“We could take care of that,” Lob said. “Leahy and his guys are fully networked, right? If we can get a virus onto their net, it’ll infect everything they have linked to it.”
“Yeah. Good, cowboy,” Hap said.
“Do you have a virus?” I asked.
They all three grinned and pointed at their heads.
I shook my head. Wireheads carrying viruses in their brains.
“How do we get it onto their network?” asked Worm. “We can’t break their encryption.”
“Give Leahy what he wants,” Lolly said.
“RR said we’d be dead if he got the data,” Worm said.
“She means let Leahy think he has the data,” I said.
“On the dot, RR,” Lolly said.
“Yeah,” Hap said with a broad smile. “Load the viruses onto some of the empty data sticks and give them to him. He’ll plug it into a data reader and his network’s fucked. So’s his gear.”
“What about antivirus or countermeasures?” I asked.
“It’s a closed network,” Lob said. “It’s encrypted so nobody but them can use it, unless you want to spend a day or two cracking it. Ain’t no way to get in from outside unless they let it in. No need for a high end antivirus because it slows data transfer.”
I smiled. “So by inserting a stick and accessing it he is opening the door and letting a stranger in.”
“You sure he’ll take a look?” Worm asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’ll take a look as soon as he can. Like opening a treasure chest to see the sparkle of gold.”
“Well, we got that solved. Now tell us how we get the sticks to Leahy and then get out of here and not die,” Lolly said.
“Is Leahy still in the same spot he was earlier?” I asked as I studied the overhead images of the computer center.
“Sure is,” Lolly said. “What are they going to do when the drone gets near them?”
“Get into their vehicle and wait it out I would imagine. Look at your map, Lolly. To the northeast of our position, there is a building next to Leahy, see it?”
“Yup.”
“Can you see the rooftop of that building from your position?”
“Give me a minute... no. I can see the two-story building to the south, but I don’t think I can get the beam over there.”
I looked at the building on the data reader screen.
“That will work. We won’t need the beam. I have a plan.”
~~~:{o}:~~~
Chapter 14
on the QT News Service - Gulf City, Spire
Role-Playing Complex Seeks Funding
The Arnold Mote Role-playing Complex seeks funding from public and private sources to be able to continue its “vital and culturally necessitated preservation of reenacted societies and lifestyles,” according to spokesperson George Vance.
Vance added, “It’s ironic that we need preservation efforts to save our preservation efforts. We face cultural extinction, and by ‘we’ I mean all of humanity. I will give you an excellent single example to illustrate the danger: Without the Role-playing Complex how will children be able to see a glimpse of what it was like when the Fops and Dandies waged their wars for fashion dominance and with it, shape the future of humanity? Without such a glimpse children might grow up understanding nothing of such an important time in human history, or if they do become aware of it they might think it was merely two groups of atrociously dressed people fighting over snuffboxes and the use of cravats!”
The editors of on the QT feel for the people of the Arnold Mote Complex. Their problems are our problems, or so they would like them to be. It is our most sincere wish that they find the funding they seek from somewhere and they follow our suggestion and reenact the Soviet Red Terror complete with actual Checkists and the complex’s reenactors acting as kulaks and clergy.
Ludicrous? You decide.
on the QT - It’s okay. You know you want to. Go ahead, read it.
---o---
I tried to keep the plan as simple as possible, but there were an awful lot of things that could go wrong. It’s always that way. I tried to minimize the hackers’ exposure to danger, and I certainly didn’t want them involved in a firefight. They were not equipped to deal with that and they’d just be in the way.
When the drone was far enough away we tied the rope off on the east side of the roof and I went down two stories to the rooftop below. The hackers recovered the rope and went back into the plylar-covered hiding spot between the air conditioners.
I was travelling light, my shoulder bag, weapons, ammo, canteen, and data sticks. The rooftop got me most of the way to my destination, and a hop over a narrow alley to another roof would get me the rest of the way. My course took me toward Leahy, with pauses and hiding when the drone passed close enough that I thought it might be able to see me.
When I reached the two-story structure next to the building Lolly was supposed to be observing I climbed a ladder to the roof and crossed a maintenance catwalk the spanned between the two buildings, then climbed down a story and crossed the roof to where I hoped Leahy and his men were still in place.
I stopped at the edge of the rooftop and peeked over. Leahy, was there with his three mercs near the vehicle.
“Pssst!” I hissed at them.
They all four jumped and the three mercs pointed their weapons at me.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Leahy hissed. “What are you doing up there?”
“Other than scaring you? They have a drone scoping the streets and guards on the ground in case you hadn’t noticed. They aren’t looking for us up here.”
“Okay. Did you get the data?”
I smiled. “Sure did. Here,” I said as I tossed a small padded satchel containing the virus-laden data sticks down to him. “We’re coming down. Give us a few minutes.”
Leahy smiled when he caught the package. “We’ll wait,” he said unzipping the satchel as he walked to the rear of the van. Inside the van sat a data reader. He was plugging one of the sticks into the data reader when I turned away.
I crossed the rooftop and climbed up to the maintenance catwalk. I looked in Lolly’s direction and waved my arm as a signal for her to initiate her part of the plan, then made my way to the other building. I crouched in the alcove near the roof access door and waited for the fireworks to start.
Lolly was supposed to reinstate the live feed from the camera near Leahy to the computer center’s security office. When she did, we hoped for a violent response from BluCorp’s security.
I heard the drone fly past not far away, then automatic weapons fire. I went to the ladder to start my descent when I heard the drone coming closer. I dashed back into the alcove just as the damned thing flew over. I guessed the SDAR was trying to gain position for an approach at Leahy’s group.
It was fine by me if the drone took Leahy and his goons down, but I was stuck as long as it hovered overhead and I needed to be moving, so it had to go.
I took one of the five slugs I’d brought and loaded it into my shotgun and went bird hunting. I moved around the corner and kept the roof access structure between the drone and myself. The firing continued sporadically down at street level. When I got to the opposite corner I peeked around the edge of the structure and could see the SDAR was hovering about twenty meters above the roof pointed toward Leahy’s position.
It was an easy shot. I waited for the shooting to flare up again and fired. The slug punched through the drone with a shower of sparks, causing the drone to lose altitude and drift off to the left out of control. I thought it might go over the side of the building, but it started coming back my way. It must have been the operator trying to keep the drone aloft.
The SDAR was smoking and shedding parts as it fell. I ran for the shelter of the alcove. As I ducked inside the drone crashed onto the rooftop with a clatter, throwing pieces everywhere. I could smell burning plastic and electronics and hear servomotors winding up and slowing down. I guess the drone operator th
ought the SDAR could still be saved.
As soon as the drone went silent, I went for the ladder and climbed down. Once I was on the roof below I went south, hoping Leahy and his boys could hold out long enough for us to escape.
The three hackers on the roof by the air conditioners were supposed to use the rope and lower themselves down to ground level and exit through the fence where Leahy planned for us to enter. They were to head north and meet up with Lolly, then skirt the computer center and make their way east and wait for me near a cabstand in the shopping zone. I hoped that if Leahy did have one of his men over there they could avoid him and he would be out of contact because of the virus attack.
I came to the end of the roof and went to the wall I needed to use to cross to the next building. It wasn’t as wide as the images on the data reader made it out to be. It was maybe as wide as the length of a hand. In my youth, I might have tried walking or running the ten meters it would take to get me where I needed to go. I decided that I was less stupid than that and did it the slow and safe way, I straddled the wall and inched my way across using my hands and the seat of my pants. It took a little longer that way, but I made it.
Once I was on the other rooftop I noticed I had not heard any gunfire for a while. At that point I didn’t really care because I was almost clear of the compound. I followed the roof to the eastern edge and saw the utility road I needed to follow. It was a good five meter drop to get down there. I looked things over and saw no signs of human activity. To the right in the corner next to the building on which I was standing was a dumpster. I decided I would drop onto that to shorten my fall.
I lashed my shotgun onto my shoulder bag and lowered it down to the dumpster. I sat down at the edge of the roof and rolled over onto my stomach, then lowered my legs over the edge. I slid out and down until I was hanging by my hands. I looked down to make sure I was centered over the dumpster.
I let go and on the brief trip down I wished I was twenty again. At that age, I was stupid enough to do shit like that and youthful enough to heal quickly when I paid the price for my lack of judgment. Now I was just stupid.
I hit the top of the dumpster with a hollow boom and rolled to my left in a controlled fall. I managed to keep myself from rolling off. I sat up and didn’t feel like I had broken anything, so I grabbed my gear and climbed to the ground. I shouldered my bag and opened the stock on my shotgun, then moved out.
When I dropped down to ground level I knew I might not find a way back up if I needed it, but I was clear of the compound. If I moved quick and quiet I hoped to get clear of the utility sector without encountering anyone and move into an area where it would be easier to move and hide.
I went down the plascrete surface between the high walls until I came to an alley that went to my right. It was a dead end with what appeared to be numerous maintenance access openings on each side.
I continued on a couple hundred meters to an intersection. I could go straight ahead or turn left. Left was the way out.
Peeking around the corner and I saw Leahy and three gunsels with him. They saw me too. They were waiting for the hackers and me. So much for BluCorp’s help.
“Johnson,” Leahy shouted as I moved back around the corner and out of sight. “I can read a fucking map as well as you. I don’t know how you pulled it off, but your little stunt with security let us get here faster than we would have otherwise with the expenditure of just a little ammo. The virus thing was bullshit though.” I smiled. At least something went right. “You have nowhere to go, unless you want to try and shoot your way out. You won’t do that though, you’re not stupid.”
“I don’t know. You overestimate my brainpower. I might get it into my head that I can take you,” I yelled back.
He laughed. He sounded like a small dog coughing. The son of a bitch was one of the men in the dark when Rex worked me over. He laughed that same laugh when I made the crack about Rex’s mom. So what was his game?
I was now positive Leahy was working for himself, with BluCorp and Arc Tau unaware of what he was doing. That also explained how he got out of the scrape with BluCorp’s security in the compound, they thought he was one of them until he showed them they were mistaken.
“Rick, I know you were a good soldier once, but these guys are elite operators,” Leahy said. “You were just a grunt. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, but you were never in these guy’s league, and they’re a couple of decades younger than you. Use your head. Give me the data and you and the others can leave. You have my word that you won’t be hurt.”
I truly disliked spooks. I disliked fake spooks that have lied to me all the way down the line even more. “How do I know I can trust you?” I yelled in reply. The time he spent answering would buy me a few ticks on the clock.
“You don’t, but you will certainly die if you go against us. Consider that,” he shouted as I was running away as fast and as quietly as I could.
“Johnson?” he yelled after several seconds.
I didn’t hear anything else from him, but I knew his little pack of killers would be coming for me in short order. I came to the alley I passed by earlier and moved around the corner. I went prone and peeked back in the direction I just came from. Within seconds, three figures rounded the corner, coming my way. Leahy was not with them.
I slid out of sight and ran halfway down the alley and ducked into a maintenance access opening on the right, a narrow walkway, ten meters deep, cluttered with various pieces of monitoring equipment, access points, and other gear I could not identify. There were ten or twelve similar access openings down each side of the alley.
When you’re cornered you have only limited options. It generally boils down to a simple choice: fight, surrender, or die. Surrender was not an option in this case because it was the same as choice three. If you choose to fight in such a situation you’ll probably die anyway, but you have a chance. You have nothing to lose, and a man that has nothing to lose can be very, very dangerous. A man who has nothing to lose and is scared, angry, able, and armed, is even more dangerous.
I watched from the dark shadows as the trio made their way down the alley using what they called a delta formation. That’s merc tough guy talk for a triangle. They covered each other, watched their sectors of responsibility, and hit all the training points somebody taught them at elite operator school. They looked good, like they knew what they were doing. They thought they had the situation in the bag. There was just one little problem for them. Me.
These young operators weren’t much different than their counterparts were in my day. They weren’t built to win fights against skilled opponents. Their kind won by holding all the cards, possessing all the advantages. The elite killed men who were armed with little more than spears in the dark while the they used state-of-the-art night vision devices and first-rate pinbeam and projectile weapons. Their stone age opponents never saw it coming.
These young operators coming to kill me, and their ilk, didn’t fight wars, they were executioners. They’d killed before, of that I was sure. It showed in their eyes. Hard eyes, but no fear. They’d never been up against it.
There’s an old saying, a veteran soldier is a scared soldier. It is the absolute truth. Anyone who has seen war, real war, knows how easy it is to get killed in that kind of environment and has faced the prospect of their own death. That is something lacking among executioners.
I was a simple grunt as Leahy said, but he didn’t know what that meant. He thought he did, but he was wrong. My kind fought and won against opponents who were our equals. We were expected to win when we had no advantages. We won fights when we were faced with a simple choice: Win or die. It was the same situation here. The trio I was facing held almost all of the cards: numbers, gear, age, fitness. I had a few cards to play though, and I’d been playing the game for awhile. Time would tell who came out on top.
I watched them move, using weapons-mounted lights to illuminate the maintenance access openings like the one where I was hiding. They
followed the drill, every time. Quick, smooth, practiced, and efficient, like it was routine. One guy worked the corners and cleared an access opening while the other two covered the sides of the alley, then they moved on to the next one.
I watched them until they were nearing my position, then I went back into the darkness of the walkway and hid, hoping it would be enough.
They hit the access opening where I was. I heard them, then saw the bright beam of the weapon-mounted light moving where the guy’s eyes moved. He covered it all, near, far, left, right, up, down, left, right, just like the others, then the light was gone. I heard them move past the opening.
The guy with the light made the error of assuming the areas of the maintenance opening that were not illuminated by his light were too small to conceal a man. Danger lies in assumption. Assumption is the mother of all fuckups. Fuckups get people hurt.
An advantage had just swung my way, the advantage of surprise.
I rolled out of my hiding place, some kind of monitoring gear behind which I had crammed myself, and moved for the mouth of the opening. They were doing the same drill at the next opening, and why not, as far as they knew it had worked for them so far.
I concentrated on the man closest to me—the lower right point of the triangle if you could view them from above—watching his movements. The lead guy slowed to cover the next maintenance opening as the trailing men moved closer. I placed my sights on the right edge of the lead guy’s head and waited until the right hand man’s head just started to overlap the lead guy in my field of vision.
The blast of my shotgun startled the hell out of them, but for the two guys in my sight picture their surprise very quickly turned to pain or death.
The pattern of the nine buckshot pellets opened to about twenty-five centimeters at the distance the farthest guy stood. Each man took about half of the pellets per head and went down, the lead guy staggering a few steps before he hit the pavement.
The third man whirled frantically trying to locate me as I worked the slide on my shotgun and moved the muzzle in his direction. This was going to be a race to see who got dead last. If the guy had mashed the trigger and held it there he might have got lucky and tagged me. It was the only chance he had to stay living and he failed to snatch it. A load of buckshot to the man’s face ended it before he got off a shot. Ended the fight and him. I turned and looked at the other two men. The lead guy was groaning and feebly holding a hand to his face while the other one lay motionless. Good enough. I didn’t care if they lived or died at that point, just so long as they didn’t bother me anymore.
The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Page 25