The Clone Assassin (17 page)

The natural-born bodyguard asked, “How long before they wake up?”

“I don’t know,” said Tasman. “A scientist got doped last summer. He woke up five minutes later.”

“We’ll have to carry him,” said Watson.

“That’s not my job. He’s not my job,” said the bodyguard. “If you want to bring him, you carry him. My job is getting you out.” As he said this, he knelt beside the dead bodyguards and took their guns. He handed one to Watson, who dropped it into his jacket pocket.

“You want to keep that out,” said the bodyguard. “That gun won’t do you any good if it gets stuck inside your pocket.”

Watson pulled the pistol out and held it in his right hand.

“They’ll kill me,” Tasman said, looking right and left, desperation showing on his face. “You can’t leave me here!”

Without saying a word, Watson bent down and flipped the old man onto his left shoulder. He was old and brittle, with balsa-wood bones and kite-string muscles. As Watson started for the door, Tasman groaned, a dry and pained sound that emanated from his core.

The bodyguard trotted ahead, his own pistol out, the other in his holster. Without looking back, he said, “Old man, if you slow us down, I will shoot you.”

“You’d shoot a crippled old man?” Watson asked.

“Whatever it takes to accomplish my mission.”

Tasman couldn’t have weighed a full hundred pounds. Watson placed him at eighty, maybe less. At eighty pounds, Tasman was easy to lift, but he slowed Watson, and he made it clumsy to step over the bodies that covered the floor.

They left the lab and entered the hallway. Nothing had changed. The lights burned as brightly as ever. The air-conditioned air was cool and had the lingering scents of ammonia and chlorine.

The bodyguard didn’t run. He stayed eight feet ahead of Watson, purposely slowing himself down to match Watson’s pace. His expression remained impassive. Not looking back, he growled, “We need to hurry, sir.”

Watson said, “I’ll be there by the time the elevator arrives.” Even as he said that, the elevator opened.

“You can’t take Tasman, sir,” said the bodyguard. “We don’t have time.”

“I’m not leaving him,” said Watson as he sprang over two unconscious soldiers and stepped onto the elevator.

The doors closed.

“Do you have the car ready?” the bodyguard asked into the discreet microphone in his collar. He nodded, apparently pleased by the answer. Looking at Watson, he said, “It’s going to be messy in the garage. Be ready for some blood.”

Tasman, folded over Watson’s shoulder like an old-fashioned mailbag, his hands and head dangling down Watson’s back, labored for breath. He twitched and rolled to take the weight off his stomach. His breath rattled in his throat.

The elevator passed the lobby without stopping and went directly to the fourth floor of the underground parking lot.
How long has it been?
Watson wondered.
Have they started waking up?

The doors to the elevator slid open revealing the bodies of the clones that Watson’s natural-born bodyguards had shot—six men lying with arms and legs spread, pools of blood expanding on the marble floor beneath them. They wore military uniforms.

Seeing the blood, Watson was not unmoved, though he had seen enough blood and killing on Mars that the sight of death no longer sickened. He saw the bodies, breathed deep to steel himself, and tasted the last remnant of the chemicals in the air. Realizing that the air was almost clean, he wondered how long it would take before the clones awoke.

Beyond the clones, a long black sedan sat, its doors hanging open.

One of the bodyguards screamed, “Everybody into the car! Into the car, now!”

Tasman, still draped over Watson’s shoulder, continued to fight for every breath. The bodyguards held their pistols out and ready.

“Who’s the old guy?” asked one of the bodyguards.

“Scientist,” said another.

“Why’d you bring him?”

“POTEME wouldn’t leave him.”

“Speck,” said the first bodyguard.

Watson saw two clone officers sitting in a car. He said, “We need to warn them.”

“We’re not here for them,” said a bodyguard. He growled like a dog, grabbed Tasman from Watson’s shoulder, and tossed the old man into the backseat of the car.

“Hey! Hey! Don’t go in the building! Chemicals in the air . . .” Watson shouted to the clones in the car as his bodyguards shoved him into the backseat.

The clone officers heard the shouting and turned to look, but they clearly hadn’t understood. One of them seemed to have recognized Watson. He took three steps toward the car.

Watson asked, “Whose car is this?” as the bodyguards sat in the front seats.

“You passed him,” said the driver.

“Dead?”

They were moving now, screeching around the corner, dashing up ramps.

“Sure. I killed him,” said the driver. “I didn’t want him reporting his missing car.” He floored the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward. “Alan Cardston is going to wake up any minute now. He has the license and make of every car in your fleet. We needed a new set of wheels he doesn’t know about, and we needed to make sure he didn’t hear about a stolen vehicle.”

“What about security cameras?” asked the natural-born bodyguard who had shepherded Watson down the elevator.

“Out of commission,” said the second bodyguard.

To Watson, the escape felt more like a kidnapping than a rescue. Looking out the back window, he saw clones racing out of doors . . . and then the gunfire began. The car sped on.

A second sedan followed them. Watson looked at the driver, a natural-born, maybe an off-duty bodyguard.

“What about the gate?” asked the bodyguard in the passenger’s seat.

“Don’t worry about that. We got a couple of ours at the gate.”

Cardston an enemy,
Watson thought. An unpleasant man, but one of the most competent officers Watson had met. Alan Cardston had once saved Watson’s life.
Cardston the enemy?
The world had just turned over on its head.

Three clones appeared at the top of the ramp, more poured out of the building. They wore security bands and carried M27s. They didn’t wait to fire. The last streaks of daylight still shone in the sky, a calming dim. The thick windows muffled the gunfire as bullets struck the car. Looking up between the seats, Watson watched the windshield crack into a thousand shards without shattering. He could no longer see what was in front of the car. All he could see was that the world ahead was brighter than the world he had left behind.

The car skidded, scraped, and bounced up the ramp, hitting a human and careening off another car as it dashed onto the road.

PART III

Location: Guanajuato, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 25, 2519

Night, in the mountains in a drizzling rain. There was no wind, and the water evaporated from the air as quickly as it disappeared from the rocks.

Freeman could see stars through the gauzy clouds. He didn’t bother with his goggles; in another minute, visibility wouldn’t be an issue. During daylight hours, this was the side of the camp that the guards had used as a firing range.

He sat on an inaccessible spot on the ridge, about two hundred yards from the edge of the camp. If he ran straight ahead, he would fall down a sheer twenty-foot drop. If he survived the fall, he would cross bare ground, leaving him an easy target, then he would need to contend with the electrified fence.

Freeman didn’t intend to enter the camp.

From the perch he had chosen, he had an unqualified view down the central lane that led from the motor pool to the dormitories. Once the action began, he would have a clear shot.

Freeman had already killed the six guards at the entrance to the camp. They were the first to die. He didn’t bother with the guards by the motor pool. Their time would arrive soon enough.

After giving his gear one last pass, Freeman pulled the remote from his satchel and pressed the button.

Five hundred yards away, two rockets fired, the hoarse cough of their engines sounding soft and low. The first rocket arced over the fence and struck a jeep, knocking it over on its side, causing the gas tank to explode and sending a ten-foot pillar of smoke and flame into the air.

The second rocket, an incendiary weapon that sprayed thermite on impact, struck the fuel depot. Exposed to oxygen and aluminum filings, the thermite ignited, rapidly reaching forty-five hundred degrees, instantly melting the sides of the tank so that it leaked fuel and fumes that exploded in the heat. The flames and the reaction traveled into the fuel tank, causing a greater explosion that shot a knotting, twisting, fist-shaped fireball 150 feet in the air.

From his perch, Freeman saw the fireball rise above the buildings and dissolve. He watched the chaos below. No alarms or Klaxons sounded in the camp, just men running, grabbing guns and rocket launchers, racing toward flames. One side of the camp was bathed in quavering orange light, the other the steady white glare of halcyon.

Freeman sat and watched, a nonparticipant, a spectator witnessing a disaster of his own creation.

The big explosion set off a chain reaction. Twisted pipes and fragmented walls marked spots where the buildings closest to the motor pool had stood. Flames covered the ground and the overturned vehicles.

Petrie appeared, surrounded by bodyguards. Freeman had hoped he’d run to the motor pool, into his line of fire, but the gangster didn’t cooperate. He seemed content to let the motor pool burn. He let his men run ahead and stayed behind, surrounded by his bodyguards. An army of men with guns and fire extinguishers swarmed at the edge of the fire, but Petrie did not approach it.

He’d made the mistake Freeman had angled for. Since the explosion was at the motor pool, Petrie expected Freeman to be on that side of the camp, somewhere hiding behind the flames and the devastation. Had Freeman approached from the east, from behind the motor pool, he would never have seen Petrie emerge from his dorm. But Freeman had hidden on a ridge overlooking the southwestern end of the camp. There, he only saw a glimpse of Petrie as he emerged from the dorms. As Petrie shuffled away from the motor pool, however, he moved into Freeman’s sights.

Dressed like a man shaken out of his bed, letting his safari shirt hang open as he buttoned his pants, Petrie searched the street for a saboteur. His brown hair was messy, his whiskers had grown halfway to a beard. Freeman was about to shoot, but then he saw something that caused him to pause. An old jeep rolled into the camp dragging a trailer. On the trailer sat his modified Bandit, his ride.

Freeman put the plane out of his mind and fired his rifle. The bullet struck Petrie’s right temple, flattened, and took the cheekbone with it as it exited on the other side of his head. The force of the bullet caused most of his skull to splinter so that everything above his grimacing upper lip splashed like thick soup against the wall.

Ray Freeman didn’t bother confirming the kill. He threw his pack over his back and carried the rifle in his right hand. Without looking back, he trotted up the ridge.

 • • • 

The question was not “if”; it was “when.”

They would come for him. Petrie’s army would come first. When they failed, Nailor’s soldiers would follow. Petrie’s men would come on foot, the attack on the motor pool had seen to that. They would hike up roads and walk blindly into caves because they were gangsters, not soldiers, and they knew nothing about mountain warfare and insurgency tactics. Mountain warfare favored small units that moved quickly and used concealment. In the mountains, snipers could take out entire platoons, and grenadiers could cancel companies . . . as long as the fighting stayed on the ground.

Petrie’s men didn’t worry Freeman. They would come with guns and rockets, unable to defend themselves. Freeman would hit them from far ridges and withdraw, attack and withdraw. He would hit them from the higher ground, and when he did not have the high-ground advantage, he would wait. Unprepared and undisciplined, the gangsters would fire blindly when they should duck. They were unused to dealing with snipers.

Freeman wanted to call in the Marines in Mazatlán. For the third time since he’d pulled the trigger on Petrie, he tried to reach Watson. When no one answered, he knew he would need to dig in for the long haul.

It was late at night. Wearing his goggles, Freeman could see clearly.

The mountains in the near west were taller and partially overgrown with scattered trees, tall grass, and cactus. He’d be able to hide from Petrie’s men on those ridges. Jungles would offer better cover and cities more protection, but a man could hide indefinitely in the mountains, depending on his foe. When the Unifieds arrived, they’d come with gunships. They would scan the mountains for heat signatures and search the caves with metal detectors.

Freeman covered ground as quickly as he could. He ran down one slope, entering the elbow between two steep rises. The moon showed above him. A few wisps of cloud floated in the sky. For Freeman, this was familiar territory—running from a larger force while preparing to kill their scouts. He’d introduced Watson to these tactics on Mars.

He wanted to stop and try the call again, but he knew no one would answer. Where was Watson?

He came to a steep climb and turned west, tracing the slope upward, farther into the mountains. He entered a dry patch with no trees or grass, just a few cactuses.

Freeman saw the bird before he heard it. Too large to be a star, too bright to be the moon, a searchlight stabbed through the darkness. The gunship floated through the darkness as smoothly as a train crossing a track. Freeman saw it and knew things had gone from bad to worse.

Not wanting to be caught in the open, he sprinted to the nearest ridge and hoped he’d find a cave.

Location: Mazatlán, New Olympian Territories
Date: July 27, 2519

I knew who I was and where I was and what I was doing there. What I didn’t know was how I had gotten there, but I had a good notion about who had brought me and what condition I had been in when I arrived.

The doctor said, “We prolonged your coma to help you recover more quickly.”

I asked, “Didn’t it also make me easier to guard?”

The doctor was a young man, not even in his thirties. But he had an old man’s face, wrinkles, pale skin, and all. He was skinny, too. In short, he was a New Olympian who had not entirely recovered from his time on Mars.

He gave me a good-humored smile, and said, “I kept you unconscious to help you heal. If your girlfriend had ulterior motives, you’ll need to take that up with her.”

I sat up on the bed. The movement made my head spin. I looked down at my right arm and saw twin tubes running into it.

“Blood?” I asked.

The doctor stood. He said, “No, no, no. Not blood. That’s saline. We needed it to keep you hydrated.

“The air is dry here, and you weren’t in a position to drink for yourself.”

I squeezed my right hand into a fist, felt the needles dig into veins, and liked the feeling. “Am I a prisoner?” I asked.

The doctor laughed, and said, “Oh, Lord no. You can walk out of here right now if you can stand without fainting.”

“You think I’ll faint?” I asked. I pulled the sheet off my legs and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. My temples throbbed, and I felt bile rising up in my throat. Whether or not I fainted, I would puke if I tried to stand—and then I might fall.

“You might want to disconnect those tubes from your arm before you stand up. You’ll save yourself a few stitches,” the doctor said, the humor showing in his face. “If you prefer, I can find you a wheelchair.”

“I can just walk out?” I asked.

“You will get farther if you wheel yourself out.”

That calmed me down. I asked, “How long have I been here?”

“Should I send for your wheelchair?”

I put up my hands in surrender, and said, “I can be reasonable.”

The doctor said, “Eleven days. Do you remember what happened?”

I looked down at my gut. The doctor must have dressed me recently, the bandages around my waist were gleaming white and perfect. “I was shot,” I said.

Finding humor where only a doctor might, he said, “Your feet needed more stitches than the gunshot wound. Next time you step out of the shower, I suggest you keep an eye out for broken glass.”

I prodded the area where I had been shot, and asked, “In the stomach?”

“Well below the stomach. The bullet went through your smaller intestines, but it wasn’t the bullet that would have killed you. No, you almost died from an infection.

“We’ve cleaned the wounds, fixed up the damage, strained the bacteria from your blood, and pretty much set you right. Considering you almost died, I’d say you’re pretty healthy.”

I didn’t feel very healthy. I felt weak and dizzy. When I told the doctor how I felt, he said, “That, my friend, has more to do with the cure than the disease. We got the bacteria out of your system, but there’s still a lot of medicine in your blood.

“Like I said before, if you want to leave, be sure to take a wheelchair.”

Feeling like I had no alternative, I lowered myself back onto my pillow and fell asleep.

 • • • 

The building might even have been a hospital eons ago. It was very old, with stucco walls and heavy arches. I suspected it once had something to do with treating patients, a hospital, maybe an asylum, maybe a rehab center. The walls were white and bare. The windows overlooked an overgrown garden and a backdrop of taller buildings. The floor was white.

I wasn’t in a room; it was more like a ward, a long and loaf-shaped room with a rounded ceiling and a floor the size of a basketball court.

I seemed to be the only patient but not the only person. There were guards outside my room. They didn’t have guns, not that I could see. They didn’t enter my room; they waited outside by the door. I got the feeling they had come to protect me. The only time I got a good look at them was between shifts, when new men would arrive.

They weren’t clones, and they didn’t dress like soldiers.

The day after I woke up, Brandon Pugh came to visit me. I knew him, but not well. Had it not been for him, I would have died in my hotel room, but I suspected he was the one who let the clone commandos in to kill me.

I played dumb. I asked, “Are you the person I should thank for this?”

He smiled. He had small eyes and a prominent jaw. He was heavy and strong, and tall . . . easily six feet and five inches. He said, “I arranged for the facilities, but you had better thank Kasara for bringing you here. I think she would have attacked those clones if you didn’t kill them first.”

“Where is Kasara?” I asked.

“She’s safe.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re safe, too,” he said.

“What about the summit?” I asked.

Pugh picked up a chair and moved it beside my bed. He said, “It didn’t happen.”

“Because of this?” I said, looking at my surroundings.

“Assassinations make people nervous,” Pugh explained.

“They also draw attention,” I said. “This place should be lousy with EME Marines.”

Before answering me, Pugh paused to think about what he should say. He finally said, “The local police are looking for you. They’ve searched the beaches and the camp. Mazatlán is a big, empty city. Hiding one guy in a big, empty city doesn’t take brains or effort. You find an empty building in an empty neighborhood, and there you are.

“The best-kept secrets are the ones that nobody knows. When nobody knows, nobody blabs.”

I asked, “What about the doctor?”

“On permanent call until you leave. You may have noticed how eager he is to discharge you. He doesn’t go home until you walk out.”

“He has a family, doesn’t he?” I asked.

“I suspect he does.”

“And they haven’t reported him missing?”

“As far as they know, he died. That’s what the police reported. Poor man was beaten to death on the beach.”

“By three Marines,” I guessed.

“As a matter of fact. His family is in for a happy surprise.”

“So who died?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Pugh. “One of mine. He ran into an accident the day you disappeared.”

“No one came looking for me?” I sat up. The drugs had mostly worn off. I still felt weak—eleven days in a coma wreaks havoc on your muscles and equilibrium. Blood still rushed to my head when I sat up, but I didn’t feel sick this time.

Pugh watched. He didn’t reach out to steady me though concern showed in his eyes. For him, I was an investment. “Two people came looking for you. They met with the police, had a brief look around town, and decided the police had it under control. That’s what they told the police.

“One of them left. The other one beat one of my guys to death. You know that stiff they found on the beach? One of your pals did that.”

“Ray Freeman,” I said.

“Yeah. Big guy . . . not especially pleasant.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Now that is an interesting question,” said Pugh. “Freeman found me his first night here. He stole into camp and identified me as a man in the know.”

I interrupted him. “But he only killed one of your men?”

“One dead, one still recovering.”

“You got off light,” I said. “Did you tell him about Kasara?” I asked, not caring much either way.

“He figured that out on his own. Smart guy.” Pugh paused again. He no longer smiled. Now he fidgeted and looked uncomfortable.

“You had a deal with the clones who came to kill me,” I said. “I bet Ray figured that out.”

“Something like that,” he admitted. “My guys got them to the hotel. I let them into your room.”

“Was Kasara in on it?” I asked.

“No, sir. No, sir, not that girl. I had her convinced they were your guys right up until she heard the shower door shatter. She tried to run in when she heard the gunshot. Then you were down and they were dead and she was screaming at me to help you.”

“And you changed sides,” I said.

“Yeah . . . maybe. I guess I changed sides; maybe, it depends on whether or not you’re willing to work with me.” He didn’t meet my gaze as he said that. He stared down at the floor.

“Let’s see . . . you made a pact to get me killed. You stashed me in a hospital and kidnapped a doctor to take care of me. You lied to the police so you could hide me. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’re a criminal.”

“A businessman,” said Pugh.

“Girls, guns, and gambling?” I asked. “Are those your enterprises of choice?”

Pugh said nothing.

“Where is Freeman?” I asked.

“Interesting story,” said Pugh.

“Where is he?” I swung my legs from the bed. A little push, and I would be standing. I had no doubt that I had the strength to stand. I also had enough strength to fight, assuming I was fighting a child or maybe a newborn kitten. For the first time since I woke up, I felt the stirrings of a combat reflex. The will was there, but so was the atrophy in my muscles.

Pugh said, “He went to run an errand for me.”

“Who did you want him to kill?”

“A criminal, a man not unlike myself.”

“Only more powerful than you . . . you wanted him to kill the competition,” I said. I wanted to say that Freeman wouldn’t do that, that he didn’t get involved in domestic disputes. He would, though. He’d made a fortune dabbling in the Unified Authority’s disputes.

By this time I was standing. I hadn’t exactly sprung to my feet, but I was up.

“You and I have a mutual enemy, Harris, a guy named Ryan Petrie,” Pugh said, sounding scared and defensive. “He made a pact with the Unifieds. That was why I gave you to the clones; I was looking for an ally.”

I didn’t care about Pugh’s selling me out; I had already dealt with it.
So I was his price,
I thought
. Freeman accepted a job as a favor for me.

“He left a couple of days ago. We haven’t seen him since.”