by Ward Wagher
“I would like that,” she said in her precise Anglo. “But all my luggage is back in Miami.”
“I will have the hotel express it to Wilton House in Chicago,” RWB said. “It will be there within a few hours.”
§ § §
Clint Worley and Chaim Lewis sat across from one another at a small diner in Chicago. The eatery was not widely known among government workers, but it was one of Chaim’s favorite haunts. They sipped coffee and nibbled on cheese Danish as they talked.
“Ward has gone kind of crazy,” Lewis commented. “He has been bedding every unattached female in sight. The business leaders are beginning to be restless.”
“Is he mismanaging the Palatinate, then?” Worley asked.
Lewis shook his head. “No, he is several times more effective than his father. He instinctively makes good decisions.”
“Listen to yourself, then,” Worley growled. “The man is doing a better job than the last couple of his forebearers and you want to sack him. What he does with his personal life would not raise eyebrows in Italy. Carlo has no problem with his behavior.”
“I did not say that, Clint. I am just saying that his constant catting about makes people nervous?”
“Is it that, or is it the fact that he always wants to talk about the Bible?”
Lewis leaned back and glared at the younger man. “You touched upon it earlier, Clint. This is not Italy. The Palatinate has a long history of religion. If the people here do not follow it any longer, they still respect it. I suppose there is also a remnant of puritanical belief that is offended by Ward’s behavior.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?” Worley asked.
“I do not know whether it would do any good. He has not been himself since the girl left.”
“Scout?”
“Yes, that would be the one. He really cares for her, I think.” Lewis scratched his thick white hair. “The boy is full of contradictions.”
“Perhaps if we locate the girl, we can give the Paladin an opportunity to patch things up with her.”
“Oh, we know where the girl is currently,” Lewis said.
Worley studied the spymaster for a few moments before speaking. “I suppose that should not surprise me.”
Lewis cracked a grin. “Actually, Carlo Roma’s people found her. She has an apartment in Rome. They are keeping an eye on her for me.”
“Why does that not surprise me? Very well, when is the next party in Italy?”
“Next week as a matter of fact.”
“Do you think we should tell him?”
“Yes,” Lewis mused, “I think we should.”
“You or me?”
“Yes.”
Worley chuckled. “What do we do; flip a coin?”
“Oh, you can do it. He trusts you more than he does me. I will send you the details.”
Worley folded his hands on the tabletop. “On to the next topic. What in the world happened in Florida two nights ago?”
“We received a tip about several boatloads of terrorists coming across from the Bahamas. They were headed for Miami, and of course, that is where the Paladin was that night. So, we blew the whistle.”
“And they had some anti-air assets?” Worley asked.
“Depending upon your definition. The idiots were using rifle grenades. Singman Jones had no problem clearing the field so they could depart. They were able to leave before the main body got there. The terrorists showed some creative thought by prepositioning a team to try to get them if they took off. Fortunately for us, though, they seem to be reverting to lower-skilled people. They just were not very good.”
“What are we going to do about them?”
“In the long run, we will just have to come up with something.”
“You always used to seem to tie them up in knots, Chaim.”
“That was the old Paladin. He would come up with these brainstorms and they worked every single time. I do not know if he was brilliant or bewitched.”
“And we have not seen any of that ability in Ward Baughman.”
“No. As we have discussed, RWB is a much better Paladin than his father. But his father consistently came up with these off-the-wall ideas for handling our enemies. I wish we could have bottled that brilliance. It is sorely missed. Sooner or later those crumbs are going to get lucky.”
“That bothers me, too,” Clinton Worley replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
During the spring and summer in the Upper Midwest Palatinate, cold fronts dropped from higher latitudes and mixed with warm moist air drifting northward from the Gulf of Mexico. As these mixtures sweep across the continent from the west to the east, the roiled atmosphere produces magnificent and violent thunderstorms along with frequent tornadoes.
RWB loved to watch these storms pummel the city. He had arranged for a suite to be created across from his apartment on the one-hundred-fiftieth floor of Wilton House so that he could view the weather from the western-facing windows. While the monoliths of the city were thought to be impervious to anything that nature could throw at them, RWB could sometimes feel Wilton House sway in heavy gusts that accompanied the storms. This always gave him a thrill of fear as he considered whether the engineers were wrong. Perhaps a sufficiently violent storm would flex the building to the point where it suffered structural failure and collapsed.
But Wilton House had stood for centuries and showed no signs of deterioration. It would take something more than a thunderstorm, or even a tornado to bring down the building. The Paladin, Ryan Ward Baughman, sat in an easy chair and watched the mountains and cliffs of the storm clouds roll in. Bolts of lightning were not immediately visible but did light up the clouds. He had activated the audio pickups on the outside of the windows and could hear the deep rumble of the oncoming storm in superb fidelity.
The Paladin sighed deeply and sipped on his cup of coffee. This storm was going to be a good one and it seemed to gather strength as it prepared to break its teeth on the shoals of the city. Of all his experiences, this relaxed him most. After a storm rolled over the city, he would sometimes return to his apartment to watch it move out across Lake Michigan.
After this sort of an evening’s entertainment RWB would collapse into bed and experience a wonderful night’s sleep. And, after recent experiences in Miami, he was weary. This was a good storm and violence was wonderful to watch. He did not hear the door to the suite open. But Senkii slid onto the arm of the chair.
“The storm frightened me,” she said.
“Some of these storms are real monsters,” he replied.
He felt her leaning into him and he also felt her quivering in fear. He shrugged to himself. Sleep was not that important. He eased her off the chair arm into his lap so he could embrace her. There were storms and there were other forms of comfort.
One-hundred-ten floors below, Lesa Carper manned the SOC for the early evening shift. Singman Jones occupied the chair next to hers. While she stayed alert and constantly scanned the screens and indicators for possible threats, he propped his feet on the console and nursed a cup of coffee.
“This storm is futzing the sensors, Boss. I cannot see a thing outside tonight.”
“Nobody would be outside in an aircar on a night like this, Lesa,” Jones said. “And if somebody was in a shuttle, we would know about it. Just pay attention to the lower levels along the enclosed part of the city. If somebody managed to put an aircar on the roof in this storm, we would have to rely on the building systems to defend us until we could get the team up there anyway.”
“Are you not worried about sensor degradation, Boss?”
“Oh, yes. I worry about things like that all the time. Regardless, there is little we could do about it in any case. So, I focus on the things I can control.”
“You do not seem very… alert,” she commented.
He grinned at her. “I am not on duty right now. You are. And you are paying attention. However, I am paying attention as well. There is a reason why I am h
ere, instead of enjoying my evening at home.”
“Why? What is going on?” she demanded.
He pointed to the screens showing the take from the external sensors. “We are having a dandy thunderstorm. I thought I would help you watch the screens until the thing blows over. When Hazel comes in at midnight, we can go our separate ways. The storm is already mostly past, and things will quiet down.”
“Is there a threat tonight, Boss?”
“Not that anyone has identified.”
“But you are not just here to help watch the screens,” she stated.
“I just had a funny feeling about tonight,” he said. “Besides, it is good for me to get down here once in a while.”
She suddenly pointed to one of the screens. “There is your funny feeling, Boss.”
On the vid pickup from the western side of the building, they saw an aircar fighting its way through the storm and heading towards Wilton House. Jones swung his feet off the top of the console and reached forward to hit the alarm button.
A row of warning lights flashed across the console, and Lesa quickly pushed buttons on her three-D display.
“Oh, no, Boss! The aircar just crashed through the windows on the one-hundred-fiftieth. And the Paladin is home tonight!”
Jones keyed the audio pickup at the console. “Intruders on Level one-fifty. Move it!”
He punched another button to connect him to the Paladin’s apartment. A sated RWB was just drifting off to sleep when the sound of a crash and breaking glass brought him to complete wakefulness. He quickly sat up in bed, as did Senkii.
“What was that?” she called.
RWB’s comm trilled and he picked it up.
“Yes?”
“This is Jones. We have intruders. Get to your bolt hole.”
“Right.”
He grabbed Senkii’s hand and dragged her shrieking from the bed. He slid open the closet door and dove in. When he touched the back wall, it swung open and they tumbled into a small room. The door swung shut again.
“What are you doing?” she yelled.
He grabbed her and clasped a hand over her mouth.
“Hush,” he said softly. “We have intruders in the building. This room is supposed to be soundproofed, but we do not want to tempt fate.”
He held his hand to her mouth until her muffled screams subsided into whimpers. He picked up his comm again.
“Still there, Jones?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Okay, we are in the bolt hole.”
“Sit tight until we localize the problem,” Jones ordered.
“Understood.”
Far below, Jones walked over to a wall panel and touched his hand to the palm reader. The panel swung open and he pulled out a short-barreled rifle and a pistol.
“Lock the SOC down after I leave, Lesa,” he ordered. “You will have to mind the store for a while.”
“Right, Boss. You had better get moving. I will let the systems know you are on the way.”
“Thanks, Lese.”
Jones trotted out of the SOC and down the hall towards the elevator bank. Behind him, the door slid closed and he heard the locks engage. As he ran towards the elevators, one of the elevator doors slid open. He trotted in. As he turned to tap the floor number, the doors closed, and the elevator started rising. He had planned to select floor 149, but that number already was displayed. His eyebrows raised and he thought about what Lesa had told him concerning the previous attack. Whatever was guiding the building systems was making good decisions.
He pulled out his comm and punched the button for the quick-reaction team.
“Report.”
“Red One. We are about halfway to 151. The building systems selected that for us.”
“Red Two. We saw you enter the elevator as we came around the corner, Chief. It looks like the building systems are sending us to 149.
“Red Two,” Jones called, “I will meet you at 149. Red One, when you get to 151, take the south stairwell to 150. We will take the north. Wait for my signal and we will go through the doors at the same time.”
“Red Two, Roger.”
“Red One, Roger.”
Jones fretted as the elevator moved up the skyscraper. The elevators were counter-grav units and very fast. But it was a long way up to 149. He hit the button for the SOC.
“Status, Lesa,” he ordered.
“Sir, four tangoes in the aircar. Three are out and moving around. The fourth must have been injured. They are carrying Fir-49s, and I think they may have breaching charges.”
“Are they in the hallway, yet?”
“No. Looks like they are placing a charge on the door.”
The building systems had locked everything down, so there was no way to get a door open without some kind of violence.
“Okay, they blew the door. They are now into the hallway.”
Jones looked at the numbers on the elevator display as they flickered upward. “Come on, come on. Lesa, can you get a look at that aircar? Does it appear flyable?”
“Negative. The aircar is wrecked.”
Jones keyed another button on his comm. “Red One and Two. This is a suicide mission. Red One will take out the intruders. Red Two will push the aircar back out of the window. The Tango in the aircar may not be injured.”
Both teams acknowledged. After what seemed an eternity, the elevator doors opened, and Jones stepped out where the ten members of Red Two waited.
“Up the stairs, people,” he ordered.
Above them, they heard the sharp bark of another explosion.
“They breached the door to the Paladin’s suite,” Lesa called.
They thundered up the stairs to the next level and halted at the door to the hallway. Jones’s desire was to burst through and begin firing, but he waited for the other team. This is where the fire-discipline counted.
“Red Two in position,” he called.
Ten seconds later, “Red One in position.”
“Execute,” Jones called.
After the second explosion, RWB moved over to a panel and opened it with his palm-print. He pulled out a pistol and checked the ammunition load. He looked around the room in the dim red lights that came on when they entered. A sofa was along one wall. A desk and a chair occupied the corner.
“Senkii,” he hissed, “Get behind the desk.”
She scuttled across the room on hands and knees and slipped behind the desk. He walked over and pulled one end of the sofa way from the wall and dropped behind it. He was not sure what was happening, but the closeness of the explosions did not reward optimism.
“Okay, team, the tangoes are searching the suite,” Lesa called.
She watched as both groups pelted down the hallway. Red Two stopped outside the hole blown into the hallway from the west side of the building. Red One stopped across the hall outside of the Paladin’s Suite. The two teams looked at each other. Then, Jones held up one finger, then two fingers. When he held up the third finger, both teams swung into their respective rooms.
The intruder still sitting in the aircar opened fire as they swung in the door. The lead guard went down. The second guard put a bullet through the center of the intruder’s face.
“Okay, push, people,” Jones shouted.
Behind them they heard shouts and gunfire across the hall. Red Two rushed into the room and began pushing the aircar. The intruders had not extended the wheels when they crashed into the building, so they had to push it along on its belly. And it was heavy.
“This is not working, Chief,” one of the guards said. “It is too heavy.”
“Let me see if the counter-grav still works,” Jones said.
He climbed into the car on top of the body of the intruder they had shot. Behind the front seat, the floor was lined with packs of high explosive, wired together. He hit the switch for the counter-grav and the aircar eased off the floor by about six inches.
“Okay, push, people,” he yelled.
In the background,
he heard the firing continue. Red two began pushing the aircar back through the window. Jones could not jump out, as the car would settle itself back to the floor without a driver at the controls. As soon as the aircar cleared the windows, he jumped back across the empty space to the building. He stumbled as he left the aircar and two of the guards pulled him in through the opening.
“Get away from the windows, People,” he ordered. “There is going to be a big bang.”
They scrambled into the hallway and the sky outside lit up with an orange glare. Glass and debris blew through the opening in the wall, knocking everybody down, and the entire building swayed.
Jones quickly pulled himself to his feet. A few moments later one of the Red One team members came into the hallway. Jones saw his mouth move but heard nothing.
“What?”
He dimly heard the other man say, “We got them, Boss. One of them had a Deadman switch.”
“Tell Lesa and the Paladin that we are clear.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“This has got to stop, People, and it must stop right now,” the Paladin yelled. “I can understand that someone has painted a target on me, but we have consistently been behind the curve on defense.”
Arlen Senter seemed to wilt in his chair under the Paladin’s glare. Chaim Lewis maintained an expressionless face. Singman Jones looked disgusted. The three men sat in RWB’s office the morning after the attack. The normal background noise that was the soft shush of the building’s enviro systems was occasionally interrupted by the sound of workers cleaning up the mess from the attack and the blast.
A circular area on the west face of Wilton House spanning about fifteen stories was missing the ceramiplast sheathing from the massive bomb in the aircar. Senter now had an armed drone orbiting the building to provide some additional protection. RWB had viewed the video of the damage that the drone provided. He had been amazed at the amount of damage. Ceramiplast was a tough material.
“These people are like ghosts, Paladin,” Senter stammered. “In some cases, we have managed to track the teams after the fact. This one appeared out of nowhere.”
