After Death(83)

Amped on bennies, having become a dragon if only in his mind, with a priapism that can be relieved only by orgasmic violence, Calaphas arrives at the motor court in front of the grand residence. Near the steps to the terrace stands Carter Woodbine’s Bentley—the treasure that symbolizes absolute power and that every game worth playing comes to in the end—enveloped in a supernatural glow, the moon favoring it above all things.

At the house, the second-floor windows are dark, but light is universal downstairs. As Calaphas approaches the Bentley, intending to pause there to reconnoiter further, he sees a woman at a window. He has come this far under the presumption that Michael Mace is on the run alone, as he was when he escaped Beautification Research and as he still seemed to be, less than twenty-four hours earlier, when he took half a million dollars from Woodbine. Calaphas doesn’t know this woman, can’t imagine who she might be or why she might have cast her lot with Mace. Then his astonishment swells into perplexity when a young boy appears next to her. They seem to be examining some small device that she is holding. Then the window shades power down, and they are gone from view.

He crouches beside the sedan, in a fever of speculation. He soon comes to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter who the woman and the boy might be. This is nothing more than one of those sudden twists that the designers of the game include to thwart players less astute and adaptable than Calaphas. She and the child have no more purpose or meaning than the bumpers, gates, and trap holes on the field of a pinball machine. If here, in the penultimate chapter of the narrative, he must kill three to claim the prize, that is not a job that exceeds his talents.

As his priapism stiffens almost to the point of pain, he sees this development as less a challenge than a reward. Even as he’d walked here from his car in the eucalyptus grove, he bemoaned the lack of intimacy in recent killings. Now before him waits a sweet opportunity to go out of the game not merely in triumph but in a condition of prolonged ecstasy. If he were designing the script for this lower reality, that is precisely how this existence would end and one more exciting would begin. His heart is racing. He is into this. He is cranked.

With his combat knife, he punctures the sidewall on the front passenger-side tire. He repeats this bit of sabotage on the rear tire.





FIREPOWER




After shutting all the shades on the ground floor, Nina and John had ventured into the garage in search of something in which to pack the three million dollars and disguise the treasure. When it’s in the back of the Range Rover, it will be visible to anyone who looks through a window. The solution is two large, insulated picnic coolers, which they have brought to the kitchen. The money, already sealed in plastic, can be packed in the bottom of each cooler and then covered with aluminum foil. Take ice from the kitchen icemaker, pile it on the foil, add beer and soda from the pantry, and no one knows there’s a fortune under the beverages.

“Fast as you can,” Michael urges.

He leaves them to it. With the AR-15, he patrols the ground floor, thinking furiously, wishing the Singularity had sharpened his mind like the tech visionaries promised. He has three options, none good.

Make a break for it in the Range Rover. If Calaphas arrives after they leave, he won’t know what vehicle they took, at least for an hour or two. However, if the agent is in place, watching them now, waiting for the right moment to make his move, he’ll cut them down before they reach the gate at the end of the driveway. Calaphas isn’t walking into this with just a sidearm. He’s sure to have the equivalent of an AR-15, perhaps one that’s been modified for fully automatic fire.

Alternately, Michael can go to the second-floor deck at the front of the house. Nina drives the Rover, with John lying on the back floor. She exits the garage at high speed. The instant Calaphas reveals himself, Michael takes him out. The obvious problem is that the agent will reveal himself by opening fire, perhaps killing Nina before he can be killed. Or say that Nina gets away. Then she waits somewhere safe. Michael has to find and kill Calaphas before being able to call her back to pick him up. He figures he’s got at least a 50 percent chance of dying. In that case, Nina and John are on their own. And even though they have all that money, they don’t possess the ability to invade official computers and create new identities for themselves.

The third option is hunker down and wait for Calaphas to come into the house after them. Nina goes upstairs with John and hides somewhere. She has a handgun if the situation goes hard south. Calaphas comes inside. There’s either an immediate confrontation between him and Michael, or they end up stalking each other. But maybe Calaphas gets tired of waiting, for whatever reason decides not to be a loner this time, and calls in backup. Plus there are maybe twenty other ways that scenario could go wrong.

The issue is firepower. Michael needs more of it. He needs the kind of backup that Calaphas could have with a phone call. But he has no one to call, no authorities who wouldn’t, in the end, turn him over to those SOBs at the Internal Security Agency.

“What’s our S-O-B doing here?” Shelby Shrewsberry’s voice echoes in memory. Referring to Dr. Simon O. Bistoury. About two weeks before the catastrophe.

Michael halts. He’s in the living room, but in the eye of memory, he sees the cafeteria at Beautification Research.

“Damn, he got coffee . . . coming this way.”

Looming over them, Simon had said, “The bastards down at Encinitas . . . knocked it out of the park.”