“So we do something about it,” Jensen insisted, a sense of new purpose taking hold in him. “A last job for the boss. Cleaning up his mess.” He gave a humorless smile. “Just like old times.”
But Pritchard was shaking his head. “That’s not what I had in mind. I’m not risking my life again – breaking into the tower was enough! I’m preparing an anonymous data packet containing everything I’ve uncovered; I’m going to drop it on the central servers of the Detroit Police Department and the local FBI field office… Let them deal with this.”
“You said it yourself, the DPD barely patrol the city outside of the secured areas. They’re not going to risk their necks on an anonymous tip. And by the time the Feds wake up, this will all be over!” Jensen eyed him. “No. I’ll go in. You can cover me by remote from here.”
“Out of the question!” Pritchard’s voice rose. “I told you, I don’t have the resources that I used to!”
“I’ll make allowances,” Jensen said dryly. “Stacks can back me up on the ground.”
Pritchard shot a glance in the direction of the bubble tent. “That’s not a smart choice. I don’t trust him. You saw how he reacted at the lab, that wasn’t a neuropozyne reaction… that was post-traumatic stress!” He lowered his voice. “He’s clearly unstable.”
“He may be,” Jensen agreed. “But the truth is, after the incident we were all damaged in one way or another.”
“Touching,” Pritchard said with a scowl, “but that sentiment could get you killed.”
“The alternative is that we sit back and don’t do a damn thing.” He gave the hacker a hard look. “That’s not gonna happen.”
WEST SIDE – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The swell of the Detroit River slapped against the side of the long, broad barge, but it sat so low in the water that the motion barely translated through the rust-caked hull. Heavy black tarps formed a tent across the barge’s upper deck, a recent addition that covered all that was taking place on board. Concealed along the rows of derelict store yards under the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, the barge was nondescript and forgettable.
It was exactly what Task Force 29 wanted, a covert location to serve as a temporary base of operations inside the city limits, but Jarreau wasn’t comfortable with it. The site had been put together by an advance unit with little time to prepare, and that made the Alpha team commander feel like he was starting the operation on the back foot. It was just one more thing on a long list of details that didn’t sit right with him. The mission brief he had been given on the flight in from Los Angeles was terse to say the least, as if someone high up at Interpol operational command wanted the job done fast, with no questions asked and no opportunity to think too hard about it.
He looked up at the flexing covers as the wind ripped across them, catching sight of the dark, winged shape they obscured. Below in the hull of the barge, elements of a mobile command center and staging area had been set up, where the rest of his squad could gear up and make ready.
He frowned. It wasn’t that Christian Jarreau wasn’t used to taking orders – he’d been military before he was with Interpol, after all – but there was something direct and cold in the tone of his standing instructions. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was more to this operation than he was being told. He wondered if Jim Miller felt the same way; but all NSN conferences were monitored by HQ, so asking that question out in the open would draw attention he wasn’t looking for. He pushed the thought away and set himself to concentrating on the work ahead.
Jarreau grabbed a can of self-heating GeeEmGee coffee and carried it over to the makeshift operations area, where a flat map screen displayed an aerial view of the city. He used the can as a marker, placing it on the riverfront where the barge was moored, and leaned over, peering at the grid of streets. Detroit had been a fractured city for decades, but in the past year it had slipped to the ragged edge of lawlessness and near-total collapse. While that meant less in the way of local law enforcement to potentially obstruct their operations, it also meant more unpredictability. Whole sectors of downtown were currently under gang control, and that made finding his marks all the more difficult.
He studied the screen. There were a dozen locations of interest that had already been entered into the mission database as potential sites for the smugglers to meet or store the hardware they were trafficking. Jarreau cast a practiced eye over them, winnowing out the ones that he knew were unlikely, highlighting others that seemed like good leads.
After a while, he reached to a margin band at the edge of the map screen, pulling out a dozen digital ‘pages’ to fan them out over the table like a hand of cards. The face of Sheppard, the ruthless gunrunner at the top of their hit list, glared back at him. The ex-Belltower mercenary’s brutish swagger set Jarreau’s teeth on edge. Thugs like this guy considered themselves as apex predators in the clandestine world of black ops. It didn’t matter if it was true or not – it only mattered that in any given circumstance Sheppard and his crew were likely to shoot first and damn the collateral damage.
“Boss?” He turned as one of his team came walking in his direction. “Sitrep. I got remotes deployed all around us, sensors and video are up.” Seth Chen was nominally Alpha’s senior field technician, a former member of the US Coast Guard’s cyber-ops force who had traded in shoreside base duties for something more challenging. Short, with olive skin and emerald augmetic eyes, he always seemed too flippant to Jarreau, but the tech had never let him down on a mission, and that granted him a lot of latitude. “No sign that we stirred up any interest coming in. If anything changes…”
“We follow orders and we won’t be here long enough to worry about it,” Jarreau told him. “Locate, isolate, neutralize. That’s the plan.”
“Copy that,” nodded Chen. “Info-sec and data intrusion tools are coming online as we speak. I’ll be in the city data-grid in the next ten.” He gestured toward the image of Sheppard and his men, and gave a wry smirk. “There he is. Handsome lad. Looks like a decent citizen, wouldn’t you say?”
“Think so? We find the guy, I’ll send you in to talk to him. Rest of us’ll go for a beer.”
“You’d put me in harm’s way?” Chen made a mock-sad face. “Really, boss? You realize how many hearts would break if I was hurt in the line of duty?”
Jarreau shrugged. “I guess I wouldn’t want to upset your mother.”
“Vande would never forgive you,” insisted the tech. “You know she’s got a thing for me.”
“In your dreams,” said Jarreau’s second-in-command, as she strode out of the shadows. She made a dismissive motion in Chen’s direction. “Go on now. The adults are talking.”
“Okay, but don’t beg, Raye,” said the tech, retreating away. “It’s embarrassing for both of us.”
If Vande found Chen’s manner even the slightest bit amusing, she showed absolutely no sign of it. “New intel dump just off the comsat from Director Manderley’s office in Lyon,” said the woman, placing a data stick on the surface of the map screen. The display immediately interfaced with the stick and new pages of intelligence were dealt out across the panel. Jarreau saw the Interpol sigil atop the first page and frowned as he saw the directive written below. “Mandate for use of lethal force against all targets is authorized and highly recommended,” Vande went on, reading the words aloud.
“We’re supposed to be a police force, not an assassination team,” Jarreau said grimly. “What happened to arrest and detain for questioning?”
Vande paused, processing her answer. “You’ve seen the files on Sheppard and his associates, sir. They’re very dangerous, they will be heavily armed and they don’t show restraint. I’d suggest that we start putting together a long-range intervention package. Snipers for an initial strike with a sweep team to deal with any stragglers.”
“Shoot on sight?” said Jarreau. “We don’t even know for sure who we’re dealing with, and HQ has already hung out the red flag. Those orders might neu
tralize our immediate problem with the smugglers, but it gets us no access to the rest of the network.” He shook his head. “I’m not okay with this.”
“With respect, sir…” Vande paused again, clearing her throat. “I see where you’re coming from, but do you think for one second that Sheppard and his merc friends are going to shy away from gunning down any one of us? We don’t know what forces he’s already got in play here in Detroit, but I’m willing to bet they’re just as dangerous. And they have the defender’s advantage.”
Jarreau had more to say, but his train of thought was broken by Chen, who came back at a run from his panel on the other side of the cargo bay. “Boss, you need to see this.” He had a digital tablet in his hand, and with a flick of his wrist he ported the data across to the map screen. “I got a subroutine running, digging through all the local PD and security webs looking for anything hinky, specifically stuff that fits the profile of our bad guys.”
The map and the data pages folded away, and now the screen was showing grainy footage captured from a camera. Jarreau made out the shapes of parked cars and flat concrete walls. “What’s this from?”
“Emergency alert exload from a Tarvos Security Box-Guard patrolling a building in the business district,” Chen said, his words coming machine-gun fast. “Get this; the building is the former corporate headquarters of Sarif Industries.”
“That’s on our watch list,” said Vande.
Jarreau nodded. “Okay, you’ve got my attention.”
Chen advanced the recording and Jarreau found himself looking at a blurry still of a man with dark hair and an angular face, a gun in his hand frozen in the moment of discharge. “Judging from the robot’s telemetry feed, it looks like he was using electromagnetic pulse rounds,” said the tech. “Those kind of bullets are not what some ragged-ass street scavenger could afford.”
“He moves like he’s trained,” offered Vande. “The face is a new one, what I can see of it…”
“Not one of Sheppard’s guys?” said Chen.
“That we know of,” Vande corrected.
The video playback spun on, the point of view slewing around wildly as the Box-Guard tried to terminate the intruder without success. Then finally the man was fully in the frame again, throwing an object toward the machine. A moment later, there was a flash of detonation and the recording went dark.
“I saw something in the background,” said Jarreau.
“Sure did.” Chen nodded, and spooled back along the video’s timeline. “Here and here.” He excerpted more stills, these showing two muddy, shadowed figures. One was partly lit by the glow of a portable screen, and the other was stocky with hulking, oversized shoulders.
“Augmentations,” Jarreau said, almost to himself. “Maybe military or industrial models. Can we get a facial recognition match on any of these jokers?”
“It’ll take me a while,” admitted the tech. “There’s not a lot to go on. But if I can assemble a three-d model, we might be able to run them through the usual databases.”
Vande leaned forward and tapped the image of the man with the gun. “Concentrate on this guy.”
Chen shot Jarreau a questioning look, but the team commander confirmed her order with a nod. “On top of that, I want you to run a hard target search on Sarif Industries and whatever holdings they have in the city. If this is connected to our boy Sheppard’s deal…” He trailed off. His gut instinct told him there was something there; the break-in seemed like too much of a coincidence not to have some link to the smuggling network. “We need to know about it,” he concluded.
Chen accepted his orders with a nod, and walked away. Jarreau looked up and found Vande watching him. “Armed and dangerous,” she repeated, tapping the image again. “Like I said.”
SIX
MILWAUKEE JUNCTION – DETROIT – UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Jensen crouched behind the burned-out husk of a cargo truck and surveyed the flanks of the four-story factory building across the way. If anything, it was in a worse state than the Sarif Industries tower, with not a single exterior window unbroken or a meter of the exterior that wasn’t covered with hateful anti-aug graffiti. Thick concrete jersey barriers had been dropped into place around it to fence off the facility, and expandable metal blockades covered all the doors and access panels across the side of the factory he could see. Getting in wasn’t going to be easy, Jensen reflected.
“I’ve got the blueprints for the building up in front of me…” Pritchard’s voice issued out over his infolink. “There’s an annex off to the west, do you see it? A two-story compound, a warehouse.”
Jensen found the slab-sided building. “Got it.” There was movement around the base of the annex, but he could only get a partial view through the scattered wreckage and debris across the open area between his hiding place and the building.
“When the stock market crashed and SI shares tanked, the last thing the board of directors did was order all the hardware off the production line. There was a plan to sell it to Kusanagi. Liquidate the assets for cash to hold off the death spiral they were in. But it never happened. Kusanagi were bought out by Tai Yong and the deal collapsed. Whatever is left in that building is the last of Sarif Industries’ augmentations, still waiting for TYM to come in and strip them to the bare metal.”
“Then the prototypes will be there,” said Jensen quietly. “If Tai Yong knew they existed, they would have emptied it already.”
“No doubt,” Pritchard replied.
A figure moved, low and quick off to Jensen’s left, and his hand tensed around his pistol. He didn’t want to fire a weapon unless he had no other option. Without a sound suppressor, any gunshot would carry across the factory compound and then all bets were off.
The shadow resolved into Stacks, his high shoulders arched forward as he dashed from cover to cover. Jensen relaxed a little as the big man skidded to a halt beside him. “Hey,” he began, breathing hard. He jerked a talon-like finger at a half-collapsed building behind them. “I got up there like you asked, put down that camera thing.” His head bobbed. He was sweaty and tense. “Okay?”
Jensen nodded. “Good. Pritchard, you copy that? Remote camera is online.”
“I have it,” said the hacker. “Position isn’t optimal but it’ll have to do. Scanning the annex exterior now…”
With all network access to the manufacturing plant’s internal security system cut off, they had been forced to figure out a work-around. Pritchard supplied Jensen with a couple of ‘sticky’ wireless micro-cameras – one of which was clipped to the front of his body armor – that could be placed in any location and monitored remotely.
“What did you see up there?” said Jensen.
Stacks showed him a grave face. “A lot of guys, man.” He pointed. “Far side is all lit up. Gotta couple of trucks there, as well, looks like they crashed ’em through the gates. Loading up stuff.”
Jensen had explained the situation to Stacks back at the Rialto. The mil-spec augs, the threat they posed, all of it. The other man hadn’t hesitated to offer his help, even though Jensen could tell he was way out of his element, and scared by the danger they were in. That Stacks was still willing to back up Jensen spoke for the man’s character.
“I was right,” said Jensen. “They’re moving the hardware out of here.”
“Looks like,” Pritchard added. “I have a visual now.” He paused. “It seems that ‘army’ we were warned about are old friends.”
“A whole bunch of gang-bangers out there,” Stacks was saying. “Same colors as those creeps who were giving your buddy shit.”
“The MCBs?” Jensen considered this new information. “They’re moving up from exterminating rival gangs to dealing in stolen tech. That’s a big step.”
“Confirmed. Jensen, watch yourself. I see two men taking up a position across from you. They’re armed.”
He fell silent at Pritchard’s warning and motioned for Stacks to do the same. Moving slowly, Jensen peered out from behin
d the ruined truck and found the pair. He saw the telltale yellow bandanas and loose-fit jackets favored by the Motor City Bangers, and noted that both of the men carried Hurricane machine pistols on straps over their shoulders. They shared a joke over something and one of them pulled a conical drug vial from his pocket, jamming it into his neck for a quick shot while the other lit a cigarette. Their body language reflected only boredom, not alertness – but the two of them were between Jensen and the only way into the annex that was in shadow. Attempting entry by any other route would be dangerous in the extreme.
After a minute or so, it became clear the two MCBs were in no hurry to leave. “You’re going to have to deal with them,” noted Pritchard.
“I figured that,” Jensen muttered.
Stacks gave him a sideways look and tapped a metal finger to his temple. “Snakey giving you trouble?”
“Tell him not to call me that,” snapped Pritchard.
Jensen nodded. “Stay here. I’ll go take care of the guards.”
Stacks looked doubtful. “Nothing but open ground over there. They’ll see you soon as you step out.”
“I don’t think so.” Jensen stood up and holstered his pistol, before calling up a nerve-impulse pattern to interface with another of his implants. It was energy-hungry and he’d been reluctant to use it until now, but after the scan at SI showed his augs were still in good working order, he was willing to chance it. “Now you see me…”
Jensen trigged his thermoptical camouflage and light bent around him, turning his shape into a shimmering, hollow outline. Stacks jerked back in shock, as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Now you don’t,” concluded Jensen, and slipped away.
* * *
He moved slowly and carefully, making sure he did as little as possible to disrupt the pattern field, aware of the ever-present energy drain on his bio-cell batteries. Each wary step brought him closer to the two MCBs and the muzzles of their machine pistols. If they made him, he’d be cut down before he could react.
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