Lockdown (Fugitive Marines Book 3) Page 11

  “Except we didn’t make it that far,” said King. “We were ambushed by a team of commandos, who attacked Quinn and his team and kidnapped me.”

  Chelsea nodded. “And one of them had Quinn’s face,” she said. “Agent Zero. We became very well acquainted with him.”

  “So did I.” King scowled. “But I won’t get into that. What I wanted you to know was that I recently learned something very disturbing.”

  “What is it, sir?” Quinn asked, though he was already beginning to suspect, and the thought made his stomach turn.

  “This is hard for me,” said King. “When I was first elected to the UFT war council, I honestly had the best intentions. For decades, millions of people who had grown up in the slums died in wars that, when you came right down to it, were nothing but trade disputes. Nations would come up with reasons for their saber-rattling, but it always boiled down to money in the end. In the Trilateral War, they stopped even pretending to have anything but economic differences.

  “I was told that the summit in Seoul was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin of war. That myself and my counterparts from the other factions were supposed to hammer out a way to not only end the war but to keep new wars from happening.”

  “I remember reading about that,” said Chelsea. “That’s why everyone was so enamored of you back then. You were the man who would finally bring peace.”

  King nodded. “Except some people had other plans. War is very good for business, as we all know, and the people who hired the team that took me in Astana wanted to make sure that I wasn’t there to muck things up.”

  “What do you mean, sir?” asked Quinn.

  “My counterparts in Seoul weren’t interested in ending war,” King growled. “They were in the pockets of people with a lot of money, and they needed to negotiate without me if they wanted to advance their cause. So I disappear—”

  Chelsea’s eyes widened. “And General Drake took your place at that summit!”

  Quinn felt his stomach drop. His mind cast back to the first wake-up cycle during the Jarheads’ long voyage to Oberon One. The vidscreens had been showing Drake’s election win. He’d been voted in as tribune based on the fact that he’d stepped in to fill King’s shoes after what happened in Astana.

  “So what exactly are you saying, sir?”

  “I’m saying that it may have been Toomey’s men who attacked us that day and took me away, but they were hired by Morley Drake.”

  Chelsea cast her eyes downward. “But Drake didn’t have that kind of money, did he?”

  “No,” said King, placing a hand on top of hers. “But I think we both know who did.”

  “Just say it out loud,” she sighed.

  “All right, I suppose you deserve that.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Morley Drake and Oscar Bloom were behind everything. They conspired with people from the other factions to end the current conflict, and to make sure that there would be plenty of future wars that would make them hundreds of billions of credits. And neither of you should trust a single word that comes out of their mouths.”

  17

  Oscar Bloom was fuming as he stalked his way toward the food shuttle in the park where Drake had insisted they hold their meetings. Bloom didn’t enjoy being summoned by anyone, let alone Drake. He’d spent billions to buy his own personal tribune, and by God, he was going to be the one who called the shots.

  He saw Drake’s tall, bony frame standing next to the shuttle in the distance. When he caught the tribune’s eye, he motioned for him to move closer to the cobblestone path that ran along the shore. Drake ambled over, snacking on what was no doubt a packet of Dungeness crab covered in real butter.

  The man’s breeding shows in everything he does, Bloom thought with mild contempt.

  “What is it?” he snapped as he joined Drake next to the rope railing that separated the path from the shore below. “I’m a busy man; I don’t have time for sudden clandestine meetings miles from my office.”

  Drake’s eyes widened and he dropped his polycarbonate fork into the container.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “You called this meeting, not me.”

  “Don’t be stupid! Why would I call you here?”

  “Oh, shit,” Drake hissed.

  “Oh, shit indeed,” said a voice from nearby.

  Bloom spun to see three people stepping out from behind the trunk of an enormous Monterey pine. He recognized one immediately: his daughter, Chelsea. That was enough to make his heart kick like a mule, but then he recognized the two men, neither of whom he’d met personally but both of whom he knew very well.

  The first was Napoleon Quinn.

  The other was Frank King.

  “Oh, my God,” he breathed. It couldn’t be. King was dead. Bloom had paid billions to assure that he was dead.

  Every instinct in him was screaming for him to run away, but his feet were rooted to the spot. He turned to his left and saw that Drake had dropped his container of crab to the ground below, where it was being voraciously fought over by a trio of seagulls.

  “Drake,” Quinn said amiably. “Mr. Bloom, I’m Napoleon Quinn. I believe you know my companions.”

  “Are you insane?” Drake hissed. He was almost apoplectic. “What do you think you’re doing? What the hell is happening?”

  “Captain Quinn is very graciously granting my request to meet with the two of you,” said King. “We have a few things to discuss.”

  Drake glanced around furtively. “This is crazy. How are you alive, Frank?”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” said King. “And I’d appreciate it if you called me Councillor King from now on, Morley, seeing as how we’re not really friends, and you’re not really a tribune.”

  Bloom heard a low moan, and was surprised to realize it was coming from him. Two years of planning, billions in payouts, and now it was all unravelling in front of him, and right in front of his daughter. The fire in her eyes was enough to burn away any hope he might have had left of bringing her back into the family and having her replace Drake as tribune.

  “Steady, Oscar!” Drake snapped. “Don’t have a meltdown on me now! Not here!”

  “How could you?” Chelsea asked, not even attempting to conceal her contempt. “When is it enough for people like you?”

  “Darling—”

  She turned away from him. “Don’t call me that. Just… just don’t talk to me at all.”

  “How are you here?” Drake demanded. “You were killed in Astana!”

  “Obviously I wasn’t,” said King. “As for how I got here, that’s not your concern. What is your concern is the fact that I’m very much here, and I know about the crisis the world is facing right now.”

  “It was you,” said Drake, goggling. “You brought in Tiffany Tranh!”

  “I had to get Captain Quinn out from under your thumb. It’s been a long time since I trusted you, Morley, but recent events have forced me to get involved directly with the situation.”

  “What do you mean, get involved? Where have you even been for two years?”

  Bloom wanted to know the answer to that as well. There had never been any indication from Toomey that his men hadn’t completed their mission. But now that he thought about it, Toomey was clever enough to have squirreled King away somewhere, just in case he needed him for leverage at some future point.

  Goddamn it! That was what happened when you trusted people who grew up poor. They were always scheming, climbing, scrabbling to get higher up the ladder. You couldn’t trust a single one of them.

  “You can ask that question till you’re blue in the face,” said King. “I’m not going to answer it.”

  Drake turned to Quinn and scowled. “Christ, Quinn,” he growled. “Every time I think your bag of tricks is empty, you pull something new on me.”

  “You’re not talking to him!” King barked. “You’re talking to me, and I’m telling you that I’m taking a direct hand in everything that happens from
now on, starting with the assault on Oberon One!”

  Bloom and Drake exchanged a glance. It appeared King knew everything. What kind of leverage could either of them find in the situation? He hoped that the tribune had some ideas, because he himself was out of them.

  “Exactly how do you expect to do that?” asked Drake. “You’re dead, remember? And, not to put too fine a point on it, you could be again, very quickly and very easily.”

  “You think so?” Quinn asked with a cocky grin that made Bloom want to slap him.

  “What’re you going to do to stop it, tough guy?” Drake warned. “All it would take is a single command to my security drone over there and it’ll target the three of you with high-velocity projectiles. They’ll slice through your heads like they aren’t even there.”

  “What drone is that, sir?”

  Bloom saw Morley’s eyes go wide before he scanned the area frantically.

  “What the hell did you do with my drone?”

  “It’s in good hands,” said Quinn. “Just like the receiver on the camera that’s embedded in this button on my shirt.”

  Bloom looked down to where Quinn was pointing. One of the buttons was indeed larger and darker than the others.

  “It’s broadcasting all of this to Foster Kenya’s servers,” said Quinn. “And it’ll all go on the network the second anything happens to any of us.”

  “Jesus, Drake!” Bloom howled. “They fucking did it again!”

  “Indeed they did,” King said somberly. “And thanks to them, I have the leverage to keep you in line from now on. I’m not in any hurry to go public just yet, but I will if I have to, if it means bringing you two down.”

  Drake scowled for a long time, his face working, until his head finally dropped and he was looking at the ground.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “For starters, I’m in on every meeting, every decision with regard to Oberon One. This situation is bigger than any of our own personal issues. Once the threat is eliminated, we can figure out how we’ll move forward. In return, no one knows I’m still alive—for now, at least.”

  Bloom’s eyes darted frantically from King to Drake. This was better than he could have possibly hoped.

  “Take the deal!” he cried.

  “Shut up,” Drake grumbled. “All right, King. I’ll assign a covert security detail to you and put you up in a government safe house.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got my own. Pardon me if I don’t trust you as far as I can spit. Just let me know whenever you’re meeting. I’ll be there.”

  Drake ignored him, instead focusing on Quinn again.

  “Does this finally get you your revenge, Quinn? Now that you’ve got me over a barrel?”

  Quinn’s glare was enough to make Bloom very glad it wasn’t him that was on the receiving end.

  “It’s still all about you, isn’t it, Drake?” he growled. “Not Oberon One, not the future of humanity, just you. That’s exactly why we need Frank King in on this.”

  Drake sneered. “Just give me back my drone.” He turned to King. “I’ll leave it to Quinn to contact you. I assume you wouldn’t take my calls anyway.”

  “What about me?” asked Bloom.

  “We’ll need you directly, too,” said Quinn. “Drake can contact you. I’m sure it wouldn’t do for you to be getting calls from slumdogs like me.”

  Bloom turned once again to Chelsea, who wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  “Darling, I’m—”

  “Let’s go,” she said, taking Quinn’s arm.

  The trio left the way they had come, without another word. Bloom watched them walk away for several long moments before finally turning to Drake.

  “How the hell is King alive?”

  Drake looked at him as if he had two heads. “Does that really matter right now, Oscar? He is alive, and we have to deal with it! I know people like you hate it when you don’t get your way, and you leave it to people like me to fix it all for you, so why don’t you just go back to your life in the clouds and let me handle it, okay? I’ll contact you if I need you.”

  Bloom felt anger rise in his chest. “Just remember who owns who here.”

  “Who owns whom, you stupid asshole!” Drake barked. “And as far as I’m concerned, any deal you and I have made is effectively null and void as of right now. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to try to do something about it. I’d love to see what you’re capable of when you don’t have people with actual brains doing your thinking for you. I’d suggest your first order of business be the same as mine: get yourself some wearable tech that will block any device from recording you.”

  He turned and stormed off in the direction of the food shuttle. Bloom saw Drake’s security drone appear from behind a tree and start following him. Bloom himself stood there forlornly for several more minutes looking out at the deep blue waters of the bay and wondering how things had gotten to this point. In his reverie, it never occurred to him that Drake hadn’t reached for his nitro applicator once during their meeting.

  When he was a few hundred meters away, Drake stopped and hiked up the cuff of his left sleeve. He tapped out a text message on his wrist device: Will wipe drone upon return. Ready to proceed.

  Several minutes later, as he climbed into airship and was greeted by the Secret Service detail he always left behind on his clandestine meetings, his wrist vibrated. The guards knew to avert their eyes any time the tribune was communicating via text.

  Excellent, said the reply. All systems go.

  18

  That evening, a storm rolled in over the bay, lighting up the sky outside the apartments at Tiffany Tranh’s building in New Richmond, and mirroring the conflict in the hearts of the people who were temporarily living in them.

  “Tiffany says the weather control allows a few storms a season,” said Chelsea. She and Quinn were sharing the sofa in her suite, watching the light show in the sky through the glass doors to the balcony.

  “I guess rich people like to watch lightning,” said Quinn. “Never got see much of it on the ground, under the smog. We just got wet.”

  Chelsea poured them each a glass from the latest bottle of Tiffany’s excellent wine that she’d opened. Quinn didn’t seem to appreciate it as much as Ellie had, but that didn’t surprise her. He was rough around the edges, and she didn’t want him to change.

  “Quite a day,” she sighed.

  “Yeah. How are you holding up?”

  Good question. What exactly does one do when their father is revealed to be the supervillain from a CR spy adventure?

  “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t been close to my family for years. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I saw my mother sober. I think it was before my high school graduation. And my father was always more Oscar Bloom than Daddy to me, even when I was a little girl.”

  “Still,” said Quinn. “No one wants their illusions of their parents to be shattered. I remember when I was about thirteen, and my dad showed up back at the apartment in the middle of the afternoon. He’d lost his job, and he was furious. Mom tried to keep him calm, but he just went off on me, yelling at me about how the place was a mess and I should be out making money to help the family. Up to that point, I’d always thought he was this perfect man who could do no wrong. Then suddenly he was just a man, like every other man. He was human.”

  She smiled and put a hand on his. “Thanks for the sympathy, Quinn, but discovering your dad has a temper is a bit different from learning he ordered the assassination of a world-renowned politician.”

  “Had to try,” he said with a shrug. “It’s funny that we’ve been able to become friends, considering how different our upbringings were.”

  “I think circumstances might have had a lot to do with it,” she said with a giggle.

  He grinned. “You know what I mean. Let’s face it, you had every opportunity to ditch us after we got back to Earth, but you never did.”

  “Somebody had to keep
an eye on you knuckleheads.”

  “There’s more to it than that and you know it.”

  He was right. She’d never realized it while it was happening, but she’d spent her adult life looking for a cause to fight for, a way to matter in the world. It was why she’d learned to heal people, and why she’d gone into active combat zones during the war.

  “When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with my cousins,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of them; the Bloom family is pretty big. Even when we were young, I knew I was different. The others would order the servants around, and they’d fight over everything. God forbid one of them had something the others didn’t, and not because they wanted to have it. They just didn’t want anyone to have more than them. Does that make sense?”

  “I wish it didn’t,” Quinn sighed. “But it does.”

  “Things aren’t like that with you,” she said. Then she realized what she’d said and felt a jolt of embarrassment. “And the others,” she quickly added. “I know this might sound crazy, but I was actually jealous of the Jarheads on Oberon One.”

  Quinn honked a laugh. “The daughter of a Global Family was jealous of four prison inmates?”

  She smacked his elbow playfully. “You know what I mean. It was the friendship you shared. The bond. Each of you would die for the others. It reminded me of a book I read in school called The Three Musketeers: all for one and one for all.”

  “I like that,” said Quinn, nodding. “It’s got a certain ring to it. I should read it sometime.”

  Chelsea couldn’t help but smile. She knew the Jarheads hadn’t received anything close to the education she’d had, especially since her father had been grooming her for politics practically from birth. But they were far from stupid, and the longer she knew them, the more she respected their knowledge and abilities, and the less she respected people whose entire education had been within the walls of a Tower school.