The Clone Assassin

by Steven L. Kent

  The stranger gave it one last try. He said, “I have clearance . . .”

  “Then take it up with the police chief. I’ll let you in when Chief Story gives me a call. Until then, get your ass out of here.”

  That was when the second man stepped into view. This one was taller, easily seven feet tall, bald, and covered with muscle. The man’s skin was the color of coffee and his eyes were black and spaced far apart. He glared down at the policeman, his expression impassive and yet menacing. He didn’t speak a word.

  Seeing the tall, dark man, the policeman knew the situation had changed and dropped his hand to the butt on his pistol. He started to call for backup.

  The first intruder said, “The officer says we haven’t been cleared. He wants us to go back to the police station.”

  Without speaking a word, the big man locked a hand the side of a catcher’s mitt around the policeman’s collar. With the ease of a chess player sliding a pawn into place, he pulled the policeman five inches forward, slammed him back against a wall, then gently lowered his unconscious form to the floor.

  “Why did you do that?” asked Travis Watson.

  Ray Freeman didn’t answer. He stepped into the hotel room. Two more policemen stood just inside the entryway, their civilian pistols raised.

  Freeman said, “The Pentagon sent us,” and the policemen obediently lowered their guns.

  One of the policemen asked, “I don’t suppose you have some form of identification?”

  Watson said, “I tried to show it to the fellow out there, but he wasn’t interested.” He held up his traveling workspace, waited while the policemen studied it, then asked, “Am I allowed . . . ?”

  “Watson,” one of the policemen said as he holstered his gun. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I tried. That guy out there . . .”

  “Him? That’s Garrett. They should have warned you about him. He’s an asshole.”

  The second cop looked through the open door, spotted the body spread out on the rug, and said, “Maybe they should have warned Garrett about you guys.”

  Watson said, “This is Ray Freeman.”

  “Yeah, they said you guys were coming,” said the second cop.

  “Mind if we have a look around?” asked Freeman, his voice hinting that he didn’t much care how they felt.

  The policemen stepped aside.

  • • •

  The New Olympians hadn’t yet formed their own local government. Gordon Hughes, their governor on Mars, had died a few months before the transfer to Earth began. The Enlisted Man’s Empire appointed an interim governor, a lawyer named Jim Evans, to oversee the creation of a permanent government, but the New Olympians considered Evans a stopgap, not a governor.

  Every town the New Olympians settled had established its own constabulary. The policeman in charge in Mazatlán was a man named Mark Story. He had come to the crime scene and already left.

  Watson pointed to a stain and asked a nearby tech, “Whose blood is that? Is that Harris’s?”

  The tech looked at a palm-sized computer, tapped the screen, and said, “We don’t have positive identification.”

  “Do you think it’s his?” asked Watson.

  “It came from a clone,” said the tech.

  “So it’s his,” Watson said.

  “Could be,” said the tech. “Could have come from any one of them.”

  “Any one of whom?” asked Watson.

  Freeman did not waste time listening to the conversation. He meandered toward the bathroom, pausing to stare at the silhouette marking the location of a body just outside the bathroom door. The police called the silhouettes, “negs,” short for negative image body models—three-dimensional holographic shadows that detectives used to mark both the locations and positions of corpses among other things.

  The blood was still on the wall. A cleaning crew would clean the walls. By that time, the police would create negs showing the shape and depth of every drop and splatter on the walls and floor.

  In his mind’s eye, Freeman stretched out the body and measured it. Less than six feet, he thought. Probably five-ten.

  He stopped a tech, and asked, “Were you here when they bagged him?”

  “Bagged ’em myself.”

  “Was he a military clone?”

  “All of them were,” said the tech.

  “How many were there?” asked Freeman.

  “Three.”

  The tech looked at the neg on the floor, a shadow of a body, legs stretched, back curled, torso propped against the wall. He asked, “How’d you know?”

  Freeman let a second pass before he answered, “Just a hunch.” Normally he wouldn’t have answered at all, but he suspected he’d have more questions and wanted to keep the techs friendly.

  He walked into the bathroom and saw two more negs—one stretched out across the floor, one lying with its head in the shower and its feet on the marble floor. These two were laid out flat, more or less.

  Freeman went to the water faucet. He asked, “Have you dusted for fingerprints?”

  “Guess what we found,” said the tech.

  “Fingerprints from clones,” said Freeman. “May I?” He pointed at the faucet.

  “Yeah, we’re done. Help yourself.”

  Freeman poured himself a glass of water, drank it dry, then set the glass beside the sink. He asked, “Were all three bodies general military clones?”

  “None of them were Liberators, if that is what you are asking,” said the tech.

  “How about the blood?” asked Freeman.

  “It’s all clone blood.”

  “Can you tell Liberator blood from standard clone blood?”

  “Not without lab equipment,” the tech answered. “The DNA is almost identical. Somebody is going to need to analyze it right down to the nucleotides, and we don’t have that kind of equipment.”

  “Have you checked the blood for adrenal levels?” asked Freeman.

  “Why would we do that?” asked the tech.

  “Harris is a Liberator. If these guys attacked him, his combat reflex would have activated.”

  “Adrenaline and testosterone,” the tech said, sounding impressed. “Easier to test for testosterone. From what I hear, Liberator testosterone levels are off the charts.”

  With Freeman following behind him, the tech scanned the walls, the bathroom floor, and the carpets. He knelt beside the neg lying in the shower and took more data. He took his equipment into the brightly lit dining area and read the results.

  “There’s plenty of adrenaline in this sample,” said the tech. “This one’s from the shower. The man in the shower was beaten to death; his jaw, nose, and neck were all broken. That probably accounts for the adrenaline level. His testosterone levels are fairly standard.

  “At first glance, I’d say this blood came from the clone in the shower.”

  Freeman said nothing.

  The tech played with his computer. He said, “This reading is from the bathroom floor. It’s got fragments of glass in it.”

  Freeman had noticed the shattered shower door and assembled the sequence of events in his head. He imagined Harris showering as the assassins entered. Maybe he’d hit the first one with the shower door, then pulled him into the shower and killed him.

  The second one, the one on the bathroom floor, Harris would have had to cross the broken glass to attack him. The blood from the floor is Harris’s, Freeman decided. It has to be Harris’s.

  The tech looked at the computer readout and smiled. He said, “You know, I never really believed in Liberators. I knew about the Mogat Wars and all, but I always thought Liberator Clones were a myth. I mean, clone soldiers with glands that flood their blood with hormones during combat . . . how about unicorns and griffins?

  “This blood came from a Liberator.” He shook his head. “There’s enough adrenaline to give a guy a heart attack. This bleeder had five times the testosterone level of a normal man.”

  He looked up at Freeman, a
nd said, “Whoever bled this shit might be more comfortable dead than alive. Do you have any idea what he’d be going through if he was alive?”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Freeman and Watson sat in a small office in the transitional police station—a building that might once have been a cheap hotel. The chief had set up shop in the manager’s office, giving himself more space but less privacy than he would have had in one of the rooms.

  The makeshift station didn’t have cells or interrogation rooms. It had a lobby, which the officers used as a cafeteria. They used guest rooms to store equipment. The New Olympian police had been issued very few guns, but they had plenty of computers, handcuffs, riot gear, and patrol cars.

  Watson used his traveling workspace to catch up on messages. He placed it on the table and typed in a security code, then entered his communications address. Seeing he had a message from Major Alan Cardston, Watson tapped a key and called the major back.

  As the head of Pentagon Security, Cardston carried a lot of authority for an officer of his rank. He lived in a world populated by colonels and generals, yet he seemed to carry as much clout as the men around him.

  Watson didn’t like dealing with Cardston; he considered the major a bigoted prick. Cardston referred to Freeman and Watson as “civilian contractors” and treated them as if they were lower than enlisted men.

  When Cardston came on the line and saw Watson, he seemed to sit on his hands. Had it been a general on the line, Cardston would have saluted. Had it been a civilian politician, he would have asked a friendly question. Instead, he merely said, “Watson, what have you found?”

  Having worked with Wayson Harris and Ray Freeman, Watson had learned not to give information easily. He said, “They found three corpses in the hotel room. All three of them were clones.”

  “Yes, I saw that in the police report,” Cardston replied.

  “Two were beaten to death, one was shot.”

  “Yes, that was also in the report.”

  “They entered Harris’s room at 08:05,” said Watson.

  “Oh-five?” asked Cardston. “Strange. The other attacks began precisely at 08:00, but this one was five minutes later. Are they sure they entered at 08:05?”

  “The door lock automatically made a time stamp when it was opened at 08:05. It’s part of the hotel’s security protocol,” said Watson. “They use it to prevent maids from robbing guests.”

  “Maybe the clock in the door was off,” said Cardston.

  “Freeman had the police check that. The clock is accurate.”

  “Interesting,” said Cardston.

  “We know Harris entered the room thirty-two minutes before the assailants,” said Watson. “There’s a security feed showing him entering the hotel lobby, and a security time stamp at 07:33.

  “There is a lot of blood in the room. We know that some of it came from Harris,” said Watson.

  Cardston paused. He looked down, his eyes jetting back and forth. Watson thought he was probably looking over the report he had received, the one that seemed to have all the answers, the one generated by the New Olympian police.

  “How do you know it was his?” asked Cardston.

  “Freeman . . .” Watson began.

  Freeman, who was in the room but out of the camera, put up a hand to stop him.

  Watson changed in midsentence. “The police analyzed it for adrenal levels.”

  “The combat reflex,” Cardston said. “Good thinking.”

  Liberator physiology was human, but it included a unique gland that dumped hormones into their blood when their systems hit high levels of stress. The hormone dumps were called the “combat reflex.”

  The reflex made them clearheaded and deadly in battle, but it also proved addictive, leading to massacres, some involving civilians. The engineers who had designed the current model of military clones had removed that gland and replaced it with a gland of a very different sort.

  “Some of the blood was laced with adrenaline and testosterone, so we know Harris was there,” Cardston said. “I’m not sure I would have thought of that.”

  Watson started to respond, but Freeman spoke over him. He said, “All we know is that Harris was there and that he lost a lot of blood.”

  Cardston said, “Freeman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he was shot?” asked Cardston.

  Freeman said, “Possibly.”

  “How about security feeds? Did you check with hotel security? Do they have anything?”

  “We checked the video feed. It doesn’t show how the clones entered the building or how Harris left.”

  • • •

  After they ended the call to Cardston, Freeman and Watson met with Mark Story, the chief of the New Olympian police in Mazatlán, a white-haired man with the polished demeanor of a politician.

  Story said, “I heard somebody attacked the Pentagon this morning. Obviously, if there is anything I can do, my entire department is at your service.”

  Freeman seemed content to let Watson do the talking.

  Watson said, “We appreciate that, Chief Story.”

  “I heard about an attack on a prison.”

  “Sheridan Federal Correctional,” said Watson.

  “Both attacks happened at the exact same time that the clones attacked Harris. Do you think they’re related?” asked Story.

  Freeman remained silent.

  Not the exact same time, thought Watson. He’d seen military precision. If it had been a synchronized attack, he had no doubt that Harris’s door would have opened at the exact same time the grenade exploded in the Pentagon and the gunship fired in Oregon.

  He said, “It’s too early to tell.”

  “Can I get you coffee or tea?” Story asked, then he thought a moment, and added, “I can get you something stronger if you like.”

  “I’m fine,” said Watson.

  Freeman didn’t answer. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

  They sat around Story’s desk. The chief said, “Obviously, we will do everything in our power to find General Harris. We’ve set up security stations on roads in and out of town. We’ve blocked off the airport.

  “You can leave, of course, but the runways are closed, and we’re scanning for transports.

  “Per Pentagon regulations, we haven’t allowed extra-atmospheric travel in or out of the New Olympian Territories at all. We’ve got boats patrolling the coastline. If somebody has General Harris, they won’t get far.”

  “Do you think it was a kidnapping?” asked Watson.

  Freeman sat in his chair mute and menacing, a giant wedged into a chair meant for a normal-sized man. He kept his legs out front, arched up and bent at the knees. His hands, wrists, and half his forearms extended beyond the armrests. His thickly muscled legs and broad torso blocked any view of the chair on which he sat.

  “Had to have been. You were there when my techs analyzed the blood samples. The general lost a lot of blood. Best-case scenario, General Harris was ambulatory when he left the hotel room. He might not have been conscious at all.”

  “What do you think happened?” Watson asked, pretending that he didn’t consider Story an incompetent bureaucrat.

  “It seems pretty clear. Somebody sent in a team of commandos. They waited until Harris was in the shower, then they tried to kidnap him. Harris put up a fight, but he lost.

  “My guess is that they sent two men into the bathroom with two more waiting in the hotel room. Harris killed the first two in the bathroom. He killed the third outside the door, then the fourth one got him, probably shot him, judging by the blood. What happened next is anyone’s guess.”

  “How would they have slipped him out of the hotel?” asked Watson.

  Story leaned back in his chair, rested his hands on his chest, laced his fingers as if saying a prayer. He thought about the question for several seconds. “That’s the big question, now, isn’t it? How do you sneak a dying man out of a hotel?

/>   “If he’s dying or dead, or maybe just unconscious, you could place him in a case of some kind. That would conceal him. You could drop him in a laundry basket. You could shove him down a trash chute. We checked the trash. It was clean.

  “We’ve searched the building, of course. The easiest answer is to hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign and leave your victim tucked into bed. We’ve checked every room in the hotel.”

  Watson smiled, and said, “It sounds as if you have all the bases covered.”

  “We’re trying. We’re giving this one everything we have.”

  “I guess that’s everything for now,” said Watson.

  “Are you flying back to Washington?” asked Story.

  Before Watson could answer, Freeman stood. Mark Story stood. Watson followed, realizing that the meeting had ended.

  Story said, “We’ll notify you the moment we find something.”

  One of the policemen appeared at the door and asked Story if he could speak to him. The police chief apologized and left the room.

  “Why do you want them to think we’re flying back to Washington?” Watson asked.

  Speaking in a voice that was more reverberation than whisper, Freeman said, “Because smart cockroaches only come out when you leave the room.”

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  As he and Freeman left the police station, Watson asked, “What do we do now?”

  The sun still shone in the sky, but evening had begun, and the day’s heat had turned mild. Night wouldn’t come for a couple of hours, but the day had ended.

  Ahead of them, the streets were nearly empty. The New Olympians had not come with fleets of cars or trucks. The only vehicles they had were the ones the Enlisted Man’s Empire had given them.

  Freeman said, “We’re going to the spaceport.”

  “So we’re leaving,” said Watson.

  “You’re leaving,” said Freeman.

  “What about you?”

  “I’m staying.”

  The police station was located in the center of what had been an abandoned downtown. Steel shutters covered the entrances of many of the buildings along the street. The New Olympians would open and populate the city, but the process would take time. They still hadn’t restored power or water to much of the city. The people still lived in a relocation camp on the north edge of town. They lived in a prefab ghetto with communal dormitories and cafeterias, and they ate military rations for meals.