Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to Reza. “Come on,” she told him, helping him up from the table. She had managed to figure out how to turn off the suppressor field holding him to the table. The rest of the machines had apparently malfunctioned when Rabat died. She kissed him, then held him tightly. “I’m so glad I found you,” she whispered, trying not to cry.
He smiled as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her shaking body gently as he kissed her hair. “I am, too, my friend.”
After a moment, she unwillingly pushed him away. “We’ve got to get our asses out of here right now,” she told him. “We’re both in really deep shit.”
“What has happened?”
“You’re up on a rap for murdering the president, I’m your accomplice – helping you to get out of the hospital, no less – and Markus Thorella isn’t really Markus Thorella at all. He’s Senator – now President – Borge’s son and an impostor. That’s the scoop in a nutshell. Aren’t you glad to hear it?” Jodi helped him to his feet and handed him some clothes. “Internal Security is crawling everywhere like a bunch of ants, and they picked up Nicole and Tony for questioning.”
“What?” Reza asked incredulously as he pulled on the blue sweater and black pants that Jodi had brought for him, then some boots. Obviously, his uniformed days were over. Jodi was not wearing hers, either. “How could they?”
Jodi snorted. “Easy. Borge’s the president now. I don’t think he plans on doing anything with them except to try and lure us in, but I don’t think they’ll go for it. Anyway, he’s declared martial law across the entire continent, which makes things that much more difficult for us.”
When Reza was dressed, Jodi handed him a blaster. “Here,” she said, “you’re going to need this later. I already had to use it on the way in.” She led him out and down a corridor that was deserted except for three bodies and the stink of burned flesh.
“How did you get in?” Reza asked. “How did you even find where they had taken me?”
Jodi shrugged. “An old friend of mine is helping us. She has… connections.”
“Can you trust her?” Reza asked as they moved through a portal and into a tiny lobby. The research center where they had taken him was in a distant rural settlement that Rabat had thought would be sufficiently isolated to avoid any unwanted scrutiny. And, with Reza under her control, she had convinced Thorella and Borge that a lot of guards would just raise the visibility of the facility and the risk of exposure. And so, there had been only three guards. Had been.
“I don’t know for sure,” Jodi replied. She hopped into the pilot’s seat of the waiting skimmer, closing the hatches after Reza had climbed in after her. “She certainly has a score to settle with our friend Thorella, though.” She looked at Reza as the skimmer responded to her deft touch, quickly becoming airborne and heading east. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway,” she told him. “I had no one else to turn to.”
Reza frowned. He was missing something. “But why would Borge be after you?” he asked.
Jodi smiled. And then she told him the entire tale of the man who would be president and his misbegotten son.
Forty-Five
President Borge did not rage. He appeared calm and cool, despite the massive confusion that swirled around him as the entire security network of planet Earth worked to find and kill – Borge had decided to dispense with any remaining pleasantries – Reza Gard and Jodi Mackenzie.
But there was a slight problem: they both had disappeared. Mackenzie had not been seen since the afternoon before, and Reza had broken out of Rabat’s little torture chamber earlier this afternoon. Fortunately, her death and the deaths of the Internal Security agents there only sealed the lid tighter on the two fugitives’ coffins. He would have had to kill all of them eventually to ensure that no one even peripherally involved in his designs could ever reveal what they knew. While he had no evidence in hand, Borge instinctively knew that Mackenzie must have been responsible for rescuing Reza from Rabat. Captain Carré and Councilman Braddock had been under constant surveillance since their release and had not been caught helping either of the two fugitives. Borge had decided that there was no point in keeping them in custody, especially since there was always the chance that they might prove incidentally useful.
The problem of Mackenzie, however, remained. How had she escaped the dragnet that had been thrown over the city since his security people had been alerted by her delving into his past and that of his son?
She must have had help, he decided. But from whom? And why would anyone help her when every form of public media carried the story of her aiding and abetting Reza Gard in his bloody escape from the hospital before “killing” Nathan (Thorella had arranged to have a particular Marine lieutenant and a few of his troops die in Reza’s “breakout”)? He knew Carré and Braddock would have helped the fugitives, but they had been effectively neutralized. Who else was there? His intelligence people and researchers had combed the files for anyone who had been associated with Gard and Mackenzie, but those relative few had all been ruled out. Reza did not have any other known associations on Earth, as most of the officers and enlisted members of the Red Legion only returned from their regiment as corpses sealed in boxes.
The search for people who had known Mackenzie, however, yielded a surprise: Tanya Buchet.
Borge shook his head. Tanya, of all people. He had known her since she was a child, and had often looked upon her as an adopted daughter. He had never known or suspected that she and Mackenzie had known each other. Borge had called her about the matter personally, and had been reassured that she had not seen Mackenzie in nearly twenty years, and if she had, she would have shot her herself.
He had eliminated Tanya Buchet from his list, leaving him a blank screen. Not a single lead presented itself. Borge silently fumed.
Colonel Markus Thorella entered the confusion of the Internal Security Command Post. Ignoring everyone around him, he made his way straight to the new president.
“It had better be important, Markus,” Borge warned ominously. Despite his outward appearance of calm, his mood was homicidally ugly.
“It is,” his secret son said quietly. “We need to talk. Privately.”
Borge scowled. He looked at the anthill-like activity swirling about him. He could do nothing but wait. And it would not really matter if he waited here, alone but for his thoughts, or talking to the Marine standing before him. His son. “Very well,” he said.
After the door to Borge’s makeshift ready room closed behind them, he said, “All right. What is so important that you had to interrupt the hunt?”
Thorella snorted derisively, but he was not about to tell the president what he really thought of the incompetent IS troops and their “hunt.” No, if Gard and Mackenzie were going to be found, he would have to do it. And he thought he had a good idea where to start. But that was not why he had come here.
“I was just talking to the fleet operations officer,” he said, leaving out the slight detail that they had been talking while in bed. “She said she came up with a plan on the staff battle computers for beating the Kreelans. Decisively. She explained it to me, and it sounds like it could be done. But L’Houillier and Zhukovski didn’t buy off on it. Neither did Nathan.” He smiled. Slightly. “I think you ought to hear it from her yourself. Very soon. The Navy has a lot of information – a lot more now than they even had a few days ago – and she thinks she can pinpoint the location of the Kreelan homeworld. And, if her plan looks like it would work, we could take out the Kreelan fleet and homeworld in a single, massive attack.”