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Axler, James - Earth Blood 02 - Deep Trek.htm
It was no surprise to her when the news came through only seconds later that a
four-by-four pickup had burst through the main gate, leaving a number of
blazing vehicles behind it, cutting their transportation capability by two-thirds.
When her skinny assistant eventually appeared at her door, looking as if he'd just
developed an ulcer, she had even managed a thin-lipped smile designed to
reassure him. It scared him even more.
"Not your fault," she said. "But it's someone's fault, isn't it?"
"Sure is, Chief," he admitted, eager to deflect the blame, his fingers playing
nervously with the badge on his lapel.
"Whose?"
He had survived relatively unscarred the last few months of Flagg's rule, and had
already learned the different ways of Margaret Tabor. She didn't mind honest
admissions of failure, but it was better not to try to wriggle your way out of
trouble by deceit or by lying to her.
"Can't have been Thomas. Someone opened his cell after they butchered the
guards."
He laid some instant pix of the scene on her desk, one by one, as though playing
some macabre game of patience. She leaned forward and scanned them, face
showing no emotion.
"Something is very wrong here," she said.
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"No evidence of anyone else being involved. Just this…" He consulted a small
notepad. "Veronica Poole. Teacher aged about sixty. From Fort Worth. The
guard, Joe, was supposed to be hooking her. Doesn't figure."
"Woman of sixty, alone and unarmed, did this—" She waved her hand at the
livid photographs. "Got a big man up on her own. Gouged out his eyes. She
somehow overcame him. Got his gun… what was he carrying?"
He rifled the pages. "Oh, yeah. Something else odd. The old woman had a Port
Royale machine pistol. Sixteen round, like an Uzi. Joe had it. Seems he also took
one of a pair of matching Heckler & Koch P-111s that she'd been carrying. Nine-
millimeter automatics. Fifteen round. Other guard had a standard .38."
"Wait, wait. This old woman had weapons of that quality on her and nobody told
me about it?"
"I didn't know, Chief."
Margaret Tabor nodded slowly. She reached for a yellow pad and then stopped.
"Who interrogated her?"
"Miller and McCabe. I checked."
"And neither of them thought that it was odd to find… Let it pass. This is spilled
milk. Bring me the folder on Mistress Poole and the black file on people we're
supposed to be looking out for. Right away."
MCCABE SAT on the floor, holding a kerchief to his broken nose, trying not to
bleed on the carpet of her office. He was white as parchment, hands trembling.
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Axler, James - Earth Blood 02 - Deep Trek.htm
"This is something very serious. And you missed it."
"I'm sorry, Chief," he mumbled through the blood and splintered teeth.
"No," Margaret Tabor said very quietly. "Mistake like that doesn't get you sorry,
McCabe. It gets you dead."
AFTER THE MAN had been taken away to the narrow passage with the rusting
iron hooks in its wall, Margaret Tabor sat and looked at the slim file on Nanci
Simms.
The light blue eyes stared back at her from a slightly blurred snatched
photograph. It was a street in small-town America, and the woman was glancing
sideways, as though she'd somehow detected the click of a hidden camera. From
the car that appeared in the picture, it looked as if it had been taken several years
ago around the mid 2030s.
There was surprisingly little information on her. No birth date, no birthplace.
Nothing on parents. No home. No friends. No social security number or bank
details, though it did mention her most common pseudonym of Veronica Poole
and the phony job record of English literature teacher in Fort Worth.
Height of five feet eleven was followed by a question mark, showing it was only
a guess. Same with the weight and age. Approximately sixty years old, it said.
The rest was a jumbled mass of supposition and partial information. What came
through was a dangerous woman who'd been around a lot. Traveled in Europe
and extensively in the Far and Middle East. Was believed to have flourished as
an undercover assassin for several years. Skilled in armed- and unarmed-combat
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Axler, James - Earth Blood 02 - Deep Trek.htm
techniques.
"You got that bit right," said the chief, laying the folder back down.
Someone who might have worked for Zelig… who might well have known
where the opposition headquarters of Aurora was hidden.
It was bitterly frustrating to have had this lethal woman safe and snug in a cell. A
chicken ready for the plucking. And then to lose her…
The chief of the Hunters of the Sun glanced at her wrist chron. Just forty-five
minutes had passed since Nanci Simms had butchered two experienced guards
and broken out of the compound with an important prisoner. She wouldn't have
gotten too far away in less than an hour.
The red button on her desk intercom brought an instant response from her
assistant. "Yes, Chief?"
"Get the chopper out."
"Now?"
"No. I thought around about the end of February would be a real good time."
"Sorry, Chief."
"Being sorry doesn't butter the turnips, does it?"
"No."
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"I want a search for that woman. We know what she's driving. Probably she'll
have headed north. Toward where we think… Then again, she might try and
second- or third-guess us. Tell the pilot to sector the land for… for fifty miles
around."
"That takes us to the hills."
"Yes."
"We don't have too much gas for the chopper at this particular temporal window,
Chief. Difficult to get our hands on more of it right now."
"We'll manage."
"Sure, Chief."
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