“Half up front,” Roberto said to Dmitri. The tenement man grunted something and started counting off bills that he handd to the agent.
“Twenty-nine hundred, fifteen percent of that is… four hundred thirty-five,” said Roberto, who Hammer figured was used to dividing numbers by fifteen percent. He handed the rest of the money to Hammer, who carefully counted the bills himself; four five-hundreds, four hundreds, three twenties and a five. $2,465, most of which would be spent on the unusually pricey bomb loads. His profit would come from the other end.
“And the other half when we get back, this time tomorrow,” Hammer said.
Dmitri smiled, baring his teeth for a moment.
“Yes. When you get back from killing Don Vito.”
* * *
Hammer and Parasite were five hundred feet above the target area that afternoon, a couple of hours before sundown. Dmitri’s map sat in a flat holder over Hammer’s empty bomb-rack.
They passed over last night’s target, Hammer looking down through a short telescope that was good for scouting but dangerously impractical in combat. Small, pitted craters in the roof where Monday night’s bombs had struck. Lookouts stood roof posts but they were paying attention to the ground, not the air. Most of the fighting in these areas took place at night, so that it wouldn’t interfere with production. Whatever the lines at daybreak were, tended to stay until the next night.
Unless it was a particularly intense war. This one didn’t appear to be. Forty-Fifth Street was a free road and those were usually territory lines; got to be careful not to drop anything north of there. But from five hundred feet it didn’t look like a hostile territory line; there were people moving across the middle of it. Well, daytime truces were the norm anyway.
Two sentries were on the target rooftop, and Hammer saw the glint of binoculars pointed at him. He and Parasite were far too high for accurate bombing – yet – but any airborne was a potential threat. The building had been hit the night before last, after all, and an important person killed.
I’m this Don, Hammer thought, and I’m pissed about my wife. I have reason to think they’ll try for me next, now they know where I live.
What would he do?
Put in steel plates and heavy with-rebar concrete to the roof, for one. Nets and fire extingiuishers.
And then I’d relocate myself to the cellar of a building on the other side of the precinct.
This Don Vito sounded like an old-school mafioso; Hammer wondered if he was an actual Sicilian, as he’d heard some of them were. Naming his precinct ‘the Family Cooperative’ instead of assuming an once-legitimate title, supported that theory. He was probably not stupid.
Stupid people didn’t stay in charge of what had to be several thousand people, from the density of the buildings below here. Hammer didn’t rate his chances of getting that bonus for killing the Don, but Dmitri had had a point when he’d said that trashing his headquarters would be something.
Movement. A flight of three gliders were passing by no further than two hundred yards to their twelve o’clock, with a height advantage of perhaps a hundred feet. The pilots had one hand on their crossbows, were alert.
Hammer’s own senses went up to high alert. These people were blocking his path to the Javitz outtake, which was the nearest one in the southwards direction he was heading. But they continued on.
Most of the time that was the case between airbornes – live and let live. When it wasn’t the case, you had to know exactly where to run and when to do so.
I think the best way to do this is to dive from high. Weather forecast at Airedale said something about strong winds from the southeast.
That was regional, of course – for New York City as a whole, picked up from the arkie news. It was also ground-level, and winds changed drastically with height. The streets and the scraper clusters and the outtakes distorted them hard. So did the river; so did the industrial sections of Queens and Jersey, where the tenements had a lot of consolidated heavy industry. At high levels there was often a lot more wind, especially downtown and in the Midtown-East Side-Park area, where the scrapers were dense enough to form their own wind-tunnel canyons. Two hundred stories high and bolstered by hundreds of intakes and outtakes.
The national weather service wasn’t particularly good anyway. It was for the people who lived in the arks, and some of why you lived in an ark was to avoid weather. Spacers liked the arks because they felt at home in sealed environments. Everyone else liked them because hell, nuclear and solar radiation killed you these days.
Hammer smiled, thinking fondly of the day when he’d rate UV rays as a top-ten threat to his life. Although they’d killed Dagger in the end.
Assuming the wind averaged out at twenty to thirty mph, though – he’d have to check that – then you’d come in… from across there… except that that’d be the most likely approach, between outtakes. How about going diagonally, almost laterally, across the wind… hard to do, but not impossible, and it’d be the last angle they’d expect. A lot less fire to worry about, even if the flying would be hell… but Hammer’s people were good flyers, so that wasn’t a big concern. Release the bombs, given forty mph speed and that crosswind… there. Yes.
He began to turn the glider around, motioning to Parasite: Follow me, we’re going home.
* * *
Santos was finishing the final repairs to Ubi’s glider when they got back. The rips in Hammer’s wings had been sewn and soldered up first thing in the morning. Rank had its privileges.
“We fly out at one,” Hammer told Santos and her girls. “Until then, time’s your own. I think that’s it.”
“What’re you doing?” Santos asked. She was naked above the waist.
“Visiting,” he said, heading down into the building.
“Who? Can I come?”
“If you want to go downstairs, yes.” Hammer turned to look at her. Had an idea.
“Actually, come with me. That’s an order.”
“Downstairs?”
“Put on something you can hide a knife under.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to make some friends.”
“Now?”
I could be talking with the Councilor tomorrow, thought Hammer, about combined arms strategy on West Tenth. If we’re going to assemble something like that, I’d rather have my own ground people. Rather than relying purely on his. That pushes the balance my way a little. No time other than now that I can line that up.
“Now,” Hammer said. He drew his blade from its leg-sheath, felt its weight. Almost a foot from tip to butt; nine inches of cold, smooth, well-oiled steel. Not a particularly fancy knife, but he could count on one finger the number of times he’d had to use it on people. That didn’t mean he didn’t know how to use it. He’d paid for training at Airedale. If something happened and you needed to use a fighting knife, then you needed to know how to use it.
Not as though his skills would necessarily compare well to the people down there. He probably knew more than they did in terms of theory, but those guys got a lot more practice. Their knives, their swords and their axes were a way of life.
* * *
He’d had to send Santos back to change clothes, twice, before she was dressed acceptably. She’d wanted to impress Hoshi by dressing revealingly, which was how Lizard had operated. That in itself was a good reason for Hammer to do otherwise.
She was twenty-five, but with the kind of life she’d had on the streets before coming up here, she looked closer to forty. A couple of bad scars, including a plate-sized burn on her lower back from when some assholes had bombed the roof four years ago, over one of Lizard’s unpaid gambling debts.
For all her constant reminders about how she could make great money as a whore, she probably couldn’t make that much now. Twenty-five made you an old lady.
The other part of why Hammer had ordered her to dress this way – long black skirt, long-sleeved white shirt, flip-flops – was so that Hoshi couldn’t see w
hat was under there. He’d want to; he’d desire her more for her perceived unavailability. Being an airborne bitch wouldn’t hurt with that, of course.
“And stop grumbling,” he told her.
“Promise we’ll go together after this.”
Hammer shook his head.
“You’ll be busy with Hoshi, perhaps.”
“You want me to go with Hoshi?”
Hoshi ran the gang below. He was a streeter, and one who in his late twenties had stayed one. As opposed to moving into the tenements. That implied a few things.
One, that he hadn’t been good enough to get a position even as an enforcer in one of the tenement outfits. Or two, that he preferred to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. Streeters were scavengers and killers as much as they were traders; it was a very, very, very violent life. But at the top of a gang, with the lion’s share of everything, it was probably almost tolerable. Two dozen guys was a fairly decent gang, and this building represented half-decent real-estate directly abutting a trash feed.
“Not tonight,” said Hammer. “Give him something to look forwards to. But you know how to prick-tease.”
“I know how to prick-tease when I’m not dressed up like it’s the middle of winter.”
“Maybe tomorrow you can come back wearing a bit less.”
* * *
The building was old and disintegrating, and you had to be careful where you stepped. Only a relatively small part of the top floor was definitely safe, and that didn’t include the area around the stairs. That was partly a security measure of Hammer’s, just in case someone got through outer security from below.
There was a heavy, locked gate at the stairwell. Hammer removed the bar, unlocked the two heavy padlocks. Pushed the gate open, with a loud squeak. A lantern in his hand, he made his way down the disintegrating stairwell. Blue and Santos followed a couple of steps behind. Blue had a one-shot pistol in his hand, a repeater crossbow slung under his arm, and a rope over his shoulder.
Below was semi-darkness. There were holes in the wall here and there. From under where the stairwell ended, there came noises – shufflings and scufflings. Someone who didn’t know better might have thought they were rats. The streeters had heard the squeak as the gate opened.
“Hoshi! Yo, someone get me Hoshi!”
The scuffling intensified, and presently a grimy figure appeared in the semi-darkness three stories down. That gap was the main protection, and every so-often Hammer checked to make sure nobody had started to reduce it.
“Whaddaya want?” the figure snarled.
“Wanna see Hoshi.”
“Why?”
“That’s for him. Not you.”
“Fuck you. Tell me.”
“I’ll tell you Hoshi’ll cut your guts out and feed `em to you if he finds you’ve told me to fuck off.”
The streeter thought for a few seconds.
“Fuck you,” he said, and went off.
“Damn,” Blue said.
“No, that’s just his way of telling us Hoshi’ll be here in a minute,” said Hammer.
He fingered the hilt of the knife in its leg-sheath, felt with his left ankle the stiletto in his boot. He wasn’t carrying a crossbow or a gun – an outward sign of good faith.
If things went to hell, though, he’d need both of those knives and he’d need them fast. And the gang would probably still need a good leader. He trusted Hoshi not to be stupid.
I don’t have much to go on with that, though. All I know is that since he became gang leader, he never once tried to attack us from below. I’d be a lot more comfortable if I had other data points for his intelligence.
A few minutes later, more gangers appeared at the top of the lower stairwell.
“Hoshi,” said one of them. Hammer recognized his rat-like features. “What’s up?”
“Thought you might like to talk. Got a couple bottles for you. Mind if we come on down?”
Coming down isn’t going to be the problem, Hammer thought. They’d gladly let him come down.
Whether they’d let him come back up, alive, was the questionable part. It would be a lot safer to invite Hoshi up, but he needed to show the streetganger that he wasn’t afraid.
“Yeah, do it,” said Hoshi.
“Safe pass?” asked Hammer.
“Safe pass,” said Hoshi.
Which is worth, in itself, precisely jack shit.
Hoshi might be semi-rational for a streetganger, but he was still a streetganger. Unpredictable, self-interested, short-sighted and therefore inherently dangerous to deal with. Especially on his own turf.
He was counting on Hoshi being able to see the immediate benefits in what he was going to propose. The gifts would help with that. They’d convey a promise of more.
Blue had already affixed the rope to a bolt set into the stairs, a part of the framework the now-decaying fire-escape steps had been built on. The rope was knotted here and there. Hammer, pack on his back, went down it easily. Santos followed. The ground they were on was unstable, and at least a half-dozen gangers stood in the shadows with long knives and tomahawks. The gangers were filthy but their weapons weren’t.
Stay calm. Yes, you’re in the lion’s mouth. Show fear and you’re a lot more unlikely ever to go back up that rope.
Which Blue was already pulling back up. Signs of good faith only went so far.
Hoshi extended a callused hand. Hammer shook it.
“This is Santos. One of our girls.”
“Shit,” said Hoshi appreciatively. “How much you gonna trade her for?”
By their standards she’s awesome.
“No trade. Cut `im open and take her,” suggested one of the gangers.
“Shuddup,” Hoshi told the ganger without turning.
Hammer unslung the backpack and took out three plastic bottles of whisky. He offered them to Hoshi. They were rotgut, the cheapest shit on the market, but streeters wouldn’t know the difference.
Hoshi took them appreciatively. Grinning.
“Come down. Drink with us,” he said.
He turned to glare at the other gangers – there were at least a dozen around the stairwell, now.
“He got safe pass. Cut `im an’ I cut you.”
Hoshi was Asiatic, shaven-headed and had a scarred, bare chest criss-crossed with bandoliers. His pants were baggy and on his feet were sandal-boots. Under each eye was a deep diagonal slash that had been deliberately inflamed, hard, so that the scar tissue rose up like new reddish eyebrows from below. Across his back was a three-foot blade in a light sheath. He had tight, knotty muscles and a heavy burn-tan under a lot of colorful street ink.
With gangers moving through the semi-darkness on all sides, Hoshi led Hammer and Santos through piles of semi-sorted trash to a corner office. The place stank hard of shit and vomit – a stink that was always present above the streets, but a lot stronger here, at its source. The office had an old wooden table and some plastic seats, which Hoshi gestured at. He placed the three bottles on the table and opened one of them, took a long sip that emptied the one-liter bottle by at least a third, and handed it to Hammer.
Hammer took a much shorter sip – he was used to a much better quality than this vile trash – and gave it to Santos, who took a short sip and passed the bottle on to the nearest of a dozen grasping hands.
A small melee broke out amongst the other gangers for possession of it.
“So what d’you wanna talk to me about, huh?” Hoshi asked, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms. One forearm had a crude tattoo of a coiled green snake.
“I been thinking,” said Hammer.
“Don’t do that too often, y’brain’ll explode,” snickered Hoshi. The way the phrase came, it sounded like a reflex on the streeter’s part.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Hammer. “Anyhow, I figured you guys might be bored. Not enough glamor, killing the trash you find in this neighborhood. Scuffling over garbage.”
Hoshi cocked his head sideways, inquisitively.
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Hammer took a salami from his pack. Handed it over. Hoshi grabbed it and took a big bite. Other gangers eyed the bag, hoping for more. When you were a streeter, you were always, always, hungry.
“You guys ever consider contracting?”
“Nah. Don’t know anyone. Too far. We loot the trashes from that building next door, trade it to gangs closer to the tennies. Or go down the free road. Gangers without trade don’t go down the free road. Too many gangs’ territory. Get killed just gettin’ there.”
The free road was Park Avenue. By common agreement, it was an open right-of-way. Common agreement was broken all the time.
“What if I lined you up some work? With us.”
Hammer took another salami from his bag, tossed it at the nearest ganger. Hands reached out to catch it, and more fighting broke out. Fists and feet only, no knives. Then he gave the bag over to Hoshi, who looked inside. It contained another salami and a couple of pounds of dry rice.
Hoshi checked it out, looped an arm over one of the pack’s straps, put it on his lap.
“Thanks,” he muttered. “You wanna work with streeters. What, as fuckin’ targets?”
A couple of the gangers snickered, not in a nice way. Hammer was very conscious of the fact that there were at least fifteen of them in this room, on all sides of him, including – he felt – close behind him. If Hoshi gave the order – or if a streeter had the impulse and thought he could deal with whatever consequences Hoshi might or might not choose to impose afterwards – then he, Hammer, would be dead in seconds.
That Hammer’s gang would drop tens of gallons of gasoline into the building and incinerate at least a few of Hoshi’s gangers, if the gang leader didn’t return… was a deterrent to that, but possibly not much of one. It hadn’t happened in recent memory, which meant that to these gangers it was only a distant concept. Killing an airborne leader who probably had cash on him, was likely to counterbalance that hard.
He hoped the gangers couldn’t see how much he was sweating.
“Hey,” he said. “We don’t fuck with your gang. You know that.”
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