by Jay Posey
Her route would intercept and then run parallel to Thumper’s. They wouldn’t meet up, exactly, and it wasn’t strictly proper according to protocol, but Lincoln’s point had been well taken. Capture wasn’t a good option for any of them; Thumper’s would be catastrophic. Wright was ready to do whatever it took to ensure Thumper made it out. Whatever else followed, they’d deal with as it came.
Wright came around the corner of a building and turned right, the timing practically perfect. Thumper emerged from a side lane on the other side of the street, maybe fifteen meters ahead and, without making eye contact or acknowledging Wright in any way, turned to head in the same direction. The streets were mostly empty, apart from a few stragglers here and there, and the vehicles parked along either side. One car came down the road towards them, but it passed by without slowing, its sole occupant asleep or passed out in the back.
A quick glance over her shoulder revealed no signs of danger. But when Wright turned back, she saw a woman stepping out of a parked vehicle, not long after Thumper had passed by. She opened her mouth to whisper a warning, then stopped herself. They’d both already ditched their comms. Wright picked up her pace. And as she did, two more individuals appeared further down from the doorstep of a building. This time on her side of the street. Two men, headed in her direction. But there was no mistake they were zoned in on Thumper.
Wright made a quick tactical calculation. Close the distance, take the woman trailing Thumper first to clear her flank, then deal with the two men, prevent them from crossing. She tightened her grip on the pistol hidden under her coat, settled it in her hand. Increased her pace as fast as she could go without turning it into a jog, not wanting to draw the attention of the men headed towards her. The street wasn’t wide, the first shot would be easy. She just had to make sure she didn’t give the woman an opportunity to hide amongst the parked vehicles.
There was a gap between two cars just ahead, an available parking space. Wright drew her weapon from under her coat and held it low, pressed against her leg. Waited for her moment. Ten steps. Six. Four.
But before she could raise the pistol, the men ahead cut diagonally across the street, headed to intercept Thumper. She wasn’t going to have anywhere to go, but through them. And Wright could tell from the change in Thumper’s posture that that was exactly what she was planning to do. She must have already ditched her gun.
A moment later, out of nowhere, a vehicle skidded around the corner and bore down on the men in the street. One of them managed to leap out of the way, but the other took a hit and went spiraling off of the front fender, landing in a heap back on Wright’s side of the street. The woman behind Thumper reacted, immediately ducking behind a parked vehicle. She pulled something from under her coat. Wright didn’t have a shot, but she didn’t hesitate. She squeezed off a series of five quick shots at the hood of the woman’s hiding place; the impacts caught the woman by surprise and sent her scrambling.
The vehicle in the street slowed to a roll alongside Thumper and the side door swung open. Wright broke into a run, bringing her weapon to bear on the car in case someone tried to snatch Thumper, but a man called from inside.
“Get in, get in, get in!”
Wright recognized the voice immediately. Elliot.
Thumper broke from the sidewalk and dashed for the still-moving vehicle, diving into the cab. Wright was right on her heels, and she launched into the car, landed in a heap on her teammate. The door wasn’t even closed when the vehicle lurched forward and tore off down the street. Wright pushed up off Thumper and looked out the back window; she managed to catch a glimpse of the woman they’d left behind, standing in the street, before Elliot took a hard corner and the scene was lost.
Lincoln crossed into the park without any trouble and immediately started shedding the rest of his gear. The pistol was the first to go, unloaded, partially fieldstripped, pieces scattered into various trash cans, planters, and sufficiently dense undergrowth that he passed. After that went the entry tool, then the flashlight, and then pretty much anything else in his pockets that might in any way be taken to be something other than everyday pocket litter.
He emerged from the park several minutes later a clean man, out for a stroll at an unreasonable hour. Lincoln took a quick inventory, tried to calm himself, made sure his cover was intact, just in case he got picked up. Cover for status? Business man in town for a few days, trouble sleeping, thought he’d see the sights. Cover for action? Seen enough of the sights, headed home. Good enough. If he could make it to a terminal to summon a ride, he just might make it out after all.
Across from the park, a bar and a restaurant punctuated a row of otherwise darkened shops. Right in front of the bar, Lincoln spotted a public terminal and made for it.
Once there, he punched in the necessary details, and was informed that an available car was en route, with a wait time of four minutes, nineteen seconds. A little longer than he wanted to spend standing on the street, but at least now he had a valid reason to be hanging around a place, people-watching. He backed off from the terminal and leaned against the exterior wall of the bar, keeping his head up, casually scanning for any signs of trouble, and trying his best to look vaguely bored.
It seemed to take a lot longer than four minutes and nineteen seconds, even though Lincoln had watched the countdown as if it had been the last minutes of his life. Finally, a vehicle cruised up and slowed to a stop just in front of the terminal.
The side door opened, and Lincoln crossed to it, glancing up and down the sidewalk one last time to see if he was really going to pull this off. He had a foot in the vehicle when he realized there was already someone sitting in it in the front, rear-facing seat.
“Mr Kim,” the man said, smiling. The expression looked out of place on the man’s grim face, like it was something he’d seen other people do and was mimicking it without understanding its purpose.
“Oh… sorry, I thought this was my ride,” Lincoln said.
“It is,” the man replied. Lincoln felt someone close in behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder he saw not one, but two people had materialized. He looked back at the man in the car.
“What’s going on?” Lincoln said.
“We’re with Internal Security Services, Mr Kim,” the man answered. “We have a few questions for you.”
TWENTY-TWO
Wright knew from the look on Sahil’s face what he was going to say; somehow, it wasn’t enough to prepare her to hear it.
“They took him,” Sahil said.
The words hit Wright like a rifle butt to the stomach. They’d grabbed her commanding officer, her team leader. Taken him away. And she didn’t even know who “they” were. In all her years in special operations, she’d never had a teammate captured by the enemy. Based on her reaction to the news, she was thinking it just might have been the absolute worst possible thing she’d ever experienced.
Sahil flopped sweat-soaked into a chair, his exhaustion apparent. He’d been the last to arrive at Zulu, their emergency safehouse in a damp basement apartment near a transit station.
“Where?” Thumper asked.
“No idea,” Sahil said. “I knew he had trouble comin’, so after the sun ray call, I circled around, almost caught up with him in the park. But I had to break off again. Got a line on him when a team picked him up. He was too far…” He stopped, leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, dropped his head, still breathing heavy. “Just too far. I kept movin’ for another hour or so, to make sure I was clear.”
He’d beaten the sunrise, but not by much. The horizon was already showing its first pinkish-red hints of dawn. Wright had to remind herself that the twilight phase lasted longer on Mars than it did back home, so maybe they had more time before the sun came up than she’d first thought. Enough to risk another trip out? Maybe, if only she had any idea where they needed to go.
“I hope whatever we got in there was worth it,” Wright said.
“I wish I could I sa
y for sure it was,” Thumper answered. “I didn’t have time to pull everything I was looking for. I need to feed it all to Veronica, get her to help me put it all together.”
Something was off with her. Sunken in on herself. Blown from the op, maybe. Elliot had all their gear out in his vehicle, a sure sign that returning to their previous safehouse wasn’t an option. They’d pulled some of it into the apartment, but Wright wasn’t ready to commit to setting up shop just yet.
“We’ll get her started on it as soon as we’re sure we have some breathing room,” Wright said.
“So I assume those were our bad guys,” Mike said. “Any guesses on who we just bumped into?”
“No need to guess,” Elliot replied. “They were Internal Security.”
“What?” Wright said, reflexively.
“The Republic’s guard dogs,” he said. “Like your usual secret police, but with more smiling and less mercy.”
“I know who they are,” she said. “How’d they get on our trail that fast?”
Elliot spread his hands, a gesture somewhere between “I have no idea” and “what else would you expect”.
“There’s a reason no one wants this place for an area of operations,” he said.
“Mas’Sarnt,” Mike said. “What should we do?”
“First order of business is to get the rest of you out of here,” Elliot said. “I’ll get in touch with the guys from Papa, see how long it’ll take them to get something prepped–”
“Excuse me,” Mike said, interrupting pointedly. “I was talking to our senior ranking team member.” Elliot took the hint and backed down. After a moment, he found himself a chair in a quiet corner, and left them to their business. He looked wrecked.
“We gotta go after him,” Thumper said. “We gotta get Lincoln back, obviously.”
Wright and Sahil exchanged a look.
“It ain’t obvious, Thump,” Sahil said. “Much as we all want it to be.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. Then she looked at Wright for support, but found none. “How is this even a question?”
Wright had wondered if she had what it took to be the team leader; had always believed she did, in fact. She’d been Almeida’s right hand for a long time, and when the old man had brought Lincoln on board to take over, she’d had to wrestle with that decision more than she ever wanted anyone to know. But now, sitting in the driver’s seat, with everyone just waiting for her word, the weight of the responsibility nearly overwhelmed her. After all the ops she’d run as an element lead, she’d thought she was more than up to the task. She’d never really thought about the fact that even in those roles, she was still executing someone else’s plan. Now, the plan was her call, and it wasn’t at all clear what her call was.
Or maybe the call was clear, and she just didn’t like it.
“It’s not a question of doing,” Wright said. “It’s a question of priorities. And I’m not sure he’s top of the list just yet.”
Thumper shook her head with her mouth open, but she didn’t have a response. And when Wright heard the words come out of her own mouth, she realized the truth; she’d already made the decision, and she hated herself for it.
“We still haven’t done what we came here to do,” Wright continued, mindful that Elliot was in the room. “Recovery of the asset has to be our focus. He knew that. Said it himself. That’s why he took the risk he did.”
“To get me out,” Thumper said. And the way she said it tipped Wright off to the thing she’d missed. A thing she shouldn’t have missed. Thumper’s guilt was weighing her down; she was taking Lincoln’s capture personally, like it was her fault. Lincoln would have caught that right away, Wright knew.
“It wasn’t about you, Thumper,” Wright said. “It was about the mission. He made a call that you were critical to mission success. And it was the right call.”
The words sounded harsher than Wright had intended, but it achieved the desired effect. Thumper’s air of near-desperate frustration faded.
“Look,” Wright said, trying to soften the moment. “If we knew where he was, we’d go get him right now. But we can’t afford to split our focus searching for two targets. So we’re going to prioritize and execute. First job first, and then we’ll put everything we’ve got into getting Lincoln back.”
Thumper nodded, and then did so again after a moment, more forcefully.
“If we play our cards right,” Elliot said from his corner of the room, “we might be able to get them both at the same time.”
“How exactly do you figure that?” Wright said. “And don’t you dare say you know a guy.”
Elliot blinked. “… then I’m not sure how to answer your question.”
“Elliot,” Thumper said carefully. “How did you find us, anyway?”
Elliot looked at Thumper, then flicked his eyes at Wright briefly. “I do know a guy,” he said, holding up a hand as he answered. He stood up and cautiously worked his way back over to the group. He held off a few feet away. “But he’s not my guy.”
He was pale, sweaty, trembling. Wright had assumed it’d been from the adrenaline dump after the close shave escape, and maybe the news of Lincoln’s capture. He scrubbed his face with both hands, pressed his fingertips into his eyes. Collecting himself. Or gathering himself.
“Look,” he said. He kept his eyes closed, and a fist pressed against his forehead. “His name is Gregor. Gregor Petrescu. He and his partner… a woman named Mei. Mei Dimasalang. They got their hooks into me not long ago. Had me pegged. Codename, records of operations, names of contacts and sources. Full book, dead to rights.”
“When was this?” Wright asked. The implications were starting to weave together in her mind, and she didn’t like them.
Elliot pulled a chair out from under the table, turned it to face her, and sat down heavily. He really did look like he was about to faint.
“Few days before NID told me you were coming in. I’ve been trying to spin it, use it to figure out what’s going on. Feed them a little information, steal some at the same time. To get to the bottom of the whole thing. I think they’re in on it. Gregor for sure, some others too, maybe.”
He opened his mouth as if to say more, but then stopped himself.
“In on what, Elliot,” Wright said.
He took a deep breath, as if preparing to jump off a cliff into icy waters.
“I think they have SUNGRAZER.”
His mention of the ship electrified the air, and Wright felt the world slip sideways.
“Where did you hear that name?” she said.
Elliot dropped his hand into his lap, kept his eyes on the floor.
“From an NID tech,” he said quietly. “About seven years ago.”
“You know about SUNGRAZER,” Thumper said. Not a question. Processing aloud. Elliot nodded.
“More. I got access to her,” he replied. “Wasn’t supposed to, obviously, but I did. What you’re going through right now? It’s just a taste of this place. How hard it is to stay on top of the bubble, to stay ahead of the game. And the Directorate… the things they ask for, that they demand… They have no idea what it’s like here, no patience, no concept of the risks involved. The intelligence on SUNGRAZER was the edge I needed. Before I had her, I was small time. After… well, I only used her occasionally, just in emergencies, just when there was no other option. But she helped me dodge a lot of bullets. And maybe put a few into some key places. The secrets I was able to get after that, the influence I was able to build… off the charts. That’s why NID keeps me here. The networks I’ve built.” He shook his head.
“Did you give them the ship?” Mike said.
“No,” Elliot said, “No! Absolutely not! I’m not a traitor. Internal Security doesn’t even know that I know about her. When they picked me up, I thought that’s what they were going to ask me about, but they were just trying to turn me…” He trailed off, shook his head again. “I’m always so careful. But… I think somehow I blew it. Somehow I tu
rned them on to her. That maybe they picked up a connection I created, maybe saw the signal bounce out, I don’t know. I have no idea how they managed it, how they took her over. But I’m sure they did… and I’m sure it’s my fault.”
“They’ve been running you since before we came in,” Wright said.
“I know Gregor’s part of it for sure,” Elliot continued, ignoring the comment.
“And how do you know that?” she asked.
“Because I…” He stopped himself, considered his words. “… I was trying to figure out what they knew. So I dropped him a hint, a piece of information that would only be useful if he could put it together with another piece that I knew SUNGRAZER had. And he did. He put them together and then he… acted on them.”
It took a moment for Wright to make the connection between his words and his mannerisms, to figure out both what he was saying and what he was telling them. Then it clicked. That explained what had happened during the Guo hit. Thumper said it before Wright could.
“Ready Vector Solutions…” Thumper said. “That’s why you suggested it. You set us up.”
“I had to give them something,” Elliot said. His flat delivery of the confession made it all the more shocking, as if he’d just admitted to something as mundane and arguably understandable as lying about his age to get into a bar.
Wright didn’t even think; her body did it all on its own. The punch caught Elliot full in the face, left side near the jaw, tipped him back in his chair and sent him sprawling into the corner of the table, then down to the floor.
The next moment, strong arms wrapped hers in a bear hug from behind, held her fast. Firm enough to contain her, reserved enough to let her know they could get plenty stronger if she tried to break free.
Sahil. He didn’t say anything, just held her there until she relaxed. Once she stopped straining against him, he released her, slowly, and then patted her back firmly. He stepped up alongside her, wordlessly showing his support while making it clear that he wasn’t going to let anything like that happen again.