Northern rubbed his face and his eyes. “All right. I figured as much.”
“That gives you about eight hours until they find you.”
Northern watched the sheets slip around Sarah’s hips as she turned around to face him.
“What time is it?” she asked, her voice scratchy.
“Early,” said Northern.
“Also,” Greer continued, “one other thing...”
Northern slid out of bed and moved over to his clothes. He placed the phone in the crook of his neck as he stepped into his jeans.
“We’re not quite sure what to make of this—”
“Just tell me.”
“Eddie Mazaryk is coming.”
Northern froze in the middle of buttoning his fly.
“What?”
“He registered his flight plan with the Tournament. Under his own name.”
“He’s coming to California?”
“Which means that he doesn’t care who knows about it.”
“Mazaryk is coming here? To California?”
“Yes, John. And he’s coming alone.”
“How do you know?”
“Ales Radomir is still under monitoring at St. Vincent’s in Dublin, and Goran Brander is registered as a visitor there.”
“What in the world—”
“We’re working on it, we’re working on it, but one lunatic at a time. I’d focus on the one you’re actually slated to fight.”
“You’d better stay on top of this. If that man gets anywhere near us—”
“—I’ll tell you. Meantime, eight hours at the most. They’re coming.”
Northern hung up and stood with his hands on his hips, gazing out at the first light of dawn as it streaked across the sky.
“Is everything okay?” asked Sarah.
He turned to look at her, but his gaze was distant again and his eyes unfocused, the way she’d seen him at the café off of Gilman. She knew that the man she’d met last night was gone, at least for now.
“I’m on the clock.” He buttoned up his shirt, then grabbed his automatic and slid it barrel first down the back of his jeans. He patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys and wallet.
“Will I see you again?”
“Yes.” He smiled down at her briefly. He looked momentarily about the room as if seeing it for the first time. He picked up his drink, still full from last night, looked at it, and set it down again. For the first time since Sarah had met him he seemed unsure of himself. Then he turned and walked out of the door, leaving her in bed, half covered by the sheets.
Northern caught the first cab he saw and went directly to the Westgate hotel, where they moved Nikkie after Dr. Walcott had reluctantly allowed her discharge from UCSD Medical. As the cab moved up the roundabout outside of the front doors, Northern saw Max Haulden. He was waiting just outside, hands crossed in front of him to ward off the early morning chill. He watched Northern in silence as he arrived, paid the driver, and exited the cab.
“Rested?” he smirked.
“How is she?”
“Sleeping. She’s still not ready,” said Max. “She looks very tired,” he added haltingly.
“They’re coming.”
“Greer told me.”
Northern nodded for a moment before he moved through the doors. Max followed silently.
Up in the hotel room, Northern took a seat next to her. Max stood and leaned against the doorway. They both watched Nikkie in silence. She looked pale and fragile in the blue light of dawn, her skin like paper. She was a long way from healthy, but her face was set in defiance, even in sleep.
She opened her eyes, and Northern was relieved to see them clear and green. But when she turned to look at him, he saw sadness lurking there.
“You’re back,” she whispered, and then she looked away and up at the ceiling. Northern glanced at Max, who looked only at Nikkie. The silence took on weight.
“Is it time to go?” Nikkie asked, her eyes closed once again.
“No, not yet. Sleep, Nikkie. Max, you should sleep too.”
Max nodded but didn’t move.
Nikkie took a deep breath and turned to her side, facing away from Northern. He could see the gentle curve of her back through the old Memphis shirt she wore as her pajamas. Max slid down the wall and sat on the floor, leaning his head back and exhaling. Northern pulled his gun from his back and held it loosely in one hand, his elbows on his knees. He dropped his head and gazed at the floor.
They sat like this for five more hours, allowing Nikkie as much time as Northern thought safe to recover what little more she could before the approaching melee. At half past ten in the morning he stood and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Max awoke with his movement and rolled his neck about.
“Time to go,” Northern said.
————
To the south of San Diego proper stands the city of Chula Vista, just north of the Mexican border. Chula Vista is home to a deteriorating dock district known as the Lower Chula Vista Port. It’s not one port so much as a long string of barely connected individual docks, constructed when the shipping business in San Diego was booming such that anyone with the startup capital could invest there, where the water depth dropped precipitously, and could make a fortune offloading rig equipment for the southern California oil fields. In the early eighties, when the oil industry went belly up and millions of dollars disappeared overnight, a good half of these docks were suddenly deserted as their owners found themselves without even the money to sell them or scrap them for materials.
The view from these blighted buildings was not pretty, and the water about them was strewn with trash and murky with waste runoff. Every waterside warehouse was anchored with at least twenty feet of solid concrete and constructed from thighthick steel bars and rivets as big as a man’s fist. They were built to last, and so they did. Over the years they accumulated debris, gang tagging, and rust.
It was into these steel skeletons that Blue forayed that evening as they awaited the arrival of Alex Auldborne, Christina Stoke, and Draden Tate. Blue had been here before, had planned to use this area as a potential battleground should the fight ever be brought to their home. The three of them were confident and comfortable surrounded by the horror-show of rusted loading machines, scurrying animals, and the thick-cabled remains of crane-works. The idea was that whomever they fought wouldn’t be.
Max Haulden walked carefully around one spattered metal chute, blood red in the waning sunlight, and took in his surroundings once again. Greer had called them thirty minutes prior and told them that the airplane in question had arrived and all passengers had disembarked.
“You’re sure they’ll follow us here?” asked Max.
Northern nodded. “Greer made it obvious to Grey Admin where we’d be. We humiliated Auldborne last time. I humiliated him. He’s been obsessing over this for over a year now. They’ll be here.”
“And Eddie Mazaryk?” Nikkie asked, leaning a bit too heavily against a steel roof support that was twice her width. Her voice rang hollowly about the cavernous loading dock. Her very being was diminished, more than could be attributed to the aftereffects of the diode shots. The diodes could paralyze the body, but as Northern watched her in the shadows her very spirit was flickering.
“I don’t know what Eddie Mazaryk is doing, but that’s secondary now,” said Northern. Nikkie continued to gaze at the ground in front of her. Max furrowed his brow.
“Max!” snapped Northern, his voice suddenly angry, “get just inside the entrance and watch the bottleneck there. They have to come in that way. Nikkie, up that flight of stairs and sit. You have the best angle. I’ll be back and behind these metal crates. Just like we planned way back when. This is our ground. Cheer up everyone, for Christ’s sake!”
Nikkie looked up, surprised by this change in tone. Max turned to the entry way: a small double door that opened into a bottleneck of concrete walling that ran ten feet to the interior. He hopped up the wall and began to move towards it.
“Look,” he said again, his voice kinder this time. “We know these three. They yell and stomp and talk a big game, but then they screw up, and we’re there to catch them. Their pride ruined them last time, and it’s gotten even worse. Use it against them, and we cannot lose.”
Max nodded and continued to walk along the top of the concrete barrier towards the front door. Nikkie paused and looked at Northern, who glanced at her out of the side of his eye. She expected him to say something more, and when he didn’t, she slowly brought herself over to the small flight of stairs behind them. She began to climb, her hand grasped tightly around the flaking banister.
Both of them gone, Northern took a deep breath and shook all thoughts from his head. He clicked his earpiece on and tested it, depressing a small button when he spoke.
“Is everyone in position?”
“Yes.”
“Ready.”
Northern walked back to the stack of metal crates behind him, pacing off in his head. He stopped. He turned around and saw clearly the swath of evening sun that cut through the massive glass skylight above. It fell upon the cluttered concrete floor in a long, sharp rectangle. To the left of the front door crouched Max, the cold glint of his gun reflecting the last of the light. Above him, through the grating of the suspended walkway, he saw the white rubber of Nikkie’s sneakers and heard the rustle of her clothing as she settled into position.
Then all that could be heard was the distant lapping of the dirty water.
Chapter Fifty
“NUMBERS ARE IN,” said Bernard, after knocking gently on the open door to Greer Nichols’ office. “Odds are all over the place, but the consensus is at two-to-one in favor of Blue. And the wagers, my God. We’ve never seen this much, or this variety.”
“And the political wager?” Greer asked, not looking up from his monitor. “Have they agreed?”
“They have...” Bernard said. “Although Grey Admin would like it noted that Eddie Mazaryk is en route.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Greer was leaning back in his chair and watching a detailed map of south San Diego County and the city of Chula Vista on his screen.
“Grey’s administration want it marked in the record as an extenuating circumstance.”
“How English of them. There is no such thing as an extenuating circumstance in this business.”
“Just telling you what they said.”
“Sounds to me like they want an excuse to bitch when they lose.”
Bernard nodded, tucked his clipboard under his arm, and made a move for the door when Greer spoke again, halting him. “Any minute now.”
Bernard glanced at Greer, confused as to whether he was being given a directive or not, or indeed if he was even being spoken to. Greer hadn’t taken his eyes off of his screen, but Bernard lingered under the open doorframe just to be safe. Greer had been known to look one way and think another before.
“I saw it coming to this,” Greer said, speaking softly, as if to himself.
“Sir?”
“But I couldn’t believe it, back then.”
“Saw what coming? Blue versus Grey?”
“I thought the people wouldn’t understand,” said Greer, oblivious. “I still don’t know...” he snapped his gaze to Bernard, who blinked.
“If we win, England will commit to the Middle East. Militarily and diplomatically.”
“That is the agreement,” said Bernard. “Grey Admin insists that they have this capability within their power.”
“And if we lose, they will draw down their current troop presence. And we will support that withdrawal publicly.”
“Yes. We have told them that this is within our power.”
Greer shook his head in wonder.
“A decades-long diplomatic issue resolved in a flash. People will never understand,” said Greer, refocusing on his screen and narrowing his eyes, “but there’s nothing we can do. The damage is already done. Frank Youngsmith, he was just one. The people know, and they’ll know more.”
“The people?”
“There was a time,” said Greer, “long ago, when whole nations, entire races of people, pinned their hopes and futures on individual warriors. Whole wars were won and lost on the outcome of a single battle between heroes. Entire countries were moved. Empires rose and fell.”
Bernard was silent. Greer did not look up.
“Not long now,” Greer said, leaning back in his chair once more and running one damp hand over his head.
Chapter Fifty-One
FOR TWENTY MINUTES THE three members of Blue entrenched themselves within the silence of the dilapidated shipping building. Only the metallic scurrying sounds of rodents and the distant wash of water against the concrete broke the dead still. Twenty minutes in which Northern looked only up, trying to catch any sign that Nikkie Hix might be looking back down at him, and twenty minutes in which she never did. All the while Max Haulden stared at them both from across the concrete expanse of the floor, illuminated like a stage in the center where the skylight above was letting in the first of the moonlight. Then Grey came.
Alex Auldborne signaled a halt in Grey’s approach by holding up his hand and closing his fist. He pointed for Christina Stoke, her white skin porcelain in the night, to take a walk around the left side of the building to the external stairway that jutted there like a broken bone. He signaled Draden Tate around the right of the building. He would linger at the front, and when the time was right, he would attack. His team made to move, but he held up his hand once more and stopped them both.
“Leave Northern to me,” he muttered. “Now go.”
————
Max strained every muscle to catch the slightest sound of movement outside of the doors, but he still heard no sign of them. He passed his gun from hand to hand and wiped his palms on his pants. His thoughts continually wandered back to Hix and Northern. He tried to blink his mind clean but thoughts weren’t so easily dismissed. She was distraught. He hurt her. It was far too easy to continue down that line, about how exactly he had hurt her. Why she felt betrayed. What it meant. He placed his ear against the flaking metal of the wall and listened. Nothing.
Max was no idiot. He knew where Northern had been last night. He knew who he had been with. Northern hadn’t attempted to hide anything. Hours before the moratorium was to end, he’d gone off with some college whore and this had cut Nikkie deeply. Northern’s little tryst seemed to wound her far worse than Takuro Obata’s diodes. Her whole light was dimmed. Didn’t he realize that they were a team? That what he did had consequences?
A rustling sound from beyond the doors snapped him back to the present. There would be time to discuss this with Northern later. He waited.
Nothing.
A rustling again, more distant this time, as of footsteps walking away.
Suddenly Max knew that nobody would come through the front. With the door open anybody could see that the concrete walls would funnel them like cattle to the slaughterhouse. This bottleneck was too obvious. He was guarding a doorway nobody would walk through. Once again, Northern couldn’t see what was right in front of his face. He hadn’t even asked Max his opinion about the positioning.
Max stood, and as he did so he caught the barest glimpse through the doorway of a figure moving around the left side of the building outside. A small figure. A woman. Christina Stoke.
He couldn’t shoot through the opening; the angle was too thin. He snuffed a breath, annoyed at his impotence. He depressed the com button on his earpiece and whispered into it.
“Stoke is circling around the left of the building.”
There was no access indoors anywhere but through the bottleneck. There was a crusty old external staircase on the left of the building. Daring to ascend it would take her to the top floor, but the door there was bolted shut—they’d made sure of it.
&nb
sp; “Did anyone hear me? I see Christina Stoke, she’s walking around the side of the building,” he whispered again.
“Hold your position Max.”
“I’m going to lose her.”
“She’s got no way in.”
Max shook his head. Stoke was the sweeper. She would hole up somewhere until it was time for her to clean up, and she was particularly slippery. If they lost her now, they would regret it later. Once you lose sight of the wasp in the room...
“I’m going after her.”
“Max. Hold. Your. Position.” Northern insisted. Max could hear his gritted teeth even through the com.
Max weighed his options. There was a good chance at least one of the other two English was outside watching the door, but if he was quick he might be able to flit out and into cover outside; change up the stalemate that was sure to ensue otherwise. He backed up, gun out, and crouched to see what he could see through the doorway. There was a stack of large concrete piping not too far from the entrance that would cover him as he rounded the corner. He shot a glance back into the dark recesses of the building where Northern was watching. Then he slipped down the concrete bank and to the floor, pressing his back hard against the wall as he crept towards the opening.
“Max, what are you doing? Do not move!”
“John, you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”
Max peered sideways out of the door. Nobody. He shot to the other side of the bottleneck and flattened himself there and peered out the other way. Nobody.
Northern hissed his name again, but in the blink of an eye his striker had already ducked out of the door and disappeared.
Alex Auldborne saw Max leave, but Max was quick, and his instincts told him to hold his fire. Max shot around the corner and behind a set of huge concrete pipes like a mouse caught by a flashlight.
He guessed that Max was most likely the one guarding the entrance. Now that he was gone nobody was there. He stepped away from the shadows and walked directly to the open doorway. He paused and readjusted the grip on his gun while looking through into the darkness. Before Max could turn around again he’d walked inside.
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