by Peter Grant
Gentian paused at the door of the old van. “I suppose this is goodbye,” he said, almost sadly.
Aferdita nodded. “If we are successful, yes.” She had to swallow hard to get the words out. Even though the risks and demands of the mission had been made very clear before they volunteered for it, and again before they departed, the thought of what lay ahead was daunting.
“Strike hard and strike sure, sister. In the Patriarch’s name!”
“In the Patriarch’s name.”
Gentian got into the van, plugged a cable into a test unit hanging down from a switch on the console, and pressed a button. He grunted in satisfaction as a light glowed green. The circuit to the explosives and detonators was in working order.
Aferdita watched him drive the van out of the warehouse, its power pack laboring under the weight of its deadly cargo, then climbed into her own van, this one not burdened with a heavy load. She tested the detonator circuits of the explosive vest waiting for her in the passenger seat, then put it on. She gave Gentian time to get well ahead of her before she left, driving carefully in the evening traffic. An accident at this point might ruin everything.
The two vans made their way across the city. The first headed for the apartment building owned by Hawkwood Corporation. Several of its senior officers were already at home, preparing supper. Others were on their way there. Gentian parked the van in an alley close to the building, then settled down to wait.
Aferdita pulled her van into an open parking spot in the alley running next to the building containing Antonia Funar’s apartment. As she sat, waiting, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her stomach churned at the thought of what lay ahead. Despite her dedication to their cause, the prospect was daunting.
At last she could stand it no longer. She opened the door, scooted over to a bush growing in a planter at the entrance to the alley, and was violently sick.
A watcher pressed a microphone button. “She’s out of the van, sir. We can take her now, without killing her. Over.”
“Negative, I say again, negative. It’s too soon. We don’t know whether she’ll have to call anyone, or someone will call her. If she doesn’t, or doesn’t answer, it would give us away. Over.”
“OK, sir. We’ll wait. Standing by.”
The watcher looked on as Aferdita stood upright again, her head swimming, and staggered back to her van. She climbed inside and closed the door, then lowered the window, hanging her head out into the fresh air outside. He said to his partner, “That’ll maybe let Mack and Sammy do this the easy way, rather than us having to do it the hard way.”
“Works for me, boss. She looks so damned young! I know she’s an enemy, and a well-trained, dangerous one, but I can’t help thinking of my little sister when I look at her.”
“Watch those attitudes. They can get you killed in a hurry. She’d do it herself in a heartbeat, if it would further her mission.”
“I know, but even so… Guess I’m just a softie at heart.”
“Then you’re in the wrong job.” The leader’s voice was hard, uncompromising. “Don’t let that stop you, if we have to kill her.”
“Oh, don’t worry, boss. I won’t lose any sleep if we do. It’s just that…”
“Yeah. I know.”
Grimly, the leader thought, It’s a good thing you don’t know we’ll interrogate them using their own techniques, if we take them alive. It’s the only way to make them talk. Damn them for making us behave like them!
In the farmhouse, the watch commander checked a time display, then clicked a switch on a jamming unit on the table next to him. A directional aerial on the roof, aimed at the hillside above, began to transmit as he nodded to the three figures near the front door. “It’s time.”
Without saying a word, they opened the door and filed through it, heading for the utility cart parked nearby. The two guards were dressed in what looked like their normal uniform; but this version had been made from ballistic cloth, offering much greater protection against incoming fire. The ‘therapist’ was another member of the security team, disguised to look enough like the real practitioner to pass muster in the rapidly deepening gloom of evening.
They settled into their seats, and the driver started the vehicle toward the gate. When he got there, he remained behind the wheel, but unfastened his seat belt, ready for an instant dismount. His partner and the woman got out of the vehicle. The guard picked up the lock and fumbled with its keypad. The inner gates began to swing open.
The man on the hillside squinted through the light-intensifying scope next to the missile launcher. He saw the guard pick up the outer gates’ lock, enter a code, and push them back. As soon as they began to move, he pressed the first firing button. To his utter shock and dismay, no missile leapt from its tube. He stiffened in sudden panic, even as he felt a sharp sting in his jaw, and another through the collar over his neck. As he dropped the button and reached for the pulser lying ready on the ground beside his head, he felt a wave of dizziness sweep over him.
He knew at once what must have happened. He’d been targeted by nanobugs or flitterbugs, firing needles tipped with a paralyzing neurotoxin. His enemies, whoever they were, had somehow jammed his missiles’ wireless remote-control firing circuits. They would wait until he was unconscious, then secure him before administering the antidote. He knew what awaited him when he woke up. They would undoubtedly interrogate him, just as he would do to them if the tables were turned. He dared not allow that. Besides, he would not be conscious long enough to reach the comm unit and call Flamar – but he had to warn him somehow.
Desperately fighting the dizziness, using his last moment of controlled thought and movement, he raised the pulser barrel, placed it against his ear, and pressed the firing button.
Flamar was sitting in the driver’s seat of the second explosives-laden van. His window was open, to let him hear more clearly. He was ready to drive through the gates, knocking their remains out of the way if necessary, as soon as the missile had blown them both open; then he would head for the house, to crash into it and detonate his lethal cargo, killing most of those inside. His team would follow up, with more missiles from the hillside and gunfire from his comrade on the road. They would make sure there were no survivors.
He heard the faint sound of a shot, echoing down the hillside. His partner did, too, from his position next to a culvert, fifty feet from the gates, on the other side of the road. The man reared up, lining his carbine at the guards at the gates. He moved so fast that the hovering flitterbugs missed his head and face. Their needles hit the rucksack on his back. They were too low-powered to penetrate such barriers. That left the watching security team no choice.
Two carbine shots exploded, then two more. The man was flung forward into the side of the culvert by the impact of the hypersonic beads. He dropped his weapon and collapsed to the ground in a crumpled heap.
Flamar’s thoughts had been focused on the imminent attack, and on his comrades back in the city, and their preparations to take out the leadership of Hawkwood Corporation and the traitor spy. He took just too long to shake his mind free of those distractions. Even as his head jerked around toward the nearby shots and he reached for his pulser, he felt the stabbing pain of a needle penetrating the back of his neck. He spun back toward his window – only to have another needle spear directly into his left eye. Agony roared through him as he involuntarily clapped his hands to his face.
He realized at once what had happened, just as his subordinate up the hill had done, and tried to end his life before it was too late… but he had hesitated just too long, and the neurotoxin in his eye was just too close to his brain, and his hands had just too far to travel. Worse, he’d fastened his seatbelt, so that if he’d had to use the van to ram the partially open gates aside, the impact would not have jolted him out of his seat. Now the belt got in his way as he tried to lean over and grasp his pulser, laid ready on the passenger seat. By the time he began to raise the weapon, his motor control was too far
gone. The pulser fell from his nerveless fingers as he crumpled, unconscious.
The guards at the gate had flung themselves flat as the shots sounded. Now they rose, and ran down the road toward the attackers. Others emerged from the bushes to help them. They gathered up both bodies and all the equipment, and took everything back to the farmhouse. On the hillside above, another team checked the dead man, then collected his gear and weapons and carried everything to a utility transport, waiting on a dirt track winding through the forest below.
Within a few minutes, there was no visible evidence to suggest that anything untoward had ever happened on the mountainside, or near the farm below.
The watchers in town heard Tom Argyll’s voice. “The farm went down as scheduled. No casualties to the good guys. We’ll give it five minutes, to allow enough time for a call from there to alert the Commodore, then we’ll start moving. That should draw them in. All teams, stand by.”
The observers settled themselves behind their weapons and consoles, and prepared for action.
Gentian tensed as he saw a sudden flurry of movement in the ground-floor garage beneath the apartment block. Two indistinct figures, about the same size and height as Commodore Cochrane and Captain Lu, ran from the elevator toward their vehicle. As its lights came on, the door to the garage began to slide open.
Gentian gulped, reached for his comm unit, and punched in Aferdita’s code. “It’s time.” He didn’t wait for a response, but heard her gasp as he dropped the unit on the seat beside him. He gunned the van’s powerpack and began to pull out of the parking bay, ready to force his way through the opening door into the garage and detonate his bomb, bringing down the entire building above him. Everyone in the basement would certainly be killed, and most of those in the apartments, too.
The van’s cargo was too dangerous for the Hawkwood security team to even consider using less-lethal methods such as nanobugs or flitterbugs. They dared not risk an explosion. The vehicle’s first centimeter of movement triggered a laser sensor, focused on the corner of its front bumper. A military particle beam rifle, a sniper’s weapon, was aimed at the driver’s head through the closed window. In the instant the vehicle began to move, the rifle fired automatically. The beam shattered the window as if it did not exist. Gentian never felt the blow as his skull and its contents were shredded by flying glass fragments and the massive energy transfer from the beam. Shattered fragments of bone and droplets of moist red-and-gray matter splattered all over the interior of the van. The vehicle jerked as his lifeless foot slipped off the accelerator, and automatically stopped as its safety sensors applied the brakes. The detonator switch in the cab, and the multiple activators built into the front of the van, never had a chance to perform their lethal function.
A kilometer away, Aferdita tried to control the fear surging up inside her. She knew her death was necessary, and that it would further the cause… but everything inside her cried out against losing the life it seemed she had only just begun to savor. She sternly commanded her trembling legs to obey her as she got out of the van, closed its door, and began to walk toward the entrance to the apartment building. She carried a box, labeled from a well-known delivery firm, plus an electronic clipboard to obtain the recipient’s signature. Her pulser was in her waistband, hidden by the box, and her explosive vest looked like just another puffy outer garment, warm against the chill of the early evening. When the recipient came to the door of her apartment to sign for the package, she would be able to visually identify her for certain. She would then detonate the vest. Her prey would not be able to escape the blast and spreading shrapnel at arm’s length.
She came to the end of the alley, and turned toward the entrance – then cried out involuntarily as four short, sharp stinging pains hit her, one just below each ear, the other further down either side of her neck. She turned her head to glimpse a small, flying ‘insect’ hovering beside her. Her eyes widened as she recognized the twin tiny tubes mounted immediately below its ‘head’… but she did not have time to do more than register their presence before dizziness swept through her. The team assigned to take her down had used double the recommended minimum dose of darts, to ensure she did not retain motor control long enough to activate her bomb vest. Her reactions already slowed by her physical discomfort, she couldn’t drop her box and the clipboard to reach her vest’s detonator switch before she slumped to the ground. She struggled briefly, but slipped into unconsciousness.
Once again, cleanup teams took care of the evidence. Within moments, everything had returned to normal. At that hour of the evening, with few passersby, no-one noticed anything out of place.
Cochrane and Hui were seated side by side on the sofa, waiting. He grabbed his comm unit as it pinged. “Cochrane.”
“Sir, it’s Tom. Complete success. We had to kill the driver of the bomb van outside your apartments. Two died at the farm, one hit by our security team on the road, one suicide with his own pulser. We’ve got the team leader, and we’re taking the woman out there to join him for interrogation. What are your orders, sir?”
Cochrane thought rapidly. “Interrogate the team leader. I want to know everything – who sent them, their mission, what they were told, anything and everything that might prove useful. Keep the woman under wraps. Don’t let her see or hear anything, and make sure she’s under constant guard. She must not be allowed to commit suicide. Bring me the recording of the leader’s interrogation as soon as it’s over, along with the highlights we’ll need to convince this ‘Antonia Funar’ that she was a target, too.”
“Aye aye, sir. Do you want us to bring her in as well?”
“I don’t know yet. It’ll depend on what we learn from the leader. Don’t forget, she’ll be at least as well trained as they were, so we’ll have to take her just as carefully if it comes to that. I want her alive, and able to understand.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’ll see you in the small hours of the morning.”
Flamar awoke to find himself lying on his back, strapped to some sort of gurney or stretcher. His arms extended from his sides at about a thirty-degree angle to his body, securely fastened to metal extensions. His left eye hurt with a dull ache, and he could feel a bandage over it, fastened around his head. His right eye was obscured by a dark cloth bag over his head, preventing him from seeing anything. He could feel a slight pain in his left elbow, and a coolness running from it up his arm. He knew at once what that meant. As his narcotic-sodden brain woke up more and more, he realized that his hair had been clipped so short it was no more than fuzz. Some sort of gel had been applied to his head, and a neural net stretched tightly over his scalp.
He struggled and writhed and tested his bonds for several minutes, but they did not give way. He desperately willed himself to die, but his body obstinately clung to life. He knew his enemies had him at their mercy. He also understood what they were about to do to him. He’d done it to others often enough to be sure about that. All he could do was conduct himself during his last conscious moments with as much courage and dignity as he could muster.
At last he heard two sets of footsteps coming down a corridor. The door to his room opened, a switch clicked, and a circle of light suddenly appeared dimly through the dark cloth of the bag over his head. A hand whisked it away, and he cried out involuntarily as the bright lights blinded him, bringing tears to his sole working eye.
A voice said in Galactic Standard English, “You know why you are here, and what we are going to do. You have five minutes to make your peace with whatever God you believe in.” A computer translated the words into Albanian through its speaker, to ensure he understood. He did not dignify them with a reply, just blinked the tears from his eye, then stared straight up into the darkness beyond the lights. He forced stillness upon his body, refusing to allow it to tremble with fear.
At last the voice spoke. “Let us begin.” A second person lifted the tube running into the needle in his arm. He knew they would be inserting a hypodermic syringe into a port and inje
cting a complex blend of narcotics. He felt it as a stinging warmth, surging up his arm. He tried to cling to his soul, to who he truly was… but he felt himself slipping away into a mental haze.
It felt as if he was swaying, like standing on the deck of a boat being rocked by small waves, or cradled in the arms of his mother as she swung him from side to side. The world grew foggy, strangely translucent. The person who had been Flamar knew – he had absolute, blind, infallible faith – that he was safe with these people. They would look after him. He need fear nothing if he did what they asked.
The voice asked, “What is your true name?”
“I… I am Flamar Hajdari.”
“What are the true names of the members of your team? Who sent you? What were your orders? When did you leave Patos? When…”
It was four hours before the voice was satisfied. By then, enough of the drug had been injected that Flamar had begun to lose his faculties forever. Within two more hours, the irreversible deterioration of his brain would push him into a vegetative state, from which he would never recover. That was an unavoidable side effect of what was otherwise the most effective interrogation drug cocktail ever developed.
“What do we do now?” the second person asked.
“There’s nothing more he can tell us, and no way to bring him back. Inject this.” Another syringe changed hands.
Within two minutes, Flamar had taken leave of life as well as his senses.
It was four the following morning before Tom Argyll finished briefing Cochrane and Hui. They all looked tired and stressed after listening to key portions of the interrogation.
“How could this Agim be so plain, damnably evil as to send killers after one of his officers who’d done nothing wrong?” Hui asked, almost in a whisper. “Does he have no loyalty to his own people?”
