As her boots touched the ground, one of the Hinds from the north launched a missile at her. She easily rolled away from this, so that only a few bits of dirt clanged against her armor. With a grim smile she held up her hand for the Sword of Justice. Then she ran straight for the helicopter.
The Hind opened fire with its cannon. The Scarlet Knight avoided most of these shells. The ones that did hit her pinged off harmlessly. They were bigger than most bullets fired at her, so that they would probably leave a bruise in the morning. The Scarlet Knight didn’t care about this, as it would be Emma who felt sore, not her.
She launched herself into the air and grabbed the fuel probe at the front of the chopper and then swung herself onto the front canopy. The pilot looked up and even through his dark visor she could see his eyes widen. She gave him a thumbs-down signal to indicate he should land the Hind. When he didn’t comply, she broke open the canopy with her fist and then yanked the pilot from his seat. She did the same with the gunner and then leaped back towards the ground.
“Who are you?” the pilot asked.
“I’m the Scarlet Knight. I’m the good guy and you’re in the wrong business.”
With her cape she managed to slow her rate of descent enough to land softly on the ground with her two charges. A solid punch to the face of each knocked them out. She again launched herself at the next helicopter in line.
This time she didn’t bother with such niceties. She grabbed onto one of the rocket pods, used it to swing herself onto the left winglet, and then punched the side of the helicopter. With her glove she yanked out some mechanisms; she didn’t care what they were. The point was that the helicopter started to go down. She dove from the winglet and drifted again towards the ground.
One of the remaining two Hinds got the right idea and turned back for Russia. The other came straight at her. It fired a pair of missiles at her while she was in midair. These missiles, being designed to blow up tanks, didn’t lock on to her; they did little more than blow a couple of holes in the ground. Since the pilot had seen this was useless, the Hind opened up with its cannon. The bullets again pinged harmlessly off her armor. A few hit her cape, but to her surprise the fabric was equally resistant to the bullets.
The gunship continued to come straight for her. She soon saw why: Ivan Bykov was in the gunner’s seat. This didn’t come as much of a surprise given what he’d shouted at her on the overpass. She waved to him with one hand while the other pulled out the Sword of Justice.
She nonchalantly tossed the sword into the air and guided it towards the helicopter. She could see Ivan stare at her, intent to drive the gunship right into her. She wanted to tell him this wouldn’t do any more good than the rest of his arsenal. Apparently he didn’t quite grasp the concept of magic armor yet. While he was focused on her, she guided the Sword of Justice to glide along the side of the helicopter and then up over the cockpit. She brought the sword down; the blade slashed down like a hot knife through butter.
The Scarlet Knight watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Ivan and his pilot crashed towards the ground. They were low enough that they probably wouldn’t die, just suffer some nasty injuries. That would probably make him more intent to kill her. She knew she should kill him, but that Emma Earl part of her brain still couldn’t do it. Instead, she drifted down to the ground and walked over to where he’d crashed.
She found him injured, but far from dead. “I’ll get you,” he said. “This isn’t over.”
“It is for you,” she said. “I’m turning you over to the Latvian authorities. You don’t have your father to protect you anymore.”
As she tied Ivan up with a strip from his own jumpsuit, Marlin appeared before her again. From the horrified expression on his face, she knew something had happened to Louise. “What happened to her?” she asked.
“She’s gone. Someone took her.”
***
Katya heard the explosions and pressed Slowey tighter to her chest. Mommy was out there somewhere, to fight bad people who wanted to take her away again. Katya wanted to run out of the trees to make sure Mommy was all right, but she didn’t. Mommy had told her to wait here and that’s what she planned to do.
It still seemed odd to think of this woman as Mommy. Katya had only met her a few hours ago, back on that bridge where Papa had sent her away for Ivan. That had been the first sign in Katya’s mind that she wasn’t Papa’s real daughter. She had tried to tell herself Papa loved Ivan more because he was older; he was a grown-up while she was still a baby.
In the car, Katya snuck glances at this woman with white hair, to figure out who she was and what she might want. While the woman had taken her away from Papa, she was nice enough; she always asked Katya if she was all right after they hit a bump. This seemed strange because the woman didn’t even know her, had only met her a couple hours earlier. How could she care so much for someone in such a short amount of time?
Despite this, Katya still wanted to go back to Papa’s sea house. Things had been so nice there; the ocean waves put her to sleep like a lullaby. Besides Slowey, she had a room full of toys. More importantly, she had an entire library of books to read. Papa had bought up a local library and transported it to the house so she wouldn’t run out of things to read. She had only gotten a quarter of the way through it. If she went with this woman, she would never get to finish.
When the opportunity presented itself, she took off and ended up in the trees. She hunkered down in the brush and hissed at Slowey to be very quiet. She would wait until the woman went away before she took off again, back to the sea house.
But the woman had found her. At first Katya thought the woman would be mad at her, but she wasn’t. Instead, she seemed sad—and scared. Katya hadn’t realized grown-ups could be scared before; Papa had never been scared, not even of spiders. Then the woman said the strangest thing: that she was Katya’s mother.
Katya didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe that Katarina was her mother. Katarina had taken care of her for as long as she could remember, at least until she disappeared a couple of months ago. Papa had said Katarina had gone on vacation and that she would come back in a while, when she was ready. As much as Katya loved Katarina, she didn’t really mind as this gave her more time to spend with Papa. They had gone to the sea house and Katya had been happy, at least until Papa came into her room and told her they had to go on a trip. He made her put on her best dress—the one she wore to church—and comb her hair. “Can Slowey come with me?” she asked.
Papa patted her head. “Of course he can, sweetheart.”
Slowey had been with her for as long as she could remember. She had cuddled with him in her crib and then in her big girl bed. He was her best friend—her only friend really. When she was still around, Katarina would often make Slowey talk in a slow bass voice that always made Katya giggle. Even after Katarina left, Katya could hear the voice in her head.
But now this strange woman said Katarina wasn’t Katya’s mommy. She said she was Katya’s mommy, that Papa had stolen Katya from her back in America. Katya didn’t want to believe this. She couldn’t believe it because that meant Papa had lied to her. He had promised never to lie to her. That in itself might be a lie, if this woman had told the truth.
As much as Katya didn’t want to believe it, she couldn’t deny it any longer when she looked into the woman’s eyes. As the woman said, they were the same as the eyes Katya saw when she looked in the mirror. This echoed something that had bothered Katya since she’d read a book on genetics: she didn’t look like Katarina or Papa at all. Katarina’s eyes were light blue and Papa’s were gray. Papa had dark hair and Katarina had blond hair while Katya’s was red. They both had round-ended noses while hers was pointed.
She had asked Papa about this one night after he read Sleeping Beauty to her. “So she was adopted by the fairies?” Katya asked.
“That’s right,” Papa said.
“Am I adopted?”
“Of course not. What a
silly question!” He smiled at her, but there was something unsettling about that smile. Now she knew why: she was adopted. Not even adopted—stolen. Papa had kidnapped her from this nice woman with the same eyes as her.
And so Katya had accepted that this woman was her mommy. Just as they were about to become close, the helicopters had shown up. She knew full well what a helicopter sounded like; she had ridden in them many times with Papa from one house to another. Only she knew these weren’t like Papa’s helicopters, not from the explosions.
Katya heard something heavy crash nearby and squealed with fright. “It’s going to be all right,” she whispered to Slowey. “Mommy said so.” Mommy had put on that red armor to protect herself from the bad people. Still, Katya knew plate armor couldn’t protect Mommy from explosions like she heard. “She said she would come back.”
Katya repeated this to herself like a mantra. Mommy had promised to come back for her. Mommy wouldn’t break her promise so soon, would she? No, she wouldn’t. She would come back. She would come back and they would go to America and she would get to see the Statue of Liberty and White House and Mount Rushmore and all the other neat things there. They would be happy there, her and Mommy.
A hand came through the brush. At first Katya thought it must be her mother, but this hand wore a black glove, not the yellow ones like Mommy wore with her armor. Katya scrambled away from this hand, while she tried not to make a sound. She pressed Slowey tighter to her chest, enough that stuffing came out of his chest. Amongst that stuffing she saw a bit of yellow, like the plume of Mommy’s helmet. She thought of what Mommy had said and then pushed the plume deeper into the stuffing so it wouldn’t fall out.
A moment later, a monster appeared through the brush. It had red eyes surrounded by black metal that gave it a bug-like quality. The rest of its face was black, except for its red, human-like lips. Katya screamed and tried to back away, but the monster latched on to her with two hands. She clawed and kicked, not caring what Mommy had said about it not being nice to hit or kick people; this wasn’t a person, it was a monster.
“Let me go!” Katya shouted. “Leave me alone!”
The monster dragged her through the brush, to where an old woman waited. Her hair was gray, but her face was far wrinklier than Mommy’s. She smiled and then bent down to look Katya in the eye. The old woman’s eyes behind her glasses were blue, but not the same as Mommy’s or Katya’s. “Hello, Katya. I’m going to take you to your new home.”
“No. Mommy said to wait here.”
“Don’t worry, Mommy will be waiting for us there. She’s got a surprise for you.”
“You’re lying! Mommy told me to wait here. She wouldn’t break her promise.”
The old woman nodded to her. “Very well. We tried it the easy way.” She put her hand to Katya’s temple. “Sleep now. When you wake up, you’ll be home.”
Katya tried to resist, but she couldn’t. She found herself falling to sleep. Despite this, she willed herself to keep hold of Slowey so Mommy could find her and save her. Then her body pitched forward, into the old woman’s arms.
Chapter 23
Her new training officer was Darlene Morgan. Except for the glasses and that she stood about four inches shorter, she and Amanda looked like they could be sisters. Maybe that was part of the reason Captain Donovan had assigned Officer Morgan to her.
The other reason became clearer as they went out on patrol that night. Morgan kept a notebook out and scribbled in it periodically as if she were Amanda’s shrink. “What are you writing?” Amanda finally asked.
“Just some helpful notes.”
“For you or for me?”
“Both.”
“What are they?”
“I’ll give you a copy later.”
“Why not now?”
“Because you’ll get pissed off and then you’ll probably crash us into a building,” Officer Morgan said. Amanda stared at her until the officer finally snapped her notebook shut. She checked her watch. “I think we can get some coffee.”
Amanda stopped at a gas station for a cup of used oil that passed as coffee. Officer Morgan’s nose wrinkled as she sipped hers. “Pour this down the sewer and the rats wouldn’t even touch it,” she said.
“Yeah, well, there isn’t a Starbucks for miles.”
“That’s fine, it’ll keep me awake as I’m puking it up.”
“You’re a laugh riot.” They returned to the car, but before Amanda could start the engine, Officer Morgan snatched the keys away. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going over the notes now.” Officer Morgan opened her notebook. “Did you learn how to drive by watching Bullitt?”
“No,” she said, though her brothers had always liked Steve McQueen movies.
“You’re the only girl in the family, right? Kind of a tomboy?”
“Why? Are you a shrink?”
“No, that just explains the driving.”
“What are you talking about?”
Officer Morgan consulted her notes. “On average I’d say you drive fifteen miles over the limit, you change lanes without signaling, you went through a stop sign without coming to a complete stop, and you nearly hit a pedestrian when making a left turn.” Officer Morgan shook her head. “And you were in the traffic division?”
“What’s your point?”
“The point is that just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you can drive like a prick—at least not without turning on your lights. When you’re on patrol you drive like a civilian until it’s an emergency.”
“Thanks for the pointers.”
“That’s the tip of the iceberg. If you can get your driving under control then the rest of your attitude problem will improve.”
“My attitude problem? I’m not the one making stupid little notes all the time.”
“I’m supposed to be training you. That’s what they assigned me to do.”
“Oh, and you do whatever you’re told, right? You’re the spotless goody-two-shoes. That’s why she assigned you to me.”
“I have two commendations for valor under fire. You might have known that if you’d bothered to look up my file like I looked up yours.”
“You read my file?”
“It’s a great read.” Officer Morgan wrote something else down. “For the record I did minor in psychology.”
“I’m sure that comes in handy.”
“It does, actually. Helps me to gauge which assholes are going to pull the trigger and which ones are blowing sunshine up their asses.”
“And what keen psychological insights did you get from my file?”
“You have a complex because your father and brothers died. Your mother had you much too late in life and so the two of you have never gotten along. You couldn’t meet her expectations for what she wanted you to be. You were her last hope at having a little girl and you were more interested in playing with your brothers’s G.I. JOEs than your Barbies. Am I getting warm?”
“It said all that in my file?”
“Not really.” Officer Morgan smiled at her. “My mom is the same way. She was forty-three when she had me. I didn’t have any brothers, but still.”
“So now I’m supposed to like you because we have something in common, right? We’re supposed to hug and be best friends like Cagney and Lacey?”
“Not if you don’t want to be. You can keep being a bitter, angry bitch all the time until there’s no one left willing to put up with your bullshit. It’s up to you.”
As Amanda searched for a comeback, the radio came to life. “Attention all units: officers down at 492 Alameda Street. Requesting backup.”
Amanda picked up the radio and looked over at Officer Morgan. “What do you think?”
“Now’s the time for reckless driving. Just make sure to put the lights and siren on.”
“Yes ma’am.” Amanda called the dispatcher while she shifted the car into gear. Before she floored the accelerator, she made sure to turn on the lights and siren. Alameda
Street was by the docks a few miles away. They would probably be the first ones to the scene. Lucky me, Amanda thought; this would only add to her Supercop résumé. Well, it could be worse; she could have that drunken slob of her previous training officer in the seat next to her. Cagney and Lacey or not, they would go into this together.
***
For the moment Captain Donovan had stuffed the brochures back into her desk and replaced them with manila folders. In the folders were the notes from the fish market where Amanda had apprehended the Russians. The six men were in custody right now, all of them silent; they refused to speak in English or Russian. They didn’t even demand a lawyer or diplomatic immunity, content to stare at the walls of their holding cells or the interrogation rooms.
Captain Donovan read the reports from Lieutenant Cielo and the two other detectives who were on the case. At another time she might have wanted to go into the interrogation room to squeeze something out of the Russians, but not in this case. She doubted they knew much of the overall scheme. They were the hired muscle, not the brains of the operation.
Another file had come in a couple hours ago. This came after an Interpol report that Sergei Bykov had been found dead on an overpass near Pskov, Russia arrived on the fax machine. Bykov had always been on Donovan’s watch list for moving in on Don Vendetta’s turf. While Interpol—or any other law enforcement agency—had never gotten the goods on Bykov, it was pretty common knowledge he was into all sorts of illicit activities over in Russia. The Scarlet Knight had insinuated on more than one occasion that Bykov had tried to destabilize the breakaway republic of Grakistan in order to buy up the country’s mineral reserves.
While Donovan couldn’t prove anything, she was fairly certain the two items were related. The question became how. Had Bykov tried to move in on Don Vendetta’s turf and she’d somehow—from her jail cell even—gotten to him? Or were the Russians in her cells from another Russian faction that had taken down the competition in Bykov? Until those Russians broke their silence, she doubted she’d know.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 131