pissed.
“He jumped over the
” he roared.
The soldier nodded, decked out in black fatigues with goggles, Kevlar vest, helmet, and MP7A. “But it didn't look like… a
sir.”
“What the hell are you—”
“Sir, the pictures you showed us. I was at the elevator, and he… or she… was at the wall, a girl, and with all that rain—”
Lydecker got in the soldier's face. “Mister, how in God's name can you mistake a nineteen-year-old man for a ‘girl'?”
“Sir, I—”
Lydecker silenced him with a look, brushed him aside, and strode to the edge of the observation-deck wall, where the carnage below could barely be made out through the slashing rain. This would be one hell of a mess to cover up.
Then he noticed the rope, flapping in the wind, tauntingly.
He spat into his handheld radio: “TAC Five.”
The radio crackled, and a voice from the ground floor said: “TAC Five.”
“Anyone come down in the elevators?”
“No, sir.”
“Watch them closely. We may have another X-Five on the premises. Possibly female.”
“… Yes, sir.”
Lydecker motioned with his head to one of the men. “Down the rope, soldier.”
The man unhesitatingly slung his weapon back over his shoulder and shimmied over the edge and down out of sight. Lydecker was roaming the observation deck now, surveying the casualties up here— half a dozen anyway. Most of them seemed alive, and were coming around, after the kind of beating an X5 could deliver…
“TAC Two,” he said into the radio.
“TAC Two.”
“TAC Two, take half the team and search the building for our man. Possibility of a second X-Five on site, female.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the team member nearest him. “TAC Three, dispose of the bodies and cleanse the site.”
The man hesitated.
“Can't you hear me in this weather, mister?”
“No, sir. That is, yes sir.”
“Then carry out your orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lydecker turned and marched back to the elevators, where another six men in combat black stood waiting. Behind him, Lydecker heard a pistol shot, then another and another.
“What's the problem?” he asked.
“The elevators, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “The doors closed… ”
“You might trying pushing DOWN,” Lydecker said through smiling teeth, though he was not at all happy. “They just might come back up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something tugged in Lydecker's gut. He got on the radio. “TAC Two?”
“TAC Two. In the stairwell, sir. No sign of anyone.”
“Keep looking, TAC Two. Time's running short.”
“Yes, sir.”
The middle elevator dinged and its doors slid open.
Into the radio, Lydecker said, “TAC Five.”
“TAC Five. No movement, sir.”
The other two elevators arrived, and three men got onto the cars at either side, with Lydecker flying solo in the middle one; he went down one floor and the doors opened onto the vacant restaurant— vacant, that is, but for the soldier he'd sent down the rope, who approached.
“Anything?” Lydecker asked.
The soldier pointed. “Sir, wet footprints all over the place— more than one set.”
Lydecker didn't like that; what it might mean made him very unhappy. “Did you search the entire floor?”
“I followed the prints to the stairwell, sir, but some went up and some down.”
Exasperated, Lydecker said, “Stay at this position.”
At the lobby, Lydecker emerged from the elevator to find that the cleanup crew— in yellow TOXIC WASTE suits and carrying no weapons— had arrived. In the parking lot, they were already dealing with the splattered remains of what appeared to be four different bodies.
Several of the yellow jumpsuited Manticore specialists were scraping up parts and filling body bags. One of them broke away from the group and scurried over to Lydecker, displaying a plastic bag from the thick fingers of a yellow glove.
“You'll want to see this, sir,” the yellow-jumpsuited man said, his voice muffled by his headgear.
Holding the plasticine bag up in the rain, Lydecker could see a fragment of human flesh, but nothing significant. He pulled out a Mini Maglite and took a closer look at the bag's contents: a chunk of skin with a series of black numbers, four in a row, and a barcode, the others numbers abbreviated on either end, probably from the impact with jagged concrete that had separated Seth from his head.
But even a partial number was enough for Lydecker to know they'd tagged another X5… or perhaps the X5 had tagged himself.
“Good work, soldier,” he said, handing the bag back to the cleanup man. “Lock that evidence away. Top security.”
Colonel Donald Lydecker checked with the various TAC positions, to see if anyone had spotted anyone or anything else. That young soldier must have been mistaken: that had been Seth who went over the side, falling on his figurative sword rather than return to the Manticore fold.
His choice.
Then Lydecker got back on the radio. “All TAC members assemble at ground level— suspect has been apprehended, I repeat, suspect has been apprehended. We're going home, men… Saddle up.”
Another yellow-jumpsuited man approached the colonel, this time with a wallet in his hand. “One of the deceased looks to be that computer big shot— Jared Sterling.”
Lydecker shook his head—
he thought— and then, already weaving a new web mentally, said, “All right.”
The tech returned to the gory parking lot, and Lydecker moved back inside, found a quiet, dry corner and made a cell phone call, filling in another Manticore specialist, finishing with, “Despondent over recent business setbacks, the well-known computer tycoon took his own life last night when he leapt from the top of the Seattle Space Needle.”
The voice from the cell said, “We can make that happen.”
“Do it— and filter the money through the usual channels.”
“Yes, sir.”
They wouldn't take all of Sterling's money— that might raise suspicions among certain reform-minded politicians and their liberal-press lackeys. Just a few million to make it look like things were turning sour for the art collector. Maybe they'd have to plant some drugs or incriminating photos; but the world at large would never question the not-so-tragic suicide of another poor little rich boy.
Lydecker clicked END and returned to the parking lot, to supervise. The TAC team was coming down now,
