Rogue

by James Swallow

  Assim worked at the phone, thumb-typing at a frenetic pace, pausing here and there as he replied.

  ‘Think of it as . . . like calling for a ride-share . . . from a less than legal source . . .’ He asked Solomon for the location of Barandi’s airstrip, and then typed that into his message. ‘It’ll cost us a bit,’ he added.

  ‘I suppose it will,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Given the day we’ve had . . . Shit, the days we’re having,’ Lucy said, correcting herself as she went on. ‘You’ll excuse me if I am having some issues right now. Assim, I didn’t press you on this before, but now there’s need. Who’s this black hat you’re talking to?’

  ‘Someone I have confidence in,’ he replied, and he wiped a film of sweat off his brow. ‘Look, can we not have this conversation right now?’

  Lucy’s expression hardened. ‘Last time you duck me on this, Assim. Last time, you get it?’

  ‘Got it,’ he replied, blowing out a breath. The hacker held out the phone at arm’s length, peering at what he had written. ‘Okay, I just have to—’

  The heavy boots sounded on the stairs and this time they were racing down in double-time.

  ‘He’s coming back!’ said Marc, as a shadow moved behind the locked door.

  It slammed open and in came the guard, with two other men following quickly behind him. The guard’s face was thunderous, and he swept the cages with a savage glare.

  ‘Who took it?’ he roared, bringing up his rifle. The gun turned towards Lucy and Marc. ‘You?’

  ‘Took what?’ said Marc, the lie sounding weak.

  The guard spat an angry order at his comrades, and they opened the first cage, rushing inside. Marc and Lucy stood back, arms raised, as the guards tore around the makeshift cell, searching every corner of it and coming up with nothing.

  Next, they pulled the two of them apart and rifled through their pockets. Lucy swore at one of the men as he pawed at her, and got a backhand slap for her troubles. Eventually, empty-handed, they stepped back out.

  The guard changed targets, aiming his rifle at Assim. The Saudi was pale and shaky, and he looked as guilty as hell.

  ‘You have it! Give me my phone!’

  ‘I . . . I don’t . . .’

  Assim backed away, into the bars between his cell and Marc’s.

  ‘He doesn’t have your bloody phone,’ Marc snapped, stepping closer. ‘Did you look in there?’ He jerked his thumb at the guardroom. ‘Maybe you dropped it—’

  ‘I told you, shut up!’

  The guard unlocked the second cage, and while one of the other men kept a pistol trained on Malte, he walked in and slammed Assim against the bars, hard enough to make Marc back off a few steps.

  ‘Lying!’ he snarled, his face a few centimetres from the young hacker’s face. ‘You will talk!’

  Unseen by any of the others, Marc palmed the phone that Assim had slipped to him through the bars, but his heart was hammering in his chest. If he didn’t give it up, his friend might die for it.

  ‘It’s not here!’ Assim screamed the words, and he looked past the guard, right into Marc’s eyes. ‘It’s not here,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘We d-don’t have it, do we?’

  ‘You will help me find it,’ spat the guard

  He dragged Assim out of the cell, hauling him away and out of the basement. The man with the pistol locked the cage and followed his comrades, leaving them alone again.

  Lucy broke the grim silence that followed.

  ‘What did we just let happen?’

  Marc slipped the stolen phone from his sleeve and watched the stilted, repeating animation of an envelope winging its way from the device and into the ether. The screen spelled out SENDING over and over, and the process was taking forever. Then at last it gave a soft ping and the display changed to SENT.

  ‘Done,’ said Marc. ‘He knew we had to cover until the message was gone.’

  Lucy looked away. ‘Assim just put his life on the line to do it.’

  *

  It was late in the day by the time they arrived at the rendezvous co-ordinates Glovkonin had provided.

  The sun was vanishing below the far horizon as the gaunt Russian gunship came in low over the trees, the downwash from its rotors blasting the ground.

  The Mil Mi-24 Hind D was an ugly, brutal machine, resembling a horror-show remix of a killer insect spliced to something low-slung and crocodilian. A heavy multi-barrelled cannon hung off the helicopter’s chin, twitching in the air as the gunner in the forward bubble cockpit panned it back and forth over the buildings of Simbarashe’s compound. Stub winglets on the Hind’s flanks were heavy with rocket pods, enough that the machine could have laid waste to the central mansion with a single salvo.

  Under orders from Khadir, who sat watching from behind the pilot in the secondary cockpit, the gunship made a long, slow orbit of the buildings, so that everyone within earshot would hear the menacing drone of its engines. At length, the Hind deployed a set of undercarriage and put down on the empty landing pad behind the mansion, blowing up a last wave of dust and detritus into the faces of the militiamen who had come out to meet their arrival.

  The gunship had a large cabin for an aircraft of this type, with more than enough room for Khadir and the rest of the Combine’s field team. The Arab disembarked first, followed by Grace and the two other men, Cord and Vine. They kept their weapons slung as they advanced, as the line of soldiers broke and one of Simbarashe’s lieutenants presented himself.

  ‘I am Dahma,’ he told them, clutching at a forage cap on his head so that the gust from the idling rotors would not dislodge it. ‘The colonel is expecting you. Please come this way.’

  Dahma was heavyset, with a round face and small eyes, and he kept shooting wary looks at the parked Hind, like a man fearful of the reach of a chained dog.

  Satisfied that the power dynamic of this relationship was already clear, Khadir inclined his head and gestured for Dahma to lead the way.

  Behind him, the woman gave Vine a command.

  ‘Stay here, keep watch. Don’t let the locals get too close or talk to the chopper crew.’

  ‘Right,’ he replied, dropping his rifle into a ready position.

  The militiamen dispersed in twos and threes, and Khadir frowned at their poor order. If they had officers here, they had to be few and far between. He had seen the same thing in other makeshift militaries, where those in command liked to have rank upon rank of common soldiers they could rule like serfs, and precious few men to delegate to.

  Useful to know, he told himself.

  If the need arose, terminating Simbarashe would likely put his forces into disarray if they had no clear line of authority beyond their self-appointed ‘colonel’.

  Dahma walked them through the lower floor of the house, past kitchens and living rooms with many expensive modern conveniences – huge widescreen televisions, bulky refrigerators, and so on – all of which were beyond the dreams of the common people living in Simbarashe’s territory.

  Khadir assumed that this man would meet them in one of these rooms, showing off his relative wealth as a way to cement his high status, but that did not happen. Instead, Dahma took them into an open vehicle garage where a large civilian SUV in bright canary yellow was parked. The vehicle was revving, and clustered around the back of it were several men in militia uniforms.

  He saw Simbarashe step into view. The colonel wiped blood off his hands with a rag, and he met Khadir’s gaze but did not dwell there.

  ‘Ah, Mr Khadir. Your reputation precedes you! Welcome, welcome.’ He flashed a practised smile. ‘Forgive me, I have been busy with this.’

  He gestured at a figure lying slumped against the back of the vehicle, then signalled to the driver to kill the engine.

  Khadir moved to get a clearer look, wafting away the monoxide stink of exhaust fumes. A swarthy young man in his twenties, his face distorted by swelling, was tethered to the rear of the vehicle by cables around his wrists.
Other cables led from his ankles to bolts fixed in the concrete floor, and the situation became apparent. If the vehicle inched forward, the young man would be pulled taut, his limbs distended. In ancient martial cultures, a disloyal man would be torn apart by horses in such a fashion. Here, the threat of that was being used for torture.

  ‘Assim Kader,’ said Cord, identifying the unfortunate victim. ‘SCD’s resident data thief.’

  Glovkonin had provided the team with current intelligence on the members of Solomon’s vigilante group.

  ‘Not . . .’ Kader’s head jerked up at the mention of his name. ‘Didn’t . . . take anything.’

  ‘Your employer did say that only Solomon was to be kept intact.’ Simbarashe smiled coldly. ‘This one made a fool of one of my soldiers.’ He gestured vaguely in Kader’s direction, indicating his handiwork. ‘I have to maintain discipline, you understand. Examples must be made.’

  ‘Of course.’ Khadir’s reply was a low mutter.

  One of Kader’s eyes was swollen shut, but he blinked up at Khadir and a slow change came over him as he recognised the towering Arab assassin.

  ‘Oh, bollocks.’

  ‘I will have this one cleaned up and placed with the others,’ Simbarashe was saying. ‘Now you are here, you may take the prizes we have captured for you.’

  He said this to his men, giving them a smirk that they returned, pretending that he and they were the strong ones here, the victors.

  This little game irritated Khadir down to his core. The pain inflicted on Kader – it had no real value beyond Simbarashe using it to show off how tough he was. Why else had he come in here and beaten a weaker person chained to a car? What other value could there have been to it?

  Provincial, short-sighted men like Simbarashe always failed to understand that true authority came not from violence for violence’s sake, but violence as a means of control. Khadir decided he would show him who was really in charge here.

  ‘Get him on his feet,’ Simbarashe was saying, and one of his men moved to detach the cables.

  ‘No,’ Khadir replied, drawing his pistol. ‘I do not need this one.’

  He put a single bullet through Kader’s throat and the hacker’s body shook, his life ending in a strangled choke as he fell forward against the restraints.

  TWENTY

  ‘What do you see?’ said Lucy, shifting from foot to foot.

  ‘No more activity at the helicopter.’

  Malte was holding himself up to the slit-windows high up the wall, peering out into the gloom.

  Marc sat on the edge of one of the folding beds, with the Finn’s boot knife in one hand and the stolen cell phone in the other. He looked worse for wear, the new bloom of a nasty impact bruise on his face and one eye marked red with burst blood vessels.

  ‘They’re here for us,’ he muttered, using the tip of the blade to lever open the phone’s casing.

  ‘Who’s they?’ she asked.

  ‘Take a wild guess.’

  Marc got into the device’s guts and began poking around.

  ‘Is that a good idea, Mr Dane?’ Solomon was watching from the other cage. ‘That is our only means of communication with the outside world.’

  ‘It’s our only means of escape,’ Marc corrected, his attention totally focused on the innards of the phone. Lucy watched him peel off a thin sliver of microcircuitry and discard it.

  Malte dropped back down to the floor with a grunt.

  ‘Heard a gunshot,’ he said quietly.

  No one replied. None of them wanted to acknowledge what the sound might signify.

  ‘Okay . . .’ Marc stood and grabbed the grubby, stained blanket lying on the cot. ‘Here we go.’

  He held the torn-open phone up, and jabbed the tip of the knife into the battery pack inside, piercing the casing in a dozen places.

  Immediately, faint wisps of white smoke began to issue out of the holes as the lithium-heavy compound inside the battery reacted with the moisture in the air.

  ‘Get back!’

  Marc jammed the sabotaged phone into the thin gap between their cage’s lock mechanism and the door frame, wrapping the blanket around it.

  Lucy smelled the bitter odour of a chemical reaction, and she knew what would come next. Cheap batteries in knock-off phones like the guard’s handset were prone to overheat and catch alight in the wrong circumstances, a reaction that Marc was forcing in order to turn the device into a makeshift explosive.

  With a fizzing, spitting jolt, the phone burst into flames as the battery went into catastrophic thermal runaway. Pinkish-blue fire flared around the cage lock, consuming the material of the blanket and burning into the metal.

  Marc gave Lucy a nod, and together the pair of them aimed boot-heel kicks into the weakened lock mechanism. On the second blow, it gave and the door groaned open on its hinges.

  While Marc smothered the remains of the smoking phone with another blanket, Lucy ran to the guardroom door and peered through the window.

  Luck was on their side. The last man out of the basement had been so eager to leave, he had forgotten to throw the deadbolt. She slipped into the next room and searched it, quickly finding the bulky ring of keys in a desk drawer.

  In moments, the other cells were open, and Solomon and Malte were free. Marc returned the Finn’s knife with a nod.

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  ‘We must escape and evade,’ said Solomon. ‘That is our priority now.’

  ‘Copy that,’ agreed Lucy. She glanced at Marc. ‘I hope you brought some more bright ideas.’

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ he said.

  *

  The equipment and weapons taken from the Rubicon team were arranged on tables in one of the mansion’s living rooms, guns piled on one side, hardware and portable computers on the other.

  Khadir examined the inert shape of a thick-framed watch, then discarded it. Solomon and his people had been carrying little when they were captured, he reflected. At each stage of this scheme, their agency and the layers of their protection had been stripped away, paring them down again and again until all they had were the clothes on their backs.

  They must have known they could not elude us forever, he thought. Every road eventually runs out.

  ‘These are the real deal,’ said Grace. Her peculiar, drifting-accent affectation had irritated Khadir at first, but now he no longer paid attention to it. The woman crouched over a steel ammunition crate, picking out the compact modules inside at random and comparing them to an image on a hand-held screen. ‘Looks like they’re intact. Your boss is gonna be pleased.’

  Khadir gave a slow nod, wondering what kind of digital bounty was hidden on the consignment of hard drives.

  Something worth a great deal, of course. Pytor Glovkonin would not commit so many resources to recovering them unless he believed they would enrich him still further.

  A possibility flitted through Khadir’s thoughts. He could take the drives for himself and vanish, use whatever was on them to rebuild his own mission. Although the Al Sayf terrorist network had been systematically dismantled by the American military, there were still sympathisers operating in the Middle East. A hard core of beleaguered jihadis and warriors with their own causes, who would take in a man like Omar Khadir on the strength of his reputation alone.

  He lingered on the notion. It was true that Glovkonin had done much to protect Khadir from perishing along with Al Sayf, but that was a purely transactional relationship. The Russian had forced the Arab to become his own personal assassin, trading off safe harbour for the clandestine murders of his rivals. There was no loyalty between them, only the dynamics of power.

  What would upset that relationship the most? wondered Khadir. To steal this from him, or to use it to usurp him?

  Ekko Solomon’s hoard of secret intelligence was to be Glovkonin’s ticket into the heart of the Combine, that nest of moneyed power brokers who profited from the conflicts of lesser men. They were the ones who had bankrolled Al Sayf, and ulti
mately, the ones who had failed them.

  Khadir picked up one of the drive modules and weighed it in his hand. He had never been a believer in Al Sayf’s brand of bloody, fanatical Islamism. He was a nihilist, if truth be told, a man seeking a path that led to the destruction of the current world order. The thought that the Combine might be a tool towards that end amused him.

  ‘Something funny?’

  Grace was looking at him, one eyebrow arched in a quizzical expression.

  ‘It would lose much in translation,’ he offered, dropping the drive back into the crate. ‘Send the Russian the picture.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Grace made a few keystrokes on her device, switching it to camera mode to capture images of the crate’s contents. The photographs would be instantly transmitted to Glovkonin for his scrutiny.

  Khadir stepped away, finding Simbarashe watching him with hooded eyes. Seated in a large leather chair on the far side of the room, the militia leader sipped from a tumbler of whisky and attempted to give an impression of disinterest. But he could not keep his attention from Khadir, Cord and Grace.

  In the wake of Khadir’s execution of the hacker, Simbarashe had at least shown enough awareness to understand that he was dealing with cold-blooded professionals, not the bellicose and ill-disciplined insurgents who were his usual enemies.

  He cleared his throat. ‘You are satisfied?’

  Khadir didn’t reply immediately. He waited for Grace to give him the nod that meant the Russian was content with the materials.

  Her computer chimed as an incoming message arrived.

  ‘All clear,’ she said.

  Khadir reached for the radio mike clipped to his tactical vest and spoke into it.

  ‘Vine, bring the payment.’

  Simbarashe downed the dregs of his drink.

  ‘Good, good!’ He jerked his chin at the plastic body bag lying in the room’s far corner. ‘You want that too?’

  There were other bags rolled up and waiting to be used, next to the one containing the hacker’s corpse. Khadir’s hand dropped to his holstered pistol and he considered the best method of dispatching the remaining members of the SCD. Solomon was to be taken alive, despite his own desire for another outcome. The lives of the others, however, were less important.