by James Somers
The two men met behind one of the columns and shook hands as their paths crossed. In an instant too fast for most to even notice, they exchanged perceptor signature data and assumed the disguise of the other. Now, Nightstalker appeared as Bratta’s secret service agent and Mad Hatter became the party crashing millionaire, John Johansen. Moments later, security personnel intercepted the interloping Johansen, ushering him out of the party. Jason was in, Hatter was out—exactly as planned.
Jason headed back into the crowd, making his way toward the conference room where the candidates were assembled with their guards. Hatter had a diversion to attend to. There was going to be a car bomb set off inside one of the diplomat’s limousines very soon, allowing the team to escape the premises unnoticed. Security would find the candidate’s bodies later, once his team was long gone. Hopefully, Soulman would have enough time to take care of the wild card, Oliver Theed.
Jason spoke low—his voice picked up by the communication pin implanted in his outer ear canal. “Wraith, is it time?”
“I still think I should be doing this,” came the reply.
“Charlie doesn’t agree with you.” Charlie was supposed to be a team joke. None of the agents actually knew the identity of those in charge of their operations, or even the identities of their handlers for that matter. A secret agent program from the days of television, Charlie’s Angels had used an unidentified controller always calling the shots for those agents. The joke stuck.
“It’s time. Make the switch, boss.” Agent Wraith emphasized boss with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“I’m on it. Prepare to scrub out. This won’t take long.”
Wraith responded. “Just be sure you get the job done before Hatter’s little diversion. I’m not bailing you out when security starts sweeping the place.”
Jason knew he meant it. He had requested Wraith’s transfer to another team on more than one occasion, but his handler always told him that Charlie felt Wraith was an irreplaceable member of Babylon’s best team. Jason would just have to tolerate him.
Jason made his way to the conference room and keyed in the code that Security had unknowingly given to Mad Hatter, believing him to be one of Bratta’s men. The door unlocked for Jason. He quickly made his way inside. Bratta’s other men stood behind their presidential candidate. One of them gave a slight nod in Jason’s direction, acknowledging him in his disguise and believing he was about to get a break to go relieve himself.
The other two security agents were in the process of switching as well. Including Jason, all of Bratta’s men were in the room. Only one candidate’s men were allowed to break at a time. Jason had to move quickly.
The other pairs of secret service agents roamed around outside. It was Wraith’s job to take them down as they approached the room after Hatter’s bomb went off. Otherwise, It would be their first priority to get to their respective candidates and see to their safety.
The candidates sat around a large oak table—three out of four chairs were occupied. Jason had to take out the secret service men first, since they were armed. One of Bratta’s men walked toward the door located behind Jason.
As the agent started to pass him, Jason whipped Stella from the small of his back in an underhanded grip and plunged it precisely below the man’s sternum and through his descending aorta. He left the man bleeding out on the floor then hurled the composite blade with deadly accuracy at another security agent.
Jason pulled his capsule gun and proceeded to kill the secret service agents with startling speed and precision. Only two of the remaining five were able to go for their weapons—it didn’t help them.
The armor piercing rounds Jason used packed more than enough power to get through the flack jackets worn underneath the security agent’s tailored suits. Now, only the candidates remained.
The three men crouched on the floor in terror next to their chairs looking at the man they still supposed must be one of Vito Bratta’s security agents. Before Bratta could question him, Jason shot the man twice in the chest, once in the head. In case any security devices happened to be listening or filming, he wanted it to appear that Bratta’s man had gone rogue.
When Bratta went down, the others pleaded for their lives. One offered him money, the other wished to excuse himself because of his wife and children. Jason never said a word to either of them. This was business after all. As far as he was concerned, these men were already dead when Babylon marked them for termination.
Nightstalker merely did as he was instructed—a weapon in the hand of an unseen entity. He finished off the other two candidates in the same manner—two shots to the chest and one to the head. Jason retrieved Stella from her victim, wiped the blade and slid her back into place at the small of his back.
An explosion rocked the New Eden Ambassador’s Complex.
Jason heard the crowd outside scream as Hatter’s car bomb exploded right on time. The other secret service agents would be heading for the meeting room door already. Wraith would be waiting to greet them with well placed sniper fire. Jason tapped the switch on his gun to rotate the ammunition cylinder within the clip. He aimed at the four bolts securing a heavy mesh framework across one of the windows and fired a nitro capsule at each one from across the room. The mesh grill clanged to the floor.
Jason slid across the tabletop to the window, jumping to the sill. He shattered the window with a single blow, replacing his capsule gun on his thigh. Jason pulled his hypermagnetic grapple and attached the head to the window’s outer framework. He released the cable then quickly descended the five stories to the decorative bushes below which lined the building’s perimeter.
Jason heard alarms sound in response to Hatter’s diversion from the other side of the complex. He used the shadows, changing his perceptor disguise to the transparency setting, rendering him virtually invisible in the low lighting. He attempted contact with Soulman—no response. Something was wrong. Jason ran away from the New Eden Alliance Complex. He had to get to New Rome Medical Center to make sure that Soulman had taken care of Secretary General Oliver Theed.
SOULMAN
Soulman crouched, nearly invisible in the shadowy corridor. He had successfully made it down to the fifth floor and had switched to transparent on his perceptor setting. Unless he made abrupt movements, or walked into good lighting, no one would probably notice him.
Soulman saw two guards covering Theed’s room. The rest of the floor’s patients had been moved earlier to other areas of the hospital. Theed would be in a secure zone with his men. No one, other than specific doctors and nursing staff, could enter the floor.
Just a short distance back down the hall, Theed’s physician and two nurses lay unconscious in the employee lounge. Soulman could just as easily have killed all three, but the killing was only business. “Only take out the marks, if you can help it,” Jason always told the team. Everyone complied, except for Wraith—he got off on the killing. Anybody that even thought about getting in his way on a mission, he ghosted with no regret.
Soulman slid along the wall on his hands and knees until he reached the edge of the nurse station counter. He pulled his capsule gun, flattening out on the newly waxed floor. He peered around the corner and brought the capsule gun around in front of his face.
On Soulman’s CLD’s a targeting icon appeared that followed an infrared laser emanating from the gun. He targeted their heads. With a full inhale half exhale, he squeezed off two precise shots that sounded like someone hitting a pillow with their fist. Both of Theed’s secret service men fell away from the door they had been guarding. It was messy, but efficient.
After a quick glance around, Soulman made his move for the door. There had not been any reaction to the deaths of the guards from the inside. Soulman stood by the side of the doorway listening. He heard classical music playing. With a quick turn, fire and kick, he came barreling through the door into Theed’s room.
His target lay in the bed with his cover pulled up. A security agent exploded from b
eneath the covers and fired at Soulman, hitting him in the shoulder. Soulman returned fire instinctively, wasting the man in Theed’s hospital bed. He realized it wasn’t Theed a moment later. They were expecting me.
Soulman didn’t let his wounded shoulder stop him for a second. He pushed past the pain, trusting the tourniquet patches in his special uniform to detect the blood on the fabric and apply appropriate pressure to that specific area. He stepped back into the hallway. More agents were already sprinting toward the room from several directions with their weapons trained on his position.
For a moment, he tried to take down as many of the security agents as he could. Several agents went down, only to be replaced by more coming from every direction. The security agents took up defensive positions behind wall corners and at the nurse’s station. They laid down a steady rain of gunfire upon Soulman’s position.
He wore a uniform that housed Kevlar composite patches throughout the garment. Capsule shots blasted hunks of wood and sheetrock away from the walls and door facing as Soulman bolted down the hallway toward a large glass window that would have seemed picturesque on a summer day. Shots ripped through his uniform all over his body. They’re using armor piercing rounds, he realized.
Soulman tried to ignore the searing pain as he ran for the only way out of the dead end the agents had cornered him into. He shot through the safety glass, transforming it into a web of fractures. Soulman leaped through the portal he had created, pulling his grapple with his free hand as he passed through the shattered fragments. He tumbled toward the ground.
Soulman fired the grapple, hoping he was aiming at the building. The grapple head found purchase somewhere on the hospital’s exterior wall. Soulman’s freefall suddenly became an arc that carried him sweeping up away from the ground. He managed to grab a vertical drain pipe connected to the guttering. Then he let the tension control on the grapple gun lower him safely to the bushes below.
The security agents appeared at the shattered window above, scanning the hospital grounds below for their target. Soulman hugged the building and reactivated his transparency cloak. The night helped to hide him. He felt warm blood collecting in pockets throughout his suit as his uniform’s tourniquet system fought to stay the bleeding and keep him alive.
Soulman moved with the shadows. The agents would sweep the area using thermal scanners. He hurried to find a safe place of cover. He couldn’t risk being captured, potentially exposing Babylon in this assassination attempt. Blood loss made him dizzy and weak. Soulman mustered what little strength he could and followed the city schematic scrolling across his CLD’s. He found a good haven nearby where he could recuperate from his injuries and slow the bleeding.
Nightstalker watched the police and WBI agents swarm around the New Rome Medical Center. A statement issued by the Secretary General’s office, via the World Mind, made it very clear that a failed assassination attempt had taken place at the hospital. They didn’t claim to know who the attacker was, but reports that the assassin was wounded and fleeing on foot appeared to be well founded.
Jason paid particular attention to the huge, shattered window on the fifth floor. WBI agents, with H9 robots, searched the area below. The WBI H9’s were known to be specially outfitted as trackers. If they had found any blood from Soulman then the trail must have ended abruptly—they appeared to wander over the same area without any lead to follow.
Jason hoped that his friend was safe and sound, but his lack of communication over the last couple of hours told him otherwise. If Soulman had been capable, he would have at least activated his beacon in order to give Jason his location. He accessed a city schematic, focusing on the area around the medical center. If Soulman had been wounded, he might very well have retreated to a place of safety where he could regroup and see to his injuries while allowing some time for the police to conduct their business and disperse.
Jason pored over the information, searching for a place where he might have hidden himself. He saw nothing on the map that looked even remotely promising. Then something occurred to him. Jason changed the information being displayed on the CLD’s with a move of his finger. He appeared as one tapping the air.
Jason accessed the subterranean systems. There were no catacombs here in the newer section of the city around the medical center, but there was an extensive network of sewage tunnels. Jason took note of one appropriately sized access point just west of the medical center. That had to be it—he hoped.
Only the occasional spire of light intruded through water grates into the dark drainage tunnel from the streets above. Jason tried to move quickly in the cramped quarters. He kept his pistol aimed down the tunnel before him. The night-vision scope fed an image to his CLD’s. Jason finally saw his man lying motionless and perpendicular with the tunnel, its wall cradling him like a baby. Soulman’s right arm was aimed straight at Jason, holding a pistol in his hand.
“Jerome, it’s me, Jason.”
Soulman’s arm relaxed, dropping like it had a fifty pound weight attached to it. He had to struggle just to speak. “Jason…I knew you’d find me. I’ve been trying to hold on until you got here. I tried the transmitter. It must have been shot away. I didn’t want to die alone.”
Jason crawled closer to his friend. “Die? Hey, don’t start talking like that.”
“I already know it’s bad, man. No use blowing smoke. I’m done.”
Jason wished he could argue with him. As team leader, he accessed Soulman’s physiologic data from his preceptor uniform. The two units communicated briefly. Data coming from Jerome’s uniform confirmed the agent’s self-diagnosis. He had shrapnel lodged in his heart, tears in both iliac arteries, liver damage and several small and large bowel perforations. Jerome’s blood pressure also displayed on Jason’s CLD. It steadily dropped below critical levels, despite the auto tourniquet system. Jason smelled the metallic odor of blood collecting in pockets under his friend’s uniform.
“Jerome….” The words cut him, he couldn’t say it.
Jerome nodded.
“Is there anyone—?”
Jerome smiled through the pain as he labored to breathe. “You know I’ve always been more of a player, man. There’s no one ever been waiting at home for me.”
Jerome grabbed Jason’s arm then found his hand and squeezed it tightly. He spoke urgently. “Jason?”
“Yes, Jerome, I’m here.”
“Theed’s men…they knew I was coming.”
“What?”
“I know, but it’s true. They were waiting for me to come into that hospital room.” His breathing became labored.
Jason contemplated what his friend was telling him. If it was true, then they had a mole within Babylon.
“Jason?”
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid.” With that, Jerome Brown’s stare became blank and the tension in his face faded. His grip on Jason’s hand relaxed. Jerome was gone.
Jason turned away from him, still holding the man’s hand. It was one thing to kill a man targeted for assassination whom you had never met, and a completely different experience to watch your best friend die. It made him glad that very few individuals held such a close connection to him, because he never wanted to experience this again.
SARAH CROSS
August 12, 2094
“This is Jules Vernon reporting live from Abingdon, Virginia, high above the city in our helicopter. We’re watching the resulting fires from a massive storm front that has spawned toxic hailstorms all around the globe. Flash fires have erupted from the chemical reactions within this hail as it falls to the Earth. It is estimated, by scientists, that we may very well see up to a third of the world’s forests destroyed by this storm as fires continue out of control.
“Thousands of people have already died in this horrible disaster the likes of which has never been recorded in history. Many smaller cities, like Abingdon below us, have already been overrun by the flames, not to mention the countless millions in property damage from these storm
s. One notable scientist was quoted as saying, “this is the worst ecological disaster mankind has ever seen. It may very well be that storms of this type were what contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago. By the time these fires have consumed what they will, we’re going to have unbelievable amounts of pollution trapped in our atmosphere which will exacerbate the greenhouse effect and drive up surface temperatures dramatically. Things will get much worse if these temperature shifts cause the polar caps to melt—with that we would see a dangerous rise in sea levels.”
“In other news, there have been flare-ups along the Russian and United States border in St. Louis, Missouri, and in Indiana. Russian tank brigades are also on the move in Lebanon, threatening the security in Israel.
“In other news, scientists are concerned about the world’s major fault-line system, the Ring of Fire. It is reported that volcanic activity and plate movement in the world’s major subduction zones has increased dramatically. Scientists feel we are fast approaching a time when we could see major earthquakes occurring all over the world.”
It was a dreary day out, which in England was not an uncommon happening. For Jason, it was one of his worst days. Having to bury his closest friend depressed him deeply. The London Necropolis had been the final resting place of many notable people, but that provided no comfort.
No one else arrived to mourn Jerome Brown that day. Four H8 robots worked the coffin into its place using a lift. They had been the pallbearers for Jerome’s coffin, yet they cared nothing for their deceased cargo.
Alfred stood next to Jason at the gravesite. He appeared as a middle-aged butler with graying, wavy hair, in a suit with an overcoat. A pair of wire rim glasses completed the robot’s perceptor disguise. Alfred actually seemed more interested in the robots working the site than anything else. “A newer model, but still inferior.” It was a favorite phrase of Alfred’s.