Outriders (25 page)

“Yeah, it’s weird. But you know, the weirdest thing is how weird it
isn’t.
How normal it feels… after. Seems like it oughta be a much bigger deal. And it is, in a way. Kind of the biggest of all deals. But… it also isn’t.” She took another sip of her coffee, then shrugged. “I’d say you’ll see what I mean, but honestly sir, I hope to God you never have to.”

Lincoln nodded. “No one’s going to need it on my watch.”

“I know you’re an officer and all, sir,” Thumper said. “But I’m pretty sure that’s not a promise you can make.” She gave him a little wink, but the weight of the comment remained. And of course, she was right.

Lincoln didn’t have a response. But even if he had, there hardly would have been time to say it. Veronica chirped, and Thumper turned back to face her terminal. “Looks like Self got something.”

“That was fast,” Lincoln said. “Does that mean he’s telling us he doesn’t have anything?”

Thumper didn’t respond at first, already lost in the report that NID was sending over.

“Oh, no way,” Thumper said. And went quiet again.

“Yeah?” Lincoln prompted, after several seconds. He got up and walked over to stand behind her.

“I never would have guessed it,” Thumper said. “That’s Yayan Prakoso.”

“Should I know him?”

“You don’t?” she said. “Sorry, no… of course not, you probably don’t follow that kind of news too much. But uh… remember how I was saying if you wanted to break in to 773’s sensor suite through a handshake, you’d need a code god to do it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she said, and she pointed at the image on her screen. The man on the display wasn’t an exact match; he was beardless, with short, buzzed hair. But he had the same small frame, and the same sharp eyes. “He’s kind of a celebrity in certain circles. Went dark a couple of years ago, had all kinds of rumors about him. I gotta be honest, sir. I’d kind of like to get his autograph.”

“Well then,” Lincoln said. “Let’s go ask him for it.”

T
HE TEAM ASSEMBLED
in their planning center, laid out plans on the thin-skin. Sahil and Mike both looked ragged, but the cups of coffee and the promise of action kept them from grumbling too much. Not that Lincoln could remember ever having heard Sahil grumble at all.

On the left side, the thin-skin showed images of a number of individuals, with Prakoso at the top. The others were all people the team had ID’d as Apsis personnel, or close associates of Apsis. The right side of the thin-skin displayed a top-down view of the three blocks surrounding the building labeled Puck, as well as a closer view of Puck itself.

Lincoln touched the thin-skin over the image of Puck, selected a wireframe view of the floorplan.

“This one ain’t real complicated, sir,” Sahil said. “Go in, get the guy, don’t get shot.”

“We could do it,” Wright said, matter-of-fact. Apparently breaching a safehouse to pull a guy out was routine business as far as she was concerned. “But everybody would know about it. It doesn’t help us if the bad guys know he’s compromised. Or even if they believe it.”

“Agreed,” Lincoln said. “We’ll have to cover it.”

“How you plan on that?” Wright asked.

“Well, we can’t do it perfectly,” Lincoln said. “I’m guessing our bad guys aren’t going to be happy about Prakoso being gone, no matter where he ends up. And I don’t think we can pull off the old ‘hey, we’re Apsis employees moving him somewhere safer’, though I’m sure you all love that one. Best thing I can think of is to make it look like he did it himself. I figure a criminal like Prakoso probably has more than enough reason to want to disappear.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to call him a criminal, exactly, sir,” Thumper interrupted. In response, Lincoln just held his hand out next to the image of Prakoso, where the long list of charges he was facing in a large number of different nations was displayed. “Well sure, yeah, he broke some laws, but I’d be willing to bet more than half the time he was working for some other country when he did it. If you picked up an Eastern Coalition report on any one of us, it’d probably say the same sort of thing.”

“If anyone knew what we were actually up to, maybe,” Mike said. “Which they don’t.”

“You hope,” Thumper said.

“Fair enough, Thumper,” Lincoln said. “But the point remains. Guy like this has motivation and skills. Given the tools at his disposal, how does he get out of there on his own?”

“Seems like he already would have done it, if he’d wanted to,” Thumper said. “That’s assuming he could.”

“How would you do it? Put yourself in there.”

She shook her head. “Too many guys, too many sensors, I don’t see how I can do it and get more than about fifty feet before someone’s on me. You saw how fast they reacted when he came out for a smoke.”

Lincoln opened his mouth to encourage her, but Sahil stopped him with a look and a subtle shake of the head. A few moments later, Thumper continued. “I mean, I guess that’s something. I guess maybe all those sensors and stuff.”

Everyone gave her a few more moments, waiting to see if she’d continue on her own. But Thumper’s eyes were unfocused, staring off at nothing in particular.

“Yeah, Thump?” Mike said at last. “What about them?”

Thumper shook her head. “I’m just saying, they’ve got all this gear rigged up, like they’re worried someone’s going to come looking for him, right? So, if I’m him, and I want to leave, and I mean,
really
leave, like never come back, maybe I make it look like someone
is
coming to look for me.”

“Spoof the sensors?” Lincoln said. “Could you do that from here?”

“Something like that, yeah. Make everybody look one direction, while I head out the other, or something. I mean, I don’t think I could get in there and make the network ignore you… we’d have to expect that they’d pick up on the intrusion. But if we went the other way with it, I might be able to do something. I’ll have to get in there and see what we’ve got to work with. I don’t know though, something like that, maybe they’ll just lock him down. Or try to move him themselves. I don’t see how any of that helps us.”

“It’s a start,” Lincoln said. “Let’s work through it.”

“Talkin’ about doing this quiet?” Sahil asked. “No shots fired?”

Lincoln nodded. “One hundred percent nonlethal. We make him vanish, with no one to blame but the guys he leaves behind.”

“Tough ask, captain,” Mike said. “This isn’t a bunch of boy scouts running around a campground waiting to get ambushed. And look at that cast of characters.” He pointed to the images of the known security personnel. They were mostly male, mostly thick-necked. But every one of them looked like they’d seen action at some point or another, either in the field, or on the street. Mike shook his head.

“One time, in Juárez, me and a couple of teammates were in this bar and one of my guys, his name was Na, and Na was about five foot two and maybe a hundred and ten pounds. Little fella. Pocket-sized. And I guess some locals decided they didn’t like us hanging around their spot, because they started giving us some noise. Maybe eight or ten of them, and just three of us. We didn’t really mind it too much until one guy has to make it serious and pulls a knife. And he’s waving it around at me and my buddy Ace, who’s an even bigger ol’ boy than me. Well, it just so happens Na is a world-class Thai boxer, and he, cool as can be, casually folds the guy in half with a roundhouse. The rest of the guys didn’t seem to want to fight so much after that.”

He let it hang in the air, as if the relevance were obvious.

“Point, Mike?” Thumper finally said.

“My point is, in any group of people, you never know who the Na is. Any one of those cats is likely to give us more trouble than we’re counting on. And it’s probably not the one we think it is.”

“So let’s not get in their way,” Lincoln said. “Those are the parameters, folks. Let’s work it out.”

Three hours later, they were putting the final touches on the plan.

“You guys want to use Poke?” Thumper asked.

Wright thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “No, that’s just another piece of gear to worry about. We’ll do it old-fashioned.”

“Poke?” Lincoln asked.

“Yeah, Pokey,” Thumper said. “Our foldable.” Foldables were many-jointed self-reconfiguring drones, particularly useful for scouting out tight places, like buildings and ship interiors.

“You named it?” Lincoln said.

“Well, sure,” Thumper answered, as if that was expected behavior.

“You’re going to want another car,” Mike said, looking at Lincoln with a trace of despair.

“I want another car,” Lincoln answered. Mike’s shoulders dropped. “You want to get started on it?”

“Guess I better,” Mike said. “But I don’t want to hear any lip about it when I get back, no matter what it looks like.”

“Just make sure it can get from A to B real fast,” Lincoln said.

“And it’d be nice if it could eat a bomb or two,” Sahil added, as Mike was on his way out of the door.

“Thumper, let Mr Self know we’re going to need to ship out, probably in a hurry. See if we can get NID to send a crew out to clean the place.”

“How you want to work the jump off?” she asked.

“I want to mail him home,” he answered.

“You got it,” she said, and headed out to make the necessary arrangements.

“I’m gonna get the gear laid out,” Sahil said, following her.

With the rest of the team out of the planning room, Wright made one final attempt at her case.

“You shouldn’t be going in there,” Wright said.

“Thumper’s gotta run the rig, Mike’s on overwatch. Sahil’s out back in case Prakoso rabbits, or worse things happen. And you’re not going in alone.”

“It’s your op,” she said with a shrug. “But I want it clear that I don’t like it.”

“Duly noted,” he said. “I appreciate the concern.”

“It’s not for you personally.”

“I know. But I wouldn’t be much of a team lead if I didn’t do my share of heavy lifting.”

“Due respect, sir, but don’t use a hit to try to make a point.”

The words slapped Lincoln with unexpected force. He’d let this go far enough. “Sergeant, this is the plan,” he said, sharply. “We’re moving forward. Unless you have any concerns
relevant
to the plan, I suggest you get busy prepping.”

Wright tipped her head back just slightly, and for a moment seemed like she might have something else to say.

In the end, she just said, “Sir.”

She exited, leaving Lincoln alone with the plan they’d drawn up. He turned and stared at the thin-skin, inhaled deeply and then let out a long breath. Like all plans, the plan itself was probably mostly useless. The planning, however, was indispensable. Having been through the process so thoroughly, Lincoln felt confident that when the unexpected occurred, he and his team would be able to react accordingly.

But Wright’s final words clung to him. Was he really leading the grab because it was the best option? Or was he just using this as an opportunity to try to prove to the others that he did truly belong here? It was an uncomfortable thought, but one he had to work out for certain. Wright was correct; this wasn’t a time for ego. He ran through it all one more time, in brief.

By the end of it, he nodded to himself. Maybe not a great plan, but it was simple enough, and it was one they actually had. Best to get out there and get it done, instead of sitting around in a room waiting for the Good Idea Fairy to show up. About the only thing she ever contributed was a bunch of extra gear you weren’t going to need anyway.

He joined the others in the main room.

“About time we got to break this stuff out,” Sahil said, laying the final case on the table with some effort. “I was startin’ to worry I’d lugged all this in and was gonna have to lug it back home without ever gettin’ to use it.”

The team started unloading the gear and laying out what they’d need, each for the role they were expected to play in the hit. Mike, on overwatch, took a long rifle with a sleek optic mounted on top. Sahil, on standby as the heavy in case things went bad, loaded up with a full assault kit.

Lincoln and Wright, the grab team, each took two sidearms, both nearly silent in operation. One, subsonic and lethal, fired a nice hefty chunk of composite guaranteed to punch holes and ruin days. The other used a softer gel that held shape in flight and delivered a cocktail of nerve agent and fast-acting narcotic to knock targets cold before they even hit the ground. Lincoln knew if they left any bodies behind, it was a mission failure. But he wasn’t so idealistic as to leave the lethal option at home.

“You sure you don’t want to sit home and run it from here?” Thumper asked. She was standing in the doorway of her bedroom surveillance center, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed. Her eyes strayed over to one case that hadn’t been opened yet.

“I’d hate to take you away from your first love,” Lincoln said.

“Yeah, well,” she answered. “I’d hate for there to be a fight and me not be in it.”

“There won’t be,” he said. “This one’s going to be super boring. Promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said. He gave her a thumbs up.

The team spent the remainder of the day making the necessary arrangements, checking their gear, double-checking their gear, and trying their best to avoid tinkering with the plan. A little after midnight, they started heading out, one by one. Lincoln was the last to go, leaving Thumper to mind the shop.

“See you in a bit,” Lincoln said.

“Knock ’em dead, sir,” she said. And then added, “Except, don’t.”

FOURTEEN

A
T 0445
, Earth-Luna sync time, the Outriders executed. Zero dark ugly. It was a magical slice of the night, when the nightshift guards were close enough to going home that they were counting down the minutes, and the dayshifters were still in deep sleep. No one in their right mind ever did anything at 0445.

“Thumper,” Lincoln said. “Bump it. Five seconds.”

“Roger, bumping,” she replied. A moment later, the lights went out. Not just in the target building, but all around it. Street lights, store signs, the buildings adjacent, everything on the three or four blocks that shared the system. Lincoln counted, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. Just as he was getting to five-one-, the lights came back up. “And we’re back up.”