by Gini Koch
“Not just them,” Lorraine said, her voice tight. “Those horrible people who protest at military and other funerals are there, too.”
“Oh, fantastic. The least Christian Christians in the world and the most xenophobic morons together at last. Two bad tastes that taste even worse together. But, I have to figure that’s a love match made in hell, right there.” Wondered if they’d done their hook up yesterday, after chasing us. Probably.
“Undoubtedly,” Buchanan said.
“Com on!”
“Yes, Chief?”
“Walter, you’re back on the job so fast?”
“Yes, Chief, though William’s still here with me.”
“Good. William, please stick around. Bring the wife and kids over if you’d like, but do it via a gate. Shields need to be up on the entire Embassy complex.”
“William suggested I keep shields active, Chief. Shields have not been off since he first turned them on yesterday.”
“You two rock. We have a situation outside that could quickly turn into a riot. I’m certain people will try to get in. We need to let friends in and keep enemies out. Good luck with figuring out which are which.”
“On it, Chief. Do you want the com to remain open?”
“No, but please advise Jeff of what’s going on. He’s still with some of the others in the conference room.”
“I don’t know that Field teams are the right answer,” Chuckie said once Walter had turned off the com. “I think we might need the National Guard.”
“We need to discuss this at the Zoo,” Olga reminded us.
We started across the bridge, meaning we were now easily seen from the street. This clearly made the crowd’s day. They turned their random focus onto us. Happily, the thick glass and metal and other materials made the bridge pretty soundproofed, so we couldn’t hear what they were yelling. I could guess, though. I’d heard most of it already.
We could, however, see them surging at us, which wasn’t fun to experience. They weren’t all that coordinated, but there were a lot of them. Wanted to pull my Glock out of my purse, but since bulletproof glass worked both ways, controlled my fight impulse, though it took effort.
Someone tossed something at the bridge, and that, of course, meant that others followed suit. Good to know this was one of their signature moves.
Happily, the shields were indeed on and working quite well. Whatever was being thrown was tossed right back. Tried not to feel vindictive joy when signs, rotten fruit, and other nasty things bounced back onto the crowd. Failed.
We reached the Zoo and were able to at least not look at the scene outside. The Zoo’s first floor was where the Alpha Four animals were on display on random days and times for our protection, the fourth and fifth were housing and the Computer Lab. The third floor was where we now hosted gala events where sometimes our guests didn’t die.
But the second floor was mostly a huge kitchen, a row of bathrooms, one of which housed a gate, a couple of elevators, and open space. It made for a good For Your Ears Only meeting room, because there was almost nothing anyone could hide in or behind.
The rest of Hacker International were waiting for us, looking worried. “Did you look outside?” Ravi asked.
“We walked over from the Embassy, what do you think?” Stryker replied.
Showing that Dazzlers were always on top of things, Lorraine and Claudia did a fast check of the floor and stairwells while Hacker International bickered amongst themselves about who was on top of looking at the mob outside and who wasn’t.
“We’re alone,” Claudia said when they returned, a few seconds later.
The one thing this floor didn’t have was chairs. Oh well. Olga’s chair traveled with her, and everyone else could follow my lead and sit their butts down on Mr. Clean Floor. Most of them did—we looked like the most formal bunch of Fireside Friends ever—though Buchanan remained standing, and because he did, Len and Kyle did as well.
“Great. Okay, I know what’s going on and I know why, at least, most of it. But first, to explain why we’re here and everyone else is in the conference room, you know how I’ve been saying off and on that we have a mole?”
Everyone nodded. “Going to steal your thunder,” Chuckie said. “It’s Gladys, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and before you all start protesting, I don’t think she’s been a willing mole.”
“No,” Tito agreed. “However, she’s given in to Al Dejahl’s mind control at least twice that we know of. Who’s to say it hasn’t been more often?”
“I’d think she’d have told someone if that were the case, Richard maybe,” Lorraine said.
“Not if she doesn’t remember it. She said that things are fuzzy when she’s under mind control and she can’t remember everything.”
“How long have you known about Ronaldo Al Dejahl?” Olga asked.
“Since Jamie was born. But he was a French businessman and philanthropist well before then. And he had to have been protected in some way, because Mom never made the connection to him and the Al Dejahl terrorist group until then.”
“While I’m sure he’s been protected,” Buchanan said, “your mother checked him out years ago. But Al Dejahl and its derivatives are common names in a small, very rural part of Europe and also in a few remote regions in the Middle East, and he had legitimate lineage to those areas. Ronaldo wasn’t shown to be anything but a successful businessman until Baby Chief’s birth.”
“So, where does this leave us?” Adriana asked.
“Besides exposed and under attack both from the mob outside and from our other enemies? It leaves us with this—I know, exactly, what the bad guys are after.” Pointed to Tito’s laptop. “From now on, Tito, that laptop, its backups, Melanie, Emily, and Magdalena are considered second only to Jamie and the rest of the kids in terms of protection needs.”
Nurse Carter looked confused. “Why? And why am I on that list?”
“Because what our enemies are searching so desperately for is the one thing they couldn’t have found when they stole and wiped our data yesterday—the research on the Yates Gene.”
CHAPTER 56
IT WAS A GOOD THING I wasn’t hoping for gasps of surprise or horror, because I didn’t get many, though Nurse Carter came through in a big way. Of course, she was the only one who wasn’t an active member of Alpha Team, who wasn’t determined to never let me know I’d surprised them, and who hadn’t been in the conference room with us.
“Why are you sure?” Chuckie asked. “I can tell you’re sure, and I’m inclined to agree, but I want to know your thinking first.”
“Because they took Melanie and Emily hostage. And there was no reason. They didn’t take Walter or the Barones, who are actively working in the Embassy. They didn’t try to lure Alfred and Lucinda or any of the rest of Jeff’s family into the trap. They had freaking Alpha and Airborne captive, and they left them. So they wanted Melanie and Emily, specifically, and there’s only one reason in the world why they’d be more appealing as hostages than anyone else I’ve named, and it’s because they’re the only ones who work with Tito on the Yates Gene project and also assist at all hybrid births.”
“Makes sense to me,” Tim said. “But do you think Gladys, or any of the other A-Cs, have figured out the connection you just made?”
“Jeff has because he can read me so easily and he went out of his way to help us get out of the room.”
“Christopher hasn’t,” Amy said. “And not because I think my husband’s stupid or unobservant. But he’s been distracted and moody like I’ve never seen, for the past few weeks, really, and I honestly think he was paying more attention to the inside of his own head than anything else going on.”
Chose not to share why I knew Amy was probably accurate. “Raj and Richard, maybe. Lucinda probably not. Gladys? Let’s just hope not.”
“Doreen might have,” Irving said. “But if she did, she won’t say anything.”
“Yeah, she’s our best untrained liar, well, her and
Richard. And Raj.” Okay, we had some A-Cs really coming along in terms of lying. Good for us, I hoped. “Speaking of which, we need to contact our trained liar. How soon can we get in touch with Camilla?”
Chuckie shook his head. “There’s almost nothing you can say that will make it worthwhile to risk her cover.”
“We need to get into Gaultier and get our data back, while also wiping our theirs.”
“Not sure escalation’s the right answer, Kitty,” Tim said.
“Not sure allowing them access to all our work on superbeing genetics is the right answer, either,” Lorraine countered. “They could figure out what Tito has, or at least what the missing links are, with all the work we’ve done over the decades.”
“Gladys is in there with our moms,” Claudia said, worry clear. “They know what we know and what Tito knows.”
“I don’t think Gladys will do anything while she’s in the Embassy,” Irving said.
“Really? Like she wouldn’t in the Science Center? I think that she won’t do anything because our enemies currently think they’ve won, and that’s the only reason.”
“We won’t have long before Chernobog drills down and discovers that what they want they don’t have,” Omega Red added. “Hours, not days.”
“There’s decades’ worth of data, and Chernobog isn’t an A-C. We may have days. But I’m with Yuri—whether it’s days or it’s hours, we won’t have as much time as we’d like.”
“If we want into Gaultier, we’ll need to have Camilla’s help,” Amy said. “There’s no way they’re going to leave things unprotected long enough for us to find what we need, hyperspeed or no hyperspeed.”
“Don’t suppose we can do like Al Dejahl and pull an older move of our own, like just flipping their fire alarm to clear out the building,” Tim said with a laugh.
“Oh, Megalomaniac Lad, there are times when I just don’t know how I function without you by my side on a regular basis. That’s it.”
“There’s no way a fire alarm will clear out everyone we need,” Amy said. “Gaultier’s equipment is state-of-the-art. And I wouldn’t leave my special, evil brews and ill-gotten data unprotected, fire or no fire.”
“There’s more than one way to clear out a building. And when push comes to shove, we can use an effective weapon—public opinion. Besides, we don’t need everyone out, just the people who can give orders.”
“You mind explaining that?” Chuckie asked. “Because while we followed you on everything else, I guarantee none of us know what you’re talking about right now.”
“So few ever do, Chuckie. So few ever do. Hang on.” Sent Jeff a text. Happily, or un-, depending on whose viewpoint you went with, the A-Cs had decided that they needed to support the President’s wishes, or else it would look like the protestors had won. Good, that played into my plan.
Verified one other thing, and got another happy reply, and the additional news that Gladys and Lucinda were heading back to join the rest of the Gowers and their closer relatives and share the group’s decision, meaning that the rest of our gang was on their way over to join us.
Seeing as they were all A-Cs, they were with us by the time I finished reading Jeff’s text.
Brought them quickly up to speed. Interestingly, only Christopher was shocked by the revelations. Amy was right—he was really distracted. He’d admitted why to pretty much everyone here, other than his wife, and I was fairly sure she was the last person he wanted to tell. But we’d deal with Christopher’s issues later.
“Kitty has a plan, but, as always, we don’t know what it is,” Chuckie said when we were done with the catching up.
“Blah, blah, blah. Just wanted the rest of the team over here so I didn’t have to say it twice. But first, a couple of questions. Am I right in thinking that no one has actually ever seen an A-C funeral because you really don’t do them anything like humans do and no one outside of Centaurion Division would have had cause to attend?”
“That’s right,” White said. “We’ve attended human funerals, of course, but only our personnel have ever attended one of ours.”
“Super. We need to use the funeral. I realize that’s totally disrespectful, but I worked with Michael plenty of times, and I can guarantee that he’d be okay with it if it meant we caught the people who killed him and Fuzzball.”
“I agree,” Jeff said. “At least, about Michael. I have no idea what your plan is, other than that you’re really excited about it and you expect me not to be.”
“Right, because you’re not going to be in on the action. None of the men are.”
“Why not?” Chuckie asked.
I shrugged. “Because men in this country don’t wear veils.”
CHAPTER 57
“YOU MIND EXPLAINING THAT?” Jeff asked.
“I get it,” Tim said. “But I think you’re expecting too much out of Gaultier.”
Shook my head. “No, and here’s why. They pissed Amy off, right? She already threatened to go to the press. So, we’re going to the press. MJO, am I right in feeling confident that you could write an article that would practically require the Gaultier Enterprises Board and other top dogs to ensure they were at Michael’s funeral?”
Oliver nodded slowly. “I’d suggest including Titan and YatesCorp in that goal as well. I can focus in such a way as to insinuate that non-attendance means anti-alien sentiments, along with non-support of the President.”
“But what if they don’t care?” Amy asked. “There’s a freaking mob outside, and we have politicians who hate us. They may use it as an excuse not to come.”
“Well, as to that, I think we’ll make our ‘friends’ outside work for us, not against us.”
“Only Tim and Amy seem clear on your idea, baby. I’m not clear, and looking at Chuck’s expression, he’s not either. If he can’t follow you, no one else can.”
“Okay, here’s my plan. We not only agree to the President’s wishes, we go one better. We go overboard. We bring out all our top people, with the clear expectation, since we’re honoring a war hero, that everyone else will be showing up. A few calls made on our behalf by my good friends Lillian Culver and Guy Gadoire and we have plenty of important people who realize this is a be seen or never expect a favor from American Centaurion again event.”
“I’m sort of stuck on the veils,” Jeff said.
“No one’s going to expect us to do anything during Michael’s funeral. Everyone should be attending, right? And that means we need to be visible. However, funeral attire includes veils for women. So, we make it a new ‘rule’ that all women have to be heavily veiled, so that no one can see their faces. Gloves on the hands. Sensible shoes. And all that.”
Raj smiled. “I can find the body doubles. They’ll need to be able to imitate mannerisms. We have plenty of troubadour women, all bored, because the science and mathematics sides don’t feel it’s an impressive skill, either.” Oh look, Raj had a sarcasm knob just like the rest of us.
“We’re about to make your brothers and sisters in acting talent feel very needed and vital to the cause, Raj.”
“Good. We can delay the funeral about a week, maybe a little more. Preparations have to be made, and we can claim cultural needs to create what will seem like a natural delay versus an invented one.”
“Like sitting shiva.”
“Right. In fact, we can use the Jewish traditions as examples, with specific details changed to our advantage.”
“Instead of rending the outer garment, make it like a burka and make us even harder to identify, type of thing.”
“Exactly, though more tailored. We can’t stall too long, but it should be enough time for my troubadours to be able to imitate their assigned doubles well enough to make it through the event itself.”
“Here’s what I don’t like, if I’m following your so-called plan correctly,” Chuckie said. “The only people who will be disguised are the American Centaurion women. Meaning those same women will be the ones doing the guerrilla raid.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what the plan is. Look, we need to get in and find out what the hell Gaultier is up to and retrieve our stolen data, right? And that means we need to get our hackers inside so we can all sing the Proximity Equals Access Song. But none of them are trained in fieldwork, so they have to go in as part of a team.”
“Got that right,” Stryker muttered. The rest of Hacker International nodded their agreement with their leader’s assessment of their lack of B&E skills.
“I don’t want to send in our Field teams, in no small part because they aren’t able to avoid the Al Dejahl Mind Control Trick and apparently all of us are. And if we get caught, we need someone who can talk their way out of things and think on their feet.”
“I know where this is going,” Jeff said, “and you’re right, I officially don’t like it.”
Ignored him and forged on. “So that means we need to have a team of experienced operatives. The only people who can be so covered up no one could tell if they were the real people or impersonators are the women. So, we’re going in with the hackers.”
“The funeral can be made to be very long,” White said. “So that should give you time, but even so, it might not be enough time. The facility is quite large.”
“And there are those hidden levels we couldn’t find,” Amy added. “Where you just know they’re hiding all the evil stuff.”
“And our data, I’m sure. And God knows what else, but I’m willing to bet that it’s the new drug that Vander’s worried about. So we’ll be helping our new friend at the F.B.I., too.”
“You’re okay with this plan?” Jeff asked White.
Who shrugged. “We have limited options, Jeffrey, and we do need to find out what’s going on over there. Besides, Kathy’s right as always.”
“Thanks, Rick honey.”
“I hate it when you two do that,” Jeff muttered.
“Who are you planning to take with you?” Chuckie asked.
“Lorraine and Claudia.” Who high-fived each other. I loved my girls. “And Serene, complete with your bomb arsenal.”