The Moreau Quartet, Volume 2

by S. Andrew Swann

  Gurgueia seemed to bristle a bit at taking orders from Evi, but she did as she was told. Huaras wordlessly took cover by the Kestrel. Evi ran to the back door. She spared a glance at the driveway. Price’s car, an old Chevy Caldera that would have looked like a police car if it weren’t for the lime-green paint job, was parked in the open garage, plugged into the vehicle feed. The snow cover on the driveway was unblemished by tire tracks or footprints. Even from where Evi was, she could see the blinking green light on the Caldera’s dash that was registering a full charge on the inductors. The car’d been parked for a while.

  She got up on one side of the back door, Nohar on the other. Using the doorframe for cover, she tried the lock. The magnetic keypad didn’t want to open. She briefly wished for the electronic gear that’d been trashed in her pack.

  It wasn’t a security building, though. She saw no trace of an alarm system.

  She glanced at Nohar to make sure he was covering her and grabbed the keypad-cardkey unit with both hands and yanked it off the side of the house. It came reluctantly, with a rasping noise. It hung on to the doorframe with twenty-centimeter-long bolts that pulled a chunk of wood the size of Evi’s hand along with them. It took all of five seconds for her to find the right wire, strip it, and short out the magnetic lock.

  A blue spark, the slight smell of melting insulation, and the door drifted open.

  She led the way into the darkened house, gun drawn.

  The kitchen was a mess. At first she thought that someone had beaten them to Price. Dishes were everywhere, lending the taint of spoiling food to everything in the room. The refrigerator hung open a crack, causing a dagger of light to slice diagonally across the room. She shut the refrigerator with her foot, to allow her eyes to adjust fully to the dark.

  After a second of scanning the room, she realized that this was all Price’s work. The pots left moldering on the stove, the coffee grounds overflowing the trash basket, the pile of slimy debris that overflowed the trash disposal—the room smelled like a compost heap, but there was no sign of a struggle, just lousy housekeeping.

  When she was here before, she hadn’t thought Price had been such a slob.

  Something was definitely wrong here.

  She stalked through the dining room, and the picture didn’t change much. On the table sat pyramids of fast-food containers, old beer bulbs, pizza boxes that had been sitting around long enough to begin biodegrading. All the shades were drawn. The only source of light was from a streetlight streaming in the open door behind her.

  In the living room sat Price’s comm, surrounded by an audience of beer bulbs and news faxes.

  On a coffee table between the couch and the comm was sitting a box of ten-millimeter ammunition. The box had ripped open, and bullets had rolled out over the table and the floor. The remains of two more boxes were on the floor. Evi kicked one, for shotgun shells.

  She looked at Nohar and whispered, “If a gun goes off—”

  “—somebody screwed up,” Nohar finished for her.

  She started up the stairs. The stairway was strewn with empty food boxes, dirty clothing, and beer bulbs. She also noticed a few bottles of harder stuff. Drunks with guns had to be one of the top items on Evi’s list of unpretty pictures.

  At the head of the stairs were six doors. Only one, the bathroom, hung open. From the bathroom came the sound of water dripping and an endlessly filling toilet tank. The entire second floor was permeated with the smell of cat shit. As she edged toward the bathroom, where the smell was concentrated, she saw the culprit nestled next to one of the closed doors.

  If she remembered correctly, Price had at least four cats. This one’s name was Lao-Tze.

  The overstuffed black cat looked up at the two intruders. He addressed Evi with a questioning. “Mwrowr?” As soon as he saw Nohar, he arched his back and started hissing, backing toward the bathroom.

  She looked into a bathroom and was greeted by the miasma of an overflowing litter box. The cats had long since abandoned the box and had moved on to towels, the rug, stray pieces of Price’s underwear.

  As Lao-Tze backed away from Nohar, Evi silently thanked him for identifying the bedroom where Price was holed up.

  Once Lao-Tze had vacated the doorway, Evi waved Nohar toward it with her gun. She stationed herself by the opening side and listened. There were a number of cats in there, and someone breathing.

  She faced Nohar and started mouthing a countdown.

  “Three . . . Two . . . One . . .”

  Evi threw open the door and dived into the room, rolling and taking cover behind an overstuffed recliner. A displaced Siamese hissed at her. She braced the gun in both hands, aiming over the arm of the chair.

  Price lay on the bed, fully clothed, oblivious.

  It took a few seconds for her to realize he was alive. But he was breathing, and he was radiating faintly in the infrared. He was sleeping off what looked and smelled like a substantial drunk. There were more beer bulbs scattered around this room than the rest of the house. Lying at the foot of the bed was a Vind 10 Auto that had been improperly broken down. Curled up next to the barrel was a black-and-gray tabby. She had remembered Price calling that one Meow-Tse-Tung.

  What worried Evi was the fact that Price had a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun clutched to his chest. His finger was resting on the trigger. It wasn’t pointing at anything, but if Price was startled out of unconsciousness, he could blow a hole in the wall by accident. Evi would like to avoid the police involvement a gunshot would bring.

  She waved Nohar into the room to cover her. She holstered the gun and opened the medkit on her belt. She pulled out the airhypo and slipped in a trank cartridge.

  Damn. She almost cursed out loud. She couldn’t risk the trank on someone who smelled like a brewery. The drug might put Price into a coma, the state he was in.

  She put the trank away and started creeping up on the bed. Easy, she told herself, the shotgun wasn’t even pointed at her. She just had to get the weapon away from the drunk before he became aware of his surroundings. Easy.

  She was only a half-step away from Price, when she found cat number four. The cat had been under the bed with only its tail sticking out. She’d been so intent on watching Price for any reaction, she hadn’t kept a good eye on her footing. Her boot came down on the cat’s tail accompanied by the loudest and most grating screech she had ever heard.

  Price’s eyes shot open and Evi dived for the gun. She did the only thing she could think of: she slammed the edge of her right hand in front of the shotgun’s hammers as they cocked.

  She lay on top of Price, and two nails of pain were driven into her hand as the hammers pierced her glove, and then skin.

  But the shotgun remained silent.

  A huge furry arm extended over Evi’s shoulder and pointed a grotesquely oversized automatic at Price’s forehead.

  “Don’t,” said Nohar.

  Price froze and Evi gently removed herself and the shotgun. She unhooked the shotgun’s grip on her hand, gratified to find that her hand retained its mobility. Even if clenching it into a fist now felt as though she were trying to rip the side of it open.

  “Damn it!” She said in a harsh whisper. She broke open the shotgun and dumped the shells on the floor. Then she really broke it by bending the barrel much farther back than it was supposed to go. There was a quiet snap as a connector gave way, and the gun fell to the ground in two distinct pieces.

  Price’s eyes kept darting from her to Nohar, then back again.

  “Cover him,” she told Nohar, “I’m going to check the rest of the house.”

  Nohar nodded as a yellow tabby crawled out from under the bed and began to weave between Nohar’s legs.

  Of the four remaining doors, three were empty bedrooms. The last was a linen closet.

  Evi was closing the door to the closet when she heard three d
istinct gunshots in rapid succession. She darted into Price’s room, but the tableau remained unchanged. Nohar looked as surprised as Price did.

  Someone outside had screwed up.

  Chapter 18

  “Grab him,” she told Nohar. “Get him back to the car.” Nohar picked up Price and draped him across his shoulder. Price still seemed too stunned to say anything.

  More gunshots, definitely from outside this time. Corporal Gurgueia was trigger-happy. The shades rippled and shredded as a few shots tore into the bedroom window. Evi ducked on the ground with the cats.

  A spotlight swept by the window washing it with a white glare and black abstract shadows. She edged up to the window so she could get a good look at the front of the house.

  Another Chevy Caldera had slid to a stop diagonally across the street in front of the house. This one was a cop car, flashers going, spotlight sweeping for Gurgueia, two cops huddled behind it.

  Evi ducked as the spotlight swept by again.

  She hit her throat-mike. “Gurgueia!”

  “Corporal—” Gurgueia paused to lay down more fire. “Gurgueia here.”

  “Cease fire, back to the car.”

  “But—”

  “Now! I’ll cover you.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The cops would stay cautious for a half-minute or so once the firing stopped. Evi peeked over the ledge of the window; neither of the cops looked injured. If they were smart, they’d stay back behind the cop car until reinforcements arrived.

  She wanted to give them something to take up most of their attention.

  She braced her automatic, two-handed, on the sill, aiming out the busted window. There was a feeling of pressure from under the bandage on her left shoulder. That was her shoulder’s way of telling her that if it weren’t for the painkiller, she’d be blacking out from the pain.

  She didn’t aim at the cops but at a small area between the trunk and the back seat.

  The cops looked as though they were about to become adventurous, so she emptied the magazine. Nine shots, and at least one hit a charged inductor. She could smell it from here. Smoke began to pour from the remains of the trunk, and the spotlight began to flicker erratically.

  She ran for the back door.

  Everyone had backed toward the aircar. Nohar was already inside, his arms wrapped around Price. Evi was starting to hear distant sirens.

  She dived into the Kestrel, followed by Huaras and Gurgueia. “What the fuck happened?”

  They’d left the engine going, so all she had to do was engage the fans. The fans started with a high-pitched whine, and snow began flying around them, caught in the downwash of air.

  Gurgueia spoke. “They slowed down and started sweeping that spotlight—”

  Evi shook her head and took a few deep breaths as she made sure that the lights and the transponder were off. “So you opened fire.”

  “I think—” A perceptible growl evolved in Gurgueia’s throat. Evi looked at the jaguar, and, eyes locked on her, maxed the acceleration of the Kestrel straight up.

  “Never engage without clearing with your commands.” Their eyes were locked on each other. The Kestrel kept rocketing upward.

  Gurgueia broke eye contact. “You’re right, of course, Commander.”

  Evi turned to look where she was going. The Kestrel was about to hit its maximum ceiling, and they seemed to have made it out of the area without a cop tail. She pulled a long turn and decided not to bother with the transponder.

  Behind her, Price asked in a weak voice, “What’s going on?”

  “Dave, just shut up for now, okay?” She looked back at Price and couldn’t help thinking of Chuck Dwyer, and how Chuck had looked at her when he saw her real eyes. It wasn’t a rational connection to make. For one thing, Price had always known she wasn’t human. For another, Price wasn’t even looking at her. He was squeezed in the back with Gurgueia and Nohar and seemed to be dividing his attention between the two big cats.

  Huaras spoke up in a heavily accented English, “Where we put down the car?”

  Good point. It was not a good idea to put down anywhere near the base. Even without a transponder, Air Traffic Control would have a radar fix on them and would see where they landed. The cops by Price’s house would have called them in. It wouldn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

  Evi could almost feel Sukiota breathing down her neck.

  The Kestrel passed by La Guardia, and the comm lit up like Times Square on New Year’s with incoming calls. The Kestrel’s onboard computer was picking up two aircraft tailing her. One had an NYPD transponder. The other didn’t have a transponder at all. So much for not having a cop tail.

  “The question, Huaras, is do we put down at all?”

  She wished she were at the controls of that veep’s Peregrine. At least that thing could maneuver. “What do . . .” Price began to say as Evi pointed the nose down at the East River. Altitude screamed by them as the Kestrel accelerated faster than the fans were ever designed to do.

  “Nohar, look out the back. On the scope I have an unlabeled aircraft at a hundred meters and closing. Seven o’clock.” She had to shout over the scream of rushing air.

  Her knuckles were whitening on the wheel, and the plastic was splitting under her fingers. Pressure was building in her left shoulder. The Kestrel was flying down so fast that the snow around them was falling up. Below, Evi could see the landing lights at Rikers flying up to meet them.

  “Helicopter, I think.” Nohar yelled back.

  “Make?”

  “You kidding?”

  When she could read the logo on the wing of a parked ballistic, Evi flattened out the descent, slamming the forward fans on full. A brick slammed into her stomach, and an invisible giant dug his thumbs into her eyes. She’d just lost a thousand meters in under ten seconds, and once she pulled that high-G turn, Rikers rocketed away behind the Kestrel. She flew the aircar down the East River, barely thirty meters above the waves and going over five hundred klicks an hour.

  Both blips on the radar passed above Rikers, and fell way behind them. She hoped she’d slipped beneath their radar.

  She slowed the Kestrel and banked to the left. It took a while to find the Bronx. She had overshot and had flown a few kilometers into Long Island Sound. No one talked. She flew low along the Cross-Bronx Expressway from the wrong end and eventually put the Kestrel down on a familiar stretch of pavement in front of a place called “ROOMS.”

  “F—Finally,” Price stammered. He was shaking, and he’d lost most of his color, if he had any to begin with. It was the first time Evi had spared more than a moment to look at him. Price’s hair was tangled in knots, he had at least three days of beard, his shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained, and he was wearing one shoe.

  Evi popped the doors and stepped out. She reached in and grabbed Price, who seemed more than a little unsteady. He stumbled out of the car, leaning away from the two big cats who followed him.

  Evi held Price up by the upper arm. “Good a place for an impromptu questioning as any. Huaras, take the car back and give the team our location. By the time you get back, we should have what we need.”

  Huaras lifted off, dusting them with snow.

  Price had the confused look of a dog who didn’t know why its owner was kicking it. Evi shook him. “Are you with us, Price?”

  “Wha? Evi?”

  She grunted in disgust and handed him to Nohar. “Hold him.”

  Evi reached down and grabbed a handful of snow, the chill dulling the throbs of her injured hand. She looked at Price, who still seemed to be looking through an inebriated fog.

  “Are you with us?”

  “What?” Price said too slowly.

  Evi slapped the handful of snow across Price’s face. “Earth to David Price, you awake?”

  Price sputtered
, blinking his eyes. Gray slush dripped down his face, and his eyes seemed a little wider.

  Evi picked up another handful of snow. “With us yet?”

  “Stop it—” Price began, and got another face full of snow. He spat out a mouthful of slush and said, “Stop. I’m awake.” He put a hand unsteadily to his forehead. “Christ, am I awake.”

  Evi felt little sympathy. She led the trio into the sweltering lobby of “ROOMS.” With Nohar and Gurgueia behind her, it didn’t take much to remind the rabbit proprietor that she still had a paid room upstairs.

  They got to the room, which still smelled slightly of gunfire, and deposited Price on the bed. Evi turned the chair around to face him while the two cats guarded the door.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

  David Price backed up until his back was to the scratched-varnish headboard. His face was wet and streaked with dirt. “W-what’s going on?”

  “For one thing, I’ve been played the fool for half a decade.”

  Price ran a shaking hand through his tangled hair. “Evi, wha—what’re you talking about?”

  Evi leaned forward. Price wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Dave, you’re an academic, not an operative. Without a script you’re a terrible liar. What was I involved in?”

  “Ask him about—” Gurgueia started to say.

  “Nohar, would you shut her up?”

  The tiger put one hand on the jaguar’s shoulder. “I think we should leave them alone.” He ducked out the door with Gurgueia before she had time to object.

  Evi turned back to Price. “So, Dave?”

  “You have to understand.” He cradled his head in his hands and Evi supposed that he was having one hell of a hangover. She hoped he wouldn’t lose his lunch—though he didn’t look like he had anything solid to lose. He was quiet long enough for Evi to consider getting more snow. Eventually, he said, “I was against keeping you in the dark.”

  “How’d you feel about sending this Gabriel character to blow holes in me?”

  Price looked up, rubbing his forehead. “You know that? Y-you must know how crazy it got. Davidson proved his hy-hy-hypothe-sis—”