Alien vs. Alien (24 page)

CHAPTER 41

“A
MES, I LOVE YOU.
Keep on writing down the questions, but revel in the fact that you’re totally on fire today.” I dialed and he answered on the first ring. “I know what’s going on.”

“Baby, now’s a really bad time.”

“Don’t let Chuckie out of your sight.”

“I can feel your panic, and, as so often happens, it’s centered around him. Why?”

“Because whatever’s going on with the dirty pictures isn’t being done to hurt American Centaurion. It’s being done to destroy Chuckie and everything he stands for.” I looked at Jamie. “And stands in front of.”

“Mind explaining that?”

“Sure. They’re after our baby, and all the other hybrid babies.” Jeff growled. “Look, belay that for now. Chuckie has a lot of enemies, in no small part because he spends much of his time protecting Centaurion Division, our hybrids in particular. Senator Armstrong said it himself—brilliant, driven men cause problems, and many times they take over. We have a lot of enemies and the person who protects us from them is Chuckie. Take him out, what the hell happens to us?”

“You get Esteban Cantu running the Extra-Terrestrial Division of the C.I.A.,” Armstrong answered. “It’s considered a straight line to the top position. Antiterrorism used to be, but not since Reynolds took over as the head of the ETD.”

“I heard him,” Jeff said, voice tight. “I don’t have eyes on Reynolds, but I’ll get to him.” He cursed quietly. “This event is a perfect place for an assassination.”

“That’s what you’re all doing there, right? Ensuring that the International One World Festival isn’t the President’s Ball, Part Two.”

“Yes. I need to get off the phone. There are too many people here—I need to focus to find Reynolds. So, on the plus side, he’s not emotionally upset.”

I refrained from mentioning that this could be because he was already dead.

Jeff sighed. “I’d feel it, if he died.”

Good to know he was reading my mind. I reminded myself that I’d told him how much I liked that only a short while ago. “Why?”

“Because he’s so tightly tied to you emotionally. It’s an empathic thing, but if Reynolds dies, I’ll know. And he’s not dead.”

“Good. Jeff, you be careful, too. Just because Chuckie’s the goal, it doesn’t mean they won’t go for a double and try to get rid of you, too.”

“Always nice to know you care, baby. I love you. I’ll let you know as soon as I find him.”

“I love you, too. Be safe.”

I hung up and tried not to worry. Failed. I took Jamie from Olga and cuddled her. Made me feel a little bit better.

“So, the expectation was that Jeffrey would go into a jealous rage and kill Mister Reynolds,” White said.

“Makes sense,” Christopher said. “I was kind of impressed with how well he handled it.”

“He was cut off from me and Jamie emotionally. I’m sure that had a lot to do with it. So he could tell how upset Chuckie was and read him correctly, without a lot of jealousy filtering required.” I looked at Armstrong. “If you’d brought him those photos, though, I think it would have gone differently.”

“So, why were you such a good friend to Kitty all of a sudden?” Amy asked.

“The truth,” I added. “Not the political spin.”

“They’re the same answer—why upset your husband? That wouldn’t do me any good politically. But if I could help you keep these out of the press, or at least help you prep for how to handle it when they hit the streets, well, I’d be your friend, wouldn’t I?”

“And friends do favors for each other. Yeah. Same with Guy and Vance. And they told no one?”

“No. If we told someone, then we wouldn’t be your friends, would we?”

“Since when did you want to become Kitty’s friend?” Christopher asked.

Armstrong shrugged.

“No, it’s a really good question, and you need to answer it. Because you haven’t done anything the person who’s sending the pictures expected you to. Meaning he or she knows you, and you’ve changed your game plan somewhere along the way. And they
don’t
know that.”

“They know,” White said quietly. “That’s why Senator Armstrong has new photos today. Because they know he’s not doing what they expected and is, for whatever reason, choosing to align himself with us.”

Armstrong sighed. “Yes, you’re right. Look, Madeline Cartwright and Antony Marling are dead. I tied my horse to t/fontheir cart, and it’s only because I legitimately had no idea what they were doing that I’m still in office, let alone not in jail.”

“How many supersoldier projects are active right now?”

He stared at me. I stared right back. He wasn’t Mom or Chuckie—I had no worries that I’d win.

It took a while, but sure enough, he dropped his eyes. “Two.”

“Based out of Paris and Paraguay?”

“Yes. You want to know the exact moment I decided it was time to change teams? When I found out that Cooper and Gaultier had been trying to use children as test subjects for the superdrug.”

“So you did know about it.”

“After the fact. Cooper didn’t tell me because he was clear on where my line was. I had to read Reynolds’ report to know the truth of what had happened.”

“But you were still friendly with Cartwright and Marling.”

“You don’t discard people like that because someone they know did something insane and illegal. And if you want to know the moment I realized I wanted nothing more to do with any of the rest of the supersoldier programs, it was the President’s Ball. Once it was all over, several of us who have the security clearances to know everything about Centaurion Division insisted on seeing what was going on down in that basement. I saw the ‘perfect weapons’ Marling had created. I saw things I’d thought of as people shown to be robots. I saw madness.”

“You’d bought in before then.”

“Yes. It sounds wonderful on paper—create an army out of the things from space that can destroy us without even trying hard. In reality, it was horrifying.” He shook his head. “I’ve thanked God every day that my wife was too ill to attend. And now I realize they wanted both of us too ill to attend. I’d almost say they were my friends for that . . . only I know they didn’t try to keep me away to keep me safe, but so that I wouldn’t see what they were really doing. Until it was too late.”

“Well, better late than never to the side of right.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “My career will be over if these pictures of you and what everyone in the world will believe is me hit the newsstands. They’re no longer after just Reynolds. I’m in their sights now. Whoever the hell ‘they’ are. The people I’d suspect are all dead.”

“Other than Cantu.”

“There is no way he’s doing this alone. And I have no idea who he could go to who would have this kind of pull that I wouldn’t know about already.”

“And they picked a hell of a day for this, too,” Amy said, still industriously writing, just as Len and Kyle were. White appeared done, so I assumed he’d once again used hyperspeed. He was the wise man. But Amy was my go-to girl right now.

“Ames, seriously, you’re totally golden today. Why? James wanted me asking that. Why did the senator get the first set of pictures the day we left town?”

“My guess is that they truly expected him to take them straight to Jeffrures they, which would have been simple because you were nowhere around to either intercept the pictures or protect Mister Reynolds from Jeffrey’s wrath.”

“Mister White wins the first round. So, the next question is, why did the senator get the next set of pictures today of all days? When the One World Festival is launching?”

“That,” Olga said, looking straight at me, “is the proper question.”

I knew my answer to this was going to mean I either flunked or got to join Oliver and Buchanan at the head of the class. I ran it all through my mind and it all added up. For once.

“Because it’s not about the pictures. Everything that’s going on—from the dirty pictures, to the mysterious-nothing-taken break-in at the Bahraini Embassy, to Sandra the Android, to Club Fifty-One’s little show—is a diversion.”

CHAPTER 42

O
LGA BEAMED. “EXACTLY.”

I didn’t congratulate myself—we were too far away from any kind of positive outcome to get cocky.

“They may be diversions,” Christopher said, “but people can still die from them.”

“Oh, I’m positive they want people dying.” Chuckie in particular. “But they’re doing all this to distract us from what they really want—Chuckie out of the way and clear access to Jamie and all the other hybrid children.”

As I said this, Amy finished up and handed her stuff to Christopher. He already had White’s completed test recap. Len finished as Christopher glared at Amy’s pages, with Kyle following shortly thereafter.

While Christopher perused their work and got more and more pissed off, based on the fact that he was running through Patented Glares #1-5 as if he were practicing for the Glaring Olympics and wanted to ensure the Gold in at least four out of five events, I went back to one of the diversions at hand.

“So, we still need to know how they got pictures of me and Jeff from last night.”

White cocked his head at me. “Do we feel our current enemies, whoever they are, know us well?”

I pondered. “I think they know
us
well. They clearly didn’t know Senator Armstrong as well as they thought they did.”

“They didn’t know Mister Joel Oliver as well as they thought, either,” Len said.

“No,” Oliver corrected. “They didn’t know my editor.”

“But our reactions are right out of our playbook. That’s what you mean, right Mister White?”

“Yes, Missus Martini. I’d assume it’s going to be catsuit time again shortly?”

“You never can tell, but I’d put money on that being a big yes. You know, since acethe Embassy was scanned several times last night, I have to assume that one of us brought whatever bug in. Either that or one of our personnel are working for the bad guys.”

“Mister Reynolds has us scan everyone,” Kyle said. “Regularly.”

“Even me?”

“Especially you,” Len said. “After all the bugs you carried in during Operation Assassination, he made it a daily task.” The boys were the only ones who used whatever Operation name I’d assigned. I loved them.

Christopher snorted. “He was late on that one, because that sure as hell wasn’t the first time Kitty had a bug planted in her purse.”

He and I looked at each other. “Oh.
Snap
. Sandra was doing double duty, at least. Maybe she was supposed to self-destruct, maybe just run away. But, hell, I carried the bug in, didn’t I?”

Len and Kyle exchanged a look. “Yeah, we didn’t scan anyone yesterday,” Kyle admitted. “At least, not after the incident.”

“I don’t think Mister Reynolds did, either,” Len added.

“He didn’t, because he didn’t say, ‘hey, Kitty, there’s a bug in your purse.’ So we still need to know what happened to it.”

“I may know.” Armstrong’s eyes were narrowed. “Titan Security was working on micronized weapons and surveillance. They had some strong prototypes, including what they called the Tarantula.”

“Let me guess, it’s a metal thing that looks like a big ol’ spider?”

“Yes. It can adapt to look like other things, as well. It ‘sleeps’ as a sphere.”

“So, they took their cues from
Minority Report
and
Transformers
.”

Armstrong shrugged. “What the mind can imagine, the mind can create.”

“Excellent. Can’t wait to see what the League of Really Crazed Super-Geniuses comes up with next.”

“I’m going home,” Christopher said. “I want to see if we can find the Tarantula.”

Armstrong shook his head. “It’s a gatherer, not a transmitter. It gets what it’s sent to find and returns to its nest, so to speak.”

“Let’s be really sure.” Christopher said. “I’ll be right back.”

“You could have Walter search, you know.”

“I want him focused on security, not on searching.”

“Oh. Wow. So that was the Club Fifty-One play.”

Everyone looked at me. “Want to explain that?” Christopher asked.

“Sure. They were testing to see what our reactions would be, when most personnel are off site at an event, when a huge bunch of suicide bombers appeared out of nowhere.”

“On the plus side, no one came out of the Embassy,” Len said. “I kept watch, and the only people on the street were Mister Buchanan, the three K-9 cops and dogs, an">“On d the three of you.”

“So we showed them we were hanging out with Romania in the off hours. But we showed them that we have people on surveillance of some kind, too. Meaning they did, as Christopher pointed out earlier, what Senator Armstrong said they were doing—they flushed us out of hiding.” Jamie was in the room, so I resisted the impulse to curse.

“I’m still going to the Embassy,” Christopher said. “I want to brief Walter and anyone else over there on what’s going on.”

“Fine. Call me before you come back.”

“Why?”

“I may not want you returning alone.”

I wasn’t sure if Christopher was on my wavelength or not, but he didn’t argue. He gave Amy another quick peck and zipped off.

“So, was the Tarantula sent to get new dirty pictures?” I wasn’t thrown by spiders or bugs, only snakes, so the idea that some big metal thing made to look like the Godzilla of Spiders had been in my purse didn’t freak me out all that much. It pissed me off to no end, though.

“Maybe.” White looked thoughtful. “Maybe it was sent to get information on the interior of the Embassy and pictures of you two being intimate was a bonus, so to speak.”

I wondered if it had seen the Peregrines’ arrival or not. Bruno pulled his head out from under his wing and stared at me. Check. If an enemy Tarantula had been there, the Peregrines would have destroyed it. Good to know. I’d worry about my complete mental breakdown later. For right now, I was going to embrace the Dr. Doolittle and just run with it.

“Why use them, though?” Armstrong asked. “Doesn’t it just give them away?”

“Only because you came to us, instead of going elsewhere. And only because we figured it out.”

“And maybe they needed a better shot of Jeff,” Amy said.

“Ames, again you bat a thousand. There are lots of pictures of the senator out there, I’m sure, but most of them won’t be of him making the o-face. So the few that would work have to fit onto a specific body position. We gave them new options, they ran with them.” Very quickly. Meaning they were either really good or had A-C traitors on staff. It was, like most of today’s problems, a fifty-fifty bet either way.

“I believe the important question now is, what do we do?” Adriana asked.

“That is the question of the moment, isn’t it? So, what do we know? Whoever’s in charge wants Chuckie out permanently.”

“Or to have him so disgraced that nothing he’s ever said or done will be regarded,” Armstrong said.

“I’d assume both,” White added. “But they also want to steal our children.”

“That cannot be allowed,” Olga said, and I knew she wasn’t saying it just because she liked us and didn’t want to see Jamie hurt.

“True enough. Okay, so, what did we tell them about how the Embassy’s set up, how we protect the kids, and all that jazz?” White handed me the papers he and the othersdisgrace had written. “Dude, seriously. It’s me.”

“She
can
read, you’d just never know that she does,” Amy said dryly. “In addition to how we handled the children, with focus on dealing with their powers and how we protected them, my questions were about lockdown and how it worked, where we took people for lockdown, what we did when we couldn’t get to a secured A-C facility, and things of that nature.”

“Ours were similar,” Len said. “Only with a lot more emphasis on actual tactics.”

“Fabulous. So, they definitely know our playbook, or most of it, which is probably more than enough, since they most likely already had some of it. You know, whatever they didn’t ask about.” And they’d done a live test less than a half an hour ago, too.

That meant Dulce was out. So was NASA Base. Caliente Base was probably out, too. We always ran to these places. I ran through options in my mind. The last place we’d want to be was Euro Base, since it was in Paris. But I wasn’t coming up with a lot of options. Decided to forge on. “Hiding here is out.”

Adriana nodded. “Even if we hadn’t been the test target, so to speak, we have none of the defenses your locations do.”

“I believe hiding is the right answer,” Olga said. “For some of us.”

“Mister White, where is the last place you’d choose to hide someone?”

“I assume you mean other than ‘in plain sight’ or similar. And what you’re asking is where could we go that would have all the security we’d need that, at the same time, our enemies wouldn’t expect, correct?”

“As always.”

He was quiet for a few moments while I tried to come up with not only who we should hide, but who should hide with them. I knew Jeff and Chuckie would both want me hiding, but that wasn’t going to happen. However, someone had to be along who could and would kick butt. More than one, if possible.

“Are our phones tapped?”

“Mister Reynolds checks regularly,” Len said.

“I would assume they are,” Olga countered. “If not your Embassy’s phone lines, or even your cellular phones, certainly some of the phones you wish to call will be.”

I contemplated some more. Jamie had a full diaper bag, complete with bottles, formula, food, and change of clothes. I could ensure everyone else I needed to hide would be adequately prepped. But we were going to have to make it look like we weren’t actually going into hiding and then hide somewhere effective.

“I believe I may have an option,” White said finally. “It’s not actually a Base.”

“But it has the A-C bells and whistles on it?”

He smiled. “And then some. It has the added advantage of being the most secured place on, I believe, Earth. And yet, it’s very easy for us to access.”

I stared at him. “Wow. I think I know where you’re talking about. And, yeah. It’s perfect. And loaded with A-C Security dudes.”

“The reth="2st of us aren’t so clear,” Amy said.

“Probably not. But, um, just in case, I’m not going to say aloud where Mister White and I are talking about.”

I looked at Bruno, who nodded his approval. Excellent. Now for the hard part—getting there. Well, in one sense, getting there was fairly easy. But we had to do it in such a way no one would be aware we were going there until everyone was safely tucked away.

I looked at White. “One big floater gate or do we all trundle over to the Embassy?”

“I believe a variety of jumps might be preferable.”

“Makes sense.” It did. If we were congregating in one area then jumping again, logic would determine that we hadn’t left someone behind. Logic would be wrong, but it was worth a shot, and I didn’t want to take too long to get things and precious cargo locked up and away.

My phone chose this moment to ring. “Hey Christopher, what did you find?”

“Nothing, which I suppose is a good thing. What have you come up with?”

“Oh, I think it’s time for us to have a party.”

He was quiet for a few long moments. “Is this you trying to pass along information in a way no one else would understand?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. “I’m not James, Jeff, or Reynolds. I don’t get your Kittyisms first thing out of the gate.”

“And yet, there you are, right with me on the plan.”

“No. I’m nowhere with you on the plan. I have no idea what the plan is, and if we continue on this way much longer, I won’t have anything other than a migraine.”

I had to accept that this was probably true. “I want to get everyone who’s in danger and not equipped to properly protect themselves to safety. I also want to be sure said someones have others with them capable of kicking butt. And I want them hidden very safely somewhere that’s still easy enough for us to access.”

“Kitty, seriously, in the time you’ll spend trying to get me to figure out your innuendos, they could launch their plan and kill everyone. Let’s assume our phones aren’t tapped and everyone in the room with you is trustworthy, and
just tell me what the hell you want me to know.”