by Mel Odom
Up front, the driver gestured frantically, and Hawke thought the man might have seen the pistols get stripped away. He was out of time. He whipped around the cargo doorway and threw himself inside.
Landing on his feet, ducking beneath the sec man’s line of fire, Hawke felt the heat of two bullets burn past him, then he was pushing up, launching off his toes with all his strength and speed, following the katar as he telescoped the blade. His body trailed the weapon in a straight line as the nano-edged point slid into the sec man’s face shield and the skull beyond.
Gripping the dead man as he fell, Hawke spun the body around to use as a shield. He pulled the katar behind his impromptu cover as he faced the surviving sec man. The cargo area was large enough for both them to stand with a couple meters between them, but that was about it.
“If you don’t want her to die,” the man threatened as he angled his weapon under Rachel’s jaw, “you’ll exit now. Otherwise, I blow her head off, and you and I take our chances with how this shakes out.”
Fredericks shrank away even further, as if trying to pull himself into the cargo netting and van wall behind him.
“Flicker . . .” Hawke subvocalized over the commlink.
“Almost there.”
Almost wasn’t going to help. Hawke faced the sec man and considered his options. If he leaped from the van, all bets were off, because they no longer had anything worth holding onto in whatever game Mr. Johnson had brought them into. He and Flicker would have to run, drop so deep into the shadows no one could find them. If they did, they’d have to keep running because they didn’t know all the players, and probably wouldn’t find out until one showed up to frag them.
No, giving up wasn’t an option because they couldn’t escape from or buy their way out of all the drek they were in.
But there was no way he could take out the sec man before he killed Rachel. For an instant, Hawke wondered if her death might get Flicker and him out of whatever this was. If Rachel died, maybe nobody won. And there was no percentage in revenge. Players only continued the game while a win was still possible. With her gone, would everything reset to zero?
Hawke pushed those thoughts aside. Whatever else she was, he felt certain Rachel Gordon was an innocent, and those people got handled differently when he was in the game. He set himself, waiting for an opening, determined to make the best of it.
“Time’s up,” the sec man said. “Move or watch her—”
Before he could finish his threat, before Hawke could launch any kind of attack, a bright blue nimbus enveloped him, and the stench of burning flesh filled the cargo van. His armor turned cherry-red at his head, chest, and groin as he released Rachel and staggered back with a rising scream.
The woman dropped to the van floor and struggled to rise.
With an anti-climactic bamf!, the sec man dropped to his knees. His armor fell to pieces off his body, and charred meat that used to be a man spilled out, twitching on the floor.
Hawke cursed, feeling the after-effects of the magic that had been unleashed. He stepped back, not knowing what had happened, unsure if it was finished.
Professor Fredericks bent down toward Rachel, but ignored the woman, reaching instead for her backpack. Before his fingers touched the material, a black fog drifted up from it, forming into a hideous mouth filled with long, serrated fangs. It snapped at the professor, driving him back against the van wall.
“Back!” a voice from nowhere said.
The professor turned his head, hiding his face as he begged for mercy.
The thing—and it wasn’t just a mouth now, Hawke saw glowing red eyes as well—turned toward him. For a moment, he thought it was going to attack him, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about that—or even what he could do.
Then it vanished.
“Hawke!”
Realizing only then that Flicker had been repeatedly calling for him, Hawke said, “I’m okay.” He couldn’t help wondering if he was telling himself that more than he was telling her. The back of his neck still prickled in fear. He hated magic.
Cautiously, Hawke approached Rachel. He put the katar away, then hesitantly reached out to her, waiting for the fog to manifest again. He was surprised when his fingertips rested against her carotid, then concerned because her pulse was weak.
So who killed the guy threatening her? And what was that—thing?
He glanced up at Fredericks. “What’d he give her?”
The other man just shook his head, like he was going to deny everything, but knew he’d come too far to do that and couldn’t answer.
Hawke pointed a katar at Fredericks. “I’m not gonna ask again.”
“A—a sedative. That’s all, I swear.” His eyes were wide and frightened behind his dust-covered glasses. “Just something to knock her out so she could be handled more easily. She wasn’t going to be hurt.”
Hawke didn’t bother to point out that Rachel had only been a finger twitch away from having her brains scattered across the van. He grabbed the professor’s shirt with his free hand and yanked the man off his feet, throwing him to the floor.
“You and me are going to talk soon. For the moment, stay there and you won’t get hurt.”
Fredericks rolled up into a fetal position next to the sec man Hawke had killed and nodded, wide-eyed and terrified.
Looking up at the video feed on the ceiling that allowed the driver to view the cargo area, Hawke said, “It’s just you now. Don’t make me come after you.”
After a moment, a man’s voice asked over the speaker, “What do you want?”
“Pull over.”
“How do I know you won’t kill me?”
“If I have to stop this vehicle myself, I will kill you.”
The van slowed immediately and pulled to the side of the road.
CHAPTer THIRTY-THREE
Once the van had stopped and the driver had fled into the jungle, Hawke stooped and picked Rachel Gordon up from the floor. He strode to the cargo door, kicking burned pieces of armor and sec man out of his way. He paused at the door and looked back at Fredericks, who gazed up at him fearfully.
“Get up and follow me,” Hawke ordered. “If you try anything, I’ll kill you.”
Fredericks had to try twice to get to his feet, then followed shakily. “They’re going to kill me anyway.”
Hawke ignored that for the moment. This wasn’t the time or place to talk about those things, but it would be soon. He stepped down from the Bulldog as Flicker drove up in her commandeered four-wheel-drive king cab pickup. Dents, holes, cancerous rust, and mismatched paint scarred the vehicle’s exterior. The engine coughed and wheezed, and exhaust trailed in a writhing gray line behind it.
“You call that a pursuit vehicle?” Hawke asked.
Behind the cracked windshield, both hands wrapped around the steering wheel, Flicker shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers, omae. It was the best I could get on short notice.”
“Is there going to be any pursuit from town?”
“None from the locals. They don’t want to buy into anything this heavy.”
“What about local law?”
“There isn’t any. One of the reasons I picked that destination.”
Hawke opened the passenger door, flipped the seat forward, and slid Rachel Gordon onto the back seats. He made her as comfortable as possible, but didn’t touch the backpack. Whatever that jewel had unleashed, he could still feel it buzzing in the air.
Flicker turned to look over the seat at the young woman. “She okay?”
“They gave her a sedative. I want to get her checked out, but I think she’s gonna be all right.” Hawke didn’t want to get into the black fog-thing, especially since he had no idea what it was. He looked at Fredericks. “Get in the back.”
The professor gazed at the truck bed, then back at Hawke. “It looks like they’ve been hauling pigs.”
From the overwhelming smell of dung in the truck bed, Hawke agreed. “Get in or I put you in.”
Fredericks clambered into the truck’s rear and hunkered down against the cab.
Hawke set the timer on an incendiary grenade for one minute, then pitched it into the Bulldog’s cargo area. He slid into the pickup’s passenger seat, moved it back as far as it would go, and still wasn’t comfortable.
Flicker engaged the transmission, making the pickup jerk forward, then let out the clutch and they got underway. “This beast’s old school,” she said, shifting gears. “Nothing cyber about it.”
“Good—makes it harder for anyone to trail us. Let’s find a hole to crawl into.”
Behind them, the incendiary went off and flames climbed out of the van, engulfing the entire vehicle in seconds.
Hours later, after the sun had dropped into the Pacific and full dark filled the jungle, signaling nocturnal predators to come out to hunt, Hawke stared at the bombed-out remains of a tempo drug lab that had almost been reclaimed by verdant growth.
Somewhere in the distance, a jaguar screamed.
Now that the adrenaline had drained from his system, his body was demanding payback for the earlier use and abuse. He curbed the immediate need with a cocktail from his med suite, but knew he couldn’t keep the coming lethargy at bay for long. He needed some rack time, or at least a period of quiet.
When the site had been an enterprising business, it had consisted of four buildings: the lab where the drugs were manufactured, a warehouse for the chemicals and finished product, a barracks for the workers and guards, and a main house for the ops boss and close crew. All of the buildings were constructed out of cheap plascrete blocks. A nearby runway, too limited for anything other than STOL aircraft, ran east and west. Brush and young saplings choked the fast-vanishing airstrip.
Since he’d found no one on his recon, Hawke stood near the main house and gave Flicker the all clear over the comm-link.
Minutes later, lights doused and trailing exhaust that looked ghost white in the darkness, Flicker parked the pickup in the warehouse. Getting inside was easy because someone had blown the building’s front and left side out. The four-wheel-drive strained a little to get over the debris, but eventually lurched into the waiting darkness. After Flicker switched the ignition off, the engine rattled noisily for a moment before spluttering to a halt. It sounded like it was on its last legs.
Hawke slung the Remington 950 sniper rifle over his shoulder and strode toward the pickup. The rifle was part of the gear Flicker had gotten from another fixer. After everything that had gone down in Playa del Iguana Verde, they hadn’t wanted to use the contact there, just to be on the safe side. Even if the man didn’t have anything to do with the ambush, any follow up investigation might root him out.
The second fixer had charged them triple for the supplies and narrow drop window, but Hawke had made her earn part of the fee by requiring a drone delivery. After a check to make sure the weapons, food, and water weren’t carrying tracking devices, Hawke had called Flicker in and they’d picked up the cargo. After making certain there were no other trackers on the shipment, they’d quickly departed the site.
Rachel Gordon was still unconscious in the pickup’s rear seat. Seeing her lying there, pallid and boneless, worried Hawke as he gathered her in his arms, but thoughts of the dark entity and the hard way the sec man had died also kept him wary. Stomach tense with anticipation, he carried her to the sleeping bag Flicker had prepared on the ground.
“There might be some salvageable hammocks in the barracks,” the elven rigger said with a frown as she looked around with a chem-powered camp light. “We need to get up off the ground if we can. You’d be surprised what tries to crawl into bed with you around here.”
Hawke nodded at the professor, who sat on the edge of the pickup bed. “You okay with him while I go see what’s lying around?”
“If he tries anything, I’ll shoot him.”
“Fine, but don’t kill him. I still wanna talk to him.”
“The way he set us up back in town, he’s got it coming.”
“Maybe, but that’s one of the things I wanna talk to him about.” Hawke left the Remington with Flicker and picked up one of the two assault rifles they’d had delivered. He went off to raid the bombed-out barracks, knowing he’d be surprised if anything was left, because whoever had destroyed the drug operation had been pretty thorough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A short time later, Rachel slept on one of the cots Hawke had rescued from the mangled barracks. Judging from the number of skeletons he’d found—both assembled and blown apart—the attack had caught a lot of people off guard. He guessed the other two buildings were probably in the same condition. Luckily, there weren’t any dead in the warehouse.
“Look,” Professor Fredericks said when he returned, “can I just explain—”
“Shut up,” Flicker said, “or I’ll shoot you in the foot. You won’t be dead, but you’ll wish you were.”
Sitting on an empty crate nearby, the professor closed his mouth, drew his feet closer to him, and sat meekly, even though Hawke knew the man wanted to try to weasel out of his predicament. Letting him stew and wonder about his future would soften him up.
In the glow of the camp lantern, Flicker ran a portable med scanner over Rachel’s body. “There aren’t any physical injuries that would account for her prolonged unconsciousness.”
“Could this be a result of the sedative?” Hawke asked.
“I ran the bloodwork. She was given a variation of Bliss, but the amount shouldn’t keep her under for this long.”
Bliss was a street drug derived from poppy opiates. Normally, narcosoldiers and various military field operatives used it as pain management. Hawke’s onboard med suite used a variant of it.
He sipped a water bulb that had been in their supplies. The night’s heat drew moisture from him, soaking his shirt. “Maybe she had a reaction to the drug.”
“I’d think that would show.” Flicker took in a breath and let it out. “I think. I’m not a med tech, Hawke. I just interface with machines. Everything I’m seeing tells me she’s gonna be fine. She just . . . isn’t.”
“Let’s hope she stays healthy.”
“Then there’s this other thing.” Flicker put the device away and slowly reached for the backpack that remained strapped to Rachel.
When she got within a half meter of it, something blurred the visual spectrum around the unconscious woman. Static electricity crackled up Flicker’s arm, making her short-cropped hair lift a little.
With a displeased hiss, she pulled her hand back, and the static charges disappeared. “I can touch her. I can check her over with the scanner. But any time I make a definite move on that backpack, that’s what happens. It knows, Hawke, and that freaks me out.”
“Then we don’t touch it.”
“I don’t like not knowing what it is.”
“Curiosity kills, Flicker.”
“I know, but knowing things keeps you from getting killed.” She turned away from her sleeping patient. “Whatever’s in that backpack, I don’t like it. And I get the impression it isn’t too chill about us either.”
Hawke shifted his attention to Fredericks. “I’m gonna talk to the professor.”
“Give me a minute.” Flicker picked up a med kit from a nearby worktable she’d found in the lab building and took out a sterilized cloth and cleaning solution. “Let me take care of your wounds.”
“I’m fine.” Hawke started to walk away, but she grabbed him and held him in place.
“You’re fine when I tell you you’re fine. In this heat and this jungle, wounds can get infected fast. You do that, you’re slotted because we don’t have much in the way of antibiotics, and even your med suite might not cover every weird bug variant out here.” Flicker applied the disinfectant liberally, the astringent smell tickling Hawke’s nose as it stung the side of his head. Her wipe came away bloodstained.
Even though he felt certain his med suite would take care of him, Hawke let her work. Flicker thoug
ht best when her hands were busy. She calmed down when she had things to do. After a few minutes, she was satisfied and stepped back.
“While you’re talking to the professor, I’m going to work on the pickup. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the morning to get out of Amazonia. You can fix dinner. I don’t want to eat out of a can if we don’t have to.”
“Roger that.”
“I don’t know what we found.” Professor Fredericks mopped the back of his neck with a sterilized wipe. It might have helped him relax and maybe even cooled him off somewhat, but it didn’t remove any of the pig dung odor clinging to him. “Whatever’s in Rachel’s backpack is as much a mystery to me now as it was when we found it.”
Hawke’s deception suite told him the professor was telling the truth. At least about that. There were a lot of other things that didn’t add up, and his explanations triggered the appropriate responses from the detection software.
“What were you looking for there?” Hawke knelt by the fire he’d built inside a loose ring of plascrete blocks and placed bacon slices on a skillet perched on a makeshift grill he’d created out of security mesh. Flicker’s food inventory had been wide-ranging. Even more surprising, the requests had all been met.
Fredericks shrugged. “Just about anything. We went to Guatemala based on some translations from other artifacts I’d been working on.”
Some or all of that was a lie. Hawke turned the sizzling bacon over with a combat knife. He couldn’t control the fire’s heat, so cooking the bacon slow wasn’t an option. He had to settle for turning it often.
Now he raised it and poked the grease-stained blade at Fredericks’s throat, causing the man to rear back and fall onto his haunches. “You’re lying.”
“We didn’t know!”
“Then you’re lying about the translations.” Hawke fixed the older man with a hard stare. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. You nearly got my partner and me killed. No one will hear you scream, the jungle will bury you, and unless you can tell me something I don’t know, right now you’re just extra baggage.”
