THIRTY-EIGHT
An hour later, as we're waiting in the lobby for Phoebe to bring the rental car around, I excuse myself from standing with Mere. Carrying the weapons case that Phoebe put me in charge of, I wander off toward the front windows of the hotel where I can get the best cell reception. I pull out my phone, dialing Callis's direct line.
He answers on the first ring.
“Hello, Callis,” I say. “Nice of you to pick up this time.”
“Silas,” he says after a moment's hesitation.
“You seem surprised to hear from me.”
“It's, ah, a different country code from where you called me before.”
“I've been traveling. It was your idea, remember?”
He's quiet for a minute. “Did you go to the island?”
“I did. What do you think I found?”
“Probably not what you expected,” he says.
“No,” I reply. “Did you know why Mother sent me there before? Who I was supposed to kill?”
He clears his throat. “You weren't supposed to kill anyone,” he says. “That's not what the Grove wanted.”
Somehow I'm not surprised to hear that response. “Come on, Callis,” I laugh at him. “When have I ever not done what Mother explicitly asked me to do? When have I ever gone off the mission parameters?”
He doesn't bother to answer because anything he says isn't going to help him.
“Do you know what Escobar Montoya is doing?” I ask.
“Saving Arcadia, even if Arcadia doesn't want to acknowledge it is in danger.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. When he doesn't answer, I ask a different question. “Did you know Talus survived?”
“Talus?” His voice isn't as confident as it was a moment ago. “What are you talking about?”
“Talus never checked in with you after the incident on the boat?”
“No,” he says. “I haven't heard from him.”
“Who did call you?”
“Just you and… and Phoebe.”
I nod, glancing out the window at the valets swarming the cars in the roundabout. “Was he supposed to check in?”
“Yes, and when he didn't—when none of you did right away—I knew something had gone wrong.”
“Oh, something had definitely gone wrong,” I laugh. “Why didn't you answer when I called the other day?”
“I didn't know it was you calling.”
“Bullshit, Callis. It could have been any one of us. You didn't have any insight into what was going on. You're sitting by the phone now, dying to know what's happening. You've seen the news. You know that the top floor of Montoya's building is gone. You know things have gone off the rails. You're blind and you're sitting there, wondering just how f*cked things have gotten.”
He's quiet for a long time. “Okay, Silas. Things have gotten out of control. I may have erred in not giving you the intelligence you needed earlier. I'm sorry, old friend.”
“Apology accepted,” I reply.
He coughs lightly after a moment. “And…?”
I spot Phoebe in a red sedan, pulling up in front of the hotel. “And Talus is dead. Phoebe shot him in the head. Probably a cleaner death than he deserved. I killed Escobar's grandson. And he has absolutely no intention of saving Arcadia. Oh, and do you remember that weed killer I mentioned when I was still in Australia? It's owned by a human corporation, and it's been engineered specifically for our physiology. That, old friend, is my report. Tell the Grove if you want to or not. It doesn't matter to me. I'm not going to answer to them any more.”
I drop the phone on the ground and shatter it with my heel.
The car is a full-sized sedan and Phoebe waves Mere toward the driver's seat. She slips into the back on the passenger's side and I climb in behind Mere, putting the case on the hump between the back seats. The other two cases must be in the trunk since I don't see them. The car comes with an in-dash GPS and Mere starts punching buttons in an effort to figure out how to reset the language to English.
Phoebe sits, her hands in her lap, waiting patiently, and I'm about to turn and tell her what I just said to Callis when our car is struck from behind.
Mere's airbag deploys, slamming her against her seat, and since the handbrake is still set, the car grinds across the pavement. Phoebe and I bounce off the front seats, and I'm nearly brained by the aluminum case as it bounces around the back seat. Whatever has struck us has a big engine and it growls noisily as the driver of the other vehicle tries to force our car into one of the columns that ring the roundabout in the front of the hotel.
A burst of gunfire shatters the window on Phoebe's side. Several rounds bounce off the case in my arms, and I feel the burn of a bullet as it streaks across the outer edge of my left shoulder. A black cylinder flies into the back of the car—too big and too slow-moving for a bullet.
Flashbang grenade.
I'm already in motion before I consciously identify what it is. My hand finds the door latch, yanks it, and I tumble out onto the sidewalk.
The flashbang goes off, and in the wake of its noise and light, I hear someone screaming but it may be nothing more than my sense of hearing being completely f*cked by the flashbang.
There's a man standing next to me, wearing boots and gray pants that are tucked into the tops of the boots. Standard military-style dress. I roll toward him, swinging the case into his knees. He falls, coming down to my level, and I spot the HK MP7 in his hands. I hit him in the face with the case, and take his gun.
More men are coming, pouring out of the back of the armored vehicle that rear-ended us. It's a security truck, the sort used by bank couriers. Secutores, yet again. In an upgraded transport this time. I point my freshly acquired gun and pull the trigger as rapidly as I can, knowing these guys don't default to full auto. Two men go down, and the rest scatter.
I bolt for a nearby pillar as the mercs still upright return fire from cover. The high-pitched noise in my head is no longer a scream; it's a tea kettle whistle echoing down a long metal tube. The scream of a mortar shell falling from its apogee. The distant crump of shells exploding along a trench line. The front, on so many nights during World War I.
Crouching behind my pillar, ignoring both the sudden influx of forgotten memories and the minute vibrations in the pillar that tells me it is being hit by gunfire, I open the aluminum case.
I have both grenades and a handgun. I blink, and I see Phoebe sitting beside me in the car, hands in her lap.
She gave me this case when we came to the elevator. Both grenades and a CZ 75—along with a few spare magazines.
I blink again and yank a grenade free of the foam. Yank the pip, release the spoon, and roll it toward the armored security truck behind our sedan. It bounces a few times, and then explodes near the armored truck. It won't do much to the heavy vehicle, but it'll make them cautious. I have two more grenades, and so I throw another one, trying to put it past the truck to flush out the guys hiding back there. I cram the remaining contents of the case into various pockets as the second grenade goes off.
A Mercedes G-class is coming from the other direction of the roundabout. The faces peering out the windows aren't frightened. More mercs, arriving in more standard Secutores-style transport. I empty the magazine of the gun I stole, killing both men in the front seat, and the Mercedes jerks to the right and slams into a nearby pillar. I drop the empty MP7, switch to the CZ 75, and put two rounds through the back passenger side window, hopefully getting one more of the mercenaries.
More Mercedes are arriving, disgorging armed men. Belfast must be bringing everyone on the payroll. I'm outnumbered and outgunned. But they're not coming in for shock and awe. They're coming in for containment. They're moving efficiently to cut me off, firing to keep me pinned down. They want to secure the sedan.
They want prisoners.
I gauge my options. I could run to my right, back toward the front doors of the hotel, and I might even make it, but that would put me inside the hotel. I'd just be containing myself, making their job easy. I jerk to my left, drawing fire from some of the approaching men, but I don't stop. I make it to the next pillar, and then keep going. I'm running faster than they expect, and in the time it takes them to recalibrate their aim, I've already reached the edge of the building. There's a narrow brick fence that separates the manicured hedges of the hotel entrance from the surrounding parking lot, and I leap over it easily.
I lurch to a stop and crab-walk back to the wall, moving toward the street that runs past the hotel. After a few meters, I press up against the wall and peek over. It takes a few seconds for someone to spot me and start firing, but in those few seconds, I get a pretty good idea of the situation.
There's more than a half-dozen Mercedes in the roundabout now, and Phoebe and Mere are being loaded into separate vehicles. The armored car has been abandoned, and the only reason would be because my grenade had actually done some structural damage or wrecked a tire.
As I creep along the wall, four of the Mercedes peel away from the hotel and accelerate up the street. There's no sense in sticking around the hotel any more, not when they've got Phoebe and Mere. I abandon any pretense of playing hide-and-seek and run after the cars. I can keep up with them for a few blocks, but once they get out of the city center, I'm going to fall behind.
As I reach the street, a helicopter roars overhead, coming in over my left shoulder. It's a Dauphin variant—sleek, distinctive fantail rotor assembly—and there are no markings on it. The helicopter dips below the buildings on either side of the street and roars up the road. The doors on both sides are open, and as it overtakes the convoy of Mercedes, people start dropping out. Leaping out of the moving helicopter onto moving vehicles like they were hopping from stone to stone on a river crossing.
Escobar's Arcadians.