Shadow

by James Swallow

  “We have limited gear,” said Lucy, indicating the steel case. “Non-lethal loadout only, just tranks.”

  Marc turned on her, a dark intensity glittering in his eyes.

  “We can work with that. Look, Lucy, I know it isn’t protocol, but we can do this on the fly. You know we can.” She shook her head, but he pressed on. “I infiltrated an MI6 station on my own with a couple of smoke bombs and some rich bloke’s suit. I broke a convicted terrorist out of a CIA black site using a laptop and a cell phone. With your help, I can do this.”

  “Okay.”

  Lucy heard herself saying the words, even as a silent voice inside her was railing against following the least considered of their options.

  But she couldn’t shake that image of Ji-Yoo Park, shivering out there in the cold, her life ticking away on a clock held by her captors. There was a lot that Lucy Keyes had done in her life that she wasn’t proud of, and precious few good deeds that worked to balance the scales against the bad. Liberating Park had been one of the first acts she had ever felt right about doing, and Lucy could not let that go. She could not allow that rescue to be undone.

  “It’s not a good idea,” she went on, “but it’s all we have right now.”

  “Lucy,” said Delancort, with all the steel he could muster. “I remind you, even if you are the senior team member on site, you are contractually obliged to do as I say. I have the authority to order you to stand down.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed, leaning forward to pick up the tablet. “Let me know how it goes.”

  She tapped the connection tab and the screen displayed the words NO SIGNAL. Marc’s face split in a lopsided grin, but it quickly faded when he saw the steely look in her eyes.

  “Don’t give me that,” she snarled. “You better make this work! Or else you, me, and a lot of people are going to end up screwed.”

  “Copy that,” he replied.

  * * *

  By the time they were back at the ridge, the storm had rolled back around and it caught the two of them as they reached the top. The icy blasts of wind snatched at the steam gushing from the vent chimneys and shredded it. Eddies of loose gravel and frost were swept up off the valley floor, rattling over the material of their cold-weather jackets—but as harsh as it was, it made good cover. Moving slow and low, Marc and Lucy advanced down into the valley proper, toward the misty lights of the Frigga facility.

  Lucy led the way, keeping her dart rifle slung. Marc had a pistol-sized version of the same weapon, assembled from other pieces of the fake camera kit. It had a five-shot carousel of hollow, needle-sharp darts, each one fitted with a reservoir of fast-acting phenobarbital-based sedative. One shot was supposed to be enough to take down an average person, but anything involving chemical doses was always finicky, and Marc was looking on it as a weapon of last resort. Not that the weapons would have been any use outside. The gusting winds would make it virtually impossible for the slow compressed-air guns to hit what they were aimed at.

  The dart thrower was not the only piece of kit Marc had taken from the steel case, however. He dropped into cover behind a broken boulder a few meters from the guardhouse and pulled out his tablet. The red-glow screen blinked on.

  Lucy crowded in next to him.

  “So?” She spoke into his ear.

  He showed her the screen. Larsson had emailed him a layout diagram of the Frigga compound taken from official records, but it had no internal floor plan, which meant they were going to have to sweep the place until they found Park and the bioprinters. Logically, both targets would probably be in the main blockhouse across from the helipad, but right now Marc wasn’t willing to take anything for granted.

  The tablet’s built-in wireless scanner was pinging the area around them, and as he had suspected, the lack of visible security did not mean a lack of actual security. There were cameras over the outer doors, and hidden among the rough black rocks was a ring of motion sensors. The sensors used near-field technology to communicate with each other and network their data, so anyone watching the ring would be able to instantly home in on where a breach was taking place.

  “This is going to take spot-on timing,” he told her, drawing the other bit of gear he was carrying from his backpack. “When I tell you to run, I need you to get to that vent stack as fast as humanly possible.”

  Lucy saw the boxy stand of metallic chimneys and nodded, eyeing up the distance.

  “A hundred yards? Sure, okay. How long we got?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. Faster would be better.”

  She looked at the device in his hands. It resembled a bulky hairdryer, with a dish-shaped diffuser on the front.

  “Is that…?”

  “HERF gun, version 2.0.”

  The unit was essentially a portable microwave generator, capable of putting out an invisible blast of high-energy radio frequencies. The experimental tech was still a bit too fragile for most conventional military operations, but under the right circumstances it could fry electronics and make a human feel like their skin was on fire.

  “You brought that goddamn ray gun with you.” Lucy was not impressed. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?”

  “Last time I used one, I shot down a drone and saved our lives,” he retorted.

  She made a face. “All I remember is a building collapsing underneath us.”

  “Everyone’s a critic.” He aimed the HERF gun over the top of the boulder, toward the approximate spot where the closest sensor was located. “I had Tech-Ops modify it after last time. It’s new and improved.”

  “Still not convinced.”

  He took a breath and squeezed the trigger plate.

  “Get ready.”

  The HERF gun hummed unpleasantly, the resonance making Marc’s flesh crawl and the bones in hand tremble. If this didn’t work, he had little in the way of backup plans.

  But then the tablet made a pinging noise, and at once three of the motion sensors blinked offline, their detection circuits momentarily overwhelmed by a flood of raw microwave radiation.

  “Go go go!”

  Marc snatched up the tablet and launched into a sprint, rocking off a heartbeat after Lucy. She flew through the haze like a rocket and he had to give it all he had just to keep up. It was hard work running over the broken, rock-strewn ground, and once or twice he misstepped and almost tumbled over. Then the steel chimneys rose up out of the windblown mist and he skidded to a halt in the shadows behind them.

  They were inside the perimeter now, and the nearest door to the blockhouse interior was around twenty meters distant. A light above it shone down on a concrete apron, and Marc could see the boxy shape of a weatherproof security camera looking down at the doorway. The door didn’t have a conventional mechanical latch on the outside, only a thick metal pad for a key-card lock.

  “What next?” Lucy panted.

  The tablet pinged again as the sensors started to come back online.

  “Wait for it…”

  Marc activated another program. It was clumsy work in the thick gloves he wore, and the cold was really starting to bite. The scanner software reconfigured and he worked to ease the racing breaths he was taking. The icy air seared his chest with each intake.

  “Wait for it,” he repeated.

  The magnetic lock on the blockhouse door thudded open and a big guy in a dark heavy-weather parka trudged out. He glowered at the storm clouds overhead with a thunderous expression that told Marc he had drawn the short straw, and then advanced. The man brought up a shotgun with a tactical flashlight beneath the barrel and flicked it on, moving out toward the sensor line. The beam swept through the air, catching the wind-driven dust and gritty snow.

  Marc and Lucy became still, watching him make his patrol. The way the big man moved sent the wrong signals. He didn’t act like a security guard, like somebody trained for this kind of thing, like someone who did it day in and day out. If anything, his body language spoke of thuggish disdain for the job, and he showed his
eagerness to get it done quickly by only giving the area the most cursory of sweeps before heading back in. As he did, the man cocked the shotgun up on his shoulder and snatched at a radio handset clipped to his collar.

  “There’s fuck all out here,” Marc heard him say, in what was definitely an angry Irish accent. “If you pricks made me do this for shits and giggles, I’ll fucking crucify you.”

  The big guy didn’t pay any attention to the garbled reply over the radio, pawing his pockets for the key-card to get back into the warmth of the blockhouse. Lucy shifted, ready to slip up behind the man and take him out, but Marc put a hand on her wrist and shook his head.

  Now, thought Marc.

  His gloved finger tapped the “commit” tab on the screen in his hand, and the tablet’s wireless scanner listened in to the silent communication between the lock mechanism and the RFID chip in the key-card, cloning the signal in a fraction of a second.

  The door opened and the big Irishman vanished inside. The last thing Marc saw was a glimpse of the man’s face, illuminated by the glow from within. He had the design of a flame-wreathed Celtic cross tattooed over the side of his throat.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that bloke isn’t Icelandic,” Marc said quietly.

  “Who owns this place?” said Lucy.

  “Larsson didn’t say,” Marc noted. “Shell company, most likely.”

  She jutted her chin at the tablet computer, fighting off a shiver.

  “You get what you need?”

  The compiler program’s progress bar filled and he nodded.

  “Here, take this.” He pressed the HERF gun into her hand. “Shoot the camera.”

  “Pew pew,” she said dryly, and did as he asked.

  He would have to be near to make it work. The tablet could simulate the RFID’s card’s call-and-response signal to the lock mechanism, but only at close range. If the camera was active and he was spotted at the door …

  Don’t think about that, Marc told himself. It’s simple. Breaking into a secure building in the middle of an ice storm in sub-zero temperatures—easy.

  He rushed the door and slapped the tablet against the lock pad. The red light beneath the camera was out, but the HERF gun’s discharge would only throw it into a reset cycle, not disrupt it permanently. He had no way of knowing how long he had.

  Then the door unlocked with a thud and Marc almost dropped the tablet in surprise. He opened it enough to slip through and Lucy was at his side in a fraction of a second. The wind pulled at the door as another gust rolled in, but together they eased it closed and the lock re-engaged.

  Both of them held their breath for a long moment.

  “Did that work?” said Lucy, dropping her trank rifle off its strap and into her hands. “No alarms?”

  Marc slipped the tablet and the HERF gun back into his pack.

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The corridor they were in resembled that same kind of drab and unimaginative architecture that characterized military bases, hospitals and schools. A sparse hallway of blank walls and vinyl floors lit by fluorescent lights ranged off in either direction, and every few feet there were signs in dense industrial text that neither of them could read. Off to the right, a set of heavy double doors led deeper into the blockhouse.

  “A map would be real useful right now,” Lucy muttered.

  “Why make it easy?”

  Marc checked his dart pistol and put it in his pocket, moving off.

  * * *

  In the next area they came across a series of isolated laboratory modules that branched off the main corridor on both sides. The resemblance to the MaxaBio facility in Singapore was undeniable. Each one had a plastic glass door with an airtight seal mechanism around the edges, suggesting that the work done inside was sensitive to environmental change—but when Marc pressed his face up to peer inside, he saw nothing but unused workstations and empty cabinets.

  “Where is everybody?” said Lucy. “This place looks untouched.”

  “Andri’s hunch about it being a front is looking more certain every second,” added Marc. He moved to a second lab module, and then another. “No sign of the bioprinters in here.” He paused, thinking it through. “No sign of any biotech hardware, in fact. Not even a test tube.”

  “Could be they keep the cool toys deeper inside. Along with the cloned dinosaurs.”

  Lucy walked to a connecting door at the end of the section.

  Marc made a face. “I see a velociraptor and you can color me gone,” he deadpanned.

  She pushed open the door a few degrees.

  “Junction up ahead, corridor branches left and right. We’ll split up, meet back at the intersection in ten mikes.”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid without me.”

  Lucy threw the words over her shoulder as she padded away from him.

  “As if.”

  He watched her disappear around a turning, then set off himself.

  At the end of the other branch of the corridor, the hallway switched sharply into a blind corner. Marc pressed himself flat against the wall and eased his head around the turn to see what lay out of sight.

  The corridor mirrored the earlier one, with a set of workrooms branching off the hallway, and at the far end there was another set of windowed double doors looking into what seemed to be an active workspace.

  But Marc didn’t have much opportunity to consider that. Less than a meter away, the big Irishman with the neck tattoo was standing in front of a coffee machine, a half-full plastic cup in his hand and a look of shocked surprise on his face.

  The two of them stared at one another, their reactions both frozen by the unexpected sight. Then a word slipped out of Marc’s mouth—“Shit!”—and the bubble of inaction burst.

  The big man burst into motion, throwing his coffee aside and storming toward Marc, bull-charging him. Marc snatched at his dart gun, but the weapon’s long frame made it awkward to draw it, and the barrel caught on the lip of his pocket.

  Twice Marc’s size, the Irishman must have been a rugby player at one point in his life, because he moved like a center, all power and impact channeling straight into Marc’s chest as they collided.

  Too slow to get out of the big man’s path in the narrow corridor, Marc came off his feet and the momentum of the hit carried them both into the wall across the way. The dart gun fell from his pocket and he lost sight of it.

  All the air blew out of his lungs in a ragged choke, and the kit in Marc’s backpack gave an unpleasant crack was it was sandwiched between a breeze block wall and his body weight. He lolled forward and the Irishman slammed him against the wall again, holding on to Marc with handfuls of his jacket and the straps of his pack.

  His hands were still free, though, but he knew striking the big man in the torso would do little good. Instead, Marc brought up his palms and clapped them together as hard as he could over the Irishman’s ears.

  “Bastard!”

  That had the desired reaction and the man let him drop. Marc’s gut reaction was to disengage and get away, but that would see the operation killed stone dead right here. Instead, he chose the act the bigger man least expected, and leaned into him, grabbing his shoulders as purchase for a downward head-butt. It was a crude and badly conceived counterblow, but the Krav Maga instructor who had done his best to embed some moves in Marc’s brain had once told him: whatever works, works.

  The blow mashed the Irishman’s already unlovely, previously broken nose and set a dizzy shock of pain burning around Marc’s skull. Blood gushed from the big man’s nostrils and he swore again, swatting at Marc with his open hand. Again, he connected, slapping his opponent away with enough force that Marc lost his balance and went down to the vinyl floor.

  One hand clamping his nose, the Irishman grabbed at his radio handset where it dangled at the end of a coiled cord.

  Can’t let him call it in.

  Marc kicked out along the line of the floor an
d hit the man hard in the ankle. The Irishman slipped on the puddle of spilled coffee and fell down on one knee, his big hands slapping at the floor to arrest his fall.

  Marc was already rolling to his fallen dart gun as the other guy growled and hauled himself back up. He aimed for a torso shot, but the pistol was lighter than he expected and it rose high as he squeezed the trigger. It let out a cough of gas and the Irishman jerked back against the wall, giving a low wail of pain.

  The dart had embedded itself in the man’s right eye. He pulled it out, now emitting a stream of curses, and staggered forward, his face twisting in a murderous snarl.

  This time, Marc braced the dart gun with both hands and fired another shot into the Irishman’s chest—and that did the trick. The big man’s breathing slowed and he sank into a heap in the middle of the floor.

  He weighed a ton, or so it seemed. Marc took a wrist and an ankle, and dragged the unconscious Irishman into the nearest vacant workroom, stowing him as best he could out of sight from anyone passing in the corridor. The job took forever, and Marc’s head was constantly on a swivel, aware that it would all be over if someone caught him in the act.

  Stopping to catch his breath, Marc rifled through the man’s pockets for his RFID pass and anything else that might be useful. The Irishman had nothing of note beyond a nightstick and a disposable plastic wallet with a few Icelandic króna notes and what had to be a fake EU driver’s license. Of the shotgun he had been carrying outside, there was no sign. Marc used his smartphone to take stills of the license card and the man’s face before leaving him trussed up with a pair of plastic flex cuffs.

  He glanced at his Cabot dive watch. Lucy’s ten minutes were up. He glared at the unconscious man.

  “You’re messing up my day, mate.”

  * * *

  The fact that Marc wasn’t at the intersection when she returned started Lucy’s warning bells ringing. In fact, scratch that—it was more honest to say that she already had an orchestra of alarms going off in her head about every damn aspect of this infiltration.