“Let’s go,” Freeman said as he joined me a few moments later. He no longer smiled or wanted to talk, that was the Freeman I knew.
“So who are we here to see?” I asked.
He did not answer.
“Is it Crowley?” I asked.
“Not Crowley,” Freeman said.
Rather than take the elevator, Freeman ran up the stairs. We entered a dimly lit stairwell and climbed twelve flights. “You’re still charming as ever,” I said, as we reached the top.
Freeman pulled his handheld computer from his pocket and looked at it. “Hurry,” he said. “Your pals are getting ready to leave the bar.” He held the monitor so that I could see it. Apparently he had placed a remote camera under his seat. Looking at the monitor, I saw Shannon standing up. Some of the other men were already wearing their helmets and heading for the door.
We entered a red-carpeted hall with numbered doors. Freeman stopped under a hall light. He pulled a pistol from under his chestplate. He walked to room number 624. Pulling a key chip from his pocket, Freeman unlocked the door and let it slide open.
The only light in the room came from the glare of the street outside. We crept along the wall. We had entered a suite. Freeman pointed toward a bedroom door, and I stole forward to peer inside.
Looking across the room, I saw the pale moon through the top of a window. Someone was crouching beside that window, spying the street. I could only see his thick silhouette. In this dim light, he did not look human.
“He’s watching the bar door,” I whispered inside my helmet.
Using his right hand, the man brought up a rifle with a barrel-shaped scope. I had used a similar scope in training camp. It was an “intelligent” scope, the kind of computerized aiming device that offers more than simple magnification. “He’s looking for…”
Then I understood. I sprang forward. Hearing my approach, the sniper turned around and started to raise his rifle. By that time, I had leaped most of the way across the room. I grabbed the rifle, spun it over my right hand, and stabbed the butt into the assassin’s face. The man made an agonized scream and dropped to the floor.
I removed my helmet and went to the window. Raising the rifle, I looked down at the street through the scope. Most of the men from the platoon stood outside the door of the bar. The intelligent scope had an auto-action switch set to fire. The scope read the identifier signals from our helmets. The scope would locate a preset target, and the rifle would shoot automatically. In the center of the pack, Corporal Vincent Lee was clearly identified as Corporal Wayson Harris— me. The scope made a soft humming noise as it automatically homed in on my helmet.
“You owe me twenty bucks, Harris,” Freeman said as he switched on the lights.
Lying dazed on the floor, the sniper moaned. One of his eyes was already starting to swell from the impact of the rifle, and blood flowed from the bridge of his nose. He reached up to touch his wounded face, and I noticed that his arm ended in a stub.
“Well, hello, Kline,” I said.
CHAPTER NINE
Ray Freeman trusted the Rising Sun police enough to let them put Kline in a holding cell, but he insisted on watching that cell until military police signed for the prisoner. Freeman’s wait would have been none of my business except that Captain McKay ordered me to remain with Kline until the MPs arrived as well. So the station captain placed a couple of chairs near Kline’s cell and told us to make ourselves at home.
For me, making myself “at home” meant removing my helmet. Freeman made himself at home by pulling out a twelve-inch knife that he had somehow slipped past station security and cleaning his fingernails. The knife looked deceptively small in Freeman’s large hands.
Admiral Klyber arrived with an intelligence officer as the first traces of sunrise shone through the wire-enforced windows. I jumped out of my chair and saluted, but Freeman remained seated. A slight smile played across Klyber’s lips as he regarded us. He returned my salute, and said the perfunctory, “At ease, Corporal.”
I was technically out of uniform. Looking down at my helmet, and feeling guilty, I said, “Sorry, sir.”
“Not at all, Corporal. As I understand it, you caught the prisoner while you were off duty.” Klyber then turned to face
Ray Freeman. “I understand you were instrumental as well.”
Freeman said nothing.
“Sir,” I said, not wanting to contradict the senior-most officer in this part of the galaxy, but determined to set the record straight.
Klyber interrupted me. “This is Lieutenant Niles, from Naval Intelligence.”
I saluted.
He saluted back. “That’s your bubble?” he asked, pointing to my helmet.
“Yes, sir,” I said. Bubble, short for bubblehead, was Navy slang for Marines. And it was indeed mine. Lee and I had traded back after we caught Kline.
“Would you mind if I borrowed it? It could prove useful during my interrogation.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
He took the helmet and excused himself.
“Why don’t you stay for the interrogation,” Klyber said, as Niles walked away. Freeman and I followed the admiral into a small dark room in which four chairs overlooked a bank of medical monitors and a large window. As we sat, a light came on at the other side of that window. Two policemen led Kline into the interrogation room and sat him on a small metal chair.
I must have been far too rough on Kline. No one had bothered to clean the dried blood from where I’d struck his face with the butt of the rifle. His left eye was swollen shut and purple. It looked wet and badly infected.
Niles entered the room carrying a large canvas bag in one hand and my helmet in the other. The policemen tried to cuff Kline’s arms behind the back of his chair, eventually closing one manacle around his left wrist and the other around his right elbow. As they did this, Niles arranged several objects on a small table near the door. The policemen prepared to leave, but Niles intercepted them and whispered something. Niles smiled as they left the room, then he turned to Kline, and said, “You make a pathetic assassin.”
“This is all a misunderstanding. An assassin?” Kline said. With his thick tongue, the S’s in “assassin” had a harsh sound—“azz-azin.” “I came here for a vacation. I thought I might do some hunting on Lake Pride.”
“And this is your rifle?” Niles held up Kline’s rifle and peered through its scope.
“It’s for hunting,” Kline said.
“You sound like quite the sportsman, Mr. Kline.” Niles was terse but not unfriendly. He placed the gun back on the table, then walked over to Kline, who shifted his weight on the small metal chair. “Is it Kline or Mr. Kline?”
“Kline.”
“I am asking if Kline is your first or last name.”
“Only one name, I am afraid.” Kline sounded distressed.
“Oh,” Niles said. “So you are an Atkins Separatist. As far as I know, only two kinds of people go by a single name— Morgan Atkins Separatists and professional musicians. If your right hand is any indication, I assume you are not a musician.”
“The term is ‘believer,’ not ‘separatist,’ ” Kline said in a sullen voice.
“My mistake,” Niles said.
“Tell you what, Kline. Let’s try an experiment. Let’s pretend that I am you, and you are…Let’s say that you are a corporal in the Marines. We’ll pretend that you are Corporal Wayson Harris, for instance. Are you with me so far?”
Kline shrugged. “I don’t understand the purpose of this?”
“Maybe this will help,” Niles said, lifting my helmet from the table.
“This is Corporal Harris’s helmet.” Niles stuffed it down over Kline’s head. Short and round, Kline was not made for combat armor. The circumference of his skull was slightly too large; but with some force, Niles managed to slam the helmet in place. Kline screamed as the lip of my helmet raked down across his wounded eye.