Remote (25 page)

There were initials beside all the other entries, too.  Initials that coincided with the name of each of Remote’s targets. 

He had the date, he had the initials.  That wasn’t enough to narrow it down—but the toy itself did. 

He’d already figured out the significance of the others.  The catapult attacking the castle had been how Remote rewarded himself for the mechanic he’d induced to kill the corrupt Mayor that had made his fortune from foreclosing on mortages; the Mayor was the king, the catapult representing the vehicle whose brakes the mechanic had tampered with.  The lion tamer was the lawyer, killing the gang members he was supposed to represent; the dancing girls were celebrating the death of the rapist, killed with poisoned wine.  The turbaned man smoking the hookah was the tobacco executive Remote had killed via his own personal assistant, and the strongman was clearly Okay Hampton. 

The knight facing the dragon was meant to represent his successful trade of Goliath for Jack himself, though at the time Remote thought he was getting a serial killer in return.  The armored figure, Jack thought, was how Remote saw himself; the dragon represented not just Goliath, but a world filled with evil. 

But if that were true, then what did a fire-breathing devil represent?

Jack leaned back, wincing at the pain it produced, and took another sip of his coffee.  He and Nikki had relocated to a Northern border town called Blaine, and were holed up in another anonymous motel.  He’d given Goliath a shot to knock the giant out for a while, but that was just a temporary measure; Jack had definite plans for his oversized captive.

The file had contained a photo of the item in question, and Jack tried to recall it in detail.  About a foot high, a horned devil seated at a desk with a quill pen in one hand.  The thing’s color had been unusual, a glossy black instead of the more archetypal crimson.  Apparently it was some sort of automatic writing device, able to duplicate your own signature. 

Something to do with media, or communication.  A newspaper? Maybe a writer?
  No, that didn’t fit.  Remote went after sociopaths, people society seemed unable or unwilling to punish.  Maybe a religious figure, a disgraced televangelist or cult leader?  That seemed more likely.

The color meant something.  Jack didn’t know why, but his subconscious was sure of it.  The blackness of the devil’s skin hadn’t seemed to be racial—its features had been stereotypically European, with a sharp little goatee and mustache. 

He closed his eyes and free-associated, just letting his thoughts drift. 
Devil, writing.  The Devil and Daniel Webster.  The Devil’s due.  Words, quill, ink.  Inky devil.  Devil’s ink.  Devil, Inc.?

He opened his eyes, and then leaned over the table in front of him and opened his laptop.  He Googled
Devil Incorporated
and got just over 1600 hits; the closest thing seemed to be a humorous website under construction.  Not what he was looking for.

He closed his eyes.  A memory was trying to surface, nudging his attention like a piece of driftwood brushing against the side of a boat.  Something about an actor—the one that played the crusty old boxing coach in the
Rocky
movies.  What was his name again?

Burgess Meredith.  Right.  He was in that famous episode of the
Twilight Zone,
the one everyone remembers, about the guy that broke his glasses after the nuclear war.   But that wasn’t the only time he appeared on the series—there was one where he played—

The Devil.

Google gave him the facts within seconds.  The episode Jack was thinking of was titled “Printer’s Devil”;  a little more research revealed that the phrase referred to a printer’s assistant.  It had come into use because the ink turned their skin black.

A printer.  That was part of the puzzle.  But the automata Remote had rewarded himself with all referenced his crimes on more than one level; they incorporated both the victim and the weapon.  The other element in the equation would seem to be the devil himself—the religion angle was looking more and more likely.  A priest targeting a printer?  No, that didn’t seem right. 

Remote often used drones that provided services to the primary target—a dentist, a mechanic.  A printer made sense.  What would a printer do for a religious figure?

Print pamphlets or books, obviously.  Helping spread whatever evil Remote had decided was poisonous enough that it needed to be stopped.  That dovetailed with Remote’s preference for using people he saw as enablers for his drones, those who actively aided his victims in some way, no matter how innocuous. 

Jack thought he knew who he was looking for now.  A printer who was willing to do business with questionable clients, maybe a proponent of free speech, maybe just greedy.  Someone with the initials SA, who counted among his clients some sort of religious organization with extremist views.

That still left a pretty big field, but Jack was comforted by one fact; Remote had probably found his target the same way Jack was searching for him right now, by trolling the Internet.

He went to work.

***

Nikki took a red-eye from LA to Vancouver.  Jack had booked her a first-class flight—she’d told him that wasn’t necessary, but he’d insisted.  “It’ll help you sleep,” he’d said.  “It’s not like we don’t have the money.”  Jack had put a painting from the Patron’s collection up for auction, and it had sold for just under two hundred thousand dollars within hours.  He hadn’t wanted to do it, but their plans required an immediate and rather substantial outlay of cash.

Nikki hadn’t slept in twenty-eight hours, but she felt more wired than tired.  That was good; things were moving fast now, and she probably wasn’t going to get any sleep for at least another twelve. 

She took a cab to the east side, where Jack met her at the warehouse storing the Patron’s art collection.  He looked as tired as she felt.

“Everything still a go?” she asked, walking up to the open door that led to the warehouse’s office.  The Vancouver air felt damp and chilly after California, and she was glad to step inside.

“So far.  I think I’ve figured out his next target.”

She sank onto the dusty couch beside the boarded-up window.  Jack closed the door and walked over to the desk his laptop sat on, swiveling it around so she could see the screen.

“Abel Printers,” she said.  “Primary or drone?”

“Drone.  Primary has to be this place.”  He tapped a key and the screen filled with a font that could only be described as Biblical.  “West Grail Church.  Abel Printers is where they go for their tracts and signs.” 

She leaned back and groaned.  “Not
those
assholes.”

The West Grail Church had achieved the kind of notoriety reserved for the truly bizarre, managing to meld elements of a lunatic cult with the kind of right-wing bigotry even a Klu Klux Klan member would flinch at.  Not content to merely picket abortion clinics, they had expanded their repetoire to military funerals, gay rights events, and even comic-book conventions.  The credo of their religion seemed to be twofold: one, that God hated everybody, and two, that it was their duty to let everyone know.  They attracted attention the same way a group of naked, full-blown schizophrenics with bullhorns would; nobody understood them, nobody agreed with them, but they were impossible to ignore.

“Jesus, Jack, they
deserve
to be blown to hell.  Can’t we just give this one a miss?”

“No.  Maybe they deserve it, but their children don’t.”  He tapped another key, and now the screen showed her a group of protesters holding signs proclaiming HELL WAITS FOR FAGGOTS and other bigoted slogans.  Clearly visible in the crowd were children of different ages, their faces twisted in hate as they yelled what their parents had taught them.  Some of the parents held toddlers.

Nikki sighed.  “Okay, granted—though I wouldn’t want to be around any of those kids in a decade or so.  How’s Goliath?”

“Still sedated.”  Jack yawned.  “I envy him.  We have a long night ahead of us.”

“Yeah.  You really think we can pull this off?”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

***

Tanner knew someone was coming.

His boss hadn’t been that forthcoming with details, but he’d sounded excited on the phone—more excited than Tanner had ever seen him.  “They’ll try to intercept you.  Most likely at the printer’s, but possibly at the church.  One at each location.”

“There are two of them?”

“Yes, but they’ll have to split up to cover both places—you’ll only have to deal with one at a time.  Jack will take the printer, I would think—it’s the most important.  He doesn’t know he’s already too late.  He’ll send his partner to the church, have her observe from a distance.  Too dangerous to get close to the drone.”  Remote chuckled gleefully.  “No, I’d imagine a rifle—possibly loaded with tranquilizer darts—would be their approach.  Disable the drone from a distance.  Probably set up an electronics scrambler near the entrance to the church to disrupt my signal.  Won’t stop a negative feedback circuit, of course, but it’s the only option he has.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go to the church.  Be careful.  Find out where his partner is surveilling the area from, and ambush her.  Make sure to take her alive.”

Her
.  Tanner grinned.  This was getting better and better.  “And Abel?”

“Keep him at the motel, sedated.  I’ll hold him in reserve in case things go south.  Just make sure you capture the partner.”

“I will.”

And, as usual, his boss had been right.  The best spot to watch the front door of the West Grail church—which was heavily fortified, with its own security gates and electronic passkey system—was from an out-of-business video store across the street.  Taped-up newspapers covered the dusty plate glass windows, but one of the curtained windows on the upper floor was open a crack.  Just enough for a pair of peering eyes . . .  or the muzzle of a rifle.

The back door had been pried open.  He went in carefully, holding the taser in one hand and the hypodermic in the other.  He had a nine millimeter pistol in his pocket for back-up; despite what his boss had told him, he had no qualms about killing his target if his own life was in danger. 

His heart was pounding, his hands sweaty.  Stalking a victim who knew an opponent existed was very different from hunting somebody clueless.  He moved silently through rooms furnished only with empty display racks, torn and discarded video boxes littering the floor.  Shiny brown ribbons of magnetic tape lay strewn in loops, the disemboweled remains of a dead medium. 

The door that led upstairs was ajar.  He crept up it quietly, into a hallway carpeted in a worn, pale green.  A bathroom at the end of the hall, door open, cracked toilet visible.  A closed door to the left, another on the right. 

He tried the one to the right, first, very gently.  Locked. 

He tried the other one.  The knob turned.

He opened the door a crack, holding his breath, and peered through it.  Inside, crouched on her knees, was a woman with long blond hair.  She was watching the church through a pair of binoculars, and didn’t even twitch when Tanner opened the door wider and stepped softly inside.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
O
NE

Goliath woke up slowly, groggily, the world lurching back and forth inside his skull.  It took him a minute to realize that he was staring up at the open sky, flat on his back.

“Hello, big man,” said a voice in his ear.  He reached up and realized he was wearing another helmet, this one without a visor but just as securely locked onto his head. 
Fuck.

“Let me bring you up to speed,” the voice said as Goliath sat up and looked around blearily.  He was on a dock, dressed in ill-fitting clothes, with some kind of wide belt around his waist.  “And I do mean speed—that buzz in your head isn’t an extra-strength espresso.”

Goliath could feel it, humming along his nerves and through his skull, clearing away the cobwebs like an industrial-strength leaf-blower. 

“The belt locked around your waist contains enough C4 to blow you in half.  It’s waterproof and booby-trapped—don’t try to remove it.  I can see everything you see, hear everything you hear.  You do anything but what I tell you, I’ll turn you into two hundred and fifty pounds of ground hamburger and bone shrapnel.”

“What the fuck do you want me to do?”

“What comes naturally.  Look behind you.”

He did.  There was a pile of equipment there, stacked neatly at the end of the dock.  When he realized what some of it was, he broke into a grin despite himself.

“Time to go fuck shit up,” the Closer said in his ear. 

***

Remote had seen the boat approach on his security cams, had seen Jack unload Goliath and everything else.  There wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

Not directly.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” he murmured, shaking his head and tapping at his keyboard.  “This kind of confrontational approach reeks of desperation.  You’ve already lost, can’t you see that?”

Tanner had sent him a text thirty minutes ago, announcing that he’d captured Jack’s partner.  Jack’s response was now lumbering up the walk toward his front door. 

Goliath wore a helmet with a wire-grid face mask, flak vest, steel-toed boots and some kind of industrial coveralls; he had a riot shotgun slung over his back, a tool belt around his waist, and a ten-pound sledgehammer gripped in his massive hands.  One of his eyes was covered with a white bandage.

“Send his partner to take out the drone, while using the biker to attack me,” Remote muttered.  “But how’s he controlling him?  Goliath is hardly anyone’s willing cannon fodder . . .”

He squinted at the screen as Goliath got closer.  Studied the wide belt, with its padlocked hasp securing it.  Smiled and nodded.

You’re a fast learner, Jack.  And I’m flattered you would choose to adopt my own methods against me.  But piloting Goliath means you have to be somewhere with network access, and you only left minutes ago; most likely the boat that brought you here has wifi or a cellular connection, and you’re anchored nearby--like a pirate ship in the bay, directing an assault on a port town.