Author's note:
Welcome one and all to Chapter 8. Where we have:
-violence
-gore
-other unpleasantries.
It's a long one yes, but lately long chapters seem to be what I am writing. Look on the bright side: more story.
Two characters in this story are based off fellow Lecterphiles. I'm sorry to say that they come out of this chapter slightly the worse for wear. But, it was necessary for the story. It wasn't meant as a reflection on the people they represent: that would be discourteous, and discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.
On a more positive note, those people may take some cheer in that this chapter gives them something they have been campaigning for since Chapter 2. And there is more to come. But on with the show….
The old factory sat sullenly at the edge of Baltimore. It wasn't terribly big as factories go, but it loomed over the small houses that had once housed its workers and the occasional squat, brick apartment buildings. The factory had seen the passing of over a hundred and twenty years since it had first been built. For the past sixty, it had been empty and abandoned. Some of the machinery had been moved out; that which was too large to easily remove or steal remained. It looked like the corpse of a murdered idea, a relic of the Industrial Age in the world of the Information Age.
The black Jaguar sat primly in its parking lot like a wealthy socialite in a tow truck, seemingly distressed to be in such proletarian surroundings. A few fluorescent lights spilled from the windows. Everything was quiet. The preparations had all been made.
Four vans pulled up quickly into the darkening twilight and parked in the parking lot of the abandoned convenience store across the street. Quickly, men and women in black fatigues jumped out military-style and lined up. They wore headsets on their heads and held H&K MP5's in their hands. Their booted feet thudded against the cracked macadam. They lined up swiftly.
A few of them set about setting up the command center. One of the vans had a table which had been folded up against the wall. They unfolded it and set up computer equipment and radio equipment quickly. The people assigned to command-post positions took up their positions in the van. Lisa Starling opened her laptop and sat down at the table. She laid the blueprints on the table and took out three black plastic checkers.
The rest of them divided up into three teams of five each. In additioned to the uniformed HRT agents, there were Behavioral Sciences people in shirts and ties. These were swiftly covered by extra fatigue jackets, but they ultimately still stuck out as tweedy intellectuals surrounded by uniformed and armed soldiers.
Lisa Starling adjusted her headset. Miehns had told her she would be running communications and tracking the teams as they went through the factory to find their prey. She did not watch them as they went in. Even though she knew it was necessary, there was still a knife of bitterness in watching them prepare to bring Susana down.
Miehns was a rock in the midst of the commotion, calmly giving orders and solving last-minute problems. Her voice carried into the van.
"All teams, report in," she said crisply.
Voices spoke in Lisa's ear.
"Team 1 – Dixon."
"Team 1- Hahn."
"Team 1 – Majors."
"Team 1 – Weiss."
An older, gruffer voice, one she knew: "Team 1 – Lima."
The other teams ran through their rosters quickly. Lisa took a great measure of satisfaction in the fact that the name 'DeGraff' did not sound in her ear. DeGraff was coming back from Wheeling, where he had been distributing Susana's picture to beauty salons.
Na na, Lisa Starling thought privately. We're gonna bring Susana Alvarez Lecter out in cuffs and you spent the day in beauty salons. Hope you didn't get too many girlie cooties on you, you officious prick. She grinned. It was juvenile, but oh so satisfying.
Miehns, Starling, Quincy, and another agent she did not recognize constituted the command-post staff. The name stitched in yellow thread above her jacket pocket read WALKER.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Walker. Communications." She sat down next to Starling at the table and began concerning herself with the radio equipment parked atop the table.
"Starling," Lisa introduced herself. "Map girl. I dunno, what do you call this?"
Miehn glanced over at her. "Location and Mapping, Starling."
Lisa had her laptop and the hard copy of the blueprints. She heard them moving out on her radio. Carefully, she moved each checker to its appropriate position reflecting where each squad was. It gave her plenty to concentrate on, and in hearing them over the radio she did not feel quite so out of the action.
Ralph Lima was alternately nervous and excited. Nervous, because there were more guns than he had seen since his Academy days around him. Excited, because there simply wasn't much opportunity for a fifty-five-year-old grandfather to play cops and robbers. The firepower around him comforted him. Good thing he was on the good-guy side.
Agent Dixon was the leader of this squad. He glanced over at Lima. Lima supposed that Dockers and a tie were not customary on HRT. He had a borrowed BDU jacket over it, but he still felt out of place.
When Agent Dixon spoke, his tone was polite and disciplined. Lima supposed that he was trained that way, even around the old farts of Behavioral Science.
"Agent Lima, are you armed?"
"Yes, I am," he said gruffly. He produced his 9mm pistol to prove it. Against the MP5s that the others held, it looked inadequate. Well, better than the .38 you had when you started, he thought. They'd laugh fit to split at that one.
"Good. Keep that out, muzzle down. Don't fire unless I tell you to, please."
Lima glanced around him at the HRT agents. He wondered what they were thinking. Was he the burden to carry around? They were all basically soldiers, trained soldiers. He was a mindhunter. Good in his own bailiwick, but these kids probably thought he was Wilford Brimley.
The squads moved into the factory. The blueprints indicated that there were three separate hallways for them to take. Once each team had taken their hallway, they were effectively cut off from the others. But these were highly trained agents of the FBI, and each team believed they could bring down Susana Alvarez without help. It was dark in the hallways, and the agents activated the flashlights mounted under the muzzles of their guns. Nothing moved. Nothing spoke.
"This is Dixon, Team 1," Dixon said. "We are in the building. No movement."
"Hernandez, Team 2. We are in the building. No movement," came a reply.
"Scott, Team 3. In the building. No movement," a third voice chirped in.
Starling kept her eye on the blueprints and told each team what to expect coming up. She moved the checkers on the blueprint. Miehns looked over her shoulder occasionally to try and track her.
…
The building was quite old. Once, it had manufactured clocks. As it was very old, it had an old heating system and an old ventilation system. Which meant that the heating ducts in the building were quite large. Large enough for Susana to fit in.
She inched her way carefully through the vent until she reached the front of the factory. She emerged from the duct at the entrance that the teams had entered through fifteen minutes ago. An old desk stood sentinel to where a long-ago secretary had greeted visitors to the factory.
She had to chuckle. If they thought they would surprise her, they had another thing coming. They sounded like a herd of elephants coming in. And those radios they liked so well: they couldn't keep from yammering on them. Susana heard her cousin's voice emanating from a few headset speakers as she crawled over them.
Susana waited and then crept to the first door. She closed it and locked it quietly. It wouldn't keep them out for very long – they had battering rams, after all – but they would not know that they were locked out until they came back this way and discovered the door locked.
She closed the next two and locked them. She stopped and waited, her head tilted in the darkness of the lobby. She heard no sound indicating they had heard her. Good.
Susana wore only a simple 9mm automatic on her belt. She was dressed in black fatigues similar to those worn by the HRT. Had they bothered to look in the Jaguar, they would have found a bag from an army-navy store in Washington, DC. She knew they hadn't. The Jag was alarmed, and she had armed it.
Ah yes, Dr. Kreglow, she thought. Kreglow was an old man, a psychiatrist. He had once practiced at Maryland-Misericordia with her father. It had given her a great deal of pleasure to kill him. Her father spoke poorly of him: he didn't help his patients well.
She did not intend to use the pistol yet. Instead, she went up to the dusty, scarred desk and knelt behind its kneehole. From it, she withdrew a crossbow rifle. Her father had used these, too, and Susana had tried her hand at it as a little girl. She was better with pistols, but the crossbow would be quieter. Susana cocked the crossbow. It made a loud click in the still air of the dead factory. Strapped to her left arm was a quiver holding ten more quarrels. The tips of the quarrels were razor sharp, designed to bring down deer. They would bring down the members of the HRT just as easily.
She slipped into the vent soundlessly and began to hunt out Team 1.
…
Starling busily moved her checkers and checked in with her teams. Except for one time when an office showed up on the blueprints as two small offices and had since been turned into a big meeting room, everything was according to plan. Except that Susana had not yet been seen.
She heard Miehns turn her head and say, "What the hell?"
A glance out the back window of the van told her what she needed to know. A Baltimore police cruiser was parked outside. Another pulled up beside it. Miehns hopped out of the van and walked across to them. Starling made as if to rise, but Miehns waved her off.
"Man your post, Starling. I got this."
Miehns jogged across to the first cruiser and stuck her head in the window. A heavy cop lolled behind the wheel.
"How you all doing?" he asked.
"Federal operation, officer. Your sergeant should have told you."
"He did, Agent…uh…," he squinted to read the name sewn on Miehns's jacket. "Miehns. We're here if you need us."
"I've got plenty of men. We should be able to handle it. Thank you, though."
"My sergeant asked me to keep an eye on things here," he said.
Miehns sighed. Great, all I need. A pissing match with local boys.
"We've got a handle on things, officer,"
"Hey, I'm just here on orders, ma'am. Same as you."
Miehns sighed. Better not to get in the way. The last thing she wanted was Susana Alvarez Lecter getting away while she argued with some fat city cop.
"Park your cruiser and get in the van," she said. "And no one else. Just you two."
"Yes, ma'am," the cop said respectfully, and shifted his cruiser into park. He got out and entered the van next to Starling. Starling sighed and made room. The other cop was tall and rangy, and he looked around wonderingly.
"You guys like SWAT?" he asked. "I'm on Baltimore city SWAT."
"Kind of," Miehns said to shut him up.
"Command, this is team 2. We've secured the office portion. Moving on to the factory," the radio spoke up.
Miehns put her hands on her hips. These guys were just plain annoying. Diplomacy was not her strong point. She wanted to toss the yokels out and send them back to their donuts.
Starling turned and smiled at the cop sitting next to her.
"Look, guys," she said in a voice kind and sugary-sweet enough to rain Academy Awards from the sky. "I know you're trying to help and you've got your orders, but it would really help me out if you didn't talk so much. I have to keep track of my squads on the radio. So I have to hear them. Okay?" This last word was in a tone so coquettish that Miehns would have made gagging noises under other circumstances.
But it worked. Thank you, Starling, she thought. The cops apologized and sat back to watch the fun.
…
Susana pushed forward out of the vent and emerged into an office. She tilted her head and listened intently. The squad was far ahead, but she could hear it. She straightened herself out and stood up. The vent was actually quite large, but she frowned at the dust on her fatigues. Dirty clothes were not ladylike.
She stuck her head out into the hallway, low enough that she wouldn't be noticed. Up ahead, in the hallway, she could see the squad preparing to move out onto the factory floor. The factory lights were on, and the office hallway was dark. Exactly as she had planned.
She went down on one knee and raised the crossbow to her shoulder. Her face went against the cheekpiece. She aimed the crossbow squarely at the last uniform-clad back she saw. Her mother's voice spoke up in her mind.
Back shots are cheap, Miss Chickabee, but they do the job.
You got it, Mother, she thought back, and squeezed the trigger.
There was little sound. The 150-pound crossbow clicked and sent its quarrel thirty feet down the hallway. It buried itself in its target with little noise. Susana put another quarrel in and recocked the crossbow. It was tough to cock, but she managed it by bracing the stock under her arm.
The team was just realizing that it had lost a member when she fired her second shot. A second black-clad figure dropped. Susana knew she would not get a third chance and drew her pistol as she ducked back into the office. Although it was dark, she knew she could hit her targets. They were federal officers, trained not to fire their weapons unless they had clearly defined targets in their sights. Flashes of movement did not count.
Their own damn fault, she thought.
She stuck her head out and fired at the third man. He was dressed differently, she noted. When she stuck her head out, she was greeted with a hail of fire that ripped into the drywall beside her. She pumped a few shots into his gut. Since she no longer had the advantage of silence, she might as well make him suffer.
Whee, Susana Alvarez Lecter thought. Now this is different.
"This is Team 1! This is Team 1! Majors and Weiss are down! We are taking fire! Repeat, we are taking fire! Lima has been hit!"
In the van, Starling stood up when she heard the transmission counterpointed by gunfire. "Lima?" she cried. "Talk to me, Ralph."
Miehns grabbed her shoulder and forced her back down. "Man your post, Starling!"
Starling's hands jittered as she consulted her checkers. "Teams 2 and 3, back to the lobby and through the first door on the left. Hurry! Team 1 is taking fire."
The clumpy-bumpy sound of running boots indicated that the other teams were already doing just that. Starling gripped a checker hard until it dug into her palm and tried to concentrate. Not Lima. Please not Lima. Susana, you bitch, don't you dare hurt Lima. She navigated the teams back through the halls, but she already knew it was too late.
Susana fired twice more, a quick double tap, and another HRT agent collapsed. Now there was just Dixon. Another quick brapbrapbrap of 9mm fire ripped down her way. The light on the end of his submachine gun strafed the hallway.
Dixon could hardly believe this. Two minutes ago, everything was fine. Now, three other agents were dead and Lima was down. He was the only one left. His pulse roared in his ears. Adrenalin flooded his system and made him jitter in his boots. Three dead agents, all one-shot kills. Goddam, she must be a good shot. He heard a loud click.
Calm down. It's just one person. One girl. Find her and shoot her. Keep your head. The click means she must be reloading. You can get her, Dixon.
He moved his rifle back and forth, slowly and deliberately. At one point, he saw a black boot scoot back into the office. He ran to the other side and began to approach it quietly. His finger was on the trigger. If he saw her, he would shoot.
Something moved in the light. He moved his rifle up and the beam illuminated something tiny, flying towards him. The tip gleamed in the light.
"What the hell?" he said, and then the crossbow quarrel struck him between the eyes and ended his questions.
Susana Alvarez Lecter rose from her position of cover in the office doorway and walked towards the dead squad. Her weapon was out and aimed at the bodies. Only one moved. She glanced down at the old man moaning on the floor. Contemptuously, she kicked his pistol out of his hand and then buried her boot in his stomach, where a red flower from her bullet was already spreading. He let out an anguished scream. She took in the tie and nice pants under the black jacket and realized he must be Behavioral Science.
"What's your name, old man?" she challenged.
"Lima," he grunted. "You must be Susana Alvarez."
"That's not it. Say my name properly."
"Susana Alvarez, kiddo. Kill me if you want, you will anyway."
Susana fired once into his shoulder. He gritted his teeth in pain and gripped the wound with his other hand.
"I'll make you suffer first, Lima," she said.
…
Starling was hunched over her blueprints, staring at nothing. Her heart larruped along in her chest as she heard gunfire and screams. Then she heard bootsteps going down the hallway, towards the team. Their microphones were still live. They were not.
She heard Ralph moaning in pain. Then, faintly, barely caught by a mike:
"What's your name, old man?"
Starling rose. She had to do something. She would not let Susana take down Lima. He was the closest thing she had to a partner. Not Lima. Susana couldn't have him. She would stop him.
Miehns glanced over at her and frowned.
"Susana Alvarez, kiddo. Kill me if you want, you will anyway."
Another gunshot echoed over the radio.
"I'll make you suffer first, Lima," came her evil cousin's voice.
She's going to torture him to death. She's going to torture him to death…knowing that I'm listening.
"Susana, stop!" she screamed into the radio. No reply came. Susana had no radio to answer with yet. Starling turned and jumped out of the van to the macadam below. Her pistol was already in her hand.
"Starling, no! Stand down!" Something bigger and heavier than her crashed into her from behind. It was Agent Miehns. Laura Miehns had run HRT for a long time, and she was used to dealing with hysterical hostages.
Miehns was heavier than Starling, but it was all muscle. With better strength, experience, leverage, and force, she maneuvered the smaller woman to the ground and forced the pistol out of her hand. It clunked onto the macadam of the parking lot. All the while, Susana continued to torment Ralph Lima over the radio while both women listened.
"I have to help him!" Starling sobbed. "I can't just leave him!"
"Starling, no. You can't help him. She'll just kill you too. You're not going anywhere. Let the teams get her."
Starling bucked and twisted under her, and for just a moment Miehns thought she might escape. She let Starling's arm go and laced her arms under Starling's shoulders and up around her neck in a full nelson. The younger woman launched herself forward, trying to evade her grip. Miehns had rehabilitated wildlife in her youth, and trying to hold Starling was like trying to hold a small, panicky wild animal that was intent on getting away. She gritted her teeth and locked her fingers tighter on the nape of Starling's neck.
"Starling, you can't help him. Man your post. Man your post, dammit."
Starling relaxed in her grip then, and burst into tears. Another gunshot echoed in her headset. Another scream from Lima. But she relaxed and remained calm. After a moment, Miehns asked her, "You calm?"
"Yes," Starling said in a tone of utter defeat.
"Get back in there and get the remaining teams to him," Miehns ordered. "Get them there now, before she kills him. She's just toying with him.
Lisa Starling picked up her gun and shoved it back in its holster. She was bitter as she sat down again and checked in with the teams. The fact that they had heard her did not help things.
"Teams 2 and 3, report your position," she said, her throat clogging.
…
"Damn," Susana said, "you take a lot of punishment, Lima."
Ralph Lima knew death was near, and it didn't bother him. He would have liked to see his grandson grow older, but that was life in the FBI. Besides, it would put him out of this monster's reach.
Lima's right hand was a mess of blood, meat, and shattered bone. Susana had shown off her accuracy by shooting him three times in rapid succession in a neat diagonal across the palm of his hand. When he still refused to address her the way she wanted him to, she had ground the remains of his hand under her boot.
He had screamed then. He couldn't help it.
"I'll help you, Ralphie boy. Susana Alvarez Lecter. LEC-ter. You know, like my papa. Say it, Ralphie, and allll the pain will go away."
"Y'know, you're just like your dad," Ralph Lima said, his lips split back in defiance.
"Why, thank you."
"You're both crazy as shithouse rats. Torture me all you want, Susana. There are more on the way where we came from."
Susana's face darkened. "Oh, I know," she said jovially. "It's just a question of how much you want to hurt before you go." She prodded his stomach wound with her boot again. "But you never…never….talk about my father like that in my presence."
Ralph Lima thought about the Marine he had once been.
"Fuck you," he spat. "Fuck you and your crazy-ass cannibal daddy." He meant to drive this young monster into a killing rage. If he had to go, he would go out a winner.
Susana bent over him, reversed her grip on her pistol, and pistol-whipped him with it in three measured blows that were no less savage. His nose broke and he felt blood fill his sinuses. His front teeth broke off and landed in the back of his throat. He tried to get his left hand up to defend himself and knew it was a mistake. She whirled the gun back into firing position as neat as you please and fired point-blank into his palm.
Ralph gagged on his own blood. His stomach and hands were points of flame. His feet were going numb. Shock, probably. Bet my pulse is dropping. Next comes numbness everywhere, then I'll die. Wonder if I'll be mentioned in her case history… But the evil young goddess of death had stepped over him and was doing something else. He heard a body thump over and heard cloth and plastic click. When she returned, she wore Dixon's cap and jacket and was adjusting Dixon's headset into position.
Whatever she was about to say, she wanted Starling to hear it.
"You're good, Ralphie boy," she said. "A worthy opponent, unlike these toy soldiers here. So I grant you your reward. Are you listening, little Lisa Starling? I hope you are."
Starling tensed in the van but did not move. Her eyes brimmed with tears of grief and fury.
Two gunshots echoed over the radio. Lisa screamed. Susana chuckled over the radio and pushed her mike out of the way.
Susana heard banging. The other teams had discovered they were locked out. She picked up a spare MP5, checked to make sure it was loaded, and slipped back into the office she had hid in. She crawled through the vent as quietly as she could. She emerged back into the second hallway, where Team 2 was busy banging on the door to the lobby.
She glanced down the hall. They were too far away to notice her, and from the jabbering over the radio they still thought there was something to find at the remains of Team 1. Too bad, boys. You missed the party. She slipped out of the vent and crossed the hallway to a door. Printed on the door was the words TO BASEMENT.
The stairs were concrete. Long-lasting but noisy. Susana slid down the banister like a child, thus getting down the stairs with only a squeak or two of flesh on metal instead of the noisy racket of boots on concrete would have caused. At the landing, she dismounted the one and got on the other. The MP5 clacked where its sling swivels banged against its body. The basement door was locked, but that was OK. Susana removed a tool from her fatigue pants pocket and slipped it into the lock. In the space of two calm breaths, the lock was open and Susana slipped into the basement.
Although no stranger to killing, Susana was neither stupid not foolhardy. She knew perfectly well she could not repeat her success with Team 1. They would be on their guard now. If they were smart, the two teams would combine into one, meaning there would be ten heavily armed people hunting her down in a party. Or maybe eight heavily armed and two with pistols, like old Ralphie. If they saw her, they'd shoot her on sight.
When you can't win the game, you can either lose, or you can change the rules.
The old factory was heated with heating oil. The big oil tank that serviced the building was where Susana expected it to be – built into a wall in the basement. According to the gauge, it was three-quarters full. She looked around at the basement and found what she hoped to find. There were a few moldy old wooden pallets, a few cardboard boxes, and a few pieces of newspaper. There was a new can of lighter fluid resting on a century-old shelving unit. This had been part of Susana's purchases before the FBI showed up.
Susana dragged these all over to the oil tank. She carefully piled up the pallets, newspaper, and boxes into a rough cone. Then she spilled a line of lighter fluid leading back to the door. Hopefully, the tank would blow. Susana thought that it would. She put the can of lighter fluid at the base of her cone of kindling.
She took a deep breath and went into her memory palace. She reviewed both her own memories of the factory and the self-same blueprints her grieving cousin was hunched over now. She mentally timed how long it would take her to run and get somewhere safe before the oil tank exploded. None of them worked. Not good.
Then she saw it – right next to the oil tank, there was an old window. It screeched horribly when she tried to open it, but open it did. The door was locked, anyway, so it didn't matter if they heard her. The window opened onto the back of the factory, and there was only a six-foot fence she could have scaled in her sleep there. Beyond the fence, the land sloped down sharply.
Translation: if she made it over the fence before the oil tank went boom, she would be okay.
Susana retrieved her lighter fluid and made a long curve leading from the door to the window. The can went back into the base of the firewood. She took a piece of newpaper and formed it into a spill. Her hands did not tremble. She was calm as she worked, her ears pricked for the sounds of the FBI. Then she dipped her fingers into her BDU jacket pocket, under the jacket she had taken from Dixon. She came out with a silver lighter. With a flick of her elegant fingers, a small yellow butane flame bloomed into existence.
Susana lit the spill of newspaper and waited ten seconds or so until it was burning nicely. Then she dropped it. She jumped up and put her foot into a pipe leading off the oil tank. The pipe creaked unpleasantly. She braced herself and thrust her body through the window and ran across the parking lot. With a grunt, she jumped into the air, her fingers and feet seeking purchase in the chain-link fence. She scaled it neatly, jumped to the ground on the other side, and ran as fast as she could to lower ground. She rolled and covered up her head for what was coming.
It was too bad, really. She preferred to kill face to face. But even an artist must sometimes employ assembly-line methods when there is no other option. And this demanded it.
Behind her, the lighter fluid caught fire as soon as the newspaper spill reached the ground. The flame ran the curve she had traced in a long, lazy dipsy-doodle curve. It ran into the base of the cone and the lighter fluid remaining in the can caught with a whump. The newspaper and cardboard caught immediately. The wood began to burn a few seconds later.
…
The teams had reached the remains of Team One. They noticed that only one weapon was missing and reported back. Lisa Starling advised them in a dry, toneless voice to spread out and begin seeking out Susana Alvarez at once. Their weapons at the ready, they began to head into the factory after their prey. Their loss had only doubled their determination. When Susana left the factory, she would leave on a stretcher, one way or the other.
In the van, Laura Miehns looked over at where Starling hunched.
"I'm sorry, Starling," she said softly.
A new voice cut in on the radio.
"Cousin Lisa? Y'all there?"
Miehns sat up and grabbed her headset. "Listen, Alvarez, you may think you're cute, but you just signed your own death warrant."
"An' who would yew be? Ah wanna talk to mah cousin."
"I'm here, you fucking psycho," Lisa said wearily. A vast emptiness was beginning in her chest. She'd never thought loss could hurt this much.
"That ain't raht neighborly of yah, Cousin Lisa. I tell you what, though. I'd git mahself to safe ground if I were you."
Just then, a massive roar shook the van. A vast gout of angry flame shook the factory. Chunks of concrete flew in all directions like the fists of an angry god. One struck the van and smacked it over on its side as easily as a two-year-old might knock over a Matchbox car. Anguished screams came from the remains of the factory. Equipment flew in all directions in the van.
For a moment, the world consisted of screams, flame, and pain. The roar of the explosion deafened everyone nearby. Susana Alvarez was the last thing on the minds of anyone in the van. As radio equipment and computers fell pell-mell in the van, chaos reigned.
…
Peter DeGraff was annoyed.
Wheeling had largely been a bust. The beauty salons he had been forced to visit all acted like he was some kind of pervert. And none of them had even heard of Susana Alvarez Lecter. The drive back to DC was stalled by traffic. He'd gotten caught in construction on I-70. The cheap piece of shit government car's air conditioning had failed. As he watched the temperature gauge rise, sweat trickling down his back, he had felt himself grow more and more enraged.
Then, to top it off, his cell phone had rang while he was in the middle of Virginia. They'd found the bitch. They were going to get her, and he was going to miss it. At least he could content himself that Starling wasn't going to get to put the cuffs on her. She was going to be back at the command post, being babysat by that Miehns bitch. Probably for the best, he thought. Women where women belong, doing administrative stuff. The fact that Miehn's position was in command, not adminstration, bothered him not a whit. And the unlovely truth about Peter DeGraff was that he really wouldn't have cared if someone had pointed it out to him. For his own pleasure, he pictured the two of them typing and taking dictation as he sat in the middle of goddam Cowshit, Pennsylvania.
He finally got through the traffic jam and got into Baltimore. He knew roughly where the place was, and when he didn't, he flagged down an officer and got directions with his FBI credentials. As he drove along Bleeker St, looking for the damn place, he heard an explosion that made the car shake.
What the fuck?
He turned the corner. 1479 Bleeker, just where it should be. And there were the vans, but they were knocked over like kid's toys. The factory itself was a flaming ruin.
DeGraff got out of the car and gaped stupidly at the wreckage of the factory. He could hear cries coming from the van, but in his sheer shock he did not think to offer assistance. He simply stared at the broken remains of the factory and at the chunks of concrete scattered about the parking lot.
A figure came scurrying around the side of the shattered building. DeGraff looked around. It was too small to be anyone except Starling. He stalked up to the figure. As he came closer, he saw she was wearing black fatigues, as if she was actually some sort of soldier.
"Starling," he said. "What the fuck happened?"
She stared at him and did not reply.
"Goddam it, answer me, Starling! They're all dead, aren't they? They're all dead."
She looked towards the wreckage and nodded slowly.
"And you…you're alive." DeGraff shook his head.
Normally, Peter DeGraff would have known better than to cut loose with what he said. But the sight of the explosion along with the realization that all the agents inside must be dead had shaken him to his core. People he knew were in there. People who had actually proven themselves as worthy, not like this kid here.
"You're alive. How'd you manage that?" His voice was both shocked and bitter. "Should've been you, bitch. That way we wouldn't have lost anything worth having."
Starling tilted her head at him and studied him emotionlessly. Her left hand crept back to behind her back.
"Look at you," he said. "Some other agent's name on that jacket. And there you are, alive. You're not fit to be here, Starling. You're not worth the air you breathe."
"You're very rude," she observed.
The voice tipped him off. He studied the planes of her face again. They were similar to Starling's but not quite. Under her cap, a few stray hairs curled out. Brown hairs, not blond.
Her eyes were maroon, not blue.
"You're not Starling," DeGraff whispered strengthlessly. Suddenly his knees felt very weak and his head felt swimmy.
"That's right. I'm not," Susana Alvarez Lecter agreed. When her left hand came away from behind her back, it bore neither her Harpy nor her pistol. Instead, she held the stun gun she had used to kidnap the other girl named Susana Alvarez. She grabbed him with her right hand and placed the probes against him. Only the thin cotton of his shirt protected him from the metal probes. It wasn't enough.
Five hundred thousand volts of electricity coursed through Peter DeGraff's body. He went limp almost immediately. Susana grabbed him around the waist and lifted. Anyone watching her would have been highly fascinated. Pound for pound she was strong as an ant, as her father before her had been. She heaved DeGraff over her shoulder and walked towards his car. Looking at it, she decided it would not do.
Beyond the toppled vans were two police cruisers. Susana walked over to the farthest one and looked it over. The vans and the other cruiser had protected it from the worst of the blast. In addition, it had a cage in the back for arrestees, which is what she had been looking for.
She dropped DeGraff on the concrete like a sack of potatoes and opened the back door. Under his checked sports jacket, she found what she wanted. She relieved him of his gun and handcuffs and slipped the cuffs on his wrists. Unable to resist, she rolled him over and looked in at the label on the inside of the sport coat.
65% POLYESTER/35% WOOL, it read.
Susana Alvarez Lecter chuckled. Her fist tightened down atop his head. She dragged him by the hair the remaining few feet to the cruiser in an unconscious reversal of the old caveman joke. Then her arms were under his, up up up, and tumble bump bump into the back of the cruiser, where he lay drunkenly on the vinyl seat. His body would still not respond to his wishes. Awareness that something terrible had happened to him was in his eyes. Susana thought he might have broken his wrists, but everyone takes their chances, and calling Susana Alvarez Lecter a bitch was a chancy thing to do indeed.
She got behind the wheel and started the car. It started right up. Susana grinned. She fastened her seat belt and dropped it into drive.
…
Lisa Starling groaned in the wreckage of the van. Her back ached where something heavy had landed on it. She raised her head and discovered she was now lying on the wall of the van. Something was atop her, but she managed to get it off her. It crashed to the floor—the wall—whatever—with a loud tinkle of glass and plastic.
Moving her limbs, she discovered that she was sore but mostly okay. The Communications agent did not seem to be. Her large base-unit radio lay atop her skull. There was too much blood under her head for Lisa to think of offering first aid.
"Starling."
Starling's head snapped up and she looked around blearily. Laura Miehns lay in front of her. A heavy piece of equipment Starling did not know the function of lay on her leg. Her face was pinched in pain.
"Starling, you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so," Starling said. "Are you?"
Miehns rocked her hand back and forth in a comme ci, comme ca gesture. "Been better. I think my leg is broken."
Starling started towards her. "Let me try to help you, then."
Miehns shook her head. In her hand was her phone. She grabbed the front of Starling's torn BDU jacket.
"I'll be OK. Don't worry about me. I know how to take a beating. Just no line dancing for me for a while. Susana Alvarez Lecter is still out there, Starling. I'll call for help. You get Lecter."
"Yes, ma'am," Starling said, still a little dazed.
"I mean it, Starling. Put her down. Put her down for all of us. You're the only one left."
Lisa Starling nodded and glanced towards the back of the van. She crawled through the wreckage towards it. The right-hand door—the top door, now—was open. She pressed on it and it opened with a screech.
She heard voices. Great. I must be going into shock. Internal injuries.
"You're not Starling," a man's voice said.
"That's right, I'm not," a woman's voice returned.
You got that right, Lisa Starling thought blearily. I am. At least I think I am. I was before, at least.
Then there was a thud, and the scraping sound of someone being lifted. Lisa stuck her head out of the van blearily. Her eyes widened as she saw her cousin stroll by the van. Hurriedly, Lisa pulled the door shut, hoping Susana did not see. Thankfully, the monster walked past without noticing her. Like a small child facing the boogeyman, Lisa opened the door a crack and looked out.
She saw her cousin drop her captive and blinked. It was DeGraff. Amazing.
She opened the door and began to work herself out of the van. In front of her, Susana threw DeGraff in the back of the car and got behind the wheel. Lisa moved a bit faster and finally collapsed onto the macadam, coughing. She forced her sore body to her feet and started off after the car.
The car's engine revved, and then it was gone. Painfully, Lisa Starling limped out into the clear and drew her weapon. She aimed it at the departing car. Then she lowered the pistol an inch or two.
Fuck DeGraff! She thought suddenly. He's been nothing but trouble. Fuck him. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
For a moment, she saw herself in a suit, facing a bunch of men in suits. She saw herself open her big blue eyes and bat them at the men.
Really, sirs, I tried to open fire on the vehicle, but Susana Alvarez had already fled…I am deeply sorry for the loss of Agent DeGraff, but I did not want to open fire, there might have been civilians in the area…what? Why yes, sir, I was in a lot of pain…I thought I might have suffered internal injuries…Agent Miehns had a broken leg, I was afraid to leave her. No, sir, by the time I had gotten out of the van, the car was already gone…I couldn't justify firing at a car a mile away, sir, that would be a violation of FBI policy regarding weapons fire…
She could do that, and she'd get away with it. All she would have to do would be put her weapon down and lie down on the ground.
Her cousin spoke up in her mind. Do it, Cousin Lisa. I'll take yore revenge for ya. Nobody will know.
"Nobody except me," Lisa Starling murmured. Her fantasy was now right about one thing: the departing cruiser was too far for her to shoot at. She sighed.
Even though no one else would know, Lisa would. And she couldn't bring herself to do it. Despite it all, Lisa Starling knew what her duty was. She was a warrior. Her job was to protect those who could not protect themselves. To protect the lambs, her first cousin might have said. She was the guardian of the lambs.
Even when those lambs cut you up and tore you down. Duty was duty.
"I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot," she murmured to herself as she limped towards the first cruiser. She examined it critically. The right side of the windshield was starred and broken. The driver's side windows were both horrors of white lines in glass. The driver's side door had a big dent. The front bumper was askew. But the grille and the hood were unmarked, and so Lisa believed that the engine was OK.
She opened the door and threw herself behind the wheel. The keys were above the visor. Starling took the keys and put them in the ignition. The engine roared.
Starling smiled bitterly. Ha ha, Susana. You're not winning everything tonight. And I am gonna get you for what you did to Lima and everyone else.
She drove off in pursuit. It took her only a few moments to catch up with her cousin. Susana had her lights going and was doing eighty on residential streets. Starling grinned bitterly and pushed her cruiser up to ninety.
Susana surprised her by swerving onto a highway on-ramp. That was actually better, Starling thought. Less chance of someone getting killed. She swerved with Susana and got on the highway.
She grabbed the radio.
"Pull over, Susana. You're never going to get away with this. We're gonna get you."
"Well, I declare," Susana answered. "Cousin Lisa Lee Starling, Ah'm not ready to do that. We're having too much fun, ain't we?"
Thankfully, Susana still had her lights going, so most traffic pulled over for her instead of getting someone killed.
"Susana, it's over."
There was no reply.
Susana kept her eyes on her rearview mirror and grinned. In the back, DeGraff was groaning.
"Well hello, Prince Charming," she said.
Her cousin kept squawking at her to give up. Susana rolled her eyes. After all, who had the nice cruiser and who had the beaten up one? Didn't that say anything? She tired of her cousin's righteous noise and turned on the radio. She found Shania Twain singing 'Man, I feel like a woman.' Susana decided this might cheer up her cousin and held down the transmit button on the mike.
"Ooh-ooh-ohh, go totally crazy…forget I'm a lady," she sang along to tweak Lisa and then pulled a face of distaste. Lesser females might forget they were ladies, but Susana Alvarez Lecter did not. She continued singing along.
Lisa Starling rolled her eyes. A murderous cousin was bad enough. A murderous cousin who listened to country music? Despite her anger and her pain, she laughed.
When you are driving at ninety miles an hour, you cover ground quickly. Within ten minutes, both women had left the Baltimore city limits and were into a more rural area. Susana noted the next exit and knew where she wanted to go. She turned off the lights and waited. The exit was half a mile away. The cruiser ate it up like a cheetah.
When she was fifty feet from the exit, Susana whipped the wheel to the right. The cruiser's tires screeched in protest, but it was built for performance. She continued on to the exit and jacked the wheel to the right, disappearing down the secondary road.
Back on the highway, Lisa swore as she saw Susana turn. She jammed on the brakes. Her cruiser whined and screamed. The police car turned a hundred and eighty degrees, leaving a thick layer of rubber on the asphalt of the highway. Lisa was staring at oncoming traffic.
Fuck it. My lights are going. Get out of my way, assholes.
She pressed the accelerator and pursued her cousin. She turned right as Susana had. A mile or two down the road, she saw a tiny white cruiser turn right onto another country road. Starling's lips split back from her teeth in a grin of savage victory. You didn't lose me yet,Cousin Susie.
The tires screeched again as she slammed the pedal down in pursuit. She roared down the highway. The radio nattered at her, demanding to know who she was and what she had been doing ripassing down the highway like that and what her badge number was.
Lisa Starling grabbed the radio's volume button and spun it to OFF so hard it snapped off in her hand. She tossed it out the window nonchalantly. The cruiser roared forward for a mile and she whipped the wheel to the right.
It was hard to believe Baltimore was so close. The road could have easily been in Beaumont. Nothing but trees and fields, as far as the eye could see. Lisa ignored the pretty arboreal scene and slammed the pedal down to pursue the two faint taillights disappearing over the next rise.
The distance closed as Lisa crested the hill. She checked her speedometer. Eighty. Susana's cruiser was doing a sedate sixty. She did not speed up as Lisa's cruiser drew closer.
What the hell? Is she going to just give up?
Lisa dropped her speed. Susana accelerated to sixty-five. She could see DeGraff's head in the back seat now, illuminated by her headlights. One was aimed properly. The other veered off drunkenly, lighting up the side of the road.
When it happened, it happened quickly. Susana jammed on the brakes of her car. The taillights lit up like twin red eyes. Susana grinned as the brake pedal vibrated under her foot, signifying that the ABS was working.
Lisa Starling tried to brake herself, but she still had ten miles an hour on her cousin and she was too close. As Susana's car screeched to a stop, Lisa's cruiser plowed into the back. Metal crumpled and screamed. Glass and plastic shattered. DeGraff screamed in the back as the nose of Lisa's cruiser steadily ate its way through the trunk towards him.
Lisa Starling and Susana Alvarez Lecter were different people in many ways. Lisa Starling was a born American; Susana had never been to the U.S. until she was twenty-one. Lisa Starling had been raised poor. Susana had been raised rich. Susana had loved her father purely. Lisa had been afraid of hers. Susana believed in chaos. Lisa believed in order.
But as the two cruisers merged into one in a hellish dance of metal and glass, there were two differences between them which were much more important. These two differences were simply these:
Susana Alvarez wore her seat belt. Lisa did not. The air bags in Susana's cruiser were functional, and indeed the side ones deployed. The air bags in Lisa's car were damaged from where the bumper had been torn off, and they did not deploy.
As the two cars slammed into each other, Susana Alvarez simply kept her foot on the pedal and tried to steer as best she could. Which was better than normal, considering that her front tires and steering were unaffected.
Lisa Starling pitched forward into the windshield. Her skull smacked into the glass with a loud crack. The windshield starred. So did Lisa's forehead. Lisa barely had time to register the rearview mirror cracking and falling to the floor. Then everything went black.