Midnight Empire

by Andrew Croome

  To wake the laptop he would need to be broadcasting near it: he thought within a range of fifty yards. If it booted, he’d be able to detect it using the wireless antenna. From there, he wouldn’t necessarily be able to pinpoint its location, but he’d know that it was near. What this amounted to was that if he got within fifty or a hundred yards of the machine, he’d be able to know roughly where it was. If he managed that, he’d just have to hope that Ania’s husband was keeping it with the stick.

  At Starbucks, he wrote a script to broadcast the wake packet. Now he only needed to decide where to start looking. The Bellagio? The Venetian? What he knew of the man was that he was a fisherman and had money. It was probably his first time in Las Vegas. Most likely, he’d be at a hotel on the Strip, perhaps on a package deal with whatever airline he’d flown. Daniel looked it up. The Luxor, the Palazzo, the Monte Carlo: there were more than fifty hotels on the Strip, almost one hundred thousand rooms.

  He put the kit in a backpack and walked. The Bellagio had four thousand rooms. He started in the east wing. The layout of each floor was the same. He walked head down, eyes on the carpet.

  The netbook was set to beep. A few times he mistakenly thought it had and his fingers shook as he got it out of the pack but these were false alarms.

  Three minutes per floor. There were thirty-six floors in this tower, the same in the western wing. He wanted to go faster but as a man with a backpack he didn’t want to draw attention. He passed doors, drink machines and ice dispensers. The elevator landings were mirror and black marble, families and people in groups and Daniel’s reflection in the glass.

  He had to cut his time. He decided he could stop twenty yards from each corridor’s end and still reach the laptop. He decided he could skip floors, that his signal would penetrate one storey below and one up—in fact he could scan three at a time.

  There were cameras. He tried to think of an excuse should a security guard quiz him about his behaviour, a fighting-age male casing a hotel with a backpack. He couldn’t think of anything. Nobody quizzed.

  The sunlight, where it penetrated, was bright through the glass. By the time he was halfway up the west tower, he was certain that he wasn’t going to find Ania’s husband here. He checked his watch. There was just time to try the Luxor before he needed to be at Creech.

  •

  He knew that he looked tired. He couldn’t fix that but he could try not to appear strange or stressed. If they asked, he planned to say he was ill.

  He showed his pass at the gate and walked in the direction of the huts. He tried to proceed as normal. He thought, what is my normal pace? A group of pilots were coming off shift. They didn’t know him from anyone, but still, he thought they looked at him suspiciously.

  He slowed for breath outside the briefing hut and concentrated on putting everything that had happened out of mind. Gray looked up when he entered the hut. Daniel made eye contact and felt himself physically react, his gaze dart to the floor.

  ‘The two flights again today,’ Gray said. ‘Stations two and three.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The first at seventeen hundred . . . And Afghanistan . . .’ He looked to the clock. ‘Twenty after that.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘Did you see Wolfe out there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you do I need him.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He went to the coffee pot. It wasn’t his regular routine but he didn’t want to be seen to rush to get out and over to the ground stations. He chose a mug and poured the black liquid, added sugar then UHT; it was the most focused coffee of his life. He was walking for the door when Gray spoke.

  ‘They’ve found a body,’ he said.

  Daniel stopped but did not turn around. ‘Oh?’

  ‘That NOC who got lost in the forest in Virginia. It was suicide. Mid course.’

  ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘Crawled under a log to do it. First time such a thing has happened in the agency’s history.’

  Gray said nothing more. Daniel went to prepare the stations.

  Later, both flights launched on time and encrypted.

  He sat quietly at the back of the border flight, witnessed a white bird riding an air column, its wings outstretched like sails.

  Ania had had enough of this. He was behaving like a spoilt child. She never wanted to see or hear from him again. But to sort this out, she was prepared to meet one last time.

  Daniel listened while Ania left this message. Her husband’s mobile had been going to voicemail all day and all evening. They sat on the sofa. Ania was drinking chardonnay. She said she was sorry. She felt awful about this, truly. Then she began to cry.

  ‘Men are pigs,’ she said. ‘They are the worst.’

  She wiped her cheeks slowly with her hand. She leaned over and kissed him gently. Her face was warm and wet. ‘This is why I like you, Daniel. You are a boy and you are not cruel.’

  ‘Will he agree to meet you?’

  ‘If he doesn’t then I will threaten to disappear.’

  ‘Probably I should know what he looks like.’

  ‘He is thick and wide. He has brown hair and very strong shoulders and he smells of the sea.’

  ‘If he agrees to meet you, we can get my things back.’

  ‘Yes. This is what we will do. This is what you want.’

  ‘You have no idea where he is staying?’

  ‘I have absolutely none.’

  Ania had gone to the Venetian and Daniel was standing in the kitchen when he heard the beep, the solid, clear tone. At first unbelieving, he opened the netbook; in the list produced by the wake script, the laptop was truly there. The fact turned him cold. For a moment it didn’t make sense. Was the laptop in the apartment still? Had it been here all along?

  No. It must have just arrived.

  Staying out of sight of the windows, he turned off the lights. Then he went to the windows to look out. There was nothing out of the ordinary down there that he could see.

  He thought for a moment, his heart in his throat. What was the maximum range of his antenna—one hundred yards? Two? He packed the netbook into his bag and moved to the front door. The man could easily have been on the other side of it but Daniel felt sure that he wasn’t.

  He swung it open. The corridor was empty.

  He walked to the lift. What was his plan exactly? What did he think he would do?

  When he got to the lowest level of the car park he stood and listened. There was nothing but silence and the noise of the city. He walked up the ramp to the next floor, where the car park was just below the level of the street. There were gaps just above head height. You could lift yourself up and see the street at rat level. Daniel tried Flamingo Road. He stood quietly on the tyre of a car and observed. The streetlights gave the scene a yellow, fading varnish. He couldn’t see anything.

  He repeated the process at intervals along the road, until almost at the end he looked across the street at a small red sedan. He was instantly convinced that there was someone in the driver’s seat.

  He thought about it. I will cross the road and demand the computer and the USB stick and then tell the man to fuck off.

  But what if the guy simply drove off? No, it was better to watch him, see what he did first.

  Daniel went to his own car. He drove it out of the car park, headlamps out. He turned right, and, two blocks later, right again. This allowed him to approach the occupied car from the rear, and he parked on the same side of the street, fifty or so yards behind.

  Ten minutes passed in which the sedan did not move. Daniel tried not to feel anything; tried to imagine that he was elsewhere, miles away, so that he could sit here in cool remove. He was certain that the figure in the car was watching the loft. He must have been waiting, hoping to see Ania arrive.

  Daniel checked the netbook carefully using one hand, wary of the screen glow. His laptop was still in the list of near devices.

  He wanted desperately for this to be it:
for his laptop and the stick to be somewhere in that sedan.

  He looked up again at the loft and was pleased that it was difficult to see into.

  Finally, the red sedan came to life. Its headlights were turned on and it pulled out onto the road. Daniel waited then did the same. He had a sudden thought: What if this wasn’t Ania’s husband at all but a scout for the terrorist cell?

  The car crossed the Strip and got onto the Las Vegas Freeway to go north. Daniel watched the netbook: his laptop was still there, it could only be in the car. The lights of the casinos went by on the right and there was not much traffic. He kept the sedan (plate 815-TUV) four or five lengths in front, relieved that it wasn’t speeding.

  When they reached downtown the car came off the freeway.

  Daniel saw the tower of the Plaza Hotel and he followed along Grand Central Parkway, the railway on their right. They took Ogden Avenue and then the boulevard. He followed past pawn and bond shops, a wedding chapel and a topless cabaret.

  At last, the car slowed. It turned off the road into the driveway of the Riviera Inn, a two-storey motel where the balcony faced a parking lot. Daniel pulled over on the boulevard and jogged to the motel’s drive. He heard the slam of a car door and walked past a closed office then edged into the motel’s central lot in time to see Ania’s husband (it could only have been him—the wide, hulking frame) move to the door of one of the rooms and go in, carrying a bag.

  The place was mostly in shadow. Daniel moved to the light of a vending machine and pulled some coins from his wallet, ready as an excuse. He watched the door of the room. The white flicker of a television set came on inside.

  Now what?

  The lion’s den. The place looked very cheap. The lot was less than a quarter full, its surface badly cracked. It was anything but holiday accommodation. There was a sense of reality to it. Of disrepair and of the resented and resentful just-lives of the underclass in America.

  He walked towards the room. He tried to do it quietly. He was nervous but he was also managing to believe himself remote from this, somewhere else.

  Room 19. The curtains were thick and the light showed only at their hem. He stopped one door further along to tie his shoe and listened to the noise of the TV. It seemed particularly loud.

  Encouraged, he went to the end of the parking lot to a series of rooms with no cars outside, rooms that were obviously unoccupied. He ran his hand over a door and tried its handle. It felt light, almost flimsy. He tapped a knuckle quietly on the wood and the sound was cheap. He felt that he’d be able to break through it. That would be the way to proceed. Wait for the man to leave then break into his room. But how to be sure he’d leave behind the laptop and the stick?

  Daniel thought for a while, standing in the darkness. He went back to his car and found its tyre change kit. The tyre iron was heavy in his hand. It would do, later, for prising the door. Replacing it, he picked up a screwdriver and walked towards room 19. There were no security cameras. The red sedan was a hire car, the Desert Springs Agency. He stood at the driver’s door and swiftly inserted the screwdriver into the lock. He gave a sharp push with all his weight and there was the quick sound of metal giving. He walked fast out of the car park and drove away. You wouldn’t keep anything in there now, would you? Once you saw that, you’d lock anything valuable in your room or you’d carry it with you. When he returned tomorrow evening, Daniel figured he’d have a fifty-fifty chance.

  The next day at Creech, he tried to write code. It was almost impossible. He felt something walling in his chest and the dis-tractedness of no sleep.

  It was just after lunch when the news broke: a pilot struck by a car that morning, a hit-and-run somewhere in Spring Valley. Daniel heard this in the mess. He ran into Peach outside on the path.

  ‘You’ve heard?’ Peach said.

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘You know it’s Moore?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s Moore. They’ve hit him with a truck.’

  ‘Is he hurt?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Jesus.

  ‘Someone heard a tyre squeal and the thump’, said Peach.

  ‘Came out to see the truck take off. He was jogging.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘We flew together in Iraq.’

  Peach was visibly upset. Daniel looked at him and it didn’t quite register, Moore dead, it didn’t seem possible.

  ‘Three kids, man. Three kids and a wife and they were happy and all.’

  ‘He was a great guy.’

  ‘Jogging. Just jogging out on the street.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  Peach waved his arm dismissively at the FBI office. ‘Gray says they’ve found a cluster specialist, a mathematician who usually deals with cancers. He’s telling them that a third death puts the chances of deliberate targeting above ninety-five per cent. But they’re in there now asking was it violent.’ Peach shook his head. ‘Because this one could be an accident, it doesn’t fit the profile, it’s not straight murder. But of course it’s just them being clever, isn’t it? Creating uncertainty. This is psychological war and it’s a smart riff, the everyday falling as terrorist event.’

  A helicopter was landing at the far end of the base, a Blackhawk, its lights bleeding even in the daylight. In the direction of the car park, beyond the administration buildings, were further lights, the flashing blue and red of a police car or an ambulance.

  Peach suddenly said that he wasn’t kidding. In a situation like this, doubt was the beginning of all mistakes, and that was what they were aiming for, the enemy, they were attempting to induce errors and the way to overcome that was a very aggressive and highly unlikely move, a sudden, heart-stopping raise that would cold-light the fundamentals of whatever was going on.

  ‘What are you doing to do?’ Daniel asked.

  Peach looked into the distance. ‘I don’t know. Find that truck maybe. We owe Moore to do something. We can’t just sit here waiting for them to pick us off.’

  Together, they walked across the base. Wolfe and Gray were standing outside the briefing hut, Ellis and O’Grady beside them. Ellis wanted to say something about Moore, a first-class pilot, the first man you wanted next to you if you were going into battle. They listened. Then Peach wanted to speak. He said Moore had been courageous. He’d known the dangers yet he’d still taken the fight to the enemy, and they’d honour him by following his example.

  ‘Amen,’ said O’Grady.

  They held a minute’s silence. Daniel looked down into the gravel in front of him. Moore killed. It had to be a terrorist cell, there was no other way.

  Their silence concluded when a siren rang out. A fast wail, it repeated every few seconds, channelled through the address system of the base. They looked in the direction of the main buildings to see what was happening. All they saw were others looking the same way.

  Eventually a voice came on. It announced itself as Creech AFB and said that the base was in lockdown. Until further notice, all personnel were confined.

  ‘Which means what?’ said Wolfe.

  ‘We can’t leave,’ said Ellis.

  ‘I mean what as in why.’

  ‘I’ll go and find out,’ said Gray.

  He walked off. The sirens sounded for a half-minute longer. Then the group watched as men with M16s began to gather over by the parade ground. At first they formed a line. Then they split up to walk in various directions, some climbing into a Humvee.

  Two men came towards the briefing hut, rifles held in front at alert carry, helmets on their heads—they looked to be wearing armour. They passed the group silently and went to the fence line, stood at the cyclone mesh past which was nothing, clear desert.

  ‘Securing the perimeter.’

  Daniel spoke the words hardly realising that he was saying them. He went to join Ellis, now seated on a fold-out chair.

  Gray came back and told them what he’d learned: the terrorist cell was real. The FBI had discov
ered the number plate of the truck that had hit Moore. It was a 1992 GMC Suburban, observed speeding on a traffic camera after the act. The truck was registered to a Los Angeles electrician who’d sold it months ago to a Pakistani–American. This man’s credit card had been used to pay the airfares of two Pakistani nationals who’d entered the United States twelve weeks ago through LAX. The FBI were now searching for them at every hotel in the city.

  ‘Do we know them?’ asked Wolfe.

  ‘Langley believes they’re cleanskins, otherwise they wouldn’t have got in. One is apparently an accountant, British trained.’

  ‘This is about drones.’

  ‘We knew that already.’

  ‘Pakistani nationals. Probably Pashtun.’

  ‘Humiliation. A foreign empire doing what it wants in their lands.’

  ‘Do we believe this?’

  ‘The explanation fits. An amateur squad would explain why they are using guns and not bombs.’

  ‘The ISI?’

  ‘I don’t think they’d back this. It’d be a declaration of war. I think we’ll find out that the motivation is revenge.’

  They looked at the soldiers by the fence, green and jacketed, oddly iconic. Daniel wondered whether they’d still go ahead with today’s flights. Then he thought about the motel room that he had to get back to.

  ‘This lockdown,’ he said. ‘How long will it last?’

  ‘An old-fashioned manhunt,’ said Gray. ‘Sounds as if the FBI’s bringing in every special agent on the west coast. My guess is we’ll be here until the group is found. We could be looking at days.’

  After a period of only hours, however, base command realised they were facing a mutiny. An armourer who was also the base offensive tackle stood in front of a row of military policemen at the front gate and announced that he would wrestle his way out—that or he’d walk straight through, whichever they wanted, this was some serious, Berlin-wall shit.

  Calls were made. Eventually, the lockdown was off. Personnel with locally resident families were granted six hours to get them out. In the meantime, skeleton crews would be built from the childless, the single and those whose families were out of town.