Ryan M. Patrick

The red Martian clay crunched under Mark Clancy’s dress shoes.

He walked through an open-air market in the domed Chinese colony of Zhongnanhai, his mind laser-focused on the mission at hand.

Clancy had gotten a tip from a local informant that his target, a bald, overweight Brazilian named Paul Esteves, planned on making a transaction today somewhere in this large marketplace. The arms dealer had been offering a cyber weapon, a danger to the galaxy-connecting Net, to different underworld contacts for weeks. His DIA handlers didn’t have much in the way of details to give Clancy, just that it was dangerous, and apparently Esteves had found a buyer.

But no one with the Brazilian’s description was to be found anywhere in the city.

Lost in his thoughts, Clancy was jostled by an elderly Han man, who turned and spat in Mandarin. “Watch yourself.”

Clancy thought about responding—he was conversational in the language—but decided against it. A younger version of Clancy would have snapped in anger, but instead he just nodded and moved along with the throng as he checked faces against a mental image of his target.

He didn’t know the market’s name. It was a chaotic sprawl of stalls and shacks, where anything could be bought or sold. It reminded him of stories about old Pacific Rim slums—only this one had been transplanted onto Mars.

As he strolled, he noticed a heavy concentration of people carrying signs with messages in the local dialect. Most of them were young, high school-age or maybe a little older. A protest was likely coming, one for a movement Clancy didn’t hold in high regard. Watching the likely agitators were security cameras placed at strategic points around the market, tied into a complex surveillance system that monitored every centimeter of the colony.

Clancy passed by a fish seller—Zhongnanhai had a huge below-ground aquaculture district—and made a left by an electronics seller. He tripped over an exposed bundle of wires as the aroma of day-old fish assaulted his nostrils. As he steadied himself, his eyes followed the cords to a towering pillar at the market’s center. The colony’s Net node. It linked Zhongnanhai to the inter-system network, allowing near-instantaneous communication across the Sol system.

Wandering wasn’t getting him any closer to his target. It was time to change tactics. Clancy reached the edge of the marketplace and found himself in a different area—the Chinese colony’s International District where foreign embassies and hotels were located. It was a wealthier area; the concrete streets had been swept free of dust and the walls of the mid-rise buildings regularly power washed, but it still had the grimy, chaotic feel of Zhongnanhai.

He stepped off the pathway. A small-wheeled electric vehicle, one that was supposed to be driven on the main asphalt road, passed by and almost hit him. Muttering a curse, Clancy took a dark side street, lit by a chain of dying fluorescent bulbs and occupied by a small family of street dogs, to one of the main pedestrian thoroughfares.

It was a nicer area, the tiled cobblestones gave the area a very European feel, but the smells wafting from the nearby restaurant were those of East Asian food. His eyes snapped to an outdoor patio, attached to a restaurant that was a fusion of a Mediterranean cafe with a Japanese tea house, near the edge of the district close to a large industrial area. It sat on the corner of a busy intersection of a vehicle road and a pedestrian walkway, a perfect spot to look for someone who didn’t want to be seen.

He entered through the main entrance and took a seat. Clancy ordered a coffee and looked around to take in the sights.

This area was much more diverse population-wise than the Han-dominated marketplace. He spotted a Dutch-speaking European couple pushing a baby in a stroller, a group of African schoolchildren on a trip from a nearby colony, and a harried American businessman speaking loudly on a handheld cellular computer in just the first minute of his surveillance. However, he saw very few olive-skinned Mediterranean types, and none of those matched Esteves’ description.

There were a lot of people here—just a matter of time before he spotted the Brazilian.

He sighed as a young Chinese couple passed by, walking hand-in-hand and smiling ear-to-ear. Clancy wished to be like them—carefree, without a concern in the world, not having to worry about the fate of the galaxy. But neither his previous career as an F-77A Rapier pilot or his current one as a covert operative gave him that luxury. And, even worse, the person he would have shared that bliss with was buried in a grave outside Pittsburgh.

His coffee came, and he took a sip. Bitter, but it wasn’t the worst he had ever had. Clancy gave a grin and nod to the waitress before going back to his people-watching.

Still no sign of his mark.

Clancy took another taste of his hot drink and watched a hovering aircar float slowly through the street, barely missing a couple of Japanese tourists with their faces in a holomap projected from a small handheld computer. If he was in the area, Esteves would have to pass by at some point.

But he didn’t. The late morning rush started to die down, and there was still no sign of his mark.

Clancy leaned over and rubbed his temples. His sinuses were killing him, the artificial atmosphere of the dome causing a pressure build-up. He looked up and did everything in his power not to shout.

A new group of pedestrians stood at the intersection outside of the cafe, waiting to cross the road. Most were locals, Han Chinese types on the shorter side. But in the middle of the gaggle was a tall, heavyset man of Latin or Mediterranean descent, visibly sweating despite the cool temperature inside of the dome.

Esteves.

Clancy wanted to pump his fist, to shout in celebration, but he kept his cool—this wasn’t his first rodeo. He shook his head slightly, pushing the headache away, and dropped a pair of renminbi notes onto the table.

The light changed, and the group started to move.

He saw the man clearly. Esteves wore a gray suit, poorly cut, and moving in almost a trot as he tried to get around a pack of miners wearing company garb walking slowly in front of him.

The Brazilian was in a hurry.

Clancy slowly got up from his table and looked for an exit from the outdoor eating area, but there were none that wouldn’t draw unwanted attention. He had to go through the front and draw as little attention as possible.

But, by the time he got out to the street, it was almost empty.

He quickly found the miners at the next intersection, walking and speaking a pidgin dialect of Mandarin from whatever rural Chinese province they had been recruited from. The group left the International District and was in the process of heading toward Zhongnanhai’s city center, probably to get on a transport to one of the distant mines outside of the dome.

But Esteves was gone.

One of the paths, the one to the left, was a dead end. The Brazilian didn’t go that way.

Another was further down the boulevard that the cafe had been on. If he had changed direction and doubled back, Clancy would have been able to see him. That meant that he took a right, toward Zhongnanhai’s industrial district.

Clancy gritted his teeth and removed a small cylinder from his pocket. He pressed a button recessed into one of its ends and surreptitiously tossed it into the air as he crossed the street in the direction of his prey.

The tube sprouted a pair of antennas, then a tiny set of rotor blades, before floating into the air and hovering just above his head.

Clancy quickly slipped a contact lens into his left eye. A small image appeared at the far left of his field of vision, a view taken from the electro-optical sensor onboard the drone.

He made the right turn on the sidewalk and walked down the avenue. At the edge of the International District, brick apartments gave way to factories and warehouses—steel and aluminum rising from the Martian dust.

The entire area was devoid of pedestrian traffic. A few autonomous work trucks ambled by shuffling material from one plant to another, but Clancy didn’t see any people—let alone Esteves. The drone overhead mirrored his path as he walked. Its feed showed more of the same—not a soul around.

Where had he gone? Clancy blinked twice, waited a second, then once more.

The drone’s feed turned from an electro-optical, panchromatic shot to that of an infrared camera.

He instantly noticed a source of heat from the entryway of an industrial plant that he had just passed.

A figure—blurry in the lower-resolution time series shots coming from the IR sensor—pressed up against the side of the door.

Clancy continued walking as he monitored the drone’s feed.

About ten seconds later, the blur moved away from the entryway and darted down an alley towards a monstrous half-finished building, a warehouse or data center in the early stages of construction with materials, machines, and temporary structures strewn around it. Next to it was a nearly complete, ten-story office building with a giant crane looming over it. Both sites were surprisingly empty—no work was being done today.

Clancy paused at the corner of the building and waited for the drone to catch up. Switching back to EO mode, he saw the figure duck into the half-constructed edifice.

He took a breath and checked the pistol worn in a shoulder holster under his jacket. The Browning automatic was there, along with an extra magazine. This was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, but Clancy was prepared for anything. He didn’t want another Buenos Aires. He waited for Esteves to fully enter the building and then walked down the alley, keeping to one side of it in the shadow of the industrial plant, as the drone continued its vigil overhead.

Clancy was almost at the construction site when he noticed a pair of new figures enter the area from the opposite side on the drone feed. He froze and ducked behind a dumpster, then switched back to IR. The two new arrivals weren’t alone. Another blur came in from yet another direction.

Then the feed went out.

He cursed and tried to reboot the drone using a complex blinking gesture on the contact lens. But it wouldn’t respond. Something had taken out either the drone itself or the RF data feed to his lens.

Clancy remained calm, slowing his breathing to distract from the unsettling feeling creeping up inside of him. Looking around, he saw a better vantage point a few meters away inside of a small trailer. Clancy crouched down even further and made a quick, quiet sprint to the temporary building. Like the rest of the construction site, it was deserted.

He slowly opened the door and slipped inside.

It was an office, a temporary space for the engineers and program managers at the site to work in. A couple of computer terminals sat on one side and a large desk with a blueprint on it on the other. The trailer had windows on both sides. Clancy crept to the one that looked out over the half-constructed building and peeked out of it.

He spotted two men and a woman standing in an empty room on the first floor less than a dozen meters from him. The woman was confidently smoking a cigarette and the two men, one of which was Esteves, stood uneasily near her. The other man was dark-skinned and thin, almost skeletal, and the woman was short and of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern descent. They seemingly hadn’t noticed his presence.

The dark-skinned man fiddled with some kind of small handheld electronic device. Clancy wagered it was some kind of portable jammer that had taken out his drone’s datalink.

That took care of three of the four shapes he had seen before the IR feed went out. Where was the fourth?

He needed to get closer.

There was another door on the far side. Clancy positioned himself next to it, opened it a crack, and slipped through. He then crawled slowly on his hands and knees to the side of the building.

He was just a couple of meters away, just close enough to hear them talk. “Are you sure she’s coming?” one of the men—Esteves, most likely—said.
The woman threw her cigarette out of the half-completed wall, narrowly missing Clancy’s left leg. He pulled his limb closer to his body. “Yes. I told you already. She’s got a lot on her plate.”

Clancy snuck a peek over the side of the wall to the three individuals. They hadn’t moved from their initial positions. He put his head back down.

“Were you waiting for me?” a new voice—female, husky and seductive—said as it came towards the group.

Clancy wanted to look over again but thought better of it. He remained still.

“We were,” the black man replied with a hint of an African accent in a high pitch that didn’t quite match his spider-like demeanor. “How are you doing, Ann?”

The new arrival ignored his question. “Why are we meeting here?”

“Because no one would expect us to.” The other woman seemed frustrated.

Esteves snorted. “Someone was watching me downtown, but I lost them.”

Clancy suppressed a snort.

“That’s probably because you’ve had your hands in arms smuggling for a decade and a half,” the African man said in his distinctive voice. “You’re the first person I think of when the term ‘gun runner’ comes up in polite conversation.”

The other two laughed.

“Shut the fuck up.” Esteves’ anger got a chuckle from the rest of the group. Clancy smiled from his hiding spot. “I’m done with guns. I’m into more deadly things now.” A long, uncomfortable pause. “So, are we going to talk?”

“Yes, of course we are.” The high-pitched tone of the African. “That’s why we’re here.”

“My clients are wondering when they’re going to be able to get access to their funds,” Esteves said with an air of authority. “They have spent a great deal of time and resources on acquiring this piece of software and would like to recoup their investment.”

Clancy’s ears perked up. If he got answers here, this was going to be an easy mission after all. Get their names, slip away, and get back to Earth on the daily shuttle out of Columbia, relaxing on the way home. Someone else within the intelligence community would take care of the next steps.

“We’re having an issue with one of the accounts we had been using,” the other man replied. “Ann can explain in detail if you want—”

“I don’t want to hear excuses,” Esteves cut the other man off. “I want the money so that my clients can get paid.” A short pause. “Do I need to talk to Jakub?”

“We just need more time,” the new woman, Ann, said. “But we also need you to deliver on your end.”

Esteves scoffed, then spit on the ground. “When have I not delivered?”

The silence that followed told Clancy the answer to the woman’s question.

The Brazilian spoke again. “This code is hot. I could sell it on the open market for a much higher price than what you’ve offered, but my clients’ past relationship with Calvin trumps that. But, if you’re unable to pay…” his voice trailed off.

Who was buying? Who was Calvin?

Clancy noticed a scuffling sound coming from the other end of the complex, followed by half a dozen loud voices, all speaking Mandarin, heading towards the meeting he had been observing.

“I thought this site was deserted,” the African man hissed, his voice higher than before.

“It was supposed to be,” the first woman replied in a loud whisper. “He didn’t say anyone would be here. Let’s scram.”

Esteves and the other three individuals scurried away in the direction Clancy had come from.

Moments later, Clancy peeked back around as a dozen Chinese men entered the lower level of the construction site, chattering in Mandarin.

He groaned silently. Clancy was trapped.

Looking back at the group that had congregated at the construction site, he saw that they were all men, Han Chinese, ranging in age from their early twenties all the way up to an older, stooped figure of about seventy. He had two beefy bodyguards in suits and sunglasses, one standing on either side of him, as he walked slightly ahead of the rest of the group.

They were security. But for whom?

Clancy wished he still had his drone. There was a facial recognition algorithm onboard that would have answered that question for him, but it was no longer an option.

The men spoke quickly, too fast for Clancy’s limited experience in Chinese languages to pick up. But they seemed incredibly excited about something. He ducked down and strained to listen.

“This is good, this is good,” he heard a soft voice say slowly in Mandarin. He must be some kind of local official. “And how long will it take to continue the rest of the project?”

Clancy missed the response.

“And how is the labor situation?”

He missed that response as well, but it was long and drawn-out and probably beyond his command of the language.

“Ah, the colonists,” the soft voice, probably belonging to the older man, said. “They never change.”

None of the other men acknowledged the speaker.

Clancy peeked around again. One of the burly men providing security had his hand over his eyes as he peered around the upper levels of the other construction site.

“What is it, Daming?”

The big man held a hand up. “Quiet, I think I heard something.”

Clancy was confused as he ducked back down. He hadn’t made a sound, and the entire site should have been empty after Esteves and his partners had left.

Was someone else here, watching the same thing as him?

Clancy took a deep breath. He hoped that they wouldn’t fan out and start looking for whatever sound the security official had heard.

“It was probably nothing,” the beefy man said. “Carry on, sir.”

“Very well.”

Clancy heard a thick crack, like the sound of a stick breaking.

He peered around again just in time to catch the old Chinese man fall to the ground of the half-constructed building, a red stain spreading on his jacket.

Whoever else was here, they weren’t here for surveillance. They were here for an assassination.

Read more in The Europan Deception, now available at Amazon!