Overhead, streaks of orange fire lit up the sky. The earth rocked a moment before the explosions hit Conor’s ears, and Karle’s bellow of triumph brought a small shake to his head.
What’s your hollering about, big man? He’d never understand the valor in a drone strike, the glory in killing by remote control. The warriors of antiquity wouldn’t recognize this dispassionate barbarity. The bone shard hidden in the hilt of his sword cooed its agreement. He laughed, and it took that moment of empathy to attack.
Daggers of black thought lanced into Conor’s mind, seeking dominance and control, freedom from the eternity of death and the enslavement of soul. It surged forward, triumphant, exultant in the ease in which it invaded his mind. Instead of fighting, Conor let it in, deeper and deeper in its orgiastic triumph, until it came at last to the center of his being. He laughed at the panicked retreat from what it found there, then cut it off and strangled it with his will.
You serve me. And you will serve.
Cowed, the sword mewled in his mind, but it would find no mercy, no sympathy in its new master. A tremor of despair vibrated through the blade, and turned to a single, pathetic, razor thought: Hungry.
Conor patted the blade, a reflexive gesture with no emotion behind it. He grabbed a rung and climbed down, careful not to mess his boots any further on the slippery, stinking remains of Hurya al-Azwar.
* * *
Ten minutes after he found al-Azwar’s shattered body, Matt stopped with a mental grunt. Pointy’s bloody tracks marked the floor in the ultraviolet spectrum like highlighter, disrupted only by spotty patches of urine – rat or mouse by the look of it – and the acrid smell of the place. Pointy’s tracks led into a small room made of dark brick, and then straight under the steel door on the far side, a bulkhead-type monstrosity with a gasketed rim and a rusty, wheeled, double-bar lock.
Pointy had gone inside, so it couldn’t be flooded, but Matt doubted he’d be able to open it without giving away his presence. He sniffed the axle and detected no trace of WD-40 or grease, nothing to keep it from screaming like a banshee if he tried to open it.
If you’re going to be loud…
Matt pulled a fist-sized wad of C4 from his combat pouch, split it into two pieces and pressed it into and around the latching mechanism on either side of the door. The detcord came next, clothesline-like material impregnated with PETN that burned at four miles a second, not so much a fuse as a linear explosive. He pushed the nylon-like material into and around the gasket, as well as through the wads of C4. Last, he added a blasting cap and set the detonator to radio signal.
Sixty feet down the hall he rounded the corner into a side passage. He set the detonator’s remote on the floor twenty feet from the intersection, gripped his shotgun in both hands, and backed up. Then he ran.
A typical ICAP Aug could maintain a three-minute mile indefinitely, and run a hundred meters in eight seconds. Matt’s personal record topped out at seven point seven-two. Legs pumping, he tried to beat it.
The impact as he stepped on the red button rocked the world sideways, and the shockwave buffeted him back just before he reached the main hallway. Legs pumping, he ran halfway up the far wall, muscles straining to turn him ninety degrees at such speeds, and fired a three-round burst of fragmentary projectiles toward the remains of the door and anything that might lie behind it.
Still glowing from the aftermath, chunks of shredded metal and broken brick littered the small room, and the resulting hole opened up not into a sewer tunnel but a metro line. A pair of tracks led left and right, and hazy orange sodium-vapor lights dotted the walls amid generations of overlapping graffiti.
The whispers chittered in anticipation of the slaughter. As Matt rushes through the door, Pointy drops from the arced ceiling, a thousand pounds of muscle and brute force crushing him to the floor and pulping his head with one double-fisted crush.
Matt tucked into a roll as he flew through the doorway, pulling the trigger as Pointy’s gigantic form came into view. Two slugs impacted on the ceiling. Three found flesh.
Gore spattered Matt’s face as he finished the roll and spun, firing again. Pointy slapped the shotgun out of the way and punched, telegraphing the move without the slightest bit of finesse. Matt rolled with it, taking the impact on his shoulder. His armor stiffened with the blow, reducing the punch to a solid hit with a Louisville Slugger.
He backpedaled as Pointy advanced, the hole in the bonk’s leg knitting closed even as he picked up speed. A center-of-mass burst failed to penetrate skin, and the fragmentary rounds shredded Pointy’s pectoral muscles to expose a gore-covered solid mass beneath. Half-blind, face streaming blood from a thousand gouges, the bonk dove, arms outstretched to catch Matt as he tried to flee.
Instead, Matt dropped prone and rolled left. He screamed as Pointy stomped, crushing his knee to the ground right through the ceramic composite. Matt fired, and two rounds caught the bonk in the stomach before he slapped the AA-12 hard enough to dent the barrel and send it flying from Matt’s grip.
Chunks of meat and organs sprayed them both.
Matt scrambled back, his shattered knee a bonfire of itching, squirming flesh. He drew his official-issue pistol, a .50 caliber Barrett WildStang with ICAP-custom SLAP rounds. The depleted uranium core and tungsten carbide tip combined with a nanofiber composite sabot and fifty grains of powder to produce a bullet that would go through just about anything. It kicked like a mule, and took superhuman strength to fire with any accuracy.
Two shots took Pointy in the bloody meat over his heart, and another two ricocheted off of his forehead.
Pointy charged, strings of intestines flopping out of his abdomen to trail behind him.
Matt fired four more times as he rose to his feet, and two more before the bonk crushed him against the wall.
Blood erupted from Matt’s mouth as his ribs imploded. A giant hand smashed the gun against the wall, denting the metal in a shower of brick dust.
Pointy stepped back for another body check. Matt let his knees buckle, dropping to the floor, and tore at the exposed viscera, fingers digging into slippery organs, wrenching them out to splatter on the ground.
The dark tunnel exploded in stars as Pointy’s knee caught him in the side of the head. Deafened by the ringing in his ears, he scrambled to the side and whirled, pistol raised. A six-car double-decker train shimmied down the tunnel at forty or so miles an hour, its light catching Pointy’s right side, washed in bright red gore.
The abomination’s abdomen had closed, cutting off the dead intestine and sealing over with fresh skin. It took a tentative, wobbly step forward. The train’s horn reverberated through the tunnel, too loud.
Matt took inventory: three combat knives, two 32-round magazines for a broken gun, no functional firearms. His knee no longer itched, but Pointy stood moments from full health.
As the train flashed between them, Matt bolted alongside, grabbed a handle and jerked himself aboard. He landed with his toes on the lip of the entry, pried the door open left-handed, and stepped inside. A half-dozen shocked faces gaped at his blood-spattered face and body armor.
“Go to the front car.” They stared, wide-eyed, but nobody moved. “NOW!”
The train lurched.
“GO!” Matt tore a stainless steel pole from the car and ran toward the back of the train. Ignoring the squeals of panic behind him, he stood alert, ready for bear.
Pointy’s head appeared in the rear window. Matt moved to dive forward, and the whispers chittered their approval as his body crushed into the rails, his brain splattering into the ground. Instead he backpedaled, shouldered open the door between cars, and gripped the handle to the coupling mechanism. The back door came off in a shriek of twisted metal, and Pointy threw it to the side.
Matt heaved, and the cars separated with a lurch.
The bonk pulled himself up onto the trailing car, quickly falling away into the distance, an almost quizzical look on his blockish face. Matt sighed in frustrated relief, al
ive but without his quarry.
And then the train braked, hard.
Matt shifted his weight to maintain balance as the other car gained ground, momentum carrying it forward as the train slowed to a stop. If the conductor didn’t have the sense to keep going, Matt would have to lead the bonk from the civilians on the train. He looked down at the pole, the best weapon he had, and suppressed a grimace. Better than nothing, but not by much. Not against that.
As the train ground to a halt he leapt out the back then darted left toward a side tunnel.
* * *
Miguel Salido watched the man in black armor fade into the distance, wielding a metal pole like a Ninja Turtle. He growled in curious frustration.
The high pitched squeal of brakes brought a low tremor to his throat; a laugh. The whispers rejoiced, a slithering, pernicious cacophony of psychotic bloodshed that got harder to ignore with every passing day, and though he couldn’t understand them, they urged him to slaughter every man, woman, and child on the train.
He crushed them to a disappointed mewling, forced himself to think like a rational person.
The man in black armor, the woman he’d crushed, Miguel had never encountered anyone like them. Through years of street fighting, standing guard over drug deals, rising in the ranks of the Mako Kings despite being Cuban, not Mexican, Miguel had always been bigger, tougher, more of a cabron than any bastard around. When Jade hit the streets and everyone started getting bigger, Miguel pushed the limits of musculoskeletal enhancement and backed it up with surgically-added barbed spikes in his wrists and titanium alloy plates under his skin.
But this man, not much bigger than most, had almost taken him down. One crazy gun and some kickass bullets helped balance the score, almost too much.
Since growing up in the shantytowns of Arroyo Naranjo, swiping fruit from stalls at the mercado to stave off scurvy and starvation, he’d come to appreciate the big things in life. In coming to the United States, his time with the Mako Kings had given him almost everything: a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Miami – despite his size he’d never had the team spirit for football – a mansion, three cars, all the gold, drugs, and pussy he could ever want. But since Jade, since augmentation, they couldn’t give him a challenge.
Sometimes it took the little things to bring a smile.
Miguel took off at a run. At twelve hundred pounds he couldn’t sprint much faster than your average Olympian, even with no body fat. But he knew these tunnels, had operated in Spanish City for two years, and his prey hadn’t. That had to count for something.
He slowed, approached the train at a jog, and cut left at the smell of the man, subtle deodorant and gun oil and blood tinged with an underlying spice he couldn’t quite place, like Jade but not. He followed the scent until it reached an access door, and stopped. Sized for normal men, it would constrict him, keep him from using his reach or bringing his full strength to bear. A perfect place for an ambush.
* * *
Conor Flynn watched as Pointy approached the doorway. The hulking monstrosity moved with a smooth grace at odds with its blocky form, silent in giant, almost comical basketball shoes. It cocked its head and waited, one hand on the door, listening or feeling for vibrations or something.
Stepping to the side, it pulled open the door, which squeaked on old hinges. It winced, waited again, and after a long, long pause, went inside.
Conor followed through the open door, sword drawn. Darkness swallowed him.
* * *
Something thrummed through the floor and walls, a breathing shudder too low-frequency for even Matt’s ears to hear. He drew a mental map to al-Azwar’s body. Her REC7 carbine didn’t pack the punch of his AA-12, but it beat the hell out of combat knives, and he wasn’t likely to beat Pointy with his fists and elbows.
He jogged down the dark hall until it ended at a T intersection, on a hunch took a right, and a few minutes later when the hall took another right, farther away from al-Azwar, he backtracked to the intersection and headed left.
* * *
Miguel paused. The man’s scent tracked in both directions.
The right-hand path led back to the railway, and past that, deeper into downtown. The left-hand path led to Spanish City, the Mercado Royale, and a warren of smaller access tunnels under the city’s west side.
Where are you going?
He chuckled, a low rumble with more growl than mirth. A smart man would try to get back to his allies, back to whatever blew the gate to the parking lot, back to guns and backup. With a shrug, he turned left – if Miguel caught him before he got out, it wouldn’t matter.
The scent grew in intensity, the sharp tang of Old Spice, the underlying notes of blood and gun oil. He froze at a realization. In the chemical miasma that permeated his enhanced nose he noted the lack, the utter absence, of anything approaching fear. Running, hunted, through unfamiliar tunnels, the man smelled of predator, not prey.
A tingle of excitement ran up Miguel’s spine, a shiver of apprehension. How are you not afraid?
* * *
Matt knelt over al-Azwar’s shattered body, ignoring the pungent reek of shit to rifle through her kit. Someone had stripped her of her carbine, pistol and combat knives, but had left her first aid kit, which all ICAP agents carried in case an innocent or suspect needed saving. That it had soaked with urine when her system had let go had probably discouraged close inspection, and he gladly took the morphine autoinjector.
He looked up at the ladder embedded into a short tunnel that terminated in a round steel hatch. Heaving on it bent a rung on the ladder but did nothing to budge the portal.
He tried the COM again. “This is Rowley, come in.”
Nothing. However they built this place, it made far too good of a Faraday Cage.
He climbed down, listened for any signs of pursuit then hatched a plan.
* * *
Conor Flynn let Matt creep off, waited a full minute then approached the body. Matt had hidden the tripwire under Hurya’s exploded viscera, a clever move that would reduce detection but make it less likely that Pointy would trip it in the first place. Matt had wrapped his remaining det cord around the magazines for his ridiculous shotgun, thirty-two-round drums loaded with smart, direction-triggerable microgrenades, enough raw explosives to make mincemeat out of anyone who tripped the switch.
He knelt, ran his finger just above the wire, and pulled the detonator from the cord.
“What the hell are you doing?” Matt’s whisper clawed down his spine like fingernails down a chalkboard.
Conor plastered on a half-grin, the charming mask he’d worn for over thirty years. Matt gave him a slack-jawed stare, trust and suspicion warring in his eyes. The sword begged him to cut Rowley to ribbons, and the whispers cajoled their elated agreement.
“Not now,” he growled.
Matt hesitated. “What do you mean?” His wary stance betrayed too much caution, and Conor suppressed a chuckle at the misunderstanding.
He whispered back, “I called dibs. Not my fault you blighters don’t listen, is it? So let’s kill this thing.”
“Are… are you insane?”
Conor hid the truth behind the truth. “That’s why they hired me, am I right?”
* * *
“Put it back,” Matt said. He took a step toward his friend, for the first time wary around the enthusiastic psychopath.
“Oil of palm, Rowley.” Flynn replaced the detonator, though Matt had no idea what ‘oil of palm’ meant in these circumstances. His wife, Monica, had said that rhyme slang was much more of a cockney rather than an Irish thing, but either way Matt had yet to find Conor’s flippant word games particularly comprehensible.
“Are you–” he cut himself off from asking the same question again. “Get over here and watch our six. These bastards killed Platt and al-Azwar, and I’m not about to let them get away with it.”
Flynn sauntered over, thumbs hooked in his belt loops, katana slung at his
waist in exactly a non-Japanese manner.
“What have you got for weapons?”
Flynn pulled his pistol, identical to Matt’s. “Just this and the sword. Couple knives. Here, take it.” He held it out grip-first.
Matt took it and holstered it.
Flynn smiled, but kept his voice at a barely audible whisper. “I’ll go up. You can be bait.” Before Matt could argue he’d scampered up the ladder to crouch in the darkness overhead, wedged in place like a movie action hero, left palm pressed against one wall, feet against the other. He drew his katana and winked. “Run along, little birdie. And tweet a little, would you?”
Chirp, chirp.
* * *
The scents mingled, the man’s combining with someone else’s, sharper, a cold, metallic bite reminiscent of dentist’s offices and morgues. Miguel hesitated, then peeked around the corner. The body still lay where he’d left it, though her weapons were missing. Nothing moved, and nothing registered in the infrared.
He stepped out, approaching the body in a silent walk, and the cold smell grew stronger, more dominant. An infrared glow filtered down from the access hatch, normal in the daytime but out of place at night. Miguel tried not to roll his eyes at the soft scrape from the end of the hall.
There had never been a time, not since puberty, that people hadn’t underestimated his mind. Only Calloway had seen through the lump of meat, lifted him up and made him a true player in her organization. The Mako Kings had no idea what they’d gotten themselves involved in, and she kept them rolled in enough cash to keep them blind, but she trusted Miguel, and used his shrewd mind to cement her ties with the Latin gang.
SNAFU: Hunters Page 37
