Surikov seemed to wake up then. He pointed toward the hole in the window panels, saying adamantly, "We are not going out through mat-"
Right.
Rico put a medjector to Surikov's right arm and fired.
The slag blinked and jerked his arm away, then got woozy-looking, like he might slump to the floor.
"Time check."
"Time is oh-two fifty hours."
Shank helped get Surikov over to the hole in the window panels. The rope connected to their harnesses grew taut.
One quick look and they went together through the hole.
The roof of the foundry gave easy access to a window on the warehouse's fourth floor. Claude Jaeger waited several moments, watching. The window, easily visible from the street below, slowly settled into a gummy, glutinous mass oozing over the window sill like mucus. The mage got that much right, at least Claude hopped through the empty frame, landed lightly on his feet and sank into a crouch. This floor of the warehouse smelled of resin and paint. Piles of antique furniture, some apparently made of actual wood, divided the space into long, narrow aisles. Claude found his way to the stairs. Two flights down, he paused before a metal fire door and listened.
Footsteps approached, softly echoing-the calm, measured footsteps of a sentry, one wholly unaware of any intrusions onto his turf. Claude drew back and flattened himself against the wall to the left of the doorway. In a moment, the door banged and swung inward, right past Claude's nose. The sentry followed through. In that instant, Claude saw the sentry's face from only a few steps away. The man's eyes gazed straight ahead, into the greater darkness of the stairwell.
Claude's fist shot forward and back, and the sentry collapsed. The satisfying feel of snapping bone and crunching cartilage lingered. Claude smiled, then dragged the sentry's body fully into the stairwell.
One down, one to go.
When the rest of the runners returned to this hideyhole, they would find only death. By then, Claude would be waiting in ambush.
He moved cautiously through the doorway and into a large space, the truck-loading bay located at the front of the building. He stood on a loading dock at the rear of that bay. The extra-large door to a freight elevator stood immediately to his left. Beyond that an ordinary-sized door. This led into a narrow hall, past an office, a lavatory, then into a smallish room outfitted like a ramshackle tongue.
The woman there, seated on a cushioned bench, looked like she belonged with the slitches in the holopics on the walls around her. enormous hair, jutting breasts, a face both sublime and whorish. As Claude entered, she lifted her head and drew back fearfully, eyes wide and round.
She gasped and blurted, "Who are you?"
Claude smiled and continued toward her. "Your friends sent me to get you out of here."
"What?" She looked at him as if astonished.
But when he reached for her, astonishment turned to animal fear. She jerked aside and began rising to her feet. Claude seized her elbow and flung her down onto the bench. Her head tilted back and her jaw dropped open and something like a blackish length of spaghetti or string shot out from under her tongue..Claude felt the tap against his chest and saw the string whip back into the woman's mouth, vanishing before he could really grasp what was happening.
Cybersnake. Narcoject delivery system. The burning spike of pain that suddenly pierced his chest suggested hypercyanide, but then he felt his heart hammering like it would burst and realized his eyes had gone out of focus.
What was it? Atropine? Working this quickly? He felt his legs give way and suddenly found himself lying on the floor on his back, staring blindly at the ceiling.
How had that happened? What was going on? Why was he so hot, burning up? He couldn't breathe. It felt like he had a metal strap ringing his neck and another around his chest, crushing him. He tried to force air into his lungs, but the pain was overwhelming.
Angels. He heard angels singing…
Surikov was wide-eyed and looking around as the towers swung by, but then the winch above their heads pulled them up beside the door in the helo's flank. Dok reached out, and in another moment Rico, Shank, and Surikov were all inside.
Dok hooked a safety line onto Surikov. Rico popped the line off his own harness and moved forward to the copilot's seat. The helo banked and picked up speed, vectoring down a long chasm of steel and crete towers.
"Three birds!" Thorvin shouted. "Coming in on freaking intercept!"
Rico shouted back. "Port Authority cops?"
The Port Authority had jurisdiction over Manhattan air space and regularly put patrols in the air. Thorvin shook his head. "I don't think so!"
Who the hell could it be? Rico wondered. Piper'd had the Crystal Blossom tower locked down solid. They'd been in and out in just minutes. Who could even know they'd been there, much less have helos in the air and coming down on them this fast? "Can ya lose 'em?"
"Do I HAVE A FREAKING CHOICE!"
"Master," the voice whispered.
Bandit closed his eyes to the tilting, vibrating world of the helicopter's interior and looked to the astral plane. The raccoon-like form of the watcher crouched before him.
"You must come," it said.
Bandit considered that.
Very risky.
Claude Jaeger dead? Killed by a woman? There was no doubting the witness of his astral senses, yet Maurice struggled with the concept, astounded. The physical adept had often seemed sufficiently formidable to be virtually indestructible. He should have known, Maurice thought Time disproved all such lies.
Now he would have to finish the job himself.
Disgruntled, he left his biffs in the Mercedes and crossed the street to the narrow front of the warehouse. The smaller of the two doors clicked and opened at a word. He stepped into the long, narrow, rectangular space of a loading area, then mounted the loading dock at the rear and continued on through another door, down the hall and into what looked like a lounge. The woman was there, huddled on a cushioned bench and quietly sobbing, her face and head completely hidden under a disheveled mass of shiny whitish-blonde hair. Jaeger lay dead on the floor, on his back, a look of inexpressible bliss monopolizing his features.
"Master," said Vera Causa, his ally, murmuring into his ear. "Beware …"
Maurice shifted to his astral perceptions in time to see the radiant figure emerging from the wall at the back of the lounge.
The shaman…
The slags in the pursuing helos were pros. Thorvin's evasive maneuvers didn't throw them. Neither did the halfer's E.C.W. They came in high and low, and Rico had no choice but to point Thorvin toward the Hudson River. They'd have to sprint for the Jersey Side, hoping Thorvin could find the speed to get them dear of their pursuit.
As they passed out over the dark expanse of water, the first slugs clattered against the helo's hull. One penetrated the airframe to gouge Shank in the upper right thigh, another fractured the window at Rico's side, spitting a jagged sliver of transparex across his cheek. The wound wasn't deep and the blood loss was minimal, but it didn't improve his mood any.
He looked to the rear and saw Bandit sitting cross-legged, unmoving, eyes closed, flute lying across his lap.
No help coming from that quarter.
They're GAINING!" Thorvin shouted.
"Push it!"
"I'm freaking pushing, ALL RIGHT?"
Bandit paused at the rear of the lounge. He had seen the corpse in the stairwell and now he saw the body on the floor here in this room. Things were happening. It seemed that Rico's concern for Farrah Moffit's safety had been more than justified. Bandit only wondered how two men had come to be dead, while Moffit still lived.