by Mick Farren
Bruce was still holding the tape. Vickers extended a hand.
"I'll take that."
"Prude or something?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I just don't want to give away trade secrets."
The Pyramid security came in with a seemingly endless supply of grim hostility. There must have been two dozen of them, with discrete dark suits and hard, bleak expressions. Contec and Global had fought a battle on their territory and they'd been forced to stand by and watch. They were madder than hell and they icily eyeballed the Contec trio while the bodies were bagged and Lavern was examined by a medic. Once she'd been shot up with tranquilizers, it was suggested that she be admitted to the hotel infirmary and given a thorough checkup. Lavern, who'd recovered a little of her composure, nodded mutely. She had to pass Vickers as she was helped to the door. She hesitated in front of him. Her face was slack with the exhaustion of prolonged fear and her eyes were wide as a child's.
"What the hell are you, Mort? What the hell are you?"
Vickers had no answer, but before he could even invent something the phone shrilled. He snapped around. Bruce was reaching for it.
"Don't touch that! Let me get it."
He moved and grabbed while holding up a hand for quiet in the room; he made his voice neutral before he answered.
"Yeah."
"Vickers still hasn't come back?"
The voice was instantly recognizable. He hardly needed the face on the uncovered screen.
"Sure, Ilsa. I'm back. I'm afraid we had to grease your boys."
So Ilsa van Doren had been sent in to get him. She, in her turn, had delegated the job to the kids. It was all getting a bit messy. Ilsa made what, transmitted through the phone, sounded like a viper hiss.
"Damn you, Vickers. You're making this matter very personal."
"Then perhaps you'd better come in person."
"I will next time."
"Next time?"
"Trust me."
"You'd better tell Victoria I'm working for Global now. You may find that she doesn't want anyone to fuck with the property of Herbie Mossman."
"I promise you there'll be a next time. You can count on that."
Vickers wondered if he'd made a rather foolish error in not killing her back when he'd had the chance.
FOUR
It was decided that Vickers should leave the city. He should be straight away transferred to the mysterious training camp in the desert. Even though he protested that he didn't feel any need to run from Ilsa van Doren, Mossman had been adamant. Vickers had become valuable. He was to be placed beyond the reach of Contec. Vickers wasn't clear what it was about him that was considered so valuable but he accepted it as a great deal better than being considered worthless. Mossman appeared to have completely bought the charade at the Pyramid, if indeed it had been a charade at all. Vickers still had his reservations. If Mossman had noticed the youth and inexperience of the Contec squad he hadn't seen fit to mention it. The fact that Ilsa was in the city and apparently directing them seemed to confirm that Vickers was a genuine target for a genuinely vengeful former employer.
Vickers had been given a line of credit and allowed out on a brief shopping trip to equip himself with an assortment of combat clothes, three pairs of boots, a flak vest, a bunch of toilet articles, some books, a tape player and a couple of bags in which to carry it all. The last stop was a gun store. With formalities smoothed by the mention of Herbie Mossman, he had bought himself the usual Yasha 7 plus the backup of a nine millimeter automatic and, as an afterthought, a shoulder holster. By the time he had all that he felt he needed, the sun was once again going down on Las Vegas. He was informed that a car would collect him at midnight. They were seemingly leaving the city under cover of darkness. This left him enough time to go back to the hotel for a shower, an early supper and then four hours' sleep.
It was Bruce who wakened him from an anxious and depressing dream in which naked people roamed a chill blue-gray desert and fought each other with long chrome spears like giant needles. At first he was disoriented and didn't recognize the room. He'd been temporarily housed in a small, faceless motel in back of the Strip. When he realized where he was, he profoundly wished that he was someplace else. "Damn."
He needed a holiday. "Time to move now."
"I feel terrible."
"Let's get going, shall we mate?"
Vickers had slept in his clothes, so all he had to do was to splash water on his face and gather up his belongings. On the way out the door, Bruce reached for the case that contained Vickers' brand new guns. "I'll take that for you."
Vickers halted. "Yeah?"
"It'd be better."
It seemed tactful not to make an issue of it. "Whatever you say."
Bruce took the case and started toward the parking lot. On the way, they passed a line of vending machines.
"You mind if I get some coffee?"
"You'll find everything you need in the car." When Vickers had been told a car would collect him, he'd expected nothing more than that. He was surprised to discover a minor motorcade. A black stretch limo was preceding and followed by a matched pair of lime green Jeep Comanches with inch-thick plexiglass and wire-mesh screens on the windows and windshield. To say the least, he was confused. One moment they were buying him guns and the next they were taking him away; one moment a cracker box motel, the next the red carpet. What did they want with him? What did they want him to do? He was even more confused to discover a nurse waiting for him in the limo. He assumed she was a nurse because she wore a nurse's uniform. She was so totally Vegas that she could just as easily have been a hooker on special assignment. Whichever one, she seemed almost unnaturally calm as she sat with her long legs neatly crossed and the reading light burning in the far corner of the dark-blue leather interior.
"This has to be a joke."
"Something wrong, Mort? Why don't you get in?"
Vickers hesitated and then sat down beside her. Bruce also got in. Vickers was very aware that they were on either side of him.
"I wasn't aware that we were going to a costume party. I was told I was on my way to the desert."
The car was moving.
"You are."
Vickers looked at the woman.
"So why the nurse suit?"
"I'll be administering the medication."
"Medication?"
"You'll be out for part of the trip."
"Out so I don't know where I am?"
"Exactly."
"I'm starting to feel like a prisoner."
"You could look at it like this, sport: you don't have the option of changing your mind anywhere in the near future."
Outside, the night glare of Las Vegas was whipping past. Vickers didn't know the city sufficiently well to be able to work out what direction they were taking. Soon, however, the liquid glare of the opticals was replaced by old fashioned neon. This was only to be expected. They were headed out of town. Vickers explained to himself that there was no percentage in speculating. Somewhere along the line they'd shoot him full of dope and then he'd wake up someplace. He'd be disoriented and the place would undoubtedly be weird. That was assuming he woke at all. The thought had crossed his mind that he might be the subject of a Herbie Mossman merciful execution. He couldn't work out a reason for that, though. It was all too elaborate. So elaborate, in fact, that he did his best to concentrate on the moment. He remembered the coffee. The limo came with a bar, a TV and an Eldo simulator. He helped himself to coffee from the Mr. Coffee built into the bar and then he hesitated. The booze was in plain sight in cut-glass decanters.
"Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a drink? We're not headed into any kind of emergency, are we?"
Bruce shook his head. "Not that I know of."
As Vickers poured himself a scotch, Bruce leaned forward and turned on the TV. He flipped through the channels until he found one that was showing reruns of Rogan's Vengeance. Bruce had the manner of someone who made the trip regularly and Vicke
rs wondered how many others had been ferried out to this place in the desert before him. The limo was now running through dark, edge-of-town streets. There was nothing to look at and Vickers' attention was drawn to the TV screen. He discovered with a little consternation that Bruce tended to bare his teeth in a faint but unholy grin during sequences of physical brutality. Even this, though, didn't stop his being sucked in by the flicker of mindless sex and violence. In fact, he was so sucked in that he only looked away when the car slowed to a stop. They were at a city limit checkpoint. Beyond it were the barrancas, the unlit, unpoliced and completely unwanted twilight zones of shanty towns and bum jungles that surround almost all of the sunbelt cities but, in the case of Las Vegas, weren't even acknowledged to exist.
This was something of a puzzle. To drive out of the city through the barrancas meant that you were going somewhere obscure along a rarely used route. As they pulled away from the checkpoint, it was like entering another world. Tin shacks sagged against decaying tract homes. Dead cars, rusted down to their skeletons, formed the basis of even cruder homes. Narrow, rat-run alleys and trenches that were open sewers snaked and zigzagged between the shanties, shacks and hoochies, tightly packed as more and more desperate wanderers daily arrived at a city that didn't want them. Vickers noticed a large plastic freight pod, white in the night. It was the kind they used on the C400 shuttles. It had been dragged from God knows where to house what looked like an entire extended family.
The original road was cracked and overgrown but comparatively clear of obstacles. Neither the limo nor the pair of jeeps showed any inclination to slow down. The limo's deluxe ride gave it a tendency to yaw and wallow on the uneven surface.
Vickers got a firm grip on a handhold and continued to lean forward and peer out of the window. Here and there, it was possible to see the yellow-white glow of what had to be stolen electricity but, for the most part, the only real light was from the fires that had been lit all over. Each one was surrounded by its own circle of figures with their dull brown faces. There were more faces lining the sidewalk. They looked at the limo with an implacable, angry hate. It was the kind of hate that can only be known by those who, in a world that knows it has too many people, have been declared by the rest to be surplus. Fists were raised and some of the faces seemed to be shouting. Urchins ran alongside the car also yelling.
"They'd drag us out and tear us to pieces if they got half the chance."
The nurse didn't seem particularly concerned. "They won't get the chance."
Vickers shook his head. There was just too much fury waiting to erupt. He experienced a brief twinge of shame to be riding in the limousine. It was so much of an affluent, ruling class affront to these people's poverty. If anything, the jeeps were the targets of even more glowering hate. They constituted an even deeper arrogance and more of a sneering threat. Jeep Commanches with protective screens, security glass and garish paint jobs were favorites with all the rabid groups who made a practice of venting their angry fear on the structurals—the Klan, the Red Squads, the Aryan League, the Sons of Davy Crockett and all the other quasi-legal vigilantes who liked to roar into the barrancas to murder and terrorize.
The brake lights of the leading jeep came on and the limo also slammed on its own brakes. The last of Vickers' scotch leaped out of the glass. Bruce and the nurse both grabbed for handholds.
"What the fuck!"
The Australian rolled down the window and stuck his head out.
"What the fuck's the hold up?"
At an intersection up ahead, a jalopy had broadsided an equally beat-up pickup and both were now burning. A crowd had gathered, black silhouettes against the red, gasoline fire glare. At first they were too concerned with the collision and fire to notice the jeeps and the limo. Then Bruce quickly pulled in his head and rolled up the window.
"Some of those bastards have spotted us; it could get ugly."
As if to emphasize the point, the lead jeep jammed its gears into reverse and pulled back beside the limo. On the other side, the rear one drew up level. The maneuver had an instant effect on the crowd around the burning wrecks. The knot that had wandered away from the fire simply to check on the vehicles were suddenly halted. Some ran, fearing an attack, but others stood their ground and even kept on coming. There were shouts. A rock hit the roof of the limo. The crowd was growing in size. The bulk of them kept their distance but every few seconds someone, usually a kid or a teenager, would dart forward, yell abuse and hurl something. The little motorcade was rapidly creating its own riot. In the front seat the driver was talking into a microphone, presumably coordinating action with the jeep drivers. A bunch of youths dashed out of the crowd dragging a chunk of blazing debris from the fire. They launched it into the air. As it flew, it disintegrated and one chunk landed on the hood of the limo.
"That's fucked up the paint."
The driver threw the limo into screaming reverse. At the same time, the two jeeps rocketed forward, straight for the crowd. The crowd broke, howling. Vickers couldn't see but he thought the jeeps had actually hit some of them. He, Bruce and the nurse were tossed back into their seats as the limo breaked and then took off after the jeeps. Bruce was cursing but the nurse, save for a strand of blonde hair that had fallen out from under her cap, maintained her absolute calm even when the car seemed to be accelerating straight for the burning wreckage. The limo was laying smoke as the driver stamped down on the special overdrive designed to save millionaires from kidnappers. At the last minute, he threw it into a shrieking, drifting turn. They bounced across a section of sidewalk and then were racing down clear road. A jeep had stopped and was waiting for them to catch up. Someone was putting down covering fire with a heavy riot gun. As soon as the limo had passed it, the jeep spun its wheels and accelerated to maintain the rear position. Somewhere nearby there was the sound of helicopters. Bruce was still cursing.
"That'll be the Stress Squad. I hope they gas the bastards. I fucking hate structural."
Vickers looked at Bruce with a raised eyebrow. "How can you hate them? It isn't their fault they got the bad breaks."
"I hate them because I got out and I don't like to be reminded how it was. They had camps for structural outside Melbourne. I spent five years being shuffled around those fucking hellholes until I volunteered for New Guinea. Even that was a lottery. Can you imagine that? Hoping that you can win a chance to get your head blown off in some stinking jungle?"
Vickers said nothing. Bruce abruptly turned up the sound of the TV. The subject had clearly been dropped. They drove in silence for another twenty minutes. By that time they were in open country. A bright moon made the scrub desert landscape look like the surface of Mars. On TV, the episode of Rogan's Vengeance had reached its bloody finale. The nurse seemed to treat this as a signal. She took out a small zippered wallet and opened it. Inside was a loaded syringe. She smiled.
"I think it's time for your shot, Mort."
* * *
The room contained exactly three pieces of furniture, an iron hospital-style bed, a metal locker and a chair. His luggage had been dumped in a corner. Another cool, leggy nurse was sitting on the chair watching him.
"How long have I been out?"
"Twenty-seven hours."
"Unh?"
"They kept you under while they ran some tests and stuff."
"Oh shit."
"Worried that you might have missed something?"
"Worried what I might have missed."
Vickers had woken on his back. He turned over on his side, wrapping the blankets protectively around him. He stared at the wall. It was painted a drab, duck's egg green. The paint was brand new with a fresh turpentine smell. The effect was someplace between a hospital and a prison. He realized that someone had removed his clothes. He glanced around. They were folded on top of his bags.
"Where am I?"
"Do you know that's the very first time I've ever heard someone use that line in real life?"
Vickers slowly sat up.
Whatever drugs they'd used on him had left him dizzy and his stomach kept threatening to heave. He was also profoundly depressed by a rapidly fading dream. It was like the drugs had taken him to some wondrous place where all the secrets of the universe had been revealed to him. As consciousness came back it had melted away like the morning mist, leaving him with a gaping, empty sadness.
"I guess it's just the drugs."
"I'll try and get you something."
"Am I allowed to get up?"
"You can do pretty much whatever you like . . . except leave, of course."
He wrapped the blanket around himself and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
"What do I call you?"
"You could try 'hey nurse.'"
"You don't give much away."
"I'm not paid to."
"What are you paid for?"
"To sit here and make sure you don't vomit or choke or anything."
"It sounds boring."
"It was." She held up a book, The New Celibacy by Wilma Deering.
He wasn't sure that he could stand but he tried anyway. He swayed dangerously. Hey Nurse was quickly beside him.
"Jesus Christ!"
"I think you'd better sit down.'
He sat. Sweat was running down his face. "I feel like I've been poisoned."
"They really did keep you under for a very long time."
"What were they looking for?"
"Ah, come on, you know I can't tell you that."
He waited a few minutes and then tried to stand again. This time he was more successful and Hey Nurse didn't have to help him.
"Can I take a shower?"
There were two doors in the room. Hey Nurse opened one of them; a small hotel-style bathroom was behind it.
"I'll fix the water for you."
"Do I have to leave the door open?"
"Don't do me any favors."
He closed the door behind him, dropped his blanket and stepped into the warm spray. Gradually the water worked on his locked muscles until he no longer felt like he was mummified. His brain also started working again. If he'd been out for twenty-seven hours, he could be just about anywhere in the world. He could assume nothing and he'd be well advised to get past Hey Nurse and on to someone who was a little more informative. So far, it had been a bit too close to brainwashing. Part of his wish had already come true when he came out of the shower. A tall, broad-shouldered man in military fatigues was flirting with Hey Nurse. He turned and extended a hand.