by John Conroe
Drone Hunter units were deployed for several years all along the Zone wall. Advanced autonomous net shooting units to capture the terrorist drones intact for military study. They caught like ten, maybe eleven Zone drones. By then, the drone network inside the Zone had adapted. A little UAV like a Kite would tease the DH units and when they came after it, a more lethal unit would ambush the Hunter, burning off its power supply with a laser or blasting a spray of flechettes into its rotors. Zone Defense lost like forty of the expensive Hunters before scrapping the idea and just leaving the skies to the big armed and armored Render drones. Now they had one tailing me like it was gonna spring the net on a freaking Berkut.
“Ajaya, you have three email messages from the same source. A freelance reporter named Mitchell Lee. That’s the same reporter who authored the article in the Ghost file with Pasha Gachev’s interview and the Zone guard. He is requesting an interview about your interview.”
“Write him back and ask if he can meet in a half hour. If yes, let’s set it for the Honest Bean coffee shop.”
I walked for a while, feeling out my ankle and attempting to loosen it up. I avoided looking up, but occasionally there were shadows that seemed much too large to be birds.
“Ajaya, Mitchell Lee agrees to meet you at the Honest Bean thirty minutes from now. I have ordered an Ublyft car to ensure your punctuality.”
“Thank you.” Me and my AI politeness.
Chapter 20
Mitchell Lee was taller than me and really thin, almost skeletal. He had really, really curly dark hair and a tightly trimmed mustache. Wearing khakis and a checkered button-up, he reminded me, at first sight, of a modern Ichabod Crane.
I waved an arm from my booth in the corner of the coffee shop, probably unnecessarily, as so many people were glancing my way, he probably could have figured it out on his own. Plus my waitress never seemed to be more than twenty feet away. How did Astrid deal with all this attention? Truth told, she had been dealing with male attention from about fourteen on, so maybe the extra amount supplied by celebrity status wasn’t a big stretch for her. Bothered me, though. Snipers like to hide.
“Ajaya Gurung, so nice to meet you,” Mitchell said, shaking my hand.
“Really? You think?”
“Well, yes, of course. The man who rescued Team Johnson? Who wouldn’t want to meet you?”
“Probably Teams Uptown Girls and Bone Shakers. They’d have a shot at number one, wouldn’t they?”
He pulled back, his grin fading. “That’s pretty… cold.”
I laughed. “I’m kidding. This newfound attention is disturbing. Nobody cared a few days ago; now I’m somehow interesting to everybody. I don’t trust it,” I said, waving a hand at the faces turned our way.
His disturbed expression cleared and he nodded. “Oh, yeah, I can see how you might feel that…” he said, but then the waitress was right there.
“What can I getcha?” she asked, directing her comment at me instead of him as she topped up my already full cup.
“Ah, mocha latte, please,” Mitchell said.
“Sure thing,” she said, smiling at me. Not sure if she even glanced his way.
“See what I mean?” I asked as she reluctantly left the booth. “A week ago, I couldn’t get her attention for, like, ten minutes.”
“Yeah,” he said, frowning a little. Then his expression cleared and he became excited again. “I’m so glad you accepted my email. You must have dozens of interview requests.”
“Yeah, like fifty-three at last count, but none of them had what you have,” I said.
“What I have?” he asked, confused looking.
“Yeah, this will be a quid-pro-quo-type deal. I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine.”
“What, ah, what questions do you have for me?” he asked, much less sure.
“You wrote an article a while back, about ghosts in the Zone. I have questions,” I said, watching his response. If it was I, and I had written an article about sightings of people in the Zone, I would have been instantly curious about that question. Instead, his eyes got wide and he looked suddenly uncomfortable, maybe even worried.
The sound of fast-moving feet hit my ears and I spun around, my brain realizing just in time that the feet were very, very small. A small blonde pixie came to a crashing halt in front of me, her mother approaching with an embarrassed expression.
“Momma said you saved Ashhtrid,” she said, possibly six or seven years old. Both of her middle two upper front teeth were missing in action.
“I, ah, helped her. She’s my friend, so we have to help friends, right?” I asked. Behind her, the woman froze, a tentative smile on her face.
The little girl nodded, then dove forward to hug me. At least six people were touching the sides of their right eyes. I hugged her lightly, giving her mom a smile back.
“Come on, Joelle. Let’s leave Mr. Gurung to his coffee, okay?” the mom said, gently peeling the little person off me. Secure in her mom’s arms, Joelle waved at me as her mother took her back to their table.
Mitchell still looked uncertain but his eyes held a gleam much like the one Cade Kallow had when we were doing the big interview. He nodded. “How about question for question?” he asked.
I nodded. “Lead the way.”
“What’s it like when you come across human remains… in the Zone? Or do you not even notice them anymore?” he asked.
“I come across them every single trip inside. They’re everywhere and no, you never get used to them. Most of the time, I try to figure out what happened to them, how did they die. I’m always careful not to disturb them. I think that would be very disrespectful. In there, it’s human against machine, so I feel for every human I find.”
He opened his mouth to ask another one, then closed it at my raised eyebrow. Then he nodded. My turn.
“Did you find any other credible accounts of people living inside the Zone?” I asked.
He scratched his head, sighed, and finally spoke. “Yes. A couple of others, all Zone Defense. But between responding to my ad for sightings and me contacting them, they all changed their minds and refused to talk to me.
“You’ve refused to go on Zone War for three years. Why now?” he asked.
“They always wanted to put cameras on me before. That would be a real quick way to get dead. This was an on-air interview, not putting me at risk inside the Zone,” I said. “Where, in the Zone, did those other good sightings happen?”
“Only one responded with that much detail when they emailed me back. Said it happened on the lower west side of the island, about level with SoHo. What drives you to keep going back into the Zone?”
“I have a family to take care of,” I said. He raised both eyebrows, the message being that there were other ways to earn a living. I explained. “New York is expensive, nowadays even more so than London or Tokyo. There are five of us. The only skill I have that lets me meet those financial obligations is Zone salvage. Did you get into trouble for that article?”
He looked troubled, glancing around to see if anyone could hear us. “I was warned by my editors that it was extremely irresponsible to suggest people could live in the Zone. It was suggested that I should post a follow-up that basically admitted that my first article wasn’t even close to being true, just spooky ghost stories of the dead. What do you think about the Zone Reclamation Bill?”
“I don’t know any of its details. Saw something on the news that said it would require the military to go in with boots on the ground. As much as I would love to see Manhattan drone free, that would be a bloodbath.”
He jumped in before I could ask my question. “But then you’d lose your way of living? That flies in the face of your previous statement about supporting your family. You don’t really want to lose the Zone at all, do you?”
“It’s my turn. Were you ever visited by government agents regarding your story?”
“I’m not answering that. You’re not being straight with me. I think I have e
nough,” he said, reaching up to touch his right temple.
“Well, Mitchell, so do I,” I said, touching a button on my shirt. People get so used to iContacts that they forget about more mundane recording systems. “Be very careful what you write. You bailed early. My answer to your last question is kind of a doozy. But now you won’t have it. Maybe another reporter would like the story. Maybe Agents Black and White would like to see how you responded to my questions?”
He grimaced and started to say something but then glanced around quickly, seeing all the faces still turned in our direction. Then he picked up his latte and left. The door closed behind him as I realized he’d just stuck me with the bill.
Chapter 21
Back home, I found Aama cooking in the kitchen. After giving her a peck on the cheek, I went into my lair. My window was open, maybe halfway. Aama sometimes did that to air out my room when my stuff got stinky. A pile of dirty clothes including my stealth suit was on the floor, so that seemed pretty likely. Mom wasn’t home yet, but I had called her back on the ride from the coffee shop. We’d ironed out an agreement on the Trinity thing.
“Map of the Zone please.”
Manhattan appeared on my wall. “Plot approximate position of sightings, including my own.”
Four dots appeared, two near Wall Street, two spaced out on the West Side, moving up toward SoHo.
If the dots were connected, they’d form a kind of sideways curve, like a left-hand parentheses that had slipped down.
“Highlight the area inside the curve.”
The inside of the parentheses became a sunny yellow. It covered Wall Street, Broadway, part of Trinity Place, West Street, and too many others to list.
“Zoom in on the yellow area. Plot the center of the area please.”
The highlighted part expanded, as did the detail, and a red dot appeared near the beginning of Hudson Street.
Hudson Street. Something about that street… some tidbit I had tucked away a long time ago.
“Any buildings of note near the dot and particularly on Hudson Street?”
“Ajaya, 60 Hudson Street is the site of the old Western Union building. After Western Union moved its headquarters to New Jersey, the building became a massive Internet interconnection hub via fiber optic cables. The hub is still active to this day, as the connections were made entirely maintenance-free just prior to the Manhattan Attack.”
Bing, bing, bing, bing… we have a winner. Now to get back in. I leaned back in my chair and turned to look at the big road map of Manhattan I’d thumbtacked up (don’t like those sticky alternatives; they always fall down on me) when we’d first moved in.
Zone Defense was a lot of things—arrogant, autocratic, and remarkably unhelpful to the salvage operator—but they were competent. Getting into or out of the Zone without them knowing was… hard. Back in the day, Dad and I played a what-if game. What if we discovered something so valuable that we had to sneak it out? How would we do it? Or what if we left something valuable inside the Zone and they wouldn’t let us back in to get it? We constructed elaborate scenarios for fun but then systematically destroyed those plans, step by step, cutting away the crazy and complex, replacing them (where we could) with simple, more effective ideas. In the end, we weren’t left with much. But a few of our schemes might actually work. However, it wasn’t time for those.
“Call Trinity.”
“Calling Trinity Flottercot…”
“Hello, Ajaya. Thank you for calling me back.”
“Hi, Trinity. Whatcha got cooking?”
“Well, I’d like to follow up on that team approach thing you suggested. Have you go in with Team Johnson, then go off to provide over watch. Brad’s not excited, mind you, but he’s willing to listen. The problem is, I’m not sure of what target would be valuable enough to risk it?”
My wall map has old-fashioned colored pins to go with the thumbtacks. Red, green, black, and gold.
The red represents what it always does—danger. Places to avoid for various reasons: structurally unsound buildings, rat nests, dog packs, and clusters of drones.
The green ones are mostly my safe havens, although a few represent some untapped resources like the FBI satellite offices that probably have excellent weapons armories.
The black ones are reminders of places I’ve almost died. They’re like little reality checks to keep my ego beat down around my ankles. I got up and put in a new one near the green pin that represented my beer cooler safe house.
There are only two gold ones, one at the top and the other near the bottom of the island. Gold is the universal symbol of bling. Wealth, money, assets. I used to have more gold pins. They used to represent untapped money sources that I had identified, but I emptied all those long ago. But, along the way, I created some other potential sources of income. Those two dots were the reason I wouldn’t lose a second’s sleep if the drones all died and Manhattan was reopened to the masses. That reporter shouldn’t have bailed.
I often avoid drones altogether when I go into the Zone. Ghost around the little bastards, which, with Rikki’s help, isn’t all that difficult. But don’t think for a second I don’t hate the things, even as much as they fascinate me. I’ve spent days on days doing nothing but trapping or shooting drone after drone.
Especially the last two years. I wasn’t kidding when I told Astrid about long-range sniping UAVs. If anything, I just didn’t convey to her how often I did that. The problem is that while hundreds of drones have fallen prey to my traps and bullets, I’ve only been able to bring out a small percentage. But my dad trained me to be neat and tidy, to organize, observe, and keep what I kill.
The gold dots represent drone depots, caches of dead drones I’ve been adding to almost every trip into the Zone.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea of something he might be interested in,” I said. “How about a storage container with a whole pile of dead drones in it?”
The sound of her sucking in a tiny breath was all I heard for a few seconds. “How many and what kinds? And for Christ’s sake… how?”
“I’m a hunter, Trinity. I hunt drones. The container I’m thinking of has between a hundred and two hundred drones in it. A whole slew of UAVs but also a few Leopards, probably twenty or more Wolves, and at least three Tigers.”
“You’ve been stockpiling,” she said.
“Got no way to get them out. You’d need something like an eight-wheeled armored vehicle to get them all. Know anyone with such a thing?”
“You’d split the proceeds?”
“I’d go one third to the Johnsons and two thirds to the Gurung family. I already killed them and stacked them. We just gotta drive in, empty the container, and drive out.”
“Where?”
“Nope. I’m keeping that close to the vest.”
“You don’t trust me?” she actually sounded hurt.
“I’m more interested in operational security. The Spiders set traps ahead of both your last missions… how did they know? But also, I don’t trust Brad.”
“You think we told them?” she was getting upset.
“Indirectly. They listen, you know. They put sensitive units as near the walls as they can get and they monitor the soldiers monitoring them. One of the major reasons I’ve kept turning you down. Listen, why don’t you talk to Brad. If it’s a go, if he’s interested, I’ll give you the general area, but only in a secure setting. I’m not telling Brad the exact location till we’re almost there. I learned from the lesson he taught my dad.”
She was silent for a few moments. “Alright. I’ll talk to him. What’s your guess on the bounty value?”