Surveillance (Ghost Targets Book 1)

by Aaron Pogue

  The monitor's audio switched off, but there was no way to know if he was still listening. Katie raised an eyebrow at Martin, asking permission to speak, but he took it for a different question.

  "I don't know," he said. "Technically, he...he wrote everything. The actual code, it's all his. He could easily be listening in now. He knew you were here, when even your boss at the FBI couldn't know that. I don't think he could listen in on my headset, because it all routes through my home server, but I don't even know that. He might have heard everything...." He looked down at his hands. "Maybe you should run, Katie. When we arrive, as soon as the doors unlock, just run for it. I don't feel safe bringing you to Velez like this. Not after what he said."

  She shook her head, then touched his arm to get his attention and shook her head more forcefully. She touched her chest with one hand, then touched his. "I'm with you."

  He caught the meaning of that, and smiled sadly. "I'm sorry for dragging you into this. I...that's what I did to Janeane, too. But without your help, I never could have...." He took a deep breath, and let it go. "I'm glad you're here, Katie. I'm sorry for everything, but I'm glad we're here together."

  She couldn't have answered him, even if he'd allowed her to speak.

  The car stopped shortly after that, and Katie took a breath to calm her beating heart. She wished for the reassuring weight of her gun in its holster, or the lifesaving cinch of her watch on her wrist, but she was alone here. She opened the door and climbed out into the breezy night. The car zipped back into the traffic, leaving them standing on a sidewalk before a run-down electronics store. Most of the wares in the window were worthless, relics of a past when new gadgets dominated the market quarterly. For a moment she considered plunging into the store, purchasing a handheld that would look as old and battered as Martin's, just to have something to record some notes on. Just to have something to hold, really, but it was a fleeting thought.

  It was driven from her mind at the sight of the man standing outside, waiting for them. Ghoster's description sprang immediately to mind: "the whitest kid you've ever seen." He was in his fifties now, but the description still seemed to apply. He was a couple inches past six feet tall, skinny and pale. Clean-shaven, balding, and wearing clothes that had been unfashionable when they'd been for sale decades ago. When he caught her considering him, he grinned.

  "Katie Pratt. Charmed, I'm sure. Martin, you always picked the pretty ones."

  Martin growled, "Stop it."

  She expected Velez to carry on his patter, to throw some rejoinder back at Martin, but he actually seemed cowed. He flinched away and shrugged, looking hurt. "Fine," he said. "I'm just trying to be friendly. Come on." He waved over his shoulder, and led them to some stairs that descended below the sidewalk. "I've got a basement apartment."

  The apartment was below the electronics store, dimly lit with a handful of dying light bulbs in a shabby living room decorated with the sort of relic electronics sold upstairs. Velez didn't stop in the living room, though, and didn't bother giving a tour. He headed straight toward the back of the house, down a narrow hallway, and Martin and Katie followed behind. Katie's fear rapidly gave way to curiosity.

  The bedroom had barely room for the unmade single bed and the cheap chest of drawers beside it. Velez slipped around the foot of the bed and opened the folding closet door, then shoved aside a rack full of clothes much like the ones he was wearing, revealing a door in the back of the closet. He glanced back over his shoulder at them, a sparkle in his eyes, then said, "Okay, we're coming down."

  The door swung inward, revealing another narrow staircase. Katie looked back at Martin, concern in her eyes, but he only shrugged. She turned back and saw Velez watching their silent exchange. His smile widened. "Ladies first."

  The stairway twisted down in a spiral, the same cramped quarters and poor lighting she'd seen in the rest of the house, but at the bottom of the stairwell she stepped through an open doorway and into a vast workshop. The rathole apartment above was clearly nothing more than camouflage for the extravagant underground lair. The floor plan was wide open, with a kitchenette off to the left boasting a well-stocked wet bar, and an entertaining area farther ahead with suede couches and a rich leather armchair circled around an expensive wall-mount monitor. The back wall of the wide space had three doors set within a shallow alcove, and she was prepared to guess they opened onto two bedrooms and a bathroom. It would have been a luxurious apartment in a tower in New York City, but it felt fake somehow. She could tell, whether from Velez's personality or some subtle clues in the room itself, that he had no use for the creature comforts it boasted. His time was all spent in the right half of the room, the workshop.

  Two full computer desks, each one easily the size of hers back at the office, stood end-to-end, and a programming monitor taller than the TV was wide stood mounted on the wall above them, currently displaying some computer code she probably couldn't have deciphered with years of training. Half a dozen handhelds lay forgotten, here and there—some of them resting on the desktops, one in a desk chair, and two apparently dropped casually on the floor. Another lay against the wall across the room, smashed to pieces, and a tear in the wallpaper showed how it had been damaged. They were all of them cutting-edge technology, nothing like the battered and much-loved device Martin carried with him.

  She noticed one other thing out of the ordinary as Martin followed her out into the room and began his own inspection. She pointed, subtly as she could, to draw his attention, but she wasn't sure he noticed.

  There were security cameras throughout the room—half a dozen here in this one open space, and now that she was aware of them she could recall another one looking down on her as she'd descended the stairwell. They weren't the discreet, miniaturized courtesy recorders Hathor had installed in every public space, every office building in the developed world. These were the big roving cameras with powerful microphones she knew from the police station, the courthouse, the federal building. There was something odd about them, though: a barrel mounted on the left side of the camera, opposite the microphone, nine inches long and about the diameter of a man's wedding ring. Despite her attempt at discretion, Velez caught her looking as he stepped into the room.

  "You've noticed my security system," he said, and clapped Martin on the back to get his attention. He pointed at one that was scanning aggressively back and forth above the two computer desks, surveying the whole of Velez's domain. "Do you recognize these, Martin? I designed them for that DARPA job. I always thought it was stupid Hathor wouldn't spring for the target locators."

  Martin shook his head. "Hathor didn't need them. The point was always to match passive observation with active self-reporting from individuals' possessions. I told you it would be enough. I told you something would come along, and the Hippocrates watches proved me right."

  Velez pouted. "It was a risk. That way makes you dependent on an outside source. What if there had been no Hippocrates?"

  "It would have been something else."

  Velez shook his head. "It costs pennies, Martin." He chuckled. "Well, not these. But a laser range finder and some pretty simple triangulation technology could have gone into every courtesy cam out there—"

  "But that's millions, Velez. Hundreds of millions. You don't understand the scale. You never did. My goal wasn't to make perfect hardware, it was to see everything. Everywhere. To do that, you have to sacrifice some of the cool factor."

  "Whatever." He held up a hand and walked away. Katie looked back and forth between them, fascinated. Their argument had the feel of old familiarity. Velez caught his desk chair with one hand and dragged it behind him to the computer desk, then climbed up in it to tap the camera on the side.

  "These are special," he said. "Remember that magnetic projection system Dewey needed math help on?"

  Martin frowned for a moment, thinking, then his eyes shot wide. "For the Navy? Back in college?"

  Velez nodded, grinning. "He never did anything with it. Los
t the contract to Lockheed Martin, and they just took the money and delivered excuses until the Navy gave up. Ten years later, technology being what it was, I put this sucker together from scrap and worked it through DARPA for millions. I don't think they ever really deployed them, though."

  Martin just stared, fascination and horror battling in his eyes. Velez nodded, grinning.

  Katie said, "I'm sorry, I don't get it."

  "It's a gun," Velez said shortly, and for just an instant his eyes bored into hers, then he put his grin back on. "A very advanced one."

  "It's a rail gun," Martin clarified, moving closer to examine it. "That's what we used to call them. It accelerates dumb payloads to extraordinarily high velocities and how on earth did you get one this small?"

  Velez shrugged. "NASA tech. I mean, that one's not going to sink a battle cruiser through seawater drag, but it's enough to protect me from intruders. Ooh, watch this. Lock target on Martin."

  The roving camera jerked back from its slow pass to train directly on Martin. Katie caught tiny movements from the corner of her eye and turned to find half the other cameras in the room now stationary, too, all of them pointing directly at Martin.

  "Oh, that's eerie," Martin said. He took a step back, away from the computer desk, and three cameras moved smoothly to follow his motion.

  "Stop it," she said.

  Velez considered her for a moment, and again Katie saw that threatening glint in his eyes. He had taken his opportunity to threaten them. She knew that, and she was pretty sure Martin was smart enough to pick up on it, too. This whole place was a deathtrap. They needed to get out of there.

  "Martin," she said. He waved her to silence. She wasn't interested in hiding anymore. She'd seen enough from Velez to know he was their man. The man wore social courtesy like a cheap suit, something sinister and snakelike slithering behind his eyes. So what if she brought Rick straight to them, now? "Martin, I think—"

  "Just a minute, Katie. We haven't seen each other in ages. Speaking of which..." he said. The last was directed at Velez and she could tell he was trying to fake casual. "What's this project you've been working on? You've clearly done well for yourself—"

  "It's Hathor," Velez said, cutting him off. He stepped in front of Martin, square to him, and when Martin's eye still drifted back to the camera, he said with a hint of irritation, "Reset cameras. Martin!" He snapped his fingers, and Martin's eyes snapped to his. "It's Hathor, Martin. We have to do something about it. I had thought that the easiest way would be to go through you, but when you wouldn't answer me, I took matters into my own hands."

  "Wait," Martin said, his brows drawn. "Why would it be easiest to go through me?"

  It was Velez's turn to look confused. After a moment, almost as though he thought Martin was tricking him, he said, "You run Hathor."

  "No." Martin barked a laugh and looked at Velez like he was insane. "You do."

  Velez shook his head, then looked pointedly at Katie. "Is this an act for her? Jesus, Martin, the stuff you've already told her, I didn't think you'd be trying to pull something like that over her eyes—"

  Katie held up her hands, annoyed. "Stop it! Both of you." All eyes turned to her, and she said, "Who runs Hathor?"

  Martin and Velez glanced at each other. Velez shrugged, and Martin sighed. "After the senate hearing, AT&T severed all ties to Total Awareness Management because of the embarrassment. The demand for the tech was still there, though, so TAMS just rebranded as Hathor Corp. and struck out on its own. But I was disgusted with what Hathor had become. That's when I left, like I told you—"

  "Wait, what?" Velez's laugh was almost shrill. "Are you kidding me? You were disgusted, so you left? No." He turned to Katie, like a witness to a judge. "I walked away from Hathor. It was dangerous. I said that all along. It was a fun project, it was cool to make it, but I said from the start that it would go bad—"

  Martin cut him off with a shout. "You also thought it was going to be AI. It was never AI—"

  "Tell me how AI is distinguishable from 'predictive recommendation algorithms' apart from built-in error. That's a semantic point—"

  "Boys!" she shouted, and the two older men turned to her, Velez panting and Martin a little flushed from the argument. "Who runs Hathor?"

  They each pointed to the other. Velez narrowed his eyes. "The senate expressed some concern about two men wielding so much power, so we built a board of directors out of whole cloth."

  "Fake IDs," Martin clarified. "For those we built AI."

  "And then I walked away, and left Martin running the behemoth he was always so in love with."

  "No," Martin shook his head. "No, if you didn't want to run Hathor, why did you send me in to convince the senate to protect it?"

  Velez laughed. "After all these years? You still really.... I sent you there to go off on your little romantic sermon about human perfection and make us look so irrational they would have to shut us down." His shoulders sagged. "It didn't work. You never got a chance to talk."

  Martin shook his head. He looked crushed. "How...why would you do that? Who's been running everything, then? The AI?"

  "No," Velez shook his head definitively. "No, there's a hand on the tiller, I can see that clearly. I just thought it was yours."

  Katie had a guess, but she didn't have a chance to voice it, because Martin drove to the point that she'd lost track of.

  "It doesn't matter who is running Hathor," he said, his breath coming fast now. "You needed a favor from me, or you thought you did, and you attacked where it hurt me most." There was no recognition in Velez's eyes, no realization that the tenor of the conversation had just changed. For a moment, Katie thought they had been wrong again, misled by another hasty assumption based on who could or couldn't do what to the cameras. Martin stepped forward, close to Velez, and grabbed his shirt in both hands. His eyes begged Velez to confirm what Katie was already starting to suspect, that he was wrong, but his words formed the accusation. "You killed Janeane."

  For a moment Velez said nothing. He understood, now, enough that he was paying attention. He tilted his head to the side, like a curious bird, and looked into Martin's eyes for a moment. Then he laughed lightly. "Little Janey?" he said. "That little blonde girl was Janey? I didn't even think to check." Martin fell against Velez's thin chest, collapsing into tears, but no emotion touched Velez's voice. "Huh," he said. "What a coincidence."

  "You bastard!" Martin said it before Katie could. He rose up and launched himself at Velez, grappling for his throat, but Velez moved like a snake, darting to the side and whipping an arm up into a lock around Martin's extended shoulder. He turned and pushed, and Martin flipped over onto his back, breathing hard.

  All of that happened in the time it took Katie to close the distance to Velez. She approached him from behind, aware now of the threat he posed, and waited for him to straighten, then moved fast. She shot an arm forward past his shoulder and bent it back, locked around his throat in a sleeper hold. "That's enough, Velez," she said. "You're under arrest. I'm taking you back to DC. We'll get this sorted out."

  She looked down at Martin, struggling to catch his breath, and said, "You okay?"

  She didn't hear his answer. She remembered too late that the real threat Velez posed had nothing to do with jujitsu. He said the words offhand, unconcerned, even with her grip tight on his throat. "Wound the girl."

  There was no gunshot, no sound at all, but she felt an excruciating explosion of pain as a high-velocity chunk of metal destroyed her left calf and glanced off the side of her shin bone, sending splinters, muscle, and blood exploding out the front of her leg. She saw the splash of red, and heard Velez's gulp of air as she fell, then the blackness took her.

  13. Bloodthirsty

  Katie woke sometime later in what was apparently the guest bedroom of Velez's underground lair. Her first thought was to wonder if Velez had killed Martin. She didn't get much past that because of the pain. Her left leg throbbed, fiery white heat, and she was afraid t
o look down at it. Her teeth ground together in the effort not to scream, and tears burned in her eyes. She blinked them away and tried looking around the room, but nothing really registered. There was furniture, bookshelves, and another computer desk, a couch against the wall, but she couldn't concentrate on details.

  She was lying on the floor, on her side. She tried to push herself up, to get a better view of the room. As she rose she heard a voice, probably Martin's, but her vision swam, accompanied by a wash of pain and nausea, and she passed out again.

  The next time she came to, she was lying face-down on the floor, and her left cheek and nose felt raw from being pressed into the carpet. She worked her jaw, forced her head around to discover that she was still in roughly the same spot in the same room. The pain that had assailed her before was quieter now—a dull roar in the back of her head. She rocked her shoulder back twice, shoving off the floor with surprisingly weak arms until she rocked over to land on her left side. She looked down and saw her left leg wrapped from knee to ankle with a clumsy bandage, stained red and soaked through. She felt a distant revulsion at the thought of it, but that was all.

  She looked around the room, dazedly, and then it hit her. "I've been drugged."

  She didn't realize she'd said that out loud until Martin answered her from the couch, behind her now. "Trust me, you needed it." He sounded as bad as she felt. "You're in bad shape, Katie."

  Katie tilted her shoulder down and rolled her weight after it, landing on her back with a thump that sent a shock of pain up her leg and right through the haze clouding her mind. For a moment, everything was just a burst of blinding white light, and then she realized she was screaming. She cut it off with a choked sob.

  "I'm sorry, Katie."

  She blinked away the tears to look up at Martin, ten feet away on the couch. His eyes were full of tears, too. "I didn't know he had anything like this. He used to be a nice guy."