The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (18 page)

“That’s easy. Only one place got the tech background to build one, boss. Cyberdine Systems in good old Boston, Massachusetts. Ask for project director, Dr. Alan Mendelson.”

Kamanski was about ask more when his walkie-talkie started squawking. He raised the small apparatus to his ear.

“Kamanski. Go ahead.”

Kimberlain caught a garble in return and just barely noticed Kamanski’s eyes seek him out as he lowered the walkie-talkie from his ear with the garbled voice still going strong.

“We just got a call from The Locks,” he told the Ferryman. “Winston Peet’s escaped.”

Chapter 16

“…ONCE AGAIN WE THANK
you for choosing the Eastern shuttle and hope that …”

Kimberlain came out of his daze after most of the stewardess’s standard speech was completed and realized he hadn’t fastened his seat belt for landing at Boston’s Logan Airport. Dr. Alan Mendelson would be expecting him in less than an hour, but Kimberlain had spent the short flight as he had spent the night before, with thoughts of the now free Winston Peet. Sixteen hours had passed since his escape, enough time for Peet to cover lots of ground.

“He faked choking on his dinner,” Kamanski had explained Thursday night after the facts became clear. “Guards waited until two minutes had passed before entering the cell. Peet’s features had gone blue, and all respiratory function seemed to have ceased. They had rules to follow too, Jared. They waited as long as they could.”

“Apparently not.”

“A pair of them entered the cell to revive Peet, with a half-dozen armed reinforcements standing outside. The two who went in did so weaponless. Everything was by the book.”

“Peet kill them both?”

“No. Used them as hostages. The guards were planning to lock themselves in while they tried to resuscitate Peet, but he lunged on them from the floor before the cell door was all the way locked. The guards outside held their fire out of fear of hitting their fellows.”

“Go on.”

“Peet made straight for the shoreline, hostages in tow. Night had just fallen, and the darkness made it impossible for anyone to get a clear shot. Peet used his shields right up to the water’s edge, when he shoved the guards aside and dove in.”

“Wearing?”

“We’re on the same wavelength, Jared. He was wearing his usual pair of khakis and was naked above the waist. Nothing else on but sandals. It was fifteen degrees outside; the water wasn’t even forty. It’s a two-mile swim in any direction to reach land from The Locks. No man could survive it.”

“Peet’s not a man.” Kimberlain shook his head in disgust. “After all these years you still don’t see that, do you? Sure, he breathes and bleeds like the rest of us, but that’s where the comparison stops. People like him and Quail aren’t like everyone else. The difference is that their abilities mirror their desires, and the mistake we make is in not recognizing that. It’s how they’re able to thrive in the world for as long as they do.”

Kamanski didn’t look convinced. “Vogelhut put an alert out, and the shores were crawling with cops within minutes. None of them reported any sign of Peet.”

“Was a body found?”

“With the currents this time of year, I wouldn’t expect one to be.”

“He’s alive, David. He’s alive because you didn’t make sure he was executed when you had the chance, and now he’s going to come looking for me.”

“Even if he survived, you really think he’ll come after you?”

“It’s what drives the bastard. You didn’t see him two days ago. I defeated him, the only man who ever did. Life and death don’t mean a damn thing when measured against evening that score. He’s alive, and he’ll be coming. You can count on both.”

That certainty had tempered the first breakthrough they’d made into the investigation of this latest serial killer. If Captain Seven’s assertions were correct, then the killer at some point must have obtained equipment and knowledge from Boston’s Cyberdine Systems. A former employee maybe, or perhaps a friend of a present employee. Kimberlain intended to have all possibilities checked out.

The taxi pulled to a halt on Congress Street in front of the modernistic First National Bank of Boston Building. The Ferryman climbed out after paying the driver and eyed the structure before him. It was made of elegant brownish marble and was shaped somewhat like a peg driven into the landscape, with its middle seven stories protruding symmetrically out from the four beneath and nine above it. Cyberdine Systems occupied these middle seven, and Kimberlain took the elevator up to the tenth floor, where Alan Mendelson’s office was located. A receptionist buzzed Mendelson’s secretary to announce his arrival. The meeting had been set for eleven
A.M.,
and fifteen minutes remained until that hour.

Mendelson’s secretary, a tall, dark-haired woman, appeared moments later and escorted him down a long, twisting corridor which had the feel and look of something from a futuristic space craft. The corners were rounded instead of square. The doors they passed were of the mechanical, sliding variety; nothing as old-fashioned as knobs and latches.

“Dr. Mendelson is expecting you,” the secretary said when they reached the last door. She pushed a button on the wall and the door slid open. The secretary smiled artificially and told him to enter.

“Mr. Kimberlain, I presume,” came a voice from the large office’s far end. “Please come in.”

With the door closed behind him, Kimberlain found himself inside the most modern office he had ever seen. The carpet was blue-gray, the walls cream white and lined with nonobjective paintings. The entire rear wall, before which sat a semicircular white desk, was formed of windows that drenched the office in sunlight, providing life to a myriad of plants and small trees scattered about. Attached to each plant was a tube that disappeared through the carpet to provide what must have been an automatic watering system.

“Water systems are my specialty, Mr. Kimberlain,” the voice said, and Jared had to squint into the bright late-morning sun to see the speaker. Alan Mendelson stepped out from behind his desk, and now Kimberlain could see him more clearly. “Sensors in the soil alert the pumps to dryness and automatically activate the hoses. We’re testing this system in a much larger scale at farms in the Midwest. Could save millions, in man-hours as well as dollars.”

Kimberlain had reached him by then, and the two men shook hands. Mendelson’s eyes bore into his, looking fearful and hesitant. The scientist led him toward a trio of chairs set immediately before his desk but didn’t offer one. The chairs looked to be made of the same material as the carpeted floor, like an outgrowth of some hybrid plant. The same could be said for the rest of the office furniture—a table and a pair of couches in a sitting area. None possessed any identity of its own, just growths in a landscape dominated by the jungle of plants and trees.

Mendelson’s eyes were quivering now, blinking rapidly. “The man who called was vague. Are you, what I mean is, are you a part of the government?”

“I have been.”

“What I mean is …” The words were obviously coming hard for Mendelson, and his fear was growing. “What I’m trying to say is do you represent anybody in a position to provide, I guess you’d call it protection, in return for cooperation?”

Kimberlain grasped his meaning and felt his pulse quicken. “A phone call away, Doctor.”

“I need help. I didn’t know what I was getting into. They had the right credentials. I thought their request was an extension of the previous work. I was simply filling an order.”

“You’re talking about the water cannon.”

“Not a cannon! The potential was there, yes, due to the modifications in design, but I never dreamed that was the purpose until I received that phone call last night. I swear it!”

“What modifications in design?”

“A drill—that’s what it was originally. That’s what it was supposed to be, what Benbasset paid a hundred million dollars to have developed seven years ago.”

“Benbasset?”

“The billionaire industrialist. It was his project, but the government had a substantial interest as well. That much was obvious.”

“A substantial interest in what?”

“It doesn’t matter now. I completed the new design just four weeks ago and delivered it just as they specified.”

“ ‘They’?”

“They had the right credentials, I tell you! But I should have known by how they wanted it delivered that something was wrong. I should have suspected.”

“Details, Doctor, I need details.”

“No!” Mendelson came closer still. “We’ve got to get out. I’ll take you at your word. Protection in return for everything I know.” He lowered his voice to a virtual whisper. “There’s a private elevator in the closet behind that door across the room. We’ll take it downstairs. Then you’ll get me safely out of the building.”

With no other choice, Kimberlain followed Mendelson to the door. His pulse was racing, but he kept himself from considering the implications of what Mendelson had said until the opportunity came for him to elaborate further.

They had the right credentials… .

Plural, not singular. Suddenly the search for a serial killer seemed about to become extremely complicated.

Mendelson reached the closet door and started to open it. He was breathing hard; even the simplest motion seemed to tax him. The door eased inward and he started through it.

The figure that lunged from the darkness Kimberlain recognized as the long, leggy shape of Mendelson’s secretary. He was going for his gun even as he saw her bringing hers up. It was a gun like no other he had ever seen.

“No!” Mendelson screamed and brought his hand up before his face.

The secretary fired the squat, rifle-like weapon. A hiss followed. Mendelson screamed. His severed hand struck the blue-gray carpet, splattering red as waves of blood pumped from the gaping wound.

Kimberlain dove to the floor, realizing that the weapon he was facing was the one that had torn Jordan Lime apart. He had his gun steadied as he rolled after landing, aiming at the secretary and firing, but she moved the fraction required to save herself, and his bullet hit the wall where her head had been. Mendelson was still shrieking, staggering, but the woman’s attention was on Kimberlain now as he sighted for another shot.

He got it off, dead on line with her chest, for a certain kill. It thumped home and the woman recoiled, but when no spurt of blood emerged, the Ferryman knew she was wearing some sort of body armor and he’d better move now—and fast.

A jet hissed out of the barrel as he twisted across the carpet just ahead of the dark, scalpel-like incision sliced through the blue-gray piling. He was square in the open, and the woman had him in her sights, when, screaming, Mendelson charged at her with blood still pumping from where his hand had been.

She brought the gun around, firing, and Kimberlain saw a wave of blood gush from Mendelson’s chest and back simultaneously as the water jet sliced in and through. Mendelson reeled backward, writhing and spasming, searching for the breath needed to scream. He had bought Kimberlain time, though, and the Ferryman grabbed for it, going for a head shot that missed when the woman swung back. The bullet grazed her unprotected shoulder at the clavicle joint and spun her around as she wailed in pain, her water jet weapon ripping a crevice in the wall.

From his prone position, Kimberlain steadied his gun once more. The woman was still in motion when she fired next, and in that instant Kimberlain was certain he could see the dark blur coming at him. As he instinctively raised his arm for protection, the water jet sliced into his pistol and turned it scorching hot in his grasp. As he dropped it, another jet cut flesh from his left side.

The agony rocked him all the way to his feet and sent him into motion, not toward the woman but toward the thick leather couch that seemed to be growing out of the floor against the far wall. Mendelson, meanwhile, was clawing for something on his desk. He reached up and spilled the contents of his blotter to the rug.

The woman fired her weapon again just as Kimberlain threw himself behind the couch. The water jet hissed through the fabric and singed the air above him as he hugged the carpet.

Kimberlain realized his best chance, his only chance, was to keep moving. He darted from the cover of the couch and dove behind Mendelson’s desk. Again the water jet traced his path, the last edge of it slicing open his other side with a feeling of ice sliding down his shirt. Kimberlain twisted the other way, and the motion brought him next to Mendelson, still alive somehow, with his eyes twitching and focusing on a piece of paper beneath the hand that remained attached. Another burst from the water-jet gun forced the Ferryman even lower. Warm blood soaked his shirt on both sides. He felt himself weakening and began to wonder how much more spray the gun could hold. Captain Seven had guessed six seconds’ worth, but obviously that estimate was low.

He heard its wielder coming and grabbed reflexively for some damp earth from the nearest potted palm. As the woman’s shape lunged over the desk with the deadly barrel leading, Kimberlain tossed the dirt upward into her face. Her weapon tore a chasm from the floor where he had been, and before she could recover, Kimberlain threw himself on her and grabbed for the water-jet gun.

Their fight for control of the weapon twisted and turned the length and breadth of the room. In the course of their wrestling, the woman compressed the trigger. An entire wall split in two, followed by fragments from the ceiling. At last the conference table collapsed, with its legs severed. The woman was good with her feet and used them effectively against the Ferryman’s knees. He could feel himself weakening considerably from loss of blood. His concentration on the weapon left his groin exposed, and she rammed into him with something that felt like a brick. He bit his lip to cling to consciousness while his feet wavered beneath him. He felt himself slipping away and knew his next move was the only one that mattered.

The Ferryman changed his strategy and went with the woman’s move instead of against it; he let her have the gun, let her think she could fire it. And when she brought it up, Kimberlain grabbed the bore at the absolute last instant and forced it hard into the dirt of a potted plant just as the woman pulled the trigger.