Greenshift (23 page)

Ben clicked an all-go signal to
his team through his reporter before he and David dropped over the side of the
wall. Their boots smashed into a bed of calla lilies with blooms folded and
drooping now that the sun had gone down over Wright’s Landing.

Every footfall shattered the
garden’s perfection, each squashed stem and dislodged petal adding to the
defacement. The brothers moved silently through the proud grounds, leaving a trail
of crushed beauty in their wake.

David held up his hand for Ben to
stop.

There it was. The hole in Dale’s
defenses—quite literally a hole in the wall.

David had noticed this scarecrow
when he and Mari first strolled through the garden. Had he not seen a butterfly
attempt to land on the stone, only to flutter straight through it, as though
disappearing into the wall itself, he wouldn’t have detected this secret
entrance to the house.

“This the spot?” Ben
whispered.

“Yeah, and it’s probably
mined as well as alarmed.”

“Alarm’s down, according to
my team. They didn’t detect any mines, but I’ll let you go first, just to be
sure.” Ben flashed his smile.

David knew better. Ben would lay
down his life for his family, both blood relatives and those bonded to him by
the call of duty. With a nod of understanding, David unsheathed his knife and
tossed it through the holographic piece of wall. They each took cover to either
side of the implied opening and shielded their faces.

Nothing
. No explosive
mines, no blaring alarms.

“Your team’s good,”
David said.

“The best,” Ben agreed.

They walked right out of Dale’s
garden and through the scarecrow, ignoring the cameras hovering low in the sky
around them. Ben’s team had done their job and rerouted the video feed and
sensors on Dale’s security system. If they worked this the right way, tonight
would be a two-for-one, each Anlow brother getting his own retribution.

David stayed low, Ben following
closely behind him. They ran among the finely manicured flowerbeds, trampling
delicate blooms and wispy stems with their combat boots. The pungent scent of
marigolds mixed with freshly trod zinnias and nearby rose bushes. They stayed
away from the central paths to avoid walking in the open and the crunch of pea
gravel underfoot. David and Ben waded through thigh-high peonies, their scarlet
and purple petals folded in on themselves. Feeling exposed, David picked up his
pace the last few meters to the iron gate.

He pulled the borrowed battle
rifle off his shoulder and used its night scope to check out the veranda beyond
the gate. Satisfied, he gave the all-clear signal to Ben. Single file they
crept onto the wide, covered patio, sweeping around huge planters bulging with
foliage and flowers whose colors were muted by the scant light of night. They
snaked around tables and chairs of elegant metal craftsmanship, keeping as far
away from the house as possible.

Heavy curtains held the golden
interior light at bay, but the possibility remained for them to cast shadows.
David put up his hand for another halt as they came to a set of glass doors,
also curtained. But no lights shone out of this room. David switched his scope
to infrared. One heat signature inside, prone as though lying on its side. He
looked to Ben for conformation. Ben glanced at his palm screen and nodded his
head in an affirmative. The tracker showed that Dale Zapona waited on the other
side of the glass.

David checked the door. The
handle turned without resistance. Another fine job by Ben’s tech team.

Keeping the night scope up to his
right eye, David placed one foot after the other to move soundlessly over the
thick carpet. Dale lay on his side, facing David. With the muzzle of his rifle
he jabbed Dale in the forehead. Dale woke up with a start, but David kept him
pinned with the weapon and forced him on his back.

“Who are you? How did you
get in here?”

David had the advantage because
Dale couldn’t see in the dark. Through the green-white artificial light of the
scope, David studied the last remnants of Dale’s wounds from the crash. In
another week they’d be gone, but the scars he’d left in Mari’s mind would stay
with her a lot longer. David swallowed his anger. They were here for answers.

“Where do I find Liu
Stavros?” he asked.

Dale’s expression changed, as
though David’s voice sparked some subtle recognition. Part of him hoped it did,
though keeping Dale off-balance was better for their plan.

“I don’t know who that
is.” Dale’s voice took on a haughty tone.

David ground the hard steel of
the muzzle into the soft flesh of Dale’s brow. He felt like smashing it right
through his skull, but they needed information.

“You’re crazy if you think
I’m telling you anything.”

David increased the pressure of
the muzzle, drawing a gasp of aggravated pain from Dale.

“My security force—”

“Was already taken care
of,” David said. “I guess Carlos wasn’t so easy to replace. Sorry to
hear he got sucked out into space like half of your freighter.”

Dale’s protests stopped upon
hearing that bit of news.

Part of the effectiveness for
on-site interrogations like this was stripping the target of all feelings of
security. The simple idea that Dale was no longer safe in his own home should
weaken his resolve, mess with his equilibrium, make him more likely to talk in
his confused state. Hinting that his captor knew details about Dale’s recent
incident that even the Media hadn’t reported had the added effect.

“Do I know you?” Dale
asked, fear replacing his earlier bravado.

Yeah, you do, you piece of
shit.

“Where do I find Liu Stavros?”

“I told you I don’t know who
that is.”

The panic was starting to rise,
but right now Dale was more afraid of Stavros than the threat of a battle
rifle.

“We know you do,” David
said.

“We?” Dale’s eyes
rolled around in his sockets as though that would help him penetrate the shadows
and outlines of the black room. That sensory deprivation did part of their
work, making the man’s imagination work over time.

“You’ve got more than one
gun trained on you right now,” Ben said from the other side of the bed.

David slid his battle rifle into
the side holster to free his hands. He forced Dale’s arm away from his body. Snatching
a short blade from his thigh sheath, David stabbed the knife through Dale’s
palm, pinning him to the bed. Dale cried out and tried to grab at the hilt, but
David had a second blade out and jammed into Dale’s shoulder, rendering that
arm immobile, as well.

Dale shrieked.

“I have more of those. You
make me draw the next one and I’m cutting your hand off to get to your
reporter. That’s the only problem with your fancy implanted kind, you can’t
just take it off.”

Dale’s screams died out into a
whimper.

“It might take us a while to
decode and trace any recent communications you had with Stavros,” David
continued, “but we’ll eventually get it. You can save us some time and
save your hand by giving up his location to us right now.”

Dale opened his mouth to scream again,
but David pressed the edge of another knife against Dale’s cheek as a
deterrent. “Are you going to take the simple way out?”

Dale’s speech came out in a sputter.
“Stavros is on Sinder Isle.”

“Wrong answer,” Ben called
out. “We were already there. Looks like he left for a little
holiday.”

“Where do we find him?”
David slid the knife along a freshly healed piece of new pink skin. Dale
whimpered, tears streaking down his face.

It just made David want to cut
him more. “Where?”

“Noveopini Territory on
Tampa Three,” Dale blurted. “But he’ll be under an alias.”

“Which would be?” David
pressed.

Dale hesitated until David
whipped the blade from his cheek and sliced a chunk out of Dale’s ear. “Mario
Buhl,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I have the team checking it
out now,” Ben said.

“You won’t find anything in
the Embassy files about him,” Dale said.

“So, you’re saying we just
have to take your word for it?” David asked.

Alarms blared inside and outside.

“Time to wrap it up,”
Ben said.

“That just cost you a hand,”
David said.

With one clean cut, David severed
Dale’s wrist from his arm and threw the appendage to Ben. Dale’s screams filled
the room as he thrashed the stub of his arm around. “Please don’t kill me.
I’ll give you anything you want…money, girls. I can get you women, any kind you
want.”

David moved away from Dale and
flipped on a bedside lamp.

When Dale’s gaze met David’s and
he was sure there was recognition lighting the panicked expression, David
snapped his battle rifle around and fixed it on Dale.

“I wanted you to know it was
me. You should have never taken her from me, Dale.” David fired two fast projectile
rounds into the middle of Dale’s forehead.

Promise kept.

Continue your adventures in
the Ambasadora-verse.

An excerpt from AMBASADORA:

Several bottles clinked to the
floor as Sean hurried to grab one of his clean shirts from the stack on the
couch. He doused a corner of the soft cotton shirt with cold water from the
bathroom faucet. Cries from the connecting bedroom sent him straight back to
Sara. She thrashed against the mattress as though fighting an invisible
opponent. His throbbing lip reminded him to approach her cautiously. She’d also
caught him above his right eye during her last episode.

“Sara, it’s Sean. I’m the
only one here. You’re safe.” He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder.

She stilled. Only her chest
moved, rising and falling with ragged breaths. Her eyes never opened. He didn’t
know if she could actually understand him or if she was just responding to the
tone of his voice. He sat beside her. Sweat beaded on her forehead and the
scent of roses suffocated the room as it dripped out of her pores. He was
beginning to hate the heady smell as much as she did because he associated it
with her torment.

He pressed the cool cotton of the
shirt against her forehead. He could feel the heat radiating from her skin, and
that worried him. Having survived a couple of full slides in his teens, he
always relied on restors to put him out so he could sleep it off. He’d given
Sara a double dose already, yet that hadn’t calmed her much. He was afraid
she’d overdose if he gave her any more. She either had a tolerance that
surpassed his own or someone had used some powerful shit to mess with her mind.

At least she slept, though it was
more like a nightmarish trance. She murmured constantly, sometimes shouted. He
could make out a small amount, pleas for help mostly, which made his chest
tight. And names. Some he recognized like Rainer, Chen, and Simon. He was
pretty sure that last one was in reference to Simon Prollixer. Though there
weren’t many familiar enough with the Sovereign to throw his first name around,
except in secret and adding a punchline to follow it up.

One name that he didn’t recognize
always brought about the most violent episodes. If this Faya had been around
tonight, he believed Sara would have torn her apart with her bare hands. At
this point, Sean could have done that himself.

The lights of her intra-tat
bounced around in erratic pulses in a frightening way that wasn’t alluring like
when he first touched her hand. Tonight they were a physical sign of whatever
horror she was experiencing.

He brushed her damp hair back
with his fingers and whispered words of reassurance, knowing this could be the
biggest mistake of his life. She had been sent here to flush out a fragger
operative, that much he knew. Right now she and the Embassy thought David was
their man—he didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or be insulted. If
that’s what her Embassy intel was saying, then it might be easier to bring down
this government than he thought.

“Sean.” She reached out
to the empty space beside her.

He put his hand over hers.
“I’m here.”

When she whimpered and shook, he
lay down next to her because he knew what it was like to go through this alone.
He knew what it was like to go through
everything
alone. Folding Sara in
his arms, he pulled her tight against his chest until her body relaxed against
him. He kissed the top of her head to soothe her.

If she betrayed him later, he’d
deal with that when it happened. It’s not like he hadn’t thought of offing
himself, and not the pleasant way with passing drugs and a bedside full of
family crying for him. Maybe she’d be doing him a favor. Sean’s older brother
had killed himself. He told Sean before he did it that Sean wouldn’t understand
because he had never known their father, so couldn’t really miss him. But Sean
did miss having a father…and an older brother.

Sara’s breathing deepened with
exhaustion. So did Sean’s. He rested his cheek against the top of her head and
fell asleep.

Click to purchase
Ambasadora
.

The first to be terraformed,
Tampa One was only halfway settled before its larger neighbor, Tampa Deux, was
ready for habitation. Home to large swaths of unspoiled wilderness, like
Archenzon, much of the moon remains a preserve for millions of species of
animal and plant life.

Heavily populated, even after
Tampa Three was terraformed, Tampa Deux’s popularity still grows because of its
infrastructure and planning.

The smallest of all the moons, it
was originally meant to be an exclusive world for Socialite families with the
most money; however, bad terraforming and rushed planning made this the least
desirable planet in the system.