by Oisin McGann
At that moment, the door slid shut, and the lock clicked and beeped. A light on the keypad beside it showed that the alarm system had been armed once more.
“To make sure we don’t get locked in,” Krieger finished with a dismayed voice.
“You can crack that lock, right?” Hector asked.
“Sure, if we had time,” Krieger answered, taking the safety off his sub-machine gun. “But it sounds like time’s somethin’ we don’t got.”
From down the corridor there came the noise of several pairs of heavy feet.
Nimmo made his way carefully along the corridor. It was his job to find the cells where Manikin was being held. He was on a tight deadline, and he couldn’t afford to be seen. Three different brundleseeds had been planted in his body to aid him in his task. All of the designs used to program the seeds were based on Safe-Guard technology. Nimmo had stolen the designs a couple of years ago. Just being in possession of them was highly illegal.
In the palm of his left hand, just beneath the skin, was a thermographic camera. Using infra-red radiation, its ‘sight’ was based on heat—seeing people and objects based on how much heat they gave off. Inside the palm of his right hand was an x-ray camera. With these two devices, he could see in the dark, through thick smoke, through solid objects. By looking through walls, he could effectively see around corners, so that he could spot security cameras before they spotted him. And he could search for Manikin without opening doors, or calling out for her.
A third implant had grown into one of the Safe-Guards’ most useful devices: a key fabricator. Using his x-ray camera, he could identify a type of lock, and the fabricator built into the longest bone of his right index finger could then, in a matter of seconds, create a key to fit it. This was the technology that allowed peepers to go almost anywhere in the city.
Nimmo knew roughly where the cells were in Move-Easy’s bunker, but he had to take a number of detours to avoid running into any of the gangsters. Like a shadow, he passed through the Void, slipping quiet and unseen through the maze of tunnels.
When he eventually found his way to the corridor leading to the ‘guest rooms,’ he ran his scanners over the wall at the corner. There was a chair at the top of the corridor, but nobody was sitting in it. There were people in some of the cells, but he wasn’t close enough to tell if any of them was Manikin. Stepping silently around the corner, his eyes took in every detail of the drab gray-green-painted hallway. There was a door ajar at the end of the corridor—the only one of the eight doors that was open. He walked down the corridor, holding his hands out to the sides, his strange new technological senses checking each cell on either side as he passed.
There were prisoners here, but no sign of Manikin. He did not release any of the captives. Some might not be friendly, and they would all be released anyway, when the police raided this place.
“Look, I cocked up, all right?” a plaintive voice protested. “But she’s in a locked-down bunker! Where the bloody hell can she go?”
“I dunno, why don’t you go ask the Turk? You wazzock!” He came to the cell with the open door. Inside, one of Move-Easy’s thugs—presumably the one charged with guarding the cells—was unlocking the handcuffs of a boy who was chained to the wall.
The boy was Tanker, and he was wearing only a T-shirt and his underwear. Nimmo took in the scene in a couple of seconds. There was a blossoming bruise on Tanker’s forehead, where he’d obviously taken a nasty knock. A pair of blue and gray reversible jeans that could have been Manikin’s lay crumpled on the ground, as well as something that looked like the remains of her fake birthmark.
“Hey!” The troll looked up, his face twisting into a snarl. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He lunged at Nimmo, who calmly swung the steel door shut in his face, and locked it. Turning to head back up the corridor, ignoring the shouts from behind him, he let out a sigh.
“All right, but where the bloody hell did she go?”
CHAPTER 36
ENEMY AT THE GATES
THE RAT-RUNNERS’ TIMING had been a bit off. FX wasn’t brought to Scope’s lab as quickly as they’d expected. They’d almost got it right—Vapor’s men got locked into the Void just after the computers in the checkpoint went down. As soon as the intruders were spotted on the reactivated cameras, Easy’s men assumed the Void was under attack. Which was all according to plan.
It was just that FX should have reached Scope by the time it happened. Instead, he and Coda were still making their way along one of the lengthy corridors.
“Oh Jesus, it’s them, isn’t it?” FX cried as he heard the sound of gunshots. In a pretty convincing show of terror, he grabbed Coda’s arm. “Please, man, don’t let them take me! This is it, they’re coming in! They’re gonna take me! They’re gonna take me!”
Coda threw him a suspicious glance, and FX suspected that if he hadn’t been the key to getting the brundleseed, he’d have been dead right then. Instead, Coda shoved him back against the wall and bound his wrists to a pipe with a large plastic cable-tie. Instead of heading in the direction of the gunfire, Coda strode quickly in the other direction. FX watched him go in frustration. He’d hoped the gunfight would get Coda out of the picture for a while.
Krieger and Hector were inside, and facing the wrath of a nest full of gangsters. Their deaths weren’t a necessary part of the plan—the rat-runners had just arranged for them to be there so that the two men would be in the right place at the right time, when people started getting arrested. Right now, police would be surrounding the bunker and blocking off all the exits. Fifteen minutes ago, an email sent on timed delivery had plonked into every police inbox in the city, with a detailed layout of Move-Easy’s Void, drawn up by Scope, along with information on all the operations going on down there. FX just had to stay alive until the coppers got inside.
“The law’s outside!” someone yelled down the tunnel. “The bloody law’s outside! They’re everywhere! Where’s the shotguns? Someone’s gonna die for this!”
Now FX was struggling to keep his bowels from emptying into his pants. Because the gunfire was getting louder, and he was stuck to this pipe. Instead of just providing a few minutes of diversion, Vapor’s men appeared to be killing their way towards him. And now that the police were here, one of the many ignorant, violent nutters running past him might decide FX was a liability they could do without. There’s no lock to pick on a cable-tie, and he had no means of cutting the toughened plastic.
“You!” a voice growled. “What the hell are you doing ’ere?”
It was Punkin. Speaking of ignorant violent nutters, here was the treacherous rat-runner who’d reesed them so he could get in with Easy’s mob. The one who hated FX and his sister with a vicious passion. The dangerous little thug who probably didn’t know how important FX was to Move-Easy. Punkin extended the blade from his wrist and held it to FX’s throat.
“See? Like Wolverine’s,” he hissed.
“Wolverine has three blades,” FX corrected him, unable to stop himself. “On each hand.”
“You and your sister slipped a bloody dye pack into that caterpillar, you little fart,” Punkin spat. “Nearly got me an’ Bunny killed when we brought it down here. We still owe you for that one. And I know your sister nicked my wallet.” He gave FX a nasty smile, swiveling the blade so it caught the light. “Now, look! Here you are, all gift-wrapped. Sweet!”
As usual, when FX got scared, his mouth developed a mind of its own.
“Really? She took your wallet? The thieving cow! Was that the time, y’know, when you, like, reesed us over for a caterpillar full of cash? That time? I’m sorry, man. That girl’s just got no principles. Get me out of this and I’ll give her a right tellin’ off. Have it back to you in no time.”
“Seems like stuff always goes pear-shaped when you’re around,” Punkin muttered. “There’s enemies in the castle. Now, how did they get in, do y’think?”
“I dunno. Maybe they followed that smell your head gives
off—ever since you shoved it up Easy’s arse?”
Punkin’s blade twitched, but then his arm was pulled back, twisted into a lock, and he was flipped onto his back. He hit the floor with a thud that knocked the air from his lungs. A black girl who looked a bit like Tanker, but without the cornrows, laid in a few more thumps while he lay there winded. Before he could recover, he was dragged over to the same pipe FX was attached to and bound alongside him. He swore loudly as he realized the plastic around his wrists was out of reach of the blade sticking out of the back of his hand. The girl gasped in exasperation at FX as she cut him free.
“‘The smell your head gives off—ever since you shoved it up Easy’s arse’?” She grimaced. “That’s the only line you could come up with?”
“I had a knife to my throat! It was the best I could do under pressure.”
Manikin looked up and down the corridor. There was no one coming in either direction.
“What’s with all the shooting?” she asked.
“We tricked Vapor’s gimps into coming down and got ’em locked in.”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression.
“What, there weren’t enough psychos down here already?”
CHAPTER 37
THE LAST DANCE
TRYING TO IGNORE the pitched battle that seemed to be taking place in one of the corridors a few hundred meters away, Scope walked towards the door into Move-Easy’s living quarters, slipping the contact lens with the fake iris onto her right eye. She had made it using the photo she’d taken earlier of Easy’s eye. Holding her face up to the iris lock that controlled entry to his living quarters, she allowed it to scan her contact lens. The door lock clicked open, and she stepped inside, leaving the door slightly ajar. Once in the corridor, she let herself into his trophy room, pulling off the empty backpack that hung from her shoulder.
It was not the rat-runners’ plan just to rescue Manikin. Scope was standing in this large room, letting her eyes sweep across its contents, because the plan was to take down Move-Easy altogether, and hopefully take Vapor with him.
The trophy room housed all of the objects Move-Easy prized most: from a selection of works of art that his bands of thieves had stolen over the years, to film and music memorabilia. Some of these things were worthless, but had great sentimental value; others were worth a fortune, but Move-Easy would never allow them to be sold.
Scope crept past a group of manikins wearing old burlesque dance-hall costumes, down an aisle lined with display cases full of antique clocks and compasses. At the end of this aisle stood a red 1969 Mini Cooper S with two black straps over the bonnet and three big fog-lights mounted on the front. She let her fingers stroke its bonnet as she passed. It had been completely taken apart and reassembled to get it in through the doors. Beyond that there were shelves of video cassettes of 1980s movies, and a waist-high Jerzy safe with a hole drilled through the side of it—apparently a souvenir from Easy’s very first armed robbery. Scope bent over the safe, inhaling air over her chemical analyzer, but didn’t get a hit.
Hidden somewhere in this room was Move-Easy’s ‘insurance policy.’ His power over London’s underworld was not merely based on his small army of villains and the fact that he was a clever, violent control freak. Easy had amassed a large stash of dirt on a selection of high-ranking judges and police officers, not to mention many of his gangster competitors. It was this stash of blackmail material that had kept Easy out of the hands of the law for so long. The police would be battering down the doors of the Void by now, but Easy could still get off with little or no sentence.
Scope wanted to ensure he got what was coming to him. And more than that, she wanted to know who Vapor was. Because Easy knew, and that was the kind of information he kept safe for a rainy day.
Without his insurance policy, he was just a cunning thug. But she had no idea where in this room he had hidden the stash, and the room was so full of clutter, even if you had x-ray vision, you could search for hours. Which was why she needed her new technologically enhanced sense of smell. Painfully aware that she had little time, she forced herself to walk slowly up and down the aisles, letting her nose do the searching. If she was caught here, the boss’s fondness for her wouldn’t save her. He might even take her betrayal harder—with consequences she couldn’t bear to think about.
The readout scrolling down across the artificial vision in her right eye told her what kinds of molecules were floating in the air. She was looking for a high concentration of cigar smoke, not suspended in the air around her, but hanging close to some surface in the room.
It was when she was walking down past the rear of the Mini Cooper that she found it. Move-Easy smoked cigars, and they left their pungent smell on his fingertips. Anything he handled regularly also picked up the smell. Scope bent down and put her nose close to the handle of the car’s boot. Bingo.
She opened the boot and discovered most of the interior was taken up with a large, very impressive—looking safe. It had an old-fashioned combination lock. She swore under her breath, lifting her head and looking around. Easy kept a key on a chain around his neck, which she’d always assumed was for his stash. But, of course, Easy knew he was surrounded by criminals.
This wasn’t fair—she should have had FX with her, and possibly even Nimmo. She could pick a fairly simple lock, but this was beyond her.
“Let me have a look,” a voice said from behind her, causing her heart to thump the air out of her lungs.
It was Nimmo. He stood behind her, having approached without her hearing.
She punched him in the arm, hissing at him: “Jesus! You tryin’ to scare the piss out of me?”
“Didn’t want to spoil your concentration,” he replied softly, gesturing towards Easy’s stash. “Sorry if I gave you a start.”
“No, you’re not. Where’s Manikin? Did you break her out?”
“She beat me to it. I figured there was no point wandering around trying to find her, so I came back to help you. Here, stand back.”
Placing his right hand against the door of the safe, he used his x-ray camera to study the tumblers of the lock. Then he spun the dial clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then back clockwise again. The lock clicked open.
The door of the wide, low safe opened and they saw folders full of papers, compact discs, data keys and variously sized boxes arranged neatly inside.
“Grab the discs, keys and as much paper as you can get into your pack,” Nimmo told her. “Don’t take more than you can carry while running.”
She did as he said, and he quickly filled his pockets with whatever he could.
“Not bad, for vermin,” a cold voice grated, making them both jump.
Behind them stood the Turk, leaning against one of the display cases. Scope experienced a horrible sinking feeling, and she could see even Nimmo had gone pale. The bald giant was holding an Uzi sub-machine-gun. He aimed it at them and pulled the trigger. They jumped again as the hammer clicked, but the gun did not go off.
“Out of ammo.” He leered apologetically. Shrugging the strap off his shoulder, he tossed the gun away behind him. “Will have to switch to manual.”
Raising his bunched fists, he held them a few centimeters apart so the rat-runners could see the electricity arcing between his knuckles. He took a step towards them. Even as he did so, there was a whistle from behind him. Swiveling to look around, he grunted as the strap from his Uzi whipped around his wrists, the loop pulling tight. A well-dressed Oriental man jerked the Turk’s arms out straight, wrenching the giant off balance, then twisted the rest of the strap around the Turk’s neck and flipped him head over heels onto his back. The Turk landed with his electrically charged fists tied up under his chin. His body thrashed and twitched for a few seconds and then fell still.
Nimmo and Scope both felt a moment of relief, before it gave way to dread at the sight of the stone-cold assassin who faced them.
Registering both reactions, Coda held up his empty but deadly hands with a modest exp
ression, as if the two kids were an audience showing their appreciation for a performer.
“Great minds think alike,” he chuckled, nodding towards Easy’s stash. “That’s just what I was looking for. I was wondering how I was going to open the safe—seeing as it was going to be a bit of a rush job. Thanks for sorting that. I’ve been following your progress, actually, ever since I first met Brundle. You’re a bright bunch—you’ve got some moves on you. But these matters you’re meddling in now … well, they’re just not suitable for children.” Scope glared at him. Coda was here, not to protect Easy’s stash, but to steal it for himself. And as she realized this, she knew it wasn’t the first time he had betrayed his boss.
“You killed Brundle,” Scope spoke up. “You knocked him out, then jammed a hazelnut down his throat. That had to be you, right? It’s your style.”
“Yes,” Coda replied simply.
“But Move-Easy didn’t want him dead,” Nimmo said. “Killing him made no sense … unless you’re working for Vapor. That’s why you had to kill Brundle—to stop him from giving the seed to Easy. But then what? Vapor thought his guys would just find the implant once he sent them in to search the lab?”
“Yes, well done. We didn’t know Brundle had given the only remaining ones to you. Now, just hand that stuff over, and I’ll let you run for your lives. We can worry about the brundleseed later. This place is about to become a war zone, so I’d be very surprised if you got out alive. But as long as you give me the files, I promise I’ll let someone else kill you.”
“Scope, take what you’ve got and go,” Nimmo said firmly, brushing past her left side to stand between her and Coda.
She was about to argue, but knowing Nimmo, there would be little point. He’d made his decision. Besides, he’d just picked her pocket. She closed the flap on the pack, slung it onto her shoulder and backed down the aisle, away from Coda. The hit man watched her leave without any sense of urgency, as if there was nowhere she could possibly go to escape him. Then he put his earbuds in his ears.