Christopher Brookmyre (3 page)

There had been no greetings, nor would there be any checks or queries as to their preparations. Bett had no need to ask, for instance, whether you had remembered to bring a particular item, or to reiterate any information. Armand couldn't have been less serious when he said he'd fallen asleep during the briefing.

Bett stirred from his inscrutable absorption once they had reattained cruising altitude. He glanced around the cabin at their faces, all three meeting his eye expectantly.

'Alexis, boot up, please,' he ordered, unsnapping his seat belt. He projected his delivery just enough to carry over the ambient noise, which was louder than on a passenger aircraft. Bett didn't like to raise his voice; didn't like ever to consider it necessary. It was said that if you wanted people to listen, you should speak softly. Bett simply assumed people were listening, and didn't expect to have to shout to get their attention.

Lex recalled Rebekah's words over the intercom, echoing the standard inflight passenger protocols about laptops. On commercial airline flights, that only applied during take-off and landing. She didn't know about helicopters, or therefore whether Rebekah's warning was serious despite its humour, but she sure as hell wasn't going to refer it to Bett. Any sentence that began

'But sir,' was a bad start with the boss. He hated 'whining' as he called it, presumably because it infringed upon his exclusive rights to all grumpiness and complaining within the company.

She unbuckled her restraint and reached beneath the seat for her kit. Meantime, Bett knelt down and slid out one of his cases from the cargo rack, flipping it slightly ajar. She didn't see precisely what he had removed - a flat plastic sleeve, possibly a CD - but did catch a glimpse of a row of identical gun butts nestling cosily in protective plastic foam. A glance at her co-passengers confirmed they were also sneaking a peak. Bett's mission briefings were detailed, but seldom comprehensive. There were almost always surprises. The first one, this trip, was for her.

'Get into the network at Marledoq,' he said.

'Sure thing.'

Mid-air hacks were not part of the plan; in fact, she hadn't been instructed to do anything more than a covert recce of the Marledoq system prior to the mission, so there was definitely no need to be doing this at fifteen thousand feet. She guessed it must have been a CD-ROM he'd taken from the case, and the contents of it were possibly something that had only latterly come into his possession. Far more likely, however, was that he simply wanted to see her dance. He liked to keep everybody on the edge of their game, always ready to improvise and adapt at zero notice. There was no record in the company of anyone ever complaining about being bored.

'Rough skies ahead,' Lex announced to no one in particular as she tapped slowly at the keyboard and patiently scanned the screen.

'What makes you say that?' Bett asked. 'You scanning Met office websites or are you just . . . channelling?' He paused before the last word to give it emphasis, then pronounced it with a clipped crispness. Bett's scorn was seldom far from breaking the surface, but nor was it ever less than elegant.

'Latency,' she explained. 'Connection's a bit sluggish. Electrical storms tend to do that to these satellite modems.'

'Oh, neato,' ventured Som, gloomily. 'I always wanted to be in a helicopter during a lightning storm.'

'Are you in yet?' Bett enquired.

'General network access,' she replied, 'but if you want me to start tampering with surveillance and security systems, it's gonna take--'

'No, no,' he interrupted. 'I just want you to shut down one of the PCs in the Security HQ. Can you do that?'

'Shutting down a PC isn't going to . . . ' Lex stopped herself. 'Yes, sir,' she corrected.

'Good. I want you to script something that monitors when it gets rebooted. Run a clock on it from the moment you close it down. I want a response time.'

'You got it.'

Lex did as instructed, leaving the response-time clock running in a minimised panel towards the left edge of her screen. It would open fully and play an alarm chime when someone at the Marledoq end turned the machine back on. She looked up expectantly for Bett's next instruction, but that appeared to be all for now. He was staring out of the window again, though there was nothing to look at but a few wispy snowflakes dancing across the beams of the helicopter's lights.

The chime sounded and the clock stopped after four minutes and eighteen seconds.

'Log that,' Bett said. 'And shut the same PC down again at exactly twenty hundred hours.'

'Yes, sir.'

The snow grew gradually heavier as the flight continued. There was no lightning, but the wind was picking up and the chopper lurched and dipped with increasing frequency. Lex felt a little nauseous, but wasn't sure whether it was as much to do with the motion as worry. This was only her second time in a helicopter. The first had been eight years ago, a tourist jaunt over Niagara Falls on a sunny July morning, in maximum visibility and nary a breath of wind. Right now it was December, pitch black, there was a snowstorm brewing and they were flying towards the Alps.

'Looks like Lex was right about the weather,' Armand said, looking a little concerned.

'If we don't do this tonight, it'll be at least two weeks before we can reschedule,' Bett stated.

'Only if you're stuck on exposing--'

'I'm stuck on all aspects of my plan, yes,' Bett assured him, with the calm of a man who seldom had to stress his point. 'But if the weather continues to deteriorate, it won't be my intentions that prevail. That will be Rebekah's prerogative. In fact, I'll just have a word.'

Bett got up and opened the door to the cockpit, reaching with his other hand into the pocket where he'd secreted whatever he removed from his case. Through the window panel, Lex saw him talk to Rebekah, then hand her what indeed turned out to be a silver disc. He returned to the passenger cabin and took his seat once again, his visage familiarly betraying nothing. He waited for the next sudden, stomach-knotting surge before responding to Lex's eager gaze.

'Rebekah seems unconcerned,' he said flatly. 'The snow is getting pretty heavy, but she's not navigating by sight anyway.'

'What about the turbulence?' Lex asked.

'Unconcerned,' he repeated. 'I believe her exact words were: "This isn't turbulence." She then added something I didn't precisely catch, but the gist of it was that you'd know what turbulence was once we're above the mountains. Which should be any time now, I estimate,' he concluded, fastening his seat belt with precise delicacy.

Everyone else followed suit, knowing a cue from this bastard when they saw one.

Mere moments passed before the chopper plummeted like a broken elevator, Lex feeling as though her guts had remained at the previous altitude. The descent stopped just as suddenly, the plunge bottoming out, rising and banking into a swoop that seemed to increase their velocity by about fifty per cent.

Those in the passenger cabin weren't the only ones to get a cue. Bett reached his hand behind his head and rapped on the window before grace-fy flicking his wrist in a gesture that looked like the proverbial royal wave until Lex realised his fingers were gripping an imaginary baton. Music. Motherfucker. And a thousand bucks said
Ride of the Valkyries
. The music began playing over the cabin speakers a few seconds later. It was
Song 2
by Blur. Lex was set to (privately) deride it as old man Bett's idea of cool, but quickly recognised his cold humour at work instead. It was probably a mistake to think he
didn't
know how overused it had been as a soundtrack to such high-adrenaline moments. The man resonated disdain like other people gave off body heat.

Som, being less sensitive to such subtleties, simply went for it, and joined in the 'woohoo's as the chopper dipped and soared through the snow-flecked blackness.

Bett sat expressionless throughout. Lex looked for a hint of a smile or twinkle in his eye to betray just how much the bastard must be enjoying this, but there was nothing. The song played out without him even tapping his feet to the rhythm.

Then
came
Ride of the Valkyries
.

The snow lightened off over the final twenty minutes of the flight, down to mere wisps by the time they landed, though it was close to a foot deep on the ground. This proved of no concern to Rebekah, who expertly set down the helicopter on a valley floor, some woodland to the north the only feature of landscape close enough to be visible by what little moonlight broke between the clouds. Lex saw no lights to indicate settlement, though as Nuno was waiting for them behind the wheel of a high-sided container truck, there at least had to be a road in the vicinity. At least, though quite possibly at most.

'Thank you, Rebekah,' Bett said, as the rotors slowed and their pilot joined them on the white surface which was so permafrozen as to compact only a couple of inches under the weight of their feet. Lex had estimated the depth at about a foot, and the chopper's wheels had sunk close to that much, but it could easily be more. Bett sounded, as ever, like his gratitude, while not begrudged, was measured out with microscopic precision to be exactly what was due and appropriate, no less and no more. The sentiment gave off as much warmth as a dying penguin's last breath, but somehow inexplicably avoided sounding insincere or even entirely graceless.

'
De nada
, sir,' she replied.

'Oh, shit, man, it's freezing,' Som complained, while they got busy unloading their flight cases.

'Appropriate clothing will be supplied,' Bett said, signalling to Nuno to bring the truck closer now that the chopper's engines had powered down.

'You are a god,' Som told him, shivering. 'People don't say that enough.'

'No,' Bett reflected, 'they don't.'

Rebekah pulled off her helmet and placed it on her seat inside the cockpit, replacing it with an elasticated fleece cap. Lex approached, flight case in hand as she shut the door.

'Thanks for the ride,' Lex offered with a smile.

'Hope it wasn't too rough. Helicopters aren't really my forte.'

'You gotta be kidding. Not your forte? That was some serious flying.'

'It's all in the technology these days. There's a joke among the civil flyers that future crews will comprise a single pilot and a dog. The pilot's job will be to watch all the computers, and the dog's will be to bite the pilot if he attempts to touch anything.'

Civil
flyers, Lex thought. As in what Rebekah was not.

'That's cute,' she said. 'But way too modest. You were hot-dogging up there, and on Bett's orders too, I'm guessing.'

'No comment,' she replied, failing to conceal a smile.

'That's a ten-four if ever I heard one. Where'd you learn to fly like that?'

'Definitely no comment.'

Nuno cautiously brought the truck towards the chopper, the vehicle bobbing and swaying as its tyres traversed uneven terrain beneath the snow. Lex suppressed a smile at the sight of the tall Catalan in this unfamiliar environment, his beloved dark locks all tucked out of sight beneath a tight black ski-hat. She couldn't wait to see how that striding gait of his coped with the underfoot conditions either.

He veered the truck right as he drew close, allowing him to turn in a wide, careful arc, presenting the rear of the container towards the new arrivals. Bett hopped on to the tailgate and flipped a lever, causing the double doors to open and releasing a heavy steel ramp that slid down to meet the snow. Lex felt it bite into the ground with a shudder a split-second after the overeager (and possibly borderline hypothermic) Som skipped backwards out of its way. Nuno trudged cautiously and awkwardly around to the rear and climbed inside behind the boss.

Bett emerged shortly with an armful of clothing, which he tossed to Som. From the flail of sleeves and legs, Lex guessed two fine fleece tops and two pairs of trousers.

'Get these on. That goes for everybody: two layers each. There's a box inside with various sizes. And if you're wearing anything made of cotton, lose it before you put these on.'

Som wasn't about to ask Bett why - you just didn't do that - but his face betrayed a reluctance to shed any of the clothes he already had without a damn good reason.

'Cotton equals death,' Lex told him. 'Cotton holds moisture against the skin and prevents you warming yourself. Trust me, I'm Canadian.'

'Are we talking, like, even my Y-fronts here?'

Lex herself had opted for all-synthetic undergarments, but wasn't sure just how much outdoor work was going to figure on the agenda. She guessed not enough for it to matter if Som's nads got a little chilly. The temptation to lay it on thick was enormous, leavened slightly by the prospect of seeing his scrawny little goose-pimpled butt in the flesh. She settled for: 'That's entirely up to you.'

'Jeez. Just how long are we going to be out in the snow? How far is this place?'

'It's about five miles,' Nuno told him.

'Just get the fleeces on, Somboon,' Bett instructed. 'And if you're still cold, I've got another layer for you here.'

Bett kicked a fibreglass trunk forward across the floor of the truck and flipped open its lid. Kevlar vests. For all the protection they offered, they were nonetheless seldom a reassuring sight.

'Body armour?' Som asked. 'I thought this place was all about non-lethal enforcement technology.'

'If it was a bakery, would you expect the guards to be armed only with custard pies?' Bett asked, with what passed in his case for good humour. 'The parent company also develops laser-guided missiles, so you'll be pleased to know the security personnel are issued with standard Beretta nine-millimetre handguns and none of Industries Phobos' hallmarked product.'

'Don't suppose there's any Kevlar balaclavas in there?' Lex ventured. 'These vests aren't so effective if you get shot in the face.'

'I'll be extremely surprised if any of these people manage to get a single shot off against us,' Bett stated with absolute certainty.

'If it's all the same to you, sir, would you mind if I borrowed Rebekah's crash helmet?' Lex said, only half joking.