Outlaw, page 33
Saito lost his protection, clinging to the blood-soaked misericorde as it tore out of the falling man’s torso.
‘Fucker!’ shouted Bragg as he came into the engagement, and the ex-cop pumped five rounds across the warehouse. Three of them hit Saito, the first a glancing kiss across the top of his right shoulder, the second and third into his belly.
He fell on his back with a grunt of pain, his head striking the ground with a thud. Wreathed in agony, he could only stare upwards at the rusting metal roof overhead. Raindrops made circles on the soot-stained skylights up there, and he heard thunder.
‘Shit! You shot Creel!’ Bragg’s voice seemed to come from far away.
‘See that knife? Dead already,’ Weldon grunted, coming closer. ‘Did him a favour. Quick finish.’
Saito had lost the gun, but he still clutched the bloody dagger. He tried to move, but agony made that impossible. He remembered the shot that had nearly killed him in Mogadishu; this was worse. He was torn up inside, he could feel it. With a hiss of exertion, he managed to lift his head.
‘The fuck we do with this asshole?’
Bragg hovered at the edge of Saito’s vision, glaring at him.
‘Boss said to put him in the van,’ noted Weldon. The sound of his words grew indistinct and hazy. ‘Give the Feds something to waste their time on after.’
‘Oh, right.’ Bragg came closer, sighting down the barrel of his pistol. ‘Okay.’
Rumiko.
Saito made himself think of his daughter. Her beautiful face and the melody of her voice.
He blotted out everything but the sound of thunder.
SEVENTEEN
The rain rattled constantly against the diner’s window, pushed by the wind until it was coming in vertically against the glass. Marc leaned against it, the cold leaching the heat from his face. The chill helped him to shake off the last of his travel fatigue – that, and the bottomless cups of strong black coffee which the waitress kept topping up from a steaming glass jug.
He had no idea what setting his body clock was on. Moscow time, European time, Middle of the Bloody Ocean time, it blurred into one.
He peered out at the traffic on Atlantic Avenue, searching the street for some kind of sense of the hour. The densely overcast sky made it difficult to tell. Here on the US east coast it was morning, but exactly what part he didn’t know.
Earlier than I care for, he told himself, and dumped another sachet of sugar into his mug before taking a mouthful.
The diner was two thirds empty, with a handful of truck drivers and early birds tanking up on carbs and breakfast specials. It had a faux-80s vibe with lots of brushed aluminium detailing and hot-pink neon, rejecting the more usual post-war Americana typical of such places for something closer to the present day. There were booths that could comfortably seat four people, and no security camera coverage, both of which suited the needs of the Rubicon team.
Across from him, Lucy was lost in her machine-like consumption of a plate of waffles. She forked the food into her mouth, but her gaze was distant, unseeing. Marc’s expression shifted into a concerned frown.
It couldn’t be easy for her to be here. The diner sat on the edge of the borough where she had been born and raised. She hadn’t come back here in years, as far as Marc knew. There was too much baggage. Too many awkward questions she wasn’t ready to face.
In a way, she wasn’t here now, either. Lucy was barely present, deep into her spec ops preparation, being what Marc’s old MI6 instructors had called the ‘grey man’. The unremarkable and unmemorable person that no one paid attention to.
Lucy wore a New York Mets snapback pulled down low over her eyes, the rest of her hidden in a shapeless hoodie a size too large for her. She blended into the rest of the locals so well she vanished, and that thousand-yard stare in her eyes set off leave me alone vibes that even a blind person could sense.
For his part, Marc had tried his best to stay nondescript in a denim jacket and weathered work jeans. Together, they were both utterly ordinary, and that was exactly how they wanted it.
Arrival in the USA had been the usual scrum of queues through passport control, each of the team coming in through different routes to JFK International. For Marc and Lucy, that had meant flying out from Sochi via the same airport he had illegally entered with Malte earlier the same day. He spent the entire time waiting to get his collar felt by a Russian border patrol officer, fearful that someone might have caught his face, and it was only when his flight was somewhere over Greenland that Marc relaxed enough to fall asleep.
He gripped the heavy coffee mug, staring into its depths. He wanted to be moving, to be on the job, but the nature of this last-second deployment forced the team to tread carefully. By Kara’s best estimates, the Combine’s operation had at least half a day’s lead, and there was a lot that could get done in that time.
Marc and his team were operating on intelligence gathered that New York City was the location for whatever the Combine were planning, but secretly he worried that their target might be further afield. Ten hours’ head start could put the EMP device he’d seen in Sochi anywhere within the continental United States, even up into Canada or down to the Mexican border. He dreaded the idea of waking up to find himself looking the wrong way when the critical moment came.
But we can’t be everywhere at once. Losing the backing and the organisation of the Rubicon Corporation had changed Marc’s team from a private intelligence service to something that more closely resembled a guerrilla cell. Smaller, more agile, but with next to no infrastructure. We have to follow the intel and hope for the best.
His gaze drifted back towards the restaurant counter, where a television mounted on the wall showed a weather forecast. He couldn’t hear the weatherman’s voice, but the animated image of a huge cyclone churning its way out of the Atlantic towards Staten Island and Brooklyn did all the talking. One of the early morning diners, an older lady with a dog dozing at her feet, finished up her food as she conversed with the waitress. The two women talked briskly about their provisions for the coming storm.
‘They’re saying this sum’bitch could be worse than Sandy,’ said the dog owner, referring back to the devastating hurricane of 2012. ‘Me an’ Rex here don’t want that crap again.’
‘It’s global warmin’, honey,’ said the waitress, with a wry smile. ‘My advice to you? Get Rex a doghouse on stilts.’
‘Better yet, we’ll move to the Catskills.’
They both laughed. It was survivors’ humour, grim in the face of the inevitable.
Outside, Marc had already noted the presence of plywood boards stacked in a pile near the restaurant’s entrance, ready to be nailed up over the windows. Other businesses along the avenue were making similar arrangements.
He looked back and found Lucy staring blankly in his direction.
‘Hey,’ he said.
She blinked, coming back to earth. ‘Hey.’
‘You all right?’
‘Sure.’ He started to speak, but she talked over him. ‘Got my game face on. We’re green for go.’
‘Right.’ Marc lowered his voice. ‘I have your back. Whatever you need, okay?’
She eyed him, looking right through to his core. ‘You’re not sure what to say, are you? I love that you’re trying to find the best way to ask me if being here is messing with my head. It is. But I can deal.’
‘Of course you can,’ he replied. ‘If you want to talk about it, or do anything other than talk about it . . . I’m here.’
She smiled for the first time in a while, and her fingers extended to brush against his around the coffee mug.
‘I know.’
‘Am I interrupting a moment?’ A woman in a bright rain jacket and a woollen hat stood at the end of the booth, and gave them both a patronising smirk. ‘You make such a cute couple.’
It took Marc a full second to realise that he was looking at Grace. Once more, the undercover operative had transformed herself from one persona to another, shifting selves as easily as Marc or Lucy could change a shirt. Grace had followed them into the diner less than ten minutes ago, dressed in a dark businesswoman’s trouser suit with her hair up in a severe bun. She’d vanished into the ladies’ room, and as far as anyone else knew, the woman who’d walked in there hadn’t come back out. The person who did leave had different hair, a different gait, and a dowdy outfit topped off with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles parked on her nose.
Lucy evaluated her new look.
‘You remind me of my third grade home room teacher.’
‘That a fact, Lucille?’ Grace played into the role. ‘Make sure you finish up that breakfast!’
‘Bite me,’ she replied.
Grace dropped into the booth next to Lucy and made a performance out of ordering some French toast.
‘How much longer do we have to sit around here?’ The food arrived swiftly and her tone changed as she ate, as she momentarily lost interest in play-acting. ‘Is Glovkonin going to be on site for this? I want him on ice, but this hunt-the-WMD game you’re into isn’t my speed. I should have stayed behind—’
‘If you believe for one second we’re letting you out of our sight before this is over, you’re sorely mistaken.’ Marc gave her a level stare. ‘No one has forgotten who you are or what you have done.’
She huffed. ‘What does it take to earn a little trust around here?’
‘Said the scorpion to the frog,’ muttered Lucy.
‘I’m a product of my environment,’ Grace continued. She pointed her fork at Marc. ‘You read my file. You know what I did, before I turned freelance. Believe me, when you’re trained by the CIA to be a human chameleon, it messes with your sense of right and wrong.’
‘I might accept that, if I ever thought you had one to begin with,’ Marc said coldly. ‘It didn’t trouble you when you were imitating my dead friend and murdering MI6 agents.’
‘And trying to kill us,’ added Lucy. ‘Let’s not forget that.’
‘That was forever ago. Don’t take it personally.’ Grace snorted with derision and returned to her food as the door opened.
Marc gave the new arrival a nod. Malte Riis returned it and walked down to join them, unzipping his crumpled rain slicker and peeling off the trucker cap on his head.
‘Blue plate special for my friend here,’ called Lucy, and from the counter the waitress gave her a thumbs up.
Malte slid in beside Marc and took in their expressions.
‘Okay?’ said the Finn.
‘Okay,’ confirmed Marc. ‘Got the paper?’
‘No problems,’ said the other man, revealing a satchel he had concealed under the slicker.
Malte waited until the server had dropped off his food, then produced four resealable plastic bags. Inside each one was a forged driver’s licence, a roll of cash and a few random items of pocket litter – enough to simulate a basic cover identity should it be needed. In turn, the Finn took the passports that they had used to enter the country, to destroy as soon as possible.
There was also a generic burner phone for emergencies, which Marc pocketed. He still preferred to use his Rubicon-issue spyPhone, favouring the suite of custom apps and the clandestine software he had personally installed on it. With the shuttering of Rubicon and its Special Conditions Division, the custom-made smartphone was the last one they had between them, as the devices had an unpleasant tendency to get chewed up in the course of covert operations.
‘Where’d this come from?’ said Grace, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. She squinted at her fake ID. ‘This is a bad match. I’ll have to change my hair again.’
‘Allow it,’ Marc retorted. ‘Kara sourced this on zero notice, it’s the best we can manage.’
‘Let me guess – from her dark web playmates?’ Grace snorted. ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell. We’re gonna need other gear, I assume? Weapons and hardware?’
‘Later,’ said Malte, attacking his meal with gusto.
‘Speaking of Kara,’ added Lucy, jutting her chin at the street. ‘Is she coming?’
Marc checked the careworn Cabot dive watch around his wrist.
‘She’ll be here. She’s already up to speed.’
Grace folded her arms across her chest and studied him expectantly.
‘Well?’ Her tone turned sickly-sweet again. ‘You gonna keep us in the dark, sweetie, or tell us what the fuck we’re doing here?’
Marc pulled his spyPhone and rested it against a napkin dispenser, allowing him to position it on the table so they could see the screen.
‘Solomon had an encrypted message for me when I touched down.’ He swiped across the phone, bringing up a grainy image. ‘This is from Saito. He set up a dead man’s switch to drop a download if he didn’t reset the timer every ten hours.’
‘Which means . . .’ Malte made a throat-cutting motion, then went back to his bacon and eggs. ‘Problem.’
‘Yeah,’ said Marc. ‘Saito’s been taken out. That could have serious blowback for us.’
‘If they killed him, they gotta know we’re on to them.’ Grace peered at the image. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a ConEd van,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m guessing that piece of junk they’re loading is our star attraction.’
‘Saito left the geotags enabled on this photo,’ Marc continued. ‘It’s a warehouse a few miles from here. And there’s more.’
He flicked away the picture, revealing the two lines of text that had been attached to the email.
wall street
tonight
‘Now we know when and where,’ Marc concluded.
Lucy laid her hands on the table. ‘So let’s box this up. Setting off a tactical electromagnetic pulse weapon in the middle of the financial district. What does that look like?’
‘A device of that magnitude, right on the doorstep . . .’ Marc thought it through. ‘The pulse would be so strong, even shielded systems will take a hit. Everything with a chip in it for miles around goes dead. Banks, the stock exchange, the Federal Reserve, all blacked out. Then there’s the effect to the city infrastructure itself. Traffic control, the Subway, emergency services . . . they go down, too. And New York doesn’t have the most efficient power grid, either. The wrong substation dies and it’s like pulling the wrong block in that tower game. It all falls. Cascade failure.’
Marc recalled the summer of 2019, when a fire in a generator substation had killed power to thirty square blocks of Manhattan. That had been a random occurrence. A targeted strike had the capability to darken New York for days.
‘Say it happens like that,’ said Grace. ‘What do the Combine win?’
Marc made a downward motion with the flat of his hand.
‘New York’s financial network goes dark and the US economy drops off a cliff. That meltdown sends shock waves around the planet. If they position themselves to take advantage, and you know these arseholes, they already have . . .’
‘They’ll make bank,’ Lucy said grimly. ‘And fuck over every little guy’s life savings and 401‑Ks.’
Marc looked around at the other people in the diner – the cook and the waitress, the dog-walker and the truckers. Big, monolithic megacorporations might be able to weather such a crisis, but tomorrow these ordinary working people could be waking up to a world where they would have nothing to their names.
Malte’s lips thinned into a hard line, pushing away his empty plate.
‘Fail safes?’
‘There are,’ noted Marc, ‘but the Combine know that, too.’
‘It’s not just the EMP,’ said Lucy. ‘That other tech is out there – the interrupt. Any leads on that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Shit.’
Grace shrugged. ‘If you pull the plug on this thing, it won’t matter.’
On the avenue, an NYPD police cruiser shot past, lights flashing as it raced towards an incident.
‘Call them,’ said Malte, nodding after the vehicle.
Marc considered that for a moment, and glanced at Lucy.
‘Maybe not the cops. But there’s your mate Gonzalez in the FBI. You trust him?’
‘I do,’ she admitted, ‘but I don’t trust anyone else.’ She scowled. ‘Dropping the dime is our last-ditch option. We know the Combine’s American partner has his fingers in law enforcement and government at high levels. If I reach out to Special Agent Gonzalez, we’re sending up a flare that anyone can see.’
‘We alert the Combine, they can shift targets, hit somewhere else.’ Marc nodded to himself. ‘Hit somewhere we don’t know about.’
‘So we go it alone.’ Lucy managed a rueful smile. ‘Usual song. Different lyrics. Same dance.’
Grace covered a snide chuckle with her hand. ‘This is how you people operate? Stumbling through everything? It’s a wonder you’re not dead and buried.’
‘It’s been said,’ admitted Marc.
The phone on the table trilled, and he snatched it up. A text message from Kara’s burner spelled out a single word – Taxi!
Lucy sensed the change in his mood.
‘We’re going?’
‘We’re going,’ he confirmed, peeling off a few twenty-dollar bills to tuck under a salt shaker.
The group rose and trooped out into the damp, drizzly morning. Lucy pulled her cap down tight, folding her hood up around it. She was in the moment now, shifting states from safe to armed, like a missile on a launch rail, ready to fire. Marc’s hands vanished into his pockets, hiding the twitches in them. The old nerves, the same gut-twist he always felt before the kick-off, reached out and grabbed hold of him.
Still not used to this. He decided that was a good thing. The moment it becomes commonplace, that’s when you start making mistakes.
With a gruff rumble, a rust-marked 80s-era Ford Econoline van in primer grey came to a halt at the kerb, and Kara leaned out of the driver-side window.
‘Get in, losers,’ she called. ‘We’re going shopping.’
*
Walter Novick made the turn at the corner of Broome and Broadway, threading his Honda Accord into the flow of traffic behind an MTA bus and a gaggle of yellow cabs. He glanced at the clock on the dash. He was running behind, but the traffic across the Williamsburg Bridge had been sluggish, compounding the fact that he’d left home late.
