Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump

by George R. R. Martin

  "Tell me about it," Finn said. "We were doing okay when it was just Sharks, but then those guys showed up and started shooting at us too."

  "People's Liberation Army," Belew informed them. "Security. No such thing as a purely civilian airfield in the People's Republic. There's probably a few truckloads of militia headed this way to back them up."

  "Swell," said Jay. "I was just thinking how this was much too easy, might as well make it interesting."

  Chow Yun Jerry joined them. "Where's Casaday?"

  "In the terminal, with the Black Trump and about a hundred hostages," Finn told them.

  "Hostages?" asked Jerry. "What hostages?"

  "The paying customers waiting for their blimp ride."

  "Chinese standoff," Belew said, stroking his mustache.

  Jerry flashed them a boyish grin. "Wrong director," he said. "That's John Carpenter." He stood upright behind a particularly large mound of baggage, hands on hips, looking cool. Even Lord Tung's pirates were shooting him admiring glances and muttering among themselves.

  From the terminal came an angry crackle of gunfire. "We need to secure the blimp before Casaday can load the virus," Belew said.

  "Great plan, J. Bob," Jay said. He was hunkered down, trying to peer through cracks between suitcases. "Tell it to the guys hiding behind those trucks, see what they think."

  "Let me handle them," announced Chow Yun Jerry. He stood upright, straightened his clothes, and strode around the end of the barricade onto the open field.

  "Get back here!" Jay screamed at him.

  Jerry held up a hand, waved, smiled, strolled casually towara the blimp. The incoming fire ceased. "Chow Yun Fat!" the defenders exclaimed in unison.

  Then they all raised their rifles and cut loose for all they were worth.

  Jerry dropped as if he'd been shot. Jay thought he had, until he came shinnying like a monkey up the front of the baggage-barricade and tumbled over with bullets snapping past his ears. The elbows of his shirt were blown out from his high-speed belly-crawl.

  "Of course," Belew said conversationally, "John Woo is the most outspokenly anti-Communist filmmaker in Asia, and the local boys may have figured they could reap some Brownie points by dusting off his pet star, cultural icon or no."

  "Shut the fuck up," said Jerry, batting away Sascha's hands, which were feeling for bullet holes.

  "You got to start watching a better class of movies," Jay told his junior partner. A man who looked suspiciously like a Card Shark made a dash for the blimp. Jay popped him off a split second before several bullets whined off the empty tarmac where he had been. No one was safe out there.

  "Uh-oh," Belew said.

  "Uh-oh?" Jay repeated. "Who the fuck said that? Confucius? Pericles? Harpo Marx? What, uh-oh?"

  Belew nodded toward the terminal. A wave of tourists in T-shirts and Mao suits and sundresses were being herded from one of the gates out across the field. Jay could hear a woman crying, even at this distance. The tourists edged out onto the tarmac slowly, frightened and unwilling but there were Shark gunmen among them, giving them no choice. "Uh-oh," said Jay.

  One of Tung's men raised his rifle. Finn grabbed his arm and wrenched it down. "No shooting! Those are civilians, damn it!" The man stared at him blankly until J. Bob roared at them in Cantonese.

  The passengers were heading for the blimp's boarding ramp, decked with red and yellow ribbons. In the midst of all that frightened humanity Jay glimpsed the pumpkin head of O. K. Casaday, bobbing along surrounded by hostages. Then it was gone again.

  "They're rolling the canisters to the blimp," Sascha called. "I can see it in their minds. They've got them on dollies."

  "Casaday, you evil motherfucker," J. Bob said. Jay looked at him; Belew said motherfucker about as often as Mother Teresa did.

  Casaday had a wall of sweating hostages pressed all around him and his cannisters. No way for Belew or Tung's pirates to fire without mowing down the innocents.

  Belew studied the moving clot of humanity, weighing them with his eyes, his face emotionless. He dropped the banana magazine from his gun, slammed home a fresh one, and barked out a rapid series of commands in Cantonese. Lord Tung's boys and the South China pirates swung their weapons on the shuffling throng, and Sascha moaned, clutching Belew by the arm. "You can't. There are women and kids."

  Jay whirled to face Belew. "You son of a bitch."

  Belew's voice was almost sad. "A hundred innocent lives against a world. We have no choice, Jay."

  "No! Tell them to hold their fire," Jay said. "Let me pop the hostages away first ..."

  "There are too many of them," Belew said. "There's no time."

  There was a roar of flame behind them, as the terminal windows blew out in a huge gout of white fire and shattered glass. Jay whirled. One of the pirates began to shout in fear. Out on the field, the crowd of hostages shattered into a hundred terrified individuals. Some of them dropped to the tarmac, hands over their heads; others screamed and broke for safety. Jay saw a Shark swing his gun toward a running woman with a child in her arms. His finger was faster. The Shark was gone before he could squeeze the trigger, off to a nice little cave in Burma.

  A human figure rose up out of of the fireball, bare-chested, golden, alive with light. His long hair whipped behind him like a banner as he streaked across the sky.

  Suddenly no one was shooting at them any more. All the guns were pointing upwards, pouring lead into the sky.

  "Is he ours?" Finn asked Jay. "Who is he?"

  "The Radical," Jay told him.

  Finn gave him a baffled look. "What's a Radical?"

  Belew stroked his mustache. "All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well. Marcus Aurelius. People's Park, Dr. Finn. 1970."

  The centaur shrugged. "Before my time."

  "It's Mark Meadows," Jay said. "Leastwise he used to be Mark Meadows. Now ..." He flew like Starshine, Jay realized. Starshine who had died in the night of space, back on Takis. He drank the sun's power like Starshine too, and beams of light played from his fingers. He was as quick as Moonchild, with Starshine's light powers and the fire of Jumpin' Jack Flash, and back at the lab he'd gone insubstantial, one of Cosmic Traveler's tricks. He was all of Mark's friends rolled into one. For some reason, that thought chilled Jay to the bone.

  "Forget the soldiers," J. Bob Belew muttered under his breath. "Disable the blimp."

  Radical held his hands out before him. Sunbeams lanced from them, blinding-bright. Jay had to shield his eyes. Away across the field a fuel truck exploded into a pool of red and yellow flame and black smoke. "The blimp," J. Bob repeated, with iron in his voice.

  Up on the terminal roof, a Chinese soldier tracked the flying man with his machine gun. Bullets zipped around him. Radical banked and swooped. The sunbeam flared again. The prone soldier became a spark and vanished in a wisp of greasy smoke.

  "Jesus," Jay said.

  Other defenders blazed merrily away, but Radical was too quick for them. He streaked away to the east, curved around, and came whipping back low. Sunbeams flared from either hand. Men blazed up and died before they could scream.

  Jay turned to Sascha, feeling ill. "You're lucky you can't see this," he told the eyeless joker.

  "I hear them screaming in my head," Sascha replied grimly.

  Across the field, a Chinese soldier tossed away his gun and tried to run. Light stabbed down from above, and he flared up like a moth caught in a torch-flame and vanished.

  Chow Yun Jerry shuddered. "I'm glad he's on our side."

  "Are you?" Jay said flatly. He wasn't so sure.

  "The blimp, you stupid motherfucker!" Belew swore.

  Twice in one day, Jay thought; now Mother Theresa would never catch up. Suddenly Jay had a clear view of a young white guy in a flapping lab coat, pushing a dolly ahead of him as he raced toward the airship. There were two canisters on the dolly, and Jay had a clear shot. He pointed ... and froze.

  One of the four canisters was the Overtrump. If he popped that o
ne away ... But even as he weighed his choices, he lost sight of the dolly behind a dozen hostages running for freedom.

  "Fuck," Jay snarled. He'd blown it.

  It was all up to the Radical now.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Radical laughed, flew forward. The sunbeams stabbed out from him in all directions, and at each touch of radiance someone puffed into vapor and died. Casaday and company were running now, the guards urging the hostages to follow with bursts of gunfire at their feet, and into the bodies of stragglers.

  "Be my guest," Radical said. "I can fly faster than you can run."

  He was almost over their heads when he saw white smoke blossom from the distance, way off to his left. Shoulder-fired missile, he knew; Mark had seen enough of them going off, waging counterrevolution in Vietnam.

  He loosed a beam from his left hand, swept it left to right. He was rewarded by the flash of an explosion; evidently the rocketeer had been carrying some reloads.

  And then, somehow, he saw the missile. A dot of blackness against the graying sky. A dot that grew larger rapidly without showing any apparent motion.

  Which meant it was headed straight for him.

  Radical aimed both hands at the approaching projectile. As he willed forth a sunbeam, he also willed himself insubstantial, just in case.

  Neither thing happened. Flying, flashing, and phasing out was just too much for the system. Instead of becoming invincible, and blasting the rocket out of existence, Radical began to fall.

  The rocket was based on the Soviet RPG-7V, an antitank weapon whose straightened-sperm shape was almost as famous to millions of CNN viewers as the AK-47. In this case its warhead was a high-explosive charge, meant to attack people, which meant its blast was less focused but wider spread. Radical had been almost exactly 700 meters distant when the rocket was launched. That meant it hummed through the space he'd occupied - and an internal fuse burned down, detonating the warhead not ten feet way from him.

  Radical saw a flash. Then black.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Jay watched helplessly from behind the luggage as Radical plummeted seventy feet to the tarmac. Jerry moaned. Sascha pressed hands over ears as if that would block out their pain.

  The golden youth hit with a loud wet smack, the sound a butcher would make slapping a piece of meat down on a tabletop. J. Bob Belew squeezed his eyes briefly shut. "How dieth the wise man?" he quoted. "As the fool. Ave atque vale, Mark."

  The dollies were just disappearing into the Harmony's sleek carbon-fiber gondola, Jay saw the man in the lab coat, boyish and plump, standing at the top of the ramp as the gunmen herded the last ot the passengers to either side of him. He looked over the field through horn-rimmed glasses. "Put down your guns," he shouted out, "you can't stop us now! You've lost!"

  With a loud clack J. Bob switched his rifle to single-shot. He brought the weapon to his shoulder, aimed, fired in one smooth motion. At the same instant a matronly Chinese woman in high heels turned an ankle on the gangplank and jostled the man in the lab coat. He turned his head a few degrees.

  The bullet struck his right cheekbone and blew it out the side of his face in a spray of blood and white fragments. He windmilled his arms and fell, and was instantly dragged aboard by goons while others knelt to rake the luggage barricade with fire. Jay and the others hunkered down as suitcases and knapsacks thudded to the impact of hit after hit. A hardshell gray Samsonite took a round and exploded, showering them with T-shirts and underwear. J. Bob shook his head. "Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed."

  This wasn't going real well, Jay decided; worse, the fucking Sharks had other vials of Black Trump. "Sascha, I'm sending you back to New York. Jokertown. Sneeze on people, it may be our last chance." Sascha didn't have time to argue. You could scarcely hear the pop over the gunfire.

  "They're casting off," Finn said in disgust. He prodded Jay on the shoulder with the barrel of a gun. He had a machine pistol in one hand and an automatic in the other. "Tell Clara I love her. Tell her I'm doing this for her."

  "Doing what?" Jay said suspiciously. "I don't want you doing anything, just stay - "

  Finn darted around the blunt nose of a baggage cart and took off for the blimp at a gallop, firing with both hands as he ran, his shots ringing out wildly in all directions.

  "Finn, damn it, no, you moron," Jay swore, racing after him. Lead fingers reached out to touch them from everywhere: from the terminal, from the hangars beyond, from the trucks where crewmen were scurrying to cast off the guy lines. Jay yelped, reversed direction, and dove back toward cover.

  Finn galloped straight ahead, bullets kicking up around his hooves, running like Secretariat on a good day. Two Shark goons knelt on the ramp, blazing away at the approaching centaur. A shot slammed into his withers. The Kevlar stopped the round, but Finn staggered under the impact. A second shot knocked him down.

  "Cover him!" Belew shouted, and repeated it in Cantonese. Tung's boys began to blast away. Jerry joined in. Jay popped off one of the goons on the ramp. The other wasn't so lucky. He did a crazy dance as the stream of bullets hammered him sideways and went tumbling to the ground.

  Belew barked a command and three of his South China pirates went tearing after Finn, screaming like banshees and firing on the run. Behind the trucks, automatic weapons began to chatter. The pirates flopped like rag dolls, one two three, the last man cut almost in half by Shark fire. Not one of them got ten yards.

  Every time one of the bad guys raised his head, Jay popped him off to that swell cave in the mountains of Burma. Problem was, most of them were keeping their heads down. The damned trucks made a much better barricade than a bunch of baggage.

  "I wonder," Jay muttered, suddenly thoughtful. He'd never tried anything anywhere near that big before, but ... "Might as well, can't dance." He took a deep breath and pointed, his right hand a gun, his left tight around his right wrist to steady his aim. He dropped a thumb.

  The nearest truck vanished with a clap of inrushing air that was audible clear across the field.

  Several Shark gunmen vanished with it. The rest found themselves standing out on the tarmac in plain view with rather dumbfounded looks on their faces. They weren't standing long; Belew was just as surprised as they were, but a lot faster on the uptake. Tung's boys and the pirates cut loose a few seconds behind J. Bob, and by then Jay had popped off the other cable trucks, one after the other. His head was throbbing so hard he could scarcely see.

  Finn was back on his feet and running again. "He'll never make it," Jerry said. The airship's engines whined up through the sound spectrum as power was applied. Hydraulics began to fold the ramp up toward the blimp's smooth, white belly. Jay steadied himself with a hand on Belew's shoulder. "Don't you have an aphorism handy?"

  "Come on, Dover," Belew roared, "move your bloomin arse!"

  The ramp was off the ground, halfway retracted. Without breaking stride Finn jumped. He landed on the ramp, began to slide back. He scrabbled his hooves wildly and futilely for purchase, dropped one of his guns, began to slide back.

  And the ramp hoisted him up into the gondola.

  The airship Harmony lifted into the sky, blocking out the sunset as it rose.

  The airfield grew strangely quiet. The only sound was the whine of the Harmony's engines. The supporting cast, native and import, had either turned to puffs of incandescent gas and floated away on the breeze, or were lying dead on the tarmac. For almost a minute, no one was shooting at anyone.

  Belew had his big, blocky handgun out, working the slide to check the load. He stuffed it back in its holster at the small of his back, sang out orders to Tung's pirates, who passed him a handful of magazines for the Chinese assault rifles.

  "I'm going to secure that helicopter and go after them," he said, stuffing the spare magazines into his pocket. "If I don't make it, you know what to do, Jay - and may God go with you." He squeezed Jay's shoulder and scuttled out from behind the luggage-cart barricade. Four of Tung's boys went sprinting aft
er him.

  "Helicopter? What helicopter?" Jay shouted after him. The only aircraft on the field was the Airbus parked at a terminal gate.

  "There it is," Jerry told him. "It was behind the blimp."

  Jay looked at where he was pointing. Sure enough, a little bubblefront chopper sat with rotors spinning at the edge of the field. It was almost lost in the huge shadow of the blimp. "Fuck the helicopter," Jay said. He had a better idea. A brilliant idea. His success with the trucks had left him feeling weak as a kitten, but wildly confident. He shaped his hand into a gun and pointed up, at the huge white bulk of the Harmony, outlined against the setting sun. He'd send the fucking thing to the south pole on Takis, he decided. He dropped his thumb.

  Nothing happened.

  His finger had never jammed before. He tried it again. Again. The airship began to move away, untouched and serene. "Okay," he said, "so I don't do blimps."

  J. Bob Belew was racing across the field, Tung's boys a few steps behind him. They were halfway to the chopper when a flickering fire bloomed within a dark hangar. Jay could see J. Bob's body jerk as the machine-gun burst hit him. The stream of bullets swept back and forth, mowing down the pirates.

  Jay caught a quick glimpse of a rumpled white suit and an oversized balding head. Casaday. The fucker hadn't gone with the blimp. Before he could react, Casaday shot him a finger and ducked back around the corner of the hangar. He was carrying some kind of machine gun with a big drum magazine. Jay found himself loathing guns more and more with every passing moment.

  "We have to do something," Jerry said. His voice had changed.

  Jay was startled to see Sly Stallone standing beside him, assault rifle in hands. He looked at what remained of their stalwart crew. Him, Rambo Jerry, and a half-dozen pirates. "Any of you guys fly a helicopter?" The pirates looked at him blanldy. "A chopper," Jay said, "you know." He spun a hand over his head and went, "Whoop whoop whoop." It didn't seem to help much.

  "I don't think they speak English," Rambo Jerry said.