Alien vs. Alien (30 page)

CHAPTER 53

“T
INO! TINO! TINO!”
Bellie cawed. It dawned on me that she didn’t have any mispronunciation issues—she was calling him Tino instead of Valentino.

“Right you are, Bellie. Treats coming soon. Hold him, guys.”

“Trying,” Buchanan said through gritted teeth.

“So you’ve shot up with Surcenthumain, haven’t you, Clarence?”

He glared at me but appeared to be using all his effort to get away from the guys holding him.

I dug around for my phone. “Where’s Jeff and Chuckie?” I took a picture of him. It wasn’t a great shot, but hopefully it’d give Christopher and Serene something to work with.

Clarence laughed one of those low, evil bad guy laughs. “You’re never going to see either one of them again. Not that you’re going to be around too long to mourn their loss.”

I wanted to kick his face, hard, but that wouldn’t get me information. “Blah, blah, blah. Heard that the last time you decided to tangle with us. Where are Ronaldo and LaRue? They
are
the ones pulling your strings, right? I mean, you’re not smart enough to do this stuff on your own.”

Probably untrހullingue. All the A-Cs were bright. But Jeremy was an empath, so I wanted Clarence’s emotions reacting, in the hopes we’d get something from them.

“You’ll see them soon enough.” The men were trying to get his hands behind his back, presumably to handcuff him or tie him up in some way, but they weren’t succeeding. Clarence had clearly taken a
lot
of the superpowers drug.

“Just the three of you against all of us? I don’t like your odds.” I relaxed as much as I could and then sent what I hoped was a really loud, really screaming emotional signal that I needed help, and as many A-Cs as possible, pronto. It had worked before, but that was in the Dulce Science Center. I wasn’t liking my odds here at the Festival.

“We’ll have your baby. She’ll provide all we’ll ever need.” He struggled to his feet, despite the fact that we had two big, strong A-Cs and a big, strong human all doing their best to prevent this.

I was going to hit him, but before I could move, Bruno flew off Clarence’s shoulders and right at me, screaming. I managed to stop myself. My rage was high, but I had to keep it in check. Bruno had been clear—if I attacked Clarence right now, he was going to escape, possibly with me in tow. “You’re not getting her, or anyone else.” Bruno landed in front of me and faced Clarence.

“How’d you get one of those?” Clarence asked, obviously talking about Bruno.

“What’s it matter to you? Where are Jeff and Chuckie? What’s your evil master plan? Why are you such a raging jerk?” No external reactions, other than an increase in the level of dirty in the look he was giving me.

“You never shut up,” he growled.

“Nope, never. Where are LaRue and Ronnie? Why did you start the problems between Bahrain and Israel?” He jerked. Just a little. “What take-over-the-world plan are you guys working on now? Why send dirty pictures of me around town?”

Interestingly enough, this got a real reaction. Clarence laughed. “Because they’ll ruin everything you’ve all worked for. And my self-righteous brother-in-law will get what he deserves—the knowledge that you’re a slut and always will be.”

“Wow, you’re all still clinging to that one? It didn’t work on anyone in Paris, and it’s not going to work on anyone here.”

“Oh, it still works on some of us,” Reader said, as he, Gower, Tim, and the flyboys, along with a good number of field agents, surrounded us. “As in it really pisses us off. Let’s get our missing traitor under wraps.”

“Can we beat him up while we do it?” Jerry asked.

“Save that for interrogation,” Tim suggested.

Bruno screamed again as Clarence flung Jeremy at the flyboys. Jeremy knocked them over like a humongous bowling ball.

With a hand now free, Clarence was able to grab Buchanan, pull him off, and throw him at Alpha Team. He missed Gower, but took Reader and Tim down, which also knocked over Hughes and Walker, who had regained their feet.

“Richard, let go!” It dawned on me that the bad guys always had some form of “destroy the Pontifex” in their plan.

White tried to comply, but Clarence had him. I was going to try to tackle them, but before I could move, Clarence tossed White at me. We landed, hard. As we did, my brain chose to cheerfully remind me that White was no longer the Pontifex while also pointing out that Gower had no one near him.

Bruno took to the air, headed right for Clarence’s face, while I heard Bellie in the near distance shrieking, “Help! Help! Help!”

Bruno slowed Clarence down to regular hyperspeed, but no one was close enough to Gower.

“Paul, run!” As the words left my mouth, I felt rather than saw someone race past us. Said someone tackled Gower to the ground, which meant Clarence shot past them, as Bruno landed in front of Gower and Jennifer.

Jeremy was up and concentrating. “He’s angry and he’s scared. He’s not coming back, though, I don’t think. It feels like . . . he has something . . . more important to do.”

The rest of us got to our feet. Jeremy helped his sister and Gower up, while White helped me. I looked around for the Poofs. Didn’t see any. Checked my purse. Harlie and Poofikins were in it, looking cute and also alert. Very alert. But none of the other unnamed Poofs were around.

Bruno strutted over. “You were my big, brave bird, weren’t you?” I gave him a nice scritchy-scratch between his wings, while I checked him for injuries. Bruno warbled at me, sharing that he liked the scratching, and the only injured party was Clarence.

“What are you petting?” Reader asked.

“Um, they’re invisible. Sort of.”

“Not any more,” Gower said. “Thank the big bird for me, will you?”

“Bruno can hear. Quite well. So, you can see him?”

Reader coughed. “Did you hit your head when Richard got tossed onto you? It’s a huge peacock, girlfriend. We can all see him.”

“You couldn’t before. I’ll explain Bruno and his flock later.” Besides, Bruno seemed agitated, as if he wanted to fly off but couldn’t. I checked on Bellie. She was perched on White’s shoulder, getting treats, and seemed calm. “We need to check on the Bahraini Ambassadress and the guys with her.”

“I’m fine, thanks to all of you,” she said as she and the others joined us. “My name is Mona Nejem. This is my driver, Khalid.” No last name given. Not a surprise, really. The younger man who looked like he was also Bahraini nodded.

“You’re with the Bahraini Royal Army, right?”

Khalid looked impressed. “Yes.”

“Dude, you’re in uniform. It wasn’t that hard to guess.” I looked at the other two with them. “You two, however, aren’t Bahraini. You’re Israeli, right?”

They nodded. “I’m Oren,” the smaller one said. “And this is Jakob,” he indicated the guy with glasses. No last names here, either. Again, not a shocker. Despite the bruising they were both starting to show from being used as two-thirds of Clarence’s punching bag set, an aura of readiness and competence radiated from　es. both of them. They didn’t look distressed—they looked quietly pissed off, and like they were both plotting how to rectify what had just happened.

“They were trying to help us,” Mona said. “When they saw me being dragged away from Khalid.”

“Mossad isn’t always working against you, in other words.” All four of them, not just Oren and Jakob, jerked, and all four of them looked a little panicky and a lot guilty. “You’re all pals, aren’t you?”

“In a sense,” Mona allowed. “While our countries rarely get along, as I’m sure you’re learning, being here is different from being at home. There are many times when we who do these kinds of jobs have more in common with our counterparts from other countries than we do our own countrymen.”

“Not that the Ambassadress is in any way giving Israel even the tiniest bit of classified information,” Oren said quickly. “Or vice versa.”

“Our relationship is more friendly than antagonistic,” Jakob added. “Though not friendly in an inappropriate sense.”

“Do either the Israeli or the Bahraini Ambassadors know about this friendship?” White asked.

Oren, Jakob, and Khalid all put poker faces on. Mona smiled. “I don’t have to share every minute of my day with my husband.”

“In other words, Bahrain likely doesn’t know, and Israel might, but if either one does know, they’re pretending they don’t because it never hurts to have friends among your enemies.”

“Well put,” Khalid said.

While we’d been talking, Tito had done quick inspections on those who’d gotten manhandled, including me. “Everyone seems okay, but I really think we should have the Ambassadress and her guardians checked out a little more fully, due to who was hitting them and where. Internal injuries are possible, and I don’t have the equipment here to be able to confirm one way or the other.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to our Embassy,” White said.

“Or any other Base.”

“Andrews,” Armstrong suggested.

“I agree,” Buchanan said. “It’s secure and has more than one gate, if necessary.”

“Really?”

I got a lot of sighs and “when will you read the briefing books” looks. Buchanan just grinned. “Yes, really. Every U.S. military facility has at least one gate, some have more. Most friendly nations have them too. And by friendly I mean friendly to American Centaurion.”

Truly I was the last to find out anything. Oh, well, the excitement of regular surprises overruled the “fun” associated with the briefing books. “Super, so Andrews it is. We have a limo nearby, hopefully it’s safe.”

“We have limos too,” Reader said patiently. “Or did you forget that?”

“I’ll hurt you later, James.” Now that the adrenaline rush was dying down, I knew I needed to focus and think. The first thought that came to me was the fact that I had AWOL Poofs. I used to thin　mesk the Poofs ran off when they felt outgunned. But experience had shown that they tended to run off when they felt they were more urgently needed elsewhere. So, that begged a question. “Where are the other Poofs?”

“Do you mean the big fluffy animals with huge teeth?” Mona asked carefully.

“Yeah. I sense a major debrief coming on, but guys, before we do that, I think it’s an important question.”

Reader shook his head. “Worry about the Poofs later; they can take care of themselves. We have a known traitor who’s working with known terrorists on the loose. We need to track him down and confine him.”

“That didn’t work last time.”

“They used specialized equipment then,” Gower said. “Alpha Four disabled it.”

“Disabled and unable to be reconnected aren’t the same thing.” The nagging grew stronger. We were missing something.
I
was missing something, and it wasn’t just Jeff and Chuckie. But they were a part of what I was missing, in that sense. And, as so often happened, I knew I had everything I needed to put most, if not all, of the puzzle together.

“Let’s get everyone to a hospital or some semblance of safety,” Reader said. “And then we can worry about your theories.”

“No. James, we need to stop and think. Someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble to prevent me from knowing anything and, therefore, to prevent all of you from talking about it with me.”

“Missus Martini is correct,” White said. “And she’s considered number one on our enemies’ hit list, meaning we need to stop pretending security clearances matter right now.”

“Oh, they matter. They just don’t matter in terms of all of us at the moment.”

Armstrong cleared his throat. “If it helps at all, I firmly support Ambassador Martini being briefed on anything necessary. We have proof the HSAC test she was given was falsified, meaning our enemies wanted to keep her out of the loop. Let’s not allow that any longer.”

Had to hand it to Armstrong. He’d moved himself into our camp with ease, and he’d done it without coming off as a total jerk.

However, the senator’s ability to be a good politician wasn’t the issue of the moment. It was part of it, of course, but not what mattered right now. Think, think. I needed to think. Took the time while my brain was coming up with nothing to send the picture I’d taken of Clarence to Christopher, with an urgent request for him and Serene both to read it.