by Dom Testa
“Quiet,” I said, then had to yell it twice before everyone settled down. “Who’s in charge in here?”
There was no response at first. Then a woman rose to her knees and halfway raised her hand. “I guess I am,” she said.
“How many of the drones are airborne?” I said, walking over and pulling her up by the arm. “How many?”
“Um, two,” she said.
“New York and Boston?” I asked. She nodded. “Bring them down.” Again, she hesitated, but I knew it was out of panic. I hated to do it, but I held the gun up to her face. Calmly, I made eye contact with her and said: “What’s your name?”
“Lynnette Deacon.”
“Lynnette,” I said, as gently as I could. “Right now you’re going to bring the drones back down to wherever they started.”
“Um,” she said. “I don’t think I can.”
Parnell had joined me. “Why not?” she asked.
“Because—” Lynnette had focused on the gun, so I lowered it. “Because we don’t control the flights here. We give the okay to launch, but once they’re up we don’t actually steer them. That’s done on site.”
“Shit,” I said. From outside I heard more gunfire. Fife and the Special Ops team were fighting their way toward us, it seemed, engaged with LoGo’s band of hired killers. I looked back at Lynnette. “Who starts the pulse sequence?”
“It can be done here or locally, in case there’s a problem at either location.”
“So you can’t disable it? Or can you?”
She seemed confused. “I . . . I may be able to. We never planned for that.”
“Plan for it now, Lynnette. Right now. Those sounds you hear are an entire team of Special Forces and when they show up in this room they’ll be very unhappy if you’ve harmed their family. I won’t be responsible for how they react. Do you understand?”
She nodded and sat down at one of the computer terminals.
“What time is it?” I asked Parnell.
“Ten-forty,” she said.
“Is the electronic shield down? Can I make a call?” In response she handed over my phone. I nodded in Lynnette’s direction. “Stay on top of this, please.”
I punched in the satellite access code, and while waiting for the connection I hustled everyone else to the far wall and had them sit on their hands. It wasn’t hard to get cooperation. It looked like at least two of them had wet themselves.
“C’mon, c’mon,” I mumbled. When the connection clicked I punched in the nine-digit emergency code, and within seconds I heard Quanta’s voice.
“Listen,” I said. “Scramble jets for New York and Boston. Both cities. Drones should be approaching the 5,000-to-6,000 foot elevation point.”
“It’s already done,” she said. “All 18 targets are being patrolled. We got a call 30 minutes ago from Fife. So far the Air Force hasn’t spotted anything, but they’re searching.”
I glanced across the room at Parnell, who gave a nod.
“Okay,” I said to Quanta. “We’re working on this end, too. I’ll get back to you.” I hung up and walked back to where Lynnette was furiously punching in keys. “Well?” I asked.
“I might be able to do it like this,” she said, pointing at her screen. “But probably not.”
I looked down at the display of numbers. “That doesn’t mean shit to me, Lynnette. Don’t explain it to me; just do it.”
“Well, first I need to—”
“Stop!” The voice came from the doorway.
Parnell and I turned to find Gillian, the LoGo Ice Queen, her own weapon trained on us. Holy shit, it never ended.
“Whatever you’re doing, Ms. Deacon, stop right now,” Gillian said. She took a few steps toward us, the gun held in both hands.
“Hello, Gillian,” I said.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “But drop your guns. Both of you.”
I held onto the gun, but kept it at my side. “We’ve met,” I said. “Over dinner. You were very rude, but the chicken was outstanding.”
Like the good agent she must’ve once been, Parnell slowly crept to one side. It would’ve been indistinguishable to most people, but I could sense she’d already put a bit of space between us.
“And Ms. Deacon really can’t stop,” I said, taking my own small step toward Gillian. “She has a lot of responsibility right now. The same responsibility you casually ignored out of some dark sense of revenge that doesn’t help anyone. Including your father.”
“You shut your mouth about my father,” Gillian said. “And drop that gun.”
“All right, I’ll set it down,” I said. I moved forward to a table, holding Carter’s gun out to my side to show her that I wasn’t up to anything. But of course I was. Moving to the table closed the gap between us, and it gave Parnell time to slide another foot to the side. I needed to keep talking and keep the twin’s focus on me.
“I understand your pain, but potentially killing that many people won’t bring your father back. All it will do is make you a murderer. So why don’t you also lower your gun, hmm?”
I was close enough now to see that it was my damned gun. The freak had my gun. Well, shit. There was no way I could let her kill me with my own weapon. For one thing, Quanta would never let me live it down. Not to mention my wife really liked this particular body, and it’s been a while since I could say that.
On top of all that, I hadn’t uploaded in a long time. No matter how it turned out, I didn’t want to forget all of this. It was too good.
“Gillian, listen. That gunfire you hear? It’s a team of Special Ops soldiers along with the FBI. So just put down the gun and let’s not make things worse for you, okay?”
“Whoever you are, you can go straight to hell,” she said. That’s when she took dead aim at me.
“Eric!” I heard Parnell yell, but by that point I’d already lowered my center of gravity and started to pounce.
Three things happened simultaneously. One, Gillian carried out her threat and did indeed fire a round at me. Two, that round hit me. And three, Parnell, who’d sashayed to the side in order to open a clear lane for shooting, put a bullet in Gillian’s chest. You’ve heard of a bang-bang play in sports? This was bang-bang-bang. Gillian and I hit the ground at the same time.
She was much worse off than me — in fact, she was dead before her long, flowing locks touched the tile — but that didn’t make my condition any more fun. Blood gushed from a hole in my upper right chest, and I recall letting loose with a string of profanity that would’ve made Chris Rock wince. I think it was the combination of pain and anger. I’d been shot plenty of times, but this one pissed me off the most.
Within seconds Parnell’s face appeared over me. She was saying something, but I was still busy with the expletives. After taking a deep breath I said: “I killed your husband.” Another breath. “Sorry about that.” One long groan, then: “Why would you help me after that?”
She was staunching the blood, with what I had no idea. “He wouldn’t have been my husband in another month. In fact, if you hadn’t shot him I probably would’ve pretty soon.”
I didn’t want to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. And that hurt like a bitch. There was more to the Parnell/Richter story, but I wasn’t going to get it at the moment.
Another face came into view. It was Fife.
“That’s great, Fife,” I managed to blurt out. “You couldn’t run a little faster and get here 30 seconds ago?”
“Stopped for coffee,” he said. “Want some?”
I explained in detail what he could do with his grande non-fat. Then things began to fade. The last thing I saw before darkness closed in was Parnell being shoved to the ground, hands cuffed behind her back. I may have tried to shout something in protest, but that’s when everything disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-One
It should be a requirement that every hospital room in Miami — or any beach resort town, for that matter — should come with a view of the ocean. It would raise t
he spirits of every patient and recovery rates might double.
Or maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe someone with an ocean view might linger for several extra days, just to soak it in.
My room looked out over a construction zone as they added a new wing to the hospital. I wanted out as quickly as possible. I was told it would be about a week.
But in case you hadn’t deduced it, that meant I wasn’t losing the body. It would need some serious mending, but I could continue to fight for truth and justice and blah blah for a while longer until it was time to reinvest.
Or, as Fife said to me from the chair next to my bed, until I screwed up again.
My first day back among the conscious was spent dealing with pain and talking with doctors who explained where the bullet had entered, where it had exited, how lucky I was that it missed this or that, and how their primary concern was infection. Plus a lot of other doctor-speak. My only question concerned the schedule for more pain meds.
My second day, however, was catch-up day. Fife arrived with Cuban sandwiches and we talked for almost an hour until the nurses booted him out.
I was likely saved because a first-class medic was part of the Special Ops team that stormed the island, and the fact that the Ormonds had included a pretty decent clinic as part of their Vita Solis development. After the firefight I was far from the only patient. Since the others were almost entirely made up of the LoGo mercenary army, I’m pretty sure I got preferential treatment.
Most importantly, the drones launched over New York and Boston never carried out their EMP attack. It didn’t even come down to Lynnette or the computers on the island. The drones were spotted and attack helicopters in each city took them down. One landed on top of a parking garage in Queens, causing significant damage to cars, but at least no one was hurt. In Boston, pieces of the drone and its deadly cargo hit a residential area where six people were injured, one seriously but not life-threatening.
Compared to the nightmare that nearly unfolded, it was acceptable collateral damage. That’s not meant to sound cold; it’s just a fact.
Of course, good old Q2 Sanitation was on it within minutes. The media was told that the U.S. military had taken down two oversized drones launched by amateurs. Not knowing if they’d been set aloft by terrorists, it was reported, the military action was deemed necessary. It became a thing on national media, reminding people that robotic aircraft can be dangerous.
Well, it was a thing for one day, until the media sniffed a potential scandal with a certain Senator. Then drones were once again background noise. The government would compensate the victims on the ground and the rest of us would go back to our obsession with coffee and Kardashians.
With the information uncovered in the Ops Room, the other 16 drones never got the launch signal. They were found and their operators quietly arrested. Fife said there was some question about how much those operators really knew about the ultimate outcome of their assignments. There was a good chance that Julianne kept them in the dark about what was going to happen. But all of that would unspool in the next few weeks.
Things were especially interesting on the island. Between bites of his sandwich, Fife told me that Gillian was indeed dead and her creepy brother in custody. My next question was about dear Aunt Mom. We’d left her in the room where I’d been locked up, but it was empty when Special Ops moved in. Later they found her among the inland trees. She’d slit both her wrists and hanged herself from a tall branch. Leave it to Julianne Ormond to overdo even her suicide.
That meant of the four Ormonds, three were dead and the fourth probably wouldn’t last long in prison. A total family tragedy.
LeMan had been found cowering beneath a desk in one of the offices on the 4th floor. I wondered if his large glasses were askew. I hoped so.
Fife said the LoGo board members on the island were not in the dark about everything, although most claimed to be stunned at the scope of Julianne’s plan. He figured there would be lots of plea bargains resulting in plenty of folks tossed under the proverbial bus. The stock would plummet and the company would be on the brink unless someone stepped up.
And then there was Parnell.
Fife raised his hands with palms up. “I don’t know what to tell you about that,” he said. “She’s here in Miami, still being questioned. I’m sure it won’t turn out well for her. She was part of it, Swan.”
“But she shut off the data block over the island and called you. That’s the only reason all of this worked out. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“That’s not up to me,” he said. When I asked him for details about Parnell and Richter, he said she wouldn’t talk about that.
“Well, she owes me an explanation sometime,” I said.
“You might have to ask her during visiting hours at a maximum security penitentiary. But she did ask me to return this to you. Said you’d already broken it in.” He handed me the Buck knife I’d taken off Brandt and subsequently rammed into his brain.
I chuckled and handed it back. “I’ll consider it a trophy from the campaign. Better put it with my other things. I don’t know how the nurses would react if they found it next to my bed.”
The news about Parnell gnawed at me, but I kept the rest of my thoughts to myself, biding my time until the one person who could influence anything walked into the room. I expected her on my third day in the hospital. She showed up on the fourth.
“I’m surprised you managed to not get this body killed,” Quanta said, her tiny frame swallowed by the bedside chair.
“I enjoy this one,” I said. “You know, it’s like nice furniture. You treat it a little more carefully. If I could, I’d Scotchgard myself.” I shifted in bed. “You’re not really here to grade my papers, are you?”
She gave one of her muted smiles. “No. It’s some of your best work, overall.”
I pretended to choke. “Wait. I must still be unconscious and dreaming.”
“I didn’t say everything you did was perfect.”
“No, because then I’d be full-on hallucinating.”
“Insecurity, Swan? Do you feel persecuted by me?”
“Only marginally. So let’s talk about the important stuff.” She didn’t respond, which to me was an invitation to continue. “Parnell.”
Quanta placed her hands in her lap with fingers interlaced. “Swan, Parnell was Julianne Ormond’s personal bodyguard and the wife of Julianne’s primary assassin. She’s been involved in this from the beginning.”
“Without knowing what they were planning. Listen, you can thank me all day long, but without Parnell helping me this country would be in flames right now.”
“So you think instead of prison she should get a Presidential Medal of Freedom?”
“If you look at the requirements, I’d say she qualifies. When she understood what was really going on she called Fife, she saved my life, and she took out Gillian Ormond before she could do any more damage.” I could tell this plea was having at least a minor impact so I played my hole card.
“Quanta, you’re not only off base about prosecuting her. You’re missing an opportunity.”
She studied my face. “An opportunity. Okay.”
“You know what I’m about to say, don’t you?”
“Swan—”
“Wait. Consider all the angles. A former MI5 operative in the UK. Already trained, for the most part. Skilled enough with Krav Maga that she could give you a run for your money.” I held up my hand to ward off her response. “Okay, maybe that’s overstating it. She’d do better than I do.”
“That’s not exactly a glowing recommendation.”
“Funny. But I’m serious, Quanta. She’s not a knave; she’s a perfect candidate for Q2’s investment program. I’m sure you could use another female agent. She’s right there, on a platter.”
When she continued to stare at me I added, “Don’t be obstinate. Admit it: she’s perfect. You can’t deny she’s off to a fantastic start serving our country. I don’t know too muc
h about her leaving the SS, but it smells of an overreaction on that end. London’s loss could be our gain. Should be.”
She stood up and walked to the window, watching the giant crane on the construction site lift a pallet skyward. I knew it was time to shut up.
A minute later she turned back to me. “Swan, I’ll think about it.”
That was a major victory. Outwardly I kept a stoic expression; inwardly I celebrated. Talking Quanta into something? This might be a first.
She nodded, indicating the topic was tabled. “Do you need anything?”
“Yeah. How about Beadle’s last known location?” When she shot me an irritated look I shrugged. “All right. Maybe some vodka?”
“I’ll have Fife sneak some in. You’re sure nothing else?”
I looked at her, puzzled. She smiled again. “Maybe you’d like for me to call Christina and let her know you’ll be home soon?”
I don’t know how much my mouth dropped open, but it must’ve looked pretty funny to Quanta. She put a hand on one hip. “You can’t be that dense, Swan. You work for the country’s greatest espionage agency and you think you can hide a wife?”
There was nothing I could say. Quanta patted the hospital blanket covering my feet then walked toward the door. “Get well soon, Swan. I’m sure there’s something critical that needs your attention.”
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