by Tom Clancy
Fisher sat still for five more minutes, then brought the SC-20 to his shoulder, thumbed the selector to STICKY CAM, then focused the scope on a tree along the bank about fifty feet upstream. He fired. With a soft whoosh-pop of compressed air, the Sticky Cam arced out and planted itself against the tree’s trunk about twenty feet off the ground, just below the lowermost branches. Using the OPSAT’s touch screen, Fisher panned the camera left and right to make sure he’d placed it correctly. He had. At full extension, the camera could scan the entire length of the mansion’s backyard. He set the Sticky Cam to slow auto pan, then crawled back down the bank, reholstered the SC-20, and started upstream again.
Each step upstream brought him not only closer to the mansion but closer to the guards, so Fisher took care, stopping every dozen steps to crouch down and study the OPSAT’s screen, which he’d programmed to give him a real-time feed of the Sticky Cam’s pan. The guards were still accounted for, each either standing in place near one of the mansion’s doors or walking across the lawn or patio.
Now the stream started to gain elevation. With every step closer to the dome, the grade increased, first from a gentle twenty degrees, then to a steep forty-five degrees, until Fisher was climbing through the water from boulder to boulder. The watercourse, now propelled by gravity, splashed around him, tossing up clouds of spray and froth. Occasionally Fisher’s hand, groping for a hold, would land on one of the mechanical incline planes or the rim of one of the water conduits.
Ten feet from the dome, Fisher was climbing vertically through what was essentially a waterfall sluicing from the tunnel entrance. Careful to stay behind the curtain of water, he worked mostly by feel until at last his right hand found the curved lower rim of the tunnel. He paused to catch his breath, then placed his left hand next to his right and chinned himself up until his sternum was level with the rim. He raised his knee, hooked it over the edge, then braced his foot against the tunnel’s side and pushed hard, rolling himself into the tunnel.
Immediately his body became a dam. He felt the current roiling against his back and shoulders, shoving him back toward the edge. He braced both palms against one side of the tunnel wall, his feet on the other, and arched his back, letting the water flow out below him. Hand over hand, foot over foot, back still bowed over the water, he walked himself up the tunnel until he reached the mouth, which rested half submerged in the dome’s pool. With a groan of relief, Fisher let himself slide headfirst into the water. He resurfaced and looked around.
The interior dome could indeed pass for a Disney World attraction. Landscaped to a picture-perfect replica of a jungle oasis, the dome was its own ecosystem, complete with shoreline littered with boulders, ferns, and miniature waterfalls lit from beneath by amber spotlights, which cast undulating shadows on the bushy stands of bamboo that curved over the pool all the way to the smoked glass ceiling, some thirty feet above Fisher’s head. Somewhere in the canopy came the squawking of night birds; Fisher couldn’t tell whether the sounds were real or recorded. Either way, true to form, Legard had spared no expense on his hobby.
The pool itself, which measured roughly two hundred feet by two hundred feet, was kidney-shaped, with six to eight Jacuzzi-size coves built into the sides at irregular intervals. Each cove featured its own waterfall, which splashed onto the surface and sluiced through a narrow opening and into the pool proper. At the far end, under an arch of ferns, he could see a flagstone walkway bordered by green miniature spotlights. An exit, Fisher thought.
He sound-keyed his SVT, then said, “At waypoint four.”
“Roger,” Grimsdottir responded. “Is it everything you’d hoped for?”
“Like Canada’s answer to Disney. I’m moving on.”
11
HUNCHED over, Fisher padded down the flagstone walkway, disabling the spotlights as he went with the SC pistol’s EM scrambling function, until he reached the exit door, a black walnut, ten-paneled monster with massive, black wrought-iron butterfly hinges.
Lacking the time for a detailed pre-mission surveillance or a pair of human eyes on the inside to feed him information, Fisher knew he would have to play much of the penetration by ear. He knew Legard was home but little else. The mansion had eight bedrooms large and lavish enough to serve as a master suite, and another twelve rooms that served as lounging or entertainment or recreation spaces. Legard was a notorious insomniac, according to Grimsdottir’s research, so there was no telling where Fisher would find the man.
He slipped his flexicam under the door’s bottom edge; the OSPAT’s screen showed a long hall done in brown travertine tile and Moroccan carpet runners, both lit by tulip-shaped Tiffany wall sconces. He switched to NV, then to IR, and saw no movement, so he switched finally to EM and scanned the corridor for signs of sensors or cameras. He saw nothing.
He withdrew the flexicam, then tried the doorknob. It was locked but, despite the door’s imposing appearance, the lock was easy, clicking open under his picks after only twenty seconds.
He eased the door open a few inches and peeked through. All clear. He stepped in, swung the door shut behind him, and started down the corridor, which appeared to be lined on only one side with rooms, four of them; the other wall contained three narrow doors—closets, Fisher surmised. The wall sconces were dimly lit and spaced at twenty-foot intervals; Fisher left them alone. Too many bad bulbs would alert any security guard worth his or her salt.
The first room, a lounging space complete with sectional leather sofas, a round, open-hearth fireplace, and a wet bar, was empty, as was the second, a game room complete with two poker tables and a billiard table, its baize surface glowing beneath a Craftsman-style billiard lamp.
As Fisher approached the last room, where the corridor ended and turned left, he could hear strains of a television playing—an American Idol rerun, it sounded like, along with the voices of two or three men.
To his right Fisher heard footsteps padding down stairs. Fisher stepped left, opened the closet door, stepped inside, and pulled it shut behind him. He pulled out the flexicam and slipped it under the door in time to see a pair of booted feet pass the closet and disappear into the TV room. The TV went mute.
Fisher cracked the door an inch.
“. . . the boss, anyway?” one voice said.
“Couldn’t sleep again. He’s upstairs, playing d’Artagnan with his sparring dummies,” came the reply from who Fisher assumed was the newcomer. “Bruno’s watching over him.”
“Lucky Bruno . . .”
So Legard had another hobby: fencing.
“I’m going outside for a smoke.”
Fisher eased the door shut again. The feet passed by the door and disappeared around the corner. Fisher waited until he heard a door slam somewhere in the distance.
He slipped out of the closet and started up the stairs.
A quick search of the second floor, which ran only half the length of the house, revealed only bedrooms and bathrooms, so Fisher continued to the third floor. The first three rooms were for recreational purposes: a handball court, an archery course, and a gym complete with elliptical machines, treadmills, vertical climbers, and a battery of Cybex weight-lifting machines.
As he moved toward the fourth room, he heard the clanging of steel on hardwood, followed by a shout, like a martial artist’s “Kee-yah.” Fisher bypassed the fourth room and crouched at the fifth door. He slipped his flexicam under the door and was greeted by a long, high-ceilinged white room lit by recessed halogen lighting. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined both the long walls, and between them a polished maple wood floor. Staggered down the center of the room were six to eight fencing dummies, like padded scarecrows with hardwood arms and legs and a round head made of black, vulcanized rubber.
Fisher panned the flexicam up toward the vaulted ceiling. At the junction of the wall and the curve of the ceiling was a long bank of windows running the length of the space. Fisher panned back down, angling the camera back and forth until he saw at the far end of the room a man in a
black-and-white mesh mask and a white metallic-filament jumpsuit lunging and thrusting at one of the dummies. Also at the far end was a single guard, seated beside a door with his HK SL8-6 lying across his knees. The man looked bored, his shoulders slumped as he alternately watched the fencer and studied his fingernails.
Fisher withdrew the flexicam and retreated to the room he’d bypassed, which he found was a locker room: four shower stalls along one wall, a small dry sauna and cedar lounging benches on the other. Fisher turned off the lights, walked to the window, checked it for alarms and found none, then slipped the latch and swung both panes inward. The cool night air washed over him, sending a shiver up his arms and down his back. Over the treetops, he could see the moon had just passed its apogee and was now on its downward arc. He checked his watch. Still a good six hours before sunrise.
Outside the window was a stone ledge not more than six inches wide. Fisher climbed onto the sill and then, in a crouch, stepped out onto the ledge and closed the windows behind him. Carefully, slowly, he stood up, balanced forward on the balls of his feet so he was pressed against the wall. He could feel the reassuring solidity of the stone through the chest of his tac suit. He slid his hand along the wall until his fingertips found a gap in the stone; he wedged his fingers knuckle-deep into the crevice, then stepped right once, then again, then again. To his right and above, less than three feet away, he could see the roof’s drainpipe slope upward to meet the eaves trough of the vaulted fencing room.
Three more steps brought him even with the angled pipe. With his left hand, he reached up, grabbed the trough, and began to slowly put weight onto it. When he had almost half his body weight on it, the pipe gave a faint creak but held steady. It was bolted firmly into the stone, not simply screwed or wired into place. God bless a sturdy eaves trough, Fisher thought.
He got a firm grip on the pipe with his left hand, then extricated his right hand from the crevice, stretched up, and hooked his right hand higher on the pipe. His legs swung off the ledge, now dangling in space. He repeated this move twice more, sliding his left hand forward, reaching higher with his right, until finally his fingertips found the open edge of the fencing room’s eaves trough. On the forward third of his fingertips, he chinned himself up to the roofline, then hooked a foot onto the trough and levered himself up. He dropped flat on the cedar shingles and lay still for a few moments.
Grimsdottir’s voice came into his ear: “Fisher, I’ve managed to untangle Legard’s wireless Internet signal. They had some decent firewalls up; took me more time than I’d anticipated.”
“And?”
“And every computer but one looks like a dedicated security workstation. Personal computer on the fourth floor, last room in the northeast corner. My guess: It’s either Legard’s bedroom or office. You get me a hard link to it, and I’ll hack in.”
“Consider it done. I’ll get back to you.”
Fisher pushed himself up into a crouch and crab-walked to the windows. The windows, which from below had appeared vertical, were actually sloped inward. Fisher slipped the latch of the nearest window and opened it an inch.
Twenty feet below, under the glare of the halogen lights, he could see Legard, now without his face mask, moving down the line of dummies, thrusting, lunging, and spinning, dispatching each with a death blow before moving on to the next.
Legard was a handsome man, with long, flowing black hair, chiseled cheekbones, and a lantern jaw. He looked ten years younger than his actual age of fifty. After he’d dispatched the last dummy with a lunging strike to the throat, Legard strolled back through the gauntlet, his foil tucked under his arm, a broad grin on his face.
“What do you say, Bruno, eh? Am I not a joy to watch?”
The guard, now sitting up straight, said, “Yes, boss, amazing stuff.”
Still smiling, Legard removed his gauntlets and tossed them at Bruno. “Someday you’ll see the beauty in it, my friend. Your senses have been blunted by our product, yes? All those fresh, pretty things . . . hard to concentrate on what really counts in life.”
“True, boss.”
“How’s our guest getting along?”
“Full of complaints, that one.”
Guest? Fisher thought. Carmen Hayes?
“He’s a pampered scientist, Bruno, a lab rat. What do you expect?”
Not Carmen.
“It would be nice if he stopped whining. I called Baie Comeau. They’re loading him aboard in a few minutes. He’s been curled up in a corner, whimpering all night.”
Baie Comeau, Fisher thought. Grimsdottir’s briefing had listed Baie Comeau, one of Legard’s port warehouses along the St. Lawrence. Clearly they were loading someone aboard one of Legard’s ships. But bound for where, and to whom?>
“We’ll be rid of him soon enough. Go get me some water, will you?”
Bruno got up and stepped through the door.
Fisher didn’t hesitate. He drew his pistol, set the selector to DART 1, then opened the window another two inches. Legard was standing at the far wall, practicing his fencing poses before the mirror. Fisher took aim and fired. The dart struck true, plunging into the nape of Legard’s neck. He gave a faint gasp, staggered forward a couple steps, arms flailing as he looked for something to latch on to, then crumpled, sliding down the mirror to the floor.
Fisher holstered the pistol, swung the window all the way open, hooked the Monkey Claw on the sill, then let the wire drop to the floor and followed it. With a quick whip of the wire he freed the Monkey Claw, then wrapped it up, restored it, and sprinted to the mirrored wall where Legard lay. The switch panel beside the door controlled the lights, he assumed. He flipped all four switches. The room went black. He pressed himself to the wall, flipped down his goggles, and switched to NV. He drew a lead-and-leather sap from his belt and waited, eyes on the door.
Ten seconds later, he heard the knob turn. The door swung open, casting a skewed rectangle of yellow light on the maple floor. Bruno’s shadow moved forward, followed by Bruno himself as he crossed the threshold.
“Boss? Hey, boss, are you—”
Fisher was up and moving. Right arm cocked, he took two quick steps toward Bruno, then flicked his wrist. The lead and leather sap impacted just below Bruno’s ear with a dull thud. Bruno collapsed, and the water bottle he’d brought for Legard rolled across the floor. Fisher caught Bruno’s body, dragged him out of the light, and laid him down. He drew the pistol and waited. Five seconds, ten, then thirty. No shouts of alarm. Fisher crept to the door and peeked around it; the hall was clear. He swung the door shut and locked it.
He holstered his pistol and turned back to Legard.
Time to have a chat with our white slaver.
12
FISHER’S SC pistol had a variety of dart selections, ranging from low to high in anesthetic dosage. Level three would keep a 180-pound man unconscious for ninety minutes; level two, half that; level one, fifteen to twenty minutes. Legard, whom Fisher assumed weighed nearly two hundred pounds, would take around ten minutes.
He was two minutes off. Eight minutes after Fisher darted him, Legard groaned, lifted his head from his chest, and shook it. He blinked his eyes a few times, then opened them and looked around. Fisher had propped him against the mirror with one of the padded dummies behind his back, his hands bound behind his back by a plastic flexicuff. Bruno, who had gotten a level two dart after he went down, was similarly bound, save one addition: a gag made of his own socks.
Now, crouched a few feet away from Legard, Fisher studied the crime lord in the gray-green glow of his NV goggles. The room was pitch-black, except for what little pale moonlight made its way through the upper windows. The rest of Legard’s training dummies stood like frozen sentinels down the center of the room, multiplied by the mirrors on both walls.
Legard cleared his throat, then spoke: “What’s . . . what’s going on? Bruno, are you there? Bruno!”
“Keep your voice down,” Fisher whispered. “Raise it again, and I’ll put a bul
let in your knee. Nod if you understand.”
Legard nodded.
“Bruno’s taking a nap. You and I need to have a chat.”
“Who the hell are you? Don’t you—”
“Know who you are? Of course I know who you are, Mr. Legard.” People like Legard were predictable. First the indignation, then the threats, then the propositioning. “And just to save time, yes, I know what a mistake this is, invading your home; and yes, I know what you’ll do to me if you catch me; and, no, I don’t want any money to let you go. Did I miss anything?”
“You’re a dead man.”
“We’ve already been through that,” Fisher whispered. “Time to move on.”
“You can go fu—”
Fisher jammed the barrel of the pistol against the sole of Legard’s foot. “Be nice, or you’ll be fondling your foil from a wheelchair. Understood?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to work: I’m going to ask you some questions. I’m a decent judge of character. Now, just because I’m also a nice guy, I’m going to give you two free lies. After that, I’m going to start hurting you. Are you ready?”
“Yeah . . .” Legard grumbled, clearly not yet a believer.
“Tell me about a woman named Carmen Hayes.”
“Who?”
“Brunette, late thirties, scientific type. Not the typical blond-haired runaway you sell. She was snatched off the streets of Montreal four months ago.”
Legard chewed his lower lip as though giving the question careful thought. “Sorry. Don’t know her.”
“That’s one lie. Okay, we’ll come back to her later. The man you were talking about with Bruno—your ill-mannered guest. Who is he, and where’s he going?”
Legard shook his head. “There’s no one here. I have no guests.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Turn your head to the side.”
“What?”
