Greg Rucka - Alpha

“If you could have them meet me in that conference room you acquired, I’d be grateful,” Ruiz says.

“Listen to me.” Porter shifts, moving in front of Ruiz, trying to keep him from leaving for just a moment more. “You have to forget about the hostages. Those are what, ten, twenty lives? We’re talking tens of thousands dead, hundreds of billions of dollars wasted.”

“Mr. Porter, sir,” Ruiz says. “I have my orders, and I will follow them.”

“Who’s your commanding officer, then?” Porter pulls out his phone. “I haven’t been out so long I don’t have pull, Colonel. Who’s giving you these orders?”

Ruiz shakes his head. “Sir, you do not want to make that call. If you’ll excuse me.”

“Who? Damn it, who do I need to talk to for you to get this straight? The hostages don’t fucking matter!” Porter is shouting, and the room comes to a halt, making his words seem that much louder, and that much more poorly chosen. “Tell me who’s giving you your orders!”

Ruiz exhales, squares his shoulders.

“You need to call the White House, sir. Then you will need to ask to speak to the president of the United States. Again, if you’ll excuse me, I have men waiting to be briefed.”

Natasia escorts him to the conference room where Cardboard and Bonebreaker are waiting, gear bags resting on the floor. Board stands, already studying the blueprints displayed in PowerPoint on the wall. Bone sits, boots on the table, leaning back in his chair, and neither man acknowledges Ruiz’s arrival. Ruiz thanks the young woman, waits just inside the door as she turns and leaves. Bone watches her go, craning his head to catch the last glimpse of the woman as she departs.

Then they’re alone, and Ruiz closes, locks the door. Bone gives him a nod of acknowledgment, moves to sit beside Board at the table.

“The mission is to rescue the hostages, to rescue the hostages,” Ruiz says, indicating the blueprints still being displayed. “Your secondary objective is to locate and verify, and in the event of verification, to disarm the radiological device believed to be in the park.”

“We have numbers?” Board asks.

“At this time we believe there are between fifteen and twenty hostages still in the park.” Ruiz pauses for a fraction. “There is a complication. Six of those hostages are deaf. Warlock’s daughter is one of them.”

Both of the men, already attentive, already focused, shift. Boots come off the table, spines straighten a fraction, and Ruiz feels the transformation, the easy slip from professional to personal. Their community is a small one, the bonds between them precious and forged quite literally under fire. What strikes at one comes to strike all, and never more so than when it strikes their Top. Of Warlock’s team, Cardboard has been with him the longest, Bonebreaker a year shy of that, Chaindragger the most recent member. Of Warlock’s team, Cardboard is divorced with two children, Bonebreaker recently married with one on the way, Chaindragger single.

All of them know Jad Bell, and all of them know Jad Bell’s family. All of them know Amy, and all of them know Athena, and Cardboard, in particular, has memories of piggyback rides and birthday parties, his children and Bell’s.

This strikes home.

Hard.

“He knows we’re here?” Cardboard asks, swipes his hand over his shaved head, clearing it of perspiration. “You have commo?”

“Just cleared. He and Chain burned another two, liberated a group of six, have them safely in the park’s security office, used as a command post. They have an additional asset, CIA-placed, call sign Angel.”

Cardboard slides a look at Bone, then both men are looking at Ruiz.

“He’s holding?” Bonebreaker asks.

“Warlock is holding on you gentlemen,” Ruiz says. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”

Chain and Angel moved the bodies before Bell brought the group back to the command post, but coming up the steps and into the room, the group sees that the signs of the killings remain. A battery of surveillance monitors are dark, glass cracked and the screens a smoke-coal shade, the victims of a flashbang that detonated too close to the equipment, perhaps. Still-wet blood staining the carpet, and a handful of spent brass. He can read the room, and he can tell; Chain and Angel never gave the Tangos a chance.

There are five with him, plus Amy.

Amy, who hates him more than she ever has before, because he’s following orders.

Bell had found the keys on the second man, the one he’d shot, pulled himself painfully to the cage where his wife and these strangers waited, looking at him anxiously from behind the bars. His throat ached, the sensation of the man’s thumbs still upon it, a dull throbbing that was too slowly beginning to recede behind his eyes. One forearm soaked with blood and the submachine gun in his hand, more blood flowing from his lacerated palm, and he didn’t blame any of them for the looks they gave. Amy at the front, taking him in, and from her reaction, he knew he was a sight.

“Listen,” he said, fitting the key, voice so hoarse he almost couldn’t hear it himself. Coughed, repeating, “Listen, there are more of them, more of them coming. You will follow me, you will stay right on me.”

He pauses for a breath that hurts to take, that feels like wet concrete in his upper chest. The door unlocked, still closed, and he meets each set of eyes in turn, they have to understand him. An early-thirties couple, husband and wife from their rings and the way they keep their children close, more children, three of them, one only a toddler in arms, a boy, and two girls, neither far into their teens.

“Stay on me, close to me, no talking until we’re in the tunnels. Nod if you understand.”

They did, they understood, and Bell pulled the door open, Amy pausing to make certain everyone else was out first. He recovered his pistol, stripped the radios and the other submachine gun from the bodies, led the way as fast as he was willing to back to the ramp, down into the Gordo Tunnel, out of the heat. Checking over his shoulder, and they were all with him, Amy taking the rear. He brought them north, skipped the turn onto Flashman, then up to the Nova Tunnel, heading west, until he found the service entrance to the Speakeasy. Through the unlocked door and into the empty bar, and he ushered everyone inside, closed it.

“Wait here. Quiet.”

“Who the hell are you?” This from the husband, a short Latino man who reminds Bell fleetingly of Bonebreaker in posture and manner.

“He’s my husband,” Amy said flatly. In crisis, it seems, their divorce is forgotten.

“What’s your name?” Bell asked him.

“Michael.”

“Michael, I am the man getting you and your family out of here,” Bell said. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

He took the short flight of stairs up to the door, threw the silly little spy-hatch slat, looked out, saw nothing and no one. Awakened the earbud and called for Chain or Angel, and it was Angel who came back immediately.

“We have the command post,” she said. “Whatever you did, they never saw us coming.”

“Do you have the cameras?” Bell asked. “Have you located the other groups?”

“We’ve located another thirteen. There may be more, we don’t have all the monitors. Some were damaged in the take.”

“The group of deaf kids this morning, my daughter’s group. Do you see them?”

She paused. “Negative.”

“I’m en route, have six with me. Find those kids, Angel. I need you to find those kids. Out.”

So there are nine of them in the command post now. Angel wrestling with the coms scrambler that was hooked into the park’s network, and Chain trying to master the Spartan. Bell hands over the weapons and the radios, then puts Michael and his family in the conference room. He gives them bottled water and tells them that they need to sit tight here, they’ll evacuate them as soon as they can.