Blades of Winter (44 page)

I’ll finally meet Patrick’s replacement when he picks me up at the airport. I’m glad Cyrus had him work from Washington. He did great, but this snatch job was so frantic that there was no way a partner could have kept up. Besides, I wasn’t ready to meet him yet.

I once asked my dad how he dealt with his friends getting killed. After a long pause he said, “I make more friends.” I can’t make another Trick, though. I loved him as much as I’ve loved anyone except maybe my father. Mom, too, especially lately. Now that she’s seen
how good I am at my job, I think it’s easier for her to accept it. She’ll be waiting for me at the ExOps hotel. I’m hoping we can buy another house. We’re sort of falling over each other in our little apartment.

I flag down a waitress and ask her how long until we land. She curtly tells me, “About fifty minutes,” and then stalks away. What is it with stewardesses? I mean, I
try
to be friendly. When I told this woman to take all my empty soda cans away, I offered to show her my scars, but that made her even grouchier.

My relationship with this particular stewardess went down the tubes when she tried to confiscate my flasks of schnapps. Technically I
am
underage, I guess. But I figure this big-ass handgun strapped to me has got to be worth a few years. Plus, these gals work for American Airlines. They’re used to ferrying Levels around. Who are they to tell me I can’t have a little drink? Damn aero-fascists.

I swig some of my schnapps and review everything that went down yesterday. Lovebird finally got his chopper repaired and flew it to my abandoned bunker. When he got there, he gave me a hard time about my captive’s physical state. I laughed in his face and launched into a meticulously detailed description of the gruesome expirations of my previous captured assets. What happened to Winter was nothing. I didn’t even cut his hoo-hahs off. He’s breathing, and all his body parts are still connected.

Lovebird stopped lecturing me and patched up Winter’s paltry fourteen gashes and lacerations. Then we flew to a small airfield. Winter and I boarded a small plane with fake flight manifests and innocently reentered the grid at Riyadh’s big airport.

While I waited for the flight, I commed with Cyrus about all the crazy shit Winter told me and my trusty commphone. The stuff about Fredericks was incredible. He really can track a Level’s No-Jack module through
his commphone. During the Blades job, that bastard forwarded my dad’s every move to Kazim Nazari.

Even so, Winter took his time luring my father. Fredericks was impatient, but Winter remained cautious. Winter knew so much about what my father was doing that he thought it might be a setup to snare
him
instead. He also knew Big Bertha would be suspicious if it was too easy to infiltrate the inner ranks of the Blades of Persia.

Winter was eventually convinced that this really was the opportunity Fredericks said it was. Kazim brought my father to Winter’s secret residence in Baghdad. There he incapacitated the mighty Level 20 Liberator with a refreshing cocktail of whiskey and neurotoxins. The powerful poison, formulated at White Stone Research Institute, was intended for horses. According to Winter, it barely worked. My father trashed an entire floor of the house before he went down. Then Kazim brought Dad to the Abwehr office in Baghdad.

I asked Cyrus what we were doing to find my father. He said that would be impossible right now since our relationship with Germany has fallen off a cliff. Apparently some crazy American covert agent trashed the Chemistry Institute at Zurich University, used the German Youth program as cover, and then carved a swath of destruction through Riyadh.

She’s also indirectly responsible for a dreadful amount of collateral damage. My German Youth group leader insisted on searching White Stone for me instead of stranding me as we expected. When the cruise missile hit, he and his fifty kids were instantly catapulted to the big jamboree in the sky.

The news of this event was uncontainable. The German public is mad as hell, and they’ve told the chancellor that they’re not going to take it anymore. All across Europe the normally factious Josef
Sechs
-Packs have fused into a unified, raging mob. The crap Dad pulled in
’68 landed him on the Reich’s ten most wanted list, and this is over fifty times worse.

Our diplomatic relationship with Greater Germany is chronically uneasy, even in the best of times. What we have most in common is that neither of us has
anything
in common with Russia or China. If the alliance between Germany and the United States were breached, both states would be vulnerable to an attack by the combination of the other two superpowers. The reverse is also true. If we could somehow isolate Russia from China, the Germans and us Americans could knock them off one at a time. Then we’d go after each other.

There’s plenty of conflict within these alliances, but it’s mostly a war of sneaky shits trying to outsmart other sneaky shits. Ironically, Extreme Operations frequently tries to outsmart the covert agencies of our ally, Greater Germany. When this gets too hot, like now, we have to back off for a while.

Cyrus tried to make me feel better and reminded me that we know Dad’s alive. The Info people are hatching a rescue plan with our intel from Zurich and the data doozies Winter has coughed up about Carbon.

We already knew about the initial generation of cloning research, or Gen-1. That resulted in the first human clone and knocked the scientific community on its collective ass. The next round, Gen-2, was the pursuit of rapid-growth techniques so a clone could grow to adulthood in a fraction of the time it normally takes. After nearly two decades, the Carbon scientists succeeded in compressing a clone’s first twenty years of physical development into only two years. The problem is, the Gen-2 clones have the emotional maturity of a two-year-old. It turns out the experiences that shape our characters still have to be lived through. There’s no shortcut. For now.

Earlier this year, Carbon launched Gen-3. They’re trying to map the consciousness of a living person into the minds of clones. It’s called psychogenesis, and it’s the
craziest fucking idea since … well, since rapid-growth clones. This is why everyone in Washington has wigged out. Each generation of Carbon research results in a scientific advance so significant that it might as well be a miracle. If anybody can invent psychogenesis, it’s the lunatics at Carbon.

Gen-3 brings up really confusing questions about the future meanings of maturity, individuality, and mortality. When people get old or very sick, Gen-3 would let them transfer their accumulated abilities and experiences into a much younger clone of themselves. Fifty years later, they do it again, and again, and never die. Their worn-out old bodies will need to be disposed of, but I’m sure the Germans can solve an excess population problem.

Gen-3 also brought up all the nuttiness that’s happened to me in the last five months. One of the minds the researchers want to try duplicating is my father’s.
What the heck
, they probably thought,
Big Bertha’s just rotting away in a Gestapo tomb, anyway. Let’s make more of him and see what happens
.

My dad’s transfer from the Gestapo to the Carbon Program showed up in one of the reports that Winter accessed. This report surprised the hell out of ol’ Winter-green, since he thought the Beast had been dead for eight years. He decided that his former partner in crime—Fredericks—should know about this, since taking down one Big Bertha was hard enough. If Gen-3 really worked, there would be multiple Big Berthas, all with vivid memories of what they had done to him. Winter had Kazim contact Fredericks through Hector, and the rest has been a nonstop jolt-o-matic thrill ride ever since.

The ride isn’t over yet, either. Snatching Winter may only be the beginning, because the Germans are threatening to leave the Pan-Atlantic Alliance. This would expose the United States to the predatory tendencies of Russia and China. Germany, too, unless Berlin decides to join the Asian Pact.

The Capitol Hill bigwigs are pulling all-nighters to deal with this emergency. The man at the head of the table is the president. At the president’s right side is his chief strategist, Jakob Fredericks. The slimy fuck is planning our response to this disaster, and until we’re out of it, he’s considered the most important man in the USA.

Director Chanez has been strongly advised by his friends at the Justice Department that Fredericks is untouchable right now. We can’t even let Winter out of the bag, because we’re worried that Fredericks will find a way to discredit or even kill his former accomplice. The Justice guys volunteered to stash our star witness until this situation with Germany gets sorted out.

It’s likely that ExOps will take an active role in that sorting, but Cyrus wants me to rest before he gives me another Job Number. I had to admit that sounded like a good idea even though I’m dying to find my father.

I finish my drink and stand up to use the bathroom. The tops of the seats try to squirm away from my hands as I stagger up the aisle. I lurch into the bathroom and catch my reflection in the mirror. I grip the sink, lean in close, and take a good look.

Lines. There are lines on my face! I look so much older! Have I been poisoned? Was it some chemical thing in Riyadh? Radiation in Zurich? I pull the skin on my face this way and that, trying to make me young again. It doesn’t work. Now I see that my red hair has a white streak on the right side of my head. Where the hell did that come from?

In the mirror, someone with big bug eyes appears behind me. I spin around. No one’s there. My hands shake, and I feel faint. I jack a dose of Madrenaline. It’s probably not a good idea to mix synthetic adrenaline with all the alcohol I’ve had today, but I don’t care. I cannot let myself pass out in an airplane lavatory. My mouth goes dry and the back of my neck tingles, but the drugs help my dizziness. I close my eyes and grit my teeth because at this point I know what happens next.

Alix

Even though I expect it, the voice almost knocks me out of my skin. My neuroinjector reacts to my stress by giving me a shot of Kalmers. I sit down on the toilet and do what I came for in the first place. I finish and flush. I’m washing my hands when I hear it again.

Alix

This time it sounds like it’s right next to me. No, not next to me. I look where it comes from, and I find myself eyeballing Li’l Bertha. Her status indicator reads “ready.”

Li’l Bertha is never switched on when I’m on a plane. The first and last part of my preflight routine is to confirm that my sidearm is powered down. I take her out of my holster and check that her mechanical safeties are engaged. Yes, they are, but somehow my gun has managed to activate herself again. While I try to figure out what’s wrong with her, it occurs to me that I hear that voice only when she’s on.

I feel like a doofus, but I hold her up to my mouth and whisper, “Daddy?” The gun’s sensors light up in succession, one after the other. Next I try, in order, “ExOps,” “Winter,” and “Darius,” with no results. Then I say, “Philip Nico.” The sensors all light up at once, and I hear a soft, distorted voice, like someone talking through a pillow. I can’t make out what the voice says. I try a couple more phrases, then repeat the words that worked before, but now nothing happens no matter what I say. I’ll have to take a long look at Li’l Bertha when I’m home. That’s another reason for me and Mom to buy a house. I need a shop.

I holster the gun and wobble back to my seat. I lay off the hooch for the rest of the flight. What do I need booze for when I’ve got terrifying hallucinations built right in? I try to sleep, but for a while I can only think about my dad and about Trick. Eventually the combination of Kalmers and liquor makes me doze off and gives me another one of my weird dreams.

I sleep through the landing and wake just as we pull up to the gate. I “buh-bye” off the plane and walk through the meat tube to the terminal. Then I mosey around the gate area, waiting for Darwin to spot me. I’ve only heard his voice, so I expect him to recognize and approach me. Instead, I find him in the airport café next to my gate.

He’s reading a newspaper.

He’s the last person I ever expected to see again.

He’s Patrick.

The fictional world of Shadowstorm is complex, and I needed the help of many intelligent and patient people. They answered my questions and advised me about everything from history and politics to genetics and emergency medicine. To mention them here only scratches the depth of my gratitude. I never would have finished this novel without these generous friends.

To my parents, Carol and George, thank you for enabling my creativity from a young age, for sending me to RISD, and for your support and confidence throughout this long process. Mom: My next series will have fewer curse words.

To my sister, Mary Rose, thank you for guiding me around rookie mistakes, no matter how determined I was to make them, and for all your help getting this going.

To my wife, Natalie, thank you for your years of support and enthusiastic help as I’ve pulled this together. I love you.

To my teachers and mentors:

• Anne Grolle: my brilliant editor at Random House. Anne has taught me more things in less time than any other person in my professional life. Her creativity, intelligence, and positive attitude made this one of my most creatively fulfilling experiences.

• Tristram C. Coburn: my bulldog literary agent. Tris had the persistence to shovel through a mountain of rejection
letters and the wisdom not to tell me about them. And I couldn’t ask for a better Protector on the business end of things.

• Roberta Grimes: my shield-bearing entertainment lawyer. Roberta’s knowledge, experience, and easygoing nature were invaluable in helping me get a grip on the foreign language of intellectual property.