A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (31 page)

“I don’t think so, unless you’re letting Hancock out in the family supersonic jet.” 
A typical smartass Lori comment, full of blood and thunder but lacking in meaning.  Tonya readied to pounce, but Lori filled in the details.  “The attack occurred at approximately 11:20 yesterday evening, Eastern Standard time, 8:20 local time.  I’ve been on the lookout for something like this and caught the news going through the Network.  The report won’t get to your desk for a few days.”

Dear Jesus.  Tonya’s eyes began to tear, heart pounding wildly.  She forced herself to take a deep breath.  “
The snatcher could be Keaton,” she said, quiet.  It wasn’t.  She knew Keaton, Keaton’s MO.  None of the snatches had Keaton’s MO.

“That
’s the other thing I wanted to speak to you about.  Keaton showed up
here
last night.  In fact, a Crow I’d never met before predicted her arrival several days ago, and he was right.”

“What did Keaton want?”

“Let’s see.  She wants your head on a platter if Hancock talks, so if you could do something about that, I would say I even owe you one.  She’s bargained with Ann and I for six hours of science lessons she assures us she has the background to understand.  We’ve also been recruited to help her on a minor little adventure.  Oh, and Tonyaaaaa…”

“Yes.”  She hated Lori-land.  Lori-land was like some godforsaken Roadrunner cartoon where anvils flew with abandon and coyotes zoomed by with rocket packs shaped like fireworks.  Dealing with Lori often meant dealing with Lori-land. 
Nothing else in the world was like it.  How Lori managed to run a top of the line household while spending all her time in Lori-land was a major mystery.  On top of that, space cadet Lori had enough political pull with her screwy charisma to have caused Tonya endless grief over the years.  Tonya knew that there might come a point when this conversation made sense to her.  Nothing yet, though.

Lori barreled on.  “
What in holy Hannah gives you the right to get on me about my dealings with Hancock when Keaton is a flaming walking lunatic straight out of an abnormal psych textbook!
  She’s camped out in the remains of my pool cabana, driving my people insane, she’s practically killed me, what, four times in the last six hours, and she’s demanding that I go with her, personally, on this idiotic snatch and grab rescue in the CDC she’s in the process of planning out.  I can’t take dealing with her, Tonya!  She’s a sadistic round the bend nutter butter whack job from aich eee double toothpicks, and if I can’t get her a volunteer Transform or two to serve as her walking juice supply she’s going to do the vampire suck routine on my bodyguards dammitall Tonya get me the crap out of this mess, already! 
Keaton is supposed to be your problem, not mine!
”

Ah, Lori-land.  Gotta love it.  Like the nursery rhyme, when Lori was good, she was very very good, but when Lori was bad, she was horrid.  When the going got rough, Lori got wacky, hyper and very strange.

Eventually, through Lori’s ramblings and demands for the nearest Clinic with an available Transform, Tonya realized what Lori had actually said.

First, Keaton was on her way to Virginia.

Second, she would break Hancock out of the CDC’s Detention Center.

Third,
the breakout would take a few days, as Keaton seemed to be working on making the attempt something besides a suicide mission.

Fourth, Tonya had screwed up badly.  Hancock wasn’t the one behind the tagged Transform snatches and killings.  Rizzari’s information
had corroborated the information Shadow provided.

Fifth, Tonya
needed to be near the CDC and away from her household, because Keaton would want a piece of her hide.  She didn’t want a hostile Keaton confrontation anywhere near her household.

Tonya relented and gave Lori the Clinic information she needed, hoping against hope this was all some sort of strange mind game
of Lori’s, Keaton was not at Lori’s house, and all hell was not about to fall down upon her.

Chapter 10

In 1967 it is estimated that 40 Crows transformed in the United States and that of those fewer than 30 survived for a year after their transformation.

“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”

Henry Zielinski: March 24, 1968

“Bentwyler, what the hell are you doing over here this morning.”  Zielinski, in his Bentwyler costume, recognized the voice
wafting down the cold institutional hallway.  Special Agent McIntyre.

Shit.  He
had made one pass on the interior of the CDC’s Detention Center already and was working on his second pass, taking more notes and trying to finish Keaton’s request to figure out the place’s sight lines.  He didn’t meet McIntyre’s eyes.

“Sir,” he said, mimicking Bentwyler’s overly deferential voice as best
as possible.

McIntyre smiled.  “Oh, you.  I’d wondered how long it would take you to figure out a way to get in here.  Won’t do you any good, though, Doc.  They’re not letting anyone
visit Hancock, not even me.”  McIntyre recognized him right through his disguise.  The FBI Agent took Zielinski’s elbow and started walking him back to the entrance.  McIntyre sounded utterly disgusted.

“
This is unfortunate.  I’m afraid they are misjudging how close Hancock is to withdrawal,” Zielinski said.  “She’s going to need juice sooner than they realize.”

McIntyre snorted and bent his head down to Zielinski’s ear level.  “This situation’s fucked in so many ways I can’t even keep track of
the FUBARs anymore,” he said.  “The bureaucrats in charge aren’t listening to anyone with Arm experience and the crazy Focus bitch, Biggioni, has convinced all of them she knows all the answers.”

Now this sounded interesting.  Zielinski grunted encouragement
as McIntyre hit the button for the elevator.

“
Nobody above field agent level is listening to us about the fact Hancock is different than Keaton.  They all have this preconceived notion the Arms are interchangeable and identical, nothing more than psychopathic killers.  I understand Hancock, though; she’s got the killer personality of a special ops soldier.  She’s sane, or at least as sane as any special ops soldier can get.  We should be able to do business with her.”

“I’ve been saying the same for over a year and nobody’s been listening to me either,” Zielinski said.  Especially not one Focus Biggioni.

The elevator arrived and McIntyre guided Zielinski to it, not letting go of his arm.  “There’s another problem, bad enough I’m pulling my people out ASAP: we had an incursion yesterday.  Doc, what does this sound like to you?  Midafternoon, a short heavy black clad person pole-vaults a shadow covered area of the outer fence, taking a second pole along for the ride.  Said person scouts out the inner fence but gets tripped up by, well, one of our secrets, gets shot at and hit, but lives to run away, pole vaults over the outer fence, and makes a clean getaway.”

McIntyre already knew.

“This sounds very much like Keaton,” Zielinski said.  Ding, and they exited the elevator into the small lobby on the ground floor, where McIntyre moved Zielinski out the door into the cool evening.

“Uh huh.  I
understand Arms enough to know they’re relentless, and once they’re on to something they don’t back down, and they don’t ever stop.  Keaton’s going to come back with an army of thugs or something equally noxious and there’s going to be a bloodbath.  The only way to stop that psychopath would be to change the game, such as with a thousand National Guard or so as reinforcements.  The authorities here said ‘no’, so my assignment here is caput.  I’m not going to stick around on some pointless suicide mission.”

McIntyre escorted him through the Detention Center’s front gate
to the small parking lot and confiscated all Zielinski’s CDC IDs, both his real ones and the Bentwyler fakes.  “You’re done here, Doc.  If you’re at all smart you’ll stay the hell away for good.”  McIntyre sneered at Zielinski, turned his back on him and left.

I
nteresting, Zielinski thought, half-amazed he remained in one piece and still a free man.  He had once surmised McIntyre and his people had been the ones who tried to assassinate him a year and a few months ago.  However, if McIntyre had been involved with the assassination, or even knew about it, his reactions would have been quite different.  He had, instead, been his usual arrogant self-righteous self, someone who considered Zielinski a lesser sparring partner, not someone worth assassinating.

Who else
might have been behind the assassination attempt?  He would ask Tommy, later, after he managed to get himself ‘arrested’ in a more proper manner.

Carol Hancock: March 24, 1968

Time passed.  I didn’t move.  I
clung to the Monster-proof fence and futilely sucked juice.

Eventually my will gave out and I gave up trying and failing to draw juice from the Transform.  I stayed
, motionless,
being
the Transform, experiencing peri-withdrawal.

More time passed, time I no longer kept track of.  Time did what
time did, and as inevitably as the sun would set the Transform passed from peri-withdrawal into full withdrawal, and my contact with him broke, all empathy gone.  My prey became useless to me, psychotic and self-destructive.  No longer prey.  No longer juice.  No longer
mine
.

I howled, mewled and cried.  Pleaded surrender.  Abject and utter surrender.  Hours and hours of howling mewling crying and miserable defeat.

I broke.

Biggioni had won.

Tonya Biggioni: March 24, 1968 – March 25, 1968

After the male Transform went into withdrawal on Sunday evening, the Arm curled herself up on the cell floor, whimpering miserably.  Tonya gave the word and sent Dr. Jeffers’ new chief interrogator, Wayne Leeson, to visit the Arm and find out if she was broken.  Leeson, the head of the Detention Center’s security and an obvious glory hound, signaled ‘yes’.  The Arm would shackle
herself
, on the promise she would get juice, and pledged to cooperate with all requests.  The questioning began.  This would be an all-nighter.

As Tonya predicted, Dr. Jeffers found a way to renege on the deal to have Tonya’s questions
answered first.  He arranged a short preliminary round of questions, first from his doctors and then from the FBI.  Tonya’s non-preliminary round of questions would come next.

In the post-preliminary interrogation films, the Arm looked terrible.  She hunched on a mangled metal bench with only a few feet of slack in her chains.  Her lank short hair stuck to her head with sweat.  She shivered and her skin was pale, except for the blistered rash now seeping a clear liquid.  She rocked unsteadily as she sat, as if she would fall over at any moment.  She fidgeted and scratched.  She squinted and tried to protect her eyes from the bright light.  She had trouble making her mouth form words.

To Tonya’s expert eye, the Arm
appeared to be near withdrawal, less than a point away.  She must have been papering over her low juice effects by force of will beforehand, just as Zielinski predicted.  The Arm’s juice count, however, showed her five points above withdrawal, also anomalous, and also just as Zielinski predicted.

Tonya gave a hand-written note for Delia to type up, requesting the CDC expedite the arrival of the next volunteer Transform.  The Arm would be much more capable of answering questions with a higher juice count.  Since Tonya had broken her psychologically, the Arm
wouldn’t backslide into non-cooperation just because she got some juice.  Given Tonya’s success, she didn’t expect any difficulty convincing the CDC to provide the Arm a juice draw now.  Tonya was the hero of the hour.  Having dealt with the world of men far too often in the past, she understood the honor from her success wouldn’t last until tomorrow.  She needed to get what she needed quickly, before the inevitable resentment appeared.

Just after Tonya finish
ed viewing the first canister of film from the doctors’ less-than-relevant questioning, Ellicot, one of the FBI men, rushed into the filming room.  Marty and Delia were with her, comparing notes.  Pete stood bodyguard duty, waiting for his turn at the Arm.

“Have you seen Zielinski?” Ellicot said.  His hat slipped precariously off his thinning hair and he pushed it back, agitated.

Tonya frowned. “No, not since I got here.”

“If you see him, notify me immediately,” Ellicot said.

“It’s nearly midnight and he’s not a young man any more. Why don’t you try his hotel room?”

“We already did.  He isn’t there.”  The FBI agent paused for a moment.
“You’ve talked with him on numerous occasions.  Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

She shook her head.
“If he isn’t in his hotel room, he’s probably out catching a late dinner.  Why do you need to find him so badly?”

“Just tell us.  Here’s the number for the command center over at the Detention Center.  Call us if you get any news at all.”  He pressed a small piece of paper into her hand.  “Anything at all.  Call us.”