John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

Starling stepped back, and Verrick focused on slowing the drone till the delta-shaped aluminum and fiberglass UAV was almost hovering over the slightly snow-flecked grove of black walnut and sycamore trees. Of course, he couldn’t see the drone directly—he saw an outline of it generated by the program. But his point of view was actually angled down on the treetops from the camera in the base of the drone. “Thought I saw something move down there, between the trees,” he muttered.

Verrick slowly slid the wheel on the mouse forward, inching the UAV over a small clearing. There was a little meadow about a hundred feet below. And in entering the meadow, taking delicate steps, moved a deer—a doe, with its mulish ears up and twitching. Perhaps the doe was hearing the distant whirr of the drone and not recognizing the sound. It took a few more steps, looking back and forth, picking its way through dimpled patches of snow…

“There she is, sir, yes sir,” Starling said, looking at the screen from behind Verrick.

“Starling—keep quiet, I’ve got to concentrate.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

Verrick moved the drone a little more ahead, then right clicked to bring up the drone action menu. He clicked on reduce altitude , and the ground seemed to slowly zoom toward the camera…

Then the deer looked right up at him, her large brown eyes startled. She poised to leap away…

With a flick of his hand he selected the aim cursor, swung the crosshairs to the deer, and clicked on fire.

Somewhere, about a half mile from here, the drone—in actual fact—fired a rifle round from the tube on its base. The UAV jiggled in the air with the recoil, but not too much, most of the recoil being redistributed by hydraulic pressure release devices.

The deer was halfway through a leap—and was struck in the rear right leg. It stumbled, fell, then was up again, limping…

“Ha haaaaa,” Verrick said. “I got it!”

“Sir, yes sir!” Starling agreed eagerly.

Verrick tracked the deer a little farther as it staggered along, centered the crosshairs on its back, and fired again—right through its spine. The deer went down, twitching.

The deer probably wasn’t dead yet. There were only four rounds in the magazine. He decided to save the other two, in case he could find something else to kill.

“Sir, want me to arrange for that deer to be picked up for food, sir?” asked Starling. He had a taste for venison.

“No, don’t bother. Is that a rabbit, over there?”

Verrick tracked the UAV over to the other side of the meadow, thinking that the next step would be to get someone human out there to hunt; someone he needed to eliminate anyway. Like, for example, Aiden Pearce. Or a certain former Delta Force sergeant…

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.