She swiveled her head and looked up at him blankly. This was so far outside her area of expertise, it felt like she really had fallen down that rabbit hole.
Baring fingered some clothes she’d left on the bed while packing and knowledge came to her in a sick rush. “He”—she swallowed heavily—“he knows I packed a bag.”
“Bingo.”
Baring cocked his head, eyes unfocused. She couldn’t figure out what he was doing, then realized he was listening to an earbud. “Yeah, boss,” he said, and pulled out a big black knife she hadn’t even noticed.
“Boss?” Nick turned to her. “Who’s his boss? Who does he mean?”
What was he doing with that knife?
“Huh? Oh. Well, technically, the CEO of our company, James Longman, is his boss. But he’s away at a conference in Hong Kong. So I don’t know who he’s reporting to.”
Baring held the knife by its haft, blade down. He lifted the knife over his head, bent slightly, and slashed a pillow on her bed. It was so outlandish a move that Catherine could only watch, blinking.
“Whoever he’s reporting to is a real fuckhead,” the blond said, anger in his voice. “Baring’s been given orders to trash your house.”
He had. Under Catherine’s horrified gaze, Baring and his two men set about systematically vandalizing her home. They were very fast and very thorough. She watched as that black knife slashed every soft surface in her bedroom. There was nothing much in the study except a worktable and chair, so they hadn’t gotten to it yet, but the sounds of broken crockery and splintered wood could be heard from the kitchen.
And soon enough, the sound of splintered wood came from the bedroom itself. Baring went through her Shaker chest of drawers, thoroughly, systematically, throwing everything on the floor, then pulled out all the drawers and tipped it over.
She gasped. The knife rose and fell and soon her lovely chest of drawers was shattered. He hunkered down on his haunches and went swiftly through the contents.
He rose and went to her closet. The door shielded him from view but there were ripping sounds and pieces of material floated in the air.
Catherine didn’t have that much. She was a saver and had simple tastes. In the space of a quarter of an hour, as she watched, shaking, every single item she owned was sliced or shattered or crushed.
“Why on earth are they doing this?” she said finally, when she could form words around the dryness in her mouth.
“Looking for something,” Nick said.
She swiveled to look at him. “Looking for something? Looking for what? What could I possibly have that would interest them? There’s nothing valuable there at all. Certainly nothing that would warrant a scorched-earth search like that.”
“They’re looking for intel,” Mac said behind her.
Nick and the blond man nodded grimly.
Intel—the military term for information. It confirmed a secret conviction she had that Patient Nine and these men were ex-military.
“On what?” Her mouth was numb. It was hard to articulate words. “There’s nothing in my house to find.”
“That’s not what they think.” The blond shot her an assessing look. “They clearly think there’s something there. Something they want. Something they need. But . . . looks like they didn’t find what they were looking for after all.”
The frenzy of destruction was nearly over. No, she thought. It hadn’t been a frenzy. That would imply emotion. It had been utterly cold and calculated.
It had been a declaration of war.
Baring and his two men stopped, conferring in the wasteland of her bedroom. They were speaking in low tones, heads together. Her computer microphone couldn’t pick up what they were saying, but their body language was eloquent. Whatever it is they wanted from her, they hadn’t got it.
Baring closed her laptop and they lost sight of him. There was a close-up of a goon fiddling near her desktop and the picture disappeared there, too. Her desktop had a mini quantum hard disk that was easy to detach.
They trooped out together from her bedroom into the living room and out the front door.
Surfer Dude flicked two fingers and a few seconds later the vidcam over the lintel of the Fredericksons’ showed the three men walking quickly to a big black Compass and driving away. Baring was carrying her laptop and she had no doubt he also had her hard drive.
Good luck with that. She cleaned her hard drive every evening, storing everything in the cloud, access to the cloud only by an encrypted code she’d designed herself.
Mac spun her around in her chair and for a second she was dizzy, spinning on air. A complete metaphor for her life. Nothing underneath her, nothing holding her up.
“What’s your take on this, Doctor?”
She thought, hard.
Everything had changed, on a dime. Like a supersaturated solution crystallizing in an instant.
These three tough men in the room with her had just become her friends and allies. She hoped. She had to stay here if Baring was after her. There was nowhere else for her to go, because if they were looking for her, no question, they’d find her. She didn’t even remotely know which steps to take to disappear.
That cold, merciless destruction of her pretty little house, put together lovingly piece by piece, had been infinitely more frightening than if crazed methheads had entered her home with a pickax.
And—it suddenly occurred to her—Baring was backed up by one of the most powerful corporations in existence. Millon was partially owned by one of the largest companies in the world, Arka Pharmaceuticals. The head of research at Arka, Dr. Charles Lee, often showed showed up at Millon.
Baring would never pay for what he did. She knew enough to know how it worked. Millon and Arka both kept whole flocks of lawyers on call for just such things as this. Hard-pressed and money-starved local law enforcement officers would be no match.
“What’s my take on this?” Her shoulders lifted and fell. She did it more to move her muscles than anything else, because she felt paralyzed by fear. Like some creature caught in headlights, knowing the oncoming truck was coming too fast to escape. Her muscles felt stiff and uncooperative, and she had to fight to keep from curling in on herself, just folding in, forgetting the whole outside world. “I have no idea. None. I have no idea what they were looking for, except that they didn’t find it. Which means—”
“Which means they’ll look again. Harder, this time. And if they can, they’ll press you for answers. And press hard. Those aren’t the good guys.” Mac’s voice was implacable.
She shivered, remembering Baring’s stony, cruel face. “Yes, they will. And no, they’re not.”
“We’re the good guys,” Blondie said, pointing a thumb at his chest, then Nick. “Even big guy over here, no matter how scary he looks.”
Mac looked over, just moving his eyes. Yes, he did look scary. She had to hope she’d read him correctly. She had no idea whatsoever what the other two men were like. All she had to go on were her animal senses, the instinctive low-level early warning system all reasonably attractive women developed in urban areas, and that system wasn’t pinging.
“And a good thing, too,” Blondie continued. “Because it looks like what that book said. You can’t go home again.”
The dark, quiet man—Nick—was even more explicit. “If you want your life back anytime soon, we’d better figure out what they want.”
“You’re safe here,” Mac said quietly. “I’m still not too sure how you got here, but we’re really hard to find. And as you know, we kill any vehicle getting within five miles of this place and kill their commo system, too.”
She was having a delayed reaction. Her hands started shaking so hard she had to put them between her knees because though there were no crazy vibes coming from any of the three men, danger vibes were. Whether they were dangerous to her or not, they were clearly hard men, like soldiers or cops, only with something more. Tougher, less friendly.
Talk about being between a hard place
and a rock. They had to believe she was harmless. Otherwise they’d MIB her and let her loose like a house-trained pet released into the jungle. She’d wake up somewhere with no knowledge of the past two or three days and no clue that Cal Baring and his goons were trying to track her down.
If she asked them not to take her memory away, that would raise suspicion like nothing else. Oh God. The thought of waking up in some hotel room with no memory, no way to defend herself . . .
A chilly wave rose up in her and she shivered, huddling in on herself. It was almost impossible to breathe; her chest would only do this jerky, raspy, panting thing. Spots danced before her eyes.
A huge, hard hand landed on her neck, pressed down until her head nearly met her knees.
“Breathe,” a deep voice commanded from way above her. It sounded like it came from the ceiling. She gasped. The hand tightened slightly. “Breathe,” the voice commanded again.
She did. First one deep breath, then another. Something lightened inside her chest, her heart went from trying to pound its way out of her rib cage to a dull but fast rhythmic beat.
“You okay?” Mac asked.
“Never been better,” she gasped, immediately ashamed of herself. A lifetime of hiding her emotions from others and now these three men were watching her naked panic, her humiliating fear, and there was nothing she could do about it. Control—the iron control she’d spent a lifetime honing—eluded her, had simply disappeared.
The big, heavy hand on her neck squeezed slightly, not painfully. Then the hand lifted and, crazily, she missed it. Only when the hand was gone did she realize that she could have read Mac while his hand was on her neck, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t read him at all. Had no clue what his emotions were. All she knew was the effect he had on her.
The door whooshed open and a man rushed in—pale, thin, balding. He was wild-eyed. “Mac! I can’t find Pat or Salvatore. We need help in the infirmary, quick! Where are they, do you know?”
The three men rose. Mac frowned. “Down in Silver Springs.”
The pale man held up a wafer-thin piece of plastic. “Pat’s not answering and neither is Salvatore. How can they not be answering?”
“Shit,” Blondie said, running a hand through his sun-streaked hair. “Pat told me she was negotiating for a new imaging machine that hasn’t hit the market yet. She was—” A sidelong glance at Catherine and his jaws clamped shut. Whatever it was he was going to say, he wasn’t going to say it in front of her.
A thin sheen of sweat covered the pale man’s face. “They’re not supposed to be gone at the same time. And why aren’t they answering their phone?”
Mac rose. He was so close to her, Catherine had to crane her neck to watch his face. He flicked a glance at her and answered without Blondie’s hesitation. Maybe he trusted her more. Then again, maybe her memory was going to be wiped and she wouldn’t remember a word of this.
“Pat and Salvatore told me the new equipment is held in a shielded shed because some of the medical equipment the company sells has radioactive isotopes. So they won’t be reachable.” He looked at a huge black wristwatch and frowned. Even in the bright overhead light nothing in the wristwatch reflected light. “They should have been back by now.”
“Fuck.” The pale man’s lips folded in. Sweat now ran down his face in rivulets though it was chilly in the room. “What the fuck we gonna do?”
Mac looked at the pale man with a frown. “I’ve had training as a medic, Sam. You know that. What’s wrong?”
“You might be trained as a medic, Mac,” Sam answered, “but I don’t think your training will cover this. It’s Bridget and she’s about ready to pop her kid. Any minute now. So you know what to do?”
There was absolutely nothing even remotely funny about Catherine’s situation. She was trapped among possibly hostile men, another band of definitely hostile men had trashed her apartment and were looking for her.
But for one fleeting second she nearly laughed out loud at the expression on Mac’s face.
He had trained for bullets and broken bones but childbirth had him panicked.
Childbirth?
Shit, shit, shit.
Bridget was the wife of Bobby “Red” Gibson, the community fixit guy. Red could repair a rocket ship on its way to the moon. He kept their community running and Bridget helped Stella with the cooking.
Bridget had been lured to the States from Ireland on the promise of a contract as a nanny for a very wealthy West Coast family and had ended up being little more than an indentured servant. One, moreover, that the husband of the household had his eye on.
She’d fallen in love with the estate handyman, Red. When Red heard her screams as she resisted rape, he rushed in to rescue her and punched the industrialist in the mouth. The industrialist had ties to the mob. Red and Bridget fled with the clothes on their backs.
They made their way to Haven the way everyone else did—seemingly by some kind of dog whistle sent out to only those capable of hearing it. Both of them were mainstays in their little community and everyone was looking forward to the birth of Bridget’s baby, the first in Haven.
It was like everyone was expecting that fucking baby, not just Bridget.
They were all, to one degree or another, outlaws and outcasts. Exiles in their own land. They’d made a sort of a country of their own here and now the first citizen was about to be born. The idea made even Nick smile. Occasionally.
Now this baby everyone was looking forward to, who was supposed to be born in a month, was coming early, right when the two nurses who ran the infirmary were both away.
Sam, Nick and Jon were looking at him. He was their fucking leader, wasn’t he? So why shouldn’t they look to him? Except . . . fuck.
Childbirth.
Mac knew how to deal with most situations. His medic training had been thorough. He was good with injuries, had dealt with a lot of them in the field. Pack a bleeding wound, start up a field IV, splint a broken bone, fine. But a premature birth? Not so much.
For the first time in living memory he was paralyzed by indecision. With any other situation he’d have said to hold it until Pat got back but even he knew babies waited on no one. They arrived on their own goddamned schedule. And a month early—what the hell did that mean? Would they be needing an incubator? Because they sure as hell didn’t have one.
So what the fuck was he supposed to do? He had no clue and he did not want to fuck this up. He was looking forward to this birth as much as anyone. He was goddamned if he was going to lose the baby or the mother.
“I can help.” Everyone turned at the soft words. Catherine twisted her hands. “I don’t practice medicine, I’m a researcher, but I am an M.D. And I rotated through OB-GYN for three months. I want to help.”
“Absolutely not.” Jesus. They had no idea who this woman was. How she’d found them. He couldn’t send her to the infirmary, expose even more of their secrets.
And then there was the question of the weird effect she had on him. She was way too beautiful for her own good. Certainly for his own good. Everything about her made him edgy, restless. No way was she—
“Fantastic,” Sam blurted out. He grabbed her hand and started running.
Chapter Nine
email from Special Projects Section
Ministry of Science and Technology, Beijing
Operation Warrior
Dr. Lee—We have followed with great disappointment the latest experiment. The People’s Republic is negotiating with the Burundian government for access to their iridium deposits. The rebel Army is active in the area of maximum concentration of the iridium deposits. We were hoping to implement Operation Warrior very soon. The failure of SL-58 means a delay of another six months at least.
In the meantime, Dr. Huang Wu of the ministry has requested funding for large-scale weaponry which includes sonic waves that have been shown to disable humans in experiments conducted on prisoners in Haerbin. Funding has been granted. It has been decided at the highest leve
ls of government that the Red Army will either pursue your protocol of enhanced abilities or a protocol of enhanced weaponry. The decision will be taken in six months’ time, after which no matter what your results, you will not find an infrastructure in place in the military to achieve your project.
Do not disappoint me and the ministry. The People’s Republic is moving inexorably toward its destiny.
Minister Zhang Wei
email from Chao Yu
The Minister is truly angry. Do something fast.
Lee stared at the screen long after the information had been understood. Understood but not absorbed. From childhood he had trained himself to control his emotions but something stirred deep inside him, something that could not be instantly repressed as unproductive.
Rage.
Rage was not productive but it was what he felt behind the barriers he’d erected between himself and the world.
Sonic waves.
He sat, staring ahead, feeling hot surges of shame and anger pulse through him. Sonic waves were toys. Weapons out of science fiction comics from the thirties. Mechanical, uninteresting. Once the weapons were used once or twice, the enemy could easily find a way to block the sounds and the vibrations and the People’s Army would be just as exposed as before.
It was unthinkable that the Minister did not understand that. A child could understand it. No, the only possible way to leverage the power of the PLA was to make each soldier as effective as ten.
Hardware wouldn’t do it. Neither would software. But meatware would.
He sat, frozen, for over an hour, steeping in the unfairness.
He was risking everything—his career, even his life—to develop the ultimate weapon for his homeland. And they treated him like a lackey. He was going to make China the world’s dominant leader for the next thousand years and this was how he was treated?
The Minister would rue this day. Lee would see to it personally.
In the meantime, he had another protocol to use on the Captain and the others. Then the Captain would be harvested, his brain studied in molecular detail. Much information would come from that.
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