by Bobby Adair
None of it mattered except to give me the satisfaction of him having just enough time to see a hover bike careening at him—just enough time to have the shit scared out of him, but not enough time to do one single thing to avoid it.
The shroud on one of my forward fans collided with his shoulder. He came off the bike, cartwheeling through the air. His bike pitched up, thrown off kilter as it zipped into the air over the soybean field. Mine went into a flat spin with one of the fans jammed against a bent shroud.
I wrestled for control, throttling up, hoping to grab some altitude to avoid hitting anything on the ground.
The landscape blurred by going sideways with the spin. I saw forest, then field, then forest, then field again. Then dirt and sky.
Oh, shit.
With the fans’ lift out of balance, the bike bucked forward. By throttling up, I’d made my problem much worse.
I throttled all the way down and leaned back as far as I could to try and balance the bike.
The software in the bike’s control system did its best to keep the bike stable as it dropped, and miraculously—luckily—settled it into the soybeans without putting a scratch on me.
I hopped off the bike and stumbled toward the riverbank before falling from dizziness. I shook my head, gave it a moment to clear, jumped back to my feet, and ran. I scanned across the fields as I went, looking for workers or trustees. None. Good luck for me.
At the top edge of the bank, I stopped. I was probably eight feet above the water. The river was wide—nearly twice as wide as it had been back in the forest. That meant shallower. Probably.
Workman was sitting on a sandbar in water about six inches deep, two-thirds of the way across. One of his legs was bent in the wrong direction at the knee. He was conscious, and his right forearm had all of his attention. A broken twig of white bone protruded from the skin halfway down from the wrist. Blood oozed around it.
I made the educated guess he was going nowhere soon.
I ran upriver about a hundred yards, scoping out the sandbanks and deep currents as I went, mapping out a path to get to him that didn’t force me to spend too much time in deep, fast water.
When I found my spot, I slid down the muddy bank and sank in water over my head. I swam across a channel twenty feet wide while being washed at least forty feet back downriver before I was able to climb onto a sandbar out in the current. I got to my feet in water just above my knees and moved toward Workman, careful with each step as the current tugged to get my legs out from beneath me.
The water became shallower as I followed the sandbar downstream, angling across the width of the river as I went. Then it was back into a deep but narrow channel. The water was moving particularly fast, and it was difficult climbing onto the sandy bar on the other side. Only one more waist-deep channel had to be crossed after that, and then I was on Workman’s sandbar, just a few dozen feet away.
Splashing through the water, breathing heavily from the effort, I stopped in front of him. “You’re a greedy bastard.”
He looked up, surprised, as if I’d just materialized out of the air when my words hit his ears.
“What’s your password?” I asked him, indulging a sudden inspiration to have Workman compensate me for ruining my life.
He was confused. His nose was bleeding. He may have had a concussion along with his other injuries.
“Your password,” I demanded. “For your computer. Tell me.”
He found some lucidity, and holding his broken arm with his good left arm, he asked, “Why?”
I grabbed a finger on the hand at the end of the broken arm.
He howled.
I hadn’t even twisted or yanked it. All it took was that little bit of movement. I knelt down in front of him. He was sobbing and going on about his busted bones. I slapped his face. “Back to me, dumbass. Look at me.” I slapped him a second time. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Your computer password.”
Shaking his head, as though he couldn’t discern the purpose of my request, or couldn’t reason out why his password was worth all the violence I’d perpetrated to get it, he blurted it out.
I smacked him again and made him repeat it twice more before I was satisfied he hadn’t made one up just to get me to stop. I stood up and took a step back.
He looked up at me, with tears on his face and asked, “Why?”
“Because you tried to destroy my life to save yourself a few bucks.”
“I don’t even know who you are.” He shook his head as his face turned to a sad grimace. “My arm.”
“I’m Christian Black, the Regulator you tried to fuck over.”
I saw recognition on his face, just before he guessed what was about to happen.
I pulled out one of my pistols and shot him twice in the head.
Chapter 71
Having wrestled the bent shroud back to a roughly round shape, I freed the fan blade to spin normally, and my hover bike flew as if nothing had happened—pretty much. On it, I raced back to the admin building. Time was a factor, so I pushed the throttle all the way forward and maxed my speed.
Once over the complex, I took two passes—one wide circle and one tight circle—looking for any threats that might have materialized in my absence.
It looked much like it had when I’d flown away, except the d-gens who’d been frightened by the gunfire were calm again, back doing much of nothing. No trustees were rushing toward the admin complex in their pickups. No men were milling around with guns out looking for perpetrators to punish. The bodies of the dead lay where I’d left them. The flow of employees’ cars out of the parking lot near the residence compound had slowed to a trickle, and the parking lot was near empty.
It didn’t appear that any of Blue Bean’s employees wanted anything to do with the massacre at the admin building. It didn’t seem that any of the trustees charged with work camp security were motivated to charge into a situation where they might be gunned down. And why would they—they had nothing to gain by it and everything to lose. Eventually, some law enforcement agency was going to show up. No prisoner with half a brain would want to be an armed inmate standing amidst the bodies around the admin building when that happened. That would look like guilt to any law enforcement-type racing onto the scene to answer the call that had to have gone out.
No, the trustees wouldn’t be coming, but who would?
The police weren’t already onsite, so that meant whatever police presence had been around to investigate my crime from the night before was gone.
Realistically, the nearest assistance might come from a nearby town with a population large enough to support a sheriff and a deputy or two. I couldn’t think of one close by, so that left Houston with its sizeable police force. I might have thirty minutes, or even an hour to work with. Ideally, I wouldn’t need that long to put Workman’s computer password to good use.
I parked my hover bike in the grass near a tree behind the admin building where I’d have easy access to it out the building’s back door. I assumed when the authorities arrived, they’d be coming up the long drive in front. If they arrived before I finished what I was doing, I’d spot them and be able to make my escape undetected.
After hopping off, I raised my rifle and scanned the area for threats. I ran to the doorway that opened up to the back stairs and let myself in. I climbed cautiously, listening for the sound of people in the building. Despite the deductions I’d made while flying in, I could easily have been wrong.
I heard nothing. The building seemed to be abandoned.
I took a moment to switch out the magazine in my rifle, guessing that if things got hairy upstairs, I might not have a second to do so then. The one I was removing had three rounds left. I loaded the only full magazine I was carrying for the rifle. I cursed the sticky-fingered trustees again for stealing everything from the Mercedes. Running through a quick count on my pistols, one was full, the other had just eight rounds. I switched my pistols right to
left and left to right, putting the full pistol on the right since I was more likely to use that one first.
At the top of the stairs, I hurried down the hall, peeking in through office doors that were still open. At the second-floor waiting room, I looked across to see Workman’s office doors ajar. After the way I went through them earlier, they weren’t going to close again without repair.
I crept into the waiting area and snuck a look inside.
What the hell?
Sienna and Lutz were sitting in the chairs facing Workman’s desk with their backs to the door. They were alive.
The situation had trap written all over it. I retreated across the waiting room and into the hall.
Get the hell out? Maybe.
Go kill the knuckleheads hoping to shoot me in the back? Bingo!
I didn’t like running from a fight.
Having given the offices off the hall only a cursory glance on the way through a moment before, I went back and did a fast but thorough check. All were empty.
Going back to the waiting room, I very quietly crept along the wall and checked each office directly off that space. Again, no one lurking there to put a bullet in my back.
My ambushers weren’t very good at what they did. They had to be waiting just inside Workman’s office on each side of the door.
Right, left, both?
Why take a chance? I had a full magazine in the rifle I could spare to save myself from a shot in the back, and I was all but finished killing folks for the day.
I took up a position in the lobby, looking through the office doors with Sienna and Lutz directly in front of me but way on the other side of Workman’s office, still sitting and facing the other direction. They weren’t aware I was in the building.
I pointed my rifle at the wall just to the left of the double doors. Because of the angle to the wall beside the door from where I stood, none of my bullets would hit either Lutz or Sienna. I fired ten rapid shots in a wide pattern across that wall and immediately fired another ten into the wall on the right. Anyone behind either wall had to be dead or wounded, and I still had ten rounds in the rifle, just in case.
With the pop of my shots still echoing, with Sienna screaming and Lutz cursing, I ran into the office, letting my rifle hang in its sling and drawing my pistols.
Once through the door, I spun, looking for the ambushers I was certain were there.
They weren’t.
Not one body.
It made no sense.
I was sure it was an ambush.
I turned on Lutz. “What the hell?”
Lutz was out of his chair and facing me. “What the hell yourself! I damn near pissed my pants.”
“Is there anyone here?” I demanded. “Ambush?”
“No,” Lutz told me. “You fucking killed everybody already.”
“Not everybody.” I crossed over to the restroom I’d kicked the door in on earlier. It was empty. I glanced over at Sienna. She hadn’t moved. “You okay?” I resisted the urge to bring my weapon to bear on Lutz.
She nodded.
I hurried around Workman’s desk, and I gave Lutz a once-over glance for a weapon. He wasn’t holding one, didn’t have a pistol stuffed in his belt, but he did have an extra big bulge in one of his baggy pockets. I laid my pistol on the desk, told Lutz and Sienna to sit, dragged Workman’s phone over in front of me, and dialed Ricardo’s number.
He picked up immediately. “Who is this?”
I put the phone on speaker. “Christian Black here. I’ve got the dipshit with me, and someone else. A bystander.”
“Lutz the dipshit.” Ricardo laughed. “I like that. Why are you calling? What do you need?”
“I’m in front of a computer full of information about accounts I think are loaded with money. I suspect there’ll be information on offshore accounts, illegal tax-evasion shit. Maybe more stuff.”
“And?” Ricardo asked.
I logged into Workman’s computer as I spoke, pleased that he’d given me the correct password. “I’ve got a quick, do-it-now-or-forget-it deal.”
Intrigued, Ricardo asked, “What’s that?”
“I’ve got access to the computer. I can give you the password. I can give you the IP address, any network details you need in order to find it from the outside. Can your hacker—what’s her name, Blix—get in and download all the account access information we need to drain the accounts? The clock is ticking. It’ll all have to be wrapped up in the next six to twelve hours.”
“How much money are we talking about?” asked Ricardo.
“Millions is my guess.” I looked at Sienna. “That sound right to you?”
“Tens of millions,” she answered robotically.
Something was wrong here, very wrong. I casually laid a hand next to one of my pistols. I told Ricardo, “Tens of millions.”
“What’s the split?” he asked.
“Half for me,” I answered. “Half for you to split with Blix.”
“Three ways,” answered Ricardo. “A third for you. A third for me. One-third for Blix.”
What did I care about the split? A third of whatever Workman had in his accounts was way more than I’d need, and probably enough to set me up for a good many years. “Deal.”
“Will you be at this number?” Ricardo asked.
“Maybe ten more minutes,” I told him. “Then I need to be gone.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll have Blix call you in a minute.”
“Ten minutes,” I reminded him. I looked at a clock on Workman’s desk. “That’s it.”
“The phone will ring,” Ricardo assured me.
I hung up, looked at Sienna, and asked. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“We thought it best,” Lutz answered for her, “that we all leave together, get back to Ricardo’s, plan our next move.” He looked out the window as if expecting to see something, didn’t, and looked back at me. “Maybe talk about a more equitable split of Workman’s money.”
Sometimes the things Lutz says are so far outside my reality I can’t help but stare, dumbfounded.
“It’s true,” Sienna said, though it didn’t sound at all true the way she said it.
Workman’s desk phone rang. I picked it up. “Yes?”
“You were expecting my call?” asked Blix, like there was no time pressure at all.
I put the phone on speaker. “I assume Ricardo explained the situation?”
“Yes.”
“You know the time constraint.”
“I do.”
I smiled. “Tell me what you need.”
We spent only a few minutes of my ten-minute allotment while I answered questions and she got connected.
She asked, “Can you see the mouse moving on your screen?”
“Yes,” I answered. “You’re doing it?”
“I have control of the computer,” she confirmed.
“Anything else you need from me?” I asked.
“No,” she told me. “You can hang up and—”
“Oh,” I interrupted. “One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve seen a few surveillance cameras around. Can you access Blue Bean’s security system and erase any record of me, Lutz, or Sienna Galloway?”
“If I can get access,” Blix told me, “I’ll erase everything.”
“Perfect. I’ll talk to you later today.” I hung up.
Chapter 72
Everything important to me was taken care of. All I needed to do was leave. I spun around in Workman’s chair, just for the hell of it, and to get a quick look down the long driveway. It was still empty, but the sky behind was glowing orange and the clouds smeared across the horizon were turning red.
Had the whole day already passed?
I realized, circumstances and time had given me the opportunity for one more quick thing.
I spun again in Workman’s chair to face his desk. I tore a piece of paper off a tablet, rifled through a few drawers to find a pen, and I sta
rted writing.
“What are you doing?” Lutz asked.
“Insurance,” I told him.
I slid the piece of paper across the desk to Sienna. “Take it.”
She hesitated, glanced at Lutz, and then leaned forward to pick it up. “What is it?”
“The combination to a safe in my house.”
“Why?” she asked.
Lutz opened his mouth to speak—in fact, got most of a syllable out—before I shushed him back to silence. I’d come to a conclusion about what to do with him. “You’re a liar without an ounce of loyalty to anyone or anything.”
Lutz shook his head but didn’t seem at all displeased.
“I’ve thought a lot about killing you this afternoon. I don’t know what part you had in making this situation go to hell, but I’m sure it was significant. Nevertheless, it’s your lucky day.”
“Yeah,” Lutz told me sarcastically. “Sounds like it.”
“Don’t screw me again,” I told him, looking into his eyes to let him know I was serious.
Lutz shook his head. “I was—”
“I don’t want to hear your voice again unless I ask for an answer.”
Lutz slouched in his chair, unconcerned.
To Sienna, I said, “I’m a fugitive now. I’ll have to cross the border, maybe go to one of the failed states where the law can’t reach me. I’m not sure where, but I am certain going back to Houston will be a mistake.”
I pointed at the piece of paper in her hand. “I would like to ask of you a service for which I’ll pay.”
“What’s that?” Sienna asked.
“There’s a safe in my house. I need the money in that safe.”
Sienna looked at the computer. She’d heard the deal I’d just made with Ricardo and Blix.
“In case they cheat me,” I told her. “Lutz can take you to my house to get the money. He’ll protect you in case any low-life Regulators are there waiting for me. No harm will come to you. I guarantee it with Lutz’s life.” I turned to Lutz. “Do you believe I can provide that guarantee?”
