by Adams, P R
“You been drinking?”
“Last night, officer,” Metcalfe said with a smile. “We’re well over it, I assure you.”
Metcalfe switched to Hindi and said something that seemed to set the officer at ease. They spoke for a few moments, Metcalfe pointing back in the direction of the hotel. The officer nodded and headed back to his vehicle.
With practiced ease, Metcalfe popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a small booklet. “I want you ready to act,” he said, never losing his smile. “Understand?”
Kleigshoen nodded.
Metcalfe popped open the door, waving the booklet and calling to the driver in Hindi. Rimes watched as the policemen focused on Metcalfe. The second officer seemed worried, looking back down the road. Rimes followed his head and saw an approaching black SUV.
It was accelerating.
“Get down,” Rimes shouted. He shoved the driver’s seat forward and hooked his arm around Kleigshoen’s chest, pulling her down as automatic gunfire roared. Glass shattered and bullets tore through the car. The firing stopped as suddenly as it had started, replaced by an accelerating engine’s whine.
Kleigshoen gasped. She pulled away from Rimes and put a hand to her back. Twisting, she looked through the shattered windows.
“They’re down!” She scrambled to get out of the car and made her way to the battered police vehicle.
Rimes grimaced in sudden pain as he carefully navigated through the glass-covered door. Outside, he braced his butt against the ruined car—the vehicle wasn’t going anywhere. A quick inspection revealed a dozen cuts across his hands, but it was his left leg that troubled him: he’d been hit in the thigh.
Kleigshoen squatted over Metcalfe, then helped him up. Metcalfe was covered in blood, but he seemed alert and functional, which was more than could be said for the policemen.
“You all right?” Metcalfe called to Rimes. He brushed Kleigshoen’s hands away, then took her shoulders, turned her around, and looked at her back.
“Caught one in the thigh.” Rimes put weight on the leg. It was numb but seemed functional. “Just cut up other than that. You?”
Metcalfe said, “I used our friend here for cover when I noticed his passenger watching the road. Get the passenger’s gun. We need to be ready if they come back.”
Rimes took a tentative step, then another. “Is she okay?”
“She was grazed along the back,” Metcalfe said after a moment. “I’ll get you two to someone we can trust.”
Metcalfe hooked his wrists under the driver’s arms and pulled him onto the side of the road. Metcalfe grunted as he lowered the policeman to the ground. “We’ll take their vehicle.”
As he approached the passenger-side door, Rimes saw the other policeman. He was still alive but slipping into shock. Rimes took the policeman’s gun and searched him for extra magazines or loose bullets, gently swatting away the policeman’s bloody hands when he resisted. When he was done, he pulled the policeman to the side of the road.
Wincing at the stiffness in his shoulder, Rimes pulled off his windbreaker and wrapped it around his hand to sweep the glass from the back seat, then let Kleigshoen in. Once he was sure she was in safely, he swept off the passenger seat, climbed in, and closed the door.
Metcalfe pulled his jacket off and swept the driver’s seat clear. After checking the gun he’d taken from the dead policeman, he pulled onto the road, already chatting in Hindi with someone over his earpiece.
A minute later, they were off the main road, heading toward the slums.
“I guess we have our answer about Petty Officer Tendulkar,” Metcalfe finally said. He gave Rimes a rueful smile.
“Or about T-Corp,” Rimes replied. “Or both.”
Metcalfe nodded. “I don’t think Tendulkar would do something like this on his own. We’ll find out soon enough. For now, though, we stay off the Grid. There’s no reason to take any risks.”
The SUV bumped and rattled as they approached the slum’s outskirts and the road turned into little more than packed dirt. Metcalfe drove for several minutes, searching down the maze of winding paths before pulling into one. He stopped the SUV beneath a tattered overhang and killed the engine.
Jacket draped over his gun, Metcalfe exited the vehicle. He looked around quickly, then entered the maze. Kleigshoen and Rimes followed.
“We’ve got a few minutes to kill before our Good Samaritan will be ready for us,” Metcalfe said. “She runs a tight schedule.”
They wandered through the tightly packed slums for several minutes, Metcalfe frequently checking the map overlay on his earpiece.
Finally, they reached what constituted a nice house, for the slums. Light leaked from beneath the heavy drapes covering the door, revealing a scooter chained against the outer wall.
The drapes lifted as they approached, and an elderly man wearing a crisp shirt and baggy, tattered pants gave a quick glance around, then waved them in.
Metcalfe and the older man spoke quietly just inside the entry as a young woman in a nurse’s uniform stepped from behind a curtain to the left of the entry. The place reeked of curry, onions past their prime, and unwashed bodies. The young woman whispered quickly to the old man, then pointed Kleigshoen and Rimes toward the hut’s central room.
The place was half the size of his apartment and served as dining room and kitchen. The floor was hard-packed dirt.
The young woman set out a bowl of water and her medical kit while Metcalfe slipped the old man a wad of cash, silencing his protestations.
The nurse quickly examined Kleigshoen and Rimes, carefully cutting away as little clothing as she could in order to get to their wounds. Kleigshoen’s shoulder and back had a long gash where a round had grazed her. It was shallow, but it was bleeding and would be vulnerable to infection without treatment.
The nurse washed the wound clean before swabbing it with alcohol and applying an ointment. She taped a gauze strip over it, then turned to the superficial hand wounds they’d received from the broken glass. The crude medicine and equipment she worked with was a painful reminder to Rimes of how fortunate he was.
After washing away the blood and applying antiseptic, she turned her attention to Rimes’s leg wound. She carefully examined the wound, then explained to him in English that the bullet had passed through without doing serious damage. Rimes grimaced as she cleaned and sewed shut both ends of the wound while warning him that he risked infection if he didn’t get a more thorough cleaning at a hospital.
It was growing light out by the time the nurse closed her kit and emptied the bloody water outside the house. She spoke with Metcalfe for a few moments, then pulled two cellophane-wrapped hospital shirts from beneath a stack of blankets. She handed the shirts to Metcalfe and stepped through the front entry.
Rimes looked the shirts over. They were distinctive in their plainness. Stolen clothing might catch someone’s attention.
We wouldn’t stand out any more than we already do, and it’s not like we’d be the first to steal clothing. Anyway, who’s to say we aren’t recent patients?
A moment later, he heard someone unchain the scooter. The motor came to life, and Metcalfe entered the house alone.
Metcalfe looked the two of them over. “Are you waiting for something nicer?”
Rimes smiled. He helped Kleigshoen into her shirt, then pulled his own on. The shirts were stiff and smelled stale, but they were clean.
Metcalfe watched the entry for a moment, finally turning to look at Kleigshoen and Rimes. “We’re staying here for now. If they’re looking for us, they won’t find us. I’d suggest you get some sleep. We’ll go looking for our friend Tendulkar tonight, so we’ll need to be sharp. He’s almost certain to be on his guard. Everyone’s going to be on their guard.”
16
2 March 2164. Mumbai, India.
* * *
They were parked off a secondary road leading into an upscale housing area. A towering privacy wall blocked out the street lights, cloaking the
m in shadow. Metcalfe sat in the vehicle’s front seat, eyes focused on the Grid security video. Rimes watched the feed over his earpiece.
“Think he has any idea?” Kleigshoen asked.
Rimes defocused from the video feed to watch Metcalfe’s face in the weak glow of hacked-together surveillance equipment.
IB’s apparently unlimited funding amazed Rimes. Metcalfe had purchased a stolen SUV, equipment, guns, and a change of clothes without batting an eye. Objectively, it was the same operational concept—”Get it done”—that the Commandos lived by, but on a completely different scale. It felt different.
Metcalfe stared into space for a moment. “No.” He lowered his head and returned to the security video.
The police killings had stirred up surprisingly little activity. According to a newscast Rimes had heard earlier in the day, the official line was that radical dissidents had targeted the policemen. By all indications, the three of them weren’t even fugitives from the law—at least officially. It had even been frighteningly easy to locate and close in on Tendulkar: he had no police protection, no extra security.
Rimes closed his eyes and relaxed, enjoying the dreamlike quality of the moment: a moment of calm in a turbulent mission that had sapped his energy and resolve.
Tendulkar’s voice suddenly came over the communication channel. Tendulkar was speaking with his cousin, the senior T-Corp scientist. The two talked about trivial matters for a few moments before the cousin asked Tendulkar if he’d heard from his friends. Tendulkar quickly said he had not. They both sounded nervous. The cousin assured Tendulkar he’d done the right thing and disconnected.
“Okay,” Metcalfe said, replaying a security video that showed the front of an impressive two-story, gated house. “This is where Tendulkar is hiding, his brother’s place. His brother’s a senior government engineer, and Poppa Tendulkar was a T-Corp administrator until last year, so they’re not hurting for money.
“Tendulkar’s brother shares this place with their parents, his own family, a cousin, and his cousin’s wife. I make eight inside right now, plus Tendulkar, so nine.
“Right now you can see the woman I believe is Tendulkar’s fiancée, who arrived ten minutes ago.
“I haven’t had any luck getting a floor plan. Best I can determine, it’s fairly similar to the floor plan I’m laying over the image now.”
A pale-blue wireframe settled over the house to match the security camera’s perspective. Metcalfe adjusted the obvious problem areas, aligning the door and windows and knocking off a small side patio.
A glowing finger appeared over the image on Rimes’s display. “Dining room, living room, bedrooms. According to energy use patterns, they’ll fire up their entertainment console and run it until about ten. That should put Ritesh and his sweetie out the door a few minutes later. Factor in a goodbye peck, and Ritesh is headed this way on his scooter by a quarter past.”
They’d wrapped a cable around a nearby pole. When the time came, Rimes would run across the street and wrap the cable around a signpost on the opposite side. In the dark, Tendulkar wouldn’t see it. It would knock him off scooter, and Rimes would be on him before he could get off the ground.
It would then be up to the IB’s interrogation techniques to pry out the desired data.
“What’s our extraction plan?” Kleigshoen asked.
“There’s a private airstrip sixty kilometers north,” Metcalfe said. “A pilot will be waiting for us. Then we get to Pune and hire a shuttle to wherever the heck we need to go next.”
“Simple enough,” Rimes said. “What are our possible destinations?”
Metcalfe thought for a moment. “Seoul. Darwin. Tokyo. Who knows at this point?”
Rimes shook his head.
“What?” Kleigshoen leaned forward, crossing her arms on top of the seat and resting her chin on her hands. “Too much travel?”
Rimes chuckled quietly. “Too much uncertainty. I’m used to knowing where to go, what to do, and what I have to do it with.”
Metcalfe glared back at him. “Who do you think makes that possible? We have people all around the globe pulling down data, listening in on countless conversations, buying information, analyzing targets, and more, all so you can have the sort of certainty you’re used to. People risk their lives every day on some of the most mundane and innocuous things, all in the name of intelligence gathering.”
Rimes nodded. “I get that. It doesn’t make the transition from operator to collector any less jarring, though.”
Kleigshoen punched him gently on the shoulder. “What we’re doing here is critical. Of course we’re uncertain. For all we know, the bad guy could be one of us.”
Metcalfe cleared his throat. “What Dana’s trying to say is that we can’t even identify what’s at stake between these two metacorporations. There’s simply no way for us to say we have actionable material to work with just based off what we’ve dug up to date—”
Rimes held up a hand. “Wait. Play back the audio for the call that just went out.”
Metcalfe waved his fingers around his console. The audio played back. It was Tendulkar’s cousin from T-Corp and his brother, exchanging pleasantries. The cousin promised to see his brother at their father’s house that weekend.
“No, before that. Just before that.”
Metcalfe waved a finger through the air. The conversation reversed itself at high speed.
“Stop,” Rimes said.
A few seconds of garbled audio played.
“There,” Rimes said. “Can you decrypt that?”
Kleigshoen leaned back in the rear seat and piggybacked off Metcalfe’s session. Rimes watched them at work, running through cracking modules, analyzing the packet with interpolators and assessors.
After several tense seconds, Metcalfe grunted. The audio piece played again, this time unencrypted.
“In position.”
It was a voice Rimes hadn’t heard before.
“What’s that mean?” Rimes looked from Kleigshoen to Metcalfe. “And where did that come from? The local Grid?”
“I don’t know yet.” Metcalfe scanned through the video feeds.
Kleigshoen began tracing the source and destination. Precious seconds slipped by. Rimes lowered his window and craned his head out, trying to see around the wall.
“There,” Metcalfe said.
A large, black SUV appeared on their screens. Metcalfe pulled the view back until they could see the SUV in relation to the Tendulkar house.
The SUV was one house over.
Metcalfe enhanced the image, highlighting two men in the front seat and what looked like a possible third man in the rear. The two in front wore dark jackets and held submachine guns.
“That message’s destination was T-Corp Administrative Facility Southwest Region Two,” Kleigshoen said.
“A T-Corp hit team,” Rimes said.
Metcalfe started the engine and popped the SUV into gear as another garbled message flew across the network. “I see the vehicle; it’s closing on the house.” Metcalfe turned onto the secondary street and accelerated toward Tendulkar’s house.
“They don’t want any loose ends,” Rimes said as he checked his weapon.
Kleigshoen readied her weapon as the decryption module cracked the message. “They’ve given them the go.”
Rimes felt powerless as he watched the SUV stop outside the Tendulkar house. Four men exited the vehicle; two ran around the side of the house while the third shoved another man toward the front door. The fourth scanned the street, then walked to the house.
Gunfire and screams shattered the night.
Metcalfe braked quickly in order to turn down a side street and come up behind the Tendulkar house. He parked the SUV.
“Okay, no heroics, Jack. Grab Ritesh if he’s alive and get the hell out.”
Rimes nodded.
They all jumped out of the vehicle.
Rimes’s leg was a mess, but it supported his weight enough that he could manage a
jump-hop motion that got him to the back gate as Metcalfe opened it. The three of them advanced on the house quickly, guns down, watching. They dropped as they heard the SUV at the front of the house pulling away, then quickly closed the final stretch to the back door.
The back door opened onto the kitchen, where two young women lay in a pool of blood. An older woman was slumped against a blood-spattered wall nearby, her dead eyes still open. Beyond the kitchen, they found the others, some in the dining area, some in the living room. The walls and furniture were riddled with bullet holes. Tendulkar and his cousin had each taken a bullet to the head, erasing any potential for extraction—or interrogation.
Rimes stared at Tendulkar’s dead eyes. “We got him killed. This deception … he was in over his head.”
Metcalfe patted down the bodies. “He got himself killed, Jack. Snap out of it. You can’t feel guilt about something like this.”
Rimes looked at Kleigshoen, saw the shock in her eyes. “He was a good soldier, Dana. He was just doing his job. What the hell did we drag him into? Why would T-Corp need to kill all of them?”
Kleigshoen looked away.
“It’s done,” Metcalfe said. He stood, inspecting the haul—earpieces and slim wallets. He stuffed them in his pants pockets with shaking hands. “He turned us in to T-Corp and they killed him. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
They retraced their path through the kitchen and out the back door. Rimes stole another glance at the women: innocent victims. A quick dash across the back yard, and they were in their vehicle, speeding away.
Six hours later, they were bound for Seoul.
17
3 March 2164. Seoul, Korea.
* * *
Seoul was a garish, neon mess, a glowing scab over an unhealed wound buried beneath tons of cement and steel. Reunification had come for Korea, but only after weeks of war, the result of one psychotic act too many. The scars were generations old and would last generations more.
