Orion failed to hide that he was a bit taken aback by how efficiently Lothan turned the tables on him.

"I can ask," was all the elf said.

"Excellent," Lothan replied. "In either case, it doesn't seem that the local rabble will pose much of a problem."

"Bring it on," the Street Deacon said, flexing one of his skeletal chrome hands with a faint whirring noise. "As it is, it doesn't sound like this will be much of a challenge."

"I prefer to find my challenges elsewhere," Lothan said lightly. "The smoother and faster our business goes, the sooner it will be taken care of and we will all get paid."

"Depriving Ares of a measure of their ill-gotten gains is enough for me," the Deacon said, though he clearly wasn't refusing the nuyen the runners would make.

"Speaking of which," Jackie Ozone interjected, "nothing online to indicate that there's anything unusual about this particular shipment."

"Nothing that I've heard, either," the Street Deacon agreed. "Though my eyes and ears within Ares are not what they once were."

"Jackie, what about the cargo?" G-Dogg asked. "What are we lifting?"

"An interesting question," the decker replied. "The manifest says it's a shipment of electronics: trid-players, cable hardware, drek like that."

"Why would anybody pay to lift a shipment like that?" Kellan asked, speaking up for the first time. "I mean, it can't be worth much more in street value than what the Johnson is paying." A couple of the other shadowrunners smiled knowingly.

"That's the point, kid," G-Dogg replied. "It probably means the manifest is faked and Ares doesn't want Metroplex Customs or the NAN authorities to know what they're moving across the border. They're moving something else with this shipment as a front, but our Mr. Johnson found out about it and wants to nab it. If Ares really is interested in keeping it a secret, then they won't raise a stink if their shipment suddenly goes missing, since it wasn't supposed to be anything all that valuable in the first place. It's not like they can go to Lone Star and complain that somebody stole their contraband."

"Still, it means that we're dealing with an unknown in the form of our cargo," Lothan said. "We'll have to be careful how we handle it. I don't like unknowns." The other shadowrunners only nodded in response.

"All right, then," Lothan said. "Given that information, let's walk through the entire plan. Unless there's anything else:?

"Right, then. Kellan, your part in the plan takes place at the very beginning, and depends entirely on how helpless you can appear."

Kellan didn't like the sound of that one bit.

How the frag did I let myself get talked into this? Kellan wondered as she sat in the driver's seat of the little electric three-wheeler. She glanced for about the thousandth time down the darkened stretch of highway that ran along the border between Redmond and Renton, heading into Bellevue. Most of the streetlights along that length of I-90 had been blown out over the years as part of target practice for go-gangs, wizzer-kids and other vandals. The few remaining cast a dim blue-white glow over the roadway. The ferrocrete barriers along either side did their best to separate the East Road from the desolation surrounding it, but some of them were badly in need of repair or missing altogether. The lanes of the highway stretched off into the darkness in either direction as far as Kellan could see.

She spotted approaching headlights and tensed, her hand immediately going to the stun baton hidden under her jacket. The glow of the lights flared brightly for a moment, then they zoomed past, the vehicle not even slowing down. As the red glow of the car's taillights receded into the distance, Kellan reminded herself that the car she was in looked like a junker abandoned alongside the road. For all she knew, Silver Max had found it here and just appropriated it for the run. She had to admit that didn't seem likely, though, since the car still had all its interior furnishings, even if it didn't run.

"How you doing, Kellan?" Jackie Ozone's voice sounded in Kellan's ear through the tiny speaker-and-throat-mic device she wore. It sounded like the decker was sitting right next to her when, in fact, Kellan had no idea where Jackie was. She could be somewhere in the plex or hanging out in the Hong Kong or Denver data havens for all Kellan knew.

She put her fingers to her ear for a moment. "Just wizard," she told Jackie in a tone that said she was getting tired of waiting, then glanced out at the road again.

Silver Max's crisp tone broke into the channel. "Target has passed checkpoint one," he said. "They're on their way. It's showtime, people."

Kellan immediately threw the little electric car into neutral and made sure the emergency brake was off as G-Dogg and the Street Deacon emerged from the shadows alongside the road. She opened the driver's side door and hopped out. The ork and the street samurai began pushing the little car out into the road. It rolled smoothly, though Kellan could hear a faint whine of cybernetics from the Deacon, so she knew it was costing them some effort.

"We should have gotten Lothan to do this," the Deacon muttered, just loud enough for G-Dogg and Kellan to hear him.

"Lothan doesn't do the heavy work," G-Dogg replied mirthlessly, "that's why he became a mage." The ork flashed Kellan a tusky grin and she smiled back.

They got the three-wheeler positioned nearly in the middle of the road, just a bit askew and facing west toward downtown Seattle. Kellan could see the bright lights and high towers of the city off in the distance, against the gray-black of a cloudy sky. As G-Dogg and the Deacon stopped the car, Kellan hopped in through the open door and put it into park.

Suddenly, the Street Deacon pulled a heavy blade the length of Kellan's forearm from a sheath strapped to his left thigh. Without warning, he plunged the knife into the front passenger side tire of the car.

There was a pop and a hiss of escaping air as he slashed the tire open, then he went and did the same to the rear tire on that side.

"We should make it look good," he said by way of explanation to Kellan and G-Dogg, sheathing the blade.

"Checkpoint two," Silver Max said over the comm-link, and the Street Deacon immediately headed for the shadows along the side of the road. G-Dogg took a few steps backward, looking at Kellan where she sat with the driver's side door still open.

"All set?" he asked. Kellan nodded. The ork gave her a thumbs-up and then followed the Street Deacon into the shadows, saying into his throat mike, "We're good to go here. Our damsel is in distress."

"Final check," Jackie Ozone said over the link. "If you're not ready to run, speak now or forever hold your peace." There was a moment of silence, then the decker said, "All right, let's do this."

"Kellan," Silver Max said. "You be ready to ditch if it looks like they're not going to stop."

"No problem," Kellan replied. "I'm not planning on getting run down by a cargo rig today."

"I'll give you as much warning as I can," the dwarf rigger replied, with a note of genuine concern in his voice.

"Thanks," she said. Then she spotted headlights in the distance. "Visual contact," she said into the link.

"Okay, people, keep the chatter to a minimum," Jackie said to everyone. The decker was monitoring the team's communications and those of the Ares personnel, along with the emergency channels and Lone Star bands, for any signs of trouble. She would ensure that the team was alerted to potential interference, and that they would be undisturbed for as long as possible.

The bright lights were getting closer. Kellan could see two sets of headlights; it looked like a smaller truck was leading the larger cargo hauler by a short distance. Kellan kept the driver's side door open a crack, her hand tensed on the handle. If the driver of the lead truck didn't see her in time to stop: