CHAPTER 39

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER 39

In his room at a Best Western in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Garrison Vessler unknotted his tie, slipped it off his neck, and slumped into one of the chairs set around the small circular table in the corner. The outside door closed slowly, and almost latched before Stillwater caught it and pushed it open. He and Wong came into the room silently. Each of them wore a dark gray suit and a dour expression, and Vessler refrained from rolling his eyes.

“You two are really the picture of it,” he said, kicking off his shoes. He pulled off his socks and massaged his left foot, and thought he heard Stillwater take a breath as if to speak, but the agent didn’t say anything. Vessler took hold of his ankle with both hands and shook his foot up and down, loosening up the joint, then repeated the massage and shake with the other foot. He undid the top button of his starched white shirt, propped his feet up on the tabletop and glared at the two agents.

Wong had immediately busied himself checking the room out, top to bottom. He came out of the bathroom, flicked off the light as he emerged, and nodded once. That meant “all clear.” Vessler knew better than to expect Wong to say anything when he didn’t have to.

The poster-boy for homegrown, apple-pie Americana, Stillwater had blonde hair, blue eyes, and the wide shoulders of a football player. And yet, aside from his slightly larger than average build, there was nothing remarkable about him at all, from his off-the-rack J.C. Penney suit to his sixty-five dollar Hush Puppies to his round, slightly underslung chin. Stillwater had learned to play up this lack of distinction whenever circumstances called for it. A practiced hunching of the shoulders, a carefully non-confrontational demeanor, and Gary Stillwater became an unknown face in the crowd. Those in charge preferred it that way.

Wong, on the other hand, could only have made himself look more conspicuous than he already was if he tried to blend in anywhere. An inch taller than Stillwater, Benson Wong was whip-thin, taciturn, and stuck permanently with a nickname the other operatives had given him years before. He hated it, but grudgingly accepted it, especially after he received a jacket with “The Asp” embroidered on the back for his birthday.

Stillwater and Wong stood several feet away from their boss for most of a minute, respectfully, their hands folded.

“They’ll probably want to talk to you both,” Vessler finally said. Neither agent responded. “And if they do, I want honest answers, no more, no less. Regardless of how it reflects on me. All right?”

Stillwater said, “Of course, sir.”

Wong nodded.

“Good. Now you can leave me alone.” He waved dismissively toward the door. The two agents said good-night and went to their own room, the second half of a suite, joined to Vessler’s by two thin doors in the wall to Vessler’s left.

Vessler shut his eyes and tilted his head back. Breathed deeply, slowly.

Damn the timing.

But the group had to give an accounting of itself at some point, and according to the message he’d received earlier in the afternoon, that point was now. He’d grimaced and sworn under his breath and angrily stabbed the OFF button on his cell phone, but other than that hadn’t let his rage show. Vessler smelled Derek Stamford behind the unexpected audit. Only he could have engineered this, at the worst possible time. Two off-the-chart augments out there, doing God knew what, and Scott had lost contact with them both. Maybe the surge did it, when he picked up the second one in the park, maybe that scrambled Scott’s head around somehow, Vessler didn’t know.

What he did know was that everything was about to come down on his head. Late tomorrow afternoon, he’d have the privilege of explaining how, under his leadership and following his rules, the group had located and then lost their potentially biggest pair of targets to date.

He was sure, as well, that Stamford was all over the decision to have them drive to Chattanooga, of all places, then catch a flight out of the comparatively minuscule city airport. The travel arrangements didn’t make any sense, but Vessler knew Stamford must have somehow justified it to the brass.

Another rung up the ladder for Derek Stamford. Another gouge up the ass for Garrison Vessler.

Vessler sighed, got up from his chair and moved slowly toward the bathroom, undressing as he went. The starched shirt fell across the dresser, and Vessler stretched hugely. Corded, stringy muscles flexed under his skin like bundles of wire.

He gave himself a tiny smile as he finished undressing and turned on the water in the shower. He’d been practicing the tired old man routine for some time now, with apparent success. No one else in the group, except maybe the physician who gave him his bimonthly physicals, seemed to know he faked his moans and groans. Additionally, most of the new recruits simply weren’t aware of how he’d gotten the nickname “Icicle.” He knew someone would try him, and underestimate him, sooner or later.

Probably Stamford. Probably sooner.

# # #

In the room adjoining Vessler’s, Stillwater and Wong began to settle in for the night. Stillwater had the first shift, and flipped around the channels on the hotel’s TV, searching for something to help him stay awake. He watched a few seconds of MTV, another few of an infomercial hawking an exercise video called “Destroyer Buns,” and finally settled on one of the premium channels, which was airing Alice’s Adult Adventures in Wonderland.

“All right,” he said happily, and propped himself up at the head of the bed with both pillows behind him.

Wong stood next to the other bed, undressing, and cast a brief glance at the TV. He pulled a book out of his bag, turned on the reading lamp on the bedside table, threw the covers back and crawled into bed. He had trouble getting to sleep unless he read for a while first, and tonight was no exception, but his tastes normally ran to Robert Ludlum novels and collections of Calvin & Hobbes cartoons. Tonight he read a progressively dog-eared copy of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Wong’s girlfriend of seven months, Patricia, had given it to him a week before, and told him if he didn’t read it she’d leave him.

Patricia, a petite Korean-American woman, taught elementary school and used most of the precious little spare time she had to write poetry. She could cook an omelette that made Wong’s eyes roll back in his head, she gave professional-quality backrubs, and she could quote, along with him, nearly every line of dialogue from all three Indiana Jones movies.

Wong didn’t like being pressured into things in his private life, but he liked the idea of losing Patricia even less, so he took the book and promised her he’d get through it.

Fifteen minutes and eight pages later, Wong glanced over toward Stillwater and said, “Hey, can I read you something?”

Stillwater didn’t take his eyes off the screen, most of which was taken up by a curvy blonde’s bare breasts. “Not from that piece of shit.”

Wong sighed. He’d just finished a particularly compelling passage, and wanted to talk to someone about it. He would have called Patricia if he hadn’t known she’d already be in bed.

As an afterthought, Stillwater said, “You ought to get your ass to sleep, anyway, you start in four hours.”

Wong said, “But—”

– and froze in place, staring at the bathroom. He set the book down on the bed next to him, reached for his gunbelt and pulled out his Browning .45.

The TV clicked off. Wong looked over his shoulder and saw Stillwater standing with his own identical Browning held ready. Stillwater’s blue eyes had instantly taken on a hard, icy sheen, and Wong knew his partner was focused.

Noiselessly Wong left the bed and nodded at the bathroom. Stillwater answered his nod and approached the door, which stood slightly ajar. They couldn’t see anything beyond it but darkness.

Wearing only a pair of paisley-patterned jockey shorts, Wong crept over to a position on the opposite side of the door, his tall, lanky body quivering.

They burst into the bathroom and flipped on the light, hammers cocked and ready for anything except what happened next.

Stillwater had time to observe that the medicine cabinet was gone, revealing a black hole in the wall that led into an adjoining bathroom, before white tentacles dropped from the ceiling, wrapped around his head, and twisted violently up and to the right, shattering several vertebrae and severing his spinal cord. Gary Stillwater slumped dead to the floor.

Simon Grove dropped from the ceiling, where he’d been clinging, spider-like. The boy’s face began to pop and distort, lengthening grotesquely, and distracted Wong just enough for Grove to fling out three of the finger-tendrils and jerk the Browning out of his hand. It clattered on the floor and slid behind the toilet. More of the tendrils snaked out, but Wong threw himself backward out of the bathroom, rolled and came to his feet. Grove immediately followed him, hissing and hunch-shouldered, lunging.

Wong whirled, his left leg flashed out, and the heel of his foot caught Grove’s temple with a thick wet crunching sound. Grove staggered and toppled over, but the finger-tendrils bunched underneath him and supported him on a bizarre coiling cushion. He trembled and got back to his feet, and Wong felt a sharp spear of panic.

Grove brought one arm forward, the tendrils twitching and writhing, but Wong stepped inside the boy’s reach and struck him three times, crack crack crack, twice to the face and once in the center of his chest.

Grove staggered again, and Wong realized he himself was bleeding.

Four of the weird spines that had replaced Grove’s teeth had broken off and rammed into his forearm. He didn’t feel the pain yet, and didn’t have any time to, as Grove hissed and rushed in again.

This time Wong stepped inside, as before, and struck Grove solidly in the gut. As foul, rotten air whooshed out around Wong’s head, he turned and slid up tight to Grove’s body, yanked one attenuated arm forward and flipped the boy across the small of his back.

Grove’s feet almost touched the ceiling as he sailed around in a perfect tight arc, and Wong knew he heard bones break as the boy crashed into the floor at Wong’s feet. Grove made a pained, keening sound, and Wong put him in a brutal arm lock. The weird, fish-white body thrashed and twisted, but couldn’t go anywhere, and only then did Wong give himself enough breathing space to think about what it was exactly he had pinned to the floor.

He’d seen plenty of strange augments, working with Vessler and the rest of the group, but nothing like this. He lifted his head and looked around for the phone: there, on the table next to the TV. Too far to reach. He’d have to yell for Vessler...no problem with the thin, shoddy doors separating the two rooms.

But Grove’s elbow gave way, rolled in a slick, greasy fashion like a ball-and-socket joint, and his shoulder went loose right after that. Suddenly the principle behind Wong’s joint lock no longer applied, and he lost his balance as Grove kicked out from under him. Wong was fast, but not quite fast enough.

The wall suddenly slammed into him, sent skittering glints of pain along his shoulders and back, and before he could try to move Grove stiffened all the fingers of his left hand and sank them into the plaster around Wong’s head, caging him. Wong wished briefly for his knives, which rested in their sheaths in his suit jacket, and then thought of Patricia.

Grove wound his other hand into a slim, dagger-point horn and rammed it through Wong’s heart.



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