"Something strange, master," the watcher said. "You said…"
"Yes."
Bandit motivated his astral self, sat up, crossed his legs and ascended, moving forward. The watcher led up the hall, through the door to the warehouse loading bay, across the bay, then through the large bay door and outside.
As Bandit passed through the astral form of the bay door, he entered the glare of directed mana, a spell, like turning to face the sun. Instinctively, he tugged himself back, back into the dim radiance of the loading bay. As he did that, he threw up a shield, a spell of his own, surrounding his astral body in a sphere of guardian power.
Then-nothing. No mana bolts streamed through the dormant aura of the bay door to strike his shield. No monstrous spirits appeared to confront him. Just what had he encountered? He descended into the ground, moved forward a ways, then came up through the buildings on the far side of the street. He saw an old, fat man seated on a toilet and smoking a fat cigar, but other than that… nothing.
The night sky shone with the reflected radiance of the Earth's energy. The air rumbled with the workings of nearby factories. Cars and trucks moved along the streets.
The magic that had glared in his face was gone. It had touched him and disappeared. What was it? What could it mean?
Trouble, for sure.
They took the meet in Jersey City, on Pacific, right near the railroad yards. Meets at very high-profile localities like malls hadn't gone too good in the recent past, so this one was taking place in the litter-strewn parking lot of the local Quik Shop store.
At three a.m., the lot was deserted.
Rico looked around from the passenger seat of the van. The surrounding neighborhood was grunge, three- and four-story grimy brick and cracked, crumbling sidewalks. It was like Newark's worst, only the cops still worked here and they never went easy. Jersey City had its own private corporation and that corp had its own cops. They were a mob like all the other mobs, only they had the law behind them. They specialized in street justice. Make the wrong move and you ended up sprawled in some dark corner with a hole through the back of your head.
Not a good place for pyrotechnics. The Jersey City cops rode in armored cars and command vehicles and had assault teams on twenty-four-hour alert. If things got real hot, they called out the fragging panzer. Or one of their gunships.
At a quarter past the hour, a crimson Toyota Ambassador pulled into the lot. It was marked for Paladin Cabs. That meant body armor, run-flat tires, and gun ports.
Tonight it also meant a bodyguard. me guard looked like a gutterpunk in razor-sharp threads. He came out of the rear of the cab in a dark gray suit, glanced toward the street, stood up, glanced toward the street, closed the door of the cab, and turned to face Thorvin's van. Then he shot another glance toward the street. Rico recognized the habit. It was something you developed after seeing too many people sliced and diced to bloody ribbons in the thrasher parts of the sprawl.
A pro would keep his eyes moving, but he'd be discreet about it. This said something about the slag inside the cab. Osborne might be a dangerous man, but he'd never walked the razor himself. If he had, he wouldn't have a clown like this for a guard.
At Rico's signal, Shank tugged open the side door of the van and then waited, crouching, watching the clown and cradling his M22A2. Rico gave the clown a few moments to adjust to that, then pushed open the passenger door and stepped outside.
Osborne came over to face him. With a quick look up and down, he said, "You did a fine job on my security." Rico nodded. "You got sticks?"
Osborne drew a synthleather wallet from his jacket pocket, folded it open, and handed it over. Rico checked the credsticks with the reader on his belt. They checked out.
"We'll set the delivery once we "got the merchandise."
"When do you go?"
"Soon."
"Make it so. I've got a lot riding on this deal. Do it fast enough and we'll have things to discuss in the future."
"Sure, amigo. Slot and run."
Osborne nodded, got back in his cab, and left. Rico glanced up at the night sky, then returned to the van.
The nightly rain would be coming soon.
Too soon.
36
"Time is oh-two forty-five hours."
Rico acknowledged that over his headset. The message came from Piper and it meant she had done everything she had to do inside the Crystal Blossom condo's mainframe computer.
Rico keyed his headset. "Go."
The helo veered abruptly, vectoring left and up as the doors siding the main compartment slid open. Rico wound the thick, slik-coated drop-rope around his left forearm and popped the safety line affixed to his commando harness. Shank nodded from the door opposite.
Abruptly, they were coming up over the edge of the roof of the Crystal Blossom condoplex.
"Now!" Thorvin said.
Rico stepped out into empty air.
The timing was precise. The helo slowed just as he slid to the end of the drop-rope. He hit the roof's flat, gritty surface with both feet, tumbled once and came up onto his knees, scanning the rooftop with his Ares Special Service in hand. Shank landed an instant behind him. The helo arced away so as not to attract attention, dwindling into the night and the infinitude of buildings and glaring lights sprawling across Manhattan.
The roof was clear. Rico rose and jogged over to the building's southern face. Shank followed. They pulled black climbing ropes from their harnesses and thrust K-2 autopitons against the low ferrocrete wall rising like a rim from around the edge of the roof. The cryomag tips of the K-2s burned holes straight into the crete. Secondary probes then extended outward from the pitons' main shaft, embedding the devices in the crete.
That took about five seconds. They spent another three or four connecting the ropes to the pitons, then to the I.M.I. power winches on the front of their harnesses.
"Set," Shank growled.
"Go."
The winches were programmed. From the roof, fifty stories above the ground, they fell about eleven stories straight down, then the winches cut in. Harnesses jerked and pulled. They slowed, jogging feet-first off the face of the building. They came to a halt before the wall of mirrored macroplast panes guarding the living room of Condo 35-8. This was where they'd picked up Farrah Moffit and where they would now find Ansell Surikov.
They applied flashtape to the mirrored windows. One quick flash seared a large hole through the panes.
They swung inside.
The heart of the Crystal Blossom condoplex mainframe used standard CPU matrix iconology. a white room walled by control panels. At 02:44:58:21:19 or so, Piper attached a black-box program icon to the Master Logic Panel icon, then transmitted her ready signal to Rico.
"Time is oh-two forty-five hours."
A while passed, then a warning signal from the engineering subprocessor advised of a breached external wall panel in Residence 35-8. The black box on the main console piped that signal, changing it, shunting it to the building diagnostic subprocessor, initializing a Level 1 diagnostic search of engineering subsystems.
Momentarily, another warning came, and another diagnostic search began.
The loop was complete.
"Alert! Alert!"
Hearing that, Skip Nolan looked down the row of comm operators facing the spectrally lit consoles lining the Executive Action Brigade's command vehicle. One console was showing its red alert light on top. Op Three was working the console rapidly.
Fingering his headset, Skip stepped up behind the Op. Window One on the console's main display showed a broad expanse of city populated by soaring towers gleaming brightly in the night