After we cleaned the kitchen, Dr. Bickel and I played two games of Samba. It was like old times—us laughing and joking as we competed for the 10,000-point win. I took one game and he the other; then he brought out a fabulous peach cobbler with a crunchy topping.
He served it warm, topped with homemade vanilla ice cream; I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
It was a perfect evening.
Around ten, Dr. Bickel went downstairs to bed, and I drove to the dojo to work out. I was gone three hours. The house was quiet when I returned home and prepared to retire. I was more than ready for a few hours’ sleep.
In the darkest and deepest hours of morning, I woke to the shouts of the nanomites in my head and their repeated stings on my body.
Gemma Keyes! We are under attack!
Gemma Keyes! We are under attack!
I leapt from my bed in the back of the house and threw on my quiver and escrima sticks over the t-shirt and sweat pants I slept in. Pushed my bare feet into running shoes without stopping to tie them.
The nanomites flung the images from the outside cameras into my mind: two tactical teams of four men each, one at each entrance, front and back. An additional four men spanned the house, watching the windows to prevent any escape from that direction.
“Nano! Is Dr. Bickel up?”
Yes, Gemma Keyes. He is awake and aware of the intrusion.
“We must buy him time to get safely away.”
We will, Gemma Keyes.
I visualized my old friend doing as we’d discussed—grabbing the essentials and leaving through the escape hatch—not staying to monitor the assault and deploy the system’s built-in deterrents.
They would not be needed.
As I raced down the hall, the front and back doors splintered and gave way. I ran to meet the intruders, certain that the nanomites and I could fight them off and avoid capture—even though I was no longer confident that our capture would be Cushing’s goal.
I didn’t bother with the nanomites’ cover. I drew down on the house’s electricity and collected it in my body, in my arms, in my hands, in my fingers. I let the power build and brighten until I blazed with crackling white light.
Time slowed: The interior of the house was no longer dark; I stood in the junction of the hall and living room, a blinding, strobing beacon, inviting the assailants and their weapons to target me.
At a shouted command, they opened fire.
The walls and furnishings around me burst and shredded under a merciless barrage of rounds. The noise and smoke were horrific, but I stood untouched within the bubble of vibrating current the nanomites molded around me. As the soldiers’ guns hammered my shield, the electrical current repulsed their bullets, often sending them flying back in the direction from which they’d come.
Three of the attackers cried out and fell when returning rounds struck arms or legs. The remaining soldiers continued to fire on me, ejecting and dropping empty magazines where they crouched and slamming home fresh ones in fluid, practiced moves.
I inhaled, lifted my hands, and fashioned an orb of snapping, popping energy within the shield. I pulled my hands apart, and the orb strengthened and grew bigger—and bigger still. Even larger!
When I could build it no larger and still maintain control of it, I took aim—not at individual shooters, but at the whole of them. I swept my hands in an arc as I hurled the sizzling mass. The wall of energy exited the shield, spread, lengthened, and thickened; it crashed into the invaders—a tidal wave of demolition.
The walls and windows of Dr. Bickel’s living room blew out, sending soldiers, weapons, and debris far out into the yard, even into the street.
I strode through the house’s splintered framework. The four soldiers who were guarding the perimeter of the house formed a line and opened fire on me. I swept my hands toward them and they flew backward.
Soldiers across the lawn began to rouse and recover their weapons. As they targeted me, I gathered palm-sized spheres of energy and pummeled them. I pounded every aggressor who moved—until not one stirred.
I stood alone in the yard and screamed, “Cushing, you coward! Cushing! Show yourself!”
She did.
She stepped from the shadows of the neighbor’s trees. “Hello, Miss Keyes. Or should I say, Miss Sawyer?”
I clenched my fists at my side, willing myself to be calm when my insides were a riot of fury, resentment, and indignation. “You may as well give up, Cushing. We know everything. The President knows all about you and the Vice President.”
“I wondered if you’d had something to do with Harmon’s untimely demise.”
She studied me a moment, then shook her head. “No, Miss Keyes. You do not know everything. You may have, for the time being, thwarted the vision Harmon and I and others shared, but it will not matter in the long run.”
She lifted her chin. “However, my part is at an end. Therefore, I will extract what payment I can while I may—and ensure that you do not interfere in the future.”
The hair at the back of my neck lifted—not in response to the power thrumming through my body, but in prescient warning of what was to come.
Gemma Keyes, Cushing’s people have laid explos—
Cushing held something aloft for me to see.
“Good bye, Gemma, dear.”
Cushing spun on her heel and ran.
“No!” I lifted a hand to hurl a sphere of energy to stop her and—
The nanomites tossed me forward. My face scraped the ground as they flattened me. Behind me, what remained of Dr. Bickel’s safe house inhaled and expanded. I tried to raise my head, but the nanomites pressed and held me down; they sheltered me from the whooshing blast and the concussion wave that followed.
The noise rolled over us, a booming cough, a thunderous roar. Wreckage rained down; bits and chunks of wood, metal, glass, cement, and drywall strafed the men Cushing had abandoned, while I lay protected beneath the nanomites’ energy shield.
I don’t know how much time passed before the nanomites allowed me to get up. I struggled to my feet, unsteady and disoriented from the ringing in my ears. A man I recognized as a neighbor from across the street rushed toward me.
I couldn’t hear more than a mumble, but I watched his mouth.
“Lady! Hey, lady, are you all right?”
I nodded. Wavered. He caught my arm and steadied me. Holding on to him for balance, I turned to assess the destruction.
It was complete.
Total.
Absolute.
Dr. Bickel’s house had been leveled. What little remained was burning. I sought some visual cue amid the smoke and flames, a marker to indicate where the closet and its hidden ladder to the basement hidey hole had been. Nothing other than a vague sense of the house’s footprint endured. That and the field of ruin around us.
“Dr. Bickel.”
Next to me, the neighbor babbled on, and I began to make out syllables and words through the high-pitched squeal in my head. More neighbors gathered in tight knots in the street. As my ears recovered, I heard sirens. Distant, but coming nearer.
I blinked and tried to pick out Cushing’s men amid the detritus. Could any of them have survived the blast? Without the nanomites and their electrical shield, I would not have, and Cushing’s men had enjoyed no such protection.
She had happily sacrificed them to wreak her reprisal on me.
My dazed thoughts wandered back to the basement and the escape hatch.
“Dr. Bickel.”
“—place blew sky high! Must have been a gas line, huh?” the neighbor speculated. “My wife and I heard all kinds of pops and bangs beforehand. We figured it was just kids setting off New Year’s fireworks early.”
“Dr. Bickel.”
When the first police cars arrived, I peeled myself off the neighbor and began to stumble my way through the rubble.
“Hey, wait, lady! You really should wait for an ambulance. You don’t look so good.”
I kept
going. The nanomites helped me navigate and strengthened my boneless, jellied legs. I reached the edge of the debris field and pushed through the crowd of gawkers.
I limped away from the glow of the fire, down the shadowed street toward the parking garage, blocks away.
“Dr. Bickel.”
***
Dr. Bickel wasn’t on the parking garage’s first level where he was supposed to be. I couldn’t have been more clear: If ever he had to flee the house, he was not to go to my car until we knew it was safe. I’d told him to wait in the lower levels. The fact that he wasn’t waiting where we’d agreed harried me something fierce.
Lord Jesus! Please let him be okay!
I dragged myself up the three levels to my car, calling his name in a rough whisper every few feet. When I reached the Escape, I turned around and stared into the concrete darkness.
“Dr. Bickel!”
A scuffle. A wheeze.
I spun a tiny ball of light aloft and walked toward the noise. “Dr. Bickel?”
“H-here, Gem . . . Gemma.”
I found him lying on the greasy pavement in front of my car. He was hurt.
“Nano!”
Assessing his injuries now, Gemma Keyes.
I brought the light in close and found his hand. Grabbed it and held on. He squeezed mine once in return. While I waited on the nanomites, I prayed.
Ten minutes dragged by. Fifteen.
“Nano?”
Gemma Keyes, Dr. Bickel has two crushed ribs, one of which has ruptured his spleen. We are attempting to piece together the rupture and cauterize the bleeding. However, our work is taking too long. We recommend that he be transported to a hospital. He requires a blood transfusion, and it is possible that our repairs to his spleen will not suffice. The organ may need to be removed.
I had no means to call for an ambulance.
Dr. Bickel gripped my hand. “G-Gemma.”
“Yes?”
“B-b-bag.”
Partway under the Escape’s front bumper I saw it—the bag. If we were attacked, Dr. Bickel’s task was to grab the bag containing Kathy Sawyer’s I.D. and other personally identifiable items, throw in the burner phones, and take the bag with him through the escape tunnel.
The bag whose contents were now worthless—except for the phones.
I dragged the bag to me and unzipped it. Pulled out one of the burner phones. Pushed the buttons for a number I had memorized.
The phone rang three times. The voice that answered was sluggish but wary.
Too many stimulating mid-sleep calls of late, I guessed.
“Special Agent Ross Gamble.”
“Gamble, it’s Gemma. We’ve got trouble.”
I filled him in and let him work out the logistics. Hung up.
“Gemma.” Dr. Bickel sounded better. A bit stronger.
“I’m here.”
“Did what you asked. Got out right away . . . Halfway out the tun . . . tunnel. Remembered . . . bag.”
I covered my eyes with my free hand. “You forgot the bag and went back for it.”
“Y-yes. T-tunnel . . . collapsed.”
In my mind’s eye, I saw the heavy door swing open to reveal the escape tunnel—a wide concrete pipe. I pictured the cement pipe bowing and fracturing under the concussive force of the explosion. Saw the chunk of concrete landing on my friend’s chest as he swung the door closed behind him.
And yet, Dr. Bickel had managed to push it off, keep going, and reach the end of the tunnel; he had let himself out, and had made it not only to our rendezvous point, but up three levels to my car.
He must have thought himself safer near my car.
Dr. Bickel’s brow furrowed in pain, and his eyes closed. The nanomites assured me that he was resting, that he was in no imminent danger, but I couldn’t stand to see another friend, another loved one suffering.
O Lord, when will this heartache be over?
During the fifteen minutes while we waited for Gamble, I struggled to keep my heart right. I struggled against the inclination—no, an urgent, craving thirst—to find Cushing, to track her to whatever hole she’d crawled out from and end her.
Zander’s words curbed the rage building in me: “If we don’t repent and allow Jesus to wash us clean before we rush off to fix the mess we’ve made, we’ll just make the same mistake again.”
“Lord, I don’t want to make another mess. I don’t, but please help me! I have such turmoil inside me. Please! Please help me.”
I was relieved when Gamble arrived, an ambulance not far behind him. I heard their engines and tires squealing as he led the way up the ramps.
Before Gamble and the ambulance arrived, I gave Dr. Bickel’s hand a last comforting touch, grabbed the bag, and stepped out of the way. The nanomites covered me, and I watched from two cars away as the paramedics inserted a line into the back of Dr. Bickel’s hand and started fluids before lifting him onto the gurney and taking him away.
Gamble called out for me. “Gemma?”
“Here.”
I rested against a nearby car. I was still shaky, and Gamble could see it. He pried the bag from my hands and helped me to his passenger seat. He got behind the wheel and turned sideways to talk to me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No; just shaken. Cushing. Don’t know how she found us. She blew up Dr. Bickel’s safe house. Took out her own men doing it.”
“You certain you’re not hurt?”
I asked the nanomites.
Gemma Keyes, you are physically unharmed except for minor shock and disorientation.
“The nanomites say I’m fine.”
Gamble nodded. “Glad to hear it.” Then he cleared his throat and switched topics. “So, you’ll never guess who called me yesterday morning.”
“Probably not.” I was too tired for guessing games.
“Well, would you believe Agent Janice Trujillo, as in Cushing’s Agent Trujillo? And she paid me a visit late yesterday afternoon.”
I shook my head. I can’t take any more. I can’t.
“It’s not bad news, Gemma.”
I blinked away the stupor. “It isn’t?”
“Agent Trujillo received a very interesting call herself Monday morning.”
“Oh?” I waited.
“Our friend in the White House, Gemma. He called Agent Trujillo himself and gave her two specific orders: apprehend Cushing ASAP and stop pursuing you and Dr. Bickel. It’s over. As soon as Trujillo catches Cushing, it will be done. For good.”
I started to crack.
Gamble opened his arms. “Come ’ere, Gemma. I’m your friend. I’m here for you.”
I leaned my forehead on Gamble’s chest. He closed his arms around me and let me rest there, weeping, until I was done.
~~**~~
Chapter 26
I called Zander from Gamble’s car and the three of us met up at UNM Hospital. When we got there, they’d taken Dr. Bickel to surgery.
“Funny,” Gamble chuckled over a cup of very bad hospital coffee.
“What is?” I asked. I took up space on a waiting room couch across from him, and I was snuggled up to Zander’s side, my feet pulled under me, not caring a fig what anyone thought or what the future held: I wanted Zander to hold me, and he was happy to do so.
“Yeah; what’s funny?” Zander repeated.
“This hospital. It’s where we met, remember?”
Zander winced. “Ouch. Don’t remind me.”
I smiled across the little coffee table strewn with old copies of People and Time magazines. “I’m glad we did meet, Gamble.”
“Well, I can honestly say it’s never been dull knowing you. So far.”
We laughed, and a young couple down from us glanced up and smiled.
The doctor came out. “Family of Daniel Bickel?”
“Yes,” I answered. “We may not be blood, but we are his family. He has no one else.”
The doctor looked tired, but satisfied. “Gotcha. Well, it’s all good news—ex
cept for the spleen. It was a complete loss, but we got it out, caught all the little bleeders, and transfused three pints of blood.” He rubbed his eyes. “I was surprised that some of the bleeding had already stopped. Sealed up on its own. Kind of weird, but whatever. Your friend should make a full recovery.”
“Oh, thank you, Lord!” I whispered.
“We’ll keep him three or four days, depending upon how he responds, and he’ll need six weeks of restricted movement.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
The physician looked a little sheepish. “Say, isn’t he, you know, that guy in the news lately? The one who held the press conference at the FBI?”
“He is.”
“And he’s not, er, wanted anymore?”
Gamble flipped out his credentials. “Special Agent Ross Gamble, FBI. I can assure you I am not interested in apprehending Dr. Bickel.”
“Good to know. Thanks.”
I pulled Gamble aside. “Did you sort of mislead Dr. Bickel’s physician just now?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe, but I’m not interested in apprehending Dr. Bickel. I won’t be party to letting that shrew Cushing get her claws into him again.”
“I told Cushing that the President was on to her. Before she blew up the safe house, she said, ‘It will not matter in the long run. My part is at an end. Therefore, I will extract what payment I can while I may.’ She doesn’t care about the nanomites any longer; she’s in it for the revenge! Gamble, I’m worried about Emilio and Abe. If Cushing knows what they mean to me . . .”
He rubbed his chin. “I would authorize security for them, but the paperwork is like an obstacle course.”
“Well, do you know any good people who would work for cash? You know, stakeout style?”
“If you have the cash, I can find off-duty and retired APD to watch Abe’s house.”
“Would you set it up? I’ll pass the money to you to pay them.” I hesitated, thinking. “It will take me a day to get it to you.”
“If you guarantee payment, I can get them set up by this evening.”
We left the hospital then. The sun had risen when I transferred the bag from Gamble’s car to Zander’s, and Zander drove me back to the parking garage.
Stealth Retribution Page 27