by G T Almasi
The Front Desk has sent us to Greenwich Village to assist Grey as he sneaks into a CIA office to swipe the name of their Middle East stringer. Trick and I got our final orders at 9 o’clock this morning in Cyrus’s office. We stood behind his guest chairs while he paced back and forth across the floor. He was very brusque and clear that he wanted there to be absolutely—
“No bullshit this time, Scarlet. The last time you were on a Job Number in New York, it was almost my head on a plate.”
“Sure, Cyrus,” I said.
“Don’t you ‘Sure, Cyrus’ me! You say, ‘Yes, sir!’ ”
I gave a little laugh, “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m NOT kidding,” he boomed, “and neither is the Director! Look, Alix, I’ve always gone easy on you because of our history together. As a result, your mission discipline has suffered, which has nearly wrecked your last two Job Numbers.” Cyrus’s eyebrows bump together. “I’ve sweated through a very uncomfortable series of meetings about you, and now is when you learn that shit rolls downhill. You’re a Level 8 Interceptor now, and it’s my job to make sure you act like it!”
“Yes, sir!” I shouted as Trick and I snapped to attention. Technically, we’re supposed to be all spit and polish, but that hardly ever gets enforced because ExOps is such a small agency and we all work so closely together. He must have gotten a ton of flak from upstairs about my promotion.
Cyrus glowered at us for a minute, then finally said, “You’ll go to Manhattan. Grey will do the black bag work. You two will wait at the Hotel Luther next door. If something goes wrong and Grey needs help, you’ll provide security and Info.”
“Yes, sir!” Trick and I both yelled.
“He’s one of my best Infiltrators, so hopefully he won’t need your help at all.” Infiltrators are undercover agents who specialize in stealthiness and other sneaky, non-Alix things. Cyrus sat down, looked at me, and said, “Let’s see if you can do a quiet assignment.” Then he turned his attention to some paperwork on his desk.
I’d already started to leave when Trick commed, “Wait!”
“What?” I commed back.
“He’s testing us, dummy. We haven’t been dismissed. Stand still.” I stood still.
Cyrus looked up, pressed his eyebrows together, and bellowed, “Dismissed! Scram, before I put my foot in your asses!” Trick and I bolted out of Cyrus’s office, cabbed it to Washington National Airport, and hopped a shuttle flight to Idlewild Airport in New York.
Now we’re on Bleecker Street, walking east. Patrick comms with his IC while I try to catch suspicious reflections in storefront windows. My enhanced hearing is turned up, but there’s so much ambient noise, it doesn’t really help. The evening rush hour is in full swing as all the suburban assholes run their daily race for the commuter train.
“Man, how do they stand it?” I ask Trick.
“Stand what?” he replies distractedly.
“Such predictability!”
Trick isn’t sure what I mean, so he has to look around. “Oh, they’d rather be safe than happy.”
I grunt, and we keep walking. I don’t know how safe these people are. The Russians and the Chinese constantly assault our way of life. They blackmail Washington policy makers, rig elections, create stock market panics, plant fake news stories about pandemics, and kill our covert agents. And this is just from our enemies.
Each pair of allies has some major sticking point they can’t agree on. For the Russians and the Chinese, it’s Mongolia. They’ve been arguing—and sometimes shooting—over it since the war. For the U.S. and the Germans, it’s Europe’s Jews. The talking heads on television insist that institutionalized slavery is un-American. When Cleo hears this, she grumbles at the TV, “Of course it is! But what’s really un-American is that if the German economy weren’t trouncing ours, you jackasses wouldn’t give a shit.” Then she storms out to the kitchen to cool off.
We’re almost to the Bowery. Trick is still looking over his shoulder. “Got her! That chick who just ducked down Mulberry Street.” I tune in as he comms to his IC. “Sir, I saw her. White female, late teens, five foot five, a hundred and ten pounds. She’s got dark hair, dark clothes and big dark sunglasses.”
Clothes can be changed, or simply removed, in only a few seconds. The sunglasses are peculiar. The sky today is blanketed by heavy cloud cover.
Patrick’s boss, Info Coordinator Harbaugh, comms back. “Solomon, be advised that we do not have any friendlies in the area matching this description. Proceed as though hostile.”
Trick replies, “Yes, sir,” and comms off.
I ask him, “Sunglasses?”
“Yeah, that’s what they looked like.” He tilts his head and purses his lips for a moment the way he does when he’s thinking about something. Then he says, “You know, they might have been bug eyes.”
Bug eyes are really obvious lenses that Protectors use for their optical enhancements. They aren’t trying to fool anyone, so external lenses work fine for them. I pretend to bump into someone so I can glance back over my shoulder. She’s not there. I ask Trick, “Who the fuck tails someone using bug eyes?”
“Someone with really lousy tradecraft,” he says.
We arrive at the Hotel Luther on the Bowery. It’s over some shithole bar called CBGB that stinks like piss and beer from a block away. I’ve read that the neighborhood has tried to close it down, but nobody else would rent a space that’s soaked up almost ten years of puke, so the club keeps reopening in the same spot. We like this area because cops hardly ever patrol here, which allows us to operate pretty freely.
We check in as Mr. and Mrs. Chowder. Patrick is so stupid sometimes. He’s always got to use these asinine names instead of a simple name like Smith. We take the elevator up to the fifteenth floor and our room, number 1517.
We leave the lights out and the shades drawn while we set up our gear. Patrick snoops around and looks for hidden microphones. He’s got a small handheld gadget he points into the corners, at the lights, at the bed. It’s a long shot that the room would be bugged, but Trick is convinced the hotel’s people could be bribed to assign us a particular room. He finishes his sweep and gives me a thumbs-up: “All clear.”
“Any word from Grey?”
Trick shakes his head. “He’ll comm us when he’s finished.”
“Then we go back to D.C.?” I ask.
“Then we see if anything else comes our way.” Trick peeks around the window shade to look across the street.
“You mean Little Miss Bug Eyes out there?”
Trick nods.
After a few moments I ask, “See anyone?”
“Not yet.”
Levels and Info Operators are always the same rank. The IOs don’t have a rank of their own. They inherit the rank of their Level, so there is no real boss. Our decisions are made by consensus. In practice, the IO thinks while the Level acts or, in my case, acts out.
I toss myself on the bed and murmur to Trick, “I know what we can do while we wait.” I turn on a small light next to the bed.
Trick glances over at me. I’m fully clothed, but my pants are snug enough to give him a good view of my ass. He takes a long look and finally tells me, “C’mon, Scarlet, I’ve got to keep an eye out here.”
Hmph. Using my ExOps handle is his way of saying we can’t fool around on the job.
“Okay, okay.” I turn the light back off. “Should I monitor the hallway?”
“Yeah. I’ll keep an eye out the window.” Patrick puts on his starlight goggles. His modified eyes can record video, like mine, but to see in the dark he needs external equipment. I lie on the bed with my eyes closed and my hearing turned up so I can pick out every sound on the entire hotel floor. I hear the floor above, too: people coughing, crapping, snoring. Very sexy, dynamic work. I zing myself a little Madrenaline to help me stay focused.
After a couple of hours I get up to use the bathroom. When I come out, I’m ready to start bitching about where the heck is Grey, but Tr
ick has his hand in the air. Something’s cooking. I tiptoe over to him.
He leans back from the window and comms, “Grey is in the office.”
I peek around the window shade and turn on my night vision. Next to our hotel is a seven-story turn-of-the-century office building. There are lots of carved stone knobbies and blobbies all up and down the thing. A CIA team works out of there, including the case officer who runs the Middle Eastern stringer Chanez wants us to meet.
We watch to see if we can catch a glimpse of Grey. I’ve never met the sneaky bugger, but that’s not uncommon at ExOps. Infiltrator missions can take years, and even when they’re between assignments most Infiltrators prefer to stay away from the office. They like to maintain as much anonymity as possible. Sounds pretty lonely if you ask me.
We peer through the gloomy New York night. We can’t see Grey, but Patrick spots something else. “What’s that, on the roof across the alley?”
The ornately facaded roof is a half story lower than our room. I see a huddled shape over there. I switch to infrared. Bingo! It’s warm and person-sized.
I lean over to Trick. “Should I go nab ’em?”
Trick comms, “No, not until we get the all-clear from—”
Just then Grey comms in to both of us. “Grey to Scarlet and Solomon. I got it. Thanks. Out.”
Trick comms back to Grey, “Roger that. Out.” Then to me, “Well, that’s done. Let’s see who our secret admirer is over there.”
I nod and give him a peck on the cheek. I pull down the window shades while he goes to the bed and pulls off the covers. He stands in front of the door to the room and holds the blanket up as high as he can while I open the door and slip out. The idea is to try to block the light from the hallway. It can tip people off that someone has entered, or in this case exited, the room.
I gently shut the door and sneak down the hallway. A winding set of stairs wraps itself around the elevator shaft like an affectionate snake. I assume the stairs are being monitored, but it’s probably only below this floor. I silently move upstairs until I run out of building. I shove open the door to the roof. I’m hidden from my target’s view since this roof is three stories higher than the top of the offices across from my hotel room. I stay low, anyway. You never know who else is watching.
I move to the back side of the roof, away from the office building, and look over the edge. There’s a shorter structure over here; it’s a five-story drop. I jump down, land with a thud, and feel a sharp stabbing pain in both knees. I suck in my breath and stifle a curse. Fuckin’ hell! My neuroinjector sends in some Overkaine so I can stay mobile.
Rather than jump five more stories to the street and completely ruin my knees, I clamber down a fire escape. Then I circle two blocks around until can I approach the office building from the side opposite our hotel. I look up and notice an elaborate patio garden just below the roof with a cluster of tall plants and one good-size tree. I leap to the fire escape and climb up as quietly as possible. As I slither onto the patio, I check out the tree. The top of it is higher than the office building’s roof.
Oh, this is perfect.
I scan the area with my infrared and night vision.
All clear.
CHAPTER 23
SAME NIGHT, 11:20 P.M. EST MANHATTAN’S LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK CITY, USA
I scale the tree in a flash, sway back and forth for a moment, then leap to the roof of the office building and silently land on all fours. My infrared vision shows my target around the other side of a big air vent. I take a deep breath and sneak around the vent. There she is, pointing a microphone gun at our room across the street. It’s the chick Patrick spotted on Bleecker Street—dark hair, dark clothes, and giant-sunglasses-looking bug eyes.
I sneak up behind her, clamp my left hand over her mouth, and stab my upgraded right hand through her jacket, shirt, skin, and muscle. I wrap three fingers around one of her ribs and snarl, “One move and I rip your fucking spine out.”
She grunts into my hand, twitches in pain, and manages a quick nod.
I hiss in her ear, “Who sent you?”
She shakes her head under my left hand. I squeeze my right hand around her rib a little more and ask again. Same result. Then her body relaxes. I must have tripped a pain-numbing module. Dammit, now she’s useless.
“Say good night, shithead.”
I’m about to tear her skeleton apart when I hear Trick in my comm channel. “Scarlet, do not terminate that asset!”
I comm, “Asset, my butt. We won’t learn anything from this one.”
“Let me try. Bring her here.”
Fine, Trick, have it your way. I slide my right hand out of the chick’s back and whack her in the neck to knock her unconscious. I throw her body over my shoulders and carry her to the middle of the roof to give myself room for a running start. Then I sprint at the roof’s edge and leap across the street to the ledge outside our hotel room window.
Back in our room, we bind our captive hand and foot, then set her on a chair. I bandage her back while Trick attaches some electrodes to her skin and shoots her up with a chemical cocktail. After I tape up the wound on her back, he gives the girl one last injection and she regains consciousness. Her bug eyes retract into her brow when she wakes up.
Patrick takes her face in his hands and looks into her eyes. It’s almost tender how he does it, sort of like when we’re alone.
“You know what comes now,” he begins, “but we don’t have to do this. I can file an easily intercepted report that states you withstood hours of chemotorture before you talked.”
She spits in his face. I lunge toward her, but Trick holds up a hand to me. I can’t believe how calm he can be at times like this.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “Okay, fine,” he says to the girl. “Let’s start with who sent you.”
“Let’s start with this, Xerox,” she snarls. “Your girlfriend’s father went rogue to buy himself a bottle of Thunderbird.”
Gun. Point. Bang! Her right shoulder bursts open, and a jet of blood sprays out.
“Godammit, Scarlet!” Trick shouts while he dives into his bag of tricks for a pressure bandage. “It’s a dodge. She wants you to kill her before we get any intel out of her!” The bitch falls off the chair and thumps onto the floor. Her dark lenses slide down and hide her eyes. Her shoulder pulses red liquid all over the chair, the floor, and Trick. Looks like I hit an artery. Trick tries to stick a bandage on her before she bleeds to death while her blood splashes all over his white sneakers. She twists and turns so he can’t patch her up until her blood flow slows and she stops moving.
“Fuck! Damn it, damn it!” Trick yells as he gives up on saving her. He reaches into his bag and pulls out two long needles with red handles connected by springy red wires to a brick-sized battery pack. For some reason, it occurs to me that the wires are the same color as my family’s old telephone from when I was a kid.
He stabs one needle into her lower back and the other through her left lens and eyeball. This interrogation technique is called the Thackery Procedure. My training has taught me to stand back because this stunt sprays biojuice all over the place. Patrick won’t try to keep her alive anymore. He’ll extract what info he can in the next few seconds before she croaks on us. He flips a switch on one of the needle handles, and she comes off the floor and wails like a banshee. Only now does it occur to me to worry about the neighbors.
The Thackery bypasses every possible pain inhibitor and cooks the brain’s cortex. It’s very effective in the short term, but it’s always lethal. I knew I should have done this chick on the roof. I’m not sure if I can actually tear someone’s spine out, and I really wanted to give it a shot.
“Give me a name!” Patrick shouts at the girl to drown out her howls. “WHO SENT YOU? A name and I let you go!”
She stops bawling long enough to hiss at us, either “Sss” or “Fff” or “Shh.” It’s hard to tell. Then she’s silent and her body falls slack. She’s gone.
We don’t use the Thackery Procedure very often, mostly because it’s so fucking gross. The smell is especially nasty.
The company that makes this device claims that if you don’t procure the intel you want, it absolutely means the subject didn’t know. In practice, the results are a little less predictable. Except the lethal part. That’s always the same.
Trick quickly packs up his bag, bloody bits and all. I shovel my clothes back into my backpack, and we’re outta there. One quick look around and all I see is blood, a dead smoking girl, and more blood. Mr. and Mrs. Chowder will not be welcome at this hotel again, that’s for sure.
If Miss Deadbitch has any friends around here, they’re probably down in the lobby or out in the street. We run up the hall, away from the elevator and stairs. The hallway turns left onto another side of the hotel. I use my infrared vision to scan the rooms for warm bodies. When we find one that reads cold, Trick picks the lock. We enter, close the door behind us, and listen for a moment.
The elevator doors grind open, and loud footsteps echo in the hallway. Then we hear curses and shrieked commands. “Move, dammit! Fan out. Find them!” Whoever it is has an American accent.
Patrick has already opened the window. He waves me over to him and points at a fire escape across the alley. It’s only a couple yards away. The alley isn’t even wide enough for a car. I climb out the window and jump to the fire escape as silently as possible. Trick jumps next, and I half catch him to help him land quietly. We scuttle down the fire escape and walk out into the street. Down the block we find a parking garage. I hot-wire a small pickup truck with Jersey plates, and we’re a block away when we hear the first sirens.
Later that night, Trick and I are in Chelsea, on the terrace outside one of our safe house apartments. We quietly drink beer. I can tell he’s frustrated with me, and I take a guess that talking might help. Sometimes that seems to work.