Authors: John Shirley
She didn’t argue. She clutched his arm and they half-skidded, half-ran, across the oil slick to the sidewalk, stumbling up it. Two bullets cracked into the wall to their right, spitting chips of brickwork.
Then they were in the doorway, descending. It went down to a basement apartment, under the main stairway. The door was padlocked—Wolfe kicked it, hard, three times, and broke the hasp of the lock.
He turned—and saw a dark figure running at him, raising an AK47. The guy had a bull’s eye tattoo around his right eye.
“Go on, Seline!”
“But—”
He was taking careful aim. “Go!”
She went through the door and he aimed. He had a flickering impulse to fire at the center of the bull’s eye but instead he aimed at a clearer target.
Wolfe fired. The thug with the AK47 went down, a bullet in the forehead.
The AK skidded over to the edge of the sidewalk. Wolfe ran up the steps, scooped up the weapon and ran back, bullets humming by him.
Then he was through the door and into the dim room. She took a small flashlight from her pocket—the flashlight was on a keychain.
“First chance I ever had to use this...”
The beam illuminated a dusty, cobwebbed sofa, a few chairs. A hole had been knocked into the farthest wall.
Voices came from the street. “Just shoot through the door and kill the motherfucker!”
“He shot Kewpie right in the head, man, I’m not getting close to that fucking door.”
“Just give me the damn gun...”
“Motherfucker that’s my gun! You got a niner!”
“I need more heat than that, now gimme the fucking Ar-five!”
“I think we oughta wait for Tranter, man. He said we wait here, he come and clean it up.”
“Sounds like we go this way,” Seline said.
She led the way through the hole in the wall. On the other side they found a concrete floor with a hole broken in it, and a web-laced aluminum ladder stretching down into the darkness.
“Great,” Seline muttered. But she put her gun in her pocket and started down the ladder. Wolfe put away the pistol, put the strap of the AR15 over one shoulder and followed her down.
Wolfe had just gotten halfway down the ladder when a burst from an AR15 came spitting through the hole in the wall from the next room, the rounds zipping over his head.
He hurried down the ladder and found they were in a sub-basement—in one wall another gap had been smashed through. The rusty sledgehammer that had done it was leaning up against the wall by the hole.
“They going to follow us down here?” Seline asked.
“I think they’ll wait for orders on that. May as well go through that hole too. Wouldn’t want to miss out on another scenic Chicago hole in the wall.”
They followed the thin flashlight beam through the hole and found they were in an old rain runoff tunnel, dripping but not coursing with water.
“It’s going the way we were driving,” Seline pointed out. “Should we follow it?”
“No better options. You hear what that guy said about Tranter?”
“Who?”
“Detective Tranter. A sleazebag with Chicago PD. Only he works for Verrick too. And the Club. I think he’s kinda the intermediary between Verrick and the Club. And these Chunkies who just chucked a bottle of burning gas at us have started working for the Club. So that means they’re working with Tranter, when he needs ‘em...And he’s apparently coming here to ‘clean this up’.”
“Meaning he’s gonna bring a lot of cops down here?”
“I doubt it. That’d cause too much talk around the ol’ department. No, the prick is probably calling Verrick right now asking what to do.”
“You think they know where we’re going?”
“Hope not. With any luck—no. They’d have waited for us there if they did. I figure the Chunkies know about me...and you. And they saw us coming.”
“We should get the hell on, then.”
“A sound strategy. You’re like a female Napoleon.”
“Oh shut up.” But she laughed softly and led the way with the light.
He unstrapped the AK and kept it ready.
The floor was wet and slippery but they went as quickly as they could. The tunnel stretched on endlessly, occasionally streaked with light from manhole covers and drainage grates. They’d gone what must’ve been several blocks when Wolfe said, “Hold on.”
They were just entering the vertical shaft of a manhole. A steel ladder went up the side. A little light came down...
“You thinking of going up there, Wolfe? Might get your head shot off like a gopher if you stick it up there.”
“No, I’m gonna try something else.” He handed her the AK57. “Keep an eye on the tunnel for me. And better turn off that light—save the battery.”
“Yeah okay.”
Wolfe climbed the ladder, almost to the top. He listened. He heard no traffic going by. He reached up, and pushed on the manhole. It moved, just a little. He pushed harder—it came unstuck from the asphalt, and he moved it a few inches aside. He listened again. Nothing.
He took out the PearcePhone, put it on speaker, and lifted it up so it would have a chance of getting a decent signal. Then he shifted it through its scanning modes with his thumb. It took him a while to locate Tranter’s phone number...
Tranter hadn’t changed it. Arrogant or sloppy. “...They tell me he’s there with that woman, Verrick.
Our guys in the Chunkies spotted him.”
“You gave them his description?”
“Hell I gave them that photo of him...He’s somewhere
in that four-block area. I can get it blocked off so we can operate kinda quiet. You know, I got some guys in the department who’ll block off the street for me, no questions, if they get a little Paypal bump for it...
”
“Can’t they go in there and do the job?”
“You don’t own the whole department. Neither does the Club and neither do I, Verrick. Told you that before.”
“Okay, fine, then have ‘em block off the area and I’ll send in...well, tell ‘em to ignore anything they see flying over the area.”
“Flying? You mean like choppers?”
“No, it’ll come out of a helicopter. So that too.”
“Out of a...you mean some kinda drone?”
“Yeah, and so what?”
There was silence on the line for a moment.
“Whatever. If any of them go down they’re your responsibility.”
“Yeah, they’re not marked in anyway that’ll...just don’t worry about it. I’m sending them in—it’ll give us a chance to test them in Chicago airspace, make sure the control signals work okay. Just get your men on the street to point the way. Let ‘em know they’re going to see drones.”
“Next the gangs’ll want their own goddamn drones.”
“Might sell them some, too.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Just do what I said, Tranter.”
A click, and Verrick hung up.
“That’s just what we need,” Wolfe muttered.
“What?” Seline asked. “I couldn’t hear much from here.”
“Tell you in a minute.”
Wolfe went through his speed dial, found the one he wanted, dialed it and put the phone to his ear.
“Wolfe? Where you at?” Pearce’s voice.
“You can’t see my position?”
“Yeah. I see it. Kind of a weak signal. Wait—you underground?”
“Yeah. Drainage tunnel. About five blocks from where I need to be. Tranter’s called Verrick—he’s sending in drones.”
“The clowns?”
“The
drones,
Pearce.”
“They can’t get to you down there.”
“These could—and the Chunkies know I’m underground.”
“Chunkies? As in Chunky Crunkies?”
“Yeah. Shuggie thinks they’re working for The Club. Anything you can do to help us out here?”
“There? Underground? I don’t know. You’ve got the phone—you could probably do most of what I could do. If I burst any water pipes, it’ll make it as bad for you as them.”
“Okay, fine. Just so you know where we are. I’m gonna try something else.”
“Wait—”
But Wolfe was dialing another number. Shuggie answered. “Who that?”
“It’s me, Shuggie. Wolfe. Um...I’m down in the drainage tunnels...” He gave the address. “And I got Chunkies all around me, up above anyway. And uh...I think we’re gonna get some drones here.”
“Drones. Like back in North Africa-type drones?”
“Yeah.”
“They going to be shooting Sidewinders at me and my boys?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think these use those kind of weapons and I don’t think they’re looking for you.” His arm was aching from holding onto the metal rungs and he pulled closer to it, to distribute his weight better. “I was just wondering if you could pull some of this heat off of us.”
“I thought I told you, you were on your own if you went down there?”
“Yeah but uh...I just wanted to say, bro:
De Oppresso Liber
.” The Delta Force motto.
Shuggie laughed bitterly. “You know what that motto even means? It means ‘To Liberate the Oppressed.’ Anybody here oppressed, it’s me, man. You should be liberating me, motherfucker.”
“Next time I liberate you. We take turns.”
Shuggie snorted. “Yeah right.
De Oppresso Liber
, fuck! Let me think on it. But I doubt I’m gonna be able to help. Doubt it a lot. Fucking drones...”
Shuggie hung up.
Wolfe growled to himself and put the phone in his pocket.
He descended the ladder. “So much for the cavalry, I guess.”
“What were you saying to him about drones?”
“Yeah. Going to be looking for us. This is Verrick’s way to test them in Chicago too. So we’re part of testing the Iceberg Project. Always good to feel useful to Major Roger Verrick. You see anybody coming? Hear anything?”
“Not so far.”
“Let’s keep going.”
They went on down the tunnel. Water dripped down their necks. It began to rush along in a gutter beside the slimy concrete walls.
Seline said, “That phone of yours...The one you use for hacking...”
“Yeah. You’re thinking I can use it to control the drones? If it’s the same kind as last time—maybe. But not more than one at a time. And there’s more than one.”
“How do you know?”
“Because...” He pointed down the tunnel. “Two of ‘em are coming at us right now...”
T
he UAVs were faintly outlined, small red lights tracing their edges. The drones were both delta shaped, like the one Wolfe had seen at the country SmartHouse, but these were each about a third the size of that one.
The drones were armed, though. A gun muzzle protruded from the snout of each drone.
“Retreat, Wolfe?” Seline asked.
“Hell yes retreat! Go, Seline!”
They’d passed a manhole access space about five strides back. Seline ran back and he ran behind her. Bullets cracked on the floor just behind them.
Then they were in the cylindrical chamber. They flattened to either side of the tunnel entrance. Wolfe could hear the drones moving their way, their engine noise more high pitched than the larger one that had patrolled the SmartHouse grounds.
“Can you fire an assault weapon?” he asked.
She gave him a look of irritation. “I’m a Marine.”
He tossed her the AK47. She caught it neatly. “Try to shoot down those drones. Or at least slow ‘em down...”
He was already working on the PearcePhone, trying to break into the drone’s GPS.
Seline fired a short burst from the AK47 down the tunnel. “I think I disabled one of them,” she said. “The other’s pulling back a little...”
No luck with the GPS hack. Then he heard a voice, coming from his phone...
“You’re trying to break into the drone’s GPS control, right, Wolfe?”
He knew that voice, from the SmartHouse. It was Starling. He was talking in a snotty tech smugness way that had always irritated Wolfe. Starling was so proud of himself he said more than he should’ve:
“Yeah, I’ve pulled back for a little minute but the GPS hack won’t work down here anyway. Most GPS doesn’t work underground. There are systems that try but they’re too spotty.”
A moment’s pause and then Starling added boastfully,
“We use a combination of geomagnetics, downloaded information about infrastructure, and, of course, the camera on the drone. You see what does work down here is the transmitter we’ve dropped into one of the tunnels. And that transmitter is completely insulated from any possible hack. It’s bouncing signals from me to the drones, and back. So I can see what it sees. And tell it what to do.”
“That’s nice,” Wolfe said. “You’re a very impressive little boy. You’re not going to ‘sir yes sir’ me?”
There was a moment’s crackling hesitation. Then, “
No. You don’t deserve it. You’re not in authority over me.”
“We’ll see about that. If I can kill you, that’s authority enough for me. And that’s what I plan to do, Starling. You’re a traitor to this country.”