They hissed at her. Actually hissed, like cougars. The sound made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight out from gooseflesh skin.
Into the ensuing silence, I said, “I’m going to give you two choices, Sparky. In scenario one, you tell your guys to lay down their weapons and you come and have a confessional moment with my boss and me.”
He just stared at me as if I’d suggested he pour live scorpions into his tighty-whities.
“Scenario two,” I said, “a whole bunch of people die, and you’re the first to hit the deck. If you’re really, really lucky, you die before I turn you over to my boss.”
“You do realize,” said the guy, “that there are four laser sights on your chest. Four.”
“Sure. And there are three of ’em on your chest.”
His smile flickered. I had my gun on him and Violin had her pistol on the closest Knight. “Three? But….”
The guy’s voice trailed off as he looked down. My laser sight was rock-steady on his sternum. But two other dots flanked it.
“I don’t...,” he began, then he raised his eyes and looked at the doorway. The snouts of two rifles protruded only an inch into the chamber. An inch was enough.
“Call it, Boss,” said Bunny in my ear.
The Knights whirled and snarled.
“Nine, three, go,” I snapped.
The other laser sights shifted and found new targets. There were two pffts of silenced rifles and the guards on either side of the guy flew backward as 5.56 × 45 mm NATO rounds exploded their heads.
There was perhaps a single fragment of time when no one moved, when the realities of this new version of the game were painted in the air for everyone to read. Then it all became very fast and messy.
I kicked the guy into the two guards behind him. It was a hard damn kick, and they all staggered backward, but both guards fired at the same time. Wild shots that pinged and whanged all over the place. I dodged and drove forward as bullets burned around me. I felt one round tug my sleeve and another ricochet off the floor and clip my heel.
Behind me, Violin emptied her gun at the Red Knights. One of them slammed into her in a diving tackle that should have crippled her. It would have broken the bones of any ordinary person. But Violin was born in the breeding pits. That meant she was half human and half Upierczi. She’s stronger, faster, and a hell of a lot more durable than anyone I ever met. She could bench press me. She did it once in bed just to prove she could.
I heard a scream, but I don’t think it was hers.
The other Red Knight whirled and tried to find cover from the gunfire that had erupted from the doorway. But Top and Bunny were on their feet, running into the room, taking lots of quick little steps so as not to interfere with their aim. Their aim was superb. Rounds punched into the Knight and tore blood and screams and life from him. The rounds made him judder and dance, and the wall behind him became a splash painting of bright crimson.
I elbowed the Kings guy out of the way, and he rolled into the corner, spitting teeth. The two remaining guards were good. Tough, highly trained. Instead of trying to bring their long-guns to bear in what was becoming the most violent episode of WrestleMania, they tried to hammer me with kicks, catching me on the forehead, the shoulder, and the elbow of the arm I raised to block the barrage. I rammed my pistol up as one kick came at my face and shot the guard through the sole of his foot. The boot and the foot inside of it didn’t even slow the nine millimeter round down; it punched through and hit the man on the point of the chin, blowing out the back of his head.
As he slumped, the second guard kicked the pistol out of my hand. I let it go and hurled myself at him, punching my way up his body, hitting him in thigh, groin, stomach, floating ribs, and throat. He managed to smash me in the side of the face with a knee, but I rolled with it and then twisted and bit hard on the inside of his thigh.
His scream hit the ultrasonic, and he twisted so hard I nearly lost my teeth.
I let go, reached up, grabbed his tie, and yanked it as hard as I could, which peeled him off the floor so that he sat up. I threw my weight sideways, spun on my right hip, and kicked him in the face with my left foot. I held onto the tie as I kicked him four more times.
I think two were enough, though. There was no resistance at all after that. He slumped back, his head lolling way too loosely on his slack neck.
I cut a sharp look over my shoulder and saw Violin and the Knight in the last moment of their encounter. The Knight had his axe; Violin’s gun was gone, lost in the heat of the fight, but she’d drawn two slender knives from inside her clothes. I’d seen her use those knives twice before. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as fast, as horrible, or as combatively balletic. She moved with a kind of athletic grace that I knew I could never possess, dancing around the swings of the axe, flicking out with the blades, seeding the air with rubies that splatted against the floor and wall and ceiling. The Red Knight seemed to disintegrate within the whirlwind of her dance. Before Top and Bunny could cross the room to give her backup, there was no need for any assistance. The Knight crumpled into red madness on the floor. He hadn’t looked human before, and now it was hard to tell that he had ever been a living thing.
I caught movement to my left and scrambled to my knees just in time to see the Kings guy make a dive for my pistol. He snatched it up but didn’t try to shoot me. He tried to eat the barrel, but I made the long reach and swatted the gun out of his hand. He even tried to fight, but he wasn’t a fighter. I only had to dent him a little to quiet him down.
And then it was over.
Gun smoke hung in the air, tinged by red. The air smelled of cordite, copper, and pain.
I got to my feet as Bunny came over to grab and cuff the Kings guy. He patted him down for weapons and to make sure there were no suicide devices planted anywhere. There weren’t any, and that was going to seriously suck for him. Life was not going to be much fun from now on.
Top and Bunny were both dressed in full hazmat Hammer suits. Just like me.
“I feel overdressed for this party,” said Violin as she cleaned her knives.
“More like we’re overdressed. I don’t think there’s anything here.” I waved the BAMS around. Everything was in the green.
The Kings guy said, “There’s nothing here. No protocols, no samples. This facility has been thoroughly stripped of everything.”
He said it with an attempt at a grin. Bloody teeth spoiled the effect. Top and Bunny each had a hand under an armpit, holding the man on his feet. He was dwarfed by them. I got up in his face.
“This is what’s going to happen, Sparky,” I said. “You are about to disappear off the face of the earth. We know how long a reach the Kings have, so you’re not going to go into the system. No prison, no vacation at Gitmo. The Kings will never find you.”
“So what? You think I don’t know about ‘enhanced interrogation’? I’ve been conditioned against it. I don’t care what you try and do to me, I won’t say a fucking word.”
Violin said, “Let me have him. Let me take him to Arklight. I’ll bet my mother could open him up.”
The little guy tried to smile his way through that, tried to construct an expression that said that her threat meant nothing. We all knew different. The Red Knights feared Lilith, and they were fucking vampires.
I sucked my teeth.
“You’re not seriously considering this?” demanded the guy.
I turned to Violin.
“On one condition,” I said. “You share one hundred percent of what you learn. No holdbacks.”
She nodded. “I’ll film the interrogations if you want.”
“Christ,” murmured Bunny.
“No thanks,” I said. “A transcript would be fine.”
The guy looked from Bunny to Top to me. “You can’t do this. I’m an American citizen. Goddamn it, Ledger, I have rights.”
“Too bad.”
“You can’t do this.”
“Sure I can.”
&
nbsp; “You’re bluffing,” he said as tears broke and ran down his face. All throughout history there are stories of what happened to enemy men when they fell into the hands of the women. Women, as a rule, don’t start wars, but anyone who thinks they’re the weaker and gentler sex is seriously misinformed. “You’re just saying this to make me talk.”
“We both know you’re going to talk, Sparky,” I said. “If I give you to Arklight, it shortcuts the process. And it means no blood on American hands. Nice solution.”
“You’re only saying that…you’re playing a game with me.”
“Look at me, look into my eyes,” I said softly. “Do I look like I’m lying to you?”
Hearing his own words was the trick. I think that’s what broke him. That, and the fact that he did take a look into my eyes. A good, deep look.
He began sobbing.
He swore on his life, his mother, his children that he would tell us—and only us—everything. Freely, without coercion. He’d crack the Kings apart for us. He’d tell us where we could find the real lab that was manufacturing the weaponized Ebola. He’d tell us where the Kings’ training camps were. Anything we wanted to know, he’d tell us—if we wouldn’t turn him over to Violin and the women of Arklight. Tears and snot ran down his face, and he pissed his pants.
I felt a wave of disgust—at him and at myself.
“Okay,” I said to Bunny, “take him out of here.”
Bunny looked relieved. He was almost gentle as he led the sobbing man away.
When they were gone, I turned to Violin. “You played that well.”
She gave me an enigmatic little smile and walked off to begin searching the facility.
It left Top and me standing there surrounded by dead people.
“Nice play, Cap’n,” he said. “He really thought you were going to hand him over.”
“Yeah.”
Top started to go, then paused, glancing back at me. “You…were joking, right? I mean, that was all bullshit. You’d never have let those women have him. You’re not that crazy…right?”
I smiled at him.
“Of course not,” I lied.
~The End~
Artifact
Chap. 1
I hung upside-down inside the laser network of a bioweapons lab. Tripping the laser would trigger a hard containment, which would effectively turn the small subterranean lab on the picturesque little island in the south Pacific into my tomb.
I wish I could say this was the first time I’d been in this kind of situation.
Wish I could say—with real honesty—that it would be my last.
I was, as we say in the super-spy business, resource light.
All I had was a bug in my ear, a Snellig Model A19 gas dart pistol in a nylon shoulder rig, and the few prayers I still remembered from Sunday school. Sweat ran in vertical lines from chin to hairline, and one fat drop hung pendulously from the tip of my nose. The watch on my wrist told me that there was nineteen minutes left on the mission clock. I needed fifteen of those to do this job.
I needed another twenty to get out.
It wasn’t the heat that was making me sweat.
The earbud in my ear buzzed.
“The laser grid is off,” said a voice. Male, slightly nasal, young.
I composed myself before I replied. Barking like a cross dog at my support team would probably not yield useful results. So, I said, very calmly, “Actually, Bug, the laser grid is still on.”
“It’s off, Cowboy. All of the systems mark it as in shutdown mode.”
The network of red lasers suddenly throbbed. The crosshatch pattern, once comfortably large enough for my body to slip through, abruptly narrowed to a grid with only scant inches to spare on all sides.
“It’s on and it’s getting cranky.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, Bug. I’m still hanging here like a frigging bat. The floor is thirty feet below me and the laser net is getting smaller. So…really, anything you could do to shut it down would be super. Very much appreciated. Might be a bonus in it for you.”
“Um. Okay. Maybe there’s a redundancy system….”
“And, Bug…?”
“Yeah, Cowboy?”
“If you don’t stop humming the fucking Mission: Impossible theme song while you’re working…I will kill you.”
“But….”
“My whole body is a weapon.”
“I know…you could kill me more ways than I know how to die, blah, blah, blah.”
The laser grid throbbed again.
I knew that the lasers couldn’t hurt me. This wasn’t a science fiction movie. Passing through them wouldn’t result in an arm falling off or my body being neatly diced into bloody cubes. However, they would trigger the alarms; and for the last hour and sixteen minutes I’d been very, very careful not to let that happen.
Bad things would occur if that happened.
Our best intel gave a conservative estimate of sixty security personnel on site, not one of whom was bound by international treaties, human rights agreements, or basic human decency. This place recruited from groups like Blackwater and Blue Diamond Security. The kind of contractors who give mercenaries a bad name.
They would shoot me. A lot.
Bug knew there was no reset button on the mission. It was a matter of getting it right the first time, which made the learning curve more like a straight line.
“Oh, wait,” said Bug. “Looks like they have a ghost program hiding the real operations menu. You need to input a set of false commands—which work as a faux password—in order to reach the….”
“Bug….”
“Long story short,” he said, “voila.”
The laser grid switched off.
I exhaled a breath I think I’d been holding for an hour and dropped the rest of the way down the main venting shaft to the concrete floor sixty yards below.
No alarms went off. No bells, no whistles.
No army of guards storming through the hatch to do bad things to Mama Ledger’s firstborn son.
“Down,” I said. I unclipped from the drop harness and stood back as the cables whipped up out of sight.
“Lasers are going back on in three, two….”
The burning grid reappeared above me.
“Good job, Bug.”
“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “These guys are pretty tricky.”
“Be trickier.”
“Copy that. Sending the floor plan to Karnak.”
Karnak was the nickname of the portable MindReader computer tablet strapped to my left forearm. It’s a couple of generations snazzier than anything currently on the market, but my boss, Mr. Church, always makes sure his people have the best toys. It’s dual hardwired and wireless connected to a whole series of geegaws and doodads built into my combat suit. I had everything in the James Bond catalog, from miniature explosives to a small EDS—explosive detection system—and even a miniature BAMS—bio-aerosol mass spectrometer which sniffed the air for dangerous particles like viruses and bacteria. Dr. Hu, the head of our science division, has told me several times that the collective value of those gadgets was worth ten of me. Considering that the rig I wore had a three million dollar price tag, it was tough to build a convincing counterargument.
One-man army is the idea. Or, in this case, one-man high-tech infiltration team.
The thing that really tickled Hu is that if I happened to be killed during the mission, the suit would continue to transmit useful information. So…the next guy would know what killed me and maybe not get killed himself. And then, when all useful info had been uploaded, small thermal charges built into the fabric would detonate and turn all of the electronics—and the body inside the suit—into so much carbon dust.
Hu thinks that’s hilarious.
He and I have not worked up much of a sweat trying to be nice to one another. If he stepped in front of a bullet train and got smeared along half a mile of tracks, I would—believe me�
��find some way to struggle on with my life. Sadly he doesn’t play on the train tracks as much as I’d like.
So, there I was a mile below the April sunshine, wearing my science fiction getup, all alone, looking for something that none of us understood.
This is not an unusual day for me.
Chap. 2
It might be an unusual day for the world, though.
Hence the reason for my being here.
Hence the reason why our best intel suggested that I might not be the only cockroach in the walls. A lot of teams were scrambling around looking for the same thing. Good guys, bad guys, some unaffiliated guys, and maybe some nutjobs guys. Last time there was this much of a scramble was when a set of four, man-portable mininukes went missing from the inventory of former Soviet play toys supposedly under guard in Kazakhstan. I’d been hunting for those, too, but they were scooped up by Colonel Samson Riggs. He’s the most senior of the DMS field team leaders. Kind of an action figure demi-superhero. Even has a lantern jaw, crinkles around his piercing blue eyes, and an inflexible moral compass. We all geek out around Colonel Riggs. He’s the closest this planet will probably ever get to a real-life Captain America.
Riggs was gone, now, though. Swept away by recent events the way so many other top operatives are who maybe spend one day too long in the path of the storm. Leaving guys like me to take the next job. And the next.
This was the next job.
So far there had been fourteen separate attempts to recover the package.
Those fourteen attempts resulted in sixty-three deaths and over a hundred severe injuries. That butcher’s bill is shared pretty evenly by all the teams in this game. There are six DMS agents in the morgue. Five more who will never stand in the line of battle.
And all for something that nobody really understands.
We call it “the package” or “the football” when we’re on an open mic.
Between ourselves, off the radio, we call it “that thing” or maybe “that fucking thing.”
Its designation in all official documents is simpler.
Joe Ledger Page 18