11

Wage war. Quietly.

Dan Pryor heard the sound of a day gone bad. The noise wasn’t a big one, wasn’t loud enough to be heard on the other floors, but it was plenty audible through the door to the boardroom. Rapid-fire spitting of a weapon, the thud and crash of bodies hitting the floor. Pryor exchanged looks with Sean McCourt. The two mercs posted at the elevator must have heard the noise too. They were pounding down the corridor. Pryor held his radio and stared at it as if the day were its fault. Command-decision time. He was point man for security on this floor. He hesitated. The firing had stopped. Couldn’t have gone on for more than ten seconds. Wouldn’t need to, against an unarmed group.

“We in or we out?” McCourt asked. The other two had their weapons up, ready to Swiss cheese the door.

Problem. Pryor didn’t know if the bad day in the boardroom was part of his employer’s game plan or not. Christ, he hated office politics. “Hang on,” he said. Better try to speak to Brentlinger. He hoisted the radio.

It beat him to the punch. “Boardroom security, come in,” it said with a woman’s voice. That Gloria person? She didn’t sound much like a personal assistant anymore.

Find out what’s what. “Security,” he answered.

“I’m giving you the same chance I gave your former employers. They said no. They’re dead. You’re taking orders from me now.”

Pryor cocked an eyebrow at the others. Mean eyes and headshakes all around. Too right. Pryor didn’t feel any loyalty toward Brentlinger or the rest of the clowns in suits. But the bitch had made him and his boys look bad. Professional honour dictated payback. Gloria was an idiot. She was outnumbered and boxed in. Where was she going to go? Out the window? Yes, and in pieces. He turned the radio off and raised his gun.

Blaylock switched channels, called Luzhkov. “Any of ours on the top floor?” she asked.

“No.”

Their infiltration was still pretty limited. This was going to be messy. “Let’s do it,” she said. “And watch for civilians.”

In the lobby, Vandelaare’s radio clicked three times. He caught Nick Haasbroek’s eye. They moved out. Special trick for his assignment. The space was crawling with potential collateral damage. Touch not one hair of their heads, and don’t even let them know what’s going down. Delicacy required. He could do delicacy. He had to do it fast, before word of the war reached the wrong ears. Besides him and Haasbroek, there were four other mercs on the floor. He didn’t know them, but he could see them. He walked over to the nearest, an Angolan whose expression could pass for extreme boredom if his eyes weren’t on perma-scan. “Spare a moment?” Vandelaare asked him.

“I’m listening.”

“There’s been a change at the top.”

The man stopped scanning for a second. That was the only sign of surprise. “And?”

“You okay with a smooth transition?”

“How’s the money?”

“It will still flow. Especially if we aren’t looking at a big market correction today.”

“What kind of work?”

“The kind that was done in Geneva.”

A tiny frown. “Glad I wasn’t there.”

“I meant on the side that did the business.”

The frown disappeared. There was a slight rearrangement in the face. This was what passed for excitement and interest. “Okay, then.”

“Excellent. Peter Vandelaare, by the way.”

“Abel Jamba.”

“Know anybody else here?”

Jamba twitched his head to the right. Vandelaare spotted a wiry merc by the fountain. Vandelaare asked, “Will he play?”

“Depends. Bad discipline.”

“Can he take orders from a woman?”

Jamba laughed.

“Right,” Vandelaare said. He glanced around, pointed to the washrooms. They were in a small corridor recessed off the main lobby. Jamba nodded. Vandelaare hit the men’s. He counted five civilians: two at the urinals, two at the sinks, one in a cubicle. He stationed himself at the entrance, stared hard at anyone who tried to come in who wasn’t Jamba or the other man. They jumped back from the scary man and decided they could wait. The guys already in the washroom hurried up double-quick. He had the place almost to himself in fifteen seconds. The cubicle occupant was the holdout. Vandelaare heard the rustle of a newspaper. This boy was here for the duration.

The door opened again. The wiry merc stepped inside, hooked a thumb back at Jamba a pace behind him. “He says you need to see me.”

A newspaper page turned.

“Yeah,” Vandelaare sighed. Jamba pinned the man’s arms. Vandelaare stepped in and hammered him in the throat, crushing the windpipe flat. The man made a flat, choking sound and slumped. Vandelaare felt his pulse, frowned. Jamba shifted his grip. Left arm around the throat, right on the back of the head. He leaned hard. Vandelaare heard the snap. No need to check the pulse now. He picked up the man’s legs. He and Jamba hauled the body to the farthest cubicle, settled him on the toilet. Jamba, the bigger man, stepped outside. Vandelaare closed the door, locked it, then dropped to the floor and slid out underneath. He cocked his ear at the occupied cubicle. The man inside cleared his throat, grunted with an effort. Busy with his own troubles. He and Jamba headed back out to the lobby. Two more to recruit or lay off.

Blaylock hugged the wall to the side of the boardroom door. No answer to her offer, and no response was a response. The bigger response came a few moments later. SMG fire powered through the door at waist height. Bullets chewed up the table and punched out the window. Blaylock winced as the Plexiglas tumbled to the street below. That was going to raise a question or two. The wind whipped into the boardroom, blowing papers and napkins into a vortex. The door was kicked open. The first merc came in crouching low. Blaylock shot him in the head, dropped under the table as the next man fired around the corner. She nailed him in the gut, and then her clip was empty. The man tumbled over, fingers splaying open and dropping his SMG. There was a bottleneck of corpses at the doorway. The other two mercs stayed in the corridor and showered the room with bullets. Blaylock rolled to the side and scuttled back to the wall. She eyed the SMG. Almost in reach, but in view of the hallway. No more fire from the enemy: they were waiting her out. She backed up to the corner of the room, giving herself room to build up speed. She ran. Just short of the door, she dived for the floor. She grabbed the SMG in mid-somersault, propelled herself through the rest of the tumble as the guns started firing again. A bullet whined by the bridge of her nose. Her eyes teared furiously. She rolled to the far corner and rubbed her eyes clear.

The mercs still weren’t coming in after her, but they knew she couldn’t come out for them. The standoff could go on until next Thursday, as long as the men didn’t call for backup. Which they would. She wished for a grenade, looked around the room, saw the furniture instead. The chairs were big, wheeled, padded affairs. Headrests and armrests, all the comforts for the modern executive. Blaylock wondered how anyone could stay awake more than ten minutes in one of those things. The seat nearest her had been Tony Weart’s. When she had shot him, his legs had stiffened fast, and he’d knocked over the chair. She pushed his corpse the rest of the way off the chair and righted it. She dragged Weart out of the way, then, sticking to shelter, she hauled the corpses out of the doorway, and down to the window end of the office. She needed room. The occasional burst of fire from the hallway kept her head low, kept her honest. Then back to the entrance, where that chair waited. She hooked her elbow around the armrest. She gauged her space. The room was a generous one. There was plenty of margin between the wall and the table. She spun, whirling the chair around. It was heavy and awkward. Momentum built up fast. She danced, stumbling in her vortex, toward the doorway. She almost mistimed, had to dance back one step, and then she had the chair careening toward the entrance. She swung around the doorway with the world’s most awkward hammer toss. The chair slammed into the nearest merc. It rocked him back on his heels and knocked his weapon high. He fired at the ceiling. The other man jumped out of the way. Blaylock pulled her trigger as she spun. She sprayed bullets around the hall. The second man yelped and fell to a crouch. He clutched his side. Blaylock let the chair hit the ground and she landed on it, rolling backwards down the hall. She raked fire across the width of the corridor. The man she had hit with the chair dropped, thud, bullets stitching finis over his heart. The other merc fired back. He was slumping, and his rounds were low. Blaylock raised her feet, heard the smack and wing of lead against plastic and steel. The chair bucked back and started to spin again. She kept firing, her aim thrown. She finished the job with quantity over accuracy.

The job wasn’t a pretty one. There were scorch marks and bullet holes in the walls, chips in the marble floor. Smashed ceiling tiles hung like gaping flesh, wires dangling like guts. Half the lights were out, and there was broken glass everywhere. I’m good because I’m delicate, Blaylock thought. She rifled the bodies, loaded up on ammo. Then she headed for the stairwell.

Flanagan saw the Plexiglas fall past his window. He winced. My girl, he thought. I guess she’s around. He sighed. His job was containment: interface with the outside world as necessary, and keep it from looking in at InSec until the war was over. He left his office. Life on the fortieth floor was Friday routine. Nothing going on. There was one mercenary, not one of Luzhkov’s, at the elevator, looking more bored than conspicuous. Nobody was expecting excitement in the shipping department. Flanagan made his way down to the lobby. He looked around for Vandelaare and Luzhkov as he headed for the exit. He didn’t see them. He didn’t see the other security men, either. Absence equalled war. Waged quietly. Good. He hoped.

Outside, things were less quiet. The window hadn’t killed anyone, but it had hit Trinity Place like a meteor, cut a half-dozen people, and scared thirty more. Everyone down the length of the block was staring up, looking for planes and fireballs. My girl, he thought again. She passes through like a ghost. He turned to the man next to him. “Has anyone called 911?” he asked. The man nodded, not taking his eyes from the sky. Ambulance, fire engine and police were there a couple of minutes later.

Like a ghost, Flanagan thought. She’s not even here.

Luzhkov knew what it was to be a virus. He liked it. He was having a sip of the draft that Blaylock had gulped by the tankard in Geneva. Intoxicating. Nectar of the gods. One taste was never enough. No wonder Blaylock was hooked. Especially since she was so good at it. The action fix was what had carried him down his path. But this, beyond covert and rogue, was one of the drugs he had been hoping Blaylock would supply. She’d delivered. The drip was hitting his veins and burning the wires.

They had divided the building’s sixty storeys into thirds. Blaylock was starting at the top and working down. Vandelaare going from the lobby up. Luzhkov had floors twenty to forty to cover. The numbers sounded ridiculous. They weren’t. Brentlinger hadn’t called in InSec’s full complement, just enough ornamental muscle to give him insurance, a show of force against unarmed board members. There wasn’t a contingent on every floor. Numbers on the top floor for the board members themselves. Sentinels in the lobby to control ingress and egress. The others were scattered through the rest of the building as troubleshooters, monitors in more sensitive departments, and potential backup, in the unlikely event of trouble. And here came Blaylock and company, the unlikely event.

Luzhkov’s earpiece was giving him the news as it broke. He and Blaylock had spoken once on a different channel from the InSec boys, then established radio silence. From Vandelaare, he was receiving patterns of clicks. They were the running tally of the infection. The numbers were good. The patient was growing very sick, very fast. His contagion was spreading well, too. No bad trouble so far. After the first couple of conversations, he’d been travelling with a posse of the converted. That made his arguments, when the group converged on a man who was lone and bored, very persuasive. He was already on floor thirty-four. Next one up was R & D, and that would be better protected.

Trouble broke out on the radio traffic. Guys were trying to reach the posts on the top floor, and were hearing nothing back. Worried calls were going out. Luzhkov’s recruits sent out words of calm, but some voices were just not being heard, and their silences were holes that couldn’t be plugged with third-party reassurances. Someone ordered all hands to the top floor. Someone else belayed that, rattled off a half-dozen names to meet him there, told everyone else to hold their positions. Luzhkov didn’t know any of the names. They weren’t in his group. He guessed they were all stationed near the top of the building, and could reach their rendezvous point fast. The action in the building was looking to concentrate. At the landing to thirty-five, he split half of his group off and told them to head for the sixtieth floor. “Be smart,” he told them. “Try to come up behind them. Avoid unnecessary combat. If we can intimidate them with numbers, let’s.” Four men jogged up the stairs. He took the other three with him through the door.

They came out on the floor and almost collided with another gang of four that was reaching for the stairwell door. Luzhkov thought fast. “Heading up?” he asked.

The leading man nodded. “I don’t care what Henderson says. He should have backup. There’s nothing going to go down here,” he swept his arm to take in the cubicles and offices. “Bunch of goddamn slide-rule drones. No threat.” The man was a shouter, his voice box muffler broken from too many years of barking orders. Luzhkov saw a couple of heads poke up like meerkats from within cubicles. What’s going on? they would be thinking. Next they’d be growing nervous. Then a tiny nudge would spread fear through the building, and no one would recover from the mess. He had to contain Loud Boy fast.

Behind him, he heard footsteps echoing in the stairwell. Traffic there was picking up. No privacy. “Can I have a moment?” he asked Loud Boy, and started walking down the main aisle between the cubicles. His gait was unhurried, casual, and his arms at his side, far from his weapon.

Loud Boy kept pace, looked like he wanted to move faster, have this conversation done with and be where the action was. The two posses followed. Luzhkov’s pack dropped just behind the other. “What’s up?” Loud Boy asked.

“I have been hearing some things. The situation is much bigger than we’ve been told.” Privacy, privacy, where was the privacy? The place was an open-form anthill. Ahead, the second half of the floor was a suite of offices. There was a bank of dens with massive windows looking out onto the floor. Even less privacy than a cubicle, and they were all occupied. The aisle became a corridor between the offices.

“Then what are we doing wasting time down here?” Loud Boy wanted to know.

“Contingency planning,” Luzhkov said, keeping it vague. Two doors down to the right, a woman emerged from an office with a sheaf of papers. She was frowning at them, barely glanced at the mercs as she brushed past them. She left her door open, so she wasn’t planning on being long. Luzhkov glanced back, caught the eye of Jean Decaux, who’d been part of the op from the start. Decaux gave a slight nod and peeled off to intercept and delay the woman. Luzhkov turned in to the office. It still had a window looking out onto the corridor, but it was much smaller. As good as the privacy deal was going to get.

“What’s in here?” Loud Boy asked, but he and his men followed. Luzhkov’s remaining two closed the door behind them and hung back. They were both new recruits. Loyalty test coming up. They’d jumped ship once. They might again, if the wind started blowing hard from the other direction. For the moment, they were looking solid. One of them, Mark Vrenna, stood in front of the window.

“There has been a takeover,” Luzhkov told Loud Boy. “InSec is under new management.”

The merc looked like Luzhkov had just farted in his face. “Bullshit.”

Luzhkov said nothing. He held his face expressionless, waited for the other man to decide he was serious. He was standing beside the desk, and he played absently with a retractable ballpoint pen that sat on top of the computer keyboard.

Loud Boy said, “You’re part of the new management, you dick.”

Luzhkov shifted his stance, ready. He kept his tone level, non-threatening. He didn’t meet Loud Boy’s eyes directly. He was trying to pacify the bear without triggering deadly force. “No,” he said. “But I do work for it. So can you.”

“Traitor,” Loud Boy said.

Luzhkov could have argued the point. He could have said he used to work for Kornukopia, and had never been part of the InSec structure. He didn’t think the man he was facing would care for the finer points of debate. He tried one more time. “Good money,” he said. “Good action.”

“I’m no traitor, you fucking commmie.”

A man of principle. Not bright, but he was loyal. There was a bit of shame to this. Luzhkov checked over Vrenna’s shoulder. No one was passing by the window. “I wish we could co-operate,” he said.

“We can’t,” said Loud Boy.

Vrenna flicked the lights off.

Luzhkov saw his opponent’s weight shift forward. Luzhkov made a fist around the pen and swung his arm in a swooping arc. He rammed the pen into Loud Boy’s neck. It went in deep, but missed the carotid artery. The man was choking up blood but still alive and struggling. He banged into Luzhkov and brought them both down in a heap, Luzhkov on the bottom. They fought and clawed. Luzhkov heard the bumps and scuffles of other fights, couldn’t see past Loud Boy’s bloody face. No one was yelling. The only sounds were thrashing and Loud Boy’s wet, drowning breaths. The radio was crackling, and Luzhkov thought he heard Blaylock’s voice being answered by a man’s snarl. He wrapped his fingers around the merc’s throat. Loud Boy tried to do the same, but Luzhkov ducked his chin to his chest, blocking access. Luzhkov squeezed harder. Loud Boy tried to tear away. He reared back, raising Luzhkov with him. His movements lost coordination. His hands slapped at Luzhkov’s face, but there was very little force behind the blows. He flailed. His fingers caught a cord and yanked the phone down to the floor with a crash. Shhh, Luzhkov thought. Shhhhh. Squeezed. Loud Boy stopped struggling, started twitching. Then he was quiet.

Luzhkov shoved the body off and stood up. The other two fights were vicious love tussles. The fourth member of Loud Boy’s group stood off to the side, watching, not joining in. Vrenna was pinned down. Luzhkov started to move forward, froze as someone walked past the window, then lunged and hit Vrenna’s opponent on the back of the neck. There was a good crack. The man fell over.

One more to go. He was grappling with Reggie McGee. He was also staring in fury at his aloof teammate. He broke free of McGee’s stranglehold, opened his mouth for a big yell. Luzhkov and Vrenna piled on. They smothered his shout, then beat him to death.

Aftermath. Three bodies, blood everywhere, the office in disarray. The hourglass draining before Decaux’s distraction would expire. How do you clean this up? Dispose of the bodies and evidence of struggle in less than a minute? Very likely. Oh, this is a war that is going very quietly, all right. First, the survivor from Loud Boy’s party. “So?” Luzhkov asked him.

“Guess I’m working for the new team.”

“You were waiting to see who won?”

“Yup.”

Brave in either honesty or stupidity. “Can we count on you now?”

“Sure.”

“What’s your name, soldier?”

“Matt Dolinksy.”

Well, Dolinsky, thought Luzhkov, you’re on the front line first, last and always. Luzhkov wasn’t going to kill him now, but he’d cut that life expectancy down to size. He turned to McGee. “Stay here. Keep everyone out until we can clean this.” He looked at the chaos again, shook his head.

“Any idea what kind of excuse I can use to keep them out?”

“Say it’s a security exercise,” Vrenna suggested.

Nice one. Luzhkov cocked a finger at him. “Perfect.” They still had to block sight of the carnage from passersby. He pointed at a shelving unit. It didn’t have a back, but it had enough binders, paper stacks and reference books on it to do. “Help me with this,” he said, and they dragged it in front of the window. Quick and dirty improv. “Let’s go,” he said, and they stepped out of the office.

They almost collided with the woman. Decaux was two steps behind, trying to slow her down. “What the hell are you doing?” the woman demanded.

Luzhkov spouted Vrenna’s lie verbatim. “Security exercise,” he said. He drew a blank for a good follow-up.

“Whatever.” She wasn’t buying. She stared at the window, now blocked by the shelves. “What does that have to do with redecorating my office?”

“We’re using your space as a temporary command post for the duration of the exercise,” Vrenna said. Luzhkov stood aside to let him spin his story. He was very smooth. “It’s the nature of security in today’s world. I’m sure you understand.”

The woman’s hard gaze didn’t suggest that she did, but at least she waited for him to go on.

“We have to be flexible, and be able to, for instance, set up a secure command centre just about anywhere and with no warning.” He smiled an apology. “You won the lottery this time. Someone else will have to put up with us for the next exercise.” He paused. “There will, of course, be compensation for the inconvenience.”

Sheer genius. The woman softened. “How long before I can get back to work?” she asked.

Vrenna made a show of looking to Luzhkov for confirmation. Luzhkov played along, made a thoughtful face, then nodded. Vrenna said to the woman, “Why not take the rest of the day off?”

She hesitated. “I have some deadlines…” she began.

“Believe me,” Vrenna reassured her, “the top management knows and realizes the situation we’re putting you into.”

“In that case,” she said, “can I just go in to get my purse?”

It took another minute of fast dancing and ad libbing before they had her things out of the office and the woman on her way. Too much delay. Luzhkov left McGee to start the sanitization. They’d haul the bodies out after hours. He wanted to run to the elevator, but he had to walk, look like nothing was up. He hadn’t received any radio communications all the time he’d been stuck on this floor. What’s going on up there? he wondered.

“Hi,” Flanagan said to the fire chief. “I’m with the building. We’re so embarrassed. We were in the middle of installing that window.” He began the lie with that. He built on it quickly. He lied a whole epic, and he was barely aware of what his mouth was saying, only that it was doing so with a contrite smile, and with the assured tone of God’s honest truth. His mind split into three. One part sectioned itself off and was devoted completely to the art of the laugh. A second gibbered panic. The third crowed, Christ, I’m good.

The stairwell door was next to the elevator. Blaylock opened it and listened. She heard boots pounding up the steps. And the elevator was humming, on its way up. It took priority. She closed the door and stood to the left of the elevator, gun up, finger already exerting pressure on the trigger. She spoke into her radio. “You in the elevator. You are ordered to stand down. Throw your weapons out before you leave the car.”

“Who the fuck is this?” a man responded. “Screw that, I don’t care. You made trouble, so that makes you a dead bitch.”

They had their chance. She crouched low. The elevator dinged its arrival. She started firing before the doors had finished opening, crab-walked to the right, strafing the idiots to pieces. One of them managed to stumble out and get off a burst. His effort was a last protest against death, and meant nothing. He barely saw her. His fire didn’t come anywhere close. The other three never left the car. Blaylock reached inside and turned the elevator off. No more arrivals by this method.

She gathered more clips, reloaded, strapped extra guns over her shoulder, and went back to the stairwell. She stood by the doorway, aiming down the stairs, ready for the next sucker. Every corpse she created made the cleanup that much more of a headache, but they weren’t leaving her any choice. Sounds of boots coming closer. Hard to tell how many flights down they were. The concrete walls and steps conducted the echoes up and amplified them. She waited. The sounds changed. The steady marching up stopped. Shouts. Confusion. Men yelling at each other, the volume building from boiling to explosive. A meeting of factions, she realized. She ran down the steps to help her boys. She jumped two or three at a time, not worrying about noise. The cacophony below would cover an elephant’s approach. She ran faster.

Too fast.

Phil Lambeck was thinking he was seeing a good idea go bad. He liked what Luzhkov had sold, and for the first while, the takeover had been smooth as silk. But now he and three buddies were in a screaming match with at least six other mercs, and those guys had the high ground in the stairwell. He really didn’t want shooting to break out. There were only stupid reasons for it. But it was going to happen anyway. He was at the head of the group, pleading for reason, but he and everyone else had his gun drawn, and he should just end the suspense and open fire.

The enemy beat him to it. The bullets rained down, pinning them. Ricochets pinged a zigzag off the walls. “Shit,” he yelled, dropping and firing back. He moved down a landing. He had no clear shot, but neither did the others.

“Now what?” Sid Wilson asked.

Like he knew. This could go on for hours. Then he heard sounds of approach from below. He and Wilson exchanged looks. “Friendlies?” Lambeck called to the rear.

“Aw, hell.” Tony Earl, the furthest down the stairs, didn’t sound happy at all, and then he was firing.

Lambeck’s heart sank. They were between floors, with no way out of the stairwell. They were caught in a pincer movement.

Blaylock almost ran straight into the bullet stream. The forward guard was standing just around the corner from her, in the same position she had used on the men upstairs. She threw herself backwards, alive only because the man hadn’t heard her coming and had been as startled as she was when she showed up. He wasn’t surprised anymore. He stopped firing, waiting for her to do the dumb thing and try to take him. From just a bit further below, she heard the steady fire of SMGs. Then still more. The stairwell became a soundscape hell of spitting weapons, one huge rattling roar.

Not good, not good. She had to overwhelm the guard with firepower. She unshouldered the extra guns, picked one up. Double wielding, twice the damage, zero accuracy. She pulled the triggers. She unleashed a hail of bullets and cement chips as she whipped around the corner on her knees. Debris slashed her face. The guns marched all over the goddamn place, hitting everything except the merc. They drove him back. He stopped firing long enough to run down for cover. Blaylock pursued, dropping one gun, taking the time to aim. She nailed him as he turned around to fight back. She shoved past his body before it had finished falling, and around the next turn of the staircase, there were his buddies, firing down at the team that had given their allegiance to her. She brought the wrath. Bang bang bang.

The firing above Lambeck eased, then stopped. He turned to help the others. Earl was dead, but they’d taken out at least two of the attackers.

Luzhkov’s head was spinning dizzy, his lungs were ragged from the climb, but the sound of gunfire pulled him like a lodestone. When he found the battle, adrenaline cleared the system. He and Vrenna piled in. Dolinsky did too, once he saw that the opponents had their backs to him. By the time they realized they were sandwiched, they were halfway to being dead. The last man cursed Luzhkov with creative fury before he took a round in the throat.

Ringing in his ears, then, Vrenna yelled, “Clear!” and silence descended. His lungs started complaining again.

“Come on up.” Blaylock’s call. It summoned his energy. He marched up, wading through bodies, and two landings up, there she was, above a bigger pile of the dead. The demon queen gave him a regal smile.