Alien vs. Alien (39 page)

CHAPTER 70

I
LOOKED AT WHITE.
“If we’ve heard them, then the folks on Alpha Four have heard them.”

White nodded. “Which means our enemies in that spaceship which left the range of our two solar systems undoubtedly know there are other inhabited planets and headed to one of them.”

“And found one, made friends, and are heading back for a really bitchin’ homecoming party.” I wanted to say we were screwed. I refused to accept it, though. “So, we prepare for another game of Interplanetary Risk. But all of this was set up well before LaRue and Ronaldo took to the stars.”

“You think Jeff and Chuck are in one of those dead-zone rooms, don’t you?” Naomi asked.

“I do indeed. Because I think one of the goals of all of the crap that’s been going on was to get us all out of the Embassy so Clarence could get in easily.” I looked at William. “Walter refused to leave. He’s not alone, he’s got plenty of Security A-Cs and Peregrines with him, and they’re in full lockdown.”

William smiled. “He’s a good kid.”

“Peregrines?” Stryker asked.

“Tell you later, Eddy.”

“But which dead zone?” Khalid asked. “There are six available, at least.”

“My bet is the last one, that the guys here haven’t finished with.”

“Feminine intuition?” White asked.

“Betting on how our luck usually runs is more like it.”

“There’s more than one pathway to that room,” Mona said. “At least if the schematic on the screen is accurate.”

“Yes, the tunnels are interconnected, at least the ones in D.C. and on the Eastern Seaboard are,” Big George said. “The others appear to be interconnected as well, but we haven’t been able to confirm fully yet. We’ve put security within every tunnel we’ve explored so far, with extra around where we’d say an entrance to a ‘room’ is. With even more security in the tunnel that leads to your Embassy. Per Chuck’s orders.” Walter had confirmed as much when the Peregrines had arrived.

“If the tunnels are also dead zones, how does the security work?”

“Well, as Henry said, they’re not as dead. So to speak. Once we found them, it was fairly simple to put high-frequency equipment in them. NASA was helpful, so we have a variety of equipment used to look out into space broadcasting from within the tunnels.”

“Fine. But if no one can get into these supposed rooms,” Tito asked patiently, “how are we going to get them out? How are we even going to guess what room they’re in? Or tell if they’re really in one of these dead-zone rooms at all?”

“Tito, you’re just batting a thousand on the tough questions, aren’t you? I don’t know. I’m hoping the Poofs can manage it. Somehow.”

“I think if they could, they’d have done it already,” Abigail said.

“Poofs?” Stryker asked.

“Tell you later, Eddy.” There had to be more. Chuckie wouldn’t have arranged to have Stryker as his backup for this reason only. “Eddy, how do you contact Chuckie?”

“He calls or comes by. Why?”

“You don’t have some special way of tracking him?” I knew Chuckie had been tagged by the A-C Wildlife Association, just like the rest of us, not that this had helped. But maybe the hackers had something even better.

“Not really. He’s the boss. He tracks us.”

“How?”

Stryker sighed and showed me his left wrist. It had a watch on it. “Nice to see the time. It’s only three in the afternoon? Wow, time drags when my guys are in danger.”

I got the long-suffering look. “It’s also a tracker, Kitty. We all have one.” The rest of Hacker International flashed their wrists. “We can’t take them off, either.”

White cleared his throat. “A-C technology.” The security stuff from NASA probably had a lot of A-C stuff in it too. Hoped that was a good thing.

“Gotcha. So, what level of testing has Chuckie done on those?” I got blank looks. “I mean, how often has he tried to reach you, where does he check from?”

“No idea,” Stryker said.

Omega Red cocked his head. “Chuck’s been with the operative teams when they’ve investigated the tunnels we’ve explored so far, including close proximity to the dead-zone rooms.”

“Yuri, you think Chuckie monitored you guys from there?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“Know where you’re going with this.” Ravi pulled off his watch and started doing some fiddling. “Going to take me a few minutes, though.”

“I thought you couldn’t take them off.”

“Still in contact with my skin,” Ravi answered. “As long as the contact is maintained, we don’t, ah, have to deal with consequences.”

“Consequences?”

Stryker gave me a long look. “You know him. What do you think the consequences are?”

I pondered. “Heads explode sort of thing?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Stryker said.

“And you agreed to that?”

“I’m not a traitor, and if someone got to me, considering what intel I’ve got, honestly, better I explode.”

“Eddy, I had no idea you were hero material.”

He shrugged. “It’s a living.”

“Where is he going with this?” Franklin asked.

“If it can transmit one way, it can transmit the other.” I just hoped that Chuckie still had on whatever it was he wore that allowed him to track Hacker International. The memory of all my guys stripped to the waist and hanging in a Parisian dungeon flashed through my mind. I got the worried feeling again, since I didn’t think Chuckie was going to carry this tracker in his underwear.

“What Kitty said,” Ravi muttered. “Do need to concentrate, since I don’t 뀀want my head to explode, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Carry on.” While Ravi was occupied, I turned my attention back to Stryker. “So, Eddy, let’s take the horrible idea that Chuckie’s gone for good. What, in that case, does he expect you to do?”

Stryker look
ed uncomfortable. “We don’t know he’s gone for good, Kitty.”

“We don’t know that he’s still alive, either. Let’s say we presume Chuckie’s dead. Share what, in that case, you’re supposed to do, or watch me react as if Chuckie and my husband are truly dead and gone. Trust me, you’d rather tell us what Chuckie expects you to do.”

Stryker didn’t seem eager to comply, if I took him not moving and looking uncomfortable to be clues.

“Do it, whatever it is, or I’ll have you up on charges.” Franklin was really pissed.

Stryker chose discretion over valor. “Fine.” He opened the lowest drawer on his desk and pulled out an envelope. It had “Contingency” written on it. I recognized the handwriting—I’d seen it since ninth grade.

Stryker opened the envelope. And stared at it. “What the hell?”

“Blank sheet of paper? If so, lemon juice and heat is the right thing.”

“Thanks, Kitty, we’re not starring in
National Treasure
. No, there’s writing. It just makes no sense at all.”

“Colonel Franklin had that same reaction when he saw your name, Eddy! Isn’t that cool and all? What the hell does it say?”

Stryker sighed. “Tell Centaurion to activate the Avenger Initiative.”

CHAPTER 71

I
COULDN’T HELP IT,
I laughed again. And got everyone staring at me like I was crazy again. “He’s amazing, he really is.”

“I’m confused, not amazed,” Tito said. He was obviously speaking for everyone else in the room.

If only Reader were here instead of Paris. He would have gotten it immediately, but he was a comics geek like me. The A-Cs didn’t go in for comics or science fiction movies and TV shows because they lived it in real life, though Jeff might have figured it out, based on the fact that he’d read a lot of my comics to be a good husband and share my interests. But Hacker International really had no excuse.

“Stryker, really, why is this hard to follow? You yourself mentioned protocols. I guarantee Chuckie has them.”

More blank stares. Well, I thought better running my mouth, so I could look at this as getting a double. “Look, in the comics, the head dudes always run diagnostics on their heroes, so they know the pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, in case said heroes go to the dark side. The baddies do this, too. In Marvel’s “Onslaught” alternate universe arc Professor X had full rundowns on all the X-Men, focused on how to kill them.”

“That was from a long time ago,” Stryker said, a tad defensively.

“It wasn’t ‘Age of Apocalypse,’ I’ll grant you, but it’s still kind of a classic. And don’t even try to pretend you don’t have every issue.”

“You think Chuck wants to kill us?” Naomi sounded confused and a little upset about the insinuation.

“No. Geez, he wants to protect us. But he’s thorough, and he has to be able to take any one of us out if we go all Crazed Evil Villain on him, right?”

“Right. And he wouldn’t be the only one.” Big George had, thankfully, joined the party. He tapped something on his keyboard, and a document appeared. “I’ve found the file on you, Kitty—Katherine Katt-Martini—Confidential.” He opened it and started scrolling through, quickly. “There’s enough here to make some good assumptions about what you’d do in a crisis,” he said as he reached the end.

“Is that Chuckie’s file on me?” He’d found it awfully fast.

Big George shook his head. “These are from the C.I.A.’s ultraconfidential files. Supposedly, no one in the EDT has access.”

“So, asking the Hacker International guys this question—who’s your loyalty to? The C.I.A., the U.S. Government?”

They all gave me the “duh” look. “Chuck Reynolds,” Stryker replied. “Who the hell else, Kitty?”

“Hey, thought so, just wanted the confirmation.” Wished Jeff were here to empathically confirm, but no such luck. Bruno pulled his head out of his wing and cooed. Right. They could see him. That meant they’d passed the Peregrine test. I hoped.

Abigail nudged me. “I can read the emotions, remember? So can Jeremy. Sis has checked, too—everyone here is working for the good of Earth.”

“I’ve taken the liberty of snapping some quiet photos,” Oliver added. “William and Jennifer have read them.”

“Enemies are not present,” William confirmed.

“Not even Senator Armstrong,” Naomi added.

“I heard that,” he said, though he didn’t sound upset. “I believe, gentlemen, that what the Ambassador would like is for you all to do your jobs and find whatever protocols Mister Reynolds has hidden. Pronto.”

Hacker International took the hint, other than Ravi, who was still busily reverse engineering. The rest of them typed rapidly on their keyboards, some, but not all, with more than two fingers. Bruno went back to sleep.

“I hate to ask this,” Tito said. “But what good will finding Jeff and Reynolds do for us with a hostile force on the way to, most likely, attack and conquer us?”

Naomi and Abigail looked upset. “Girls, it’s a good, legitimate question. As I said not too long ago, you both need real field experience. Here it is. So start thinking like leaders.”

“We’ll get assistance from Alpha Four if we can get Charles back safely,” White pointed out.

“I think Tito’s looking at the bigger picture, Mister White. Tito, what are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering why everything that’s happened this weekend, other than Reynolds being kidnapped, has happened at all. It seems like a lot of work for, well, nothing, really. Earth isn’t truly equipped to fight an interstellar invasion. So why bother with all the other stuff? Take Reynolds out, one and done, the fight’s over before it can start, because we can’t get any backup.”

“It’s a good point,” Buchanan said.

Armstrong nodded. “Why bother with the naked pictures if none of it matters tomorrow?”

“Naked pictures?” Stryker asked.

“Later, Eddy.”

“Promise?”

“No, I’m lying. Never. Get back to work.” Armstrong and Tito had exceptionally good points. Time to stop being The Ambassador, run to a phone booth, and change into Megalomaniac Girl. “Per Tito’s question, pretty much every distraction they’ve tossed at us has done at least double duty.”

“But it’s all pointless,” Abigail said. “If the only goal is to get Chuck out of the way.”

“So that means getting rid of Chuckie can’t be the only goal.”

“Makes sense,” Buchanan said. “But, other than chaos and destabilization, what were your enemies achieving by everything that’s happened this weekend?”

“Why say ‘your’ enemies?” Tito asked. “You’ve been under fire, too.”

Buchanan shrugged. “Only because I’m assigned to watch over Missus Chief. Otherwise, honestly, I haven’t been in any danger.”

My brain nudged. “Maybe that’s because the bad guys don’t know you exist, Malcolm.” He’d only been assigned to be my shadow six weeks ago, and he’d spent four of those weeks in Florida.

“I don’t follow you,” Naomi said.

“So few ever do, Mimi. I mean that Malcolm’s right. Essentially he’s been ignored, and considering his skill set, that’s kind of stupid. And our enemies are many things, but stupid, sadly, is never one of them.”

Think, think. Everything we needed was in front of us, just like always. I had to stop worrying about the impending invasion and the lack of Jeff and Chuckie and focus on what we knew for sure. “Okay, every action this weekend was focused on getting everyone else completely distracted and Chuckie out of the way. But each action also did at least double duty, so that if it failed in one of its missions, it didn’t fail in the others.”

“How so?” Franklin asked.

“Sandra the Android failed to kidnap or kill me, but she slipped a bug into my purse and ensured I’d be kept out of the high-level security briefings, presumably because I might see a pattern or make a connection the others wouldn’t. Senator Armstrong didn’t take the dirty pictures to the person they’d hoped he would, but he identified that he wasn’t on their team any more by doing so. Him taking the new set to me today got him out of t󀀅he way.”

“Another set of dirty pictures?” Stryker asked. “When do we see those?”

“Never, Eddy. Get back to work.”

“Why was getting me out of the way at the Festival important?” Armstrong asked. “It’s not like I’d have been able to prevent anything that happened.”

Mona looked pensive. “Actually, Senator, that’s incorrect. My husband was supposed to spend time with you and some others this morning. Because you disappeared, the meeting was rescheduled.”

“Meaning . . . what?” I asked her.

“Meaning Khalid and I were free to wander the Festival. If the Ambassador had been at the meeting, we would have been there as well, waiting.”

“Why?”

“Political photo op,” Armstrong said. “So they could show how nice they are.”

“And impress everyone with how awful it was that the evil Israelis broke into their Embassy,” Oren said, with no malice at all in his tone.

“But it wasn’t Israelis who broke in, was it?” All of the Middle Eastern Contingent shook their heads. “So, who did?”

“Our surveillance cameras caught nothing out of the ordinary,” Khalid said. “I had Oren and Jakob review them, as well. None of us could find anything.”

“What was taken in the break-in? I know the papers said nothing, but clearly an alarm was triggered or something.”

Mona shook her head. “No items of significance were taken, and no alarms were set off.”

“Share what insignificant things were taken. I mean, how did you even know an unlawful entry had happened?”

“We had unimportant things missing. Food, mostly. Rooms not under surveillance were in disarray, but it was slight.” She shrugged. “It was strange, and a bit unsettling, but not necessarily criminal.”

“So, why blame the Israelis?” I got “duh” looks from everyone. “Oh, come on. Seriously, you guys can’t blame everything strange or bad that happens on Israel.”

“True,” Mona said with a laugh. “It was thought to be Mossad because of how cleverly it was done.”

“Only Mossad doesn’t break into other Embassies in order to steal food and make beds untidy,” Jakob said.

“A-Cs moving at hyperspeed don’t show up on human cameras. So Clarence was hanging out at your Embassy. When did it start, the weirdness?”

“Last week. It went on for several days before we brought it to the press. In an effort to get the intruder to leave.”

“So, that’s when he came back to Earth. Which, I suppose, makes some kind of sense for how the invading armada is traveling. Presumably he was either on a scout ship or they can move one individual even faster than they can the armada.” The A-Cs used the Dome for the big transfers, after all, and they definitely took longer than sending one guy through a gate.

“But the first set of pictures arrived a month ago,” Armstrong reminded me.

“Meaning they definitely have people in place who were advised to roll their part of the plan. Yuri, Eddy, take a look at any transmissions that may have filtered across your desks, or anyone else’s, from a month ago.”

“What are we looking for?” Omega Red asked.

“Something innocuous that still seems out of place.” A random moment from earlier flashed through my mind—the way Olga had advised her husband that she and Adriana wouldn’t be around for a while. “You know, as if someone were
having a normal conversation and then said one line with a different kind of emphasis. Too casual, too well enunciated, things like that. Or one simple line that comes out of the blue, with no response. Sort of thing.”

“Kitty, that’ll take us hours, if not days or even weeks,” Stryker said.

“Dude, I didn’t mean every conversation on Earth. I meant every transmission from space.”

“Oh, that’s
so
much better.”

“Cry me a river. I know you can come up with this faster than you want anyone to believe, Eddy.”

Eddy grumbled about demanding females who only dropped by when they wanted something while I went back to trying to make sense of what the hell was going on. “So, why create unrest between Bahrain and Israel? Clarence could have ensured you had no idea he was using your Embassy as his base of operations, and yet he did things specifically to let you know he was there.”

“Tensions are always high between Israel and the rest of the Middle East,” Franklin said.

“I can’t buy that this incident would cause a war.”

“They’ve been started for less,” Oliver said. “Though I do agree the break-in seems like a slim reason to break even an uneasy peace. However, the kidnap and/or murder of the Bahraini Ambassadress? That would start a war almost instantly.”