The Backlash Mission

Chapter 16

The alarm's twitter snapped Kanai out of a troubled sleep, and almost before he was fully awake he had rolled out of bed, shuriken pouch in hand. The window was intact, the door to the rest of the house still closed. Taking a deep breath, he eased over to the window and cracked the shade away from the wall.

It was perhaps half an hour before dawn, judging by the faint glow starting to compete with the haze of city lights to the east. Traffic was practically nonexistent at this hour; parked cars lined both sides of the street, none showing any lights. Touching a hidden wall switch, Kanai shifted a section of the glass to infrared sensitivity. Nothing—all the cars within view had apparently been parked there for several hours. But the alarm had been triggered from that side of the house.... He was just about to step to his monitor for a complete area scan when a lone figure came into view, striding purposefully along the walk toward his front door.

Lathe, was his first instinctive guess; but another second's observation eliminated that possibility.

The man's walk showed none of a blackcollar's feline grace; his obvious glances to left and right were a far cry from the more subtle awareness of his surroundings that was the blackcollar norm.

Which meant it wasn't one of Kanai's teammates, either. And at this hour of the morning, it sure as hell wasn't a casual visitor.

He stepped to his room monitor, keyed for a center-walk view with light amplification. It would be another couple of seconds before the man would be close enough for a good look; reaching to his bedside, Kanai scooped up his robe and the nunchaku hidden under the pillow. Eyes on the monitor, he got the robe on... and swore under his breath.

The man walking up to his door was General Quinn.

The doorbell rang twice in close succession; impatience personified mechanically. Jamming his nunchaku into the robe sash, Kanai reset his alarms and headed for the door.

"General," he said coolly as he unlocked the reinforced panel and swung it open. "You're up rather early."

Quinn didn't bother with even the forms of politeness. "Kanai," he growled, brushing past the blackcollar and into the living room. "You putting them up here?" he added, glancing around him.

"Putting who up?"

"Don't play innocent," Quinn snarled, turning back to face him. "You know who—Comsquare Damon Lathe and his pack of troublemakers, that's who."

Kanai felt his stomach tighten, consciously relaxed it. "They're not here. Sorry to disappoint you."

Quinn grunted. "What do they want here?"

"What business is it of yours what our clients want?" Kanai countered.

"Don't insult my intelligence, Kanai. These aren't ordinary money-slicers renting you to cut other money-slicers' throats—these are guerrilla soldiers who want to rekindle the war. If I were you, I'd be thinking about what something like that would do to my cozy arrangement here in Denver."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that if you and Bernhard rock the boat too hard it's going to sink with you aboard it."

Quinn smiled sardonically. "Do I detect a grain of surprise at Bernhard's name? Thought we didn't know who your leader was, did you? Believe me, Kanai, we know just about everything there is to know about your team—you can't run around the way you have for so many years without scattering a lot of lint along the way."

"Perhaps," Kanai said as calmly as he could. "You might find it expensive to try and get more than just information, though."

"Sure we would—why else do you think we've put up with you this long? But we could do it, if we had to."

Kanai nodded. "All right, consider the point made. If that's all you came for, you can go now."

Quinn ignored the offer. Pulling a photo from his pocket, he flipped it through the air toward Kanai.

"Ever seen this man before?" he asked.

The blackcollar caught the photo, looked at it. "No. Should I have?"

"Name's Allen Caine. Has Lathe mentioned him to you?"

"Again, no. What's he done that has you so interested in him?"

"In other words, how much do we know? Forget it. But as long as we're on the subject of information, what exactly are you doing for Lathe and what's he paying for it?"

Kanai cocked an eyebrow. "As someone here just said, forget it. You've about worn out your welcome, Quinn."

Casually, the general looked around the room. "You've got a nice place, Kanai," he said. "A real nice place. A lot nicer than the interrogation cells in Athena; a damn sight nicer than a box underground."

He brought his gaze back to Kanai. "Take some good advice and stay away from Lathe."

"Or else?" Kanai said softly.

"Or else," Quinn replied. "Consider it a threat or a warning, I don't care which. But believe it." With one last glance around the room, he walked past Kanai to the front door. A moment later he was gone... and the blackcollar spun and threw, his pent-up frustration burying his shuriken center-deep in the far living-room wall. The thud of its impact was a thunderclap in the silent house, its sound almost covering up the ancient Japanese curse he spat in the same direction.

—

"The cabin should be just over this next rise," the pilot told Galway, easing the small spotter craft between a pair of tall pines. "Sorry about the ground-scratching here, but I have to stay low because of the Ryqril base over to the south—their lasers recognize their own aircraft, but I've never gotten a really airtight guarantee that we get the same courtesy."

"Fine by me," Galway said, swallowing. "I'd just as soon show up unvaporized myself."

The pilot grinned and gave his full attention back to his flying. Galway kept his eyes on the landscape ahead and tried to relax, and a minute later they were there.

To find that the term "cabin" hardly did the place justice. "Mansion" was a far more appropriate term—a single story, rustic-walled millionaire's hideaway. The lump in Galway's throat grew another size, and it was all he could do to keep from ordering the pilot to lift and get him the hell back to Athena where he belonged. But the aircraft was already crunching down onto the forest mat, and at the cabin doorway he could see the owner watching him.

He stepped out almost before the craft was fully stabilized, walking over to the cabin with artificial confidence. "I'm Jamus Galway," he identified himself as he approached the man. "I called from Athena this morning. You are Prefect Ivas Trendor...?"

"Former prefect," the older man said curtly. "Long since retired. Come in, Galway."

He led the way to a living room the size of Galway's entire Capstone apartment and gestured to a feather-plait couch. "This had better be as important as you claimed," he warned as he took a matching chair across a glow-pit from the couch. "I have even less interest in getting involved in Denver's Security programs than Quinn has in my doing so. I presume you didn't tell him you were coming?"

"No, sir, but as I mentioned this morning I'm essentially a free agent—"

"Which also thrills Quinn right down to the marrow, I expect."

"Ah—I think that's a fair statement, sir. But I felt I had to see you because I've come across information that indicates you may be in danger."

Trendor's eyebrows lifted with polite skepticism. "You'll forgive me if I tell you that's ridiculous," he said. "Why would anyone want to hurt me?"

Galway shrugged uncomfortably. "I can't say for sure, sir. But I looked up the record of your tenure as Security prefect, and—well, it occurred to me that it might have made you some enemies."

Trendor's expression didn't change. "I make no apologies for what I did, Galway," he said coldly.

"Denver was at flashpoint—it could have gone up like a strat nuke practically overnight. I kept it together, and if it cost a few lives, so be it. Better to decapitate a few radical organizations than watch the whole thing go up in flames."

A slight shiver went up Galway's back. In principle he agreed... but the way Trendor said it made it sound decidedly cold-blooded. "Yes, sir," he said, allowing the older man to take that any way he wished. "The records certainly indicate you were successful in keeping the peace. But there may still be people who resent what you did back then."

"I suppose that's possible." Trendor shrugged. "Though I don't know why anyone would wait this long to do something about it."

"I don't know, either, sir... unless it's because the right people for the job have just arrived. I don't know if you've heard, but the reason I'm here on Earth is that an offworld blackcollar force has just arrived in Denver."

Trendor's eyes narrowed, and he seemed to sit up straighter in his seat. "I think you'd better start from the beginning," he said quietly.

Galway did so, describing Caine's team and its still-secret mission, the trip into the mountains and its proximity to Trendor's own home, and the unexpected arrival of Lathe on the scene.

"And you think these blackcollars, out of touch with Earth for over thirty years, would want to seek me out for some sort of delayed retribution?" the former prefect asked when he'd finished.

"Unfortunately, they haven't been entirely out of touch," Galway shook his head. "General Lepkowski and their three Novas have made several trips to Earth in the past year, and it's conceivable they received intelligence during one of those flybys that caused them to latch on to you for God only knows what reason."

Trendor stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You said Caine had asked specifically about old war veterans. You think that fireworks display over Athena last night was designed to attract their attention?"

"I don't see what else it could have been. Does his asking about the vets mean anything to you?"

"It might." Trendor stood up and wandered over to the picture window at the south end of the room.

"Some of the groups I quashed had a high percentage of war vets in them. Could be he's trying to reactivate one of them with some new blood."

Galway thought about that. With the last of the resistance groups, Torch, apparently gone the way of the others, Caine could indeed be trying to start his own. Certainly he would accomplish a lot more with that kind of support behind him. "Possible," he admitted. "But then I don't understand exactly how you fit in."

Trendor smiled grimly. "I can think of at least two ways. Once, I knew a lot of the vets, both inside and outside the subversive groups. He may think that I could be persuaded to give him enough names to get started on his recruitment drive. Or else"—he snorted—"I'm to be another way to attract their attention."

Assassination of a former Security prefect. Galway licked his lips. But it would certainly do the job.

Nowhere in the records had he ever seen a case of political murder by blackcollars, but there was a first time for anything. "I think, sir," he said quietly, "that you should consider moving back to Athena, at least for the time being."

"No," Trendor said flatly, his eyes still on the wooded hills outside his window. "I've earned my home and my peace out here, and I'm not giving it up for anyone—I don't care if there are a hundred blackcollars gunning for me. Let them come—I'll blow them all to hell and back."

Galway grimaced, wondering fleetingly whether refusal to face reality was a requisite for Security positions in this city. "They're more likely to blow you away, sir—and you know it."

"Are they now?" Trendor snorted contemptuously, turning back to face the other. "Well, let me tell you something, Galway. I killed a few blackcollars, too, when I was in charge of things around here.

And I'm damned if I'm going to start running from them now."

Galway took a deep breath. "In that case, sir, I respectfully suggest that you should at least request some additional security around here. Some perimeter guards, at the very least—perhaps a full sensor/defense network as well."

Trendor didn't reply for several heartbeats, his eyes drifting back to the window. Then he sighed.

"Because if I don't, I'll be handing Caine an easy victory and making things tougher for Quinn, right?" he said at last. "I suppose you're right. Damn it all—if Quinn wasn't so loose-wired about crunching dissension, people like Caine wouldn't show up within a hundred kilometers of Denver."

Galway swallowed. For the first time since he'd read the records of that period, the almost casual carnage of Trendor's reign was beginning to sound believable. "With your permission, then," he said,

"I'll head back to Denver and start making arrangements with General Quinn's office."

"What size guard contingent did you have in mind?" Trendor asked as the two men headed for the door.

"I thought perhaps a three-tiered force of sixty or seventy men—"

"You thought what? Don't be ridiculous, Galway. Give me ten men and to hell with layering. All outside guards are for is to slow down the attack and give me some advance warning, anyway—you know that."

"Yes, sir," Galway said, resorting again to the most neutral tone possible. "Then for electronic surveillance equipment—"

"There's enough of that around the area already," Trendor interrupted. "You just get me my ten men, give them lasers and comms and a sandwich apiece, and we'll let it go at that."

Quietly, Galway admitted defeat. He'd done his duty; if Trendor refused to accept his advice, there was nothing more he could do. "As you wish, sir. Thank you for your time... and I hope I'm wrong about what Caine's up to."

"You probably are," Trendor agreed. "But somebody's got to do the unnecessary worrying, don't they?"

The spotter aircraft was halfway back to Athena before the hot flush finally receded from Galway's cheeks.

—

The preliminary reports on the midnight catapult attack had arrived while Quinn was downstairs at lunch, and with the meal churning in his stomach he read them over twice. Probability ninety-four percent that the explosives used were the same strength as those stolen from the water reclamation center earlier that evening; probability less than fifteen percent that that theft had involved inside help.

The hell with probabilities, Quinn snarled to himself, jabbing at his intercom. "Yes, General?" his aide answered.

"I want this Geoff Dupre brought in for questioning," he told the other. "Bring in his wife, too, and their housemate—that Karen Lindsay woman. Have interrogation prepare a full-spectrum for them."

"Yes, sir," the other answered. "Do you want the surveillance on their house lifted once they're here?"

"No—Caine may decide to drop by, and if he does I want someone there to follow him."

"Yes, sir. Oh, General, there's a message just coming in for you from one of the search squads."

Quinn tapped the proper switch. "Quinn here."

"Abramson, sir," the voice came, brisk and self-satisfied as all hell. "We've got him, General—we've found Caine's stolen car, parked right out in the open on the sixteen-hundred block of Rialto Avenue."

Quinn felt his lips curl back from his teeth in a tight smile. "Any sign of Caine or his men?"

"Not yet, sir, but we've been holding back as far out of sight as possible, per your instructions."

"Continue doing so—I'll have backup units there in five minutes. Under no circumstances are you to move in or confront any of them until we've got the net solidly in place—you understand? Pass that on to any other units already in the area—I'll have the skin off of any man who spooks them."

"Understood, General. They won't get away."

That's for damn well sure. Quinn cut off the connection, punching for tactical command. At last—at long and bloody last—they had him. By nightfall at the latest Caine would be in a cell; by midnight, psychor training or no psychor training, they'd know just what the hell he was doing in Denver."

And half the pleasure of this was going to be seeing the look on Galway's face when they brought him in to see the prisoners.

Tactical command answered, and Quinn began issuing orders.