The Brummie Con (Sunken City Capers Book 4)

by Jeffrey A. Ballard

“Why?” I ask annoyed. “Because you both have penises? Is there some kind of magnetic compass on those things or something?”

  “No,” Winn says, equally annoyed. “I’m bigger and stronger.”

  “And clumsier and noisier,” I finish for him.

  Winn sounds like he’s about to argue more when Puo breaks in, “Falcon, do as she says. She’s right and it’s not like she’s never been in a fight.”

  “Understood,” Winn says. I can tell by his tone he’s not happy but at least trying not to let it bother him.

  “Okay,” I whisper as I watch the goon. “I’ll go first. Once I’m across I’ll give the go ahead for you to move.”

  Winn acknowledges.

  The goon is near the front of the house and occasionally glances around in an attempt to keep an eye on things. He doesn’t have any nightvision equipment on.

  I silently slip across the hard packed earth that serves as a driveway and behind the trees. I whisper to Winn to reposition. I move from trunk to trunk, stepping over sticks, willing my feet to sense the tiniest anomaly underfoot, implicitly trusting my instincts to tell me whether it will snap.

  Before I reach the tree I had mentally marked, the goon becomes agitated. It’s clear he’s suddenly talking to someone. He pops his head up and starts looking all around. I freeze in place.

  Shit. Looks like the Cleaners just learned we’re not in the bedroom.

  “Falcon,” I whisper as low as I can. “Distract now. They know we’re gone.” We have to get into those hovercars now. Every second that passes now favors them as they fan out to search and call for reinforcements.

  I can see inside the hovercar from here: empty. So at best there’s two unidentified Cleaners lingering around here somewhere.

  A window on the house near where Winn and I were initially hiding suddenly shatters.

  “Whoops,” Winn whispers.

  Damn it. I bite down on my lip to keep from yelling at him. The point was to distract one goon, not all of them. If I heard that through my helmet, they all did.

  The goon near the hovercar turns and moves toward the noise. He takes out a handgun. Lovely. And he’s looking all around him as he approaches with the handgun held out at the ready.

  At least this will answer the question of if there are any other lingering goons in the area—if there were they’d be summoned to help investigate the noise and search for us. I don’t relay this information, though. The goon is on high alert and so I’m not making any more noise than I absolutely have to.

  I move silently from the tree trunk to the edge of the Cleaners empty hovercar, squatting behind it to put it between me and the goon.

  The goon is still walking alertly toward the broken window, and now paying more attention to the darkness in front of him as he gets closer. I chose my steps judiciously as I pivot to hide behind the back of Hank and June’s hovercar. This is the last stop before the fifteen-foot-and-growing gap between me and the goon.

  I mentally mark my route and then move out into the open. I force myself not to run, not to crunch the earth underfoot. I stay low. One foot in front of the other. Deliberate. Purposeful. Five feet away. He slows and starts to turn around.

  I explode forward.

  Tree branches snapping from the direction of Winn distract the goon.

  I grab the goon around the neck with my left arm, putting him in a choke hold. I jam my left hand in the crook of my right elbow resting on his shoulder as leverage and squeeze, falling backward to wrestle him to the ground. Oof! My back takes another one for the team. Adrenaline is pumping so hard I doubt I would’ve even felt it if not for my other back injuries.

  I squeeze his neck hard enough to cut off blood to his brain, while I desperately use my legs to wrap around him and pin down his arms that are holding the gun.

  Winn ducks out from his hiding space.

  Pop! The asshole got a shot off.

  Fuck! Everyone is going to hear that.

  Winn keeps moving uninjured.

  “Get the car,” I grunt out as I continue to squeeze the goon like an overgrown pimple.

  The goon’s body finally goes limp. I continue the hold for another second to make sure he’s not faking and then I pat down the body quickly for the keys to the hovercar. Found them! At least that saves me precious seconds.

  I run to the goon’s hovercar and slide into the driver’s seat.

  Hank and June’s car lights up behind me and starts to take off.

  Shots start popping off. Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!

  I get the hovercar started and jam the car into climbing. Two shadows are running from around the house.

  More shots. One hits the hovercar with a thunk. I guess they figured out someone besides an ass-glitter-loving Cleaner is driving their car.

  “Falcon,” I say, “you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he rushes. “You?”

  “Me too,” I answer. “You drive west, I’ll head east.”

  “Roger that.”

  I accelerate the car up toward the cloud deck heading east. The windshield radar overlay shows a clear sky ahead of me—everyone else is sensibly inside, snug from the cold, and asleep.

  An SUV hovercar drops down on the right behind me. He’s not on the radar overlay.

  Umm, shit. The SUV changes course straight for me. “Damn it—they got a jammer and I got company,” I tell Winn and Puo.

  “Understood,” Winn says. “Visually clear over here.” Winn honks his horn several times for Hank and June.

  With a radar jammer running it’s like driving blind. Old school. Except with hovercars, there’s that whole other third dimension to worry about.

  Another SUV hovercar drops down on my left ahead of me.

  “Shit! I got another one.” The cloud deck can’t come fast enough. “I’m going to lead them into the clouds. Falcon, do the same.” Never mind that you can’t see below or above your hovercar in clear conditions, now let’s remove any semblance of being able to see in the horizontal plane. Despite such stupidity, it’s our best chance.

  I punch the acceleration as hard as it goes and I’m rewarded by being thrown back into my seat against my groaning back.

  Clouds envelope my hovercar. Once I’m in deep enough, I level off and head—

  “Shit!” I swear. One of the SUV’s just pulled up behind me with their high-beams on. How the fuck did they find me?

  I dive the hovercar down suddenly and spiral to the north.

  “What’s going on?” Winn asks.

  “They must have a tracker on the hovercar,” I yell as I jerk the car out of the downward spiral. The second SUV comes up from below me. Running a jammer hurts them too—it has to be a tracker.

  “Not good,” Puo says.

  “No shit! Suggestions? They’re converging on me!”

  “Ditch the car,” Puo says oh-so-helpfully.

  “Sure! No problem!” I force the car into a forty-five degree climb through the clouds. My helmet is adding nothing to this, the nightvision is useless in the clouds. If I had the rest of my anti-gravity suit ...

  “I’m coming,” Winn says. “You can jump to my car which doesn’t have a tracker.”

  “No!” I command, a new plan forming. “Falcon, are you still clear?”

  “Yeah,” Winn says.

  “Great, go pick up Chameleon and our equipment. Chameleon, get our jammer ready.”

  “Okay?” Puo says. “Feeling spiteful?”

  “When we manage to lose them, I don’t want them to just turn off their jammer and find us,” I explain quickly rather than indulge Puo.

  Puo makes an ohhh sound.

  I hope Hank and June will be able to quickly identify that Puo isn’t where we said he would be and they get their butts to safety at a neighbor’s house.

  “I’m doubling back,” Winn says.

  One of the SUV hovercars drops down to the right of me.

  Pop! Pop! Pop! The passenger side window shatters.

  “Fuck!” I ja
m the car downward and kill all internal and external lights. I spiral down to the west. Cold air buffets into the cabin and rudely finds all the gaps in my clothing.

  I glance all around. The SUV hasn’t caught up yet. I jerk the car to start climbing again and slowly start banking toward the south.

  “Keep me apprised,” I say, shivering. I crank the heat up. “I need to know when to start working my way back to you.”

  “I’m about thirty seconds to Chameleon,” Winn says.

  The clouds down to the left of me start to get brighter from two approaching headlights. I turn to the right and dive as fast I can.

  Cold sweat beads along my temples, rolls down my forehead to drip off my brow. Why are they so desperately after me?

  It doesn’t make any sense. Even if Ham was right, and they knew we stole Ham’s code, they’d come after us, yes, but not start a war. And not just a war with a single Boss, but all of them? There’s something else in play.

  I jerk the car toward a new altitude and course.

  Winn breaks in, “I’m with Chameleon and loading now.”

  “Roger that,” I say. “I’m going to start making my way back.” I switch the internal light on to read the map and set a new course. “And don’t activate the jammer until we’re linked up.”

  “Duh,” is Puo’s only response, which I ignore.

  The Cleaners blackmailed a Boss to come after us in Vancouver. Kidnapped Winn to question him—which makes me think. “Falcon,” I say. “What did the dick unicorns ask you when they held you?”

  “Uh,” Winn says while he thinks. “Mostly about whether I was with you. Where you were. Stuff like that. Why?”

  “None of this makes any sense,” I say. One of the SUVs pulls up ahead of me. “Damn it,” I swear under my breath and spiral down to the left. I don’t think the SUV saw me.

  I ask Winn, “Did they ask you about our Cleaners code at all?” A particularly nasty piece of cold shoots down the collar of my neck causing me to shiver.

  “No,” Winn says. “Chameleon and I are done packing up. We’re en route now.”

  “Roger that,” I say. If the Cleaners were all hot and bothered about our stealing their code, why weren’t they asking about it? “Chameleon,” I ask, “do we still have the video of their questioning of Falcon?”

  “Yes,” Puo says. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “There’s got to be something we’re missing.” I check the map. “I’m dropping below the cloud deck now. The two SUV hovercars are not friendlies.”

  “Roger that,” Winn says.

  I turn the external lights on and drop the hovercar below the cloud deck. The nighttime landscape opens up below me in blue pixelated detail. There are specks of light scattered around, but it’s mostly dark out here in the country—and cold, so very, very cold.

  “I see you,” Winn says.

  There are a pair of headlights coming in from the east. “I got you too,” I say.

  “Presto chango,” Puo announces. “Radar jammed. Bam! You’re welcome.”

  This doesn’t actually change anything. All it’ll do is continue to jam if the Cleaners turn theirs off.

  I start to respond but lights suddenly blare into my cabin from above. “Damn it!” I dive the car and jerk it right back up in Winn’s direction. “We need to work our way next to each other.”

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  “Understood!” Winn says.

  “They’re firing at you!” Puo says.

  “They are?” I ask. “I hadn’t noticed.” The landscape below pitches and rolls as I drive as unpredictably as I can while maintaining a general direction toward Winn.

  The second SUV drops down between my hovercar and Winn’s. Pop! Pop! Pop!

  “Now they’re firing at us!” Puo squeals.

  Winn’s hovercar takes evasive action.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  “Into the clouds,” I shriek. I pitch the car upward. “Kill your lights,” I order and then do the same.

  Twenty five hundred feet. Three thousand feet. Thirty five hundred feet.

  The clouds hide any sign of pursuit. But they’re still out there, following the tracker on this SUV. “You lose them?” I ask Winn.

  “No sign of them,” Winn confirms.

  “Great,” I say. “Dive back down below the cloud deck. Give me your position.”

  “Roger that,” Winn says and relays his position, course and speed.

  Puo follows quickly with, “Wait. If you’re up there, and we’re down here, how are we supposed to meet up?”

  The clouds lighten up above me from a hovercar zooming toward me. The tracker.

  “I’m going to jump,” I say thinking fast. This isn’t going to last long if they can track me even if the radar is jammed. “Make sure you don’t miss me.”

  “Queen Bee—” Puo starts in his pedantic voice.

  I align my hovercar over Winn’s as best I can guess and set the autopilot.

  Puo continues “—you can’t jump. You don’t have your suit and—”

  Two hovercars drop down on the passenger side and start firing. Machine guns. Machine. Fucking. Guns.

  “Fuck!” I open the door at thirty-seven hundred feet and tumble out. Freezing, biting air tries to rip all my warmth away, steals my breath as the metallic sound of bullet holes rip my hovercar to shreds. I flare in the traditional skydiver fall to maximize resistance. I have no idea if they saw me or not.

  “Too late,” I manage to say through chattering teeth. I plummet past a climbing ball of light in the clouds.

  Puo yells, “This is nuts! We won’t be able to see you in time.”

  “Too damn late!” I scream back. “I’m already free. Thirty-three hundred feet!” Fuck it’s cold! I had no choice!

  “Helmet!” Winn yells. “Can you track her through her helmet?”

  “What?” Puo yells back. “Yes! But I need my computer!”

  “Then get it!” Winn and I scream at him.

  “Three thousand feet!” I say.

  “What is the matter with you!” Puo yells at me. “Couldn’t give me five seconds warning?”

  “Chameleon!” I yell back at him to shut up and start to tell him about the machine guns, but the cold cuts off the rest of the breath.

  “I swear you have a fetish—” Puo admonishes me as he works.

  Another ball of light is rushing upward to meet me. “Fuck!” I scream as I roll out of the way from another SUV zooming upward. I pass so close I can see that it’s a woman driving and her eyes widen as I plummet past—the end of her left drawn-on eyebrow is smudged.

  “They saw me,” I say. The ball of light disappears quickly above me, no doubt already turning around.

  I can hear Puo muttering under his breath.

  Twenty-seven hundred feet. “Well?” I say.

  “It’s kinda hard,” Puo says, “to get my laptop in a car that’s dipping and diving, jumbling all my equipment around.”

  “Well, please take your time,” I snark, glancing upward to see if the SUV is tracking me. “Sorry to be an inconvenience to you. Twenty-four hundred feet!”

  “Five seconds, Queen Bee!” Puo yells back at me. “You couldn’t have waited five seconds!”

  “Leveling out below the cloud deck,” Winn cuts me off from yelling at Puo about the machine guns.

  “Got it!” Puo says. “GAH! NO! I don’t want to update my freaking computer right now!”

  You got to be kidding me! “Twenty-two hundred feet!” I slip my army-green hip-length winter coat off and hold it between my arms out in front of me to increase my drag. Holy shit! The wind cuts right through to the nipples.

  “The stupid computer is updating!” Puo screams in frustration.

  “Are you serious?” I scream. I’m gonna die because a fucking computer decided to update without explicit consent!

  “No!” Puo yells back with a massive amount of smugness. “I’m not serious—”

  I punch throu
gh the bottom of the cloud deck. Winn’s hovercar is several hundred feet away zooming toward me.

  “—there’s no updating,” Puo continues with supreme smugness. “It’s a custom build! How’s it feel Queen Bee to have the living poo scared out of you—?”

  “Forget cheese,” I fume at Puo, “I’m gonna squeeze your bones outta you. I’m gonna—”

  “Doesn’t feel good does it, Queen Bee?” Puo asks. “Five seconds, Queen Bee—”

  “Children,” Winn interrupts with command, “now is not the time for this!”

  Winn’s hovercar is angling down toward me. The edge of the clouds lighten and get brighter until an SUV bursts out above us.

  “Damn it,” I yell. “We got company again.”

  The ground is rushing up to meet me, the blue pixelated hills are growing more and more defined fifteen hundred feet away.

  Winn’s hovercar passes by below me.

  “Keep that trajectory,” I order. I roll up my coat, holding it close to my body while I streamline by body my free-fall to increase speed and head for the car. I use the retina-tracking controls to put a target on it.

  Fifty feet to the hovercar. Twenty-five feet.

  “Umm ... Queen Beeee,” Winn draws out.

  That ground is getting awfully well defined. Hey look, there’s a pocket of birch trees.

  Ten feet to the hovercar. Almossst there.

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Got it! I grab the passenger side door handle and try to open it. Locked! “Open the fucking door!”

  “Whoops,” Winn says and unlocks all the doors.

  I pry the door open and pull myself in. The backseat is a jumbled mess of our stuff. “Hi ya, boys—” I try to say nonchalantly, but Winn jerks the hovercar up from it’s free-fall, throwing me backward and cutting me off—my poor back.

  “Get us into the clouds,” I order. “And make sure our jammer is on.”

  “Aye,” Winn says.

  Puo verifies the jammer is still on, a silver cylindrical device that’s roughly the size of a soda can.

  The newfound peace only lasts seconds.

  “Second SUV!” Puo jabs his hand out toward the new set of lights that just dropped down out of the clouds in front of us.

  We continue our perilous climb. The angle and accelerating force pins me to the back of the seat making it hard to breathe.