by Dakota Banks
“You know you’re being used by the New Founders, don’t you?” Maliha said. “Is this what you want to do?”
“Yes. I believe in this cause. You could think of me as a puppet, but I’m a willing one.”
No way to put a dent in that. He’s a true believer.
“Once I become president, Project Hammer goes into full effect. Simply put, we’re tired of America being pushed around. America needs to be able to guide the rest of the world through these tumultuous times. That means a stronger military. A much stronger military. One that these terrorists won’t dare challenge. I’d like you to join us in this noble cause. After all, what better way is there for you to save lives?”
Emergency. Emergency. Calling Homeland Security.
“My dear, you have seen the abuse America has suffered firsthand in your travels. All of those oil rich countries throttling back production of vital resources simply to manipulate prices? It’s immoral. If the prices were something we could manage, we could pour the revenues into other sources of energy. We could even stop global warming, save the environment, feed all of the hungry children, if only I could be president. We could force the change that needs to happen by removing people’s right to hesitate.”
This guy is slick. He’s got the patter down perfectly, as long as you don’t examine what he says too closely.
“What about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?”
“Not written for the twenty-first century. Once I get in office, I don’t plan on leaving. Term limits need a bit of tweaking. It’s going to take a lot more than eight years to convert this country into doing things the right way—the New Founders way.” He unzipped his jacket and handed her an envelope. “Here’s some information on the president’s schedule.”
A delusional ideologue. A very dangerous one, with Elizabeth as his guardian. I can see why her demon set this plan in action.
“Did you have to reveal that much detail?” Elizabeth said.
“What, now that I’ve told Maliha, I have to kill her? She’s part of the grand scheme, just like you. After I’m president, I’m going to need someone to eliminate people who get in the way. We don’t want to have to deal with formalities like court hearings, let alone arbitrators without an understanding of the real world, like the Supreme Court.”
Elizabeth did not like being equated with Maliha. She scowled but said nothing.
I don’t think Cameron’s getting lucky tonight.
Maliha rolled the facts over in her mind, trying to determine Cameron’s chance of pulling this off. It seemed like he had a turnkey plan, no doubt with others on his payroll to step into new positions of authority. There was no certainty of success, but the consequences were unthinkable if Elizabeth managed to get him through this. Billions of lives could be at stake with Cameron’s finger on the nuclear button, and what would the world look like after Cameron got through with it? Of course there would be rebellion against his plan, but rebellion could be quashed if he or Elizabeth had anything to say about it. Americans weren’t used to martial law with a ruthless dictator calling the shots. She could contact Homeland Security, but who would they believe, the vice president of the United States or her?
Maliha was horrified to know the depth of the trap in which she was caught. With scheming at this level, and with so many years invested, it seemed unlikely that Yanmeng would ever be returned alive—Elizabeth had said as much in Kelly’s Pub—and that her role as unwilling assassin would never let up.
Maliha’s shoulders sagged with the weight of her decision. Damn. I can’t risk it. This just became a suicide mission.
Project Hammer had to end here.
She took a step forward, alerting Elizabeth, but there was nothing Maliha could do about that. She dropped the envelope, pulled the whip sword from its sheath at her waist, and lashed out with it toward the two bodyguards. With her other hand, she launched a throwing knife at Cameron’s heart.
The blades of the whip sword caught their targets, and heads rolled into the snow. The bodyguards slumped toward the ground, blood pumping from the severed arteries of their necks. Maliha had her second throwing knife in her hand.
The first one didn’t land in Cameron’s chest as she’d hoped. Elizabeth thrust out her arm, and the blade penetrated it near the elbow, the point emerging on the other side inches from Cameron. Maliha threw the second knife, hoping to slip it past Elizabeth. As soon as the knife left Maliha’s fingers, she pulled her Glock from her jacket pocket.
Elizabeth already had a sword in hand, the same kind Xietai had used. She flicked it in the direction of the knife and as it straightened and formed a hard, deadly blade, it turned the knife aside to fall harmlessly in the snow.
“Get down, fool,” Elizabeth shouted at Cameron. Not waiting for an answer, she swept his legs out from under him and he fell facedown in the snow.
Maliha fired a couple of rounds at Elizabeth in a desperate effort to slow her down, then aimed the weapon at Cameron’s prone form. She got off one shot and hit him in the back.
Elizabeth yanked the knife from her arm and sent it whirling back toward Maliha. It struck the Glock, sending it tumbling from Maliha’s grip. Elizabeth snatched the second knife from the snow and launched it in the air before the gun reached the ground.
The knife landed solidly in Maliha’s right thigh. Pain exploded in her leg, sending shock waves down her leg and up her spine. She struggled to remain standing. Elizabeth moved toward her, the fox to the wounded rabbit.
Oh, shit. Here it comes.
Cameron groaned and tried to move forward weakly. Elizabeth’s orders from the demon took precedence. She shook her head. She was a guardian first, avenger second. She turned around and started dragging Cameron over the snow. With her strength, he glided as smoothly as a sled. She left with him on one of the snowmobiles.
Maliha leaned against one of the tombstones. The bloody scene in front of her looked eerily like the one in Siberia years ago, and she wondered if it had been more of a premonition than a memory.
After resting a little while, Maliha braced for a challenging journey. She retrieved the blood-spattered envelope and began moving toward the snowmobiles, putting as little weight on her injured leg as she could. She mounted a snowmobile, put her feet in the stirrups, pulled up the kill switch, and turned the key. The engine, still warm, fired up on the first pull of the start cord. She made the trip back to her car slowly, not wanting to lean into any high-speed turns. Noticing spots of blood along the road, she hoped that her single hurried shot had done the job on Cameron. She sighed with relief when she saw the Jeep untouched, and then again when it started.
Elizabeth could have disabled it on the way in. This hiding place didn’t fool her.
When the Jeep was pumping warm air on her face and feet, Maliha considered her situation. She wasn’t sure she could drive the manual transmission with her leg injury. There wasn’t a lot of blood loss because the knife was plugging the wound, and she needed to keep it that way. There was a blizzard kit in the Jeep. Wrapping a blanket on either side of her wound, she steadied the knife to keep it from jarring loose and tied it securely with rope from the kit. She started driving on Eliot Road and found that it was barely manageable. She called Hound, gave him a brief explanation, and got directions to a nearby airport.
Maliha drove to the town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It would have been an hour’s drive in good weather with a driver who didn’t see black around the edges of her vision whenever she had to shift gears. As it was, it took her two hours before she had the airport in sight. Putting her trust in Hound, she sat back and tried to ignore the knife sticking out of her leg.
Hound came in by helicopter. He took Maliha to a doctor he knew in Green Bay. The doctor was curious about why Maliha’s flesh had begun to heal around the knife. Hound doubled the pay, and the doctor sealed his lips and broke the still-delicate scar tissue formation to remove the knife. Maliha insisted on no sedation, and she shuddered when the docto
r withdrew the knife. There was no massive spurting of blood from her leg, just a slow leakage.
“You’re lucky,” the doctor said. “It looks like the deep femoral artery is intact. A couple of centimeters over and you wouldn’t have made it here.”
Maliha let him stitch and bandage her wound. She’d take the stitches out later.
The doctor grunted when he was finished. “You need blood.”
“No transfusions. I’ll be okay. Give me IV fluids.”
The doctor glanced at Hound, seeking affirmation that his patient knew what she was talking about. Hound nodded.
“Saline, not Ringer’s or D5W,” Maliha said.
“Antibiotics, then.” He raised his eyebrows and set his mouth, prepared to stand firm on this one.
“In the drip,” Maliha said. She saw Hound and the doctor conferring and money changing hands, then left in a wheelchair with a portable IV stand.
Hound and Maliha headed home to Chicago. Somewhere during the flight, Hound put something in her IV. When she woke, she was home in her bedroom. It was nighttime, and there was a single lamp on in the room. Hound sat in a chair watching her.
“Thanks for the lift,” Maliha said. She smiled. It was good to see him.
“Christ, woman, you scared the shit out of us,” Hound said. “I should’ve called a ranger to pick you up in the forest.”
“I would have had some trouble explaining the two headless bodies.”
“Beside the point. I’m sure you would have thought of something. When I got my first look at you . . .”
His unsaid words I thought you were dead hung between them.
“Just doing some meditation. It helped with the pain.”
“You had the pulse rate of a hibernating bear.”
“You’re exaggerating. I did not have a pulse of ten beats per minute.”
Hound crossed his arms across his chest and said nothing.
“Okay, I’m sorry I scared you,” Maliha said. “I didn’t want to bring in any outsiders. Even the doctor in Green Bay was a risk. Besides, as a medic you should be able to cope.”
“Isn’t that a backhanded apology.”
“Come on, Hound. Let it go. I’m happy to be alive and thankful that you saved me. Is that better?”
He sighed, came over to the bed, and kissed her forehead. “We’re hyped up, that’s all. Yanmeng, the threat to Eliu, and then you.”
“So am I, Hound. I’m—we’re—in deep on this one and I’m not seeing a path out.”
“We’ll make it. We all will. And then I’m going on a vacation with Glass to someplace warm and fuck her brains out.”
Maliha laughed. “Sounds good to me.”
“Jake is here. You want to see him?”
“In a minute. How’s Amaro holding up?”
“Well, you know he’s not a field guy. All this is too much like stuff he sees in the movies. He’s not trained for it.”
“We need to have everybody able to handle fieldwork. Start training him whenever you get the chance. Tell him I ordered it because he’s pathetic away from his computer.”
“Ordered? Pathetic? That’ll get him riled up.”
“Exactly. Riled up to prove me wrong. That leaves him open to cooperating with you to learn. What’s the news with the list of doctors?”
“We have three prospects. I feel like we’re getting close.”
“Okay. Let me know the names and I’ll check them out.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. There was some pain, but she could deal with it. Keeping a grimace off her face was an old habit, one that Master Liu had cautioned her about on her recent visit, depending on the message she wanted to send.
Master Liu says that sometimes you should show pain as a strategy to make your opponent overconfident. He will strike toward pain, leaving an opening for your blade.
Hound left and Jake came in, striding over to the bed and pulling her up into his arms. “I was worried about you,” he said, and kissed her.
“You know I have a leg wound, right?”
“Yes. Oh.” He lowered her back to her seated position and sat down next to her. “Is it that bad?”
“No. I’d just like a little more rest before I hit the streets. Hound says there are places to go, doctors to check out.”
“I can do that.”
“I know, Jake, but this is personal. I have to be out there doing something. Have you been filled in about Elizabeth and the vice president?”
“Yeah. What a piece of shit.”
“Which one?”
“Both. Elizabeth’s got a reputation among the Ageless. You know we’re not exactly warm and cuddly—excluding me, of course—but Elizabeth tops the charts. She doesn’t just kill, she gets off on it, wallows in it. Her demon Tirid is considered crazy, which is a tough call when you’re talking about demons. Elizabeth fears getting old and ugly, and the story is that’s how Tirid keeps her in line. If she screws up, he punishes her by making her an old hag for a few decades. It makes her seriously toe the line.”
“I understand something now. I wondered why Elizabeth needed me to be an assassin for Project Hammer when she could clearly do the work herself, and enjoy it. She’s been ordered to stay close to Cameron whenever possible to make sure the plan succeeds. She doesn’t dare disobey Tirid.”
Jake nodded. “That makes sense. Cramps her style, too. Tirid likes to jerk her strings.”
Another thought occurred to her. “It could be that when Cameron takes over as president, he’s going to want to catch the assassin right away to impress the public. With Elizabeth staying in the background, he needs a visible assassin—me—he can put on trial. Something I haven’t told the others is that Elizabeth expects me to become her chief warrior to replace a man I killed.”
He cupped her chin with his hand. “Won’t happen. I swear it.”
I want to believe him, but how can he be sure?
“Jake, why don’t you hunt down other Ageless and kill them? I know it’s dangerous, but . . .”
“Believe me, I’ve considered it. The world just doesn’t need Elizabeth in it. There are several problems, though. When the demons lose one of their slaves, they recruit another one. If I started popping off Ageless—were I to be so lucky—they’d be popping back up again as fresh recruits. They’d start to hunt me in packs, and I couldn’t withstand that for long. Finally, there’s my own demon, Idiptu. He ignores me now and no longer gives me any assignments. I’ll stay that way as long as I don’t do something that brings me back to his awareness. Killing the Ageless would definitely ring his bell. I’d be back under his thumb, forced to kill at his whim. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, I could be hunting you.”
“You could turn rogue, like me.”
Jake looked down at the floor. “We’ve been over that before. I feel I can be of most use to you and your goals the way I am. If I took the mortal path, I’d become . . .”
“Vulnerable, like me?”
Silence grew and stretched in the room.
“Yes. Vulnerable and less able to protect you. I love you, Maliha. I don’t want to lose you.”
He turned toward her with eyes overflowing with tears. She leaned forward and touched his cheek. “You don’t have to explain your decision. I’m sorry I asked.”
“There’s something else I want to talk about,” Jake said. His gaze went back to the floor. “I know about you and Lucius. I know you loved him very much. If he should ever make it back, I’ll step aside for him if you ask me to.”
Maliha felt a powerful sensation of barriers breaking down, barriers that she’d built around her heart in all the years she was Ageless, brick walls of defense that kept betrayal and love out and kept her able to function. The barriers tumbled and light flooded her body, the clear light of love. She could see it on the inside of her eyelids and feel it reaching out into her dark aura, the aura quivering and changing with its power.
She opened her eyes to find Jake staring at her.
Maliha let out the breath she’d been holding. “I love you, Jake.”
“Too bad you’re in a fragile state right now.”
Pain had fled from Maliha’s mind. She smiled. “I’m not that fragile.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maliha got the suite numbers of the three doctors. From the hall outside each one, she used an infrared camera to search for heat signatures within. One suite was empty, one had a couple making love, and the third had a woman pacing back and forth. None of them had a bedridden figure.
No Yanmeng. Too much to hope for that he’d be in a condo owned under the real name of a doctor. Or we’re off base with the whole doctor thing.
After she reported that none of the three doctors had a private medical suite with Yanmeng hooked up to sedatives, Jake took the camera from her and went out to check every condo in the building.
Maliha settled at the table and opened the envelope Cameron had given her. She tried to ignore the dried blood, a reminder that two men had died in the snow. They could have been Secret Service or on Cameron’s private payroll. Either way it didn’t make them evil just for that service. Yet Anu hadn’t taken away any of her lives saved.
So many factors figure in Anu’s decisions that I can’t make any predictions. I just have to let my morals guide me. It seems like Jake got to this place way ahead of me.
The papers in the envelope detailed a choice of two venues for the assassination of President Randall Millhouse. The first was a speech in Phoenix and the second was an overseas trip to Pacific Rim countries. He’d be making an outdoor appearance in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. In Phoenix, he’d be in a large auditorium.
Amaro told her to glance up at a TV news broadcast. The vice president had been reported injured on a Wisconsin hunting trip, and was expected to make a full and rapid recovery.
“Damn. That’s one chance blown. Will the president leave the country while the VP is in the hospital?” she said. “His trip is scheduled a week from now.”
