Drakon (48 page)

***

White light shone through every crack and vision block in the Bradley. The armor rang like a cracked gong with heat expansion. It reared up as the wind caught it, teetered, hesitated, dropped back on its tracks with a shattering crackle of broken torsion bars. When he became conscious of anything again, Henry Carmaggio knew he was still clutching Jenny to him, and that her arms were tight around his neck.

Her mouth moved, but the words seemed very distant.

". . . happened?" she said. "What happened?"

"I think—" he began.
Jesus dead. Chen dead. Christ, everyone in that building, and a block
around
. . . "I think we won," he said.

"Yeah," she replied, and laid her head back on his chest. Tears dripped down onto the bloodstained Kevlar of the armor vest. "We won."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The coffee tasted bitter, but it was warm. Henry sipped, watching the flames over the intervening rooftops, smelling the reassuringly normal stink of gasoline and ordinary, everyday burning. It was odd, having so much official stuff around and no role for himself. Odd, and fairly pleasant.

There was everything from APC's to fire-engines lining the streets. Even the press had shown up, although the city was still dark; luckily, they didn't seem to have any idea that he was involved. Helicopters went by overhead, and floodlights kept this section brilliant. There were even civilians crowding up to the police barricades where the uniforms kept the curiosity-seekers at bay. He sipped the coffee again, and looked across to where Jennifer sat on a park bench with somebody's jacket around her shoulders.

Carmaggio smiled at her, and a faint turn of the lips answered him.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know if it was all real, if I can believe it—or if I can ever forget it."

He crouched to bring their eyes level. "You won't forget it," he said. "But you're tough. You can live with it. Believe me."

"I do."

"Carmaggio?"

Henry turned and stood. So did Jennifer, clutching the coat about her and coming to stand by his side.

"Yup, that's me. And if it isn't Andrews and Debrowski, the Wet-Work Twins."

The two agents were in Army gear, camo BDUs and Kevlar, with officers' sidearms but no insignia. The ones behind them were the genuine article, though, Carmaggio judged; Rangers, at a guess.

Andrews smiled. "If we could talk?" he said.

"Sure," Carmaggio said. Jennifer stiffened, but moved with him to a spot where a little distance and the background roar of engines and voices gave some privacy.

"We'll have to debrief you both in detail," Andrews said. "But let's get one thing straight. It appears—appears—from the . . . information left on our computers by your friend—"

And he was,
Carmaggio realized with faint surprise.
Damned if he was a likable sort, but he
was a friend and a good one at that.

"—that we misinterpreted the situation."

"Is that the royal 'we,' Mr. Andrews?" Jennifer asked coldly. "Or are you speaking for—"

Henry laid a hand on her arm. She cast him a doubtful look but shut her mouth with a snap.

"Well, all's well that ends well, hey?" Carmaggio said.

Andrews nodded, still smiling but his eyes narrowing.
That's right,
Henry thought.
I'm not giving
you any excuse to use your tame gorilla there.
Debrowski was rubbing at his nose and glaring.

"Matters of national security are involved," the agent continued. "We'll be working out the implications of the technology we've acquired for decades. This incident will have to be handled with discretion. Otherwise it could destabilize the entire country; the entire world, come to that. I'm sure you see the necessity. And since most of the people involved . . ." He shrugged delicately.

"Are dead, yeah," Carmaggio said flatly. So
you can do a Grade-A coverup. I wonder who gets
blamed for the explosions?

Hopefully the
Jihad al-Moghrebi.
They deserved it.

Debrowski stiffened slightly at his tone, then relaxed as the detective looked away.

"Yeah, no sense in getting people excited," Carmaggio said, letting his exhaustion into his voice.

"We'll be glad to talk to you. And then maybe we'll take a vacation out of the country?"

"That'd be a good idea," Andrews said. He held out his hand. Henry shook it.

"We?" Jennifer asked sharply, as the two government men made their way through the uniformed crowds.

"We, if you want it that way, Jenny," Carmaggio said. "I had to send you in there."

"I did what I had to do. And you got me out," she replied. "What bugs the
hell
out of me is that those . . . those buffoons get to tie this whole thing up with string and put it in their safety-deposit box."

Henry looked after them, and then back at the woman. "Did I say that?" he said, a slow grin creasing his heavy-featured face. "Did I?"

***

"That's all then," the Bahamian lawyer said.

He shook his head at the American couple. "I've never seen anything quite like it in the way of wills, but the documentation's all in order. Net asset value—"

"I'll just take the papers, thank you," the woman said in a sharp, businesslike New York accent.

"We've been over all this. Ms. Ingolfsson
did
follow all the formalities, and the probate's concluded."

He shrugged, and handed over the last manila envelope. Jennifer Carmaggio pushed her sunglasses up on her forehead, did a quick check-through and then nodded.

They stood hand-in-hand as the lawyer's car crunched away up the coral-rock driveway, then turned to look at the mansion. The hot Bahamian sun beat down, and the air smelled of sea and pine and sand, huge and clean. The sound of breakers on the reef came faintly over the roof.

"Amazing what Lafarge could do with computers and documents," Henry said, and tasted sweat on his upper lip. He shook his head, trying to make it seem more real. "And he
did
have a sense of humor. He would have loved this."

A tall black man walked up from the house; there was a suspicious set to the way he wore his loose printed shirt. Henry fished in the jacket slung over one shoulder and came out with an envelope. This one bulged pleasantly, crisp hundred-dollar bills.

"Captain Lavasseur," Henry said, extending his hand.

They shook, two big men old enough to forgo boys' games. "I think Mr. Lafarge would have liked you to have this, as well as the retainer."

Antoine Lavasseur took the envelope with a slight, white smile and a very Gallic shrug. "He was some man, him," he said. "But I smell death on him, from the first time." He checked the envelope with a pirate's lack of self-consciousness, and his smile grew broader. "
Bon.
Not too little, for come and watch the house, talk to police for a few weeks."

"You kept the staff from burning it," Jennifer said. "With what's in there, that could be very important—for the whole world."

Another shrug from the sailor. "You need this sort of help again—any sort—you call Antoine Lavasseur."

"We may at that," Carmaggio said. "And now it's all ours," he went on, when the man from Martinique was gone.

"I like to think of it as a trust, Henry," Jennifer said seriously.

He smiled down into her eyes. "That too. No reason we can't enjoy ourselves while we figure out what to do with it, though. Let's go honeymoon."

Hand in hand, they walked under the arched gateway. The ironwork Drakon flared its wings above, its empty eyes staring out into the sun.

EPILOGUE

Tom Cairstens leaned back from the controls and rubbed red-rimmed eyes. He looked back to where Alice nursed an infant with too much knowledge behind its green gaze.

Three hundred meters down and moving at a three-knot crawl, the
Reiver
ran deep and silent.

Silent, save for a baby's cry.

[front blurb]

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DRAKON

"In a literature of ideas, S.M. Stirling picks up his slingshot and goes hunting the giants: Is absolute evil possible? How would flawed ambivalent human beings deal with it? What is the price of a free society and can it be paid while staying free? What exactly is a 'human' anyway? How much does it take to change history, and how does a change in history change the answers to the other questions? Now in
Drakon
he puts the hardest question of all: what if these monsters of his imagination walked into our world? Who would stand against them? Could anyone?

"And the more frightening question—who would join them?

"
Drakon
might keep you up all night, It might get you into a thousand mental arguments, it might even make your flesh crawl. Every now and then you'll laugh, and it just might break your heart near the end. Stirling has gone after the big ideas and brought them back still struggling. That's what the job of SF is supposed to be—and it's good to see someone do it."

—John Barnes

Author of
MOTHER OF STORMS

"A splendid, compelling novel. Honest, insightful, taking a sharp look at the forces that dehumanize people, as well as the forces that humanize them."

—William Barton

Author of
DARK SKY LEGION

"I went through
Drakon
at one sitting, having a great time all the way. Fine characters, both human and not quite; convincing locations; action that cooks . . . quite a lot of things. Don't stand there reading this blurb—buy the book."

—Harry Turtledove

Author of
GUNS OF THE SOUTH

[Version History]

Version 1.0—Scanned, OCR'd, spellchecked, and formatted. The first 3 books in the series were republished a few years ago as an omnibus, called
The Domination
. It also contained some lead-in stuff to re-frame the story so that this is the central book. I don't anticipate having a hankering to re-read them for a while, so anybody who wants to do
The Domination
, please do.

Version 2.0 – April 28, 2003—proofread in detail and corrected by The_Ghiti. If you find errors, please fix, increment version number by 0.1 and re-post.