“It fit Scalli’s profile,” Bobbi said. “We do things differently with me running the show myself.”
“She’s right,” said Syme. “You forget, Mark, I was around then. Overt action was Marcus’s specialty. Bobbi kills them in a much quieter way.”
“Assassins versus special forces, yeah,” Tanaka said with a grunt. “He did always used to say that she killed like a spider.”
“Very nice,” Violet spat. “So did you lot have something to do with it, brute force as you are anymore?”
“That’s ridiculous.” Tanaka’s face darkened. “I just said that we didn’t. What the fuck do you take us for?”
Violet spoke through her teeth. “Traitors, maybe.”
The look in Tanaka’s eyes reached a point of no return. His hand moved to reach into his jacket.
Bobbi’s voice rang like a hammer on steel. “Enough!”
Both Tanaka and Violet paused to look at her.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you two,” Bobbi said, the strength of her voice receding into something more irritable. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.” She looked to Syme. “You know who died that night.”
Syme made a soft sound of appreciation. “I had almost forgotten that. The architect. A suicide, they said. Locked himself in the upper floors of his penthouse and shot himself in the face.”
Bobbi nodded. “No suicide.”
Tanaka’s brows shot up. “You?”
“Me.” Bobbi gestured to Violet. “Directly. Vi picked me up after, and we were making our way out for extraction.”
“He was on our list,” said Syme. “But we hadn’t gotten to him yet.”
“He was on the list before you all took off, yeah. And anyway, we hear you don’t talk to Cagliostro these days. How are you going to get any kind of quality intelligence?”
“Fuck that ghost.” Tanaka sneered. “Asshole got more of us killed every time we went on assignment than was ever worth it. We don’t need him anymore.”
“That may be”―Bobbi glanced to Syme once more―“but the fact remains that somebody was waiting on us. It sure as fuck wasn’t one of them steering that drone. I’d know.”
Syme frowned. “Yes. I suppose that you would. Well, this is interesting. I can see why you’d want to talk to Marcus about it.”
“Right.” Bobbi folded her arms over her chest. “So let him know, won’t you? He’s not answering my calls.”
“I wouldn’t read too much into that.” Syme shrugged. “He’s very busy. I’ll pass it on the moment we see him. In the meantime, I’ll make some inquiries of my own. I don’t know of any order being made concerning you and yours except to stay out of your way.” He looked skyward, and frowned. “It appears the rain’s coming in.”
She took the hint. “Fair enough.” Bobbi narrowed her eyes once more. “Look, if it really wasn’t our out-of-town friends, and it wasn’t your boss, then that means there’s another threat out there, something that may not only be after me and mine. So all differences aside, you two be careful, all right?”
Tanaka squared his shoulders and nodded. “I guess that’s our cue to let you get going. Right, same to you. But the Doc’s one of ours, all right? So that makes this place off limits. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave Tenleytown alone entirely.”
Violet bristled, but Bobbi inclined her head. “All right. For now. I’ll be waiting to hear from you, gentlemen. You know how to reach me.”
Syme nodded. “Indeed.” He looked up beyond the hospital once more. “Well then, ladies, be safe on your way.”
“You always were a gentleman,” Bobbi said with a faint smirk as Violet stooped to pick up their fallen needlers. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” As she walked past the two men into the darkening shades of the evening, Bobbi watched Syme’s face from the corner of her eye. He’s like me in a lot of ways. Tanaka’s so much like Violet. She wondered if they had the same kind of relationship. More than that, of course, she wondered just what was going on in their organization. What the hell was Scalli so busy with?
The hospital doors sealed shut behind the two men, leaving her alone with Violet in the silence of the alley. Above, the skies indeed darkened with rain.
Bobbi keyed her cochlear pickup.
“I wish you wouldn’t let them talk to you like that.” If Violet’s expression embodied the image of the storm, her voice contained its distant thunder. “I could have bitten out their throats for the insult.”
“And you would have been killed.” Bobbi squeezed her dear friend gently. “I’d take all the insults in the world if it meant you sticking around with me yet. I know it’s hard, but please don’t be so ready to kill everyone who’s not impressed with me, okay?”
Violet stiffened as Bobbi tugged her close, but ultimately she sighed and sagged against her lady’s side. “Of course you’re right, my lady. It is…hard.”
“And no more calling me ‘my lady,’” Bobbi murmured. “Please. I almost miss the way you talked to me when you thought I was some dumb bumba you almost threw out of your temple.” She sighed, and led Violet out of the alley.
“You were never a bumba.” Violet untangled herself from Bobbi, and her face grew serious again. “Else you wouldn’t have crashed a truck trying to save your friends like you did. I knew from the start you were something special. And so should Scalli.” Her eyes became slits of blue flame, glittering with rage. “Stupid asshole.”
Without a further word, Bobbi took Violet’s hand and headed out into the vast courtyard of the Tenleytown core. She did not think that the crumbling office towers and the battered strip mall, the settlement’s human heart, would remain for too much longer.
Such was the march of progress.
“So what you’re saying is that there’s something else going on behind the scenes over there.”
Shaper, Sumire, Bobbi, and Violet all sat in the conference room of Plato’s Cave, eating grilled meat Shaper had bought from the Tenleytown market. They had not yet left, but after the encounter with Tanaka and Syme, they had thought it best to go right after dinner.
“That’s the idea,” Bobbi said around a mouthful. “Note how careful he was to avoid mentioning any real contact with Scalli. It’s as if they don’t know where he is.”
“Indeed.” Sumire smiled with approval at Bobbi’s estimation of things. “They could be operating as individual agents, or as part of a splinter group. An internal faction, perhaps?”
“Or it could be that they just don’t get all the information.” Shaper frowned, gesturing with his skewer like a wand. “I saw the way that Tanaka feller looked at you two when you mentioned the attack at the bridge. Plausible deniability, you know?”
Bobbi squinted at him. “I thought you linked up with us awfully quickly back there.”
Shaper coughed faintly. Sumire laughed.
Yeah, well. I couldn’t let you go out and meet those two buggers without some kind of support, now could I? Besides”―he reached over and with his free hand took Sumire’s―“I’ve got a damned good spotter. Wanted to make sure she had a good look at the situation.”
Sumire smiled a bit more. Her pale cheeks colored faintly. That was new. “I noticed Mister Syme was content to allow Mister Tanaka to think he was in command. But the reality is anything but.”
“I noticed that too.” Bobbi nodded. “One has to wonder just what we walked into when we came to that clinic. And of course, we don’t know what Lionel is doing working with them.”
“That much I think I know.” Violet looked up from where she sat curled up next to Bobbi, her blue e
yes cold mirrors in her bewitching face She had not spoken since they left the clinic together. “They have found an alternative means of identifying the Yathi; that much is certain.”
Everyone looked at Violet.
“That’s a hell of a claim.” Shaper prodded the air in Violet’s direction with his skewer.” Where do you get that?”
“Based on what he told us in the clinic,” Violet said. “He knew who Bobbi was, even with her reworked physiology. The nerves, he said, taken from Chin’s databases after he died. He also said he could identify ‘Genefex’ technology – that is, Yathi-derived. Impressive, but hardly out of the realm of possibility if he has access to their technological base.”
“Indeed,” Sumire said. “Since the split between the two factions, all data points to the other faction depending on the existing list of targets, or additional intelligence provided by Mr. Cagliostro, to perform their activities. With Cagliostro no longer serving as a source of information, they have very little other choice but to find another method.”
“Right.” Bobbi tapped her fingers on the table in a rhythmic thrum. The wheels in her head turned, and she propped up her chin on the back of her hand. “They’re still drawing from the list, though. Tanaka said that they knew of him on account of it.”
“They’re not talking to Cagliostro anymore,” said Violet. “Which means they aren’t going to get the same intelligence. And what if they can’t get good intelligence? They’re liable to be wide open eventually, if not now.”
Shaper grunted. “They’d be well and proper fucked. And while I might not like their way of doing things, they’re still our allies in the enemy-of-my-enemy sort of way.”
“Same goal, same purpose.” Bobbi said. “If we can help them, we need to do so.”
“Unless they’ve tried to kill you,” Violet muttered.
“Depending on the situation, Vi, we might even if they did.” She leaned back in her chair, tapping the end of her bare skewer against her lips. “Assuming that they do have some new technology to sniff ‘em out, I wonder how close they have to be to make this work. You know, how sensitive their equipment is. I mean they read me and Vi in the clinic, right? And Lionel said he could detect the presence of Genefex agents in Tenleytown. But Tenleytown’s still an awfully small place, and if they tried to read real Yathi up close, I’m sure they’d be spotted.” She looked to Sumire. “Thoughts?”
It took a moment or two of blank-faced consideration before Sumire answered. “Given their level of resources, or at least, what I would assume to be available to a cell of operatives with a reduced level of efficiency working with a black-market physician like Doctor Knightley, I would think that they would choose to use something medical in nature. Perhaps some kind of portable electromagnetic imaging device, something that would allow them to sample the subject’s anatomy. I would imagine that this would have to be some kind of customized technology, or at the very least a heavily modified example of something that already exists.”
“It would have to be some serious voodoo, that’s for certain.” Bobbi shook her head. “But if they’re using an imager with that kind of power, it’s going to show up like a bonfire on an EM scan, right? Plenty of mundane sensors around here that can read that, to say nothing of Yathi eyes.”
Sumire nodded. “This is very true. I wonder if we might not find that they are using some kind of method to baffle that energy, assuming they have progressed to that point. And it may be that they have so far been able to mask the presence of such technology in plain sight thanks to its location at the clinic. Or, perhaps they have utilized some other technology. This is all entirely a best guess.”
“Some ‘best guess’.” Shaper whistled. “It’s an entirely plausible solution, in any case.”
“Primitive, but plausible.” Violet said. “My method is far more sensitive, and I can use it anywhere.”
“Holistic analysis of a subject based on one’s own intimate experience is a singular ability.” Sumire folded her hands upon the table, and looked to Violet with a serene expression. “But primitive or not, this measure may suffice. It is a suitably effective solution, assuming this is the method being used. We have no other real data.”
Shaper grunted in disgust, and tossed his skewer onto the table. “What we need to do is go back and drag that doctor friend of yours out by his heels, find out what he knows. And haul Syme and his twitchy little friend out as well if they get in the way.”
“Amen to that.” Violet’s pale hands clenched at her sides.
“No.” Bobbi got up, tossing her skewer onto the table as well. “That’s what we most definitely aren’t going to do. We need to find out what they’re doing, yes, but there are far more subtle ways to do that.” She tapped one finger at her temple. “I’m going to hack his systems, see what I can find out. In the meantime, you guys get some rest. This shouldn’t take but a few hours.”
“They will be waiting for you to do that,” Sumire said. “I would suggest great caution, even with your abilities. If the Yathi are aware of the situation after all…”
At that, Bobbi gave them all her biggest cowgirl’s grin. “Hey, it’s me, right? There’s not a system yet that I can’t make give it up.”
ake up, man. We’re here.” Jacinto’s broad hand shook Walken awake, and his eyes slid open like a doll’s.
“We are in Mexico?” Walken forced himself to blink. “How long was I asleep?”
“Couple hours,” Jacinto said, looking down at him, still zipped up in his suit and helmet. With its visor up, his face looked like a mask. “Funny, I didn’t think you’d have to sleep.”
Walken shrugged. “The living brain has to rest even if there’s a lot less in there than before. I’d say that I was tired, but I guess that really doesn’t scan.”
Jacinto smirked and stepped back. Walken looked down to find himself in the copilot’s seat, where he had strapped himself in before. The depth of his apparent sleep surprised him. “Well, come on… Strikeboy’s waiting on me. He made lunch.” This, from the sound of it, was something to get excited about.
“All right.” Walken slid out of the copilot’s station and headed aft, through the hatch and into the bay where the gangplank had already been extended. The sea air blew in, salt spray tinged with industrial chemicals. Did he really smell it as it was? He descended the ramp into the Mexico sunshine, which paled everything beneath its light, and walked off across the crumbling concrete toward the bunker.
He had gotten perhaps ten feet from beneath the plane when he knew something was wrong.
The sense didn’t come from anything special, no magical technology. Or rather if it had, it only enhanced what had long been inside of him. Old instinct, one bred into him over years of police training. The stone-cold realization that someone out there drew a bead on you. He continued toward the bunker without breaking his stride, though he scanned the industrial tangle around him with suspicion.
Jacinto tightened still.
Walken strode up to the bunker’s door and reached for the ringer, conveniently emblazoned with a yellow bell. He pressed it. It lit up, and for a few seconds nothing happened. Hidden tumblers disengaged with a clank, and the heavy slab of steel slid open.
Strikeboy sat behind the desk, hands on its surface. He looked pale, and he wore the same outfit as Walken saw him in the night before. As Walken appeared, he tried his best to summon up a friendly smile.
“Hey, man,” Strikeboy said in his soft, breathless tenor. “How’s it going?”
/>
It was a good act, but Walken saw straight through it. “In the back?”
Strikeboy blinked at him. “W-what?”
“Whoever’s here.” Walken wondered if he could leap across the desk and protect the hapless hacker should bullets start streaming out of some corner of the building. “Are they in the back?”
Strikeboy’s eyes slid slightly to Walken’s left. He turned toward empty space, a row of chairs lining the wall of the waiting room. Walken knew better than to assume that, however. “You might as well show yourself.”
It was a guess, but one that bore fruit. At the far end of the room, a piece of the image sputtered and died, turning into gray fabric. A drape slid from the body of a woman who, sitting in the chair the ghost-cloth had just emulated, watched them with arms crossed over her chest. She wore combat fatigues, and her dark red hair pulled back into a fierce bun atop an equally fierce head. She looked like a bird of prey transformed into a woman, albeit one with sparkling dark eyes.
“Good evening,” Walken said. “May I help you?”
The woman smiled. Her hawk’s nose wrinkled when she did it, which perhaps in another would have been attractive, but in her only conjured a great sense of disdain. “No.” Her voice was iron beneath a thin tissue of silk. “Thank you, but I’m actually here just to see you.”
Walken returned her smile. “Your choice of fashion suggests ‘observe’ might be the operative word, miss.”
“I suppose that you’re right,” the woman said. “Do you know who I am?”
“Other than someone who has a curious taste in making an entrance? No.”
She smirked. “I am the other arm of this little conspiracy of ours. That is, besides your damned ghost of a master.”
“Well.” Walken performed a slow catwalk turn, palms up. He’d surely had more than enough of mysterious strangers popping up. “Here I am, as you see. I don’t suppose you need there to be a swimsuit component to this little pageant, do you?”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 18
