by Jay Posey
It all seemed excessive to Lincoln, but it was too early in the game for him to try pulling rank. Still, he did his best to make it clear he was letting them have their way this one time. He wasn’t sure any of them bought it.
Now he and Wright were walking through the outer perimeter of the cluster of buildings she and Pence had identified. It was always a tricky business to introduce yourself into a new environment without attracting the wrong kind of attention. Fortunately, there was more foot traffic in the area than there was back at the temporary HQ. Even though it was just a few blocks over, this section of town showed signs of more normal life. It was still clearly low on the economic end of things, but at least there were a few restaurants, grocers, and other small businesses on each side of the street. Still, the target zone wasn’t exactly the kind of place that seemed to attract a lot of tourists, and Lincoln knew any team serious about security wouldn’t just have their own people watching. They’d have developed a network of regular people to help them out: bartenders, grocery clerks, baristas, anybody with a routine and consistent interaction with the local populace. Casual connections, but ones that might give early warning of anything new or unusual.
Early in his career, Lincoln had nearly blown his team’s cover by buying a case of water after he’d told a clerk he was in town by himself for a couple of days. When internal security services had shown up later, he’d managed to persuade them that his religious beliefs required ritual washing eight times a day and that he didn’t trust the purity of his lodging’s water supply. It had taken a demonstration of said “ritual” and six bottles of water to convince them. That little caper had earned him a nickname from his team that, thankfully, hadn’t followed him through the rest of his career.
It’d been a good lesson, though; well worth the grief it had caused him amongst his teammates. And it was one that he kept in mind while checking out the streets in and around the target buildings.
Wright had already pulled in a fair amount of data on the area before they’d visited it, but it was a funny thing about surveillance technology: no matter how clear the images had gotten, or how good the audio, the eggheads still hadn’t been able to come up with a device yet that could capture and communicate the feeling of a place. They could fly a drone array through and then simulate a city block with pixel-perfect precision. Lincoln had prepared for many operations using those simulations. Not one of them had ever compared to actually walking the route himself.
Lincoln really wanted to get down into the heart of the target area, but he’d had to promise to keep to the outer perimeter until Thumper got a better read on the surveillance and counter-surveillance measures that Apsis had in place. He was helping on that front, though, and not just with his own eyes and ears. Thumper had rigged him up with a detector.
It was a simple device: just a belt with small, vibrating elements arrayed around it. Interpreting the signals wasn’t any more difficult than playing a game of hot-or-cold. The stronger the vibrations, the more signal was being detected. And depending on which elements were active, Lincoln could tell what direction he should head towards, or whether he was walking through the middle of a field. Thumper had fine-tuned the sensitivity to filter out the background levels of normal traffic. While they walked, directed by the whims of the strength-of-signal, the detector’s sensors soaked up whatever electronic signals he and Wright passed through and transmitted any relevant information back to Veronica, Thumper’s much-beloved surveillance system. Together, they were building a more complete picture of their area of operations.
They’d been at it for a little over an hour when they had their first hint of trouble.
“Captain,” Thumper said over comms, “I think you picked up some interest. Veronica’s tracking two men, one behind you, one across the street. Looks like they’ve been orbiting you for a few minutes.”
“Roger that, Thumper,” Lincoln said. “Mark ’em for us.”
“Marking,” she said, and then a moment later, “Marked.”
Lincoln ran a thumb across the dermal pad in his wrist and activated his retinal heads-up display. Two pips appeared, one at six o’clock and one halfway between eight and nine o’clock. Both Lincoln and Wright maintained their pace, and kept their eyes forward.
“You get that?” Lincoln asked Wright.
“Yeah,” she said. And then through the comm channel, “Thumper, can you get facial on them?”
“Negative,” Thumper said. “Skeeters are too high, and I can’t risk bringing them much lower.”
“All right, copy,” Wright said.
“Think we’re pegged?” Lincoln asked.
“I don’t see how you could be. But Veronica’s running the loop now, and they’ve definitely been reacting to your movements for a couple of minutes. It isn’t random. Take a right up ahead, let me watch what they do.”
At the next cross street, Lincoln and Wright turned right and continued on their way. The pips in Lincoln’s vision converged briefly, crossed over. One stayed fixed at six o’clock while the other worked its way gradually from six to eight.
“All right, yeah,” Thumper said. “They’re definitely trailing you. They just handed off. Guy in a black coat is on your tail now. Guy in a ballcap looks like he’s moving up a block. Guessing he’s going to rejoin you in a few.”
“Roger,” Lincoln said. “Designate Black Coat and Ballcap. Black Coat’s on our six?”
“That’s affirmative,” Thumper answered. “Black Coat is trailing you.”
“Could they pull a read on the detector?” Wright asked.
“Might be,” Thumper said. “It’s mostly passive, but it sends packets in bursts. If they knew what to look for, it’s possible, I guess. Maybe you should kill it, just to be safe.”
“Negative,” Lincoln said. “If they’re picking up some kind of signature off us, going dark will just be an admission of guilt. We’ll figure something out.”
“Ballcap’s circling back your way,” Thumper said. “He’s picking up the pace.”
“Give me range,” Wright said. A few moments later, distance indicators appeared next to the pips in Lincoln’s view. Black Coat was about fifteen meters behind them. Ballcap was farther, but closing.
“What else reads like a detector?” Lincoln asked.
“Not much,” she said. “Uh…”
“Come on, Thump, give me some options.”
“I don’t know, sir,” Thumper said. “Anything uh… anything that does burst transmission. Assuming they’re just picking up signal and not actually intercepting packets.”
“The idiot’s version, sergeant,” Lincoln said.
“Like… I don’t know, some kind of low-profile recording device, a tracker, uh… maybe a high-end–”
“Pence,” Wright said. “Come around, prep for a snatch. Thumper, find a spot, send us a marker. Somewhere close.”
“Copy,” Thumper answered. “Stand by.”
“You need me?” Sahil asked.
“Negative, stay put,” Wright responded.
A few moments later, another icon popped up in Lincoln’s augmented reality display; a small triangle pointing down at a location just a couple of blocks away.
“Pushing it to you now,” Thumper said.
“Roger, I see it. Pence, you got it?”
“Roger that,” Mike answered. “Maybe three mikes out.”
“Two’s better,” Wright said.
“I’ll see what I can do. Who’s the target?”
“I’ll handle it, just be there.”
Wright clearly had a plan and the team was executing it with smooth coordination. The fact that she hadn’t consulted him or asked for permission should have bothered him, but Lincoln knew in a moment like this, he had to swallow his pride and just let the team work. The best thing he could do was follow her lead.
“Ballcap’s catching up,” Thumper said. “And Veronica just picked up another possible threat heading your way.”
“How po
ssible?” Lincoln asked.
“About thirty percent,” she answered. “He just changed direction, maybe to intercept. Maybe just because he forgot something.”
“Understood. Mark him.”
A third pip appeared, this one at about one o’clock. Black Coat and Ballcap were closing fast.
“Mir?” Sahil said over comms.
“Hold steady, Sahil,” she said. “Mike, how close?”
“Forty seconds,” Mike said.
“That’s too long,” Wright said, almost to herself. “He’s not going to make it.”
A moment later, Wright slowed her pace and stepped closer to the side of a building. Instinctively, Lincoln matched her, angled his body towards her to see what she was up to.
“Lean in and kiss me,” she said.
“What?” Lincoln said. “Seriously?” The move was such a cliché, he’d never thought anyone actually used it.
“Just do it. Sir.”
Lincoln hesitated for a moment, but Wright’s eyes were intense, insistent. He leaned down, closed his eyes, brought his lips to hers.
They didn’t meet.
Instead, a jarring impact on the right side of his jaw stumbled him. He brought his arms up reflexively to protect himself but before he could get oriented, a second blow caught him in the back of the knee and buckled him to the ground. An instant later, he was caught in a vicious chokehold from behind. His assailant was over him, crushing down. Black Coat couldn’t have closed the gap that fast, they must have had a fourth guy. Fourth and fifth. Where was Wright?
Even as his mind was racing to process what was happening, Lincoln’s training took over. His attacker’s hold wasn’t perfect, wasn’t deep enough. Lincoln knifed his hands back and sought out those of his attacker. When he managed to grab hold of one, he snatched it down and forward over his shoulder, wrenched the wrist, forced the arm over his head and used it as a lever to break the hold. Free from the choke, he rolled sideways onto the attacker’s ankle and shin, dropping his opponent hard to the concrete. Not knowing how many other attackers he had to deal with, Lincoln’s first priority was to get off the ground. He twisted and whipped an elbow back behind him, felt it glance off the side of his assailant’s head, and then wrested himself free and spun up to his feet.
He instinctively came up in a defensive posture, scanned the crowd around him for a second attacker, and for any sign of Wright. There, just behind the first row of people, stood a man in a black coat, staring right at him with a startled expression. Lincoln had just enough time and presence of mind to make one quick gesture before he realized that Wright was surging up off the ground in front of him, and someone behind him screamed. Pain exploded at the base of his neck. Blackness swallowed him.
ELEVEN
PIPER LAID with her face to the wall and her hands behind her back, hoping that the woman couldn’t hear the sound of her heart pounding against the bed. It wasn’t that she feared anything that might happen while the woman was in the room with her. She’d gotten used to the routine now of lying still until the door was closed again. It was what would happen after the woman left that had filled Piper with anxiety.
“I grabbed you an extra couple of pieces of bread,” the woman said. Her voice was direct, purely informational, though the words themselves hinted at a sense of concern for Piper’s wellbeing. “I know you like them.”
“Thank you,” Piper replied.
The woman finished up her work, and moved to the door. Paused there. Piper’s heart leapt into her throat, and she had to shut her eyes and clench her jaw to keep herself still.
“If you need anything else, let me know,” the woman said.
“I will,” Piper said. “Thank you.”
A few rapid heartbeats of silence passed, and then the woman left the room and the door slid shut. The lock clicked, as it always did, but there, if anyone had known to listen for it, was a second, quieter click just ahead of it. Piper made herself count to twenty before she came out of her position, and then to one hundred before she sat up on the bed. She was going to do it. Now that the moment had come, she knew she was going to. She had to try. Even so, it took all of her will to make herself stand to her feet.
Piper went to her little table and sat in the folding chair. The woman had left her a meal and, as promised, with it were three discs of the flat bread Piper had come to enjoy so much. She wasn’t especially hungry at that exact moment, but she tore off some of the bread and nibbled at it, poked at the rest of her meal with its corners.
There was no way to know how long they’d been holding her. Her wrist seemed to have completely healed, and the woman had removed her cast. So that was probably at least a week of time, depending on what nanos they’d used to help heal the bone. But it had been a long stretch before Piper had even thought to try to keep track of time, and the only system she’d been able to come up with since then wasn’t exactly reliable. She’d started counting the number of times she’d slept, which was now up to twenty-three. Unfortunately, she could never tell how long she’d slept at any given time, nor how much time had passed before she felt tired enough to go back to sleep, so she had no clear idea of how long she’d been a prisoner.
It must have been intentional on the part of her captors, as well. At first, Piper had assumed that her body was just out of kilter from the stress and trauma of her circumstances; that she needed more sleep than usual, or that sometimes she was ravenous when it was time to eat and other times she had no appetite at all. Over time, though, she came to suspect that the people holding her were purposefully avoiding establishing any sort of set routine for her. Maybe they would bring her two meals only a couple of hours apart, and then make her go a full day before the next one came. Piper had no way to measure it, of course, but once she started paying attention, it seemed very likely that they were manipulating her to keep her off balance.
That was OK, though. Because Piper had started manipulating them right back. Carefully, cautiously, she’d begun to establish a routine of her own, to build a certain level of expectation and maybe even something like trust. She had no idea if she was under constant surveillance, but she’d decided to assume she was. After a couple of experiments, she’d located the camera they were using to keep an eye on her and, more importantly, the extent of its vision. It was high, near the door, and angled mainly to focus on the bed and table. Piper had managed to extract some concessions from the woman that brought her meals by mentioning several times how difficult she found it to use the bathroom knowing that anyone could be watching her. Eventually they’d brought a makeshift folding screen for her and set it up to give her a small corner of privacy.
Piper had also taken to doing yoga and some calisthenics to keep her strength up. For some of these, she made use of the wall by the door, just out of view of the camera. No one made any comment to her about it, undoubtedly to avoid acknowledging that there was a gap in their surveillance. But she was on good behavior anyway, and never gave them any reason to think she would do anything other than what they expected of her.
She’d made good use of her privacy screen. Over time, she’d managed to pull a few parts from the waste recycler; a spring here, some flexible tubing there, a small amount of some kind of thick pasty substance that clung to surfaces and never seemed to dry out or harden. A couple of components came from her table. And her work to establish rapport had gone far enough that they were even trusting her with an eating utensil now: a single instrument part fork, part spoon, with an edge that was enough to cut butter and not much else.
Over several sessions of sitting on the toilet behind her screen, she’d assembled a small device. Nothing special or fancy, by any means. Just a tiny, spring-loaded metal plate on a makeshift hinge crafted from flexible tubing. This device she’d stuck to the door frame during one of her stretching exercises. It was this device that had clicked, just before the lock had settled into place, preventing it from securing completely. And, with any luck, it was this device that w
ould enable Piper to work the lock open. Studying the door and the lock had confirmed what she had begun to believe; the ship she was on hadn’t been built with prisoners in mind, and her captors didn’t consider her to pose any serious threat of escape. The lock was a simple catch, dialed in from the outside. Undoubtedly there were security measures preventing any sort of attempt to hack the control, but that was a common mistake. High-tech security often had the most embarrassingly low-tech vulnerabilities.
She poked at her meal a few minutes longer, with both bread and eating utensil. Then, after hopefully having given a good performance of not being especially hungry, she got up, sat on the edge of her bed for a span and let her nervous energy show. She bounced her legs, she fidgeted, she rolled her head around to stretch her neck. And she hoped no one noticed the utensil was no longer on the table.
She got up again and started going through a series of yoga poses. Her usual routine. If anyone was watching, they would know the whole series of movements, and how long it would take for her to get through them. After the first few minutes, she’d move over to the wall for a while. Twenty to thirty minutes or so, by her best estimation. How long would that give her before they came looking?
Piper completed the first part of her routine, and went calmly to the wall. There, she executed her first two stretches as usual. Partially to keep up the ruse, and partly because her hands were trembling with the enormity of what she was about to attempt. There was no telling what was on the other side of that door. She could very well open it and find her captors all sitting right on the other side. And what would she do if they caught her? Or, more likely, when.
She didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t take being trapped in this room any longer. She had to get out, had to breathe other air, if even for a few minutes. At that very moment, the idea of a few minutes of freedom seemed worth giving her life for.
Piper steeled herself, and slid over to the door. She had to crouch down to examine the locking mechanism. Worried that she might show up on camera if she did so, she ended up standing with her back pressed against the wall, but bent over and twisted awkwardly so she could see what she was doing. Fortunately, all of the yoga she’d been doing had given her excellent balance and flexibility.