All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

The music began playing over the cabin speakers a few seconds later. It was Song 2 by Blur. Lex was set to (privately) deride it as old man Bett’s idea of cool, but quickly recognised his cold humour at work instead. It was probably a mistake to think he didn’t know how overused it had been as a soundtrack to such high-adrenaline moments. The man resonated disdain like other people gave off body heat.

  Som, being less sensitive to such subtleties, simply went for it, and joined in the ‘woohoo’s as the chopper dipped and soared through the snow-flecked blackness.

  Bett sat expressionless throughout. Lex looked for a hint of a smile or twinkle in his eye to betray just how much the bastard must be enjoying this, but there was nothing. The song played out without him even tapping his feet to the rhythm.

  Then came Ride of the Valkyries.

  The snow lightened off over the final twenty minutes of the flight, down to mere wisps by the time they landed, though it was close to a foot deep on the ground. This proved of no concern to Rebekah, who expertly set down the helicopter on a valley floor, some woodland to the north the only feature of landscape close enough to be visible by what little moonlight broke between the clouds. Lex saw no lights to indicate settlement, though as Nuno was waiting for them behind the wheel of a high-sided container truck, there at least had to be a road in the vicinity. At least, though quite possibly at most.

  ‘Thank you, Rebekah,’ Bett said, as the rotors slowed and their pilot joined them on the white surface which was so permafrozen as to compact only a couple of inches under the weight of their feet. Lex had estimated the depth at about a foot, and the chopper’s wheels had sunk close to that much, but it could easily be more. Bett sounded, as ever, like his gratitude, while not begrudged, was measured out with microscopic precision to be exactly what was due and appropriate, no less and no more. The sentiment gave off as much warmth as a dying penguin’s last breath, but somehow inexplicably avoided sounding insincere or even entirely graceless.

  ‘De nada, sir,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, shit, man, it’s freezing,’ Som complained, while they got busy unloading their flight cases.

  ‘Appropriate clothing will be supplied,’ Bett said, signalling to Nuno to bring the truck closer now that the chopper’s engines had powered down.

  ‘You are a god,’ Som told him, shivering. ‘People don’t say that enough.’

  ‘No,’ Bett reflected, ‘they don’t.’

  Rebekah pulled off her helmet and placed it on her seat inside the cockpit, replacing it with an elasticated fleece cap. Lex approached, flight case in hand as she shut the door.

  ‘Thanks for the ride,’ Lex offered with a smile.

  ‘Hope it wasn’t too rough. Helicopters aren’t really my forte.’

  ‘You gotta be kidding. Not your forte? That was some serious flying.’

  ‘It’s all in the technology these days. There’s a joke among the civil flyers that future crews will comprise a single pilot and a dog. The pilot’s job will be to watch all the computers, and the dog’s will be to bite the pilot if he attempts to touch anything.’

  Civil flyers, Lex thought. As in what Rebekah was not.

  ‘That’s cute,’ she said. ‘But way too modest. You were hot-dogging up there, and on Bett’s orders too, I’m guessing.’

  ‘No comment,’ she replied, failing to conceal a smile.

  ‘That’s a ten-four if ever I heard one. Where’d you learn to fly like that?’

  ‘Definitely no comment.’

  Nuno cautiously brought the truck towards the chopper, the vehicle bobbing and swaying as its tyres traversed uneven terrain beneath the snow. Lex suppressed a smile at the sight of the tall Catalan in this unfamiliar environment, his beloved dark locks all tucked out of sight beneath a tight black ski-hat. She couldn’t wait to see how that striding gait of his coped with the underfoot conditions either.

  He veered the truck right as he drew close, allowing him to turn in a wide, careful arc, presenting the rear of the container towards the new arrivals. Bett hopped on to the tailgate and flipped a lever, causing the double doors to open and releasing a heavy steel ramp that slid down to meet the snow. Lex felt it bite into the ground with a shudder a split-second after the overeager (and possibly borderline hypothermic) Som skipped backwards out of its way. Nuno trudged cautiously and awkwardly around to the rear and climbed inside behind the boss.

  Bett emerged shortly with an armful of clothing, which he tossed to Som. From the flail of sleeves and legs, Lex guessed two fine fleece tops and two pairs of trousers.

  ‘Get these on. That goes for everybody: two layers each. There’s a box inside with various sizes. And if you’re wearing anything made of cotton, lose it before you put these on.’

  Som wasn’t about to ask Bett why – you just didn’t do that – but his face betrayed a reluctance to shed any of the clothes he already had without a damn good reason.

  ‘Cotton equals death,’ Lex told him. ‘Cotton holds moisture against the skin and prevents you warming yourself. Trust me, I’m Canadian.’

  ‘Are we talking, like, even my Y-fronts here?’

  Lex herself had opted for all-synthetic undergarments, but wasn’t sure just how much outdoor work was going to figure on the agenda. She guessed not enough for it to matter if Som’s nads got a little chilly. The temptation to lay it on thick was enormous, leavened slightly by the prospect of seeing his scrawny little goose-pimpled butt in the flesh. She settled for: ‘That’s entirely up to you.’

  ‘Jeez. Just how long are we going to be out in the snow? How far is this place?’

  ‘It’s about five miles,’ Nuno told him.

  ‘Just get the fleeces on, Somboon,’ Bett instructed. ‘And if you’re still cold, I’ve got another layer for you here.’

  Bett kicked a fibreglass trunk forward across the floor of the truck and flipped open its lid. Kevlar vests. For all the protection they offered, they were nonetheless seldom a reassuring sight.

  ‘Body armour?’ Som asked. ‘I thought this place was all about non-lethal enforcement technology.’

  ‘If it was a bakery, would you expect the guards to be armed only with custard pies?’ Bett asked, with what passed in his case for good humour. ‘The parent company also develops laser-guided missiles, so you’ll be pleased to know the security personnel are issued with standard Beretta nine-millimetre handguns and none of Industries Phobos’ hallmarked product.’

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s any Kevlar balaclavas in there?’ Lex ventured. ‘These vests aren’t so effective if you get shot in the face.’

  ‘I’ll be extremely surprised if any of these people manage to get a single shot off against us,’ Bett stated with absolute certainty.

  ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, would you mind if I borrowed Rebekah’s crash helmet?’ Lex said, only half joking.

  ‘You can’t,’ Nuno told her. ‘It would get in the way of your night-sight.’

  Night-sights. Of course. One of the reasons – though far from the main one – why Bett was so confident of not getting shot at.

  ‘I eat lots of carrots,’ she protested. ‘I’d prefer the helmet.’

  Nuno threw her a pair of fleece trousers and a top, both black. ‘Get dressed, Lex,’ he said.

  Once everyone was suited and bullet-proofed, Bett reached for one of the cases he’d brought from Aix. He handed everyone a pistol and two mags. They each slapped one clip into the breech and the spare to their utility harness. It didn’t look like a lot of ammo.

  ‘Will this be enough?’ Rebekah asked.

  ‘Not if you miss,’ Bett replied. ‘And on that note, let me just stress that I don’t want any of you staying your trigger hand with thoughts of the poor guard’s wife and kids tragically impoverished at Christmas. We’ve got a job to do and so have they. The one who does it best doesn’t need to worry about his or her conscience.’

  Lex checked the action on her weapon. She didn’t need this particular pep talk. These guys were packi
ng Beretta nine-mills: that was all the encouragement her trigger hand needed.

  Som distributed earpieces and Pin-Mics that attached snugly and nearly invisibly to the inside of their fleece collars. You pressed down on them to transmit, which was a big improvement on those goddamn sub-vocal things that broadcast every last unwitting word you happened to utter. Once they were fitted, Nuno began handing out night-sights. Gadget-geek Som almost bit off Nuno’s hand to get his first.

  ‘These the new LS-24s?’ he asked excitedly.

  ‘Si.’

  ‘I don’t see what’s to get excited about,’ Lex said. ‘Everything looks like green shadows and white blobs through these things anyway.’

  ‘These have a built-in laser range-finder,’ Som told her, his enthusiasm undiminished by her failure to share it.

  ‘What’s a range-finder?’ she asked.

  ‘It tells you the distance to the object you’re looking at,’ Som explained. ‘Lets you know whether the white blob you can see is a tree half a mile away or a boulder ten feet away.’

  ‘Long as the white blob’s not a guy holding a gun, what does it matter?’

  ‘It’ll matter when you’re approaching the boulder on a snowbike at a hundred kilometres per hour,’ Nuno stated.

  ‘We’ve got snowbikes?’ asked Som, who really was going to regret the moisture retention properties of his cotton underwear if his excitement level got any higher.

  ‘MX Z-REVs. What do you think I needed such a big truck for?’

  ‘Too cool.’

  The new toys were dragged from within the lorry on pallets and slid carefully down the ramp on to the snow. They looked state-of-the-art and expensive, the way Bett liked it. Basic instruction was given, accompanied by some vocal surprise that the resident Canadian and ‘expert in all things wintry’ should never have ridden a skidoo before. She admitted that she hadn’t skied before either, politely explaining that no amount of snow could make eastern Ontario a downhill winter sports paradise due to the place being as flat as a pool table. To this she added that if you gave her a pair of skates and a hockey stick, she’d kick all their asses, but by that point Bett was calling them to order with the outfit’s most peremptory command.

  ‘A-fag, children. A-fag.’

  It was time to get serious.

  They rode in darkness. The ZX Rev-Ups, or whatever Nuno had called them, were fitted with powerful headlights, but such luminosity was ‘contra-indicated’, as Bett put it with understated technicality, when attempting to approach undetected. The noise, he claimed, would be less of a concern as they’d be pulling up a quarter of a mile short, and in darkness no one would be able to determine whether the sound wasn’t motorbikes on the nearby road through the valley. ‘That’s if anyone’s listening,’ he added.

  It was pretty easy, even if viewing by infrared made the sense of velocity seem all the greater. Like their aquatic equivalent, it was hard to imagine a lot of people owning one of these for everyday use. Lex guessed the majority of sales of such machines were for hiring out to tourists, who didn’t want to spend a day and a half learning how the thing worked. They just wanted to push a button, twist a handlegrip and go. She got a real fright the first time the sled fully left the ground (range-finder or no, her night-goggles failed to distinguish whether the white blobs of her colleagues in front were gliding on snow or air), but after a couple more such bumps it became a real rush. Her only concern was for her laptop, stowed in a compartment beneath her seat, but with the others setting an unrelenting pace there was no option to ease off. She was already in the rear of the group, trailing even Armand who was dragging a cargo sled behind him. They had left a lot of kit back at the truck, Bett changing arrangements at the last minute as usual, so Lex wasn’t sure what the cargo sled was actually transporting, but it was having far less of a braking effect than her caution.

  Before folding her laptop closed, she had noted and reported that there was still no response from the PC she’d shut down back at eight o’clock. Bett had nodded dismissively in response, like he always did when you were telling him something he already knew.

  They pulled up, as specified, about a quarter of a mile short of the compound, dimly lit against the foot of the mountain by the glow from a few overhead lamps. There were maybe a dozen cars lined up in a tight grid, close to where a counterbalanced barrier and a wooden hut blocked access from the snow-dusted road. The buildings were low-rise and cheap-looking: windowless warehouses, a prefab site office with darkened wire-mesh windows, chemical toilets, an electrical sub-station. Nothing to see here, they were saying to any passers-by. The compound was delineated by a wire-mesh fence, about two metres high. Lex could see a couple of white blobs on top of the wire that she plausibly estimated to be sparrow-sized, meaning it wasn’t electrified. Nothing else in her sights appeared to be giving off much heat, apart from the sub-station.

  They parked their bikes at the foot of a small undulation, barely a bump on the landscape, but enough to render the vehicles invisible from any range beyond ten yards the other side of it. A heat signature belatedly ambled into view: a guard on patrol, the sight of which prompted Lex to crouch until she noticed that she was the only one doing it.

  ‘Have a look without your night-sight,’ Armand reassured her. She did. The compound became little more than glow and shadow. Behind her there was blackness. ‘That’s what he sees.’

  ‘Gather your goods and chattels,’ Bett instructed, and they each unloaded what was beneath their saddles. Armand, she noticed, unloaded nothing from the cargo sled. Lex’s batbelt had a specially designed velcro-fastening cradle for her laptop, holding it out of the way, across her back. This meant she was less encumbered by it when moving, but it required detaching the utility harness altogether when strapping the PC in or taking it out, unless someone else was there to help. She was asking for just such assistance when Bett told her to stick the machine back in her skidoo.

  ‘We won’t be requiring any remote access from here on in. If necessary, you can grab a terminal directly. You do have your tools on removable storage.’

  This last was most definitely a statement, not a question. Indeed, she did have the code she needed on a USB stick, but it wasn’t what was on her laptop that she was worried about missing. It was the two hundred gigs of free space on the hard drive. Removable storage was the issue, and whether she’d have room to store what she intended to remove.

  Bett set the pace. They advanced slowly, strung out in a wide line, stopping two hundred metres from the fence, or 198.678m according to the range-finder. All but Som got down and lay prostrate, leaning up on elbows to look ahead. Gadget Geek was about to deploy. He placed an aluminium tube down in front of him on the snow, then drew a modified grenade launcher from a quiver across his back. Resting on one knee, he slid the top half of the tube away from the base, inside which nestled six of his self-designed and -constructed Flying Eyeballs. He loaded four, one by one, into the breech and levelled the weapon to his shoulder. Meanwhile, his colleagues were snapping open hand-held LCD monitors, each about the size of a compact make-up mirror. The Flying Eyeballs, as he had explained (at length, in detail and on an unwearied number of occasions), were a means of creating an instant, covert CCTV system without setting foot in the subject area. They consisted of a tiny digital camera, crucially containing no moving parts, and a lens constructed from the same synthetic material as prescription contacts. Crucially, because the device had to withstand being fired several hundred metres through the air by a grenade launcher, plus the effects of rapid deceleration associated with being slammed into its target surface at the end of this flight. For analogue devices and glass lenses, this sort of treatment was largely contra-indicated, to use one of Bett’s favoured terms. It wasn’t highly recommended for digital ones either, to be fair, and not all of them survived the trip. However, their chances were greatly improved by the round rubber housing that gave rise to the Eyeball part of their name, and more so by being suspended in a th
ick, gloopy, adhesive resin inside a fragile outer shell. The shell shattered on impact, releasing the resin, which dried instantly on contact with air, theoretically securing the rubber eyeball where it landed, but in practice working better on sloped roofs than plumb walls. The camera was weighted and balanced within the Eyeball so that it would tilt and right itself by gravity up to forty degrees, the lens protected from the resin by a tube-shaped plug that could be popped off by remote once the device was in place. The only thing Som had so far been able to do nothing about was the whole thing hitting a wall or roof lens-side first, which was why he always brought at least a dozen.

  He fired off three of the four he’d loaded, readjusting his weight and position as he aimed at different potential vantage points. Then he scuttled around to the side of the compound and began again. Lex checked her LCD, toggling through the views. A lucky night: only one lens-to-wall, one DOA and two nestled on rooftops beneath four inches of snow. Six shots resulting in two functioning cams, giving a pretty good triangulation on the main paths through the compound. There’d been times when Som had cracked off a full complement of those things and they’d still ended up going in blind. She deleted the useless frequencies and toggled between the two good ones. They had views of most doorways, the sub-station and the guardpost at the road barrier.

  ‘Just one guard so far,’ said Nuno’s voice in her earpiece. ‘We don’t have an angle into the sentry box.’

  ‘It’ll be manned,’ Armand ventured. ‘It’s freezing. If his boss wasn’t in the box, don’t you think that guy would be in there warming his toes?’

  Lex watched the grey figure on her monitor walking slowly and shiftlessly, stamping his feet every so often, bored and cold.

  ‘True enough, Armand,’ agreed Bett. ‘Assume a count of two. We’ll take them separately but simultaneously. Nuno, Alexis, you take …’

  Bett cut himself off in response to the guard suddenly stopping in his tracks, evidently having heard something. He turned on his heel and began running towards the sentry box.