The Refugee Sentinel Read online

  THE REFUGEE SENTINEL

  Copyright © 2015 by Koalanda LLC. All rights reserved. For information or questions, contact: [email protected].

  To my father.

  A man lives until he’s remembered; live so you’ll never be forgotten, 09/11/1995.

  table of contents

  pre prologue

  map of Seattle

  prologue

  part one

  part two

  part three

  epilogue

  post epilogue

  acknowledgements

  pre prologue

  The Last Human Age… that’s what they called it.

  When the world’s population reached thirty-four billion and our ever-growing need for energy broke the capacity of the biosphere to renew itself.

  When entire countries ran out of food.

  When, for years, we battled overpopulation by castrating eighty percent of all newborn boys and sterilizing every woman after she gave birth.

  When our numbers kept growing by a new billion every few months.

  When civil wars out broke across the continents because people were dying of starvation.

  When Greenland melted first, then Antarctica, and the oceans rose by two hundred and twenty feet.

  When many of our coastal towns drowned.

  When cities like Shanghai, New York and Rotterdam abandoned their flooded downtowns and covered the avenues with suspension bridges, tethered to the skyscrapers above.

  When the world’s independent governments fell, swept by the rioting of their own people.

  When a new authoritarian regime, The United Lands of Earth, took over, born from the defunct United Nations.

  When the ULE assumed military, legislative and executive powers over its former member nations, making Earth a single-country planet.

  When our global capital moved to Mexico City, the metropolis with the highest elevation, and divided the world into eight autonomous Territories: US, Brazil, UK, Germany, Russia, China, Nigeria, and Australia.

  When the ULE introduced a new voting law called “Defiance Day,” meant to defy our lot and save us as a species.

  When this law decreed that everyone had to earmark one other citizen to die, or take the place of an earmarked person by sacrificing his own life.

  When we had three months to cast a vote with the results executed on December 19.

  When the ULE tracked our voting status and whereabouts by mandatory chips, called “Digital Passports,” implanted in everyone’s right hand.

  When ten million of the world’s foremost scientists, artists, and politicians were exempt from voting to continue their contributions to the human race.

  When the names of these High-Potentials were kept in utmost confidentiality and their physical well-being was guarded around the clock.

  When rumors swirled that a third of them were American, a third Chinese, and the balance scattered across the other Territories.

  When this took place… it was the year 2052.

  thirty six days till defiance day (prologue

  It was a pity Gordon Vigna would die in the next two hours, because he was in a great hurry. The woman in the back of the cab didn’t seem to mind Seattle’s traffic despite what she had told him before, but Vigna kept cursing at it under a nose peppered with blackheads. Two minutes earlier and a mile to the south, he had dropped off his previous customer: a four-hundred-dollar grand-slam fare from downtown to SeaTac Airport.

  Vigna pushed on the blinker to merge to I-5 and the city. His stiff neck cracked at the acceleration but he ignored the pain. Instead, he smiled and clicked his tongue – a sound full of hunger and saliva. He was going to Gregory’s birthday party and the anticipation, honed by nine hours behind the wheel, was as good as the real thing.

  It was the thirteenth of November and, defying the laws of probability, Vigna was ahead of his full month quota. At this rate, he could take a day off and take his genius boy to Greenlake. Vigna loved calling his grandson “his genius boy” because the boy was a genius. Who else hosted his directorial film debut at the Pacific Science Center on his sixteenth birthday? Vigna’s own invitation had graced his bed stand for the last three months. He pointed the taxi’s nose to the Science Center. Then he saw the woman.

  She stood under the Alaska arrivals sign and waved a hand through the air when his “For Hire” hologram lit up. Vigna couldn’t help it – his taxi was like a flame for the likes of her; moths in a hurry, too busy to notice their tiny moth lives ticking away. He glanced at the clock, six-thirty-pm. The massive chandeliers would stay on for another ninety minutes then the lights would die and Gregory’s masterpiece would begin. And Gordon Vigna would be in Row WW, Seat 86, his chest bursting with pride and his eyes forgetting to blink.

  His index finger would have greeted any other curb-waver with an exaggerated wag. His shoulders would have shrugged, as if to say, “Love to take you, hon, but I can’t.” But this woman was different. He slowed up, to hear what drop-dead gorgeous sounded like. The passenger side window went down.

  “You should look for a white taxi, Ma’am,” Vigna shouted at the noisy curbside. “I’m yellow and checkered, can’t pick you from the airport.” She ran two short steps and held on to the half-open taxi window as if that would have stopped Vigna from driving away.

  “I’m running late to this business meeting,” she said, “a firedrill.”

  “It always is.”

  “But I’m beyond late. I’m so late I might as well be dead.”

  “Where to?” he said, extending the conversation if only to accumulate visual material for use in the bathroom later.

  “The Fairmont Olympic Hotel, 411 University Street.” She smiled with the confidence of a woman who stayed in Seattle’s best hotel.

  He shook his head. “I can’t even turn my meter on.”

  “You don’t have to and I’ll still pay you double fare,” she said, “All cash. My boss will rip me a new one unless I get to this meeting on time. Please…”

  He looked at the clock again. The Fairmont was six blocks away from the Science Center. Also, he’d be legal in the “Fast Pass” lane with two people in the car. Eighty-six minutes remained until Gregory’s show.

  “Five hundred fifty,” he said. “Cash.”

  The woman squeezed inside the back seat and slammed the door shut.

  Forty-five minutes later, Vigna could still see SeaTac’s observation tower in his rearview mirror. In between every other song, the radio lamented a seven-car pileup on I-5. He cursed again. If he gunned it straight to the Science Center, cop stakeouts be damned, he might have stood a chance. But having to drop the woman at the Olympic meant failure. No amount of luck would rock-paper-scissors his way past this one. In his wishful thinking, he saw his hand pulling on the emergency brake, the taxi slurping to a stop in the breakdown lane. He imagined the rear door’s child-proof bolt unlocking with the deceleration, then the woman stepping out and her leather shoes making acquaintance with the oily highway. He saw the cab’s rear wheels spinning and hurling pebbles at her hands clutching a designer purse as he tried not to smirk much. If only…

  In the real world, the cab’s clock converted miles to minutes at the cruddy exchange rate of point five to five. On any other day, sitting in traffic would have been heaven and a gold mine too. Any other day, but the thirteenth. The beat-up Infinity seat bit into his lower back. More stiffness.

  Vigna craned his neck through the driver-side window to confirm what he already knew. The cars in front, for as far as he could see stood as still as the last time he’d checked, their exhaust pipes belching on empty. He glared at the seat next to him that held a box wrapped in glossy paper. He had snatched the second-to-
last PlayStation, at the mere price of one thousand five hundred dollars plus a six-hour wait at the Meridian Mall. By the time he walked out of the Sony store with the coveted square of glass and aluminum, he already hated it. But he remembered Gregory’s pupils dilating each time a PlayStation ad popped up on his phone. And turning cloudy when some announcer on TV said the supplies of the damned thing were spoken for, for the next god-knows-how-many months.

  His genius boy’s happiness in exchange for a six-hour wait? Vigna would take the trade every time… without thinking. He peeked at the woman’s reflection in the rearview mirror. A looker. Late twenties, shoulder-length Asian-black hair, no jewelry and no makeup. She wore a burgundy red suit, jacket and pants, showing no skin and covering two subdued lumps where other women would display cleavage. Yet, she had an allure. Like an Isotta Fraschini Roadster from the roaring ‘20s, whose components didn’t shine when apart, but smoked the competition when you put them together on the track.

  The skin on the woman’s face glowed in the afternoon dusk. Her thin eyebrows described near ninety-degree arcs above coal-black pupils. Her lips were uncompromising, the lower one fuller and firm, like a foundation anchoring the rest of the face. Two muted shadows under her eyes were the sole whistleblowers that she must have arrived on a transoceanic flight from Asia. She sat straight despite the taxi’s saggy back seat and hid her hands inside yellow leather gloves, lying in her lap like sleeping birds. Vigna was convinced she had come from someplace cold, or at least rainy, though the Big Melt had made the whole world wet.

  He cleared his throat and turned a stiff neck. “Where are you from, Ma’am?” Her face graduated from a smudgy reflection in the mirror to a close-up, inches away from his nose. She stayed mum. “Hope you don’t mind me asking. At this rate,” he motioned towards the cars on the highway, “we’ll be pitching a tent for the night.”

  “From Seattle,” her steely voice filled the car, despite a million idle engines droning outside, “heading to a board meeting before going home.”

  “And where are you coming from?”

  Her gaze traveled from some object outside to his rear-view mirror. “An overseas trip…”

  “Right. You missed six days of straight November rain. As if we needed more water.” He licked his chapped lips. “What do they call two days of rain in Seattle? The weekend…” Vigna snorted expecting her laughter to join his, as certain as a thunder following lightning. Instead, her eyes moved back to the road in silence.

  “I like your taxi,” she said. “Taxis are dependable and help people.”

  What a wacko, Vigna thought. This kind of beauty must come at the expense of the Department of the Brain. Dependable? The only dependable part about a taxi was the passengers’ vomit and urine, not to bring up other unmentionables hugging her pretty behind right now. A taxi’s back seat made a Seven Eleven toilet look like a NASA Clean Room. And the best way to clean up a taxi was to let other passengers wipe the grime. Do nothing and the stream of human butts, going in and out, would disinfect the seat clean. Vigna bet she wouldn’t feel helped if she knew.

  They had somehow reached the Olympic with eight minutes to spare. Lucky… Vigna turned around beaming. “How about I drop you on the Fourth Avenue suspension bridge and skip the main entrance roundabout?” A broader greasy smile. “I need to jet to the Science Center and it’s a straight one-way shot from Fourth. If you don’t mind, that is?”

  “Sounds fine,” she said and opened her purse.

  “Thanks, hon. That’s five hundred fifty flat.” The taxi stopped and its hazards jumped into life. Vigna turned around for a second time. “You want a –?” The words froze in his throat because his forehead thumped against the muzzle of a semi-automatic Smith & Wesson. He then realized he hadn’t seen the woman smile during the trip and for some reason the thought made him piss himself. The scent of warm urine took over the recycled car air.

  “Listen to me, Gordon Vigna.” How did she know my first name, his scattered mind flashed, “and do as I say if you want to live.” Her ice-cold eyes drilled into his face.

  “Your tongue. Stick it out, nice and big.” Under a different circumstance, he would have flipped the finger to whoever said these words. In the present condition, his tongue came out as tears streamed down his face. The woman produced a syringe filled with semi-transparent brownish liquid and her knuckles, gloved by the yellow leather, brushed against his dry lips.

  “A small prick,” she said and pushed the plunger for what seemed like a full minute, like a worried nurse careful not to cause a swelling. Vigna’s muscles locked and his jerking body wedged in the space between the front two seats. His head slammed against the woman’s knee. She took his face in her lap and caressed the hair off his forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “for lying to you, Gordon.” He snuggled his twitching face, as much as the spasms would let him, against her warm thigh. As the brown liquid took over his system, her next sentence was the last information Vigna’s mind took away from the world.

  “Almost there,” she whispered to the man’s departing soul, not to his already dead body. “Your grandson will inherit your life insurance, a much better birthday gift than a PlayStation. Chronic bradycardia will be the unwarranted cause of your death unless your insurance company runs blood tests for heroin.” Her knuckles continued flirting with Vigna’s forehead and her whisper, as rhythmic as a lullaby, treated the corpse with more respect than she had shown to the living person. “Rest, Gordon Vigna. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  part one (colton parker

  eighteen days till defiance day (1

  The voice in the receiver shook like a live wire, but came across with perfect, brittle clarity. “Colton Parker? I want you to die. It is important to me that you die.”

  The man, who the voice had called Colton, squinted hard at the alarm clock. His eyes, semi-blind without contacts, somehow recognized the red outline of three-thirteen-am swimming in the darkness. He winced at the pain in his spine, as stiff as rusted metal, sat up on the bed and rested his head against the wall then shoved a hand inside his mouth, fishing out a chewed-up night-guard with a garland of drool clinging to the ground-down plastic.

  “Who’s this?” he mumbled with a swollen voice. The weightless space between sleep and waking up filled him with grimy disorientation that would linger until the piercing warmth of a morning shower. His brain was attempting to catch up to his reflex of picking the ringing cell-phone and holding it to his ear. Yes, he was sitting up in bed and the weight in his stomach was the Big Mac he had eaten around midnight. He rubbed his four-day-old stubble and cleared his throat. A steadier attempt, “Who’s this?”

  “This is Sarah.”

  “Sarah? Jesus…” The words came out moist and clammy, like the December night.

  “You must Sacrifice yourself. For me and Yana. Most of all, for Yana.” The voice broke, pushed away by a wet gulp, “Promise me, Colton.”

  He stumbled as he got out of bed. His mind was clearer now. Funny how cold words could replace a hot shower.

  “Sarah, hi. I haven’t heard from you in…too long… seven years?”

  “Did you not hear me? Will you Sacrifice yourself for Yana?”

  Another spasm shook his back. “Yana. How is she? Where are you, guys?”

  “You almost killed her before.” The voice gasped for air then grew into a scream dug from deep within the lungs. “You selfish man…” There was pain in her scream, interminable and unbounded pain.

  “What is wrong, Sarah? What’s wrong with Yana?”

  Silence. When she spoke again, an invisible remote had wiped out the screaming. “They earmarked her last night. Who earmarks an eight-year old? Who does that, Colton?” More silence followed by the flat sound of the phone connection she had just killed.

  thirty six days till defiance day (2

  The woman shoved the body back into the front seat and left six one-hundred-dollar bills on top of the wrapped gift. The
setting sun was peeking inside the taxi with voyeuristic curiosity.

  She stepped out of the car and entered the hotel, her heels cracking against the Olympic’s tiled floor and coming to a stop in front of the reception desk.

  A pimple-ridden teenager in a purple uniform grinned at her. “Good afternoon and welcome to the Olympic Hotel, Ma’am.”

  “I have a reservation for six weeks,” she said. “The President’s Suite.”

  “Certainly, Ma’am. And what name is the reservation under?”

  “My name is Li-Mei. Li-Mei Gao,” she said and signed the checkin paperwork. She was annoyed by the rate of twenty thousand dollars per night but had no alternative if a room with running water was to be in the books. It was what it was and she chose to think about Vigna’s glorious capture.

  She hadn’t assassinated him all by herself, Taxi’s spirit had guided her even before she arrived to this wretched city. Her telemetry slate had lit up in unison with the plastic voice of the Alaska Airlines stewardess welcoming all Cincinnati passengers to Seattle and warning them to watch out for bags that may have shifted during the flight.

  On the tablet, Vigna’s holographic image had turned orange, an indication he was less than a mile away. The plane had shaken to a final standstill, she had gotten up and elbowed her way along the center aisle, ignoring the looks of frustration from the passengers she stomped past. She kept glancing at the slate’s soothing orange as she squirmed by people and bags. She had turned her phone off at takeoff like the rest of the cattle in the main cabin, but was done following useless flight rules. Not when she sat in the deep plane guts, otherwise known as Seat 21E, with an orange-colored target blinking in her tablet’s crosshairs.

  She had researched Vigna like any other target. The man was average: a taxi driver, but also impressive – a grandfather of the youngest High-Potential in the world. Killing Vigna would be of average difficulty but she welcomed an average target. She had used the last nine months to assassinate fifty military officers across the former countries of Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They were non-commissioned targets she killed off protocol because of a promise she had given to Taxi.