“Don’t know,” I replied. “I think the idea works whether he wants to rescue his son or just shut him up. Either way, moving Jovani gives him a reason to act.”
“It’s a messy scenario,” Veraldi said. “Let’s say they decide to kill our prisoners. Can we actually stop them from doing that? If we move Jovani and it gets him killed, then what?”
“If we move Jovani and it gets him killed, then the world has one less Russian mobster in it,” Raven replied. “I don’t see the downside.”
“She’s right,” added Andrew. “We’re not a law enforcement agency. We don’t need to keep our prisoners alive until they go to trial. Pang is in our hands now, and there’s nothing he can do about it. If we decide to use him as a pawn, that’s just how it goes.”
The ruthlessness of Andrew’s comment made my skin crawl, but essentially my logic was the same as his. We needed the enemy to make a move, and using Pang as bait was the only way to do it. If he got killed as a result, that was unfortunate but ultimately not our problem. It was better than the summary execution we’d threatened him with on the airplane.
I didn’t love the fact that I was becoming just as ruthless as my companions in Section 9, but it was the truth and that was that. Keeping the Secretary-General alive was worth risking Jovani’s life, and I couldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Jovani’s life is of no consequence to me,” added Thomas, “but if the enemy stages a dramatic public attack, it could cause us problems. We are undercover here.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a huge problem,” Andrew replied. “We can always play it off as an attack against a confidential informant.”
“A public assassination attempt against an informant would be international news,” Veraldi pointed out. “It would make it much harder for us to maintain our cover.”
Raven spoke up. “Even if Solovyov doesn’t care about his son at all, someone will relay the news that active participants in the plot are being moved. I think we can be sure that they will attack, and the only question is whether they will try to rescue Jovani or assassinate him.”
“That’s probably true,” I said, “but we’re running out of time here. Unless we can expose everyone involved in this plot, they’ll make their move. If we want to keep the Secretary-General alive, we need to take the initiative. We have to.”
“I think Tycho’s right,” said Andrew. “We need to do this.”
“I agree,” added Raven. “It’s a risk, yes, but we need to keep them reacting to us instead of carrying out their own agenda.”
“Looking at it logically,” Thomas announced—which got a chuckle, because that was the only way Thomas knew how to look at anything, “it is usually better to take the initiative and force your enemy to react. Whether this is the best way to do that I don’t know, but it tracks in terms of being the most reasoned response.”
“Probably?” Veraldi sounded thoughtful, like he wasn’t sure he liked having to fill in for Andrea in the role of field commander. “It’s a risky move, but I think it’s the best move available to us. If it goes bad for any reason, I’ll take full responsibility. Now, who are we going to use? I need someone who’s louder than a bullhorn and leaks like a sieve.”
“Every major politician in the North Atlantic States,” I said. “Except the ones we already know are involved.”
Andrew frowned. “That doesn’t make sense though. We don’t have any reason to tell all these politicians about a prisoner transfer.”
“We do if we present it as an anonymous tip—we tell them the transfer has been arranged through official channels but is really being coordinated by the SFIS in order to infiltrate someone into the NAS prison system. Once the politicians realize that the Sol Federation Intelligence Service is keeping someone prisoner in NAS territory, they’ll tell the Inspector General’s Office. Unless they’re involved in the plot, in which case they’ll tell Solovyov’s people instead.”
“Good approach,” Veraldi said, tilting his head in thought. “All we have to do is see who informs us about the transfer. We can ignore those people because we’ll be carrying out the transfer ourselves. If any of them don’t, then we can assume that person is involved in the conspiracy. I think this plan could work.”
“What if our superiors assign someone else to arrest the evil foreign agents?” asked Thomas, no hint of irony in his voice.
“They won’t,” replied Veraldi. “We already have priority on any foreign intelligence cases in NAS territory. Andrea made sure of it. If any SFIS agents do get captured as a result of this mission, we can arrange to have the charges dropped.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Thomas replied. I still couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. As one of the “evil foreign agents” in question, it didn’t seem like a time for jokes. If the NAS caught us, the situation was not going to end well for us at all.
“I think this is a good plan,” Andrew admitted. He sounded somewhat reluctant, but it was probably just because he’d had to praise my plan. “My investigation into MetSec has turned up a little corruption, but none of it seems related to the case. This may be our best opportunity to expose everyone involved in the conspiracy.”
“Okay,” replied Veraldi. “This is a classic canary trap. Let’s get started putting it together, and maybe by the time Andrea gets back we’ll have this case all wrapped up.”
No one said anything about how optimistic it was for him to even say this. No one had to.
17
Section 3 provided four vehicles for the prisoner transfer. Two would serve as decoys, one transported Sergei Li and Lihua Federova, and the last was for Jovani Pang. The vehicles left the safehouse in two groups on a staggered schedule, each following different routes from London to Woodhill. The plan would minimize the chance of a single point of failure, though the roads did necessarily force some overlap. We hadn’t leaked any information about the location of the safehouse, only about our intended destination. If anyone took the bait, they’d have to do it on the highway.
Raven and I followed Jovani’s transport northbound along the M22. One of the decoy vehicles had merged onto the highway and its path would keep it just a kilometer ahead of Jovani’s for the next twenty minutes. This was one of the few vulnerable sections of the transfer, when half of the potential targets were in virtually the same place at the same time.
Thomas commanded a fleet of Section 3 drones from the Chelsea safehouse to watch the entire transfer from above.
There’s no sign of enemy contact, he reported. The next three kilometers in your area are clear, but there are multiple civilian vehicles beyond that. Likely slowdown.
Should we deviate? I asked.
Vincenzo replied. No, just stay with the decoy.
Despite our overhead surveillance, I watched the street view around us carefully. An attack can come in many different forms, after all. Android proxies, Augmen, improvised explosive devices. There were many possibilities and no way to know which the enemy would choose.
Raven turned to me. “You look nervous.”
“Something feels off,” I replied.
“Of course it does. Andrea’s missing and the NAS has a mole.”
“It’s more than that,” I tried to explain, not even certain myself where the feeling was coming from. “I don’t know if it’s my subconscious putting together pieces that didn’t fully register, or patterns lining up or what, but something’s telling me we’re in danger.”
“Of course we’re in danger. That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
I shook my head, my eyes still scanning the road. “Not just right now, not just today. Something’s coming for us. I can feel it. Like a whisper at the edge of silence.”
She looked at me with concerned expression, then turned to the interior display and watched the highway outside.
We soon caught up to the cluster of civilian vehicles Thomas had mentioned and Raven’s car slowed to maintain distance from the transports. As we passed the exit
for Luton, Thomas spoke up again.
A motorcycle just turned onto the highway behind you. Do you see it?
I turned around and saw a sleek black bike with a helmeted rider less than a kilometer behind us. He was dressed in black and quickly gaining on us. I slid over to the rear seats and adjusted the zoom on the interior display. I was relieved to see that what I’d thought was a nanosuit was just black riding leathers with graphene armor.
I see him, Thomas, I replied. Is he our guy?
Too early to tell.
The biker suddenly sped up, passing us on the right and pulling up even with Jovani’s car. I slid back over to the front of the car and picked up my submachine gun. It was clever to use a motorcycle. They were one of the few street-legal vehicles to offer almost total manual control.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Raven said, as if sensing my thoughts. “He could just be a civilian driving aggressively.”
She had a point, and I couldn’t work out how the man on the motorcycle would get Jovani out of an armored vehicle and onto a bike moving at high speed down the highway anyway.
He sat up and craned his neck for a few seconds, then leaned forward with his head turned as if to peer into Jovani’s vehicle. Of course there was no way for him to see inside, but the movement seemed odd to me.
I shook my head. “I don’t like it, Raven. I think he’s scouting.”
“Yeah,” she agreed and followed up on our shared channel. Thomas, do you see any other suspicious vehicles?
He appears to be alone, Thomas replied.
The man on the motorcycle suddenly reached down to his right and came back up with a revolving-cylinder grenade launcher.
This was not a rescue attempt.
Without exchanging a single word, Raven and I went into action. Raven tapped the center console to set the car to pursue the bike, and I updated Vincenzo on our status.
We have contact, I said. The target is armed with an MGL.
The man aimed down the road ahead and fired. There was a deceptively understated action from the weapon. A small black streak erupted from the muzzle, and there was little more than a light shake as the chamber rotated the next round into place. A second later, A ball of fire exploded beneath the decoy vehicle. White tendrils of flame licked up from the road and the plasticrete cratered.
The decoy car was thrown into the air. It landed on its front end then slammed back flat onto all four wheels before spinning out of control. The car clipped a civilian vehicle in the left lane, then crashed into the center barrier and rolled onto its roof.
Apply tactical vehicle intervention, ordered Vincenzo. Do it now.
“Raven?”
“I’m doing it.”
Vehicle intervention was a formalized method of running a target off of the road. It violated the basic principles of AI navigation, so applying it meant disabling almost every autonomous control and driving the car manually. At the typical speeds and traffic density of just about every terran population center, that was not something to be taken lightly.
The car accelerated, and we gained on the motorcycle. The shooter had turned and was taking aim at Jovani’s vehicle when he saw us barreling down on him. He pulled up his weapon and gunned his motor.
“We can’t catch up like this,” I said. “We’re going to lose him in the traffic up ahead if he tries to run.”
“Take the controls,” Raven replied. She unfastened her seatbelt and slid to the back of the car to retrieve her rifle, then she climbed back over the seat and chambered a round.
“Don’t let me fall,” she called, then she tapped to release the locks. She shouldered the door open, and I grabbed onto her waistband with my left hand. Wind whipped her hair wildy, and her eyes narrowed to slits as she leaned out over the open road streaking by at two hundred kilometers an hour.
She braced her rifle against the roof of the car, then took aim and fired.
The round cut through the biker’s right arm. It separated from his body just above the elbow and skipped along the highway, the hand still gripped tightly around the grenade launcher.
Thomas sent another message. Three motorcycles just entered the highway behind you. Thirty seconds to contact.
Raven fired another round, and the biker slumped forward. The motorcycle veered left and right before the autobalancer recovered it. It slowed and we began to catch up.
She slipped back into the car moments later and closed the door. “I don’t know what we can do about three of them,” she said grimly.
I could only agree. With three more hitmen approaching, there could be no doubt about the outcome. One of the three would get close enough to take a shot at Jovani’s vehicle before she could possibly kill them all.
“I have an idea,” I said as I slung my weapon across my chest. “Take the controls back.”
The rider might have been dead, but his bike’s AI was still keeping his motorcycle upright. I popped the door on my side of the car and climbed out onto the hood.
Tycho, this is crazy. What are you doing?
Bring us even with the dead rider.
I kept low and planted my hands flat against the car. The wind screamed past, and my clothes whipped under the rushing air as Raven accelerated to meet the motorcycle ahead. Once we were just under two meters away, I kicked off with both legs and jumped against the wind.
I landed hard on the dead man’s back. The bike leaned far to the right on impact and swerved wide until the autobalancer kicked in. The momentum threatened to fling me off, but I gripped the dead body and pulled against it. The corpse slipped off the bike instead of me, and I settled onto the seat.
I gripped the controls, locked the brakes, and dipped the bike low to the left. The tires screeched and billowed white smoke as the motorcycle slid sideways and burned off speed. Traffic behind me parted to avoid a collision, and I came to a standstill in the middle of the road.
Between the twin streams of swerving vehicles, I could see the three motorcycles racing in from the south and going full-throttle to catch Jovani’s vehicle. I snapped up my weapon and fired down the highway.
The riders scattered, weaving between vehicles to avoid my gunfire. That was all I needed. The three bikers had to slow down to get through the tangle of cars and shipping transports. It would put a little distance between them and Jovani, and with any luck, we’d lose them on the exchange further north.
That was my plan, until I saw one of the motorcycles jump the center divider and tear off against the oncoming traffic on the southbound side of the M22. I opened the throttle and accelerated back down the road, vaguely aware of the other two bikes following suit.
I weaved past the vehicles ahead with an eye on the biker in the southbound lanes. He was moving slower than I was, dodging oncoming cars as their AIs tried to predict and avoid his movements. It didn’t take long for me to close in, but I couldn’t get a clear shot. It was unlikely any stray gunfire from my weapon would penetrate a passing vehicle on the road, but I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I’d find another way.
The northbound and southbound halves of the highway split around a rocky hill up ahead, forcing the riders to either give up the chase or re-enter the northbound side. Anticipating their choice, I moved into the far right lane and matched speed with a shipping transport to keep from being seen. As the first of the bikes jumped the divider and pulled ahead, I took aim and fired at him from behind.
I watched a cloud of red mist explode from his chest as my shots found their mark. He slumped forward, then started to turn back toward me. I fired two more bursts and saw the glass of his visor shatter before he slipped from his seat and bounced along the road like a ragdoll. Past his slowing, empty motorcycle, I could see the other two riders speeding ahead near Raven’s car.
I may have been able to hit both from that distance, but I wanted a clean line of fire. I couldn’t risk hitting Raven. I maxed out the throttle and leaned into the wind. As our three motorcycles passed her, she sent
a message.
Get him next to the car.
I understood what she had planned. She wanted me to draw the rider back so she could apply tactical vehicle intervention.
Copy that, I said.
The bikes were staggered, and I had nearly reached a good angle with the furthest back when he noticed me. Luckily for the both of us, he was smart enough to know I was too close for him to use his grenade launcher. He holstered it on his bike and drew a sidearm instead. I swerved left behind him to evade, and Raven’s vehicle suddenly shot forward and got between us.
She cut hard to the right. The bike slammed into the car and flipped end over end over the hood. The rider was thrown clear, twisting and pinwheeling through the air to land on his head. His body folded over itself at improbable angles as he slid along the plasticrete. Raven swerved around the motorcycle as it came back down but drove straight over the rider.
I raced along the road in pursuit of the remaining assassin and noticed the opening of a tunnel up ahead of us. I could just see Jovani’s vehicle, already streaking toward the tunnel entrance. Not far behind him, the remaining motorcycle was gaining rapidly. There was simply no way Jovani’s car could outrun it.
My own bike was already going about as fast as it could go, meaning that I stood no chance of catching up with the hitman before he took a shot at his target. My only hope was that he missed, buying me the time to catch up and stop him. I didn’t need to get all the way there, I just needed to get close enough for a clean line of fire.
I slipped between vehicles at dizzying speeds, teetering on the boundary between control and reckless abandon. The wind was a chorus of screams. The world beyond my target was a tunnel of light and color like analog static. My eyes burned and my face stung.
And still, I wasn’t fast enough.
18
Two hundred meters into the tunnel, Jovani’s car burned. I locked the brakes, slid to a stop, and took in the scene. The car had flipped onto its right side, and bright blue flames licked out from the bottom of the vehicle and crept up the sides. The assassin stood next to it with his weapon out, aiming carefully. As an engineer in a previous life, I knew what he was trying to do: attack at the structurally weakest parts of the vehicle.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 108