by John Ringo
"I'll get right on it, Peter."
"Oh, by the way, you're going to have to have your AID disguised as a PDA. Beed barely tolerates the latter because they can be told to turn off, instead of recording everything and dumping it all to the Galactics' central storage like the AIDs do. Beed will have you tell it not to record. A real PDA would obey that order. Your AID not only won't obey, but is smart enough to understand the necessity of acknowledging the command as if it were going to comply. God, I love real AI," he said, grinning evilly.
"Doesn't it ever bother you that the AIDs have learned how to lie?"
"It probably would, except that I learned long ago not to waste my time and energy worrying over things I can't change. So, James, have you talked to Iron Mike lately?"
"Had a letter from him last week, as a matter of fact, apologizing for not being able to make the triple nickel reunion."
"Not even by AID?"
"The Posleen on Dar Ent were getting frisky. He was in the middle of a battle."
"Now if that isn't just like him. Other than that, did you have a good turnout?"
Chapter Five
The most popular car on the road that year was a copper Ford Peregrine coupe. The second most popular was a silver CM Smoker sedan. It took her about an hour to find a reliably nondescript '45 model year of the latter with a real tag at a used car lot. It had a faint odor of stale french fries and cookie crumbs that brought a fleeting memory of heat and a greener, more sprawling cityscape with taller, more elongated trees, tall pines and poplar mixed in among the oaks, and she put a hand absently to her throat, which was feeling oddly tight. Perhaps an effect of the local industrial smog. She paid ten percent over in FedCreds for the salesman's poor memory, including forgetting to switch out for a dealer tag. She pulled into the lot of an office park and took the time to hack the DMV and reactivate the thing before getting on 74 to Indianapolis.
Right outside the valley the city gave way to trees on steep hillsides with open cuts of whitish-gray sedimentary layers of something between clay and soft rock. Or they could have been mountains, technically. She didn't know. They just didn't seem all that high after the Smokies along I-40. She drove through the Cincy suburbs and out into the Ohio countryside of short, fat, hills and, mixed into the patches of paler spring leaves, a profusion of short, fat cedars.
It was a nearly cloudless day, and with the rolling hills of the Ohio countryside long gone, the sky stretched overhead, enormous, deep, and blue, fading to an odd periwinkle haze near the horizons. Even after darned near forty years away from Rabun Gap it always seems so damned flat out here. No wonder people used to think they could fall off the edge. Outside of the city the road bisected miles and miles of low and growing corn interspersed with great squares of darker green plants, low, with itty bitty leaves. Her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement for a few minutes before deciding they were probably soybeans.
Indianapolis was a surreal Twilight Zoney kind of place, like Tom Sawyer could have lived there or something, minus the white picket fences—the everytown USA a famous theme park had tried to capture and not quite pulled off. It was so pure and wholesome she kept expecting to drive past a row of wood-sided wholesome little houses and look back to see the false fronts of a movie set. She couldn't help hunching over a bit as she drove through, as if, if there really was such a place, she shouldn't be in it.
She ate on the road, and four hours later stopped at a small motel off U.S. 30. There was a vague metallic tang to the air, the familiar smell of sand momentarily made strange and alien by the absence of Charleston's salt and muggy heat, and some odd bushy trees with silver foliage that she'd seen off and on since Kentucky. More bushy than treeish, out here. She checked in and set the alarm on her PDA to wake her early enough to get into Chicago and in place for initial surveillance the next morning.
* * *
Friday, May 17
It was four in the morning when she e-paid her toll, which was, oddly enough, more anonymous than being photographed paying cash at one of the booths—where her face would have gone straight into the net—and pulled onto 80/94 for Chicago. She'd heard once that prewar Chicago had had freeways. All the major arteries in were toll roads, now, unless your car had government or diplomatic plates.
Even at this hour the traffic was there, though moving freely. The dawn was flattened and grayed out by the overcast sky. She could smell the dampness of Lake Michigan, though the noise barriers and accident walls tended to screen out most views of the surroundings except for the road itself and the swaying stands of reeds and heather.
The profile had her setting up on the corner of Delaware and Michigan, at the Fleet Strike Tower. Most shops hadn't opened yet, even downtown, but an all-night grocery had Art Institute of Chicago notebooks, a sharpener, and a pack of pencils. It only took about fifteen minutes in the parking lot to rough the notebook up and make it look reasonably used. All the textbooks came on download now, anyway, and her sketchbook was a national brand—a suitable prop for anyplace with an art school. It barely even took a hack to get the current art history textbook, one of the small touches that made Marilyn's transfer to the Art Institute all the more real. By six she had stashed the car in a self-parking garage and was sitting over a cup of coffee at a table in the courtyard across from the Tower main entrance, watching the people going in and out, occasionally rendering one in cubist drawings. What safer way to watch people than as an artist. We're expected to watch people. Who would've thought that Sister Theodosia's hobby would've come in so handy over the years?
For security reasons, the plaza entrance on the north face of the Tower was the only one open for daily use. Early as she was, the plaza was nearly empty, except for a Fleet Strike sergeant enjoying a cup of coffee and a smoke while his AID was sitting up on the table in front of him, apparently displaying the morning paper. Occasionally he told it to turn the page or find another article.
The smell of fresh coffee and pastries mingled with car exhaust, cold concrete and asphalt, and the early morning chill. The white noise of the fountain covered the traffic sounds, but in the still of the morning it was quiet enough that she could hear the scritching of her pencil as her hands automatically filled in the lines and shadings. Iridescent gray pigeons fluttered around hopefully on the granite tiles in front of the café, dodging the occasional pedestrian and waiting for the inevitable dropped crumbs that would come with the morning breakfast rush. A handful of sparrows flitted in among the herbs that spilled over the edges of beds built into the stairs around the fountain, occasionally flitting between the sidewalk tables to peck at a crumb before flitting back to hide in the greenery.
When he came down the stairs he was easy to identify despite the distance, his U.S. Army uniform making him stand out from all the Fleet Strike personnel entering the building. She was careful not to look directly at him. Petane was in early. Six-fifteen, which she had wondered about when she reviewed his morning travel patterns, until he reappeared out the door in sweats and climbed the staircase next to the cheesecake restaurant across the plaza. She tried to not look hurried as she picked up her trash from the table, having paid inside, and climbed the nearer staircase, shoving her sketchbook in her backpack and emerging onto the street on the Drake hotel side before reaching into each shoe and clicking down the wheels. Roller sneakers had been something of a fad before the war. She hadn't had a pair, but she remembered them—barely. Cheesy, badly made things with slow wheels. The remake of the fad was better—these wheels were as good as those on any standard four-wheelers in the stores.
She moved fast enough to follow him around the corner at the end of the block from not too close, not too far. He couldn't be heading for the beach along the lake shore. It just couldn't be that easy. A jogger. Go figure. He really was. Right past a small baseball and tennis park, down another bit, up the stairs and across the pedestrian overpass. Since the lake effectively limited his options, she took the opportunity to stay on the opposite side of the
street. As she went, she pulled out a helmet and shades. Instant anonymity. A bit of bubble gum from a pouch in the backpack made a nice prop. Ear buds and her PDA clipped to her belt created an instant illusion of a skate babe lost in her own little musical world.
About a half a mile down, he crossed back on another pedestrian overpass and began to work his way back through the streets towards the tower.
She shadowed his route through the warren of narrow streets and small blocks, memorizing. Surely he'll vary his pattern every day . . . but maybe not. Jogging is for idiots. Jogging when one has deadly enemies is for extreme idiots. This would be an ideal place for a heart attack if I just needed to kill him. Unfortunately, the only way to verify Robertson's assessment of his lack of serious value is to interrogate him first. He'll be missed too soon if I drop him on the street. Need something better.
She breezed past him going backwards, leading his probable route. Odd, but people never thought you were a tail if you were in front of them. Whenever she got too far ahead she slowed next to a boutique window to look at the display, popping her gum as she gave him some time to catch up a bit. One of the places they passed was a valet park deck that had a line of cars with government plates and a few Fleet Strike uniforms walking out of it. Subject's probable parking location found.
By seven he had made a circuit through the city streets and back to the north face of the Tower. She let him get past her and got lost in the crowds behind him, locking up the wheels, shoving the helmet and shades back into the pack, changing the posture and walk a bit, ear buds into a pocket, PDA to the front pocket, swallow the gum. No more skate babe.
The coffee shop was more than happy to let her buy a large cranberry juice and an apple strudel and go back to her sketching. She made light conversation about art with the busboy who occasionally came out to pick up any trash left on the tables by other customers, but only when she couldn't avoid him by looking busy. The target didn't leave the building for lunch. Either they had a sandwich shop or something in the building, or he skipped it, or snacked out of machines. Something. Not that she minded sitting and watching the other uniforms come and go. Fleet Strike either believed in a good PT program for its headquarters staff or their doctors were doing some good metabolic work to cope with the desk jobs. Quite a few of those young—well, okay, young-looking—men had some seriously tight buns.
Around two she moved her car to the self-park deck that adjoined Fleet Strike's valet deck. If it hadn't been a Friday afternoon she would have had no hope of getting a spot close to the stairwell and the exit, but on a Friday somebody always knocked off early. Fortunately, the place was basically empty, but she still watched carefully as she cut her way through the fence separating the two decks and climbed over the low concrete wall. It would be impossible for a single agent to tail a car by eye through Chicago streets. If you didn't stay close enough to be readily spotted, the subject would lose you in two blocks without even trying. She had to hide from passing valet employees three times before she finally found the car the Illinois DMV so obligingly revealed was registered to her target.
Petane was apparently one of the people leaving early this Friday afternoon. It wasn't quite four thirty when he came out the door carrying a gym bag and walking towards the parking deck. One advantage to her of his early departure was the sidewalks were still open enough that she could drop her wheels and skate between pedestrians, dropping down into a fire lane here and there to get around clumps of slow walkers, and getting to her deck well before he got to his without drawing attention by appearing to hurry.
She paid the exit machine and got her car out and into the fire lane quickly, but it was always touchy doing a solo surveillance. Sometimes you just had no choice but to let the subject out of your sight, and sometimes you lost him. When you did, of course, you just picked him up again when and where you could. On a mission like this, better to lose him for a bit than to get too close and risk him spotting the tail. Especially since she had assistance, if needed, in picking him back up. She glanced at her PDA whose screen was displaying a single big red button. If she lost him, it was just a matter of pressing the button and having the beacon pinged. The location would cross reference to the metro Chicago street map she'd loaded and display a map section and his location. The nature of the street made some part of tailing him out of the deck a matter of guesswork. His patterns suggested that west to Lakeshore would be the best route to location B, and east to 94 would be the best choice for his probable home. On Friday, location B was more probable. She had her shades on again so her face could be turned slightly away from the other parking deck's exit, while her eyes watched every car and driver coming out for Petane in his '45 Ford Arabian. Her breathing loosened when he appeared at the exit at the wheel of the cherry red sports car, the rearing horse logo on the front grill sporting the distinctive arched neck.
Following was a delicate balancing act of staying far enough back not to be noticed, but close enough not to lose him too many times. There was always a chance, however small, that a beacon transmission would be detected. It helped, of course, to know roughly where he was going. The route he chose was obvious and direct, the behavior of a man of fixed habits who feels safe. The apartment he drove to was in a lower middle class suburban complex. After he entered, she watched the building carefully for changing lights. Not a sure thing, since it was still daylight, but the best she had. Fortunately, most people turned on the lights inside even when the natural light was good, and Petane and whoever he was meeting were no exception. Well, that was probably the right apartment, anyway. A good place to start. It was still early for the evening rush, so Cally made good use of the deserted parking lot, walking casually over to the building entrance and hiding the door knob with her body while she picked the old-fashioned key-lock. She had to look at the first and second floor apartments to get the numbering scheme.
Once she had the address, it was child's play to use the back door into the phone company to tell the phones in apartment 302C that they were off hook, making them into instant bugs. Does this guy take no precautions at all? She set her PDA to dump the audio into storage on a cube and play real-time. Judging from the sounds and Petane's first name being "Charles," she had the right apartment for his mistress. She pulled up her notes from the camera search. There's always something slightly obscene about listening to a target screw. Okay, he visits the mistress Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, looks like. Maybe he's not that regular, but he sure looks like a creature of habit. Drug the mistress and bring a sound damper and I can interrogate him here—he won't be officially missed until his wife gets anxious, maybe not noticed by Fleet Strike until the next morning. If I check in after cleaning up from the job, I'll have my makeover into Sinda and it doesn't get more off the radar than premission prep. Monday, then. Heart attack. Mistress wakes up with a fuzzy memory and a corpse. Not a nice morning for her, but a clean hit that leaves her alive. Flunitrazepam and alcohol for her, a viagra, insulin and coke cocktail for him, a nice little party. I'll have to be gentle with the scumbag at first, on the very small off chance that there's more to him than meets the eye and he's the Comstock lode of sources or something. Yeah, sure.
* * *
When he left to go home, she followed him to note down his home address, found a cheap motel and paid cash for three nights. She settled in, set her alarm for four a.m. and laid out her clothes in easy reach. On the one hand there was no point surveiling him on Saturday since she had to have the job done by Thursday. Weekend patterns were useless. On the other hand, she could pick up some random piece of information helpful in evaluating his value as a source, and some access to his house Monday would be nice, if it were possible.
New Orleans. Mardi Gras parade, no war, no training, freedom for a long weekend. Strings of cheap plastic beads and hurricanes, and a young-looking soldier of the Ten Thousand who looks like he puts in a lot of time in the weight room. She's Lilly tonight and laughing up into his face and she tries no
t to go this time but she always does, and now it's morning and he's telling her about his wife, again, and she's trying and trying to get off the bed and kick the bastard in the crotch, but she can't move, and she's back in survival training in Minnesota, and the snow falls, and falls, and falls.
* * *
Saturday, May 18
She slapped the off button to stop the annoying beeping and rolled out of bed, keeping the lights off to preserve her night vision. This early in the morning her face was clammy and damp, but not quite soaked yet. Oddly enough, she couldn't remember whatever it was she'd been dreaming about. But then again, when she had to get up in the middle of the night, she never did. The baggy jeans, T-shirt, and windbreaker were all in medium shades of gray. The cotton bandana she shoved in a pocket had once been black and white, but several washings with dark clothes had turned the bits of white patterning a dingy gray-brown. The canvas-topped skate sneakers had started off light blue, but were well broken in and had picked up a solid coating of casual dirt and dust. The hem of the windbreaker covered the black nylon strap of the gray canvas butt pack she fastened around her waist.
She went to his home first, parking down the street and jogging in. Placing the cameras was a matter of setting the little gray dots, half the size of a dime, for short range IR transmission, using the PDA screen to line them up and securing them in place with a bit of adhesive putty. Once they were secured on target, a tap on a screen button set them to record only. Half a dozen of them covering the target's garage and strategic intersections from trees and signposts and she was back in the car and headed for the mistress's place. It was five thirty and the pre-dawn gray was beginning to be tinged with pink when she planted a couple of cameras on trees and posts in the apartment parking lot, watching carefully for early risers—a possibility even on a Saturday. Somebody always had to work, and once she had to abort to jogging down to the end of the row of buildings and back, before she got two good camera angles on the door and one on the apartment windows.