Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  She couldn’t argue with that. Memory backed it to the hilt, faces turned to her full of mute accusation when they knew what Ethan had been. Friends, colleagues, even Murat. Once they knew, they didn’t see the Ethan they’d known anymore, just an Ethan-shaped piece of darkness, like the perp sketch that served in virtual for the man who’d murdered Toni Montes.

  “Monsters, scapegoats.” The words dropped off his tongue like cards he was dealing. His voice was suddenly jeering. “Angels and demons, heaven and hell, God, morality, law and language. Sutherland’s right, it’s all metaphor. Scaffolding to handle the areas where base reality won’t cut it for you guys, where it’s too cold for humans to live without something made up. We codify our hopes and fears and wants, and then build whole societies on the code. And then forget it ever was code and treat it like fact. Act like the universe gives a shit about it. Go to war over it, string men and women up by the neck for it. Firebomb trains and skyscrapers in the name of it.”

  “If you’re talking about Dubai again—”

  “Dubai, Kabul, Tashkent, and the whole of fucking Jesusland for that matter. It doesn’t matter where you look, it’s the same fucking game, it’s humans. It’s—”

  He stopped abruptly, still staring into the blue-lit displays, but this time with a narrowed focus.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. We’re slowing down.”

  She twisted in her seat to look through the rear windows. No sign of an autohauler they might be blocking. And no jarring red flashes anywhere on the display to signify a hardware problem. Still the jeep bled speed.

  “We’ve been hacked,” Marsalis said grimly.

  Sevgi peered out of the side windows. No road lighting anywhere, but a miserly crescent moon showed her a bleached, sloping landscape of rock and scrub, mountain wall to the right, and across on the far side of the highway what looked like a steep drop into a ravine. The road curved around the flank of the mountain, and they were down to a single lane each way. The median had shrunk to a meter-wide luminous guidance marker painted on the evercrete for the autohaulers. No lights or sign of human habitation anywhere. No traffic.

  “You’re sure?”

  “How sure do you need me to be?” He took the wheel and tried to engage the manual option. The system locked him out with a smug triple chime and pulsing orange nodes in among the blue. The jeep trundled sluggishly on down the gradient. He threw up his hands and kicked the pedals under his feet. “See? Motherfucker.”

  It wasn’t clear if he was talking to the machine or to whoever was reeling them in. Sevgi reached for her pistol, freed it from the shoulder holster, and cleared the safety. Marsalis heard the click, fixed on the gun in her hands for a moment. Then he leaned across the dashboard and hit the emergency shutdown stud. The display lit red across, and the brakes bit. They still had solid coasting velocity. The jeep’s tires yelped at the abuse and locked. They slewed, but not far. Jerked to a tooth-snapping halt.

  Silence—and the blink, click of the hazard lights on automatic. Cherry-red glow pooled at each corner of the jeep, vanished. Pooled, vanished. Pooled, vanished.

  “Right.”

  He fumbled the mechanism of his seat so it sank and allowed him access to the back of the jeep. Dived over and hung from the seat back by his hips, groping around. His voice tightened up with the pressure on his stomach muscles. “Seen this before in the Zagros. Mostly from the other side of the scam. We used to flag down the Iranian troop carriers like this for ambush. Hook them well before they could see you.” A blanket rose and fell in his hand, tossed away. “Once you’ve cracked the pilot protocols, you can do pretty much what you like with them.” Rattle of something plastic spilling. He reached harder. “Crash them into each other, drive them off the edge of a cliff, if there is one. Or over a carefully placed mine fuck.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a weapon. I figure you’re not going to share that Beretta with me, right? Contractual obligations and all that.” He bounced back into the seat, teeth tight in frustration, glared around him, and then threw open the door. He ran around to the back of the jeep. Road dust from the emergency stop caught on a soft breeze and blew forward over and around them in a cloud. It floated away, ghostly quiet and intermittently lit up red by the hazard lights. Sevgi looked back and saw Marsalis working to loosen something from the rear hatch. The jeep rocked on its suspension with every tug. The flashing lights lit him amid the dust, turning his face demonic with tension and focused effort. She thought she heard him grunt. Something clanked loose.

  He came back to the door, hefting a collapsible shovel.

  “All right, listen,” he said, suddenly calm. “If we’re lucky, these are local thugs, used to flagging down easy-mark trucks and the odd tour bus. If they are, I’m guessing we’ve got a couple more minutes before they realize what we’ve done. Maybe another three or four minutes after that for them to mount up and come find us. Not long, however you look at it. So, textbook response, we need to get out of the vehicle and find some cover, fast.”

  Sevgi nodded mutely, suddenly aware of how dry her mouth was. She snapped the slide on the Beretta, textbook style, tilting it to the horizontal so she could read the load display on the side. Thirty-three, and one in the pipe. The Marstech guns took state-of-the-art expansion slugs, pencil-slim, accurate at long range, and explosive on impact. She cleared her throat and lifted the Beretta.

  “You think we’ll be able to chase them off?”

  He stared at her. The hazards painted him red, dark, red, dark, red, dark. He looked down at the folded shovel in his hands. Snapped the blade out into the functional position. Then he looked up at her again, hands tightening the locking mechanism in place, and his voice was almost gentle.

  “Sevgi, we’re going to have to kill these guys.”

  CHAPTER 31

  There were seven of them.

  From his limited vantage point, Carl made them for Peruvian regulars and relaxed a little. Familia hit men would have been worse. He let the mesh come on, felt it seep into his muscles like rage. His vision sharpened on the lead soldiers. They were walking three-abreast on the opposite lane, ten paces ahead of a slow-crawling open army jeep that carried the other four and a mounted machine gun. The vehicle moved with the main lights doused—that much, at least, they were doing right—and the vanguard party held their assault rifles ready for use. A gawky tension in the way they moved screamed conscript nerves. These guys could have been the same easy-grin, soccer-talking uniforms he’d blagged a ride from months back on his way to kill Gray. With luck, they’d be as young and unprepared.

  They came to a halt twenty meters from the red hazard flash pooling and fading at each corner of the stranded COLIN jeep. Muttered Spanish, too far off to catch. The curve on the road was gentle—they’d have been able to see the lights for the last hundred meters at least, but they’d chosen now to stop and discuss tactics. Carl smiled to himself and gripped the shaft of the shovel. The eroded metal edge of the blade touched his face, cold and notched with use against his cheek.

  The jeep backed up a little. The vanguard soldiers crossed the luminous median, looking both ways like well-trained children. Carl thought he could hear the distant drone of an autohauler somewhere in the night, impossible to tell how far off or which direction it was headed. Otherwise there was nothing but thin moonlight on porous rock and jagged mountain backdrop. Stars shingled across the sky, almost as clear as on Mars. It was quiet enough to hear the scuff of booted feet across the evercrete now that they were close, the follow-up grumble of the jeep’s antique engine.

  Fucking seven of them. Christ, I hope you’re up for this, Ertekin.

  He’d asked her if she knew how to kill someone with the matte-gray Beretta, if she’d ever shot anyone dead. Half hoping she’d crumble and give him the weapon. The look he got in return was enough. But she hadn’t answered his question and he still didn’t know.

  The vanguard arrived
at the COLIN vehicle. They crept up crabwise and peered inside the cabin. Tugged at the door handles and barked surprise when the doors pulled open on smooth hydraulic servos. Poked their weapons nervously inside. Now he could hear them talking. Forced bravado rinsing through the soft coastal Spanish accents like grit through a silk screen. Young-boy talk.

  “You check the back, Ernesto?”

  “Already done it, man. They’re fucking gone. Run off. Told the sarge we should have pulled them over old style. Flashing lights, roadblock, it never fails.”

  “That’s all you fucking know.” A third voice, from around the other side of the jeep. It sounded a little older. “This isn’t some Bolivian strike leader, this is a fucking thirteen. He would have driven right through us, fucked us in pieces.”

  “That gringa cunt, that’s what I’ll fuck in pieces when we catch up with them.”

  Laughter.

  “She’s not a gringa, Ernesto. Didn’t you see the photo? I got a sister-in-law in Barranca got lighter skin than that.”

  “Hey, she’s from Nueva York. That’s good enough fucking for me.”

  “You know something, you guys disgust me. What if your mothers could hear you now?”

  “Ah, come on, Ramón. Don’t be an altar boy your whole fucking life. You seen the photos of this bitch or not? Tits on her like Cami Chachapoyas. Don’t tell me you don’t want a piece of that.”

  Ramón said nothing. The slightly older one filled in for him.

  “Tell you what, you do fuck her, either of you, you’d better spray on first. Those gringas got a dose of everything going. I got a cousin in Nueva York says those bitches are out fucking everything that moves.”

  “Man, you got fucking family all over, don’t you. How come—”

  An NCO bellow from the jeep: “Report, Corporal!”

  “Nothing here, sir,” the older voice called back. “They’re gone. Have to quarter the area.”

  In the jeep, something indistinct was said about fucking infrareds. Probably, Carl guessed, that they didn’t have any.

  “Ground search. Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m telling you, when we catch up with this twist and his bitch—”

  And time.

  He let the rage drive him, rolled, braced himself off the edge of the molded roof storage pan, and came down a meter clear, on the side opposite the other jeep. The heat-resistant elastic tarpaulin that had hidden him stretched taut as he rolled, let him free, and then snapped back with a flat slapping sound.

  It was all the warning they ever had.

  He hit the evercrete amid uniformed bodies. Sent them staggering and sprawling—no time to count. The one in front had his back turned, did not quite go down—

  “Fuck, Ramón, what are you doing?”

  He hadn’t understood what was happening. Was turning, unguarded, no worse than irritated, when Carl swung the shovel blade into his face. Blood splattered, warm and unseen in the dark, but he felt it on his cheek. The man dropped his assault rifle and clutched at his shattered cheekbone, made a wet sound, fell down screaming. Carl was already spinning away. A second uniform, struggling on his hands and knees. Ramón the altar boy? Carl hacked down with the shovel, into the soft top of the skull. The man made a noise like a panicked cow and collapsed prone. More blood spritzed, painted his face with its warmth.

  The third soldier was still on the far side of the COLIN jeep. He came around the back of the vehicle at speed and Carl met him head-on, grinning, black and splattered with the other men’s blood. The soldier panicked, yelled. Forgot to raise his rifle.

  “He’s here—”

  Carl lunged. Jabbed hard with the shovel, blade end into the soldier’s throat. The warning shout died to a choked gurgle. Carl zipped up the gap between them, blocked off the late-rising barrel of the assault rifle with one splayed hand, smashed the butt end of the shovel into the man’s nose. The fight died, the soldier went down choking. Carl reversed the shovel and hacked down with the point of the blade, into the throat until the other man stopped making a noise.

  The night flared apart with headlight beams from the other jeep. Shouts of alarm from the other side. Four more, he knew. No way to be sure how many were still sitting in their vehicle, how many deployed by now…

  Come on, Ertekin. Pick it up.

  Gunfire—the flat, high crack of the Marstech gun, six rapid shots in succession. The lights doused. Panicked yells from the jeep.

  Fuck. Nice shooting, girl.

  “Open fire!”

  Carl hit the asphalt. Kicked the screaming, rolling victim with the shattered face out of his way, snagged the man’s assault rifle. Dimly he registered it as a use-worn Brazilian Imbel, not exactly state-of-the-art but—

  From somewhere, the mounted machine gun on the army jeep cut loose. The noise ripped the night apart. Stammering thunder from the gun, and the shattering clangor as the .50-cal rounds smashed themselves apart on the COLIN vehicle’s armored flank. Marstech, Marstech, we got the Marstech. The idiot rhyme marched through his head, flash image of the kids who used to chant it out back of the bubblefabs at Wells. Carl grinned a tight combat rictus, crabbed about in the cover the jeep gave him, and poked the Imbel under the vehicle. He sprayed a liberal burst of return fire through the gap, then cut it off. Confused yelling. The machine gun coughed, suddenly silent. Carl pressed his face flat to the road surface and peered. Nothing—his vision was still blasted from the headlamps. He squeezed both eyes shut, tried again.

  “Motherfucking twist piece of—”

  The injured soldier was on him, flailing with fists, face hanging off in flaps where the shovel had sliced it apart. His voice was a high weeping torrent of abuse, a boy’s fury. Carl smacked him under the chin with the butt of the Imbel, then again in the region of the wound. The soldier screamed and cringed back. Carl brought the barrel of the assault rifle to bear. Short, stuttering burst. The muzzle flash lit the boy’s ruined face, reached out and touched him on the chest like fizzling magic—kicked him away across the road like rags.

  The machine gun cut loose again, died just as abruptly at yelled orders from the jeep. Still grinning, Carl got to his feet and crept to the wing of the COLIN vehicle. He crouched and squinted, squeezed detail from his flash-burned vision. Saw the silhouette of the soldier manning the mounted gun. About forty meters, he reckoned. It hurt to hold on to the detail through aching pupils, but—

  Better get this done.

  As if she’d heard him, Ertekin’s Marstech pistol cracked again across the night, three times in rapid succession. The soldier on the mounted gun pivoted his weapon about, chasing the sound. Carl put the Imbel to his shoulder, popped up over the jeep hood, cuddled the weapon in, and squeezed the trigger. Clattering roar at his ear and the muzzle flash stabbed out again in the cool air. Long burst, drop back into cover, don’t stop to see…

  But he already knew.

  The mounted machine gun stayed silent.

  He gave it another minute, just to be safe—just to beat that bullshit thirteen arrogance, right, Sutherland?—then poked the weapon up over the hood again, butt-first. No returning fire. He moved to the rear of the COLIN jeep and eased his head out far enough to see the other vehicle.

  Silent, tumbled figures in and alongside the open-topped jeep. The mounted gun, stark and skeletal amid the carnage, unmanned and tilting butt-first at the sky. Carl stepped out of cover. Paused. Moved slowly forward, mesh-hammer ebbing along his nerves now that the fight was done. He covered the distance to the other jeep in a cautious, curving arc. Peripherally, he was aware of Ertekin climbing up onto the road from the ravine side where she’d hidden. He got to the jeep well ahead of her, circled it once, warily, and then stood looking at his handiwork.

  “Well, that seemed to work,” he said, to no one in particular.

  It looked as if the sergeant had gotten clear of the jeep, was on the way to support his men when he ran into the hail of fire from the Imbel. Now he lay flung back against the forward wheel arch like a dru
nk who’d just tripped on a curb. Above his slumped form, the jeep’s driver was still behind the wheel, hands folded neatly in his lap, face ripped away, brains dripping down his shirtfront like spilled gravy. The soldier manning the mounted gun hung twisted over the back of the jeep, one foot tangled in something that had prevented the impact of the Imbel’s rounds from knocking him bodily out of the vehicle. His head was almost touching the evercrete surface of the road, boy’s face slack with shock, staring from frozen, upside-down eyes as Carl moved past him.

  The remaining man lay huddled in the back of the jeep like a child playing hide-and-seek. In the low light, blood shone wet and dark on his battledress, but his chest still rose and fell. Carl reached in and gripped his shoulder. The soldier’s eyes flickered open drowsily. He blinked at Carl for a moment, bemused. Blood-irised spit bubbles moved at the corner of his mouth as his lips parted.

  “Uncle Gregorio,” he muttered weakly. “What are you doing here?”

  Carl just looked at him, and presently the soldier’s eyes slid closed again. His head tipped a little to one side, came to rest against the inside trim of the jeep. Carl reached in again and felt for a pulse. He sighed.

  Ertekin reached his side.

  “You okay?” he asked her absently.

  “Yeah. Marsalis, you’ve got blood—”

  “Not mine. Can I see that Marstech piece of yours for a second?”

  “Uh. Sure.”

  She handed the weapon to him, took the Imbel as he offered it over in return. He weighed the Beretta for a moment, checking the safety and the load display. Then he raised it and shot the young soldier through the face. The boy’s head jerked back. Lolled. He knocked the safety back on, palmed the warmth of the barrel, and handed the pistol back to Ertekin.

  She didn’t take it. Her voice, when it came, was leashed tight with anger. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

  He shrugged. “Because he wasn’t dead.”

  “So you had to make him that way?” Now the anger started to bleed through. Suddenly she was shouting. “Look at him, Marsalis. He was no threat, he was injured—”