Then the door closed. The rotor sound changed pitch, the engine spooling up to speed. They all ran back, shielding themselves from the down-blast as the big black machine lifted off and disappeared over the roof of the post-office. The flag whipped in the rotor wash.
Tavish came up to him, an apologetic look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” He held up the paper. “One of them slipped me this. It says Catfish has been legally detained for questioning by the United States Government. It says that complaints or inquiries can be directed to the proper authorities.” His eyes looked wide and lost. “But, it doesn’t say who the proper authorities are!”
Jubilee wandered out into the parking lot of the track plaza and sat on the chromed running board of a parked semi. Rogue had told her that Logan was working out in the X-Men’s Danger Room, and that it would take a few minutes for him to get to the phone.
Logan, better known to the world as the ferocious X-Man, Wolverine, liked to tell people that he was completely self-reliant, that the X-Men needed him more than he needed the X-Men, that he didn’t need anybody for anything. Usually, maybe 99.9 percent of the time, that was true. But on those rare occasions when he had needed someone, one or more of the X-Men were usually there for him. He didn’t talk about those times much, but he was fiercely loyal to them because of it.
Jubilee had often said the same thing about herself, that she didn’t need anything from anybody, that she could take care of herself. Then one day fate had thrown the two of them together. Her parents were dead, she was lost, alone in a distant land. Logan, Wolverine, had just taken the beating of his life, and lay close to death. She'd saved him. And he’d saved her.
After that time, Logan was many things to her, friend, protector, mentor, father figure. There was nobody in the world she trusted more than Logan. No one. She hoped he trusted her half as much.
“Jubilee,” his voice came from the phone. She could still hear that danger-room edge to his tone. “I was slicing up Sentinels when you called, but Rogue said it wouldn’t wait.”
“I wish I could be there with you, team up, give them the old plasma bombs like we used to.”
“You didn’t call to chat, Darlin’, I can tell.”
She sighed. “I need a favor, Wolvie, like, a big one. I need sone information about a guy. You still have lots of cloak-and-dagger friends you could call, don’t you?”
“You know I do, but something tells me this don’t have nothing to do with one of Emma Frost’s class projects.”
“I need to know anything you can find out about a guy named Sharpe. All 1 know is, he used to be a general, and he went up against X-Factor once.”
“Need ta know what?”
“Like what he’s up to now, where he hangs his hat, like that. And this isn’t the kind of guy you can look up in the yellow pages.”
A truck rumbled by.
Logan heard it. “You aren’t at the school, Jubilation. Where are you? Do you need help?”
She sighed. “Wolvie, you know how you used to tell me, and I quote, ‘sometimes there are things a man has got to do—alone.’ ”
There was silence from the phone for a while. “It’s like that, is it?”
“It’s like that,” she said firmly.
“Darlin’, I was always afraid you’d grow up to be just like me. Now it looks like my worst nightmares are coming true.” A pause. “I’ll make some calls, get back to you.”
She gave him the number for their phone.
He didn’t have to say it. “I’ll be careful,” she said.
The Genogoth safehouse was a nondescript farm house outside Fayetteville, North Carolina. From the outside, the only thing that differentiated it from a dozen other similar houses on the same two-lane blacktop road was a thirty-foot antenna mast topped with a huge television antenna which was hooked to nothing, and a much smaller cone-shaped antenna that was the real reason for the mast. The small antenna was attached to a special jamming transmitter located in the house’s attic.
The signals transmitted by the antenna would interfere with any mutant locator device, such as Professor Xavier’s Cerebro machine, or other similar, but less sophisticated, devices used by government agencies and independent organizations like the Hellfire Club. While it was operating, any mutant within a fifty mile radius of the antenna might be detected, but their genetic signature would be impossible to localize and pinpoint. If the mutant were very close to the antenna, or if the detector were much less sensitive, they might not be detected at all.
It was just such a jamming device that had, for twenty years, protected the mutant Catfish Quincy, and had just as abruptly failed to protect him at all. Perhaps fortunately, there were no mutants currently present in the safehouse, only a handful of human Genogoths.
Espeth sat in the middle of a sway-backed couch covered in textured, avocado-colored fabric. The room smelled unpleasantly of cigarettes and stale beer. Leather sat in a chair near the door, picking rocks out of his boots with a switchblade, and carefully avoiding making eye contact. That was good, because she had no intention of talking to him anyway.
Another of Leather’s troops, a tall, muscular woman named Inky, stood by the front window on lookout. She watched closely as a car crunched up the gravel driveway outside and a car door opened and closed. She turned to Leather and nodded. She walked over and opened the door for Black.
Leather didn’t get up. “She called us from a diner near the ninety-five, forty interchange. She demanded to talk to you, and nobody else.”
Black nodded, walked over, and sat down in a brown easy chair across from her. “Where are your friends, Espeth?” “Locked up in a secret government installation, last I heard.”
Black frowned at her. “You know what I mean, child. Where are the Xavier School mutants?”
“I don't know. They don’t check in with me.”
“Where did you leave them?”
“Can’t remember.”
He sighed and leaned forward in the chair. “What then, Espeth? Did you simply call me here to taunt me? Act as a distraction while your friends attempt a rescue? It won’t work. We’ll still catch them before they even get close. It will be even easier without you to help them.”
“You might be surprised,” she said. “Let them rescue the guys. The Genogoths don’t have to be involved at all.”
“Thanks to you, we already are. They know too much to be allowed to escape, Espeth, much less to risk their falling into government hands. It could be a disaster, the end of everything we’ve worked for—”
“—since the time of Darwin,” she sneered. “I know the speech. Black, do the right thing. Let them do what they came to do, or at least let them go. You’ll never catch them at this point anyway.”
“We know where they’re going, Espeth.”
“They don’t know where they’re going. I never told them where Sharpe’s base was.”
His eyes widened. He hadn’t expected this.
“They don’t know anything, really. Let them go.”
“I can’t do that, Espeth. They have to be captured, taken to a relocation center.” He studied her face. “Don’t look at me like that, Espeth. They weren’t involved at all until you brought them in. You’ve created this situation, now others must pay the price for your mistakes. I feel for your three friends who were taken, f really do, but this is for the greater good.”
He stood and turned to Leather. “I think she’s trying to throw us off their trail. They’ve gone west to bypass our search. Concentrate your people on a line north and south of Charlotte.” He glanced at Espeth. “You, are coming with me. Now." ~ ' '
Espeth slowly stood.
Leather looked suspicious. “Where are you taking her?”
“I’m sending her back to Washington state,” he said firmly, “to the Abbey, for reeducation. Perhaps a few years of simple living, hard work, and meditation on the principles of the Genogoths can salvage her spirit.
If not, at least she will be contained. Come on, Espeth, I’m going to have a plane waiting for you.”
She followed him reluctantly. Leather smiled evilly as she walked past. “We’ll get your little friends. Don’t you doubt it for a minute.”
She said nothing, and followed Black out to his car. Perhaps there would be an opportunity for escape later.
“Don’t look back,” Black said quietly as they approached the car. “The situation has changed.”
She climbed into the car with Black. She stared straight ahead, careful to maintain the unhappy expression on her face.
He started the car, backed out, and drove off up the highway. Only when they were several miles from the farmhouse, did he speak again. “The situation has changed radically in the last few hours. I had to put on a show for Leather. He’s building a power-base independent of my own, and he can’t be trusted.”
“I could have told you that,” she said sarcastically.
“That’s enough of that,” he said angrily. “The situation has changed, but you were still wrong in what you did.” He stared grimly at the road. “You remind me of myself when I was your age, Espeth, angry, headstrong, convinced that you can right all the world’s wrongs single-handedly. But some wrongs can’t be righted, some sacrifices must be made. That is the hard truth of what we do. The genes must survive, and nature doesn’t play favorites.”
She watched as they drove past a row of hothouses, some sort of agricultural station, tall stalks of corn growing under glass, never feeling the rain or the caress of a summer’s breeze. “If you really feel that way, why aren’t you putting me on that plane back to Seattle?”
“Who says I’m not?”
“I know you too well. Besides, you wouldn’t have thrown Leather off the trail if something wasn’t up. Something has changed. What?”
“I have to talk to your friends, meet with them. Perhaps I can negotiate some sort of settlement so that nobody else gets hurt. You can contact them?”
“I have a phone number.”
He plucked his phone from its pocket and handed it to her. “I know a place we can meet, someplace public and along their route. I’ll make a reservation for them at the hotel there.” “They’re short of money,” she said.
“It’ll be taken care of. Tell them that. Anything for their comfort.”
She looked at him.
“The phone won’t be traced. This isn’t a trap. You, me, and them. We’ll have a talk.”
She didn’t dial. “What happened? I won’t call unless you tell me.”
His frown deepened. “This morning a mutant under Genogoth protection was taken from his home in eastern Kentucky. He was hunted down and taken by three armored individuals who identified themselves as government agents.” He let that sink in for a moment. “The agents wore face masks, but judging from the physical descriptions, and the special abilities they demonstrated, we believe them to be your missing friends, Chill, Dog Pound, and Recall.”
Leather wandered onto the safehouse’s front porch and sat down in one of the old-fashioned metal lawn chairs. It squeaked under his weight, but it was surprisingly comfortable. A soft breeze blew through the trees that shaded the front yard and driveway. Birds chattered out their territorial disputes, and he could hear the faint sound of a tractor plowing a distant field.
By now, most of his forces were headed north to intercept the young mutants, and he knew he should get into his van and drive to join them, but something didn’t seem right. Oh, things seemed to be going well enough. Though he was disappointed that Black had failed to provoke a direct confrontation, he had bowed, at least a bit, to Leather’s demands. The traitor, Espeth, was in custody and would soon be sent where she could do the Genogoths no further harm.
', Still, something didn’t seem right. Black was old, but he was a fighter. Did he know something that Leather didn’t about the situation, or rather, was there something he didn’t want Leather to know?
Leather stood and locked the safehouse’s front door, then flipped the sequence of hidden switches that activated its intruder alarm and emergency self-destruct systems. That done, he climbed into his van and fished out his palmtop computer.
One of the Genogoths’ most valuable resources was a deep-cover operative known as “Visor.” Visor worked somewhere in the financial industry, and provided information to the Genogoths on banking and credit transactions. Black had recently charged him with locating all bank accounts, debit cards, and credit cards belonging to Espeth or any of the students of Xavier’s school, and further, informing them instantly of any transactions on those accounts. Unfortunately, Espeth seemed to have anticipated this, as none of their accounts had been accessed since the beginning of their flight from Massachusetts.
Leather had never met Visor, never even talked to him by phone. Visor could be reached only by an encrypted internet mailbox. That didn’t mean that Leather hadn’t made it a point to be in regular touch with Visor, or that he hadn’t had a chance to plumb the operative’s opinions on Black and various issues in dispute. Thus, he had a certain confidence that Visor would be receptive to what he was about to ask.
He opened the computer and began to finger a message into the little keyboard:
REQUEST YOU ACQUIRE, MONITOR, AND REPORT ACTIVITY OF ALL ACCOUNTS UNDER CONTROL OF BLACK. REPORT IMMEDIATELY, FOR MY EYES ONLY.
—LEATHER
He pushed the send key. He was just about to put the computer away when it beeped to notify him of incoming mail. He Iqoked at the screen and smiled.
REQUEST RECEIVED. ACCOUNTS IDENTIFIED AND MONITORED. STAND BY FOR CONFIDENTIAL REPORTS AS NECESSARY
-VISOR
He closed the computer and slipped it into a pocket inside his vest. He chuckled to himself. “Whatever you’re up to, Black, I’ll be keeping tabs on you.”
CHAPTER NINE
Angelo cranked the Xabago’s wheel sharply to the right as they wound their way around the third hairpin turn in the last five minutes. The wheels spun and bounced on the rutted clay of the road. “We are not,” he announced, “lost.”
Jubilee was sulking in the passenger seat. “We are very lost, Angelo.”
He laughed. “We can’t be lost, chic a, we don’t know where we’re going.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “We at least knew what direction we were going, and when Logan calls me back, we may know more.” She slumped in her seat. “Assuming if, like I think, she was blowing smoke when she said we’d never find the place.”
Monet came forward, an opened road atlas in her hand. She pointed at the map. “We don’t know where we are, Espinosa. I believe that is the definition of ‘lost.’ ”
An hour earlier, when Ev had spotted a pair of black trucks coming up behind them, they’d made a panic turn at the next exit and attempted to lose their pursuers by making a series of random turns onto back-roads. Actually, they’d never seen the trucks after they’d turned off, and everyone now agreed that it had probably been another false alarm.
He gave Monet an annoyed glance. “Give it a rest, M. You’re the navigator. We’ve got to be on that map somewhere.”
“I assure you,” she said coldly, “that this road is not on this map.”
He grinned. “Well, just pick one of those empty places, take one of your crayons, and draw one in. That’s where we’ll be.”
“I don’t do crayons.”
He waved her away. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Hey,” called Ev, who was still on look-out duty, “Monet or I could fly up and see if we can spot a highway from the air.”
Angelo snorted. “It was you, Mr. Eagle-Eye GI Joe, who got us in this fix in the first place.”
“I just call them as I see them. I didn’t tell you where to drive.”
Paige emerged from the bathroom and came forward to flop into the recliner. “Will you all just shut up? If I want to listen to this kind of bickering, I can just go home to my brothers and sisters.” She sighed. “It isn�
��t even all that far from here.”
“I’ll let you out,” cracked Angelo, “and you can walk it.”
“Shut up, Angelo.”
«J 99
' > “Shut up."
For once, everybody did. Jubilee stared out the window, Angelo focused on his driving, and Monet curled up on the couch with a calculus book. Paige had recently struggled through the same book herself, and she had the feeling that Monet was using it as light reading just to get her goat.
Well, it was working. Paige sulked in the recliner. Everyone was fighting, they didn’t know where they were going, and Jono was alone in the back, on a guilt-trip for having trusted Espeth. The phone rang. Paige looked at it and sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was give Emma or Sean another song and dance about how much trouble they weren’t in.
Jubilee leaned over the back of her seat. “It might be Wolvie!”
Paige put the phone to her ear. “Hello,” she said flatly. Then her eyes went wide. “It’s Espeth!” Then louder, “Jono, it’s Espeth!”
Angelo hit the brakes just as Jono came running forward. He tripped over Ev, who was swinging down from the crow’s nest, Ka-Zar-style, and overshot, almost landing in Angelo’s lap. Angelo nearly climbed over the top of him to get close enough to listen in.
“Okay,” said Paige into the phone, “talk. You definitely have everyone’s attention.”
Espeth looked out the window of Black’s car and watched the “Welcome to South Carolina” sign flash by. She turned and nodded to Black, to let him know she’d reached them. She sighed. This was hard enough without his listening in, but it had to be done.
“Let me talk to Jono,” she said.
There was a pause, then Paige came back on. “You know he talks telepathically. All he’d be able to do is listen.”
Espeth wasn't sure that it was true that Jono couldn’t use the telephone, but it made a good excuse for him not to talk to her. She couldn’t really blame him. “Paige, tell him I’m sorry. I was just trying to do what was best for everybody.”
Generation X - Genogoths Page 13
