Sim Lim Square.
Mecca of high technology.
In the heart of Singapore.
I was pretending to be a tourist, not a very difficult task given my height and weight, which made me the jolly green giant amidst the eclectic—but predominantly Asian—crowd browsing through the interior of the nanotronics mall. Open from the ground floor to the glass ceiling atop the seventh floor, the place bustled with activity.
Jam-packed balconies overlooked the controlled chaos dominating the bottom floor, where merchants from all over the Pacific Rim ran booths displaying their advanced gadgets, selling them with an energy that paralleled that of the old stock exchange floors at the turn of the century—or the whorehouses of Madras, Belgrade, and Quito.
While touring the fifth floor, I winced at the cacophony of voices in a dozen languages mixed with the sounds of hundreds of digital television sets. The glow from their high-definition flat screens washed the faces of impressed customers. All of the newest gizmos could be purchased at Sim Lim, from nanotronic systems housing the latest AI programming, to flexdisplays with wireless broadband capability, nanotronic sex toys for the lonely of heart, and commercial versions of the hovering security sphere that began to make its way into some police forces last year, providing limited assistance to cops in their rounds. Even the U.S. Army was now incorporating a military version of the famous Orbs, heavier and carrying higher-caliber ammunition and higher-resolution cameras than their law enforcement cousins.
Wearing a pair of gray slacks and a white polo shirt, I inspected the glittering interior, the neon signs of every major high-tech manufacturer—and many unknown ones. My enhanced sight, courtesy of a pair of molecular lenses with built-in telescopic capability as well as night vision, allowed me to probe the crowd browsing the displays on the floors below with ease. Most of the classic electronics merchants were present, from Sony, Toshiba, and RCA to recent additions from China and Korea. But the majority of the shelf space belonged to CyberWerke, the German conglomerate that was second to none but United States Nanotechnology in the development of the latest and greatest nanogadgets, from the coolest personal communicators smaller than a wristwatch to micro DVD players integrated into mobile phones.
Merchants made deals in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindu, English, Malay, Japanese, Korean, French, and, of course, German, courtesy of CyberWerke market expansion. All currencies were accepted in this high-tech heaven, which had its own bank and security force. Several restaurants on the third floor offered fast food for this eclectic crowd on the run. The smell of curry, ginger, pepper, and grilled fish hung in the air, mixing with body odor, cheap aftershave, cigarette smoke, and the acrid stench oozing from overused restrooms. And on the top floor—according to a hooker I bribed on Orchad Road last night—one could even find the private penthouses of the richest merchants, who used anything from the finest Asian whores to the most exotic sports cars to close the big business deals. I had already spotted four high-class courtesans going up the escalators in the past thirty minutes.
Just in time for happy fucking hour.
Under the watchful red eye of a nearby security sphere—Singapore’s version of the Orb designed and manufactured by CyberWerke—I took the escalators to the sixth floor, checking the flesh-colored implant on top of my right wrist. The Plasmaflex nanotronic gadget, manufactured for the CIA by United States Nanotechnologies and surgically integrated with my skin at USN’s facility in Austin, Texas, confirmed my location as well as those of my team members. No one but yours truly could read the Plasmaflex. The tiny system constantly performed eye scans of anyone trying to read it. Its directional nanocells blended with the natural texture of my skin in every direction but that of the firmware signature embedded in the molecular lenses filming my eyes—also a product of USN—making it impossible for someone else to see anything but skin.
The Plasmaflex, which provided me with the vital signs from each member of my team via an encrypted wireless channel, also reminded me that my own heart rate was up fifteen percent, and it urged me to calm down.
Easy, Tom. Don’t blow this.
I had positioned my relatively young team efficiently in the building, one per floor, leaning against the balconies, with a clear line of sight to the floors above and below.
Today was the day Troy Savage planned to assassinate Rem Vlachko—through me. One of Milosevic’s monster colonels way back when, Vlachko became an arms dealer after Milosevic’s fall in 2001 and was responsible for arming half of the world’s looneys. Vlachko was responsible for the Semtex explosives used to bring down that pretty skyscraper in downtown LA in 2005. Vlachko had personally financed the nerve gas strike in Rome in 2006 as well as the smallpox epidemic in Toronto that same year. And let’s not forget about the radiation waste he dumped in London’s water supply in 2007. To this day people were still dying from the hot water they drank three years ago courtesy of that monster. Trust me. Vlachko was one mean cat and the Agency sent yours truly here to make sure that I eliminated all nine of his lives in one swift blow.
I inspected my surroundings again while pretending to check a beautiful Sony holoscreen, half-watching the impressive tri-dimensional image. Troy, through assets—also known as agents—he ran in several countries, had gotten word that Vlachko wanted to get his hands on the latest generation of nanoweapons, the stuff that we had been using to combat the ever-rising terrorist camps around the world. So I floated an idea to Troy five months ago: create a fake high-tech company in California under government contract to build nanoweapons, and then have those contracts canceled and given to a competitive firm, forcing its CEO—yours truly—to look for other sources of income to keep his company afloat, including potential new buyers with lots of cash but unsavory backgrounds. As head of Counterterrorism at Langley, Troy sold the concept to Director of Operations Dobson, who, in turn, obtained presidential sanction for this operation.
I wasn’t certain why, out of all the places in the world, Troy had agreed to a meeting in Singapore, where owning a firearm carried a death sentence. Even possession of a single bullet meant five years in jail—plus an unbearable number of canes.
That’s right. Canes. The bastards here still whip you on the ass with long bamboo sticks. But they don’t give you all of the whacks in your sentence in one session because you usually pass out after two or three. Instead, they let you heal a few weeks before giving you a few more whacks, and repeat the heal–whack cycle until they administer your entire punishment.
An image of me, pants down, leaning over and getting it on the ass from some little Asian while others laughed and shouted in Chinese, made me dread the cold steel of the smart Colt shoved in my trousers as much as I feared getting burned by my quarry. I had protested the location on several occasions, quite concerned about the added risk of Singapore’s excessive security system. Just about every square inch of this island was monitored either by stationary cameras, by the floating Orbs, or by a geosynchronous satellite. I would have much rather held this meeting in Latin America, or even in the Middle East, places that exponentially increased our ability to vanish when shit hit the fan—something that invariably happened in these operations. But Troy had already set events in motion that could not be stopped—lest we wished to raise suspicions with the shadowy North Korean firm brokering the deal.
On top of all that, Troy had insisted on using rookies, wanting new faces to minimize the chance of getting burned.
“I can’t believe that Vlachko himself is going to be there,” I had told Troy the month before, when I’d learned of the meeting he had arranged. Initial contact was typically conducted by buffers, by people with connections to each interested party, but who didn’t know how to make direct contact with them—therefore kidnapping the buffers and interrogating them for information would yield nothing except telegraphing our intentions. A first meeting was more like a dance, with each side checking the other for weaknesses, for alarms, for the slightest reason to pull the plug on the whole thing. In my business neither side remained alive for long without this level of paranoia.
“Relax, Tommy. I know how things work. I taught you the rules, remember? I am the one who showed you a hundred different ways to assassinate a target without anyone suspecting it was a murder.”
I nodded.
“But I also taught you that when an opportunity presented itself you should act on it. This is the case with Vlachko, so I jumped at the chance to bag the bastard,” Troy had replied while smoking one of his illegal Cohibas in that dark-paneled office of his on the third floor of the new building in Langley. Troy Savage, a former SEAL already in his early fifties, still had the body and stamina of a man twenty years his junior, his only vice being the Cuban cigars he regularly obtained through a contact at Guantánamo Bay. He had lost most of his hair in his thirties and had gone for the Kojak look back then, though he kept a well-trimmed goatee, probably to compensate for the lack of hair in the northern hemisphere, as so many men do. His ice-cold blue eyes narrowed, as he expected a reply.
“That doesn’t leave us enough time to prepare,” I had replied. “We need to send scouts, survey the meeting ground, set up rendezvous points, perhaps a safe house or two, especially in Singapore, where Big Brother is always watching.”
“Have I burned you yet on an operation, Tommy? We go back to well before the Gulf War, to the days when the Commie rebels were the threat. Have I ever done you wrong?”
I shake my head. The huevos rancheros incident in Testikuzklan had occurred under someone else, and Troy had actually taken some of the heat when the shit hit the fan in Belgrade, especially when it became obvious that I couldn’t defend myself against Washington piranhas because I was in deep mourning over Maddie’s loss.
“Besides, Tommy, I even contributed to your personal well-being four years ago, remember?”
Troy was, of course, referring to the Kulzak case, where his agreement to my temporary transfer out of Langley to join the newly formed Counter Cyberterrorism Task Force back then resulted in yours truly working for Karen Frost, who headed the CCTF.
I nod.
“Are you still seeing her?”
“Now and then,” I replied, not feeling like talking about how little we had seen of each other in the past six months because of our job responsibilities.
“Have I broken trust?”
“No.”
“Then leave the setup to me,” he had replied.
“What about the assassination method, Troy? We don’t even know what we’re going to use this time.”
“Yes,” he said, taking a drag from the Cohiba, exhaling toward the fluorescent lights behind the ceiling tiles. “The assassination method . . . let me see.” Reaching inside a drawer of his mahogany desk, he had produced a vial. “When you’re face-to-face with Vlachko, you give him this,” he had replied with the same easygoing grin he had used when plucking me out of the Madras CIA Station a lifetime ago.
The tiny test tube looked empty to the naked eye. “What’s in it?”
“The same nanocrap we dumped on that terrorist camp in Colombia last month thanks to your handiwork.”
I continued to stare at the vial but with growing respect, remembering the long weeks I had spent in Colombia confirming the intel gathered by our satellites.
Colombia.
Identifying the sites had not been that difficult thanks to Troy’s assets in that drug-ridden country. The daughter of a banker in Caracas and the nephew of a high-ranking government official in Valencia had been among the agents assisting me in the mountains, guiding me through treacherous roads, across meandering rivers, pinpointing the well-hidden camp, which I marked with a laser for the stealth fighter that released the nanotronic load soon after. The terrorists had gone mad, shooting each other as the man-made plague entered their ear canals and detonated in their heads, inducing aneurysms in some and maddening pain in others.
Still holding the vial, I said, “This is great, Troy, but how am I supposed to get away after I release the contents of the vial? I don’t feel like having some nanorobot crawling up my ass.”
He fingered his goatee, still flashing that condescending smile. “Tommy, Tommy. After all we’ve been through and you still don’t give me enough credit. The nanoorganisms are safe for everyone but Vlachko. They have been programmed to seek his DNA. You just tell them they’re neutralized samples of the real stuff we would like to sell him.”
“And he’s going to believe that because?”
Troy stopped smiling. “Maybe you’re not the right man for this job.”
He had not finished saying that when I realized I was being tested. I quickly said, “I offer to let them try it on me to convince them that the weapon has been neutralized.”
“Very good. And then you tell them that they will receive a programmable version they can customize for any kind of assassination job—but only after payment is received. Then the bastard will open that vial to inspect the goods and . . .” he exhales a cloud of smoke, “poof. One less motherfucker selling arms to rogue regimes. Of course, if somehow the nanoweapons don’t get him, you have permission to just shoot the bastard to kingdom come. Word I got is that everyone at the White House will kiss your ass when you pull this one off. We sure could have used that kind of executive attitude for dealing with terrorist assholes back in the Clinton years. Perhaps then shit like the USS Cole and September 11th could have been prevented. But Washington isn’t taking the pussy way out anymore.”
That was Troy’s way of saying that we had presidential sanction to carry out an assassination, which was in direct violation of the old Presidential Directive 12333. While 12333 was still in effect, every president since September 11th had been making exceptions, especially when it came time to bagging international terrorists.
“Question?” I ask.
He pointed at me with the burning end of the cigar. “Shoot.”
“How did you get Vlachko’s DNA?”
Troy leaned back on his chair, set his feet on the ground, and placed the Cohiba in between his lips while winking at me. “Just tell them what they need to know. Always keep them guessing, Tommy. Always keep them guessing.”
As I remembered the way I last saw that cool cat two weeks ago, confidently puffing away at the cigar, I whispered to my termination team, “Interior check.”
An atomic-scale microphone implanted behind my front teeth captured my voice. A moment later I listened for their response through a minuscule earpiece attached to my right ear canal, connected through a wireless interface to the Plasmaflex unit on my wrist. I had four officers inside Sim Lim Square and six others out on the streets covering each exit. I wished I had twice as many, but Troy had reminded me to never underestimate the enemy’s dry-cleaning skills—their ability to detect surveillance—and had insisted on capping this operation at ten officers plus me.
“Two check.”
“Three check.”
I wait for my last two team members, but I get no reply.
I frowned. “Interior check, Four. Five.”
Nothing.
The possibility of malfunctioning equipment briefly flashed in my mind, but I discarded it an instant later. Our nanogear, assembled with molecular precision in the vast USN complex in central Texas, was defect free, as flawless as the nanoweapons Vlachko sought—and far more advanced than anything else on the market today, even from CyberWerke.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
But what? No one but Troy and I knew the details of the deal. Not even Director Dobson had learned of the specifics, of the time and date of the initial exchange of dollars for the tiny test tube housing neutralized samples of the same nanoweapon that wiped out that Colombian terrorist camp.
I glanced at the Plasmaflex, my stomach filling with molten lead when the unit displayed flatlines for two of my operatives.
I performed an outside team check and all six officers reported in. The team on the street was intact and professionally listening but not making any moves unless ordered to do so.
Cursing Troy Savage for setting up this meeting in a country I didn’t like, and without allowing me the time to survey the area properly, and then making me run it under several restrictions, I triggered the destruction of the implants in the dead operatives. The classified nanotech implants could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Our advanced nanotronics had to be protected at all costs. In an instant, a wireless signal reached the oral, ear, eye, and wrist implants—as well as the nanocells on the grips of the smart Colts—of the neutralized operatives. The molecular-level burns on the wrist, eyes, and mouth and in the right ear canal carried a high degree of injury, including blindness and the potential of a digitally induced aneurysm. But the operatives were already flatlined, which was the only way the implants would acknowledge such a termination signal. The nanotronics in the implants monitored the host’s vital signs. As long as there was life, they would not acknowledge the termination signal. This was a safety mechanism to prevent one operative from accidentally killing another. The only exception to this rule was if I chose to trigger the destruction of my own implants to prevent anyone access to the technology if I was captured alive, though doing so would likely result in my death—at least certain blindness.
I forced my legs into motion, reaching the escalator while whispering, “Two, three, engage countermeasures.”
Our wrist implants possessed the ability to fool any nanoweapon in existence today—at least those we knew of.
A security Orb hovered a dozen feet away monitoring the scene. It didn’t appear to have gone into alarm mode yet. One of the dangers of active countermeasures was potentially telegraphing our presence to the Orbs. Although our transmitting frequency was encoded to make it nearly impossible to trace, the chance of getting caught still existed, and possession of military-class implants except by local law enforcement also carried an automatic death sentence in this country—the reason why Troy had insisted I only activate the countermeasures in case of an emergency.
But I had no choice. The meeting had been compromised and it was my responsibility to empower my surviving operatives inside this building with every defense at our disposal, including the use of their smart Colts, which became active the instant the film coating the composite gun grip detected the owner’s fingerprints and enabled the firing mechanism. Whoever had neutralized my men had done so ruthlessly and brilliantly, without tipping the high-resolution eyes of the floating security force in Sim Lim Square—almost as if the bastards knew we were coming.
“Two, countermeasures engaged,” comes the reply from one of my agents.
I just about peed in my pants when I failed to get a reply from the third guy, spotting instead another flatline on the Plasmaflex.
I reluctantly triggered a termination signal to the neutralized operative, frying his on-board nanotronics.
Then I saw the threat. My advanced lenses, fitted with pattern-recognition technology and a state-of-the-art processor, helped me discern something too subtle to be detected by the hovering drones or the crowd around me, but definitely a disturbance in the normal pattern of customers and salesmen making deals. Three men, all Asian, wearing dark trousers and colored T-shirts, their movements fluid as they advanced through the gathering in front of a large nanotronic store selling CyberWerke hardware, heading my way as I’m about to reach the fifth floor.
Out of options, silently cursing the unfortunate fate of this operation, I ordered my surviving interior team member to our rendezvous point on the bottom floor while moving briskly away from the trio, past a display of vintage high-definition televisions and portable computers guarded by an old Malay man with dark, wrinkled skin. He shot a narrowed gaze of curiosity at me as I rushed by, trying to increase the gap with my pursuers.
Glancing at the shiny Orbs, confirming their continued lack of awareness of the attack under way, I felt a tingling sensation on my wrist. The Plasmaflex had just detected a laser.
Someone was painting me. The Asian trio was the flush team, guiding me toward a hidden sniper. In the same instant my implants informed me that the last operative had flatlined.
Issuing another termination signal, I dropped to a deep crouch, using the perplexed crowd as my shield against the hidden sniper.
My flanks turned into a blur as I raced away as fast as my legs would go while ordering the team outside to their vehicles. We were cutting our losses and getting out of here.
Pressing my right fist into my left palm at chest level, elbows extended, I slammed into the crowd, shoving people aside, no longer caring to avoid attention. Two Asians in business suits fell on their sides, crashing against a window display as I rushed by, ignoring shouts of anger, of surprise. Glass shattered; people screamed; equipment fell to the marble floors. I scrambled past angered shop owners, beyond shocked patrons, some screaming in Chine—
The tingling in my wrist abruptly changed frequency just as something buzzed past my left ear, like an angered hornet—an instant before a smart dart embedded itself in a wooden display to my left.
My breath was caught in my throat for an instant, before I exhaled in relief. The near miss was no lucky break. The Plasmaflex countermeasures had emitted a jamming shield around me the moment they had sensed the advanced dart in the air.
“We’re in the vehicles. Which exit?”
That was my senior officer outside. The team had made it to the two sedans and one of them was waiting for me to show up.
According to plan, I was supposed to emerge on Albert Street, which faced the south side of Sim Lim Square. But the slight change of plans had pushed me to the north side of the building, meaning I would be exiting on the side facing Rochor Canal Road.
The adrenaline rush drying my throat, I conveyed my exit point while chastising myself for following Troy’s orders and not engaging the countermeasures sooner, perhaps sparing lives.
I pressed on, pushing my way through the crowd not only to lose the trio and their sniper but also to evade the pair of Orbs heading my way. The CIA brief on the Singaporean version of the pseudo-intelligent guards claimed they packed quite the nasty little arsenal, including live ammunition—though I seriously doubt they will open fire in this crowd.
The Asian trio breaks through the wall of people. One of them is taller than the other two, and my advanced lenses briefly focused on his face, on his high cheekbones, on his aquiline nose, on his strong chin, on a pair of lips twisted in apparent anger. The man is no Asian cat but someone trying to pass for an Asian. My supervision has spotted the clear microtape pulling the ends of his eyes, creating the slanted effect meant to fool me.
But he could not fool the advanced lenses, which broadcast a 76.5 percent probability that the features belonged to Rem Vlachko. My intelligent wrist also tells me that the estimated height and weight of the stranger—six feet, one inch, and 190 pounds—matches that of my target, raising the percent of certainty to 93.
If my implants were correct, then Troy had been right in assessing that the monster would be here. Unfortunately, the bastard didn’t look like he was here to negotiate.
In the same instant, as my legs burned from the effort, I spotted a fourth figure breaking the rhythm of the crowd, coming at me from the opposite direction, his movements powerful but fluid, like a football player rushing through the line of scrimmage. But there was more to it. My enhanced vision suddenly told me more than what my mind was willing to accept. The man was taller than me and also wider, but not fat, just big. His movements were too familiar, bringing back memories of my training days at Camp Peary. I thought I recognized his features, not Asian but Western, with a well-trimmed goatee. They were shadowed by a baseball cap, or was it makeup? Or was my alarmed mind playing tricks on me?
Troy?
Unable to make a clean ID, my senses screaming at me to treat all incoming figures as the enemy, I rushed past the next escalator, reaching the double metal doors marked STAIRS in English, above its equivalent in Hindu, Chinese, and Malay.
My pursuers trying to converge on me from two different directions, the Orbs just behind them recording the occasion, I pushed the waist-high crash bar running across the metal door.
Was that really Troy Savage?
If so, what in the hell is he doing here with Rem Vlachko?
Or was he trying to catch Vlachko? Perhaps using me as bait?
No time to analyze!
The Plasmaflex went nuts again, prickling the top of my hand just as I detected an acrid stench. The tiny screen is flashing at me to get away from the bluish cloud enveloping me.
Puzzled, considering drawing my weapon, my heartbeat pounding my eardrums, I rocketed away from the strange odor, from the madness, shutting the door, staring at a hot and empty stairwell.
Concrete steps heading up and down projected beyond the small landing. Sunlight forked through side windows, washing my escape route in a yellow glow, creating a greenhouse effect inside the steamy emergency exit.
Still hesitating to reach for my piece in this place, I ran downstairs, beads of perspiration dripping down my forehead, stinging my eyes. If a hidden camera spotted the Colt I would have the entire fleet of Orbs and the Singapore police department congregating on my ass. I couldn’t get caught, not with the implants and the smart Colt—and not because of the certain death sentence. The implants were top-secret technology.
Wondering how things got so out of control so quickly, not certain how any intel could have leaked from Troy’s controlled circle, I reached the landing for the fourth floor, still spotting no one, still praying that I would not.
Tension throbbing in my forehead, in my temples, my enhanced eyes wildly gazing about me, I reached the third floor, then the second, breathing heavily now, as if I were really out of shape.
But I was not. Back then I was in superb physical condition, at the top of my game, capable of running at full speed for minutes before breaking a sweat. Yet my body shivered from exhaustion, as if an invisible force had sucked the energy right out of—
The smell! The blue cloud!
Of course!
The same cat who had fired the smart dart realized I was armed with countermeasures and had then fired a microcanister filled with a paralyzing gas, which did not have to hit me directly, as was required with a dart. The canister only needed to go off near me to nail me.
A crash from above, followed by hastened footsteps. My pursuers had reached the emergency stairs, were coming after me.
But the paralyzing chemical had already spread through my system. My legs would no longer move, refused to carry me any farther. I struggled forward, tried to reach the first floor—reach the street, get to safety. But I fell instead, crashing my right shoulder against the steps, then flipping, landing hard on my back.
Disoriented, finding it hard to breathe, my shoulder blades burning from the impact, the clicking footsteps getting closer, I did the only thing I could before losing all control of my body. Pressing index fingers against my eyes, I rubbed down and to the side, removing my lenses, tossing them aside while also ordering my team outside to scramble back to the safe house. I had become a liability to them.
Wishing I could also dig out the implant in my right ear but realizing I was out of time, I reached for the vial in my pocket and slammed it hard against the concrete, releasing the nanoorganisms, hoping that if one of the Asians was indeed Vlahcko maybe I would get the bastard.
Hands grabbed my shoulders, tugging at me, but I could no longer see. It would take minutes before my sight returned after I removed the advanced lenses—something to do with the way the molecular interface connects the lenses to the pupils to enhance sight.
But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care to see the faces of my executioners, of the bastards who killed my team members. But the fourth cat . . . was that Troy? If so, what was he doing there? And more important, why wasn’t he helping me?
As my mind grew cloudy, dark, I reluctantly ordered the Plasmaflex to issue a final termination signal, realizing what that would mean. Although I had removed the lenses, sparing my eyes, the detonating implant in my ear could kill me—or turn me into an eggplant. But I had taken a vow to protect the technology at all costs, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. People would die if terrorists got ahold of my advanced USN implants and learned how to counter them, how to turn them against us.
Cringing, I waited for the command to propagate through the logic of the Plasmaflex, which, realizing that I had issued an order to self-destruct, prompted me for final confirmation.
Confirmed.
Colors exploded in my brain as a white-hot pain pierced through my head like a sizzling splinter, tearing into my mind, my soul. Somewhere in the distance I could also feel the top of my right wrist burning, as if I had immersed it in acid, but it felt far away, detached from the overwhelming lightning bolt deep in my mind ravaging my senses.
Scourged, maddened, I tried to scream, to shout, to howl from the agonizing pain gripping my sanity, but the choked cry never reached my gorge before everything went black.