John Shirley - Watch Dogs - Dark Clouds

“I thought I told you, Wolfe, not to—”

“Quiet. Here they come. They turned when we did. Doesn’t prove anything but…”

The van was still toddling slowly along the street. It hadn’t quite drawn abreast of them yet. The van was driving about five miles per hour, clearly taking its time as the driver searched for something—he was the one getting honked at now, the driver, who looked vaguely familiar… from the old lodge.

“See if that door behind us will open,” Wolfe said. He hadn’t even noticed what kind of building it was before he’d ducked into the doorway.

“Yeah. But there’s a security guy at the desk staring at us…”

“Be ready to go through the door anyway… if we have to.”

The van’s driver wasn’t looking his way. But as it drew abreast, that profile…

Then it hit Wolfe. The driver was the Graywater who’d fired the AK47 at him.

And now the driver of the van turned his head—and looked straight at Wolfe.

“Go!” Wolfe said sharply.

She turned, and opened the door, and they rushed through.

“Can I help you folks?” the black security guard asked them, standing. He wore a uniform but didn’t seem to have a gun on him. The lobby was faced in marble and brass. This must be some kind of upscale high rise apartment.

Wolfe turned, glanced through the door. Saw the van pulling up, the driver getting out—with a Mack 10 auto-pistol in his hand.

“Visiting friends upstairs,” Wolfe said. “Party.”

“Sir…”

But then the elevator opened, and a lady with an ermine coat stepped out, with her two small white fluffy dogs on a leash. “Come on lovie loves,” she said. “Walkie walkie!”

Before the elevator doors had closed Wolfe and Seline were through them, and Wolfe was punching the Close Doors button. He saw the security guard push the woman with the dogs out of the way—she dragged the dogs with her—as the Graywater merc burst into the lobby, raising the Mack 10.

The doors closed, catching a short burst on them, then the elevator was headed up.

“I hope those people in the lobby are okay, Wolfe,” Seline said.

“So do I. The Graywaters won’t waste time with them. They’ll be coming right after us. Anyway—there are a lot of lives at stake. More than you know. Thousands.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something called the Iceberg Project. Tell you later.”

“Just tell me one thing—how’d these guys in the van find us?”

“Security cameras in Union Station. I guess they were monitoring the place through their pal at Blume pretty closely to keep us from leaving town. And they had your face in their system. And ctOS recognized you and sent those lunkheads over to take us out. Must’ve been close by—the Blume Building’s not far off…”

“Oh. I shouldn’t have taken off the scarf.”

He was thinking that there had been an emergency stop elevator button in the lobby—and just as that thought crossed his mind, the elevator jarred to a stop.

“Oh shit,” she said.

They were about seven floors up. They seemed to be almost up to the eighth floor.

“Let’s not stay here and wait for the sons of bitches,” Seline said. She found the emergency open door button, slapped it, and the doors opened—showing they were halfway up the doorway of the eighth floor.

Wolfe slid the plastic bag through the doorway, onto the carpeted floor, then did a pull up, and scrambled out onto the hallway. He turned reached down, clasped Seline, and helped her up.

Then he picked up the bag—and drew his gun. “This way.”

They ran to the door to the stairs, through it—and then they heard urgent footsteps coming up the stairs, not far below them.

“Iwant to know what this whole upload runaround is all about, Garnet!” Aiden Pearce snarled.

Pearce had just changed his own headquarters to a new safehouse, activated its surveillance gear and watch devices, when he’d gotten the redirected-call chime on his phone.

Now Pearce was sitting on the edge of the bunk, close beside a shuttered window, glaring at Garnet—the fixer was on the smartphone screen. This image wasn’t animated—Garnet wouldn’t dare pull that crap on Pearce. Garnet took a spliff from his mouth, exhaled smoke, and said, “DedSec’s started running scared after GlowWorm got offed. They’re all worried they might have someone inside—some kinda mole. And it looks like any major download coming from the underground is gonna be blacked out.”

“How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know. There’s somebody at Blume who’s pulling a lot of shit with ctOS without the rest of Blume knowing it. That’s what I’m hearing.”

Pearce thought, That’s probably Verrick . But Pearce wasn’t going to mention that—he instinctively told Garnet only what he had to. Information was money, as far as Garnet was concerned. Sometimes Pearce thought Garnet had a rudimentary conscience. But most times the hacker seemed totally self-interested. He wasn’t sure Garnet would try to sell him out to Verrick—but there was no way to know.

So Pearce only said, “I can upload the damned file myself. I’ve got systems that can do it without Blume being able to do a damn thing about it.”

“DedSec’s not trusting just anybody with it right now. Last I heard, that was especially ‘Don’t trust Aiden Pearce’. They’re not gonna let you have it. It has to be done this way.”

“So how’s ‘this way’ work?”

“They go to some place where the file can be uploaded safely through a short term wifi terminal. Without Blume knowing about it till it’s all over the internet.”

“What place?”

“I don’t know, man. I already told you way too much for free anyway—so if I did know I’d have to charge you. In fact I’m gonna send you a bill for this call.”

“And I’ll use it to line a bird cage.”

“You got a bird in a cage now? What kind? I used to have a cockatoo.”

“No, you stoned-ass fool, it’s an expression. Never mind. Just tell me you didn’t give my man bad information. If you fucked him over, Garnet, I’ll come after you. He’s a good man and he’s valuable to me.”

“See, that’s your problem, Pearce. You think that exists.”

“What exists?”

“Good men.”

With that, Garnet hung up.

Worried, Pearce sent Wolfe a text:

Everything rolling okay?

He waited. In fact he waited quite a while.

There was no answer from Mick Wolfe.

Wolfe was busy. He was trying not to get shot in the back.

He was pounding up the steps, carrying the laptop in its plastic sack; two steps behind Seline, he turned now and then to fire a single bullet down the steel stairs, mostly just trying to slow down the pursuers. There were four of the Graywaters in all. The other three had been waiting in back of the van.

A quick burst of bullets came up the airspace and struck the railings, the shots ricocheting. Sparks flashed. Wolfe smelled friction-heated metal.

Then they passed the top-floor landing, went up the last flight, and ran up to a doorway to the roof. Seline opened it, stepped through, and held it for him. He ran through onto a flat roof, and she slammed it closed. There didn’t seem to be a way to lock it without a key.

He put his arm through the loop in the plastic sack, pulled it up onto a shoulder, and looked around—seeing it the same moment Seline did.

“Look!” Seline said. “A helicopter!”

On the other side of the roof was a green concrete helicopter landing pad—and there was a chopper on it, its rotors slowly starting to turn. It was someone’s posh private helicopter, neither large nor small. Wolfe could see the pilot in the cockpit looking down at his instruments.