***
People see what they expect to see, and I managed to get into the Blackstone office without incident. I flashed an ID badge at the gate, though the guard didn’t even look twice at me once he recognized the car. I parked, and strolled right through the rest of the security, and found Josh’s office from the directions he had given me.
It was still early, and it didn’t look like Josh’s bosses, two men named Mr. Roberts and Mr. Plonsky, were in yet. According to him, they normally rolled in around nine-thirty. I wanted to be gone by then, so I moved quickly.
I sat down at his computer, punched in the password he had graciously provided, and had access to all of the information I needed. I opened the briefcase I brought with me (which I had stuck in the trunk of Josh’s car the night before), pulled out the hard drive I’d be working with, plugged it in, and started cloning.
The process of cloning a hard drive wasn’t exactly fast, but it would’ve been unbearably slow even a year or two before this. I guess people got tired of spending two days backing up their pirated movies, and figured out ways to cut down on the hassle of petty larceny.
I kept my head on a figurative swivel, looking around the office building, alert for signs that anything had gone wrong. If one of the guards had come in late for his shift—or, God forbid, showed up early—it was possible that they would be the ones to find Josh. That would be an interesting conversation, to say the least.
But I wasn’t particularly worried. It wasn’t like I didn’t have virtually limitless ways to escape.
Skinchangers are rarely, if ever, caught.
I stood up from the chair when the process was at about twenty percent. It was a few minutes after eight o’clock, and I still had plenty of time to finish up and be gone before anyone was the wiser.
I walked around the office building casually, keeping an ear out for shouts of alarm. I poked around for a while, trying to see if there was anything significant that I should know about. You know, secret labs hidden in the lower levels of the building in which Blackstone grew hideous biological creatures that would serve as foot soldiers in a bid for world domination, that kind of thing.
But it was just an office. Alas, the real world is often far less interesting than we hope. I mean, hell, I was a freaking skinchanger walking around an honest-to-God mercenary company, and these flatfoots didn’t even have the courtesy to be part of some kind of horrifying conspiracy.
Just once, once, I’d like to find out something that wasn’t completely boring. But all I turned up was human resources complaints, tax information, personnel files, and, on one of their computers, a surprisingly varied and meticulously organized folder filled with pornography.
Lame.
I went back to good old Josh’s office, and flopped back down in front of the computer. The building itself was totally empty except for me. The guards apparently were posted in positions to keep people from getting into the compound at all, not to monitor what happened inside. They probably didn’t particularly care what happened inside. It’s not like there was anything interesting.
The transfer was up to ninety percent, which was good. I wanted out of there. If I had to hang around for much longer, the sheer boredom might just kill me. I checked the desk clock. It was just after eight-thirty. That was fine. I’d be gone before the work day officially started.
Just as the transfer reached ninety-six percent, I heard a chorus of shouts from the courtyard outside the building. It sounded like hurried demands, voices giving orders that should be followed, and that most sane men would obey.
Shit. They must’ve found Josh.
There wasn’t much I could do just yet; the transfer wasn’t complete, and you never know what the client was really looking for. I didn’t want to have to do this again, so I didn’t scrap everything and bug out. Besides, it was almost finished. And it’s not like they wouldn’t spend some time figuring out what had happ—
Ka-WHAM.
An explosion, impossibly loud, erupted from the direction of the shouts. The blast shook the building, and the windows of the office rattled in their panes, threatening to shatter. I jumped up from my chair, almost frantic, trying to remain calm. It’s hard to do that when the fucking building shakes.
I staggered to the door and closed it, but there wasn’t a lock on it. I cast about for something to barricade it, and as I considered the heavy file cabinet against the wall, a hail of gunfire shattered the relative quiet. Renewed shouts of alarm were barely audible in brief pauses between the gunshots, but they sounded panicked.
I forced myself to look at the situation rationally. It didn’t make sense. If Josh had returned, then they would have come for me. There shouldn’t be a freaking battle breaking out.
The compound was, it seemed, under attack.
I didn’t know why it had happened, or who had done it. It didn’t particularly matter to me, either. I had a job to do, and getting myself involved wouldn’t get that done.
Cursing the awful timing of paramilitary conflicts, I practically dove over the desk to get to the computer. The transfer was, I was happy to see, just about complete, hovering at ninety-nine percent. In my experience, that could have either meant it was done or would hang there for an hour.
I didn’t have an hour.
I stood over the desk, staring at the little progress bar, wondering what pencil-necked code monkey had designed this to estimate remaining time so poorly, when the door swung open and a white-faced guard burst inside.
He held an assault rifle in his hands, an honest-to-God assault rifle, not just a civilian one that was semi-automatic. That one would rip a man to shreds in a few seconds, and might even kill me if he got lucky enough. I sized up the distance between us, and was about to strike when the guard closed the door quietly and crouched down where he couldn’t be seen.
His eyes found mine, and he mouthed “Get down!” with startling sincerity. I obliged him, ducking behind the desk. I crawled around it, and looked at my new friend.
“What’s happening?” I whispered. I wondered why we bothered being so quiet; there was still gunfire aplenty to cover the sounds of our voices.
The guard shook his head. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “A few guys showed up, laughed at us when we asked for ID, and then a fucking bomb went off. They must’ve planted charges or something. We shot at them, but…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know. Nothing seemed to get through. They didn’t get hit.”
That wasn’t normal. If they had been fired at by a bunch of panicky civilians with weapons they weren’t trained with, well, that would be one thing. But these guys all had military backgrounds, and they knew what they were doing. They were paid to fight, and there were over a dozen of them. They should have made short work of a few men, bomb or not.
“A bunch of guys went down. I didn’t see how,” he continued. He was almost babbling, the stress of a sudden combat situation on comfortable, safe ground obviously getting to him. “It didn’t look like they had any guns or nothin’. Maybe snipers or something outside the compound.”
The gunfire abruptly ceased outside.
That was either very good or very bad.
“Ssh!” the guard said, which was totally unnecessary. I hadn’t made a sound.
We both listened closely, and we heard a calm, mocking voice from the courtyard. It was impossible to make out, but the tone was unmistakable. Someone was having a very good day, and I doubted that it was Blackstone.
“What are we going to do?” I asked the guard. It seemed in character for Josh to defer to whoever had the most experience in life-and-death situations.
The guard shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know what their objective is. They just started fighting. They’re probably going to search the buildings next.”
Well, that wouldn’t do.
I nodded. “Well, we’ll have to get out of here. We can’t stay where we’ll be found.”
“Nowhere
to hide, man. This place isn’t exactly built for something like this.”
I shook my head slowly, then crept around to the computer. Lucky for me, the transfer was complete. I unplugged the portable hard drive, stashed the cables in my suit pockets, and rose to my feet. I shut down the computer completely, and pushed the chair back in, so it looked like nobody had been here at all.
“What are you doing?” the guy asked.
“Escaping,” I said blithely. “Want to come?”
The guard’s mouth fell open, and he shut it firmly a few seconds later. Then I saw him visibly calm himself down, taking a deep breath with his eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them, there was steel in his spine, and he rose cautiously from the floor, and nodded to me.
“They’re at the front of the complex, right?” I asked, my voice low.
“Yeah, last I saw. Three or four guys, max.”
I nodded. “Okay. We’re only on the second story. We can get out through the window, pop over the fence, and call for help.”
He shook his head. “Barbed wire, man. Do you think that—“
“It’s either get a few cuts or get killed. Which do you prefer?”
He shook his head once again, but didn’t say a word. I took that as acceptance, and stepped over to the window. I opened it up slowly, a little surprised that they were the kind that slid up all the way rather than the weird narrow ones office buildings usually had. I poked my head out cautiously and looked around. I didn’t see anyone, but the voices were a bit louder outside.
I placed both hands on the windowsill, swung my feet over, and hung down. The drop was only about twelve feet, and if I landed right, it wouldn’t even hurt.
I let go, and kept my knees loose on the way down. I collapsed to the ground, which wasn’t exactly comfortable, but Josh was a lightweight, and I didn’t even have a scratch.
The guard followed a moment or two later, his impact significantly louder with all of his extra weight. I pressed a finger to my lips, and he nodded. Together, we crept toward the chain link fence. It wasn’t all that high, only about ten feet. My main concern was the noise it would make.
Nothing I can do about it now.
I could just leave the guard behind. I didn’t owe him anything, and he worked for a company that probably did very bad things for very big piles of money. He wouldn’t be much of a loss, if you judged things solely by the numbers. I could turn into a bird and fly away. Who would be the wiser?
But the guard hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. He was just a guy who had a skill set that wasn’t in demand by nice businesses. A lot like me, when you think about it. If I could escape with him too, why not? I’d have to leave him behind eventually, but I could at least get him out.
So, rather than do the smart thing, I tried to do the noble thing, and attempted to save us both.
I swept the suit jacket off, making sure to switch the hard drive to my pants pocket, and flung it over the top of the fence. It rested over the barbed wire, and the heavy cloth (why on earth would a guy wear a suit that warm in the middle of the fucking desert, I have no idea) should prevent most of the damage.
The guard grinned and nodded at me, then motioned for me to go first. I nodded, and quickly scaled the fence, taking care to be as quiet as possible. I carefully went over the opening Josh’s jacket provided, and dropped to the ground on the other side, the next best thing to silent.
The guard made a lot more noise as he went over, but I didn’t hear any cries of alarm, so I chalked it up as good enough.
Once we were out of the compound, we both breathed sighs of relief, and moved quickly toward the desert, not quite running. There wasn’t a whole lot of sand out there, and most of the surface was hard, rock or packed sand and dirt, so we had to be careful until we were far enough away.
After about three hundred yards, sweat pouring down our faces, we came to a halt.
“That,” the guard panted, “was some quick thinking. Good job, Mr. Breckan.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Can you call for help? I don’t have a phone.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Let me catch my breath, and we’ll see what I can get from the home office.”
I nodded, pretending not to find it odd that the guy wouldn’t just call the police. It’s not like their business was illegal… was it?
Heh. Better to handle things internally, I guess.
“Got a pair of binoculars? I want to see these guys,” I asked.
He nodded, and reached into one of the pockets of his vest. He handed me a small pair of binoculars. I looked through them back toward the compound, scanning the area, and saw something that was odd.
Damn odd.
The guards, about eight of them, knelt on the ground, their hands laced together behind their heads. Their weapons were gathered into a pile off to one side. In front of them were three people, two men and a woman. One of the men was talking to the disarmed guards.
None of them held a weapon, which was… unsettling. There had been a lot of gunfire, a storm of bullets that had lasted for several minutes, at least. I figured that at least some of them were coming from whoever had stormed the compound, but… if they didn’t have the guards under weapons, why had they surrendered?
Hell, if they were unarmed, why didn’t the Blackstone guys fight now? They could overwhelm three unarmed people pretty quickly.
The three strangers were wearing normal street clothes, jeans and shirts. One of the guys, a tall, skinny man with long hair that fell past his shoulders, was wearing sandals for Christ’s sake. It didn’t look like they were wearing suicide vests, and unless they had planted charges everywhere and held a switch or something, it just didn’t make sense.
What the hell had happened here?
The weight of the hard drive in my pocket suddenly seemed very, very heavy.
A chill went down my spine, and I started breathing a little faster. I had some suspicions as to who—or, I should say, what— these people were, and it made my mouth dry up.
Evidence. I might have some evidence on the hard drive I had copied. Until then, these were just three people, but if they were what I suspected…
My life could get complicated, fast.
There were a lot of things that I could reliably fight, but some of them… some of them you just ran away from. Some things you don’t fight, and the best you can hope for is to survive.
The guard was talking into a radio, a murmur that I didn’t really pay attention to. He seemed canny enough, and had obviously thought to switch channels before calling for help, or I suspect I would have seen some sudden activity in the compound.
One of the buildings was obviously a total loss, its walls barely holding together as it burned merrily. The smoke was probably enough of a signal to get someone’s attention eventually, but we were in the middle of nowhere. I doubted that it would be any time soon.
I saw the guy wearing sandals grin at something the woman said, and they both burst into obvious laughter. It looked like they were having a good time.
“How many guards were with you today?” I asked my companion quietly.
He had evidently finished with the radio, because he answered quickly enough. “Twelve, me included.”
I counted again. There were only eight guards kneeling down. Either the other three had escaped like us, or they had been killed in the fight. I swallowed against a lump that had formed in my throat.
I didn’t say anything to the guard. I just passed him the binoculars, and stepped away while he looked. I saw him take in what he saw, do the math, and come to the conclusion that I had. His face fell, but I saw his jaw clench.
“What’s your name again?” I asked.
“Brett, sir. Brett Childress.”
“You can drop the ‘sir,’ I think, Brett. Just Josh is fine.”
“Josh, then.” He took in a breath, and his voice barely contained his rage. “Looks like they got three
of ours. Home office is sending in help. I told them to come in heavy.”
“That sounds appropriate.”
“Who the hell are these people?” He turned and eyed me carefully. “What did you guys get us into?”
I shook my head. “Son, I have no idea.”
I debated what I should do next. Brett didn’t strike me as a trigger-happy idiot looking for an excuse to kill people, which is what most media tend to think of mercenaries. But these guys were veterans, ones who did their service and either washed out, were drummed out of service, or just wanted a better paycheck. I couldn’t really blame them for joining up with an outfit like Blackstone. Three years could provide what the military paid in twenty, and they mostly did the same job and fought the same people.
Today, if the President needed an oil field secured in the Middle East, he was just as likely to call someone like Blackstone as he would the Joint Chiefs. Well, I doubt that he’d make that call personally, but still.
These guys weren’t just a bunch of assholes. They were just soldiers who did it for money rather than country.
I could stick around for a while, but whatever backup was on the way would be likely to pick up Josh where I had left him. I’d be found out eventually.
I had to leave, but I’d have to shift to do it. I wasn’t about to walk across several miles of desert. Brett would see me. He’d either freak out and shoot me, or freak out and have a breakdown.
I could kill him. But I really didn’t want to do that. Like I said, he wasn’t an asshole who deserved a bloody death.
So I did the next best thing, what I hoped would preserve his life. I turned my eyes back to the compound, and stepped back a few feet.
“Something’s happening,” I muttered.
Brett stepped ahead, looking intently through the binoculars. While he was distracted, I stretched out one arm, and concentrated. My hand widened and flattened out, but didn’t harden; I wanted it to be heavy and soft. The fingers joined together, and it looked like I was wearing some kind of bizarre mitten. I ground my teeth, and made the bones of the hand dissolve, turning them into something quite like fine sand. I piled more muscle onto my biceps, the skin of my arm bulging weirdly, straining against the fabric of my shirt. It took me all of six seconds or so to get what I needed.
“I don’t see what—“
I swung the improvised flesh-and-bone blackjack across the back of Brett’s head, and he dropped like a stone. The impact actually split open my skin, and I bled for a few seconds before I closed the wound, shifting my hand back to normal.
I knelt down next to Brett’s still form, and rolled him onto his back. He was still breathing, but was knocked clean unconscious. He’d be down for a while. I reached down and found his canteen, and spilled a little water onto his lips, making sure he had some go down his throat. It was going to be hot soon, and I didn’t want the guy to die of heat stroke before help arrived. I probed the back of his skull, and didn’t feel anything broken, which was good. He would probably be fine after a few days. I rolled him back onto his stomach to keep his eyes out of the sun.
I’d done all I could for Brett and myself. I needed to get away, as fast as I could. If those people were what I thought, it was possible I was in huge trouble. If they knew about me, I was definitely in trouble.
So I took the hard drive out my pocket, placed it on the ground in front of me, stripped down, and shifted again. A few moments later, wearing the shape of a buzzard, I picked up the hard drive in my talons, and flew to safety.