It’s a classic box tail with a twist: there are the usual two blokes behind me, but rather than another two in front there’s a mother-and-baby combo instead. I don’t know why it took me so long to pick it up; maybe it was the bus journey and then the mostly empty pavement and I’m just not paying enough attention. But that’s not the only thing that’s wrong with this picture. Normally a box tail is all about making sure you don’t lose your target in a crowded city, but something about this one has snatch written all over it, if not hit. I can see it all unfolding in my mind. If I try to break the box I’ll have to get past her, whereupon she’ll make a loud scene (baby snatchers are perennially popular) and her two “white knights” will close in. If I try to break past them, she’ll start screaming that I was stalking her. There’s probably a fake police van and a couple of bodies in equally fake uniforms shadowing us, waiting to make the pickup, but I can’t sense them this far away (not through bricks and concrete and dozens or hundreds of bystanders), so all I can see is the immediate threat.
They’re clearly coordinated and they’re converging on me, and they probably saw me pick up Bill’s package—which means it’s an intercept and they’ll make their move before I get to the New Annex.
Fuck.
The New Annex is a secure government site. We have CCTV on all the approaches and armed officers outside the front door these days. But the plod clocked off at six and I’m out of range of the site surveillance and secure is not the same as secret, as the residents of 85 Albert Embankment in Vauxhall4 can testify. And after my Newsnight slot I’m very much not secret at all. I’m not sure how they traced me to the office in the first place, but to have a snatch squad on the pavement waiting outside for me to leave is bad: very, very bad indeed.
And it gets worse. I can’t tell what’s in the pram, but the adults are all using MilSpec wards. MilSpec wards like the one Jeremy was wearing when he interviewed me, not something knocked up in a spare half hour by an amateur warlock. I can count the number of organizations able to make that kind of kit on my fingers without cheating and using binary arithmetic, and after this evening’s fun and informative pub chat I don’t need to make any guesses. I abruptly feel so sick I wonder if I’m going to throw up. It’s the adrenaline spike from being hunted—I’ve been here before and it’s something you never get used to. But at least I’m not paralyzed. I know what to do and I’ve done it before: I need to evade and escape, then take them down before they hurt anybody.
It’s late enough that most of the shops on this street are shuttered. There’s a kebab joint up ahead on my side and an off-license on the other side, but neither of them have multiple customer exits, which makes breaking out of the box problematic. Nor am I armed, at least in conventional terms. I palm my phone, hoping they can’t see me in the failing daylight, and dial the first number on my contacts list. Ten seconds of suspense carries me fifteen meters further towards the next crossing, and I’m in luck: the phone rings twice, then she answers. “Yes?”
Mo sounds tense. Unexpected midevening phone calls from separated not-quite-an-ex-at-this-point will do that.
“I’m in a box tail heading towards the New Annex front door, I just made a pickup for the SA and I think the oppo are planning on lifting me. Please alert the duty officer, CODE RED.”
“Bob—understood.” Her voice catches. “Keep the call open for updates, I’ll be on the landline to the Duty Officer.”
I switch to speakerphone and slide the gadget back into my pocket without hanging up. Mo is a total professional and will get the ball rolling in the time it would take me to authenticate myself over the phone to whoever’s on the Ops desk. Every second counts now. I walk ten more meters, estimate another ten meters of pavement ahead before the pelican crossing, note that the lights are against me (not that there’s much traffic), and observe that the lead element of the trap is stopping and not pushing the WALK button. The two behind have just crossed the road at a brisk clip, dodging between two cars that have slowed to weave between speed pillows, and now we’re all in a classic kill zone. Out of the corner of one eye I see a white van turning into the main road behind me.
I stop in the middle of the pavement, ten meters short of the mother with pushchair and unidentified contents, and take a deep breath, knowing that this is going to be really unpleasant even if I’m wrong—
I’m not wrong.
There’s no such thing as telepathy … at least not for the likes of me. There are some really nasty brain parasites that can blur the boundaries between their victims’ minds, and there are destiny entanglement rituals as well, along with all the concomitant risks, but I’ve got no way of peeking inside someone else’s skull and pulling out anything but the owner’s current sensory impressions and emotional tone. Especially when they’re warded. But as I focus hard and crank up the metaphorical gain, I begin to burn through their wards and pick up a common sense of feral intent and frightening dedication. I take in one of them sliding a telescoping baton out of his coat sleeve as the other raises a spray can, and they’re both watching me with anticipation. Can’t be having that, part of me thinks, and then that part of me yawns, a sensation like a deep sea angler fish spreading its jaws infinitely wide, and I bite down on their minds.
Yes, they have high-powered MilSpec wards. They crunch all the same, a mild fizzing note of bitterness and gun smoke tarnishing the desiccated fragments of their souls as they go down hard. There’s something wrong with them: they taste gray and drained, half-eaten from the inside out by something that got there before me. I gag as I swallow their minds, feel their last thoughts spiraling down in surprise and dismay as I shred their souls. They have pepper spray and a baton with a three-centimeter ball of tungsten on the end, but that doesn’t save them. What I do is clearly self-defense within my terms of engagement. Even so, I feel sick to the tips of my toes and take an involuntary step towards the bodies. I don’t get enough practice at killing people to not feel bad about it; I hope I never do, although that’s looking like a forlorn wish these days.
The vehicle turning the corner is stickered up to look like a police van, one of the regular ones with seats and no light bar used for ferrying bodies around rather than snatching people, but the driver is just as intently focused on me as the box tail duo—
There is a flat crack-crack behind me and something tugs sharply at my hood.
I reflexively reach my imaginary jaws behind me and bite down hard as my heart starts pounding and I dive at the pavement. This one’s soul squishes. They’ve got a stronger ward and there’s an indescribable sensation, somewhere between wasp-stung-my-tongue and the memory of standing by my father’s graveside and letting a handful of soil trickle onto his coffin (which is odd, because he’s still alive). As I hit the ground there’s a clatter as pushchair girl collapses, dropping the suppressed pistol. The baby buggy topples over into the road.
I hear a screech of tires and an engine revving as the white van takes off. It sideswipes the pushchair, then careens round the corner, running a red light. The pushchair is flung into a shop doorway; there’s no baby, but a life-sized doll and something else, a horribly familiar olive-drab casing. Claymore mine. This isn’t good, this is very bad indeed: it may have started out as a snatch but they were willing to use massive lethal force if it failed, high risk of collateral damage. The van was there as much to evacuate the survivors as to collect the captive.
“Oh fuck,” I say and my voice comes out shakily.