by Thomas Webb
“You catch any of that?” Hale whispered to Zombie, leaning down so she could hear him.
Zombie rolled her eyes. “Before she started speaking Dutch? Uh . . . yeah boss. Like, all of it. Was mostly standard briefing stuff, really. She said they’ll go in quick and hard, but careful. ‘Smooth is fast’ translates pretty much the same. She told them not to let us get in the way.”
Hale laughed at that. “Yeah. I think I might have picked up on that part.”
The final briefing complete, Juliette dismissed the officers and approached Hale and Zombie. “As we discussed at headquarters, we will need you both to hold back. My teams will go in first.” She handed them both portable holo screens, which they strapped to their wrists. “You can use these to see what is happening inside. You may enter once my officers have cleared every room of the apartment. Not before. Am I understood?”
Hale nodded down at her. “Understood,” he said.
“Understood,” Zombie echoed.
She fixed them both with an appraising stare. “I will remind you that you are guests on Galia, and in New Paris. I expect you both to be on your best behavior.”
Hale held up a gloved hand, delivering what he hoped was his most charming grin. “Scout’s honor,” he said.
Martin returned the smile. “Good.” The commander stepped off, headed toward a small army of local police. She’d had most of her people set a perimeter around the building, while the rest directed vehicular and foot traffic.
Hale waited until she was gone. “Still with us TOC?” he asked.
“Affirmative One.”
“Did you get all of that conversation?”
“We did,” Shane said. “She seems like a real hard-ass.”
“They’re dealing with a lot down here. The local cops are caught between the Separatists and the UN. She’s just doing the best she can for her people.”
“Copy One. Let us know what you need.”
Hale held up the screen Martin gave him, examining it. “Looks like you’ll be watching a screen view of a screen.”
“It appears that way,” Lima replied. “We still have your optic feed as well. We will take all the intel we can get. TOC is standing by.”
Hale checked the side of the building where the armored cops were standing. They were just shifting into position to make entry. He tapped Zombie’s shoulder with the back of his hand and jerked his head toward the officers. “Looks like we’re up.”
One of the lead officers, faceless behind her helmet’s black screen, signaled her team to move out. The stack shifted forward. The armored officers moved in a low crouch, displaying good spacing and situational awareness. Hale and Zombie fell seamlessly into the rear of the stack, moving in unison with their new local partners. Hale glanced over at Juliette Martin, running the op from the command center at the perimeter.
Hale could swear she winked at him.
He shook it off and switched his mind into tactical mode. He and Zombie may not be on point today, but there was still real danger in taking your eye off the ball. Lives were still at stake, and he was still going to be the professional he was.
An almost preternatural silence hung over the building as they entered. The smells of unwashed clothing, spoiled food, and urine—the smells of poverty—hit Hale like a sonic hammer. Soon the only sounds they heard were the creaking of wood as they moved up several floors of rickety stairs. Separatist graffiti lined the walls. Trash was strewn everywhere.
The lead officer moved up the steps, her pulse rifle aimed at the stairs and floors above them. They took three flights before arriving on the fourth floor. Hale caught glimpses of the apartment building’s inhabitants, little more than furtive glances from behind cracked and hastily closed doors as they passed. A fleeting image of a little girl clutching a toy to her chest, her eyes full of fear, a second before her mother hugged her tight and slammed the door shut. There was no reason the residents of the building wouldn’t know what was happening here. Hale ventured a guess that this wasn’t the first time the building had been hit. Having been through this same thing before, the inhabitants were experienced enough to know that sheltering in place was their best chance at safety.
Hale and Zombie stalked down the hallway, passing doors on the left and right. In theory, each door posed a potential threat—just another uncleared space from which they could be attacked. There was no way to quietly clear them all, so he tried not to dwell on it as they passed each apartment. 408, then 410, then 412, until they arrived, at last, at their target.
Apartment 414.
The lead officer pause a few meters from the door and gave way. A larger cop with a pneumatic ram—the New Parisian team’s breacher—moved up next to the door.
“Toutes les unites. . . sont en attente,” Juliette said over the comms. Hale understood that one.
All units. . . standby.
There was a second’s pause, then “Alle.”
Execute.
The New Paris cops hit the door like pros, the breacher taking it down in a single, handheld-pneumatic ram blast. The team flowed in, Hale watching the whole thing go down on the holo strapped to his wrist.
“Screw it,” he said, right before he and Zombie followed behind.
Juliette had given specific instructions for them to wait until the entire apartment was clear before entry. But who was he kidding? Now way was he going to sit back while the Galians hit that apartment. A look between the two of them was all it took for him to understand that Zombie wasn’t taking a back seat, either.
Hale wasn’t used to going in at the rear of a stack. He wondered how the last man ever did it. With most of the action happening as soon as they hit the door, to Hale the rear positions felt anticlimactic at best. He let the Galian cops do their jobs before entering swiftly behind them.
The living room and small kitchen were cleared with practiced speed before he or Zombie even set foot across the threshold. ULS tech lay scattered around the room. Hale made sure he got good views of everything for Lima and Shane. The company’s tech alone wasn’t damming evidence, but along with everything else it was just one more data point they could use to build their case.
“Front section looks clear,” Hale said, speaking over the channel only Zombie and Sao Paulo could hear.
“Copy that,” Shane said in his ear.
“Wait a minute,” Hale said, checking the holo on his forearm again. Hale watched the lead officers breach into the rear bedrooms. He spotted something, there off in the corner. It was easy to miss if you’d never seen it before, but Hale caught it-a miniscule red light, blinking off to the left.
An infrared tripwire with a thermal timer wasn’t something a local planetary cop would recognize.
“Hold!” Hale bellowed. Too late.
The blast wave blew him from his feet, tossing him and Zombie against the far wall with enough force to crack the plaster. Hale impacted hard, bouncing off the wall and hitting the floor face-first.
Time seemed to slow as Hale struggled to get up. The helmet compensated for some of the blast, but the world spun as he fought up to a knee. A constant ringing sounded in his ears. A few seconds later the ringing subsided, yielding to the sound of sirens. And screaming.
“—over! Come in Razor One! Razor One or Razor Two! Please respond!”
“Razor Two…up,” Zombie said, coughing.
“Razor One . . . up,” Hale said. He dragged himself to his feet. Hale stumbled over to Zombie and got an arm under her shoulder. The two of them managed to shamble through the smoke and debris and out into the hallway. Emergency personnel and bomb techs, a day late and a credit short, passed them by on their way to the door. A series of commands in desperate French flooded the localized comm wave. Hale coughed up smoke as he and Zombie limped toward the window at the end of the hall. He supported her with one arm, using his free hand to open it. They both needed some fresh air.
“What happened?” Lima asked.
“Tripwire,” Hale said
, breathing in deep. His eyes scanned the streets below. “Local cops never knew what hit them.” He turned to Zombie. “You good?”
“Yeah,” she grunted. She was covered with soot and blast dust, and her forehead bled thanks to a cut from a flying piece of debris, but she seemed intact.
“Is everyone ok?” Shane asked. Hale heard the fear and concern in her voice.
“We’re all good,” Zombie said. She slumped against the wall, sucking in deep, even breaths.
“Any sign of the target?” Lima asked, wasting no time getting back to business.
“No,” Hale replied. “He’s in the—” Hale stopped. He saw something—movement in the street below. A lone man, pushing against the flow of a growing crowd of onlookers. Hale got in his rifle sight, increasing the magnification. The man turned to look up at the smoke billowing from the fourth floor window. He looked familiar.
“Is that our guy?” he asked Zombie, pointing.
Zombie moved to the window, grabbing the rifle from Hale and taking a look for herself. “Damn if it isn’t,” she said.
Hale was already moving. “I’ve spotted the target, TOC. I’m in pursuit.”
“Razor Two to TOC. We’re both in pursuit.”
Zombie had just been in an explosion. How in the hell was she fit to run down a fleeing terrorist? But then again, Hale had been in that same explosion. Who was he to question her fitness for duty?
They raced down the hallway, shoving through emergency response personnel headed in the direction of the blast. A grim thought flashed through Hale’s mind. The first responders weren’t likely to find anything but bodies of friendlies in that apartment.
Hale and Zombie leapt down the stairs, taking them three, four at a time, the trauma from the blast momentarily forgotten. Hale knew they’d be paying for it later, when the adrenaline dissipated. At the ground floor they broke left, bursting out of a side exit.
“He was headed east,” Zombie said.
Hale nodded, not breaking stride. They pushed through the security perimeter and the crowd beyond. Half a block later they spotted him.
“There,” Hale said. Just then, LeBlanc spotted them as well. He bolted.
“We’ve been made,” Zombie said into her comms. “Target’s squirting, TOC. We’re on him.”
Hale and Zombie dodged and darted, weaving through pedestrians and honking traffic in a rush to get to the fleeing Leblanc. Hale shoved through civilians hurrying home from their day’s work, ignoring the horrified looks directed at the large man and the woman, their faces smudged and bleeding, both dressed in body armor and carrying guns.
Hale spotted him. “There!” he shouted. Leblanc was just up ahead. The Separatist bomb maker cut down a side street. Hale and Zombie both whipped up their rifles, just in time to see him disappear down an alley.
Zombie shook her head. “No shot, boss.”
“No shot,” Hale agreed.
They picked up the footrace again, reaching the alley. This time they spied Leblanc at the far end, just as he turned and flagged down a passing vehicle.
“Shit,” Hale swore. He took off, pushing into an all-out sprint. “He’s about to go mobile!”
As they drew closer, they watched him pull the driver out at gunpoint, throwing the man to the ground and leaping into the vehicle. Hale skidded to a stop, just in time to watch the vehicle peel off into the distance. Hale got his rifle into his shoulder, looking for a shot. Just as he trained his sights on the stolen car’s driver side, a row of vehicles rolled into the path his pulse round would have taken.
Hale swore like the Marine he was, just as the footrace and the effects of the blast began taking their toll. He and Zombie leaned over, sweat dripping from their faces, resting hands on knees. They both proceeded to gulp in great, heaving breaths.
“Dammit!” Hale roared. The flash of anger passed as quickly as it had come. Hale stood, preparing himself to admit, out loud, the obvious.
“TOC this is . . . Razor One,” Hale panted. He and Zombie locked eyes. “We lost him,” Hale said. “The target’s in the wind.”
-14-
“Target’s in the wind.”
Hale’s voice, angry through his gritted teeth, came across loud and clear over the comm wave.
Lima stared at the image from his ground team leader’s feed—a crowded street in New Paris, the early evening traffic picking up, their target’s stolen vehicle fading far into the distance.
“Stand by Razor One,” Lima said. He turned to the AI drone body next to him. Lima, tall himself at over two meters, was forced to look up at the towering, shining exoskeleton. Up into the brilliant metallic orb where a face should have been. “X37, I need you to hack in to the New Paris network. Give me everything in that sector,” Lima ordered. “I want traffic feeds, café and pastry shop holos, personal comm devices . . . if it carries an image or touches a wave, I want it. All of it.”
“Right away Mr. Lima,” X37 replied, already ambulating toward a bank of holo screens in the hangar’s command center.
“Do you think we can get him?” Shane asked.
The earlier worry in her voice for Romero had been clear and evident. Silvio knew when he brought them onboard that their relationship might possibly complicate things. But he’d been betting that the bond between them might also serve to strengthen the team’s overall cohesion. The flip side was that when people worried about their loved ones, logic and calculation went right out the window. He’d have to consider that going forward.
“I do think we can get him,” Lima replied. “Galia is a relatively advanced world. There is plenty of connected technology in New Paris. If it has a feed, X37 can lock on and grab it.”
A wire-thin rod extended from one of X37’s “claws,” mating with a port at the base of the holo screen. “I’m powering the hack now Mr. Lima,” the AI said. There was a humming, then a red light pinged online. “Wave is moving through the jump gates,” X37 mentioned by way of update. The red light switched to blue. “We’re through, Mr. Lima. Connecting to Galia’s planetary communications sats. . . zeroing in on New Paris. We have it, sir. The feeds from that sector of the city are coming in.”
A series of still holo images leapt to life above the briefing table. There were shots of traffic scans, optics from the personal comm devices of the city populous, and views from the surveillance feeds of shops and restaurants. People were drinking tea, shopping, enjoying early evening meals, and going about their lives, oblivious to the greater forces at play around them.
“Christ in the Stars,” Shane uttered. Her wide eyes took in the multitude of hacked feeds. “We have this kind of capability?”
Silvio kept watching the screens. “Ordinarily? No. But I was able to gain some access from a few old contacts. Not to mention X37’s tech is state of the art. She has capabilities that not even some UN agencies have access to.”
In one image, emergency services vehicles rushed past, hurrying to what he assumed was the scene of the bombing. Lima scanned the time stamps, confirming his theory—all the call-outs were within mere minutes of the initial explosion.
“Sort these images X37.” Lima swiped a floating screen view of LeBlanc from the virtual mission board, moving it in among the series of stills and holo feeds from the planet. “Then cross reference this image of Leblanc with everything from this sector. Use local planetary time stamp, marking from the time of the explosion plus ten minutes. Facial recognition protocols enabled—authorization Jaguar.”
“Authorization Jaguar accepted,” the drone said. “Cross referencing now, sir.” A few seconds later a new image blinked green in the air. “I have something, Mr. Lima.”
“Thank you X37. Expand, please.”
The image grew. It showed a crowded New Parisian street. A man in a vehicle pulled over at a traffic intersection.
“There,” Shane said, pointing.
Lima saw it as well. Someone—a man—rushing to the door of the stopped vehicle, a pulse pistol in his hand. He
yanked the door open, turning as he did so. A holo cam caught his face. The view froze, automatically zooming in on the yelling assaulter. The image of Leblanc moved itself next to the man with the pistol. A series of data points highlighted themselves on the two faces. Below, a percentage bar quickly tallied the resemblance.
“Facial recognition protocol places likelihood of the target at 100%,” X37 announced.
“Thank you X37.” The AI had cost Lima a king’s ransom, but she was proving to be worth every single credit. “Please continue the replay.” The image shrank and resumed motion. There was Leblanc assaulting the driver, stealing the vehicle, and then speeding off. A few seconds later Hale and Zombie raced into the frame. He could see the frustration and exhaustion, evident in their body language. Hale appeared to yell, before they both placed their hands on their knees and began breathing heavily.
Shane’s eyes narrowed. “Looks like they gave him a hell of a chase.”
“Yes. They have provided us a great lead. I hope we can make their strenuous efforts worthwhile. X37—please pause and run the image back one minute.”
The image rewound, Hale and Zombie running backwards out of the frame. A second later the vehicle backed into the frame.
“Pause X37.”
The image froze. Silvio studied it. The vehicle’s ID tag was captured in the image, but was small and blurry. “Freeze that image, if you please?”
As Lima watched, Shane grabbed the image and spread her hands, expanding it.
“X37,” she said, “could you please enhance?”
“My pleasure Captain Mallory.”
The holo disintegrated, pixels scattering into atoms, before coalescing back into a crystal-clear image. A short series of alphanumerics hovered before them.
“Can you take that vehicle ID and trace it?” Shane asked the AI.
Lima nodded his approval. Shane was picking this all up very quickly. She was an outstanding military pilot. One of the best. But she would have made a natural intelligence operative, had she chosen that path.
