Mind Magic (51 page)

“Who gets the third AK-47?” Jason asked. “Rule?”

“No. I do. Your Rho shouldn’t be out front, firing and drawing return fire. Also, I’m better with it than he is. He can use one, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve stayed in practice. He hasn’t. Before we start, I want to make one thing clear. These weapons will be our last resort. If we get to the point where we have to kill U.S. troops, we’re pretty well screwed. Rule will do his damnedest to keep from using you three. Got that?”

Manny and Luke nodded. Jason didn’t.

“Jason? Got something to say?”

“No.”

The terse answer managed to combine obedience with a clear lack of respect. Jason had been told to obey Lily. He would, but he didn’t like it. Women weren’t supposed to give orders to men—especially not when it came to combat.

Lily had run into his type often enough, both among humans and with lupi, but the attitude was especially virulent in Leidolf. It was an attitude neither of them could afford. People had died when another Leidolf lupus decided his opinion counted for more than hers in the midst of battle. Lily couldn’t adjust his attitude the way Rule would have. She wasn’t bad at hand-to-hand, but that was against humans. Against lupi, she had no chance.

So she stared at him. Stared right into his eyes. Six seconds passed. Eight. Ten . . . and his gaze dropped.

He immediately looked up again, but now his eyes were slightly wide. Startled. He hadn’t intended to look away, but he had. He knew it. So did the other two.

Lily went on as if she hadn’t just challenged and won. “The good news is that these weapons are made for dummies. Almost anyone can use one. The bad news is that every one of those soldiers is going to be twice as good with his weapon as you will be with yours.” She paused. “Manny? Got a comment?”

“Well—yeah. They’re humans. They don’t have our reaction time.”

“They don’t need it. Ever heard of muscle memory? They’ll be carrying M16A4s. AK-47s are good weapons, don’t get me wrong. But M16s are better. And these guys know their weapons like you know your arm. Each one of them can field strip his rifle in three minutes or less. Right now, none of you know how to load your weapon, much less strip it. Which is why we’ll start by learning how to load the magazines.”

*   *   *

DEMI
talked for a long time. Ruben asked a few questions, but not many, and Mike broke in once to add something, but mostly it was up to Demi to explain why she was now a Unit 12 agent. She would rather it was Ruben who arrested Mr. Smith, she told him as she finished, but she would follow orders if he told her to do it.

He tilted his head and said, “It’s funny. When I first brought Lily into the Unit, my only real concern about her was that she’d be too by-the-book.”

“It sounds like you can stop worrying about that, doesn’t it?” Deborah said.

He smiled, but not for long. “I can’t give you orders, Demi. I lack that authority now. Lily was right, however. I haven’t been relieved of duty. I suppose I should have made Mathison aware of that omission, but I had a feeling it was best he didn’t know.”

“You get hunches, right?”

He nodded. “Unfortunately, I’m not getting one about this.”

Demi’s forehead knit in sudden anxiety. “You don’t believe us?”

“I think you’ve spoken both truly and accurately. That’s both gut feeling and logic. What you’ve told me fits with conclusions I’d already drawn. It was obvious that another arm of government was involved in the frames on Rule and on me. Given the nature of those frames, my suspicion had begun to turn towards the NSA. The fake radar sightings today confirmed that for me.”

Demi blinked, surprised. “How did you know they were fake?”

“If Mika had truly gone mad—gone rogue, as many in the media are putting it—the other dragons would know and would already have dealt with her. That’s in the Accords, which each dragon swore to uphold. It is barely possible that one dragon might violate his sworn word. It’s inconceivable that all of them would.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “I wish I knew what Smith wanted with Mika.”

That was one of the questions he’d interrupted Demi to ask. She’d had to tell him she didn’t know, but Lily and Rule did, only they couldn’t tell anyone because of a promise. Tentatively she offered, “I think it has something to do with the Lodan potion.”

He flicked her a glance. “Hmm. I have some questions about that, but they’ll wait.” He didn’t say anything more. He went on saying nothing for quite a while. Demi figured he was thinking, so she kept silent, too. She hated it when people yammered at her when she needed to think.

Finally he reached out and took Deborah’s hand. “I have to do this.”

“Of course you do. Those people can’t be allowed to get away with this.” She smiled when she said that, but it looked like she was holding Ruben’s hand really tightly.

“There’s no going back, no matter what happens. I’m known to be lupus now. I won’t serve as head of Unit Twelve again.”

“I’ll settle for you coming back alive.”

Ruben smiled. “I’ll do my best. Now—Danny, Mike.” He let go of his wife’s hand and gave them each a nod. “I do still have the authority to arrest Smith. Keeping it a legal arrest will be tricky because I can’t go to a judge for a warrant. We lack the time and the evidence.”

“Lily explained the exceptions that permit a warrantless arrest.”

“Did she? I believe we’ll have to rely on the courts to agree that this is a pressing emergency, and that I didn’t have time to get a warrant. And who knows? Smith may simplify matters by attempting to commit a felony, such as assaulting an officer, while I’m arresting him.”

“That doesn’t sound simpler,” Demi said. “That sounds dangerous.”

“This is going to be dangerous. You need to understand that, because I’m about to make a request. Edward Smith has been trying to catch you for nearly a year, Demi, for very good reasons. He might not come to the door to speak with me. He’ll do so if you’re with me. He’ll have to, given what you know. Are you willing to come with me when I make the arrest?”

“Of course,” she said, though the thought made her stomach jittery. “You should probably know that sometimes I panic, and when I do, I can’t think straight. I do better if I have a list, but we don’t know enough about what might happen for me to make a list. So I’ll try to not panic, but it’s possible I will.”

Mike snorted. “You didn’t panic when a machine-gun-equipped helicopter chased us. You didn’t panic when a dragon flew over our heads, roaring. I’d say you don’t panic easily.”

She thought that over. “I think you’re right,” she said, pleased. “I’m getting better. But Mr. Smith knows me pretty well. If anyone can make me panic, he can.”

“If you start to panic, let me know,” Mike said. “I’ll tell you what to do so it won’t matter if you’re thinking straight or not.”

“I can delegate the thinking?” She considered that and nodded. “That makes sense.”

Ruben cleared his throat. “The question we must consider next is whether to make the arrest as soon as possible—which would mean going to NSA Headquarters—or waiting until Smith is at home. Here, I’m afraid, we’ll have to rely on logic, not hunches. There is one important point in favor of arresting him there and two against it. The point in favor is that it’s legally a public place, making an arrest without a warrant simpler. However, that’s his territory. Security staff there are likely to obey him, and he almost certainly has co-conspirators there. Also, I don’t think I’d be able to get you two into the headquarters. It’s probable that I’d have to go in alone.”

“That doesn’t sound smart.”

He gave her a quick smile. “I suspect you’re right. However, we don’t know when Smith will go home. We can’t even be sure that he will. We don’t know enough about how his conspiracy is organized to guess what place he considers his command post—home or NSA—but with matters reaching a crux, he’ll wish to be where he can coordinate his people. That might mean remaining at NSA Headquarters.”

“Seems pretty clear,” Mike said. “You need another Unit agent. One of you can go to the NSA and the other to Smith’s home.”

“I’m a Unit agent.” Demi felt she had to point that out.

“Yes, but I believe it would be difficult for you to convince others of that. However, we’re in luck. Another Unit Twelve agent is due to return to Washington later today. I have no authority to send him anywhere, but I believe he’ll attempt to make the arrest if I ask it of him.”

“How long will it take for him to get here?” Demi asked anxiously. “NSA is an hour’s drive from here. So is Mr. Smith’s house.”

“His plane should arrive at four thirty-two, so we need to leave soon to pick him up.”

“Who is it?” Mike asked. “Anyone I know?”

“Abel Karonski.”

Danny frowned. Lily and Rule had used that name earlier. “I thought he got relieved of duty.”

Ruben smiled. “He was supposed to be. I’m told that something went wrong with the paperwork.”

*   *   *

COPS
do a lot of waiting. Lily should have been used to it, but this wait was rubbing her nerves raw. Maybe because the stakes were so high. Maybe because she had nothing to do—nothing that mattered anyway. Though that was pretty much the definition of waiting.

“. . . most in the government know nothing about,” Rule’s voice was saying on the iPad mini on Lily’s left—the proud possession of a brownie who went by Guido. “But a few do. And those few will stop at nothing—even murder.”

He was followed by a brownie’s high, piping voice. “There are soldiers coming! Soldiers with guns and tanks!”

“They’re not tanks, stupid.”

“They’ve got big guns on top and—”

“They’re IFVs, not tanks.”

“IFVs, tanks, whatever—they’ve got
big
guns on top,” the second brownie said. A third one chipped in: “The government Big People promised this wouldn’t ever happen. They said this was
our
land. Our home.” And a fourth: “They wrote it all down that way in laws, but it’s happening anyway!” All four brownies: “Please help us!”

The show she was listening to was
Town Hall Live
, the biggest pundit talk-fest at this time of day
.
The last bit, followed by the brownies’ plea, was the part of Rule’s webcast the news channels kept playing. Lily had heard it over and over. Brownies, she reflected, did pathos really well.

Rule had relied on emotion more than fact in his webcam performance. Lily had objected to that. “I don’t need to prove my case in court,” he’d told her. “I need to change the conversation, make people start asking why all of this is happening. If I simply tell people what’s going on, the story becomes two-sided: my version versus the official one. Everyone would then pick a side and stop listening. People don’t ask questions when they’ve decided they already have the answers.”

He’d been right, of course.

Lily frowned at her cards—little bitty cards, less than half the size of normal playing cards. The face cards featured adorable brownies. They were a hot item, she was told, in the reservation’s gift shop.

“Are you going to play or not?” Shisti demanded.

“Sure,” Lily said, and laid her hand down. “Gin.”

Shisti squeaked in dismay.

About twenty yards away, Jason and Luke were practicing stripping their AK-47s. Manny had been given the Uzi. He was showing it to two of the other lupi.

Rule wasn’t with them. Codger wanted him to see a defensive installation on the east side of the reservation—something about a “potential pit,” whatever that meant.

She’d mindspoken Mika when soldiers started arriving in Summersville, explaining what was happening, trying to get the dragon to understand the need for her to go to Summersville and order the Army to stay away from the reservation. The only thing that had gotten Mika’s attention was the part about her leaving the reservation. If Lily tried, Mika would bring her back. The dragon had made that emphatically clear.

Lily didn’t want to take any more rides clutched in a dragon’s talons. She’d wait for the CO to come to her, all the while hoping he didn’t. Of course, there was no guarantee he’d listen to her when she did reach him. But it was their best hope.

She glanced at her watch: 5:35. Sundown today would be at 8:25, with civil twilight lasting until 8:55. If Smith and Company intended to use Nicky to attack Mika, they’d move before it got dark. She looked at the rifle at her side. If the Army did manage to cross the wards, they had to be stopped. She accepted that, but the idea of firing on men and women who were serving their country made her ill.

“Lilyu,” Shisti said in a sad little voice.

“What?”

Shisti looked up at Lily beseechingly from big, green eyes shiny with unshed tears. “Could we play this hand again?”

Lily snorted. “Forget it.”

Shisti huffed. “You don’t react the way Big People are supposed to.”

“Nope. I’m a cop.” And that was part of her problem with using one of those weapons. Soldiers were trained to kill and to fight strategically—to take a hill or defend one. She had been trained to apprehend criminals, not to kill them. Deadly force was only for situations when the bad guy was going to harm you or others. If necessary, she could fire on someone who was trying to kill Mika. But to shoot at people who simply crossed a boundary they shouldn’t have crossed . . .

“My deal,” Shisti said brightly, gathering up the cards.

“Wait a minute. You didn’t lay your hand down.”

“I had two unmatched cards, but I laid them off on your run.”

“You can’t lay off on a gin.”

“Sure I can. I’m not supposed to, but you weren’t looking.”

“You really like cheating, don’t you?” She didn’t think they’d played a single hand in which the little brownie hadn’t tried to pull something. Still, if it cheered her up . . . Shisti had been devastated when Gandalf told her not to come to the creche for the singing. “If the stupid Big People come,” Gandalf had said, “you’ll be needed out here.”

She was right. If the soldiers came, the brownies might well need their healer.

Lily glanced to her right. Rule was loping toward her with his communications officer riding his back like a jockey, courtesy of the leather harness Rule now wore. Dilly was one of the smallest brownies, but he was no youngster. He had crow’s-feet, a wife, a husband, and two children with a third on the way.