He had seven minutes.
Nohar left the side of the lobby opposite the parking lot that held the van. He headed straight out, keeping the floodlit bulk of the building between him and the watchers. He reached the fence ringing the grounds and didn’t bother following it to a gate. He grabbed the fence, pulling himself up on top in a crouch that set off flares of pain in his bad knee. He stayed there as long as he could stand it, staring at the barbed wire angling away from him, over the outside of the fence.
Then he grabbed a strut holding the barbed wire in place, and vaulted over the wire.
He hit the ground in a stumble that fired pain off in his knee and his shoulder. He could taste his own exertion like copper in his mouth.
Six minutes.
He backed into the darkness and circled the property around toward the van. He could smell them before he reached the driveway that led to the project’s parking lot. Three pinks had been here; their distinctive odor was as obvious as a neon sign. How the hell had he missed it before?
Nohar drew his gun and wondered if he was still capable of going through all this shit.
He edged up the driveway, sticking to the shadows on the upwind shoulder of the road. The van was twenty meters into the parking lot, on the edge farthest from Maria’s building. The van was a modern Electrostar that looked out of place on the broken asphalt, in the midst of cars that were either headed for the junk heap, or customized beyond recognition. It was parked next to an old Ford Jerboa with a gold paint job, jacked-up rear, and a purple-fringed interior.
Five minutes.
Nohar was running on instinct. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, even when he started running up on the van. He held a dim hope that he wasn’t going to shoot anyone. Knowing who he was dealing with, that seemed unlikely.
He closed the distance with the van in a matter of seconds. He landed between the van and the Jerboa, his back against the van’s cold composite wall. He edged up on the passenger-side door. It had tinted windows that reflected the sodium lights of the parking lot.
Nohar sucked in a breath.
Four minutes.
He spun around before the men in the van would have time to react, bringing the butt of his gun down on the passenger window. There was a tense moment when the thought of armored polymer crossed Nohar’s mind, but the window was just plain safety glass and exploded inward when the blow hit.
Nohar pointed the Vind in toward the driver’s seat, yelling, “Nobody move.”
Nobody did.
Nobody was there.
Nohar was pointing his gun at an empty driver’s seat. He ducked his head in to look in the back. That was equally empty. There wasn’t anyone in the van. The smell of the pink owners was strong, but ghostly. They hadn’t been in the van for a while.
Nohar shook his head and lowered his gun. He did have the right van; he could see a portable comm unit in back, what looked like a satellite uplink, and what had to be the laser mike on a tripod, pointing toward the driver’s side window, which was open a crack to let the beam reach Maria’s window.
Chalk one up for the Bad Guys. Wherever they were watching, it was from a distance.
Nohar reached in and opened the passenger door. As he did, he heard the whine of the flywheel as the Electrostar’s inductors were engaged.
“Shit!”
Nohar had a choice of backing up or diving in before the van pulled out. He dove into the passenger seat, broken glass digging into his knee as the van’s autopilot engaged.
Nohar held on as the van accelerated over the parking lot’s broken pavement. He could see a red light on the dash flashing the alarm he’d triggered when he busted the window.
There was little point to subtlety now. The Bad Guys had a live uplink to what was going on. They knew their van was compromised, and they probably had a video feed of him right now. He reached over to the dash and began flipping up the nav display. Security measures kept him from reprogramming the comm, but the Bad Guys left the display functions alone, so as the van tore out of the lot, swinging the passenger door shut on a sharp turn, Nohar managed to call up a map on the headsup with the van’s programmed route flashing in red.
It was going for the freeway, then north to an address in Pasadena. That was all Nohar needed. He didn’t want to follow the van into an ambush. He slipped into the back of the van, bracing himself in a crouch behind the driver’s seat. Then he lowered his Vind and aimed at the nav computer.
The Vind exploded in the enclosed space, and a nasty hole opened up in the dashboard. The headsup winked out and the van rolled to a stop as the governors kicked in.
Three minutes.
Nohar backed into the van, checking over the equipment they’d been using to eavesdrop on Maria. It was sophisticated stuff. Nohar figured that the uplink alone cost a bit shy of ten grand. There was a set of numbers on an LCD set into the base of the uplink. Nohar noted them.
He probably only had a few more minutes before the Bad Guys descended on Maria’s apartment complex. He had to get back and get both of them out of there.
• • •
“Is there a friend’s place you can stay at?” Nohar ran into the apartment, gun still drawn, killing lights and going toward the windows. He looked out and cursed his bad vision. It had never been great for distance, but age seemed to have begun eating at his once-excellent night vision. He had to put the gun away and pull out his camera to make sense of the parking lot.
The van was still on the driveway, stalled, hazards blinking. No sign of the Bad Guys yet.
“What’s going on?” Maria voice was strained.
“Like, what happened out there?” Stress brought out the Southern California in Henderson’s voice.
“We don’t have much time.” Nohar kept scanning the parking lot, shifting through the spectrum on his camera. “They were watching this apartment. They know I’m here with Henderson. If they’re true to form, they’ll fall on this place like a tac-nuke.”
“But—” Maria began.
“They were watching here, waiting for Manuel to show, I think.” Nohar lowered the camera and waved both of them into the bedroom. “Grab what you need. You help her. We have to get out of here before—”
They must have heard it about the same time he did. Nohar turned back to the window. When he placed a hand on the glass, he could feel the vibration caused by the rotors.
A black helicopter hovered over the parking lot, close enough for Nohar to make it out without the camera. It was heavy, armored, and three times as wide and twice as deep as a civilian aircar. The thing was matte black, and an even blacker hole was opening in its side as it descended.
Nohar raised the camera and saw it barely kiss the parking lot’s surface. The camera was still set for IR, so the hole in the black helicopter’s side was suddenly the brightest thing in the lot. The pit in its belly glowed, and Nohar saw the IR shadows of a dozen men spill out toward the building.
“Shit. We’re moving now! Get out the door.” They should have all been gone by now, before these guys showed up.
Nohar put away the camera and drew the Vind. How the hell were the three of them going to get out of here? He pushed through the door after Henderson and Maria. He felt a sinking feeling as he looked at her wheelchair. They couldn’t get her down the stairs, and the elevators in the lobby would be the first thing the Bad Guys would secure.
“No chance of an aircar lot on the roof?”
“In this neighborhood you’re lucky you have the roof.”
“How do we get out of here, past them—” Nohar was at a loss, swinging his gun up and down the hallway, expecting commandos to storm them at any moment.
“Maria?” Henderson spoke up.
Maria and Nohar turned to face her.
“You have, like, a friend in this building, maybe upstairs?”
&
nbsp; “I know a lot of people here.”
“Come on, then.”
Nohar followed, willing to try anything.
• • •
Maria had a friend on the forty-third floor. They were lucky on two counts. First, the Bad Guys hadn’t seized control of the elevators yet, and second, the elevators only had up-or-down indicators on the outside, nothing to tell bystanders what floors the elevators were on.
When they reached the door to the friend’s apartment, Henderson began pounding on it. Nohar nervously stashed the Vind in the holster under his shirt.
After a while the external camera swiveled to cover them and a whispery voice buzzed through the speaker next to it, “Ungodly hour, what is this—Maria, is that you?”
“Let us in, Sam,” Maria said.
“We need to use your comm,” Henderson said.
The camera moved toward Henderson, and the voice said, “Well, ain’t you the pretty one? I guess for you, Maria—” The door slid open on a gray lepus in a ragged bathrobe. “Who’s your friend?” the rabbit stared at Henderson.
Nohar pushed through the door, leading the other two in. “Where’s the comm?” Nohar asked.
“If you’re going to be like that,” the rabbit said.
Maria wheeled up next to the rabbit and said, “Now, Sam. We need your help.” She raised the back of her hand and patted his cheek with it.
Sam sighed and waved them into the living room.
Nohar led Henderson into the room, feeling time pressing on his back.
The living room was a wash of colored lights and incense. A black velvet couch faced a yellow comm that was two decades out of date. Above the couch hung a giant holo of “The Last Supper,” the principals played by various moreys. Christ was an angelic canine, while Judas was some sort of ferret.
Henderson stepped in front of the comm and started to make a call. Nohar split his attention between her, the window at the end of the living room, and the door where Maria and Sam were talking. He expected to be on the wrong end of an assault at any minute.
“Eye on LA, Enrique Bartolo speaking. How can I help you—Sara? Is that you?” On the other end of the line was a fuzzy picture of a human. Nohar couldn’t tell if the fuzziness was due to the connection, or because the pink had just woke up.
“Hi, Rick—”
“Christ, lady, where’re you calling from? What happened?” The pink’s face began to show some interest. Nohar could tell he was looking past Henderson at the rest of the apartment. Nohar stepped aside, out of view of the comm. He didn’t know how much publicity there was connecting him to Royd’s death, but he didn’t want to test this guy.
“—this is hot, Rick. There’s a SWAT team going into Pastoria Towers in East LA. Guns, armored helicopter, the works.”
“No, shit, when?”
“Five minutes ago. They’re running through the building right now.”
“Christ! Then we’ve got to get a team moving now. Thanks. Where’re you?”
“Where do you think?”
The pink’s face went a little blank. “No shit? Well, we’re—”
Enrique Bartolo never finished the comment, because the line went dead. A few minutes later the lights flickered and went out. “Just in time,” Henderson said.
“What was all that?” Nohar asked, edging up to the window and looking at the helicopter in the parking lot. By now the commandos had found Maria’s apartment empty, and were probably doing a systematic sweep through the building. Cutting the comm lines and the power would be the start of that.
“Rick’s an old friend. Royd’s office used to feed him stories all the time about folks screwing us—nonhumans—over.”
“A reporter—” The more Nohar thought about it, the more it made sense. The Bad Guys weren’t cops. They didn’t like the daylight. Unless they were part of the Fed, the presence of cameras might scare them off. Even if they were Fed agents, cameras might keep them from summarily shooting someone.
With Maria in a wheelchair there was nothing more they could do but wait.
Nohar stayed by the window and pulled out his camera. It seemed that the commandos were everywhere out there, ringing the parking lot. He could hear noises through the skeleton of the building now. Odd thumping sounds through the air vents. Occasionally, Nohar thought he heard something that might have been muffled gunfire.
“What’s going on?” Sam asked. For the first time Nohar heard in his voice how old he must be. His voice had become high and papery, the lisp much more pronounced.
Maria, sitting, was at eye-level with him. “Some people have broken into the building.”
“Who? What people?” Sam walked into the living room. He moved slowly, limping on a bad leg. He walked up to Nohar and looked him up and down. “Oh, this is bad. It’s you, isn’t it?”
Nohar didn’t know what to say, so he returned to watching out the window.
“You, you’re the one who killed that lawyer.” Nohar felt something soft strike his hip. “Bastard.”
Nohar looked down and saw Sam pounding on him with both fists. Nohar barely felt the blows. Looking down at Sam, the only emotion Nohar could dredge up was a feeling of pity.
Henderson stepped up and pulled Sam away from him. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? That cat’s a terrorist. He’s likely to kill everyone in this building. I saw it on the comm.”
“You don’t believe everything you see on the comm.” Henderson led him back into another room. “Do you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Nohar heard Sam reply.
Nohar shook his head slowly and raised his camera again.
“Do they want to kill us?” Maria’s voice sounded small and weak. The words tore at his heart. Her voice hadn’t changed at all from what he remembered.
“I don’t know.” Nohar shook his head. “I think they want Manuel, and they don’t know where to find him.”
“But why?”
“That’s the big question.” Nohar lowered the binocular camera and turned around. “Every time they show up, they seem more blatant. More desperate . . .”
Maria looked away from Nohar, toward the bedroom where Henderson had led Sam. Whispered parts of their conversation drifted toward them. Henderson seemed to be explaining the last few hours to the rabbit.
Maria looked back at Nohar. Her eyes were moist. “I saw about Royd on the comm, too.”
“About me?”
“Don’t worry, I know you didn’t.” She wiped her eye with the back of a twisted hand. “But were they right about what they did to him?”
All Nohar could do was nod.
“Could that happen to us?” Maria asked him.
Nohar walked up, knelt, and wrapped his arms around her. She rested her head against Nohar’s shoulder and started shaking. “I keep telling myself I have to be strong for Manuel—but I couldn’t take that. I can’t take any more pain.”
Nohar ran his hand over her head and whispered, “Shh.”
“I don’t have the right to ask you anything—”
“We’ll get through this.”
“—but don’t let them do that to me.”
“I won’t.”
Maria pushed him weakly, and Nohar let go of her. She was looking at him with a grave expression. “I mean this, Raj. If they’re going to torture me to get information about my son, I want you to kill me.”
Nohar looked into her eyes and couldn’t find any words.
“Promise me.” Maria held up her hands in a pleading gesture. They were cupped, as if to catch Nohar’s nonexistent tears.
Nohar was about to respond when a wash of white light flooded the living room. Nohar spun around to face the window, where the light was coming from.
He headed toward the window, and behind him he heard Henderson rush out from the b
edroom asking, “What’s happening?”
When Nohar reached the window, he announced, “I think your friends are here.”
He didn’t need his enhanced camera to make out what was going on. Even his rotten vision could make out the two aircars shining floodlights on the scene around the building. The aircars looked like huge flying beetles with two huge fans in place of wings. On the sides, twinned pylons carried spotlights and video equipment that was probably more sophisticated than any recon unit had during the Pan-Asian War.
When the spotlight swept by their window, Nohar caught sight of the side of one of the copters. It was painted in fluorescent colors so that no one could miss the screaming red logo of Eye on LA.
Nohar raised his camera so he could focus on the parking lot and what was going on.
Henderson had called it right. The Bad Guys were in retreat. Nohar could see two on either side of the hatch in the helicopter, weapons raised as if they expected someone to fire on their retreat.
More of them poured from the entrance of the building, running for the helicopter. In a few moments the helicopter had lifted off—just in time for the groundcars of another half-dozen news crews to arrive.
“You did good, Henderson.”
“Sara,” she said. She had edged up to the other side of the window to see what was going on. One of the Eye on LA aircars was trying to follow the unmarked helicopter; the other still hovered over the building.
“Sara,” Nohar repeated.
“So,” she asked, “are you going to find Manuel?”
He nodded.
Chapter 11
They had to wait until the power returned before they could leave. By then dawn was breaking and about half the news crews had left. They managed to slip out from under the cameras. The reporters had their hands full with all the morey residents who wanted everyone to know how their rights were violated by these pink commandos—who everyone assumed were cops.