by Blaze Ward
“I meant in his report to Tanaka,” Handsome clarified.
“No, it was verbal,” Alicia relented. “He didn’t transmit anything from inside the room that I was able to identify. Once he was out of range, I don’t know. Why?”
Rob surprised her by turning to Esme now.
“How long do you figure we have?” he asked. “Until news from Ramsey becomes present tense?”
“Twenty-four hours from right now is probably as safe as we can expect,” the woman replied with a shrug both verbal and physical. “Call it midnight tomorrow night and then we should expect something. Why?”
“I left them with the opening that they might want to hire me when you’re done with me,” Handsome said. “Nothing concrete now, but an expectation that they’d get a call from me in a year. Do we burn them tonight?”
“Tonight?” Alicia blurted out before she could stop herself.
“Audacity,” Handsome Rob turned to her now. “They’ve been in here and looked around. I’ve been there and seen the sights. Do we sneak in and try to compromise them right now, before they know any better? In two days, I presume they’ll harden everything, assuming they don’t just run like hell for another planet where nobody can find them. Won’t be anything left at the ranch incriminating if they are any good.”
“And tomorrow night?” Alicia asked anyway.
“Maybe nothing,” Rob shrugged. “Maybe the news arrives early and they disappear at lunch.”
“And maybe they’re in the middle of a disaster drill tomorrow night because the news has arrived,” Esme pointed out. “That might be a good time to penetrate their security, as everything will be up in the air.”
“If I had the rest of the Can’t Shoot Straight Gang, sure,” Rob said.
“You don’t think I can measure up?” Esme snapped.
“I’ve seen your training numbers, Mac,” Handsome snapped back as Alicia watched. “I’ve helped train you, and you were in the top third of your group, competing against men and women half your age, with some of them fresh out of boot camp and advanced training.”
He surprised Alicia now by turning those dreamy eyes this way and fixing her with a predator stare.
“Can Alicia handle that scenario?” Rob asked Esme in a hard voice, even as he looked at her. “We can’t do this via remote access. Too much risk of signals traffic giving us away if we transmit something, and we don’t have the slightest clue what it will take to crack everything at that end. I’d need to take both of you in across country, through the perimeter, access the building that looks like a show barn, and hope that the computers I need are in that building, rather than in the main house. My bet is that one, but it’s only a guess until the ball stops bouncing. One mistake and we’ve blown the case. Your case.”
Alicia kept her snarl at the man polite. But only because he might be right.
Her good, Polish peasant genes, inherited from Mom, didn’t lose weight when she was stressed. Or not eating. Or exercising.
They presumed she was being chased by German knights, Danish raiders, or Mongol Hordes and stored away as many calories as they could against future need.
Gymnasiums be damned.
But he was also one of the Cowboys on Three. And a special one at that. The field agents who did crazy car chases and wild gunfights hanging off the sides of starships, like in the vids.
He didn’t think she had what it took to get chased by Danish raiders. That was clear in his eyes.
Esme had fallen silent.
Alicia glanced over and caught the appraising look on the woman’s face as well.
Alicia figured she could insert something salty and maybe a little rude here, but that wouldn’t make her case, and might piss Esme off.
Like the woman had said, maybe she needed to take her physical fitness quarterlies more seriously. Blowing by the numbers instead of just barely passing. Turn those Polish genes into something where she could outwalk some dork on horseback. Run down an antelope because she had the endurance and eventually they just fell over dead from exhaustion as she chased them.
Wasn’t going to happen tonight, but if she wanted to go on a second mission with these two, Alicia could see it becoming necessary.
She held her peace, and her breath, as Mac ran the numbers in her head.
Audacity had a lot going for it, but the risk was absolute. They permanently burned Tanaka as a potential contact, even if he was innocent of being Lonelyman.
Of course, the man was living and working in Salonnia, so it wasn’t like he was a cherub among men. The only question was what kind of crime he was involved in and how much of it had spilled across a treaty boundary on a map.
Or they took the slow, methodical approach, like spies were supposed to do. Build the case carefully, one fragment or shard at a time.
With the risk that the target might simply vanish before they got anywhere, and the whole mission was a bust.
The bosses had sent Handsome Rob, but put Esmeralda MacTavish in charge.
“Shit,” Esme muttered after a long heartbeat of silence.
“What?” Alicia asked.
“Dig out your comfortable shoes, Alicia,” Esme said. “We’re leaving shortly.”
25
Audacity.
Rob had considered getting the word translated into some obscure language that had survived the Cataclysm and tattooing it somewhere. Except that would make it memorable, in a business where anonymity paid dividends.
Maybe he needed to buy a yacht one of these days and name it that instead?
They had to minimize all the footprints that they were about to leave, stomping all over the scene of the crime in their hurry, so he was down in the resort’s long-term vehicle storage, where the hotel left trucks and stuff that they didn’t need except during major holidays or something. Maintenance bays and a field.
Nigel had given him a device that was flat illegal on every planet, anywhere. Rob had removed the faceplate from an electronic doorlock’s cover and snipped an alarm wire, and now his plugged-in gadget was sledgehammering the tiny computer brain with every possible combination that the manufacturer might have used. Only about fifty million options, but it clicked so quickly that Rob wondered if they had left it on factory default.
Whatever. He was in.
Rob turned the handle and pulled the door open enough to confirm that the lights were off inside before he removed Nigel’s toy and slipped it carefully into a pocket of his slate gray pants. The tactical stuff you wore in the field, where dead black stood out almost as badly as reflective tape.
The cover went back on and it would hopefully take a while before anybody noticed that the door wasn’t signaling things when it should.
With luck, he’d be off-planet by then, instead of dead or in jail.
Tanaka didn’t look like the type who would press charges officially.
Inside, Rob closed the door behind him and flipped on the light. Alicia promised him that she could kill any alarms he accidentally tripped, but much of the resort relied on local locks and ringing bells that she couldn’t control.
Someone had to do it by hand.
Small office. The sort of place where the head mechanic could sit and do paperwork when he needed. Rob located a key holder box on the wall and flipped it open.
Fobs for every vehicle. Four types, depending on manufacturer. Rob needed light trucks, and had already located and identified the easiest one to steal tonight.
Step one, have the right fob to start it, so the motion alarm hidden inside didn’t go off. As long as nobody was visually tracking the vehicles stored back here, they wouldn’t notice anything until morning. Maybe next week, if he was lucky.
He grabbed the little disc that would slip into a slot on the dash and pocketed it.
To the door, he cracked it open and peeked, but nobody was around. The resort didn’t have a second or third shift of the maintenance garage, so he hadn’t seen anyone around.
Didn’t m
ean he wouldn’t run into a couple of drunk tourists or kids sneaking away from parental units to fool around.
He put his head down, slipped out the door, and pushed it closed.
The field lights back here were off. If there were any. Rob couldn’t remember seeing lights before, so they might not exist. He had enough leftover light from the nearby buildings to navigate.
And music from a poolside luau kept wafting over everything.
Back corner, farthest from the front desk and anything official, but actually pretty close to the people who always wanted the quietest wing. Hopefully they wouldn’t call the front desk to complain about a repulsor truck moving around at night, but there wasn’t much he could do about it right now except act like he was on a mission.
Rob pressed the button in the middle of the disc as he got close and lights blinked at him.
He approached, and paranoia got the best of him, so Rob peeked into the bed, worried that he might see two kids necking, or a snake sleeping.
Neither. Big win.
Rob let go a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
He opened the driver door and stuck the disc into the slot.
Shadows detached themselves from the nearby darkness, but Rob was expecting them, so he didn’t draw the pistol on his back hip, under his shirt.
“Pop the hood,” Alicia whispered as she got close.
Rob reached under the dash and rooted around until he found something that felt like a lever. He pulled and the generator compartment cover clicked up a handspan.
Alicia did something and lifted it the rest of the way. A moment later, she closed it again and came around to where Mac was standing by the passenger door, hand held triumphantly in the air.
Mac opened the door and slipped her big gear bag in behind the seat. She’d already had the hotel run her up to the ship, at the port on the mainland, so she could retrieve something she forgot.
It just happened to be an urban assault gear bag that the Service had originally created. Rob had tucked a bunch of secondaries in there, things Nigel and the Can’t Shoot Straight Gang swore by.
Alicia climbed in and slid across the bench seat until she was pressed against his side. Mac was in a moment later and pulled the door quietly closed.
Rob started the ignition and nodded at them as the various systems came live and the flight collective wiggled in his hand.
Rob set the truck to rising. It beeped loudly, like they were supposed to, warning people to get out of the way.
Nothing he could do about that, either, so he just flew like a hotel employee until he got fifty feet in the air and pushed the collective forward. The beeps stopped, and hopefully no high roller had gotten annoyed enough to call the front desk.
“They can’t track us,” Alicia said out of the blue, holding up the thing in her hand. “At the same time, all your lights are dead, the radio won’t work, and the navigation system has been lobotomized, so we’re invisible as long as you don’t buzz anyone.”
Rob nodded. She’d said she could do it, but it was nice to know that Alicia could deliver.
There was already a stupid amount of risk riding on this mission tonight.
He pointed the truck west as they cleared the edge of the building and started his run out to sea, so he didn’t happen to fly over any of the other islands tonight.
No reason Tanaka should get any warning they were coming.
26
Mac watched the darkness roll by beneath them, broken by the occasional farm house, bodega, or bar. This far inland, there wasn’t much population, and what was there was spread pretty thin.
Farms or ranches, broken up by the occasional village, or more likely just a collection of buildings on a corner where folks might drive to pick up something.
Middle of nowhere, at least metaphorically compared to the island resort they had left an hour ago.
Rob had them flying low. Right at the bottom of normal flight operations, so only about two hundred feet in the air. Fortunately, there were no trees around here that got that tall, and the power lines were generally marked with glowing balls so you didn’t fly into them.
She’d gone over the mission in her head a dozen times, trying to find the best approach, but the fuse was burning, at least in their minds. Alicia was confident that she could penetrate the facility’ computers, but Rob assumed he or she would end up shooting someone before it was done. Unless they took everything down tonight, Tanaka would close up shop tomorrow, to have been subject to armed burglary.
Gone.
Either he had what they needed in his computers and she could take him down, or he didn’t and probably got away in the morning.
Or worse, he just happened to be an innocent businessman and the real Lonelyman would be close by, watching Tanaka get hit and do the math well enough to figure that someone was coming for them.
Nothing like rolling the dice.
Espionage was supposed to be slow and deliberate. Her case against Guadarrama had taken months to assemble, until she found his weak spot in the accountant and was all set to stick a knife into the organization.
Rob with a pair of stun grenades had been necessary at the end, but Miguel had assured her that sometimes you did everything right and the bad guys still got lucky.
She didn’t want Lonelyman getting lucky.
“Time,” Rob called quietly.
Alicia looked up from her tablet and then closed it and stuffed it into a pocket. Mac brought herself back to the surface and looked out the front window.
Tanaka’s ranch was apparently that cluster of lights in the distance.
Rob brought the vehicle to a halt and descended until the lights nearly vanished behind a straight line of trees that probably marked a boundary.
“This good enough?” he asked.
“Spin me sideways so I’m looking out your window,” Alicia replied, digging a small sensor unit out of her breast pocket and bringing it live.
Rob opened a window to let in the muggy night air and expertly slid the truck around, even though it normally flew like a pig on ice. Alicia pointed the gadget at the darkness and watched it do whatever esoteric magic it did.
“Good news,” she said after a moment. “There’s an active landing beacon, but no short range sensors. Presumably, you can land pretty close inside the wire.”
“Need darkness first,” Rob muttered so quietly Mac almost missed it.
The man was tense, but he was working with a wildcard tonight. He had already stormed a building with her. It was Alicia making him nervous.
Mac couldn’t argue with his logic. One mistake now and the case was done.
They might as well get back onto the transport and head home at that point.
Rob lifted them some and slid the truck sideways, watching something in the distance. Mac wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but they moved a considerable distance sideways along the trees before he grunted and turned the hood towards the farm again.
Ah. The show barn was between them and the main house now. Tall building should protect them from casual watchers. Not much moonlight tonight luckily, with both of the moons pretty small and barely providing any illumination.
There were lights around the buildings, but not much they could do about that, except hope that Tanaka didn’t keep a military-style perimeter.
Or dogs.
“Okay, we’re about to commit,” Rob said louder, leaving the window down as he moved.
Mac assumed that was so he could hear ambient noises in the night. She thumbed her window down as well.
“Let’s do it,” she replied.
Rob pushed the controls forward and they crossed the outer fenceline almost low enough to touch the trees.
Nothing like rolling the dice with your case.
27
Handsome kept his eyes focused on the quad with the house and the barns. Hopefully, it only superficially looked like a navy base, and wasn’t really secured like one.
Last thing he needed right now was to stumble into a shore patrol detachment. At least he was sober this time.
He didn’t remember seeing any horses during the flight in, just a couple clusters of cattle in distant fields. Maybe fifty head all together. Not enough for a working ranch, but probably sufficient for a man to raise his own dinner and entertain folks.
Not that he figured that Tanaka did much of the work himself, rough hands or not. He’d have people for that, unless he felt like being a cowboy occasionally. And there weren’t tanks for milk, so hopefully the whole place was just for meat.
Show farm. Pretty, but not a working place. Kinda like that show barn with the tac range. Expensive and nice, but not the place where serious professionals went to work.
At least until tonight.
Rob crept the truck forward slowly, low and eyes on the terrain.
There. Nice dark shadow. Not deep enough to be a pond, but the land wasn’t as flat as a rugby pitch here. The truck didn’t have any running lights, thanks to Alicia, but there were still reflectors on the corners by law. One light at the wrong angle might draw someone out to see what the hell was going on.
Rob dropped close to the ground, flying by touch now rather than relying on visual cues that would be thrown off by all the shadows. The barn vanished except for the top and Rob cut forward motion. Quickly, he brought them down.
It only beeped twice before he cut the lifters and shut everything down. Hopefully, no nosy cattle would wander over and sound an alarm.
Or whatever the big beasts did. Rob was a city boy. Still, he figured a couple of shots from the class one heavy stun pulse stunnar would knock one down.
He opened his door and slid out. Mac did the same on the other side, grabbing that heavy bag once Alicia got clear.
Rob joined them and unzipped the bag quickly, pulling out a little flash he attached to his unbuttoned overshirt for now so he could see.
“Here, put these on both forearms.” Rob handed a bundle to Alicia.
The other bundle he split, handing one bracer to Mac and sliding the other onto his left forearm.
