The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 27

They drove for three miles, looking back with imagine enhancers as they did. Three miles was far enough that anyone following ought to have stood out on the empty road behind them, Ellie thought.

At least they would if it was low-tech following, in a car on the ground, rather than with trackers on their comms or with drones. Because of that, Ellie leant forward sometimes, too, and looked up through the windscreen, and opened the side-window as well, and looked upwards out of that. She looked up, knowing she wouldn’t see anything, even if there was a hostile drone up there. That was what the corporate overwatch drones were for, to catch any such incursion, but it made Ellie feel better to look as well, so she looked, even though it was a waste of effort.

Her worry wasn’t really drones, though. Instead, it was idle curiosity. That they might be being impulsively followed by some bored locals who’d happened to have seen Joe waiting, or noticed the big corporate SUVs which Elle and Sameh had arrived in, and had decided to find out what was happening.

Ellie didn’t actually expect any trouble, but caution was a habit, and one she wasn’t going to break now. She kept glancing around as they drove, glancing backwards, keeping an eye out for ambushes, and an eye behind them too. Sameh was concentrating on the road behind them, too, keeping watch through the image enhancing goggles, studying the road carefully as it twisted and turned. Joe had a radio scanner on as he drove, and was flicking through the channels the local border guards and smugglers used, and that all seemed quiet as well.

After three miles on Joe’s odometer, Ellie decided they weren’t being followed.

“Is there a side-road somewhere ahead?” Ellie said.

“In about half a mile,” Joe said.

“Turn into it, then turn around and stop and see if anyone’s behind us.”

In half a mile, Joe did.

“Switch off the engine for a second,” Ellie said.

Joe did that too, and Ellie opened her door and listened. She heard the night. There was wind, and a river in the distance, and a lot of stillness, and not anything else. No vehicle engines, getting closer. Not propeller sounds from the sky.

Ellie looked up again, anyway, and still couldn’t see anything above her.

She tapped her comm, and said, “Are we clear?”

“We think so, ma’am.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said, then, “Keep driving,” to Joe.

He drove back to the intersection, and turned onto the road they had been following, and then kept driving, in the direction he had been. There still seemed to be no-one else around.

“Can you drive and talk?” Ellie said to Joe.

He nodded, so Ellie briefed him while he drove. She told him they were looking for someone, but not who or why. For the time being she just said she had some locations to check, locations where financial transactions had taken place, and she had some coordinates the target had visited too. She held out her tablet, and Joe looked at the icons Ellie had left on the map. The area she was interested in was south and inland of them, several hundred miles away.

“That’s fine,” Joe said. “I can’t see any problems.”

“Is it safe to go there?” Ellie said. That was the first thing to check. “I mean, to get from here to there by road.”

“Mostly safe,” Joe said.

“Mostly?”

“There’s militia here,” he glanced ahead, then reached over and touched the screen, at an area where a highway seemed to cross some hills. Then he touched another place to the north of the highway. “And here it’s best not to go,” he said. “There was some kind of chemical leak there years ago.”

The chemical leak they could avoid, judging from the map, but the militia was between them and their destination, and right across the only marked highway, too. Ellie looked quickly, but couldn’t see any alternative roads. Not major ones, which still looked usable on her satellite image.

“Is it a dangerous militia?” Ellie said.

“Not especially.”

“Not even for me and Sameh?”

Joe shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Because we could fly, if we need to,” Ellie said. “Now we’ve linked-up with you, we could call in a helicopter and hop to there.”

Sameh stirred in the back seat, but Ellie ignored her. Sameh was a soldier. She knew sometimes they needed to fly on operations.

“It should be fine,” Joe said. “They’re militia, and they’ll fight if a debt-recovery team tries to repo anywhere near them, but only then. We won’t be stopping, and they don’t interfere in highway traffic, anyway.”

“Ever?”

“Very rarely. It draws too much attention. From your people especially, but also from some of the other groups on our side of the border.”

Ellie thought.

“People leave the highways open,” Joe said, after a moment. “It’s better for everyone that way. And driving’s more discreet than a helicopter, too. If you want to be discreet, I wouldn’t fly that far in from the border.”

“People will notice?”

“People absolutely will.”

Ellie nodded. “Then we drive.”

Behind her, Sameh sighed, and sounded a little relieved.