Takedown (11 page)

G
avin fumbled for the gearshift, threw it into first, and popped the clutch to an already redlining engine. The rear wheels
of his British racing car instantly dug into the soft, soaked earth, spinning and spitting grass and mud onto the house, all
while Gavin watched the cement truck running out of street, not even a flicker on the brake lights. The car was foundered.
Gavin cursed repeatedly and slammed into reverse. Same result.

Suddenly Gavin found himself in the middle of the street, his legs seeming to move slowly, his gasps for oxygen deep, fast,
urgent. The cement truck’s front rose slightly when it passed over where Gavin knew Amy’s new minivan had been parked when
he last saw it in his rearview mirror. He heard himself screaming but didn’t know what because his entire mind was given over
to his eyes—huge eyes searching for the power to make the truck stop, pleading, demanding that his house… home… would somehow
stop the enemy truck like some giant catcher’s glove.

Gavin was the length of a football field away when the cement truck came to a complete stop… in his backyard, the barrel
still spinning. The truck no longer mattered.

“AMY!”

There was no answer as he screamed her name, hurdling a flattened skid of black metal and smashed glass that used to be her
mode of transportation. He landed on rubble, feet twisting, falling,
hitting his walkway hard on his hip. Back on his feet in a second and down again on the broken concrete of his front stoop.
His arms and legs grabbing and pushing him through a huge open expanse where the front door and half the rest of his home
used to be.

“Amy!” he yelled. “Amy, where are you?” There was no answer, the only sound coming from the squeaking barrel of the cement
truck. His eyes darted desperately. Where to go? “Oh, God!” he said, seeing one of Cedar’s doggie dishes half crushed, sticking
out from under a pile of wood. His dog had been on the stoop, he remembered. “Cedar!” he yelled, looking, spinning, desperate
to see something alive. Nothing. The dog always came when called… unless he couldn’t.

“Amy!” he shouted in tears as he ran back to where he’d left her in the kitchen, which was no longer there at all. Just open
space with fallen debris and rubble from the collapsed second floor. Most of his house was in the backyard along a path to
the tanklike truck. If the truck hadn’t been going so fast, it probably would have fallen through to the basement.

Gavin grabbed his cell phone from his waist and dialed 9-1-1. A figure caught his eye. “Jesus!” he gasped. Larry was part
of the wreckage along the path to the truck. If there were even the slightest chance he was alive, Gavin would have raced
to him, but he had seen enough twisted bodies in his life to know which ones were and were not worth spending time on, especially
when—

“Uhhh!” Gavin gasped, startled by something alive touching his leg. He turned. “Cedar!” His delight to see the dog vanished
almost as quickly as it arrived. “Mommy, Cedar—where’s Mommy? Go find Mommy. Where’s—”

“Nine-one-one emergency,” called a female voice over the cell phone.

“This is Detective Pierce. Code three!” he shouted with his home address. Under the circumstances there was little more
needed to say. A code one would have meant there was no present emergency but to have an officer stop by at his convenience.
A code two carried more immediacy but still did not necessarily signal an emergency; an officer could respond without the
use of his lights and siren carving a path for him. A code three pulled out all the stops. There was no code four.

“I repeat, we’ve got a code three! Code three! Need several ambulances, patrol and fire assistance. Multiple injury, fatality
and—” he yelled, almost eating his phone, before he suddenly heard Cedar bark to his right.

Cedar was staring at a section of roof that had fallen and was now leaning precariously over a part of the house still standing.
The dog looked at him and then looked back again in the same direction.

Gavin dropped the phone and leaped toward the fallen roof. Behind the roof was a hallway leading to a bathroom. He grabbed
and pulled at the roof section, black sandy granules from the shingles scraping his fingers as he fought. Not a chance of
him and all the adrenaline in the world moving this mass. He looked around the side, hanging on the edge of the shingles.
“Amy! Can you hear me?”

A moan.

He’d heard a moan! It was faint, but it was definitely there. The shingle he was holding tore off in his hand. As he fell
he caught himself on something sharp… painful. Jumping to his feet, he ran back out to where the front of the house used
to be and around to a window at the end of the hall. He looked into the window. Dark. No, a shade down. He pushed on the window
but it was locked. He thought of throwing something through it, but what if Amy was there… right there? Just below the lock
he bashed the window with his elbow, reached in, unlocked the window, and threw it open. A moment later he was in the hallway,
light pouring in behind him.

“Amy!” he cried, dropping to his knees in the middle of the hallway.

“Gavin,” she said weakly. She was curled into a fetal position, cradling her belly, cut, bruised, and semiconscious, just
like the Spanish woman the night before.

“Shhh. I’m here. Everything will be all right,” he said. He could hear sirens.

“What’s happening?” she whispered, no more than a breath. She didn’t seem to be able to open her eyes.

“There’s been an accident. Don’t try to move. Help will be here in a moment,” he said, holding her hand. He squeezed it, but
she didn’t squeeze back.

The sirens were loud, and so were the racing engines ahead of them. There was the screeching of cars coming to a stop outside.
He reluctantly let go of her hand and went to the window. The thought of six or seven men handing Amy through the window was
alarming. He called out for help, then ordered the first person he saw, a uniform, to gather help to move aside the fallen
roof section. Within minutes the voices of many men were on the other side of the roof section and paramedics were coming
in the hall window. They went right to Amy and he went right to the blockade. He pushed as they pulled and tore and ripped,
jamming in boards for leverage. Cracking, squeaking, popping, and finally an opening large enough for a stretcher.

Once outside, Gavin held Amy’s hand while the paramedics strapped her more tightly to the stretcher. The light also revealed
a large bruise on her temple.

“Somebody shut that thing off,” Gavin heard a cop yell regarding the cement truck.

Fire trucks, patrol cars, and ambulances were everywhere, a smaller version of the night before. A dozen firemen and police
surrounded Larry the decorator, none of them moving very fast.

“Gavin!” a panicked but familiar voice cried out. Chris was running up to the house much the same way Gavin had.

“Somebody slow him down before he kills himself,” Gavin said to nobody in particular.

“What happened here?” Chris yelled as he jumped up to the floor level. He seemed to be looking everywhere at once.

“She’s alive, Chris. Right now that’s all I can think about.”

“What the… How did…”

Gavin pointed to the cement truck.

Chris stared for a long moment, then turned and looked up the street as if trying to imagine. He turned back to Gavin. “Anyone
else?”

Gavin pointed again to the cement truck. “Why don’t you check it out, Chris? It’s really the last thing on my mind right now.”

Chris paused to look at the help Gavin was getting, then nodded and headed to the cement truck in the backyard.

F
or the last few hours Krogan had been busy enjoying and exploring the physical and mental worlds of his new host. Early possession
was often very rewarding in this respect. He was renowned for his ability to meld a host’s mind into his own quickly, often
not needing more than one or two earth days. Some of that he credited to his meticulous, albeit painful, selection process.
But most of the glory belonged to his own fierce determination and power to dominate.

This Hoban was particularly amusing and easy, blaming early mind saturation on hallucinations brought on by his drug use.
Krogan had to admit, drugs made the job easier, but he would find his challenges in unique places with this one.

The front of the WWX building had a huge black flag with red WWX letters hanging from a horizontal flagpole. Krogan was about
to enter the building when something caught his eye. He went to the newspaper dispenser, ripped open the glass door, and took
a paper. The headline read “Terror Strikes,” and the photo of a train wreck was reminiscent of a head-on collision he had
caused forty years earlier. He nodded approvingly and wondered how long it would take him to find the terrorist if he decided
to switch hosts.
Another time,
he thought, then dropped the paper and went into the building.

Krogan walked into Michael Grossman’s plush outer office. A
buxom blonde secretary spotted him from behind a polished green granite desk. Behind her were gold WWX letters on an oak wall.
Hoban had been here only a few times, each time very awed by what he thought was success on display to breed more success.
He’d always felt the man behind it all, Michael Grossman, was God personified. His inexperienced, untraveled mind fell easily
to Krogan here, and consequently was now quite unimpressed.

“Oh, Mr. Hoban!” the woman said with a wide smile. “Please have a seat. Mr. Grossman has been expecting you.” She furrowed
her brow with a chummy nod and whispered confidentially, “Actually, waiting, if you know what I mean. He can get—”

Her eyes widened. “You’re bleeding,” she said, then apparently realized he wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. “Wait
a second. You can’t just—”

Krogan pushed through a huge oak door. Grossman looked up from his thronelike seat behind a massive, thick glass desk with
WWX etched into the top from underneath. Except for a small stack of papers in front of him and a glass box of cigars at the
far corner, the desk was devoid of anything. No computer, no pictures, nothing. Another man, balding, with a dark-blue suit,
big tie, big rings, and big watch, looking annoyed, stood up from a seat. Presumably Mark Bodder, the lawyer Grossman had
mentioned. And next to him, one of the WWX’s most recognizable celebrities— Grossman’s daughter, Tanya—or Tanya the Terrible
as she was better known—dressed in her trademark black leather everything.

“Jackhammer Hoban,” Tanya said with a thin smile, as if she was introducing him to the others.

“How long were we supposed to be waiting here for you?” Bodder squeaked. “You told us to wait for you”—he checked his gold
watch—“six and a half hours ago.”

“Okay, okay.” Grossman motioned for his lawyer to calm down. “This is not about who’s late.”

“But—”

“Nice outfit,” Tanya said as Krogan walked by wearing old, ripped jeans, his chest bared under a vest made from a cut-off
denim jacket, also ripped and soiled, and a newly acquired dog collar around his neck, tags jingling as he walked. “I think
you’re bleeding.”

“The one who rules is never late.” Krogan flipped open the lid on the cigar box and helped himself, biting off the end and
spitting it on the floor. He took an extra one and stabbed it into his vest pocket, leaving the glass lid for someone else
to close.

Bodder started to stand again, but Grossman eyed him down.

“Allow me,” Tanya offered, rising to Krogan’s side. She took a cigar from the open box, bit, spit, lit with a strong drag,
and blew the smoke in a considerate direction. She gently removed the cigar from Krogan’s mouth, inserted hers, then lit his
for herself.

Krogan looked into her eyes, deeply, sniffing at her thoughts. He liked what he saw and thought of being inside her body,
controlling, possessing. That of course was impossible while the wrestler Hoban still lived, but the thought continued to
interest him as he made a simple suggestion to her focused mind.

Grossman wore a confused frown. “Were you in some kind of accident on the way over here?”

Krogan continued to hold Tanya’s stare as he replied, “There are no accidents.”

“Hmm, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, but there are mysteries, and right now, you’re one of them. I watched you
last night. You were… different. You’ve changed. What happened?”

Still eye to eye with Tanya, Krogan smiled and whispered in his usual deep rasp, “I’ve been born again.”

Bodder snorted. “Uh, right. Look, I suggest we get down to business. We have a lot to cover and it’s already
late
.”

Tanya, unblinking, turned to Bodder and yanked a white handkerchief from his suit pocket. She turned back to Krogan’s gaze,
licked the end of the cloth, and dabbed the wound on his forehead.

Grossman cleared his throat. “Uh, Jack. About last night, again. We’ve been getting some pretty strong feedback and, well,
let’s just say you’ve created the kind of conflict that draws a lot of attention. E-mails, faxes, website hits are all off
the chart. Everyone wants to know when your next fight is. Some can’t wait to see you destroy your next victim, some can’t
wait to see you destroyed. Figuratively speaking, of course. After all, this is pro-wrestling. A small fact that might have
gotten away from you in your bout with Tyrant.”

“What Daddy’s trying to say is the fans love you… and hate you.”

“Exactly. Thank you, baby. So we’d like to talk to you about your next fight. The way we see it, Jackhammer Hoban is announced
again as the new champion and you—”

“Silence,” Krogan snapped with an energy that seemed to command their mouths shut. “I’m not interested in what you see. And
I am not interested in your make-believe games. I will fight when I decide and where I decide. I do not travel to fight. All
will travel to me, to this place you call New York, like they did in Athens. And I will not be called ‘Hoban’ any longer.”

After Krogan finished they all looked at each other as if to ask if it were all right to speak.

“This place you call New York? Athens? What are we talking about here?” Bodder said, as if asking himself aloud.

“Then what shall we call you?” Tanya said sweetly.

“Krogan.”

There was a brief moment of pause before Tanya asked, “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

“You can’t be serious,” Grossman said, frowning. “Krogan was the name of that serial-killer maniac.”

“Great,” Bodder scoffed. “There goes the crowd conflict. Everyone will just hate you again. Why don’t you just call yourself
Hitler, or better yet… Satan?”

Krogan walked to the window, puffing, looking at the sunset. There was something about smog that seemed to turn the crimson
sky into flames. He turned to them. “This is not a suggestion. My name is Krogan and I will fight in this,” he said, pointing
his cigar to a large glass-framed advertisement on the wall. All heads turned.

ARMAGEDDON

WWX

HELL ON EARTH

“Armageddon?” Bodder said incredulously. “That starts tomorrow night. There’s no time.”

Grossman shook his head slowly, then turned back to Krogan. “Armageddon has been a long time in the planning. It runs for
ten days starting tomorrow, and every slot has been filled. Everything, and I mean
everything,
is already set.”

“You will issue a challenge to everyone… your phony wrestlers and the rest of the world. They will all prove that I am above
all… and I will enjoy myself.”

“Impossible,” Grossman said.

“It must be the drugs,” Bodder said, shaking his head.

Krogan took a long, confident drag, then dropped the cigar; it landed, smoldering, on the plush beige carpet. All eyes went
to the
cigar, then back to him. “To resist me will prove very expensive,” he said, then turned and started away. “And I have a
long
memory.”

“No, wait! Jack, I mean, Krogan,” Tanya said, giving her father a desperate eyeful. “Let’s think about this for a second.
I mean… it’s not like we don’t have
any
time to put this together. There’s… there’s the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow.”

Krogan kept walking.

Bodder was about to issue another whining complaint, but Grossman spoke over him. “I suppose we could announce a special guest
appearance,” he suggested.

“And that the following nights will have a change of venue,” Tanya added.

Bodder sighed. “If we extend the programming and shorten each program incrementally, we could probably bill him as—”

“The main event!” Tanya interrupted.

Krogan heard a splash of water and turned to see Bodder standing over the cigar with an empty glass of water.

“Main event?” Bodder said incredulously. “Why don’t you set up a ten-thousand-dollar prize for anyone who can unseat him?
See what he’s
really
made of… see if he’s all talk. I mean, isn’t that what promoters did in the old days with their house champ?”

Right then, Krogan decided there would be a time to meet Bodder alone—to let him know exactly to whom he was speaking so sarcastically.

“I
like
that idea,” Tanya said, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. “Only it should be more than ten thousand. Make it a half million
and we’ll have half the country watching.”

“I was only joking,” Bodder spat.

Grossman stood up from behind his seat. “Make it a million and the whole country will watch.”

Bodder plopped into his seat, his open hand dragging down slowly from his forehead to chin.

“Yes!” Tanya yelled. “It’ll be a full-page ad in tomorrow’s paper. A million dollars for anyone who can complete a three-minute
one-round bout with King Krogan. If that doesn’t make the action real enough for you, nothing will. It will be the biggest
open prize and the biggest show on earth.”

Bodder stood up. “And what about when he loses in the first bout? What do we do with the rest of Armageddon?”

“The winner continues, whoever it is. If they don’t agree to that, they can’t get in the ring,” Grossman said emphatically.
“But if Krogan here continues to win, we’ll make billions.”

“See that it’s done,” Krogan ordered, then left.