Gray Man:
That you get across the street without anyone even trying to stop you is promising. Your anonymous guardian angel, whoever he or she is, appears to be accurate in its assurances that you would not be actively molested, at least not until you have actually made your un-ignorable disturbance.
That this benefactor appeared as he or she did—hacking your supposedly secure flashware without warning late last night and refusing to offer any identification whatsoever, only cryptic assurances of support—left definite doubts as to his or her veracity. The obviously synthesized voice—flat yet cool—that spontaneously piped into your interface gear without offering to identify itself could well have been from the Rads themselves, hoping to walk you into someone else’s ambush and save themselves the trouble. But it would make more sense that the Rads would want to extract at least a modicum of vengeance by their own hands. Which they may still do, in full view of a NATO Counter-Terror platoon.
But lunch is done. Time to see if this will actually work the way it’s supposed to. If not, your exit will not be easy.
You tipped your hat to your closest watcher (the one who shared lunch with you from two tables away, all the while looking like he was trying not to yell out to his comrades that their little covert surveillance was anything but), got the fingers of your left hand preset on your flashkey, and marched off to see if the Rads have spread the word about you.
There’s a very annoying chime on the deli’s door.
The overfed beard-and-knit-cap forty-something behind the counter matches your flashware’s ID-profile exactly. He looks up initially with a practiced smile, but you can almost see his limbic system dump panic into his veins within a split second of scanning you. Apparently he’s seen your little web video, or at least heard about it. His body seems like it wants to start in three directions at once, but then you notice his eyes dart over into the corner of the store, which freezes him.
So you look. And then hope you don’t look as shaken as he does when you realize how badly you’ve just fucked up.
There are small tables tucked away for in-store dining. They were somewhat out of sight from your café table, but you thought you were being careful to keep track of the comings and goings to time your entrance to catch the place free of civilians. But there’s a young couple—maybe tourists, because they don’t quite look local—finishing some kind of shared desert. You blame the ouzo or the back entrance, and lock back on the counter man.
“Hassan…” you greet him by name like an old customer. He looks like he’s forgotten how to speak or is having a stroke, and manages to greet you back in a raspy whisper:
“Greeh Mahn…”
Gray Man?
At which point he apparently decides not to wait for his customers’ safety, and a shaky hand lunges for the shotgun you know he has strapped under the countertop. So you shoot him.
The Israeli Desert Eagle you took from Al-Nahl’s corpse is so loud in the small retail space that all you can hear is ringing in your ears, and your face feels the familiar sinus-clearing slap of the .44 magnum’s shockwave. Hassan flies back and drops so fast you don’t know if you hit him, as some bottles of soda flavoring on the shelves behind him explode back into your face. Your glasses sprayed with colorful goo, you have to look over the counter to be sure you actually hit him. He sits slumped like a drunk staring at nothing with a dime-sized hole next to his nose. It’s hard to tell in the mess what’s blood and what’s syrup. You taste some kind of chemical fruit-flavor on your lips.
There’s a scream over the ringing. You woke up the tourists.
They’re frozen in panic, wide-eyed and shaking a hundred times worse than Hassan was. You tip down your interface glasses so that they can see your eyes, which hopefully will convey your intended message better.
“Run?” you suggest gently but firmly, then gesture for the door with the big pistol as they might not speak English. They do get the hint, and manage to drag each other out of the place, and not an instant too soon.
Reinforcements arrive from downstairs.
There are two coming from the back, pushing through the narrow passage of the stockroom. The lead one has an AK. The one behind is still scrambling to get his vest on. At least they appear to be following protocols.
The lead man raises his weapon and starts to scream at you, then hesitates a fraction of a second when he sees that you are not raising your gun—instead, you show him the flashkey in your left hand.
You wonder idly if he gets it before you key the speed-dial, bracing yourself and hunkering down and pulling your coat over your face and head.
The explosion seems to happen very slowly.
12
Thomas Richards:
It almost sounds like an airstrike.
“Damn it…!!”
First one blast blows the storefront glass of the deli out into the street. This is almost instantly followed by a string of additional blasts from somewhere inside. I can feel the old brick and frame structure shudder with the drumming of maybe a half-dozen muffled bangs, and more windows dissolve—not blown out, merely shattered by the vibrations—raining more glass.
“Hold position!” I’m yelling into my link. “Nobody goes in!”
“What the fuck?!” That was Burke, gathering himself up from under one of the café tables he’d reflexively tipped over for a shield. Becker cuts in and explains it for him.
“Parental Control, Captain. Datascan confirms…”
“A what?” Burke tips into incredulity, ignoring my order and moving out of the café with his sidearm in public view.
“Not general knowledge, sir,” Becker makes the effort to not make him feel stupid. “The last few generations of vests—especially the HAMAS brand—have built-in remote detonation. Just in case the mart changes their mind.”
I can hear people screaming, probably from the upstairs apartments. The sergeant we had on the falafel cart looks like he’s nursing some mild shrapnel wounds, but he keys that he’s okay.
“Datascan caught the signal,” Becker keeps going, talking fast. “He had a WiFi flashkey. He probably one-touched a flashmob speed-dial, dexed every live vest in the building.”
“Keep holding…” I’m reminding over him, but no one seems eager to charge into the smoking mess. I count ten seconds with no further detonations. I decide to give it ten more, just to be sure. “Burke!”
At least he’s being cautious—though it looks more out of shock than experience—edging his way across the street. In the relative silence (the screams have already stopped, but I can hear a baby cry), his link picks up the sound his boots make grinding glass into the street. He holds up a hand, trying to reassure me he isn’t planning to do anything too stupid, despite how little he seems to be concerned with my orders.
“I don’t see him,” he finally says, almost in the already-fading smoke. Samuels and Ransom are moving behind their guns to back him up, ready to leapfrog inside, but not very eagerly. They don’t have full armor, just torso. The very real thought that there might be more suicide vests pending has got them worried about how much precious flesh is uncovered.
“Gray,” Burke confirms, leaning warily in through the gutted windows, using his pistol’s barrel-light to cut the haze. “He’s not here.”
“Aw, shit,” I hear someone—probably Sergeant Stamos, still packing his facial wounds with styptics—complain. But we all saw it: Gray popping the register-guy cold in the face, then just standing there as his friends came (or went) running. He obviously knew and anticipated standard Wab procedure: when your safehouse is compromised, grab a bomb-vest and run for it. That way if you get cornered, you can try to take out your pursuers or as many innocents as possible. Certainly more appealing than the risk of getting rendered to an offshore for interrogation.
“So he had the remote codes for their current inventory,” Burke catches on reasonably quickly, fanning the smoke away from his face as he gingerly steps through the window, wading through piles of
dumped and leaking bottles and canned goods. “And now they’ll know that, too,” he voices my current unhappy thought.
“Still nothing?” But I know: I’m getting link feed from all three of them as they pick through the wreckage. The counter-man is indeed dead where Gray shot him. There are two other bodies—badly mangled—roughly in the doorway to the back room. The AI is already calculating blast-patterns from the wounds and other damage: it figures the first of the two who came running was either lazy or too eager—he grabbed a gun but not a vest—while the second followed procedure. Number One looks like he took a lot of Number Two’s vest’s pellets in the back.
“No Gray. Not here,” Ransom confirms. “Not even a blood-trail.”
But there is a trail: the AI can see it and highlights it. Footprints through the plaster dust and spilled and foodstuffs, already fading as more dust continues to settle like gray snow.
“He went back…” Samuels agrees. But Burke, stepping over the pair of shattered bodies, is already on it.
“He should be dead,” Burke idly complains as he checks the hidden angles with his weapon before advancing. Everything in a roughly horizontal spread—walls, boxes, cans, bottles—is peppered with vest shrapnel. “Why isn’t he dead?”
“The coat,” Becker answers him. “Something Datascan considered from the Rome video…”
“It’s armor, isn’t it?” Burke concludes sourly.
“Probably HAMAS,” I consider, trying not to sound as stupid as I suddenly feel. “Popular accessory for their vest-handlers, I hear. They can keep a close shadow on their marts, shroud themselves from the shrapnel when they blow.”
“This would be that ‘Parental Control’ thing again?” He starts snotty, then back to pro: “Explains how he walked away from Rome without a scratch.”
He winds back through the rear stockroom, past what may have been the place’s closet-sized office and employee head, and finds an open closet. With a false floor.
“Trapdoor,” Burke confirms up close. “Need a tunnel-rat?”
“Back him up,” I approve, though I’m not sure Burke was volunteering. He waits for Samuels and Ransom to shine their barrel lights down the steep, narrow steps. There’s more smoke down there.
And more bodies, as Burke’s feed shows once he manages to get downstairs: three visible in the tight-focused barrel-light as it dances through the thick haze of smoke. Two are drenched in fresh blood and peppered all over with shotgun-like wounds. The third lies bent brokenly backward, abdomen ripped out, arms gone below the elbows—he’d been vesting up when it blew on him. The flash I get of his blank, bloodied face makes him look barely fourteen. I have to give Burke credit—he doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t make a sound—he just goes about his sweep.
He pans the tight little basement, trying to make out details in all the smoke. The bare-bulb ceiling lights are gone, taken out by the blasts, and there isn’t any daylight, so the only illumination is Burke’s little barrel-light, dancing in the haze. I have to put the scene together in little flashes of illuminated images: the pit of a basement looks like a combination of an armory and a makeshift barracks: there are tables and a small kitchen and bunks. There are racks of assorted guns along two of the walls. And more vests.
“Out!” I yell at him. “Get out of there!”
“It’s okay, Colonel,” Becker chimes in, apparently as foolishly eager as Burke is. “They’re cold. The remote code won’t trigger if the vest isn’t armed.”
“It doesn’t look like they had the time or forethought to leave a booby-trap,” Burke estimates. “Still, forgive me if I don’t stay long.”
“That doesn’t mean the target hasn’t left something to get in our way,” I warn him. “Watch your advance, Captain.”
“Gray hasn’t left any surprises for us before,” Burke defends too quickly.
“We haven’t been right up his ass before,” Samuels counters, still on the topside of the trapdoor.
“You want me to catch him or not?” Burke gets snippy. I’ll cut him some slack for taking point down the hole and staying pro through it so far, but now I can tell he’s definitely earned his reputation as a discipline problem.
He keeps moving, following the currents of smoke to a second room—more cots, more supplies, more guns and assorted tools, and two more bodies, vest-shredded like the others. He scans them just to be thorough, shining bright light in dead eyes.
There’s sudden movement, and the feed-view shifts as Burke jumps back on the defensive: one of the bloody bodies comes to life, flailing. All I get is a blur of shiny red, then a gunshot. It makes me think of the zombie movies I used to make myself endure with my friends when I was a kid.
“Captain?!” I hear Ransom shout before I can.
“Clear,” Burke answers, sounding just a bit shaken. “Possum with a gun. Might have gotten the shot if he wasn’t already bleeding to death.”
I annoy him by warning him to be careful again.
“Footprints…” Burke tracks a trail of partial boot-tread patterns with his light. The boots that made them walked through blood, which means the walker came this way after the blasts. Burke’s feed leads me along with him, following the still-damp trail, to where a tall shelf of assorted hardware has been overturned and a rough sheet of plywood that must have been behind it has been cast aside to reveal a rough-chopped hole in the basement wall. The blood-smudges keep going into that pitch-black maw, and as Burke tracks into it with the barrel-light he gets a flash of what looks like someone waiting prone inside it with a gun. The camera swings sharply as Burke jumps out of line with it and hits the brickwork beside the chopped hole, waiting for hostile fire or any telltale sound of movement echoing in it at all.
I can see Burke in Samuel’s camera now—he finally squeezed himself down that closet trapdoor and is closing for backup, or was until Burke signed for him to hold and grab wall. Burke counts off a few seconds of silence, then bobs around behind his gun to check it with his barrel light. It’s definitely a tunnel—rough concrete, low and narrow—and it looks like it was cut not all that long ago, disappearing somewhere under the streets of the old city. Escape route. Except it didn’t work that way for those that made it: there are what’s left of two more bodies wedged in it, not three meters from the opening, their arms half blown off and torsos ripped in half, thoroughly sprayed with each-other’s pellets. He tips his light down like he doesn’t want to see the mess, but his camera keeps looking down into the meat-clogged tunnel. And then I see what he’s looking for: light, just a sliver of it but bright enough to be daylight, leaking into the darkness far away down the tunnel. The camera bobs as Burke ducks into the smallish opening, then bounces as he steps quickly over the bodies in his path and starts running as best he can in the low, tight space, toward the light, his own barrel-beam dancing on the tunnel floor just ahead of him.
“Backdoor!” he announces. The AI is already predicting the exit point, which looks like a manhole cover in an alley two blocks away. I send Tomlinson and Cooper off the street to meet him there, and yell at him again to watch for traps. His unbroken pace again demonstrates his lack of listening skills.
The feed gets bright when Burke makes the half-open manhole and cautiously pries himself back up into daylight. He sweeps the empty alley, then picks a direction. Comes to a street. The light foot-traffic is all slowly gravitating in the direction of the deli. They don’t seem to be giving the Captain much notice—he must have his weapon concealed down behind him or in his jacket. I can see Specialist Tomlinson running toward him, scanning the civilians himself. Then the view pivots wildly and Burke runs the other way. He almost collides with Cooper on the opposite street, the two men locking weapons on each other in the split-second before recognition. Then the feeds turn back to crowd-scanning.
But it’s pretty obvious that our target is gone. Or at least gone enough, because I can already hear the sirens coming.
“Pack it up.”
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 10
