Killfile

by Christopher Farnsworth

  But Preston’s guys are the real thing. They’ve got a profile I recognize: cold, constant awareness, ready to hurt someone without hesitation or remorse. They’re so fresh from the wars that they still have the faint echoes of gunfire in their heads.

  Preston didn’t hire them from any rent-a-cop shop. They’re PMCs—private military contractors, the kind I used to see babysitting Halliburton execs in the Green Zone. Professional killers, wearing company polo shirts.

  They regard me with a little wariness. I don’t cast the same shadow as the rest of the people here. But they don’t have my gift. They don’t see me as anything more than an anomaly. If they did, they wouldn’t let me get this close to their boss.

  I figure this must be the latest thing in personal protection, and another way for Preston to show off: if Sloan hires ex-military like Keith and David, Preston hires former Navy SEALs.

  Fortunately for them, I’ve got no intention of hurting him yet. Like I told Kelsey, this meeting is all recon, a chance to get a look at the opposition and evaluate. Nothing serious is going to happen here.

  So I smile and shake his hand like a normal person and let my talent pick his brain.

  He’s not as smart as Sloan, but still much higher up the IQ scale than I can climb. I catch a couple of coding problems he’s fussing over in the back of his head, and it’s like an alien language.

  But he’s easier to read than Sloan. He has none of Sloan’s calm or patience. Preston is all jagged edges and wandering attention. His mind is like a strobe, illuminating one thing for an instant, then flickering to the next.

  For the first time, I start to think what Sloan asked might actually be possible. I never doubted I’d be able to get the algorithm back, at least in software form. But wiping out a memory is, as I said, something I’ve done only once, and not exactly with surgical precision.

  Looking into Preston’s head, however, gives me some hope. He’s got almost no inner resources, aside from his intellect. He’s obsessive, which is not the same as disciplined, and he’s easily distracted. Given a little time, I can probably grab whatever I need from him.

  “So you two know each other?” I say, nodding at Kelsey.

  He grins hugely. “Oh yeah. We overlapped when I was at Sloan, didn’t we?” He puts more saliva than I thought possible into the word “overlap.”

  Kelsey’s smile turns into a mask. “We didn’t work together,” she tells me. “Eli left the company a couple of months after I started.”

  Preston’s barely paying attention to me, spending most of his mental energy picturing Kelsey naked. But it’s pretty clear they didn’t sleep together, no matter how much Preston wishes it were true. I remind myself that it shouldn’t matter to me.

  “I was hoping we could talk about you doing some work for Mr. Sloan again,” I say. “He’s been watching your progress, and he thinks you might be able to help him. He’d like to hire OmniVore to root out a few old, buried secrets.”

  I get a small charge of triumph from Preston, but no guilt or anxiety.

  “Well, we’re pretty busy. I don’t know if we have the room to take on any new clients right now.” He turns to Kelsey. “This is all hush-hush, but you know we’re prepping for our IPO. It’s not too late for you to come over, get in on the ground floor.”

  “I like my job, Eli,” Kelsey says.

  “Working for the old man? Come on. That place is a retirement home.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Sloan will let you steal her,” I say.

  “She’s about the only valuable thing Sloan has,” Preston says, then remembers I’m supposed to work for Sloan too. “No offense.”

  “No fear,” I say. “But given how much you took away from your time with him, I think you’d want to hear his offer now. He helped make you what you are today, after all.”

  There’s a prickle of self-righteousness at that. Preston’s ego throws up automatic defenses to any suggestion that his success isn’t his alone. But again, there’s no guilt. I’m tossing plenty of key words that should trigger some kind of response: buried secrets, steal, fear, took away from him. And I’m getting nothing. If he did steal from Sloan, he’s got it covered well, or he managed to justify it to himself long ago.

  He teeters on the edge of a decision, and then his curiosity pushes him over the brink. “Sure,” he says. “I can’t promise to give a shit, but I’ll listen to your pitch.”

  “That’s all I ask,” I say. “When?”

  “Let’s get it over with. The lodge has an office I’m using. Give me a few minutes to get this party started, and then we can talk, cool?”

  He turns back to Kelsey without waiting for my response. “What about you, Kelsey? You going to help your boy here? I’d rather listen to anything coming out of your mouth. Or at least watch it while it moves.”

  For a second, I think she’s going to lose it and punch him. I can feel the impulse run down toward her fist. I wouldn’t blame her.

  Then she surprises us both by saying, “Actually, I thought I’d go shoot a few of your nerds.”

  That wipes the grin right off Preston’s face. “Seriously? You want in on this?”

  Her smile is something sharp now. “What, your boys can’t handle a girl on the field? Are you scared of me, Eli?”

  He laughs. “Hey, knock yourself out. You want to try for the cash, you got it. I guess Sloan’s not paying you that well these days. Be careful out there.” He looks at me as if he’s won some kind of point. “Office. Twenty minutes,” he tells me, and then his bodyguards escort him away.

  Kelsey finishes her drink and sets the glass down carefully on a nearby table made from the foot of an elephant. She turns to go as well.

  I stand in her way. “This is a bad idea,” I tell her. “I’ve had people shoot at me before. Trust me, the novelty wears off pretty fast.”

  “I can handle myself,” she says. “Why shouldn’t I take a shot—yes, I know, terrible pun—at a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Because it’s idiotic. You could get badly hurt. Take one of those rounds in the face and you might not get back up.”

  She smiles brightly. “That’s assuming they get me before I get them.”

  I can see she’s completely serious, completely unafraid. And the more I argue with her, the deeper she’s going to dig.

  I step back. “Do what you want,” I say. “I’ll be here when I’m done with Preston.”

  “Try not to melt his brain before I get back,” she says.

  “I told you. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  She walks away, and I watch her go.

  All right. Let her have her version of fun. She’ll be fine. And besides, protecting her is not part of my job.

  I KNOW WHY Preston wanted time before he met me. He needs to run me through his databases. He’d be an idiot if he didn’t.

  I felt one of his goons snap a picture of me with his phone earlier. It’s the same tingle I get when someone looks at me through a gunsight. I could have spoiled it easily, but I want him to have my photo.

  With Kelsey’s help, I’ve already got a full cover ID. My fake credit report lists me as an employee of Sloan’s firm, and I’ve got a fake address with a fake mortgage. My fake credit-card numbers lead to a full purchase history—copied and pasted from another guy’s account—so that even if Preston uses his data-mining software, he’ll find a complete record. I checked it out on Kelsey’s laptop on the plane. Apparently I spend a lot of money on dog food.

  It’s enough to stand up to whatever Preston can throw in twenty minutes. I don’t think he’s going to look at me too closely, because he wants to believe that Sloan would come to him for help. It’s a chance for him to be smarter than his old boss, to show that he was always the bigger brain.

  I’m counting on that. I want Preston to treat me like any other prospective client. The full sales pitch, complete with a tour of his operation and expense-account dinners. That should be plenty of time for m
e to figure out a way inside his computers and his head.

  In the meantime, I get a drink from the lodge’s bar—which is finally empty of brogrammers and the math club—and then go out to the porch to watch the games begin.

  The air is already filled with flat, hollow booming and shouts of surprise and pain; the music of idiots with shotguns.

  Most of the OmniVore employees have scurried into the forest like overfed squirrels, but there are still a few stragglers. There’s a rack of guns, mostly empty now, next to a big table of boxed beanbag ammo. Some of the employees are still struggling to load their weapons, which makes them easy targets for the guys who figured it out first.

  One tech in a classic Atari T-shirt fumbles with his shells, spilling them all over the ground. Another guy wearing a Doom shirt comes up behind him and aims from about ten feet away.

  “Ah come on, man,” Atari Man shouts. “No fair! No camping!”

  Doom Boy pulls the trigger anyway. The recoil catches him by surprise, and his first shot goes wide. The beanbag round knocks a bunch of boxes off the table. Atari still can’t get his gun loaded. Doom Boy walks about five steps closer, aims more carefully, then fires again.

  Atari starts running, but he gets hit anyway. He screams in pain, then starts cursing Doom Boy.

  Doom Boy sees me on the porch and considers raising his shotgun.

  “I’m not playing,” I tell him.

  He smiles as if that’s a joke. “Everyone’s playing, dude,” he says, and starts to aim.

  I don’t even put my drink down. I give him a hard stare, with a small sense of some of the things I’ve seen behind it.

  “Don’t make me tell you again,” I say.

  He blanches, not sure why he’s suddenly got a picture of a sucking chest wound and the screams of wounded men stuck in his brain. He lowers the gun and shudders, backing away from me slowly. Then he jogs into the woods surrounding the lodge, looking for easier targets.

  Behind me, I sense Preston’s bodyguard before the man politely clears his throat.

  “Mr. Preston will see you now,” he says. I turn to follow.

  Meanwhile, Atari hauls himself to his feet and limps to the medical tent, which Preston thoughtfully set up on one side of the lodge. I hope he brought lots of paramedics. Somebody’s going to get hurt.

  I’m glad I’m going inside, where it’s safe.

  THE SECURITY GUY walks in front of me, his mind stuck in neutral.

  He opens the door for me, and I get a jumble of impressions. The office is decorated the same way as the lodge, only with photos of dead animals instead of their actual corpses. Which is fortunate, or there wouldn’t be enough room for Preston and the five large men inside.

  The bodyguards have a kind of relaxed vigilance. They’re not expecting any problems from me, but their training won’t let them slack off completely. They run through the motions. One is behind me, next to the door, and my escort takes a position opposite him. Two more on either side of me and one guy behind Preston at the desk. They check my posture and my attitude and box me in neatly without being obvious about it.

  Preston doesn’t look at me. He’s got three different laptops up and running. I can’t see any of the screens, but through his eyes, I see my profile picture and my fake LinkedIn page on the first computer. He’s got queries running on the other two.

  He says, “Have a seat,” and points to the empty chair in front of the desk.

  It’s upholstered in zebra. I wonder if I can remain standing without seeming rude. He finally turns and stares at me, waiting. I sit down.

  “So, do you know what we do at OmniVore?” he asks.

  Ah. So this is where he proves how smart he is. “Data mining.”

  A snort of contempt. “Yeah. But what does that mean?”

  When I hesitate, he smirks. “Let me explain it to you, then. We’ve got a proprietary algorithm—” He pauses when he sees the blank look on my face. “That means we have a piece of software called Cutter. Does that make it easier for you?”

  I nod.

  Preston thinks, and then continues. “What Cutter does is search through any big collection of data and find the patterns. Like, let’s take you for example. John Smith.”

  He punches a few more keys on one of the laptops. “Very common name. But by cross-referencing that with what we already know, your age, your occupation, we can get more detail. We can find your address. We can find how much you owe on your mortgage.”

  He’s typing faster now. This is where we see how well the cover ID holds up.

  “We can even take your biometric information—that’s the photo we snapped of you earlier, hope you don’t mind—and run it through law enforcement databases, in case you’re using a false name. We can learn stuff about you that even you don’t know. I can tell if you had a bad piece of fish by checking your restaurant bills against your purchases of Imodium and toilet paper—”

  He stops again. Then there’s a sudden, tectonic shift in his mental landscape.

  A window just popped open on his third laptop. He scans the information—I can’t get all of it, because damn he reads fast—but suddenly he’s on high alert, adrenaline spiking through his veins.

  He leaps up from his chair so quickly he knocks it over. The bodyguards are confused, but they snap to attention.

  “Get him the fuck away from me! Get him out of here! Now!” The smirk is gone. He’s genuinely afraid of me. His mind is jumping all over the place. He’s on the verge of panic.

  I’m caught flat-footed, trying to sort through his racing thoughts.

  I get only a glimpse of what he saw on the screen before it vanishes in the rush: TWEP TWEP TWEP.

  It’s a phrase I recognize from my CIA days: Terminate With Extreme Prejudice.

  And Preston knows it too. I can see the thought form, without hesitation.

  He’s going to have them kill me.

  The bodyguards move in on me, all at once.

  CONFESSION TIME: I’M not a great fighter. This isn’t false modesty. My instructors in hand-to-hand combat would have given me a B-minus on my best day.

  These guys have had the same training, and they’re better than me. They know how to use their muscle. They know to get close and throw quick, devastating blows. They will aim for nerve clusters, masses of blood vessels, the fragile edges of bones, the tender spots in the neck and gut and face.

  Their minds suddenly sharpen, and deadly intent forms. I’m a threat now, and they’re going to remove me. They’re not out to win. They’re out to disable.

  Fortunately for me, it’s almost impossible to hit a guy who can see a punch when it’s still just a bad idea. I know every move an opponent is going to make before the nerve impulse reaches his muscles.

  The guy on my right is closest and steps forward. My escort moves away from the door to back him up. The guy on my left pulls a pistol from a concealed-carry holster under his polo shirt.

  This might seem like an odd time for a fashion note, but I wear a Baume & Mercier Capeland on a steel band around my wrist. A lot of guys in my profession prefer something made of black impact-resistant plastic because they think it looks cooler. They like the dials and timers and pulse counters and pedometers or whatever else can be crammed under the Nike logo. I did too, when I first joined the service. Then I noticed that Cantrell and all the other old-school operators wore something high-dollar and metal around their wrists, usually a Rolex. I asked him why.

  That was the first time I ever made him proud. I could feel it. It was the right question.

  “First place,” he told me, “it looks better.”

  Then he got into the other reasons.

  Like Cantrell’s Rolex, my Baume & Mercier is powered by the movement of my wrist, so there’s no battery to go dead. It has luminous
hands, rather than an LED that lights up at the accidental press of a button, so it will never reveal my position in the dark and make me a target. And it’s worth money. You can pawn it if you’re out of cash, use it as a bribe, or trade it if you don’t have any of the local currency.

  But best of all, it weighs about a third of a pound, which is the same as the head of a hammer. With practice, I’ve learned to pop the clasp and let the watch drop around my fingers one-handed.

  I turn into the guy on my right and swing as hard as I can with my left fist, which now has the watch wrapped around it like a set of brass knuckles.

  He runs right into the punch. His head snaps back, his eyes roll up into his head, and his knees buckle.

  The crystal on my watch doesn’t even break. Swiss engineering at its finest.

  I duck the arm of my escort as he tries to grab me around the neck, then fire a kick into his midsection that bends him double and knocks the wind right out of him. His body becomes an obstacle for the other two on that side of the room.

  The guy on the left has his gun out now. I send him a message, as hard as I can:

 

  He’s a professional, so some part of him knows he didn’t do anything that stupid. But his eyes dart down by reflex, just to make sure.

  The instant he looks, I get my foot under the zebra-skin chair and kick it at him. It hits him dead center, tangles with his legs, and he goes down.

  With the gun off me, I’ve got enough time to focus my thoughts, which is bad news for everybody else in the room.

  I don’t have to touch my forehead or gesture dramatically like psychics or magicians. I just have to think hard.

  No time for anything cute, so I light up the amygdala region of their brains, which, among other things, regulates fear and emotion.

  And suddenly everyone except me is on their knees or their backs, gasping for air. It’s like a needle of adrenaline, plunged right into the carotid artery. You choke on your own breath. Your blood pressure shoots so high you can hear your own pulse behind your ears. Your arms and legs turn to jelly. Your gut clenches and you taste stomach acid at the back of your throat. Your skin feels like it’s on fire. You’re drowning in your own sweat, and for a few moments, all you know is that you are going to die.