Gridlock

by Byron L. Dorgan

  “Had an accident, did we?” he said, half to himself.

  He’d packed his bag a couple of hours ago. Some underwear, a couple of shirts, a second pair of jeans, some money, and his three passports—one Dutch, one U.S., and one Canadian. Plus his iPad and a universal charging device that would work on all of his toys including the custom-built laptop which he used for his serious shit.

  For a moment he stood, bag in hand, staring at Karn. It had been fun with her while it lasted. But she was a whore, like just about every other woman he’d ever known, including his two sisters. The fact that she was smart had hurt the most when he’d discovered that she’d cheated on him.

  All things came to an end eventually, and over the past few months he’d started to get the feeling that the Haven was about done for him. No one was left here who was any challenge. A bunch of new kids had been filtering in over the past seven or eight months; squatters who wanted to party 24/7 and never make a contribution to the game worth crap.

  He’d heard about some really good shit starting to happen in Bangkok, and maybe down south on the beach near Tha Chang. More stoners mostly, but he suspected that there might be a decent gamer or two among them.

  “Here’s looking at you, kid,” he said to Karn. Casablanca was one of his all-time favorite movies, and he’d always wanted to use that line.

  In the living room he put his bag down by the door and went back to his worktable. Time now, he figured, to set the virus loose. He almost wished that he was a little bird in some corner somewhere in the States, just to watch all the frantic people scurrying around when their lights went out.

  The lone figure on the Roma side hadn’t moved, nor had the second one reappeared, which was a little troublesome. But then the image from downstairs came up, and the three men were in the lobby. One of them was holding a pistol on the other two with one hand while with the other he held a phone to his ear.

  At that moment Dekker’s cell phone chimed the Lone Ranger’s theme from the William Tell Overture.

  The man with the pistol was looking up at the hidden camera, taunting him.

  Dekker answered on the second ring. “Ja.”

  “Do you know who this is?”

  Dekker recognized the voice, though the man’s face on the computer screen was unknown to him, as was that of one of the other men. But the third who’d just looked up was the VEVAK officer from Tehran who’d delivered the thumb drive.

  “You’re the North Dakota shooter. What are you doing here with Colonel Dabir?”

  “We’re here to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  “This man,” Makarov said. “We found out that he came here to kill you and retrieve his thumb drive.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name doesn’t matter, what does matter is that he works for Russian intelligence. They want to stop you.”

  “Then shoot him and leave,” Dekker said. “I’m busy.”

  “What about Karn?” Dabir asked. He seemed to be genuinely concerned.

  “I’ll send her down and she can go home with you. I know all about her.”

  “Yes, I understand. But I want to talk to her.”

  “I’ll send her down,” Dekker said, and he lowered the phone and was about to switch off when Makarov gestured to him. He raised the phone. “Yes?”

  “We need to talk before you launch the virus.”

  “I have been paid, there is no need for talk. Kill the Russian and go home.”

  “We can take the money back,” Dabir said.

  Something clutched at Dekker’s head. “You’ll have to find it first,” he practically shouted.

  “Not so difficult as you’d think.”

  An image on the large screen caught Dekker’s attention. A man was in the tunnel from the Roma building. It was a second hammer blow to his ego. He could fight the bastards, but only on a battlefield of his own choosing. Someplace far away, isolated. Thailand loomed large in his imagination.

  He switched cameras to the one downstairs in the back stairwell. The ground-floor door was blocked from the outside by construction debris, including a large mass of concrete that had apparently been accidentally spilled and left to harden. The important part was that no one was in that stairwell.

  If they wanted a fight he’d give it to them, starting now.

  “All right, come up,” he said. “But you’ll have to use the stairs, the elevator doesn’t work.”

  “We know,” Makarov said.

  Dekker watched the three men go through the front stairwell door and start up. He brought up a program on his laptop and entered a few keystrokes which locked the tunnel door in the basement. Next he opened the valves from the building’s rooftop reservoir which directed all of the water into the tunnel, and before he shut down he watched as the deluge began.

  One down. The virus would have to come later, there wasn’t enough time now.

  67

  NONE OF THE lights in the stairwell worked, and the climb to the tenth floor was mostly in darkness until near the top where the corridor door was open and a dim light spilled out. Sumskoy and Dabir were winded but for Makarov, who always was in good shape, it was nothing.

  “Do you think he’s waited?” Dabir asked.

  “He has if he’s interested in keeping his money,” Makarov said, and he motioned for them to hold up a few steps down.

  The building was absolutely still. No voices, no music, no machinery noises.

  “Mr. Dekker, we’re coming up,” Makarov called softly. He motioned for Sumskoy to go first.

  “I bloody well don’t like this,” the FSB officer said, but he went the rest of the way up, hesitated at the open door, then stepped into the corridor. “One light at the other end, nothing moving.”

  “Which apartment?” Makarov asked.

  “First one on the right,” Dabir said.

  “That door is open,” Sumskoy called from just around the corner.

  “Damn,” Makarov said. He pushed past Sumskoy and went to the open door where he held up for just a moment before he eased inside the apartment, his pistol at the ready. But he knew that the kid was already on his way downstairs the back way.

  A computer monitor on a worktable in the front room showed images of the front stairwell, the lobby and elevator shaft, and other views including one of the Roma settlement on the other side of the parking lot. The small fire was still casting its glimmer into the night.

  Sumskoy and Dabir had come in right behind him, and it was Dabir who found the body of Dekker’s minder.

  “She’s been dead for twenty-four hours at least,” he said at the bedroom door.

  Makarov phoned Dekker, who answered on the first ring.

  “Too bad.”

  “I’ll find you sooner or later,” Makarov said. “And when I do I’ll kill you.”

  “You’ll try,” Dekker said. “But I’ll be long gone.”

  The hacker appeared in the stairwell and he raised his middle finger at the camera and hurried the rest of the way down to the lobby and outside.

  “You won’t get far without money,” Makarov said, but Dekker had already rang off.

  “What now?” Sumskoy asked.

  Makarov turned to Dabir. “That’s your call.”

  “We have to find him.”

  “We’ll be too late. He just has to go to ground, somewhere close to release the virus.”

  “That doesn’t matter as long as we can get to him before the Dutch or Americans, kill him, and retrieve the thumb drive and his computer. Nothing can get back to Caracas.”

  “Or Moscow,” Sumskoy said.

  Another image on the monitor caught Makarov’s attention. It was in infrared. For a long moment or two he didn’t quite understand what he was seeing until he realized that it was the view of what probably was a maintenance tunnel beneath or between the buildings. Water was pouring in from somewhere beyond the camera, and a man, already chest deep, was caught right there, his head against the
ceiling.

  “Who is it?” Dabir asked.

  “I don’t know, but in about five minutes he’ll not be a problem for us,” Makarov said. “Dekker is.”

  “But where the hell did he go?”

  Makarov stuffed the pistol in his belt and went into the bedroom where he stepped over the girl’s body and checked the closet and the chest of drawers. A woman’s clothes were there but one drawer in the chest was empty and several hangers in the closer were bare.

  “He’s gone,” he said, coming back to the living room. “If we hurry we might still be able to catch him.”

  “Then what?” Sumskoy demanded. “I’m not getting into a gunfight in the middle of Amsterdam even if we do catch up with him.”

  “That’s my job,” Makarov said, stepping out into the corridor and racing for the stairs. “Go home,” he called over his shoulder. “Both of you.”

  68

  OSBORNE REACHED THE steel door at the end of the tunnel, and it was closed, the very cold water already high on his chest and rising. Holding his breath he ducked under the surface and groping around in the darkness found the latching mechanism. It was a short handle in the middle of a pair of metal bars that slid into slots on either side of the door and could be retracted by pulling the handle to the left.

  He pushed it first to the left and then to the right, but it didn’t budge a fraction of an inch, and he surfaced to catch his breath, the water already a couple of inches deeper. The Gypsy hadn’t known if the door on this end would be unlocked. But it was, and Dekker had opened some water valve somewhere to flood the tunnel.

  Which meant there were probably cameras down here, and the bastard had picked his time, and by now was probably gone. It was also likely that he’d seen the approach of the three men who’d been lurking in the shadows on the east side of the building and had cooked up some nasty surprise for them as well.

  He’d underestimated Dekker. They all had.

  Dark enclosed spaces had never really bothered him, nor had he ever been particularly afraid of drowning. And what little anxiousness he’d ever felt about either situation had been knocked out of him in FORECON training and out in the field behind enemy lines. But when he’d gotten out of the Marines he’d figured that all that was behind him. And nothing out in the North Dakota badlands was as difficult as the Marines, except for the winters.

  He turned and looked back the way he had come. It was at least eighty meters to the Roma end of the tunnel, but there was no guarantee that even if he made it that far before the water reached the ceiling, that the steel door would be unlatched from his side, or that the Gypsy would be there to hear his pounding to get out.

  Overcome, adapt; the basic principles had been drummed into the head of every FORECON recruit from day one. The RECON’s creed had been just as simple:

  Realizing that it is my choice to be a Recon Marine I accept all the challenges.

  Exceeding beyond the limitations set down by others shall be my goal.

  Conquering all obstacles I shall never quit.

  On the battlefield I shall stand tall above the competition.

  Never shall I forget the Recon Marine’s principles: Honor, Perseverance, Spirit, and Heart.

  A RECON Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine.

  He wanted to get mad at himself; it wasn’t supposed to end this way, not with a job unfinished, not with Ashley and everyone else he would be letting down.

  Overcome, adapt. The water was nearly up to his chin as he started back to the Roma side, using his hands along the low ceiling to help propel him forward. And as it was he nearly missed the fact that the tunnel had grown a little lighter; almost light enough for him to see the rough concrete of the curved ceiling and the gray painted utility pipes that ran along its length.

  He was suddenly at a narrow break overhead that led ten feet up to a steel grate that opened to the night. For a moment it made no sense, until he realized that the tunnel floor had been flanked by concrete drainage ditches. The grate was the opening to the storm sewer system, down which the water would eventually escape. But not fast enough in this case.

  Within a minute or so the water reached the ceiling of the tunnel and Osborne rode it up until he was in reach of the grate. Bracing his back against one side of the storm sewer drain, his feet against the opposite wall to give himself leverage, he tried to push to grate out of the way, but his feet slipped away.

  The grate had moved a half-inch but then had come up against something that held it from going any farther.

  He braced himself better and tried again. This time the grate moved a little farther up, but again came up short.

  The water was now within inches of the top of the sewer drain so that he had to hold his head back in order to breathe. The edge of a panic niggled at the back of his head; not strongly enough to make him lash out or flail around, but enough for him to understand that he was in a very bad spot from which he had only a minute at the most to get himself out of before he would drown.

  All that was holding the grate in place was either a rusty steel pin or bolt. And it was ready to give. Nearly ready to give. He needed either time or more force, a tool or something, neither of which he had.

  Except for his prosthesis.

  The water already over his chin, Osborne reared back, took a deep breath, and turned a somersault, his feet over his head. Bracing his shoulders against the side of the drain, and holding himself in place with his outstretched arms, he hammered at the grate with his titanium leg. Once, twice, a third time, every ounce of his strength into the effort.

  “Goddamnit.” The thought rebounded in his head. “Not like this! Not here! Not now!”

  He kicked again and this time the grate came free from its restraint, and moments before he was about to pass out, he clawed his way upright, shoved the grate the rest of the way off and out of the way, and rose up out of the water into the clean night air.

  69

  THE BARREL FIRE on the Roma side of the Haven sent shadows flickering across the sides of the apartment buildings. Dekker held up behind a pile of broken concrete road barriers, looking over his shoulder toward the front door of his own building.

  The North Dakota shooter hadn’t come down yet, nor had the other two, but he didn’t think they would be long behind him.

  When he had crossed the parking lot water had been gushing out of the storm drain, but as he watched a figure rose up almost as if it were a sea monster coming out of the deep, and Dekker shrank back, his heart racing, his stomach so sour all of a sudden that he felt as if he were on the verge of throwing up.

  The son of a bitch in the tunnel hadn’t drowned. But he’d seen the bastard down there with no way out. No escape.

  He looked back to where his lo-lux cameras had spotted the lone figure in the shadows on the north side of the Roma camp. The one who’d waited with the other. Dutch cops, most likely. But if he was still there Dekker couldn’t make him out. Nor were the Gypsies anywhere to be seen. But he had to count on them still being somewhere near.

  The man who’d climbed out of the access tunnel headed in an oddly stiff gait across the parking lot, keeping low and moving in a zigzag pattern as if he thought that he would come under fire at any second.

  Any minute now he would run into the three coming down from the tenth floor, and Dekker had half a notion to stick around to see what came next. Whatever, it would be interesting. The bastards shooting at each other would make for a nifty video game, as if a hundred others just like it weren’t already out there.

  Clutching his laptop under his left arm, his go-to-hell escape-kit bag slung over his shoulder, he worked his way to the south around the Roma camp, moving carefully from one shadow to the next, keeping low and as much as possible behind construction debris and other piles of garbage including the rotted-out hulk of a small riverboat that had been dumped here sometime in the past before he and Karn had moved in.

  Within mi
nutes he’d made his way around to Westerstraat which was deserted at this hour of the morning, as he expected it would be. Glancing once more over his shoulder he pulled out his cell phone and headed in the general direction of the Central Station where he might be able to find a cab.

  He brought up an airline ticket search program and asked for any flight to Bangkok, coming up almost immediately with Lufthansa 2301 that left at ten until nine this morning. He booked a round-trip first-class seat, and entered an American express credit card under Wayne Hansen, the name on his Canadian passport, but before he submitted it he transferred the transaction to another program of his own design. Two simple voice commands aged the booking, making it look to the credit card and airline computers that he had bought the ticket eight days ago.

  It was a minor next step but one that had become increasingly important since 9/11 where same-day bookings raised red flags in just about every airport in the world.

  When he was finished he pocketed his phone and glanced again over his shoulder in time to see what he thought was the figure of a person ducking into a doorway half a block away.

  He watched for a full minute but when nothing moved he put it down to nerves, and headed again down the street.

  If Karn were here she would know the right words to calm him down. She’d been the only person in his entire life who’d had that power over him. She called it love, which was nonsense of course, because she’d played him like a fiddle. She’d been nothing more than a spy from the beginning, a whore for hire.

  Nevertheless he wished that she was here with him right now. Bangkok would have been fun with her.

  70

  THE GROUND FLOOR lobby of the apartment building was in darkness, and nothing moved outside the open door. Makarov, his silenced pistol drawn, raised a hand for Dabir and Sumskoy to hold up. Something didn’t feel right to him. Some inner voice was warning him to go with care.

  “Is it Dekker?” Dabir asked softly.