The Ferryman

by John E. Siers

  “You were planning a corporate takeover,” she told him. “Think about it.”

  “Yeah…I see your point. Anyway, he agreed there would be no witnesses to the actual event. The family will wait outside the room while I do it, and they won’t come in until I depart. Also, we’ll still send the death notice to DHS, so they won’t have to call in the coroner or anyone else who might ask questions.”

  “I still don’t see Ragnhild just standing by and letting this happen.” Lisa shook her head. “If I was the guy’s loving daughter, I wouldn’t—especially if he’s only doing it to protect me.”

  “Yes…OK…that’s been bothering me, too,” he admitted. “And she made a big point of it—said he’s going to die anyway, so the real objective should be to just keep her alive and let him enjoy the rest of his natural days.”

  “Honestly, if I were in their place, that’s how I would play it. I’d just put heavy security on her—which he’s done, by the way, and a lot more than just her beloved bodyguard—and hold out for the duration. But then, I’d probably have whacked Johansen without a second thought.”

  “What the hell…?” Lisa was startled as the contract vanished from her pad, replaced by a flashing security alert accompanied by an audible alarm. Mark looked at his own screen, where the same alert had appeared.

  “Carla, cameras now!” Lisa demanded. “Upper level!” She studied the images that appeared. “Drone…landing on your balcony,” she announced. “It’s dropped a small package.”

  “Scotty! Shields up!” Mark ordered.

  “Aye, Captain…shields up!” his AI assistant replied in a male voice with a pronounced Scottish accent.

  “Shields up?” Lisa looked at him with a wry grin.

  “What?” He returned the look. “Hey, it’s easier to say than, ‘Activate Drone Interdiction Protocols.”

  On the screen, the drone wobbled and began making beeping sounds easily audible to the camera microphones. It had already cleared the balcony rail, but now its operators had lost contact with it, as the Ferry’s systems jammed their signals, and hit the drone’s electronics with a low-level, short-range EMP that scrambled its memory chips. The craft’s control system went into default mode, which—by FAA regulation—required it to make an emergency soft landing in the nearest available open space. The loud, audible beeps were intended to warn anyone below that it was coming down.

  “Outside…” Mark jumped from his chair and headed out of the conference room. The thing would most likely be coming down in the parking lot in front of the building. Lisa was right behind him, carrying her pad in case they needed to do anything else with the building systems.

  As expected, the thing was down when Mark came out the front door, drawing his Glock as he approached it. It’s four rotors were still spinning, and he was worried that whoever sent it might regain control. Taking careful aim, he put a round into the top of its fuselage, right where the four motor pylons came together. The .45 bullet did considerable structural damage, and the drone collapsed as the pylons folded. Three of the four rotors stopped spinning.

  “You’re terminated, fucker,” Lisa announced in her best Sarah Connor imitation. She had long been a fan of 20th-century Sci-Fi movies, of which her video collection rivaled her library of fine pornography.

  “Now let’s hope it wasn’t just Amazon with a delivery they forgot to tell us about,” Mark said, holstering the Glock.

  “Doubt it,” she said. “Don’t see any markings on it.” The drone was painted a dull, flat gray color that would have been difficult to see against the sky.

  “No registration numbers,” Mark noted. “In fact, this thing’s missing the required anti-collision and navigation lights. It’s not going anywhere, so let’s deal with the package it left upstairs.”

  “Deal with, as in…” Lisa gave him a questioning look.

  “I’ll let Waldo go get it. Somehow, I don’t think it’s a belated Christmas present.”

  Waldo was a robot—a general purpose “gopher” of Mark’s own design and construction, controlled through a simple interface to the Ferry’s secured WiFi network. His rotating tracked wheel arrangement allowed him to go just about anywhere in the building, climb stairs, and fit into tight spaces that were barely human-accessible. His manipulator arm could take a firm grip on anything a human hand could grab and was long enough to allow him to work the building’s elevator controls. His top-mounted camera could turn and tilt to view anything around him.

  Mark’s original intent was to provide a mechanical servant that could help him with some of the building maintenance chores—especially those that involved crawling into tight spaces—but Waldo had proven useful in many situations. They had even used him for a couple of terminations under unusual circumstances. Mark joked that Waldo wasn’t subject to Asimov’s First Law of Robotics, by which a robot could not harm a human being.

  What Waldo could not do was get out of the locked service room in the basement where he was stored, so Mark went down to let him out, then went back upstairs to join Lisa in the conference room.

  “He’s off the elevator and in my apartment, heading out to the balcony now.” He worked Waldo’s control interface, making sure the robot closed the balcony doors behind him as he rolled outside. “Now…let’s have a look at this thing.”

  The camera itself was mounted on an extension arm so they could see the package from any angle—but there was little to see. The thing appeared to be just a box the size of a paperback book, completely wrapped in brown paper, with tape around it. There were no labels or markings of any kind, unless they were on the bottom. It was lying on the stone floor of the balcony near the little cafe table they often used when enjoying a warm summer night in the open air.

  “Can’t just leave it laying there,” Mark muttered. He worked the control interface, and the manipulator arm reached out and got a grip on the package. “Think we’ll just turn it over and…”

  The screen went blank. Five floors above them, Waldo ceased to exist. The Ferry building was solidly built and well-insulated, but they heard—actually felt—the heavy thump of the explosion. Mark looked at Lisa.

  “That probably woke the neighborhood,” she said.

  Hastily, Mark reviewed the building’s safety and security systems. The security camera that normally covered the balcony was out, but the tower-mounted camera on the roof was still operational, and Mark swiveled it to look at the balcony below. He couldn’t see the apartment entrance from that viewpoint, but the security system told him the balcony doors were still secure.

  The fire alarms hadn’t triggered, and though he could see some smoldering fragments of something on the balcony, nothing appeared to be burning. For that matter, there wasn’t much of anything left on the balcony at all. Lightweight furniture had vanished altogether, and a section of the outer wall was missing. The sixth floor was set back a bit from the fifth, and the area beneath that damaged wall was the fifth-floor balcony. He hoped the broken masonry had landed there and not out on the street below.

  The only recognizable item still on the balcony was a heavy stone planter, and that had been overturned.

  “That was a serious blast,” he told her. “Anyone on the balcony wouldn’t have survived.”

  “Looks like somebody called 911 pretty quickly,” she remarked, pointing to the view from the street facing camera. A fire truck and an ambulance, red lights flashing, were just emerging from the fire station two blocks down the street.

  “At that distance, they didn’t need anybody to call them—their ears are probably still ringing from the blast. I’ll finish checking the building over—you go meet them out front, and I’ll call you with details. Don’t open the gate unless we need them.”

  “Roger that.” She got up from her chair and headed out. “Can I tell them what we know so far—the drone, the bomb?”

  “No…better just invoke Homeland Security. Tell them we’re handling it, but we can’t allow them access. In this cas
e, we’ll have to get HSA involved anyway. I think they’ll want to know if somebody is flying bomb-carrying drones around the city.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  It’s On!

  Half an hour later, the first responders were back in their vehicles and rolling home. Lisa had convinced them there were no injuries or fire danger, and it appeared there had been no damage from falling objects outside the Ferry’s grounds.

  In fact, the bomb had been near the outer edge of the balcony, and most everything caught in the blast—including what remained of Waldo—had been blown inward against the wall of Mark’s apartment. Surprisingly, the wall had survived the blast with only minor damage. Knew there was a reason I paid all that money for armored glass, he reflected. And now I’m going to have to spend it again. At least three panels of the wall and both the doors had major cracks in them.

  The missing section of the parapet wall had fallen onto the fifth-floor balcony, where it demolished a small water feature, narrowly missing Mark’s precious bronze Aphrodite. All in all, they’d gotten off lightly. Back downstairs, Mark had just finished talking to Homeland Security, who had a forensic team on the way. He promised to leave everything as is until they finished looking at the site.

  “I doubt they’ll find anything. I’m going to get NorthStar started on a little investigation of our own,” he told Lisa, “though we have a pretty good idea who might be behind this.”

  She had just started to reply when an incoming call got Mark’s attention. He found himself looking at Thor Nilsson’s face on the screen.

  “We must finalize this contract immediately, Mr. Marshall. There was an attempt on Ragnhild’s life early this morning.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes, she is unharmed, but…one of the staff was killed. I will let Theo tell you about it.” The screen split to show Schmidt, whose face was grim.

  “A small package was put on the hood of Ms. Nilsson’s Porsche right in front of the house where she always parks it. Ms. Givens noticed it this morning, went out to check it, and it exploded. She didn’t survive.”

  “Ms. Givens?” Mark looked at Lisa and saw his own horror mirrored in her face. “Ms. Nilsson’s…”

  “Yes…her…partner, wife, whatever you choose to call her. Despite their relationship, she never stopped doing her original job as Ms. Nilsson’s personal security, and now…”

  “The package wasn’t there yesterday.” Schmidt shook off the mood and turned professional again. “You and I walked right past the car when you left, and I would have seen it. No one else came through the gates after you left. I’m forced to believe one of the staff put it there, and the police are questioning everyone. They’ve been here for hours now.”

  “You see, Mr. Marshall?” Nilsson said. “We must proceed immediately. If you approve the contract, we can start the three-day wait period immediately.”

  “Just a moment.” Mark held up his hand. “Theo, do you have drone detection on your security system? Any form of defensive measures against drone intrusion?”

  “No…we don’t,” Schmidt admitted, his face reflecting dismay and sudden understanding. “Hollywood Hills is a drone no-fly zone, and…”

  “Right…and the city of Los Angeles is a no-gun zone, but hospital statistics show about a hundred gunshot wounds per week, and a dozen fatalities as a result.”

  “So you think the bomb was delivered by drone?”

  “I don’t think—I know it was, because the very same package was delivered by drone to my balcony about an hour ago. Fortunately, I do have drone defense, and the drone itself is down in my parking lot now. As for the package—I sent a robot to retrieve it, and parts of that robot may now be in orbit. Fortunately, no one was hurt here, but we do have some damage to the building.”

  “Any idea who sent it?”

  “No proof…but I think we both know who’s running the show. Homeland Security is coming over here, and they’re bringing the FAA with them, but as far as I can see, the drone was unregistered. I’ve also got some of my own resources working on it.”

  “NorthStar…” Nilsson suggested. “Theo, you should contact them, too.”

  “But that means I’m going to have to decline your contract, Mr. Nilsson,” Mark said. “It has now become personal, and I have to deal with the situation in my own way. I hate to turn down a five-million-dollar fee, but in fairness—if this leads where I think it will—when I resolve my problem, yours will be resolved as well, and you will no longer require my services.

  “It may even happen faster than you expect,” he told Nilsson with a grim smile. “LifeEnders is not required to observe a three-day waiting period.”

  Thor Nilsson made a strange little sucking sound, which Mark recognized as the unique form of assent practiced by people in northern Sweden—the equivalent of a vigorous nod of the head and a substitute for the regular Swedish ja—yes.

  “I understand,” the billionaire said. “You’re telling me my stepson may not be a threat much longer—and I cannot fault you, because he or someone in his employ tried to kill you as well.

  “You are also an honest businessman, which I respect and appreciate. You could have taken my money and gone ahead with your own solution. If you do it within three days, I won’t want to proceed, but then I’ll be in breach of contract, and you’re entitled to the entire fee.

  “So fine…we do it your way. I’ll concentrate my efforts on protecting my daughter until it’s done. Please keep Theo advised on your investigations.”

  “Either you’ve got a rogue agent on your hands, or somebody is out there whacking without a license.”

  “Not one of ours,” Jay Morgan insisted. “Besides, we would never use drone-delivered bombs. Too much chance of a target ID problem—which seems to be what happened in the Nilsson hit.”

  “Yeah…and mine, too—I’m pretty sure they were after me, but if we hadn’t caught them, it could just as easily have been Lisa who found the package.”

  “And you’re sure that thing wasn’t a UFO?”

  “It was a UFO,” Mark snorted. “It was a flying object, and we still haven’t identified who sent it.”

  “I meant extraterrestrial—as in ‘alien spacecraft’—I know,” Morgan shrugged, “sounds silly, but I got a strange memo from on high a few weeks ago—had to send it out to all field operatives advising them to report any known or suspected UFO activity to SAD. Apparently, they have people who deal with such things.”

  “No, this was definitely from Earth. Looked like a commercial delivery drone, but with no markings.”

  “So now you’ve got Feds out the wazoo, crawling all over your place. How’s that working out for you?” Morgan gave him a crooked grin.

  “Actually, it wasn’t that bad. They got what they wanted, and they’re gone now. They took the drone with them, but I’ve already got a preliminary report. It was homebuilt using commercial parts, no registration, but some of the parts may be traceable. HSA’s lab also says the explosive used was C-4—not the most modern stuff, but one of the most readily available.

  “The Feds are keeping it quiet—no fuss, and they told us not to give anything to the media. Cover story is an electrical transformer blew up on our roof. That’s pretty weak, since there are no transformers up there, but that’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. No mention of FAA involvement, either.”

  “Yeah, well, you know what that’s about.” Morgan nodded. “Ever since 9/11, they’ve been hoping nobody figures out that drones are ideal weapons for terrorists. These days, any teenager can build one in his garage, and all attempts to license and regulate them have failed. With control via IP, a bad guy sitting in Baghdad can land one on top of the Statue of Liberty. All he needs is somebody somewhere in New York to deploy and launch it for him.

  “So far, that hasn’t happened—which might have something to do with the fact that my people have cleaned out most of the bad guys in Baghdad, but…” Morgan shrugged, “we can’t cl
ean out every piss-ant gang in Los Angeles.”

  “Right…though I can think of one that might be a good start. I just want to put more pieces together before I ask you to start on them.”

  “Ms. Nilsson…I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Mark and Lisa were having lunch after his conference with Morgan when the call came in. It was a number he didn’t recognize, and he was about to send it to voicemail, when the caller sent a voluntary video ID, and Ragnhild’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Yes…thank you, Mr. Marshall.” She paused for a moment to collect herself. “Mr. Marshall, you and I didn’t get on very well when you were here, but I understand that you were simply following my father’s instructions. Now he’s told me of your decision not to accept the contract, and I have a better understanding—a much more favorable opinion, shall we say.”

  “Ms. Nilsson, I was reluctant to accept the contract in any case, simply because it wouldn’t solve the problem you and your father have. The fact that that problem has now become my problem made the decision easy.”

  “Hopefully, I am about to make it even easier for you,” she said. “I told you I didn’t want to take direct action against my half-brother out of respect for my mother’s memory, but now the situation has changed. If he was responsible for what happened here, I want him dead.

  “No, actually…” she paused for a moment, “I want him to suffer horribly and die in absolute agony…but I’ll settle for just having him dead. Can you understand that?”

  Mark said nothing but nodded slowly. At that point, Lisa came up behind him and put her head on his shoulder, leaning into camera range.

  “Ms. Nilsson, we haven’t met. I’m Lisa Woods, Mark’s business partner and also his…”