Watch Dogs (9 page)

 Mick Wolfe. How would it be to have Mick Wolfe running like a rabbit through the woods under an armed UAV? Ironic and appropriate. Because Wolfe had used another drone to spy on Verrick’s own special acquisitions operation. Wolfe had nearly stopped that money from getting to Verrick—and to Purity.

Sadly, it would be taking too much of a chance to put Wolfe out in those woods to let him run free so he could be hunted down like an animal. There was always a chance Wolfe could get away in a scenario like that.

Verrick wasn’t going to take that chance. He was going to make sure Wolfe died at the first chance that came along...

Wolfe couldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Iceberg project, nor could Pearce. They were pushy, inquisitive, threatening. They might find out about it, if they were persistent and lucky. And if people involved in the project didn’t keep their damned mouths shut.

Verrick spun in his desk chair, to aim a sudden glare at Starling. “You remembering what we talked about, with respect to Iceberg, Starling? High level discretion?”

“Sir, yes sir, I do remember,” Starling said hastily, rubbing his hands together in washing motions.

“Just see that we get all those drones ready when we need them.”

“Sir, you sure you don’t want them weaponized, sir?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.
They’re
not the weapons. Just make sure they’ll do what they’re supposed to. Or you’ll be running through those woods out there, under one of your own drones, instead of some dumb animal...”

#

Eight P.M., and Mick Wolfe trudged along a snowy street on the Southside of Chicago, just a few blocks from Washington Park. Cars had made dark, slushy ruts down the middle of the street, past a boarded over restaurant and a liquor store; a truck hissed along through the slush, then turned the corner.

 It wasn’t thick snow; the snowfall had been sparse. Thinking like a Delta Force operative, Wolfe wondered if snow was to his advantage, or disadvantage, in the coming conflict on this terrain. Probably the latter—anything that slowed him down would increase his risk, if he were being hunted. And he knew he’d be hunted.

He did have one advantage, if Aiden Pearce could be believed. Pearce had gotten back in touch; his face, this time, appearing on the PC where Wolfe had been sitting.

“You’ll find something that looks like a television remote control, in the top drawer of that desk,”
Pearce had said.
“That’s a security cam scrambler. Take it with you, and anytime you’re crossing a street it’ll blot out the cameras on the block you’re coming to. It’s designed to look like a glitch in the system.”

“Take it with me where?”

“You’re going out to a Tech Shack store! I can see the PC is running slow for your program—you’re going to need an external drive to speed things up. I can’t arrange for it to be brought to you, right now. Too risky. You can simply buy one at the Tech Shack—ten blocks north. I recommend you walk there. Don’t trust the cabs, not till you hear differently. You’ll see someone you’ve met once before on the way—Blank. He may have a message for you.”

“But Pearce—”

But then Pearce’s image had vanished.

And now Wolfe was trudging back from the store with his small backpack over one shoulder; the external drive was tucked into a plastic bag inside the pack. He’d gotten to the store just two minutes before it had closed.

He looked nervously up the street toward the block of abandoned projects. He wasn’t happy about being out after dark, in Black Viceroy territory. He had a gun, but so what? How many Viceroys would he run into? They’d all be armed.

“Wolfe...” came the gravelly voice, from the alley.

Wolfe stiffened, turning toward the alley. Then he remembered what Pearce had said. “Blank? That you?”

“Yeah. Come in here, outta the street lights...”

Wolfe crossed the sidewalk, stepped into the shadows. A silhouette stood there—the man’s breath plumed out into a slanting beam of street light. Blank stepped forward, just enough so that Wolfe could see his scar-blurred face, and a bit of his gnarled, burn-reddened hands.

Wolfe shuddered. He’d met Blank once before in a homeless encampment after asking people on the street how to find Pearce. But he hadn’t gotten a good look at Blank there, in all the smoke from the campfires and the uneven glow from the flickering flame light. Blank had listened to Wolfe’s enquiries, and approached him, claiming he could take a message to Pearce, for a price.

 Wolfe had taken a chance—and Blank had come through. Was Blank the one who’d betrayed Pearce to the hitman that day? It seemed unlikely. Pearce seemed to trust Blank implicitly.

“Keep quiet a li’l minute here,” came Blank’s gurgling voice, as a group of young black men in black and orange hoodies coats went striding by.

Wolfe nodded and looked Blank over.

Blank wore a grubby overcoat that might have been black—or might have turned black; its lower hem was frayed almost like the fringe on a leather jacket; two of its large black buttons were missing. A wide brimmed, dented slouch hat angled almost rakishly on Blank’s head, half hiding one eye—instead of a hat band, the hat had a battery powered electric light strapped on it, a surprisingly powerful light, now switched off. Blank’s brown eyes were all that remained intact of his face—the rest of it had been burned away. Pink scar tissue from the old burns overlapped like bandages of raw flesh across his cheeks. His mouth had been burned lipless, and his snaggled, blackened teeth were perpetually visible. His nose was mostly burned away; one of his eyelids was just a parchment-like scrap of skin; his eyebrows were just a memory. His face looked, to Wolfe, like a face in a drawing that had been mostly erased by a hurried artist. There
was
no clear cut face there. That was one reason he was called Blank.

There was another reason, Wolfe knew. Blank lived off the grid, even when he walked around within the grid.

Many homeless people actually had cell phones. Cheap phones were given to them by family, or social services. They often used free computers in a library, or borrowed a friend’s laptop. Some homeless were ex-I.T. workers who’d been laid off one too many times, and still had a lot of tech when they could get it powered up.

But not Blank. Not only did he have no cell phone, he didn’t even have an electric watch, or a portable radio. He had no driver’s license, no state I.D., no social services I.D. No identification card at all. He had no wallet, and it was said he had no tattoos—or none that hadn’t been burned away. His fingers had been as badly burned as his face...so he had no fingerprints.

Facial recognition wouldn’t work on a man without a face. And he never told anyone his real name. People on the street knew him only by the moniker “Blank”.

Blank was blank.

 “Wolfe...” Blank’s voice was a gurgling growl—his voice, too, was blank, without its original character, because his vocal chords had been burned by hot smoke in the nameless fire that had burned him so badly. Rumor had it that years ago, when he was first homeless, Blank had been sleeping in a crack house, and someone careless with his dope lighter had set the place on fire. Most people in the house had burned; Blank had gotten out...or part of him had.

But that story was just a rumor. Blank’s past was blank, too.

Wolfe could see why the scarred derelict was useful to Aiden Pearce. It was hard to trace Blank—which made him the perfect “bagman” and streetside go-between.

“They’re gone,” Blank said, turning toward the street.

Wolfe saw, then, that Blank’s left ear was missing. There was just a hole in the side of his head.

“Who was that?” Wolfe asked.

“Gangbangers. Viceroys.”

“You got a message for me?”

“Maybe. I’m just lookin’ in on you for Pearce.”

“He can look in on me anytime he wants, what I’ve seen.”

“You ain’t using the camera scrambler?”

“I am, yeah.”

“So he needs me to check on you while you’re out, at least in some places. ‘Nother thing, he just decided: you get the tool for sure. I’ll be telling you where to find it tomorrow. Meet me at noon....”

“Noon tomorrow. Okay. Where?”

“The camp where we first met.”

“That where you stay?”

Blank took off his hat for just a moment to wipe the top of his head with his hand...and Wolfe saw that most of the tramp’s hair had been burned away in that long ago conflagration. Only a few tufts of gray hair stuck out, in random spots.

Blank put his hat back on and said, “I don’t stay
any
place longer’n six or seven hours at most. Mostly not longer’n six or seven
minutes
. Got to keep moving! Not much use to anybody if I don’t keep moving.”

“Okay. The homeless camp under that same overpass, right? At noon. So—you have no cell phone...how does Pearce get in touch with you?”

“He has his ways. Puts messages up for me somewhere. They come and go quick and only I know what they mean. Uses what he calls ‘a drop’ too.”

“I know what that is.”

“Tomorrow at noon, Wolfe. Careful going back to that safehouse he’s got you in. Watch your back on the way there. And before you leave here, press the scrambler again for the cameras. The effect probably done wore off.”

Then he switched on the hat light, and went out of the alley...and Wolfe knew that the hat’s glare blurred his image when he walked under the cameras. His face was “faceless”—but a scarred face is recognizable too. The glare made him just a blur from the neck up, so they couldn’t even see his hat.

Wolfe waited a couple of minutes, then went out onto the sidewalk. There was no sign of Blank out there now. He was gone.

#

Wolfe had almost reached the partly pushed-over fence around the projects building when he realized that someone was following him.

He turned, and saw several black men in hoodies and sagging pants walking stolidly his way, their eyes locked on him.

Wolfe stepped onto the overturned fence, clambered over it, and hurried between the old, thickly tag-marked high rises. He went as fast as he could without running. Running would show fear, instead of respect. Showing fear was dangerous out here.

On the wall to his left was a big crown-shape, a cartoon of a king’s crown, stenciled in day-glo orange.
Black
Viceroys.
No one had dared put their tags over that symbol.

 He stepped over debris, boots crackling on broken glass, and strode quickly around a corner of the building to the left, and the now-doorless entrance of the high rise. Straight ahead through the door was a rubble-strewn corridor; to the right was the concrete and metal stairs he was going to take up to the seventh floor.

At least, he’d have done that if three more gangbangers hadn’t blocked his way.

They stepped out of the stairs, two of them carrying crowbars in their hands. The third one, the tall one in the middle with his hair dyed orange, had a 9 mm pistol in his waistband. Day-glo orange shoelaces were woven into his signature sneakers, and orange trim on his black vinyl windbreaker.

“Where you think
you’re
going?” the Black Viceroy asked. And the Viceroy put his hand on the butt of his 9 mm semi-automatic.

T
he tall one in the middle was their leader, Wolfe figured. He was the Black Viceroy here who had had the requisite nimbus of authority. And he had a little more maturity—he looked to be in his mid to late thirties.

Wolfe looked him in the eye and said, “I’ve got a gun, too. We don’t want to use those. Somebody probably get shot. Might be me.”

The tall one almost smiled. “Let me see the gun. Show it real slow.”

Wolfe, real slow, unbuttoned his coat, opened it, to show the .38 stuck in his belt.

“That a lot smaller gun than yours, Shuggie,” said the Viceroy on Shuggie’s left.

Shuggie grinned, showing a gold grill. “Yeah. I got a niner. He got a snub nose.”

“At this range, a .38 will do the job really well,” Wolfe said, keeping his voice calm and even.

“Don’t even think about it, man,” Shuggie said. “You better look behind you.”

Wolfe glanced over his shoulder. The three Black Viceroys who’d been following him earlier were there, a few steps away. One of them lifted up his sweatshirt to show his own 9 mm pistol.

Wolfe looked back at Shuggie and nodded. “You could rob me, but I got only twenty dollars on me. No credit cards. Boots aren’t worth much. I haven’t been out of prison all that long so...I’m still kinda broke.”

“What you got in that backpack?” Shuggie asked.

“An external hard drive.”

“And where you taking that?”

“Home. Just cutting through the old projects. Heading about ten blocks up. Ducked in here ‘cause I don’t like people following me.”

“You lying,” said Shuggie, his gaze steady and his voice flat. “You were going into this building and you was doing it for a reason. We saw you come out. What’s up in that old building?”