Watch Dogs

by John Shirley

  So I didn’t say anything, not right away. I’d have to find some discreet way to ask about this.

  But I had trouble sleeping for two days, wondering about it. Not feeling right.

  Then I heard about the al Qaeda attack on one of our delivery convoys. “Yeah, we lost a buncha guys,” Specialist Gamble was saying, in the mess tent, as he speared roast beef and shoved it into his mouth. He was chewing with his mouth open and gabbing at the same time as usual. “Navy SEALS killed, what I heard. Six good men down. The front humvee hit some kinda IED, then your garden variety terrorists come out with RPGs and they nail the humvees and steal the truck.”

  “What was in the truck?” I asked.

  “I’m not supposed to say...” Gamble swallowed, drank some milk, and then glanced around.

  I knew he’d get around to telling me what he’d heard. He was one of those guys who like people to think they’re “in the know”. He was in the know, too, because he was tasked on the ultra-frequency receiver that decrypted intel stuff; he turned it into reports for people in the high access loop.

  Now he lowered his voice and went on, “Money! Al Qaeda ripped off more a hundred-forty million bucks in cash. Bundles of cash, piled up like it was nothin’ but notebook paper shipping out of a warehouse! It was going to pay off Somali warlords, see, get them on our side.”

  “They shipped it in cash?”

  “Sure! Like all that big cash that disappeared into Iraq, years ago, remember that?”

  “Uh huh. They never did catch those guys...”

  “Well, word is, this was terrorists killed those guys in the trucks and humvees, stole that money intended for the guys who were gonna switch sides against ‘em...But listen, bud, you didn’t hear it from me!”

  Terrorists. That was the official story. Only I’d confirmed that was Verrick out there—and Callahan.

  So what did I do then, Pearce? Did I leak the stuff anonymously? Did I get myself sent back to the DC, so I could slip right to top levels with what I’d seen—what I’d recorded?

  No! Like a dumbjack, I went to my base commander, right there on the island. I took it to General Van Ness, and I told him all about it. I gave him a disk with the goods on it.

  Van Ness went white when he heard that stuff. I didn’t realize why at the time. I thought he was just worried about guys from his command ripping off money.

  About an hour later I was just going over to the drone control trailer when I almost ran into Specialist Gamble—he came off frightened when he saw me.

  Whoosh, he turned on his heel and went the other way.

  I can read the signs in the military.

  So right then I went to the CIA attaché, told her what I’d seen—I can’t give you her name. Well, she stared at me for a long moment after I told her the story, then said, “How about some evidence?”. I told her sure, I’ll get it.

  I went to my bunk. The only other copy I’d made of that disk should’ve been in my personal effects case—it was gone. I went to the trailer, looked in the hard drive of the PC I’d used. Nothing.

  Then I realized it was not even the same PC. The one I’d used was missing.

  I went back to her, told her what had happened. I said somebody was covering up. She wasn’t letting on if she believed me or not. She said, here, fill out this form...

  I did. I heard her talking on the phone to her boss in Washington as I filled out the report. She seemed genuinely concerned I might be telling the truth.

  Turned out, that didn’t do me any good.

  Half an hour later, I stepped out of the Agency’s Quonset, and two MPs were waiting there. They put me under arrest.

  General Van Ness had “turned me in”. He claimed there was evidence that I’d sold classified data to Al Qaeda operatives.

  During the preliminary hearing I demanded to know what evidence he had against me. He produced a doctored clip from the disk I’d given him.

  They rushed me into military court as fast as they could. Major Verrick came in and perjured himself with about ten large lies, cool as a cucumber the whole time.

  My legal rep wanted to bring Captain Callahan in. Rafe Callahan apparently had been drunk ever since the incident, maybe having an attack of conscience.

  They couldn’t find him for a while. Then they found him in pieces.

  He’d gotten killed in a handy terrorist bomb attack while he was on leave. Something arranged by Verrick, I figure.

  A handy explosion would’ve taken care of me too if I hadn’t gone to the CIA attaché. But after that it’d look too suspicious if they arranged for me to die like Callahan.

  The CIA attaché was on my side. But the attaché couldn’t save me from prison and a dishonorable discharge and a ruined reputation. Van Ness and Verrick put it around that I had some connection with the “terrorists” who’d stolen the cash. They couldn’t prove it but a lot of people believed it.

  I had a pretty good military lawyer. But in the end it was a Master Sergeant’s word against a General’s. The General’s version of my disk didn’t seem authentic to any of the I.T. people looking at it, and it was thrown out as evidence against me.

  Verrick called me an accomplice to murder, in the hearing. I lost it and slugged Verrick, right then and there, knocked him on his keister. I said he was the murderer; he got up and hit me back and then the MPs moved in.

  I was convicted of that attack on a superior officer, mitigated by circumstances, and perjury for supposedly lying about what I’d seen, and they gave me a year in military prison. I think I’d have gotten more time, maybe life, but the CIA attaché pulled some strings for me.

  So that’s it. Roger Verrick’s a murderer—killed some good American soldiers. And one bad one—Callahan.

  And Verrick hoisted more than a hundred million dollars in cash. Somehow laundered it.

  I heard he bought a lot of shares in Blume after his discharge, amongst other things. His family already owned a lot of shares. Now Verrick owns a lot more. He doesn’t control the company—but he’s powerful there. So he got himself shoehorned into the security boss job.

  That makes him more powerful still. A hard man to bring down.

  #

  “You see what I mean about having a conscience?” Wolfe said. “It’ll get you.”

  “I see what you mean, Wolfe,” said Pearce, from the television screen. “But...I ran from my own conscience, for most of my life...”

  “Didn’t seem like that to me, when I was a kid.”

  “I tried to be decent. But not hard enough. And when I buried my conscience away people got hurt, Wolfe. People I loved—they got caught in the crossfire of my life. They died and it was my fault. Way I look at it now, in the long run, conscience is pretty much all we’ve got. Otherwise we all turn into Roger Verrick.”

  Wolfe snorted. “Verrick!” He winced, remembering the gunfight in the Four Clubs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, confronting him at a mob casino. It was like I was wound up tight by a year in ‘Disciplinary’. The spring all of a sudden...uncoiled. And there I was in the Four Clubs, waving a gun around.”

  “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” Pearce mused. “You’ve got him off balance now. Worried. A man off-balance makes mistakes. It might force him to show his hand. What we need is to prove he’s hooked in with the Club.” After a moment’s silence, he added, “There are rumors about something else. Something called Purity.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I don’t know. Some secret organization moving in on Chicago. Doing a search on Verrick, I found a sketchy piece by an investigating journalist, trying to find out just what Purity is. The journalist disappeared—and next time I went online to look at the article again, it was gone too. The journalist claimed Purity is a secret political organization using a front company called Iceberg Investments. And Roger Verrick is one of the names from Iceberg’s board of directors. There’s not much information about Iceberg out there, though. We look into that, maybe we can find out
what Verrick had against me—and find some evidence that helps you clear your name.”

  “Starting where? Seems like the dirt on Purity’s been cleaned up.”

  “Starting with the guy who tried to shoot me. Identify him, maybe we’ll work from there back to Verrick and Iceberg. See what you can do with that image I got from the train station. You’re the expert on long range image enhancement. We get a face, we’ll run it through ctOS facial recognition, see if we come up with something.”

  Wolfe figured he was committed now. He’d been looking for Pearce anyway. He shouldn’t let his paranoia put him off his only ally. “Okay. You got it, Pearce. I’ll do it.”

  “I’m gonna do some more checking on you. Could be I’ll have that special tool I mentioned for you, pretty soon.”

  “When do I see you in person?”

  “The time will come. I’ve got to keep my head down now. I don’t know if you heard—but someone recently tried to blow it off my shoulders.”

  Then Aiden Pearce’s head and shoulders vanished—from the TV screen. It was replaced by a pink cartoon bear in a toilet paper commercial.

  Wolfe sighed and turned off the TV.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Roger Verrick was playing videogames that killed things for real.

  He loved that idea.

  He was in a sprawling, well protected rural house, about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago. But it wasn’t an old house—it was the latest in Smart Houses, a home-automation prototype owned by Blume and sometimes used by Blume executives. Verrick was just out there for the weekend, to mix work and play—and to throw his enemies off, if they were setting up an attack on him in town.

  The “hunting exercise”, as he called it, was in a comfortable basement, what used to be called a rumpus room, with carpets on the floor, sofas, a refrigerator full of beer—and a wide desk with several monitors set up. Verrick was sitting at the desk, operating the system through a simple mouse, like a PC videogame. Only it wasn’t a videogame really—it was a set up for controlling a hunting drone.

  The hunting drone was illegal, of course. That was part of the fun. Since the laws were enforced by an Order that Verrick despised, he enjoyed breaking them when he could get away with it. He needed the recreation right now, too. It took his mind off Wolfe—and that ache in his lower spine. Verrick managed not to think about taking the pills when he was hunting—at least, hunting in this comfy way. He had made up his mind to cut back on the Oxycodone. Had to focus on getting all the pieces in places, all the dominoes that would fall over in a long row, triggering the Iceberg Project...

  Standing behind Verrick, humming annoyingly to himself and rocking on his heels, was the project’s chief technician, Geoff Starling, a former Unmanned Aerial Vehicle designer for the USAF. Post Air Force, Geoff Starling was getting flabby and sloppy. He almost always wore the same one-piece AF mechanic’s coveralls. And Starling didn’t bathe enough. Verrick could smell him.

  “Starling,” Verrick said, guiding the drone not far over the treetops of the woods near the farm, “do step back from me, won’t you please? At least a yard back.”

  “Sir, certainly, yes sir,” said Starling, in that obsessive-compulsive way he had. He washed his hands every thirty minutes but rarely washed his clothing or his person.

  Starling stepped back, and Verrick focused on slowing the drone till the delta-shaped aluminum and fiberglass UAV was almost hovering over the slightly snow-flecked grove of black walnut and sycamore trees. Of course, he couldn’t see the drone directly—he saw an outline of it generated by the program. But his point of view was actually angled down on the treetops from the camera in the base of the drone. “Thought I saw something move down there, between the trees,” he muttered.

  Verrick slowly slid the wheel on the mouse forward, inching the UAV over a small clearing. There was a little meadow about a hundred feet below. And in entering the meadow, taking delicate steps, moved a deer—a doe, with its mulish ears up and twitching. Perhaps the doe was hearing the distant whirr of the drone and not recognizing the sound. It took a few more steps, looking back and forth, picking its way through dimpled patches of snow...

  “There she is, sir, yes sir,” Starling said, looking at the screen from behind Verrick.

  “Starling—keep quiet, I’ve got to concentrate.”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  Verrick moved the drone a little more ahead, then right clicked to bring up the drone action menu. He clicked on reduce altitude, and the ground seemed to slowly zoom toward the camera...

  Then the deer looked right up at him, her large brown eyes startled. She poised to leap away...

  With a flick of his hand he selected the aim cursor, swung the crosshairs to the deer, and clicked on fire.

  Somewhere, about a half mile from here, the drone—in actual fact—fired a rifle round from the tube on its base. The UAV jiggled in the air with the recoil, but not too much, most of the recoil being redistributed by hydraulic pressure release devices.

  The deer was halfway through a leap—and was struck in the rear right leg. It stumbled, fell, then was up again, limping...

  “Ha haaaaa,” Verrick said. “I got it!”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Starling agreed eagerly.

  Verrick tracked the deer a little farther as it staggered along, centered the crosshairs on its back, and fired again—right through its spine. The deer went down, twitching.

  The deer probably wasn’t dead yet. There were only four rounds in the magazine. He decided to save the other two, in case he could find something else to kill.

  “Sir, want me to arrange for that deer to be picked up for food, sir?” asked Starling. He had a taste for venison.

  “No, don’t bother. Is that a rabbit, over there?”

  Verrick tracked the UAV over to the other side of the meadow, thinking that the next step would be to get someone human out there to hunt; someone he needed to eliminate anyway. Like, for example, Aiden Pearce. Or a certain former Delta Force sergeant...

  Mick Wolfe. How would it be to have Mick Wolfe running like a rabbit through the woods under an armed UAV? Ironic and appropriate. Because Wolfe had used another drone to spy on Verrick’s own special acquisitions operation. Wolfe had nearly stopped that money from getting to Verrick—and to Purity.

  Sadly, it would be taking too much of a chance to put Wolfe out in those woods to let him run free so he could be hunted down like an animal. There was always a chance Wolfe could get away in a scenario like that.

  Verrick wasn’t going to take that chance. He was going to make sure Wolfe died at the first chance that came along...

  Wolfe couldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Iceberg project, nor could Pearce. They were pushy, inquisitive, threatening. They might find out about it, if they were persistent and lucky. And if people involved in the project didn’t keep their damned mouths shut.

  Verrick spun in his desk chair, to aim a sudden glare at Starling. “You remembering what we talked about, with respect to Iceberg, Starling? High level discretion?”

  “Sir, yes sir, I do remember,” Starling said hastily, rubbing his hands together in washing motions.

  “Just see that we get all those drones ready when we need them.”

  “Sir, you sure you don’t want them weaponized, sir?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. They’re not the weapons. Just make sure they’ll do what they’re supposed to. Or you’ll be running through those woods out there, under one of your own drones, instead of some dumb animal...”

  #

  Eight P.M., and Mick Wolfe trudged along a snowy street on the Southside of Chicago, just a few blocks from Washington Park. Cars had made dark, slushy ruts down the middle of the street, past a boarded over restaurant and a liquor store; a truck hissed along through the slush, then turned the corner.

  It wasn’t thick snow; the snowfall had been sparse. Thinking like a Delta Force operative, Wolfe wondered if snow was to his advantage, or disadvantage, in the
coming conflict on this terrain. Probably the latter—anything that slowed him down would increase his risk, if he were being hunted. And he knew he’d be hunted.

  He did have one advantage, if Aiden Pearce could be believed. Pearce had gotten back in touch; his face, this time, appearing on the PC where Wolfe had been sitting.

  “You’ll find something that looks like a television remote control, in the top drawer of that desk,” Pearce had said. “That’s a security cam scrambler. Take it with you, and anytime you’re crossing a street it’ll blot out the cameras on the block you’re coming to. It’s designed to look like a glitch in the system.”

  “Take it with me where?”

  “You’re going out to a Tech Shack store! I can see the PC is running slow for your program—you’re going to need an external drive to speed things up. I can’t arrange for it to be brought to you, right now. Too risky. You can simply buy one at the Tech Shack—ten blocks north. I recommend you walk there. Don’t trust the cabs, not till you hear differently. You’ll see someone you’ve met once before on the way—Blank. He may have a message for you.”

  “But Pearce—”

  But then Pearce’s image had vanished.

  And now Wolfe was trudging back from the store with his small backpack over one shoulder; the external drive was tucked into a plastic bag inside the pack. He’d gotten to the store just two minutes before it had closed.

  He looked nervously up the street toward the block of abandoned projects. He wasn’t happy about being out after dark, in Black Viceroy territory. He had a gun, but so what? How many Viceroys would he run into? They’d all be armed.

  “Wolfe...” came the gravelly voice, from the alley.

  Wolfe stiffened, turning toward the alley. Then he remembered what Pearce had said. “Blank? That you?”

  “Yeah. Come in here, outta the street lights...”

  Wolfe crossed the sidewalk, stepped into the shadows. A silhouette stood there—the man’s breath plumed out into a slanting beam of street light. Blank stepped forward, just enough so that Wolfe could see his scar-blurred face, and a bit of his gnarled, burn-reddened hands.