I’m not ready for this. The words kept turning around in his mind, and like he always did, Assim fell back on bad habits when things slipped out of his control. He dug in a pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He’d given up twice this year, but every time he needed to steady his nerves, he went back to them.
He had the cigarette between his lips when a shout reached him. ‘Hey! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, mate?’ One of the airport’s safety crew, a woman in a bright-orange visibility vest, marched swiftly over to him and plucked the cigarette out of his mouth before he could react. ‘No. Smoking.’ She grated, saying the words slowly and loudly. ‘Do that indoors or not at all, right?’
‘Oh.’ He nodded profusely. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘That smell in the air is jet fuel,’ she added, prodding him in the chest to underline her point. ‘You want to end up burned to a crisp, that’s your lookout, but don’t put the rest of us in danger!’
‘Yes. Sorry.’ Visions of blackened corpses and body bags filled his mind’s eye. ‘I’ve had a really bad day.’
The woman must have seen the truth in his expression and her manner softened a little. ‘Be careful—’
A deep, echoing drone drowned out the rest of her words, pulling Assim’s attention toward the departure runway. He saw two dazzling points of white from the lights along the bottom of a huge cylindrical fuselage, as a massive cargo jet clawed its way off the ground and into the night sky. It was the biggest thing with two wings that he had ever seen, and the aircraft’s quartet of engines emitted a steady, metallic howl that briefly rose into a shriek as it passed over them.
Then it was gone, a fading black shadow blending into the darkness.
FOURTEEN
When the Antonov reached cruising altitude and the green light pinged on to indicate they could move freely around the aircraft, Kara wasted no time in shrugging off her seatbelt and making her way down to the cargo plane’s lower deck.
Pyne followed closely behind, giving her a distrustful, sideways look. ‘This is not a good idea,’ she said, pitching her voice to be heard over the steady rumble of the engines.
‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ Kara replied. She glanced around, making sure there was no sign of Erik, or anyone who would go running to Madrigal if they saw her.
‘But you did ask for my help.’ Pyne noted, pulling the baggy, shapeless mass of the woollen jumper she wore around her skinny form. ‘I can just walk away . . .’
They halted in front of the hatch to the server compartment and Kara studied the magnetic lock. ‘Fine. Then don’t give it. I can get this open myself.’
‘Yeah, but how long would it take you?’ The girl played with the closure-ring piercing at the corner of her lip. ‘Why do you even want to talk to them?’ Pyne’s nose wrinkled, like she smelled something bad. ‘After what they did to Lex?’
‘What they did?’ echoed Kara.
‘Madrigal said the black woman is the one who shot him.’
Kara glanced at her. ‘Do you believe that?’
Pyne gave Kara a blank look. ‘Okay. Listen. You’ve been out for a while, so I’ll let that slide. But seriously, Song. You need to get with the programme. You gotta deal.’ She showed her teeth in a grin. ‘We got the band back together. You know what means? The whole fucking internet should be shitting itself!’
She sighed. ‘If you know the code, open the door. Otherwise, go away.’
‘Don’t have to be nasty about it,’ Pyne scowled, and leaned in to tap out a string of numbers. ‘There. And screw you.’
The red light on the mag-lock turned blue and Kara twisted the handles to open the door. Inside, Marc Dane and Lucy Keyes reacted to her appearance with surprise, then annoyance. Kara glanced back at Pyne and held up a hand to make her stay on the threshold. ‘Keep an eye open. Tell me if anyone comes up here.’
Lucy’s mouth curled into an ugly snarl. ‘What do you want?’ She shifted against the restraint holding her to the metal barrier across the compartment, and Kara knew that the woman wanted to go for her throat.
Kara’s gaze moved to Marc. Where Lucy showed her fury, the Englishman looked back with sorrow. ‘We trusted you,’ he said, after a moment. ‘And you burned all of that . . . for what?’ He indicated the plane with a tilt of the head. ‘For this?’
‘I’m here to explain,’ she began, and doubt crossed the man’s face. Kara looked back and saw Pyne watching her, then turned away again. ‘I am sorry about how this has turned out. I know you won’t believe that, but it’s true.’ She took a breath of the compartment’s dry, cold air and went on. ‘I made a mistake. I thought I could work with Rubicon, but it wasn’t right.’ She shook her head, cementing the truth of it in place. ‘Once a black hat, always a black hat.’
‘To hell with you, Kara . . . or Song, or whatever your name really is.’ Lucy spat the words back at her.
‘I thought we were friends,’ said Marc, and the simple honesty of the statement seemed to weigh on him.
Kara gave a slow shake of her head. ‘I have always had trouble with that.’
‘So who is Kara Wei?’ Marc’s jaw hardened. ‘Someone you invented? Just a cover?’
‘A cover,’ she repeated. ‘I suppose so. I was trying to be what I’m not. I don’t want to do that anymore.’ She took a step closer, mimicking Marc’s nod toward the walls around them. ‘This is where I fit, I think.’
‘What about doing the right thing?’ said Marc.
Pyne gave a derisive snort, unable to hold her silence. ‘Hey, asshole, you work for some billionaire’s mercenary mega-corporation. Anyone who makes money off other people’s conflict isn’t doing anything that’s right!’
Marc eyed Kara. ‘You agree with that?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘The difference is, I realised I don’t care. It’s actually quite liberating.’
The emotion, the coiled anger that had lurked behind Lucy’s gaze, faded. ‘Let me help you with that,’ she said, a dark and predatory calm falling into place.
Lucy tore her wrists away from one another with a high-pitched crack of breaking plastic, as the zip-tie holding them together snapped in two.
Kara’s prediction about the sniper’s next act was not an error. Lucy dove at her, revealing a wad of thick black cord hidden in her hand. She snapped it out into a garrotte and looped it around Kara’s throat before she could flee the compartment.
Pyne shouted in shock as Lucy drew the cord tight and choked Kara’s breath from her lungs. Marc cried out for her to stop, but the dark-skinned woman ignored them both, applying steady force.
Kara tore at the cord, struggling to force air into her chest. Pyne ran from the room, and Lucy dragged Kara toward the doorway. ‘You fight it,’ she hissed into her ear, ‘and it won’t end easy.’
‘Lucy!’ Marc roared. ‘Don’t do this!’
‘Your boy Erik should have taken my bootlaces,’ Lucy explained, as the colour drained out of everything and grey fog grew at the edges of Kara’s vision. ‘Sawed through those ties in ten minutes.’
‘Stop,’ Kara choked desperately. ‘This is . . . is not . . .’
She heard Marc call out the other woman’s name again, but the sound seemed to be coming from far away, echoing down a long, fog-filled tunnel. Then she heard the crackling of electricity and a savage scream.
The murderous tightness around her throat went away, and Kara wheezed, stumbling into the bulkhead as she gulped down painful chugs of air. Each effort was agony, but she could breathe again, and she pawed at her face, wiping away the tears of pain that streamed down her cheeks.
She heard the howling screams again and the buzz of electric discharge.
‘Bastard!’ shouted Marc.
Kara blinked as her vision cleared. Lucy lay on the deck in a quivering heap. Standing over her, Erik held a stun prod in one fist, the metal tines sparking with bright blue light. At his side was his thuggish cohort, the burl
y Romany German with the metalhead tattoos who called himself Null.
Null had an identical weapon in his hand, and he was generous with his use of it. He hit Lucy again and the woman let out another cry.
‘You fucking cowards!’ Marc tore at his restraints with all his strength, but only succeed in shredding the skin around his wrists and drawing blood. Null crossed the compartment and jammed his prod into the Englishman’s belly, giving Marc a taste of the same treatment to silence him.
‘I warned Madrigal. We should have shot these two and been done with it,’ said Erik. He glared at Kara. ‘She didn’t kill you. You must be stronger than you look.’
Kara could only make a wheezing noise in reply. She caught sight of Pyne on the other side of the hatchway. ‘I had to get them,’ said the woman. ‘That bitch would have strangled you!’
Erik aimed a finger at Null. ‘You stay here. Watch him.’ Then he looked back at Kara. ‘As for you. From now on, keep your distance, understand?’
‘What . . .’ she had to force out the words, ‘you going to do . . . with her?’
Erik reached down and hauled Lucy to her feet. ‘That is not your concern,’ he said, dragging the stricken woman out of the compartment.
*
After a while, the tremors in her muscles subsided and the pain in her joints dropped to a manageable level. Lucy had weathered hits from tasers more than once in her life, and she knew that as long as you could ride out the shock, it wouldn’t kill you. That was the theory, anyhow, but then again there was always the outside chance that getting volted by some psycho with a cattle prod would stop your heart. She eyed the German guy as he shoved her into a metal chair bolted to the floor. He still had the stun baton in his hand, warning enough for her to know that he wouldn’t hesitate to use it again.
He didn’t secure her to the seat. Lucy guessed he was making the assumption she would play nice from now on. If so, then he had seriously misread her.
They were on the upper crew deck of the cargo plane, a narrow space aft of the cockpit curtained off into a handful of bunking areas and common spaces for the aircrew. This section was dimly lit by a lamp fitted to the curved wall, and the only other furniture was a second chair facing the one she was in.
The set-up was obvious. They were going to interrogate her.
Lucy looked at the floor and drew on her pre-game ritual, calling up the training she’d gone through at Camp Mackall back when she was Army Green. The instructors on her SERE course had done their best to prepare her for the worst that any enemy could throw at her, from physical abuse through to psychological torture, but there was no way to know how this situation would unfold until the punches started landing or the thumbscrews came out of the box. She focused on the hum of the Antonov’s engines as she waited, clearing her mind.
Madrigal came through the curtained partition and pulled it closed behind her. She had a laptop computer open on the crook of her arm, and she took the seat across from Lucy without speaking.
Lucy watched her prop the portable computer on her knees and type rapidly. ‘There is data I require,’ said Madrigal, without looking up from the screen. ‘Specifically, the scope of the intelligence that Rubicon has on Ghost5’s current operation. In case I need to alter any elements going forward.’ She stopped typing. ‘That’s clear enough, isn’t it?’
‘We know everything,’ Lucy said lazily. Her guess about why the woman had kept them alive had been right on the money. ‘When you land, you’re gonna find a strike team waiting for you. Want my advice? Turn this bird south and fly somewhere warm with no extradition treaty.’ She studied Madrigal’s complexion. ‘Although with that skin, sister, you may want to get some sunblock first.’
‘If you refuse to give me the information I need, I am going to take steps to punish you for withholding it.’ Madrigal cocked her head as she manipulated icons on the screen. ‘I don’t have the time to get Erik to beat it out of you. And we’re not really set up for chemical interrogations here. I want you to understand that nothing you say is going to change your personal circumstances.’
Lucy’s lip curled. ‘Have you, like, not read the manual? Because that’s not how threats work.’
Madrigal looked up at her for the first time, long enough to deliver a smirk. ‘Oh, I assure you, my threats will work.’
Lucy glanced up at Erik. ‘I’ve shit things more frightening than your little clan, sweetheart. You think you can scare me?’ She leaned forward in her chair, and Erik stepped closer, hefting the stun baton as a mute threat. She ignored him. ‘What are you gonna do? Post some swears on my Twitter page? Sign me up to a million Cat Lady Magazine subscriptions? Fuck with my credit rating?’ She made a mock-scared face.
‘You have a social media feed? Huh.’ Madrigal took the slights in her stride. ‘Who knew?’ She folded her hands across her chest, affecting the manner of a schoolteacher lecturing some disappointing student. ‘I could, given time, search out every element of your digital existence and completely obliterate it. But you’re right, that doesn’t matter to a person like you, who already lives on the margins. It only matters to people in the real world. Normal people. People with lives and bank accounts, jobs and mortgages. Like your brother, John.’
Externally, Lucy didn’t react in the slightest. She refused to give Madrigal the satisfaction of seeing it. But within, a flood of sickly cold ran through her veins and questions bombarded her. How did she know about Johnny? Was this Kara’s doing? What could they do to him?
‘Or should I call him Jasur? That’s the name he took after he converted to Islam, am I right?’ With a flourish, Madrigal turned the laptop’s screen around to show her the scanned image of an Ohio driver’s licence. Lucy’s brother looked back out at her, his plain face staring at nothing.
‘Not much of a family resemblance,’ Madrigal went on. ‘Does he take after your father?’
‘I have no idea who that is,’ Lucy tossed out the denial like she meant it.
The other woman seemed to consider her words. ‘Well. Maybe that is so. Maybe this man is some average person who isn’t actually related to you in any way. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that he has a little girl with a middle name the same as yours. This ordinary man, who works long hours at his ordinary job as a delivery driver so he can provide for his family. It doesn’t really matter to me if he’s your sibling or not. Unless you tell me what I want to know, I’m going to destroy everything he holds dear. Probably orphan his daughter into the bargain. Brother, stranger, whoever.’ She slowly turned the screen back around and put her hands back on the keyboard. ‘You can stop it happening.’
‘Bullshit,’ Lucy snapped. ‘You’re gonna have to do better than that, Red.’
Madrigal swiped down the laptop’s touch-sensitive display, reading aloud. ‘Hmm. So the human resources file on Jasur’s wife says she was passed over for a promotion at her job last month. Apparently she didn’t take it well. There’s probably a lot of stress in their home, wouldn’t you think? And there’s kid’s cough medicine on their last grocery bill. The little one must be unwell.’ She made a sad face. ‘Oh, look here. The people who live in the apartment above them are on vacation for a week, but they have an internet-enabled TV. I wonder what would happen if that started switching on at full volume, at random intervals through the night. Losing sleep makes people irritable and that’s a nasty combination with pre-existing tension in the mix . . .’
Lucy said nothing. The stun prod hovered close to her cheek. If Erik gave her the opportunity, she would grab for it, or at least try. The muscles in her legs were still weak from the last shock she had taken. It was fifty-fifty that she would even be able to stand under her own power.
‘I think a couple of hours of that will make Jasur edgy and short-tempered,’ continued Madrigal. ‘That’s when a 911 call goes out to the local police department to warn them that a black man, a Muslim man, with a gun at his address, is threatening to shoot his wife and child. And it won’t tak
e much to alter the shift rotations, so that the officers on call for the SWAT team response are the ones who have had disciplinary issues, or complaints made about them engaging in racist behaviour. When those cops get to Jasur’s house, they’ll be the kind of men who are predisposed toward shooting first and asking questions later.’ Madrigal paused, considering the repugnant scenario she was constructing. ‘We can help that along by using that internet TV to blast out sounds of gunfire when they arrive. I can’t guarantee who will end up getting killed, of course, but it’s not hard for me to shift the odds in the direction of the outcome I want.’
‘That man has done nothing to you,’ Lucy said, forcing herself to remain calm.
‘Why are you saying that to me, as if it should matter?’ Madrigal shook her head and patted the laptop. ‘When I’m done with this, I think I might go looking for someone else. Are your parents still alive? I imagine they’ll be on some kind of medication, most people that age usually are. It won’t take much to hack the prescriptions database at their local pharmacy to dispense a drug that will give them a heart attack, poison them . . .’ She met Lucy’s look. ‘All that I can do from here, from this cabin, with this computer. I won’t feel a moment’s guilt. Because these people are expendable when weighed against the larger goal.’ Madrigal’s eyes glittered. ‘That’s the way the world works. What I am doing is more important than their small lives could ever be. The information you have, that I want, is more important than them.’ She took a breath, her gaze never wavering. ‘Family is a weak point. It’s an exploit.’ Then she seemed to realise she was showing more of herself than she wanted to, and the woman leaned back in her chair, looking toward Erik. ‘Lock her up again. Give her some time to think it over.’
He pulled Lucy to her feet as a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt gave a squawk of static. The man snatched up the radio and growled into it. ‘What?’
‘Tell Madrigal to get down to the hold.’ Lucy tensed as she heard Kara’s voice on the other end of the channel. ‘The animals are out of their cage.’
Ghost: Page 28
