True Path

by Graham Storrs

  She put on the shoulder holster and pushed the handgun into it. She was already feeling better. The sub-machine gun was on a lanyard that she hung over her shoulder. The spare clips went back into the bag, along with the grenades and everything else. “Detonator switches?”

  “Oh yeah.” He handed her a small plastic tablet about the size of a compad, which turned out to be an actual compad. She touched the stud and it came to life. On its little screen were six green buttons labeled “1” to “6”.

  “Range?” she asked.

  “How the fuck would I know? The guy just said you push the buttons and the bombs go boom.”

  She switched it off again and put it in her trouser pocket. “Enjoy your drink,” she said and climbed out into the night.

  Chapter 21: At the Mansion

  Cara woke from a dreamless sleep to find a man filling her whole field of vision. Crying out in fright, she scrabbled away from him. She didn’t get very far. She was on her back, on a bed, and her head hit the headboard with a crack. A meaty hand came down over her mouth.

  “Shut up,” the man said. “I’ve come to get you out of here.”

  She goggled at him, her heart racing. Where was here? Why was she on a bed? As if he understood, he held up a small silver disc, the size of a coin and said, “This is a neural damper. They’ve kept you under for twelve hours. Look, I’m not going to hurt you. If I take my hand away you won’t scream?”

  She shook her head. She’d been in some weird library out of a Dickens novel with her father talking to … “Duvalle? He did this?”

  The man shushed her. “Yeah. You’re still in his house.”

  “My dad? Is he here too?”

  “No. Duvalle’s got him out on some errand. You’re the insurance to make sure he does as he’s told.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Don’t blaspheme, child.”

  She looked at the stranger more carefully. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Tonker, Jonah Tonker.”

  “Really?”

  “What, you got a problem with my name?”

  “No. I just . . . Can I get up?”

  “Just so you don’t do anything stupid, all right? If they hear us, we’re both dead.”

  He moved back and let Cara swing her legs off the bed and sit up. She still had all her clothes on and the realization that she might not have been so lucky disturbed her powerfully. Another thought came to her. “Why are you helping me?” She was whispering now, finally comprehending the dangers of the situation.

  “I’m FBI. Undercover. I know who you and your father are but I sure didn’t expect you to turn up in this house. I’m here to watch Duvalle is all. I called it in and got a Deputy Director telling me to get you out of here, even if it blows my cover.” He didn’t seem resentful about it, just surprised.

  “Why don’t they just come and get me? I mean, they’re the law, right? And, even here, you’re not supposed to kidnap people, are you?”

  “Even here?”

  “It hasn’t been a really good experience for me, so far.”

  “Sure.” He seemed to understand. “Of course, if you hadn’t run away from your protection detail this morning, it might have gone a little bit better.”

  “Yeah. Not my best move ever. Have they found my mum yet?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, kid. Shall we get moving?”

  “You’ve got a plan?”

  “Sure.” He went to the door and put his ear against it.

  “So, what is it?” She got up and joined him.

  “What’s what?”

  “Your plan? Tell me.”

  He frowned. “How about I worry about the plan and you just do what I tell you?”

  Cara stepped back from him. “How about you tell me what this plan is so I can decide whether I think it’s good enough to risk my life on?”

  He studied her for a moment, his face unreadable. Finally, he said, “You know, that’s a real sensible attitude. Of course, you’ve got to weigh up that, if you stay here, you’re dead for sure. Either your dad delivers and Duvalle kills you both, or he don’t and Duvalle just kills you. At least with me, you got a chance.”

  “All right, all right. Don’t tell me your stupid plan. At least tell me if you’ve got back up or something.”

  He screwed up his face as if it pained him to break the bad news. “Yeah, that’s a bit tricky. Thing is, Duvalle’s a bit of a big cheese around here. No-one wants to be the guy that ordered an FBI raid on the Measurers HQ. That kind of thing has a habit of getting you noticed. But don’t worry. We’ll get out OK. Trust me.”

  With that, he put his ear back to the door and listened. Cara appraised him as she waited. On the one hand, he was big, and he looked tough. On the other hand, he didn’t seem overly bright. On the one hand, he must have had some FBI training. On the other hand she didn’t know how much of that was in hand-to-hand combat and how much was in theology.

  Did she trust him with her life? Definitely not. Did she think going with him was better than staying put? Oh yeah.

  So, when he said, “OK, it sounds clear. I’ll step out first and then you come after me when I give the signal,” she took a deep breath and nodded.

  “OK,” he said, again, sounding nervous, and reached for the door handle.

  There was a flash and a blast like thunder that rattled the windows and shook the house. Cara and Jonah looked at one another and then at the window. They rushed over to it and peered through the curtains. Across the lawns, from beyond the shrubs, a mushroom cloud of flame was rising on a skinny black stalk.

  “What in the world is that?” Jonah said.

  Cara wasn’t sure. “I think it must be my dad.” But, if she hadn’t known better, she’d have sworn it was her mum.

  -oOo-

  In the silence of the night, the explosion seemed to tear the fabric of the sky. O‘Dell had certainly been generous with his charges. The two men on Duvalle’s broad, balustraded veranda, turned towards it, red light flickering over their faces. Guards, or occupants, she couldn’t tell, but they were looking the other way and that’s what mattered. She raised herself from the ground and ran. There was a tree halfway across the lawn and that was her next stop on the way to the house. Almost as soon as she moved, a spotlight came on and swept with mechanical swiftness across the grass to find her. She jinked out of its beam and ran at right angles to her previous path, but it was on her again in moments. She cursed and kept running. The house systems must be tracking her with radar and guiding the spotlight automatically. Which meant that, any moment now …

  Two robot sentries appeared, rolling around from the back of the house. Their guns, no doubt synced into the radar sensors, were already pointing straight at her. She still had fifty meters to cover before she reached the relative shelter of the house but it might as well have been five hundred. The robots would start shooting long before she got there.

  She pulled a grenade from the bag and tore the pin out with her teeth. She dug in her heels and skidded to a halt. The spotlight tracked on past her. In the moment of darkness, she lobbed the grenade at the killbots, grabbed up the sub-machine gun, and fell to the ground, spraying the robots with gunfire. The little killbots reacted by shutting away their sensors behind armor. Sandra’s bullets pinged harmlessly off metal plating but she kept up the fire until the grenade went off.

  Springing up again, every muscle tensed against the return fire she was expecting, she ran on towards the house. She risked a glance at the bots and saw that one was lying on its side and the other had rolled off in the wrong direction. She could only guess that it was due to some kind of mechanical damage. Cheap African knockoffs, she told herself. She ejected the clip and slapped in another, then ducked for cover alongside the brick wall of some kind of outhouse. Panting hard, she stood for a moment with the cool brick against her back as she looked around and listened. She heard voices to her left, so she ran right.

  Straight into a man who had been
sneaking up on her in the shadows. He threw his arms around her in a bear hug. He had the size and strength to make that a dangerous hold. Sandra had been gripping the short-barreled machine gun in both hands and now her gun and hands were pressed against the man’s stomach.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “I got her!”

  With all her strength, she pushed the barrel away from her. It barely moved, but she squeezed the trigger anyway. Pain flashed through her like a lightning strike as the gun went off, tearing a hole in her opponent’s side and burning her arm and waist with the muzzle flash. The man let her go at once, screaming in pain as they staggered apart. A second burst of fire from the gun shut him up. Sandra fell back against the wall, nauseous and weak. Her flesh felt as if the flames were still searing it. Blackness crept in around the edges of her vision but a shout from nearby snapped her back. It’s just a burn. Worry about it later.

  She stepped over the fallen man and ran unsteadily away from the shout. She didn’t want to face anyone else. Not for a minute or two, anyway. She made for one of the back entrances. She was fairly sure that the radar couldn’t track her this close to the house, but she kept an eye out for more robots just the same. They had their own sensors and didn’t need to rely on external guidance.

  A horse whinnied nearby. A stable block? The possibilities for cover and escape flashed through her mind. The idea of trying to mount a horse and gallop away made her smile, despite the pain in her side.

  She saw a man standing guard at the door she was heading towards. No doubt every entrance was covered by now. Pushing the hunting knife into her belt behind her back, she stepped out of the shadows as close to the guard as she could get and raised her hands in surrender. It was almost comical to watch him jump out of his skin and then fumble to get his gun pointed the right way. She stepped towards him, hands high, dragging one leg.

  “I’m injured,” she said and saw his eyes flick towards her side. “I need a doctor.” Which was the truth for sure.

  “Stay there,” he said. “Stop!” She stopped but she was already close enough. “Don’t move.” He fumbled with his gun again and put a finger to his ear.

  Sandra had the compad in her hand. She touched one of the buttons on its screen and an explosion blasted out from the boundary wall. The guard almost dropped his gun as he jumped and turned towards the noise. Sandra stepped forward, grabbing the knife out of her belt and plunging it to the hilt in the man’s neck.

  He was still alive, but dying fast as she dragged him away from the door and into the shadows.

  -oOo-

  “Hey!”

  Jonah and Cara froze. Slowly they turned to find a suited man in the hallway behind them. Another explosion shattered the windows at the end of the corridor and all three of them ducked. It was the third explosion. To Cara, it felt as if a whole army was fighting its way into the house.

  “Simon,” Jonah said to the newcomer. “Give me a hand. I’m supposed to get this brat down to the basement.”

  To Cara, it sounded completely convincing, but Simon seemed uncertain. “Says who? It’s arma-fucking-geddon out there. What I heard was every man to his post.” His expression turned even more suspicious. “You know the boss said nobody touches her?” He began walking towards them. “She’s just a fucking kid, Jonah.”

  “Looks grown up enough to me,” Jonah said and Cara could only hope the FBI man was going along with his friend’s suspicions as part of some brilliant ruse.

  “What, so you thought you’d go somewhere quiet for a bit of fun while the rest of us get our asses blown off?”

  “Come on, Simon. It’s not like that. This won’t take more’n a couple of minutes. Who’s gonna know?”

  Simon was close now and he looked angry. “You know, I never had you pegged for this kind of sleazebag.” He turned to Cara. “Come on, kid. Let’s get you back to your—”

  The blow was so fast and hard, it made Cara jump. Jonah’s hand lashed out, the butt of his automatic hit Simon on the temple, and the man’s eyes rolled as he fell with a soft thud onto the thick carpet.

  “Come on,” Jonah said and took Cara’s arm. “We need to keep moving.”

  “You might have killed him.” She staggered into motion, impelled by the FBI man, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Simon. She felt as if her chest were being squeezed. A trembling started up in her limbs. She wanted to see Simon draw a breath, just one, so she’d know he was all right. “No, wait,” she said, resisting Jonah as he tried to pull her around a corner.

  “He’ll be fine,” said the agent, almost yanking her off her feet. “It was just a tap.”

  Tears sprang to Cara’s eyes and she didn’t know why. She stumbled along with Jonah, half-blinded by them. Even though Simon was a thug who worked for Duvalle, he had tried to help her, and now he was just a heap of nothing lying on the floor. But why would she cry about that? He was going to lock her up again. He was going to go outside and fight her father, or whoever it was.

  “It’s all right,” Jonah said. “I’ll get you out of this.”

  She was mortified that he’d seen her crying. He thought she was just some stupid child who was feeling sorry for herself. A dumb kid who was scared and going to pieces. Machine gun fire broke out somewhere in the house. She flinched and her heart fluttered against her ribs like a panicking bird.

  Well, all right, maybe she was scared. And maybe seeing that man smashed in the face with a gun was more shocking and brutal than she could ever have imagined. It was no wonder she felt sick and weepy and resented the man who did it. “Stop pulling me!” she cried, feeling dizzy and off-balance. Her legs were going to give up soon and the walls of the corridor had become a blur as they ran by. When they barged through a door onto a concrete staircase, she had to grab the cold metal banister with both hands and hang on hard, lest she tumble all the way down.

  “That gunfire, it must have been my father. We need to get to him. He’ll be looking for me.”

  Jonah shook his head. “That’s the worst place to go. That’s where the maximum danger is. He thinks you’re locked up somewhere, remember? He doesn’t know you’ve got a chance to escape. Trust me, he’d want you to get away if you could, not go barging into a gunfight.”

  Was he right? He sounded so certain. She thought about Jay trying to fight his way to her. If it had been her mother instead, it would be different. Nothing would stop Cara from going to find her. But, even though Jay was risking his life for her, what if she went to him and they both got killed? Her mother would never let that happen, she knew … but Jay? She didn’t know him. She didn’t love him. She couldn’t trust him to save her.

  Jonah didn’t hurry her along but let her hang on the banister a moment. She felt the world steady and straighten. Anger welled up inside her—mostly directed at herself for the weakness she’d shown, but there was plenty left over. She turned her face to her would-be rescuer, her eyes hard, lips pursed. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

  “You’re welcome,” the FBI man said with that unnatural, unflappable, infuriating manner. “All right, this is the plan. We’re going down these stairs to the ground floor. Then we get out and cross the yard to the garage block. Then we steal a car and I drive like a bat out of Hell, dodging the bullets that are going to rain down on us as sure as fire and brimstone rained down on Gomorrah. Then we’re going to crash the gates, and, if that doesn’t kill us, keep on going until we reach the J. Edgar Hoover Building. How does that sound?”

  She looked into his steady eyes. Her anger drained away and she found herself smiling. “It sounds like the most stupid plan I’ve ever heard.”

  “Good. It’s agreed then,” he said, starting down the steps. “Let’s go, kid. Those gates won’t crash themselves.”

  -oOo-

  Sandra stood over the fallen man. A row of bloody holes perforated his chest. She knelt down and frisked him quickly for some kind of communication device—a radio, a compad, anything. It seemed unlikely that the guar
ds here would have comms implants, since she hadn’t seen that level of tech anywhere else. In the man’s left ear she found what she was looking for: a tiny pink plastic lump. She pulled it out and stuck it in her own ear. She could hear people giving orders, confirming positions, announcing the results of sweeps and searches. It was better organized than she was hoping for, but at least she had some idea what her opposition was up to.

  When she heard, “Man down. Top floor, east wing. It’s Simon,” she ducked into an alcove to listen.

  “Check the girl’s room.”

  Sandra’s heart skipped.

  Another voice said, “How could they be up there already?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Perhaps there are more than we think.”

  Whoever was on the top floor took his time checking Cara’s room. “The room’s clear,” he finally said. “The girl’s gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?” The voice was angry and commanding. It had to be Duvalle. “Find her!”

  Another voice, “Simon was killed by a blow to the temple, sir. A single, clean blow. The killer hit him from the front, I’d say, with something heavy.”

  Cara didn’t do that, Sandra thought. Somebody’s helping her. She wondered if it might be Jay. Or could O‘Dell have sent someone in here without Sandra knowing? It didn’t matter. Cara had a friend. She might get out of here alive.

  “What are the exits from there?” Duvalle was asking.

  “Service stairs at the far end of corridor B and corridor C. Main staircase. And the windows at the back of the west wing open onto the roofs below. You might be able to jump or climb that way.”

  “I want people on those staircases. I want people outside. Get people behind the west wing now!”

  Sandra sprang into a fast run, ignoring the sudden flaring of pain from the burns across her waist and arm. She retraced her steps to the back entrance. If she were helping Cara escape, she’d head for the nearest motor vehicle. That meant finding the garage. She stepped out of the shadows to get her bearings and two men almost fell over her as they came sprinting along the path.