Watch Dogs: Dark Clouds

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wolfe could see his own breath shining in the sunlight.

The sky was blue—ice blue. The sun was in its winter declination, pale and low in the sky, though its light glinted on patches of snow in the meadow.

He had his hoodie on under his coat, the hood up, but it didn’t do much for the cold stinging his ears.

Mostly, Wolfe was concentrating on staying alert, watching the sky, and looking for cameras. While they were too far from town for ctOS cameras, the property could well have its own…

His boots crunched frozen stalks of grass as he skirted the meadow, staying under cover of the trees as much as he could. There wasn’t much foliage in those barren branches to hide him—and when he saw the UAV he had to duck into a denser stand where several trees overlapped.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle—a model similar to those Wolfe had controlled in Somalia—hummed by overhead, a few yards above the treetops, like some runaway from an extraterrestrial mothership. But he knew exactly what model of drone it was—a new, delta-shaped prototype he’d seen being tested on a secret base in Pakistan—and what it was capable of doing. It was smaller than most attack drones, and didn’’t have the elongated, missile-like shape of the Predator. This one was for specialized surveillance and targeting. It was only about twelve feet from snout to tail.

Were those gun muzzles, projecting at a thirty degree angle from the bottom of the drone? Could be. Wolfe wasn’t certain at this distance.

Wolfe pressed against the bole of a tree, and waited. Soon enough the drone moved on. That would seem to indicate it hadn’t spotted him…

But it would see him, when it returned this way, if he weren’t careful.

Keep moving. Keep watchful.

Wolfe emerged from the woods into the clearing, but keeping close to the trees—and then he saw the dead deer. It was sprawled awkwardly, with only a few gnaw-marks on it where something had tried to feed in the night and a couple of bullet wounds on its flank and upper spine. Judging from the placement of the wounds, Wolfe figured the thing had been shot from above. From directly overhead.

He shuddered, imagining himself sighted by the UAV. Followed. Hunted. Shot down that way.

He hurried to the treeline, and on toward Blume’’s prototype smart house. Wolfe hoped he was going the right direction. The presence of the drone suggested that he wasn’t far away…

He emerged from a stand of sugar maples, and saw he was just about fifty yards from the edge of a house; it was a spread-out, glassy, angular place, modern architectural-style, one-story. It was exactly where it should be—the smart house—it used a distributed control system, an intelligent network to govern all the devices in the house, right down to door locks, window shutters, lighting, voice activation systems. There were satellite dishes on the roof, and another control antenna, which rotated as Wolfe watched. It was probably there to control the drone.

A brawny, heavy bellied man in a blue parka walked around the corner of the building, a Mack 10 over one shoulder. He was looking at his cell phone as he walked along. Probably reading a text from someone. The text might be business but more likely he was just doing a shitty job of being a sentry. A Graywater.

Wolfe waited. The sentry wandered to a corner of the yard and sat down on a wooden bench, still looking into the screen of his phone. Still Wolfe waited.

Minutes passed. No other sentry showed up.

Just one sentry outside? Good. Overconfidence, maybe because of the drone. And those security cameras on the corners of the building.

The presence of a Graywater made Wolfe suspect that Pearce’s info was right—that Verrick or Van Ness or both might well be in that building, right now.

Tempting to go in there, gun blazing, and kill the sons of bitches, right now. Kill that sentry first, take his Mack 10…

No. There was a threat to Chicago itself. Maybe to millions of people. If he killed Verrick and Van Ness right now it might precipitate the attack—or send the other perpetrators into deeper cover, where it’d be harder to find out what they were up to. It couldn’t be just Van Ness and Verrick. There had been an auditorium full of “Purity” enthusiasts on 77th Street. And there was Winters to consider…

Wolfe shook his head. He needed to gather all the information he could get about Purity’s plans… So he had to put some pressure on these guys without killing them.

Might not be able to get by without killing that Graywater guard, though. He’d been reluctant to kill the Graywater mercs at the auditorium. Then he’d had to kill one. Now, he was a little less reluctant. Funny how that works, he thought.

He was, by his own estimate, just out of range of the cameras on the house. Getting closer he was going to have to use the background scrambler. The PearcePhone would transmit digital imagery to the cameras that blurred him with the surroundings—but anyone looking closely at the security monitors would see the outline of a man. They wouldn’t know what man, though. And soon they’d know someone was around anyway…

Wolfe set the scrambler, then moved off along the treeline, till he was behind the sentry. He drew his .45, sprinted across the grass and up to the wrought iron fence; he was just clambering over, when the sentry, alerted by the sound, turned around and gaped at Wolfe.

“What the f—”

The sentry was fumbling at his Mack 10 when Wolfe jumped down inside the fence, bringing the barrel of his gun down on the man’s head as he came.

The gun connected solidly and the Graywater merc went down like a dropped feed sack.

Wolfe was gratified to see that the man had handcuffs clipped to his belt. He pulled the Mack 10 free, put it over his own shoulder, then retrieved the cuffs. He cuffed one of the big man’s hands behind his back, the other to a post of the fence. Then he rushed to the house, pressing himself to a wall underneath a camera.

He readied the PearcePhone, and scanned for the home automation server. Pearce had already run a password cracking program. Pearce entered the password, hacked the smart house, and then got a floor plan of the building from the server, indicating people in the rooms. The smart house was doing all his surveillance for him. Each room had a system to pick up voice prompts for the house computer. It could also be used to listen to people talking. Wolfe heard them on the small wireless earpod.

“Sir, there’s something here, sir.”

“Something where, Starling?”

“On the monitor. Does it look like the sentry is down, sir?”

“Well zoom in on him you fool!”

“Sir, yes sir.”

Who is coming out with this sir yes sir stuff? Wolfe wondered. He’d recognized the voice talking to the guy. Verrick.

“Yes, sir, he’s definitely down—and cuffed to that fence.”

“Holy fuck! Okay, check all the exterior cameras, if you don’t see anything then rewind the digital feed! And recall the drone! Get it back here! And where’s the other Graywater?”

“Here, sir!”

“Get out there—no, wait till drone gets back, should be less than a minute, we’ll cover you with that…”

“Should I call the police, sir?” Starling asked.

“No! Are you nuts?”

“Sir…” Starling hesitated before saying, “…no sir.”

Wolfe chuckled—and, through the house’s automation server, directed the doors to lock. He found an option for emergency lock override… and unchecked it. Warning: House will stay locked for thirty minutes, said the message. Continue?

He clicked on yes.

“Sir! The door is locked!”

“Well unlock it!”

“It’s not responding, sir!”

“Sir—”

“What is it, Starling?”

“Sir, I rewound the security footage, sir! Someone’s hacked the system! You can see the man some of the time, but not clearly, sir, he’s used image blending on the—”

“Who the hell is he?” That was the Graywater’s voice. He sounded scared.

“Could be Quinn—he got word Pearce is still alive. He blames me because it was part of the deal for me to… it doesn’t matter.”

“I doubt anyone in the Club would have this much hacker sophistication. They could have hired a fixer, sir, but this is very… very Aiden Pearce.”

“Get that admiration out of your voice, Starling! Pearce is scum!”

“Sir, yes sir, but when you asked me to study him I did admire the way he…”

“Shut up! Get the drone back and find this guy!”

“Maybe we oughta get out through the windows!” the Graywater whined.

Wolfe smiled, and hit the controls that brought down metal shutters, blocking off the windows. Those were an anti-hurricane device. But they effectively sealed the residents of the house in.

The doors were high-security. They wouldn’t be easy to break. Shooting the lock wouldn’t work. They’d have to get a sledgehammer and work on it.

He could hear shouting, faintly, from inside the house.

Wolfe switched to the house heating system—and turned it up full. He then gave the house a series of other commands…

He heard a humming, then, and looked up in time to see the delta shaped drone appearing over the treetops, coming toward the house.

Delta Force, delta-shaped drone. Did Verrick intend that irony?

He didn’t have time to ponder—he was running, cutting right at the corner of the house. He heard a hissing, and bullets thwacked into the ground behind him. The drone was shooting at him. Verrick was probably controlling it, enjoying this little remote controlled hunting trip.

More bullets zinged past, one of them ricocheting from a metal shutter over a window. Next time that thing wouldn’t miss. Wolfe could almost feel the crosshairs on his back. And he pictured that dead deer in the meadow…

There—a driveway, in which sat a big white four-door Chevy Silverado truck; the driveway led to a carport.

Wolfe ducked into the car port. The concrete and steel roof would protect him for now. But how low could the drone fly and still fire with effect? If it came down low enough and got him in its sights, he’d have to try the Mack 10 on it, see if he could shoot it down. But it was probably armored against light weapon firepower.

He could hear it whirring overhead as they looked for him…

Wolfe shoved the .45 in his belt, and concentrated on the PearcePhone.

He knew how to hack into a drone—he’d worked up methods of blocking hacker transmissions from the Iranians. Could this drone be protected—by technology Wolfe himself had helped create? If so, that was another cold-blooded irony.

But as far as he knew, the methodology hadn’t yet been adopted. The Army took its time with testing.

“I guess I’ll find out,” he muttered, as he directed the phone to scan for the drone’s GPS receivers.

Pearce had a program for hacking a GPS receiver. And GPS is what drones used to orient themselves. The remote controls relied on GPS—you could tell the drone to go straight, but it used GPS to work out to do it relative to the controller.

“Spoofing” was the key—in this case, generating counterfeit GPS signals… He needed to get his phone’s signals aligned with the original signals used by the drone; then he had to increase signal strength, to override the GPS tracking loops. That would give him control of the receiver’s sense of location and time.

The drone was humming closer, as Wolfe pecked at the phone with his cold, half-numb fingers.

He glanced up—and saw its shadow on the driveway. The shadow was getting larger. Meaning the drone was getting lower. The controller had figured out where he was and was sending the drone lower to try for a kill shot. He could hear its rotors whirring, saw dust rising, swirling under their pressure…

“There he is sir!” came Starling’s voice through the phone’s hack into the house’s voice activation system. “All you have to do is get him in your sights!”

The phone chimed—and Wolfe saw the words GPS receiver located. Lock in?

He clicked on yes.

The drone was still lowering… and there it was, vibrating in the rotor wash, its camera swiveling to take Wolfe in; its gun muzzles training on him.

He looked at the GPS control grid—found, Veer Left. He tapped it—and the drone suddenly veered left. Firing a moment after it turned.

“Ha!” Wolfe said. His heart was pounding—he’d come within a split second of being shot down.

The drone fired a few more bullets but now its rounds were aimed to its left, away from Wolfe, and they spanged off the building’s shutters.

Wolfe found another directive: Circle area. Choose area diameter.

He chose fifty yards.

The drone suddenly headed out, circling the building…

“What the hell!” said the voice. “Starling, what’s going on?”

“Sir, I think he’s spoofed the drone, sir! He’s gotten control of its GPS—that’s the vulnerable point… We really should have used those GPS input protocols recommended by—”

“Starling, don’t say it!”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“It’s sure getting hot in here,” said the Graywater.

“Oh, hell and damn, he’s got control of the heat!”

“Who is this guy?” the Graywater muttered.

Wolfe put on the speakerphone and said, ””Verrick—I really should just cook you alive. It’d take a long time. Maybe hours. I guess you’d probably get through the door. Or call someone to get you out. But maybe not. I’ve shut down the house’s wifi and cell output! The house doesn’t have landlines—so how are you going to call out?”

“Who are you?” Verrick demanded.

“I’m the guy who can turn the lights out on you…” Wolfe tapped the superimposed interface on the PearcePhone.

“Hey! The lights went out!” the Graywater yelled.

“I can see that, you moron!” Verrick snapped. “Go get some lanterns—there, in that storage room. And stop panicking! He’s just messing with your head!”

“But you can have the lights back on, if you want…” Wolfe said, as if it had just occurred to him.

He switched them back on.

“Hey now they’re on—!”

“I can see that too, you idiot!”

“But on second thought,” Wolfe said, “why not give you a dark room to chill out and think things over in…”

He switched the lights out again—just as Verrick growled, “That voice! I know that voice!”

“Do you know my voice, Verrick?” Wolfe asked. “You should! Before I’m done you’ll hear my voice plenty—loud and proud! It’ll be the last thing you ever hear!”

“Wolfe!”

“Bingo, Verrick! The guy you framed and left in federal prison for a year! Big mistake!”

“My mistake was not killing you!”

“It’s a mistake you can’t undo, Verrick! You’ll never get another chance!”

“Sir—he’s hearing you! But the cell phones aren’t on! He’s got to be listening in through speech recognition!”

“That means he’s been hearing us all along!”

“That’s right, Verrick. Now how about telling me about the Iceberg Project? And about Purity?”

“Wolfe—I’ll tell decadent socialist scum like you nothing! You go to hell!”

“Hell is all about heat, Verrick! How’s the temperature in there?”

“You, get that door open! There are tools in the maintenance room! Make it quick!”

“Yes sir!” the Graywater replied.

“You come outside,” Wolfe said, heading out from under the carport, “I’ll shoot you dead!”

He glanced up, saw the drone circling the house.

“Sir—I might be able to free up the GPS, sir!”

“Starling—shut up! He’s listening! How can anyone be so smart at some things and so stupid at others?”

“Sir, I don’t know, sir!”

“It was a rhetorical… never mind! Just…”

“Yes sir! I’m sorry! It’s this heat… this heat!”

“Stop whining!”

Wolfe had reached the front door, heard a hammering on the other side. But he had something else to deal with first…

He brought up the phone’s hack of the UAV, and made the drone change course, so it was heading for the front of the house…

The hammering became a strident clanging. The door beside the lock was starting to bulge outward…

“You ready to talk, Verrick?” Wolfe demanded. “Cooking alive’s going to be very unpleasant! I really think I’m going to have to shut the phone off pretty soon. The screaming of men baking to death is just something I don’t care to listen to. I’m too sensitive a guy…”

“You’re going to die slowly when I get my hands on you, Wolfe!”

“Come on, Verrick! You may as well tell me the facts! I know that you’re planning a—”

Suddenly the doorlock snapped and the door flew open.

Wolfe backpedaled quickly, keeping to the wall to the side of the door. “Stay back, Graywater!”

Bullets sprayed through the open door, more or less at random. None of them hit Wolfe.

“Get out there and kill him!” came Verrick’s command from inside.

The merc was sure to rush out at any moment. Wolfe could waylay him and shoot him down—but why not kill two birds with one stone? If he did this right he could block the door?

His fingers flicked over the phone. He sent the drone down fast and hard, screaming with speed into the front door, the last of its bullets firing as it dived down.

Wolfe ducked back around the corner—there was a yelp of fear from the front door—then the drone crashed.

The house shook. Smoke billowed up at its front.

Suddenly the steel shutters over the windows flickered up. Starling may have gotten control back.

Wolfe turned—and found himself looking straight at Verrick.

And Verrick was aiming an assault rifle at Wolfe.

Wolfe threw himself aside, a moment before Verrick fired. Shattered glass flew, bullets hissed, and then Wolfe was up, running around the corner of the house. He sprinted past the front door—another burst of bullets rattled after him, cutting through the flames and smoke.

Then Wolfe angled out, dodged behind the Chevy Silverado, and used his phone to unlock its doors. This was a late model, luxurious, plenty of electronics to hack into—he started the engine remotely, then ran to the driver’s side, opened it.

Bullets strafed up the driveway and clanged off the door. But he was already in the truck, putting it in reverse, stamping the accelerator. The truck roared backwards, and Wolfe spun it around. The back window exploded from gunfire.

Would be nice to go back and shoot it out with Verrick…

But he had information to get to Aiden Pearce. Vital information.

He drove the Silverado to the highway, got on the freeway fast as he could, and headed for Chicago.