None of them should.
He wanted to share all that with the guys…
Yarborough wanted to…
But the laughing… they'd just laugh if he said all that.
Wouldn't they?
So Yarborough said, instead, giving the people the Yar they thought they knew so welclass="underline" "God ain't invented the girl that can own me. When He does, I guess I'll just cross her bridge when I get to it."
Bo was going to make a crack, keep ragging on Yar 'cause Yar was good to rag on and could take a well-thrown joke. Before he got a chance Tac-1 crackled with a call out from Command to Fifth and Flower. A patrol reporting a metanormal.
The radio hadn't even gone quiet and all four MTacs, weapons in hand, were moving from the ready room for the APC.
When D Platoon, LAPD's SWAT unit, rolled on a call, they hit the scene in modified GMC Suburbans. Doesn't sound real menacing, traveling same as your average soccer mom. But you see a couple of the vehicles—armor-plated, dark black or deep blue—you see guys sporting MP5s or CAR-15s piling out of them, that'll get your menace up. Unless you're a metanormal. You're a metanormal, maybe all you'll do is use your telekinetic abilities to send the Suburban flipping into the side of a building from a block away.
It happened.
So MTacs don't show up in modified Suburbans. MTacs roll in carbon-fiber APCs rated to withstand temperatures of up to l, 200°F and pressure up to 3, 000 psi. And since its exterior isn't metal, a metal morpher can't put a hand to it and simply make the vehicle collapse, killing all the cops inside.
That happened too.
So, most times, the carbon-fiber APC was enough to get the MTacs to the call in one piece. After that, they were on their own.
Bo led Yarborough, Vin and Whitaker from the APC to a squad blocking off the intersection on Flower. Down the block was another squad doing the same. To the officer in charge, Bo gave his standard greeting.
"Whatcha got?"
"Guy flagged a patrol down. Says he saw a shape-changing freak."
Bo looked up the street. Low-rise brick buildings. A couple of parked cars. A motorcycle. Garbage cans. Pay phone.
Bo asked: "He thinks he saw a shape-shifter, or he saw one?"
"We hit the scene, there were three or four guys, baseball bats, beating the shit out of the thing. One second it's a bear, then it's a… like a lion. Thought it was gonna turn into an elephant or something, trample the hell out of those guys."
"They can change shape not mass." Halfway up the block an alley."It'll maintain its relative size. How big was the guy?"
"Caucasian male about six-one, maybe two hundred pounds. It was for a second. Then it was a lion again."
Six-one. Two hundred pounds. That left a lot of possibilities.
Yar, Vin and Whitaker were already fanning the intersection, weapons ready, looking up the block for likely targets: something that should be still but was moving slightly. Something that should be inanimate but was bleeding from taking hits from a Louisville Slugger-armed Neighborhood Watch.
Bo to the sergeant: "Your guys chased it up the street?"
"Yeah. The other squad cut it off. It headed down the alley, but it dead-ends. They kinda looked for it."
"Kinda?"
Direct but not trying to be harsh: "Their job's to lock the scene down and put in the call. You got the call. You take out the freak."
The freak.
It probably wasn't, couldn't be, one of the cars. Could easily be a garbage can, the pay phone stand. But maybe it'd blended with the stoop of one of the buildings. Maybe that bit of wrought iron was really just a mutie in disguise.
Or maybe it was none of that. Maybe it'd managed to slip past the uniforms.
Or maybe that newspaper vending machine was going to do everything it could to end an MTac's life.
"Mike check. One."
"Two."
"Three.""Four."
Gripping his. 45, Bo took point, started down the block. Yar, Vin and Whitaker followed.
Yarborough yelled: "Bo!"
Bo whipped around. Bo saw a section of brick wall of the alley moving toward him. He had a split second to do something.
The split second passed.
Bo did nothing.
The wall was nearly on top of him. The wall was about to come crashing down on him. The wall was going to kill Bo.
And then the wall was raked with a steady stream of automatic gunfire spat hot and loud from a pair of HKs. The wall jerked back, twisted in response to the hits. Couple of its bricks went flying as the slugs tore divots from it.
The gunfire stopped.
The wall seemed to steady itself as if its masonry and mortar were marshaling; readying up for a surge forward.
Whitaker's Benelli took care of that.
The shell of the shotgun ripped away a huge chunk of the wall. The wall staggered, collapsed—not collapsed, more like slumped— down to the ground.
Yarborough, Vin and Whitaker eased for it, weapons ready to do some more graffiti work if necessary.
The wall didn't move. But it changed. It contorted and contracted. The bricks turned from red to the pinkish tone of flesh. The wall took on the shape of a human. Naked, bullet-riddled, absent some body parts where bricks had been blown off in its previous form.
The four MTacs watched the transformation without expression. Just another changeling. Just another freak. Now it was just another dead one.
Yarborough looked down at the all-but-smoking carcass."Got you, mutie." To the others: "Shape-shifter. Hate 'em the most. Sneaky bastards." To Bo: "What's the matter, Bo? Didn't read 'em?"
"Must've missed it."
"Got your back, man. Tough mo-fo, huh? You even hit him, Vin?"
"Blow me. Shoulda thrown your Pleather jacket at it. That would've scared it off."
"Hell, bet if we had a piece like Bullet's we coulda put it down in one shot."
Whitaker nudged the shape-shifter with the muzzle of his Benelli. The shape-shifter responded by flopping a bit, then lying still some more.
Vin said: "Heard around she doesn't like to be called Bullet."
"Yeah, well, you don't tell her I said it, she don't gotta find out."
"What's she like?" Vin wanted to know."I can't get two words out of her."
"You ladies want to form a stitch 'n' bitch," Bo cut in,"do it on your own time. As long as you're on the city's clock, how about you sweep the rest of the alley; make sure there aren't any more muties hiding out while I get a wagon out here for the meat?"
Yarborough and Vin" yes sir"-ed that, started down the alley. Whitaker nudged the shape-shifter one more time. One more time the shape-shifter flopped, then lay still. Maybe they were superhuman when they were alive, maybe there wasn't anything they couldn't do. Dead they were just as dead as anybody. Whitaker tagged along behind Yarborough and Vin.
Bo stayed back with the body, looked down at it, then looked at his left hand. He curled it into a fist, held it that way for a second, a second more. Uncurled it. He did the same again.
No difference. The action had no effect.
Bo couldn't stop his hand from shaking.
Not that she knew what to expect other than what you see in movies and on TV shows, but the morgue at Cedars-Sinai was different than Soledad figured it'd be. It was cold, yeah. Had to be cold to keep the dead from rotting. And it was empty of smell except that it smelled well scrubbed. It smelled clean. What it didn't smell like was death, however death was supposed to smell. Rancid. Stale. Soledad was pretty sure death didn't smell like Pine-Sol.
Mostly the morgue was a whole lot louder than she figured it would be. Should be. There was, even at the late hour, nothing but people—living people—in the morgue. MEs and cops examining bodies, giving them a close and careful once-over, pushing paper; turning lives into forms to be filed away. Grieving family members come to ID loved ones, gather loved ones. And regularly, very regularly, new bodies making their way down from above. The dead didn't stop coming. Morning. Noon. Night. Los Angeles kept on manufacturing fresh corpses.