by John Shirley
The drones were armed, though. A gun muzzle protruded from the snout of each drone.
“Retreat, Wolfe?” Seline asked.
“Hell yes retreat! Go, Seline!”
They’d passed a manhole access space about five strides back. Seline ran back and he ran behind her. Bullets cracked on the floor just behind them.
Then they were in the cylindrical chamber. They flattened to either side of the tunnel entrance. Wolfe could hear the drones moving their way, their engine noise more high pitched than the larger one that had patrolled the SmartHouse grounds.
“Can you fire an assault weapon?” he asked.
She gave him a look of irritation. “I’m a Marine.”
He tossed her the AK47. She caught it neatly. “Try to shoot down those drones. Or at least slow ‘em down...”
He was already working on the PearcePhone, trying to break into the drone’s GPS.
Seline fired a short burst from the AK47 down the tunnel. “I think I disabled one of them,” she said. “The other’s pulling back a little...”
No luck with the GPS hack. Then he heard a voice, coming from his phone...
“You’re trying to break into the drone’s GPS control, right, Wolfe?”
He knew that voice, from the SmartHouse. It was Starling. He was talking in a snotty tech smugness way that had always irritated Wolfe. Starling was so proud of himself he said more than he should’ve:
“Yeah, I’ve pulled back for a little minute but the GPS hack won’t work down here anyway. Most GPS doesn’t work underground. There are systems that try but they’re too spotty.” A moment’s pause and then Starling added boastfully, “We use a combination of geomagnetics, downloaded information about infrastructure, and, of course, the camera on the drone. You see what does work down here is the transmitter we’ve dropped into one of the tunnels. And that transmitter is completely insulated from any possible hack. It’s bouncing signals from me to the drones, and back. So I can see what it sees. And tell it what to do.”
“That’s nice,” Wolfe said. “You’re a very impressive little boy. You’re not going to ‘sir yes sir’ me?”
There was a moment’s crackling hesitation. Then, “No. You don’t deserve it. You’re not in authority over me.”
“We’ll see about that. If I can kill you, that’s authority enough for me. And that’s what I plan to do, Starling. You’re a traitor to this country.”
“I’m not a traitor! I’m going to help liberate this country. From people like you, Wolfe. You’re going down first...”
Seline was looking down the tunnel. “The drone’s coming back...the other one’s bumbling around like a bee in a jar.”
“Wait till it’s close and open up on the aggressive one,” Wolfe said. He was trying to find some way to hack into the camera on the drones...screw with what Starling was seeing.
But it turned out there wasn’t time for that.
Seline fired a long burst down the tunnel. Then the AK47 gave out an empty clicking sound. “You got another clip for this?”
“Nope,” Wolfe said.
“It’s still coming.” She threw the AK47 itself down the tunnel, to try to confuse the drone.
The drone fired at her, and she sucked air between her teeth. “Ouch.”
He looked at her. “You hit?”
“Just a small chunk of my shoulder. Flesh wound stuff. Didn’t think I was that exposed. Stupid.”
“There’re bandages in that backpack that...” He broke off, listening. A humming had drawn his attention to the other tunnel, running the opposite way.
“Seline—that tunnel...” He saw them then. “Two drones from that direction now.”
“We’re getting boxed in.”
Wolfe pulled out his .45, emptied the clip at a drone—it drew back a little but he could still see its small red running lights in the tunnel.
He ejected the clip from the .45, pulled another from his pocket, quickly slapped it in the gun and handed the weapon to her. “Use this one. We’re going to have to head in another direction.”
He swarmed up the manhole’s rungs as she opened fire at the drones.
“They’re slowing,” she called. “Doing some kind of evasive maneuver...”
The UAV’s returned fire.
“You hit?” Wolfe asked as he got to the manhole cover.
“No! But they’re moving in! We’re caught between them, Wolfe!”
Wolfe pushed up, hard, on the steel disk. The manhole cover just didn’t want to open. Probably it was rusted into place. He pressed harder yet, using his back and shoulders. He grunted with effort. The cover creaked.
“Oh Wolfe!” she yelled. “You got any ideas? They’re coming!”
He pressed with all his strength—and suddenly the manhole popped upward.
No time to see if the coast was clear. He shoved the steel cover out of the way, climbed up, clambered onto the street, immediately reaching down to Seline. “Come on, Seline! Up!”
She jumped to the rungs and climbed them--fast. Wolfe braced himself and caught her coat collar, lifting her up almost by the scruff of her neck.
The drones were coming into the manhole space below, tilting up to aim...
She scuttled clear of the manhole, just as the bullets cracked upward. Another split second and they’d have nailed her.
Wolfe and Seline got to their feet, Wolfe taking the .45 from her and reloading it. “Weather’s cleared up,” Wolfe remarked, as he reloaded the gun. Seline busied herself putting a bandage from the backpack over her shoulder wound. The wound was fairly bloody but not serious. She took the .44 out and put the pack back on, wincing.
Wolfe looked around. They were on a block of moderately small houses, some of them boarded over; some of the street’s houses were like insistent survivors, refusing to give up. There’d be a house that was badly deteriorated, even boarded over; then a house that was in good shape, with a neat lawn enclosed by a fence. He saw no Chunkies—not yet. In places along the gutter, thin deposits of snow gleamed...
Just across the street, an elderly black lady in a shapeless black coat stumped by on her walker. She looked suspiciously at Wolfe and Seline. Possibly it was the gun Seline had in her hand...
Wolfe smiled and waved to the elderly lady. She didn’t wave back.
More bullets, fired by a UAV, sang up out of the manhole. The elderly lady said, “Oh!” and tossed the walker aside, hurried off down the avenue, almost running. Wolfe used the tip of his boot to shove the cover back over the manhole. It clanged with another bullet, and spun like a coin about to fall flat—and then fell neatly back in place.
“They going to fly up out of there?” Seline asked.
“No. They can’t fit through. By now Starling is figuring that out and looking for another egress for the damn things. They’ll come after us again from some other direction. Come on!”
Wolfe took the gun back and reloaded it; she took out her own.
“I don’t suppose there’s any point in our calling the police?” she asked, as they hurried down the road.
“Somebody’s probably calling the police right now. That old lady, I bet. But I heard on the phone hack—Tranter’s got some of his dirty cop pals posted around the area. They’re blocking it off. So they’ll probably tell dispatch that something’s going on here that isn’t going on here...and we wouldn’t get any help, anyway.”
“Okay but...you said yourself that not all Chicago PD is corrupt. Maybe we should try working with some of the stand-up cops.”
“Most of them are probably stand-up guys. But how do we decide which is which, Seline? Police records don’t prove anything. And if I try to call the cops here, Tranter’ll set me up to be arrested for some bullshit or other. They’ll take the phone Pearce gave me.” He shook his head. “When we get this file uploaded, NSA, Homeland Security, people like that will see it. We’ll look into getting in touch with them—when the moment is right. Maybe give them a clue about Purity. But even wit
h that...I don’t know how far Purity’s tentacles extend. Or how many friends Van Ness has in homeland security...Who to trust there--that’s a hard call to make anywhere.”
He was studying the addresses as he spoke. One more block...
And then a low, dark blue sedan came cruising slowly by, heading the opposite way. The men in the car were probably Chunkies: they each had the gang’s bull’s eye tattoo. Wolfe muttered, “Get ready to vault that fence on the right, Seline, if we need to...”
The sedan got about ten yards past and then did a sudden screeching U-turn. The windows rolled down on the two nearest side windows and the muzzles of guns emerged.
“Vault it, Seline!” Wolfe shouted as he drew the .45 from his waist band and fired at the car, letting his instincts guide his aim. He squeezed off two rounds, and the bullets smashed through the windshield. He saw the driver rock back in his seat, hit, the car swerving. The bullets fired from the side windows went wild with the car’s swerving, and then Wolfe turned, vaulted the fence. Seline was crouched down, waiting for him by the front porch.
A piebald pit bull came snarling from the front door—someone had let it out to attack the intruders into their yard. Wolfe raised his gun to shoot it but Seline shouted, “No!”
She snatched up a coiled garden hose and she threw the coil of hose over the pit bull’s head so the dog was tangled, confused. It struggled to free itself and she led the way to the back of the house.
“Come on!” she yelled.
Wolfe and Seline ran into the back yard. Bullets cracked over their heads from somewhere in the street. They climbed another force, tumbled over, landed on their feet side by side.
“I can’t shoot a pit bull that’s coming at me?” Wolfe asked, as they crossed through the neatly kept-up yard.
“No! I love dogs! Don’t you shoot any dogs, Mick! He’s been trained to attack people!”
“And I’m trained to shoot at something trained to attack me! That was a pit bull!” Wolfe laughed breathlessly at carrying on an argument while they ran.
“Tough! I dealt with it!” she puffed.
“You did, I got to admit! Glad I didn’t have to kill the poor brute.”
They came to a boarded-over house, fenceless, and beyond it was the cross street.
Wolfe ran ahead, looking for the Chunkies, didn’t see them. Maybe they were thinking better of just rushing in on him. Gangs have some pecking order, some hierarchy, but they aren’t as structured as military units and that led to confusing and dissent in “the ranks”--which was a damned good thing, right now, for him and Seline, Wolfe reflected, as he led the way across the street.
“There...I think that’s it two houses down!” Wolfe said, pointing. “That’s the address!”
“That house with the huge white satellite antenna out front? Really? That obvious?”
“That’s one of those old satellite antennas, from back in the day, for television,” Wolfe said, as they strode quickly along the sidewalk. “No one knows it’s been retrofitted for this...They think it’s just old junk...”
They hurried to the rear of the house, and up the back porch steps. A piece of paper was taped to the screen door. On the paper someone had penciled a simple outline of a wolf. The drawing of the wolf meaning Wolfe, probably. Under the wolf outline was an arrow pointing downward.
Near the arrow was scribbled one word, a kind of signature: Blank.
“Looks like a message from Blank,” Wolfe said. He tore it off, turned it over. Nothing on the other side.
They went through the unlocked back doors, and looked around the kitchen. The house was empty; there were no appliances, no furnishings. The floors were neatly swept. There was a door standing open on the left. It led to a wooden stairway to a basement. The arrow had been pointing downward. Wolfe, go downward.
Wolfe drew the gun—for all he knew the Chunkies were waiting to jump him down there. He switched on the basement light and led Seline down the steps. There was an ordinary concrete basement, smelling of dust and mold, and a single naked overhead bulb. The basement contained a desk in a farther corner, and on the desk was a computer, turned on.
On the monitor screen was one word: Upload.
Wires ran from the back of the computer to its power source and to the front of the house—to the old, retrofitted satellite dish.
“What a relief to see that computer waiting for us,” Seline said.
She crossed to the desk, taking off the backpack. She drew the laptop out, set it up on the desk beside the computer, and powered it up. When it had booted, she found the jacks and plugged them in. She used the passwords and clicked to begin the upload...
The upload was going pretty quickly. Should take ninety seconds.
But as it was happening a car was pulling up outside. And another. Another after that, too, all three of them stopping with an urgent squeal of tires...
“They must’ve seen us going into the back yard,” Wolfe said, as he went to look through a screened air vent in the concrete wall.
He could see a Chunkie standing on the sidewalk, a Mack 10 in hand.
Men were walking past the vent, toward the back of the house. The computer was still uploading...
Voices. Whispers from outside. Footsteps. The click of a cocking gun.
The computer was still uploading...
“We’ve been getting boxed in a lot today,” Wolfe whispered calmly. “It’s a popular trend, boxing us in.”
“They got to be in there!” someone said, outside. “We got to rush ‘em and shoot any motherfuckers we find!”
The computer was...
Done.
“It’s uploaded,” she said breathlessly.
“That’s good.” Privately he was thinking, But it’ll be a shame to die here anyway...
“It looks like it’s completely up and going out onto SystemLeaks,” Seline said, bending over the desk. “And from there—everyplace else.”
“Cool. I hope Verrick chokes on it.”
Wolfe walked over to the stairs, and prepared to defend Seline as best he could. He drew the .45...
“You got that .44?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Better get it ready...”
Gunfire sounded—but from the front of the house.
Seline went to the vent and looked through. “They’re...in a fight. With one another! No...I think that’s a different bunch of gangsters! I saw your friend, Shuggie!”
Wolfe ran to the vent, and looked—he could make out Shuggie crouching behind a car, firing across the hood with the Desert Eagle. The huge handgun lifted a Chunkie off his feet and spun him around before he fell, stone cold dead, on the sidewalk.
“Yeah man,” Wolfe chuckled. “De Oppresso Liber!”
#
It didn’t take long. No more than three minutes of firefight, the Chunkies taking all the casualties. The surviving Chunkies took off, some of them driving away, the others, unable to get to their cars without being shot, running off between houses.
Wolfe and Seline walked upstairs and out front, hands in the air, just to defuse anyone trigger happy. “Shuggie!”
The Black Viceroys captain was standing by a rebuilt Army-green Plymouth Duster, reloading his Desert Eagle. He glanced up at Wolfe and Seline.
“Let ‘em through, they’re okay!” Shuggie called, as other Viceroys—some Wolfe didn’t know—turned to stare.
“Put your hands down,” Shuggie said, tossing the massive handgun on the front seat of his Duster.
“Nice ride,” Wolfe said. “You cherry it up yourself?”
“Fuck no, man, who’s got time for that. I paid to have it done by the best.”
Seline was looking at the dead men on the street. “The cops are gonna see all this...”
“Nah,” Wolfe said. He was feeling pretty good. A Delta Force brother had come to his rescue and he and Seline had successfully uploaded the files. Verrick must have smoke coming out of his ears about now. “Remember, the cops got t
he area blocked off.”
“Yeah, just two blocks outside that perimeter I was at,” Shuggie said. “Don’t get my ‘hood back till you’re dead—or until I deal with this.”
“Thanks for getting my back, brother,” Wolfe said, putting out his fist.
Shuggie gave him a fist bump, the kind Special Forces do. “Hey you know, I had to deal with those Chunkies sometime. Funny thing, the cops kinda making that possible, keeping the area locked up. But you know—it’s not the Chunky Crunkies I’m worried about...”
He pointed at the sky past Wolfe.
Seline and Wolfe turned—and saw two drones skimming their way over the rooftops.
Shuggie drew his Desert Eagle and took careful aim, both hands wrapped around the big hand gun—while the drone was taking careful aim at him.
Wolfe drew Seline back behind the car, assuming the drones would soon open fire. But he already had his PearcePhone out.
Shuggie fired; the gun boomed loudly, three times. The big gun, firing .50 Action Express rounds, easily penetrated the snout of the UAV on the right—and the unmanned vehicle exploded.
The other drone was rocked by the shockwave from the explosion. Shuggie fired at it, missed, and lined up his aim again
“Don’t shoot that other one, Shuggie,” Wolfe said. “I’ve got this.”
Shuggie looked at him. “You gonna deal with that thing with a phone?”
Wolfe was already flashing his fingertips over the interface. “No ordinary phone...and above-ground these things are vulnerable to a GPS hack...”
The drone, hovering just above the phone lines, angled downward to aim its gun at the group by the car—and then it froze. It seemed to jerk about in the air for a moment like a fishing float, then angled upward, and flew overhead. “I’ve got to deal with that police barricade,” Wolfe said. “With some luck this thing’ll do it.”
“You got control of that thing with a phone?” Shuggie said, amazed. “You show me how to do that?”
“We’ll talk about that sometime, brother,” Wolfe said. “Can you drive us back to my hidey-hole...if I can get rid of the cops?”
“You’re not planning on shooting any cops around here, are you?” Shuggie asked. “I don’t need that kind of heat coming down on me.”
