7th Son, page 17
“There’s no time for this,” Michael said, his eyes flitting to the soldier’s shoulder, “Sergeant Morris, and you know it. If it weren’t for us, and the machinery downstairs that made us, you wouldn’t be here parroting orders. Things’ve changed. Clones take precedence over standing orders. You should know that.”
Sergeant Morris shook his head. John saw Private Ballantine’s hand jerk closer to his pistol. “Sorry, sir,” Morris said. “No one gets by without permission.”
Michael nodded, turned to leave, then, in an eyeblink, he reached out, snatched Private Ballantine’s gun from its holster, grabbed the befuddled kid by his shirt, yanked him past Morris, and twisted his arm behind his back. Michael passed the .45 to Father Thomas, who was standing next to him. Amazingly, Thomas found himself bringing the sights of the gun up toward Sergeant Morris’s chest.
The fuck is he doing? John thought. Does he even know how to use one of those things?
“I think Private Ballantine here is going to give us our permission,” Michael said. He pulled the private’s arm upward, and the young man fought back a shriek. His face was turning red. “You’re willing to let us walk through those doors, aren’t you, Ballantine?”
The private nodded furiously.
Sergeant Morris’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he stared at the pistol in Thomas’s hand. His eyes were wide, and his hands were shaking.
“Let us pass,” Michael said. “Don’t be any more stupid than you’ve already been. I know we’re being watched right now. Hill told us all about the surveillance system. So if I were you, I’d be wondering why no one has come to your rescue. Think about it, hoss: they’re not busting through that door because we’re not doing anything wrong. Just let us pass so we can talk to the big man, and you can get on with watch duty.”
Morris stepped aside. The clones entered, with Michael yanking Private Ballantine along in the lead.
General Hill, Dr. Kleinman, and Intelligence Officer Robert Durbin were sitting at the large mahogany table, dozens of manila folders laid out before them. Behind them, one of the wall-mounted television screens revealed that Michael had been right—Sergeant Morris’s flustered face stared back at them. He was shrugging as if to say, What could I do? Other screens revealed hallways, the interior of the express elevator—and the layout of the clones’ hastily abandoned Common Room. Staring at these screens were two soldiers, sitting in the back of the Ops room in the raised control area.
Michael released Private Ballantine. The young man offered an apologetic look to his superiors, rubbing his aching arm.
“Gentlemen,” Durbin said coolly. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“No shit,” Dr. Mike said, nodding to the screens behind them. “So our room is bugged, too?”
“Of course it is,” General Hill replied. “Not that we were listening. We’ve been pretty engrossed here.”
Kilroy2.0 snorted.
“Whatever happened to a man’s right to privacy?” Jack asked.
“Don’t be theatrical,” Hill snapped. “You’ve come home to roost, and you think we wouldn’t monitor your conversations? It’s nothing personal. Private, you’re dismissed.”
The young man brushed past the clones as he left. His face sported a combination of petulance and humiliation.
“Let me congratulate you, Mr. Durbin, and your whip-smart staff, on cracking John Alpha’s riddle,” Dr. Mike said as the private departed. “We’ve been doing your job since we got here. What’s next, pretty boy? Are we gonna polish your Eagle Scout badge?”
The ballpoint pen in Durbin’s hand nearly snapped in half.
“Stop it,” Hill said. He turned to the clones. “We’re presently going over the 7th Son security staff files, selecting the men who’ll accompany Michael, Dr. Mike, John—and Durbin here.”
“Him? You gotta be fucking kidding,” Dr. Mike said. “They haven’t cut his umbilical cord yet.”
“Keep talking, civvy,” Durbin seethed. “That mouth’s gonna get you in trouble. I can think of a great way to wire it shut.”
“I said stop it!” Hill screamed, slamming his hand on a nearby folder. “When this is all over, you two can go out to the playground and kick the shit out of each other, for all I care.” Hill glared at Dr. Mike. “So he’s younger than you and knew your life story before you did. Big fucking deal. Right now, you both—and the rest of you—will listen to me. We’re picking your support team for the mission. These will be the best men our facility has. Some of them were the agents who brought you here, so if you recognize them, don’t hold a grudge. We’ll have the team members selected in a few hours.”
“Estimated time of departure?” Michael asked.
“Sixteen hundred. Four p.m.” Hill consulted his gold Baume & Mercier. “That’s two hours from now. It’ll give those of you who are going enough time to fine-tune your plan and brief the team traveling with you. That’ll also give us enough time to bring an Osprey x-mod here to pick you up and to prep some Black Hawks and ground vehicles for use while you’re in California. You’ll get there fast—the x-mod is jet-powered. Brand new, no props.”
“So how exactly are you going to keep this off the books?” Dr. Mike asked. “And once the bullets start flying, how are you going to keep it out of the papers?”
“Leave the fallout to me,” General Hill said. “And to Code Phantom clearance.”
“What is Code Phantom, anyway?” the profiler asked.
From beside General Hill, Durbin smirked. “Officially, Code Phantom does not exist.”
Kilroy2.0 gave him a wet raspberry.
General Hill waved away the exchange. “Boys, Code Phantom is a blank check. The nearly limitless resources of the military and government are at our disposal—without any oversight whatsoever.”
The clones stared at him, stunned.
“So that’s how you got those spooks to watch us over the years,” John finally said. “They’re the dogs. You’re Pavlov’s bell.”
Hill smirked. “That’s one way to put it. For most people in the military and intel community, Code Phantom is an urban legend. When you get the call, you drop your shit, you pull rank, you fall off the face of the earth. It supersedes any standing orders. Code Phantom orders are untraceable, written in invisible ink. It was very useful in the early days of this project, when we needed resources and manpower. Now it’ll come in handy to get you where you need to be. You might consider this an improper use of the authority—and you’d be right.”
“But it’s for a good cause,” Jack said. “To cover your ass.”
“The world isn’t ready for you,” Kleinman said, glaring over his trifocals. “Or for 7th Son.”
“I think the world is less ready for John Alpha,” Jack replied.
“The only 7th Son team members who have Code Phantom access these days are Kleinman and myself,” General Hill said. “It’ll get to you to California. It’ll cover up any incident you may encounter. The president himself doesn’t have such privilege.”
“My God,” Father Thomas said.
Hill raised his eyebrows. “Precisely.”
“So when do we arrive in L.A.?” Michael asked.
“If the Osprey pilots redline it, seven p.m., local time,” Hill said. “It’ll already be dark.”
Kleinman cleared his throat. “For now, gentlemen, it’s a case of hurry up and wait. I suggest you all make some time to relax. Maybe call your families, or friends.”
“Uh . . . you’re serious?” Jack said.
“Of course,” Kleinman said. “Considering what you’ve been through—and how we brought you here—there are some worried family members and lovers out there.” The old man glanced at Dr. Mike. “And probably some irked publicists, too.”
“Larry fucking King,” Dr. Mike moaned. He closed his eyes. “Rochelle’s going to kill me.”
Father Thomas stepped forward. “What do we tell them?” He looked at Hill, then Kleinman. “What can we tell them?”
“I want to say, ‘Use your best judgment,’ but I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Kleinman said. “I’ve discussed this with General Hill. He feels this is a security risk, but I’ve convinced him to let each of you make one phone call. There are conditions. You get fifteen minutes each. No exceptions. Of course, you cannot tell who you’re calling where you are or why you’re here. Anything resembling details about Project 7th Son are strictly forbidden. If you fail to adhere to these rules, the line goes dead.”
“Let me guess,” Jay said, his eyes flitting to the wall-mounted monitors. “You’ll be listening.”
“Affirmative,” Hill said.
“We should get going,” Michael said, turning to the doors.
“Be careful what you say in your phone calls,” Kleinman called to them. “And be careful in California.”
EIGHTEEN
Jack’s hand trembled as he picked up the gray telephone resting on the desk in his living quarters. Lisa would be worried—no, terrified was more like it. And Kristina and Carrie . . . Jesus. He was supposed to watch a movie with them last night. D.A.R.Y.L., about the man-built boy with the programmed memories. Irony has a way of kicking you when you’re down, doesn’t it?
Jack pulled his leather wallet out of his pants pocket and unfolded it. There they were. His girls. Lisa, Kristina, and Carrie, smiling from a photograph. Taken a year ago, at a picnic in Linnell Park.
What could they be thinking right now? That he’d run away? That he’d been abducted? That he didn’t love them? Jack shook his head. The call would just spawn more questions for Lisa . . . more worries. This thing—this experience, this adventure, mission, whatever it was—was going to hurt the family, Jack could feel it. More pieces to mend when he came home.
He lifted the receiver, held it to his ear. Jack scratched at his beard, that nervous tic of his. What will you tell her? The truth? Lies? Something in between?
He dialed their home number in Tucson. The phone on the other end rang once; just once.
“Hello?” It was Olivia, his wife’s sister. Lisa must have called in the family for support. Jack couldn’t blame her.
“Olivia, it’s Jack.”
“My God,” she nearly shrieked. “Where are you, Jack? Lisa has been out of her mind!”
Jack could her his wife in the background—Is that Jack? Give me the phone—and then she was on with him, talking to him, saying his name over and over. Her voice was raw, like shattered glass.
“Lisa, honey. It’s me.” Jack looked down. There she was, in the photograph, smiling. Here she was crying. “I’m okay.”
“Jack? Thank God, oh, thank God. Where are you, Jack? Where have you been?”
“I can’t tell you.” He stared at her smiling face in the photo. “I’m sorry. I can’t. But it’s . . . it’s important, Lisa. More important than you’ll ever know. Sweetie, understand me: I’m safe, I’m okay. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
“What does that mean?” Lisa said, her voice sharpening. “You can’t tell me where you are? Why not?”
Jack cringed. “I just can’t. It’s complicated.”
“Does this have something to do with your research at the university, with the rats? Is it that protester kid, Kalajian?”
Oh, if only the stakes were so pedestrian, Jack thought. I’d take a paint-bucket-wielding activist zealot any day over this. I’d rather be red than dead.
“No, baby. That’s ancient history. This has nothing to do with that.” Oh, but it does . . . it has everything to do with clones and rats. See, I’m a cloned rat, and me and my newfound brothers are trying to navigate the labyrinth. We’re looking for Patient Zero. “It’s something else. Something important. Listen to me: I can’t tell you. I want to, but I can’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I love you, Lisa. I love you and the girls more than anything. And it means that, no matter what happens, I’ll always love you. I just have to take care of some business with these people, and then I’ll be home.”
Lisa was silent for a long time.
“And when will that be?” she asked finally. Her voice was flattening, dissolving. She was shutting down, the way she did when they fought. Lisa didn’t yell or scream when she was pissed . . . she went antarctic, the impassive observer, a scientist peering through a microscope.
“Please, Lisa. Please understand. This is out of my control. I want to tell you. I didn’t volunteer for—”
A click came over the phone line, and for a heartbeat Jack thought they (whoever they were) had disconnected the call. But there Lisa was again, on the line, crying quietly. That was a warning, Jack thought. Message received.
“Baby, I love you,” he said. “Just remember that. No matter how long I’m gone . . . no matter if I can’t call you again for a while . . . know that I love you and the girls more than anything else in this world.”
“You’re in trouble.”
Jack gazed down at the photo and rubbed his finger across Lisa’s face. The photo blurred before him. He fought back the tears.
“Yeah, in a way,” Jack said. “Are the girls there?”
She called for Kristina and Carrie. There was Olivia’s frantic voice—Where is he? He won’t tell you?—then Kristina was on the line, soft and little and just about as real as it could get.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, sugar puddin’. How you doin’?”
“I’m okay.” God, that voice. She was the one who watched and listened and asked the right questions. Twenty years from now, Kristina would be a scientist, a journalist, a problem solver. Jack would bet on it.
“When are you coming home?”
Jack smiled. See? So soon with the questions. “Soon, baby. Soon. Daddy just needs work with some new friends for a little while. I have a very important job to do.”
“What kind of job?”
Jack thought for a moment. “A special job. So special I can’t even tell Mommy about it.”
“It’s a secret.” Pause. “You have a secret science experiment.”
“Kinda.” Try dead-on, kiddo.
“Can you tell me anything about it?”
Jack looked at Kristina and Carrie in the photograph. “Only that you and your sister would get a big kick out of it. But I’m okay, sweetie. I’m just fine. And I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay?”
“I believe you.” Another pause. “Hurry, Daddy. We miss you.”
God, that voice. His own voice was shaking now. “I miss you, too. And I love you. Is your sister there?”
A second later, Carrie was with him.
“Hey, Daddy!”
“Hey, you. How’s my princess?”
“Fine. How’re you?”
Miserable. Afraid. Questioning my place in the universe and busy missing the hell out of you, little one.
“I’m doing fine, just fine.”
“Daddy? When are we going to watch the D.A.R.Y.L. movie?”
“Oh, honey.”
That’s when Jack began to cry.
As he listened to the phone on the other end ring and ring, Dr. Mike stared at the walls of his quarters and considered the thoughts he’d had in this room last night (or was it this morning? It’s blurring together . . . goddamn sleep deprivation): screw this place; he would be no help to these people. No help at all.
That anger had come before Dr. Mike had seen his father—his dead father—this morning. Before he’d seen the man pulled out of Ops by armed men. Before he’d seen the room with the metallic, multi-armed monstrosity that had birthed him and the others. Before he’d seen the awesome field of ten-foot-tall Q-Cray hard drives whirring away two thousand feet beneath the earth.
Somewhere between last night and this afternoon, Dr. Mike had begun to believe that this was all real, all true. Talk about making a one-eighty. And now he was actually helping his captors. Dr. J. “Mike” Smith, criminal profiler, was assisting the men who’d put a gun to his head and walked him out of the most significant moment of his life. His appearance on Larry King Live would have made him, legitimized the book and started the word-of-mouth publicity blitz.
And yet, sitting in this cramped dorm room, Dr. Mike realized he didn’t really care. If a third of what he’d learned in the past half day was true, then he hadn’t just stumbled upon the best-kept secret of his life—he’d stumbled upon the best-kept secret in the history of the world. And more significant: the secret of perfecting human cloning (and, God help us, memory duplication) was apparently in the hands of John Alpha. And he had a chance to stop the sicko. What a book that would make.
The phone on the other end of the line rang again. And again.
I know you’re there, Rochelle. Pick up.
Dr. Mike knew that she was going to be disappointed and angry—after all, at this stage in his career, you don’t strut onto Larry fucking King without cashing in plenty of favors. And that’s what Rochelle Romero had done to get Mike, her darling new author, on Live. He had told her she wasn’t going to regret this . . . that his book, Hunting the Hunters: Inside the Minds of a City’s Most Notorious Killers, was going to bottle-rocket up the sales charts . . . and that he owed her big-time. Rochelle had smiled in her office and said just three words in that slippery Colombian accent of hers: That’s right, kiddo.
And then Dr. Mike had gone MIA last night, right there in the studio bathroom. Put his photo on a milk carton. Call David Copperfield. He had vanished, and he’d blown it. It’d been out of his hands, but he’d blown it. Rochelle had every reason to be angry and disappointed.
But when Rochelle picked up on the other end and heard his voice, Dr. Mike realized Rochelle wasn’t angry. She was thermonuclear.
“Just who in the flame-ing fuck do you think you are?” she screamed. Mike recoiled from the receiver as if he’d been burned. He imagined Rochelle in her smoke-filled office, cordless phone pinched between shoulder and chin, scrambling to find her cigs.
Rochelle was still screaming. “Pendejo! And just what in the fuck do you think I am?” She must’ve popped a smoke in her mouth; her words were slurring now. “A doormat? A dish towel? A fucking flushable tampon? Do you realize what you’ve done?”
