by Rob Aspinall
“But don’t hard drives have to cool?” I asked. “Surely there’s an air duct. A fan. A weak point.”
“The vault uses free-air cooling,” Roni said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Air flows in through grilles in the carriage walls and floor,” Bilal said. “They’re regulated by a series of angled slats that open and close automatically. All hooked up to a thermostat.”
“We don’t know when they’ll open. And the gaps are only centimetres wide," Inge said.
“We could use a dropbox,” Roni said.
“A what?” I said.
“A small, customised computer,” Inge said. “Disguised to resemble an everyday item. You can sneak them into buildings and no one knows they’re there until it’s too late.”
“There's one I built at JPAC,” Roni said.
“You've got it on you?” Klaus said.
“Yeah,” Roni said. "It’s a dropbox in a smartphone with a shockproof case. Just slide it in. It’ll bounce in there and turn itself on. It’ll give me remote access. I can rip the data from there . . . Though it’s not gonna be easy. There’s the data banks themselves. You’ve got endpoint detection and response. Microsegmentation. DevOps Intelligent SOC. Deception tech . . .”
I pulled my confused face. “Can we have that in English? Spanish? Any language?”
Roni looked up from her screen and fixed me with a condescending look. “It’s really fucking secure. It picks up any deviation or irregularity in the code. Flags it up to a team of counter attack white hats. And they won’t be some two-bit rent-a-geeks. They’ll be trained up to fuck.”
“But you can do it?” Bilal asked her.
“I can’t be sure,” Roni said.
“How sure can you be?” Klaus asked.
“Fifty, sixty percent . . . If I get enough of a head start.”
“Those are good odds,” Inge said.
"They are?" I said.
“I’ll set up a new data bank for the transfer,” Roni said.
“Wait,” Bilal said. “How are we even getting near the damn thing?”
Inge shrugged. Looked around the room for answers.
“I have an idea,” Ling said from the back of the room. She turned off her game and tucked her phone away in her jacket pocket.
“Are we gonna like it?” Bilal asked.
A sugary smile crept across Ling’s face.
“Is it the kind of thing you would like?” Inge asked, smiling too.
Ling took a sweet from the bag she brought in from the SUV. She popped one in her mouth and nodded. “Uh-huh.”
"Great," Bilal said with a shake of the head. “We're all gonna die.”
11
Crap Fashion
It’s dirty. The air thick with fumes. The traffic nose-to-tail, the sun beating down. Music escapes out of car windows. Scooters buzz between gridlocked cars, buses and trucks with fruit on the back.
The road is lined with scruffy buildings and high-rise offices that don’t look much better. The streets are tight and packed with people under a blazing blue sky.
I step off the pavement onto the road. Blue plastic bucket and yellow sponge in hand. I’m dressed in rags. Taller than before. Bigger too, with hairs sprouting out of my forearms.
The traffic moves again. Boxy cars from a time that style forgot.
I stand between the lines of traffic. They slow and a shiny black car rolls to a stop. A big, long Mercedes saloon with tinted windows. I step out in front of it, dunk the sponge in the cold water in the bucket. I pull out the sponge and slap it against the windscreen.
The driver window whirs down halfway. The chauffeur is a big, balding guy in full uniform. He looks and speaks Portuguese. He waves me away. Tells me to get lost.
I wipe the sponge over the windscreen. “I’ll make it nice and clean, mister,” I say in Portuguese.
The driver winds his window all the way down. “I told you to fuck off.”
I stop and step around to the driver’s window. “But it’s dirty.”
“It is now your filthy hands have been all over it.”
“I’ll clean it up,” I say. “Quick and cheap.”
As I speak, I squeeze the sponge in my hand. Water shoots into the driver’s face. An accident, or a choreographed move? Either way, the driver recoils and splutters. He reaches through the window. Grabs me by the scruff of an old yellow t-shirt I’m wearing and pulls my head inside the limo.
“I’m gonna kill you, you street scum,” he says.
As I’m doubled over, I see a man in the back. Fat and fifty, cigar in mouth. Mullet grey haircut and black nineties suit. “Eduardo, pay the fucking kid and leave it,” he says.
The traffic moves in the other lanes. Cars honk angry behind.
I drop the sponge in Eduardo’s lap. Eduardo goes nuts, tossing it out of the window with his free hand and pushing the water off his suit trousers.
While he’s distracted, I reach inside the pocket of my frayed denim board shorts. I feel something small and plastic in my hand. I push a tiny metal button on the side with my thumb. I take it out of my pocket and toss it in the passenger footwell.
I do it fast and subtle. The driver doesn’t notice. I see it’s counting down to zero—red digital numbers starting at twenty.
Eighteen.
Seventeen.
Eduardo rants at me.
His boss tells him again to leave it.
The traffic honks louder and longer from behind.
Twelve.
Eleven.
I try and pull away. “Please mister, no charge. It’s okay.”
We’re down to eight seconds. Eduardo won’t let me go. I grab his hand and twist. He yells in pain. I deliver a flat-hand punch to his nose. His head rocks back.
Eduardo's boss leans into the front to intervene. He spots the timebomb in the passenger footwell. Spits out his cigar. Panic in his eyes. He moves to get out.
Five.
Four.
I pull away from Eduardo. My t-shirt rips.
Three.
Two.
I sprint away.
One.
The Mercedes goes up in a fireball. A wave of heat throws me onto the kerb. Black soot mushrooms into the air. The Mercedes is a wreck. Eduardo dead. People screaming, but the blast contained to the car.
I look around and see Eduardo's boss is alive. Resting against the bonnet of a small white car behind the Merc. He staggers and coughs. Sees me rising to my feet a few metres away. He turns and wobbles away onto the pavement. His short, chunky legs breaking into a speed-waddle.
I give chase, pushing through a gathering crowd of onlookers.
Old Man Mullet cries for help. No one seems to hear or care. They’re too busy eyeballing the blaze and shouting about putting the fire out.
The bossman cuts down an alley between buildings. I run in after him. He turns, back-pedals. Pulls a gun from inside his jacket. I skid to a stop. He’s got the drop on me.
But I hear the rasp of a scooter engine—a red one flying down the alley. A teenage girl in Wayfarers with long blonde hair under a white helmet. She holds a handlebar in one hand. A SIG with a silencer in her left.
She approaches at speed. The bossman turns. She shoots him twice in the heart. Muffled shots contained to the alley.
The man collapses. The girl brakes to a stop. She’s wearing a white vest and blue denim Daisy Dukes. A black bumbag around her waist. She unscrews the silencer attachment, then zips up the pistol and barrel inside the bumbag. I climb on the back of the scooter and wrap my arms around her ribcage.
She revs the scooter and steers us out of the alley. She weaves us through the bogged-down traffic, away from the scene of the blast.
12
Small Talk
Ling blew out a big pink bubble of gum.
Klaus leaned forward across the cargo hold. “You don’t say much, do you?”
The bubble popped. She sucked the gum back in and chewed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I dunno,” Klaus said. “A little small talk would be nice.”
Bilal laughed, sat to the right of Klaus. “She’s a bit young for you, pops.”
Klaus shrugged. “Only making conversation. And what do you mean, pops? I’m thirty-seven.”
“Is that all you are?” Inge said, fiddling with a strap on her wrist.
As Klaus took the bait and bantered with Inge, I turned to my left, to Ling. “It would be nice to chat, though."
“Why?” Ling said.
“I dunno. It would be good to get to know each other, that’s all,” I said. “Seeing as we’re the youngest."
“Okay," she said. “You first.”
“Alright, um, seen any good boxsets lately?”
“No.”
“How about clothes. Where did you get that panda jumper? The one you wore in New York?”
“When I beat you up?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Don’t remember.”
A cold wind whistled between the two of us. And it wasn’t the cool stream of air coming from the pressurised cabin.
“Is that it?” Ling asked.
“Um . . . Why don’t you ask me something?” I said. “That’s how making friends works, you know? I ask you something, you ask me something.”
“Okay, I’ll think of something,” Ling said. “But I doubt there’s much point.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because there’s a seventy percent chance that one of us will die in the next hour. A fifty percent chance we both will.”
“God, it’s like talking to Philippe," I said. "Only you’re way more positive.”
A red light came on inside the cargo hold, bathing everything in an Amsterdam glow. Ling took her gum from her mouth and stuck it under her seat. A co-pilot in a green flight suit opened the door from the front of the plane and spoke Russian. He told us we were close.
Everyone looked a little more alive. I felt the butterflies in my stomach. I stood up and we checked each other’s gear.
A rectangle of light broke into the cabin. It grew in size, revealing a hazy sky. I pulled my mask down over my head—an oval thing with a tinted visor over my face and a tube under my chin. The backside of the mask was made of the same stuff as my suit—carbon poly-something or other. It attached at the neck, forming a seal.
We ran a comms check as we walked slow towards the cargo door.
It opened out full. A gentle stream of oxygen activated inside the mask.
Bilal turned to me. “You ever jumped out of a plane before?"
“Only without a parachute,” I said.
“Anyone mind if I put on some tunes?” Klaus asked.
Inge gave him a look.
“It psyches me up,” he said.
“You scared of heights?” Bilal asked.
“No,” Klaus said. “Just the distance between me and the ground.”
I tugged at the sleeve of my black and grey jumpsuit. It felt disturbingly light and skintight. Then there were the retractable wings on the back. “You sure these’ll work?” I asked. “They seem a bit small and flimsy.”
“Thermo-carbon polymer,” Ling said, giving me the thumbs up, as if that was any kind of reassurance.
I gave her a thumbs-up and a weak smile back.
Klaus selected a tune and turned it up over the comms.
“What’s this?” I asked. “Dad-rock?”
“Thunderstruck. ACDC,” he said. “Classic.”
Inge shook her head. “What has the world come to?”
“I’ll turn it off when we get there,” he said.
I pushed a button on the side of my mask. Red holographic readings appeared on my visor, including height and distance to target.
Inge turned to us and gave the signal. She stepped out onto the edge and jumped, disappearing over the lip of the cargo door. Ling went a three-count after. Then Bilal. Then Klaus.
His choice of tune kicked in. A drum and lead guitar intro leading us into the song.
I took a deep, shaky breath and counted down. Three, two, one . . .
13
Adrenaline
I dropped out of the sky like a lead bowling ball. Thinking I was right about the suits. Thinking Ling, who’d come up with the plan and sourced the equipment, had some kind of group suicide death wish.
Only as I plummeted head-first away from the plane, the air caught between the wings.
And suddenly, whoosh—I was arrowing at sixty degrees through the sky.
We flew in a single file line. Inge the squadron leader.
The distance from the train and the ground ticked down on the visor in front of my eyes. I followed the vapour trails coming off the tips of Klaus’ wings.
Man, if they could have turned it into a ride, they would have made billions.
We pierced the clouds lying low over summertime Siberia. A face full of white mist and ears full of rock music. Guitars, bass and drums. A singer with shredded vocal chords screaming his lungs out.
We punched out of the cloud cover at incredible speed. Swaying left to right. Pure adrenalin. No brakes or control other than the roll of a shoulder.
I saw the line ahead. Inge banked right and the rest of us followed her lead.
The Siberian countryside grew big in my visor. Snowy mountain peaks. Swathes of dark-green forest. And rugged hills and valleys dotted with cattle and twinkling, vein-like rivers. I saw the railway line snaking ahead of us along a hill face.
We swooped low over a high-rising line of pine trees perched on top of a mountain peak. We dove deeper into the landscape. Winged shadows flitting over rocks, fields and water.
And here came the train. A black-painted juggernaut powering along the tracks. Twenty long carriages at least. We came up fast and low over the train.
Inge, Ling, Bilal and Klaus dropped out of the sky and landed like cats on separate carriages: Inge and Ling towards the front of the train.
I tucked my legs up and angled my body vertical to the ground. The wings acted like brakes.
Like hitting a brick wall.
But I already had my magnetic winch gun off my hip. I pulled the first trigger and the three-pincered magnet shot and stuck to the roof of the rear carriage. I pulled the second trigger and the cord pulled me in fast. I touched down and the five of us crouched low, all in a spaced-out line.
Like the others, I detached the magnet and holstered the shooter. I pushed up and jogged forward, the wings snapping in tight against my back.
The train curved around a bend. I took a running jump onto the next carriage. Within seconds, armed soldiers in green and brown camouflage appeared. They climbed up ladders between carriages—one rising in front of me and one behind.
I kept running.
As the soldier in front drew a sidearm, I fly-kicked him to the rooftop. He dropped the gun over the side. I leapt over him, rolled, turned and drew my Glock 17. I double-tapped the soldier coming at me from behind.
And I moved, the music long since cut and the only sounds, the wind and rumble from the train.
I looked ahead and saw the other soldiers down.
“Zone One secure,” Inge said.
“Two secure,” said Ling.
“Three secure,” Bilal said.
“Me too,” said Klaus.
“Lorna, you’re up,” Inge said. “Response team ETA two minutes.”
“Just give me one,” I said, ripping the velcro flap off a pocket on my belt.
I took out the smartphone dropbox Roni had handed me before take-off. I made the leap over the next gap.
But there was a wee problem.
A hand on my right ankle. Yanking me down. I landed chest-first on the lip of the carriage. Fell through the gap into the unwelcoming arms of a tree-trunk of a soldier. He knocked my gun from my hand. I pulled the same trick on him, but the dropbox fell onto the steel mesh platform between carriages. The soldier had me by the throat. Off my feet.
&n
bsp; “What’s taking so long?” Roni asked over comms. “Why aren’t we up yet?”
“Got a teeny problem,” I said, wheezing.
“Fix it,” Inge said.
The soldier smiled at me. I whipped my winch gun from my belt. I pulled the first trigger. The magnet whizzed by the soldier's head and stuck against the opposite carriage.
The soldier laughed. “Missed,” he said in Russian.
I pulled the second trigger. The cord reeled us in across the space between carriages. The soldier didn’t know what hit him. He pedalled straight back into the carriage wall, his head smacking solid titanium. His body slumped to the floor. Again I retuned the shooter to my belt.
My Glock was lost to the tracks, but the dropbox was there on the platform. I scooped it up and climbed the ladder to the roof.
“One minute to response team,” Inge said.
“Now would be a good time to deploy,” said Bilal.
“Everyone chill,” I said, flattening out as a bridge came at me.
A few seconds of darkness passed. We broke into the light. “All under control,” I said, leaning over the left side of the carriage wall, the gravel-ground rushing by. A sheer drop into a deep valley only a few feet away.
I waited for the slats to open. Roni had somehow worked out they’d have to open at least every thirty seconds.
And there they went, snapping open. I was all ready to slide the device in.
“Lorna!” Klaus said.
I looked up and saw a signal pole about to wipe me out. I rolled out of the way onto the roof. The pole rushed by. “Thanks,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief and leaning back out.
But the slats had slammed closed again.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Inge said.
“Missed my window. Gotta wait for the next one.”
It seemed like an age, but the slats flew open. I slipped the dropbox inside. They snapped shut again, like teeth trying to take my fingers off. But it was in. And I was back on the roof, rolling into a crouch position.
“Dropbox deployed,” I said.
“The link’s up,” Roni said. “I'm in.”
