Predator One (16 page)

All I could do was ride it out and wait for it to be over.

But it was not over.

Not even close.

Interlude Eight

Ha-Nagar Street

Above the Stein Family Falafel Shop

Ashdod, Israel

Two and a Half Years Ago

Aaron Davidovich sipped coffee and studied the code he’d just written, tapping a key to scroll the page. The coffee was excellent, better than any of the piss water his Agency watchdogs had provided for him at the safe house. The croissant he’d just finished was top quality, too.

He sipped his coffee and read.

One small part of his mind was detached from the meticulous process of reading computer
code. That part stood to one side and observed. He was aware of it. Davidovich had always been aware of that part of his mind. The part that watched and evaluated everything he did. The nature of the observer shifted depending on mood. For a long time he imagined what Sherlock Holmes, with all of his deductive and inductive reasoning, would make of the little things that Davidovich did. Would
Holmes properly interpret the smooth patches of dry skin on his wrists as the result of countless hours of resting on the metal deck of his computer? Would Holmes deduce his general fitness was the natural result of the sedentary habits of a member of an office-based nerd hive?

Sometimes the watcher in his mind was a cop. As when he was clearly over the legal limit of appletinis and was walking
from bar to car.

Lately, though, since he’d come to live here with Boy, he imagined that they were watching him all the time. They. Whoever they were.

Even now, six months into his captivity, he didn’t know if he worked for terrorists, criminals, or a foreign government. Boy was not an American. Nor, he was convinced, were Mason and Jacob. That left a long list of possibles.

Over time, it mattered
less who was watching and more that he give a good impression regardless of whether anyone was watching. He was very careful. He constructed his habits to convey acceptance of his new life, resignation to the situation, and diligence to his tasks.

Even now, sipping coffee and proofreading his code, he arranged his body so that he looked relaxed but alert, showing neither tension nor any of the
physical tics of fear. By acting that role, he found, over time, that he actually was relaxed.

It was nice.

After that first horrible day, the whole situation had become …

He took a long sip of coffee as he fished for the word.

“Comfortable.”

He stiffened and set the cup down, staring at the screen but suddenly not seeing it.

“Comfortable”?

Really? Was that the word? Was that actually
what he was feeling?

Suddenly conscious of his inner watcher and the real possibility of hidden cameras and actual watchers, he pinched his nose as if trying to prevent a sneeze. He made a presneeze mouth and took in a breath. Held it. Then sighed, long and with obvious satisfaction of having prevented the sneeze.

All good theater.

All to hide his reaction to his own thought.

Davidovich picked
up his cup again and took another sip. It was damn fine coffee.

And, yes, damn it, he was comfortable.

He looked inside to try and read the expression on his inner watcher’s face. Would there be disappointment? Contempt? Self-loathing?

Shock and horror?

There should have been.

There probably should have been.

This should absolutely be a crisis moment, the precursor to a dark night of the
soul.

Yes, sir.

Aaron Davidovich got up, crossed the room, and got a fresh cup of coffee. Added soy milk and sugar. Sipped, sighed, smiled.

And went back to work.

Chapter Twenty-seven

National League Baseball Opening Day

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 29, 1:05
P.M.

Ghost screamed.

Actually screamed.

It was a sound I’d never heard from a dog before.

Pain and fear, blind panic, and a total loss of faith in his pack leader to make sense of the world.

Then there was another sound.

Was it another explosion?

The whole crowd seemed to freeze
for one moment to hear. It wasn’t behind them, not outside in the stands.

It was inside, in here.

Ahead of where the crowd was trying to go.

In that shocked half second, I struggled to my feet, the gun loose in my sweaty hands.

That sound could have been a gunshot.

Except it wasn’t.

There was a faint buzzing noise, and then there was a second bang.

Closer. Louder. A bigger and more hollow
sound than either a pistol or rifle round. Way too small to be a shotgun.

It was somewhere ahead. Thirty, forty yards.

The crowd screamed again and sagged back.

I couldn’t see what it was, though.

The tide of the crowd was caught between those still pushing from outside and the rest inside, who were trying to avoid whatever was ahead of us. So, I decided to make my move.

I raised my stolen
gun and yelled, “Federal agent! Move, move, move!”

The people around me shied away. Ghost got to his feet, shaking and scared, but he was drawn by my attempt to take control back.

“Let me through,” I bellowed. “Federal agent, let me through.”

This time, with no clear direction in which to flee, they did. Now they needed an answer, and I was the only possible authority they could see.

Bleeding,
battered, and wearing a baseball shirt from a different city. Didn’t matter. I had the gun, and I was using my best cop voice.

“Let me through,” I growled again.

Someone—a woman—screamed, “There’s another one!”

I couldn’t see what she was pointing at, but above the sudden upsurge in shouts I heard another motorized buzz.

And then …

Bang!

Forty yards in front of me, something exploded. I
could see the flash and hear the bang, and then I saw blood and red pieces fly as high as the ceiling.

The crowd spun and slammed into me.

I went down again. Harder. Much harder. My head hit the concrete wall.

My gun went flying somewhere.

My legs buckled, and I slid down to the cold ground.

I felt feet running across my chest. My thighs. My groin. I curled into a ball and tried not to die.

I prayed that my dad was okay. Rudy and Patrick, too.

There were more buzzes.

There were more explosions.

And there was more death.

Maybe none of us were going to be okay.

Chapter Twenty-eight

National League Baseball Opening Day

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 29, 1:09
P.M.

James Wolcott Ledger stood his ground.

The mayor of Philadelphia knelt behind him, his face streaked with blood, his suit torn and covered in soot. Colonel Douglas lay sprawled. Maybe unconscious, maybe dead. All around him, the stadium seemed to blossom with vast red flowers.
Pillars of smoke reached toward the blue sky like the arms of demons. The air was torn by screams, by explosions, by shouts.

He was aware of all of it, but at the moment—inside that moment—his entire body, his reflexes, and all of his heart and soul were focused on the thing that hovered in front of him.

Small.

Shaped like a bird.

Not a bird.

Others just like it flew into the stands and exploded.

This one had swooped down from the upper tiers, canting slightly on a damaged wing but still able to fly. A thin streamer of smoke trailed behind it.

James Ledger ground his feet into the dirt on the pitcher’s mound and raised the Louisville Slugger that had been signed by both teams as part of the presentation to Douglas. The bat felt good in Ledger’s hands. He’d played ball in college and used
to knock the hide off fastballs for the Baltimore Police League. Both his sons had the knack, and his grandson, too. All of them could hit sliders and breakers and break the heart of overeager pitchers.

The drone was moving slower than a fastball. As it swept toward him, Ledger stepped into its path and swung for the bleachers.

The drone darted up and left, and the bat slashed empty air with
such ferocity that Ledger was spun three-quarters of the way around. He staggered off balance, took a quick step to catch his balance, turned, and swung again.

Again, the drone flitted out of the way.

A third time.

A fourth.

“Come here, you little cocksucker,” snarled Ledger, spitting with fury and feeling, his anger rising even above the level of his terror.

He faked a thrust, faked again,
and then leaped forward to bunt the drone. The ash hit the machine and knocked it backward, where it wobbled, trying to level out.

Tried a second too long.

“Up yours,” growled the mayor of Baltimore as he swung the bat at full force.

Interlude Nine

Ha-Nagar Street

Above the Stein Family Falafel Shop

Ashdod, Israel

Two Years Ago

Aaron Davidovich lived his life in that apartment above
the falafel shop. He worked twelve to fourteen hours each day, a schedule broken up by meals and exercise. Boy and her two male companions—known as Jacob and Mason, though Davidovich was positive those were not their real names—brought in some gym equipment. A Bowflex, small free weights, a jump rope, chin-up bar, push-up handles, TheraBands, a physioball, and a yoga mat. Boy began teaching Aaron
how to use the equipment, and, as the weeks passed, Davidovich began losing flab and putting on muscle. After weeks of nightmares, he began sleeping soundly and woke refreshed. Boy made sure that his food was a balance of healthy and enjoyable. Almost no alcohol, though. A few beers a month, usually as a reward for finishing a new section of the design on which he was working.

They arranged to
have messages sent to his family. Assuring them that he was alive and being well cared for. None of their messages were ever sent to him, though Davidovich was able to watch them at various times on computer monitors. They were well. They were healthy.

But they grieved.

Even though he was now in high school, Matthew sometimes cried at night.

Davidovich’s mother did, too.

His wife…? Not so
much.

After seven months of solitude, she began to go out and lie to her son about where she was going. Sometimes she was out all night. Boy’s video surveillance showed him what she was doing. And whom she was doing it with. Meeting with a divorced man they’d known for years. Meeting in a motel. Hidden cameras recorded everything.

So, instead, it was Davidovich who wept for her. For the loss
of her.

He ached to hold his son. To take him out to basketball games. To talk with him.

It was Matthew who kept him going.

His mother, too. But mostly his son.

Sometimes in the night he secretly wished that Boy would do to his wife the things she’d originally threatened.

The first time Davidovich had that thought, he immediately rushed into the bathroom and vomited.

The second time he had
that thought, he just lay there in bed and let the thought play out.

It was the same the third time. And every time after that.

It got easier each time he watched the video feed of his wife in bed with Harvey Cohen. Screaming as she came. Like he was fucking a porn star instead of a goddamn dentist. Doing things with him that had fallen out of the repertoire of activities she’d shared with her
own damn husband.

It made Davidovich so mad.

On the days following those moments of video voyeurism, Davidovich found himself working harder at his new job. He threw his anger and frustration into the Regis program. He was even aware that he was channeling his anger and hurt in the worst possible way.

But he didn’t care.

It was the only kind of payback that was open to him.

If you can’t hurt
the one you love, then you hurt anyone you can reach.

*   *   *

BOY WATCHED
Doctor Davidovich all the time. She even played back video footage of him from when she was away on assignment or sleeping. She knew every movement, every tic.

Boy saw the way the infidelity of the doctor’s wife stuck knives in him. She saw how it changed his sleeping and eating patterns. His workout intensity. She
noted how it changed the quality of his work. Boy noted it all down.

Doctor Pharos and the Gentleman, she knew, would be very happy. It was unfolding exactly the way they said it would. Exactly according to plan.

Davidovich would, of course, never be allowed to know that his wife’s lover belonged to Doctor Pharos and the Gentleman. Body and soul. Paired very well to seduce the doctor’s wife.

So, Boy watched him watch them, and she grew excited. It was as if she could actually see, hear, and feel a great switch being turned on in Davidovich’s soul.

From light to dark.

Chapter Twenty-nine

National League Baseball Opening Day

Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia

March 29, 1:13
P.M.

It seemed to last a long, long time.

I crawled into a corner behind a trash can. This time, it was Ghost who found me. He was limping. His face and shoulders were streaked with blood. His tail was curled under his body, and he shoved himself against me, whimpering, lost and scared.

I felt exactly the same way.

My head was spinning. I know I’d been kicked several times. Maybe a couple of cracked ribs. My groin was a ball of fire. My stomach was in knots.

In those few seconds, at the hands and feet of a crowd of ordinary people, I had taken the worst beating of my life. It was comprehensive, and I had no idea how badly hurt I was. There was blood in my mouth.