All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (35 page)

“Ma’am, I have a question,” a gruff voice said, a half hour later.  “What was the combination to your office safe as of the summer of ’68?”

Checking veracity.  She shook her head and gave the long-changed combination.

“Good enough,” Mr. Gruff said.  He sounded like a Greek immigrant from her generation or perhaps a little earlier.

Another person picked up the phone.  “Tonya?  You’ve gone through a lot of work to talk to me.”

“You have a problem,” Tonya said.

“I have many problems, of which you are now one.”

“I’m on your side.  You’re speaking with your own voice, you see, and I can tell you grew up in Queens and have spent at least a decade in Manhattan.  Also, when I was a young Transform, Focus Adkins told me everything about her early years in Quarantine.”

That ought to be enough, if her estimates on his smarts were correct.

“So, you’re not buying the story.”

“No, I’m not.  Not that I have any evidence that could convince anyone else.”  She paused.  “I’m also thinking that you have a personal stake in this.”

“I do.”

She could hear it in his voice.

“Join me, then.  As a bodyguard.”

“I’ve made other arrangements.”

“I can guess what they are, involving disguises and illusions.  But your protection will not be where I am, and where I will be is where you need to be.”

“It’s true that my arrangements will lead me either into pointlessness or into danger I’m not able to cope with easily.”  He paused.  “Why are you offering to help me?”

“Because if you come with me, you can help all of us.  Despite all appearances, we’re on the same side here.  Unfortunately, none of your peers agree.”

“Too true,” he said.  “I’ll do it.”

They made arrangements, and then he hung up.

Tonya composed herself and made another phone call.

“Hello?”

“Oh, it’s you,” Lori said.  “It’s two in the morning, yah know.”

“I need a favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

“I need to keep a secret.  I want your permission to keep it.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“I can’t.  If I’m wrong, you won’t want to know.”

“You’re trying to pull something on the Arms, aren’t you?”

“In a way,” Tonya said.  “If it works, it will be to our advantage next week.”  The wedding fight.  “If not, well, I’ll pay the price.”

“Things aren’t what they seem, eh?  Or so I figure, at night.”

In her Dreams.  “That’s right.”

“Go for it.  We inhuman Focuses need to keep the courage of our convictions.”  Lori hung up.  It sounded to Tonya like Inferno still gave Lori grief about her recovery from the assassination attempt.

Good for them.

Enkidu: May 11, 1969

Enkidu cracked his knuckles and paced around the ratty garbage-dump table in the ‘new’ Hunter headquarters, a recently abandoned farm – abandoned due to a Monster attack Joshua had craftily set up.  The place was farther from Chicago than any of their personal headquarters, but large enough and secluded enough to hold their entire army, and allow them to train.

He had begged and pleaded and eventually got, from all of the leading combatants, the specifics of what their assets would be in the fight.  Some of the Master of Master’s assets were amazing.  He hadn’t expected they would be seeing Thunder in this fight, given that he had moved half way across the country, but Wandering Shade said he would be showing up later today.

“Our greatest vulnerability is on the trip to Detroit,” he said to the Masters of his army.  Odin, Joshua.  The Master of Masters Wandering Shade.  They gathered around the table piled with battle preparations, planning for war.  “The enemy knows we prefer the big rigs.  We’ve used that trick too many times.”

“How else can we get there?” Odin said.

“Smaller vehicles, a back road caravan to about twenty miles out.”  He nodded to Wandering Shade, who had provided him the intel on the upper-end Crow tricks.  Learning about metasense repeaters answered many of his old questions about how senior Crows managed to avoid the Hunters.  If the enemy had a senior Crow on call in Detroit, they would need to mask from him, which meant the attackers needed to be on foot, in a compact group.  “We’re also going to go in a bit later than the original plan – I’ve seen things in the clouds that make me think going later will provide much better cover.”

“Ugh,” Odin said.  “We’ll need the time, if we’re going to come in on foot.  I’d rather go in during daylight.”

“The wedding is a death trap I’d rather avoid,” Enkidu said.  “The narrow streets around the church would turn into shooting galleries, with us as the targets.  We keep that part of the original plan.”  That being to hit the reception, at night, not the wedding.

“Why do we need to hit them with everything we’ve got?” Joshua asked.  “And why are you separating us into different teams?”

“Huh,” Enkidu said.  “I fear a trick on their part.  Two of the damned Focuses haunt my dreams, the White Witch of Pittsburgh and the Madonna of Montreal.  Based on our intel, they’re not invited, but both of them hate us enough to crash the party.  Our Master of Masters,” Enkidu nodded to Wandering Shade, who nodded back “says that either one is more powerful than any five of the Focuses we know might be attending.”

“I also fear that the Flying Monkey, the Focus who serves as Council President, may be showing up,” Wandering Shade said.  “She’s plenty powerful for a Focus.  So the point of Master Odin and his pack’s, um, demonstration is to attract their attention?”

“Yes,” Enkidu said.  “This looks like overkill, and I hope it is.  If any or all of these leading Focuses attend, we don’t want them helping the Arms and whatever thugs they drag into the slaughter.  The last thing I want is this turning into a fair fight.”

They all laughed, except Master Odin.

“Why don’t you do the demonstration, General?” Master Odin said.  Neither he or Wandering Shade had given Enkidu anywhere as much grief as he had feared they would.  Odin was lost, understanding little of Enkidu’s military analysis.

“Me?”  Enkidu laughed.  “Face facts – I can take a lot of punishment, but in a stand-up fight, I’m the fifth best fighter among the Hunters.  Something you know far too well, dammit,” he said, growling at Odin.  “It won’t do us any good if the demonstration fails so badly our potential enemies can ignore it.”

“It’s good you finally realize your place, twerp,” Odin said.  “Okay, I’ll do it, if you” he pointed a bear-ish finger at Wandering Shade “douse me and my stalwart Gals with various protections against senior Crow and Focus tricks.  Going in that way’s going to invite Major Transform tricks instead of heavy weapons fire.”

“I would be happy to do so, Master Odin,” Wandering Shade said.  He shook his head, looking at Enkidu’s loose-leaf binder of contingency plans and the various maps and photographs he and his spies had assembled.  “General, I am both shocked and amazed.  Almost terrified.  Nobody’s ever faced a true Major Transform military leader before, as you have become, and I like what I see.”

Enkidu smiled at the praise.  He had sold his plan, and if he could keep his innermost thoughts hidden until the fight, he would end up with both his Masters, Odin and Wandering Shade, leading their respective attack groups, allowing Enkidu to hang back with Joshua, Thunder and Jaws (another barely-established senior Hunter) in the best attack group of all.

The attack group with ‘Arms, attack here’ written all over it.

Enkidu ever so badly wanted to taste Arm again.  And for his Masters to fall.

Carol Hancock: May 10, 1969 – May 11, 1969

“Hancock.”

“You remember how I’d wanted you to wait until just before the wedding for the Focus Frasier rescue?” Keaton.  She almost never called me.  Not my home line.  Not in the few hours of sleep common to all Arms.

Gah.  I shook the sleep out of my eyes and glanced at the clock.  4:30.

“Uh huh.”

“
Wake up or I’m going to come down there with my dental picks and wake you up!
”

Her Keatonic rage spoke to my soul.  I woke up completely.  “Yes,
ma’am
!”

“That’s better.  A certain someone we both know tried to convince me in my dreams that we need to do the rescue now.  Do you have any opinions on the subject?”

So this wasn’t exactly an order, but more along the lines of a suggestion.  Keaton was being careful; last time her orders, about Echo, cost me far too much healing time, time we didn’t have now.  The wedding was only eight days away.

I tried to remember my dreams.  I had been juggling daggers while someone tried to pull the bed covers out from underneath me.  Or something along those lines.  “Someone was trying to get me to pay attention to them in my dreams tonight, but beyond that, no useful information.  I can make rational real world arguments either way on the subject of when to do the rescue.”  If we went now, we risked Shadow taking this slap in the face as a legitimate warning not to do the wedding attack.  If we went later, we risked stumbling into the Hunters as they moved into position for the Detroit fight.  “I’d say that the night-time warning is a big red sign saying the Hunters are going to start moving sooner than our predictions.”

“That’s foolish of them,” Keaton said.  “Giving up on the shock and surprise of a sudden approach in semi-trucks is a big mistake.  This is going to increase our odds immensely.”

“I can see it from their point of view,” I said.  “They’ve shown that trick to us too many times.  If they came in trucks, and we were trying to defend by driving them off instead of suckering them in, being ready to take out their trucks piecemeal would be a good tactic.”  Separate them.  Defeat them in detail.  “Don’t forget they’re being led by a Crow.  Bold he is not.  They’re going to come in on foot from a close-by staging area.  Stealthy and slow.”

“You’ve convinced me, Commander,” Keaton said.  “Do the grab tonight.”

---

“You don’t seem to be having any problem with the flight,” I said.  First class, Houston to Chicago.  Ballsy, but part of the point.  The other part of the point was that in our several Chicago capers since the Hunters took over, I had always come in from the south, staging in Indianapolis.  Too much warning and too much pattern repetition.

Hephaestus radiated neither panic nor nervousness.  I hated plane flights myself, because I wasn’t in control.

“I’m surprised,” he said.  “The takeoff was bad, but now I’m okay.  Not, Carol, that I would volunteer to do this without a cause.  The psychology of what we’re doing makes this work, though.”

I nodded.  He had to, so he did.  The psychology of the goal was of utmost importance to a Crow.  We were rescuing a Focus.

Crows instinctively loved Focuses.  That is, until a Focus betrayed their love.  Then Crows got as snarly as jilted lovers, and Crows held grudges for a long, long time.

Hephaestus reeked of bad juice, larded down with Arpeggio tricks, in addition to his own.  No way would I climb into bed with him in this state.  I had slept with him, part of what I needed to do to make him ‘my Crow’, but as a lover he was nothing more than a normal with a little extra stamina.  Shadow’s Crows were a lot better in bed, mercurial, explosive, and willing to engage their Major Transform natures.

A lot better in bed but a hell of a lot more work to lure under the covers.  If Hephaestus was typical of Arpeggio’s Crows, I would say they were all cold fish, dispassionate and distant.  On the other hand, all I had to do to lure Hephaestus into bed was hint at my availability.

He wasn’t coming with me to Detroit; neither was Focus Laswell.  They didn’t have enough of a juice tie to this problem.  I could strong-arm them, but I decided not to, and advised Keaton not to try, either.  She agreed.  From her viewpoint, uncommitted and unmotivated allies were just cannon fodder for any enemy attempts to sabotage us.

---

“How bad is it?” I said, nervous, while we waited in the car rental line.  I did not give into my impulse to clear the line with a little Arm predator.

“Zilch,” he said.  Nothing within five miles.  We exited O’Hare and drove south, carefully not following the main roads.  Part of our purpose here was to gauge the Hunter strength, if possible.

The cheery spring sun shone down on us, announcing a gorgeous day.  I hated it.  I didn’t trust Arpeggio worth shit, thus the nerves.  For this snatch to work, Arpeggio’s tricks needed to work, which presumed that Guru Arpeggio had been honest with me.  If Arpeggio set me up, though, he also set up his own man, Guru Hephaestus.  Not the sort of thing Crows usually did.

My logic was a hell of a weak reed to stand on, and my nerves informed me of this without hesitation.

“Got something,” he said, almost an hour later.  We were cruising the back roads to the northwest of Joliet, setting up for a run at Odin’s place.  Currently, we were twenty-five miles northwest of Odin’s east-of-Joliet Frankfort lair, assuming he and his lair hadn’t moved.