Girl Takes Up Her Sword (4 page)

“She thought it wouldn’t be safe on the base.”

Jenkins stopped and stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Not safe,” he sputtered out. “What on earth...”

“You remember, sir, that business involving Carver.”

“Oh... yeah.” The details of an embarrassing investigation all came rushing back to him. “That was
her
file he leaked. I’ll need to discuss that with the Admiral, too.”

Jenkins turned again to leave.

“Wait, sir. Don’t you want to meet her?”

“No. You stay and make my apologies, give her my regards.”

He glanced at Wendy, whose red hair momentarily caught his attention again, and smiled.

“Thank you, Miss. You’ve been very helpful.”

She shrugged, puzzled, as Jenkins walked briskly to the exit at the far end of the building.

~~~~~~~

After the last match, and after Coach Parker made some final remarks about the importance of controlling initiative, the men started moving towards the locker room and the women on the team crowded around Emily.

“You’re still in high school?” one asked.

“You joining us in the fall?” asked another.

“We could sure use someone like you here.”

Emily smiled at all of them. It seemed to reassure them just to make small talk with her.

“I think I’m going to Charlottesville in the fall,” she said.

“It’s not because of Calder, is it? He’s an ass, but the guys aren’t all like him.”

“Nah. He’s not so bad, you know, once you kick his ass,” she said with a smile.

They all laughed. Eventually, the circle broke up and headed for the locker room. A few probably noticed Hankinson hovering in the background the whole time, obviously waiting his turn with her.

“You didn’t want to spar before. How come?” she asked, once they were alone.

“I’m the captain of the team. It wouldn’t have served any purpose.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“If I lost to you, it might have undermined the team’s morale, and if I won, it would have distracted them from the lesson you were trying to teach.”

“I suppose,” she said, with a shrug.

“But if you’re still offering...”

Once they had pads on, they circled each other for a few seconds, Hankinson looking over his gloves at her, trying to find an opening. He’d analyzed her technique carefully during the other matches. He was cautious, conservative. She would have to draw him out by initiating the action.

A quick front kick tapped him on the knee. Instead of trying to block it, as most opponents would have, he conceded the strike and moved to block the high roundhouse kick he guessed was coming next. When she flicked her foot up to his ear, one hand blocked and the other punched to where her head should have been. But she leaned over with the kick, ducking under and deflecting his fist up while striking lightly with a ridge hand to the groin. He reached down instinctively to block—too late—only to find a second roundhouse kick touch his temple. He backed away and smiled.

“Smooth. You were two steps ahead.”

“Why didn’t you block the first kick?” she asked.

“It was too fast, and it wouldn’t score anyway.”

“Yeah, but in a real fight, and with full force, it could have disabled you.”

“That sounds like Calder talking.”

“He’s not wrong about that, you know. He just overestimates his own abilities.”

“Is that what you said to him after you smoked him?”

“More or less.” She paused for a second. “Guys like that, they think the rules of sparring unfairly prevent them from using all their strength. What he needs to realize is that, in a real fight, I’d never let him use
any
of his strength.”

A shadow seemed to pass over her face, and her eyes grew steely, as her thoughts turned to darker matters.

“No one comes out of a real fight unscathed,” she went on. “Not the winner, and certainly not the loser. For all his bluster, he’s not ready for that... and there’s nothing more I can do to help him understand.”

Hankinson tried to smile at her. Her understanding of conflict was profound, maybe even a little scary, he thought. She didn’t get that in a karate class. Just what sort of fights has she been in?

“Again?” he asked, gesturing with his gloves.

This time, she held her open hands out to him. One looked like a greeting, the other a request. They intruded on his space, pressured him to act. He pushed the upper hand aside with a quick block and jabbed from the other side. But he couldn’t quite extricate himself from her hands. Her soft block guided his fist to the side as she curled the other hand around his block. When he lifted his foot for a low kick, she kicked it to the side before he could bring it all the way out. There was no way to keep his balance, and he fell to one side. Two quick, light punches to the center of his chest—her hands slid along the inside of his arms—and one last slap to the side of his headgear punctuated his defeat as he went down.

He looked up at her and shook his head, smiling to cover his embarrassment. Her domination was more than he expected from watching the other matches.

“I could see it coming the whole way,” he finally admitted. “And there was nothing I could do about it. You’re quite a chess player.”

Hankinson didn’t bother trying to finesse her this time. A short, quick kick to the knee would create an opening for a jab, hook, uppercut combination. Emily stepped inside the kick, slapped the jab aside and leaned out of the way of the hook and uppercut. In what finally looked like an opening, he tried to sneak in an overhand right. It was a forceful punch, with a bit of frustration behind it. Before he could fully extend the arm, she poked a sharp knuckle into his bicep. A shrill yelp escaped him as she pivoted through an elbow to his chest, followed by a fully extended back kick to the same spot. He ended up across the mat, lying on his back.

“Omagod,” she cried out, rushing to his side. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry. I guess I got a little carried away.”

His chest throbbed, and breathing seemed to be a challenge, but he didn’t want to let her know it. Looking up into her eyes, he was shocked by what he saw. Surprise and sympathy were reassuringly there, but something else too, something ominous, painful, even perhaps a little menacing. Most of all, though, the depth of feeling visible to him was startling. Turning his head, he noticed most of the team lurking on one side of the room, watching surreptitiously, perhaps uncertain of their welcome. How much had they seen? Emily helped him up.

“Damn, that smarts,” he moaned, rubbing his chest. “I had no idea you could develop that much power from so close.”

“Sorry about that.”

“You know, I get a feeling about you, the way you spar. This isn’t just a sport for you, is it?”

Emily didn’t respond right away, so he pressed on.

“You’ve experienced real fighting, real violence, haven’t you?”

Still she said nothing, but the expression on her face spoke volumes.

“I don’t want to intrude on your personal life, but I think Charlottesville is a mistake for you. I mean, not just because you fight like the god of battles. I know you let me off easy. But there’s a darkness that comes with that kind of discipline. You may not be able to manage it on your own. Belonging to something larger, like the corps, you know, the camaraderie can really help with that.”

She was obviously moved by what he said, though he couldn’t quite tell whether it was annoyance or gratitude he saw in her eyes. Then she smiled and held out her hand.

“My friends call me Em.”

As he held her hand, he was surprised by how small it was. She was strong, to be sure, but he felt a delicate side as well. Was she aware of her vulnerability?

“You can call me Perry,” he said, with a broad smile, full of teeth.

Just then, her friend with the colorful hair interrupted the moment.

“C’mon, Em. I’m getting hungry, and we don’t have all day.”

She made her goodbyes to Coach Parker and Captain Crichton, before flashing him a broad, happy smile. Her friend pulled her toward the exit.

“Did you tell her?” Parker asked.

“Yeah. But I don’t think she’s the type to be easily swayed.”

“I thought you almost held your own against her,” Crichton said.

“Nah. She was being kind... coulda kicked my ass whenever she felt like it.”

“We could really use someone like her,” Parker mused.

“Maybe, but I suspect she needs us a lot more than we need her.”

Back to Top

Chapter
5

What Happened in Kamchatka?

Berea’s footsteps echoed in the stairwell outside Burzynski’s office. A message from a contact in the Russian navy had been creating a stir throughout the building all morning. Harkness was already sitting on the sofa. The door clicked shut and the yelling began.

“So Dolohov finally deigns to send us something?” Burzynski slapped the folder he’d just been handed down on his desk. “If he wants me to keep his good-for-nothing cousin out of jail, he’s gonna have to do better than this. Well, what’s his excuse?”

“The Avacha Bay Strike Group was out on maneuvers most of last month,” Harkness replied. “He claims it was just bad timing.”

“Bad timing, my eye. What about Duggan. What’s his excuse?”

“Duggan’s dead,” a voice from the speaker phone crackled out. “Sheriff’s Deputies recovered his body on a roadside in West Virginia.”

“So he never made it onto the plane, then.” Burzynski mused on this proposition for a moment. “Did the Parks double-cross us?”

“I wouldn’t put it past the Colonel,” said Harkness. “She’s mean as a snake.”

“I saw the coroner’s report on Duggan,” the voice on the phone offered. “There were signs of a struggle. I don’t think Colonel Park would have wasted that much time. She’d just shoot him in the back.”

“Cardano’s people must have put up a fight by the plane,” Berea suggested.

“It’s what he gets for not finishing off Cardano when they grabbed the boy. But that still leaves the Parks in the wind with the clone and the girl.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about them anymore,” Berea said. “That’s the gist of Dolohov’s intel. Colonel Park is dead. Beaten to death.”

“What the hell happened over there?”

“He says they’re all dead, even the General. There’s no sign of the clone, and the girl’s vanished, too. He thinks maybe a black-ops team hit them.”

“Not one of ours. There’s no way,” Burzynski snorted. “We’d have gotten wind of an operation of that magnitude on Russian soil. And no way Cardano’s got the resources to run something like that on his own.”

“And Meacham...” Berea suggested.

“Not after Taipei,” Harkness said. “He doesn’t have the manpower.”

“Was Dolohov at least able to salvage any data from the compound?” Burzynski asked.

“No. Whoever did it torched the place. It’s a total loss.”

“If it wasn’t Meacham or Cardano, what’s our theory?”

“Sounds to me like they lost control of the clone,” the voice on the phone suggested.

Burzynski mulled over this prospect for a moment. General Park had been working on developing a genetically enhanced clone for military purposes for the last two decades. Early setbacks cost his family its influence in the North Korean Security Services. This allowed Burzynski to cultivate their dependence on his assistance for the last few years. To have the whole project blow up in their faces was infuriating, especially just as it was about to bear fruit.

“What about the girl?” he asked. “Dolohov says she’s missing, too. Are you suggesting she’s on the run with him?”

“There’s no way to control him, or hide him, even in plain sight,” said Harkness. “He’s too violent. If he’s on the loose, it won’t be long before he turns up. I mean, where can he hide on Kamchatka? It’s two towns and a bunch of volcanoes.”

“If the girl escaped with him, she’s probably dead by now,” Berea said. “Dolohov had another item. His sub tracked a Coast Guard cutter twelve miles off the Kamchatka coast.”

“Had to be operating out of Attu,” said Harkness. “It’s the only station close enough.”

“What would they be doing way over there?” Burzynski asked himself, while his people conferred among themselves.

The speaker phone crackled with an epiphany: “Ah! Now it’s beginning to make sense. I had a report that Connie Savaransky was spotted in Juneau last month. Our man thought she was arranging a flight to Attu.”

“Savaransky? You mean Meacham’s hitter? Is that what we’re calling her now?” Harkness asked.

“Yeah,” said Berea. “Whatever her name is. You know, Walker’s protegé. Where did Meacham ever dig up a pair of sociopaths like those two?”

“I thought she was killed with the rest of Meacham’s team in Taipei.”

“If she was on that cutter, Meacham must know about the clone,” Burzynski said. “Either we’ve got a mole on our end or.... I thought you warned the Parks about using any wireless communication. With Meacham’s access at NSA, everything’s got to be analog landlines, face-to-face or paper.”

“Could Meacham
have
the clone? And the girl, too?”

“I think we’d have heard something by now, if that were the case,” said Berea.

“Somehow, the girl’s the key to this, if she’s still alive. Harkness, didn’t you have a lead on her? Something about West Virginia bikers?”

“Yes, but it’s too old. The timestamp on the website predates the kidnapping.”

“Check it out anyway,” Burzynski said. “See what they know. Sanitize the scene.

“There’s one last tidbit from Dolohov’s message,” Berea said. “His inventory of the bodies at the Korean compound, one other person’s unaccounted for, a conscript from Chongjin.”

“Find him. If he’s alive, he knows something.”

Burzynski dismissed his aides and looked over Dolohov’s message more carefully. Satellite images seemed to corroborate his story. Unfortunately, heavy cloud cover concealed the area for part of the satellite’s pass. No way to track comings and goings.

“If Meacham has the clone, it’s an unmitigated disaster,” he moaned into the speaker phone. “We had him on the run after the Chinese ambushed his team in Taipei. But if he shows the clone to the Sub-Committee on Intelligence, well, that’d restore his position pretty quick.”

“Yeah, he could regain the influence he lost, and then some,” the voice on the other end said.

“Meacham’s a tough old bird. Finishing him off is proving to be much more difficult than we expected.

“And now with Duggan dead, and Davis and Kittner missing... What’s that make, seven so far? Our own ranks are starting to look a bit thin. If word gets out...”

“Don’t remind me. I’ve managed to conceal it from Harkness and Berea so far. We may need to make a bold move, turn the tables on Meacham before he’s too strong again.”

Burzynski depended on leverage and ambition to keep his agents in line. But if they knew what was happening, he could lose them all. The whole business was unsettling, to say the least. Most puzzling of all was the role the girl seemed to play in everything. He originally assumed she was an innocent, even interviewed her himself. To think, how easy it would have been just to grab her then. Now she seemed more like a ghost. He didn’t want to admit he’d been outwitted by a teen age girl. That wouldn’t do much for the stability of his network either.

“Cardano must know where she is,” he thought out loud. “We might try hitting his compound, maybe get lucky and grab her before he can spirit her away.”

“I’m not sure how good an idea that is,” the voice said. “He’s pretty clever about these things. And if you attack him again and come up empty, it’ll cost you.”

Burzynski winced at the thought.

“Let’s just hope Harkness finds something out from the bikers.”

~~~~~~~

Connie tried to keep her distance from Michael’s estate. It seemed the best way to avoid being marked by Meacham’s people. And it might keep Emily safe for just a little longer. She found herself trying to purchase tiny increments of security for her friend by calculations like this one. It was a delaying tactic at best. She knew events would bring things to a head soon enough.

The lure of watching Emily lead a sparring class for the security staff proved irresistible. The fact that it was Ethan’s invitation may also have worked a little magic on her. Michael met her at the front door.

“I’ve got something to show you. It’s about Emily.”

“Nothing bad, I hope.”

“You’ll have to be the judge of that. It’s a video smuggled out of Kamchatka. You can see what really happened there. Some of it is pretty grueling.”

Connie tried not to let it show on her face, but she found it exceedingly difficult to swallow at that moment. So many questions presented themselves to her mind. Who filmed it? How did Michael get it? Who else has seen it? But only one found expression, and it wasn’t the question of a professional. More that of an older sister.

“Are you sure she’d want me to see it?”

“She asked me to show it to you, and Ethan, too. We can talk about who else should see it afterwards.”

Ethan was already settled in on the sofa when Michael opened the door to his library. A minute later the grainy images from a dingy cell flickered on the television screen. The scene was horrendous, but Connie had seen worse things, even done worse things herself. Just not to someone she cared about.

The first part showed Emily in her underwear fighting off a gang of men, a rape gang, Connie knew. She cringed to watch it. To her great relief, Emily quickly dispatched her assailants, though with a ferocity even she could find appalling. In a second scene, now dressed and in a ring, she fought against multiple opponents.

“Thank God, she’s found some clothes,” said Ethan.

“Probably stripped them off one of the guys in the cell,” Connie said.

In the ring, Emily dominated the teams of opponents sent against her. All that was terrifying in the cell was transmuted by her display of power and confidence. It was almost comforting,
until the clone entered the ring
. He was huge, so much larger than her. The camera angle obscured his blank, lifeless eyes. He loomed over her gigantically, the sheer immensity of his strength unmistakable.

“What the hell is that?” Ethan asked, practically gagging on his own words.

“He is the source of all our troubles,” Michael said.

“That must be the Koreans’ clone,” Connie said. “They really managed to make one? Look at him.”

“How does he not kill her?” Ethan shouted.

“Just watch,” Michael said.

Connie wasn’t looking for reassurance. She’d already found it. On the ship, Emily concealed his existence from her. That required more self-possession than she credited her with. Being able to dissemble in a pinch, even with friends, she knew that was a crucial survival skill.

The first time the clone managed to hit her, a backhand to the side of the head, he sent her sprawling. Ethan squirmed on his end of the sofa. He tossed her across the ring, and she bounced off the wall. She eluded him for a few moments. They both could see she was merely delaying the inevitable. He struck her again, then leapt across the ring, trying to get to her before she could squirm away. Ethan couldn’t keep his seat. He paced across the room, visibly upset.

“Just watch,” Michael said, again.

Then something unexpected happened and everything changed. Somehow, Emily got the upper hand. She had locked her legs around his neck and trapped the wrist of his free hand, twisting it to control him. He was helpless. She squeezed and twisted, slowly, inexorably. He would be dead in a matter of moments.

“That’s my girl,” Connie whispered.

What happened next shocked even her. Suddenly, inexplicably, Emily released him, disentangled herself and leaned in, close to his ear. She seemed to be speaking to him. Then all hell broke loose. Armed men rushed in, and he unleashed on them the savagery that just a few moments earlier had been directed at her. Michael turned off the video.

“What the hell just happened?” Ethan demanded, his face flushed, his breathing uneven.

Connie sat quietly at the end of the sofa, mulling over what she had just seen.

“Michael, do you know how she turned him?”

She shifted around on the couch to face him, but found Emily standing behind her.

“Let’s just say we had a meeting of the minds.”

“What happened to him?” Ethan asked.

“He’s dead.”

“You didn’t have to kill him, did you? Not after you released him?”

“No. He died shielding me from gunfire.” Then, turning to Connie, she said: “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“It’s okay. You have to keep your own counsel, just like you’re doing now. Tell us what you want us to know.”

Emily perched on the arm of the sofa next to her. When she leaned over to kiss her on the forehead, Connie felt a little frisson of pleasure, and savored the peculiarity of the gesture: kissing a stone cold assassin as if she were her mother.

“There
is
some stuff I’m not gonna tell you. But here’s what I will say. His name was Ba We. He was the only clone who survived to maturity. Lots of others died as children, probably from genetic irregularities. After I destroyed the Koreans’ compound, I disposed of Ba We’s body. I don’t want anyone ever to find him, or reconstruct what the Koreans were able to do.”

The four of them sat quietly for a moment as Emily’s words sank in. Connie reflected on the chances Emily had been willing to take for Michael’s family, what she achieved, and what it must have cost her. She sensed in it a form of loyalty unfamiliar to her.