by Greg Rucka
“This is how it’s going to work,” Steinberg said to her over the subcutaneous. “We wait for the Hawk Team to present and approach the vehicle for loading. As soon as one of us makes visual confirmation that Doctor Rose is with them, I’ll open fire, take out the pilot first, then light them up.”
“You’re going to get a shot through the cockpit canopy?”
“You’re not the only one who can hit a target,” Steinberg said. “Give me a little credit.”
“Just a little. And while you’re doing this, I’m just to sit on my thumbs, then?”
He ignored her. “What they’ll do, they’ll try to get into the ship, and they’ll be moving to protect Rose, right? The moment I open fire, you activate the beacon, recall Rogers and the dropship. Since I’ll have opened fire, the Hawk Team will be orienting on my position, laying down suppression to cover their evac. You still have your silencers?”
“Already equipped,” Jo confirmed. “One for each.”
“While they’re trying to get Rose to the ship and take me out, you pick them off quietly. We do this right, they won’t even know you’re here until it’s too late.”
“It’ll never work,” Jo said, not because she meant it, but mostly to see how easily she could press Steinberg’s buttons.
There was a brief pause. “Are you saying that because it’s my idea, or because it requires you to follow orders and wait for a signal?”
“Mostly the former.”
“Figured. Do it the way I’ve said, Jo. I’m relying on you to kill them before they kill me.”
That sobered her, killed the playfulness she was feeling. “I won’t let you die.”
“I’m not asking for a promise, just your best effort.”
“I won’t, Jonathan,” she told him, in absolute seriousness.
There was another pause, and Jo thought that was the end of the discussion, and it was, because the next thing Steinberg said was, “Here they come, northeast side.”
It wasn’t the direction Jo had expected, and for a moment she wondered if all the careful positioning for the ambush would be for naught. Then she saw them, six men in combat dress identical to that of the mercenary she’d downed earlier, all of them carrying their M16Cs, moving in a diamond formation around another man, a seventh, and even without seeing his face, she knew it was Rose.
“It’s him,” she said.
“Can you confirm?” Steinberg hissed.
“Who else would it be?” she shot back
“Do not engage, Jo! Let me confirm.”
The diamond was moving quickly, perhaps twenty meters from the side of the dropship. Jo had flexed her fingers around the grips of her two pistols, thinking that she’d need them closer, that she was asking a lot of the silenced Falcons to hit all their marks at this range. The mercenary in the lead of the formation was speaking into a radio as they moved, she saw, and she wondered if he was in communication with the pilot aboard the dropship, or another command post somewhere else entirely. That worried her, because they hadn’t considered that option. If the Hawk Team had backup nearby, they could find themselves in exactly the same scenario they were constructing, but on the receiving end, instead.
The cluster of mercenaries had closed to within fifteen meters of the dropship, but they were slowing for some reason, and Jo watched as the men on the flanks seemed to tense, looking about more cautiously.
“Any time you want to do this.”
“I confirm Rose,” Steinberg said, and then she heard him shoot, and it wasn’t the sound she expected, not the Fairchild’s terse chatter, but instead the solid, heavy report of a Magnum round being fired once, twice, three times in quick succession.
From there, it was exactly as Steinberg had said it would be. Jo had slapped the beacon on her tactical vest with her right hand, activating the signal that would guide Rogers and the Institute dropship to their location, then leveled her pistols and begun picking her shots. By the time the Hawk Team realized they were in a cross fire, half of them were dead, and by the time they’d resolved to do something about it, all of them were.
The whole firefight couldn’t have lasted more than fifteen seconds.
When it was over, she, Steinberg, and Rose were the only ones left alive, and the dropship was overhead, drawing smallarms fire from the jungle as Rogers brought it in for a landing. Rose had previously been cuffed by the Hawk Team, and as Steinberg had moved to load him into the Institute dropship, he’d told Jo to search for the keycard. She’d gone through the bodies quickly, finding the card on the same man who’d been using the radio, and on impulse, answered the radio, as well.
Steinberg hadn’t liked that she’d done that, and told her so even before she was aboard.
“What the hell was that?”
“A joke,” she’d said, pulling herself up through the open side door.
“You think there’s anything here that’s funny?”
“You mean aside from you?”
“Shut up and get inside!”
The dropship had lurched, taking to the air once more, and Jo had turned to slam the side door shut, and a bullet had pinged into the side of the hull, perhaps an eighth of an inch from her forehead. Jo had reacted instantly, dropping and drawing. Peering out of the dropship as it continued its rapid ascent, she’d seen the figure of a lone man in the compound below, the muzzle flash from his rifle as he’d fired uselessly after them.
She thought she recognized him, but in the darkness and with the distance, couldn’t be sure.
Wonder what his problem is, Jo had thought.
Shortly into their flight back to London, Doctor Rose spoke for the first time, his manner and tone both imperious and instantly unlikable.
“You obviously have no idea who I am,” he told them. “I am one of Core-Mantis OmniGlobal’s most pre-eminent scientists, and if you think that they will suffer my abduction without an immediate and savage reprisal, you’re both as stupid as you look. Return me at once, or face the consequences.”
“Consequences?” Steinberg snapped. “What the hell do you know about consequences, you fat-assed son of a bitch?”
Rose’s mouth drew into a thin-lipped sneer. “I am a prisoner of a trade war, and entitled to the protections described by the Geneva Convention of 2011. Release me, or else!”
“Or else,” Steinberg echoed, directing his words to Jo first. “I guess that means if we don’t do what he says, he’ll unleash another superflu, kill another forty million or so.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” Jo agreed.
Rose sighed, wearily, as if already exhausted by having to deal with people he so clearly thought were his lesser.
“Is it money, is that it?”
“What?” Steinberg snapped.
“You want money, of course. It’s all your kind ever does. Very well. Name your price and—” Steinberg punched him in the jaw, sending him sprawling from his seat on the bench to the deck. Jo had thought the one punch would be it, but then she realized Steinberg was about to follow it with a kick, and she lunged forward, restraining him.
“Jonathan!”
“I won’t kill him,” Steinberg said, not truly fighting her hold, but not quite willing to back down, either. “I won’t, even though if anyone ever deserved it it’s this piece of shit. I just want to hurt him a lot.”
“You can join the queue,” Jo said. “But that’s not who we are, right? We’re the good guys, right?”
Steinberg had continued to stare at Rose, who was now seated on the dropship floor, wiping blood from his lips with the back of his manacled hand.
“Right?” Jo asked.
“God, I don’t know,” Steinberg told her.
Rose had remained silent for the rest of the flight.
Carrington was waiting for them when the dropship touched down at the Institute, and no sooner had Jo and Steinberg unloaded Doctor Rose than they were loading him again, this time into the Rambler. There’d been no explanation given by Carrington as t
o what they were doing or why they were doing it, only the direction he’d given to Steinberg.
“The Cooler, in Wales,” Carrington had said. “Best time, Jon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Joanna?”
“Sir?”
“Keep a weapon on Doctor Rose, please. If he so much as scratches his nose, feel free to shoot him.”
“Yes, sir.”
Beside her, in the backseat, Doctor Rose had made a noise that Jo could only interpret as a contemptuous snort.
How events had brought Jo, Carrington, Steinberg, and Rose to an abandoned listening post in the Wye Valley, here and now, she still wasn’t certain. Whatever Daniel Carrington had planned, he was playing it close to his tweed vest.
She followed Carrington into the largest of the buildings, smelling stale air and wet concrete. The lights inside were off, but the diffused daylight lanced through slit windows high on two walls, illuminating disturbed motes of dust. She heard the echo of Steinberg’s voice from further inside, the sound of his progress as he prodded Rose along. Carrington had stopped near a massive fuse box affixed to the wall, secured with a very old-fashioned-looking padlock. He took a key from his watch chain, opened the padlock, then reached into the box and threw a switch.
Somewhere, a generator kicked painfully to life, and one by one, the ceiling lights overhead flickered on, old fluorescents that made Jo’s eyes hurt. They were in a long hallway, she saw, all concrete—floor, walls, and ceiling. At the end of the hall was a stairwell leading both up and down.
“This used to be an Echelon intercept station,” Carrington said, closing the fuse box once more and affixing the lock back in place. “Early iteration, Echelon II, I believe. Decommissioned back in 2010, when the NSA retasked most of their electronic intelligence gathering to private firms. I acquired it in late 2017 at Jonathan’s suggestion.”
“Jonathan has a passion for ugly industrial architecture?” Jo asked.
“No, this was just when we were beginning to get the Institute’s covert action capacity going,” Carrington said with a chuckle, resuming his way down the hall, toward the stairs. “Jonathan pointed out—quite rightly—that we would want secure facilities where we could bring agents—and others—for debriefings outside of the Institute grounds themselves. This is ideal; the location is secluded, and the construction itself was designed to inhibit the ability of others to eavesdrop on the location. I’ve had additional work done, as well. This is one of the few places in the world, Joanna, where no one can hear what you’re saying.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s seen much use,” Jo said. They’d reached the stairwell, concrete steps just like the rest of the building, and Jo waited while Carrington began to laboriously descend, following the direction Steinberg had taken Rose.
“This is only the second time, in fact. It’ll serve its purpose for us today, though. Should serve it quite well.”
They came off the stairs into the basement, a low-ceilinged rectangular room with a battery of generators and other equipment secured behind a chain-link cage. Jo noted surveillance cameras mounted in the corners, realized that she’d seen three others in the hallway above and the stairwell without truly noticing them. The door to the boiler room was open, and she could see Steinberg standing inside, Doctor Rose visible just past him, seated at a rather abused-looking card table.
Carrington stepped forward, and Steinberg moved out of his way to allow him entry, staying to the side long enough for Jo to enter, as well. There was only one chair and Rose was in it, and Jo thought that, arrayed as they were, the man should have been intimidated, but instead he watched their approach with the same blend of condescension and arrogance he’d turned on her and Jonathan during their flight from Hovoro.
“Doctor Rose,” Carrington said.
Rose fidgeted in his seat, then held up his shackled hands. “If you’re intending to offer me a position at your Institute, Mister Carrington, your pitch leaves much to be desired.”
“You think very highly of yourself, Doctor. Perhaps too highly for a man who has stood on the backs of giants to achieve not greatness, but infamy.”
“If I think highly of myself, sir, it is only because I know my own worth. What is it you want?” Rose asked, lowering his hands, as if his shackles were of only passing interest to him.
“Many, many things, sir, but from you, only this: a public declaration that you, as an employee of pharmaDyne, engaged in experiments that led to the 2016 outbreak of influenza A subtype H17N22.”
“You have no evidence that I was responsible for that,” Rose said.
“I have you.”
“I admit nothing.”
Carrington nodded, as if he had expected as much. “Then you have no objections to my handing you over to Doctor Friedrich Murray at pharmaDyne.”
Jo couldn’t remember ever seeing a person go pale so quickly in all of her life.
“Ah, that’s right,” Carrington said to Rose. “He wants you dead, I forgot.”
Rose fidgeted in his seat some more, twisting his hands against his shackles, rubbing them together nervously.
“If it helps,” Carrington said, “I couldn’t care less about you.”
Rose looked up, suddenly, confused. “I beg your pardon?”
“Arrogant bastard,” Steinberg murmured in disgust.
“I don’t care about you,” Carrington said. “But I do care about pharmaDyne, and I’d like to hurt them. Your public declaration will help me to do that.”
The confusion remained on Rose’s face, his eyes narrowing. “And then what?”
“Then you’ll be free to go, Doctor Rose. You can return to the cold embrace of the women of Core-Mantis, or slink off to the research labs of Zentek, or sell what little is left of your soul to Beck-Yama. I could care less what you do after I get what I want. But I will get what I want.”
“But Murray—”
“If you make a public declaration, sir, Doctor Murray will no longer be any threat to you. He will be far too busy tending to his own survival to worry about what damage you can do him, because the damage will have already been done.”
Rose brought his hands up, rubbing his mouth, and Jo could see the wheels spinning in the man’s mind as he tried to see a way out of his situation. He mumbled something to himself, looking down at the table, then brought his eyes up again, gazing at Steinberg, then Jo, and finally Carrington in turn, and the fear that had risen had vanished, and the arrogance had returned.
“It was an unfortunate, but unavoidable, consequence of my work,” Doctor Rose said. “I was handcuffed by pharmaDyne, by the ridiculous restrictions that dullard Murray had placed upon my research.”
“And that is your excuse for mass slaughter?” Carrington asked, mildly.
“I do not need to excuse myself,” Rose said, tightly. “A necessary by-product of discovery and creation is destruction. And what was truly lost, really? If there is one endlessly renewable resource on this planet, it’s human beings. We breed like maggots on a corpse.”
Jo saw Steinberg tense, the muscles in the man’s jaw clenching. For a moment, she was afraid he would lash out at Rose a second time.
“Do you have the first idea what I actually did for pharmaDyne, Mister Carrington?” Rose asked. “I did the work of the Almighty. What I did for dataDyne—what I do for Core-Mantis—it is the work of God, sir. I create life. I make no apologies for my actions. There was an opening in dataDyne’s bioweapons division, and I pursued it.”
“So the virus was developed as a weapon?” Carrington asked.
“I said I saw an opening, not that I had taken the position. At the time, I was simply working on a gene-therapy to destroy the influenza A subtype. I had no idea that the DNA I was using would be so unpredictable … or would yield something that the bioweapons division would find appealing.”
“Then it was an accident,” Carrington said, and it wasn’t a question.
“A happy one, yes. By applying work
from other divisions, I could secure a position more suited to my talents,” Rose said, annoyed.
“Without thought to the consequences.”
“I can’t be held responsible for the results of my work,” Rose said, evenly.
The statement was so utterly ludicrous that Jo almost laughed, sure that Rose was making a joke. But his expression, the certainty on his face, the absolute denial of any wrongdoing, made her realize it wasn’t. Whether or not Rose himself believed what he was saying, she didn’t know.
That he expected them to believe, though, was patently clear.
“Do we have a deal, Doctor Rose?” Carrington asked.
“If you can be trusted to keep your end of the agreement, then yes,” the man said. “If for no other reason than it’ll destroy Murray.”
“Then you’ll remain here for the time being. Mister Steinberg will watch you.”
Rose moved his look to Jo, clearly trying to undress her with his eyes.
“I’d much rather have the young lady guard me,” Rose said to Carrington, edging forward in his seat. “I’m certain she and I could—”
“No,” Carrington told him, and turned and left the room, motioning for Jo to follow him.
She’d gone out the door when Steinberg called her back. She looked to Carrington and he shrugged, then continued his ascent of the stairs, and so she turned back to find that Steinberg had emerged from the boiler room, was pulling the door closed behind him.
“Yes?” she asked.
Steinberg waited until Carrington was out of sight, then said quietly, “The thing on the dropship.”
“Where you wanted to beat the hell out of him?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to the Old Man.”
It took her a moment. “You lost family?”
“My mother’s side,” Steinberg said. “They lived in Toronto.”