“If that’s true, then why doesn’t your boss just tell the whole world it’s been stolen to cut the robbers off?”
“Do you have any idea what that would do to AlterBionics’ stock price? This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s best to keep it quiet. Of course...it usually doesn’t get this complicated.”
“So, we’re still left facing an unknown quantity of skilled and well armed men, which leaves us with two options. Either we become very capable ninjas in the next two hours, or we bring along more bodies and guns than they have.”
"You don't happen to have an army handy, do you? Maybe one that isn’t going to screw us over?”
“No, but you do. AlterBionics has a security force, and the law does allow corporations to violate most laws to reclaim stolen property.”
“True, but again, that risks it becoming public that we were robbed, and starting an all out war with the Z.A.C. What about Rossi’s security? I’m sure he could round up a few big bodyguards for us.”
“We can ask him, but it might be a huge waste of time. The price he’s going to ask might be more than your prototype is worth.”
“Mr. Wright will spare no expense to recover the prototype, but if you have any other ideas, I’m listening.”
Unfortunately, I did not. We called a cab and said our goodbyes to Aunt Lou and Nikie while we waited.
Chapter 15
I tapped the button to switch the back seats into privacy mode, dimming the glass between us and the driver, and cutting off all audio transfer. “At this point, we may just be screwed. We could show up with a hundred men and still not get out with the prototype. It could get destroyed in the fight, or someone could slip out a rear exit with it.” I took a breath. “I just want you to be prepared to write this one off if you have to.”
“My job is to recover the item, and that’s what I’m going to do. If you do your job, we’ll both get out of this fine.”
“I’ll honor my contract.”
“Besides, it occurs to me that this may not devolve into a fight after all.”
“How’s that?”
“While it is possible that the seller may have come after us, it’s unlikely. The seller is going to want the best price, and competition will achieve that, no matter who he ends up selling it to. So, that means it was probably the buyer that came after us. If so, that buyer has a pretty serious force behind him or her, but they won’t be able to bring it to the meeting. I’m guessing only the buyer, the seller, and two guards each are going to be allowed.”
“Yeah, but if we show up with five or ten men of our own, they’re just going to ghost.”
“True,” she said, “but you, me, two or three other guys, and a small fortune might be able to walk right in the door without a single shot fired.”
“You have that kind of cash on you?”
Jennifer took hold of the side pocket on her right leg, peeling back its hidden magnetic closure, exposing the smooth white outer plate of her leg. Pressing her thumb to the outer surface, a small slit in the long side of the plate came open and ejected a card. She held it low for me to see.
At first glance, the card seemed to be solid black with rounded edges, slightly thicker in the middle. Where it caught the light, dense rainbow colored circuitry briefly appeared. Though I had never before seen one with my own eyes, I knew it was a cryptotech card, capable of transferring large quantities of funds without a trace. Put it into any bank machine and a pre-loaded fortune would be placed in your account, no questions asked. This was how corporations did their dirtiest work.
She slipped it back in its slot, closing it and her pant leg. “That should get us in the door, hopefully.”
I wanted to discuss the point further, but my train of thought fell off the track when our cab jerked to a stop, my seatbelt the only thing keeping me from falling into the floorboard. Another tap of the privacy button cleared the window, revealing a half dozen fire trucks a half mile ahead of us, blocking the road. By my estimation, they were gathered right outside Hamilton Towers, lights still blazing as they coiled their hoses. Gray smoke curled around the Skyway crossing overhead.
I exclaimed a curse, hurriedly paid for our ride, and jumped out of the vehicle.
A short jog down the sidewalk, I rounded the corner to the hotel’s plot of land. Many of the patrons were already filing back inside, but Rossi was still out front, directing his supervisors and instructing his security team. When he caught sight of me, he waved away his underlings and marched toward me. I met him halfway.
He spoke first. “Exactly what the hell have you pulled me into?”
“What happened?”
“A bomb is what happened! The damn police are already writing it up as a terror attack. They’re saying one of my patrons tried to blast their way into the Skyway.”
“And you disagree?” Jennifer asked, catching up to me.
“Of course I disagree,” he snapped. “You’ve seen my security. Lowers aren’t allowed on the upper floors, and the damn Skyway entrance wasn’t harmed. Someone from the Skyway planted it, and you can believe I was the damn target.” Rossi turned back to me. “Who did you piss off?”
“We’re actually still not quite sure,” I answered. “Your code cracker and we were hit apparently at the same time you were.”
“We have a plan,” Jennifer interjected. “We’ll find out who did this.”
Rossi took a step toward Jennifer, his gaze hardening on her. “I don’t give a damn about your plan. My hotel is ruined. That bomb took off the top two floors, and the fire department caused enough water damage to ruin nearly everything else. I lost six employees, three patrons, and seven more of my security personnel are in the hospital, three of which are probably losing limbs, and the only reason I’m standing in front of you now is because I like to take my breakfast a little late in the downstairs restaurant.”
Jennifer didn’t step backward or even look away from his glare. “I can help you,” she said calmly. “I’m certain David Wright will be willing to help your people get new limbs.”
“That’s a start,” he responded, turning his hard gaze back to his building. “Now, why are you two here? Surely it isn’t just to check up on me.”
Jennifer answered, “We have a time and location for the buy. We plan to crash it, but we could use some muscle for backup.”
“Is this the guns blazing kind of party crash? Because most of my people are going to be busy for the next few hours.”
“No, we just need a few, enough to let them know we’re serious, but not enough to scare them away.”
Rossi glanced at me. “Talk to Jason. He’s in the lobby. Tell him I said he and his crew are getting the rest of the day off, with pay. He’ll know what it means.”
“We appreciate your help, Mr. Rossi.”
“This isn’t help, Ms. Nadee,” he snarled. “This is an exchange. When the two of you figure out who is responsible for this, I expect names.” Rossi turned to face me. “Names, Jackson.”
Without any further comment, Rossi walked away to oversee the final day of a once legendary hotel. Jennifer and I wasted no time relaying Rossi’s message to Jason. He pulled out his radio and spoke with four people. Within ten minutes, we were all in the sub-basement security room, discussing the situation.
Jason brought up a map of 832 Meadow Rd. on the largest wall monitor and started examining it. The aerial view didn’t show much of the squat, abandoned factory because it sat beneath a crumbling overpass on the northeast border of the city. Just west of the factory were taller buildings offering good sniping positions. Jason seemed to think the same.
“Dixon and Banks,” Jason spoke to two of his crew, a young man and a woman slipping into their field gear, “we’ll drop you on the way in to scout these buildings. Don’t engage. We just need to know who has eyes on us.”
“Heat or audio?” the young woman asked.
Jason thought it over for a second. “Let’s go with heat scanners. These buildi
ngs should be abandoned enough to avoid too much interference.” His attention shifted to the other two of his crew, men larger than myself. “Bellamy, you’re driving. Pack heavy. If we come out running, you’ll be our primary cover.”
“How about me?” asked the slightly larger of the two. “Heavy or light?”
“Light arms, Garris,” Jason responded. “You’re walking in with us. We’re expecting hostility, but this is still primarily a buy.”
With marching orders settled, the team finished readying themselves. Bellamy withdrew a heavy machine gun from the weapons locker, while Garris placed nine millimeters in his shoulder and ankle holsters. Dixon and Banks both strapped on extra body armor before covering it with loose street jackets. The young man and woman each slipped a monocular heat scope in an outer pocket.
Once everyone was properly decked out in casual clothing and firearms, Jason removed earbud radios from their charging ports and distributed one to each of us. It stuck out a bit from my ear, but fit securely enough that I wouldn't have to worry about it falling out. We each did a quick test of the earpieces before Jason led us out to a black van in the parking deck.
Chapter 16
Bellamy was a decent enough driver, but it still took us more than an hour to cross the city. Thirty minutes before the scheduled meeting, we dropped Dixon and Banks out two blocks from the factory. I still wasn’t sure which was which.
This far out from the core of the city traffic was quite a bit lighter, allowing us to make a loop around the surrounding blocks, getting a good look at the location without getting too close. There were no cars parked in the fenced off eastern parking lot, nor around the west side of the building, but at least one dock door had ramp access that could have allowed them to park inside. People passed to and fro on the sidewalks, but no one entered or exited the building, nor did we see anyone come or go from the Skyway access point one block north of the factory.
We were on our second wide loop around the area when our radios crackled to life. “Building one clear,” came the female voice. “Nothing but two squatters, and they say they haven’t seen anything.”
“Thanks, Dixon. Banks, what have you got?”
“Just finished,” came Banks’s deeper voice. “Nothing here but a family of cats. Have we got any food in the van?”
“We’ll bring some takeout back when we’re done. You two get back down to the ground level to watch the west side. We’ll enter the east. Radio if you see anything.”
“Will do,” came Dixon’s voice.
Bellamy drove us in through the open front gate and parked parallel to the building, passenger side closest. Jason checked his weapon again and re-holstered it.
“It’s your game from here,” he said to me.
“I’ll take the lead,” I responded. “Ms. Nadee, you stay to my left, one step behind. Jason, you and Garris follow closely.”
Jason and Garris nodded. I opened the van’s rear doors, and Jennifer followed. Sounds of the city rolled across the empty parking lot. My nose wrinkled at the smell of rubber and stagnant chemicals filling the air. Mold grew thick between the bricks of the doorway, slowly eating away the mortar. Crumbling concrete steps supported a railing that was more rust than steel. I climbed the steps and opened the door with my right hand, intending to keep it between my soft tissues and any potential incoming projectiles. The vest gave me some sense of security, but I wasn’t eager to test its limits.
No bullets came flying from the shadows. The only sounds were our own footfalls and the creaks of rusted tufting machines. Dim sunlight shone through broken windows, while holes in the sinking roof dripped condensation into rust red puddles around the room.
As our formation moved deeper into the building, I wondered if the location of the meet had been changed, or if we had ever had the correct information from the start. I was almost convinced that we were walking into a trap when I felt Jennifer’s hand on my shoulder.
“Jackson,” she said. Her gaze was fixed on a bulbous lump draped across the top of a creel rack, red droplets falling from its dangling hand.
I gestured for the group to hold position while I moved to take a closer look. The steel rack was about seven feet tall and twenty feet long, designed to feed synthetic yarn into textile machines. Retirement hadn’t been kind to the structure, but it still did a fine job of holding up two hundred pounds of cop-looking bodyguard, minus the weight of an adult human head.
The man’s cranium had not been removed smoothly, but rather crushed. The jaw and rear portion of the skull remained attached to the flesh of the neck. Sadly, this was not the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
Jennifer stepped past me to examine a pair of combat boots extending beyond the edge of the nearest tufting machine. “There’s another one here,” she said. “Crushed throat, I think.”
“Does he look like a cop?” I asked, still watching the darkness.
“I’d say so,” she responded. “So where’s his boss?”
“There,” Jason said, gesturing his sidearm toward a caved in door on the south wall.
I borrowed Jason’s flashlight to peer inside. The beam glinted off the crumpled remains of a snub nose revolver laying on faded blue carpet. On the other side of the small office, the carpet took on a much deeper color around the form of a finely dressed young man. Like the gun, his right hand was crumpled into an unusable mess, and though he still sat upright, there was no life in his almond eyes. Small globs of congealing blood fell from cracks in the cinderblock wall behind his head, leaving behind their dry brown outlines.
“I don’t get it,” Jason said. “Why the hell would they beat them all to death? Seems a bit excessive.”
Jennifer answered before I could. “They couldn’t take any risks. One stray bullet and a billion dollar prototype is worthless.”
“So they sent bionically enhanced thugs to the meeting, but why not just buy the thing and be done with it? Why take even a small chance with the prototype?”
“Us,” Jennifer answered. “We’re the reason. We got close, and they sent people after us. We escaped, so they bumped up the time of the meeting and tied up their loose ends. We should check him for I.D.”
I crept closer to the man, keeping my boots clear of the thickening mess soaking into the carpet. Patting his jacket, I found his wallet and slid it out. Careful to avoid leaving fingerprints, I used only my right hand to flip it open and find his license.
“His name is Peter Zhao,” I said, reading the card. “I think I met him the other day. He works for Amanda Tsai.”
“He works for the Z.A.C.? That could be why they went after Rossi. Between you and Cassdan, they might have thought I was his agent. But then again, Ms. Tsai doesn’t run the kind of business that gets you approved for Skyway access. I suppose she could have paid someone to deliver the bomb to Rossi’s doorstep.”
“If Amanda Tsai wanted Skyway access, she would get it, but she would never have gone after Rossi like that. If Ms. Tsai thought Rossi was meddling in her business, she would have just told him to put in a bid or back off. This is starting to smell more and more like an independant job.”
“That would make sense. The Z.A.C. values autonomy. If Mr. Zhao and his crew set up the job and did the bulk of the work, they’d be entitled to the bulk of the payoff, minus Ms. Tsai’s usual cut, and a bit extra for connecting him with someone who could open the case.”
“If Zhao was working independently, for the most part, how did he plant the bomb in the hotel?”
“That must be where the buyer comes in. I doubt Zhao’s little three person team had the skills to realize Cassdan was spying on them, so my bet is the buyer has been tracking everything from the start, running his or her own investigation.”
Jason spoke up. “That still doesn’t explain why they had the meeting here.”
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“Criminal behavior one-oh-one. If the authorities start snooping around your usual corner, you find another
corner.”
“That’s true,” I said. “As soon as they knew we were onto them, they should have changed the time and the location. What’s so special about this place?”
“It’s probably the overpass,” Jennifer offered. “All that steel and concrete probably blocks the police drone scanners.”
“That likely means the buyer has gotten away clean with the prize. By now, they’re probably already in the upper city, sipping champagne and washing the blood off of their hands.” I took a moment to breathe and unclench my jaw.
“Maybe we’re making too many assumptions,” Jennifer offered.
“What do you mean?”
“This buyer clearly has resources. He sent six men after us, maybe the same after Cassdan, but none that we’ve seen have been bionically enhanced.”
“How can you be sure? They busted down the door to my apartment easily enough.”
“True, but it took them a minute to get in, same as it took a few minutes for the second team to get up the stairs. I could have made that run in half the time, and any decently sized person can bust down a door.”
“Okay, so what are you getting at?”
“How certain can we be that Marrow didn’t make it here before us? She’s had people watching us, so she could have also been watching Zhao, or the buyer’s people, or maybe she just got lucky and somebody saw these guys walking around with a fancy case.”
I thought the idea over for a minute. She wasn’t wrong. So far, the only bionically enhanced muscle in play had been working for Dana, yet something still didn’t seem to add up.
“Zhao’s team is the only one here,” I realized. “They wouldn’t have arrived more than a few minutes before the buyer, yet none of those tactical bastards are laying dead around here.” I squatted back down to check Zhao’s half closed eyes, finding them rigid and unmoving. “Rigor is starting to set in, meaning all this went down maybe two hours ago.”
Jennifer understood. “And Marrow hasn’t called yet. She was so eager to make a deal, but two hours have passed without a word.”
Under the Skyway (Skyway Series Book 1) Page 12
