Blades of Winter

by G T Almasi

  I crouch in the doorway opposite Winter’s room, slam some Madrenaline, and launch myself across the hallway. I flip over in midair so my feet strike first. The door smashes apart like it was hit by a cannonball. Splinters of wood shatter in every direction. I bounce back onto my feet with Li’l Bertha ready for some serious intimidation.

  Winter stands in the middle of the room. He recognizes me instantly. “You!” he exclaims.

  I ball my right hand into a fist and slam it into Winter’s stomach. He exhales sharply, doubles over, and falls to his knees. While he gasps for breath, I take a plastic zip-tie out of my pocket and cinch his hands together with it.

  Boom minus 4. Okay, I’ve got him. We’ll walk out the back, hop on Lovebird’s chopper, and away we go. Plenty of time.

  “Lovebird, this is Scarlet. Target acquired.”

  “Roger that, Scarlet. On my way.”

  I bend down to lift Winter to his feet—

  Wham!

  My vision turns to static, and I topple across Winter. I push myself off him and try to get back on my feet, but I can barely see and my sense of up and down is totally whacked. A powerful pair of hands grabs me by my jacket and hurls me into the air. I catapult across the room and skid across the top of a desk, scattering papers and shit onto the floor.

  I scramble to my hands and knees in time to see a blurry pair of shoes approaching. I pivot away from a zealous field goal attempt and lash out with a kick of my own. My foot connects with an ankle, I think. Whatever it is, my strike staggers my assailant enough for me to back off and stand up.

  I know this guy. It’s Hector! He recovers his balance and comes at me, growling in Russian. I fend off his first flurry of karate attacks, but my head is still reestablishing its connection to my body, and Hector’s whirling hands knock my defenses aside. He grabs my shoulder and spins me around with my left arm bent up behind my back.

  Meanwhile Winter fishes around under the desk with his bound hands. He recovers what he’s looking for and points it at me. It’s Li’l Bertha.

  Hah, good luck with that, limpdick.

  Winter comes over and presses my pistol against my temple. I stomp my heel down on Hector’s toes. He grunts and lifts my arm up further. Just before my shoulder dislocates, Winter pulls the trigger.

  Click.

  I snarl. “Surprise, asshole.”

  My vision has cleared and my sense of balance has returned enough for me to go on the offensive. I leap in the air and kick Winter in the knee. He bends over. I lash out with my free arm and punch him in the head. He drops like a rock.

  Hector wraps one of his arms around my chest and the other around my neck. My elbows are pinned to my sides. I wriggle back and forth, but Hector’s grip gets tighter and tighter until I can’t breathe. My pulse throbs in my ears.

  I’m twelve. My dad drives the two of us home from the shooting range. I sit on his lap and steer while his feet work the pedals.

  Everything begins to lose its color. My lungs blaze. My mouth gasps.

  I’m nine. I compete in my first gymnastics nationals. Cleo is there, shouting encouragement to me as usual. Dad is there, too. It’s the first time he’s come to one of my meets, and I can see his stunned expression from across the arena.

  I flex my arms to try to break free. My synthetic right hand brushes against the front of Hector’s pants. With the last of my strength, I grab his thigh and crush his flesh between my fingers.

  I’m seven. A huge snowstorm wipes out three days of school and prevents Daddy from taking his trip. The first night we all huddle around the portable radio and play cards.

  I gouge five wet gorges out of his quadriceps. My fingertips meet at his femur. I rotate my arm and rip a slippery hunk of flesh out of Hector’s leg.

  Hector screams and shoves me away from him. I land on all fours and spin around to fend off his next attack. But there is no next attack. Hector has dropped to the floor. His leg squirts blood all over the place, and he’s desperately trying to stanch the bleeding.

  I gasp to regain my breath. My commphone activates. “Scarlet, I’m on station but I don’t see you.” The air-chopping thrum of a helicopter rotor reverberates from outside.

  I’m twenty. I’ve got less than two minutes to avoid a terminal cruise missile overdose for myself and the only person who knows what really happened to my father.

  “Sorry, Lovebird, I was unavoidably detained.” I retrieve my pistol from Winter’s limp grasp. I say to Winter’s unhearing ears, “Too bad, jerkoff. My little girl doesn’t put out for just anyone.” I snap her grip into the WeaponSynch pad on my left palm. Li’l Bertha wakes up and jacks back into my Eyes-Up display.

  Lovebird asks, “What’s your status now?”

  “I’m on my way, but my target is nonmobile.”

  The deep rhythm of Lovebird’s engine is joined by the sharp rattling of automatic gunfire. My pilot comms, “Hurry it up.”

  I squat down and hoist Winter across my shoulders. Then I stand up and drag him toward the door. Time to break long-range comm-silence.

  “Darwin, this is Scarlet. How are we doing for time?”

  Darwin comms, “You’ve got ninety seconds until missile impact, Scarlet.” I don’t even know what Darwin looks like, but so far he’s been perfectly competent. It’s weird to work with a new partner. Whenever Darwin comms me, I think I hear Trick’s voice in my head.

  I haul Winter through the shattered doorway. He’s so much taller than me that his knees scrape the ground. I lurch down the hallway and into the warehouse. Someone runs up behind me, but I keep going. Someone gets in front of me. Someone gets a biomechanically enhanced kick in the nuts from one of my German Youth jackboots. Someone effectively vanishes from the gene pool and goes down in a howling heap.

  Boom minus 75 seconds. C’mon, feet! Move it! I turbo-schlep Winter to the shipping entrance where Patrick and I originally entered this place. Winter’s head rams the door open with a shuddering bonk, and we emerge into the scorching desert heat. There’s no one out here. The shipping area is deserted. Fast-moving footsteps sound from back inside the warehouse. I shrug Winter off my shoulders, and he thuds to the ground. Li’l Bertha loads herself up with some big-ass bullets. A guard pops out of the door and promptly sails back inside with a gaping hole in his chest. He leaves a long red smear on the door frame. Li’l Bertha’s sensors display four remaining heat signatures. They hang back inside the entrance, no doubt stunned by their colleague’s sudden transformation into a smoking wad of meat.

  I holster my gun and pull three of my disk-shaped grenades from under my uniform jacket. I twist the arming knobs and shovel the frags through the doorway. Voices shout and feet clomp away from my triple helping of shrapnel strudel. I grab Winter by the collar and drag him away. The explosion is awesome. All three grenades detonate at once, and the entire shipping entrance vanishes in a cloud of fire and smoke.

  My ears are ringing, but I still hear my helicopter on the way. When it gets close, the pilot radios to me.

  “Scarlet, this is Lovebird. Everything all right down there?”

  “Affirmative, Lovebird. Table is set for a dust-off.”

  “Negative on evac, Scarlet. I’ve been locked on. Stand by for a vehicle drop.”

  “Roger, Lovebird. Standing by.” That sucks. He’s my fastest way out from under what’s about to happen here, but there’s no point getting in a helicopter if the baddies have already fired missiles at it.

  The chopper flies in very low, barely higher than the roof of the lab. I don’t need to signal. He knows where I am by my No-Jack signal and the smoke from the ruined shipping entrance. Lovebird’s helicopter zooms over the perimeter fence and momentarily slows down. A custom hatch in the bottom of the chopper opens like a pair of bomb bay doors. A machine drops out of the hatch and hits the ground about thirty feet away. It bounces off the packed sand, lands again, and settles onto its wheels. Lovebird swoops away, over the warehouse.

  Boom minus 35 seconds.
I swear I can hear the missile coming. The machine is a sand rail dune buggy. The vehicle’s steel-tube frame holds four open wheels, two racing seats, and a big mother engine. They’re fast as hell, and they’re tiny so they fit me just right. I drag Winter over to the passenger side and stuff him in the seat. He mumbles like he’s coming around, so I give him another knock in the head. Gunfire clatters from the other side of the lab as Lovebird makes his escape.

  My new Info Operator comms, “Scarlet, impact in twenty-five seconds.”

  “Roger, Darwin.”

  “You’d better shake your ass out of there.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m shakin’, I’m shakin’!” Hop-in-seat-start-engine-stomp-gas. The exhaust belches a low, throaty roar, and the vehicle launches us past the smashed shipping entrance like a frog leaping off a lily pad. I slide around the warehouse’s corner and accelerate straight for the main gate. I hold the steering wheel with my right hand and aim Li’l Bertha with my left. I dial up an all-out bullet blitz. This is going to happen all at once. No point in holding back.

  Darwin comms, “Fifteen seconds, Scarlet!”

  There is no past or future. There’s only now, this precious instant of clarity when I know I’m about to die and the important things are thrown into sharp relief.

  I take my right hand off the wheel to shift up to third gear, steadying the wheel with my left knee. I rapidly comm to Raj, “Rah-Rah, I’m on my way out. Can you clear the main gate for me?”

  Raj comms back, “Roger that, Scarlet. I’ll be right there.”

  I comm to Darwin, “Hey, D! Where’s my goddamned air support?”

  Darwin answers, “Lovebird has to stay clear of the blast zone, but you’ll have gunship cover after the air strike. For now, just get the hell out of there!”

  The small guardhouse next to the main entrance has puked out four of the men who patrol the front gate. Li’l Bertha unleashes a minihell of flames, explosions, smoke, and sparks. If it’s terrible, it happens to the little sheet-metal structure and the jamokes around it. Li’l Bertha demolishes the gatehouse so quickly that some guards can’t even get out of the way before it collapses on them.

  Raj makes a dramatic entrance by smashing his produce truck straight through the gate. He keeps the engine at full throttle as he cranks the steering wheel over to the right. A half-moon of sand sprays out from under the rear wheels of his truck as it slides through a 180-degree skid and kicks up a billowing cloud of dust. The shattered gate bashes into the guard tower and breaks one of its legs. The tall structure falls over and dumps its occupants into Raj’s maelstrom. We’ve created such intense chaos that the two guards who have evaded the collapsing guardhouse and the toppling tower come completely unglued, drop their guns, and dive for cover.

  I flash past Raj’s truck and roar out of the compound. Both of my feet jam down on the gas pedal, and the buggy bucks like a racehorse in heat. We hurtle toward the horizon, hammering our way to Riyadh over a sand-strewn two-lane highway. Scattered one-story houses and shops blur by.

  “Darwin, we’re out!” I comm. “Where to?”

  “Proceed to this location, Scarlet. And hang on to something!” Darwin comms me a set of coordinates. They point to the middle of Riyadh. He continues, “Impact in three, two, one—”

  Suddenly my sand rail buggy hops up and down even though the road is smooth. My car casts an unnaturally sharp, short-lived shadow straight ahead. Then a long, shattering explosion erupts from behind me, back at the lab. The concussion is so big, it feels like an earthquake. The buggy bounces off the road into someone’s vegetable garden and stalls out on me. The locals squeal and point back the way I came, where a colossal mushroom cloud of dust and fire rises from the desert. Dark spots in the debris fountain indicate large objects that weren’t instantly incinerated. It’s quite a sight, but I can’t stay to admire it. I start the buggy back up. An old man sees me plow my way out of the garden, and he shakes his fist at me. His mouth moves, but my roaring engine drowns out his voice. The man’s inability to make himself heard reminds me to switch on my signal jammer.

  Moments later a massive dust storm rushes past, covers the sun, and brings instant dusk to the whole area. The explosion continues to echo in my ears as sand chisels into my skin. Visibility drops to about ten feet. I slow down a little while I drive around all the rubbernecking bozos who gawk at the source of the noise and smoke. Everyone is so distracted by the DTET—short for Discreetly Targeted Event: Thermobaric—that I make it all the way to the outer neighborhoods of the city proper without anyone paying the slightest attention to me.

  A column of German police charges past me, going the other way. I have to pull over to allow a row of fire trucks to go wailing by, toward the blast site. The DTET is sucking every Kraut city official toward it like a colossal lager whirlpool. Excellent! This will help clear my path into and out of the city.

  Mixed with the swirling sandstorm is a cloud of gray flakes. It almost looks like snow as the flakes cover the road and buildings with a light gray blanket. The sky is slowly getting lighter. Visibility still sucks, but this fallout fog does a great job of hiding me and Winter as we drive into and through downtown Riyadh. I could be dressed like Bozo the Clown right now and not get a single glance from people.

  I turn off the main street into a crowded residential neighborhood of twisty little streets that all look alike. My coordinates lead me to a narrow three-story tan house sandwiched into a dense row of two- and three-story houses. Red shutters cover the windows, and the ground floor is a garage. I screech to a stop in front of the house, jump out, open the wooden garage door, hop back in the buggy, and then drive inside. I slam the door shut, then hoist Winter out of his seat, and lug him up to the second floor of the house.

  It’s the kitchen. The place is clean, but the old appliances, chipped counters, and exposed electrical wiring show how long it’s been since the interior was updated. Although the room would never get the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, the age of the decor is convenient because I need something to restrain Winter. I rip two lengths of wire off the wall and use them to tie him to a chair.

  So far, so good. Now we wait for the DTET-induced dust storm to die down so Lovebird can come pick us up.

  CHAPTER 38

  SAME DAY, 12:56 P.M. ST RIYADH, PROVINCE OF ARABIA, GG

  The only way we could think of to prevent the Blades of Persia from finding Winter was to jam his No-Jack signal. I could try to remove his No-Jack like we did to Pavel Tarasov in Paris, but that’s pretty serious surgery and I’m no Med-Tech. Carving this turkey up with my combat knife and no anesthetic would be quite satisfying, but my mission is to capture this fuckhead, not kill him.

  Good Scarlet, not kill.

  The jammer is a heavy little box I’ve got in my jacket pocket. It works only at very short range, but that’s all I need for this mission. Jamming Winter’s No-Jack also blocks my commphone, so I’m on my own for now. My instructions are to wait here until Lovebird picks us up. If Lovebird doesn’t show by 1:15 p.m. local time, I’ll have to stop jamming long enough to check in with Darwin.

  I’m searching Winter for weapons when he finally wakes up. I back off for a minute in case he’s feeling heroic. After taking a moment to get his bearings, he looks at me, and then he tilts his head back in despair. He barks a couple of words in Arabic and then lets his head slump forward onto his chest.

  I say, “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life, pal.”

  “After a failure like sis, sere is no life,” he groans. “My people will never believe in me now.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I resume patting him down. “They’ll believe all kinds of shit about you. They’ll believe you’re a two-faced crook. They’ll believe that you ratted out fellow Arabs to the West.” I lean into his view. “They’ll believe that Winter was a self-serving lunatic who wanted to end civilization.”

  “Civilization.” He shakes his head. “If sis is civilization, sen perhaps it
is just as well I am finished,” he declares.

  “Oh ho, no. You’re not finished.” I haven’t found any weapons or suicide agents in his clothes, but I’m not done yet. “You’ve been recruited by the United States Justice Department to help combat government corruption.” I stand behind him and slide my hands down the back of his sweaty shirt, my fingers pressing through his back hair, looking for anything irregular. Then I do the same for his chest and stomach. Yuck.

  He tenses up, clearly uncomfortable at being groped like this. He grumbles like he’s about to say something, but he changes his mind.

  The only surface of Winter’s body I haven’t explored is up between his legs. I’m just going to presume that he doesn’t have anything in his ass. He’s a busy guy, after all, and I’m sure someone of his social standing is not going to yank a derringer out of his butt every time he has to take a shit. I unbutton his pants and tug them down to his knees. The things I do for my work.

  Out in the street, there’s a lot of bustling activity and noisy conversation. It sounds like the local citizens are still freaked out by the huge explosion in the desert. I peek out the window and see that the dust has mostly settled down now. The ground and rooftops are covered in those gray flakes mixed with sand. It’s almost normal daylight again. I walk back to Winter while he looks toward the window and listens to the noise from outside. He spins his head back to me as I slide my hands up between his thighs.

  It’s more awful, sweaty hairiness, but finally I find something. Under the skin of his left thigh is what feels like a large button that squirms around as my fingers try to get hold of it. Ah hah! I stand up and draw my combat knife out of its holster under my left armpit.

  Winter declares, “You do not look like your father.”

  “Oh, yeah? When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Much more recently san you, little one.” He grins as he says this.