The Clone Assassin (28 page)

The first U.A. fighter wing had forty jets. The jets flew fast, stayed low, employed radar-disrupting technology, and filtered their engine streams through heat-disbursement gear. They came from a new generation of Tomcats. They were slightly larger than the fighters flown by clone pilots and slightly slower, but more maneuverable and covered with a light-refracting skin that disrupted laser targeting.

The jets traveled halfway up the Potomac before anyone spotted them. They flew in ten-bird formations, tight together, low against the water, the draft from their aerodynamic slipstreams barely churning the river in their wake. They flew three thousand miles per hour, nearly four times the speed of sound, covering the 150-mile distance in three minutes.

Admiral Hauser’s men spotted them halfway across the Potomac; by the time they informed the admiral, the U.A. fighters had already reached Washington, D.C., and no longer mattered.

As the Tomcats approached the junction where the Anacostia River splits off from the Potomac, they crossed the East Potomac Golf Course, where MacAvoy had stationed two Z Battery units in case of an air attack.

Z Battery units were armored vehicles with chain guns that fired grenades instead of bullets. Each battery fired twenty grenades per second, pulling its ammunition from a chamber that held fifteen thousand grenades.

Flying at three thousand miles per hour, the fighters zipped past the burning ruins of Bolling Air Force Base and dashed into air saturated with grenade shrapnel. The flak shredded the fighters’ armor, and they exploded as if they’d slammed into a wall. Traveling at three thousand miles per hour, the last pilots didn’t have time to see what happened to their leaders before they went up in flames as well.

 • • • 

MacAvoy watched the fighters from several views. One showed them as they entered the mouth of the Potomac. Another showed them as charcoal gray streaks tearing past a checkpoint fifty miles north. The last screen showed the fighters as they flew in range of the Z Batteries.

Looking from this view, he saw the slow dawn of a summer morning, the white horizon, the clearing sky. He heard the
POPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOP
of the batteries as they spat out thousands of exploding grenades. The air turned translucent, then almost opaque, with the silver of shrapnel and the thin white smoke of a million tiny explosions. Even watching carefully, MacAvoy never actually saw the enemy fighters.

His standard grimace worked its way into a smile. He muttered, “And saints and angels sing,” under his breath. “Christmas came in August this year.”

When one of his men gave him a congratulatory clap on the back, General MacAvoy turned to sneer. The officer quietly slipped from the truck, hoping to hide for the rest of his career.

Three Schwarzkopf tanks from the Seventy-seventh Armor Brigade rumbled past the triangle junction where Constitution Avenue met 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. A company of infantrymen surrounded the tanks, creating a perfect symbiosis, a martial partnership that had remained unchanged for nearly one thousand years—the tanks protecting the men from armor and light armor attacks while the men protected the tanks from infantry.

Weathering the early afternoon in Washington, D.C., with its high temperatures and its humidity, the soldiers’ faces glistened with sweat. Glaring sunlight reflected off windows, and rays of heat rose out of the street.

Washington, D.C., wasn’t a single city; it was three. The forgotten face of the city, the one forced to the outskirts, housed workers and bureaucrats. This was a bedroom community with average homes and lots of minimalls. The second face of the capital was filled with glitzy bars, expensive restaurants, and luxury hotels—a place where businessmen went to bribe politicians. The third and most famous face was the pangalactic government seat. Even now, with all the colonies lost and the clones in control, this part of the city remained resplendent, a living, breathing museum exhibit filled with monuments, marble palaces, and modern towers of metal, glass, and stone.

The triangle junction sat in the heart of monument boulevard.

To the left, a circular fountain sat hidden beneath a copse of trees. A large three-sided plaza filled the next block, its marble façade adorned with enormous columns that served no practical function except to help the building fit into the capital’s Greek-temple motif. One block farther, the ruins of the Archive Building smoldered, its granite-and-marble rubble still glowing orange, like coals in a fire.

A few walls of the once-glorious temple still stood, geometric planes that highlighted the differences between the symmetry of architecture and the entropy of destruction. A quarter section of the domed roof poked out of the twenty-foot-tall pile, covering it like a shield.

By this time, reinforcements had arrived. Fighters streaked over the city. Helicopter gunships hovered over neighborhoods. Above the atmosphere, fighter carriers and battleships circled.

Pockets of fighting had broken out all over the city—lightning assaults. The Unifieds attacked smaller units, nothing bigger than squads and the occasional platoon. Everyone had heard that a squad of soldiers from the Big Red One had gotten their noses bloodied near Mount Vernon Square. They’d gotten themselves trapped in a building until 3rd Corps Command sent a battalion to dig them out.

The patrol continued on, moving away from the National Mall, continuing down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Linear Committee Building, the structure that had represented the ultimate seat of power under the Unified Authority, the one government building in all of Washington, D.C., that remained vacant.

The patrol passed the giant circular pool erected as a monument to the old Navy, the “Wet Navy.” The building on the next block was a seven-story latticework of concrete and glass. Across the street stood a clunky marble fortress, a federal edifice that had remained in place for centuries on end.

Three Schwarzkopf tanks and 150 infantry men patrolled the lane. They were looking for Watson. They were hunting the enemy. They were looking for survivors. They were on patrol. Patrols don’t require reasons.

The enemy fired rockets first, then machine guns. Shoulder-fired rockets streaked out of windows on either side of the street, striking each of the Schwarzkopfs several times. The heavy tanks didn’t bounce or cartwheel, they bobbed and burst into flames, and their crews were incinerated inside them.

One moment, the tanks were rumbling ahead, the next their turrets lit up like torches. A rocket struck one of the tanks directly below the main gun, causing the ceiling of the driver’s compartment to melt under the heat of the flames. The soldiers standing outside the tank heard the screams of the men riding inside.

Gunfire and grenades poured out of the building.

Caught in a cross fire, some soldiers ran straight ahead. Some dropped, seeking cover between the burning tanks. A radioman called for support. A sergeant fired three RPGs into the building on the south side of the street. Glass shattered. Walls crumbled. Fine plumes of white smoke mixed with large clouds of dust rising out of the building, and the shooting continued.

A corporal stood and fired his M27, shooting at the building, not at the men inside of it. A sniper hit him in the throat, nearly decapitating him. Bullets hit him in the shoulder and chest.

The first EME gunship to respond came from two miles away. It chased up the block, dual chain guns carving the buildings from which the assault had begun. Bullets as long as pointer fingers drilled through windows and walls alike. Glass shattered into the building. Shards of marble dropped down its façade, and splinters of rock sprayed across the sidewalk.

A Unified Authority solider on the third floor of the southern building fired an L-19 rocket, a bulky-but-portable weapon specifically designed for damaging gunships. The rocket traveled less than one hundred yards before hitting its mark, leaving behind a fluffy white streak of smoke.

The rocket, a foot-long harpoon, struck the gunship in a dazzling flash of flame, chemicals, and electricity, incapacitating the floating fortress much the same way that a wasp’s sting paralyzes its prey. The electricity short-circuited the gunship’s computerized brain while heat and acid tore at her mechanical functions. The blast knocked the gunship to the side, and the pulse caused her engines to flutter, but the pilot maintained control of his ship, returning fire with a missile of his own.

The gunship was slowly dying. Smoke rose from her engines. The pilot would need to land shortly, but at the moment, he still had time to return fire for fire.

On the ground below, soldiers saw the struggling helicopter and cleared out from beneath her. In the building, the assailants turned their attention to the soldiers. With the tanks destroyed and the gunship struggling, they nearly had the battle won. When a Unified Authority soldier appeared on the top of the building carrying a rocket, a gunner on the dying gunship spotted him and immediately turned his chain guns on the man.

To the west, three more EME gunships flew into view. The pilot of the first gunship saw them, flashed a distress signal, then fired a rocket cluster at the building on the northern side of the street. Grenade-sized explosions, a great bunch of them condensed into a fifty-foot space, flashed and dissolved across the face of the building, causing it to sag, then to collapse.

A standard rocket-propelled grenade struck the belly of the injured gunship, bouncing her skyward. It was a glancing blow that caused no damage though one of the gunners felt his sphincter clench as he rode an invisible elevator up three stories on the bounce. The pilot glanced at his radar, saw the other birds closing behind him, and radioed, “Can you take this one?”

“Affirmative,” answered one of the pilots. “Specking HOOOOAH!” said the other.

The first pilot allowed the hit from the RPG to carry his bird up another few feet, then he used his pedals to turn her around as he crossed over the top of the battle and flew back to base.

At 16:00, Pernell MacAvoy arrived in a mobile nerve center (MNC) to oversee the operation on Pennsylvania Avenue. Unlike General Harris, who always seemed so anxious to die with his Marines, MacAvoy had every intention of surviving the day.

Watching the scene on a monitor, he spoke to Major Max Jensen, the officer leading the operation. He said, “Son, what’s it look like in there? Is that old bitch going to fall down on you?”

The soldiers in Special Forces didn’t wear the same gear as Marines. Jensen and his commandos wore open-faced helmets with cameras attached above their foreheads. Sitting in the MNC, MacAvoy and other officers directing the show went along for the ride vicariously, watching every move through those cameras.

Major Jensen said, “The engineers say the back half of the building is safe, General. We should be fine as long as we stay away from the wreckage.”

“Can you do that, son? Is that going to get in your way” asked MacAvoy.

The major pointed his camera across an undamaged lobby and down a mostly solid-looking hall. Glass shimmered on the floor at the far side of the hall.

“Have you checked for traps, son?” asked MacAvoy.

“Mines, wires, sensors, and infrared, sir,” said Jensen.

“Did you scan for enemies?”

“Yes, sir. The building appears empty.”

MacAvoy’s adjutant had read him a report that said as much, but the general wanted to make sure. Jensen and his company were Special Forces, a type of soldier that commanded a unique place in Pernell MacAvoy’s olive drab heart.

The major and his men were from the First Special Forces Operational Detachment. They were Deltas. They were tough, highly trained, and careful. They were the Army’s best.

Jensen said, “General, I hope to hell there is someone in there. I’d hate to think you flew me here for sightseeing, sir.”

MacAvoy said, “Son, I flew you out to the capital because I like your attitude. Watching you kill some Unified Authority speck, well, that would be just like finding chipped beef in the gravy on my biscuits. Now, seeing you interrogate one, son . . . you do that, and I’ll retire a happy man.”

The major called out to his men. He yelled, “Move out, Deltas.”

They moved out.

Civilians had died during the fighting. Most had escaped, but a few employees with offices facing Pennsylvania Avenue were caught in the cross fire.

The major sent a few scouts upstairs to search the building, but it was more of a perfunctory search for survivors than anything else. The Deltas had scanned the building with listening equipment that could pick up a rabbit’s heartbeat from a mile away.

Jensen and the rest of his men headed into the darkness. As they left the sunlight behind them, lenses folded down out of their helmets and covered their right eyes. Unlike Marines, who “hid their pieholes behind a visor,” Deltas used a discrete eyepiece that gave them a night-for-day lens and heat vision. Like Marines, they used an interLink connection. But, while Marines wrapped their heads in an audiovisual display, soldiers heard through earpieces and spoke into microphones.

Jensen sent four men down two different elevator shafts. The soldiers would rappel down to the dormant elevators and jimmy the doors.

As the rest of his men entered a stairwell, Major Jensen quietly groaned. The air smelled of sulfur and spoilage, like swamp gas and shit. One of his men whispered, “Speck, who flappered that one?”

“Stow it,” hissed Jensen.

He looked at the stairs and saw tiny puddles of water on the concrete. Speaking to MacAvoy, he said, “It smells like a sewer down here, sir.”

“A sewer,” the general echoed, and disappeared from his mike. A moment later, he returned. Sounding authoritative, he said “Major, head down two floors. Tell me what you see.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jensen. MacAvoy didn’t tell him to send men to search the first level of the underground parking structure or the lower levels, but he sent teams to each level just the same. Jensen also assigned men to guard the stairwell. He was a Delta, and Deltas left nothing to chance.

MacAvoy had risen through the ranks of infantry and armor, never having spent time in Special Forces. He knew how to bulldoze enemies and how to hold locations. This was a different kind of mission, and it required a different set of skills.

After sending men to investigate the lower levels and guard the stairs, the major brought a single squad with him as he entered the second level of the underground parking structure—ten men, including himself. He didn’t inform General MacAvoy about his precautions. On special operations such as this mission, the boots on the ground were given more room for discretion. They were specialists carrying out highly technical operations; they understood the inner workings of their world better than the officers on the other end of the mike.

The sulfurlike smell became stronger as they entered the parking area. Lights still shone from the ceiling, illuminating an underground garage filled with cars. Major Jensen and his squad entered the level and spread, each man finding cover, scanning for enemies, holding his place.

A thin layer of silt covered the floor, and tawny-colored water splashed beneath their boots as they walked.

“Are you getting this, sir?” asked Major Jensen. He took in a breath that smelled of rotten eggs and stepped ahead into the mud.

Jensen signaled for his men to stop. Speaking softly to the general, he said, “I suggest scanning this area again before we proceed, sir.”

The sound of sloshing water echoed through the level. It sounded as if it was far away. The major heard it and wondered if it had something to do with air-conditioning.

MacAvoy asked, “Are you wearing a gas mask, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you’re good to go. Do you know what you are smelling?”

“Yes, sir,” said the major. “We’re knee deep in shit.”

The masks filtered chemicals out of the air, but they did not eradicate smells entirely. Along with the rotten-eggs smell of sewage, the soldiers now imbibed the sharp odor of ozone.

Jensen gave the hand signal for the men in his squad to remain in wedge formation as they moved ahead. They trudged slowly, passing the ramp that led up to the first deck of the parking structure before they stopped.

He radioed General MacAvoy, and said, “Sir, we found their point of entry.”

MacAvoy said, “And . . .”

Not knowing what else to say, Jensen said, “. . . and they entered through this point.”

Sounding irritable, MacAvoy snapped, “Is it clear, son? Can you secure the location?”

Observing the scene through the major’s head-mount, MacAvoy saw the twenty-foot section that the Unified had blasted out of the cement wall. Their charges had destroyed more than cement and structure; a yard-wide pipe had been blown in two. A steady trickle of mud dribbled out of either end of the pipe, but most of the sewage had poured out earlier. A pile of fecal matter had gathered below the pipes.

Beyond the broken pipes, the break in the wall presented a morbid landscape of underground tunnels with wedges of light that streamed in through street-level storm drains. This was Washington, D.C., through the looking glass.

Son of a bitch,
thought MacAvoy.
No wonder nobody spotted the bastards, they came in through the waterworks.

Soldiers used handheld meters to scan for the same information that Marines read through their visors. Army instruments were clumsy and inconvenient but generally more precise than Marine gear.

Jensen had his men test for explosives. He scanned for voices and electronic signals. Deciding to ignore the ontological meter’s warning about high nitrogen levels and the increased probability of improvised organic-based explosives, the major determined the area was secure.

With his men behind him, he approached the wall.

The underground parking structure they were leaving wasn’t particularly bright, but it looked like a sunlit field compared to the tunnel on the other side. A ten-foot-wide water trough ran down the center of the tunnel. Fortunately, the trough conveyed drainage, not sewage. Below the water, jade-colored moss grew like seaweed. Concrete walkways ran along the trough. The tunnel itself was semicircular, twenty feet in diameter, with flat spots along its otherwise curved walls on which spokes poled out like the rungs of a ladder, leading to manholes.

Jensen looked up one side of the tunnel and down the other. Large, thick pipes ran its length. The pipes looked like the twin strands of a helix. One held drinking water, the other, sewage. The major had an interior dialogue in which he joked about the effects of switching the pipes.

The underground tunnel system made him nervous, but fear was an emotion he’d been taught to ignore. He said, “Do you want us to go in?”

MacAvoy didn’t hesitate a moment before answering. He said, “Hell yes. Son, enter that tunnel, but do not engage; this is purely recon. If you so much as smell anything larger than a rat, you and your men hightail out. You read me, Major?”

“Yes, sir, General. I do.”