The van carrying the extraction team roared up behind, and both vehicles pulled to a stop: Sula and Macnamara transferred to the van, along with the laundry bag. Another driver hopped into the car – he would drive the car to the parking stand of the local train, where it could be retrieved at leisure.
As Sula jumped through the van's clamshell door, she saw the extraction team, Spence, Casimir, and four burly men from Julien's crew, all bulky with armor and with weapons in their laps. Another pair sat behind the windscreen in front. The interior of the van was blue with tobacco smoke. Laughter burst from her at their grim look.
"Put the guns away," she said. "We won't be needing them."
Triumph blazed through her. She pulled Macnamara into the van, and then because there were no more seats dropped onto Casimir's lap. As the door hummed shut and the van pulled away, Sula put her arms around Casimir's neck and kissed him.
Sergius and the whole Riverside Clique couldn't have managed what she'd just done. They could have sniffed around the halls of justice for someone to bribe, and probably already had without success; but none of them could have convinced a Peer and a judge to sign a transfer order of her own free will. If they'd approached Lady Mitsuko, she would have brushed them off; if they'd threatened her, she would have ordered their arrest.
It took a Peer to unlock a Peer's cooperation – and not with a bribe, but with an appeal to legitimacy and class solidarity.
Casimir's lips were warm, his breath sweet. Macnamara, without a seat, crouched on the floor behind the driver and looked anywhere but at Sula sitting on Casimir's lap. The cliquemen nudged each other and grinned. Spence watched with frank interest.
The driver kept off the limited-access expressways and onto the smaller streets where he had options. Even so he managed to get stuck in traffic. The van inched forward as the minutes ticked by, and then the driver cursed.
"Damn! Roadblock ahead!"
In an instant Sula was off Casimir's lap and peering forward. Ahead she could see Naxids in the black-and-yellow uniforms of the Motor Patrol. Their four-legged bodies snaked eerily from side to side as they moved up and down the line of vehicles, peering at the drivers. One vehicle was stopped while the Patrol rummaged through its cargo compartment. The van was on a one-way street, its two lanes choked with traffic: it was impossible to turn around.
Sula's heart was thundering in her chest as it never had when confronting Sergius or Lady Mitsuko. Ideas flung themselves at her mind, and burst from her lips in not-quite-complete sentences.
"Place to park?" she said urgently. "Garage? Pretend to make a delivery?"
The answer was no. Parking was illegal, there was no garage to turn into, and all the businesses on the street were closed at this hour.
Casimir's shoulder clashed with hers as he came forward to scan the scene before them. "How many?"
"I can see seven," Sula said. "My guess is that there are two or three more we can't see from here. Say ten." She pointed ahead, to an open-topped vehicle run partly up onto the sidewalk, with a machine gun mounted on the top and a Naxid standing behind it, the sun gleaming off his black beaded scales.
"Macnamara," she said. "That gun's your target."
Macnamara had been one of the best shots on the training course, and his task was critical. The gunner didn't even have to touch his weapon: all he had to do was put the reticule of his targeting system onto the van and press the go button: the gun itself would handle the rest, and riddle the vehicle with a couple of thousand rounds. The gunner had to be taken out first.
And then the driver of the vehicle, because he could operate the gun from his own station.
A spare rifle had been brought for Sula, and she reached for it. There was no spare suit of armor and she felt the sudden hollow in her chest where the bullets would lodge.
"We've got two police coming down the line toward us. One on either side. You two – " She indicated the driver and the other man in the front of the van, "You'll pop them right at the start. The rest of us will exit the rear of the vehicle – Macnamara first, to give him time to set up on the gunner. The rest of you keep advancing -you're as well-armed as the Patrol, and you've got surprise. If things don't work out, we'll split up into small groups – Macnamara and Spence, you're with me. We'll hijack vehicles in nearby streets and get out as well as we can."
Her mouth was dry by the time she finished, and she licked her lips with a sandpaper tongue. Casimir was grinning at her.
"Nice plan," he said.
_Total fuckup,_ she thought, but gave what she hoped was an encouraging nod. She crouched on the rubberized floor of the van and readied her rifle.
"Better turn the transponder on," Casimir said, and the driver gave a start, then gave a code phrase to the van's comm unit.
Every vehicle in the empire was wired to report its location at regular intervals to a central data store. The cliquemen's van had been altered so as to make this an option rather than a requirement, and the function had been turned off while the van was on its mission to Green Park. An unresponsive vehicle, however, was bound to be suspicious in the eyes of the Patrol.
"Good thought," Sula breathed.
"Here they come." Casimir ducked down behind the seat. He gave Sula a glance – his cheeks were flushed with color, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. His grin was brilliant.
Sula felt her heart surge in response. She answered his grin, and then she felt that wasn't enough. She lunged across the distance between them and kissed him hard.
Live or die, she thought. Whatever came, she was ready.
"They're pinging us," the driver growled. One of the Patrol had raised a hand comm and activated the transponder.
The van coasted forward for a few seconds, then halted. Sula heard the front windows whining open to make it easier to shoot the police on either side.
The van had a throat-tickling odor of tobacco and terror. From her position on the floor she could see the driver holding a pistol alongside his seat. His knuckles were white on the grip. Her heart sped like a turbine in her chest. Tactical patterns played themselves out in her mind.
She heard the footfalls of one of the Patrol, walking close. She kept her eyes on the driver's pistol. The second it moved, she would act.
Then the driver gave a startled grunt, and the van surged forward. The knuckles relaxed on the pistol.
"She waved us through," the driver said.
There was a moment of disbelieving silence, and then Sula heard the rustle and shift of ten tense, frightened, heavily armed people all relaxing at once.
The van accelerated. Sula let the breath sigh slowly from her lungs, and put her rifle carefully down on the floor of the vehicle. She turned to the others and saw at least six cigarettes being lit. Then she laughed and sat heavily on the floor.
Casimir turned to her, his expression filled with a kind of savage wonder. "That was lucky," he said.
Sula didn't answer. She only looked at him, at the pulse throbbing in his neck, the slight glisten of sweat at the base of his throat, the fine mad glitter in his eyes. She had never wanted anything so much.
"Lucky," he said again.
She didn't touch Casimir till they reached Riverside, when the van pulled up outside the Hotel of Many Blessings. Careful not to touch him, she followed him out of the van – the others would store the weapons – and then went with him to his suite, keeping half a pace apart on the elevator.
He turned to her, and she reached forward and tore open his shirt so that she could lick the burning adrenaline from his skin.
His frenzy equaled hers. Their blood smoked with the excitement of shared danger, and the only way to relieve the heat was to spend it on each other.