Headhunters

by Mel Odom

  “Go!” Skater never took his eyes from Luppas. Deja Chilson wasn’t feeling sorry or apologetic; she was scared and hurt.

  The ork woman breezed on by him.

  Even then, Skater didn’t quite trust her not to be somehow working with Luppas. He kept her in his peripheral vision till the doors closed behind her and the floor indicator showed that she was rising.

  “Now,” Luppas said, “the programs.”

  * * *

  The inside of the maintenance tunnel was narrow, but it was clean. The dark, however, was so thick that even the infrared capability of Archangel’s visor was sorely tested.

  She ran the schematics back through her head as she trailed a hand around one wall of the tunnel. She needed that to keep herself oriented because the infrared vision didn’t strip all the shadows away.

  Six more steps, then seven, eight, nine, till she lost count again thinking about Jack and where he might be. She made herself remain calm, angry that she’d let so much of her self-control become lost. She was a fool to think she could just walk in and save him, like some animated hero on the trid.

  But it hadn’t been like that, she realized. She just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him there by himself. The door appeared around the next right turn, just where the blueprints said it would be.

  Taking a fresh grip on the assault rifle, Archangel tried the door. It was unlocked. Twisting the handle gently, she opened it and peered out.

  Luppas and his group of mercenaries stood confronting Jack only seventy meters away, dim and distant in the shadows twisting through the building. She counted maybe twenty men, surely no more than thirty, strung out in a halfmoon around Jack, their weapons drawn.

  She raised the assault rifle to her shoulder and trained the open sights on Luppas. Of all the mercs, Luppas was the most dangerous.

  “Archangel,” Cullen called over the commlink, “be patient. Let’s make the most of our energies and whatever opportunities may come our way. Fuchi has sec-crews already en route from the research compound. They’ve been on standby.”

  The next voice she heard was Skater’s, also over the commlink. “What the slot are you here, Angel? You’re supposed to be clear.”

  “There’s been a slight change in plans, Jack,” she said softly.

  “No,” Skater said.

  “Steady, Jack,” Archangel said. “Don’t blow this chance. You’ve walked into the dragon’s mouth, let’s see if we can walk you back out, chummer. I’ll be right there with you.”

  Archangel felt for Trey’s presence, but evidently the mage had only returned to his meat body long enough to establish the communication. She waited, feeling more tense, more ragged, than she had in years. Control was everything, and she was on the verge of losing it. Emotions were fragged. She couldn’t have them and be herself, be the person others could depend on. She knew that, dammit, she knew that.

  She made herself wait.

  * * *

  Skater held himself steady as one of Luppas’s mercs moved forward.

  “Wait,” Luppas ordered the man.

  The merc froze, less than two meters from Skater. His face looked tense.

  “Give your weapons up before you get near him,” Luppas commanded.

  The merc stripped his rifle and pistol off and tossed them to a man behind him.

  His stomach churning with fear, barely able to restrain the boosted reflexes, Skater watched. His hand holding the grenade shook with the effort it took to keep it closed. He kept his eyes riveted on Luppas, but couldn’t help thinking about Archangel somewhere out there in the parking area.

  Just as the merc put his hands on Skater, a knot of mercs came swarming in from the street, setting up in a defensive parameter. Skater couldn’t hear everything they were saying over the sudden din of helicopter rotors beating down out in the street, but he did hear Fuchi’s name being called several times. Evidently the megacorp had struck without hesitation.

  Gunfire picked up out in the street, becoming a backdrop that unleashed a living thing of noise into the parking area.

  “Now, Trey!” Skater said, knowing the mage couldn’t hear him over the commlink because he wasn’t in his meat body. But he was counting on Trey being able to read his intent in the astral.

  A shimmering took form around Luppas, spreading out from the elf merc in concentric waves that swept his men from their feet. Luppas himself staggered back, appearing dazed from whatever spell Cullen Trey had cast at them.

  Skater exploded into action, lobbing his grenade he held toward the mercs. Luppas saw him, and the elf drew back, a shimmering taking place around him that clashed with the shimmering from Trey’s casting. One of the mercs dove for the grenade.

  Concentrating on the man in front of him, Skater dodged away, feeling the merc’s fingers graze across the front of the coveralls. The material tore, giving his attacker no purchase to work with.

  Wheeling into a spinning side kick, Skater lashed his foot into the man’s head. Pain splintered through Skater’s leg at the impact, but he forced himself to ignore it and retain his balance.

  Everything in the underground parking garage had turned to chaos. Over half of Luppas’s force had been downed by the spell Trey had cast.

  “Jack!” Archangel yelled over the commlink. “I’m at ten o’clock of your position, at the far end of the garage!”

  Moving, breaking into a run, dodging another merc, Skater saw her come running from the maintenance door at the back of the garage. Then the grenade went off, slapping him to the ground.

  57

  “Jack!”

  Skater was cut and bloodied from the explosion, feeling weak as a kitten. He considered it a miracle that he was still breathing. He made himself get to his feet and somehow lurched into a staggering run.

  A glance at the merc ranks told him they’d been reduced even further by the grenade. Then a gush of blood occluded his cybereye. He took a fresh grip on the Predator and used cars and the support pillars for cover as Luppas screamed orders behind him. He fired the Predator at everything before him that looked hostile. Skater spotted the Americar he and Duran had parked earlier. “The car,” he called to Archangel over the commlink.

  “I see it.”

  “Get there.”

  Squeezing through on the pistol’s trigger again, Skater found he’d emptied it. He pulled up short behind a support pillar and changed magazines. He thumbed the slide release and sent it scooting forward, stripping the top round from the magazine and thrusting it home.

  Archangel fired round after round at Luppas and the group of mercs. The bullets didn’t penetrate the magical barrier the elf had erected around himself, but they played bloody frag with his troops.

  Skater pushed off the pillar and ran for the Americar XE. He was vaguely aware of the Fuchi helicopter landing out on Overlake Drive West in front of the apartment tower.

  Archangel beat him to the car, sliding alongside it and using it for cover as she slipped a fresh magazine into the assault rifle. She fired again as soon as it was ready, knocking a merc from his feet.

  “Get in,” Skater said, pulling the driver’s-side door open and dropping into the bucket seat. Archangel followed him in, firing a final burst at a merc less than twenty meters away and closing from the protection afforded by a line of cars. The bullets hammered vehicles and merc as well, busting out glass, ripping through bodywork, and tossing the man over a low-slung Runabout.

  Skater reached under the seat and grabbed the key from where he and Duran had left it. When he turned the ignition, he breathed a short sigh of relief when the engine caught with a throaty roar. He slammed the stick into first gear and popped the clutch.

  The XE sports package came with an old-style rear-wheel drive. Skater’s reflexes took the performance all wrong for a moment and nearly piled them into the side of a massive Landrover before he corrected. He pulled back hard on the wheel, let off on the accelerator, and muscled the car back into line with the entrance le
tting out onto the street with skill and luck.

  The ramp leading up to Overlake Drive West was filled with the Fuchi helicopter and secmen. None of them wore identifying uniforms, and there were no markings on the aircraft. To Skater, they were all dangerous.

  Using Fuchi against Luppas had been the wildest card in the deck he’d set up for the night’s run. And now it looked like it would be one of the most effective. If it didn’t kill them first.

  “Stay down,” he told Archangel.

  “It’s a little late for warnings,” she said, giving him a look. “And a little late for taking chances, don’t you think?” Skater didn’t reply, focusing his attention on driving. The XE powered up the ramp, scattering Fuchi men and drawing fire from before and behind all at the same time. Two men were too slow to get out of the way. The Americar bowled them over, one of them going down under the wheels and the other going high, slamming onto the hood for an instant before being tossed off.

  Cutting the wheels sharply, Skater narrowly avoided the waspish shape of the attack helicopter sitting in the street as he turned east. He touched the brake briefly when he saw pedestrians on the sidewalk ahead of him, then laid on the horn. The shrill bleat and the sparks of gunfire bouncing from the vehicle sent the onlookers scattering. He held the course with difficulty.

  A moment later he was through, shoving his foot down on the accelerator. The high-performance sports engine responded like a thoroughbred, barreling down the street.

  “What the frag were you doing there?” he demanded.

  “Keeping you from getting killed.” She didn’t look at him, her beautiful face masked tight and hard. Her almond eyes searched the street behind him. “We’re being followed. While we were back there, I saw Luppas getting into—that!" She pointed.

  Skater checked his rearview mirrors, picking up the deep sepia-colored Australian-made Brumby roaring after them at once. “I could have made it out of there just fine.”

  “Fraggit, Jack,” Archangel said, “you still did, you dit-brained moron.”

  “You didn’t have to come back there.”

  “You didn’t have to jander down there when Luppas had Deja Chilson either. But you did.”

  “You were supposed to stay clear,” Skater said. “You weren’t even supposed to be near the real risk.” He turned the corner hard, following Overlake Drive West as it jogged south toward Groat Point.

  “We’re clear now.”

  Skater had no argument for that, but he was surprised at the anger in Archangel’s voice. Fear or concern, he’d have understood. Those things were natural. But the anger was out of place, not stemming from their current situation. He pushed it out of his mind. There were too many other variables to keep track of. He keyed up the commlink. “Okay, chummers, now we get down and dirty. Make the shift over to beta frequency.” He switched over himself. “Cheshire Two, do you copy?”

  “Cheshire Two copies,” Duran replied.

  “Where are you?” Skater laid on the horn again and shot through the intersection at Eighty-fourth Avenue NE and Overlake Drive West against a red light. Cars squealed to a halt on either side of the intersection. A light truck skidded out far enough to make brief contact with the XE’s driver’s side.

  Skater fought the wheels as the car rocked, watching sparks flare up in his window as metal scraped metal. Then he had control again and the intersection was behind him.

  “Coming up on the intersection where Overlake Drive West meets Overlake Drive East,” Duran replied. “We’re almost out of running room, kid.”

  “Cheshire Five,” Skater called, checking his review mirror, “are you ready?”

  More acclimated to the run and gun conditions of fleeing through the streets, the Brumby was closing the distance between itself and the XE.

  “Yes.” Cullen Trey sounded completely beat. “Don’t worry, chummer, for the rest of the night’s activities, I’ve got help.” Trey had explained about the water elemental that he’d summoned up. The creature had been put in his service over a year ago and still had a debt to pay off to Trey, though the mage never said what that debt was. All the team members had their secrets, though.

  “Cheshire Six,” Skater called, thinking he recognized the Tsarina ahead of him.

  “I’m here, chummer,” Wheeler replied. “Taking care of biz. They’ve got two on their hoop.”

  Closer now, Skater saw the bursts of autofire blazing at the Tsarina. Some of them struck the vehicle, igniting brief comets immediately sucked away in the crush of wind rushing over the speeding vehicle. The mini-cannon mounted on Wheeler’s vehicle belched flame.

  Unerringly, the rocket smashed into the rear of the car less than forty meters ahead of the Tsarina. Propelled by the blast, the car flipped end over end, coming to rest on its side against a squat building that advertised boat rentals and repairs. Flames licked out around it, then consumed it in a rush.

  The Brumby suddenly slammed against the rear of the XE. “Frag,” Skater cursed softly, recovering control over the car with difficulty. He glanced at the next intersection, a three-way that led off to NE Second Street. They were almost on top of Groat Point, closing faster than he’d wanted to.

  The Brumby rushed forward again, assault rifle fire hammering the rear of the XE. The glass in the rear window emptied and the front seat puffed out plastifoam stuffing as the bullets ripped through the covering.

  Archangel grunted in pain.

  Skater looked over at her quickly. “Angel—?”

  “I’m all right,” she said. “The armor stopped a round from going through, but it didn’t stop it from hurting like drek.”

  “Cheshire!” Quentin Strapp called over the commlink. “Here,” Skater said.

  “There are more unidentified aircraft pursuing your extraction path,” the federal agent said. “Advise me as to the situation.”

  “They’re from Fuchi,” Skater said, checking the mirrors, hunkering down so he could scan the sky behind him. Sure enough, there were at least two helicopters in the air, closing in rapidly and hugging the ground just above the tops of the nearby buildings. “You’re getting them gift-wrapped and at no extra charge.”

  “We’re moving in,” Strapp said. “I’m not waiting any longer.”

  “Now,” Skater said, whipping the XE to the side as the Brumby driver tried to ram him again, “now’s the time.”

  The Brumby crossed bumpers with the XE, almost spinning it out of control again.

  Ahead of them, not more than sixty meters away, Wheeler fired at the last pursuit car dogging Elvis’s van. The round struck the pursuit car squarely and blew it off the street, turning it into a rolling mass of fire and wreckage.

  “There.” Archangel pointed.

  Following the last curving turn of Overlake Drive West down to the Groat Point marinas, warehouses, and docks, Skater looked up and spotted the black mass that was Lake Washington. On the other side of it, what looked like a spun confection of lights rose into the air.

  Skater knew the lights were from the aircraft Quentin Strapp had put into position. None of the pilots and federal agents aboard them had known what their mission objective would be until the last few minutes.

  “Home free, omae,” Elvis called over the commlink. The van pulled off Overlake Drive and hurtled down one of the many small side streets leading into the docks and wharves. It didn’t stop until it reached a transport barge tied up at a loading dock. The barge rocked under the sudden weight of the van as it skidded to a halt only a few meters from the end.

  Elvis and Duran erupted from the doors and set about casting off. The man they’d hired to keep the motors running abandoned the barge at the sight of the Brumby still firing guns at the XE.

  The lights streaking across Lake Washington were more defined now, taking shape as being part of a phalanx of combat helicopters with UCAS government markings.

  Wheeler’s Tsarina sped up the ramp and braked on the barge as well, coming around gracefully to face the oncom
ing traffic with the mini-cannon, millimeters to spare on one side before it would drop off into the lake.

  Skater struggled with the wheel as the Brumby bashed into him again. “Strapp, it’s your show now.” A glance in the rearview mirror showed him that the Brumby hadn’t come alone. Skater didn’t know if the other vehicles were filled with Luppas’s mercs or with Fuchi secmen, but he did know that either one spelled trouble for himself and his team. “Cheshire Two, cut away.”

  “You’re not here, kid.”

  “Fraggit, if you wait till I’m there, everybody else is going to be on top of you too.”

  “Kid—”

  “Do it,” Skater ordered, “do it now!”

  Out on the lake, part of the loading ramp braced against the barge suddenly dropped into the water as the barge started pulling away.

  The Brumby accelerated again.

  This time Skater held his ground and stomped on the brakes. The collision nearly swept away his senses, an overwhelming barrage of lights and force and noise. He thought for a moment that his head had snapped off his shoulders.

  “Strap in,” he croaked, having to force his arms and legs to work.

  “I already have,” Archangel said. She reached across and worked his safety straps as well, belting him in tightly.

  The rear wheels spun for a moment, trying to get up enough speed to tear free from the Brumby. The collision between the two vehicles had temporarily locked them up. It hadn’t stopped the forward momentum, though.

  The Brumby’s driving wheels and greater mass and weight kept them moving forward. The XE’s presence did frag up the steering, however, and the bigger vehicle listed heavily to the right, driving them at a rack of rental canoes.

  Skater popped the clutch again, sending the XE surging forward till it unhooked from the Brumby, then he pulled it back on track, approaching the loading dock. The Brumby smashed through the canoe rack, splintering the boats and scattering beachcombers who’d taken cover when Wheeler and Elvis had blown through.

  Even though he’d prepared for it, he almost thought his eyes were telling him the truth when he saw the barge still tied up and waiting at the end of the loading dock.