He stopped running. He was a dead man, and he knew it. “Juno!” he yelled. “Is that you?”
Damn straight it is.
“Juno! Where are you?” His voice came rolling across the jungle brush, desperate, pleading. I pulled my finger off the trigger and watched him through the scope. He had his shirt pulled up, and he was digging into his side with his fingernails, trying to get to the heat seeker. “Juno!” he cried. “JUNO! Don't do this, Juno. Please! Please!” He gave up on the heat seeker and dropped to his knees. “P-please!” he wailed. His face was all wrinkled up, a giant, bawling baby's face.
Looks like Ian hasn't changed so much after all. In the end, the guy is still a pussy.
I held down the trigger and swept the barrel from one side to the other until the automated firing system let loose. People always imagined the burst barreling across the open space like one of the spokes of an exploding Roman candle. But the pulse moved faster than the eye could track. One instant Ian was groveling on his knees and the next, he was blown back in a burst of bright energy.
I stood up and swung the rifle over my shoulder. I reached down to scratch my ankles, and then I crossed the fifty meters, stopping when I reached Ian's body. I bent over the corpse and pulled up the pant legs. Nothing. I rolled him face up. He was crisped beyond recognition. Twisted metal poked out from his biceps, his freakish strength enhanced by mechanical implants. Evidently, the steroids hadn't been enough for him to erase his inner weakling.
I looked over at the Zoo. I heard no sirens, saw no searchlights. The guards in the towers hadn't seen anything. They'd been facing the other way, looking toward the inside just like they were supposed to.
I pulled Ian's smoldering shirt open. There, inside a charred leather sheath, was the blade. It was hot, too hot to touch. I used my left hand and tried to snatch it out fast without ever really grabbing hold. It took three tries before I managed to pull it free and fling it into the weeds.
I pulled the penlight from my pocket and shined it on the knife. It was stained with blood, Raj Gupta's blood. True to form, Ian was carrying it on his person, ready to plant it on me as soon as the cops nabbed me. I picked it up and dropped it two more times before it had finally cooled enough to hold.
DECEMBER 5, 2788
I puttered up to the Jungle Pride, me and my two-cadaver cargo, one still in the wrapper, the other cooked medium well. I wondered how Yuri was doing in the dark. A check of my watch told me it had been more than two hours since we'd left him cuffed to that pipe. It was already half past midnight.
I'd stayed in that field with Ian's body for at least an hour, hashing it all out in my head. The plan was solid. All I had to do was get Maggie to sell it to her lieutenant. The rest was up to me.
I killed the motor and stood up, my legs telling me they weren't ready for more exertion. Hauling those two bodies out of that field had wasted what was left of my strength. And after having used these same legs to hold off a group of panicked offworlders, I hadn't had much to begin with. I suddenly remembered the knife, the one used to kill Raj. I picked it up from the boat's floor and heaved it into the river. That was a murder that would remain unsolved. I tied off and hauled myself up to the rippled pier. I made my way along the decrepit docking, choosing my path carefully, trying to stay away from the collapsed portions.
Yuri was going to have a hell of a time carrying those bodies across. I'd have to check the skiff for life vests. He'd need one if he fell through.
My knees creaked as I climbed the gangway. At the top, I could hear the drone of a thousand buzzing flies. I turned on the penlight. Hoshi's body was crawling with lizards, all of them chattering and clicking. Some fled when I passed, others hissed, and the rest just kept feeding.
I found Yuri where I'd left him. He looked relieved to see me. Two hours was plenty of time for him to start thinking I wasn't coming back for him.
I sat down on the floor. I caught a whiff of urine, and saw the stains running down the wall a short ways down. “Couldn't you hold it?” I said.
“Not for two hours,” he said petulantly.
He was already ticking me off with his big-baby routine. I told myself to let it go. At least he wasn't crying anymore. “Do you know who I am?”
“No. But Ian told me to look out for a guy with his hand in a cast.”
“What did he say about me?”
“Nothing. He just said to call him if I saw you.”
He had no idea who I was. As I'd hoped, I could be anybody I wanted. Ian's little need-to-know policy was about to bite Yuri in the ass. I kept my face straight. “I'm a cop, Yuri.”
“I figured that.”
“I'm a captain. I'm Ian's boss's boss. Consider yourself caught. We have you on so many counts, I haven't had time to add them all up.”
He nodded, his jowls puffing in and out under his chin. I could tell he was ready to talk. The guy was caught so red-handed that he could pass for somebody who sliced beets for a living. When you caught a guy dead to rights like that, he'd usually just come out with it, no lies, no arguments. Could be a guilty conscience that would make them confess, or maybe it was just the fact that they'd spent so much time looking over their shoulders that it was a relief to finally look straight ahead. Either way, Yuri was ready, and I made it a little easier on him by telling him the code to his cuffs so he could free his wrists.
“I think we can help each other,” I said.
He perked up a little. “How's that?”
“Why don't you tell me what you know first, and we'll see.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know how you got into the business of selling executions. Start with Horst Jeffers. Tell me how you met him.”
Yuri didn't look me in the eye as he talked. Instead, he picked at a fold in his pants. “He hired me for a job. He had a tour group going on a tiger hunt, and he wanted somebody to film it so he could sell the vids to them.”
“I thought tiger hunts were just a cover.”
“They were, but sometimes people would sign up anyway. Horst doesn't like to turn money away.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“Well, like I said, he hired me. He saw one of my ads on a lamppost. I used to freelance a lot, you know, weddings, parties, that kind of thing. The tiger hunt was a three-day job, so I took some sick days to do it.”
“The pay was good?”
“The pay was great. I told Horst that whenever he needed me, I'd be available.”
“Is that when he told you about the fuck flicks he wanted to make?”
“That wasn't until later, but yeah, he approached me about the movies. He knew I worked for Lagarto Libre, and he thought I might be able to let him in late at night so we could use the studio space.”
“And you approached your boss about it?”
“No. I thought I'd get fired if Hector found out what we were doing. I was really careful, but he found out anyway. I think one of the cleaning crew tipped him off.”
“Was he angry?”
“He acted angry, but he wasn't really. He just wanted a cut of the profits.”
“I heard he liked to be there during the shoots.”
“Yeah,” he said. “He'd say he had to be there to make sure nothing went wrong. He had the reputation of the Libre as a news organization to think about. But that was all a bunch of bull. He really just liked to watch Liz. He drove me crazy. He was always in the way. I don't know if he had bad eyes or what, but he was always trying to get way too close. I'd be looking through my viewfinder and all the sudden, there's Hector's shoulder in my shot, or there's his head, coming in from the side. What really sent me over the edge was that whenever I'd move in for a close-up, he'd follow me in so I'd end up bumping into him when I tried to pull back out. But what could I do? He was my boss.”