Dark Time: Mortal Path (38 page)

Information about the town flashed up on one of the monitors.

“A population of less than two thousand people at the last census.”

Maliha was very worried, now that things had gotten so specific. What was Greg planning to do to the two thousand people? She stood up next to the door, staying away from the window in it. She tried the doorknob and found that it turned. As a test, she cracked open the door a quarter of an inch. She could get in anytime she wanted.

“There is something interesting about this small community,” Greg lectured. “It is located right next to the Naval Air Weapons Station, NAWS, which has been a center for development and testing of airborne weapons for decades. I’m sure you know of it. Wouldn’t want to touch them, would we?” He grinned. “At least, not as a demo. This will demonstrate the precision with which I can control the power grid. I’m going to black out China Lake but leave NAWS unaffected. One moment please, while I enter the back door.”

Greg turned his back to his audience and worked at one of the computer consoles, one that had a shield over it.

“Ready. Here goes.” He reached out and touched the dot that represented China Lake on the enlarged map of Kern County. A couple of grid lines leading to the town went dark, as did the town itself.

There was silence in the room. Greg waited about thirty seconds, and then touched the grid again. China Lake lit up.

“You may all verify the effect. There are phones built into the arms of your chairs. Call whomever you wish, and we’ll wait for the results.” He sat down on a black swivel chair that was a twin to the one in the control room adjacent to his office.

Most of the fourteen audience members—she’d counted—picked up their phones. They dialed, and spoke softly into the handsets. Ten minutes passed as they, and Maliha, waited for confirmation.

The Latino in the dark suit stood again. “It is as you say. I offer ten million.”

T
en million is a good starting bid,” Greg said, with a grin on his face. “Who’ll top it?”

A large man clothed in the garb of a sheik called out from his seat. “I will take the system for two hundred million U.S. dollars. The meeting is over.”

Others rose to their feet, gesturing and yelling over one another’s bids. Maliha had heard enough.

Greg’s scheme was going to be successful. There was no time to involve the Feds. She’d come here to confront Greg and Subedei—
Where is Subedei?
—and now was the time.

She couldn’t see any guards in the room. She was sure Greg would be armed; she didn’t know if the audience members were. Regardless, she was going to kill them all. She couldn’t work up any sympathy for people who were bidding on the opportunity to kill innocent civilians to further their goals. Maliha pulled her whip sword from its sheath around her waist. She checked the placement of her throwing stars within their pack.

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Then she examined her deep feelings. She had to be committed one hundred percent to what she was about to do.

No holding back. No fear. Subedei is here somewhere, I know it. I can’t let him stand between me
and saving millions of people. Go!

As ready as she was going to be, Maliha took a deep breath, threw the door open, and dashed inside.

The shrill alarm of a metal detector went off as she passed through it, jolting everyone in the room from their dreams of deaths and dollars. She went up one aisle of the theater, slashing the throats of those within reach of the whip sword. Its blades slipped through the air and bit with precision.

Four down.

The lone woman in the audience was the first to react. She leaped from her seat and ran for the door Maliha had just entered. Maliha caught her in the back with a throwing knife, and the woman stumbled forward, short of her goal.

Maliha kept in motion, not giving anyone a still target. A bullet flew by her. Greg or someone else was firing. She jumped to the top of the seat nearest her and ran lightly along the row of seat backs. A bullet hit one of the seats she’d just passed, exploding out the back with a burst of stuffing and fabric. The whip sword flicked again as men tried to move down the rows to get to the aisle. Each of the sword’s blades took a life.

Seven.

Three men were heading down to the door. Maliha launched three throwing stars simultaneously.

The stars split apart in midair and landed in the backs of their heads. They collapsed to the ground, forming a barrier to the door.

Greg had ducked behind a seat in the front row and was still firing at her. When she paused to throw the stars, a lucky shot of his grazed her side at the waist. An inch to the left and the bullet would have harmlessly sped by.

Damn that man. I’m going to…

She couldn’t let the pain distract her. One of the men in front of her had stood his ground. As she approached, he flung a knife at her, followed by another. They were nearly invisible in the dim light because they were made of plastic. She lashed out with the whip sword, knocking one of them from the air. The other knife, deflected, slipped by her and nicked her thigh. She pulled the throwing axe from its position on her back and in one smooth motion sent it flying through the air. It split his face, and he went down, stunned. She unsheathed a knife and threw it at the seat Greg was hiding behind with tremendous force. It penetrated the seat and there was a scream.

Yes!

She kept up the momentum of her run and yanked the axe from the face of the dead man as she went by.

Eleven.

But at a cost. She was injured, bleeding, but couldn’t let it slow her down. She locked the pain away with her strongest key and moved on.

Another of the men, a couple of rows over, launched a plastic throwing star at her. Intended to avoid triggering the metal detectors in the building, the plastic weapons had done their job. She hit the star with a throwing knife, propelling it back at him. Knife and star buried themselves in his throat.

Suddenly her heart nearly stopped. One of the men, in the shadows at the edge of the theater, was unaffected by the carnage around him. It was like the scene at the plaza in Washington, D.C., where she’d seen a motionless man, unmoved by death.

He came to life suddenly, with a crossbow that appeared from underneath his robes. He’d bypassed the metal detector somehow, because that bow gleamed with metallic menace. He notched an arrow and released it.

Move! Move!

Pulling out every remnant of speed in her diminished arsenal, Maliha jumped upward in a leap for her life. Instead of burying itself in her belly as intended, the arrow sliced her outfit and the skin on her lower leg, and passed by, trailing her blood like a comet’s tail. Then the arrow embedded itself in the forehead of a man who’d been skulking low behind her, ready to attack with one of her own knives he’d yanked from a victim.

Thirteen.

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She whirled in the air and landed in the aisle a dozen feet from Subedei.

Too close, can’t be this close, he’s faster.

To her surprise, he didn’t take the advantage she’d given him. Instead he turned and sped for the platform. She fired a couple of darts aimed several feet ahead of him and they connected, landing in his hip. He ignored them, scooped up Greg from behind the seat, and ran for the door. He yanked on the handle, tossing aside the three dead men and the woman who’d piled up at the door.

Greg wasn’t dead, but he’d been hit in the back with her knife. Subedei pulled the knife from Greg’s body and threw it backward over his shoulder at Maliha.

She dodged it and went after Subedei. She couldn’t let him get into the storage closet, into the escape tunnel, and away into the night. With grass under his feet outdoors, he could easily outrun her.

She got to the door. Subedei was headed the wrong way! He didn’t know about the tunnel. Greg had kept the secret from his bodyguard. She had a chance.

Subedei threw Greg over his shoulder, with Greg’s belly bouncing as he ran. The next thing Maliha knew, there was a tremendous explosion behind her in the theater room. Tossed forward by the force, she was thrown toward the opposite side of the hallway. While still in midair, she curled herself around the pack that contained the C4 she was carrying—this level of shock and heat could set it off, but she sheltered it with her body and was surprised to find herself still in one piece.

Trying to get away from the bombed-out room, she felt the clothing on her lower legs catch fire. Pain seemed to come from everywhere at once and the edges of her vision blackened. As though looking down the long tube of a telescope, she saw Subedei escaping, opening a door at the end of the hall and disappearing into it.

Maliha rolled before the flames crept higher, putting out the fire, and came to her feet. Precious seconds had been lost, and to one of the Ageless, seconds represented an overpowering advantage.

Maliha took off down the hall at the best speed she could manage. Part way down the hall, one of the doors opened in front of her and several guards poured out into her path. She didn’t slacken her pace.

She whipped four throwing stars at them, two from each hand, saw the stars separate and strike, and ran up the side of the wall to get around the last man. As she went by, she planted a dart in his heart. He fired his gun before he fell, but the shot went wild.

The pain of the burns tore at her as she ran. The skin on her calves was blistered and her two bullet wounds made themselves known with each impact of her feet, but at least she hadn’t blown herself up with her own explosives. She wondered how much blood she’d lost, then decided it didn’t matter. She was going after Subedei until she couldn’t move anymore, and tried not to think how close to that condition she might be. She put her head down and ran. She couldn’t let Subedei get away with Shale.

Or is it that I can’t let Subedei get away?

She thought of his hands on her, of how close he’d come to killing her friends. There was no backing down now.

The door at the end of the hallway opened to flights of stairs. She was still in the enclave, so how was Subedei going to get out?

One of the doors is in Greg’s office!

When she got to the stairs, she followed a hunch and went up instead of down.

Eight seconds in the elevator from the tunnel. Eight seconds, not enough to get to the Greg’s
seventh-floor office from underground in anything but a high-speed elevator, and the building wasn’t
tall enough to warrant it. The theater room has to be below the level of Greg’s office.

Putting all of her hopes in that thought, she made her way up the stairs, leaning on the railing, moving as fast as she could. She passed three landings, then saw blood on a door as she passed it. She stopped and came back. Greg, still riding on Subedei’s shoulder, must have brushed the door and left the blood.

Brushed against it when entering, or just in passing?

Resisting the urge to burst through the door—Subedei could be just inside—she eased it open. The hallway was just like the one below, which gave her no hint to go on.

She felt something like a hand descend onto her shoulder. She didn’t recognize it at first, but then knew it must be Yanmeng remote viewing her and exerting more pressure than he ever had before. The hand gave her a slight push toward the hall. From Yanmeng’s view above and around her, he must have seen Subedei just disappearing through the door a couple of seconds before she arrived.

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This floor, then.
She hoped Yanmeng would stop viewing her now. She didn’t want him to see her die, if it came to that.

Ahead of her in the hallway she could see that Subedei had paused. He was holding Shale by the shoulders, his face pushed right into the wounded man’s face. Subedei was talking to Shale in a low, deadly voice. If he remained distracted, she could overtake him. It might be her best chance. She quietly moved down the hall, flattening herself against the wall intermittently, then advancing further.

Suddenly Subedei whipped Shale up in the air and brought him down sharply on his knee. She heard the
crack!
of Shale’s spine. She was close enough now that she could make out Subedei’s words. He dangled Shale, still alive, in midair, clutching him by his head.

“You failed, human. Now you belong to me. I only wish I had a longer time to enjoy this.”

Subedei twisted his hands, tearing off Shale’s head. The body dropped limply to the floor. Subedei tossed the head away like a piece of garbage.

And then Subedei was gone in a flash. Maliha had been so intent on watching Shale’s demise that she hadn’t gotten close enough to launch an attack.

Damn, damn, damn! Staring like I’ve never seen a man die before.

She moved cautiously down the hallway. She had no idea which of the doors at the end would be the control room adjacent to Greg’s office—the entry into the enclave. As she neared the doors, she heard something behind her.

She gave it everything she had, running up the side of the wall to get out of the path of certain death.

Two knives whipped by where she’d been. Hitting the ceiling, she twisted—
damn, that hurt
—and came down hard, rolling on the floor and ending up next to one of the doors. The movement caused a spasm of pain in her blistered, wounded leg. She grimaced until it passed, and then she realized the center door of the three was open. He’d gone past her while she was rolling around in pain.

He’s playing with me. He could have killed me right then. Or maybe he doesn’t intend to kill
me—yet.

Subedei’s words came back to her. He’d told Shale that he wished he had more time with him. Time for what, she could imagine. She nearly gagged when she realized that part of that time would be spent ravishing her. He’d already made that clear in the darkness of her bedroom.