by Gini Koch
“Sounds like he was telling the truth.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t trust him.”
“He needs us more than we need him right now. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. At least sometimes.” Usually the enemies of our enemies ganged up and worked against us together, but hope liked to spring eternal.
“Okay, be careful. Keep Christopher with you. I’ll cover what he was doing.”
“That you can’t tell me about, I know. You be careful, too.”
“Love you baby. Don’t get into anything with Jamie along.”
“Love you, too, and I’ll do my best, as always.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Yi
CHAPTER 35
RE JOINED THE OTHERS. “Okay, I’m willing to believe the senator for the time being.”
“I’m telling you the truth, of course you should believe me.”
I snorted. “You’re a politician. Of course most of what you say is a lie, half-truth, or a statement filled with deniable plausibility.”
Armstrong stared at me. “You’re a lot smarter than anyone thinks, aren’t you?”
“You’re not really good with compliments, are you?”
“Whatever,” Christopher said. “Where are we? Besides our usual nowhere, I mean.”
“Are we expecting anyone else?” Len asked as he looked out the window that faced our Embassy.
“Not that I know of.” Looked around. No one else indicated they’d invited anyone else to our impromptu party. I joined Len at the window. Most of the others joined us.
There wasn’t a lot of legal street parking around here, so the several nondescript cars double-parking on both sides of our street were sort of obvious.
“They’re purposefully dirty,” Len said.
“No argument.” These cars had either spent the last month off-roading—which seeing as none were SUVs seemed unlikely—had just driven through the biggest and wettest dust storm ever, or had gone through the dirt car wash. “It’s amazing they can see out of the windows.”
The dirt mobiles’ passengers got out. Most were men, but there were some women, too. All were dressed the same way—jeans, sneakers, and long-sleeved, camouflage jackets with a lot of pockets. The jackets hung oddly on all of them, indicating there were things underneath the jackets. Potentially bulky things.
A tallish girl about my age with long dark brown hair appeared to be in charge. She was pointing, and people were moving, so that seemed to prove the “in charge” theory. “Anyone know the new girl? She looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t know why.”
Everyone peered out the window. Negatory replies given by all. Well, almost all. “She looks familiar to me, too,” Christopher said slowly. “But I also don’t know why.”
“They look like suicide bombers,” Kyle said. “How they’re dressed, I mean.”
As the words left his mouth, the brunette looked up and around, and I got a better view of her face, or rather the expression of burning hatred she was shooting around. Maybe it was the mention of suicide bombers while I stared at her fanatical rage, but I knew who was on our street.
“Oh. Crap. I think I know why Christopher and I recognize her. I’m pretty darned sure that’s the stewardess from Operation Drug Addict, Casey Jones from Club Fifty-One, the one who was in charge of trying to blow our plane up.” All the new arrivals started to fan out—not toward or around our Embassy, but around Romania’s. The cars appeared to still be running, too. “Um, I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.”
“What do you think their plan is?” Christopher asked.
I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t asking me how Casey was here instead of locked up somewhere, in part because I figured he’d assumed what I had—our enemies had gotten her out of Guantanamo somehow, because that was exactly how our luck went. However, the answer seemed sort of obvious.
“I think they’re here to blow things up.”
“They’re encircling this building,” White said calmly.
“Why blow up this Embassy?” Christopher asked. “When ours is right across the street?”
Looked over at Olga, who was still holding and cuddling Jamie. “Oh. Double crap. Why do terrorists hit civilian targets? Because it makes the people they want to hurt feel even more awful, and it allows the terrorists to blame the murders they commit on their enemies.” My parents had really trained me well. I hoped I’d be able to get us out of this unscathed so I could thank them yet again for their prescience.
“I believe it’s catsuit time, Missus Martini.”
“Right as always, Mister White. Len, Kyle, get the stroller, get it up here and activate its special features. Everyone else stay here and protect everyone.” I ensured I made eye contact with the Peregrines, who’d deigned to wake up and pay attention, as well as any Poofs on Duty. All the animals seemed clear about my desires. “Christopher, let’s move.”
“What if they’re trying to flush you out?” Armstrong asked.
“Then they get to feel successful.” I grabbed White’s and Christopher’s hands, and we took off. Thankfully, we weren’t going too far, because Christopher’s Flash Level was hard on me and White.
We reached the street in about a second, and that included closing the Embassy door behind us. Even so, we were slow—Buchanan was already on the scene, and he wasn’t alone.
There were three police officers accompanied by the same number of impressive German ShepherӀerman Shds. One dog in particular I recognized. He wuffed in a friendly manner as he raced past us and after one of the Club 51 goons.
“Heya, Prince.” Nice to see that Buchanan had called in reinforcements in the form of Officers Moe, Curly, and Larry. They were better than the Three Stooges, but I was still partial to their nicknames. I’d wanted to talk to our personal K-9 cops, but under the circumstances, now didn’t seem like a good time.
The street was chaos personified. There were many more Club 51 people than there were cops, dogs, and Buchanan. Some were running away from the dogs, some were running away from the cops. Buchanan grabbed a driver and pulled him out of his car, slammed him against the vehicle, flung him down, and cuffed him, all in about fifteen seconds. I was officially impressed.
“Focus on anyone around the buildings,” White said. Christopher nodded and zipped off. “Missus Martini, I believe Mister Buchanan has the correct plan at the moment.”
“Go for it, Mister White. I have a date with a former stewardess.”
We separated, and I looked for Casey. She wasn’t around. Ran around the Romanian Embassy. Lots of activity, much of it being caused by Christopher knocking people out, but Casey wasn’t among them.
Did a tour of all the buildings on the street at hyperspeed. Was hugely impressed with my ability to run fast and corner without slamming into anything I didn’t intend to. Was less impressed with my ability to find one chick, because Casey was nowhere around.
Rejoined Buchanan and White. They had all the drivers down. Christopher had rounded up a lot of the general goons. So far, nothing had gone boom, and Buchanan and the cops seemed to be taking care of defusing whatever these people were wearing.
Got a bad feeling. Maybe Casey wasn’t herself anymore and was, instead, an android. That would mean she was probably fast, and that also meant she might have slipped inside either our Embassy or the Romanians’. Neither idea was appealing, but my daughter was on Romanian soil.
Was about to run into the Embassy when something flashed out of the corner of my eye. Turned and looked to see Casey. I’d missed her because I hadn’t looked up. She was on the roof of the building next to the Romanian Embassy, but on the other side from the Irish Embassy.
As near as I could tell, she had a rifle. And it was aimed at me.
Yi
CHAPTER 36
DECIDED I HAD HYPERSPEED FOR A REASON. I took off, running in a serpentine manner that probably didn’t matter because someone I didn’t like in the first place pointing a rifle at me
had the ability to rev me over to rage without even trying.
As I had at NASA Base, I ran up the side of the building—I was becoming rather fond of this move—breached the top, and slammed into Casey. Confirmed she wasn’t an android, which was kind of nice, all things considered.
The rifle flew out of her hands, and, thankfully, we both went down. Down on the roof versus down onto the ground three stories below. The fact that I’d inherited the A-C ability for fast healing was great, but broken, smooshed, and scraped parts still hurt.
The brilliance of hitting someone loaded with explosives didn’t occur to me until after I’d hit up against her, but fortunately Casey didn’t seem rigged to explode, and she either didn’t have a kill switch or she didn’t want to die, because we didn’t go boom.
“What the hell is your damage this time?” I snarled at her as I reared up and prepared to hit her.
“We’re trying to stop the invasion,” Casey snapped right back. “If we get rid of you, the rest of them won’t come and destroy us.”
“You people are the biggest whack jobs going, you know that? How the hell did you get out of the hole the government tossed you into?”
“We have powerful friends. If you kill me, more will come to take my place.”
“Yeah . . . but you’ll be dead.”
The logic of this didn’t seem lost on Casey, at least if the panic that flitted across her face was any indication.
I was about to question her or hit her, or both, when I heard a sound I was familiar with, although I hadn’t heard one for a while now. Looked up to see several helicopters coming toward us. People with long-range guns were leaning out of the sides. They were wearing camouflage that covered their heads and faces and sunglasses that hid their eyes. They would have looked at home in a war zone. In the middle of Embassy Row, they looked surreal, or as if we were in the middle of a Michael Bay movie.
Casey used my distraction to shove me off her and scramble to her feet. She started jumping and waving her arms. Apparently these were choppers she was expecting.
“We’ll take it from here,” a distorted voice said from the nearest chopper via loudspeaker. “Untie and back away from the prisoners or we’ll shoot you where you stand.”
Edged to the side of the roof and looked down. My guys were obliging, possibly because there were a lot of high-powered guns aimed at them.
The freed Club 51 folks bolted for their cars and took off. This left Casey on the roof with no ride. Contemplated my options. Had to figure that if the people in the choppers were friendly they wouldn’t have had us let our enemies go. However, they weren’t shooting at us.
All the choppers other than the one nearest to me and Casey flew off. The remaining one came closer and dropped a rope ladder down. Casey looked at me and smirked. “We’ll take care of you, all of you, later.” She grabbed the ladder and started climbing up.
“Bet me.” One of the guns pointed right at me. I decided not to push my luck. “Guys, time to play catch!” I jumped over the side as the bullets hit where I’d been standing.
Happily, Buchanan was up to Jeff’s standards when it came to catching me when I fell from a great height. I didn’t want to contemplate Jeff’s reactions as I landed in Buchanan’s arms—I was just happy to not be going splat.
“Ooof! Missus Chief, perhaps it’s time to lay off the Cokes.”
“You’re hilarious, Malcolm. Jeff never complains.”
“They’re still shooting,” Christopher snapped. “We need to get inside. And the K-9 cops refused to get to safety.”
Buchanan ran us into the doorway of the Romanian Embassy, then put me down. Christopher and White came with us. “The police officers said they were going to follow the helicopters,” White said. “None of them or their dogs were hit.”
“They were only aiming for Kitty,” Christopher said. “Why?”
“I’m popular?”
“That kind of popularity we can do without,” Buchanan said. He cocked his head. “The last helicopter’s gone.”
Christopher stepped away from the door and looked around. “Yeah, we’re all clear. So, do we go after them?”
Buchanan shook his head. “I’ve called it in. It’ll be handled, if at all possible, but it shouldn’t be handled by any of you. So, since I’m sure to be asked, what was that all about?”
“We think our good friends from the supposedly defunct but clearly still in action anti-alien Club Fifty-One were trying to blow up the Romanians as a statement, because the Romanians are our friends. And Casey said they wanted to get rid of us to prevent an alien invasion.”
We all exchanged the “what the hell?” look. “Are these people unaware that you’re all here already?” Buchanan asked.
“Talk to Chuckie about them, but most of the Club Fifty-One loons aren’t in the know. They think aliens are little green men with truth rays and anal probes, sort of thing. Most of the grunts have no clear idea what A-Cs can do, at least they didn’t when we tangled with them before. So, did anyone tell Officer Moe that we want to chat with them about our other little problem?”
White sighed. “I did mention that we’d been hoping to meet up with the officers, but Officer Melville feels that they need to track down these Club Fifty-One terrorists much more than deal with faked dirty pictures.”
“Can no longer argue with Officer Moe’s logic.”
Buchanan nodded. “Get back to whatever it was you were doing with Senator Armstrong. I’ll stay on guard.”
I thought about this. “If Len hadn’t looked out the window, would we have even known this was going on?”
Buchanan grinned as he turned and walked away. “Guess that’s one you’ll never know, Missus Chief.”
“Well, that was fun,” Christopher snapped. “Can we assume Club Fifty-One’s behind everything?”
“Hardly, though it’s so ‘nice’ to know they’re back in action, and with a lot better support than they had a couple years ago. No, we need to get back to the others and to what I wanted to do before we were so rudely interrupted.”
“And that is?” Christopher’s snark was at eleven and threatening to go for twelve, just to see if he could manaۀhe couldge it.
“Establishing what’s gone and going on. We have nothing else to work with, unless and until the K-9 cops track down Casey or her cronies, and let’s admit it—that’s a real long shot based on the firepower that came to back them.”
“What was their purpose?” White asked. “They seemed to achieve nothing.”
“Ah, but, Mister White, you fail to realize—that’s the Club Fifty-One way.”
“They flushed us out,” Christopher said. “Just like Senator Armstrong said.”
“And Malcolm, too. And the K-9 cops. I didn’t realize Malcolm had them on speed dial.”
“Mister Buchanan does seem to work in mysterious ways,” White said. “Sadly, though, I’m inclined to wonder if this was a stalling or distraction tactic only.
“No. I think it was doing double duty.” Something about that nudged at me. “We need to get back to the others. Whether or not Club Fifty-One was trying to blow the block sky high or just waste our time, we have a lot of questions that remain unanswered.”
“I’m still questioning why we have those stupid birds,” Christopher said. “They didn’t do a damn thing during this incident.”
“Missus Martini told them to sit and stay and guard,” White said. “They obeyed, as far as we can tell.”
“Have you told the others about the birds yet?” Christopher asked as he opened the door.
“Oh, no. They’re still a super special secret just for the few of us.”
He sighed. “I feel so lucky.”
Yi
CHAPTER 37
WE HEADED BACK UPSTAIRS to find everyone calm and safe. Jamie was happy to see us and demanded kisses from all three of us to make up for our long absence. Then she demanded to go back to Olga while Christopher compared notes with the others about wha
t they’d seen differently from us—nothing—and where we thought this put us—nowhere.
Christopher grilled Armstrong, but he seemed to know no more about Club 51 than the rest of us. He might have been lying, but we had more immediate questions and concerns, so I chose to believe him for the moment.
Jamie happily back in Olga’s lap, I decided to get us back onto some kind of track. “So, Senator, enough about our good friends from Club Fifty-One. I’d like your thoughts about why someone would have given me a bizarre test in place of the real HSAC.”
“How bizarre? You didn’t give me many details before.”
“It was a psychological profile.”
“They all are.”
“They aren’t all like this. Every answer was set up tހo ensure I’d sound like a psycho, no matter how I answered. It was easily triple the length of everyone else’s tests. And the questions at the end related to Chuckie and Cantu. Nothing relating to Club Fifty-One, by the way, for those keeping score.”
Armstrong’s eyes narrowed. “That makes absolutely no sense. Why didn’t you question it?”
“Because she’s Kitty,” Christopher replied.
“Ah.” Armstrong seemed to be considering. “Triple the length . . . you weren’t done when the attack started?”
“I wasn’t even close to done when the attack started.” I thought about it. “I’d skipped ahead, though, and read the last page. That’s what triggered Sandra, I think.”
“Why did the android attack with witnesses present?” Armstrong was asking some good questions.
“Well, maybe she had to. I was supposed to be in a separate room, but the instructor found me and insisted I join the others.”