Revolution No. 9 (26 page)

Dozens of cops, Coast Guard, and SWAT-teamers ringed the RV, taking cover behind parked cars.

“Everybody stay the hell back,” Pietowski yelled. “That thing could be rigged to explode.” He looked pleased but wary. There was still plenty of risk, and the possibility of a drawn-out siege.

Monks started to hear a bizarre sound that seemed to be coming from inside the RV—a screaming whine like a dozen chain saws being revved. The others heard it, too. Talk stopped and the megaphone went silent.

Then the RV did explode, the entire barn-door-sized back panel bursting free with a gut-wrenching
kuh-whump
, spinning through the air like a giant tin can lid showering shrapnel. A cloud of thick smoke billowed out with it, sending the nearest cops spinning away and clawing at their faces.

In the midst of that, several MX-type dirt bikes came flying out of the RV's rear section. The gas-masked, helmeted riders hit the pavement, submachine guns slung across their chests, spraying full automatic bursts that hammered into the parked cars and buildings. The bikes tore through the smoke, splitting off in different directions. Cops fired back
furiously, and one bike went into a skid, sliding into a curb and throwing the rider hard against a car.

Monks saw that another of the riders, incredibly, had bare feet.

“That's Freeboot!” he screamed. “The barefoot one!” He ran forward into the acrid reek of the gas, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, pointing with his other hand. Through burning eyes, he saw the barefoot rider jerk suddenly, in the convulsive spasm of a man hit by a bullet. But he recovered, popping the bike up in a wheelstand and skidding around in a half-circle. Front wheel still raised, he tore back through the heart of the smoke cloud and appeared again a few seconds later, weaving and leaping like the others through the jammed traffic. Helicopters thundered overhead in pursuit.

Pietowski watched them go, his face taut with controlled rage.

“He looked like he got hit,” Monks said.

Pietowski nodded grimly. “That makes me feel a little better.”

They walked to where the fallen rider lay, surrounded by glowering cops, red-eyed from gas. The body was crumpled and motionless against the car it had struck. The torso looked padded, and Monks realized that the rider was wearing body armor. Probably all of them had been, along with bullet-resistant helmets. But blood was seeping from under the jaw—a lucky shot for the cop that had fired it, the end of luck for the rider. Monks knelt to feel for a pulse, but he already knew, again, that life was gone.

“He's dead,” Monks said, standing. “You can move him.”

“Let's see who we got,” Pietowski said.

A deputy knelt and eased the helmet off, revealing soft auburn hair and a thin, almost pretty face. He stepped back in shock.

“Jesus,” he said, “it's a woman.”

“Shrinkwrap,” Monks said. This time, he felt neither anger nor pity, and by now, not even surprise.

Pietowski nodded. “Nice catch, gentlemen,” he said to the cops. “She was a kingpin.”

Highway 1 looked like a mile-long junkyard, crammed with vehicles too impacted to move. The remnants of the crowd were still spiderwebbing out in the distance, over the headlands to the north, across the crescent beach south, and up into the coastal hills to the east. At least another thousand still lined the streets, many huddled on the ground or crouched behind shelter, and there were new casualties from the motorcyclists' gunfire, explosion, and general mayhem.

“I'd better get to helping,” Monks told Pietowski, and walked out into the chaos, scanning the injured, doing triage in his head as he decided where to start.

T
hirty hours later, Monks walked into Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa to see Glenn. Most of the serious casualties from Bodega Bay had been taken either to Santa Rosa Memorial or to Bayview, in Marin County. But the FBI wanted their star witness separated from the pack, and the Queen was known for its top-notch trauma center. He was under full-time guard by teams of two armed agents, in case Freeboot's
maquis
came looking for him to silence him.

Glenn wasn't yet strong enough for serious interrogation. So far, the impatient agents had been limited to a few brief sessions. But he was able to talk a little, and, knowing now that Freeboot had set him up to be killed, was cooperating fully. He had already given them valuable information, including details on hideouts and communication systems, and a description of what Freeboot looked like now.

And he had tacitly admitted hacking the computer information on the “Fortune 500” list.

Via Pietowski, Monks had arranged to get a few minutes alone with Glenn. The agents on guard were expecting him. He identified himself to them, stepped into the room, and closed the door. He glanced approvingly at the medical arrangements—EKG monitor, saline IV with antibiotics, nasal oxygen tubes. It was just the kind of setup he would have used.

Glenn was sitting up in the adjustable bed. He looked uncomfortable and scared, but intact. The severed ear had been another of Freeboot's mental tortures. He had demanded Glenn's earring and Glenn had handed it over, without any idea of what it would be used for. Whose ear it was that Monks had found might never be known.

“You getting enough pain meds?” Monks asked.

Glenn nodded, and pointed to the call button on the bed arm. “They come right away.” With the strain of the injured lung, his voice was a husky whisper.

“I'll keep this short, Glenn,” Monks said. “I need to know the truth about some things. Just between you and me. No one else will ever know.” He pulled a chair up to the bedside and leaned close, watching Glenn's face intently.

“Did you know that Freeboot and the
maquis
were committing the Calamity Jane murders?” Monks said. “That that's what they were doing with the names and addresses you provided?”

Glenn shook his head emphatically.

“No way, man. He told me we were putting together information on enemies of the people. I never dreamed anybody was getting killed.”

Monks kept his face emotionless, but his fear took a sickening jump. Before Glenn had spoken, his eyes had flickered away just a tiny bit—the look of the same boy that Monks had raised, a very smart, accomplished liar, who was un
doubtedly aware that the issue was going to be crucial in his sentencing.

Monks steeled himself for the next, almost worse, question. “Were you the one who attacked me and cut off my hair, that night in the camp?”

“That was Shrinkwrap. She wanted to get back at you for pissing her off.” This time, Glenn seemed disinterested, as if the issue wasn't at all important. That had the ring of truth.

“Do you think she was in on setting you up?” Monks said, perhaps cruelly.

“I don't know.” Glenn's head rolled to the side, facing away.

“All right, I'll let you rest.” Monks stood. “We're there for you, your mom and me. You know that, son.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Glenn's voice was laced with unmistakable sarcasm. But at least he hadn't brutalized and humiliated his father, and there was some relief in knowing that.

In the hospital's lobby, Monks stopped at a pay-phone kiosk and called Glenn's mother. She hadn't yet been allowed to visit him, and Monks had promised to check in.

“I just talked to him,” Monks said. “He's doing fine.”

“Fine?” Gail said shrilly. “He's going to prison, isn't he?”

Monks exhaled. “That's going to depend on a lot of factors.”

Pietowski had assured Monks that if Glenn was what he seemed—a dope-ridden pawn under the brainwashing influence of Freeboot and Shrinkwrap and who hadn't been part of any violent acts—a plea bargain with a minimum sentence could be reached.

But if it was proved that Glenn had known about the killings, that would be a very different order of business.

“He should have a lawyer with him every second,” Gail fumed.

“He needs to tell the FBI everything he knows, as fast as
he can,” Monks said, trying to stay patient. “If they have to put up with a lawyer interfering, you can
bet
he's going to prison. We're talking killers out there.”

“I think you're handling this horribly!”

“Why am I not surprised,” Monks said and hung up.

He walked on outside to the parking lot. The afternoon was clear and sunny. Queen of the Valley was a long, low modern building surrounded by greenery and trees, without the forbidding aspect of older, urban hospitals. But all hospitals had plenty of grief and guilt passing through their walls.

Monk was terrified that Glenn was guilty and would be punished—and almost as afraid that he would scheme his way out of it.

 

When Monks had left Bodega Bay, after hours of helping paramedics evacuate casualties, the town looked like it had been hit by an earthquake. Storefronts were shattered, shops and private homes savaged and looted by the fleeing mob. Police were still dealing with the tangle of abandoned vehicles. Most of the crowd had gotten away, catching rides in the cars that had managed to get out, or melting into the woods and nearby communities. Police eventually questioned hundreds of stragglers and detained dozens, but, owing to the identical T-shirts and caps, it was almost impossible to figure out who had done what.

It was clear that the riot had been carefully orchestrated. Glenn's instructions had been to incite the crowd until the police intervened, then wipe off his blackface makeup and get back to the RV. But no one had said anything to him about shooting.

What happened next seemed to have been a series of double-crosses planned by Freeboot. Hammerhead, dressed as a Highway Patrolman, had inflamed the mob by shooting
the speaker who was championing them. A sniper then killed
him
, enraging the cops, who had taken him for one of their own. More snipers kept shooting at police, who returned fire into the crowd, and from there, it was unchecked mayhem. Police and media videos showed armed bikers and gangstas joining the attack. Six law enforcement officers had been killed and eleven wounded. The civilian toll was more than twice that. Many more people had been injured in other ways, some of them local residents—trampled, beaten, cut by flying glass, hit by the cars trying to escape. Three women had reported being raped, and there were probably more who hadn't come forward.

Only one of the escaping dirt-bikers had been caught—Callus, the limper who had given the RV away. He was being held in isolation on twenty-four-hour suicide watch, refusing to say a word. Freeboot might be wounded or even dead, but his status as a daring Robin Hood figure had jumped explosively.

And his message of the ugly violence hovering close at hand had come through loud and clear.

 

Monks found his car, the same rental that he had driven to Bodega Bay. His Bronco was highly visible, and he wanted to stay underground just now. Besides the threat of Freeboot and his men still at large, Monks had been propelled into another media furor. This time, he had checked into a Napa motel under a phony ID that he sometimes used for investigation work.

He drove across the north edge of Napa, crossing Highway 29, once a charming little road through the grand old California wineries, now a major traffic artery. The motel was a mile or so south on a frontage road—big, modern, and anonymous, just what he wanted.

When he opened the door to his room, he caught the faint scent of perfume. Then he saw another suitcase on the extra bed, open beside his own.

Sara was curled up in an armchair, sipping wine, looking out the window over the expanse of greening vineyards to the west. She turned at the sound of his entry. They hadn't seen each other since the night that Monks had abducted Mandrake. He'd invited her to join him here, and had left instructions at the desk to give her a key, but he hadn't been sure that she would come.

“How did it go?” she said. Her eyes were soft with concern.

“It could have been better. Worse, too.”

“He's okay?”

“Physically,” Monks said.

She stood and came to him. He put his hands on her waist and kissed her. She started crying. Monks held her, feeling helpless. Now she was the one waiting to find out whether her child was alive. Acting on Glenn's information, police had raided the place where Marguerite had called from, an isolated backwoods shack near the tiny town of Annapolis. But it was deserted by the time they got there, and she hadn't been heard from again.

“He's not going to hurt her, she's carrying his bloodline,” Monks said, although the fear that he was wrong was another bitter gnawing in his heart.

“I just want it
over
,” Sara said shakily. “Lia back home again, everything like it used to be.”

“Soon,” Monks said, stroking her hair. “The net's closing on Freeboot.”

“I want him dead,” she whispered.

S
ix days later, late in the afternoon, Monks was driving back to his house from Sara's and stopped for gas in Santa Rosa, at one of those big plazas with a dozen pumps and a convenience store. The price of gasoline had gone up ten or fifteen cents per gallon since he'd last filled up, a couple of weeks earlier. He put thirty-four dollars' worth into the Bronco and went inside to pay.

The clerk at the cash register was a woman who had to be at least seventy years old. She was carefully made up and groomed, and her dignified bearing was very much a lady's, in spite of the store employees' clownlike uniform of a pink polka-dotted shirt and a bow tie. It seemed odd that she'd be working at all, let alone in a place like this, probably for minimum wage. Skyrocketing living expenses on a fixed income, Monks thought, or maybe a gutted 401K, and this was the only kind of job she could get.

Feeling vaguely guilty, he walked back outside. His path
was intersected by a man coming toward him—skinny, with lank shoulder-length hair, jeans and T-shirt that had been worn for days, and several highly visible tattoos.

“Hey, pardner,” he called to Monks. “Me and my friends got a little car trouble. We need a couple bucks for some oil. Could you help us out?” He jerked his head toward a big old sedan pulled up outside the store. Two other men of roughly the same description were leaning against it.

Monks hesitated, then said, “Sure.” He was used to being tapped by street people in San Francisco—it could cost several bucks to get across Union Square at night, paying tolls at every street corner—and when he was there, he carried folded one-dollar bills in his pocket. But here he was unprepared. He pulled out his wallet, extracted two singles, and handed them over.

“How about making it twenty?” the skinny man said, eyeing the other bills inside.

Monks blinked, taken aback. “Sorry. That's going to have to do it.”

“Come on, man. You got plenty.”

“I'm glad to help within reason,” Monks said. “But I need money, too.” He started to put the wallet back in his pocket.

The man took hold of his wrist with a clawlike grip of surprising strength. He might have been thirty and was certainly not yet forty, but his thin, sallow face was ageless, his eyes burning with dead black fire from another world.

“Are you threatening me?” Monks said in amazement.

“
Threat?
Don't insult me, man. I'm asking very
politely
.” The hand stayed on Monks's wrist. His buddies who had been leaning against the car were walking closer now.

Monks almost laughed at the sheer outrageousness of this.

“You realize I can go back into that store and have police here in two minutes?” he said.

The skinny man's mouth tightened, and his eyes drilled
into Monks's for a few more seconds. Then he let go his grip and went back to his car. The other men gave Monks measuring looks before they turned around, too.

He got into the Bronco and drove away, checking his mirror in case they followed. But they were back to leaning against their vehicle—probably waiting for the next mark, who might be more cooperative.

He realized that he was shaken, more so than he should have been. Partly, it was the brazenness of what had almost amounted to robbery, in a public place, in broad daylight. But something else disturbed him more deeply. He had to think for a minute to grasp it, but then it came—the way the skinny man's mouth had tightened, and that final searing gaze. That was not just anger. It was a look that said,
Okay, asshole, if you want to play hardball, that's how it's going to be
.

The Bronco's radio was tuned to a Golden Oldies station. Monks usually preferred quiet while he drove, but these past days he'd been keeping up with the news constantly, hoping for the welcome word that Freeboot had been captured.

After a few minutes, he caught an update.

“One of the largest manhunts in California history continues, for a charismatic ex-convict named James Reese, known to his followers as Freeboot,” the news announcer said. “Law-enforcement officials believe that Reese is the mastermind behind the Calamity Jane killings, as well as last week's riot at Bodega Bay, which left twenty-one dead, including six police officers, with many more injured, and a damage toll in the millions of dollars.

“A San Francisco police car was attacked with gunfire earlier today, while making a drug-related arrest. The shots apparently came from a nearby building, but police were unable to locate a suspect. No one was injured.”

Monks turned the radio off. What the announcer hadn't
mentioned was that there had been two similar incidents during the past days, one in Philadelphia and one in Miami, where police cars had been fired on. The one in Miami had had the aspect of an ambush, with cops lured in on a phony call. An officer was killed and another wounded. There had also been a spate of random shootings in several cities—cars driving around at night, firing into parked vehicles, store windows, even private homes. No one yet had been hurt during those, but if they continued, it was only a matter of time.

In general, there was a sense that whatever mysterious societal force held chaos in check—not just law enforcement, but the awareness that there were lines that couldn't be crossed—was eroding, fast.

He had been keeping in touch with Pietowski, and so he knew that FBI informants in the fringe world were aware of a sort of verbal underground newspaper that was developing, a word-of-mouth communication that spread through the country with amazing speed. It was urging the stockpiling of weapons and ammunition, attacks on law-enforcement officers, and random violence, especially against the affluent. It also threatened more incidents like Bodega Bay. Authorities admitted that they'd been caught napping, and vowed that nothing like it would happen again. But if thousands of people just started showing up someplace, what could be done? Call out the National Guard? Haul them all off to jail?

What if they started shooting?

Pietowski had hinted that behind the scenes in the political world the alarm was even more acute. The president himself had made a veiled allusion to Bodega Bay at a press conference, repeating his insistence that the United States government would not tolerate terrorism.

But these weren't terrorists. These were citizens.

Monks turned off Highway 101 at Petaluma, relieved as always to get off the freeway onto two-lane country roads. Traf
fic thinned as he drove farther west, with the thick canopy of oaks, laurels, redwoods, and eucalyptus groves bringing an early dusk. It started to sink into him how exhausted he was. With all the troubles that still hammered at him, he felt a kind of numb joy at getting back to his own home. The world might be going crazy—crazi
er
—but here, all was serene.

When he stepped inside his house, he was immediately hit by an ugly, fetid smell. It wasn't one he encountered often, but he never forgot it.

Rotting flesh.

“Just like old times, huh?” Freeboot said from the darkened living room.

Monks had been cautious about his own security at first, but as the days passed, he had decided that the risk of Freeboot's coming after him were nil, and the FBI had a lot more important people to protect. His gaze swung toward the telephone. It was dead, its lights out.

Taxman stepped into sight, holding a submachine gun at the ready.

Monks felt a dizzying lurch inside his head, and feared that he was having a stroke, that he was going to seize up like a burnt-out engine and collapse to the floor.

Then, just as swiftly, the same euphoria that had come to him after his showdown with Freeboot touched him again—the sudden certainty that nothing more could happen that was worse than what already had.

“If you're going to shoot me, go ahead and get it over with,” he said. He walked across the kitchen and got a bottle of Finlandia out of the liquor cabinet.

Freeboot made a hoarse hacking sound that seemed to contain amusement.

“Let's get down to it,” he said. “I ran out of junk. You keep Demerol here, your kid told me.”

“The kid you tried to have killed?” Monks said, dropping
ice cubes into a glass. He felt detached, disembodied, almost like he was floating. He noticed that his hands were remarkably steady.

“That was nothing personal, just business.”

“Whose ear was it?”

“Nobody you know. I need a shot—now. So quit fucking around and get it.”

Monks set the ice tray on the counter and said, “All right. Where's the wound, by the way?”

“How'd you know about that?” Freeboot said suspiciously.

“Are you kidding? I smelled it as soon as I walked in the door.”

“Get the shot.”

Monks walked down the hall to his office, with Taxman following. The phone in there was dead, too. He knelt on the floor and opened the safe where he kept an emergency supply of narcotics, his .357 Magnum, and several thousand dollars in cash.

“All the drugs, and the money,” Taxman said. He pulled the plastic liner bag out of a wastebasket, emptied it on the floor, and tossed it to Monks.

Monks stuffed the bundles of bills inside it, along with an unopened twenty-milliliter vial of hundred-milligram-strength Demerol, a packet of syringes, and a bottle each of Percocets and Vicodin. He waited, expecting Taxman to demand the pistol, too, but he said, “Okay,” and jerked his head back toward the living room. Apparently they had plenty of guns.

When they got there, a light had been turned on. Freeboot was sprawled on the couch, with one leg extended over the coffee table.

At the couch's other end, huddled into herself, was Marguerite. She looked bewildered, dully frightened, but unhurt.

Another wave of relief washed over Monks.

“Say
your
little bitch ratted you off,” Freeboot said, pointing a thumb at her. “What would you do with her?”

“She's carrying your child,” Monk said quickly. “Genetically pure this time.”

“Ain't that a fucker?” Freeboot said, annoyed. “Confuses the whole issue.”

He took the plastic bag from Taxman. His left arm was already tied up with his belt, popping blood vessels thick as nightcrawlers in his forearm. He held the bottle to the light, examining the label, then unwrapped a syringe and inserted the needle through the vial's seal. Monks watched him draw out just over one milliliter.

“For a guy who distrusts medicine, you know your dosage,” Monks said.

“This ain't medicine, man. This is dope.”

Freeboot slid the needle into a vein, and a few seconds later, relaxed and laid his head back with a grunt. The lines of pain eased visibly out of his surgically thickened face.

Now Monks could see the wound—a hand-sized patch of crusted, blackened blood and scab toward the right side of his groin. The bullet must have missed the femoral artery, and the entry point was beneath most of the abdominal organs. But it almost certainly had penetrated the intestines—besides the gangrene, there would be infection, maybe peritonitis—and it might have ricocheted off bone, causing more organ damage.

“If that gets treated immediately,” Monks said, “you might make it. I'm talking hours.”

Freeboot smiled faintly. “The same argument we started with. Kind of like our song. It makes me go all gooey, thinking about it.”

“Let's try another old song,” Monks said. “‘I hate to say it, but I told you so.' Remember that one? It was one of those sixties Brit groups.”

He walked back into the kitchen and filled his glass with vodka.

“How about ‘Revolution No. 9'?” Freeboot said.

“A theme song for murder and havoc?”

“The motherfuckers are paying attention, you got to admit.”

Monks took a long sip, savoring what he figured was going to be his last drink.

“It looks to me like a giant step back toward barbarianism,” he said.

“You kick a dog long enough, that dog's finally gonna bite you. This isn't over, Rasp. It's just getting started.”

Freeboot grimaced suddenly, his face contorting in a spasm. The Demerol would provide a little relief, but the agony had to be nearly unendurable. Only unconsciousness was going to keep it at bay now.

Freeboot reached for the bottle again and inserted the needle through the seal. Monks watched with surprise, then alarm, as he drew three milliliters, then five.

“That's getting up toward lethal,” Monks said.

Freeboot ignored him and filled the syringe to the tenmilliliter mark.

Monks glanced quickly at Taxman and his weapon. Both looked ready.

“Remember one thing, Freeboot,” Monks said. “I had you in my sights and I let you walk away.”

Freeboot looked up at him—not with the stare that Monks was used to, but with weariness, and maybe pity.

“There's no fucking truth,” Freeboot said. “Everybody's full of shit, including me. I done what I could, man.”

This time, Monks got the sense that
man
was intended to include all of humankind.

Freeboot slid the needle into his arm. His thumb pushed the plunger all the way home. Almost immediately, he sagged, forward this time—chin falling onto his chest, right
hand dropping to the couch, palm up, fingers slightly curled. The syringe still hung from his left forearm. Marguerite made a whimpering sound, turning her face away and curling more tightly into herself.

Taxman moved without hesitation, stepping forward to pick up the plastic bag of money and drugs.

Monks edged in front of Marguerite. “There's no reason to hurt her,” he said.

Taxman looked at him curiously, as if Monks was a puzzle he couldn't get a handle on.

“I watched you playing with the kid that night, making him laugh,” Taxman said. “I never could have done that.”

He flipped the weapon into the air, catching it by the breech in a quick, practiced motion. Then he strode across the room and out into the dusk, breaking into a lope, footsteps crunching lightly on the gravel drive until the sound faded.