Kingmaker (29 page)

The patio brick is cool and rough against his bare feet, and the grass beyond is damp. He suspects he can make it across to the closest of the dormitories if he sprints, but he wants to make sure he isn’t followed. If anyone has eyes on him, it’s best they resolve their differences before the children get involved.

He is almost halfway across the lawn when he feels something collide with his vest. It is so subtle that he has to look down to verify that he has indeed been tagged. The syringe is barbed, and has penetrated enough of the composite weave that it is dangling. He drops to the ground, but there
is no cover out there in the middle of the yard, and before he can even begin crawling, he feels a second dart embed itself deep into the meat of his calf. Instinctively, he reaches down, and the barb tears through muscle and flesh as he snatches it out. He dials his goggles back down the spectrum and sees in the infrared floodlights that the syringe is empty. When he looks up again, rather than the satisfied grin of a sniper walking toward him in a flexible hooded nanocomb heat-sink suit, he sees at least a dozen miniature quadrotor drones hovering and dipping through the air around him. That’s when he realizes that he is exactly where his enemies want him; that the two men upstairs were nothing more than expendable decoys; that the lawn between the house and the children was the focus all along.

At this point, he knows he has nothing to lose. He reaches into the pack strapped to his thigh, removes the jet injector, presses it into his left shoulder to release the contact safety, and fires the high-pressure stream of adrenaline into his muscle. He has no idea how epinephrine will react with the synthetic opioid—or even if it will react at all—but he does know that whoever is after him is very unlikely to tag him a second time. Assuming both the incapacitating agent and the dose were intended to have maximum effect at Alexei’s precise age and weight, a second dose would almost certainly kill him in seconds. And if whoever is after him didn’t have a great deal of incentive to keep him alive, he and the house and indeed the entire property would have already been reduced to nothing more than a smoldering crater strewn with splinters of building materials and barely recognizable body parts.

He tosses the jet injector away, curls up in a fetal position around his pistol, and waits. The autonomic pickups embedded in his spinal cord begin accelerating the centrifuges in his chest and Alexei believes he can hear the blood surging through his body. He begins to sweat, and he realizes that he is feeling the effects of the adrenaline over that of the opioid. As he listens to approaching voices, he focuses on his breathing and on remaining conscious and coherent.

He is suddenly fully illuminated by miniature LED spotlights pointed down at him from the drones, so he peels off his goggles. When he opens his eyes and squints through the glare, he sees two men standing at his feet. One of the men is pointing a nozzle down at him with his thumb on a yellow, rubber-coated release lever. The nozzle is joined by a
black woven hose to a canister strapped to the man’s back. Alexei knows the tank likely contains a nontoxic incapacitant—probably some type of foam—that can cover him and harden within seconds. Dangling from the other man’s hands are several recoil cords—bindings made from a type of polymer that releases energy at a rate faster than it is generated, which means they not only instantly arrest any sudden movement, but violently reverse it.

In order to apply the restraints, the man with the recoil cords will have to get close enough to Alexei’s feet that Alexei can easily smash his nose with the heel of his foot. However, both men are wearing high-impact visors which means, at best, Alexei could only knock the man off balance before the other man covered him with enough foam that Alexei probably would not move again until sufficient quantities of solvent were applied through atomizers in the ceiling of an underground concrete cell hundreds if not thousands of miles away.

The man with the canister must go first.

Alexei closes his eyes, pulls himself into an even tighter ball, and moans, drawing both men in closer as they peer down and attempt to assess his condition. He then opens his eyes long enough to judge the distance and position of the man with the canister on his back, and kicks with all of his strength. His heel strikes the side of the man’s knee, and as tendons wrench and cartilage shatters, the leg buckles in a direction almost perfectly perpendicular to its intended motion. The man screams and collapses, and Alexei sees him look down at his leg, then scream again at what he sees.

The man with the cords does not seem to know whether to advance or retreat, and the moment of indecision is enough for Alexei to get off two shots into the sternum region of his vest. Even though he goes down instantly, Alexei knows he isn’t fully incapacitated, so he crawls on top of him and slips the long black muzzle of his pistol’s suppressor below the man’s visor and up against the bottom of his chin. Alexei squeezes the trigger, and after traveling cleanly through the man’s head, the round strikes the top of his helmet and erupts, instantly covering the inside of the visor with a chunky stew of bloody skull fragments and lumps of fatty brain tissue.

The man with the canister is still screaming, probably as much from what he just saw as from the pain of his torn knee. He is scooting himself
backwards as effectively as he can with his hands and his one intact leg. The leg he is dragging is limp and bends at a dramatic and disturbing outward angle.

The dynamics of the two drugs in Alexei’s bloodstream are confusing. The depressive effects of the opioid have been more than countered by the adrenaline, but not the high. He is surging and murderous. He stands, holsters his pistol, and smiles at the man who is backing away from him. The canister on the man’s back is digging into the grass and pulling it up in great divots. When Alexei takes a step toward him, the man’s face contorts further out of anticipation of what’s to come.

“Shoot him!” the man screams. He looks around at the drones, but they hover impassively. “Goddamnit, somebody do something! Somebody fucking shoot him!”

Alexei puts a knee on the man’s chest, grasps the hose at the point where it enters the canister, and follows it out to the nozzle. The man is slapping and scratching at Alexei’s face, but Alexei does not feel anything. He inserts the nozzle below the man’s visor and opens the valve with his thumb. The foam is thick and fills the cavity between the man’s face and visor almost instantly. The man’s screams are rapidly muffled as the foam fills his nose and mouth, and then he is quiet. His hands go from Alexei’s face to his visor, but the foam has already set and the visor cannot be lifted. His fingers go beneath the visor and claw frantically at the wall of epoxy. The pale yellow of the foam becomes red and slick when the man’s fingernails buckle and separate from his fingertips as he digs. His body begins to shudder, and then it finally relaxes and falls still.

Alexei gets to his feet and walks boldly among the drones. They dip and weave in perfect coordination to keep him illuminated as he finishes crossing the lawn. There are too many of them for him to take out with just his pistol, but after he has secured the children, he will visit the weapons locker in the basement of the dormitory beside the indoor range. A gas-operated, fully automatic twelve-gauge with a thirty-two round drum is the perfect tool for cleaning up the lawn.

He makes no attempt to surveil or infiltrate. He is enraged and invincible. The sliding glass doors admit him and he walks across the cold stone floor directly to the stairs and ascends with unwavering resolution and absolute focus. There are rooms all along the upstairs hallway. The first three are for the children’s caregivers, and the rest full of bunks for the
children themselves. The room at the end is a common area—a combination play space and classroom. It is the only room with the door cracked and the lights on. Alexei does not bother with the others.

Everyone is inside. The nannies are face-down on the carpet beside shelves of plastic bins and neatly stacked boxes of puzzles and board games, their hands bound behind their backs with zip cuffs and their mouths duct-taped. The children are all at the back of the room, sitting as a group on the floor in their pajamas at the feet of five armored soldiers. There are two bulky black rifles raised, and when Alexei looks down, he sees two green laser dots jittering on his chest. He looks again at the rifles and knows that the dots are not for aiming; the lasers are creating an electrically conductive plasma channel in the air between Alexei’s chest and a series of step-up transformers housed in the bodies of the rifles. At any moment, he can be shocked unconscious.

The soldier directly in front of Alexei is not wearing his helmet. He is sitting on a table that has been pushed against the wall and his feet are crossed at the ankles. The man is young and handsome with trimmed black hair, a caramel complexion, and a smile that is disarmingly warm. He has a black throat mic strapped to his neck like a collar and a pair of video goggles in his hands.

“I watched what you did out there,” he says. His teeth are perfectly straight and very white. “I wish you and I were on the same team. That was impressive work.”

Alexei looks at each of the soldiers, then back to the man in charge. “You have until I count to three to get the
fuck
out of my house,” he says.

The commander raises his eyebrows. “Mr. Drovosek, before you start counting, let me explain something to you. You
are
coming with us. Alive or dead. Conscious or unconscious. My orders are to keep you breathing if the opportunity presents itself, so I’m doing my very best not to kill you tonight, but make no mistake. All of this…” He indicates the children, the nannies, the classroom—the compound in general. “It’s all over.”

Alexei takes a step further into the room and enunciates very carefully. “One.”

The commander wags his finger between the rifles to either side of him. “We can take you down right now if that’s the way you want to play this, but it’s possible with the state you’re in that we’ll send you into cardiac
arrest, and given what you’ve done to some of these men’s friends tonight, I can’t guarantee they’ll try very hard to resuscitate you.”

Alexei places his hand on his pistol. “Two.”

The commander pushes himself up from the table. He isn’t smiling anymore. He draws his sidearm and places the muzzle against the top of the head of a little girl sitting at his feet.

“Let’s try this another way,” he says. “Lay down on the floor.
Now
.”

The sweat on Alexei’s head and face is mixing with blood from the scratches, and the solution runs pink down onto his vest. He is smiling and his breaths come in great heaves.

“Three.”

Alexei’s hand moves and there is a flash followed by a tremendous crack. The kids are screaming and there is smoke in the room. The air has the metallic odor of ozone. Alexei’s body is half inside the room, and half out in the hallway. The commander shakes his head as he holsters his pistol.

“Rowe, go see if he’s still alive. Everyone else, start getting the kids ready to move.” The commander reaches up and touches his throat mic. “Target secured. Extraction in five minutes. I want every single child on the premises accounted for. Copy?”

One of the soldiers has left the cover of the children and is approaching Alexei with caution. He kicks at Alexei’s bare and dirty feet, and when Alexei doesn’t react, the soldier bends down, grasps the ankles in front of him, and drags the body fully into the room. Alexei’s eyes are closed and his head bounces as it crosses the wooden threshold. His arms are limp, and pivot into a position above his head. The soldier moves to Alexei’s side, gets down on his knees, and checks for a pulse by pressing his fingers to the side of Alexei’s neck.

“I don’t feel anything,” the soldier says. “I think he’s dead.”

The commander is helping to zip the children’s hands behind their backs. “Check if he’s breathing.”

The soldier pulls off a glove, holds his palm over Alexei’s nose and lips, and waits. “I can’t tell. I don’t think so.” He removes his helmet and leans down to place his ear above Alexei’s mouth when Alexei’s head snaps up and meets the soldier’s temple with a sharp hollow popping sound. The soldier’s eyes are wide and he is expressionless as he teeters for a moment,
then falls over on his side. Alexei’s hand moves down toward the pack strapped to his leg.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the commander says. He stands and pushes through the children to make a direct path to Alexei. Alexei is sitting up now and his pistol is out of its holster. The commander’s composite-toed boot smashes Alexei’s nose, and the back of Alexei’s head hits the floor. Alexei tries to raise his pistol, but the commander steps on his hand and pins it down.

“If you refuse to be taken alive,” the commander says, “then so be it.”

He draws his sidearm and points it down at Alexei’s torn and bloody face.

“Sir,” one of the soldiers behind him says. “We need to get a clean ID scan.”

The commander does not look back at the soldier. He stares down his pistol’s sights into Alexei’s eyes for a long moment.

“Fucking bureaucratic bullshit,” he finally says.

The commander holsters his weapon, takes a step back, then slams the toe of his boot into Alexei’s ribs. Alexei groans and begins to slowly curl up around the blow. He has released his pistol and the commander kicks it away, sending it spinning across the hardwood floor. The commander kneels over Alexei, shoves him down flat against the floor, and begins removing his vest. He rips back the Velcro straps, heaves the flexible armor up over Alexei’s head, then tosses it casually out into the hallway.

The commander stands. “Last chance to come peacefully,” he says.

Alexei lunges for the man’s groin but he is weak and slow and the commander steps easily out of reach. The commander draws his sidearm, holds it steady, and looks down at the man on the floor. Alexei looks up and thinks he sees a flash of something in the man’s face. It is subtle and fleeting, but it is there, and it is something Alexei knows he has seen before. Something he once detected when looking up into another man’s eyes when he was a boy. It suddenly seems important to remember who and when, and as soon as Alexei closes his eyes, he has it. It was after all the arguing between his parents late at night, and after he found the hole in the wall behind the books and the prototypes of the earth-orientation instruments with the modifications for the aluminum microfilm canister. He brought one of the devices to school and showed it to his teacher. He
then explained everything again to two men who took him out of class and asked him questions in a room he had never seen before.