“Ten dollars he’s going to try,” Kohei said.
“Bloody hell,” Omri said. “Dimon was scouting it out for him in person. These blokes never use the internet for anything. They’re religiously old-school.”
“Keep on them,” Yuri yelled. “Kohei, with me. Dalager, empty the hub, now! Our suspect is coming through.”
He ran out of active ops. There was a portal door twenty meters away. Boris threw a route to the Northern Territory central hub on his screen lenses. The portal door led into Connexion’s internal network. Left turn, through two more doors, right turn at the ten-portal junction hub. Three straight—
Poi Li’s icon sprang up. “What’s happening?” she demanded.
“Akkar’s surfaced. We’re about to take him down.”
“All right, I’ve got the feed. I see him. What’s in his courier bag?”
“We don’t know. The portal sensors will pick up anything dangerous.”
“I don’t want him in a central hub.”
“If I send the tactical team through to Kintore now, he’ll run.”
“They can catch him,” she said.
“There isn’t time. Let him through, and he’s contained on our territory.”
“I need a decision,” Omri said. “Akkar is ten meters from the Kintore hub.”
“If the bag’s a bomb, if he’s going to suicide, we can’t let him do it on Kintore’s Main Street,” Yuri yelled. “Too many people.”
“Central hub is almost empty of pedestrians,” Dalager confirmed. “Team assuming interception positions.”
“Very well,” Poi Li said. “Let him through.”
“Dimon is walking away,” Omri said.
“Keep the drones on him,” Yuri said.
“Yes,” Poi Li said. “And route their feed to me. I’m sending a team through the C and GST portal; they’ll intercept before he can vanish on us again.”
Yuri almost smiled at the déjà vu moment. It was exactly like first fall, when Poi Li had jumped in, putting her own people into the operation—but now she didn’t have exclusivity on the operation’s data. “Tell them to be careful,” he said. “Akkar is the brains, but Dimon is the muscle. He’ll likely be armed.”
“I can access a file, thank you, Yuri,” Poi Li said.
Yuri sprinted through the last portal. He was in a windowless corridor. At the far end a locked double door closed off the hub. Boris sent it his access code, and the bolts clicked open.
“He’s in the Kintore hub,” Omri said. “Using a cash code. Through the barriers now.”
“Scanners picked up some kind of flask in the bag,” Tarli shouted.
“Is it a weapon?”
“The flask’s metal. Can’t scan the interior. No residual molecular traces. He’s going through to central—”
“Dalager, intercept!” Yuri said. He burst through the double doors, with Kohei right behind him. They shot out onto the central hub floor, quarter of the way around the big circle from the Kintore portal. Shouts rang out, echoing along the eerily empty space.
“Down!”
“On your knees!”
“Hands where we can see them!”
“Down, down!”
“Do not move!”
Up ahead, Yuri saw the Kintore portal door. Akkar was in front of it. On his knees, his hands raised. Five figures in light armor were closing on him, their carbines raised, ruby target lasers slicing the air to form a neat grouping of dots over Akkar’s heart.
Yuri skidded to a halt behind them. “What’s in the bag, Akkar?”
Akkar smiled grimly. “Open it and find out.”
“Put it down slowly,” the tactical team’s leader instructed. “There is too much firepower in here to risk making people nervous.”
Akkar lifted the StepSmart satchel from his shoulder, holding it by its strap, a grin spreading across his face. Yuri didn’t like that grin at all, but they had every angle covered.
“You mean this bag?”
“It’s over, Akkar,” Yuri said. “Put it down.”
Akkar stared at him for a long moment, then the defiance collapsed, and he put the bag on the shiny tile floor and raised his hands.
Moments later the tactical response team had his wrists zip-locked and hauled him away. Yuri and Kohei stared at the satchel nervously.
“Bomb squad on the way,” Omri said. “Ninety seconds.”
“I don’t feel the need to stand this close,” Kohei said. “We can’t contribute at this point.”
“Yeah,” Yuri growled. They both walked back, around the curve of the concourse.
The three members of the bomb squad jogged out of the same double door Yuri had just used, their bulky protective armor parodying a sumo suit. A safetez followed them, its tracks a blur. The spider-leg array of manipulator arms locked around its stubby central cylinder.
“Omri,” Yuri asked. “How are we doing with Dimon?”
Boris immediately threw a drone camera image across the screen lens. It was the green-and-black monotone of light amplification circuitry, looking down on a street in Kintore’s industrial zone. Dimon was running into a big warehouse with a Warbi Crude Metal Corp sign on the gable end.
“Bugger!” Tarli exclaimed.
“What is it?” Yuri asked as the drone’s camera image flickered.
“He’s got electronic countermeasures operating down there. It’s nearly military grade. I can’t send the drones in any closer, or we’ll lose them.”