“I just got back from a month in the field in the EU. I’ve got interviews in the can with CEOs, with street thugs, with grandmothers and with regulators, all saying the same thing: unmetered communications are the secret engine of the economy, of liberty. The highest quality ‘content’ isn’t one-hundred-million-dollar movies, it’s conversations with other people. Crypto is a tool of privacy not piracy.
“The unwirers are heroes in Europe. But here, you people are pirates, abettors of terrorists. I want to change that.”
Marcel picked a fight over supper: “What are you planning this week?”
“More dishes. Got a couple of folks to splice in downtown if I want to hook up East Aurora—there’re some black spots there, but I figure with some QOS-BASED routing and a few more repeaters we can clear them up. Why?”
Marcel toyed with a strand of cooling pizza cheese. “It’s boring. When are you going to run a new fat pipe in?”
“When the current one’s full. The more we’ve got, the more there are for the Feds to cut.”
“I could take over part of the fiber-pull,” Marcel said.
“I don’t think so.” Roscoe put his plate down.
“But I could—” Marcel looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Security,” Roscoe grunted. “Goddamnit, you can’t just waltz up to some guy who’s looking at twenty-to-life and say ‘Hi, Roscoe sent me, howzabout you and me run some dark fiber over the border, huh?’ Some of the guys in this game are, huh, you wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night. And others are just plain paranoid.”
“You could introduce me,” Marcel said after a brief pause.
Roscoe laughed, a short bark. “In your dreams.”
Marcel dropped his fork, clattering. “You’re going to take your pet blonde on a repeater splice and show her everything, but you won’t let me help run a new pipe in? What’s the matter, I don’t smell good enough?”
“Up yours.” Roscoe finished the meal in silence, then headed out to his evening class in conversational French. Marcel was just jealous because he wasn’t getting to do any of the secret agent stuff. Being an unwirer was a lot less romantic than it sounded, and the first rule of unwiring was nobody talks about unwiring. Maybe Marcel would get it one day.
Sylvie’s hotel room had a cigarette-burns-and-must squalor that reminded Roscoe of jail. “Bonjour, m’sieu,” she said as she admitted him.
“Bon soir, madame,” he said. “Commentava?”
“Lookee here, the treasures of the Left Bank.” She handed him the Motorola batarang he’d glimpsed earlier. The underside had a waxed-paper peel-off strip and when he lifted a corner, his thumb stuck so hard to the tackiness beneath that he lost the top layer of skin when he pulled it loose. He turned it over in his hands.
“How’s it powered?”
“Photovoltaics charging a polymer cell. The entire case is a slab of battery plus solar cell. It only sucks juice when it’s transmitting. Put one in a subway car and you’ve got an instant ad hoc network that everyone in the car can use. Put one in the next car and they’ll mesh. Put one on the platform and you’ll get connectivity with the train when it pulls in.”
“Shitfire,” he said, stroking the matte finish in a way that bordered on the erotic.
She grinned. She was slightly snaggletoothed, and he noticed a scar on her upper lip from a cleft-palate operation that must have been covered up with concealer earlier. It made her seem more human, more vulnerable. “Costs three Euros in quantity. Some Taiwanese knockoffs have already appeared that slice that in half. Moto’ll have to invent something new next year if it wants to keep that profit.”
“They will,” Roscoe said, still stroking the batarang. He transferred it to his armpit and unslung his luggable laptop. “Innovation is still legal there.” The laptop sank heavily into the bedspread.
Sylvie’s chest began to buzz. She slipped a tiny phone from her breast pocket and answered it. “Yes?” She handed it to Roscoe. “It’s for you.”
He clamped it to his ear. “Who is this?”
“Eet eez eye, zee masked avenger, doer of naughty deeds and wooer of reporters’ hearts.”
“Marcel?”
“Yes, boss.”
“You shouldn’t be calling this number.” He remembered the yellow pad, sitting on his bedside table.
“Sorry, boss,” Marcel said. He giggled.
“Have you been drinking?” Marcel and he had bonded over many, many beers when they’d met in a bar in Utica, but Roscoe had cut back lately. Drinking made you sloppy.
“No, no,” he said. “Just in a good mood is all. I’m sorry we fought, darlin’, can we kiss and make up?”
“What do you want, Marcel?”
“I want to be in the story, dude. Hook me up! I want to be famous!”
Roscoe grinned despite himself. Marcel was good at fonzing dishes into place with one well-placed whack, could crack him up when the winter slush was turning his mood to pitch. Good kid, basically, but impulsive. Like Roscoe, once.
“C’mon c’mon c’mon,” Marcel said, and he could picture the kid pogoing up and down in a phone booth, heard his boots crunching on rock salt.
He covered the receiver and turned to Sylvie, who had a bemused smirk that wasn’t half cute on her. “You wanna hit the road, right?” She nodded. “You wanna write about how unwirers get made? I could bring along the kid I’m ’prenticing up.” Through the cellphone, he heard Marcel shouting “Yes! Yes! YES!” and imagined the kid punching the air and pounding the booth’s walls triumphantly.
“It’s a good angle,” she said. “You want him along, right?”
He held the receiver in the air so that they could both hear the hollers coming down the line. “I don’t think I could stop him,” he said. “So, yeah.”
She nodded and bit her upper lip, just where the scar was, an oddly canine gesture that thrust her chin forward and made her look slightly belligerent. “Okay.”
“Marcel! Calm down, twerp! Breathe. Okay. You gonna be good if I take you along?”
“So good, man, so very very very very good, you won’t believe—”
“You gonna be safe, I bring you along?”
“Safe as houses. Won’t breathe without your permission. Man, you are the best—”
“Yeah, I am. Four PM. Bring the stuff.”
“We’re heading for East Aurora.” Roscoe looked over his shoulder as he backed the truck into the street, barely noticing Sylvie watching him. “There’s a low hill there that’s blocking signal to the mesh near Chestnut Hill. We’re going to fix that.”
“Great!” Marcel said. “Hey, isn’t there a microwave mast up there?”
“Yeah.” Roscoe saw Sylvie making notes. “Could you keep from saying exactly where we’re placing the repeaters? In your article? Otherwise FCC’ll take ’em down.”
“Okay.” Sylvie put down her pocket computer. It was one of those weird Brit designs with the folding keyboards and built-in wireless that had trashed Palm all over Europe.
“We should only need two or three at the most,” Roscoe added. “I figure an hour for each and we can be home by nine.”
“Why don’t we use the microwave mast?” Marcel said.
“Huh?”
“The microwave mast,” he repeated. “We go up there, we put one repeater on it, and we bounce signal over the hill, no need to go ’round the bushes.”
“I don’t think so,” Roscoe said absently. “Criminal trespass.”
“But it’d save time! And they’d never look up there, it’ll look just like any other phone company dish—”
Roscoe sighed. “I am so not hearing this. Listen, if I get caught climbing a tree by the roadside I can drop the cans and say I was bird-watching. But if I get caught climbing a phone company tower, it’s criminal trespass, and they’ll nail me for felony theft of service, and felony possession of unlicensed devices—they’ll find the cans for sure, it’s like a parking lot around the base—and violate m
y parole. Enough about saving time, okay? Doing twenty to life is not saving time.”
“Okay,” Marcel said, “we’ll do it your way.” He crossed his arms and stared out the window at the passing trees under their winter cowl of snow.
“How many unwirers are working the area?” Sylvie asked, breaking the silence.
Marcel said, “Just us,” at the same moment as Roscoe said, “Dozens.” Sylvie laughed.
“We’re solo,” Roscoe said, “but there are lots of other solos in the area. It’s not a conspiracy, you know—more like an emergent form of democracy.”
Sylvie looked up from her palmtop. “That’s from a manifesto, isn’t it?”
Roscoe pinked. “Guilty as charged. Got it from Barlow’s Letters from Prison. I read a lot of prison-lit. Before I went into the joint.”
“Amateurs plagiarize, artists steal,” she said. “Might as well steal from the best. Barlow talks a mean stick. You know he wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead?”
Marcel came out of his sulk when they got to the site. He set up a surveyor’s tripod and was the model of efficiency as he lined up the bank shot to bounce their signal around the hill.
Sylvie hung back with Roscoe, who was testing the gear using his laptop and two homemade antennae to measure signal strength. “Got to get it right the first time. Don’t like to revisit a site after it’s set up. Dog returning to its vomit and all.”
She took out her key chain and dangled it in the path of the business end of the repeater Roscoe was testing. “I’m getting good directional signal,” she said, turning the keychain so he could see the glowing blue LEDs arranged to form the distinctive Nokia “N.”
Roscoe reached for the fob. “These are just wicked,” he said.
“Keep it,” she said. “It’s just a Nokia freebie.”
Roscoe felt obscurely embarrassed—like an American hick. “Thanks,” he said. “Hey, Marcel, you got us all lined up?”
“Got it.”
They lined up the first repeater and tested it, but there was no signal. Bad solder joints, interference from the microwave tower, gremlins . . . Who knew? Sometimes a shot just didn’t work.
“Okay, pass me another one.” It worked fine, but they needed two to make the shot. “Didn’t you bring a third?” Roscoe asked.
“What for?” Marcel shrugged. “They worked back home.”
“Shit.” Roscoe stamped his feet and looked back at the road. Sylvie was standing close to the truck, hands in her pockets, looking cold. He glanced at the hill and the microwave mast on top of it.
“Why’n’t we try the hill?” Marcel asked. “We could do the shot with only one repeater from up there.”
Roscoe stared at the mast. “Let me think.” He picked up the working repeater and shambled back to the truck cab. “Come on.”
“What now?” asked Sylvie, climbing in the passenger seat.
“I think.” Roscoe turned the ignition key. “Kid has a point. We’ve only got one unit. If we can stick it on the mast, it’ll do the job.” He stared at Marcel. “But we are not going to get caught.” He glanced at Sylvie.
She whistled tunelessly. “It’s your ass.”
“Okay. You guys keep an eye out for any sign of anyone following us.” He drove with excruciating care.
The side road up to the crest of the hill was dark, shadowed by snow-laden trees to either side. Roscoe took it slowly; a couple of times there was a whine as the all-wheel drive cut in on the uncleared snow. “No fast getaways,” Sylvie noted.
There was an empty parking lot at the end of the driveway. The mast rose from a concrete plinth behind a chain-link fence, towering above them like a giant intrusion from another world. Roscoe parked. “See anything?”
“No,” said Marcel from the back seat.
“Looks okay—hey, wait!” Sylvie did a double take. “Stop! Don’t open the door!”
“Why—” Marcel began.
“Stop. Just stop.” Sylvie seemed agitated, and right then, Roscoe, his eyes recovering from headlight glare, noticed the faint shadows. “Marcel, get down!”
“What’s up?” Marcel asked.
“Crouch down! Below window level!”
Roscoe looked past her. The shadows were getting sharper and now he could hear the other vehicle. “Shit. We’ve been—” He reached toward the ignition key and Sylvie slapped his hand away. “Ouch!”
“Here.” She leaned forward. “Make it look like you mean it.”
“Mean what—” Roscoe got it a moment before she kissed him. He was hugging her as the truck cab flooded with light.
“You! Out of the—Oh, geez.” The amplified voice, a woman’s voice, trailed off. Sylvie and Roscoe turned and blinked at the spotlights mounted on the gray Dodge van as its doors opened.
Sylvie wound down the side window and stuck her head out. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can fuck right off!” she yelled. “Voyeurs!”
“This is private property,” came the voice. Boots crunched on the road salt. A holster creaked. Roscoe held his breath.
“Sorry,” Sylvie said. “All right, we’re going.”
“Not yet, you aren’t,” the voice said again, this time much closer. Roscoe looked in the rearview at the silhouette of the woman cop, flipping her handcuffs on her belt, stepping carefully on the ice surface.
“Go go go,” hissed Marcel from the back seat.
“Sit tight,” Sylvie said.
From the back seat, a click. Roscoe mumbled, “Marcel, if that is a gun I just heard, I am going to shove it up your fucking ass and pull the trigger.”
He rolled down his window. “Evening, officer,” he said. Her face was haloed by the light bouncing off her breath’s fog, but he recognized her. Had seen her, the day before.
“Evening sir,” she said. “Evening, ma’am. Nice night, huh? Doing some bird-watching?”
Made. He couldn’t have moved if he tried. He couldn’t go back—
Another click. A flashlight. The cop shone it on Sylvie. Roscoe turned. The concealer was smudged around her scar.
“Officer, really, is this necessary?” Sylvie’s voice was exasperated, and had a Manhattan accent she hadn’t had before, one that made her sound scary-aggro. “It was just the heat of the moment.”
“Yes, ma’am, it is. Sir, could you step out of the car, please?”
The flashlight swung toward the back seat. The cop’s eyes flickered, and then she slapped for her holster, stepping back quickly. “Everyone, hands where I can see them now!”
She was still fumbling with her holster, and there was the sound of the car door behind her opening. “Liz?” a voice called. The other cop, her partner. Fourth and Walnut. “Everything okay?”
She was staring wide-eyed now, panting out puffs of steam. Staring at the rear window. Roscoe looked over his shoulder. Marcel had a small pistol, pointed at her.
“Drive, Roscoe,” he said. “Drive fast.”
Moving as in a dream, he reached for the ignition. He slammed it into gear, cranking hard on the wheel, turning away from the cop, a wide circle through the empty parking lot that he came out of in a fishtail.
He regained control as they crested the ridge. Behind him, he heard the cop car swing into the chain-link fence, and in his rearview mirror, he saw the car whirling across the ice on the parking lot, its headlights moving in slow circles. Sylvie’s gasp snapped him back to his driving. They were careening down the hill now, tires whining for purchase.
He touched the brakes, triggering another skid. The truck hit the main road still skidding, but now they had rock salt under the rubber, and he brought the truck back under control and floored it, switching off the headlights.
“This isn’t safe,” Sylvie said.
“You said, ‘Drive fast,’ ” Roscoe said, hammering the gearbox. He sounded hysterical, even to his own ears. He swallowed. “It’s not far.”
“What’s not far?” she said.
“We’ve got about five mi
nutes before their backup arrives. Seven minutes until the chopper’s in the sky. Need to get off the road.”
“The safe house,” Marcel said.
“Shut up!”
Roscoe hadn’t been to the safe house in a year. It was an old public park, closed after a jungle gym accident. He’d gone there to scout out a good repeater location, and found that the public toilet was unlocked. He kept an extra access point there, along with a blanket, a change of clothes, a first-aid kit, and a fresh license plate, double bagged and stashed in the drop ceiling.
He parked the truck outside the fence, between the bushes and the chain-link. They were invisible from the road. He got out quickly.
“Marcel, get the camper bed,” he said, digging a crowbar out from under his seat and passing it to him.
“What are you going to do?” Sylvie asked.
He passed her a tarpaulin. “Unfold this on the ground there, and pile the stuff I pass you on top of it.”
He unloaded the truck quickly, handing Sylvie the unwiring kit. “Make a bundle of it,” he said, once the truck was empty. “Tie the corners together with the rope.”
He snatched the crowbar away from Marcel and attacked the nuts holding down the camper bed. When he’d undone them, he jammed the pry end of the bar between the lid and the truck. It began to slide and he grunted, “Get it,” at Sylvie who caught the end.
“Over the fence,” he gasped. They flipped it over together.
A car rolled past. They all flinched, but it kept going. He stilled his breathing and listened for the chop-chop of a helicopter, and thought that, yes, he heard it.
“Over the fence,” he said. “All of us.”
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