Rico didn't doubt it. Mr. Victor had juice of his own. "What's the deal?"
"My friend, I am a businessman," Mr. Victor said. "I am the man in the middle. I bring prospective clients together with specialists such as yourself. Whether the client is a businessman like me or the party offering an original contract is of no importance to my trade. You see why I am reminding you of this?"
"You only got some of the details."
"Si, a few. L. Kahn asks to be connected with an experienced team possessing a broad range of capabilities. He has said that the contract is for a high-risk job, and that the pay will be commensurate to that risk. I am led to believe that the assignment comes from high places. A success here could add great weight to your reputation."
"What's the run involve?"
"It was described to me as being in the nature of a recovery job. Naturally, I thought you would approve."
"What's being recovered?"
"That is for L. Kahn to say."
"Could be a datasnatch."
"It could be many things, my friend,"
"I heard L. Kahn contracted for the Winter Systems job."
"That is only rumor."
"Still…"
Winter Systems had contracts for police services in Manhattan, Union City, and other places around the New York-New Jersey megaplex. The Winter Systems job had involved the kidnapping and murder of several Winter Systems execs, and, incidentally, a conspiracy that had touched practically every major corp in the megaplex.
The murders were what mattered to Rico. He did not do killing for hire. Neither did he do kidnapping. Neither did anyone in his group. "You trust this slag L. Kahn?"
"Can anyone be trusted, my friend?"
"Some can. Some can't."
Mr. Victor paused for a few moments, then said, "As you well know, there are no guarantees in this life. I would say that L. Kahn can be trusted. More than some, less than others. I have not heard that L. Kahn has ever broken a contract or betrayed a trust. You must decide for yourself, my friend. Merely tell me now whether I should arrange a meet."
Rico thought about it, and nodded, "Si."
"Consider it done, my friend."
3
Thorvin didn't much notice the first few bangs and pings against the sides of the van. He was busy. He'd managed to pull the G-6 torque converter out of the drive train of an otherwise ruined Gaz-Willys Nomad. That was like finding gold. The G-6 was built like an anvil, durable as a slab of tempered steel. Finding one amid the wasted, ghost-haunted toxic graveyard of Newark's Sector 13 was a freaking miracle, though it didn't really surprise him. He'd been hunting through the crumbling projects and derelict tenements around the old airport for years. That was how he'd dug up the City of Linden no-parking sign, now hanging in his garage. And who saw any of those standing around anymore? Thorvin knew there were treasures here, minor mechanical marvels, gleaming motes of engineering majesty not apparent, much less comprehensible to the ordinary eye. He just hadn't expected to stumble over, of all things, a G-6 torquer. The prizes to be had in this sector ran heavily on the side of wafer-guided electronics, appliances, household drek.
Something clanged loudly against the side of the van. With that rose a howling that sounded decidedly unnatural.
Thorvin paused and looked up.
When the van starting rocking back and forth like a boat turned crossways to a heaving sea-accompanied by a storm of clanging and banging-he dropped his chrome ratchet and can of lubricant and ran, tool belts clanking, to the front of the van, hopping over toolcases, a stripped-down engine block, an eviscerated Suzuki Aurora, a partly disassembled Kaydee A.C. condenser twinpak, hubcaps, nuts and bolts, an antique C.R.T., and an old General Products multifuel power generator, like a freaking kangaroo!
The ghoulies had come a-calling. Thorvin leaped up into the driver's seat and slapped the black lead from the driver's console into the datajack at the side of his neck. His vision blanked, then returned. The van's external vid-pickups replaced his eyes and ears. The van had become his body.
The ghoulies were there all right, all around him. Pounding on his armor-reinforced, metal-alloy flanks. Using fists, bricks, and metal bars. Skeletal jaws flapping, fingernails like talons, clothes hanging in rags, they looked like rotting corpses just emerged from their worm-infested holes. And Thorvin knew what they wanted. They liked their meat raw. Human was best, decayed and rotting even better, but in a pinch, if enough of them got together, they'd go for anything, even something alive. Even a freaking dwarf!
Just the thought of those slimy, decaying monstrosities clawing at his metal-alloy skin sent chills up his rear doors. Back. Whatever. No effing way they'd get inside. He had a Magnum V-12 850-horsepower blower-driven petrochem heart. For blood he had Super-98 octane with injected nitrous oxide. He set his power plant to roaring and slammed his tranny into drive. His rear wheels churned, screaming, sending up a billowing storm cloud of smoke, seizing the road and hurling him ahead.
The gleaming red graphic indicators overlaying his external view went wild. Velocity shot toward 200 kph. Engine revs pegged max. Targeting indicators guided by his onboard combat comp streaked left and right, winking and flashing. A raucous symphony of electronic warning tones, beeps, and bleeps rilled the back of his head, his real head, somewhere inside… not quite forgotten.
Things bounced off his van-body, banged and slammed and then fell away. Building debris, derelict cars, assorted junk, garbage, and other things, not junk or garbage. Things that squished and splatted. Like bodies. There must be a whole tribe of the freaking zombie cannibals hanging around, closing in from all sides. That's what he got for treasure-hunting so near the freaking cemeteries. Suddenly, one stood in the road directly in front of him, a shambling monstrosity with spindly limbs hefting what looked like a freaking shoulder-mounted Panther assault cannon.
Thorvin's own nervous system pegged max.
The M-134 minigun in the pod on his roof popped up and stammered rapid-fire. The ghoulie in the road jerked and spun, then slammed against the crash-grille guarding Thorvin's front end.
An ocean of red-tinted slime splashed across Thorvin's external sensors. Mentally he flinched. The van swerved and pitched, bounding up then slamming down. Things crashed. Fortunately, his all-terrain General Products F-6900 self-healing tires could really take a pounding. He switched on his forward-looking infrared radar and found himself hurtling straight into a building wall.
Panic time.
He cut his wheels right, roared up an alley, smashed through a pair of cyclone fences, and shot out onto a broad open space like a weed-infested parking field.
Bad move.
A half-dozen beat-up, smashed-out petrochem heaps were wheeling around the crumbling, debris-strewn concrete. As many as a dozen motorcycles whizzed back and forth. Every driver and every passenger held some kind of weapon-handguns, rifles, shotguns, SMGs. Thorvin recognized the colors even as the thundering barrage of gunfire assaulted his audio pickups. He'd steered himself right into a freaking war! Chiller-thrillers versus a go-go-gang, the Toxic Marauders versus the Rahway Blades.
Great Freaking great.
A cycle came screaming toward him. Bullets pinged and panged rapid-fire off his front grille. Winking red targeting markers homed in on the cycle. Thorvin opened up with his minigun and hurled himself into a skidding, tire-screaming half-circle.
The cycle exploded.
Thorvin fired himself back down the alley. A storm of rocks, bricks, chunks of metal, and other junk crashed against his sides and roof as he roared out onto the street. Ghoulies again. Just freaking great. He set his power plant to whining, and went squealing around the very next corner, almost, but not quite, hopping up onto two wheels.