The elevator outside had a default setting. Even without electricity it could go down on battery power. Andre pushed the chair inside, flipped off the red emergency stop switch, and pressed the 1 button. The doors closed slowly, and the elevator went down. A minute later, the doors opened again. The castle had a wide walk-through corridor that allowed people to transit from one part of Worldpark to another, and a mosaic that covered the arching walls. There was also a pleasant westerly breeze, and the Frenchman wheeled Anna right into it.
"What's this?" Noonan asked, looking at one of the video monitors. "John, we got somebody coming out."
"Command, this is Rifle Two-One, I see a guy pushing a wheelchair with a kid in it, coming out the west side of the castle." Johnston set his binoculars down and got on his rifle, centering the crosshairs on the man's temple, his finger lightly touching the set trigger. "Rifle Two-One is on target, on the guy, on target now."
"Weapons tight" was the reply from Clark. "I repeat, weapons are tight. Acknowledge."
"Roger, Six, weapons tight." Sergeant Johnston took his finger out of the trigger guard. What was happening here?
"Bugger," Covington said. They were only forty meters away. He and Chavez had an easy direct line of sight. The little girl looked ill in addition to being scared; she was slumped to her left in the chair, trying to look up and back at the man pushing her. He was about forty, they both thought, a mustache but no beard, average-normal in height, weight, and build, with dark eyes that displayed nothing. The park was so quiet now, so empty of people, that they could hear the scrape of the rubber tires on the stone courtyard.
"Where is Momma?" Anna asked in English she'd learned in school.
"You will see her in a moment," Nine promised. He wheeled her around the curving entrance to the castle. It circled around a statue, took a gentle upward and clockwise turn, then led down to the courtyard. He stopped the chair in the middle of the path. It was about five meters wide, and evenly paved.
Andre looked around. There had to be policemen out here, but he saw nothing moving at all, except for the cars on the Dive Bomber, which he didn't have to look at to see. The familiar noise was enough. It really was too bad. Nine reached into his belt, took out his pistol, and
"-Gun, he's got a pistol out!" Homer Johnston reported urgently. "Oh. fuck. he's gonna -"
–The gun fired into Anna's back, driving straight through her heart. A gout of blood appeared on the flat child chest, and her head dropped forward. The man pushed the wheelchair just then, and it rolled down the curving path, caroming off the stone wall and making it all the way into the flat courtyard, where it finally stopped.
Covington drew his Beretta and started to bring it up. It would not have been an easy shot, but he had nine rounds in his pistol, and that was enough, but-
"Weapons tight!" the radio earpiece thundered. "Weapons tight! Do not fire," Clark ordered them.
"Fuck!" Chavez rasped next to Peter Covington.
"Yes," the Englishman agreed. "Quite." He holstered his pistol, watching the man turn and walk back into the shelter of the stone castle.
"I'm on target, Rifle Two-One is on target!" Johnston's voice told them all.
"Do not fire. This is Six, weapons are tight, goddamnit!"
"Fuck!" Clark snarled in the command center. He slammed his fist on the table. "Fuck!" Then the phone rang.
"Yes?" Bellow said, sitting next to the Rainbow commander.
"You had your warning. Turn the electricity back on, or we will kill another," One said.
"There was nothing we could have done, John. Not a thing," Bellow said, giving voice to words that the others didn't have the courage to say.
"Now what?" Clark asked.
"Now I guess we turn the electricity back on."
As they watched the TV monitors, three men raced to the child. Two wore the tricornio of the Guardia Civil. The third was Dr. Hector Weiler.
Chavez and Covington watched the same thing from a closer perspective. Weiler wore a white lab coat, the global uniform for physicians, and his race to reach the child ended abruptly as he touched the warm but still body. The slump of his shoulders told the tale, even from fifty meters away. The bullet had gone straight through her heart. The doctor said something to the cops, and one of them wheeled the chair down and out of the courtyard. turning to go past the two Rainbow members. "Hold it, doc," Chavez called, walking over to look. In this moment Ding remembered that his own wife held a new life in her belly, even now probably moving and kicking while Patsy was sitting in their living room, watching TV or reading a book. The little girl's face was at peace now, as though asleep, and he could not hold his hand back from touching her soft hair. "What's the story, doc?"
