“Vamoose,” said the man, then to the dogs he said, “Go play.”
Looking dazed, scared, and excited in equal measure, the boys and the mastiffs departed and were soon lost inside the huge crowds of holiday revelers. The man lit another cigarette and leaned against the truck, smiling contentedly.
“Like fucking clockwork,” he said to no one in particular.
He finished his cigarette, returned the ramp to its position, pulled down and locked the door, got in, and drove away. It took nearly an hour to make his way through two miles of party traffic. When he was out of the city, he found the closest highway and drove off at high speed. He pulled into a small village seventy-three miles east of the town, parked the truck on the street, closed and locked the door, and walked around the corner to a little hotel. He ran up two flights of stairs, entered a room, then locked the door behind him. He opened a desk drawer and removed a thin laptop, loaded a program, and waited as the screen filled with four smaller windows. Each one showed the swirling, dancing, laughing, singing throng of people at the celebration. The crowd was so thick that it was nearly impossible to see anything. The angle of the camera was low, aimed upward. On one of the screens, he saw a skinny boy with silver duct tape on his shoes. The camera angle changed and jolted and spun in a circle. It was dizzying to watch, but the people in the area laughed and applauded and threw coins at the dancing, twirling dog.
It made the man smile.
He fished in his pocket for his cigarettes, kissed the last one out of the pack, lit it, watched the crowds as they watched the dogs. Caught glimpses of the ten street kids. Everyone was having such a great time. He watched the screen and saw one dog’s point of view as it trotted around the edge of the crowd, saw the laughing people wave at it, blow kisses at it, laugh at the thing. The camera showed the dog going in through the open door of the police station at the edge of the plaza.
“Release the hounds,” the man murmured, and laughed. “God, I always wanted to say that.”
He pressed the Enter key. There was a flash of bright white and then all four screens went dark. No sound, no other images. He was left to imagine the sound of the explosions. He sighed and leaned back in the chair, enjoying the menthol tickle of the smoke as he took a deep, contented drag. Then he got up and turned on the TV, channel-surfed over to the news, and waited for the story to break. Maybe someone caught it on a cell camera. Maybe one of the news people would have footage. After all, with everyone having a cell phone, somebody had to have caught one of the four dogs exploding during a festive celebration.
It would be nice to watch.
“Good doggies,” he said to the empty screens.
CHAPTER NINE
I heard about Mexico while I was halfway across the ocean.
Church called me at the same time that I was trying to call him. “Robot dogs, boss?” I said. “This is mine. I’m going to refuel in New York and then head down to—”
“No, Captain,” interrupted Church, “you’re not.”
“The hell I’m not. I run the Special Projects shop, and what says ‘special’ more than exploding robot dogs?”
“Normally I would agree, but you’ve just come off two back-to-back combat assignments. Mexico has its own counterterrorism teams. Our assistance has been offered, as has that of some of our colleagues. The Mexican government has accepted help, but not from us.”
“Well… shit.”
I didn’t have to ask why not us, because it wasn’t the first time we’d been snubbed lately. Ever since Kill Switch, the DMS has stopped being the go-to SpecOps outfit. The people in the know are aware that, while we didn’t actually become a clown college, it looked that way from a distance. Best case was that we were being treated as if we’re all invalids. They look at us like we’re guys in wheelchairs offering to run foot races. Thanks, but no thanks. Fair? No. Understandable? Yeah, but it still pissed me off, and it still hurt.
We talked for a while about the Prague gig, about the nanotech and the steroid stuff, and explored theories about who was behind it. We had a lot of ideas, but none of them seemed to go anywhere. Sadly, there are a bunch of smart and very bad people out there, and, yeah, some of them are actual mad scientists.
“Go home and rest,” said Church. “I have no doubt something else will come up.”
I spent a good portion of the rest of the trip home sulking.
Well, drinking and sulking.
INTERLUDE TWO
“Eleven weeks?” echoed the Concierge, his voice filled with alarm.
“Yes,” said John.
“Is she serious?”
“Quite serious.”
“It took quite a lot of time to set things up a certain way,” said the Frenchman. He was in the vast kitchen of his villa. The house was fully automated and required only a monthly visit from a maintenance supervisor and biweekly deliveries of food. He preferred living alone, and, despite his profession as fixer and arranger for a select few clients, he was generally an antisocial man. Or, as he saw it, asocial. He didn’t dislike people, but he preferred to keep his own company. Robots of various functions and the household artificial-intelligence computer system offered enough interactive challenges to satisfy any residual need for chitchat. And his job required that he spend hours on the phone or in virtual-reality conferences. When he wasn’t working, the silence of his huge, empty house was a comfort to him. If he had his way, he would never leave the place. VR and luxury robots brought everything to him that couldn’t be physically delivered.
Problems, though, always seemed to find him.
Case in point.
“Should I tell Ms. Bain that you’re unable or unwilling to make the necessary adjustments?” asked John.
“Of course not,” said the Concierge. “No… of course not. It is merely that eleven weeks is a very tight timetable.”
“And…?”
“It will require a great deal of cooperation. Gifts will need to be given in order to allow things to move quickly.”
“You have carte blanche, my friend.”
“People often say that and then I find out that there is, in fact, a budgetary limit. If I am expected to make a change as radical as this, then—”
“Hush,” said John, and the Concierge hushed. “Spend whatever is necessary. This is the eve of the revolution, my friend. Act like it. The lady is relying on you.”
“Of course, I—”
“She will expect you to pay special attention to our friends in the DMS. Very special attention.”
“Yes, but I have outlined the risks with that part of the—”
The line went dead.
The Concierge sat in his electric wheelchair and drummed his fingers on the armrest. When he moved his fingers, there was the faintest sound of tiny servomotors and mechanical clicks. He was no longer aware of that, though, except when he was in his moments of despairing self-awareness. Every part of his body made some kind of sound. Even his breaths were accompanied by a hiss of hydraulics and compressors. It was a fact of his life.