Cold Warriors (37 page)

He moved deeper inside the building, drawing the rifle from his back to join the Beretta in his hand. Now that he'd notched up his first kill he didn't have much time left and he had to make it count. He removed the silencer from the Beretta's barrel, wanting to make a noise now - wanting to be heard.

Classroom 4B was on the second floor. As he took the stairs two at a time he realised he felt weightless. Was this the elation he'd been waiting for? It hadn't occurred to him that happiness was something so foreign he might not recognise it if he felt it.

A kid scampered towards him as he rounded the second curve of the stairs. No one he recognised, some jock senior with a thick neck and dumb eyes. They widened when the boy caught sight of the semi-automatic in his hand.

He took a moment to savour the raw fear in the jock's face and then he fired. The trigger was lighter than he'd realised and a hail of bullets shattered the silence before he released the pressure. The senior's body danced and jerked, just like in the movies.

When the bullets stopped the screams started. A door to his left opened then quickly slammed and he knew that the cops would be called very soon.

But not soon enough. There was the wooden door to 4B, pitted at the bottom where generations of feet had kicked it open. He added his own toe print, a little memento of his existence that would be lost amidst the bigger legacy he was leaving behind.

It was Mr Skeet's class. He'd planned it that way. Skeet had once taken him aside and told him that he had a real talent for physics. He'd asked if there were problems at home, if there was anything he wanted to talk about.

There were no problems at home, that
was
the problem. There was only the destructive blandness of it all.

Mr Skeet was the first to die. Then ten more in the first wild volley of bullets. He'd read about other school shootings, and the thing that had shocked him was the survival rate. It seemed to him those other guys just hadn't done their research. But he'd read an airport thriller about Navy SEALs once and he knew they never took a kill for granted.

He didn't either. Brittany was bleeding from a wound in her shoulder. It seeped a rich dark blood through the fingers she curled protectively against it. When he took a step towards her she said his name and he wondered how she recognised him behind the mask. But he found it gratifying that she did. He
was
memorable - hell, he was unforgettable. He winked at her as he rested the barrel of the gun against her ear and pulled the trigger.

It became almost mechanical after that, each kill a little less of a high and more of a chore, like the fourth hit of X you took when the pleasure was gone and you were just looking for the energy to go on.

When he'd finished there was blood
everywhere
. He placed himself in the middle of it, feet planted in the deepest pool. He lifted a hand to his mask, considered lifting it. But no, the crime-scene photos would be so much more memorable if he was still wearing it. The media would love it. They'd fucking eat it up.

The barrel of the gun was scalding as he rested it against his temple. All that heat from the bullets, the transformed kinetic energy. That was something he'd learned in Mr Skeet's class. He took a deep, final breath as his eyes slid shut.

They snapped open again when he heard the footstep behind him. His finger tightened on the trigger of his second weapon as he spun, but the chamber clicked empty and the man just smiled.

For a moment he thought this must be his father. The shape of the face was the same, and the wide hazel eyes. But this man was younger, and his father had never worn quite that knowing, cynically amused expression.

The man nodded at the gun in his other hand, the one still pointed at his own temple.

"If you knew where you were going," he said, "you wouldn't be in such a hurry to get there."

The man was waiting for Alex outside the front door of the school. She walked right past him into the bitterly cold Manhattan morning, cellphone pressed to her ear as she made an appointment with her manicurist, only for him to grab her by the wrist and swing her round to face him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said, jerking her arm futilely in his grasp. "And while we're on the subject, who the hell do you think you are?"

He was tall, dark-haired, Native American, a quality of stillness about him so extreme it was hard to tell if he was even breathing. "I'm an agent of the federal government, Miss Keve," he said. "And to answer your first question, I'm arresting you. I can make it more of a showdown if you like. Miranda rights, handcuffs. Or you could just come quietly."

She was so shocked that she let him pull her unresisting down the broad steps and past the stunted, winter-bald oak trees to the car park out front. It was only when she saw Jenna leaning against her Porsche, eyes unreadable behind dark glasses as she waited for her ride home, that Alex returned to her senses. She dug in her heels, skidding a few inches against the sidewalk before pulling him to a halt.

"Not so fast, Agent Orange," she said. "How about you show me some ID? And how about I get my constitutionally mandated phone call and use to it call my dad? Who, by the way, is a senior 9th circuit judge, in case no one mentioned that to you."

He raised an eyebrow, unperturbed. "Have it your way, kid. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law -" He pitched his voice loud enough to carry across the entire car park. Jenna's head jerked up at the sound, expression registering shock when she caught sight of Alex.

"Shut up!" Alex hissed. "I'm coming, OK - just shut the fuck up."

The rest of the walk passed in silence, but he didn't release her wrist and she felt eyes on her, boring into the back of her head. Kids at West Village High didn't get arrested. It just wasn't that sort of school.

Alex waited until she was inside his black Impala before she turned to him again. She'd had the walk over to decide on a new tactic, and it required her to look friendly. Her smile was so stiff it made her jaw ache.

"Look, this has got to be some mistake," she said. "Why don't you drive me home, have a quiet word with my father - I'm sure we can clear this all up." She was sure her father would be furious, but dealing with his anger seemed like the least bad option right now.

"Here's the thing," he said. "Most people, when they're told they're arrested, ask what the hell for."

"I..." she trailed into silence.

"You need to work on your poker face, kid," he said. "Far too many tells."

He was right and he knew it and there was nothing she could do about it. After a second he clicked on the radio to some college station, tapping his finger against the wheel just out of time with the music. She looked at her reflection in the car's tinted window, long blonde hair bleached to ash and pale skin ghost-like. She didn't look like an innocent person taken against her will. She looked like a guilty person who'd been caught.

"I have a problem," she said eventually. "I'll get help. I'll go into rehab. I'm not hurting anybody except myself."

He nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes fixed on the road and finger still tapping.

"What do the FBI care about a little recreational drug use, anyway?"

"They don't," he said. "But thanks for the heads-up. I'll make sure to have local law enforcement search your home and locker."

After that she sat in silence, fists clenched tight and jaw working soundlessly. She'd walked right into it and she only had herself to blame, but that didn't stop her fury. And beneath that, quivering in her belly, her fear. Because she really hadn't done anything other than attend a few pharma parties and maybe score X a few times when they hit the East Village clubs. There was no reason, none at all, why a federal agent should have dragged her out of school and into his unmarked car. And she'd asked for ID, but he'd never shown it.

She thought about screaming, but there was no one to hear except him, and she had the horrible feeling that it would just make him laugh.

She stared out of the window instead, trying to memorise their route, imagining repeating it to a cop, a real one, when she made her escape. The West Village passed by, leafy and quiet, dull Chelsea, the sprawling campus of Colombia and then the shabby-hipness of Harlem. They were on 105th, somewhere between 4th and 5th, when the car finally slowed.

Alex hoped they'd stop on the street where she'd have a chance to call for help, but her captor pressed a button on the dash and the doorway to an underground garage opened onto darkness. She banged against the glass of the window as the car slid down but all it did was bruise her palm, and no one looked round.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the man said mildly as he reversed the car between two others, both identical black Impalas.

Alex took a shaky breath, desperately wishing she could believe him. "You haven't even told me your name."

He shrugged. "You can call me PD. People tend to."

The underground garage was empty, dank and dripping. Her heels caught in the cracked concrete as she walked beside him, but he didn't take her wrist again and she let herself believe that was a good sign.

"PD," she said, "are you really with the FBI?"

"I never said that I was." He turned to stare at her, head cocked to one side, considering. "Listen, kid - you're in trouble, but not the kind you think. You'll be walking out of here alive, I promise you that. Whether you're walking out a free woman or in cuffs is up to you."

He led her to a rusted metal door, punching a number into a keypad lock before swinging it open. The corridor beyond was white painted and strip-lit, clinical and unwelcoming. Her footsteps echoed on the tiled floor but there was no one around to hear them.

The room he brought her to contained nothing but a table and three chairs. PD gestured at one of them and settled himself beside her so that she had to twist her head to see him. She was sure it was deliberate, an interrogation technique. But what the hell did he want to interrogate her about?

She tried to keep calm, not to let the waiting get to her the way it was clearly intended to. She tried to convince herself this was all a trick of her father's, something he'd cooked up with his contacts in the NYPD in an attempt to scare her straight, and it was almost plausible enough that she could buy it.

When the door opened behind her with a whoosh of air she couldn't help her start of surprise. She forced herself not to look around as the newcomer paused behind her. PD's head lifted and she knew the two were exchanging glances.

A few more seconds passed before she heard a soft sound which could have been a laugh, or maybe just a sigh, and the newcomer moved to sit opposite her. He was thin, old and white with a friendly, almost avuncular face and eyes such an odd, pale blue they appeared blind. But the most striking thing about him were his hands. He held them steepled in front of him, slender, desiccated fingers tapering into hooked nails. They were a skeleton's hands covered in only the thinnest parchment layer of skin.

"Miss Keve," he said, "My name is Hammond. You must be wondering why you've been brought here."

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

"The Patriot Act's a marvellous thing, Alexandra. It gives us a freedom we never had before. It allows us to listen in on a populace that once valued its privacy above its safety. And, as the conspiracy theorists have correctly surmised, Al Qaeda operatives aren't the only people we're searching for."

Alex's heart raced as she tried to recall the hundreds of phone conversations she'd held in the last few weeks alone. Had she said anything incriminating? But they already knew about the drugs, and they didn't seem to care about those.

Hammond read her expression and smiled. "No need to rack your brain, young lady. I can tell you exactly what you said that was of such interest to us."

He nodded to PD, and a moment later the sound of her own voice filled the room. It was a little slurred in places, over-enunciated in others. Whatever she was about to say, it was clear she'd been wasted when she said it.

"Hey," her voice said. "Is that the - what's the word? Is that the NBC
complaints division
?" There was a brief pause, but no reply came. She'd probably reached an answering machine and failed to realise it.

"Well, anyway," her voice continued, "I've got a complaint to make. I'm - it's late, I'm a little - I'm watching the news right now, and it's some piece about a high-school football team, and that's supposed to be cheerful, right? I mean boring, but cheerful. But there's
blood everywhere
."

Another brief pause, and in this one you could hear her gasping breath, a whimper buried somewhere in each exhalation. "He killed them all - he shot the whole fucking lot of them. Jesus, I don't know, maybe that's news or whatever, but did you have to show us the bodies? That... that girl with her head blown off, and the guy in the George Bush mask, that's just sick." A shuddering breath, and then her voice was a little steadier. "So yeah, that's what I wanted to say. Just stop showing it, all right. Please stop showing it."

There was the hiss of static, and then a long stretch of silence. Alex had no memory at all of making that call. But she knew when it must have been, 10 days ago exactly after that night at Jenna's place where they'd all tried ketamine and god knows what else and none of them had had a very good time on it, but she'd had the worst. "Down the K-hole," Jenna had said, and after that it was all just a blank till Alex woke up the next morning with a pounding head and a feeling of sick, unfocused dread.

Alex didn't generally follow the news - she didn't give all that much of a shit - but she'd seen the piece about the school shooting in Iowa, where an unknown boy in a George Bush mask had walked into his school and shot down twenty-seven of his classmates before walking calmly back out again. They still hadn't identified the killer, but then it was only
three days
since the shooting.

"I didn't know it was going to happen!" she said. "It was - I don't know, a crazy coincidence or something. You can't possibly think I was involved. I've never even been to Iowa!"