Bzrk Apocalypse (9 page)

Green? Good grief, sounds like a golf course.”

“I’ve never been there.”

Tanner nodded. “Know anyone who’s ever been there?”

Suarez shrugged. “I imagine a lot of the support people have.

Must have been to handle construction.”

Tanner shook his head, and watched her. “No. In fact, the crews

have been kept almost entirely separate. There’s very little crossover.

There’s Cathexis Base and its people, and there’s Forward Green and

its people.”

Suarez looked at him expectantly, waiting for some kind of clue.

When all he did was look back at her, she said, “So?”

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“So, it’s odd.”

“Okay.”

He was an experienced interrogator and had mastered the trick

of waiting. But Suarez had nothing to offer, so all she could do was

wait as well.

He nodded as if he’d satisfied himself on some point, then leaned

forward on his elbows. “Anyone at Cathexis ever suggest you might

want to try piloting a new kind of hovercraft? Something faster?”

“Well, the navy already has—”

“I’m not talking about a piece of navy equipment.”

“Then what
are
you talking about, because I’m tired, I need sleep,

and before that I need a drink.” She was bouncing one leg, a habit

when she was impatient.

He opened his laptop, hit a few keys, then turned it so she could

see. “The video is just seven seconds long.”

The film was obviously taken from a great distance. It shook and

wobbled. What it showed, or seemed to show, was a sleek, low-slung

object shooting across the ice.

“Do you recognize that?”

“Do I recognize what? Something going zoom across the ice?”

He laughed. “We did a bit of enhancement and a bit of informed

speculation, and the best guess from Langley is that it’s a hovercraft,

quite small, so not designed for cargo. There appears to be a bubble

canopy large enough for one, possibly two people. Speed in excess of

a hundred and twenty knots. And it appears to be armed.”

“Armed?” That stopped the bouncing of her leg.

“Mmm. Armed. With a type of Russian missile, essentially an

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MICHAEL GRANT

antitank weapon, although obviously it would work even better

against a tractor or a Sno-Cat or a shelter.”

The thing that came to her mind was obvious and a bit stupid.

But she said it, anyway. “Weapons are forbidden on the ice. Nothing

beyond a couple of handguns for the security people.”

“Yes.”

“Why would somebody need missiles? On some souped-up hov-

ercraft?”

“That’s the question,” Tanner agreed. “Why would they? Specu-

late, Suarez.”

She pushed back, tilting the hind legs of her chair. “If it’s as fast as

you say, it would be tough to hit from the air. White on white, going

one hundred twenty knots? You’d see a hell of an infrared signature,

so if you went after it in an Apache you could use the thirty mil, but

an Apache’s top speed is one hundred fifty knots, so you don’t have

much of an edge in speed.”

“I knew a good pilot like yourself would see it all clearly,” Tanner

said. “A pilot with SEAL training, and right here close at hand. Let’s

have that drink, Suarez.”

She hefted a bottle, unwound the capsule, and poured into paper

cups. “Am I going to need it?”

“Lieutenant Imelda Suarez, I am informing you that pursuant

to a special directive of the Department of Defense, you are hereby

returned to active duty.”

“Whether I like it or not?”

Tanner raised his cup. “Cheers.”

Sailing in the San Francisco Bay in blustery weather, Francis Janklow,

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the CEO of Janklow/MediStat, was not as happy as he should have

been. He loved his boat in the abstract, but now that he’d bought the

damned thing for two million dollars he felt as if he had to use it.

But the truth was, he was just not that crazy about sailing. Especially

when the wind was up so that he was constantly drenched by a spray

that ranged from cooling mist to fire hose.

His guests seemed to be having a good time, though. These were

a senior state senator and the senator’s much younger “assistant,” a

rival CEO, a supposed painter whom Janklow’s wife was sponsoring,

and of course Janklow’s wife.

The boat had been his wife’s idea. According to her, you could

not own a waterfront property on Belvedere Island and not also own

a boat of some sort, and after all Janklow had sailed as a youth.

And yet, Janklow thought glumly even as he affected many a grin

in the face of the elements, he would much rather have been home

with a spreadsheet on his screen and a scotch in his hand. Instead he

was at the wheel, yelling instructions to the kid, Antonio, who some-

times crewed for a day.

And also seeing things. Definitely seeing things. He frowned and

peered off toward the Golden Gate, open water ahead, trying to figure

out just what he was seeing.

“I think I’m seeing things,” Janklow said. He forced a laugh. No

one heard either the remark or the laugh.

No one heard him say that it was as if a window . . . no, two win-

dows . . . had opened in his head.

Antonio saw him stagger back from the wheel and raced back to

take over.

“You okay, Mr. J.?”

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MICHAEL GRANT

“I’m . . . Nah. Nah. Yeah. Oh, shit.”

And then suddenly Janklow was racing up the mast, hand over

hand, like a much younger man.

Everyone saw this. The state senator’s assistant yelled something

and pointed. All eyes turned to look at Janklow, now thirty feet up,

his sparse hair flowing in a wind that was too strong for those below

to make much sense of what sounded a lot like disconnected, wild

ranting.

And then Janklow fell. Although it looked very much as if he

actually leapt.

He plunged straight down into the sea.

Pandemonium. All the passengers jumped up and began yelling

to Antonio to
turn the boat around, turn the boat around
.

But sailboats are not so easy to turn around when under wind

power. So first Antonio—without help—had to lower the sail and

start the engine. Only then, a quarter mile away from Janklow, could

they turn back and effect a rescue.

Janklow could be seen. He was in the water, waving his hands

wildly, but more as if he was a little kid splashing in the tub.

As the boat drew up alongside, the state senator had the presence

of mind to throw a life vest to Janklow, while his wife berated him for

being so careless.

But Janklow just laughed; a wild, manic sound that sent chills

up his wife’s spine. And then, pushing himself along the side of the

boat and refusing all proffered hands, Janklow went to the stern, dove

down, and came up with his face shoved straight into the churning

propeller.

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It would be listed as an accidental death, not a suicide.

“I’m looking at the spreadsheet right now,” Lystra Reid said. She had

a phone propped against her ear and a pad open before her. Tiburon

police officers and California Highway Patrol detectives were milling

around the marina of the Tiburon Yacht Club. They had taken state-

ments from everyone on the Janklow boat. Lystra had little enough to

say, and none of it useful, and the detectives had let her go.

But rather than take off immediately, Lystra savored a bourbon

rocks and split her attention between the mild chaos of the investiga-

tion and the neat order of her spreadsheets.

“Yes, I am very much aware of some of my off-book expenses,

and no, I won’t enlighten you further, Tom. One of the reasons I don’t

take the company public, yeah, yeah, is because I like to spend my

money without being second-guessed. It is, after all, mine.”

At the age of nine, Lystra had been sent away. Her father had

finally decided that he could not raise her properly. His own busi-

ness was falling on hard times; the carnival business was fading fast.

Her father’s act—he was a trick shooter and put on an impressive if

threadbare show with guns, knives, and hatchets—no longer drew

enough of a paying crowd for the carny life to make much sense.

He’d sat her down and explained it all to her. She would be going

to a good, decent family that would raise her properly, with school,

and friends, and all of that.

“You won’t be my dad anymore?” She hadn’t cried. She’d felt sick

with betrayal, but she hadn’t cried.

Her father, his lined face half hidden in the gloom of the

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MICHAEL GRANT

Louisiana dusk, had said, “I won’t be with you. I won’t be seeing you,

I . . . I have to find some way to make a living. But listen to me, Lystra.

Listen to me. You’re a very smart kid. And better than smart, you’re

determined. You’ll do fine. And if you ever need me, really need me,

life-and-death need, I’ll be there.”

“What about Mom? Is she dead?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She knew he was lying. She couldn’t recall the exact moment

when it dawned on her that her father had killed her mother. But once

the idea
had
dawned, certainty soon followed.

Her mother had been a bit of a party girl. That was the nicest way

to put it. Lystra’s mother liked a good time, and she had not found it

in the life her husband gave her. She’d looked for comfort elsewhere.

In booze, in drugs, in sex.

“I know,”
Lystra had said. Nothing else. Just those two words.

Her father had said nothing. The two of them just sat there on the

broken-down lawn chairs. Then her father had poured two fingers of

bourbon into a paper cup and handed it to her.

God, it had burned her throat, but she had swallowed it and not

made a sound.

“Bad things happen in this life,” he had said at last.

Lystra had held out her paper cup and said, “More.”

He shook his head. “That taste was enough. You’re still a kid.”

“You killed my mother. Now you’re dumping me. Okay. That’s all

done. Yeah. Maybe I’ll never see you again.”

“Maybe.”

“But if I do, you’ll do whatever I ask you to do.”

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“Will I?” He’d seemed almost amused, but seeing the look in her

eyes he had flinched, looked down, and finally poured her a second

drink. “I will,” he had said, and there was a sacredness to that vow.

Lystra went to live with a very nice, childless family by the name

of Reid, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She got straight As in school while barely

bothering to crack a book. She wasn’t just a smart kid; she was bril-

liant. A cold, emotionally distant, friendless-but-never-bullied kid.

But at age fourteen things began to change. Not her grades, those

stayed top-notch. But at about that time Lystra began to talk to her

long-distant father again. He would speak to her when she was walk-

ing through the corridors at school. He would speak to her as she sat

in the Baptist church and listened to the sermon. Her lip would curl

when she heard him. Her eyes would focus with inhuman intensity

on the back of a man’s neck until by sheer force of will she could make

him turn around, uncomfortable, only to become confused when the

danger he sensed turned out to be just a young girl.

Her father’s voice spoke to her. And other voices as well. Angels,

sometimes, though not the better sort of angel. And the voice of a girl

with the odd name of Scowler.

She never told anyone about the voices; they had universally

warned her not to.
Yeah, don’t tell anyone we’re here, they’ll lock you

up. Yeah.

Then both her adoptive parents had died in a car accident. The

particulars of the accident raised eyebrows but elicited sympathy. Lys-

tra had been sixteen at that point, just learning to drive. And despite

the fact that Lystra had played various online driving games for years,

she panicked while driving the real thing. She had not realized the

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MICHAEL GRANT

car was in reverse. She did not notice that her parents were standing

behind her, down at the bottom of the long driveway.

The police questioned her for a long time. The detectives could

not quite square her story of intending to pull the car forward slowly

into the open garage with the fact that the car had been in reverse and

had shot at surprisingly high speed the sixty-seven feet between the

rear bumper and the two Reids.

“When I realized it was in reverse, it was too late, yeah. I saw what

was about to happen, and I knew what to do, but instead of hitting the

brake I accidentally hit the gas pedal.”

“And then?”

“I felt the impact, and my only thought was that I should pull the

car forward. Yeah. Undo my mistake.”

“Right. And in the process you ran over both of your parents

again. That’s your story. You’re sticking to that?”

“How can I do otherwise? It’s the truth.”

No, they had not believed her. No one believed her. People who

knew Lystra Ellen Alice Reid scoffed at the notion that she had pan-