Cally's War

Given the Bane Sidhe’s experience of thousands of years of the Darhel playing hell with their communications security for any form of electromechanical data transmission, face-to-face meetings were regarded the most relatively secure and safe means of passing information the organization had, and was mandated as a major part of SOP. It had only taken a few catastrophic losses from the ranks of the Cybers in the early days of cooperation to convince them of the wisdom of the policy. One consequence of the policy was that in addition to specific high-impact ops, teams like Hector and Isaac were routinely rotated through information gathering assignments that involved traveling an assigned circuit and picking up physical reports from agents in place.

While it was generally the best use of limited resources, where practical, to split the team and send each agent on a segment of the route, effective coordination of efforts required periodic face-to-face meetings during the field cycle. Good intelligence had an unfortunate tendency to become stale quickly. The meeting allowed one team member to collect the take of the entire team and pass it upstream to a base courier before returning to his own circuit.

Levon liked the Wexford. Not so much this particular pub as cheap little dives that attracted a such a mixed bag of people that as long as you didn’t get loud or dance on the tables, nobody looked at you twice. They never used a particular place for a field face-to-face more than three times in ten years if they could help it. This was the Wexford’s second time for that dubious honor.

Automatically, he scanned the bar with his eyes as he came in, taking a quick visual overview and mentally cataloging what he’d seen as he picked an empty table against the wall and sat in a seat that gave him a good easy view of the door. A man and woman at the bar, looks like he’s trying to pick her up and possibly succeeding. A couple of gentlemen in a booth, very fit, but also obviously interested in each other. A man drinking alone at a table by the window, staring out at the street. A man and woman in the back booth, holding hands across the table somewhat furtively. Path past the kitchen to the back exit was clear.

A determinedly cheerful waitress came over and he ordered a pitcher of hard cider and a cheeseburger. Okay, so it was junk food. At least it didn’t have any corn or soybeans in it.

Barry got there before the cider did, so he was able get his food ordered and pour himself a cold pint, using the cover of looking through the menu to pass a cube out onto the table, blocked from prying eyes by the various items on the table. Levon lit a cigarette, palming the cube while adjusting the ashtray. He wasn’t, personally, all that fond of the taste of the things, it just made such a damned good cover for moving your hands around.

Sam came in almost on Barry’s heels, a short, gently rounded girl with mouse brown hair curling around her ears. He felt her cube drop in his jacket pocket as she leaned over to give him a peck on the cheek before walking back around to sit by Barry.

George, predictably, was late. You could set a clock by his son-in-law. When you saw him walk through the door, it was invariably twenty minutes after he’d been supposed to be there. He swore he didn’t do it on purpose, and he could always spin you a yarn about whatever it was that had delayed him. The only time he was on time was when he had to make a hit or coordination was absolutely mission critical — then he was there on the dot. His wife liked to tease him about it. Personally, Levon thought he just got so caught up in his cover role that sometimes he acted like the teenager he was supposed to be.

The first sign he had that something was wrong was when everybody but the waitress and bartender started moving at once. He barely had time to dump the cubes in his cider before one of them was on him, taking advantage of his momentary distraction to jab something into his thigh. He tried to get his pistol in play from under his shirt, but the man knocked it from his hand. Barry and Sam each had their first man on the floor by the time he recovered his balance enough to snap the neck of his. And he doubted he would have taken him down that soon if the man hadn’t hesitated, obviously expecting whatever he’d injected to have an immediate effect. The ring of shots told him that at least one of his people had gotten a pistol into play, but the dead man’s ten seconds worked against them, the shots ending after the first two.

As he traded blows with the woman from the back booth, he had an instant to reflect that whatever was in the needle must have been one of the things his nannites were programmed to sweep out immediately, thank God. This girl was pretty good, but she lacked the strength and power of one of the Bane Sidhe’s upgraded female agents. After years against agents in the gym, and men in the field, it was easy to forget how low on upper body strength unmodified women were.

The two gay guys joining in against him made it a real fight, and as he saw and heard the uniformed Fleet Strike troops pouring through the front and back doors, the bar staff having wisely disappeared behind the bar, he knew that this wasn’t one they were going to get out of. Fighting that many without maneuvering room it was impossible to block everything. He saw the fist coming towards his head for just a second. Oh, fuck…

Afterwards, Bobby was real proud of his agents. They’d patiently waited until all three of the targets — the fourth one hadn’t shown — were clear of the building before taking their shots. The first two were in near unison. The third had taken a couple of seconds too long and as a result needed three shots to put his target down.

Fortunately, his backup men were good enough to use their own rifles to confuse the Fleet Strike pukes about the direction of incoming fire long enough to cover their withdrawal.

The only bad thing was that the no show kept the mission from being a complete success. Some things just couldn’t be helped.

Cheryl Martin barely restrained herself from throwing her PDA to the floor of the cab and stomping on it. Bare seconds after the shots started, the damned thing had beeped at her.

“Yes?” she snapped.

“Pinwheel. Pinwheel. Repeat, pinwheel.” It had that slight colorless quality she associated with synthesized voices.

“Kevin, is there something I can kill around here?” she said.

“Cheryl, I’m so sor — wait!” He spun the cab up on the sidewalk, blocking the forward progress of a short, brown-haired man. “Grab him. Gently.”

The rear driver’s side door of the cab swung open and the man stopped in the middle of what had been a smooth, rapid motion, swaying a bit as he recovered his balance from suddenly aborting whatever he’d been going to do.

“Cheryl?” he croaked.

“No time, get in. Trade codes on the way.” She yanked him, unresisting, into the back of the cab, which didn’t even wait for the door to finish closing before backing up and finishing its U-turn, speeding off into the night.

“Pumpernickel. It all went to hell. We think you’re the only one that got out. Good to see you, son, but why the hell weren’t you in there?” She fidgeted with her purse, coming up with a pack of tissues she knew she was going to need any minute now.

“The rest of my team?”

“Not good. Come on, George, answer her.” Kevin met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I was… I was late.” His shoulders slumped.

“And you were walking because?” the other man prompted.

“I… I… ah, hell, I got stuck behind the second big fucking wreck I ran into on the way here just a mile up the road, and it was so screwed up I figured I’d get here faster on foot. If I’d been there…” He trailed off numbly.

“It wouldn’t have helped,” Cheryl mumbled.

“You don’t know that.” His voice was bitter.

“Yeah, we do. Unfortunately.” The cab drove on.