Oracle

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Roger that,” said Mendoza.

  “Change of orders,” said Frey. “I no longer want you and your team to secure the prisoners for our arrival. Instead, I want them dead. All of them. The new hostiles on the scene, and especially Anna Abbott. She’s much too lucky for her own good. So no more playing with fire.”

  “You’re aware that this will double our fee.”

  “Done,” said Frey. “Can you wipe them out? Even if they have a force considerably larger than yours?”

  “Uncertain. We have enough explosive power to turn the warehouse and vicinity into slag. But your men are right there, so we’ll have to try something else.”

  “No, Lieutenant, do what you have to do. My men are expendable.”

  Mendoza’s eyes narrowed and he glanced around him and in his rearview mirror to gauge the reaction of his comrades, whose comms were also picking up the call. If Frey was willing to waste the team already at the warehouse without a second thought, he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to them. It was certainly food for thought.

  “Lieutenant?” repeated Frey. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you loud and clear,” replied Mendoza. He blew out a long breath. “And we’ll do as you request. The area will be wiped clean of life within ten minutes.”

  ***

  Anna broke off the discussion with her alien companion as a war erupted outside. First there had been a police warning, amplified by a megaphone, which could barely be heard inside the warehouse. This had soon been followed by prolonged bursts of pistol and machine-gun fire all around, a horrifying cacophony that easily penetrated the thick steel walls.

  She suddenly felt ill.

  “What’s wrong, Anna?” said Vega worriedly. “Isn’t this the Cavalry?”

  “Yes, but they’re also my friends,” she replied anxiously. “They should have enough of an advantage to come through this okay, but there’s always a risk.”

  “What does your intuition say?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” she said unhappily. “No signal at all. Maybe I overtaxed it and it’s decided to take a rest,” she added with a weak smile.

  Anna gasped as the west door suddenly burst open and three of DeShawn Young’s comrades rushed inside. They slammed the door closed behind them and looked to where the prisoners had been tied to chairs, shocked to see nothing but the unconscious form of their boss instead.

  Anna fired as the men dived for cover behind a pallet of stuffed canvas bags. She hit one hostile in the chest before he reached safety, but the other two made it unscathed.

  The detective continued firing, purposely hitting several bags of cocaine, which exploded, belching huge clouds of white powder into the air, momentarily blocking the view of their adversaries. She continued shooting while leading Vega to the long banquet table nearby, pushing it over and dropping behind the newly formed steel wall for cover. But just before Vega ducked down behind this barricade, the man Anna had shot managed to squeeze the trigger on his machine gun, sending a poorly aimed curtain of fire their way with his last breath, and one stray bullet nicked the alien’s lower forearm. A trickle of neon green blood began to seep from the superficial injury. Anna removed the loose gauze bandage from her wrist and handed it to the alien to use on his wound.

  The detective cursed her precognition-fueled intuition for abandoning her completely. How had it failed to give her any warning of what had just happened? Talk about letting her down. Her newfound clairvoyance was as fickle as one of Vega’s portals.

  And she cursed herself, as well. She had already let this newfound power become a crutch. She should have known—consciously—that if the cops did their job, DeShawn’s men would have nowhere to run but inside the warehouse. And no other option but to turn this into a hostage negotiation.

  Another curtain of fire swept across the upended steel tabletop, which was now thoroughly decorated by pockmarks. “Cease fire!” screamed Anna as loudly as she could. “Your only chance is to take us hostage! Killing us doesn’t help you!”

  The firing tailed off and then stopped as these words registered. “Does that mean you’re surrendering?” said a deep voice. “Good choice,” he added. “That table won’t save you forever.”

  “How about this,” called out Anna, no longer needing to shout, “I won’t press charges for kidnapping. I’ll see to it that you walk. All I ask is that you tell my fellow officers how Neil Marshall framed me.”

  “No deal!” said the same man who had spoken earlier. “Marshall will skin us alive!”

  Anna was about to say, “Not if he’s in prison,” but even her old-fashioned, non-clairvoyant intuition told her that this would fall on deaf ears.

  She handed Vega the closed switchblade she had taken from DeShawn Young and put her lips to his ear. “The instant they tell me to drop my gun,” she whispered hurriedly, “throw this ten feet to your right.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, okay,” said Anna out loud. “I’ll surrender. But you have to promise not to kill me when you’re done using me as a hostage.”

  “Done.”

  Anna rose from behind the table with her hands in the air, still clutching the gun. The two men tentatively came out from behind the eight-foot wall of cocaine, machine guns pointing her way. They inched closer, never taking their eyes from her right hand.

  “What about Vega?” asked the shorter of the two men.

  “He’s been hit. And you know he’s harmless, anyway. But if he pops up from behind the table, kill him.”

  This seemed to satisfy the two hostiles. “Drop the gun, Detective!” barked the shorter of the two.

  Upon hearing these words, Vega flung the switchblade to his right, as instructed. It crashed down onto the concrete floor about fifteen feet to the hostiles’ left with a sharp crack, and both men reflexively turned toward the sound.

  Anticipating this moment, Anna moved instantly, firing a bullet into each man’s thigh in a blur of motion, and then ducking back down behind the table. Both men collapsed to the floor, moaning in pain.

  “My offer still stands!” she shouted. “Testify, and I’ll see to it that you walk.”

  Before they could answer, Donovan Perez rushed through the west door with four other armed policeman in tow. “Freeze!” he shouted at the two men, who were now trying to staunch the flow of blood from their matching wounds.

  One of the uniformed cops disarmed them while Anna rose up from behind the table once again. She made a show of dropping her gun to the ground and raising her hands. “Hello, Captain Perez,” she said cheerfully. “Glad you could make it.”

  He nodded and then turned to another man beside him. “Go outside and sound the all clear,” he ordered. “Get a medic in here to attend to these two men, and call for an ambulance. Confirm that all teams are in place to ambush any possible incoming reinforcements.”

  Suddenly, Anna’s intuition came to life once again, giving her its usual, vague instructions without explanation. It would have been nice if her gut had given her a warning when the three men had stormed their castle, but better late than never, she supposed.

  “Captain Perez,” she said urgently, “I need you to also have your men trigger the sirens on three of the cars. Immediately.”

  “Why would I do that? If additional hostiles are on the way, as you suggested on the phone, why advertise our presence?”

  “They’ll know you’re here, anyway,” said Anna. “Please! You’ve trusted me this far. I’m asking you to trust me one last time.”

  34

  “The explosives are primed and ready,” reported Lieutenant Carl Mendoza. “We’re using missiles and multiple drones. Each is loaded with C99, an experimental explosive we’ve gotten our hands on that is many times more powerful than C4. We’ve entered precise GPS coordinates that should ensure an even spread.”

  “Are you within sight of the warehouse?” asked Frey.

  “Negative. We stopped about a hundred yards away, with a woods between us and
the target. We don’t want to chance being seen and tipping them off. Would you like us to launch now, or should we await your arrival?”

  “Launch immediately!” insisted Frey.

  “Roger that,” said Mendoza. “Launching now.” He reached for a launch button icon on his touchscreen computer and heard a faint wail off in the distance, coming from the direction of the warehouse. He jerked his hand away at the last second as he recognized the sound.

  It was a siren. Multiple sirens.

  Police sirens.

  “I’ve paused the launch,” he reported to Frey. “Why are we suddenly hearing police sirens at the site? Was it the cops who attacked your men?”

  “I have no idea,” snapped Frey. “What does it matter?”

  “What does it matter?” repeated Mendoza in disbelief. “It matters a lot. I was under the impression that this was a turf war between drug lords. To use this kind of explosive power on US soil to kill rival criminal gangs is dodgy enough. But using it to kill cops? Are you out of your mind? This is where we draw the line. Besides, kill this many cops and no precinct in the state will rest until they have all of our heads on a spike.”

  “I’ll triple your pay,” said Frey.

  Before Mendoza could answer, two stealth military helicopters streaked by overhead, eerily noiseless in operation, and began to settle down over the warehouse grounds.

  “What the hell is going on at that warehouse?” demanded the mercenary leader. “Because the military just joined in on the fun. Probably Black Ops. What aren’t you telling us, Shane?”

  “I don’t know why they’re here,” said Frey, “but cops will burn just like everyone else. And so will soldiers. Launch your explosives now, and I’ll pay you and your men six times your normal rate.”

  Mendoza snorted, having no need to check with his team. “I’m afraid that’s a negative,” he said. “Not for all the money in the world. The police and military, both?” He shook his head in disbelief. “If only there were little kids on site, we could have pulled off a no-way-in-hell trifecta.”

  ***

  Shanifrey Doe screamed a curse, while the other three Tartarians in the car tried to blend into the woodwork so as not to become the focus of their boss’s ire. “Turn the car around!” he ordered Eldamir Kor, now his second-in-command. “She did it again. She escaped what should have been certain death.”

  Eldamir banked to the right to take the next off ramp. “She’s been good,” he said, “but she’s also been lucky. If our mercs hadn’t happened to hear those police sirens at the last second, which she had nothing to do with, she’d be toast.”

  “But they did hear them,” said Shanifrey in disgust. “Events seem to have a way of working out in her favor. Perhaps the Vorians are on to something with this Oracle nonsense. The empirical evidence is building, which means that she’s more of a priority than ever.”

  The commander fumed. “And these mercenary hires turned out to be worthless. They seem to have a lot more lines they won’t cross than was apparent during our negotiations.”

  Shanifrey thought about this further. Maybe it had been a mistake not to use their Human Control Serum on the mercenary leader. If they had, the site would be rubble by now, and Anna Abbott would be dead. But they were down to their last dose, and were too busy to devote the many hours needed to make more. They were saving this dose for a rainy day, for more important uses.

  But even though the detective had eluded them again, Shanifrey forced himself to look on the bright side. Despite the repeated blows they had been dealt over the past twelve hours, things were looking up. He had received an important call on his internal comm from Bulgaria just the night before. Their portal had reappeared briefly, bigger than ever, and alert soldiers on Tartar had managed to send over six hundred of his people through. Soon, Shanifrey would have the resources he needed to make more HCS, as painstaking as this was.

  And to accomplish so much more, as well.

  They had suffered some severe reversals of late, but the Tartarian commander had no doubt that their long-term prospects were better than ever—Anna Abbott or no Anna Abbott.

  35

  Stephen Redford’s pulse quickened as the helicopter he was in landed near an array of police sedans and SUVs spread out along a warehouse parking lot. Seconds later a matching helicopter set down beside his.

  Dressed in civilian clothing, he had rushed to LA the night before to take over the Camden International Hotel case and do damage control. He had questioned hotel personnel, examined forensic evidence, and helped his people sneak two alien bodies back to Evie headquarters in refrigerated containers.

  And he had found what he was looking for, a solid lead, one that he was desperate to follow up on. A lead by the name of Anna Abbott.

  Footage had shown this woman calling down to room service and then riding the elevator to the ninth floor shortly before all hell had broken loose. But there was no footage of her riding the elevator back down, which meant she had likely taken the stairs.

  The Camden International Hotel catered to a wealthy clientele who expected the utmost in privacy, and so cameras were relegated to the lobby and elevators, period. Redford would have given his last dollar for a room or hallway camera, but this was not to be.

  Still, this woman’s behavior was more than suspicious enough for him to do further digging. Redford had sent one of his people to wake the poor sap who had taken the room service call near the end of his shift, and he had recounted the conversation he had had with this suspect.

  Apparently, she had tricked the young employee into revealing the room number of a man named Tom Vega. A man staying in room 925, the very room in which all the alien blood had been spilled. In the next room over, a married couple had been found with their throats slit, and numerous bullet holes had been punched through the wall between the two rooms.

  Nessie had checked the footage until she found an image of Vega checking in, but even she hadn’t been able to learn anything about him. Vega wasn’t his real name, and he was a ghost, not leaving a single electronic fingerprint anywhere. There was off the grid, and there was this—so far off the grid that even the NSA’s AI, the most impressive on Earth, couldn’t find any evidence of his existence, despite having access to the most impressive collection of data in history. To Redford’s knowledge, Nessie had never come up this empty before.

  Redford hadn’t arrived back at Los Angeles Air Force Base until almost two in the morning, and by that time he could barely keep his eyes open. So he had set an alarm that would give him five hours of sleep. He had then instructed Nessie to do three things: Prepare a comprehensive report on the life and times of Detective Anna Abbott for him to read in the morning. Scan through the footage of every street and store camera in a five-hundred-mile radius, looking for any sign of this detective or Tom Vega, and use any and all other methods at her disposal to find them. And finally, to awaken him if there were any events that she believed warranted his attention.

  Sure enough, less than three and a half hours later, Nessie had awakened him with an alert. The detective had become the subject of an All-Points Bulletin, nationwide, and police captain Donovan Perez was rushing a veritable army to apprehend her at an abandoned warehouse a forty-minute drive away.

  While Perez had a big head start and was moving fast, the colonel had seen to it that two NG 225 helicopters were on standby at the base, and managed to arrive at the warehouse only a few minutes after the police captain.

  Redford exited the chopper and surveyed the warehouse and vicinity, which was a beehive of activity. He tried to concentrate, but police sirens were blaring all around him, penetrating his skull like a dentist’s drill.

  What idiots, he thought. What was the point of sirens? The site was secured, so why would they want to draw attention to themselves? And how in the world had this crew found Anna Abbott before Nessie had?

  Redford ordered the four commandos and two helo pilots who had arrived with him to stay where they
were, marched to the warehouse, and entered. Inside there was a maelstrom of activity. Banks of lights had been brought in to make the large space bright as day. White powder had settled onto the floor and around a wood pallet containing a number of exploded canvas bags, no doubt filled with cocaine. Police were cataloging endless shell casings, and the body of a man, shot through the heart, was lying in his own blood.

  The rest of the room was decorated by a pockmarked steel table, lying on its side, machine guns, an unopened switchblade, and at least a dozen people milling about.

  And in the center of it all, Anna Abbott, in handcuffs. Along with the mysterious ghost known only as Thomas Vega, unrestrained. Captain Perez was to her left, along with a second man he didn’t recognize.

  “Nessie,” he said subvocally, “who is the man next to Perez?”

  The colonel had perfected this silent form of communication with Nessie, using sensors in his throat that converted subvocal impulses into words, which were then transmitted to the AI.

  “Lieutenant Cole Boyer,” said Nessie through the comm embedded in his ear. “Perez’s number two man. Texts and calls between him and Detective Abbott suggest that they’re friends, but not romantically involved.”

  Satisfied, the colonel made his way over to the foursome, which included the two people he most wanted to speak with in all the world.

  “Can I help you?” said Perez irritably as Redford approached, clearly annoyed by his intrusion.

  “I doubt it,” snapped the colonel. “You’ve shown no ability to follow orders so far.”

  Perez did a double-take. “Look, asshole,” he hissed, “I don’t know who you are, but you’d better have a very good reason for being here.”

  “I’m Colonel Stephen Redford. I’m the one behind the order you got to back off the Camden International case. So what about that order didn’t you understand?”