“But you knew. Because the family called about their pretty, pretty—but not too young—baby.”
“Uh—yeah.”
“And who are you?”
“I do—jobs—for people.”
“Oh?” The gun came up. “What kind of jobs?”
“Please, don’t—no, not those kinds of jobs. Not with guns. But rich families get in trouble sometimes—more than most people realize. And I—I take care of those problems for them.”
The gun went down. “They must be paying you a lot to come out here on your own, not knowing if we were gonna let you in or let you have it.”
“Well—” Careful now: just the way you rehearsed it. Use as much truth as possible: that’s how you’ll get away with the lies.
“Yeah?”
“I know this family. I’ve worked for them before.” True. “And now the father’s dead and the mother’s back on Earth and they didn’t have anyone else to turn to.” Also true. And now the lie. “And yeah, the money’s good.”
“Good enough to risk your life?”
“Good enough that I’ll never have to risk it again.”
The kidnapper with the machine pistol became thoughtful, only looking up when his partner returned from outside, carrying an aluminum briefcase. “How’s it look?”
The other put the briefcase down, popped his helmet. “As advertised. All clear, as far as I can tell.”
“What the hell does that mean, ‘as far as I can tell’?”
“Look, man, you wanted me back quick, right? Well, that means I can’t go wandering around behind every hill and big rock within five klicks. But the buggy’s where he said it is, and empty.”
The one with the machine pistol was about to open the case, halted, thought a moment, reached out and put it on Trevor’s lap. Then he walked behind Trevor, his arms coming around from behind to prepare to undo the clasps.
“You mind being a human shield?”
Trevor shrugged. “Fine by me.”
The clasps snapped, and the briefcase opened without incident. “Good: we’re off to a promising start. No tricks.”
Trevor nodded, thought: No tricks that you can see. But the concentrated CO2 canister in the false bottom has started dumping its contents—which will trigger the atmosphere alarms soon enough.
The kidnapper had pawed through the bills in the attaché case. “One hundred K?”
Trevor nodded.
“Light, man; way too light.”
“Don’t worry: there’s plenty more where that came from. This is just a taste.”
“Just a taste, huh? Well, I’m ready for the full meal. But how do I get it? You don’t get to leave until she does—and I’m not going to let in any more visitors.”
He had taken the bait—which all but proved that they weren’t from a group of religious or political fanatics. And they’re not seasoned professionals or they’d have already debriefed—and then greased—me. That’s the problem when you don’t use professional operatives; always the greed factor.
“Getting the rest of your money is easy. It’s on my bomb-rigged buggy.”
“Bomb-rigged? How did you get explosives? Even the black market is tighter than nun-pussy on those.”
Tighter than nun-pussy? If you took a course on how to talk like a tough guy, you should get a refund. Out loud: “The family has some clout. But you know that already.”
“Yeah,”—he was a bad actor—“I guess I do.”
No, you really don’t. Someone sketched out the basics, but didn’t fill you in on the reasons for taking the hostage. You’re just hired muscle, following orders. Good for me now; bad for the follow-up investigation. Because when the authorities start checking into these guys, it’ll be a dead end: they’re on the outside of the operation. Way outside.
“So, now you give us the information on how to disarm the bomb.”
“No, because the second I do that, you put a bullet in my head.”
The wiseguy considered for a moment, then waved listlessly with the machine pistol. “Ah—you’re right. So how do we do this dance?”
“You get a spacesuit for the girl, we all walk—”
“Nope. Not happening, hero. She stays here.”
“Until?”
The wiseguy frowned, got agitated. “Until I say so, asshole. Listen, I call the shots here.”
No, you don’t. You were told to sit on her and await further orders. Kill her if someone tries a rescue op. And you’re starting to realize that that may have been your employer’s plan all along: they want her dead, and you dead, and a lot of chaos and worry in the bargain. It’s only a matter of time until someone comes looking, you start shooting, and it all goes to hell.
“The way I see it, you might need the buggy as much as the money. More.”
“Yeah? And why the hell do you think that, asshole?”
“Because whoever hired you to do this hasn’t told you how the whole show ends, has he? And the radio he gave you is quiet—and he didn’t tell you how to signal him, did he? ‘Don’t call me; I’ll call you’?”
The wiry man’s face became very red and he stuck the gun straight out, quivering, the muzzle half a foot from Trevor’s forehead. “Listen, asshole—”
Trevor waited. The gun trembled, wavered, was yanked away.
“Shit! Shit, shit!” The wiseguy put his other hand to his own forehead, as if trying to still it.
The big sleepy-eyed one crooned, “Hey, Mingo, man—we just need to wait. We just need—”
“Shut up—just shut up! And don’t use my name—not even my street name.”
“Okay—but listen, man. He’s just messin’ wif you. We got a deal we can trust, a deal—”
“Yeah? We do? Why? ’Cause they said they want to keep her anyway? That’s bullshit, man—and we were bullshit to believe it. We were doing too much ice, man: they messed us up, messed up our heads so we wouldn’t think it all the way through. Shit, man—” And then he spun back toward Trevor, gun up and steady. “You. Hero. Why are you here? You lie, you die.”
As if you’d know whether I was lying. “I’m here to get the girl. The family was smart enough to know that if they went to the cops, they were as good as killing their daughter themselves: by the time a rescue team got to her, you’d have killed her.”
“Damn skippy on that, hero. Okay, so you’ve got a buggy, and we’ve got the girl. How do we do this?”
“We all go to the buggy together.”
“How big is it?”
There’s an open door for me to gather some tactical intel. “How big does it need to be?”
“I got eight—and her.”
“And me.”
“You can ride on the outside, hero.”
“Okay. And you’ll need to put one other out there. I’ve got six seats, room for two more as cargo.”
“Fine. So we’re at the buggy. Then what?”
“We drive to another outpost—I know you won’t accept going back to Syrtis City.”
“No shit, genius. So we’re at another outpost.”
“She walks away. You have the money and the buggy. And me.”
“And then?”
“When she’s safe, then I disarm the bomb. And you drive away.”
He brought up the gun quickly; Trevor let himself flinch a little.
The wiseguy smiled. “Not so brave after all, huh, Mr. Hero? So tell me, how do you know I won’t grease you as soon as you’ve pulled the plug on the bomb? And how do I know you haven’t bugged the vehicle—a hidden radio, a transponder?”
“You’ll know the vehicle isn’t wired the same way you knew I wasn’t—your friend’s RF signal detector. And as for shooting me—you might, but right now, she’s just an unreported missing person. And she can stay that way. And you don’t have to be accused as kidnappers. But you shoot me, and now there’s a crime that can’t be ignored or unreported: the law gets involved. And you don’t want any news getting out of how you got away, do you? Because
if your employer finds you, that will be worse than the police. Right?”
Chapter Thirty-One
TELEMACHUS
Wiseguy’s eyes widened: he hadn’t thought of what his employers might do if they found out he skipped on the job. If they had meant him to be killed by the cops, they’d need to finish the job themselves if something went awry with that plan. He swallowed. “Okay, okay—but we do it my way. We go to the outpost I choose. And you’re blindfolded until we get there.” He forgot Trevor, started giving orders. “Peak, you get the others: tell ’em we’re moving. Now. Just suits and guns. Mel, you—”
A klaxon started shrilling. Wiseguy whirled, aimed the gun at Trevor, saw it couldn’t be his doing, started a spastic circle dance in search of the cause. “What the fuck, what the—?”
“That’s an enviro sensor, man: we got a leak, or somethin’.”
“Great. Fucking great. Probably broke a seal when you capped that guy in the back. I told you—”
The boss—Mingo—stalked past Trevor, intent on berating his flunky and checking the atmosphere gauges that were next to the inner hatch. Peak was halfway out the door that led further into the compound; Mel was standing flat-footed, following Mingo with slow, heavy-lidded eyes. No one watching and no one close.
Trevor kicked himself over backward in the chair, touching his heels together as he pushed. The contacts in each heel closed, and he felt the base of his life-support unit blast outward, the bottom panel cutting through his suit leg as it went spiraling into the room like a runaway circular saw. White hexachlorathene smoke vomited out of the bottom of the backpack unit in a wide, gushing plume.
As Trevor bounced to a stop on the floor, he joined his hands into a composite fist and hit the sternum-centered strap release: the life-support unit came loose, and he rolled toward the densest accumulation of smoke. Coming out of the snap-roll into a sitting position, he brought his left foot up between his arms, pulling his hands as far apart as he could. He angled his foot sideways, so that the black-painted razorblade taped to the sole of that boot was pressed against the duct tape. He sawed his foot up and down twice, felt the fibers of the tape give—just as gunfire erupted, spanging off the bedrock floor near his chair.
“Mingo, man—don’t shoot! There’s too much smoke: you could hit me—”
“Shoot, asshole—get him! Don’t wait—shoot, shoot!”
By the time they had worked out their sophisticated tactical response, Trevor had pulled apart the remains of the duct-tape cuffs and grabbed down under the collar ring of his spacesuit to pull up the slimline thermal imaging goggles taped there. He tugged hard, felt a moment’s resistance, then heard a plastic pop and a metallic crunch. Shit: busted an eyepiece. He got it out and around his head in a quick motion and snap-rolled again, coming up into another crouch.
The unit—already on—only worked in the right eyepiece now. But with that one eye, he could see the kidnappers’ white silhouettes plainly as they moved around the smoke-filled room, following around the walls, guns out in front, firing occasionally. Mingo was particularly trigger-happy: he’d be dry in another moment. And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king—
Trevor grabbed one of the mugs off the table, threw it away from himself, against the wall that was directly opposite Mingo.
Who, along with his crew, promptly blasted away at the sound. Mingo’s response was short-lived, however: “Shit! I’m out.” His silhouette jabbed a finger frantically at his gun’s magazine release. Trevor moved toward him, pressed against the same wall, keeping his weight on the sides of his feet.
Mingo had a new magazine out, snapped it up into his weapon—
As he did, Trevor shoved his body against Mingo’s flank, rotating him slightly out from the wall as the thug finished reloading. In the same instant, Trevor reached over the kidnapper’s left shoulder with his left hand and grasped the right side of his jaw, just as Trevor’s right hand locked in a secure grip on the left rear side of the thug’s neck. Trevor uncrossed his arms in a sharp X motion: his left hand yanked Mingo’s head swiftly to the left; the right kept the neck from rotating with that sudden turn. There was a sharp snap, like a piece of well-dried kindling broken over a knee, and Mingo went limp, a shout dying out of him as a breathy gasp.
Trevor snagged the MP-5 in mid-fall as he dropped to one knee, made sure the slide was back, and snapped the selector switch to semiautomatic.
“Mingo—Mingo, man—”
Trevor aimed for the center of Peak’s mass and squeezed twice in rapid succession. Peak screamed, went backward, firing wildly, still screaming without words. Mel froze in place—thank you, stupid—and, taking about half a second to aim, Trevor centered two rounds into him, as well. Staying low, Trevor crossed the room, knowing what he would have to do when he got there.
Peak was still screaming, heard someone approaching. “Help me, man—oh, oh, shit—fuck, help—”
Trevor crouched so he was very close and fired a single round into the center of Peak’s bucking forehead. He snatched up the thug’s pistol—another ten-millimeter Sig Sauer caseless—and headed back to the airlock’s inner door, which he opened wide before returning to the center of the room. He snatched up his life-support unit, reached in through the jagged hole where its base plate used to be, and burned his hands as he yanked out the empty smoke canister that had been installed in place of the second air tank. He reached in again, pulled out a black disk the size of a hockey puck, flipped back a cover, pressed the single concealed button, and placed it in the center of the floor, looking away as he did. There was a flash that he could see quite clearly in his peripheral pickups: the thermite filament fuse had lit—and would burn for about three minutes. He pulled a small packet out of the ruined base of the LSU before strapping the unit back on.
Then over to the table as he pocketed the small packet, found his helmet, latched it on and toggled the communicator as he started moving in the direction of the storm room. “Crossbow, this is Quarrel. Crossbow, this is Quarrel.”
“Quarrel, this is Crossbow. Go.”
“I am in. Beacon is set. Have you acquired lock?”
“Negative, Quarrel. I’ll have to come closer to see the heat from the fuse. Not getting the UV phased-spectrum signal from your beacon at all.”
“Roger. Any sign of laser targeting beams?”
“Negative. Looks clear. No sign of fixed defenses or heavy weapons.”
“Take no chances. Use the antilaser aerosols as you approach.”
“Pretty marginal effect, Quarrel. Wind is over forty klicks, here. And rising.”
Trevor had spun open the storm-room hatch. “Use the aerosols anyway. Out.”
“Out.”
He swung the hatch inward—and found the hostage, taped to a chair in the center of the room. The duct tape was so thick on her that she seemed half-mummified.
He slung the machine pistol, stuck the barrel of Peak’s weapon through a utility ring on his belt, grabbed her chair by the backrest, dragged it out of the door’s sightline, speaking as he went: “We’re getting out. No time to talk. Answer my questions—and only that.” She nodded as he pulled the razor off the sole of his boot, and started sawing at the tape binding her legs.
“Nod for yes. There were eight of them, all told?”
Nod. He moved on to her arms and hands.
“See anything bigger than a machine gun?”
She shook her head.
“You know how to use a rescue ball, right?”
A pause. Then a tentative nod.
Great. That pause meant she didn’t really know. He began to slice at the wraps that bound her midriff to the chair. There were a lot of those. And there was some distant, tentative shouting: the rest of the rogues’ gallery was on the way, no doubt.
He pulled the pack off of his belt, dropped it on the floor in front of her. “Rescue ball. Listen carefully. When you pull the tab, the ball will balloon out at you, so stand back. It’s in two halve
s, joined by a hinge at the bottom. Sit in the middle. There’ll be a zipper at your feet: pull it up over your head; the ball will expand more as you do. When the zipper can’t go any further, you’ll feel a click. That means you’re sealed in. You’ll find a mask to your right, on the floor. Put it on right away; that’s your O2 with chemical rebreather. Gives you about forty-five minutes of air. The hissing you’ll hear around you is okay; that’s inert gas, creating point five atmospheres of pressure in the ball. Wait here.”
Trevor slipped away from the chair, listened beyond the door. The smoke was not quite as thick, but, having filled a single room with only two narrow exits, its dissipation was slower than usual. He knelt, ducked his head around the corner.
One bright white silhouette was just entering the main room, the suggestion of another one, maybe two, hanging back in the corridor’s entryway.
Trevor pulled Peak’s pistol out, sighted carefully, high in the first silhouette’s chest, and fired twice.
The silhouette went down, and after a quick, blind fusillade, the other two ducked back.
So did Trevor—only to discover the hostage trying to pull the tape off her mouth. For one incongruously mischievous moment, he was tempted to make her leave it there—but toggled his radio, instead: “Crossbow, I have the package.”
“Copy that, Quarrel. I see the fuse now, and have locked on. Ordnance is hot and ready to fly. Waiting your mark.”
“Roger, Crossbow. Out.” Turning: “Into the ball. Right now. No talking. We’ve got to go.”
To her credit, she was already pulling the activation tab. The ball’s two halves burgeoned outwards; she sat between them. Trevor nodded approvingly, sidestepped back to the doorway; a thermal glimmer suggested the kidnappers had returned to their earlier covering position at the doorway into the corridor.
This was the tricky part—how to get the loaded rescue ball from the storm room to the exfiltration point he’d chosen. He hoped the last five of the bastards hadn’t had the time to fully suit up; if they had, his plan might not work. But their lack of both time and discipline was on his side. Of course, there was also the backup plan—to call in the heavy artillery—but even in the storm room, there was no guarantee that he and the hostage wouldn’t wind up as corpses themselves. Rockets tend not to be discriminating about who they kill, and the walls of the storm room were designed keep out brief bursts of solar radiation—not hypersonic projectiles.
Fire With Fire-eARC Page 27
