Whos Bogue and Sharkey? Bobby asked.
The bartenders I dont like this. He got up from his chair, walked to the door, and gently edged one of the curtains aside. What the fuck are those dipshits doing out there? Hey, Count, this looks like your speed. Get over here.
Bobby got up, full of misgivings he hadnt felt like telling Jackie or Jammer about letting Leon see him, because he didnt want to look like a wilson and walked over to where the club owner stood.
Go on. Take a peek. Dont let em see you. Theyre pretending so hard not to watch us you can almost smell it.
Bobby moved the curtain, careful to keep the crack no more than a centimeter wide, and looked out. The shopping crowd seemed to have been replaced almost entirely by black-crested Gothick boys in leather and studs, and amazingly by an equal proportion of blond Kasuals, the latter decked out in the weeks current Shinjuku cottons and gold-buckled white loafers. I dunno, Bobby said, looking up at Jammer, but they shouldnt be together, Kasuals and Gothicks, you know? Theyre like natural enemies, its in the DNA or something... He took another look. Goddamn, theres about a hundred of em.
Jammer stuck his hands deep in his pleated trousers. You know any of those guys personally?
Gothicks, I know some of em to talk to. Except its hard to tell em apart Kasuals, theyll stomp anything that isnt Kasual. Thats mainly what theyre about. But I just been cut up by Lobes anyway, and Lobes are supposed to be under treaty with the Gothicks, so who knows?
Jammer sighed. So, I guess you dont feel like strolling out there and asking one what they think theyre up to?
No, Bobby said earnestly, I dont.
Hmmm. Jammer looked at Bobby in a calculating way, a way that Bobby definitely didnt like.
Something small and hard dropped from the high black ceiling and clicked loudly on one of the round black tables. The thing bounced and hit the carpet, rolling, and landed between the toes of Bobbys new boots. Automatically, he bent and picked it up. An old-fashioned, slot-headed machine screw, its threads brown with rust and its head clotted with dull black latex paint. He looked up as a second one struck the table, and caught a glimpse of an unnervingly agile Jammer vaulting the bar, beside the universal credit unit. Jammer vanished, there was a faint ripping sound Velcro and Bobby knew that Jammer had the squat little automatic weapon hed seen there earlier in the day. He looked around, but Jackie was nowhere in sight.
A third screw ticked explosively on the Formica of the tabletop.
Bobby hesitated, confused, but then followed Jackies example and got out of sight, moving as quietly as he could. He crouched behind one of the clubs wooden screens and watched as the fourth screw came down, followed by a slender cascade of fine dark dust. There was a scraping sound, and then a square steel ceiling grate vanished abruptly, withdrawn into some kind of duct. He glanced quickly to the bar, in time to see the fat recoil compensator on the barrel of Jammers gun as it swung up.
A pair of thin brown legs dangled from the opening now, and a gray sharkskin hem smudged with dust.
Hold it, Bobby said, its Beauvoir!
You bet its Beauvoir, came the voice from above, big and hollow with the echo of the duct. Get that damn table out of the way.
Bobby scrambled out from behind the screen and hauled the table and chairs to the side.
Catch this, Beauvoir said, and dangled a bulging olive-drab pack from one of its shoulder straps, then let it go The weight of the thing nearly took Bobby to the floor. Now get out of my way... Beauvoir swung down out of the duct, hung from the openings edge with both hands, then dropped.
What happened to the screamer I had up there? Jammer asked, standing up behind the bar, the little machine gun in his hands.
Right here, Beauvoir said, tossing a dull gray bar of phenolic resin to the carpet. It was wrapped with a length of fine black wire. No other way I could get in here without a regular array of shitballs knowing about it, as it happens.
Somebodys obviously given them the blueprints to the place, but theyve missed that one.
Howd you get up to the roof? Jackie asked, stepping from behind a screen.
I didnt, Beauvoir said, pushing his big plastic frames back up his nose. I shot a line of monomol across from the stack next door, then slid over on a ceramic spindle... His short nappy hair was full of furnace dust, He looked at her gravely. You know, he said.
Yes. Legba and Papa Ougou, in the matrix. I jacked with Bobby, on Jammers deck...
They blew Ahmed away on the Jersey freeway. Probably used the same launcher they did Bobbys old lady with...
Who?
Still not sure, Beauvoir said, kneeling beside the pack and clicking open the quick-release plastic fasteners, but its starting to shape up... What I was working on, up until I heard Lucas had been hit, was running down the Lobes who mugged Bobby for his deck. That was probably an accident, just business as usual, but somewhere theres a couple of Lobes with our icebreaker... That had potential, for sure, because the Lobes are hotdoggers, some of them, and they do a little business with Two-a-Day. So Two-a-Day and I were making the rounds, looking to learn what we could. Which was dick, as it turned out, except that while we were with this dust case called Alix, whos second assistant warlord or something, he gets a call from his opposite number, who Two-a-Day pins as a Barrytown Gothick name of Raymond. He was unloading the pack as he spoke, laying out weapons, tools, ammunition, coils of wire. Raymond wants to talk real bad, but Alix is too cool to do it in front of us, Sorry, gentlemen, but this is official warlord biz, this dumbshit says, so natch. we excuse our humble selves, shuffle and bow and all, and nip around the corner. Use Two-a-Days modular phone to ring up our cowboys back in the Sprawl and put them on to Alixs phone, but fast. Those cowboys went into Alixs conversation with Raymond like a wire into cheese. He pulled a deformed twelve-gauge shotgun, barely longer than his forearm, from the pack, selected a fat drum magazine from the display hed made on the carpet, and clicked the two together, You ever see one of these motherfuckers? South African, prewar... Something in his voice and the set of his jaw made Bobby suddenly aware of his contained fury. Seems Raymond has been approached by this guy, and this guy has lots of money, and he wants to hire the Gothicks outright, the whole apparat, to go into the Sprawl and do a number, a real crowd scene This guy wants it so big, hes gonna hire the Kasuals too. Well, the shit hit the fan then, because Alix, hes kind of conservative. Only good Kasuals a dead one, and then only after x number of hours of torture, etc, Fuck that, Raymond says, ever the diplomat. Were talking big money here, were talking corporate. He opened a box of fat red plastic shells and began to load the gun, cranking one after another into the magazine. Now I could be way off, but I keep seeing these Maas Biolabs PR types on video lately Something very weirds happened, out on some property of theirs in Arizona. Some people say it was a nuke, some people say it was something else. And now theyre claiming their top biosoft mans dead, in what they call an unrelated accident. Thats Mitchell, the guy who more or less invented the stuff. So far, nobody else is even pretending to be able to make a biochip, so Lucas and I assumed from the beginning that Maas had made that icebreaker If it was an icebreaker... But we had no idea who the Finn got it from, or where they got it. But if you put all that together, it looks like Maas Biolabs might be out to cook us all. And this is where they plan to do it, because they got us here but good.
I dunno, Jammer said, we got a lot of friends in this building.
Had, Beauvoir put the shotgun down and started loading a Nambu automatic, Most of the people on this level and the next one down got bought out this afternoon. Cash. Duffels full of it, Theres a few holdouts, but not enough. That doesnt make any sense, Jackie said, taking the glass of Scotch from Jammers hand and drinking it straight off. What do we have that anybody could want that bad? Hey, Bobby said, dont forget, they probably dont know those Lobes ripped me for the icebreaker. Maybe thats all they want.