Hardbingers rj-10 Read online

  The Oculus knew many things could upset him, but nothing could make him doubt himself and his calling.

  But as Rasalom told his tale, he realized he was wrong.

  18

  The WALK sign flashed the go-ahead green to cross 58th. Gia was just stepping off the curb when she heard a voice calling from somewhere behind.

  "Miss! Oh, Miss!" Calling her?

  She turned and saw Dov, the owner of Kosher Nosh, hurrying toward her, waving his arms.

  Had she forgotten something?

  "Phone call!" he said, pointing back toward the deli. "Emergency phone call!"

  Emergency? Who—?

  Her chest tightened as the possibilities raced through her mind. Had something happened to her parents? No, they wouldn't know about Kosher Nosh. Only Jack knew of her fondness for the place, and no one in her family had a way to contact him.

  It had to be Jack.

  She signaled to Dov that she'd heard him, then turned to take Vicky back. She was surprised to see her a third of the way across the street, her nose in her new book. Probably thought she was right behind her.

  Then things began to happen.

  Hearing the roar of a big engine…

  … turning to see a truck of some sort running the red light and bearing down on Vicky…

  … seeing the hulking shadow behind the wheel…

  … realizing he wasn't going to stop…

  … knowing Vicky was going to be hit and nothing she could do would change that…

  … leaping into the street…

  … pushing Vicky to get her out of harm's way…

  … seeing the truck's grille rushing at her…

  … feeling an instant of awful, bone-crushing impact…

  Then nothing.

  19

  Cal saw it all—saw the kid step off the curb, saw the mother run to the child, saw the impact, saw two human projectiles that looked like rag dolls.

  And then Miller came to a screeching halt behind him, blocking the view. He hopped out of the truck and into the passenger seat.

  "Let's go!" He pounded on the dashboard. "Go-go-go!"

  Fighting a wave of nausea, Cal flipped the Camry into gear. The tires chirped as he hit the gas.

  Neither spoke as they accelerated the half block down to 1st Avenue and turned downtown. Though the FDR might be faster, they'd opted instead for local streets, figuring they'd offer more options.

  Somewhere in the forties, Cal gave in to the need to say something.

  "Are we proud of ourselves yet?"

  He expected a typical Miller reply—like "Fuck you"—but it didn't come.

  "Almost missed her," Miller said in a low voice. "For some reason she stopped at the curb. I mean I could have driven up on the sidewalk to take her out, but probably would have wrecked the truck and me along with it."

  Cal glanced at him. Something odd in Miller's voice.

  "But that didn't happen," Cal said, and added a silent unfortunately.

  "No. I was figuring I'd have to settle for just the kid when the woman sees me coming and jumps out to try and save her when there was no way in hell she could. They both looked at me. I saw their eyes—they had the same blue eyes—staring at me just before…"

  As Miller's voice trailed off, Cal shook his head. He was feeling worse and worse.

  "So… the mother knows it's going to cost her life but she tries anyway?"

  "Yeah. She was in the clear."

  "But her kid was more important." Cal gave his head another shake. "Does this sound like someone involved with the Otherness? Someone who's a threat to the Ally? What did we just do, Miller? What have we done?"

  Miller said, "Pull over."

  "What do you mean? We've got to keep moving."

  "Pull over, goddammit!" His voice sounded strange. Strained. No questioning the urgency in the tone.

  So Cal pulled to the right and stopped midblock. Miller opened his door and leaned out. Cal heard retching and the splat of vomit hitting the pavement. Twice.

  Then he straightened and wiped his mouth on his sleeve as he closed the door. He looked pale and sweaty.

  Cal stared at him, astonished. "What the—?"

  "Just something I ate, okay? Shut up and call the 0. Tell the fucker it's done."

  Then he leaned back and closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.

  20

  Jack shouted into the phone as he steered the car into the maw of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

  "Hello! Hello, goddammit!"

  Where was she? Where was Dov? Had he missed her? Why wasn't one of them back?

  His blood chilled when he heard a commotion on the other end, cries of alarm.

  Oh, please… please…

  After a seeming eternity—long enough for Jack to near the far end of the tunnel—he heard a voice. Not on the phone, but near it.

  Not Gia. Dov.

  Jack's blood began to sludge as he heard him wailing, "Oh, dear God! Oh dear God!" in the background.

  "Pick up! Pick up!"

  Finally a clatter and then the guy's voice, sounding strained, shaky.

  "You are still there?"

  "What happened? What's wrong?"

  "A lerrible thing! A terrible thing! The lady and the little girl—by a truck they were hit!"

  Jack forced the words past a locking throat. "Are they hurt? Are they alive?"

  "They're hurt terrible is all I can tell you. I don't see how they could live through such a thing. Emergency has been called. Help is on the way but I don't know… I don't know…"

  Jack dropped the phone without cutting the connection. Dov might have been still talking but he couldn't hear.

  The tunnel wavered before him, went out of focus. A blaring honk brought him back in time to keep his car from drifting into the next lane.

  He searched for an emotion but he felt nothing—no rage, no fear, no sorrow. He'd flatlined. All that kept him sane was the conviction that this couldn't be… couldn't be…

  Sunlight ahead. He aimed for it. Then he was out and pointed toward the FDR Drive. As he raced uptown he felt his insides turning to stone.

  21

  The Oculus's insides jumped as the ringing of the phone jangled through the enveloping darkness. With each passing minute the temperature had dropped, but his body was nowhere near as cold as his soul.

  For as he'd sat in this black neverwhere he'd been forced to listen to the Adversary as he whispered his insidious, serpentine soliloquy.

  What I'm going to tell you will upset you, make you doubt yourself and your calling…

  The Oculus hadn't thought that possible, and had listened through a wall of iron confidence. His calling was his heritage, in his genes.

  But now…

  As Rasalom had talked on, his words rang true, resonating with the Oculus's own questions about the Ally's recent alarms. And toward the end, as he saw how it hewed to a certain frightful logic, he realized that Rasalom might very well be telling the truth.

  It sickened the OcuJus to his soul to realize that he might have been involved in—

  He heard the phone's receiver rattle off its cradle and a voice say, "Hello?"

  Rasalom had picked up the call and… it took the Oculus a few heartbeats before he realized that Rasalom was speaking in a perfect imitation of his voice.

  "Very well. Good work… You sound upset. I can hear it. 1 feel your pain… Yes, well, we answer to a higher calling, don't we? You must take solace in that."

  Then the sound of the receiver returning to its cradle.

  "And there it is," Rasalom said softly in his previous voice. "Confirmation from the yenigeri themselves. A bit late calling back, don't you think? Perhaps because they're upset. I sensed their inner turmoil. They aren't yet aware of what I've told you, and perhaps they never will be, but they sense that something is not right, that something is askew. It's causing confusion. And confusion is… delicious."

  And then those eyes with the unb
linking stare hovered before him again.

  "Well, now that the Alarm has been answered and the mission complete, I don't see that I have any further use for you. The important question is, how to dispose of you?"

  The Oculus's bladder clenched. The yeniceri—what were they doing? If only one of them would call, or stop in, or—

  "But another question is, what to do with your daughter?"

  Not Diana! No, please!

  If only he could speak, shout…

  Rasalom's tone became mocking. "Ah, the concern of a loving parent for the safety and well-being of his beloved offspring. I sense your terror, your dread, your plummeting self-worth because of your helplessness. Tasty."

  The Oculus's mind screamed for help. Where was the Ally in all this? Where was the Sentinel? Or even the Heir? Why was this being allowed to happen?

  "On the other hand, I may let her live. Give those lackeys you call yeniceri someone to rally around after they work through their loss, their sense of impotence and worthlessness. After a suitable period of self-flagellation, they'll recover and move on to a renewed purpose, a sense of hope, a search for redemption after having failed you so. Let them feel they've succeeded in protecting their new Oculus, then crush them again."

  Bastard.

  "I know what you're thinking: Why do this piecemeal? Why not go from Oculus to Oculus—say, one a day—and kill each in a serial massacre? Perhaps because all the pieces of the elaborate clockwork I've been assembling are not yet in place. And although the deaths of the Oculi are necessary to the plan, they are but one facet. So it amuses me to spend the intervening time—and you may trust me that it will not be long—removing you poor excuses for prophets at random intervals. The human mind is comforted by patterns, but I shall offer none.

  "Now, a question you're probably asking—besides why must I face this alone?—is why is he telling me all this? Well, call it a weakness, but the truth is, my existence does not allow me much opportunity to talk about these things—at least with someone who knows the truth."

  The Oculus wished he could shout his own take on the truth: You want to gloat!

  "I used to have a companion. I called him Mauricio, but that was not his name. I could discuss anything with him—even argue with him. I miss that. He died along with your beloved Twins. A mutual tragedy."

  The Twins? Dead?

  The Oculus had been all but sure that their absence meant they were dead, but now to hear it from the Adversary himself…

  If he'd had a voice he would have sobbed.

  Rasalom heaved a sigh as heavy as it was artificial.

  "But enough talk. Time to get down to business. Your demise must occur in a way that causes the most consternation, evokes the most revulsion in the survivors. I'm good at that. An artist, you might say. I've already done my masterpiece—hard to believe it's been four years already. I tailored it for a certain man—to drive him to his knees, to crush him into the dirt. I thought I'd succeeded, but I've learned he's still standing. I intend to remedy that. As for you, however… you shall be an acceptable lesser work."

  And then the cold, silent, wrenching, tearing agony began…

  22

  Jack rushed down Second Avenue but slowed as he reached 58th Street and saw a flashing cop car blocking the entrance. He spotted other units farther east, clustered around a double-parked truck. But no ambulances, no EMS rigs.

  He'd already stowed his Glock under the front seat, so he double-parked and ran to the nearest uniform.

  "Was—?" He cleared his throat. It was almost too tight for speech. "Was there an accident here?"

  The cop was waving away cars that wanted to turn onto 58th. He turned and gave Jack the patented NYPD who-the-fuck-are-you? stare.

  "Move on, sir."

  A vision of his hand shooting out and grabbing this lard-assed bastard's throat and slamming his head back against the roof of his unit flashed through Jack's brain, but he let it remain a fantasy.

  "I got a call that my—my wife and little girl had been hit right here. Is that true?"

  The cop's features softened. "Oh. Sorry. Yeah, we had a hit and run here. Woman and child hit at high speed. The driver took off."

  Jack felt himself swaying—or was it the world? He looked around.

  "But where…?"

  "On their way to the hospital."

  Hope jumped in his chest. His heart starting up again? For the first time since his call to Kosher Nosh, he sensed a trace of life inside.

  "You mean they're alive?"

  The cop's expression turned bleak as he became more interested in moving the traffic along.

  "Can't say. Been up here since the git-go."

  "Did you see anything?"

  "I saw a couple of pretty banged-up people."

  Aw no.

  "Where'd they take them?"

  "New York Hospital, up on—"

  "I know where it is." Jack ran back to his car. Ten blocks uptown on York Avenue—he could be there in minutes.

  23

  The first indication Miller had that something was wrong was when no one answered the doorbell. He rang it three times and still no one buzzed them in.

  Angry and puzzled, he said, "What the fuck?" and jabbed the button for a fourth try.

  They'd dumped the stolen cars one at a time along the way. First the Camry. Miller and Cal then piled into Hursey's car, which followed Jolliff until he dumped his. Then all four drove to where they'd left the Suburban. No one had said much along the way.

  Miller kept seeing that woman's face as he'd hit her. He kept telling himself it had been for the cause, for the greater good.

  But the memory of that face made him want to puke again.

  He looked up at the two overhead cameras. Both had their red indicator lights lit, which meant they were operating.

  Creeping concern blanked out the soul-deep malaise that had gnawed at him all the way back.

  "I don't like this," Cal said.

  "Neither do I. I'm going to let us in."

  He fished his keys from his pocket while Cal, Hursey, and Jolliff pulled their pistols and hid them under their coats. He heard hammers being cocked. Miller's own H-K would be out in a moment, but first he had to unlock the entrance.

  Home was protected by an Electrolynx steel door, set in a steel frame—no way of breaking in—and secured by three bolts. Each yenigeri had a set of three keys but were supposed to use them only in dire emergency. Each key turned one bolt. Manually unlocking any of the three set off an alarm.

  Miller inserted a key into the top lock and heard the warning bell begin to clang as he turned it. At least the alarm worked.

  When no one responded, he quickly unlocked the next two, then pocketed the keys and replaced them with his pistol. He looked up and down the street. He felt so exposed out here on the sidewalk in daylight, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

  "Okay," he said. "Stack."

  They quickly divided into pairs on either side of the doorframe. On the left, Miller stood and Jolliff crouched; Cal and Hursey took the right.

  "Ready?"

  When he had three nods he grabbed the knob, twisted, and pushed the door in. Wilco's "Pot Kettle Black" was playing within, but he heard nothing else: no warning shout, no shots. Just… Wilco.

  A strange, disturbing odor wafted out along with the music.

  Miller chanced a look, tilting his head forward for a peek inside, then ducking back with closed eyes as his stomach did a roll.

  Ybarra… mouth gaping, eyes wide and staring… draped over the monitoring console… his head twisted at an impossible angle… and blood… blood everywhere.

  Miller didn't know whether to be angry or afraid. He liked anger—so much cleaner and sharp-edged than fear—so he pumped it up. Not hard to do. One of his brothers, probably more, had been slaughtered right here at Home.

  Davis's voice: "What's going on?"

  Miller looked at him. "We've been hit."

  24


  The hospital's official title was New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell campus, but no one called it anything but New York Hospital.

  Jack pulled into the semicircular entrance drive at the eastern end of 68th Street. The complex had a classic medical-center look—twenty or so stories of vaguely art-deco design with a clean granite face and tall arched windows. He was ready to abandon his car in front of the canopied entrance. If they towed it, so be il. But if they checked the tags first and found Vinny the Donut's name, they might leave it alone.

  Then he saw the valet parking sign and screeched to a halt in front of the Latino attendant.

  "How long you gonna be?" he said as Jack hopped out of the car.

  "Forever. Where's emergency?"

  He pointed over Jack's shoulder. "Right over there where it says EMERGENCY."

  Jack looked. How had he missed that?

  He ran inside and came face-to-face with a uniformed security guard.

  "Can I help you?"

  "I need to check on two emergency patients."

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at a windowed alcove.

  "There you go."

  Jack fairly leaped toward it and slid back the glass.

  "A woman and a little girl! Just brought in by ambulance! Where are they?"

  The mocha-skinned clerk behind the desk took her time looking up from her computer screen. Her name tag read MARIA.

  "What are their names, sir?"

  "DiLauro and Westphalen."

  He spelled both for her and watched as she did some tapping on her keyboard. He couldn't keep still. His fingers kept up a chaotic tattoo on the counter, his feet shuffled back and forth.

  She shook her head. "No… no one by that name. But we did have two Jane Does brought in, an adult and a child. MVA."

  Jack looked around. "Where are they? How are they?" He had to force out the next question. "Are they alive?"

  "I can't say."

  He felt his fingers stop fidgeting and ball into fists.

  "Why the hell not?"

  A look of alarm flashed across her face—maybe she'd heard something in his tone.

  "Because I don't have that information. They were taken directly to the trauma unit."