I wrapped my arms around her. I didn't know why. I just did. She succumbed to the hug, squeezing me back, our bond growing as tight as any true father-daughter bond. With Maggie, there was a chance. A chance that she could actually change things. Chief Paul Chang was a great man, and I'd loved him like a brother. He'd had ideals once, too. He wanted to change things. You couldn't live on this backwater planet and not want to change things. But he'd had to put those ideals on hold in order to get ahead. We both did. First we had to seize control. Only then would we have the power to go about instituting change. It took us fifteen years to get there. Fifteen years of bribes and frame jobs. Fifteen years of beatdowns and executions. We were the most ruthless sons of bitches you ever saw. You got a nasty habit? We cut off your supply. You got a pretty face? We knock out your teeth. You got a gambling problem? We buy out your debt and become your new loan sharks. You're a fag? We out you. You're having an affair? We film you. You're a fucking saint? Well, then we just plant shit on you.
Fifteen years.
By the time we got there, right and wrong had become faraway concepts, nothing more than unproven theories. Such things were only good for academic discussion. They had no place in the real world.
But with Maggie, it wasn't too late. She still had a heart. I had to protect her from the ugliness-the backstabbing, the violence, the perversion, the greed, all of it. I remembered the look on her face when she'd told me to dunk the zookeeper. That face wasn't her. She'd seen and done enough. I couldn't let her get corrupted any further. My soul was already damned. I could take the burden for her. She was family.
I'd be her guardian angel.
Or guardian devil.
She broke the hug. “I'm going with you,” she insisted.
“No. You can't be involved in this, not if you're going to be chief one day. From now on the dirty work is my job,” I said. “Let me handle it. I'll make the whole thing go away.”
She studied me from out of the shadows. “You're going to help me take over KOP?”
“I won't stop until you're chief.”
“It could take years, Juno.”
“I know. I'm in it for the long haul, okay? But right now, I need you to go back home. I'll call you.”
“No way, Juno. After all this, how can I just go home? I have to see this through.”
“Listen, Maggie, from this point on, it's all about protecting your plausible deniability. You have to take the long view. You can't clean up KOP until you get to the top, and you won't get to the top going out on assassination runs with me. You can't take the risk. Just let me do what I do.”
She stayed silent for long seconds. “I wanted to do this clean,” she finally said.
“I know you did. But there's no other way. Please, Maggie, just let me do what I do.”
I fought through the scrub, vines snatching at my ankles. I kicked through, ripping up clumpy root systems that dragged along behind me. I was on the south side of the Zoo, crossing through an open field that was overdue for a slash and burn.
George told us that they'd snuck the inmates out through the kitchen. There were three separate cargo bays on the south side. Which one was closest to the kitchen I had no idea, but I was certain that the Zoo's mess hall was on the south side.
I stopped short of the road that ran alongside the south walls, and far short of the reach of the tower lights. From here, I had a good view of the three bays, all of which had their doors sealed shut. I took the lase-rifle off my shoulder. I had no intention of getting into a duel with Ian. I'd take him out at long range.
I kneeled on the ground, a blanket of weeds bending under my knees. Targeting could be a problem with my shaky karate-chop hand. I experimented a bit, trying different ways of holding the rifle before settling on lying face down in the weeds with the rifle jammed against my left shoulder, the barrel resting on a rock. I kept my right hand in the weeds where it could shake all it wanted without affecting my aim. This could work.
I kept my eyes on the cargo bays, waiting for him to come out. Something was biting me, down on my ankles. I tried to make it stop my rubbing my ankles together like a cricket. Where is he? Was I too late? No, I thought. Ian had gotten a head start on me, but he wouldn't have raced the river the way I did. He had a dead body with him. He wouldn't have wanted to attract any attention to himself. He would've taken the trip slow and casual. Then he would've needed help carrying Adela's body up the riverbank. No, he couldn't have come and gone already. He was still inside. He had to be.
Maybe not. I might've spent too much time talking to Maggie on the pier. I caught some movement in the corner of my eye. There he is. Damn. He was coming from the wrong direction. I was expecting him to come out of the Zoo, but he was coming from the river. I was wrong about him needing help carrying the body up the riverbank. He had the body bag draped over his right shoulder and seemed to be doing just fine without any help other than the 'roids raging through his body. I was surprised I'd beaten him here. He must've made a couple stops on the way. Or maybe he'd been waiting all this time for his zookeeper accomplices to give him the green light to bring the body in.
He was crossing the same field I'd crossed, but from a different angle. I was facing the wrong way. I rolled over once, twice, reorienting my body in the process. Without a rock to rest the rifle on, I used my right forearm as the fulcrum on which I could pivot my aim. The balance was all off, but it would have to do.
My heart was fucking pounding. I told myself to calm down; I had plenty of time, so just calm down and do it right. I slowly swiveled the rifle until I had him in the scope. I could see him clearly with the night vision, his smug face, his arrogant stride. I couldn't keep the crosshairs level, but it didn't matter. I didn't need them to line up perfectly. I fired the targeting device, a bug-sized heat seeker that only required an accuracy of ten meters. It squealed out across the weeds, honing in on his body heat. He heard it and knew what it was. He dropped the body bag and sprinted back the way he had come. He yelped when the heat seeker hit him, not from the pain but from what he knew would be coming next. The heat seeker itself didn't carry a deadly payload. It was built for speed and maneuverability. It dug into his flesh, deep like a tick, and then it began broadcasting a signal back to the lase-rifle. All I had to do was hold the trigger down and swing the rifle in his general direction, or better yet, aim way out ahead of him and just hold the weapon steady, waiting for him to cross the rifle's path. When the rifle locked onto the heat seeker's signal, it would fire a single pulse at the speed of light.
He stopped running. He was a dead man, and he knew it. “Juno!” he yelled. “Is that you?”
Damn straight it is.
“Juno! Where are you?” His voice came rolling across the jungle brush, desperate, pleading. I pulled my finger off the trigger and watched him through the scope. He had his shirt pulled up, and he was digging into his side with his fingernails, trying to get to the heat seeker. “Juno!” he cried. “JUNO! Don't do this, Juno. Please! Please!” He gave up on the heat seeker and dropped to his knees. “P-please!” he wailed. His face was all wrinkled up, a giant, bawling baby's face.
Looks like Ian hasn't changed so much after all. In the end, the guy is still a pussy.
I held down the trigger and swept the barrel from one side to the other until the automated firing system let loose. People always imagined the burst barreling across the open space like one of the spokes of an exploding Roman candle. But the pulse moved faster than the eye could track. One instant Ian was groveling on his knees and the next, he was blown back in a burst of bright energy.
I stood up and swung the rifle over my shoulder. I reached down to scratch my ankles, and then I crossed the fifty meters, stopping when I reached Ian's body. I bent over the corpse and pulled up the pant legs. Nothing. I rolled him face up. He was crisped beyond recognition. Twisted metal poked out from his biceps, his freakish strength enhanced by mechanical implants. Evidently, the steroids hadn't been enough for him to erase his inner weakling.
I looked over at the Zoo. I heard no sirens, saw no searchlights. The guards in the towers hadn't seen anything. They'd been facing the other way, looking toward the inside just like they were supposed to.
I pulled Ian's smoldering shirt open. There, inside a charred leather sheath, was the blade. It was hot, too hot to touch. I used my left hand and tried to snatch it out fast without ever really grabbing hold. It took three tries before I managed to pull it free and fling it into the weeds.
I pulled the penlight from my pocket and shined it on the knife. It was stained with blood, Raj Gupta's blood. True to form, Ian was carrying it on his person, ready to plant it on me as soon as the cops nabbed me. I picked it up and dropped it two more times before it had finally cooled enough to hold.
