Command Decision (14 page)

“So do it, then.”

“Just like that.” Gary shook his head. “You show up again after…however many years it’s been, and it doesn’t matter except that we’ve been out of touch and I have no idea if you’re still worth a damn.”

“As a killer?” Rafe asked.

“As someone I can trust to pay the bills,” Gary said. Rafe opened his mouth, but Gary raised a hand to silence him. “Oh, yeah, we all knew you were a rich kid, good for any amount of money. And what I heard was you were still a rich kid, getting remittance from papa as the price of staying away. That doesn’t sound like someone I want to trust with the lives I’m responsible for.”

Rafe tried not to glare, remembering Gary as someone who had never, to his knowledge, accepted responsibility for anyone else. “Responsible,” he said, testing that.

“Yes,” Gary said. His mouth worked as if he might spit, but he didn’t. “Things you didn’t know, rich man’s son. There were other kids I took care of back then. There are men I take care of now.”

“You didn’t—”

“Do a thing for you for the first year. That’s true. You were a cocky little squirt, Rafe; you had all that rich-man’s-son gloss all over you, and I hated the rich for good reason. I wanted to see that gloss come off, see if you were worth anything underneath. And you surprised me. You were. Then you left…and I don’t know this Rafe.”

Rafe shook his head. “Too much time between. Too many things happened. It’d take weeks to catch up, if we ever could, and I don’t have that time.”

“Think you’re tough enough to force me?”

“Might be. But that’s a waste of time, too. I have more important things to do than prove myself to you, Gary. If you don’t want the mission, say so. I’ll go somewhere else.”

This time Gary did spit, with the same precision Rafe remembered from their youth. “You won’t find any better than me. You’ll just get in more trouble.” He gave a sharp head shake. “I am an idiot, because I’m going to trust someone I know is a snake to the backbone, and I swear, Rafe, if you cross me, I will stake your snaky vertebrae to the hottest griddle in hell, one by one…”

“I don’t want to cross you,” Rafe said. “I want to get those people out safely.”

“Those people…not your family?”

“If I think of them that way, I can’t think,” Rafe said. He heard the tremor in his own voice and struggled to control it. Gary had no respect for weakness.

Gary shrugged. “Whatever helps you give me what I need for the team.”

“Which is?”

“Info and money. I’m assuming you still have unlimited funds…”

Rafe shook his head. “Not at the moment. My account’s not available. I don’t have access codes for the family accounts, let alone the corporate accounts. That’s part of the problem. I can get into my personal accounts locally, but that will be obvious to anyone watching, and I know someone is.”

“Tell me,” Gary said.

Rafe described the experiences he’d had in the past days, from the phone surveillance of his family’s numbers to the difficulty with accessing his accounts. “I should’ve been able to transfer funds from the deposit account to my alias’s without a hitch; I’d done it before. Financial transactions are supposed to be secure, anyway. It’s one of the selling points for financial ansibles. This time a team of ISC security personnel showed up at the hotel, and I barely got away.”

“So how were you planning to pay for my services?” Gary asked.

“My alias has accounts on Cascadia, and ansible service between here and there is still functional. I don’t know if it’s enough until you give me a price, though. If it is, then you’ll work through a dummy corporation selling baking equipment—”

“Baking equipment?”

“My alias is a food service manager,” Rafe said. “I’ve been all over the planet looking at food processing equipment—commercial ovens, specialized snack production equipment, and so forth. There’s suspicion, but so far I think the bad guys are convinced that my alias is a real person with someone trying to use his identity.”

“I don’t come cheap,” Gary said. “What we do is dangerous work, and my team are all well aware of the risk. I have to provide sufficient medical coverage and death benefits to recruit reliable, skilled team members, as well as training facilities and equipment.”

“So how expensive is
not cheap
?”

“There’s a per diem or a per mission rate. Per diem seems lower, but you have to understand that it includes the pre-extrication time necessary to assemble, brief, and train the team for this specific task, as well as the time needed for the mission itself. That’s always more days than the customer expects, though I give the best estimate I can. Per mission is much higher, but it’s a turnkey price. Doesn’t matter how long it takes; I absorb any overage.”

“How long do you think this would take?”

“Don’t have enough data yet. You say they’ve been moved from Green Hills…that’s good, because a setup like Green Hills is very difficult. We have to find the new location, assess it, plan a route in and out, train the team on any specific problem areas, and so on.” Gary spat again. “I don’t take credit; we have expenses up front and I got stung a few times early on when I trusted someone. But I can see you’re in a bind. If you can come up with a substantial down payment, I’m willing to trust that you or your family will pay the balance afterward.”

Rafe felt a tiny burst of warmth. “You’re that sure you can get them out.”

“I didn’t get the reputation I have for failing, Rafe.” Gary grinned. “I can’t exactly give you references, but I can say that we’ve had only one failure in the past six years, and only two before that. Out of…quite a few cases.”

“So tell me what the down payment is,” Rafe said.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

T
he funds transfer from Cascadia went through without a hitch and without—so far as Rafe could tell—arousing any interest from ISC security. With great care, he and Gary routed funds through several company names, and Rafe filed contracts for the manufacture of commercial ovens and food production machines with the relevant offices, and applied for export permits “upon completion of design & manufacture of these machines.” As far as Rafe could tell, this seemed sufficiently dull to arouse no interest here, either.

In the meantime, Gary had put his own intelligence-gathering team to work on the problem of location. His files revealed that Green Hills Development Corporation was distantly owned by ISC’s Nexus II local development division, along with a string of other resort and retreat properties.

“By talking to various travel agents, we’ve been able to determine which ones are scheduled for events when,” Gary said. “If your parents’ captors are corporate, as you suspect, they’d be able to find holes in the schedules and move your family from one resort to another. Most of the places are fairly secure—it’s what clients pay for, after all. If we’re lucky, this is how they’re being held, and we’ll locate them in a few days.”

“How long do you think they’re being kept in each place?”

“Don’t know yet. The gaps in the schedules range from a weekend—probably not time enough to move in hostages and move them out again—to sixty days or more, for the hunting lodges. Did you ever stay at one of these places?”

“We went to resorts sometimes, but I don’t know if they were part of this list,” Rafe said. He looked down the printout Gary had handed him. “Bel Ara, yes. That was the first time I saw a tropical reef. But you’ve marked it off—”

“It’s one of the busiest. All-year use by conventions, corporate training sessions, and so on. Vacant at most for three days, or during tropical storms. What about the ones marked in green?”

Rafe shook his head. “My father may have gone to one of these—I see they’re mostly hunting or fishing lodges—but I didn’t.”

“I think they’re the best bet,” Gary said. “You said your family was snatched a maximum of three weeks ago, judging by the condition of the house and the plants. Green Hills had an opening starting about then, but a series of religious meetings is starting two days after you think your family was moved out. That’s the kind of thing a retreat center can’t cancel without people noticing. Maybe they hoped whatever they wanted would happen in that time, but just as likely it was planned as a short-term holding site.”

“Still a lot of places to look,” Rafe said.

“And a lot of tools to look with,” Gary said. “I’ve got long-term surveillance data to play with. Want to see?”

“Always,” Rafe said. The files Gary opened astonished him. “What made you start keeping all this?” he asked, looking at a summary graph of the previous three years’ satellite data on travel patterns.

“The need to find people,” Gary said. “You’ll have noticed that this algorithm allows me to filter out all scheduled traffic—” The graph changed. “—and then to spotlight specific areas. Here I’m entering the locations of the ISC-owned resorts with gaps of thirty or more days in their schedules.” The graph changed again. “The colors show total traffic in the past three years…file that…and now for this year…”

Rafe, watching the lines and colors shift, was more impressed than he wanted to admit. Gary had always seemed like a big dull-witted bully. “Big” and “bully” might be true, but not “dull-witted.” Rafe wondered how many other misjudgments of character he might have made—and how much those misjudgments mattered in this crisis. The planetary schematic turned, showing the other hemisphere.

“Now let’s match the traffic to the schedule gaps,” Gary said. He reset the parameters, and they watched the schematic redraw itself. “Now that’s interesting…”

“What?” Rafe wasn’t sure which colors went with which meaning now.

“There.” Gary pointed. “High-latitude hunting lodge specializing in ice bear trophy hunting in winter and wildlife ecotourism in summer. Normally it’s vacant this time of year—too cold for summer tourists, migratory birds have left, and the ice bears haven’t migrated down yet. But you’ll notice…” He touched the controls again. “Ah. Yes. Traffic there a week ago, and since, and I’ll check the infrared data on the next satellite pass.”

“You can access the security satellites?”

“Nothing tricky about that; I have a license,” Gary said. “Law enforcement doesn’t mind as long as I’m not extricating criminals from their prisons. I don’t do that; it doesn’t pay enough.” He turned to another console. “And while we’re waiting for that, let’s see what else we can find out about…what do they call the place?…Aurora Adventure Lodge.”

Another visual came up, this one a developer’s rendition of the site. Against a backdrop of a lake, with mountains beyond, a glacier peeking between them, a massive log structure surrounded by smaller log cabins was rendered in bright colors, windows framed in white and bordered by green shutters. Flower baskets festooned the eaves, and more flowers overflowed planters on the deep porch.

“This must be for summer tourists,” Gary said. “Terrain’s not bad.” It was treeless, lumpy with huge boulders scattered here and there, cut by streams emptying into the lake.

“Above timberline?” Rafe asked.

“Yeah,” Gary said. “But plenty of cover in those rocks. If we control the airspace and aerial surveillance—and we will—we can get very close without being detected. Weather’s the possible problem here. It’s late autumn; the first winter storms should hit any time.”

“So how soon can you do it?”

“I still don’t know enough. We need to know if they’re really there—that it’s not a decoy—and how many people are guarding them.”

Access to Aurora Adventure Lodge, its website said, was by “the incredibly scenic” train from Brygganha to the high-altitude station at Dobst, from which the train went on to Pergyn, on the far side of the plateau. Dobst Station was just that: a small prefab building with a snack bar, toilets, a ticket counter, a left-luggage room. Beside it was the station staff’s dormitory, and adjoining was a bare-bones hostel for high-country hikers. At Dobst, the site went on, Aurora Lodge guests were met with “a seasonally appropriate vehicle” and transported some eight kilometers to the lake. The summer vehicle was motorized; the winter one appeared to be a horse-drawn sleigh.

The website map showed “public hiking trails” well away from Lodge property, touching the lakeshore kilometers away from the Lodge. “Private hiking trails” led from the Lodge down to the lake and along its shore, up from the Lodge to the glacial margin, to various fishing spots and scenic overlooks. All were color-coded “for the use of Lodge guests only.” The property was secure, its brochure said, from all types of intrusion, physical and electronic; the perimeter barriers were “top of the line.”

“They’re not, actually,” Gary said, leaning back in his chair. “They’ll certainly stop a curious hiker, or a criminal who’d like to sneak in and pretend to be on staff while robbing guests, or the casual everyday kind of commercial snooping.” He leaned forward again, deep in another site. “The latest version of their perimeter security was installed…almost two years ago. Reputable company in Brygganha, main concern ice bears in winter and nosy tourists in summer. Good products, but not the best; that cost too much. I know Stani; he supervised installation, and he’s good.”

“So…”

“It’s more difficult than some jobs we’ve done, but not impossible.”

“When will I meet the others?” Rafe asked.

“Meet them? You’re not going to meet them.”

“But—”

“Rafe, for the hundredth time—! You are not part of this op. You cannot be part of this op. You are a
client,
like any other client. You must not be seen to have any connection whatever with what we’re doing; it’s bad enough that you aren’t out there continuing to look for food processing equipment, or being the businessman on vacation chatting up beach girls or boys or something.”

“I can’t just—”

Gary’s look stopped him. Rafe took a deep breath, then another. When he looked down, his left hand was shaking slightly; he went on breathing, willing it to stop. When it was steady, he looked up.

“I’m being an idiot,” he said.

“You’re being a client,” Gary said with a shrug. “Clients are like that.”

“I don’t like thinking of myself—”

“—as just like everyone else? That hasn’t changed, at least.” Gary punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, son; you aren’t like the others except in being anxious and tense and entirely too eager to jump in and help. But part of our security, and yours, and your family’s, is a nice thick, tight wall between my people and you. You have no idea what will happen after we get them out—”

“You said
after
—you really think—”

“After we get them out, yes. Yes, it’s doable, and yes, we’ll do it. If you don’t muck it up in the meantime. Now—what was your original itinerary? How long did you plan to stay on Nexus?”

“Not this long,” Rafe said. “I planned to visit Dad, find out what was up with the ansibles, see how the land lay, and then—”

“Did you have a reservation?”

“Yes, but now—”

“You have to use it.”

“No! I can’t leave the planet not knowing—”

“Rafe, you have no reason not to leave—your persona doesn’t, I mean. If you don’t leave you’ll arouse suspicion—you already have.”

“But—”

“Do you have anyone outside who would act as your office manager or CEO or whatever and send you orders to stay?”

“Er…no.” Stella might, if he explained it to her, but he hadn’t explained it before he left Cascadia, and he could not trust even secured ansible transmission now.

“Then you have to go. If you can sneak back in, that’s fine, but you have to go, in that persona. It will make our job, and your family, much safer.”

Intellectually, Rafe knew Gary was making sense, but he did not want to leave. If something happened while he was away, something that his presence could have prevented…“I’m sure I can work something up, something believable—”

“What, break a leg? That’s no bar to travel, as you know—”

“I know. I’d need to be in a hospital or locked up—” Rafe stopped. From Gary’s expression the same thought had come to him. “I don’t suppose—”

“You wouldn’t like it,” Gary said. “Lockup isn’t much more fun than school was.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Rafe said.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Not on this planet, but—I do know my way around a jailhouse.”

“Something local,” Gary said. “Something you could get out of, probably. Just to tide you over, hold you onplanet until your ship’s taken off and the op’s started.”

“I don’t even know what gets you temporary incarceration here anymore,” Rafe said. “And it can’t be with ISC security, or something that a local would report to them.”

“Right. On the other hand, they—or someone higher up—has to know that you’re behind bars or something else legitimate, so there’s an explanation for your not catching your ride out.”

“I guess I could get sick,” Rafe said.

“It’s harder to find cooperative doctors and hospitals than cooperative law enforcement,” Gary said. “No, don’t look at me like that. I’m on their side now, and favors go both ways. I’m just thinking which one to call.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“I may not take it.”

“Of course not. But a traveling businessman, like my persona, is apt to become…lonely. He could misunderstand, perhaps, local customs.”

Gary snorted. “A Cascadian?”

“Polite amorous insistence is still amorous insistence. And it depends so much on the attitude of the person receiving the attention, whether it is unwanted or not. Such a person might come to understand, at a convenient time, that the incident resulted from a cultural misunderstanding…”

Gary shook his head. “Rafe, you are even more devious than you were. But yes, that’s a possible scenario, and I suppose it suits you better than a false accusation of theft or conspiracy.”

“Since I expect to be guilty of the conspiracy, at least, before this is over, yes.”