Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  “Where you going?” she demanded. “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know yet, but we’re hauling ass out of here with the shooter, and you’re staying with Petrie while he goes to the hospital.”

  She inhaled to argue. Kev clapped his hand over her mouth. “No, Zia,” he said, his voice steely. “Not this time. Petrie took a bullet for you. You will hold his hand in the ambulance. It’s the least you can do.”

  She stared at him. Gave him a nod. He could hardly believe he’d managed to convince her so easily.

  A siren sounded, far away in the distance. Good, for Petrie’s sake. No time to smash the box open here.

  “That’s our cue,” he said. “Come on. Move.”

  “Where is she?” King demanded. “What’s taking so long?”

  Hobart tapped the keyboard. “Just waiting for the database to—”

  Whack! King slammed the side of the computer desk, making them all jump. “Do it faster!”

  Hobart flubbed the string of characters he was entering. He blocked, deleted, entered it again. “Yes, sir.”

  King hung over the man’s shoulder. Melanie and Julian stood by, eyes downcast, shutting down external signals, hoping not to be noticed. He swung around upon Melanie. “Have they said anything?”

  Melanie’s hands lifted to the earbuds in her ears. “Nothing new. No conversation. The McCloud who got wounded is just groaning.”

  “Good.” King was glad the son of a bitch had taken a bullet. Let him ache and throb and bleed until he died. King wished him a nasty strain of antibiotic-resistant staph to gnaw at his suppurating wound for a few agonizing days before that happy event.

  “I have it!” Hobart’s voice was tight with excitement. “They’re in a self-storage facility outside Newark!”

  King peered down at the screen at the satellite shot of the McCloud brothers’ vehicle. As he watched, the door opened and a man in a lack knit cap got out. He went to the back of the SUV, opened it. Then opened the door of the unit. He returned to the car, seized a long, limp bundle. It did not move.

  “Is she alive?” he demanded.

  “Vitals all strong,” Hobart said.

  The man dragged Zoe into the unit and came back out, locking it. He got back into the vehicle. Melanie’s hands flashed to the earbuds.

  “Put the sound on the external speakers!” King snapped.

  Hobart pushed buttons. Sound blared out, fuzzy and distorted. “. . . to the emergency room before I bleed to death, goddamnit!”

  “Yeah, we’ll go, OK? We had to stash her first. She’d be hard to explain parked outside the Urgent Care if she started to squeak. And I want a crack at her before we deliver her to the cops, so you can—”

  “What the fuck do I care? I want to plug this hole!”

  “Calm down. I’ll take you to the Urgent Care, and then I’ll come back and have a chat with monster chick. We’re gonna get friendly.”

  “Tell me about it after,” the wounded McCloud snarled. “I’m hemorrhaging!”

  “That’s not hemorrhaging. It was a ricochet, OK? Stop being such a pussy. I’ve gone out clubbing after worse than that.”

  “Yeah, and I want stitches and an IV antibiotic, so drive the fucking car . . . now.”

  No talk after that, just grumbling and the sound of the engine revving. The vehicle began to move. The screen showing the RF frequency bleeping from the chip embedded in Zoe’s clavicle remained stationary in the storage unit. The one in Zoe’s cell phone and the one in Rosa Ranieri’s cell, which her adopted nephew had conveniently taken, began to move. King watched the vehicle until it pulled into the covered area attached to the administrative office of the storage facility and was lost to sight. He calculated the timing. Came to a decision.

  “Hobart, Julian,” he said. “Go retrieve her.”

  Hobart’s eyes widened. “But I thought—”

  “Plans change. Her com device is with them. She’s immobilized, probably unconscious, so she wouldn’t be able to fulfill a Level Ten command even if I could deliver one. And I don’t want her interrogated.”

  Melanie piped up, her voice anxious. “Sir, I could go with Hobart. I have more experience than Julian. He hasn’t even completed his final training, and if the McClouds come back before we—”

  “Your combat skills are not up to a McCloud. Julian’s are superior to yours. Do not presume to question me again.”

  Melanie’s face turned crimson. All three operatives were frozen, inert.

  “For God’s sake!” he roared. “Move!”

  Hobart and Julian scuttled out of the room. In the silence that followed, King heard choked sobs.

  His teeth clenched. His hands fisted. He carefully did not look at Melanie so as not to lose control completely.

  How had a specimen so defective, so inferior, managed to get through his culls? He was tempted to initiate the sniveling cunt’s mortal command sequences then and there. He forced himself to stop. He was down to a bare minimum of three functioning agents, one of whom was not even fully trained. He’d called back others from outside assignments, but it would be days before they came home.

  He could get rid of Melanie when his rankshe attendants swelled to an acceptable number. Until then, distasteful though it was, he needed her. Which meant he had to hold his nose and manage her.

  He softened his voice. “Melanie. Forgive my sharp tone. It’s an act, for Hobart and Julian’s benefit. Would you really want to leave me all alone here, with no one to back me up? As you so intelligently pointed out, Julian hasn’t even completed his training program. Call me selfish, but if I’m going to have the support of only one sole operative, it has to be the best one.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “And you can imagine why I can’t say that in front of the others. Can’t you?”

  Melanie blinked away her tears. Her face illuminated. She stood up straighter, with a tremulous smile. “Of course, sir.”

  “Come here, Melanie,” he said, keeping his voice soft.

  Her face turned pink. She moved toward him, eyes shining. He smiled at her, trying in vain to remember her command sequences. He prided himself on knowing every operative’s command codes by heart, but nothing was coming to him today. Too tired, too stressed. It irritated him. He grabbed his handheld organizer. Melanie waited, eyes wide and expectant, while he punched them up from his private database.

  Ah, yes. Medieval Georgian. Melanie’s whole pod had been command coded in that language. Why he hadn’t been able to recall it was beyond him.

  “Give me your hand, my dear,” he purred. Her slender fingers were ice cold, though her face was pink, eyes exalted.

  He recited a Level Eight reward sequence, and Melanie convulsed with a shriek, eyes rolling back. She sagged against him.

  He caught her by the armpits and held her, cursing long and bitterly at the indignity of his situation. His creations were not supposed to fall apart on him when he needed them most. They were not supposed to lose consciousness when he gave them a reward sequence. They should not be so jealous, so competitive, so distastefully oversexed. It should not be so easy to destabilize them. This problem went beyond Zoe’s breakdown. It was a general defect in DeepWeave that he had to address before he began with the new, fresh ones.

  But first things first. He let Melanie drop to the floor. Took ten seconds to let his temper cool. He crouched and slapped her.

  She moaned, opened her eyes. They were fogged with devotion.

  “Get up, my dear.” He kept his voice gentle, by brute force of will. “No time to wallow! We have work to do.”

  She scrambled ungracefully to her feet, still panting.

  King clicked on the video interface until he found Parr’s cell. The woman was sitting in the corner, on the floor, positioned in such a way that he could not see her face, it being below and behind the camera’s eye. Just jeans-clad legs and pale, bare feet. There was a dusting of scattered white dots around her on the floor. He peered at them, then at the movement of
her fingers. She appeared to be picking at some piece of paper. Shredding it. “Did you send Howard’s video archive to play on the monitor in Parr’s room?” he asked Melanie.

  “Oh, yes. She’s probably seen the whole loop three times by now.”

  “I want to know what she thinks of it,” he said. “Bring her to me.”

  “Lemme get this straight, mon.” The dreadlocked Jamaican cabbie crossed his arms over his chest, releasing a pungent cloud of patchouli and weed. “You want me to drive your car to the Urgent Care, alone. Grning and cursing. Park in the ambulance zone, where they will tow your ass away. Take two cell phones into the emergency room and put them in the garbage can. And then walk back to get my cab.”

  “That’s all,” Kev said.

  The man stared at the eight hundred-dollar bills fanned out in Kev’s hand, clearly tempted. “That’s fucking weird as hell, mon.”

  “Yeah, sure. But you have to go now,” Kev said. “This thing’s time sensitive. It times out in a minute. And so does the pay.”

  The man shook his head. His eyes were slitted with suspicion, but sharp. “What other kind of sensitive? I don’ wanna go to jail, mon. I don’ want no trouble with nobody.”

  “You won’t be doing anything illegal,” Sean told him. “You’ll be helping save innocent people from criminals. I swear it, before God.”

  “Swear all you want, mon,” the man said. “These bad guys, they gonna be mad, and I don’ wanna talk to them ’bout it, after. I don’ want to be caught on no security camera. I got me a woman, a baby girl.”

  Kev reached for his wallet again, peeled out four more hundreds. “This is for your woman.” Another four. “This is for your baby girl.” He pulled out two more. “These are for making your mind up, fast.”

  The guy shook his head again. “Fast is not good, mon.”

  Kev sighed through clenched teeth. “It is today.”

  The guy walked around Kev and Sean’s vehicle. He opened the back hatch, looked in. Looked at the cases of equipment that Sean and Kev had unloaded. “What’s in those cases?” he asked.

  “Nothing you need to concern yourself about,” Kev said. “They won’t be in the car you’ll be driving. And then abandoning. Forever.”

  “I will be on the cameras at the emergency room,” the cabbie pointed out.

  “Maybe so, but you won’t have committed a crime,” Kev countered. “Just a traffic violation. In a car not registered to you.”

  The guy stared at the fan of bills in Kev’s hand once again. His hand stretched out, even though his head was still shaking. The extra thousand had clinched the deal.

  Kev looked at Sean. “Get the phones out of the trunk.” He turned to the cabbie. “Listen up. As soon as he brings you those phones, do not say another word. Not one more word. Got it?”

  “Ah! Bugged phones? This is so fucked up, mon. I don’ like this,” he said, but the money had already disappeared into his pockets.

  “Me, neither,” Kev said fervently. “Don’t forget the cursing and groaning, like you have a painful wound.”

  “No problem. I groan real good. I drive all day, in this winter slop, and my arthritis kicks up. Auooow! Fuck, mon, that hurts . . . auooow!”

  “Don’t overdo it, for God’s sake!” Kev said, alarmed. “Muffled groans, OK? Or they’ll be able to tell it’s not one of our voices. Got it?”

  “Oh, yes, I got it, I got it,” the guy assured him.

  “Take them out of the bags before you go in. If someone sees you drop a handbag into the garbage, they’ll think you’re leaving a bomb.”

  The guy winced and opened his mouth, but Sean was there, finger to his lips, holding up the bag that held the phones. Kev clapped his hand over the guy’s mouth and yanked the driver’s side door open. Sean opened the back door and tossn.

  The guy still looked miserably doubtful, but he climbed in. Kev slammed the door shut. Nodded farewell. The guy nodded back, started the engine with a roar. The SUV leaped and bumped out of the shelter, down the short concrete ramp, onto the street. It turned and was gone.

  Sean walked over to stand beside Kev. They stared at the place where the vehicle had left their field of vision. They couldn’t step out of that shelter until the other piece of their hastily cobbled plan drove up.

  “That was stressful,” Sean commented. “I hope that guy doesn’t get distracted and stop for munchies somewhere.”

  Kev shook his head. “He wasn’t stoned. But he was scared.”

  “So am I,” Sean said. “Do you think we’re fucking him up?”

  “I don’t think so. There are no explosives in monster chick’s phone. They must have gotten nervous about that, after the cabin. And there’s no way anyone could trace him back to the phones, even using fingerprints. He was wearing leather gloves. He’s safe from the Butthead Brigade. Unless they recognize him personally, if he gets caught on some camera. And that’s not likely.”

  “None of this shit has been likely,” Sean said, darkly.

  They stared glumly out at the rain-slicked street, and another vehicle appeared, turning onto the ramp. It was the aging but fitlooking Volkswagen panel van that Sean had spotted in a nearby used car lot.

  The guy they’d met in the storage unit got out. He was a heavyset guy with slicked-back hair. “Here she is,” he announced. “I got ’em down to thirty-six hundred and filled her with gas, like you said. She runs real good.” He held out a handful of cash. “Here’s your change.”

  “I appreciate the savings. Keep it as part of your commission.”

  The guy looked taken aback. He slid the wad of money into his pocket. “Uh, thanks. Why didn’t you buy it yourself? You on the lam?”

  “No. Long story, but nothing illegal. So, like I said. The van’s in your name. We borrow it from you today. When we’re done, we give it back to you, free and clear. I’ll call your cell, we get you the van.”

  The guy shook his head, his mouth flat. “If you use it to commit a crime, I’m rolling over on you,” he warned. “I will fuck you up.”

  “Fair enough,” Kev said. “Say we stole it. I’m fine with that.”

  Kev and Sean began loading the plastic cases into the back of the van. The man stared at them. “Yeah. Sure. And, uh . . . now?”

  “Now we go,” Kev said. “And thanks for your help.”

  The man just stood there. “What did you put in the storage unit?”

  Kev just looked at him.

  “Yeah, never mind. Whatever.” The guy walked away.

  They climbed in. Sean started up the motor. It sounded pretty good. Kev opened up the laptop and opened the surveillance program, clicking open the view from the slap-on vidcam he’d attached with a single discreet gesture to the outside wall of the storage unit they had rented, using gray-brown putty and fuzz disguise, which made it almost invisible. They’d positioned repeaters to augment the signal at least to the street outside the storage unit.

  “How far can we go and still get the signal?” he asked.

  “Let’s park around the first corner.” Sean turned the van around and put it into park. “It’s ris, though. They might just eyeball us when they come. Those two guys both think we’re going to blow up the Chrysler Building, or something.”

  “I know,” Kev said bleakly.

  “You think they’ll call the cops?”

  Kev stared at the screen, watching as the guy they’d gotten the van from approached their newly rented storage unit and stared at it.

  “They might,” Kev said. “At least, the dreadlocked guy might. The other guy’s still hoping to score a free car out of the deal. Best we can hope is that they’ll wrestle with their consciences just long enough for us to snag a tail. Then they can do whatever they want, and welcome.”

  Sean shook his head. “It’s so damn risky. Bringing strangers in.”

  “I know!” Kev exploded. “All I can do is try, right? I’m pulling this thing out of my ass as I go along! And I am wide open to suggestions!”
<
br />   “Sure you are,” Sean soothed. “I just hope the Butthead Brigade cares enough about monster chick to send someone to pick her up. At least she didn’t blow up in our faces, like the cabin guy. Small mercies.”

  Kev reached down, rummaging for the inlaid jewelry box. He slid the back panel aside. “Give me your blade,” he said.

  Sean handed it over. Kev snapped off the entire back panel, splintering it as he wrenched it off. He slid the blade into the wooden seam of the drawer and pried. Ker-ack, the wooden frontpiece snapped in half. He fished out the loose piece, pried out fragments, wrenching loose tiny nails, until a dark slot opened up. He peered inside, heart beating so frantically it felt like it was banging his throat from underneath.

  Something was in it. He tipped the box forward, tapped, knocked, shook. Please, God. Let it be a lead.

  A clump of floppy disks slid out, scattering over his lap. The ancient kind that he remembered from college. Not even the rigid 3.5 plastic-jacketed ones. These were the ones that were genuinely floppy.

  The two of them gazed at the ancient disks, disheartened.

  “Fuck.” Kev’s voice shook. “Where are we going to find a machine that can read this prehistoric shit fast enough for it to matter?”

  “Miles could,” Sean said. “He’s a specialist. He’s got some real museum pieces in his dad’s basement in Endicott Falls.”

  “Three thousand goddamn miles away!” Kev yelled.

  “Hang on to your shit.” Sean’s voice was all steely calm. “Put them aside. We watch for the people who are coming for monster chick—”

  “If they come at all! And if they don’t?”

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes.” Sean studied him, narrow-eyed. “Those glaciers are melting faster than I thought. What happened to Zen Dude, floating over the rough edges of the world?”

  “There is no Zen Dude,” Kev snapped. “It was bullshit all along.”

  “That’s a relief. Welcome back. Remember when it was me, flipping out, and you were trying to talk me down?”

  “How could I forget?” Kev paused. “Unless somebody tortured me, inflicting brain damage that caused eighteen years of amnesia, that is.”