Point and Shoot (6 page)

Despite his military and police background, Hardie knew he wasn’t an especially skilled fighter. Nor had his technique changed all that much since grade school. The thing to do in any fight, he thought, was to get in close and do as much damage as quickly as possible. None of this dancing around, butterfly-floating, bee-stinging bullshit for him. No, it was much better to pull your enemy close and just maul him. Which was a good thing, because there wasn’t much room in this space tube for anything else.

Thing was … his opponent seemed to have pretty much the same thing in mind. And he’d struck first. Hard, relentless, fast, and brutal.

Once they reached the bottom of the tube and bounced up off its surface, the Other Him snap-punched him in the face again. The universe exploded. It was possible there was a follow-up punch, but if there was, Hardie didn’t feel it. He started to sink into a numb, murmuring blackness until some words roused him back to attention.

“I don’t want to do this,” he heard the Other Him say.

Hardie grunted. That was all he could do. His mouth tasted like it had been stuffed with pennies.

“I mean that. We’re wasting time.”

Hardie spit blood in his (own) face.

The Other Him slammed Hardie’s head against the tube again. And
again
. And then slammed a fist into Hardie’s nose for good measure. It was amazing how much power he’d managed to pack into the blow, considering there was no room to wind up. Hardie knew he hadn’t been getting into the best shape of his life up here in the vacuum of low earth orbit. But he also didn’t realize how weak he’d become until this moment, grappling with a man who was essentially a younger, stronger, and way more fit version of himself. This was like wrestling with himself back when he was in the military, straight out of boot camp, as cut and lean and tough as he’d ever be in his life. Their weight was the same; Hardie supposed they had to be because of all that biometric nonsense. But while Hardie’s muscles had atrophied to the point where he wanted to kick sand in his own face, his double’s body mass was seemingly made up of nothing but bone and muscle.

Unconsciousness was becoming a serious and real option in the near future. Hardie tried to use his forearms to return some blows to his opponent, but such efforts were easily deflected. And he kept banging his own damn elbows against the sides of the tube. So Hardie flipped. Heaved his shoulders until he was facing the cold metal of the tube.

This seemed to confuse the Other Him, who started a flurry of punches up and down his back, as if trying to snap his spine in at least six different places. Hardie appeared to be immobile. What, was he playing dead?

Not exactly, fuckhead.

Instead, Hardie was prying open one of the machine-gun ports.

They gave Hardie a tour of his new shiny microhome before they shot it (and him) up into low earth orbit.

Okay, not really a tour, more like a fitting—a groomsman trying on his miserable tux. You have no choice in the matter; you have to wear the damned thing no matter what.

During one excruciating session he watched as burly technicians installed rows of guns into a tube, running wires from the guns to a control panel. (It wasn’t until much later that Hardie realized that tube was part of the craft he’d be trapped in for the next year.) They were machine guns specially outfitted to be fired by remote control from outside of the tube. Hardie had seen these kinds of setups before, at places that specialized in forensic ballistics. Techs would call it a “gun machine” or the “hall of bullets.”

Thing was: They also had manual triggers. Right there on the gun, mounted inside the tube.

You didn’t need a wire. All you needed was a finger.

By the time the Other Him realized what he was doing, it was almost too late. Hardie had pried open the gun port hatch and shoved his arm inside, fingertips brushing against the trigger. Just another couple of inches …

The Other Him screamed at Hardie and then got all MMA on him, wrapping a beefy arm around his neck and pulling his free arm in a way that resulted in agonizing pain and seemed to defy the rules of human anatomy.

“You can’t do that!”

“Wuh. … Wuh …
watch me.
”

“We’ll both die!”

“Yeah, maybe we will.”

“Listen to me … this tube was designed to be jettisoned, so the walls aren’t bulletproof. You pull that trigger … we’re both dead, you stupid fuck! You want to do that to Kendra and Seej? Or do you want to save them?”

“They’re dead if I don’t kill you.”

The Other Him loosened his grip, then untangled himself from Hardie. “I get it.”

Hardie was suspicious. “You get w-what.”

“You think the biometrics might be a little off, and the moment I step into the capsule, an alarm will go off and they’ll send someone to kill Kendra and CJ.”

Actually, no, that wasn’t what Hardie was thinking. But it was a good enough reason.

“Yeah,” Hardie said, huffing hard.

“
Fine
. You win, you stubborn old bastard. You search the craft, then. I’ll do my best to tell you what to look for.”

H
ARDIE COULDN’T EXACTLY
chalk this one up in the
win
column, though. After scrambling back up to the main craft, he searched through every section of it, as instructed by his double. Through components labeled Propulsion. Avionics. Flight software. Communications. Power. Guidance. Environmental control. TCS. TPS. EDL. The Other Hardie called out each system like a drill sergeant, leaving Hardie to scramble to look for the label, then figure out how to pry the components open with his bare fingers, which left his fingertips raw, by the way, only to find …

… nothing.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing like you’re describing. You sure you got it right?”

“I wouldn’t travel a hundred sixty-six miles up into outer freakin’ space unless I had it right.”

What the Other Hardie had been describing: a small black square of shiny plastic, mounted on four corners with some kind of gummy material.

Hardie didn’t see anything like that.

“We’re running out of time,” the Other Hardie said.

“You keep saying that. Why?”

“This mission’s on a strict timetable. I don’t get it right, then we splash down in the middle of fucking Oklahoma. Look, I understand your hesitation, but c’mon now. Let me trade places with you and take a look. I know what I’m looking for. If you just give me ten minutes this can be all over.”

“Gimme that gizmo and I’ll look. You told me it could find it instantly, right?”

The Other Him hesitated. “It’s not as easy as that. It’s not just going to light up and go ding ding ding when it finds something. I had to train for weeks to use this damned thing and learn what the numbers mean. It’s taking very precise measurements of electrical impulses, and this craft is full of them, so …”

“You’re saying I can’t read numbers? That I’m some dope who can’t tell a two from a three?”

“Argh. Will you just let me up there to look?”

Hardie considered this for a minute.

“You know, maybe it’s down there,” Hardie said. “In the gun tube, with you. Did you use your little magic device down there?”

The look on the Other Hardie’s face was sort of priceless. He recovered and snapped, “Just keep looking.” Then he ducked back down into the tube.

Why hadn’t you thought of that first? Some spy you are.

It would be just like the Cabal to pull a fake-out move where the valuable object was safely hidden away in the disposable portion of the spacecraft.

The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. Put Charlie Hardie, the armed guard, inside the craft, with access to guns inside the tube. On the off off
off
chance that somebody who looked exactly like Charlie Hardie would make his way up here, overpower him, then go looking for the dingus on the craft. The last place any sane person would look would be the gun tube, which would eject upon reentry and crash somewhere in the Pacific and presumably be forgotten. Unless … you were the Cabal, and had a secret way of tracking it, with a beacon or some other device.

So you start scanning the interior of the tube, as much as it galls you to admit that Hardie might be correct.

You weren’t kidding about the program’s being tricky. By its very nature, the dingus was designed to fool traditional forms of tracking. It emitted close to zero power, and any tiny bursts of power your tracking device did pick up could be attributed to random bursts in space. Detecting something that may actually be the dingus was a matter of interpretation; the device was meant to give you a possible nudge in the right direction, and then give you a place to start digging and dismantling.

The numbers tell you: nothing.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a trace.”

“Is it possible you’re mistaken, and I’m not guarding this super–mystery shit you keep going on about?”

“Then what else would you be guarding?”

“I don’t know. This billion-dollar satellite would probably fetch a pretty penny in the scrap metal market.”

“Har-har. No, it’s got to be here. They’ve just been super-clever about where they’ve hidden it. Maybe somewhere between the outer skins, where even you couldn’t get at it? No, that’s too risky …”

“So what do we do now?”

“Well, I do have a Plan B,” the Other Him said. “But you’re
really
not going to like it.”

H
ARDIE WAS ASHAMED
to admit it, but his body did an involuntary jolt when he heard Plan B.

Sweet Jesus in heaven, this was the Other Charlie Hardie’s plan:

“We’re going to knock the satellite out of orbit, crash-land in the Atlantic Ocean, and then get scooped up by my handlers. We’ll let the NSA tear this damned thing apart, one piece at a time.”

That his body jolted when he first heard the plan was remarkable, because it took a few moments for Hardie to unpack and comprehend what this Other Him was suggesting. It was as if his physical body understood right away how painful—if not totally life-threatening—this plan was, leaving his brain to play catch-up. Hardie, with his slow lizard cop brain, picked it apart one awful segment at a time. Knocked out of orbit. Crash-land. Scooped up. Tear the damned thing apart. Not one part of that plan sounded good.

So of course Hardie told him, “That’s a horrible plan.”

“It’s our only choice.”

“No, it’s not. There’s got to be something else. Don’t you get it? Once they notice it’s missing, my family’s dead. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“We do have a decent window of time,” the Other Hardie said. “I can have my handler dispatch a team of double-hard bastards out to protect your family as soon as we make contact.”

“No. Think of something else.”

“There is nothing else. This is the plan. This is what I’ve been training for.”

“Goody for you. We’re not doing that. You can just climb back into your fake-food drone there and go back the way you came.”

The Other Him just stared at him. Even Hardie knew that was ridiculous. The food drones were one-way delivery vehicles. Once the food was loaded onto the craft, Hardie pushed a button and the food drone (containing his own personal waste products) was jettisoned back into orbit, joining the billions of other pieces of space junk floating around up here.

There was no way out for the Other Him. Not until three months from now, when a promised private space cruiser would dock with the satellite and bring him back home—presumably replacing him with another mook they’d blackmailed into freaky indentured servitude.

“There’s no way out for either of us, Charlie,” the Other Him said. “You realize this, right? What did they promise you—a year in space, and all would be forgiven?”

Hardie said nothing. That was exactly what they’d promised.

“Uh-uh,” the Other Him said. “They’re not going to let you go. You’re up here for good … until you die. And they’re kind of counting on you being the indestructible type. That’s why you were chosen for this mission. You’re Unkillable Chuck, the man who can’t be killed.”

“That’s ridiculous. I can sure as hell
die
.”

“Of course. And they know you’re not immortal. But they’ve learned things about you over the years, leading them to realize that if they needed someone to spend an infinite amount of time in this orbiting tin can, that person should be you. Let’s say there’s a precious jewel at the bottom of a seriously deep lake. Who do you send to the bottom to retrieve it? The person who can hold his breath the longest. For all intents and purposes, out here in space? That’s you.”

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing special about me. I have the worst fucking luck of anyone I know. That’s about it.”

The Other Him grinned. “You really don’t know, do you.”

“Know what?”

“We don’t have time for this. C’mon up and I’ll figure a way to strap us both in so we won’t both get killed upon im—”

But the Other Him never finished the thought.

Hardie had been in these moments before—these supposedly do-or-die situations.

About a year ago he’d been in such a situation. He’d had a loaded gun in the mouth of one of his primary tormentors, some really smug bitch named Abrams who’d basically sentenced him to rot in a secret prison forever. He could have pulled the trigger.
Do or die
.

But he didn’t.

Instead he found himself up here, in this satellite with a duplicate of himself, informing him what a fool he’d been to believe them, that he was basically sentenced to rot up here forever instead of on earth, where at least he could have had a proper burial.

Each time, every time, when faced with a do-or-die decision … Hardie always seemed to select the worst and most painful option possible.