Conspiracy of Fire

by Tony Bulmer

  redouble their efforts, but in reality reports don’t write themselves…”

  “So you must leave us, and so soon. Well, I must say I am disappointed Ms. Kane I was hoping that you might join us for dinner, so that you could regale us with bloodthirsty tales of your

  investigations to date.”

  Karyn examined Cheena Tao’s face, for any depth or sincerity, but found none. What she found instead was a cruel, hard-­‐sculpted exterior that boded cold and superficial. Despite her words, Cheena Tao quite clearly didn’t give a damn about anything, or anyone. Then there was the tiny veiled hat perched on the back of her head, black and incongruous like a giant bug. Who wore hats these days—I mean really.

  Cheena Tao’s black gaze swept quickly over Karyn and to the heavy bronze door beyond, “My husband is an important man Ms. Kane. He is driven. And he always gets what he wants, no matter what the price.”

  “Not on this occasion.” Cheena Tao gave Karyn a tart look. If you are not working with us, then you must be working against us Ms. Kane. Surely you would not wish to do that?”

  Karyn smiled. “Work? I like that Mrs. Tao. I wouldn’t have taken you for the working type.”

  Raising her chin Cheena Tao said, “You joke of course Ms. Kane. But you must know that my tireless and all encompassing passion is to provide support to the Humanistian cause.”

  Very commendable I am sure, ” said Karyn, her voice cold and even. “But meanwhile, back in the real world, us working stiffs, we get to trudge

  through the rain and write reports in grey little buildings, no one much cares for. So that smart-­‐ suited executives can make big-­‐bonus budget decisions and look good on television. It is government Mrs. Tao—the way of things, I am sure you understand.”

  A look of distaste twisted at the corners of the rouged mouth. “I cannot say that I would even pretend to understand Ms. Kane. It all sounds too dull for words. But if you absolutely insist in flying back to your dreary little life in Washington, or wherever it is you government people lurk these days, then you are a fool.” Cheena Tao, didn’t wait for a response, she stalked past Karyn without a second look. “Come Calista, our guests await.” The words were enunciated with the harsh authority of a pet owner speaking to a wayward dog.

  Calista Johnston reached out and touched Karyn on the arm. “Perhaps we will meet again in Washington, or some such place Ms Kane.” The old woman’s bony fingers pressed into Karyn’s flesh, lingering rather longer than necessity dictated.

  Karyn looked her in the eye and said, “You better hope you play your hand better than that husband of yours, or you might well be joining him and sooner than you think.”

  Calista Johnston batted her spider web eyelashes. “You are concerned Ms. Kane. How very sweet of you.” She flashed her ivory grin and said, “Be sure to tell your superiors in Washington that my worthless husband made absolutely the right career choice when he dived out of that window.”

  “Too bad he took the plunge, he’s never going to see that power station of Deng Tao’s come online, is he?” Karyn frowned then said, “He could

  have been the hero of the people, just like he always wanted. Maybe he could even have had a shot at the Presidency, if he played his cards right.”

  “The Presidency?” Calista Johnston gave a musical laugh. “How thoroughly charming you are Ms. Kane. We are working towards far higher ideals. In the new future, such positions of high office will seem as antiquated as the Pharaohs of old. Such a pity you won’t be joining us.” Enrique sidled up beside his mistress and threw Karyn a lascivious look.

  Karyn narrowed her eyes, “This bright new future you talk so much about sounds like a three-­‐ card scam to me. You better hope you get out before the rush, or you might just end up losing everything you have.”

  Calista Johnston’s smile broadened. “Perhaps you will join us for a cocktail Ms. Kane? Enrique and I will be flying back to the mainland tomorrow. It might be the last chance we get to enjoy a relaxing drink together. Unless of course you choose to join us for the flight home.”

  “A kind offer, but I am running a tight schedule, so I am sure you will understand if I take a rain-­‐check on that.”

  “I cannot say I am surprised,” Calista Johnston pouted, “But I am certainly disappointed, as is Enrique,” She turned to her assistant. He threw her a smug lascivious look. “Such a pity, we could have all had such fun together, couldn’t we Enrique?” She gave Karyn a wistful smile. “No matter. Destiny awaits Ms. Kane. You will excuse us I am sure.” And with these final words, Calista Johnston sashayed off in the direction of the party. Enrique followed close. He ran a hand over Calista

  Johnston’s ass. As they got to the big bronze doors he turned, looked back at Karyn and laughed, like nothing in the world mattered anything worth a damn.

  43

  Karyn took an early launch back to the

  Kahanamoku Beach key quayside, leaving the ever-­‐ noisier party on the Chánchú behind her. She grabbed a cab amid the throng of quayside revelers and ordered the driver to hit the gas. She told him to head uptown into the city night and keep driving, until she gave the word. He gave her the eye in the rearview and asked her where she wanted to go. She told him Ben Franklin and his pals would know when they had arrived. The driver pulled away from the curbside faster than an Indy-­‐Car front-­‐ runner and melded with traffic, to a serenade of blaring horns. Six-­‐blocks west of the Hawaiian Gardens hotel. Karyn folded over the Benjamins into the driver’s sweaty palm and hit the sidewalk. She watched as the euphoric driver cut into traffic, with a squeal of hot rubber with the fresh-­‐folded hundreds nestling happily in his breast pocket.

  Standing on the sidewalk, Karyn did a 180, scanning for any sign of a follow car. Nothing. The Feds must be losing their touch, either that they were holding the bag loose, figuring they could move in with a takedown, just as soon as they felt the need.

  Running through the past 24-­‐hours in her head, Karyn was beginning to draw form to the dark events that were unfolding on the Island. Deng Tao and his rotten little friends were on the verge of a big play, there was no doubt now. He was going to make a political move against the Federal

  Government that much was certain, but there was something more, much more, than some emergent philosophy at stake here. Tao was going to use the opening of the new power plant to leverage his political ambitions, but what form would that leverage take? With Brad Verner in his power, any kind of madness was possible. But could the Tao Corporation really wreak the kind of destruction that Verner had suggested?

  Then there were the attacks. The muscle outside Club Carmady was HPD for sure, there was no way the Feds could have fumbled a play like that. The dudes outside the Fountainhead were a different matter however, those guys were Fed heat, had to be—but the Feds had underestimated her and botched their takedown badly. The creeps
probably figured they were dealing with some weak-­‐limbed little bureaucrat from the Department of Justice. Big mistake. Given the chance, they would have bundled her into the trunk of their car and spirited her away to some quiet little spot on the edge of town, for some hard questioning and a brass-­‐knuckle run over. No doubt they would have had the dénouement figured from there—a tumble from a cliff top, or a long drive up the coastal drag, out of sight of the tourist trap boulevards, then a shallow grave on a lonely hillside. Karyn was glad she had damaged those guys; those bastards had it coming.

  Walking more quickly now, Karyn scoped the street again, keeping a subtle but ever watchful lookout for interference. Every burning instinct told her the Feds were watching but there was no way they would ever get the drop on her, she couldn’t allow that—not ever.

  Karyn played tradecraft moves as a matter of course. She darted across the Boulevard, to shake any tailing units. Horns blared, and brakes squealed, but that was OK. Now she was walking against traffic, any follow car would have to flip a u-­‐ turn, or circle the block to regain position and by that time she would have changed direction again. It was a precautionary measure. The opposition were wise to her moves and although they could not know her Agency pedigree, or the exact nature of her motives, they were worried no question.

  Karyn checked the mirror application on her smart phone, scanning the street behind her for any sign of a chase team. Deng Tao and his friends were messing with her right now, fielding interference to distract a big noise Investigator from the Department of Justice. No doubt that creep Tao had run her name through every Beltway political connection he had, trying to dredge clues as to who, or what he was dealing with. The Agency always had those kind of moves in hand. Anything Tao’s people came up with would be finely crafted baloney that backed up every word she had told him, and a lot she hadn’t. But the thought of this cherubic little messiah running the make on her made her skin crawl. There was something about Deng Tao and his posse of happy-­‐clappy helpers that was cultish and deeply unsettling. Karyn frowned. Tao was involved in the Johnston killings, no doubt, but the creep was a shot-­‐caller not a triggerman. He had franchised this sordid little murder out to freelancers. The knowledge that Tao had sanctioned three deaths made Karyn want to pop him right between the eyes. But that kind of hit would create a tidal wave of blowback that would

  ride all the way to Washington. Deng Tao was protected—or so he thought—the trouble for Tao was he had crossed the line. Murdering

  democratically elected government officials meant his billionaire ass was now a blip on the radar of death and with each passing sweep of the scanner beam, he was inching ever closer to an inevitable destiny.

  Checking her phone more regularly now, like a busy executive fielding calls on her way to the next meeting, Karyn picked up the cable van crawling the curb, maybe two hundred yards back. The dark tint on the van’s windshield told Karyn she was looking at trouble, though what kind it was hard to tell. Fed’s usually played the swarm gambit, moving in for a takedown with a dozen agents or more. The van could be their control car, two men up front and a takedown team in the back, all kitted out with body armor, helmets and a whole mess of heavy weaponry. But if they were going to make a move, they would come from all angles. They would strike at a pinch point, like an intersection or an alleyway. They would have street people working undercover and an intercept wagon to pull in front. The attack would come so fast and hard. There would be no time to even think of pulling her weapon. She had to act now, get the jump on the opposition before they got the jump on her.

  Karyn’s pulse raced. Senegar had thrown her in deep this time, enemies wherever she looked and no nearer to reaching her mission objective than the day she had arrived. She paused. Peered into a café window, as though checking out the interior, while scoping out the mirrored street reflection in the glass. The black van was rolling. A

  street corner vagrant was looking her way. They were coming. A squeal of tires at the intersection just ahead was the signal. Karyn didn’t even look around, she pushed open the coffee-­‐shop door and was inside with three quick steps.

  She dropped the bolt on the door, tilted a chair against it and held her DOJ badge high. “Police Robbery Squad. Everyone down. There is going to be shooting, in the street,” she announced with calm authority.

  The coffee shop was sparsely populated with the late-­‐evening crowd. The announcement drew looks of paralysis and disbelief. The head barrista moved out from behind the counter his face lined with concern, wiping off his hands on his apron as he came. He tried to bar her way, like she was some kind of crazy person. Karyn shouldered past him. She cannoned down a long narrow corridor that led past the bathrooms and headed towards the emergency exit with building speed. She leapt in the air to drop kick the door release bar and heard a crescendo of breaking glass in the store front behind her. The bad men were coming, and they were coming in force.

  44

  The Pacific Kellerman lay on the floor of galley in the

  smoldering wreckage of what used to be a corridor, but now resembled a twisted ruin. Scorched bomb-­‐ damaged metal and sparking electrics hung down from the ceiling and a thousand bullet holes covered every broken surface.

  Kellerman moved her fingers. She couldn’t move anything else. And what her fingers felt boded deeply unpleasant—thick oozing grime all over the floor, mixed with metal fragments, cartridge cases and some kind of sloppy mess that might once have been part of her body. Those creeps had got her. They had caught her good. She struggled to move, but paralysis held her tight.

  A heavy weight, pressing down from above. No feeling in her lower body, just an unending pressure, like everything below her stomach had been blown away. She swallowed down the fear, knowing these last precious seconds of consciousness might well be a final tenuous communion with life. But as the seconds passed, death remained elusive, replaced instead by a dark and oppressive silence that pressed in all around.

  She could barely draw breath, barely move and then there was her face—hard and oven-­‐baked, covered in a thick coat of something acrid and cloyingly unpleasant. Perhaps the blast had burned away her flesh, so that she might live the rest of her life with the torture of disfigurement. Her heart raced faster, as the horror of her plight ran through

  her mind. She felt herself circling in and out of consciousness. It was all over now—it had to be. Buchanan blown apart by the force of the explosion, their plan to take back the ship from the pirates over before it had even started.

  A long, dark silence. The taste of water—hot, warm salt-­‐water, washing against her body.

  Then—a sudden burn of light beating down from above.

  As her faculties came alive, Kellerman realized with shock that she was trapped beneath a heavy door. The force of the explosion had blown it off its hing
es and it had fallen over her, pinning her to the floor. Perhaps she would live after all perhaps—a feeling of release, a weight falling away—then—rising up, moving higher until—

  The slap came hard, and then again. Kellerman felt her cheeks ringing with the impact. The oven-­‐baked feeling was gone now, replaced by a raw and throbbing soreness. She squinted against the brightness and opened her lips experimentally, so that she might enquire as to what kind of afterlife she had been transported to. She tried to speak, but words came hard. She could manage nothing more than a dry croak. She ran her tongue out over the edge of her cracked, salt-­‐caked lips, like a lizard scenting the air, then pulled her tongue back just as quick—This was no heaven, or hell either, this was—

  Another slap. Kellerman felt the world spin;, felt her knees and her legs and her feet move under her like rubber.

  Her feet—they were still there—not blown away in the explosion as she had thought. She

  smiled. Alive—she was alive. As the euphoria filled her, she sagged forwards laughing uncontrollably. Strong arms pulled her upright—strong arms and rough hands, twisting tight beneath her armpits.

  “Your friend is dead, blown into a thousand pieces and yet you laugh Officer Kellerman? Are you heartless, or mad?”

  A face now; drawing close to hers. A nasty, savage, tight little face filled with animosity.

  “You killed my men, very many of them. Perhaps I should kill you too mad lady—cut you open with my knife so you can watch yourself die.”

  Kellerman was too exhausted to say anything. Instead she squinted into the harsh light and examined her inquisitor, the smooth thin face, with fish-­‐belly skin, the heavy-­‐oiled black hair shaved short at the sides—he was young too, at least he seemed that way, but with the tight drawn features and thin coal-­‐black eyes eating into her, Kellerman figured the creep for the wrong side of thirty, at the very most.