Unfortunately, the phone picked that moment to bleep. L. Kahn directed his eyes to the limo's center console. The telecom screen there opened a window to display the image from an incoming call. A second window displayed the code of the originating phone, and the location-Sector 9, proximate to the border with the Passaic metroplex and immediately adjacent to Sector 20. The so-called "Executive Action Brigade" had finally located the runners in Sector 20.
L. Kahn reached out and tapped the telecom key to accept the call. When he saw the dark-skinned Hispanic face that appeared on the screen, he forced himself to remain calm.
"Mr. Rico" this one liked to be called.
"You lied," Rico said.
L. Kahn felt a twinge of anger and puzzlement, but suppressed it Half-truths and lies were an integral part of the biz. Even a rank amateur should know that. What mattered most was the money, money and power. What inspired this razorguy Rico to cloak everything he said in pretentious moral language, L. Kahn did not understand. "You will make delivery tonight," L. Kahn said simply. Twenty-three hundred hours. Sector 17."
"Wrong."
"You refuse to make delivery?"
"Like I told you at the start, I don't do snatches. I'm no dog you can just order around, amigo. We know who your client is and the man don't wanna go. Your money's on its way back to you. The deal's off."
"Turn the subject over to me and I will forget you said that."
"Not today, amigo."
"Your lives will be forfeit."
"We was born that way."
The image on the screen froze and held as the disconnect icon appeared. L. Kahn maintained his composure for a few moments longer, then cursed. That face glaring out of the screen, it was too much to endure. He should have known that pretentious slot Rico would be trouble. A shadowrunner with ethics.
Who could believe it?
L. Kahn leaned back in his seat, growled with frustration, then smashed his boot heel through the telecom display screen.
The order came at 19:40 hours.
Ten minutes later, Skip Nolan stood in the dingy, litter-strewn alley behind the street of ghetto rowhouses in Sector 20, North Caldwell. Like the four men and two women of Team A, he wore the armored assault uniform of the Executive Action Brigade.
The Team B leader signaled ready. Team B would take the front and upstairs portions of the narrow rowhouse where the runners had holed up. Team A would take the rear and basement areas. Somewhere up above, in the night, Bobbie Jo had the whole block under surveillance. No one had entered or left the house for hours. Ground-based surveillance teams had seen lights going off and on and curtains moving and figures silhouetted against window shades. The house was hot, making infrared analysis difficult, but no one had any fears that the runners might have slipped away again. A vibration detector dropped onto the roof of the house had picked up people moving around inside, and a laser snooper had picked up conversation off one of the windows. And on top of all that, the runners' van was parked right behind the house.
The runners were there, no question about it, and now, according to orders, they were going to be taken down. Skip didn't know why the Brigade should suddenly go from a surveillance role to an interdiction role, but he wasn't planning to worry about it. That wasn't his job. Taking down runners in the Newark metroplex wasn't so different from scoring smugglers along the C.A.S.-Pueblo border or supporting a coup in Guatemala. The world was full of conflicting interests. When forces clashed, somebody lived and somebody died, and maybe once in a while the right people got what they deserved.
He keyed the mike of the headset worn under his helmet. "Team A, Team B… let's rock."
Two men swung a portable ram, smashing the rear door of the rowhouse right out of the frame. As the door went down, a third trooper flung a stun and smoke grenade that went off with a bang. Squad One rushed into the kitchen, weapons tracking from side to side, then called "clear" and moved on. Another grenade banged from the front of the house. Skip followed Squad One through the swirling smoke as far as the stairs to the basement and there pointed Squad Two up the hall toward the front of the house.
Another grenade detonated upstairs. Squad One called out that the basement was clear. Skip started toward the front of the house, but already he felt the uncertainty gnawing at the pit of his stomach. One room after another came up clear. Still no weapons fire, no report of confrontations, no sign of the runners. In another moment or two, the Team B leader would call the second floor clear and then Skip would know that the worst had happened yet again. The place was empty. The only bodies present belonged to the E.A.B.
How the hell had those fraggers gotten away?
"Bitches stay in the car."
None of the women complained, and that was well. The call regarding the change in the runners' status had come at an untimely moment in Maurice's studies. The last thing he wanted to do was waste time traipsing around die metroplex after a group of recalcitrant runners, but unfortunately he had no choice.
Gathering his coat around him and hefting his walking stick, Maurice stepped from his Mercedes limo. The night was cool and quiet, but rife with a tension that hinted at things to come. Claude Jaeger stepped up beside him. Maurice looked at the faint shimmering in the air before him and shifted to his astral senses.
Vera Causa stood facing him. She smiled and turned to indicate the house directly behind her, saying mind-to-mind, This dwelling gives a fine view, master.
Maurice looked at Jaeger. "Clear this house."
"Is that an order?" Jaeger replied.
"Consider it a recommendation."
Jaeger nodded and walked over to the rowhouse's front door. The woman who answered the door fell without a sound, then Jaeger proceeded to neutralize the rest of the occupants. Maurice moved through the house to the kitchen. Through the transparex-panes of the rear door, he could see the dark, litter-strewn alley behind the house and the mundane forces now gathering.
Vera Causa indicated the rowhouse directly opposite. That was the runners' safehouse. The runners' van waited there. Finding the house and the van had not been difficult. A spirit such as Vera Causa moved with the speed of the astral. She could pursue a supersonic jet halfway around the globe. The forces of the Executive Action Brigade had literally led his ally here.
Taking refuge in the wastes of Sector 13 had provided the runners with more safety than they knew. Vera Causa had refused to enter the area, despite Maurice's command to follow them from their meeting with L. Kahn at Newark International. Maurice himself found that blighted region discomfiting to approach on any but a purely mundane level. It had therefore been necessary to forego any direct action. Continuing to monitor the Brigade had led them here to Sector 20 and the district of North Caldwell.
Maurice watched with interest as the dark armored figures wearing the flash of the Brigade gathered at the rear of the house and prepared to force entry.
The runners had a shaman, called "Bandit." Despite Maurice's best efforts, he had been unable to learn much about this shaman. Many people in the plex seemed to know his name, but few admitted to anything beyond a basic physical description and facile rumors. An astral glance at Bandit's aura and the foci he carried, such as Maurice had caught at the airport, might lead one to conclude that Bandit had little true ability in the Art, and even less in terms of true power.
That was obviously an inaccurate perception, Maurice now saw. The rowhouse occupied by the runners was protected by a powerful ward, a lattice of blue-green energy that throbbed in brilliant counterpoint to the rhythms of the natural energies pulsing and flowing through the night in this part of the plex. Any magician could cast a ward, but only one of considerable ability could cast a ward as strong as the one now burning before him.