He nodded and his smile grew a little. “I’ve been in worse places.”
“Paris, for one,” she said.
Kevin placed both elbows on the arms of the chair, interlacing his fingers in front of him. The smile became a smirk. Of all the impudence…
“Is this the part where you show me how smart you are by telling me my life story?”
Kaye allowed a small smile. “Yes, it is. I particularly liked it, Lt Anderson. It made for good reading. You signed up for the Marine Corps a year too early, made it through Ranger training with little problem, were quickly recruited to the SEALS, and later started working for Intelligence. Due to the nature of your education, you attained a degree in engineering. Now you’re older, but not wiser, because you’re trapped here in Hell with the rest of us.”
Kevin smiled evilly, and his voice grew from even and friendly to dark and as cold as liquid nitrogen. “All I did was enforce my own concept of term limits.”
She had heard a voice like that once before, on a recording of a meeting between a Corp Exec and an assassin named Kyle. The coldness of the voice had originally sent a shiver down her spine, but this time she was prepared for it.
“And the irony is,” he continued, “if it hadn’t been a Lib-prog administration, I wouldn’t even be here right now. But I was disappeared…” he gave a slight growl. “I blame Chicago.”
She blinked. “What?”
“After the Last Day, Rep-Cons couldn’t win elections because they were in office the day of the attack. But if it weren’t for their missile defense program, the entire country would look like California, and had the Lib-progs not decided to ban missile shields in their states, we would be problem free. So, how could they win elections? Answer, I blame Chicago.” He smiled sadly. “But I’m from the Northeast. I always blame Chicago.”
She looked at Kevin with a slight twinge of guilt. She almost regretted rigging the presidential election, but she had been well paid, and that money had paid Alcatraz’s maintenance for a year.
Kevin sighed, then perked up, almost forced. “So, what do I call you?”
“Ms. Kaye.”
Kevin nodded slowly. “Not Madam President?”
Kaye Wellering blinked. “Why would you say that?”
He waved a hand around. “All of this. You’re overselling the image of a lower-ranking hacker stuffed in a broom closer … but I walked past secretaries on the way in, and they have better accommodations. You also forget that I know Chinatown; you’re the 'face' of this organization on the mainland. You’re more than a clerk and trying to hide it. Everyone knows that a CEO of a company doesn’t meet everyone personally, so what better way to hide than in plain sight?”
Kevin smiled at her again. “Forgive me for thinking that’s an oversimplification relying on stereotypes, but your personality skills aren’t those of a subordinate.” He raised a finger. “You haven’t bothered with any overt security, like guards, but you did rig my chair to be electrified, along with a dozen other subtle security arrangements I noted while you made me wait—another standard tactic of a bureaucratic higher-up. Oh, yes, and I figured you'd come running the moment I said Omega Biotech at the front door, since you didn’t know anything about it.” He leaned forward and smiled. “Also, I’ve seen you around Chinatown. You’re the ‘head secretary’ for Guild President 'Omar Zephyr.' I mean, seriously? The freaking Wizard of Oz?”
Kaye didn’t know whether to be impressed with his analytic skills and his instincts, or if she should take offense and cook him. She had known Omega had been up to something, but no one could tell what it was supposed to be. That had pissed her off to no end. Then this troglodyte saunters into her domain to tell her all that he discovered? This Exile?
It was time to teach him a lesson. She decided she could be impressed by his analysis later. “I came here cranky, Anderson. It took three minutes to compile this information on you, because so much had been deleted from the servers. It usually takes me one. Do not make the mistake of angering me.”
“Or what?” He waved a hand. “Try it.”
Kaye nodded. The metal chair he was sitting on had been wired to strap him down and send a nasty shock through his body at her command. She clicked several switches for the sole purpose of doing just that.
Her computer told her it was unable to comply.
“Your software is fine,” he said after a moment, as if he were actually trying to console her. “You’re just going to need an electrician in here after we’re done.” He shrugged. “I was bored. I spent the time you kept me waiting to disable some of your more arbitrary devices. If I try to kill you, you’ll still be able to stop me. But shocks, truth serum, etc., sorry, no.”
Kaye readjusted her position within the chair, and tapped a warning signal under her desk. It was a warning to get the defenses ready; to make sure this man didn’t leave the room alive if she didn’t. “You expect me to believe you found and disabled my security measures in ten minutes?”
“Yes. You have a great security system, and you’re lucky that there are very few people on the planet who can bypass it.”
“Is that it?” she asked flatly.
Kevin Anderson sighed. He stood, walked to the door, and opened it. A guard jabbed a gun in his face.
*
Walter Dunn swallowed hard, staring at the gun. Never once did he look directly at Kyle. His eyes were locked on the gun.
Kyle frowned. “You tried to kill me. I would like to know why.”
Dunn’s voice was shaky. “Who are you?”
Kyle sighed. “How many people have you tried to kill lately?” Kyle rolled his eyes. “Tell me why, and maybe I won’t kill you.”
Dunn swallowed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “We-weellll…”
Kyle flipped the safety back-and-forth. “It’s entirely up to you, of course. If you want to waste my time, I’ll just shoot you right now.”
Dunn swallowed. “You’ll let me live?”
“We’ll see.”
Dunn told his story, and, Mac had been absolutely right. Dunn had tried to kill him over a woman. He had met the mistress of his CEO one day and immediately wanted her. If he wanted her to come to bed with him, he would have to prove he deserved the opportunity. Hence the profit skimming, killing off his competition, and if he had taken out Kyle, it would have proved to her that he was not only capable of having a man murdered, but cleaning up afterward.
When Dunn finished, Kyle resisted the urge to shoot him immediately. “So, you thought it would be a good idea to kill off a highly-trained, professional killer, just to get someone to sleep with you, even though you could have achieved the same result from having me kill her boyfriend?” Kyle sighed. “I think, if you hadn’t tried to kill me, if you hadn’t screwed me out of what you owe, if you were merely a client, I would kill you just on the grounds of being too stupid to live.”
Dunn did not even have a chance to blink as the dart caught him right in the Adam’s apple. He began to gurgle as the neurotoxin took effect. Dunn collapsed to the floor, his eyes yellowing and finally rolling back in to his head. The seizures began almost immediately afterward. Dunn’s vocal cords clenched tightly as he instinctively attempted to scream from the pain and could not. Tears dripped from his eyes, mouth foaming.
When rigor set in, it would not be pretty. Dunn’s body was twisted, fingers disjointed, no part of his eyes but the whites showing; joints shattered, and his body had shaken in such violent seizure against the floor that it had broken apart. What was left his face, where the muscles had not torn themselves apart, was a mask of incomprehensible agony.
I may have been a drunk, but you do not play games with me.
Chapter 28: To Reign In Hell
Kevin didn’t even blink at the gun in his face. “Would you gentlemen like a chair?” The guard blinked. The spy cocked his head, and then shook it. “And work on your posture.”
He closed the door and turned back to Kaye. “I’m not
in a mood for games, Madam President. I just came from doing what you couldn’t. Omega created a bio-agent…” he stopped and blinked. “Sorry. I mean a bio-weapon.” He sighed. “And what kind of an idiot called something that destroys civilizations an agent? It’s not like it gets people jobs in Hollywood or anything.”
Kaye leaned back in the chair, the tip of her finger rubbing the emergency code button. The best personality profiles they had said he only acted crazy, but right now, she wasn’t certain
He sighed again. “Anyway, ninety minutes ago, to prevent the entire destruction of the city, I was forced to kill a plane filled with men, women, and children, and I'm not happy about it, so if you think you came in here pissed, you haven’t had my day. So, do you want to continue being angry, or do you want to hear about what happened?”
About a half-hour later, Kaye studied Kevin once again, this time with fresh eyes. It was apparent that he was smarter than he looked. While he talked, she did a status check on her security arrangements—he really had disabled most of them while waiting for her. She couldn’t kill him, or torture him for fun, but she could slow him down enough for her security team to save her, if it became necessary. He had allowed her just enough security so she would feel safe.
When he finished his story, she looked at him. “Why didn’t you go with Omega?” He stared at her. She continued, “You didn’t think about stopping them until you got to the plane, so you were tempted to go back to the East Coast. You could have gone. Why didn’t you?”
“I joined the military because I was a patriot. I still am. I believe in the United States of America. Like it or not, this is part of that republic—not officially because everyone thinks this place is glowing in the dark. But this place is still here, and I can’t ignore it.”
Kaye didn’t hesitate. It was such transparent garbage. “And you’re not interested in your fiancée?”
Kevin stopped. “You checked my credit history, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Lingerie, jewelry. If money is love, you were very much enamored. So, did she say yes before you became one of the Exiled?”
He snorted a laugh. “First of all, I prefer 'inconvenient.' Second, she said yes.”
Typical male, she thought. He’d rather stay in hell then go into commitment. Why should he leave San Francisco and run into marriage if he can avoid it? “Why weren’t you married before the exile took place?”
The spy slowly steepled his hands. With the careful, controlled motion, Kaye became slightly unnerved, as though he were a werewolf keeping his claws in. “She was with me on the compromised mission.” He stared at Kaye blankly. “Never fall in love with a coworker.” He flashed a hollow smile. “Is there anything else you have to ask me?”
The redhead stared at him a long while. This was something different. He was something different. He wasn’t the normal stab-in-the-back exec, or even a bit of pond scum. He was … a challenge. “So, why tell me?”
“If you don’t stop Omega, they will try this again.”
“And? What’s to stop me from just moving?”
Kevin grinned, for real this time. “Because you haven’t left already. You’re a genius with tech decades ahead of the East Coast, yet you’re still here. You could have fled years ago, moved to New York and disappeared without worrying at all. Why do you stay?”
“Because I have ultimate power here. Why give it up?”
Kevin nodded. “Exactly. It is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
Kaye blinked, taken aback. “You read?”
“Of course I do. Just because I was a jarhead doesn’t mean I’m illiterate…. that’s the Air Force.” He smiled. “But, seriously, who else would I tell, Madam President? The Mega Corps would just get ideas, the local cops would probably sign up for security detail to get their families out of town, and if I were to take them on by myself, they would become my full-time job, and that’s assuming they don’t sic my good friend Kyle on me.”
Her green eyes widened perceptibly. “You’re friends with Kyle Elsen?”
Kevin shrugged. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t think Kyle has friends. I think he has business associates and those he finds useful. He respects me, but I don’t know if he likes me. I don’t even know if the man likes himself. So, are we friends?” He shrugged. “It’s complicated.”
“Granted… What do you know about him?”
“He kills people and he’s really good at it.”
“That’s it?”
Mr. Anderson smiled. “Well, if you must know…”
She leaned forward, tensed on the very front of her seat. “Yes…?”
“His favorite color is urban camouflage, which is odd, I always thought it would be violet—it sounds so much like ‘violent.’” He chuckled. “Hey, Madam President, if you really want to know more, ask Kyle yourself, he doesn’t bite. Ask very politely, and make certain you offer him a lot of money first.”
Kaye blinked. “So, you don’t know, or you won’t say?”
“I don’t know, and I haven’t inquired too deeply. I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.”
“I’ve noticed.” She folded her hands in her lap and thought. Kyle was the one creature she couldn’t dig up a whole biography on with the flip of a switch. But he had waited for a long time, and she could wait just as long. “So Omega was planning to turn us into beach front property…how did you find out about this while we couldn’t?”
“You have Lint, but you need Mint.”
She blinked. “Did you say any of that in English?”
Kevin paused a moment. “Oh, nuts, sorry. Electronic Intelligence and Human Intelligence are usually called ELINT and HUMINT, but some people shortened it further… Electronic intelligence is fine, but if they know you’re coming, you’re screwed. They can put everything on paper, and I don’t think even you can monitor all the instant messages on the ‘net.”
Kaye nodded. “Understood.” She didn’t like it, but she understood it well enough. She looked towards her computer and said, “Computer, access Omega Corp files, run Sentinel program.” She looked back towards Anderson. “Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
“That depends, did you just attend to Omega Corp?”
She nodded. “They’re dead in the water and sinking, they just don’t know it yet.”
“In that case, I want to suggest you create an insurance policy, in case someone else tries to pull something similar, and I want your help getting a report back to my people to make certain they know that if anyone tries this again, they die. Just because Omega is over and done with doesn’t mean someone else won’t come up with this idea again.”
Kaye looked off into the distance, over Kevin’s shoulder, at no point in particular. It would need to be a very special virus, she decided. A computer virus with a destructive capability equivalent to the bio-weapon that had nearly been unleashed on San Francisco. It wouldn’t be too hard to leave a ticking e-bomb on the net, should anything happen to the Hacker’s Union—and without the Hacker’s Union, San Francisco was dead either way. But what would the virus do? Make all nuclear reactors go critical? Unleash a new nuclear holocaust? There were also viruses that would destroy the individuals responsible—should the power men in D.C. destroy San Francisco, a virus could dig out and publish all of their secrets, bankrupt their accounts, and send them, their families, and their livelihoods into debt.
“I’m sure we can think of something appropriate,” Kaye told him. She tapped a little bit on the keyboard on the desk, inputting the ideas she had, and then turned back to him. “Think of it as a Masada program. If we go, they go.”
Kevin nodded. “By the way, if they know about it, would they be able to find it if they went looking for it?”
She shrugged. “If they were extremely lucky. Why?”
“It just occurred to me that, if they could find it, that the chances are that they would, eventually. But if there wasn’t any virus, but they thought there was…”
>
“They’d tear out their own hard drives looking for it.” Her eyes glittered with amused malice. “I like you. I’ll consider it.”
He nodded. “Thanks, Madam President.” He rose, moving towards the door as though he were making ready to leave. “I'll toddle down the hall, and start recording that message.”
“Just call me Kaye.” She leaned back in her chair. “Do you have any source of income?”
“Let’s just say I came into a recent windfall.”
“If you need a job, I’m sure I can get you one.” She smiled slightly. “Maybe even something permanent?”
He shook his head. “No thanks. Maybe short-term, but I’ve already got a job.”
*
Kevin slipped off the trolley at Grant Street, in front of the giant arch that marked the passage to another world, Chinatown. He was still surprised that his one good deed had dropped the local crime rate to virtually nothing. But right now, all Anderson wanted was a nap in his own damn bed.
Kevin took the fire escape up the side of the building, carefully avoiding his traps along the way, and his window. He looked through the window before entering. He saw no one, paused, and drew one of the guns he had collected that evening. He carefully stepped into his living room, gun up and level the whole time. He swept the barrel from one end to the apartment, and then sharply to the other—
Suddenly he and the other man in his apartment were staring at each other down the barrels of their respective guns.
Kevin sighed, and then lowered his weapon. “Damnit, Kyle, I’m paranoid enough without you breaking into my apartment every time you decide to come to visit.”
“You were at my kill.”
The spy moved into the kitchen area and started piling confiscated weapons onto a counter. “We really need to give you a personality transplant, Kyle. I think Mac, Mickie and Lotus will be happy to chip in, and we could take up a collection.” Kevin sighed. “You might want to take a seat, it’ll take a while.”
Codename: Winterborn (The Last Survivors Book 1) Page 31