“Jesus,” Michelle said. Her voice trembled. “What the hell is going on in there?”
“You’re certain of this information?” Lohengrin asked. His image stuttered through the Internet connection, though the voice was clear enough. Barbara nodded. From the viewscreens arrayed around here, other faces also reacted with some lag from their various distances: Secretary-General Jayewardene was in Barbara’s office with her, but the others were elsewhere in the world: General Nabiyev, who replaced General Ospanov after his murder of the Al Jazeera reporters; President Karimov of Kazakhstan; U.S. Secretary of State Obama in Washington; General Ruiz of NATO in Brussels …
“I’ve had Ink verify the timing of the satellite photos that Representative Bondarenko gave to us, Klaus,” Barbara said. “The conclusion he drew appears to be absolutely correct—the hospital is the focal point. Whatever’s caused this is coming from there, and still is. The fog, the disturbances: they’re a nearly perfect and ever-widening circle, like a ripple in a pond—and the stone that caused the ripple is there in that hospital.”
“All of us here are in agreement,” Jayewardene responded. “We are ordering an attack on the hospital with the intention of wiping out whatever or whoever is causing this. General Nabiyev has ordered a tank division to be ready to enter the city. Drones have already proved useless within the affected area, and President Karimov has said—and we agree with him—that we can’t just indiscriminately bomb the area because hundred or thousands of innocent citizens might die.” Barbara saw Karimov’s solemn, pudgy face nod a few seconds afterward.
“Klaus,” Babel said. “We want you and the major aces there with you—maybe Bubbles, Earth Witch, Doktor Omweer, Aero, whomever you feel is best suited and willing—to accompany General Nabiyev’s tanks, as an ace escort.”
She hated saying that, and she hated the obvious eagerness in Klaus’s face at the statement. At that moment she wanted nothing more than to be there with him, to be at his side rather than thousands of miles away. Fear dug fingers into her gut and twisted.
“Excellent,” Klaus said after a brief delay, his smile broken in the erratic video feed. Behind him, she thought she glimpsed Michelle, Earth Witch, and the wings of Aero, with the fabric of a tent behind them. Through the tent’s open flap, she could see a lowering sun nearing the horizon. “We’ll be happy to do that. It’s better than sitting here. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of whatever is behind this.”
“Then it’s settled,” Jayewardene said. “We’ll leave the details of the mission to you and General Nabiyev. I believe we’re done here. Secretary Obama, if you’d please relay to President van Rennsaeler how much we appreciate her cooperation. Thank you all. I know everyone’s busy, so I’ll simply say how grateful I am for everyone’s work, and we will all stay in touch. And with that, I’ll leave all of you to your work.” The screens, after similar statements, began to flicker out, one by one.
“Klaus,” Barbara said quickly, hoping he’d hear her with the lag in distance before he broke the connection. “Stay with me, please…” Several seconds later, all the screens were blank except for his. Barbara glanced at Jayewardene, who nodded understandingly, and left the office. As the door closed behind him, Barbara realized she didn’t know what to say, or rather had so much she wanted to say to Klaus that the clutter of the words stopped her voice.
He smiled at her. “I’ll be fine,” he told her, as if he understood her silence.
She summoned up an expression to match his own, which was more difficult to do than she thought it would be. They talked, with a few seconds’ pause between each exchange. “You’d damn well better be.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“But I do. And I will until I know you’re safe. If I were there—” She bit off the rest of what she was going to say. “I know. I’m needed here.”
“You are. Look at what you’ve accomplished already for us.” His hand waved, almost angrily, she thought. “You can navigate all the scheisse that they throw at us. I can’t, at least not well. I just get angry. I’m best here.”
“We’re best together, my love.”
He smiled again. “Yah,” he answered. “And we will be again. Soon.”
“You promise?”
“I swear it.”
“I talked to Michelle earlier today. She said things were really confused there. Klaus, I can’t help but be worried, especially stuck back here.”
His smile dissolved. “We both know the risks, mein Liebe. This is what we were given our gifts to do.”
“Just don’t take any risks that you don’t have to.”
“I won’t. I have a lot of incentive to come back, after all.”
“I’ll make it worth your effort, I promise,” she told him. She kissed her own fingertip, then pressed it against Klaus’s lips on the screen. A moment later he did the same, his fingertip against hers.
“I have to go,” Klaus told her.
“I know. So do I.”
“I love you.” They said the words together despite the time lag, and the synchronicity made them both laugh.
She wasn’t sure which one of them ended the connection first.
Mollie wanted to go anywhere else, but she had to take Mom back to the farm. Somebody who didn’t know the woman might have thought her mom had spent all her energy losing her shit at the hospital while the doctor recited an extensive list of injuries and surgeries. But Mollie’s mom was stronger than that. Strong enough to bitch Mollie out the moment they returned.
“What did you do to them?”
“Mom, I didn’t do anything—”
“You didn’t do ANYTHING? You didn’t fill our barn with stolen slot machines from God-knows-where? You didn’t convince your father and your brothers to go along with another one of your stupid ideas? You didn’t try to cheat the man who killed my Todd?”
It always came back to that. It always came back to Noel and the Nshombos’ gold and those awful few moments in the barn.
“He was my brother, too,” said Mollie. Her voice was unrecognizable, hoarse and small, stomped flat by guilt and regret.
“Yeah, ‘was.’ He was my son. He died because of you. But that wasn’t enough, was it? No, you gotta put your father and half your brothers in the hospital. You won’t be happy until you kill this whole family, will you?”
“I DIDN’T KILL TODD! Stop carrying his coffin. Stop acting like I’m the one who shot him! It was my idea but Dad and the boys agreed to it. It was their choice.”
“They never should have listened to you. I’ll make sure nobody in this family ever listens to you again.”
Mollie pointed to the kitchen table. “You sat right there! You sat right there and listened to my suggestion and you agreed with everybody else that it was a terrific fucking idea to steal that gold! You’re just as guilty of Todd’s death as I am. Stop acting like it’s all on me.”
A trio of heads poked around the corner. The yelling had summoned the younger boys. Mom hadn’t even waited to tell them their dad and brothers were in the hospital before rounding on Mollie.
“It is on you!” she cried. “It’s all on you. If not for you none of this would have happened. It wouldn’t have happened back then and it wouldn’t have happened today.”
Not fair. Maybe it was true. But it wasn’t fair. She didn’t know. How could she?
“How could I have known any of this would happen? How can you blame me for not knowing the future?”
Mom said, “I blame them. They should have known how stupid you are. They should have known your ideas are stupid and dangerous.”
“No. They all made their own choices. You’re just as guilty as I am. Have you ever asked yourself what might have happened if you’d actually weighed in with your own opinion for once?” Mollie paced. “No. You know what? This really is your fault. Because none of this would have happened if you hadn’t convinced me to try out for that stupid game show in the first place!”
“You to
ld us nothing could go wrong!” Veins bulged from Mom’s forehead. “You told us it would be easy and that we’d all be rich!”
“Well, at least I tried. Instead of watching game shows all day and wishing somebody would wave a magic wand and make me rich without any effort, like you do.”
The slap actually turned Mollie’s head. The pain came an instant later, the hot sting where, she knew, her face already sported a pink handprint. A warm, salty breeze gusted into the kitchen from the portal to an Australian beach that opened in the kitchen wall.
Mom yelled, “Don’t you go nowhere, Mollie Steunenberg! Don’t you run away again and leave me with this. You stick around and take me back to the hospital in the morning.”
The portal snapped shut. Mollie stomped out of the kitchen. En route to the spare linen closet for blankets and a pillow so she could sleep on the downstairs sofa, she barged past the three youngest Steunenberg boys.
“What did you do now to make Mom so mad?”
“Yeah, why is Mom crying?”
“Mollie, where’s Dad and the others?”
“Fuck off, turdlet.”
“Klaus? Is it true, the reports about Bugsy and Lama?”
The carrier line of the satellite phone hissed as she waited for Klaus’s reply over the private and secure channel—she wished she could see his face, but this was nothing she wanted to leak out. The report that Ink had given her was frightening: Bugsy having lost a huge percentage of his wasps and eating the survivors, the Lama gone mad and spouting gibberish, then running back into the fog …
Klaus, I want you back here …
Klaus’s voice was serious and curiously flat-sounding. “It’s true. We think someone’s weaponized the wild card virus.”
Barbara forced herself to sound calm. “We think the same here. I’ve talked to CDC and to the UN doctors, and I’ve spoken with the Red Crescent people. They’re sending full-face filter masks for you that should keep you from inhaling the virus. The worse part is that it appears the virus has been altered so that people who’ve already been infected—like Lama and Bugsy—can be infected again. Klaus, maybe going in isn’t the best option. Maybe programming some cruise missiles to hit the hospital…”
She heard his protest beginning before she could finish. “Too much potential for collateral damage, and the drones we’ve already sent in get wonky. We wouldn’t have any assurance that the same wouldn’t happen with missiles. God knows where they’d actually come down. No, we have to go in ourselves, so we can control the situation.” He paused for a second, but began speaking again before she could respond. “Babs, I sent them in. And I’m going to make sure that whoever did this pays for it. In full.”
There was an undertone of pleasure in his statement. She could hear it even over the phone. Being in action. Doing something, not sitting behind a desk, getting his hands dirty. That’s what drives him … and some of the others, too. She glanced at his photo on the desk—taken several years ago, before he lost his eye, before he’d lost the friends he’d once had. That Klaus smiled in a way she hadn’t seen him smile for a long time. She wondered what his expression looked like now, at the thought of going into Talas, of gaining revenge for whoever had injured Bugsy and Lama. “I’m planning to split the group up into two teams as soon as we’re inside the perimeter,” he was saying. “Michelle will be with Aero and Earth Witch, doing some general scouting of the area and hopefully finding Lama. Angel, Inkar, and myself will be accompanying the tanks to the hospital and dealing with whatever’s there.”
“And everyone will be wearing the filter masks,” Barbara said.
She heard him give a huff that might have been exasperation. “Everyone will be wearing the masks,” he answered. “I need to get things moving on our end, Barbara. There isn’t much time. Thanks for your help. Don’t worry yourself. We’ll be fine.”
“I know you will,” she told him, “but that won’t stop me worrying.”
“Understood,” he said. “I love you.”
“And I love you. So stay safe.”
“I will,” he told her, and with that, the connection was gone. Barbara placed the satellite phone in its cradle and leaned back in her chair. She stared at Klaus’s picture for several breaths, then pressed the intercom button on the side of her computer monitor. “Juliet,” she said to Ink, “let’s get the conference room set up. I want to be able to watch all the video feeds from Talas.”
Klaus tapped his finger on the map next to the pin indicating the hospital complex, then slid his finger down the main road leading to the military encampment.
“There’s no reason to be subtle going in,” he said. “We go in together, then split into two groups. The first group will be mine. We’ll head up the main boulevard with a platoon of your men, General. We’ll also take the tanks. Doktor Omweer, Angel, Tinker, and Inkar, you’ll come with my group. Michelle, I want you to lead a second group. You, Earth Witch, Recycler, and Aero. Take a squad with you and a couple of Hummers. You’re going after the last location we had for Bugsy before his transmitter went dead.”
She nodded. “Once we get Bugsy, we’ll rendezvous with you.” She didn’t want to say anything, but she thought the soldiers might slow the aces down. But she also knew that the Kazakh soldiers wanted their people out as much as the Committee people wanted theirs. They’d figure it out. Making things work was what she did.
Franny had been mulling possible escape plans. Unfortunately they all crumbled to ash the minute he walked down the steps of the plane. It wasn’t Tomlin. It was a small airport that judging by the direction of the skyline of Manhattan was in fucking New Jersey. Also judging by the westering sun it was sometime in the afternoon. Franny realized he had no idea what day it was. Maybe Thursday?
There was also a welcoming committee. Seven large men in cheap suits with distinctive bulges beneath their arms. In the center was a dapper little man with milk-white hair and a ridiculously luxurious mustache. Franny recognized him from the NYPD files—Ivan Grekor, the most ruthless and efficient Russian mob boss in New York.
The wrinkles around Grekor’s eyes deepened as he smiled at Baba Yaga. Opening his arms wide he called out in Russian. She replied in the same language. Franny heard his name float by. They were surrounded by the phalanx of guards and hustled into the small white terminal building. Franny saw a sign and realized they were at the Teterboro airport.
There were more Russian goons inside and support staff, TSA customs people, and a few well-dressed travelers huddled on the floor. One security guard was unconscious and bleeding. Franny couldn’t control the impulse so he ran over and dropped to one knee next to the man, felt for a pulse.
“He won’t die of it, young man,” Grekor said, amusement lacing the words. He glanced at Baba Yaga. “Mariamna, you are picking them younger and younger.”
Baba Yaga gave a crack of laughter at Franny’s horrified look. “Oh, this one is not a toy for the bed, Ivan, just a tool for the hand.”
Franny stood. “Trust me when I tell you that doesn’t sound any less creepy.”
Baba Yaga looked from Franny to the unconscious man and back again. “You see what happens when you try to be a hero? You understand what I am saying, yes?”
“Yeah, you’re coming in loud and clear.”
“Good.”
“Mariamna, what do you wish to do now?” Grekor asked. “I worry for you. You are hurt.”
She gave him that mirthless smile. “Yes. I need a hospital. Someplace we can control. From which I can direct events.”
Grekor stroked the absurd mustache and frowned off into space. “The Jokertown Clinic. Not too large, not a lot of security and doctors that specialize in the wild card.”
“Jokers,” Baba Yaga said with disgust.
“And aces.”
Franny felt a surge of hope. The clinic wasn’t all that far from Fort Freak and help and he’d have a better chance escaping from the old bitch and her army of goons there.
The hospit
al called a few hours later. Mick had been the lucky one, escaping the carnage with just a few broken bones. Mollie opened a portal to the hospital in Coeur d’Alene the third time that day, and helped Mick back into the farmhouse.
They didn’t speak to each other. They barely looked at one another, each barely acknowledging the other. To acknowledge each other was to accept as real the confusing and horrifying “incident” in the barn.
That’s the word they used. Incident. As though that word were large enough to contain the mindless homicidal ragestorm that had swirled through the barn.
Families fought sometimes, sure. She and her brothers had blackened each other’s eyes, even loosened a tooth here and there when they were younger. But even the most dysfunctional families in the world, the most fucked-up lowlife reality-TV hillbilly families from one of Berman’s sleaziest productions never tried to pull out each other’s intestines. And yet there in the Steunenberg barn she’d felt it was necessary …
Accepting its reality meant accepting they were all just half a heartbeat from murdering each other, from setting upon each other with extraordinary ferocity. To accept that an indescribable viciousness lurked inside each of them, and that it could break free without a moment’s notice. It didn’t make any fucking sense. And that was the most horrifying part of the whole thing—it had made sense when it was happening, like there was a logic that only Mollie could see …
She couldn’t stand the feeling of being trapped inside her own skin. Of being trapped inside the person who had thought and done those things and had yearned to do still more. Mollie’s ace made her very, very good at running away from trouble, but she couldn’t run away from herself.
Too tired to endure the angry, accusing glances from Mick and Mom, Mollie went out to the barn. She hosed down everything, sluicing away the blood and the teeth and the gobbets of flesh. Then she used a cutting torch and the hydraulic jack to take out all her shame and frustration on Baba Yaga’s safe.
High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel Page 31