Outriders

by Jay Posey

  “We could do it,” Wright said, matter-of-fact. Apparently breaching a safehouse to pull a guy out was routine business as far as she was concerned. “But everybody would know about it. It doesn’t help us if the bad guys know he’s compromised. Or even if they believe it.”

  “Agreed,” Lincoln said. “We’ll have to cover it.”

  “How you plan on that?” Wright asked.

  “Well, we can’t do it perfectly,” Lincoln said. “I’m guessing our bad guys aren’t going to be happy about Prakoso being gone, no matter where he ends up. And I don’t think we can pull off the old ‘hey, we’re Apsis employees moving him somewhere safer’, though I’m sure you all love that one. Best thing I can think of is to make it look like he did it himself. I figure a criminal like Prakoso probably has more than enough reason to want to disappear.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair to call him a criminal, exactly, sir,” Thumper interrupted. In response, Lincoln just held his hand out next to the image of Prakoso, where the long list of charges he was facing in a large number of different nations was displayed. “Well sure, yeah, he broke some laws, but I’d be willing to bet more than half the time he was working for some other country when he did it. If you picked up an Eastern Coalition report on any one of us, it’d probably say the same sort of thing.”

  “If anyone knew what we were actually up to, maybe,” Mike said. “Which they don’t.”

  “You hope,” Thumper said.

  “Fair enough, Thumper,” Lincoln said. “But the point remains. Guy like this has motivation and skills. Given the tools at his disposal, how does he get out of there on his own?”

  “Seems like he already would have done it, if he’d wanted to,” Thumper said. “That’s assuming he could.”

  “How would you do it? Put yourself in there.”

  She shook her head. “Too many guys, too many sensors, I don’t see how I can do it and get more than about fifty feet before someone’s on me. You saw how fast they reacted when he came out for a smoke.”

  Lincoln opened his mouth to encourage her, but Sahil stopped him with a look and a subtle shake of the head. A few moments later, Thumper continued. “I mean, I guess that’s something. I guess maybe all those sensors and stuff.”

  Everyone gave her a few more moments, waiting to see if she’d continue on her own. But Thumper’s eyes were unfocused, staring off at nothing in particular.

  “Yeah, Thump?” Mike said at last. “What about them?”

  Thumper shook her head. “I’m just saying, they’ve got all this gear rigged up, like they’re worried someone’s going to come looking for him, right? So, if I’m him, and I want to leave, and I mean, really leave, like never come back, maybe I make it look like someone is coming to look for me.”

  “Spoof the sensors?” Lincoln said. “Could you do that from here?”

  “Something like that, yeah. Make everybody look one direction, while I head out the other, or something. I mean, I don’t think I could get in there and make the network ignore you… we’d have to expect that they’d pick up on the intrusion. But if we went the other way with it, I might be able to do something. I’ll have to get in there and see what we’ve got to work with. I don’t know though, something like that, maybe they’ll just lock him down. Or try to move him themselves. I don’t see how any of that helps us.”

  “It’s a start,” Lincoln said. “Let’s work through it.”

  “Talkin’ about doing this quiet?” Sahil asked. “No shots fired?”

  Lincoln nodded. “One hundred percent nonlethal. We make him vanish, with no one to blame but the guys he leaves behind.”

  “Tough ask, captain,” Mike said. “This isn’t a bunch of boy scouts running around a campground waiting to get ambushed. And look at that cast of characters.” He pointed to the images of the known security personnel. They were mostly male, mostly thick-necked. But every one of them looked like they’d seen action at some point or another, either in the field, or on the street. Mike shook his head.

  “One time, in Juárez, me and a couple of teammates were in this bar and one of my guys, his name was Na, and Na was about five foot two and maybe a hundred and ten pounds. Little fella. Pocket-sized. And I guess some locals decided they didn’t like us hanging around their spot, because they started giving us some noise. Maybe eight or ten of them, and just three of us. We didn’t really mind it too much until one guy has to make it serious and pulls a knife. And he’s waving it around at me and my buddy Ace, who’s an even bigger ol’ boy than me. Well, it just so happens Na is a world-class Thai boxer, and he, cool as can be, casually folds the guy in half with a roundhouse. The rest of the guys didn’t seem to want to fight so much after that.”

  He let it hang in the air, as if the relevance were obvious.

  “Point, Mike?” Thumper finally said.

  “My point is, in any group of people, you never know who the Na is. Any one of those cats is likely to give us more trouble than we’re counting on. And it’s probably not the one we think it is.”

  “So let’s not get in their way,” Lincoln said. “Those are the parameters, folks. Let’s work it out.”

  Three hours later, they were putting the final touches on the plan.

  “You guys want to use Poke?” Thumper asked.

  Wright thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “No, that’s just another piece of gear to worry about. We’ll do it old-fashioned.”

  “Poke?” Lincoln asked.

  “Yeah, Pokey,” Thumper said. “Our foldable.” Foldables were many-jointed self-reconfiguring drones, particularly useful for scouting out tight places, like buildings and ship interiors.

  “You named it?” Lincoln said.

  “Well, sure,” Thumper answered, as if that was expected behavior.

  “You’re going to want another car,” Mike said, looking at Lincoln with a trace of despair.

  “I want another car,” Lincoln answered. Mike’s shoulders dropped. “You want to get started on it?”

  “Guess I better,” Mike said. “But I don’t want to hear any lip about it when I get back, no matter what it looks like.”

  “Just make sure it can get from A to B real fast,” Lincoln said.

  “And it’d be nice if it could eat a bomb or two,” Sahil added, as Mike was on his way out of the door.

  “Thumper, let Mr Self know we’re going to need to ship out, probably in a hurry. See if we can get NID to send a crew out to clean the place.”

  “How you want to work the jump off?” she asked.

  “I want to mail him home,” he answered.

  “You got it,” she said, and headed out to make the necessary arrangements.

  “I’m gonna get the gear laid out,” Sahil said, following her.

  With the rest of the team out of the planning room, Wright made one final attempt at her case.

  “You shouldn’t be going in there,” Wright said.

  “Thumper’s gotta run the rig, Mike’s on overwatch. Sahil’s out back in case Prakoso rabbits, or worse things happen. And you’re not going in alone.”

  “It’s your op,” she said with a shrug. “But I want it clear that I don’t like it.”

  “Duly noted,” he said. “I appreciate the concern.”

  “It’s not for you personally.”

  “I know. But I wouldn’t be much of a team lead if I didn’t do my share of heavy lifting.”

  “Due respect, sir, but don’t use a hit to try to make a point.”

  The words slapped Lincoln with unexpected force. He’d let this go far enough. “Sergeant, this is the plan,” he said, sharply. “We’re moving forward. Unless you have any concerns relevant to the plan, I suggest you get busy prepping.”

  Wright tipped her head back just slightly, and for a moment seemed like she might have something else to say.

  In the end, she just said, “Sir.”

  She exited, leaving Lincoln alone with the plan they’d drawn up. He turned an
d stared at the thin-skin, inhaled deeply and then let out a long breath. Like all plans, the plan itself was probably mostly useless. The planning, however, was indispensable. Having been through the process so thoroughly, Lincoln felt confident that when the unexpected occurred, he and his team would be able to react accordingly.

  But Wright’s final words clung to him. Was he really leading the grab because it was the best option? Or was he just using this as an opportunity to try to prove to the others that he did truly belong here? It was an uncomfortable thought, but one he had to work out for certain. Wright was correct; this wasn’t a time for ego. He ran through it all one more time, in brief.

  By the end of it, he nodded to himself. Maybe not a great plan, but it was simple enough, and it was one they actually had. Best to get out there and get it done, instead of sitting around in a room waiting for the Good Idea Fairy to show up. About the only thing she ever contributed was a bunch of extra gear you weren’t going to need anyway.

  He joined the others in the main room.

  “About time we got to break this stuff out,” Sahil said, laying the final case on the table with some effort. “I was startin’ to worry I’d lugged all this in and was gonna have to lug it back home without ever gettin’ to use it.”

  The team started unloading the gear and laying out what they’d need, each for the role they were expected to play in the hit. Mike, on overwatch, took a long rifle with a sleek optic mounted on top. Sahil, on standby as the heavy in case things went bad, loaded up with a full assault kit.

  Lincoln and Wright, the grab team, each took two sidearms, both nearly silent in operation. One, subsonic and lethal, fired a nice hefty chunk of composite guaranteed to punch holes and ruin days. The other used a softer gel that held shape in flight and delivered a cocktail of nerve agent and fast-acting narcotic to knock targets cold before they even hit the ground. Lincoln knew if they left any bodies behind, it was a mission failure. But he wasn’t so idealistic as to leave the lethal option at home.

  “You sure you don’t want to sit home and run it from here?” Thumper asked. She was standing in the doorway of her bedroom surveillance center, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. Her eyes strayed over to one case that hadn’t been opened yet.

  “I’d hate to take you away from your first love,” Lincoln said.

  “Yeah, well,” she answered. “I’d hate for there to be a fight and me not be in it.”

  “There won’t be,” he said. “This one’s going to be super boring. Promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she said. He gave her a thumbs up.

  The team spent the remainder of the day making the necessary arrangements, checking their gear, double-checking their gear, and trying their best to avoid tinkering with the plan. A little after midnight, they started heading out, one by one. Lincoln was the last to go, leaving Thumper to mind the shop.

  “See you in a bit,” Lincoln said.

  “Knock ’em dead, sir,” she said. And then added, “Except, don’t.”

  FOURTEEN

  AT 0445, Earth-Luna sync time, the Outriders executed. Zero dark ugly. It was a magical slice of the night, when the nightshift guards were close enough to going home that they were counting down the minutes, and the dayshifters were still in deep sleep. No one in their right mind ever did anything at 0445.

  “Thumper,” Lincoln said. “Bump it. Five seconds.”

  “Roger, bumping,” she replied. A moment later, the lights went out. Not just in the target building, but all around it. Street lights, store signs, the buildings adjacent, everything on the three or four blocks that shared the system. Lincoln counted, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. Just as he was getting to five-one-, the lights came back up. “And we’re back up.”

  “Roger that,” Lincoln said. “Sixty seconds, then bump it again.”

  “How long?” Thumper asked.

  “Make it ten.”

  A minute passed, and right on schedule the power went out once more. Ten seconds later, it was back online.

  “All right, everyone hold tight, let me know what you see,” Lincoln said. He scanned the target building through a slender handheld optic, a multifunction device that he’d currently set to track thermal signatures. The first bump hadn’t attracted too much attention, but the second one caused some mild stirring amongst the Apsis personnel inside. There were six signatures total in the building; two of them had been sitting in a small room on the ground floor, but now one was up, moving towards the front door.

  “One man, moving to the front door,” Lincoln said. He tapped a button on his optic, designated the man’s signature for tracking.

  “Roger, good track,” Thumper answered over comms. Veronica locked on the signature, shared it out to the rest of the team.

  “Two tangos, north side,” Mike said. He was set up in an elevated position a couple of buildings away, watching the front of the target building. “Crossing towards Puck. Looks like… OK, yeah, they’re meeting up with your guy now at the front door.”

  There were three ground level entrances to Puck; front, rear, and a basement entry on the right side. Sahil was stationed a few blocks over, waiting in the second car Mike had procured.

  “Sahil, what’s it like on your side?” Lincoln asked.

  “Quiet,” he said. “If anybody noticed the blip, don’t seem to have bothered ’em much.”

  “Rear entrance is still clear outside,” Lincoln said. “Thumper, bump it one more time, then give ’em a dose.”

  “How big?”

  “Flood it.”

  “Roger that. Keep your heads down.”

  The power flickered, and the lights dimmed to half output for a few seconds before returning to full strength.

  “You’re probably going to be seeing some activity here in a second,” Thumper said. “Maybe a lot.”

  Sure enough, personnel inside the building scrambled up, and moments later two pairs of previously undetected watchers on the outside rushed in, converging on Puck.

  “Well that woke ’em up,” Wright said.

  “I’d guess so,” Thumper replied. “I just fed their sensor network eighty-five contacts.”

  “Count ’em and mark ’em,” Lincoln said. He scanned and targeted each of the responding individuals, keeping a tally of those he could find from his vantage. Inside, four people were moving with purpose, not counting the guy at the front door who was in a half crouch. That made five inside, and six outside. Eleven hostiles. One individual, however, was merely sitting up in bed. “And that’s our man Prakoso,” Lincoln said, designating the man in a corner room on the third floor.

  “Roger that, I count eleven hostiles, one VIP,” Mike said.

  “I confirm eleven hostiles, one VIP,” Thumper echoed. “Marked and tracked.”

  Lincoln lowered the optic and activated his augmented vision. Each of the eleven Apsis personnel now had bright red brackets highlighting them, while Prakoso was represented by a white circle.

  “Confirm track,” Lincoln said.

  “Yep, got it,” Mike said.

  “Drop it off, Thumper,” Mike said.

  “Copy that,” she answered. “Sensors should be showing clear now.”

  The activity inside and around the building slowed and separated, as each Apsis employee reacted to the sudden all-clear.

  “Give them about thirty seconds,” Lincoln said. “Then bump the power again.”

  Thumper did as requested, shutting the power off completely again thirty seconds later.

  “Let ’em simmer for a bit on this one.”

  For the next half hour or so, Thumper continued the manipulation with a variety of patterns; sometimes power was completely down, sometimes it was back to normal, sometimes it was inbetween. And, at any given moment, their sensors might show anything from being completely clear to a full-out siege on Puck, or any one of the surrounding buildings. She was careful not to focus too much attention on Puck itself, but she also didn’t
ignore it completely.

  The Apsis personnel spent some of that time geared up, checking doors, windows, and their principal. But after a while they relaxed, started forming little clusters. One of them eventually broke off and went back to bed.

  “All right, that’s our signal,” Lincoln said. Other guards drifted off, including some of those that had been out on the perimeter.

  “You’ve got an extra in there,” Mike said. Lincoln did a quick count, and sure enough, not everyone who’d come in from the outside had left the safehouse. One stayed behind, bringing the total to six potential hostiles in the building. Three against one. Bad odds for anyone without close air support. Three of them returned to the sitting room on the ground floor while the rest headed back up to their bedrooms.

  “That seems like a lot of guys to babysit one dude,” Mike said.

  Thumper cut in. “If Prakoso’s working from home, he’s probably sitting on a lot of choice gear. All that force might not be just for him.”

  “If you say so,” Mike replied. “Still seems like a lot of guys, though.”

  “We’ll just have to keep it nice and quiet,” Lincoln said. “Gemini, ready to move.” The codename was a convenience as well as a safety precaution; Gemini meant both Wright and himself, and there was less chance that one of them might slip a name while inside, where audio surveillance might be online. Thumper cut the power again, dousing the street in darkness.

  “Copy that,” Thumper said. “West approach is clear for you to move.”

  “Roger, Gemini moving to target.”

  “Gemini moving, copy.”

  Lincoln slipped out of his hiding place and moved to the corner of the building across the street from Puck, then dropped to a crouch. A few moments later, Wright stepped in behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. Lincoln counted to five, then patted Wright’s hand, and together they crossed the open space to Puck. They tucked in close against the wall, just beneath a narrow window. This side of the building had no door, which made it likely that it was the least guarded entry point. The street outside Puck had a steep grade, and the window here was about eight feet above the ground.