Before he could answer, the screen door swung open again and Frankie stepped into the kitchen. "What the hell’s he doing in my house?" Though he hadn’t a gram of cybernetic chrome at all, his sister’s bantam husband glared at Tiger and dared him to stand up.
Tiger realized, as Frankie’s anger failed to provoke a response in him, that he was plain exhausted. He reached down into his coat pocket and pulled out the simsense tape. He arced it across the room, unerringly threading the needle between his sister and the refrigerator. "That’s for you." Frankie caught it easily and knew instantly what it was. He popped the cassette package out of the bag, then held it in his hand and stared at it, unbelieving. His features sharpened and his dark eyes narrowed. "Rambo Twenty! What is this, some sort of a joke? I start playing this, then I get another documentary on animal husbandry?"
Tiger fought to control his smile and LaVonne turned back to her cooking to hide her grin. "No trick this time, Frank. It’s for real. A guy I know had it shipped over from Japan. It’s uncut."
Frank’s face slackened and his mouth opened, but no sound came out. He blinked his eyes a couple of times, then looked up at Tiger. "You mean it’s got Vita Revak and everything?"
Tiger nodded. "And everything."
Frankie turned and gave LaVonne a kiss on the cheek without ever taking his eyes off the simsense packet. "Do I have time to preview some of this before dinner?" LaVonne nodded silently and Frankie drifted from the room in a zombielike state.
LaVonne gave her brother a smile. "That was nice of you." She raised an eyebrow. "Why’d you do it?"
"With that simsense tape. Frankie won't notice you or the kids for the next week." Tiger hesitated for a second, then drew the wad of nuyen from his pocket. "I’m gonna give you four thousand. I want you to take the kids and get out of this apartment for a week. Just go up to Renton and get a room so you can visit Mama. Take her out to dinner or something. Just get clear of this neighborhood for the next week."
"This has something to do with what’s got you worried, doesn’t it. Eugene?" She stared wide-eyed at the sheaf of bills he held out to her. She accepted them and looked at the money with the same expression her husband had worn when he saw the simsense tape. "What's going on?"
"Mike and I didn’t exactly part company with the Halloweeners on the best of terms. I don’t think Charles the Red is dumb enough to go after you. Hell. I don’t think he even knows you exist, but I don’t want to take any chances." Tiger tried to stop there, but her hawk-stare and the knowing way she arched her brow forced him to go on. "And Mike and I have a job that’s giving me bad vibes. I want you to have that money and clear out, just in case something strange goes down
"You’re not in trouble, are you, Eugene?"
Tiger shook his head resolutely. "No. Other than the misunderstanding with the Halloweeners and the usual static from Lone Star. I’m clear. I was thinking, though, that I’d like to crash here for tonight. I want to look tomorrow’s job over, then I really need to get some sleep and my crib gets noisy at night. I mean, if the couch is available, may I stay here?"
LaVonne nodded. "You can stay here anytime you want . . ."—she looked back toward where her husband kept his simsense rig—"no matter what he says. We’re family, and splitting up a family is something I won’t tolerate."
"You’ll use the money to see Mama? You’ll get out of here?
She pressed her lips together as she thought, then nodded slightly. "Because it’ll take some worry off your shoulders, and that’ll let you think clearer. That’ll keep you safe."
Tiger smiled and let his sister’s confidence buoy his spirits Yet even as he made the conscious decision to wait for problems to crop up before worrying about them, dread nibbled away at his resolve. And by the time he returned from his recon of the target, his worries had returned in legion
* * *
As agreed upon earlier that day, Tiger found iron Mike in the alleyway between two townhouses facing the Fairview Towers Apartment Complex. It was built fronting a street that ran down a hill, a sizable chunk of which had been carved out to keep the Fairview’s foundation level. The two towers sat diagonally across a courtyard that featured a fountain and flat concrete expanses that still bore faint traces of the shuffleboard courts that had once decorated them.
"I had someone downtown flip some bits on faxfiles for me. Mr. Paxxon has owned that suite of apartments for the past three years. He paid 150.000 nuyen for it, cash, and my wirehead said the file looked hexed." Mike let an uncomfortable expression settle onto his face. "I don’t know what this guy is, but all the neighbors thought him deserving of the Good Citizen award I called to discuss with them."
"You keep calling his place a suite." Tiger jerked his head at the Towers. "I thought this used to be a ‘God’s-waiting-room’ kind of place."
"That it was, Tiger, but it got reworked about five years ago. They shipped all the oldsters downcoast or over to Renton. The A tower was made over as luxury apartments, while the B tower was renovated to make four suites out of the sixteen apartments on each level. Paxxon got his cheap. The one above it went to Nadia Mirin—a VP over at Natural Vat—for a cool half-million. Of course, she's on the top floor, lucky number seven."
Tiger glanced at his watch. "I’ve got nine o’clock. Let’s do a check, then we're in."
Mike nodded. "Kalashnikov with link and fourteen clips for it. Ares Predator with five clips. I also brought along two smoke canisters. I’ve got kevlar over and under, with shock pads chest and back." As he inventoried his weapons, Mike patted himself down to be sure he did, indeed, still have everything. As he touched a pouch on his belt, he smiled. "I also picked up about four meters of Monofilament wire, just in case we need to be slicing our way out of anything."
Tiger winced. "Yechh, I hate that stuff. It’s an industrial-strength papercut just waiting to happen. Keep it away from me."
"Will do. Your turn."
"Ditto the AK and two weeks worth of clips. I’ve got my sawed-off double-barrel with two pouches of twenty shells. HE and sliver." Tiger patted the thick belt around his waist. "I've got 300 meters of synthetic cable and two micrograpples. And they’ll have as tough a time getting through my armor as they will punching through to your flesh."
"Good."
Tiger looked at his partner. "You don't sound too enthusiastic about this job."
Iron Mike started to shrug, but ended with a shudder. "Don’t know what it is, but something just doesn’t feel right."
"I’m not feeling any better about it than you are, Mike. We can just walk away if you want."
Mike raked fingers back through his black hair. "Can you pass back Mr. Johnson’s money and his tape by tomorrow morning?"
"No."
"Neither can I." He forced a smile on his face. "Let’s just slot and run and be gone. lad. In and out easy."
Tiger nodded silently and led the way out onto the sidewalk. He headed downhill, then crossed over at the mouth of an alley between the fenced perimeter of the Fairview Towers and the residential homes surrounding it. Mike joined him as they walked through the darkness and turned in behind the complex. The lock on the back gate proved no challenge to Mike’s skill with lockpicks.
Tiger caught the lock and length of chain before it could clatter to the ground. "I’m glad you learned to work these things during your misspent youth. It’s easier than shooting them and—given that this one would stand up to a bullet-much more certain."
"You’re welcome, lad." Mike opened the razor-wire topped gate and ushered his partner through. They passed around the dumpsters, each holding his breath, then mounted the steel steps to the loading dock. After showing another lock no mercy, Mike opened the junction box and flipped on the power for the service elevator again. He gave Tiger a thumb’s-up and Tiger summoned the elevator.
The boxy elevator reeked of old garbage, and whatever coated the walls had a dark, unsavory look. Tiger flicked out his claws and used surgical steel instead of flesh
to punch the button marked "6." Iron Mike likewise avoided contact with the musty walls and only reluctantly dropped to one knee as the elevator ground to a halt. From the side, Tiger opened the elevator doors and Mike quickly signaled all-clear.
They alighted into a small service area filled with brooms, mops, and other janitorial supplies. Tiger used a brush-broom to prop open the elevator doors. They would not go out the same way they had come in if they could help it, but jamming the elevator meant, at the very least, that any pursuers couldn’t use it, either.
Weapons hidden beneath their longcoats. Tiger and Iron Mike left the service area and came around into the sixth-floor lobby. They saw no one else, and the lighted panels above all four elevators indicated that the elevators were all on other floors and heading down. The fact that one was stopped on the seventh floor added to Tiger’s apprehension. but he followed Mike into the hallway leading to the door of apartment 602B.
As Mike knocked gently on the door. Tiger pressed himself back against the wall and slid his right hand through the slashed pocket of his longcoat. He closed his hand on the grip of his shotgun. At the sound of the lock being opened, he was glad he’d jammed two flechette shells into the gun for its first load.
It's a monster! were the first words to shoot through Tiger's mind as the door snapped open for the length the short chain would allow. His left hand smashed Mike flat against the opposite wall as the man in the gasmask pitched a canister of tear gas into the hallway. A shotgun blast from inside the room blew the apartment door in half, but neither of the street samurai had been positioned to catch the full load of shot. Still. Tiger found himself falling even as his shotgun cleared the longcoat. His eyes gushing tears and his lungs burning, he stabbed the short weapon at the man at the door, then jerked both triggers.
The cloud of plastic flechettes spread out to the size of a large pizza in their short flight. They ripped the rubber mask off the man in strips, along with the flesh under it. Blood sprayed as the synthetic barbs pinned his scream in his throat and carved a major new outlet for his carotid artery. Crimson hands straining to stem the flood, he reeled out of sight.
Another shotgun blast sizzled through the narrow confines of the hallway, but passed over their heads. As Tiger clawed the carpet and dove clear of the blinding, choking cloud of gas, Mike unlimbered his Kalashnikov. With his spine jammed against the juncture of floor and wall, he pointed the gun back toward the doorway and burned the clip. A rain of spent shells ricocheted wildly through the corridor as the gun’s thunder stole their hearing.
Coughing and gasping for air, both men scrambled down the hallway with wisps of the tear gas rising from them like steam. Tiger posted off his left hand and had begun to stand when the floor rippled beneath his feet. He sprawled forward into a blizzard of falling acoustical tile. The echoes of the explosion from above hammered its way into his head and body like a Penetratoi rocket.
Tiger landed hard on his Kalashnikov, but continued fighting his way down the corridor. He looked back to see if Mike was following him, then cut around the corner to the janitor's room. Mike joined him a second later and they both slumped against the wails, sucking in clean air Above them, a fire alarm began its wail.
"Are you hit, Mike?" He had to shout to hear past the ringing in his ears, and Mike's eyes narrowed as he took a moment to understand what Tiger had bellowed.
"No, just cuts and scratches. You?"
Tiger swept back his longcoat Except where the shotgun's holster had blocked them, splinters of the door peppered his thigh. Only one the size of a pencil had drawn blood:, all the others had failed to penetrate the kevlar he wore beneath his jeans. Tiger pulled out the large splinter and threw it away. "I’m fine."
Mike glanced over at the service elevator Smoke had begun to drift down from the level above. He grabbed a mop and poked away the broom holding the elevator door open. The doors shut and she elevator began its descent.
Tiger frowned "How are we going to get out of here?"
Mike pointed at the door marked 'Fire Exit.' "If we just act normally, we can walk out. We were guests in 602B. Let's move."
At the fifth-floor landing, Tiger popped the shotgun open and tossed away the two spent shells. He replaced them with high-explosive rounds. He pulled his longcoat around himself, but did not holster the shotgun. He had a nasty feeling about what might be waiting for them below. Two landings later, he took great solace from Iron Mike slapping a new clip into his Kalashnikov.
The emergence stairwell opened directly so the outside, bypassing the lobby. Initially Tiger's spirits lifted a; he realized that was how the building had been set up. As soon as he cleared the doorway, with Mike two steps ahead of him. his spirits plummeted.
Splattered on the courtyard were the remains of the high-diving Lone Star cop. The half-light turned the bloody stain around the body to inky black, but there was no mistaking the shattered helmet, jacket with striped epaulets, khaki jodhpurs, and biker boots. If Tiger hadn’t already known what the guy who took the header was wearing, the two dozen Lone Star cops staring in shock at the body would be due enough to piece together his identity on the fly.
One of the Lone Stars looked up and pointed at them. "There they are! Get them!"
"Set up. Mikie. Move!" Tiger drew the shotgun and fired one barrel in a smooth motion that caught the Lone Stars flat-footed. The grenade round exploded on the ground two meters shy of the nearest badge, sending him flying back in a tumbling roll that knocked down two of his compatriots.
Tiger’s second shell hit the grill of the nearest Rover sedan. The explosion lifted the car like a horse rearing up, blasting the engine back into the passenger compartment. A second later, the gas tank exploded, flipping the car over and sending it rolling out into the middle of the courtyard.
Tiger whirled and started to run after Mike. His mechanical eyes had dampened the light from the fireball, but that left him momentarily blind as he left the concrete and hit the grassy slope leading down toward the fence surrounding the grounds. He stumbled and fell, but fought to maintain his hold on the shotgun as he rolled downhill.
"Tiger, stay down!" Mike screamed above the angry buzz echoing off both towers. The high-pitched, mechanical wail revealed itself as a Lone Star cop jumping his Yamaha Rapier from the courtyard right at them. Backlit by the inferno atop of the tower, he looked to Tiger like the wrath of God descending in all its fearsome glory.
Iron Mike’s Kalashnikov lipped flame as he swept a stream of shells across bike and rider. The gas tank ignited immediately, boosting the immolated cop into a cartwheeling trajectory up and over into the alley. The bike itself did a nosedive. The front wheel bit into the dirt, then the whole machine somersaulted into the fence. Metal screamed and snapped like breaking bones, pushing a whole twelve-meter section of the fencing into a sag outward.
Mike grabbed Tiger by the scruff of the neck and propelled him toward the opening. Tiger scrambled out into the alley and brought up his Kalashnikov, with his left hand on the grip. Because his left hand was not equipped with a link to the sighting mechanism, he did not get a dot on the pupil of his right eye indicating the targets at which he pointed, but it hardly mattered. While Iron Mike cut through the opening in the fence. Tiger tightened down on the trigger and chopped up enough turf and concrete to make the cops dive for the ground.
Both men took off running toward the street instead of further down the alley. Tiger’s decision came from more than seeing the flaming skull-face of the motorcycle cop leaned up against the garbage cans. He just knew that if there were Lone Stars waiting at the front of the building, there would be even more of them waiting at the back.
Mike shot across the street and hugged a shadowed wall in the alleyway where they had first approached the Towers.
"Never a cop when you need one, but when you don't, they're all over you like flies on an open wound."
Tiger popped a new clip into the Kalashnikov, then reloaded the shotgun with two more explosive sh
ells. He looked up at the burning tower and thought he saw something golden flash through the dense, black smoke. When it vanished in a second, he concluded it was probably nothing more than a tongue of flame licking out through the pall. "Mike, let's move."
Iron Mike pointed back away from the street. "Get down there, lad, and secure that side alley. I’ll join you in a second."
Tiger grabbed the shoulder of Mike’s longcoat and turned him halfway around. "Don’t go doing something stupid just to save my ass."
Mike looked at Tiger as though he’d lost his mind. "Your worthless hide? Dammit. Tiger, you don’t believe I’m from Ireland. Why would I shed my green blood for you?" He grinned through the grime on his face as the sounds of more motorcycles filled the night. "Go, and be quick about it."
Tiger ran down the ailey. He shifted the Kalashnikov to his right hand and got his targeting dot burning in place. He filled his left hand with the shotgun, and with his stomach pressed against the wall, peered down the offshoot alley. Nothing moved there but a big old alley cat, who turned and hissed.
Looking back at his partner. Tiger growled, "Clear, Mike."
If Iron Mike said anything in reply, the sound of two shots from his Predator swallowed the words whole. From where Tiger stood, he saw one of Mike’s targets fall as the windscreen on his Rapier shattered. The other motorcop gunned his engine, popped the bike into a wheelie, then shot across the street. Mike turned and ran.
Tiger started to bring up his AK-97, but Mike waved him off madly. The motorcycle's roar filled the alley as the cop throttled up to ride Mike down. Tiger could see the man’s white teeth and homicidal grin and mentally promised Mike his murderer would die fast.
Then, above the engine's whine. Tiger heard a wet thump that sounded like a long knife whipping through a watermelon. For a moment frozen in time. Tiger saw the upper half of the cop’s torso suspended in the air, then it started to tumble while the bike went down in a skid. Sparks flew and Mike dove to the side as the bike careened down the alley, but by the time it reached Tiger, only a splash of blood on the seat remained of the rider.
Into the Shadows Page 23
