Max Collins - Before the Dawn

“You might trying pushing DOWN,” Lydecker said through smiling teeth, though he was not at all happy. “They just might come back up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Something tugged in Lydecker’s gut. He got on the radio. “TAC Two?”

“TAC Two. In the stairwell, sir. No sign of anyone.”

“Keep looking, TAC Two. Time’s running short.”

“Yes, sir.”

The middle elevator dinged and its doors slid open.

Into the radio, Lydecker said, “TAC Five.”

“TAC Five. No movement, sir.”

The other two elevators arrived, and three men got onto the cars at either side, with Lydecker flying solo in the middle one; he went down one floor and the doors opened onto the vacant restaurant — vacant, that is, but for the soldier he’d sent down the rope, who approached.

“Anything?” Lydecker asked.

The soldier pointed. “Sir, wet footprints all over the place — more than one set.”

Lydecker didn’t like that; what it might mean made him very unhappy. “Did you search the entire floor?”

“I followed the prints to the stairwell, sir, but some went up and some down.”

Exasperated, Lydecker said, “Stay at this position.”

At the lobby, Lydecker emerged from the elevator to find that the cleanup crew — in yellow TOXIC WASTE suits and carrying no weapons — had arrived. In the parking lot, they were already dealing with the splattered remains of what appeared to be four different bodies.

Several of the yellow jumpsuited Manticore specialists were scraping up parts and filling body bags. One of them broke away from the group and scurried over to Lydecker, displaying a plastic bag from the thick fingers of a yellow glove.

“You’ll want to see this, sir,” the yellow-jumpsuited man said, his voice muffled by his headgear.

Holding the plasticine bag up in the rain, Lydecker could see a fragment of human flesh, but nothing significant. He pulled out a Mini Maglite and took a closer look at the bag’s contents: a chunk of skin with a series of black numbers, four in a row, and a barcode, the others numbers abbreviated on either end, probably from the impact with jagged concrete that had separated Seth from his head.

But even a partial number was enough for Lydecker to know they’d tagged another X5... or perhaps the X5 had tagged himself.

“Good work, soldier,” he said, handing the bag back to the cleanup man. “Lock that evidence away. Top security.”

Colonel Donald Lydecker checked with the various TAC positions, to see if anyone had spotted anyone or anything else. That young soldier must have been mistaken: that had been Seth who went over the side, falling on his figurative sword rather than return to the Manticore fold.

His choice.

Then Lydecker got back on the radio. “All TAC members assemble at ground level — suspect has been apprehended, I repeat, suspect has been apprehended. We’re going home, men... Saddle up.”

Another yellow-jumpsuited man approached the colonel, this time with a wallet in his hand. “One of the deceased looks to be that computer big shot — Jared Sterling.”

Lydecker shook his head — fucking mess, he thought — and then, already weaving a new web mentally, said, “All right.”

The tech returned to the gory parking lot, and Lydecker moved back inside, found a quiet, dry corner and made a cell phone call, filling in another Manticore specialist, finishing with, “Despondent over recent business setbacks, the well-known computer tycoon took his own life last night when he leapt from the top of the Seattle Space Needle.”

The voice from the cell said, “We can make that happen.”

“Do it — and filter the money through the usual channels.”

“Yes, sir.”

They wouldn’t take all of Sterling’s money — that might raise suspicions among certain reform-minded politicians and their liberal-press lackeys. Just a few million to make it look like things were turning sour for the art collector. Maybe they’d have to plant some drugs or incriminating photos; but the world at large would never question the not-so-tragic suicide of another poor little rich boy.

Lydecker clicked END and returned to the parking lot, to supervise. The TAC team was coming down now, and he’d get them the hell out of here, before this turned into an incident. Wouldn’t do for that Eyes Only to get ahold of tonight’s fun and games...

Thank God the neighborhood was practically deserted, but for junkies, winos, and other riffraff, not the sort of place where anyone would call the cops over a few gunshots.

Lydecker’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound — a few blocks over — of a motorcycle revving, then peeling out. When he turned his rain-flecked face toward the engine roar, Lydecker saw nothing. Something nagged at the back of his mind — that girl, that remarkable girl in LA — but he shrugged. Things were contained. And another X5 could be checked off the list.

No one would ever know what had happened here tonight. The bodies and the blood would be swept away, like the garbage they were; and the money that littered the parking lot would be taken into custody by Manticore.

Things in Seattle would soon be wrapped up. They’d be going home...

... only Donald Lydecker still had the gnawing, nagging feeling that he’d missed something, something important, that for the success of Seth’s elimination, an important but unspecified failure had also occurred, making a nasty balance.

Two days later, back in Wyoming, he called a certain TAC team member into his office — the young man who had seen the X5 dive off that observation deck. Lydecker — having learned that one of the dead men was the Russian he’d aided in the Chinese Theatre massacre — wondered if Kafelnikov’s presence indicated also the presence of that extraordinary young woman from the Chinese Clan, that unidentified suspected X5.

“Tell me again what you saw,” Lydecker said.

The soldier, Keenan, just a kid himself (from Nebraska), wore simple black fatigues now, instead of his TAC gear. His blond hair was cut close, and he had shown nothing but loyalty to the program in his year and a half of service.

The boy was obviously considering the question carefully before risking an answer. “Sir, I saw the X5 known as Seth. He had his back to me, and—”

“No.” Lydecker rose behind his desk, hands on his hips. “Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth — tell me exactly what you really saw that rainy night.”

Keenan met his superior’s eyes. “I saw a girl, a woman really... with black hair, dressed in black, sir. Leather, I think. Sort of... motorcycle gear.”

Lydecker’s memory replayed the sound of that cycle revving up and taking off, a few blocks from the site. “Did you see her face?”

“Negative, sir.”

“You’re sure it was a female.”

Nodding, Keenan said, “Yes, sir, I’m sure. She was...” And now he risked a tiny smile. “... built like a girl. Woman.”

“Athletic?”

“Oh yes, and... nice.”

Lydecker sighed. “I’m glad your faculties are so acute, Mr. Keenan... well done. Now... this stays in this room... between you and me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Keenan saluted, spun on his heels, and strode out.

Lydecker sat down, rather heavily, and thought over what he’d just heard. It wasn’t completely implausible that the X5s were in contact with each other. But were they up to something, together?

He thought about that revving motorcycle and wondered if he’d screwed the pooch. Maybe there had been two X5s in the Needle that night, Seth and one of the girls... Jondy, Brin, Max... could have been any of them. And very possibly this was the LA X5, over whom so many had died at the theater.