Suicide Kings

20

Tuesday,

December 15

On the Lualaba River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The Lukuga river jagged sharply to the north just before joining the Lualaba. Wally studied a map in his guidebook. The Lualaba was itself a tributary of the famous Congo River.

He passed a village nestled where the two rivers met. Kongolo, according to the guidebook. He slowed down, so that the villagers could get a clear look at the metal man driving a PPA boat. Most fled. But a few folks saw him and pointed. He sped up again when Kongolo was behind him.

A barge floated somewhere on this tangle of waterways. A barge that had supplied the Nyunzu lab with the virus that had killed Lucien. Wally kept reminding himself to leave a few survivors when he finally found the barge. Survivors who could report his whereabouts. Which, he hoped, would keep people off Jerusha’s trail.

The files from Nyunzu said the central lab, the centerpiece of the PPA’s project to create an army of child aces, was in Bunia. He found the village on the map, tucked up in the northeastern corner of the PPA. After taking care of the barge, he’d go as far upriver as he could, then strike out over land toward Bunia.

Wally was so preoccupied with the map, glancing up only occasionally to keep the boat on course, that he didn’t notice when the river widened and slowed. Thud. The boat ran aground on a sandbar at the edge of a marshy stretch of river. The impact jarred the guidebook from Wally’s hands; the pilot’s chair creaked under his shifting weight.

“A www, heck.” Wally slammed the throttle into reverse, but the boat didn’t budge. Its sleek prow had sliced into the sand like a knife, but now it was wedged in there good and snug. “Nuts.” He killed the throttle and climbed out. Muck squelched underfoot. It oozed up to his ankles. “Well, that’s just great.”

The marsh was an expanse of chest-high river grass dotted with a smattering of wispy, droopy trees. Jerusha could have told him exactly what kind of trees they were.

Jeez, do I ever miss you, Jerusha. Stay safe, okay?

Here and there, rivulets of brackish water cut channels through the stands of grass. Wally thought about this. The barge had to come through here on the way to and from Nyunzu; he’d traveled the entire length of the Lukuga River without seeing it. So there had to be a way through.

Twenty minutes of searching revealed a circuitous channel just wide enough for a barge. It was almost invisible until he was right on top of it, hidden by the river grass. But entering the channel at its outlet would have meant turning around, heading back up the river, and searching for the entrance. That would take a couple of hours. On the other hand, it wasn’t all that far from his boat to the channel. Wally decided to portage.

The important part was getting a good grip. He lifted the prow out of the muck, then walked his way under the boat, hands overhead, until he reached the center of balance. Another heave freed the stern. He sank to his knees, but he managed to heft the boat overhead. So much for my bandages, he thought.

As strong as Wally was, carrying a boat through a swamp took a lot of work, even for him. Each step was a struggle to free his legs of the sucking mud without losing his balance. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face. Water and marsh slime pattered from the hull onto Wally’s pith helmet. The occasional portage during canoe trips up in the boundary waters had never been this tough. But slowly, carefully, he made his way.

Wally gave one final heave. The patrol boat splashed back into the navigable portion of the river, ready to resume its pursuit of the barge.

He hunkered down for a breather at the water’s edge, panting like he’d just run a marathon. This was the river, all right. The water rippled where the current picked up again. He unwrapped a granola bar.

Something launched out of the water, clamped on his leg, and yanked him into the river.

The next thing Wally knew, he was facedown on the river bottom with what felt like a hydraulic press squeezing the heck out of his leg. It flipped him over. Wally caught a glimpse of green amid the bubbles and froth in the murky brown water.

His lungs ached. He couldn’t see. Something rough smacked him in the face.

Wally aimed a fist, blindly, at the crushing pressure just below his knee. He poured everything he had into it. The blow landed on something scaly with a muffled crunch. The dazed crocodile loosened its grip.

Wally pulled free. He flailed for the surface, desperate to pull air into his burning lungs, but he wasn’t much of a swimmer. The iron skin didn’t do much for his buoyancy. His field of view receded into a narrow tunnel.

His fingers brushed a bundle of tree roots. Wally wrapped both hands around the roots and pulled for all he was worth. His head broke the surface. His chest creaked like old bedsprings as he sucked down a lungful of air.

The croc grabbed his leg and pulled him under again.

“Crip-” Splash.

They hit bottom again. It felt like the lousy thing was biting right through the iron. He’d have dents for sure. The croc outweighed him; using its tail for leverage, it flipped Wally like a pancake. His hip erupted in wrenching pain.

The death roll. That’s what Jerusha had called it.

Wally doubled over when the croc rolled under him. He reached the jaws clamped around his shin. Wally grabbed the croc’s snout, one hand on each jaw, and pulled.

Wally felt a tremor as he pried apart the croc’s jaws. But it fought him for every inch. Judas Priest, this thing is strong.

Its forelegs scrabbled at his chest. The massive tail hammered at his arms and legs.

Wally pulled his leg free, then launched himself back to the surface with a kick to the croc’s gut. The croc surfaced a split second after he did. Gasping for air, he finally got a good look at the thing. It had to be twelve feet long.

The croc lunged again. For something so large, it was surprisingly fast. Wally clamped his hands around the tip of its snout again. This time, he squeezed until he could lace his fingers together. The croc couldn’t open its mouth.

But it could still use its tail to pound at Wally. Which it did. Furiously.

Wally raised his arms overhead, pulling the croc’s head and forelegs clear of the water. It thrashed, sending Wally toppling over backward. But as the croc landed on him, he threw his legs around its midriff and his arms around its throat. He squeezed.

They went under again, wrestling at the bottom of the river. The croc writhed in his grasp. It couldn’t twist around far enough to bite him; Wally’s shoulder was pressed into its throat. It tried to smash him, using its weight to pin Wally to the mud. The blow expelled the remainder of the breath Wally had been holding. That loosened his grip just enough for the croc to spin around until Wally held it from behind, but he didn’t release it. The ridges along its back scratched his chest. Wally’s field of view receded into the tunnel again. He locked his ankles together, squeezing until he felt the creak of reptile bones.

The croc coiled its free half like a spring, then launched them both with one colossal thrashing of its tail. They broke the surface, Wally’s arms and legs still clamped around the croc. They crashed on the riverbank. Pain shot up and down Wally’s back.

Crack. Something snapped under his grip. Then another, and another.

Ribs.

Crimson froth issued from the corners of the crocodile’s mouth. It struggled, weakly, to free itself. Wally let go. It dove back in the river.

Wally staggered back, shaking. His entire body trembled with the last vestiges of adrenaline and the first twinges of, Holy cow, that thing could have killed me.

He slumped against a tree. Part of him knew he had to dig out a towel and start drying himself as quickly as possible. But he couldn’t catch his breath. His arms and legs throbbed with bruises from the battering they’d received. It felt like every joint in his body had been stretched apart, especially his hip. His ribs burned.

Slowly, the panicky feeling ebbed, leaving only aches and pains in its place. He watched the retreating crocodile. The post-adrenaline crash left him giddy.

Well, gosh, get a load of that, he thought. Just like Tarzan!

Wally pounded his chest with both fists. The jungle echoed with his best imitation of Johnny Weissmuller.

But the post-adrenaline crash hit him hard. Almost before the last echoes of his triumphant yell had faded away, his eyelids became too heavy for him to lift. Heavier than the boat, heavier even than the crocodile. The need for sleep defeated him before he could towel off.

Something bumped his neck. A loud clink snapped him out of a deep nap some time later. The ghostly little girl stood over him, a ten-inch knife clutched in her tiny fist.

Bahr al-Ghazal Region

The Sudd, South Sudan

The Caliphate of Arabia

The Ghazi commando shrieked wildly as Ayiyi, clinging to his back, plunged his fangs into his shoulder through the tail of his green-and-white checked keffiyeh. The boy face above the spider body gleamed with Christmas glee.

“That’s the way, man!” Tom shouted. The camp grew flames, whipping like pale yellow and orange banners in the merciless sun. A Ghazi jumped from behind a blazing BMP-3, aiming a stubby AKSU carbine at Tom’s face. Tom plucked it from his hands and tied the barrel in a knot, shattering the synthetic forestock. Then he handed it back. “I know it’s trite, man, but sometimes the old ways are best.”

The dude had balls, Tom had to give him that. Rather than accept the useless steel pretzel back he batted it away and fired a brutal sidekick into Tom’s solar plexus.

Tom had already bent his body at the center to bring the rim of his rib cage protectively over the vulnerable nerve junction. He took a step back. “Tae kwon do, huh? Nice shot. Try this on for size.” He drove a palm-heel strike into the center of the man’s chest. The commando’s eyeballs popped clear of their sockets. Juice squirted from his nose and mouth and ears as his rib cage flexed clear to his spine, squishing heart and lungs and liver and other incidentals. The Ghazi flew up and away, flopping like a rag doll, to slam against the radar dish of the armored barge that had dropped the elite mechanized recon squadron here on the west flank of the Simba Brigades.

Tom’s kid aces, augmented by two were-leopards and a squad of non-shape-shifting Leopard Man commandos, were raising adequate hell among the cars and crews. Tom wanted the barge. Blowing up and sinking it would look really cool for the cameras. Hei-lian and her crew were squatting ass-deep in a nasty stagnant pool a quarter mile away, capturing the action through the papyrus shoots.

It would’ve been easier, of course, to zap the barge before it off-loaded the squadron, but Doc Prez wanted his new aces showcased in action, showing the world how not just every ethnic group but every age group of the People’s Paradise was stepping up to fight imperialism.

Tom raced toward the papyrus screen at the water’s edge. Without pause he dove in. Drawing in a deep breath he willed himself to change even before his outstretched fingertips touched the roiled brown syrupy surface.

Then he floundered, his belly scraping bottom. What the fuck? he wondered in amazement. I’m supposed to be a fucking super-dolphin now!

Another voice, deep and sonorous, said clearly in his mind: You are unworthy. I care nothing for these land dwellers. Your madness endangers the creatures of the sea as well. I go, and wish you only failure.

The words were French, with a Quebecois accent. He had never heard that cold, contemptuous voice before. As the Radical. But in memories from his hated hippie predecessor he recalled hearing it from his own altered mouth…

In his befuddlement Tom ran out of air and broke through gasping ten yards from shore. A gunner on the barge’s superstructure spotted him. A 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun opened up like Doom with a stutter, throwing up really enormous jets of water around him.

He sucked deep breath and dove. The water deepened rapidly. Despite its weight of armor, the Caliphate barge had a shallow draught for river work, especially relieved of a hundred tons of armored car. Tom had plenty of clearance to swim beneath to the other beam. He may not have a dolphin’s torpedo speed, but he still swam with more than human strength in arms and chest.

When he broke the surface of the water there wasn’t a face in sight on the barge’s starboard side. Everybody’s attention was fixed on the battle the other way, no doubt looking for the shattered body of the PPA’s unmistakable field marshal and general rock star of World Revolution, the Radical.

He laughed. Laughing, he rose. He could have scuttled the vessel with a single blinding lance of white light. Instead he stretched out his hand. “Burn, baby, burn!” he shouted, and rained down fire from the sky.

Noel Matthews’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking to start a revolution. But somebody’s got to step up to the plate because governments have failed. We live in the freakin’ twenty-first century, and here we are with people starving, and armies fighting in the Sudan, and for what? Oil? National pride? We could achieve wonders, hell, make that miracles-end hunger, travel to the stars, have perfect privacy and total freedom, but we’ve got to get out of the trees. We’ve got to tamp down the monkey brain…

Noel leaned back from the computer screen. The rant continued for several more pages, but he had read enough to have a sense of the writer. An idealist, but angry and cynical. I can work with that.

Working from the handle provided by Broadcast, Noel had determined that the Signal on Port 950 was really Robert Cumming, age twenty-three. He lived in Chicago, Illinois, and he was a joker. He avoided almost all human contact, but he still had to eat.

Noel checked his watch. The groceries were about to be delivered to 865 Lake Shore Drive, apartment 723.

People’s Palace

Kongoville, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

He was still freaked out when he stalked into the war room of the Nshombos’ new vanity palace in K-ville, a great gleaming concrete iceberg, a true city within a city, if still a bit raw. The air-conditioning inside was like a frigid river flowing outward. Tom still welcomed it after the stinking sauna heat of the Sudd, and the diesel-reeking heat of K-ville. But it raised goosebumps on his arms.

That fucker, he raged. He stole Aquarius from me. He lessened me. Long ago, when his enemy ran around in a purple Uncle Sam suit calling himself “Captain Trips,” he invoked his “friends” by taking unique decoctions of psychoactive chemicals, each and every one devised by Meadows in hopes of invoking him. The man who called himself Tom Weathers now. The Radical.

At last Mark Meadows got his way. And Tom had had things his way ever since. But it had come at a cost: Tom didn’t dare use any kind of drug more mind-warping than coffee or chocolate. No pot. No booze. Not even antihistamines. Because anything that altered Tom’s consciousness risked snapping his mind and body back into the long dark prison of Meadows’s subconscious.

But the only way of reclaiming the surly shape-shifting Canuck who called himself Cetus Dauphine was to re-create the drugs that Meadows used to invoke him. Tom felt sick certainty that wouldn’t work, either: no formulation his enemy had ever tried had sufficed to bring back Starshine after he “died,” or martial-arts goddess Moonchild once she retired from the world in horror at taking a human life. And while Tom had access to many of his predecessor’s memories, he lacked Mark’s biochemical genius. He couldn’t even try.

“Oh, Tom,” Alicia Nshombo said, rising as he came through the automatic sliding door. Video screens covered the walls of the room beyond, showing moving scenes of battle in the Sudd, of Congo-basin forest, of everyday life in K-ville. “I am so glad you are back.”

Dr. Nshombo sat behind a vast gleaming black African blackwood desk. As usual the President-for-Life’s face showed no more reaction than the desktop.

“The United Nations has offered to broker a peace conference between ourselves and the Caliphate of Arabia,” Nshombo said gravely. If he was capable of talking any other way Tom had never heard.

“So? Fuck ’em.”

Alicia uttered a little gasp and pressed fingers to her mouth. She’d reacted the same way the thousand other times she’d heard Tom use such language. “Tom, cher,” she said. “Please don’t take such a tone with my brother. You need each other so much.”

Dr. Nshombo wasn’t one to mouth meaningless phrases. He went on as if Tom had not spoken. “I have decided it is in our best interests to participate. I mean to send our foremost jurist, Dr. Apollinaire Okimba, as our representative. He enjoys an impeccable reputation on the world stage. His participation will play well, as our clever young friend the Chinese colonel would say.”

“You’re shitting me,” said Tom. “You’re not actually gonna negotiate with this fat imperialist Allah freak?”

“Our representative will deliver to Siraj our ultimatum: either he withdraws his support from the genocidal aggressors in South Sudan and pulls back his armies, or we shall destroy those armies, depose him, and liberate the suffering people of the Middle East from the chains of a brutal superstition. There will be no negotiation.”

Tom could only stare at his old comrade. “Yeah, well, that will play well, I’m sure.”

Dr. Nshombo’s brows twitched a millimeter closer together. It was the equivalent of a normal man throwing a rage fit. But Alicia’s mouth crumpled, pursed between plump cheeks, and her eyes got dewy behind her bat-wing glasses at Tom’s rudeness. “But Tom,” she said, “if the Arab gives in, the war will end.”

“Siraj won’t give in. It’d mean crawling home on his belly. And the U-fucking-N? Those Committee fuckers helped protect Bahir when he kidnapped my daughter!” He was half standing and all shouting.

Nshombo faced him impassively. “The Revolution must come before your petty desires for vengeance, Tom, but I am not unmindful of the wrong you suffered.” Then he actually smiled. “It is not my intention to send Dr. Okimba to the Paris peace conference at all.”

“No?” Tom goggled.

Dr. Nshombo began to laugh.

Robert Cumming’s Apartment

Chicago, Illinois

One hundred dollars simplified the negotiation with the delivery boy. Noel stood in front of the apartment door, set down one sack, and rang the bell. He idly noticed that the sacks contained mostly pasta Meals in a Sack, bags of potato and tortilla chips, and several different kinds of cookies.

He expected a behemoth to answer the door. What actually stood framed in the doorway once it was opened was an incredibly tall and incredibly thin monochrome joker. Despite his youth, his hair was grey, his eyes were grey, and his skin was greyer. “You’re not Chuck,” Cumming said.

“No.”

“What do you want?”

Noel was pleased. He hated people who didn’t get to the heart of a matter, and instead wasted time asking, “Who are you?” and “How did you get here?” or “How did you get the groceries?”

“I’m the man who’s going to give you the opportunity to change the world,” Noel said.