The Clone Assassin (14 page)

She interrupted him, shouting, “What would you do if Emily was missing? What would you do? Would you go after her? Would you talk to people who could help you? Would you spend a lot of time worrying if the information you learned was classified?

“We’re talking about Wayson. He may be a
Marine Killing Machine
, but I love him. What would you do if Emily disappeared down there? Wouldn’t you go after her?

“My boss talked to Mark Story. He said he met with you and a man named Freeman. He says you gave up and flew home. What do you expect me to do?”

“Did he tell you there were three dead clones on the scene?” asked Watson. “We think Harris killed them. Your detectives probably won’t find anything if they go, or if they do, they might just find something that gets them killed.

“Whoever went after Harris meant business, Sunny. They didn’t send those Marines to talk to Harris; they sent them to kill him.”

“Have you given up on him?” asked Sunny.

“No, of course not.”

“What about Freeman, the other guy. What does he think?”

Watson paused, weighed the pros and cons in his head and decided he needed to stop Sunny. He said, “Look, this is classified information. What I am going to tell you is for you only. Don’t go running to your boss. Do I have your word?”

Sunny said nothing.

Watson didn’t trust her, but he didn’t want her to go to the Territories. If she got herself killed, he’d answer to Harris, and that thought terrified him. He said, “Freeman is still down there. He’s located Harris.”

Sunny smiled. She asked, “Is he okay? Was he hurt?”

Already regretting his decision to tell her, he sighed, and said, “I’ve already told you too much. Now, just . . . go back to your apartment, okay? Just go home and sit tight. I’ll let you know when we have him.”

Sunny stood and took Watson’s hand. She said, “Okay, thank you for telling me. Trust me on this one, Travis. I’ll keep it to myself.”

Location: Guanajuato, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 22, 2519

Freeman fit into his Piper Bandit the way a size-twelve foot fits into a size-eleven boot. For a man of his size and bulk, the little plane was entirely impractical, but it had its virtues. This particular Bandit had been redesigned by the Unified Authority Intelligence Agency for smuggling infiltrators onto EME-held planets. It had a rudimentary broadcast engine and a stealth shield.

Viewing the mountainous territory through night-for-day technology built into the glass of the windshield, he saw barren peaks and jungle-covered slopes. He saw rivers and deserts.

He flew slowly, letting his onboard computer chart possible landing sites, hoping to touch down no more than five miles from the city, from his target.

The Bandit would need a runway to land, but that runway wouldn’t need to be long or wide. A hundred-foot stretch of open dirt road would do.

Landing, it turned out, would be the only part of the operation that came easily. As Freeman approached the city, he found a spider’s web of paved roads and abandoned towns. He chose a site eight miles north and west of the city, a small farm town that looked dark and afflicted. Using the heat-tracking equipment in the Bandit’s cockpit, Freeman scanned the streets and houses for heat signatures. He found wild dogs, pigs, rats, and birds, but no people.

He touched down on the old country road that ran through the center of the ghost town, a better runway facility than he had expected to find. He landed smoothly and taxied past the edge of civilization, rolling silently through the moonlit landscape until he found the ruins of an old brick wall. He hid his plane behind the wall. The ground around him must have been farmland at some point, maybe hundreds of years ago. It was still flat, but overgrown with scrawny trees and knee-high grass that had dried to gold. Copses of cactus peered out from behind scrub.

Freeman opened the cockpit and pried himself free. He stretched his arms, legs, and back, encouraging blood into limbs that had first gone numb, then fallen asleep. Circulation returned slowly, burning as it did. He did not care about the ache in his arms; it didn’t matter.

He reached back into the cockpit and pulled out his rifle, patrol pack, and satchel. The satchel held a change of clothes, BDUs designed for mountainous terrain and jungle boots. He could have worn the BDUs for the flight, but the thick cloth would have made fitting into the cockpit even more difficult.

He stripped down to boxers and a tank top, stuffed his discards into the cockpit, and sealed it, knowing that he might not return for days.

The morning had not yet begun as he started the hike to the town that his navigational computer identified as Leone. Moonlight shone down on the road, on the barrens, and on the wispy trees that covered the slopes. He jogged a mile, but mostly he walked. The air was thin, and he had sixty pounds of gear on his back. At 350 pounds, Ray Freeman would never run a marathon.

He owned a complete set of Marine combat armor, but he didn’t want it for this mission. Instead, he wore a set of goggles with sensors that tracked his path and laid virtual beacons, gave him night-for-day vision and heat vision.

He traveled six miles before spotting the first guard. Using the scope on his rifle, he spied the man patrolling the top of a distant ridge. Freeman searched the ridge for more guards, but the man was alone, an easy target. Freeman didn’t fire. Dead men attract attention. Corpses don’t answer calls or report in at the end of their patrols. Even when you kill them silently without anybody noticing, dead men tell tales.

Freeman would leave corpses behind when the time came; Pugh had sent him to kill Ryan Petrie, but he would do nothing to draw attention until the moment presented itself.

Skirting that guard would add an extra half mile to his hike, but Freeman chose to add it. Unlike Pugh’s organization, Petrie’s seemed ready for company.

Freeman’s BDUs masked much of his body heat, and it included a hood of the same material that he pulled over his head. Seen through heat-vision goggles, he would look rust-colored, instead of red or yellow. A trained soldier might spot him; he’d need to be alert.

Skirting that first guard had been a waste of time. As he neared the vacated city of Leone, where Petrie had established his base, Freeman found men guarding every ledge and ridge. Two guards here, one guard there, he could pick them off if he had to, but he he’d come to kill the gangster, not the men guarding him.

Too damn many guards. Someone tipped him off,
thought Freeman.

Pugh had placed a few guards around the Mazatlán relocation camp as well, but nothing like this. Then again, Pugh was a smaller player. He was a bottom-feeder who’d tried to buy his way back into the game by cashing in on his niece. He was still cashing in on his niece.

It was possible that Pugh had set him up, but Freeman dismissed it. Maybe Pugh was a bit player trying to buy a seat at a table for high rollers, but he was scared of the other players.

Freeman still felt like he had stumbled into a trap. There were too many guards. This was supposed to be a backwater operation, but the gangsters were on alert. Freeman asked himself who else knew his plans and came up with only one answer, Travis Watson. He had told Watson where he was going and what he planned to accomplish. Freeman trusted Watson; they’d fought together on Mars.

In another hour, dawn would break. The sun would rise, lighting the flats between the mountains. Like a vampire fleeing the daylight, Freeman would need to find a hiding place before dawn. He needed one question answered before he hid for the day. He would take a closer look at the guards.

Natural-born or clone?
That question needed answering. If those guards were natural-born, Freeman could still run his operation as planned. If the stories Pugh told were true, Petrie ran a large organization, but Freeman had seen New Olympian thugs in action, and he wasn’t impressed. If Petrie’s guards came from the same gene pool as Pugh’s, Freeman had little to worry about.

On the other hand, Petrie supposedly had made a pact with the Unified Authority, an alliance that could include equipment and trained personnel.

Freeman knelt and removed his backpack. Silently flipping through the contents, he located a SCOOTER (Subautonomous Control Optical Observation Terrain Exploration Robot), a ground-scuttling spy probe that contained a self-preservation routine in its programming.

The SCOOTER was a disc, six inches in diameter, and its entire surface worked like a fish-eye lens. Freeman had modified the unit so that it sent its signal directly to his goggle. Using optical commands, he could assign the SCOOTER targets and territories to investigate. He would be able to see through the robot’s lens.

Using an optical command, he powered the SCOOTER’s motor and placed it on the ground, then he marked the sentries for recon and watched as the robot slipped into the darkness, making no more noise than an ant.

Freeman sealed his backpack and headed west, away from the guards and the city. He would find a better hiding place, one from which he couldn’t see the guards, and they absolutely would not see him. The robot would find its own way back. That was part of its programming.

Freeman crossed a gulch. Seeing that he’d left footprints, he kicked the top of the bank, causing a small cave-in that covered most of his tracks. If trained trackers came looking, they would spot his partial footprints, but that couldn’t be helped.

Traveling slowly, Freeman pushed into the brush. When he checked on the SCOOTER, he saw that it had made slow progress as well. That was the problem with self-preservation programming: it turned robots into cowards.

He found a dry divot hidden behind a gnarly, nine-foot tree and stepped into it. He checked the ground around him for snakes and kept an eye out for wolves and coyotes as well. Wolves made noise. On this night, with the silence broken only by the buzz of insects and the gentle breeze, the growl of a wolf would carry. It would draw attention.

Freeman checked the area for heat signatures, saw nothing. He settled back and kept his rifle ready.

The SCOOTER circled the ridge, looking for ruts and hollows, approaching the guards with all the confidence of a gazelle sneaking up on a lion. In a little corner of his goggles, the signal showed Freeman the world as the robot saw it. He saw trees and scrub from just above their roots and the night sky as seen through tall grass. In the clear, dark heavens, a million million stars sparkled.

The robot jiggled over tiny rocks and past clusters of salsola that would soon detach from their roots and become tumbleweeds. Along with the lens on its back, the SCOOTER had eyes—powerful cameras that adjusted to darkness and zoomed in on distant objects. Still hundreds of yards from the sentries, its microphones listened for voices. Its eyes searched through grass and branches, then focused on the targets.

Freemen groaned inwardly. The first guard the SCOOTER found wore combat armor. He might have been natural-born or clone. It didn’t matter; either way, Petrie had properly trained men around him.

Maybe Petrie was naturally careful, or maybe someone had warned him. Freeman asked himself a second time if he trusted Watson and no longer knew how to answer. He had the patience of a sniper, though. He could wait a day, a week, or a year, time spent hiding, watching, and planning.

Location: Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
Date: July 23, 2519

Watson took the call at 08:00. It came on a secure line.

He said, “Freeman, where are you?”

Ray Freeman’s voice, so low that Watson might have mistaken it for sound distortion, concealed emotion the way a black hole conceals light. When he said, “The Unifieds knew I was coming. They sent troops,” his voice betrayed neither anger nor suspicion. He might just as well have been describing the weather.

“Are you still going to kill the guy?” asked Watson.

Freeman didn’t respond, and Watson understood. He wouldn’t have remained had he not planned to hit Petrie. Watson asked, “How did they know you were going after Petrie?”

Freeman answered with a question of his own. “Who have you talked to?”

“Nobody,” said Watson. “I don’t know anybody in the Territories.” He could feel tension rising like bile in his throat. “What about Pugh? He was the one who sent you. Maybe he wants you killed.”

Freeman said nothing.

Watson thought about it. Why send an assassin to kill an enemy and then warn the enemy? You might get the assassin killed. The enemy and the assassin could also end up as allies.

He said, “Maybe Petrie has spies in Pugh’s camp.”

“He might,” said Freeman. “Did you tell anyone I was down here?”

Hoping to make the question go away, Watson said, “Cardston knows you’re down there.”

“Anybody else?”

Watson paused. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, and his gaze naturally sank to the floor as he said, “I told Harris’s girlfriend.”

Freeman said nothing.

“She’s a lawyer. Her firm represents the New Olympians; that was how Harris met her in the first place. When I told her that Harris was missing, she took it to her boss.”

In his head, he rephrased his words.
I told her classified information and she told it to her boss. Her boss has friends in the Territories, friends all over the Territories. Shit, I specked up. Lord Almighty, did I ever speck this one.

Freeman asked, “Do you trust her?”

“Yes . . . No,” he said. “I’m not sure. She isn’t connected to the Unified Authority. She’s a lawyer, a young lawyer. Her boss is Alexander Cross. He’s another story. For all I know, Petrie could be his favorite client.”

Anxious to change the subject, Watson added, “Mark Story told Cross about our visit.”

“Yes. He and a couple of cops came sniffing around Pugh’s dormitory.”

“Story told Cross that you and I came, had a look around, and pretty much abandoned Harris. Sunny said that Cross offered to send investigators down to the Territories to look for Harris.”

“You ever had a boss offer to do anything like that for you?” asked Freeman.

Watson thought about it. “No.”

“And you told her that I was down here,” Freeman extrapolated.

“She asked if I had somebody down here. When I said, ‘Yes,’ she asked if it was you. Apparently, you made quite an impression on Story.”

“Petrie has the New U.A. in his pocket. Pugh allied himself with those clones because he was scared of Petrie.

“It looks like the Unifieds want inroads with the New Olympians.”

“Even if he’s a gangster?” asked Watson.

“Gangsters make good allies; they’re ruthless, they run tight organizations, their customers depend on them, and the general population is scared of them. Petrie is exactly the kind of ally the Unifieds would want.”

Watson played with that thought. “So the Unifieds are with Petrie. Okay, that works, but you said the clones who attacked Harris were working against the Unified Authority.”

“They must have gone rogue,” Freeman agreed.

“Okay, but who did they work for before they went rogue? They can’t have been ours, or they wouldn’t have tried to kill Harris.” Coming at the conundrum from another direction, he said, “I could see the Unifieds sending converts to kill Harris. They’d want him out of the way.”

Harris must have had thousands of enemies, maybe even tens of thousands of enemies. He’d killed superior officers, waged a massive war against the Unified Authority, and led men into battles that few had survived. He probably had enemies inside the EME Marines. Watson asked, “Could they have been ours, maybe disgruntled Marines?”

“Their programming wouldn’t permit them to attack him,” said Freeman. “You need to take this to Tasman; maybe he can figure it out.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Watson. “If the Unifieds have Marines guarding Petrie, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Nothing has changed down here as far I’m concerned. The deal hasn’t changed. I hit Petrie and Pugh gives us Harris.”