Shot Clock

by Mark Parragh

  She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. Another man down. But this one was different. No guest could have done that. It must have been someone’s bodyguard, though she had a hard time imagining even one of them taking out one of her squad leaders. A bodyguard with an interesting résumé, she decided.

  “They found him maybe fifteen minutes ago,” Kwon said, “in the north wing stairway.”

  “Why am I just hearing about it?”

  “His ATAK’s gone,” said Kwon. “So’s his weapon.”

  She swore under her breath. Only the squad leaders had been issued ATAKs. The teams operated as a group. There was no need to contact each individual, and she’d seen no point bringing in more along with all the gear they had already been smuggling into the Cambie. But the problem was that when Hudgins lost his, his team was cut off.

  No, she realized, the real problem was that the ATAKs held sensitive operational data, information Turnstone would absolutely not want getting out.

  “Stand by there,” she told Kwon. “I’m going to Phoenix the units.”

  “Understood, Oracle.”

  She hung up and activated the unit’s Phoenix protocol. Her device shrieked in her hand, and a keypad appeared on the screen. The same thing would be happening to all the units across the team. Each leader had ten seconds to enter a personalized code into the device or else it would wipe its data and permanently brick itself. She entered her code, and the alarm stopped.

  The keypad faded into a list of units on the network, each reporting back in what they’d done. What she wanted to see was a list of green entries for each unit except one. There should be one red entry for Hudgins’ unit, making its final report before committing digital suicide.

  But there wasn’t.

  Hudgins’ ATAK didn’t respond at all. She swore again. Whoever had taken it knew enough to turn it off.

  But she still knew something about him, she realized. She knew he’d been in the stairwell to the north wing. Was he going up or down? If he was headed into the north wing, then that was where she’d find him. If he was coming down from a room there, where was he going? There were only so many ways out of the waiting lounge, and he hadn’t gone through the lobby. But from a connecting passageway, he could have reached the back offices. Bookkeeping, payroll, human resources, the IT help desk, or security. That was it, she decided. There were weapons in security, medical supplies, radios, things someone might have gone after.

  Someone like John Crane, she suddenly realized. Horton’s pet…whatever. Once Crane had left Horton’s office that morning, she’d asked Horton why he’d involved a guest in an internal security matter. Horton had grinned and hinted strongly that Crane was much more than just a bodyguard. Whatever he was, he sounded like someone who might have a chance against Hudgins in a fight. And that sounded like the kind of person Redpoll might employ.

  That’s what happened, she concluded. Someone, quite possibly John Crane, had come down from the guest rooms. He’d run across Hudgins in the stairwell and killed him. Then he’d gone on to security. But he wasn’t there now, or Kwon’s team would have run across him.

  He’d gone back. He’d come down looking for something, and then he’d taken it back where he came from. She was sure of it. That was where he was, and she had a hunch that if she found him, she’d find Redpoll.

  She reactivated her ATAK and started moving teams into the north wing.

  Chapter 24

  The sky outside grew ominously dark as the afternoon wore on. Crane’s phone had warned of storms before it went down. It looked like the forecast had been correct.

  Redpoll was awake in the bedroom, and Swift had sent Josh in to keep him company. Crane heard them arguing in quiet tones. Swanepoel had mostly kept to herself since Crane’s return. She sat on the floor in one corner, an armchair mostly blocking her from view, and scribbled in her notebook.

  Swift joined him at the window. For a moment, they stood in silence, looking out at the dark, ponderous clouds moving in over the mountains. Crane squeezed her hand, and she squeezed his back.

  “We should be moving soon,” she said quietly.

  Crane nodded. Bad weather would make flying a Chinook through the mountains more dangerous.

  They collected medical supplies and weapons, and Josh helped Crane get Redpoll up. The old man was pale and shocky, wobbling on his feet. He would have fallen without their support. They got him out into the living room and sat him down while Crane and Swift removed the barricade from the door.

  When it was clear, Crane went to the corner where Swanepoel sat writing furiously in her journal.

  “We’re moving out,” he said. “You can come with us.”

  She shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “You’ve got Redpoll with you. He’s a walking target. The safest place for me is wherever you’re not.”

  Crane understood. She wasn’t wrong.

  “Okay,” he said. “Stay here and stay out of sight. I got a look at the lists of names before we shut down their terminal. You’re not on either one. So if you keep out of their way, they’ll probably ignore you. Good luck.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “you too.”

  They moved to the front door. Crane and Swift both carried MP7s. Crane had his Sig clipped to his belt, Josh had the gun Hank David had given him, and he assumed Swift still had her Taurus Curve strapped to her inner thigh. All of them had limited ammunition. They would be moving slowly with Redpoll. Crane didn’t care for the tactical situation at all. But it was what it was, and he couldn’t do anything about it right now.

  Then Crane heard shouts outside, followed by an eruption of gunfire. The fire kept coming in single shots and bursts. There was a full-scale firefight out there, which meant the mercenaries had arrived. They must be going up a floor at a time, searching room to room. Crane assumed they now had the elevators locked down, and a team in the stairwell he’d used earlier to keep anyone escaping that way. They might have been caught here if the mercenaries hadn’t found the Egyptians first. Whatever else he might be, Youseff Arafa had saved them, assuming they could capitalize on the opening.

  “Time to go!” he shouted. “On me. We’re going right, for the utility room.”

  Crane opened the door and spun into the hall, the gun ready, but he saw nobody. Down the hall, he could see that both elevators were stopped and open now. The sounds of men fighting and dying in close quarters came from around the corner.

  “Move,” he hissed, and Swift and Josh brought Redpoll out. They hurried as fast as they could down the hallway in a tight group. As they neared the utility room door, Crane ran ahead and slotted his master keycard into the door. He held his breath for a moment, hoping they hadn’t managed to lock him out somehow. But then the door beeped and unlatched. Crane kicked it open and covered the others as they ducked inside.

  He heard shouts from the other end of the hallway as he turned into the room. The team at the stairwell must have heard the firefight and was hurrying with reinforcements. Crane leaned against the door, fighting the hydraulic cylinder that wanted to close the door slowly. Finally, it clicked shut. A moment later, he heard running footsteps pound past the door and keep going.

  Swift was already leading Josh and Redpoll past shelves stocked with toilet paper and clean linens, toward the freight elevator at the back of the room. Crane tossed her his keycard, and she used it to call a car while Crane rolled a service cart against the door to the hall and locked down its wheels.

  As he rejoined the others, he could hear the elevator car approaching. They leveled their weapons at the doors and traded a nervous look, but when the door slid open, the freight elevator was empty.

  They got Josh and Redpoll inside and punched for the basement level. There was a faint lurch as the car started down. Redpoll slumped heavily on Josh’s shoulder as they both leaned back against the wall.

  “Close,” Swift said quietly.

  Crane nodded. They watched the lights over the door count down the floor
s, and then the car slowed to a stop and the doors slid open.

  The first thing Crane saw was shadows and dim light on cement walls. Then something moved in the room, and Swift sprang into motion. She raised her gun and opened up with a long burst. The noise was deafening in the confined space. She dove out of the elevator, and Crane pushed Redpoll to one side. He and Josh fell into the corner and slid to the floor. Then Crane ducked and rolled out the doors as bullets slammed into the back of the car. He saw Swift to his right on one knee with the MP7 in both hands. He saw bodies in black on the cement floor in the middle of the room, and more muzzle flashes from the darkness.

  A bullet ricocheted off the floor near him, and Crane dashed toward a row of wheeled utility carts. He fired a wild burst in the direction of the flashes as he ran. Then he dove over the carts. He hit the cement floor hard as a bullet smashed into a plastic storage tank mounted on the wall, and some kind of industrial cleaner sprayed over him. He came up behind the carts and scanned the chamber. On the far side of the space, someone was moving toward a darkened opening, firing as they went. Crane led the figure with his muzzle and fired a short burst. The figure tumbled forward in a jumble of limbs, hit the floor, and didn’t move.

  Crane swept the room for any more targets, but saw only Swift. She was standing over the bodies in the center of the floor, checking them for anything useful.

  “No more ATAKs,” she said as he approached. “They’d only be given to squad leaders. Here.”

  She tossed him a partially loaded magazine for his MP7. Crane pocketed it. There were four bodies in the group. Three wore the black ACM duty uniforms, but the other was a middle-aged man in a suit.

  “That’s Stijn Langbroek,” Swift said, and Crane recognized the name from the ATAK’s Protected List. “Money laundering, mostly. He brought me a carved wooden tree once when I was a girl. You took off a section of bark, and there was a whole little dollhouse hidden inside with furniture and curtains and a tiny family. Mother, father, little girl. I remember there was a dog as well, and he had to explain to me what a pet was.”

  The dead man’s arm lay at an awkward angle, and Swift prodded it with her foot until it lay more naturally beside the body. “Ah, well,” she said. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  Crane looked over the bodies. Soldiers escorting one of the guests into an area he couldn’t have gotten into on his own. They were taking him somewhere away from the action. It would make sense to collect the people on the Protected List somewhere where they could be kept safe.

  “Can I get a hand here?” Josh called from the elevator. Redpoll had fallen on top of him, and Josh was struggling to get him upright. Redpoll himself appeared to have lost consciousness again. He was drifting in and out now. Crane helped get him to his feet, and they took him out of the elevator, his feet dragging.

  They were in a hub beneath the hotel, a place where several of the service tunnels connected and support equipment could be stored. The place appeared to be on emergency lighting, with only some of the overhead lights operating.

  Swift had finished checking the bodies and was standing guard, sweeping the tunnel entrances with her gun. Some were still lit, while others were completely dark. Crane wondered what the difference was. Did they just keep the lights on in the tunnels they planned to use?

  “Which way?” asked Swift as they approached, carrying Redpoll between them.

  “Far end of the room, then left,” said Crane.

  “Hey,” Josh said suddenly, “over there. Perfect.”

  He pointed out a row of wheelchairs lined up neatly against one cement wall. They carried Redpoll over and sat him down in one. He seemed more comfortable in the chair. He managed to nod, and his breathing seemed steadier. Josh unlocked the wheels and pushed the chair behind them as Crane and Swift led the way.

  They were about halfway to the other end of the long space when they heard more gunshots echoing somewhere in the distance. Crane fell into a crouch and swept the perimeter with his weapon. Swift fell back and took up a position beside the wheelchair as Josh crouched on its other side. Crane couldn’t locate the sound. It was coming from one of the tunnels, but there were so many, leading away in all directions, and the noise reverberated back and forth off the cement. It could be coming from anywhere.

  “Keep moving,” he whispered after a few moments. The shooting trailed off gradually. At last, there was a single shot, different from the others, and then nothing.

  “That’s a little disturbing,” said Swift.

  “We actually agree on something,” said Josh. “Somebody write this down.”

  Crane checked his map of the hotel and looked back at the elevators for reference. They’d come to the mouth of a lit tunnel. A sign with arrows indicated that this tunnel led to “Summer Pavilion,” “Snack Bar #4/Outdoor Gift Shop,” and “Funicular Terminal.”

  “This is it,” he said. The tunnel stretched away into the distance. It was square, about eight feet on a side, with a row of fluorescent lights running down the center of the ceiling. Crane realized it was just about wide enough for two utility carts to pass each other.

  No one spoke as they moved quietly down the tunnel, the only sound an occasional squeak from Redpoll’s wheelchair. Crane felt the tension growing, and it only became worse when they began to see signs of battle. The floor was strewn with shell casings, and then they passed a thick smear of blood along one wall. Josh gave Crane a look but said nothing.

  They passed a side tunnel. The sign said it led to “Snack Bar #4/Outdoor Gift Shop.” They stopped for a moment and listened, but the tunnel was dark and silent.

  They moved on, and the tunnel slowly curved its way around the lakeshore. It was Swift who suddenly went on alert and held up a hand to stop them.

  They listened, and Crane heard footsteps. They didn’t sound like boots. He gestured for the others to remain in place as he moved up and to the outer edge of the curve. This way, he’d see whoever was coming before they had a clear line of fire at the others. He fell to one knee, leveled the MP7, and waited.

  A few seconds later, a lone woman appeared around the curve of the tunnel. She wore what had once been a rather expensive sleeveless dress. Like Crane’s suit, it had gotten the worst of the last few hours, and she’d torn a strip off the hem to form a sling for her bloody right arm. In her left, she held a pistol.

  The woman looked up and saw him. She immediately held up her left arm, letting the pistol dangle from one extended fingertip.

  “Whoa!” she said. “Peace. I’m not the bad guys.”

  Crane recognized her now. This was the woman he’d seen on the arm of the mercenary called Viking. He stood up and lowered the MP7’s muzzle, though he kept it ready to fire if she made any hostile move.

  She approached him, moving carefully. She shook her head.

  “Can’t get through that way,” she said. “I tried. I’m sorry, Mr. Crane, but you’re going to have to go back.”

  Chapter 25

  Crane’s grip tightened on the weapon.

  “Who are you?” he said, his voice cold and taut. “How do you know me?”

  “I’m Beverlee Couillard,” she said. “I’m with CIRC.”

  That meant nothing to Crane, but behind him, he heard Josh mutter, “I’m a locksmith...and I’m a locksmith.” Crane thought that probably made him seem somewhat less menacing.

  “Thanks, Josh,” he murmured. “That’s very helpful.”

  She slowly put her gun into a chain purse that dangled around her neck. “CIRC is the Committee for International Research Coordination. We’re part of the Food and Drug Administration. I work mainly with Chris Parikh there,” she added. “I gather I got your job.”

  Crane lowered his gun. A couple things were starting to make sense. Chris had known he was there. His new agency had to have someone on the ground who’d spotted him. Why not her? And an innocuous, dull-sounding office deep in the organizational structure of a civilian agency like FDA? That sounded a lot like
how the Hurricane Group had been put together. But he needed to be sure.

  “Did he tell you about how we met?” Crane asked.

  “He said you spent five days stuck in a safehouse in Peshawar where all you had to pass the time was some bootlegged Pakistani soap operas without subtitles and a stray copy of The Princess Bride. So you watched that until you both knew it by heart.”

  Crane was convinced. She’d gotten the details correct, right down to the soap operas being bootlegs.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Best to talk about that while we’re moving, I think,” she said, and she took a small flashlight from her purse. “It’s possible they’re following me. They’re putting a lot of effort into keeping this tunnel clear.”

  If she recognized Redpoll, she kept that to herself. She nodded to Swift and Josh, and Josh turned the wheelchair around.

  “Why is that?” Swift asked.

  “It looks like they’ve got a group of people they’re killing on sight, and another group they don’t want dead,” said Couillard. “They’re taking the lucky folks in the latter group out through this tunnel and keeping them under guard in the Summer Pavilion.”

  That makes sense as well, Crane thought. They would need to gather the Protected List people somewhere outside the main theater of action where they could keep an eye on them and protect them with fewer men. So far, Couillard hadn’t said anything that didn’t line up. He decided she was playing it straight. Straight enough, at least.

  “So what do we do?” Josh asked. A gunshot echoed through the tunnel from somewhere, and he flinched.

  “We get out of sight,” said Crane. They turned into the darkened side tunnel marked Snack Bar #4/Gift Shop, and Couillard swept the darkness ahead of them with her flashlight. This tunnel was narrower than the one they’d left, and appeared generally less traveled. The walls were covered in black and white ceramic tiles, and long cracks ran along the walls where the ground had settled. Crane guessed this was one of the original steam tunnels.