Nomad

by James Swallow

  “Thanks,” Marc said, with a wan smile. “Can’t do that, though.” He shrugged. “Got a job to do.”

  That earned him a comradely nod from the techs. “I hate it when this shit happens, man,” continued the younger one. “Nine times outta ten it’s a false alarm.”

  That caught Marc’s attention. “What do you mean?”

  “They tightened up security this morning,” said the other man. “Something about an alert…”

  “Heard it was about some ship,” said the young technician. “In New Jersey. Got Homeland Security rattled.”

  “Really?” Marc tried to seem nonchalant. The elevator clanked to a halt and the two men got off, pushing a trolley between them.

  “You coming?” said the older man.

  Marc shook his head. “I’ll catch you later.” The door closed again and he tapped the button that would take him to the top floor.

  In his head he was sketching a map, drawing on what he had seen on his web search as they drove in. Marc believed his guess about the Willard serving as a vantage point was sound. The other options didn’t synch up; it was too far away from the rally for the deployment of any other kind of weapon, too public to be an operating base for the Al Sayf attack cell. But it was close enough to monitor the progress of any act of terror, and just far enough away to be on the outside of the event’s main security cordon. The hotel had multiple exits that spilled out in every direction, enough that any watcher could be off and away before the echo of a bomb blast had faded. That, and the fact that the comings and goings of the press corps would provide adequate cover to anyone doing anything untoward, made it an ideal choice.

  The only thing he couldn’t figure was exactly how the devices were going to be detonated. He kept thinking back to the screen on the makeshift cellular trigger. One Missed Call.

  As the lift rose, Marc felt around inside his backpack and found the dead detonator. He turned it over in his fingers, scowling at it. Any cellular device could be used to send a signal to it, and with the right setup, it could be pinged through any number of networks, not just mobile or landline, but by satellite phone or voice-over-internet protocols. If he could not see through this puzzle, the death toll would be catastrophic, and it would be his fault.

  A bell rang and the freight elevator deposited him on the penthouse level. One hand around the butt of the pistol buried in his jacket, Marc set off down the service corridor. It took a physical effort not to steal another glance at his watch.

  * * *

  For the duration of the president’s rally, a stretch of Independence Avenue had been repurposed as a parking and disembarkation area alongside the Department of Agriculture building. Barriers erected to guide the buses arriving and departing funneled each new group of students through metal detectors, before allowing them on to the mall and into the gathering throng.

  Teape pulled into an off-loading area, directed to a halt by a police officer who communicated through shrill blasts on a silver whistle between her lips.

  Jadeed stood up, nervous energy fluttering through him, and cast a look over the faces of his charges. “Remember,” he began, “do not speak if you are spoken to, do not react. You are deaf and dumb. If you are challenged, show them your identity card and move on.”

  They nodded back and Jadeed paused to slip on a pair of spectacles before adjusting the tie and shirt he was now wearing. He took a light jacket and folded it over his arm. His new attire had been carefully selected to give the impression of a scholarly, unimposing man, and he felt lost in the constricting clothes. He gave Teape a meaningful look. “Remain here.”

  “Cops ain’t going to let me stay long,” he replied.

  “I will return soon. In the meantime, do nothing to draw attention to yourself.”

  “Sure.” Teape looked away. “Whatever you say.”

  Jadeed beckoned the youths and they rose as one, following him down the steps and off the bus in an orderly line. Some of them could not help but stare, fascinated by their first close-up view of the streets of an American city.

  The group was drawn into a queue and Jadeed feigned a smile as a portly woman in a uniform shirt snatched the pass he offered and peered at it. Nearby, he saw more police officers in full deployment gear, and on the far side of the barriers there were patrols moving back and forth through the crowds. Some had dogs, their sensitive snouts looking for anything hazardous. The security situation was exactly as the Combine had said it would be.

  “Wayne County School for the Deaf?” said the woman. She gave the youths a sour glance, her face pinching. “No disrespect, mister, but if your kids can’t hear, how are they gonna follow the speeches?”

  Jadeed showed a wide, fixed grin. “They can read lips, ma’am,” he told her.

  Raised voices distracted the woman, and she held on to Jadeed’s pass rather than hand it back. He turned to see what she was looking at and stiffened.

  Jadeed saw a face he recognized. An angry man with thinning brown hair was in the process of arguing with a pair of police officers, standing at the head of a group of sullen-looking teenagers. The lawmen had a fan of identity passes in their hands, and they presented humorless expressions behind the mirrored lenses of wraparound sunglasses. Jadeed knew the angry man’s face. He had seen it and those of the students on the passes he had stolen from the safe of an airport motel room only a day earlier. The teacher was losing his patience trying to explain that of course his passes were in order.

  The woman gave an arch sniff and dropped Jadeed’s pass back into his hand. “Move along,” she said, dismissing him so that she might take a closer interest in what was about to happen to the party. “And have a nice day.”

  * * *

  Marc moved through the façade behind the hotel’s well-kept corridors. Here, the carpet was threadbare and the décor was purely functional. The residents of the Willard never laid eyes on these areas, the service passages that threaded through the building like veins through a body.

  He spotted a doorway leading to roof access. Marc took a step toward it and hesitated, catching the faint sound of radio static at the edge of his hearing.

  There was a laundry cart off to one side, as if it had been discarded in the shadows. A sense of wrongness chimed in Marc’s thoughts. It seemed out of place, and he went to it, reaching out a hand to pull back the cloth draped over the top of the wheeled basket.

  In the cart was the body of a man wearing a police uniform, and he was very dead. Marc stiffened, seeing a red lesion on the policeman’s throat, livid like an insect bite. A fatal injection?

  Glancing around, he saw no blood, no signs of struggle. This had been a clean kill, designed to draw no attention. The dead man’s gun was still in his holster, along with the service radio clipped to his jacket. The weak sound was coming from the handheld, and Marc leaned closer to listen, holding his breath.

  “Command, station six, how copy?” said a woman. It was a status check, a regular call to an isolated officer on watch to monitor for any security breaches.

  “Six,” came another voice. “All clear.”

  A pulse of static garbled the transmission and the woman spoke again. “Please repeat?”

  “Six. All clear.”

  Marc caught the timbre of the reply. It was identical to the first response, the same pause, the same intonation.

  “Command confirms, over.”

  He reached down to shift the body and saw the name Dwyer on the dead policeman’s ID tab.

  Drawing his pistol, Marc made for the stairs. He climbed up and put his arm to a push-bar door, shouldering it open. Light flooded over him as he emerged on to the roof of the Willard.

  He came out near the edge of the building, facing Pershing Park and the city beyond. Up here, an orchard of satellite antennae had been set up to channel the feeds of the news trucks down on the street.

  Behind him, Marc heard movement and turned sharply, keeping his Glock tucked out of sight behind his back. He saw another
figure in the blue of a DC cop’s uniform coming toward him, drawn by the creak of the door.

  The man had a craggy face beneath the peaked policeman’s cap, and a curious expression. It took a fraction of a second for Marc to understand what he was seeing. It was recognition. He heard the click of a hammer being cocked.

  “Fuck me,” said the policeman, in an accent that was harsh and grating and very definitely not American. “Is that you…?” Morning light flashed off a gun barrel as it aimed Marc’s way, and he shrank back. “Drop the weapon!” The policeman’s Sig Sauer pistol had a non-regulation silencer attached to the muzzle, one final confirmation for Marc that he had made a grave miscalculation.

  Cursing inwardly, he released his grip on the Glock and let it dangle on his trigger finger. “You … killed Officer Dwyer.”

  “Who?” The other man advanced, keeping the gun on him. He had to be one of Grunewald’s mercenaries.

  “The cop in the laundry cart.”

  He shrugged, as if the man’s murder was meaningless. “I guess. Toss the gun!” snarled the killer. As Marc let the pistol fall to the ground and kicked it away, an incredulous sneer broke out on the killer’s face. “How the hell are you still alive?” he said, with an air of mild amazement. “You’re fucking lucky, that’s what you are.” He angled his head, studying him. “Don’t remember me, do you? On the yacht. We had a little back and forth, ja?” He gestured with the pistol.

  “Novakovich … You were on the kill team.”

  “I’ve done in a lot of folks,” admitted the mercenary. “Doesn’t seem to take with you, though. How’d you bring down that drone, eh?”

  “You saw that?”

  He got a shrug in return. “It doesn’t matter. You had a good run, but you’re out now, son.” The other man pointed with the silencer, in the direction of the rear of the building. “Start walking.”

  “You gonna push me off the roof?” Marc said, trying to stall. “Not smart.”

  The mercenary laughed unkindly. “Oh, no. You’re too good to be true. I got someone you gotta meet before I shoot you dead.”

  * * *

  Jadeed strolled casually to one of the plastic archways that were the last gate between the outside world and the inner cordon of the rally. To most people passing through them, the arches would have seemed little different to the metal detectors that scanned the passages into any modern airport, but it was Jadeed’s business to recognize such devices for what they were, to know their capabilities and sensitivities. These arches concealed full body scanners that swept those who stepped through them with an extremely high frequency radio signal, capable of penetrating layers of clothing. Anyone concealing a weapon on their person would immediately be identified.

  The arches represented the last barrier between success and failure. Jadeed glanced back at the youths following him, and beckoned the teenager in front to come forward.

  Adad gave him a brief, questioning look, but said nothing. “Go on,” he told him.

  Adad emptied his pockets into a tray and walked slowly through the arch. There was a chime and Jadeed craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the screen through which another police officer monitored those entering the rally.

  He saw a ghost-image of Adad, rendered like a vague chalk sketch on dark paper. Nothing of the weapon he carried within his flesh showed on the display, only the lines of his body beneath the clothes he wore.

  The officer tending the arch waved at Jadeed and he bobbed his head, smiling again. He hid his relief as he passed through without sounding any alerts. One by one, each of the youths followed in Adad’s footsteps, and each time the scanning machine saw nothing.

  A sense of calm settled on Jadeed as he led them deeper into the crowds. We have done it! The enemy looked and did not see.

  “This way,” he told them. Jadeed slipped his smartphone from his pocket as he walked, and saw that the data and cellular indicators were dark. No signal could reach them within the cordon.

  He glanced around, taking in the crowds. Somewhere nearby, a localized jamming device was blanketing the area as part of the security precautions—a measure designed to prevent the use of cell phones to trigger remote-detonated devices. Jadeed smiled thinly, thinking of the confusion that would strike the Americans when they realized their defenses had been circumvented.

  He beckoned the others. “Stay with me,” said Jadeed. “And keep away from the men with the dogs.” They moved deeper into the throng, pushing their way toward the distant stage.

  Ahead of them, a dozen tall flagpoles were spread in a semi-circle, and from each fluttered the Stars and Stripes. Jadeed’s smiled widened as he imagined each one of them falling to the earth, wreathed in flames.

  * * *

  There was a second bogus policeman on the Willard’s roof. He had a pair of powerful binoculars raised to his face, peering out over the buildings to the southeast.

  The South African mercenary shoved Marc toward the other man with a hard push in the small of the back. “Hey,” snarled the merc, “Tommy, or whatever you’re damn well called, look here. I brought you a present! Not as dead as you’d like, eh?”

  “What are you on about?” growled the other man, in a harsh London accent that made Marc’s blood turn to ice. “Supposed to stay at your fucking post, you tosser…” The second man put down the binoculars and turned to see what was important enough to interrupt him. When he met Marc Dane’s gaze there was the smallest flash of shock, quickly smothered by the spread of a predatory smile.

  Marc was looking at a dead man. Someone who had been consumed in fire on a French dockside, lost along with Sam Green and the rest of his squad in the explosion that destroyed the Palomino.

  Now he heard his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Marc felt a sudden sense of dislocation, as if the roof beneath his feet had unfolded and dropped him into freefall. He tried to say the name but his throat felt like it was filled with cinders.

  “You…” began the other man, with loathing in his words. “You never learn, do ya? Couldn’t just die and be done with it. Shit.”

  “You’re alive,” Marc blurted it out, finally finding his voice. “Nash.”

  “Surprise,” he said, with the same arrogant sneer Marc had seen a dozen times before.

  TWENTY-SIX

  His hard-edged face was split by a scornful grin that seemed to eclipse everything around Marc. “What’s the matter?” Iain Nash chugged with mocking laughter. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He’s dead. She’s dead. They are all dead. The harsh truth of Nomad team’s murder was the one thing he knew was undeniable among all the shifting sands of loyalty, distrust and lies. It was the single truth he had never questioned, but now he saw this man standing in front of him and it all began to crumble.

  “How…?” he managed, unable to frame all the questions suddenly shouting at him for answers.

  “Nash…” said the South African. “So not Tommy, then?”

  “Iain Nash is dead,” said the other man. “Except he ain’t.” He stepped down on to the roof proper and looked Marc up and down, enjoying the moment. “Come on then, Dane. You always thought you were so fucking smart.” He prodded Marc in the shoulder. “Can you figure it out, you clever little sod?”

  Marc’s mind reeled back to that night in France, forcing himself to remember what he had witnessed from the OpTeam van. The feeds from the assault team, the night-vision footage from his micro-drone. “I saw you die!” He blurted out the words, feeling giddy and sick inside.

  “Did you?” Nash sniffed. “I tell you what, let me lay it out for you. Just so I can see the look on your sorry face.” He glanced at the other man. “I mean, after all the trouble he’s been, I deserve to get something out of this, don’t I? A little entertainment?” He spread his hands. “What did you see? Think about it. What did you really see with your little toy box?” Nash turned his head and spat, advancing.

  The other mercenary was at Marc’s back, and he felt the
muzzle of the silenced Sig push against his shoulder blades, cutting off any avenue of escape. “You … Got off the Palomino before the explosion.”

  “Bra-fucking-vo.” Nash clapped, slow and exaggerated. “That’s your problem, Dane. See, you lot think you got sight of the whole world through your computers and your drones and your bloody cameras.” His mocking snarl hardened, becoming fiercer, stronger. “I got sick of you and the rest. You never get it, you don’t see how it is out in the grind. You don’t get shot at or pissed on or screwed over, day in and day out.” Nash’s hands contracted into fists. “The real shit every poor bastard tommy has to deal with.” He pointed two fingers toward his narrowed eyes, looming over the other man. “You don’t see that from some nice soft chair. You don’t want to get any of it on you.”

  In that moment, Marc’s fear faded away and in its place rose a wellspring of anger, a burning resentment at the callous murder of his teammates, at Sam Green’s cruel death, at all of it. “Fuck you, Nash,” he spat. “Fuck you! We were your team and you led us to the slaughter!”

  “Not everyone!” he shot back, grinning. “You survived! I mean, who thought that would happen? You? Last man standing?” He gave a derisive snort. “Wouldn’t sit down and die, would ya? Like a stone in my shoe, all the way here…”

  “Rix. Bell. Marshall…” Their names fell from him in a litany. “Leon and Owen … And Sam! You betrayed them! Why?” Marc shouted, putting all the fury and sorrow in him into one word. “What was worth that?”

  “Never was a team player.” Nash gave a low chuckle. “See, I like money. I like guns. And I like blowing things up for a living. But Six is slower than a shit at the North Pole, and I get bored easy.”

  “The Combine recruited you, ja?” offered the other merc.

  “I went to them.” Nash shook his head. “They’re already in British Intelligence. Deep. They snapped me up, mate. Saw my skills, knew I was hungry and fed up. But they didn’t like the OpTeams, nah. They don’t like things they can’t manage, you get me?” He glared at Marc. “Rix, he had a big mouth, didn’t he? Was looking at stuff he shouldn’t have, figured out that there was a mole at the Cross. He was going to go right to the big man, and he roped in Sam and me to help him. Idiot…” Nash hesitated. “Well. You know how that ended up. The rest were just collateral damage.”