The Backlash Mission

Chapter 29

The spotters were still buzzing around the city—mostly far to the south of their quarry—when Lathe pulled the car into an alley and shut off the lights. "What're we doing here?" Caine asked, his stomach tensing again. He'd had enough surprises for one night.

"I need to make a quick phone call," the comsquare replied as the second and third cars pulled up behind them. "Ms. Silcox, I'd like you to accompany me. Pittman, come up here and get behind the wheel, just in case a fast exit is required. Caine, you stay with him; I'll have the rest of them spread out in loose shield formation."

"It might help if we knew exactly what kind of trouble you were expecting to run into here," Caine told the comsquare in a low voice as the others began clearing out of the van.

"No trouble anticipated," Lathe assured him. "Just a precautionary measure. Really."

"Right," Caine muttered under his breath. He and Silcox got out as Pittman went around and climbed into the vacated driver's seat. Caine listened as the footsteps faded into the night... and for the first time since their capture he was alone with Pittman.

For a long moment neither man moved or spoke. Then Pittman took a deep breath. "Whatever you're going to say to me, I wish you'd go ahead and get it over with."

"All right," Caine said. His eyes flicked over the younger man's face, noting the tension lines there—lines he'd never really paid attention to before. "You've been playing this game for quite a while, I understand. Why?"

"You mean how did the Ryqril force me to—?"

"No, I mean why did you go to Lathe instead of simply playing along with them?"

Pittman turned to face him, a vaguely bewildered look on his face. "What the hell else was I supposed to do? Betray all of you for real?"

"Why not? Whatever they had on you must have been a real sun-cruncher for them to trust you so fully." Caine frowned, a sudden thought striking him. "Unless they thought they'd gotten you loyaltyconditioned?"

Pittman snorted. "Galway's not stupid enough to try something that obvious. It takes fifteen days to condition someone that thoroughly, and if they'd tried keeping me out of circulation that long they might just as well have phoned Lathe and announced their intentions."

Caine nodded. He knew all that, of course, but for a moment he'd dared to hope Pittman might have stumbled on a way to break the Ryqril's loyalty-conditioning technique. "Then back to question one: why didn't you simply play on Galway's side?"

Pittman dropped his eyes, turned back to face the windshield. "Because I couldn't," he said simply.

"You're my friends; my comrades-in-arms, if you want to get sentimental about it. I couldn't betray you, no matter what it cost."

He swallowed, and Caine saw his jaw muscles tighten momentarily. "What is it going to cost?" he asked quietly.

"With luck... nothing. At least, that's what Lathe's promised me."

"And you trust him to come through?"

Pittman turned back to face Caine, a wry smile on his lips. "Why not? You do."

Caine snorted. "That's hardly an apt comparison. I never get to choose whether to trust him or not."

"Sure you do. You don't have to put up with all of his high-handed finagling—not really. You could go to him right now, tell him he's pulled one too many fast ones at your expense and that you're taking off. But you're not going to, and we both know it. Why not?"

"Because he's the best tactician I've ever known, I suppose," Caine said, almost grudgingly.

"Because—hell, I don't know why."

"In other words, because you trust him to get the job done right, with the least hazard to your own skin... and you're smart enough to prefer getting bruises on your pride to watching your teammates die around you."

Pittman broke off abruptly. Caine studied his face for a long moment, then snorted. "Yeah, I guess you're right. We both trust him... and we both hate it."

Pittman shrugged fractionally. "It beats getting killed with dignity. I guess. The hell with it." He nodded toward the alley mouth. "Who do you suppose he's calling? Quinn?"

"I sure hope not. This town's going to heat up enough as it is without him waving red gloves under someone's nose."

"Yeah. Well... maybe he's just calling Reger. Someone safe, anyway. That would be a change."

"It would be nice," Caine agreed heavily. "But somehow, I doubt it."

—

Kanai had just finished his dinner, and was wondering without any real enthusiasm what he should do for the rest of the evening, when the phone twittered.

He paused, turning to look at it, his hand falling to his shuriken pouch. There were perhaps a dozen people who might be calling him, most of them mad at him, none of them anyone he really wanted to talk to. Glaring at the phone, he willed it to shut up.

But the person on the other end was persistent... and Kanai had been the blackcollars' contact man too long to easily ignore a phone call. With a sigh, he picked up the handset. "Yes?"

"Kanai?"

The blackcollar squeezed the handset with sudden pressure. "Lathe?"

"Right. Your line being tapped?"

"Certainly not," Kanai answered, automatically giving the old blackcollar code response for yes.

"Okay. I want to talk to Bernhard—let him know how things went tonight. Can you arrange that?"

"Probably," Kanai said cautiously. How things went tonight? A smokescreen for Security's benefit, or was Bernhard working some sort of game behind his back? "When do you want to talk to him?" he asked Lathe, forcing his voice to remain casual.

"There's a street six blocks north of last night's popbox—we'll be at a house two blocks west of that intersection. Got that?"

"I think so." Popbox—that had to be the place they'd popped up out of Anne Silcox's tunnel.

Visualizing a map of Denver... "Yes, I know where it is. You want me to bring Bernhard there tonight?"

"Affirmative. Alone, of course."

"Of course." Translation: no Security tails. Possible, but only if he worked fast. "We'll be there shortly."

"Good. Oh, and you might tell Bernhard that Anne Silcox will also be here."

"Right," Kanai said, stomach tightening with sudden uncertainty.

The line went dead, and for a couple of heartbeats Kanai stared unseeing at the instrument. Anne Silcox? But that was impossible—less than twenty-four hours ago Bernhard had indicated he would be turning her over to Quinn.

"Damn," Kanai hissed between his teeth. Something strange was happening here, and whatever it was, he already didn't like it. Gathering up his gear, he grabbed a coat and slipped out the door.

—

The Security man at the monitor bank shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry, Prefect Galway, but there's nothing more I can tell you. There were four high-power comm-frequency laser pulses in each of these three directions, each pulse consisting of the single word 'Christmas.' We've got the source pinpointed to an area a short way out into the mountains, but until and unless General Quinn releases the spotters from search duty over Denver, there's nothing I can do about looking for it."

Galway clenched his jaw with frustration. "And if the damn thing is mobile, it could be packed up and back in someone's garage before we find it."

"I'm afraid that's about right," the officer agreed.

"Damn." Galway stared at the star images displayed on the monitors, his eyes shifting among the three superimposed circles. At the end of one of those vectors was the mysterious spacecraft that had been skulking out there ever since Lathe's team had landed on Earth. Clearly, it was the intended recipient for the unauthorized message; just as clearly, at least to Galway's thinking, the message itself had come from Lathe. A prearranged signal to action... but action of what sort? One way or another, it'll all be over soon, Lathe had said, referring to the consequences of Pittman's actions.

What could he have meant by that?

"Oh, hell," Galway muttered as a sudden thought struck him. Crazy—utterly crazy—but it was exactly the sort of thing Lathe would do—

"Galway!"

The prefect jerked around, startled, to see Quinn and two other Security men stride into the situation room. "General," he said, stepping toward the other, "there's been a signal to the ship out there—"

"Galway, pending a full investigation through the Ryqril officials on Plinry, you're confined to quarters," Quinn cut him off. "Your alleged double-agent scheme has been a total fiasco, resulting in loss of life, damage to government property, and the escape of valuable prisoners. Escort him to his quarters, men."

"What?" Galway stared, unable to believe his ears, as the two Security men stepped to his side.

"You're not serious. All right, so Lathe and Pittman pulled the sheets over our heads. We haven't lost the whole—"

"What do you mean, our heads?" Quinn snarled. "You're the one they fooled."

"Me and the Ryqril on Plinry," Galway shot back. "Let's not forget they were the ones who initiated the whole project."

"We've got only your word and some possibly forged papers for that," Quinn said icily. "Maybe when we do some inquiries we'll find out you had more to do with it than you claim. Eh?"

Galway felt his stomach tighten up. This couldn't be happening—it just couldn't. Had Quinn gone totally insane? He looked to the man at the monitor for support, saw only carefully measured blankness in the other's eyes. "General," he said, forcing his voice to remain calm as he turned again to face Quinn. "A signal's been sent to the enemy ship out there, and if I'm right we're on the verge of losing any last bit of leverage we might still have on Pittman—"

"To hell with Pittman!" Quinn thundered. "He had his chance to cooperate—now he can damn well roast with the rest of them. And when we've dealt with them, it'll be your turn in the pit. Go on, get him out of here."

Hands curled into impotent fists at his side, Galway let them lead him from the situation room. It'll be all right, he told himself, trying with only limited success to believe it. It'll be all right. He's sending word to Plinry—that's the important thing. Maybe it'll get there in time. Until then—

Until then he would just have to sit quietly by and hope Quinn came to his senses soon. And hope to hell that Lathe didn't shred the city into ribbons before then. The city, and any chance of survival for Plinry.