Fallout

11

Hunched over, Fisher padded down the flagstone walkway, disabling the spotlights as he went with the SC pistol’s EM scrambling function, until he reached the exit door, a black walnut, ten-paneled monster with massive, black wrought-iron butterfly hinges.

Lacking the time for a detailed pre-mission surveillance or a pair of human eyes on the inside to feed him information, Fisher knew he would have to play much of the penetration by ear. He knew Legard was home but little else. The mansion had eight bedrooms large and lavish enough to serve as a master suite, and another twelve rooms that served as lounging or entertainment or recreation spaces. Legard was a notorious insomniac, according to Grimsdottir’s research, so there was no telling where Fisher would find the man.

He slipped his flexicam under the door’s bottom edge; the OSPAT’s screen showed a long hall done in brown travertine tile and Moroccan carpet runners, both lit by tulip-shaped Tiffany wall sconces. He switched to NV, then to IR, and saw no movement, so he switched finally to EM and scanned the corridor for signs of sensors or cameras. He saw nothing.

He withdrew the flexicam, then tried the doorknob. It was locked but, despite the door’s imposing appearance, the lock was easy, clicking open under his picks after only twenty seconds.

He eased the door open a few inches and peeked through. All clear. He stepped in, swung the door shut behind him, and started down the corridor, which appeared to be lined on only one side with rooms, four of them; the other wall contained three narrow doors — closets, Fisher surmised. The wall sconces were dimly lit and spaced at twenty-foot intervals; Fisher left them alone. Too many bad bulbs would alert any security guard worth his or her salt.

The first room, a lounging space complete with sectional leather sofas, a round, open-hearth fireplace, and a wet bar, was empty, as was the second, a game room complete with two poker tables and a billiard table, its baize surface glowing beneath a Craftsman-style billiard lamp.

As Fisher approached the last room, where the corridor ended and turned left, he could hear strains of a television playing — an American Idol rerun, it sounded like, along with the voices of two or three men.

To his right Fisher heard footsteps padding down stairs. Fisher stepped left, opened the closet door, stepped inside, and pulled it shut behind him. He pulled out the flexicam and slipped it under the door in time to see a pair of booted feet pass the closet and disappear into the TV room. The TV went mute.

Fisher cracked the door an inch.

“… the boss, anyway?” one voice said.

“Couldn’t sleep again. He’s upstairs, playing d’Artagnan with his sparring dummies,” came the reply from who Fisher assumed was the newcomer. “Bruno’s watching over him.”

“Lucky Bruno…”

So Legard had another hobby: fencing.

“I’m going outside for a smoke.”

Fisher eased the door shut again. The feet passed by the door and disappeared around the corner. Fisher waited until he heard a door slam somewhere in the distance.

He slipped out of the closet and started up the stairs.

A quick search of the second floor, which ran only half the length of the house, revealed only bedrooms and bathrooms, so Fisher continued to the third floor. The first three rooms were for recreational purposes: a handball court, an archery course, and a gym complete with elliptical machines, treadmills, vertical climbers, and a battery of Cybex weight-lifting machines.

As he moved toward the fourth room, he heard the clanging of steel on hardwood, followed by a shout, like a martial artist’s “Kee-yah.” Fisher bypassed the fourth room and crouched at the fifth door. He slipped his flexicam under the door and was greeted by a long, high-ceilinged white room lit by recessed halogen lighting. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors lined both the long walls, and between them a polished maple wood floor. Staggered down the center of the room were six to eight fencing dummies, like padded scarecrows with hardwood arms and legs and a round head made of black, vulcanized rubber.

Fisher panned the flexicam up toward the vaulted ceiling. At the junction of the wall and the curve of the ceiling was a long bank of windows running the length of the space. Fisher panned back down, angling the camera back and forth until he saw at the far end of the room a man in a black-and-white mesh mask and a white metallic-filament jumpsuit lunging and thrusting at one of the dummies. Also at the far end was a single guard, seated beside a door with his HK SL8-6 lying across his knees. The man looked bored, his shoulders slumped as he alternately watched the fencer and studied his fingernails.

Fisher withdrew the flexicam and retreated to the room he’d bypassed, which he found was a locker room: four shower stalls along one wall, a small dry sauna and cedar lounging benches on the other. Fisher turned off the lights, walked to the window, checked it for alarms and found none, then slipped the latch and swung both panes inward. The cool night air washed over him, sending a shiver up his arms and down his back. Over the treetops, he could see the moon had just passed its apogee and was now on its downward arc. He checked his watch. Still a good six hours before sunrise.

Outside the window was a stone ledge not more than six inches wide. Fisher climbed onto the sill and then, in a crouch, stepped out onto the ledge and closed the windows behind him. Carefully, slowly, he stood up, balanced forward on the balls of his feet so he was pressed against the wall. He could feel the reassuring solidity of the stone through the chest of his tac suit. He slid his hand along the wall until his fingertips found a gap in the stone; he wedged his fingers knuckle-deep into the crevice, then stepped right once, then again, then again. To his right and above, less than three feet away, he could see the roof’s drainpipe slope upward to meet the eaves trough of the vaulted fencing room.

Three more steps brought him even with the angled pipe. With his left hand, he reached up, grabbed the trough, and began to slowly put weight onto it. When he had almost half his body weight on it, the pipe gave a faint creak but held steady. It was bolted firmly into the stone, not simply screwed or wired into place. God bless a sturdy eaves trough, Fisher thought.

He got a firm grip on the pipe with his left hand, then extricated his right hand from the crevice, stretched up, and hooked his right hand higher on the pipe. His legs swung off the ledge, now dangling in space. He repeated this move twice more, sliding his left hand forward, reaching higher with his right, until finally his fingertips found the open edge of the fencing room’s eaves trough. On the forward third of his fingertips, he chinned himself up to the roofline, then hooked a foot onto the trough and levered himself up. He dropped flat on the cedar shingles and lay still for a few moments.

Grimsdottir’s voice came into his ear: “Fisher, I’ve managed to untangle Legard’s wireless Internet signal. They had some decent firewalls up; took me more time than I’d anticipated.”

“And?”

“And every computer but one looks like a dedicated security workstation. Personal computer on the fourth floor, last room in the northeast corner. My guess: It’s either Legard’s bedroom or office. You get me a hard link to it, and I’ll hack in.”

“Consider it done. I’ll get back to you.”

Fisher pushed himself up into a crouch and crab-walked to the windows. The windows, which from below had appeared vertical, were actually sloped inward. Fisher slipped the latch of the nearest window and opened it an inch.

Twenty feet below, under the glare of the halogen lights, he could see Legard, now without his face mask, moving down the line of dummies, thrusting, lunging, and spinning, dispatching each with a death blow before moving on to the next.

Legard was a handsome man, with long, flowing black hair, chiseled cheekbones, and a lantern jaw. He looked ten years younger than his actual age of fifty. After he’d dispatched the last dummy with a lunging strike to the throat, Legard strolled back through the gauntlet, his foil tucked under his arm, a broad grin on his face.

“What do you say, Bruno, eh? Am I not a joy to watch?”

The guard, now sitting up straight, said, “Yes, boss, amazing stuff.”

Still smiling, Legard removed his gauntlets and tossed them at Bruno. “Someday you’ll see the beauty in it, my friend. Your senses have been blunted by our product, yes? All those fresh, pretty things… hard to concentrate on what really counts in life.”

“True, boss.”

“How’s our guest getting along?”

“Full of complaints, that one.”

Guest? Fisher thought. Carmen Hayes?

“He’s a pampered scientist, Bruno, a lab rat. What do you expect?”

Not Carmen.

“It would be nice if he stopped whining. I called Baie Comeau. They’re loading him aboard in a few minutes. He’s been curled up in a corner, whimpering all night.”

Baie Comeau, Fisher thought. Grimsdottir’s briefing had listed Baie Comeau, one of Legard’s port warehouses along the St. Lawrence. Clearly they were loading someone aboard one of Legard’s ships. But bound for where, and to whom?>

“We’ll be rid of him soon enough. Go get me some water, will you?”

Bruno got up and stepped through the door.

Fisher didn’t hesitate. He drew his pistol, set the selector to DART 1, then opened the window another two inches. Legard was standing at the far wall, practicing his fencing poses before the mirror. Fisher took aim and fired. The dart struck true, plunging into the nape of Legard’s neck. He gave a faint gasp, staggered forward a couple steps, arms flailing as he looked for something to latch on to, then crumpled, sliding down the mirror to the floor.

Fisher holstered the pistol, swung the window all the way open, hooked the Monkey Claw on the sill, then let the wire drop to the floor and followed it. With a quick whip of the wire he freed the Monkey Claw, then wrapped it up, restored it, and sprinted to the mirrored wall where Legard lay. The switch panel beside the door controlled the lights, he assumed. He flipped all four switches. The room went black. He pressed himself to the wall, flipped down his goggles, and switched to NV. He drew a lead-and-leather sap from his belt and waited, eyes on the door.

Ten seconds later, he heard the knob turn. The door swung open, casting a skewed rectangle of yellow light on the maple floor. Bruno’s shadow moved forward, followed by Bruno himself as he crossed the threshold.

“Boss? Hey, boss, are you—”

Fisher was up and moving. Right arm cocked, he took two quick steps toward Bruno, then flicked his wrist. The lead and leather sap impacted just below Bruno’s ear with a dull thud. Bruno collapsed, and the water bottle he’d brought for Legard rolled across the floor. Fisher caught Bruno’s body, dragged him out of the light, and laid him down. He drew the pistol and waited. Five seconds, ten, then thirty. No shouts of alarm. Fisher crept to the door and peeked around it; the hall was clear. He swung the door shut and locked it.

He holstered his pistol and turned back to Legard.

Time to have a chat with our white slaver.