The Clone Assassin (5 page)

Freeman and Watson sat in a small office in the transitional police station—a building that might once have been a cheap hotel. The chief had set up shop in the manager’s office, giving himself more space but less privacy than he would have had in one of the rooms.

The makeshift station didn’t have cells or interrogation rooms. It had a lobby, which the officers used as a cafeteria. They used guest rooms to store equipment. The New Olympian police had been issued very few guns, but they had plenty of computers, handcuffs, riot gear, and patrol cars.

Watson used his traveling workspace to catch up on messages. He placed it on the table and typed in a security code, then entered his communications address. Seeing he had a message from Major Alan Cardston, Watson tapped a key and called the major back.

As the head of Pentagon Security, Cardston carried a lot of authority for an officer of his rank. He lived in a world populated by colonels and generals, yet he seemed to carry as much clout as the men around him.

Watson didn’t like dealing with Cardston; he considered the major a bigoted prick. Cardston referred to Freeman and Watson as “civilian contractors” and treated them as if they were lower than enlisted men.

When Cardston came on the line and saw Watson, he seemed to sit on his hands. Had it been a general on the line, Cardston would have saluted. Had it been a civilian politician, he would have asked a friendly question. Instead, he merely said, “Watson, what have you found?”

Having worked with Wayson Harris and Ray Freeman, Watson had learned not to give information easily. He said, “They found three corpses in the hotel room. All three of them were clones.”

“Yes, I saw that in the police report,” Cardston replied.

“Two were beaten to death, one was shot.”

“Yes, that was also in the report.”

“They entered Harris’s room at 08:05,” said Watson.

“Oh-five?” asked Cardston. “Strange. The other attacks began precisely at 08:00, but this one was five minutes later. Are they sure they entered at 08:05?”

“The door lock automatically made a time stamp when it was opened at 08:05. It’s part of the hotel’s security protocol,” said Watson. “They use it to prevent maids from robbing guests.”

“Maybe the clock in the door was off,” said Cardston.

“Freeman had the police check that. The clock is accurate.”

“Interesting,” said Cardston.

“We know Harris entered the room thirty-two minutes before the assailants,” said Watson. “There’s a security feed showing him entering the hotel lobby, and a security time stamp at 07:33.

“There is a lot of blood in the room. We know that some of it came from Harris,” said Watson.

Cardston paused. He looked down, his eyes jetting back and forth. Watson thought he was probably looking over the report he had received, the one that seemed to have all the answers, the one generated by the New Olympian police.

“How do you know it was his?” asked Cardston.

“Freeman . . .” Watson began.

Freeman, who was in the room but out of the camera, put up a hand to stop him.

Watson changed in midsentence. “The police analyzed it for adrenal levels.”

“The combat reflex,” Cardston said. “Good thinking.”

Liberator physiology was human, but it included a unique gland that dumped hormones into their blood when their systems hit high levels of stress. The hormone dumps were called the “combat reflex.”

The reflex made them clearheaded and deadly in battle, but it also proved addictive, leading to massacres, some involving civilians. The engineers who had designed the current model of military clones had removed that gland and replaced it with a gland of a very different sort.

“Some of the blood was laced with adrenaline and testosterone, so we know Harris was there,” Cardston said. “I’m not sure I would have thought of that.”

Watson started to respond, but Freeman spoke over him. He said, “All we know is that Harris was there and that he lost a lot of blood.”

Cardston said, “Freeman?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he was shot?” asked Cardston.

Freeman said, “Possibly.”

“How about security feeds? Did you check with hotel security? Do they have anything?”

“We checked the video feed. It doesn’t show how the clones entered the building or how Harris left.”

 • • • 

After they ended the call to Cardston, Freeman and Watson met with Mark Story, the chief of the New Olympian police in Mazatlán, a white-haired man with the polished demeanor of a politician.

Story said, “I heard somebody attacked the Pentagon this morning. Obviously, if there is anything I can do, my entire department is at your service.”

Freeman seemed content to let Watson do the talking.

Watson said, “We appreciate that, Chief Story.”

“I heard about an attack on a prison.”

“Sheridan Federal Correctional,” said Watson.

“Both attacks happened at the exact same time that the clones attacked Harris. Do you think they’re related?” asked Story.

Freeman remained silent.

Not the exact same time,
thought Watson. He’d seen military precision. If it had been a synchronized attack, he had no doubt that Harris’s door would have opened at the exact same time the grenade exploded in the Pentagon and the gunship fired in Oregon.

He said, “It’s too early to tell.”

“Can I get you coffee or tea?” Story asked, then he thought a moment, and added, “I can get you something stronger if you like.”

“I’m fine,” said Watson.

Freeman didn’t answer. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

They sat around Story’s desk. The chief said, “Obviously, we will do everything in our power to find General Harris. We’ve set up security stations on roads in and out of town. We’ve blocked off the airport.

“You can leave, of course, but the runways are closed, and we’re scanning for transports.

“Per Pentagon regulations, we haven’t allowed extra-atmospheric travel in or out of the New Olympian Territories at all. We’ve got boats patrolling the coastline. If somebody has General Harris, they won’t get far.”

“Do you think it was a kidnapping?” asked Watson.

Freeman sat in his chair mute and menacing, a giant wedged into a chair meant for a normal-sized man. He kept his legs out front, arched up and bent at the knees. His hands, wrists, and half his forearms extended beyond the armrests. His thickly muscled legs and broad torso blocked any view of the chair on which he sat.

“Had to have been. You were there when my techs analyzed the blood samples. The general lost a lot of blood. Best-case scenario, General Harris was ambulatory when he left the hotel room. He might not have been conscious at all.”

“What do you think happened?” Watson asked, pretending that he didn’t consider Story an incompetent bureaucrat.

“It seems pretty clear. Somebody sent in a team of commandos. They waited until Harris was in the shower, then they tried to kidnap him. Harris put up a fight, but he lost.

“My guess is that they sent two men into the bathroom with two more waiting in the hotel room. Harris killed the first two in the bathroom. He killed the third outside the door, then the fourth one got him, probably shot him, judging by the blood. What happened next is anyone’s guess.”

“How would they have slipped him out of the hotel?” asked Watson.

Story leaned back in his chair, rested his hands on his chest, laced his fingers as if saying a prayer. He thought about the question for several seconds. “That’s the big question, now, isn’t it? How do you sneak a dying man out of a hotel?

“If he’s dying or dead, or maybe just unconscious, you could place him in a case of some kind. That would conceal him. You could drop him in a laundry basket. You could shove him down a trash chute. We checked the trash. It was clean.

“We’ve searched the building, of course. The easiest answer is to hang a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign and leave your victim tucked into bed. We’ve checked every room in the hotel.”

Watson smiled, and said, “It sounds as if you have all the bases covered.”

“We’re trying. We’re giving this one everything we have.”

“I guess that’s everything for now,” said Watson.

“Are you flying back to Washington?” asked Story.

Before Watson could answer, Freeman stood. Mark Story stood. Watson followed, realizing that the meeting had ended.

Story said, “We’ll notify you the moment we find something.”

One of the policemen appeared at the door and asked Story if he could speak to him. The police chief apologized and left the room.

“Why do you want them to think we’re flying back to Washington?” Watson asked.

Speaking in a voice that was more reverberation than whisper, Freeman said, “Because smart cockroaches only come out when you leave the room.”

As he and Freeman left the police station, Watson asked, “What do we do now?”

The sun still shone in the sky, but evening had begun, and the day’s heat had turned mild. Night wouldn’t come for a couple of hours, but the day had ended.

Ahead of them, the streets were nearly empty. The New Olympians had not come with fleets of cars or trucks. The only vehicles they had were the ones the Enlisted Man’s Empire had given them.

Freeman said, “We’re going to the spaceport.”

“So we’re leaving,” said Watson.

“You’re leaving,” said Freeman.

“What about you?”

“I’m staying.”

The police station was located in the center of what had been an abandoned downtown. Steel shutters covered the entrances of many of the buildings along the street. The New Olympians would open and populate the city, but the process would take time. They still hadn’t restored power or water to much of the city. The people still lived in a relocation camp on the north edge of town. They lived in a prefab ghetto with communal dormitories and cafeterias, and they ate military rations for meals.

The only cars on the street were police cars.

Freeman said, “Keep walking.”

As they passed the car that had chauffeured them from the spaceport, the driver—a policeman—stepped out.

Watson said, “Wait for us here. We’ll just be a moment.”

They walked to the end of the block, crossed the street, walked another block, then turned a corner. They were several blocks from the ocean, but the wind carried a hint of salt.

“Why am I leaving?” Watson asked.

“Because I work better alone,” said Freeman.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Watson asked, though he already knew the answer and didn’t want to be reminded.

Freeman obliged him. He said, “You went to law school; you’re not trained for this.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Freeman didn’t answer immediately. They walked around another corner. The block ahead had been a storefront with tinted windows and a black marble frieze, a style of building that looked out of place in a coastal tourist town. Ahead of them, business buildings gave way to parks.

Freeman said, “I want them to see us board a shuttle, and I want them to see the shuttle leave. I want them to think we’ve gone home.”

“You can’t possibly think you can slip back here and blend in unseen,” said Watson.

Freeman stood seven feet tall. He was a black man, a pure-blooded African-American living in a society that had outlawed races several centuries ago. His family had been part of an all-African-American Neo-Baptist colony that had not been touched by the Unified Authority’s integration efforts.

Freeman and Harris had something in common: they were both the last of their kind. Harris had been minted decades after Congress had nixed the Liberator project. Freeman’s Neo-Baptist relatives died when the Avatari incinerated a planet called New Copenhagen.

Freeman didn’t respond to Watson’s comment. In his mind, answering questions only invited further discussion, and Ray Freeman didn’t like to chat. He said, “Harris is still here.”

Watson stopped walking. He asked, “How do you know?”

“They didn’t come here to capture him,” Freeman said. “They came here to kill him.”

“You don’t know that.”

They entered a park with overgrown hedges and an empty fountain riddled with bird droppings. The grass had grown knee high. Shrubs and palm trees lined the walkways.

Freeman said, “Let’s cross the street.”

“Don’t you like parks?” asked Watson.

“Not as much as I like privacy,” said Freeman. “If we step out of their line of sight, the New Olympians will send soldiers to keep an eye on us.”

By this time, three police cars and a truckload of soldiers trailed behind them. Having lost the second-highest-ranking officer in the Enlisted Man’s Empire, the New Olympians weren’t taking any chances.

The police cars and troop transport waited in the distance as they crossed the street, then lingered a hundred yards back.

“How do you know they didn’t come to kidnap Harris?” Watson asked, as they stepped onto the next sidewalk.

Freeman asked, “If you were going to kidnap a clone like Harris, would you shoot him?”

Watson thought for a moment. He said, “Not if I wanted him alive. I’d try to convert him, get him to walk out on his own.”

“Did you smell any chlorine? Did you smell ammonia?” asked Freeman.

“It’s been more than twenty-four hours; the smell might have gone away,” said Watson.

Freeman shook his head. He said, “The police checked. They wrote about it in their report.”

“So that’s it? You’re taking me out of the loop?” asked Watson.

“You’ll be safer in Washington,” Freeman said. “You wouldn’t like the direction I’m headed out here.” And that, as far as Freeman was concerned, was all that remained to be said. He steered Watson back to the police station in silence, and their driver took them out to the spaceport.

Gordon Hughes Spaceport was technically an “airport,” not a spaceport. It was designed to handle atmosphere-only flights though its runway was long enough to handle fighters. The spaceport could easily accommodate military transports, which were vertical-landing crafts, but it lacked the upgraded equipment needed for fueling extra-atmospheric freighters and commuter crafts. Any space birds landing in Mazatlán would need to pack sufficient fuel to fly home.

Freeman considered the logistics of extra-atmospheric flights from Mazatlán as the caravan rolled onto the spaceport grounds. He saw cargo planes and atmospheric commuters, but no extra-atmospheric freight haulers.

Hughes Spaceport did have enough space for a fleet of transports, and those were extra-atmospheric birds that carried large amounts of fuel. Even if a ship’s tanks were nearly empty, there were spaceports in California, Texas, and Utah where an extra-atmospheric ship could refuel.

Freeman mulled this over in silence.

Humiliated that he was being sent home, Watson remained quiet as the car approached the spaceport. He told himself he was angry, but he knew the truth. He was embarrassed.

The car caravan drove into the hangar in which the government shuttle was parked. While Watson thanked the New Olympian driver and policemen, Freeman entered the shuttle. The escort stayed to watch as the pilot powered up the shuttle’s engines and taxied out of the hangar.

No one noticed that Freeman had already exited the plane. He had entered the main cabin, walked to the galley, and exited through the service hatch at the rear of the plane.