The Clone Assassin (10 page)

“What are we going to do about that?” asked Ritz. “I need to get men down there. He’s a Marine. This is a Marine operation. I could have a Fifth Regiment—

“Is that why we’re here? Hauser interrupted. “You’re looking for someone to run the show?”

MacAvoy returned to his chair. He sat silently for a moment, then said, “That’s above my pay grade.”

Watson said, “As I understand it, General, you’re next in line.”

MacAvoy shook his head. He said, “If Harris wasn’t fit for the job, I sure as speck can’t do it.

“I execute battle plans. I started as a rifle-toting grunt. I never attended officer training. I may not have mentioned this before, but I grew up in an orphanage.”

Everyone in the room knew that MacAvoy had grown up in an orphanage. They could see that he was a clone even if he couldn’t.

Watson said, “General MacAvoy, are you saying that you are unwilling to take command?”

“That depends on what you want me to command,” said MacAvoy.

“Admiral Hauser?” asked Watson.

“I’m next in line to run the Navy. I can do that.”

“How about the empire?” asked MacAvoy. “Are you ready to run the entire show?”

Hauser looked at Watson, and said, “I’m not sure I’m ready to run the fleet.”

Watson nodded, jotted a note, and asked Colonel Ritz, “Are you prepared to run the Marines?”

Ritz said something inaudible; it might have been, “Yes, sir” or possibly, “Yeah. Sure.” He met Watson’s eyes, and said, “I suppose I am.”

“And the empire?” asked Watson.

Ritz chuckled, and said, “Sure. I’ll run this motherspecker.”

Admiral Hauser gave Ritz a quick, desperate glance, then said, “Mr. Watson, I think the Enlisted Man’s Empire might be more prosperous with civilian leadership at this juncture. You’d make a great interim president.”

MacAvoy sneered at Ritz, and said, “That’s exactly what every militaristic clone empire needs, a natural-born civilian as commander in chief.”

“A civilian leading the Enlisted Man’s Empire, what an interesting turn,” said Hauser.

Ritz finally spoke up. Staring at Watson, their eyes locked, he said, “If you’re looking for a natural-born president, I know who Harris would have elected.”

Location: Mazatlán, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 18, 2519

Ray Freeman slept on a bed in one of the gangster-held dormitories; not that he trusted the gangsters. He slept with one of their M27s beside him; another lay on the floor beneath his cot. Freeman had a notion about when and how the guns had come into Pugh’s possession. If he was right, they had a third M27 stashed somewhere near Pugh.

The dormitory was two stories tall, made with polymer walls that blocked the heat and the sunlight. The furnishings were sparse—folding cots for beds and cardboard boxes for dressers.

Freeman had slept soundly, but he’d organized his thoughts as he dreamed. He’d thought about Harris’s apartment, the placement of the corpses, and the perfume on his shirt.

He woke to the sound of footsteps. The apartments inside the dormitory were ten-by-ten cubes, divided by clapboard partitions that were no more soundproof than rice-paper walls. The door didn’t lock.

He had no illusions about the door or walls protecting him. If someone started firing Pugh’s third M27 in his direction, those walls would do nothing to slow the bullets.

Freeman didn’t waste time thinking about the person who walked past the door. Many people had come and gone during the night. He’d woken up and tracked their footfalls. As a mercenary, he’d spent weeks in enemy territory. For him, being at rest didn’t include being unguarded.

Two men chatted in whispers as they approached Freeman’s door. They didn’t slow or try to quiet their steps. He remained on the cot, his eyes shut, his finger along the trigger guard of his gun.

One of the men knocked.

Freeman didn’t answer. He lay on his back, his eyes still closed, his other senses alert.

“Freeman.”

Recognizing the voice, he answered, “Yes.”

“You want to know where those clones came from?”

Already dressed, Freeman sat up and stepped to the door. He opened it. The man on the other side was Brandon Pugh, the man whom Freeman had identified as the “thug in charge.”

“You done with our guns yet?” Pugh asked as he walked through the door. The man was built like a retired football lineman, with a gut that was starting to go soft and massive shoulders that hadn’t. He had one man with him and another down the hall. So much for the mystery about the third M27; the one down the hall was holding it.

Freeman handed Pugh the M27 he held in his hand.

“We loaned you two,” said Pugh.

Freeman said, “I’m not done with the other one.”

“Yeah? Well get done with it real soon, would you? I don’t see why you need a gun. With my boys watching out for you, no one is going to touch you, not even Story.”

“I’m not worried about the police,” said Freeman.

Pugh gave him the crooked smile he normally reserved for bad bluffers in poker. He said, “You don’t seem like the nervous type.”

Freeman read the smile and didn’t care. He said, “You said you knew where the clones came from.”

“Yeah. They came from the beach. You want to go have a look?”

Freeman asked, “They came by boat?” He hadn’t put much stock in that possibility.

The New Olympian government didn’t have radar stations or satellites, but the Enlisted Man’s Empire most certainly did. In this day of air freighters, water travel had mostly sailed into the sunset. Civilians kept small boats for fishing and other hobbies. A small boat like that could approach shore unnoticed, maybe even roll right up to shore undetected. It could carry five men. A pilot and three assassins: that would leave room for a wounded victim.

“And do you know where they landed?” asked Freeman.

“Yeah, I know where.”

“Did your men see them come in?” Freeman asked. Knowing how many men the Unifieds sent would answer questions. Three clones meant an assassination, five or six meant an abduction. If they had five or six, they could have injured Harris and hauled him away.

“No. They slipped right by us,” said Pugh. He rubbed his nostril with the side of his fist. “I don’t have enough men to watch the water all night. My boys found out about them after the fact, if you see what I mean.”

 • • • 

Pugh and his men didn’t use cars. They had access to one, but driving attracted attention, something Pugh and his organization preferred to avoid. Under the cover of night, they walked from the camp to the beach.

The streets were dark, the night warm and dry. In the distance, waves rolled onto the beach, the crush of the water slapping the sand rang in the air.

As they walked past darkened buildings, Freeman asked, “Harris came here a week earlier. What was he doing here?”

“The speck would I know?” Pugh asked, his irritation showing.

“Because you were following him,” said Freeman.

“Why would I do that? Harris didn’t mean anything to me.”

Freeman said nothing. They walked in silence for three blocks, Freeman at the front of the group, Pugh beside him, followed by five other men.

Pugh said, “Okay, maybe I want to know what’s what in my territory.”

Freeman remained silent. They crossed another block.

“I don’t know why he came.”

Freeman asked, “Who was the girl?”

“The speck would I know?” They continued walking. No one spoke until Pugh said, “None of your damn business, Freeman. That’s who.”

“Is she part of your organization?” asked Freeman.

Pugh didn’t answer. He stopped to glare at Freeman, said nothing, then started walking again.

Freeman didn’t ask the question a second time, didn’t even consider asking again. He had the patience of a sniper.

“What are you saying? You think we went after Harris? You think I sent three clones into his hotel room? You think, maybe, I have my own army of loyal clones?

“Look, man, back on Olympus Kri I dealt in guns, girls, and gambling. You want to lude, I can arrange it, anything you want to lick, sniff, or shoot. The Unies didn’t like me. The clones didn’t know about me. I always did what I could to keep it that way. Enemies aren’t so dangerous when they don’t know you exist.”

Pugh called citizens of the Unified Authority “Unies.”

“How does the girl fit into this?” asked Freeman.

“The speck business is that of yours?” asked Pugh. That was all he said on the subject.

 • • • 

Mazatlán had a curfew and policemen patrolling the streets to enforce it.

The police rode on motorcycles and carts that moved slowly and silently along dark avenues. Searchlights shone from the carts, rolling across buildings, sidewalks, and muted streetlamps. The motorcycles were electric; the only sound they made came from their tires.

A police cart turned onto their street. Freeman heard the screech of its tires. Pugh and his men didn’t, but they spotted the light long before the cops on the cart could have spotted them. The policemen shined their searchlight, filling the lane with a hard white glare. Shadows turned to crystal. Light bleached the color of the plants and stone and roofs so that everything appeared in shades of gray.

Freeman and the gangsters stepped behind a building and waited as the cop drove by.

Pugh and his men simply hid. Freeman analyzed. The cart had no armor except a low windshield. The cops wore helmets but no body armor. They could be neutralized, decapitated, by a neck-high wire stretched across the street.

The cart moved smoothly at a fifteen-mile-per-hour clip. Freeman asked himself if he could allow the cart to pass, then sprint fast enough to catch it from behind. He had his doubts. Maybe several years ago, when he been in his prime; now he relied on both strength and intelligence.

That was how Freeman evaluated every situation. Walking into a room filled with men, he determined whom he would kill first if it came to a fight, where he could duck for cover if his enemies had a gun, how he would escape if he found himself in trouble, and what advantage he might find by starting the violence himself.

In his mind, the difference between killing and preserving life was situational ethics; self-preservation came as automatically as breathing. Pugh was his ally for now, but Freeman didn’t trust the man and suspected that the alliance would end in a death.

 • • • 

They crossed sand and walked beside a stone-and-cement pier that ran out past the waves. The pier was wide, and strong enough to support trucks or tanks.

“This is where they landed,” said one of Pugh’s men.

They walked along the side of the pier, ducking low so that no one would spot them in the moonlight. The soft roar of sea waves remained constant in the air.

Both Freeman, Pugh, and a third man carried M27s. In Freeman’s and Pugh’s hands, the guns looked like oversized pistols. In the other gangster’s hand, it looked like the highbred automatic weapon it was designed to be.

Pugh said, “They didn’t come by boat. They swam in, SCUBA style.”

“Have you gone through the gear?” asked Freeman.

“Sure we did,” said Pugh.

The gear had been stacked into a pile. Before you could see it, you had to climb under the pier, wade through waves and knee-high water, and pick among the rocks. Here, the clones would have been hidden from view and hard to overhear. The sound of the waves slapping the rocks was loud.

Freeman examined the SCUBA gear. It was of a recent Unified Authority make, probably manufactured within the last two years. It was the kind of gear used for deep-sea operations; breathing harnesses that included saturation gear—bulky rebreathers that dispensed a calculated combination of gases instead of simple oxygen. They’d come in special armor that fitted around their heads and torsos and compensated for pressure . . . deep-water gear.

Three dead clones, three sets of deep-sea diving gear,
thought Freeman. A trained diver could go down hundreds of feet in this gear, maybe even a thousand. The rebreathers included inboard screw systems that worked like underwater jetpacks. With rebreathers providing an unlimited air supply, the right mixture for breathing in deep water, and the propulsion systems doing the swimming, the clones could have come in from fifty miles out.

Freeman lifted a rebreather with one hand, spun it so he could look at the back, and opened the airtight compartment. It had enough room to hold a pair of M27s and spare ammunition as well.

He examined one of the masks. They had night-for-day lenses. With night-for-day lenses, the clones would be able to swim at night without using torches . . . without drawing attention to themselves. The lenses also allowed them to swim in deep water, where sunlight didn’t show.

Three masks. Three rebreathers. Three sets of fins. Had there been a fourth? A fifth?

Freeman asked, “How much do you know about SCUBA gear?”

“None of us are deep-sea divers, if that’s what you want to know,” said Pugh. “You don’t look like a SCUBA diver yourself.”

Freeman said, “Your men didn’t spot them because they came from a long way out.” He held up a rebreather. The unit weighed nearly fifty pounds, but Freeman handled it as if it were a ten-pound toy. He showed them the venting along the sides.

“It’s like having a submarine strapped to your back. The propulsion system pulls in water here,” he said, pointing to the holes along the top. “The water comes out here.

“A trained diver can cover fifty miles per day with one of these.”

“Sounds good,” Pugh said, sounding unimpressed.

Freeman dropped the rebreather back onto the sand. It landed with a soft thud. He held up one of the face masks, and said, “This mask has all the same gear they put in Marine combat helmets. The clones who came here were able to see in the dark. They probably knew exactly where your men were sitting, and they might have been listening in on their communications.”

“They got all of that in those little masks?” asked Pugh.

Freeman said, “You have no idea what you are up against.”

“Do you think Harris knew these guys were coming for him?” Pugh asked, as they slipped back toward the camp.

Freeman thought about that question but did not answer immediately. Harris had been captured by the Unifieds once before. Now that the chemical was in play, every clone lived under the constant threat of capture or reprogramming. In the old days, the Unified Authority killed clones, and that was the end of it. Now, they
converted
prisoners, reprogramming them and sending them back as saboteurs.

Whatever they had done to Harris on Mars remained a mystery. Freeman doubted that Harris had any idea.

They returned to the camp, having spent three hours walking to the beach and back. Freeman said, “He didn’t know when he got here. He might have suspected something near the end.”

As they entered the suite of rooms Pugh had arranged for himself by removing clapboard partitions, Pugh asked, “What makes you so sure?”

Freeman said, “If Harris knew he was walking into a trap, he would have come armed.”

The conversation slowed after that. Freeman said, “Three clones attacked him in his hotel room. He killed the first two, and the third one shot him.”

“How do you know he was shot?” asked Pugh. “I heard there weren’t any bullets.”

Freeman seemed to ignore the question. He said, “Judging by the amount of blood he lost, he probably took the shot in the gut, maybe the chest.”

“You lose a lot of blood taking one in the gut,” Pugh agreed.

Freeman seemed to have entered his own isolated world. He seemed not to hear anything Pugh said. “If Harris was right on top of that third clone when he pulled his gun, he would have killed him quickly . . . and then he would need help.

“That’s where the girl fits in.”

“What girl?” asked Pugh.

“The one you’re hiding.”

“I told you, Freeman, there isn’t any girl,” said Pugh.

“Once the clones were down, Harris would have asked her for help.”

“You aren’t listening to me,” said Pugh.

“She would have been the one who took his clothing. If she placed a towel over the wound, that would have stopped the blood.” Silently, Freeman asked himself how she could have slipped Harris out of the hotel. Even a Liberator in the throes of a full combat reflex would have been too weak to walk out of the hotel with an M27 slug in his gut.

“I said there wasn’t any girl,” Pugh repeated.

Three clones,
thought Freeman.
Three combat veterans. They break into his room, and they see the girl. Why not kill her?
He could only think of one reason for allowing the girl to live. He said, “Either the girl was working for the Unifieds, or . . .”

Pugh brought up his M27.

Freeman asked, “When was the last time you put in new rounds?”

“You specked with my bullets?” asked Pugh. “Bastard . . .” And then Freeman hit him. Pugh was already unconscious when Freeman pulled him up by his shirt and hit him a second time . . . to be sure.