Greg Rucka - A gentleman_s game

There were three others just like him, one affixing a fiber-optic cable to the wall with strips of tape he'd stuck to the left thigh of his pants. The other two were crouched around a laptop, their faces lit in green from the light from the screen. All were armed, pistols set in holsters on their legs, MP-5s hanging from the straps at their backs. None of them looked up.

The furniture had been moved to the far side of the room, and Chace could see the naked picture hooks on the wall that adjoined four-twelve, where the Assault Team had taken down the frames. Resting in a corner of the couch, she counted four stuffed animals, heaped haphazardly atop a stack of picture books. One of the toys was a small fat panda bear, with thick, brightly colored pieces of hardened rubber stuck to its hands and feet.

A family's apartment, Chace concluded. One child, young enough to still be teething.

She wondered where they'd been relocated to, and if they had any idea why the Security Services had so covertly and unceremoniously evicted them from their home.

The man guided Chace across the room, pointing down to indicate the coiled power cables and cords, mutely warning her to watch her step, heading for a door opposite the wall to four-twelve. She heard a soft whine, cast a glance back to see that the one who'd been placing the fiber optics was now using a small electric drill to cut a lead hole into the drywall. They'd place charges next.

The man gave her another nod, then left her to go through the next door alone. She did so, stepping into the bedroom and more light than she'd encountered in the last ninety minutes. She hadn't expected it, and it blinded her for an instant, and when her vision came back she was facing a man.

"Fucking hell," David Kinney said softly, and he looked anything but pleased to see her. "You."

"Me, Mister Kinney," Chace said. "How nice to see you again."

Kinney pulled a face, then turned away from her, lifting the radio in his hand to his mouth, whispering a string of orders. He was built of a similar stock as the Deputy Chief, but a larger version, as if Weldon had been the structural test case and David Kinney the final product. In his early forties, straight black wiry hair and a mustache to match, black suit, hands like hammers, he always made Chace think of the stereotypical trade union leader, at least physically. Kinney's position was much like D-Ops's own, except at Box, where he ran Security Service operations in the Counter Intelligence and Counter Terror divisions.

This was most certainly a CT operation. It made sense that Kinney would be here.

But Chace had to wonder why he couldn't have been somewhere else instead, at one of the two other operations running, perhaps, where Poole or Lankford would have had to deal with him instead of her. But she knew the answer as soon as she posed the question; she'd dealt with Kinney before, and the bad blood of that past encounter notwithstanding, Crocker had been obliged to send his Head of Section as a courtesy. Anything else would have been an insult.

Chace waited until Kinney was finished on the radio, then asked, "How many?"

Kinney sucked air through his teeth, as if debating whether or not to tell her. It was against his every instinct to be honest with SIS, just as it was against all of Crocker's to play fair with Box. But tragedy made for strange bedfellows, and for the moment inter-service rivalry had been forced into the backseat, at least for tonight.

"Five," Kinney said. "Three men, two women."

"Armed?"

"That's what we've been led to believe."

"Explosives?"

"Suspected. Not confirmed."

"And they're HUM-AA?"

"That's what our intelligence suggests, yes." Kinney looked at her pointedly. "Unless you have anything to the contrary?"

She shook her head. "Terrorist cells operating in London are your province, not ours."

Kinney started to respond, then seemed to think about what she'd said. He closed his mouth abruptly. Chace continued before he could respond to the slight.

"So we're taking them?"

"We are taking them, yes."

"When?"

"When we're ready. You're here as an observer, Miss Chace, as a courtesy. This is a Box operation, not some Minder shoot-'em-up. We want them alive, for questioning."

"That's a lovely sentiment," Chace said. "Have you shared it with them?"

Kinney held her stare for a second, then turned away, speaking into his radio once more. • Chace moved back into the main room before dawn, settling on the couch to watch the video feed of the action coming in over the laptop. The CT team had finished placing their breaching charge, a snake of explosive that ran in a tall oblong on the wall, roughly half a meter from where the camera had been placed. The detonator sat beside the laptop, a toggle switch with a lead that ran back to the explosive on the wall.

The camera itself could be turned nearly ninety degrees in any direction, controlled by a remote with a thumbstick set in its center, and the image it sent back was remarkably clear for a device so small. Looking into apartment four-twelve was like looking into a mirror image of their own room, at least in terms of dimension and layout. But content was radically different, and there was no question in Chace's mind what all that equipment on the kitchen table was meant to do.

Four-twelve held explosives, and its occupants were building themselves a bomb.

"If there's one, there could be others," Chace said. "We don't know what else is in that apartment."

"The second team drilled through into the bedroom, from four-ten," Kinney retorted. "They've seen nothing but the two women asleep in the bed."

"Where are the men?"

"Out and about. We've got them under surveillance. We'll take them when they get back."

"Out and about at five in the morning? They're scouting locations, Mister Kinney."

"We have them under surveillance. If they try anything, they'll be stopped."

The four men on the CT team had stopped their work, listening to the hushed debate. Chace looked to the man who'd let her into the apartment, the one she took to be the team leader. He shook his head slightly, turned his attention back to the laptop.

"The point is that they're not trying anything yet," Chace whispered. "You wait until all of them are in the apartment, you're giving them a chance to react."

"Miss Chace, you're here as an observer-"

Chace gestured angrily at the laptop screen. "You don't even know if it's armed! For God's sake, Kinney, at least start evacuating the building!"

Kinney clamped his mouth closed, and for a second, Chace thought she could hear his teeth grinding.

"Miss Chace," he said, "if you cannot keep your voice down, I will have one of these men escort you from the scene."

"You want to get blown up?" she demanded.

Kinney leveled a finger at her. "One more word. One more word and you're out. Now, be a nice little girl and sit down, shut up, and mind your own."

Chace bit back the immediate urge to respond, feeling heat climbing down from her neck to her shoulders, feeling the eyes of the four men on the CT team on her again. Normally she could take sexism in stride, but here, now, coming from Kinney, in front of an audience, it infuriated her. She knew why he was opposed to evacuating the building, let alone the floor; it would tip his hand, give the game away, and as far as it went, he was right, it would. His targets might escape, and he wasn't willing to let that happen, especially in the wake of the disaster on the tube only three days gone.

The Security Services were taking it on the chin, and Kinney wanted the big success, to prove that they were still in the game. Hence the three operations in one night, timed to coincide; a message to say, what you did to us, we can do to you.