Single Combat (16 page)

With these conditions in mind, now try to imagine the frustration of the head NSA spook when Young's own personal screwing put the quietus on audiovisual security screens. The President might envy porn stars, but he did not propose to be one even for his own laconic gumshoes who had already seen everything and would not, presumably, have been scandalized to find that a widower President enjoyed a carnal tussle now and again, and again, and again.

Young was perhaps ignorant of the criticism Russell laid on Neitzsche. Paraphrased: it's okay to be tough-minded, provided you start with yourself. Or perhaps Young simply did not want
any
recordings of
any
deals inside his Granite Mountain apartment. It was this decision which permitted the raven-haired hotsy to circumvent Young's anti bugging array with basic equipment, ears and memory. The lissome lass lay flat on her belly in Young's bedroom and monitored the Mills meeting through a fresh-air duct that served both rooms. The early part of the evening had justified all her hours of patience. Yet the initial dialogue paled as good booze took its effect in the room just beyond…

"… Told you we'd build the true Zion together four years ago, didn't I?" Young had now switched to brandy, and tended to use shorter words.

"You also said it would take some careful weeding," said Mills, gauging his own alcohol capacity with care. "But I wish you'd told me how much weeding you intended to do last week. Even with control of FBN, Mr. President, we've had a bitch of a time explaining away that rash of disappearances."

"Couldn't be helped," said Young, waving his goblet airily. "Anyway, a good third of 'em were Mormons. Who'd believe White House Deseret could possibly be involved?"

"Must've been a tough decision for you, of all people."

"Shhhhit," said Blanton Young, and glanced at the younger man with a half-smile. "Not with true inspiration to guide. Mills, in the true Zion there won't be any room for a bunch of old farts wrangling over interp'tations of the word of God. Came to me in a meeting of the Council of Apostles one day. A rev'lation like a thunderclap; I was bein' tested."

Somehow, Mills decided, a tiny ice cube had entered his bloodstream. "You mean—Divine examination?"

Nod. "A dozen old men, balkin' me at every turn. It came to me that the President of Streamlined America can't be wrong every time; that if Blanton Young was put in this office by a higher power, then a solid wall of opposition can only mean that wall is bound together by the devil's flaxen cord." The zealot eyes burned past slitted lids. "You follow me, Mills?" The President's face was choleric with remembered frustrations, his last words a rasp on old tin cans.

Until the past half-minute, Boren Mills had cherished the assumption that Young, whatever his failings, was bound to his Church; that ultimately he would be constrained by its tenets of fellowship and grace. Mills's ice cube was now a frozen stalactite against his spine. "I couldn't help noticing some, ah, changes in your, um, lifestyle. Are you saying you've decided to leave your Church?"

"I
am the Church!"
Mills realized with a start that he'd seen the same look on Eve's face when he asked for her amulet. "The Council of Apostates," said Young, relishing his heresy, "is a test. I see that now. And I have passed that test."

Through his consternation, Mills saw that he was privy to a development so new that it had not yet become surrounded by rumor. With utterly no idea of what to say, he fell back on the hoary goad of interviewers and shrinks: "I see."

"I wonder if you do. I have passed through a purifying fire of the spirit, and I can depend on insp'ration. When I'm inspired I can't be wrong. It's a tr'mendous sense of respons'bility but," the President unleashed a beatified smile, "somehow it makes me feel free."

No doubt, thought Mills. That same sense of guidance and inspiration must have given the same freedom to Alexander; to Rasputin; to der fuehrer. But to ride the coattails of Young was to ride a barmy tiger. Should he dismount now? But how the hell could he? And how long before this loony generated an open break with what was, unofficially, a state religion?

Suddenly Boren Mills knew why LockLever was paying cash homage to the rebels. They knew of Young's instability; were straddling the ideological fence. Yet the CEO of LockLever hadn't helped organize Young's S & R hit team as he, Mills, had done. Mills and IEE could expect no quarter from Jim Street. Unless—unless Mills made himself absolutely vital to the survival of Streamlined America no matter who won the political battles. Choosing his words with utmost caution: "Mr. President, how did the Council of Apostles respond to your revelation?"

Young lurched up from his chair, circled the wet bar as if analyzing an opponent, chose a glass of seltzer before answering. "I'm not an idiot. Mills. I won't feed a man things he can't swallow. What I
can
do, is replace Council members with my own people. A matter of seein' that some of my folks are standin' in the right places. Pity you're not LDS yourself."

"I can do more as a fellow traveler," Mills said quickly. "How long before, um, normal attrition in the Council," he said, knowing that some members would die by means that were not normal, "gives you the power you need?"

Innocence personified: "How would I know? Could take a year or so."

"If I might suggest it, Sir, you might take care not to let your new lifestyle show in the meantime."

"Council isn't as down on plural marriage as you might think," Young chuckled, "but I get your drift, son. It has been revealed to me that even the head of the Church must make haste slowly." Horsewink.

Mills exhaled with undisguised relief. Whether mad as Parisian hatters or merely posturing in his cups, Young still understood caution. Mills: "Depend on IEE to move with you. But I'll have to know what you need."

"You can start by talking with those Israelis about a media countermeasure. Streamlined America must break free from foreign pressures." A rolling rippling belch paced the President's train of thought. "And not just media gadgetry. Mex oil, Canadian platinum, African cobalt—stuff this country must have."

At that moment, inspiration struck Mills. Some crucial raw materials were present, in minute quantities, in sea water. "We're already doing our part with shale, but IEE hasn't been idle in the rare metals field either," he said slyly.

"I'm talking metric tons."

A hundred kilos a day of lighter elements from a synthesizer, perhaps ten a day—he'd have to check with Chabrier—of heavy rare metals like cobalt. It would mean a different production schedule of synthesizers, but a few could be on-line in less than a year. A hundred synthesizers could yield a ton of heavy elements every day.

"So am I," said Mills. "Pure stuff. It's, uh, an extraction process we've kept pretty secret. In a few months IEE can be shipping a ton of cobalt a day from Eureka."

"Not enough for the New Denver and Cleveland mills by a long shot. We use seven thousand tons of Zaire cobalt a year."

"In two years we can match that," Mills promised. He hadn't said the process was ocean extraction, but the implication was clear enough.

"Domestic?"

Time to enrich the implied lie: "Domestic as sea water."

"At compet'ive price?"

"No. Sir." Pause for effect. "Cheaper."

The President sat down slowly, then raised his goblet in salute. "The Lord has provided," he murmured. "I knew I was right about you; inspiration," he said smugly and then added, "but you better come through."

Mills tallied new necessities in his head. He'd have to maintain utmost security on shipments of elemental metals from the Utah desert to the Port of Eureka. And set up some kind of barge facility off the coast as a blind. But once those shipments became mainstays of reconstruction in Streamlined America, Mills could write his own ticket with any administration.

"To Zion," said Mills, and raised his own goblet.

Ten meters away on the other side of the wall, the raven-haired hotsy felt her lip curl.

As the pudgy, chain-smoking Sean Lasser began Sanger's briefing, she surmised that old age was creeping up on him. He'd never shown this much courtesy to any rover. "… Had to be one of the undercover rebels that we disappeared two weeks ago, you see."

Sanger, quickly: "You mean because it had to be a rover who helped him escape? If the man told the Canadians all you say, I suppose so." Finger-snap: "Unless some rebel posed as one of us and—"

Lasser's headshake, slow and commiserating, stopped her. "No one but a rover could've faked that mission," he said gently. "All we needed was the escapee's name, and our man in Calgary couldn't get that. He
did
manage three minutes alone in the room where the man had been debriefed, and tape-lifted prints off the chair arms. We identified one this morning. Ever hear of a Dandridge Laird?"

Negative shrug. Marbrye Sanger had no doubt she'd learn plenty about him from the file that lay at Lasser's elbow. She'd never had to go into Canada to disappear a man before, but the prospect disturbed her no more than any other killing might. "Will I be on a team or singleton?"

"Team. We have to pick that team with more than usual care. Howell and Cross are busy setting the mission up; that's why Seth isn't briefing you himself." A finger tapping against his teeth, as though the ritual and not his thought processes generated the pause. "How well do you get along with Ted Quantrill?"

Under the little man's deceptive mild gaze, Sanger had to force her eye contact. "As well as with any rover. We've teamed on several missions—but you know that." Taking a risk: "We get along; he doesn't talk my arm off. He's a surly little bastard but he doesn't have many weaknesses."

"Not even in bed?"

"I've had that pleasure," she said evenly. "Also with Ethridge, Graeme Duff, once even with Howell, which I won't bore you with. I might have it with you, if the occasion ever arises." The spots of color on her cheeks did not suggest that it was very likely.

"Why thank you, Sanger; though I ah," with a dusty cough of self-deprecation, "wouldn't want to bore
you
with
that
." Pause. "I'm asking as politely as I can: do you think any of your liaisons—with Quantrill, for example—left emotional bonds?"

She made her laugh loud enough so that it wouldn't come out shaky. "Basic T Section stuff, Lasser! Going soft on another member of a hit team is a deadly mistake." Her grin was as feral as she could make it: "I don't have many weaknesses either." Sanger, however, knew that her responses to stress were not as controlled as Quantrill's. At the moment she hadn't the strength to kick a sick whore off a bidet and she knew it.

Lasser, studying her, at last said, "Good," and picked up the thick file. "Howell will give you details but I can tell you now that this will be touchy work. You have to take your man out without killing him, if at all possible. We have a lot of questions we need to ask him."

"Soporific slugs? Hypospray?"

"Hypospray might not be fast enough, but you'll get a canister just in case. You'll probably have to use your chiller. Just don't hit a vital spot; they don't care if he loses an arm. He won't be needing it again."

Not worried, but perplexed: "So how do we get a bleeder back here alive?" She was thinking of Calgary.

"Sprint chopper. He doesn't know we're onto him but when he does, you can expect some good moves."

She took the file from Lasser, glanced at the first page, and then realized why that file was so thick, why Howell and Cross were setting up the mission. Seth Howell and Marty Cross had more single combat experience between them than any half-dozen rovers, and they would be her team members. No wonder Lasser had been so gentle, so careful.

The file she held was Ted Quantrills.

So this was the way her world ended, thought Sanger. Inside, she was whimpering. She'd spent far too much time trying to figure a way to warn Quantrill, and not enough time steeling herself for her decoy duties. Quantrill was pulling sprint chopper maintenance at Dugway, on the Utah side of the Nevada border. How simple it might be to ask Control, through her critic, to patch her into Quantrill's head. And how fruitless; for Control would not let her say a dozen words of warning, and she'd be cancelled forever. What would she say anyway?
Run for it
? They'd only zap him with his critic detonator.
Whatever I must do now, I love you beyond all reason
? He probably knew it anyway, and it wouldn't keep either of them alive.

Sanger stared out the polymer port of the sprint chopper, ignoring the wiry half-Cheyenne, Cross, in harness near her. Howell was not as good a pilot as he was a killer—but there was no great hurry as he guided them past the Oquirrh Mountains.

Quantrill had not seen fit to tell her (oh God, why not? Hadn't he known he could trust her?) he'd funked a mission, turned rebel beneath her nose. But neither had she told
him
the real story about his friend Raima. How Sanger had left a printed warning for Dr. Cathy Palma two hours before she was expected to disappear the woman in Abilene, Tex as. God
damn
that man, refusing to ask her help! Now she could not give it and hope to live. Marbrye Sanger did not want to die, and didn't intend to. The best thing for her was to expunge Ted Quantrill from her memory; to bleed her soul of him. He'd made his single bed and now he could die in it.

Quantrill only half-noticed the approach of Howell's craft as he lay supine on the mechanic's creeper. Three similar craft squatted outside the maintenance hangar five hundred meters away, and Quantrill lay above hot concrete beneath the nose of the fourth, which Miles Grenier had flown to the alignment pad. Old-timers still called these secluded spots 'compass roses'. Grenier sat in the cockpit, checking out the avionics and calling out the results of Quantrill's simple remove-and-replace operations with numbered modules. It had never occurred to Quantrill that rovers might be kept deficient in electronic theory.