Dues of Mortality (14 page)

Unarmed
and thoroughly humiliated, Hobson then got up, using a sleeve to
squeegee his vomit-soaked face. He was grateful that none had gotten
in his eyes, but
thoroughly
outraged
at how
much had spilled into his mouth. He quickly surveyed his
surroundings.
Fuck!
Now this kid,
he
thought.
It was
time for Hobson to cut his losses. Miles Gabriel would be ticked, but
it would be nothing Hobson couldn’t handle. Looking around one
last time, he spotted the blade of his knife poking out from under
the dumpster where the bum had kicked it.
He
ran to it, scooped it up and without losing a step, made tracks for
the nearby maze-work before somebody decided to set up a ticket booth
in the alley.

Disoriented,
Glenda approached
her
knight in rusted armor
and warily knelt by his side.

“
Sir,
are you okay?” she said. He was motionless. She reached beside
him and picked up the soiled baseball cap he'd been wearing before
the fight. “Oh, god, mister, please don’t be dead!”
She then turned to the busboy, who hadn’t so much as dropped
his bag of trash. “You wanna call an ambulance, please—people
are hurt!”

The
boy nodded, fish-mouthed and hightailed it back to the restaurant.

A
series of esophageal drones drooled from the dirty man’s lips.
Glenda leaned closer relieved he was still alive. She had heard
horror stories of people getting killed by a single punch to the
head. And if there was anybody whose luck appeared to be that bad, it
was this guy.

“
Sir,”
she said again.

The
man's eyelids fluttered, struggling to open and his head jostled like
a compass needle.

“
Hey!”
Glenda said, louder this time. “Hey mist...” She
catapulted backward.

The
man’s fist had bounded straight up, brushing her cheek in the
exact spot where the attacker had punched her. He then sat up, to a
sharp ninety-degrees, panting heavily, looking as if he would puke
again. He haphazardly pushed to himself to his feet and stood at the
ready. His eyes darted about frenziedly, anticipating attack.

“
It’s
okay,” Glenda assured him. “He’s gone!” She
tried to paint on a smile that communicated calm. “I guess you
were too much for him.”

The
man stared at her, unresponsive, like a wild animal that happened
upon a nosy human in its natural habitat.

“
Just
take it easy. There’s an ambulance on its way.”

The
man backed away from Glenda.

“
You
don't need to be scared,” she said. She thought again of the
coin-begging bum—
homeless
man—
from
the previous day. “No one is going to hurt you.”

The
dirty man stepped forward, whipped out an arm and snatched his cap
from Glenda's hand. He then turned away from her and tripped twice as
he fled the alley as fast as his watered-down legs would carry him.

Washington, D.C., August 26,
6:57 p.m.

Calvin
Ross's scarred fingers tapped precisely on the map screen's
projection. His ring signifying the 2012 graduating class of Michigan
State University sparkled like a diamond on his left middle finger.
The tracking icon on the advanced FBI-model, fliptop computer had yet
to come to life over the Washington D.C. highways. Ross was still
debating what to do if anything out of the ordinary occurred. His
options were basically one of two. The first was looping the tracking
signal back through the satellites and laying multiple numbers of
false locations on the FBI's map screen. This would leave a van or a
helicopter full of government agents drumming their fists against a
few million dollars’ worth of surveillance equipment. An
old-school trick by today's standards, but still very much worth its
weight in gold. The second, was to simply hit the road at the first
hint of a persistent signal. Of the two options, the latter was the
least desirable. It meant Ross would have a new loose end to contend
with and would put BioCore even further out of reach.
If
it was any place but, Millenitech
, Ross thought,
any
place but BioCore
.

****

In a men's restroom at Union
Station, Trineer passed the dufflebag to Emil Bruckner after putting
his own clothes inside. They’d both changed into the nearly
identical outfits of jeans, t-shirt, baseball jacket and athletic
shoes, Ross had left in a locker for their “convenience”.

“
All
this really necessary?” Bruckner asked, getting edgy.

“
Not
to me,” Trineer answered. “But standard operating
procedure to Elvis. Did you leave everything in your pockets?”

“
Yeah.
Who's Elvis?”

“
Never-mind.
Let's go.”

Bruckner
and Trineer departed the train station about a quarter after seven.
By 7:30, Trineer’s beat-up Hummer, with the bag of clothes and
effects, was left taking up valuable parking space at a greasy spoon
just off the interstate. From there, the two men transferred to a red
Toyota Camry—again compliments of Ross—and proceeded to
their next destination. Any one of Ross’s vehicles had rear-end
cameras that transmitted a picture to Ross’s fliptop, so
tail-enders were not a threat, even if Trineer was a total moron.

Forty
minutes later, the men arrived at the motel. They exited the vehicle
and Bruckner was quick to survey the immediate area. The parking lot
was largely unfettered and there were plenty of potential perches in
direct line-of-sight. It didn't appear there were many patrons, which
allowed for unencumbered access and a low risk of collateral damage.
Bruckner was pleased.

“
There
we are,” Trineer said. He pointed out the designated room
number.
He and
Bruckner approached its door and Trineer knocked out the pattern
sequence. A code lock sounded and they entered anxiously.

From
the far corner of the room, Calvin Ross stood shirtless, with his
back to the two arrivals. He was fiddling with the lamp he’d
unbolted from the nightstand. He’d removed both its LED and the
shade. Trineer assumed he was still exacting his personal grade of
exploratory surgery on the place, as bedbugs had an entirely
different meaning to Ross.

“
You’re
right on time,” Ross said, “for a change.”

“
Amtrak
bullets don’t fuck around,” Trineer said.

“
Have
a seat. I just got out of the tub. There’s some nuts on the
desk if you want.”

An
open cloth sack of assorted nuts lay just inches from a fliptop
computer on the characterless Formica desk across from the single
bed.

“
They
were grown in non-reconstituted soil—completely organic,”
Ross exclaimed. “My family comes from several generations of
farmers. They knew that you never screw around with what you put in
your body...or what comes out of it.”

Trineer
broke out in laughter. “Or what comes out of it! That's funny,
man.”

Bruckner
saw Ross set the lamp down and pick up another object from the
nightstand.

Ross
turned and approached his guests, carrying a finger-sized signal
sweeper and magnetometer.

The
first thing Bruckner thought was that Ross didn't quite look the way
he had imagined. That is to say, he didn't
look
like a terrorist—or for that matter much of a criminal. His
eyes were deep, but casually so. The rest of his face was almost
shockingly
plain
,
average, like an untouched canvas on a painter's easel. His body was
slender and symmetrical and his dark brown hair laid thick and smooth
against Ross's skull. He resembled a young tough from a movie maybe
seventy years old and Trineer's throwing out the name “Elvis”
suddenly made sense. As Ross stood in front of him, Bruckner also
noted that he lacked the scent of freshly rinsed lather so common
after bathing.

“
Just
a precaution,” Ross smiled, holding up his equipment.

Bruckner,
of course, knew better. It was a precaution, but one that served more
to gauge reactions rather than detect listening devices. The sweeper
Ross used looked modified, like something Bruckner had once been
shown by a friend in the CIA. Ross ran it the entire length of their
frames, pausing ominously at Bruckner’s crotch.

Nothing
like threatening a guy’s nut-sack to make him jumpy
,
Bruckner thought. McCutcheon was right to send him in without any
body-ware.

When
he finished his sweep, Ross smacked a glare on Bruckner that would’ve
unnerved a cobra.

“
You
got something for me?” Ross asked.

Bruckner
pulled the slip-disk from his pocket, nice and easy.

Ross
plucked it from his hand like a bird on a bread crumb. That's when
Bruckner noticed Ross's hands—how extensively scarred they
were, like they'd been stitched back together in some places. Did he
have a mishap or two in bomb-making 101?

Ross
went to the corner of the room and dragged out a box that looked like
a space-age footlocker and flipped it open. It was a lead-lined
container with an airtight magnetic lid.

“
Come
on, with this,” Trineer complained.

Ross
shot him a look, no different than a pistol to Trineer's head.

“
What?”
Bruckner inquired.

“
We're
strip-teasing again,” Trineer said. “Just go with it if
you wanna get paid. I swear he enjoys this.”

After,
stripping to their shorts, Trineer's and Bruckner's clothes were
stuffed into the box and its lid sealed tight. Ross then slid the
slip-disk into the side drive of his fliptop. He put a thumb to his
lip as the file displayed itself, out of view of anyone else.

Bruckner
promptly made an effort to appear both curious and naïve, which
wasn’t easy when you were mentally plotting out scenarios to
keep you alive. There was always a tendency to think the bad guy
would develop spontaneous telepathic powers.

“
Everything
cool?” Trineer asked.

“
Fine,”
Ross answered smoothly. “Everything’s fine.”

“
Fine
for you. I've got one of the prettiest camel-toes you've ever seen
waiting for me back in C-Town, but she requires plenty of drinking
and dancing to get her in the mood; know what I mean?”

Ross
pointed to a red dufflebag on the corner of the room's double bed.
“Over there.”

Trineer
opened the bag and pulled out several stacks of fifty and one
hundred-dollar bills. He began counting out his take and didn't have
to get far to know it was short. “Why can't anything ever be
easy? This isn't even half of what it should be, Elvis.”

“
Yeah
how bout that,” Ross replied, scaling up the belligerence. “I
was expecting a six figure advance after we finished up north, but
the interested party reneged after someone literally hand-delivered
the fucking package to some poor sap who shouldn't have even been
there!”

MIT!
Bruckner thought.

“
I
did my job, man!” Trineer proclaimed. “I reconned! It
wasn't my fault!”

“
Abort,”
Ross blared. “Do you know what the word abort means?” He
strode up to Trineer, nostrils smoking like five-alarm fires. “It
means to
kill
!
You were told to
kill
all activity and report to me if
anything out of the ordinary happened! But you didn't do that because
you were too busy worrying about getting paid! You knew you wouldn't
until it was done and you didn't want to wait.” Ross lowered
his voice as if plenty hadn't already been said in the stranger's
presence. “You know, I read some philosophy once that said what
you fear most is what you call into being. That makes you a powerful
creator of your own destiny, Trineer. So congratulations! You were
afraid of not getting paid so much that you actually willed it into
existence.”

Bruckner
thought back to McCutcheon's warning. Could this “interested
party” of Ross's be part of the leak? The thought made him
swoon.
Or maybe even the
source itself!
The biotechs had their share of detractors
in Washington, but to think anyone would use Ross as a weapon against
them.
Sheee-it
.

“
I
don't mean to interrupt,” Bruckner said tepidly. He had to say
something. He was looking too much like a human sponge, standing
there silent in his boxers. “But you've still got all
my
money, don't you?”

“
Yeah
you'll get yours,” Ross answered, not looking at him. Ross then
wandered back to the desk and plopped into its chair. He tickled the
computer's keyboard and looked at Bruckner with eyebrows creased up
the middle. “You're not a bad hacker, Mr. Buttrick.”

“
My
dad did a ten-year stint in Silicon Valley when I was a kid. Used to
read software script to me as a baby.”