Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  Luppas glanced at Kossuth. “So we’ve got the names of dead people. Where does that get us?”

  Kossuth smiled. “Only two of those other portable telecoms tracked back to corpses. The third one didn’t show up anywhere. The guy who’s using it doesn’t exist as far as the phone companies know.”

  “Do you know who the third person is?”

  “No,” Kossuth said, “but I think I know where he is now. I put a trace utility in the phone company’s software, and it found the guy. Normally a portable telecom is fragging impossible to find. You’d have to do it while a conversation was occurring, then triangulate the broadcasting unit between two communications towers. And if it’s near the heart of the sprawl, forget it. This joker has been talking to someone for the last three minutes, downloading files over a public telecom through his personal unit.”

  “Where?” Luppas asked. He checked his chron. It was 20:41:22.

  “A border bar called Neon Sunsets. Near I-5, where Everett butts up against the Salish lands.”

  35

  “Since we haven’t seen the Johnson in the flesh,” Quint Duran said, “won’t there be a problem identifying him in the crowd?”

  “Not much,” Skater said, riding shotgun and staring out through the bug-smeared window of the Landrover they’d stolen from the Normandy Park area. The effort had been marred only by a small brush with Knight Errant security watching over the garage after the squealer went off. His mind stayed active, playing the angles on the situation they were walking into. He weighed the pros and cons, and tried not to think of Emma asleep back at the safehouse. Elvis had arranged a troll bodyguard to watch over her during their absence. “He’ll know us.”

  “You’re playing the cards awfully close to the vest, kid,” the ork growled.

  “You see another way?”

  Reluctantly, Duran shook his head.

  Less than four minutes later, at 20:53:12 by Skater’s chron, they arrived at the bar. The Landrover’s wheels crunched over the graveled area out front, which spanned both Everett and part of the Salish Council lands.

  The building itself had been constructed on tribal lands, free of UCAS taxes and laws, and close enough for foot trade to escape the duties levied at the official checkpoints for getting into the Council lands. Two stories tall, built in an L-shape that suggested a bar below and shops overhead, as well as a few rooms to let, the building’s exterior was unfinished scarred pine that had grayed from long exposure to the elements.

  Bars covered the windows. On the other side of the multi-paned constructions, neon tubing advertised beers and exotic dancers. Wooden steps led up to double batwing doors. Illumination from inside splashed out onto the large porch area where an armed troll shared guard duty with a lean elf. Both were dressed in rough-out genuine leathers and knee-high mocassins, harking back to the frontier days so many Amerindians said they longed for. Their weapons, however, were fully modern pistols and stun batons.

  The parking lot out front held a lot of road machinery. The accumulation included expensive vehicles of men slumming from Everett looking for a brush with imagined danger in a real frontier border bar, worn and patched-over pickups from the Salish lands, and motorcycles clustered together that suggested the presence of a go-gang.

  Duran pulled the Landrover alongside a new-model Americar and shut off the lights. He let the engine idle for a few minutes, the transmission still in gear as he waited for trouble to appear.

  “I’ll be back in a minute, chummers,” Cullen Trey said.

  Skater shifted his vision around the parking lot, Predator ready in the pocket of the long military-surplus jacket he wore. From the corner of his eye, he saw Trey slump against the back seat. The mage was in the astral now, checking out the interior of the bar.

  “There’s Wheeler and Archangel,” Duran said, nodding to the right.

  Skater swiveled his head around and watched Wheeler bring the modified Leyland-Zil Tsarina to a halt at the other end of the parking lot. The Tsarina belonged to the dwarf and had an interesting array of weapons built into it as well as a souped-up Leyland-built engine. With its patchy-gray exterior and accumulation of small dents, no one would have given it a second look. The SIN it was registered to would hold up to inspection, unless someone tried to find the individual it belonged to on file.

  Bringing it to the meet was risky in some respects. Not in the least was the danger of losing the vehicle and having to replace it. But that was also about the extent of the loss. Losing hardware was a fact of life for a professional shadowrunner. Skater knew that wannabes and amateur shadowrunners could suffer a hardware loss that would shake them right out of the biz. His own team had a commitment to replacing any losses they took in a score, then they divvied up what was left. It was the only way for a professional to act.

  Wheeler would use the Tsarina to run blocker for them if the operation got hosed up.

  Skater accessed the Commlink IV. “Elvis.”

  “Here, omae,” the troll responded.

  Duran shoved a forefinger to the left.

  Following the direction, Skater spotted the troll getting out of the used Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit he’d purchased that morning. It was the yellow of old bone and carried a layer of dust. Archangel had created the SIN and the identity it was registered to, but the ID was so thin that if the car dealer hadn’t been greedy, the deal would have fallen through under a serious inspection. And they’d paid by certified credstick, which turned most larcenous eyes in the sprawl blind.

  “Step easy, chummer,” Skater said softly. He was perspiring in the Landrover, his skin already saturated from the additional weight and thickness of the heavy Kevlar armor and plate sewn into the military surplus jacket. None of them were exactly what they appeared that night.

  “Call me Lightfoot,” Elvis said quietly, scaling the short flight of steps. The sec team stopped him for only a few seconds, running a weapons wand over the big troll samurai.

  Even over the distance separating them, Skater watched the wand light up repeatedly. When the sec crew finished, not bothering to remove any of the weapons, Elvis slotted a credstick and moved on into the building.

  “Couple of thorough yabos there,” Elvis commented. Despite the special filters managing the commlink, noises and snippets of conversations inside the bar echoed into the frequency.

  Duran kept both hands on the Landrover’s steering wheel. His attention was focused on the building, but he looked at ease. The neon tubing spelling out the bar’s name along the face of the second story splotched his hard face, gleaming wetly across his bared fangs.

  “The bar’s pretty much like we figured it,” Elvis said. A feminine voice asked him if he wanted a drink, and he ordered a beer.

  Skater listened to the creak of synthleather and the shrill of a bar stool being pulled across the floor as the troll took a seat. He glanced at his chron. It was 20:57:09. He took in a long breath, held it, and let it out. He tried telling himself the meet was the most danger they had left to face, but he couldn’t convince himself.

  “It’s set up in the H pattern like Archangel found in the blueprints,” Elvis went on. “The bar’s in the center between the two sections of the interior. They’ve got a band on the east-end stage. Strippers are working the west-end stage. There’s a lotta people in here, omae. If Cullen can’t find our guy, it’s going to be hard to do.”

  “He will,” Skater said. He waited quietly, working on his breath, knowing that Duran was aware of it. Two more minutes passed. A half-dozen more customers entered the batwing doors.

  In the back seat, Trey stirred, coming back into himself. Then he smiled. “I found him.”

  “Where?” Skater asked.

  “Near the band stage. Guy’s sitting all by himself at the line of stools along the wall.”

  “Elvis,” Skater said.

  “Got it,” the troll rumbled. “I’m on my way.”

  “He’s human,” Trey went on. “Tall for a human. Maybe tw
o meters. He’s jacked, running some kind of stimulant, and carrying a lot of body augmentation.”

  “Bearded,” Trey continued, “a scar on the left side of his face that runs from his nose back to his earlobe. It’s new enough he still feels twinges from it.”

  “I see him,” Elvis said a few seconds later.

  “Be careful approaching,” Trey warned. “He’s got at least two yabos backing his play that I found. One of them is a street shaman.”

  “I see them too,” Elvis said.

  Skater accessed the commlink. “Archangel, Wheeler.”

  “We’re in,” Archangel said in her cool, professional voice. “And he sees me,” Elvis stated.

  “All right,” Skater said to Duran and Trey. “Let’s do it.”

  36

  The bar reeked of beer, body odor, nicosticks, a dozen different perfumes, and spicy Salish meats. The wooden floor was littered with a thin layer of sawdust to absorb spilled drinks and spilled blood. Illumination was kept at a low level, creating pools over nine-ball tables. Trid arcade games hovered impossible figures of mechanical madness and freakish nature combined with mythology in the smoke-laced air in the back. Bets were made and taken rapidly, the groans coming regularly from one group or another as the imaginary combatants flew at each other with rending fangs and claws or missiles and machine-gun fire.

  Skater wound through the packed crowd, driving through them to the stage area.

  The band took refuge behind a wall of poultry wire that held dimples from thrown beer bottles over years of nightly abuse. Plastiglass fragments dangled in the wire now, winking in the lights and picking up the muted neon glow from the advertising above the bar in the center of the big room.

  The band had four members equipped with electric guitars, a keyboard, and drums. The female lead guitarist was also the lead vocalist. Her throaty voice sweltered in the bar, taking advantage of the acoustics and belting out old gold country music with a razored Japanese undertone. All the band members wore black and silver acrylic gloss and blue denim.

  Elvis sat at a small table with the bearded man Trey had described.

  As Skater approached, he picked up the two yabos running close-cover on the Johnson that Trey had warned them about. There was also one other in the shadows. All of them trained their attention on him and Duran. From outward appearances, Cullen Trey didn’t seem like a threat.

  “Mr. Johnson,” Skater said politely.

  The Johnson looked up and smiled uncomfortably. “Won’t you join us, Mr.—”

  “Snipe,” Skater replied, pulling out a chair and seating himself at the table, “Snipe-Hunt. It’s a hyphenated name and carries history with it. We’ll get to that.”

  The Johnson gave a pained look. “Hey, I can only take limited responsibility here, pal.”

  “Only if we allow you to,” Skater said. “You made the call. You made the deal. You didn’t tell us everything.”

  “I told you everything I knew.”

  Skater looked at the man, getting the impression that the Johnson was telling the truth. “Then. What about now?”

  “That hasn’t changed.”

  Duran took a seat at another table that gave him an opportunity to cover Skater. He kept his attention on the yabos.

  “You hired us to recover a body,” Skater said. “A body that wasn’t a body until we went to make the recovery.”

  “I didn’t know about that.” The Johnson ran a thick hand through his thinning hair and blew out a tense breath. “I got hired to hire you.”

  “By who?”

  He shrugged and reached for the nicostick package by the ashtray on the table in front of him. He shook one out and lighted it. The cool yellow glow bathed the hard planes of his face. He didn’t look like he’d been sleeping well. “I don’t know. She didn’t give her name.”

  “She?”

  He nodded. “It was a woman. I can tell you that much.” He took a hit off the nicostick and breathed it out through his nose as he talked. “She sounded educated. Cultured, maybe. But she knew her biz in the shadows.”

  “Why you?”

  “I work on the fringes,” the Johnson said. “I know people who work both sides of the shadows. She knew me.”

  “Who are you?”

  The Johnson shook his head. “No. You’re not getting that. I’m staying as clear as I can of this whole thing.”

  “Why would you take work from this woman?” Skater asked.

  “Same reason you took the job. I got the money up front when I was supposed to, and it was enough to make me forget I should have been afraid. You could have drek-canned the run the minute you found out DocWagon was bringing in a fresh corpse. You didn’t.”

  “I didn’t want to give the money back,” Skater said.

  The Johnson smiled. The effort showed genuine mirth despite the stress that was also obvious. “You could have kept it.”

  “No,” Skater said, “I couldn’t have done that.”

  The Johnson rolled his cigarette on the ash tray’s edge, shaping the coal.

  “That’s what I asked her,” the Johnson said. “How she could trust you. She said you had a reputation. I did some checking and turned up a joker who knew a fixer named Kestrel who’s supposed to have done some work with you. I put in a call to Kestrel but never got a call back from him. However, I did get one from a lady who knew a guy I knew. We talked about you and she gave me the message drop for you.”

  Skater knew most of that because Kestrel had arranged for the Johnson’s people to talk with people that would be considered safe. The association between Kestrel and the shadowrunner team was loose and carried an amount of deniability for both sides. And Kestrel brokered for more than one team of shadowrunners.

  “Only other guy my contact would have worked with was a team under a guy named Argent,” the Johnson finished up.

  Argent was known to Skater, as was his team; they called themselves the Wrecking Crew. A name they’d well-earned. Argent was a legend in the biz, a guy who’d had his own flesh-and-blood arms hacked off to receive cybernetic replacements. There was no way to explain that to Skater’s way of thinking, even discounting the Salish beliefs his grandfather had instilled in him.

  “Argent’s got a bigger rep,” Skater said.

  “Argent’s also out of the sprawl,” the Johnson said.

  “So that left us.”

  The Johnson nodded. “And we’re here together now because we’re chasing the back end of the amount we contracted for.”

  “That’s not all I’m after,” Skater said.

  “Then you’ve wasted my time—because I’m not here to negotiate.” The Johnson stood up, crushed his cigarette out, and started to move away.

  “I’ve still got the package,” Skater told him. He didn’t want the man to leave, but he knew if he tried anything physical, the drek would hit the fan.

  The Johnson’s attention riveted on him. “Here?”

  “No. Delivery is negotiable.”

  The Johnson hesitated for a moment. “Too much heat’s come down from this thing to play fragging games.”

  “I’m not playing,” Skater said. “I’m just a guy trying to slip through the cracks on a very nasty piece of biz. If I’d known more up front, maybe I’d have done things differently, kept the heat at a distance. Maybe I’d have just walked away. I think the lady who hired you knew that.”

  “What do you know?” the Johnson demanded.

  “Probably more than you at this point.” Skater looked up at the man, holding his gaze. “What did your contact tell you about Coleman January?”

  The Johnson took a deep breath, glanced around at the three yabos sitting quietly and ready to follow his lead. Cursing, he sat back down at the table and fumbled for his pack of nico-sticks. “Money, slot it! Spirits, I hate whoever came up with the idea of money!” He stuck a nicostick into his mouth and lit up between cupped palms. “The drekkingest part of money is that you can owe it to somebody, you know? Money you
haven’t even made yet!” He let out a blast of smoke. “Yeah, I know about Coleman January.”

  “What do you know?” Skater insisted.

  “Look, I’m not here to let you push my buttons,” the Johnson warned.

  “It’s your back-end money,” Skater pointed out. “I’ve got the package and your contact told you to get me. She’s using you as a middle man right now. If I squeeze you out, she’ll come to me to get what she wants. I can’t do anything but better my position for the deal. You’re valuable to me only as long as you cooperate.”

  “You’re a hard son of a slitch,” the Johnson said.

  Skater said nothing.

  The Johnson ordered a fresh beer from the cocktail waitress. When she was gone, he said, “My contact and Coleman January were in biz together. He slotted her over. She wanted him out.”

  “Did you contract for the wetwork?” Skater asked.

  “No, man. I told you I only hang in the fringes, and that doesn’t include anything that heavy. I broker deals, set up recoveries for small corps, insurance companies, do skip-tracing, that kind of drek.”

  “You didn’t think she was going to have him killed,” Skater said.

  The Johnson started to shake his head, then stopped. “Maybe. There wasn’t anything I could do about it even if I knew for sure. I ran Coleman January through some databases I’ve got access to. The fragging guy wasn’t even real.”

  “But you picked up street buzz on him, didn’t you?”

  The Johnson sucked the nicostick again, and the coal glowed bright orange. “Yeah.”

  “And they said January was involved in corp extractions.”

  “Did you know this before?” the Johnson asked. “Or after?”

  “After,” Skater said. “I’m still playing catch-up.”

  “You move fast.”

  “It’s a fast game.”

  “Jack,” Archangel called over the commlink.

  “Yeah,” he answered.

  “There’s a helo approaching the bar.”

  Skater swiveled his head around to Cullen Trey.

  The mage nodded, then his head fell forward onto his arms. “What’s wrong?” the Johnson asked, picking up at once on the byplay.