“They’re making themselves a target if they don’t let us through,” Matheson called to Bingham and Chapel.
The Tin Men began to shove back, knocking students into one another. Young men and women sprawled on the ground even as others protested the violence. A scruffy-faced kid with frantic eyes shattered a bottle on the side of Chapel’s head and the bot stiff-armed him away with such force that Felix, so close to them, heard ribs crack in the kid’s chest.
President Rostov raised the gun he’d stolen from the policeman’s corpse and fired into the air. The shot echoed off the faces of buildings and silenced them all. Students stumbled away or ducked their heads or just froze, staring. One guitarist hit a jangling note as the other musicians halted their music.
“You are students!” Rostov shouted at them, spittle flying from his lips. “Even the least intelligent of you is smart enough to have gotten this far with your lives! Most of you have enough sense to see who is standing before you, but do you understand what it means that you’re seeing us here, together, with only these few comrades at our sides?
“Idiots!” he shouted. “If there’s any hope at all of repairing the damage done to the world today, we are that hope. If there is any future in which whatever education you’ve had so far will mean anything, we are the ones who will build that future. Let us pass, you fools, for if the men who caused today’s horrors catch up with us, there will be no hope at all!”
Startled, the students began to fall back, opening a path for them. Bingham moved immediately, while Syd and Kirkham ushered the presidents forward. Chapel nudged Felix into motion and he rushed ahead, catching up so that he found himself striding beside Rostov.
“You believe all of that?” Felix asked in Russian.
Rostov glanced at him, eyes narrowed.
“Some,” he muttered in his gravelly voice. “People will pull together or they will fall under the boot-heels of one oppressor or another. Peter and I…we can lead. Create alliances. Rebuild and repair. There’s hope in that…but not magic.”
They passed through the thickest throng of students and moved along the block as small clusters gawked at them. One of the young men shouted drunken words of support that were hard to decipher.
A scream came from behind them, followed by gunfire.
“Here they come!” Syd shouted.
Rostov halted, turning to see how bad a turn the situation had taken. Matheson put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him forward.
Felix ran past them, moving to catch up with Bingham. The marina! he wanted to scream. Getting to a boat seemed the only thing left that mattered.
More gunfire drummed the air and the students began to scatter, running for their lives. Felix saw a young woman fall to the pavement and then rise, limping. The two who’d been having sex on top of the dead car in the street slid off the hood and tried to run. The naked girl hurled herself behind a thick tree on the university’s tiny lawn while her lover tripped over the pants that were crumpled around his ankles and then tried to rise only to be shot twice in the back.
“Look there!” Felix shouted, pointing along a narrow side street across from the university.
Armed soldiers in black uniforms ran up the street toward them, carrying assault rifles. Many wore riot helmets, but none of them bore any insignia Felix could see.
“Greek military?” Syd asked.
The soldiers opened fire, giving Syd her answer.
“This way,” Chapel shouted, grabbing Felix by the arm.
Felix felt the change in direction but he kept his head down and ran alongside Chapel as bullets flew around them. One dinged off of Chapel’s back and Felix felt the terrible certainty that he would never leave Athens alive, that his hope of seeing Kate again had been a fantasy.
They reached a row of glass doors. Bullets shattered two of them as Bingham and the presidents approached. The bot crashed right through. Shards of glass rained down around her and then the rest of them were hurtling through the broken doorways, boots crunching on broken glass.
“Move aside!” Felix shouted, certain that bullets would come right into the interior of the university’s main lobby and kill them there in the sorrowful darkness that the Pulse had left behind.
“What now?” Rostov asked.
“We work from cover,” Matheson said. “Kill as many of them as we can as fast as we can and then we run for it before reinforcements arrive. We’re a block and a half from the marina and I’m not giving up when we’re this close.”
He gestured to Chapel. “You and Bingham go tear them apart.”
“Yes, Mister President,” Chapel said. “Gladly.”
“Better take another look,” Syd announced. She’d slid along the wall inside the main entrance to get a clear view of the outside. Her pale face looked more ghostly than ever. “Those reinforcements are already here.”
~23~
Aimee moaned quietly as she dozed. She had paced her cell for the early hours of her confinement, pausing to try to eavesdrop on the interrogation taking place across the hall. She heard Major Zander’s sharp tones but had difficulty making out the words; North’s voice never grew above a low rumble as the MPs came and went. Major Zander might have gone out for a time as well, but if so it had been after she had decided to lie down on the concrete-hard cot.
From the cot she could hear even less of what unfolded across the corridor, but she realized that none of it mattered. If they could never confirm that North was guilty, she felt confident that at some point they would at least decide that she herself had not participated in his crimes. She could prove it if they would give her access to a computer. It might take a while, but eventually she would be released.
Aimee rolled that calming mantra around in her mind and tried to make herself believe it was the truth. She had lain there, just breathing and reassuring herself, until she had drifted off to sleep with murmurings and occasional bursts of violence as her lullaby, all coming to her from North’s cell.
A shout woke her.
She clung urgently to sleep. There came another shout and then a series of loud thumps from across the hall, the crack of wood and the muffled snap of a gunshot. Only then did Aimee open her eyes. She lay on the cot and stared at the wall.
They killed him, she thought. They just executed North. No matter what kind of traitorous bastard he’d turned out to be, the idea that a man she’d made love to had just died less than twenty-five feet away from her…she could scarcely imagine it.
A loud thump echoed across the hall, followed by two more in quick succession. Would they do the same thing to her? Had the world changed so much since this morning that if they did not like her answers they would just kill her?
She heard the hinges squeak on the door to North’s cell but no voices. Major Zander and the MPs had finished their work and now they remained silent, as killers often did. Would they try to be surreptitious now, hide what they’d done, or did it not matter? Perhaps this was meant to be a warning to others who would betray their uniforms—a warning to me.
She leaped from the bed and rushed to the door of her cell. There might be no such thing as a court martial in this new world, where the only people they could be sure were safe were those underground with them, but she would argue her case.
“Look,” she said, “if you give me a chance, I swear I can prove—“
A shadow ran past her cell. Boots hammered the floor, maybe two dozen steps, and then a second gunshot rang out, this one echoing up and down the corridor. The boots returned and a moment later the shadow slid into view. A man stood just outside her cell, staring in through the small mesh window.
Thomas North.
My God, she thought. Three armed men against one unarmed prisoner. The idea that North had prevailed had not occurred to her.
“If it helps,” North said, leaning against the outside of her cell door, “Major Zander never believed you’d been working with me. He couldn’t rule it out, but he had faith in you.”
Aimee brought a hand up to cover her mouth. “You killed them?”
North stepped aside so that she had a view across the hall. His cell door hung open and she could see one of the MPs in the open doorway, the man’s head dented and bloody from where North had bashed it against the wall or the doorframe. Beyond him, Major Zander lay crumpled and dull-eyed, a bullet hole just to the left of his nose. Aimee figured the gun had been fired at an upward angle, the bullet tearing through Zander’s brain.
“This whole thing was supposed to be an equalizer,” North said. “Put the world on a level playing field. I’ve got family out there, people I love. They’re gonna be taken care of, as long as I do what I promised. And I get to live. You think Zander would’ve made me the same deal? Hell, even if he would have, there’d be no way for him to guarantee it. The old world is over.”
He jangled a set of keys in front of the mesh.
Aimee felt sick. “What are you doing?”
“I couldn’t work the door release, but these ought to do the trick,” he said as he began to try each of the keys in the lock.
Aimee backed away from the door as if it had burned her. “You son of a bitch. Just stay out there, all right? I’m locked up. You’ll either finish what you started or they’ll shoot you. Killing me won’t change that.”
The lock tumbled with a clank that made her flinch.
North stared at her through the mesh. “I’m not going to kill you, Aimee. I didn’t want to kill those guys—I don’t want to kill anyone.” He hauled the door open and stood face to face with her, stolen gun aimed at her chest. “But I’ve resigned myself to doing what needs to be done and that means shutting down the Hump’s defenses and unlocking the doors. I know where I’m going, how to move around without being seen, but I don’t have your skills. The techies will be on guard now, but you’re like a fucking virtuoso with this stuff.”
Aimee shook her head, her face flushed and her breathing short.
“You don’t actually think I’m going to help you?”
North lifted the gun, aiming it at her heart. “I know you are. Think for a second on the difference between brave and stupid. You opened your heart to me, Aimee. I know you have family, friends…people who would be devastated if you died.”
“If they’re still alive after today,” she said, “they’d be ashamed of me for helping you.”
“Not if you only did it because some lunatic held a gun to your head,” North replied. He nodded to her. “Hurry up and decide. I shut off the cameras on this corridor just now and most everyone’s attention is elsewhere, but it won’t be long until someone comes to check on the major.”
Aimee stared at him. Her throat tightened and her mouth went dry. She told herself that if she lived she could be the base’s best hope. Even if he dragged her along with him, she could find a way to thwart him. Dead, she would be of no use to anyone. North took a step nearer and lifted the pistol, aiming between her eyes.
“Don’t think I won’t kill you if it buys safety for me and the people I love,” he said, as if he could read her mind.
In the end it was the anguish in his eyes that convinced her. It tore him up, but he meant it. Safety for the people he loved. Once she had thought she might be one of those people.
He ushered her into the corridor with the barrel of the gun and then followed behind her.
“Into the guard booth,” he said. “First thing you’re going to do is take down the internal surveillance cams. All of them.”
Aimee wanted to tell him to go to hell. The words were on her lips. But the presence of the gun seemed to burn a small spot at the base of her spine, and she knew that she would do as he’d asked. It would make it harder to locate them, maybe buy North enough time to complete his mission.
Unless she could stop him.
Kate barked orders as the hydroptere skimmed toward Piraeus. The signal had grown louder as they approached Athens and she had intended to sail the ship directly toward that signal, but now it seemed the signal had been coming from Piraeus itself.
“Birnbaum, you’ve got to slow us down!” she shouted.
Kate still knew next to nothing about sailing the trimaran but Birnbaum had done a credible job of teaching the others the basics. Sails began to furl and shift and soon they were gliding slowly enough that the angled foils beneath the hydroptere’s wings slid into the water. When the floats touched the undulating sea the ship began to roll with the waves and Kate realized just how much smoother their journey had been on a hydrofoil than it would have been on any other vessel.
“Travaglini!” she called. “I want you and Broaddus in the water on my mark. Each of you take a line and tie us off.”
Danny stood on the right wing, staring into the seaspray and the darkness ahead.
“You’re taking us into the marina?” he asked.
“Why not?” Kate called back.
“Take a look!”
The wind had died down with the easing of their speed and she could hear the voices of her squad, mostly Birnbaum snapping commands to Torres and Zuzu. Kate had been so focused on their speed and general direction that she hadn’t glanced at the horizon in a minute or two. Now she looked westward and saw the fires burning in Athens. Even from this distance, the orange light of those flames gave a terrible amber aura to the sky above the city. Black smoke drifted in clouds that seemed to swallow moonlight.
Several smaller fires burned in Piraeus, much closer to their position, and as the hydroptere cut its threefold trail across the water Kate realized she could make out the Zea marina after all. Hundreds of yards wide, it had been constructed as a vast circle with long docks all around its circumference. The only gap in the circle was at the mouth of the marina, between a pair of sea walls. One wall was stationary but the other looked as if it might be a swinging gate to protect the marina from the sort of storm surge that had been devastating to oceanfront areas around the world. The marina could have held hundreds of yachts and sailboats. At this distance, with the eyesight of a robot and in the light of the moon and stars, she could make out only a handful of masts. The yachts remained, their engines useless, but most of the sailing ships were gone.
“Birnbaum!” she called. “Get us in close to the sea wall but don’t enter the marina!”
There would be people looking for any way out of the chaos in Athens. Most of those who had thought of sailing away were already gone, but Kate wasn’t about to take chances. They could not afford any complications.
She bent and then extended the arm Birnbaum had reattached. The hand and elbow joints worked fine but the shoulder had limited range of motion. Kate didn’t mind the charred blackness of her carapace or the places where it had warped a bit from the heat of the explosion, but she feared that partially frozen shoulder could cost her in combat. She hoped not to find out.
The hydroptere continued to slow. As they glided toward the marina, Kate glanced back at Hanif Khan. The anarchist had been stitched up and the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital, so the wound wouldn’t kill him, but he’d lost a lot of blood and they had no way to replenish it. He looked drawn and tired, hunched over to protect himself from the wind and the sea spray. Zuzu kept a gun on him at all times. Once he’d been Afghani warlord and later a Bot Killer; now he was a wounded prisoner.
Wounded or not, Kate thought, don’t underestimate him.
Khan couldn’t do the bots any harm—not without a high-powered gun and the time to aim—but a man that dangerous would always be dangerous, and they had Alexa to think of.
As if summoned by the thought, Alexa began to make her way forward. She had spent the past twenty minutes in Kate’s old spot at the rear of the central float but now she stepped carefully along it, ducked under the sails, and hurried up to the prow.
“What’s the plan, Kate?” Alexa asked.
“Sergeant Wade,” she corrected. “And the plan is to rescue the President and whatever remains of his entourage, with POTUS our priority.”
“President Matheson and your dad, you mean.”
Kate nodded. “That’s right.”
Alexa held herself differently now than she had when they met at the embassy earlier in the day. Seventeen could be a strange age even in the best of times. A kid could go from petulant and whiny to wise and courageous in the space of minutes, and then back again. But most seventeen year olds didn’t cross that bridge in the midst of combat, and most didn’t have to witness the murder of a parent. Alexa had crossed that bridge today and from what Kate could tell, she’d burned the motherfucker down behind her. The girl had a sharp glint in her eyes and a bold tilt to her jaw that bespoke a hardening of the heart.
“I should have a gun,” Alexa said.
Kate frowned. “I don’t think so. We can handle the fighting. Besides, you won’t be going anywhere near combat. You’re staying right here on this ship with Birnbaum. She’ll be guarding Khan and keeping you safe, just in case anyone decides to try to borrow our boat.”
“Not a chance,” Alexa said. “No way am I staying behind!”
“Alexa, listen—“
“You’re not leaving me!”
The Tin Men who weren’t occupied with sailing the trimaran looked up, staring at the furious seventeen-year-old. Khan kept his head down, as if he hadn’t even heard Alexa raise her voice.
“You’ve been in enough firefights for one day, kid—“
“Stop calling me that.”
Kate nodded. “Okay. Alexa, then. Do you see the fires burning all over the place? I can hear gunfire from here. It’s going to be more chaos, more risk of you being killed. On top of that, if my people have to look out for you that makes us less effective. I’ll say it one more time. I’m sorry, but you are staying right here.”
Tin Men Page 30