They tried to stem the flow of blood from another's chest wound. Gore spilled across pale skin, and the harder they pressed down on the entry wound, the more it bled, and then his eyes rolled back into his skull as he died.
Michael shook his head, and he walked away, trying not to listen to the groans of the other wounded and the frantic shouts of the medics. The policeman in the checkpoint booth removed his helmet and balaclava. Sweat glued strands of hair to his forehead.
“We're dropping like flies out there. There isn't going to be anyone left to guard this place the way things are going,” he said.
“I hear you,” Michael said.
The policeman removed a beaten packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket. “Want a smoke?”
Michael declined. The policeman lit up in his security booth, tilted his head back and blew smoke into the air. “We get another food riot or unemployment protest and fuck, I don't know what's going to happen.”
Michael stepped around the barrier.
“Don't wander too far, mate. I think there's people out there who've got us marked. It's real easy to hide in one of those old houses; they can sit up in the loft or watch us through the windows, and we'd never know without seeing them through a thermal sight.”
“I'll be fine,” he said, and walked on. He found himself a seat on a front garden wall. The hands ticked on his watch; a longer wait than he wished for, but he needed fresh air, or whatever passed for fresh air these days. Fifteen minutes later, and an infantry fighting vehicle rolled out of the compound, followed by a car.
Richard slowed, rolling down the driver's window. “You had any luck?”
“Maybe, I'm waiting to meet the guy again. You see the mess back there?”
“Yeah, sucks for those guys. I got a real honest to god murder call out; I'm going to investigate. Maybe I'll get a bounty for it, if those motherfuckers in the IFV don't try and hog the glory.”
“People get murdered here every day. Nobody gives a shit,” Michael said.
Richard shrugged behind the wheel. “People are upset enough about this one that we have to go and check it out. I'm telling you, it's going to be one of those days. See you. Don't get yourself plugged.”
Richard drove off after the infantry fighting vehicle. James turned up ten minutes early and pulled over by the curb. He exited the vehicle and approached in his plastic rain jacket. “Okay, let's see what you've got.”
Michael handed him the papers. He skimmed the text, nodded and then gave him an envelope. “Good enough. Take this. I hope your breaking and entering skills aren't too rusty.”
“What is it?”
“Open it and see. I'll be in touch.”
“What did you say to Harris?” Richard said.
“I didn't say anything to him. Keep your voice down.”
Michael pushed his way through the bushes. A street light glowed a hundred meters away, and concertina wire topped the seven foot wall surrounding the house. CCTV watched from beyond the iron gate. He moved to the wall, huddling low, and Richard trailed after him.
“Looks clear. He should be at work,” Michael said.
“Have you ever broken into somebody's house before?” Richard whispered.
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“Nobody from Assurer is going to intervene; it's private security we need to worry about.” He popped open the bag he'd brought and took out the wire cutters. Richard linked his fingers together and gave Michael a boost, grunting with exertion.
“A little more,” Michael said.
Richard lifted higher, and Michael gripped the top of the wall. He felt the rough edges of the brickwork cutting into his fingers, as he clipped away the first wire, and then the second and a third.
“Hurry it up; my arms are hurting,” Richard said, with a grimace.
Michael clipped the last one. “Got it.” He dropped backed down. “You good?”
“Give me a minute. What are we looking for in there?” Richard said.
Four Rotweilers trotted along past the bushes. Their owner followed behind with their leashes in hand. Michael pressed a finger to his lips, as they waited for the group to pass by.
“Documents.”
“That journalist is going to sell us down the fucking drain.”
“Harris wants this guy.”
“Yeah, Harris and nobody else. Sod it. Come on, let's get it over with.”
Michael grabbed the bag. He pushed off Richard's hands again and clung onto the top of the wall, lifting each leg over in turn. He reached down then and began to pull Richard up. His vision drifted to the other side of the wall, and then he let Richard drop. He heard a thump and a curse.
“For Christ's sake, what was that for?” Richard said.
“There's a bed of punji stakes along the wall.”
“No joke?”
“Give me a minute to remove them.”
He pushed off the wall with as much strength as he could muster and hit the concrete hard, landing a few centimetres beyond the stakes.
“You okay?” Richard said.
“Fine. Keep it down, there might be others about.”
Michael yanked each stake out of the earth and tossed them to the side. A rusted ladder lay against the side of the building, which he took and propped up against the wall to help Richard over.
“Are those cameras working?” Richard said.
“Probably. We'll have to get the drives from inside. Let's go.”
They jogged around the back of the house to the garden patio, and Richard pointed to the burglar alarm box partway up the building. “Let's be quick, okay? That one looks like it's actually wired up.”
Michael picked up a lump of gravel from the patio and hurled it through the kitchen window. The glass shattered with a noise that pierced the afternoon quiet like a death scream. He took the hammer from his bag and smashed out the remains still clinging to the window frame.
The burglar alarm began to shriek.
“Shit,” Richard said.
Michael climbed into the kitchen. Stainless steel cabinets lined the walls, and everything was built large, as though to accommodate two or three families. He stared at his reflection momentarily, as Richard climbed in after him.
“Strange to have a place like this beneath the plate,” Richard said.
“Maybe we'll find out why. I'll search upstairs, you take down here. We're looking for business documents and memory sticks. Got it?” Michael said.
“Just make sure you get the camera drives.”
He jogged up the stairs, inspecting each room until he came to an office with a door of wood and frosted glass. He tried the handle. Locked. Michael smashed the glass with the hammer, cleared the door frame and climbed through.
A computer with a flat screen monitor sat on the desk, and two laptops rested on top of a cabinet in the corner. None were plugged in. He put the laptops in his bag and moved onto the filing cabinets. Two minutes later and he'd added a set of ring binders to the haul, and the bag sagged with the weight of its contents, strap cutting deep into his shoulder.
Richard came up the stairs. “There's nothing of interest down there. Did you find the camera drives?”
“Not yet. This machine isn't even on.” Michael yanked the wire out of the computer and lifted the machine onto the desk. He took a screwdriver from the bag, removed the screws and then slid away the case's cover to reveal the internals.
“They've got to be somewhere. The walls? I've seen it before. I'm going to go and have a look. Don't take too long,” Richard said.
Michael ripped out the wires plugged into the hard drive. Another set of screws held the drive in place, and he removed them as well. The drive came free with a tug. He placed it in his bag and hurried out into the hallway to find Richard banging on each wall with a clenched fist.
“Anything?”
“Too hard to say. Just tell me you got what you needed.”
“I got it, don't worry.”
> Richard moved on, only to stop partway between two doors. He banged on the same spot again. “Does that sound hollow to you or what? Give me the hammer.”
He reached out. A car engine rumbled from the street outside. Richard snatched the hammer from him.
“Go see who it is,” Richard said.
Michael jogged to the room at the end of the hallway, parting the blue curtains enough to look out with one eye. Four men climbed out of their armoured transport. Richard hammered a hole in the wall, and Michael flinched at the noise as chunks of plaster crumbled across the carpet.
“Keep it down, it's private security; four of them. Two are at the front gate. The others are going around the side. I don't think they have the keys,” Michael said.
Richard hit the wall again. “Damn it, the drives are inside a safe. I can see wires going in through the bottom, but I need a number and a key to open it. I've got neither of them.”
He rapped his knuckles on the metal. “Explosives would do the job.”
“Forget it. It's not enough to identify us. We've got a bigger problem downstairs.”
Michael stepped past Richard and into one of the other rooms. He prised the blinds open and saw the pair of security personnel inspecting the hole in the concertina wire. One lifted the other up to look over the wall before he dropped back down again.
“They've found our entry point. One of them is calling it on the radio. I think they're waiting for back up.”
Michael turned his torch off and moved back downstairs to the kitchen with Richard. They removed one of the curtains from its railing and tossed it out the window to cover the shattered glass. A muffled clink sounded as they climbed outside.
Michael heard garbled voices on the radio and one of the security team speaking. He padded across the patio stones to the end of the garden, craning his neck, and caught a glimpse of their entry point in the darkness. A flash of torchlight illuminated the side of the house.
Richard removed the bamboo stakes from the gravel. The drone of another engine approached in the distance, and Michael wiped the sweat from his forehead on a coat sleeve. “You ready?”
Richard nodded and locked his fingers together again. He lifted Michael up to cut another hole in the concertina wire. They landed in an alleyway of broken fencing and rubble, and behind that was a stretch of ruined street, covered in bits and pieces of Russian aircraft.
Michael stepped over the debris, trying not to disturb any of it. More voices came from around the corner, and he paused to look back, watching three silhouettes climb over the original entry point with their guns.
They cleared the rest of the ruins and found themselves on the next street, disappearing into the darkness before anyone could see them.
It was icy cold in the office, and they sat in near darkness, light coming in through the window blinds from a floodlight on the underside of the platform. Michael listened to the sounds of the next shift arriving.
Richard scraped more mud from his shoe. “You ever think about the war much?”
“Sometimes. What's up?” Michael said. He continued eyeing the phone.
“Just wondering; those planes reminded me of it. I was still at school when the war happened. That one we saw today? The exact same model crash landed in the playground. It's that ugly turquoise colour they paint the interior of the cockpits with, like some bad DIY job on a council estate, you know what I mean?”
Michael yawned. His eyelids felt heavy. “It wasn't the planes we had to worry about so much in Germany; they went by so fast they never had much of a chance to spot us in the rubble. Helicopter gunships were the worst. They could spot us scurrying about with their thermal sights, and we never had enough MANPADs.”
“I never used to feel very lucky about avoiding the fighting in Germany. Didn't seem to count for much when they were levelling a new city every month. Have you got a place to stay?”
“Are you offering?”
“No, I was going to tell you about this cheap little hotel nearby. The area seems pretty safe. Can't ask for much more than that these days.”
“I'm good.”
“Does that mean you're fucking Samantha? I've got to get going,” Richard said, pulling on his coat. “Hope Harris doesn't keep screwing you around; he's got the taste of blood now. Maybe some of the others will come back and pick up some of the slack around here.”
“I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.”
Richard waved and left the office. Harris phoned several minutes later. “Okay, come on up. We need to talk.”
The major hung up before Michael could respond. He shut his eyes and sighed. It was even colder in the corridor outside, and he shivered as he ran up the stairs and found Harris's daughter mopping the floors. Each time she cleaned it, somebody else passed on through and left a fresh set of muddy footprints. She eyed him suspiciously as he knocked on the major's door.
Michael went inside without waiting for an answer. “Have you finished looking through what we found, sir?”
“There's a ton of stuff there; it'll take a long time to go through it all. I had a team filter what they could and what they found makes for some interesting reading. I hope you haven't made plans for tonight; we're going to be here a while.”
He sat down opposite the major. “What's new? To be frank, sir, I wish you'd let this thing go. There's other things just as worthy of my time that we might actually solve.”
“There's nothing on the drives or in the folders that you took that helps our investigation. What that journalist gave us was probably just a piece of bait, something to keep us busy. I shouldn't be surprised. That was always the risk of dealing with them.”
Michael let his shoulders relax as he reclined further in the chair. “So we're done? We can shutter this case now. There's nothing else to go on.”
“Don't you want to know what was in those files?”
“Not really, sir, but I expect you're going to tell me anyway.”
“An Eratech production facility. Information about a business contract.”
“Two of us managed to break into that property. It's a nice house, and as far some places go around here, fairly safe, but it's not the kind of place you'd keep confidential information related to your job.”
“It's still something. What do you know about the new defence contract the government has been passing about?”
“What defence contract? They're so deep in financial mismanagement they couldn't buy a crate of rifles for the army even if they wanted to. What good will it do them?”
“It's for some kind of remote-controlled drone. I don't think they ordering a weapon. The references are vague, but it looks like something designed to clear up toxic waste and radiation.”
“Assurer makes a ton of money shipping off criminals to clean up this stuff. With drones, they wouldn't need to use people. Goodbye revenue stream,” Michael said. He remembered the return journey from Basingstoke and what he'd seen, looking down at his hands as the realisation dawned upon him.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Assurer must know about this.”
Harris nodded. “Probably. Big company. They all indulge in corporate espionage. You know, Jim Belton probably knew about some of this stuff. He sat on some of the committees overseeing defence.”
“He was friendly with Eratech, though. They paid him money; there was no reason to kill him unless he changed his mind and went against them.”
“Maybe that's what he did.”
“And the attacks on Assurer police units... It's making company shareholders nervous, and the government too. People are starting to think that Assurer is the wrong company to run the service for Lower London. A way for Eratech to put more pressure on Assurer? Shit, this whole thing is a fucking pissing contest between two multi-national companies.”
“I've got nothing else to go on for now, so I'm putting the case on the back burner again. But don't think we're finished. I think you and I are getting somewhere with this. W
e're close. I'll keep sifting through what you brought back; there might be something else amongst it. This guy is going down, so keep thinking about that bonus cheque.”
Michael frowned. He looked over his shoulder at the door. “I don't think the bonus really matches how knee deep in shit we are.”
“I'll give you a bigger one.”
“The bounties are fixed, sir, unless you're implying you'll breach company regulations.”
Harris shrugged. “It's business. You do what you have to stay in the game and some people won't like that.”
“I'll see you tomorrow, sir.”
Chapter 16.
The smell of last night's Chinese take away still hung in the air as he brushed his teeth. Michael missed the solitude of his flat and the absence of loud music pounding through the walls at night. He heard the faint sound of the television coming through the gap in the doorway.
“Mike, come and see this,” Samantha said.
“Give me a minute.” He spat the toothpaste out his mouth and rinsed the brush under the tap. Samantha opened the door enough to stick her head through.
“You really need come and see this,” she said.
Michael dropped the brush in the cup. “What is it?”
He followed her into the lounge, and the television was tuned to channel one. A footer scrolled across the bottom of the screen, proclaiming breaking news, and the reporter spoke excitedly into her microphone at the edge of the motorway.
“Is this live?” Michael said.
Samantha tightened the belt on her dressing gown and nodded. Fires rose up behind the reporter, stretching even higher than the surrounding woods.
“Do you recognise the place?” Samantha said.
“That's where I pulled over the other night.”
“Right.”
The news cut away to a different camera, filming from the edge of the woods, and Michael felt a lump form in his throat. The flames stretched from one side of the screen to the other, as firemen sprayed streams of water with little effect. Two Assurer fire engines from Lower London joined the others.
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