Silhouette

by Dave Swavely

“Which is?” I asked, glad that he was talking while I frantically tried to figure a way out of this.

  “You’re already under suspicion for murdering your superior, since I leaked a hint of that and the video clip to Harris. Even the possibility that you killed your own daughter to get ahead makes you look like a monster, or at least highly unstable. And why stop with Darien? Why not take out the Rabins as well? Chinatown security scanned your card today, and the cameras at Cyber Hole recorded you asking them when our bodyguard would be gone, with no official authorization. And beyond all that, I have a film of you from my home theater saying, ‘I just killed three people, including my own daughter.’” He smiled even bigger at me. “You’re history, man.”

  “Why would you do this, Paul?” the old man broke in, though his sad eyes said that he already knew the answer.

  “Because like you said, I’m not going to let you take away my chance to be king.” I wondered if he meant king of the Bay Area or king of the world, but I supposed that both would be true of the man who inherited BASS. “I grew tired of living in your shadow a long time ago, and then you bring in these two pretty boys to upstage me more. You must know what everyone, big or little, says about Paul Rabin: ‘If the Mayor wasn’t his father…’

  “I’m taking no more of that,” he finished. “Every knee will bow.”

  “Did you kill D and the kids yourself?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, and I winced involuntarily. “The kids weren’t a part of the original plan—they were just there when the best time came around. But we can’t have witnesses, of course.” He felt my glare, and added, “But if you hadn’t dropped your daughter off that night, maybe she wouldn’t be dead. So maybe you did kill her after all.”

  “And Kim?” I asked, ignoring his taunts.

  “Who?”

  “Kim, the tech we chased in the city.”

  “Oh, yeah. I sent a message to him that he knew too much and we were coming to kill him. That’s why he ran. You almost did him in yourself when I told you the wrong fingers for the bird … that would have been even better, but at least you were seen all over the city chasing him, so if someone had to be tagged for his murder, it could be you. Then, when I found him, I slammed into him with the falcon when he was near the front of the trolley, and now he’s resting in pieces.” He shrugged apologetically for the joke. “But that was really fun. I’ve been wanting to do this kind of stuff for years, and those acting classes sure paid off. You were so snowed…”

  “You obviously haven’t turned on the cameras up here,” I said.

  “Give that man another degree!” he said sarcastically. “But enough talk. Now we’re going to have a good old-fashioned gunfight, though it’ll be somewhat one-sided. At the end, you’ll both be dead—my beloved father and his killer, who I tried to stop.”

  I noticed for the first time that his two guns were boas, like mine, to make sure the ordnance evidence would not be an issue.

  “I may even wound myself, for effect,” he said with a shrug. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  He waved the guns around for a moment, deciding whom to shoot first, then pointed one at each of us. “Goodbye, old man,” he said to Saul.

  “Goodbye, Paul,” said the gray-haired man, and then made his move in an explosion of motion that was remarkably fast for a man of any age—especially his. He simultaneously threw his cane at Paul and jumped in front of me, clasping my shoulders in his hands and carrying me to the floor. Saul yelled, “Go, Michael!” as Paul instinctively fired both boas at our falling figures. As we neared the floor, I felt the impact of several bullets on the old man’s body and was sprayed with blood from at least one exit wound, but I was not hit myself. Paul got off only a few rounds in this initial flurry, because Saul’s cane had begun spraying a heavy gas while it was still in the air. From where I now lay, behind the old man’s limp body, I saw the shielded man staggering back, unsure whether the gas would affect him.

  Knowing I would die if I stayed in the room, and hoping I could escape Paul and return to Saul somehow, I made use of the momentary window of opportunity he had given me by thrusting myself up to my feet and sprinting to the door through which I had entered the room. I reached it before Paul noticed me, but was a sitting duck for the few long seconds it took for the door to slide open. So I crouched and fired at him repeatedly with the one boa I still held, hoping that the impact of my shots on his shield would at least distract him. As I did, the metal surfaces around me clanged and pinged and sparked like fireworks from his slugs, but somehow none of them connected with me before I had backed safely into the little room.

  The door slid shut between us, absorbing his last few shots.

  I remembered Saul’s saying that a man moves more slowly with the shield level up, but I didn’t know how slow, so I hurried through the second door to the elevator and mashed the first button I saw. The elevator rose to the roof, and just seconds later its door opened to the windy city air. Then it started to close again, so I quickly squeezed out onto the roof, not wanting to ride it back down toward Paul. I heard it start to descend, so I spun around to survey the roof.

  About a hundred feet away, protruding from the surface, was the private entrance to the apartment that we had entered the night Lynette died. In front of it and slightly to the right sat an aero, which I assumed belonged to Paul. Beyond it was a big garden, and on the far side of the garden I knew there was another external elevator, similar to the one behind me.

  I could hear the elevator behind me coming back up, so I had no time to weigh any options. I took off running as fast as my tired legs could take me, hoping to reach the shelter of the aero or the elevator housing before Paul shot me in the back. I could almost feel the door opening behind me before I reached my goal, but I pressed forward anyway with a few more bounding steps, then dived and rolled behind the aero. I jerked up into a crouching position, grabbed the back bumper, and peered around the edge of the car at the elevator.

  The door was already open and Paul had emerged, the shield shimmering around him and the two guns pointed in my direction.

  “I saw you, Michael, I know where you are,” he said as he began moving toward me across the empty space on the roof. “The old man bought you a few extra minutes, but it won’t make any difference. You can’t move from there without me shooting you; you can’t shoot me because of the shield. I have the only key to that aero here in my jacket, and even if you could get away somehow, you’re now the most wanted man in the Bay Area. If you were actually captured rather than shot on sight, which is unlikely, no one would believe you against all the evidence, or take your word against mine.” He was about halfway to me by now. “So just come out and take it like a man, please. Don’t cower behind there. Don’t make me shoot up that fine piece of machinery just to end your miserable life, when it’s already over anyway.”

  Crouched against the back of the aero, I frantically studied the distance between me and the elevator housing, to see if I could somehow make it there alive. Paul was right … there was no way I could. And even if by some chance I did, it would only put me back down in the apartment again. Maybe if I reached the elevator, I thought, I could sabotage it and keep him out, but even then he could probably override the door or just wait until his helpers arrived. I couldn’t think of any way out of this, so all I could do was raise my head and look through the rear window of the car to see how close he was. But when I did, my eyes were looking across the cover of the trunk, and a thought hit me.

  Could it be? Maybe, because they are his favorite toys. But would he have the same voice code on this aero as he did on the ground car? Maybe …

  I didn’t have anything to lose, so I said “Interview!” toward the back of the car.

  Nothing happened, except that Paul heard me and said “What?”

  I pressed my eyes shut, trying to remember, and whispered, “Please God, please God…” Then it came to me.

  “Wintermute?” I said, and immediatel
y the trunk slid open.

  “What?” Paul said again, then muttered, “Oh no,” when he saw through the windows of the aero that I was reaching into the trunk with my one hand, and putting my glasses on with the other. There was only one in this car, rather than two, but the remote registered in the glasses and responded to my grip.

  The falcon rose into the air above the car, its wings extending as it did. For a moment, Paul was frozen in awe at the sight of this frightening weapon pointing at him rather than someone else. I squeezed the remote with all my fingers at once, unleashing a barrage of killers, stoppers, and gas pellets in his direction. Then I ran for the nearby elevator, knowing that the car, the bird, and the gas were filling the space between me and Paul, who was stumbling backward with his arms up from the attack. When I was in the elevator and the door had closed, I saw through the falcon’s view in my glasses that Paul had recovered enough to start shooting at it—neither the bullets nor the gas I fired had penetrated the shield. So I swung the bird back and to the right, keeping it away from Paul and mobile enough to make it hard for him to hit.

  I was enjoying this inverted version of skeet until I noticed the red line from the elevator’s security system start at the ceiling and proceed slowly down the walls toward my head. I felt a surge of fear and crouched instinctively, realizing afterward that I did this because Paul might have changed the security codes to exclude me, in which case I would soon be “resting in pieces,” to use his expression. I said, “Please God,” again, this time just in my mind, and rather involuntarily. The red line reached my head and then traversed down my body for an agonizing five seconds, but nothing happened except that the elevator came to a stop and the door opened.

  As I stepped through the small anteroom and then through the second door into the penthouse’s big middle room, I continued watching the roof in my glasses and firing on Paul with the falcon, pulling it back and swinging it around him in wide arcs when he shot back. I noticed he was moving in reverse toward the other elevator, which meant he would be coming my way soon, and I didn’t have much time down here. So I ran over to Saul and knelt down by him, while trying to occupy Paul with the falcon as much as I could.

  The old man’s body lay riddled with bullets, a few of which had hit him when he was acting as my shield, and others that Paul had added afterward to make sure he was dead. I was hoping that he might have survived, so that he could somehow assist me and both our lives could be saved. But all I could do was close his eyes and give him a brief message, which consisted mostly of “sorry” and “thank you.” Then I had to go, because I saw through the falcon’s view that Paul had reached the elevator and was now inside it, riding it back down to the penthouse. I couldn’t survive a close-quarters battle with him, especially while he was armed, but a last desperate plan was coming together in my mind.

  As I took my body back the way I’d come in, I brought the falcon into my elevator through the roof entrance and down to the penthouse level. I took its place in the elevator and sent it into the penthouse while I stayed in the safety of the elevator. Paul was halfway through the big room, looking for me, when he saw the black shape floating through the door into the room. He opened fire on it immediately. I swerved the falcon to the side and used the rest of the gas pellets to obscure vision in the room, then continued to fire and move, and fire and move, until all of its ammunition was depleted. Fortunately, as I had hoped, Paul also ran out of ammo in the deafening chaos of the fight. He was just a gun hobbyist, never in the military or even a peacer, so as I’d expected, he didn’t count or preserve his rounds.

  As Paul shook the empty guns in frustration, I quickly brought the bird back through the doors and into the elevator, and rode with it up to the roof, where I would have more room to maneuver for a last stand against the shielded man. As the elevator descended again to pick him up, I stood next to the aero and parked the falcon in the air on the other side of it, gripping my gun in my right hand and the remote in the other. When Paul appeared in the opening door of the elevator, I began firing repeatedly at him with the boa, as he instinctively turned his body and raised his left arm to cover his face. Now that he was out of ammunition unable to fire back, I was hoping that the close range might do some damage to the shield, and I also fired at parts of it that might possibly be weaker, like the feet, head, and the spot on his right hip where the “control pocket” was. But soon I was out of ammo myself, and Paul seemed unaffected by the bullets I had spent. Worse, when he stepped out of the elevator and straightened his body, I saw that he was holding another boa in his right hand, which he pointed at me.

  “But you’re out,” I said with a sense of dread, when I saw his mocking smile.

  “This is the gun you dropped earlier in the apartment,” he said, savoring the expression on my face. “You forgot about it, huh? A big mistake for such a great war hero.”

  I dived for the shelter of the aero again before he stopped talking, but he still managed to hit me twice before I disappeared behind it. The desperate lunge managed to preserve my vital organs and arteries, but the bullets took chunks out of my left side and shoulder. Safe behind the car for now, I dropped the empty gun and passed the remote to my right hand. Then I sent the falcon crashing into Paul as hard as I could, which surprised him, causing him to stagger back a bit and fire wildly at it with his boa. He missed, fortunately, and I pulled the bird away and then farther back than it had been before, to produce more momentum. I sent it streaking at him again at full speed, but this time he was firing from a stationary position before it got to him, and he hit one of the wings twice. The falcon went spinning to the surface of the roof, bounced several times, and then lay motionless in a smoking heap. He fired several more times into it to make sure, which was his big mistake.

  “Did you count your rounds?” I asked from my hiding place.

  “No,” he answered, looking at the gun, his brow knitted.

  “I did,” I said, took my glasses off, and stepped out from behind the aero.

  He pulled the trigger several times in vain until he was sure the gun was empty, then he tossed it aside. We stood facing each other, and at the same time we both noticed the cluster of bullets hanging in the air on the left side of his chest, embedded in the shield. There were also others at various spots I had targeted. So Paul reached into the “pocket” on his right hip and pressed the control pad until the little wads of lead were catapulted away from him and clattered on the surface of the roof. He grunted in pain momentarily, before he reduced the shield’s density, which showed that he wasn’t wearing any body armor under the shield.

  “I love that little trick, don’t you?” he said.

  “Give me the key to your aero and record a confession of everything you’ve done,” I said, “and I may let you live.”

  “Oh, Michael, come on,” he answered. “I know it wouldn’t be a fair fight between us in a normal situation, you being the killer soldier and all.” He spat this in disgust. “But you’re wounded and wasted and I have the shield, which doesn’t just protect me, like you’ve seen, but makes me stronger, too.” The big man spread his shimmering arms wide. “Even if you could take me down, you’d be just adding to your horrible crimes and still be executed. Face it, I’m untouchable.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, and moved toward him.

  I tried some normal attacks to the upper body, head, and legs to see if the shield had possibly been weakened or would allow slower objects in, but every place I hit or kicked felt like hardening cement and had no effect on Paul at all, except to make him laugh. Next, I got in closer, and in between dodging the arms that he was swinging wildly, I tried stopping my blows at the surface of the shield and pressing on it hard and slow, in case I could get inside it that way. But I couldn’t, so I gave up and blocked one of his arm blows with both of mine, bruising them badly but allowing me to grab his arm with my left hand and use my right to find his fingers at the end of it. I figured that the shield had to open at that spot in
order for him to hold the guns, and I was right. I worked some of my fingers between his and then bent his hand back like a game of “mercy.”

  Paul screamed in pain, and my idea was to subdue him in this way and force him to turn off the shield, or to do it myself while he was immobilized. But the big man proved more resilient than I had thought and used his free arm like a club to connect with my wounded left shoulder, and then my head. I lost my grip on his hand and staggered back so badly that I could barely remain standing. My ex-friend had been right again … the events of the last few days and my wounds had drained me to half the man I’d been before. So whatever else I was going to try, I had to do it now, while I still had anything left.

  With no better idea coming to mind, I diverted Paul with some moves to his front, then maneuvered close to his side and used a takedown that would have been crippling in a normal fight. I dropped hard behind him, simultaneously clipping the back of his calves with both my legs and yanking on his arm until he toppled sideways onto the surface of the roof, which cracked and splintered at the impact. Unfortunately, the lower half of his body came down on mine, and the extra weight of the shield plus the “cement effect” made it my turn to scream out in pain. Paul, on the other hand, had only yelled in surprise, and soon managed to roll his body over onto my torso, which caused more screaming by me, and brought his free arm down on my face, which ended the screaming abruptly and left me barely conscious.

  He started calling me every profane name he wasn’t allowed to use around his parents, and pushed himself up by pressing on my chest, which by itself broke several of my ribs.

  “I am so sick of you,” he said, and using the extra strength he had from the antigravity field, he hauled my limp body up onto his shoulders and stalked to the closest edge of the roof. I knew there was an invisible barrier there, to provide some safety but not impair the view, but I also knew it was low enough that he could throw me over. I guess I had irritated him enough that merely crushing my skull wasn’t a good enough death for me. And I was glad that I had, because as he was approaching the edge, I glanced down and saw the small control pad attached to his hip, inside the shield.