Jayne looked down at him, ensuring that she revealed enough cleavage to fluster anyone male. “Is there a second way out of here?”
The man – the boy – frowned. “I’m not supposed to...”
Jayne held out a ten dollar note, although there was no way of knowing precisely what it was worth at the moment. “My ex is behind me,” she lied smoothly. “I can’t let him see my face, or he’ll kick up a right fuss...”
Either the money or the sob story clinched it. “Just walk right out of there,” the boy said, pointing to a half-opened door in the far wall. “Turn left and you’ll come back to the street.”
“Thanks,” Jayne said. She passed him the note and hurried towards the door. It opened onto an alleyway, allowing her to slip past a pile of containers and rubbish bins. A small mob of cats were clawing at the bins, uncovering food that had been thrown out and been left to rot. Jayne shuddered as she passed the cats and kept moving. How long would it be before the citizens of Washington were scavenging in the waste bins for something to eat?
Pushing the thought aside, she started to run.
***
Davenant saw a woman leaving through the backdoor, but it took him a moment to realise that she was his target. The briefing hadn’t suggested any combat training skills – either military or civilian – yet she had been a reporter. Situational awareness would have been hammered into her head while she was being taught how to sniff out news – and, more importantly, who to avoid. And she’d grown up in an inner city, according to the briefing. She would know when to listen to her instincts.
Ignoring the waitress, he pushed forward and into the kitchen, glancing around quickly. A door was half-open on the far wall. There was no other place to hide. Starting forward, he was surprised when a pimply-faced kid got in the way, glaring up at him with mute defiance. Davenant didn't have time to deal with him, or talk his way past. Instead, he slapped the kid’s face with the back of his hand and didn't stop to watch the boy fall to the ground. The sound of someone screaming in pain – and someone else calling for the cops – came from behind him as he ran through the doorway and into an alley. His target was right at the far end. She glanced behind her, just once, but it was enough to realise that he was on her tail. Davenant’s powerful feet propelled him forward, one hand clawing at his pistol. The ID he’d been given would answer any questions anyone dared to ask.
Turning the corner, he saw the girl running as fast as she could. It was impressively fast, but Davenant had yet to see the person who could outrun a bullet. Targeting her legs, he fired two quick shots in succession. The woman crumpled to the ground.
***
Jayne didn't register the shots. There was only a hammer blow that slammed into her legs, sending her flying forward, carried by her own momentum. She hit the ground, feeling something cracking under the impact. Pain surged through her body; it was a moment before she realised that she’d been shot, twice. Her body was a useless jangled mass, almost impossible to move. Blood was pooling all around her.
A strong arm rolled her over and she found herself looking up into the face of her killer. He was looking down at her, a cold dispassion on his face that she found infinitively more terrifying than anger or hatred. He’d killed her and yet he almost didn't care. She was nothing to him. Something bubbled up in her mouth and she realised, with horror, that it was blood. Had one of the shots hit her somewhere else and she’d simply missed it in all the pain?
He stood over her, his gun pointed directly at her head. Jayne almost laughed, despite knowing that it was almost certainly the end. Did he really think she could still hurt him? Maybe a Special Forces soldier, like one of the ones she’d interviewed, could have kept going despite being so badly hurt. Jayne knew better than to think that she could even move. There was nothing she could do to escape. And no one, even on Washington’s streets, would be able to help her.
Oddly, she found that certain death boosted her determination. “You’re too late,” she said, half-choking on her own blood. Even shaping the words was difficult. “The world already knows what you did. It’s too late.”
Her killer looked down at her, and then his gun barked once. There was a brief moment of sound and lightning, and then nothing.
***
“Armed police! Drop the gun!”
Davenant swore under his breath. He hadn't expected anyone to dare intervening, even if the policeman had been too late to save the bitch’s life. Maybe the Washington PD wasn't as cowed as the aliens had promised, or maybe this one hadn't realised that he was working directly for the aliens. And he had Davenant bang to rights. Sighing, Davenant let his pistol drop to the ground and raised his hands. There would be time to explain himself once he was no longer in danger.
“You’re making a mistake,” he said, calmly. “If you will allow me...”
“Lie down on the ground, spread your legs and arms,” the policeman snapped. Davenant complied, reluctantly. The policeman was on edge. That was clear from his voice alone. A single mistake could set him off. “Don’t even think about moving without permission.”
He stepped closer, looking down at Davenant. “Put your hands behind your back and cross your ankles,” he ordered. A moment later, Davenant was securely handcuffed and the policeman was searching him roughly, removing a set of weapons and tools that would have alarmed anyone. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a federal agent and that woman was a wanted fugitive,” Davenant said. “If you’ll check my ID...”
He felt a boot on the back of his neck. “Damn collaborators,” the policeman said. The pressure increased to the point where Davenant felt his neck beginning to break. “You’re all scrum.”
There was a terrifying crunching sound, somehow shatteringly loud inside his skull, and then Davenant fell into darkness. The last thing he felt was the policeman removing the cuffs and preparing to move his body. No one would realise what had happened until it was far too late.
***
The Colonel hadn't told his son – or any of his other children – that he was moving to Washington. None of them needed to know. The information Toby had slipped down to the farm had been relayed through a team of human agents, all of whom knew no more than they actually needed to know. If the aliens had the patience – and a lucky break – they might be able to track the messages to their destination, but the Colonel knew that fear and suspicion could not be allowed to paralyse him. The aliens would win if he gave up the fight believing that they could track him whatever he did. Besides, there was Gillian’s bug detector to ensure that they were not followed or detected.
General Thomas had been moved up to a location near Washington two weeks ago, where he’d been making contact with military deserters and a number of former military personnel who had realised that it was in their best interests to go underground. The aliens and their pod people – and their collaborators – had been expanding the round-ups, tracking down and arresting everyone who had any military experience at all. It made perfect sense, the Colonel knew; people with military experience presumably knew how to be dangerous. The aliens, given what they now knew about alien society, might not realise just how many guns were in civilian hands. And, now that they’d wrecked most of the federal government, they had no way of knowing how much unregistered weaponry was in the hands of the resistance.
“We begin the operation in three days,” General Thomas said. Once, he would have been forced to use PowerPoint slides, creating a dog and pony show for bored officers and civilians who wanted to feel that they were at the heart of military operations. Now, nothing was written down and no records were kept. The aliens had busted one underground cell because they’d made the mistake of keeping records. No one else would make that mistake. “We hit the collaborators – not the aliens – as hard as possible.”
There were nods from the grim-faced men gathered around the table. They all knew what happened when aliens were killed; their bodies disintegrated in a massive explosion. Worse, the alien
s didn’t seem to care how many of their collaborators were killed, but they launched massive reprisals against any civilian settlements anywhere near where one of the aliens were killed. The Colonel wasn't particularly surprised. There were only a limited number of Snakes, after all, and they weren't expendable. Humans were expendable. They could always make more pod people.
It wasn't just in the United States, either. The Snakes were trying to hold down the entire first world. Communications channels to the rest of the world were flighty, but they’d managed to get general agreement to join the attack on the aliens. The Snakes would start thinking that the entire world had turned on them. And if they realised that no Snakes were being killed...
“Keep the pressure on, but don’t let them have a chance to smash you,” the General added. “We cannot afford a stand-up fight; not now, perhaps not ever. We hit, we hurt...and then we get out. Any questions?”
There were none. “Very well, gentlemen,” the General said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Washington DC
USA, Day 69
Jeffery Spender was having a bad day.
It was bad enough that the FBI had been turned into a cheap knock-off of the Gestapo. He’d never signed up to abuse American citizens, back when his wife had become pregnant and he’d been forced to choose between staying with her or staying in the Marines – without her. He’d applied to join the elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team and discovered, much to his surprise, that he actually enjoyed the work. He saw more combat action and saved more American citizens than his brothers in the Marine Corps. And besides, many Marines had been discharged back when the government had started cutting the military in line with the Galactic Federation’s demands. Spencer had known that his position was secure.
And then the government had been forced to order a lockdown and Spencer had found himself serving as their tool. He’d had to raid houses, arrest citizens without any regard for little niceties like law and constitutional rights; the look on the faces of scared citizens would haunt him until the end of his days. If he’d been a bachelor, he would have deserted and joined the resistance, but that hadn’t been a possibility. His wife and his six-year-old daughter had been taken into protective custody, officially because the wives and children of federal agents were being targeted by the resistance. Unofficially, they were hostages for his good behaviour. If he failed to satisfy the government – and its alien masters – that he was doing the job they ordered, he had no doubt that his wife would be killed and his daughter fostered out – or killed herself. He dared not do anything that might alarm their captors.
He scowled. A motley group of federal agents had been placed under his command, with orders to intercept anyone attempting to leave the city. The darkness and the drizzling rain had deterred anyone from driving out, not when they might be shot by the federal agents or arrested and taken to one of the detention centres. Spencer didn’t know quite what happened there, but some of the arrestees became pod people and others simply vanished. Or were vanished, as they’d joked down in Latin America. The fools who had welcomed the Galactic Federation with open arms hadn’t seen how they’d been manipulated until it was far too late. They’d been nothing more than useful fools, just like the American-born Communists and Islamists who had served an agenda that had treated them as nothing better than tools. And really, what had they deserved? They had betrayed their country – and Spencer, by following orders, was no better than them. How could he ever look himself in the face again?
Washington was encircled by a ring of federal agents, backed up by a handful of military units and equipment. No one was allowed to enter or leave without good reason – and there were very few reasons that they were allowed to accept. A number of federal agents had gone completely to the bad, abusing their powers in ways that would have shocked any pre-Contact American – and been completely familiar and accepted in a Third World country. Most of the good ones had deserted, been turned into pod people or – like Spencer – found that their families were being held hostage. At least Spencer’s team wasn't abusing the refugees. He had that much honour and dignity left.
But there were the stories…federal agents, like everyone else, loved to share stories about what was going on and what was going to happen. Some of the stories were shocking, suggesting mass rape and kidnapping; others were merely worrying. It wouldn’t be long, he’d been assured, before every federal agent was a pod person. And then there would be no hope of resistance. If the Galactic Federation turned everyone on Earth into a pod person…but they couldn’t do that, could they? The logistics would be formidable, even for super-powerful aliens. He checked his M16 automatically as he glanced down the long deserted road. Everything had been much simpler in Iraq. The enemy might have been cowardly enough to hide behind the civilian population, but at least they hadn’t had pod people on their side. And they hadn’t had access to America families.
He heard the truck before he saw it, a lumbering gas tanker heading along the road towards Washington. Gas deliveries had been reduced sharply ever since Tehran, when chaos had spread over the Middle East. Rumour had it that the Saudi Royal Family had been strung up by their own population, while the Iranians were taking their revenge upon the Mullahs who had driven their country into the dirt and Iraqis were slaughtering each other in vast numbers. Not that it really mattered any longer; oil deliveries out of the Middle East were all that mattered, and they’d been reduced. Rumour had it that the aliens were talking about producing synthetic oil, but Spencer no longer believed them. They’d lied to get the human race to let down its guard – and they’d succeeded brilliantly. They’d stolen an entire world.
The tanker started to slow as it approached the roadblock. Traffic in and out of Washington had slowed dramatically since Tehran, leaving the capital perched on the verge of starvation. What little food there was had to be brought in by soldiers and men pressed into service, ever since many of the truckers had gone on strike after Tehran. Seeing a tanker gave him hope, even though he knew that there would only be a small amount of gas – and none of it would be put into civilian hands. They’d be more likely to take it directly to the collaborators.
Shaking his head, Spencer walked forward as the tanker lumbered to a halt. He couldn’t see the driver’s face behind the windscreen, but that was hardly surprising. The rain was pelting down now, as if even the weather disapproved of the aliens. Or maybe the aliens were manipulating the weather from orbit. God knew they’d shown enough remarkable tricks before they’d shown their true faces. Maybe they’d promised their collaborators sunshine and rainbows while drenching the rest of the world with cold rainfall.
The driver’s door didn’t open. Puzzled, and a little alarmed, Spencer stepped up and pulled at the handle. The door opened, revealing a makeshift doll – life-sized, wearing male clothes – grinning at him. There was no one else in the cab. He stared at it, his tired brain refusing to quite process what he was seeing, and then he threw himself backwards. It was far too late.
***
Mathew Bracken, who was officially dead, loved C4. It was a common feeling among the SF community, who firmly believed that there was no such thing as enough C4. Rigging up the gas tanker with enough explosive to destroy the roadblock utterly had been easy; it had been more complicated to rig the tanker so it could be driven by remote control. In the end, they’d had to cannibalise a set of remote-control cars to construct the control system – and even then it had been flighty. But it had sure paid off on the night. The explosion smashed the roadblock as if it had been made of paper, throwing a pair of police cars dozens of meters away from the blast. They caught fire and burned merrily, adding an eerie light to the scene.
He exchanged a grin with two of his men and settled down to wait. It wasn't long before they saw the vehicles driving towards the burning roadblock. The collaborators had been smart enough to keep a quick-reaction force on permanent standby, knowing that they would have to seal any hole
in their ring of steel before insurgents started getting in or out of Washington. Mathew waited until they’d stopped near the burning cars, and then carefully targeted their positions. The pod people had made one elementary mistake. Their leader was obvious to the sniper waiting with Mathew’s team.
“Fire,” Mathew ordered, quietly.
The SEAL team opened fire as one. Carl, his sniper, took out the enemy leader, while the others contented themselves with random bursts that forced the enemy team to dive for cover. An RPG, fired at one of the enemy vehicles, caused it to explode into a fireball, illuminating the eerie scene. The enemy team hadn’t trained together very well; instead of firing back, or retreating in good order, they either hid and cowered or ran for their lives. Mathew had once had reservations about shooting men in the back. Now, with his country under enemy occupation and governed by puppets and traitors, he had no objection to killing them all by whatever method seemed quickest. Besides, the runners would probably scream for help when they reached somewhere out of the line of fire. Better that the enemy believed that their response force had run into a phantom army than to have any idea just how few resistance fighters there were on the front lines.
A brilliant flash of light lit up the horizon, followed rapidly by a pearl of thunder. For one moment, Mathew thought that someone had popped off a nuke or that the aliens had decided to intervene directly, before realising that it was neither. One of the other squads of insurgents had been planning a nasty surprise for the enemy; if the resistance was lucky, they’d spend long enough wondering just what the fuck had happened to allow the resistance to withdraw safely. But once they figured out that there was no radiation – or forced their men forward anyway – the cat would be out of the bag.
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