There wasn’t much I could say. If Little Lou was waitin’ for me at the bridge he had me all figured out. I just hoped he really needed me enough to keep me in one piece so I could set up his bomb gizmo for him. What would happen after that, I didn’t know and I didn’t want to think about.
We drove through the dead, empty city for a dozen blocks or so. I had turned around in my seat and was lookin’ ahead out the windshield. Everything was dark. Not a light in any window, not a street lamp lit. I knew people lived in those buildings. They were supposed to be abandoned, condemned. But nobody bothered to tear them down; that would cost the taxpayers too much. And the people who didn’t exist, the people whose names had been erased from the government’s computers, they lived there and died there and had babies there. I was one of those babies. So was Jade.
«Are those tits real?» I heard Lou ask.
Through the side-view mirror I saw Jade turn her face to him. Without a smile, with her face perfectly blank, she took his hand and placed it on her boob.
«What do you think?» she asked Lou.
He grinned at her. She smiled back at him. I wanted to kill him. I knew what Jade was doin’: tryin’ to keep Lou happy so he wouldn’t be sore at me. She was protectin’ me while I sat there helpless and the dirty [deleted] [deleted] bastard climbed all over her.
«Thirtieth-street station comin’ up,» said Rollo. His voice was high and thin, almost like a girl’s. But I bet that anybody who laughed at his voice got his own windpipe whacked inside out.
Lou sat up straight on the backseat and ran a hand through his hair. Jade edged away from him, her face blank once again.
«Okay, Sally, you little [deleted]. Here’s where you earn your keep. Or I break your balls for good.»
Lou, Rollo, and me got out of the car. Lou ducked his head through the open rear door and told Jade, «You come too, cute stuff. We’ll finish what we started when this is over.»
Jade glanced at me as she came out of the car. Lou grabbed her by the wrist, like he owned her.
If Lou had been by himself I would have jumped him. He was bigger than me, yeah, and probably a lot tougher. But I was desperate. And I had the blade I always carried taped just above my right ankle. It was little, but I kept it razor sharp. Lou was gonna take Jade away from me. Oh, I guess he’d let her come back to me when he was finished with her, maybe. But who knew when? Or even if. I had only used that blade when I needed to protect myself. Would I have the guts to cut Lou if I could get him in a one-on-one?
But Lou wasn’t alone. Rollo was as big as that damned city hall windowsill. There was no way I could handle him unless I had a machine gun or a rocket launcher or something like that. I was desperate, all right. But not crazy.
The Station was all lit up. Cleaning crews and robots were crawlin’ all over the old building, but I didn’t see any oinks or soldiers. Later I found out that they would be pourin’ into the area in the morning. The Chairman was due to arrive at eleven A.M.
Lou took me and Jade to a panel truck marked PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT. Two other guys was already sittin’ up front. And there was my gizmo, sittin’ on the bare metal floor. All by itself. No bomb in sight. That made me feel better, a little.
They hustled us into the truck and made me sit on the floor, big Rollo between me and the back door and Lou across from me. He made Jade sit beside him. She kept her legs pressed tight together. We drove off.
«Where we goin’?» I asked.
Lou said, «There’s a maintenance train comin’ down the track in half an hour. You set up your gizmo where we tell you to and we see if it can spot the train at the right distance away and send the signal that it’s supposed to send.»
«What’re you guys gonna do, blow up the Chairman?»
I got a backhand smack in the face for that. So I shut my mouth and did what they told me, all the while tryin’ to figure out how in hell I could get Jade and me outta this. I didn’t come up with any answers, none at all.
When the truck stopped, Rollo got out first, then Lou shoved me through the back door. The other two guys stayed in their seats up front. Lou pushed the gizmo across the truck’s floor toward me. It was heavy enough so I needed both hands.
«Don’t drop it, [deleted]head,» Lou growled.
«Why don’t we let Rollo carry it?» I said.
Lou just laughed. Then he helped Jade out the back door. I thought he helped her too damned much, had his hands all over her.
We was parked maybe ten blocks away from the station. Its lights glowed in the misty drizzle that was still comin’ down, the only lights in the whole [deleted] city, far as I could see. Some of the people livin’ in the buildings all around there had electricity, I knew. Hell, I had wired a lot of ’em up. But they kept their windows covered; didn’t wanna let nobody know they was in there. Scared of gangs roamin’ through the streets at night.
All those suits and oinks and everybody who had been at city hall was all safe in their homes in the tracts by now. Nobody in the city except the people who didn’t exist, like Jade and me. And the rats who had business in the dark, like Little Lou.
I saw why Lou didn’t want Rollo to carry the gizmo. The big guy walked straight up to a steel grate set into the pavement. It must have weighed a couple hundred pounds, at least, but he lifted it right up, rusty hinges squealin’ like mad. I saw the rungs of a metal ladder goin’ down. Lou shone a flashlight on them. They had been cleaned off.
Rollo took the gizmo off me and tucked it under one arm. I followed him down the ladder. Down at the bottom there were three other guys waitin’. Guys like I had never seen before. Foreigners. Dark skin, eyes like coals. One of them had a big, dark, droopy moustache, but his long hair was streaked with gray. They were all kind of short, my height, but very solid. Their suits looked funny, like they had been made by tailors who didn’t know the right way to cut a suit.
The two clean-shaven ones were carryin’ automatic rifles, mean-looking things with curved magazines. Their jackets bulged; extra ammunition clips, I figured. They looked younger than the guy with the moustache; tough, hard, all business.
«This is the device?» asked the one with the moustache. He said «thees» instead of «this.»
Lou nodded. «We’re gonna test it, make sure it works right.»
«Bueno.»
We were in a kind of—whattaya call it, an alcove?— yeah, an alcove cut into the side of the train tunnel. The kind where work crews could stay when a train comes past. This wasn’t one of the old city subways; it was the tunnel that the trains from other cities used, back when there had been trains runnin’. The Chairman was comin’ in on a train the next morning, and these guys wanted to blow it up. Or so I thought.
Rollo carried the gizmo down to the side of the tracks. For an instant I almost panicked; I realized that we needed a power pack. Then I saw that there was one already sittin’ there on the filthy bricks of the tunnel floor. I hooked it up, takin’ my time; no sense lettin’ them know how easy this all was.
«Snap it up,» Lou hissed at me. «The train’s comin’.»
«Okay, okay,» I said.
The guy with the moustache knelt beside me and took a little metal box from his pocket. «This is the detonator,» he said. His voice sounded sad, almost like he was about to cry. «Your device must make its relay click at the proper moment. Do you know how to connect the two of them together?»
I nodded and took the detonator from him.
«Tomorrow, the detonator will be placed some distance from your triggering device.»
«How’ll they be connected then?» I asked.
«By a wire.»
«That’s okay, then.» I figured that if they had tried somethin’ fancy like a radio link, in this old tunnel they might get all kinds of interference or echoes. A hard-wire connection was a helluva lot surer. And safer.