by O. J. Lowe
Nick had to admit that he did. He knew how the carnival had operated in the past, it had started out solely in Graham’s Field, later spread to the surrounding streets. Even later than that, it had covered most of the surrounding districts. Last estimate said that most of the city now celebrated it in one form or another, though the action remained the most intense over at Graham’s Field. He’d spent a lot of his childhood in that park, him and Mark Meadow getting into all sorts of scrapes. They’d rode bikes, kicked balls about, gotten into fights with kids bigger than themselves. They’d taken ass kickings, they’d dealt a few out. Those were the days. He had to smile at the memories. The park was a large open area. Plenty of people. Difficult to police. Difficult to track one person through it all.
“Do you have confirmation that he’s after someone for sure? Or are you merely speculating that he is?”
Carling shook his head. “This man is a professional. He doesn’t go just anywhere without a damn good reason. If he’s here, he’s working, if he’s working then the lives of every potential target at that carnival are in danger.”
“I take cancelling it isn’t an option?” Nick said. He knew how ridiculous it sounded, even before Carling burst out laughing, the mirth spreading through the lines on his weary face. “Okay, I had to ask.”
“Nicholas, you couldn’t cancel this thing now if you tried. Not without concrete proof that someone definitely is in danger. Not without a confirmed identity. And even then, it’d be easier just to ask that person not to show up and hope that they listened to you. Even if they didn’t listen to you and showed up regardless, it’d still be easier to see them protected for the duration of the event. Cancelling it is not an option.”
“Just floating the idea out there,” Nick said, shrugging. “I guess if you were able to, then you would have.”
“Damn right I would,” Carling said. He let out a snort, rested his head back against the seat. “I really would. Hobb is out there somewhere. He could be anywhere in the city, just waiting for his moment to strike. My city, my problem. There’s normally up to a million people in this city, add an extra half for tonight and any one of them could be his target. And that’s not all. I can’t trust…”
He brought himself to a halt, shot Nick a furtive look. Nick shrugged, curious suddenly. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Carling what he meant but he still didn’t want to know. He shouldn’t be hearing this. Then the realisation dawned. Why Carling was desperate to get him. Why he’d be coming to someone with no current contact with Unisco.
“He’s one of ours, isn’t he?” Nick said slowly.
Just as slowly, Carling nodded his greying head. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Nick knew what that meant.
“Okay, talk to me.”
The rifle was always a beautiful beast when assembled. Large but deadly certain over a good thousand feet and half in the hands of a professional. Hobb had already judged the area in his head from window to where they were building the stage, counted out the distance mentally in double quick time. It wasn’t a thousand feet. It was maybe a half of that, maybe two-thirds at absolute most. Practically point-blank range. When the time for the shot would come, he would be able to make out the facial features of everyone on the stage, everyone in the surrounding VIP area. None of them would be safe. They’d have no idea just how much danger they’d be in.
He always liked to savour that look on their faces before he pulled the trigger, just the feeling of total oblivion as to what their immediate future was about to become. That feeling as the projectile left the barrel of his rifle, wove its way through the air. Forget methiliation, it was the greatest drug he knew. No better high than to witness someone else’s absolute lowest point, the point where everything they could go on to be simply ceased as an option for them. No future. No hope. Nothing.
Hobb still favoured the old type of rifle, the one that fired a projectile rather than a laser blast. So much more refined. Capable of so much more damage. Using them was the ultimate expression of skill. In his situation, the Femble was the best rifle he was likely to get his hands on. He’d assessed his options and he’d made do. Projectile weapons were a dying product. In another five years, they might be gone completely. The market was failing.
If one was a sniper, this was the perfect place to be. Plenty of visibility to take the shot. Very little natural cover. When night came, it would be illuminated heavily. There may be some elements of distraction but nothing that couldn’t be tuned out. He’d been trained to ignore distractions. He’d trained others to be able to tune everything out, everything but the sound of their own breathing, just focus on the inhalation and the exhalation of their own lungs, count using their own heartbeat.
He’d always thought there to be something relaxing about it all. All his worries melted away into obscurity when he was behind the scope. He knew that some would call him monstrous. Hobb had always seen it as providing a service. When one set out to provide such a service, one had a duty to see that it was done as efficiently as possible. He saw himself no different than a high-class exterminator, a throwback to a simpler time. That wasn’t the job that it used to be. One used to put down poison for rats, dose their food with enough of the stuff to wipe them out, put down traps that would maim them. These days, the job of the exterminator was to remove the beasts then try to sell them individually to come enterprising spirit caller who wanted to do something unspeakable to a rodent.
Like everyone who’d worked for Unisco in their life, Hobb had his own spirits. He’d found that when they came down to it though, they were infinitely less useful in a real-world fight than people thought them to be. It was one of those things that had been a good idea at the start, perhaps had faded more as time had passed. These days, criminals went for blasters rather than spirits as a first option. The spirits only really came out when running and shooting had failed as a viable option. Still, it had worked for all these years, it wasn’t all going to come crashing down overnight. It wasn’t why he’d left the agency. He’d had his own disagreements with the way the place was run. Didn’t like that they’d lost some of their autonomy. The Senate insisted on demanding that they do much more to try and reduce enemy casualties. For a sniper, that didn’t really do much for him. His whole modus operandi was to wait until he saw the whites of their eyes and pull the trigger, see those whites get blown away by the heat of the blast or destroyed by the raw force of a metal slug.
There’d been unpleasantness. Disciplinaries for his willingness to pull the trigger. People had died. Not all of whom he’d been meant to. They’d held it against him, tried to suspend him for doing his job. He hadn’t taken to that idea, not from someone who wouldn’t know how to find the field of battle if he tripped over it. His impromptu departure had followed hours later, a decision he’d yet to regret.
They were still looking for him. If they ever found him, he’d be in trouble. Maybe they already knew he was here. They couldn’t know who the target was. Not unless someone had talked. If that was the case, then there would be nothing he could do about it. He’d just have to try and escape if it came down to it. He’d outwitted Unisco’s finest before. He’d do it again if necessary. They had nothing on him.
“Two years he’s been in the wind?” Nick asked, upon Carling’s ceasing to speak about why Hobb had gone rogue. “That’s disgraceful, a rogue agent being gone that long. And nobody’s been able to find him?”
“Oh, we’ve nearly had him a few times,” Carling said, nodding his head. “He’s a slippery bastard, I assure you of that. We trained them that way. The life of a Unisco sniper involves getting in, taking the shot as soon as they have it and buggering off before they get caught.”
“That’s still too long,” Nick said. “I mean, you caught a glimpse of him in the city this time…”
“Quite by accident, I assure you,” Carling said. “Hobb is currently the subject of a silent hunt, we don’t have the people to have someone on him all the time.
When he does rear his head, we throw everything at him.” Nick knew what a silent hunt was. Standard Unisco procedure for dealing with agents who’d gone rogue from the organisation. “He appeared in some footage from across the street of a crumbag motel. Killed two muggers, one blow each if you can believe it.”
Nick could. It wasn’t impossible. Looking at the picture of Lucas Hobb, he’d already decided he looked strong and capable enough. Just because he was a sniper didn’t mean he hadn’t gone through the same vigorous unarmed combat training as the rest of the agency.
“Anyway, the local constabulary sent us the footage, asked if he was one of ours. We didn’t reply.” Nick thought that was a mistake. At best, it confirmed their suspicions that Hobb was a Unisco problem, at worst it meant that they might blunder into trying to arrest him and wind up decidedly dead. “In short, we’ve got every spare agent combing the city into looking for him. It’s not going to be enough. He’s not been back to his motel. A smart fox never returns to the same henhouse. Left nothing behind.”
Nick said nothing, let Carling continue. “He’s called the Wandering Man, you know. Not left Canterage in the two years since he went rogue. We know nothing about how people get in touch with him, other than he probably has a go-between. We have no idea who it is. He wanders from place to place, very low-key, hides in the backs of speeders and transports where he can, the sort of place that people don’t really check if they can help it.” He smiled weakly, suppressed a yawn. Up close, Nick could see that his eyes were black, half-shut with sleep. “This might surprise you but there’s a lot of people out there who are paid to do a job they really couldn’t give a shit about. If everything in these kingdoms went as they were supposed to, then we wouldn’t have to bloody worry about the Wandering Man sneaking in and out of cities. He’d have to get a speeder like everyone else. We’d have had him months ago if he hadn’t got creative.”
“You never want them to do that, huh?” Nick said. “Look, I still don’t understand why you need me. If you’ve got every agent looking for him, then…”
Carling cleared his throat, a noise that sounded hollow in the rear of the speeder cab. Hollow and evasive. The sound a guilty man made to avoid answering a difficult question. “Well, I’m not entirely sure that I do, you know old son. Sometimes, these things can sneak up on us. We think it’s well in hand, and well, we’re not quite right with the theory.”
“Nigel,” Nick said, his patience well and truly snapped. He’d wanted to relax through this journey, not be briefed by riddles and the sort of games he’d been specifically told to avoid. He didn’t have time for this, felt no inclination to get involved with it. He’d come home to relax. “Either tell me the damn truth or let me out the speeder. And for the love of Gilgarus, stop the word games because you’re trying to get so damn clever you’ll trip yourself up over your own tongue if you’re not careful.”
Carling blinked. “Did you not hear what I said? We’ve nearly had him a few times. Gotten close to him. He’s gone. Poof! Like he wasn’t there. Like he knew that we were coming.” He studied Nick solemnly. “Like he knew that we were coming to get him.” He repeated himself slowly, the words forced and deliberate. Nick knew he was being mocked, he didn’t care. He was too busy considering them.
“You think somebody is tipping him off?” he asked. “Letting him know when he’s about to be taken so that he can be elsewhere.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, old boy,” Carling said. “He was with Unisco for fifteen years. A silent hunt is never popular amongst some of our agents. They worry it might be them one day if they make the wrong choices. I’ve heard of our agents sometimes holding back when it came to the deciding moment. Someone going as far as aiding and abetting for him in this circumstance is troubling. I also have a theory that I don’t like to even consider but somebody has to.”
Nick fought the urge to shake his head. He’d heard too much already. The warnings of the Inquisitor were fresh in his head about getting involved in this thing. “Go on?” He couldn’t keep the wariness out of his voice.
“I think that same someone might well be his go-between. Not only stopping us from finding him but helping him do the work he should be doing for us. That… Now that’s just perverse.”
“So instead of one rogue assassin, you’ve got a potential traitor in Unisco feeding him targets and keeping him informed of the hunt on him,” Nick said, the urge to summarise the discussion right in front of him. He felt the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. It wasn’t funny, it was probably sad rather than anything else. Someone had abused their oath shamelessly. “Yeah, you’ve got a big problem there, Nigel. A massive one. If it’s true. I mean, you have no evidence of that at all.”
“Well, it’s a theory that I mean to test,” Carling said. “Hence why I need you. You’re suspended from duty. You were going to be here anyway. I want you to keep an eye on things at the carnival. If you see anything suspicious, let me know and I’ll see that it’s acted on. Not on operational duty at all. More a second set of eyes. One that I know I can trust. You haven’t been to this kingdom for years. You’re beyond reproach.”
Well that was something at least, Nick thought.
“Hobb hasn’t left since he became the Wandering Man, not that we know of anyway, but we’re confident of that fact. You know what international security is like. Not a chance he could bluff his way through immigration. He’d trip something sooner rather than later. Then we’d have him.”
“Second set of eyes?” Nick said. “I don’t know, it still sounds…” What? He asked himself that question in his head. It sounds what? Like the sort of thing that could get him blacklisted by Unisco. That was worse than being fired. That was the agency cutting all ties with you and then deliberately making your life a living hells just purely to entertain a petty streak running through them. A reminder that they might have cut you loose from their authority but that they still owned you. Unisco gave and Unisco could take away.
“Nerves not gone, have they?” Carling asked, his grin gentle but his voice mocking. “It happens sometimes, seeing someone close to you get hurt. Makes you question stuff. I’ve been there, Roper. It’s never pleasant.”
Something twisted in his stomach, just the faintest stab of anger at that comment. He glared at Carling. “Nerves haven’t gone. I’m just not risking everything to defy an express order given to me by possibly the pettiest man I’ve ever met.”
“Suppose…” Carling started to say before shaking his head. “No. No. You’re right. It’s not right. You have your orders. I can’t circumvent them. It’d drive apart the whole power structure of Unisco.”
It was like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, Nick sank back in his seat and let the smile creep across his mouth. “Well I’m glad you see it that way. I’d help you if I could, Agent Carling but we’ve all got to do what we need to do.”
Carling clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You know what, I’m glad that you said that. It speaks wonders for your character. Unisco needs more people like you. Loyal. Devoted. Willing to obey orders. You should see some of the agents I get sent these days out of the academy. The cream of the crop, they are not. Years gone by, they’d have been tossed out on their arses. Unfit for anything more than crowd control.”
“Well, it was a different time back then, I think you’ll find, Agent Carling,” Nick said. “We knew we might go out to die. These days, kids seem to think it’s a joke. We never thought that. We knew that when we went on a mission, we had to be at our absolute best just to survive.”
“The field,” Carling said. “Divines, I miss that. Everything was so much simpler back then. You did what you were told, you either lived or you didn’t. Now, it’s not the same. Nicholas Roper. I have something to show you.”
He took the data pad back, pressed a few buttons on the base of it then forced it into Nick’s hand. Against his better judgement, Nick glanced at it.
“You ever seen one of those before?”
He had. It had never been directly put in front of him before. He’d never been the subject of one before. Never. He’d known people who had. Very senior agents, usually high above him in the Unisco pecking order. It was unthinkable it had been brought out for him for something like this.
“Agent Nicholas James Roper, consider your suspension revoked until the morning after the carnival under the Unisco directive forty-two alpha six. Consider yourself under my command until that point. And I’m ordering you to stop thinking about leaving this speeder and to listen very carefully to me.”
Hobb saw the Vazaran every time he closed his eyes. He didn’t regret pulling the trigger. He’d been a particularly nasty piece of work, one who hadn’t deserved to live. He’d made his choices. He’d made to secede from the rest of the kingdom, he’d deliberately chosen to reject any sort of authority the premier of Vazara had over him. He’d made himself his own premier, thumbing his nose at Nwakili’s authority. He’d murdered the rich and their families, taken their fortunes for himself to fund his ambitions and his protection. Hobb knew Leonard Nwakili from way back when he’d been a part of Unisco, his move into politics had been a surprise but he’d always felt he did a good job.
With the jumpstart based in the west of Vazara, originating out from Cubla Cezri of all places, Hobb and a Unisco team had been sent to deal with him at Nwakili’s request to the Senate. They’d been ordered to check the accuracy of Nwakili’s claims, to see if they hadn’t been exaggerated. Whatever else you could say about Nwakili, he’d known how to play the political game, he’d learned well during his time working for Unisco and honed it in his kingdom with his run for the top job.