BZRK Reloaded (25 page)

She felt her gaze drawn irresistibly to Burnofsky. She expected
to see him gloating at the animal revealed in Keats. But he was not
gloating. His mouth worked, and he chewed his lip. His washed-out
eyes were hungry.

He was jealous. He was a junkie watching another addict mainlining the ultimate drug.
Plath felt sick. Her biots waited on the crater as Wilkes’s two biots
came rushing by and swan dived into the blood. Clotting nets were
slowing the flow now. Plath couldn’t see Keats’s nanobots or biots,
just the tumbling platelets and, riding that red tide like driftwood,
the nanobot legs, heads, and insides.
A tear rolled down Burnofsky’s cheek.
Keats’s blue, blue eyes had disappeared behind the bug-eyed
goggles.
Wilkes was laughing to herself. Heh-heh-heh.
He’d said he loved her, and she had not answered. Now she wondered if she gave him everything he wanted, her body, even her love,
would any of it matter as much to Keats as this terrible game?
“What’s happening?” Billy asked her.
“Madness,” Plath answered.

Pia Valquist and Admiral Edward Domville rode through the
storm aboard a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter. It was not the very
best way to travel through high winds and lightning. The natural
background noise of the helicopter itself was deafening, but when
you added shrieking winds and sudden thunder like God tearing
the sky open with his bare hands, you had a great deal of noise.

And a great deal of movement as pockets of wind acted like surprise elevators, dropping the Sea King hundreds of feet, or shooting
it suddenly upward, all the while buffeting it back and forth. There
was something about the constant bobbing and weaving that made
Pia think of a boxer in the ring, always keeping his head in motion.

Admiral Domville was less inclined to be thinking of colorful
descriptions. He was busy being sick into a plastic bucket.
“Seasickness is nothing to be ashamed of!” Pia yelled at the top
of her lungs.
“Nelson was frequently seasick,” Domville yelled back during a
brief moment of coherence.
Then, quite suddenly, they were through the storm, and the massive piles of dark gray clouds gave way to scattered clouds lit by a
fading sun. The noise was still ferocious, and the motion of the helicopter was still erratic, but it was nevertheless a relief.
A crewman came back and motioned to the tiny window. Pia
reluctantly disentangled herself from the jump seat and stutter stepped
over to look out; she saw the Albion sailing serenely below them.
She gave a thumbs-up signal.
“We can land,” the crewman said. “We won’t have to use the
winch.”
“The what?” Pia asked. It was the first anyone had mentioned a
winch. “Did you say ‘winch’?”
The landing was fairly smooth. The reception was Royal Navy
spit and polish. Domville played his role, but as soon as was decent
he drew the Albion’s captain aside. Introductions were brief and to
the point.
“Captain, I’m going to ask for the loan of some of your marines.”
“Certainly, sir,” the captain said, as though nothing could be
more natural than an admiral dropping out of the sky in company
with a Swedish spy and demanding to abscond with a platoon of his
men.
“We need to have a conversation with an LNG carrier that is
rapidly approaching Hong Kong harbor.” He gave the course and
position of the Doll Ship.
“We’ll have to step smartly if we’re to intercept before they reach
Chinese territorial waters,” the captain said.
“Indeed.”
“Just time for a cup of tea before you go,” the captain said briskly.

Minako did not want to get her hopes up, not yet. Hope would just
make her heart beat faster, and she could barely draw breath as it was.
Were they really here to rescue her?
“Only two ways off this ship,” Silver said. “We take a lifeboat, or
we steal that helicopter. I can fly the chopper, but it’s been a good long
while, and that’s a pretty good storm raging out there.”
“It’s supposed to blow itself out,” KimKim said. “If they see us
take a boat they’ll be on us in a heartbeat. It has to be the helicopter.”
“Yep,” Silver said.
Neither man looked happy about it.
With his gun hand low and out of sight, KimKim cracked the
steel door and peeked out.
Minako noticed that only KimKim had a gun. Silver did not. Silver was a big man, but Minako did not believe in magic or in Jackie
Chan. One man with big fists was nothing against the mad villagers
of Benjaminia and Charlestown.
The prime numbers helped. But many more men with many
more guns would help more.
“Down the hallway, take the stairway down two decks, out to the
landing pad. We hole up in the flight tech’s quarters. If the pilot’s
there, we convince him to help us.”
Silver nodded. “You’re the James Bond here, I’m just a grunt.”
“Minako. Stay close.” KimKim opened the door followed immediately by Silver and Minako.
One-two-three-four-five . . .
They clattered down and that’s when Minako saw her mother
standing there, standing right there on the steps and she stopped and
cried out and KimKim walked right through Minako’s mother and
so did Silver.
Like she wasn’t there, no, impossible. And yet, she was.
Minako had counted the thirteenth step. And there was her
mother.
She took another step, number fourteen, and her mother was
gone. Like she had never been there. And of course, how could she
have been?
Fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-and nothing, no mother, just the two
scared but determined men glancing over their shoulders to make
sure she was keeping up.
The first flight of steps counted nineteen, a prime. If the second
flight was the same, that would be good.
One-two-three . . .
She counted to thirteen and—her mother, as real as anything she
had ever seen, as real as real could be except that KimKim and Silver
again stepped straight through her.
Minako froze.
The two men reached the bottom, noticed she wasn’t with them
and Silver said, “What’s the matter, honey?”
“I . . .”
“Are you okay?” KimKim asked her in Japanese.
“I see my mother. I see her. Right there!” She pointed a finger at
what was empty space to both men. “The thirteenth step. The same as
the last time. The thirteenth step.”
Shaky, she took the fourteenth step and her mother disappeared.
“There’s something …They did something to me. To my brain.”
KimKim took the steps two at a time to reach her. “That may be,
Minako; that’s what they do. They do things inside your brain. You
must ignore it. You must follow me and Sergeant Silver, and pay attention to nothing else.”
Minako sobbed. “I’m not good at that. I’m not …not good at
ignoring things.”
“Yes, but you are a brave girl, and you will do it,” the spy said.
He had taken her hands in his, an awkward embrace that pressed the
chilly metal of his gun against her wrist.
The door at the bottom of the stairs opened. A crewman looked
up, took it all in and looked shocked and confused. He saw Minako.
He saw the pistol in KimKim’s hand. He saw Silver.
He hesitated.
“Keep your mouth shut and walk away,” Silver said. “Don’t volunteer for trouble.”
The crewman nodded once and pushed past them up the stairs.
“Will he tell on us?” Minako asked.
“Fifty-fifty,” Silver said. “Come on.”
They made it down the stairs and stepped out onto the helipad. The
rain was coming down, but it was vertical, no longer horizontal. The
swell was still heavy and the ship wallowed fore and aft, up and down.
“Not so much of a cross sea,” Silver commented. “And the wind is
dying. Maybe an hour.”
KimKim led the way to the pilot/mechanic room, which was
directly off the helipad and tucked beneath an exterior stairway. He
stepped in without knocking.
The pilot was there, bent over a workbench, twisting something
metal with two sets of pliers. He was a man in his thirties, with longish black hair falling back from a receding hairline.
“What do you want?” he demanded, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously when he saw Minako. Silver closed the door behind them
and threw the lock.
“What the hell is going on?” the pilot demanded.
“What’s going on is that I have a gun,” KimKim said, helpfully
showing the pistol. “So that means I talk and you listen.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Then that’s stupid, you should be scared.”
The pilot forced a laugh and set the pliers aside. “I am happy,”
he said. “Deeply, sustainably happy. Fear has no place in happiness.”
“He’s one of them,” Silver said contemptuously.
“Yes,” KimKim said with a sigh.
Silver took one quick step and snapped a hard left into the pilot’s
face. His second blow was an uppercut that turned the pilot’s legs to
jelly. Silver bound the man’s hands and ankles with wire.
“So it’s up to you to fly us out of here,” KimKim said to Silver.
“Do you think—”
The door opened. A man was framed in the doorway. An officer.
KimKim leapt but the man was too quick. The door slammed back
in KimKim’s face.
KimKim threw open the door, but it was too late. There was no
one in sight.
“We have about ten seconds to figure something out,” Silver said.
“Get that helicopter in the air!” KimKim yelled.
The three of them bolted for the helicopter. The cockpit was not
locked, but the craft itself was tied down to the deck, lashed with padded chains.
“Cast us off!” Silver yelled, and climbed up into the pilot’s seat.
Minako hauled herself into the surprisingly spacious and oddly
configured backseat, and sat there drenched, teeth chattering. Onetwo-three . . .
When she got the thirteen, her mother was standing outside in
the rain. The illusion was perfect. Her mother’s hair was blowing.
Her police uniform was turning a darker shade of blue as the rain
stained it. The only thing missing was any kind of real reaction to
Minako or to her environment. It was as if her mother was a very
limited computer program, like the illusion knew how to be affected
by the environment, but not how to respond to it.
Fourteen.
And her mother was gone.
“You down there, back away from the helicopter.” It was a voice
magnified by a megaphone; even then it was half snatched away by
the wind.
Minako leaned forward to look up and out. There. Two ship’s
officers in yellow slickers.
KimKim continued throwing off the straps. Silver was flipping
switches in the cockpit. Minako pulled the harness belts tight around
her but they weren’t made for anyone her shape. She realized, suddenly, that the seat was built for Charles and Benjamin.
The officers were motioning. Men were rushing from aft, from
behind Minako’s line of sight.
KimKim aimed fast and fired. A man went down, clutching his
leg. That reversed the charge of crewmen.
Minako heard an electrical sound, a sort of whine. A gust made
the helicopter tremble.
KimKim was fighting the last tie-down strap, but it was jammed.
The rotor above began to move. Slow… slow… gaining a little
speed . . .
How many revolutions per minute? Minako wondered. Was there
a set number? Was it a good number?
Suddenly a riot of people, all rushing toward the helicopter.
These were not cautious crew, these were residents of Benjaminia and
Charlestown.
“No!” Minako cried.
KimKim threw back the last strap. He stood, facing the wave of
bodies. He fired the pistol into the air.
No one stopped.
“Oh no, no, no,” Minako pleaded.
KimKim lowered the pistol, took aim, and fired.
A red flower appeared in the exact center of a man’s chest. The
man fell backward.
This, finally, sent the mob into retreat. They didn’t run far, but
they had stopped charging. They might still escape, if only they could
get the helicopter into the air.
The rotor was moving, but so slow, so slow!

“People! Our people! We are under attack!” Benjamin shouted. He
saw the one KimKim had shot. Dead. One of his people. He had once
spoken to the man. Or maybe it was some other man like him—it
didn’t matter, all of the people of Benjaminia were his.

Benjamin said, “Captain, open the spheres. Let all of the people
out on deck, every one of them. We’ll soon deal with these scum.
Every one of them! We’ll swarm them with sheer numbers.”

The spheres began to split open like sliced oranges. From their
spot on the bridge the Twins could see down into the nearest sphere,
down into the structure of catwalks and braces. They saw faces suddenly turned skyward, suddenly seeing the sky for the first time in
weeks or months or years.

“Rise up!” Benjamin cried, his voice ecstatic. “All of you, out onto
the deck and destroy the traitors. Don’t fear, attack!”
Out into the wind and rain and light they came, stumbling over
unfamiliar territory, climbing over each other like ants. The people
of Benjaminia, the people of Charlestown, hundreds of them, scraping their shins on sharp metal, banging into bulkheads, mad with
excitement.
“Get them!” Benjamin cried. “Kill the men and save the girl!”
A woman tripped and fell into the gears of the sphere; she fell
and screamed and was drawn slowly down and out of sight, like meat
going into a sausage grinder.
But the sustainably happy did not hesitate. They had their orders.
They had their targets in sight.
The dolls of the Doll Ship had come to vicious life.
And then one of the officers on the bridge yelled, “Captain! Captain! We have targets incoming!”
Every eye on the bridge swiveled to follow the direction in which
he was pointing. Two Sea King helicopters, moving as fast as race cars
and so low and close to the heaving waves that no radar could see
them, flew, relentless, toward the Doll Ship.
Binoculars were snatched and sighted. “Royal Navy!”
“Shoot them down! You said you had missiles!” Charles whinnied in terror.
“They’re too close, they’d hit us and blow the ship,” Captain Gepfner said. “And those are Royal Marines.”
“We’re only half a mile from Chinese waters,” the first officer
reported.
But it was irrelevant information for the moment, because the
nearest Sea King banked sharply, roared overhead like the wrath of
God, seeming barely to miss the bridge, so close that Charles could
see the faces of the men inside the Sea King’s open door.
With startling speed the helicopter came to hover over the melee
in a well-practiced maneuver. The second Sea King floated a hundred
feet away. A swivel-mounted machine gun pointed its muzzle directly
at the bridge.
Charles felt his heart stop. There was no way the deadly calm
Marine behind that gun would miss.
“Stop them!” Benjamin demanded.
“If we’re taken it’s prison for the lot of us,” Gepfner said, ignoring Benjamin and speaking to his officers. “If they take us in Chinese
waters it may be a firing squad.” He glanced around sharply and saw
the consensus form. “Life or death now, gentlemen. Break out the
RPGs and issue them to the mob.”
“No, sir,” a junior officer said. “I am not firing on Royal Marines,
sir.”
Gepfner drew a pistol and without warning shot the officer in the
chest. As the explosion echoed in the metal box of the bridge, he said,
“I’m not ending my career in a Chinese prison waiting for a bullet at
sunrise.”
“This is a fight for all we love,” Benjamin shouted into the loudspeaker. “Die if you must. Die for me!”