A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  “Come on, Oliver,” muttered Ben as he turned the boy over. He felt for a pulse, checked beneath his eyelids, and then scooped him up from where he lay on the ground. “Come on, Emily,” he said impatiently. “Tranquilizers are nothing to be meddled with, especially in children.”

  His calm, serious demeanor snapped some sense back into her. She picked herself up and looked around in a daze. A hundred GCA agents had begun to stir from their prone positions upon the ground. Ben had already broken into a run back to one of the waiting vans, Oliver unconscious in his arms. She started after him with a growing sense of purpose.

  The Wests were nowhere in sight, but she didn’t care. Something had gone horribly awry, and Oliver had been injured.

  Really, nothing else mattered.

  XX

  Reversal of Fortunes

  August 2, 7:56pm mst, Phoenix, AZ

  Only an unforeseen intervention allowed their escape. In the moment, it seemed like poor aim or accident was at fault for Oliver’s unconsciousness. In the moment, the cause didn’t matter. The four Wests could not afford to waste the opportunity it presented.

  As Happy’s unchecked emotions swept across the crowd, Hawk surged forward to claim his fallen pet. Revere shrieked in pain, and with that shriek came a stunning realization: the bird wasn’t drugged. He was only hurt. Hawk clutched him protectively to his chest, careful of the white-tufted dart that stuck out of his shoulder joint. He was wary of removing it in all this chaos but silently assured the bird that all would be well.

  Honey took quick measures to order everyone to the ground, but even if she hadn’t, Happy’s innocent despair had already rendered most of them harmless. A small bubble of GCA agents still stood, and one of them shouted orders in rage. In answer, Hummer snatched up two single-round tranquilizer guns and fired at the man. He cast these away and dove for two more.

  Hawk scooped up another with his free hand. “Grab a gun and go!” he yelled. Honey was more than willing to comply. Happy, tear-stricken, panicking Happy, couldn’t collect his wits. Hawk was on the verge of falling apart. “Come on, Happy,” he said to his little brother. “We have to go.”

  The sight of the raven nestled in the crook of Hawk’s arm did more to calm Happy than any words could. He swallowed a shuddering breath and moved. Together the four ran, past the prostrate agents, across the train yard, and through a gap in the fence on the other side. They kept running until Happy started straggling behind.

  “Hummer, wait!” Hawk called, his breath ragged.

  Hummer had outstripped them all, despite the three tranquilizer guns and an extra set of darts he had hanging from one shoulder. At Hawk’s command, he changed directions and jogged back.

  “We’re not far enough away,” he said. “We have to keep moving.”

  “They’re not going to follow us with Oliver out of commission,” Hawk said. “Besides, I only wanted you to carry Happy piggy-back for a bit. How’d you manage to get all of that stuff?”

  Hummer glanced down at his newly acquired armory. “It was there to take. You’d have grabbed more if you didn’t have to carry Revere.”

  “And the extra darts?” Hawk pressed.

  “The squad leaders had ’em. The useless guns only fire one round, so it stands to reason that someone would have refills.”

  “They only fire one round so that there’s less chance of an overdose,” Hawk said. “At least we know they’d prefer not to kill us.”

  “As interesting as this conversation is,” Honey interjected irritably, “could we please continue with our escape? Hummer, give me your stuff. You carry Happy.”

  Hummer was halfway through complying when he realized it. “Hey!” he cried.

  Honey snatched the shoulder straps of his backpack from his outstretched hand, the tranquilizer guns already slung around her neck. “Piggy-back ride for Happy, now! Don’t argue!”

  “Sorry, Hummer,” Happy murmured as his brother crouched to pick him up.

  “It’s fine,” Hummer said. “You’re a lightweight anyway. We just need to get to some place we can hide.”

  Happy was small for his age, and Hummer was athletic enough to carry him for another block and a half before running out of steam. They stopped to rest in an alleyway behind a convenience store, careful to stay in the shadow of the huge dumpster there.

  Revere let out a soft caw.

  “How is he?” Honey asked in concern.

  “He’s hurt,” said Hawk. Gingerly he settled on the ground and rested the bird in his lap. “I’m going to need some light.”

  “I’m on it,” said Hummer, already digging around in his backpack.

  Happy crouched next to Hawk and leaned in to get a closer view of the injured bird. “Is he going to die?” he asked, anxiety thick on his voice.

  “I don’t think so,” Hawk said, “but he’s got a tiny piece of metal jammed into his wing joint. It’d be like someone giving you a shot but forgetting to take out the needle.”

  Honey tilted her head. “What about the tranquilizer? Did it not work?”

  Light blossomed in their shadowy corner. Hummer moved the flashlight closer, and Revere cringed away with an indignant shriek. Hawk’s fingers closed around the dart and yanked it from the bird in one swift movement. Revere screeched and flapped his wings to get away.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Hawk told him.

  The bird cawed and ruffled his feathers, then immediately preened the area around his injury. Hawk looked down at the dart in his hand.

  The needle was colored with dried blood, but something along the metal shaft caught his eyes. “Hummer, shine the light here. What does that say?”

  Four curious heads crowded together to study the tiny inscription.

  Hummer suddenly hissed. “It says ‘Real Irish Tea.’”

  “What? No,” said Hawk, and he squinted for a closer look.

  “Yes,” said Hummer, and he held the light closer. “I’d need a magnifying glass to make out the rest of it, though. It just looks like a bunch of numbers.”

  Honey abruptly stood and started rummaging around in her pockets.

  “Don’t tell me you have a magnifying glass,” said Hawk.

  She favored him with a flat look. “I have cash, and we’re sitting behind a convenience store. My guess is they have a magnifying glass.”

  He bristled. “Maddie North is not walking into any convenience stores tonight.”

  “I’ll go,” said Hummer. “That sketch they showed on NPNN barely looked like me anyway.”

  “Get us something for dinner, too,” Honey said as she handed over a wad of bills.

  “Is anyone else at all concerned that a horde of GCA agents are within half a mile of us here?” Hawk asked.

  “You said yourself they won’t come after us with Oliver out of commission,” Hummer retorted. “I’ll bet that’s the last time they try to use him. I’ll be right back.”

  Much as Hawk disliked sending Hummer off on his own, he let him go. It was easy to think of the short linear distance between them and their recent traumatic encounter, but the fact was that in a city this densely populated, there was too much ground for the GCA to cover to find them, even in such a relatively small area.

  “I’m pretty sure none of our safe houses are safe anymore,” Hawk said as he studied the metal dart. “What do you think we should do, Honey?”

  She sighed. “We each have a blanket, and it’s a warm night. I think we’re going to have to camp out. And tomorrow, we get out of town, regardless of the spotty train schedule.”

  He didn’t respond, even though she was probably right. The GCA would be monitoring the trains, though. They’d be monitoring all transportation out of the city. He felt like he’d been painted into a corner and couldn’t get out again. Absently his thumb ran over the engraving on the metal dart. “Real Irish Tea,” he murmured.

  “Looks like we owe them one,” said Honey.

  Hummer returned shortly thereafter. “There wasn’t m
uch of a selection,” he said as he handed a sack over to Honey. “I got a hotdog for Revere—it’s mostly soy and vegetable protein, but I thought he’d like it anyway.”

  “Did you get the magnifying glass?” asked Hawk.

  He pulled that object from his pocket. “It’s pretty cheap, but it should be good enough. Lemme see the dart.” He received the white-tufted tranquilizer with one hand and raised the magnifying glass in the other. “Can you hold the flashlight, Hawk?”

  Again four curious heads crowded together to have a look. The engraving read,

  Real Irish Tea 1400

  19504 69990 +08520 59590

  18365 63364 +38470 12910

  20412 59000 +45164 90000

  33475 30700 -11208 92760

  “What the heck is that supposed to mean?” asked Honey. “It’s just a string of numbers. Are we supposed to add them together?”

  “Hang on,” said Hummer, a frown furrowing his eyebrows. “I know that first line.”

  “We all know the first line,” she said sarcastically. “‘Real Irish Tea’ means ‘Altair is here.’ It’s a message from Altair. We got that.”

  “I’m talking about the first line of numbers, you pest,” he retorted. “One, nine, five, zero, four, six, nine, nine, nine, zero… What was it?”

  “It must be pretty obscure if you can’t remember it,” said Hawk.

  “Nineteen, fifty, 46.9990,” Hummer said abruptly. “It’s the right ascension for Altair, the star. It was in those astronomy textbooks I was reading at the library back in Flagstaff. And the second half is the declination. The first line stands for Altair!”

  “Great,” said Hawk. “What are the other three?”

  Hummer’s face went blank. “I have no idea. They’re probably stars as well, don’t you think?”

  “Which stars?” Honey asked.

  He bristled. “I didn’t memorize the entire catalogue. We were only looking for stuff on Altair.”

  “I don’t think the last line’s a star,” Hawk said absently. “It has a negative instead of a positive. I don’t think it’s a star.”

  Hummer peered closer at the magnified script. “Thirty-three and negative eleven—no,” he suddenly corrected himself, “negative one-twelve. You’re right. It’s latitude-longitude.” When three stares bored into him, he scrunched up his face. “Thirty-third parallel, negative hundred-and-twelfth meridian? C’mon, guys. You’ve seen all the same maps I have.”

  “Where is it, Hummer?” Honey asked.

  “It’s here. Phoenix. It’s a latitude and longitude in Phoenix, Arizona.”

  “Where in Phoenix?”

  “I don’t know, Honey! I’ve never gone and memorized every single exact point of latitude and longitude in the world. Sorry I can’t be of more help.” He grimaced at her on this final word.

  “Calm down, everyone,” said Hawk. “We don’t have to figure it out tonight. In fact, there are a lot of other things we should be figuring out first, like where we can go to stay safe.”

  “Someone’s back yard,” said Honey promptly. “Preferably someone with a lot of vegetation and no pets roaming around at night. We can sleep under the bushes and be gone by morning.”

  “Wow,” said Hummer. “I thought for sure you’d be demanding that we rent a room somewhere.”

  She made a face. “I’m not that stupid. Obviously the GCA’s got its eyes on any cash rentals, if they were able to trace us to that warehouse. It’s a warm night, so we should just camp out and consider it an adventure. We might even have enough time before curfew to buy ourselves a tent.”

  “That would risk drawing way too much attention to ourselves,” Hawk said before she could latch onto the idea. “I think you’re right about the camping, but we’re going to have to rough it. Are there any libraries open tomorrow that we can look up the rest of these numbers, or will we have to wait until Monday?”

  “Are we staying in Phoenix that long?” Honey asked, an edge to her voice.

  Hawk took the dart from Hummer and held it up for all of them to see. “Altair made the effort to reach out to us,” he said solemnly. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. Are we going to stay and try to meet them, or run away and start again from square one?”

  The answer was obvious. They all knew it.

  “We stay,” said Happy.

  “We stay,” said Hummer and Honey.

  “And we tranquilize anyone that comes near us,” said Hawk grimly, “especially if that someone is Oliver Dunn.”

  XXI

  Rude Awakening

  August 3, 2:23am mst, GCA Regional Office, Central Phoenix

  Oliver felt like he’d been clobbered with a ton of wet cement. It pulled on his limbs, weighing him down even as he struggled against it. After some exertion, he managed to open his eyelids, a monumental accomplishment.

  “Erm-I?” he asked groggily. It was supposed to be “Where am I?” but his mouth refused to form the words properly.

  He heard movement and slid his eyes toward the left side of the bed where he lay. He recognized his cell-like room at the GCA office now, but he couldn’t remember how he had come here.

  Emily’s worried face swam into his vision. “Oliver? Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

  “Not deaf,” he sneered, and he struggled to sit up.

  “Don’t try to move,” she said, pushing him back down. “That was a powerful sedative that hit you. You might need to sleep it off a little longer.”

  That explained why his arms and legs felt so heavy. He took her advice and relaxed back into the bed. His eyes shifted upward to stare at the ceiling above him. The longer he was awake, the more alert he felt. If he exercised patience, his strength would come back to him.

  “They’re still trying to figure out what went wrong,” Emily said. “After you passed out, it was total chaos. The Wests got away.”

  He remembered now. “Someone shot me with a tranquilizer.” His tongue felt like a dry, bloated potato in his mouth. “That’s what went wrong. And what do you mean, they got away? No one followed them?”

  Emily heaved an exasperated sigh. “It wasn’t an option. The minute you were unconscious, Honey and Happy West unleashed their projections on us all. I finally understand why everyone keeps saying that Happy’s the one to watch out for.”

  His attention flitted toward her. “It was that strong?” he asked with ill-suppressed interest.

  “Yeah.” Emily’s lack of elaboration spoke more about the experience than any description she could have given. Closer assessment showed that her face was puffy around the eyes, as though she had been crying. Was that on his behalf, or was it a remnant of her ordeal back at the warehouse?

  Probably the latter. No self-respecting handler would cry over her Prometheus student getting hurt.

  A knock on the door interrupted this melancholy reflection. Oliver’s gaze slid that direction to discover Ben Birchard in the doorway.

  “Oh,” he said when he saw Oliver looking back at him. “I thought I’d come spell your handler for a bit. How long has he been awake?” he asked Emily.

  “Only a couple minutes,” she said.

  Birchard entered the room. Oliver would have ordered him away again, except that the man was a fount of information. Birchard would know everything that had happened back at the warehouse and everything that had happened since. Much as it annoyed Oliver, he needed not to waste such a resource.

  “Make yourself useful and tell me everything,” he ordered, not bothering to conceal his objective.

  Ben paused, startled to be dealt with so bluntly. He recovered his wits, though, and even had the cheek to pull up a chair next to Oliver’s bedside. “You were struck by a rogue tranquilizer dart. The ensuing projections from Honey and Happy West rendered most of our forces ineffectual for, oh, two or three minutes at least.”

  “I know that already. What about Quincy?”

  “What about her?” Birchard asked, much to Oliver’s increasing ire.

&nb
sp; “Was she hit with a tranquilizer as well?”

  “No, but General Stone got one in the arm, courtesy of Hummer West. It didn’t knock him out, but it left him extremely dizzy. And made him furious, of course.”

  “Did they figure out which agent shot Oliver?” Emily asked.

  He sat back in his chair, a flat expression on his face. “It wasn’t a matter of figuring out anything. Every tranquilizer dart has a serial number on it. We know exactly which gun it was loaded into, and exactly which agent that gun was issued to. All we had to do was look up the serial number of the dart in your neck.”

  “And?” Oliver prompted.

  A wry expression pulled at Birchard’s mouth. “As you might imagine, the agent responsible has been in questioning ever since the incident. General Stone conducted the first round of interrogations himself. He’s letting Veronica have a go at the second.”

  “Then you don’t believe it was a stray tranquilizer?” Emily asked, a hitch in her voice.

  Oliver knew it wasn’t. The timing and aim had been too perfect.

  “That’s where the trouble comes in,” Birchard said slowly. “There’s no way it was an accident, but the agent—Greene, his name is—claims he didn’t pull the trigger.”

  “Even Veronica couldn’t get him to confess?” asked Emily. Oliver suppressed a snort at her thinly veiled contempt.

  Birchard ignored it. “Oh, she got a confession right away. She told him to admit he did it, and he did. If we needed a scapegoat, we’d have him, but with so many resources at stake here, we can’t afford anything but the truth. Agent Greene has already undergone several interrogations, and the only thing we’re really certain of at this point is that he genuinely believes he didn’t do it.”

  “Believes he didn’t do it?” Oliver repeated. “So what, maybe he did but just can’t remember?”

  Birchard shrugged. “General Stone is taking into account the possibility of hypnosis or brainwashing. I think it’s far more likely that Greene is telling the truth, that he wasn’t involved at all, but that would indicate sabotage from another agent, someone who had the opportunity to switch weapons with him. Our lives would be a whole lot easier if Greene actually was the perpetrator.”