Savage (Jack Sigler / Chess Team)

by Jeremy Robinson

  “It means their q-phones aren’t working anymore. They were alive when I lost the signal, but the rebels were firing mortars on their position. We built those phones to take a beating. The fact that we lost both signals at the same time…” Deep Blue didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. “It gets worse. Queen and Rook found Mulamba in a farmhouse outside London. He’s alive, but they’re pinned down. I thought you should know.”

  “Understood. Keep me posted. King, out.”

  Damn it!

  14

  The shit had hit the fan, and there wasn’t a thing King could do to help any of them. The instantaneous connectivity afforded by the q-phones made him feel all the more helpless. The Chess Team were the best soldiers on Earth. If anyone could get out of a tough scrape, he knew they could, but that didn’t make dealing with it any easier.

  He flashed back to the conference call just a few hours earlier. It had not been as difficult to convince Deep Blue to commit to the operation as King had initially feared. Like the others, the former president felt the same compulsion to defend the innocent and the helpless—the ones who would almost certainly die first if the situation in the Congo continued to deteriorate. Because he was no longer constrained by political realities, the former president was actually eager to do something, anything, even if it seemed like a desperate long shot. His restraint stemmed, not from an ambivalence toward the plight of the Congo’s people, but from a very real concern about putting his people in harm’s way for a goal that was, at best, unclear.

  King understood that kind of thinking better than Tom Duncan ever could. He had spent nearly three thousand years focused on one objective—saving his friends and family. It had become a sort of mania, almost impossible to let go of. Like an overprotective parent, he had become so used to the idea of saving them that now he couldn’t bear to see them at risk. But risk was what they did. They were, one and all, willing to sacrifice anything, their lives if necessary, for a greater good, just as he was.

  Easy to say, but a lot harder to accept, especially after centuries focused on the single goal of keeping them alive.

  And for what? So they could die senseless deaths just a year later?

  He choked down his helplessness and anger, and he followed Mabuki into the presidential palace. The general led them to a large conference room where several people were already gathered around a table. Given the awkward silence that followed their arrival, King guessed they had probably been arguing.

  As he moved his gaze about the room, his glasses began supplying him with biographical data. The photosensitive lenses were now barely tinted, and would hopefully be passed off as ordinary spectacles. None of those present could see the information being beamed onto King’s and Asya’s retinas—the names of Congolese assemblymen and military officers, tribal leaders and of course, acting President Gerard Okoa. Not everyone in the room was African, however. A group of Caucasians sat near the president, two men with the sort of muscular physiques that could be achieved only through the use of illegal chemical substances—King dubbed them ‘the steroid twins’—and another older man with doughy features and slicked back hair. King’s attention, however, was drawn to the fourth person in their group, a stunningly beautiful woman with dark hair, who focused her laser-like stare in their direction.

  Asya narrowed her eyes and stared back. “We don’t like her,” she muttered in Russia.

  King knew his sister wasn’t merely being catty. There was something dangerous about this woman, and she made no effort to hide it.

  A name appeared before his eyes, seemingly superimposed over the woman’s face. Monique Favreau. Former officer of the DGSE. Presently field director of Executive Solutions International.

  King knew that name very well. ESI was a notorious private security company. Not just mercenaries, but an army of mercenaries. Only the wealthiest corporations could afford ESI—the diamond cartel and petroleum multinationals—and certainly not a poor developing nation in Africa. If ESI was involved, it meant that someone with a lot of money and power had taken an interest in the Congo situation.

  Mabuki introduced King and Asya simply as ‘advisors from the United States’ and no one questioned it. King got the sense that there was a lot of advising going on. As they took seats, the acting president addressed them.

  “More Americans.” Okoa was a blunt man in both word and appearance. He was not exactly overweight, but thick, like an unfinished clay statue. “Why are you here?”

  King studied him, wondering how much he could say about what they hoped to accomplish, and whether he could promise the man anything at all. Okoa claimed to be a strong supporter of Joseph Mulamba, but politicians could rarely be trusted to say anything that wasn’t self-serving, and now that Okoa had a taste of power, King wondered if he would he still be faithful to Mulamba’s vision of a unified Africa.

  There seemed no point in lying to the man. “If I may speak frankly, Mr. President, my country is reluctant when it comes to interfering in the politics of a sovereign nation.” Someone laughed aloud, a staccato sound, like the crack of a whip. It was the woman, Monique Favreau. King didn’t stop. “But some of us are not willing to stand by and allow another genocide to take place.”

  Genocide was a powerful word. Even those who openly advocated the extermination of their hated enemies shied away from it.

  Okoa was unmoved, though. “And since we have oil and natural gas, our genocide is much more interesting to you.”

  The not-so-thinly veiled accusation shocked King. “I don’t know anything about that, sir.”

  “Is that so?” Okoa glanced toward Favreau and the other men. King did, too, and as he did, he heard Deep Blue mutter a rare curse. An instant later, the facial recognition software displayed the name of the older Caucasian man. Lance Marrs, United States Senator, Utah.

  Two years earlier, Marrs had taken advantage of an unfolding global crisis to target his number one political enemy, President Tom Duncan—Deep Blue. While Duncan and Domenick Boucher had ultimately turned Marrs’s attack to their advantage, it had come at great expense. Duncan had been forced to resign from office in disgrace, providing endless fodder for late-night talk show comedians, and his accomplishments, the public ones at least, had been relegated to a footnote in history.

  King realized that Marrs was staring back at him. “I’m not sure who you are, fella,” the Senator said, oozing contempt. “I can only assume that President Chambers sent you here without the approval of the United States Congress.”

  “You can assume whatever you like,” King said. “That’s your standard operating procedure, isn’t it?”

  Marrs bristled, but King kept talking. “Speaking of assumptions, am I to assume that you have the approval of Congress?”

  “I am on a fact-finding mission.” Marrs enunciated each word as if that would somehow lend gravity to his statement. “This region may have strategic importance to the energy policy of the United States of America, so naturally my colleagues and I are concerned with maintaining stability.”

  King suddenly understood what Okoa had meant with his accusation. He didn’t know exactly what kind of resources the Congo had to offer, but the evident collusion between Marrs and Executive Solutions International hinted at a well-funded agenda.

  An agenda that would have been seriously threatened by Joseph Mulamba’s plan to create a unified African federation.

  Favreau spoke up. “Mr. President, we can end this crisis right now, right here in this room, without any meddling from foreign governments.”

  Okoa seemed to deflate a little. “And all it will cost me is the wealth of my nation.”

  “Sir, my employers do not want to take away the resources of your nation. They want a mutually beneficial partnership, that will help you and your citizens reap the benefits of those resources. What do you want to give your people? Jobs? Security? A future?” She cast a glance at King. “Or genocide?”

  King subvocalized a message t
o Deep Blue. “Who is this bitch working for?”

  Marrs was quick to add his input. “I am in complete agreement, sir. We do not, I can’t stress that enough, do not want to meddle in your affairs. We want to help you help yourselves.”

  “ESI’s client list is heavily safeguarded,” Deep Blue said, “but the record of Marrs’s campaign donors isn’t. His super-PAC receives support from three different petroleum multinationals. Consolidated Energy tops that list. It’s probably not a coincidence that Methods Logistics—the second largest oil field support company in the world—is headquartered in Salt Lake City.”

  King suddenly felt like he was in over his head. He was a soldier, a warrior, accustomed to dealing with threats head on. This was an entirely different kind of battlefield.

  Deep Blue must have sensed his growing frustration. “Disengage,” he advised. “You won’t beat Marrs here. We need to find out more.”

  King scanned the faces in the room once more. Several of the politicians were nodding in evident support of Favreau’s statement, and Okoa, too, seemed to be wavering.

  King stood up and addressed the man at the head of the table. “Sir, it’s not my place to advise you on matters of internal policy. I’m here to give you whatever support I can…until President Mulamba is restored to office.”

  The words had the desired effect. A stir of confusion arose among the government officials. Marrs looked bewildered. Favreau’s gaze sharpened to its earlier intensity. She leaned back and whispered something to one of her steroid-infused goons.

  She knows.

  King drove the point deeper. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but President Mulamba has been found. He’s alive and well, and on his way back right now.” Please let it be true. He turned to Asya. “Let’s go.”

  No one stopped them from leaving the room, but as soon as they were in the hall outside, General Mabuki caught up to them. “Is this true? The President is alive?”

  “He is.” King didn’t like deceiving the man with a half-truth, but revealing his uncertainty about Mulamba’s fate would undermine what little advantage he had gained. “If you are as loyal to him as you claim, then let me help you hold this country together until he returns.”

  The general gave a pensive nod. “There is only so much that I can do, but I will try. I will speak to you again when the meeting is over.”

  When he was gone, Asya said, “Well that was fun. Are all your assignments like this?”

  No, he almost said. Usually there are monsters.

  Before he could utter the comment, a group of soldiers rushed toward them. At first, King thought they might be Mabuki’s men, come to escort them to a place where they could await the general’s return, but two things made him quickly realize this was not the case.

  Unlike the Republican Guards he had seen thus far, these men were not wearing red berets. Rather, they wore soft patrol caps that matched their uniforms.

  The second indicator was much more explicit.

  The soldiers were all aiming their Kalashnikov carbines at him.

  15

  Dartford, England

  Queen held her SIG out in a two-handed grip, the muzzle trained on the door. Behind her, Joseph Mulamba raised his weapon as well, but Rook placed a hand on the muzzle and gently pushed Mulamba behind him.

  “Just stay back, sir,” Rook said.

  “Let him fight,” Queen said, “When they come through that door, we’re going to need all the firepower we can get.”

  Rook gave a nod. “I agree. So let’s keep them on the other side of that door.”

  He advanced, his pistol at the ready, and knelt down. When he was as close to the opening as he dared get, he took his glasses off, set them on the floor so that the lenses were facing out, and then slid them out into the hallway.

  Queen gave a little gasp of delight when she saw the result. It was like being able to see through the wall. Two figures, both tagged with a red icon, were creeping along the passage, just a few yards from the door. She raised two fingers to signal Rook, then inspiration dawned. She took a step back, aimed her pistol at the wall, and fired twice.

  The bullets punched through the thin plaster and then kept right on going through the heads of the two mercenaries. Queen saw both men go down, the one closest to the door pitching forward, and then his image, along with everything else that was being transmitted in the virtual display, abruptly vanished. Just visible on the hall floor was the outstretched hand of the dead would-be attacker. The Skorpion pistol in his grip had landed squarely atop Rook’s glasses, smashing them to bits.

  “O-kay,” Rook said slowly. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

  “It was a good idea,” Queen said. “I just wish we had a spare pair.”

  Deep Blue’s voice sounded in her head. “You do. Use your glasses, Queen. You can use the q-phones to view the feed. I’ll configure them remotely.”

  Queen relayed the message to Rook, and then took her q-phone out and placed her thumb on the dark screen to unlock it. It immediately glowed to life, and showed a picture of what Queen was looking at, which at that moment happened to be the phone in her hand, creating an infinity mirror effect. She took the glasses off and extended them around the door frame so that the phone screen showed the now empty hallway.

  Rook was looking at the display of his phone as well, which also showed the feed from Queen’s glasses. “Where’d they go?”

  Queen knew there were at least three more gunmen, and possibly as many as six more, but evidently the loss of their vanguard had caused them to reconsider their tactics. “Keep watching the hall. I’m going to check the balcony.”

  Staying low, with the glasses held up over her head like a periscope, she crept through the French doors and scanned the ground below. She immediately spotted two mercenaries, crouched down behind a parked car in the driveway. Their guns were trained on the front of the house. The men were hunkered down. Not going anywhere.

  They’re covering someone, she realized, and extended the glasses out a little further, tilting them down to reveal the front porch almost directly beneath her. She expected to see a line of men preparing to storm the house, but something much worse waited below.

  “Shit,” she muttered.

  There were more mercenaries near the front of the house, but they weren’t getting ready to make a tactical entry. Instead, they had opted for a scorched earth policy—literally. Two men poured the contents of large red metal canisters onto the side of the house and all over the porch. If she had any doubts about what was in those cans, they were swept away when she caught a whiff of gasoline fumes.

  There was no time to sort through the options. Queen placed her phone on the floor and raised her SIG. The weapon was equipped with a sensor that linked its holographic sight to the glasses, so now the phone showed not only the scene below but also a highlighted section where her shot would strike. She adjusted the barrel until it was centered on one of the gas-can toting mercenaries, and pulled the trigger.

  The mercenary dropped, but before she could line up a second shot, the men by the cars opened fire on the balcony. As bullets hammered into the wooden railing, Queen was forced to retreat inside. She didn’t see what happened next, but she could smell it. The odor of gasoline was replaced by something else: the acrid tang of smoke. At first, there were just a few wisps of black vapor, but in a matter of seconds, the smoke became a cloud, roiling with convection waves as the fire spread.

  Rook crept out the bedroom door but returned a moment later, shaking his head, accompanied by a trail of smoke. “No good. The first floor is already engulfed. They must have doused it first.”

  “Looks like we’ve only got one way out,” Queen said, jerking a thumb at the balcony.

  Rook didn’t challenge the assessment, and she knew he wouldn’t. They had worked together—been together—long enough that they didn’t need quantum technology to communicate. He stooped down and relieved one of the corpses of a Skorpion. He released th
e magazine, checked it and slammed it back in. “Out of the fire and into the frying pan.”

  “Don’t be a pessimist,” Queen said.

  Rook grinned. “I was talking about them.”

  Queen returned his smile. “Right. Let’s get cooking.”

  Mulamba didn’t share their almost psychic bond. “What are you saying?”

  “We’re going that way.” Queen pointed to the balcony.

  “But they are out there!”

  “Not for much longer,” Rook said. He edged outside, using the smoke for concealment, and unleashed a burst from the machine pistol. Rounds sparked off the hood of the car parked below. A hand holding an identical weapon appeared above the front fender, and Rook drew back an instant before another volley raked the wall above the balcony. Rook was already back inside, so he didn’t see the man at the other end of the car move out into the open, training his weapon on the doorway, ready to take a well-aimed shot the next time an opportunity presented itself.

  Rook didn’t see it, but Queen did. She saw everything in her phone’s display and with just a slight adjustment, isolated the man in the targeting box and took the shot.

  “Got him.”

  “Good, ‘cause we gotta go right now.”

  Queen knew he wasn’t exaggerating. The room was filling up with smoke, stinging her eyes and lungs, and heat was radiating up through the floor. In a few minutes, or perhaps only just a few seconds, the fire would burn through, plunging them into the inferno, but there were still at least two more mercenaries outside, waiting for the flames to drive them out.

  She put the glasses on and stowed the phone in a pocket, then turned to Mulamba. “We have to jump. You’ll have to go first so we can cover you.” She didn’t ask if he could do it. He didn’t have a choice. “Drop, roll and then run for cover, got it?”

  He gave her a terrified look, but then Rook clapped him on the shoulder. “He’s got it. Am I right, Joe?”

  Mulamba managed a wan grin. “Hakuna matata.”