NOVEL FROG Chapter 16: Blood Trail
Rook chuckled to himself as he watched the helicopter take off. His massive frame nearly blocked the door.
"What's so funny?" I demanded.
The armored Döbian turned to face me. His carbine was slung across his chest but his eyes were still scanning the room for clues and threats.
"That helicopter costs six thousand Western Alliance Credits per flight hour. The three liters of nanite infused blood we gave him are valued at nearly one hundred thousand WAC, per liter. I estimate the total cost of saving Mr. Brown's life at three hundred and fifty thousand WAC. The average income of armed security in Porto is under sixty thousand WAC, less than a fifth of what it will cost to save him."
"And your point is?" I asked, wondering if I was going to get a lecture about fiscal responsibility. Because if I was, he could go fuck off right now.
"It is worth every single credit." Rook replied, surprising me. "If we do not take care of those who risk their lives for us, how can we expect them to continue to do so? Most others in this building would have left him to die, either here or in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. But you stayed and made sure he survived. This is a good reputation to have as an employer. Of course you were incredibly foolish."
"How so?" I demanded.
The Döbian pointed at the ceiling. There was a bloody gloved hand print on one of the white ceiling tiles. "There was a second intruder. Our people did a sweep but they seem to have left already." He guided me along the path they had taken. There was an open window in the kitchen and a smudge of blood on the sill. "Lucky for you they chose escape over revenge." He said as he closed and locked it.
"Where did the blood come from?" I asked.
"Perhaps they checked on their partner when you were tending to Mr. Brown. From the gear on the dead one it seems that they either did not expect a confrontation or prioritized stealth over survivability."
He walked back over to the dead intruder and pointed at the wounds in their back. "Any decent ballistic insert, even a flexible one, would have stopped conventional handgun rounds. But they left their back plates at home and paid the price for it. They also did not properly scout the location, otherwise they would have known about the ballistic glass."
"Why do you think they were here in the first place?" I couldn't understand it. If they were just looking around they could have run away instead of following me into the office. And if they intended to murder me I would already be dead.
"Most likely this was an attempted abduction." Rook surveyed the living room, pausing as he saw the stack of magazines before continuing. "Have you checked your safe?"
"No." I said, "But it's in my office. Do you think they were hoping I would open it up?"
"Possibly. Let's go check." He suggested.
He followed me to the office and watched as I opened what looked like a closet to reveal a hidden black steel safe. It was set flush with the walls and ceiling with no gaps above or below.
"Allow me." Rook said, "Though unlikely, there may be booby traps. I was sent the combination when we responded to your distress call."
"As you wish." I said, stepping aside. The safe was purely mechanical with an old school dial. I almost never used it because it took too long to open.
Simple mechanical music began to play as he entered the combination, specifically a rendition of Wiegenlied by Brahms. There was a mechanism inside that wound up a music box when the dial was spun.
At least once I had heard music coming from my office and looked inside to find a party guest or caterer wearing a guilty expression. There was something about a big mysterious safe that made them want to spin the dial and see what happened.
Rook opened the safe and pressed the hidden button on the door that unwound the music box, stopping the music. "Nothing exploded so we should be good. Tell me if anything is missing or out of place." He said.
I went through the safe top to bottom. "Do people really put traps in safes?" I asked as I sorted through the folders of important documents looking for anything that might be missing. It was nice to have something mindless to do. It stopped me from having to think or process.
"Usually they do so to destroy the contents and anyone who would attempt to gain unauthorized entry. I once knew an old veteran who placed several pounds of explosives on the inside of the door to his gun safe. His explanation was that if anyone tried to drill the lock he wanted to make sure they ended up splattered against the far wall like a cartoon character."
"Yeesh!" I was about halfway done and so far nothing was missing.
"Another more common method is to take a hand grenade with a zero delay fuse and loop one end of a piece of wire under the spoon. Then put it into a metal can and pull the pin. The can stops the spoon from opening enough to detonate the grenade. But pull on the wire and out comes an explosive surprise." He paused as if remembering something. "Of course you need to make sure to secure the can, or put something heavy on top of it, to stop it from moving when the wire is pulled. The other side of the wire goes to a hook on the inside of the door."
I was most of the way through now and nothing was out of place. "Sounds nasty, what do they call it?" I asked, not really paying attention.
"They call it a grenade in a can." Rook said. "It isn't a particularly clever name. But it does get the point across. Of course, most grenades these days have variable delay fuzes and remote detonators. But a classic is a classic."
"Fascinating." I finished my inventory. "All my documents and jewelry are still here. Nothing seems to have been taken or added."
However, something was missing from my apartment. Or rather, someone. "Hey, where's Krieger?" I asked. "I haven't seen him since he let the medics in."
"One second." Rook said as he made a call via wetware. "Sparky hasn't seen him for at least five minutes. Once he filled us in on what happened we told him to wait in the kitchen."
I put two and two together at the same time as everyone else did. I hadn't heard the elevator ding. "Shit. They must have gotten him on the way out." I said, my stomach turning cold as I realized that someone I knew was probably dead and I hadn't even noticed. How could I be so fucking stupid?
Rook closed the door to the office and waited, his carbine trained on the doorway in case anything tried to come through. His ears perked up as he tried to hear what might be going on outside. "Sparky is checking the patio. He found drag marks on the ground outside the kitchen window." Rook said. "They weren't there when we checked earlier."
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and Rook held his position, not saying anything.
"It's me, Sparky. I'm coming in." Said a familiar voice. Then the door handle began to turn.
There was a brief moment of hesitation. Then the Döbian reached a decision and fired. First at chest height through the door, then at the walls to either side of the door frame. He followed up by stitching a line of fire across the wall at knee level. His carbine made an evil sound like a buzzsaw running at full tilt as it launched thirty supersonic rounds in less than four seconds.
A second later there was a loud bang that shook the walls and a flash of light shined through the gaps between the door and the frame as some kind of concussive grenade went off.
I looked over to Rook with wide eyes, waiting for an explanation of what just happened.
"Sparky is still out on the patio." He said, his voice still level and cool. "I checked his location when I heard the knock. The second intruder must have snuck back in when he went outside. Sparky is on his way back to confirm the kill."
Two more shots from a carbine rang out. "And that would be Sparky doing just that." The Döbian smiled. "If these bastards think they can get past me that easily they have something else coming."
Sparky opened the door. "The intruder is down. I found our security guard with his neck snapped in a utility closet near the pool. Looks like they killed him and pulled the body out through the kitchen window while everyone was focused on saving his friend."
"Fuck!" I swore, wondering how I had been so stupid. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!"