The Scarab

by Rhine, Scott

  Whitaker’s head had been grazed by debris, but he was shouting orders and calling for back-up on three channels. “Pull in the perimeter. She’s making a run through zone two. Get me the bomb squad, at least four ambulances, and a fire rescue squad!”

  Out of all of us, Steve reacted first, dusting the plaster and glass off, and opening his first aid satchel. “Nigel, clear me a glass free zone here big enough for two people. Josie, put on a pair of these sterile gloves. Rip those veils into five centimeter wide strips. We’ll start with the people who are bleeding the most,” he ordered. Josie remained stunned for several seconds before mutely nodding.

  Mare shouted to the agent at the door as she grabbed the edge of the heavy chandelier. “Help me move this wreckage. There are people trapped under here.”

  I was useless to help any of them, but I noticed that Kali had used the confusion to get away. Angry, I chased after her. When I reached the far doors, they held fast. Pushing as hard as I could, they only gapped a few centimeters. Kali had co-opted the daily event easel that normally sat in front of the doors, and shoved its three six-foot long rods of oak through the metal door handles to the ballroom. We were trapped! I could see her half way to the front door already, and I didn’t have time to run around the long way, especially if she had a car out there waiting. Furious, I shouted, “Whit, she’s getting away!”

  As agent Whitaker hurried over, I watched helpless as one of the back-up police officers approached Kali. Her face changed immediately. Tears poured down her cheeks, and she pointed back to the ballroom in hysterics. When the poor cop got close enough, she hit him with her purse strap and squeezed the on switch. I shouted a warning, but he dropped like a sack of potatoes anyway. When Whitaker reached my side, I said, “She barred the door with wooden rods.”

  “Back off!” He took a stance, thumbed the targeting override, and fired several rounds into the stubborn wood. When he stopped, I threw my good shoulder against the door, and staggered out into the lobby. Kali had a clear path to the exit with no one barring her way. Instead of leaving, however, she had liberated the policeman’s weapon and now unloaded it in my direction.

  It happened so fast, I couldn’t move. The noise was incredible. The stone column beside us splintered under the hail of bullets. The urn in front of us shattered. I knew exactly what was about to happen, but I was a bystander at my own execution.

  About the same time the first shot slammed into my chest, Whit tackled me from behind. I couldn’t breathe. The next shot obliterated my mask, and feathers flew everywhere. I couldn’t see anymore. Whit took a swarm of bullets for me, but another one still hit my right hip. I couldn’t form coherent thoughts because of the pain.

  Mare shouted, “Police. Drop your weapon!”

  I was gawping like a fish to get air. My side was soaking wet. Was it from my blood or Whit’s? The stone floor felt like ice, draining the heat from me.

  Since Mare’s gun had been confiscated as evidence, she was now carrying a heat-seeking automatic like Whitaker’s. According to the report, Officer Anselm, braced against the door frame, and placed two rounds in Kali left forearm, shattering the bone. The second bullet went through the arm into Kali’s lung. The combined force of the shots slapped her against the floor. Black-and-yellow jacketed officers came from several directions to swarm over of the ring leader. Thanks to the ambulances Whitaker had just ordered, Kali didn’t die, but would have some interesting scars to show her fellow inmates.

  Mare rode with me in my ambulance. “But the game is about to start,” I objected.

  “Nigel will take care of it. As soon as Steve’s free, he’ll help out. I’m not leaving you alone for a second, young man. You don’t listen,” Mare chided.

  My protective vest stopped the first bullet. The mask had sacrificed itself for the second. After they ripped open my pants and cleaned off the blood, they found out that Josie’s commlink had taken the third shot. I had major bruising, possibly even broken bones, but not a scratch. Mare cried again when she saw. “Ethan, you’re the luckiest man I know. If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  After getting X-rays, I spent the most agonizing hour and a half of my life waiting to see a doctor. I dialed our hotel room on the cell phone every minute until Mare took it away from me. Our team was making excellent progress and would soon be in Berlin. HEO had encountered an unexpected delay but still finished first. Porsche finished not far behind. If the Matsumura team hit the same snag and Mare and I could do a little aggressive city piloting, we might have a chance for third. I was climbing the walls, but Mare refused to give the phone back to me.

  An FBI agent we hadn’t met before took our statements while we waited. He found it hard to believe that I identified Kali on such circumstantial evidence. “Taken separately, I admit they don’t sound like much, but how many left-handed local female reporters are there with computer degrees?”

  “But how could you have known that her mother was an AmerInd?” he asked.

  The shot the nurse gave me for the pain was making me sleepy, but I fought it. “I had no idea. But she was the only reporter in the place who didn’t have a single question for me.”

  “So you just blurted out your suspicion?” he said.

  “She was getting away,” I said lamely.

  Finally, a country doctor who looked older than water paid us a visit. He took one look at my embarrassing injury and ruled. “Use the wheelchair for a week. Stay in bed. Take the same pain pills you’re on already. You’ll be okay.”

  As Mare pushed my chair out, I said “Great. You heard him. Back to the hotel!”

  The doctor, overhearing me, shouted down the crowded hall after us. “And no sex!”

  Even I blushed.

  Chapter 30 – Finish Line

  We borrowed a pair of surgical scrub pants so I could leave immediately. Putting them on, even with help, was an adventure. Before we could leave, though, Mare wanted to check in with Reynolds. All the agents from the hotel were sitting in the hospital waiting area. On our way through, Mare asked the field supervisor how Whitaker and the other two officers were doing. “Peebles was dead on arrival. We don’t know if Smith is going to lose the leg or not yet. It was badly crushed, but he’ll survive because of your brother. The photographer is still touch and go. Whitaker’s out of surgery and doing fine, thanks to your quick action. No thanks to your boyfriend, there.”

  “Is there anything we can do? Flowers, explaining to relatives, thanking the agents in person?” I asked.

  Reynolds looked disgusted. He turned and spoke to Mare instead of answering me. “Do me a favor and get him the Hell out of here. Three of my men got sent to the hospital for him, and I’ve got twenty reporters down there asking how the Scarab is doing. It’s like somebody shot the president. I’m not blaming you for how things went sour, but right now I can’t stand to see his face.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, wheeling me away, accompanied by a hospital worker. I wanted to protest, but decided to bow to Miss Anselm’s judgment. She had to work with these guys; I didn’t.

  Once in the cab, Mare phoned ahead to the hotel to request a wheel chair. The first person to greet us in front of the hotel was Mr. Niven; he was there to oversee delivery. “Sir, you came back.” He seemed quite shocked, and puzzled.

  “I had to. I left my luggage and a team with a race to finish.”

  “But you were shot. They had live footage on the news. The police said that there had been fatalities, and we all thought you were one of them,” he explained.

  “You know what Samuel Clemens said about things like that being exaggerated.” Scarab just racked up another return from the grave.

  “Indeed,” he said, recovering some of his composure.

  “We’ll need another room for tonight, one that’s wheelchair accessible. We’ll let Mr. Anselm use our current suite. Put it on our tab.”

  Niven didn’t bat an eye. “Very good, sir. Might I suggest taking the
service elevator? Barnes will escort you. It might help you avoid the press.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Niven,” I said sincerely. “Ever consider being a personnel director in a research firm?”

  “Too much excitement, sir. But thank you. The rooms are on the house, as is everything you’ve charged on your stay here. If there’s anything further you need, do not hesitate to ask.”

  Everything? I felt uneasy accepting his gratitude, however formal. “I should at least pay for some of the damage we caused. I feel terrible about the urns.”

  “Not to worry, sir. They were old anyway,” he said with a perfectly straight face.

  While Mare phoned ahead to our room, I asked Niven, “When you said everything, did that include the ring?”

  He leaned close as he personally pushed me to the service elevator. “They thought you were dead, sir. It seemed in poor taste to demand the ring back.”

  “I want to pay for the ring. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be from me, it wouldn’t mean the same thing.”

  Niven, being a gentleman, seemed to understand. “Very good, sir. But the hotel will insist on charging you only our cost on the item.” We shook on the agreement as the elevator doors closed.

  Mare interrupted, still on her phone. “Bad news, Ethan. Ghedra is being pulled over by European Commonwealth troops at the Berlin border. What do we do? If we pull over, we lose our chance at third place.”

  “Call a fifteen minute time-out this second!” I shouted so that Steve could here me at the other end. “There are five players left. We have our vote and two abstentions. All we need is LAS or Andiron to say yes.”

  By the time we reached the room, Nigel was already stripping off the data gloves and head gear. I felt bad because none of the equipment had been calibrated for him. Steve met us at the door. “Only took a few seconds. Good idea. Now we have a breather to plan.” He gave his sister a hug and asked quietly, “Are you okay?”

  She nodded, and handed Steve a copy of my medical brief. “Can he play? I don’t want to risk his life over this.”

  Steve scanned the file and then looked me over himself. “Lucky.”

  I glanced up at Mare. “I know.”

  “How do you feel?” Steve asked.

  “Like I’ve been kicked twice by a mule,” I admitted.

  Steve shrugged. “I don’t see why not. We’re only going to be playing about another twenty minutes,” the team medic ruled. “But then, it’s plenty of bed rest for the rest of the day.”

  Josie walked out of Mare’s bedroom, looking a little worse for the wear. Being in the middle of a war zone had taken a lot out of her. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, probably Steve’s, instead of the top from her costume. Her makeup had been removed, and she spoke in subdued tones. “He recommends that for all his patients. Personally, what I need right now is a drink. I still see blood when I close my eyes. How’s everyone at the hospital doing?”

  Mare gave her the optimistic outlook, neglecting to mention the agent who had died during the helicopter flight to the emergency room. “Everyone at the hospital should make it. Agent Smith might not even need a prosthetic to walk. Thanks to your costume and the other precautions, Ethan was released already.”

  “Both the costume and the phone were ruined. I’ll pay for them, of course,” I apologized.

  “The hotel is already covering the damage. They have very good insurance.” Barefoot, she went to the mini-bar in the kitchen and mixed herself a prescription. I watched her legs move hypnotically and almost drifted off before I shook myself awake again. “Anyone else want a belt?” she offered.

  “Not till we cross the finish line,” said Nigel. “This is exhausting work. I don’t know how you fellows managed with just the two of you for so long.”

  “Don’t listen to him; he’s been doing a great job. When we first came into Berlin, he did the old JFK schtick. ‘I am a donut’ and got laughs from everybody. He drives a little more conservatively than I would, but road construction ended the lane we were in a while back. If we’d been going full speed, we would have plowed through the barricade and into the pit,” Steve summarized.

  “What about the other players? Mare hasn’t let me near the race for over half an hour. What delayed HEO?”

  “The cops pulled him over for an inspection. The EU has a set of standards for all vehicles that drive on European roads. The test gives you a list of everything you need to change before you’re street-legal,” Steve said.

  “We don’t have to obey the laws,” I said, outraged.

  “That’s what the Hicks-Eisner pilot thought. When they finally did catch him, he got hit with a two-minute penalty. Now we have the same problem. We could take out the simulated police vehicles and might keep out of the dragnet for long enough to cross the finish line, but then we’d have a reputation as cop killers. We didn’t want that, so we decided to pull over and eat the time,” Steve said.

  “What did everyone else do? Seems to me that everyone would have the same delay,” Mare interjected.

  “Porsche, LAS, and BW were from EU countries. They pre-certified. The Japanese team tried an end-run, taking a different route, and ended up with an even bigger delay,” Nigel explained. “If we stop, Andiron and LAS will close with us in five to six minutes. Matsumura is likely to cross the finish line in that same time frame.”

  Mare put her finger on something that had been bothering me. “Why is it so quiet in here?”

  Steve answered. “We found out that the Ghedra handles a little smoother without the CD playing. Somehow it soaks computer cycles.”

  That was a design problem I had never considered. The onboard computer adjusted the balance several times a second, but if it was reading the CD, there would be a brief delay in the adjustment. I started doing a calculation in my head and drifted off again. Mare snapped me out of it.

  “We need to see the map and get some background here,” she said.

  Nigel handed me a map and narrated as we looked it over. “Berlin is the largest city in Germany, as well as being the capitol. They just had their sesquicentennial, the 150 year anniversary celebration, a huge event. I remember seeing the rebuilt Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church...” Steve tapped his watch, and Nigel shifted gears. “Right. Our goal is to get from here, near that wooded area on the west end, to the Sportsforum on the other side of the Spree River. Our path through the city is designed to highlight various tourist attractions.”

  “Which wooded area? A third of the map is green.” Mare observed.

  “And they’re very serious about protecting their parks and farm land. No floaters or ground cars in these areas, only pedestrians, horses, and bicycles on the approved trails,” said Nigel.

  “Don’t tell me, you’ve been there, too,” I said. “This looks like a straight shot.”

  Nigel winced. “Somewhat. The part of the route near Museum Island goes through the heart of their historic district. It starts here at the Brandenburg Gate and goes to the Pergammon Museum. The road is normally closed to vehicles, but they’ve opened it for the race because they want to show off everything they can.”

  “Do they have any high-brow type culture centers?” I asked innocently.

  “You can’t swing a dead cat in Berlin without hitting a culture center. Art, music, dance, countless horse statues—you name it, they’ve got it,” said Steve, a surprising source of insight.

  “You’ve been?” Miss Valencia asked.

  “Briefly. Marines, America’s ambassadors to the world,” he responded.

  “Speak any German?” I asked.

  “Just enough to get my face slapped,” he said, embarrassed.

  “Right. That means Mare is the pilot, and Nigel is the Navigator. I’ll stand by on tactical. You said that the Japanese team went around. An outer-belt?” I asked my team.

  “There isn’t a hover-capable outer-belt, which isn’t as shocking as it seems at first. Most of the transport is mass-transit or rail. And that’s how they managed it. From
our adventure earlier, the other teams know how easy it is to ride the rails from one part of the city to the other. They detoured onto a rail bridge north of the Charlottenburg Palace, and crossed the Spree outside the slow zone. The penalty, detour, and slowed speeds on the rail have cost them almost ten minutes,” Nigel explained.

  I shook my head. “We can’t afford to take that route, but Mare’s right. If we don’t stop, we have a chance to beat them. What are our options, though? We don’t want to kill them. Like it or not, we’re role models now, and we can’t advocate cop killing. If we run, the pursuit will be on us like white on bread. We can jam the electronic tracking and lose them in any parking garage.” Mare raised an eyebrow at that. Reluctantly, I grumbled, “But we don’t want to teach people how to do that either.” I growled in frustration, watching the time slip away.

  Resigning myself to an act of good citizenship, I asked “How long is the test supposed to take?”

  “Ninety to 120 seconds, depending on how much is wrong. They transmit the whole list.”

  “Just shoot me now and get it over with,” I whined. “Stop forward motion, but keep spinning. I want quick acceleration out of this place. Make sure to chat pleasantly with the officer, and mention that Mare is an off-duty investigator. While you’re talking, I’m going to look at the last series of tests on the laptop. Maybe I can make up the time somewhere else.”

  Before strapping in to the interface, Mare hugged me. She managed not to hurt my ribs too badly. “I know that went against every one of your criminal instincts, but it will work out alright in the end.”

  Steve moved the chair out of the way and I scanned the overhead map of the city. There were only five tests after this one. The Matsumura team would bypass all but the last three at the stadium itself. One of those was the final engine wear and endurance rating for the design. After this cluster of racers crosses the line, they’d probably switch to time-compression mode again. This whole race would be over in less than an hour. We’d be done in time for the west coast evening news. There really wouldn’t be any more surprises after the next ten minutes. After all those months of effort, I’d end up with honorable mention. I sighed. “I suppose fourth place is good enough.”