Kaleidocide (47 page)

Finally, Terrey added that the guards at the Marin County Jail did wear black uniforms, but no one knew beforehand that they were going there, and they would be accompanied by the watchful eyes and powerful weapons of Min, Ni, and Stephenson, which would provide more than enough protection for them.

At the mention of weapons, Jon asked me if he could wear my boas again on this trip, like he had on the one to the castle. I said yes, and he said he was glad I did, because he already had put them on. He pulled my jacket aside to show me, through the room's cameras, and I saw them on his belt next to the control box for the Atreides shield that had been built for him. Terrey made a crack about leaving the safeties on, “permanently, please,” and everyone loaded up into their aeros and flew them out through the big holo at the mouth of the hill's hangar bay.

As the flying cars traveled south over Napa City, then Vallejo, and then the top inlets of the San Francisco bay, I switched my video and audio to riding with Jon and coached him on what we would say to John Rabin when we talked with him at the jail. The double was in the passenger seat of Min's aero, with the big bodyguard driving, and Lynn was in another with Ni driving and the Rabin twins in the back. Stephenson flew one by himself, behind the other two. Terrey and San flanked him in the fourth aero, and would not be stopping with the others at the jail, but would be continuing south to visit the Presidio orphanage in the city, to put the finishing touches on the security measures we cooked up for Lynn's stay there. The idea was that after the visitors talked with John Rabin and were filmed coming out of the jail, Min would take Lynn to the Presidio and the rest of the team would return to Napa Valley.

The security officer inside me was worried about having so few team members, and how thinly spread they would be, especially on the return trip. But we didn't bring in any BASS peacers for fear that one or more of them had been bought off by Sun, because the “heavy guns” sent to kill me had already been dealt with by the triplets in Oakland, and because the team members themselves didn't seem to share my anxiety. Min and Ni, for example, spent half the trip comparing the specs of their combat augmentations in the most lighthearted fashion I could imagine between two very serious cyborgs. Ni even made a bona fide joke at the end, when she conceded victory to Min because she had never been equipped with a cannon in her derriere. I knew the big machine-man would never live that one down, and now he was taking it on the chin from a creature that seemed to have very little sense of humor otherwise.

The trip passed uneventfully, despite the tension I felt with Lynn being so close to the double, and soon our destination came into view amid the arid woodlands and hills of San Rafael. The Marin County Civic Center was one of the truly unique buildings in the world, which is why it had been carefully repaired and restored after the big quake. It had been designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright, completed in 1962 and, like most of his buildings, seemed to exist outside of time and place. There was nothing quite like it, with its two long, thin arms stretching out in almost opposite directions from a central domed structure, and hundreds of arches of different sizes on the arms reflecting the curve of the dome in an uncanny symmetry. And it was very colorful, of course, which I thought was an interesting coincidence—the roofs of both the long buildings and the dome were painted a bright light blue, which from some angles also looked a little greenish.

At the end of the longer arm, on the northern end of the buildings, was a circular hill that also added to the symmetry of the whole campus. This was where we were headed, because inside the hill was housed the Marin County Jail, as it had been since the Center was built. The three aeros that were staying parked near the entrance to the jail, and Terrey said good-bye and continued on toward the city. He added that he would be monitoring our visit through Ni, however.

The entrance to the jail was set down low in the hill, and on the top behind it was a flat but wide pillbox-like structure with skylights on the roof that served as a source of light for the main room inside. It took us a little while to get there, because we had to undergo a security clearance and then wait for permission to visit John.
We may not need to alert the press,
I thought as we waited.
One of the staff here might alert them, because they could probably make some good money by doing that.

Eventually we were all let in to the main room of the jail, which was deep in the center of the hill. It was quite spacious, containing about twenty tables and chairs—all bolted to the floor, of course—and extending about thirty feet up to the aforementioned roof with all the skylights that sat on the top of the hill. On the outsides of the circular room were two stories of nicely painted cells—a twentieth-century experiment in making incarceration more “open” and accommodating for the inmates, and a significant contrast to the austere interior and gothic exterior of the Nob Hill cathedral Saul Rabin had transformed into a jail in the city. Normally some prisoners would be milling around in the open area, but the jail staff had cleared it out so we could meet with John Rabin alone.

That didn't end up happening, however, because the staff informed us that he was unwilling to talk to Lynn and me (my double, that is), but would only see his sisters in another room, if allowed. I was actually somewhat relieved by this, since I had been worried about trying to have another difficult conversation through Jon, so I told the staff through him that Hilly and Jessa could meet with John in one of the interrogation rooms deeper inside the underground facility. After we had given them about ten minutes together, we told the staff to inform them that they would have ten more, and then we would be leaving. At that time, Min contacted the three net news services from the area that we had decided upon, so they had a few minutes to get someone there to film us leaving the jail, and maybe get a few brief comments from us about why we were there.

This unencrypted communication over the net, however, brought a lot more than some reporters to our location. Before the ten minutes were up, Terrey's voice broke into all our audio lines, announcing that Ni and San, who were hooked up to the Eye satellite surveillance system, were seeing another enemy assault team in the air just minutes away from the Marin Center.

 

42

JAILBREAK

“Another assault team?” I said. “Where is this one coming from?”

“It looks like the Dickensian twists of fate are not with us today, mate, but with our foes,” Terrey said. “There was never more than one assault team before, and I joked about how easy it was to find the other one, but I guess the joke's on me and they're smarter than I thought. Looks like they put one in the ruins of Oakland in case you turned up in that direction, and another one in the ruins of San Quentin in case you came this way.”

San Quentin had been a state prison only a couple miles from where we were, until it was heavily damaged in the earthquake and devastated further by the resultant fires and a protracted fight between the inmates who took it over and the BASS forces who eventually took them out. The prison was not rebuilt, and the area around it had never been an attractive place for people to live anyway. So its seclusion and the shelter of the abandoned buildings, like Oakland across the bay, provided an ideal place for an attack force to gather and wait for the right moment. And the right moment had definitely come—besides being so close to where Jon was, the colorful buildings of the Marin Center must have made Sun and his fellow plotters wet themselves from excitement. In fact, Terrey sent an aerial view of the assault team from the Eye to my second screen, and when it zoomed in I could see that the helicopters and the Armored SUVs that hung from wires below them were all painted the same bright blue as the roofs of the Center. I wondered why there was a misty cloud of that same color trailing from the back of each of the airborne vehicles, until I realized that they had sprayed them so quickly, prior to taking off, that the paint wasn't even dry yet.

Of course,
I thought,
they didn't know we would be at the Center until just now, when they intercepted our communication.
I marveled at their efficiency, but also at the insanity of Sun's obsession with colors. And I feared for the safety of our team—and my wife—when I counted the helicopters and suspended SUVs. There were four of each, and they would be at the jail before any of us could get out of it.

“I'm already on my way there,” Terrey said. “And so are the closest BASS Firehawks and peacers. But it'll be probably twenty-five minutes before the cavalry will arrive, and the bad guys will be there in five. You'll have to find a way to hold out until some bigger firepower gets there.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I'll be glad to make suggestions, Michael, but you'll have to make the calls.”

“We need to go get Hilly and Jessa out of that room right now,” said Lynn, characteristically thinking of others rather than herself. “And keep them safe.” She waited to hear my answer in her earpiece, which I had made her wear in case I needed to coach her also in the conversation with John Rabin.

But while she was talking, the jail alarms started to sound, telling me that our enemies were already close enough to be detected by the security systems there. The prisoners would be thoroughly locked down now, and would therefore be sitting ducks for the destruction that was about to be unleashed on the jail. I knew exactly what was going to happen to it after only a few moments of looking at my second screen, because of my military experience and some of the details that the Eye's scanners had picked up, which the triplets had now transposed onto the view of the approaching vehicles.

“The rockets on the helicopters are hot,” Terrey said, realizing the same things I had. “And the mercs inside have loaded grenade launchers.” This meant that the attackers wouldn't be taking any chances on a firefight with rifles, or worrying about collateral damage. They were simply going to fire explosives ahead of them until everyone in the jail was dead, and they would do that into every entrance so no one could escape. They were now close enough to the jail that they were fanning out for their approach, and their trajectories to various points on the property were also being displayed on my screen.

“Michael,” Lynn said in the direction of the double, “we need to get the girls, now!”

“No, Lynn,” I said. “Leave them in the back room.”

“Why?” she shouted over the alarm.

“Because that will keep them far from the fight that's about to happen, plus they would slow you down when I try to get you out—and you're my main priority. But please don't ask me why again—this is a combat situation and you have to do exactly as I say to survive. We only have minutes. When the copters arrive, at least one of them will fire rockets into the roof to break it, and then fire more rockets to obliterate the room you're standing in. A group of soldiers will attack the main entrance, firing explosives ahead of them to take out any of the guards defending it and anyone trying to escape out of it. Another group will come through the only other entrance, from the court building adjacent to you, and do the same thing. In a matter of minutes everyone in the jail will be dead. Are you with me so far?”

“How do you know this?” Lynn asked.

“Because it's what we would do,” Terrey answered, “if we were them.”

“If you stay where you are,” I continued, “you're dead, no doubt about it. So you'll all have to move, there's no other way I can see to save any of you, or even any of the prisoners and guards in the jail. Min, Ni, and Stephenson, you'll have to take the fight to them right now, meet them on their way to each of those three spots. And it'll distract them from where Jon and Lynn are going.”

“Where can we go?” Lynn asked. “There's no other way out.”

“Yes there is,” I said. “And we're going to hope and pray that the Chinese don't know about it, because they got their information from the net, and the location of the prisoner transfer tunnel up those stairs is not in the public records, for obvious reasons.”

I knew of the existence and location of the secret tunnel from being in BASS leadership, and we had confirmed it when planning the visit. Frank Lloyd Wright must have had fun designing a corridor that was hidden between the first and second floors of the long courthouse building next to the jail, so that prisoners could be transported safely and quickly to and from the courtrooms.

“Why don't I stay back there with Hilly and Jessa?” Lynn asked. “Don't you want to keep me away from your double?”

“I normally do, but this is the best way for you to get out alive, and I don't want to send you alone—I want to go with you by riding with Jon. Once you're in the clear, or if the enemy finds the two of you, I'll separate you then, and hopefully they'll only go after him.” I looked at the screen and saw the enemy location. “But we
really
don't have time for whys now. Stephenson, pick your poison … it's only fair that you should have your choice of which entrance. The public hallway to the court building is to your left—maybe you'll get lucky and they won't come in that way after all.” In reality this was a token gesture, because I was sure they would attack that exit, and so any way he went would be suicide. I didn't think the two combat cyborgs would even survive the day, let alone this unaugmented rent-a-cop.

Jon turned toward Stephenson when I said his name, so I could see him now, because I was looking through Jon's eyes. The little man stood there with his mouth wide open, which at first I assumed was because he knew he was going to die soon. But it turned out to be the opposite, and his mouth widened further into a big grin.

“It doesn't matter which way I go, because I'll be invincible. You won't believe this, but I had a dream about this, too! I thought it was a memory, but now I know it was prophetic. Don't pity me—pity the poor bastards who get in my way.” He pulled the assault rifle off his back, which had its own grenade launcher, and practically skipped into the hallway, muttering “Yippee-ki-yay” something-or-other.