Russell's Attic, Books 1 - 3

by SL Huang

  “He got under…”

  “Someone in this mess really likes playing with explosives. They almost blew me up, too.”

  “They almost…” He trailed off. “I, uh, I gotta talk to Arthur.”

  It wasn’t that I’d expected him to ask if I was okay, really. It was just—he usually would have. “Arthur’s running to the authorities,” I said bitterly. “The NSA, or Homeland Security, or whoever’s running this shit show. If you want in on that, knock yourself out.”

  “I think it’s a joint operation,” he said distractedly. “The NSA doesn’t have field agents. I—uh—Cas—”

  “Well, the DHS or whoever else, I’m going to beat them. Have you planted the evidence for the Lancer yet?”

  “Yes—mostly. Listen, I—I don’t know how to—”

  “I got out in time.”

  “What? Oh, uh, yeah. Good. Cas, remember when I said that thing about personal worst nightmares and end times? I just—this is—”

  I wasn’t interested. “Set it up so the Lancer thinks I’m taking a meeting and thinks he can track me down, somewhere with no bystanders to get in the way. Text me the location.”

  “I—okay.”

  He sounded so dispirited. I sighed. “We’ll kick this case in the balls and get the professor back. You’ll see.” Arthur would see.

  “That’s not what I—okay. Okay. I’ll set it up.”

  I hung up.

  I dropped the phone on the passenger seat of the car I was jacking and leaned my head against the steering wheel, my hands in my lap. The bandage had come off my left one at some point. It didn’t look worse than the other, though; both hands were caked in blood and dirt.

  I should drive to one of my bolt holes and patch myself up. And sleep. Sleep until Checker texted me with a location, one where, hopefully, the Lancer’s crew would swoop in to trap me and take me to Sonya Halliday.

  It took me four tries to start the car. My grip was too clumsy on the wires.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A tall Asian man loomed above me. Rio.

  “You have no choice,” he said. “Nor did he.”

  “There’s always a choice,” someone answered. The words echoed through my chest and head as if I were the one who was saying them. “He chose to kill me rather than to let me die.”

  Rio closed the distance between us with one step, suddenly menacing, and reached for me. His palm clamped over my nose and mouth—I wanted to struggle, to save myself, but if Rio wanted to kill me then I should die, right?

  Right?

  Animal panic took over and I fought, beating against the iron bar that was his arm, but I’d waited too long, and my movements were weak, feeble, the cells in my brain shutting down one by one, blinking out like the lights of a dying city—hypoxia and cell death—and from very far away I heard someone else say, “It’s the only option.”

  I jerked awake. I was on a thin mattress in the shithole apartment I’d driven to, dirty and bloodied bandages scattered on the floor from redressing my accumulating injuries. My hand, back, and ribs had started to throb, but I could tell that wasn’t what had woken me.

  Sleep had never been particularly restful for me, but in the last two years the nightmares had become worse and worse. More detailed and more crippling. When I wasn’t on the job, I couldn’t hope to stay asleep for more than half an hour before I woke, tangled and sweating and hyperventilating. Getting blackout drunk was the only thing that helped.

  And now I was having trouble while working. Work had always focused me, kept me sane, but now…

  I wasn’t stupid; I knew why it was happening. Two years ago was when we’d gone up against Pithica, when a psychic had rooted through my brain like it was her own personal rummage sale. I didn’t think she had taken any particular care not to break anything.

  It was what it was. Just something I had to deal with now, I supposed.

  I checked my phone, but I’d barely managed to stay sacked out for ninety minutes and Checker hadn’t texted yet. I thought about going to pick up some more armaments, but seeing as how I was trying my best to get captured, I probably didn’t even want to bring my Colt, since they’d just end up taking it.

  I got up and did a more thorough job of cleaning and rewrapping my open wounds. None of them were very serious on their own, even the burn; it was the cumulative effect that was becoming troublesome. I bandaged both the hand and the graze on my shoulder, which I’d mostly forgotten about—it wasn’t that painful, and more importantly didn’t impede my movement. The bruised ribs and torn muscles were harder to ignore.

  At least my head and lungs felt better than they had yesterday. That was good. Small favors. I chewed a few protein bars that tasted like sand and waited for Checker to get in touch.

  He took a lot longer than I expected. It was five in the morning before he texted me an address with a nine o’clock meeting time and a short message: CANT SAY 4SURE THEYLL SHOW. He’d also included fake names for me and for my would-be business contact—Checker was nothing if not thorough. An instant later, I got another set of texts detailing anything the Lancer might know about me from the false trail—it wasn’t much; Checker had kept specifics to a minimum—and a final message that added, MIGHT GO RADIO SILENT IF NSA ARND. ARTHUR TEAMING W/ THEM NOW.

  Yeah. Of course he was. My mood soured, and I felt the sudden need to get out of my apartment, even though the setup was still four hours away.

  The imaginary business meeting Checker had leaked turned out to be at an abandoned diner in the mountains. It wasn’t a spot I would’ve chosen—too many places to hide, too easy for someone to set up an ambush. Although I supposed them ambushing me was the whole point.

  I turned sharply off a winding canyon road and down an overgrown driveway to reach the dilapidated had-been restaurant. The place looked like it had overreached in its day, with tiered landscaping inset into the slope and several separate buildings with outdoor stairs between them around defunct patios. Less of a diner and more of a kitschy yuppie eatery. No wonder it had gone out of business.

  I climbed up to the main building. I didn’t even have to bust in; the door was unlocked. Inside, sunlight filtered through dusty windows to illuminate a long counter and bolted-down diner stools that had once been red. Presumably there had also once been tables, but they’d either been taken by the old owners or looted. I was betting on the latter, considering the odd bits of graffiti around and the used drug paraphernalia someone had left in plain sight on the countertop. I spotted a discarded condom in a corner as well. Lovely.

  I sat on one of the grimy stools and leaned back against the counter, waiting.

  The hours crawled by. I wondered if this was pointless. How did we even know the Lancer was still checking into Sonya Halliday, that he would see the clues Checker had left? What if Checker had been too subtle—or too obvious? What if the Lancer was good enough to figure out who I actually was, to see through Checker’s charade of an itinerant math genius collaborating with a university professor, and had ordered his men to put a bullet in me instead of bringing me in?

  It had all seemed like such a good idea at the time.

  I forced myself to calm the twitchiness, reminding myself that if this was to have any chance of working, I needed to look unsuspicious, to appear someone who could easily be captured. As nine o’clock rolled nearer, I forced myself to concentrate on the countertop instead of investigating every little noise outside. The faded pink laminate had an overlapping pattern of light white squiggles texturing it—I graphed the squiggles parametrically and then translated to rectangular coordinates just for kicks.

  The swinging door to the kitchen banged open. Several large men with AKs crowded into the diner, apparently having come in through the back.

  I had started to move before I tamped down the reflexes, and just ended up jerking off the stool. God bless Checker. It had worked. “Hi,” I said, absurdly. What did a person say when a bunch of guys with guns appeared and it wasn’t exactly
what she’d been hoping would happen? “Who are you?”

  “Come with us,” said one of the goons.

  I wondered if I should put up an appearance of fear. Probably, though I wasn’t very good at such things. “Okay,” I said, trying to look subdued, and started forward.

  A megaphone squawked outside. We all stopped. The guns in the bad guys’ hands twitched upward—

  “Federal agents,” came an echoing voice. “We have you surrounded. Put your weapons down and come outside with your hands in the air.”

  Oh, fuck.

  I didn’t know if the DHS had tracked me or if they’d been following the bad guys, but reflexes kicked in—when a meet’s blown, make sure everyone knows you’re not the one who blew it, or you might not live to be arrested. “Fucking Straczynski sold me out!” I yelled righteously before I could think about it, using the fake name of my business contact. One of the goons grabbed me by my jacket collar and I let him wrestle me into their midst.

  And then a shout came from in front of the diner—something about freedom—and someone started firing. Several someones. The acoustic calculations resolved themselves instantly—people shooting away from the diner, bad guys firing at the Feds. A split second later, the Feds started firing back, and just like that, I was in the middle of a shootout.

  The priority of staying alive swept everything else out of my head—the blown meet, the bad guys, Sonya Halliday. I had to get out of here. I tried to listen, but there were too many Feds, too many angles—the math couldn’t map a safe path for me. As if to prove it, a bullet tore through the wall and tagged the guy next to me in the gut. He yelled and staggered, and one of his friends helped him down and pushed hard on the wound.

  The rest of them rushed to defensive positions by the windows, where they could peer out and presumably help their colleagues outside. I hunkered down by the counter, making myself as small a target as possible. What the math could tell me was an estimate of how many Feds were out there, and the answer was: too damn many. The men in here might not know it, but they were dead.

  And I was going to be dead with them if I didn’t do something.

  I glanced at the guys at the windows—they were all facing away—and then whipped my hand forward to slam the would-be medic’s head against the corner of the counter. He slumped on top of his gut-shot friend. The friend didn’t twitch, already unconscious from blood loss.

  I stole a nice little bullpup AK off the guy I’d just killed and helped myself to whatever spare magazines I could grab easily from their pockets. Then, keeping my head down, I scooted for the swinging door of the kitchen like the hounds of hell were after me.

  The crumbling kitchen had a back hallway that probably led outside, but I was one hundred percent sure the Feds had people covering that exit. Instead, I turned to the side and peeked out a window to confirm what I thought I’d remembered: the wooden decking that used to be outdoor seating abutted this building and led in meandering verandas and stairs up to the next one.

  I opened the rotting cabinets against the wall, checked that the AK was on full auto—it was, idiots—and fired.

  The magazine emptied itself in less than three seconds. I reloaded and repeated. In short order, I’d perforated myself a very nice little hole in the base of the wall.

  I kicked out the remaining plaster and wood and then ducked down and jammed my head through. The firefight muffled itself momentarily as I pushed through the dense screen of plant growth that had crept to life in the crack of sunlight against the wall before I burst through under the decking. It was cool under there, dark and musty-smelling with narrow white slats of light striping the dirt. I wormed the rest of my body out and through, dragging the AK with me just in case.

  There was still a chance I’d be hit by a stray bullet under here, but much less, considering the Feds would be concentrating on the main building. The space wasn’t tall enough for me to crawl, but I managed a reasonably fast belly-and-elbows squirm.

  I reached the far end of the first patio and wriggled my way over to the stairs. Unfortunately, they’d been built over a rocky bit, and I peered upward in the dimness—nope, I wouldn’t be able to fit underneath.

  Which gave me two choices: risk breaking cover, or hunker here and hope that when the DHS took the building they wouldn’t find my escape hole. Well, there was next to no chance of that happening. If I didn’t want to be taken by the Feds, I had to clear out entirely.

  The thrum of a helicopter rose on the edge of my hearing, mixed with the deafening staccato of the gunfire. Better to go now than after the bird was above me. Fortunately, the place had become so overgrown that I’d be camouflaged by untamed bushes and stunted half-grown trees in my dash up to the next patio.

  I pulled myself to the edge of the deck and out into the shrubbery, pushing off into a hunched run up the five strides to my next cover. I was two steps in when the building behind me blew up.

  A cascade of reactions flew through my thoughts before the blast had completed itself, starting with What the hell and How many explosives do these people carry anyway and Sounds like that went wrong for them and diving immediately into Who gives a shit, it’s a perfect distraction, keep moving keep moving—

  And then my knees hit the rocks and my face bounced off the branches and twigs and I couldn’t move.

  Pain blossomed in my left side, answering the question I hadn’t gathered my wits to ask yet. Something—a bit of debris, a chunk of shrapnel, something sharp and jagged and ugly—had driven itself into me, something slingshotted by the blast, some woefully unlucky projectile that hadn’t even been aimed at me.

  Oh Jesus fuck that hurt.

  Whatever it was had ripped through just below my left kidney, and was still in there, a massive rod of fire piercing my abdomen, tearing all the way through to the front and then lodging itself. I tried to move, and my muscles twitched unresponsively. Breathing was shallow and a colossal effort, as if my insides had been scrambled so much that I no longer had any room for air.

  I had to be bleeding a lot. I tried to push myself onto my elbows. The brush underneath me was sticky and red.

  Shouts and movement echoed from the woods around the diner.

  The stairs I was next to led to a walkway that wound around the next building to open into another veranda. If I could get to the building, maybe I could take cover somewhere inside. Find something to patch myself up. Maybe.

  I pawed at the plants and the ground and managed to lurch into a crawl. By the time I made it up onto the walkway to the door, my vision was darkening around the edges, and my side was a ball of fire. I reached up and pushed the door open, vaguely noting the scarlet smears and handprints I was leaving behind.

  I slumped against the wall just inside the door and concentrated on breathing. My right hand had dug in to press against the front side of the wound, and it felt like it was drowning in blood.

  I reached my left hand up and found the edge of a table—this building still had them, dusty and defunct—and heaved. The world tilted and the floor almost went out from under me, but somehow I got myself upright, standing—okay, leaning heavily—against the wall.

  Getting captured by the DHS was not an option. Checker had broken me out of local police custody before, but I wasn’t going to bet on his skills when up against national security resources. Not to mention that I wasn’t convinced this level of federal agency would feel inclined to let me go even if Checker hacked enough files to make it seem like I was the Pope.

  And if the DHS connected me with any of my other not-at-all-legal activities, or, worse, if the NSA found out about my math abilities…

  They wouldn’t just throw me in a hole. They’d throw me in a lab.

  I still had a small but finite opportunity for escape. The back of this building was up against the wooded slope of the mountain. The Feds had to be moving in their perimeter now, concentrating on whatever had happened in the exploded building. If I went out a back window, I had a chance of
being able to scale the slope while they were distracted and slip their net without being seen, or fight my way through surprised agents. A slim chance, but a chance.

  I pushed off the wall and limped toward the back of what had been this building’s eating area. My legs almost buckled, but I forced them to support me.

  I got to the back wall—well, lurched against it. I fumbled with the latch on one of the windows with my left hand, but the thing was rusted shut and my fingers were slick with blood. I’d lost the AK at some point, but I pulled out my knife and bashed the hilt against the pane. Large shards cascaded down. I started using the blade to break off any jagged bits remaining in the bottom of the frame; I had no desire to be cut up more than I already was.

  “Hands in the air,” said a quiet voice behind me.

  I turned slightly.

  The same fucking DHS agent from before stood across the room, her tall silhouette backlit in the door. Aiming a gun at me. Again.

  “I thought it was you,” she said evenly. “Hands in the air. You’re coming in this time.”

  Still, she was only one DHS agent. And she had a gun aimed at me, but all I needed was a split-second distraction…

  Under normal circumstances, the mathematics reminded me.

  That was the bad thing about mathematics: it wasn’t going to be swayed by what I wanted reality to be. Usually it told me how I could win, but this time…this time the escape avenues shriveled and curdled away, stricken down by disinterested logic. My weakened state shortened the possibilities, made it so every move I could make, the agent could counter.

  She might make a mistake—but then again, she might not. And even if I got past her, there were still all her friends out there. If anyone spotted me running, I was liable to get shot, and even if I knew I was being targeted, right now I probably had no better than a forty percent chance of being able to avoid it.

  Mathematical expectation—the probability of being shot by her or one of her colleagues if I tried to get past her, multiplied by the truly awful outcome of dying…