The Legend of Banzai Maguire

by Susan Grant

  Bree on the other hand appreciated a man with a warped sense of humor. And she was glad to see he was unrepentant in the face of the dismayed medical people.

  “Why wait?” he asked the women. “She is strong.”

  “Your Highness, Captain Maguire has suffered tremendous trauma. At this point, I’m hesitant to add more.” The second sister had spoken. Bree locked eyes with her knowing, empathetic gaze. She was a shrink. Bree would bet her bottom dollar.

  As if on cue, the original Dr. Park said, “This is Dr. Park—Min Park. She is also assigned to your well-being.”

  Another Park. It was a popular Korean surname. But the women were identical. They were sisters. If not for the age difference, they’d be twins.

  The second Park wore her hair long and loose. She looped it over one shoulder as she bent her head in greeting. “As your psychiatrist, I look forward to assisting you, Captain Maguire.”

  Ha. Bree knew it. She was a shrink. Bree was two for two. But despite her awkwardness with the idea of a psychiatrist assigned to her, Bree found the woman’s kind expression comforting.

  “With all due respect, Your Highness,” Min said, “I think our patient is ready to return to her bed.”

  Kyber ducked down and reached for Bree’s legs. His forearm hit the back of her knees. In one graceful motion, he swept her off her feet and put her back in bed.

  “Do as the doctors ask,” he said. “Or I will walk you the length and breadth of this building if that’s what is required to keep you awake.” Then he flashed a smile, the kind of self-confident, devilishly charming grin that told her he recognized his effect on women. His black clothing looked more like functional body armor than surgical wear. She’d been following a series on TV called Outrunners about futuristic cops, and this man could pass for a cast member. Only he was better looking than the actors on the show. Much better looking. He worked out, and it showed in his muscled biceps and broad shoulders. Asian ancestry gave him smooth, burnished skin and slightly almond-shaped eyes. He wasn’t 100 percent Korean, or even 75 percent. He probably had a parent of each race, and maybe more than that, a Caucasian grandparent or two, she guessed, recalling her own Eurasian blood. His hair was long, glossy black, and clasped at the nape of his neck. His eyes were stone gray, and utterly taken with her.

  “It is a miracle she is alive,” he murmured to no one in particular, transfixed.

  Bree went very still. It was eerie, having someone look at her that way ...as if she were an acquisition. A prize. Kyber saw in her something he wanted. Badly. So had her rescuer, she realized. The blue-eyed soldier’s gaze had been little different.

  Bree shrank from the attention. “I’m not the first pilot to be shot down. I did my duty, that’s all. I’m nothing special.”

  Kyber crouched by her bedside. “You are the stuff of legends, Banzai. One of a kind.”

  “Actually, there are two of us. Cam Tucker is my wingman. How is she? Is she at this hospital, too?”

  No one answered.

  Bree smiled, shook her head. “Knowing Cam, she managed to get through this without a scratch, the little stinker.”

  Uncomfortable silence met her words, and everyone looked at everyone else but her. Bree stopped breathing, and her face felt hot. “She’s not okay, is she?” Were they going to tell her that Cam hadn’t made it? That the drugs that had so sickened Bree had killed her friend? “Is she alive? Just answer me that.”

  Min Park, the mind doctor, opened her mouth to speak, but Kyber’s hand went up, stopping her. “We found you in an underwater cave one week ago. Until that day, I didn’t know the cave existed. Records show that the site was once a North Korean laboratory. Heavy bombing reduced it to rubble. It complicated the rescue.”

  “They bombed the lab,” Bree whispered. She remembered none of it.

  “Anyone else who may have been with you in the cave either escaped at that time or was killed.”

  “Cam wouldn’t leave without me.”

  Kyber’s voice took a sudden tender turn. To Bree, the gentleness was out of place on a man of his size and stature. “They searched, Banzai, searched until a typhoon warning forced me to order an evacuation of the cave. I didn’t want them stranded underwater with rough conditions at the surface.”

  Hope flared. “They’ll go back to finish.”

  Kyber shook his head. “Those are some of my finest men. I trust them when they say they performed a thorough search. They found no bodies. Although the sea may have long since washed away any human remains.”

  Something in her chest knotted into a ball. Ah, Cam... It seemed as if an air force chaplain should be telling her this, not him. “What about the Americans? Aren’t we searching the ocean? The divers will look. There has to be a body somewhere. I know Cam was with me. I rode in the truck with her.” Bree had passed out on her! “Cam was there. She was there.”

  Min Park shook her head. “I’m sorry—”

  Pressure built up behind Bree’s eyes. “The bastards,” she whispered bitterly. “They killed her.”

  Kyber’s expression darkened. “Or took her, as they would have stolen you, had I not intervened in time.”

  Bree jerked her head up. The idea of Cam as a hostage carried a hell of a lot more hope than one of her dead.

  “We have one man in custody. He claims to know nothing of another pilot.” Kyber made a fist. “If he has lied, he will die. No one steals from the Hans.”

  He fumed, but as soon as he returned his attention to Bree, his expression transformed back to a disturbing mix of possession and awe. When he spoke, his voice had turned husky with reverence. “But, perhaps, I will keep the bastard alive—if only because he brought me to you.”

  Kyber brought his hand close to her cheek. Bree held her breath as it hovered there. But he didn’t touch her. Making a fist, he pushed to his feet and strode from the room.

  The doctors resumed their fussing over her, and Bree stared straight ahead. She worked hard at remembering the man who’d woken her the first time, the blue-eyed soldier. She’d assumed he was Special Forces, although now that she thought of it, she hadn’t seen a uniform. He’d worn a black wet suit with no insignia.

  This man was Kyber’s “bastard.” Bree scowled. If Blue Eyes had anything to do with Cam’s disappearance, she wouldn’t wait for Kyber to hurt him. She’d do it herself.

  * * *

  Ty woke with his cheek pressed to a cold stone floor. Something tickled and bumped his nose. He opened his eyes and focused on a pink muzzle with twitching whiskers. The furry head turned, and a black, beady eye stared back at him.

  Groaning, Ty pushed off the floor. The rats scurried off into the depths of the surrounding underground dungeon. A summer palace equipped with a dungeon. How convenient. Ty supposed that the Hans didn’t believe in taking vacations from pillage and torture.

  He shoved a hand through his hair. The short strands were greasy and matted with dried blood. The floor was wet where he sat. A drop of water landed with a plunk. It came from above his head, foul-smelling. Ty hoped it wasn’t seepage from the palace’s sewer system. The dungeon stank so badly, he wouldn’t have been able to tell if it was. Another drip landed. Tiny creatures wriggled through the puddles on the floor. Larvae? Ty quickly checked for open cuts and bruises, wiping the scrapes on his arm with the filthy tattered hem of his prison shirt, hoping he’d acted before any exotic diseases kicked in.

  He exhaled and rubbed his forehead. He would have been home by now—with her. Instead, he sat in a cage, wasting time while someone else had what he’d wanted. That haunted him.

  He should be less affected. He’d raided tombs before, hunted for treasure. There was always someone else who thought they owned what you were after. Robbery was always a risk. He’d gone into this knowing that. But this was different. It was Banzai he’d found. Banzai Maguire. She’d been right in his hands. He’d touched her, seen her face. Damn it, she belonged to him!

  And now someone else had her.
<
br />   Ty stood, staggering a bit before he found his balance. They’d beaten him again when they’d thrown him in the cell last night, but not too badly. The guards had known where to kick the toes of their boots so as not to damage a kidney or a rib.

  He couldn’t say the same about the soldiers who’d found him in the cave, but that had been over a week ago and something had changed since then. Kyber, his captor, wanted to keep him alive.

  If not, Ty would have been dead already—or at least tortured to the point of permanent dysfunction. Instead, medics had arrived to patch him up. They’d given him nanomeds that started the process of healing his internal injuries and sealing his broken ribs. And then there was the matter of his new living quarters. This cell was luxurious compared to the places he’d stayed the past few days. Only one explanation existed: Kyber had learned the results of the DNA tagging, and thus Ty’s pedigree.

  Crouching, Ty used a pebble to scratch a tick mark onto the stone surface of the wall. One day down; how many more to go? It had been seven days—no, eight—since they brought him here from the cave; he’d forgotten to include the day of interrogation when he got here, during which he’d been crammed into a cell too small to stand or sit. Total: eight days missing.

  Ty’s next thought was of his father. The general knew he’d gone off treasure hunting, but not where he’d gone to find it. Of course, now the secret would be out. Kyber was now in a unique position to make his rival squirm. The prince would take great pleasure in tormenting the “Ax,” dangling his son and only heir in front of his nose. Ty wondered how long the emperor-prince planned to hold him hostage. And what the UCE would have to give Kyber in exchange for his freedom.

  The muscles in Ty’s jaw tightened as he imagined Kyber savoring his rare appearance on the world stage, declaring the son of the UCE’s number-one military man a trespasser and a thief. Even Ty couldn’t deny it was the truth. Kyber had caught him red-handed. Although the UCE could—and probably would—argue the point that Ty was justified in stealing back what was rightfully theirs.

  And, by God, he was justified. The claim to the missing pilots belonged to the UCE. Those pilots were a shining symbol of the past, the UCE’s past. Banzai’s reappearance would motivate and inspire all who came to see her. She was worth too much to the UCE to leave behind, especially in the hands of an intolerable tyrant who wouldn’t understand what he possessed, who wouldn’t know how—or even want—to use the pilot-hero to her full potential.

  Ty explored further and found some old graffiti scratched into the wall, the legacy of those who’d previously suffered this cell. It looked like a few of them were here a while, based on the deepness of the etching, and the amount written. D’ekkar Han Valoren. Kyber had imprisoned another Han? The name was scratched out vigorously and replaced with Deck. Along with a few other illegible scribblings were several references to Shadow Runners and a very bold Freedom! Had “Deck” been part of a rebel group? And down near the corner, in large lettering in a different handwriting was Kyber sucks!

  Ty’s mouth curled. Another satisfied customer in the Kingdom of Asia, he thought.

  Ty paced, analyzing his options. He was a combat veteran. He’d been in worse scrapes. He’d get out of here, and not in a body bag. He intended to walk out of Kyber’s prison, and before the Kingdom of Asia could thoroughly humiliate the UCE.

  Ty swore. The Kingdom of Asia? More like the Prison of Asia. No one got in, and no one got out. But Ty was determined to be an exception.

  He limped back to the wall of the cell. It was made of moist, dirty stone. Yet, it was an illusion. Within its unsophisticated confines, no doubt, lurked some of the most advanced microscopic robotic technology found in the world.

  He stopped, pressed his palms to the wall. Closing his eyes, Ty tried to gauge any temperature fluctuations, texture, vibration. He felt nothing out of the ordinary, but the cement more than likely contained “smart dust,” programmed to track his every breath, his every move.

  Everything but his thoughts.

  Ty smiled. That was his one advantage over Kyber, those private thoughts. Little did Kyber know that every last one of them centered on the treasure Ty had lost and was dead-set on taking back.

  Chapter Seven

  It was almost dawn, an observation Bree made based on the glowing numbers of a clock built into the curved clear table near her bed; the room had no windows. It was her third night since coming awake again, becoming aware, but it was the first night she couldn’t sleep. Tossing and turning, she tried to puzzle out the strange circumstances of her hospital stay.

  Almost every one of her conscious moments over the past two days had involved some sort of physical therapy. In one respect, she’d welcomed the exertion. It distracted her. Left alone, she spent her time beating herself up over her role in Cam’s fate. If she’d been more observant, reacted quicker, looked harder, who knew, maybe her friend would be alive. Of course, there was that reedy little voice of dissension that assured her she’d done all she could.

  On the other hand, if she was feeling guilty, then she must be feeling better. She knew herself well enough to figure that out. And now that she was feeling better, she wanted out of the hospital.

  It wasn’t that she had complaints about the care. Meals came regularly and were nutritious and tasty—although the too-obviously genetically bioengineered pitless avocados and the cute apple-sized watermelons with edible peels were more than a little strange. And Kyber’s all-female medical team of identical twins acted as if she were the center of their lives. What more could a patient want?

  Access to the outside world.

  Where were the intelligence people? They were usually the first on the scene, even before the shrinks and chaplains showed up, so they could begin the lengthy process of debriefing a freed POW. And why couldn’t she use the phone?

  Her “fragile physical condition” was always the excuse the doctors gave her. Granted, for a while, she had felt fragile, and didn’t argue with the diagnosis, but she wasn’t feeling that way anymore.

  Maybe she could wander the halls a bit before the sisters came on duty, chat with the doctors and nurses working the graveyard shift, and see what she could find out about using the phone. Good idea, Maguire.

  Sitting up, she swung her legs off the bed. There was no wooziness this time, another sign that she was on the mend. A faint humming noise caught her attention. It was barely audible, lower in pitch and volume than a mosquito.

  Something glinted to her right, and a silver sphere floated into her field of vision. At first, in the dim light, she thought her bleary eyes were playing tricks on her. But, it was a sphere, and it was bobbing...all on its own.

  In midair.

  It rotated, laser-sharp lights glowing, and paused to hover in front of her face. “Pip!” it chirped.

  Bree lifted her finger to touch it, and changed her mind. How was the thing floating? No hospital she knew had that kind of technology. It begged an answer to the question: Where was she?

  “Lights on,” Bree said, as she’d heard the sisters Park do. The walls and ceiling glowed brighter, providing the room’s lighting from an opaque, almost luminescent material resembling white crystal. The furnishings and tech reeked of money. The setup bore less resemblance to a hospital room than it did a converted bedroom in an opulent home.

  All the more reason to take a walk.

  Wobbling a bit, she stood. Her muscles ached some, but all things considered she felt pretty darn good. Not great, but good enough to find a telephone. And, if she was lucky, a Coke and a Milky Way. Her caffeine level was dangerously low.

  She crossed the room to the huge double doors that everyone used to come in and out. The sphere followed her. “Pip! Pip!”

  She ignored it, as she’d ignore an annoying, yapping dog that she didn’t know. It seemed harmless, but it might have sharp teeth.

  The doors were heavy. Bree leaned her shoulder against one and pushed hard. Then she tried the other. No dice
. Running her fingers along the frame revealed no knobs, handles, or dead bolts. She was locked in. Trapped.

  She didn’t like the feeling. At all.

  She tried again, shoving her full weight against the door. It didn’t budge. She slammed her hands against the surface. “Open!”

  “Pip!”

  Bree pushed away from the door and looked down her nose at the floating ball. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas.”

  “Pip!” A thread of light shot out of it and into her right eye.

  A violet splash of light blinded Bree. Her pores went electric as she staggered backward, covering her eyes. There was a commotion outside the doors. Her hospital staff pushed them open and swarmed into the room.

  Dr. Park’s gaze traveled from the lights turned on in the room to where Bree now stood, spitting mad. “Captain Maguire. What’s wrong?”

  “That thing flashed something in my eye.”

  “It was a routine scan, nothing more.”

  “I don’t care what it was. Never mess with a pilot’s eyes. If that little disco ball tries to shine any more lights without my express permission, I’m going to see how it likes playing Ping-Pong.”

  “Pip!” The sphere bounced close to Bree’s face, and she blocked it with the heel of her palm. It thudded into her hand with a clanking noise, as if she’d knocked something loose inside. “Pip!” It came at her again. She drew her arm back.

  “Pip, go!” Dr. Park shouted, and the sphere soared off. “Please don’t be alarmed.”

  Bree rubbed her palm. “Keep it away from me.”

  “Pip is your triage nurse, my robotic assistant.”

  “A what? A robot?”

  The ball was back, hovering near Dr. Park. It rotated, its tiny lights pulsating. Some sort of wireless communication was going on between the sphere and Dr. Park’s handheld, which seemed to confirm the woman’s explanation about the scan. “When you arose from bed on your own, Pip reacted to your unpredicted behavior. It’s programmed to monitor your vital signs during the night.”