Watch Dogs: Dark Clouds

CHAPTER SEVEN

Seline Garnera walked out of O’Hare airport, looking for a taxi to her hotel. She still had her duffel bag for luggage, but she wasn’t wearing a uniform. She had a long white Armani coat on over a charcoal-colored suit, things she’d bought on her layover in London.

There was a line for taxis. She got in the line, and waited, trying to get clear in her mind the reason she had come to Chicago at all.

She was relieved to be out of the Marine Corps, in comfortable walking shoes, in civilian clothes, with her long black hair on her shoulders just the way she liked it. Sure, she was proud of serving in the Marines. But the military had some toxic seams deep down in it, like something deadly you’d find in a mine.

Probably she used the mine analogy, thinking about it, because her dad was a retired mining engineer. He’d worked in tin and copper and gold mines all over the world. After she’d gotten that nerve-wracking meeting in Chicago over, she planned to fly to Northern Georgia to see her dad. He was going to be relieved she wasn’t on that aircraft carrier anymore. He’d always been afraid terrorists would hit it when it was in port.

She hadn’t seen much action—except off the coast of Libya during the overthrow of Gaddafi—but she’d done her part. She’d advanced to Chief Computer Security Specialist, and she’d found it interesting. But she had the misfortune, at least a misfortune in the military, of being a pretty good looking woman, and she’d had to fend off a lot of knuckleheads on that flattop. Carriers were mostly crewed by Navy men with some Marines on board, almost all of them men. Rough, lonely men. The worst that had happened was one groping, and some inappropriate talk. But she’d put a stop to it.

Her C.O. had been sympathetic, and he’d put the groper in the brig for a month. The Commander in Chief, the President of the USA himself, had pledged zero tolerance for sexual harassment and it had been working in the last year. The knuckleheads were starting to leave her alone. She’d even dated a naval lieutenant, when she was on leave, a nice guy who’d treated her in a gentlemanly way. Seline had been thinking about “re-upping”, signing up for another four years…

But then she’d come across the “Van Ness files”. And the military had soured for her. She didn’t blame the whole military. She still believed in military service. But she had to get out, if she was to get any justice for Ruth Medina.

General Van Ness was Army, not Marines, but there were Marines involved in this too. And one Central Intelligence Agency attaché who’d disappeared… right after transmitting the Van Ness files to Seline.

Oh yes, Seline had known the CIA attaché—they’d been pretty good friends. She was civilian, a confident, sharp-eyed career CIA agent about forty years old: Ruth Medina, Italian-American like Seline. Ruth had been on the carrier, had transferred from the base on the island of Socotra, assigned to communications with North African classified troop activities. Agent Medina had done her job quietly, and sometimes she and Seline had eaten dinner together in the cafeteria, for mutual support. They’d talked about a lot of things, but since they were both sworn to secrecy about their work, they almost never spoke about it—and when they did they never broke the rules of classification.

One evening, as they ate in the cafeteria, Ruth had been unusually quiet. She kept glancing fretfully at her cell phone.

“Something wrong?” Seline had asked her, at last.

“Um… you have that app on your phone where stuff can be transferred to it just by touching it with another phone, if…”

“I do have that. Almost never get to use it.”

“’Kay. Is it alright if I test mine, transfer a jpeg to yours, maybe a couple of them?”

“Sure!”

They set it up and the two women touched their phones together. Then Ruth signaled her to wait—and she sent Seline a text.

The text said, Pretend to look at a jpeg. Don’t look at file. Just keep for me.

Seline nodded. She clicked on a photo she’d taken herself, off the fantail of the ship, pretended to study it, and smiled. “Nice!”

Soon after, Ruth smiled nervously at her, got up, and took her tray to clean it off…

And that was the last time Seline ever saw her.

Ruth disappeared from the ship the same night, somewhere off the coast of Yemen.

“Taxi, lady?”

Seline was jarred from her thoughts, and looked at the taxi driver, a smiling older black man.

“Sure. Michigan Shore Hotel.”

“I know the place. Let me take that duffel for you…”

“It’s okay. I’ll take it in back with me…”

She wasn’t letting that bag out of her hands. In it, along with her uniform and passport and souvenirs and discharge papers, was a flashdrive.

And on the flashdrive was something that Ruth Medina had died for.

Seline was going to make sure Ruth hadn’t died in vain.

Mick Wolfe sat down on the sofa in the safehouse, and unwrapped the package.

Inside the package was a black smartphone. One of the slightly larger types. It didn’t seem unusual…

He looked for a note in the package, found nothing except a charger and an extra battery extension. No, there was one other thing. It looked like a small hearing aid. He realized it was some kind of Bluetooth device, so he could listen to the phone without seeming to, when he wanted.

He switched the phone on and waited. It booted up quickly, and almost immediately a message appeared, text within a jpeg frame:

Wolfe’s fingers trembled as he tapped the screen icon. The program came up with animated imagery showing the methodology for using what Wolfe thought of as the PearcePhone.

He read the directions excitedly, and then with increasing skepticism. For one thing, Pearce claimed the phone’s transmissions were totally untraceable; no one could listen in on it, or trace back its calls. Wolfe doubted that was totally possible.

But this other stuff… taking control of traffic lights? Remotely shorting out power boxes? Controlling trains?

This phone couldn’t possibly do all that…

Could it?

There was only one way to find out.

Southside Chicago, east 45th. Sleet was slanting through the dusk.

Wolfe had put a heavy dark blue hoodie on; he had the hood up, but his face was exposed. He hoped the improved facial scrambling app actually worked. The black market app transmitted a signal from the PearcePhone to nearby ctOS cameras, blurring his face in the camera itself.

But ordinary people on the street saw him as he really was, a lean white guy in a black neighborhood, an interloper with a two day growth of beard, just trucking along, hands in his pants’ pockets, as if he had no particular place to go.

He was walking with the sleety wind to his back. He had the .36 under his hoodie, and the phone in one hand.

He’d already used the PearcePhone before leaving the safehouse—to break into a police computer file on the various gang turfs in Chicago. According to the file, this street was being taken over by The Club, who had lately been trying to muscle in on Black Viceroy territory.

He might be confronted by any of them here—Club thugs or Viceroys. But he was pretty sure that the Club had taken over this block, through a group of ex-cons it had hired to move weight here.

Wolfe didn’t like drug dealers—not if they dealt in major drugs like crack or meth or heroin. He’d seen what they’d done to his own neighborhood.

On the right was a fast food place, Golden Fish and Chicken, with a white and blue awning. Across the street was a shaggy, fenced-in park, with steel piping exposed in muddy trenches. A sign on the fence said Change for Chicago At Work but it didn’t look like there’d been any work done there for a long time. Across the street three men hunched along in the sleet, one of them talking on a cell phone.

Wolfe thought, If I want, I can listen into that guy’s phone call… if this phone works.

But someone else had words for him. “Hey, you here for a reason, bub?” came a rough voice behind him.

He turned to see a red-haired man in a long black leather coat looking at him from the parking lot, half-sheltered in the back of the Golden Fish eatery. Probably from the Club.

“Thing is,” the Club thug continued, “you got to be a customer, a resident of this block—or you got to pay a toll. To me.” He patted his coat pocket. “Got a .45 here will back me up.”

“A toll? Sure.” Wolfe reached into his pocket, and walked timidly up to the thug, as if to pay him off. “Here…”

Then he flashed the .38 out instead and used its gun butt to knock the thug on his ass.

Wolfe bent over the stunned man, plucked the .45 from his coat, and stuck it in his own waist band. Straightening up, Wolfe drew out the PearcePhone with his left hand. With his thumb he activated the contiguous phone hack; it penetrated the nearest phone, the thug’s…

The system pulled up the man’s phone bill, first off. The bill provided the name Ken Brown, with an address a few blocks from here. Might be his real name but Wolfe suspected it wasn’t.

Wolfe took a phone picture of the sprawled thug with a quick flick of his fingers. He hacked ctOS recognition, cross referenced the phone photo with the population database. Came up with another name in the CPD case files: Buford Keeting. The red-haired Keeting’s face came up, along with his rap sheet. Buford “Duck” Keeting.

Keeting groaned as he sat up, holding his head. “Where’s muh gun… want muh gun…”

“Don’t worry about your gun, Keeting,” Wolfe said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

“I know you? My name… How yuh know…?”

“Sure I know you, ‘Duck’,” Wolfe said, glancing around to see there wasn’t anybody else around going to interfere. He saw a group of school kids across the street, walking by a nineteenth-century brick building with a FOR RENT sign in it. The kids were careful not to look over Wolfe’s way. They knew trouble when they saw it and how to avoid it. Wolfe looked back at Duck Keeting—he was trying to get to his feet. Wolfe used a boot to shove Keeting back on his ass. “I know you’ve got two warrants out for you.”

“So you is a cop, huh? Go ahead, arrest me, the Club’ll have me out again in an hour!”

“I know they would. But I’m not a cop so it doesn’t matter. But hold on—one of those warrants is federal, I see. Yeah. Moving underage girls across a state border… for reasons of human trafficking!”

“I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“The feds do. They don’t care about the Club. Should I call them? I bet I can get an FBI over here really quick if I tell him who I’ve got right here…”

“Nah, what do you want? You want a pay off? I got maybe eight hundred bucks on me, that’s all.”

“I’ll take that, for starters.”

He pointed the .38 at Keeting’s head.

“Sure, sure, here it is…” Keeting offered a wallet from his pants’ pocket. “Won’t do you much good for long…”

“Take the money out slow. Hand me that carefully. Don’t get creative. I’ll just start firing. Couldn’t miss at this range.”

Keeting growled to himself, but dug out the cash and handed it over.

“Thanks, ‘Duck’,” Wolfe said, tucking the bills away in his coat. “I’m a little cash poor.” Have to use that ATM trick next, a little later. And why not see what Duck had in his bank account? “I need something else from you Keeting—you know a gunhand, name of Grampus? A hire, might do some work for the Club sometimes?”

“Grampus? I heard the name. Somebody pointed him out to me once. I don’t know him ‘cept from that. He might be with that 77th Street bunch. I saw him go in that old lodge hall, over on 77th , I think he was with Gary Klyde…”

“Who’s Klyde?”

“Some kinda fixer. Don’t know him much either.”

“A lodge—on 77th?”

“Used to be an Elks Lodge. You know, for charity shows and all that shit. They sold it to some other outfit. I don’t know what it is. Might be Alcoholics Fucking Anonymous for all I know.”

“Okay. Get up and get out of here. And stay out of this territory. This is Black Viceroy territory.”

“You don’t look like no Black Viceroy to me.”

“They know me, though. And I know them. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.”

“I get my gun back?”

“Hell no. Go on, fuck off.”

Wolfe stepped back and let Keeting get to his feet. He watched the thug stagger dizzily off. When Keeting was no longer in sight, Wolfe stepped up to the wall, sent a message through Pearce’s trace-proof system to the FBI agent mentioned in the file on Keeting. James Wyst. The Chicago FBI agent who was looking for him for trafficking underage girls.

Wolfe didn’t like human traffickers, either.

It was getting darker out. The streetlights had come on. The sleet had let up but he went into the Golden Fish to get something to eat and wait for the Club to send some more thugs out. He knew they would.

Wolfe was absolutely sure that Keeting was on the phone to the Club right now.

The place was welcomingly warm, emanating a crude perfume of cooked fish and fowl. Wolfe waited in a line for the order window, and tapped the controls to check in on whatever the current phone call from “Ken Brown” might be.

“Hey, O’Mara? It’s Duck. Listen I just been jacked up by some guy. He almost cracked my damned head open! He kinda tried to put it on the Viceroys but that’s all hooey, the motherfucker’s gotta be some kinda independent operator—maybe a cop went independent, see…”

“What’s his name?”

“Dunno, he got the drop on me. Took eight hundred bucks from me and my gun!”

“You pussy!”

“Hey shaddup, he got the jump on me, he snuck up and… never mind! Thing is, he’s in our new territory over there on 45th! We was in the parking lot of that Golden Fish place, just about two minutes ago! You can nail the guy, find out who he’s working for!”

“Yeah, I guess dat’s worth doing. But you’re still a pussy.”

Keeting gave a brief description of Wolfe, and hung up. Wolfe chuckled. It’d take a few minutes for them to organize some muscle to get over here. Just time for some fried fish and coffee…

It took almost half an hour. Wolfe had misgivings about what he was doing. If Pearce had exaggerated the PearcePhone’s capabilities, he could be cut to pieces here.

Better wait outside so none of the people eating in here get caught in the crossfire…

Wolfe waited out in the cold, listening in on chatter from the Club—none of it seemed relevant till he went to the number Keeting had called. O’Mara’s cell phone. “Yeah, Percy? You almost there? I’ll be there in a couple shakes… Yeah I see the place up on my left… You in that new metallic green Escalade?”

“That’s it, man. Brand new. Luxury car. Self-parking…”

“I still got that old Lincoln…”

“That Town Car you restored?”

“Yeah, but it’s lookin’ nice. New black and gold paint job.”

Here came the Lincoln, slowing to turn left so it could go into the parking lot; and here came the green Escalade, fast, with a greater sense of urgency.

Wolfe was ready. Just as the Lincoln was turning the corner, he used the PearcePhone, sent out a signal that took control of the car through the automatic parking’s electronic control units—ECUs are a luxury car’s point of vulnerability to remote hacking. At the same time the phone interfered with the pre-collision system, cutting off the Escalade’s brakes—which shut down completely. The Lincoln, having slowed for the turn was still partly in the intersection, just as Wolfe had hoped; the Escalade came roaring through, its brakes suddenly out of order.

The Escalade crashed into the Lincoln, not quite t-boning it, but hitting it at the rear so the Lincoln spun around, tires screeching, front end swinging to crack into the Escalade.

Both cars were badly damaged. The Escalade plumed gray smoke from its crumpled front end. There was a guy slumped in the passenger side of the Lincoln. Wolfe couldn’t see the driver from here.

His .38 down by his side, Wolfe walked to the corner, stopping just ten paces from the two crumpled cars. The driver of the Lincoln was getting out. He wore a blue suit, and horn rim glasses. He had a gun in his hand and blood on his forehead. He squinted at Wolfe, and raised the gun, a .45 automatic, pointing it toward Wolfe.

Wolfe turned sideways, aimed—the stunned driver fired, and Wolfe heard the bullet sizzle past his right ear. Wolfe returned fire, squeezing off two rounds, and “horn rims” went down.

Wolfe turned to see the driver of the other car was slumped over the steering wheel… Seemed like he hadn’t bothered to get an airbag in the car.

The passenger of the Escalade was getting out though; he was a heavy set man with greased-back blond hair and a cardigan sweater. “Blondie” climbed stiffly out of the car, a lit cigarette still dangling from the corner his froggish mouth. He seemed dazed as he spotted Wolfe, fumbling for his gun.

“You better be careful with that cigarette,” Wolfe told him. “Look down at your feet.”

The guy blinked dazedly at Wolfe and then down at his shiny black shoes.

There was a spreading pool of gasoline around his feet. The Escalade’s fuel line had broken, was leaking fuel fast from under the car.

“See what I mean?” Wolfe said. “Just toss your gun away. Walk off with that cigarette. I do hate to see a man burn to death. Even a fucking dirt bag like you.”

“Who you callin’ a dirt bag?” the thug said.

As he said it, the cigarette waggled in his mouth… and fell out.

Wolfe sighed and turned away. He didn’t even see the pool of gas catch fire. But he heard the explosion, and felt the heat on the back of his neck.

He put the gun away, and strode off down the street, till he found a car that had a remote opening key. He used the phone to unlock it, and start it. He got in, just as the sirens started screaming toward the burning cars at the street corner, and drove back to the neighborhood of the safehouse.

I guess Pearce’s sweet little device does work after all…