The news was reaching everyone at once.
Interlude Ten
Tanglewood Island
Pierce County, Washington
One Week Ago
It was a three-mile commute across Puget Sound from the mainland to the small island. As the boat approached the island, Doctor Pharos gestured to the pilot to circle it. The boat began a slow circuit. The craft was a Sea Ray 350 Sundancer. Old, but in excellent condition, with quiet engines and a pilot with a subtle hand. Water creamed along the fiberglass hull and foamed out behind in a widened V.
Tanglewood Island was tiny, like a crumb that had fallen from the vast bulk of Fox Island. It was only eighteen hundred feet long and six hundred wide but densely wooded, with lush growth even this early in the year.
“We’re coming up on it, sir,” said the pilot.
Michael Pharos nodded. “Circle around so we can take a look at it. Take your time. Let the Gentleman see it.”
Beside him, the burned man hunched in his wheelchair, wrapped in layers of blankets, warmed by a portable heater, sustained by the machines fixed to the chair’s frame. He wore a fur-lined hat with the earflaps pulled down and heavy protective goggles to shield his eye. The lenses were flecked with spray, and he had to squint to see anything.
“What do you think of our new home?” asked Pharos, nodding to the island.
They both knew that it was very likely the last home in which the Gentleman would ever live. They knew he would die there, and that day was not far away. A matter of months now. The treatments, the surgeries, the mind-clarifying cocktails by Pharos’s pet mad scientist, a disgraced chemist named Doctor Rizzo. The man had been fired from Merck for using the R & D facilities to concoct street drugs, and Rizzo had avoided jail only because the company didn’t want the scandal. Instead, they’d released him and made him sign papers swearing that he would not seek employment in big pharma for at least ten years. No one but a guilty man who’d been caught red-handed would ever sign a paper like that. Doctor Rizzo had, and three weeks later he’d been recruited by one of Pharos’s street scouts.
The chemist had been working on a new cocktail that was part psychic stabilizer and part painkiller. It also had small amounts of different so-called psychoactive “truth” drugs developed for interrogators in various countries: narcoanalytics like scopolamine; potent short- or intermediate-acting hypnotic benzodiazepines such as midazolam, flunitrazepam, temazepam, ketamine; and various short- and ultrashort-acting barbiturates, including sodium thiopental and amobarbital. Pharos could barely make sense of the chemistry.
It was a dangerous brew, but Rizzo said it was all about balancing the trace elements and keeping a bunch of rescue drugs primed and ready. Rizzo was probably certifiable, but he knew his chemistry.
Maybe that would do the trick. Even though Doctor Rizzo had very likely extended the Gentleman’s life, there was a line between cutting-edge science and wishful thinking. They all saw that line very clearly.
Pharos wondered if the burned man thought the line was drawn along the dock of the island.
The trip here from the resort in British Columbia was almost too much. No, it probably was too much. Pharos was deeply concerned about how hollowed out the burned man looked. How vacant he seemed to be. Not all the time, but too much of the time. The Gentleman seemed to quiver like a match in a strong breeze.
Seeing the process filled Pharos with moody thoughts about the finite grains of sand in the human hourglass. It made him consider his own span here on earth. Sure, there would be decades allotted to him so he could play with his billions in whatever version of the world existed by this time next week, but there would be an end to it. It was sad.
Life was so unfair. So fragile.
So easily stolen away.
The Gentleman did not answer the question, so Pharos repeated it. “What do you think? It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering, the Gentleman asked, “What about the others? Are they all here?”
“The ‘others’?” It took him a moment before he realized that the Gentleman was having a moment. The burned man thought that they were going to a meeting of the Seven Kings. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time in a while. It caught him off guard, though he recovered quickly. “Ah … yes. They’re waiting for you. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you, sir.”
The Gentleman suddenly peered at him. “You think I’m already out of my mind, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not.” Pharos even managed to smile as he said it.
“You’re a lying piece of shit, Hugo. You always were.”
Pharos did not correct the Gentleman. He waited instead, knowing that the burned man would catch his own mistake if he was at all lucid. The moment of realization came as a twist of self-disgust on the Gentleman’s face.
“Pharos,” he muttered. “You know that’s what I meant.”
“Of course. We all make mistakes … and besides, sir, it’s been a long trip. I’m sure you’re exhausted.”
The rheumy eye of the Gentleman studied him. “You’re a complete bastard, you know that, don’t you?”
Pharos shook his head. “I am your friend and physician. And I am the last person on earth to judge you. The great are not to be judged.”
“Such a bastard.”
They lapsed into a bitter silence.
The boat completed its slow circuit of the island.
“It’s nice to be going home,” said Pharos.
The Gentleman said nothing at all, and there was a tear in his eye.
“Very well,” Pharos said to the pilot, “take us in.”
The pilot nodded and stood with his hand lightly touching the wheel, letting the craft find its way into the boathouse and out of sight of the mainland. He killed the engines and used a remote to close the big wooden doors. Even three miles from land, there was always the possibility of a casual eye looking this way. When the door was shut, lights came on automatically. A man in a black combat-dress uniform was waiting on the dock to make the bowline fast to a heavy cleat.
Silence settled over the boathouse except for the soft slap of water against the exterior walls. Four strong men clambered over the side and, at a word from Pharos, lifted the wheelchair and carried it onto the dock. Embarrassed and angry, the Gentleman tried to turn his face away, but they were on all sides of him. So he glared down at his folded, liver-spotted hand. He did not offer a word of thanks. These men would not expect it of him, and he was too humiliated to want to create that kind of conversation.
Pharos leaped nimbly onto the dock. Showing how fit and strong he was. How young he was. Making a statement to the Gentleman in a way that could not be taken as a direct insult, but which clearly was.
Pharos jerked his head back toward the boat.
“Escort our friend inside,” he said.
The guards looked past him and down into the hold. A man sat in a corner, hands bound, a black hood pulled down over his head.
Without another backward glance, Pharos began pushing the Gentleman’s wheelchair along the dock to the elevator.
Chapter Thirty-two
National League Baseball Opening Day
Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia
March 29, 1:59 P.M.
It was Rudy who found me.
Rudy.
I felt hands on me, fingers pressing into the side of my throat. Fingers spreading my eyelids open, and vague shapes leaning close.
“Over here!” he yelled. “It’s Captain Ledger. He’s alive!”
Alive, I thought. Maybe. Not sure I wanted to be. I felt closer to dead, and death offered an escape from the pain that overwhelmed me.
Rudy.
I tried to say his name. Failed, because it required too much of me.
“Ay Dios mío,” he muttered, then he rattled off a longer prayer to Mary and Saint Francis, and, I think, Saint Jude. The prayers were not even a little comforting if they meant he thought I was a lost cause. I wanted t
o smile, to comfort him. He wasn’t a soldier, but he’d come into the smoke and ruin of this building to find and rescue a man who was.
I blinked up through dust and blood and tears and saw his face. Caked with dirt, his one good eye filled with dangerous lights. His lips trembling with stress and horror.
“Joe!” he said urgently. “Joe, can you hear me?”
I couldn’t answer his question. It was too difficult. I didn’t know which words to use.
The explosions had stopped.
No telling when. I wasn’t here for that. I’d checked out and didn’t recall anything other than a dream of falling, falling, falling …
There was something big and soft pressing against me. I fumbled for it, tried to push it away, afraid of it. Then something wet on my fingers. A kiss? No, a tongue. Licking me. Small, frantic licks.
I knew there was a name that should occur to me.
It came so slowly and from the wrong closet in my broken head.
“G-Ghost…?”
He barked once. Weak, but certain. I heard a scuffling and saw him crawling toward me. His coat was bloody, and drool flecked his muzzle. I reached out to him, and he nibbled my fingers. I touched his face, his head, his ears. Scratched them. There was a thump-thump of his tail hitting something I couldn’t see.
“He’s okay, Joe. He’ll live.”
Those two statements weren’t as comforting as they were intended. People don’t say “he’ll live” when “he’s okay” means exactly that. It meant that Ghost was hurt, but not fatally. That still left it open to his being seriously hurt. I flapped out a hand and found a furry shoulder. My fingers came away slick and wet. I knew what that wetness had to be.
Blackness came and went in my eyes and, I think, in my mind.
During one moment of clarity, the shape in front of me moved back, and I could see it now. A man’s face. Covered with soot, lined with worry. A black eye patch and tousled black hair, thick mustache.
“Rudy?” I gasped.
“Me lleva la chingada, Joe,” he said in a quick, nervous voice. “You scared the shit out of me. Are you hurt?”
“I—I don’t know. How do I look?”
“You’ve looked better.”
“Great.”
I tried to sit up and set my teeth against an expectation of terrible pain. Like splintered ribs or internal injuries, both of which I was positive I had. But my body moved without the grating of broken parts. Everything hurt, but nothing seemed fatal.
“I don’t think you should move, Joe.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think I should lie here.” I sat up and then sagged back against the wall, panting. There were little white explosions going off inside my eyeballs.
The fog in my head began to thin. I gasped and caught Rudy’s wrist. “My dad—?”
“He’s okay, thank God,” said Rudy. “Patrick, too. He’s helping with…”
His voice trailed off.
“What is it?”
“Joe … there are a lot of casualties. The police and fire department are still searching for bodies.”
“How’d they … get here … so fast?”
He shook his head. “You’ve been out for almost an hour. We just found you. The police had you tagged as one of the dead.”
“Shit. Help me up.”
“No way. Not without a stretcher and—”
“Goddamn it, Rudy, help me the fuck up.”
He insisted on checking me for broken bones first. His probing fingers found a lot of places that detonated hand grenades of pain, but nothing moved the way it shouldn’t. Rudy stood and pulled me to my feet.
It took a long time and a lot of effort. The corridor tilted and spun, and I nearly fell.
Nearly.
Didn’t.
Ghost got up slowly, too. Just as carefully, every bit as shakily. He looked up at me and gave me half a wag as if to assure me he was alive. For some reason, that made me want to cry. I squatted down and pulled him to me, running my fingers through his fur to see how badly he was hurt. It looked worse than it was. A bunch of cuts, but he yelped and whined when I touched different places, clear evidence of the kind of bruises I had. I hugged him and kissed his head, and he licked my chin and nose.
Rudy’s words were starting to sink in. Without turning to Rudy, I said, “How … how many people?” I asked.
When he didn’t answer, I straightened and looked at him. He looked stricken.
“Rude—? How many?”
“They’re … not sure. A hundred. Maybe more.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“God almighty.”
“Yes.”
I looked around. Now that I was on my feet, I could see how bad things were here in the corridor. Bodies lay everywhere. Some of them had been covered with white plastic. Others lay where they’d fallen. There were whole bodies and there were parts of bodies. It was a sickening sight. Not just because of the blood and torn meat, but because these were people.
Ordinary folks. Not combatants.
This was the opening day of the baseball season. We’d all come out to have some fun. Maybe get drunk. Have a hot dog or a soft pretzel. Maybe catch a foul ball. This was all supposed to be fun. A day to remember.
And I guess that’s what it was. That last part. A day to remember.
An unforgettable day, for all the wrong reasons.
I tapped my earbud to see if it was working yet.
“There’s no radio in here,” said Rudy. “Cell phones won’t work, either.”
“Shit,” I growled. “I need to get out of its range. Those sonsabitches might still be in the building.”
“Who? Did you see something?”
“Yes,” I said, moving as quickly as my battered body would allow, “I damn well did.”
Chapter Thirty-three
National League Baseball Opening Day
Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia
March 29, 2:15 P.M.
I had to fight my way over rubble and around too damn many bodies. Ghost was beside me, and despite his being an experienced combat dog, the blood and death was hitting him hard. His tail was tucked under, and he kept twitching and jerking away from things we found. I made reassuring and encouraging noises and hoped that I wasn’t wasting my breath. Just like humans, combat dogs have complex psychologies, and they have their breaking points. I didn’t want this to be Ghost’s. He was a hell of a lot more than a service dog. He was family.
Rudy was somewhere behind me. He said he needed to help the medical teams. He’s a doctor, and that was fine. I was a fighter, and I needed to share intel with other soldiers so we could start to hit back.
If it wasn’t already too late for that.
When we reached the main field, I stopped as if I’d run into a wall.
It was like stepping across one of the rings of hell.
The crowd was gone, of course. Many of them had fled. The rest, I suppose, had been ushered out by surviving staff and responding police.
Too many of them, though, were still here.
In the shattered stands.
On the field.
Smoke drifted upward from dozens of spots. Whole sections of the bleachers had collapsed down. The green grass of the field was torn up and splashed red. Scores of emergency vehicles were parked at haphazard angles. Hundreds of emergency specialists were down there. EMTs, firefighters, cops. Volunteers.
It was a scene of stunning horror.
I saw a familiar figure on the field, and he was talking on a cell. There must have been coverage down there.
“Come on,” I said to Ghost, and we began making our way to an undamaged set of stone stairs.
The man on the phone heard me calling his name, turned, and saw me coming. He lowered the phone and stared in shock. Even from fifty yards away, I saw the sob that hitched his chest.
Then he was running. Calling my name.
And I called his.
“Dad!”
James Wolcott Ledger pushed past his own police escort and grabbed me in a fierce hug. The hug hurt every damaged inch of me, but I didn’t care. His face was wet with tears.
“Oh my God,” he said as he held me close. He kissed my head. “Oh my God, Joe, they told me … they told me…”
“Thank God you’re all right, Dad.”
He pushed me back and held me at arm’s length. Dad is about my height, a little over six foot two, and as trim and fit as when he walked a beat in West Baltimore. Blond hair gone gray and piercing blue eyes. At that moment, though, he looked old. “Christ, you’re hurt? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
His questions ran together, and before I could answer, he bellowed for a medic.
Ghost wagged his tail and pressed himself against my dad’s leg.
“Dad,” I said, “your phone? Are you getting a signal?”
“Yes,” he said, “but only out here. Can’t get anything in—”
I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Bug! Come on, goddamn it. Bug, are you—?”
“Cowboy? Jesus, you’re alive. Oh, man, I—”
“Bug, listen to me. I’m at the stadium, and I have intel.”
“Cycling in the TOC,” he said quickly. “Deacon is on the floor.”
“What have you got, Cowboy?” said Church’s voice.
I told him what happened in the hallway with the masked shooters.
“Copy that, Cowboy. I have two full teams inbound to you. Echo One and Two are twenty minutes out.”
Echo One was Top; Two was Bunny. If they were that close, then they were coming via helicopter, which must be burning its way through the sky.
“I’ll secure a landing spot,” I said.
“Negative, that’s already in hand. SWAT is at your facility. I want you to coordinate with them for a full sweep.”
“Haven’t they done that already, for God’s sake?”
“They have,” said Church. “You have not. Take them in again. I’ll clear it.”
“I’ll need a weapon.”
“They’ll provide.”
“There’s no radio or cell anywhere but in the center of the field. Must be a jammer. Bug, find it for me.”
“Targeting it now, Cowboy. Okay, got it. Looks like the source is inside the Hall of Fame meeting room.” He gave me a set of directions.