by Chris Turner
“No, we like it back here,” long hair said in a toneless voice. “Plenty of space up front for brats and bitches like you.” He pointed to the package and grinned at his mates. “It stays where it is, old man, unless you want to be eating corn out of your ass?”
The man muttered but slunk back, thinking better to stay cool than to pick a fight with these roughies. Regers didn’t blame him. Five against one were bad odds. Especially against bully boy types. On the rag. Trouble with the law maybe? Maybe got shafted out of a flight, like him. Pissed at the cancellations and now decided to head to port and take it out on anybody caught in the crossfire. He’d no doubt they’d all be going to the same destination.
Chapter 8
An excruciating two hours later, Regers flexed his aching legs as the bus screeched to a rattling halt in a dingy parking lot that’d seen better days. Its asphalt cracked and crumbled from weeds poking through. A few other beat-up buses and dented taxis parked by a low wall. A plain adobe brick control room stood to the side, with some lazy custom officials waving buses and assorted vehicles on. The passengers disgorged in a frantic wave.
Regers was only too happy to exit that hot, battered crypt with the sweaty multitudes who naturally gravitated to a wired-off ticket booth by the waterfront where a large, black and red hovercraft docked at the shore. Marise kept alongside Regers after securing her small valise from underneath the bus.
The impressive quasi-amphibious passenger boat was moored to a cement pier that ran some five hundred feet out to house more boats: private cabin cruisers, electric-powered sloops, jerry-rigged skiffs. The hovercraft appeared somewhat avant-garde in comparison to the other moored vessels. Alongside the battered bus and tired terminus along the pot-holed roads, no contest. Its shallow flat-bottom could beach on any reasonable surface. Blunt bullet nose and pilot cabin ranged up front. Cargo bays to either side. Passenger space loomed up higher to either side with lifeboats. Powerful quad propeller engines sat at the back, doing justice to hovercraft technology.
Regers’d seen vehicles like this before. The Mercorian fly-wheel engines had good torque and came with enough power to cruise at 45 knots. Excellent for managing swamps, shallow water or deep-troughed waves. Some of them could even cruise in the air several feet off the water like hydrofoils if the engines worked up enough rpms. Not this one, Regers bet. The stink of diesel wafted even from this distance as the terminus staff tested the high-powered engines.
The sun beat down with a vengeance. He motioned to Marise, then pulled his light cap tighter down over his lank black hair as they descended to the boarding area.
Crossing the straits would mean moving into a new territory. A new ‘country’ in truth, though the term was loosely applied around these parts. Borders were always changing. Nothing was definite.
The aqua-blue waves shimmered golden highlights in the freshening breeze. Regers sucked in a waft of cooler air. Sandy beach ranged to either side of the cement wharf and its huge cement pylons. Towering rocks loomed farther down. A seaside village of adobe brick homes amid twig-like trees sprawled upshore. A picturesque seascape, but isolated. Not a place Regers’d like to settle in. The locals must have caught a whiff of the future, what it was like to live under tyranny and the threat of bloodshed erupting at any instant in the built-up areas. The smart ones had packed their bags, loaded their kids and various animals and set out to hop borders before those borders closed forever.
Long hair and his four monkeys took their time, coddling their mysterious cargo, but they seemed wary. At least two of them glanced anxiously about as if under threat of getting spotted. Regers frowned. These men were bad news. If he hadn’t been under a time crunch, he’d wait for another boat.
Marise shook her head in disapproval, gave her thin shoulders a small shudder. “Gostases freyas. Local boys. Thugs and ruffians.”
Regers nodded and glanced wryly at the surge of the freyas making beelines for the hovercraft’s international loading area and quickly switched lines from regular fare to first class. As he brought out new folded bills for the premium seats, he earned the envious stares of several locals. He had the cash. He’d ride first class. He was about to pay premium fare for Marise too when the squeal of tires shot out from behind. The passengers were not yet half loaded when a dusty black van pulled up about fifty feet away. A gang of men burst out with uzis in their hands, wearing dark sunglasses and leather jackets with tassels. One opened up fire on the crowd.
“Holy shit. Down!” Regers flattened himself on the tarmac. He pulled Marise down with him. Regers you’re a fucking magnet for trouble.
A man and woman a few feet away dropped, limp ragpuppets, blood gushing from multiple wounds. Regers reached for his travel bag to grab his preassembled E1.
Long hair and his men dropped their package and reached for weapons of their own. They returned splats of fire. One of the hoodlums beside the van crumpled in a spray of blood, neck blossoming in crimson.
Regers blasted an armed figure in the left calf and rolled away before he got peppered himself.
Long Hair stood legs-braced and fired at the aggressors using the bodies of gutshot innocents as shields. Two of the gunmen went down in fleshy ruin. The man to Long Hair’s left got half his throat ripped out with uzi fire. Long Hair gave a frustrated howl. He raised his submachine gun and sprayed back two dozen rounds at the attackers, riddling the van full of holes and shredding bodies. Tires exploded. A human figure slumped out of the passenger side, rifle clattering to the pavement.
“Choko!” Long Hair cried. “Nail the last ones!”
“I see them! More of them at two-o’clock, Biggs.” Choko, the chunky thug to long hair’s left wearing a thick black bandanna, shouted back.
The leader rained more fire, pegging another of the van gang in the knee. He went down screaming, with his uzi tilted, spraying fire, killing civilians and dock personnel. Biggs waved his gun. “Gila! Choko! Flip! Snatch their weapons off that van. We’re gonna need them. We’ll have fireflies on our ass before long. Move!”
Bullets zinged and Regers cursed as chunks of tarmac splattered up from return fire and stung his right hand. His sixth sense warned him too late.
Before he could recover and get off more shots, Choko ran behind him and kicked the E1 out of his grasp. Choko snatched it up. “Get aboard the ship. Now! Move!”
Regers hesitated but when the ugly mutt’s gunhand lifted, Regers grabbed Marise and shuttled her up the gangplank along with the other passengers scrambling about in panic.
Biggs’s three surviving thugs beetled to the rear of the van. Choko of the black-bandanna, Flip with his brush cut and Gila with his mop of oily brown curls. They bullet-holed open the back, killing anyone who may have been seeking cover inside. Regers saw the three haul two RPG launchers out of the van’s shell-holed crumpled back doors. Biggs covered them from the side as they carried the RPGs up the gangplank, while the van’s horn still blared bloody murder.
All this happened in the space of a few minutes and now new gunfire erupted from the direction of the customs control house. Scores of dock security in blue-kevlar suits came running toward the hovercraft. Frightened mothers herded their children away from the loading area and the threat of gunfire. Biggs dragged one of the half-conscious assailants sprawled on the tarmac up the gangplank, signaling to Flip and Gila to pick up the package. He ordered the hawsers cut. On nimble legs, Choko raced up to the pilot cabin and pointed a gun at the captain’s head. “Break away from the dock! Now!” The propeller engines roared in response. With massive creaks, the heavy craft nosed away from the docks.
Regers edged back from the port railing, cursing his luck that he had no weapon. Two long seconds and ears deafened by blasts had cost him the advantage. He peered around with glittering eyes, saw Marise quivering. He flashed her a grim look. Only a boat hook, fifty yards out of reach passed as any form of a useful weapon.
Flip dragged the strange package onto the deck. He let it drop with a t
hud.
“Be careful with that thing, you idiot!” snarled Biggs. “It’s worth more than your worthless hide.”
“Yeah, take it easy, Biggs,” said Flip, scratching at his bloody ear flattened to a nearly shaved skull.
The hovercraft jetted out to sea while the air raid siren from the dockside grew fainter and fainter. Figures still milled there, gesticulating wildly, firing intermittent shots at the hovercraft, now out of range.
Flip and Gila trained guns on the fifty or so passengers huddled on the port deck while Biggs knelt on the chest of the prisoner he had dragged up. He ground the muzzle into the gunshot wound into the man’s left ribs. “Who sent you, bastard? Who tipped you off?”
“Dunno, man, agh!—” the dying gunman choked out a stream of blood.
“Answer me, you stupid fuck! Eh? Eh?” Biggs twisted the muzzle deeper into the wound.
“Zoral.” That was his last phlegmy word before he died, eyes staring up in mockery of having escaped Long Hair’s torture. His tongue lolled. Blood seeped from multiple chest wounds.
“Damn that Zoral,” hissed Biggs. He rose and kicked the corpse while wiping his bloody hands on his thighs. “How the hell he sniffed word of this is anybody’s guess.”
“Cost us big time,” said Gila. “Hamand’s dead. Everything’s gone to shit, Biggs. We’ll have half the coast guard on us soon.”
“All’s not lost,” said Flip. “We got these RPGs and the package.”
Biggs seemed not to hear. The man seemed lost in thought. Regers watched in eerie silence as the lead thug contemplated his next move. Regers’ merc mind, though dazed, worked at double speed, but came up with nothing.
“Flip, get them seated and secured,” Biggs said at last.
Flip herded the passengers into the covered glass hospitality area through the hovercraft’s port entrance. Regers saw the boat had a layout similar to a cross between an aircraft and a ferry. Rows of imitation white-leather seats faced forward with a wide aisle separating them up the middle. Tall bay windows peered to either side; a games room at the back with billiard tables and bar and glass-enclosed smoking area. Passenger decks ranged to port and starboard, and the cockpit and pilot cabin to the foredeck.
Gila jabbed panicked women and their husbands who moved too slowly with the muzzle of his machine gun. Regers pushed out his palms, protecting Marise. “Whoa, there, amigo. Slow down.”
“Back the fuck off, asswipe. Get over there with the others.” He smacked Regers in the shoulder with his gun barrel and shoved him into a seat. Marise went flying over his lap at the swift thrust of the thug’s boot. Regers grunted. He reached over to pull her to the other side of him to shield her.
“Okay, listen up, people,” the lead thug called, holding his hand high, gun slung over his left shoulder. His three men fanned out to cover the hostages, leveling barrels at their backs. “This is a takeover. Relax and all will go well. Some nasty stuff has gone down. True, unforeseen and unintended. Some people were killed. More will die, you can guarantee that. Anyone who gets too cute, or tries to run somewhere or rush my men, gets fried.”
One curly-haired drunk stood up, venom in his voice, “We’ve done nothing wrong! You can’t keep us here like—”
Biggs leveled his gun and blasted the idiot’s arm. He sagged in a whimpering heap. “I said settle down, asshole. Which part of ‘cute’ didn’t you understand?”
The man rocked in his shredded seat back and forth, gritting his teeth, holding his bullet-torn arm.
“Any questions?”
Eyes stared in rapt terror.
Chapter 9
Biggs trained a cold glance at the hostages cowering and gibbering at the fresh blood. “I’d better set the captain straight, before he gets some crazy ideas too. Flip, Gila, hold the show.” He marched up the aisle, kicking open the door leading to the foredeck.
Regers sensed an opportunity. While Flip was heckling a flustered middle-aged man trying to console his sobbing wife, he ducked down in his seat and cat-crawled past astonished people’s legs. Crawling flat on his stomach, he made it down the aisle to the back of the passenger area, then he slipped out down the corridor through which Biggs had disappeared.
Regers drew a deep breath, tempered the heart beating in his throat. One false move and he was rat bait.
He approached the half open door to the pilot cabin. Raised voices drifted his way: Biggs, Choko and two others. Sneaking a peek, he saw captain and navigator sitting rigidly before a modern dashboard of LCD screens, sensors and radar equipment. Choko and Biggs stood behind them, guns pointed at their backs.
Regers considered. If he could somehow sneak back here after Biggs left, sandbag the remaining gunman…
Biggs took the butt of his rifle to the radio console, smashing it to bits. “Just in case you two flyboys try to send out a mayday.”
A pair of headphones dangled on a cord from the ceiling. Biggs grabbed those and crushed them under his boot heel. Likewise, he snatched away the captain’s helmet equipped with com and tossed it to Choko. Choko grinned and kicked it out the door and down the aisle like a soccer ball. Regers ducked back, grimacing as it rolled by him.
The captain squawked: “You can’t navigate this craft without a radio.”
Biggs clipped him with the rifle. “The fuck you can’t. Think we’re playing games here, flyboy? Which one of you dies first, you or your co-navigator bitch?”
“Easy fella,” said the captain, pushing forth palms, “no need to get violent.”
“Don’t ‘easy fella’ me, you jackshit.” Biggs blasted his leg.
The man howled. “You bloody bastard!” He rocked, clutching his shattered shin.
Regers winced. His plan suddenly seemed less viable.
Choko, alerted by some movement in the hall, came charging out, rifle raised. He caught Regers, back flat to the wall.
“Hey, fuckface, where are you going? I thought Gila was supposed to be watching you?”
Regers raised hands to shoulder level. “Sorry, man. Just had to go to the bathroom. Guess I got lost.”
“Yeah, my ass you got lost. Just like you lost your E1? How about it, you ready to die?” Choko jabbed the gun at Regers’ chest.
“How about nothing,” said Regers. “You’re better off keeping us all alive as hostages in case things go sour. Why slaughter everybody?” He motioned to the groaning man in the pilot cabin. “Your captain’s going to bleed out in a matter of minutes.”
“Boo hoo. What makes you so smart?” Huh?” He jammed the muzzle in Regers’ face.
Regers turned his head away. He knew that to rile this animal up or show fear would only kindle his wrath and spur more violence. Give him a reason to make an example as Biggs had the captain, then he would in a heartbeat. Biggs came out, scowling, his gun raised.
Choko pointed at Regers. “Here’s the same wanker who was firing at Zoral and his goons.”
“Yeah, I remember him,” said Biggs. The leader’s lips curled in interest. “I could get to like this man. He doesn’t piss his pants, like these other jackshits. What’s your name?”
“Regers.”
The gang leader squinted at him, took a deep breath. He gazed at the place just past his accomplice as if weighing the fate of worlds while Choko licked his lips, no doubt familiar with his boss’s volatile moods.
“Take a close look at this Regers, Choko. A professional rogue’s my guess. Maybe paramilitary. Eyes cold as an eel. Someone who can turn on his own sister, or slit his own mother’s eyeballs if he has to. Ain’t I right, Regers?”
Regers shrugged, the faintest curl of a sneer on his lips. Better these scum create their own illusion of him.
Biggs laughed. He slapped Regers on the back. “Welcome to the gang, Regers. If you can hack it, you’re in. We could use a man like you. As you see, we’re undermanned. I happen to be a good judge of talent.”
“You can’t be serious, Biggs?” Choko groaned. “This fucking pipsqueak? If I blow too h
ard he’ll fall over.”
Biggs stared in mild amusement. “I’d like to see that. No pipsqueak here from where I’m standing.”
Choko rubbed his chin, maybe a bit too hastily. “If he’s going to be one of the brothers, let’s initiate him.” A sarcastic grin passed over the thug’s jowly face. He pulled a wad of brown-white pellets from his greasy jacket. “You need to try some bam, Regers. Loosen up your tight ass. You’re a bit stiff. Not a full-fledged brother till you’re nice and loose, like me and Flip.”
“I’m about as loose as I need to be,” Regers said.
Biggs waved his gun. “He said, try some, Regers.” He made a head motion to Choko.
Choko leered and thrust the pellets in Regers’ face. Regers stuck up an elbow, deflecting the arm, while Choko tickled Regers’ ear with his gun muzzle. “Help you work better, you dipshit vrego.”
“Back the fuck off,” grunted Regers. “I don’t need you feeding me pablum.” He grabbed at the pellets and downed them in one gulp. “Next one touches me ends up with a knee up his ass.”
Biggs only laughed.
“Tough man,” sneered Choko. His barrel swept up, fingers heavy on the trigger.
Biggs restrained Choko and lanced him a warning glare. “Dial it back, Chok. You’re too hair-triggered. This man is part of our outfit now. He’ll remain so, till he messes up. In which case, he gets a one way ticket to the sharks. We clear?”
Choko growled, a low, sullen sound. Regers’ eyes dimmed as the narcotic went to work.
Biggs nodded in satisfaction. “See, when Choko says, vrego, he means the non-freyas who live and breed like Balden Boys.”
The drone of a boat engine drifted across the waves. Biggs’s head turned, his grin disappearing. “Get Regers back to the passenger area with the others. We can use his muscle. Grab a stick or something, Regers, and watch over the hostages. Fucking Flip’s a useless twit.”
“You heard the man,” Choko grunted.