Earthbound (The Reach, Book 1) (29 page)

She mouthed the word ‘What?’ but he ignored her, turning away and shuffling forward to the end of a garden row.  He peered around the edge and remained there for some time, still as a statue.  Eventually he turned back to her.

“We’ve got company,” he said.

“Who?”

He gestured for her to move forward and she followed his example, poking her head out only far enough to see who was out there.  Some distance down the aisle, two men stood quietly under one of the yellow bulbs.  One wore a suit, lounging against the garden bed with his hands in his pockets, and the other wore an earthy brown shirt the colour of ochre, black shorts and boots.

“What are they doing?” Ursie whispered.

“I’m not really sure, but whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

Ursie looked the man in the suit up and down.  He was unshaven and sported a tattoo of what looked like a star on his cheekbone.

“Is that an inspector?”

“No, he doesn’t look like he’s with the Enforcers to me.  More like a gutter rat who’s trying to look more upmarket than he really is.”

“This must be a sling, then.”

“If it’s a sling, why aren’t they making the trade?  Where are the drugs, and what are they waiting around for?”  Knile inclined his head.  “The guy in the brown shirt.  He’s a worker here.  There’s not much more I can figure out at this point.”

“Can we get past?”

Knile chewed his lip.  “Let’s give it a few minutes.  Hopefully they’ll just leave.”

They waited and watched as the men continued to talk quietly.  The man in the suit checked his holophone compulsively every few seconds, as if eager for an important message to come through.  There was a loud bang of a door being thrown open and both men looked up.  Two more men were heading their way from the opposite direction, laughing at some joke they were sharing.  One had
a thick beard and wore a jacket;
the other was thin and wiry and grinned with an almost feverish mix of excitement and trepidation.  They reached the first two men, and the one in brown introduced them to the man in the suit, who gave each of their hands a single firm pump.

“So what’s this about?” the man with the beard said loudly.

The man in the suit responded in a far more reserved manner, his voice not carrying to Knile and Ursie.  Knile strained forward and concentrated but he could only pick out fragments of the man’s speech.

“This is bad,” Knile said, shuffling back again.  “I don’t like it.”

“What do we do?” Ursie said, alarmed.

“We have to keep moving.  There’s not enough time to turn back now and retrace our steps.  Dawn is coming.”  He pointed across to the next row.  “We’ll have to head across and then try to sneak past them.”

“Won’t they–”

The door at the far end opened again, a little less noisily than before, and the men turned as one to observe the newcomer.  Knile saw his chance to move while their backs were turned.

“Go!” he said, diving across the aisle to the next row.  Ursie was caught off guard and hesitated for a moment, then dived after him, landing heavily on the concrete floor.  She gasped and clutched at her hip, which felt as though it were on fire.

“Ow!” she gasped.

Knile reached over and clamped a hand on her mouth, the intensity in his eyes telling her that she should not make a sound again, even if the pain was so bad that she thought her leg was going to fall off.  She bit her lip, fearing that she had made too much noise, that the men would turn and come to investigate.  She stared up at Knile, waiting to hear footsteps headed their way, but the men made no reaction.

“Here he is!” one of them called.  “Late as always, Binkowski.”

Knile took his hand from Ursie’s mouth and pointed to the row adjacent to the men.

“We have to go along here.  There’s too much light over by the windows.  They might see our shadows.  Do you understand?”

Ursie nodded.  “Yeah.”

“Can you walk?”

“I’m fine.”

Knile wasted no more time, moving into a crouch as he headed up the aisle he’d nominated.
  Ursie followed close behind, her hip stinging but not greatly restricting her movement.  Over the top of the garden they could see Binkowski approaching, a sho
rt and rotund man with a pushed-
in and deeply wrinkled face like a pug.  He was still trying to button up his brown shirt as he waddled toward the men.

“Screw you,” Binkowski responded to the men.  “Do you know what time it is?”

“Time you moved your fat ass,” the man in the uniform said.

“Hey, I’m doing my best.  You called in the middle of the friggin’ night, man.  I was in the middle of humping my wife.  What gives?”

“I’m sure she’ll manage without you,” the wiry man said.  “Isn’t she banging your neighbour anyway?”

The men laughed, all except for Binkowski.

“Fuck you.”

Knile and Ursie were now close to the men, close enough to hear the man in the suit clearly for the first time.

“Is this it?” he said.

“I guess so.  The others mus
tn’t be interested.”

“All right, then,” the man in the suit said.  “As I was saying, I’m coming to you with something huge to offer.  This is a one-time deal.  It won’t come around again.  It’s real simple and the payoff is friggin’ massive.”

“What’s the catch?” one of the men said.

“No catch.  All you have to do is keep your eyes open and give me a buzz if you find the mark.  If we find the guy because of your help, you get the gold.”

“Yeah, and where exactly is this gold coming from?”

“I work for Mr. Wilt,” the man in the suit said.  “You might have heard of him.”

“The drug lord?”

The man in the suit shrugged.  “I wouldn’t say that to his face.  Let’s put it this way – his organisation explores many different avenues of income.”  He enunciated each word carefully as if he’d learned the phrase by rote and was repeating it exactly.  “Mr. Wilt would look upon your help very favourably.”  He leaned forward and lowered his voice.  “The reward for finding this mark is insane, man.  Any one of you could change address tomorrow with this kind of cash.  I’m talkin’ a nice suite up in Lux, with enough left over to pay for hookers to suck your dick every morning before breakfast.”

“Who needs that when Bink’s wife is around?” the bearded man said, and the others brayed with laughter.

Knile and Ursie were only a matter of metres away from the men.  They’d reached the critical point and would not get any closer than this.

“So when is this happening?” Binkowski said, ignoring the insult from the bearded man.

“Right now.  You can get started immediately.”

“But we don’t clock on for another few hours yet,” Binkowski complained.

The man in the suit chuckled to himself.  “You can wait till your shift starts, if you like, but if someone else find
s the mark before then, you get nothing.”

“Is this guy gonna try to kill us or something?” Binkowski said, a note of alarm in his nasally voice.

“You don’t have to put him in a fuckin’ headlock,” the man in the suit said.  “Just get the call in right away and tell me where he is.  That’s it.  I handle the rest.  No danger for you.”

“Okay, I’m in,” Binkowski said.

“Me too.”

“And me.”

“Good,” the man in the suit said, satisfied.  “You’ve made a wise choice.  Now,” he said, tapping on his holophone, “this is the guy you’re looking for.”

Knile took the chance to raise his eyes, just enough to see the men on the other side of the garden.  The man in the suit was holding his holophone between thumb and forefinger, turning it slowly in an arc before the men so that they could each see the display in turn.  As it rotated in his direction, Knile could clearly recognise the face on the screen.

It was his own.

His blood turned to ice in his veins and he inwardly shuddered, suddenly nauseous.

“Get a good look, boys,” the man in the suit said.  “Burn it into your memory.  Don’t forget it.”

Knile ducked his head back down and kept moving, his pace more urgent than before.  He felt sick to his stomach.  He had to get out of here.  He had to get away from these men before their conversation ended and they began their search.

Knile and Ursie made it to the end of the row and stuck to the shadows as they headed over to the stairwell, wasting no time before proceeding inside.  Once they were clear, Ursie struggled to catch up as Knile bounded up the steps.

“What’s going on?” she said.  “Was that you they were after?”

“Yes,” Knile replied grimly.

“And?  What does that mean?”

“It means that things are about to get even harder.”

25

Duran stalked out of the barracks on Level 190, all too aware of the baleful glares at his back.  As he reached the elevator he heard a muttered curse and then laughter, the pathetic bleating of those who mocked him.  He told himself that it didn’t matter, that those men were beneath him.  Still, he jabbed his finger at the call button impatiently.  He wanted to get out of there.

He’d never been liked by most other Enforcers, the ones he should have been able to call his own.

It had been no different at the barracks down in Link.  In the few years he had spent there, demoted and shamed after the incident in the Atrium, the Enforcers stationed with him had viewed him as an interloper, someone merely passing through on his way to somewhere else,
somewhere even worse than Link.

He couldn’t blame them for thinking that.  In some ways they had been right.

Duran had never been content with taking the easy path that most of the other Enforcers had chosen to tread.  They seemed more than happy to use their power and status to make their own lives more comfortable.  After all, it was easier and more profitable to take bribes than to bring the real criminals to justice, wasn’t it?  And it was less likely to ruffle the feathers of one’s peers to boot.  The other Enforcers never trusted Duran because he wouldn’t drink from the same cup.  He was a do-gooder and they despised that.

Duran didn’t view himself as some kind of saint or a pillar of justice.  He wasn’t trying to appeal to a higher moral code than the other Enforcers.  For him, it was purely about the work ethic.  He believed in doing his job and doing it well, no matter what vocation that was.  It was something his father had taught him from an early age, an ideal that he still aspired to now.

“Alec,” his father had said, peering at him through his spectacles with sharp hazel eyes, “I don’t care what it is you become.  You could be an astronaut or a fighting man or a politician.  That part doesn’t matter.  Just make sure that, whatever you choose, you do it right.  You be the best at what you do.  If it’s a janitor you become, you swing that broom with pride.”

Now all these years later, here he was, still trying to be the best at what he was – an Enforcer, one of those who had been entrusted to maintain the peace and keep the law.  To bring criminals to justice.  Maybe the others in these barracks had forgotten what it really meant to do the job, or had never cared in the first place, but Duran hadn’t.  And he never would.

Of course, Duran had a knack for rubbing people up the wrong way as well, a habit of doing things that his colleagues disliked.  Like storming into the barracks in the dead of night and waking everyone up.  They hadn’t liked that at all.  But how else was he going to locate the men who had been on guard when Knile Oberend walked through the gates?

Then, once he had found them, the men had offered no help whatsoever.  That was no great surprise.  They had been more concerned with getting their eight hours’ sleep than trying to remember the details of one innocuous man among hundreds who had passed through the gates.  Duran had been given the same response by all of them – no, they hadn’t seen the guy, so fuck off.  The expletive changed from man to man but the tone had not.

The elevator finally arrived and Duran stepped in, his finger hovering over the button that would take him to his next destination.  The doors closed, shutting him off from the view of those at the barracks front desk, where those on night shift had glared at him with palpable dislike over
the
rims of their steaming cups of coffee.  Alone in the confined space, he told himself to be calm.  To think.

What am I doing?  Time is wasting and I’m no closer to Oberend.

He’d already spent hours interviewing Enforcers and trawling through surveillance footage to try to track his target’s movements, bouncing from one level to the next like an errant pinball with no sensible plan of attack.  No fixed destination.  He was wasting time and he knew it.

“Think,” he said to himself.  “Get inside this guy’s head.  What would he be doing right now?  Where would he go?”

He thought back to the hunt several years ago, the time he’d been entrusted to find Oberend when the man had first appeared on the Enforcers’ radar.  Duran’s ability to track Oberend had not been terribly good then, either.  Most of the information he’d gleaned about his target had been gathered in the aftermath of the explosion, in those few days he’d had to pick through the pieces of what had happened and try to put them back together again.