“All right, enough about our pal. Two questions, any more like him between here and our objective? And how we doing on time?”

“Good news is you got nothing between you and our boy. Bad news is that I got some minor activity on the home front here. Everything just went on red alert. I think you got about eleven minutes until your position is completely compromised.”

“All right, boys and girls,” Flak grunted. “Time to hump and earn our pay.” With one hand, he lifted the ork’s body and shoved it under the bench next to the lockers, then covered it with a biohazard suit. it wouldn’t fool anybody who actually entered the room, but it might keep from alerting someone merely walking past.

The rest of the team were taking up their positions again. but Rachel felt Sinunu’s hand on her arm. She turned to face the pink eyes beaming out of her balaclava hood. “Next time, don’t move unless I tell you to,” Sinunu said. “Barging straight into a room like that might have gotten you killed, and I got a deal with a certain someone to try and bring you back alive. Got that?”

Rachel swallowed her response and nodded.

“Good. At my left shoulder, one pace back.” Sinunu held Rachel’s eyes for a moment. “You got a gun?”

Rachel nodded again, then pulled out her Seco LD-120.

Sinunu snorted, then reached down to her ankle. She drew a much larger, squared-off pistol from a velcroed holster. “Seco makes a good weapon, but it tends to jam if it runs too hot, and the load is way too light for what we got going on here. Here, take my Manhunter, It’s got sixteen shots, and the safety is here. But I don’t want you firing it unless things get out of control, and then, I don’t want you firing it anywhere near me. Understand?”

Rachel shook her head to show she didn’t. “Then why are you giving it to me?”

Those pink eyes seemed to bore into her for a second. “’Cause if I’d just seen what you saw and didn’t have a real weapon, I think I’d have lost it. Just be careful with it.”

Rachel nodded and pulled the weapon, popped the clip to check her rounds, and then reholstered it. She velcroed the pistol to the small of her back, where it would be out of the way, but within easy reach.

Sinunu nodded in approval.

“All right, ladies,” said Flak, who had finished stowing the body of Number One, “hate to bust this up, but we’re flying to beat the clock.” He handed the four crossbow quarrels back to Sinunu.

“You might want to be careful of the blood on those.” He turned and looked at the covered body of Number One. “There’s no telling what kind of monster made that thing, or what nasty ingredients went into the soup, if you know what I mean.”

Sinunu nodded at him, then turned and gave Rachel a wink. “Papa Flak, just looking out for me.”

As they moved through the round door into an entirely white chamber, Rachel watched Sinunu wipe the black fluid from the ends of the bolts, then reload them into her crossbow. The room they came into was almost five meters in length by three meters wide, with a line of nozzles ringing it.

At the far end was a small corrugated steel platform with handrails. Big enough to hold all of them, it ran on shiny plastic pulleys up into the ceiling.

“This is it,” said Sandman over the tacticom. That platform should lead right to the money boy’s room. Be on the alert. Once you hit the room, it’s ringed with windows, so some dirty peeper could be watching you without my knowing It.”

“What?” Flak growled. “You can’t get a trid feed of the room above?”

“Sorry, Flakman. Somebody did a digital loop, and I don’t want to interrupt it. If it’s our insider, then he’s done it to cover his own tracks. If it’s not, well, you’ll know in just a minute.”

Flak grunted. “Thanks a lot.”

He turned to the group. “Okay, it’s showtime. Everybody keep it tight. Sin, give the package body-cover if necessary. You’ll have the ground level one-eighty. Trux, you’ll take the sky one-eighty.” He pulled out a modified Predator II from a holster at his belt. The big gun looked tiny in his grip. “I’ll take both ground level and skyward zero. Let’s move.”

They stepped onto the platform, Sinunu pushing Rachel gently into a crouch in the center of the group. From there she could cover Rachel as well as her field of fire without obstruction.

Rachel watched as the small elven woman pulled a slim, golden rod from a long pouch at her back.

Then they were on the lift, and without any of them doing anything, it rose quickly and silently into the air.

Her first thought as they came out of the darkness and into the light was that they were on stage. For just an instant, it reminded her of some of the rooms at The Tiger’s Lair, where she had worked most of her teenage years as a cocktail server.

Woo Ling, madame of the Lair, had paid a truckload of nuyen to have a circular room constructed where the girls performed with each other and with any customers who were into exhibitionism. People could walk around the outside and watch through the glass, picking the girls they liked or just enjoying the show.

That was what went through her head as the platform came to rest.

“Sky one-eighty clear!”

“Ground one-eighty clear!”

“All clear!”

The others had moved off the platform, and were continuing to cover their fields of fire, but Rachel had stopped noticing them, had in fact stopped breathing. She stared at the still form on the floor, at the tiny trickle of blood seeping from the back of his head.

Scrambling out from under Sinunu’s protective stance, she moved forward on her hands and knees until she was over the body. She pulled him to her. “Warren?”

Rachel looked down at the unfamiliar face, and then up at the runners. “Hey, this isn’t Warren.”

Flak stepped toward her “What are you talking about?”

Rachel pushed the man away from her. “This isn’t Warren. Can I make it any plainer?”

Sinunu stepped up behind Flak. “You sure?”

Rachel felt frustration bubble up through her. “Am I sure? You gotta be kidding. I’ve seen Warren naked almost every night for the last six months. You think I wouldn’t know him?”

“Fraggit!” said Flak. “Sandman, what kind of drek is this? The target’s been switched.”

Sandman’s voice sounded hollow over the tacticom. “You’re drekking me.”

“Does it Sound like I’m fragging drekking you? Find him, and find him now.”

It only took a few moments, during which time Truxa took a look at the still form. “He’s actually in pretty good shape,” she said. “What do we do with him?”

lust then Sandman’s voice came back. “Sorry, Flakman. I can’t find your boyo anywhere else. You sure that’s not him?”

“Positive.”

“Then I suggest you get the hell out of there, because things are getting hot.”

Rachel thought her heart was going to burst when she heard that. “We can’t go. Not when we’re this close. We’ve got to find him.”

Sinunu was at her shoulder. “it’s no good. We got no recon, we got no intel, we got nowhere to even start looking. Best to pull back and try the run again from another angle.” Rachel knew Sinunu was right, but it still hurt. Everyone hustled toward the lift, when a voice from above them said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

20

Just got the go-ahead from D’imato, and I’ve seen the prelims. It looks like we’re going to be able to pull the whole operation out from under Marco’s nose before he even knows what’s happened. Julius thinks we can use that as further evidence that his brother should he committed. Just between you and me, I couldn’t agree more. I had a talk with the bastard by telecom yesterday, and frankly he scared the drek out of me. The sooner they lock him up the better.

– 

Interoffice email, John Bonavear to Calvin Justran re: D’imato vs D’imato. Fillips, Bonavear, and Justran, Attorneys at Law, Seattle, 07 August 2060