Kirsten grates on about asset distributions, primary and secondary objectives, but I just tune her out. All that mil-speak comes down to one statement: go visit the Eighty-Eights and frag them up. Simple. No matter what the war boss or his designate—Kirsten, in this case—has to say about it, whoever’s actually leading the raid has total discretion over how to use his “assets” and what to choose as objectives. Much as the Cutters might want to pretend otherwise, the gang isn't an army and doesn’t have anywhere near the level of command and control of a professional outfit like the Star.
So that frees up my mind to worry about more pressing problems. My continued survival, for one, a subject very close to my heart.
Ranger would like to see me gutted. That’s obvious and—after the gang council where I dropped him—inevitable. Yet Ranger, like Bart, has to recognize the fact that Blake apparently has his eye on me, for whatever reason. Geeking me without damn good reason would not be conducive to continued good health. Or something.
Oh, Ranger could easily arrange for someone to scrag me. An up-and-comer inside the Cutters might do it for brownie points with the war boss, and outside talent isn’t that expensive in a buyer’s market like Seattle. But no matter how theoretically unattributable Ranger makes the kill, there’s always the chance the blame will find its way back to him and the word get out that he had me fried. A route that would be a definite risk.
But there’s a much simpler, much more certain route he could take that dates all the way back to that early example of science fiction, the Bible. I can’t remember which Biblical figure did it, or why, but one of them sent an enemy out to the wars, put him in the front line, and got him geeked that way. (The Bible doesn’t say if the cobber behind the plot also arranged for someone in the second line to get careless with his spear, but that's the play I’d have used if it were me setting it up.)
And so, all in all, it doesn’t come as any surprise when I hear Kirsten announce, “Larson, you’re leading Team A. Bart’s got Team B.”
I shoot a glance over at Big Bad Bart, and he’s giving me one of those dentist-frightening smiles of his. He knows what Fin thinking, and I know he knows, and he knows I know it. Suddenly I feel a tingling in my back, right between my shoulder blades, and the meaning is inescapable. As far as Ranger and Bart are concerned, I've got a target painted over my spine.
* * *
Night again, and we’re rolling through the streets of Seattle in another Bulldog van to what’s sure as frag going to be another shoot-out in another warehouse. Whoever said, “Life’s just one damn thing after another” doesn’t know squat. Life’s the same damn thing over and over again.
The Bulldog’s packed to the gunwales with the “heavies” from both Team A and Team B. That’s ten gang-bangers— including Bart, who bulks enough for two. Everybody’s wearing whatever armor they’ve got and bristling with assorted offensive weaponry, with all of us jammed into a windowless box designed for eight. A couple of the younger gangers are talking quietly, carrying on a tough-chill conversation to prove to each other, themselves, and anybody else who cares that they’re cool as ice and smooth as silk. But the more experienced soldiers know. We can smell the tension, a kind of low-grade funk that you never really forget. Some of Team A are checking their weapons again. Paco, my lieutenant on this one, is toying with one of the grenades hanging from his bandolier—a nervous habit that doesn’t make me feel any better. Bart seems to be asleep.
A button-transceiver burbles inanities in my ear. Both teams have sent two bike “scouts” ahead to scope out the target, and the team leaders—me and Bart—are in constant contact with our scouts. I don’t know about Bart’s people, but mine seem to figure they’re not doing their jobs if they aren’t keeping me apprised—in exquisite detail—of the whole lot of nothing that’s going down across from Pier 42. it’s real tempting to cut them off—except I'm sure as frag that the moment I do, they’ll babble something I really should know, and I’ll miss it.
I give my people one last scan. Apart from Paco, I’ve got Jaz, a classic example of Cutters street muscle (big and not overly bright). Also Marla, who claims to be a Snake shaman, but seems to consider nine-mil ammo her fetish of choice. And then there’s the musclebound ork everyone just calls Doink. I've never worked directly with Doink before, but I know that the others are steady and dependable. Plus, they like me personally—or I think they do—which makes me feel a little better. Not because I’m insecure around people who don't like me, but more because they’d be less likely to go along with Ranger’s plan to off me—I hope.
And Team B? I know them, too: Sydney with her cherished grenade launcher; Fortunato and Jack “the Hammer,” some of the gang’s younger blood; and Zig the dwarf cradling his Remington Roomsweeper like it’s a baby. I’ve worked with a couple of them, and shot the drek and boozed it up with the rest. Like with my own team, I figure they’re probably not in on any plan to cut me down from behind.
But then they don’t need to be, not with Big Bad Bart in on the game. Propped up in a corner of the van, snoring his fat head off, he’s packing an Enfield AS7 drum-fed assault shotgun—a big, brutal motherfragger of a weapon that looks no bigger than a popgun in his hands. The Mossberg CMDT combat gun—which the Star FRT used to pulp little Piers and remodel my van a couple of nights back—is more lethal, but not by much. If Bart takes a shot at me, I’ll be too busy getting torn to shreds to notice the difference. So the name of that tune is not to let him into a position where he can take that shot.
Bart and I—with our chosen lieutenants Paco and Sydney—talked out our tactics before putting the teams into the van. Or maybe “tactics” isn’t the right term for a battle plan that boils down to “drive through the fence, jump out, and blow drek up real good”. My (limited) experience with the Eighty-Eights told me not to expect much security at the temporary warehouse, and the scout reports back that up. (Unless—and here’s a nasty thought—Ranger leaked details of the raid, and now they’re waiting for us with everything they've got. That would sure as drek take me out, but it’d also cost him nine more valuable assets, including Bart. No, the cost would be just too high.) The goal’s a quick in-and-out—maximum impact, maximum shock value, minimum personnel exposure. And that means personal explosives.
That’s why everyone’s packing a half-dozen grenades. If we do it right, we'll be back in the Bulldog and on the road again before the echoes have died away—and before whatever Eighty-Eights happen to be there know just what’s going down.
A new voice in my button transceiver—the driver. “We’re at King and Marginal.” I tap my earpiece, sending a beep of confirmation back to her. Out the corner of my eye I see Bart do the same thing. His eyes are still closed, but he’s definitely awake now.
Less than a minute. I feel the Bulldog start to accelerate. “Lock and load,” I tell my people—unnecessarily, probably, but I always love saying that. The inside of the van echoes with metallic snicks and clacks. I pull my H & K from its shoulder-holster, and let wire and weapon get reacquainted.
“Point one,” the driver says, and now I hear her voice both in my earpiece and through the van’s intercom. “Hang on, boys and girls.”
I brace myself as the Bulldog swerves hard to the left and accelerates again. A jolt and a crash of metal against the body-panels, and we’re through the gate. I’m almost flung out of my seat as the driver jams on the brakes and we skid to a stop. “Go!” I snap. The two side doors of the modified Bulldog fly open, and we pour out—Team A out the left side, Team B out the right.
The warehouse is straight ahead of me, about twenty meters away. The two windows I can see are dark, the only light coming from above the door that must lead to the office. Parked out in front is a flash new targa-top Westwind 2000. (Looks like members of the Eighty-Eights make more money than the Cutters.) The Westwind severely depreciates in value as Sydney pumps a grenade into it—crack-WHUMP—a friendly invitation for whoever’s in the warehouse to come ou
t and play, I guess. I turn away from the flames, and wave Team A around the left side of the warehouse. Paco takes point, with the others following close behind him, and I trail along at the rear.
Just as we round the corner, a door bursts open and out pelt three armed figures. Paco and Jaz open up with their SMGs, and the targets basically disappear in clouds of blood and tissue. It’s over before the three Eighty-Eights can cap Off a single round, and before Doink even knows there’s a fight on. The sound of gunfire comes from around the front of the building, and I realize the triad’s sent forces out that way too. This is where it gets dicey as far as I’m concerned. Once the bullets start to fly, all Bart has to do is sit back and wait for the best time to take his shot at me. Again there’s that strong tingling between my shoulder blades.
The three deceased Eighty-Eights neglected to shut the door behind them, so Paco dive-rolls in, and I hear his SMG stuttering away inside. Jaz and the others follow him, and again I’m ass-end Charley.
This warehouse is a lot smaller than the Cutters’ Lake Meridian facility, and it’s nowhere near as claustrophobic— none of those high-stacked crates that turn the place into a labyrinth of walls and alleys. There’s still a drekload of cover, however, and the handful of small lights make the place about as bright as a moonlit city street. There aren’t any colors, and few details, but the light should be enough to spot movement.
Like that over there. I spin to the left and up comes my H & K. But before I can even bring the gun to bear, the running figure—another Eighty-Eight, presumably—gets chopped down by someone else. From somewhere to my right—the warehouse office where Team B was headed, I’d guess—there’s the distinctive ripping sound of a Uzi III on full-auto. A hostile, obviously—none of our guys were packing Uzis. Then the whole fragging place echoes with the brutal ba-ba-bam! of Bart’s auto-shotgun, and the Uzi doesn’t speak again.
The sound of that fragging shotgun on burst-fire brings back too many bad memories of my last visit to a warehouse, and in my mind’s eye I see little Piers getting blown out of all human shape. Way down deep in my heart of hearts (or maybe half a meter lower in my contracting scrotal sack) I know that good old Bart has one of those three-round bursts earmarked for me. That he’ll grease me— preferably from behind, so there’s no chance of me reacting—and then claim that the light was deceptive or that I wandered into his killing zone or some drek. Translation: Oops, better luck next reincarnation. Not particularly satisfying, from my point of view.
So the trick is to hunker down somewhere where I can see trouble coming and do something about it. I look around, look up . . . Ah, perfect.
Mounted on the wall near me is a ladder leading up (presumably) to the overhead catwalks. About ten meters off the ground, right next to the ladder, there’s a rusting metal light fixture bolted to the wall. Like the other lights dotted around the warehouse, it’s not bright enough to illuminate the floor well.
But it is bright enough to dazzle someone looking directly into it. And that’s all that matters.
Quickly, before I have time to think it through and get scared, I scurry over to the ladder and clamber up. For the first few moments I feel hideously exposed, but that’s just irrational fear talking. Then I’m ten meters up, right next to the metal housing of the light. I can feel its heat on my bare skin. I feel more exposed than ever, but I know that’s not the case at all. Anybody looking my way will see only the light. I turn around, hanging on with my left hand and settling the H & K in my right.
This is an incredible vantage point, I realize. With low piles of crates and other similar drek providing cover, I can still see over a lot of it. In the first few seconds I spot a couple of Eighty-Eights hiding from the marauding Cutters. I could cap them both if I wanted to, but I don’t. It’d only draw attention to me, which is the last thing I want. I can also see members of Team A—namely Paco and Doink— doing their sweep.
And there’s Bart. He’s come out of the office area, and he’s moving forward slowly near the wall. Hanging from its broad suspension harness, shock pad firmly against his right hip, the auto-shotgun is at the ready. Even mounted on a suspension harness, the AS'7 is big and bulky enough to make most people clumsy. Not Bart; he’s big and bulky himself, and strong enough to lug the killer weapon around like it weighed no more than a feather. I’ve got to take that into account, as well as the fact that he’s probably strong enough to ride out the recoil of multiple bursts. For all I know, he might have jiggered the gun so it’s capable of full autofire. Not at all a pleasant thought. I lose sight of him for a moment behind an abnormally high pile of crates, and my stomach twists with sudden fear. Maybe he knows where I am, and he’s moving in for a clean shot . . . But then the big brutal muzzle pokes out into the open again, followed by Bart himself, and I breathe a little easier.
Part of me wants to cap him right now. The wire tells me I can put a burst right on the money, all five rounds impacting within a centimeter of his ugly ear before he even knows what’s happening. But then my years of drek-sucking cop training get in the way: lethal force only in response to direct threats and all that jazz. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong about Bart wanting to grease me, and taking him down before I’m sure is just plain premeditated murder (yes, officer, I'll come quietly). Below, the bloated ork pivots slowly and his shotgun comes to bear on something. My eyes follow his intended line of fire.
It’s Paco. Continuing his sweep, the young ganger has just cleared a crate that’s marked as machine parts. I see his head move slightly and I know he picked up Bart in his peripheral vision. I also know he’s labeled the ork as “friendly,” and decided to ignore him. Bart moves the shotgun to follow, and I know what’s going to happen. The ork’s “mandate” isn’t to drop only me, but anyone who’s personally loyal to me as well.
“Paco, break!” I scream, and not a millisecond too soon. The younger ganger reacts like he’s chipped to the max, flings himself forward and down into the cover of some macroplast shipping cases.
The assault shotgun roars, the burst disintegrating the crate where Paco was standing an instant before. The ganger might have caught the periphery of the shot pattern, and almost certainly got hit by what was left of the crate, but odds are he lived through it. Not through any fault of Bart’s, of course.
I bring my H & K to bear, putting the sighting dot on the ork’s temple. “You’re out of here,” I say.
But before I can pull the trigger, he’s coming around, bringing the AS7 up into line. Faster than I’ve ever seen him move, faster than anyone has a right to move. He pulls the trigger and the big motherfragging gun roars again.
Too soon, an instant too soon. The light next to me, the metal housing, and a good chunk of the wall explode into shrapnel. Splinters of metal lash my bare hands and face. Instinctively I bring up my right hand—my gun hand—to shield my eyes, an instant too late to do any good. Then I have to bring my H & K back into line.
I’ve got enough time to make it good this time around. Bart had to swing the shotgun’s shock pad off his hip when he spun to take a shot at me, so he didn’t have the pad to absorb any of the recoil when he fired. Strong as he is, he’s not strong enough to stop an AS7 on burst-fire riding way the frag up and off-line. And strong as he is, it’s not enough to wrestle the gun back onto target before a five-round burst of nine-mil smashes his skull wide open.
“Scrag ’em all,” I mutter as I clamber down the ladder, trying to control the sudden shaking in my hands and the wrenching in my gut.
7
And to think I’d been concerned about how to deal with Ranger. Elementary, my dear Watson, and all that drek. I didn’t even have to lift a finger.
With Big Bad Bart’s brains blasted, I let the rest of Teams A and B geek the other Eighty-Eights and have fun with their grenades while Paco and I slipped outside for a quick discussion. It took all the jam I had to suppress my reaction—the shakes, the nausea, the sense of absolute fragging wrongness—that comes every time I
’ve had to kill someone. (Every time? Well, to be honest, priyatel, that’s both times—including Bart.) Anyway, I was sure that showing such a reaction would probably diminish me in Paco’s eyes, something decidedly counterproductive at the moment. So I bit back on everything, shoving it into the old emotional gunnysack where my nightmares go looking for raw material.
Predictably, Paco wasn’t hyped to the max to learn that Ranger had put both him and me beyond salvage, and I didn’t even have to voice the idea that the war boss’ useful days were over. But Paco was also smart enough to realize that, satisfying though it might be, marching up to Ranger and putting a bullet in his gut wasn’t the best way to handle the matter. All I had to do was remind the younger ganger that Ranger always rode his big BMW Blitzen super-bike everywhere, and that the war boss seemed sadly negligent when it came to mechanical maintenance. A satanic grin spread across Paco’s face and he told me, “The gumbas a corpse. Count on it.”
The matter resolved itself nicely the next day. The explosive charge Paco wired into the Blitzen’s ignition was big enough to take care of the immediate problem, but small enough not to cause too much collateral damage. The concussion shook the Ravenna safe house and broke a few windows, with both Paco and I on hand to rush outside with the other shocked gangers and swear vengence against whatever rival outfit had done the dirty deed. Ranger was out of the way, and the last things that went through his mind were his cojones.
And that, of course, left a nice opening in the Cutters hierarchy. Can't have a gang without a war boss. Not in Seattle, and particularly not in 2054. Blake had to replace Ranger and he had to do it now. No, not now, right now. In an ideal world, I’d have gotten the nod, called up from the ranks to sit on the council of the high and mighty. Yeah, right. I can think of lots of words to describe the world, and “ideal” isn’t one of them.
Lone Wolf Page 5