The Clone Assassin

by Steven L. Kent

  Cutter said that something had happened, that seeing all the devastation, Ava Gardner had given up on life. He believed she had asked Harris to leave her behind.

  Watson said, “I think Harris was . . . is committed to Sunny. I’m not sure he loves her.”

  Freeman asked, “Have you ever heard about Ava Gardner?”

  Watson perked up. He said, “Yes. I heard she died when the Avatari burned Providence Kri.”

  Freeman didn’t respond. Instead, he said, “No one ever wondered if Harris loved Ava; the answer was obvious.”

  Watson asked, “Why are you asking about Sunny?”

  Freeman told him about Brandon Pugh, his involvement with the clones, and that Harris was sleeping with Pugh’s niece, Kasara. After he finished, Watson whistled. He said, “Another girl. That doesn’t sound like Harris.”

  “From what Pugh says, they knew each other already.”

  “Do you believe him?” asked Watson.

  “Yes. Even if I didn’t, I want Pugh on our side. If he’s telling the truth, something is going on in the Unifieds. We may need an ally in the Territories.”

  Freeman explained what he knew about Ryan Petrie and his rival organization. When he finished, Watson said, “It sounds like he needs us more than we need him.”

  “It’s not a question of needing him more,” said Freeman. “Having an ally behind enemy lines is useful.”

  “Even if he’s a gangster?”

  “Especially if he’s a gangster.”

  “Can you trust him?” asked Watson.

  “I don’t trust him, but I am going to do this favor for him,” said Freeman. “I’m going to need some equipment.”

  “What do you need?” asked Watson.

  Freeman had the list ready. He said, “A sniper rifle and Special-Forces-grade demolitions gear for openers. You’ll find everything I need in a little Bandit I have hidden just outside of town.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  A team of Army engineers began work on the new air-conditioning system later that afternoon. Because it was too big to fit in an elevator, the only way they could deliver the new equipment was by helicopter. Watson didn’t watch the delivery though most of his staff went to see the spectacle.

  So did Major Cardston and his security team. They inspected the equipment for bombs and pronounced it clean. They only allowed clones from the Army Corps of Engineers to work on the project.

  The engineers used a crane to remove a section of roof from the Pentagon, then a team of helicopters lifted the destroyed HVAC equipment and delivered its replacement. The helicopters delivered enormous canisters of the compressed-oxygen refrigerant, then the cranes replaced the roof. The entire operation took nearly three hours.

  While his secretaries and staff went out to watch the spectacle, Watson remained in his office. He was still there ten hours later when the air-conditioning units finally began pumping cool air into the vents, but it would be hours more before the atmosphere in the building felt comfortable.

  • • •

  “Yes, sir. This is Major Cardston from Pentagon Security.” Now that Watson was an interim president, Cardston began every conversation by identifying himself as if they had never before met.

  Programming, thought Watson. He looked away from the communications screen and gazed out the window. It was early in the afternoon. The air in the Pentagon now had an October chill. Watson looked out his window and was surprised to see a bright sun and a few scattered clouds.

  He asked, “Have your men found Freeman’s warehouse?”

  “It’s like an armory. If this guy declared war . . .”

  “Let’s just make sure he doesn’t,” said Watson.

  “Doesn’t what?” asked Cardston.

  “Let’s make sure he never declares war on us.”

  “Sir, I think we should confiscate—” Cardston began.

  “He’s an ally, Major. Just ship his plane and his gear to the New Olympian Territories. I promised Freeman he’d have them to him by this time tomorrow.”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” said Cardston. He was assigned to the Pentagon, but he was an officer in the Enlisted Man’s Army. When he received new orders, he sometimes responded with the term Harris dismissively referred to as a “sir sandwich.”

  Watson signed off.

  He stared out the window at the river and the marble monuments just beyond its banks. The needle of the Washington Monument stood above the city like a giant steeple on a church. Beyond that ancient monument, the marble-walled buildings of the National Mall seemed to stretch out forever. The capitol itself, the largest building in the galaxy, loomed like a distant mountain.

  The day was bright but hazy. Watson could see the capitol building, but its shape blended into the sky behind it. Harris loomed in the back of Watson’s thoughts, an overshadowing concern that made it hard to concentrate.

  Alive . . . wounded . . . unfaithful to Sunny. Did he love her? Watson asked himself. The indestructible Harris he thought he’d known didn’t match the one Freeman described on the telephone.

  Harris had occasionally alluded to the pleasures of sex with Sunny. He often spoke about her beauty. She is nice to look at, Watson admitted to himself. So is Emily, he reminded himself. And Emily isn’t such a bitch.

  Watson loved Emily. He knew he loved her, and he knew why he loved her. Why would anyone love a woman like Sunny? Sure, she was beautiful, but underneath the beauty, she was toxic.

  From what he could tell, Harris had only slept with a handful of women before meeting Sunny. Ask him about fighting or killing, and he sounded confident. Talk to him about women, and the deadly Liberator ran out of things to say. Was that why he stayed with Sunny?

  Sunny was intelligent and rich and elegant and beautiful. From what Harris had said, she gave herself to him easily.

  Could Harris have cheated on her? Watson wondered. What about “Semper fi”? he wondered. “Always faithful.” Did it extend beyond his brothers in the Corps?

  Watson’s private phone rang. Cardston wanted him to jettison the phone for security reasons. He said it was easy to trace, easy to target, easy to booby-trap, but Watson had owned the phone long before Harris hired him as an aide, and he planned to keep on carrying it long after he finished his term as the interim president.

  Besides, if he stopped carrying the phone and answering it, people would ask questions. No one outside the Pentagon knew that he was the acting president of the fledgling empire; he wanted to keep it that way.

  He pulled the phone from his coat pocket, saw the call was from Emily, and answered. She said, “Travis, you’d better get home quickly.”

  “What’s the matter?” asked Watson.

  “Sunny is here.”

  “Sunny?” He remembered how she’d looked the last time he’d seen her. She’d been drunk and disheveled. He asked, “How does she look?”

  “How do you think she looks? She looks like a beauty queen. Why don’t you ask me how she’s acting? Why doesn’t anybody ever care about how she behaves?”

  “How is she behaving?” asked Watson.

  “Like she owns the place,” said Emily. “She came in, asked for a drink, and said, ‘Where’s Travis?’”

  “What did you do?” Watson asked. One of the things he loved about Emily was that she stood up for herself.

  “I told her I’d call you. I also told her I had to go to a meeting off base.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I am not going to hang around with her. I’ll wait till you get here, Travis, but after that . . .”

  “I love you, M,” he said.

  “You better.” She hung up.

  • • •

  Watson and Emily lived on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, in the southern corner of the District. The late Admiral Don Cutter had ordered him to move there just after the attack on Mars Spaceport.

  He and Emily both hated the place.

  He also hated r
iding in a chauffeured limousine and living with bodyguards. The limousine, driver, and three bodyguards came with the house because the Empire’s enemies were now Watson’s enemies. Two of Watson’s bodyguards had died protecting him a few months back. He didn’t like having bodyguards or living on a military base, but knew he needed them. Had the bodyguards not been with him at the Unified Authority Archive building, he would have been killed. The bodyguards would be a fact of life for the rest of his life. Even if he quit his job and went into hiding, he would never be safe again.

  He called his aide, and asked, “Is my car ready?”

  “Waiting for you, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said Watson. “I’ll be out for the rest of the day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Watson placed his traveling workspace in his bag and slung the bag over his shoulder. The computer weighed less than a pound. He hurried out of his office.

  His bodyguards waited for him by the elevator. The doors were open. The two guards standing outside the elevator were military clones. The third guard, waiting in the lift, was natural-born.

  All three dressed like civilians. Their uniform included black suits, dark glasses, discreet earpieces, and pistols. Their jackets were bulletproof, technically, but in an age with explosive bullets and bullets made of a third-generation uranium alloy, the term “bulletproof” described a nebulous concept.

  The natural-born bodyguard asked, “Where are we going, sir?” as Watson stepped onto the lift.

  “Home, Mark,” said Watson. “Home.”

  Watson now made it a point to learn his bodyguards’ names. At the time, he’d jokingly referred to the ones who’d died protecting him as “B1” and “B2.” Looking back, he decided the joke had been disrespectful.

  The bodyguards referred to him as “sir” or “Mr. Watson.” Even before he’d become the acting president, he’d been “sir” or “Watson.” When he wasn’t around, they referred to him as “MTW,” short for “Mr. Travis Watson.” Creativity was not a talent cultivated by bodyguards.

  When the elevator’s doors opened three floors below street level, in the secured garage, two more bodyguards were there to meet them. So were three limousines. A natural-born bodyguard and two more clones joined the entourage that escorted Watson to his car. Some of the bodyguards climbed in his car with him. Some stepped into the other cars. As they drove off, Watson thought about clone programming. A natural-born bodyguard and two clones escorted him at all times. Why hadn’t the clones ever noticed that they weren’t the natural-born?

  Watson sat in the back, poured himself a drink, and managed a few sips before the car pulled up to the front gate of Bolling Air Force Base. The guards at the gate saluted and let his caravan through. For security purposes, the car had been cleared from the Pentagon.

  The limo pulled up to his home, a building that had once been reserved for admirals and generals reporting in from outer colonies. Watson hated the lawn, with its manicured hedges and the beds of wildflowers that lined the walkway. He loathed the bright blue façade of the home, with its white trim and faux shutters.

  Until Cutter had moved him into this place, he’d lived in the city. He’d gone bar hopping every night and never slept with the same girl twice. First came the house, then Emily had entered his life. Was he transforming into his parents?

  Emily met him at the door. She let him in, kissed him on the mouth, and said, “I better get going, Trav, I’m already late.”

  She was beautiful as ever. He felt a pang whenever he saw her. She had shoulder-length honey blond hair, blue eyes, and a nice figure. A natural athlete, she had a graceful walk, but she also had the swagger of a woman who had made the rounds. Emily wouldn’t have interested him had she come across like a virgin.

  He barely managed to say, “See you when you get back,” before she had swept past the bodyguards and into her car.

  Sunny sat in the living room, gazing out the window, looking as if Harris had never disappeared. She said, “Wow, Travis, I didn’t know you had bodyguards. Did you tell them to wait outside while you were in my apartment the other night?”

  “They’re used to it.”

  She did not stand to greet him. She remained on the couch, legs crossed, holding a tall glass of iced tea. He walked to her, kissed her on the cheek, and asked, “How are you doing?”

  Her eyes were clear, no red at all. The puffiness had gone from her face. She looked good. She looked beautiful. Her hair was brushed back, the soft, shiny brown hair that always made Watson think of mink and chinchilla.

  She said, “I spoke to my boss about Wayson.” Her boss was Alexander Cross, one of the biggest, noisiest, most successful ambulance-chasing lawyers in the capital.

  “That was classified information,” Watson said. He’d always lived by a simple rule—Don’t expect people to keep secrets you don’t keep yourself. For some reason, he had decided to tell Sunny classified information, and, of course, it had backfired on him. He was mad at her and even angrier at himself.

  “It was classified?” she asked, sounding more curious than sorry. “I’ll try to keep it quiet.”

  Sunny said, “My boss offered to send some of our investigators down to look for him; our firm represents the New Olympians. The New Olympian government will cooperate with us; it always does. He said I could go to help with the investigation.”

  “To look for Wayson?” Am I angry or embarrassed? he asked himself. The answer was, Yes.

  Watson wanted to tell her not to go, but he didn’t know how he could stop her without giving her more information, and he didn’t want to tell her anything more. Telling her as much as he had had been a mistake.

  She put her drink down on an end table. Emily had given her a coaster, but Sunny didn’t bother placing the glass on the it.

  Watson noticed this but said nothing. He hated the bland wood and leather furniture in the house every bit as much as he hated the house. He debated within himself about telling her that Freeman had found Harris. He might have found Harris, but Harris wasn’t out of the woods. From what Freeman had said, he could be in bad shape. Even the great Wayson Harris can die, he reminded himself. He’s a killer, but that doesn’t make him immortal.

  She interrupted his thoughts. She said, “You don’t look happy.”

  “I don’t think you should go.”

  “Why wouldn’t I go? It’s not like I’m going down there by myself. I’m going with our investigators.”

  Watson said, “They’re only going to get in the way.”

  “Are you saying you already have people down there?” she asked.

  “Of course we do. The highest-ranking officer in the Enlisted Man’s Marines is missing; of course we’re investigating.”

  “Are they making any progress?” she asked. “Maybe we can work together, you know, you tell us what you know, and we’ll tell you what we find out.”

  “Sunny, this is a government operation.”

  “And it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Travis, he’s been missing for over a week.”

  He looked at her, noticed how she pursed her lips. She does that too much, he thought. Did it get on Harris’s nerves? It got on his nerves. These days, everything about her got on his nerves.

  “Sunny, we have a full investigation under way. We’re making progress.”

  “That’s not what I hear,” said Sunny.

  “What?” Travis Watson, the acting president of the all-clone empire found himself stunned. He asked, “What have you heard?”

  “I heard that you and some other guy went down, some giant named Freeman. That’s what the police said, that there were only two of you . . . you and Freeman. They said you looked at the crime scene and asked a few questions, then you flew home.

  “Is that it? Is that your big investigation? It doesn’t sound like much.”

  “What are your detectives going to find that the New Olympian Police and my Marines haven’t found?”

  “Your Marines? The police t
old me that your Marines aren’t down there,” she said. “According to the police, you left the matter in their hands.”

  “Sunny, I shouldn’t have told you as much as I have. I gave you classified information . . . and you told it to your boss. I shouldn’t . . .”

  She interrupted him, shouting, “What would you do if Emily was missing? What would you do? Would you go after her? Would you talk to people who could help you? Would you spend a lot of time worrying if the information you learned was classified?

  “We’re talking about Wayson. He may be a Marine Killing Machine, but I love him. What would you do if Emily disappeared down there? Wouldn’t you go after her?

  “My boss talked to Mark Story. He said he met with you and a man named Freeman. He says you gave up and flew home. What do you expect me to do?”

  “Did he tell you there were three dead clones on the scene?” asked Watson. “We think Harris killed them. Your detectives probably won’t find anything if they go, or if they do, they might just find something that gets them killed.

  “Whoever went after Harris meant business, Sunny. They didn’t send those Marines to talk to Harris; they sent them to kill him.”

  “Have you given up on him?” asked Sunny.

  “No, of course not.”

  “What about Freeman, the other guy. What does he think?”

  Watson paused, weighed the pros and cons in his head and decided he needed to stop Sunny. He said, “Look, this is classified information. What I am going to tell you is for you only. Don’t go running to your boss. Do I have your word?”

  Sunny said nothing.

  Watson didn’t trust her, but he didn’t want her to go to the Territories. If she got herself killed, he’d answer to Harris, and that thought terrified him. He said, “Freeman is still down there. He’s located Harris.”

  Sunny smiled. She asked, “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

  Already regretting his decision to tell her, he sighed, and said, “I’ve already told you too much. Now, just . . . go back to your apartment, okay? Just go home and sit tight. I’ll let you know when we have him.”