He dropped the body onto the tarp, and stepped away. As if he finally noticed the audience, he waved his cigarette to them, and remarked, “Just paying my respects.” He stepped back.
Reyna had questions of her own. Twelve years of investigation. Twelve years of dead-end cases and closed doors. The Demadi Cartel was untouchable. Now, without a warrant, their leadership is laid on a floor, a stairwell, and three layers of elevated highway. “Sir, what the hell was that?” She demanded.
“A gunfight, Commander. I thought that was made perfectly clear when you blasted Holland and Abrezzo. Nice shooting, by the way.” Raschel answered. His voice was distant, like he was thinking about something else. “Your range time paid off.”
“I caught that part, sir.” She said. The memory was seared into her brain. She'd placed her tablet on the table, as the lift car came in to land. The lawyer, Holland, took a drink. The recorder was next to his glass. Total immunity. That was the deal. Total immunity, and untold favors from Raschel’s black bag teams. The mistress stood by the upstairs fireplace. She rested against the hydroponics trough, and idly rolled her eyes. Demadi, the boss himself, waited with his attendants by the window. The car touched down. The door opened. Raschel stepped out. All hell broke loose.
Her hand was still sore from the rapid hammering of the handgun. Her eyes still burned from the blowout of the caseless propellant.
She clarified her question, “What I mean is, sir, I was narcotics. We were on these assholes for years. My boss's boss was a field agent when we started on them. We had nothing. Then, one trace from Porte Harcourt puts Mind Blade into his racket, and he's willing to break down his whole organization and turn? The boss? Old Man Demadi, Black Peter, the Butcher, the King of Reza? The single coldest “businessman” in the entire fucking underworld? And he wants to go State-side, just like that?” Velasquez demanded. It didn't make any damn sense.
“Up until he doesn't.” Raschel finished. “He packs his apartment with a couple hit men, and brings along a genejob to pose as his mistress – again, nice shooting – and tries to relive his street days with some good old fashioned bloodletting.”
Velasquez glanced to the whirlwind again, and shook her head. She demanded, “Why? Why play soldier for Striker? What was his angle?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Raschel replied. “Maybe the old bastard had a love child. Maybe he had a mistress. Maybe he really liked a puppy.” The wind seemed to swallow his words, making them sound hollow, tired. He explained, “Striker isn’t complex, Reyna, not like people pretend he is. He's efficient. He found the pressure point that made the King of Crank bend, and then he knuckled down. Everyone has a weakness. Everyone has a chink in their armor. Striker homed in on it and gained possession of a drug lord. There's no need to go any deeper. By the time we got involved, Demadi belonged to Striker, and now he's dead.”
She had no answer to that.
There was so much blood.
Her hands started to shake, again.
Focus! She changed the topic. “Sir, there should be enough evidence in his records that we can trace where he received the Blade core shipments from. We should take everything back to the lab-”
“Do it.” Raschel cut her off. “But you aren’t going. I just got a ping on some subjects of interest. It’s game time, and we need to be there.”
Velasquez stared into the room, to the pandemonium. “Twelve years, sir!” She burst out. “We've been after this bastard for twelve years, and now... we just waltz in here for a deal, gun him down, and walk away without even going through anything?”
Raschel followed her gaze. The techs were peeling the room apart, digitizing every millimeter of it, sending the holographic records back to the Citadel’s blackest vaults. One pulled a zipper over Abrezzo’s face, her wounds already closed, the Faction rejuv kit not recognizing that it was patching up an empty mannequin. The back of her head was flat, in the plastic, her graybox sealed in an armored case nearby.
“We’ll keep the records.” He allowed. “They’ll be useful after this is done. There’ll be hell to pay, once the cartels realize the head just fell off their hydra. After we get done with this, any leverage we can use to stay on top the storm will be useful. Keep tracing, Reyna. Rule One-eighteen: keep pulling until the thread runs out. Even once Striker's dead, we've still got to gut the money-trail and distribution network. That's more your style, I think.”
There are rules. There are procedures. “Sir, any investigation is hopelessly compromised. I don’t think there’s a judge in the hub that would let this evidence-”
“Doesn’t matter if we can prove we know it. We know it. Pressure points, Reyna. Grab, twist, and the first fucker that lawyers up? Put him in a fucking ditch.” He snubbed his cigarette against the leather couch, and pocketed the butt. “They’ll play ball.”
Welcome to Operations, Rey. Get your cowboy hat on. Reluctantly, she agreed, “Yes, sir.” Her earpiece chirped. A new lift car hovered over the clear spot on the pad. “You call for a ride?”
He nodded, and then bounded up the bloody stairs, towards the pad. “That's ours.”
She pointed towards the carnage, and asked “There's still a lot to clean up.”
“Cleaning is for beat agents. We've got a busy day ahead.” He ticked his head, as if to summon her up, after him.
“We're both going, sir? In person?”
“Of course. This job, it needs a personal touch.” There was an edge under his words.
“The plan, sir?” She asked, as she followed him into the roaring wind on the pad. The smoking wreck was mere feet from their black sedan, leaking thick oil from blackened pipes. Waves of heat still poured off it, piercing the spring chill. The air stank of coolant and burned metal. The Bergman drive was a leashed sun. That it worked at all was a miracle. That it failed so perfectly was providence. The Airship wasn't a miracle, or providence. Is that Striker's trick? Weaponize the mundane? Twist the miraculous? Turn the world into a nightmare tableau, our lives as viewed through a mirror, darkly?
The car touched down, and Raschel circled it. He dropped to his knees to check the undercarriage, waved a scanner under the frame. She didn't need to wonder what he was searching for. She started her daily commute with a bomb-check, anymore. Through a mirror darkly, indeed. She looked in the windshield, verified the driver. Tremont, from the car pool. She's clean. Velasquez waved, motioned, ‘open the trunk’. She checked that, too. I chem tested my breakfast, and didn't even think how fucked that was. Eyes forward, and helmet on.
“Clear, sir.” She said, when she was satisfied.
“Agreed.” They dropped into the back seat, and Raschel ordered, “Phyllis, take us to the Haven Airstrip, full speed.” He toggled the isolation controls, sealed the rear of the vehicle, so they could talk clearly.
As soon as the seal was up, Velasquez demanded, “Sir, the fuck was that?”
Raschel recoiled, but quickly recovered, and answered, “We solved that question.”
“No, we didn't.” She explained. “Demadi was in Striker's pocket. That much is obvious. If he was just trying to fuck with us, he could have refused to come forward, or given bad information. What he gave us checked out. We have enough information from the leads he gave us to cripple the Blade networks, and he gave that out, free of charge, just to get us into bed.”
“It's not enough.” Raschel replied. “What he gave us will take months to sort out. Striker let it slip because he knows we don't have the time.”
“Agreed. It still doesn't fit. Striker is efficient, you said? Calculating? Then he wouldn't do this just for fun. There's a purpose, a gain. Follow the money, follow the blood, that's how this works in narc, and this is narc work, sir.” She called up her mental catalog, and continued, “They had me in their loft, outnumbered and out-gunned, but they played nice, strung me along, let me transmit good leverage against them. They smiled and gave me a drink, and didn't once try to poison, shoot, stab, or otherwise even ruffle my damn suit, sir.
”
“It's your charm, Commander. They were enraptured by your wiles.” Raschel said, without emotion, more noting the passage of the argument than attempting to derail it.
She flashed her teeth in acknowledgment, but pressed on, “Until you showed up. They wanted to get your personal assurances, and you came right in, unarmed. That was a trap for you, sir. Personally designed, personally set, and with crippling operational data as bait.” She glared right at him, giving her best perp-stare, like she was running an interrogation. “This was personal. Follow the blood. Sir, you're good, but even you aren't worth that. What. The. Fuck. Am. I. Missing?”
Raschel turned away, to watch the city pass below. “Follow the blood.” He echoed. “Refreshing, I tell you, and reassuring.”
“Sir?”
He was silent for a moment, and then, like an old oak finally giving way, he answered, “There are four people in this world that Striker hates.” Below, the cityscape rolled, streaked, the mix of smog and snow and slush, gray canyons and filtered light and blazing neons. “Director Draco lead the operations that dismantled the Faction. Striker needs to defeat him, and return the destruction in kind: the State must fall. Bill Halstead beat him, so Striker killed him. Antonius Berenson 'betrayed' him by turning to freelance work. He must be proved inferior, as he was on the Airship.”
“And you?” She asked.
“Antonius shamed him, the Director outplayed him, and Bill beat him, but I broke him. He aims to return that in full.”
Velasquez let the silence stand, out of respect. The answer she was looking for would not be quick in coming, and to call for it would scare it back into the dark. If she was going to do her job, she needed that darkness burned away. The shadow was a weakness, where the worst hid and the wicked festered. She would wait, and let it fade to light.
Raschel sighed, defeated. After a moment, he admitted, “There are certain principles in war. Cover, concealment, deception...” he trailed off, “Some advantages are objective. The high ground, for instance, cannot be denied. It allows you to dominate down, forces the enemy to assault over difficult terrain into prepared fire, allows you to move more rapidly, and grants improved angles of attack and increased communication. This is why air dominates ground, and orbitals dominate air. This advantaged can be countered with siege or artillery, but, in the end, it must be addressed.
“Other advantages are subjective, and rely on your opponent's perception to be effective.” He turned back to her, and for the first time, she saw pain in his eyes. “Do you understand?” He asked.
Her instincts were good, and well honed. She knew there was something rotting in the waters, now. The voice in her head warned her to turn back, but her gut commanded her to press forward. She nodded, and let him continue.
“For example,” he explained, “a hostage.” He paused. “A hostage is only valuable to take so long as your enemy cares more for its survival than you do. You cannot take a rock hostage, or a mutual opponent. You must find something dire, and hold that as leverage.”
“What did you do?” She whispered.
He was locked onto his track now, and pressed forward. He echoed his own words. “Striker is not complex. He is not the god of war many take him to be. He misjudged soft cover for hard.”
“What did you do?” She demanded.
“Bill never did forgive me.”
“What did you do?”
“Glavoor. The Faction was dying. It was the bleeding hour. Obsidian Razor was cutting through their best and brightest, their “Advisory Council” was lying in ruin, dead or imprisoned. They'd centralized. A fatal error. We gutted them. Both copies of Striker were in play. We've never seen anything like that, Reyna, not before or since.” He let out something between a cough and a sigh. “We had a trick to deal with them. We came in too light, let them draw us into their trap, and then hit them with gunships. Antonius got pinned in a skywalk, and Bill dropped it on him. Tiberius made it to the roof, tried to make an over-and-out exfil, and we cornered him, slammed him with the sensory overload.
“You should have seen it, Reyna. He wasn't a mastermind right then, not even a man. I've seen people break under that kind of hit, but he just snapped, howled like an animal, screamed and thrashed about like I'd stuck him with a branding iron.” Raschel said. “Of course, that didn't stop him. He lost his weapon, but he pulls out this deadman's switch, and starts hollering about how he's going to kill thousands if we don't pull back-”
“You didn't-”
“Bill orders a halt, tries to flank – which is exactly what this bastard wants. He gets clear of the overload, and he's grinning, like he thinks he's got us by the balls – I fucking hate that grin, Rey – and we're just going to let him walk on out. Bill's trying to outplay him, but we've already sacrificed too damn much. He says he's got hostages and a bomb, and we’re going to let him walk or he'll send the signal-”
“How many people?”
“Twelve hundred and change.” Raschel replied coldly. He winched, and echoed, “Twelve hundred and thirty-seven.”
“Twelve hundred. Just like the Airship-” Her stomach had turned to ice.
“I deprived him of his leverage.” Raschel stated, his voice like iron.
Velasquez stared, aghast.
“I sent a burst transmission on all channels, and the building came down. For the first time, I saw him flinch. The bastard whirls around, forgets about us, and stares at the fireball, and as he's turning back, he's got this look on his face, total shock and confusion, staring at me like he's gone dumb. Before he can ask the question, Bill puts a magazine into his chest.”
She said nothing.
“We took him in, alive. I had his limbs taken off so he couldn't slip cuffs, and left him in overload so he wouldn't get any ideas. By the time we got him back to Draco, he'd bashed his own skull in, just by doing the worm in the cargo hold. Didn't quite kill himself, but ended in a solid coma, so the Director ripped his graybox, and then sent the body to disposal. The Faction must have swapped it out before incineration, and used his box to reboot him. A few new pieces of hardware, and he's back, worse than ever.” Raschel shrugged, and finished, “So, yeah, I think it's personal.”
“You killed them.” She stated. You have the right to remain silent. What you say or do may be admitted as evidence against you-
“They were already dead, Reyna. You saw, back in that apartment, what Striker's leverage will do to you. I figured it out, long ago, and that was the key to breaking him. He will seize the things you care about, and hold them hostage. If you concede, you lose. When his advantage relies on you caring more than he, there is one solution: refuse to care.”
“How far does it go?” She asked. How far will I go?
“Until the end, Rey.” The skyport was approaching, and Raschel had placed his mask back into place. “Your men were correct when they put Halstead's unit outside of London. His team stole a V-30.”
“A stealth bird, sir?” She asked. There is a job to do. “How did they – they stole it from us, didn't they?”
“Bingo. We had a black hangar on a civie airstrip, and they jacked it. What does this tell us?”
“That bird only has range for in-hub flight, and they can't store it. They're moving on Striker, and he's somewhere in Euro Hub. There were more than a dozen possible sources, especially with the chaos from Thessaloniki, all inside that envelope.”
“Correct.” He agreed. “But what they don’t know, is that that bird is carrying a tracer.”
“Sir, how did you know to bug-”
“I didn't.” Raschel stated. “I’m not Striker, able to predict a man, based on his choice of hand soap. I cannot, I will not, be drawn into their games. I won’t get tied in loops, trying to outwit them. It can't be done. What I'll do is remove myself, let them play out their masterstrokes, and then bomb them both into oblivion with imprecise and clumsy force. Lesson one-nineteen, Reyna: don't play by the enemy's rules.”
He added, “So
no, I didn't predict that they would steal a certain vertol and trace it. I had every boat, bird, and lift vehicle on that fucking island bugged, the moment you put them on it.” His sneer had returned. “The Director instructed me to go 'all in', so I am. There is a cruiser, the Cataphract, locked in behind the Skyweb orbitals. We'll be aboard, we'll follow that tracer to Striker's base, and when the brothers Berenson face down, we'll smack them with nuclear fire.”
“Sir, what if it's in a city?” Velasquez asked, but she knew the answer.
“What if, Commander?” Raschel returned. “You make that call. One city or the world.”
“The city.” She replied, and felt the chill settle to her bones. “But what if he has a different hostage?”
The Section Chief turned to her, and smiled serenely. He stated, “I have Vonner to control the airwaves, the Cataphract to control the battle, and a proper state of mind to control Striker's leverage.” He paused, and clapped her on the shoulder. “And unlike either of the other two in this fight, I am not irreplaceable.”
“Disregard the leverage.” She echoed.
“That's the second to last lesson, Rey. Ignore the leverage, and change the game. Learning this lesson cost me more than you could ever know, but it was a game-changer.”
The car settled onto the tarmac. The flitter waited to bring them towards the endgame. When the door opened, and the wind rushed at them from the hot engines, she watched the Raschel's coat billow against the dimmed evening sky. He cut a figure more of shadow than man as he climbed those steps. She had to wonder, if he’d looked like that, when he’d stepped onboard that vertol towards to Glavoor. She wondered whether he’d joked with Halstead and his men, whether he’d known how it would end, or simply crossed that bridge when it came.
She followed, felt the heat of the engines, the pounding of the turbines. How did she look, framed in the white lights of the tarmac, as she walked away from Agent Tremont's car? There was a tear in her suit. The Agency pins were shining. The gun was cold again, pressed into her side. Her hands still stank of blood and cordite. She put one foot in front of the other.
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