Loading Souls by Dalen Buchanan
Chapter 10: Pornography Filters
The cell jammer was shut down, allowing more bandwidth for our Battlenet. Feeds to my glasses opened to show several Policia cruisers arrayed out front. Uniforms were pouring into the entrance. The hall soon became crowded with excited, armored patrolmen. Father Cervantes and Nuncio walked in behind them.
Rafe ran down the warrants to the ranking Sargento, Gomez. I handed Gomez the cheap pistol in my pocket and pointed out the Morro boy on the floor. The Sargento was not pleased with his role as garbage man, but he saw the prisoners were led out in cuffs. Perez looked familiar as the knife wielder who had stopped a weighted chain with his forehead. His roommate was a new face. The girlfriend got a ride to the station for her statement. Gomez would sit on her for a while, just in case.
Father Cervantes walked into the apartment while Nuncio started pulling equipment out of a bag. They would give these rooms scientific scrutiny while a few Policia stood watch in the hall. I grabbed Lucho’s battered toolbox out of the way and went down to the SWAT van with the other Templars. We got a little break until Saint Peter or the Father gave us the next target up the chain.
Rafe pulled the doors shut behind us and shucked his tunic over his head. The uniforms were traditional stiff hemp, colored bright white with the blood red Cross. Rafe always felt like a target when wearing the tunic. I agreed, although being readily identified usually kept the different flavors of Garda from shooting at us. Chelo’s Catholic status gave us primacy on her abduction, but Sweety was a related local matter. We were going to have to work with other Garda units closely. "Keep the tunics close," I said. Then I gave them a little sitrep.
Our advantages were better forensics and dedicated oversight by Saint Peter. The local Garda were willing to follow our lead, as long as we didn’t cause an incident. It was an ideal position for them, accepting good results and disavowing screw ups. I had heard the Traficante Sexo unit was ready to step in if we got bounced. That was all above my pay grade. If Saint Peter could keep making headway then the Garda overseer, Oberon, would let us have the wheel. He was a Christian Network AI, but more keyed to the cultures in his zone. He would factor the political effects of the crime and stay on the narrative.
Garda HQ officers would package and distribute this narrative. It was no mistake that some of the better Spindocs got started in the NorthAm Garda AI flow. There was always plenty of news that needed a good spin. Together they would keep the media nudged along the path of least speculation. The Garda had learned to get out ahead of news in the NorthAm zone. A sort of "lead it by the nose and kick it in the ass" pincer movement worked best.
Right now, Garda releases were claiming arrests in connection with, but not naming suspects. Credit was given to the Chihuahua Policia. They used the usual "tips from street contacts" byline. Templar references were buried under "consulting agencies." Word of mouth sightings of Templars, such as we had arranged, would eventually filter into the media without Garda spin. Saint Peter wanted to elevate paranoia among the guilty parties. He said it degraded their networks, something about pushing out support by weak factions. Having independent reports framing Templars in the picture should do that.
Saint Peter won the race for the next lead. Perez and Vargas had regular communications with several people using mail accounts. Once Saint Peter had hacked the contacts lists out of their computers and served a few User Inquiry warrants, social dating networks like Parecer Verdad or Saludable put pictures to names. They had voluntarily put themselves in these line ups, looking for romance. My own witness upload had positively ID’ed two more of the Sangron attackers. The ghoul with the chain was named Diaz. He liked to be called Nacho and also enjoyed candlelit dinners. Without much of the makeup, he looked happier. The photo may be old, but the wide mouth and pronounced canines were unforgettable. He would probably be wearing gloves for his torn hands. The other Sangron was called Miguel Aroz, the first I fought that night. His evil cosmetics stayed on for his romance photo and the rambling essay left no doubt that he was a bad boy looking for submissive victims. At least he would be after the swelling went down on the side of his head.
The addresses in the public indexes were out of date for Diaz, but still good on Aroz. He stayed at a place in the western foothills that was fairly remote. Aerials, utilities and delivery records showed the house was occupied by at least four people and a lot of computer equipment. The owner was a Corpie called Mithras Management, leasing to Manuel Delgado. Manuel dabbled in game design and subscription porn. He had a good credit rating. Aroz was not the owner, but had ordered food deliveries there for the last few months.
So Saint Peter bought a subscription to Delgado’s porn feeds and pulled house details from the videos, stills and immersives. Who knows what he thought about all the sex. We also got a look at Aroz in bizarre domination garb. His film name was El Rozo. Don’t know who the other guys were but they had a harem of enhanced girls parading through that place regularly. Most girls seemed to be paying off surgeries for some other career path. A couple episodes and they left. I smelled money, but not a lot. It looked like a niche cottage industry from a start up score. Maybe Delgado was good at business and wanted his own little crew close by. Guess I would just have to ask him.
We conferenced with Saint Peter over the excellent net in the van. Implants are great, but you can get a lot more bandwidth and save charge next to a full access Garda comms unit. Saint Peter gave us a fair simulation of the approach and layout of Aroz’s hideout. We worked the time of day and terrain line of sight. It was hard to get close without giving them response time. Fatalities ramped up exponentially if given time, on both sides. We could infiltrate tonight, but with no idea of what waited. Going in too fast was a high risk of disaster. Etienne noted that the occupants ordered deliveries individually. If this porn studio was to receive say, new mattresses, it would take a conference to figure out who ordered them. It could get us in close.
Rafe offered that the Swat van had roll-down mimetic tarps he could strap onto the sides and program for whatever graphics looked best. One of the store delivery patterns would work. Delivery hours didn’t run this late, so we could go back to my Tio’s and collect the cousins for an early morning raid. Saint Peter would develop the entry plan overnight. We could trade seven hours for better odds of success. Everyone signed off and we dropped back into the Real.
My neck was wet with drool. Rafe shook himself and slipped into the drivers’ seat. He got us heading back to Tio’s barn while Etienne and I both shucked our crosshair tunics. Rafe was right, it did feel better.
The Father and Nuncio beat us home, but were sequestered away in their rooms, working through intel gleaned from the apartment. A message from Memo said he was going under the beam tonight with his sports surgeon. Be back tomorrow about lunchtime. Lalo and Lucho were still running through the simulators and making good progress. A few hours of intense sims followed by two hours of sleep and subliminal learning was working well. The sleep cycles gave the simulators time to absorb the sweat. Meat management in a good simulator includes a host of electrolyte replacement, toxin transport and specialty nano meds. They would wake up hungry but undamaged.
Rafe laid two deputy uniforms on the pile of gear I had assembled for my cousins. These were extra large khaki shirts with smaller red Cross sigils and cargo utility pants in black. He added carry slings for the cut down shotguns and network glasses so we could keep channels open with the cousins in the field. I intended to keep a close eye on them.
Esmeralda served up some burritos for us in her night robe. I told her we would probably be having an early breakfast and the boys would be very hungry. She smiled briefly, saying she was "Happy that Lalo and Lucho would be out of those coffin things. The boys make noises sometimes when I am cleaning." The shiver following that statement made it clear Esmeralda was getting creeped out.
"Thanks for your patience, Esmeralda. The simulators are an imposition, but we need them for the boys. How about we pick up afte
r ourselves in that room for a while?" She didn’t like it, but was flexible enough to accept. Tio had housed Esmeralda under roof for the last eight years. Her family businesses had been thoroughly intertwined with Tio the last four. It was like a merger and the old Patron system. Rumor was that Tio took her in because of trouble with her husband. If so, no one had heard from any husband since. I preferred to give Tio the benefit of the doubt. Esmeralda was more than just an employee, she was my extended family.
I got the boys up at five. Stretched and showered them off a little before feeding. That also gave the Cocktail number 7 some time to wake them up. They were a mess coming out of the box. It wouldn’t be good to shock Esmeralda this morning. As it was, they didn’t seem like themselves. When they first came out, they were friendly drunks. That lasted twenty minutes. Then their faces grew more immobile and blinking slowed. The serious faces and brisk speech were nothing I had seen my cousins do before. It occurred to me that I must be acting the same, Cocktail number 7 slips up on you that way. No wonder Esmeralda was feeling disoriented. Maybe Father Cervantes could spin the program with a religious viewpoint for her. I would ask him, later.
After a quick meal, I took them to the barn. They needed a workout patterned for the sims. About an hour of muscle memory familiarization would greatly speed response times. My cousins were fairly surprised at the passage of time while learning. It had felt like they were training for a week. These were military sims, not commercial gamers or avatar cubes. The speed multiplication feature was only found on the high end military and scientific units.
Lalo and Lucho looked good in deputy outfits. The right mix of utility and don’t shoot me badging. Body armor was padded molespun, stretchy enough for movement and rated to shed all but serious weapons. With the networked glasses, I could follow their progress on small screens and redirect with frag orders. They were used to my voice and terminology from personalized training, that and the Cocktails should keep them firm. I did feel a little strange about having to chemically dial down their survival instinct.
There were many documented side effects of the Cocktails the Garda had been issuing. Each new design just seemed to add to the range of symptoms. The military developed these centuries ago and still production evaded perfection. It made you wonder about the true best interests of contracted R and D labs or the sheer stubbornness of human physiognomy. The basic designs had been in use so long they were numbered based on class. Even numbers were child doses of the next odd numbered adult types. Cocktail number one was lethal to all. What we were usually issued was seven and nine. Seven was issued to short term troops, when you didn’t have the luxury of profiling and sorting. They would hold steady under supervision, at the expense of some initiative. The child dose, number 6, acted like a strong espresso for me. Nine was for speed learning. Your mind becomes receptive to a higher bandwidth of data transfer. But it is a little like filling your computer with files, hard to find what you’re looking for. Large chunks of training must be organized by the student into some kind of mental index. That is done by hijacking several higher brain processes during dosage. Nine users had little interest in anything but the training. Conversation, personal intrigues or complex movements were difficult for them to initiate. The designers added a little afterglow to Cocktail number 9 a few years back. A feeling of accomplishment added to euphoria. Felt like getting drunk with a friend at graduation. It counteracted the migraine headaches the old mix used to give. I thought the new effect was brilliant.
I pronounced them ready at nine am. Etienne and Rafe had camouflaged the swat van. We were now identified as "Home Goods Delivery." It was a distribution hub that shipped purchases from stores without licensed and bonded drivers of their own. Large and anonymous. The van looked more commercial with the removal of the steel ram over the grill and some of the antennas. It would have to do. We loaded up and Rafe showed Lucho the controls to keep his hands off of. Lucho would be our driver and Lalo his helper. Rafe put HGD patches over the Templar sigil on their khaki shirts. He handed Lucho a clipboard of phony e-documents. We three Musketeers stepped into the back of the van. Our uniforms and Combat Skins meant we needed to hide until the entry was accomplished. Etienne had thoughtfully provided the mattress from his bed to push up behind the seats. Now the view of the van interior was blocked from the front windows. Lucho checked the GPS route and pulled out of the barn to the main road.
We had almost an hour out to the target, plenty of time to network with Saint Peter and refine the plan. The overnight picture of the house had firmed up with a further interrogation of Perez. He had been there a few times for parties. We had a floorplan, fleshed out with images from the porn feeds, which had very few blank spots. We had occupant names to go with faces from the movies and identity registrations. Saint Peter had compiled dossiers on all of them. Aroz was still the only familiar face. Back tracking telecom and power providers with User Inquiry warrants gave us a good picture of schedules. We could expect most of them to be home this time of day. They seemed to only come out at night, keeping vampire hours as a lifestyle.
I cobbled together orders for my cousins including aerials, floor plans and a futbol style play. They would secure any vehicles outside or in the garage. We expected some to hold weapons and all could be used for flight. Fire if Threatened, Cuff and Detain. Rafe informed me he had put stun sticks under the front seats, so I added Stun Resisters to the orders. I sent a clip of El Rozo to them and identified him as our Primary Target. All others were Innocent until Otherwise.
Putting insets on my lenses of both their feeds, I watched them flipping through the plan and studying visuals. They were slow at commanding the glasses, having just learned the ocular movements and subvocal commands needed to interface with the network. My implant had freed me from that protocol some time ago. Hopefully, they would learn quickly with practice. But the thoroughness of their research I could not fault. The training had them reviewing and memorizing everything I sent. I left them to their studies and logged into the mobile Battlenet.
We were getting close, according to the 3D model Saint Peter had crafted. Floating in his quantum spaces was a compilation of maps, images and real-time military satellite surveillance. I could see a car in the driveway. Time lapse showed the four occupants had just gotten there. Two men and two women, unidentified. We were ten minutes away. I updated the cousins.
We pulled up to an automatic gate just off the winding road. The house was a hundred meters away and backed up to a steep ridge. The fence appeared electrified and had a cattle guard under the gate. They must be on a grazing range, remnant of the old Ejido common use lands.
Lucho rang the bell and waved his clipboard at the pole mounted camera, "Delivery." The reply was an unintelligible buzzing. I guess Lucho could figure it out, because he proceeded to verify the address. The speaker buzzed some more while the pole camera panned across the van. The gate retracted with a squeal of metal on metal.
The driveway was gravel and ended in a loop in front of the house. I watched Lalo’s feed focus on the man outside the front door. He was dressed casually, but wore an earphone. No visible weapons. As we stopped, he approached.
Lalo hopped out the passenger side and walked to the van’s back doors. The three of us were stacked at the door, waiting for release like hunting dogs. Lucho stepped out with his clipboard and initiated a conversation with the doorman about a mattress delivery. The conversation involved some third parties speaking from the doorman’s earphone. It kept him too busy to observe our exit. The bad news was, when we took him down, the third parties would hear it.
Lucho was keyed to our footsteps, waiting for my order. When we were almost around the van and in view, I told him "Now." Then we sprinted ahead to see Lucho slap the earphone off the doorman and kick his feet out from under him. The doorman landed hard on his back and lost the ability to breathe for the time it took Lucho to cuff him. I recognized Agudo Silat. When Lucho finished he threw his hands up like a rodeo va
quero. It was a peek at the real Lucho, behind the Cocktail mask, that made me smile. Then he went blank faced again and pulled a small pistol from under the doorman’s back. He was showing some aptitude for this.
Etienne wasn’t so fortunate, bouncing off the front door because it was locked and reinforced. The doorman must have a key, but we were pressed for time. Rafe used his breaching shotgun to shred the latch, shouted "Garda" and in they went.
I stayed in the courtyard with my cousins. They retrieved the stun sticks and pulled off the HGD patches. I tossed them two helmets. The garage doors started opening behind us, the code having been hit after thousands of tries by the remote decoder in the Swat van. We ran over to the cars. My cousins followed their instructions to cover the area and watch the front. I hit the house entry door at speed. That door wasn’t reinforced.
I came out between two cabinets in the kitchen. The doorknob had clipped my hip on the way through but it was just an annoyance. The Nano muted it as I stopped for a moment to gather sound. I had just made a loud noise and now I could hear footsteps heading out back from the dining room. The noise had flushed someone outside. I needed to contain them.
Running through the dining room and out back through arched double doors I saw the large pool and mass produced statuary visible from orbit. The scaffold of film lights and reflectors by the diving board was new. So was the bleached blonde, tied facedown on the board with a ball gag.
Her eyes gave him away, staring at me and then flicking past to the left wall around the yard. I turned to see a shirtless man levering himself over the two meter wall at the back corner. He showed bad form but was in decent shape. I checked the Battlenet for locations. Dots sprang up on a cutaway sketch of the grounds. My guy was a red 8, moving slowly along the base of the ridge. Blondie was a green 7, noting that she was already under control. There was another red 4 in the house, but my sergeants had him boxed. The others all showed green. "Pursuing 8," I said and leaned forward to start running.
No more than two steps into the run, there was a rapid popping noise from the right. It didn’t sound like I was the target, glass muted the sound. An arrow popped up on my lens, showing the gunfire was behind and to my right. It only takes a second for Saint Peter to triangulate all our audio feeds on the Battlenet. The sergeants were in a firefight. My run at the wall made a hard right around the pool to get an angle on the upper floor windows. Red 8 wasn’t going anywhere on foot and all phone services were jammed. This was the priority.
My coverage was unnecessary, as it was. A man flew out the second story window on a backward trajectory, separating him from a carbine that landed in the pool with him. Etienne leaned out the broken window and hopped down to the ground. We met on the pool decking, watching Red 4 blow air and float. "Merde, when did they get a pool?" Etienne asked. I looked over at Red 4 and said, "News to me too." Etienne hooked his thumb at the blonde, still tied to the diving board but now soaked in water. "Who’s your date?" Since he spoke French and she was gagged, I assumed he was asking me.
"I didn’t catch her name…" which brought a tortured grin to Etienne’s face. He looked down his nose and said, "Typical Navarro. The frenzy takes hold and progeny fly. Just like your Red 8. Maybe you could go do your job and I will protect these two beauties from themselves for a little while." There was no winning one of these quip fests with Etienne. It was fun to try though.
He pivoted toward the blonde and gave her a smile that made her eyes widen. She was a sight, with the running makeup, wet strands of hair and frightened stare. I’m sure to Delgado that would have been a real money shot. I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely lost on us either, Christian soldiers notwithstanding. I slapped Etienne on the shoulder as I turned around into a run and went to collect pool girl’s date. "Have you ever been wrong?"
Etienne shouted at my back, "I am filled with self-doubt."
The wall came in eight quick strides. I took the jump onto the back wall at a steep angle, pausing just a second at the top to correct for obstacles on the other side. There were plenty of those in the form of large irregular stones, slid down over time from the steep ridge. A little correction put me in a clear space upslope, another push from the right leg sent me away from the scree onto level ground. Red 8 was visible about a hundred meters away, trotting toward some arroyos. I dialed up the zoom in my lenses.
His black boots puffed dust and were holding him back from running, probably heavy with armor. I guessed it was more a fashion thing for 8. The pants were faded and had strategic torn flaps that were in style. He had no shirt but black straps like suspenders ran across his shoulders. I couldn’t see his face, but the outfit looked like El Rozo. "Eight acquired. Possible target, confirm?" Rafe and Etienne sent back "Possible." I guess they had not yet identified all their suspects. Leaning forward into an intercept run, I closed with the Rose.
The Skins accelerated me to a wind rushing speed, but I could not outrun sound. Aroz heard some disturbance and turned to see a large helmeted Templar chasing him down. This spurred him to run, in his clubfooted fashion, for the nearest arroyo. The dry gullies were bad footing and had short lines of sight, in his panicked state he thought he could lose me.
He looked back once more and realized I was much closer than before. The Skins legs blurred with their three meter stride, the only thing slowing me down was the slippage of dirt under the soles. I saw defeat for a second in his eyes and then he sprinted off in an upslope direction toward a Palo Verde tree. Now he would settle to just put an obstacle between us.
The upslope turn helped me shed speed after a skidding right deflection. We reached the tree at the same time. He stepped around the tangled trunk of the tree and snatched up a fist sized rock. I laughed and said "Did you hit your head recently? Just come back and sit with your friends and have some agua. You can do that without bruises, entiendes?" I emphasized it a little by tapping the butt of my breaching shotgun.
Aroz stared at the faceplate on my riot helmet, but showed no glimmer of recognition. His eye makeup had started running so he looked like a weepy boy toy. But the eyes had some shrewd in them. I hoped he was thinking, "Yeah, I did hit my head the other night." He dropped the rock and stood still while I cuffed him. I hooked a few plasticuffs into a chain and attached it to his leather harness. There were rings and attachments on the harness that seemed purpose built for a leash. I guided him into a brisk walk to the front of the house.
Rafe was placing the home’s occupants in a seated line near the Swat van. Some he guided, some he just lifted. Lucho was walking the blond pool girl over in a fuzzy bathrobe. The shooter was lying in a puddle by the back tire. All were plasticuffed. A quick count showed one short.
"Did you at least kiss him first?" Rafe asked.
I told him, "You know I don’t kiss the Johns. You should tell that to your idiot beau-frere." Rafe’s eyes widened a little at the jab, "He takes things the wrong way just to see what trouble looks like. I have other sisters I like even better than Josephine."
I handed him the leash. "I like Josephine fine. But I pick the Sangria next time."
"Not that awful Castilian grappa and you have a deal." Rafe spat, as though sucking lemons. I saw him smile a little.
Aroz had visibly paled during the exchange. He didn’t know French but I handed his leash to this spitting ogre of a Templar. Rafe’s normal tone was a rumbling growl. His smile had the same effect on Aroz as was seen on the pool girl. Must be a skill they teach in Alsace, where the sheep never sleep. "Go upstairs with Etienne and see Delgado" Rafe told me, gesturing with his chin at the house. I repositioned my cousins to help watch the prisoners and went inside.
The front door hung crookedly. Splinters of wood littered the entry tile. There was a dusty footprint partway up the left arch leading to the kitchen. It looked like Etienne’s. I turned right at the arch to see where he went. The short hall opened into a living area. They had decorated it as a drug bar. A long white couch lay on its back next to a short table co
vered with paraphernalia. Judging angles, I would say Etienne redirected off the couch and headed toward the staircase. Rafe would have cuffed whoever was on the couch. He likes to say he is the man with the shovel behind the parade.
I walked up the staircase, noting a cracked handrail. Etienne must have really been moving. The top of the stairs showed a dent in the wall about shoulder height. Double bedroom doors to the right were in pieces. Entering the master bedroom, I saw Etienne examining a large oak coffin. There was no bed, black curtains over the windows and a spinning collection of holo imagery floating around the room. I saw a ragged hole in the wall, leading into a walk-in closet. "You can see how disorienting this room is, to enter at speed?" Etienne said. "The shooter was over to the right, firing out of the master bath." I noticed bullet holes on the wall behind me.
"I had to get behind him through the closet. Rafe redirected his attention by slapping his chest, that gorilla impersonation he does sometimes." In his Combat Skins, Rafe can make the slaps sound like a submachine gun. That was the popping noise I had heard. The shooter’s own weapon was fitted with a suppressor. "What’s with the coffin?" I asked, pointing at its elaborate wood and brass placard showing an inverted Roman cross. "Delgado is in there. I think it’s his simulator, but the outside is armored like a safe room." Etienne rapped knuckles on the lid. It sounded solid.
There were no visible connections or controls. It was tightly bolted to the floor and locked airtight. Without tools, we weren’t getting in. "At least the signals are jammed." He said. I told him I had an idea. "Stay here and wait for him to rise." He smirked, getting into the play. "I will find a stake. I am already wearing a cross."
Downstairs, I stacked two couches to allow me to reach the ceiling. Handfuls of plaster later, I was looking at some pipes running to the bottom of the coffin. Using a loop of monowire, I cut the power line and hand crimped the metal air line.
Minutes passed. Delgado seemed determined to last us out. He was probably waiting for his lawyer to get here. Since the warrants weren’t filed until we exited the van that could be a while. We had shifted to microwave bands when launching the assault, everything else was jammed or under denial of service. Unless he was using a quantum linkage, nobody had called out.
"The Policia are going to be here within the hour. Do you think he will last that long?" Etienne asked. "He’s still Innocent until Otherwise by the regs. I think this only merits Resistance."
I looked up at the pipes and got an idea. I sent my Battlenet feed as an inset on Etienne’s lens. "Watch my hands and stand ready."
The loop of monowire came out again. I cut the air line to expose the pipe and then pulled through the waterline. Water sprayed from the severed end until I got it pushed into the air line. A little crimping and water slowed to a trickle from the join. Now it was following the copper pipe up into Delgado’s dark, foul box. I hoped he had a strong sense of survival.
"That got his attention" Etienne drawled. I could hear thrashing in the coffin from beneath. "I’ll zap him on exit." I remembered the shooter, having a weapon up there in the fall back. A guy with a safe room or coffin or whatever might be holding protection. Etienne had already gotten lucky today. It wasn’t his turn again. "Negatory zap. Stand clear of exit and ready to rush, will zap from here." Etienne drawled back "D’accord."
I watched Etienne’s feed of the coffin for movement. He was standing behind the lid, using it for cover. When the lid suddenly flew open, it swung one hundred eighty degrees to strike the stun stick in his hand. The stick was caught for a moment on the wrong side of the lid. Delgado sat up from the interior amid a lot of splashing and gasps of air. The pistol in his hand was already firing, putting bullets in the master bath. The lid striking Etienne’s stun stick made a noise that oriented his head toward Etienne. The gun tracked around, still firing bullets into walls. I squeezed my wet hand to the metal lines and sent voltage.
Delgado jerked into a straightened position that still left his heels in the water. The gun stopped firing because he couldn’t release the trigger to reset the action. Etienne’s feed also showed sparks coming from the coffin and the floating holograms flickered off. The electrical field let me feel Etienne approaching Delgado, ready to take over when I stopped. I gave a final surge that popped a light fixture on the ceiling and bled away the charge.
A lamp in the living room flickered. It must have been Etienne. His feed showed me a wet Delgado lying on the floor with Etienne’s hands on his chest. He was restarting Delgado’s heart. He must have had an undocumented condition. Then I noticed the simulator gel on Delgado’s body. I had forgotten it wasn’t really a coffin and the gel was a great conductor. Delgado woke up and started coughing. Good news. No harm, no foul for a Resisting suspect.
****
The cell jammer was shut down, allowing more bandwidth for our Battlenet. Feeds to my glasses opened to show several Policia cruisers arrayed out front. Uniforms were pouring into the entrance. The hall soon became crowded with excited, armored patrolmen. Father Cervantes and Nuncio walked in behind them.
Rafe ran down the warrants to the ranking Sargento, Gomez. I handed Gomez the cheap pistol in my pocket and pointed out the Morro boy on the floor. The Sargento was not pleased with his role as garbage man, but he saw the prisoners were led out in cuffs. Perez looked familiar as the knife wielder who had stopped a weighted chain with his forehead. His roommate was a new face. The girlfriend got a ride to the station for her statement. Gomez would sit on her for a while, just in case.
Father Cervantes walked into the apartment while Nuncio started pulling equipment out of a bag. They would give these rooms scientific scrutiny while a few Policia stood watch in the hall. I grabbed Lucho’s battered toolbox out of the way and went down to the SWAT van with the other Templars. We got a little break until Saint Peter or the Father gave us the next target up the chain.
Rafe pulled the doors shut behind us and shucked his tunic over his head. The uniforms were traditional stiff hemp, colored bright white with the blood red Cross. Rafe always felt like a target when wearing the tunic. I agreed, although being readily identified usually kept the different flavors of Garda from shooting at us. Chelo’s Catholic status gave us primacy on her abduction, but Sweety was a related local matter. We were going to have to work with other Garda units closely. "Keep the tunics close," I said. Then I gave them a little sitrep.
Our advantages were better forensics and dedicated oversight by Saint Peter. The local Garda were willing to follow our lead, as long as we didn’t cause an incident. It was an ideal position for them, accepting good results and disavowing screw ups. I had heard the Traficante Sexo unit was ready to step in if we got bounced. That was all above my pay grade. If Saint Peter could keep making headway then the Garda overseer, Oberon, would let us have the wheel. He was a Christian Network AI, but more keyed to the cultures in his zone. He would factor the political effects of the crime and stay on the narrative.
Garda HQ officers would package and distribute this narrative. It was no mistake that some of the better Spindocs got started in the NorthAm Garda AI flow. There was always plenty of news that needed a good spin. Together they would keep the media nudged along the path of least speculation. The Garda had learned to get out ahead of news in the NorthAm zone. A sort of "lead it by the nose and kick it in the ass" pincer movement worked best.
Right now, Garda releases were claiming arrests in connection with, but not naming suspects. Credit was given to the Chihuahua Policia. They used the usual "tips from street contacts" byline. Templar references were buried under "consulting agencies." Word of mouth sightings of Templars, such as we had arranged, would eventually filter into the media without Garda spin. Saint Peter wanted to elevate paranoia among the guilty parties. He said it degraded their networks, something about pushing out support by weak factions. Having independent reports framing Templars in the picture should do that.
Saint Peter won the race for the next lead. Perez and Vargas had regular communications with several people using mail accounts. Once Saint Peter had hacked the contacts lists out of their computers and served a few User Inquiry warrants, social dating networks like Parecer Verdad or Saludable put pictures to names. They had voluntarily put themselves in these line ups, looking for romance. My own witness upload had positively ID’ed two more of the Sangron attackers. The ghoul with the chain was named Diaz. He liked to be called Nacho and also enjoyed candlelit dinners. Without much of the makeup, he looked happier. The photo may be old, but the wide mouth and pronounced canines were unforgettable. He would probably be wearing gloves for his torn hands. The other Sangron was called Miguel Aroz, the first I fought that night. His evil cosmetics stayed on for his romance photo and the rambling essay left no doubt that he was a bad boy looking for submissive victims. At least he would be after the swelling went down on the side of his head.
The addresses in the public indexes were out of date for Diaz, but still good on Aroz. He stayed at a place in the western foothills that was fairly remote. Aerials, utilities and delivery records showed the house was occupied by at least four people and a lot of computer equipment. The owner was a Corpie called Mithras Management, leasing to Manuel Delgado. Manuel dabbled in game design and subscription porn. He had a good credit rating. Aroz was not the owner, but had ordered food deliveries there for the last few months.
So Saint Peter bought a subscription to Delgado’s porn feeds and pulled house details from the videos, stills and immersives. Who knows what he thought about all the sex. We also got a look at Aroz in bizarre domination garb. His film name was El Rozo. Don’t know who the other guys were but they had a harem of enhanced girls parading through that place regularly. Most girls seemed to be paying off surgeries for some other career path. A couple episodes and they left. I smelled money, but not a lot. It looked like a niche cottage industry from a start up score. Maybe Delgado was good at business and wanted his own little crew close by. Guess I would just have to ask him.
We conferenced with Saint Peter over the excellent net in the van. Implants are great, but you can get a lot more bandwidth and save charge next to a full access Garda comms unit. Saint Peter gave us a fair simulation of the approach and layout of Aroz’s hideout. We worked the time of day and terrain line of sight. It was hard to get close without giving them response time. Fatalities ramped up exponentially if given time, on both sides. We could infiltrate tonight, but with no idea of what waited. Going in too fast was a high risk of disaster. Etienne noted that the occupants ordered deliveries individually. If this porn studio was to receive say, new mattresses, it would take a conference to figure out who ordered them. It could get us in close.
Rafe offered that the Swat van had roll-down mimetic tarps he could strap onto the sides and program for whatever graphics looked best. One of the store delivery patterns would work. Delivery hours didn’t run this late, so we could go back to my Tio’s and collect the cousins for an early morning raid. Saint Peter would develop the entry plan overnight. We could trade seven hours for better odds of success. Everyone signed off and we dropped back into the Real.
My neck was wet with drool. Rafe shook himself and slipped into the drivers’ seat. He got us heading back to Tio’s barn while Etienne and I both shucked our crosshair tunics. Rafe was right, it did feel better.
The Father and Nuncio beat us home, but were sequestered away in their rooms, working through intel gleaned from the apartment. A message from Memo said he was going under the beam tonight with his sports surgeon. Be back tomorrow about lunchtime. Lalo and Lucho were still running through the simulators and making good progress. A few hours of intense sims followed by two hours of sleep and subliminal learning was working well. The sleep cycles gave the simulators time to absorb the sweat. Meat management in a good simulator includes a host of electrolyte replacement, toxin transport and specialty nano meds. They would wake up hungry but undamaged.
Rafe laid two deputy uniforms on the pile of gear I had assembled for my cousins. These were extra large khaki shirts with smaller red Cross sigils and cargo utility pants in black. He added carry slings for the cut down shotguns and network glasses so we could keep channels open with the cousins in the field. I intended to keep a close eye on them.
Esmeralda served up some burritos for us in her night robe. I told her we would probably be having an early breakfast and the boys would be very hungry. She smiled briefly, saying she was "Happy that Lalo and Lucho would be out of those coffin things. The boys make noises sometimes when I am cleaning." The shiver following that statement made it clear Esmeralda was getting creeped out.
"Thanks for your patience, Esmeralda. The simulators are an imposition, but we need them for the boys. How about we pick up afte
I got the boys up at five. Stretched and showered them off a little before feeding. That also gave the Cocktail number 7 some time to wake them up. They were a mess coming out of the box. It wouldn’t be good to shock Esmeralda this morning. As it was, they didn’t seem like themselves. When they first came out, they were friendly drunks. That lasted twenty minutes. Then their faces grew more immobile and blinking slowed. The serious faces and brisk speech were nothing I had seen my cousins do before. It occurred to me that I must be acting the same, Cocktail number 7 slips up on you that way. No wonder Esmeralda was feeling disoriented. Maybe Father Cervantes could spin the program with a religious viewpoint for her. I would ask him, later.
After a quick meal, I took them to the barn. They needed a workout patterned for the sims. About an hour of muscle memory familiarization would greatly speed response times. My cousins were fairly surprised at the passage of time while learning. It had felt like they were training for a week. These were military sims, not commercial gamers or avatar cubes. The speed multiplication feature was only found on the high end military and scientific units.
Lalo and Lucho looked good in deputy outfits. The right mix of utility and don’t shoot me badging. Body armor was padded molespun, stretchy enough for movement and rated to shed all but serious weapons. With the networked glasses, I could follow their progress on small screens and redirect with frag orders. They were used to my voice and terminology from personalized training, that and the Cocktails should keep them firm. I did feel a little strange about having to chemically dial down their survival instinct.
There were many documented side effects of the Cocktails the Garda had been issuing. Each new design just seemed to add to the range of symptoms. The military developed these centuries ago and still production evaded perfection. It made you wonder about the true best interests of contracted R and D labs or the sheer stubbornness of human physiognomy. The basic designs had been in use so long they were numbered based on class. Even numbers were child doses of the next odd numbered adult types. Cocktail number one was lethal to all. What we were usually issued was seven and nine. Seven was issued to short term troops, when you didn’t have the luxury of profiling and sorting. They would hold steady under supervision, at the expense of some initiative. The child dose, number 6, acted like a strong espresso for me. Nine was for speed learning. Your mind becomes receptive to a higher bandwidth of data transfer. But it is a little like filling your computer with files, hard to find what you’re looking for. Large chunks of training must be organized by the student into some kind of mental index. That is done by hijacking several higher brain processes during dosage. Nine users had little interest in anything but the training. Conversation, personal intrigues or complex movements were difficult for them to initiate. The designers added a little afterglow to Cocktail number 9 a few years back. A feeling of accomplishment added to euphoria. Felt like getting drunk with a friend at graduation. It counteracted the migraine headaches the old mix used to give. I thought the new effect was brilliant.
I pronounced them ready at nine am. Etienne and Rafe had camouflaged the swat van. We were now identified as "Home Goods Delivery." It was a distribution hub that shipped purchases from stores without licensed and bonded drivers of their own. Large and anonymous. The van looked more commercial with the removal of the steel ram over the grill and some of the antennas. It would have to do. We loaded up and Rafe showed Lucho the controls to keep his hands off of. Lucho would be our driver and Lalo his helper. Rafe put HGD patches over the Templar sigil on their khaki shirts. He handed Lucho a clipboard of phony e-documents. We three Musketeers stepped into the back of the van. Our uniforms and Combat Skins meant we needed to hide until the entry was accomplished. Etienne had thoughtfully provided the mattress from his bed to push up behind the seats. Now the view of the van interior was blocked from the front windows. Lucho checked the GPS route and pulled out of the barn to the main road.
We had almost an hour out to the target, plenty of time to network with Saint Peter and refine the plan. The overnight picture of the house had firmed up with a further interrogation of Perez. He had been there a few times for parties. We had a floorplan, fleshed out with images from the porn feeds, which had very few blank spots. We had occupant names to go with faces from the movies and identity registrations. Saint Peter had compiled dossiers on all of them. Aroz was still the only familiar face. Back tracking telecom and power providers with User Inquiry warrants gave us a good picture of schedules. We could expect most of them to be home this time of day. They seemed to only come out at night, keeping vampire hours as a lifestyle.
I cobbled together orders for my cousins including aerials, floor plans and a futbol style play. They would secure any vehicles outside or in the garage. We expected some to hold weapons and all could be used for flight. Fire if Threatened, Cuff and Detain. Rafe informed me he had put stun sticks under the front seats, so I added Stun Resisters to the orders. I sent a clip of El Rozo to them and identified him as our Primary Target. All others were Innocent until Otherwise.
Putting insets on my lenses of both their feeds, I watched them flipping through the plan and studying visuals. They were slow at commanding the glasses, having just learned the ocular movements and subvocal commands needed to interface with the network. My implant had freed me from that protocol some time ago. Hopefully, they would learn quickly with practice. But the thoroughness of their research I could not fault. The training had them reviewing and memorizing everything I sent. I left them to their studies and logged into the mobile Battlenet.
We were getting close, according to the 3D model Saint Peter had crafted. Floating in his quantum spaces was a compilation of maps, images and real-time military satellite surveillance. I could see a car in the driveway. Time lapse showed the four occupants had just gotten there. Two men and two women, unidentified. We were ten minutes away. I updated the cousins.
We pulled up to an automatic gate just off the winding road. The house was a hundred meters away and backed up to a steep ridge. The fence appeared electrified and had a cattle guard under the gate. They must be on a grazing range, remnant of the old Ejido common use lands.
Lucho rang the bell and waved his clipboard at the pole mounted camera, "Delivery." The reply was an unintelligible buzzing. I guess Lucho could figure it out, because he proceeded to verify the address. The speaker buzzed some more while the pole camera panned across the van. The gate retracted with a squeal of metal on metal.
The driveway was gravel and ended in a loop in front of the house. I watched Lalo’s feed focus on the man outside the front door. He was dressed casually, but wore an earphone. No visible weapons. As we stopped, he approached.
Lalo hopped out the passenger side and walked to the van’s back doors. The three of us were stacked at the door, waiting for release like hunting dogs. Lucho stepped out with his clipboard and initiated a conversation with the doorman about a mattress delivery. The conversation involved some third parties speaking from the doorman’s earphone. It kept him too busy to observe our exit. The bad news was, when we took him down, the third parties would hear it.
Lucho was keyed to our footsteps, waiting for my order. When we were almost around the van and in view, I told him "Now." Then we sprinted ahead to see Lucho slap the earphone off the doorman and kick his feet out from under him. The doorman landed hard on his back and lost the ability to breathe for the time it took Lucho to cuff him. I recognized Agudo Silat. When Lucho finished he threw his hands up like a rodeo va
Etienne wasn’t so fortunate, bouncing off the front door because it was locked and reinforced. The doorman must have a key, but we were pressed for time. Rafe used his breaching shotgun to shred the latch, shouted "Garda" and in they went.
I stayed in the courtyard with my cousins. They retrieved the stun sticks and pulled off the HGD patches. I tossed them two helmets. The garage doors started opening behind us, the code having been hit after thousands of tries by the remote decoder in the Swat van. We ran over to the cars. My cousins followed their instructions to cover the area and watch the front. I hit the house entry door at speed. That door wasn’t reinforced.
I came out between two cabinets in the kitchen. The doorknob had clipped my hip on the way through but it was just an annoyance. The Nano muted it as I stopped for a moment to gather sound. I had just made a loud noise and now I could hear footsteps heading out back from the dining room. The noise had flushed someone outside. I needed to contain them.
Running through the dining room and out back through arched double doors I saw the large pool and mass produced statuary visible from orbit. The scaffold of film lights and reflectors by the diving board was new. So was the bleached blonde, tied facedown on the board with a ball gag.
Her eyes gave him away, staring at me and then flicking past to the left wall around the yard. I turned to see a shirtless man levering himself over the two meter wall at the back corner. He showed bad form but was in decent shape. I checked the Battlenet for locations. Dots sprang up on a cutaway sketch of the grounds. My guy was a red 8, moving slowly along the base of the ridge. Blondie was a green 7, noting that she was already under control. There was another red 4 in the house, but my sergeants had him boxed. The others all showed green. "Pursuing 8," I said and leaned forward to start running.
No more than two steps into the run, there was a rapid popping noise from the right. It didn’t sound like I was the target, glass muted the sound. An arrow popped up on my lens, showing the gunfire was behind and to my right. It only takes a second for Saint Peter to triangulate all our audio feeds on the Battlenet. The sergeants were in a firefight. My run at the wall made a hard right around the pool to get an angle on the upper floor windows. Red 8 wasn’t going anywhere on foot and all phone services were jammed. This was the priority.
My coverage was unnecessary, as it was. A man flew out the second story window on a backward trajectory, separating him from a carbine that landed in the pool with him. Etienne leaned out the broken window and hopped down to the ground. We met on the pool decking, watching Red 4 blow air and float. "Merde, when did they get a pool?" Etienne asked. I looked over at Red 4 and said, "News to me too." Etienne hooked his thumb at the blonde, still tied to the diving board but now soaked in water. "Who’s your date?" Since he spoke French and she was gagged, I assumed he was asking me.
"I didn’t catch her name…" which brought a tortured grin to Etienne’s face. He looked down his nose and said, "Typical Navarro. The frenzy takes hold and progeny fly. Just like your Red 8. Maybe you could go do your job and I will protect these two beauties from themselves for a little while." There was no winning one of these quip fests with Etienne. It was fun to try though.
He pivoted toward the blonde and gave her a smile that made her eyes widen. She was a sight, with the running makeup, wet strands of hair and frightened stare. I’m sure to Delgado that would have been a real money shot. I’m afraid it wasn’t entirely lost on us either, Christian soldiers notwithstanding. I slapped Etienne on the shoulder as I turned around into a run and went to collect pool girl’s date. "Have you ever been wrong?"
Etienne shouted at my back, "I am filled with self-doubt."
The wall came in eight quick strides. I took the jump onto the back wall at a steep angle, pausing just a second at the top to correct for obstacles on the other side. There were plenty of those in the form of large irregular stones, slid down over time from the steep ridge. A little correction put me in a clear space upslope, another push from the right leg sent me away from the scree onto level ground. Red 8 was visible about a hundred meters away, trotting toward some arroyos. I dialed up the zoom in my lenses.
His black boots puffed dust and were holding him back from running, probably heavy with armor. I guessed it was more a fashion thing for 8. The pants were faded and had strategic torn flaps that were in style. He had no shirt but black straps like suspenders ran across his shoulders. I couldn’t see his face, but the outfit looked like El Rozo. "Eight acquired. Possible target, confirm?" Rafe and Etienne sent back "Possible." I guess they had not yet identified all their suspects. Leaning forward into an intercept run, I closed with the Rose.
The Skins accelerated me to a wind rushing speed, but I could not outrun sound. Aroz heard some disturbance and turned to see a large helmeted Templar chasing him down. This spurred him to run, in his clubfooted fashion, for the nearest arroyo. The dry gullies were bad footing and had short lines of sight, in his panicked state he thought he could lose me.
He looked back once more and realized I was much closer than before. The Skins legs blurred with their three meter stride, the only thing slowing me down was the slippage of dirt under the soles. I saw defeat for a second in his eyes and then he sprinted off in an upslope direction toward a Palo Verde tree. Now he would settle to just put an obstacle between us.
The upslope turn helped me shed speed after a skidding right deflection. We reached the tree at the same time. He stepped around the tangled trunk of the tree and snatched up a fist sized rock. I laughed and said "Did you hit your head recently? Just come back and sit with your friends and have some agua. You can do that without bruises, entiendes?" I emphasized it a little by tapping the butt of my breaching shotgun.
Aroz stared at the faceplate on my riot helmet, but showed no glimmer of recognition. His eye makeup had started running so he looked like a weepy boy toy. But the eyes had some shrewd in them. I hoped he was thinking, "Yeah, I did hit my head the other night." He dropped the rock and stood still while I cuffed him. I hooked a few plasticuffs into a chain and attached it to his leather harness. There were rings and attachments on the harness that seemed purpose built for a leash. I guided him into a brisk walk to the front of the house.
Rafe was placing the home’s occupants in a seated line near the Swat van. Some he guided, some he just lifted. Lucho was walking the blond pool girl over in a fuzzy bathrobe. The shooter was lying in a puddle by the back tire. All were plasticuffed. A quick count showed one short.
"Did you at least kiss him first?" Rafe asked.
I told him, "You know I don’t kiss the Johns. You should tell that to your idiot beau-frere." Rafe’s eyes widened a little at the jab, "He takes things the wrong way just to see what trouble looks like. I have other sisters I like even better than Josephine."
I handed him the leash. "I like Josephine fine. But I pick the Sangria next time."
"Not that awful Castilian grappa and you have a deal." Rafe spat, as though sucking lemons. I saw him smile a little.
Aroz had visibly paled during the exchange. He didn’t know French but I handed his leash to this spitting ogre of a Templar. Rafe’s normal tone was a rumbling growl. His smile had the same effect on Aroz as was seen on the pool girl. Must be a skill they teach in Alsace, where the sheep never sleep. "Go upstairs with Etienne and see Delgado" Rafe told me, gesturing with his chin at the house. I repositioned my cousins to help watch the prisoners and went inside.
The front door hung crookedly. Splinters of wood littered the entry tile. There was a dusty footprint partway up the left arch leading to the kitchen. It looked like Etienne’s. I turned right at the arch to see where he went. The short hall opened into a living area. They had decorated it as a drug bar. A long white couch lay on its back next to a short table co
I walked up the staircase, noting a cracked handrail. Etienne must have really been moving. The top of the stairs showed a dent in the wall about shoulder height. Double bedroom doors to the right were in pieces. Entering the master bedroom, I saw Etienne examining a large oak coffin. There was no bed, black curtains over the windows and a spinning collection of holo imagery floating around the room. I saw a ragged hole in the wall, leading into a walk-in closet. "You can see how disorienting this room is, to enter at speed?" Etienne said. "The shooter was over to the right, firing out of the master bath." I noticed bullet holes on the wall behind me.
"I had to get behind him through the closet. Rafe redirected his attention by slapping his chest, that gorilla impersonation he does sometimes." In his Combat Skins, Rafe can make the slaps sound like a submachine gun. That was the popping noise I had heard. The shooter’s own weapon was fitted with a suppressor. "What’s with the coffin?" I asked, pointing at its elaborate wood and brass placard showing an inverted Roman cross. "Delgado is in there. I think it’s his simulator, but the outside is armored like a safe room." Etienne rapped knuckles on the lid. It sounded solid.
There were no visible connections or controls. It was tightly bolted to the floor and locked airtight. Without tools, we weren’t getting in. "At least the signals are jammed." He said. I told him I had an idea. "Stay here and wait for him to rise." He smirked, getting into the play. "I will find a stake. I am already wearing a cross."
Downstairs, I stacked two couches to allow me to reach the ceiling. Handfuls of plaster later, I was looking at some pipes running to the bottom of the coffin. Using a loop of monowire, I cut the power line and hand crimped the metal air line.
Minutes passed. Delgado seemed determined to last us out. He was probably waiting for his lawyer to get here. Since the warrants weren’t filed until we exited the van that could be a while. We had shifted to microwave bands when launching the assault, everything else was jammed or under denial of service. Unless he was using a quantum linkage, nobody had called out.
"The Policia are going to be here within the hour. Do you think he will last that long?" Etienne asked. "He’s still Innocent until Otherwise by the regs. I think this only merits Resistance."
I looked up at the pipes and got an idea. I sent my Battlenet feed as an inset on Etienne’s lens. "Watch my hands and stand ready."
The loop of monowire came out again. I cut the air line to expose the pipe and then pulled through the waterline. Water sprayed from the severed end until I got it pushed into the air line. A little crimping and water slowed to a trickle from the join. Now it was following the copper pipe up into Delgado’s dark, foul box. I hoped he had a strong sense of survival.
"That got his attention" Etienne drawled. I could hear thrashing in the coffin from beneath. "I’ll zap him on exit." I remembered the shooter, having a weapon up there in the fall back. A guy with a safe room or coffin or whatever might be holding protection. Etienne had already gotten lucky today. It wasn’t his turn again. "Negatory zap. Stand clear of exit and ready to rush, will zap from here." Etienne drawled back "D’accord."
I watched Etienne’s feed of the coffin for movement. He was standing behind the lid, using it for cover. When the lid suddenly flew open, it swung one hundred eighty degrees to strike the stun stick in his hand. The stick was caught for a moment on the wrong side of the lid. Delgado sat up from the interior amid a lot of splashing and gasps of air. The pistol in his hand was already firing, putting bullets in the master bath. The lid striking Etienne’s stun stick made a noise that oriented his head toward Etienne. The gun tracked around, still firing bullets into walls. I squeezed my wet hand to the metal lines and sent voltage.
Delgado jerked into a straightened position that still left his heels in the water. The gun stopped firing because he couldn’t release the trigger to reset the action. Etienne’s feed also showed sparks coming from the coffin and the floating holograms flickered off. The electrical field let me feel Etienne approaching Delgado, ready to take over when I stopped. I gave a final surge that popped a light fixture on the ceiling and bled away the charge.
A lamp in the living room flickered. It must have been Etienne. His feed showed me a wet Delgado lying on the floor with Etienne’s hands on his chest. He was restarting Delgado’s heart. He must have had an undocumented condition. Then I noticed the simulator gel on Delgado’s body. I had forgotten it wasn’t really a coffin and the gel was a great conductor. Delgado woke up and started coughing. Good news. No harm, no foul for a Resisting suspect.
****