by Brian Parker
“Huh?” she asked in confusion.
“Nothing,” I replied, testing my legs’ ability to hold my weight.
Karimov was behind one of the worst drug epidemics the city had seen in decades, and was responsible for the rise in Easytown’s cyborg explosion since he paid for them to be made to protect his budding empire. I couldn’t pin any murders to him directly, but he sure as hell tried to kill me with a forklift. That was enough.
“I haven’t been officially notified of anything,” I reminded her. “As far as I know, the police chiefs haven’t even met yet, so I’m within my jurisdiction to follow through on this case.”
“You’re playing with fire, Zach.”
I cast about the room searching for my clothes, finally finding a bag marked “Patient Belongings” in a cabinet. It was extremely light when I picked it up.
“Aww, what the hell?” I grumbled, looking inside. The bag contained only my Oxfords, socks, and wallet. My weapons were missing. So were my pants and shirt.
I limped back to the bed and pressed the nurse call button. After a full thirty-second wait with no response from the nurse, I ripped the IV from my wrist, blood oozed from the hole where the catheter had been. Alarm bells began to chime, bringing the nurse almost immediately.
“Mr. Forrest!” the nurse exclaimed. “Do you need to go to the restroom? Your ah…” He glanced at Katheryn and took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Your catheter will drain the fluid for you.”
“What?” I said, reaching down and pulling up the bottom of my hospital gown. A tube ran from a bag taped to my leg into the head of my penis. My guest whirled around when she saw my dick. “Oh, goddamn it. Pull this thing out of me. I’m leaving.”
The nurse put a restraining hand on my chest. “You better remove that if you want to keep it,” I hissed.
“Zach!” Katheryn said, having turned back around, despite the intense rosy color of embarrassment plainly splashed across her cheeks.
“I… Ah, okay,” the nurse said, taking his hand away quickly. “But, you can’t leave, Mr. Forrest. See,” he pointed to the bedside monitor. “You’ve only received about eighty percent of your regenerative genetic stimulation treatment—that was what you were getting intravenously before you tore it out. Without the remaining twenty percent, you may have a pronounced limp for the rest of your life.”
I turned and tapped the IV bag. “This the remaining twenty percent?”
“It’ll take that one and another bag to complete this series of stem cell administration, and then we need to provide the radiation treatment to force the cells to mutate and repair themselves.”
I held out my arm, blood dripped to the floor from where it had ran down my hand. “Put the IV back in and go get that machine. I’ll be ready for the second bag by the time you get back. I’m leaving in thirty minutes, one way or another.”
“Mr. Forrest, please.”
“No. I have buddies that could be getting shot right now. I need this to be over.”
“I can’t authorize an early release.”
I jabbed my arm at him again. “Put the IV back in and go get that machine.”
“This is highly irregular, sir.”
“Welcome to my life. Just hook me back up.”
He complied, quickly sterilizing a spot further up my forearm from where the initial IV had been and inserted the catheter. He began to tape it off when I stopped him. “Don’t bother. Just go get that machine.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” he countered. “I’m going to tape it off so you don’t rip it out.”
I relented and he taped the head of the catheter against my arm, then hooked the IV drip back into the catheter. “Now, how do you—”
“Like this,” I said, knowing what he was going to say. I grabbed the IV bag from the hook and began squeezing, forcing the fluid from the bag faster than it would have flowed normally.
“Mr. Forrest, I don’t think—”
“It’s fine. We used to give IVs to each other all the time in the academy. Forcing it is okay as long as you don’t blow out the vein. Now, please, go get that machine.”
He mumbled something to himself, and rushed out the door. Katheryn gave me a dirty look and followed him into the hall. I could hear them talking for a few seconds, but couldn’t make out the words that they said.
She returned alone. “He’s going to get the mutation device. Neither of us think forcing the IV is the best thing.”
“I’m giving the guy the benefit of the doubt by staying until this is done,” I replied. “I could just leave.”
“And never be able to walk pain free again,” she reminded me. “It’s not really a good option.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“So you’re still gonna go down there?”
“You’re goddamned right I am,” I replied. “I’m going to get Karimov, one way or another.”
“I don’t like it, Zach.”
“You don’t have to like it. I’m doing it.”
“Why are you like this?” she asked, clenching her hands at her sides. “It’s maddening.”
“Because I have a sense of duty.”
“Your sense of duty has gotten you kicked off the police force! Your sense of duty has gotten you beat up, stabbed, run over, and shot. Your sense of duty has pushed away every woman who’s been interested in you. Have you ever thought about that?”
I shook my head. “That’s just who I am. I have to see this through.”
“No, you don’t. There’s an entire SWAT team in position to raid the Dockyards, as well as two precincts’ worth of uniformed cops surrounding that place. You don’t have to do anything except try to recover.”
“I’ll get this guy and then take a few days of down time.”
“You are such an arrogant asshole,” she stated, surprising me. “You have such an inflated sense of self-worth that you think all of those other cops aren’t going to be able to stop Karimov.” She turned and grasped the door handle before I could reply.
Then she walked out of my life.
EIGHTEEN: SATURDAY
I ran my wrist over the credit scanner to pay the taxi and stepped out into the rain. I didn’t have a jacket or an umbrella since it’d been sunny on the day I was MEDEVAC’d by the police drone. I wore clothes from the donation pile and somehow, I’d lost my phone, so I wasn’t able to contact Andi or the Jeep. Thankfully, the hospital security had both my service pistol and the Aegis. I’d have been screwed if I lost either of those.
It felt strange going to a case, or more appropriately, into combat, without Andi there beside me for instant updates and information gathering. It was the second time in as many months where I’d been without her assistance since I’d had to go off the net during the clone case as well.
For a guy who hates tech, you’re awfully dependent upon it, a voice whispered in the back of my head.
It was true. While I hadn’t been totally lost without her help, it had made that case much harder. I hoped that I didn’t run into any situations where I needed her today.
I made my way through several layers of police security, flashing my badge and submitting to a facial scan at each checkpoint. Several officers patted me on the back, congratulating me on my speedy recover, while others scowled at me for being the source of their twenty-four hour duty on the perimeter of a major hostage situation. Finally, I made it to the Easytown Mobile Command Unit.
The MCU was a massive wheeled hoverskiff variant, designed to provide real-time command and control to high-profile situations. The unwieldy beast was better suited for driving down the four-lane freeway than the crowded alleys of Easytown or of flying gracefully through the air, but it could do both, bringing the command suite to where it was needed most.
Right now, the damn thing was simply a place for wet cops to get out of the rain and have a cup of coffee.
“I don’t care what they’re demanding,” Brubaker shouted from his office far in the ba
ck of the MCU. “We aren’t negotiating with those dickwads. You hear me? No negotiations.”
“That’s not how a hostage situation works, Chief Brubaker,” a male voice I hadn’t heard before replied.
I stood on my tiptoes to see if I could figure out who it was back in the office with him, but I couldn’t make him out. The only thing I could see was the back of a blond head with short, styled hair and the shoulders of a dark blue or black suit. Brubaker glanced beyond the man and I ducked back down to avoid being seen by him.
The only reason I’d come to the MCU was to get the latest intel on the situation. Otherwise, I’d have just gone to Warehouse Six and made my stand. It wasn’t a great plan, hell, it wasn’t even a smart one, but frontal assaults were my specialty.
Like I said, I spent a lot of time in the hospital, and the NOPD Officer’s Union insurance plan worked on overdrive for me.
I wondered what I’d do as a replacement once I was let go. I examined vidscreens and maps on the walls of the MCU while I listened passively to the officers manning the communications systems.
Lieutenant Fairchild’s SWAT team was in position around Warehouse Six, where they believed the bulk of the hostages to be. Snipers were on top of the shipping container walls, ready to engage any threat they scoped.
Our electronic countermeasures unit had also been called into play. The defensive team was actively jamming all signals coming from or going into the Dockyards that weren’t from a police radio, while the offensive team had tapped into the building’s security systems and watched everything that Karimov’s people did. They hadn’t seen Karimov in several hours, though, and a rumor circulated that he’d somehow managed to slip the net.
I doubted it. There had to be another explanation. The guy had been able to run his synthaine operation from here, without anyone finding out about it except Ortega—that I knew of. In reality, I had no idea how many people he’d killed since Branch Corrigan wasn’t much of a talker while he tortured people in his videos.
Two of the MCU’s vidscreens held images of the Dockyards. One was a real time satellite feed showing Warehouse Six and the immediate area that switched between thermal and naked eye views intermittently, while the other was of the registered blueprints from when the buildings were originally built.
I studied the satellite thermal image view for a while. I saw hundreds of heat signatures inside the warehouse, but it was nearly impossible to tell who was a hostage and who was a hostage taker. With few exceptions, all of the signatures were a giant blob of white.
When the screen switched back to the normal view, I examined the warehouse from above. Nothing really stood out as special or a place where a sniper could conceal themselves to fire at the SWAT guys as they advanced. I did note how the placement of the shipping containers resembled a series of concentric half-circles with the ends terminating at the water’s edge.
The city had a token riverine force, primarily used for fishing bodies out of the Mississippi. It wasn’t capable of transporting part of the SWAT team in stealth for an amphibious attack. They could stop some of the criminals from escaping by boat though, which is why they were currently arrayed as a blocking force out toward the Gulf, and one of the reasons why I didn’t think that Karimov had escaped.
Not that they’d be able to do anything if Karimov’s people got in one of those big cargo ships, I mused. They’d slice right through those trawlers like a hot knife through butter.
Besides noting that my Jeep was still where I’d parked it, there wasn’t much else to see on the satellite imagery, so I switched my attention to the blueprints. There were several places highlighted on the screen, indicating possible points of entry for the SWAT breaching team. I studied the blueprints for almost ten minutes without anything jumping out at me. There were no secret underground tunnels connecting warehouses or hidden rooms where people could ride out a hurricane until the storm passed—although, I’m not sure why I’d thought that was even an option. The water table down here was so high that a hole filled with water after only eighteen inches, probably even worse right next to the water.
I nudged one of the officers scrolling through additional imagery and cross-referencing it with MainFrame data to determine if there were options that no one was seeing here in the MCU. “Any luck finding a way in that doesn’t involve getting a bunch of hostages killed?”
“Not yet, Detective,” she replied, noting the golden badge I’d pinned to my belt.
I could tell that she didn’t want to be bothered, but I needed to know who was talking to Brubaker, so I asked her.
“FBI hostage negotiator,” she replied tersely.
“Ah. Makes sense.” I stepped back. “Thanks for the info.”
“Sure,” she said without missing a beat as she continued to scroll through the data. I began to turn to see if there was something else in the MCU that would give me inspiration to break the stalemate at the Dockyards when something on the officer’s screen caught my eye and I edged closer.
“Excuse me, sir,” she said, sliding her shoulders out of the way so my wet clothing wouldn’t touch her.
“Sorry,” I replied, easing back slightly. “Can you scroll through those historical satellite images again?”
“I’ve been through them fifteen times,” she stated. “There’s nothing here.”
“Can you just humor me, please?”
“Sure. Why not, I’m not going anywhere until this thing is over anyways.”
She began advancing the images, spaced about twenty-four hours apart; some more, some less, including several nighttime shots. Ships came and went at the piers, most often unloaded and reloaded within the time between images. By the time she’d gone through thirty images in the space of two minutes, I was convinced about what I’d seen.
“Go to the satellite image from the moment we learned about the hostage situation.”
Another glance over her shoulder at my badge; she was trying to determine whether or not to follow my instructions. After a few seconds of deliberation, she typed in the command and advanced the images a few times, then began reversing them until she came to where she started.
“Son of a bitch!” I whooped. “He’s on that old cargo ship across the channel.”
Sure enough, in all of the images, a rusty cargo ship had been docked across the channel from Warehouse Six. I’d noticed several boats pulled up alongside the old dock and trucks parked at various times of the day and night at the end of the jetty.
“Forrest? You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” Chief Brubaker’s voice erupted from down the hallway.
I pointed at the satellite image on the MCU’s vidscreen, realizing that the cargo ship wasn’t in view. “Chief, I know where Karimov is. Probably where the synthaine production facility is too.”
“What do you mean you know where he is?” Brubaker said, pushing his way through the press of bodies inside the command unit. “You’re telling me he isn’t in Warehouse Six with the rest of his people and the hostages?”
“I don’t think he is,” I replied, shaking my head.
I waited for him to get through the crowd and then pointed to the smaller vidscreen in front of the female officer. “Can you go back a few weeks and then begin moving forward?” She complied and I pointed at the old cargo ship while she advanced the images slowly. “That ship has been moored up on the jetty across from the warehouse for several months, maybe longer, I’m not sure. See how every day new container ships come in, get unloaded and leave, while that thing stays there?”
“Sure, but—Wait, there are boats and trucks coming and going to it, but it never leaves.”
I smiled. Chief Brubaker still had the gift for investigative work. “That’s right. Then, right around the time that the standoff began, some smaller boats made their way from the warehouse side toward that bigger boat. Obviously, we can’t see where they go since this is just a photograph that happened to be taken at the right time, but I’d be willing to bet a few w
eeks’ pay that they went to that cargo ship.”
“Our analysts have been staring at this place for almost forty-eight hours and haven’t seen shit. You sneak in here, soaking wet, and figure it out in a few minutes.” He looked up from the screen to me. “Who does the boat belong to?”
“Uh… I hadn’t gotten that far yet, Chief.”
He patted the female officer on the shoulder. “Get on that, Gracie. Find out who owns that boat and what its story is.”
She nodded, gritting her teeth so hard that the muscle along her jaw threatened to jump from her skin.
“Come on, Forrest. We have a few things to talk about.”
“I’ve got some bad news for you, Zach,” Chief Brubaker stated once he’d closed the door to his tiny office in the MCU. It was the first time I could remember him calling me by my given name instead of my last name.
“If it’s about the district chiefs’ panel vote, I already know.”
“You do?” he asked, seeming genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. Someone from Internal Affairs notified me this morning.”
“Those sonsabitches,” he groused. “They weren’t supposed to notify you; I was. Probably sent a courier droid with a message to the hospital, didn’t they?”
“No, it’s not like that, Chief. IA didn’t officially notify me. A friend of mine works there and she came to the hospital to tell me what the results were.”
He scowled. “Your friend? You mean that skirt they sent to entrap you? She shouldn’t have told you anything; it wasn’t her place.”
“If she hadn’t, I’d still be at the hospital and you wouldn’t have a potential lead,” I countered.
“Okay, granted. Now, go back to the hospital and finish your treatment so you don’t come back and sue the department in a few months when you develop health complications due to inadequate treatment.”
“I received the full treatment,” I replied, omitting the part where the doctor had told me he wasn’t sure it would take since I’d flooded ten hours’ worth of stem cells into my bloodstream in twenty minutes. Details.