Greg Rucka - Alpha

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 that makes him fast, but his left snaps up, into Bell’s hands, knocks the.45 out of line and out of his grip, sends the gun clattering to the concrete. Mouth opens, and he starts an inarticulate shout of surprise, but Bell is now stepping forward, snapping his forehead into the Tango’s nose. The cry is stifled, turns to a choke, his nose shattering, and he staggers back.

Bell presses, pursuing, trying to put his fingers through the man’s trachea. But the Tango is swinging the submachine gun up, wild, and the weapon begins to speak and spit even before it’s in line, and Bell throws his left forearm up instead, blocking the swing. He’s inside the man’s guard, drives his right at the Tango’s throat, hits his chin as the other man instinctively tries to protect his neck. Still surging forward, smashing the Tango’s back against the bars of the cage. The jaguar within roars, meal threatened.

The MP5K shouts again, another rattle of shots, wild, deafening in Bell’s left ear. He shifts, moves from the waist, gets his right onto the Tango’s wrist, slips to a finger, twists and pulls, feels bone snap. The Tango shouts as he loses his weapon, pounds his left down, trying to catch Bell at the back of the neck. Misses, the punch just low, hitting the spine and the mass of muscle. Bell grunts, right forearm rising to cross, again going for the throat, and now each man has a grip on the other; Bell can feel the Tango’s fingers clawing at his face, straining for his eyes even as Bell tries to force the man’s head back, tries to crush his windpipe with his arm. The Tango drops his weight, Bell’s purchase vanishes, and he feels half his wind rush free as his back collides with the cage. Punches with his left, hard and fast twice to the man’s midsection, and the Tango takes both punches and is now trying to crush the back of Bell’s head against the bars, through the bars. The jaguar roars again, and Bell feels a searing heat blossom at his lower back.