I thought about punching their leader, knocking him off his motorcycle, and then systematically doing the same to the other five riders. That shit didn't go over well with the Chippers though, so I would have to get the fuck out of here. Then I'd lose the pod I was following. Worse than that, Jae would probably get mad at me. I didn't want to see him get pissed off at me until I was teasing him in bed.
"Alright, fuck it." I gassed Funakoshi and leaned my body back. The massive motorcycle's front lifted into the air like I'd done tens of thousands of times. The green-clad riders moved aside a bit to give me more room, and they made thumbs up signs. Their leader was still popping his wheelie. When I mirrored his movement, he set his own bike down and took both hands off the bars to clap.
"Now shoo." I set Funakoshi down and waved them away with my hand. They all shook their heads and then rolled their left hands in a circle pattern. Obviously they wanted me to do another trick. I shook my head again, pointed at their leader, and then I motioned for him to do another stunt by making my hand wiggle and shrugging my shoulders.
Fuck it. I just couldn't leave well enough alone.
The leader of the green riders jumped up on the back of his bike, took his hands off the bar, and then stood on his seat. It was a dangerous move to do in traffic, but the self-driving cars around him would avoid the motorcycle if it leaned into their lanes. The guy crossed his arms in a stoic pose and then hopped back down on his pegs before nodding to me. The rest of his bosozoku gang put their fists in the air to celebrate and laid on their horns.
I checked up ahead, and the cream-colored executive pod was still half a dozen cars in front of me. I set the cruise control on Funakoshi, leapt onto my saddle, took my hands off my motorcycle's grips, and stood like the Green Ranger had a few moments ago. This was a move for amateurs, and I was Sue Zay, the Moto Gymkhana Queen. I put my hands on the saddle and pushed my body up into a vertical handstand while Funakoshi continued on his merry path up the 85.
"Sue Zay, performing such a stunt while in live traffic is extremely dangerous." Hogan's voice was surprisingly frantic.
"I'll be fine!" I saw the road behind me, and the two green bosozoku riders were upside down. Behind them was a self-driving pod, and I could see a pair of older women pointing with their mouths open.
I had my hands on each side of Funakoshi's saddle, and I lifted my right off the leather before putting it back down on the rear of the seat. Then I raised my left and placed it at the front. Now I was facing to my motorcycle's left side and at the leader of the green gang. I leaned my weight a little more on my left arm and brought my right hand up to my shoulder.
Then I flipped the asshole off for a few seconds while my left arm carried all my weight.
The green bosozoku riders honked all of their horns again, and their leader made a bowing motion with his head. I brought my right arm back down onto Funakoshi's saddle and dropped myself back on the bike pegs. All six of the riders followed their leader's example with bows, and then they waved to me as they sped away.
"Fuckers," I sighed, "at least I didn't have to hurt 'em."
"It appears that our target is getting off the 85, Sue Zay," Hogan said. I was surprised he hadn't made another comment about my stunt, but he probably realized I would have gotten mad at him again.
"San Mateo Avenue," I said after I saw the exit sign. "Maybe he is going to the airport?"
"Or the train station," Hogan guessed. The AI was correct, the pod made a turn into the maglev parking lot. I dropped my speed down well below traffic pace and then turned into the driveway behind another pod. Funakoshi wasn't exactly the best motorcycle to be using on a job like this. He was big and loud with bright pink trim, but there were plenty of motorcycles on the road, and most self-driving cars were practically sound proof. Especially the executive models.
"Call Caleb," I instructed Hogan. Within a few seconds I heard the ring, and the tattooed man I had met last night appeared on my helmet screen.
"Hey, Sue Zay."
"Jae wanted me to call you when this guy got to his destination. I think he has arrived."
"Hmmm." He looked down away from the camera, and I heard fingers drum across a keyboard like a machine gun. "He's at the maglev station? That is weird."
"Weird? Where did you think he would be?"
"We thought he would return to his office, or to work; both are in San Carlos."
"He's getting out of his car." The parking structure was a double level, and Greaseball's executive pod pulled up to the horseshoe-shaped drop-off zone. I pushed Funakoshi to a spot at the start of the concrete legs that held up the parking building and then cut his engine.
"Want to see the feed from my helmet?" I asked Caleb.
"Yeah, if you don't mind."
"Hogan?" I asked; my screen flashed green, and the AI fed my visual to Jae's friend.
"The train is about to arrive." Blinking security lights were lighting up the platform. It was eight fifty-five AM on a Sunday morning, so the only people on the stage looked to be forty or so suited-up Mormon men and women. I guessed they would take the maglev train to their temple.
My quarry stepped out of his car and glanced around nervously. He had his hand on the handle of a luggage roller board. It was bright yellow and seemed out of place next to the suit-wearing man. He took a half step away from the pod, and then he turned and bent over to put his face near the open door. The angle wasn't good from my position, so I couldn't really get a view of his mouth, but the man looked many shades of terrified.
"Looks like he thinks someone is following him," I said to Caleb.
"Haha, someone is, but he probably has a good reason to be nervous besides you tailing him," Caleb said.
"Oh?"
"Yep. Mr. Collanta just sold MartanUAV's latest experimental weapon-drone schematics to Acitty Technologies for the small sum of ten million dollars."
"Holy Joseph Smith fucking a man," I gasped. Both Martan and Acitty were two of the largest military-drone manufacturers in the United States, and they were also cross-Silicon Valley rivals.
"He's probably fleeing the country."
"Could be, but I'm surprised he isn't getting on a plane," Caleb said.
"Looks like the train is going south. Maybe he'll take it to Mexico?" The maglev pulled up to the station. Sirens sounded briefly, and then the emergency warning lights shut down. The door to the white and red train opened, and half a dozen people stepped out of each car.
"He's running up the stairs." I turned on Funakoshi and then tore ass through the ramps of the parking garage to reach the top level. It took me only ten seconds, and I managed to get eyes on Mr. Collanta as he pulled his yellow luggage into the nearest car segment.
"See that?" I asked Caleb as the train lifted off the tracks and sped away.
"Yeah. I guess that is the job, Sue Zay. We'll track the pod you attached the module to. We wanted to double check that this guy was doing as expected. He didn't, but it could be he made sudden plans to spend all the cash he just got for selling weapons." Caleb's face soured, and he turned to tap on a keyboard.
"Jae will wire the money into my account?" Damn, I didn't want to sound like I was that hungry, but I kinda was. As soon as the funds hit, I was going to take the Bosozoku Bitches out to a steak dinner. They always paid my way, and I was looking forward to treating them for once. Then I'd take the other eight thousand dollars and upgrade some of Funakoshi's older parts.
"Yeah, I just sent him a message. He'll-"
The world suddenly shook, and my helmet's auto dimmer darkened to just a few shades above absolute black. It felt like something hit me from the side, and I almost toppled over. Fortunately, Funakoshi's gyros had been on so, I didn't have to put my stand down, and the machines ensured that we stayed upright. Caleb's image on my helmet screen went to static for a few seconds, hung as a frozen frame, and then finally resumed the video.
"Oh fucking…." I found that I couldn't even finish my sentence.
&
nbsp; "Sue Zay! What happened? Holy shit!" Caleb's voice was a screech of terror, and I didn't blame him.
The maglev train had exploded into a fiery mushroom cloud of yellow plasma and smoke. It had reached half a mile away from me by the time it exploded, but that wasn't saying much. The blast radius looked to have scorched everything within a quarter of a mile. If it had been just a second or two earlier, I would have been a Sue Zay kabob. The tracks were lined with fifty-storey apartment and condo buildings. Most of them were now on fire and punched full of holes caused by pieces of the train's magnet flying everywhere. An eerie silence hung in the air, almost as if San Bruno had turned into a calm forest.
"Was he carrying a bomb?" I remembered the yellow roller board that my target hauled into the train car. The air was filling with smoke and ash.
"I don't know. You need to get out of there, Sue Zay. There must be a few thousand people dead." I didn't know Caleb that well, but his voice sounded like it was crossed between terror and a sob of despair. A scrap of metal half the size of Funakoshi landed next to me, and then a fragment of magnet the size of a stop sign cut into the concrete of the ledge. Both pieces started squirming as they inched toward each other.
"Caleb is right, Sue Zay. Every single police channel I monitor is awash with alerts of the explosion. There will be drones here in a few minutes."
"Okay." I couldn't peel my eyes away from the cloud of smoky sky lava. How in the fuck could anyone do this? Why would they do this? I felt tears fall to my cheeks, and I realized I was crying.
"Sue Zay!" Hogan actually yelled at me, and I shook my head to clear it. A few other pieces of metal rained down on the concrete I was parked upon. It would only be a matter of moments until I got unlucky and one cut me into sushi.
"I'm going!" I twisted my right hand, and Funakoshi spun around before he sprinted down the stairs and out of the parking structure. My exit was just in time; a piece of train innards the size of a bus bulldozed into the maw of the garage like a boxing glove. The whole fucking thing crumbled behind me as if it was made of porcelain.
"Should I go to the house?" I was surprised my voice sounded so calm.
"No. Jae will call you. Do whatever you had planned after the assignment." Caleb's face was white. "I have to go."
"Yeah. Okay. Talk later." I felt my hands start to shake, and my stomach did a million flippy flops. What had I gotten myself into?
"Okay. Be safe." Caleb cut the video, and I twisted the throttle more to get to Kate Tee's house faster.
Chapter 9
"We are on your street," I said to my friend through my helmet microphone.
"Alright, I'm opening the gate," Kate Tee responded. The girl lived in a home in Los Altos Hills that her parents bought for her to use while she was going to school. The area was where most of the upper echelon of Silicon Valley had lived for the last ninety years, but Kate Tee's family could afford to buy whatever they wanted, so the idea of a college age girl living in a thirty thousand square foot mansion with half a dozen servants wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded.
Alright, maybe it was ridiculous.
Stacey Jones pulled into the long driveway behind me so that we could slide through the opening that the moving gate made. Then we gunned it up the gray and brown cobblestone pathway. This mansion was art déco style, with tinted non-reflective glass instead of the usual stucco or stone. It glowed in the midmorning light, but I didn't spend more than half a second studying it before I parked in one of the many garage bays next to Kate Tee and Xiu Mei's bikes. Stacey Jones kicked down her motorcycle stand next to me, and we both dismounted in an unspoken, but coordinated movement.
"You okay, bitch?" Kate Tee was already in the garage and threw her arms around me in a grateful hug.
"I'm fine," I said. Xiu Mei's hands slid on the back of my leathers, and I glanced over my shoulder to see the pretty Chinese girl examining my suit for any shrapnel damage. I had called my three friends on the way over and explained what happened. Stacey Jones had met me on the road, and we'd ridden the tail end of the journey together.
"It's all over the news," Xiu Mei said.
"I've asked the servants to prepare an early lunch. We can watch the TV while we eat." Kate Tee and Xiu Mei were excellent party planners, so I wasn't surprised that my Muslim friend was trying to package this horror into something festive.
"I'm kind of not hungry." An image of the mushroom cloud replayed in my mind as my bitches pulled me out of the garage and through the wide hallways of Kate Tee's mansion. Before I realized it, we were sitting on a plush leather couch in her entertainment room and food was being laid out on a nearby table.
"Drink this," Kate Tee ordered as she put a cup of tea in my gloved hand. I absently brought it to my lips and stared at the TVs. It was much like Jae's place, with a dozen screens covering the entire wall, and every one showing the crater and burning buildings on the maglev track.
"The current death toll is unknown at this point, but analysts have done rough math on the population of the three apartment towers that took the most damage and-"
"Incoming request to talk from Over Zipf, Sue Zay. It is on my encrypted address and marked as urgent." Hogan's voice came from my watch and interrupted the reporter speaking on the TV.
"You can put it on screen," Kate Tee said. I nodded to Hogan, and Over Zipf's pasty face appeared much too fucking large on the far wall.
"Holy Muhammad," the man's eyes were wide, "what the hell happened?"
"What do you mean? A fucking bomb went off in San Bruno," Stacey Jones spat at the TV. There were still news coverage playing, and one of the reporters was speaking to a police officer who was saying something about these kind of attacks not happening in Silicon Valley.
"Yeah. I know that, Sweetheart. Oh, and hello you sexy ladies. You are all looking bone-er-iffic this morning. Why was Sue Zay at the train station?"
"How did you know I was there?" I asked. My body went cold, and I forgot to tell Over Zipf to go fuck himself.
"Check it." His image shifted up to the top corner of the screen he was on, and a slightly pixilated video of the top of the train station parking structure appeared. I saw myself on the back of Funakoshi fly out of the ramp on top and then stay balanced by the edge facing the train.
"How did you get this?" Xiu Mei asked.
"I pulled it from the aerial traffic drones that patrol SFO."
"Shit! Does anyone else have access to that?" The video showed the cream-colored executive pod pull away after the greasy asshole with the yellow suitcase started to walk up the stairs.
"I deleted it after I saw it. I checked all of their other drones and wiped any other footage I saw, but their servers were getting overloaded. I'm guessing I'm not the only hacker, or FBI agent, or fucking police who thought the airport drones might have a clue about the bombing."
The train pulled away on screen. A few seconds later, the pixels got fuzzy and then the aftershock of the explosion seemed to hit my tiny form on the video. I continued to look at the distant cloud of yellow smoke. It almost seemed as if I hadn't been surprised by the explosion.
It looked fucking incriminating.
"The problem is the fuzz might think that whoever deleted the videos from the drones was part of this thing. Now they'll focus more on the train station where you were. Few people would recognize that bike or outfit, but you're infamous in motorcycle circles, and I'm guessing that last thing you want is for all the news stations and police in the valley to be looking for a woman riding a black and pink motorcycle."
"Fuck, yeah. Thanks for the save." I sighed and saw my image on the screen dart out of the parking structure moments before it met its demise.
"But now they won't be able to see the car you were following, they won't see the fucker with the briefcase." Stacey Jones got off the couch and paced between us and the TV.
"Maybe I can edit the video and then send it to the fuzz or something." Over Zipf started typing on his keyboard. "Yeah, I might be
able to do that. Hmmmmm…." His face looked a bit whiter suddenly.
"What's wrong?" Kate Tee asked.
"My IPs are getting traced. Fuck!" He started pounding on his keyboard with chubby fingers.
"Are they going to find you?" My voice was a screech of panic. If this was the police, they might haul him in for questioning and then discover his drone salvaging and hacking side business. They might also connect him to me.
"No, I doubt it, but whoever is doing it is half-way decent. I've got alerts set up to let me know if such a thing happened." He looked back to the screen and smirked at us. "I am going to throw a bunch of shit at them if they make it to my next fake IP address. I will go dark while I edit this video. I'll call you tomorrow when I've let my trail cool."
"Alright. Thanks Over Zipf," I said. My stomach was still tied up in knots.
"The Daughters of Smith have alerted various news stations that they are responsible for the carnage we've seen today." The reporter wore a fake look of sympathy on his buttered face. "The apartment tower most destroyed by the blast was a primary residence for several Islamic ulema and their families. We also believe that Caliph Abdul Hakeem Lodi was visiting relatives in the building. If he is one of the victims, this could further elevate religious tensions-"
"No!" Kate Tee screamed. If the talking head was correct, it would be horrible. Lodi was one of the leading Islamic voices of peace.
"They don't know if he is dead yet," Stacy Jones said. The redheaded Mormon girl raised her eyebrows with sympathy and moved to comfort her friend. Kate Tee's eyes narrowed, and it looked as if she was about to yell at our friend.
"It wasn't the Mormons," I said. Kate Tee closed her mouth with a sharp snap, and then the two girls turned to me.
Concrete Chaos Page 9
