Toploader Read online

  “That’s up to you.”

  “I suppose it would be polite.”

  When they had finished, they retreated into the garage and rolled down the door again. Flora lit some candles and set them on shelves and crates, their light dancing on the car’s polished skin. Joseph installed himself, along with his laptop and camera, in the backseat, pushing to one side a tangle of blankets and pillows, and Flora pulled an old bar stool over and sat by the open car door so she could brief her uncle on her scheme. Meanwhile, the pilot made his way slowly around the car, furtively dragging his hand along its curves.

  “That’s a nice old car,” he ventured.

  “Yeah?” said Joseph, distracted by his keyboard. “It’s a 1965 Ford Falcon Futura. My dad bought it a long time ago, back in the good old days, before they walled us up in here. He was a real car lover. Come to think of it, the guy he bought it from was a pilot, like you. He made us promise that it was going to a good home.”

  The pilot finished his orbit of the car and halted by Flora. “Does it still go?”

  “Oh, sure. It helps keep me sane—polishing it, fixing it up, turning the engine over sometimes. It makes a wonderful noise.”

  “Where do you get the gas?”

  Joseph was frowning at the screen. “It’s not a question of where, son. It’s a question of when—I still had half a tank in it when the army stopped letting the smugglers bring fuel in. There must be a gallon or two left in it still. Not that it matters, since your drones started attacking all private cars on sight. I’m ready to compress this file now, Flora, and then we can send it.”

  “I’ve got an army cell phone.”

  Joseph looked up at her. “Really? Is it his?”

  “No.” She wouldn’t meet his eye. “Look, I’ll explain about that later. The number we want is on speed dial—when you’ve set up the message, just press and hold the 1 key. Here.”

  Joseph did not take the phone. “You said you wanted to stay hidden until the exchange is about to happen, which means we can’t use that thing. They’d be able to trace its signal instantly. We should send your message over the Internet.”

  “You have Internet? In this place?”

  “No. But we have a wireless network back in the office, and this garage is just within range of it. If we route the text message through a Skype account, then your pals in the army”—he scowled—“won’t be able to fix our position so easily.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Captain Smith lay on his back, eyes closed, trying to ignore the pressure of his bladder. He wasn’t getting any younger, and he should not have had that second beer, still less the fourth or fifth one. But the colonel had been insistent, and they were spending the colonel’s money. It was warm beneath the doubled-up army blanket, and the folding camp bed was adequate for a man of his size. The wind nestled agreeably in the eaves of his office, and the roof creaked like an old wooden ship riding a gentle sea. He was going to be rich, he reminded himself: perhaps his wife would let him go with them to Paris. If only he could get back to sleep again. He had had so little rest the night before, and something else was nagging him, something other than the insistent call of nature, something he’d forgotten . . . . Then his cell phone rang, and he opened his eyes, cursing himself: he had left it recharging on his desk on the other side of the room.

  Emerging fully dressed from the blanket, Captain Smith tap-danced across the darkened office and flicked his desk light on, fumbling for the phone.

  “Daddy Jesus?” he yawned. “Are you back? . . . Well, I’m at the office. When you get here, put the Iranian in the lockup and I’ll stroll over as soon as the colonel arrives. He’s very keen to see the prisoner for himself . . . . Yes, soften him up a little. I’ll leave the details to you if you don’t mind.”

  Smith left the phone on his desk and skipped over to the door that led to the anteroom and, beyond it, the toilet. His hand was reaching for the doorknob when his phone beeped twice, loudly. Swearing, he darted back to the desk, snatched up the phone, and took it with him through the door.

  Silence returned to the office apart from the sound of the wind and a faint hum from the photocopier/scanner. And then, echoing from the toilet, reverberating through the anteroom, came a terrible bellowed oath, and an instant later the captain shot back into the office, his flies still disordered, and hurled himself across the desk. Grabbing the land phone, he punched in a number.

  “Colonel? We have a massive problem. I can’t explain on this phone—I’ll meet you outside the drone room in ten minutes . . . . Yes, I’m deadly serious—we are one hour away from being utterly fucked!”

  The colonel was lurking in the shadow of the doorway, and Smith collided with him as he came panting down the poorly lit corridor. He shoved his cell phone in the colonel’s face.

  “Take a look at this!” he said, and pressed “Play.” The colonel watched, puzzled.

  “Now read the text!” urged Smith. The colonel pressed the menu key and read. “They’re going to tell the press about the Iranian within the hour!” he said, aghast. “How the hell are we going to keep a lid on this now?”

  He threw open the door to the drone room. It exploded inward, smashing into the wall. The two duty drone jockeys jumped in their chairs.

  “Fuck off!” Colonel White screamed at their astonished faces. “Get the fuck out of here now!” They fled wordlessly into the night. Smith logged on to the tactical computer as the colonel hurled himself at the drone controls.

  “What kind of a name is Moon, anyway?” he demanded. “Is it Farsee, or Turkic, or whatever the hell kind of language they speak in Iran? It sounds oddly familiar. And why is he only a damn lieutenant?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Smith muttered, checking his screen. “That’s not his real name or rank. He’s still trying to maintain some kind of cover like the top agent he is—the girl obviously hasn’t broken him yet. Damn: this message wasn’t sent over the mobile phone network.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they sent it using an Internet account. Which means we don’t know where they are—if they’d used a cell phone, we could’ve traced its signal.” The captain plunged his face into his hands and became very still apart from one index finger, which slowly tapped his temple. The colonel jumped to his feet.

  “Oh, no! If the girl still has the Iranian—which she clearly does, judging from this video clip—then who is Daddy Jesus interrogating?”

  The captain’s index finger stopped tapping for a few moments, then started again. “It doesn’t matter. Not important right now,” he muttered. “What’s important right now is that they say they’re going to send this clip to 24/7’s London bureau within the hour. Sure, 24/7 won’t broadcast the clip right away; they’ll sit on the story until closer to the supposed handover so they can have exclusive coverage for themselves. But let’s face it: once 24/7 has any footage at all, we’ll never be able to make this story go away again; it’s bound to come out sooner or later. And if that happens, we’ll be lucky to end up in prison: if I were in charge, I’d give us both to Daddy Jesus.” Smith raised his face from his hands and looked grimly at the colonel, who was staring back in open-mouthed terror. “I hate myself for saying this, Colonel, but there’s only one thing for it—we’re going to have to do this your way.”

  “Right . . . What way is that?”

  “We’re going to have to kill them before they can send that footage. We need to throw everything we have at them!”

  White slumped, despairing. “But we don’t even know where they are!”

  The captain took out his phone and played the clip through again, holding the screen close to his face. Then he looked at the colonel. “Actually, we do know where they are—sort of. They’re somewhere within a few hundred yards of the Easy’s media center—that’s the building where all the foreign-owned press bureaus are based. You can just see a couple of the broadcast dishes in this shot, on that rooftop in the top left-hand corner.” He sm
acked the console. “Yes, that’s it! They must be using one of the center’s wireless networks to communicate with us. It’s one of the few places in the Easy that we’re still forced to allow to have the Internet.”

  “But that means they could be anywhere within a few hundred yards of that building. We need to be much more specific than that; we can’t just carpet bomb that big a radius in the middle of a crowded city—someone might start asking questions.”

  Captain Smith lowered his face into his hands again. The finger tapped his temple some more. When he raised his face again, White saw that he was smiling.

  “Then we’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way!” Smith said, and took a land phone from the console. “Hello? Switchboard? Put me through to the artillery, please.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  To conserve his computer’s battery, Joseph had set it to run at the minimum processor speed. With each instruction the screen froze for several seconds, then shook itself awake again. Flora and the pilot drew close, watching as he edited the clip to a usable length. Then a new window popped up on the screen uninvited, and the computer began to chime at them.

  “They’re calling us back!” said Joseph. “Here, Flora.”

  He tried to pass her the computer, but Flora shook her head. “You do the talking, Uncle Joseph. I want them to know they’re dealing with someone with connections in the real world.”

  “Me? You’re sure?” She nodded. “Well, I hope you’re right; you’ve been the brains so far.”

  He clicked on the computer. Flora and the pilot leaned in through the window, their heads almost touching.

  “Hello again, Flora,” said a voice from the computer, distorted by the long-range Wi-Fi connection. “You say you have what we’re looking for.” Joseph and the pilot looked at Flora. “It’s him,” she mouthed silently.

  Joseph addressed the computer. “You’re not talking to Flora. This is Joseph West, Easy bureau chief for 24/7 Television News. Flora has asked me to talk on her behalf. What’s your name?”

  “Me? Well, Brown, I suppose. And you must be Uncle Joe. Tell me, is the girl listening to us?”

  Joseph looked at Flora. She nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “Good Then we can get down to business. We agree to your terms. We only ask that you delay sending the advance footage to your London bureau for the time being. If the news leaks out from there before the exchange takes place, you’ll have every terrorist in the Embargoed Zone combing the streets for you. Even if they didn’t find you, which they probably would, it would make it very difficult for us to extract you.”

  Joseph looked at Flora again. She shook her head. “I can’t do that,” he said. “That footage is our guarantee that nothing funny will happen.”

  “Really?” There was a click and a long pause, and then the voice resumed. “So, if you can just tell us where you are, I’ll start making preparations for your extraction.”

  Flora shook her head so violently this time that she accidentally butted the pilot.

  “No,” said Joseph. “We’re not telling you where we are until our footage is sitting in 24/7’s in-tray. But I’ll tell my bosses to embargo the story until we’re ready to show the pilot being handed over live, via the Internet.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Captain Smith pressed the “Hold” button on his cell phone.

  “Pilot?” Colonel White demanded. “What the hell does he mean by pilot?”

  “The Iranian must be a pilot,” said Smith impatiently. “They would naturally use someone with an aviation background for a mission like this.”

  He picked up the land phone from the console. “Hello, Fifth Battery CP? Could you put one ranging round—high explosive, if you please—on the coordinates I already gave you? Then wait for further instructions. Thanks so much.” He put the receiver down and activated his cell phone again.

  “That will be fine, Mr. West,” he continued. “Would you like to tell us where you and your niece wish to go after we extract you, or shall we wait until we can talk face to face? By then we should have established some trust, eh?”

  “Once you have the pilot and 24/7 has the exclusive, trust won’t be an issue for—Holy God! What was that?”

  Smith gave Colonel White a silent thumbs-up. “What?” he asked the phone anxiously. “Is there something wrong, Mr. West? Did I just hear some kind of explosion or something?”

  Bruised and breathing heavily, Joseph picked himself up from the ground. Moon, who had been hurled to the front of the garage when Joseph flung his door open, had banged his head against the roller door. Flora lay sprawled against a half-toppled rack of tools and old car parts. The computer lay on the floor in the car’s rear footwell. Joseph picked it up and sat in his seat again.

  “We’re still here. There was a big explosion pretty close by. I heard a whoosh just before the bang—some kind of artillery shell. What the hell is going on, Brown?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. West, I really don’t. I just thank God you’re okay. Let me check something on my tactical computer here. Oh, dear . . . oh, dear. Look, Mr. West, there may be a bit of a situation developing. The tactical computer tells me that several artillery-fire missions are starting right now—just routine interdiction barrages fired at random map references to send a message to the terrorists. Unfortunately, you must be very close to where one of the ranging shots fell, which means you could accidentally be caught in one of those bombardments.” Smith winked at the colonel. “Now, I’m not asking you to tell me where you are or anything like that, but if you could just tell me where and how far away that particular shell fell in relation to where you are now, compasswise, I can instruct all of the artillery batteries to shift their fire in the opposite direction. That way you’ll be safe no matter where you are.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you, but anyway, that shell must have fallen due south of us. I can’t say how far exactly. Maybe a hundred and fifty yards or so.”

  “Excellent.” Captain Smith pressed the “Hold” button and picked up the landline. “Hello, Fifth Battery? Adjust fire one hundred and fifty yards due north.” He nudged the colonel. “Old-school but effective, eh? Who needs lasers and GPS and antiradiation homing systems?” The colonel scowled at him.

  “Okay, everything’s taken care of now,” Smith told his cell phone. “Now tell me, Mr. West, what are your preferences for the postextraction period? Will you be wanting publicity for your own role in this rescue? You could be a hero on the lecture circuit.”

  “Are you kidding me? I want you to say that you abducted the kids and me when you picked up the pilot. We don’t want to look like traitors. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll be able to go home again if the walls come down.”

  “Who knows indeed? Dear Lord! What was that?”

  This time the explosion was so close that its shock wave threw Flora and Moon to the ground. The walls of the garage heaved, and dust poured from the roof and rose from the floor, acrid and choking. Motor parts and tools clattered off the shelves. Flora and Moon could barely see each other as they dragged themselves to their feet again, trembling from shock. Moon’s head throbbed as if it had been kicked. Joseph coughed and spluttered, gagging on the dust.

  “Brown!” he screamed. “They’ve gone the wrong way! That last shell was almost on top of us!”

  “Oh, dear. What a dreadful mistake! Did it fall just east of you, or west?”

  “You treacherous bastard!” Joseph, tears of dirt streaming down his cheeks, cut the connection. He looked at Flora. “He’s trying to kill us! Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s getting us to tell them where to shoot!”

  Moon slid in behind the steering wheel, settling his hands on it. “I get it now,” he said. “They want me dead, not alive! I know too much: they’re afraid that now that I’m in touch with the media, I’ll go public about all the terrible stuff I’ve done.”

  Flora stared at him. “You? Terrible stuff? You seem pretty geeky to me.”
/>   “I am a geek—I’m a drone pilot, not a real pilot!” He looked at her imploringly. “It was me who fired that missile yesterday morning, the one that hurt your brother and killed all those other kids! God knows what else I’ve done over the past couple of years. They give me a target, and I engage it; that’s all I do. And the targets are always terrorists.”

  Joseph reached between the seats and punched him on the shoulder. “You self-important little prick! The army doesn’t give a shit about stuff like that. What happened yesterday happens all the time here; all they have to do is cook up some half-assed denial and they’re back in the clear. They couldn’t care less about you so long as you don’t get killed or captured and get your picture in the news. But if people know that you’re here, they’ll have to do a deal to rescue you.”

  “That’s just it! I don’t think anybody else does know that I’m here. Which means it could be easier for them to cut their losses!”

  “And to keep it secret,” concluded Flora, “they’ll need to kill us as well.”

  Another shell slammed to earth right outside the garage and then another and another. Flecks of twilight appeared in the dust and the cordite smoke as shrapnel tore holes in the roller door and skittered along the walls. As one, they ducked inside the car, seeking the frail protection of its metal skin. The windshield was speckled with stars.

  “Well, that’s that,” commented Captain Smith. “Now that the Fifth Battery is firing for effect, the rest of the Sixth Regiment will join in and lay a standard concentration on that area. It might flush our friends out into the open, in which case you can get them,” He indicated the drone console. “And if they stay put, well—” He gestured at the screen that was relaying footage of the scene. Shells were falling every few seconds, flashing white for an instant and then blossoming into filthy clouds of smoke and debris. A whole city block, a postindustrial jumble of two-story warehouses and one-story lockups, was crumbling into rubble and flame.