The Frenzy War (45 page)

Cheryl jumped to her feet when she heard the bolt on the other side of the door slide open. She noted that Rhonda remained seated.

Her spirit's broken,
Cheryl thought, unable to blame her.

A man with a bandaged nose entered, followed by a younger man.

Michael. The leader.

A woman appeared behind them, carrying several window-sized pieces of poster board. Michael held a camera. The other man held a shotgun. The door remained open behind them.

Cheryl felt the back of her throat turn dry.

“My name is Michael, Mrs. Mace.”

He does intend to kill us, or he wouldn't even tell me that much.

“I've been impressed by your reporting this past week. No one's ever implicated the Brotherhood of Torquemada in the media before.”

“You'll have to thank Rodrigo Gomez for that.” Her voice sounded hoarse.

“I'd sooner decapitate him.” He glanced at Rhonda.

“What are you going to do with us?”

Michael raised the camera. He popped open the LCD screen on its side and trained the camera on her. “I'm going to give you an up close and personal view of what this war is all about and then a chance to report on it.”

Cheryl's gaze darted to the poster boards in the woman's hands. “You mean you want me to read a prepared statement.”

Michael made a slight nod. “It will be the truth.”

“And then I suppose you're going to release me?”

Michael's smile seemed sympathetic. “I won't insult your intelligence by making promises we both know I can't keep.”

Cheryl stared into the camera's lens. “Then you'd better

shoot me now. I'm not reading a goddamned word, and my husband will be coming after me.”

“Captain Mace? Rodrigo Gomez seemed impressed by him. But as Gomez admitted, he's a beast, and I'm a man. Are you certain I can't change your mind?”

“Positive. Maybe you should torture me like you did Rhonda.”

“We don't torture human beings, and that would delay our departure.” Michael turned to the woman but kept the camera on Cheryl. “Help the others load out of here. We'll take it from here.”

The woman glanced at Rhonda, then Cheryl, and left.

“You don't need to read our statement. Your presence here now will be testimony enough.”

Cheryl heard a beep from the camera as it started recording.

Michael panned to the other man and stepped back, creating a wider frame. “Do it.”

Fearing the worst, Cheryl sucked in her breath and took a step back.

The man leaned his shotgun against the wall and moved forward. He took out what resembled a remote control. Michael panned over to Rhonda, who rose with a brave expression on her face, then back to the man, who pressed a button on the control. Rhonda screamed and fell, and Michael panned over to her as she flailed her arms on the floor, a crackling sound coming from the collar around her neck.

M
ace walked over rusty railroad tracks covered with overgrowth. “Watch your step.”

They pushed the branches of bushes out of their way, and thorns whipped against their coats.

“Your hand is bleeding,” Gabriel said.

“I wish you'd stop that.”

A minute later, they reached a perfect square in the earth, each side ten feet long, surrounded by young trees. Mace aimed his flashlight inside the hole and illuminated the rotting carcass of a buck lying on a mound of dirt, leaves, and branches.

“This must have been some sort of inground trash receptacle,” Gabriel said. “The deer was probably galloping through and didn't see the hole. Maybe it broke its neck, maybe just its legs.”

“Let's keep moving.”

Rhonda thrashed around on the floor like a wild animal.

Cheryl ran to help her, but the chains around her wrists yanked her back. “You son of a bitch!”

The man with the remote control stepped back.

Michael moved his camera closer to Rhonda. “Relax,” he said to Cheryl. “That won't kill her. It's just an electric charge, like a Taser, designed to elicit a very specific reaction.”

On the floor, Rhonda looked into Cheryl's eyes. Her eyes changed, the irises expanding until no whites showed, and the teeth in her screaming mouth quadrupled in length.

Cheryl felt her eyes and jaws widening in unison.
Oh, Jesus, no …

The transformation happened quickly. Rhonda's nose and jaws extended, as if a creature living inside her body fought to be free. The fingers on her remaining hand extended, and at the same time each fingernail extended into something sharp looking, the result being that each finger appeared two inches longer than it had. Her ears became canine; her feet stretched into additional segments of her legs, the front balls becoming lupine paws. And her breasts flattened out, absorbed into her powerful torso as if their mass had been distributed to other parts of her body. Black fur spread over her from head to toe as the muscles in her limbs reconfigured themselves with great spasms.

Out of the corner of her eye, Cheryl saw Michael panning back and forth from Rhonda to her, presumably capturing

her terrified reaction. She backed away from Rhonda even before the werewolf stood on its hind legs and snarled at their captors, and her back bumped against the wall. Cheryl believed every word that Gomez had uttered.

“Welcome to the real world,” Michael said.

Rhonda howled.

“You and me are going to have some talking to do after this,” Willy said to Karol as they followed Gabriel and Mace through the dense brush in the darkness. “When this is over,” Karol said.

“I mean, I'm dealing with some very legitimate trust issues.”

“Not now.”

“If nothing else, I expect my
partner
to tell me when—” Mace stopped ahead of them, and Willy almost collided into him.

“I said to keep the chatter to a minimum.”

“Sorry, Captain.” They resumed walking.

“Am I being unreasonable?” Willy said in a whisper. “I can still hear you,” Gabriel said. Willy sighed. “Let's just discuss this when this is all over, all right?”

“Right,” Karol said, sounding exasperated.

Then he heard what sounded like the howling of a wolf.

Michael aimed his camera at Cheryl. “Any last words?”

Horrified, Cheryl shook her head.

Michael panned over to Rhonda, then switched the camera off and closed its LCD screen. Turning to his companion, he raised the camera. “Let's go download this.”

The man nodded, and Michael led him through the cell's open door and disappeared. The door slammed with a reverberating sense of finality, and its bolt slid into place.

They crouched in the high grass along the Cyclone fence, and Mace stared at the side of the brick complex. The basement windows had been boarded up, and those on the first floor had bars over them. Three of the windows on the third floor glowed yellow through the filthy glass, and a streetlight cast harsh shadows over the chipped bricks. Thick vines crept up the side to the roof.

Gabriel said, “In the front, there's a brick archway that leads through a short tunnel into the parking lot, which is enclosed by brick walls. The front doors to each warehouse are locked. I don't know about the rear doors, which face the parking lot. When I checked earlier, there were two vehicles parked in the lot, a van and an SUV.”

“I see three lines of attack,” Mace sad. “Gabriel and I will break in through that boarded window. Willy and Karol, climb those vines to the fire escape, then go through a third-floor window. Norton and Shelly, go in through the parking lot tunnel Gabriel just described.”

Norton took off her coat, revealing a Kevlar vest, and Shelly did the same. Willy removed his coat, revealing Kevlar

as well, and so did Mace and Karol.

“Paranoid minds think alike,” Willy said.

Norton removed a headset from her coat pocket and put it on, adjusting the microphone. “Give Tony your headset.”

Shelly took his headset from his coat pocket and handed it to Mace.

“Go to channel two,” Norton said.

Mace adjusted the channel and put the headset on.

“What about us?” Willy said.

“We're covered.” Karol put her headset on and fiddled with its settings.

“That figures,” Willy said.

“Everyone make sure your cell phones are off,” Mace said.

While the task force members checked their cell phones, Gabriel pulled off his socks and shoes.

“What the hell are you doing?” Shelly said. “Never mind. I don't want to know.”

Mace looked around the isolated wooded area. “There's no one around for miles, which is probably why they chose this location. Once we're inside, this could take five minutes or five hours. Don't any of you take any chances with Cheryl's life. Let's go.”

Even in bare feet, Gabriel scaled the fence first and dropped onto the grass on the other side. Karol followed him, then Mace and Norton. Willy waited for Shelly to make it over, then climbed the fence last. Mace tapped Gabriel on the arm, and they ran across the grass to the boarded-up basement window. Mace pressed his back against the bricks on one side of the window, and Gabriel imitated him

on the other side.

Karol gripped the vines creeping up the wall and climbed to the fire escape. Willy grabbed the vine but tore it from the brick. On the fire escape, Karol turned and reached over the corroded railing. Seeing her outstretched hand, Gabriel interlaced the fingers of his hands and looked at Willy, who set one foot in the locked hands. Gabriel boosted Willy, who took Karol's hand, and Karol pulled him up onto the fire escape.

Turning his head, Mace watched Shelly and Norton run to the front of the building and disappear. Despite the burden of keeping everyone safe, he preferred working with a team to breaking into Janus Farel's brownstone alone. And it wasn't even raining.