Outriders (3 page)

That wasn’t precisely true. He didn’t come here every day. But he’d started visiting the restaurant attached to the hotel every couple of days almost as soon as he arrived. Laying the groundwork. Not enough to become a regular, never at quite the same time each visit. But consistent enough to blend into the scenery. The packet had indicated this was one of the Target’s favored spots for meeting his various contacts. Vector just hoped he’d get the green light before anyone else showed up. This wasn’t the kind of thing he liked to do outnumbered. Not any more outnumbered than he already was, anyway.

The seconds ticked by as he waited for a response from the Woman. He surveyed the surroundings once more, trying not to let the delay get to him. If he didn’t look up, it didn’t take much effort to imagine himself in any number of cities back home on Earth. Or, back where he used to call home, at any rate. The architecture was familiar, if not exactly culturally distinct. Some mixture of Cuban and Mexican, maybe, translated across roughly two hundred and twenty-five million kilometers of open space. The hotel was squat; the outdoor seating for its restaurant was a square, walled courtyard with two exits to the busy streets that hemmed it in.
Outdoor.
The word didn’t mean quite the same thing here. It was a comfortable spot, sure, as long as you didn’t mind living in a bubble.

Down here, looking up, the vast membrane that kept the artificial atmosphere and temperature stable and the dust storms out was nearly transparent. Nearly. There was a silvery sheen to the sky that was obvious to Vector’s Terran eyes, like a thin skin of oil on the surface of a pond. From a couple of thousand meters up, it looked like a planetary blister. From orbit, the collection of settlements clustered together made it appear that Mars had developed some horrendously disfiguring skin disease. But the Martians seemed pretty pleased with it. All the estimates back home said it’d be another fifty years at least until they could take their chances with a completely unshielded settlement. Then again, back home they’d been underestimating the rate of Martian progress since Day One.

Vector could still remember sitting at the dinner table as a kid, listening to his parents talk about
those colonists
and wondering why they always sounded a little angry when they said it. It’d taken barely two generations to go from
our brave brothers and sisters
to
those colonists
. And these days, it was getting harder and harder to think of them as colonists at all. Mostly they were just Martians.

The general consensus had been that the great Martian Experiment would draw the nations of Earth together. And like most predictions by the people who should know best, that consensus had been dead wrong. While Earth was busy squabbling with itself, the colonies on Mars just kept plugging along, expanding, crystallizing. Making the world their home. And anyone who had studied history even casually shouldn’t have been surprised at the course things took. The colonists’ ties to Earth weakened, their Martian identity strengthened, and before anyone knew it, Earth had a whole new group of people to squabble with.

Not that the Martians had the peace and harmony thing all figured out either, though; a fact Vector was here to exploit. As far as he could tell, no matter how far out into space humanity got, it would never be far enough to escape its own nature.

“Vector, Cisko,” the voice finally spoke in his ear, as loud as if she’d been standing beside him instead of thirty thousand kilometers above. “You’re a go.”

“Copy that, Vector is go.” He set his coffee on the table and leaned back in his chair, stretching. Casually, slowly, he swept his eyes around the courtyard, careful not to let them rest on the Target’s security detail. They were locals, but he could tell by the way they held themselves, and from their level of focus, that they weren’t amateurs. The two of them were standing at opposite corners of the courtyard, each stationed by an entry point. Not bad for controlling the courtyard, but, in Vector’s opinion, that put them too far from the man they were supposed to be protecting. If he’d been running the detail, he would have had a third guard tasked solely with close protection. They probably had overwatch positioned somewhere in the surrounding buildings, keeping an eye on the general flow of the area, but that wasn’t going to help them. Vector and his team had already successfully infiltrated the target zone. Of course, it was easy for Vector to spot all the flaws in the protection plan, seeing it as he was through the eyes of the attacker. It was always easier for the party who got to choose the time, place, and method.

The Target was still busy reviewing his viz, looking over whatever information the cheap Thug had shared with him. Or maybe digesting the morning’s intelligence brief that his analysts had compiled for him while he slept. Vector couldn’t help but wonder how shocked those same analysts would be a few minutes from now.

He cracked a knuckle and in the same motion switched channels on his comms. He picked his coffee back up and mimed drinking it while he spoke again.

“Kev, we’re a go. You in place?”

“Roger that,” Kev answered. “Say when.”

“Hey, Kid,” Vector said. “You got me?”

“Yeah, I gotcha,” his long-time partner replied.

“What’s your angle?”

“Clear line to the big guy by the door,” she answered. “Heat signature’s good on the other fella, but I’d have to shoot through to get him.”

“Okay. Take the big guy. I’ll get the other.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Roger. On you.”

Vector replaced the coffee on the table in front of him, and rested his hands on his lap. This was the tricky part. As soon as he moved, he’d draw attention. Every space had its rhythm. It was his job to match it, to blend with it. Too fast, and security would perk up. Too slow, and they’d keep watching him until he’d left the zone. He allowed himself a few settling breaths.

“Doc,” Kid said a few moments later, “you got a spotter.”

“Yeah?” Vector answered.

“Just above you. Fourth floor, about the middle of the building.”

“Shooter?” Even with a couple of decades of practice, Vector had to restrain himself from glancing that direction.

“Can’t tell for sure. Better assume so.”

“Can you take him and the big guy?”

“Depends on the order. Whatcha think?”

“I think I’d like you to take whichever one’s most likely to kill me first.”

A pause, while Kid thought it over. One of the reasons Vector liked her. She never hurried with answers.

“Spotter then,” Kid said finally.

“Be sure.”

“I am.”

“All right. Let’s do it,” Vector said. He scratched his belly in an absentminded sort of way, let his fingertips brush the grip of the pistol he had tucked close against his ribs. It wasn’t a complicated plan. Walk over, kill the bad guys, leave. But for all his years of experience, no matter how simple, Vector had never once seen things go exactly according to plan.

Go time. He laid his napkin on the table, brushed the crumbs from his lap. Kept his eyes away from his Target and the security team. Slow breath. Vector stood.

And as he was rising to his feet, he felt a hitch in his gut. Some warning instinct firing off that he’d learned long ago to trust. But he was in motion now, he couldn’t stop or slow or change direction. He’d have to figure it out on the fly. He paused and drained the last of his terrible coffee, buying himself a few moments to scan the environment. In that cursory sweep, he saw the Thug was standing now, a few paces closer to the thin security officer. Bad timing; Vector and the man had just happened to start moving at nearly the same moment. Any security worth half its rate would take that as a potential concern. And if either of the two men were preparing to leave, that was problematic. Security was always a little tighter, a little more aware in transitions. He would have preferred to act while the guards were settled, when they’d gotten comfortable in the space and thus, hopefully, complacent.

There was still time to scrub the op. He could just walk out. Wait until another day. But no. The Woman’s timetable could absorb a few delays. She was too smart, too experienced to think anything would work out exactly according to her predictions. But she did have a timetable nonetheless. He needed to wrap this job, and get on to the next.

Vector changed the plan on the move.

“Kid, scratch that, scratch that. Take the shoot-through first.”

“You sure?”

“Roger, shoot-through, then spotter,” he said as he placed his empty cup on the table and started towards the exit guarded by the big guy. “On my action.”

“Shoot-through, then spotter, copy. On you.”

Vector kept his pace steady, casual. Just another morning. All part of the routine.

Twelve feet from the big security guy by the door, Vector made eye contact with the man, gave him a nod then looked away. A brief acknowledgment; I see you, you see me, nothing to be concerned about.

Six feet away, Vector glanced back over his shoulder as if he’d maybe forgotten something at his table, angled his body away from the security officer.

“Kev,” he whispered, “Come on around.”

“Copy, on the way.”

Three feet. When Vector turned back, the gun was in his hand, the grip pressed tight against his ribs as an index. Held that way, he didn’t have to look at the gun to know where it was aimed. At least not at this range. He angled the pistol low. The big security guard’s face changed, hands flared up in reaction. Too late. The suppressed pistol coughed twice, sending rounds through the man’s pelvic girdle, folding him into Vector.

“Help!” Vector cried, catching hold of the guard. The man struggled weakly, and Vector fired a third round point-blank into his solar plexus as he lowered him to the ground. “Help! This man needs help!”

Vector crouched over the man, his pistol still held close to his body, swiveled on his heel and did his best to look helpless. The crowd sat frozen, unsure of what had happened, or what was happening. One man was caught halfway between sitting and standing as if he knew he should do something, without having any idea what that would be.

“Gun! He’s got a gun!” another man shouted. Everyone looked, Vector included, and he saw the man pointing frantically at the thin security guard who was now moving towards the Thug. Vector fought back the urge to bring his own weapon up. Kid would handle it. After three steps, a puff of concrete burped off the exterior wall, and the security guard fell headlong into a table.

That’s when the screaming started. The panic. The remaining patrons scrambled and clambered over one another in every direction, some towards the exits, others just
away.
To them, everything was happening too fast for comprehension, some lightning strike of utterly random and unpredictable violence, taking the lives of anyone who happened to be in its path. Only someone familiar with Vector’s line of work would have noticed the precision, the fluidity, the careful unfolding of each step in its proper time and place. Vector left the big security guard and moved through the crowd towards the Target.

In the churning chaos, no one was looking four stories up, where Vector was certain the spotter was having just as bad a day as his two ground-level security companions. The Thug was by a table thirty feet away, in a partial crouch, with his hands splayed out to either side like he was trying to keep his balance. He was paralyzed by indecision, with his head turned such that he presented a perfect side profile to Vector. Only one person in the zone was paying any attention to Vector at all.
That
person was staring right at him.

The Target.

He too was standing now, but he was absolutely still, untouched by the confusion swirling around him. His body was tense and coiled, out of sync with the blank expression Vector saw on the man’s face. Recognition of what was happening, refusal to accept it. Powerlessness to stop it. He raised a hand, part shield, part supplication for mercy. Neither had any effect.

Vector fired two rounds in quick succession,
pat pat,
into the center of mass, and the small man grunted and winced with the impacts. To Vector’s surprise, the man didn’t cry out; he just seemed to deflate as he sank to the ground, with a strange and sad look in his eyes.

The Thug looked at Vector with horror, fell backwards in his haste to scramble away. He rolled to his side and writhed in an awkward attempt to simultaneously regain his feet and crawl away, all the while keeping his terrified eyes locked on Vector’s. Vector put a single round through the man’s head, and then another three rounds, haphazard, into his body as he flopped back and lay still. Couldn’t make it look
too
good.

Having handled the Thug, Vector calmly closed the remaining distance to the Target with an even pace. On his way out he passed by the man, who was now lying on his side breathing the ragged last breaths of a man as good as dead. Vector didn’t slow as he fired a final round through the Target’s neck and continued with the same stride to the eastern exit of the courtyard. That shot hadn’t been strictly necessary; the first two would have done the job. But it made the hit messier, and that was a carefully calculated component of the op.

He fired the remaining rounds from the stubby pistol into the walls and floor, and then dropped the empty weapon just before he exited the courtyard, leaving it behind. The Woman had insisted on that particular point too. He hadn’t asked why. Vector had learned well enough that she always had her reasons, and they were almost always good ones. And anyway, there was nothing on it that could be traced back to him, or to his team, or to anyone off-planet for that matter.

As he stepped out onto the street, the first shockwaves were just spilling out into the general populace. A few patrons had fled the courtyard in that direction, screaming. Several other citizens were standing around on the sidewalks, trying to get a read on what exactly was happening. No one took notice of the white vehicle that pulled to a stop and opened its door just as Vector emerged. Nor should they. It was identical to the thousand other autopiloted vehicles of various colors that moved around the streets at every hour of the day or night. He slid into the seat and closed the door. Kev was sitting in a forward-facing seat, a tablet in his lap and a mess of cables dangling out of the forward dash.