Zero (26 page)

“
Did you see if Armin had a comm unit in his apartment?”

Webb raised his eyebrows then nodded.
“Yeah, I saw it.”

“
Can you get into it to monitor incoming calls?”

Webb chewed his thumbnail.
“Rami could, piece of cake.”

“
The lieutenant’s not here, Commander,” Hugo said. “Can
you
get into it?”

Webb's face darkened slightly but he paused and nodded.
“Yeah, I reckon so. I'll have to get into the system relays under the building with a half-decent panel...”

“
Ta-da,” Harvey sang, pulling a scratched but serviceable computer-panel from one of the packs. Webb took it and booted it up, skimmed through some of its systems.

“
Aye, this should do.”

“
Good. We move out at 0400. Harvey and I will take up position at a surveillance point whilst you get under the building and get that thing hooked in. Then we wait.”

“
You got it, Captain,” Harvey said, still smiling.

“
Will you just relax, Kaleb? You're making me nervous.”

“
It's been nearly an hour.”

“
He'll be back,” Harvey insisted again, checking the magazine on her gun.

Hugo growled and peered through th
e binoculars at the window of Armin's apartment, but it was still shuttered and dark. “When was it alright for you to start calling me that?”

“
Maybe I'm starting to like you.”

Hugo looked down and saw a narrow smile playing on her face as she holstered her gun. Hugo sighed and slumped onto the floor next to her to check through his own supplies again. Harvey was just opening her mouth to say something else when they heard footsteps. They both froze, hands on guns but then Webb came through the storeroom door, locking it behind him.

“Did you get in?”

“
Yeah,” Webb said, pulling a glove off with his teeth. “But we have a problem.”

“
What?”

“
The fire-system door sensors clocked the bastard leaving ten minutes before we got here.”

“
Shit,” Harvey muttered. “Do we wait for him to come back?”

“
It might be too late by then,” Hugo said. “Can you access his comm unit's history?”

Webb slumped cross-legged on the floor, pulled off his other glove and fished the panel out of his pack. His face lit up with the light from the display as he flicked through the data and scowled.
“The bastard's wiped it.”

“
Can you get it back?”

Webb frowned.
“I can try.”

“
Do it. See if he had any transmissions before he left.”

Webb muttered, shifted and then balanced the panel on his knee and began searching through the system. Hugo craned his neck to try and see the readings on the display but it was in an old code that Hugo couldn't make head nor tail of. He made himself not drum his fingers on the floor and instead went through his utility belt and checked his boot knives for the fifth time.

“Ah,” Webb said, sitting up. “Got something.”

“
What?”

“
Hang on, hang on. It got scrambled when it got trashed. It came in at 0420 though, four minutes before he left. Hang on...I'll see if I can dredge up the video.”

Harvey scooted over and looked over his shoulder. Hugo moved closer too, watching Webb's fingers tapping commands. The screen was fuzzy but gradually came into focus to show the face of a man with dark features, heavy eyebrows and beard and thick, black hair.

“He was with Armin at Hannah's yesterday,” Hugo said.

Webb nodded.
“They went to see all the points together. I think we have the number two in our little ring.”

“
Where's the sound?” Hugo said as the man shook his head and his lips moved.

“
Just hang on, will you?” Webb growled, rewinding the feed and tapping in a few more commands. “Anita normally does this...wait...I think... there.”

The feed started over again.
“It's no good,” the man said, shaking his head. “It's over.” There was a pause, but the recorder had either lost Armin's mic feed or never recorded it. “Tough shit,” the dark man continued. “He wants us there in two hours. You'd better be there.” Then it fuzzed to a blank.

“
That sounds like somewhere we should be...” Harvey mumbled. “Is there anyway to tell where they're meeting?”

“
Even if they mentioned it, the rest of it is too scrambled.”

“
Well than, can you trace where this transmission came from?” Hugo asked.

“
I think so...”

“
Do it. If we can get to this man before he leaves, he can lead us to the meeting point.”

Webb sighed and shifted on the floor and bent back over the panel. Hugo had to stop himself from pestering Webb as the minutes slipped by. He got up and walked back to the window and stared at the shuttered blinds until Webb announced he'd traced the
location.

“
Can we get there in time?”

“
If we move like shit off a shovel. Come on.”

ɵ

A bike ride later, the speed of which had left Hugo’s lips chapped in the wind, and they were kneeling on a flat roof in the shadow of a lift shaft, scanning the windows of a building over the way. He shifted from one knee to another in a puddle to try and keep the feeling in his legs.

“
How long has it been?”

“
It's under an hour until the meeting time...” Webb mumbled.

Hugo cursed.
“Can you hack into the fire system to see if he's still in there?” Hugo asked.

Webb shook his head.
“This dump won't have one. You're lucky if you even get a fire
escape
around here...wait...”

Hugo brought his bino
culars back up just as someone emerged from the front door. The dark man paused to light a cigarette, scowling up and down the street as he did so.

“
That's him,” Hugo whispered.

“
If he heads for a flyer we're screwed,” Harvey muttered.

“
Didn't you bring the tracker?” Webb said.

“
The launcher's bust.”

“
What?”

“
What do you want? It was cheap -”

“
Quiet,” Hugo snapped, watching the Splinter. He took another long drag of his cigarette then turned right down the walkway towards the parking pool next door.

“
Shit,” Hugo cursed. “He's going for a vehicle. Give me the tracker.”

“
Hugo -”

“
I said give it to me. Now.”

Harvey dug in her pack and pulled out the launcher gun and detached the tracking device. Hugo grabbed it then snatched Webb's cap off his head. He ran across the flat roof, ignoring the commander's protests, and clambered down the fire escape. He paused at the edge of the groundway, hanging in the shadows of some trash skips until there was a break in the traffic. He dashed across the groundway and around the side of the smoking man's apartment building to the parking pool. He got to the gate just as the Splinter was stamping out his cigarette and climbing into a battered flyer.

Feeling his heart hammer against his ribs, he wove between the parked up flyers and cars, hands in pockets, slumping his shoulders and keeping his head down. He heard the engine hum to life but kept his gaze on his feet. He passed behind the Splinter's flyer close enough to touch the tracker to its rear bumper just as heat blasted from its exhaust and it pulled out of its berth.

Hugo didn't break his stride
or look back until he reached a gate at the back of the lot. Releasing a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding, he hurried back round the groundway, just in time to see the Splinter's flyer join the queue of craft heading up the nearest guidance strip towards a skyway.

“
Have we got a feed?” Hugo asked as he jogged back across the roof to where Webb and Harvey were bent over the panel.

“
We got it, Captain,” Webb said. “Looks like he's heading hubwards.”

“
Let's go.”

They hurried back to the yard where they'd hidden the bikes. Hugo started his engine even before Harvey had got a decent grip round his waist and then they were off. Webb kept them on back ways and alleys again. It made Hugo dizzy trying to keep orientated so he gave up and just stuck as close behind the commander as he could. He felt every minute slip by like stones dropping into water. The buildings around them got bigger and the ways busier. Eventually Webb pulled them up in behind a complex of storage units that was swamped in the shadow of a spacescraper. Craning his neck Hugo saw skyways coming and going from different levels and shuttles rattling back and forth on rails towards a dozen platforms branching from its sides. Huge letters across the side read
Houston Block
. Hugo got off his bike and went to peer over Webb's shoulder at the blinking light on Webb’s windscreen display.

“
He's parked up in a pool on level 179.”

“
We need to hurry,” Hugo said. “And avoid cameras.”

“
Follow me,” Webb said, swinging off the bike. They skirted around the storage units and followed close behind as Webb scrambled up a wire fence onto the roof of
Houston Block's
ground-level entrance lobby. Hugo felt his heart go into his mouth when Webb jumped the gap between the roof and an industrial lifter parked up behind the lobby, then began scrambling up the cab until he could reach the bottom of a maintenance ladder on the side of the building.

Hugo had paused at the edge of the roof, but when he saw Webb start climbing, he gestured for Harvey to follow, jumped the gap with his heart in his mouth and scrambled to the ladder.
The sweat broke all over him as he hauled himself up, rung after rung, until they were so high he didn't dare look down. Eventually Webb checked his wrist panel and stopped them at a maintenance hatch. He shimmied onto the narrow platform and bent close to the control panel. Hugo felt his arms and shoulders start to burn with hanging on but Webb soon had the hatch open and was helping Harvey down off the ladder and into the maintenance duct. When all three of them were in Webb started hurrying along the duct, bent almost double.

“
Do you have any idea where you're going?” Hugo growled.

“
Not a clue,” Webb said. “But I know what I'm looking for.”

They came to a junction and Hugo looked at his wrist panel. Only ten minutes until the time the Splinters were supposed to meet. Webb turned left and straightened as they emerged into a maintenance
passage with a higher ceiling. He peered down every tunnel that branched off the one they were on, until stopping and ducking down one that went left and bent over a workstation sunk into the wall.

“
Keep watch,” Webb said as the workstation display flickered to life. Hugo took up a position at the junction and Harvey at the next one down, and then there was the sound of Webb's fingers on the keys, his breathing, and nothing else. The air was hot and close and the lights dim. He looked back over his shoulder at Webb's face, a mask of concentration, then made himself look back down the corridor. He heard footsteps and voices approaching and drew his gun but they faded away again around the next bend.

“
I'm in,” Webb muttered at last.

“
In what?”

“
The camera feed from the parking pool. Hang on... he took a lift to level... 198...”

“
Can you get into the feed from that level?”

“
Give me a freakin' second,” Webb growled, fingers tapping. “Wouldn't hurt you to pick up some system skills of your own, you know.”

“
We're running out -”

“
I
know
,” Webb snapped again. “I can't... hang on, got the bastard...” Webb stared at the screen then shut the booth down. “Got it. This way,” he said and started heading down towards Harvey.

He led them on a twisting route until they saw a door up ahead.
Loud banging and humming filtered through from the other side. Webb peered through the small window in the door, holstering his weapon.

“
You two ready?”

“
For what?”

“
We’ve got to get across this bay to the elevators. There are engineers. And cameras. Act natural.”

With no further warning Webb palmed the door control and was strolling out onto a metal walkway. Hugo took a breath and followed. The walkway spanned a vast, echoing shaft. Air rushed upwards in a constant hot stream and as far up and below as he could see was a towering, empty space criss-crossed with walkways. People moved about in engineer coveralls, hauling lifters, speaking into wrist panels or running with packs of tools. The clunk and whirr of machinery and electricity thrummed in the air.

Hugo stopped himself from gaping down the multitude of floors into nothingness and made himself walk swiftly but easily. When they were over the chasm Webb led the way, weaving between maintenance workers with his head down until they reached a bank of express lifts. Webb chose one in the quietest corner and keyed in level 198.

The d
oor hummed shut and the lift shuddered as it took off upwards. They came out onto a virtually identical walkway on level 198 then Webb led them down another corridor. They twisted and turned at a jog before Webb skidded to a halt, checked his wrist panel, then reached up and pulled at a grill in the wall.

“
You're kidding me,” Harvey muttered. “An air duct?”

“
We don't have to go far,” Webb said. “But don't even sneeze, seriously. We'll be right over them.”