"Prayers for the assassin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferrigno Robert)

CHAPTER 13

Rakkim eased out the side door of the Blue Moon, right behind a noisy foursome of oil workers fresh from the offshore rigs, the riggers drunk, staggering as they elbowed their way through the crowd outside. The wind off the Sound made him shiver, but the riggers were in jeans and T-shirts with the sleeves rolled, flashing their muscles to the moderns, who gave them room. Rakkim stayed with the riggers, close enough to smell the petroleum in their shaggy hair, then peeled off into one of the Zone’s cobblestone alleys.

He had stopped at the Blue Moon after spending a fruitless afternoon in Marian’s library. He and Mardi had had dinner and she’d given him his share of the week’s receipts, the part that they didn’t report to the tax authorities. She went on about some incredible bourbon the new salesman had let her sample, then asked him again if he could help the grocer and his family escape to Canada. He told her again it would be spring. Maybe when he found Sarah, he would take them all to Canada. Winter or no winter, he would find a way.

Rakkim had gotten quiet after that, and Mardi knew him well enough not to try to engage him in conversation. He ate beef stew and thought of geology and earthquakes and load-bearing trusses. Marian’s father, Richard Warriq, had hundreds of textbooks in the library, but Marian said it was his journals that Sarah had been interested in. Warriq had traveled to China for over forty years, before and after the transition, one of the few Americans who had such access. Sarah had been looking for something in his journals. She must not have found it, because Marian said Sarah was supposed to visit and do more research last Saturday, the day after she had disappeared.

Three jocks in college letterman sweaters trudged down the alley toward him, half-slipping on the slick stones, wispy beards hanging from their chins like dirty icicles. The wind sent fast-food papers tumbling. Rakkim gave the jocks plenty of room, but they barely noticed him, arms around each other’s shoulders, singing some rah-rah song. He increased his pace as he zigzagged through the maze of alleys, the nearby tech shops shuttered this time of night.

Rakkim had no idea what Sarah was researching. Plenty of topics would be dangerous to write about, even for the niece of Redbeard. Any examination of the legal authority of the Black Robes could lead to trouble, and no publisher would dare print an exposé of the finances of the congressional leaders or the army high command. Rakkim kept coming back to Sarah’s interest in China and Miriam’s father’s work on the Three Gorges Dam-that was the only connection he had.

Although Russia had given refuge to the Zionists, China, the richest and most dynamic nation, had aroused the greatest concern among the Islamic high command. General Kidd, the Fedayeen commander, had been the most bellicose, particularly when he had a cheek full of fresh khat. Most Westerners preferred the distillation of the euphoric stimulant, but Kidd preferred the herb itself, flying it in daily from Yemen. In private, Kidd had stated that if the Chinese ever signed a pact with the Russian Bloc, or attacked nearby Muslim countries for their oil, he had a list of prime targets ripe for destruction. He had never named them, but the Three Gorges Dam had to be high on the list; six hundred feet high, it allowed ships direct access from the ocean to the interior. Its destruction would flood millions of acres and cripple the Chinese economy overnight.

If Sarah was writing a critical book on the Fedayeen, that qualified as dangerous, since most of their covert actions were in violation of the cease-fire with the Bible Belt. The pushpin in Sarah’s map would have been a visual cue for Sarah, one she had removed after she’d decided that Redbeard might see it and ask questions.

Rakkim had hoped to find evidence in Warriq’s journals, some indication that he was feeding the Fedayeen information about China, taking notes for a future attack, or some potential sabotage. Unfortunately, the journals were as impenetrable as the textbooks, Warriq’s handwriting neat but cramped, the words pressed together with barely a break. One shelf of the library was given to his private journals, thirty-eight of which were devoted to his work in China. Rakkim had barely skimmed two volumes this afternoon, before his eyes gave out.

Marian was right-her father’s journals were a laundry list, a travelogue of useless information. Warriq cataloged every meal, noted every landmark, accounted for every hour of his schedule. Page after page, the man’s disposition was uniformly foul. The meat was of poor quality, the tomatoes tasteless, the soup cold. His bed was too hard. Or too soft. Proper hygiene for his prayers was difficult. The roads were poorly designed. The weather was not to his liking. His descriptions of his Chinese employers were equally critical: they were dismissed as “ignoramuses,” “atheists,” “eaters of pigs and dogs.” His superiors fared no better, and the accounts of his engineering work yielded nothing of particular interest. Rakkim found no evidence that the man was a spy, but ample reason to conclude he was a supercilious pain in the ass. Rakkim had asked Marian if he might take a few volumes home, but she had politely refused, said she never let them out of her keeping, but invited him back at his leisure to spend more time in the stacks.

An aluminum can clattered across the alley behind him. Rakkim turned, but no one was there. He listened, but there was only the faint hum of cars on the freeways. He waited for another minute, immobile, then started walking. He was being followed, but whoever it was, wasn’t particularly adept. Accidents happened when shadowing someone. You were tempted to hurry so as not to be outdistanced, but in your haste you stumbled or knocked something over. It happened. The secret was not to go silent, but to make a great show of noise afterward, cursing to the moon, howling that you had hurt yourself. The one being followed would actually take comfort in the racket, consider you harmless, and go on his way. Silence was certain to rouse suspicion.

Rakkim could easily escape his pursuer; he knew every twist and turn of these alleys, every loose cobblestone and open manhole, but he waited. Knife in hand. A Fedayeen knife was a technological wonder, a carbon-polymer alloy infused with the DNA of its owner. At a half-inch thick, it was unbreakable, sharper than surgical steel, invisible to metallic and biological scans. Literally part of the fighter.

Two thugs in black trench coats scurried around the corner behind him, stopped when they saw him.

Rakkim beckoned them closer, then turned, hearing motion in the alley ahead of him.

Anthony Jr. and another kid, also in trench coats, slid down a fire escape, putting Rakkim between the four of them. Anthony Jr. wore a headset. He must have been following Rakkim from the roofs, where the light was better, coordinating the movements of the other two. Not bad.

“You shouldn’t have taken my goods at the Super Bowl.” Anthony Jr. slipped off the headset. “That ain’t kosher.”

Rakkim smiled. The kid was a lousy thief, but he had his father’s sense of humor.

All four of them took baseball bats from the slings inside their trench coats.

“Nice choreography,” said Rakkim. “I like the matching coats too. Whose idea was that?”

“That was Anthony,” said the one beside Anthony Jr. “Not bad, huh?”

“Shut up,” said Anthony Jr.

The first two closed in. They looked like brothers, overgrown hyenas with stringy blond hair and narrow, protruding foreheads. They tapped their bats on the stones as they approached. The tapping was probably supposed to scare Rakkim, but they looked like blind men testing the terrain with their canes.

Anthony Jr. assumed a batter’s stance about ten feet away and took a few practice swings. Rakkim felt the breeze on his face.

“You sure you want to do this, Anthony?” said Rakkim.

“Fuck yes,” said Anthony Jr.

Rakkim stood relaxed, watching them close in. If there had been only two of them, he might have kept a wall at his back, but in this kind of situation, he preferred mobility.

“He got a blade,” said the first hyena.

“You got us really terrified, mister,” snickered the one beside Anthony Jr., a bandy-legged punk missing a couple of front teeth. He blew balls of spit when he talked. “We took down some soldier boys last month. They had knives too. Lot bigger than that little bitty thing of yours.”

“Careful of this guy,” warned Anthony Jr. “He’s not like the other ones.”

“I hit a home run on one of them soldier boys,” said the first hyena. “Blew out his kneecap and he practically begged us to take his gear.” He held up his left wrist. “This here’s his watch. What time you got, mister?”

“You can keep your watch, Rakkim,” said Anthony Jr. “My father thinks you’re hot shit and that counts for something. You want to hand over your wallet, we’ll call it even.”

“Good to see a son who respects his father,” said Rakkim.

“You going to give us the wallet?” said Anthony Jr.

Rakkim looked from one to the other, shook his head. “I’m carrying three or four thousand dollars. I’d hate to lose that.”

“Fucking jackpot,” said the punk next to Anthony Jr., lunging forward, eager now.

“I said be careful,” said Anthony Jr. “He’s Fedayeen.”

“He’s Fedayeen,” the first hyena mimicked in a high falsetto. He tossed his blond curls, pretended to yawn, then attacked, the bat raised high.

Rakkim stepped into the charge, dodged the bat, and jabbed him in the shoulder with his knife, just a little stick, turned, and poked the other hyena in the chest, felt Anthony Jr.’s bat whistle past his head, and stuck him in the belly, then slid the tip of the knife across the chin of the toothless punk as he swung and missed with the bat. It had been one smooth, continuous movement on Rakkim’s part, a dance move where he was the only one who could hear the music. A Fedayeen training game, one they played every day in boot camp, parry and thrust, feint and jab, using only the very tip of the knife, just enough to draw blood, not enough to do lasting damage. By the end of boot camp, most of the recruits had at least a hundred scars. Rakkim had barely a dozen.

The four of them came at him again and he stuck each of them in turn, dodging and twisting, always someplace where they didn’t expect him, the tip of the knife nipping their arms and legs, their back and sides, hands and face. They came at him again and again, howling with pain and frustration, cursing as he slipped out of reach, but still coming after him, blood flying, their trench coats in ribbons.

Rakkim slowed slightly, as though tired, and Anthony Jr. unwound, swinging for the fences. Rakkim backed away at the last moment, and the bat caught the first hyena square in the chest. It sounded like a tree limb cracking. The hyena made a small sound, more of a moist gasp, then collapsed onto the alley. His bat rolled across the cobblestones.

“What did you do, Anthony?” squealed the other hyena, rushing over to help. Rakkim had sliced his right ear, cartilage flapping as he ran. “What did you do?”

“I…can’t…breathe,” hissed the first hyena, as his brother bent beside him.

“You’re okay.” Anthony Jr. was bleeding too, but he still circled Rakkim, the bat cocked.

“Can’t…can’t…breathe,” repeated the first hyena. A bubble of blood inflated from one nostril. Popped.

“I’m getting him to a hospital,” said the other hyena. He slid an arm under his brother.

The first hyena screamed as he was lifted.

“We got a job to finish,” said Anthony Jr.

“We’re finished,” muttered the other hyena, carrying his brother down the alley.

“This ain’t right, Anthony,” said the punk with the missing teeth. His trench coat was spattered with blood, his face opened up. “This guy’s a buzz saw.”

“Okay, he’s got some moves,” admitted Anthony Jr. “So do we.”

The punk shook his head and trotted down the alley after the others.

Anthony Jr. stared at Rakkim. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“They don’t give medals for that. They should, but they don’t.”

Anthony Jr. hefted the bat, his knuckles slick with blood. “We still got to settle up for what you did to me at the Super Bowl. I stole that wallet fair and square.”

Rakkim held up a hand. “Take a breath.”

In spite of himself, Anthony Jr. did what he was told.

“Tell your father, I’m going to recommend you for the Fedayeen.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious.” The Fedayeen had a high fatality rate, but the way Anthony Jr. was going, he had better odds in uniform than on the street.

Anthony Jr. peered at him. “Don’t fuck with me. I won’t tolerate that.”

“I’m not fucking with you.”

Anthony Jr. slowly nodded. “Thank you.” He slipped the bat back into his trench coat, hands trembling. “I mean…I’d like that.”

“You won’t be thanking me once you hit boot camp, but maybe you will when you get through it. If you get through it.”

“I’ll get through it.” Anthony Jr. glanced around. “Is it true what they say? You know. Fedayeen…you’re amped up, aren’t you?”

“No, it’s not true.”

“Come on. Look what you just did to me and my boyos. They do something to you when you become Fedayeen, don’t they? New and improved, that’s what I want.”

“Fedayeen aren’t supermen.”

“No way you’re normal.”

Rakkim laughed. “Well, that’s true. The thing about Fedayeen…after the first month of basic, the docs take the ones who survive, the ones who haven’t dropped dead or quit, and they give them the cocktail.”

“What’s that, some magic potion?”

“Gene therapy. It’s a series of injections-”

“I knew it.”

“It’s not magic. Ninety-eight percent of what makes Fedayeen so dangerous is training. Training and…attitude. All the gene juice in the world isn’t going to help if you don’t have the right attitude, and all the attitude won’t do you any good without the training. In fact, attitude without the training is guaranteed to get you killed. What the cocktail does is allow you to train at a level no one else could physically or mentally tolerate. Fedayeen basic lasts for a whole year, a year of ten-mile swims and fifty-mile runs, of improvised weaponry and hand-to-hand combat in heat and cold, and in that whole time you’re lucky if you get three hours of sleep a night. The cocktail makes it possible. Fedayeen have quick reflexes. They have a high pain threshold, a perfect sense of direction, and their wounds heal faster, but it’s the training that makes a Fedayeen. Are you ready for that?”

“This cocktail…you still got it inside you?”

Rakkim nodded. “It’s permanent.”

“Once Fedayeen, always Fedayeen, that’s what they say.”

“That’s what they say.”

“I want it.”

“Tell me if you still believe that when you get through your first year.”

Anthony Jr. grinned. “You said when, not if.”

“You should go home and take care of those cuts. You want me to tell your father?”

“I can handle it.” Anthony Jr. stared at him, plucked at his lip. “Rakkim…sir, how could you leave the Fedayeen? Why would you want to?”

Rakkim smiled. There was hope for the kid yet.