The Deaths of Tao (39 page)

I thought you hated being an attorney.
 

“I hate that too.”

The problem is not the job. You just need a better attitude.
 

“Shut up.”

See.
 

Jill went back to the second floor and led Wilks toward the southwest end of the building where it joined with the Dickson Senate Building. They moved slowly, hiding behind cover and in cubicles wherever possible. There was a small garden with several large trees on Constitution Avenue nestled between the two buildings where Wilks liked to smoke when he didn’t want anyone to see. With luck, they could climb down a tree or at the very least jump onto a nice bed of flowers to soften the fall. As luck would have it, there was another guard near the entrance to that section of the building. Wilks was about to call out to the guard when she covered his mouth with her hand.

“We’re not sure if he’s compromised,” she whispered. Then she motioned for him to stay still. She stayed low to the ground and crept forward toward the guard.

“He’s wearing a federal uniform. Maybe he’s a good guy.”

I am sure the Genjix have several federal uniforms for Halloween. You cannot risk it.
 

“I don’t see a rifle or Kevlar. I think he’s a regular.”

Do not risk it. If he is a regular guard, the best thing you can do is put him down non-lethally. He would not stand a chance against Genjix squads.
 

Jill cursed under her breath as she inched closer. The closer she got, the more she was sure he wasn’t the enemy. For one thing, he looked relaxed and was completely oblivious to his surroundings. If he were a Genjix agent masquerading as a bored guard, he should be nominated for an Emmy.

She crept up to the cubicle adjacent him and waited. And waited. And waited some more. The guy was so lazy he kept staring straight ahead, at one point yawning and leaning against the wall. Finally, feeling a sense of urgency, she picked up a stapler on the desk, stood up, and chucked it at him. It clipped him on the ear. Jill leaped out of the cubicle, swept his legs, and choked him out.

Well, that was not elegant.
 

“No style points there, but it did the trick.”

Jill went back to retrieve Wilks, and they continued to the next room. By now, his shoulder was pouring blood, leaving a trail for anyone to find. They had to get out of there fast. They reached the corner of the building with the small garden. She looked out the window. It was a decent drop, but not more than what she had trained for with Marco. She took aim and put three slugs into the window, shattering the glass. She dragged Wilks to the ledge, apologized quickly, and pushed him out. Then she leaped out of the second floor window and landed on a bed of tulips, rolling as she was trained into a kneeling position with pistol drawn.

I see the training is paying off.
 

“Didn’t stick the landing, but I give that a six.”

Hearing the clatter of footsteps approaching from the east, she grabbed Wilks by the collar and dragged him westward between the building and a row of bushes. He was in sorry shape by this time. The fall might have broken his leg. She wrapped his arm around her shoulder and dragged him down Constitution Avenue. There was a flash and the pop of gunfire. Jill threw herself to the ground and returned fire. A squad of Genjix appeared across the street and closed in. There must be a Penetra van nearby. She was a sitting duck. Then she saw one of the Genjix agents approach with a small round object in his hand.

Flash incendiary. Hold until range. Open fire during throwing motion.
 

She opened fire right when he was about to toss it at her, taking him out at the leg. A moment later, there was a blinding flash and then another hail of bullets ripped through the air right above them.

“You alright, James?” she whispered.

“Ain’t the first time I’ve been shot at,” he replied.

The Genjix closed in. By her count, there must have been seven or so. Far too many to deal with. At best, she could take out two before they pinpointed her location. Still, two was better than none. Jill tensed and waited for them to get in range. Thirty meters. Twenty-five. Just as they were within twenty meters, two of the Genjix suddenly dropped. The squad turned to engage the new threat. Jill got up and fired as well. The five remaining Genjix agents didn’t stand a chance in the crossfire. A new figure sprinted toward her from her left. She dropped to one knee and aimed.

Marco held out his hands. “Whoa, whoa, it’s me. We have to move. Bogies converging on our position. The entire beltway is under Penetra surveillance.” He looked down at Wilks. “Hello, James, need a hand?”

Wilks’ entire body was shaking. A veteran of both Vietnam and Korea, he didn’t scare easily, so he had to be in a lot of pain. “You’re part of these shenanigans?” he demanded. “I should have figured.”

Marco picked the large man up by the waist and started to half-carry and half-drag him as if he were a piece of luggage. “We’re still on for golf, right?”

“I’ll pay for the beer if we survive,” Wilks grinned.

Jill rolled her eyes. They got off the main streets and navigated through the smaller ones leading out of the city. The night was eerily loud for the capital at two in the morning. The center of the city, where the government buildings were located, had very little night life surrounding it. Usually, everything inside 495 shut down early, leaving the Hill a semi-ghost town. Tonight, though, felt more like the Fourth of July. She could hear continuous pops in the distance, followed by low rumbles that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than low-grade incendiaries. The capital was a battle zone tonight.

“We need to find a place to hole up outside of Capital Beltway,” Marco was saying, snapping her back to reality.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Have you spoken with Paula?”

“She’s out trying to bring people in,” he replied. “We’re stretched thin enough as it is and getting massacred out here. Last count was seventy confirmed casualties. The rest we aren’t sure about.”

Seventy. That is twenty percent of our influence in the government. That means we just lost the United States.
 

Jill stopped dead in her tracks. The States were lost. How could this happen? She stared in stunned silence at the lone flag waving in the night sky next to a government building. The Genjix controlled the United States now.

Marco turned around and snapped his fingers in front of her face. “We have to move. There are more Genjix teams filtering in by the second. Paula is working on establishing a rendezvous point. Until then, we need to stay low and out of danger.”

“What about Command operations?” she asked.

He shook his head. “The first place attacked.”

Jill gasped. “The Keeper?”

Marco exhaled, the usual twinkle in his eye gone. “She left for European Command last week. Paula was able to take the helm and fight off the first Genjix wave, and then they escaped through the manufacturing district. I’m waiting for confirmation on a rally point. The existing safe houses here are all considered compromised.”

“We have nowhere to hide?” Jill said. “Wilks can’t stay on his feet much longer.”

Marco shook his head. “We’re in a bad state. Without a place to regroup to and Penetra scanners everywhere, we’re sitting ducks. We need to avoid all major cities for a few days until Paula figures things out. Unfortunately, that’s where all our safe houses are.”

“Wait,” Jill said quickly. “I know a place. Can you get a word out to Paula and the rest of our people?” He nodded. “Good,” she picked up her pace. “I guess my good for nothing husband is good for something after all.”

 

THIRTY-SIX

THE FALL

There were others like me who wandered the land, searching for greatness. While most were unsuccessful – finding the special humans who have the power to change history was as difficult as finding Quasing during the Gathering – a few were successful, though sometimes with unexpected results. Huchel and Camr succeeded with King Solomon and Hammurabi. With Alexander the Great, Cualm showed us what could happened if we lost control of a host with unbridled ambition. Both Zoras’ hosts, Nero and Caesar, were cases where the Quasing lost control as well.
 

Tao

 

The trip around the South China Sea at the freighter’s snail-paced twenty knots became a mini-vacation of sorts. Though Roen had paid enough to get them all housed at the Ritz Carlton for a year, they were given cargo containers down in the hold as apartments. It seemed that in the distant past, Dylan had indeed dated Manny’s niece, and the two men had once been close and dabbled in cockfighting together. Now, Manny’s niece was a nun and Dylan was on Manny’s permanent shit-list. However, Dylan had saved Manny’s life more than once from bad wagers in the arena, so the old captain put up with him.

Roen and his men spent much of their days practicing their golf swings on the makeshift driving range at the aft starboard side. This was the first real downtime the team had had since they arrived in Taiwan, and the men’s individual talents were coming out of the woodwork. Jim had been an opera major and a pretty decent baritone, Ray had once been a semi-pro figure skater, Grant had graduated from culinary school, Faust had made it to day four of one of the World Series of Poker tournaments, Hutch was a Golden Gloves amateur champion, and one would never guess, but skinny Stan could drive the golf ball nearly three hundred meters. Roen had no idea why Stan bothered being a Prophus agent. If Roen had that kind of skill, he’d ditch Tao and join the PGA in a heartbeat.

Thank you for the loyalty and support.
 

“I’ve seen the chicks pro golfers nab. You still owe me a Brazilian lingerie model.”

When not working on their golf swings and swilling lambanog, a liquor brewed in the engine room, the team passed the time sparring. Their friendly fights became so popular that it soon became the ship’s main attraction. Grant had to make a fight schedule to accommodate the crew and even set up a relatively complicated system for them to bet on. Within two days, the team was able to amass a tidy enough sum to pay for all the lambanog they could drink.

What also impressed Roen during these sparring sessions was the skill his men had in hand-to-hand combat. These weren’t the green grunts that he had encountered guarding doors at Command. These were the best shock troops the Prophus had to offer. Roen wasn’t about to admit that any of these guys were better than him, and all the betting odds backed his confidence, but all of them had at one point given him a run for his money. There were quite a few upsets during the fights, from Ray with his flashy dance-like moves to Stan’s old-school Chinese Hong Fist to Grant’s “I’m impervious to pain” Neanderthal beat-down. It wasn’t pretty, and he ate punches by the bunch, but once Grant got his paws on him, it was pretty much over. Now Roen knew why the rest of the guys called him Zangief. Hutch, on the other hand, gave him the most problems with his boxing. His odds against Roen were nearly one-to-one.

Their Pacific cruise finished its leg in Manila on the second day and reached Macau on the fourth. They spent two days in port, loading new cargo before chugging back toward Taiwan leisurely. The sun was out, and there was a gentle breeze coming in from the west making the weather perfect for just lounging and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. All in all, this was the best and only vacation Roen had had in years.

And you needed it, Negative Nancy.
 

“All work and no play...”

And as karma would have it, just as the going got good, bad news had to rain down on their parade. They were a day out from Taiwan when disturbing information from the States came across the Prophus sub-channel. Roen and Hutch were playing tetherball with a punctured soccer ball when Stan came sprinting out onto the deck.

“We’re all needed in the communication room,” he gasped, breathing so hard he barely got the words out.

Roen looked down at his watch. “I’m not on radio duty for another thirty minutes.”

“We’ve just lost the government!” Stan said.

Roen looked puzzled. “What happened to the Keeper?”

“No, the United States!”

This cannot be true!
 

Roen only thought of Jill as he rushed to the tower, followed closely by the rest of his team. According to bits and pieces from scattered Prophus reports, Washington DC had fallen to the Genjix. The team huddled around the communication array, hitting every back channel they could find. Nine hours later, the Keeper had verified their worst fears. The capital of the United States had fallen to a brazen military coup, and the Genjix were now in firm control of the country.

Roen spent those hours huddled in a ball next to the radio. Some of the information was conflicting, and he didn't know what to believe. It trickled in slowly and in bits, and it only got worse. Senator Thompson was missing. Secretary of Defense Jayloh, Director Sun of the FBI, and Representative Forbeck, a respected nine-term congressman, were all confirmed dead alongside their Quasing. Federal appellate Judge Cole, Secretary Kowal of the Department of Education, and Vice Admiral Andrews were only a few of the growing list of important Prophus figures missing. The number of dead Prophus operatives climbed higher and higher. Initial estimates were fourteen, then forty, and then over a hundred. One bit of data stood out to him though. Senator Wilks had been shot and presumed dead. Scenes of Jill facing a hit squad of Genjix assassins played over and over in his head. His face drained of all color as he clutched his knees, listening for any piece of news that would prove his worst fears false.

I cannot believe they can be so brazen as to risk such an attack.
 

This was a coordinated attack, one inconceivable a few short years ago. For the Genjix to risk this sort of exposure and cause this kind of public upheaval was beyond any Quasing’s understanding. This went against strict Quasing doctrine both sides had followed for thousands of years.