Lone Wolf

by Nigel Findley

  Don’t waste time and effort that could better be invested in keeping my skin intact.

  But just letting it ride goes against every fragging fiber of my personality (such as it is). I’ve always been the kind of slag who can’t leave stones unturned, who’s got to roll them over and poke around with a stick at the creepy-crawlies underneath.

  No. That’s not the whole truth either, is it? I’ve got to have something—some gem of data, some lead, some answer—that I can bring in with me when Layton and company bring me into the light. Something I can hand over to them with a smug grin, something they didn’t know about. Something to prove I’m not just a frag-up who can’t keep his cover intact.

  I derail that train of thought right there. Cat’s eyes are on me, and I get the uncomfortable feeling she can see the way my mind’s working. So I put on a solid, emotionless biz mask, and meet her gaze directly. “Can you do it. Cat? I know it’s against regs to use the Star’s databanks for private drek like this . . ” A pause as she thinks about it, then a warm smile spreads across her face. “I can do it,” she confirms, “and we both know how much you really care about the regs. Have you got a time-frame for this? And don’t tell me ‘soonest,’ or I'm going to hang up.”

  I don’t answer immediately, my brain trying to come up with a guess about how long this could take her. After a second or two I shrug. “What can I tell you, Cat? Soon, priyatel.”

  She nods. “I’ve got two days off, so I can push it after I get some sleep. Depending on just what’s going down, I might be able to give you something preliminary by . .. midnight, maybe?”

  “That’s better than I expected,” I admit.

  She shrugs that off with a smile. “I take it there isn’t a number where I can reach you,” she says dryly.

  “Right in one,” I confirm. “I’ll call you.”

  “I might not be in,” she reminds me. “I do have a life, omae.” She thinks for a moment, then, “I’ll log everything I find as I find it,” she says. “I’ll file it on my telecom under ‘Special Favors.’ How about that?” I nod. “I’ll encrypt and lock it,” she goes on. “Give me a password, something you’ll remember.”

  A perfect opening. I stifle a grin. “Something I’ll never forget,” I say earnestly, then use the phone’s keypad to enter the word “Mayflower.” Cat blushes faintly, a factoid that I file away for future use. One never knows, do one?

  13

  Midnight in the sprawl. Do you know where your kids are?

  A good number of them seem to be hanging out in and around Denny Park, Mr. and Mrs. Seattle, in the shadow of the Space Needle. Chipped up or gooned out, frying their brains with chemicals or electronics, trying to escape from what we laughingly call reality. Somebody once told me Denny Park was refurbished a few years back to be a kind of friendly family park, somewhere to take the kiddies of an afternoon or a lover of an evening. Doesn’t look like it worked worth a damn.

  Anyway, that doesn’t matter to me at the moment. For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling good.

  Why? I’m coming into the light, that’s why. Layton and her little friends have finally come through for me. About time, too. I was starting to feel like the Flying fragging Dutchman or the Wandering fragging Jew, hopelessly roaming through the world looking for safe harbor or haven or some slotting thing.

  As we agreed, I called in at 1730, and got told a big load of nothing. Still working on the matter, can’t help you out, go off and play, blah blah blah ... oh, and phone back later. So I phone back later—from the only functioning public phone on Denny Way, it looks like—expecting much the same runaround.

  Surprise, surprise, surprise. “The way’s clear to bring you in,” Layton told me as soon as she answered the phone. “Hold for details.”

  Hold I did, and sure enough the details were forthcoming. Not that they made much sense, at least not from my standpoint. I guess what I'd expected was to receive the address of somewhere I could hunker down for awhile—a safe house that wasn’t listed in the Star’s databases—until other arrangements could be made. The fact that Layton and crew were laying on something a tad more elaborate hinted that there’s even more to this frag-up than meets the eye. Just what kind of drek is the Star going through? Oh well, not my biz. I’m coming in, and that’s all the matters at the moment.

  Not immediately, but no surprise there. So much that has to do with Lone Star is “hurry up and wait.” I don’t have to wait long, however, and that’s what counts: three hours or so. By the time the sun’s up again, I should be into the light, even be able to sleep. (What a concept!)

  In the meantime, Cat said to give her a shout at midnight or thereabouts, and it’s pretty fragging close. So I key her number into the same pay phone I used to contact Layton, and wait for the connection. It’s not good fieldcraft, placing two calls from the same location, but frag it, I get the recorded message again, and this time Cat doesn’t break in live. That’s chill. I execute a “break” sequence and request access to the file called Special Favors. When the system requests a password, I type in “Mayflower,” and I’m in.

  I probably needn’t have bothered. Looks like so much drek in there; just a list of names without any kind of annotation. Crystalite, Griffin, Telestrian, Marguax, and Star-bright. None of the names means anything to me. What the frag are they? Corps? Individuals? People Cat’s already dug up on or leads she’s planning to pursue? Frag knows, and nothing I can do about it. I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run, anyway.

  * * *

  For the hundredth time I wonder why Layton and chummers decided to go this route to bring me in. I know they must have a good reason, and if I can scope out what it is, that might tell me more about what kind of deep drek the Star seems to be in. That’s how I scan it, at least. I know Drummond would tell me. I’ve got no “need-to-know” on this one, but sometimes, “want-to-know” is enough of a driving force. Mentally, I go through it again, trying to work it out.

  What’s unusual about this whole scam is the level of personnel involvement. The way it’s coming down, according to Layton, is that I’m supposed to keep an eye on the south end of Montlake Bridge—the single span that crosses the Lake Washington Ship Canal between U-Dub and the Montlake District—during the period from 0255 to 0305.

  There’ll be a car with a single driver who’ll make contact using “generally accepted fieldcraft principles” (a high-toned way of saying “the same old drek”). I get in the car and we’re off.

  Layton also came right out and said there’d be at least one exchange of vehicles along the way. That surprised me on a couple of levels: one, that she thought it was necessary to say. and another, that she’d even tell me, but ours is not to reason why drekcetera. Why the pickup and why the vehicle exchange? It doesn’t make any sense unless I’m hotter— much hotter—than I think or unless the penetration into the Star’s even deeper than I figured. Frag, scary. The Star’s always been the one constant in my (professional) life, the one thing I could trust and depend on when I was undercover. It rattles me that what I thought of as a solid rock foundation might actually be JelloSoy . . .

  I snort, and shove those thoughts into the “To Obsess About Later” file. It’s 0251 and the rain’s stopped, but there’s a nasty, thin wind blowing from the east across Lake Washington and Union Bay, and I’m fragging freezing. At least Layton chose a good spot for the pickup. There are a dozen good overwatch positions from which I can see the south end of Montlake Bridge without being spotted myself. (Too often, desk jockeys pick spots that offer one and only one place you can hang. If the meet gets hosed, that single spot turns into a death trap.)

  I’m already hunkered down in the best of the lot, a small booth outside a restaurant where I figure the valet parking slots hang during the day. Without exposing myself significantly, I can see more than halfway north across the bridge, as far south as the overpass that crosses Highway 520, and a full block both east and west along East Shelby Street. T
he only kick I’ve got against it as an overwatch “nest” is that the fragging place isn’t heated. No matter where I crouch, there’s always an icy draft blowing down the back of my neck.

  It’s 0300 on the button—the exact middle of the specified time-span—when I see headlights coming south across the bridge. It’s a single car, cruising slowly, moving not much faster than a person at a walk. As it hits the end of the bridge, the headlights flick off, leaving only the sidelights. Linder the cold blue-white of the streetlamps, I see the bulbous and unmistakable shape of a Leyland-Zil Tsarina pull over to the curb at the corner of Montlake Boulevard and Sheiby. It flashes its headlights once, then all the lights go out. I hear the high-pitched whine of its multifuel turbine spooling down, then a hydraulic hiss as the front and rear canopies open.

  The L-Z Tsarina’s a weird car, which is probably what you’d expect from an English-Russian coproduction, but I’ve got to admit it’s a good choice for this kind of op. It’s a two-seater—a pure one, not a two-plus-two or even a two-plus luggage. The passenger compartment has room for two, and only two, people: the passenger in the front, the driver slightly above and to the rear (the same seating configuration as in a helicopter gunship, a chummer told me once). The point is, with the two canopies open, there’s no way or place for someone in the car to hide. Thus, no drek about someone ducking down in the passenger seat out of sight. The ambient light reveals the dark shape of one person in the car, a small figure sitting in the driver’s seat. I’m not figuring this as any kind of setup, but I decide to wait and watch another minute or two anyway just because it’s not chill to be overeager in this kind of situation. Then a vanity light flicks on inside the driver’s compartment and I see who it is.

  I rise to my feet, ignoring the way my cold, stiff, knee joints crack and ache, and I jander across the street to the waiting car.

  Cat Ashburton smiles up at me from the cramped confines of the Tsarina. “Going my way, sailor?” she asks.

  I shake my head with a chuckle, and swing into the front seat, trying to find a comfortable position for my long legs. Down come the canopies, the engine fires up again—little more than a subliminal whir inside the car—and we’re off.

  The disadvantage with the Tsarina is that you can’t carry on a face-to-face conversation. I’m facing straight forward out over the short, curved nose, and there’s not enough room for me to twist myself around. Cat, on the other hand, has a great view of the back of my head and my incipient bald spot. Still, you make do with what you’ve got. At least the car's nice and warm.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask her. “Are you my official ride?”

  I hear her chuckle, and I wish I could see her face. “That’s me, omae,” she confirms. “I got the word from Drummond. I guess he wanted someone you’d recognize, but who wasn’t traceable to you, or something.”

  “Maybe.” A mental alarm sounds, but I don’t know why. Without meaning to, Cat distracts me from that line of thought before I can pursue it further. “Did you check Mayflower?” she asks.

  “Yeah, for all the good it did me. Crystalite, Griffin, and the rest—who the frag are they?”

  “What are they,” she corrects. “And what they are are major Tir-based corps that have no official operations in Seattle.”

  “What good’s that?” I want to know.

  “The key word’s 'official'.”

  “So?”

  Cat sighs, probably frowning at my obtuseness. “If a corp’s got no official presence,” she says slowly and clearly like she’s talking to a newborn ork, “it makes you wonder why they’ve got a security presence, doesn’t it, omae? It’s like, if you don’t have anything to guard, why have guards, neh?”

  I’m too tired to think clearly—that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. “Yeah, scan,” I grumble. “And all those corps have a security presence in the plex?”

  “That’s what the Star files say.”

  “Why?”

  She chuckles again. “That’s the big question, isn’t it?” She pauses. “It’s also not something you’re going to find in one single record in one single database. If there’s any answer at all, you’ll only find it by cross-correlating a drekload of different data in a drekload of different files.”

  I sigh. “No go, huh? Well, thanks anyway, Cat, I owe you—”

  “Damn straight you owe me,” she cuts in, “but I didn’t say it’s impossible. Just that it’s difficult.”

  “Oh?” I feel a slight stirring of hope. Even if there’s no way I’ll have my gem to hand over to Layton, McMartin, and Drummond the moment I arrive on Star territory, it’d stili be a partial victory if I could present them with something significant before they find it themselves.

  “Yeah, ‘oh’,” she says, “and do you ever owe me. I hardly got any sleep, thanks to you.”

  “Didn’t seem to bother you much in the past,” I say innocently, then go, “Ouch, drek,” as she delivers a stinging rap to the top of my head with a knuckle, I decide I hate L-Z Tsarinas after all.

  “Why don’t you think with this for a change?” she says, punctuating her words with another rap to the skull. Yet there’s something in her tone that tells me she’s not as slotted off as she’d like me to think. “Anyway, as I was saying ... I whomped up a couple of smartframes and demons and sent them out to do the dirty work and the crosscorrelation. They’re at it right now.”

  “Huh? By themselves?”

  She laughs out loud at that. “You’re out of date, chummer. You don’t have to actually do a datasearch anymore. You just write a code to do it for you.”

  I shake my head. Sometimes I think I'd have been better off born in the Dark Ages, like back in 1994 or some drek. “And what do they do when they find what they’re looking for? Phone home?”

  I meant it as a joke, but she just says, “You got it. They’re programmed to log all their conclusions in Special Favors and the raw data in a couple of other files so we can crosscheck it later. Satisfied?”

  “Bolshoi satisfied.”

  We fall silent, and in that first instant of silence I listen, really listen, to the warning bells that have been ringing in my skull for the past few minutes. Cat said Drummond assigned her to pick me up because there’s no connection in our records between her and me. But if there’s no connection, how did he know to get in contact with her?

  Oh, drek ... I draw in a breath to tell her, but it’s too late, way too late.

  At that moment I see a burst of light to the left and thirty degrees up, from the top of a low building. Yellow-red light, like fire. The next thing I know, that fire is streaking down toward us, an ultra-speed comet that burns an afterimage into my visual field.

  Transition.

  It’s like a badly cut trideo. One moment I’m sitting comfortably in the Tsarina’s front seat, the next I’m sprawled grotesquely across something hard and jagged, head down, hoop in the air. My face is freezing, my back’s scorching hot. There are sounds in my ears, but the horrible shrieking-ringing inside my head’s too overpowering for me to make sense of them. When I try to open my eyes, I feel the eyelids move, hut I’m still blind. I try to move, but my body’s not paying attention to the messages my brain’s sending it. I feel like I’m in a fragging nightmare, which suddenly sends me into a panic. Or maybe it’s the turbocharged nerve-jolts of fear that do it. My legs and back spasm, and I roll over onto my right side. Something sharp and cold lances into my left buttock.

  It’s the pain—precise, crystalline, localized—that seems to clear the fog from my mind. I’m lying out in the road, on top of wreckage of some kind. My eyes are open, but I can’t see because there’s something warm and sticky in them— blood, what else? A car crash . . . Then I remember the flaming comet.

  And I’m rolling—madly, over and over to the right. Away from the direction the comet came, off the wreckage, and onto the cold, wet pavement. Frag the pain, frag the fact I’ve got something driven deep into my ham, frag the fact that
my back feels like it’s on fire. If I don’t react fast— now—I’m dead. Still rolling, I drag my left hand across my eyes, trying to wipe away the blood, while my right hand pulls out my H & K.

  I can see again, but I’m rolling over and over so fast I can’t make sense of anything. Night sky, flames, wet pavement, flames, night sky again. The ringing in my head’s decreasing, and now on top of it I can just hear the roaring of flames. And a woman screaming—high, continuous, throat-ripping . . .

  Then another sound, one I’ve heard before, a fast-paced triple concussion. Ba-ba-bam, and my face and hands are flayed with fragments of pavement. I roll again, this time getting my hands and one knee underneath me, then, with a convulsion of all my major muscle groups, I fling myself to my feet. I’m dizzy and almost go sprawling again, but I manage to keep my balance—just. An instant later I almost trip over a curb, but I turn the move into a stutter-step and cut hard to my right. Ba-ba-bam again, and a garbage container next to me turns into shrapnel. Another stutter-step, cut left, and I risk a look over my shoulder.

  In the middle of the road, the main body of the Tsarina is blazing madly, the rear of it twisted and torn into some horrible kind of sculpture. Flames are leaping merrily from inside the driver’s compartment. The screams have stopped, and I know that’s a blessing. The front part of the car, the portion ahead of the passenger seat, is lying a couple of meters from the rest of the wreckage—not on fire, by some strange chance—smashed free when the impact of the missile split the Tsarina in two right at the front axle.

  There’s movement on top of a low building across the way—a single figure, I’d guess—and two more on the road, moving cautiously toward Cat and the car that’s her crematorium. The wire takes over and I send a couple of quick bursts their way. Just to keep them preoccupied, not with the expectation of doing damage. I know they’re armored, just as I know who and what they are.

  All that took a split second, and fragging good job. The Mossberg combat gun across the way roars again, and this time the triple-shot pattern’s so close I can feel it.