East London, South Africa
November 12, 9:59 A.M.
Before either man moved, Foster shot Breen a sharp, lingering look of unvarnished contempt. In it, the mass murderer had packed disdain for Breen and the corruption of what should have been a trusting, man-to-man process. Breen understood—and, improbably, felt wounded.
Then both men moved.
Breen did not want to waste time shouting. He turned toward Chase Williams and just pointed to where the man had thrown his mask. There was no need: the other man was already moving to recover it.
Breen did the same, literally broad-jumping toward the hedge. He landed on his knees and fell on his chest, grabbing the mask and pulling it on. He did not move, save to look back and ascertain that Williams had done likewise. Both hunkered down, out of the way of the eight masked STF officers who deployed into the yard with R5 assault rifles—all pointed toward the shed, once they realized that was where Foster was.
With the few seconds he had before the eight barrels converged, Foster had turned toward the back of the van, first for cover and then for a weapon. He managed to slam the door shut and smash the glass with the butt of his submachine gun.
Though he was in darkness, it was a narrow swath with eight barrels aimed at him with overlapping vectors of fire.
“I have the canister and will open it—” Foster shouted, then seemed, almost tragically, to realize that the men in the masks would not be slowed by that, that he himself would die if he made good his threat, and that the STF team was probably prepared to accept collateral damage to put an end to him.
Foster began firing.
Through the smoky lenses of the mask, Williams saw the red sput-sput-sput of the muzzle and then the red of Foster’s body being pecked to shreds by the rifle fire. The submachine gun continued to fire into the roof of the van as Foster fell over, his finger locked on the trigger. The echoing drone was like a defiant roar, finally sputtering as the gun emptied.
When the confrontation was over, the STF members moved forward, a wave of camouflage green. Breen got up and removed his mask. He was still the closest person to the shed, and looked inside. Then he went over to Williams, walking wide around the unit.
Williams was still on his knees, his shoulders slumped in defeat, his expression flat. Breen offered him a hand up. Williams took it.
Williams looked down. He was generally repulsed by self-pity but he was also unaccustomed to defeat. Now, in just over three months, he had managed to bungle the future of Op-Center and permitted the Intrepid to be firebombed … and this. They had not prevented any deaths and had lost the bug to South Africa. God alone knew what they would do with it.
“I guess they figured out the scanner thing too,” Williams said, looking at the team.
“Perhaps. But why didn’t they take us into custody?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we look honest.” Williams sighed. “Do you realize, Major, that we managed to accomplish absolutely nothing being here?”
“That’s not true,” Breen told him, “and maybe we’re not so honest.”
Williams’s eyes snapped up. “What do you mean?”
“I had a look in the shed. Katinka Kettle isn’t there. The STF may not even have realized she was there.”
“Okay, felon on the run—not exactly our concern.”
“It is if you think back to that initial distress call from the yacht,” Breen said. “That was Foster on the call—he mentioned three sites, three samples. Foster showed us only two.”
Williams did not realize he was slumping until he straightened. “Thank you, Major. I should have thought. There’s a back door to the shed. She could have escaped during the gunfire.”
“And maybe not empty-handed. As long as the STF doesn’t seem interested in us—”
Breen did not have to finish. With their masks and guns, the men went to the street, along the hedge on the adjoining property, and looked for evidence of an escape. They found it in trampled roses out back.
They were crushed by the tracks of a bike or scooter having been walked across them. Beyond was a backyard and then another street.
Williams started running toward Harewood Drive but Breen stopped him.
“I have a better idea,” he said, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“He’s dead.”
No matter how many times she said it, the reality was something else. Katinka Kettle still felt that she should could call or text Claude Foster and share news, get an answer, go to the office.
“But you saw him die.”
Protecting her. That was the image that would last. She had been helpless in the front seat, her sole window to his heroic defense of the space under the headrest. Even as stuffing of the seat exploded into the air as fair-colored dust, even as glass cracked and fell all around her, on her, even as she dropped down flat, Foster was just a few feet away, defiant to the end.
“Even in death they were afraid,” she said. “They crept toward you.”
And while they crept, she escaped. During the fusillade she had opened the door and slunk out and crawled on the concrete floor of the shed, a floor one of the men at Foster’s car dealership had poured at no charge. Protected by the shattered van, she had crept to the bag of fertilizer and removed the canister.
“The bag I was using to deceive you,” she said apologetically.
It was easy to crack the back door and depart. Foster had even moved the scooter for her, which enabled her escape. Maybe he had even intended that—
“Just in case.”
For all the man’s monstrous acts that day he had still been looking out for her.
“He chose this death … but he did not deserve it,” she thought aloud. “He merited a hearing, a chance to speak for all the poor.”
The wind pushed Katinka’s tears across her ringing ears as she raced her scooter west along Beach Road. She knew she would hear the gunfire forever, first the assault and then the dead hand of Claude Foster spitting bullets into the van.
“What good did it do?” she asked. “What did any of it do? Death! Death! How did it go so wrong?”
As she sped not to any place, just away, she looked at the street ahead, saw the houses and parked cars. Everyone was inside, hiding—
“Because of you,” she said. “How many of them are in mourning because of the thing you brought among them?”
Yes, Foster had committed the mass homicides. Randomly, callously, with God alone knew what old hates driving him.
“You should have thought more clearly, though,” she said. “Waited before giving him the samples.”
But that was not the way they had worked. She had always become excited by every find, could not wait to deliver the news or the gems to him. A pleased expression, a wink, a complimentary word from Claude Foster meant so much.
“So you barreled into this like an idiot schoolgirl with a crush on teacher,” she said, thinking back to those in her life. And each time she had tumbled up, from a professor to an assistant dean and naturally to Foster.
“How could you be so reckless?”
They weren’t questions but laments. It seemed as if, in a day, her life had been put through a cyclone and landed somewhere else.
“But it wasn’t a day, was it?” she asked.
She had been building toward this. She recalled the steps now, with hindsight. This was not just a crush but a partnership. And there was one thing more, one crucial evolution to come.
“You are not quite landed, not yet,” she said.
There was the canister she carried on the back of her scooter. And a destination that occurred to her. The tears dried as she did some thinking. That was a good sign: something that made her less upset was worth exploring.
“You can get there,” she told herself.
She was headed toward the R72 Expressway. The scooter was not permitted there, but that was not the only way to get where she wanted to go. Church Street was about four miles away … twenty minutes at the most.
The young woman did not know whether it was vengeance or a rising desire to join Foster that moved her. Now that she had the power, she began to understand what may have tempted him. The chance to craft a platform, to make a statement.
“All right,” she said. “I will make one.”
With the sun to her back and her destiny ahead, Katinka pushed the Sym Blaze 200 to its top speed.