Carl grinned skullishly. “Was that the Rimside dream you had in mind, Suerte?”
“Go west, young man, go west,” Norton said piously. “But go with some cash and a decent fake ID.”
“Both of which we’ll give you,” Carl told him. “Together with a bus ticket right into the Freeport. And all you’ve got to do is answer a couple of questions we have about your cousin Manco Bambarén.”
“Hey!” Suerte Ferrer backed up in the chair. His hands chopped a flat cross out of the air in front of him. “I don’t know nothing about Manco’s operation, they didn’t tell me shit about any of that. I didn’t live down there more than a couple of years on and off anyway.”
Carl and Norton swapped another look. Carl sighed.
“That’s a shame,” he said.
“Yeah.” Norton started to get up. “We’ll tell the migra boys not to rough you up too bad before they dump you back over.”
“Hope you’ve enjoyed your brief stay in the Land of Opportunity.”
“Wait!”
Greta Jurgens’s hibernation retreat was an environment-blended two-story lodge built right into the side of a cliff face set back a couple of dozen meters from the riverbank. Fifteen meters or more of scrubby open ground from where the path from the bridge rose out of the groove it followed along the river, rounded a worn rock bluff, and petered out in the scrub a handful of paces from the front door. The upper-story windows were blanked with carbon-fiber security shutters, but downstairs there was activity. Motion visible through a wide picture window, and men darting in and out of the open door with weapons in their hands. Carl counted five before he slid back into cover, none of them yet fitted out in the weblar jackets the three down by the river had worn. One of them, older and apparently in charge, was already on the phone for further orders. Carl crouched where the rock wall on the right of the path still rose over a meter high and listened to the reports of his coming.
“…sounds like a whole fucking squad.” Voice panicky and small across the distance and the steady white-noise pour of the river in the background. “I can’t raise Lucho or Miguel down at the bridge. There’s a fucking mule here with panniers that look like they fucking blew up or something. I don’t know if—”
Pause.
“All right then, but you’d better make it quick.” A shouted aside. “You fucking idiots get your jackets on.”
Shit.
Well, not like you weren’t expecting this.
He went around the corner of the shallowing rock wall at a taut, bent-kneed run, sharkpunch slung and cling-padded to his thigh once more, Glock held out in both hands at head height before him like some kind of venerated icon.
It took them the first three meters to spot him, another two before they realized he wasn’t one of their own. He held fire until they realized, didn’t want to waste the shots. But as the yells erupted and weapons came up, he squeezed the trigger and the pistol yapped in his hands like a badly behaved little dog. He came on in, same rapid pace, straight line toward them, Make the shots count.
The older guy with the phone, jittering in front of his own men’s guns, tugging a pistol loose from somewhere. Carl’s third and fourth shots put him down, staggering back against the wall and doorjamb behind him, clawing for support, sinking fast. One down. More yelling, boiling confusion. Someone got off return fire—At fucking last, Jesus where’d you get these guys, Manco—but it crackled nowhere near, and the mesh made him ignore it. No time, no time, still firing, the steady, flat smack of the Glock rounds, the picture window starred and cratered, had to be security glass. Another guy with a Steyr, shooting wildly from the hip, correct right with the Glock and knock him off his feet like some tugging trick with a wire. Two down. The others were in the game now, cacophony of gunblasts, automatic stutter, and the dull boom of shotguns. Pale dry earth erupted from the ground to his right and in front, he darted left, lost some focus, thought he tagged a third target as the guy darted back inside the lodge, couldn’t be sure. The two remaining outside huddled back toward the door as well, weapons held higher; they’d be getting the range. Shotgun blast, he caught the outer edge of the spread, felt a couple of pellets sting through in his legs. He sprinted the rest of the way in, emptying the Glock as he came. A slug finally caught him somewhere low in the ribs, hammer-blow impact, and he staggered, jerked to a halt, nearly went over. His hat came off, bared his face to the light and his remaining opponents. He saw the shock in their eyes. He snarled and got the Glock back in line, kept pulling the trigger. One of the two men jolted, stumbled backward, firing wildly, one-handed, winged but not down. The Glock locked out on the last round, he threw it away. Less than half a dozen meters now, he ripped the sharkpunch clear and up, aimed vaguely for both men, pulled the trigger.
The picture window shattered in the center, became a sudden, jagged-toothed mouth. The two men were both hurled back off their feet and hard against it, the remaining glass suddenly awash with red and clots of gore; the bodies fell in shredded chunks. Carl got to within two meters of the door, put another shot through on general principles, and then stopped.
Listen.
Faint scrabbling sound from within, off to the right. He threw himself inside, falling and twisting in the air, saw vague movement above the rise of a breakfast bar, and fired at it. Another gun went off at the same time, and he felt a second impact in the ribs. But the edges of the bar ripped apart in flying splinters, and the darkened form in the kitchenette behind blew backward. Wet, uncooked meat noise and a shriek. He hit the ground, skidded painfully into the back of a wood-frame armchair.
And everything stopped again.
This time for real.
“It’s simple enough,” he told Norton, after the interrogation was done. They were playing an inept game of pool on the garish orange table. “I don’t have to find Onbekend now. He’ll come to me.”
“If he doesn’t just have you picked off at whatever airport you’re planning to use.”
“Yeah, well, like I said they’re kind of busy right now. And I’ll be going in under a fresh identity. No COLIN badge, no UNGLA accreditation, no weapons, nothing to ring any bells.”
Norton paused, chin hovering over the cue. “No weapons?”
“Not as such, no. I aim to look like a tourist.”
“And this fresh identity.” The COLIN exec rammed his shot home. “I assume you’re looking to me for that.”
“No, I’ve got a friend back in London can handle that for me, have the stuff couriered across inside a day. What I need from you is the cash. Free wafers, untraceable back to COLIN. My credit still good for that?”
“You know it is.”
“Good. And can you persuade RimSec to keep Ferrer locked up somewhere until end of next week? Make sure he doesn’t have a change of heart and go squawking down the wires to Bambarén?”
“I suppose so.” Norton looked vainly for position, tried a double, took it too fast and missed. “But look. You don’t know this Jurgens will be there. What if she’s not sleeping yet?”
“It’s November, Norton.” Carl chalked his cue. “Jurgens was almost flaking out when I talked to her three weeks ago. She’s got to be under by now.”
“I thought they had drugs that’ll unlock the hibernation.”
“Yeah.” Carl lined up his shot, eased back with due regard for the scarred yellow wall behind him. Sharp snap and the target ball disappeared into a corner pocket as if sucked there by vacuum. The cue ball stood solid in its place. “I knew this hibernoid back on Mars, we used to go the same tanindo classes. He was a private detective, occasional enforcer, too. Very tough guy, always getting into scrapes. I don’t think I ever knew him when he wasn’t carrying some kind of injury. And he told me that no beating he ever took hurt as much as the time he dosed himself with that wake-up shit.”