“All clear in back!” Vierziger reported over channel three. Several quick bursts of sub-machine gun fire snarled from the rear of the warehouse. “All clear in back!” Vierziger repeated, simultaneous with another burst.
Steam and smoke billowed from the burning office cubicles. Another Astra truck drove into the warehouse. Its headlights brightened the gray mist but did little to illuminate the building’s interior. The Astra gunmen didn’t have night vision equipment. They shouted to one another in anger and confusion.
The gage was in double-walled 150-liter plastic drums. For shipment, the drug was dissolved in a matrix of ethyl alcohol. Because Coke knew what to look for, he could already see the fires started at the back of the warehouse where Vierziger had raked pallets with his sub-machine gun.
“I’m coming out!” Vierziger called over the unit push. “Do not shoot, I’m coming out!”
Coke grabbed the foregrip of Niko Daun’s sub-machine gun and lifted the muzzle high. The sensor tech might not have heard the warning, might not have understood it—might have dropped his gun on the concrete and triggered a shot wholly by accident. Firefights weren’t Daun’s proper job, so it was the commander’s duty to see that no accidents occurred.
Adolpho Peres swung down from the cab of the second truck. He wore body armor and a helmet that must have weighed nearly ten kilos. “Start loading the gage!” he bellowed. “We can’t wait around here long!”
The gigolo waved his machine pistol. He turned his head as he spoke. Coke stepped toward him, releasing Daun.
Peres saw the motion past the edge of the helmet’s cheek plate. He must have thought he was being attacked, because he tried to swing the gun onto the Frisian.
“I’m a friend!” Coke shouted as he lunged forward. Instead of directing the weapon upward as he’d done with his own trooper, he jerked the machine pistol out of Peres’ hand. “We’ve killed them all for you!”
The office cubicles were fully involved by now, hammering the men in the front of the warehouse. The right side of the ram-equipped truck was only a few meters from the fire. The plastic body panels started to soften; bubbles appeared on the front fender.
“Who?” Peres shouted. “Coke, is that you? Manuel!”
The last call was for the gigolo’s bodyguard, a man nearly as tall as Sten Moden and broad in proportion. Coke saw Manuel’s vast, weapon-festooned bulk several meters away, groping in what was for him a gray fog. Vierziger’s assessment of the big man was that a gun-jeep had more brain cells and could carry even more weapons—but that choice was for Peres to worry about.
Johann Vierziger stepped up on the Astra leader’s other side. “I’m here, Matthew,” he said. “Now let’s get out of these gentlemen’s way, shall we?”
“Peres, we’ll leave you to load the gage,” Coke shouted in the gigolo’s ear. “We’ll meet you tomorrow morning to arrange contract terms!”
The warehouse had become a steambath because the heat boiled water off the concrete. The flow from the sprinklers had decayed to irregular dribbles, noticeable only if a drop happened to splash you from above.
“Yes, of course,” Peres replied. He snatched his helmet off in frustration at its weight and the degree to which it limited his range of vision—not that he was going to be able to see much more without it. “Manuel! Sanjulio!”
The three Frisians broke for the door. Coke’s finger on Daun’s wrist gave the sensor tech guidance he might or might not have needed.
A third truck drove into the warehouse and collided with the second. The drivers shouted at one another, and the rest of the convoy stopped in confusion on the approach road.
Coke led his men toward the gap he’d cut in the fence. “I think we’d best stay in the woods and hump our way back,” he explained. “I’m not thrilled about walking the six klicks into Potosi, but L’Escorial is going to see the flames before too long and come out with guns blazing.”
“Does Peres realize that?” Niko Daun asked. The point had obviously escaped the tech himself.
“Here, wait by the jitney,” Vierziger said.
“We can’t drive it back through the forest,” Coke objected. “It’s not a skimmer. We’ll just have to abandon it.”
“Sten’s going to pick us up in a moment,” the gunman explained. He looked at the sensor tech. “Niko,” he went on, “the Astras don’t know the gage is burning yet. Whether they’ll realize that a fire here will call the owners’ attention is an open question.”
An unlighted aircar slid low over the treetops. Sten Moden was at the controls. He dropped vertically to hover on fan thrust directly behind the jitney.
Coke half-climbed, half-tripped his way into the vehicle’s other front seat. Vierziger and Daun got into the back.
“Is there anything else you ought to have told me?” Coke demanded in a loud, generally directed voice.
“Well, you didn’t want to walk either, did you, Major?” Sten Moden said as he pulled the joystick toward him to add power. “Esteban was still doing tests on the Stellarflow, so I asked if he’d mind me putting it through its paces tonight. Does pretty well, don’t you think?”
The Stellarflow was too massive to accelerate quickly, especially with a load that included the logistics officer, but it had a good deal of power. Starlit glimpses of the treetops close beneath suggested their speed was 200 kph and rising. Moden swept them in a broad arc that would approach Potosi from the north, opposite to where all the commotion was occurring.
“Look, I’m not going to argue with success,” Coke said after a moment “But the next time, don’t pull this sort of thing behind my back, all right? You guys act like a team, and I’ll promise not to act like a little tin god.”
He realized as he spoke that something very basic had changed in the structure of this survey team; and that he was pretty sure it had changed for the better.
They were out of sight of the warehouse at this altitude, but the whole sky behind them glowed red from the swelling inferno.
Matthew Coke’s bedroom had a window which opened out onto the alley beside Hathaway House. When he leaned his elbows on the ledge, he could watch the building across the street. As a result, he wasn’t surprised to hear his commo helmet click, then warn in the voice of Lieutenant Barbour, “Matthew, two men are walking toward us from L’Escorial headquarters. There isn’t any other exceptional behavior from that direction.”
The breeze blew from the south. Even at this distance it carried with it a whiff of burned vegetation, burned plastic, and—present only if you knew it was there—burned flesh.
Coke lifted himself back from the ledge. One of the approaching visitors was garbed in an ensemble of scarlet and vermilion, a well-tailored outfit and clearly expensive. The two close hues made his plumpish figure seem to shimmer.
The other man wore a red beret, but the remainder of his clothing was khaki. The garments looked a great deal like Frisian battle dress.
“Right,” Coke said as he snatched the gray cape from the hook by his bed. “Action stations, though I doubt there’ll be trouble. I’m coming down.”
The shooting had gone on south of town until nearly dawn. The fact that it hadn’t spread to Potosi proper meant the syndicates really didn’t want the lid to blow, despite all their deadly posturing. That might change when the L’Escorials realized just how badly they’d been hurt by the fire.
Margulies slammed down the stairs ahead of Coke. She slid her left hand along the balustrade against the possibility of her heel catching on a tread as she jumped the steps three at a time. Vierziger was already with Barbour in the lobby, his proper location.
Georg Hathaway stood by the door and wrung his hands. “I’m sure there won’t be any trouble,” he murmured. His voice sounded like that of a dying sinner claiming confidence in his salvation.