Fade to Black

36

"Time is oh-two forty-five hours."

Rico acknowledged that over his headset. The message came from Piper and it meant she had done everything she had to do inside the Crystal Blossom condo's mainframe computer.

Rico keyed his headset. "Go."

The helo veered abruptly, vectoring left and up as the doors siding the main compartment slid open. Rico wound the thick, slik-coated drop-rope around his left forearm and popped the safety line affixed to his commando harness. Shank nodded from the door opposite.

Abruptly, they were coming up over the edge of the roof of the Crystal Blossom condoplex.

"Now!" Thorvin said.

Rico stepped out into empty air.

The timing was precise. The helo slowed just as he slid to the end of the drop-rope. He hit the roof's flat, gritty surface with both feet, tumbled once and came up onto his knees, scanning the rooftop with his Ares Special Service in hand. Shank landed an instant behind him. The helo arced away so as not to attract attention, dwindling into the night and the infinitude of buildings and glaring lights sprawling across Manhattan.

The roof was clear. Rico rose and jogged over to the building's southern face. Shank followed. They pulled black climbing ropes from their harnesses and thrust K-2 autopitons against the low ferrocrete wall rising like a rim from around the edge of the roof. The cryomag tips of the K-2s burned holes straight into the crete. Secondary probes then extended outward from the pitons' main shaft, embedding the devices in the crete.

That took about five seconds. They spent another three or four connecting the ropes to the pitons, then to the I.M.I. power winches on the front of their harnesses.

"Set," Shank growled.

"Go."

The winches were programmed. From the roof, fifty stories above the ground, they fell about eleven stories straight down, then the winches cut in. Harnesses jerked and pulled. They slowed, jogging feet-first off the face of the building. They came to a halt before the wall of mirrored macroplast panes guarding the living room of Condo 35-8. This was where they'd picked up Farrah Moffit and where they would now find Ansell Surikov.

They applied flashtape to the mirrored windows. One quick flash seared a large hole through the panes.

They swung inside.

The heart of the Crystal Blossom condoplex mainframe used standard CPU matrix iconology. a white room walled by control panels. At 02:44:58:21:19 or so, Piper attached a black-box program icon to the Master Logic Panel icon, then transmitted her ready signal to Rico.

"Time is oh-two forty-five hours."

A while passed, then a warning signal from the engineering subprocessor advised of a breached external wall panel in Residence 35-8. The black box on the main console piped that signal, changing it, shunting it to the building diagnostic subprocessor, initializing a Level 1 diagnostic search of engineering subsystems.

Momentarily, another warning came, and another diagnostic search began.

The loop was complete.

"Alert! Alert!"

Hearing that, Skip Nolan looked down the row of comm operators facing the spectrally lit consoles lining the Executive Action Brigade's command vehicle. One console was showing its red alert light on top. Op Three was working the console rapidly.

Fingering his headset, Skip stepped up behind the Op. Window One on the console's main display showed a broad expanse of city populated by soaring towers gleaming brightly in the night

"We've got a hit," said an excited voice. A burst of static interrupted the signal. The transmit display on the console ID'd the speaker as part of Ground Eleven, the surveillance team assigned to monitor a tower on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

"Ground Eleven, report," said Op Three.

The surveillance agent's voice returned in mid-sentence, "-just skimmed the roof. We make it a Hughes Stallion, possibly armed. We've got some activity-"

More static.

"— scanning two unknowns rappelling down the south face."

Window Three on the console's main display abruptly zoomed in on the Crystal Blossom condoplex. Two dark, human-sized figures seemed to be elinging to the building's mirrored surface, maybe thirty, thirty-five stories above street-level. Something flashed, and a black squarish patch appeared in the building's mirrored skin. The two figures disappeared into the black patch.

Skip suppressed a curse.

He'd been all but incredulous when Colonel Yates ordered a surveillance team to monitor the exterior of the condoplex. What the hell did this building have to do with their mission? The brigade didn't have resources to waste like this. Their targets were somewhere in Newark, not Manhattan. They'd scraped up enough street-level intelligence to be reasonably sure of that. All the colonel would say was that he had special intelligence, not through regular channels.

Now it looked as if someone were making a run on the condoplex. Skip jacked into the console, replayed the vid, and zoomed in tight on the two dark figures hanging at the side of the building. Computer analysis found a ninety-seven percent correspondence between the figures on the wall and datastore references on two of the runners who'd participated in the run against Maas Intertech.

That was a match.

The colonel's long shot appeared to be paying off.

Skip looked up the line of consoles to the crippled body in a wheelchair. Bobbie Jo, her mind and spirit, were linked to an underpowered backup drone drifting slowly over eastern Newark, futilely, it now seemed. She was too far from the action to make any difference, way too far away. The drone was too slow, and Bobbie Jo was getting too timid. She'd be lucky if Colonel Yates didn't cancel her contract The colonel didn't believe in on-the-job therapy.

If only she could have found the will to pilot one of the brigade's assault choppers… Things might've worked out better for her.

But-no time for that now.

He jacked into his command console. "Alert, alert. Cap One, you are go. Stand by for target designation on channel three."

A monotone voice replied, "Acknowledged. Lifting off."

From the background came the rapid thump-thump-thumping of rotorcraft.

When the lights came on, Surikov lay on the bed with his legs hanging over the side like he'd been sitting there a while, then just leaned back and fell asleep. He wore a black robe. He looked about fifty, sophisticated, with thinning hair and a close-trimmed beard turning gray. Extra weight around the middle. Not a big man. Not a small one either. A liquor bottle lay close to hand.

Rico tossed the bottle back toward the center of the bed and tried shaking Surikov awake. When that didn't work, he took the opportunity to press Dok's DNA scanner against Surikov's arm. The check took about thirty seconds and came back positive. ID confirmed. Again. He tugged Surikov up into a sitting position and cuffed him. Surikov grunted, moved his head, gradually starting to come around. He smelled like booze. "What…?" he mumbled. "Who's there? What's going on?"

"We're taking you to the Garden."

"A garden of delight," Surikov said, smiling stupidly. "That's my wife."

"We're taking you home."

Surikov stared for several long moments, then rubbed a hand over his mouth and made an obvious effort to get hold of himself. "How… Tell me… how do we proceed?"

No fragging guano.

The runners had called him Cannibal.

With her head lowered and hair hanging around her face, Farrah watched the runner watching her, trying to look as if she were doing anything but paying him any attention.

He made her nervous.

According to what she'd overheard, the runners had brought this Cannibal in specifically to stay with her, to serve both as guard and jailer. The ork runner had referred to Cannibal as a "hired gun." He looked like that. Like the kind of person who would do whatever someone asked, as long as the pay was satisfactory. Red and black slash-tats made his face a vicious mask. His teeth were filed to points and colored jet-black. He wore some unusual dark metallic armor on his upper body, and a small grayish skull dangled from his left ear. He carried a compact rifle-possibly a submachine gun-a pair of pistols, a rather short-looking sword, and numerous knives.

Farrah wished the runners had trusted her enough to leave her by herself. She would rather they'd left her here in handcuffs and manacles than leave her unfettered with this scuzpunk for a guard.

Cannibal leaned against the wall opposite and watched her. Some unknown quanta of time slipped past. Cannibal pushed away from the wall and turned and walked slowly out of the warehouse lounge. His footsteps moved up the hall. The door to that space beyond, the loading area, squealed and then banged. Silence descended, but lingered only moments.

Too soon, the door squealed and banged again and Cannibal returned. He leaned against the wall again, facing her, cradb'ng that rifle in his arms. He grinned.

"Do I make you nervous?"

How to reply to the sociopathic personality? Farrah tried to decide. She could not expect him to observe any of the ordinary social conventions. Almost any response at all would only encourage him. An outright challenge, looks or words of defiance, might well incite him to violence. Better, it seemed, for her to do nothing, say nothing, make no response whatsoever. Better to appear completely cowed, in hopes of providing little or no provocation.,

"I could do you in a second," he said. "I could do you in a way we'd both enjoy. One time I did this biff in bed.

First we bopped, then I took her heart out. I could do you like that. One minute, you're in heaven. The next…"

Farrah suppressed the tremor that rose up through her insides. If he came near her… if left no choice but to try to save herself, she would have one chance and one chance only.

If would be do or die.