by D L Young
Maddox blew smoke. “And he jacked data the same way he played chess. Smart and careful, nothing left to chance. That’s how he’s lasted so long in this business. That’s how he built up the best crew in the City. Yeah, maybe he struts around like some movie star, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. But when it comes to the job, there’s never been anyone more sober and serious. So what I don’t get is why this guy I’ve known half my life, who’s anything but reckless, would go to so much trouble, put so much on the line over a few small-time deals.”
To Dezmund he said, “So, back to the question. What’s all this really about? And don’t give me some nonsense about jacker cred and reputation. It’s not like the street knew I was undercutting you. Nobody outside of the people sitting around this table knew I was poaching your bids.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his shoe. “Tell me, old friend. I really want to know. Because it’s not like you to bring out your queen out to capture a little pawn.”
For a long moment no one spoke. Tommy’s insides jumped around like he’d eaten bad Thai. He thought he noted a change in Dezmund’s expression. The kind of look you saw on a card player’s face when they weren’t so sure about the strength of their hand.
Maddox seemed to notice it too. Or maybe he detected something more, something Tommy hadn’t picked up on. In any case, Maddox apparently he didn’t like what he saw, because he stood up suddenly and said, “Kid, let’s get out of here.”
Tommy remained seated.
“Kid,” Maddox repeated.
Tommy averted his eyes from Maddox. He stared at the tabletop and said nothing.
“He’s not going with you,” Blayze said, smirking. “He’s no fool, old man. He wants to move up in the world.”
“He does, does he?” If Maddox shot his apprentice an angry or disappointed look, Tommy didn’t see it with his eyes still cast downward. But from the top of his vision he glimpsed Maddox snapping his fingers at Dezmund. “Now that’s the kind of thing you might start a war over, Dez,” Maddox said. “Stealing someone else’s crew. That shit’s not cool.”
Dezmund began to say something back, but his eyes moved beyond Maddox as something in the near distance drew his attention. Maddox turned to look, seeing what Tommy now noticed also: two large men in black suits, most of their faces obscured by oversized darkened specs, heading straight for them. Tommy scanned the area, finding two more similarly dressed thugs striding toward them from the opposite direction.
Maddox glared at Blayze. “What the hell is this?”
“Don’t make a scene,” she said calmly, “and they won’t hurt you.”
Tommy steeled himself for what was about to happen. Then he spotted a familiar face in the crowd, heading toward them. His mouth dropped open in shock.
What the hell was Beatrice doing here?
18 - Foolish, Foolish Woman
Datajackers were good at a lot of things, Beatrice reflected. They could sneak into a secured datasphere like a digital ghost, unseen and undetected, steal a company’s invaluable intellectual property, collect their fee from a grateful competitor, and deposit the proceeds in an orbital tax haven. All this they could pull off inside a minute or two. They were also experts at disappearing. The best datajackers knew how to erase their personal digital histories, birth records, even their criminal pasts, though this last was often difficult as law enforcement—when it came to datajacking crimes—had reverted to the ancient practice of keeping records on paper and microfiche to avoid such disasters. Still, datajackers were adept at the manipulation, deletion, and deception of all things digital. But they were far from perfect criminals. In Beatrice’s experience, it was rare for a datajacker to have much in the way of criminal capabilities beyond their area of expertise. Sure, plug them into VS and they could work magic. But in the world of physical crime, most jackers were fish out of water, techie nerds who knew little about smuggling goods or running an underground gambling room or pimping out sex workers. They didn’t know much about countersurveillance either. Case in point: the four datajackers sitting two tables away from her. Not a single one of them had the slightest clue she was watching them.
Beatrice sat facing an old dark-skinned man with a gray beard, her head down but eyes locked on the four datajackers. Minutes earlier, wearing a jacket with a large hood that covered her face in shadow, she’d planted herself in the empty chair across from the old man, who had a tented paper sign reading 10-minute game $200 handwritten in a dozen languages. His calling card for tourists who might want to challenge a local at the famous chess tables in Washington Square. Under her breath she offered triple his normal rate if he played slow while she kept an eye on her employer. The old man, taking her for a bodyguard, shrugged and said no problem, then moved his king’s pawn forward two spaces.
“Your move,” the man said. She pretended to stare at the board for a long moment, then advanced a knight.
Over at the other table, Maddox sat next to the kid. The salaryman was a pretty decent liar. As a professional thief, he had to be. The gift of deception was as fundamental to a datajacker’s tool set as their specialized hardware and black market apps. They lied to intelligent systems and cybersecurity measures, masking their identities and fooling their way past the digital guardians of virtual space. They lied to cops about where they’d been and what they’d been doing on the night of the big data heist. Datajackers were born BS spinners, and you could save a lot of time and trouble by assuming everything that came out of their mouths wasn’t true, believing only what their actions told you, not the actual words they said.
She’d thought Maddox was different in that respect, or at least different when it came to her. How utterly wrong she’d been. Until this morning he’d never lied to her, and she’d assumed that meant something. Foolish, foolish woman.
He’d lied to her about Tommy without so much as a blink, pretending not to know where the kid was, saying as much right to her face. She might not have caught it, but her gut told her something was wrong, and as he spoke she called up her thermal vision, a recent upgrade she’d acquired for her eye implants. The heat-sensitive view revealed a telltale flush of heat in the salaryman’s cheeks. It was nothing more than a small surge of blood to the face, a tiny, involuntary bio-reaction. But it had been a reliably damning one. Maddox had lied to her.
So in turn she’d deceived him, ditching her ride to the airport once she was out of sight and tailing him the rest of the day. An impetuous reaction, for sure, especially for someone in her profession. The cold, steely part of her who cared about nothing but the job still nagged at her, telling her she should have written off the lying bastard and taken her scheduled flight out of town. But another part of her was too pissed off to listen, too stubbornly set on finding out why he’d deceived her.
And then there was Tommy. She couldn’t leave without knowing whether the kid was in real trouble and, if it turned out he was, doing what she could to get him out of it. Maybe the salaryman didn’t know the meaning of trust and loyalty, but she sure as hell did.
“It’s your move,” her opponent said, in a way that made her think he’d said it more than once. She looked down and nudged a pawn forward.
With the ambient noise of a crowded tourist spot and the jacket hood draped over her head, she couldn’t make out what Maddox and company were discussing, even with her modded hearing. But then she didn’t really have to. The scene unfolding a few feet away from her appeared to be a setup. There were four thugs dressed in black who kept looking over at them, doing a generally poor job of trying to stay inconspicuous as they wandered about the area. Not exactly your top-notch professionals, the four of them. Probably nightclub bouncers working a side gig.
Still, even if they weren’t hardened criminals, they outnumbered her four to one. She was armed, but so were they. Inside two of their sport coats she’d spotted shoulder holsters, and if two of them were packing, it was a safe bet all of them were. Disrupting their plans would be no easy
task.
Dezmund and the girl Blayze wouldn’t take out Maddox, not here. Not with dozens of street cams, a crowd of eyewitnesses, and the heavy police presence common to every tourist spot in the City. She’d already seen three rhino-armored patrol cops in the two minutes since she’d taken her seat. They’d have to get him out of here first, which meant at some point the four glorified bouncers would converge on him, show him their guns, and discreetly usher him into an alleyway or maybe a ground car.
As if on cue, an unmarked white van pulled up to a nearby loading zone. The driver got out, opened the side door, then stood there with his arms folded across his chest as he scanned the crowd. His gaze fell first on Maddox’s table, then to the nearest of the four thugs, to whom he gave an almost imperceptible nod.
Given the odds, a distraction was the best option, though she had difficulty coming up with a tactic. It had to be something restrained and low-key. Enough to throw the thugs off guard for a moment or two so she could hustle Maddox and Tommy safely away, but not so disruptive it attracted police scrutiny or set off a crowd panic.
While she tried to come up with options, no small part of her wanted to get up, walk away, and leave Maddox to his fate. The cold, battle-hardened part of her. Wash her hands of the whole dirty business and get out of this teeming cesspool of a city. It wasn’t her fight, was it? If it weren’t for the kid, she most likely would have bailed already.
“Your move,” the old man said again. A few tables over Maddox started to rise up from his chair, as if he was leaving. She scanned the crowd, spotting two of the hired thugs, both heading straight for the salaryman.
She had to move quickly. Standing up, she slid her way through the crowd. Inside her jacket, she found the rubber grip of the hand-sized shockstick, a miniature version of the same weapon used by police, only with a much smaller charge only good for two or three uses. She headed straight for the table where the salaryman stood. His features knotted in worry as he spotted the thugs striding toward him. As she passed close enough to Maddox to reach out and touch him, Beatrice tucked the shockstick beneath her free arm and jammed it into a tourist, a large man with a half-eaten hot dog in his hand. The man gasped at the poke and glanced down, then as Beatrice thumbed the switch, he cried out and collapsed to the ground in a twitching, convulsing heap.
“Heart attack!” someone shouted. A crowd of onlookers formed around the man, gazing down at him in open-mouthed stares.
“Is there a doctor? Is someone here a doctor?” a woman cried frantically.
Maddox and his three datajacker companions gawked at the man, distracted by the sudden outbreak of human drama. Even the thugs paused to look, caught off guard by the unexpected scene. In the confusion Beatrice grabbed Maddox and Tommy by the arm and pulled them away from the table.
Maddox’s eyes grew wide. “What are you doing here?”
Tommy’s face knotted in confusion. “B? Thought you left town, mama.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Beatrice said. “Keep your heads down.”
Maddox yanked his arm away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving your ass, as usual,” she answered. “Though God knows why.”
“You’re screwing everything up,” he said.
“Listen,” she hissed. “Your friends want to throw you into that van over there, put a bullet in you, and dump you in the Hudson. Come on, let’s go, now.”
“B,” Tommy said, “you really should have—”
“Don’t move,” a gruff voice behind her said. In the same moment she felt pressure against her lower back. One of the thugs pressing the muzzle of his gun into her.
The thug’s three associates were suddenly there, surrounding her and Tommy and Maddox.
Beatrice swore inwardly. She’d almost gotten them out.
19 - No Sellout
“Poaching someone else’s crew,” Maddox said. “That shit’s not cool.”
Uncool but not unexpected, he added inwardly. In fact, he would have been surprised if they hadn’t tried. He wondered for a moment who’d come up with the idea of turning the kid but then quickly answered his own question. She had, of course. She was the brains behind the whole thing, behind Dezmund’s entire operation. Dez had even hinted around it before, hadn’t he? That night his crew had shown up in Maddox’s bar, when he’d mentioned how he was looking forward to getting out of the game. If Maddox had been paying closer attention, maybe he would have come to the conclusion then.
Dezmund began to say something, then stopped, his gaze shifting to something in the crowd. Maddox looked and spotted two men in black suits with oversized specs concealing most of their faces. Striding shoulder to shoulder, they headed straight for him. Then he spotted two more, coming at him from the opposite direction.
He glared at Blayze. “What the hell is this?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Don’t make a scene, and they won’t hurt you.”
The girl had balls, no doubt about it. Kidnapping him in broad daylight, in a crowded public space, was a bold move. It was also exactly the move he’d counted on.
As the suited thugs closed in, Maddox spied a white van parked in a nearby loading area. The driver opened its sliding door, then stood next to it with his arms folded, trying his best to look nonchalant.
“That my ride over there?” he asked Blayze.
“Our ride,” she said. “I thought it would be better if we finished our chat in private.”
A sudden commotion broke out nearby. Two meters away from their table, a large man lay on the ground, twitching and convulsing.
“Heart attack!” someone shouted, then another voice cried out for a doctor. A knot of onlookers quickly formed around the man, jostling Maddox as they drew near. He looked away from the spectacle, trying to find the thugs, but he’d lost them in the excited chaos the stricken man had caused.
In the next instant Beatrice was there, appearing as if out of thin air.
“What are you doing here?” he asked reflexively.
“B?” Tommy cried, standing up. “Thought you left town, mama.”
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, already pulling him away.
He yanked his arm from her grip and tried to tell her she was screwing things up, but she wouldn’t listen. A second later they were surrounded by the four thugs.
“Don’t move,” one of them grunted at Beatrice, sliding a pistol discreetly into her back.
Maddox felt a second pistol thrust into his own back. “Easy,” the thug behind him said. “Nice and easy, jacker.”
The men in suits ushered them away from the chaotic scene as Dezmund, Blayze, and Tommy followed close behind.
“Get them in the van,” Blayze ordered. Over by the fallen man, a rhino-armored cop had arrived, and an ambulance siren wailed in the distance. The thugs maneuvered Maddox and Beatrice through the crowd toward the waiting van.
“Where’s the driver?” Blayze asked one of the thugs. The man who’d been waiting by the van was no longer there.
The suited thug looked puzzled. “I don’t—”
A screaming noise suddenly filled the square, hitting Maddox’s eardrums so hard he flinched. Damn, those machines were loud.
The first Anarchy Boy burst into view a block away, his bike’s engine screaming as he zoomed down the pedestrian walkway toward the square. Tourists and locals leapt out of his way as he tore down the avenue, barreling straight for Maddox and company. Another biker appeared in the opposite direction, coming at them just as fast.
The kids had timed it perfectly, Maddox noted.
“Tommy, get down!” Maddox shouted as he dropped to his knees. Tommy quickly followed suit, crouching down low to the pavement.
“What the—?” one of the thugs blurted as the first bike screamed past, his words cut off by a blow to the head. The rider whooped and hollered and waved a small pipe around as he tore down the walkway. The second rider attacked simultaneously with the first, spinning a chain over her
head like some demon cowboy’s steel lasso. She took out a second thug, shattering the man’s specs and slashing his face as she whizzed past. The man spun around and fell, clutching his face and howling. The two uninjured thugs, stunned and confused by the sudden attack, forgot their captives and moved to help their associates.
Maddox sprang to his feet and made his move quickly, bear-hugging Dezmund from behind; Tommy did the same with Blayze. Clutching the two tightly, Maddox and Tommy dove into the van, crashing onto the hard floor in a heap of bodies. The van’s tires squealed and smoked as the vehicle shot away. Fighting to keep his balance, Tommy reached over and slid the door shut with a loud metallic bang. The last image Maddox had of Washington Square before the door closed was Beatrice staring at him, her mouth gaping open in surprise, and the two uninjured thugs leaping up to their feet and running after them.
“They’ve got a car,” Tommy said, breathing heavily. “They’ll be coming after us.”
“Get off of me!” Blayze cried. Confused, she raised herself to a crouching stance as the vehicle rocked and bumped along.
“You wanted to finish that chat in private, yeah?” Maddox said. He released Dezmund and stood, pressing his palm against the roof for balance. “Well, so do I.”
“You fucking amateurs,” she snapped. She lurched to the partition separating the cargo space from the cabin. Rapping her knuckles on the narrow connecting window, she cried out, “Coop, stop the van, now!”
The window slid open, and a kid with a green mohawk who definitely wasn’t Coop shouted back, “Who the hell is Coop, baby?”
“That big fook you knocked on the head a minute ago, Z,” Tommy answered.
“Oh, yeah,” Z Dog said. “Coop was kind of a dick.” He held up a pair of oversized lenses. “Nice specs, though.” Then to Blayze: “Sorry, baby, I only take orders from my boys Blackburn and Tommy Thai.”
