“Real tough boys you’ve got there, Callahan,” I said to myself in a whisper. Behind me, the first explosions showered the street with fire, glass, and smoke. Pausing for less than a second, I caught a glimpse of flames bursting out of a distant storefront.
“What the sp . . . ?” Callahan asked as I pushed him forward through the door that lead from the outdoor terrace into the restaurant.
“Hey,” someone yelled from a nearby table. I did not notice if it was a man or a woman.
“Move it, asshole,” I said to Callahan, as I continued shoving him.
Behind us, the next set of explosions tore into the street. They sounded closer and more powerful. This was the trap. The first bombs, at the far end of the curving boulevard, sealed us in so that no one could escape. The only thing we could do was sit and watch as the explosions moved toward us. Only I didn’t plan on cooperating.
The noise and percussion from the next set of bombs shook the restaurant. People jumped from their seats but the panic had not yet sunk in.
By this time, I had made my way through most of the restaurant, with Callahan stumbling ahead of me. The shock wave from this blast knocked glasses and silverware from the tables. The doors to a wine cabinet flew open. Bottles of fine wine crashed to the floor and bounced like bowling pins. Rubble from glass and china crunched under my shoes.
The sounds of panic started to waft across the restaurant. A woman shrieked. Someone yelled something about calling the police. Most of the people headed to the terrace for a closer look at the action.
The explosions happened in ten-second intervals. Even with smoke and dust filling the air and the explosions getting close, people still crowded the terrace so they could watch. I stole one last glimpse of them. Then, with my back hunched and my right arm bent around the top of my head to shield my eyes, I shoved the stupefied Jimmy Callahan through the swinging doors and into the kitchen. The big room was empty. Steam and froth boiled out of five-gallon pots along the stove.
“What’s . . . What are you doing?” Callahan screamed.
The final explosion erupted from somewhere back in the restaurant. The sound was booming and short, a brilliant clap of thunder that rattles the world then leaves a vacuum in its wake.
The entire building seemed to leap from its foundation and slide backward. A large metal table in the center of the kitchen flew in the air and landed upside down. Five-gallon pots flew from the stove, splashing scalding soups and water across the floor.
The force of the blast sent me sprawling. I did not know if I was flipped into the air or if the floor dropped out from under me. Callahan landed face first beside me. “God almighty,” he screamed as he sat up like a baby waking from a nap. Blood gushed from his forehead and nose. “My boys!” he half moaned. “Tommy! Eddie!”
I stood up and pulled him to his feet. I could see in his eyes that no one was home. I saw panic, not thought. The mark of my kind was that chaos gave our thoughts a warm kind of clarity and it irritated me to see Callahan so out of it. I spun him around and launched him face first through the service entrance at the back of the kitchen.
We entered a long service corridor that ran behind all of the buildings. There were none of the awnings or pretty trappings out here, just concrete block walls, empty palettes, and trash bins. This area was unscathed. The explosions had blown up the façades of these buildings, not the backs.
“Harris . . . What the speck happened. Where are my boys?” Callahan, looking dazed, turned to me for help. He did not bother wiping the blood from his pudgy face. He probably did not know it was there.
So much for his swagger. Callahan’s shock irritated me beyond reason. I grabbed him by the lapels and slammed his back into a wall. Still pinning him down, his lapels in my fists which were pressed against his chest, I spoke in little more than a whisper. “They’re dead, Jimmy. Everyone in that restaurant is dead. Maybe one day they will make a movie about the way the terrorists blew up this restaurant and they can make you the hero. Wouldn’t that be a great idea for movie? Know what I mean?”
CHAPTER THREE
A moment of terrible silence followed the explosions. I knew that silence. It was filled with shock and disbelief, as if something so outrageous had just occurred that even the buildings could not understand what happened. This envelope of silence lasted a few brief seconds, then moaning and screaming filled the vacuum.
With their façades blown off, the buildings along the block looked desecrated and bare. The delicatessen, the building Patel visited right before the explosions, drooped like a tent in a storm. Its bright red awning lay in a rumpled heap across the sidewalk.
The explosions reduced several buildings to nothing more than mounds of brick and debris. Some of the cars on the street remained right side up. The force of the blast sent others tumbling and they now lay wheels up like dead insects fallen around a hive.
Walking outside the bottom floor of the restaurant in which I had just been sitting, I took in the extent of the damage. The front wall of the building was gone, terrace and all. What remained was an open-faced building with wide open floors and a blanket of bricks, broken furniture, and concrete debris spilling out to the street.
“God almighty,” Callahan said. His eyes flitted over the damage. His mouth hung slightly open.
“Your pals are under there,” I said.
He nodded and said nothing.
Sirens blared in the distance. Fire engines and ambulances appeared at the end of the block where William Patel’s burnt orange Paragon still sat parked. The emergency vehicles could get no closer. The street was choked with cars. It looked like a junkyard. The cars were smoke-stained and heavily dented.
Firemen with extinguisher packs and evacuation equipment jumped from their trucks. They ran down the street in companies, splitting up to search each building for survivors. Medics set up an emergency station around the outside of the fountain. Casualties that could not walk were rushed to that station on stretchers. Even before the first tables were open, the walking wounded came for medicine and stitches.
As the firemen dug through the wreckage, the medics started sorting victims. Freight helicopters swooped in from overhead. Policemen waded through the road pulling people from vehicles. Once the cars were empty, the police attached cables to them and the helicopters dragged them away.
“You’ve seen this before?” Callahan asked.
“I’ve seen worse than this,” I said. I thought about the battle on Little Man and the parts that were left out of the movie. I remembered staring at the valley and seeing its rock walls glowing like hot embers.
Callahan’s dark eyes narrowed as he began to comprehend what happened. He ran to the ruins of the terrace and dug into the debris. He pulled up a helmet-sized chunk of concrete, brought it to his chest, then threw it aside. “Tommy!” He found something and tugged at it until he unearthed the remains of a chair.
Not all of the wounded made it to the field hospital across the street. One man lay on his back staring peacefully into the sky. He held his arm over his face covering his eyes. A small trickle of blood ran from his gaping mouth. I saw this and knew he was dead. A woman kneeling beside him whispered in his ear. Blood poured from gouges in her cheeks and forehead. Sticks, paper, and shards of glass littered her dirty hair. All in all, the woman looked more battered than the corpse beside her.
There was no river of blood along the street, just dirty bodies, some alive, some dead. Jimmy Callahan might find an arm or a leg, as he pulled up chunks of brick and plaster. Panic showed in his movements. He’d already cut his fingers and palms and his blood splashed on the debris as he threw it behind him, but he did not notice.
“You gonna help me?” he shouted.
I shook my head.
He stood up and stared at me. “There are people under here,” he shouted so loud that his voice cracked.
Some nearby rescue workers heard Callahan and mistook his shouting to mean that he had located a survivor. Gra
bbing gas-powered lifts and laser cutters, they ran over to join us. “Where are they?” one of the firemen asked.
Callahan looked down at the ground and shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just trying . . . I was wrong.”
The muscles tensed in the fireman’s cheeks as he clenched his jaws. Then he relaxed. “Don’t worry about it, pal. We’re all desperate.” He dug into his jacket and found a pair of protective gloves which he handed to Callahan. “Try these.”
Callahan took the gloves and stood there as stiff and lifeless as a waxwork dummy. He held his hands palm up, as if he were cupping water. Somewhere along the way I got the feeling that Eddie and Tommy, the bodyguards, meant more to Callahan than hired muscle, but I didn’t know what was going on between them. Callahan looked like he was going into shock as he looked at the pile of concrete and metal.
“You take the right glove, I’ll take the left,” I said to Callahan. He looked at me but said nothing as I picked one of the gloves out of his outstretched hand.
I was right-handed, but my genetic engineering gave me nearly equal dexterity with both hands. I found a long, rough slab of concrete. Holding it with my gloved left hand and balancing it with my right, I pushed it away from the pile.
“How did you know?” Callahan asked as he pulled on his glove. “How did you know this would happen?”
“I knew because Billy Patel is a galactic-class terrorist and you’re nothing but a two-bit punk,” I said as I traced the fallen arch of a doorway.
“A punk?” Callahan asked. He sounded more stupefied than offended. “What does that mean?” He got his foot twisted in some wire and fell on his back.
“It means that there was no way you and your two-bit operation was going to sell out a big player like Billy the Butcher without him knowing it. He knew we were watching him. He knew you were watching him all along.
“When he ditched his car and turned to look back at us. He knew exactly where to look. We were right where he wanted us and he couldn’t resist a quick look back just to gloat. He must have figured you were too stupid to guess what he was up to. Know what I mean?”
“Get specked, Harris.”
“You asked,” I said.
“So why did you pull me out?” Callahan asked. “You would have made it out more easily on your own.”
“Look at this,” I said. I was standing beside a long heavy beam that looked like it might have been made out of white marble. I found leaves from the hedge that had run around the edge of the terrace.
The man who gave Callahan the gloves returned. “You found something?”
“We were just leaving the building when the bombs went off,” I said. “There were people right about here.” I squatted and brushed away a layer of dust, then picked up a smashed branch with five teardrop-shaped leaves.
The man wore a radio clipped into his collar. As he knelt down to see the crushed shrub, he whispered into the radio. “Send a team. Full gear. We might have something.”
Now that they had located a promising spot, the firemen ushered Jimmy Callahan and me away as they did serious excavation. They placed jacks and lifts under that beam, which must have weighed a good five tons.
“You think anyone is alive down there?” Callahan asked as two burley rescue workers wrestled a large ultrasonic cannon over to their dig. By this time it was late at night. Now that the helicopters had cleared the streets, fire engines and ambulances could drive right up to the buildings. The firemen placed tripods with spotlights around the dig. The spotlights were tiny, about the size and shape of a coffee cup, but their beams could be seen from twenty miles away.
We stood huddled at the front of a crowd that had gathered just behind the lights. Somebody had handed Callahan a blanket and a cup of coffee. His clothes were torn and bloody from the dig. He had wiped his cut up hands on his shirt and pants, and the dust and blood made him look like he had been in the heart of the explosion.
“I’ve never seen anyone pulled out alive,” I said. I supposed that they probably did find survivors sometimes, but I had never seen it happen.
The rescue team’s ultrasonic cannon reduced rock and glass to powder. If they fired it at the marble beam that stretched across their dig, they could destroy it, but that was not their goal. With the jacks supporting its weight, that beam now acted as a roof over their dig, protecting any survivors buried beneath.
The ultrasonic cannon fired sound waves that passed through liquid, air, and wood. You could fire it into a pond without bothering the fish, but the rocks in the pond would disintegrate. It did not hurt people. The shock waves from the ultrasonic cannons did not affect plastic or steel, but they reduced stone to dust.
The firemen used the cannon to clear a three-feet deep crevice under the beam. Two rescuers lugged a stiff, wide-bore hose into the hole. The hose was almost a full yard in diameter with some kind of cage in its opening.
“What is that?” Callahan asked.
I’d never seen anything like it and did not answer.
“Stand clear,” one of the men with the cannon shouted, and the other rescue workers backed away from the site. There was so much dust in the air that I could watch the shock wave as it fired from the cannon. It looked like a pattern of ripples as it passed through the airborne dust. There was a soft sound, not unlike the sound made by a quick shake of a baby’s rattle, and suddenly the rubble beneath that gigantic hose compressed into a powder that was finer than sand. The hose sucked the dust up.
A fireman with a tow cord strung around his waist walked up to the crevice left by the hose. He stared down into it for a moment. The man wore an oxygen mask over his face and held a crowbar in one hand.
Another fireman approached and handed him something small that he tucked in his belt. “You ready, Greg?” the second fireman asked as he patted the first one’s shoulder.
The fireman wrapped his hands around the cord, turned so his back was toward the hole, and rappelled out of sight. A moment later his voice echoed over multiple radios. “I found one. It’s a woman.”
“Condition?” a man on the fire engine asked.
“Alive.” The crowd around me cheered. Jimmy Callahan rocked back and forth on the soles of his feet blowing warm breath nervously into badly gashed hands.
Two more firemen lowered themselves into the hole. Someone handed a stretcher down to them as a fire engine and an ambulance drew just a few feet away. The fire engine extended a ladder over the hole and dropped a winch to the firemen. Tense silence followed. Then the rope tightened. Most people cheered and a few even cried as the winch raised the stretcher from the hole.
Two medics received that stretcher. They detached the cord from the stretcher and pulled the woman into the back of their ambulance. In less than one minute, they loaded her, sealed up their rig, and sped away into the darkness. Another ambulance immediately filled the vacancy.
The rescue workers found seventy-six people in that one area—sixty-two were alive. Tommy and Eddie were alive. As the explosions had come closer, they had crawled under a table and made it out virtually untouched. Tommy had a badly broken jaw. Eddie’s knee was shattered. Both of those injuries were my doing. The explosion barely scratched them.
I was glad Jimmy Callahan’s boys were alive. Callahan was going to need all the help he could get. He had some powerful enemies. Considering the devastation that I had just seen, I doubted that “Silent” Tommy and “Limping” Eddie could protect Callahan from much of anything.
CHAPTER FOUR
How to describe Ray Freeman?
Freeman stood over seven feet tall. When he walked through a crowd, other men came up to his chest. His hands were so large that he could bury your face in his palm and plug your ears with his thumb and little finger.
Every inch of him was sinew . . . no gawky limbs on Freeman. He had a large head, heavily muscled arms, and shoulders so wide that he had to move sideways through narrow doors. His body was hard and cylindrical, his waist being nearly as
wide as his chest, and all of it muscle.
In the galactic melting pot of the frontier, race meant nothing. Terms like African, Caucasian, and Oriental were obsolete. The population was so intermarried that the physical characteristics could no longer be matched to specific races. In the cosmopolitan collective of the territories, Ray Freeman stood out. He was a black man, a man of African descent born centuries after that Earth continent had been turned into the galaxy’s most prestigious zoological exhibit.
Freeman’s skin was such a dark shade of brown that it almost looked charcoal. Looking into Ray Freeman’s far-set eyes was like staring down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. Utterly ruthless, he was the most intimidating man in the galaxy. He was my partner.
Two years earlier, when I limped out of the ambush on Ravenwood Station barely alive, Ray Freeman rescued me. He placed my helmet beside the remains of Corporal Arlind Marsten, staging my death, then carried me out of Ravenwood. Instead of wearing dog tags, U.A. Marines wore helmets with virtual identifiers. Placing my helmet next to Marsten’s remains was tantamount to changing our identities. Since we were both clones, no one would think of checking our DNA.
Now Freeman and I were in business together, freelance bounty hunters.
“I hear there was some action on New Columbia,” Freeman said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I was in the middle of it. You seeing much?” He was on Providence, an evacuated planet in the Cygnus Arm—one of the renegade arms. We were speaking over the mediaLink. He was using a communications console with a camera so I could see him.
“Have a look,” Freeman said, and then he stepped away from the camera to give me a panoramic view of downtown Jasper, the capital city of Providence. The streets were completely empty. The only cars were parked along the curb. No children playing. No pedestrians. Everyone had fled the city.
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