by Mel Odom
"The driver's mundane." Beedle replied, verifying that he'd checked the scene out on the astral and with detect spells at his access. "No Art, and no cyber. That guy's one hundred percent flesh and blood. But I gotta tell you, the sec systems in this place are wiz. I've ferreted out cyber systems hidden in the walls, but only because the magic barrier has been breached before. And you don't even want to know about the wards the sec mages have put over the property."
"Good enough." Argent followed Shamura through sliding glass doors past a McHugh's and a Sloppie stand.
Beedle was a street mage, one of the best Argent had ever seen, and one of the few he would trust on a run.
Human and thin, barely above medium height, with a long nose and close-set eyes below a razored shock of dark brown hair, Beedle hardly ever drew a second glance. But mages who assensed him registered him on their personal radar because he carried a lot of power.
"Telma." Argent prompted.
"Telma reads you, Thunder-Walker." the sultry voice answered. "Your escort is unescorted. He and you make two. And two is the magic number."
Telma Stinnett was a professional bodyguard with an impressive record. She hadn't gone in for augmentation, choosing to remain flesh and blood entirely so she could better fit into the social calendar of her upper crust employers, as well as pass all their security ware. Besides mastering most of the known martial art forms, she knew everything worth knowing about small arms and close combat.
Shamura led Argent to an escalator that took them down into the private loading area below. Sec teams patrolled the area with vigilance, guns plainly visible on their belts. The chauffeur's and Argent's sec clearance chips were scanned at the entry gate. The passes Hornberg of AA had arranged allowed access to the heavily guarded floor.
Ever since the Great Quake of 2028 had hit and wiped out Los Angeles, Long Beach had become the most secure airport in the area. Besides the augmented muscle on hand and the hi-tech equipment, mages also contributed to the defenses covering the area.
"I've got that information." Peg called back.
"Show me." Argent responded, following the young man through the final gates and out onto the concourse. The interior was dimly lit for privacy, with pools of light staggered systematically through the underground parking garage.
The right lens of the Corona wrap-arounds grayed over, becoming slightly opaque. Argent could still see through it by concentrating on the images on the other side of the lens, but he was also able to see the display Peg juiced through the computer display connected to his commlink.
"Shamura, Tobin." Peg intoned as front and right profile images of the chauffeur formed on the lens. "checks out. He's licensed and bonded, and employed by Affiliated Artists. His length of service is slightly more than eight months in that capacity, which is actually enough to qualify him as someone considered to be a long-time employee." The front and profile views blurred into a single three-dimensional image that rotated on an axis.
"Any records?" Argent asked.
"Shamura's been noosed for DWI and DUI, but that's been four years ago. There were a couple shop-lifting charges at about the same time. Evidently he's cleaned up his act."
Data streamed across the right lens of the Corona. Argent stared through it at the bottle-green Toyota Elite limousine as Shamura opened one of the rear doors. "End transmission." he told Peg. So far, so good.
15
Dropping his valise on the bed, Argent scanned the hotel suite Affiliated Artists had reserved in the Erskine name. They hadn't spared the expense. The decor was the epitome of affluence and decadence. The theme for this one was 1940s, with the large, bulky furniture and Salvador Dali prints of the time on the walls. Unfortunately, that opulence also provided for a number of hiding places for aud and vid snoops.
He checked his retina clock. It was 10:21:43, giving him something over an hour to make the rendezvous at Lookers. By that time, Beedle and Telma should have everything in place at the tavern. He'd briefed them on the meet before the flight to CalFree. Peg had provided the floor plans and a place to pick up the necessary hardware.
Accessing the commlink hardwired inside his skull, Argent called Peg. "I'm ready to set up and bring the Parabyte on-line." He thumbprinted the maglocks on the valise, releasing the catches. He worked coolly, taking the Parabyte out of its case. It was small, no longer than five centimeters to a side, and thinner than his forefinger. Trodes stuck out near the top, and they were formatted to slip directly into a telecom's circuit grid. He used a small electric screwdriver to remove the suite's telecom case as the unit sat on the nightstand beside the bed. The telecom case came off and he laid it to one side. He studied the interfaces left open for his inspection. Lights winked red, green, blue, and amber as current flowed through the connections, keeping the telecom ready to access the Matrix. "Power up the Parabyte and get it on-line."
"I'm bringing the Parabyte on-line now and taking over the telecom LTG there."
Argent watched as the lights on the telecom blinked in syncopation. The cycle was familiar. He'd used it with other Mr. Johnsons in the past.
The Parabyte was only one of the contributions Peg had made to the Wrecking Crew over the years.
The device, when hooked in, took over the transmission and reception of the frequency at the LTG, then shunted the signal through the main switchboards of a given arena. If the signal was tracked back, Peg would know it and could cut the trace off before it reached any destination except the Parabyte's location.
With it in place, she could also spin out communications lines, splitting them and sending them to more than one commlink.
"You've got a green light at that end." Peg stated. "Standing by to access the other units."
Argent watched the screen closely. From her deck, Peg carefully blended all the incoming telecom signals. Using the hotel suite telecom line, she created a web in the local communications grid, then masked it with a Passport 55 deception utility she'd layered in for that purpose.
Five small windows opened across the telecom screen, leaving a sixth space blank. Two of them showed views inside the tavern Argent knew to be Lookers. The other three showed exterior street scenes covering three sides of the tavern.
Four stories tall, Lookers stood like a staggered giant amid the clutter of L.A.'s El Infierno neighborhood.
Argent was familiar with the area from past assignments. "Where's the fourth exterior cam?" he asked.
"Couldn't get that one in place." Telma answered from the bar where she was positioned. "I used two broken telecom lines and a patch into a security cam at a convenience store to get what we have, but there wasn't access to the fourth side."
The cams she'd used were fish-eye cams, no longer than Argent's forefinger and smaller in diameter.
They were designed to plug into telecom lines and transmit vid and aud. The aud pickups left a lot to be desired because they couldn't always cut out the undercurrent of noise.
Argent didn't like the idea of leaving the west wall out of the complete picture, but there wasn't anything to be done for it. He studied the views open to him, memorizing the layout of the tavern and the surrounding streets. Terrain was everything to a soldier.
"Argent." Peg called, "let's see if the Coronas are online through your headware."
Taking the sunglasses out of his pocket, Argent slid them on, making the connection to his commlink so Peg could start feeding him data. "Go."
"Processing." Peg responded. "With the smaller area of the lens, you won't be able to see all of the individual frames at one time the way you can on the telecom there."
"Understood. Can you change them as I need them?" Argent studied the views of the different screens as they flipped through a steady cycle. He viewed the streets and the tavern's gathering late night crowd.
Lookers definitely didn't bring in the high rollers.
"I've got them set up on voice command." Peg answered. "As you can see them on the screen there, they are views on
e through five. Memorize their sequence and call them out to bring them up on display."
Argent quickly checked the voice command, noting the smooth way each scene was replaced by the other. The image inside the tavern showed Beedle lounging at one of the tables making interlocking circles on a napkin with the bottom of a sweating glass. The mage fit in with the rough crowd. Where Argent had expected Telma to stick out, though, he was only slightly surprised to see that she had set herself up as a street hustler. She sat at a table near the back, fanning out cards from a Tarot deck. Three spectators watched her flip the cards, prompting her with questions and dropping nuyen notes on the table. She'd gone high-profile, knowing she was going to be noticed, and blending in as a huckster that no one wanted to make eye contact with if they wanted to hang onto their money.
The operation was as complete as Argent could make it. The Affiliated Artists cover was still intact, and he had the zone wired for vid and aud.
Twenty-seven minutes remained before the meet. He removed the Ingram Super Mach 100s from the valise and snugged them under the suit jacket. It had been cut well enough to conceal the snubbed machine pistols. Extra magazines for the pistols hooked onto the specially made belt he wore, at his back and out of casual sight.
He closed the valise and triggered the release of the powerful acid trapped inside the lining. His cyber fingers left no prints and AA would do their best to clean up after him for deniability if anything went wrong today. Equipped with an auto-destruct, the Parabyte on the suite's telecom was gone as soon as Peg triggered the proper sequence. Argent concentrated on his breathing as he quit the room, keeping the memories at bay while he centered himself. Life and death was measured in those heartbeats.
16
The ork cab driver braked his wheezing vehicle at the curb twenty meters from the El Infierno district's main gate. "Sorry, chummer." the cabbie said, shaking his head. "This is as far as I go. El Infierno's more like a demilitarized zone than a part of this city."
Argent looked at the massive open gate ahead. The night-darkened street continued, but not much traffic went. The stone wall encompassing El Infierno branched in both directions. Homeless people nestled against the base of the wall in plastiboard snacks shivering in the breeze.
Words carved into the stone above the main gate announced: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
Despite the mortaring jobs that had been done over the years, bullet holes and grenade scars showed through. More war had taken place than repair.
"This is fine." Argent slotted his credstick into the cab's reader, added a tip, then climbed out of the cab and crossed the street. There were no guards on the gate into El Infierno. Guards weren't put there until the rest of the city was ready to keep the locals in.
El Infierno had a history of trouble. Even as far back as the 1990s, the area had been filled with violence; gang wars and drive-by shootings. In the early 21st century, the violence had been stepped up by the addition of yakuza and Korean Seoulpa Rings filtering into the area and adding to the turf war. Then VITAS II, cousin to the virulent strain that had depopulated so much of the earth, hit and the National Guard was called in to liberate the stockpiles of anti-VITAS serum that were on hand. After the virus had been eliminated, a major war for real estate was fought in the area. The walls had gone up to section off the neighborhoods that hadn't been taken over. When the L.A. city government, already granted free city status, realized how many losses it was going to incur in the effort to try to take the rest of the neighborhoods, they cut their losses. As a result, El Infierno festered and fed off the rest of L.A. like an infected boil that no one dared lance for fear of unleashing all the poisons into the other communities.
Six blocks of buildings that had been battered and broken, and gutted by fires stretched out behind Argent. The populace showed a higher percentage of metas versus human norms than the overall demographics of the Cal-Free State published. Prejudice, Argent had found in his dealing around the world, was established and enforced by wealth.
Taking a left at East Alondra Street, Argent strode under a withered canopy of sun-faded synthcotton, past the collection of empty fruit and water stands. A pawn shop across the street blared out hot salsa music from a public address system in an attempt to draw paying customers. All of the buildings more than two stories tall were generally filled with squatters or gangers. Both groups were transitory, one fleeing retribution and the other seeking new market areas.
Lookers towered above the buildings around it, topping out at four stories. A hand-painted sign hung out front, the letters big and bold in bright crimson. The two windows facing the street had been shattered, then coated with spray-on acrylic to hold the pieces in place. Electrostatically charged chalk held the day's specials on the acrylic in day-glo blue.
A Latino troll yabo guarded the bar's main entrance, carrying a chopped-down Defiance T-50 shotgun in one hand. Bandoliers of ammo crossed his chest.
"There's a cover charge, chummer." the yabo stated around the thick nicostick in his mouth. He released a cloud of blue-gray smoke.
Argent slotted his credstick, noting the way the yabo's eyes flickered to the reader.
"Mr. Smith." the yabo read.
Argent gave him a small smile. "You can all me John."
"Yeah, well, get this Mr. Smith: I don't put up with no trouble in my place." The ork lifted the shotgun meaningfully.
"I'm not here for trouble."
"You decide you are." the ork warned, "and we dole out double portions around here."
"Got a regular buffet, right?" Argent gave the ork a cold smile, then stepped on into the tavern.
The tavern was dimly lit, the effort beaten into docile submission by the clouds of nicosticks and reefer.
Several small tables and booths covered the floor space as well as booths to the left of the long bar and in the back. Over the bar, two trids were tuned to World Sports Broadcasting's "Combat Bike Heat XXVII."
The signal to the trids was pirated, Argent knew, because WSB was a premium pay-channel. Most of the tavern's customers were quiet, but some of them shouted encouragement to the recorded version of the competition.
Argent felt eyes on him as he stepped up to the bar.
"Want something?" the laconic elven bartender asked. Slender and pale, a bar towel thrown over one shoulder, the bartender glanced up over the noteputer he was working on.
"Water." Argent said. Water was in short supply in all of CalFree State, but not nearly so much as in El Infierno. Some gangers regularly hijacked water delivery trucks and brought it back into the district to sell there, or to resell to the original owners.
"Got some stuff in from Denver." The elven bartender pulled the bottled water from the chiller racks behind the bar and named the price.
After slotting his credstick, Argent took the bottle and sat at the corner of the bar furthest from the tavern's main door. Speaking softly, he started the sec-cam images cycling through the right lens of the Coronas. Neither Beedie nor Telma paid any attention to him.
There were a few passersby. Most of them looked like they were just getting started with the night, cruising the broken streets outside. Only a handful of vehicles passed by. Four of them looked like they were on their last legs, springs and shocks worn, and belching from black market fuel.
Argent's stomach tensed when a silver and crimson Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit pulled to a stop in front of Lookers. Two Korean men got out, dressed in black suits and wraparound black sunglasses.
Argent knew from the way they walked and the cut of their suits that both were armed. He kept his hands on the table, trusting his speed and reflexes to keep him out of harm's way if the drek hit the fan.
The men were young and cocky, talking easily between themselves in Korean as they entered the tavern. Some of the men seated at the bar left their seats to make room. The yabo at the door let them pass without a word.
They spoke briefly with the bartender, who disappeared behind the ba
r for a moment.
Argent tagged them then, knowing they must have been representatives from a local Seoulpa ring. The Korean crime families had a lock on some of the areas within El Infierno.
One of the Seoulpa soldiers stared at Argent, his obsidian gaze totally unreadable.
"Chemistry." Telma said inside Argent's head. "He just doesn't like you."
Argent didn't comment. He knew the look, and what made the man respond to him. He returned the man's stare in full measure.
The second Korean took the gray plastisteel case the elven bartender offered. The man tapped his partner on the shoulder and nodded toward the door. They left together, without another word.
"Bag man." Peg said over the commlink, "Picking up the protection fee."
Argent silently agreed. He froze the cam view on the Coronas and watched the image of the Jackrabbit speed down the street.
"Tense." Beedle said with a forced lightness in his tone. "One of those guys was carrying some heavy ju-ju."
Uncapping his water, Argent took a long drink. The liquid tasted clear and clean, totally out of place with the dirt and foulness that seemed to cling to the air in El Infierno.
"Why would Sencio choose this place?" Peg asked over the commlink. "She should know you'd stick out in a place like this."
Argent knew she was watching him, patched in through the sec-cams tied to the telecom back at the hotel suite. Even if things went right, he planned on finding another place to stay than the hotel. "Exactly. I'll stick out and whoever's hunting her will stick out as well. If it's someone who can't afford to get identified, they may pass up the meet. If it's not, I'll scan them up close and personal."