The Survivor (11 page)

The room cleared, and then there was only Red Mask and Kim Pham and the doctor.

‘Release me,’ Red Mask said.

The doctor came forward and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be still.’

Red Mask could not. He had gone back in time.

In his mind, Kim Pham’s white suit fell away and was replaced by a green cap and a grey buttoned-down jacket. There were screams coming from outside the window, from where the women were kept. And a machinelike voice spoke.

‘You are a special agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.’

‘Sister,’ Red Mask replied, and in his mind he was eight years old again. ‘Where is my sister?’

‘You are an emissary of the United Socialistic Soviet Republic.’

‘No. No. My family—’

‘You have shit in the food supplies to make the others sick.’

‘What?’

‘You have falsified medical documents to undermine the reputation of this hospital because it is an icon of its kind and a great testament to the glory.’

‘Mother! I want my mother!’

And then, like an evaporating mist, the vision dissipated. And Kim Pham stood there. The muscles of his face were tight behind his padded cheeks.

‘Fuck, this is bad. Bad, bad, BAD. Nothing is finished! The bosses won’t be happy.’ He paced back and forth, balled his fists against the sides of his head, then stopped. He leaned back over Red Mask and spoke in English, as he always did, for their dialects were too far apart. ‘Can you hear me? For fuck’s sake, can you hear
anything
?’

The words were too loud and too soft. But Red Mask responded. ‘I am here, I am awake.’

Kim Pham’s voice deepened. ‘What the hell happened over there? Did you get the job done?’

Red Mask felt the images overtake him, wave after nauseating wave. ‘A man appeared. Like a ghost. He came from nothing.’

‘A man? What man? What are you talking about? Was he a cop?’

‘A soldier, yes.’

Kim Pham became silent. He looked up at the flat-screen monitor that hung on the far wall. The news was on. The entire focus was St Patrick’s High. The images were blunt: yellow police tape; dead kids; frantic parents; lots of cops. Pham watched for a long moment, then nodded in acknowledgement of what was happening. He turned around slowly and gave Red Mask an odd look.

‘Where is Tran?’

The words hollowed out Red Mask’s heart. ‘Tran is no more.’

‘Stop talking in fucking riddles!’ Kim Pham yelled. He paused. ‘And what about Sherman Chan?’

‘Dealt with. As planned. But not . . . not Que Wong.’

‘Not Que.’ The words sounded flat as Kim Pham spoke them. ‘You let him get away?’

‘He did not show. That is why Tran had to come.’

‘Fuck! Another fucking failure. There’s gonna be a lot of heat over this, a lot of
heat
. They will not tolerate this.’ Kim Pham got on his cell, dialled and had a quick conversation in a dialect Red Mask could not understand. When he closed the flip-phone, he asked, ‘Where is Tran’s body?’

‘Where it fell.’

‘Stop talking in chicken fucking English –
where did it fall
?’

‘Saint Patrick’s.’

Kim Pham’s eyes took on a faraway stare. Eventually, he nodded. Gave Red Mask’s uninjured shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘Rest, my friend. You need to heal.’ As Kim Pham turned to go, he gave the doctor a sideways glance. The old man nodded back. The movement was minimal, but Red Mask noticed the exchange.

And he acted.

When the doctor came towards him with the syringe, Red Mask grabbed the old man’s wrist. ‘What is name of medicine?’

The doctor tried to pull away. ‘It’s . . . it’s an antibiotic.’

‘What is name?’

‘. . . Naxopren . . .’

‘Liar!’ In one quick motion, Red Mask bent the old man’s wrist back until a loud
crack
filled the room. The doctor screamed, fell back, and Red Mask sat up. Kim Pham turned from the door, his hand going for his gun.

Red Mask was quicker. With his good arm, he pulled the Glock from behind his waistband and fired three times from the hip.

Pham’s white suit exploded with redness and he let out a strangled sound; he fell forward, landing hard on the dirty green vinyl. Almost immediately, the stairwell door burst open and the two men who’d brought Red Mask downstairs raced into the room.

Red Mask shot them both. By the time they hit the ground he was rushing across the small room. He locked the stairwell door. Spun and found the doctor. The old man was crouched in the corner, the needle still clutched in his broken right hand.

‘I have done nothing!
Nothing
!’ he whispered.

Red Mask neared the old man. ‘Untrue. You have done much, Doctor Kieu. In Vu Nuar, and Anlong Veng. Yes, you have done much horrible things. What is name of medicine?’

‘Naxopren!
Naxopren
!’

‘Inject yourself.’

The doctor’s eyes became rounder. ‘I . . . am not sick.’

‘Inject yourself!’

When the doctor did not move, Red Mask snatched up the syringe and drove the needle into his shoulder.

The old man screamed. ‘Please, please,
Mok Gar Tieun
!’

But Red Mask did not listen. He depressed the plunger.

The old man gasped. Trembled. Started to cry.

Red Mask’s face hardened. ‘Tears from
you
, Doctor? An irony – and an insult to your victims.’

The old man opened his mouth to speak, but only spittle came out. He clutched at his chest, then fell forward and slumped in the corner like a child’s doll. His breaths came deep and heavy; soon he began to shake more violently. Foam bubbled all around his lips. And then he became still.

The threat was over.

Red Mask struggled to get up and let out a cry when he put pressure on his injured shoulder. He focused on the TV screen. The news was on, showing a photograph of the cop who had ruined everything. The one who had manifested from nothing. Beneath his face was a name: Detective Jacob Striker.

Red Mask stared at him with dead eyes, this man who had killed Tran.

Let him come, he thought. It will change nothing. I will find the girl. And I will finish the job.

He headed for the exit with this one thought on his mind. The girl was still out there somewhere – the only one who had escaped him. Now that Tran was gone, her death was all that mattered. He would find her. And then he would kill her.

Twenty

Striker approached the cafeteria with Felicia beside him. The doors were open. Standing out front of them was a young cop – male, East Indian, easily six feet tall and square-jawed. A solid guy, no doubt, but still a rookie. Had to be. Only rookies got stuck with the shittiest of all posts – guard duty. When Striker got close enough to see the badge number on his shirt, he nodded with understanding. The kid barely had six months under his belt.

Six months, and already this would be his worst day on the job.

Striker badged him, then grabbed a pair of protective booties and slipped them over his shoes. Felicia did the same. They gloved up and stepped under the police tape.

The first thing Striker noticed was the smell – not of blood or of urine or of anything bad. It was a sweet smell – almost caramel-like. He looked ahead to the kitchen and saw the blown-apart racks of Coke bottles. Black liquid was stuck to the floor. Memories of dropping to the ground with shotgun blasts impacting over his head hit Striker, as explosive in his mind now as they had been in reality six hours ago.

He jerked in response to the memory and slowed his steps. Then he felt Felicia’s heavy stare upon him. No doubt analysing him. If he stalled at all, the questions would begin:

Is it too soon, Jacob?

Do you need some time, Jacob?

Are you coping, Jacob?

Without meeting her eyes, he said, ‘It’s sticky here,’ and made a point of walking around the tacky goo. He marched into the eating area where the gunfight had erupted, and immediately spotted four covered bodies. Students.

He turned away and saw another body. From where it lay, he knew it was one of the gunmen.

‘White Mask.’

Dark fascination overtook Striker, and he moved forward.

The body of the gunman lay face up between the first and second row of cafeteria tables. The bloodied-red vinyl around the body had been blocked off by red cones and bright strands of yellow tape.

Another crime scene within the crime scene.

Emotions hit Striker. So many of them. They mixed into some strange concoction he could not define. Suppressing them, he walked right up to the police tape, crouched low, and looked at the body.

The gunman’s head was completely gone, as were both his hands – obliterated in response to the shotgun blasts Red Mask had pumped through them. Even now as Striker stared at the carnage, he could hear the violent explosions reverberating through the room:
ka-boom, ka-boom, ka-BOOM.
Up this close to the body, he could now clearly detect the unique stink of death – the urine and blood and shit. And the faint trace of burned gunpowder, which lingered as a dark reminder.

‘There’s not much of the prick left,’ Striker said.

Felicia came up behind him. ‘Yeah, he kinda lost his head over the whole ordeal.’

Striker leaned back under the tape and stood up. He analysed where White Mask had fallen, then considered where Red Mask had been standing. He pointed to the area beyond the body. ‘Look for teeth over there. We gotta find something, some way of identifying this bastard.’

‘Ident’s already done that.’

‘They find any?’

‘No, but they combed this place down.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Keep looking.’

Felicia started to say more, stopped. She just shook her head, turned around, and walked between the second and third row of tables. After a few steps, she leaned down and, with a gloved hand, picked up one of the rounds that had been expelled during the firefight. She inspected it. A brass casing with an inset head on the bullet. Frangible. She held it up for him to see.

‘Hydra-Shok,’ she said.

Striker recalled the meaty exit wounds he had seen in some of the students.

‘Bag and tag,’ he said, and Felicia continued her search.

With her out of the way, Striker could better focus. He examined the top of White Mask’s neck. It was an uneven fleshy ridge. The edges glistened, and here and there spots of whitish bone and yellow cartilage could be seen – some of them blown deeper within the body.

The musculature around the neck struck him as odd. There was too much muscle bulk for a teenager. Striker grabbed hold of each clavicle and tried to move them. The joints shifted, but very stiffly, and he wondered if it was ossified near the sternum. That would mean the John Doe was older than they thought. Maybe even over thirty. He wasn’t sure, but it was something to bring up with the Medical Examiner.

Fanning down the left side of White Mask’s neck was a strange, golden design. It added colour to the copper skin. Striker leaned close and studied it. Calligraphic lettering, he thought, or perhaps an artistic design. Something tribal.

It was hard to tell because most of the design was blown away. The part which remained was clear around the edges, and the colours were vibrant. It had been done by a professional, no doubt. Unfortunately, eighty percent of it was gone, along with the rest of the gunman’s neck and head. Striker took out his notebook, noted the location and design, and drew a copy of what he could make out. Then he called Felicia over. She looked unimpressed.

‘That look gold or yellow to you?’ he asked.

‘Amber sunshine.’

The small stab at humour felt good, and Striker managed a weak grin. ‘I’m serious, Feleesh.’

‘Gold. Definitely gold.’ She knelt down and leaned under the police tape for a better look. ‘But there’s red in there too, at the uppermost edges.’

‘Red?’

Striker took a better look and realised she was right. He’d thought it was dried blood, but the colour was too bright compared to the rest of the crusted goo. It was ink.

‘Good call.’

After writing this information in his notebook, his eyes fell upon the area where the neck met the chest. Just below the collar bone, left side near the heart, was a crudely tattooed number 13. Striker noted this too. Wrote it down.

He scanned the rest of the chest.

Located perfectly in between the collar bones, at the top of the chest bone, there was one small dark hole, barely noticeable in contrast to the sundered flesh of the neck. This was the first point of impact – where his bullet had gone through, dead centre, then carried out via the rear of the throat, tearing through the gunman’s spinal cord.

Striker stared at that spot, and the recollection hit him all over again. The moment had happened so fast, more reaction and muscle memory than intention. And he couldn’t help but wonder what the outcome might have been, had this first shot not landed with such pinpoint accuracy.

The thought left him sick inside.

Felicia stood beside him. She dropped her hand to her holster and rested her palm on the butt of her pistol. ‘That’s the shot that dropped him. Probably saved our lives. And God knows how many others.’ She spoke the words calmly, logically, without a trace of emotion. As if she were talking about a shot he’d made at the range, or even in a video game.

It drove Striker nuts. Here he was, struggling not to have a meltdown, while Felicia remained cool and composed.

‘Yeah, I got him centre mass,’ he finally said.

‘Great shot.’

‘Well, one of us had to hit him.’

Felicia flinched at the words. Striker caught her reaction, and immediately regretted saying them. You’re an ass, he told himself. Why push things? As Felicia spun away from him and headed in the other direction, he said ‘Look, Felicia, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘Yes, Jacob, you did.’

‘Felicia . . .’

‘I’m looking for teeth. That is what you wanted – right,
Boss
?’

Striker stood fixed to the spot, half of him still angry, half wondering if he should go after her. He watched her search the room, clearly doing a grid, her head angled down, her long brown hair draping across the caramel skin of her cheek. She was beautiful – something he noticed far too often, but never mentioned. And for a moment, he recalled the brief time they’d shared together. It had been a wonderful two months, a temporary reprieve from the grief of losing Amanda. And though it had been exactly what he needed, he now regretted it. Nothing had been the same since. Not with their partnership, and not with their friendship.