by Matt Forbeck
A white spotlight that showed up only on my UV vision caught me in it as if I was an escaping prisoner trying to swim to freedom. It blinded me, but the men still pulling me downward kept me from being able to flinch away. Then my brain finally realized it was starving for oxygen. The light raced away from me as my vision narrowed down to a collapsing tunnel.
Then everything went black.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The first thing I did when I woke up was force all the water out of my chest. It felt like vomiting except it came from higher up and hurt much worse. Thinking back, I'm not sure if I woke up and did that, or if doing that woke me up. Either way, I was conscious for the whole miserable experience.
I had been laid out in a fold-out bench with a hole in it for my face, something like a massage table but harder and closer to the floor. Someone had fastened a soft mask of clear plastic over my mouth and nose, and it had sucked all the water out of me, like an oxygen mask set to maximum reverse. Once it had saved my life by removing what felt like several gallons of the Tidal Pool from my lungs, I thought it might kill me by producing enough suction that I couldn't manage to breathe in against it. Then it reversed itself and began supplying me with sweet air. In truth, the air was probably canned and stale, but with my sinuses full of river water I couldn't tell, nor did I care.
A delicate hand patted me on the back. I tried to get up and realized I was strapped down.
"You can't escape us that easily, Mr Dooley." I recognized the voice as that of the Kali woman in the rotunda.
"Call that easy?" I managed that much before I fell into a fit of coughing. The respiratory vacuum might have been done with me, but my lungs weren't. I coughed until I felt like I'd cracked a rib again, and then I coughed some more.
From the feet I could see gathered around me, there were at least three people in the room with me, including the woman. The fourth of my kidnappers probably wasn't too far away.
"Sit him up," the woman said.
I heard a pistol cocked, then felt the tip of its barrel against the base of my skull. The man holding it put his knee into the small of my back and bore down with all his weight, keeping me put while his compatriot undid the straps binding me to the table. Then the man got off my back, and rough hands grabbed me by the shoulders and sat me up. I swiveled onto my haunches and started hacking again.
As I coughed, I glanced around. I was in a small, cramped room not much larger than the back of a stretch limousine, but curved along one axis like a long pipe. Almost everything inside the place was made of white marine-grade plastic, all scuffed and worn but well tended. To the front, where the driver's window would be in a limo, stood an irised-closed door that I guessed led to the cockpit of whatever I was in.
The windows had been polarized white. If I hadn't known where to look, I might not have thought that there were any at all. I'd been in private submarines before, though, and I recognized the design of this one.
That the Kalis had enough money to buy a submarine like this didn't surprise me. I knew they dragged in a staggering and all-but-uncountable amount of money from their rackets. No gang got to run most of DC without being good with numbers. Still, I would never have guessed that they had the imagination to buy a submarine, much less actually put it to use. The fact that they had done so explained a lot. As the head of the Kalis, Sharma Patil was the most wanted man in the region, but he seemed to come and go as he pleased, and no one was ever able to track him. Most of our efforts had been based on land- and air-based travel though. We'd never thought to look for him in the Potomac.
I figured this should have been just one more reason tossed on top of the pile they had for punching my ticket. Yet here I was still breathing. In fact, they'd brought me back to life.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "If you wanted me dead, you should have just let me drown."
The woman flashed a mirthless, wry smile. "We're not here to kill you, Mr Dooley. We only want your attention for a short conversation."
I boggled at this. "Most people don't send a sniper's bullet as part of their greeting."
"Would you have come with us willingly if we had asked?" She sneered at me.
"If you'd been polite about it. But killers usually can't manage that."
One of the men raised his arm to backhand me, which was just what I wanted. If I could get him close enough, I might be able to grab his gun before the others could stop me. He froze at the height of his swing, though, when the woman forcefully cleared her throat.
I smiled at her. "Did you go to all this trouble to pick me up for a conversation or a beating?"
"A small talk," she said, "but not with us."
At a gesture from her delicate hand, the lights in the cabin dimmed. A set of thrideo projectors kicked in, and my lenses automatically polarized to see Sharma Patil sitting there in front of me.
He looked like an ancient raja from his homeland. His regal features and bearing seemed to demand respect and obedience from all those around him. He wore sharp business clothes that were more fashionable than any I'd owned in over a hundred years. His tie pulsed with a faint glow that, I was sure, matched his heartbeat, which was strong and steady, not betraying a hint of nervousness at all.
Patil's graying hair swept back from his forehead in a tall widow's peak. Large, wide-set eyes stared out at me from wherever he actually was, and as he spied me a soft smile grew upon his lips. It never touched his eyes.
"Mr Dooley," he said. "I'm so glad we could finally have this chance to chat."
"I wish I felt as amicable about it," I said. "Your people have a poor way with invitations."
"I do apologize for them, Mr Dooley." His tone showed not a hint of regret. "They are hard people who do hard jobs, and sometimes the niceties do not always come easily to them. Despite that, you should appreciate that they are very good at what they do."
"Like shooting innocents."
"Come now, Mr Dooley," Patil said. "I hardly think Agent Querer is innocent. She does work alongside you, after all."
"I'm not sure what I'm guilty of, but I would think a man in your position would know the dangers that come with guilt by association." I'd tried to nail him on conspiracy charges for associating with known criminals in the past, but the US attorney's office had never been able to make it stick.
Patil shook a long finger at me. "Touché, Mr Dooley."
He waited for me to say something, but I wasn't about to indulge him. He'd called this meeting. He could set the agenda. I just stared, memorizing every bit of him. I set my nanoserver to record everything. I'd never been in a face-to-face meeting with Patil before, and if I managed to survive the experience, I knew I'd want to be able to run through the encounter over and over like a quarterback going over last week's game film.
Eventually, the Kali leader spoke.
"I had my people bring you in so I could personally deliver a message to you, Mr Dooley. It is short and succinct, so please listen carefully. I want to be sure I have your full attention."
I nodded at him. The idea that I would ignore him at this point was ludicrous, but I was willing to play along. "Don't be shy."
"Back off."
I dropped my chin forward and stared at him in disbelief. "Are you serious? You think just asking me politely means that I'll suddenly take orders from you?"
Patil nodded softly. "Pardon my manners. I meant, 'Back off, please.'"
I gaped at him. "After what you did to me, you have the gall to ask me to back off?"
"I have done nothing to you, Mr Dooley. I have only sought to protect my own interests."
"By killing me?"
Patil smirked. "For a man such as yourself, such a detail is but a small annoyance. I have no reason to kill you. If I did, you would only come back to haunt me again. You are a ghost made flesh."
"Yet you murdered me – or had me killed. Who did your dirty work for you doesn't really matter, does it?"
It was Patil's turn to look shocked.
"You think I had something to do with your horrific public death? How appalling. I may have applauded it, but I had nothing to do with it."
He leaned forward in his chair and steepled his fingers before him. "How long have you been trying to bring me in for my crimes? How many years have I frustrated your efforts? Just how dumb do you think I am?"
"You're the criminal mastermind here, Patil. You tell me."
He shook his head. "What have I done in the past that would make you think I would be so insane? Why would I publicly murder a top Secret Service agent and dare the government to come after me for it?" He pointed at his chest. "People like me, the ones who succeed and rise to the top, don't do it by poking the sleeping elephant. I have always been content to let the elephant slumber, to remain ignorant of my purpose as I tiptoe around him."
"Maybe you've been on top too long, Patil," I said. "Maybe you're getting tired of living."
He smirked at this. "I do not think that I am the one who has grown weary of life, Mr Dooley. This is not our first meeting. When you approached me for a favor back in May, I took a risk and decided to trust you. It wounds me that I cannot expect the same from you."
I narrowed my eyes at him. Despite his classy manners, Patil didn't have the scruples of a three-year-old. "I may not remember much of the recent past," I said, "but I'm sure I'd never ask you for any sort of kindness."
Patil grinned, and it occurred to me that he might not be lying. Also, that I'd just given him more information than I should have. While my murder had been the top topic on all the newsfeeds the day I was killed, the fact that I'd not bothered to back myself up for a few months hadn't been released. I was supposed to be the poster boy for the faithfulness and dedication of the Secret Service, not a bad example of an amortal blithely taking his ability to come back from the dead for granted.
And up until that moment, Patil hadn't realized that fact – but now he did.
He cocked his head and squinted at me, his mouth curled in disbelief. "Just how long was it since your last backup, Mr Dooley?" he said. "How much did you lose?"
"You don't have the clearance for that," I said in my best deadpan.
Patil shook his head. "So the joke is on me. I performed a service for a part of you that's forever dead and gone, beyond anyone's reach. And now I'll never be able to collect upon it. That is unfortunate. I thought we had finally come to an understanding."
"Why would you think that?"
Patil snorted in amusement. "You don't remember? The EMP technology you requested? I suppose you've lost track of that too. More's the pity. Those were not simple items to procure."
"I'm sure I never intended to make good on any debt to you."
"Do you have so little honor, Mr Dooley?"
I nodded. "I'm more of a results-oriented kind of guy – especially when it comes to bringing down crooks like you. A few lies are a small price to pay." I gazed at him, trying to gauge his reaction. "Don't be so shocked. You tried to kill me twice since I was murdered."
Patil shook his head. "You have only yourself to thank for that. You brought it on yourself."
This, I hoped, was my chance to learn more about what I'd been doing during those missing three months. "And just how did I do that?"
Patil folded his hands on his lap. Despite his cool demeanor, his tie pulsed a bit faster now. "Don't play the innocent, Mr Dooley. We both know how much blood you have on your hands."
I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. "I knew – I knew – from the moment I heard the news of your murder that you would assume that I had been behind it. But I believed you would simply pursue the matter with your traditional doggedness and quickly discover who the real culprits behind your murder were.
"Instead, the night you came back, a masked killer attacked and destroyed my nanoserver farm located in an underwater facility beneath the Dumbarton Bridge. At first, I thought perhaps one of my competitors had decided to launch some sort of offensive against us. But our security cameras turned up this."
Patil's visage faded away, and an image from a camera mounted high in the corner of a dark, cramped room replaced it. It showed a score of people reclining in workstation chairs, their eyes unfocused, their fingers twitching with arcane gestures that only their nanoservers understood, like ancient wizards engaged in some sort of spirit walk.
These young men and women were all Indian and all bore the mark of Kali on their foreheads, guaranteeing that anyone who saw them would know whom they belonged to. This abstract, red-inked image of a many-armed woman writhed in a hypnotic pattern beneath their skin. The movements were synced up to match exactly on each face.
I didn't recognize the facility, but I instantly knew what it was. The Kalis had been running a money laundering operation for decades, filtering cash through a gold-farming operation that sold virtual cash from persistent-world video games to people who didn't want to bother with gathering it themselves. This had been a major issue for the Service since the dawn of the twenty-first century, and we'd never been able to do more than stick our collective thumb in the dike.
The Kali operation was the most solid in the world. It required human operators to run it though. We knew that they had a base somewhere in or near DC, but we'd never been able to find it. It looked like someone finally had.
A man dressed in a dripping, black wetsuit entered the room, a full diving mask covering his face. He bore a dry Nuzi in each fist. The workers roused themselves and reached for guns resting in holsters duct-taped to the sides of their chairs.
The man opened fire before the workers could aim their weapons, riddling their bodies with dozens of bullets. After the first fell, the others refused to surrender, bringing their guns to bear on the man too. He kept firing at them until his guns ran dry. Then he sprang forward, plucked the pistols from the grasps of the first two victims, and let loose with those guns too.
When those pistols were empty, the man stood and surveyed the carnage. Satisfied that no one would interrupt him, he tossed the borrowed guns onto the floor, then removed something heavy from a matte-black dry bag slung across his back. It looked like one of those German potato-masher grenades you see in WWII games and thrids, but bigger, with a thick pipe wrapped in white tape where the handle would be.
The man set the device down on the floor, then tapped the end of it with a gloved finger. Illuminated numbers flashed to life there and started counting down. The man nodded at the device, then turned and left. When the numbers reached 0:00, there was a bang and a flash, and the image went black.
"That little toy hit my facility with an EMP that fried every piece of electronics in it," said Patil. "It will cost me a fortune to fix it."
I allowed myself a faint smile at that.
"Do you have any idea who that was?" Patil asked as the black image dissolved and his image solidified again.
I nodded. I'd turned on my gait recognition layer the moment the scene had started. Because of the foil cap they'd put on my head, I couldn't connect to Homeland Security's main database, but I didn't need to. The layer already had the killer's gait stored in my nanoserver's onboard memory.
It was mine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Someone faked my gait," I said. "It's been done before, with other people. It's hard to fool the layer's diagnostics but not impossible."
"Of course you would say that. But he used an EMP, one that used the same sort of technology I supplied you." Patil shook his head. "I had thought we were coming to an understanding."
I felt my heart pounding in my chest. It was one thing to die. I'd been expecting to be killed ever since the sniper's bullet had knocked Querer into my arms.
It was something else entirely to realize that someone was trying to frame me – to pin a massacre on me – and not in a court of law but in the mind of one of the most powerful criminals in the nation.
"I have a roomful of witnesses that will place me in the White House at the moment of that incident." I struggled to kee
p my voice even, to not show how much the scene had shaken me.
"Yes," said Patil. "I wondered how you managed that. To be in two places at once. Did you have someone pose as you in front of the reporters? Or did you somehow manage to blackmail them all into lying for you?"
"There's video of me there," I said. "From several different newsfeeds, and a few private ones too."
Patil scoffed at this. "Faking video is trivial, especially with the resources of the White House behind you. My grandson could manage a decent job of that, and he is merely six."