Rat Runners by Oisin McGann Read Free Book Online

say:
    “And you want to knock it over, right?”
    “The money’s there for the stealin’, Mister Easy. All we need is…”
    Scope couldn’t hear any more without pausing beyond the door, and she had learned long ago not to be curious about these things. Move-Easy was as paranoid about his own people as he was about the police. As he said himself, “You can never trust criminals.”

CHAPTER 6
THE CREW

    ONE OF THE keys to Move-Easy’s success, reflecting the length of time his Void had survived undiscovered, was the confounding means of getting inside. Unless you were part of his inner circle, you didn’t get in without being invited. Most of the day-to-day business was done by his people on the outside, whom the boss monitored closely. If you did get invited in—and it was unwise to refuse such an invitation—you entered the maintenance tunnels beneath the massive hospital by a door chosen randomly on the day. You were given blacked-out contact lenses that effectively acted as a blindfold. An actual blindfold would have looked suspicious if you ran into any hospital staff or other civvies who might happen to be in the tunnels at the time.
    You were then led by a member of the gang to one of the steel- and lead-lined doors that opened into the nest of old wartime bomb-shelter corridors that formed the core of his Void. Each time you visited, you were taken in through a different door. Each of these doors was disguised in a different way, and their use was also dictated at random. Even the boss’s own people had to change their routes constantly. The WatchWorld computers loved patterns. The hospital complex was monitored twenty-four hours a day, and every member of the hospital staff and every frequent visitor was on file. Anyone else seen going in or out of the hospital on a regular basis would eventually attract suspicion. Move-Easy had built a career on avoiding suspicion.
    Manikin was still wearing her mac over black jeans, but had changed to a bobbed red wig. FX was in his usual combats, hoodie and trainers. Blinking over the contact lenses that blinded him, he felt someone take his console bag from him at the security checkpoint, but didn’t protest. It would be held until he was leaving. He suspected they’d try and have a look through the console, but was quite certain even Tanker would not be able to break the encryption that protected its contents. There were hackers in Britain who were better than FX, but he knew most of their names, and none of them worked for Move-Easy. It was more his physical safety that concerned him. These gangsters scared him, and whenever he and Manikin came here, he let her do the talking, because he had a habit of mouthing off when he was nervous. Around someone like Move-Easy, that could be a dangerous habit.
    When they got the nudge, Manikin and FX plucked out their blacked-out contacts and handed them to the man who had guided them in. They found themselves standing in the gangster’s audience chamber. He was sitting in the circle of couches, beaming up at them. There was another kid there, about Manikin’s age, with a slightly blank bony face, but intelligent eyes, and a gray woolen hat, which covered hair that was cut close to his scalp. Dressed in trainers, jeans, T-shirt and a weathered black leather jacket, he was tall and looked impressively fit. He did not seem at all nervous in Move-Easy’s presence—unusual for someone his age.
    “Manikin, FX, meet Nimmo,” Move-Easy said, waving them over. “I’m puttin’ a crew togevver for a new job, and you’re it.”
    The three nodded to each other, but said nothing. FX and Manikin sat down on the couch next to Nimmo and waited. There was one other man in the room, standing by the bar, making himself a Martini. He was an Oriental guy with an expensive hairstyle, a sharp light-gray suit with a cravat instead of a tie, and a set of wireless earphones in his ears. The dapper man had the dead black eyes of a shark. This