Rogue clone (18 page)

“This new strain was developed specifically for commando operations. They are quick, think
independently, and are programmed to kill.”

“That sounds an awful lot like Liberator clones,” an officer calls out.
Huang laughs. “Klyber’s Liberators were never in the same league,” he says with a confident
laugh. “Klyber’s clumsy attempt at clone-making may have been enough for the Mogats . . .”

“Is that so?” asks General Smith. “I understand that you lost a squad of ten clones in an
operation in Scutum-Crux.”

Klyber sits this battle out, preferring to let his allies ask questions and pose charges. He watches
quietly from his seat, smiling as he follows the direction of the conversation.

“They were killed running drills on a planet called Ravenwood,” Huang admits. “Over a
four-year period, we ran hundreds of drills and only lost one squad.”

“And how many Marines did you kill off?” the Marine general asks, sounding angry.

“I’d guess in the neighborhood of five to six hundred. Ravenwood was a major success. We sent
squads of ten clones against platoons of forty-two Marines, and we only lost once. Most drills
ended without the loss of a single commando.

“We also ran tests in a tough-man competition in Hawaii.”

“Sad Sam’s Palace?” asks the Marine.

Huang nods. Hawaii is a popular vacation and retirement spot for high-ranking officers and Sad
Sam’s Palace attracts military types like a magnet. “I suspect many of you are familiar with the
Palace’s tough-man challenge. If there’s a better testing ground for hand-to-hand combat, I have
not found it.

“We had a clone fighting under the name Adam Boyd entered in that competition. He racked up a
record of two hundred and fifty wins and one loss.”

“Two hundred wins and one loss?” General Kellan observes. “How do we get our hands on the
guy who beat him? That’s who we should be cloning.”

The last time I visited Honolulu I stayed in a vacation home with a courtyard and a well-stocked kitchen. I came with a pal from my platoon, Vince Lee. He was a corporal, I had just been promoted to sergeant. I met a beautiful blonde named Kasara on the beach and we had a fling. She had a friend named Jennifer, so Vince got to share in the fun.

That was a vacation. This time I came on business.

Freeman and I drove out of town after visiting the Palace. We found a wooded area and pulled our car off the road. Then I curled up in the backseat for five hours and he pulled guard duty. Living with combat armor, you learn how to make yourself comfortable in all sorts of situations. Lying in the fetal position, with my knees propped up against my gut, I slept very soundly until 4:00 A.M., when Freeman and I switched places.

Massive as he was, Freeman breathed heavily in his sleep. He took long hard pulls of air, then exhaled in three-second drafts. His breathing sounded like waves rolling in and out of shore. We were up in the slopes just north of town. I held Freeman’s pistol on my lap, well out of sight in case anyone passed by.

The sun rose at 0800. Sitting behind the wheel, feeling sweaty, with stubble covering my cheeks, I watched the sunrise. I watched the violet sky turn copper colored and then eventually blue. Down below us, the town filled with shadows as the streetlamps faded. Honolulu was a tourist town, but it had its share of traffic. I watched thousands of cars roll into the city in stop-and-go traffic. From my vantage point, they looked like a column of ants.

I did not notice when the current of Freeman’s breathing vanished behind me. The sunrise had just finished, and I watched mynah birds nimbly hopping back and forth on the branches of a nearby tree.

“You ready to go?” Freeman asked as he lay folded on the backseat of the car. It was early in the morning and his voice rumbled more softly than ever. His words came in a thunderous whisper.

“Good morning to you,” I said, knowing that the humor would be wasted on Freeman.

“Give me a moment.” With this, the big man reached across the seat and opened the door by his legs. He stretched his legs out and found the ground with his feet, then he sat up just enough to grab the edges of the open doorway and pull himself out. Once in the open air, he stretched and yawned. The sunlight reflected in a dull streak across his shaved head as he unfurled his long arms and rotated his back. Next, he walked into the woods to relieve himself. When he came back, I handed him his pistol and did the same.

We stopped at a drive-in restaurant and bought a couple of greasy egg sandwiches which we ate as we drove, passing signs with mostly incomprehensible names like Waipahu and eventually Wahiawa. We passed a defunct naval base called “Pearl Harbor.” The base was enormous. We headed out of town and into the countryside where farmers grew pineapples. The pineapples grew in immaculate rows that made the landscape appear as if someone had raked an enormous comb across it. The pineapples themselves were knee-high clumps with football-shaped fruits in the center, like some sort of alien cactus.

We drove deep into the farming country where sugarcane fields stretched out along the sides of the road. We passed large stretches where only scrub trees grew. Antique railroad tracks ran along the side of the road at one point, and we crossed a steel-framed bridge that spanned a stream. I thought the countryside was beautiful. Freeman seemed not to notice it at all.

We passed Wheeler Air Force base. It was dark and abandoned. We did not stop. A few miles farther, we approached another military complex called Schofield Barracks, a defunct Army base. Schofield Barracks looked a lot like Wheeler and the defunct Naval base at Pearl Harbor, just an empty campus with sturdy two-and three-story buildings. From the road it looked a good deal larger than Wheeler but not even half the size of the Pearl Harbor facility. There were no immediate signs of life, but there was one difference at Schofield Barracks—the main gate was wide open. A length of chain link fence blocked the main gate of Wheeler and some of the gates around Pearl Harbor were bricked shut.

“You think they’re expecting us?” I asked.

“Looks that way,” Freeman said.

We originally planned to drive by the base a few times before going in. I did not know about Freeman, but I felt a strong desire to avoid stumbling into a hive filled with Adam Boyd clones. Seeing the gates left open did not deter Ray Freeman. He was not the type of man who looked for trouble, but he did not back down from it. He turned into the entryway. Finding our way across the base was easy enough. Most of the roads were overgrown with weeds, but one artery was trimmed and neat. The sidewalks in this part of the base gleamed in the sunlight and the asphalt on the streets was not cracked. We passed a courtyard in which the weeds had only started to grow wild. The grass was knee-high and the trees wanted trimming. We found a parking lot in which the stalls were clearly painted, and Freeman parked.

“We’re supposed to go there,” Freeman said, pointing straight ahead. The building was three stories tall. Its architecture was a cross between twentieth century American military and sixteenth century Spanish, combining rounded arches and thick stucco walls. The sun was behind this building and its verandas were buried in shadow. Had there been lights on in the building, we would have seen them. The lights were off but the front doors of the building hung wide open.

“An open invitation,” I said, embarrassed by my own flat humor. Strangely enough, Freeman cracked a small smile at that lame joke. Freeman was a bright and dangerous man with absolutely no sense of humor. Perhaps jokes had to be obvious for him to appreciate them.

I had no gun, but Freeman had his pistol. He carried it in the open now, holding it in his right arm which hung almost limp at his side. He seemed so relaxed.

We walked straight toward the building and right in the door. Leaving the sunshine and entering this shadowy realm was like falling into a deep cave. Even after Freeman found a light switch and turned on the lights, the darkness in this building seemed almost palpable.

Most of the furniture had been removed from this hallway. There were no chairs. A large reception desk wrapped around one doorway. Bulletin boards lined one of the walls. One of these bulletin boards was covered with rows of eight by ten photographs, and the light from the windows reflected on their glossy finish. Beside the bulletin board sat a communications console.

We approached. Five rows of five photographs—twenty-five pictures in all—stretched across the bulletin board. Each of them was a picture of me. There were pictures of me entering Klyber’s C-64

transport right after the evacuation team brought it back into the hangar at the Dry Docks. There was a picture of me climbing out of my Starliner in Honolulu. There was one picture of me in the International Marketplace and two of me and Freeman outside of Sad Sam’s Palace—one of us entering and one of us leaving.

The last row of pictures had been taken this very morning. One showed me pissing outside the car. Another showed me taking a big bite out of my breakfast sandwich. The most recent photograph showed me opening the gate to the barracks. The picture was no more than five minutes old. Whoever placed these pictures had time to print this last photo and escape unnoticed between the time that I opened the gate and the moment we walked in the door. I had been under surveillance and never even knew it.

“I think they are sending you a message,” Freeman said.

The message was obvious. The photographer could just as easily have used a rifle with a sniper scope as a camera with a telephoto lens. I reached over and switched on the communications console. Che Huang’s face appeared on the screen.

“Are you always this slow, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Hello, Huang,” I said. I was supposed to salute him at this point. Instead, I folded my arms and stared into the screen. “What do you want?”

I tried to sound calm, but my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it pulsing. Liberators were known for their primal instincts. Though I was still in control, I could feel the rage building inside me.

“I did not kill Klyber,” Huang said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Not by yourself,” I said. “You had one of your SEAL clones do it for you. I have the video feed from the Dry Docks security. You had a clone on the maintenance team that cleaned Klyber’s transport.”

“I did send a SEAL to visit Klyber’s transport,” Huang admitted. “He installed listening and video devices throughout the ship.”

“I didn’t hear anything about bugs on the transport,“ I said.

“Golan security didn’t look for surveillance equipment. Why don’t you have your friends back at the Dry Docks sweep the main cabin and the late admiral’s room for bugs?”

I did not respond.

“Think about it Harris, why would I kill Klyber?” Huang asked.

“Let’s see . . . petty jealousy, old rivalries, just for the fun of it, to take control of the
Doctrinaire
. . .”

“I already had control of the
Doctrinaire
,” Huang said. “I took it away from Klyber during the summit.”

“I saw the summit. You didn’t have anything,” I said.

“You have been busy,” Huang said. “Perhaps you weren’t watching the feed closely. By the time the summit ended, I had command of the
Doctrinaire
and Klyber had nothing but the fleet.”

“Commanding the fleet isn’t being in control?” I asked.

“Once the battle begins, the ship’s captain makes the decisions. When historians discuss great battles, they won’t bother mentioning the fleet. Klyber knew it. I suppose you saw the old fool sulking once I got my suggestion past Smith and the rest of them. He did not say a word for the rest of the meeting. He just sat there, stewing. I got everything I wanted.

“History will remember me as the secretary of Navy who won the war. I’ll place Robert Thurston over the ship. He’ll be the commander who won the key battle. And Klyber . . . Klyber would have been a footnote. He would have been the man who brought up the rear.

“Harris, if you don’t believe anything else I tell you, believe this—I got what I wanted.”

Huang generally seemed on the verge of a tirade. Not this time. Now he explained himself with gloating patience. I thought about what he said. When the meeting ended, I met Klyber at the door. He looked tired and old and withdrawn. He talked about the members of the Joint Chiefs being too young to understand war, and he said that the fight would not be as easy as they thought.

“Why come to me?” I asked.

“I want your help,” Huang said.

“Help you?” I laughed. “Why should I help you?” Across the hall, Ray Freeman stood as still as a statue, watching Huang. His face showed no emotion. His eyes never left the screen.

“We both want the same thing, Harris. We want to kill the people who killed Klyber. Now that I have the Doctrinaire, I won’t be safe until they are dead.

“You can clear my name while you’re at it. You are not the only one who thinks I sabotaged Klyber’s transport. Once Smith and the other Joint Chiefs see the video feed with that SEAL entering the ship. . .

.” He shook his head.

“I saw your SEAL in the feed. I saw your spy, too,” I said.

“My spy?” Huang asked, sounding frustrated. The ragged edges of his personality began to show.

“What about Halverson? He was in the landing bay, too.”

“Halverson?” Huang repeated.

I did not like or trust Huang, but I had never known him to lie. He was a storm-the-front-gates type of enemy. He did not smile at people he disliked. If he wanted you dead, he let you know it. Except for his political maneuvering on the floor of the summit, I had never seen anything resembling subtlety from the man.

“Wasn’t Rear Admiral Halverson working for you?” I asked.

“Halverson?” Huang asked. “I wouldn’t work with an idiot like Tom Halverson. He was Klyber’s man.”

“He was your spy on the
Doctrinaire
,” I said.

“Johansson was my spy,” Huang said. “I should have thought that was obvious. He sat with my staff during the summit. He flew back to D.C. with me. Leonid Johansson was my eyes on the project.”