The Backlash Mission

Chapter 25

It was a curious sensation, Mordecai thought, to be helpless.

Curious, and thoroughly unpleasant. Every small motion of the ambulance made him feel in danger of sliding off the stretcher, even though he knew they'd strapped him securely in place. Overhead, the dome light had been dimmed, for which he was thankful: with his eyes paralyzed open the glare could have quickly become painful. It would have been nice to be able to see the city below, but his head was pointed straight up and all his peripheral vision could pick up was reflections of the ambulance's own interior from the side windows.

About all he could do was listen. And he did.

"Easy as breezy, wasn't it?" one of the Security guards remarked from beside him. "I guess blackcollars aren't so tough to handle when you know they're coming."

"All guerrilla forces are like that," another responded. "They're long on nerve and short on numbers, and once you get them pinned down they fold."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't get too confident if I was you," the paramed put in. "I helped treat some of the guys that came in after the Rialto Street fiasco—"

"Watch your mouth," the first Security man growled.

"A fiasco's a fiasco," the paramed insisted. "And these same blackcollars did a complete medical runthrough on them."

"Yeah, but they could move then," someone said, and Mordecai sensed dimly that he'd been poked hard in the chest. "This one's not—"

"Hey, what's that?" the third Security man interrupted. An arm reached over Mordecai's face to his chest, reappeared with a small, flat disk. "Didn't you guys search him?"

" 'Course we did—got all his stuff right back there in that bag. How the hell did we miss something so—"

And with a crack! of released gas pressure, the belly-bomb disintegrated into a cloud of flying needles.

Exquisite pain jabbed into Mordecai's cheeks, and he tensed, dimly aware that for the first time since injecting himself with paralyte he could tense. A tingling sensation flooded his system, as, around him, the startled oaths and shouts of the others came to an abrupt halt. Muscles trembling slightly, he fumbled at the straps holding him down and managed to release the clasps. Taking a deep breath, he sat up and looked around him.

His four companions sat slumped in their seats, faces contorted in death into surprise or horror, depending, Mordecai supposed, on whether or not they'd realized in time what had been done to them. For his own part, he could sympathize most with the outrage clearly visible on the face of one of the Security men. Paralyte antidotes had been deliberately designed to be lethal so as to prevent potential targets from doping themselves up with antidote before being shot; it was unlikely the creators of that policy had ever realized how it could be used against them.

The trembling in his muscles was fading now, as was the stinging in his cheeks. Reaching to the lighting control board, he killed the lights in the compartment and looked out the windows, trying to get his bearings. They were over Athena now, clearly, and his inner ear told him they were starting to descend as well. Only a couple of minutes left. Pressing against the window, he searched quickly for the rooftop landing pads that would mark the hospital and—with luck—the Security building.

There... there... and there. Three of them. One was directly ahead, almost certainly the hospital, and he quickly scanned the other two buildings for clues as to which would be Security. The plainer tenstory one, he decided; the taller and fancier one would probably be the central government building.

A tempting target for one of his limpet mines, perhaps even for some more serious attention if they happened to wind up with a little extra time. Fixing the locations of both in his mind, he turned in the darkness to the dead Security man nearest his height and build and began to strip off his uniform.

The ambulance cushioned to a landing on the hospital roof, and almost before it was down the medic was out and running toward the rear. Mordecai had the doors open by the time he arrived and was industriously grappling with the back end of the stretcher. "Get the other end," he snapped to the medic. The other got a foot up into the compartment—

And folded over as Mordecai jabbed him in the belly.

The blackcollar gave him a surreptitious push to aid his momentum into the compartment, his attention on the four orderlies who'd abruptly burst from the observation corridor alongside the landing pad, shoving a gurney ahead of them as they hurried toward the ambulance. Easy to take out; but someone else might be watching the proceedings from elsewhere along that corridor, and he couldn't afford to trigger the alarm too soon. Fleetingly, he wished Lathe had opted to take this part of the plan himself—the comsquare was so much better at this kind of deception.

"Hurry up!" he called to the orderlies, tugging the stretcher half out of the ambulance. "We're going to need more help right away."

"What the hell?" one of them gasped, peering inside at the unmoving bodies. "We were told only one casualty—"

"You were told wrong," Mordecai snapped. "Come on—get moving."

Three of them raced back into the corridor for more gurneys. The other helped load the stretcher—and the blanket-swathed Security man Mordecai had loaded onto it—onto the gurney and headed inside with it. The medic was starting to recover from the stomach jab; with everyone else temporarily out of eyeshot, Mordecai took the opportunity to lean into the ambulance and knock him out more thoroughly. He'd just completed that task when the pilot finally finished his shutdown procedure and strode back to see what was going on.

"What the hell?" he gasped, staring at the view inside.

"He had a doomsday gas bomb," Mordecai growled. "I was the only one who got to the oxygen in time."

The man hissed between his teeth and took a quick step back from the open door. "Damn," he muttered. "What kind of gas—hey! You're—"

Taking a long step toward him, Mordecai slammed a reverse roundhouse kick to the side of the pilot's head. The man went down without a sound. Mordecai was starting to scoop up the unconscious form when the corridor door behind him banged open. "Hey, you!" a voice shouted.

"What was that—?"

Most people, Mordecai had learned long ago, didn't expect to be attacked while they were still talking, and he was on the three orderlies before they knew what was happening. Five punches later they were sprawled on the rooftop with the pilot.

Carefully, he scanned the windows in the corridor for any witnesses. No faces showed that he could see. Jogging forward to the cockpit, he opened the door and peered inside at the control panel. It was, fortunately, just like the one he and Lathe had looked at briefly the day before. With another quick glance at the corridor windows, he slid into the cockpit and gingerly took the controls.

He brought the gravs to life first, making sure they were set in neutral mode. Flipping on the autopilot, he keyed in a high-speed course due east. The gravs glowed brighter and the ambulance began to lift, and as he hopped out he reached in to flick off the aircraft's running lights before slamming the door closed. A dark mass barely visible behind the gravs' violet glow, it headed off across the city.

Slipping through the doorway into the still-deserted corridor, he looked about for the elevator.

Somewhere on the street down there, he'd have to find a car to steal.

—

The transport was just making its approach to the Security building when word came through of the runaway ambulance. "What do you mean, stolen?" Galway growled. "How could it have been stolen?"

"I don't know, sir." The transport's copilot shook his head. "But the hospital says they didn't send it out, and it isn't answering its radio. Wait a moment—there's more coming through.... They've found the pilot unconscious on the hospital landing pad, General."

Beside Galway, Quinn swore bitterly. "Damn that stupid medic. Is the ambulance still within range of the Green Mountain lasers, lieutenant?"

"No, sir, it's well outside the Athena perimeter now, heading east across Denver."

"What did you mean about the medic?" Galway frowned.

"Isn't it obvious?" Quinn snorted. "He must have gotten a telemetry reading from the hospital and found out what antidote to give Mordecai. And then given it."

"Galway?" Pittman called from across the cockpit aisle. "What's going on?"

The prefect turned to look at him. "It looks like Mordecai's managed to make a break for it," he told the youth. "He's stolen his ambulance and is heading to somewhere in Denver."

Pittman's eyes widened, and for a moment his lips moved wordlessly. "Oh, no," he breathed at last.

"Oh, hell. Galway—General Quinn—you've got to protect me. You've got to. I've earned that much, damn it—"

"Protect you from what?" Quinn cut in. "Mordecai's to ground and gone by now—he sure as hell isn't coming back here."

"Maybe," Pittman said, eyes darting around as the transport set down on the rooftop pad. "But maybe not. He may just have gone for reinforcements."

"What reinforcements?" Quinn scoffed. But his eyes had narrowed. "Some remnant of Torch? Or someone else?"

Pittman shook his head. "I don't know who... but Lathe was pretty damn pleased they'd come over to our side. Those are his own words."

Quinn glanced at Galway, cocked an eyebrow. "You know these delwort toads, Galway," he said.

"What sort of group would they be likely to link up with?"

"Hey, can we deal with the important things first?" Pittman put in before Galway could speak. "Like my safety? I want to be someplace where Mordecai can't get to me if he comes back in. I mean it, Galway—and you people owe me."

Quinn sniffed in obvious contempt. "Your blackcollar training doesn't seem to have supplied you with much in the way of a backbone, does it?"

"Maybe I've seen Mordecai in action more often than you have," Pittman shot back. "Is there anywhere in the cell-block that would be safe?"

"We could lock you into solitary," Quinn suggested, shifting his gaze outside. The transport's side door was disgorging prisoners and guards now, and the general watched closely as the line disappeared through the armored door into the building. Galway held his breath, but no one made any trouble.

"No—no cell." Pittman shook his head. "At least not a locked one. I want to be able to get out if there's any trouble."

"Well, then, just what the hell do you—"

"What about the emergency bunker, General?" Galway cut in. "It's three levels underground, Pittman, with only one entrance, and it's designed to withstand a concerted enemy attack."

"Wait a minute, Galway," Quinn growled, unfastening his restraints and stepping to the cockpit door.

"That bunker isn't a hotel, you know."

"How far away from the others is this bunker, Galway?" Pittman asked.

"Shut up, Postern," Quinn snapped. "I've got orders to work with you, but I don't have to like you—and to be honest, traitors like you make me want to vomit. So I'll tell you this just once: you give me even half a reason to do so and I'll let Lathe weld your mouth shut. You can't stay in the bunker, but there's a lounge off the situation room you can cower in if you want."

Pittman bristled. "I don't especially care for you, either, Quinn, if it comes to that. But there's a lot more I can tell you about Lathe and his men—stuff I'm pretty sure you and the Ryqril would like to know. I can't tell it to you if I'm dead. So if you want to explain to the damn cockroaches how you let Mordecai get to me—"

"All right—all right," Quinn said with an exasperated snort. "Anything to get rid of you. Galway, take him down to the lounge and tuck him in. If you can spare a moment later, we'll be processing the prisoners." Without waiting for an answer he opened the cockpit door and jumped out.

"Understood," Galway muttered after him, jaw tightening at the sarcasm. Pittman's paranoia wasn't his fault, after all. "Come on, Pittman, move it."

"How hard is it to get off the detention level, anyway?" the youth asked as they stepped out onto the roof. "I'm not just being fussy, Galway—I've seen these guys in action."

"They'll be on the fifth level; you'll be two levels underground," the prefect growled, starting to get fed up with Pittman himself. "There's a single elevator off the fifth level, which opens out only onto the fourth floor. The elevators off the fourth floor are then half the building away, and the entire level is guard barracks. Give Quinn a little credit for sense, okay? There really isn't any way they can get out without getting killed."

"Okay," Pittman murmured, and with that finally subsided.

They made the rest of the trip in silence, a quiet that, oddly enough, matched the building as a whole.

Even during the night shift Galway had never seen the place quite as deserted as this, and he found it a bit unnerving until he realized that virtually all the troops at Quinn's disposal were either up with the prisoners or still out in Denver clearing up the aftermath of that operation.

The lounge was empty when they arrived, the handful of men who might be there clearly occupied elsewhere. "There's a luncheon pantry over here, and drinks in the cooler here," Galway said, pointing them out. "No beds, but the couch over there will do if you get tired enough. The situation room is through that door. Stay out of it if you don't want Quinn to yell at you again."

"I understand." Pittman took a deep breath, let it out. "I expect you've got some important torturing to attend to, so I suppose you'd better go."

"You're welcome," Galway said dryly. Turning, he stepped through the door and headed back toward the elevator.