“Who is she?” Akkar asked in a deadly whisper.
“She’s my fucking wife, you piece of shit! And if you’ve touched one hair on her head, I will fucking kill you!”
Akkar snatched the taser baton from Dimon and jabbed it into Callum’s chest. The pain was abysmal. Callum writhed helplessly, unable to think, transformed to nothing but a lump of screeching agonized flesh.
Dimon pulled Akkar’s hand, moving the baton away. “This is not you, my friend. We need him talking, not screaming.”
Akkar nodded reluctantly, but beneath his anger he was giving Callum a puzzled look. “Speak to me. Your wife?”
Callum coughed pitifully, his body still shaking. “Yes, she’s my wife. What do you think I’m doing coming here to shit-city central asking where she is? I want her back.”
Akkar and Dimon exchanged a glance again, which Callum guessed was bad.
“What’s her name?”
“Savi Hepburn.” He knew he shouldn’t tell them, but it was just a name. And appearing to help, to cooperate, might kick something loose. Where she was…
“A Connexion undercover agent,” Akkar said in quiet fury. “She led us into a trap. Your bitch did this to us!”
Callum glared at him. “Yeah, so? She outsmarted you. It couldn’t have been difficult. Where did you see her last?”
Akkar glared at him. “She betrayed us. I should make her watch while I cut your throat in front of her.”
“You’ve got to find her first. When did you see her last? Come on! When?”
“I ask the questions, company boy.”
“Yes, you do. So try asking this. How do you—you who’s hiding in a crappy prefab cesspit in Kintore—how do you get into Connexion to find your precious people? How do you recruit someone on the inside? Someone they’ll never suspect? Someone who’s a lot more desperate than you are to find out what the fuck happened? Got any ideas on that, pal, huh? Got a name, maybe?”
Akkar gave an incredulous snort. “You want to work with us?”
“I would sooner chew my fucking leg off. But what choice have either of us got?”
“No way,” Dimon growled.
“Really? Go on, then,” Callum challenged recklessly. “Explain your alternative. Savi is with Security. She was watching you, recording you, gathering every detail of your pathetic little eco-cause lives. Connexion Security knows it all. A multi-trillion-dollar company with a security division budget bigger than the sodding CIA. The only thing—only thing—that they don’t know about is your current location. But you can’t get out of Kintore now, can you? Not through a portal, and drones or satellites will spot any vehicle driving away. You’re in a jail just as secure as your missing comrades. Nicer food, maybe, and invisible walls. But this is where you’ll stay for the rest of your life. Which, with drone surveillance and G5Turings searching the internet, probably isn’t going to be more than another week. So go on, tell me your super smart master plan to bust out and save everyone, wherever they are. Got an address on that, have you?”
“How can Osha be missing as well?” Akkar asked.
“Who?”
“Your wife; that was the name we knew her by. If she’s Connexion Security, why is she missing?”
“I don’t know. I can’t even get the bastards to admit she was working for them.” He jerked his wrists against the cuffs. “Unlock me. Come on. We need to work out what to do next.”
“A hundred and twenty-seven people vanished, Callum. Including one of their own, if we believe you. The only thing we’re going to find now is their grave.”
“No,” Callum shouted. He tugged hard, as if that alone would break the handcuffs. “She’s alive. I know you’re paranoid enough to believe Connexion can murder that many people; it’s all part of your sad little echo chamber conspiracy bollocks. But they don’t. And I’ve met Ainsley. He’s a ruthlessly clever businessman, sure, but he’s not fucking Hitler.”
“There won’t be a grave to uncover,” Dimon said. “Haumea station gets rid of all Connexion’s problems, all the evidence.”
“Buzzt! Wrong! Have you ever been to Haumea station? I have. I go every week. I know every ventchamber. I’ve watched our grandparents’ toxic crap sail off into space. There aren’t any corpses going through.”
“If not Haumea, then another invisible asteroid out beyond Neptune. It’s a big company, as you said. With infinite resources.”
“She’s alive!” Callum cried. “Now fucking let me go. I’m going to find her, with or without you. Do you want to know where your friends went or not? Because I’m your only chance to find out.”
After a long moment, Akkar nodded. Dimon sighed in disapproval, but bent down and unlocked Callum’s handcuffs.
“Okay, company boy,” Akkar said. “What do we do now?”
Callum rubbed at the red marks on his wrists. “Secret rendition, that’s what’s happened here, right? They’re all sitting in some deep hole somewhere: disused mine, hollowed out volcano, North Korea. We’re agreed on that, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s only one thing we can do now. They vanished down the rabbit hole. We have to dive in after them.”
* * *
—
The sun had set two hours before, leaving the Sydney skyline ablaze in neon and office lights. As always, Yuri hadn’t noticed.
“We’ve got movement, chief,” Kohei Yamada said breathlessly.
Yuri looked up from the screens on his desk to see his deputy leaning on the doorframe grinning excitedly.
“Movement?”
“Dimon just broke surface. Active ops is tracking him.”
“Now?”
“Yeah. We’re live!”
“Shit.”
The two of them hurried along the corridor to the active ops center. Omri Toth was duty operations manager. He gave Yuri a thumbs-up. “Facial recognition got him outside the Kintore hub five minutes ago.”
“Where did he go?” Yuri asked.
“He didn’t.”
“Show me.”
Omri gestured at Tarli, who was on one of the desks. Yuri peered at the main screen at the front of the room. It had a camera view of the Kintore hub: a hexagonal green-and-white tiled lobby with four portal doors, two for the town’s tiny loop, the other pair leading to the Northern Territory central hub.
“Seven minutes ago,” Tarli said.
Yuri watched Dimon linger just outside the entrance barriers, looking around slowly. The big man spent a couple of minutes observing pedestrians come and go, then left.
“Current location, hanging ’round outside twenty meters away,” Omri said in a bemused tone.
The screen switched to one of the hub building’s external cameras. Sure enough, Dimon was standing farther down Main Street.
“Kohei, get me the duty captain at the Northern Territory central hub,” Yuri said. “And put our armed response team on active alert.”
“Yes, chief!”
“And no national police. Let’s keep this in-house.”
He watched Dimon, who was still standing on Main Street. The man was wearing one of his charcoal gray suits, which must have been disturbingly hot in Kintore’s evening heat.
“Is his mInet using the internet?” Yuri asked.
“Difficult,” Tarli said. “I’ll put our G5Turing into the local servers, see if we can identify his digital signature.”
Boris threw a communication icon across Yuri’s screen lenses.
“Captain Dalager, the Northern Territory hub network security chief.”
“Okay, captain,” Yuri said. “We have some activity at the Kintore hub. A suspect on our critical wanted list may try to get through central hub. I need you to start shutting it down.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Let ev
eryone currently in the hub go through, but close the barriers and every portal door to new traffic apart from Kintore. My authority.”
“That’s going to cause chaos!”
“I don’t care. Once the hub is empty, deploy the tactical response team to pick him up. I want him to walk straight into this eyes open.”
“Yes, sir.”
Omri was chuckling. “Oh, man, regional control is going to dump on you from a great height. You shut central, and you’re closing down the whole Northern Australian Territory.”
“The Hubnav app will throw everyone a route through the secondary networks; that’s why we have multiple overlaps. It’ll take people thirty seconds longer.”
“As long as I don’t get hauled in to corporate to explain this.”
“You won’t be. Now, get all our Kintore spy drones into the air. Do not lose Dimon. I don’t care about stealth. This needs to be wrapped.”
“Already launched.”
“Tarli,” Yuri said quietly. “Open a secondary cache, and copy all this operation’s files into it. My access only, not New York.”
“Got it, chief.”
“Boris, notify Poi Li we have a situation developing—”
“It’s him,” Tarli exclaimed.
“Who?” Yuri stared at the screen.
“Akkar. That uniform isn’t fooling anyone.”
Yuri felt his excitement building as he saw the tall eco-warrior walking along Main Street toward Dimon. “He wouldn’t dare,” he breathed. Akkar was wearing the brown-and-green jacket of StepSmart couriers, along with matching shorts. The company’s standard-issue canvas satchel was slung over his shoulder. His cap had a long peak which he’d pulled down until it almost touched his broad wraparound sunglasses. That, along with several days’ stubble, was possibly enough to confuse a low-level facial recognition program, but not anyone in active ops.
“Ten dollars he’s going to try,” Kohei said.
“Bloody hell,” Omri said. “Dimon was scouting it out for him in person. These blokes never use the internet for anything. They’re religiously old-school.”
“Keep on them,” Yuri yelled. “Kohei, with me. Dalager, empty the hub, now! Our suspect is coming through.”
He ran out of active ops. There was a portal door twenty meters away. Boris threw a route to the Northern Territory central hub on his screen lenses. The portal door led into Connexion’s internal network. Left turn, through two more doors, right turn at the ten-portal junction hub. Three straight—
Poi Li’s icon sprang up. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“Akkar’s surfaced. We’re about to take him down.”
“All right, I’ve got the feed. I see him. What’s in his courier bag?”
“We don’t know. The portal sensors will pick up anything dangerous.”
“I don’t want him in a central hub.”
“If I send the tactical team through to Kintore now, he’ll run.”
“They can catch him,” she said.
“There isn’t time. Let him through, and he’s contained on our territory.”
“I need a decision,” Omri said. “Akkar is ten meters from the Kintore hub.”
“If the bag’s a bomb, if he’s going to suicide, we can’t let him do it on Kintore’s Main Street,” Yuri yelled. “Too many people.”
“Central hub is almost empty of pedestrians,” Dalager confirmed. “Team assuming interception positions.”
“Very well,” Poi Li said. “Let him through.”
“Dimon is walking away,” Omri said.
“Keep the drones on him,” Yuri said.
“Yes,” Poi Li said. “And route their feed to me. I’m sending a team through the C and GST portal; they’ll intercept before he can vanish on us again.”
Yuri almost smiled at the déjà vu moment. It was exactly like first fall, when Poi Li had jumped in, putting her own people into the operation—but now she didn’t have exclusivity on the operation’s data. “Tell them to be careful,” he said. “Akkar is the brains, but Dimon is the muscle. He’ll likely be armed.”
“I can access a file, thank you, Yuri,” Poi Li said.
Yuri sprinted through the last portal. He was in a windowless corridor. At the far end a locked double door closed off the hub. Boris sent it his access code, and the bolts clicked open.
“He’s in the Kintore hub,” Omri said. “Using a cash code. Through the barriers now.”
“Scanners picked up some kind of flask in the bag,” Tarli shouted.
“Is it a weapon?”
“The flask’s metal. Can’t scan the interior. No residual molecular traces. He’s going through to central—”
“Dalager, intercept!” Yuri said. He burst through the double doors, with Kohei right behind him. They shot out onto the central hub floor, quarter of the way around the big circle from the Kintore portal. Shouts rang out, echoing along the eerily empty space.
“Down!”
“On your knees!”
“Hands where we can see them!”
“Down, down!”
“Do not move!”
Up ahead, Yuri saw the Kintore portal door. Akkar was in front of it. On his knees, his hands raised. Five figures in light armor were closing on him, their carbines raised, ruby target lasers slicing the air to form a neat grouping of dots over Akkar’s heart.
Yuri skidded to a halt behind them. “What’s in the bag, Akkar?”
Akkar smiled grimly. “Open it and find out.”
“Put it down slowly,” the tactical team’s leader instructed. “There is too much firepower in here to risk making people nervous.”
Akkar lifted the StepSmart satchel from his shoulder, holding it by its strap, a grin spreading across his face. Yuri didn’t like that grin at all, but they had every angle covered. Unless he’s going to suicide. But he’s not the type, according to Savi.
“You mean this bag?”
“It’s over, Akkar,” Yuri said. “Put it down.”
Akkar stared at him for a long moment, then the defiance collapsed, and he put the bag on the shiny tile floor and raised his hands.
Moments later the tactical response team had his wrists zip-locked and hauled him away. Yuri and Kohei stared at the satchel nervously.
“Bomb squad on the way,” Omri said. “Ninety seconds.”
“I don’t feel the need to stand this close,” Kohei said. “We can’t contribute at this point.”
“Yeah,” Yuri growled. They both walked back, around the curve of the concourse.
The three members of the bomb squad jogged out of the same double door Yuri had just used, their bulky protective armor parodying a sumo suit. A safetez followed them, its tracks a blur. The spider-leg array of manipulator arms locked around its stubby central cylinder.
“Omri,” Yuri asked. “How are we doing with Dimon?”
Boris immediately threw a drone camera image across the screen lens. It was the green-and-black monotone of light amplification circuitry, looking down on a street in Kintore’s industrial zone. Dimon was running into a big warehouse with a Warbi Crude Metal Corp sign on the gable end.
“Bugger!” Tarli exclaimed.
“What is it?” Yuri asked as the drone’s camera image flickered.
“He’s got electronic countermeasures operating down there. It’s nearly military grade. I can’t send the drones in any closer, or we’ll lose them.”
“Use the drones to surround the warehouse. Make sure he doesn’t leave.”
“That’s kinda rule one-oh-one, chief, you know?”
Yuri nearly smiled at the man’s hurt tone.
“My team will be there in two minutes,” Poi Li said. “They’ve cleared Kintore C and GST.”
Yuri’s heart rate was calming. By unspo
ken agreement, he and Kohei walked a little farther around the central hub.
“Well, look at that,” Kohei said wryly as the drones showed them two big four-by-four vehicles pulling up outside the Warbi Crude Metal Corp warehouse, one at each end. “Like police responder cars, but bigger.”
Yuri watched impassively as seven or eight men deployed from each four-by-four, all wearing dark head-to-toe armor. “Packing them in,” he murmured.
Boris gave him a private channel to Poi Li. “I want to interrogate Akkar myself.”
“He will be questioned by professionals,” she replied.
“At least let me sit in.”
“Yuri, we have this. You run an excellent department. Believe me, I am aware of that. Just trust our procedures. They exist for a reason, understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said resentfully.
Five minutes later the bomb squad chief announced: “Clear and safe.”
Yuri and Kohei walked back to the StepSmart satchel, which was now being held aloft by one of the safetez’s arms. The squad chief had his helmet visor hinged up. He was holding the flask and several sheets of paper.
“Two kilos of plastique,” the chief said cheerfully, shaking the flask. “And plans.”
“Plans of what?” Yuri asked.
The squad chief thrust the sheets toward Yuri. “Connexion’s Sydney headquarters. Looks like he was coming to pay you blokes a visit.”
“Holy shit,” Kohei grunted.
Yuri watched the chief seal up the plans and flask in evidence bags and record their barcode.
“We have Dimon,” Poi Li announced. “Well done, everyone. Yuri, looks like you can close down the Akkar file now.”
* * *
—
The screens on Yuri’s desk were showing three pictures: Savi, Akkar, and Dimon. He sat there motionless in his black leather executive office chair, staring at them.
Kohei walked in, carrying two empty shot glasses and smiling brightly. “Chief! If you fancy sharing some of that godawful vodka of yours, I thought we might toast our success. And the team’s heading out to a club. Everyone invited.”