The Spies That Bind

by Diane Henders

  “You want to use it on the fly, or set up a fixed weapon for an ambush?”

  “On the fly. If I’m being followed inside visual range, I wouldn’t be able to set up an ambush.”

  “Fatal or non-fatal?”

  I considered that for a moment. “Non-fatal, I guess. I’d rather be subtle. So, sorry; but throwing a giant fireball from the rear of my car is out.”

  Chow made a resigned gesture. “Damn. ‘Cause I’ve got this trunk-mounted flamethrower I’ve been just dying to test in the field.”

  My jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

  “No, you dumb shit, I’m just fucking with you! What the hell use would we have for a flame-throwing car? We’re covert ops. Covert. As in ‘don’t attract attention’.”

  I flipped him the finger. “That’s what I just said. So have you got anything?”

  “Couple of things that might work. If they’re driving right behind you, I’ve got a laser that would temporarily blind them and make them drive off the road. But if they actually have a brain and they’re tailing you a few cars back, you wouldn’t be able to use it without taking out all the drivers in between. If you’ve got a passenger-”

  “I don’t,” I interrupted.

  “Hm. Too bad. If you’re driving you can’t aim at the same time, and if you trigger something generalized it’ll wipe out everybody in the vicinity including non-combatant drivers. Can you sneak up on them and disable their car?”

  “Maybe… but I was hoping for an easier option. If they left the car I could easily disable it, but I can’t see them wandering off so I can do that.” I shrugged unhappily. “And if I was going to sneak up on them anyway, I might as well just shoot the driver and solve the whole problem. But that’s loud and messy and it attracts too much attention.” I gave him a hopeful look. “That ultrasound weapon would be perfect. Silent and unobtrusive.”

  He snorted. “No way. It’s our only prototype. And we don’t know what might happen if there was a laminated glass barrier between it and the target. Somehow I can’t see you strolling over and asking them to roll their window down so you can liquefy their brains.”

  “Huh. No.” I slumped against the counter. “Shit. So I’m out of luck.”

  “I didn’t say that.” He crooked a finger, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “I’ve got a little toy you might like. Come on over here.” I trailed him eagerly to one of the lab doors, and he shook his head and leaned down for the retinal scan. “Christ, you’re easy. How many times have you fallen for that line? Come on over here and look at my toy, little girl.”

  As the door swished open, I batted my eyes at him. “Oh, but I feel perfectly safe with you.”

  He groaned. “Ballbuster.”

  I followed him across the lab and watched with anticipation while he took a flashlight out of a drawer and laid it on the counter, then extracted what looked like an ordinary taper candle and pressed it into a holder. Just in case the lights were about to go out, I shot a glance around the small room to orient myself and rested my hand on the pocket of my waist pouch that held my tiny LED flashlight.

  The lights didn’t go out.

  Chow leaned an elbow on the counter, watching me with his one-sided smirk. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “Where’s the weapon?”

  I approached the counter cautiously, examining the flashlight and candle without touching them.

  “I’m guessing it’s the flashlight,” I said, fully expecting him to guffaw and magically transform the candle into some kind of guided missile.

  “Good guess,” he said instead, and picked up the flashlight, flicking the switch on. He let the beam track across the candle and the wall behind it while I held my breath, wondering what was about to happen.

  Chow shot me a grin and shone the light on the candle, then thumbed the switch again. Less than two seconds later the middle of the candle disintegrated in a cascade of melted wax. The top flopped over to dangle by the merrily-burning wick for a moment before the wick burned through and dropped the top half of the candle to the counter.

  “Oops,” Chow said, and blew out the flames before reaching over to rub at a one-inch round scorch mark on the wall behind it. “That burst was a little too long.”

  “What the hell is that thing?” I demanded.

  “A flashlight.” He shone the light across the wall again and I flinched involuntarily. He grinned. “And an infrared laser.”

  “You mean… holy shit, you mean like they use in spy movies to cut through steel doors?”

  “It’s not a cutting laser. That’d be too dangerous. Steel is reflective to infrared.” Chow snorted. “If they tried that in real life they’d probably cut their own damn hands off.”

  I backed away. “Is, um… does glass reflect it, too, or would it go through and burn something on the other side of the glass?”

  “Depends on the glass, but usually it’d go straight through.”

  “Usually?” I eased a little farther away. “So exactly how and why would I use that thing?”

  “Don’t be such a pussy.” He hefted the flashlight cheerfully and I managed to dampen my flinch down to a small twitch. He shook his head reprovingly. “I told you, it’s not a cutting laser. If it was, that single burst would have wrecked several lab walls, a bunch of very expensive equipment, and probably a couple of people. Watch and learn.”

  He shone the flashlight’s beam on the candle again, then thumbed the control. As the candle melted into a flaming puddle and the wall behind it discoloured with an unpleasant smell of singed paint, he passed his pincer-hand in front of the laser.

  I gasped and lunged toward him, but he had already clicked the switch off.

  “Fuck! Jesus…” I seized his wrist to examine his hand, bracing myself for the blackened skin and nauseating stench of burned flesh…

  “Oh… Christ…” I sagged against the counter, his wrist still clenched in my trembling hand while I gasped out my adrenaline overdose. “Christ almighty. I’m going to kill you! As soon as I can walk again, I’m going to fucking kill you, you son of a bitch!”

  “Sorry.” He tugged gently against my deathgrip on his wrist. “Hey. Kelly. You can let go now.”

  “Asshole,” I growled, and managed to persuade my fingers to loosen.

  “Hey, I’m sorry.” There was no taunt in his voice and the undamaged side of his face showed concern. “I didn’t mean to trigger you. What happened there?”

  “Nothing.” I swallowed and drew a deep breath, trying to calm my hammering heart.

  “Bullshit. You had a flashback. Believe me, I know what they look like. So let’s try this again. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I repeated. “I just thought you were going to get burned.”

  Burned. Again. My stomach clenched at the thought of his scarred flesh bubbling and melting.

  “So you’ve got some trauma with burns?” Chow inquired gently.

  The sympathy in his fire-ravaged face shamed me.

  “It’s nothing,” I muttered. “Like you said, I’m a fucking pussy. So you were just proving that it won’t burn a hole in you if you get in the way, right?”

  “Right. If you held your hand in front of it for more than a fraction of a second you’d be in trouble, but it’s not going to reflect off something and instantly burn a hole in you. You’d feel it and have time to turn off the beam before you got a serious burn.”

  “Good to know. So what would I use it for? If it’ll reflect off glass and steel, it’s not much good for disabling a car, is it? And…” My throat closed and I fought my voice back to normal. “I’d never use it on a person. Never. That’s just fucking sick.”

  “Tires, Kelly. It’ll blow out a tire in less than five seconds. And you could still safely burn through a steel body panel. With this large a beam diameter, just about any surface has enough imperfections to harmlessly disperse the reflection. And remember, you’ll have time to turn it off if anything
goes wrong.”

  “Okay.” I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thanks. So what’s its range?”

  He shrugged. “Line of sight. Heat distortions and particulate in the air will disperse the beam over distance, but on a clear day it’d easily work over a mile. So was that a flashback from your plane crash? Or something else?”

  Dammit, he wasn’t going to let it go.

  Okay. Just spit it out.

  I straightened my spine. “Both. The young guy who was killed with the ultrasonic weapon… he… burned. During the crash. He was already dead but I thought…” I swallowed. “It doesn’t matter. And one time a guy held a butane torch on me a little too long, but it was just a tiny burn. You can hardly see the scar anymore.”

  “If somebody’s holding a butane torch on you, any amount of time is too fucking long,” Chow said quietly.

  I couldn’t look him in the eye so I studied my toes. “It wasn’t that big a deal. I just freaked out because…”

  I almost said ‘I couldn’t bear to think of your poor hand getting burned again’, but stopped myself in time. He’d be enraged if he thought I was pitying him.

  “Anyway, I’m over it,” I said determinedly. “I hadn’t even thought of it in months.”

  “Yeah, that’s the bitch about flashbacks.” He grimaced. “They hit when you least expect them. So if I hand you this flashlight are you going to be okay?”

  I squared my shoulders. “Of course. Just tell me how it works first.”

  “Here’s the regular button that controls the visible light beam.” He indicated the ordinary-looking flashlight switch and pushed it forward. “You can use this light as your targeting system, or if you want a laser targeting system with longer range…”

  He toggled the switch backward and a small red dot appeared on the wall. “It’s just a laser sight. No burning or cutting.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you want to activate the laser, you have to simultaneously press and hold the main switch down and back while you depress this panel.” He turned the flashlight over and showed me a long narrow panel on the underside. “It’s designed to fit your fingertips so it’s pretty well impossible to activate the beam accidentally. If you just use the main switch without depressing the panel, nothing will happen. Oh, and this…”

  He flipped down a cap on the back end of the flashlight and indicated a button. “This is the self-destruct. This isn’t highly-classified technology but if somebody’s about to take it away from you, press this button to fry everything inside. Don’t try to hang onto it after you hit the self-destruct or it’ll burn you.”

  “Okay.” I held out my hand gingerly. “I’ll give it a try. Where do you want your next scorch mark?”

  He grinned and flipped the self-destruct cap closed before placing the flashlight in my palm. “How about right next to that other one?”

  “Sounds good to me.” I toggled the switch forward to test the flashlight beam, then backward to get the laser dot. Then I sucked in a long slow breath and activated the laser. As the paint darkened, I clenched my teeth and whisked my hand through the beam.

  Chow made a sudden move beside me, but I had already released the switch and lowered the flashlight, my pulse pounding in my ears.

  “Okay?” he asked cautiously.

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my tingling palm against my jeans. “No worse than running your finger through a candle flame. We used to do that all the time when we were kids. We thought we were such hot shit.”

  Chow laughed. “You’re still hot shit. Go toast some tires.”

  Chapter 26

  With the laser flashlight concealed inside the sweater I usually wore to ward off the chill of air conditioning, I hesitated in the lobby of Sirius Dynamics to gather my composure.

  Look casual. Look as though you don’t know you’re being followed…

  Frowning, I considered that. Labelle had told me I was being followed. So wouldn’t he be suspicious if I didn’t look as though I knew I was being followed?

  “Fuck it,” I muttered, and headed for the door. If my followers didn’t already know I was onto them, they soon would.

  Driving down the highway toward my farm, I kept a wary eye on the vehicles around me. No way to know if any of them were actually following me. With the long stretches of highway out on the open prairie, it was perfectly plausible that the same vehicle might follow me all the way to one of the major cities.

  I slowed and turned onto the gravel road that led to my farm. My followers would know I was headed home, and there was nothing but miles of empty gravel road north of me. If they’d been watching me for a while they’d know I never went that way, so they’d likely wait for me out on the highway.

  Unless…

  My pulse accelerated as I stopped at my gate. What if they’d tagged my car with some kind of transmitter?

  I unlocked the gate, drove through it, and locked it again behind me with my heart thumping. As soon as the garage door rolled down behind me, I pulled the bug detector out of my waist pouch and let out a breath of relief at the sight of its steady green light.

  All right, then. As long as I left my cell phone at home to be sure they couldn’t track me through it, I’d only have to watch for a physical tail.

  Inside my house, I exchanged my smartphone for a couple of secured phones and grabbed some snacks for the road. A few minutes later I locked my gate behind me and turned north.

  As I drove up the hill beyond my farm, I spotted the glint of a parked vehicle on the highway. I couldn’t make out any details over the two-mile distance, but I didn’t need to. The glint moved, and a moment later a distant plume of gravel dust told me my tail was firmly in place.

  The crest of the hill hid my pursuers from view as I coasted down the other side, but they’d be able to find me just fine. The warm August air was barely moving, and my dust would hang like a beacon for several minutes after I’d passed.

  “Eat my dust, assholes,” I muttered, and settled in for a nice drive in the country.

  I slowed to a crawl each time a hill hid me from view, and several miles of zigzagging along gravelled roads closed the gap between us enough that I could make out a silver SUV. It stayed too far away to identify the make, but I memorized the grill pattern and noted that unless there was somebody hiding in the back seat, my original assumption of ‘they’ was wrong. Only the driver. Good.

  I emerged on pavement at last and turned west toward Innisfail, keeping an eye on my rear-view mirror. The silver SUV halted at the stop sign behind me and waited a few seconds despite the lack of oncoming traffic.

  Okay, buddy, go ahead and play coy, but you’re going to have to cuddle up a little closer in a few minutes…

  Sure enough, the SUV closed the gap as I entered Innisfail. The driver kept a couple of vehicles between us at all times, but where I turned, he followed.

  Pretending cluelessness, I parked and went into a grocery store. Basket over my arm, I circulated close to the front windows and spotted the SUV parked on the other side of the lot. When I came out with my small sack of groceries and drove down the street, the SUV followed a few cars back as usual.

  My heart picked up the pace. So far, so good. Just let him get used to waiting for me in parking lots…

  Next stop, a drugstore. I bought a box of cough drops just for the sake of leaving with a purchase, and spotted the SUV parked a few slots over.

  When I pulled out, I thought I’d lost him. A steady stream of traffic prevented him from turning out after me, and I was several blocks down the street by the time he tagged onto the tail end of the procession.

  Despite the tension of being followed, I breathed a sigh of relief. As long he was sticking to me, it meant he was likely alone. If he had stopped pursuing I would have had to guess whether it was because I’d truly lost him, or somebody else had picked me up.

  Time to end this.

  I spotted a small fast-food restaurant with a front and back door and pulled i
n close to the front. Striding to the entrance with my sweater swinging from my hand as if I hadn’t a care in the world, I shot a quick glance over my shoulder. The silver SUV was just nosing into a parking spot on the opposite side of the lot.

  Perfect.

  Inside, I ordered a burger and fries to go and nodded toward the back door. “I’m just going to use the washroom while I wait.”

  The young server gave a disinterested shrug, and I strolled away. Bypassing the washrooms, I slipped out the back door.

  A bit of cautious circling positioned me at the corner of a reeking garbage dumpster, with a clear view of the back of the silver SUV. Hoping his concentration was focused on the restaurant’s front door and not on his rear-view mirrors, I pointed the flashlight and steadied my hand against the dumpster.

  The red dot wobbled onto one of the rear tires and I drew a slow breath, then depressed the switch and panel. For a couple of long seconds nothing happened.

  Then the tire blew like a shotgun blast.

  I flung myself back against the dumpster, heart hammering. Holy shit, I hadn’t realized it would be so loud. I chanced a peek around the corner, but apparently the driver had thought it sounded like a shotgun blast, too. As I watched, his head appeared briefly above the seat, then disappeared again. A quick peek to see who was shooting at him.

  Grinning, I focused on his other tire. Let’s just keep him guessing.

  The second explosion was even louder than the first, but I didn’t stick around to check the results of my handiwork.

  Scuttling back into the restaurant, I hurried up to the counter to collect my food, trying to look as though my sweaty fist wasn’t clenched around a classified weapon.

  I needn’t have bothered with my Oscar-winning acting skills. The kid didn’t even glance my way, nor did he seem the least bit concerned about two explosions from the parking lot. With the warm greasy bag swinging from my hand, I did my best nonchalant stride out the door to my car.