As she stood there in her nightgown and ratty bathrobe, she knew she had only one advantage: What he saw was a small, pregnant woman who couldn’t possibly be a threat to him.
And in truth, she wasn’t much of a threat. Any strenuous activity could cause her to lose the baby. A full-out hand-to-hand fight would certainly do it. Even if her skill at silat was enough to overcome his drug-induced strength, she couldn’t risk applying it. She had to fall back on one of the first principles of her art: deception.
So she played it as he would expect: “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Alexander Michaels,” he said.
“He’s not here.”
“I figured that. He’s still in Los Angeles, isn’t he?”
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t make it too easy.
He grinned, a maniacal, over-the-edge expression. There was a wooden coat tree by the door. He grabbed it, turned it sideways, brought his knee up and the rack down, and snapped it over his thigh as if it were a twig. He dropped the broken halves. “Don’t fuck with me, lady, I’m not in the mood, okay?”
It wasn’t hard to act afraid. She had never seen anybody do anything like that before. The man was a scarecrow missing half his stuffing, and no way should he be able to do what he had just done.
“He ... he won’t be home until tonight. His flight gets here around s-s-seven o’clock.”
Bershaw—that was the name Alex had told her—grinned his mad smile again.
“Ah. Good. That will give us plenty of time to get acquainted. What’s your name?”
“Toni,” she said.
“Wife or girlfriend?”
“W-w-wife.”
“Well, don’t worry, Toni, I’m not gonna hurt you.” He looked at her. “Got a bun in the oven. How far along are you?”
“Five months.”
“Congratulations. You do what I tell you, you and the kid will live to get to know each other. You can call me Tad. Why don’t you take me on a tour of the place, since we have some hours to kill?”
“Okay.”
The com chirped.
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
Toni’s thoughts ran at top speed, banging into each other as she tried to keep them straight. She had to get word to Alex somehow. This man had come here to kill him, she was certain of that, and he might or might not kill her and the baby. She had to go along with whatever he wanted until she could figure out a way to stop him.
Tad followed Michaels’s wife as she led him through the condo, where he made sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for him. It was an okay enough place, nothing special, and there were some pictures of her and her husband here and there, other images of their families, easy to see the resemblance in those.
Every five minutes or so, the phone would ring, and he’d just shake his head at her. He didn’t want her talking to anybody, especially her husband, and maybe giving him some secret code kind of clue.
In the garage was an old Chevrolet convertible, the hood up, and parts of the engine laid out on a workbench.
“Very nice,” he said. He walked over and put one hand on the car’s fender, rubbed it lightly. “Your old man is into cars.”
“Yes. He rebuilds them. It’s his hobby.”
Tad needed to work off some of the Hammer’s bubbling and insistent energy, and while he was horny again, a pregnant woman didn’t do it for him. He looked around for a pry bar or a hammer. A little drum work on the Chevy would do fine. He’d be sure to let Mr. Michaels see his project car was gonna need a lot more effort to bring back to cherry condition before he did the same deconstruction on him.
He saw a ball peen hammer hung on pegs over the workbench and went to get it. The Hammer working a hammer, he liked the symmetry in that.
But when he got to the bench, he noticed something else. Little pieces of ivory, needles, a microscope. Scrimshaw.
“Your husband has a lot of time on his hands,” he said. He nodded at the bench. “Cars and art. That’s when he’s not having guys murdered.”
“My husband doesn’t have people murdered,” she said. She glared at him.
He smiled. She had balls, this pregnant woman did. She’d seen what he could do, and she knew he could kill her with a backhand, but here she was defending her old man anyway. Tad had never heard his mother ever say a kind word about his father. “That fucking asshole,” was about as good as it ever got. Give Toni here a point for loyalty.
“Tell that to my friend Bobby,” he said. “He was standing in the middle of the road with his hands in the air, and the feds gave him an instant craniotomy. Blam! Blew his head apart.”
“My husband didn’t order that. Net Force does computer investigation, they aren’t field operatives on drug busts. And they’d never shoot a prisoner, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, he was there, I saw him on the evening news. He should have stayed at his desk on this one.”
He twirled the hammer in his fingers, was about to go do the car, when he saw the capsule. He looked at it, saw that it was open under the microscope, and the powder emptied out. He put the ball peen hammer down and moved to look.
He shook his head. “That fucking Bobby. He was too smart for his own good sometimes.” He turned to look at her. “You know about this? Your old man talk to you about his work?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“Bobby was a genius, you know. Certifiable, high MENSA grade, smarter than almost everybody. Even when I’m Hammering and all my edges are sharp, Bobby could still think circles around me. He had contempt for the feds, ’cause of his father. You don’t know about that part, but his father was with the FBI for like a hundred years. He and Bobby didn’t get along. So Bobby left clues in every fifth cap: little riddles, each one different.” He waved at the cap. “That’s how they found him, isn’t it? Some geek at your husband’s computer farm turned the machines loose on this and figured it out, didn’t he?”
She didn’t say anything.
“C’mon, you might as well tell me. I can’t kill him any deader than dead, can I?”
“Please don’t kill him.”
“Bobby might have fucked up and gotten caught because he underestimated his opposition—you tend to do that when you are always smarter than them—but he should be alive. Somebody has got to pay for that.”
He was really ready to pound the car now, and he reached for the tool to do it with, when the doorbell rang.
“Don’t answer it,” Bershaw said. “They’ll go away.” He considered it for a second. “No, maybe we ought to see who it is.”
The security cam Alex had installed showed two men in uniform, with holstered pistols. Net Force troopers.
“Cops?”
“Net Force Security.”
“I thought your husband was a desk jockey.”
“He is, but they have some special teams for certain situations.”
“Yeah, like executing drug dealers.”
The two at the door rang the bell again. And again. They weren’t going away, and she wondered why they were here. The missed phone calls, maybe.
Toni felt a surge of hope, but she quickly quelled the feeling. The two men at her door were in immediate danger. Bershaw was a killer, and he had a drug-driven rage that couldn’t be easily stopped. A wrong word, and he might go off like a bomb.
“Get rid of them, some good reason to go away, and you better not give them a fucking hint,” Bershaw said. “You do, they die, you and the kid die, and I might get bored waiting here alone for hubby to come home, but that’s how it will go down.”
“I understand.”
Bershaw stood behind her and to one side, out of sight, as Toni opened the door. He didn’t have a weapon that she could see, but he didn’t really need one.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Michaels. We’re sorry to bother you, but Commander Michaels has been trying to contact you.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, I’m sorry about that. I was working out, doing my ae
robics, and then I took a long hot bath to relax.” She was in her bathrobe. “I turned off the ringer and let the computer take messages.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you would call Commander Michaels at your convenience, that would be very helpful.”
“I will. I’m going to go take a nap, and I’ll call him when I wake up. Sorry to have caused you any trouble.”
“No trouble at all, ma’am. Have a good day.”
When they were gone, Bershaw said, “That was all right, except for the part about calling your husband. Now you’ll have to do that. But I’m gonna write a script for you. You will make the call, and you will say exactly what I tell you to say, not one word more or less, you understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. We have a little time to work on it, since you are going to take a nap and all. Tell me about your family, brothers, sisters, like that. I’ve seen some of the pictures, so don’t lie to me. If I think you’re lying, I’ll just kill you, okay?”
Toni felt her heart pounding harder than usual. He was being very cautious, and she might not get another chance to warn Alex. She had to hope he would get the message she had been able to send.
Los Angeles, California
They had almost finished breakfast when Michaels’s virgil announced an incoming call. He had it off his belt and thumbed to receive in two seconds. “Yes?”
“Sir, this is Chris Carol, military ops. We just spoke to your wife at your house. She seems fine, sir.”
Michaels blew out a sigh. Thank God!
“Did she say why she wasn’t answering the phone?”
“Yes, sir. She was taking a bath, sir, and had the ringer turned off.”
He shook his head. Of course. It had to be some piddly thing like that.
“We’ll remain in the area on surveillance, sir, as per General Howard’s orders.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Ask Toni to call me as soon as she can, will you?”
“She says she will call you, sir, after she has a nap. She must be tired from her workout.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Sir?”
“About her being tired?”
“Sir, I just assumed she might be. She said she had been doing her aerobics, before her bath, sir.”
Michaels felt a shard of icy steel stab deep into his bowels. He looked at John Howard. “He’s there,” he said. “He’s got Toni.”
39
Washington, D.C.
The general had pulled strings in a hurry and gotten them fast rides. The National Guard fighters had zipped from Los Angeles to the East Coast at speeds more than twice supersonic most of the way. By the time they were on the ground again, the trip had only been a little over two hours. It was almost two-thirty in the afternoon when the escort picked Michaels, Howard, and Jay up at the air base and took off with lights flashing and sirens screaming. They’d shut those off before they got to his neighborhood. Howard had set up a command post a half mile away from the house, and there were more Net Force people on the scene, far enough back to stay hidden but close enough to see if anybody left.
An hour into the flight, Toni had called, and it had twisted his stomach to hear her speak the words that Bershaw must have made her say:
They exchanged greetings, he’d asked how she was doing, and she’d said she was fine, then she said, “I’m sorry I missed your call earlier, I didn’t mean to make you worry. Listen, I can’t talk now, I’ve got my mother on the other line, some crisis with my sister-in-law she has to settle. Call me when you get to the airport tonight, okay? Bye.”
He put in a call to Toni’s mother in the Bronx. She was surprised to hear from him, and he pretended he was calling to check on Toni’s silat teacher. Guru was doing okay, his mother-in-law told him. Say hello to Toni when he saw her, tell her to call and visit.
If he needed any confirmation, that did it. Toni wasn’t talking to her mother. And she was being held hostage by some psychotic drug fiend who almost certainly blamed Michaels for his buddy’s death. It was a nightmare.
“How do you want to play it?” Howard asked, as the Net Force car careened toward the city. “You want to call in the FBI kidnap teams?”
“Would you call them in if it was your wife?”
“No, sir.”
“We have snipers, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir. A couple of very good ones.”
“Have them meet us at the staging point. I’ll try to get him in front of a window. If they have a shot, tell them to take it. It will have to be in the spine or the head to be sure to drop him.”
“Yes, sir.” Howard didn’t say anything about job description or rules of engagement. He pulled his virgil and made a call.
“You’re not going in there alone are you, boss?”
“Toni’s my wife. It’s my house. I know them both better than anybody else. Damned right I’m going in.”
“Jesus, you’ve seen what this guy is capable of. Even if you shoot him, you can’t be sure of stopping him.”
“I know that. What choice do I have? I’ll have surprise on my side. Maybe that will be enough.”
“We could storm the place, hit it with fifty guys—”
“And he could break Toni’s neck before they got through the door. No. It’s me he wants, so if he spots me alone, he’ll have what he came for. If he’s in my face, Toni can get clear.”
“And you might get dead.”
“Yeah, well, that’s how it is. Better me than her.”
What he didn’t say was that he still had the capsule Howard had found at the shooting site in his pocket. And that if he took it before he went in, he’d be more than a match for the zombie. He was in better shape, he had some training as a fighter, and he was motivated. The drug would cancel Bershaw’s advantage.
But there was a big problem. It was risky. He didn’t mind the jeopardy to himself, but what if the drug didn’t do exactly for him what it did for Bershaw? What if he went crazy like some of the other druggies who used it? Saw snakes coming out of the walls or thought he was being chased by demons or whatever those people who had gone mad and committed suicide had seen?
Could he risk Toni’s life and the baby’s life like that?
Six of one, half a dozen of the other, his little inner voice said. If the zombie goes through you like Sherman through Georgia, he’ll probably kill Toni anyway, don’t you think?
Michaels stuck his hand into his pocket and fingered the capsule.
Devil or the deep blue sea, Alex. And you better decide soon. You don’t know how long it’ll take before the stuff kicks in if you decide to go that way. It might not help in time, even if you do eat it.
Shit.
“Ten minutes to the staging point,” Howard said. “My snipers will be there. If they can see him, they can casket him.”
Michaels nodded. He fingered the capsule. Toni was sure Alex had gotten her warning. She could hear it in his voice when she called, and she was fairly certain the rumbling noises in the background had been a jet engine and wind noise. That meant he was on his way home, and he’d be here sooner than Bershaw expected him.
What was he going to do when he got here? Would he bring in the regular FBI hostage negotiators? She tried to put herself in his position, and that answer came up a solid no. He would know Bershaw was desperate, probably know he was on the mind-altering drug that made him fast, smart, and strong. Alex wouldn’t take the risk that Bershaw would hurt her or the baby.
What would he do?
And her greatest fear was that he would try to sneak into the house and take on Bershaw alone. It wasn’t a macho thing but just how Alex was. He would see her as his responsibility, and his coming in alone as the best chance of drawing the killer’s attention away from her.
If she had not been pregnant, she would have already tried to take Bershaw down herself. He was fast and strong, but she had more than fifteen years of pentjak silat training and practice, and she would risk that her skill
could offset his drug-powered strength.
Silat was a weapons-based art. Toni was comfortable with a knife, a stick, a sword, whatever came to hand. A knife from the butcher block rack wouldn’t take a second to pull. No matter how resistant to pain, no matter how strong a man might be, he couldn’t walk if he had no blood circulating or if the tendons controlling his feet or legs were cut or if his spine was severed.
But in her condition, the slightest mistake would cost her. She wouldn’t risk the baby unless there was no other way. If it came down to it, she would not let this psychotic kill Alex, even if it meant she and the baby didn’t make it. You didn’t stand by and allow the man you loved to die if you could prevent it, no matter what it cost you.
She had already rehearsed grabbing the knife in her mind a dozen times, never looking at it so as to give it away, but planning how to step, what to throw to distract him, what her targets might be.
She had to expect Alex to show up hours before he was supposed to show up. She had to be ready.
Right now, she had to pee. And she didn’t much want to do that with Bershaw watching her, but better that than to wet herself.
“ad?”
“What?”
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
“Let’s go.”
He followed her down the hall. “Go ahead.”
“Can I close the door?”
“No. Just pee. I’ll look the other way.”
“Thank you.”
She thought she might be able to use that, somehow, if she could think of a way.
While the woman was on the john, Tad turned away and dry-swallowed two more of the Hammer caps. He could feel the first ones start to wane, and a few seconds later, he took a third. He had built up a tolerance to the stuff by now, but it didn’t matter; the remaining caps were all going to be deactivated soon, anyhow, and any way you looked at it, this was going to be his last Hammer ride. When Ma and Pa at the portable lab heard about Bobby getting killed, they would get rid of the RV and hit the road for parts elsewhere. The plan he’d had of getting to the lab and mixing his own caps wouldn’t happen now. He could mix the stuff, but some of the chem was just beyond his ability to create from scratch. Bobby had never written his formulas down anywhere, figuring if the cops ever grabbed him, those would be his best bargaining chip.