The Loop

by Wesley Cross

  “Aha.”

  “The problem is, Engel also wants me to take out two of their scientists, and when I brought it up to my handler, he told me to proceed.”

  “Shit, man.” Doug rubbed his bearded face with both hands. “What was the rationale?”

  “The greater good bullshit. I suggested taking out Engel, but they insisted he’s one of the many hydra’s heads, and by taking him out I’ll only make it worse.”

  “I hate to be that guy, but they might be onto something. From everything I’ve seen over the past few years, if you bury him, they’ll put someone else in his place, and you’ll be burnt. But I agree in principle that killing scientists isn’t a way to continue this either. I take it…” Doug paused and looked up at his friend. “You have something in mind?”

  “I do. Remember what Porter used to say about turning a weakness into a strength?”

  “It’s hard to forget that guy.” Doug laughed. “I still have nightmares sometimes that I’m dying from push-ups and the asshole is standing there and yelling at me.”

  “I have those dreams too.” Connelly chuckled. “So, recently a gang of homeless guys torched my car. Long story. When I asked corporate to replace it, they gave me the town car that you saw outside. Apparently, that’s all we’re going to use going forward. I don’t care for them, but it got me thinking. Maybe it’s too early to remove Engel, but what if I could slow him down somehow? Put some sticks in his wheels, so to speak?”

  “Okay. But what does it have to do with the car?”

  “The fleet plays a pretty important role. It’s not just the executives who use them. It’s also how Engel moves the high-end drugs around the city, from his production facilities to his distributors.”

  “I see.” Doug nodded. “You want to mess with it.”

  “Right. It’s not that hard to find a few town cars. Then I could make them into carbon copies of those from Engel’s fleet. VIN numbers, license plates, registrations, the whole thing.”

  “But the drivers will know if they get a different car. Every car smells different, and people have all kinds of shit in there. A cross hanging off the rearview mirror, a picture of some chick they’re dating.”

  “No, they won’t. The cars that are used for drug trafficking aren’t personal vehicles. Nobody gets to keep them for more than a trip. There’s a fake transportation company up in Queens that was set up specifically for distribution. Drivers pick a car from there, get to a loading dock at a warehouse not that far from there and then go through a car wash next door that also belongs to Engel.”

  “Why the car wash? For the smell?”

  “Yes. They wash them twice—after they load them with the product and after the trip.”

  “I see. That’s pretty smart.”

  “Right. But before I try anything, I’d need a Plan B first in case I get burnt. A couple of safe houses. Maybe one with a defense system and one without.”

  “So, you’re thinking of doing some vigilante shit,” Doug said thoughtfully.

  “Yes.”

  “While still working for Engel and maintaining your cover.”

  “Yes.”

  “Something reckless and dangerous, by the sound of it.”

  “By the sound of it.”

  “All right.” Doug patted the stacks of money under the tarp he was sitting on. “What the hell. I’m in.”

  23

  New Kowloon

  Bleak. That’s the word that came to mind as Helen walked through the dark, narrow alley inside the massive building. Her feet made a squelching sound as she went—everything was wet. The walls, the patchwork of panels hanging from the low ceiling, the thick electric cables hanging overhead and snaking in and out of openings: everything was dripping water.

  As the population grew and incomes dropped year after year, the city saw an explosion of self-made housing that had once seemingly disappeared for good with the demolition of Kowloon Walled City. A cluster after cluster of ugly buildings sprung up in former parks and playgrounds, ever-reaching higher as more residents were priced out of their shoebox-sized apartments. Sometimes they moved into existing structures and then built new floors upon new floors. Sometimes they built from the ground up.

  Dubbed New Kowloon by the inhabitants as a nod to the old city, the building where Helen was taking refuge was the biggest of them all. It started as two illegal buildings on either side of a brook in an abandoned park located at the edge of the city. As the structures continued to grow upward, they grew sideways until their roofs met.

  The resulting mega-structure continued to spread up and out like an ugly tumor, utterly absorbing the park grounds and encasing the brook. Now the grotesque vertical city, shaped like an upside-down U, stood twenty-six stories tall and housed forty thousand residents, almost as many as the original Kowloon at its peak.

  The police, reluctant to come to Kowloon City from the beginning, stopped coming there at all once the triads took control of its light-deprived streets. It was a perfect place to hide for a fugitive on the run, as long as she didn’t step on anyone’s toes.

  Helen’s shelter was an empty space between the two sections of the building created when one wall partially collapsed. The resulting triangular area was not visible from outside unless you removed one of the plastic panels on the wall. She found it by accident on the first day in the city when she slipped on a wet floor and crashed into the panel. She looked around, making sure no one was watching, and slipped behind the plastic.

  The room was small, but there was a leaking water pipe in the corner with a crudely welded faucet and a drain underneath it, which provided her with relatively fresh water and the means of cleaning herself. The leak wasn’t substantial but constant, and Helen suspected it was the reason the wall had collapsed in the first place. But for now, she didn’t think there was any danger, and the presence of a cold pipe provided some relief during hot and humid nights.

  There was a dirty mattress that she strategically placed behind the pipe to take advantage of cooled air while staying away from the spraying water. A laptop sat at the corner of the mattress—there was a shop that sold stolen electronic goods one level down, and she was able to milk their Wi-Fi signal. She looked at the computer and sighed—her day was far from being over.

  There was a nightstand with a table lamp without a shade hard-wired into the wall. Helen screwed the naked bulb all the way in to turn it on. A two-step stepping stool served as a makeshift table.

  Helen put the plastic bag with a container of noodles and a loaf of bread next to the stool and collapsed on the mattress. Her arms and shoulders were sore after the fourteen-hour-long shift at a noodle shop, but it was a small price to pay. After she’d fled TLR, she’d spent the first two weeks in the slums hungry, fighting for her life, reduced to stealing from fruit shops and delis before she figured her way around the slums and found that job.

  “Helen?”

  She jumped off the mattress and leaned to the hole in the panel, trying to see outside.

  “Helen,” the quiet voice said again. “It’s Mandy. Where are you?”

  She moved the pane, opening the entrance to her room in one motion, and a second later found herself in Mandy’s fierce hug.

  “Come in,” she said, pulling the woman inside. “Quickly, before somebody sees us.”

  “Wow,” Mandy said, looking around her place. “This is intense. This is where you live?”

  “How the fuck did you find me?” Helen said, ignoring the question. “If you can track me, so can everybody else.”

  The woman threw her a strange look. “You sent me instructions on how to find you, remember?”

  “Yes, sorry.” She sat down on the mattress and rubbed her face. “The last few weeks have been a blur.”

  “Jesus, are you hurt?”

  “What?”

  “That.” Mandy pointed at the crusty brown bandage covering Helen’s right arm.

  “Ah, that.” Helen looked at her arm as if seei
ng the bandage for the first time. “I’m fine. Ignore it. Long story.”

  “I brought you something,” Mandy said, putting a large shopping bag in front of her. “There’s food mostly, some fresh clothes, and a little money. I didn’t want to make large withdrawals, so there isn’t much.”

  “You shouldn’t have come. It’s too risky. I’m shocked he didn’t put you on his shit list just to be safe.”

  “If you think coming here was too risky, I guess you won’t get mad at me for destroying CCTV records with your face on it.”

  “You did what?” Helen’s cheeks grew hot. “I don’t know what to say. How?”

  “It doesn’t matter and you don’t need to say anything. Tillerson knows, obviously, and so do his Black Arrow henchmen, but now he has no proof. You’ll be in trouble if they catch you, but I wanted to make sure that if by some miracle you managed to get away, you could start over.”

  “Thank you,” Helen said, reaching out and squeezing Mandy’s arm. “I owe you. Big time. Are you sure he doesn’t suspect you?”

  “I was on the AI project well before you. He trusts me, at least for now. Besides, what am I supposed to do? Let you stay here until you rot away? Judging by the smell of this place, it shouldn’t take that long.”

  “You might have to,” Helen said, looking up at her friend. “I’m a fugitive, remember? I have nowhere to go. This is the only place in the city where Black Arrow isn’t on every corner.”

  “Yeah.” Mandy nodded in agreement. “I had no idea there were so many of them. They are everywhere. It looks like an occupation army.”

  “Once again—you shouldn’t have come. I need to—”

  “There’s something you need to know,” Mandy said, interrupting her. “Tillerson is holding a meeting next week. Next Wednesday, to be exact.”

  “What kind of a meeting?”

  “The kind that requires a massive cleanup of the facilities and a hire of a catering company. They are also cordoning off the executive suites on campus.”

  Helen sat up straight as a cold shiver ran down her spine. “He wants to show off Callisto.”

  “I think so. I’m pretty sure Mr. Ye, whoever he is, is coming to town.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Helen put her face into her hands. “Edmund’s actually going to do that. He’s going to give Callisto to him.”

  She looked around the grime-covered room as if seeing it for the first time.

  “You have to stop worrying about Edmund and start thinking about yourself. We need to get you out of town, somehow,” Mandy said. “Or move you somewhere where you can lay low for some time and wait out the storm in dignity because this is insane.”

  “No.” She looked up at her friend, half-surprised at the strength of the simple negative she spoke. “I can’t do that. Edmund might be an unscrupulous person, but he’s an angel compared to the people who are financing him. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  “You have to enlighten me, then. I’ve had enough of hints and half-truths,” Mandy said, standing up and waving her arms in frustration. “Look at us. We’re sitting in a shithole of a room, smack in the middle of the dirtiest slums in the world, and mercs are looking for you all over the city. The time of not being transparent is over, hon. I’ll go with you all the way, but you’ve got to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  Helen looked up at her friend, stunned by the passion of her words. She was so absorbed in her own troubles, she realized, that she didn’t bother to stop and consider how much risk Mandy was taking by being there. She stood up and pulled the woman into a hug. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

  “You’re good, girl,” the woman said, stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Helen’s forehead. “Start talking. Who is Victor Ye?”

  Helen pulled away from her and smiled for what felt was the first time in a long time. “Okay. Not to go into too much detail right this second—suffice it to say that Victor Ye is the head of one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world. I had to flee the United States to stay alive after I accidentally crossed his path. He’s a member of an organization known as the Cabal, that wants to, don’t laugh, take over the world.”

  “Take over the world?” Mandy said skeptically.

  “Yes. A secret task force was formed by the US government to fight them, but something happened. I don’t know how, but the people in charge of it died under some suspicious circumstances and the whole org was disbanded. The Cabal is for real, Mandy, and they were trying to build cyborgs.”

  “Jesus. Are we inside a movie?”

  “I wish.” Helen smiled a tired smile. “Let’s just say if they get a self-aware AI, it would be game over.”

  “Wow,” Mandy said, shaking her head. “It’s a lot to process. What now, then?”

  “Now I need to figure out how to dodge an army that is looking for me on every corner, infiltrate a fortress, bypass some of the most sophisticated security on the planet, and steal a program that might bring the end of the world as we know it. Do you still want to come with me?”

  Mandy’s face split into a wide grin as she patted Helen’s shoulder. “Tell me how you’re going to do it, but there’s no chance in the world I’m going to miss that much fun. Is there a plan?”

  “You know, when Tillerson went nuts and hired Black Arrow, it made me depressed at first because how on earth do you fight an army? But then I thought I’d have to take it to the next level, and I got this crazy idea. We could pull it off, but we’ll need to get access to a weapon. That would be a tough one.”

  “A weapon? What kind of weapon? Like a rifle?”

  “No. We’ll need to take over a Kalibr.”

  “What the hell is a Kalibr?”

  Helen lips stretched into a manic grin. “A Russian cruise missile.”

  24

  New York

  Ralph Perry opened the car wash every night at twenty to nine. It wasn’t a normal time for a regular car wash, but Perry was used to working during the odd hours. He started his career as a coke pusher in some of the seediest parts of Queens about twenty years before he was put in charge of Engel’s distribution business. He referred to himself as “half Italian, half Greek, and half trouble” and was a thin, average-built man with a dark face that some would describe as ruggedly good-looking.

  Born and raised in the neighborhood, he knew every street like the back of his hand. But he had no intention of joining one of the warring gangs and staying a low-level scum roaming the streets at night. He had a bigger picture in mind.

  His cousin had been working with a Bolivian cartel, transporting vast amounts of fine white powder across the southern border. Some of it inevitably was “lost” in the process, and a small amount of it ended up in Perry’s personal stash. But after trying to sell it to streetwalkers and junkies and narrowly avoiding reps from rivaling gangs, Perry decided that he needed to switch it up. He invested some of the money in clothes and hit the hottest nightclubs in all five boroughs and Long Island.

  The stuff he was selling was no different from everybody else’s, but what Perry lacked in resources, he made up in imagination. After one of his trips to Bolivia, his cousin told him a tale about Devil’s Breath—a drug popular in Colombia that induced a zombie-like state in a user. Most stories about the drug included an attractive woman targeting a wealthy man and handing him a business card soaked in Devil’s Breath and then robbing him or kidnapping him for ransom. Most serious drug traffickers considered the drug to be an urban legend, but Perry liked the name, and a business idea had been born.

  He had purchased a few dozen small black jewelry boxes and then had them stamped with a stylized pair of red horns. Instead of calling it Devil’s Breath, he translated the name into Spanish—Aliento del Diablo—to give it even more flair. He then proceeded to stuff the boxes with a small plastic bag of cocaine and sell them to wealthy clients at five times the street price.

  The business boomed, and after a few short years Perry moved from hi
s aunt’s basement to a three-story mansion in Long Island City, was seen driving a poisonous-yellow Lamborghini, and had distribution of his own. He tried to protect his business, too—instead of relying on his cousin, he recruited a few youngsters from his old neighborhood and had them purchase the powder from other dealers and deliver it to his facility, where he and his trusted crew repackaged the product.

  He wasn’t delivering merchandise himself anymore either. Instead, he spent his time socializing with New York’s movers and shakers while dozens of his own well-dressed pushers were running around the city and servicing his loyal fans. At this point, his reputation for delivering an exotic high that wasn’t available anywhere else started to reach people he’d rather steer clear from.

  Despite his business acumen, Perry’s story would have had a quick and unpleasant end when a chemist employed by the Bolivians confirmed that the famed Aliento del Diablo was nothing more than a repackaged product stolen from the cartel. Perry’s house and Lambo were torched, and after a few weeks of hiding in cheap motels and opium drug dens, he had been approached by a small, shifty man with thinning hair who offered him a job.

  The man, who introduced himself as Latham Watkins, and appeared to be avoiding physical proximity with Perry as if he had carried some deadly infectious disease, said he would smooth things out with the Bolivians. In fact, he said he could take care of all other rivals and provide Perry with a genuinely high-quality product that nobody else had access to. There was a catch, of course—instead of running his own empire and doing what he wanted to be doing, Perry would have to agree to a somewhat generous salary and keep a low profile.

  Considering the alternatives, Perry took the job and then watched in wonder as his pursuers backed off. He helped Watkins purchase a small warehouse and convert it into a loading dock. A car wash was also Perry’s idea. With time, he had hoped to gain his new benefactor’s trust and monetize his expertise. At some point, he reckoned, he would become indispensable.