by Brian Craig
The thought of a hero’s death in battle was appealing, in a way, but Homer Hegarty was over in Amarillo and he sure as hell wouldn’t come this far east in order to film the last few minutes of a two-bit ex-gang leader who didn’t have the wherewithal to run a proper shooting-match.
Homer Hegarty had never liked him anyhow; the way Homer told it, Ace and the Low Numbers had never amounted to anything in the hierarchy of hell-for-leather leather boys.
On the other hand, he thought, maybe the quickest way to get it over and done with would be to go upstairs to the poker-game and pick a fight with some quick-tempered loser, who would probably shoot him down so slickly that no one would ever know that his own side-arm didn’t have any bullets in it. The thing which worried him most about that possibility was the thought that the loser might be sufficiently sour of temper to shoot him in the belly.
He looked around the bar, wondering if there was anyone there who could be trusted to shoot him dead cleanly, but the drinkers were all sandrats, mostly in worse condition than himself—the only reason most of them were still alive was that no one in the world could think of a good enough reason to put them out of their misery. The sight of them increased the Ace’s resolve to have himself put down.
Not for the first time, he regretted not having kept the last shot in his locker for himself. Now that he couldn’t actually do it, the thought of simply sticking his piece into his mouth and blowing away the back of his head seemed positively attractive.
He heard a vehicle draw up outside and turned his head to see what it was—in fact, he craned his neck just like all the old-timers, so eager for distraction from his misery that any excuse was good enough.
It was a jet black limo, solidly armoured and heavy with artillery—not the sort of vehicle one usually expected to sec cruising in the western desert. The sand had worn away some of its polish but it looked bright and clean and thoroughly citified. The window-ports were one-way only, so there was no way to tell how many people were inside it—but only one got out. It was a little guy with sleek black hair and cock-eyed mirrorshades. He was wearing a dazzling white linen suit that was cut just tightly enough to show off the line of his shoulder-holster.
The little guy walked into the place as if he didn’t have a care in the world, and marched up to the bar, where he took the seat next to Ace the Ace.
The Ace thought it looked promising. Nobody who looked as harmless as this guy did could possibly be less than absolutely deadly. He began to run through his catalogue of insults, trying to decide which one would be most certain drive the guy into an instantaneous fit of fury. His train of thought was interrupted, though, when the bartender came over and the guy asked for a coca-cola.
“Coke’s off,” observed the barman laconically. “Delivery truck got held up, ’bout five years back. I got orangeade.”
“Orangeade,” said the little man wearily, throwing a bill on the table which would have bought a round of “beers” for the whole bar. “Keep the change.”
“What change?” muttered the barman.
The man in mirrorshades turned to face the Ace, and said: “You’re Ace the Ace, aren’t you?”
The Ace’s catalogue of insults snapped shut inside his head, to be replaced by an attitude of wonderment and suspicion.
“Never heard of him,” he replied reflexively.
“I thought so,” said the little guy, exactly as if the Ace had said “Sure I am.” He would presumably have gone on, except that his orangeade had arrived. It wasn’t alone—just as the bartender was thumping it down on the bar the door to the staircase which led to the gambling joint was thrown open, and three men came through. Two of them were very big, but the one they were shadowing was only medium-sized; even so, he towered above the man in mirrorshades when he came to stand close to him.
The guy from upstairs had the top three buttons of his shirt undone, and through the gap the Ace could see a sliver of a gold-and-red tattoo. The workmanship was obviously first-class, and the Ace knew that this was no mere infantryman in the ranks of the yakuza. All three of the guys were white, but that didn’t signify these days—the Japanese yaks didn’t find the desert very congenial, so the local organization was as thoroughly American as the Klu Klux Klan.
“Aren’t you a little bit out of your territory?” said the yak—who was obviously not a man to waste time with social niceties.
“I got a passport,” said the man in mirrorshades—who had had the foresight to put said same passport in his breast pocket, so that no one could misread his action when he reached for it. He took it out delicately between thumb and forefinger and handed it over. It looked just like any other bit of coloured plastic to the Ace, but the yak obviously had advanced powers of recognition.
The yak raised an eyebrow to signify surprise—which was unusual, because the white yaks generally tried to be even more inscrutable than their overseas cousins, in the interests of maintaining an appropriate image. Then he passed the plastic back to one of the heavies, and said: “Check it out.” The heavy returned to the staircase, this time descending into the mysterious depths where the local hackers kept their smartware. In the meantime, the yak stared at the mirrorshades, and the little man presumably stared back. The Ace stared at both of them, wondering what the hell was going on.
After a couple of minutes had passed, during which nobody in the bar would have dared to drop an experimental pin, the heavy returned and passed the plastic back to his boss with a curt nod. The yak, in his turn, handed it to the man in mirrorshades.
“Okay, Mr Andriano,” said the yak. “You’re clear to operate. Have a nice day.”
“You can call me Rico,” said the man in mirrorshades placidly. “And the same to you.”
The yak and his escort went back upstairs to the game. Not one of them had bothered to spare Ace the Ace the merest glance.
“Some passport,” murmured the Ace admiringly.
“The world’s changing, Ace,” said the little man, sipping his orangeade. “It’s all a matter of philosophy. The families, the yaks and people like you have no friends at all outside their orgs, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t all get along just fine, as long as we know who our enemies are. We’re just beginning to wake up to who our real enemies are—and it seems like the families, the yaks and people like you all have one major enemy in common. That’s all we need, in order to negotiate passports, and alliances, and ways of getting what we want. The world’s looking up, Ace. There’s cause for hope. Can I buy you a beer?”
Just for a second the Ace was tempted to ask for an orangeade, but thoughts of suicide had quitted his mind sufficiently to encourage him to be discreet.
“Thanks,” he said.
The man in mirrorshades laid another bill on the bar, just as big as the first, but this time he didn’t tell the bartender to keep the change, and the bartender didn’t try to tell him that there wasn’t any.
“Your boys got cut up pretty badly by Pasco and Preston,” said the little guy amiably. “That’s a pity—we tried to soften them up for you, but we didn’t have the kind of vehicles required for the job. On the other hand, we did dent them badly enough to save your life, and you delayed Pasco and Preston long enough to let us get a little bit of business done. We helped one another, you see. We didn’t know we were doing it—we didn’t even know that we were on the same side—but that’s the way it worked out. Common enemies, you see.”
The Ace certainly wasn’t blind, but he had to admit to himself that he didn’t quite see.
“The families,” he said distantly. “That’s the mafia, right?”
“There’s no such thing as the mafia,” said the man in mirrorshades. “The mafia is a myth, invented by people who couldn’t understand the concepts of loyalty and reciprocal altruism which my forefathers imported into this lunatic dog-eat-dog country. But that’s not the point, Ace—the point is that you and I have something in common, and that we can keep on having something in common, if yo
u want. You did us a favour—now I’ve come to do you one. We have a certain joint operation planned with some more enemies of our mutual enemies, but as our tattooed friend observed, we’re a little out of our territory. We need a little local expertise, and we thought you might have exactly the right kind of motivation to pull out all the stops on our behalf. We want to recruit you to the team.”
“You want me to join the mafia?” said the Ace, stupid with incredulity.
“There’s no such thing as the mafia,” said Rico Andriano, with a discontented sigh. “And if there were, we wouldn’t let you join it if you applied in triplicate. What’s on offer is a purely temporary arrangement, with a single limited objective.”
“What objective?” asked the Ace, feeling proud of himself for contriving his first semi-intelligent question.
“We want to spring Kid Zero.”
The Ace was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that his jaw had fallen open. He very nearly said: “The mafia want to spring Kid Zero?” but he managed to stop himself in time by filling his mouth with beer. This beer, oddly enough, was noticeably cooler than the last—which just went to show what benefits a man could enjoy if he was in the right company.
By the the time he’d savoured and swallowed the mouthful of beer the Ace had recovered sufficient presence of mind to rephrase his question more succinctly. “Why should you want to help Kid Zero?” he asked.
“It’s a long story,” said the man in mirrorshades. “He did us a big favour, for one thing, and we like to preserve our traditions of reciprocal altruism. In addition to that, our associates are very annoyed with the way in which GenTech went about snatching him from their tender care. They feel that GenTech’s over-reaction is symptomatic of a kind of arrogance which needs to be discouraged, and they feel that the time is ripe for a little over-reaction of their own. You should understand that, Ace—weren’t the Low Numbers and the Atlas Boys over-reacting just a little when you elected to chase Ray Pasco?”
“Kid Zero was a friend of mine,” said the Ace sullenly. “I owed him one, from the time the guys made me freeze him out of the gang. I still owe him one.”
“Reciprocal altruism,” said Andriano. “I can relate to that. So are you with us, or what?”
The Ace shrugged uncomfortably. “I got no ammunition,” he confessed. “I ain’t goin’ to be much use in a scrap.”
“Ammunition,” said the man in mirrorshades breezily, “is not a problem. Not getting killed might be a problem, but ammunition isn’t. You supply the guts, and we’ll supply the fireworks. Okay?”
The little man stuck out his hand. The Ace took it.
The guy is right, thought the Ace. There’s hope in the world after all. If it ain’t a new beginning, at least I get to go out in style.
He took another gulp of beer as soon as his hand was free again, and wondered if anybody had tipped off Homer Hegarty about the impending action. He felt in his bones that this might be his big chance to become a hero at last. Homer really liked Kid Zero, and was sure to have something nice to say about anyone who helped to liberate him from the Big Bad Wolves.
Ace the Ace finished his drink and put the glass back on the bar. Then he gave the bartender the filthiest look he could conjure up, just to let the bastard know how stupid he’d been to give a warm beer to a mean hombre like Ace the Ace. Then he followed the little guy out of the bar, and into the newly hopeful future.
3
When the American coast came into sight on the far side of the Gulf of Mexico Pasco felt his stomach muscles tightening. His mouth was dry and he was sweating with anxiety. He was puzzled by this reaction, because he thought that it ought to have been the other way around: the sight of home should have made him relax. Nor was it just the knowledge that his mission had turned out to be a failure.
Something was wrong.
The excitement of hauling Kid Zero out of M-M’s maximum-security research establishment had worn off somewhere over Brazil, when a sober contemplation of his achievements had informed him that one motorpsycho, sans serpentine girl-friend, wasn’t much to show for all the trouble his bosses had been through. But this was more than just a feeling of let-down; it was a sense of impending disaster which was growing stronger by the minute.
Pasco was not fool enough to believe that he had a magical sixth sense, but he trusted the reflexes which had been honed by years of stressful experience. Something bad was about to happen, which would tax his strength and ingenuity to the limits. He was certain of it.
In order to distract himself from the uncomfortable feeling he went back to tell Carl Preston the news. Preston was sitting in back in a window-seat, with Kid Zero beside him. The Kid was conscious, but he was secured so firmly that he could barely twiddle his fingers.
“Any sign of trouble?” asked Carl.
Pasco scowled. “Not yet,” he said. “They’re trying to forestall the possibility by sending up a couple of fighters from Galveston to cover us. Anyway, nine-tenths of the heavy metal between here and Dallas is ours.”
“Are they putting us down in Dallas?”
“No—your boss still wants to talk to the Kid, so they’re taking us all directly to the strip at the labs. The runway’s a bit short, but we should get down easily enough. You’ll be able to visit your brother.”
Preston gave him a dirty look, but Pasco had worse things preying on his mind than anxiety about Preston’s hurt feelings. He stretched himself a bit, then looked down at the Kid. “You’d better think of some real neat answers for the Doc, Kid,” he said. “He’s going to be real mad at you, given that you managed to pass his data to every son of a bitch who wanted a look at it. If he wants a volunteer for some particularly hairy experiment, you’ll probably be it.”
“Maybe,” said the Kid calmly. “But with my luck, I might just end up being the superman the Doc’s trying to make. And whatever else he does, he won’t be throwing acid in my face—so I’m one up on you, anyhow.”
Pasco scowled again, and felt the numbness in the left side of his face as he did so. He clenched his fist and leaned forward, intending to remind the Kid that being brought back alive could still be painful—but he was interrupted by a shout from the cabin.
He went back, and leaned over the co-pilot’s shoulder to examine the synthesizer screens. The co-pilot stabbed one of the sim screens with a bony finger. A little flock of blue dots was making its way across a map which showed part of Arkansas. They were a long way away, but it didn’t take a genius to work out that they were on an interception course.
Pasco’s sick stomach jumped as though he’d been kicked—as though he’d somehow known that those dots would be waiting him; as though they were his own personal nemesis.
“What are they?” he asked. “Fighters?”
“No,” said the co-pilot. “They’re too small to be planes, and the computer can’t recognize them as any kind of missiles it knows about. I think they’re remote-controlled drones, like the one which sprayed you with knock-out gas before.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“Somewhere up in Kentucky. The technics must be M-M, but it may be the mob who launched them.”
“Why aren’t our people shooting them down?”
“They’re flying too low and swerving too often—our airborne scanners can barely pick them up. They show up clear enough on the simulator, but there’s a certain amount of guesswork in plotting their position moment-to-moment.”
“Are they going to cause us much of a problem when we come down?” asked Pasco, feeling certain that they were but not quite knowing how.
“Probably not. Almost all of their load must be fuel, or they wouldn’t be able to fly so far. They can’t pack more than a tiny warhead each—no real firepower at all.”
Pasco chewed his lower lip reflectively. If M-M were going to hit back in reprisal for what had been done to them down in Antarctica, they’d surely send out something more powerful than a couple of dozen fireworks. He turned to t
he radio-operator.
“Any intelligence about troop movements?” he asked. “Anything heavy in the vicinity of the base?”
“The mob pulled out,” the radio-man old him. “There’s no sign of M-M activity within fifty miles—not even bona fide wrappers. The only gunmen in the neighbourhood apart from our own are a couple of motorpsycho gangs.”
“Which motorpsycho gangs?” asked Pasco, quickly.
“The usual—Maniax, plus a few oddments.”
That settled the matter as far as Pasco was concerned—he already knew that the Maniax were in with the mob, and were probably still out to redeem themselves after the failure of their booby trap.
“Scramble the mercy boys with orders to send the bikers running,” said Pasco. “And warn the birdmen that they may be packing something heavier than the usual four-point-twos.” His heart was pumping faster as he scanned the screens. There had to be a third prong to the attack, and if it wasn’t yet evident, it had to be the deadliest one. It wouldn’t be the kind of software attack which GenTech had launched against the Antarctican base’s systems—the defences were up against that kind of sting, and the target wasn’t anywhere near as alarm-sensitive.
“What else have M-M got on the ground between the coast and the desert?” asked Pasco urgently.
“Not a thing,” the radio-man told him. “I told you—even their trucks are off the road.”
“Further north, then—Oklahoma, Kansas.”
“It’s not their territory,” the radio-man complained. “They run their technics in, with the co-operation of the yaks, but the only functioning operation they have is the microwave- receiver which picks up the beams from their spyballs.”
Pasco’s stomach lurched again, and the blood buzzed in his ears. It was as though all his bodily alarms were going off at once. He’d never had such a strong premonition of disaster. Underneath the sickness of his clamorous suspicions, though, he felt confident, because he knew exactly what was coming down and exactly what to do about it.
