“Okay,” he said, but he still seemed nervous.
Ellie looked at him for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Everything’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ll be okay. Don’t worry about this.”
“You know what I think.”
“I know. But we’ll be fine. And anyway, if anything terrible happens, it won’t be happening to you.”
Joe looked over at her. “At least, not until after you’re dead.”
Ellie thought about that. “How do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No,” she said. “Tell me.”
“Just that I’m not safe really, am I? If they kill you, they’re going to come outside and look at the car you arrived in.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“I’m not complaining. I can look after myself. I just meant that this isn’t completely safe for me, either.”
Ellie looked at him for a moment, then tapped her comm. “Are you there?” she said to the operations centre.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If at any point our biosensors show that I and my partner are both dead, would you please let our driver know immediately so he can get away?”
“Of course, ma’am,” the operations centre said.
“You have his phone number?”
“We do.”
“Is your phone on?” Ellie asked Joe.
He looked at her, as if she was joking.
“Is it?” she asked.
He checked. “Yes.”
“Is there a signal here?”
Joe looked again and nodded.
“His phone’s on,” Ellie said to the operations centre. “Please make certain you tell him if anything happens.”
“We will, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” she said, and broke the connection. “Happy?” she said to Joe.
“I didn’t mean…”
“I know. But it’s a good point. It’s fair enough. Drive off and leave us if anything goes wrong.”
“No.”
“Don’t argue.”
“I’m not. But I’m not leaving you two behind.”
“We’ll be dead. We won’t care.”
“You might only be injured.”
“Not if the biosensors are showing us dead.”
“The sensors might just be damaged. Or the signals shielded or blocked somehow.”
Ellie shook her head. “Then there’d be no signal at all. Not an end-of-life signal.”
“Oh,” Joe said, sounding unsure, almost confused, as if he’d forgotten that.
Ellie looked at him, curious. She seemed to remember these were a newer model of biosensor, but she wasn’t sure how new. She supposed the equipment must have been different when Joe was in the MidEast, but didn’t want to embarrass him by pointing out just how long he had been stuck in Měi-guó.
“I want you to leave if our sensors say we’re dead,” she said.
Joe didn’t answer.
“Tell me you will, or I’ll call the ops centre back and have them cancel your contract right now.”
He looked at her, then shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll leave.”
“You will?”
He nodded. “I will.”
“Good boy,” she said, grinning, teasing him. She was feeling a bit silly and edgily overexcited because she was about to go into combat. A bit silly, but not so much that she didn’t notice Joe was still looking at her rather than the road. “Um, look out,” she said mildly.
They were a hundred meters from the compound and getting closer fast.
“Fuck,” Joe said as he noticed too, and then he started to slow down.
Chapter 11
The militia compound was a cluster of buildings two hundred meters back from the road. It was surrounded by two fences, a high metal inner fence, tight against the buildings, and a second outer wire-mesh fence around the whole property, running along the roadside boundary and back along the sides. That was the fence Ellie had been looking at behind the compound.
Both fences were substantial, with heavy gates, and coils of razor wire along their tops as well. The outer fence had faded warning signs hanging from it at chest-height, probably just saying no trespassing, but perhaps that it had once been electrified. Or perhaps it still was. Ellie wasn’t sure. She hadn’t been able to read the faded lettering as they drove past.
The ground between the two fences was cleared of scrub, and level, and the grass had been cut short enough it wouldn’t be easy to infiltrate across it, either in person or with sensor drones. Ellie assumed there was some kind of defensive sensor net in that grass, even if it was only a basic motion sensor and camera system. She assumed there were sensors at the front gate, as well, and they were going to be seen as soon they arrived.
She assumed so, and a lot more besides, because it was safest to assume the worst.
She was assuming, for instance, that both gates were reinforced, and strong enough that ramming them with anything less than a bulldozer or fully-loaded truck wouldn’t push them over. She was assuming the gates had remote locks, and could be opened from inside the compound, so there was no hope of taking hostages and interrogating someone who came out to open a gate. She was assuming the militia was armed, probably fairly heavily, and fortified, and that there were firing positions on the buildings’ roofs with clear fields of fire over the inner fence to the front gate. She was assuming there were very likely buried landmines or explosive charges out in the grass between the two fences, making it extremely dangerous to wander off the actual driveway between the two gates, or to try and climb fences at the back of the compound.
She was assuming a lot, because those were just the basic, common-sense precautions anyone with a compound like this ought to take. If her assumptions were wrong, this whole exercise would be a lot easier. But she really didn’t have much hope they would be.
Instead, she was planning around those assumptions, and had decided they meant two main things. First, they needed to go in through the gates, where they knew there were no traps, or that the traps which were there could be disarmed easily, so the militia themselves could come and go. And second, that she and Sameh had to talk their way through the first gate, even if they fought their way through the second.
They had to talk. That was the trickiest part of all of this, and there was no easy way around it.
The area around the outer gate was flat and open, with absolutely no cover at all. It was a death trap, an obvious killing zone, and worse, the people inside the compound would expect trouble to begin there, to come at them through that gate, and so would be very well prepared to stop it. It was almost certainly too dangerous to fight their way in from the outside gate, and if they tried, they would just be pinned down and killed, eventually.
Instead, they needed to get inside the outer fence, past the outer perimeter, beyond the open area with only cut grass and wire fencing to hide behind, before they started shooting.
If they could talk their way in through the first gate, and get up to the second, then they had a chance. Then they would have cover when trouble started, up against the solid metal wall of the compound, out of sight and able to shoot back at anyone who looked over. There they would be hidden, and could deploy drones from cover, and hopefully they would be able to force the gate open if they had to.
That was Ellie’s plan, but it depended on them reaching the inside gate before they began shooting, not fighting their way across the militia’s front lawn. If they could get inside, she thought, the whole thing might work. If they couldn’t, then it would be too dangerous to do anything, and they would have to leave, just drive away, and call in an assault team after all.
Which she desperately didn’t want to do.
*
Ellie and Sameh got out of the SUV, and walked over to the compound’s gate. There was no obvious buzzer or bell, so Ellie just thumped on the gate itself a few times
, so it rattled as she banged.
Because there was no buzzer, she assumed she was being watched already. The militia were trying to be discouraging, to make casual visitors go away, but they would have to be watching, to see who was outside. Ellie couldn’t see the camera, but it must be there, and the camera being hidden was a good thing. A hidden camera ought to have poorer resolution than a more obvious one, and was probably somewhere up high, on top the fence. A high-mounted low-res camera might not give a good enough image for the people inside to see Ellie and Sameh clearly, and to see that they were wearing tactical armor under their clothes.
That was a piece of good luck.
“Hey,” Ellie shouted, and rattled the gate again. If it had any kind of remote lock on it, then shaking it like that would be setting off alarms inside, at the control panel.
She rattled, and called out, and looked around, trying to seem impatient.
After a moment, an intercom buzzed off to her left. Ellie looked, and saw it, screwed and also taped to one of the gateposts. It was dusty. She hadn’t noticed until then because of the dust.
“Hey,” she said, and leaned towards it slightly. “Is John here?”
“What do you want?” a voice said, from the intercom.
The voice was a man, and sounded American. That was all Ellie could tell. The sound was flat and scratchy. The intercom wasn’t very high quality, which was also good. It implied the camera wouldn’t be either.
“I want John,” Ellie said, glad she’d picked a common name, and had guessed correctly. At least, she assumed she’d guessed correctly, since the man inside wasn’t telling her there were no Johns there.
“Who are you?” the voice asked.
“It’s business. Could you go get him, please?”
“Why?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Um, not yours unless you’re John.”
A pause. Someone inside was thinking, or getting instructions from a supervisor.
Ellie thumped the gate, and rattled it a little more. “Come on,” she shouted.
“Wait,” the voice on the intercom said.
“I’m in a hurry.”
“Just wait.”
Ellie shrugged, shrugged obviously, overdoing it, and then just stood there. She looked around. She waited, as she’d been told to do.
The intercom buzzed again, and then the voice said, “Someone will come down to you.”
“No way,” she said. “Let me in.”
Being met out here wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to get inside their perimeter, not be stuck out here, exposed to their fire, with only an expendable hostage to negotiate with. Expendable, because they were sending that person out in the first place, so they didn’t care about them very much.
“Stay there,” the voice said.
“Not a chance,” Ellie said, thinking quickly. “I’m not doing this here, on the side of the road, where anyone can see.”
“Doing what?” the voice said.
“Business,” Ellie said sharply. “Which isn’t yours. Go get John.”
“I’m John.”
There had been a hesitation. Enough of a hesitation Ellie guessed it was a lie.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Let me in.”
“Not until you say why you’re here.”
Ellie thought for a moment, then took a risk. She turned around, and reached for the bag Sameh was holding, the bag with the submachine guns.
Business had to be weapons or drugs, she thought. With a fortified compound like this, it had to be weapons or drugs or something worse, human trafficking or the like. Ellie didn’t have any drugs on her, and she didn’t want to pretend Sameh was a captive she intended to sell, and she imagined that selling weapons probably fit their appearance better anyway, especially if the person looking at them through the camera happened to notice their tactical armor.
Ellie pulled Sameh closer, as she reached for the bag. “I’m improvising,” she whispered, as she unzipped the top.
She glanced up and down the road, obviously, acting all suspicious and furtive, and making too much of it. The road was empty, so she took out the topmost submachine gun, probably her one, and held it down in front of her body.
She turned towards the gate, towards the camera, and stood there for a moment.
“Can you see?” she asked.
“I see,” the voice said.
She nodded, turned back to Sameh, and put the gun back in the bag, quickly.
“I’m selling these,” she said to the intercom. She glanced around again, needlessly, and said, “You saw what it was? What model?”
“I did.”
“You could see clearly?”
“Yes, I saw.”
“They’re debt-authority issue, from a depot and a shipment that got misplaced. They’re new, never used except to test. I was told John would be interested.”
“He might be,” the voice said. “How many do you have?”
“Sixteen,” Ellie said, picking a number out of the air. Because sixteen was an unusual number and seemed more believable than fifteen or twenty, and because she wanted it to be a large enough number that it was worth the militia dealing with her, but not so large it seemed odd she was trying to sell them at a shitty little militia compound in the middle of nowhere.
“Sixteen,” she said again, then added, “And five thousand rounds of mixed ammo.”
“We need to see them.”
“I assumed,” Ellie said. “But not here. Either let me in, or meet me somewhere else, somewhere private.”
“Do you have everything with you?” the voice asked.
Ellie didn’t answer. She didn’t look at the SUV, which was probably where the watchers were assuming the guns were. She just stood there, silently, fairly sure a grey-market arms dealer wouldn’t answer a question like that.
“How much do you want for them?” the voice said, after a moment.
“Something reasonable,” she said. “We can talk about it. But not here.”
There was a short silence. They were talking to each other with the intercom off, Ellie assumed. They were probably suspicious, but not as suspicious as they would have been once, or would be in other parts of the world. Here, in Měi-guó, there weren’t really very many undercover arms-control officers wandering about, so someone trying to sell guns door-to-door was probably actually just selling guns, not trying to catch them in illegal weapons trading.
The intercom buzzed again. “Why didn’t you contact us first?” the voice asked. “Why just turn up?”
“What, talk on the phone?” Ellie said, doubtfully. She waved upwards, meaning signals interception by satellites and drones.
“You should have contacted us.”
“I’m contacting you now.”
There was another silence. Ellie assumed that meant the voice had decided she was right about the risk of the phone call being overhead.
She thumped the gate again. “Come on,” she said. “It’s just an offer. If you aren’t interested, just say so and I’ll go somewhere else. But don’t be assholes about it and waste my time.”
“Wait,” the voice said. “We’re deciding.”
“I’m waiting. But not very much longer.”
“Wait.”
“I’m about to leave.”
“All right,” the voice said. “Okay. Come inside. But just you.”
“Nope,” Ellie said. “My security too. I need her to carry the samples.”
The voice didn’t answer, but the gate buzzed, and clicked unlocked, which Ellie assumed meant they agreed. She was a little surprised this had actually worked, but she grinned at Sameh, and then pushed the gate open.
The gate had unlocked remotely, Ellie noticed, but it hadn’t opened by itself. That was good. It was very good. It was lucky, like guessing the correct name had been lucky, because it meant she and Sameh could leave a line of retreat open in case they needed it, and not be trapped betwe
en the two fences.
Ellie opened the gate, swinging it as wide as it would go, and then deliberately left it open. She picked up a small rock from beside the driveway, and placed it against the gate, so it couldn’t swing closed. It wasn’t a very big rock, and it would have done little to stop a motorized gate. But here, when all she needed to do was make sure the wind didn’t nudge it, it would do.
She put the rock down, and kicked it against the gate to make sure it stayed put, and then she and Sameh walked up the driveway towards the second gate.
*
The second gate was solid and metal, and the fence to either side of Ellie was thick metal too, what looked like sheets of old roofing iron set vertically into the ground. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, she thought, but it was high, and would be difficult to climb, and the wire along the top was substantial as well.
It wasn’t even worth trying to climb over, Ellie thought as they walked up. Even if she and Sameh lifted one another, they wouldn’t manage. To get over, they would need to bring the SUV up and climb onto it first, and that would be very difficult under fire.
The gate was the only way in.
She walked up to the gate, and stopped in front of it. She banged on it, hard, and shouted, “We’re here.”
There was another camera set up here, a better one, and in plain sight. Ellie saw it, but she didn’t look up at it. She looked at the gate instead, trying to seem natural, impatient, and like she was in a hurry to do her business, while also keeping her face down and her arms folded, so they couldn’t see her, or what she was wearing, very easily.
She waited, but nothing happened. That was a bad sign. She thumped again, a little worried, hoping she was just being looked over again, more carefully.
She must have been, because after a moment the gate was pulled open from the inside.
It opened inward, swinging from one gatepost, like the outside gate had. It only swung a meter or two, though. There was a young man standing there, a forgettable young man. The everyday of Měi-guó, Ellie thought. Normal clothes, like she had been seeing all over the town, normal hair, cut fairly short, and some straggly facial hair. Everything about this young man was forgettable and normal, and Ellie wasn’t quite sure how accidental that was.
The Debt Collectors War Page 16
