Survivalist - 23 - Call To Battle (14 page)

Kids didn’t grow up wanting a job like that; men and some women went into those jobs, into those camps, because of what happened in between. As a kid himself, Tim Shaw read a story once about the French Foreign Legion in the years Before The Night of The War. In the story, which was about some brothers who joined the Legion because of a theft, one of the big points was that men enlisted to get away from their pasts. The reforestation camps were that way now; they were a place to get away from a past better forgotten.

But escaping the past was like taking a vacation; it was impossible to leave yourself behind.

Tim Shaw opened the rear door.

Before he helped her out, he said, “You sure you wanna go through with this, Mrs. Rubenstein?” “You need a tourist, right?”

“Yeah, but if you get hurt, your father and your husband are gonna be all over my ass. Excuse the language.” Annie Rubenstein stepped out of the car, pushing down her miniskirt, Ed getting the streetside ddor. Tim Shaw looked across the roof of the car at Angie Fargo’s pretty face. “Hey, Angie, you keep this civilian outa trouble, huh?”

“Got it, Inspector.”

“You guys start walkin’. And first sign oftrouble, just remember, I can almost hear ya breathin’.” Tim Shaw put the receiver into his left ear. He looked at Annie Rubenstein. “You remember one thing Mrs. Rubenstein. This guy Yuri, he’s a tough little shit. Mean. Wouldn’t matter to him if he slit your throat to get five bucks, right? And he’s tight like this-” Shaw held his first two fingers up, then squeezed them together, “-with the Nazis. He’s an Eden agent, gotta be. Eden’s his drug connection.”

“Then why haven’t you arrested him?” Annie Rubenstein asked him.

She looked so sweet and innocent when she looked at him like that - she reminded him of his own daughter, Emma. “Would you believe we got nothin’ on him? Everybody knows he deals designer drugs, everybody knows he deals information. Now, it isn’t like it was Before The Night of The War, where there’s a law tellin’ you how long to hold your breath and which way to fart - excuse the language -and these days it’s basically the Constitution and a few laws to help implement things, but we still can’t nail a guy ‘cause we think he’s wrong; we’ve gotta have evidence.”

“So if he tries to rob us or something -“

Shaw grinned; for a girl who’d done so much with her father and her brother and her husband, she was an innocent when it came to the streets. “He’s not gonna go tor ya; but whoever doesll probably be able to lead us to Yuri.”

Then what? I mean, if you still can’t arrest him.”

Shaw smiled, pushed his coat aside so she could seethe .45 tucked in his waistband. This is an extraordinary situation Mrs. Rubenstein. It requires extraordinary measures. Those Nazi creeps that killed all those kids can’t be left hangin’ around to do more of the same. That’s why Ed’s with me. And Angie over there, her father and I were in the Marines together and used to work the streets together, too. She’s a good guy. I figured you were a good guy, too.” Tim Shaw smiled at her. “Know what I mean?”

“You’re taking the law into your own hands,” Annie Rubenstein said, smiling at him.

“Right you are, little lady. Got any problems with that?”

She smiled again. She really did remind him of his daughter. “Not a one. My father always said the only real law is personal morality; with it, a code of laws is superfluous and without it a code of laws is a joke.”

“Your old man’s got the ticket, Mrs. Rubenstein. Now, go be a good little tourist.” She took his hand. “I like you.”

“I like you, too, so don’t go gettin’ yourself killed or somethin’, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She looked across the roofline of the car. “Ready Angie?” “Ready, Annie.”

Shaw watched as the two women walked along Mauna Kea toward Sugar Street, about three blocks down. Without looking at his son, he said, “We’re gonna get that Yuri bastard, Eddy. Make him tell us where those fuckin’ Nazis that hit the school are hidin’ then maybe we’ll have a moral dilemma.”

“A dilemma?”

“Yeah.A dilemma.”

He’d stood outside the door to Mixing Room Nine for several minutes, listening. There were mechanical noises coming from beyond it, some sounds which might have been from lab animals. He could tell nothing else.

Armed not at all, James Darkwood had no choice but to open the door and hope he wouldn’t walk into a black-clad security man with an energy weapon.

The door was like a watertight doorway on a submarine.

He spun the locking wheel.

He opened the door.

He stepped over the flange, a synth-rubber gasket surrounding it, evidendy to seal Mixing Room Nine in the event of contamination.

Beyond the doorway was a narrow walkway extending in both directions and, beyond it, nothing. Darkwood stepped across the walkway to the railing and looked down. Contrary to all the intelligence data the Trans-Global Alliance had concerning Plant234, the facility was not entirely on one level. Below Darkwood, stretching off well beyond the perimeter of the building, out to run beneath the loading and storage areas outside, was an assemblage of huge pressurized vats. Piping led from one to another and to storage tanks in the distance on either end. At the center of the area, almost just below him, were structures looking like hermetically sealed field accommodations or tents. But they were transparent.

And there were men inside these, naked as Adam except they were tied hands behind them and there were stickball gags in their mouths. Some of the men just stood in the centers of the tents while others

threw themselves against the transparent walls, railing down, struggling to their feet, throwing themselves at the tent walls again.

After a few seconds, the men started to collapse.

These were test chambers and the men inside the chambers were being used to gauge the effectiveness of Eden’s biological weapons. As James Darkwood realized this, he began to retch. Turning away from the rail, he saw a black-clad figure with an energy rifle coming toward him along the catwalk. “Who are you!”

James Darkwood slumped against the still open door.

“Why is this door open?!”

Darkwood stood there, his left knee against the door. “Answer me or you will be shot!” “I took a wrong turn, man.” “That is not the correct answer!”

The security man was very close now, almost close enough. Darkwood doubled over, coughing as he said, “Maybe my suit has a hole in it. I feel sick, man. Maybe we’re all contaminated.”

The security guard took the one step Darkwood needed him to take, and James Darkwood threw his entire body weight against the door, swinging it hard against the face and upper body of the security man, kicking him against the wall. Then Darkwood was on him, Darkwood’s right knee smashing up into the testicles, Darkwood’s left hand pinning the energy rifle, his right fist hammering across the mask-covered face, hammering at it until his knuckles felt as if they were broken.

When he stopped hitting the man and looked at the man’s face through the blood-smeared faceplate, he could see that the man was unconscious or dead.

Darkwood released the energy rifle, drew his left fist upward, then hammered downward for the guard’s throat, crushing the larynx. If the man hadn’t been dead before, he was dead now.

Darkwood leaned back, still straddling the body.

Before he changed uniforms with the dead man, he would change faceplates in their masks. He started dragging the body off the catwalk, over the flange of the airtight doorway and into the tunnel.

Soon the man he’d killed at the entrance to the tunnel would be discovered, and the guards patrolling Mixing Room Nine might have to make regularly scheduled checkins. All in all, time was running out. Granted, he already knew enough about Mixing Room Nine to recommend the air strike against the facility. And, if he had been the agent he should have been, he would have left immediately.

But there was something else he’d seen below the catwalk. There was a pen on the far side of Mixing Room Nine, like a large animal cage with shining metal bars that were probably electrified. Inside the cage were at least two dozen bodies, crowded together, naked, no one touching the bars.

They were the victims for the next test series.

In a few minutes or a few hours - it didn’t matter, really - a few of them would be taken out, tied and gagged and put into the tents to die.

James Darkwood had a duty more immediate than his report to consider.

Even though most of the other women she saw - and Angie the policewoman, too - were dressed in miniskirts and high-heeled plastic-looking boots, Annie Rourke Rubenstein still felt like a hooker in an old videotape. That a woman could possibly want to dress like this amazed her. When she sat down, no matter how hard she tried, there was nothing between her bare behind and whatever she sat on except her panties. If she bent over-she would not unless her life depended on it! - her panties would be all there’d be between her bare behind and the eyes of whoever happened to be looking her way and under her skirt.

And the top she wore stopped just below her breasts, leaving her midriff exposed. These days, it was fashionable for people to see a woman’s belly button because the waistband of her skirt didn’t even rise to her natural waist.

A thought suddenly crossed her mind and, as she and Angie navigated a narrow alleyway still one block away from Sugar Street, she asked the woman, “Have you read anything about Lydveldid Island lately?”

“Lydveldid whadand?”

“Lydveldid Island-Iceland, you know!”

“Ohh! Every once in a while there’s something in the papers, I mean.”

“About women’s fashions there?” “No.”

“Well, I just couldn’t imagine the women there dressing like this.” “What’s wrong with dressing like this?” Angie retorted.

“Well, nothing I guess, but when we lived there I used to wear these wonderful long skirts and these blouses with long puff sleeves and cuffs and necks up to-” She started gesturing what she meant, but Angie was just looking at her oddly. “What’s the matter?”

“Why would anybody want to dress like that!”

Annie shut up, kept walking. She liked dressing that way. If Angie didn’t-

“Hey, look sharp Annie,” Angie hissed through her teeth.

Annie felt her eyes narrowing slightly as she followed Angie’s gaze into a store window. The window displayed lingerie, and not the kind that a woman would buy for herself, she thought. Hot pink bras with black bull’s-eye cutouts so the nipples could protrude, panties with fur trim and cutouts at the crotch. But, reflected in the glass, she saw two men, staring at them, not the lingerie. “Think they work for this Yuri guy?”

“Doesn’t matter. If they hit us, Tim and Ed’U get ‘em, and they’re bound to know where Yuri is. Yuri’s got his greasy little fingers into everything in this part of town. Keep walking, Annie.”

Annie slipped her hand into her purse, cocked the hammer on the little Firestar 9mm and raised the safety. Although, like her father and her husband, she didn’t like a cocked and locked carry. Under the circumstances, if she needed to use the gun, it would be faster. As she withdrew her hand from her purse, she held a handkerchief, dabbed at her nose with it, then replaced it in the bag.

Angie rasped, “Don’t jump the gun, Annie. Remember, we want them set up so Tim and Ed catch ‘em red-handed.”

“They can hear everything, right? Inspector Shaw and his son?”

“I sure hope so. Two of those guys we can handle, but around this part of town, they usually strike in larger groups. These guys are probably just scouts for a gang. Six or eight guys, probably.”

“A gang. Wonderful,” Annie said, nodding. Like most women, she felt, she had always considered combat grossly unpleasant, however necessary it sometimes was. But if there had to be fighting, it was much better to have it out in the open. This business of living in a city and playing by artificial rules just did not appeal to her. If these men were about to attack them, logic dictated taking out her weapon now, letting them know she could fight back and would. Then, the men would have the choice of leaving or fighting. There would be no waiting.

Instead of taking out her weapon, she left it inside her ridiculously small purse, the purse hanging from her left shoulder. This was madness. With the high-heeled boots, she couldn’t even run properly and the flimsy stockings she wore would shred the first time she dropped to cover. Better a pistol belted at the waist, an ankle-length full skirt of good honest fabric and stockings with some body to them and sensible combat boots.

Annie shook her head, walking on beside Angie, eyeing the two men who were quite definitely following them. She could see them every time a suitable piece of window glass was available.

Annie Rubenstein and Angie reached the end of the block, Angie stopping to look into a shop window. A uniformed policeman walked past, Angie turning away. “Heknowsme,” she whispered. “Ifhe stops to say hello well lose the guys tailin’ us.”

There were magazines and books displayed in the window, all of the printing in Cyrillic alphabet and unreadable to her. “A Russian bookstore?” Annie asked.

“More or less,” Angie said, laughing softly.

Annie looked more closely. Interspersed among the books and magazines were a variety of items, some of which she recognized; others were objects she had not only never seen before but could not guess at a use for. “Is this a-“

“Sexual aids, that’s all. Welcome to Sugar Street.” The beat cop passed them and Angie turned her head down the side street. Annie turned away from the window display of books, magazines, dildos and whips, following Angie’s gaze.

“Sugar Street,” Annie repeated. The sidewalks were all but obscured by carts and booths and the scruffy-looking men and scantily clad women who hovered about them hawking their wares. Some of the stalls were apparently outgrowths of the stores they fronted, whileothers just occupied sidewalk space. And, there wasn’t much of that. The street was packed with gaily clad tourists weaving their way among the stalls, and persons whom Annie assumed were denizens of Sugar Street itself, men and women even more unsavory in physical appearance than those operating the sidewalk bazaar.