Ascendance (25 page)

‘So these are all mine now? That’s cool. Uh, we’ll need to wash the blood off the screens. And maybe we could get a generator or something, to hook up the Box of X?’

He smirked.

Guyuk meant well.

‘But you know what I could really use, G-Man? If I’m gonna actually use these things.’

‘Broadband?’

‘Well, yeah. Totes. But I could really use an intern. You know. A slave or two.’

He clacked his talons together, showing how poorly fashioned they were for controlling human artifacts.

‘Interns will be captured,’ Guyuk promised. ‘But now we must discuss the greater plan. Our advance forces invest the village of the champion and we must deploy in good order to engage him should he step into the lure.’

‘Yeah, yeah, the greater plan. I’m all over that like a cheap Chinese suit. But remember how we were talking about interns. You know who’s a really cool intern. Polly ur Farr’l.’

24

‘H
ey!’

Emmeline jumped as the papers she had been about to hand to Heath disappeared.

‘What the hell?’ the navy captain exclaimed.

‘Sorry,’ Dave said. ‘But I gotta go.’

‘At ease,’ barked Colonel Gries over the small uproar which followed, with everyone talking over and across each other.

‘What the hell is going on, Dave?’ Emmeline asked. ‘Did you just magic away my file?’

‘No,’ Dave answered. ‘Karen’s got it.’

The Russian spy showed no shame as she held the papers aloft for Heath and Ashbury. Igor eased one hand toward his sidearm but remained seated at the table. Chief Allen looked like a spectator at a tennis match, his head snapping back and forth as he followed the ball between the players.

‘This is unacceptable,’ Heath said darkly. ‘Return the classified documents, Colonel Varatchevsky. And don’t do that again. Not unless you’d prefer to deal with Agent Trinder.’

She smiled.

‘I apologise, Captain Heath. No harm meant.’


Emmeline looked ready to start listing all the ways Karen had put herself in harm’s way, but Dave jumped in.

‘Look, we don’t have time for this.’ He pointed at the red list on the whiteboard. ‘Camden Harbor, Maine. Mean anything to you?’

Both the SEAL and the scientist frowned at the board.

‘It’s a small coastal village,’ said Emmeline. ‘A tourist town in New England, I think. Maybe some fishing too. Why?’

‘My family,’ Dave said. ‘My boys,’ he clarified. He was forever clarifying Annie out of what he considered to be his family. ‘They’re up there. So, what? You didn’t know that?’

The scepticism leaching out of his voice could have burned a hole in the hardwood floor.

‘No,’ said Emmeline.

‘No,’ Heath added. ‘That was . . .’ He paused. ‘That was Compton’s responsibility.’

‘Fuck,’ Dave spat. ‘Why? Aren’t you doing his job now?’

He was glaring at Emmeline.

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ She laughed. Not a real laugh. Just a short, sharp bark. ‘Have you been paying attention? We’ve been a little busy, Hooper. The background check on you was an administrative detail. And Compton, God rest his nit-picking soul, was all about the administrivia. Not Michael or me. Compton. The location of the post office box you neglect to mail your alimony to every month really wasn’t our concern.’

‘Maybe it should have been,’ Dave suggested acerbically.

‘And maybe you should have paid your fucking alimony,’ said Emmeline, the colour in her cheeks rising fiercely.

Fuck that
. Dave’s stomach turned over and burned with the bitter acid of resentment. He paid most of his alimony. When he could afford to. He threw a despairing glance at Karen. She seemed to be the only person in the room who’d clued into how serious this was. Gries’s men and women were obviously aware of the confrontation, but doing their best to ignore it and get on with their work.

‘Okay. So Compton ran a standard background check on Hooper,’ Karen said, throwing her hands up like a cop walking into a fight over a parking spot. ‘Trinder probably ran a deeper one. And your lawyer, the hobbit . . .’

‘Boylan,’ Dave said.

‘Yes, he would have too. Millions of people will have been running checks on you, Hooper. There’s no reason for you to presume malign intent because it was Compton. Or because Heath and Ashbury left that to him. It was his job.’

Dave felt his head beginning to swell like a hot air balloon. He’d been looking to Karen to support him, but this was a piss-poor excuse for support.

‘But it’s Compton,’ he protested. ‘He hated me before he turned into a fucking daemon, and now he knows where my kids are. That’s why Camden’s on that list, Karen. He knows where they live.’

‘Maybe,’ she conceded, then seemed to consider it. ‘Probably.’

‘Dave,’ said Emmeline, her voice changed, dragging his attention back onto her. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. We should have known. I should have known and
. . .
’

She was blushing now, but not with anger. Dave waved away her self-reproach, a triumph for Grown-up Dave over Asshole Dave.

‘I’m sorry, Em,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Wasn’t your fault. Let’s blame Compton. I’m good with that.’

The military personnel were grim-faced: Heath thin-lipped, Zach looking a little ill. Even Igor appeared concerned at some level. He wasn’t braced, ready to drop into a shooter’s stance anymore, but he was frowning mightily.

‘Still, I gotta go,’ Dave said again. ‘I gotta get up there. You know that, right?’

He was talking to Heath and Emmeline, not certain which of them was the boss now. Karen watched the SEAL, looking into the man’s eyes, her own mind unreadable. But she was reading him, for sure.

Dave wished he could borrow that ability from her, the way she seemed able to steal his warp facility from him. But that was a one-way street. He could only guess at what Heath and Emmeline were thinking. He couldn’t know, unlike her.

‘I don’t need you here for this,’ Heath said at last, twirling a hand to take in the Armoury.

‘But we’ll need to know where you are and what you’re doing,’ Emmeline added. ‘We need to know we can call on you if we have to.’

Dave almost said, ‘You sound like my wife’, but wisely kept that thought to himself.

‘I got a phone,’ he offered instead, remembering the new iPhones he and Karen had secured from the store at Central. He fumbled it out of a pocket, almost dropping it. ‘It’s not bent,’ he said to Karen.

Heath shook his head.

‘You can’t rely on the cell networks. Chief Gaddis?’

Igor pulled the Iridium phone out and tossed it to Dave who caught it with ease. ‘Know how to work that?’

‘Used them in my job from time to time,’ Dave said.

‘We have a batch of pre-set numbers in there
–
one of them will be my phone,’ Zach said.

‘How are you going to get up there?’ Emmeline asked.

Before he could answer, Karen had spoken over him.

‘You can’t warp. Not that far, not for that long. If you made it at all, and I doubt you would, you’d be drained when you got there. We both would be.’

‘So you’re coming with me?’

‘Sure,’ said Karen Warat. That was all she said, but there was a whole world of meaning behind that one word. He knew to be wary of Varatchevsky. He knew Trinder was probably right about her. But Warat? Dave thought he could trust that woman. She seemed to have an understanding of things that wasn’t necessarily prescribed for her by some controller in Moscow or the GRU or whatever.

He tried to not think on it. It was an uncomfortable experience knowing that she knew his mind as he did, possibly even better. She wouldn’t be subject to the lies and evasions with which Dave habitually faced the world. He flicked a glance at her, guiltily, as though he’d been caught imagining her undressed.

And then, of course, he did do just that, and he blushed.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’

‘You won’t even get out of the city,’ Zach warned, unaware of the unspoken exchange between them. ‘Bridges and tunnels are jammed solid. Some of them are free-fire zones.’

‘How did you get here, Captain Heath?’ Karen asked, choosing to ignore Dave for the moment.

‘By Osprey, landing on the deck of the USS
Intrepid
about four hours ago, Colonel,’ Heath said. He pointed at the collapsing perimeter screen. ‘I’m afraid we no longer hold that LZ and I’m not sure I want to chance Madison Square Garden.’

‘It’s the only aircraft with the range,’ she said.

‘You presume a great deal.’

‘Well, you could find us an aircraft, or Hooper could call up a news station. Network or affiliate. It wouldn’t matter. You know they’d all send a chopper. For him.’

‘Oh, checkmate,’ said Dave. ‘You’re even better than Boylan.’

‘No,’ Karen said. ‘From what I know of Boylan he would have got the chopper and a development deal with all the merchandising rights.’

Heath rubbed both hands on his face. Dave distinctly heard the rasping sound of a five o’clock shadow.

‘Michael, you have to let them go,’ Emmeline said. ‘It’s his children. He’s going to go anyway. You know that. Send Igor and Zach with him. Two more guns won’t make a difference here, but they might up there.’

Heath checked his watch. Half an hour until he had to brief the NSC. His face was sombre and his voice flat when he spoke to Dave.

‘Do you know they’re alive? I have to ask.’

A hot wind blew through Dave. The muscles in his jaw bunched as he ground his teeth together. What the fuck was Heath . . .

He felt a cool hand on the back of his neck.

‘Chill out,’ said Karen and all of the heat and pressure seemed to drain from his head as though she’d pulled a plug. He shrugged off her soothing touch.

‘I said don’t do that to me, Karen.’

‘You say a lot of stupid things, Hooper. This situation isn’t helped by you letting the little cartoon angry man inside your brain run around Hulk-smashing everything. The captain is offering to help. Take his offer. It’s the best you’ll get tonight.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ Heath said, looking a little puzzled by her. He’d obviously seen the effect she’d had on Dave, deflating the worst of his temper with a simple word and a light touch. Perhaps he’d also been briefed about the effect she’d had on those cops and firefighters she’d pushed at 530 Park Avenue.

Pushed them all the way into their fucking graves, thought Dave, not caring if she could read that too. The head of steam he’d been building up had dissipated as soon as Karen had laid those cool fingers on him, but he was not about to just chill the fuck out and let things be.

Merely irritated now, rather than dangerously enraged,
he set the satellite phone down on the table, unlocked the iPhone
and entered the number for Pat O’Halloran’s house, surprising himself by recalling it with ease. But of course he could recall almost anything with ease these days. Even things he’d never known.

Nobody spoke. He had two bars of reception. It should have been enough, but after half a minute or so the attempt to connect dropped out. Dave frowned, trying again.

‘The civilian cell phone net is not reliable,’ Emmeline said gently. ‘It’s not even the Horde taking down towers and relays. It’s just 300 million people trying to call at once.’

‘I’ll keep trying,’ Dave said, putting the phone away for now. ‘I still have to go.’

‘I know,’ Heath conceded. ‘I would ask that you take Zach and Igor, as Emmeline suggested. They’ll liaise with any military assets we need to call on.’

‘And keep an eye on me.’

‘In your dreams,’ Igor muttered.

‘You cool with this?’ Dave asked him.

‘Ours is but to do and die,’ the big SEAL answered in a slightly louder voice.

‘Zach?’

‘Somebody’s got to carry your chocolate bars, man.’

‘I’ll try to get you some usable intelligence on the situation in Camden,’ said Emmeline. ‘I’ll need those new phone numbers of yours.’

Karen grinned. A sardonic expression at best.

‘You’ll need Dave’s number. Not mine.’

‘Oh whatever,’ said Emmeline, rolling her eyes toward Heath. ‘Remind me to ask the NSA for her cell number, bra size and credit card details later.’


‘Ladies,’ Heath sighed. ‘Please. Colonel Gries, are you in contact with the
Iwo Jima
?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is spotty but I am in contact with them.’

‘Ask them to task an MV-22 Osprey urgent to . . .’ Heath looked at the map. ‘The roof of this armoury?’

‘Very bad idea,’ Gries said. ‘Worse than Madison. Your best bet would be the cleared area by the United Nations Building. Large enough to handle the Osprey plus they have a perimeter that is, for the moment, holding.’

Dave and Karen looked at each other, then at Zach and Igor.

‘Piggyback,’ she said. ‘Just like you did with Captain Heath.’

‘What?’ Dave said, a little stupidly.

‘You do that a lot,’ Karen said. ‘Contrary to what you think it is not very cute or charming.’

‘I suppose I get to carry Igor then,’ Dave said.

Igor broke into a huge smile. ‘I am always on top.’

‘Dude,’ Zach said. ‘I am really cool with not knowing.’

‘And you get to ride the sexy Russian colonel,’ Igor said.

‘Gentlemen, how about just a little fucking decorum here,’ Heath said, his own well of patience upon the edge of depletion.

‘Yes, sir,’ Igor said. ‘Of course, sir.’

‘Okay,’ said Heath. ‘Chiefs, the Osprey will have food, ammo and a Growler onboard if you need it. Make sure these two keep fuelling up until you get there. As for you, Colonel,’ he said, addressing Karen directly, ‘I’m putting a good deal of faith in you. Ordinarily I’d use whatever force necessary to detain you for the federal authorities. There is still a warrant out for your arrest, you understand.’

Dave scoffed at the suggestion of detaining her.

Karen might have shrugged, or she might merely have been rolling her shoulder to settle her katana into its scabbard.

‘And ordinarily I’d use whatever force necessary to evade your authorities, Captain. But we passed through the looking glass a while ago, I think. Nothing is ordinary anymore, is it?’

Emmeline interposed herself into the exchange.

‘No, Colonel,’ she said. ‘But be aware that our priorities are not universally shared. Agent Trinder and the Office of Special Clearances are not much interested in having you running loose. Nor the FBI. Pretty much any local law enforcement you encounter will try to detain you if they realise who you are. We would prefer you let our men handle any such difficulty.’

Zach gave Karen his stone face, Igor smiled.

‘We’re well-known charmers,’ said the bigger man.

‘I promise,’ Karen sighed theatrically. ‘No killing the anonymous extras. Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said Emmeline. ‘It would assist us greatly in not being arrested and eventually jailed for aiding and abetting the escape of a foreign intelligence agent, if you didn’t use this opportunity to escape.’

Heath threw his hands up to forestall the point Karen was about to make.