Chapter Twenty-two

“How’d you shut down the riot so fast?” I asked General Archdeacon. Lee’s impromptu brigade had barely finished mop-up operations when the soldiers of Fort Sheridan returned.

Back at the riot, I’d sent Tyrone to get Doc and as many men as he could. They were supposed to join us in the storming of Fort Sheridan. When I didn’t see them among Lee’s commandos, I’d assumed Tyrone had failed to get support.

“Your friends Doc and Tyrone. They were amazing,” said Archdeacon. “Sterling got up to the microphone with the champ, Rocky Graziano, pleaded for rioters to stop. They called for tolerance, more articulate than I would have given boxers credit for. Hell, they did a better job than I think Ike would’ve.” He held his hand to the side of his mouth. “Keep that between us, okay?”

A shackled Amanda Orchid was being led away when Tyrone arrived and caught sight of her. He busted through the soldiers trying to hold him at bay

“That’s her! That’s the one that took Merlot!”

I stepped in front of the freight train before he got himself in trouble.

“Don’t worry, Tyrone. I’m sure she’s back at the base just fine.”

“No, she not,” came Lee’s voice as he joined us with Ream. “We check everything out. No songbird.”

Tyrone pushed me aside like a mosquito. He grabbed Orchid right out of the hands of the two soldiers escorting her. “Where is she? Where’s Merlot?”

While she should have been afraid for her life, Orchid laughed.

“Isn’t it ironic? Noel Glass’s old flame with his new one. I’m sure they’ll have lots to talk about.” She continued to cackle in that insane way people do when they have nothing left to lose.

Tyrone dropped her and turned on me. “New flame? I’m gonna kill you!”

“Hey!” I said. “I didn’t want her caught up in this any more than you did.” I looked over to the former dean of NMIT. “Amanda, where are they?”

“You’re the dick. You figure it out.”

I don’t think she meant detective.

“I can help,” said Lee. He pulled a small vial from another hidden pocket and popped its lid. I could see the trails of green smoke coming from the container as he waved it under Orchid’s nose. She went slack, her eyes closed, and her lips curled into a slow smile. She giggled like a schoolgirl and hummed to herself.

“Okay, Glass,” said Lee. “Ask her anything.”

I knelt down by her. “Where’s Tangie and Merlot?”

Orchid giggled again. “Oh, Noel. Noelly, Noelly, Noelly. She’s going to do what you couldn’t fourteen years ago. Tangie is going to change the world. For really-reals this time.”

“You’re not making sense.”

She opened her glazed-over eyes and looked up. “What a big, pretty moon. Don’t you remember, Noelly? The moon? She’s going to do it. She’s going to put us back in control of this God-awful world.”

I followed her gaze to the moon. Fourteen years ago, I was going to create radar so powerful it could track planes anywhere over the United States. I was going to do this by bouncing it off the moon. Tangie was going to do the same thing, to my horror, with her MASER wave. She was going to wipe out everyone who didn’t have Atlantean DNA. It was her endgame. Wipe the board clean.

“When!”

“Soon. Because I failed, and I failed because of you. Always you. I wanted to be the one, the one to seduce you, but nooo! It had to be Tangie. You were too important. Too many big bad ideas in that head of yours.”

Lee’s potion worked too well. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I shook her. “Where? Where is this going to happen?” I followed her eyes again. She was looking at the truck, the DBC broadcasting truck.

“Ream?” I asked without turning my head, “What did you come up with on DuMar Broadcasting?”

“They have a broadcast station in Bloomingdale.”

“That’s forty miles from here. And she’s already got a head start.”

“If we can get the coordinates, we can send a ballistic missile and destroy the whole complex,” Archdeacon suggested.

Both Tyrone and I said, “No!”

Archdeacon remained adamant. “Glass, the fate of the world or one innocent?”

Getting into a command car, I knew he was right.

“I’m going to go for her. Target the place.” I did some quick calculations. I looked at a clock. It was twenty after eleven and chances were she’d use the beam at midnight, when the moon was at its zenith.

“If you don’t hear from me in forty minutes, do it.”

There were protests as I started up the car. Lee jumped in before I pulled away.

“No way you leave me out of this one.”

I gave him my best smile. “Glad to have you along, Wan. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

* * *

The DuMar Broadcasting Company didn’t own their stations; they rented them. Affiliates would take a network feed and choose what shows to broadcast to the viewers. Comedians were the kings of television with serious actors keeping to the silver screen (or on those rare times, visiting variety shows.) Names such as Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, and Bob Hope were known in every household. I didn’t own a TV, but I had Lee, who picked an unusual time to fill me in on who and what was popular.

“When Uncle Miltie wear a dress, he so funny. I think he look like my wife, only taller. Think he will be there?”

“You know this is just a relay station, right? They don’t film anything here. It’s usually shot in New York or L.A.”

“Bozo the Clown in Chicago.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Bozo is in Chicago.”

“He be there?”

“No, he won’t. His show doesn’t come on for six hours.”

“Oh.” Lee was disappointed.

“What?”

“If I die tonight, I want meet real star first. Then no regrets.”

“And you’d be happy with Bozo?”

“Wise man once said, ‘beggar cannot be chooser.’ I think it important to die with no regrets.”

“You met the president! What more do you want?”

“Yeah, but he not on TV ’cept when something bad gonna happen.”

I shook my head. “Why does any of this matter right now?”

“When family burn incense at my shrine, they can say, ‘He good for nothing, but he knew Bozo personally.’”

“How about we stop my psychotic ex-girlfriend from murdering a couple million people, and then we’ll see about meeting Bozo.”

Lee beamed and pulled out a black hood from a pocket.

It left room for his eyes but nothing else. “You going to tell me who you are?”

He slipped the hood over his head obscuring all but his eyes. “You introduce me to Bozo, we yap later.”

I pulled over about two hundred yards from the entrance. I had no plan.

Stealth wouldn’t work as the relay sat in the center of a freshly mowed field. Technocrat soldiers vigilantly patrolled the parameter, as they had back at Fort Sheridan. I had no lake to use for an approach. No plane to drop in from above. I saw very few options.

I began to discuss this with Lee, but found him already gone.

Okay, that’s creepy.

“Lee? Lee?”

I looked in the backseat. I poked my head out the window.

Vanished.

Again.

He had pulled another Houdini.

“Oh, sure. ‘Don’t leave me behind,’ he says. I’m going to put a leash on that dog when I find him.”

Keeping to the drainage ditch, I considered cutting the power to the building, but Tangie wouldn’t be that stupid. She’d already have a backup generator in place.

As I got closer, something spoke to my bones. Maybe it was the fictional Atlantean DNA. I could feel it. I didn’t need to sneak in. I was expected. I looked at my watch and estimated how much time I had left. I returned to the car, got in and started it back up. I drove the rest of the way, stopping at the gate. After a flashlight in the eyes, I was waved through.

I pulled up to a small, brick building with a large tower sat behind it. Unlike most broadcast towers, this one had a giant concave dish attached to it. It pointed directly at the moon.

At the front door, two guards patted me down, taking only my gun. My pocketknife seemed no concern to them. There were no guards inside.

I passed through a small reception area and found the room I needed. A glass window allowed me to see inside the broadcast booth. Tangie sat in a chair, fiddling with knobs and dials. The board looked almost identical to the one I had sat behind at NMIT the day of the experiment fourteen years ago.

The day my life changed.

I tried the door, but knew it would be locked. She looked up and her expression showed she was not happy. Maybe it was the fist-shaped bruise on her face.

The girls must have had a talk.

Tangie motioned for me to look to my left. Another door sat propped open. I could hear the hum of the magnetron and reasoned that was the power room. I walked over to the door, stepped through, and found Merlot, bound to a chair.

I went to her, and the door closed behind me. I didn’t have to check it to know it’d never open again under my power.

Merlot looked at me as if I was some sort of idiot. Maybe I was.

“Noel, this is a trap. You knew that, right? The bitch wants to kill you.”

“Don’t they all?” I cut her free of her ropes, and she rubbed circulation back into her wrists. Then she hugged me.

“I like your new girlfriend, Noel. She’s got spunk!” I looked for Tangie’s voice and found it came through a speaker on the control board. “Oh, don’t bother trying the switches. They’re all disabled.”

“Stop this! We’re not playing a game here, Tangie. You’re talking about committing mass murder.”

“And you just came running in to save them all, did you? No, you came to save her. You couldn’t care about the rest of the world.”

I placed my palms on the glass separating us. “I do. I do care. About them. About her. And about you. This doesn’t have to end this way.”

She shook her head. “What? With you dying? Or maybe you think we’ll all die? No, not you, Noel. You are not the type to lay down your king and commit suicide. You must think there’s some way to win.” She ran a hand through her long, red hair. “The only one walking away from this is me, Noel. Me and the chosen few. You could have been one of them. We could have been the new Gods!”

The fire in her eyes might have looked like passion to some, but it reeked of insanity to me.

“You were already slated for crashville, baby, long before this started. And I am walking out of here. I’m taking Merlot with me. And if I need to, I’ll throw your crazy ass over my shoulders.”

She cackled again. I was losing her. “I don’t see how. You’re unarmed. The army will never get here in time. The MASER is ready to go. All I have to do is turn up the power and flip the broadcast switch. I’ve made it so your side will flood with microwave radiation and no matter what you’ve done to slow the effect, it won’t be enough to keep you from bursting at the seams like overcooked hot dogs.”

“And you?”

Tangie waved above her head. “I had this room lined with lead. C.J. wasn’t the only one who could build a vault.” She then stepped over to the window and placed her palm against it, mimicking mine. “This is a specially designed Atlantean glass hybrid you’re looking through, something we ‘brewed’ up at the bottling side of Atlantic Brewing. Stronger than metal, really. You’ll never break it in time. It’s over, Noel. I’ve finally beaten you!”

Tangie had made one fatal flaw, I suddenly realized. Something she couldn’t have accounted for. I had her and I began to smile. Hell, I gloated. Merlot looked at me as if I’d gone as looney as the redhead. I took her hand below line of sight and squeezed, letting her know everything would be all right.

“Oh, Tangie. You still don’t know how to play chess, do you? You’ve had fourteen years to learn, and you’re still hung up on the fundamentals.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? Do tell? How did I fail?”

I pulled out a chair and motioned for Merlot to sit. Her expression showed concern, but she acquiesced. I stood behind another chair, my hands gripping the back.

“You use the same pieces. Once I knew who your pieces were, it was easy to take them out, one by one. Let’s lay it out.

“Orchid. The missile strategy failed and she’s behind bars.

“Your board of Atlanteans? Being rounded up by Federals across the country. A similar thing is happening in Russia. They’re turning on you, flipping. We’ll have the whole Technocrat organization rounded up by morning.

“Your assassins, the Hero Twins? Dead. You took all the strongest pieces and used them as pawns, to be discarded. I did that. I took them out. Me. And you know how I did it?”

The explosion that rocked the building couldn’t have been timed better. Wan Lee hadn’t specifically told me he’d brought explosives, but I was just beginning to understand how the guy thought.

Tangie looked around frantically, as if we were in an earthquake.

“That’s your tower. No way to send the signal to the moon. No MASER, Tangie. Not anymore. And I did it by playing GO while you were busy playing chess. For every piece I took down of yours, I built a wall of friends and resources. I removed all the places on the board you could play, until all you had was one piece, while I had hundreds.”

Lights flickered and Tangie’s eyes went wild. She went to turn the dial to fry Merlot and me. Before she could get it to full, I had taken the second chair in our room and, with my Bogdanov-enhanced strength, smashed it through the unbreakable glass window.

Shards flew in Tangie’s face, and she raised her hands to protect herself. Stepping back, I jumped through the gap and rolled. Tangie launched at me and I backhanded her. Her strengthened blood must be running low on juice, because she flew back away from me like a ragdoll. I turned off the magnetron before it reached full power.

Seeing that Merlot was safe, I offered her a hand into the control room.

Tangie curled into a ball, arms wrapped around knees, gently rocking. Venom leaked from every pore as she stared us down.

“You bastard. You stupid, fucking bastard!”

I looked down at her with pity.

Tangie Taylor, the woman I loved, had died fourteen years ago. Whatever this wretched creature was, it wasn’t her.

“Tangie, you should’ve sacrificed your queen. You never learned that, did you?”

We left the room. I closed the door to the control room, smashing the lock before hustling Merlot out the front door.

There were bodies of Technocrat soldiers all around our car. Lee sat the backseat, motioning for us to go. He mimed a missile and a big explosion.

We were back on our way to Fort Sheridan by the time the radio station had been obliterated. I only hope that the twisted dreams of a madwoman had been obliterated with it.

The night became orange and thundered with sound of my past mistakes being erased once and for all.

Merlot leaned into me. “You wouldn’t have sacrificed me, would you, Noel?”

I recoiled. “You’ll hit me if I tell you.”

She snuggled in closer. “No, I won’t, sugar. I promise.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Yeah, I had already. I was just going to stall until the rockets hit. I wasn’t planning for either of us to get out alive.”

She hit me.

* * *

The cleanup over the next week was rough. The president made his speech for racial tolerance, but he made it from the White House.

The Technocrat Board of Atlantean Trustees had been arrested and new, non-Technocrat leadership took charge of their individual companies. I had been surprised to discover that each of the businesses were primarily oblivious to their CEOs’ secret dealings.

Rocky Graziano took down Tyrone Sterling, Merlot’s brother, in the seventh round, but at least he paid hard for it. Lee and I watched ringside, and we’d never seen such a balanced fight in our lives.

The Nikes were settled in at Fort Sterling, ready for the next great threat to America. Over all, thirty reservists gave their lives protecting them; not of them had one surrendered.

Lee and I saw Sacha, the Russian doctor and reluctant spy, off to the airport with his wards. Two coffins, draped with Russian flags, rolled on to the Aeroflot jet.

“Now it is time to go home and mourn.” He said, resignedly.

I placed a hand on Sacha’s shoulder.

“Yeah. Vincent—Vadim—came through for us all, in the end. He was a truly big man, not in size, but in heart.”

“Da.”

Lee added, “I burn incense for him by picture of Mt. Fuji. He like that.”

Sacha grinned. “Thank you, comrade.”

We all shook hands, and Sacha made to leave but turned back to me. “I do not know if what I say will be consolation or not, but Alexander Bogdanov did many unethical things, as well as making many scientific breakthroughs.”

“I’m sure he did, but what—”

Sacha held up his hand to pause me. “When he was given Lenin’s brain, he tried many different ways to bring him back. One such thing was to grow Lenin new body. He was sure he could create new premier from cells of old premier’s body. He called it ‘cloning.’”

My mouth went dry. “Did it work?”

Sacha shook his head. “Not that we in secret police could find. But that was long time ago.” He gave me a compassionate nod of his head, as if he’d said everything he’d come to say. “If that helps.”

I think it did. It gave me an idea to focus on that wasn’t so depressing.

We shook hands once more, he clasping my elbow in a sign of affection. He exited the boarding area and returned to his fatherland.

Lee and I visited the studios of WGN later that morning. Wan got to meet Bozo the Clown. He also ran into Milton Berle, who was doing an interview at the station. Lee ran up to him and said, “Wow! You look much better than my wife in person.”

Uncle Miltie leaned over and with a grin said, “Security?”

Lee and I returned to Industry City triumphantly. Wan with his two signatures and me, free of guilt, for the first time in many years.