SPARE PARTS (The Upgrade Book 4)

by Wesley Cross

  “We’ll account for that. My team is prepped and Martin is at full charge. We are as ready as we’ll ever be.”

  “Not quite,” Hunt said. He stood up and leaned on the table. The wood creaked under his weight. “There’s something I’d like to propose. We are about to enter a new phase of our confrontation with Engel and his minions. Rovinsky is convinced we are on the brink of civil war. I’m not as pessimistic as he is, but the man’s got a point—we’ve had more shootouts with Engel’s forces in the past month than in the entire last year. We are on the run, for crying out loud. There are riots all over the country. The entire system is close to a breaking point. Over the past few days, Max here is aware, I’ve installed over a dozen new implants and weapon systems. I’m suggesting you get upgrades as well.”

  “I agree,” Schlager said. “Although the idea creeps me out—no offense, Jason.”

  “None taken. And I don’t suggest you install the same mods as I did. To each their own. We all have different roles to play. But I think it would make sense to enhance our strengths. Max and Helen, for example, would install supplement CPUs and remote network penetration mods and you, Mike, should consider weapons augs. I have a few suggestions you can look at, but at the very least you should consider installing EMU.”

  “When would we do it?” Chen asked. Her face was neutral and Connelly couldn’t tell if she was agreeing to the suggestion or not. “If we only have three days before the attack on the convoy, we won’t be able to recover in time.”

  “You and Max would. We wouldn’t have enough time to calibrate your new mods to their full potential in this time frame, but the procedures themselves are minimally invasive. For Mike, of course, that wouldn’t be possible as wet-wired mods would take a few weeks’ recovery time. Once you’ve built the chassis like I have, any new upgrades are much easier. Plug and play. What do you say?”

  “I’m game,” Schlager said. “We need an edge and at this point I’ll take what I can. Helen?”

  She stayed quiet for a few moments, her eyes looking somewhere in the distance. Finally, she nodded. “I’m game, too.”

  “You, Mike, should do it after the raid,” Hunt said. “We’ll take our time, make it as little invasive as possible so we don’t derail you—”

  “I think I’ll pass, Jason,” Connelly said, interrupting him. “I’d like to stay as is.”

  “Look, it’s ultimately your decision,” Hunt said. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “We’ve been lucky. We know, well, you know Engel has been trying to create a new generation of cyborgs. No one has been able to replicate Martin yet. But it’s only a matter of time. And when that time comes, no human—even an elite soldier like you—would stand a chance in a battle.”

  “I understand,” Connelly said. He looked down at the palms of his hands. His skin was rough and callused, and there was a long scratch at the base of his right thumb. He touched it and it stung. He couldn’t remember where he scraped it. “I used to have a friend. When we were in Afghanistan, a few times as we were going through some rural areas, I saw him taking a piss in the open. Just standing there doing his business without a care in the world. It grated on me, to be honest. One time I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of getting shot.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that if a 7.62 round was going to find him a few clicks away, it was his time and there was nothing he could do about that. I feel the same way. For now, I’d like to continue pissing in the wind.”

  34

  “I can see it, boss.”

  Connelly’s radio crackled in his ear. He was lying prone on top of the short hill at the foot of the Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge that carried Interstate 95 over the Susquehanna River. The six-lane highway—three in one direction and three in another—was empty at this hour save for an occasional truck. It looked like a chain of islands floating in dark sea under the miniature moons of the light poles.

  “Go on, Lee.”

  “Two SUVs with flashing lights in the front,” the man continued. “A semi with the trailer and another two SUVs in the back. I read two signatures in the big truck and four in each SUV. You’ve got eighteen hostiles, all heavily armed. Two minutes out.”

  “Any civilians?”

  “Negative. Black Arrow mercs.”

  “Roger,” Connelly said. “Stay close.”

  Lee was circling the bridge in the Killer Egg, a nickname given to the Boeing MH-6M Little Bird helicopter, fitted with outboard benches that carried three soldiers on each side.

  Connelly looked at the remote-activated spike strip at the entrance to the bridge that he had installed a few minutes ago. Colored in asphalt-gray with a sloping edge on both sides, it looked nothing more than a slight bump on the road in the poor light of the lamppost. But at the push of a button, three-inch-long spikes, sharp as a razor, would deploy at the forty-five-degree angle to the oncoming traffic. Another strip was positioned two hundred yards farther on the bridge.

  “Martin?” he called into the microphone. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” came the laconic answer. The cyborg was hanging off the concrete Jersey barrier on the outside of the bridge. His camouflage systems were online, and unless the convoy was looking at the specific spot with some sophisticated equipment, he would remain invisible.

  “Thirty seconds. I’m heading for the other side.”

  Connelly could now see the flashing lights of the front SUV speeding down toward the bridge. A few moments later, the convoy came into view: two Black Suburbans in the front, a Volvo truck pulling a white box trailer about twenty yards behind, and two dark-gray Range Rover Defenders another twenty yards back.

  He let the Suburbans and the Volvo pass the first strip and then hit the button. A row of steel teeth rose from the trap, biting into the tires of the Defenders. The two SUVs swerved, trying to regain control, one of them failing and flipping on its side. The other slowed down, and Martin flung his massive body over the barrier, opening up a torrent of fire on both vehicles while he was still airborne.

  The Suburbans and the Volvo, seeing commotion behind them, pulled away, and that’s when Connelly activated the second strip. The front SUV flipped over a few times, coming to a rest at the barrier long enough for the second SUV to ram it, sending up a fountain of sparks and coming to an abrupt stop.

  The driver in the Volvo truck slammed on the brakes, coming to a screeching halt in front of the strip.

  As if on cue, the Killer Egg dropped out of the dark skies, blocking the truck’s escape route, six commandos jumping off the benches. Automatic fire erupted for a moment, and then the night was quiet again.

  “Brian, sitrep.”

  “Hostiles neutralized. We didn’t detect any outgoing transmissions. Decoupling the trailer now. It’ll be sling-load ready in sixty seconds.”

  “Roger.” Connelly stood up and looked up in the sky. “It’s your show, Simon. Take Martin. He’s coming with you.”

  A minute later, the low rumble of the CH-53E Super Stallion heavy-lift helicopter filled his ears and, in a few seconds, he saw the massive machine coming over the bridge.

  Connelly brought up a pair of binoculars and watched Martin hop on top of the trailer and connect the cables to the cargo hook. Then the bird lifted the trailer, made a turn, and headed north, slowly gaining altitude as Martin sat down on the edge of the container, his feet dangling over the void below. As the Stallion passed over Connelly’s hiding place, Martin raised his hand and saluted.

  “Show-off.”

  Another moment later, the Killer Egg, its engine sounding like an angry bee after the low roar of the Super Stallion, jumped into the air and disappeared into the night.

  Connelly climbed down the hill and took the camouflage net off the Ducati Panigale bike. As the short-stroke two-hundred horsepower engine screamed east on the interstate, he dialed Jason Hunt.

  “Cargo is en route.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Without a hi
tch.” Connelly zoomed past a small minivan and kept accelerating. “The guys did an outstanding job. We hit the support, but the truck was undamaged. The trailer is being transported as we speak. We will rendezvous in ten minutes like we discussed.”

  “You still want to split up? It seems like we will have more protection if we stay as a group.”

  “Yes, but we will also stick out like a sore thumb. Let’s stick to the plan. We’ll keep Sorkin company until we cross into New Jersey, and from there he should be safe.”

  “All right, I’ll see you in a few.”

  Connelly revved the engine, shifting into a higher gear. It was still dark, but it was no longer pitch black, and when he took the MD 272 exit following the signs for the interstate, the sky in the east changed from monochrome to full color.

  A minute later, he took another exit to a local road and soon was pulling into an abandoned truck stop. The large parking lot next to a boarded-up truck shop and a crumbling Denny’s that once used to serve long-haul truckers was empty save for the two rusting carcasses of eighteen-wheelers. But now, in front of Denny’s, there was a Ram pickup truck with a container hitched to it and two Ford F-150 trucks. A group of people stood next to the vehicles, the immense bulk of Martin towering over everyone else.

  Connelly rolled next to one of the F-150s and killed the engine.

  “Hey, Mike.” Brian Sorkin stepped forward from the group, shaking his hand. “Thanks for letting me be a part of this.”

  “Good to see you.”

  “This old geezer here is Chris.” Sorkin nodded at the older man leaning on the Ram’s cabin. “He’ll be helping me out to process the ballots. He used to work for the Gazette. It was way before my time, but he knows the drill.”

  “How long do you need?” Jason Hunt asked.

  “Forty-eight hours. I’ve already prepped two semi-major papers and a whole slate of bloggers and online news outlets. We don’t need to scan all of them. Just enough to sort through the data and show that they are fake in a compelling story. Hopefully, it ignites enough fire for the story to go viral.”

  “Did you tell them what it was?”

  “Of course not,” Sorkin said. “But I still carry enough weight in a few places to be taken at my word when I say I’ve got a major scoop.”

  “We should move,” Connelly said. “Somebody could have heard the bird. Was it here long?”

  “It was here less than five seconds,” Hunt said, “just long enough to unhook the trailer and then they were gone, but you’re right. We shouldn’t push our luck.”

  “We’ll get going then,” Sorkin said and climbed into the cabin of the truck. He started the engine. “I won’t contact you unless something urgent comes up.”

  “Hang on one second,” Chen said. “Let me grab one box. Just in case.”

  Connelly watched her run to the back of the trailer and then a few moments later she emerged with a bankers box in her hands.

  “You know what?” Hunt walked over to her and looked at the box. “I think it’s a good idea. Mike, since we are splitting up anyway, can you take Helen back to the base? We will make copies of these and then reconnect with Brian and give the ballots back to him. I’ll stay with Max and Martin. We need to pick up a few things.”

  “Sure.” He glanced at Martin loading up the Ducati in the back of his pickup truck. “You are not going back to the city, are you?”

  “No,” Hunt said. “Don’t you worry. It’s on the way. I have a small stash of things in a storage near Albany. It’s under a shell name. No one knows about it.”

  “Okay then.” He helped Chen put the box into the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Brian, you’re ready?”

  “Yep.”

  “We’ll shadow you until we cross the Delaware River and then you’re on your own.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “Famous last words.” Chris chuckled and waved through the open passenger window. “See you later, fellas.”

  They waited as Sorkin’s truck pulled the trailer out of the parking lot and climbed on the road. Jason Hunt’s rolled out next, the springs of the back wheels compressed under the cyborg’s bulk. Connelly released the brakes and started after Hunt. There was a long road ahead of them.

  35

  A bath bomb was sizzling at the surface of the bathtub as Jill Cooper watched the sunset over the Hudson River. With no access to her place at Park Slope after Engel’s people’s failed attempt to kill her, she had a decision to make. Cooper had been a firm believer in doing the opposite of what most people thought was a good idea in dangerous situations. Most, in her shoes, would try to lie low in some inconspicuous motel, pay cash, and avoid meeting anyone unless absolutely necessary.

  But Cooper didn’t feel like feeding bedbugs and watching pay-per-view on a twenty-year-old television. Hiding in plain sight was more her forte. She accessed her emergency account in the Cayman Islands and paid a visit to a forger who owed her a favor. Then, as Alison West, a jet-setting socialite, she checked into the Hudson room at the Standard Hotel. The swanky place in the Meatpacking District sitting on giant concrete stilts above the High Line, the famed elevated park built on a former New York Central Railroad spur, was the opposite of inconspicuous. But that was precisely the point.

  She thought she was ready to do a deep dive into the trove of information that had been sitting on the small drive in her purse. And yet, when she locked the door, connected the drive to her laptop and opened the copy of Engel’s computer, she looked at the long list of files and then closed the laptop shut. The truth was—she feared what she could find. What thread was she going to pull in her search for Elizabeth? Was it going to be her location? A place Cooper could actually find? Or a small note with a message from an anonymous killer, reporting on a completed assignment? A contract fulfilled at the same time Cooper was supposed to be blown to bits?

  Instead of being relieved and ready to look for clues, she felt like a giant coiled spring, ready to explode.

  She needed to unwind. For three days, she did nothing but shop, drink wine while watching traffic on the Hudson, and twice a day went down to the bar to pick up someone to distract her.

  “Bring me another glass,” she shouted without bothering to look. “Make sure it’s full this time.”

  She couldn’t remember his name. David? Don? Danny? It was something that started with a D, she was pretty sure of it.

  “Here, princess.” He appeared in her view, nude as the day he was born, a glass of white wine full to the brim in his hand.

  She accepted the glass from him and took a sip, her eyes wandering up and down his muscular frame. She couldn’t decide what to do with him. He smirked and went down on one knee next to the tub, his right hand going under the water and touching her foot. Then slowly moving up. By the time his fingers reached her thigh, she had made up her mind. “Thanks, um, David. You can go.”

  “It’s Zach.”

  So much for the D.

  His hand froze in place. He didn’t pull it away and his lips were still curled into a smile, but she could see it was now a facade. He tried to play it cool, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Nope. Just time for you to get off the train, that’s all.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Get the fuck out of my room,” she said without raising her voice.

  “Bitch.”

  She ignored his angry mumbling as the man shuffled around the suite, getting dressed. A few moments later, the door slammed and the room was quiet again. It was her and the sunset.

  But now the colors had lost their magic. The body had taken care of its needs. The itch that she felt now was all in her head. Cooper pushed aside the pieces of the bath bomb, turned on the shower to wash off the foam, and stepped out of the tub. She wrapped herself in a soft bathrobe, sat down on the couch, and opened her computer again.

  The folder had two big parts. One opened into a complicated file system
that looked like a three-dimensional family tree, with cubes at each junction signifying multiple pieces of Engel’s empire. The biggest of them all, right at the top, was Guardian Manufacturing itself, with a multitude of branches splitting away from it and connecting it to other businesses, both legal and illicit. Each cube was color coded. She quickly learned that the green ones were profitable, and the flashing yellow needed attention. And there was a whole subsection of the tree with gray cubes—the companies and illegal enterprises that weren’t connected to Guardian on any reports, but were part of the empire, nonetheless. The other part was a spiderweb of folders connected to each other with color-coded lines.

  Mesmerized, she wandered through the diagram, clicking on different cubes and watching them disassemble into a swarm of diagrams, charts, profit-and-loss statements, contracts, and spreadsheets. She chuckled—if Engel ever found out that she was alive and stole this from him, he’d definitely kill her, and this time for real. If there ever was a treasure trove of information, this was it.

  But for now, none of this was of particular interest to her. She launched a crawler program, populated it with a dozen words and word combinations she thought would be relevant to start the search, and let it loose on the disk. A moment later, it started printing the matches in its gray-colored window.

  The word she had the highest hopes for, Elizabeth, produced nothing useful. It made her heart jump when the crawler started spitting multiple files with the word in it, but the exhilaration quickly faded into angst and disappointment. All the hits had to do with a city in New Jersey, where Guardian apparently had a quite extensive operation. There was a large, legitimate pharmaceutical plant producing a line of a profitable cancer drug, a smaller factory producing even more lucrative street drugs, and a few warehouses storing them both.

  Cooper scrolled through the results and, finding no leads, started to erase them when something caught her eye. There was a file titled SCL and when she clicked on it, it opened into a simple text document. The text was coded, but Cooper’s pulse jumped as she looked at the long strings of letters and numbers.