Watch Dogs (17 page)

Pearce opened up ctOS records for the address’s building plans, and superimposed the cell phones and wifi signals.

The signals were clearly marked: Most of them were on the second floor, with Grampus using that PC in a front bedroom, and the other three guys in the adjacent den. The one talking on the phone to somebody about his wife’s sexual predilections was on the first floor. Some downstairs guard in the living room out front.

The front bedroom. Mistake, Grampus.

Pearce froze, hearing a sound from the front of the building. A door opening and closing. He heard footsteps on the front walk, more crossing the street.

Tranter, heading for his car.

Catch up with you later, Tranter.

#

The wind had let up. The sleet was no longer falling.

Wolfe was sitting in the SUV listening to the news on the radio. He hadn’t gone anywhere—he was still thinking that Pearce might need his help in that brownstone.

 “The strange events across from Golden Fish and Chicken on the Southside have authorities puzzled,”
said the announcer on the radio
. “Several men died in the conflagration—but one of them seems to have died from gunshot wounds. The ctOS cameras show nothing clearly...Police believe they may have been interfered with...”

Wolfe thought,
Maybe I should ignore Pearce’s orders and back him up anyway...

But that’s when he saw Tranter driving by in the Crown Victoria.

Here was another opportunity...

Wolfe watched Tranter drive past, ducking down to keep the detective from spotting him. After a few moments he raised up, used the PearcePhone to start the SUV. He waited till Tranter was a good distance down the street and then started the SUV and drove after him.

A quarter mile on, he realized that Tranter was looking into his rearview. He suspected he was being followed.

And a moment later Wolfe saw Tranter speaking into a hand-mic. Calling it in, on some pretense. They’d use ctOS to check the license on this vehicle—they might well find that it was a stolen vehicle. Probably it had been reported by now. There must be a way to scramble ctOS’s view of that license plate. Too late now. There ought to be a way to send a signal to stop those cops from coming...but he was deeply fatigued...he couldn’t remember if there was a way to do that or not...

Crap
. A shitload of cops were about to descend on him.

Two tight spots in one night, Wolfe. Brilliant job.

Wolfe heard sirens approaching. He sighed and hit the brakes, spun the car around, and cut down the nearest side street.

He was going to have to make a run for it.

#

Pearce went to the backdoor—and found nothing electronic to hack. He’d have to do this the old fashioned way. He took a thin tool from an inner coat pocket, used it to jimmy the lock. He drew his pistol, opened the door, slipped into the back kitchen. It was an old fashioned place, with mid 20
th
century stove and cabinets, but would be pretty expensive in this part of Chicago. Probably some place Tranter owned.

On the wall was a series of sharp kitchen knives lined up on a magnet. Pearce took a particularly wicked looking butcher knife down, and slipped it into his belt.

He went to the doorway into the front part of the house, looked up the narrow hallway. On his left was a wooden stairs; straight ahead was a hall with hardwood floors. He heard the guard downstairs talking. “...so I said to her, you don’t want me to fool around, then you don’t be boinkin’ that Spinning instructor, yeah I know about that bitch...so she says...”

Pearce was pretty sure the three up in the den would have the door open so they could keep an idea on the upstairs hall. And these old wooden steps would creak. He needed a decoy.

He moved down the hallway, taking three steps in ten seconds, aware of the creaking, and then opened the closet under the stairway, and slipped into it. He closed it, finding himself in musty darkness. He drew out his phone, and checked out the house’s electrical system.

There—the fire alarm in the kitchen...

He flicked on the cursor, sent a pulse that would activate the alarm.

Immediately a high pitched warbling shrieked from the kitchen.

“What the hell!” yelled the guard in the front. Pearce heard him thumping past. Then he heard a stampede of footsteps overhead as the upstairs guards rushed along the upper hall, and down the stairs.

Pearce waited a few more moments, then put his phone away and stepped out of the closet, went to the stairs—the men in the kitchen were crowded around the fire alarm, their backs to him.

“What the fuck! There’s no damn fire in here!”

“Probably just a crossed wire. These old buildings...”

“Well maybe somebody screwed widdit!”

Pearce was moving up the stairs, his footsteps hidden under the wailing alarm. The alarm soon shut off, but Pearce was already partway down the hall.

He glanced through the open door of the den. He could see the poker cards laid out on the desk. He hurried to the door at the end of the hall, opened it, slipped through, one hand pointing the gun at Grampus, who was just turning away from the PC. Pearce closed the door behind him.

“What’s all that noise from...” Grampus stared, seeing it was Pearce—-and seeing the gun in Pearce’s hand.

Pearce put a finger over his lips. “Remember me, Grampus?” he whispered. You tried to kill me not long ago. Now, stand up, slowly and quietly, Grampus, and I won’t shoot you. Give you my word.”

Grampus licked his lips, then slowly stood up. He glanced at the desk—there was a Mack 10 lying on the desk.

Pearce grinned at him and shook his head. He took a step closer. “Move away from the gun...”

Grampus took a reluctant step, a small one, away from the gun.

The guards were returning up the stairs, arguing. “You don’t know if it was just an accident...”

Grampus opened his mouth to yell—and stopped short when Pearce jerked the knife from his belt and plunged it up, into the soft skin under Grampus’s jawline, up through his lower palate, through his tongue.

Grampus choked, and flailed at Pearce’s arm.

Pearce twisted the knife to make sure Grampus couldn’t say anything. Blood choked the hitman’s throat so he couldn’t even scream.

Pulling the knife free, Pearce winked and whispered. “Promised I wouldn’t shoot you and I didn’t.” Then he stabbed Grampus under the ribs, driving it to the hilt, up into his heart.

Stan Grampus crumpled.

Pearce wiped the blood off the knife onto Grampus, and put the knife in his belt.

“I say we check on Grampus...” someone said from the hall.

Pearce pulled out turned and locked the door. That wouldn’t hold them long. He’d like to have taken the PC or get the hard drive out of it...but there wasn’t time for that. Not even time to hack it with the phone. And in fact someone was already trying the door. “Hey, is this door supposed to be locked, Burfy?”

Pearce got out his phone, quickly went into the ctOS power interface—and turned off the power for the whole block.

The room went dark—the whole house did too, Pearce assumed. The men in the hall shouted.

Pearce went to the tall front windows, opened them, kicked out a screen, slid through, and dropped onto the front porch. He glanced around, saw no one on the street. It was pitch dark except for a little light from the next street down. There was shouting from upstairs.

“Who’s gotta flashlight? One of you assholes find a flashlight!”

Pearce chuckled to himself and tossed the butcher knife into a drainage grate.
Better get out of here fast.

He crossed to the Ford Explorer, got in, and drove off, not turning on his lights till he was around the corner.

He hoped Wolfe had taken his advice and gone home.

S
hould’ve taken Pearce’s advice...

Wolfe pulled into a random driveway of this suburban neighborhood off the main drag. He killed the engine and got out into the cold night, hearing the sirens keening nearer.

He glanced up at the lamp posts. There were the ctOS cameras. Chances are his phone had scrambled his appearance—but it hadn’t disguised the car they were looking for.

Wolfe hurried down the street, looking for a hackable car. There, a Lexus. That’d work.

He used the proximity sensor when he got near the car, told its doors to unlock. It beeped softly at him and he got in, started it with the phone, backed out, and drove down the street.

But looking in the rearview he saw gumball lights spinning, a few blocks down. Looked like at least three patrol cars. He heard the sirens, then. For sure they’d gotten a report the SUV was stolen. And the ctOS had probably seen him change cars.

He could try and outrun them, but that usually didn’t work out, and then trying to operate the PearcePhone while driving—notoriously, a disastrous thing to do in itself.

He could just pull over, on the theory that they were looking for another vehicle. But they’d have his description and no way they wouldn’t check him out on their way. Especially now that the Chicago cops were hip to guys like Pearce and Wolfe “borrowing” cars, and changing them up.

He turned at the corner, hoping they’d drive by...but two of them screeched to a halt at the intersection...

Wolfe pulled over, hoping to bluff this out somehow.

Then his phone vibrated.

He pulled it out, as the cops turned in the intersection...

Steam started rising from a manhole cover—and suddenly it erupted upward, a water main geyser gushing up out it, knocking the steel cover into the front of the oncoming patrol car. The car ground to a halt, its engine totaled. Another manhole blew...and another water main shot its geyser into the sky, deflecting the second cop car. The street was almost submerged in spurting water, churning with steam and flooding.

Wolfe could just see the outlines of the cops getting out of their cars, baffled, backing away...

Wolfe answered the phone. “That you, Pearce? You blow up those watermains somehow?”

“Yep. Got my system monitoring CPD—and Tranter. He called in your car. Said it was probably stolen...And it is stolen. So...I came out to see what I could do. Watched through the cameras, hacked into the hydraulic public works control.”

“What do I do now?”

 “Get out of that car. Your phone’ll blur the cameras—I’ve reset it to do that at the moment. Head into that alley behind the houses. I’m coming to get you...”

Wolfe got out of the SUV, ran to the right, into the broad alley between the houses. Dogs barked at him. The lights suddenly dimmed around him—Pearce had blacked the area out.

A car was turning into the alley up ahead.

Wolfe stepped out of the way and a black Ford Explorer pulled up. The driver’s side window hummed down.

 “Get in, ya dumbjack,
fast!”
Pearce shouted.

Wolfe ran around the Explorer, the door opened and he climbed in.

Pearce started backing down the alley. He knocked over a couple of garbage cans in the dimness, then they were on the cross street, turning, and racing off toward the Southside of town.

“Grampus is dead,” Pearce said, the way another guy would say,
“It’s raining again.”

“You killed him?”

“Yeah. I got in and stabbed him. Quieter.”

“Pearce,” Wolfe said, looking out the back window, “I thought Somalia was stressful. But you know what? Getting into your scene, in Chicago—that might be worse.”

“You get used to it,” Pearce said, yawning. “Man I need to go home and lay down.”

#

Wolfe was sleeping in on the sofa bed when Pearce called—the PC switched on and he heard Pearce’s voice. “Hey, hotshot. Get your ass up.” Pearce’s face was on the PC monitor.

Wolfe swung his feet onto the floor. “You bring coffee?”

“Are you joking?”

“Naturally. What’s up?” Wolfe got up, and boiled some water in the microwave.

“I finally got that encrypted message Grampus sent out
de
crypted...He says—well here, read it...”

Wolfe hastily dumped some instant coffee in his hot water, swirled it, tasted it, grimaced, drank some more as he went to the PC. He read the decryption Pearce provided in a note window:

 I did my part. I killed Pearce. Tranter might not be convinced of it but I am. No one has proved the vigilante isn’t dead. And what I am saying, boss, is that when the project kills hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of people, it’s going to bring the New World Order right down on our asses, the US gov will come for us and they’re not gonna neglect me. They got me on their list. That guy at the Purity talk today was probably some federal agent. Hiding me here from him is only good for so long. I’m gonna need a way out of the country and plenty of money...

“Holy shit,” Wolfe said.

“That’s what I said too, coincidentally,” Pearce told him dryly.