“There,” he said. He set the pane down. “There!”
As Barbour climbed through the opening, he happened to look over his shoulder. The Widow stared at him with a puzzled expression. He supposed his obvious competence had surprised her.
If it came to that, he’d surprised himself. Barbour had always been somebody who helped people who did things.
The locks on Suterbilt’s desk were electronic biosensors. Rather than try to duplicate the patterns of the factor’s brain activity, Barbour zeroed the settings, then changed the combination to his own patterns. It was childishly simple.
The owner was supposed to scramble the access codes after he or she set the locks. If Suterbilt had done that, even the computing power Barbour could call in through his commo helmet would have required ten minutes to get to this point. Most people, Suterbilt included, didn’t bother to proof their locks properly. It was as if the equipment were a magic talisman which need only exist to be effective.
The desk popped open. Barbour leaned under it and began unhooking the computer itself.
Several Astras entered the office behind him. “Keep quiet,” he whispered, “and keep away from the waiting room. Let them sl—”
He heard the anteroom door open quietly.
“Don’t—” he rasped.
A sub-machine gun lighted the office cyan with reflected light. The gunman emptied his entire magazine into the sleeping L’Escorials. The air roiled with ozone, hot matrix from expended powergun ammunition, and fires the bolts started in the upholstery.
“Shut the door,” the Widow Guzman ordered. “Keep the smoke out.”
Barbour closed his eyes and whispered a prayer. Then he got back to work. He had the computer out in three minutes, but by then the stench of feces from the men disemboweled in the anteroom had oozed under the door to bathe him.
He sat up and handed the fist-sized unit to the Widow. “There,” he said hoarsely. “They’ll trade your friend back to you for this, never fear.”
She nodded her head crisply. “Yes,” she said. “The chips are waiting in your name at your hotel.”
Gunmen were leaving the office through the window, as they’d come. The waiting room door was beginning to glow from the heat of the fire enclosed behind it.
Barbour looked at the door. Unwilling to speak but unable to help himself, he said, “Did you have to do that? They were asleep!”
The Widow frowned at him. “What does that matter?” she said. “It’s better that they’re dead, surely?”
Robert Barbour looked at her in a sudden epiphany. For the first time in his life he realized that there really were people who should better be dead.
It gave meaning to his life.
Matthew Coke and Johann Vierziger watched from chairs set on the sidewalk in front of Hathaway House. The breeze followed Madame Yarnell’s reconnaissance vehicle up the street and out of Potosi. Bits of trash lifted as if waving goodbye for the evening.
It was midnight. If past practice continued, the cartel representative would remain in the spaceport compound for the remainder of the night.
The gangs began to come out. An armored gun truck maneuvered from the L’Escorial courtyard. Down the street, the converted bulldozer grunted forward to lead the Astra contingent.
Vierziger chuckled. “The best show in town,” he said. “And we’re the only ones interested in front row seats.”
“They’re watching, though,” Coke said, glancing at the facades of the nearby buildings. “For that matter, we could get a better view at the main console inside.”
All the windows were shuttered, curtained, or blocked with makeshifts like the side of a packing crate, but there were hidden viewslits in the screens. The citizens of Potosi didn’t want to call attention to themselves, but they were afraid not to watch.
“Something I’ve noticed about war zones, Matthew,” Vierziger said. “The people who live in them either act as if they’re in danger always, or they act as if there’s no danger at all.”
Three more L’Escorial armored vehicles followed the first. They puffed and snarled as they lined up side by side to block the street. The same thing was happening in front of Astra headquarters.
The escape hatch in the back of one L’Escorial truck was open. Suterbilt huddled inside, mentally clinging to both armor protection and freedom of movement.
Coke glanced at his companion. “Look, I know it’s dangerous,” he said. “I just didn’t want to be cooped up inside if something popped.”
Somebody on the Astra side signaled with a bosun’s whistle. The L’Escorial gunmen who followed the vehicles on foot stared goggle-eyed, looking for signs of an ambush.
“The rest of the team can handle security for Bob,” Coke said. Vierziger’s comment still rankled. It wasn’t the whole truth, but …And nothing was the whole truth. “Via, I know we might get shot out here.”
“The difficulty isn’t in being killed, Matthew,” Vierziger said. His smile was as unreadable as that of the Mona Lisa. “The difficulty’s in what comes after.”
Pepe Luria sauntered from the courtyard of the L’Escorial building. His galaxy of fireflies looped and spun ten meters above him, each outlined by the purple haze of the static discharge which supported it.
Adolpho Peres stumbled along behind his captor. A L’Escorial gunman walked a meter to either side of the gigolo, but from a distance Peres did not appear to be tethered.
Coke raised his visor’s magnification to x40, then doubled it again. A glint joined Peres’ face to the short batons which the men beside him held. Trickles of blood had dried on the back corners of his jaw.
The L’Escorials had poked a length of piano wire through the gigolo’s cheeks. The men escorting Peres held the ends wrapped around their batons. If Peres tried to run—if he did anything except walk in precise unison with his escorts—the wire would rip his face open like a razor blade.
A L’Escorial with a handheld radio sat on the back deck of an armored car. He held his free hand over his ear as he spoke, then listened, to his radio. He looked up and waved to Pepe. Pepe waved back.
The four armored vehicles roared and staggered forward in clouds of black smoke. The men behind them followed, squinting through the dust and exhaust fumes. Overhead, the fireflies sailed in a figure-eight formation that advanced just ahead of the armored cars.
The breeze had died. The Astras moved up also, in a pall of their own raising.
Roberson clung to himself and shivered at the gates to Astra headquarters. The Widow Guzman walked behind the snorting armored vehicles. Kuklar was beside her, wearing a blank expression and carrying a drawstring sack. The bag held the data base looted from Suterbilt’s private office.
Vierziger laughed. He leaned his chair back against the building wall. “What do you suppose they’d do if Madame Yarnell returned to town just now?” he asked.
“Both sides are watching her,” Coke said. “They’d scurry to their holes like mice when the cat comes home. There’d be enough time.”
The L’Escorial radioman kept the armored cupola between him and Astra guns while he watched Pepe. When the lines of opposing vehicles had advanced to within fifty meters of one another, Pepe pointed his index finger.
The radioman spoke into his mouthpiece, turned, and closed his eyes. He jumped upright in plain view of the Astras, waving his arms like a semaphore.
The armored lines halted. The radioman lurched forward. He almost slipped off the side of his mount. He caught himself to crouch again in the shelter of the cupola.
Pepe gestured forward the men holding Peres. They worked their way carefully between the flanks of two of the armored cars, paying more attention to the hot exhaust louvers than they did to the man whom they were escorting. The wire twitched and quivered, drawing drops of fresh blood at every motion. The gigolo was crying.