Watch Dogs

by John Shirley

  “That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  The cops arrived, a patrol car and an unmarked Crown Victoria. The patrolmen got out, and went down to talk to the workmen. Verrick looked over at Tranter who was coming over to stand at his side.

  “That yours?” Tranter asked.

  “That’s what the police report says, Tranter. Stolen truck. And that’s my truck. Perp, Mick Wolfe. So why hasn’t anyone arrested him?”

  “You said before you didn’t want an all points bulletin on him. We could put his name up on television news, call him a mad dog, the whole shebang.”

  “It’s tempting. But can you count on Wolfe not talking to the wrong people when he’s arrested? Can you count on every cop who picks him up to deal with him our way?”

  “Hell no. Who knows what Wolfe’ll do if they pick him up. And you haven’t got the whole department on your payroll. We can’t count on any of that.”

  “Then...I’ll just push harder to locate him through ctOS. We find him, we’ll get the right people out there.”

  Verrick watched moodily as water started streaming out of the Silverado as they got up on the back of the towtruck.

  He sighed. “Not the top best truck out there but I loved that thing. I’m going to put him in what’s left of it and set him on fire.”

  “Smarter to just shoot him first chance.”

  “Don’t tell me what’s smarter, dammit!”

  Tranter’s face went grim. “You don’t own me, Verrick. I am not your little abused dog, like that Starling character. Don’t push it.”

  Verrick returned the look. “What have you done for me lately, Tranter? Nothing much. What am I paying for?”

  “Tell you something. Things are getting hot around you. You want me to work on this—you double my paycheck.”

  “What!”

  “You heard me.”

  Verrick privately vowed to put Tranter in that burning truck with Wolfe when he got a chance. But he said, “Fine. Just get it done. Get Mick Wolfe.”

  #

  The Hawk was ripping down South Canal Street as Wolfe and Seline walked hunched over, against it.

  The Union Station with its dignified Beaux Arts face, was just up ahead. “You sure the station’s still open at this hour?” Seline asked. Her voice was somewhat muffled under the wool scarf she had bought. It covered half her face. She now had a blue scarf in place of a wig, and no sunglasses.

  “Of course it is.” He glanced at her. “That’s a better disguise. Just cover the whole damn face up.”

  “It wouldn’t work inside. It’d call attention to me. Maybe I should get a burka.”

  “Maybe you should. But not in a train station.”

  “You don’t disguise yourself. You’re not worried about ctOS?”

  “Not too much. I’ve got some hardware on me that transmits to their camera. Disguises me.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Where’d you get that? At Radio Shack?”

  “Got it from a friend. Tell you about him some other time. If it turns out I can trust you.”

  “Wolfe, I’m the one who should be worried about trust around here...”

  “Are you? You could be some kind of federal agent looking for my friend. Van Ness could’ve pulled some strings...”

  They had gotten to the Union Station entrance, and Wolfe was glad to go in. His face was going numb in the cold wind.

  Inside, faces tingling in the renewed warmth, they found their way to the Great Hall. A lot of the ticket booths were closed, but that’s not what they were here for.

  A discontented-looking black-clad hipster with a soul patch was slumped on a wooden bench by the door, clutching his luggage to him. On other benches were a number of homeless—one of them, hunched under a broad brimmed hat, looked familiar to Wolfe...

  They clopped across the Great Hall, the big room echoing their footsteps in a way that made Wolfe edgy. They were right out in the open here. He remembered that sniper that Seline had mentioned.

  “He said someone would recognize us,” Seline whispered.

  “I know who it is...I think. Seems like he works for more people than I knew.”

  He led the way over to Blank but was careful not to look at Blank directly. He cleared his throat as he walked past, and in his peripheral vision was aware that Blank looked up. He led Seline about thirty steps past Blank they sat down on the facing bench.

  “Gotta rest my legs,” he said.

  He looked up at the cameras on the columns of the ornate room, then looked at his feet. After a few moments he took the device out of his coat pocket that Pearce had given him—the one that looked like a remote control. “Here,” he said, handing it do her. “I found this. If you ever get a TV you can control it.”

  She pulled the woolen scarf down, glanced at him in brief puzzlement, then took the device and put it in a pocket.

  He caught a motion in the corner of his eye, saw Blank getting up, walking out. Under the bench, where Blank had been sitting, was a plastic bag. Wolfe kept an indirect watch on the bag, making himself sit there for a couple minutes.

  Maybe too long, he thought. Seline has her face exposed.

  Wolfe got up, and Seline followed him over to the plastic bag. He acted like he’d just seen it. “Hey, that old guy left this bag...maybe it’s worth something...” He picked it up, looked in it. A laptop taped up in bubble wrap. He shrugged and carried the bag to a side exit from the building.

  When they were in a secure hallway just before the exit door, Seline whispered, “It’s in the bag?”

  “It’s there.”

  “What’s with the TV remote?”

  “Not what it looks like. It’ll blot out your face, on a block by block basis, when you go into the range of the ctOS camera.”

  “It’ll work for you too?”

  “I’ve got a different device. Just remember to press the button on yours every time you cross a street.”

  “I won’t need this scarf on my face?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to have it.”

  She put the scarf back up and they went out into the cold. “Now where?” she asked.

  “Should be some kind of instructions when we boot it up. Find a safe place to do that. I’ve got a safehouse. You may as well use it too.”

  He could feel her looking at him in a “what are you up to, male?” sort of way.

  “I won’t manhandle you there,” he said.

  “You mean you won’t handle me at all. No touching.”

  “You’ve got a high opinion of yourself.” He flinched inwardly, wishing as soon as he said it that he hadn’t put it that way. She was an attractive woman. He didn’t want to make her feel sneered at.

  “I was on a Navy ship for a long time,” she said, unruffled. “I learned to set boundaries.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” Wolfe was walking briskly south, Seline taking two steps for each of his long strides. He was trying to decide what the best way to get to the safehouse was. Steal another car? He had been doing too much of that. Every time was a risk. Maybe if he got one from a storage lot, where it wouldn’t be reported for a while.

  Something made him turn and glance back. A gray van was driving along the street, back there, a little too slowly. “Turn right here,” he told her, as they approached the corner. “Then we cut across the traffic—fast.”

  “What’s going down?”

  “Not sure. You see action when you were in the corps?”

  “You mean, did I ever kill anybody?”

  “I mean—anybody ever shoot at you, when you were enlisted?”

  “Not to speak of. I was rated a Data Network Specialist. Computer stuff. But somebody shot at me the other day. I handled it.”

  “You might have to handle it again,” he said as they turned the corner. “Come on!”

  They dodged through the light traffic, making a Safeway truck blare its horn at them, a cab driver cuss at them. Then they were acr
oss, stepping into a doorway.

  An automatic light came on when they went into the darkened doorway. Wolfe instinctively pushed her behind him.

  “I thought I told you, Wolfe, not to—”

  “Quiet. Here they come. They turned when we did. Doesn’t prove anything but...”

  The van was still toddling slowly along the street. It hadn’t quite drawn abreast of them yet. The van was driving about five miles per hour, clearly taking its time as the driver searched for something—he was the one getting honked at now, the driver, who looked vaguely familiar... from the old lodge.

  “See if that door behind us will open,” Wolfe said. He hadn’t even noticed what kind of building it was before he’d ducked into the doorway.

  “Yeah. But there’s a security guy at the desk staring at us...”

  “Be ready to go through the door anyway...if we have to.”

  The van’s driver wasn’t looking his way. But as it drew abreast, that profile...

  Then it hit Wolfe. The driver was the Graywater who’d fired the AK47 at him.

  And now the driver of the van turned his head—and looked straight at Wolfe.

  “Go!” Wolfe said sharply.

  She turned, and opened the door, and they rushed through.

  “Can I help you folks?” the black security guard asked them, standing. He wore a uniform but didn’t seem to have a gun on him. The lobby was faced in marble and brass. This must be some kind of upscale high rise apartment.

  Wolfe turned, glanced through the door. Saw the van pulling up, the driver getting out—with a Mack 10 auto-pistol in his hand.

  “Visiting friends upstairs,” Wolfe said. “Party.”

  “Sir...”

  But then the elevator opened, and a lady with an ermine coat stepped out, with her two small white fluffy dogs on a leash. “Come on lovie loves,” she said. “Walkie walkie!”

  Before the elevator doors had closed Wolfe and Seline were through them, and Wolfe was punching the Close Doors button. He saw the security guard push the woman with the dogs out of the way—she dragged the dogs with her—as the Graywater merc burst into the lobby, raising the Mack 10.

  The doors closed, catching a short burst on them, then the elevator was headed up.

  “I hope those people in the lobby are okay, Wolfe,” Seline said.

  “So do I. The Graywaters won’t waste time with them. They’ll be coming right after us. Anyway—there are a lot of lives at stake. More than you know. Thousands.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Something called the Iceberg Project. Tell you later.”

  “Just tell me one thing—how’d these guys in the van find us?”

  “Security cameras in Union Station. I guess they were monitoring the place through their pal at Blume pretty closely to keep us from leaving town. And they had your face in their system. And ctOS recognized you and sent those lunkheads over to take us out. Must’ve been close by—the Blume Building’s not far off...”

  “Oh. I shouldn’t have taken off the scarf.”

  He was thinking that there had been an emergency stop elevator button in the lobby—and just as that thought crossed his mind, the elevator jarred to a stop.

  “Oh shit,” she said.

  They were about seven floors up. They seemed to be almost up to the eighth floor.

  “Let’s not stay here and wait for the sons of bitches,” Seline said. She found the emergency open door button, slapped it, and the doors opened—showing they were halfway up the doorway of the eighth floor.

  Wolfe slid the plastic bag through the doorway, onto the carpeted floor, then did a pull up, and scrambled out onto the hallway. He turned reached down, clasped Seline, and helped her up.

  Then he picked up the bag—and drew his gun. “This way.”

  They ran to the door to the stairs, through it—and then they heard urgent footsteps coming up the stairs, not far below them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I want to know what this whole upload runaround is all about, Garnet!” Aiden Pearce snarled.

  Pearce had just changed his own headquarters to a new safehouse, activated its surveillance gear and watch devices, when he’d gotten the redirected-call chime on his phone.

  Now Pearce was sitting on the edge of the bunk, close beside a shuttered window, glaring at Garnet—the fixer was on the smartphone screen. This image wasn’t animated—Garnet wouldn’t dare pull that crap on Pearce. Garnet took a spliff from his mouth, exhaled smoke, and said, “DedSec’s started running scared after GlowWorm got offed. They’re all worried they might have someone inside—some kinda mole. And it looks like any major download coming from the underground is gonna be blacked out.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “I don’t know. There’s somebody at Blume who’s pulling a lot of shit with ctOS without the rest of Blume knowing it. That’s what I’m hearing.”

  Pearce thought, That’s probably Verrick. But Pearce wasn’t going to mention that—he instinctively told Garnet only what he had to. Information was money, as far as Garnet was concerned. Sometimes Pearce thought Garnet had a rudimentary conscience. But most times the hacker seemed totally self-interested. He wasn’t sure Garnet would try to sell him out to Verrick—but there was no way to know.

  So Pearce only said, “I can upload the damned file myself. I’ve got systems that can do it without Blume being able to do a damn thing about it.”

  “DedSec’s not trusting just anybody with it right now. Last I heard, that was especially ‘Don’t trust Aiden Pearce’. They’re not gonna let you have it. It has to be done this way.”

  “So how’s ‘this way’ work?”

  “They go to some place where the file can be uploaded safely through a short term wifi terminal. Without Blume knowing about it till it’s all over the internet.”

  “What place?”

  “I don’t know, man. I already told you way too much for free anyway—so if I did know I’d have to charge you. In fact I’m gonna send you a bill for this call.”

  “And I’ll use it to line a bird cage.”

  “You got a bird in a cage now? What kind? I used to have a cockatoo.”

  “No, you stoned-ass fool, it’s an expression. Never mind. Just tell me you didn’t give my man bad information. If you fucked him over, Garnet, I’ll come after you. He’s a good man and he’s valuable to me.”

  “See, that’s your problem, Pearce. You think that exists.”

  “What exists?”

  “Good men.”

  With that, Garnet hung up.

  Worried, Pearce sent Wolfe a text:

  Everything rolling okay?

  He waited. In fact he waited quite a while.

  There was no answer from Mick Wolfe.

  #

  Wolfe was busy. He was trying not to get shot in the back.

  He was pounding up the steps, carrying the laptop in its plastic sack; two steps behind Seline, he turned now and then to fire a single bullet down the steel stairs, mostly just trying to slow down the pursuers. There were four of the Graywaters in all. The other three had been waiting in back of the van.

  A quick burst of bullets came up the airspace and struck the railings, the shots ricocheting. Sparks flashed. Wolfe smelled friction-heated metal.

  Then they passed the top-floor landing, went up the last flight, and ran up to a doorway to the roof. Seline opened it, stepped through, and held it for him. He ran through onto a flat roof, and she slammed it closed. There didn’t seem to be a way to lock it without a key.

  He put his arm through the loop in the plastic sack, pulled it up onto a shoulder, and looked around—seeing it the same moment Seline did.

  “Look!” Seline said. “A helicopter!”

  On the other side of the roof was a green concrete helicopter landing pad—and there was a chopper on it, its rotors slowly starting to turn. It was someone’s posh private helicopter, neither large nor small. Wolfe could see the pil
ot in the cockpit looking down at his instruments.

  Wolfe tugged his PearcePhone from a pocket, and handed Seline the .45.

  “Walk slowly backwards toward that helicopter,” he said. “Keep the gun pointed at that door. See if you can keep them from coming through. There’s seven rounds in that clip at the moment.”

  “But I’ll back into the chopper blades!”

  “They’re over your head. Go!”

  “What are you going to...?”

  “Just do it and let me concentrate.”

  “Whatever. This is crazy shit.” She backed toward the chopper, keeping the pistol, gripped in both her hands, trained on the door of the building; Wolfe walked backwards himself as he told the phone to search for Aviation mode: Vehicle Door locks.

  The phone scanned the area—and it found the locked doors of the chopper.

  The chopper doors popped open. And at that moment Seline fired the pistol at the men bursting out of the stairway outbuilding. One of them yelled in pain, stumbled. The next one jumped over him...

  Wolfe was only peripherally aware of this. He was focusing on the phone’s scanner. It found: Aviation mode: Automatic pilot control. He clicked on that...as a bullet shot past his head. And he clicked on, Suspend Take Off.

  He looked up at the doorway. The merc thugs were backed into the doorway, trying to get a clear shot. But every time they raised their guns Seline fired at them. The bullets didn’t seem to be hitting any meat—except the first one had wounded the man groaning face down on the roof.

  Wolfe drew his .38 back up pistol and said, “Now—turn and run, get in that chopper, then keep your head down!”

  She ran—Wolfe fired at the door. Wounded a Graywater in the shoulder. A burst from a Mack 10 cut its way up the rooftop close beside him.

  Almost lost a kneecap there, Wolfe.

  He turn and sprinted to the chopper, the blades slowly churning overhead.

  The doors were open—because he’d set them that way with the phone hack.

  A bullet slammed into the chopper fuselage just beside the door. Then he pulled himself in, and saw the pilot had already split. He looked out the window, saw the pilot frantically climbing down a metal fire escape ladder off the rooftop.