Hardbingers rj-10

by F. Paul Wilson

  "So you would wind up right where you are now. But you almost escaped me. I had to send a false Alarm—a very brief one, and quite a strain it was. It went through a Florida Oculus. I wanted to bring you back."

  "The yeniceri assassin? You sent him? Why did you want me back?"

  "Because I didn't want you in Europe when your last two loved ones were removed."

  Last two loved ones… the filthy—

  Jack exerted every fiber of muscle, every ounce of will to lever himself from the bench, but he might as well have been trying to stop the freighter making its way down river behind Rasalom.

  "Is your boss so petty it stoops to killing mothers and children? How did they even get on its radar?"

  "Let's not forget the deaths of your father and siblings. You're wondering why something as vast as the Otherness would concern itself with these seeming trivialities?"

  "So you could have this moment, I suppose."

  Rasalom laughed, and the genuine amusement in the sound puzzled Jack.

  "The Otherness leaves me to create my own amusements."

  "Then why? Does it think I'll be so discouraged and beaten down that I'll crawl into a hole and die? Well, guess what—it's backfired. It's made an enemy for life who'll do anything and everything to get in its way. So you'd better kill me now."

  Jack realized then that for the first time in his life he was reaching a point where he wouldn't mind dying. If Gia and Vicky didn't make it, he couldn't think of a goddamn thing to live for… beyond revenge. And revenge wasn't enough.

  Rasalom said nothing.

  "Why, goddammit?"

  A dramatic sigh. "Well, I was saving this for later but I suppose telling you now will have just as much effect: The Otherness is not behind the tragedies that have befallen your loved ones."

  "Don't lie to me. I knowV

  "Have you ever heard the expression, 'A spear has no branches'?"

  Jack had—a number of times. But what—?

  And then the realization came crashing in on him, crushing him like an avalanche.

  "The Ally?" He could barely hear his own voice.

  The silhouette nodded. "Who else?"

  Jack sensed the glee in the tone and his mind reeled. Had the side that had drafted him been systematically eliminating everyone who meant anything to him? It couldn't be.

  "Aaahhh… the broth of betrayal. Spicy, delect—" Jack saw the silhouette straighten, saw the head swivel. "What?" It dropped to the pavement and stood looking around. "Where are you? Come out!"

  "I'm over here," said a woman's voice to Jack's right.

  As he looked around, the lights flickered to life, but weak, sickly life. He saw a tall slim woman in a long, stylish, camel hair coat. She had patrician features and wore her long, glossy black hair up in a knot, Audrey Hepburn-style. A dog—an Akita, maybe—strained at the leash she gripped.

  "You!" Rasalom gritted. "What are you doing here?"

  "Halting your feast." Her tone was cultured, just this side of Long Island lockjaw. "And clearing the table."

  A lady with a dog, Jack thought. Again.

  "Since when do you interfere in my business?"

  "Since now. Be on your way." Her voice betrayed no emotion. She could have been ordering alterations on a dress. "I'm sure you can find a child being molested somewhere and slake your thirst there. You'll sup no more here."

  "No? We'll see about that."

  He turned back to Jack and stepped toward him, arms extended, fingers curved like claws.

  The dog growled.

  "Don't force me to release him."

  Rasalom hesitated.

  "That thing can't harm me."

  "He can't kill you, but he can certainly harm you. Or did you forget that you still inhabit human flesh?"

  "I can harm him as well."

  "I know. And I wouldn't want to see that, so that is why I still hold the leash. But if you force my hand…"

  "Why are you doing this?"

  The words sounded as if they were being driven through clenched teeth. Jack could sense his rage.

  "Because it pleases me. And because I can. Move along, Rasalom. You're finished here."

  "You do not order me about."

  "I just did. I can't make you go, of course. And you can't drive me away. But I can keep you from feeding. I believe this is what is called a stalemate."

  He took a step toward her but stopped when the dog growled.

  "I'll put an end to you eventually," he whispered. "It's inevitable and you know it."

  "I know nothing of the sort."

  "I've already hurt you and weakened you."

  "That in no way guarantees you victory."

  Jack noticed a drop in the assurance of her tone.

  "Not yet. But I'm growing stronger while you are not. I'll weaken you again. And after that…"

  "My-my, what confidence. Aren't you forgetting someone?"

  Now it was Rasalom's turn to lose a little self-assurance.

  "I'm not worried about him."

  Jack gathered they were talking about Glaeken—the Sentinel.

  "You should be," the Lady said. "The last time you underestimated him you wound up locked away for half a millennium."

  "That will not happen again."

  "Are you sure?" Her tone turned taunting. "You've never been able to defeat him."

  "Those were different times. This time I'm restructuring the battlefield to my liking. When I'm ready to make my move, I will have the high ground and he will be powerless to stop me."

  She shook her head. "Hubris…"

  "Where is he then?" Rasalom said, and Jack heard anger in his tone. "I might already be too powerful for him. That's why he doesn't show himself."

  "Why don't you show yourself? Why do you hide? Why do you sneak through the shadows, never showing yourself? You fear him."

  "Perhaps he fears me."

  Probably right, Jack thought. One of the Ladies had told him that the Sentinel was nothing but a powerless old man now. Obviously Rasalom did not know that.

  "I doubt that very much," the Lady said. "I believe he's watching you, toying with you, letting you think you're gaining the upper hand, waiting until you're almost ready before he moves in and crushes you—just as he's done before."

  Good for you, Jack thought. Keep him off balance, keep him looking over his shoulder.

  Rasalom said nothing.

  "One thing you can be sure of," the Lady said, pointing to Jack, "is that he has his eye on this one. Harming him will be like setting off a beacon as to your whereabouts. And then the hunt will begin in earnest—and you will be the prey."

  Rasalom straightened his shoulders. "My time is near. I know who will win our Ragnarok. But you won't be there to see it."

  He hopped up onto the top rail where he turned toward Jack. Through all this he'd not had a single glimpse of Rasalom's face.

  "And neither will you."

  With that he took a step back and slowly sank from sight.

  29

  Cal couldn't drag his eyes or his attention from the newspaper.

  "What do we do?" Miller said.

  Cal looked up at him. This was the first time in recent memory that Miller had asked his advice.

  They stood at the monitoring console, an island of tranquility in a sea of furious activity. Back in the lounge area he could see Lewis and Geraci emptying the contents of the lockers into heavy-duty black garbage bags.

  "I don't know that we do anything."

  "Get off it. We were supposed to take them out but they're not—down, maybe, but not out."

  "We don't know that they were supposed to be killed. The Oculus saw us hitting them with a truck—"

  "Not us—you. He saw you driving. But it didn't turn out that way, did it."

  Cal didn't reply. No need to.

  Miller leaned closer. "Let's cut the bullshit, okay? The Ally didn't show you running down those two because it wants them laid up for a while. It wants them out
. Gone. Kaput."

  Cal looked at the paper again. "Says they're in critical condition. Maybe they won't last."

  "'Critical condition' don't mean shit. You ever read about anyone going into a hospital in less than critical condition? Yeah, it means someone's bad hurt, but I bet nine out often walk out of there."

  "You hit them awful hard."

  "But not as hard as I could've. If the lady had stepped off the curb with her kid, yeah—they'd've been goners. But she held back—talking to someone, I think. Don't matter why. Bottom line was I had to swerve toward her, and then when she ran out to her kid I had to swerve back again. If they'd stayed together we wouldn't be having this conversation."

  They stood in silence. Cal glanced at Miller and saw a pensive look on his face. He seemed to have regained some of his usual bravado, but not all.

  Then Cal thought of something.

  "Maybe we shouldn't be having this conversation."

  Miller gave him a questioning look.

  "I'm saying, what if they didn't make it. What if they're already gone? Then we can forget about them."

  Or try to anyway.

  "How do we find out?"

  Cal looked at the paper. The woman's name was given as Gia DiLauro, the little girl as Victoria Westphalen. His stomach gave a lurch. He wished he hadn't read that. They had names now. That made it worse.

  "Says they were taken to New York Hospital. Okay…"

  He picked up the phone and called information which gave him the hospital's main number. He dialed in and got shifted around until he wound up with Patient Information. He decided on a backdoor approach.

  "I'd like to send some flowers to two of your patients. Can you give me the room numbers of"—he checked the article—"Gia DiLauro and Victoria Westphalen?"

  Miller gave him a thumbs-up.

  After spelling both names twice, he learned what he hadn't wanted to hear.

  "I'm sorry, they're in the trauma unit. No flowers allowed, I'm afraid."

  He thanked her and hung up.

  He didrfl look at Miller as he spoke. "They're still hanging on."

  Cal jumped as something crashed behind him. He turned and saw Port-man smashing one of their computer towers. Zeklos was helping him. They both wielded heavy hammers to crack open the case. Zeklos pulled out the hard drive and together they began smashing it into an unrecognizable lump of metal and plastic.

  Transporting the computers risked disaster if they fell into the wrong hands, so they'd leave them—but not in useful condition. They'd run a shredder program on each drive but Cal felt it foolish to underestimate the ability of some hacker to peek under the overwrites. He didn't have a degausser to do a magnetic wipe, so he told the men to smash the drives as well. The MV had other computers at the safe house and secure backups of everything that mattered.

  Zeklos sawr him looking and approached.

  Miller snarled. "What do you want?"

  "The Heir came to my apartment today."

  Miller looked at Cal. "Didn't he say he was going out of town?"

  Cal nodded. Yeah, he had. He turned to Zek.

  "Why would he want to see you?"

  "He talk about MV. He say if he is to join, then he wish to know about it."

  "Why didn't he come to us?" Miller said.

  Zek eyed him. "You have not been very welcoming."

  That was true in Miller's case, but Cal thought he and the guy had connected in some way. He was getting a bad feeling about this. The only reason to go to a guy on the outs with a group was to hear the dirt.

  "What exactly did he want to know?"

  Miller added, "And what exactly did you tell him?"

  "Very little. But I do not think that is why he come." He reached into his pocket. "He brought this."

  He held out his hand. Cal felt an electric jolt when he saw the Starfire's filled hollow.

  "Oh, shit," Miller said. "Where the fuck did he get that?"

  "He did not say. He ran out before I could ask him."

  "When was this?" Cal said.

  "A little after one o'clock."

  "Why did he run out?"

  "I do not know."

  Zek's eyes said that wasn't quite true, but that would keep till later. Cal didn't want to get sidetracked from the Slarfire. Cyanide tips were what the yeniceri had been taught to use for a hit. And the Starfire was favored because it had such a lame hollow.

  "One o'clock," Miller said. "Diana says she heard the commotion of a fight around one-thirty. The guy's in the neighborhood, pumping Zeklos, then he leaves, and a little while later the 0 and everybody else are slaughtered." He looked at Cal. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "I can't imagine what you're thinking."

  Miller leaned closer. "Maybe this 'Heir' wasn't anything of the sort. For all we know he could have been the Adversary in disguise, and we invited him in. Hell, we dragged him in like a Trojan fucking horse."

  "The 0 would have known."

  "Yeah? He didn't know he was going to be torn to pieces. Maybe he got fooled."

  Cal didn't want to think that, but he had to admit the timing was suspicious.

  Miller pounded a fist on the console. "I never trusted that fucker. 1 smelled something wrong from the git-go."

  Cal took the Starfire from Zek and pointed back to the computers.

  "Finish up so we can get out of here."

  He pocketed it as he turned back to Miller.

  "We'll worry about the bullet later. Right now we need to decide about the woman and the girl. What do you think we should do?"

  He hesitated, then shrugged. "Finish the job."

  "How are you—?"

  "Uh-uh." Miller was shaking his head. "Not me. I'm not letting our new Oculus out of my sight."

  Cal felt the same way. Who knew how many were left in the world?

  "So who? It'll be a kamikaze mission."

  Miller had that pensive look again. "Kamikaze…"

  "What are you thinking?"

  "I know just the guy." He straightened and called over Cal's shoulder. "Hey, Zeklos—want to redeem yourself?"

  30

  As soon as Rasalom disappeared, Jack felt the bench release his body. He sprang to the railing and peered below, but saw only dark, churning water. No sign of him.

  Gone.

  So what?

  He stepped back and slumped into the seat again. He glanced right and saw the lady and her dog still standing there.

  "How many of you are there?" he said.

  She stepped closer.

  "As many as need be."

  Women with dogs had been dropping in and out of his life since last year. They all knew more about what was going on in his life than he did. They seemed to be a third force in the shadow war. One had told him that if they had their way, both the Otherness and the Ally would be chased off to do their interfering somewhere else.

  "What did you mean about preventing him from feeding?"

  "I blocked his access to your pain."

  "You can do that?"

  "Only on a one-to-one basis. If 1 could block him from all the world's pain, he'd shrivel up and blow away."

  Jack sat in silence, wondering at the sick nature of what had become his reality.

  Finally he looked up at her. "Is it true what he said—that all this is the Ally's doing?"

  She nodded. "I am afraid so."

  He felt weak, as if life were oozing out of him.

  "But I'm supposed to be on the Ally's side. Is this what it does to its people? Is this any way to treat your troops?"

  "You've been told about the war: It's not a battle between Good and Evil, but more like a battle between the indifferent and the inimical. We cannot comprehend their scope, nor understand their motivations, so it's useless to try."

  "But I thought the Ally would at least—"

  "Obey the rules? Follow a code? Neither force has rules or morality. The concepts are alien to them. When you are so vast and so powerful, you've moved b
eyond the abstracts of right and wrong. Whatever gets you what you want is right, whatever impedes you is wrong. We can make rules for ourselves, but not for them."

  "Then we're pawns."

  "Only some of us. You are one."

  "Great. Just great."

  "The Ally regards us as nothing more than a possession. Let me give you an example. Do you know what sea glass is?"

  "Of course."

  What did this have to do—?

  "Then you know it's simply broken glass that has been worn and rounded by time, tide, and sand. People collect it. The whitish sea glass is the most common and can be found every day on every beach. The colored glass—the red, blue, green—is much more rare and prized by collectors."

  "I don't see what—"

  "Just bear with me. I'm trying to put this in the most concrete terms possible. Different worlds, different realities are sea glass to the Ally. It collects them and gathers them under its cloak. But the most prized of these are the sentient realities—the equivalent of colored sea glass. Now let's suppose you have a collection of sea glass. How much would you care about the individual pieces? Would you take each out at every opportunity and examine it under a loupe for any new flaws? Would you love it and cuddle it and polish it every day?"

  She waited for an answer, so Jack shook his head and said, "No. Of course not."

  "Same with the Ally. It devotes only the tiniest fraction of its consciousness to us. But let's say there's a predator out there that eats sea glass and is always on the hunt for more. You're going to protect that collection, aren't you. Not because you care for every single individual piece, but simply because it's yours."

  "I've got the picture."

  "Not quite. A full frontal assault by the predator won't work because you are virtual equals and you can repel it. That was tried back in the First Age, and it failed. But that doesn't mean the predator has gone away. It hasn't. And it never will. So you've got to worry about sneaky, backdoor moves and—'" She shook her head. "1 feel I'm trivializing this, and I don't mean to."

  "I'm following."

  "Good. So they battle on a smaller scale."

  "Who's winning?"

  "The Otherness, I'm afraid. The Ally is an interested collector who wants this world, this reality. The Otherness needs it—needs us. It feeds on worlds such as this. Its hunger is a more insistent drive than the Ally's possessiveness."