The Shadow Mission

by Shamim Sarif

  “Really?” I inquire, still tapping on my tablet keyboard. “I’m just wondering—does Thomas tell you what he’s having for dinner every night?” Honestly, I’m trying not to grin at her discomfort.

  “You know what I’m wondering?” Hala snaps.

  “What?”

  “Why it’s taking you so long to do your job.”

  “Just because you watch TV shows where some actor from geek central casting does this in ten seconds . . . ,” I huff. “Look, I can disable the entire network right now. But someone might notice that kind of brute attack.”

  But even Caitlin is getting antsy, coming around to look over my shoulder. Methodically, I look for devices that could be the cameras and try to verify them online. Within another minute, I’ve chosen the most likely ones and found my way into the camera feeds. Disabling them is satisfying, watching each streamed image drop into darkness on my screen.

  “Let’s move,” I say. There’s a strong chance that someone else has those feeds on their cell phone. Who knows if they might care enough to come and check up on the place if they noticed that the cameras were not live anymore? We can’t waste any time.

  Hala’s already at the top of the side fence, and once she’s explored, she gestures us to a piece of fence at the rear that’s hidden behind industrial-sized garbage bins. She cuts open a hole right there. Caitlin and I bend down to slip through it.

  “Stay in touch,” she says, as we move past her.

  “Of course,” Caitlin says. The plan is for Hala to stay out here. She’s the best at climbing, and it makes sense for one of us to be separated out, to stay nimble in case we come up against any problems inside. Meanwhile, Caitlin scans through the few windows while I check the doors for alarms. None of them seem wired to anything, so we choose one and use a small explosive charge to open the lock. Stepping in gingerly, we both wait for a moment to get our bearings. There’s no beeping or flashing indicating an alarm. Slowly, we track our way forward, guided by Caitlin’s low flashlight.

  Closed boxes are stacked up in neat piles at the back of the warehouse. Open boxes sit out in front of them—some of them contain piles of clothing, while the contents of others gleam metallic and strange in the beam of the LED light.

  We are heading over to explore when a rustling, low and constant, attracts our attention. Little tapping noises too. We both freeze, holding our breathing still. A couple of furry creatures shoot across the floor, and burrow into the cardboard of the boxes. I relax.

  “Just rats,” I say.

  “Ugh,” Caitlin breathes. “Can I just wait here?”

  I have to smile. Caitlin will unflinchingly face bullets, knives, and fists, but faced with some oversized vermin, she’s cowering behind me like a slab of Jell-O.

  “Come on, this looks interesting,” I say, indicating the boxes lying ahead of us. We both hurry forward, eager to explore—and I trip over something and fall. Caitlin reaches to grab me, but she trips too. Righting herself, she gives me a hand up.

  “What was that?” she wonders, pointing her flashlight.

  A taut wire is strung across the warehouse. As soon as I see it, I know why. It’s some kind of deterrent, some kind of trap for unwanted visitors.

  “Dammit,” Caitlin says. “Booby trap?”

  I nod, grabbing the flashlight from her. I walk down the length of the wire. It runs into one side of a bank of lockers on the back wall.

  “This wire must be linked to something. An alarm, an explosive . . .”

  “No shit. But if it’s a bomb, why aren’t we blown sky-high already?” Caitlin asks.

  While we talk, we’re both trying to break into the lockers that the wire runs into.

  “Could be they set it up with a time delay,” I say. “In case someone tripped it by mistake, they have time to reset. . . .”

  Caitlin grabs a knife from her boot and helps me prize open each locker, one at a time. So far, each one of them has just clothes or shoes, just like lockers in a changing room. But I can still see that wire running through the back of them. I follow it along and down to the last row of lockers, low by our feet, ending with one in the corner, the hardest to reach. Caitlin inserts her knife blade into the edge of the door and levers it hard. It swings open. My stomach takes a hard dive into my shoes and a strangled sound gurgles up from the back of Caitlin’s throat.

  It’s a bunch of explosives stuffed into a length of pipe and capped and sealed at both ends to create enough pressure to do some serious damage. Now, I’ve seen these before, and I’ve even practiced defusing them. But that was with a remote-controlled robot, or some proper equipment to hand. Both those options aren’t foolproof but they often work, given enough time. But we don’t seem to have that luxury. Because connected to the bomb is a timer, and it’s down to four and a half minutes.

  “What’s that keypad?” Caitlin asks, pointing to a digital box next to the bomb.

  “With the right code, it can stop the timer. And the bomb.”

  “Any chance of cracking it?” Caitlin wants to know.

  “Eight digits. That’s, like, a billion possible combinations. . . .”

  “Just get out of there!” From outside, Hala’s voice comes into our ears.

  Her advice seems better than anything else I can come up with. Caitlin grabs my sleeve and we both run like crazy for the door. I’m fleetingly pissed off about all the evidence in here that might be lost, but I’m right behind Caitlin as she flies outside. We start bolting across the yard toward our bikes when something touches us, like a burn. Involuntarily, without thinking, we both turn and run back inside the warehouse.

  Caitlin and I stand there on the threshold, staring at each other.

  “What the hell was that?” she asks.

  I shake my head. It felt like a searing heat, no more than a second, maybe two, but it took away all my control. Call it a reflex, or primal self-preservation, but something outside my rational mind was impelled to stop moving forward and get back. And clearly Caitlin felt the same, or we wouldn’t both be standing here, inside a booby-trapped warehouse, scared to leave.

  “Let’s try again,” I say. “We can’t stay here.”

  We venture out once more, but as soon as we step out of the door, the same heat hits us, and I try not to let it stop me, but it’s impossible to power through the pain. Both of us are compelled to retreat back to the warehouse. Caitlin shines a light onto our faces and limbs. No injury, no burns.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Hala growls in our ears. “Get out!”

  “We can’t,” I pant.

  “I saw this tested when I was in active service,” says Caitlin. “It’s an ADS.”

  “Can you not be an army nerd for two seconds?” I snap.

  “Active denial system. It’s a military weapon that heats up water and fat molecules in the top layers of skin, so it feels like a burn, and it makes you run. There are scaled-down versions in lots of countries, used by law enforcement to scatter protesters, or on boats to stop pirates attacking. . . .”

  While she’s talking, I’m back at the locker, watching the bomb tick down to two minutes and forty-eight seconds. I use my own flashlight to scan around the warehouse—there are no other windows or exits. So now I wave the beam around searching for something, anything, that could help me here. In a corner, near a rusted sink, is a power cleaner—one of those things that uses a water jet to dislodge heavy stains like oil or paint. In the meantime, Caitlin is explaining to Hala what the ADS might look like, so she can try to find it and disarm it. From London, Amber comes in too, scouring satellite images of our location in case she can see anything that could help.

  I lift the cleaner to the sink and run water into it, willing the cascade from the tap to gush faster. Then I drag the machine over to the explosives. Under two minutes left.

  “What if we somehow resist the urge to retreat and keep going past the ADS?” I ask Caitlin as I peer at the nozzle on the end of the cleaner. Made of metal, it forms a h
igh-pressure jet of water, activated with a trigger handle.

  “If we stay in its range, we’d be cooked,” Caitlin says. “Microwaved like popcorn.”

  So either Hala has to find the ADS and disable it, or I need to defuse this bomb. Either solution has to happen within ninety seconds.

  Caitlin helps me move the machine and plug into the closest wall socket. The clock taunts me, moving backward. 1:18, 1:17 . . . Really, I need more power than an ordinary electrical outlet can give me, something to create a burst of harder pressure. A proper bomb disposal squad would use a PAN disrupter on a device like this—something like a small water cannon. A length of shock tube, a controlled explosive charge—enough to make the stream of water it shoots cut through the pipe. I have no idea if my homemade version will hold up, but I have to try. I fire it up with fifty seconds left and aim it at the pipe. At least the pipe is PVC, not metal. The thin water jet starts to cut through, and I’m practically panting from both adrenaline and a sense of relief that this could work—when the jet stops. In fact, the whole bloody machine shuts down.

  I stare at it, wild-eyed. The motor must have a safety switch that cuts off the power when the jet pressure gets too high. It’s the kind of standard safeguard that manufacturers put into basic household equipment, but it’s the last thing I need right now. I smash open the plastic door that houses the motor of the cleaner, pulling at wires in desperation.

  “I see a guy, top floor of the warehouse next door. He’s holding something,” Hala says from outside. “I’m going for him now.”

  “Forget it, don’t risk it,” Caitlin instructs.

  We both know we need at least thirty seconds to make it out and clear the blast zone. Even if Hala disarms the guy or scares him off, there’s just no time for me and Caitlin to run.

  We’re down to twenty-five seconds now, so I have to make this water jet work. My fingers fumble with wires, successfully shorting out the safety switch. Within a split second, Caitlin’s turned the machine back on again. My arms are shaking so badly that I can hardly aim the thing, but her hands close over mine to steady them . . . fourteen seconds.

  The jet spray bursts out, covering our faces in a fine mist, but it bores through that pipe, slowly but surely. I watch the clock tick down to five seconds, four . . . And then the outer layer of pipe breaks apart, the water floods the casing, and the clock goes blank. My eyes are bursting out of my head. It takes a moment before I can gasp for breath, becoming aware of Hala’s voice from outside, in my ear, desperate.

  “Talk to me,” she says, stressed. “Are you okay?”

  Like they’re made of rubber, my legs give way, and Caitlin grabs me by my arms and steadies me.

  “Jessie defused it,” Caitlin tells Hala. “We’re fine.”

  I lean over, still panting from stress. Behind me, I’m aware of Caitlin taking photo after photo of the weapons and the big crates of clothing, which seem to be shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with slogans. Going over to help, I move the top layers of guns so she can photograph the ones beneath. But now Hala comes in again.

  “He ran and took the ray gun thing with him, but I got pictures of it,” she says. There’s a brief pause and when she speaks again, her voice holds urgency. “He must have called someone. There are two cars coming this way,” she says. “They don’t look friendly.”

  My legs are still shaky, but I push myself to stagger out, Caitlin propelling me with a strong hand on my back. Hala meets us at the door. I don’t need to look for the approaching cars—the distant squeal of their tires makes it clear that they are bearing down on us. We edge through the gap in the wire, one by one, then run like mad for the bikes. Hala fires hers on first, jamming on her helmet to cover her face from the arriving crew. Caitlin and I do the same.

  “Hold on,” Caitlin tells me as her bike roars to life. Skidding away from the vehicles which are just now screeching to a stop on the road, we all burst into the alleyway that runs behind the warehouse and emerge behind the cars, roaring past them and back onto the highway, before the men inside can do anything more than pull out guns and watch us go.

  10

  IT TAKES A LONG TIME for sleep to come, and when it finally does, my dreams are all about me trying to reach Kit’s school in time and yet never being able to get there. I guess it doesn’t matter how many miles I can run when I’m awake, or how resourceful Athena teaches me to be, there’s always some deep-seated insecurity that can haunt me when I’m unconscious.

  Even though my eyes are burning with tiredness, I’m relieved to wake up just before 7 a.m. I check my phone. As I scroll through today’s weather and news reports for Mumbai, a message pings in from Riya.

  Meet me 8:30 a.m. Juhu police station. Pls confirm

  Over the time we’ve known each other, Peggy has often diplomatically suggested ways for me to work on my people skills. Sometimes, I’m fine with new contacts, but other times it’s not clear to me how to reach out or form a bond. Certainly, I’ve already experienced some rocky opening exchanges with Riya. One of Peggy’s gems of advice is that offering someone a meal can often be a good way to break the ice. Keeping this in mind, I tap out a reply that’s more friendly than Riya’s curt text deserves:

  Good morning, Detective. Can I buy you breakfast?

  Congratulating myself on implementing this piece of etiquette, I go and brush my teeth while I wait for Riya’s reply. It’s taking some time, so I reckon she’s clearly tempted by my kind offer. That is, until my phone pings with her response:

  No

  Really? Would it kill her to just be polite? I spit the toothpaste into the basin, annoyed. Then I take a breath. One of my many life lessons from the past couple of months is that it’s better not to get upset by something beyond your control. I remember this excellent tip about 10 percent of the time, which is 9 percent more than I used to. That’s significant progress, if you ask me. I don’t bother responding to Riya any further though. Let her wonder if I’ll show up or not. Instead, I take my time in the shower, get dressed in jeans, a shirt, and a jacket, then walk down the hotel corridor to Kit’s room.

  I knock quietly, in case Kit’s still sleeping, but my mother is up and sitting with Peggy already. Both of them sip at cups of tea with delicate lemon slices floating in them. Kit’s in skinny jeans and a flowing paisley shirt, which is the kind of thing that would make me look like a tablecloth if I tried it. Peggy looks just perfect in a khaki ensemble—like a fashion ad for casual chic in a warm climate. They both seem subdued, so I just come out, as gently as I can, with the question that’s been on my mind:

  “When are the funerals for the girls?”

  “Probably day after tomorrow,” Peggy says. “Often, Hindus hold funerals within twenty-four hours, but these have been delayed. Forensics and . . . things.”

  Jittery, Kit gets up and pads over to the desk, scooping something up in her hand. Returning to where I sit, she takes hold of my fingers, slipping a small bracelet of darkly polished, gleaming wooden beads onto my wrist. They are intricately carved with tiny symbols.

  “I got these at a place around the corner,” she says. “They’re supposed to ward off bad spirits.”

  Peggy reaches for my hand to take a closer look.

  “It’s beautiful, Kit,” she says.

  “I have two more, for Caitlin and Hala,” my mother adds. I can just imagine Hala’s face when she gets this and is told nothing bad will happen to her ever again.

  “Do they work against terrorists?” I ask. I’m trying to be funny, or at least flippant, but Kit frowns.

  “I know you don’t go in for this kind of thing, but energy fields exist. You studied physics, Jess, you should know that better than any of us,” she says.

  I’m totally ready to challenge that mash-up of new age wishful thinking and the laws of physics, but a stern glance from Peggy helps me to keep it in my head. Instead, I mutter a “thank you” to Kit, glancing sideways at her. Her shirt is open at the neck, displaying a turquo
ise necklace that’s supposed to channel her inner energy lines. One of her many silver rings contains a magnet for balancing the ions in her body, or something. On her right wrist is a handmade bracelet of Tibetan prayer beads gifted to her by a saffron-robed monk. On her left is a delicate red thread that she got from a Hindu temple. Sometimes, it feels to me as if there’s nothing Kit won’t try in her quest to make sure she’s got all possible sources of universal flow and blessings covered. She’s always been like this. When other girls got the Harry Potter or Judy Blume collections, Kit gave me the complete works of Deepak Chopra. I’m just glad she got over the incense phase early in my childhood. The smell of that stuff still makes me tense.

  Meanwhile, Peggy is filling me in on what’s happening in London.

  “Amber is still looking for a financial link between Imran and Family First,” she explains. “And Thomas is analyzing the photos he got from Caitlin last night—the pictures of the crates of clothes and weapons from the warehouse.”

  “That’s great,” I say, only half listening.

  “What’s on your mind?” Peggy asks, attuned, as always, to the moods of everyone around her.

  “I’ve been summoned to the police station by Riya, the detective on the case.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” says Kit, “I’m not surprised she wants to see you. After you got to Hassan ahead of her, she probably wants to tell you off.”

  “Or perhaps she just has information to share,” Peggy suggests, always looking for a possible upside.

  As I leave, Kit pulls me back for a hug. I go over and hug Peggy too, just so nobody feels left out. For the first time, though, I feel the stress in their embraces. It occurs to me how much they must suffer when they watch us fighting through danger. If I think about it too much, though, it’ll make me soft. I turn away briskly and leave them without looking back.