Steel, Titanium and Guilt: Just Hunter Books I to III

by Robin Craig

  Soft chimes sounded in the air and a voice spoke, “Excuse me, sir?”

  Daniel frowned. The AI would only interrupt private conversations if it decided it had to. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry sir, but police have arrived outside.”

  “At this time of the evening? How many?”

  “Several, and they are armed. I cannot give a precise number because they are all wearing infiltration suits with signal disruptors. I deduce from this that they must have at least a search warrant and possibly even an arrest warrant: and they intend to vigorously pursue it.”

  Daniel thought quickly. ”Analyze their warrant carefully and if it is valid and dangerous enough to trigger Plan C, initiate it immediately.” He paused. “I expect it will be.”

  He looked at Katlyn. “Suddenly I’m glad things are already almost prepared. There are a few things in the front office I’d have liked to take but we’ll have to forget about them, at least for now.”

  His eyes acquired the same mixture of fear and excitement that Katlyn’s had moments before. “Let’s get going. Things aren’t quite ready yet so it will take us a few hours before we can go: but unless we get very unlucky we’ll easily have that much time.”

  Chapter 42 – Intruders

  For the fourth time Miriam found herself in the driveway of Tagarin’s estate looking towards the entrance. For the first time she had more than Stone for company: a van with ten heavily armed police pulled up behind them. They did not know what to expect and Ramos had decided that overkill was better than failure.

  Stone got out and called two of the others to come with him. As they approached the front gate, the AI spoke. “Good evening, Detectives. I see you have a warrant this time. My owner regards this is rather inconvenient timing: could you perhaps return tomorrow? He promises to make himself available then.”

  Stone barked a short laugh. “Sure, it works that way. Open up or we’ll have to rough you up a bit, Gate.”

  “It is always a pleasure to cooperate with the police, especially when they threaten me so nicely,” answered the AI drily. Tagarin seemed to have successfully transplanted his personality into his AI, thought Stone. “Please wait.”

  Stone glanced cynically at his colleagues and waited. The wait began to stretch out and Stone shook his head impatiently. He was in two minds about whether to demand entry or just break the gate down when it spoke. No doubt if he had shown more patience it would have waited even longer.

  “I have confirmed that your warrant is valid: I am opening the gate for you and have unlocked the door to the house; you may enter without violence. Be warned that any deviations from the terms of your warrant will have severe legal consequences.”

  “OK,” said Stone. “Goodbye Gate, it’s been a laugh. Jones, deactivate this outpost of the AI – I want to keep them guessing.”

  When Jones gave him the thumbs up they jammed the gate open with a rock, drew their weapons and walked cautiously up to the front door. Stone pushed it with his foot and it opened easily onto a dark corridor. “No welcoming committee with drinks, eh?” he commented. “I feel unloved. Jones, cover that camera and turn on your signal jammer.” While he did so, he called the others to join them. “All right guys, show time. Jones, guard the door; Smith, go back and guard the gate. Don’t let anyone in or out. Anyone who turns up, detain them; anyone who tries to leave, arrest them. The rest of you, let’s go. Hopefully Tagarin will be as accommodating as his gate. If not, we’ll just have to return the favor.”

  They went in and the two cops left behind stood at their posts, nervous and alert, weapons drawn.

  Some minutes later one of the darker shadows under a stand of trees across the road detached itself and glided onto the road towards the entrance. Smith raised his weapon but the shadow kept coming, revealing itself as a man dressed in black with a high collar obscuring his face, holding his hands out and visible. Smith kept his gun trained on the man’s chest and ordered him to halt, but the man simply smiled humorlessly and extended his identification. Smith grunted and lowered his gun. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked with brittle politeness.

  “You can stand aside, officer, I’m going in. I presume you have no objection?”

  “Be my guest, sir,” replied Smith. “Should I advise my team?”

  “No, we don’t want to warn any eavesdroppers.” Smith waved to Jones to indicate to let the man past, and he moved quickly up the path and slipped through the door. Then he stole carefully and silently up the corridor. He turned suddenly at a metallic clang behind him: a steel door had descended, cutting off the way out. He hoped that was to keep the cops out, not that he had been detected and it was to lock him in. Grimly, he drew a slim gun from the folds of his clothes and crept cautiously into the gloom.

  Chapter 43 – Trapped

  Stone’s team had met no resistance. But nor did they meet any people. Just as the front door had opened but that was all, further inside the place appeared to be deserted and the lights refused to shine. “Funny guy, eh?” commented Stone. “Well if that’s the way he wants to play it, we might just have to break down some doors.”

  Tagarin’s visitors’ annex was empty, as was the office where he met with his callers. They did not need to break down any doors; the doors simply opened at their touch. Yet the lights still did not shine: it was like a physical essay on passive resistance. Besides the door they had entered the office through, there was only one other door leading deeper into the complex. Stone nodded to one of his men, who stood beside it and pushed it gently. It opened as the others had, revealing a short straight corridor that split into two at the end.

  “Why do I feel like we’re being suckered?” murmured Stone. “OK, we’re going to have to split up. This is the only way out and we already have guards out front, so we’ll all keep going. You lot take the right branch, you others take the left one with me. Check every room. Split up if you have to as long as you can stay in pairs. I don’t trust this place an inch.”

  He thought a moment then added, “First, search this room. Make sure there’s nothing obvious like a place to hide or a hidden door. Once we’ve covered that angle we’ll move in.”

  He whispered into Miriam’s ear: “You stay put: when we start searching, duck under the desk. It’s probably nothing and when this is all over you’ll whine about missing all the fun, but I want you here. You know all the players and you’re fast on your feet. You’re my backup plan. I really like backup plans. And if this is a sucker play, you’ll be our second chance – and maybe our lifeline. I don’t think anyone watching will have been able to count heads, not the way we’ve been milling around shining lights everywhere: they won’t notice if one of us vanishes. I hope.”

  Miriam nodded tensely.

  They all began searching the room, looking into and under things and poking walls, while Miriam quietly slipped under the desk. Then Stone called out, “OK, looks like there’s nothing here. Let’s get going before they manage to come up with more tricks.”

  Their expressions tightened as they stalked down the corridor and split up. But Stone’s suspicions were borne out: to explore everywhere at once his team had to split up again. It was like a fractal trap. It was a fractal trap.

  Tagarin had been planning this for a long time. He knew that one day the surface of his plan might unravel and they might need to escape in the face of a police invasion. He wanted to avoid the necessity for battles and blood. He had remodeled his mansion accordingly.

  Few people were granted access to Tagarin’s domain. Had one of the few been a police spy, Stone would have been even more suspicious and things might have taken a different turn. It had taken mere seconds for the exit from Tagarin’s office to be switched from the normal passageway, which led to his private rooms, to the bifurcating corridors, which did not. The change had been triggered the moment the police went through the gate.

  Tagarin did not trust people in large groups. Fear fed on fear and they might panic. Or less
likely but worse, thought might feed on thought and come up with a plan. He had always been a fan of jiu-jitsu, and his defenses were planned accordingly: let your opponent overextend himself and use his own thrust against him. So once the invaders had been split up into twos and threes, something else happened.

  Stone and his two remaining companions were exploring a corridor, hoping that beyond the curve was not yet another bifurcation. For now, they stood outside a locked door, considering. For the first time, the door had not opened for them: but what did that mean? Progress or a trap? The question in their minds was answered when two doors slid shut ahead and behind.

  Then Tagarin’s voice came from somewhere. “Welcome to my uninvited guest quarters, noble officers of the law. The door you see in the wall is now unlocked and within are basic facilities to enable you to survive a day or two in modest comfort. Alas, I fear it will be a day or two. Personally I would be happy for all this to be done with as soon as possible, but I suspect your superiors will wish to haggle over my perfectly reasonable demands that are the price for your, and not coincidentally our, freedom.

  “Rest assured I wish you no harm. You may even communicate with your colleagues outside. In fact, I encourage it: it might stop your more aggressive friends from bombing the place. I am sure you want that as little as I do. I suppose many of you have wives and children; if you want to spare them the grief of attending your funeral, you would be wise to reveal you are safe and counsel restraint.

  “Now there are a few rules. Be aware that the walls and doors of your current home are steel and if anyone tries to blast their way in – or if you really came prepared, out – the shockwave will surely kill you. So please refrain from any such heroics, as they will achieve nothing but your own deaths. There are also more active defenses should you attempt some other form of escape: I encourage you not to find out what they are. Again I assure you that I wish you no harm; if you do not believe me, consider that I have merely imprisoned you when I could just as easily have shot you. So the only harm you will come to is what you bring on yourselves. As lawmen you must be aware of rules and the consequences of breaking them: act accordingly. You will be freed unharmed soon enough. In the meantime, take this interlude as a paid holiday. I regret that you will have to make your own entertainment, but you will be safe and comfortable enough.”

  The same scene played out elsewhere in the trap. Stone gave voice to the thought in all their heads.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 44 – Miriam

  “Miriam.”

  The whispered voice sounded in her ear.

  “Yes? I’m here,” she whispered.

  “The bad news is, it was a trap. We don’t appear to be in any danger but we’ve been neatly cut out of the picture. You need to know, but I don’t know what you can do about it. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ve already told the guys outside – who are now locked outside. An inner door slammed shut and Jones had to retreat to the gate when tear gas started spraying at him. Reinforcements are coming and they could try to break in, but we’ve been told in no uncertain terms that we’re hostages and hostilities, including attempting to penetrate their perimeter, will invite retaliation. So we have a siege but are going to play it cool for now. Sorry kid, it looks like you might see some excitement after all. All I can tell you is that we were somehow diverted into a well set up trap: if you can find a way into his main facility you might be able to stop him, but I have no idea how you’d do it. I’ll hang up now; the less chance we give them to discover you’re still outside their trap the better. Good luck.”

  Christ, thought Miriam. Only a few minutes in and it’s already eleven down, one to go. At least the others were alive, though it was easy to be merciful when you held the upper hand. Tagarin might play the gracious host when he felt safe, but if he found her prowling through his house with a gun his reaction could be deadly. Her fear and isolation told her that maybe she should just stay here cowering under the desk. It was unlikely anyone would fault her for it.

  But she knew that would never happen: she couldn’t stop trying any more than she could stop breathing. She had never been one to be a passive passenger of life, someone who just hoped that the world would deliver her wishes: to her, the essence of living was action. At least if you failed you died trying, she believed; you died as someone who had fought and so deserved to live.

  But, she wondered as she identified that feeling in herself, wasn’t that equally true of Katlyn and Tagarin? Wasn’t that all they had been doing too, in their bizarre plot that had led to all this? She shook her head. No. Tagarin had not been forced into his life of crime; he had chosen to do it, knowing the consequences, knowing the risks. And however innocent Katlyn might have been, she in her turn had become a dangerous sociopath; the rights and wrongs of how her past had brought her there did not change what she was in the present.

  Wonderful, Miriam thought, you’ve rationalized your call to heroic action so well I can almost hear the trumpets: but what action are you going to take? It wasn’t at all obvious. If Tagarin had trapped the others somehow, how would she avoid the same fate? It was unlikely he had anything as obvious as a hidden button that opened up his true domain: everything would be computer controlled with no hope of access by an outsider.

  Well, there’s no point sitting here forever, she told herself. If I start looking around and this room is under observation then I’m sprung, but if I do nothing I might as well be locked in with the others anyway. Her best bet was to carefully explore the corridor the others had gone down, hope to find how they had been diverted and hope there was some way around it, or even better some way to release the others. It was either that or stay hidden here and wish for the unlikely event that one of the villains of the piece would come to her.

  She was just standing up after crawling out of her hiding space when Katlyn stepped into the room.

  Chapter 45 – Caught

  So far things had gone according to plan, even if the plan had to be accelerated. With their sortie caught like crabs in a pot it would be a while before the police would try anything else. So Katlyn had gone to the front office to collect a few things they preferred not to leave behind: they would never return. She walked silently, more out of habit than caution. The light came on as she entered the room and she nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a black-clad apparition rising up in front of Daniel’s desk, face hidden by a dark visor; the apparition jumped too, so the feeling must have been mutual.

  Miriam reached for her gun but Katlyn’s reactions were much faster. Miriam was stunned by the speed and ferocity of the attack. Katlyn leapt at her and knocked her back onto the desk, slamming her forearm down so the gun shot from her hand and slid off the back of the desk, before whacking her head from side to side until her ears rang. Stunned, Miriam could only gasp as Katlyn tore off her helmet and hurled it away; there were two dull thuds as it hit the wall then fell to the floor. Katlyn looked back and stopped, startled. “You again! Will I ever be rid of you?” she hissed, then wrapped her hands around Miriam’s neck and began to squeeze.

  Miriam knew she had only seconds of consciousness left, but by the time her mind became aware of that fact her reflexes had taken over: her arms wheeled to break Katlyn’s grip then grab and twist her arm, forcing her over sideways. Katlyn went with the move to escape Miriam’s grasp but Miriam suddenly let go; her legs were already up and she kicked Katlyn hard in the stomach. Katlyn went one way and banged into the wall with an explosion of breath; Miriam went the other way, rolling back over the desk, and in a single fluid motion came to her feet with the gun in her hand, pointed straight at Katlyn.

  “That’s enough!” she ordered. “Stay where you are with your hands up or I’ll shoot!”

  Katlyn’s eyes darted to Miriam, to the door and back. No chance, she thought. Miriam was too far to be jumped and the door too far for escape: not when, however fast she could run, all Miriam had to do was move her hand and pull the trigger. She exhaled an
d put her hands up slowly.

  “You’re making me regret saving your life,” she said bitterly.

  “Be thankful I didn’t just shoot you where you stand! Now face the wall and kneel on the floor with your hands behind your head. This time I get to handcuff you.”

  Katlyn did not move. “Listen. I know you’re mad at me. I know you’re a cop and catching people like me is what you do. But if you don’t let me go, I’m dead. Whatever else I’ve done, I did save your life. What did you say to me once? That you didn’t deserve to die? Well I don’t deserve it either. Let me go.” She added roughly, as if it was a word she wasn’t used to, “Please.”

  “You only had to save me because I was chasing you! Taking all our charming meetings into account, I think you’re psychotic. Unpredictable and dangerous. Maybe it’s not your fault. Maybe your genome has made you mentally unstable; maybe it was growing up the way you did. Or maybe it’s just you. But that’s not my call. My job is to uphold the law. You just tried to kill me and for all I know you’ve left a trail of dead bodies behind you! For all I know, you do deserve to die.”

  Katlyn sighed, and it was if the brash bravado left her body with the breath. Suddenly she looked more like a scared teenager than a hardened criminal. “No. I wasn’t trying to kill you, just knock you out. I never killed anyone. I was never even going to hurt you, that first time, not seriously. Do you know why I treated you so badly then?”

  “I don’t care. On the floor. Now. Or I’ll shoot you.”

  Katlyn continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “‘Know your enemy’ is the first rule of war, and this is war, you know. Not much of a war, I admit; not much of an army. But war just the same. I needed to know your mettle and I wanted to scare you off if I could. I did what I had to, that’s all. Well, maybe not all. I was angry: at the world, at you, at what you represented. But don’t you see? If I’m what you say, do you think I’d have let you live?”