AN ENTIRE CANCER WARD FILLED with children was reason enough to vilify Buford Bone. A world full of such wards was reason to kill him. Kichi’s sons in imminent danger was reason, however gallingly, to rescue the oily prick while doing as much collateral damage to Thoom, vampiric, and Bone enterprises as possible. The stock exchange would rue this day.
Kichi had gone old school. They knew where Buford wasn’t, and it was a given that wherever he was, Buford would do his damndest to throw up flares of a sort.
Kichi sat with Foom and young Michael—under the watchful eye of Asme Du Ikare—to get a feel for the young man’s abilities. Michael Foom’s mind was like a bee: if you planted a stinger barb in your mind of who you wanted stung, his hive could find them.
Also, he could start fires.
Michael Foom was ultra cool.
It wasn’t easy, and Bubba and Michael had to mentally elbow aside Buford’s own psychic search teams any time he and his son felt close to a solid lead. They’d be damned if they’d lead them to him. But inside the chaotic stream of the ether-mind they eventually found him.
Buford had formed a huge bubble of null thought around his head. There were only a handful of people, including psychics, who knew the technique and were brave enough to do it. Buford’s ace-in-the-hole rescue failsafe was an appeal to his enemies.
There were times Kichi dreaded getting out of bed in the mornings.
He’d admonished the boys for taking the fight public. He just might have to apologize for that.
Jefferson Avenue was one of Detroit’s major arteries, an eight-lane two-way from city through suburbs. Deep beneath it and somewhat under the bordering Detroit River (robotic carp kept eyes on it at all times) was a Thoom wormhole. The terrestrial kind. Buford was inside it.
Several Agents of Change kept Jefferson blocked. The underground maglev trains weren’t going anywhere; huge polarity disruptors made sure of that. The Detroit Police Department would not take kindly to huge polarity disruptors blocking midday traffic on Jefferson Avenue.
Three spokes ran out from the underground bubble. Kichi left one avenue of escape open: the maglev tunnel under the debris and silt of the river heading northeast to nearby Canada. He was certain a train was racing toward him that very moment. The Detroit side of things had taken care of the operation flawlessly. Time for Toronto to return the favor, which was where he was.
He ate the last of his pancakes sitting outside the Golden Griddle, a favorite breakfast stop each time he visited Toronto. “Everything ready on Yonge Street?” he said. A button-sized comm at his collar relayed the query.
“There’s a disruptor team below the subway. Inside Man’s cleared the station and disabled trains a kilometer in either direction. We expect they’ll be dressed in their best furs for confrontation,” came a woman’s mature Southern drawl.
“Be prepared,” said Kichi.
“We’re armed for bear.”
“They’ll be close enough for you to disable them in fifteen minutes. Cleavage?”
“Yes, sir?” said the mature drawl.
“Have Thighs keep our communications open. They’ll try to disrupt. Let theirs stay open though. I want as much chaos for the Thoom as possible.” Kichi Malat wiped his mouth, left money for both bill and tip, and stood. “On my way.” The people he passed topside going about their magnificent lives had no idea the stately old man ambling by possessed enough chi to level a skyscraper.
Kichi entered the Yonge Street subway station. Agents of Change in police garb guarded it from public entry. This ruse wouldn’t last long though.
A short escalator ride down, and he was underground.
They had already accessed the utility catacombs under the subway tunnel, then lasered a hole to the deep level below that (where the Thoom wormhole was) and a final hole through the sequoia thick plascrete and steel maglev tunnel. A burly, hairy man emerged from this hole as Kichi entered.
“They’re still five minutes out,” said Thighs.
Kichi nodded. “No sign they know we’re here yet?”
“None, but I’m sure they’re on full alert. We left only the one escape route.”
“Which is why I’m going to drop this tunnel on top of them. There’s going to be a lot of shooting; I prefer it remain inside the train. I want Buford alive. Focums on maximum stun, maximum dispersal.”
“Relayed,” said a woman with marvelous laugh lines and ice-blue eyes coming to stand with them. Cleavage. She stood beside Thighs.
Kichi had considered using Bubba and Michael to incapacitate the train’s complement, but as soon as the word “use” entered his mind he put all thought of Michael Foom out of his head. This wasn’t that child’s war. Cleavage was forty-seven years old, divorced, estranged from her family, former Air Force intelligence. Thighs, a former semi-pro linebacker who’d turned his back on sports and the possibility of fame for the mystic teachings of Po Yum Ken and an almost obsessive drive for language acquisition. They had lived their outer lives to their satisfaction, had assumed ownership of the second world in total and private volition, and fought the New War out of necessity. As Agents of Change they knew truth was only worth something if an element of beauty could be found in it, not the heavier, leaden element of profit. Kichi would be damned if he’d take that same discovery away from Michael Foom. He already felt thrice damned for the boy’s involvement in this idiocy at all.
“Bullets,” Kichi had Cleavage relay next, “are our last resort.”