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27
David groaned as he came to lying on his back. For some glacially long seconds, he thought the flashing colors in his mind and the screaming of sirens were the same thing. Then he began to untangle his senses. The colors and the screaming separated, the colors giving way to a grayscale landscape painted in drizzle, while the screaming turned into sirens. The screaming also turned into the feeble cries for help coming from the second building further away, which had not directly suffered the blasts, but must have partially collapsed and now was in danger due to spreading fire.
David shook his head as he sat up. He touched his forehead and found it slippery. He saw blood on his fingers. The scab on top of his head was intact. Beside him was a pile of bricks where Tabitha Summers’s body had been, and he guessed she must be under there. No way she could be alive. A fire engine was trying to get into the alley, but was blocked by debris. Jagged, scorched timbers stuck out of heaps of broken masonry. Combs of lath and plaster were scattered about. Concrete blocks revealed teeth of torn rebar.
David heaved onto his stomach, then did a pushup to get onto his knees and palms. He remembered the urgency of Tomasik and Jankowsky—dead now, along with Tabitha, gone also the list of names, and how many other innocent people. He remembered the blond-haired man and the opaque-eyed shadow in the driver’s seat, and suddenly had a sense of desperation. Whoever they were—whatever Operation Ivory Baton was—they were killing everyone connected with Ib Shoob’s discovery. And that meant that he, David, was next. Perhaps he was the only one left alive who knew. He rose, swaying, and pushed down his uniform. The raincoat, although filthy, had only a small tear. His car was down the street on the other side. People were running to aid him, but he yelled. “Go help the ones inside! There’s a woman’s body under the bricks here.” Civilian paramedics offered to help, but he brushed past them. A thick gauze pad got onto his forehead somehow, and he waited a moment while someone wrapped his head. “Just a grazing flesh wound,” he heard. “Get that cleaned out and stitched up. You okay, bud?”
“Thanks,” he whispered. He accepted a drink of cranberry juice. Never during those two or three minutes did he sit down. It started raining again—a fast, straight rain from a bright sky—and he welcomed the cooling water that dribbled through the heat and pain on his forehead and swept the mud from his coat.
He turned onto the side street just as the first military vehicles arrived. Combat soldiers in full gear jumped out and began forming a perimeter. As David turned the corner onto the bigger street where his car was parked, and crossed to the other side, he began to think that he’d be able to get away. Just keep walking, walking, walking, hands in pockets, don’t look left or right. He heard the sound of a helicopter and looked up. There, flying at 2000 feet, he saw three dark choppers flying in a row, each with big red crosses on white square backgrounds. The rear two choppers swung to one side, still in line, turned slowly, flew away. As he walked, David spoke Tory’s work number into his collar com.
She answered: “Yes?”
“Tory.”
“David!” She sounded pleased.
“Something terrible has happened.”
“What!”
“The place I work has been bombed. Everyone is dead, including Tabitha Summers.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’m not badly hurt, and I’m walking away. I saw some of the guys who did it. I think. I recognized one man I saw the night Ib was kidnapped. Pleasant preppy blond guy. The other was in Top Five. Reminds you of a lizard. You remember, the guys in the police sketches.”
She cut to the area of her main concern. “How badly hurt are you?”
“Another scrape on the head, like last time. I’m coming in to see Mattoon. We were betrayed from up top, I don’t know by whom. Someone or some group high up in command. In case I don’t get to him, you do the same. One of us has to reach Mattoon. Tell him to watch out for Operation Ivory Baton. Montclair is in on it. So is Felix Mason. So are two dozen other important people whose names I don’t remember just now. It’s on the list, which Tabitha had and which is now lost. See if you can get Jet to dig it out of the system. It’s got the names of all the important conspirators. They killed Consiglio and Shoob. I’ve got to talk with Mattoon, get him to call off the convention. See if you can get to Mattoon also. CON2 must be canceled. Stopped dead. Killed.” As he stumbled along, he could see the rest of it. There were people waiting in the wings, just waiting for the right moment to step in and take over with a Constitution of their own.
She shrieked: “David, please take care—”
“I love you, Tory. I’ll see you in a little while. I’m coming over there.” He cut her off—turned the button off because her hysteria cut his heart. He stepped off the curb and crossed the street. There was his car. A row of dark green Army and dark blue Air Force MP squad cars cruised by with flashing lights and screaming sirens. Inside sat MP’s and Air Police in fatigues, holding shotguns. Civilian police cars stood parked with flashing lights, apparently told not to go any closer. A row of Army field ambulances crawled in—olive boxes with white squares and red crosses, their windows and headlights covered with steel mesh. Their headlights were round and yellow, trailing wisps of rain and fog, sallow candles in a funeral procession.
As he approached his car, David fished out his keys. They jangled familiarly and reassuringly. He’d get in and drive away and start making a list of the names he remembered. He put the key in the door and started to turn it.
“I wouldn’t.”
He looked up.
There was Mr. Blond with the steel rimmed glasses. His cherubic face was wreathed in a smile that wavered between childish delight and ice cold insanity. “It might explode if you turn it on, Captain Gordon baby.”
“What do you want?” David felt a numb matter of factness. Of course they’d come for him. He suddenly felt tired; felt the smash he’d gotten to the head; swayed a little.
“My colleague and I,” Blond said indicating with his thumb the reptile man who stepped out of a doorway, “want to save you so we can ask you some questions. If you run or yell, I’ll shoot you in the neck and you’ll never walk again. One way or another, I will drag you in for questioning.”
“I’m a U.S. citizen. An officer—”
“You are a dupe of the corrupt and evil forces that took over our country many years ago. Since you don’t know any better, save your breath. Now walk with us.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Mud-Eyes managed a faint smile. His voice was raspy, as if coming from a leathery throat. “We heard you talk with your little chickie. You want to go to the Atlantic Hotel? Why not let us chauffeur you? A free ride to see Colonel Bronf.”
“And who the hell is Colonel Bronf?” David muttered as they herded him along. People were running past them toward the ruins and fire, and ignored the three men. Then he remembered—it was the sweaty, cigarette-smelling, balding little assistant chief of staff he’d met while working on the Corcoran case. This lizard-man had been in Bronf’s office that day.
David echoed the hotel provost marshal’s complaint. “I thought nobody ever got to see Colonel Bronf more than once.”
And Mud-Eyes said: “You just got lucky, asshole.”
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