Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (3 page)

Emily finished
her soup, kissed Yuki good night, and went up to the apartment to finish her
homework and go to bed. Yuki watched her walk across the compound to the garage
and shook her head. “What’s going to become of that girl?” she wondered aloud.

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Chapter 3:
Software

“Mike, you’re gonna have to turn
‘em over to us. You know that, don’t you?” the voice on the other end of the
phone said.

Michael Cardano reflected on the
quality of the tone of that voice. Several million lines of code and a few
hundred miles of fiber optic cable lay between him and the man on the other
end. The code was written to ensure the security of the connection, dissolving
the vocal noises made at either end of the connection into miniscule bits,
whirling them into a billion randomized patterns and then, at the last moment,
reconstituting them into a facsimile of the original vocal intonations. Most of
the code was actually tasked with recreating as accurately as possible the
sound of the original voice. The voice from the phone sounded like the man
Michael knew him to be. He could hear the tonal indicators of his emotional
veracity. The sound was true to the voice. He hoped his own voice would sound
as true at the other end of the line. He felt the need to be able to control
the shading of his voice, to shape the way he was perceived, and he didn’t want
the nuance he aimed to create to get lost in the code.

“You gotta be kidding,” he snorted.

“Nope.”

“You realize this is just more of
Meacham’s bullshit, don’t you?” he needled.

Silence.

“He’s gonna flog this turkey all
over the hill, and we both know it’s bullshit. That’s not how real soldiers
work.”

“Maybe you’re right. So what?” the
other man said.

“He’s gonna get us all killed... or
worse. That’s what!” Michael muttered.

“That doesn’t change anything. You
still gotta turn ‘em over. Are you gonna bring ‘em in, or do we have to come
get ‘em?” he asked menacingly.

“Fine! I’ll need a couple of days.
I’ll have ‘em there on Monday.”

He hung up the phone, not waiting
for a reply. He knew the men on the other end would accede to his request. But
he was equally certain they would come down early, sometime on the weekend.
They would not wait for him. With a little luck, they wouldn’t come down before
Sunday, late in the evening, hoping he would have his guard down. He needed to
be ready to move on Saturday. A lot depended on Kane.

Michael first met Kane years ago in
the Philippines. He was working out of the embassy in those days and
occasionally needed a driver, and maybe even a bodyguard. The problem was a
bodyguard large enough to be worth anything would spook his contacts. So he
ended up taking a lot of chances. On one meeting, his boss arranged for a new
driver, some kid from Subic Bay. He looked like a callow farm boy from Kansas
or Iowa, who knows, maybe even Nebraska. He was smallish, on the skinny side.
He wore a Marine uniform. That seemed improbable. As he sat in the backseat of
their sedan it struck Michael that this kid wasn’t wearing any rank insignia.
Just fatigues. He had assumed it was a uniform largely because the kid walked
like Marine. You didn’t learn to walk like that in Kansas. Who was this kid?

His name was George. He had bounced
around the services a bit. Started in the army, wanted to be a Ranger. He
didn’t look like the physical type they favored. Somehow, he found his way into
some obscure unit in the Navy. Being large wasn’t quite as useful on a ship. So
here he was, working out of Subic, driving cars for the embassy. He must have
washed out of some program or other, and now they didn’t quite know what to do
with him. Meacham must have seen something he liked in him. He didn’t usually
make mistakes about people. About everything else, maybe. But not people.

He was going to meet a Chinese
contact. Tang. That was all he really knew about him. He was ready to sell
something concerning the North Koreans. Exactly what wasn’t clear. But Meacham
was willing to take a chance. He and Michael had been developing this contact
for months and they wanted to get him to commit to something. They were driving
through a seedy neighborhood in Manila. Of course, at that time, every
neighborhood in Manila looked seedy to American eyes. The meeting was at an
Italian restaurant, of all things. Was Tang joking? Or was he trying to put
Cardano off his guard? Just don’t eat anything there, he thought to himself.

George pulled the car up in front
of the restaurant. There was another car, in the alley, with a driver leaning
against the passenger side door. He looked too tall to be a local. Another Chinese?
That didn’t look promising. If Tang brought him along, maybe he didn’t have the
nerve to breach security. Or maybe he was trying to do it right under their
noses.

As Michael walked up the steps and
pulled open the door he noticed George approaching the other driver for a
cigarette. What was he up to? The room was empty and dark, a glow from the
kitchen and whatever glared in through the dirty windows out front were the
only light. A Chinese gentleman motioned to him from a booth at the far end. Was
it Tang? It looked like him from that distance. Before he’d taken three steps,
a strong hand reached around his face from behind and clamped a sweet smelling
rag over his nose and mouth. Everything went even darker, and much more
compressed.

He woke up, feeling groggy and
nauseous some time later in the back seat of his car. George held a cool, damp
cloth over his forehead.

“Here, drink this. You’ll feel
better soon,” he said.

“What the hell happened back
there?” Michael wheezed.

“Things went south in a hurry. I
had to get you out of there. Fast.”

“Where’s Tang?” he asked, trying
for some composure.

“Dunno. But those guys weren’t
there to deal.”

“Shit!”

Back at the embassy compound,
Meacham filled him in. Tang was dead. Or there never was a Tang. It was hard to
tell. But the guys at the restaurant just wanted to throw Michael in the trunk
of their car, and that would have been the last anyone ever heard of him. It
was Meacham they must have wanted. Michael would not have been of much use,
didn’t know enough. After they discovered their mistake they would have
disposed of his body.

The local police came by the next
day, alternately listless and officious, asked a few questions. An article
appeared in the paper about four dead Chinese. There were no leads. They had
been found in an alley behind an abandoned restaurant. When the police arrived,
they found that some one had already taken fingerprints of the victims. At
least, all of them had ink on the fingertips of their right hands. That was
puzzling. The Chinese embassy was saying nothing in public, but screaming
bloody murder behind the scenes. They may not have cared much for the lives of
their operatives. But they were worried about being seen to have been
outplayed, to have lost face. That might give encouragement in the wrong
quarters.

But what had really happened in
that restaurant? Those guys were big. At least the two he saw. Bigger than him,
so a lot bigger than George. When Meacham showed him the police report, he
noticed it didn’t mention any gunshot wounds.

George said nothing about the
events of that day. Nothing about the restaurant. Nothing about Michael
throwing up on the ride back. Nothing. Meacham had found him the perfect
driver. A bodyguard no one would notice. Nothing about him drew anyone’s attention.
No one felt threatened by him. Unless, of course, they looked in his eyes,
those blank, dead eyes. Empty, like the eyes of a Midwest farm boy... and then
some!

Michael left his den and went down
to the basement. There were actually two basements under the main building. The
lower one connected by passageways to the other buildings. It was not a huge
underground complex, like you see in the old Bond movies. But it was very
discreet. A quick search of the compound might not reveal the second basement,
especially a search conducted in a hurry, perhaps under fire. It would be no
good to hide down there in an attack. A more deliberate search would eventually
reveal it. But you might be able to use it to elude intruders for a little
while, perhaps long enough to escape through the long passage that led into the
woods behind the main building.
 

The tunnel was concealed much more
carefully than anything else in the basements. It might take a full thirty or
forty-five minutes to find it. It didn’t lead to the fences, or to any of the
gates. It led further into the heart of the estate. A little bit of
misdirection that might enable someone who really knew the woods well to get
away. It would be very hard to track someone there, especially in the dark.

The upper basement was mainly for
storage. The concrete floors were carpeted and the rooms were very well lit. A
couple of them were casually furnished, like a suburban rec room. There was a
ping pong table, a pool table, a TV room. Michael kept a small, private office
down here, with the only computer terminal in the main house. The mechanicals
were kept in one room, and in another the mainframes and servers that ran all
the electronics on the estate. But there was no arsenal. It wasn’t that kind of
place. The security guards had the only firearms on the estate. Michael figured
the enemy he was really preparing for would always be able to outgun him, so
there was no point investing his resources there. Instead, he focused on
stealth and subterfuge, and better intelligence, he hoped.

The second basement was much
darker, barely even lit. To get to it you had to climb down a ladder hidden
behind the bar. It led almost fifteen feet down, well below the floor level of
the upper basement. It was practically a cave. The temperature stayed a
constant fifty degrees or so year round even though it was completely unheated.
There were a few small rooms, with sparse furnishings, a few wooden tables and
chairs, some benches. No electrical outlets. The few lights were powered by batteries
connected to solar cells on the roof. He clearly did not intend to spend much
time down here.

He sat in his private office and
made his plans. They would have to spirit Yuki away from the estate, and the
girl, too, he supposed. And they’d have to do it quickly. He was expecting that
phone call, and had already begun making plans. He sent George to a safe house
outside of Langley to meet a couple of his agency contacts. He was calling in
some pretty old favors. He just worried George might not be able to persuade
them to trust him. He trusted George implicitly, he had good reason to. But
others often didn’t. Why should they?

There had been other scrapes, and
George had saved his life a number of times. More than he cared to remember. He
owed him everything. But he had also saved George, protected him, concealed
him.

Eventually, Meacham had sent
Michael on a different kind of mission. There was a group of scientists in
Tokyo working on a project that had become Meacham’s new preoccupation. They
were researching drugs to enhance the fighting capabilities of any soldier.
Years of research into the effect of psychotropic chemicals had convinced them
they could enhance both the response time of the aggressor instincts, and the
sensory acuity to actuate those instincts. In effect, they would turn soldiers
into super sensitive, hyper-aggressive predators for brief periods. There were
drawbacks, of course. The subjects became difficult to control, and initially
could not follow mission commands for more than a few minutes. Soldiers like
this would require constant battlefield supervision. But at their best, they
were capable of great ferocity, and seemed utterly uninhibited by concerns for
their own personal safety. Their preservation instincts were almost completely
suppressed.

There were also some severe side
effects. Of course, most of the early subjects went insane. Several committed
suicide. Other side effects mimicked those of anabolic steroids. Hair loss,
megalocephaly, loss of libido, depression.

As promising as these drugs seemed,
there appeared to be no way to resolve all of these drawbacks. But a
breakthrough occurred when it was noticed that the worst side effects were
greatly diminished in female subjects. Also, in the case of women, the enhancement
of the aggressor instincts did not come at the expense of a greatly reduced
attention span. Female soldiers seemed likely to be able to carry out complex
missions lasting over several hours. The Tokyo group hypothesized it might be
possible to manipulate the genetic code of males to mimic the neurological
profile of females. These genetically altered males would then be able to
benefit from the enhancements these drugs promised, while suffering greatly
reduced physical and emotional detriments. It was even thought possible to
reverse the genetic alterations at a later date. At least, that was their hope.

Meacham wanted Michael to insinuate
himself into the genetics group, assess the viability of their technique, and
persuade them to turn over their research to him. Michael was skeptical from
the outset, but Meacham was convinced this was the future of modern warfare. He
was equally convinced America’s military and economic future depended on
research like this, and his own career did, too. But, whatever his
reservations, Michael accepted the mission.

George accompanied him to Tokyo.
Michael hadn’t noticed when it happened, when George had become attached to his
career. Was it Meacham’s idea? Or George’s? It certainly wasn’t his idea. This
did not seem like a particularly dangerous mission. At most, it might entail a
bit of corporate espionage. More likely, it would merely be a matter of hiring
someone away from their current employer. Still, George came along.