7th Son, page 31
“You believe him?” John asked.
“I searched him. And with half the LAPD heading this way, we don’t have time to look for it.”
“How much time?” They were at the ropes now.
“Evac ETA, three minutes.” Michael waved his free arm to the soldiers who were peering through the skylight from the roof. “Everything accounted for?”
Rubenstein waved back. “Affirmative. All guns, gear, and armor were retrieved. And the KIAs. We scooped up as many shells as we could. But we’ve got a problem up here.”
Michael grunted. “What?”
“The sniper you shot. He’s still alive. Says he’s got a suicide pill inside his mouth. Wants to speak to one of you.”
Michael glanced to John, who appeared equally mystified, and muttered, “What a fucking mess.” Then, to Rubenstein: “Keep watching him. We’ll be up soon. We’ve got what we came for. Drop me two EEHs.”
Two beltlike nylon harnesses fell from the sky. Michael caught one of them before it hit the ground. He turned and for the first time acknowledged Dania Sheridan.
“Hi, Mom.” He grinned. He didn’t flinch from the gore on her face, didn’t bat an eye. “Good to see you again.”
Dania Sheridan smiled back weakly. “Are you Michael?”
“Yeah.” He adjusted the straps on the harness. “One of the few, the proud. We don’t have time to chat, Mom. Big reunion happens later. I’m gonna put this harness on you, then you’re going up.”
Dania Sheridan nodded. John stepped back as Michael slipped the harness over her chest. “This might hurt,” Michael said, and tugged two straps dangling from her shoulders. The harness pulled taut across her chest. Dania Sheridan winced.
Michael pulled the rappelling rope close to his mother. At the base of the rope rested a black contraption that bore an undeniable resemblance to Pac-Man; the rope snaked through its pie-wedge-shaped mouth and continued through a small hole on the opposite end. A carabiner dangled from the device. Michael clipped the carabiner through a metal ring on Dania Sheridan’s harness.
“The ride’s quick,” he said. “Just let them take care of you when you get to the top.”
“Michael. Why? Why did you come for me?”
The marine’s chiseled features warmed for an instant. “It’s how you raised us, Mom.”
Michael pressed the round button on the device. It whined for a few seconds, as if something inside were whirring in a centrifuge, then it shot up the rope, lifting Dania Sheridan along with it. Her body rose through forty feet of space, then stopped at the roof. Rubenstein and the remaining soldiers pulled her through the skylight. The Pac-Man device slid back down the rope.
One of the choppers was overhead now. A spotlight lanced into the club, then flitted away. The helicopter wouldn’t be able to land on the roof—Folie à Deux’s couldn’t hold the weight—but it could hover just above it. That’s what the chopper pilot was doing now. The downdraft from the rotor blades roared through the skylight, creating a gale of broken metal, glass, and wood.
The clones turned to John Alpha. “He’s unconscious, so this shouldn’t take long,” Michael said. He picked up the second harness and slipped Alpha’s arms through it. He rolled Alpha’s body over to tighten the straps.
John grimaced. Alpha’s face was covered in blood. His nose had been broken. His bottom lip was split. Fresh splotches of purple bruises were already appearing on his face.
Michael did this.
Alpha opened his eyes.
“You should really talk to that man on the roof, John.” Alpha grinned. “I’m certain he wants to confess his sins. As does Michael. Isn’t that right, Michael? You’ve lived a very sinful life.”
“Shut up,” Michael said. He secured the harness clasps and pulled the straps taught. Alpha howled. The marine pulled a pair of plastic flex-cuffs from one of his vest pockets and slipped them over Alpha’s wrists. Michael grabbed the collar of John Alpha’s suit and dragged him over to the other rappelling rope.
“He lives in sin! He bathes in it!” Alpha screamed as Michael connected the harness to the Pac-Man device. The downdraft was a hurricane here, blowing Alpha’s once well-coiffed hair about his face. “Ask him! Ask the great archangel Michael about his lover! Ask him about Gabriel!”
Michael jabbed the device’s button and John Alpha shot skyward. A moment passed, and the rope-climbing machine slid back to the floor.
John looked at Michael. Even through the whipping winds around them, Michael didn’t blink. “I’m a good man.”
“I know,” John said.
They attached the rope-climbers to their belts and zipped upward together, to the roof, to their mother and brother.
It was a spectacle worthy of a Hollywood action picture. One Black Hawk was hovering less than ten feet above Folie à Deux’s roof, its rotors spinning precariously close to the abandoned office building next to the club. Another was flying in a holding pattern, scorching a path above Sunset Boulevard. Below, on the street, police cars were screeching up to the front of the club, their alert lights casting blue-and red-colored strobes across the confused faces of pedestrians and commuters. LAPD officers were trying to block the streets and sidewalks, pressing the mass of stunned bystanders away from the scene.
Michael and John climbed onto the roof and disengaged the Pac-Man climbers. Those left of the 7th Son squadron were crouching near the skylight. Dr. Mike, Dania Sheridan, and John Alpha were with them. Beyond them was the Vaporwear sniper, lying in a pool of blood. And beyond the sniper, the hovering chopper awaited, its side cargo door open and waiting.
“The KIAs are in there,” Rubenstein shouted over the din, nodding to the helicopter. “There’s still room for two more. You want to take the prisoner here?”
Michael nodded. “Let’s stick to the plan. Alpha and I will take this ride, but only after you all have loaded up in the other bird. Radio the chopper. Tell it to move back and hold position—then get everyone else on the second one when it moves up. This one will come back for us.”
“What?” John said. “No! Go now! Take Alpha with you! We’ll be fine!”
Michael shook his head. “I’m not leaving anyone behind,” he cried. “I’m the first to go in and the last to leave: that’s how it works, and that’s how I want it. My word is law, remember?” He turned to Rubenstein. “Do it.”
The soldier began barking orders into his headset. The hovering chopper rose upward, then banked away from the buildings. The crowd below on Sunset Boulevard gaped and gasped.
“And find the police band on your radio,” Michael screamed to Rubenstein. “Tell them to pull back, pull everyone back. There’s a tanker’s worth of JP-8 under the building rigged to explode.”
As the second helicopter swung into position, Michael grabbed John’s shoulder and pointed to the bleeding sniper. The man’s Vaporwear face mask had been removed; he was pale, wheezing, no longer a threat. He was young. A kid, really.
“Go on and see what he has to say,” Michael said. “I’ll cover you.”
Michael unholstered his Beretta and drew back the slide. John considered this, then walked over to the sniper. He went to one knee, struck by the killer’s age. So young. No more than seventeen. What happened to make him homeless? He wondered how Alpha had found this boy and administered the NEPTH-charge. John exhaled. Whoever he was, he’s gone now. You’re not speaking to a child. You’re speaking to whoever Alpha zapped into the boy’s brain. An assassin.
“You wanted to talk to me,” John said.
The sniper nodded and pulled his lips apart into a grin. A white, triangular capsule was clenched between his front teeth. The suicide pill.
“You don’t need that. We aren’t going to hurt you.”
The sniper placed the tip of his tongue behind the pill and maneuvered it over, so it was placed between his molars.
“Jesus, it’s over,” John said. “We can take you back alive, give you medical attention. Do you understand?”
The boy/not-boy chuckled, the pill still between his teeth. “I don’t want a doctor; I’m dead already. I want you to listen. I have a message—a very important message.”
John stood up.
The sniper grinned. “It’s the voice of the demon. My voice. The voice of Legion, the one who was many. Don’t you want to know my last words to the world?”
John took a step backward, pale. “No.”
The sniper laughed, cocked his head to one side, and chomped down on the fang-shaped pill. His body jittered into immediate convulsions.
“Go fuck your mother!” he cried through clenched teeth. The boy/not-boy doubled over, arms slamming onto the roof, foam and spittle running from his mouth. Then it was over. John shuddered, wanting to scream.
“Come on,” Michael said, gently pushing John away, toward the hovering chopper. The other 7th Son soldiers—and Dr. Mike and Dania Sheridan—were already aboard. Only Michael, John, John Alpha, and the dead sniper remained on the roof.
“Go,” the marine said. “I’ll take both of them on the other chopper. It’s doubling back now.”
John nodded numbly and ran to the helicopter. He glanced out toward Sunset Boulevard. The police cars were pulling away; cops were waving back the pedestrians, most of whom were running down the block now. The bomb report had everyone backing off.
John climbed into the Black Hawk and sat in the seat next to a bloody, beaten Dr. Mike. John looked back at Michael. He waved once. Then one of the soldiers inside slammed the cargo door shut.
“Buckle the fuck up, kemo sabe,” Dr. Mike said, his voice a stoned slur. “Your in-flight drinks will be served shortly. I heartily recommend the morphine.”
John nodded, but wasn’t listening. He was hearing the echoing voice of the sniper.
Michael quickly conducted an inventory of the situation: The helicopter filled with survivors swooped upward and outward, then hovered several hundred yards away. It would wait there for the second chopper to pick up Michael and John Alpha on the roof, then both helicopters would arc northeast. Back toward Edwards Air Force Base. Michael peered down to the street. The once-gawking bystanders were bolting away from Folie à Deux, the cops waving them away. Good. The second chopper was moving into position now. Also good.
He turned his attention to John Alpha, who lay on the roof, grinning up at him.
“All alone again,” Alpha said. “You going to pull another Rodney King while everyone’s looking the other way?”
“You’re getting everything you deserve.” The second chopper was now hovering over the roof. Its downdraft rushed across Michael’s face. He walked over to John Alpha and again grabbed the man’s suit jacket, dragging him across the tar-covered roof toward the helicopter. Alpha didn’t struggle.
They passed the body of the NEPTH-charged sniper.
John Alpha laughed. “He didn’t make it, huh?” he screamed hysterically. “But then again, he was going to die anyway. My assassins have a very short shelf life.”
Michael released Alpha’s jacket; the villain’s torso flopped onto the roof. “We know all about it,” Michael said as he walked over to the sniper’s body. He grabbed the sniper’s wrists and pulled the body closer to where the chopper was hovering. “You did this to a four-year-old boy, too. Don’t think you’re not going to pay for that.”
The helicopter was now floating just feet above the roof. Its rotors were almost deafening, its downdraft ripping through their bodies. Michael picked up the sniper’s body, carried it over to the chopper, and threw it into the cargo hold. He strode back to John Alpha.
Almost done now. Almost home.
“You’re over and done, and you know it,” Michael said, yanking Alpha to his feet. He pushed Alpha toward the open cargo door.
“It’s never over. Have you even considered—”
Michael grabbed Alpha’s handcuffed body and heaved him into the helicopter’s cargo hold. Alpha slammed onto the metal floor, next to the sniper’s body.
Michael climbed into the chopper. As he reached for the door, he glanced around the cramped space. It reeked of burned flesh and blood. He was surrounded by the bodies of the Vaporwear shades, the 7th Son soldiers. Durbin, Andrade, Travieso, Fleming, Tomasello . . . Don’t think about it, not now, not yet. The helicopter swayed in midair, the pilot waiting for Michael to close the cargo door.
“I was saying something to you, Michael,” Alpha shouted.
“Shut up.” Michael grabbed the door handle.
“Amazing, that boy’s suicide pill,” Alpha said conversationally. “Shaped like a tooth, implanted into his gum. Just one good crunch is all it takes. You can put all kinds of things inside a fake tooth, Michael. Like I told you, a man needs his choppers—”
Michael whirled around. The helicopter swayed again.
“What are you talking about?” Michael roared, dashing toward Alpha. Alpha turned his head toward the dead sniper beside him and laughed.
It was the high-pitched laughter of the damned.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Michael screamed. “TELL ME!”
John Alpha raised his eyebrows as if to say, You poor thing. “You can put all kinds of things inside a fake tooth. Like a radio transmitter. A transmitter to detonate a bomb.”
Michael reached outward, trying to grab Alpha’s face.
You’re too slow. You’ll never make it. He’s done you in, hoss.
Alpha winked.
“Never over,” he said.
John Alpha clenched his jaw, and Michael closed his eyes.
The outer walls of Folie à Deux trembled for a nanosecond, then blew outward, flinging flaming splinters of steel, plaster, and brick onto Sunset Boulevard, into neighboring buildings, into the night sky. Liquid fire soared across Sunset Boulevard like napalm, exploding streetlights, incinerating bystanders. Another explosion from deep within the club launched the charred, warped remains of Folie à Deux’s thirty-foot-tall, centerpiece statue through the roof like a cannonball.
John, Dr. Mike, Dania Sheridan, and the 7th Son soldiers watched this through the portholes of their helicopter. They gazed, horrified, as the explosions consumed the helicopter hovering over the club. Michael’s helicopter.
Michael’s chopper was pushed upward from the blast. It tipped wildly on its right axis . . . struggled to regain its altitude and control . . . then plummeted nose-first toward the street. Its top rotor blades sawed across the fiery asphalt, crumpling, breaking away from the engine. The rotors sliced through the sky like mad boomerangs. One skewered a police car straight through its engine block. Another whizzed down the street, slicing a flaming palm tree in half.
The helicopter smashed onto Sunset Boulevard and exploded.
Flying away from the growing blaze in West Hollywood, the surviving Black Hawk soared back toward the San Gabriel Mountains, toward Edwards Air Force Base.
The mission was over.
THIRTY-TWO
Father Thomas wandered the halls of the 7th Son complex with Hugh Sheridan. The old man led them up and down dangerously steep, dusty stairwells (apparently reserved only for emergencies), past a small gymnasium, countless doors and floors. The place seemed an exercise in excess; since the apparent heyday of the experiment, not much of the facility was used anymore.
“I knew you’d ask me that. I knew you’d ask me about Dania,” Hugh Sheridan said as he stopped, and cupped his hand to light his third cigarette of the hour. He blew the smoke up at the hallway’s ceiling. “I’ll make you a deal. You tell me what you know about my ex-wife and her disappearance—the information you got from Kleinman. Then I’ll tell you the truth.”
Father Thomas slouched against a wall and rubbed his eyes. God, I’m tired.
“What we learned was told to us in Ops, after you were thrown out,” Thomas said. “After you tried to warn us about Bregner.”
“I remember that all too well,” Hugh Sheridan said, blowing a ring of smoke.
“Kleinman and that up-and-comer intel guy . . . Durbin . . . explained how NEPTH-charge was accidentally created during the early stages of the memory-recording process. Told us all about it in that storage area, the Lock Box. They called it something like a bioelectric kickback. Michael said it was like a neutron bomb for the mind.”
Sheridan nodded. “Accurate, if simplistic. Continue.”
“They said Dania Sheridan was the first to identify the cause of the kickback. She also realized the NEPTH-charge effect could be duplicated and used again and again. She realized it could be used as a weapon. But Kleinman said the 7th Son team had no interest in pursuing that.”
“Also true.” Sheridan motioned Thomas to move again, and they continued down the hall to a stairwell door. Sheridan opened it, and up they climbed, their footfalls ringing in the stairwell. “The secret of NEPTH-charge was placed in our archives, presumably to be forgotten.” Sheridan gave a cynical smile. “We were shooting for loftier goals in the annals of amorality.”
“You sound sick about the whole thing.”
The old man nodded, sucked down another lungful of smoke, kept climbing. “When Dania and I came here in ’73, we were told the stakes, took our vow of secrecy. I was your age when Dr. Kleinman recruited me. He promised me the things young people want to hear: unlimited resources, an obscene salary, research in a cutting-edge field of study. How could I say no?”
Thomas shrugged. “By saying no.”
Sheridan stopped at a landing and eyed the number designating this level. He opened the door. Thomas realized they were now on the Ops level. While the Ops center was located somewhere down the winding network of halls and T-junctions, the door to the facility’s Lock Box warehouse was mere feet away.
Sheridan punched in a code, and the door opened. They stepped inside.
“I tried for so long to not think about what we were doing here. It wouldn’t rest. I finally left. They were glad to see me go. After seeing Kleinman and me earlier today, that should be obvious.”
“Got the T-shirt,” Thomas affirmed.
Sheridan smiled slightly. He wandered farther into the cavernous room, and Thomas understood why his father was doing this. He understood it as much as he did their destination. “You have a wit about you, Thomas.”
