Flashback

face. “Do you understand, shitstain? Are you going to keep your mouth shut?”

Hurt, Val could only blink and nod. He felt a strange sensation with the gun aimed at him—a crawling around his scrotum, as if his testicles wanted to crawl back up inside his body, and a sudden urge to hide behind someone, anyone, even himself.

Val heard himself say, “You haven’t told us how and where we can kill a Jap yet.”

Coyne smiled, slid the gun under his now attentive and grimly smiling Putin shirt, and nodded in return. He gestured everyone into a crouching circle. Even Cruncher struggled to his knees to join.

“Not a Jap,” whispered Coyne. “The Jap. Daichi Omura himself. The California Advisor.”

Some of the boys whistled. Cruncher tried to but just winced and touched his ruined lips and broken teeth with tentative fingers.

“Shut up,” Coyne said. Everyone shut up.

“This Friday evening, they’re having a big city thing rededicating the Disney Performing Arts Center down on Grand Avenue in the city center. The spanic mayor and everyone’ll be there, but no one but the top guys and us knows that Advisor Omura’s showing up, coming down from the Green Zone and Getty Castle in a motorcade. I know right when he’ll arrive—to the second—and where the armored limo will pull up and which side Omura will get out of the car on and where the bodyguards will be.”

“But how could…,” squeaked Dinjin and was slapped into silence by Toohey or one of the others.

Val, still blushing with anger and embarrassment, understood. Coyne had so much money because his divorced mother worked for the city—worked as liaison for the Advisor’s office and the city. Worked in the transportation department.

“And we’ll be there waiting,” said Coyne. Looking from face to face.

Gene D. was shaking his head. “I’ve seen that sorta thing on TV, B.C. And no disrespect or nothing, but… I mean… like… we ain’t going to get within ten blocks of that Performing Arts place and whatever’s goin’ on inside. Especially if the Advisor’s going to be there. It’d be like a pope visiting and…”

“They killed a pope not long ago,” interrupted Coyne.

Gene D. nodded, shook his head, found his strand again. “No, I mean… you know… there’s going to be state troopers and whatchamacallims… the federal guys…”

“Homeland,” said a sullen Sully.

“Yeah, but no,” said Gene D., “that’s not who I mean. Those other federal guys…”

“The State Department Office of Security,” said Coyne, showing everyone how patient he was being.

“Yeah. And not only them but the Jap protection guys as well…,” said Gene D. and sort of wound down. It was a pretty impressive showing by a not very impressive kid, thought Val.

When Val spoke, he was amazed how normal—even solid—his voice sounded, given that he’d almost pissed himself a minute or so earlier when Coyne had pointed the Beretta at him.

“What Gene D.’s saying,” said Val, “is that we couldn’t get close, and even if we did get close, we couldn’t kill Omura without getting gunned down by his security, and even if we did somehow get close and kill the Advisor and not get killed ourselves, we’d never get away. The whole city would go apeshit. They’d have our faces on every sat channel before we got half a block away… which we wouldn’t get anyway.”

Val heard how lame that finish had been, but he left it that way and crossed his arms.

Coyne smiled. “You’re absolutely right, my man. Except for one thing. Sewers. I know the sewers and how to get there and where to wait and which one to shoot from and which ones to get away in.”

Toohey made a scrunchy face. “Forget it, man. I ain’t crawling through shit to kill no one.”

Coyne rolled his eyes. “Not shit-sewers, stupid. Storm sewers. Rain runoff sewers. The city’s riddled with them.”

Val again remembered the 1954 movie Them about the giant ants and the finale where FBI guy James Arness and his sidekick, whatshisname, chased down the ants in the storm sewers that ran into the usually dry Los Angeles River with army Jeeps and big trucks roaring down the echoing underground corridors. Val’s old man had loved that movie for some stupid reason—probably because Val’s mother also loved it —and when Val was little, he’d loved watching the idiot black-and-white flatfilm with both his parents, the little room in the little house smelling of popcorn and the sprung old couch crowded…

He came up out of it—the memory had been almost as compelling as a flash, but only because he had flashed on those experiences so many times with the drug—and said, “No, Coyne. No. It’s not like the city and Jap security people don’t also know about those sewers. When someone like the Advisor goes somewhere public, I’ve read where they weld the sewer openings closed for a mile or so around…” Val could see Coyne grinning but he went ahead anyway. “Not just the round manhole-type sewer-sewers that Toohey was talking about, but storm sewer openings, too. Weld them shut or seal them up somehow.”

The grin stayed on Coyne’s smug face so Val shut up. He realized that his arms were still crossed. He wasn’t buying any of Coyne’s bullshit. And he hadn’t liked having the muzzle of a loaded gun aimed at him. He wasn’t going to forget that.

As if sensing Val’s hostility, the flashgang’s leader set his hand on Val’s shoulder. His voice was soft, reasonable. “You’re absolutely right, Valerino. City security and State Department Security and DHS security and Omura’s own ninja guys will all make sure that all windows in nearby buildings will be sealed against snipers, all rooftops checked, all unauthorized vehicles hauled away, and all sewers—those carrying Toohey’s shit and those for storms—will be sealed up…”

Coyne waited several beats like the son of a movie actor he was, his gaze moving from face to face—even to Cruncher’s ruined face—and then he said, “But this storm sewer opening outside the Disney Pavilion is already sealed up. Has been for years and years. All the computer files say it’s a permanent weld-job, but it ain’t. It’s an old rusty iron door made out of panels with a steel grate inside. We can cut through the grate ahead of time. And…”

Coyne looked around the faces again, drawing it out.

“… and I’ve got the fucking key for the iron panels.”

Six of the seven other boys started babbling and jostling one another.

“They’ll never see us,” said Coyne. “We’ll shoot the Jap VIP from the sewer opening, just cut him down like a weed, and be gone before his security can turn around. We lock the iron panels behind us. By the time they get down into the sewers, we’re a mile away through the whatchamacallit—labyrinth—of those old storm sewers, already out on the streets and blending with the crowds. I even know where to dump the guns on the way so they’ll never be found.”

The babbling and jostling stopped and all eight boys just looked at one another. Even Cruncher quit mopping his bleeding mouth.

“Holy shit,” Val whispered at last. “It might work. Holy shit.”

“We’ll flash on this for years,” said Coyne.

“Holy shit,” repeated Val.

“Holy shit and amen,” Coyne said, blessing everyone with his fingers like he was the new pope who’d taken over for the dead one.

“Yurodivy!” said the thinly smiling, smirking, full-face T-shirt image of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. “You are all… holy fools.”

1.05 LoDo, Denver—Saturday, Sept. 11

Sato didn’t take the handcuffs off as he drove north to 20th Street and then east above I-25 again and down into the part of Denver called LoDo. Nick’s wrists were already torn and bloody; the jouncing of the heavy— obviously armored—turd-brown Honda electric tore more flesh off his wrists and made Nick grind his molars rather than cry out again.