Black Man (65 page)

“It was not a deal,” Onbekend growled. “It was a strategy, a deception.”

“Okay, he organized a deception, in your name. Your other brother was supposed to be coming back as an assassin for the Martian chapters. Some story about clearing out the Lima
familias
by way of reparation, laying the whole
afrenta Marciana
to rest so you could all do business with Mars again. That about right, Onbekend?”

“You did this?” Manco Bambarén whispered. “Even this?”

“Come on, Manco, we’ve talked about it often enough.” Onbekend gestured impatiently. “It wasn’t for real anyway, but—”

“You used my name?”

“By association, yeah. Marsalis, you fuck, listen to me—”

Bambarén lunged across the table at Onbekend. The thirteen jumped, blindsided, fended him off. Carl raised the Glock.

“Gentlemen,” he said warningly.

Bambarén appeared not to hear. He braced his arms on the table, still staring down into the face of the man he’d made into his brother. Rage brought up his accent, bruised the English he used.

“You used my fucking name?”

“Sit down, Manco,” Carl told him. “I won’t tell you again.”

But the
familia
chief did not sit. Instead he turned himself deliberately to face Carl and the Glock. He drew a deep breath.

“I wish to leave now,” he said stiffly. “I have no further interest in this matter. I withdraw my protection from Greta Jurgens.”

“Oh, Manco, you
can’t
fucking—”

“
Don’t
tell me what I can do, twist.” Manco pushed himself off the table with his hands. He looked at Carl. “Well? Is our business concluded, black man?”

“Sure.” Carl hadn’t expected it to work nearly this well, but he wasn’t about to miss the sudden bonus.

“Walk to the door, hands on your head. Let yourself out and shut it behind you. And I’d better hear those helicopters leaving inside ten minutes.”

Bambarén stood up and laced his hands together over his head. He and Onbekend looked at each other for a long moment.

“Don’t do this,” Onbekend said tightly. “I’m your brother, Manco. Fourteen years, I’m your fucking brother.”

“No.” Bambarén’s voice was as cold now as the chill coming off the alcove rock. “You are not my brother, you are a mistake. My mistake, my mother’s mistake, and the mistake of gringos without souls.

You are a twisted fucking
thing,
a thing that crept into my family and used me, a thing that cut the living fat from my bones to feed itself. I should have listened to the others when you came.”

“You used me, too, you fuck!”

“Yes. I used you for what you are.” Bambarén spat on the table in front of the thirteen.
“Twist! Pistaco!

You are nothing to me.”

Onbekend stared down at the spittle. Then, abruptly, he swayed to his feet.

“That’s it, Onbekend.” Carl rapped on the tabletop, gestured with the Glock. “Sit the fuck down.”

There was a grim smile stamped onto Onbekend’s mouth. “I don’t think so.”

Carl came to his feet like whiplash. The chair went over behind him, the Glock leveled on Onbekend’s face.

“I said—”

And then Bambarén was on him like an opsdog.

Later, he never knew why the
tayta
jumped. Maybe the rage, rage at Onbekend but sloshing generally to include all thirteens, maybe all variants, maybe just anybody within reach. Maybe rage at the unaccustomed powerlessness of sitting at the table under another man’s gun. Or maybe—he hated the thought—not rage at all, maybe the two of them, Bambarén and Onbekend, the two unlikely brothers, maybe in the end they just played Carl, improvised, used the angle, and it worked.

Bambarén slapped a hand into the Glock, swept it wide, and came around the edge of the table yelling.

The gun went off, once, nowhere useful. Carl twisted, took the other man’s momentum, and dumped it over his hip. Most of him was still trying to work out where Onbekend had gone. Bambarén clung on with street-fighter savagery, fingers digging for eyes, knee to groin. Carl dropped the gun. They both went down, thrashing to get the upper position.

Tanindo
and the mesh won out. Bambarén had an antique street-honed savagery to call on, but it was blurred with age and years of rank. Carl broke his holds, took the punches through the padding of the weblar jacket, teeth gritted tight as pain flared across his cracked ribs and through the codeine veil. He vented a snarl, smothered a knee jab to his groin, and then smashed an elbow into the
tayta
’s face. The other man reeled off him. Carl stabbed stiffened fingers in under the chin. Bambarén gagged and—Behind him, the recently familiar chatter of a Steyr assault rifle erupted across the living room space.

Short, controlled burst.

He flailed loose of Bambarén, rolled for the cover of the table and the chairs around it. The
tayta
yelled something, and then another brief storm of automatic fire swept over them both and the shout choked off.

The tabletop was ripped into splinters, the assault rifle slugs punching through as if it were cardboard. He heard impacts off the rock behind him. Something slammed into his back,
ricochet
he knew fleetingly.

The Glock, the fucking Glock—

—was gone. From his position on the floor, he saw Onbekend’s legs moving forward, cautious, bent-kneed stance, edging around for a clear shot. He did the only thing left, stormed to his feet, mesh-fed speed and raging strength, hurled the chewed-up table off two legs and forward like a shield.

Onbekend snapped off more fire, the table toppled like a tossed playing card, impossibly slow, he dodged sideways. The Steyr chattered, impacts caught him, the impact jacket squeezed and warmed as it worked, the shots twisted and slammed him backward into the alcove wall…

And the firing stopped.

It was almost comical. Onbekend stood with the suddenly silent weapon in his hands. Faint ping of the load alert, into the quiet like a dripping tap. His gaze dropped from Carl’s face to the Steyr, saw the blinking red light. He’d had no time to check the magazine, must have grabbed the first decent weapon he saw off the pile on the breakfast bar, and he’d come away with one almost fully discharged.

Carl came off the wall with a yell.

Onbekend threw the emptied Steyr at him. He batted it aside. The other thirteen tried to grapple, he punched and stamped the attempt apart, drove Onbekend back across the space in a flurry of
tanindo
technique. The thirteen blocked and covered, launched jabbing counters, but all the time Carl read out the damage Sevgi’s slugs had done in the way the other man moved. He felt a snarl peel his lips, savage satisfaction, the heart-deep anticipation of damage. He closed, broke up a defense, lanced a high blow through, and caught Onbekend across the jaw. The other thirteen staggered, his back almost to the shattered picture window now. Blood and translucent light behind—Carl caught it out of the corner of his eye, dull red smears on the jagged lower line of the remaining glass, glint of the sun’s rays on the sawtoothed edges. He closed with Onbekend again—And there was a crouched figure beyond the glass.

Carl had time to register the shocked, frightened face, the raised shotgun. His attack momentum was already committed, all he could do was let it carry him stumbling across the living room, trying to get out of the way. The shotgun went off, fresh glass smashed off the ruined window, and Onbekend bellowed.

Carl fetched up against the breakfast bar, clawed down a clatter of weapons, and hit the floor. He grabbed at random, found himself with another of the assault rifles, dragged it around—
safety off
—and triggered it just as the door blew inward.

There were a pair of Bambarén’s men gathered there. They’d shot out the lock and burst in, one high, one low. Carl was sitting on the floor, back to the breakfast bar, nowhere near where they’d expected.

He held down the trigger on the Steyr and sprayed. The hammering fire kicked both men backward, limbs waving as if they were trying to fend the bullets off. One of them flew back through the entryway and landed in a puffed cloud of dust outside; the other caught an ankle on the doorjamb and went down tangled where he was. Carl skidded back upright, got cover at the edge of the picture window, and then hooked around and hosed the shotgunner off his feet.

Sporadic fire from farther off. No more bodies. In the sudden quiet, the Steyr pinged insistently for more ammunition. The weapon’s previous owner had doubled magazines, taped two back-to-back and inverted. Carl unlocked the gun, swapped the ends, and snicked the fresh magazine into place.

Somewhere on the floor, Onbekend groaned.

Carl peered out and saw crouched figures backing hastily off, slithering back to their cover by the path.

He chased them with a quick burst from the Steyr, drew a deep breath, went back to the doorway, shoved the body on the threshold out of the way with his boot so he could get the door closed. Halfway through, he realized the man was still alive, breathing shallowly and rapidly, eyes closed. Carl shot him in the head with the Steyr, kicked him the rest of the way out, and shut the door. Then he dragged an armchair across the floor and pushed it hard up against the handle. Vague realization of pain as he worked—he stopped and looked down at the impact jacket, saw the shiny bulges where the gene-tweaked weblar had stopped the slugs and melted closed around them. But blood trickled down past the lower hem of the garment. He pulled it up and saw an ugly gouge in the flesh above his hip.

Angled fire from someone as he jumped or twisted or fell sometime in the last minute and a half. Could have been Onbekend or the guys in the door, maybe even a stray long shot from outside.

With the sight, the pain rolled in. He sagged onto the arm of the wedging chair.

“That’s fucking ironic,” Onbekend coughed wetly from the floor. “I come that close to taking you down and one of Manco’s fucking goons takes me out instead.”

Carl shot him a tired look. “You were nowhere near.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you.” Onbekend propped himself up. “Manco?”

No reply.

“Manco?”

Carl watched the other thirteen’s face curiously from across the room. Onbekend’s features contorted with effort as he tried to get himself into a sitting position. His chest was drenched with blood from the shotgun blast. He growled through gritted teeth, pushed with both hands, couldn’t do it. He fell back.

“I’ll go look,” Carl told him.

Manco Bambarén was flat on his back in a pool of his own blood, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. It looked to have been instant—Onbekend’s shots must have nailed him across the chest as he was trying to get up. Carl looked down at the
familia
chief for a moment, then headed back.

“He’s dead,” Onbekend said. Blood in his throat turned his voice deep and muddy. “Right?”

“Yeah, he’s dead. Nice shooting.”

A bubbling laugh. “I was trying for you.”

“Yeah? Try harder next time.” Carl felt spreading wet warmth, glanced down at his leg, saw blood soaking through the material of his trousers at the belt and thigh. Even through the painkillers, his chest ached as if he’d been crushed in a vise. He wondered if the weblar had failed, let something through somewhere else as well—it could happen with multiple impacts in the same region of the jacket, he’d seen it before. Or maybe someone out there, some fucking gun fetishist, had an armor-piercing load he liked to show off. Power enough to bring down a coked-up black man, just like in Rovayo’s history books; power enough to bring down the thirteen. Power to stop the beast in its tracks.

“Ah. Not a complete waste, then.”

Onbekend had seen the blood as well.

Carl sank onto the floor, put his back against the armchair he had blocking the door, and pulled his feet in so his knees went up. He propped the Steyr on his legs and checked the load. Filtering sunlight slanted in past him, missed his shoulder by half a meter, made him shiver unreasonably in the contrasting shade.

“How many are there out there really?” he asked Onbekend.

The other thirteen turned his head and grinned across the short expanse of stone-tiled floor that separated them. His teeth were bloody.

“More than you’re in any state to deal with, I’d say.” He swallowed liquidly. “Tell me something, Marsalis.

Tell me the truth. You didn’t hurt Greta, did you?”

Carl looked at him for a while. “No,” he said finally. “She’s fine, she’s sleeping. I didn’t come here for her.”

“That’s good.” A spasm of pain passed across Onbekend’s face. “Just came for me, huh? Sorry you got beaten to the draw, brother.”

“I’m not your fucking brother.”

Quiet, apart from the sound of Onbekend’s wet rasping breath. Something had happened to the angle of the light outside. Carl and Onbekend were both in pools of shadow, but between them bright sunlight fell in on the dark tiles, seemed to burn back up off them in a blurry dust-moted haze. Carl reached over with a little jagged effort and dipped his hand in the glow, brushed the tips of his fingers over the warmth in the tiles.

Definitely blood trickling somewhere inside the strictures of the weblar jacket. He tipped back his head and sighed.

So.

He wondered, suddenly, what
Fat Men Are Harder to Kidnap
would sound like when they took the Mars Memorial Hall stage in Blythe next week. If they’d be any good.

“Fifteen.”

He looked across at Onbekend. “What?”

“Fifteen men. Manco was telling you the truth. Plus two pilots, but they don’t count as guns.”

“Fifteen, huh?”

“Yeah. But you downed a couple just now in the doorway, right?”

“Three.” Carl raised his eyebrows at the gallery rail. He thought for just a moment he saw Elena Aguirre leaning there, watching. “Including the guy that got you. Leaves an even dozen. How’d you rate them?”

Onbekend coughed up more laughter, and some blood with it. “Pretty fucking poor. I mean, they’re good by gangster standards. But up against Osprey training? Against a thirteen? A dozen shit-scared cudlips? No contest.”