All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Fuck, we’ve been made,’ Rebekah said urgently, unholstering her gun.

  ‘At ease, my dear,’ Bett chided, looking at his monitor. Lex couldn’t make out what was on his LCD, but it wasn’t the same thing she was looking at; there was lots of colour, mainly green, as opposed to grey shadows and snow. ‘Quite the contrary, I’d wager.’

  The guard disappeared into the hut, from which no alarms sounded, no lights flashed, and indeed from which he did not re-emerge.

  ‘Nuno, Alexis,’ Bett said, by way of command.

  Lex drew her pistol and flicked off the safety, then back on, then back off. It was an obsessive-compulsive habit, like trying the doorhandle after locking her car, and she’d shown no sign of shaking it, no matter how many times she’d used various firearms. When you were effectively entrusting your life to a device, you had to be damn sure it was functioning.

  The snow silenced their footsteps, only the lightest crunch audible as their boots sank gently into the unspoiled surface. As Lex neared the hut, she discovered both that the guards wouldn’t have heard a thing anyway, and why Bett was unworried by the sentry’s dash to cover. She heard the sound of a crowd and the excited voice of a commentator. They were watching soccer on TV, and Bett had known not only that much, but presumably also which game; that’s what he was tuned in to on his LCD. A goal had been scored, and one guard had relayed this to the other – which was why he came running.

  They took position side by side, a few feet from the doorway, guns each held in two hands. The commentator’s tones got near-hysterical, accompanied by angry and then happy/excited shouts from the two marks. Lex looked to Nuno for the green light, but he took a hand off his weapon and clenched his fist to signal hold. ‘Penalty,’ he whispered.

  There was quiet from the crowd, a collective drawing in of breath. She and Nuno joined it.

  ‘S’il vous plaît, mon Dieu,’ one guard’s voice implored.

  ‘Ne manquez pas, ne manquez pas,’ pleaded the other.

  Nuno smiled and gave the signal.

  Ne manquez pas. Don’t miss.

  They didn’t.

  Lex and Nuno lay the bodies next to each other on the floor of the hut and patted them down. She found what she was after in a hip pocket, Nuno in a zippered breast-pouch. Swipecards, each with a photo ID thumbnail in the bottom left-hand corner. Low-level security clearance, no doubt, but it would be enough for now.

  She checked her LCD, toggling between the two views. No activity from any doorways, no further sign of life.

  ‘Area secure,’ she announced. ‘Clear to proceed.’

  Nuno sprung the mags from the guards’ handguns, sliding them into slots on his harness.

  ‘This pair won’t be needing them any longer,’ he said.

  The rest of the team caught up soon after, advancing at a brisk walking pace.

  ‘Which building’s the way in?’ Rebekah asked.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Lex told her. ‘We’re only working from information in the public domain.’

  ‘Yeah, Lex, but I thought when the member of the public happens to be you, the domain gets pretty wide.’

  ‘Ordinarily, sure, but on this job …’

  ‘Not in the parameters,’ Rebekah finished, nodding.

  ‘There are, I would estimate, at least two, and possibly three, entrances,’ Bett said. ‘Two cards, two teams. Knock, knock.’

  Rebekah went with Lex, Armand with Nuno. They bypassed the prefab site-office and the chemical toilet as these had only conventional locks, making instead for the low-rise warehouses. Each pair approached, guns drawn, keeping an eye on their counterparts to ensure that they acted simultaneously. Lex swiped the card and threw the door open, Rebekah moving quickly inside and levelling her weapon at shoulder height.

  The interior was in darkness. Lex found a light switch and flicked it on, revealing a room full of stationery supplies, stocked neatly in six columns of shelves. They were staggered to allow a narrow channel between each, apart from between the fifth and sixth, where there was a wider avenue. She walked along and looked down it. At the end, a few yards short of where the rear wall ran across the rest of the building, there stood two featureless aluminium doors, a swipe slot to their left. Another storey’s worth of steel ascended to the ceiling, presumably housing the pulley.

  ‘One entrance located,’ she reported. ‘And we’re cool for Post-its too. How about you guys?’

  ‘Nada,’ Nuno replied. ‘Canteen supplies, I think. Tinned soup. Hey, these guys really like lentil and bacon. Moving out.’

  ‘Hold your position, Nuno,’ Bett interrupted. ‘Any confectionery?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yeah, that’s a positive on the confectionery.’

  ‘Snickers?’

  ‘Okay, let’s see … Mars, Twix … Snickers. Affirmative.’

  ‘Two please, there’s a good chap.’

  ‘Ah, sir, I think that would count as stealing.’

  ‘There’s a good chap,’ Bett repeated pointedly.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Som and Bett arrived at the stationery warehouse as Nuno and Armand continued their search. Bett was chewing on one of the appropriated chocolate bars, his face expressionless despite a glow of juvenile satisfaction. If it was giving him pleasure, he was trying to keep that to himself, just like the chocolate.

  Lex swiped the card to part the lift doors, holding them open while Som got to work. He had the control panel out in seconds and began expertly stripping wires, splitting and splicing with contacts from one of his gizmos, which he secured to the inside of the panel before replacing it.

  ‘You’re cool now,’ he told Lex. She stepped away from the doors, which remained open. Som then attached another Eyeball – of the non-flying variety – to the rear interior of the car, this time a remote-controlled, zoom-lens, multi-pivoting device.

  ‘Let’s take a peek,’ he said, pressing a button on the grotesquely modified gamepad he used as a multi-functioning remote control. The lift doors closed and a deep whine emitted from the housing above. Lex toggled to the newly available channel on her LCD. It showed two closed doors, and it showed them for a hell of a long time.

  ‘Some depth,’ Rebekah observed. ‘What was this place, a mine?’

  ‘Nuclear shelter,’ Bett informed her. ‘And before that, once upon a time, a secret Allied operations HQ.’

  The whine stopped and the doors opened, revealing a reception area with a desk, a row of bucket seats along one wall, a water cooler against another and two fire doors dead ahead. The lights were on, but there was no sign of human activity. Som twiddled a hat switch, panning right a little and zooming in towards the ceiling. There was a CCTV camera staring back.

  ‘Is that going to be a problem?’ Lex asked.

  ‘Only if someone’s watching it,’ Bett answered. ‘But let’s assess all our options first.’

  Som brought the lift back, undoing his handiwork and retrieving his gadgets with the same speedy but unhurried efficiency as he had deployed them. As he was reattaching the last of his hardware to his harness, Nuno’s voice played across all their earpieces.

  ‘Second elevator located. Last warehouse on the right-hand side, closest to the mountain.’

  ‘Received,’ Bett acknowledged. ‘And what the bloody hell kept you?’

  ‘Thorough reconnaissance, sir,’ Nuno replied. ‘It took us a while to find the lift, but we now know where these people keep their toilet-roll supplies, so if we really want to hurt them, or this turns into, like, a siege …’

  ‘At ease, Nuno.’

  Nuno had been part of the outfit longer than anyone bar Armand. Lex used to wonder how many McDonald’s long-service stars you had to have amassed before you could talk back to the boss like that, but had learned in time that it was more to do with experience telling you when you could best try your luck. Bett had no favourites and no formal hierarchy beyond the very simple one by which he ruled with supreme authority.

/>   Som repeated his surveillance operation on the other lift, intended for transporting freight going by its greater size, grubbier appearance and wider approach area. The warehouse Nuno called them to had a large loading bay at the front, served by two padlocked vertical roller doors, each around four metres wide, with the card-op entrance separate, three or four yards to the right. Inside there was a lot more space than housed the personnel lift, though there were supplies on shelves around three walls. Much of it appeared to be for general site maintenance – paint, varnish, detergent, lightbulbs, tools – plus, as reported, enough toilet paper to keep them going through a nuclear winter.

  They checked their LCDs as Som sent the freight elevator grinding slowly down into the earth. It took even longer than the personnel lift, though most probably because the mechanism was simply slower.

  ‘Must have been some deal to carve this place out,’ Rebekah observed, echoing Lex’s slightly discomfited awe at the subterranean scale.

  ‘A lot of the caverns and tunnels were natural,’ Bett said. ‘Magma chambers, lava flows.’

  Som beamed, his cheeks aglow.

  ‘What?’ Bett asked, with the weary sigh of one who knows he won’t be impressed by the answer.

  ‘You’ve made him very happy,’ Armand offered.

  Yes, Lex thought. And they weren’t short of an evil genius either, though no one was going to say as much.

  ‘Delighted to be of service,’ the evil genius muttered, sounding considerably less so.

  Lex’s screen remained black, despite the mechanism having quit its laboured grinding a few seconds back.

  ‘Open the lift doors, Som,’ Nuno prompted.

  ‘They are open,’ Bett answered. ‘There’s no lights on in the freight bay. Which makes the camera issue moot, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Unless they’ve an infrared,’ Som suggested. Bett rolled his eyes to indicate how likely he considered this.

  ‘Well, on the outside chance that someone has gone to the bother of monitoring the camera they’ve got overlooking reception, I think it would be polite to dress for the occasion. Armand, Somboon, retrieve the security guards’ jackets from the guardpost and go in through the main lift. Keep your heads down and remember to bin the uniforms once you’re past the camera. If I shoot either of you, I’d like to mean it. The rest of us will take the tradesman’s entrance.’

  No one spoke as the lift descended, the four of them standing with weapons drawn. Lex felt a cold, sweaty nervousness, the like of which she hadn’t experienced on a job since the earliest days. No matter how many times she’d gone into situations like this, she’d never lost that feeling of being hyper-energised, like all of her senses were at a level normal life had never asked of them. Time felt both accelerated and suspended, as though standard relativity could not be resumed until events were at a close and this mode was once again set to zero. However, this gnarling, dull fear was something different, a chill terror long-since banished by experience but back tonight, ready to dog her every step. She knew why, and it was nothing to do with those Berettas.

  She flipped down her night goggles as the lift doors ground open, infrared describing the room to her in subtle differences of tone and texture, all of it white on green. Shelves, crates, pallet-trolleys and a wide, windowless double door. They stepped forward slowly, Nuno finding his way first to a light switch. He flicked it, turning on strip lighting suspended from a surprisingly high ceiling above. Lex advanced to the card lock and looked to Bett.

  Bett signalled to hold, pressing his other hand to his collar-mike.

  ‘Status,’ he said quietly.

  There was no response. Too much rock. They’d be able to hear Som and Armand again once the pair were down inside the complex.

  ‘Status,’ Bett repeated several times, at intervals of thirty seconds.

  ‘Status is we are all troglodytes now,’ said Armand’s voice at last.

  ‘Acknowledged. We are holding position in the freight bay. Preparing to deploy. Any hostiles?’

  ‘Only Somboon. Ah … okay, I’ve got a layout schematic from behind the reception desk. Freight bay is on the second level, which puts Security HQ upstairs from where you are now, downstairs from us. Back-up generator and power control is in the lowest level. You still want us to …?’

  ‘Proceed with assigned tasks. Remember to smile if you pass us on the stairs. Oh, and Armand, mess?’

  ‘No, everything is very clinical-looking. Som’s delighted, I can safely say.’

  ‘No, I meant mess as in canteen, as in dining area,’ Bett clarified with barely contained disquiet.

  ‘Oh, pardon. Oui. Upper level.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Bett said, with all the appreciation one might expect in addressing a stone that has finally yielded 0.01 millilitres of blood.

  Bett gave the signal and Lex opened the double door, more strip light immediately spilling into the freight bay from the wide corridor outside. There were doorways along either wall, as well as tributary corridors and a T-junction visible at the far end.

  Bett pulled a fire-exit schematic from the wall and they all briefly examined it before moving out. Lex dallied a little, allowing Nuno and Rebekah to head off first, the pair of them charged with locating the staff dining area. She was hoping she could drop behind Bett also, in order to check on something unnoticed, but she had no such luck. Bett ushered her onwards in front of him, making it impossible now to drop back without it being conspicuous. He would be accompanying her in locking down the Security HQ, so she knew her window would be tight, meaning she had to be ready to act when – if – an opportunity presented itself.

  The four of them walked briskly on soft feet, proceeding down the corridor to the end, where they turned right towards where the fire plan had indicated the main staircase to lie. Nuno went a few paces ahead of the rest, stopping short of the final stairs to extend a mirror into the corridor on a telescopic handle. He checked the view in both directions, then gave the signal to advance. They split into their pre-assigned pairings at the top, approaching each bend silently and with guns at the ready.

  Lex and Bett found themselves at one end of another long corridor, more doors and passages leading off along the puce-painted walls. The decor was cleanly and uniformly slapped on to bolted gypsum panels, making it impossible to distinguish where the façade was covering mere partitions or live rock on the reverse. A grid of white tiles above indicated a suspended ceiling, housing vents, pipes and cables. It wasn’t much different to a corridor in any modern hospital or school, she thought, but there was something about the way it swallowed sound, far more than any lack of a view, that emphasised the inescapable isolation of the place. Som, she was sure, wouldn’t be disappointed, and like her would be regretting that they couldn’t freely explore every last bend of this labyrinthine oubliette.

  The thought reminded her of what else her itinerary didn’t officially have a space for. They took another corner, observing cover protocol, though she could tell Bett was going through the motions for the sake of good practice. This next passageway took them past banks of glass on either side, allowing views into darkened laboratories, in which only the shapes of computer monitors were distinct. She stopped by a door and swiped the card, figuring blatant was less suspicious than furtive. It remained locked.

  She had her answer prepared should Bett enquire why she had done it: she was checking to see what level of security access was on the cards they’d lifted from the feckless gumbies topside. Bett didn’t ask. His lack of enquiry made the ensuing silence seem an intolerable vacuum, which meant she had to force herself not to guiltily volunteer her explanation.

  She felt like she was scattering pointers the whole time, and that he must be seeing her guilty intentions in widescreen. That was merely fear. She had to hold her nerve. Truth was, she had no idea whether Bett was so difficult to keep a secret from; this was just the first time she’d tried.

  Bett signalled to move swiftly around the next corner.
They’d been able to see into the adjoining passageway through a bank of windows perpendicular to the ones they were passing, but Lex suspected Bett was getting fed up playing it by his own book.

  ‘We could be waltzing through here naked, playing trombones,’ he said, confirming as much.

  ‘Permission to discount that image, sir.’

  ‘Granted. Ah, here we are. At last.’

  Lex skipped ahead and took position against the wall outside the Security HQ doors, one of which was wedged open. She waited for Bett to do likewise, but instead he marched past her and straight on in, miming playing a trombone as he did so.

  Lex followed him into the room, a split-level office with a bank of CCTV monitors along one wall of the upper area, and a row of computers facing the same direction on the lower tier. Identical screen savers played on all but one of them, depicting a three-dimensional animation of the Deimos logo. The odd one out was blank, being the PC Lex had shut down at eight o’clock, meaning no one had been in here since. She looked at her watch. It read 21:43. The CCTV cameras all looked across empty corridors, apart from those that were looking at complete blackness in rooms where the lights remained off. Bett sat down at the control suite and brought up some different views. More corridors, more blackness, and one ‘Error: Camera Offline, Lev1/secNW3/cam1’.

  ‘Also known as the mess, I’d wager,’ he remarked drily.

  The strip lights overhead flickered briefly as she took a seat at one of the machines.

  ‘Smooth,’ Bett noted approvingly. He meant the near-seamless switch to auxiliary power just effected somewhere below them by Som and Armand. If the main power went down, there was an average three-second delay before the back-up systems kicked in, which would be enough to put even this sorry mob on alert that something was amiss. Their trick was to bring the auxiliary power online first and make the transfer before killing the main grid.

  ‘Very,’ Lex agreed. It hadn’t even rebooted any of the PCs, which made a change. The corollary of Murphy’s Law dictated that she wasn’t midway through an elaborate script the one time a power switch didn’t crash the computers.