Authors: Dakota Banks
Maliha leaned against one of the tombstones. The bloody scene in front of her looked eerily like the one in Siberia years ago, and she wondered if it had been more of a premonition than a memory.
After resting a little while, Maliha braced for a challenging journey. She retrieved the blood-spattered envelope and began moving toward the snowmobiles, putting as little weight on her injured leg as she could. She mounted a snowmobile, put her feet in the stirrups, pulled up the kill switch, and turned the key. The engine, still warm, fired up on the first pull of the start cord. She made the trip back to her car slowly, not wanting to lean into any high-speed turns. Noticing spots of blood along the road, she hoped that her single hurried shot had done the job on Cameron. She sighed with relief when she saw the Jeep untouched, and then again when it started.
Elizabeth could have disabled it on the way in. This hiding place didn’t fool her.
When the Jeep was pumping warm air on her face and feet, Maliha considered her situation. She wasn’t sure she could drive the manual transmission with her leg injury. There wasn’t a lot of blood loss because the knife was plugging the wound, and she needed to keep it that way. There was a blizzard kit in the Jeep. Wrapping a blanket on either side of her wound, she steadied the knife to keep it from jarring loose and tied it securely with rope from the kit. She started driving on Eliot Road and found that it was barely manageable. She called Hound, gave him a brief explanation, and got directions to a nearby airport.
Maliha drove to the town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It would have been an hour’s drive in good weather with a driver who didn’t see black around the edges of her vision whenever she had to shift gears. As it was, it took her two hours before she had the airport in sight. Putting her trust in Hound, she sat back and tried to ignore the knife sticking out of her leg.
H
ound came in by helicopter. He took Maliha to a doctor he knew in Green Bay. The doctor was curious about why Maliha’s flesh had begun to heal around the knife. Hound doubled the pay, and the doctor sealed his lips and broke the still-delicate scar tissue formation to remove the knife. Maliha insisted on no sedation, and she shuddered when the doctor withdrew the knife. There was no massive spurting of blood from her leg, just a slow leakage.
“You’re lucky,” the doctor said. “It looks like the deep femoral artery is intact. A couple of centimeters over and you wouldn’t have made it here.”
Maliha let him stitch and bandage her wound. She’d take the stitches out later.
The doctor grunted when he was finished. “You need blood.”
“No transfusions. I’ll be okay. Give me IV fluids.”
The doctor glanced at Hound, seeking affirmation that his patient knew what she was talking about. Hound nodded.
“Saline, not Ringer’s or D5W,” Maliha said.
“Antibiotics, then.” He raised his eyebrows and set his mouth, prepared to stand firm on this one.
“In the drip,” Maliha said. She saw Hound and the doctor conferring and money changing hands, then left in a wheelchair with a portable IV stand.
Hound and Maliha headed home to Chicago. Somewhere during the flight, Hound put something in her IV. When she woke, she was home in her bedroom. It was nighttime, and there was a single lamp on in the room. Hound sat in a chair watching her.
“Thanks for the lift,” Maliha said. She smiled. It was good to see him.
“Christ, woman, you scared the shit out of us,” Hound said. “I should’ve called a ranger to pick you up in the forest.”
“I would have had some trouble explaining the two headless bodies.”
“Beside the point. I’m sure you would have thought of something. When I got my first look at you . . .”
His unsaid words
I thought you were dead
hung between them.
“Just doing some meditation. It helped with the pain.”
“You had the pulse rate of a hibernating bear.”
“You’re exaggerating. I did not have a pulse of ten beats per minute.”
Hound crossed his arms across his chest and said nothing.
“Okay, I’m sorry I scared you,” Maliha said. “I didn’t want to bring in any outsiders. Even the doctor in Green Bay was a risk. Besides, as a medic you should be able to cope.”
“Isn’t that a backhanded apology.”
“Come on, Hound. Let it go. I’m happy to be alive and thankful that you saved me. Is that better?”
He sighed, came over to the bed, and kissed her forehead. “We’re hyped up, that’s all. Yanmeng, the threat to Eliu, and then you.”
“So am I, Hound. I’m—we’re—in deep on this one and I’m not seeing a path out.”
“We’ll make it. We all will. And then I’m going on a vacation with Glass to someplace warm and fuck her brains out.”
Maliha laughed. “Sounds good to me.”
“Jake is here. You want to see him?”
“In a minute. How’s Amaro holding up?”
“Well, you know he’s not a field guy. All this is too much like stuff he sees in the movies. He’s not trained for it.”
“We need to have everybody able to handle fieldwork. Start training him whenever you get the chance. Tell him I ordered it because he’s pathetic away from his computer.”
“Ordered? Pathetic? That’ll get him riled up.”
“Exactly. Riled up to prove me
wrong
. That leaves him open to cooperating with you to learn. What’s the news with the list of doctors?”
“We have three prospects. I feel like we’re getting close.”
“Okay. Let me know the names and I’ll check them out.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. There was some pain, but she could deal with it. Keeping a grimace off her face was an old habit, one that Master Liu had cautioned her about on her recent visit, depending on the message she wanted to send.
Master Liu says that sometimes you should show pain as a strategy to make your opponent overconfident. He will strike toward pain, leaving an opening for your blade.
Hound left and Jake came in, striding over to the bed and pulling her up into his arms. “I was worried about you,” he said, and kissed her.
“You know I have a leg wound, right?”
“Yes. Oh.” He lowered her back to her seated position and sat down next to her. “Is it that bad?”
“No. I’d just like a little more rest before I hit the streets. Hound says there are places to go, doctors to check out.”
“I can do that.”
“I know, Jake, but this is personal. I have to be out there doing something. Have you been filled in about Elizabeth and the vice president?”
“Yeah. What a piece of shit.”
“Which one?”
“Both. Elizabeth’s got a reputation among the Ageless. You know we’re not exactly warm and cuddly—excluding me, of course—but Elizabeth tops the charts. She doesn’t just kill, she gets off on it, wallows in it. Her demon Tirid is considered crazy, which is a tough call when you’re talking about demons. Elizabeth fears getting old and ugly, and the story is that’s how Tirid keeps her in line. If she screws up, he punishes her by making her an old hag for a few decades. It makes her seriously toe the line.”
“I understand something now. I wondered why Elizabeth needed me to be an assassin for Project Hammer when she could clearly do the work herself, and enjoy it. She’s been ordered to stay close to Cameron whenever possible to make sure the plan succeeds. She doesn’t dare disobey Tirid.”
Jake nodded. “That makes sense. Cramps her style, too. Tirid likes to jerk her strings.”
Another thought occurred to her. “It could be that when Cameron takes over as president, he’s going to want to catch the assassin right away to impress the public. With Elizabeth staying in the background, he needs a visible assassin—me—he can put on trial. Something I haven’t told the others is that Elizabeth expects me to become her chief warrior to replace a man I killed.”
He cupped her chin with his hand. “Won’t happen. I swear it.”
I want to believe him, but how can he be sure?
“Jake, why don’t you hunt down other Ageless and kill them? I know it’s dangerous, but . . .”
“Believe me, I’ve considered it. The world just doesn’t need Elizabeth in it. There are several problems, though. When the demons lose one of their slaves, they recruit another one. If I started popping off Ageless—were I to be so lucky—they’d be popping back up again as fresh recruits. They’d start to hunt me in packs, and I couldn’t withstand that for long. Finally, there’s my own demon, Idiptu. He ignores me now and no longer gives me any assignments. I’ll stay that way as long as I don’t do something that brings me back to his awareness. Killing the Ageless would definitely ring his bell. I’d be back under his thumb, forced to kill at his whim. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, I could be hunting you.”
“You could turn rogue, like me.”
Jake looked down at the floor. “We’ve been over that before. I feel I can be of most use to you and your goals the way I am. If I took the mortal path, I’d become . . .”
“Vulnerable, like me?”
Silence grew and stretched in the room.
“Yes. Vulnerable and less able to protect you. I love you, Maliha. I don’t want to lose you.”
He turned toward her with eyes overflowing with tears. She leaned forward and touched his cheek. “You don’t have to explain your decision. I’m sorry I asked.”
“There’s something else I want to talk about,” Jake said. His gaze went back to the floor. “I know about you and Lucius. I know you loved him very much. If he should ever make it back, I’ll step aside for him if you ask me to.”
Maliha felt a powerful sensation of barriers breaking down, barriers that she’d built around her heart in all the years she was Ageless, brick walls of defense that kept betrayal and love out and kept her able to function. The barriers tumbled and light flooded her body, the clear light of love. She could see it on the inside of her eyelids and feel it reaching out into her dark aura, the aura quivering and changing with its power.
She opened her eyes to find Jake staring at her.
“You look radiant,” he said.
Maliha let out the breath she’d been holding. “I love you, Jake.”
“Too bad you’re in a fragile state right now.”
Pain had fled from Maliha’s mind. She smiled. “I’m not that fragile.”
M
aliha got the suite numbers of the three doctors. From the hall outside each one, she used an infrared camera to search for heat signatures within. One suite was empty, one had a couple making love, and the third had a woman pacing back and forth. None of them had a bedridden figure.
No Yanmeng. Too much to hope for that he’d be in a condo owned under the real name of a doctor. Or we’re off base with the whole doctor thing.
After she reported that none of the three doctors had a private medical suite with Yanmeng hooked up to sedatives, Jake took the camera from her and went out to check every condo in the building.
Maliha settled at the table and opened the envelope Cameron had given her. She tried to ignore the dried blood, a reminder that two men had died in the snow. They could have been Secret Service or on Cameron’s private payroll. Either way it didn’t make them evil just for that service. Yet Anu hadn’t taken away any of her lives saved.
So many factors figure in Anu’s decisions that I can’t make any predictions. I just have to let my morals guide me. It seems like Jake got to this place way ahead of me.
The papers in the envelope detailed a choice of two venues for the assassination of President Randall Millhouse. The first was a speech in Phoenix and the second was an overseas trip to Pacific Rim countries. He’d be making an outdoor appearance in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. In Phoenix, he’d be in a large auditorium.
Amaro told her to glance up at a TV news broadcast. The vice president had been reported injured on a Wisconsin hunting trip, and was expected to make a full and rapid recovery.
“Damn. That’s one chance blown. Will the president leave the country while the VP is in the hospital?” she said. “His trip is scheduled a week from now.”
“I think so. Cameron will probably be back at his desk by then, unless his condition is worse than they’re saying,” Amaro said. “I wouldn’t expect the released medical condition to be completely truthful. There are appearances to keep up.”
Amaro came over and sat with her. She shared the contents of the envelope. He said he’d start putting together complete information on the locations.
“Hound said you wanted me to get field training,” Amaro said. “You didn’t have to try to trick me into it. I want the training.” He said it matter-of-factly, but she could tell he wasn’t happy with her method.
Humility lesson number nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine.
“Sorry. I should have just asked you. I’d like to go over the details of why you and Hound picked those three doctors.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
She crossed her hands over her face to defend herself. “I trust you, I trust you. I want to know what the issues are. These doctors could still be involved, just keeping Yanmeng somewhere besides this building. A doctor who lives here would have an ideal way to bring in body parts from elsewhere and deliver them to my door. There would be no separate courier.”
“It would have to be a doctor with a sophisticated device for turning digital recordings into digital mush.”
“Agreed. Elizabeth should be capable of providing that. I’ve heard about some infrared LEDs you can wear on each side of eyeglasses, or on your collar. They’re emitting infrared light, but your eyes don’t respond to it, so it doesn’t bother you. Cameras see IR, though, and they have filters to block it. All you need is emitters that generate IR radiation with enough power to overwhelm the camera’s filters. The result is that on the recording, your head is a bright ball of light that blocks out your face. I’ve seen it in action. It’s highly effective, at least until all commercial cameras get high-power filters. If you’re concerned about your body or clothes revealing something about you on camera, you can put emitters all over. You’d look like a brilliant white ghost.”
“Cool, and so simple. Do you think that’s what our messenger is using?” Amaro said.
“I doubt it. The telltale white blobs weren’t on the film, just overall static. I’m just saying that someone with Elizabeth’s resources could do that. Now, about the three doctors?”
“One is selling drugs from her office, the next is in the throes of the world’s nastiest divorce and had a breakdown, and the third has an active malpractice suit that looks rock solid against her. That doctor’s attorney wants to settle out of court, the victim’s family wants a full-blown trial and a sympathy award from a jury.”
“Sounds promising. Tell me about it.”
“Dr. Jill Bakkum is a pediatric neuro-oncologist. She cuts cancerous tumors out of little kids’ brains. She has a profitable solo practice with an office in a medical building on Michigan Avenue.”
“Her office isn’t far away, then.”
“She uses a car service to and from her office and to hospitals. I see that light in your eyes. You’re thinking we could get the records from the car service and see where she’s been going. She does have her own car, though, a gray Mercedes CL550, so the car service records wouldn’t account for all of her movements.”
“Get the car service records anyway. What did Dr. Bakkum do to earn the malpractice suit?”
“Basically, she was too aggressive in treating a cancer. Weird. She removed a cancerous tumor from a delicate spot growing in the brainstem of a ten-year-old girl. So far, so good. Determined to remove a metastasized bit of the tumor that was beginning to spread into the girl’s spinal cord, Dr. Bakkum damaged the spinal cord. The girl ended up a quadriplegic and the metastasized tumor was later treated successfully—nonsurgically—with radiation and chemotherapy. Dr. Bakkum should have tried the conservative, nonsurgical treatment first rather than gone digging further down past the brainstem trying to get the last bit of tumor. It was a major error in judgment by the doctor.”
“Other specialists concur?”
Amaro nodded. “The hospital’s protocols agree, too, leaving the doctor high and dry. Not only that, staff in the operating room stated that she was hyper or wired during the surgery, which turned out to be due to prescription drugs she was taking to keep up with her workaholic schedule.”
“It seems hard to fault her for wanting to dig in and get all the cancerous tissue she could.”
“Surgeons tend to think with their scalpels and sometimes discount the nonsurgical approaches. She could have been thinking at the time that radiation and chemo wouldn’t do the job and the girl would lose her life to cancer,” Amaro said. “Surgeon to the rescue. Besides, she was later proven to be making decisions with her self-confidence and focus boosted by Dexedrine. Maybe she recognized the risk and thought she could handle it.”
“It’s only a matter of time before Dr. Bakkum loses everything, including her ability to get malpractice insurance and suspension of her medical license while she undergoes drug rehab and stays verifiably clean for a long time. A person with a lot to lose will jump at any chance of preserving the status quo,” Maliha said. “Cameron and Elizabeth could entice her with the prospect of making all her problems disappear.”
“More likely they plan to make her disappear when they’re done. There’s plenty here to warrant surveillance on this doctor.”
“Do you really think a doctor’s oath would allow her to cut off body parts unnecessarily?” Amaro said.
“You’d think not, but the Dexedrine probably helped along the decision. At least Yanmeng’s probably not in pain. Not even aware of what’s going on, would be my guess. I have to get ready to go to Phoenix for the president’s appearance. You and Hound can do the surveillance. Let me know right away if you come up with anything.”
“Is Jake officially part of the team?”
Amaro agreed that I’m swayed too easily by Jake. What if it’s true, and I’m letting the wolf in with the chickens?
Maliha hesitated just a moment. Amaro didn’t notice. “Yes,” she said.
“Good enough for me. So we can talk with him while you’re gone. Are you really going to blow away the president?”
“Probably not.”
“Probably?”
If Cameron ends up in power, many lives will be lost—so many that the resetting of my scales administered by Anu might be so bad that I can never rebalance. I could be expendable after the assassination. The world will
not
be a better place. With Elizabeth guarding him, I might not be able take out Cameron. On top of that, there’s no clear way out for Yanmeng.
Maliha shrugged. “I’m making it up as I go.”
M
aliha had three days to get to Phoenix, so she decided to take her Zonda for another road trip. She’d driven it home from New York, but she’d been injured and barely paid attention to her new vehicle. This time, her knife wound was well on the mend, and she was determined to make the drive as enjoyable as she could under the circumstances. Eliu was safe. Amaro was helping with the advance work for the assassination attempt. Hound was surveilling Dr. Bakkum, and Maliha hoped there would be news about Yanmeng’s location and Arnie’s fate when she returned home. The Zonda’s trunk was stuffed with weapons. She had a bag of jellybeans to snack on while on the road, and a lot of time to think, with eighteen hundred miles to go and six states to cross.
There was some snow on the first day, but when she got into southern Missouri, the highway was clean and dry. The Zonda was an effortless ride, quiet and powerful on the straightaways, tight and fast on the turns.
The night was cold and clear when she rose. The full moon lighted her way back to the McLaren. Moving from country road to country highway to interstate, Maliha headed home to Chicago, over eight hundred miles away. She intended to be in her condo before lunchtime. The McLaren was in its element, flying through the night. She rode with the windows down, drowning out her memories with the white noise of wind rushing past the car.
Pain streaked across the side of her neck, and then sliced across her left temple. She put a hand to her neck and it came away bloody. Maliha braked hard for an upcoming turn and struggled for control of the car. She felt the impact as the car scraped along the roadside barrier and then punched through it. When the tires left the road, there was a heart-stopping moment when the McLaren seemed to hang in midair before gravity took charge.
She stayed in a hotel in Springfield, Missouri, and left before dawn, heading for Amarillo. She hadn’t been in the Texas Panhandle for a long time, and was surprised to see the huge wind farms bordering the highway. There was brown grass from horizon to horizon and lines of spinning windmills as far as she could see. The wind swept across these plains for miles, unbroken by tall buildings or mountains. Pulling over to the side of the road, she lowered the window. She could hear the
whoosh
of nearby blades turning. It seemed like an alien landscape with an army of giant beings marching.
Amarillo was bright lights, music, and steaks. Eating out, she was approached by friendly Texans who wanted her company for a meal and more. She turned them away with good humor, and it made her smile. There were people out there who were living lives that left them free to pursue pleasure, not dark, tangled lives like hers. She walked, sat, and ate among them, but her life would never be without deep issues. She had purpose, friends, and now love.
I am a lucky woman.
It had been a good idea to drive, and by the end of the second day she knew she was not going to kill the president in Phoenix.
Crossing New Mexico was like driving through an old western movie. Red rock formations, mesas, buttes, gulches. It was horse territory, and Maliha had traveled extensively here on horseback in the 1800s, sleeping under the stars.
I’d like to do that again someday with Jake. So many places I’d like to visit with him. I want to have time for everything.
Climbing in elevation to Flagstaff, she tried to design a plan that would allow her to look as though she’d made a good effort at the assassination, but put Millhouse in no danger.
Elizabeth is likely to have a backup, in case I don’t take the opportunity when it presents. She’s running her own agenda here, in addition to Project Hammer. What to do about a secondary shooter?
She let her mind work on the problem while her eyes appreciated the drive down from Flagstaff to Phoenix, a six-thousand-foot drop from ponderosa pine forest to the Sonoran Desert, from ski resorts to saguaro cacti, some of them a hundred and fifty years old.
After settling in her hotel, Maliha contacted Amaro.
“I have the perfect situation for you,” he said. “A woman named Victoria Blake is attending the speech and the fund-raiser dinner afterward by herself. Her husband, Norman, is in London and not returning until the morning after the event. They moved here from London just two weeks ago and don’t have a network of friends yet, just Norman’s business associates, and he’s gone. She’s not happy attending by herself but Norman thinks it’s important. She’s about your age—your apparent age—and build, though you’re going to have to do an English accent if anyone talks with you.”
“Flower girl or Professor Higgins?”