“Do what you have to,” I say, climbing out through the open gull wing and dropping to the tarmac. “But keep him quiet and out of sight.”
A light rain falls. I wrap my trench coat around me and walk calmly into the terminal. Domestic flights aren’t subject to screening, although there are the ever present security cameras and facial recognition software, so I sit my hat firmly, angling it slightly across my brow. Computer algorithms are smart—too smart. But like most smart people, that also means they’re easily fooled if you stray outside the norm. I’m five foot eleven and a bit, easily clearing six foot when wearing boots. Computers know that. They take those kind of details into account, so bounty hunters like me lower our profile. It doesn’t take much, but when I’m on a job, I wear flats—hollowed out boots with an almost nonexistent heel to throw off at least one metric. Padded shoulders in my jacket, and a shorter, quicker stride, and the algorithms already got three mismatches that will help undermine any correlation.
I slip a few cotton rolls into my mouth, pushing them up above my gums. To the untrained eye, they look like cigarette filters, and I’m sure the NSA has wondered more than once why I keep ordering dental supplies, but positioning them high or low will change my cheek structure enough to throw the algorithms off the scent. To a human, it looks like I’ve got a swollen face, but computers aren’t that smart. All they measure is numbers. Beat the numbers. Beat detection. Simple tradecraft like this has kept me alive more than once, and it’ll help me get into GRU undetected.
A couple of Mendorian critters walk ahead of me. They’re brute beasts from a star system 57 light years away and not known for their patience. I stay close, knowing eyes on them means eyes not on me. Mendorians are ugly by human standards, but then, aren’t all aliens? Fluorescent blue tentacles, fishbowl eyes, teeth like a piranha—razor sharp and resembling a wood saw. Yeah, I’d be nervous if one of those guys smiled at me too.
I paid a small fortune for a fake ID before coming to Russia and almost didn’t bother. Now, my paranoia is paying off. I take the tunnel beneath the river, jumping on the metro for one stop, and get off beneath the Aquarium. Security is tight, which is good. If it was lax, I’d be worried. I’m always happy when the other guy’s nervous.
A set of escalators takes me up to ground level. Armed guards carry machine guns. Amateurs. The Russian obsession with control means they’re slow adopters of alien tech. To be fair, bullets and MAC rounds are both equally effective at perforating a body. With aliens from at least five different star systems wandering around Moscow these days, I’m guessing the guards are skittish as hell.
I present my ID at the security desk and ask for Colonel Dimitri Belgoff. Movies always get this shit wrong. Sneaking in through air vents is dumb. They’re a lot smaller than Hollywood suggests, and they’re noisy as hell. Sheet metal flexing back and forth beneath two hundred and twenty pounds of alpha male is just plain dumb. As for waltzing in without building security, that’s another surefire way to have your ass handed to you on a stretcher. Nah, nothing beats knocking on the door and being polite. Suspicion melts away.
The guard reads out the name on the ID, and I hear the colonel replying, sounding surprised. Why break in when asking nicely will bring him down? Curiosity—it’s not just effective against cats. That’s the thing about humans. We’re as tough as nails when we’re prepared and in control. Catch anyone off guard, and they’re as weak as a baby.
Dimitri walks out of the elevators and through security, looking around for someone he might recognize. As there are three security desks in the lobby, spaced between the elevator towers, with seven guards wandering around, he’s confused. He talks to one guard, who shrugs, pointing at one of the other desks. That’s when I make my move.
“Good morning, comrade,” I say, slipping one arm over his shoulder, and digging my pistol into his ribs with the other, carefully hiding it from view beneath my trench coat. ‘Comrade’ is a nice touch. It’s cliche, but tells him something important. I’m not Russian, therefore, I’m not predictable, so don’t fuck with me. “Coffee?” I smile, pretending to laugh at something he said, as his face is as white as a sheet. There are so many people passing through the lobby, no one notices as we walk out into the rain.
“Tell me about Alexei Popov,” I say, removing my arm as we walk through what the Russians consider a park in front of the Aquarium. Concrete seats line a gravel path. The focal point of the square is a hideous concrete sculpture that could be the remains of reactor four at Chernobyl. I can’t imagine anything more depressing than working in a building called the Aquarium, looking out floor-to-ceiling glass windows at this monstrosity. Dimitri is tight-lipped. The initial shock has worn off and his professionalism is coming through. I respect that.
“Does the name Ian James Manning mean anything to you?”
He looks at me as the realization hits. He’d have a short list of bounty hunters operating on Earth.
“I’m a dead man, right? You wanna join me? Plenty of room in this grave.”
“Popov is from Naukograd,” he says. “And this conversation never happened.”
“Understood.”
Naukograd is one of the old Soviet-era closed cities, cities that never existed on maps until Google started publishing satellite photography. My Russian is a little rusty, but Naukograd means ‘science city,’ although science is a somewhat convenient term. Shit holes where Russians enslaved their scientists, experimented on smallpox, developed thermonuclear weapons, and generally plotted the destruction of the planet. Best I understand it, Naukograd isn’t one city, but rather a general term for dozens of closed research centers. It’s probably as much as Dimitri knows, even though he’s SigInt.
“There was an experiment.”
Here it comes.
“The results were inconclusive.”
Bullshit. If they were, there wouldn’t be a manhunt being waged by proxy. Whatever’s going down, it’s not being fought at my level. Popov is no fool. He knows Jessie and I are UPS. We’re bit players, delivery boys. The Peacemaker Guild, the Science Guild, and probably the Merc Guild are locked in an arm wrestle over whatever Popov was working on, but this is a high stakes poker game—lots of bluffing, with no one willing to show their hand. I’ll see you and raise you, now turn over another card.
Given these three guilds are ostensibly all on the same side, no one can be seen to be fighting the other. As for the Russians, it sounds like they were hiding Popov in plain sight. My police escort last night must have been a plant. Whatever I gave them was a bonus, a bit of icing on top of the cake. They were being paid by someone else, probably one of the guilds, as their allegiance to Mother Russia seemed dubious at best.
Dimitri says, “You’ll never make it out of Russia.” It’s not a threat. He’s stating the facts. We were supposed to play nicely. Dump Popov on a flight to one of the space stations and take a paycheck. How the fuck did I screw that up? The number one rule for bounty hunters is don’t ask questions, and yet my gut still churns. There’s something horribly wrong about all this. They wanted this to be a simple retrieval. The history books would show a valid contract issued and enforced. Popov would be brought in to stand trial and then disappear. History is an illusion of convenience. But the Russians teamed up with mercs to secure his passage off-world; why would the Russians sell out one of their own?
Gravel crunches under our feet as we walk around the statue. At the moment, the only card in my hand is that Dimitri would like to make it home for borsch. Sometimes, silence is the best interrogation technique.
“Popov was in the biological warfare unit,” he says. “He’s a geneticist. That’s all I know. I swear.”
“Keep walking,” I say, coming to a halt by the entrance to the subway. Dimitri pauses. He’s expecting a KGB special—a bullet in the back of the head. “Go.” He walks on with his hands slightly away from his sides, his fingers spread, wanting to indicate he’s not going to do anything stupid like reach for a gun, whil
e not drawing too much attention to himself. He’s not dumb. He knows his history. To avoid a scene, the KGB would walk a convicted man out to the courtyard, but before they got to the firing squad, they’d put nine grams in the back of his head, often just a few feet from the poor sap’s cell. Messy, but it avoided theatrics. No staring down your killer.
I suspect Dimitri’s done his homework on me. He knows I’m not a killer—or he hopes I’m not. The remote control taser badge still stuck to his shoulder, from when I first nabbed him in the lobby says I’m not, but he doesn’t know that. Fifty thousand volts ought to numb his tongue for a good hour. As he reaches the automatic doors I hit the control, dropping him in the entrance and forcing a bottleneck. That’ll cause maximum chaos, and throw the building into lockdown.
Back at the airport, I hail Jessie. A bright red Lamborghini glides down from the clouds with its fins extended beneath its fuselage. The hover jet kicks in at the last minute, and the sports flyer pulls up, flaring as it touches down. The gull wing opens, and I climb in.
“Good to see you’re keeping a low profile.”
“It belongs to Luzhkov.” The blank look on my face speaks volumes. “Oligarch. He’s the Speaker of the Duma.”
“And he won’t miss a red Lamborghini?”
“He’s got dozens of them. It’ll be a month before he realizes this baby never made it back from the shop. Besides, this bad boy will pull close to MACH 1, which could prove handy. “
Popov is sitting in the back with cuffs on and duct tape over his mouth. I reach back and rip it away in a single motion. Tiny red dots of blood appear where facial hair once grew. He won’t need to shave for a month.
“What did you learn?” Jessie asks, maneuvering the Lamborghini to one side and resting it over a charging station.
“Pretty boy, here, is a scientist. Geneticist. Weapons grade. Peacemakers want him, only he’ll never make it there. The Russians want to look compliant, but they’re in league with the Mercs. It’s all an act.” I reach in and undo his cuffs. “Get out.”
Jessie looks at me surprised. I back up, gesturing with my pistol. “I said, get.”
Popov asks, “What are you doing?”
“Going off-script,” I say. “Dumping your ass here at GRU.”
“You can’t.”
“Why?” I climb back in the front of the Lamborghini, making as though I’m ready to leave him standing on the tarmac.
“They’ll kill me.”
“Why?” Same question, and yet entirely different now the context has shifted. He looks at his shoes.
“Your family is already being exfiltrated, aren’t they?”
He nods.
“You’re a traitor to the Russians, a liability to the Peacemakers, a weapon to the Mercs, and a paycheck to the oligarchs. Is that about it?”
Again, he nods.
“Did I leave anyone out?”
He shakes his head.
“Why should I care?”
“The Canavar.”
“The Canavar are a myth,” I snap. “At best, they’re a legend. They’re extinct if they ever actually existed. There’s no more Godzilla, or King Kong, or whatever the fuck they were supposed to be.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” he says as the rain mats down his hair, rolling down his face like tears.
“Who?”
“The Science Guild.”
“Now, we’re getting somewhere,” I say. The Science Guild is supposed to be the gatekeepers. They’re the glue that holds the Union together. Without them, everything falls apart—the cartographers, the traders, the Peacemakers, the mercs—none of it works without the boffins. I rest my boot on the side of the door, getting comfortable, knowing he feels horribly exposed standing in the open with security cameras on all the terminal buildings. If anyone looks too closely at some old guy standing in the rain, facial recognition is going to go ballistic. Us? We’ll simply fly away. He’ll be surrounded in less than a minute. I want him to feel particularly uncomfortable.
“There are limits to what the mercs can do, even with their powered armor.”
“So they’ll make bigger mercs,” I say. “Something like the Raknar. Big nasty robots.”
“Don’t you think that if they could, they would have done that already?” he asks. “They can’t. Material strength doesn’t scale. An ant can lift a thousand times its own weight. We can’t. There are physical limits.”
“And that’s where you come in?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes.”
“So how does a geneticist overcome the physical limitations of a machine?”
“CRISPR but not on the germ-line. Somatic manipulation. Your cells.”
That’s meaningless to me. I turn to Jessie, winding my hand in the air, indicating it’s time to leave.
“No, wait. Please.”
I raise two fingers, and Jessie lowers the revs.
“Imagine if you could engineer your warriors. Not from birth. But on each specific mission. Giving them features adapted to a specific goal. Imagine if you could give someone the burst speed of a cheetah, the muscle density of a gorilla, or the crush resistance of a blue whale, allowing them to operate in a high-gravity environment without a power suit. Or the ability to see polarized light. Or increase their offensive capability. They could have the strike power of a Mantis shrimp, hitting with ten thousand times the force of gravity. Canavar wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Neither would mercs,” I say, suddenly understanding their interest in intercepting Popov.
“Holy shit,” Jessie says.
“And this is possible?” I ask. “This isn’t just theory?”
“I’ve engineered a virus to impart genetic sequences. We have had success—applying and reversing. Catch a cold and two weeks later body adaptations begin kicking in.”
It’s no wonder the Peacemakers want this guy. They want to secure his research, but without alarming too many people on Earth.
“Who knows about this? Your research, I mean. How widespread is it?”
Popov stammers, “My—My team.”
“You’re team’s dead, right?”
He nods.
“And your records?”
Popov points at his head.
“Oh, that’s bad,” Jessie says.
“Get in.”
Popov climbs in, slumping on the backseat. Jessie lifts off, taking us up into the dark clouds.
“I don’t understand,” Popov says. “Why isn’t this a good thing? We can protect ourselves from the resurgence of the Canavar.”
“For a smart guy, you sure are dumb,” I say. “An arms race is predicated on gradual change. You make a better missile, the other guys beef up their defense. They make their missiles smarter, you counter. It’s a seesaw, rocking one way, then another, but you…”
“You’ve changed the rules of the game,” Jessie says.
I say, “What was well understood...”
“Is now meaningless,” Jessie says, completing my thought.
“Whoever ends up with this tech is going to have a massive advantage over everyone else. They’re going to get to dictate the rules. Other factions will try to reverse engineer it, but having a head start could mean winning the war.”
“What war?” Popov asks.
“The civil war you just started. It’s cold today. Hot tomorrow.”
The gravity of what’s happening seems to finally hit home for Popov. He stares at his hands as though they’re stained with blood. They might as well be.
“Who took your family?”
“They—They were going to flee with the help of the Science Guild.”
“Help?” I say, trying not to laugh. “In my line of business, that’s not help. It’s leverage.”
“What have I done,” he mumbles. His hands are shaking.
Jessie looks at me. Without speaking aloud, he mouths the words, “Should’ve left him down there.”
I know.
“Wh—What am I going
to do?” Popov asks, but he’s not asking us. He’s still staring at his trembling fingers.
“Where to, boss?”
I’m looking at a map. “Southeast. Join the air corridor to Kazakhstan. If we make the border, we’ll run on silent down across the Caspian, over Azerbaijan and Armenia, until we can hit international waters in the Black Sea.”
“And from there?”
I love this kid. Optimist. We probably won’t make it out of Moscow airspace once they realize we backtracked and hit Dimitri.
“If we make the Straits of Bosporus, we cut down toward Greece, and Popov here claims political asylum. Hell, I’d settle for asylum in Turkey, but they’re liable to turn us over to the Russians.”
“The Peacemakers are going to come after us,” Jessie says. I really do love this kid. He could jump ship if he wants to, make his way out of Russia on the next suborbital, but he’s in for the long haul.
“They won’t give up,” I say. “You know that, right?”
He grins. Dumb bastard will die with that grin on his face, and I’ll die with him, squeezing off one more round. Butch Cassidy never had it so good with Sundance.
“It’s me, isn’t it? Dump me and your problems are gone.”
“Oh, it’s not that simple,” I say to Popov. “Cross the Peacemakers, and they’ll ensure you have peace with your maker.”
“There’s got to be another way,” he says.
“Spoken like a true scientist,” I say as Jessie banks, joining a flight around the capital. Tourists are busy snapping shots of the Kremlin. We join them, faking our interest by tilting the Lamborghini, blending in, trying to avoid the attention of a mobile air block setup by the police.
“Science,” he mumbles. “Publish or perish.”
“What?”
“Publish or perish,” he repeats. “It’s the mantra among scientists. If you want to stay relevant, you’ve got to publish research papers.”
“Or you perish?” I ask, not getting his point.
“In academia, yes.”
I laugh. I know what he’s thinking. “Jessie, make for the public library.”
For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7) Page 3