it’s different out here in the cold, cruel world. My mom thought she was a human being. But some drunk, rich diplomat saw her as an obstacle — or maybe as a target.”
The false sympathy was gone from his voice. Each word came out as if it were chipped from ice. “We’ll never know what was going through his mind. He hightailed it back to Whatzislavia as soon as his ambassador pried him away from the police. Now, it’s too bad you don’t have an ambassador to go to bat for you. We don’t need another pretty face around here. We don’t need your daddy’s money. We need someone to take the heat for us after this operation goes down. And you’re elected. Grow up and face it, girl. It’s the last thing you might be able to do in this life.”
It was a cruel little speech, but Matt could see Caitlin wouldn’t give Rob the satisfaction of seeing tears. The effort made her shake, but she stood straight and glared at him.
“Good work!” Rob applauded. “See, you’re growing up already.”
He turned his attention to the other prisoners. “Okay, now, I expect you guys to be cool. Keep annoying us”—he looked especially at Serge as he spoke—“and you’ll wind up with marks that will make it harder for us to set the right picture. We want the public to see a bunch of rich, privileged kids who got in with the wrong crowd and came to a sorry end. Behave yourself, and I promise your sorry end will be relatively painless. Give us trouble, and we’ll hurt you before this is over. Then we’ll have to come up with a nasty end to hide what we did. You’ll end up flipping a car and being burned to death. Or maybe even have your cruel gangbanger pals kill you execution- style.”
“And what happens if we’re good boys and girls?” Matt asked, amazed that his voice stayed steady. “What nice way will you use to kill us then?”
“Well, there is no nice way,” Rob admitted. “Maybe we’ll get you drunk or high so you’ll scarcely feel somebody’s home security system taking you out.”
He glanced around. “So, if there are no more questions — and I really hope no more ‘you can’t get away with this’ silliness — it’s time to get to work!”
For one wild moment, Matt was tempted to reveal his Net Force connection and tell Falk that he was working undercover. That would rip away his condescending attitude.
As if he were reading Matt’s mind, Rob said, “Don’t try to threaten me with Net Force, Hunter.” He smiled at Matt’s openmouthed response. “Come on! I’ve been in your computer — and a lot of others. You really thought I didn’t know you’re a Net Force Explorer? Seems to me you’ve gone beyond whatever your Captain Winters had in mind. Perhaps I’ll e-mail him a suggestion about better training for Explorers going undercover. Your effort was pretty…pitiful.”
His fellow prisoners looked at Matt with different expressions. At least his effort had been good enough for them.
Now he’d keep quiet, wait, and try to pull off the duty of every prisoner — to escape.
That, of course, would depend on wherever Rob and his gangbanger friends decided to store their captives.
Since no one had anything more to say, Rob and James declared their little meeting over. The guards closed in around Matt, Caitlin, Luc, and Serge, and began herding them through the door in the far wall of the room — the door the boys had come through earlier.
They went out of the room, then down a short, dark hallway ending at a big, heavy oak door, the kind you couldn’t buy anymore. Not that anybody would want this one, Matt thought. The heavy wood panel was torn and gouged. There were even a couple of bullet holes, as if someone had used it for target practice.
But the door was still able to block out sound. Matt was surprised at the noise level on the other side when the guards pushed the door open. He was even more surprised when he went through the doorway into a huge, high-ceilinged room filled with row after row of scarred wooden pews. They were in a church!
A quick glance told him that it had to be an abandoned church. Leaks from the steeply angled roof had caused huge smears down the dingy walls, rotting the plaster away from the red brick beneath. Most areas were thick with dust, except for the pews. They were thick with people, but these people hadn’t come to pray.
The congregation consisted of hard young men, many younger than Matt, the rest ranging in age on up to a couple of guys who looked to be in their late twenties. Beefy or rail-thin, black-skinned, brown, or pale and freckled, they all had the same wary, street-smart hardness. And whatever they wore — most were in jeans and shirts with the sleeves torn away — their outfits mixed the colors green and black.
There had to be a couple of hundred of them, smoking, laughing, checking their guns. Yes, each young man was armed. Hunting rifles, stolen armory weapons, and every variety of pistol Matt had ever heard about seemed to be on display. There were even a couple of antique Beretta M9s like the one Rob Falk had waved around.
This was Rob’s strike force, the fighting strength of the Buzzards called together at their warlord’s orders.
They fell into a dangerous silence for a second as they saw strangers coming through the door. But James came in after them, and the warlord was definitely in a cheerful mood. “Be nice to these people, now,” he warned his troops. “They’re the ones who’re helping us get into the Gardens at Carrollsburg!”
A roar filled the air like nothing that had been heard in that church before — half ironic cheer, half wolf’s snarl at sighting red meat.
James gestured to Matt and Caitlin. “Put these where you kept the others. And no foolin’ around with ’em! We want them all in one piece for when we need them.”
Matt and the others were marched down the aisle to the rear of the church, and Matt thought they were going out. But before they reached the church doors, the lead guard turned aside, to the gaping entrance of a dusty stairwell.
Are they sticking us in the choir loft? Matt wondered. But the stairs kept going up, until Matt realized they were climbing inside the church’s steeple. Then they came to a moldy wooden ladder leaning drunkenly against the lip of a trapdoor overhead.
Matt climbed, and found himself in a space a little larger than his bedroom — but a lot taller. Once bells had hung here, rung on feast days and to celebrate marriages. They were gone now, probably taken when the church was deconsecrated. A bell was a valuable thing, even if it was only melted down for its metal.
This space was empty, except for dust, the remains of a couple of bird nests, and what looked like mouse droppings on the floor. Four reasonably clean folding chairs were scattered around. Apparently, they’d been brought up for the comfort of the prisoners.
Caitlin, Luc, and Serge had all reached the upper story now. From below came a scraping sound. Their guards were removing the ladder!
“Y’all just sit quiet up there,” Willy’s voice echoed up the steeple. “We’ll come fetch you when we’re ready to move.”
As soon as the guards were out of sight, Matt snatched up one of the chairs and pushed it against the wall. The belfry had no windows, but above their heads, the enclosure was open to the air. This was where the sound of the bells had rung out in the old days.
At some point, though, there must have been a problem with intruders. Iron bars, spaced five inches apart, wouldn’t have blocked the tolling of the bells. But they’d keep anyone out of the belfry — or in.
The bars didn’t block the view, though, as Matt pulled himself up on his improvised step stool. He looked out — upon a vista of empty, crumbling buildings. The roofs of the surrounding stone and wooden row houses seemed to sag as if the weight of too many years pressed down on them. Paint peeled off the siding boards like diseased, scabby skin, revealing the gray of moldering wood. Obviously, it hadn’t been a great neighborhood even when people lived there. Scattered among the houses were square, raw brick buildings. They’d housed auto-body repair shops, chemical warehouses, all the parts of a city that get shoved into out-of-the-way corners where nice people didn’t have to look at — or live with — them.
It did keep the rents down, of course. Poor folks were expected to put up with the noise and the corrosive smells. This was a neighborhood that had been hard-used. And once it was deserted, the buildings, both old and new, began quickly falling into ruin.
To Matt, it looked like a town abandoned in the face of an enemy army’s advance. No-man’s-land. But where would you find such a desolate area in the middle of a teeming cityscape like greater Washington?
