Aswon shook his head at Kai, then moved to a window and carefully peered through it, catching another look at the block of flats.
"It's pretty much the perfect spot to observe us from – good line of sight, elevated position, plenty of cover and unlikely to be walked over or past. The only downside is limited access. Even so, I think that's where I'd set up a hide if I was trying to do recon on someone at the airport. Don't you think, Hunter?"
The big ork looked up from his assault rifle that he was checking over and gave a curt nod, then slapped in a fresh magazine and worked the action before setting it down carefully next to him and moving onto his other weapons.
Shimazu got back in the UAZ and made sure his sword and pistol were ready, then waited for Kai to climb in to the passenger side. Carefully he backed down the ramp, then took off at a leisurely speed towards the security checkpoint leading out of the airport. Over the last couple of days the staff there had at least come to nodding terms with them – they weren't any laxer with their checks of the ID, but at least they weren't just processed as another set of bodies passing through.
The road leading out from the airport was quiet at this time of morning – most of the first flights wouldn't land until 10:00, before heading back to their original sources. Shimazu tried to drive casually, but couldn't help but feel like a bug under a microscope, knowing that he was in full view of a potential enemy. It only took a few minutes to navigate past the block of flats, then he threw the car over the central reservation and made a swift U-turn, looking to find a back street or road that would take him towards the sniper's perch.
It didn't take long for them to find their way to the far side of the building and park up, close to the building so someone would have to lean over the roof parapet to spot the four by four. Looking around for observers and seeing none, Shimazu grabbed his sword and held it under his arm, the scabbard running down the side of his body to knee level. A close inspection would reveal it at once, but to anyone more than a few metres away it could have been a stick, cane or any one of a number of other items. Kai walked along behind him with his day-glow green jacket on, clipboard under his arm and a look of concentration on his face.
As Shimazu led the way, Kai moved the muscles and ligaments under his flesh, slowly commanding them to move and reshape. He wasn't quite sure how he did it, and he was at a loss to describe to anyone else how he knew what muscles to flex, what ligaments to relax – but they obeyed his subconscious mind and slowly his face sculpted into a new image. It didn't change his body shape, his gait, pheromones or DNA – but it threw facial recognition a curve ball that was hard to deal with.
As they approached the front entrance of the building, they could see clearly the signs of decay and lack of maintenance. The area was poor for certain – nobody willingly lived under the glide path for an airport – but the building was decrepit and had an aura of sadness about it. The video camera that should have looked down at the entrance door had long since been ripped away, and the bracket that would have held it was rusty and peeling.
The door had a keypad and a buzzer, and a very old maglock – but still an obstacle to impede their entrance and stop them getting to the rough. As Kai examined the lock, looking to see if he could get the case off, or if he would be better buzzing a random flat and trying to smooth-talk his way into the building, Shimazu gave the door an experimental tug, to make sure it was locked.
It was locked. However, the maglock was very old, poorly maintained and had a locking force that would only be an obstacle for small children. As Shimazu rattled the handle, the door popped open in his hand. With a flourish he waved Kai into the building, before entering himself, giving the lock a close look on the way past. They made their way up the dirty concrete staircase, passing the heavy doors on each landing covered with graffiti and with rubbish piled up in the common areas reinforcing their opinion that this was not a nice place to live.
Back at the chopper, Aswon was strapping all kinds of stuff onto a gun – two scopes, an under barrel flashlight, suppressor, a broken laser sight – anything that would fit on the rails. He figured that for someone watching through binoculars or a spotting scope, it would look impressive and interesting, and probably worth watching – or worrying about. Marius manned the sensors, not probing actively in case that set off any counter-surveillance gear, but keeping an eye out visually and across the EM spectrum as well. Hunter had finished loading himself up with spare magazines, explosives and all manner of firearms. For someone of lesser build, it would have been an impossible amount to carry and still be combat effective – but for the well-built ork it was manageable, barely.
Tads stood by the back ramp, slowly breathing and clearing her mind, trying to centre herself and get ready for the coming conflict. It was likely she'd be called upon to react at a moment's notice – either to shield and protect the team, or to launch a magical attack, or possibly summon some spirits and go haring off in astral space to follow a fleeing enemy and catch them before they could reach reinforcements. Tads hated not knowing what was coming – she knew she didn't react quickly and would often hesitate when decisions were thrust upon her. So, she tried to plan in advance what might be needed, and worked out how best she could support the rest of the team.
Shimazu found the access ladder to the roof, and pointed to the broken lock and alarm sensor on it. Whether their spy had broken it or just taken advantage of it, they couldn't know – and they didn't really care. Kai motioned for Shimazu to stay at the foot of the ladder and keep the area secure, while he went on ahead. Shimazu shook his head for a moment, then let his shoulders slump and capitulated, resigning himself to letting Kai go onto the roof alone.
Kai climbed the steps up to the roof somewhat awkwardly, until he put the edge of the clipboard into his mouth and bit down on it, freeing up his other hand. Once he had four limbs to climb with he made much better progress, and he rapidly ascended the rungs of the ladder and stepped out into the bright and cold morning, taking care to place his feet down as gently as he could on the stone chippings scattered across the roof.
The top of the block of apartments was flat, with a maze of pipes and ducts running across it leading to a multitude of air-conditioning units scattered all across the surface. Kai walked forwards carefully, heading towards the corner closest to the airport and the location of their foe. He was intent on what lay ahead of him, and didn't hear Shimazu start to stealthily climb up the ladder behind him…
As he moved around a blocky heat exchanger, he saw his target – or rather the bottom part of their feet. The rest of the body was laid under some kind of camouflage rug or blanket, with a couple of pipes coming out of the bottom corner. He loosened his gun, centred his clipboard and then took a deep breath.
"Morning!"
He watched as the set of feet slowly drew forward, tucking under the blanket. Possibly the person thought he hadn't been spotted, and someone was just testing… time to let them down gently.
"I said, good morning Mr Hiding under the Blanket!" He walked forwards as he finished. "Lovely morning up here on the roof, isn't it. But this is a restricted area." He stopped his approach at perhaps two metres away from the target, then started to circle around. "I do hope you have a permit to be up here?" As he moved towards the front of the blanket he could see a large spotting scope set up on a tripod, along with a tablet and rollout keyboard, and a few other electronic devices.
"Name? I-denti-i-fication?" He stretched out and emphasised the words, tapping his clipboard to punctuate it. Still there was no answer – but now at least there was movement. The man peeled back the blanket revealing an average-sized build along with a small selection of gear. He was wearing jeans and a thick long-sleeved t-shirt, with his greasy hair slicked back over his head. Moving unhurriedly, he climbed to his feet, and pulled a rucksack out from under the nearest piece of air-conditioning pipe and started to load up his gear, refusing to make eye contact with Kai.
"Well, I figure you're either up here for bird spotting, which is fine. Or not bird spotting. Which is not fine. So what's it going to be? We can do this with our without paperwork, easy or hard. I'm sure you know the routine." Kai watched as the man finished throwing random gear into the rucksack and then finally raised his face to meet his gaze. His average, unremarkable brown eyes met with Kai's, and he slowly reached into a pocket before pulling out a phone, and starting to casually dial – all still without uttering a sound.
Kai let him get halfway through dialling before deciding that enough was enough. With the clipboard still in his left hand, he pulled out his taser and aimed it squarely at the man's face. Kai was rewarded with a slight widening of the eyes and flaring of the nose, and the hand holding the phone fell to his waist. But Kai noticed his fingers were still moving slowly, typing in the number blindly.
"Who are you? What do you want? Why do you harass me?" The sudden exclamation was presumably designed to throw Kai off balance, startle him and cover the dialling of the last few digits. Kai tensed his muscles, contracting the throat and imbued his speech with the weird harmonics that seemed to bypass the rational cognitive part of the brain and just made people obey.
"GIVE ME THE PHONE!"
At the chopper, they were listening over the comms system, and as soon as they heard that particular tone of voice they jumped into action. The ramp of the chopper lowered, and Hunter crouched by the edge, using the hull as cover and sighted with his rifle. Aswon grabbed his gun and took up position too, ranging on the distant building and getting ready to provide covering fire. Marius started to ramp up the power on his sensors, not worrying about who might see them now, but wanting to make sure he could see and affect what was going on. At the roof entrance, Shimazu quickly drew his pistol in one hand and sword in the other.
The man started to move, twisting and rolling to the side and Kai reflexively pulled the trigger. The two prongs of the taser flew forward, one hitting the flesh on the side of his head, the other catching in the clothing. A massive jolt of current flew down the filaments trailing behind the prongs, and he saw the man twitch and stumble – but the swiftness of his motion and the imperfect placement meant he didn't catch the full charge. As the target continued to roll and dive around the heat exchanger, Kai fired a second time, this time giving the target a little too much lead and sending one of the darts into the clothing again, saving him from taking the full effects of the taser.
The man was halfway around the lumpy grey metallic unit now and scrabbled under his arm, pulling out a slender and discreet pistol from a concealed holster. He aimed in Kai's general direction and pulled the trigger. A blast of flame burst from the front of the gun and a moment later a rolling boom echoed across the rooftop. The custom round exploded on impact with Kai's armoured vest, a small pocket of explosive mixture blasting out in all directions, the shockwave throwing Kai back and nearly sending him reeling over some pipes.
A split second later Shimazu arrived, still accelerating as he charged across the roof into the combat. His gun arm went under the outstretched limb pointing at Kai, then angled upward, forming a barrier. His sword arm then smashed forwards into the elbow, and the arm straightened explosively. Shimazu's bulk and sheer power drove the elbow joint straight, and then with a sickening crunch it ripped and deformed the joint, the arm flexing back in the wrong direction. A scream of anguish issued from the man's throat as the gun tumbled from his fingers. A moment later, still reeling from the after-effects of the taser coursing through his body, the pain from the shattered elbow became overwhelming, and he passed out, collapsing to a heap on the ground.
Aswon swung out with his rifle, bringing it up to bear as he heard the odd double shot – once over the comms, a split second later as the shot noise reached them through the air. He was joined by Hunter, who also raised his rifle to his shoulder, and they both scanned the rooftop though their scopes, ready to put lead down-range at targets. They saw Shimazu – or at least his upper torso – and a moment later Kai rose from his position, and they eased up on their triggers, with no enemies being visible.
"I'm ok, we're ok. Only got one shot off, and the armour pretty much stopped that. One target down, and a bit broken."
"Roger that, Kai. Ok, Hunter and Tads are on the way over to you, I'm staying with the chopper to provide long range support." Aswon turned and watched as Hunter stashed his rifle and accompanied Tads down the ramp, breaking into a jog as they headed for the security gate leading out of the airport.
It didn't take them that long to clear security and cover the half-kilometre to the building, where they joined Shimazu and Kai on the roof. Kai had checked the unconscious man out, carefully stretching out the shattered elbow and making sure there was no major blood vessels damaged or internal haemorrhaging. Shimazu had found a phone and various personal effects, and was carefully examining the rest of the gear.
The first thing Tads did was to push Kai down onto a rusty power box attached to one of the air conditioning units so she could examine the wound on his chest. The armour had done a good job, and it was mostly superficial burns and pitting that were causing him pain. She gathered mana into her body, then slowly channelled it out into the now depressingly familiar golden glow, healing the flesh and blood vessels underneath her hands as she played them over this chest.
"I checked the phone, but it's not in English, or anything I recognise. Can you see what you can make of it, Hunter?" Shimazu flipped the phone through the air towards the ork, who caught it deftly and then keyed the display alive.
"Georgian. We need his PIN to unlock it. I wonder…." Hunter reached down and snagged the man's hand and lifted the arm, noting in passing the arm was all floppy and the joint didn't work properly. Not particularly bothered by this, he grabbed the first finger and swiped it over the bottom of the phone and smiled as the device unlocked and he worked through the menu, looking for the language option. His written Georgian was passable, but not great and he much preferred to work in English – at least for any detective work.
"Right, let's see. Ok, looks like this is Mohammed Medin. We have…. Ok… wow. Ok. We've got an address book that is stuffed full of contacts. Some code names, some first or last name only. Some full. Lots of stuff here with corporate affiliation or company names. Some kind of scoring system with most of them. Some other random icons and stuff – no, maybe not random – but I don't know what they mean. "
Tads moved over from Kai and then gathered her strength again, and soon after the golden glow washed down over Medin, his arm twisting and flexing under her gentle touch as the horrific damage to his bones was repaired, good as new. When he awoke, he'd be somewhat stiff and uncomfortable perhaps, but functional. She sat down rather heavily afterwards and gently rubbed at her temples, trying to relax and recover from the effort of her spellcasting.
"Right, I've disabled the fingerprint swipe, his phone will unlock to 654321 now. Let's see. There's a notes application here, and some kind of logging system. Lots of notes, more notes. Bunch of these have been forwarded to someone called 'Otto', all over the last two days. Hmmm." Hunter frowned, checked a few settings then sighed. "Right, all the text is in Georgian, that's not affected by the system language. Let me check this." He was silent for a moment while he read.
"Bad news – this guy has been up here for a couple of days, pretty much since we arrived. Seems, oh. He spotted us walking through town and trailed us here. Saw the chopper come in. Has been keeping surveillance ever since, and has been keeping a detailed log of what we've done. A very detailed log – recording how we dressed, acted towards each other, what we drove. Arrival and departure times. What we carried in or out of the chopper. All of this has been forwarded on to this Otto character."
"Well, that doesn't sound good." Kai realised that it was a particularly dumb and redundant statement to make, but it certainly echoed all of their feelings. "I don't think we can let this guy go, whoever he is. We're going to have to take care of him. Permanently." Tads gave him a dirty look, but he shrugged his shoulders at her and raised his hands. "I don't see what else we can do, Tads!" She stood up, and headed back to the ladder leading downwards, clearly not wanting any part of the murder.
"Hang on a second, message here. This Otto person says he's going to get in contact. Shit, in about twenty five minutes, according to the timestamp. We're going to have to move fast on this, Kai." Hunter was still working through the messages, translating them in his head as he went and trying to work out a timeline of what had happened.
"Let's just roll him up in the blanket thing, stuff him under some of these pipes and leave him here. We finish him off nice and clean, and leave him for creatures and nature to take their course."
"I know you're not suggesting that we waste that very desirable thermal blanket on a corpse, Kai" came Aswon's indignant voice over the radio. "Don't tease me like that – those things are great!"
"He's got a banking app, but its security looks pretty good." The phone gave a low buzz. "Ok, not a basic password." It buzzed again. "Ok, two bad attempts. It'll probably lock his account if I try a third. Short of questioning him, I don't think we'll get the passcode for his account."
"Let's strip him naked then, take all his gear. We'll dispose of that later, along the way, and just leave his body here. Between the weather, birds and squirrels and stuff, they should make a mess of the body and make it hard to gather evidence." Hunter and Shimazu both looked at him non-committedly. They clearly didn't object, but neither moved to make it happen. Kai pursed his lips together for a moment, then got on with stripping the man and pulling his clothes off. When he was done, he reached over and with a sudden wrench pulled the head back sharply and in one direction, straining until he heard several cracks. The body spasmed underneath him, and he worked the head further over, trying to make sure it was done, and quickly. A minute later the body was still, the lips already taking on a blueish tinge.
The three looked around for any stray evidence they'd left, then gathered all the equipment and gear and bundled it up into the blanket, and headed for the exit. Closing the door behind them, they again looked around for traces of their passing and then headed down and back to the car, meeting up with Tads who was sitting in the back and staring fixedly into space, avoiding eye contact with them all.
It took longer for them to clear through the security gate than it did to drive back to the airport, with the guards checking their IDs as usual, and the new supplies they had being picked through loosely and examined for contraband. A few bits of the surveillance equipment caused a raised eyebrow, but nothing seemed to be illegal or an issue, and eventually they made it through and back to the chopper.
Once back onside they pulled out the bug scanner, carefully playing it over all of the recovered gear. Just as the antenna ran over the phone, it buzzed again, making them all jump. Hunter reached over carefully and read the message, then translated for them.
"There's a team on the way to deal with us, they're asking for surveillance to be continued. They're offering more money on top of the five thousand already paid for furthering information…"
"If location services are enabled on that thing, can you turn them off, right now?" Marius said, watching as Hunter nodded and worked his way through the menus, gradually disabling all services beyond calls and messages.
"Look, we still need that cage finishing, or the job is going to be a bust. We need to head off to the shipyard to get things finished. Call us if you need us, but otherwise we should be back later on, with the gear and we can head out of here, right?" Marius and Kai nodded at Aswon, watching as he, Hunter and Shimazu headed to the car for the second time this morning. Soon they had backed out of the chopper down the ramp and were heading for the security gate once more, heading through the checkpoint and north to the shipyard.
"What are we going to do about this team, Kai?" asked Marius. "I shall prepare weapons, but we shouldn't be caught split up – and if there is a team willing to attack us while in a secure area, then we're in real trouble."
"I agree – but I have a plan. We're inside their communications, and they have no idea. Time to do a little counter-espionage I think, and start to feed them false information." He entered the code on the phone and sent a message back to the contact.
'Position possibly not sustainable, may need to relocate. Please advise when team will arrive?'
With the message sent he sat back and considered options. Marius was checking the chopper over once more, and had his weapon to hand. Tads was sitting with some paper drawing complex shapes in charcoal – she said she was working on a formula for Shimazu's sword, but it looked more like she was drawing snowflakes… who knew. The phone buzzed once more in his hand, and he checked the display.
'ETA 12:00. Expect full report.' He checked his watch – just past 10:00. Only two hours to go, if the estimate was correct.
"Marius – the enemy team is going to be here in about two hours. We need to stay near the city to pick up the rest of the team and the gear, but far enough away from them to avoid trouble. Where can we go?" Marius started checking the maps, muttering under his breath. Kai watching him place a marker on the map and a shaded circle appear, covering the southern part of the city. "What's that?"
"Flights are handled by control centres that cover most of the long haul routes, but they hand over to the tower at each airport for the actual take-off and landing. So they have local coverage out to this limit," he pointed at the shaded area, "and everything inside that belongs to them – outside that it belongs to the regional flight centres. So we need to get out of local coverage, and then drop out of sight of the regional centre and just disappear."
Marius continued to move the map around, another pin on the screen showing the location of the shipyard, with a shaded area representing the travel time from there.
"How about here? There's a clear area near these hills, not far off the main road, that links to the highway cutting through town. It'll take them only forty minutes or so to drive here, and if we fly low we can drop off, and reappear on the radar and systems ok, from around these hills." Kai looked at the map and double checked the routes, then nodded. Marius immediately headed for the cockpit and started the pre-flight, taking time to do it by the book and give everything a chance to warm up properly.
Kai studied the map a little more, then scrolled out and looked around. Finally he navigated to the folder showing the half-complete folder of flight plans, selected one and started to fill in the details, plotting a hop up the coast to Sochi. It was close enough to the bearing they would take leaving the airport that it would look legitimate, was a reasonable destination, but lay nearly 130 degrees off the course they intended to take – not quite the opposite, but enough to make tracking them very difficult. It also meant that if anyone checked the airport records, it would throw them way off the scent.
With the paperwork complete, Kai started to strip all the data from the systems collected from Medin and transfer them to their own computer for later analysis. He paid particular attention to ensuring that all of the contacts were copied over, along with the strange stars, triangles, number ratings and other weird characters that seemed to adorn them.
As he scrolled through the contacts, he noticed that there were three entries for the airport – a baggage handler, ticket agent and check-in handler. Glad that his instinct had served him well, Kai made sure to send a second copy of the flight plan, this time to the general mail store for the airport, hoping that would increase the chance of it being seen.
"Kai! KAI!" the shout came from the cockpit, and Kai raced forwards, finding Marius twisted in his seat and tapping away on his computer. "Look at this! I had a hunch, and look what I found!" On the screen was the number for Otto, the person who was the recipient of all of the information developed by Medin. Just below it, on the second half of the screen was the contact details for Zeta Imp-Chem, at their headquarters in Switzerland. The first nine digits of the comm-codes matched, making it likely that the difference between them was just a direct dial extension number or routing code. So – whoever this Otto was, it was looking more and more likely that they were from ZIC, and actively trying to trace Hunter and capture him. Or kill him….
When the turbines were properly pre-flighted and the rotors started to turn, Kai sent another message to the contact. 'Subjects preparing to leave, all aboard helicopter. Will monitor and advise.' The giant chopper lumbered into the air, and started to head north-east, skirting around the city centre, keeping fairly low and heading for the broken hills. Kai sent a follow up message 'Chopper in flight, heading north-west, out over the sea angling north.' Only a few seconds went by before he received a response. 'Excellent.' He didn't know why they thought that, but it worried him, whatever it meant.
The chopper found the clear grassland on the map, that looked to be a sports pitch of some kind, with broken down stands and goal posts – clearly it had seen better days and didn't appear to be in use. It did make a nice clear area for them to land in though, and to be sheltered from the surrounding area by the terrain. The ground wasn't prepared, and Marius winced as they sank nearly 150mm into the grass as he powered down, the wheels cutting through the turf and pressing down into the mud below.
They waited, silently keeping a lookout, Marius at the front of the chopper, checking passive systems and looking out through the cockpit windows, while Kai did a little patrol from one door to another, checking portholes and stopping to listen occasionally.
At 11:28 the phone buzzed again, with a curt and succinct message: 'Confirm previous intel.' Kai thought for a moment, his mind racing as he worked out the various paths this could take in his head. He wasn't sure how long the deception would last, and finally he reached the decision that it was better to have doubt in their mind that they'd ever been fed bad information, than to have something to analyse. He placed the phone carefully on the floor and then stamped on it, hard, his boot repeatedly smashing down on the case until it was thoroughly destroyed. Scooping up the pieces, he added them to the small pile of gear that they needed to dispose of later.
Time crawled by, but eventually they got word from the shipyard team – construction was complete and they were ready to leave. Kai sent them the rendezvous co-ordinates, then resumed his patrol, watching anxiously for the rest to arrive. The next 45 minutes crawled by, but eventually the UAZ appeared on the track between the two sets of decrepit seating, sedately driving down the muddy track towards them. Marius triggered the ramp and started on his sequence, gradually bringing systems online and getting ready to depart.
They took off just before 15:30, leaving behind only a set of tracks from the off-roader, and 3 enormous dents from the landing gear, now nearly 30 centimetres deep, looking like an enormous footprint of a clawed beast, gouged into the earth.
Marius kept low, skimming roof-tops and headed out to sea by the shortest route, aiming to get past the national borders and into international space – for what good it did them. As they crossed the shore, he dropped down until they were barely fifty metres above the surface of the water, flying almost directly into the sun. Almost visually blind as the sun reflected off the crenelated waves, he relied on his sensors and the precise gestalt with the equipment, keeping them steady and leaving Batumi and the Trans-Caucus league behind them.
The chopper flew on, sensors probing ahead for fishing vessels, cruise ships or other traffic – all of which could be a danger at their altitude, and the shoreline receded behind them as Marius accelerated to their cruising speed.