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Hense gestured, and two Stormers took a bead on Bendix, ready for the order.

“New York is a graveyard,” Bendix said forcefully. “I doubt anyone’s left alive there. There’s no government. We have no presence there. You might as well land in the fucking ocean and let us sink.”

“Mr. Bendix,” Hense said, standing up. “I advise you that you are being covered by two randomly placed troopers who have orders to shoot you at first sign of any psionic activity. Am I understood?”

He grinned, that puckered face twisting up, but he said nothing else. I looked at Marko.

“New York,” I said. “That’s where he wants me to go anyway, and I can’t risk the kill switch. Besides, that’s where he’ll be.”

“But why would he take Mr. Kieth to the same place we’re going?” Marko said, scrubbing his face with his filthy hands, leaving dark streaks on his cheeks.

I glanced at Bendix. “Because the Spook’s right-New York’s a fucking Ghost City. There’s no safer place for Kev and his merry men to hole up.”

From my right, Bendix’s congealed laughter filled the cabin. “Monks? Kev? Kev Gatz?

I stared at him, my right eye giving a twitch. “You know him?”

He moved his head around as if sniffing the air. “Mr. Cates, the government naturally keeps track of all known terrorist organizations. Kev Gatz and his fellow cyborg refugees have been on our radar for some years now. His file is admittedly thin; we have almost no record of him prior to the Monk Riots.” His face twisted up again. “Our usual agents had tabs on his organization up until two days ago, when our usual agents… died.”

For a few seconds we all sat there in silence. Finally I licked my cracked lips. “Mr. Bendix, do you have a point?”

He nodded, opening his mouth as he did so and waggling his eyebrows under the blindfold. “Oh, yes, Mr. Cates. Three days ago our last official report on Gatz had his group seizing Bellevue Hospital Center with little resistance, the complex having been abandoned and occupied by itinerants of deteriorating health. You would have heard the report, officers, except you’d been burned off the force by then, of course.”

“Well, hell,” I said. “We get a fix on Kieth’s signal like before, you can call in a fucking missile strike or whatever. Kieth’s dead, this whole mess goes away.” A thin kernel of hope bloomed inside me, and I almost welcomed the idea of having to worry about getting away from Hense and Happling or whichever System Pigs stepped in to take their place.

I felt Marko looking at me, and I knew he’d heard me make my promise to Ty. I kept my eyes off him, but I still felt his scrutiny.

Bendix nodded. “Certainly. But you would have to put me in touch with my office.”

“Uh,” Marko said slowly, raising his hand, “there is one problem with that. When I got the hover going I tried a scan for Mr. Kieth. I can’t find him anymore.” He shrugged, an incredibly slow, lazy movement. “I think they’re shielding him.”

I closed my eyes. The Kev Gatz I’d known had been a burnout, a man who could make you dance and sing if he bent his mind to it but who sometimes didn’t seem capable of forming sentences. Now he was a goddamn cyborg mastermind. “All right, but I think Mr. Bendix is saying we know where they’re headed-Bellevue. Just take the shot. We’ll know soon enough if we hit the mark.”

We all looked at Bendix. His smile got even twistier, but he shook his head. “No.”

I almost jumped to my feet. This was it, this was a solution. This was burning out an infection. This was easy, and I wanted to squeeze an answer out of the goddamn assistant to the Undersecretary. Before I could find my voice, Hense spoke up.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Ms. Hense,” Bendix said, shaking his head. “The whole eastern seaboard is in turmoil as this spreads, and we’re starting to see flare-ups of the infection elsewhere in the System, probably spread by System Security Force personnel moving from place to place. We’ve lost huge numbers of assets and resources, and we’re struggling simply to maintain control in North America right now. Intact assets in the rest of the world must be preserved to guard against what is at the moment an inevitable spread of chaos and loss of life.” His smile faded a little. “We’re stretched thin as it is. You expect me to arrange for military assets to be transported to New York and expended for the chance?” He shook his head again. “No. Show me where Mr. Kieth is, and I will issue such an order. Not before.”

“Motherfucker,” I hissed, looking up at Hense. “Call the cops. Call your people.” The cops didn’t hesitate. The cops killed everything first and asking fucking questions later.

Hense didn’t look at me. “No, Mr. Cates,” she said quietly, looking at the Stormers around us. “We’re burned. No one will talk to us. We won’t get through to anyone.”

I stared at her, then at Happling, who looked like he was chewing his own tongue. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. You’re not police.”

I stood up, the action intended as dramatic but ending up slow and pathetic. “I’m not insane,” I said, turning to Marko. I hated him because he knew what I’d said to Kieth. “New York. We find Kieth and then Mr. Bendix will wave his hands in the air and rain death from the sky.” I looked around. Hense, Happling, Marko, and the Stormers were all focused on me. Except for Marko, they’d all wanted me dead not so long ago, but they were looking at me calmly, expectantly, as if I knew what our best move was.

“Fuck it,” I said, turning for the cockpit. “We do it the hard way. As fucking usual.”

XXIX

Day Ten: Send the Vip on Down

Zooming toward the coast, the hover rattled and shook violently, but I barely noticed. It had been shuddering and lurching through the air, the displacers roaring with a sour, off-center noise that was painful to the ears, ever since we lifted off. Marko handled the brick like he was riding a dead elephant, and by the time we were halfway across the ocean he’d made four of the surviving fifteen Stormers puke into the safety netting.

I was sitting in the copilot’s seat. Wires snaked from the maintenance duct on the floor between us directly into the dashboard, which made me nervous. Any sudden, unplanned move by Marko would more than likely result in some disconnections, and I had a vague but heavy certainty disconnections would result in us smashing into the Atlantic.

“Things must be bad,” I said to Hense in a low, careful voice. She crouched on one side of me, awkwardly folded into the space between the copilot’s seat and the dashboard. Happling was behind us, grim and silent, all his crazy cheer gone for a change. I’d liked him better laughing. “You hear Bendix? Assets, resources: translation is, they’ve lost the fucking East Coast and have nothing to throw at it.”

Hense nodded. We’d all been out of touch for too many days; we were working from hints. “That explains a fucking civilian Spook leading a team of cops,” she said. “A week ago that would never have happened.”

I’d sketched out a primitive map of Bellevue Hospital Complex in a mixture of blood and grease on a piece of cloth torn from one of the Stormers’ underuniforms. It wasn’t pretty but it gave the general idea. I’d been there only once, eight or nine years before, on a job. Three doctors, all rich and under guard, all had to be dead on the same day. I remembered the job welclass="underline" a challenge. I’d been forced to take some pains with the grounds; next to The Rock, the hospital was one of the most heavily guarded areas of the city. After all, they couldn’t let in the assholes without medical chips.

Nine years was a long time. Buildings went up or down, security configurations changed, floors were abandoned or populated. Still, my hazy memory was all we had to go on until Marko dug up something more useful.