Time Bomb and Zahndry Others Part 23

Maxwell c.o.c.ked an eye at Christophe. "Anything you can do without something from his body?"

Christophe shook his head. "Only a little bit is required, Mr. Maxwell, but that little bit is absolutely essential."

Maxwell swore and said something else to Christophe... but I wasn't really listening. A crazy sort of idea had just popped into my head... "Dr. Christophe," I said slowly, "what about the doll itself? You made the thing*presumably you know everything about its makeup and design. Would there be any way to make a*I don't know, a counteracting doll that you could use to destroy the original?"Christophe blinked. "To tell the honest truth, I do not know. I have never heard of such a thing being done. Still... from what I have learned of the science of voodoo, I believe I would still need to have something of the stolen doll here to create the necessary link."

"Wait a minute, though," Pak spoke up. "It's all the same wax that you use, isn't it? That strange translucent goop that's so pressure-sensitive that it bruises if you even look at it wrong."

"It is hardly that delicate," Christophe said with an air of wounded pride. "And it is that very responsiveness that makes it so useful*"

"I know, I know," Pak interrupted him. "What I meant was, would it be possible to link up with the stolen doll since you know what it's made of?"

"I do not think so," Christophe shook his head. "Voodoo is not a shotgun, but a very precise rifle. When a link is created between doll and subject it is a very specific one."

"And does that link work both ways?" Maxwell asked suddenly.

There was something odd in his voice, something that made me turn to look at him. The expression on his face was even odder. "Something?" I asked.

"Maybe. Dr. Christophe?"

"Uh..." Christophe floundered a second as he backtracked to the question Maxwell had asked. "Well, certainly the link works both ways. How could it be otherwise?"

For a moment Maxwell didn't say anything, but continued gazing off into s.p.a.ce. Then, slowly, a grim smile worked itself onto his face. "Then it might work. It might just work. And the President should even go for it*yeah, I'm sure he will." Abruptly, he looked down at his watch. "Three and a quarter hours to go," he said, all business again. "We'd better get busy."

"Doing what?" Pak asked, clearly bewildered.

Maxwell told us.

The Hyatt ballroom was stuffed to the gills with people long before President Thompson and Senator Danzing came around the curtains, shook hands, and took their places at the twin lecterns. Sitting on the end of the bed, I studied Thompson's television image closely, wishing we'd been allowed to set up somewhere a little closer to the action. TV screens being what they were, it was going to be pretty hard for me to gauge how the President was feeling.

The moderator went through a short welcoming routine and then nodded to Thompson. "Mr. President, the first opening statement will be yours," he said. The camera shifted to a mid-closeup and Thompson began to speak*"

"Stomach," Maxwell said tersely from behind me.

"I see it," Pak answered in a much calmer voice. "...This should do it."

I kept my own eyes on the President's face. A brief flicker of almost-pain came and went. "He's looking okay now," I announced."Unfortunately, we can't tell if the treatment is working," Pak commented. "Only where the attack is directed*"

"Right elbow," Maxwell cut him off.

"Got it."

"Thank you, Mr. President," the moderator cut smoothly into Thompsons's speech. "Senator Danzing: your opening statement, sir."

The camera shifted to Danzing and I took a deep breath and relaxed a bit. Only for a second, though, as an angled side camera was brought into play and Thompson appeared in the foreground. "Watch it," I warned the other. "He's on camera again."

"Uh-huh," Maxwell grunted. "*stomach again."

"Got it," Pak a.s.sured him. "Whoever our thief is, he isn't very imaginative."

"Not terribly dangerous, either, at least so far," I put in. "Though I suppose we should be grateful for small favors."

"Or for small minds," Maxwell said dryly. "It's starting to look more and more like murder wasn't the original object at all."

"I do not understand," Christophe spoke up.

Maxwell snorted. "Haven't you ever heard of political dirty tricks?"

The camera was full on Danzing again, and I risked a glance around at the others hunched over the table set up between the two hotel beds. "You mean... all of this just to make Thompson look wracked by aches and pains on camera?"

"Why not?" Maxwell said, glancing briefly up at me. "Stupider things have been done. Effectively, I might add."

"I suppose." But probably, I added to myself, none stranger than this one. My eyes flicked to the table and to two wax figures standing up in flower pots of Haitian soil there: one with a half dozen acupuncture needles already sticking out of it, the other much larger one looking more like a pincushion than a doll.

But those weren't pins sticking into it. Rather, they were a hundred thin wires leading out of it. Out, and into a board with an equal number of neatly s.p.a.ced and labeled lights set into it... and even as I watched, one of the tiny piezo crystals Christophe had so carefully embedded into his creation reacted to the subtle change in pressure of the wax and the corresponding light blinked on"Right wrist," Maxwell snapped.

"Got it," Pak said. Belatedly, I turned back to my station at the TV, just in time to see the President's arm wave in one of his trademark wide-open gestures. The arm swung forward, hand cupped slightly toward the camera... and as it paused there my eyes focused on that hand, and despite the limitations of the screen I could almost imagine I saw the slight discolorations under his neatly manicured fingernails.

Would any of the reporters in the ballroom be close enough to see that? Probably not. And even if they did, they almost certainly wouldn't recognize Christophe's oddly translucent wax for what it really was.

Or believe it if they did. Doll-to-person voodoo was ridiculous enough; running the process in reverse,person-to-doll, was even harder to swallow.

The picture shifted to Danzing. "He's off-camera again," I announced, getting my mind back on my job.

The battles raged for just over an hour*the President's and Senator's verbal battle, and our quieter, behind-the-scenes one. And when it was over, the two men on the stage shook hands and headed backstage... and because I knew to look for it, I noticed the slight limp to the President's walk.

Hardly surprising, really*though I've never tried it, I'm sure it's very difficult to walk properly when your socks are full of Haitian dirt.

The Secret Service dropped me out of the investigation after that, so I don't know whether or not they ever actually recovered the doll. But at this point it hardly matters. The President's clearly still alive, and by now the stolen doll is almost certainly inert. I haven't seen Pak or Christophe since the debate, either, but from the excited way they were talking afterwards I'd guess that by now they've probably worked most of the bugs out of the new voodoo diagnostic technique that Maxwell came up with that night. And I suppose I have to accept that all medical advances, whether they make me uncomfortable or not, are ultimately a good thing.

And actually, the whole experience has wound up saving me a fair amount of money, too. Instead of sh.e.l.ling out fifteen dollars for a haircut once a month, I've learned to do the job myself, at home.

I collect and destroy my fingernail clippings, too. Not paranoid, you understand; just cautious.

Banshee

The bar was a small, roadside spot nestled almost invisibly among the mountains of south-central Wyoming. It had probably once been a tourist trap of sorts. I guessed, before newer roads had drained traffic away and left it struggling to survive on the flyspeck towns loosely grouped around it. How it was managing to do so I couldn't guess; even at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon a decent bar ought to have had more than three cars huddled together in its parking lot. In my mind's eye I envisioned an interior to the place as dreary as its exterior, aching with a sense of failure, and the thought of facing that nearly made me pa.s.s it up. But I hadn't eaten since breakfast and my stomach had been rumbling for the past two hours... and besides, perhaps my patronage would help a little. Pulling my old rust bucket into the lot, I climbed out into the hot sun and went inside.

I'd been right about the bar being largely deserted; but on the plus side, the decor was not nearly as depressing as I'd feared it would be. Old and somewhat faded, it had nevertheless been well cared for.

Which, coincidentally, was how I viewed the waitress who reached my side as I settled down at my chosen table. "Afternoon," she said with a smile as she set down a water gla.s.s in front of me. "Our special today is home-barbequed chicken with..."

"Sounds good," I agreed, when she'd finished her description, "but I think I'll just have a medium-rare burger and a gla.s.s of beer."

"You got it," she said, smiling again as she marked it down on her pad and moved back toward the kitchen. The chicken actually had sounded better, but the burger was cheaper, and taking that instead would enable me to shift a little more of my limited resources into her tip. Silly, perhaps, but I'd always felt that a little sacrificial scrimping was well worthwhile when it would help brighten someone's day.Taking a long swallow of water, I moved the gla.s.s across the table and pulled out my map. I'd need to find a motel eventually, but I wanted to get at least a little closer to where I'd be hiking before I quit for the day. If I picked up Eleven and got at least to Woods Landing... "Hey! You!"

I looked up to see the barman waving the phone in my direction, an odd expression on his face. "Phone's for you," he announced.

My tongue froze against my teeth. "It... what?" I managed.

His expression grew a little odder. "Your name Sinn?"

My stomach tightened against its emptiness. No one knew where I was... which meant no one could possibly have called me. But someone had. "Yes... yes it is," I told him. "Adam Sinn."

"Yeah, well, guy wants to talk to you. C'mon*I don't want my phone tied up all afternoon."

I got my legs under me and walked over... and halfway there the only conceivable possibility clicked into place. After nearly a year... For a second I considered turning around, getting back into my car, and heading for parts unknown. I would have a perfect right to do so; neither Griff nor Banshee had the slightest legal hold over me any more.

I reached the bar and accepted the phone from the barman. Licking my lips, I took a deep breath and held the instrument to my ear. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Adam? G.o.d*I was afraid we weren't going to find you."

My jaw clenched painfully, and I knew with absolute certainty that my year away from Banshee had abruptly come to an end. Griffith Mansfield was the archetypical iron-calm man, with a manner and matching voice that were as even and steady as set concrete even at the worst of times. In my two years with Banshee I'd never once heard that voice as shot through with tension as it was now, and it sent an ice-cold spike digging into my stomach. "What's the matter?" I forced myself to ask.

"Full-fledged h.e.l.l has just broken loose, that's what's the matter," he growled, "and we're right square in the middle of it. Where are you?"

"What do you mean, where am I? You called me, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, let me check the readout." The line went blank for a moment, and the spike digging into my stomach took an extra turn as I realized Griff really didn't know where I was. Checking the readout meant he'd been on something like the FBI's Search-Spot system... and last I knew the FBI was not in the habit of lending their magic phone equipment out to hole-in-the-wall agencies like Banshee. Which meant he hadn't been exaggerating: all h.e.l.l really had broken out. "Adam? Okay, I got you. Look, there's a small private airstrip about four miles south of you, at the west end of Lake Hattie. Go there and wait; they'll be sending a T-61 from Warren AFB for you."

I licked my lips again without noticeable effect as my intention of pointing out to him that I was no longer under his jurisdiction died a quiet death. First the FBI's phone search machine, now an Air Force general's commuter jet casually laid on to carry a civilian cross country. Whatever was happening, it was becoming less and less likely that anyone was going to let my personal preferences get in the way.

"Griff... can you at least give me a hint of what's happening? Has something happened to the rest of the Jumpers?"

"No, no, everyone's fine. As to the rest of it, you'll get everything we know on the plane*if you don't find out sooner. I understand they're going to release it to the media in a few minutes.""Griff*"

"Look, Adam, trust me; I wouldn't be asking you to come back if it wasn't vitally important. I'll see you soon." There was a click and he was gone.

"d.a.m.n," I said softly to the dead line. Laying the phone back on the counter, I looked up to find both the barman and the waitress staring at me with what seemed to be a combination of awe and suspicion... and in the waitress's eyes, at least, I could see the dawning realization that she was about to lose possibly her only customer of the afternoon.

That, at least, I could do something about. Digging out my wallet, I found a twenty and handed it to her.

"Keep the change," I told her. At least now I could give without having to take quite so much thought for the morrow: whatever Banshee's other financial difficulties, Griff had always insisted on good salaries for his Jumpers... and it looked very much like I was about to become a Jumper again.

I reached the airstrip in ten minutes, and was sitting in my car listening to the radio when the news broke.

Somewhere over western Colorado, Air Force One had just crashed. With the President of the United States aboard.

The T-61's pilot didn't have much more for me than I'd already heard on the radio, mainly because there wasn't much more that anyone knew at this stage. Air Force One had been on its way to Washington from President Jeffers's Sierra retreat when the pilot suddenly announced he'd lost the right inboard engine.

Seconds later the radio went silent altogether, and the jets that were scrambled for an overflight reported wreckage strewn across a large swath of smoking cliffside forest. There had been no confirmation of casualties or survivors as yet, but from the sound of things there wasn't much call for optimism. Little to do now but clean up the wreckage, both physical and psychological... and to find out, for the record, what had gone wrong.

The latter would be Banshee's job.

We arrived about an hour and a half after leaving Wyoming. A police car was waiting at the end of the runway for me, a lukewarm box of take-out chicken in the back seat reminding me that I'd never gotten the early dinner I'd planned. Indirect evidence of two things: that Griff was getting his balance back, and that sometime this evening I was indeed going to have to Jump. Two of Banshee's Jumpers did best on empty stomachs, but I wasn't one of them. The thought of what was coming tightened the knot in my stomach; but the hunger down there far outcla.s.sed the nervousness, and by the time we pulled up at the familiar nondescript building fifteen minutes later I'd worked my way through all three pieces of chicken and was polishing off the last of the biscuit.

Griff was waiting for me at the front door. "Adam," he nodded, gripping my hand briefly as he pushed the door open. "Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it."

"No trouble," I told him, not entirely truthfully. We stepped out of the entryway airlock... and I found myself face to face with a dress-uniformed Marine.

"He's one of our people," Griff told the Marine before I could get my tongue unstuck. The guard noddedincuriously; but even as we pa.s.sed him I could feel his eyes giving me an un.o.btrusive but thorough once-over. I'd seen that kind of apparent unconcern once or twice before, always from truly professional guards who used it as a way to throw people off-guard.

Professional guards at Banshee. "The place has changed," I murmured.

"The Marines are just on loan," he shook his head. "Courtesy of a Washington VIP named Shaeffer. He's in the lounge updating things for Hale and Kristin."

"What about Morgan? Or has he quit?"

"No, he's still with us. He's downstairs getting prepped."

I blinked. "You've got a Jump going already?"

"We will as soon as the model of Air Force One is ready. Shaeffer insisted on particularly fine detailing, and the modelers just finished it a few minutes ago."

"Actually, I was surprised more by the speed than the delay," I told him.

Griff snorted. "Yes, well, for a change, the budget overseers aren't going to be a problem. It's amazing,"

he added with a trace of bitterness, "the kind of money people are willing to throw around when someone important gets killed."

I nodded silently.

We reached the lounge and went in. The Washington VIP was there, all right, easily distinguishable by his expensive business suit and taut look. He was standing over the lounge table talking across a map to Hale Fortner and Kristin Cosgrove andI stopped just through the doorway, so abruptly that Griff stepped on my heel. "Rennie?" I hissed.

Griff squeezed past me into the room. "We needed everyone we could get, Adam*"

"How on Earth did you get him to come back?" I whispered. The painful scene that had taken place when Rennie Baylor was fired from Banshee flooded back from my memory.

"Look, this is no time to dredge up past disagreements," Griff hissed back. "Not for me, not for any of us*and if I can stand him for three days, so can you. Okay?"

I took a deep breath and got my feet moving again. True, it was Griff, not me, with whom Rennie had had most of his friction... but that didn't mean the rest of us hadn't suffered with him from the sidelines.

Still, for three days*and under such circ.u.mstances*I would do my best to make do.

"*came down about here, among a real mess of hidden ravines and tricky cliff faces," the VIP was saying as we came up to the table. He looked up, eyes flicking past Griff to lock briefly onto me.

"Mr. Sinn," he nodded in greeting. "Shaeffer*special aide to President Jef*" He broke off, his mouth compressing in brief pain before he could recover himself. "Have you been briefed?"

"Just the basics," I told him, his tight expression inducing another flicker of pain within me. Shaeffer, clearly, had been very close to the President. "Air Force One lost its right wing*somehow*and went down out in Colorado."

He nodded. "That's about all we've got at the moment. The search-and-rescue team hasn't been working for very long; so far they haven't got anything.""No survivors, in other words," Kristin interjected quietly.

Shaeffer's lip tightened. "Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Well. Banshee's job will be to find out what happened to the plane. As I've already explained to Dr. Mansfield, you've got essentially a blank check*go ahead and do as many Jumps as it takes to get the job done right. Understood? Dr.