That was it then.
What she had to do now was get to a public comm. Everyone who worked for the Agency had a number to call when the shit got real thick. She’d memorized hers a dozen years ago. She’d never used it before.
But then she had never gotten caught with her ass hanging this far out. The Agency would have to bring her in.
She walked out the front of the parking garage with a practiced air to make it look like she belonged. The ramp was out of sight of the sniper but on a street in common with her building.
Her guesses had been good. SWAT was there, and since the gunfire had ceased, she assumed that they had mopped up the last of the Afghanis. The firemen were going in now, they’d been holding back because of the guns. She saw three unmarked Dodge Havier sedans, Bureau vehicles, parked down the street.
She turned down the street and started walking away from the scene. She wanted to stay and watch. It wasn’t normal in the States to walk away from a knot of cop cars and fire engines. There was a perverse rubbernecking instinct in Americans that made anyone walking away from such a scene an object of suspicion.
She had to risk looking suspicious.
If she walked toward the chaos, like everyone else who was out on the streets this early, she would walk right under the sights of the sniper. She hoped he was going to cover her building until he was damn sure that she wasn’t in it anymore.
She turned south on Fifth Avenue, crossing the street to the park side. The sniper was facing her building, the opposite direction, and on the park side of Fifth she’d be in the shadow of the peeper’s building.
She wished it were a few hours later in the day and there was a crowd to get lost in.
She ran. She still had no idea if there was anyone else lying in wait for her. She had to get away and lose herself. She ran south, along the massive concrete wall that contained the park and formed the foundation of the “dome.”
Only one other person was on this side of Fifth. A tall man in his mid-twenties, walking a nasty-looking, but apparently un-engineered, doberman. Before she reached the guy, she turned into the East 85th Street entrance to the park. Five steps under the dome and the temperature rose by a half-dozen degrees. Humidity stuck to her skin after the December chill in the street.
She kept running, hoping that she looked like a jogger.
Ahead, a new bridge spanned the street, and running across it was a man who instantly made her suspicious. Short, stocky, balding, gray mustache, and in his mid-forties. The build under the yellow jumpsuit showed constant conditioning; the jumpsuit was loose in the top, and Evi could swear that he was wearing a shoulder holster. It didn’t look like he was jogging.
The man actually looked down and locked eyes with Evi for a moment.
But he kept running.
When she was under the bridge, she spared a look behind her. The dog-walker had just turned down 85th after her at a dead run. He was drawing a silenced automatic as he ran. The doberman was running, tongue lolling, and was halfway to her.
The embankment was too steep. She dived behind one of the pilings that held up the bridge. She could hear growling and claws clicking across concrete, getting closer.
The doberman was a trained attack dog. In some ways it was more dangerous than its intelligent Afghani cousins.
There was a crack as a bullet chipped away part of the piling behind her.
She got to her feet and listened as she pulled the SG from her backpack. The dog was almost to her position, and the guy with the gun was following. The dog reeked with excitement and bloodlust; it was probably barely controllable in the best of circumstances. The guy was using the dog to flush her and give him a clean shot.
The SG cleared the pack as the doberman rounded the piling. She aimed an improperly balanced kick at the dog’s nose. The contact was solid and she felt the soft tissues give, but the dog didn’t back off or shy away. It should have, simply by reflex.
Instead, the doberman clamped its teeth around her right calf. The carbon monoweave kept it from breaking the skin, but it felt as if the dog were ripping her lower leg off. Evi lowered the silenced SG and fired a round into its upper chest. The bullet sprayed pieces of the dog on the sidewalk and knocked it over.
Despite a hole in its chest she could put a fist into, the dog stayed clamped on. It felt as if waves of fire were shooting up her leg. The dog was still alive and still biting down. A few more seconds of this and the monoweave would give. She lowered the barrel and wedged it between the dog’s eyes. That’s when she saw that the dog didn’t have eyes. It stared back at her with a pair of slightly disguised video cameras.
She pulled the trigger and prayed for her leg. Parts of dog brain and circuitry flew away from her. Fortunately, the bullet missed her leg. She kicked and the dog’s corpse fell off her leg, dead now. A dull ache throbbed in her calf in time to her pulse.
The dog’s owner had rounded the piling and was covering her. She could now see he was armed with a silenced nine-millimeter Beretta. His face was permanently etched on her brain. Straight black hair, Japanese features, and irises so black that Evi couldn’t see the pupils.
The gunman addressed her in perfect English that, had he been two decades older, she would have assumed was the benefit of a corporate education. “Do we go quietly, Miss Isham?”
He must have been kidding.
It was a contest to see who fired first, and she knew she was going to lose even as she started to raise the SG from the dog’s corpse.
She was caught by surprise when the gunshot she heard wasn’t the soft hammer of the nine-millimeter but a cannon shot from something forty-five caliber or better.
Most of the gunman’s head evaporated. There was a soft crack as the Beretta blew away more of the dog. Evi rolled away as the gunman collapsed on the doberman. She whipped the SG around to cover the area behind her where the shot had originated.
Evi found herself covering the jogger in the yellow jumpsuit.
“Who’re you?” She didn’t fire, though every instinct was screaming at her to do so.
“Colonel Ezra Frey, USMC retired—”
Evi recognized the voice. “Aerie?”
Frey reached down and helped her up. “We better leave before the local law follows that gunshot. Too bad they don’t make silencers for the old Smith and Wesson forty-four. Can you keep up on that leg?”
Evi nodded as she put away the SG. Frey holstered his weapon and started jogging off into the park behind the Museum as if nothing had happened. Evi followed, trying not to limp.
Frey had just thrown her a massive curve. He had been, she could tell from the voice, her controller in the field for the first eight years after the Agency recruited her. He was a few leaps upward in the Agency hierarchy by now. She hadn’t heard his voice manning the Aerie since ’53, nearly six years ago. Evi had never seen his face before, and, until now, she didn’t have an alias for him other than Aerie.
Damn it all, what the hell was he doing here? He couldn’t be with the hit squad, or she’d be dead . . .
It couldn’t be a coincidence.
They jogged through Central Park for ten minutes before they spoke again. She knew they were hunting for a tail, either cops or black hats. None showed. The only people were the homeless who clogged the domed park, especially in winter. A good quarter of the ragged population were moreaus. Evi kept an eye out for heavy-combat strains, like the mercs that’d attacked her. She didn’t see any. The moreaus they passed were, for the most part, rabbits and rats from Latin America.
The sky was lightening beyond the moisture-whitened surface of the dome, and other joggers were beginning to pass them.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Evi asked when they seemed clear of eavesdroppers.
“What happened back there?” Frey asked, avoiding her question.
“A hit on me. Afghani canine s
pecial forces. At least ten mercs. One human coordinator. A sniper, didn’t see him. As well as the suit with the doberman.”
“Christ.” Frey shook his head, whispering to himself. “A fucking shitstorm. Price was right.” Before she could ask him what he meant, he asked her, “Have you called in yet?”
There was such a desperate urgency to the question that Evi didn’t prod him about what David Price might have been right about. “No, I just got out of there.”
She didn’t trust the situation. But the agitation she began smelling on Frey was hard for a human to fake. Especially since he kept a professional front that didn’t let it show in his face or his voice. “This mess, I’m sorry you’re stuck in the middle of it. I’ll take you in, a safe house in Queens.”
They jogged along a few more minutes, past an empty playground, in silence.
After a while, Frey asked, “What’s the status of the hit team?”
“The sniper’s the only one undamaged.”
“Damn.” Frey shook his head. “You didn’t get a look at the sniper?”
She shook her head no.
“Gabe, you bastard,” Frey whispered to himself, subvocalizing. Evi doubted if he knew she heard him. She restrained herself from asking who Gabe was.
After they left the dome and rejoined Fifth Avenue, she asked again. “What were you doing there, just when I needed you?”
Frey ran a hand through his slate-gray hair. They were waiting for the light, even though there wasn’t any traffic. “Call it an embarrassing streak of curiosity.” He removed a small plastic box from his pocket and she saw that it led to an earplug in his left ear.
“Police scanner,” he explained. “You and the Afghanis caused one hell of a ruckus. I was on my way to see what it was.”
Curiosity, hell, she thought, you were running full out.
What was he hiding?
• • •
Frey lived in a condominium close to Central Park South, about ten blocks away.
She got to his apartment, fifteen floors up, and the situation was still very wrong. Having Frey show up in the nick of time strained credulity.
Frey punched in the combination and let her in. “I’m going to put the call through. We have a secure line here.”
She nodded as she walked into the apartment. It wasn’t as large as her penthouse, but it could’ve been as expensive. The Agency tended to reward performance.
The impact of the sunken living room, with its modern black lacquer furniture and glowing holo-table, was ruined by stacks of white plastic boxes scattered at random.
One was spilling Frey’s underwear on a couch.
Frey weaved through the boxes and headed for a flat, compact-looking comm hanging on the wall. “Pardon the mess.”
Frey paused and said, “Comm. On.”
The rectangle on the wall flickered and came on. Evi heard a seductive female voice from the glowing white screen. “Your comm is active, Colonel.”
The voice was an artifact of the comm, but she could swear she heard the synthetic voice lick its nonexistent lips.
“Load program. Label, ‘Secure Line.’ Run program.”
“Searching . . . I found it, lover.”
Evi arched an eyebrow as Frey responded. “Love you, too.”
Frey noticed her reaction and explained. “Security code requires the response.” Then he shrugged as if it wasn’t him that programmed the thing.
She decided that you really didn’t know anyone until you saw his or her home life.
Frey looked at a text menu that had come scrolling up on the comm. He was shaking his head. “It’ll take me awhile to contact the current Aerie. After I set up a meet to take us in, we won’t have much time. Go in the bedroom and find yourself some protective coloring.”
“Like what?”
“Cover that jumpsuit. Looks like Agency issue. It also shows off your physique. Any description of you is going to emphasize that. Not too many women built like you.”
She supposed not.
She walked into Frey’s bedroom and her ears picked up on his subvocalization. “Pity.”
That almost made up for Chuck’s reaction.
Everything still felt wrong. Too much of a coincidence. However, Frey couldn’t be one of the assassins, or she would be dead. If Frey had turned, he was after something else. She’d have to roll with it.
Evi looked around the bedroom. Black and red furniture, indirect lighting, no boxes lying around. She wasn’t surprised by the mirror on the ceiling. Looked like it doubled as a holo projector, damn expensive. She wondered if the room came furnished, or if it was Frey’s decor.
She slid aside one closet door, and she decided that it was Frey’s decor.
Neatly hung up, taking up most of the space in the closet, were women’s clothes. An incredible variety of sizes and styles. Cocktail dresses, negligees, evening gowns in red and black, blue jeans that no way could fit the Colonel, a peasant blouse in paisley, T-shirts, one executive suit, skirts, it went on. Some clothes were old, way out of style; some weren’t. She could smell at least six or seven different women in the closet.
She wondered if Frey was going to make a pass at her, then shook her head. Things were going too fast, and her mind was beginning to wander.
Besides, Frey was too much the pro.
She found a few items that broke up the appearance of the jumpsuit. She wasn’t going to lose the monofil. It had already saved her leg, though the bruise was getting tender and hard to walk on now.
She chose a leather jacket, removing a few of the chrome chains and studs so she could achieve a semblance of stealth in it. There was also a belt in the closet with a brushed-steel death’s head on it. It seemed to go with the jacket. Lastly, she undid the velcro tabs that held the jumpsuit’s integral sneakers on and replaced them with a pair of engineered-leather boots. The boots were black, like everything else she’d chosen, and had a fringe at the top.
She considered pulling one of the pairs of jeans over the monofil, but she didn’t want to restrict her movement that much.
She wished Frey was using the voice interface in the other room, secure communications or not. She wanted to know what he was doing.
There was a full-length mirror in the door to the bathroom. She appraised the look for verisimilitude. She had to admit that little else in the closet would match the way her hair got tousled. With the jacket, the tangled wind-dried look seemed intentional. She ran her fingers through her hair as she tested the jacket for mobility. The jacket wasn’t a perfect fit, but it didn’t catch her arms. That was good. Some clothes looked like they fit her until she tried to flex her arms and wound up splitting the seams on the arms or the back. She zipped the jacket up and had to stop halfway up her chest. She had small breasts, but they were on well-developed pectorals.
While the jacket hid the physique of her upper body, the form-fitting jumpsuit still showed her legs. She decided they weren’t that noticeable. The legs of a marathon runner, but not abnormal.
She looked like a street punk or an art student.
She reached under the jacket and zipped open a specially tailored pocket in her jumpsuit, under her left arm. It became a holster. She slipped the Mishkov into it, and she slid the barrel extension into a long pocket on her right leg.
In the mirror, the jacket was tight enough on her upper body to show the bulge. She unzipped the leather to the waist, until the gun disappeared. Magazines for the Mishkov went into other pockets. The only other things she took from the backpack were a selection of false IDs, a roll of twenties, and the black ramcard she’d looted from the canine.
When she put the twenties in one of the jacket’s pockets, she found a pearl-handled switchblade. She shrugged and put the money in another pocket.
She took off the shades and looked into her own eyes. Golden-ye
llow eyes glowed green through a slitted pupil as they looked back.
What was going on here?
She wasn’t engaged in any sensitive work for the Agency. She wasn’t working on anything remotely dangerous. Her job was cooking projections on the geopolitical situation and forming contingency plans. Her last “fire” assignment had been six years ago in Cleveland.
The four aliens had been sucked into the black section of the U.S. government, and the effects of that had worked themselves out a long time ago, hadn’t they?
That had been the last time she’d heard Frey’s voice manning the Aerie . . .
Frey walked into the bedroom behind her. She replaced the sunglasses.
“Good job,” Frey told her.
“What now?”
“In five minutes, six-fifteen, we’ll start walking down East 60th. Between here and the Queensboro Bridge, a remote cab will pull up next to us. We get in, stay down. That’s it.”
Five minutes was pretty quick reaction time for the Agency. She could hear Colonel Abdel telling her to trust her instincts, and her instincts were telling her that things were rotten.
What could she do about it?
She walked back into the living room. Frey didn’t follow her immediately. She glanced back and saw he had straightened out the closet of women’s clothes she’d rummaged through. Frey’s back was turned and he was picking up the sneakers she had abandoned. She expected him to return them, but, instead, he placed them neatly next to a pair of red stiletto high heels in the closet.
He turned and caught her looking. There was an embarrassed half-smile under his mustache. “Some people collect coins.” He shrugged and stood up.
“Your shoes are a more than fair trade for Shelly’s jacket.”
She wondered exactly how Frey figured that. She also wondered who Shelly was. Frey closed the closet and walked toward the door where she still stood watching him.
Instinct was telling her that the situation was wrong, but instinct was also telling her that Frey hadn’t turned. Instinct also told her that, once this was over, Frey was going to make a pass at her.
She could sense it building in the man. A civilized and very earnest lust that didn’t seem to belong to somebody who was about to toss her to the wolves.