The Mandel Files (50 page)

“Should be along here somewhere,” the marine-adept woman said.

“Greg said it looks just like a farm road.”

“Right.” Nicole leaned even further forwards, nose almost touching the cracked windscreen. “What the hell’s this?”

As they turned a corner Eleanor saw about fifteen cars and four methane-fuelled Transit vans parked along both sides of the road, all of them had flashing lights on top, blue and orange in equal numbers. “Police?” The ever-present fear increased its hold.

“Some of them.”

Nicole slowed. A uniformed bobby was standing in the middle of the road, flagging them down. The headlights of the parked vehicles had been left on, casting pale beams of light along the tall hedgerows, turning the leaves grey. There were a lot of people milling about on the road, less than half were wearing police uniforms, the rest had green nylon windcheater jackets with Event Horizon’s logo across the back.

The bobby looked into the cab and smiled. “Evening ladies, won’t keep you a moment. There’s a C9 division van backing off the road up ahead.”

“I have to get to Wilholm manor,” Eleanor said. “I’ve got an appointment with Julia Evans.”

The bobby looked her slowly up and down, Eleanor had thrown a thick lumberjack shirt over her swimsuit, and there were some borrowed trainers on her feet. His eyes tracked her long bare legs. “Oh yes, ma’am?”

Nicole didn’t turn her head, gripping the wheel tighter.

“Please, I really do.”

“Name?”

“Eleanor Broady.”

The bobby pulled out a slim cybofax and typed quickly. Eleanor’s heart sank.

“I don’t think you do, Miss Broady,” he said.

“Well, its really Morgan Walshaw I’m booked to see.”

He began to walk away. “Drive straight through when the road’s clear.”

“Arsehole,” Nicole muttered.

“What is going on here?” Eleanor could see the big van ahead, creeping into a gap between two powerful Vauxhall groundcruisers with the Event Horizon logo on their sides, there were armed men inside.

“Lotta heavy shit going down.”

They both jumped at the voice. There was a young man standing on the running board next to Nicole, dressed in a black jumpsuit with a rubbery collar which came up to his chin.

Familiar face, unpleasant memory. “Des, isn’t it?” Eleanor asked.

Des grinned wolfishly. “Kinda memorable, right? Listen, Father’s hung out a hundred metres past the last of the pigs. See ya there.” He jumped off.

Nicole grunted and shoved the Bedford into gear and they growled slowly between the lines of stationary vehicles. Eleanor saw what must’ve been Wilholm’s entrance, a cattle grid which opened into the fields of sugar cane. It was illuminated from below by a harsh orange light, as though something was burning beneath it. Several people were standing watching it, none venturing particularly close.

It was Suzi they saw first, standing in the middle of the road, hands planted firmly on her hips. She was wearing the same kind of jumpsuit as Des, a photon amp across her eyes, and a maroon beret on her head. She waved them on to the grass verge.

Nicole pulled over and switched off the engine and lights. Eleanor looked round to see Suzi marching determinedly down the road towards the ant’s nest commotion outside the manor’s entrance.

Teddy swarmed into the cab, sitting beside Eleanor. “Lo there, Nicole, thanks for bringing her.”

“No problem. Good seeing you again Ted.”

Eleanor hadn’t known they knew each other. The military mates thing again.

“OK, we’ve got problems,” Teddy said. “Royan can’t access Wilholm to see what the hell’s going down; the manor’s ‘ware has been burned by a virus. Event Horizon and English Telecom have both physically unplugged it from their networks, it was doing too much damage hooked in. Half of Peterborough’s telephones have already been glitched by the fallout.” His thumb jerked back towards the entrance. “That’s why the cavalry’s here.”

“Someone’s attacked the manor’s ‘ware again?” Eleanor asked.

“Yeah, third time. Persistent buggers.”

“Why are the police waiting out here?” she asked. “Why haven’t they gone in?”

“Can’t,” said Teddy. “All the manor’s defence gear is running loose. They’ve got to deactivate it first, which ain’t gonna happen before morning, some of that stuff is seriously hazardous. And when they do get in the likes of you and I aren’t gonna be first on the guest list.”

“But we’ve got to find out about Greg, it’s been hours!”

Eleanor felt Nicole’s restraining hand on her shoulder, sympathetic, alleviating some of the anguish.

“I know, gal. Looks like we’re gonna have to go in ourselves if we want some answers.”

“Hey, Father.” Suzi calling with soft urgency. Teddy and Eleanor climbed out of the cab.

Suzi had a man in tow, oriental looking with a young face, wearing one of the Event Horizon jackets. “Man here is Victor Tyo,” Suzi said. “Met him last night, one of Julia’s security people. Captain no less.”

“I know you,” Eleanor said quickly. “You went up to Zanthus with Greg.”

Victor Tyo seemed puzzled. “That’s right, although can’t say I remember you. I’m sure I would do.”

“Greg’s my man,” she said simply.

“And we’d like to know what’s happened to him,” Suzi said.

“Happened?”

“Yeah,” said Teddy. “He never got back home after snatching that phyltre junkie from the di Girolamo yacht. Eleanor here is loaded up with grief about that. You know anything about it?”

Victor glanced round at the circle of faces. “I don’t understand. Greg left the finance division offices right ahead of Miss Evans’s convoy.”

“When?”

“About half-past four this morning.”

“You saw him leave?”

“Yes, he had Miss Thompson with him in the Duo. He said he’d be back later to help analyse some holomemories we’d acquired.”

“The Crays from Ellis?” Teddy asked.

“How did you know?”

“Always cover yourself, Victor. Someone you trust. And don’t sweat yourself, man, I ain’t interested in no corporate politics. So Greg never showed today at all, right?”

“Not at the finance offices, no. But the programming assigned to crack the Crays squirted all the data they pulled out up here to the manor. I thought he must be here.”

“Don’t get it,” said Suzi. “Nothing could happen to Greg, not with that Lady Gee in tow. She’s in-fucking-credible, like nothing happens without her seeing it first. Nothing!”

“Then why did this virus get into the manor’s gear?” Eleanor said. They all looked at her, faces gusted by random beams of blue and orange light from the vehicles in the distance. “Gabriel predicted the second hotrod attack against Wilholm, why not the third?”

“Shit,” from Suzi.

“OK, so strike Gabriel,” said Teddy. “She and Greg have been zapped—” he flinched, glanced at Eleanor, started again. “Least, we don’t know what’s happened to ‘em; same time Wilholm gets burned again. You like maybe see a connection there, Victor?”

The Security Captain nodded earnestly. “I’ll make absolutely sure that you get to the manor right after we debug the defence gear.”

Teddy snorted. Eleanor was struck by just how menacing he’d become; nothing like the directionless thuggishness of Des, he focused his energy and anger with deadly precision. And she was very glad she wasn’t on the receiving end of it. Victor Tyo was wilting under his stare, unable to look away.

“You’re not reading me right, man,” Teddy said softly. “The answers are in that fancy mansion your lady boss lives in, and we want them. Tonight. Now.”

Victor spread his arms helplessly. “We’re calling in all our security programmers, but it’s the middle of the night. They’ll produce an antithesis, but it’s going to take time. There is nothing I can do that’ll get us in there any sooner.”

“Wrong, man. We’re going in now, and you’re coming with us.”

“What?”

“Think about it. Security hardliners inside see us coming at them it’s gonna be target-practice time. We need you out in front to show them we ain’t hostile.”

“You’re insane,” Victor Tyo said. “Do you have any idea what kind of hardware is guarding that manor?”

Teddy grinned and beckoned.

There were five electric Honda bikes behind the hedgerow. Des was waiting with them, along with Roddy and another Trinity called Jules. All of them wearing the same black jumpsuit. Eleanor began to think it must be more than just a uniform.

Teddy flipped open a cybofax, showing it to Victor Tyo. “See this? List of Wilholm’s defence gear. We know what they’re loaded with, where it is, line of fire. Got our approach all figured out. We can handle the automatics, all we need now is some way of convincing the security hardliners not to shoot after we’ve broken through. That’s you, man.”

Victor Tyo took the cybofax, holding it gently as he read down the screen, dismay growing on his face. “Where in Christ’s name did you get this from? Every byte here is ultra-hush.”

“Snatched right out of your security division cores,” Teddy said. “Now you believe we’re serious?”

Royan, Eleanor knew. The thought that he was behind them, an intangible general, bolstered her in a way she couldn’t define. She actually began to believe there might be hope after all.

The Hondas took them across country, heading for the back of the Wilholm estate in a long, flat curve to avoid the police patrols checking the perimeter. Eleanor rode pillion behind Suzi, clinging tenaciously to the wiry Trinities girl, sugar cane beating at her legs and arms. She could see the front wheel-fork’s chrome suspension springs hammering up and down as the bike bounced over the compacted furrows of sandy red soil. They were travelling in single file, with Teddy leading; Nicole was his passenger.

There’d never been any question over the marine-adept woman joining the break-in team, which irked Eleanor, because Teddy hadn’t wanted to take her along.

“No offence, gal,” he’d said calmly. “But you ain’t used to this kind of heat.”

“So how many times have you broken into a place like this?” she’d retorted.

“That ain’t the point. My troops, they got the discipline, know weapons.”

“I used shot-guns and rifles at my kibbutz. And I’ll just follow you after you go in.”

“Shit, OK gal, but Greg’ll have my arse if he ever finds out. Guess there’s more to you than—well, you check out neat.”

More than tits ‘n’ ass, Eleanor had filled in silently. But Teddy had stopped objecting after that. Some part of her wished he hadn’t.

It was Suzi who’d given Eleanor one of the jumpsuits to put on. “It’s an energy dissipater,” she’d explained intently. “It can hold out against a hand-laser for a good twelve seconds. But with those Bofors masers they’ve got up at the manor, you’ve got maybe three, four seconds to skip out of the beam before burn through.”

Along with Victor and Nicole, Eleanor had stripped off before pulling the heavy garment on, its slippery, spongy lining clinging to her skin. When it had adjusted to her figure there was virtually no restriction of movement. A tight cap held her hair down, and a hood with an integral photon amp came over her face, sealing to the collar.

Once it was on she became appreciably colder, the thermal shunt fibres siphoning out her body heat.

“It’s no use against bullets,” Suzy went on. “Then you can’t have everything. ‘Sides, Wilholm only has beam weapons. So Son says. Better be fucking right.”

The world as seen through the photon amp was a place of ghostly shadows, shaded blue and grey. Eleanor was gradually growing used to it; depth perception was a little misleading, but as long as she remembered that, there’d be no trouble. Suzi had shown her how to up the magnification, bleed in infrared. There was a throat-mike activated graphic overlay, the jumpsuit’s internal gear already loaded with the route Royan had devised into Wilholm. Eleanor ran through an articulation acceptance check, and practised calling up the various data projections.

The Hondas were riding down a slight incline. Teddy’s bike was slowing up ahead. Eleanor searched her mind, but there was no fear, only determination. A sense of inevitability. Teddy pulled up beside a broad fast-flowing stream at the bottom of the slope, sugar cane had given way to thick reedy grass. Suzi braked beside him.

They all gathered together at the water’s edge. “We’ll use a diamond formation,” Teddy said in a low steady voice. “Eleanor and Victor at the centre; you two will carry the Rockwell cannon and its power units, it’s heavy, but we’re gonna need its firepower to take out the manor’s Bofors masers when we get within range. The rest of you are gonna provide us a three-sixty cover. Now you look out for those sentinel panthers, OK? You ain’t never been up against ‘em before, I but I have. They’re not simple modifications like police assault dogs, they’re gene-tailored. Hazards don’t come any bigger, they don’t behave like animals, they’re smart and sneaky with it. Your AKs can handle ‘em, but it’s gonna take more than one hit. OK, now remember, we stick to the water. The estate’s got lotsa ground traps. They’re listed, but in these conditions you’re gonna have trouble matching the graphics to the landscape. The stream bed’s safe, Jules, you stay out here, see to the receiver.”

“Hey, screw that, Father.”

“It’s important, boy. Might all wind up depending on that receiver before tonight’s out. Gotta be done properly.”

Jules looked away across the fields, anger showing in the set of his shoulders. Eleanor wondered if he was blaming her.

“Radio communications to the manor are out,” Victor said. “There’s a jammer blocking all frequencies.”

“Yeah I know, a Grumman ECM788,” Teddy said. “We got us a tactical message laser, nothing gonna interfere with that. Jules’ll take the receiver up to the top of the valley; Son says we’ll have direct line of sight from there to the manor.”

“Christ,” Victor muttered in an undertone. “Walshaw’s going to kill somebody when this is over.”

“Anything else?” Teddy asked. “OK. We’ll ask the Lord for his blessing.”

The Trinities bowed their heads. Eleanor saw Victor look round in surprise. She lowered her own head.

“Lord, we ask for your guidance and protection in our task ahead, We’re going to see if we can help our lost brother and sister, and we believe our cause is right and just. If in your wisdom you could grant us success we will remain thankful for such mercy for the remainder of our mortal life. Amen.”