Radicals, p.1
Radicals, page 1
RADICALS
Nik Korpon
Copyright © 2021 by Nik Korpon
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover design by JT Lindroos
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Radicals
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by the Author
Preview from Complicated Shadows by James D.F. Hannah
Preview from Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell
Preview from Roughhouse by Jeffery Hess
For Colin and Tim, who showed me that my brain
wasn’t broken, even if they never knew it.
1
They parked the car two blocks down, just past where streetlights spilled weak umbrellas of light over the street, making the broken glass glitter like fallen stars. All three shuffled out, bumping the doors closed with their hips. The summer air was damp enough to touch, thick with the smell of tiny backyard grills and festering garbage. They hurried down the sidewalk, the night thrumming with cars and shouting. The fat man stopped short when a rat scurried out from beneath a car, then kicked a bottle at it, the glass skittering across the pavement.
The man running point snapped his fingers, then set his index finger on his lips before dragging it across his throat.
“It’s the middle of the city in the middle of a heat wave,” the fat one said. “Ain’t no one sleeping.”
The point man stopped short, the fat one’s gut squished against his sharp elbow. The fat man slapped away the elbow, then straightened his back, his stomach rounding out.
“If people aren’t asleep, it’s more important that we shut the fuck up and not make any more noise,” the lead said. “Everyone stays quiet, we complete the mission, and everyone’s happy. Got me?”
“Be careful, son,” the short man said to the fat one. “He’ll take your nuts, you don’t watch your mouth.”
The fat man started to respond, then caught his tongue, and nodded forward. “Are we going or what?” he said to the lead.
The point turned without a word and continued. Two hundred yards out, Community Health Medical Clinic—housed in a converted row home—sat quietly between a boarded-up Chinese restaurant and a darkened pawnshop, its metal gate drawn down tight. The moon silvered the windows, making it hard to see inside. The lack of visibility could have complicated the mission, if they hadn’t already obtained the staff schedule, security plans, and three weeks’ worth of camera footage of the lone watchman. Places like this, they made hacking as easy as breathing.
Standing at the corner, awash in jaundiced light, they pulled down their balaclavas and the group split.
Raymond Cody slapped his feet on the desk and opened his latest issue of Popular Mechanics beneath the lamp. His daughter had got him a subscription as a Father’s Day gift, and he’d gone to the library to read whatever back issues they had on hand. Really, it was a gift for Raymond’s grandson, who was spending the summer weekdays with Raymond while his mother worked. He’d gotten into computers and gadgets over the last year at school and talked about them endlessly. Giga-this, pixel-ready that, slam-zoom-something or other. It was all Greek to Raymond; his TV still had knobs. So the magazine was like a monthly Rosetta Stone to understand hyper-connected teenagers and a good way to spend night shifts at a tiny clinic on the Westside.
Raymond took the top off his coffee and blew at the steam. He loved spending days with the boy, especially because it took some pressure off his mother, but the long days and work-filled nights were beginning to wear on him. Normally, he’d spend most of the weekend in the basement, planing boards for a dresser or working table legs on his lathe. These days, he felt like he could lie down as soon as his daughter left the block and not get up until she came back the next week. The boy’s one saving grace was that the teenager liked to sleep till noon, so Raymond could catch a little rest when his shift ended. True, the boy would be up all hours, but he was a good kid and Raymond trusted him to make the right decisions. Until summer’s end, Raymond was spending his nights with his new best friend, Juan Valdez.
Inside the clinic, the short man crept down the hallway. The tile floor needed a wash, speckled with dirt and other things he wasn’t willing to wager a guess on, but a clean floor would have made for a squeaky floor, and so he was grateful for that. He passed four exam rooms, some sterile white with only a framed motivational poster as decoration, others painted with gaudy but fading rainbows and clowns.
He paused at the edge of the hallway, listening for the guard, then risked a glance. The Center hummed quietly with the sound of the whirring computer fans in the server room off to the side. He’d been surprised to see the layout of the place, at its open floor plan and abundance of half-walls—save for the closed-off examination rooms—but he figured it was a cost-saving measure, and done with the help of the very people it would serve. Beyond the guard, the short man saw the sharp shadow of the point man and the bulbous one behind him.
The point raised his hand. They raised theirs in response. He dropped it and they moved.
Raymond was halfway through an article about using torpedo technology for self-driving cars when he heard a squeak. He set his magazine against his chest to listen a minute, but heard nothing else. Probably a mouse, he thought, though having vermin in a supposedly sterile environment wouldn’t sit well with the Center’s director. Not his problem now, though. He went back to his article.
But two paragraphs down, he heard another noise, something like a swishing. He set his magazine on the table and grabbed his Maglite to investigate. He headed toward the hallway with the examination rooms.
The Maglite’s beam pierced the darkness of the first exam room. Nothing unusual in the corners, or behind the door. Nothing except for that creepy clown painted on the wall. He understood it was supposed to be cheery, put kids at ease and whatnot, but every time he saw that clown he expected it to take off its face and expose teeth like a giant anglerfish. Raymond moved on to the second room, then paused outside the third, listening. The clinic lay quiet, and he began to wonder if he was just hearing things, the way his old partner used to when they were on stakeouts. That old boy either had supersonic hearing or had kissed the bottle one too many times.
To be safe, Raymond cleared the rest of the rooms. Each was silent and still as a tomb. He closed the door to the fourth and headed back to his post in the main room.
“This isn’t going to work,” the fat man said to the point. “This place isn’t big enough.”
“We have to try.” The point heard a door close down the hallway.
“Trying’s going to get someone shot.”
He whirled around to face the fat one. “No one’s getting shot. Just relax and stay quiet and everything will be fine.”
They crept across the main office toward the servers. He’s right, the point thought as the second door closed. This place looked bigger in the security footage than in real life. The idea was to get in and out without anyone noticing—draw the guard away, hit the servers, and be gone before he came back—but there wasn’t enough space to distract him, get him away from the main area. And besides, once a single screen lit up, the guard would be able to see it over the half-walls from his post. He’d had reservations about the plan, but they didn’t have any other options; if they wanted to get in the castle, this was the door they had to use. This job was bigger than them. It was for the Harper twins; it was for the people.
As they approached the server area, a third door closed. They stopped short. One exam room left.
“Told you,” the fat man said.
The lead could hear the smirk in the prick’s voice as the final door slipped closed.
The footsteps tracked into the main office and the chair creaked as the guard sat with a sigh. His feet landed on the table.
“Okay,” the point said. “We’ll have to improvise.” But as he went to turn back, the fat man was already moving forward. The point grabbed at the fat one but he was too far away. Calling to him would make too much noise. Choking him—while cathartic—might alert the guard. Plus, he weighed a ton. Instead, he strafed along the half-walls, approaching the guard, ready to spring up behind him, cinch his elbow around his throat, and put him out.
Then the red dot appeared on the guard’s chest.
As he scurried to get in close to the guard, the point promised himself he was going to kick that fat ass in his pencil-dick as soon as they got outside.
It took the guard a couple seconds to notice it, then a few more to understand what it was before jumping out of his chair. He went to dive under the desk, seeking cover, when the point man wrapped one thick arm around the guard, pressed a cloth against his mouth with the other. He guided the guard’s body down to the tile floor, resting him gently.
When the guard was fully out , the point man stood and cracked his neck.
The short man stepped forward, assuming control of the situation. “Tape him up.”
“On it,” the point man said.
“Not you. Him.”
“But—” the fat man started.
“But nothing. You watch one TV show and you think you’re a criminal genius?” He snatched the laser pointer from the man’s pudgy hands on the way to the servers, shoved it into his pocket, and pulled out a thumb drive. “Make sure he’s comfortable and keep a lookout. We’ve got work to do.”
Raymond Cody’s eyelids flickered open. His lips slapped together, trying to find moisture. He started to call out, but caught himself as images slammed against him. The red dot, the man choking him, the rag. He stayed quiet and shut his eyes, in case someone was close and had a mind to finish the job. He listened to the noises, determining position, number, temperament. Raymond wagered there were at least two of them, both men. There was a bunch of clacking and a voice farther away, on the other side of the office. Labored breathing behind him, thick inhalations through a busted nose, maybe ten feet away. So make that three perps. He let his eyes crack open.
Blue light shone on two faces in the server area, both hunched over a computer and rapidly typing, pointing at things on the screen. He had no idea what they were doing but doubted it was particularly good. Could they steal money that way? Maybe they were hacking into the clinic’s accounts, a pretty low move, stealing from a nonprofit.
A few minutes later, the two finished the computer work. The third one set something on the security desk. Raymond closed his eyes when they turned toward the main office.
They stopped beside him, one pressing his fingers against Raymond’s neck, checking his pulse. He reflexively swallowed, kicked himself for it as soon as it happened.
“You don’t have to pretend to be out,” the man said.
Raymond opened his eyes. A short man crouched down a hair, a black balaclava covering his face.
“You feel okay?” he said.
“Head’s fuzzy.”
“It’ll be like that a bit. Are you comfortable?”
Raymond looked down—his wrists duct-taped to the chair’s arms, his ankles to its legs, his torso to its back—and motioned with his hands.
“Sorry, not much else I can do,” the man said. “You don’t have circulation issues or anything do you?”
“I’m not that old,” Raymond said. “And would it matter if I did?”
The man cocked his head. “Good point. But there’s no reason for you to be unnecessarily uncomfortable. You haven’t done anything. In fact, everything we’re doing is for you.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’ll see.” The man stood. From his demeanor, Raymond expected him to be much taller, not a squat five-foot-six. “A few days from now, when everything starts happening, remember what I said.”
The three of them made for the door before Raymond called out. “What about when I have to piss?”
“You’re not that old, right? Hold it.” The man laughed once before walking out.
The clinic was quiet once more, computers humming, air ducts rattling. Raymond sat in the dim light, flexed his fingers, and sighed hard.
“Holding.”
2
Jay Brodsky punched the button on the car radio to change the station. He couldn’t handle listening to more coverage of the Harper twins, who were both afflicted by the same congenital disease, the name and nature of which totally escaped Jay. But the big story was that their mother’s insurance company had determined it was a pre-existing condition and could therefore deny payment, forcing the mother to choose which twin received the life-saving procedure. As the twins’ health worsened, the mother had to make the worst, most painful choice a parent ever could: decide which child would live and which one would die.
Jay didn’t have kids but damn near teared up every time he heard the story. Even two weeks after the story broke, news outlets continued to cover it. Jay figured they would have moved on to a different tragedy already. He turned left and came face to face with a colorful mural that took up the whole side of a building. Justice for the Harpers ran across the bottom of the painting on a cloth banner, with No Healthcare? Go to Hell and other slogans written around the edges.
So instead of listening to coverage of dying children, Jay was now listening to meteorologists’ vast and varied predictions for the path of Hurricane Donovan—where it would make landfall, how strong it would be, what the damage might be. Jay sighed hard and turned off the radio completely, opting to spend the rest of his commute in silence instead.
Jay walked through the FBI field office in downtown Baltimore, down hallways with bureaucratic gray carpet, along white walls pocked with black scuffs, past groups of men with stale coffee breath and Danish crumbs on their untailored Men’s Wearhouse suit jackets arguing emphatically about the Orioles’ playoff prospects, all the way down to the end of the hall where he badged in to the Cyber Crimes division. He placed his lunch in the fridge, the same he had every day: peppered turkey sandwich, Muenster cheese, an apple, a handful of pretzels, a small container of raw almonds. A woman he’d been dating laughed one night when she opened his refrigerator and saw four brown paper bags sitting in a row, his lunches for the week. She asked if he labeled them for each day. He’d laughed, said, Of course not, they’re all the same. Just like breakfast. He pointed to the shelf below with four six-packs of Greek yogurt—strawberry and honey—beside two bottles of orange juice with pulp and two cartons of eggs. She just blinked and excused herself. That relationship didn’t last long either. He’d always had trouble explaining the need for routine to girlfriends, which was part of the reason he’d simply stopped dating a couple years ago. It wasn’t that he was OCD or a control freak, but more that he couldn’t not be in control in order to keep his tics reined in. It was a fine distinction that was either understood or not. His sister, Sam, understood it. She’d taken care of him when he was younger, made sure the Tourette’s didn’t consume him whole. And for the last seven years, in her absence, he was trying—with mixed results—to keep it at bay.
Jay slid into his cubicle.
“Yo, you watch it yet?” Special Agent Ari Yemin said as he poked his head around the divider wall.
Jay glanced up at him. “Watch what?”
“The video about the room.”
“What are you talking about?” Jay picked up a report sitting on his desk, a sticky note affixed to the top. Look at this ASAP.
Yemin rolled his chair into Jay’s cubicle. “Dude, I sent you the video about redoing the kids’ room. The one with the X-wing bed and speeder bike rocker? Here, look.” He brought something up on his phone.
“No really, it’s—”
Jay sighed as Yemin tapped his phone against Jay’s, transferring an image of some blueprints.
“Now you can look at them.” Yemin’s face was long and angular over his rumpled Oxford, his cheeks gaunt, though Jay rarely saw him not snacking on something at his desk. Jay did his best not to cringe at all the almond skins and stray raisins littering the papers and floor. Yemin’s father was Turkish and his mother was Sicilian. With his dark skin and close-cropped brown hair, he regularly got called a terrorist and, despite the FBI badge, got tons of side-eye when going through TSA security. Jay knew he’d grown up in New Jersey and was more worried about rolling a d20 with his kids than daisy-chaining C-4. “You said you’d help me build it.”
“I forgot, I’m sorry. I’ll watch it tonight.” Jay split the folder open and began scanning the specifics. Break-in at Community Health, a small Westside community medical clinic. Nothing stolen. No one hurt. Only a strange computer graphic displayed on the monitors. “But I still don’t think they’re ready for it. Or at least won’t appreciate it.”
