Hardbingers

29

Cal couldn't drag his eyes or his attention from the newspaper.

"What do we do?" Miller said.

Cal looked up at him. This was the first time in recent memory that Miller had asked his advice.

They stood at the monitoring console, an island of tranquility in a sea of furious activity. Back in the lounge area he could see Lewis and Geraci emptying the contents of the lockers into heavy-duty black garbage bags.

"I don't know that we do anything."

"Get off it. We were supposed to take them out but they're not—down, maybe, but not out."

"We don't know that they were supposed to be killed. The Oculus saw us hitting them with a truck—"

"Not us—you. He saw you driving. But it didn't turn out that way, did it."

Cal didn't reply. No need to.

Miller leaned closer. "Let's cut the bullshit, okay? The Ally didn't show you running down those two because it wants them laid up for a while. It wants them out. Gone. Kaput."

Cal looked at the paper again. "Says they're in critical condition. Maybe they won't last."

"'Critical condition' don't mean shit. You ever read about anyone going into a hospital in less than critical condition? Yeah, it means someone's bad hurt, but I bet nine out often walk out of there."

"You hit them awful hard."

"But not as hard as I could've. If the lady had stepped off the curb with her kid, yeah—they'd've been goners. But she held back—talking to someone, I think. Don't matter why. Bottom line was I had to swerve toward her, and then when she ran out to her kid I had to swerve back again. If they'd stayed together we wouldn't be having this conversation."

They stood in silence. Cal glanced at Miller and saw a pensive look on his face. He seemed to have regained some of his usual bravado, but not all.

Then Cal thought of something.

"Maybe we shouldn't be having this conversation."

Miller gave him a questioning look.

"I'm saying, what if they didn't make it. What if they're already gone? Then we can forget about them."

Or try to anyway.

"How do we find out?"

Cal looked at the paper. The woman's name was given as Gia DiLauro, the little girl as Victoria Westphalen. His stomach gave a lurch. He wished he hadn't read that. They had names now. That made it worse.

"Says they were taken to New York Hospital. Okay…"

He picked up the phone and called information which gave him the hospital's main number. He dialed in and got shifted around until he wound up with Patient Information. He decided on a backdoor approach.

"I'd like to send some flowers to two of your patients. Can you give me the room numbers of"—he checked the article—"Gia DiLauro and Victoria Westphalen?"

Miller gave him a thumbs-up.

After spelling both names twice, he learned what he hadn't wanted to hear.

"I'm sorry, they're in the trauma unit. No flowers allowed, I'm afraid."

He thanked her and hung up.

He didrfl look at Miller as he spoke. "They're still hanging on."

Cal jumped as something crashed behind him. He turned and saw Port-man smashing one of their computer towers. Zeklos was helping him. They both wielded heavy hammers to crack open the case. Zeklos pulled out the hard drive and together they began smashing it into an unrecognizable lump of metal and plastic.

Transporting the computers risked disaster if they fell into the wrong hands, so they'd leave them—but not in useful condition. They'd run a shredder program on each drive but Cal felt it foolish to underestimate the ability of some hacker to peek under the overwrites. He didn't have a degausser to do a magnetic wipe, so he told the men to smash the drives as well. The MV had other computers at the safe house and secure backups of everything that mattered.

Zeklos sawr him looking and approached.

Miller snarled. "What do you want?"

"The Heir came to my apartment today."

Miller looked at Cal. "Didn't he say he was going out of town?"

Cal nodded. Yeah, he had. He turned to Zek.

"Why would he want to see you?"

"He talk about MV. He say if he is to join, then he wish to know about it."

"Why didn't he come to us?" Miller said.

Zek eyed him. "You have not been very welcoming."

That was true in Miller's case, but Cal thought he and the guy had connected in some way. He was getting a bad feeling about this. The only reason to go to a guy on the outs with a group was to hear the dirt.

"What exactly did he want to know?"

Miller added, "And what exactly did you tell him?"

"Very little. But I do not think that is why he come." He reached into his pocket. "He brought this."

He held out his hand. Cal felt an electric jolt when he saw the Starfire's filled hollow.

"Oh, shit," Miller said. "Where the fuck did he get that?"

"He did not say. He ran out before I could ask him."

"When was this?" Cal said.

"A little after one o'clock."

"Why did he run out?"

"I do not know."

Zek's eyes said that wasn't quite true, but that would keep till later. Cal didn't want to get sidetracked from the Slarfire. Cyanide tips were what the yeniceri had been taught to use for a hit. And the Starfire was favored because it had such a lame hollow.

"One o'clock," Miller said. "Diana says she heard the commotion of a fight around one-thirty. The guy's in the neighborhood, pumping Zeklos, then he leaves, and a little while later the 0 and everybody else are slaughtered." He looked at Cal. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I can't imagine what you're thinking."

Miller leaned closer. "Maybe this 'Heir' wasn't anything of the sort. For all we know he could have been the Adversary in disguise, and we invited him in. Hell, we dragged him in like a Trojan fucking horse."

"The 0 would have known."

"Yeah? He didn't know he was going to be torn to pieces. Maybe he got fooled."

Cal didn't want to think that, but he had to admit the timing was suspicious.

Miller pounded a fist on the console. "I never trusted that fucker. 1 smelled something wrong from the git-go."

Cal took the Starfire from Zek and pointed back to the computers.

"Finish up so we can get out of here."

He pocketed it as he turned back to Miller.

"We'll worry about the bullet later. Right now we need to decide about the woman and the girl. What do you think we should do?"

He hesitated, then shrugged. "Finish the job."

"How are you—?"

"Uh-uh." Miller was shaking his head. "Not me. I'm not letting our new Oculus out of my sight."

Cal felt the same way. Who knew how many were left in the world?

"So who? It'll be a kamikaze mission."

Miller had that pensive look again. "Kamikaze…"

"What are you thinking?"

"I know just the guy." He straightened and called over Cal's shoulder. "Hey, Zeklos—want to redeem yourself?"