the school was back there somewhere, stuck in the second dog’s throat, wedged into bone.
There was a second soft noise and a piece of shadow detached itself from the black trunk of the left-hand tree. It moved forward, becoming man shaped. Was there a gun in his hand?
The figure came and stood over him.
“Prospero,” he said. A quiet voice. Cultured. Foreign?
The boy raised a bloody hand, half to ward off a blow and half to beg for help.
“Please…,” gasped the dying boy.
“Prospero,” said the man. Sure now. Prospero could see the flash of a smile. Bright white teeth. Then the figure squatted down and lifted him as easily as if he weighed nothing. No grunt of effort. Nothing.
The boy clutched the man’s dark shirt. “Did he send you? Are you one of his angels?”
The man just smiled and carried the boy to the car.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
So, yeah, kick me while I’m down. Kick me, stomp on me, park your car on me.
Church said nothing as it all sank in. I mean, on one hand, hooray. Bolton is the real deal. All those wins he racked up in the field, all of the deep and crucial intel he’s obtained since then. Still my hero, but at that exact moment I would have gladly chopped him into cat treats and fed him to Church’s cat.
“Well,” I said, “I’m back now. It’s going to get pretty chummy if we’re both trying to squeeze our asses into my chair.”