Resurrection Express (42 page)

“Who the hell are you guys?”

“Heather Stone,” the girl says. “Nice to meet you.”

She doesn’t offer her hand. She doesn’t smell like Toni anymore—but she still resembles her, just a little. Her face, like an imperfect copy of perfect art.

This is insane, surreal.

“We’re friendlies,” Morales says. “We gotta move fast. This place crawls.”

He’s not a cop. Some sort of mercenary, maybe a spook. Only guys with military training say things like
this place crawls
.

Heather Stone motions to Pizzaface, who takes over pushing my wheelchair, back down the hall, towards the elevator at the opposite end, away from the massacre. Morales covers us from behind. There’s no one else in the ward. No more blood on the walls. It’s just us. My head is light and swimming. Tingling all over my body. Soft needles jabbing the muscles in my upper thighs. I feel the floor rumbling under my feet as they motorvate me. Heather Stone leads point with her big pistol. I can see now that it’s a .357 Desert Eagle slide—the Mark XIX, military-grade monster. Those things cost more on the consumer market than a
60-inch flat-screen. She’s wearing a white doctor’s coat over military black, the heavy gun weighed effortlessly in a practiced grip.

She is something very different from what I thought she was.

She’s one of these guys, always has been.

A spook.

Just as I think that, her gun does its low bark again. I don’t even see the cop as he steps out of the elevator. A blast of blood and the mark goes down fast. Heather Stone is a stone-cold statue when she does it. Hardly even breaks stride. We’re past the carnage and inside the elevator in nothing flat.

The car fills with electronic bells as we head down. Heather reloads her weapon, unscrews the silencer. Her boys check their shotguns. I can tell now that she’s in charge of these men. She has a Bluetooth clipped to her ear and starts speaking very calmly into it.

“I need an all clear in the main lobby. Give me a picture.”

Someone’s voice says important things I can’t hear. Heather pulls something that looks like an oversized iPhone out of her pocket and studies it. I can see graphics pay out, infrared, scrolls of data in the form of electronic silhouettes.

“Okay,” she says calmly to her men. “We’ve got five in the stairwell, on the way up. Two more in the car just behind us. Three left in the lobby, no civilians. Plug up.”

The two grunts stand in front of me, pulling out tiny little yellow beads and stuffing their ears with them. They do it very smoothly, professionally. One of them tosses a gas mask in my lap and tells me to hold my breath and my ears. Morales is screwing a shiny steel attachment onto the end of his shotgun.

The elevator car clunks to a stop just as Morales hits the switch that keeps the doors closed. Heather aims her monster gun and pulls the trigger. She’s staring at the screen in her hand, which shows her the targets standing on the other side of six-inch steel.

Boom.

The muzzleflashes are two feet long.

She’s switched to a much higher grade of ammunition since that last clip went in her gun. The three shots are like thick laser beams, punching neat little holes in the door, knocking down two of the men in the lobby on her infrared screen. The sound almost makes me deaf, even with my fingers in my ears. She hits the switch that opens the door as Pizzaface fires the tear-gas grenade, spewing a long thin contrail of hissing white smoke that bounces off a marble wall and begins to fill the room.

I get the gas mask on my face as Heather steps into the lobby, firing again at the cop on the floor. Another two-foot white flash kicks its high-velocity load right in the guy’s face. The cop doesn’t even get one shot off before his head turns into superheated jelly, and then the jelly is consumed by the rolling, stinging mist. The load keeps on shredding the lobby after it’s done with the cop, finally exploding somewhere in the next hall, twenty feet away. Two other cops are dead on the ground, gaping holes where their badges used to be. Gigantic chunks of the room carved out in the bargain.

Heather moves like a robot, her men right behind her.

Morales grabs my chair and rolls me out alongside Heather and Pizzaface, who spin quickly and step in front of me as the second elevator dings and the doors open. I don’t even notice the three of them are wearing gas masks until they fill the elevator car with thunder, annihilating everything inside there. It’s like a series of bombs going off and I can’t even see who they are shooting at, arms and legs and faces consumed in a quick-time maelstrom of bright strobing and dark red splashes, like the flickering fangs of some greedy invisible monster devouring it all to hell. Whoever was in there had no idea what hit them.

The thunder recedes as the smoke thickens and Heather gets a beep on her hand screen. She motions to Pizzaface:

“Stairwell! Now!”

Morales hustles me into the covered concrete cul-de-sac, which is just outside the main ER entrance doors. Heather right behind us. Back in the lobby, I hear the shotgun roar again and the sounds of more cops screaming as they blast apart. It doesn’t take long to chop them all to ribbons. I steel myself and let it all happen—like some kind of nightmare where you just sit there and watch the world explode on all sides of you. I’ve never seen guys who move this fast, and I’ve certainly never had a seat this comfortable in the middle of a firefight.

I find myself laughing at it.

Right out loud.

•  •  •

A
n EMS vehicle shrieks to a halt, tires peeling up smoke just outside the door as I come rolling up to the curb, pushed along by sure hands. The doors are already open and two guys whose faces I can’t see behind black masks are leaping out to grab me and my wheelchair . . . and it’s all a quick blur as they get me inside, chair and all. Heather is right behind us, leaping in. An unmarked car that looks fast and sleek, like a photon torpedo, pulls up behind us and I see Morales and Pizzaface calmly getting in the passenger’s side, pulling off their gas masks. I leave mine on, for no reason that matters.

The ambulance doors slam, and we blow out of there, with the photon torpedo right behind us.

Heather checks her screen, smiles quickly. “We’re almost clear,” she says into her Bluetooth. “Take the alternate route and stand on it. This area is hot.”

The siren on the hood of the ambulance comes on at full blast. Subterfuge. They had this whole run plotted out to the last shell casing.

And Heather?

Is anything about her real—anything at all?

The muscle car runs blocker for us the whole time we’re on the road, lagging just a quarter mile behind. My new friends all keep their guns up and ready. Heather watches her hand screen. We show up there as a glowing green target blip. The traffic parts on all sides of us and we punch through red lights all the way. No cops on our tail. Nothing looking for us in the air, either, not yet.

But that won’t last long.

I think I can hear sirens somewhere out there—just below the obnoxious scream of the ambulance.

She holds my chair steady as we shift sharply to the right and I feel the open road tilt under our tires. For the first time, I notice that there’s a small spot of blood seeping from under her white coat sleeve. Where they shot her at the club. She doesn’t flinch at all, if she even feels it.

I look up at her and laugh, pulling off the gas mask. “So . . . do I get kissed on the second date, too?”

“Is that a joke?”

“Maybe. Depends who the hell you really are.”

“He told you, we’re friendlies. You can relax.”

“Thanks.”

Her stone expression almost goes soft for just a second. “I’m sorry, Elroy. I can explain everything.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“I was working under deep cover where you found me.”

“Dirty tricks for Uncle Sam, huh? Figures.”

“Don’t get all self-righteous with me, Elroy. We all do what we have to do.”

“Yeah, and you do it
so well,
don’t you?”

That stings her. Just a little. I’m almost surprised.

“I just saved your ass,” she says. “You should be a little more polite.”

“So they put you on the street to get Hartman?”

“Something like that.”

“And you look like my wife
because
 . . . ?”

“Just shut up a minute. There’s no time for that now. I have a
question,
Elroy. It’s really important.”

I nod to her because I know what the question is.

But then she doesn’t get to ask it.

•  •  •

T
he first RPG hits like a lightning bolt.

I see it outside through the tiny window of the ambulance, screaming from the sky in a swooping whiplash crackle, then someone screams—I think it’s Heather—and I see the photon torpedo following us turn into a flash of flame and debris, and the world shudders and my heart stops for three whole seconds, and the ambulance skews across the median, out of control, and I’m upside down, right side up, and everything is suddenly spinning and tumbling, my head smashing against something hard and metal, and Heather screams again, and the world spins again and something slams into us like the hand of Murphy, and he’s really pissed off tonight . . . and as I go under . . . I hear the pavement scraping under us and the sound of roaring shotguns . . .

•  •  •

S
irens.

Angry voices.

Explosions.

I come to for just one second, and see that I’m outside now, on the blacktop. Faceless shapes standing silhouetted against the flames.

Muzzleflashes on all sides of us.

Blood in my face.

Street war,
I think.
I’m in the middle of a goddamn street war . . .

I go under again as the gauntlet closes around us.

•  •  •

I
hear the shooting, even in the dream.

I hear them all killing each other, my own heartbeat pounding through it.

Then the deep-bass chug of a helicopter, cancelling out everything.

Someone screaming right in my ear to wake the fuck up.

I go down deeper when I hear the voice.

Down and down.

•  •  •

F
loating now.

It’s peaceful.

I made it out of there and now I’m floating.

I see the face of the girl.

Heather’s face.

Toni’s funhouse-mirror image, distorted and not quite perfect, but perfect enough to fool a man with demons. Enough to fool a man obsessed.

I have to find her.

I want to know why she looks like my one true love.

She was going to tell me.

I was so close to the truth.

I’m flying now.

•  •  •

T
he helicopters blare at me.

I wake up on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over my face.

We’re moving fast, across a flat concrete surface, and I can tell we’re outside, the sun shining on my face, and Heather is still
alive, yelling at the people pushing my stretcher, but I can’t hear her . . . because all around me, metal beasts drown her out, shredding the air and shaking the earth.

Apache AH attack choppers.

A sea of state-of-the-art bang bang.

This is not a dream.

It’s real.

You see these machines in movies sometimes. Super fast, super sleek, all armed to the teeth. Sidewinder missiles, 70-millimeter rockets, 20-millimeter cannons. They usually carry something called Hellfire anti-tank bombs, too. Two of those bad boys have enough sheer heart attack in them to erase a bad Middle Eastern neighborhood without breaking a sweat.

Looks like World Wars III and IV are about to go down.

I only see the armada for a few seconds.

They push me away from the chugging beasts, towards a central complex that reminds me of prison. It’s a five-story concrete monolith with no windows and a flat roof that has a landing pad. A gunship up there, gassed and ready, spinning its giant blades and rotors—like the king of the monsters. We move into the complex through a thick steel door, opened by a thick steel jarhead.

Heather leads us down a security corridor. Five doors with ancient locks, opened by sentry statues who know we’re coming. No laser sensors or motion detectors, just marines in every corner, every six feet. The sounds of heavy combat boots in front of me and behind me. The hall smells like cigarettes and sweat and stale aftershave. Everything is old and rusted, typical military operation. Uncle Sam spends money on guns, not barracks. I’ve heard tell that some of these places are little more than tent cities in the desert. Almost makes me laugh, the irony is so overwhelming. I can’t laugh because it hurts too much. The wound in my side, the throbbing in my head.

I try to think of Toni, but she taunts me, just out of reach.

Have to focus on the moment.

I notice for the first time that I’m still in my blue hospital smock, the urine tube no longer attached to my lower region. I am half naked in this place of corroded steel, even more helpless than I was in prison.

Great.

We stop at a door guarded by two guys in desert brown battle-dress uniforms. They salute Heather and open up. It isn’t even locked, but that doesn’t matter. Only the Terminator could get through the manpower in this building. I counted fifty grunts on the way up the hall, all armed to the teeth, all on combat-ready alert and itching for an excuse to kill someone. I get all the details in stark relief. Wide awake now.

My legs twitch on their own as they move me through the door.

21

00000-21

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD

M
y legs.

They’re moving.

No, this is really not a dream.

I’m sitting upright now in the stretcher, cool air tingling the bare skin of my back and legs, electricity seething through my bloodstream, surrounded in a wide metal chamber by more hard-carved men with guns, my shocked breath forced out in quick, bad spasms. I recognize Morales from the hospital—I could never forget that guy’s face, stone cold and dark. He’s wearing a military uniform now, sidearms bristling on his hips. The other men are backlit shapes against a wall-sized flat-screen monitor, which flashes a video strobe across the room.