by Lee Doty
“But the Clerics are dullards, I’m almost certain of that…”
“You mean they’re dullards like rocket scientists and particle physicists, or dullards like politicians?”
He beamed with the pleasure of her joke and it made her mostly forgive him for the capabilities he wasn’t holding over her. “Exactly, miss! Exactly like politicians!” Jackie was sure he was going to clap his hands with joy, but he simply continued, “They think in the same twists, they move through the same manipulative spirals… they are politicians masquerading as parents.”
“You are adorable.” Jackie said without any premeditation and without the normal filters. He blushed and she laughed. “You remind me of Jo. When you’re not terrifying me, you are like a big puppy… a big…” Jackie struggled for words, “True. Like a big, true puppy.”
A clumsy lurch and a half-hearted ding intruded into the confines of the Wonkavator and the old doors labored open slowly. The priest bowed his head, still blushing furiously and let Jackie lead the way into the hallway.
She stepped into the hallway and quickly checked both directions for threats. Nothing. “What now?”
The priest led the way through the hallways until they finally reached a dead end where a floor-to-ceiling pane of dark glass framed the lights of the city outside.
They stood in silence about ten feet from the glass. For a moment the priest stood motionless, looking at the patch of the nighttime city ahead, then he fished in his pocket and pulled out Jackie’s phone. He consulted the tracker again, then settled again into complete stillness.
Jackie stood in a tight, unwilling patience, resisting the urge to recheck her weapons. Finally, the priest ended his preternatural stillness with a small move of his hand. He held out Jackie’s phone to her. “It’s time to call Ash.”
***
“What was that?” Yuen asked, wonder peeking only slightly through his usual cold sarcasm. At Bai’s sharp look, he cringed back behind his monitor and back to his job.
Bai shook his head slowly. It was clear that the staged melodrama between Crow and the unknown woman on the street was, well… a staged melodrama. But what did it imply? The first impressions were somewhat clear, that the two of them were (not?) conspiring to deceive some kind of audience they thought they had on the street, that said deception was about the location of Ash, but what was the actual point?
Subtle… all of the Falcons were subtle, the former members of Phoenix most of all. On the surface, the act said they would stay at the cheap hotel then locate Ash tomorrow, when the woman could locate her at work. The second layer down Bai thought was that they knew where she was now and would try to shake whoever was following them first, but that made no sense as the obvious act made it clear that they thought their pursuers were listening, so why would they telegraph their plan so “clearly”? But under that layer, there had to be a more and truer meaning, a clever plan, but who could unravel it? On the second level they were doing it because they knew they were being observed, but maybe the next level down they were doing it in case they were being observed to try to get their enemies to tip their hand… to provoke some kind of conflict now? Who could know?
Rather than trying to outthink the dragons, Bai needed some way to make a lateral move, circumventing the Falcon’s plan… whatever it was.
Bai ground his teeth in the grip of a tight and merciless frustration. He knew he needed to apprise Xian of this latest development immediately, but knew how much better it would be to come with more than the unexplained, with some analysis that consisted of more than circular suppositions that could imply anything and therefore did imply nothing.
“It’s the woman from the cab!” Jen burst out, bringing an end to Bai’s reverie and his immediate problem at the same time.
Bai’s eyes settled on her and she hurried to elaborate, “The woman with Crow now is the same one from the police report that started all of this. She was also in the back of the cab when our first team hit them at the traffic signal.”
“Show me.” Bai commanded, gesturing to the tactical display that covered the wall at the front of the mobile command post. Jen’s fingers flew over her keyboard, the clicks merging into a long punctuated rattle that filled the closed space. After a few seconds, a new window opened to cover the top left quadrant of the screen. The window was split into three images. The first was of Crow and the woman, cut from the video feed of the Kabuki act in front of the hotel. Crow was looking overly grave and the woman’s face was caught in mid declaration, mouth open, eyes rolling, her expression of fearful resentment painted onto a canvas of pure sarcasm. Her sharp, intelligent eyes, minimal makeup, activity-hardened features and kinky shoulder-length hair pulled back into a loose ponytail gave her the overall look of a no-nonsense television personal trainer, or maybe a mid-level executive of a multinational corporation with an exercise addiction. All of which was to say that she looked like an agent of the enemy.
Bai had begun to notice long ago that the operatives of different agencies shared distinct characteristics. Not a commonality of features and physical characteristics… nothing so overt or genetic. Not like the predominant features of ethnicity or even national or regional tendencies, not the similarity between siblings or even cousins. This look was more ephemeral, as if some manifestation of the spirit, some clue not to what the person was made of, but what they were made for.
The operatives of the world’s various organized crime syndicates shared the dual look of the attack dog and the butcher. Their dead faces impassive until the time came for violence or debauchery, their eyes empty save for a constant watchful calculation, as if they were a frugal butcher constantly looking for the best place to cut, as if the world around them could be exploited only with apron and cleaver.
The operatives of the most encompassing governments like North Korea or the robber states of the Middle East or Africa had an almost identical look to the syndicate men. The main difference being that they tried to hide their greed and self-interest beneath a mask of service to “the people” or to whatever petty tyrant currently ruled them.
The operatives of religious insurgencies balanced the look of the mob enforcer and the drug addict. Not the addict who is still chasing the high. Not the junkie who can look forward to a fix with any kind of anticipation, but the advanced addict whose life is a yawing void of uncomprehending pain and dissolution, interrupted briefly by the sting of the needle and the briefest moment of despairing humanity before the lights go out and the horror of emptiness returns. To see the top level operatives of terror was to see those who speak most of God and believe least. Those who take off their white robes, set down the holy AK-47s of their YouTube channel to veer, despairing, between the black hood and butcher’s cleaver and the thumb drive of internet porn.
The operatives of the more elaborate governments of Europe or Japan tended to be less focused, less fit and less serious. They seemed to Bai that they had a day job, or maybe just an intense hobby, that occupied a significant portion of their minds. They tended toward the officious, the petty. Toward the world of the desk and telephone. They transacted in the currency of pull and favors rather than the machine of rending teeth and blood that was the more explicit nature of government. They were like the internal organs of a killer, necessary parts for the whole, but fastidiously blind to the larger purpose outside their own small domains. There were islands of purpose here, those who believed in duty and courage, but Bai was pretty sure this was just the cigarette burning inexorably toward the extinguished filter of the desk and the phone and the politics of influence.
The agents of Bai’s own glorious cause had the look of machines—fearful, ambitious machines. But that wasn’t exactly right—not machines but replaceable components of a single great machine. His purpose wasn’t his, but the purpose of the machine. His actions helped or hurt the whole, but he was too small to be important, too small to think in primitive terms of guilt or greed. When the people join together, when they
look beyond their selfish needs, when they learn their rightful place within society, then we steal paradise from the heavens and build it here on earth…
Bai noticed two things at the same time: that he was quoting from one of the many chants of the indoctrination of his youth, and that he was frowning bitterly.
What Bai saw when he looked in the mirror was one gear among many, with his glinting purpose made to disappear into the machine’s complexity. What Bai saw in the mirror was a high and righteous purpose of which he was just one small part. But when he was tired, when the cog wasn’t turning, when he looked in the mirror years ago trying to wash Mae’s time-crusted blood off his face and out of his hair—what he saw then…
With a horizontal jerk of his jaw, he cut that thought off, along with the knowledge it surely contained. Bai didn’t want to know—couldn’t know it. He was a cog in a glorious machine, a cog in a glorious machine. A cog in a glorious machine.
It was safer to think about what he hated, he thought desperately. And what he hated with a deep and aching pain was before him now, it was in this woman’s face on the screen. It was conviction and purpose. It was a purpose that unified mind and body into a self-directed action within the context of a team. What he saw on the woman’s face on the screen, what he saw so often when dealing with the OSI, and a few other teams like U.S. or Israeli Spec Ops, but not in the mirror, was a world beyond the cog, a person acting on their own beliefs because they had arrived at those beliefs by experience, choice and discovery rather than by fear and conditioning. This woman had chosen her life, but Bai’s life had been chosen for him. Her life would be directed by her choices, by her spirit, but his life would forever be directed by his wise masters from above. When he looked at her—at people like her—Bai didn’t feel like a servant of the people, he felt like a slave in a galley, rowing.
With another jerk of his jaw and a wince, Bai realized it was also not safe to think about what he hated.
What Bai felt when looking at the woman on the screen was a weight of envy hiding a white-hot thorn of guilt. What Bai felt was a danger, a danger that if he looked too closely, thought too incautiously, that he might find himself insufficiently blind to continue to be effective. Bai thought generally of the rulers above him and specifically of Xian’s laughing eyes when any situation justified pulling the trigger.
Bai took a deep focusing breath and forced himself back into the moment. When he was sure he had control, he forced his eyes back to the screen.
The second picture on the screen was taken from the helmet cam on one of the now dead Falcons of tonight’s first attack. The Falcon’s rifle was in the bottom right of the frame, belching a halo of fire from the integrated compensator at the end of the barrel. In the center of the frame, the taxi was frozen, with Ash behind the driver and this woman behind the empty passenger’s seat in the cab. Her face showed none of the terror and confusion that most showed upon encountering the Falcons for the first time. Bai remembered that the cab had gotten away when Ash had leapt out and fled to the underground train platform. The third image was of this same woman, unconscious and bleeding from both nostrils on the concrete floor of a stairwell in the parking structure. It was an image cut from the police report that had begun this evening’s operation.
“Excellent, Cleric Jen.” Bai said, voice carefully devoid of enthusiasm or anything beyond token praise. “You have served the people’s cause well this day.”
Jen bowed her head fractionally and dropped her eyes briefly in acceptance.
Bai drew his phone from his pocket and dialed Xian, feeling grateful to have something concrete to report.
***
“Jeremy, it’s Jackie Love.”
There was a pause, then Jeremy began the protocol. “Are you calling from home?”
Jackie completed the sequence indicating that it was her and that she was not under duress. “I’m far from home, but anxious to return.” She paused for a second then continued, “I need to speak to Ash.”
Jackie heard the subtle change in the small amount of white noise on the line as Jeremy muted his phone. She looked at the priest, “They didn’t ask who. Maybe her memory is coming back?”
The priest was smiling at her, a warm and oddly unencumbered smile for such a slayer. “I like your name.” He said simply, “Nice to know you, Jackie Love.”
“Nice to meet you too, Paulo.” Jackie said, wanting to pinch herself for the fifth time in the last few hours. She still wasn’t entirely sure that she had actually woken up after this kindly priest had knocked her out mercilessly in that stairwell. She kept expecting to wake up on her bed in Kansas, surrounded by friends and family who looked a great deal like the interesting characters she’d met on her adventure here in Oz.
The timbre of the static again shifted and Jo spoke uncertainly, “Hello?”
Jackie nodded to the priest, whose scarred face was now emoting a child’s giddy relief in the most unselfconscious way. The dolphin will live, Jackie thought of the appropriate part of the children’s movie that expression was torn from. “Jo, it’s Jackie. Who is with you?”
“My fake boyfriend and my fake psychiatrist.” Jo said, voice accusing.
Jackie winced, “Smith is there?” Jackie asked, realizing how much worse the situation had become. “Do you remember who you are?”
“Yes.” Jo said simply, voice dead.
“Are you okay?” Jackie said, “Were you ready?”
“You don’t have to pretend it matters to you.” Jo said without accusation this time.
“I haven’t been pretending for some time now.” Jackie said, but then shook her head and got back on-script. “Jo, would you please put me on speaker… there are some urgent things I need to tell you all.”
***
Jo lowered the phone from her ear and switched it to speaker. “Go.” She said.
“Dr. Smith,” Jackie asked, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“I am in the hotel across the alley to your south. We followed Jo’s trackers here and have just discovered that we were likely tracked ourselves. I have strong intel that there are at least two dragon teams here and that they have had time to secure the area. We do not believe they have an exact fix on Jo or that they realize that you are here, Sir.”
“Why haven’t you and Agent Ramirez checked in? Why did you attempt to follow Jo on your own initiative?”
“I’m not with Agent Ramirez.” Jackie said.
Smith’s face grew more wary. “You said ‘we’.” She said in a carefully neutral tone.
There was silence on the phone for a moment, then Jackie said simply, “I am with a new ally. He thinks he is a temporary ally, but is stupid and will eventually figure out we are his friends.”
The only surprise that made it to Smith’s face was a slight raise of the eyelids, but her mind was exploding with potential implications.
“Who?” Jo asked, standing so quickly and carelessly that her chair tumbled away behind her and Jeremy startled badly, jerking his head down and away from her, “Who is with you?”
There was silence for a few beats, then Jackie said, “A friend is all I can say for now. It’s all he wants me to say… like I said, he’s stupid. ”
Smith and Jo exchanged a glance. There was a warm affectionate smile in Jackie’s voice as she delivered her insults that spoke volumes about her situation. They both gave the same half shrug.
“If you’ve got teams securing the area, you might want to warn them quietly,” Jackie said, “We think the dragons have been here for less than ten minutes, so it’s possible some of them might still be responding.”
“May I?” Smith asked Jo, gesturing to her phone on the table.
Jo gave her a quick nod and Smith drew the phone and dialed quickly.
“Leo?” she asked into her phone, “You heard that? Good. I’ll wait.”
Jo gave Smith a hard stare and Smith gave a small shrug of apology. “I never said we were having a privat
e talk, just an honest talk.”
Smith looked away from Jo, again giving her full attention to the phone, then said, “I see. Recommendations? Hold please.” She looked up at Jo, “We need to move. Only one of the two sniper teams returned the correct challenge response and they reported nothing out of the ordinary. And yet we’ve lost contact with both pairs of operatives on the street. They know we are in the area, but what we do not know is if they know that I am here or that we are in this specific apartment.” She paused, then resorted to understatement, “We are in trouble.”
“How many assets do we have in the area?” Jo asked.
“Agent Love,” Smith said, “I need you to be absolutely sure about this: do you believe it will rain?”
“Never inside.” Jackie said without hesitation from Jeremy’s speakerphone on the table.
“Well, that was insightful.” Jo said, half to herself, but then she understood that it was another challenge and response. “And what did that signify?” She asked Smith.
“That I can discuss plans with that channel open.” Smith waved to Jeremy’s phone on the table. Then, looking around the table, she continued. “Okay. One big happy family for the moment. Agreed?” Smith gave Jo a pointed look.
Jo frowned. “Please excuse my skepticism, but I’ve been played ever since I can remember. First by the Clerics and then by you. This situation is just a bit too convenient for my comfort.” She was looking hard at Smith. “How convenient that there is an immediate danger that we both must now face, how convenient that it draws us together and takes my focus away from your deceptions at the same time.”
“That,” Smith said quickly, as if to protest, but she paused, then finished with a hint of sadness coloring her voice, “is fair.”
The silence extended between them for a moment, with neither sure how to continue. They were both aware that the time for a decision had arrived, but both knew that words weren’t the answer to this problem.
