Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  "I found it on the floor of the closet, partly under a piece of drywall," Becky said. "I didn't see a lockbox."

  "Sorry, I was burglarized earlier today, which is why the door and the wall were broken."

  "Don't you mean yesterday?" Evelyn asked.

  "If you want to be pedantic, yes." I paused. "I keep asking why you came here of all places, and you haven't answered me."

  "It's the last place anyone would think to look for us," Evelyn said. "So we'd be out of the crossfire."

  I took my mask and license back from Becky. "I'm not as altruistic as the stereotype would have you believe. You can stay here, but it's not going to be free."

  "What is it you want?" Becky asked. I wasn't so crass as to say what I actually wanted, so I went with something more reasonable.

  "Some help fixing up the place would be nice. It seems I have a hard time keeping people out." I walked towards the bedroom door.

  "Where are you going?" Becky asked.

  "It's my bed, I get to sleep in it." I'm not sure how much time is left on this side of the tape. This is a good spot to turn it over.

  *click*

  Tape 1, Side 2

  Yes, I had been a bit of an asshole. But, mind you, I'd just gotten home at around two in the morning. I was still decaffeinated after one of the less-enjoyable days of my existence. And I found people in my apartment who'd let themselves in and helped themselves to my food. Oh, and they'd rooted around in my things to boot. I think I'm a sucker for a pretty face. After all, Becky was still cold, and Evelyn wasn't much better. I think the only reason I didn't wake up with a slit throat was because they figured they could use me. All right, that might be a bit harsh for those two.

  I awoke to find that I'd slept with Becky in the most brutally literal sense of the term. Her back was to mine, and she was still asleep. During the night I'd been nudged continually closer to the edge, and I was precariously close to falling off. Half the mattress was sitting unused at this point. I just stood up and tried to go through my morning routine. Evelyn was snoozing in my chair. It was the only other padded furniture in the place. I both washed and dressed in the bathroom to avoid any awkward moments.

  I set about prepping caffeine as the ladies woke. "Do you have a computer I could use?" Evelyn asked.

  "I did, up until yesterday. The burglar took it." As I poured a steaming, overly strong cup of coffee, Becky was emerging from the bathroom. She'd borrowed my shower, which was sort of expected after I hadn't thrown them out. She'd also borrowed my clothes, without asking. I'd known her less than an hour in terms of total time awake together. Already she was assuming hospitality I'd not extended. Evelyn gathered up what appeared to be an overnight bag and stood. As she turned to head for the bathroom, something fell to the floor. It landed silently on the rug, but the glint of golden light caught my eye. Disguising my interest by fetching a pan from under the counter, I picked it up.

  The dropped device was barely longer than a thumbnail. It was an extremely slim form USB drive. While I rooted in the fridge, I slipped the drive into my pocket. I asked myself what the chances were it held pieces of the encryption key versus, say, the ledger for Tesla Too. I was never good at probability. I started breakfast. It was simple fare, the sort of stuff I'd have on any given morning. As I was finishing up, Evelyn emerged again. She'd donned a pale blue pantsuit, and her hair was still wet. I had just finished plating when the first bang went off. I dove away from it out of reflex.

  If you've never been on the receiving end of a 'dynamic entry', count yourself lucky. It's a mass of jacked-up psychopaths bashing in the door and lobbing a flash-bang in your face. Followed immediately thereafter by a mass of meat-heads shouting contradictory orders while hopped up on caffeine and adrenalin. Their twitchy trigger fingers sought any excuse to blast hot lead into anything that moved to prove to themselves that they aren't just dickless assholes. The effects of the flash-bang felt like my eyes had popped like grapes. Fortunately, there was no actual damage. After I was cuffed, one of the pricks decided to rinse out my eyes with pepper spray. I got a swift kick to the ribs for turning away from the source of the fire in my sinuses.

  "Hey, Weeks, what about this guy?" A steel-toed faux combat boot collided with my gut.

  "Grova never said nothin' about no guy," Weeks said. That wasn't exactly the language he'd used. The exact turn of phrase was one applicable to bundles of firewood or British cigarettes. I had trouble seeing him at the time, but I got a better look later. Weeks was a broad-faced, weak chinned man with an arrogant swagger. His gut barely squeezed into a tactical outfit that they didn't make in the size 'fat bastard'. "Worry about the girls first. We'll do something about him later." Again, I'm paraphrasing, because Weeks' juvenile vocabulary was terribly inaccurate. Weeks picked up one of the plates from the counter and started eating my breakfast. "Get those two in the cars," he said.

  Handcuff locks are not terribly complicated. The main difficulty being their position relative to your fingers. I can pop a handcuff lock with a great many implements, but it was far easier just to use a key. All standard, police issue handcuffs use the same key. These keys were commercially available. I owned one, and kept it on my keyring. Weeks and his goons hadn't bothered to look at my keyring. Indeed, had they searched me instead of kicking me, I wouldn't have been out of the cuffs already. I was up the wall and out the window before Weeks got his Glock out of its holster. My sudden appearance surprised the goon in the side alley. I twisted his gun arm out of the way and clobbered him with his own nightstick. He went down, so I didn't press the attack. My goal was to get over the buildings and far away. The cars the police had arrived in weren't even unmarked cruisers, they looked to be personal cars. I don't think this was a sanctioned raid.

  A lot of people practice "Free Running" or "Parkour" for a variety of reasons. I have an unfair advantage over the rest of the lot in that any surface was a hand- or foot-hold. I left the SWAT team in the dust. At that moment, I knew Dan Foley would cease to be a valid alias. As my eyes finally started to clear, I found a hiding spot and took stock of my circumstances. I had my wallet, my keys, the USB drive Evelyn had dropped, and my BHA card. I let the holofoil eagle glint in the early morning light.

  With my ire and heart rate up, and the world smelling of chili powder, the malformed eagle gave me a disapproving look. 'Dan Foley' might not be a valid alias anymore, but I still had a name I hadn't used in years. It felt like the time had come to use it again.

  I walked downtown. I covered the two miles in a little under a half an hour. Not bad for having gotten lazy in the past few years. The blue BHA card swiped me in the front door of Paragon Logistics. The professionally dressed black woman behind the front desk raised an eyebrow at my disheveled appearance. It didn't help that I reeked of sweat and pepper spray. To her credit, she wasn't phased, and simply asked, "May I help you?"

  I put the blue card on her desk. "I am a Community Fund Member, I wish to verify my balance and procure some supplies."

  She shot me a skeptical glance, but she picked up the card and keyed in the digits from its face. "What codename do you operate under?" she asked.

  "Omnirunner," I said.

  "What brings you to Bilgewater?" she asked.

  "It's just where I happened to stop," I said.

  She ran through a handful of security questions to make sure I wasn't impersonating myself, then said. "There is a station inside that alcove over there." She pointed. I took my BHA card back and moved over to the nook. It had been so long since I'd used the Fund network that I had to reset my password before I could log in. I couldn't remember the old one anyway. I'd initially set up the automatic withdrawal from my bank to cover the payments the Fund made to the BHA for my insurance. I had proven to be such a low risk that my premiums had sunk steadily over the years. It was a side-effect of being almost completely off the
radar. The difference between the two numbers had accumulated in my Community Fund account.

  I wasn't quite awash in Fund credits, but I had enough. I limited myself to what was available in the Bilgewater and Sandy Shore area. I had no intention of waiting for something to ship out of New Port Arthur. I got a new hero suit and underclothes in the same pattern I had on file. Before I added it to my cart, I noticed a few new options. I clicked on the information link for 'Armored Hero Suit'. It was a design meant to keep as much of the flexibility as possible from the standard model, but also shrug off small arms hits. The note stated that it couldn't shrug off full rifle rounds, and the most powerful bullet they guaranteed against was from the standard Kalashnikov. That was with an asterisk that said blunt force from the hit could cause internal injury anyway. I chose that option, because it beat no armor at all.

  In my dark mood, I might have gone a tad overboard with the rest of the gear. I ordered a harness, a pair of side-handle stun batons, lockpicks, breaching charges, stinger grenades, a filter mask and an extra large pack of zip ties. I tossed in a backpack for good measure. I fought to keep a maniacal grin off my face as the robot pickers pulled boxes from the back room. Changing in the men's room, I stuffed my old clothes into the backpack. "You look like you're going to war," the woman behind the desk said.

  "In a way, I am." While it would have been stylish to exit on that line, I still had work to do here. I sat back down at the computer and looked up Kazor Grova. The Internet seemed almost sarcastic in its depiction of Kazor Grova as a totally legitimate banker who was in no way a money launderer. It did tell me that the doughy man lived on the top floors of Cypress Down, a condominium tower in Sandy Shore that he had built. I couldn't take the bus in this getup, not that I had bus fare anyway. I went back to my account balance, checked on the cost of the available vehicles and flinched. There was an overdraft fee if my balance went negative. The Fund wouldn't look for payment in cash. No, they'd find me, and ask me to do a few favors for them, some 'Community Service' as it were. With my powers that probably meant being a decoy during a counter-assassination mission. There was a reason I paid up front.

  I'd gone this far.

  I put in an order for something they had in the lot. The site spun for a while before the word "Approved" popped up and my balance went to negative numbers. I gave the black girl a nod as she tossed me the keys. There it was, a loophole in action. I wasn't allowed to drive as Dan Foley or Dan Fullbright, but as Omnirunner, I could operate any vehicle I could get my hands on, with the damage I might do being charged against my BHA insurance. Take the mask off, and it was once again illegal for me to be driving.

  Heading out, I woke up a fairly nondescript car and drove towards Sandy Shore. It was a blue hatchback, but it was the cheapest thing they'd had. Cypress Down was a mid-rise tower halfway to downtown from the shore. It was a brick-faced building of about fourteen or fifteen stories. I couldn't park in their closed lot, but I found an unoccupied street space not that far away. While I could have walked up the side of the building, gravity would still be pulling on me. That puts a lot of strain on your knees, thighs, and back. It was easier to crawl up the building in a freehand climb. Yes, I ran up shorter buildings, but that was not fourteen stories.

  Anyway, I crawled up the brickwork, and I was wheezing pretty heavily by the time I sat down beside Grova's pool. You try free-handing a hundred and fifty feet straight up. I was caught off guard at the rattle of ice cubes as someone held out a glass of iced tea. She was slim, in that waifish, malnourished kind of way. Her hair was dyed red with brown roots starting to show. The straps of a red bikini poked out from the wide neck of a loose white dress. All that lost my attention the moment she turned and the bruising on the left side of her face became visible. Most striking was the fact that her eye was swollen shut, the lids livid in streaks of purple and yellow.

  "I should not be surprised Kazor has gotten the attention of costumed heroes," she said.

  "You'll forgive me if I decline the drink," I said. "Paranoia is an occupational hazard."

  She shrugged and chugged half the glass. She sat on one of the pool chairs. "I am Sofiya Grova, who might you be?" Sofiya had a strong accent, but I could still understand her relatively clearly.

  "Omnirunner," I said, catching myself before the word 'Dan' had left my lips.

  "You will probably want Kazor's computer," Sofiya said. "It's where he keeps most of his secrets, and all of his records."

  "And you're telling me this because?"

  Sofiya gestured to the side of her face. "I married a man I hardly knew who described himself as a rich American. I'd figured he was lying about the rich part because a rich man can keep American girls. He is rich, but not enough to overcome his personality. If I leave Kazor, I get sent home with nothing. If you send Kazor to prison, I stay in America with his money."

  I nodded and decided not to tell Sofiya about the abomination that was asset forfeiture. It would only sour her mood. Having caught my breath from the climb, I stood up. Sofiya gestured with her glass. "Through the left hand door," she said. "His password is 'King of Sandy Shore,' three capitals, no spaces." There was clearly no love lost between Kazor and his mail-order bride. I couldn't really blame her. The sliding doors opened onto a very modern home office of glass, steel, and titanium white. With the air conditioner clearly set to full blast, I closed the door behind me to keep the cool air in. I sat at the glass-topped desk and woke the computer.

  Entering 'KingofSandyShore' into the password box, I got in. Of all the people I'd dealt with in the past few days, Sofiya was probably the most honest. I could sit here and talk about what I did on Kazor's computer, but most of that was not very relevant. I did check out the contents of the USB drive Evelyn had dropped. There were two text files 'Kenjikey' and 'Lanakey' along with a video file named 'Insurance'. I played it. The video looked like it came from a security camera in Tesla Too. It showed Sullivan mixing a drink. She added an ingredient that I don't think was standard. It was a fine powder. She delivered the glass to Katai and started a conversation in Japanese. After a while, Katai hurried towards the restroom. He never came out.

  I took the opportunity to do some online banking, then set up Kazor's computer to overwrite its hard drive thirty five times in a row. While it required burning something to an optical disk and booting from that, I couldn't think of a better way to cover my tracks. What kind of online banking? Well, there was a file called 'Kazorkey' that I stumbled onto, or rather searched for after seeing the files on the USB drive. And a cyphertext block that, once decrypted, said a good deal about the Third National Bank of Sanalta. All of that information was now on the USB drive, along with the video of Sullivan murdering Katai.

  Volkan caught me off-guard once again. Five rounds to the chest, just like he'd done Salvador. The nine-millimeter slugs slamming into the armor felt like I was being kicked repeatedly in the chest by an angry mule. A professional assassin wasn't foolish enough to miss the complete lack of blood from five bullet hits, though there was a half-second pause as the information filtered into his mind. In that half of a second, I pulled a baton and brought it down on his wrist, hard. A wet crack echoed from the collision as his wrist broke and the pistol tumbled from his fingers.

  The man in brown wasn't so easily dissuaded, and brought his left fist up under my solar plexus. The hit knocked the air from my lungs and lifted my feet from the carpet. My eyes tried to leap from their sockets, and I made a most undignified noise. I pulled the other baton and wailed on the larger man as best I could. As I fought to regain the wind he'd knocked out of me, Volkan denied me another solid hit by ducking, weaving, deflecting, and all-around dancing around my wild flailing. I'd trained to fight powered criminals, but I hadn't swung a tonfa in years. The fight with Volkan was slowly awakening the old muscle memories, though I was nowhere near as fast as I'd once been.

  I was
sick of Volkan beating me up and taking pot shots at me. I lit up the electrodes on the batons and began sprinkling in jabs with my attacks. The Turk saw the danger and began inching away to avoid a debilitating jolt of electricity. I should have been watching where his eyes went. His gaze kept flicking down. He swept my leg when my weight was forward. He took the knee out on the load-bearing limb and sent me crashing to the floor. The heel of an Italian loafer came down on my sternum right where the bullets had hit. The crunch and the pain convinced me that my ribs were broken. They weren't, but at that instant, I could have sworn otherwise.

  As he kicked for my throat, I rammed one of the batons into the back of his other knee. The impact knocked the leg out from under him as the jolt sent muscle spasms up his thigh and down his calf. I rolled aside before the big man landed almost exactly where my head had been. I was not lenient in exploiting this opportunity, and the force I applied was, well, excessive. Volkan lived, but I did break more bones than just his wrist. I zip-tied his wrists and ankles, and staggered away, gasping for air. Volkan looked up at me, blood dribbling from his nostril.