He emerged from a stand of sugar maples, and saw he was just about fifty yards from the edge of a house; it was a spread-out, glassy, angular place, modern architectural-style, one-story. It was exactly where it should be—the smart house—it used a distributed control system, an intelligent network to govern all the devices in the house, right down to door locks, window shutters, lighting, voice activation systems. There were satellite dishes on the roof, and another control antenna, which rotated as Wolfe watched. It was probably there to control the drone.
A brawny, heavy bellied man in a blue parka walked around the corner of the building, a Mack 10 over one shoulder. He was looking at his cell phone as he walked along. Probably reading a text from someone. The text might be business but more likely he was just doing a shitty job of being a sentry. A Graywater.
Wolfe waited. The sentry wandered to a corner of the yard and sat down on a wooden bench, still looking into the screen of his phone. Still Wolfe waited.
Minutes passed. No other sentry showed up.
Just one sentry outside? Good. Overconfidence, maybe because of the drone. And those security cameras on the corners of the building.
The presence of a Graywater made Wolfe suspect that Pearce’s info was right—that Verrick or Van Ness or both might well be in that building, right now.
Tempting to go in there, gun blazing, and kill the sons of bitches, right now. Kill that sentry first, take his Mack 10…
No. There was a threat to Chicago itself. Maybe to millions of people. If he killed Verrick and Van Ness right now it might precipitate the attack—or send the other perpetrators into deeper cover, where it’d be harder to find out what they were up to. It couldn’t be just Van Ness and Verrick. There had been an auditorium full of “Purity” enthusiasts on 77th Street. And there was Winters to consider…
Wolfe shook his head. He needed to gather all the information he could get about Purity’s plans… So he had to put some pressure on these guys without killing them.
Might not be able to get by without killing that Graywater guard, though. He’d been reluctant to kill the Graywater mercs at the auditorium. Then he’d had to kill one. Now, he was a little less reluctant. Funny how that works, he thought.
He was, by his own estimate, just out of range of the cameras on the house. Getting closer he was going to have to use the background scrambler. The PearcePhone would transmit digital imagery to the cameras that blurred him with the surroundings—but anyone looking closely at the security monitors would see the outline of a man. They wouldn’t know what man, though. And soon they’d know someone was around anyway…
Wolfe set the scrambler, then moved off along the treeline, till he was behind the sentry. He drew his .45, sprinted across the grass and up to the wrought iron fence; he was just clambering over, when the sentry, alerted by the sound, turned around and gaped at Wolfe.
“What the f—”
The sentry was fumbling at his Mack 10 when Wolfe jumped down inside the fence, bringing the barrel of his gun down on the man’s head as he came.
The gun connected solidly and the Graywater merc went down like a dropped feed sack.
Wolfe was gratified to see that the man had handcuffs clipped to his belt. He pulled the Mack 10 free, put it over his own shoulder, then retrieved the cuffs. He cuffed one of the big man’s hands behind his back, the other to a post of the fence. Then he rushed to the house, pressing himself to a wall underneath a camera.
He readied the PearcePhone, and scanned for the home automation server. Pearce had already run a password cracking program. Pearce entered the password, hacked the smart house, and then got a floor plan of the building from the server, indicating people in the rooms. The smart house was doing all his surveillance for him. Each room had a system to pick up voice prompts for the house computer. It could also be used to listen to people talking. Wolfe heard them on the small wireless earpod.
“Sir, there’s something here, sir.”
“Something where, Starling?”
“On the monitor. Does it look like the sentry is down, sir?”
“Well zoom in on him you fool!”
“Sir, yes sir.”
Who is coming out with this sir yes sir stuff? Wolfe wondered. He’d recognized the voice talking to the guy. Verrick.
“Yes, sir, he’s definitely down—and cuffed to that fence.”
“Holy fuck! Okay, check all the exterior cameras, if you don’t see anything then rewind the digital feed! And recall the drone! Get it back here! And where’s the other Graywater?”
“Here, sir!”
“Get out there—no, wait till drone gets back, should be less than a minute, we’ll cover you with that…”
“Should I call the police, sir?” Starling asked.
“No! Are you nuts?”
“Sir…” Starling hesitated before saying, “…no sir.”
Wolfe chuckled—and, through the house’s automation server, directed the doors to lock. He found an option for emergency lock override… and unchecked it. Warning: House will stay locked for thirty minutes, said the message. Continue?
He clicked on yes.
“Sir! The door is locked!”
“Well unlock it!”
“It’s not responding, sir!”
“Sir—”
“What is it, Starling?”
“Sir, I rewound the security footage, sir! Someone’s hacked the system! You can see the man some of the time, but not clearly, sir, he’s used image blending on the—”
“Who the hell is he?” That was the Graywater’s voice. He sounded scared.
“Could be Quinn—he got word Pearce is still alive. He blames me because it was part of the deal for me to… it doesn’t matter.”
“I doubt anyone in the Club would have this much hacker sophistication. They could have hired a fixer, sir, but this is very… very Aiden Pearce.”
“Get that admiration out of your voice, Starling! Pearce is scum!”
“Sir, yes sir, but when you asked me to study him I did admire the way he…”
“Shut up! Get the drone back and find this guy!”
“Maybe we oughta get out through the windows!” the Graywater whined.
Wolfe smiled, and hit the controls that brought down metal shutters, blocking off the windows. Those were an anti-hurricane device. But they effectively sealed the residents of the house in.
The doors were high-security. They wouldn’t be easy to break. Shooting the lock wouldn’t work. They’d have to get a sledgehammer and work on it.
He could hear shouting, faintly, from inside the house.
Wolfe switched to the house heating system—and turned it up full. He then gave the house a series of other commands…
He heard a humming, then, and looked up in time to see the delta shaped drone appearing over the treetops, coming toward the house.
Delta Force, delta-shaped drone. Did Verrick intend that irony?
He didn’t have time to ponder—he was running, cutting right at the corner of the house. He heard a hissing, and bullets thwacked into the ground behind him. The drone was shooting at him. Verrick was probably controlling it, enjoying this little remote controlled hunting trip.
More bullets zinged past, one of them ricocheting from a metal shutter over a window. Next time that thing wouldn’t miss. Wolfe could almost feel the crosshairs on his back. And he pictured that dead deer in the meadow…