by Brad C Scott
“Sure you did,” I say. “Enough. Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” Simmons looks away, jaw tight.
So that’s it, then. Some confession. I resettle the arm – damn sling’s too tight – and turn to Henrikson. “How were you planning on finding them?”
“By any means necessary. My superiors want those sons-of-bitches almost as much as I do. They’ll have answers for us. My boys can be amazingly persuasive.”
“Not in my city,” says Simmons. “No torture, no killings, or you’ll answer for it.”
“You want to avoid that, you shouldn’t hold out on me,” says Henrikson. “You know how to find them. I know you do.”
Enough with this bullshit. The chief’s had his chance. “Clear the room,” I say.
That gets their attention, both breaking off their dick-measuring contest to stare at me.
I flex the fingers of my good hand. “Dan. Please clear the room. Now.”
“Malcolm,” says Simmons, “this is my crime scene. CSI needs to work –”
His words cut off when I pull my pistol. Holding it at my side, I look him in the eyes and let him see the truth of my lethal resolve. “Clear. The Fucking. Room. Now.” It’s all I can do to keep from blasting off his kneecaps.
Dead silence. Everyone in the room has stopped what they’re doing to stare at me. The FBI guys have hands on their pistols, though they’ve yet to draw. Simmons, squinty-eyed, works his jaws. “Everyone out,” he grits. “We need some privacy. You too,” he directs at FBI.
They do it, the silence broken by the ding of feet ascending metal rungs as I stare murderous intent at the man who put Sam in the hospital. Sam. I struggle not to blink as her face fills my mind – pale and beautiful and indispensable – pushing the image away before rage gets hold of my gun arm. That and this fuck-all headache. The chief’s eyes widen in surprise at what he sees on my face, fingers restless on the gun hand hanging near his revolver. He doesn’t draw, knowing how that’d turn out. Or maybe guilt stays his hand, for his part in the murder of eighty-six innocent people. Because Henrikson’s right – the attack couldn’t have happened without the constabulary’s cooperation. Their unrestrained, unforgivable corruption.
“You mind if I stick around?” asks Henrikson, sounding untroubled by developments.
“You can stay. Close it!”
The last of them closes the hatch, leaving us the chamber. Activating a scrambler, I place it on the gun cabinet without taking eyes off Simmons.
He stares back, hands at his sides. “What’s this –”
“Reckoning,” I interrupt. “You’re complicit in the deaths of eighty-six innocent people. I’m at liberty to dispense justice, here and now. Or do you deny that men in your organization, men sworn to serve the people as constables under your authority, aided and abetted those who carried out the memorial attack?”
Simmons says nothing, eyes angry; but also, afraid.
“Those badge-wearing pieces of shit you’ve got locked away? Ortiz and Williams? You knew they were both in bed with Connor, well before the attack, and yet you let them run free. Detective Ortiz leaked the plans. Sergeant Williams defeated the bomb sweeps. The logs for Memorial Park were faked. The men on the ground never checked it, they all said someone else took care of it. Someone assigned by Sergeant Williams. You didn’t pull them off the event. And eighty-six people are dead because of it.”
“Malcolm,” he says, “I didn’t think –”
“No, you didn’t. Fortunate for you, I’m not here to punish your stupidity. God, I want to, but what I want doesn’t matter. What I need are the masterminds behind the attack. That’s not Los Santos, but they’re our best lead to finding them. And I know you can get me to them.”
“Doesn’t seem like you’re giving me any choice,” he says.
“Choice? Right.” I holster my weapon and get in his face. “Here’s your choice. You stop acting like Ortiz and Williams are still cops. Those nice, comfortable cells you’ve got them in, where they’re getting three squares and no one’s laying a hand on them? You cancel that bullshit and do whatever it takes until they tell you what you need to tell me: where Connor is. Because I need to have words with him. Or don’t, and I’ll swoop in and take them from you. And believe me, Dan, they’ll talk to me, they’ll tell me all about the sort of setup you’re running. It’ll be all I need to bring the full weight of the federal government down on that corrupt cesspit you call the Metropolitan Constabulary. I’ll gut it. And you? Dirty cops don’t last long on the inside.”
He works his jaw, outraged but afraid. “You’re set to start a fire you can’t contain.”
“Eighty-six innocent people dead. Over two hundred injured, including…” I stop myself from mentioning Sam. Never hand the devil a loaded gun. “So, what’s it going to be?”
The hatch opens, followed by the ding of steps descending the metal ladder.
“Well,” says Henrikson, “look what the tyrant dragged in.”
John Monroe enters the crime scene, walking over to stand with us. No enforcer escort this time, left topside, no doubt.
“Gentlemen,” says Monroe. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“John,” says Simmons, clearly relieved as he puts out a hand, “No, we were just about wrapped up. You know Malcolm, this here is Bruce Henrikson, DOD counter-terror.”
Simmons and Monroe shake hands. On impulse, I follow suit. “John.” Best to show the chief I can let old grudges go in favor of new ones. Monroe, surprised, is slow to take my hand.
“We’ve met,” says Henrikson, keeping his hands to himself. “Let me guess, you’re here to wrest jurisdiction away from us.”
“No,” says Monroe. “Due diligence. Jurisdiction is still being debated in Washington.”
“Seems like a foregone conclusion,” I say.
Monroe eyes me, aware I’m fishing. “I heard Director Johnson presented a solid defense at the oversight committee, but the political winds are against you. The memorial attack is seen as Reclamation’s failure.”
“I suppose we should thank you for the help after the attack. The zone closure’s a bit extreme, though, don’t you think?”
Monroe appraises me, gray eyes wary. “A state of emergency is in effect.”
“Kind of hard to turn away help after the attack,” says Henrikson. “Convenient is what I call it. The people on the streets will see your enforcers as a provocation, you know.”
“People’s perceptions are not my concern,” says Monroe. “Maintaining order is. Malcolm, Bruce, if you’ll excuse me, I need to speak with the chief.”
“Forty-eight hours,” I say to Simmons, then turn my back and head for the ladder.
◊ ◊ ◊
I stride past the lifts in the car bay, exiting through one of the roll-up doors into the bruised light of a gray morning. Rain patters the concrete, the windshields of the squad cars, and the hard suits of Monroe’s escort. His enforcers, a full squad of eight, stand about on the far side of the lot, their presence explaining the quietness of the constables and onlookers facing each other across the temporary barricades.
With reception restored, time to return the call I missed while below. Stepping beneath the awning fronting the service bay, the call connects, the blade’s blue-tinted screen displaying the aurora borealis effect on the monitors lining Cato’s vault. But no Cato.
“Master tech?” I say. “Are you there?”
“Malcolm!” comes his voice from offscreen. “I’ll call you right back! One moment!”
The call disconnects, one moment becoming ten as I watch the enforcers shifting in place. An older model sedan pulls up and a pair of detectives exit, one going to talk with the constables manning the barricade and the other with the enforcers.
His call comes in, Cato’s head appearing onscreen. “Ah, Malcolm, how are you?”
“I’m good. What was that about?”
He scratches his auburn goatee and sighs. “Sorry, a necessary evil
. I’m trying a new authentication protocol.” He casts his eyes about. “Try breaking into this, ya damn beasty.”
“You alright?”
“Oh, aye, no worries. I hope.” He looks down, squinting at something offscreen, then slides a pair of glasses on. “Let’s see, was this the one? No.” He looks to one side, eyes scanning.
“Gerard?”
“Hmm? Right. The docs you sent me. Shipping manifests and the like. The easy part was IDing the product. It came from the Strategic National Stockpile, so I slinked in and got the matches.” He lowers the glasses and raises a bushy brow at me.
“ID chips.”
“Aye. No product specs, just a generic model name, the ALX10 Neurological Interface Platform. So next up was trying the manufacturer. Are you ready for this?”
“Tell me.”
“Xander Technologies. The same company making our V5s.”
Shit. “So the shipments?”
“NIDs.”
“Right. Of course.” I clench my fists and scowl at the leaden sky. Lowering my gaze, I note one of the enforcers staring at me from across the lot. My return glare causes his helmet to rotate away. “Are you sure about the nanobots?”
Cato sighs and leans back. “Sure as the devil. I laid hands on some ALX10s after your last visit. Got a friend at a nearby lab to run some tests. The results were the same as the V5s: the chip produces them. Recorded the process this time, too, it’s quite incredible. The chip makes the nanobots from materials present in the body, slowly at first, but the growth rate is damn impressive. Mostly uses iron, magnesium, and selenium. At least now I know why it causes headaches, it’s hijacking a lot of minerals.”
“What about Xander itself?”
“Pure as a nun’s smile. A gold star vendor with HHS, lots of lucrative government contracts, a sterling reputation – and too good to be true. Every company’s got dirt if you dig for it, but no’ this one.” He points at the ceiling and mouths the phrase, Cover-up.
“Right. What’d you find when you hacked them?”
Cato’s face turns solemn. “Nothing but the corporate fluff it wanted me to see.”
“It?”
He leans forward, face filling the screen. “They’ve got a super.”
“An AI?”
He nods. “It could be NSA’s Oracle, but no way to know. Likely it was the same one that hit me before, last time when you were by, remember?” Cato stops and cranes his head about. “It was powerful, bulled its way right in, again, cut through my new security protocols like they weren’t there. I had to pull the plug, sanitize every system we have, but if it wants back in…”
“Gerard, this is crazy, even for you.”
“Aye, got me ten-times-around spooked, I can tell you.”
“What about the quantities being shipped?” I ask. “HHS should have those records.”
“Shipped units are in the hundreds of thousands. Pending in the millions.”
“LA? St Louis?”
Cato looks offscreen again, eyes scanning. “Aye, and aye. You should see these numbers. They’ve sent shipments to every zone that’s been federalized in the last few years. Houston got them, so did Atlanta, New York, LA. The ones for St Louis are sitting in a facility run by city services, an installation with some pretty impressive security.”
I rub my scalp and sigh. “Yeah, that makes sense. Who approved the purchase orders?”
“All sorts of bureaucrats. This is no black budget stuff, it’s above-board. The budgetary outlay is for compliance with provisions of the Reclamation Health Services Act. Specifically, statutes regarding federalization.”
“When LA was federalized by executive order,” I muse aloud, “there was no grace period for residents to get chipped on their own. They were forced to accept the implants the healers gave them. The NIDs. And now they’ll try the same thing in St. Louis.”
Cato nods, eyes resigned. “True. I wish I had good news, but it’s all bad. And no, I still haven’t cracked the NID source code. I don’t know that I can.”
“Keep trying. And send me what you have. All of it.”
“Will do. And be careful, Malcolm. This’s a boiling kettle of sheep shit.”
◊ ◊ ◊
“You know,” says Henrikson from behind me, “for a man you’ve got a hard-on to kill, you were awfully polite to the first sentinel. What’s your game, Adams?”
Sneaky bastard. How much did he hear? “What do you want, Henrikson?”
He steps up beside me. “Justice, vengeance, preferably a bit of both. A return to better days, a nice retirement in New Zealand, take your pick. Right now? Cooperation.”
“You realize the ID frequencies are a dead end?” Even if we recover usable data from the ruined drives, it’s a longshot whether the ID frequencies can be used to track the cartel members fitted with the fake IDs. “Why put your men in harm’s way for a ghost of a chance?”
“To see how serious the competition was. Now I know.”
I turn my head to peer into the eyes of a comfortable killer. One holding something back.
“First Redeemer Adams!” calls a female journalist at the barricades, waving an arm to get my attention. “First Redeemer Adams, can I have a statement?”
I ignore her. The headache’s another matter. “What’s your game, Henrikson?”
He gives me a lazy, lopsided smile.
“First Redeemer Adams!” shouts the journalist. “Would you care to comment on the presence of enforcers in St. Louis? What does it mean? First Redeemer Adams!”
One of the enforcers walks over and grabs her arm. Scowling, I turn my head away.
Henrikson beckons to me, so I follow him around the side of the auto shop building, away from gray hard suits and dangerous questions. The smells of wet rubber and stale grease emanate from piles of old tires and a dumpster. Henrikson pulls out a scrambler and sets it atop a stack of rusty wheel rims.
“I don’t play games, Adams,” he says. “Not with this. Two of my men got taken out by professionals, real pros – I was outmaneuvered. There aren’t many on this planet who can manage that, definitely not cartel hitmen or seventh-century barbarians.”
“What’s your point?”
“Really, Adams? I know you know. You ran into them in Los Angeles, you’ve been chasing two of their best ever since. DSS employs operatives to do its dirty work just like we do, the difference being, theirs don’t care about collateral damage.”
“You think DSS is sponsoring Conry and Leeds?”
“Sponsoring? That would imply an audit trail, compadre. This is outside the lines, beyond even the sentinels. As ruthless as they are, they’re still accountable. No, we’re dealing with the undead here – KIA every one, dead to the world but still very fucking active. Shadow operatives – unaccountable, amoral, lethal – the men the government sends to kill its own.”
I cut my eyes around, wishing Patton was with me. “You have any proof?”
“Why do you think me and my boys are in town? This isn’t the first false flag attack they’ve pulled off. You think Los Angeles was bad? New York last year? That was them. As for who’s pulling the strings, Leeds and Conry are good, but it’s not them. Not even close.” He raises his eyes to the sky, points at the clouds. “All the way, Adams. Farther than you or I can reach. But if we can’t strike at the head, we can always chop off the hands.”
I say nothing, uncomfortable to voice aloud that I think he’s right. I’ve suspected all along that DSS was behind Los Angeles, but this… This is on a different level entirely. In LA, they killed six of my team, but we were combatants. Here, it was eighty-six innocent civilians. Henrikson’s right: an attack like that goes beyond traditional black ops. It would have to involve operatives with no official accountability. And if DSS leadership and Admin policymakers are behind them, if they’re willing to send such men to commit such atrocities, then what wouldn’t they be capable of? God help me if I ever find out.
“You know I’m right,” he s
ays.
“You know why?”
Henrikson gives me a long, probing look. “Yeah, and so do you. I’ve got people working the tech angles, too. We can compare notes later.”
I sigh and shake my head in irritation, mostly at myself. So he was eavesdropping on me. My screw-up, though, for not being careful. “How long do we have?”
He smiles and nods. “The million-dollar question. They stick around just long enough to get the job done. You blink, they’re gone. Missed them by a fingernail in New York. Los Angeles, too. Yeah, I was there. There’s only one thing still keeping them here.”
“Connor.”
“Correct-a-mundo, amigo. We need to get to him first.”
I scowl and peer up at the leaden sky. “You mentioned cooperation.”
“On our next op. Well done with Simmons, by the way. I hope you weren’t bluffing about putting him down – I appreciate a man who’s willing to get his hands bloody to get the job done. You also strike me as someone who likes his answers firsthand.”
“You’re going to ignore the chief’s warning?”
“I don’t trust him. My boys already have eyes on him. I’d give it fifty-fifty whether he helps us or betrays us. Maybe sixty-forty, since you asked him so nice.”
I don’t know that I can trust Henrikson – he’s holding something back – but Sam does. That and cold rage will have to do. “What do you propose?”
“Once we locate what’s left of Los Santos, what say you tag along with me and my team? A joint operation, the best of both worlds – yours, and mine.”
A hovership passes overhead on its approach toward downtown. A hovership with DSS markings, carrying yet another load of enforcers and equipment, more reinforcements to solidify the occupation. Two tactical drones cruise in its wake, as if anyone in the city might try to prevent its passage. No one can. It’s too late – the city has fallen, an undertaking costing eighty-six innocent lives. As Henrikson said, convenient.
“All right, Henrikson, a joint op. One condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
