by D. D. Marks
"You'll get a second chance." Jean hadn't looked up from his laptop in nearly an hour. "At least you found out where he was from. That's something, right?"
"I guess." Isfahan province, as it turned out, was dead in the centre of Iran. But Iran was a big country, and whether those fake schematics were destined for the ruling party or the militant opposition was something Blackrock would have dearly liked to know. She didn't even know whether Rostam had been telling the truth. As for Lockheed's contract, and the real plans...
"Anything on Zero Error, yet?"
Jean winced, almost imperceptibly. "That kid they brought in doesn't know shit. Got hired over the net to smuggle some guns and shoot at some guys. They didn't even know who you were. Teenage gangsters for hire - they didn't even have any weapon's training outside their Playstations. We asked him about killing Young, but he didn't know anything. The guys sent to steal the schematics out of his apartment were probably a totally different team of professionals." He shrugged. "Hey, at least we solved the mystery of the missing machine-guns, right?"
"That's not good enough!" Olesia stood, hands clenched into bloodless fists. "There's so much wrong with this. The two Lockheed staff watching Young's place, where the fuck are they? And how the fuck did they find me and Rostam? Twice? What did they even want, if they already had the schematics? I don't want to get fired, Jean. I don't... I don't want to fail. This is my job. This is all I'm good at."
Jean gave an exasperated grunt. "Olly, I have work to do-"
"Don't call me Olly!"
He closed his laptop with a snap. "Fine. You want answers? They followed you because you were sloppy. Maybe you hung around too long at Young's house and they followed you from there. Maybe Rostam's getaway wasn't so clean. Maybe you should've been doing your job and interrogating the guy with something other than your ass, how about that? Fuck!"
Olesia ducked her head. "They told you."
"I read their reports. 'Found agent Eight-Oh-Six immobilised with cuffs and rendered assistance'. There's only one thing that means, with you." He threw his hands up in the air. "Look, I'm not angry you fucked someone else. I'm angry that you fucked a target. I'm angry that, instead of getting the info and getting away clean, you wasted time and got into the middle of something you had no business with." He stood and placed his hands on Olesia's shoulders. "I don't want you hurt."
She met his gaze. "You used to be a target."
"And you should've stayed well away then, too."
She scowled. "I don't want pity, Jean. I want to get this sorted, before headquarters calls me back and tells me I'm out in the cold. If Sparks could just trace those Zero Error emails-"
Jean turned away. "He won't."
"What?"
"He won't trace them. I already know where they'll end up. Some local net cafe, I'll bet. Look, Zero Error aren't some gang of teenage shitheads. The guys who killed Young, who took the data, who hired those teenagers to shoot you... they'll be ten steps removed. Already vanished. It's done, Olly. The schematics are gone and the contract is fucked. Just sit the hell down and wait for headquarters to figure out what to do."
"There are still two men-" Olesia stopped. "What did you mean, before?"
"When before? Zero Error being a gang?"
"No." She stepped back, eyeing Jean up and down. "Getting into the middle of something I had no business with."
Jean's brow furrowed. "It's just an expression."
"Yeah, well, maybe you can express why you weren't there, and why Sparks couldn't call you. Or how Rostam knew my name. How did he know my fucking name, Jean?"
His adam's apple bobbed. "There are always leaks-"
"And where's the leak? Sparks never said any info was getting out. His networks are secure."
Jean stepped back. "You need to go."
"Yeah." She couldn't meet his eyes. "I think I do."
* * *
She collected her clothes, her gear, and her iPad from where they'd been scattered across Jean's house, but only once she was half a mile down the road and still walking fast did she call Sparks. "I need you to check me in to a hotel. Anonymously."
"I always check you in anonymously, Eight-Oh-"
"Different anonymous. Don't record the name anywhere on our files. Nowhere Jean can see. And get me nightwork gear, goggles, a balaclava, climbing shoes, everything. Have it delivered to the alley behind the hotel. Jean can't know."
"Hold on, hold on. Jean can't know? Where the hell do you expect me to get this stuff? And we haven't even chosen a hotel!"
"Figure it out. I've got an itch, Sparks. You know what happens when I get an itch." She looked over her shoulder. The street was empty, but for all she knew there were Zero Error goons hiding out in the trees and stationed in the alleys. "Oh, and one more thing. A car, something inconspicuous."
Sparks grumbled on the other end of the line. "How am I supposed to explain all this to accounting?"
"You'll figure it out, kid." She flagged down a passing taxi and climbed inside. "You always do. Now, where's my hotel?"
* * *
The gear was waiting in a briefcase behind a dumpster, locked to Olesia's thumbprint. Night clothes, an array of tracker dots, a fresh laptop, and extra ammunition. She almost smiled. Sparks was always thinking one step ahead.
It took nearly an hour to squeeze into the tight kevlar mesh, and by the time she was done it was nearing sunset. She packed the rest of her equipment into the briefcase and left via the fire stairs, hiding her face from the streetlights. Only once she was in the little Prius Sparks had delivered to the hotel garage did she relax.
It was near an hour's drive to Jean's place. She stopped a mile away and walked the rest of the distance, keeping to the side streets, hugging the shadows. The house directly across the road from Jean's was a two-story bungalow with a peaked roof, and she scaled the outside wall via a picnic table and a poorly placed electricity meter.
The lights were on inside Jean's house, and she could just make out his silhouette shifting in front of the widescreen TV. He was pacing, head down, hands behind his back.
She wondered, briefly, if this was all paranoia. Trying to find patterns where there were none. And for it to be Jean, of all people...
She shook her head. The only way to disprove a theory was to test, and she was testing. She set up the first of the webcams on the edge of the building, trained on Jean's front door, with another aimed at the garage. They streamed directly to cloud storage; a little data vault she'd set up years before, one that not even Blackrock knew about. Whether she was wrong or right about Jean, at least she'd have a record of when he came and went.
She scurried back down the wall, leaping over the fence and into the safety of the rhododendrons. She flipped out her iPad, checking that the cams were broadcasting correctly. The angle was perfect.
A car was approaching, and she waited for it to pass before darting across the street. It felt good, running with boots on again. Her feet were blistered from the chase through the airfield but the familiar squeak of rubber on macadam was enough to wash that pain away.
She made it to the shadows beside Jean's house and crouched, panting. She'd seen Jean operate his own security system enough times over the past days - while he was at home, the sensors were off, with the exception of the garage security door. The garage window, however, was on the same circuit as the house.
She took out her lock-drill and burred the inside of the window lock smooth within moments. The window slid open on oiled runners, and she climbed into Jean's garage, closing the window behind her.
It was midnight black inside, and she didn't dare flick on the light. Instead, she lowered the light enhancement goggles Sparks had requisitioned. The harsh lines of Jean's garage sprang up around her. Wooden shelves stacked with paint tins, cardboard boxes filled with nails, crowbars and carjacks. Dead weight, to give the room an air of real homeliness. Anything worth stealing would be hidden in a Blackrock approved safe somewhere. The garage
was a shell.
She passed the first of his cars - the Blackrock Ford, still pristine, the manufacturers air-freshener still dangling from the rear-view mirror - and went to the Z-28 Camaro with the tinted windows. From inside a zippered pocket came another of Spark's tiny tracker dots, and she licked the paper until it dissolved before pressing the dot deep into the groove of the back door.
She was halfway to the window when she heard footsteps.
She dropped flat as the door swung open. Light from the house flooded the room, and with the goggles on it was as if the sun had bloomed in the centre of the garage. She squeezed her eyes shut. Blinded, flat on the floor, she rolled beneath the Camaro and lay there very still.
The heavy thump of Jean's footsteps carried around the room as he climbed into the Camaro. He was mumbling to himself, but all Olesia caught was, "Amateur dickwads, can't even clean up their own mess-" The Camaro grumbled as he turned the key, and the garage door began to winch up.
Olesia lay flat on her back, staring at the car's front axle. She flicked the goggles off and tried to think. If he reversed out of the garage, if he looked over his shoulder, if the light outside was enough to blind him...
The car began to move, and she made a decision. As the front wheels passed her by, she began to roll right, towards the Ford. At the moment that the Z-28 passed over her entirely she was moving fast, only exposed for a second on the cold garage floor, and she caught a glimpse of Jean in the driver's seat, looking behind him as he reversed out into the street. Then she was under the Ford, and Jean vanished from view.
She lay flat on her stomach, panting into her cupped hands as the garage door came down. Only once she was alone in the garage did she dare crawl out and brush herself off.
The alarm light was beeping in the corner, and she quickly crossed to the keypad and punched in the code Jean had taught her. The light blinked off.
She checked her watch. Five minutes. Any more than that, and Jean would have an impossible lead.
She went through the garage door into the kitchen, where she yanked open every cupboard, peering behind the flour and the biscuit tin. Nothing. Then to the bedrooms, where she bashed open the locks on three different suitcases. They were empty except for black linen, neatly folded. She wondered how often Jean needed to leave town in a hurry that he would need so many cases already packed. If he were still working as a Blackrock agent, sure, but a local liaison?
She dug deeper, and touched paper.
Bank notes, worn and faded. Greenbacks, Mexican pesos in red and blue and battered purple, the bright gold of Canadian one hundred dollar bills, and more she didn't recognise.
It didn't mean anything, she assured herself. As a liaison, he had to be ready to outfit agents heading across the borders. It didn't mean...
She crossed to the walk-in cupboard where Jean kept his suits. At the back, beneath a pile of shoes, was a gunmetal-grey safe, reinforced and locked not just with a combination but also a thumbprint scanner and a keypad.
She ignored it. There was one just like it in her own New York apartment, with nothing inside but second-hand passports and misleading birth certificates. The real prize, she knew, was underneath.
It took precious minutes to shift the safe aside, and as she glanced at her watch she realised she was already over budget, but it was worth the effort. Hidden by the grain of the floorboards was a thin dark line, and when she ran her fingers along the gap there was a section of board that pressed down a little too easily.
The floorboards slid away with a click, exposing the steel sheet beneath. Another safe, but the only lock was a simple yale tumbler, and she had it drilled within moments.
She lifted the steel safe door and shone her flashlight into the darkness.
The light played over black steel. Snub barrels, receivers open and oiled. Magazines in neat stacks.
Uzis. Israeli sub-machine guns.
She snapped three quick photos with her phone before taking one of the guns, along with two full magazines. She retreated to the garage and out the window. Once in the garden she retrieved her iPad and followed the path Jean had taken, west and out of town. He was, as far as she could tell, stopped about five kilometres past the Lockheed headquarters.
She tossed the Uzi on the passenger seat of the Prius and jammed the car into gear. Only once she was on the main street and topping 100 did she realise she was snarling, lips drawn back over her teeth. Her jaw ached. There was sweat in her eyes.
"Fucker," she said. "Fucker, fucker, fucker."
The SP-01 was loaded. She had work to do.
* * *
She followed the tracker dot until she saw the Camaro parked beneath a dying oak tree, almost hidden by the scrub. This far out of town, the lights of Bethesda were just a slick orange glow above the horizon, and the night sky was a huge sweep of black that made Olesia feel very small. Crickets sounded somewhere in the darkness. Her boots crunched on gravel.
She slung the Uzi over one shoulder and advanced into the night with the SP-01 held out before her. The Z-28 was empty. There was a crowbar in her Prius, and she took a moment to pop open the hood of the Camaro and yank a few choice wires before creeping on, into the shadows. The plain was deserted, apart from what looked like a concrete pillbox rising up from the muck. She circled the pillbox, finding a steel door at the back, the faded sign indicating that it was an old electricity substation.
The door was unlocked. She flipped her goggles down and inched into the darkness.
The pillbox was empty, but in the centre of the concrete floor was a wide hole and a ladder leading down. Voices floated up from the darkness. High pitched yelling - kids, maybe. And then, the low boom of Jean's voice: "You showed them your faces? What are you, idiots? Did you tell them your names and addresses, too? Did you invite them to your birthday parties? Christ."
Olesia began her slow descent. It was hard going with the pistol held out before her and the weight of the goggles pressing on her temples, but soon she was at the bottom. The chamber at the end of the ladder was dim and wide, the walls sweeping away into the shadows. At the farthest end was the massive bulk of a generator, humming gently, green lights blinking behind panes of glass.
Three figures stood before the generator, two in white hooded jumpers and the third in black - Jean, the bald dome of his head shining in the dim light coming from the generator. Their backs were turned, and Olesia came off the bottom of the ladder and crept behind a concrete pillar. Peering around the edge, she saw two figures huddled in the shadows, their hands bound, cloth gags shoved rudely into their mouths. The two Lockheed employees. One was awake, eyes wide and terrified, flitting between the two Zero Error kids and the pistols in their hands. The other was either asleep, or dead. There was a great gash across his forehead, and blood had dried black over his nose and eyelids.
One of the Zero Error kids was whining again. "What the fuck do you want from me? Cleaning this up wasn't our job! We didn't even bring them here!"
"You were supposed to watch them. That was all you had to do. You know how professionals work? You get paid to do a job, and you do it! To the letter!" Jean ground his knuckles into his eyes. He had a cloth pulled up over his nose and mouth, but she could tell that he was exhausted. "Give me your gun."
"What?"
"Give me your gun!"
The kids stepped back, suddenly uneasy. "Hey, man, you're not gonna-"
"They saw your faces. You talked about work in front of them. You think we can just dump them in the woods and let them find their way home? You fucked up, both of you. Now I have to clean house." Jean held out his hand. "Be a good boy and give me the fucking gun."
That was when Olesia pivoted out from behind the concrete pillar with the SP-01 trained on the first kid's chest. "Drop it!"
Both Zero Error kids were frozen, jaws hanging low, pistols limp in their hands. Then the first kid dropped his gun to the floor and dove onto his belly, while the second kid squared up and aimed his pistol at O
lesia's heart.
She squeezed off two rounds. The first blew a chunk out of the concrete wall just behind the kid's head, and the second took him in the shoulder, spinning him away. The kid hit the ground with a heavy thump of bone, but he kept firing even as he kicked and screamed on the floor, and Olesia ducked back down as bullets stitched a line across the ceiling. She'd lost sight of Jean and the two prisoners, and the gunshot echo was carrying around inside the concrete chamber so loud that she thought her head might split. There were footsteps below the gong of gunfire, but it was impossible to tell who was running, or where.
She popped her head out. One of the kids lay on his back, moaning, his magazine spent. The other kid and Jean had vanished, and so had the second pistol. She moved half-crouched, already depressing the trigger. "I don't want to hurt you, Jean. I don't know why you did this, but we can figure something out-"
A dark shape rose up from behind the generator. She saw the muzzle-flash and dropped low. Rock chips showered down on her head. By the time she stood again, Jean was hidden.
There were five concrete pillars around the outside of the chamber. She'd moved clockwise around the walls, creeping closer to the two prisoners. As far as she could tell, Jean had made his way to the pillar closest to the ladder. If she squinted, she could make out the shadow of his leg jutting from behind the stone. Or was that just her imagination?
"You shouldn't have followed me," he said, his voice strangely magnified by the curving walls. "This wasn't your job."
"Lots of things aren't my job." She tried to still her breathing, watching every shadow at once. It sounded now as if he were standing right behind her, even though her back was to the wall. "How much are they paying you?"
"Enough. Well, maybe not enough."
"Did you kill Young?"
Jean laughed. "You know I'm out of that game. I just fix things, now."
"Like you fixed up the stolen Uzis?"
