Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump

by George R. R. Martin

  When he dreamt of the first time he picked up a football, the dreams changed. He was no longer nobody. He was the first player to go from the Busted Butte Central High six-man football team to a major college, where he led the University of Michigan to the Rose Bowl in his freshman year, broke his leg in three places in the first half and his ace turned and he tried to get back into the game and people realized there was something strange about the boy nicknamed Kid Wolverine.

  So it was government service rather than a pro-football career, and his first mission was the botched attempt to rescue the Iranian-held hostages. There Ray learned about the taste of blood and earned his second nickname, Carnifex, given him by the Mechanic, an ace agent with a classical bent, and God, was that almost twenty years ago?

  Ray kicked ass for the government, never questioning, never thinking, just doing. He killed more than he could remember, and came close to death himself half a dozen times, at the claws of the werewolf clan in that not-so-sleepy little New Mexican town, at the buzz-saw hands of Mackie Messer, under the waters of New York Bay during the Battle for the Rox.

  But there he learned that action itself wasn't enough. He needed something else. He needed meaning in his life. He needed, he now knew, April Harvest. He had never needed anyone, not even when he was a child. Not his mother, not that son of a bitch, Hartmann. No one. Never.

  But now he knew he needed April. He would find her. Nothing would stop him.

  Ray woke, his dreams over.

  Captain Flint was standing in front of his hospital bed. He looked concerned, if a stone statue can possibly look concerned. Next to him, looking dwarfed and harried, was Nephi Callendar.

  "We thought you were going to die," Flint whispered in his sepulchral voice. He sounded like a disappointed Grim Reaper.

  "Me?" Ray asked with a grin that was only partly forced. "From a couple of bullet wounds?"

  "You took seven rounds," Flint intoned. "Two pulped your liver. One shattered your right humerus. Two perforated your small intestine. One bisected your spleen. One lodged in your chest near your heart. I won't even mention the bayonet wound."

  "Is that all?" Ray said. He sat up. "How long have I been out?"

  "Only three days," Callendar said. "That's not very long, even for you."

  Ray looked at the tubes feeding into his left inner elbow and pulled them loose. He swung his feet over the side of his bed.

  "What about April?" he asked Callendar.

  The agent sighed. "Johnson still has her ... we think. At least we haven't found a body."

  "Hartmann and his bimbo?"

  Flint and Callendar glanced at one another. Finally Flint reluctantly whispered, "They seem to have disappeared during the confusion."

  Ray shook his head. "Jesus Christ. Great job, Flint. You and your boys deserve a big round of applause." He stood. Nausea punched him in the gut.

  "Easy, Ray," Callendar said. "You've taken some bad wounds and lost a lot of blood."

  "Fuck you," Ray snapped. He ripped his hospital gown off with one hand and tossed it on the bed. He examined his body. The entry wounds had all dosed, but the puckered scars still looked angry and raw. He knew that everything hadn't quite knitted together inside. Still, he could move, he thought. He took a tentative step, felt his stomach surge into his throat, and swallowed. "Get me some clothes," he told Callendar.

  "Well, if you're feeling up to it," Callendar said. He looked at Flint, who looked back silently, "There's something we need you to do."

  Ray was about to tell Callendar to take the mission and shove it up his ass, but something stopped him, some newfound sense of restraint and cunning.

  "What?" he asked.

  "The Black Dog has a nuclear bomb. He's got it in Jerusalem and he's threatened to use it."

  "What, and blow up the whole city? Himself included? He's fucking crazy."

  "He may very well be," Flint whispered. "Apparently he feels his back's against the wall. He's caught between the Nur and the Card Sharks."

  "Jerusalem, huh?" Ray remembered Horvath's words to Hartmann and that bitch who'd gunned him down.

  "One other thing," Callendar added. "There've been indications that Johnson's in the city and that he knows about the bomb and is trying to get it, either for the Sharks to use or simply to take it away from the Fists."

  "Well, that would be a relief," Ray said. "I told you before, Nehi. Get me some clothes."

  Callendar sighed. "That's Nephi. All right. But remember your mission. Forget about Hartmann for now. Recover that nuke at all costs. And arrest or terminate the Black Dog."

  "Terminate. Jesus Christ, Nephi, you're starting to sound like one of those fucking bureaucrats. You mean kill, don't you?"

  "Well, yes."

  Ray nodded. But for once death and destruction weren't on his mind. He was thinking of April Harvest, of the heat of her body and the sweetness of her mouth, and he knew that he was in love.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Just what the hell went on back there, man?" Mark asked the eyeless man, almost shouting to be heard over the hum of the C-130's four big turboprop engines.

  Sascha Starfin raised the Styrofoam cup two-handed to his mouth, snatched another convulsive gulp of the water Mark had given him when he woke up a few minutes before. A few drops of blood dotted a bandage wound around Sascha's upper arm. The round that hit him had punched a clean hole through muscle, missing bone. His eyeless face was bruised and puffy, and dried blood was caked on a split lower lip. Layton had worked on him, Mark guessed.

  Nylon netting pinned crates holding notes, equipment, and the Black Trump cultures - including Mark's secret Overtrump - in the rear of the aircraft. The squat black-painted Hercules had dropped out of the rising sun's red eye to touch down on what looked like a wide stretch of road like a hippo ballerina coming down from a grand jete. The Black Karens loaded it like ants on meth and the plane took off without even cutting its engines.

  "We were trying to rescue you," Sascha said dully. "Me and my, uh, partner." He took another hit of water, shook his head, "What the hell am I being cagey for? Me and Creighton. It's not like I didn't tell them everything."

  "Don't worry about it, man," Mark said earnestly. "Anybody would have done the same thing. Once they start in on you, you're gonna talk one way or another." He nodded toward the front of the cavernous cargo compartment, where Casaday, Layton, and a couple of Occidental goons Mark hadn't seen before sat on the bench that ran down both sides. Dr. Carter Jarnavon snoozed near them with his head on a rolled-up lab coat, drooling. Colonel Ditmar noticed their attention and gave them a fat smile that glistened like oil in the dim light.

  Mark remembered Osprey tied to a chair, the awful snick of bolt cutters, blood spurting, Osprey screaming ... and that exact same smile. He felt sick.

  He glanced down at his daughter, filled with the irrational need to be reassured that she was - however momentarily - safe. She slept on the floor by his feet, wrapped in olive drab blankets.

  Another wave of pain crashed through his gut. Sprout was acting strange. She was very stiff around her father, cool almost, pushing him gently but definitely away when he tried to enfold and reassure her. That evoked his greatest secret fear, that he had lived with since she was born: that one day she would awaken to the fact that he was a failure as a father and reject him.

  Has it happened? Is she rejecting me? The fear was given additional torque by the realization that it was selfish, and emphasized his unworthiness all the more. He imagined the hand of God following the Herc across a map of Asia, pointing, and accompanying it the legend glowing in mile-high letters: MARK MEADOWS, FAILED FATHER.

  Oh: AND GENOCIDE. Can't leave that out.

  Sascha was talking again. "Sorry, man. My mind drifted."

  The joker nodded accommodatingly. "I was saying my boss is an old friend of yours. Jay Ackroyd."

  "Jay? He's looking for me? Why? I'm supposed to be dead. It was on CNN."

  "Well, he wasn't. Not
exactly. He's hunting one of the Black Trump containers. One trail led through Saigon. He sent me and Creighton to follow up. He asked questions and I read minds, so it didn't matter if they answered or not."

  Mark blinked. Then he remembered what Sascha was. Cap'n Trips had never passed much time in the old Crystal Palace, but he'd been there.

  "Anyway, we did some detective work. Some people down on the riverfront saw some pretty suspicious cargo being loaded on a sampan the night of the blast. No, they didn't say anything to us about it." A slight smile. "They didn't have to."

  "I ... guess not."

  Sascha rubbed soft, white hands together, interlacing the fingers as if scrubbing them. Mark thought he was still trying to wash away the guilt of spilling his guts. Then he stamped the thought back down where the skimming-telepath wouldn't catch it.

  You're being a liberal weenie again, J J Flash told him from the cheap seats of his skull. Can you really afford to be that sensitive right now? You got better things to do with your mental energies.

  Sascha was looking at him with those blank flesh patches over his eye sockets, Mark realized he was politely waiting for Mark's internal dialogue to get over.

  Hey, Sascha, JJ thought, my man! How's it hangin'?

  "Been better, JJ, I got to tell you," Sascha said. "How's by you?"

  Same old same-old. Trying to get over.

  Mark squeezed his eyes shut and kind of vibrated his head. Attention drew JJ Flash like sunlight draws a growing plant. He was old pais with Sascha; he had frequented a lot of places Mark stayed away from, including the Palace.

  Okay, guys, Mark thought, cool it. I'm not gonna be odd man out of a conversation with my own multiple personality disorder.

  Wrong again! a shrill thought came. True multiple personality disorders are prohibitively rare. You just don't want to admit that we're real people, trapped by your own irresponsible indulgence in drugs inside your -

  Traveler, Mark thought pointedly, shut the fuck up.

  "Anyway," Sascha said, turning his eyeless gaze away from Mark, "we hired some local talent and came for you. And I guess you know the rest of the story."

  Yeah, but do you? Do you now what it might have cost me - Mark abruptly filled his mind with a giant image of a section of DNA twist.

  "Good idea," Sascha said in a hoarse whisper. "Don't think anything around me you don't want them to find out."

  Mark nodded, keeping his mind full of different-colored CATG balls, webbed together, DNA, ad infinitum. Deep down, he felt shocks of dread that Quasiman would lose track of him, not know where to bring the drugs ... if he even remembered them.

  "Yeah," he said hoarsely. "So, uh, who was this partner of yours?"

  "Guy named Creighton. He can make himself look like anybody he wants. I'm glad he made it out, anyway." After the downpour had washed away any tracks, the Jeep fire had died down enough for the Black Karens to discover there was no body in it. The shapeshifting ace and his hirelings had gotten away clean.

  Mark tried hard to sit on bitter thoughts about a man who would scuttle off and leave Sprout captive. Sascha sighed and cast another Zen glance toward Casaday and company.

  He stiffened. Mark looked up to see Casaday himself striding back toward them.

  "So how's our new guest doing?" the CIA man asked. "Accommodations to your liking?"

  "Well, I like it lots better now that that trained monkey of yours isn't beating on me any more."

  Casaday laughed. "Better not let him hear you say that," he said. "I suppose you're both wondering why we're bothering to take Mr. Starfin along with us, instead of leaving him back on the Salween Plateau with a bullet in his head. Of course, it could be for the pleasure of rolling him out at about thirty-five thousand teet, which is our current cruising altitude, by the way."

  He gave a shark's smile to Sascha. The eyeless joker got paler.

  "But relax. We got a much better use in mind for you."

  Sascha gasped. Casadav nodded. "That's right. The good doctor here might need a guinea pig to test out that extended-virulence Trump he's been putting together for us. We don't want to let all his good work go to waste, now, do we?"

  Sascha turned an eyeless glare of accusation. "Meadows, you're not - oh, you son of a bitch!"

  Mark buried his face in his hands.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Ray's plane landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport near the Mediterranean coast, about thirty miles west of Jerusalem. The plane was largely empty, though a few businessmen and tourists were still daring enough to visit the city that was so important to three of the world's great religions.

  Ray blended into the crowd, sparse at it was, catching the first bus to Jerusalem. It was hot, but it was a dry heat. Somehow, though, that failed to make Ray feel any better. The bus was air-conditioned, but Ray was sweating and still more than a little shaky from the wounds he'd received in the Westminster Abbey imbroglio.

  Callendar had sent him after the Dog, but Callendar wasn't pulling his strings anymore. No one was. His prime objective was to find Harvest. If she was still alive. No, he wouldn't even think about that. She was alive. She had to be. Then there was the matter of Hartmann and the bimbo with the automatic. Jerusalem, especially the Walled City where the wild carders hung out, was not a big city. Ray was sure to run into Hartmann and the woman. Sure to run into the Dog, too, and if it came to it he wouldn't be averse to a little animal training. But Harvest came first. Harvest and Johnson.

  The bus passed through brown desert, several times skirting the crazy-quilt Palestine border and reached the suburbs of the New City almost before Ray realized it. Access to the New City was relatively easy. Wall-less, borderless, mostly Jewish, New Jerusalem was three hundred thousand strong and constantly growing. It was much more security conscious than the average American city. Soldiers and policemen were everywhere. But Ray's business wasn't in the New City.

  He disembarked with the others, but bypassed the modern, multi-storied tourist hotel that was the bus's destination, He went to the cab stand, told the driver "Old City," and got in. He was sweating profusely and already felt washed out.

  The Old City was still encompassed by Jerusalem's medieval walls. Part of it belonged to Israel, part of it to Palestine, but it really belonged to the people who lived there, fought there, and died there for it every day. Traditionally it'd been divided into Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian quarters. When the wild carders arrived they'd pushed out the least numerous, least powerful group and took that Quarter for themselves. The Armenians had either been absorbed by the others, or else disappeared into the dustbin of history, no one really knew.

  People had been fighting and dying for their part of Jerusalem for the last fifty years, but it was just another city to Ray, maybe a little more crowded, dry, and dirty than most. The cab dropped him off at the New Gate, which was guarded by Israeli soldiers. They didn't really care much, since he was going in rather than going out, so he was only waved through the metal detector. He stepped through and entered another century.

  The streets were twisty, the buildings crowded together, the smells foreign, somehow ancient. The first thing Ray did was find a small hotel off the main streets whose proprietor took cash and didn't ask questions.

  The hotel room was so dirty that it made Ray's skin crawl. The walls were peeling and filthy with finger marks and hand prints. The unwashed carpet was worn clear through in several spots and stained almost everywhere else. It smelled of urine and vomit. Ray didn't look too closely at the bed.

  But it was dark, quiet, and out of the way, which was what Ray needed. Time was obviously of the essence. He didn't have the time for a careful investigation, even if that was his style. He had to find Harvest fast.

  There was only one way he could think of to do it. There was a war going on, and when there was a war you always needed soldiers. The easiest way to track down Johnson and find Harvest would be to join the Sharks, but there were problems with that. For one
, he was pretty well known among them and, for two, Ray was sure that you couldn't just join up. They didn't exactly have recruitment offices on every street corner.

  The alternative, Ray thought, was to go with the Twisted Fists. Not that they were the Rotarians, either. Normally it was difficult to join them, but the dossier Callendar had given him said that lately there'd been confusion in the organization. Now would be the time to join.

  Of course, there were two little problems. The Fist leaders probably knew him. Even though he wasn't that famous and his face had changed half a dozen times over the years, there was no doubt that he'd be better off with a new face if he wanted to join the Twisted Fists. And he also had to be a joker.

  He looked at his face in the rust-spotted mirror over the room's stained porcelain sink. He rubbed his jaw and grimaced. This was not going to be pretty. He sighed, took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  He smashed himself in the nose.

  Involuntary tears of pain started from Ray's eyes as he felt cartilage break. He looked back in the mirror. His nose was flat, just how he wanted it. But the job wasn't done. He took the straight razor from his shaving kit and looked at it, grimacing.

  "The face first," he said aloud. "Then the hands."

  Before long he was crying again, but he didn't stop cutting. The tears ran down his slashed cheeks, diluting the blood that dripped freely into the sink below. When he was done with his face he started on his hands. Soon the razor was slippery with blood.

  When he'd finished he bandaged his face and hands as best he could, then he lay down on the bed. He'd already put in a supply of water, fruit juice, and vitamins, and had straws to drink them through.

  Twenty-four hours later he left the hotel.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Mark stood alone in a pool of light. The five petri dishes arranged in a neat line on the tin lab table told their story in a silent shout.