Remote (27 page)

And now, Goliath is going to tear it down.

Remote: I refuse to abandon rationality, Jack.  Let’s negotiate.

Jack: The problem, Mr. Remote, is that you can’t negotiate with an extortionist.  They always have the upper hand, because information can’t be unlearned.  You either stand up to them and suffer the consequences, or you acknowledge that they own you.  Eden Fawnsley understood that, and so do I.  I regret that innocents have to die, but I can’t stop that.  All I can do is ensure they’re your last victims. 

Remote: Eloquently put for someone who claims he can’t be reasoned with. 

That was a mistake, Jack.

I don’t think you’re willing to sacrifice your partner.  I think you’re gambling that Goliath can eliminate me before I can give any instructions to my drone. Perhaps this conversation is just a distraction, and you plan on disabling my communications systems at any second.

Too late, Jack.  I just told my drone to kill her.

***

“Upstairs,” the Closer told him.  “That’s where the real prize is.”

“What is this, Super Mario Brothers?” Goliath said.  He laughed, not because it was funny but because he was having such a great time.  “I have to follow a trail of gold coins, too?”  Maybe he could find a mushroom to eat that would give him his eye back.

“Ten kilos of cocaine and seven million dollars in cash.  That’s what’s up there, locked behind a door to the left of the stairs.”

Goliath shook his head.  “Get thee the fuck behind me, Closer,” he said.  “I know what’s
really
in there.”  He didn’t, not really—but as soon as he’d spoken he’d had this incredibly sharp vision of a dozen naked women with triangular, green heads, all of them posed alluringly on a gigantic, circular bed.  The bed was his throne, he realized, and the women were the Mantis High Priestesses that were going to be his own personal property until the end of time.  Cocaine?  Money?  He could have all he wanted—ten kilos would barely fill his bathtub.  

He took the stairs three at a time, leaping over the huge gap in the middle.  “Look out for traps.  There’s an electrified panel in the floor in front of the door, and another panel in the ceiling that drops down.”

He stopped at the top of the stairs, and looked to the left.

There was a robot there, and it was pointing a shotgun at him.

The blast caught him in the belly, sending him staggering backward.  The flak vest took the brunt of it, but it knocked the wind out of him and he dropped the sledgehammer.

He yanked his own shotgun out and fired back, giving it both barrels.  Buckshot whanged off steel, but the damn thing had its own armor plating protecting its electromechanical vitals. 

It fired back, but missed.  Maybe he’d gotten lucky, hit a camera or something.  He took the opportunity to grab the hammer from the floor and rush it, screaming as he did so.

He smashed the hammer into the shotgun, trying to disable it, and succeeded in knocking it askew, the barrel angling upward.

It fired again.  This time, the blast caught Goliath under the chin.

***

Jack: Take it back.  You win.  Don’t kill her.

Remote: I thought I told you she was already dead, Jack.

Jack: You were right, I was bluffing.  Goliath’s dead and I have no other cards.  I’d arranged for all your Internet, cell and landline access to be cut off, but that does me no good now.  Let her live and I’ll do whatever you say.  Please.

Remote: You’re a good player, Jack, and a good player knows when he’s been beaten.  Your partner is still alive—but only for the next thirty minutes, unless I send another message telling my drone to wait.  I know you’re offshore.   You’ve got twenty minutes to get to the Blue Sea Marina at these GPS co-ordinates, and call me from the payphone there.  Don’t use a cell or your laptop; I’ll know. 

And then, Jack, we’ll discuss what an appropriate punishment for your actions will be.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
T
WO

“Mr. Tanner,” said Remote.  “There’s been a change in plans.”

“How so?”

“Don’t kill the girl.  Bring her to the safe house in Meadowview.  I’m sending you a list of equipment I want prepared, and a diagram of camera placement inside the house.”

“When do you need it ready?”

“Two hours.  Make sure you exit by the back, and that no one sees you leave.  Be alert, and make sure you’re armed.”

“Don’t worry, boss.  Nobody gets the drop on me.”

“Stop talking like you’re Humphrey Bogart.  This isn’t a movie, it’s life and death.  Do you know who the Closer is?  Do you?”

“Uh—yeah.  Yes.  Is that—“

“That’s whose mercy you’ll be at if you get caught.”

“Any . . . any advice on what to do if he shows up?”

“Yes.  Don’t be there.”

***

Jack sat outside in his car, staring at the building, steeling himself to go in.  He knew what was at stake.

He thought about everything he and Nikki had been through together.  The risks they’d taken for each other, the sacrifices they’d made.  The pain they’d endured.

He’d always known that somehow, he’d wind up here.  At this particular point in time, this intersection of purpose and blind luck. 

He closed his eyes, centering himself for what he knew was coming.  He pushed aside the tattered remains of who he used to be.  No more Jack.

He was the Closer. 

An image rose up, unbidden, in the dark behind his eyes.  A brightly wrapped Christmas present.  The Patron had taken it from Jack’s home after he’d slaughtered his family, and sent it to Jack years later.  It had originally contained a toy truck for his son.

When the Patron had returned it, the box had contained something else of his son’s.

Jack couldn’t go there.  He knew what was in the box, but he couldn’t open it—not even in his mind.  What he’d found in his son’s bedroom had almost destroyed him, but somehow what was in the box had been worse. 

But that was all right.  He didn’t need to open the box.  Instead, he put something into it—his anger, the cold rage that defined his other persona.  The box would contain it, focus it, give it a place to exist without consuming him. 

The box was no longer a gift for his son; it was a present for all those the Closer hunted.  A present born of Jack’s past, and denying his subject’s any future. 

In the beginning it had been different.  He’d had to learn to channel his rage, had to shape that black flood into something more than an aching need to obliterate something--but shape it he had.  He’d taken his drive to create and turned it into an obsession with answers, an emotional structure he’d crafted with as much care as he’d once used to make art.  He knew people who would view what he did now as a kind of performance, a long and elaborate piece that transformed pain into something else. 

Time for the curtain to go up
, he thought.  This show was going to be different from any of the others—but it was still part of the performance.

He kept telling himself that as he got out of the car.  Building up the emotional distance between himself and what he was going to have to do.

Because that’s what the Closer did.

***

Remote watched Jack enter the house through one of the cameras Tanner had installed, mounted over the front door. Everything was in place. 

“We’re in here, Jack,” Remote said.

Jack walked into the living room.  It was unfurnished, except for two tables:  Nikki lay on the larger one in her underwear, gagged and tied spread-eagled on her back.

The smaller one held a laptop with a webcam, and a small faux-leather suitcase.  The suitcase was on its side, closed; the laptop was open, and showed Jack a real-time feed of Remote himself.

Jack had changed into jeans, sneakers, a black t-shirt and a beat-up leather jacket.  He carried an attaché case in one hand.  He looked, Remote thought, about as memorable as an extra in a crowd scene on a TV show. 

Nikki was wearing one accessory with her outfit.  A leather harness, with several slim, oval-shaped cases attached at various points: one over the belly, another under each breast.  Jack couldn’t see it, but Remote knew there was another one at the small of her back. 

“I thought we should do this face-to-face, as it were,” Remote said.  He leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of the blackberry smoothie he was drinking; he’d rescued it from the slowly de-frosting freezer compartment of his up-ended fridge downstairs, after he’d determined Goliath’s body wasn’t booby-trapped. Careful inspection with the aid of his pole-mounted mirror had told him Jack had been bluffing in more ways than one; the biker wasn’t rigged with explosives at all, just the padlocked tool-belt and a fanny-pack stuffed with modeling clay. 

“I’m here,” Jack said.  He stared at his partner, but didn’t get any closer.

“Put down the briefcase, please.”

Jack did so.  “Why is she here?  You said I was the one you wanted.”

“You are, Jack.  But you’re a very strong personality, and I thought you needed some extra incentive for what I’m about to ask you to do.   Having—Nikki, is it?—here will provide that extra emotional component.  After all, you’re doing this to save her, aren’t you?”

“What do you want me to do?”  Jack said it so flatly it came out more as a statement than a question. 

“I want you to open the zippered pouch on the outside of the suitcase, and take out what’s in it.”

Jack stepped forward and unzipped the compartment.  Nikki glared at him with a fury Remote found impressive, and tried to talk.  What came out was a series of impassioned but incoherent sounds, but Remote had no doubts about what she was trying to say: she wanted Jack to turn around and leave, abandon her to her fate.  Her anger seemed to stem from the fact that Jack was pretending not to understand.

Jack pulled out a second harness. 

“You belong to me, now,” said Remote.  “You know that. If I wanted you dead, I could have killed you when you walked in the front door, but I value my possessions and treat them with care—unlike Goliath, none of
my
drones have ever died.  This is more a symbolic act than anything else, Jack—but it’s important. You have to acknowledge who’s in control.  Put it on.”

Jack stood there for a long moment, contemplating the harness.  Nikki shook her head violently, twisting against the ropes, making a
Nuh! Nuh! Nuh!
sound over and over. 

Jack took off his leather jacket, dropped it on the floor.  He slipped the harness over his head and around his waist, clicking the lock securely into place.  A pop-up window on Remote’s screen told him the device was now armed. 

“Very good, Jack.  I’m proud of you.  Now open the main compartment of the suitcase.”

Jack undid the clasps and opened the lid.  He stared impassively at what the case contained.

Razor blades.  A propane torch.  Needlenose pliers.  A box of salt.  A variety of other tools, all items he was intimately familiar with.

“The harness you’re wearing—unlike the one you put on Goliath—contains enough plastique to kill you instantly, Jack.  As does your partner’s.  The lock is electronic, and requires a four-digit passcode to open.  I’ve told Nikki what the code for her own belt is—all you have to do is ask her.”

Jack reached down, undid the ball-gag sealing Nikki’s mouth.

“Fuck, Jack, what are you
doing
here?  You know what the protocol is if one of us gets taken!”

“What’s the code, Nikki?”

She shook her head.  “No.  The belts are linked, Jack.  Unlock mine and yours detonates.”

Remote grinned at them from the laptop’s screen.  “But if you don’t unlock hers within three hours, she’ll die anyway, Jack.  Right in front of you.  And if you decide to take the noble way out—by which I mean suicide or refusing to participate, which is the same thing—I’ll kill her anyway.  You want to save her, all you have to do is convince her you should die in her place.  I promise that if you do that, I’ll let her go.  Otherwise, you both die.”

“Tell me what the code is, Nikki.”

“So I can watch
you
die?  I don’t think so.”

“One of us is going to.  You know that.”

“Fuck that.  We can beat this.”

“How?  We have three hours.  We can’t disable these belts or even try, or he’ll kill us.  The only solution is to unlock your belt with the combination he gave you so that my belt detonates and you go free. Any other way we both die.”

“I won’t let you suicide, Jack.”

“I’ll
make
you give me the code, Nikki.  If it will save your life, I’ll put you through Hell.  At least you won’t stay there.”  Jack shook his head.  “You should be the one that lives, Nikki.  I’m already dead, aren’t I?  Inside?”

“You aren’t.  I
know
you aren’t.”

“I can’t be responsible for your death, Nikki.  I
can’t
.  You’re—”  Jack stopped, looked down. “You’re the only part of my life that isn’t about death.”

“
Bullshit
.  I’m a lot of things, but a poster child for life isn’t one of them.  I’m
bait
, Jack. I have more in common with the worms we feed our victims to than anyone you save.  And that’s what you do, okay?  You
save
people.  I know that’s hard to see sometimes, but you
do
.  Me, I’m just an old hooker.  I can be replaced.”

Remote listened, fascinated. 
Such passion, such intensity.  They really will die for each other.