Spider - Michael Morley [127]
Where are their bodies?
He’d fixed the cameras in the basement in reinforced glass housings designed by film crews to withstand explosions and even train crashes.
He peers closely at the plasma screen.
Slowly, it fills with flames of vivid red and orange.
The fires of hell. May the flames consume King’s stinking body.
Spider puts the computer down.
They’re dead. King and the girl are dead.
Now I can finish off the policewoman and King’s wife.
Spider looks over at Nancy, and then Orsetta. They’re both lying down, curled up in near foetal positions.
Lambs to the slaughter.
He turns to pick up his pistol.
But he never makes it.
The first bullet hits him in the face.
His ears are still ringing with the sound of the gunshot when the second and third shots tear holes in his stomach.
Spider falls backwards, his head cracking against the tombstone.
The fourth and fifth bullets splinter his ribcage and rip his heart to pulp.
Only when he is absolutely certain that the man is dead, does Terry McLeod drop the policewoman’s Beretta.
Howie Baumguard and the ESU team were still holding back when the blast went off.
Howie had figured that BRK was running the show from remote cameras and he didn’t dare give a ‘strike command’ that might endanger the lives of Jack and Lu Zagalsky.
But after the explosion, all bets were off.
The ESU team works, as usual, from a Radio Emergency Patrol truck, but even basic REPs are perfectly equipped for sieges and small building blasts. As Howie rushes towards the scene of the explosion, the small arms troops are at his side, and the rescue unit is already unbolting a variety of tools from the truck, such as fire extinguishers, metal cutters and the kind of inflatable airbags that can be used to lift heavy weights off bodies.
Lead officers with high-powered search beams on their weapons go in first. Behind them come their armed cover and then the Extrication Squad.
At the first sight of flames, the ranks part and the guys with extinguishers lay down a blanket of foam.
Seconds later, when the gas boiler explodes, the heartbeats of the ESU team barely jump. It’s something they’d been expecting.
Clouds of foam instantaneously smother the flames. There’s no sign of panic. Howie Baumguard steps aside and calmly lets the experts do their work. He’s seen the ESU magicians pull people out of mangled metal in multiple car crashes, bomb explosions and building collapses. They’re the best. They’ve worked everywhere from the Oklahoma bombing to the hurricane in New Orleans. If anyone can get Jack and Lu out of this mess alive, it’s them.
‘Get some portable light in here!’ someone shouts.
Through the flashlight, dust and plaster spins in the brick-coated red mist as expert eyes roam over the rubble.
Less than two yards from the door is a pyramid of timber and breeze block.
‘More foam!’ an officer shouts as a fire flares again near the doorway.
At the top of the basement stairs stands Bernie, the one specialist member of ESU that Howie doesn’t want to see deployed.
Bernie is a bloodhound.
And Bernie’s expertise is cadaver recovery.
Orsetta has taken two bullets in the muscle of her right shoulder and is bleeding badly. The fall knocked her unconscious. Now, as she comes round, she is too disorientated to move. In the movies, hero cops get shot and then simply carry on running as if they’ve suffered a bee sting. In real life, things are different. Most shootings blow you off your feet and you stay down until paramedics scrape you up and take you away. Orsetta struggles even to sit upright.
‘Are you okay?’ asks McLeod, both hands still around the pistol, now pointing at the ground.
Orsetta nods. For a moment she is unable even to find her voice.
‘He’s dead. I think he’s dead.’ McLeod waves his gun towards the body sprawled against the tomb.
Orsetta forces herself to stand up by sliding her back against the wall.
Finally she manages to talk, her voice croaky but calm. ‘I’m a police officer… Please give me the gun.’ Rather awkwardly, she pulls her ID card from her back pocket. ‘Hand