The Far Shores (The Central Series) (24 page)

Minutes ticked past, and
the conversation Mauricio was holding in his headset became more heated. Daniel
fluctuated between annoyance at the delay and slowly growing concern at
whatever could preoccupy his head of security and his personal bodyguard. Then
Mauricio flashed him a quick look, coupled with a smile that was likely
intended to be reassuring. Daniel could see the concern in his lively brown
eyes, and his mood darkened. While he waited impatiently for the conversation
to end, Daniel Morgan checked to see that his compact pistol was lodged next to
the seat in the golf cart, loaded and ready to deal with any unforeseen
situation. Daniel closed his eyes momentarily, extending the reach of his
prodigious empathic abilities, scanning the vicinity for anything untoward.

Like a number of
empaths, Daniel Morgan’s empathy was processed as auditory input, and closing
his eyes allowed him to better concentrate on the intertwined cacophony of
emotional stimuli that engulfed him. The most immediate cues were his own
rapidly diminishing melody of contentment and the rising crescendo of
Mauricio’s tension, cut with discordant notes of fear and perverse excitement.
Beyond that, he sensed the null hum of the surrounding environment, the simple
songs of the birds and the insects – repeating motifs of hunger and fear, or
their absence. Aside from the mundane sounds of natural emotion there should
have been nothing…

But that wasn’t the
case.

At the very edge of his
range, several hundred meters distant, Daniel could sense the rather shrill
notes of mirth and anticipation, woven in a tight harmony of sources acting in
concert. And that was very troubling indeed.

If they had been his
security, or reinforcements sent by the Hegemony, or even Lord North’s
representatives, Daniel would have sensed the flat tones of boredom and routine
exertion, sounds produced by servants and messengers the world over. Even if
they had been expecting trouble, as Mauricio clearly was, their expectations
would have been tempered by familiarity and dullness of repetition. Any soldier
on patrol or guard duty knows that most alerts are nothing more than an
exercise, and treats them as such. A crisis only becomes relevant when one
materializes. Soldiers on an offensive, however, carry a very different tune.

“Mr. Morgan, sir,”
Mauricio said urgently – his accent slight to the point of imperceptibility,
thanks to years of work with a tutor that the Morgan Cartel subsidized – jarring
Daniel from his extrasensory awareness. “My apologies. We need to move, sir.
Something has gone wrong.”

“Yes. Absolutely,”
Daniel Morgan agreed, nodding while he removed the stainless-finish Colt from
where it rested between the seat cushions and placed it beside his leg. “What
do you have in mind?”

“My father is inbound,”
Mauricio explained, starting up the cart and driving it as fast as the pitiful
electric motor would allow. “He suggested that we move to the east, and meet
him near the perimeter for evac, sir.”

“Very well. Tell me –
what is happening?”

Mauricio’s mouth was a
tight line of tension, and he pushed the cart too hard, sending it bouncing
over the miniature hills of the rough, each impact jarring through the minimal
suspension. Daniel Morgan reached with the steadiness of a conductor to sooth
the dissonance from Mauricio’s internal melody, restoring a measure of calm and
clear-headedness to the reliable and loyal but largely inexperienced youth.

He was not without
experience – if not for Mauricio Delgado, then Daniel might well have died a
year earlier, during an assassination attempt on the cartel’s yacht, moored in
the harbor of Rio de Janeiro. If not for his quick reflexes and prodigious
barrier protocol, the flechettes launched by a plastic explosive charge rigged
to a nearby launch would likely have killed him, as it had so many others.
Daniel Morgan had promoted Mauricio for his abilities, but he did not have the same
confidence in him that he had in his father.

“How far out is Santiago?”

“Five kilometers.”
Mauricio had to shout over the ruckus the cart made bulling its way through the
low brush. “He is already en route.”

Comforting information.
Even accounting for the winding road that led to the course and the private wilderness
that surrounded it, it would take no more than a few minutes for his head of
security to arrive at the head of a small column of armored SUVs. Daniel Morgan
would be evacuated, along with the boy – for security reasons – while his Santiago
Delgado dealt with whatever intruder had the temerity to invade his privacy.

Gripping the dashboard
to keep his balance and avoid tumbling from the cart, Daniel Morgan had time to
speculate as to the identities of unseen invaders. The Black Sun was always a
possibility, obviously, but the Morgan Cartel was not among the more warlike
factions within the Hegemony, and had never offered personal offense to the
Martynova family. It seemed doubtful that Daniel Morgan would have been at the
top of any list of targets, assuming the long-awaited war between the two
archrival cartels had actually begun. He had enemies, of course – one did not
survive seventy-odd years and innumerable political and personal squabbles,
rising to the top of the cartel leadership, without ruffling a few feathers. By
the same token, however, Morgan had learned early on that avoiding the creation
of unnecessary enemies was equally important to continued success.

There was nothing he
could think of, unless…unless Santiago had been right about the fire at the
Planter’s Ball last night. The entire incident was still under investigation,
but given the thoroughness of the burn damage on the corpses found on the
property, and the lack of survivors, it was assumed to be an attack on the
Linfield Cartel. The prime suspect, according to Central’s Administration, was a
local Witch coven with which the cartel had been competing in recent years.
There was talk of dispatching the Auditors to find the Witches, assuming the
Hegemony’s own forces could not locate them and deliver retribution. Santiago
had been agitated during the morning briefing, however, insisting that his gut
told him that the attackers were in fact from another cartel.

If that was the case…

Daniel Morgan didn’t
have an opportunity to finish the thought, because it took both hands and his
full strength to avoid slamming face-first into the dashboard of the suddenly
immobile golf cart.

“What the hell,
Mauricio?”

“I don’t know,” the boy
said, pushing the start button repeatedly. “The engine died, and the brakes
locked up. I don’t know why!”

“Forget it,” Daniel
said, stepping from the golf cart with his Colt at the ready. “We’ll just have
to get out of here on foot.”

“But, sir…”

“Move it, son. We don’t
have time for debate.”

“Right away, sir,”
Mauricio responded crisply, pausing to gather and ready his LaRue OBR Tactical
– a modern variant on the AR-15 platform of which he was very proud, though the
various shades of green-and-grey plastic always made it look like a toy to
Daniel. He checked the clip, charged the rifle, then followed Daniel into the
brush. “My father and the convoy have arrived at the gate, sir, but it appears
to have lost power. The guards are not present, and they cannot activate the
gate mechanism manually.”

The bad feeling in
Daniel Morgan’s gut grew worse as he made his way through scrub oak and
mesquite.

“Climb the fence,” he
snarled. “Cut the gate. Tell them to do what they need to do. I want support
and an evac, sooner rather than later.”

“Right, sir,” Mauricio
affirmed, resuming a hushed Spanish conversation over his headset – which cut
off suddenly, in mid-word.

“What’s wrong?”

Daniel already had an
idea, and he wasn’t waiting for an answer. He set the best pace his arthritic
knees could handle, and the boy barreled along next to him, rifle at the ready.

“Comms are down,”
Mauricio said, tapping his earpiece futilely. “No idea what the problem is.”

“Our enemies,” Daniel
Morgan snapped, wishing he had the time to stop and scan his surroundings, but
with scant hundreds of meters separating him from escape, he didn’t think it
was worth the delay. “That is the problem.”

“I don’t know, sir,”
Mauricio said uncertainly. “The channel is secure, and the comm gear is
hardened. I don’t see how…”

“Worry about it later.
We need to get out of here, first.”

“Right, sir. I’ll take
point.”

The boy brushed ahead of
him, blazing a path through the small trees and undergrowth, checking behind
him occasionally and slowing his pace so that Daniel could keep up. His breath
was shallow, and the bad feeling in his gut had been replaced with an ache in
his chest, where he had a bypass and a pacemaker installed a few years ago. The
doctors had found an irregularity during the installation of the cardiac shunt,
which apparently could have killed him if they had not. Since then, he had
barely noticed it, even when he exerted himself, sailing or on the golf course.
But now his chest was burning, and his left arm was tingling.

“Hold on,” Daniel Morgan
commanded, coming to a stop and resting his hand against a slim willow tree. “I
need a minute.”

Mauricio’s eyes widened,
and he almost shook his head, before he remembered his place. His brown eyes
scanned the scrub behind them with a frenetic intensity.

“Are you certain, sir?
They could be very close, now.”

“Yes,” Daniel panted,
his vision swimming and his legs shaking. “I need to catch my breath.”

“Right, sir,” Mauricio
said, crouching behind him and flipping open the scope mounted on the LaRue. It
was an expensive toy – a thermal imager, Israeli design, not available even on
the military market yet – but the ability to sight through meters of vegetation
made it a worthwhile investment at that particular moment. “Sir, I think I see…”

Mauricio trailed off,
and he turned the rifle on its side and started to fiddle with the scope.

“What? What is it, son?”

Daniel gasped out the
words. His lips were numb, and the fire in his chest was almost unbearable. He
was hyperventilating, and only his grip on the tree kept him from falling over.

“The scope went dead,
sir. Maybe the battery, or…”

Mauricio cried out,
tearing the earpiece from his ear and tossing it away. Daniel didn’t have to
ask why. Even at a slight distance, he could hear the squealing of feedback
being emitted by the tiny speaker.

Daniel Morgan wanted to
use his protocol, to try to locate their attackers, but the pain in his chest
and arm made it out of the question. It was all he could do to keep breathing.

Mauricio tore the
thermal imager from the rifle and scanned the terrain behind them using the
iron sights, looking for any unnatural movement or flashes of color, but the
steady breeze caused too much motion in the grasses and the tree branches to be
certain of anything. He spent the better part of a minute panning across the
area behind them in a fruitless search for the pursuers.

When he turned around to
check on Daniel Morgan, the old man was already on the ground, lying on his
side with his face in the dirt. Mauricio cried out and bent over him, rolled
him onto his back and took his wrist to check his pulse. The old man’s mouth
moved like a fish out of water, as if he were trying to sound out words that he
couldn’t say. His pulse was ragged and irregular, and Mauricio could only watch
helplessly as it petered out.

***

Vivik left before class ended, so
Alex never had a chance to speak with him. Alex asked around, but no one had
seen him leave, or could say where he might have gone.

It would have to wait. Alex
returned to Eerie, who was still gathering up her books.

“Wanna get lunch?”

“I can’t,” Eerie
explained, picking up her ever-present knitting basket. “I’m supposed to do a
session with Rebecca, then I have Biology.”

“Too bad. Hey, is Vivik
in your class?”

Eerie considered for an
unreasonably long period of time, but Alex just waited. He knew that the
Changeling struggled to communicate, particularly when she was asked to recall
a name or a face. He suspected that most people looked roughly similar to her.

“No,” she decided,
shaking her head. “Not so far.”

“Okay. We’re still on
for tonight, right?”

“Yes,” Eerie said, hinting
again at a smile. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Good. I’ll come by around
nine. Alright?”

“Yes,” Eerie said, going
up on her toes to brush his cheek with her lips.

Alex just watched her
leave, not moving until the door closed behind her. Then he realized he still
had his hand on his cheek, and dropped it, hurriedly collecting his books and
heading for the door.

He caught Katya outside
the dining hall. Anastasia and Timor must have had other plans, because they
were nowhere to be seen, a fact for which he was grateful. Even if Anastasia
was again to be his benefactor, that didn’t mean he wanted to deal with her
taunting while he ironed out the final details.