Hero (Gone 9)

Dekka nodded. “A good one, too. A huge space so our little bug bombs won’t accomplish much; they’re each just good for a room, a normal-sized room. Plus tons of shops and restaurants, and tunnels leading off in all directions.”

Shade said, “Edilio? Malik? Any of the people you’ve interviewed so far ready to help us?”

Edilio shook his head, face grim. “None that I would trust to be a real plus. But I’ve got a couple people who might be helpful in defending this place in case Markovic strikes back at us here while you’re going after him. Also, I have these.” He fished seven smartphones out of a canvas bag and handed them around. “They’re new, so no one has the numbers but me. I’ve installed an encrypted text app and input all the numbers, including mine.”

“Of course you have,” Dekka said, nodding at Edilio.

“In terms of weapons, mostly it’s guns, which are useless against Markovic. But I have something else, if you all will follow me.”

He led them across the drill hall to a table loaded with gear.

“Okay, so these big steel tanks that look like scuba tanks? They are, basically, scuba tanks, but full of jellied gasoline. Napalm. Just like the bad guy of the same name. And see the smaller tank here? That’s CO2. The CO2 pressurizes the napalm.” Three steel tanks had been fitted with harnesses so they could be worn as backpacks, and Edilio hefted one onto his own back, groaning under the weight. “I had some help with this from a veteran who came by to offer support. Basically, the first thing you do is light the pilot.”

Edilio unlimbered a three-foot-long black hose ending in a nozzle. Beneath the nozzle was a much smaller nipple that ended just beneath the nozzle’s outflow. He snapped a lighter, and the pilot light burned a small blue flame.

“You point, and you squeeze. Step back.”

“Are you going to . . . ?” Cruz asked, but her question was answered when Edilio pointed the nozzle down the length of the drill room and squeezed.

A jet of orange flame flew thirty feet. Most burned off in the air, but a smear on the floor burned on. Shade felt the wave of heat and smelled the familiar stink of gasoline.

“We have just these three, and they’re heavy. Too heavy for Francis, and probably too heavy for Simone to fly with.”

“Oh, I got one of those,” Armo said, almost drooling.

“I can handle one,” Dekka said.

“Me too,” Shade said.

“Well, Shade, there are special considerations for you. You move much faster than the flamethrower sprays. Be careful not to run into your own flame. And remember that a flame blowing past at Mach 1 isn’t going to burn anything. For the rest of you, something less dramatic.” He held up a spray can with only a white label. “I reached out to an exterminator. They mixed up these cans for us, which contain a blend of the nastiest insecticides. They won’t kill a human, but at the same time, do try to avoid breathing them. They spray about ten feet.”

Shade caught Dekka’s eye and nodded, impressed. She’d at first thought Dekka was silly for bringing Edilio into things.

Not silly at all.

“I’m seeing people joining with Vector. Markovic, I mean,” Cruz said, frowning at her phone. “Some people are probably just scared and going to him for protection. But some look like bad guys, a lot of skinheads, some gangbangers, and some of them are armed. And there are people saying he’s got other mutants with him, too.”

Simone spoke for the first time during the grim meeting. “I will fight skinheads. I’ll fight other mutants. But I . . . Look, I understand what you have to do. But not me. I’m not going to kill my own father.”

Dekka said, “You have to follow your own conscience, Simone.”

Now Edilio was handing out printouts of the floor plan of Grand Central Terminal. He also had a laptop open to a site that showed pictures of the interior of the station. “You should all study these.”

“You have suggestions?” Shade asked Edilio.

Edilio shrugged. “Well, you could get down to the subway at Lexington.” He tapped the map. “You’d have to walk down the tunnel for, like, ten blocks. You’d come in through the lower-level subway terminal of Grand Central.”

Dekka nodded. “Vector’s smart to go for a big space with lots of escape routes, but not as smart as he thinks he is: every escape route out is a way in as well. Markovic has a lot to cover—the subway tunnels, the doors and windows . . . We know he seems to be able to detach bits of himself, so he may have a lot of openings covered, but hopefully not all of them.”

They all stood around Edilio looking at the pictures, the maps, committing as much as possible to memory.

“Okay,” Dekka said finally. “Armo, Simone, and me go through the subway tunnel. Shade? I want you on Forty-Second Street until it’s time. Cruz: stall and distract. Malik and Francis, you pop in somewhere . . .” She looked at the map again. “This bathroom here. If you can pop in without being spotted, you can give us a heads-up on the phone. And Malik?”

“Yes?”

“Your power doesn’t seem to affect Rockborn in morph, so it won’t bother Markovic, but we need to keep any possible civilians or hostages from getting in the way. I’d say a ten-second blast as soon as H-Hour hits. H-Hour is in three hours, five p.m. Everyone be in place by then. As soon as your phone clock rolls over from 4:59 to 5:00, Malik hits the humans not in morph to remove them from the equation. Shade comes in through the front door, and Armo, Simone, and me, we come up from the tunnel below.”

Edilio cleared his throat, deferentially, almost as if he thought he should raise his hand.