Baker shook his head. He said, “We should have spent more time shopping.” He looked at his watch, and added, “It’s been ninety minutes since we left the hangar.”
By this time, the sun hung west over the ocean. Night wouldn’t settle in for hours, but the air was cooling. Kids played in the streets. Pedestrians walked the sidewalks. The closer they came to the ocean, the bigger the houses became. They passed a house on a hill with several cars parked around it. Men milled among the cars trying to look casual but clearly guarding the area.
“Are those men carrying guns?” asked Naens. “Jeff, my friend, I believe we’ve found our gangster.”
Baker agreed, but he said, “We should drive around some more.”
“What, you enjoying the view?” asked Naens.
“They may own the entire block,” said Baker. “We should make sure this is the right house.”
Naens turned up a street that led up toward the top of the hill. They parked beside an empty lot and reconnoitered. None of the other houses had a fleet of cars or guards.
Naens contacted Harmer. He said, “We found our man.”
“Have you seen him?” asked Harmer.
“I’m looking at his house. He’s got guards all around his yard.”
“So does the pope,” said Harmer.
“Good point. If he comes to the door in mitre and cassock, I promise not to touch him,” said Naens.
“I don’t think these boys are the Swiss Guard,” said Baker.
“Are you sure that’s not the mayor’s house?” asked Harmer.
“These guards don’t look like policemen,” said Baker.
“From what Freeman told me, it sounds like they just established this town; maybe they don’t have regular police yet.”
“Your call, Master Chief, do we hit him or wait?” asked Naens.
“You sure you got the right guy?” asked Harmer.
“I am,” said Naens.
“Hit him,” said Harmer, who had a policy about trusting his men’s judgment.
Naens looked at his watch. Two hours and seven minutes had passed since they had left the airfield. He told Baker, “Keep your eye on the clock. I want to be home before curfew.”
Harmer said, “What’s the big deal? You’re grabbing a gangster; you better beat the clock.”
* * *
Watson and Emily had waited in the Explorer while Freeman spoke with the SEALs. When Freeman entered the ship to check on Harris, Emily asked, “Are you sure these men know what they’re doing?”
Watson added, “I know why you’re scary. I know why Harris is scary. These guys, I think they may be crazy.”
Freeman knelt beside Harris, checked his pulse, and felt his forehead without speaking. Then, still looking at Harris, he said, “Watch yourself around them. These clones are scarier than Harris, and a lot more scary than me.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
Wearing goggles that scanned for electronics and heat signatures, Petty Officer Samuel Naens crouched between a bush and the stucco wall that separated Pugh’s mansion from the beach. He flipped his goggles to his forehead and rummaged through his backpack for the tiny Communications Disruption Device he’d packed before leaving New Copenhagen. CDDs “sludged” all open-air communications in a target area, blocking radio and phone signals alike.
Satisfied that the CDD would prevent Pugh’s men from coordinating, the diminutive SEAL pulled himself over the seven-foot outer wall in a single fluid motion, landing as silently and gracefully as a cat. He found himself in a shadow-filled corner of the yard, his dark skin blending in with the night.
With the CDD sludging the airwaves, Naens and Baker couldn’t communicate, but they had synchronized their responsibilities. Naens’s job was to enter the house through the back and disable any guards he located. If he ran into Pugh, he would disable him as well.
Having entered Pugh’s backyard, Naens paused behind a tree and searched for dogs. Moments passed, then three black and rust-colored Rottweilers charged around a corner of the house. Naens shot them with tranqs, hitting their necks, silencing them instantly.
One of the guards, a big heavy man, spotted the sleeping dogs and went to investigate. He tried to radio the other guards, but no one answered. Aiming his M27 into the yard, he headed down the hill, and Naens slipped behind him like a cat on the prowl, pressed a foot into the back of the big man’s knee, forcing it to buckle, then slipped an arm across his throat and choked him. Naens could have killed the man more quickly and easily, but Harmer had told him not to kill the guards unless absolutely necessary.
Naens dragged the unconscious guard under the deck at the back of the house. He found a door that led to a storage area, picked the lock, and tossed the limp guard and the sleeping dogs inside.
* * *
Petty Officer Jeff Baker watched the property from three houses away, hoping that more guards would enter the yard. Slipping past inattentive guards would be easier than subduing them inside the house. Watching the relaxed way in which these men guarded the property, occasionally glancing up and down the street as they chatted, irritated Baker. Dereliction of duty, he thought. They were imbeciles. They were dumb thugs who hadn’t been challenged for too long. They were ripe for the picking.
Baker stole through one lot, then another, approaching Pugh’s home from the south. The sky had the golden glow of the late-afternoon sun. The elongated shadows of the trees stretched the length of the lots he crossed. A mountain beside a sea, he thought. How beautiful.
He heard the softest yelp and knew that Naens had squelched the dogs. He heard a quiet rustle and knew that Naens had squelched a guard as well. Baker leaped the wall that surrounded Pugh’s yard, slipped into the garage through a window, and entered the house from inside the garage.
He crouched and waited in the darkened entryway, blending into the shadows, watching a guard pour himself a glass of water just eight feet away. The man wore a shoulder holster from which hung a pistol.
He could have tranqed the man, but the glass of water posed a problem. Glasses falling on ceramic kitchen tiles made noise and attracted attention. The man was looking away, enjoying the view of the ocean as he drank. Baker waited, poised in the shadows, taking long, slow breaths.
Still staring out the back window, the man lowered his glass. Baker rose to his feet, watched and waited until the gangster placed his glass on the kitchen counter, then the SEAL sprang, covering the distance to target in a single second, reaching a hand over the man’s mouth and chin, holding his tranq pistol an inch from the man’s spine and squeezing the trigger. The unconscious guard went limp, and Baker gently lowered him to his knees, then scooped him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and left him curled on the pantry floor.
Killing him would have been easier, he thought, but Baker always followed orders.
He moved over to the living room.
The house wasn’t quite a mansion, but it came close. Baker paused to admire the large chandelier that hung over the grand staircase leading to the second floor, then he scanned the living room and the main entrance. He was looking for guards but had enough presence of mind to appreciate the architecture.
The house had two main floors and a lower subfloor that opened onto the backyard.
Baker stole back toward the kitchen and down the dim hallway that led to the bedrooms. He heard a man yell, “What the speck! My phone ain’t working.
“Hey, Greg, let me see your phone. I want to see if it works.”
A woman stepped out of a doorway. She was skinny and blond with short hair. To Baker, who considered himself only marginally more attractive than most insects, the woman looked beautiful. He slid back, out of the doorway, and hid in the shadows. If the woman stepped into the room, he would “disable” her. He hoped she would stay clear.
The man started yelling again. He said, “Yo, Greg, are you out there?”
“It’s me,” said the woman. “Greg’s not here.”
> “Where is he?”
She said, “I don’t know. Maybe he went outside,” as she walked past the door without peering into the room. Baker watched her, gave her a moment, then slipped into the hall. She might have turned into the kitchen or possibly gone up the stairs.
The man was probably Pugh, judging by the command in his tone. He headed down the stairs to the subfloor. That made him Naens’s problem.
Baker hid low, remained in the shadows, and waited. He heard the man say, “Hey! Who the speck are you?”
“Brandon, is everything okay?” The woman glided down the stairs, stepped into the hall, and Baker choked her into unconsciousness without leaving so much as a bruise. It only took a moment. He carried her into the pantry and lowered her beside the man . . . Greg.
Three of the men from the front entered the house. One yelled, “Hey, Brandon, are you having trouble with your phone? Brandon?”
Baker waited until they closed the door behind them, then he tranqed them and dragged them to the walk-in pantry. He thought, This is a big pantry. But the floor was filling up. He stacked the men on top of each other and left the pretty woman a respectable space, then he sprinted down the stairs leading to the lower part of the house. Pugh and Naens waited at the bottom of the stairs. Naens said, “Brandon here is an agreeable fellow. When I told him that Ray Freeman and Wayson Harris wanted a word with him, he even offered to drive.
“How did it go upstairs?”
Baker said, “About as expected.”
Pugh asked, “How many of my guards did you butcher?”
Baker said, “None.”
“You didn’t touch them?”
“Sorry, when you said ‘butcher,’ I thought you meant ‘kill.’ I knocked out four guards and a woman.”
“That would be my niece,” said Pugh. “Did you hurt her?”
“Not a scratch on her,” said Baker.
“Lucky you,” said Pugh. “She’s Harris’s girl. He wouldn’t have taken kindly if she showed up with a black eye.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-SIX
“D’you find any uniforms?” Harmer asked when Naens reported.
They were in Pugh’s car, just leaving the neighborhood. The sun had finally set. The streetlights had switched on though the sky was too bright for them to matter. In the way of tropic skies, the horizon was filled with streaks of purple and orange against a glowing red background.
One of Pugh’s bodyguards drove. Pugh sat in the passenger seat. Naens and Baker sat in the back. Naens leaned forward, and said, “Excuse me, do you know if the Unified Authority has any installations here?”
“You kidding?” asked Pugh. “Last time Harris and Freeman came through, they massacred the Unifieds and all of their buddies. I ain’t seen so much as an ant wearing U.A. colors since.”
“Did you hear that? Even the ants are out of uniform,” Naens told Harmer.
“Not a problem; we’ll borrow a uniform from one of their guards when they arrive.”
“Which one of us is changing sides?” asked Baker.
“I am,” said Harmer.
Including the times when they’d had to hide, Naens and Baker spent forty minutes running from the airstrip to town. The drive back took ten. Naens identified himself and the car using his headset, and a couple of SEALs opened the gate and let them in.
Pugh asked, “You got guards watching the airstrip?”
“We have guards watching the road, too,” said Baker. “I spotted Warsol a half mile back.”
Pugh said, “My compliments to your sergeant; he runs a tight ship. So what would have happened if we didn’t identify ourselves?”
When neither SEAL answered, Pugh said, “That’s what I thought.”
They parked in the hangar. The man who met them as they climbed out of the car was neither SEAL nor natural-born. He stood five-two, and his fingers ended in claws, but he had pale skin, blue eyes, and a smooth but macrocephalic brow.
Naens said, “Who are you supposed to be?”
“Major Joseph Conlon, Unified Authority Army,” said Harmer.
“Who’s that?” asked Baker.
“Some guy Freeman killed back in D.C. I got his ID and papers,” said Harmer.
“Too bad you don’t have his uniform,” said Naens.
“Was Conlon’s head shaped like a mushroom?” asked Baker.
“I don’t know what he looked like,” Harmer admitted. “How do I look?”
“Your head’s shaped like a mushroom, and the Army doesn’t enlist midgets,” said Naens. “Other than that, you look good.”
“There’s nothing I can do about my forehead; I need to cover up my brow,” said Harmer. He sounded defensive.
“In that case, you look good,” said Naens.
While the SEALs spoke, Freeman and Watson emerged from the Explorer. They walked over to Pugh. Watson and Pugh were nearly the same height; Freeman had seven inches on both of them.
“Where’s Harris?” asked Pugh.
“He’s in the plane,” said Freeman. Freeman and Pugh knew each other well enough to have a healthy mistrust. Watson had never met Pugh, but he didn’t trust him, either.
“Waiting for me to come to him?” asked Pugh, who was both astute and crooked. “First, he sends his goons to grab me, now he’s too important to meet my car; things must be going well.” He lifted an eyebrow, and said, “Sounds like our boy is king of the world.”
Harmer and his SEALs never joined in on the conversation; they didn’t believe they had anything to add. Watson had Emily wait in the cockpit. If anything went wrong, he wanted to keep her hidden away and safe.
Pugh entered the ship and saw Harris stretched out on the floor with a drip line attached to his arm. He bobbed his head amiably, and said, “He looks peaceful.”
“He should,” said Freeman. “The mixture going in his arm is one-tenth morphine.”
“Morphine?” Watson asked. “I thought you were hydrating him.”
Pugh stared down at Harris, and said, “That explains the smile. Why are you trying to make him an addict?”
“Addiction isn’t the problem,” Freeman said as he told Pugh about the flu. “He wouldn’t have had the strength to fly here if he weren’t having a continuous combat reflex.
“You’ve heard of Volga and New Albatross,” said Freeman. Those were former U.A. colonies. New Albatross was a prison colony; Volga was an impoverished backwater world—the colony Howard Tasman once called home. When the inmates on New Albatross rioted, the Unified Authority sent Liberator clones to restore order. When the citizens of Volga tried to abandon their planet, Liberators were sent to guard the spaceport. Both incidents resulted in civilian massacres.
Pugh knew about both massacres. Everyone knew about them; they occupied a dark place in the public consciousness.
Freeman said, “Massacres happen when the combat reflex goes too long. If we keep him luded long enough, he might come out of this without paranoid delusions.”
Harris stirred. He turned his head but didn’t open his eyes.
Pugh knelt beside him and pried one of his eyelids up, a trick he had learned for dealing with overdosing lude jockeys. He asked, “Harris, you planning on dying?”
Harris mumbled something incoherent.
Watson said, “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“He’ll survive,” said Freeman.
Pugh said, “All we’re talking about is a head cold and a little dehydration here. For a guy like this, that ought to be a snap; I mean, he survived a bullet in his gut last time I saw him.”
“Are you going to help us?” asked Freeman.
Pugh answered, “Why would I put my money on a dead horse; there’s no percentage in it.”
“He’s not dead,” said Watson.
“What’s the difference? He doesn’t have his army, and you say the Unies are coming to get him,” said Pugh. “That makes him as good as dead.”
“Are you a fan of the Unified Authority?” asked Wat
son.
“Not especially,” said Pugh.
“From what I hear, the Unifieds like your enemies more than they like you,” said Watson.
“Something like that,” Pugh agreed as he rose to his feet.
“If Harris survives this head cold, he’ll have a score to settle with the Unifieds,” said Watson. “If he dies, you have a problem. If he lives, the Unified Authority has a problem.”
“He’s not the kind of guy who turns the other cheek,” Pugh agreed.
Freeman said, “He’ll be more effective if he’s sane. We need to keep him from having a combat reflex as long as possible.”
“I got drugs. I got plenty of drugs,” said Pugh. “You want me to set him up?”
“Set him up,” that sums it up perfectly, thought Watson.
CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
Date: August 23, 2519
“There’s supposed to be a guy there named Franklin Nailor,” said Brandon Pugh. “Is he around?”
Pugh knew he wasn’t. Nailor was more than dead; he was profoundly dead. Wayson Harris had shot him and hidden him in a trash container in an undersea city that the Enlisted Man’s Navy destroyed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes.
“Who is this?” asked the officer on the other end of the line.
“The name’s Brandon Pugh; pleased to meet you,” said Pugh.
“What is this about?”
The conversation had reached the point when Pugh would draw most on his ability to lie. The Unified Authority had seized control of Washington, D.C., but they hadn’t yet declared their victory. Pugh, living in the New Olympian Territories, shouldn’t have known that the clones were dead.
“I got a clone I want to give you,” said Pugh.
“You wish to give Unified Authority Strategic Command a clone?” asked the officer. He sounded stiff and suspicious.
“Is that where I’m calling? I got this line address from Frank Nailor a few months ago. He told me he was U.A., but he didn’t tell me he worked in Strategic Command. I guess he’s an important guy.”
The officer didn’t seem interested in chatting. He said, “Are you calling to report a corpse?”
The Clone Apocalypse Page 27
