Ostrander took a limping step back, gave up the floor to Bo.
Bo, jerking a thumb at the photo on the monitor: "It has a dog that it walks twice a day in Griffith Park. Oh-six-thirty, and again at about sixteen. Routine. It doesn't particularly vary. In the morning's when we go. Fewer people in the park. Here's how we work it: After the freak goes into the park we have uniforms move in. Set up a perimeter here" — he pointed at a map of the park—"here and here."
Somebody, one of the officers: "This thing sees blue, it's going to take off running, and that's the end of that."
"Hyperkinetic freaks can only maintain their activity for short bursts. The calories required make prolonged high-speed movement prohibitive." Soledad spat out information, appreciative of Bo's planning, like a professor of freakology giving a dissertation.
Bo said: "Once we move in, it'll see the cops, start running and run into more cops. So it'll go another direction. More cops. Cops everywhere it looks. We pinball it around, wear it down until it's got little or no speed left. Then we bring in the MTacs to close things out. The uniforms are like a bullfighter's cape, softening the beast up. The MTacs are the sword that's going to put it out of its misery."
"We would prefer it alive," Ostrander reminded."Alive enough to answer questions."
"That's the objective. But not to the exclusion of our people's safety."
"How many elements?" Rysher asked.
"Four. One for each side of the box. One element from each unit. That way, if things go south, we're not going to lose a whole unit."
No matter Bo was talking about contingencies for people getting killed, real quick Yar volunteered Central to be one of the elements going in.
Bo said, plainly, showing no favoritism to his old element, he'd draw up a unified duty roster later.
"Yes, sir. Just want to remind you Officer O'Roark is continuing her field test of the O'Dwyer, and she has ordnance that could be very useful in bringing in this particular kind of freak." Yar stretched to sound objective about offering up Soledad and her piece. Reality: no way he wanted to miss out on this hunt.
Rysher: "We'll take that into consideration." He was fronting like he still had authority over Soledad's weapon. A signed piece of paper from the governor said otherwise.
"Any other questions?" Bo said to the group."Comments?"
None. The plan was simple but solid. As long as… As long as the speed freak was as harmless as DMI thought it was. As long as it was just the speed freak they encountered and not some other freaks, a telepath in particular. As long as something unexpected, no matter how prepared for, didn't happen that cost some people their lives. As long as…
"Then it looks like we've got ourselves a job. We'll work up a perimeter, a grid, and have the elements ready to converge at… oh-five. Let's all go home and kiss our wives."
Soledad was on her way from the room when she heard:
"Soledad."
She turned.
Rysher. Back to using her first name."Soledad," he went on,"I am going to take your piece into consideration putting together the duty roster. I think it… I know you can do good work. I know you can, and I'm glad to have you back."
And he smiled to her. Rysher looked right at Soledad and smiled same as if he were grinning to his best friend. Never mind the investigation, the subtle swipes, the bitter conclusion… it was like the past hadn't happened. Or at the very least, it paled in comparison to Rysher's need to glom, to leech himself to whatever could carry him to the next plateau of his career.
Soledad wondered if he'd gotten around to replacing the photo of him and her in his office.
"I don't need your happiness," she said."I'm working toward some of my own."
She left things there. Anything more would have drifted toward violence.
Ten of seven.
The morning was getting warm. The APC was getting hot. Yarbor-ough and his element—Soledad and Vin and the probee, Eddi— ignored it and sat and waited for a freak named Herbert Lewis to get flushed out into the open same as an animal from the brush.
Yarborough had put Eddi on an HK. Her marks were high with that weapon. Her shots were accurate. Her groupings tight, which is a mean feat when your gun is spitting out five rounds a second.
Soledad was curious how Eddi would handle her first call. Unlike Soledad on hers, Eddi, cocky as always, was going into the op low on body armor. No helmet. No Nomex on her upper body. She had on a chestplate, but only because Yar ordered her to wear it. Beyond that, it was hard for Yar to enforce regs he didn't follow himself.
Soledad remembered her first call, the others in the APC making fun of her for being buttoned up tight. Now she, like most MTacs, responded to a call with no helmet, little body armor and Nomex. Soledad looked like she was on her way to a water gun fight, not out for a morning of freak hunting. If nothing else during her time on MTac, she'd learned if a freak wants you dead, all the gear in the world doesn't go far toward stopping it.
"Command to Central." Bo came in over the radio.
Yarborough back: "Central. Go ahead."
"We picked up the target. It's heading into the park."
"Read that, Command." To his element: "It's on its way." Yar shook his head."Just a guy heading into the park, walking his dog… and it's a freak. You'd never even know it."
Soledad checked her piece, checked the clip, the blue-marked one. Something special for speed freaks.
"It's like there's more of them all the time. You ever wonder where they come from?" Yarborough questioned out loud.
"Genetic mutation at the recombinant level," Soledad said. She holstered her piece, looked up, saw everyone was looking at her, waiting for her to go on."You're MTacs, and none of you ever studied metanormal physiology?"
Yarborough started: "We got that pamphlet in the academy… Look, I know you put a bullet in them, they go down. Most times."
Beyond that no one had anything to say.
Soledad said to the others, but said at Eddi: "And here I was thinking you knew everything."
Eddi smiled.
Soledad smiled.
A couple of cats hissing at each other.
Soledad: "There are people walking around out there with latent metanormal genes; the one that gives a person special powers. Maybe one person in ten million has it but can't use their abilities. Then over time—ten years, a hundred years—just on the odds, two people with latent genes meet, screw, have a kid. Now you've got one person with an active M-gene. Eventually, a hundred years later, on odds again, a descendant of the kid meets someone else with an active gene. They have a kid, and every generation the pool gets larger—more of these things, more active genes—until pretty soon there's a freak on every corner."
Yarborough summed up: "So it's like freaks keep having freaks, keep passing on the gene."
"They got a name for it, Yar," Vin said."Assortative mating."
"I know what… that is. Don't go thinking I'm stupid."
"I don't think you're stupid," Eddi said to Yarborough.
Eddi got a smile for that and, unlike the one she'd gotten from Soledad, this one was nothing but nice.
Over the radio, Bo: "Central, we're rolling in the blues."
"Copy."
The blues in, Soledad thought. The freak would see them, then… It was just a matter of time now.
"So what about," Yarborough asked further,"like witches and vampires, werewolves and stuff like that? Where do they get their powers?"
"Those would be paranormal-based abilities derived from magic or the supernatural, not metanormal or genetic."
"Wait a second." Eddi wasn't believing what she was hearing."You telling me there really are werewolves and vampires?"
"No." Soledad laughed at the girl's naivete."That stuff is just in storybooks and make-believe. But freaks that can fly, muties that can pass through solid objects and shoot heat beams from their eyes… that's as real as it gets."