He nods her toward the bed, then ignores her entirely. He can feel his erection, already full and determined, and he wonders what is thrilling him more: the thought of fucking this woman who is giving herself up so easily, or the thought of fucking all of Southern California, the United States of America, and that piece of shit, Mr. Money.
He dials Matias’s number, thinking that it’s all fucking the same things.
Chapter Nineteen
Bell moves quicker alone, sacrificing stealth for speed, heading back up the Gordo Tunnel and then turning again onto the Flashman Tunnel, heading east. Jogging easily, pistol in his hands, south again at Betsy. Maybe he should’ve kept the rifle, but appearing on camera with a long gun and full combat rig, that would have tipped his hand, maybe even warned whoever was on the cameras that more were coming, geared and ready. With the pistol, Bell hopes to look like the same threat he was before, hopes his presence alone will be bait enough. Trying to remember the camera emplacements above ground, where he’ll be most easily spotted. The highest concentration is, logically, in the zones around the park perimeter, tapering off the deeper one goes into the park.
He wants to be seen, and Bell figures Wild World Live! is probably his best bet; it’s close enough to the entrance that he’ll have cameras, but far enough from the Sheriff’s Office, the command post, that-presuming that’s where the hostiles are staging from-they’ll need to cover some ground to reach him. There’s the added benefit that it’s a theater, backstage areas outside of surveillance, with plenty of cover and room to move.
The mixed scent of the animals greets him as he makes his approach, slowing at the foot of the ramp. Their noise comes next, the anxious chitter and chirp of creatures used to constant tending and near-?constant attention, abruptly abandoned. Perhaps they’ve sensed that something has happened, perhaps it’s simply the breakdown in their routines, but they don’t sound happy.
He holds in the shadow of the ramp that feeds into the backstage, checks his watch, and finds it’s nine minutes past one. Chain and Angel should be in position and holding, and he frees one hand to press at his earbud.
“Chain, Angel,” he murmurs. “Warlock, coms check.”
No response, which he interprets to mean they’re still below ground, still waiting on the clock. As they should be, and it’s what he expected, but it was worth a try. He frees his phone next, sees that it has, once again, acquired a signal. Still holding in the shadows, the noise of the animals in the background, he punches up Brickyard.
“Brickyard, go.”
“Warlock. Chain and Angel are in position to take back the CP, ten minutes.”
“We have new information,” Ruiz says.
“Tell me.”
“Confirm hostages on the ground. One has already been executed. Hostiles are claiming they have a radiological device, will detonate if demands not met, will detonate if any attempt is made to retake the park. Bone and Board are en route to my location, estimate deployment fourteen forty.”
Bell leans back against the wall, eyes on the mouth of the tunnel, up the ramp. There’s been no movement, but still, he won’t look away, even as he considers what Ruiz is telling him. A dirty bomb changes things, and changes them radically, but it throws a whole new sheet of doubt up, as well. Whoever these people are, they’re savvy enough to have coordinated taking the park, to have put at least one person on the inside, to have spoofed the botulinum. Bell can believe in their ability to construct and place a radiological device.
But believing its existence and then believing that, whoever these people are, they’re willing to set it off- that’s something else. Unless they’re willing to die for their cause, they’ll be exposing themselves to the same radioactive debris as their targets. Outside of immediate ground zero, a dirty bomb does slow work, attacks economies far more effectively than it does individuals. Contamination from the debris would take years to manage, cost literally billions to clean up, and even then, the park’s reputation would be destroyed. A dirty bomb detonating in WilsonVille would kill the park just as thoroughly as if it were shot in the base of the skull, and would kill Wilson Entertainment with the same slow inevitability as cancer, the same cancer hundreds of thousands might contract as a result.
Death might come slowly, but it would come all the same, to friend and foe alike.
“Are they true believers?” Bell asks.
“They talk the talk,” Ruiz says. “But they’re walking funny.”
Bell wants to grin at that, but can’t bring himself to do it. “The CP has the Spartan. We get it up and running, we can scan for radioactive material.”
“You trust that Spartan?”
“Either that or wait. Are you telling us to hold?”
Ruiz answers without hesitating. “They’re killing hostages.”
“Understood.”
“Out.”
WilsonVille itself isn’t equipped to house the animals who perform in the Flower Sisters Mystical Show and Wild World Live! on-site. Rather, they’re brought into the park each morning, escorted by their staff of handlers and overseen by the chief vet. For every animal used in the show, there’s at least one, sometimes as many as four, left to figuratively-and often literally-wait in the wings. Three separate jaguars are required for Real Live Hendar, for example, none of which are allowed to work for more than thirty minutes a day. A tired cat is a dangerous cat, and, from a management point of view, a lawsuit waiting to happen. The same can be said for the lionesses that perform as Real Live Lavender, though as Bell understands it, there are only two gazelles because, as it was explained to him, gazelles are actually really fucking stupid.
He’s not sure about the snakes.
He’s thinking about all this as he comes off the ramp from the tunnel and into the animal holding area of Wild World Live! hears the growl from one of the big cats hidden nearby. It’s a wide, sunken space, feeding into backstage, covered overhead by a massive awning meant to shield those below from the sun. The holding areas themselves are separated by sixteen-foot-tall curtains, and he imagines this is done to keep the animals from eyeing one another, though clearly it does nothing to hide their scents. The cat-or perhaps a different cat-growls again, and maybe the beast is smelling Bell, or maybe it’s just pissed off at having been left alone on this scorching day.
It’s a sound that sinks through flesh and awakens primal warnings that evolution has done nothing to dull. It’s a sound that makes his muscles tense, and draws his attention unconsciously from what he’s doing and where he is to the more urgent need to be certain-absolutely certain-that some pissed-off jaguar or indignant and hungry lioness isn’t about to make a meal of him.
This is why Jad Bell doesn’t spot the Tango until it’s too late.
This is what he tells himself later, at any rate.
He’s coming around one of the holding pens, this to his right, the heavy, high curtains blocking the sight lines of one animal to another. The stage is to his left, the literal backstage, and another curtained block lies dead ahead. He hears a snarl, this one unquestionably a warning, a declaration, catches the scent of fresh blood and offal, all suddenly clear; the ammonia tang of urine. He hears what he thinks is the sound of a baby’s whimper.
The curtain beside him flutters, parts. Head turn, a quick flash, a cage, a jaguar, a dead gazelle torn open stem to stern, organs spilling into a burgundy pool on the concrete ground. And the Tango, most important, the Tango: Caucasian, no more than his midtwenties, still in Tyvek, no mask, no gloves, black hair and startlingly blue eyes. A submachine gun in his right hand, and Bell identifies the weapon without thought, an MP5K. The man is grinning, opening his mouth to speak in the moment before he realizes Bell is standing, unexpectedly, in front of him.
Bell pivots, raising his weapon and trying to take a half step back all at once. The Tango is fast, or maybe he’s panicked and
