Alien Diplomacy

by Gini Koch

  “I shall guard our little princess with my life,” he said. “Jimmy shared that you fell more on the active side of the house, darling. Besides, I was at your wedding. I’m sure you’re ready to race in there. Just be careful.”

  “You stay here,” I said to Oliver in my strongest mean-person voice, which I hoped was channeling my mother’s.

  He shrugged. “They’re moving too fast for pictures. I’ll take whatever ones might be helpful once things are, ah, handled. Until then, I’ve had a trying afternoon and am taking a nap. So to speak.”

  “Works for me. Kyle, Len, do what Jeff said, and if there’s trouble, get Jamie out of here.”

  “Will do,” Len said.

  Kyle grunted. “Let us know if we can help, though. I’d like to kick some ass.” He looked back at Jamie. “Sorry.”

  “She’s heard the word already, trust me.” I kissed her head. “You be good, Jamie-Kat. Mommy’s going to help Daddy.”

  Who, as I turned back, might indeed need an assist, as there were a lot of guys with semiautomatics firing wildly. A-Cs were fast, Jeff and Christopher were both enhanced, so faster than normal, but still, all it was going to take was one or two random lucky shots and I’d be doing CPR. If we were lucky.

  I concentrated, focused on the inner me, and let myself rev for a moment. I had a plan, and I needed to both move at hyperspeed and accurately hit something. I could do either one just fine, but both together wasn’t coming easily without an A-C holding onto me. However, Christopher was cornered, Jeff was surrounded, and no one had gotten out of one car, meaning they were the backup or, more likely, the ones in charge.

  I considered taking my Glock, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t confident I could handle it while running, so I decided to let discretion be the better part of valor. “MJO, please close the door behind me.” He nodded; I opened the door, and went for it.

  Out of the car and slamming into the one I’d aimed for, almost like a pro. I didn’t wait for an invitation—I ripped one of the back doors off. It felt great and didn’t hurt at all. Then again, pulling and hitting weren’t the same thing.

  I looked in to see several people with their jaws hanging open. Three of them had the big-lug look of bodyguards that Kyle carried off a lot better. Two of them, however, were dressed in expensive clothes and looked like they were in charge. I reached in, grabbed both of them by their throats, and pulled them out of the car.

  A-Cs were stronger than humans, and I’d inherited that from Jamie, too. I held on and dragged them with me as I ran toward where Jeff and Christopher were. I flung the smaller one to Christopher. “Hang on and use him as a shield.”

  Dragged the larger one in front of Jeff and held him there. “Keep shooting, hit your bosses. Try to hit or run us over, and we’ll just break their necks!” This time, I knew I sounded like my mother. Or I sounded scary crazy. Either way, the bullets stopped, and everyone backed away.

  “Run and I kill them. Move and I kill them. Are we clear?” I waited. No one said anything. “Well? Dudes, you choosing that I kill them and you too?”

  The man I was holding cleared his throat. “You told them not to move.” He had a slight accent. I couldn’t place it, but it didn’t sound American in any way. He also didn’t sound the way the taxi driver had, disguised voice or not.

  “Whatever.” He was right, but why give him the satisfaction of agreeing? At least his minions were well behaved and good at following orders to the letter. “Jeff, hold the trash, will you?”

  “Sure, baby. Let’s see who we have here.” He turned my captive around. “No one I know.”

  “Hang on.” I walked at human speeds to Christopher and looked at his captive. “No clue. Hang on again.” Trotted to the limo. “MJO? I think we need you. Bring the cameras. Len, Pierre, stay in the car with Jamie. Kyle, come and gather up all the guns. I want them in the trunk of our car.”

  Oliver and Kyle followed me out of the limo. Kyle started removing weaponry. “You want them tied up?”

  “Yes, but we have nothing to do that with.” A thought occurred to me. What we needed was a pickup, and not the truck kind. “You know who they are?” I asked Oliver quietly.

  “No,” he said just as quietly, while he took snaps of every single person. “They’re foreigners, and they’re likely to use the diplomatic immunity card based on their license plates.”

  I remembered the lugs in the last car and ran over. They were still sitting there. “Really? Weapons on the ground, butts with the rest of your goon squad, or we kill your bosses.”

  “Do what the crazy woman says,” the guy Jeff was holding called.

  His goons dropped a lot of firepower on the ground, then left their limo. I did a fast headcount. Yeah, there was no way we could handle all these people. I took a closer look—none of them were overly impressive in the looks department, meaning they were all likely to be humans. I ran back to our car, dug my phone out, and dialed. She answered immediately. “Mom, are you busy?”

  “Only watching a bizarre car chase on the news James insists you didn’t start.”

  “I didn’t! They chased us. But that’s why I’m calling. We have a lot of bad guys sort of in custody, and I need someone to tell me what to do with them.”

  “Why did you call me instead of Charles?”

  “I think they’re involved in whatever’s going to go down at the President’s Ball, and I figured you’d want to know. Geez, you always complain when I don’t call you before Chuckie.”

  “It’s just a shock. What’s going on?”

  Wow. That was a good question. I honestly had no idea. “Well, Mister Joel Oliver thinks they’re after me, because they tried to blow us up using Jamie’s car seat, but I think they’re after him, because they were shooting at all of us, but that was after he was with us. Though I also think there’s a lot more going on than we’ve figured out yet, especially because I don’t think the taxis are involved in this part of whatever plan’s going down. The police presence in D.C. seems nonexistent. And the traffic around here beyond sucks.”

  “Someone shot at my daughter and tried to blow my granddaughter up?” I hadn’t realized Mom could sound scarier than I’d heard when I’d come in way too late from a date without letting her know. Apparently, she could. “I’ll be right there. Call Charles, I want him there, too.”

  “How do you know where our ‘there’ is?”

  She sighed. “I’m tracking you via the GPS in your cell phone. Charles will track you using the tracking implants Centaurion Division has in all of you. Why would you even feel the need to ask? Other than the fact that you probably didn’t remember, I mean.” My mother’s sarcasm knob went well past eleven.

  “I remembered.” Sort of. “I’m distracted.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m used to it. Be there shortly. If we can ever get through this damn traffic.”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t our friend earlier, I can say that. I’d suggest a police escort only I think you’d have to send out to Maryland or Virginia to score any. Possibly to Florida or New York, even.”

  “Let’s deal with the bigger, more pressing issues first, shall we?”

  “Okay, love you, Mom, calling Chuckie now.”

  “Love you, too. Keep all of them where you can see them. Search their cars but be careful in case they’re rigged.”

  “On it.” I called Chuckie, had a very similar conversation with him, complete with rage about the continuing danger and insinuations about my lack of focus, and then considered how best to search the cars. Decided I wasn’t up to the task, so I traded with Christopher—I held his hostage, he searched the other limos.

  Lots of guns and such were found, not much else, including false beards, so I went back to the assumption these guys had nothing to do with the taxis from earlier. By the time Christopher was through and I’d given him back his captive to have and hold, Mom and Chuckie had both arrived. Kevin Lewis was with them. The hotness quotient was now back up to where I liked it.
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br />   “I demand diplomatic immunity,” the man Jeff was holding declared.

  Mom and Chuckie exchanged long-suffering looks. “Let’s see your papers,” Mom said.

  The man Jeff was holding reached into his inner suit pocket and handed Kevin a folio. He nodded and handed it to Mom. “Looks legit.”

  Mom heaved a sigh. “So, you’re from the Republic of Kazakhstan?”

  I looked at the men. They didn’t really look Central Asian in any way. Then again, that might not mean anything.

  “Yes. We demand to be released immediately, and have all our property returned to us.”

  Mom was muttering under her breath, but she nodded to Jeff and Christopher, who let go—reluctantly. “They tried to kill my wife and child,” Jeff said with a growl.

  “They have the immunity, we don’t have a choice,” Chuckie said angrily.

  “Stop them!” Kyle shouted as he ran to us. “I ran all the plates. None of these cars are actually diplomatic vehicles.”

  The Goon Squad turned as one and tried to grab everyone. Kyle slammed into the nearest group, showing that USC really had a great football program. The three men he hit went down, Kyle on top of them.

  There was a flurry of activity that included a lot of slamming of bodies and a variety of martial arts. Apparently the Goon Squad hadn’t gotten the memo that those working with aliens were highly trained. Mom, Chuckie, and Kevin were all kicking butt and waiting for later to take names. Kyle was slamming body after body to the ground; Jeff and Christopher were taking those bodies and slamming them up against the walls.

  However, there were a lot of goons, and our side was quite busy. And the two bad guys clearly in charge were hoofing it for their car.

  CHAPTER 18

  I DIDN’T HESITATE. I RAN AFTER THEM. At hyperspeed.

  The fact that this was a mistake was made quickly clear as I overshot them, their limo, and, in that sense, the parking garage. The only positive was that I didn’t hit a wall. I was, however, outside, in front of the exit.

  While I caught my breath and tried to determine if I should run back in or not, the decision was made for me, as their limo came barreling down the ramp.

  During Operation Drug Addict, a crazed politician had tried to run me down in the middle of the Arizona desert in an Escalade. This seemed remarkably similar, only I wasn’t emotionally distraught, and I now had A-C powers.

  I jumped out of the way as the limo screeched its way out of the garage. The two escapees were in the front seat, and the driver was aiming for me, but either the missing door caused some sort of wind disturbance, or he was a lot more interested in getting away, because they missed me completely.

  However, I wasn’t happy with the idea of them getting away. I ran after them and this time caught what I was aiming for. I was through the hole in the car and inside the limo in a split second, and, happily, I didn’t just bash out the other side.

  I congratulated myself for a moment, then realized, hey, I was now, essentially, in the car with the guys who’d been trying to kill me all afternoon.

  The window between the front of the limo and the back was down, and the lack of brilliance of this current plan was reinforced when the one who’d demanded diplomatic immunity pulled a gun from somewhere Kyle and Christopher had missed and aimed it at my head. “Please don’t take this personally.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He shrugged. “You’re a pretty girl. I don’t like killing pretty girls. Or little babies.”

  “Then why have you been trying to do just that all day?”

  “A job is a job.”

  “Were you in taxis earlier, trying to get us?”

  He gave me a small smile. “No. They are…amateurs.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He moved the gun nearer to my head. “They didn’t want to damage the merchandise.”

  “Before you pull the trigger,” I said quickly, “where the heck are you from? You’ve got an accent I really can’t place.” I wanted to keep him talking because I wasn’t sure if I had enough speed left to get out of the car without getting hurt or shot. Hurt was better than shot, of course, but not my preferred plan. Of course, my preferred plan had me back in the garage with Jeff right there to at least perform an assist. So much for my plans, preferred or otherwise.

  “You heard that woman.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think you’re really from Kazakhstan. I think that was just a really good forgery.” Or a way to toss blame onto a country that could easily work as a fall guy, though circumstances suggested I table this line of thought.

  He gave me a small smile. “I am from all over.”

  “I get that. But where did you start out, spend the formative years, and all that jazz?” Keep ’em talking, that was my motto. It was a big reason I was still alive to have a motto.

  “Why does it matter?”

  “I’d hate to die not knowing.”

  “Just kill her,” the driver snapped. He sounded like he’d grown up next door to wherever the guy with the gun had lived. “We have no time for this. We are behind schedule.”

  Interestingly enough, I was fairly sure English wasn’t either of their first languages, yet they weren’t speaking to each other in native tongue. My gift for languages extended only to high school French and a smattering of Spanish, so the likelihood that I’d recognize anything they’d say seemed slim. I wasn’t sure if they just didn’t want to take the chance or if there was some other reason. Like their reason for having Kazakhstan papers, tabled for later, like when I was out of this car and safe later.

  “What, you were supposed to have me offed already? So sorry I’ve caused your timeline to get screwed up and all.”

  The gunman shook his head and made a frowny face. “You are not the target.”

  “You’re going to kill me why, then?”

  “You are…in the way.”

  “Shut up and kill her,” the driver snarled. He was racing us along. The traffic that had been a problem earlier seemed all cleared up, or else he was taking a different route. Unsurprisingly, I heard no sirens. And I didn’t want to risk looking away from the man with the gun to see where we were heading or if there might be a cop in silent pursuit.

  The gunman nodded. “We are close to the river?”

  “Yes. Kill her, toss her body in.”

  “Why not take me as a hostage?”

  The gunman stared at me. “Why would you want that?”

  “Better than being dead.”

  He shook his head again, and I got another shot of the frowny face. “I would like to offer that alternative, but the orders were very clear.”

  “Orders from whom?”

  He cocked the gun. “From the people who want things to run more…smoothly.”

  “I don’t get the names of the people who paid you to kill me before I die? What kind of a deal is that?”

  “The only kind the people we work for make,” the driver snarled.

  “I am truly sorry,” the gunman said. “Good-bye, Miss Katt.”

  I could tell by the way the car was moving we were on a bridge. I decided I’d gotten all I was going to. I ducked to the right and slammed myself against the partition separating their side of the car from mine.

  The A-C superstrength wasn’t as strong in me as it was in Jeff or Christopher, or even Lorraine and Claudia, but it was a lot stronger than humans normally managed. I didn’t break through, but I rocked both of them.

  The gun went off, the driver shouted, and the car went out of control. The gunman tried to shoot me again, but we were flipping around and he missed. I took the opportunity to kick the gun out of his hand. It went off as it landed, shattering the windshield.

  The car hit a railing and, probably due to the lack of a door, caught on something and flipped. The men were shouting in a language I couldn’t understand, and I considered screaming but figured I’d save that for later. Especially since I fell out of the limo and headed for the water.
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br />   Time seemed to move really slowly. I figured the car was going to land on me, because that was exactly how my luck ran, so I managed to flip myself around and into a dive position, thanking my parents for insisting that I learn how to swim and dive despite living in the middle of the desert.

  The limo was reflected in the water, and I could tell I’d been right—it was falling on top of me. I took a deep breath and held it as I hit the water.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE POTOMAC WAS COLD, WET, AND ICKY. It was also hard when I hit it, but I’d been prepared for that. Sort of.

  Track was good for more than running—it had expanded my breathing capacity, so I could hold my breath for a good length of time. Every action movie said the same thing—when something big and nasty was falling on you, get as far down underwater as you can. I swam down as fast as I could.

  Despite the movies prepping me for this visually, what I hadn’t been prepared for was the impact the limo made when it hit the water. I was close enough that the water’s displacement knocked me over. I’d have panicked, but I didn’t have much longer until I’d have to breathe. I looked around to figure out which way was up.

  Happily, I saw what looked like the bottom of a boat and kicked up toward it. I got around it and hit the surface just as I thought my lungs were going to explode. I looked around and realized what else I hadn’t been prepared for: the amount of water traffic. I might no longer be at risk of drowning or being shot, but I was at real risk of being run over by boats.

  The limo’s swan dive hadn’t been missed, and there were more boats congregating and heading toward us. The water got choppier, I got colder, and I became more concerned that I wasn’t going to get out of this well.

  I tried to remember what to do in cases like this. Not fall in was probably the first rule. Be wearing a life jacket was undoubtedly up there in the top three suggestions. Kick off your shoes was in there somewhere, but I didn’t want to lose my Converse if I didn’t have to, and they really didn’t seem to be weighing me down.