by Joe Craig
Jimmy thought for a few seconds, but no more. His mind was heavy with strength, but serene at the same time, as if a thick black ink had injected itself and was infusing every thought.
“Who’s Rambo?” he said, thrusting the car door open and stepping into the night. Saffron had no choice but to follow. She kept her head down and jogged to catch up with him. Jimmy kept the laptop tight under his arm.
Every step swept leaves into a swirl that picked up with the wind and curled round their feet. They were two thunderstorms picking up momentum.
“They’ll see us,” Saffron whispered. “They have cameras.”
The position and angles of the security cameras were already fixed in Jimmy’s head. It seemed so natural to him that he hadn’t even thought to comment on it.
“We walk straight past,” he said under his breath. “Head down. To the row of houses.”
Jimmy’s mind zoomed from the image of the security cameras back to something else, another detail so small he hadn’t even realised his eyes had registered it. When they drove past, the leaves and litter in the gutter had been dancing. Not drifting in the wind, not resting in the shelter of the curb, but trembling. Rhythmically, thought Jimmy.
“The bass is coming up from the underground level of the club,” he announced, picking up his pace. “Strong enough to feel it on the pavement. We go in through the basement flat of the house next door.”
“And the people who live in that flat?” Saffron asked.
“I…” Jimmy trailed off. He could only guess how he would instinctively react in order to take control of the flat. All he could predict was efficiency, speed… violence.
“Leave it to me,” Saffron ordered. She diverted into the crowd outside LOCO. Jimmy slowed his pace so as not to lose her, but she disappeared from view for a moment. Jimmy felt his eyes flicking from side to side, always searching, spotting every detail. They locked on to the faces of the people in the crowd. The assassin in him was analysing everything about them, picking up on body language. Was it hostile? Wary? Had these people been warned about Jimmy? Would they offer any resistance? Would they be easy opponents if they did?
All the time, Jimmy felt like he was watching through frosted windows, seeing the same faces with his other self – his purely human side. He wanted to wonder how old these people were, whether they had families who knew where they were and that they were breaking the law to be there… whether he would ever be able to come to a club to relax, instead of to attack.
He felt himself wanting to consider those questions, but he couldn’t. His brain and body were locked. He was like a missile, primed for launch. He let his frail thoughts fall away, driven out by the tremors coming up from the pavement that confirmed the presence of the underground club.
There was a shout. Jimmy tensed, but held back. One corner of the crowd was bustling, and Jimmy could hear the female bouncer taking control. A second later Saffron was spat back out of the throng of people. They marched on together, keeping their heads low.
Saffron rang the bell of the basement flat just past the club. It was the first in a line of old-fashioned houses that had been converted into flats years ago. Saffron and Jimmy lurked in the shadows at the bottom of the steps, hidden from more of LOCO’s customers hurrying past on the pavement.
A middle-aged woman answered the door with a napkin hanging from her trousers. She was still chewing.
“Sorry to disturb you, madam,” Saffron began straight away. She sounded firm, but friendly. “We’re from the electricity board.” She thrust an ID card towards the woman’s face. Jimmy smiled as the woman peered forward, squinting.
“I don’t have my glasses,” she shrugged. “What’s the matter?” In the shadows it would have been impossible to read the ID card anyway. Jimmy glanced back towards the street, wondering whether the female bouncer was going to have any trouble controlling the crowd without her security pass.
“This is an emergency call out, madam,” Saffron explained. “We’ve got a surge in the network that we think is being caused by a fault in your wiring. If you don’t mind, we’re going to have to come in and do a quick scan.”
The woman looked bemused, but Saffron’s patter was fluent.
“This is my nephew,” Saffron added when the woman looked suspiciously at Jimmy. “He’s on work placement with me. Bit of a computer whiz.” She leaned forward to conspire with the woman. “I couldn’t do this job without him, if I’m honest.”
The woman shrugged, still chewing on the same mouthful and stepped out of the way.
“We won’t be a moment, madam,” said Saffron. “You just enjoy your dinner.”
Jimmy unfolded the laptop, switched it on, then held it up against the walls, pretending to be scanning for something. Saffron went ahead of him, tapping and pressing her ear against the paintwork, gradually working her way through the flat.
“James!” the woman called out. “It’s the electricity!” She pushed open the door to the kitchen and Jimmy caught sight of the woman’s husband tucking into some delicious-looking food – from both plates. “I’ll bet it’s because of that hellhole next door,” the woman added, to Jimmy and Saffron. “Can’t hear myself think most nights.”
Meanwhile, Jimmy had made his way into the room at the side of the building. It turned out to be a small bathroom: their portal into the club.
“I’m afraid we have to strip the tiling on that wall,” he called out, re-emerging into the hallway.
“Strip the tiling?” The woman was aghast. “That doesn’t sound…” She looked Saffron and Jimmy up and down. “Let me just make a phone call…”
“Wait,” Saffron urged as the woman reached for the phone.
“What’s going on?” It was the man, hurrying from the kitchen.
“OK,” said Saffron with a deep breath. “Here’s the truth: Christopher Viggo is in the building next door.”
“What?!” gasped the woman.
“And if we don’t—”
“Yes,” Jimmy cut in. His eyes flicked to the pot of pencils by the phone. “If we don’t get in there to arrest him, we’ll never stop what he’s planning.”
“What’s he planning?” asked the man.
“I’m afraid we can’t tell you that, sir,” Jimmy replied. “We’re from a government agency called NJ7. This is top secret and vital to the security of our nation. Can we rely on your loyalty?”
The couple looked at each other.
“Of course,” whispered the man.
“I knew you weren’t from the electricity company,” said the woman with an excited smile.
“Your government will reward you for this,” said Jimmy. “You!” He turned to Saffron. “Come with me and take notes.” He grabbed a pencil from the pot by the telephone and thrust it at her. Printed along it were three words: Efficiency. Stability. Security.
“He’s the technical expert,” Saffron explained, following Jimmy into the bathroom. “But we might need some tools…”
Within a minute, the bathroom tiles were clattering round Jimmy’s knees as he knelt in the bath with all the necessary tools. “You sure we won’t be disturbed?” He nodded towards the door.
Saffron shrugged. “They seem pretty excited. I told them a back-up team was on the way.”
“Back-up team?” Jimmy’s confusion melted into a smile when he saw Saffron texting. “Tell Felix to bring me something to eat,” he said. “The smell of that dinner is driving me nuts.”
Jimmy worked on a small, clearly defined square, not wasting any effort making the hole bigger than it needed to be. Once the tiles were off, he quickly went through the plaster, then the brick. A layer of stone slowed his progress before he hit clay, but by now the tunnel was almost long enough.
Jimmy drilled into key stress points in the earth, then chipped away at the rest, while Saffron worked behind him to remove what he dug out. His right arm slammed down with the regularity of the heavy beat pounding through from next door. Every bit of force Jimm
y hammered through the chisel was magnified by the vibrations of the club. It was as if LOCO was drawing them in, willing them to break down the last barriers between them and Viggo. Them and the Capita.
“Wait,” Jimmy shouted over the noise of the drill. He dropped the chisel into the bath and rested a finger on his lips. When the drill stopped, the noise from the club was obvious. Now it wasn’t just a bass line or a drumbeat they could hear, it was the full blast of the music. Jimmy closed his eyes for a moment. He could even pick out voices. He scraped at the end of their tunnel. A flurry of red dust came away – brick dust. They’d reached the wall of the club.
“Get the laptop,” Jimmy ordered.
Saffron crawled backwards and reached for the laptop they’d left in the bath. “What’s the plan now?” she whispered, lying on her front and clutching the computer to her chest.
“You circle to the left, I’ll go right. Cover the whole floor looking for exits, staircases, lifts, security personnel…”
“I know what to look for,” Saffron cut in. The light from the bathroom caught the outline of her face, glinting off her cheekbones. Jimmy felt the force of her determination. For a second it cracked the stone inside Jimmy’s skin and he felt his human emotions seeping through the assassin.
“Are you still going to be his girlfriend?” Jimmy whispered, before he could stop himself. Saffron tensed up.
“What do you…?”
“You don’t look scared,” said Jimmy, studying her face. “You used to be scared for Chris, but now you…”
“Get through that wall,” Saffron ordered. “Let’s do one job at a time.”
Jimmy emerged from the hole in the wall at knee level. He immediately rolled to one side then bounced to his feet, his eyes darting in all directions. Had he been spotted? Was the Capita’s security force coming for him? Jimmy saw the throng of people heaving in all directions, barely in time with the music. They pushed him back against the wall. Above the pounding, his ears picked out the swivel of the security camera on the ceiling. With the place so packed and the darkness only broken by coloured flashing lights, there was no way he could have been spotted by security. Not yet.
Saffron rolled out of their tunnel straight after him. Jimmy saw her disappear into the shadows of the club. Even the black hole in the wall was invisible from more than a step away. Jimmy moved around the edge of the room, knowing Saffron was doing the same in the opposite direction. The ceiling was low and the whole room was packed. The smell of sweat and stale nuts infused the air.
Jimmy quickly picked out the only exits: a spiral staircase leading up to the rest of the club, manned by a security guard, and the doors to the bathrooms. There was also a bar on Saffron’s side of the room, and Jimmy guessed there’d be a ladder up to the street somewhere back there. But he didn’t need Saffron to confirm it. His body had already chosen his strategy. It was simple, direct and lethal.
Jimmy circled back to the security guard at the bottom of the stairwell. He was a huge man, dressed all in black, but his size was already working against him. From the bulges in the man’s clothing, Jimmy could see the location of the man’s weapon as clearly as if it had been lit up by a spotlight. He knew that was what the man would go to first to defend himself, and a predictable opponent may as well already be on the ground.
Jimmy twisted and ducked, swivelling into the guard with his head bowed and his shoulders low to the floor. He swept his heel into the guard’s knee and his hand beneath the man’s jacket. The guard let out a gasp of pain as his knee crunched in the wrong direction. He reached for his gun, but Jimmy simply grabbed his wrist and used the man’s own momentum to bring him to the floor.
“Take me to Viggo,” said Jimmy, bending to speak directly into the guard’s ear as the man writhed face down in a puddle of something fizzy. “I have an invitation.” Jimmy flicked the guard’s gun to the ground, where it spun directly in front of the man’s face. Stuffed down the barrel was the LOCO flier, rolled into a thin tube.
Just then Saffron appeared at Jimmy’s back. They smiled at each other and lifted the guard by the shoulders. Without another word, the man stumbled up the stairs, leading Jimmy and Saffron towards their appointment with the Capita. Saffron pocketed the gun to keep it out of sight and clutched the laptop under her arm.
When they reached the ground floor the true size of the club became clearer. The floors above had been replaced with balconies to create one huge, dark, circular hall with a massive dance floor in the middle and bars around the edges of the room. Large balconies ran round the whole hall at eight or nine levels overhead, all of them packed with people.
The guard led Jimmy and Saffron up to the very top floor, to the back corner of one of the balconies. He ushered them behind a bar, watched suspiciously by paying customers and servers alike. The barman aggressively sliced through a lemon when he saw the strangers slipping past him. They marched through a more brightly lit storeroom, stacked high with crates of bottled drinks, until the guard paused at the door of a back office.
“Don’t stop,” Jimmy ordered, shouting over the music. He gestured for the guard to open the door and get out of the way.
The guard scowled at him. “I’m only doing this because they’re expecting you,” he grumbled.
“Yes,” said Jimmy with a sarcastic grin. “It’s so very kind of you.” He burst forward and slammed his foot into the door, just below the handle, missing the guard’s hand by a millimetre. The door crashed open, but Jimmy held back. His instincts kept his feet locked to the floor, not letting him plunge straight into danger, and not wanting any startled Capita security agents to launch an unwise counterattack.
“You could have knocked,” shouted a woman in the middle of the room. Jimmy instantly recognised her: the short woman who had come to Viggo’s headquarters. The dim light caught her cheeks, which almost glowed from behind the black curtain of her hair. She was still wearing that thick white coat that swamped her tiny frame. For a second she looked like a baby polar bear looming out of an Arctic night.
“We’ve come for Viggo,” Jimmy announced, stepping into the office. His senses were tingling. He could feel every movement reverberating in the stale air and every shift vibrating in the floor. There were Capita guards posted in every corner of the room and Jimmy saw them draw their weapons.
The light from the bar came through the door and cast Jimmy’s own shadow across the floor. Caught at the edge of the brighter rectangle was a man’s bare foot. There was dried blood on the nail of the big toe. Jimmy knew he had found Christopher Viggo. He was strapped to a chair in the middle of the room, his hands tied behind his back, a bag covering his head. Was he even still alive? Yes, Jimmy told himself. He has to be.
“The H Code?” announced the woman in the white coat. Jimmy felt his muscles creeping with tension and knew Saffron must be feeling the same. But was she also rapidly constructing a plan to extract Viggo and escape?
The door had swung closed, cutting out most of the noise of the club, but there was still a pounding thud. It reinforced the power of Jimmy’s thoughts. They wouldn’t stop. They piled over each other, swamping his consciousness until he didn’t know whether the music was hammering the inside of his skull or the walls of the room.
“It’s here,” Saffron responded. She pointed to the laptop. “But we need guarantees first.”
“Guarantees?” snorted the Capita woman. “I’m not selling you a washing machine.”
“Show us his face,” Saffron ordered, ignoring the other woman’s jibes. “You promised us he’d be alive.”
“He’s alive.” The Capita woman whipped the bag off Viggo’s head. Jimmy felt ice trickle down his throat. Viggo’s eyes and mouth were open and from what Jimmy could see in this darkness, there weren’t any serious cuts or bruises on his face. But though he was still breathing, he looked totally unaware of anything that was happening around him. His zombie-like expression seemed to loom at Jimmy, who couldn’t bear to look away.
Jimmy’s gut churned. How was he going to get this man out alive when he was bargaining with nothing?
“I know you rigged the election,” Jimmy announced to the Capita woman. Put them off guard, he told himself. Let them know their secrets are coming out. He felt Saffron shift uncomfortably at his side and he realised he’d caught her off guard as well – she didn’t know what Dr Longville had really found on the Chisley Hall computer.
“Just protecting our investment,” the Capita woman barked after a long time. Then she added in a grumble, “Trying to, anyway.”
“It’s a hard system to hack,” said Jimmy, all the time assessing the surroundings, looking for escape. His eyes flashed imperceptibly, taking in the positions of the guards, the dimensions of the room, the single bare bulb that illuminated it in the centre of the ceiling…
“Sometimes humans are more effective than systems,” the Capita woman replied. “We had a man working on the HERMES project from the beginning. Deep cover, I suppose you might call it.”
“You had a Capita man working on HERMES?” Jimmy said sharply. Unsettle her, he thought. Provoke her. Anger creates mistakes. “And you still lost the election? Your man didn’t do a very good job, did he?”
“He’s been processed,” replied the Capita woman automatically.
“Processed?!” Jimmy couldn’t hide his disgust. His effort to unsettle the Capita had backfired. “Bring him into the bar,” he said firmly, waving a hand at Viggo with a lurch of revulsion.
The Capita woman snorted. “You know you’re too young to buy him a drink?
“Just do it.” Jimmy’s voice was flat and strong, while his eyes watched every movement of the guards that surrounded him. “We need to know you’re going to let us out alive once you have the H Code. We need to be where people can see us.”
The woman let out another snort. “Give me the laptop first,” she insisted, then looked to Saffron. “And the gun.” Saffron glanced across at the guard, whose weapon she had taken. His embarrassment was as obvious as the bulge in Saffron’s pocket. Saffron tried to protest, but Jimmy raised a hand to stop her. There was no point with so many armed guards surrounding them.
