"We just want to talk to her," I said.
He wrote the address down on a card and handed it to me.
We drove there. I knocked on the door.
A woman answered with black hair and well-tanned skin. She said something in Spanish. There were three young kids watching from right inside the door. Zen said something in Spanish back.
We walked back to the car. "That man lied to us," Jet said.
Zen climbed into the driver's side of the car. "That or he was lied to."
I hopped into the passenger side. "I'm guessing the latter."
"What's next?"
"Lunch, then we pull a list of every rental property through that agency. Check everyone."
Chapter Eight
Over the next two days, we checked on fifteen residences. Jet and I were up just after dawn. We needed breakfast. Jet pulled open the hotel door, and right there, floating, was a drone of some kind. A camera flash went off. The drone had four propellers on top and seemed only interested in taking our picture.
Jet and I drew our sidearms and blasted. Each bullet pushed the machine backward, but it didn't stop the drone from flying away.
Zen stepped out of her room with a pistol in hand.
"Drone," I said. "We've been identified."
"I don't think 'we' is the right word to use, unless you mean all the males present," she said.
"This is a serious matter."
"Ussilla likes to take pictures of me when I'm naked to send to all her sisters," Jet said.
"Great, Jet is officially a porn star," Zen said, "and I'm not even getting any."
I holstered my 9mm. I was unhappy. "How did they find out where we were?"
"Maybe Ralan has a back door into our computer network."
I called Sphinx. "There was a drone waiting for us outside the hotel."
"Are you ok?" Sphinx asked.
I was emotionally damaged. "Yeah, it just took pictures. Can you get Joe to look at the security and make sure there are no Ralan backdoors?"
"Joe?"
"He's a programmer who mans the server room some days."
"Fat guy? Kind of smelly?"
I nodded. "You know him."
"I'll have him check, bye."
"Wait," I said. "Has anybody else had any luck finding Nancy?"
"No."
I hung up the phone. Six police cars with blazing lights and sirens pulled into the hotel parking lot. Zen said, "You're up, Bear."
I walked up to the officers. "I'm Agency. We were just trying to shoot down a drone."
The closest officer said, "This is a populated area. How many shots did you fire?"
"About six."
"Ok. Be more careful next time."
We barely escaped with our lives. "We'll do better."
Zen, Jet, and I went to a fast food joint and scored breakfast sandwiches. We pulled up another address on the computer in the car. Watched the house. An older woman, maybe sixty, stepped out of the house. She had a navy blue suit on and a white shirt. It didn't look exactly like Nancy, but the shape of her body, and the way she walked. It was Nancy. I climbed out of the car and waved.
She scowled. "What the Hell are you doing here, Bear?"
"You didn't go through the process?"
"Like I would let those brain butchers alter my memory."
She unlocked her car.
"Wait," I said.
"No bullshit, what's this about?" She asked.
"Your replacement turned out to be a rat. The database with retirement info got leaked to Centurian. If we could find you, they could find you."
"I have been shopping for cats since I left the Agency. I plan to become a crazy old cat lady. You can't stop me."
"Enigma has a Siberian Husky. You can play with him. He answers to Lobster."
She opened the door to her car.
"Plus," I said, "I think to be a crazy cat lady you have to collect strays."
She slammed the door closed and stepped towards me. "I've been watching for strays!"
"You've been collecting strays since your first days at the Agency. We need you. Your strays need you."
She pointed her finger at my chest. "Damn you, Bear."
Jet and Zen had joined us by then, but they were being awfully quiet.
Tires squealed, and I glanced in that direction. A black SUV barreled right towards us. The driver stared at us. The passenger had a submachine gun out the window firing rounds off with little accuracy. I put my body in between the truck and Nancy.
Zen and Jet returned fire. The windshield on the vehicle was bulletproof. I aimed for the tire and hit my mark. The SUV slid to a halt maybe twenty meters from us. The driver hopped out and pulled a pistol. Jet shot him right through the heart. The back doors opened, and two men with machine guns stepped out. Zen and Jet shot them both right to their faces. So much blood. Maybe I had forgotten how much blood was in a human body, and I was reminded in those instants.
The bad guys were all dead or bleeding out. I turned to Nancy. "Come with us. Lead us again."
"I'm old. Make somebody else do it."
Jet was checking on the bad guys. Zen walked up to Nancy and hugged her. "If you won't help, I understand," Zen said, "but you were the best at what you did."
"Do we have a decent budget?" Nancy asked.
"No clue."
"Enigma's Husky, he's a good dog?"
"Great dog. Well trained. Responds to commands."
Sirens in the distance broke my concentration. Likely the same locals we dealt with earlier.
"I need to pack a bag," Nancy said.
Great news. The locals processed the bodies of the four gunmen that attacked us. Nancy came out of her house with a large duffle bag. "I really do prefer cats."
"Cat, dog, same thing," Jet said.
"They are not."
Chapter Nine
Nancy pointed into the distance. "Do you see that drone?"
I looked. Same drone that was at the hotel. "We need to go."
Nancy put her duffel bag in the back of the car. "Shotgun!"
Jet and Zen looked at each other. I climbed into the driver's side, and we were off.
"Who's in charge now?" Nancy asked.
I said, "Sphinx."
Nancy hissed. "That dirty whore is running things?" No, she didn't say that. She hit the radio button on the phone in the car. "Sphinx?"
Sphinx's voice carried through. "They found you?"
"We need helicopter support. Scramble a few birds."
"They're onto you?"
"Bear brought a drone right up to my front door."
The sound of Sphinx typing on the keyboard carried through the phone.
"It wasn't my fault," I said.
"It was all our faults," Jet said.
Zen rapped her knuckles across the back of my skull. "Bear's in charge. We blame Bear."
Since when was I in charge? The gravity of the situation started to hit me. There likely wasn't anybody on Earth Centurian wanted dead more than he wanted Nancy dead.
"The birds are launched," Sphinx said. "It's great to have you back, Nancy."
"I'm not back yet," she said.
Lobster barked in the background. I pressed the gas down a little bit on the car.
Nancy disconnected the phone. "Did you bring any heavy weapons? Did you bring an extra gun for me?"
I wanted to weep.
"You can have my gun," Jet said. "I can kill with my good looks."
Nancy sighed. "I can see somebody's ego has grown."
Zen did this kind of he-he-he laugh. "There should be a submachine gun in the trunk. Archangel put it there."
"Dibs!"
I pulled over at a gas station. There was a submachine gun in the back. Nancy grabbed it. Everybody climbed back in the car. I sped down the freeway. The drone followed far behind us. Nancy said, "Pull over."
I followed her order. She stepped out of the car, braced her gun on the roof, and blasted that drone. "Nice sho
oting," Jet said.
"It's not hard with a rifle, especially if you have a way to steady it."
At least, I knew for sure we had the right crazy cat lady.
I got us going on the freeway again. After about a half hour, traffic stopped. I tried using the emergency lane, and after a kilometer or so, that was blocked, too. A man with a shotgun approached us from the front. Two men with shotguns walked towards us from the rear. They were dressed in dirty, worn clothes and had a variety of food stains on their shirts. I shouted, "Behind us!"
Jet and Zen stepped out of the car, as did Nancy and I. Nancy fired first, and the guy in front went down. A shotgun blast pelted Jet on the gut, but he didn't even fall. The other guy shot way off target. Zen and Jet fired to the rear, and those two men fell.
Two car lengths in front of the blockage and three men with pistols stepped out of a car. Nancy bagged the one on the right, and I got both of the ones on the left. One of them was able to fire two rounds, and both hit me in the chest. Hurt but that is what body armor is for.
"Back in the car, Nancy," I said.
"Piss on that. This is the most fun I've had in years."
Gunfire erupted from behind us. Nancy ducked down low. Zen and Jet were returning fire. I was watching both our sides and the front. A kid no more than 14 chucked a grenade at us. I caught it in mid-flight and threw it right back at him. It exploded, and the kid fell. Damn, I just killed a kid! That was going to be a new dream, for sure.
"We need to get out of here," Nancy shouted. "The car has traction control. Drive through the desert."
Everybody climbed back in. I steered off the road onto essentially dirt and sand. The car moved forward through it. We made it past the blocked part of the road, and I steered us back onto pavement.
I killed a kid!
Nancy reached over and touched my shoulder. "You did what you had to do. That kid was likely a MindBender addict anyhow."
I started to shed tears. "He didn't even look 14."
Was I going to have a meltdown right then and there? We had the freeway to ourselves, and I tightened my grip on the wheel and pushed the gas down. Cactus and rocks flew by on both sides. My gut, my insides were a mess like I'd eaten fifty greasy pizzas.
Zen said, "You saved our lives."
"Quick thinking on your part," Jet said.
The face of that young man etched its way into my psyche. I wondered if Doctor Heathers was still around.
I happened to glance in the rearview mirror. Back in the distance, there was another drone, and this was not an unarmed picture taking drone, but a big drone with rockets attached to it. Rockets that would likely shred my beautiful automobile.
Chapter Ten
"Watch the rear!" Nancy shouted as she put her hand on the steering wheel. "I'll keep her steady in our lane."
A tiny puff of smoke exited the drone. I dodged hard from the left lane to the emergency lane on the right. A car-sized explosion boomed on the left. I slid the car back into the left-most lane.
Another rocket launched. I didn't move.
"Bear?" Zen asked.
"Dodge!" Jet yelled.
The ball of white fire and shrapnel landed on our right in the far right lane.
Nancy let out a little chuckle. "Don't listen to them."
A third rocket launched out of the Razdoran drone behind us. I stood on the brakes. The rocket sailed overhead, landing a few hundred meters in front of us. I pushed the gearshift into first and egged the gas all the way.
"You'd think these cars would have chaff," I said.
Nancy flipped open the glove box. "They do."
"How could I have never known that?" Zen asked.
"You've never been assigned one of these exact models."
I had been watching the rear this whole time, while rolling through the gears on the car. We were doing almost 200 kph. Another puff of smoke. Nancy pushed a button, at least I heard a click. My eyes were glued to the rear. Two foil clouds jetted out of the back of our car, and the missile exploded mid-flight.
"How many of those things do we have?" Jet asked.
Nancy whispered, "One, now."
The drone started gaining on us. I pushed the gas down, but the drone still flew past us.
The phone in the car rang. Nancy answered it.
Sphinx showed up in the video. "Joe found multiple ghost processes and Trojans installed on our servers. It's almost like they had the source code for every piece of software we run."
Nancy took her hand off the steering wheel. "It's possible they do."
"What about reinstalling the operating system? Starting from scratch?" I asked.
Joe leaned into the video monitor. "These computers all seem to have the ability to instantiate new infections directly from the motherboard. Like there is virus source code right in a microchip."
Did Ralan's subcontractor provide those computers? "Shut down everything that was purchased since Ralan was in charge," I said. "Get an old computer, and work on cleaning the source code."
"That could take months."
"Get an old archive backup of the system. Run a comparison between old and new. It'll mean restoring an old operating system."
Joe nodded. "Better old than traitor."
Sphinx moved back into the video. "Run into any trouble on the road."
"Nothing out of the ordinary," Zen said.
"When will we have Apache support?" Nancy asked.
Sphinx rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "We lost contact with those two Apaches."
"Get us an A-10 Warthog or something instead. We need big firepower."
"I love you, Nancy."
"Oh shut up."
Sphinx started typing on the keyboard. "If you're requesting it, I'll launch more birds. Pilots are standing by. But with our computer hacked, it may just mean losing more people."
Put Joe back on the screen. I need to tell him to hurry. Nancy disconnected the phone.
"Is this Joe fellow trustworthy?" Zen asked.
I looked back at Zen. "With my life."
I realized I was doing 200 kph. I let the vehicle slow down. Soon enough there were other cars on the road. I kept the speedometer well over the speed limit for almost an hour. The range meter on the gas tank said 56 km. Within about 15 km, a gas station loomed in the distance. "We need gas."
"I need food," Jet said.
Nancy put the gun on the floor. It fit almost perfectly in the floor, too, as if the car was designed to store our machine guns right there.
I started pumping gas. The others went into the shop. Once the tank was full, I went inside to relieve my bladder and get a snack.
Soon enough we were back on the highway. We went through Albuquerque. Traveling through desert was relaxing. The road was largely empty, and I had the machine up to 140 kph.
Two Apaches flew beside us. Our computer in the car chirped on. "We lost radio contact with base. We're your support."
Good news for once. We drove for hours. Then I made Zen drive, and I fell asleep in the back seat. The sun set, and Jet took over the driving. Pulled into our main base in Phoenix, and my only thought was home.
The cafeteria opened for us. I went swimming. Zen and Xeon joined me. What? Xeon? There she was, though. Fit and trim, with a bullet hole scar on her gut.
"Xeon?" I said as I stared in awe.
"They had to reactivate me. I was in that database."
Good news. Couldn't be happier. I smiled at her, and she dove into the water.
Chapter Eleven
I pushed myself out of the pool and approached the woman of my dreams. Xeon smiled at me. I put my arms around her, bending her over, with my lips on hers. She pushed up, and away. "Not tonight, Bear."
What's wrong with tonight? "I've missed you so much."
"I broke up with you. I don't know if we're getting back together."
I knew she was fooling. I could tell by the grin on her face. "You're back now, though, right? For good?"
She n
odded. "For a few missions. Maybe."
Enigma stepped into the pool area and squealed like a teen. Xeon shouted, "Enigma!"
They ran at each other and embraced. I was doomed. They separated.
"Don't even think about it," Enigma said.
"Think about what?" Xeon asked.
"Getting back with that whore, Bear."
I am not a whore!
Xeon walked back over to me and pecked me on the lips. "He's not that bad."
"Don't you think about it either, Bear," Enigma said.
Think about what? "My thoughts are my own, woman."
Xeon leaned in and whispered in my ear, "She means getting both of us into bed at the same time."
My dick betrayed me. I mean the suit I was wearing was doing an ok job containing everything. Surrounded by three women.
"Ben is flying in tomorrow," Zen said, "and while he's not RedCat, he's a close second."
"He never retired?" I asked.
"No."
"He never found a new woman?"
"None that stuck around."
Xeon said, "Sauna, and I want Chinese tomorrow."
They never fed us Chinese. "I'll commandeer a car. We'll get some."
"You think you're going to get some just by providing Chinese?"
That's not what I meant. "I love you. I miss you. Isn't that reason enough to do it?"
"I love you, too."
"I'm going to puke," Enigma said.
Xeon disappeared into the sauna. Zen and Enigma swam laps. I walked my boner up to my room and did my best to capture sleep. I dreamed of Xeon and nothing else.
Breakfast rolled around, and I went through the cafeteria backward to make sure Xeon wasn't already eating. Then I waited at the entrance for her. She kissed me again, which I considered a very good sign. Sphinx came out of the food line and sat with us.
"I need a car," I said.
Sphinx stirred her oatmeal to mix up the brown sugar. "Ask Nancy."
I didn't see Nancy at breakfast. I paged her on my cell phone.
"Bear?"
"I need a car this afternoon. Xeon wants to get Chinese food."
Nancy sighed. "Too risky, and it's against the rules."
"I just want to take the woman of my dreams for a nice meal," I said.
Codename: Bear II: Secret Agent (Codename Universe Book 2) Page 4
