"Sure," said Zarathustra"s man, not too enthusiastically. "You think the Kid will make a run for it when the heat comes down, or will he try to hide out?"
"If he"s still in town," said Pasco, "he"ll hole up until nightfall. What we really have to worry about is whether he got any kind of advance warning. If he did, he"ll be way out of town already, holed up somewhere that the heat won"t reacha"in which case we"ll have to wait for another sighting."
Preston laughed shortly. "And when we go after him," he observed, "We"ll have a freakin" circus trailing in our wake."
"Either that or we launch our own decoy operation," Pasco confirmed. "I told your boss it wouldn"t be easy, didn"t I?"
"You did," admitted Preston dolefully. "But it won"t be you that has to explain to him how it all went wrong."
Pasco actually felt a slight pang of sympathy, but he managed to scowl anyway. "We"ll all have to do our fair share of explaining," he said sourly, "Including Doc freakin" Zarathustra. I get the feeling that there"s more to this than a little bit of mislaid data. My boss just handed me a line about desperate necessitya"and though he talks like that all the time, this time I think he means it. We could be in big trouble, if we can"t pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Are you sure you don"t have any idea what all the panic and double-dealing is about?"
"Dead sure," said Preston. Pasco couldn"t make out whether he meant it or not.
The squad-leader put his head through the cabin door and shouted: "Pasco! Message incominga"scrambled with virgin code. Looks hot!"
Pasco grinned. "See," he said to Carl Preston. "Sometimes we get the breaks."
He went forward again to decant the message from the radio into a portable digitizer, which he carefully detached from the bird"s systems before breaking out the previously-unused code-disc. As soon as the code-disc was snapped into the machine the unscrambled message began to come up on the screen. He went right to the back in order to read it, and the mercy boys knew enough to give him a wide berth. Only Carl Preston came to hear the news.
"Someone"s bailing us out," he muttered, as the letters swirled past, strutting their brief lives across the screen. "Someone with real clout. They"ve only requisitioned a freakin" skyball with IR-visual capacity. Something with a bike-profile engine did cut out of Melendez an hour or so before dawn. It"s stationary now, and we have the co-ordinates correct to the nearest thirty feet. He"s on this side of town, and we"re the only ones who know where. You a gambling man, Carl?"
"You mean," said Preston, laboriously demonstrating how quick on the uptake he was, "am I prepared to work on the a.s.sumption that it"s Kid Zero?"
"If it is," said Pasco, "it"s our one chance to gel ahead of the opposition again. Whatever the freakin" mafia do have, the one thing we can be pretty sure they don"t have is a spyball. The mercy boys have to go to Melendez anyhow, to put the mobsters through the scramblera"but we can get off quietly, and have the Kid to ourselves. Only thing isa"
"We have to jump down, and then we"re on foot," Preston finished for him, demonstrating that he was quick enough on the uptake when the chips were all on the table.
"That"s right," said Pasco. "No wheels, no armour, no heavy weapons. Just us and what we can carry against Kid Zero. Two against one."
"Two against two," said Preston drily. "Let"s not forget the snake."
"You can take the snake," said Pasco. "Leave the Kid to me. Or would you prefer it the other way around?" When Preston didn"t reply he added: "You feel up to making the drop?"
"Sure," said Zarathustra"s man. "Why would I have jumped off the gas-station roof if I hadn"t needed the practice?"
"So let"s get ready," said Pasco, feeling a peculiar tautness winding him up inside. His feelings were oddly mixed, because his exultation about the possibility that they were back in first place in the race to grab the Kid was underlaid by a certain anxiety about how they had got there. The kind of people who had seniority enough to requisition skyb.a.l.l.s were the kind of people who didn"t normally interest themselves in the routines of SecDiv counter-espionage. There was something freaky about this whole operation, and it was getting freakier.
A strange echo of feeling which sometimes returned to the left side of his face was there again, dull and warm. He tried to ignore it, and went to give his orders to the pilot.
The drop wasn"t easy. They had no time to scout around for somewhere soft to come down, and they daren"t cut the bird"s air-speed to zero for long without attracting attention. Nor did they dare to get too close to the place where the Kida"if it was the Kida"was hiding out, lest they warn him that trouble was coming. That meant that they couldn"t get a visual scan of the placea"but that didn"t seem to matter much, because the map reference told them that it was an old railroad tunnel, about five hundred metres long.
In the end, they had to jump down eight or ten feet on to an ap.r.o.n of baked clay shielded by a stand of dead trees; they jumped together so that the bird could accelerate away, having hovered for no more than a few seconds. They threw down their packs first so that they could make the drop unenc.u.mbered by equipment.
Pasco had some experience in skydiving, and he knew enough to make himself relax as he fell. He rolled as soon as he touched the ground, trying to absorb the shock of the impact as gradually as possible. He sc.r.a.ped the side of his left hand, but that was all. He was up again almost immediately, and ran to help Preston, who had too many bruises already to have come down comfortably.
Preston was okay; shaken, but not stirred.
Pasco picked up his pack and checked the weapons. Before putting the pack on his back he took out both the 4.2 millimetre machine-gun and the automatic pistol, slinging the strap of the first over his shoulder and stowing the second in his belt-holster. Then he went to look out over the ground which they had to cover.
They were about three miles from the nearer mouth of the tunnel; if they went quickly they could be there in forty minutes or so. The territory was arid, but there was enough scrub to provide reasonable cover. The sun wasn"t so high as to be desperately uncomfortable.
In a way, the walk was relaxing. Pasco wasn"t used to walking out of doorsa"it was something n.o.body did any more, even in the PZsa"but he still managed to find some kind of natural rhythm in it. It wasn"t too surprising, he supposed; the human species had a history going back eight hundred thousand years, and for seven hundred and ninety-five thousand of them there had been nothing to ride at alla"not even horses. The human body was designed for walking, no matter what kind of training it got in a world full of motorized transport.
Needless to say, there was no sign at all of Kid Zero. If he was around, he was presumably in the tunnela"but not too far in, because he would want to keep an eye and an ear open for visitors. Because the tunnel had two ends, they had to split up. Pasco gave the nearer end to Carl Preston and went over the top of the hill so that he could come at the second entrance from the other side, without ever having crossed the line of sight of anyone within.
The branchline tracks were still there, though no train had run on them for some years now. Despite the dryness of the semi-desert the rails were well and truly rusted up, but the sleepers didn"t seem to have rotted at all. There were no wagons or flatcars anywhere to be seena"which was a pity, because one such vehicle might have made a big difference to their chances of getting to the Kid quickly and easily.
When he got to his position beside the tunnel entrance Pasco checked his watch, then took a pair of goggles, a light breathing-mask and a couple of smoke grenades out of his pack. He didn"t make any attempt to put his head around the rim; he knew that he wouldn"t be able to see anything at all in the darkness within, while his own head would be clearly visible in silhouette. There was no need at all to take senseless risks.
When the right moment came, he quickly pulled the pins on the grenades, and tossed them as far as he could into the tunnel, still without exposing his head. He heard them fall, and then he heard the hissing sound of the smoke escaping, but he was still in no hurry. He just moved a short distance away from the tunnel entrance, so that he could cover it from above, and waited. The smoke began to drift out of the tunnel entrance, but nothing else came with it.
Pasco wasn"t unduly surprised or alarmed. Half a kilometre was a lot of tunnela"there"d be plenty of s.p.a.ce for the Kid to retreat into. When he was sure that he couldn"t possibly be seen through the smoke, though, he took out two more grenades, and moved casually down onto the tracks. This time he threw them as hard and as far as he possibly could.
Despite the mask he had to cover up his own face because of the stuff that was drifting out, but he had a lot of open air around him. The smoke was acrid as well as thick, and it could be pretty nasty even in small quant.i.ties, if exposure were sustained for any length of time. Half a kilometre wasn"t that much tunnel, once both its ends were corked with this kind of cloud. Even if the Kid retreated all the way into the middle the drifting smoke would get to him eventually, and in a confined s.p.a.ce it would only need a few minutes to set him weeping and retching. It wouldn"t knock him unconscious, but it would render him utterly helpless.
Pasco was quite prepared to go in and gel the Kid if he had to; he wasn"t optimistic enough to believe that the Kid would make it easy by coming staggering out into his waiting arms. Just in case, though, he went back up the slope a little way, so that he could keep the entrance covered while he waited until it was time to throw in the last two grenades.
He watched the entrance intently, because he knew that if Kid Zero did come out, he would probably come out firing at random.
In fact, Pasco was so intent on watching the tunnel"s entrance that he was absolutely astounded when he heard the click of a revolver"s hammer being drawn back, quickly followed by a command to drop his gun. Every judgment he could make of tone and distance suggested to him that he should do exactly as he was told, so he did.
The Kid hit him anyway, and as his senses left him he seemed to hear words echoing in the dark recesses of his skull. The words in question were: "Aw, s.h.i.t!"
7.
Carl began to have a bad feeling about the trap even before he had reached the half-way point of the tunnel, where he found Kid Zero"s bike, unattended.
Having pa.s.sed it, he continued to run impatiently along the track, shining his flashlight on the tracks ahead, determined not to stay in the tunnel too long. The mask he was wearing was too light to keep out all the effects of the smoke; even the tiny amount of leakage he was suffering was making his eyes water, and the supposedly clean air he was dragging into his nostrils through the filter-plate tasted like some kind of cleaning-fluid.
There was no particular reason to be worried because he hadn"t found the Kid in his half of the tunnel, and even when he was past half-way it remained entirely possible that the only reason he hadn"t met up with Pasco was that the Kid had used the other exit and Pasco had grabbed him; in spite of all this, Carl"s paranoia was screaming at him that things had all fouled up again. Before he got to the far end of the tunnel, and despite the fact that he was direly uncomfortable inside his mask, he slowed down and began to move forward as cautiously as he could.
There was still just enough smoke in the tunnel to hide him from view as he came outa"or, at worst, to reduce him to a blur. He figured that he would see better looking out than anyone outside would be able to see looking in.
He decided on a quick dash round to the righta"the likelihood was that Pasco had stationed himself on the left, with his machine-gun at the ready. But when he"d made the move, he just felt stupid. There was nothing and n.o.body to be seen. No Kid; no Pasco. He ducked back into the tunnel-mouth, wishing fervently that he could get rid of the mask.
He knew that it had to be enemy action. Pasco had obviously reached his station, and had had time to throw in at least some of his grenades. If he had failed to follow through, that could only be because he was prevented from so doing.
It didn"t need a genius to work out what had gone wrong. The Kid hadn"t been in the tunnel when they"d arrived. Maybe he expected someone to come after him, and didn"t want to be caught in a trap. Maybe he just didn"t like the dark. Either way, he had found some other hidey-hole, and must have rubbed his hands in glee when he saw that his two adversaries had obligingly split up.
Carl thought that he"d have heard a shot even in the depths of the tunnel, but he wasn"t prepared to conclude from the fact that he hadn"t that Pasco was still alive. The snake hadn"t been in the tunnel either.
Thought of the snake made Carl tense up inside. He wasn"t particularly frightened by the thought of facing a maniac marksman, but the snake was something else.
The logic of strategy told him to stick with what cover he had, but the logic of strategy didn"t take account of the imperfections of his mask. He felt that he was about to vomit, and he couldn"t stand it any longer. He came out of the tunnel again, hurrying to get far enough away from the poisonous smoke to rip off the protective apparatus and suck in a lungful of real air. He threw the mask away.
Not until he"d done that did the power of caution rea.s.sert itself. He looked furtively around, but there were too many bushes nearby from which the Kid might be watching him, and he knew that he was in deep trouble. He edged his way up out of the cutting, heading uphill in order to get a better look around as soon as the way was clear. He looked around for some cover of his own, but he was too latea"he"d already blown it.
A voice from behind hima"not very far behind hima"told him to drop his gun. He was quick to obey, realizing that he had no chance at all of making a fair fight of it. He waited until he received an order to do so before he turned around. The Kid collected the four-point-two and then removed the automatic from his shoulder-holster before taking him around a dense patch of bushes to a sheltered covert whose surrounding trees were still alive and richly clad in dark green foliage.
Pasco, divested of his mask, pack and guns, was laid out face downwards on the bare ground. He had been hit hard but he was still breathing; his things were in a pile ten or twelve feet away; a six-foot rattlesnake was coiled up on top of them. The Kid added Carl"s guns to the heap.
Carl was surprised by how young Kid Zero looked. He had seen photographs of the outlaw"s face before, and had seen him in longshot astride his bike half a dozen times on the Homer Hegarty show, but the camera was a selective reporter from which it was difficult to get an impression of the live being. The Kid, legendary though he was, looked like nothing at alla"he was only five-three or five-four in his booted feet, and very scrawnya"but he held himself as if he meant business. Which, presumably, he did "Sit down," said the Kid evenly. "I don"t intend to kill you if I don"t have toa"I know you"re only doing your job."
Carl realized that because he was wearing a mercy boy"s uniform Kid Zero had mistaken him for run-of-the-mill hired help. He couldn"t see any way, though, that the mistake could be turned to his advantage. He did as he was told, quietly grateful that the Kid wanted to talk. The spot where the Kid had told him to sit was a long way from the guns, but that meant that it was also a long way from the rattler. That was just fine by Carl.
"The other guy"s Ray Pasco, right?" said the Kid to his prisoner.
"That"s right," Carl admitted. He remembered what the SecDiv man had said about he and the Kid having acquaintances in common. The Kid"s brow was furrowed, as though he couldn"t for the life of him think what to do next. Carl didn"t envy him, though he was only too well aware that his own situation wasa"for the time beinga"the more perilous.
"You know how I feel about your employers," said the Kid uneasily. "And you know I won"t have much compunction about adding you to my score if I have to. But I know you"re just trying to make a living, and I figure it hurts more to hit GenTech in the pocket than to rub out their expendable operatives. I know how easily expendable people are, in GenTech"s way of thinking."
"I understand," Carl a.s.sured him. "I"m not about to play heroa"I"ll tell you anything you want to know."
"How did Pasco find me?" asked the Kid, abruptly. "This time, n.o.body saw me."
"There"s no privacy, even in the wilderness," Carl told him. "The bosses put a spyball on you. By day it can read the maker"s name on your sickle, by night it just switches to IR, and your bike"s engine is lit up like a flare."
Kid Zero glanced up into the moistureless blue sky which arched from horizon to horizon. If he was hoping to see some heavy cloud-cover on the horizon he was out of luck. There would be none this weeka"or even this century.
"I"m impressed," said the Kid, putting on a tough-guy act. "I must really have hit a big pocket, this time. I wonder if M-M and Chromicon know that you"re looking the other way for once."
Carl didn"t bother to speculate about that. He had more urgent concerns on his mind. "It may not be too late to make a deal, Kid," he said, hoping that the lie didn"t sound too transparent. "While you have the discs, you have something to trade."
The Kid wasn"t about to be suckered into that kind of discussion. "How long will it be before the bird comes back for you?" he asked.
"You have a couple of hours," Carl a.s.sured him. "There are too many people watching to see what it does. But you can"t get away, Kida"not with the eye in the sky staring down at you. Try to make a deala"it"s your only hope."
"Sure," said the Kid unhappily. Carl couldn"t blame him for being unhappy, with only that kind of hope to keep him going. Fearing for his own life, he cast about for something to distract his captor from contemplation of the hopelessness of his plight, and his roaming eye caught the steady stare of the rattler. He shivered.
"How"d you come to pal up with that, Kid?" he asked. "I heard about you having a pet snake on the Homer Hegarty show, but I never really believed it until now. How"d you make friends with him?"
"It"s a her," said the Kid off-handedly. "We met when she bit mea"but she was only scared. I got better from the bite. Afterwards, our relationship got friendlier. Did Pasco happen to mention to you why the disc"s so important?"
"No," said Carl. "They never tell guys like me things like that? All they tell me is to get out on the road and fetch it."
"But it"s something to do with Doc Zarathustra, isn"t it?" said the Kid, insistently. "I"d like to talk to Zarathustra, one day. He and I have a little score to settle."
"No you don"t," said Carl, before he could stop himself. "The Doc didn"t have anything to do with that Snake Eyes charactera"he doesn"t work on cosmetics."
The Kid gave him a curious look, but didn"t manage to jump to any unfortunate conclusions. "What happened to Harriet?" he asked.
"She"s still alive and well," Carl told him. "Once you"re all wrapped up and we have the other two copies of the disc back, she"ll be as free as a bird."
"So you got her copy back," said the Kid. "And Homer Hegarty turned his in. But you know that there are two more."
"That"s right," admitted Carl. "Who was the other copy for, as a matter of interest?"
"Haycraft"s people. I figured that if GenTech wanted to stop him delivering it, it was worth doing it for hima"whoever they might be. Do you know who he was working for?"
"Who"s Haycraft?" asked Carl disingenuously.
"Alias Blay," said the Kid, tiredly.
The Kid sat down. He kept his pistol trained on Carl"s midriff, but the barrel was dipping carelessly. Carl realized that the Kid must be dead beata"he was obviously exhausted, and probably very confused. For a moment, Carl saw his enemy in a new light: as a teenager who was way out of his depth, caught up by fate in something he couldn"t begin to comprehend. Carl felt suddenly sure that the one and only reason why the Kid had captured him instead of simply blowing him away was because he was at the end of his tether, and needed somebody to talk to.
"Where are the discs, Kid?" he asked, in as gentle a tone as he could manage.
"In a safe place," the Kid replied. "Maybe too safe. Still, once I"m dead, you never know who might find them, do you?"
"That might not be such a good situation," said Carl tentatively. "My bosses aren"t going to stop looking until they find it. They"re bound to talk to all your friends about it."
"I don"t have any friends," said the Kid flatly.
"That"s not true," said Carl softly. "Charlie Atlas and Ace the Ace tried to take us out to get us off your taila"and it wasn"t just that Pasco had killed Cyril and made him look cheap. There"s not much left of the Atlas Boys now, or the Low Numbers, but Ace the Ace is still alive. The old lady is safe enough once we get the discs backa"but if we don"t, anyone who might be able to give us a lead on their whereabouts is likely to be tested to destruction. Better to tell me where the other two copies are."
"None of them know where I stashed it," said the Kid.
"That won"t keep them alive," Carl insisted. "As long as there"s a chance of getting a lead, they"ll have to keep trying."
"So it"s true," said the Kid, half to himself. "It is more important than a mere matter of life and death. The whole threatened-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it bit."
"Our strict instructions are to take you alive if we can," Carl went on, thinking that he might just have a chance of pulling the situation out of the fire. "That needn"t be painful, if you tell us where you stashed the discs."
The Kid laughed shortly. Carl couldn"t blame him for not believing it.
"What option have you got, Kid?" he asked, wishing that his heartbeat would calm down a little. "Nothing short of a miracle can save you."
"I"ve got Pasco," the Kid pointed out, "And I"ve got you. How much are you worth, do you think? Could I trade you in as hostages for a chance to run?"
It was lunatic optimism and the Kid had to know it, but in Carl"s estimation no hope was too feeble to be fed while his life was on the line.
"Maybe," he said. "Is that what you have planneda"using us as hostages to buy yourself a copter when our back-up gets here?"
"It wouldn"t work," said the Kid dispiritedly. "Better to run now, or stand and shoot it out."
"Run," advised Carl. "No point in going out in a hail of bullets for the sake of giving Homer Hegarty a two-minute story. What did he ever do for you?"
"Not much," admitted the Kid, with a wry smile. "My instinct says that I should ice the pair of you, but there wouldn"t be any point, would there?"
"Like you say," said Carl, uneasily aware of the tackiness of his duplicity. "I"m only doing my job. I"ve nothing personal against youa"nothing at all."
"The only thing is," said the Kid, "I can"t get to my bike while the tunnel"s full of poisonous smoke, can I?"