Watch Dogs

by John Shirley

  “None of your business.”

  The ticket cashier, a gray haired man in thick glasses, was staring at them, as they got closer in the line. He excused himself for a moment, as the fat lady up ahead fumbled in her purse for cash, and then stepped away from the window, talking quickly into a cell phone.

  I shouldn’t be paranoid about that, Seline told herself. The man could’ve just realized he had to call his wife. Could be anything.

  The cashier quickly returned to the window and took the fat lady’s money.

  Seline tried to relax. It took a couple more minutes, but at last Bullock stepped up to the window, and asked for a ticket to Los Angeles.

  Then Seline realized the cashier was staring past Bullock--past her. At someone...

  She turned, saw a flabby pot bellied man in coveralls rushing up toward Bullock. In his hand was something like a walkie-talkie. It seemed modified, with extra wiring on the outside--and he was pointing it at Bullock.

  “Bullock!” Seline called.

  He turned--saw the man...stared at the device in his hand...

  Then Bullock began to sway. He looked dizzy. White foam showed at the corners of his lips. “Insulin...shock. He...”

  Bullock collapsed.

  Seline automatically knelt by him--tried to hold Bullock still as he convulsed, his eyes rolling back in his head...

  She shouted, “Someone! We need an ambulance!”

  The cops ran over to her, looking genuinely concerned. Seline looked around for the man with the device in his hand...

  But he was gone. Vanished into the crowd.

  She backed away. The cops were kneeling by Bullock, one of them taking his pulse. “This man’s dying...”

  Seline slipped into the crowd herself.

  #

  “Wolfe?”

  “Yeah, you get him on a train?”

  “No. They were watching for him. He’s dead. He said something about his insulin...There was a man there who was pointing a...a machine of some kind at him...”

  Wolfe was driving a “borrowed” car to the justice department, listening to Seline on his bluetooth.

  She described the man with the “device”.

  “That’s Starling,” Wolfe said. “He must’ve been nearby. But then Blume’s headquarters is about half a block away. Must’ve hacked into Bullock’s insulin injector. Made it dump three months worth at once. Too much insulin--you die.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “You get away without being followed?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. Go back to the safehouse. I’ll call you. I’ve got to go in and see Doolin. Kiskel got me an appointment. I want to get this over with fast before they start looking at me for...other stuff.”

  Wolfe ended the call, pulled the car up to the nearest curb. It was a red curb but he didn’t care--he didn’t plan to drive it again.

  He hurried through the increasing wind across the street to the Federal Building, sizing it up as he went.

  It was old granite building, about eight stories high, with a U.S. flag out front and curving stone eaves. The Department of Justice’s offices in Chicago were housed in two buildings and this was the older one.

  Wolfe went in, half expecting to be arrested on sight. He wasn’t sure to what extent law enforcement might be looking for him now.

  In the old, echoing marble faced lobby was a scanning machine and a metal detection framework. He’d been expecting this and he’d left his gun in the car.

  He went through it, removing off his shoes and belt as at the airport, aware of the curious stares of the Federal Marshals as he put them back on. He didn’t look like the usual visitor.

  Wolfe went to the downstairs admissions desk where a brisk black woman in a suit looked him over. “My name’s Wolfe. Agent Doolin’s waiting for me.” She looked at her appointment book.

  “Yes sir.”

  Doolin was expecting him. His identification was checked, then he was sent upstairs to room 325.

  The door had the old fashioned white glazed glass in it; painted in black on the glass was Edward Doolin, Special Agent .

  Wolfe reached for the doorknob--then he heard a man whispering inside. Another door opening. The hair went up on the back of his neck. Something was wrong here. He could feel it.

  And then he saw it...he looked down and saw blood spreading slowly out from under the door.

  Wolfe thought, If you were smart, you’d beat it out of here, now.

  He opened the door. Never said I was terribly smart.

  Inside two men were duct taped to chairs; one, a hefty middle aged man in a suit, was behind a desk; the other was facing the desk. That one, Wolfe figured, was Kiskel, who was supposed to meet him here. The other one was Edward Doolin.

  They were both dead--their throats cut. Their eyes were open and unblinkingly staring. Their clothes were soaked in blood.

  Wolfe theorized that a couple guys had come in with guns, one had taped them down, the other had slashed their throats. Quieter that way. Silencers weren’t really very silent.

  There was another door with glazed glass in it, to the left--and Wolfe could see the shadow of a man there.

  Wolfe thought about going downstairs, calling a general alarm. But these guys would have a way out of this. And he didn’t. The feds would hold him for questioning, to see what he might know about these deaths. And he’d probably end up with his throat cut too. Somebody on the inside would find him alone in an interrogation room...

  He crossed the room, stepping carefully around the blood, and quietly opened two of Doolin’s desk drawers. It was in the second one--a .44 semiauto police special. He took it out, checked it--it was loaded.

  Voices from the next room. Maybe they were expecting him but they didn’t seem to know he was here.

  “...that chopper has to be on the roof, Van Ness. That was the deal...”

  Wolfe walked over to the door, readied the gun--and opened it.

  Two men stared at him in shock. One was probably a Graywater--he just had that look about him. He wore a long coat, had his hair cut short like the others. There was a time-blurred tattoo on his neck. In his hands was a plastic sack, sealed with duct tape. Probably had the knife in it they’d used for cutting throats.

  The other man was General Van Ness, now in civilian clothes. He was a stocky man, mid sixties, in a charcoal suit, with iron-gray hair, a square jaw and hooded blue eyes.

  “Wolfe,” Van Ness muttered.

  “I’m guessing you guys have been wiretapping Kiskel. Pearce told him what was going down; he told Doolin. Came over to talk about it with me. So you guys took those two out...Kind of a desperate way to deal with it, Van Ness.”

  “Timetable’s been moved up, thanks to you, Wolfe.” He was looking at Wolfe’s gun. “When it all goes down--you can take credit. In fact we plan to give you credit.”

  Van Ness smiled, showing a lot of large yellow teeth.

  “You got your pal here in the building, Van Ness? You have another contact in here? Who is it?”

  “Why should I tell you? You going to shoot me? Then they come up here and find you shot a Brigadier General. And they find those bodies...”

  “How about if I just shoot you in the--don’t go for that!”

  But the Graywater already had the Mack 10 out, was spraying metal toward Wolfe--who fired the .44 as he threw himself back.

  Machine pistol rounds tore up the doorframe and thudded into the dead men behind Wolfe. Then Van Ness gasped, fell back, spitting blood.

  Wolfe wasn’t sure who’d hit Van Ness, him or the Graywater.

  The mercenary was running across the other office, and out into the hallway. He was heading toward the roof. And even from here Wolfe could just hear the sound of chuffing rotors.

  Wolfe got up, and saw that the mercenary had dropped the plastic sack. Maybe hoping to implicate Wolfe in the execution of the two men in the office. And it might work.

  There wasn’t time to chase the M
erc down--the shots would’ve been heard. The marshals would be up here in a minute.

  Wolfe stuck the gun in his waistband, turned to the window behind Doolin’s body, and unlocked it. The old style office window opened fairly easily. He could hear shouting from the hallway. Pretty soon, the sirens would start.

  He looked out the window--he was three stories up. Cold wind cut at his face; the air smelled of snow, and car exhaust.

  Below him was a parking lot, mostly full. To his right, about six feet away, was a drainage pipe. To his left were rows of windows. No easy way down.

  He probably should surrender. But...

  It wasn’t going to look good. And they weren’t going to be in the mood to listen to crazy stories about drones and planes.

  Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw himself taking off his belt earlier, when he went through the metal detector.

  He removed his belt, and slung it over his neck, and then climbed through the window. Placing his feet carefully on the ledge, and holding to the inside of the window frame with his left hand, he closed the window with his right. Then he edged toward along the slippery ledge, balancing carefully, holding on with the tips of his fingers along the tops of the granite blocks...

  One slip, he’d go over backwards, probably shatter his spine on one of those cars down there.

  He heard voices from the window to his right. They were looking at the bodies, in there. No one seemed to have checked the window yet. The door would be open from the adjoining room to the hall. With luck that’d draw them that way.

  The chopper on the roof was about to take off. He could hear its engine roaring...Distant sirens approached...

  He kept moving, crabwise, step by excruciatingly careful step...and then he wasn’t careful enough. He slipped. He swayed, near falling back...

  But the drainage pipe was in reach. He grabbed the pipe with his left hand, and steadied himself. With his right he slipped the belt off his neck, threaded it behind the pipe. He took hold of the pipe with his right hand, then grabbed the belt on both sides--and slid down, rappelling down the side of the building with his own belt.

  It was a fast trip down--Wolfe was able to slow it some by braking on the wall with his boots, and his hands burned as he struggled to keep a grip on the belt.

  Then he struck the asphalt with both feet. He sucked air through his teeth at the pain, but it didn’t feel as if anything was broken.

  He pulled the belt free, and hurried away, weaving past cars to get quickly out of the parking lot.

  The sirens were loud, now. And overhead, the helicopter was taking off.

  #

  “General Van Ness is dead?” Pearce asked, surprise in his voice.

  “Looked pretty dead to me. I didn’t stick around to take his pulse.”

  Wolfe was in the corner booth of a crowded bar, talking to Pearce on his phone. He had an untouched beer in front of him.

  “You kill Van Ness?”

  “Not sure. Hope so.”

  “You think you’re going to get blamed for that--and the other two dead men? I mean--you signed in, you went up there. And then there were gunshots...”

  “I think they’ll piece together that Van Ness and the guy with him went in at the right time. There are cameras in the lobby. They had to have signed in...Eventually the feds will figure it out.”

  “You better hope so. Wait...hold on...holy shit...Verrick is....”

  “Pearce--Verrick is what?”

  Someone put some loud music on the jukebox. Hip hop of some kind. Wolfe stuck a finger in his other ear to block the noise.

  “Wolfe--Verrick’s gone out to the airport...”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I’ve been monitoring his movements on ctOS. What do you think? He’s heading for the cargo jet area. And--Seline uploaded everything on Bullock’s phone to me.”

  “She did?”

  “What do you think, she sits around and waits for you to do everything because you’re a macho badass?”

  “I kind of was hoping for something like that, yeah. What about Bullock’s phone?”

  “I’ve been monitoring his contacts. One of them is this Winters you were talking to. Apparently Verrick didn’t tell him what the plans were for Bullock. He tried to leave a message on Bullock’s phone.”

  “To what effect, for crying out loud, Pearce?”

  “To this effect, and I quote: Iceberg Project has been moved up. Head to safety zones. It’s happening tonight. In two hours.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “There are only certain frequencies these drones are likely to be using, Pearce,” Wolfe said, as he strode into Pearce’s safehouse.

  An odd, grubby little man named Morrsky had picked Wolfe up at the bar. He’d driven him in a fading 2000 Toyota Echo to pick up Seline. She’d been waiting outside the safehouse under the billiard parlor. Morrsky had taken them to the safehouse Pearce was in--an apartment in a high rise overlooking Lake Michigan.

  Pearce was at a desk overlooking the lake, staring into a computer screen.

  “Man,” Wolfe remarked, glancing around. “This place is way better than the safehouses I’ve been in. You’re styling in here.”

  “Really,” Seline said. “I want an upgrade.”

  Pearce glanced up in mild annoyance. “This is my main domicile. But it’s also a safehouse. What were you saying about the drones, Wolfe?”

  “These are based on the Navy’s X-47B drones. Smaller but the same idea. Mostly they use GPS for navigation.” As he talked, Wolfe gazed out the window. He could see passenger planes out there. They could all start raining down on Chicago soon if something wasn’t done. “They can switch to a kind of manual with guidance from the operator, via camera, but it’s not as reliable. They use a set of frequencies they can get away with here, without FAA approval. And I know what those would have to be. I’m going to have to go out there. I need you and Seline here to work on the drones from this end. If they’re launched, you might be able to override the GPS and control them manually...Starling might have blocked direct GPS control from outside, by now. Probably has. Pearce--do you have any hand grenades?”

  “Nope. Nothing like that. Take me an hour or two to get any decent explosives. We don’t have time. You thinking of just finding this plane and chucking a grenade into it?”

  “Thought about it. But sounds like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

  “Wolfe,” Seline said, sinking onto the posh sofa--she was sitting now but there was no relaxation in her posture. She was tense with worry. “We need to call Homeland Security...I can go out and call them...but they need to ground every aircraft in Chicago. And detour the planes that are coming in!”

  “You can try, Seline. But grounding all those aircraft...they’ll ground one if you tell them there’s a bomb on it. But they’re not going to believe they all have bombs on them. And they’re not going to believe this drone story. And we don’t have time to convince them.”

  “They’re probably infiltrated by Purity,” Pearce said. “Look what happened to that DoJ guy, Doolin--and Kiskel.” He shook his head sadly. “Kiskel wasn’t some kind of heroic guy but he put his life on the line and...”

  “We have to try,” Seline insisted.

  Wolfe nodded. “I don’t have time to wait on them though. I’m going to check out that cargo plane that Verrick’s taken such an interest in. Let me give you the specs and basic methods for the drones, Pearce...”

  #

  It wasn’t far to O’Hare airport. Pearce had printed him out a counterfeit access to the cargo field, and Wolfe had swiped a Jaguar to get him there as fast as he dared to go--if he went too fast he’d be delayed, maybe arrested, by Chicago PD.

  Now Wolfe was walking up behind the hangar--cargo hangar three, which his PearcePhone designated as the last known location of Roger Verrick.

  The orange sun, blurred by the striations of clouds at the horizon, looked like it was spreading out like the broken yo
lk of an egg. He figured the light was still good for another half hour or so. And Wolfe had to take action within minutes if he was going to stop this thing...

  There was a rear corner door, for maintenance workers, at the back of the hangar. Wolfe stalked across the tarmac to the door, opened it, looked out at the interior of the hangar. There was the cargo plane, taking up the hangar floor. The hangar was open to the runway at the front. Lights gleamed from the main airport. Wolfe could see planes taking off--planes full of unsuspecting people who might soon be screaming as the plane crashed into Chicago.

  If only he could spot something here--something he could warn the airport authorities about. Something he could phone into Homeland Security-- maybe upload a picture to them.

  But there was nothing visibly illegal going on in the hangar--nothing that would bring the authorities stampeding here in time. The freight loading ramp at the rear of the cargo jet was down. The aircraft was a 747-400M Combi, a twelve-year-old cargo jet with room for some passengers. Men were loading large oblate canvas covered objects, on wheels, into the back of the fuselage with a roller-conveyer system. The objects just fit. Most of them must already be loaded. One was disappearing into the plane, the other was just going up the ramp. The general shape told Wolfe these were probably the drones--but UAVs could be legitimately shipped--and they were under canvas so they weren’t obvious anyway.

  He saw two Graywater mercs standing near the jet, watching the loading, with Mack 10s over their shoulders. No sight of Verrick yet.

  Nearer were a number of fueling pumps, washing hoses, and an unloaded freight truck. Wolfe slipped through the door and went stealthily to the left, quickly getting under cover of the fueling pumps. The smell of jet fuel was strong. He waited, looked cautiously around the pump. No one was looking his way. He moved on, and got to the freight truck. It was angled toward the front so he was able to use it for cover to get closer to the cargo plane.

  The big spaces of the hangar echoed with voices, the clank of machinery, the whir of the loading machine. Someone laughed.

  He had no hope of pretending he belonged here. They had to be on the lookout for him.

  But he was close enough, now, to hack the plane’s controls. If he could do it--he could put the kibosh this whole project of Verrick’s, quick and easy.