Gun Metal Heart (11 page)

Mr. Smith said, “Will we get a demonstration of Hotspur?”

Todd glanced at the American Citadel brass in the back of the room. “Well, not from Italy, no. While Mercutio is a surveillance suite, Hotspur is an aggressive weapons package. We can't exactly go blasting away in Florence. However, we have a demonstration range in an abandoned mine, about two hours south of Sandpoint, which we'll be switching to for a live demonstration in about thirty minutes.”

Miss Jones said, “What sort of weapons package?”

“Depends on the configuration,” Todd swiveled to her. “Guns or miniature guided missiles. Because of weight restrictions on the drones, we use only small-caliber weapons. But the bullets are incendiaries, and the missiles are our own design, which we'll show you when we switch to the demonstration range a little later this morning. The beauty of the Hotspur weapons suite is that we can configure the MAVs for whatever opposition we expect to face.”

Cyrus Acton glowed, watching his protégé, Todd Brevidge, completely in his element.

Miss Jones nodded, eyes darting to the screen. “But you have a set of these Hotspur drones on scene? In Florence?”

“For demonstration purposes, yes. We wanted you to notice that the hummingbirds and the hawks are floating around over this very crowded city and nobody's paying any attention to them. They're just too small and too fast, and they were designed to be mistaken for actual birds.

“We'll show you the visuals from Hotspur's perspective, too. While Mercutio can hover like a helicopter, Hotspur swoops. I say that as a warning; with the high-def screens, it can be a little disorienting. For instance, you won't get an image as stable as this.”

He spoke into his walkie. “Give us a close-up of the lobby, dude.”

One of the Mercutio MAVs zoomed in on the front window of the Hotel Criterion. Through the glass, they could see a cluster of people standing about.

From the back of the room, Cyrus Acton said, “Todd…?”

“Ah. Yessir?”

Acton pointed over Brevidge's shoulder at the screen. “What's going on there? In the hotel?”

Todd turned. Through the plate-glass window of the hotel, he, the brass, and the buyers could see Dr. Incantada and her two assistant engineers. Standing opposite them were members of the hotel staff.

It took Todd a moment to realize that the engineer's driver lay on the floor. Unconscious or dead.

And that two of the hotel staff carried submachine guns with folding stocks and dual handles.

“Whoa,” Todd said. “Whoa whoa whoa what the hell?”

Mr. Acton had surged forward, now standing between Todd and the buyers.

Todd lifted his walkie. “Snow, are you getting this?”

The voice came back quickly from the phone. “Sure am.”

“What the … is this a robbery? Snow, get us audio.”

A second later, and the people in the observation lounge began to hear electronically enhanced voices. Audio signatures popped up on one of the screens, logging the speakers as
INCANTADA, DR. GABRIELLA
and
SPEAKER
3
.

Speaker number three was the tall, pretty blond woman. She was speaking in Italian.

From the control room, one of Snow's pilots made an adjustment to the audio. As the blonde spoke, an English translation of her words appeared beneath the sine wave of her audio signature.

SPEAKER
3
:
I'm waiting.

INCANTADA:
Who are you?

SPEAKER
3
:
For the sake of today's fun, I'm using the name Major Arcana. It's a joke, but don't feel bad if you don't get it. Now, my friends in Belgrade have need of some of your technology, Doctor …

Florence

Daria lay sprawled before the blonde's Gucci pumps. The peaked driver's cap lay on the floor, upside down. Daria's hair fanned out, obscuring her eyes, which were open. She was awake and listening to the conversation above her. She did not move.

The blonde calling herself Major Arcana turned to the elderly woman with the pebbled leather doctor's bag and three-footed cane. “My friends in Belgrade have need of some of your technology, Doctor.”

Dr. Incantada's eyes grew large, magnified by her thick lenses. She gripped her steel case in the hand not holding her cane. She looked pugnacious.

Major Arcana bent at the waist and picked up the communications bracelet Daria had stripped off her wrist. “I've got two friends with me, and you've got two friends with you. The big difference is: my friends have submachine guns. And I've asked my friends to shoot your friends in the kneecaps should you be reluctant to cooperate.”

The two engineers started to protest, but a glance from the woman's silvery blue eyes shut them up.

“May I have the case, please?” The major held out her hand. “Doctor?”

Gabriella Incantada paused a second, then handed over her doctor's bag.

The blonde took it from her. “Thank you. Now my sources say the command mechanism for this device is already in the hotel safe. And you have the combination?”

Incantada studied the younger woman. Jowls quivering, she recited the fourteen-digit alphanumeric code. Major Arcana didn't bother writing it down.

“Splendid! Dr. Incantada? Gentlemen? We are heading upstairs now. I have locked the front door and the telephones are disabled. I wish you to stay here for exactly twenty minutes. Can you do that? Twenty minutes. Then please feel free to holler all you wish.”

She turned to the stairs, and her two Serb soldiers backed up, machine pistols locked on the engineer, her men, and the unmoving form at her feet.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Mr. Acton grabbed Todd by the shoulder and hissed. “We have to do something!”

Todd turned on the emaciated man. “Ah. Sure. I mean: Yeah. But … I don't know what we can do about it. This is happening in real time!”

The representatives from the Pentagon stood back and watched the interplay.

Acton leaned in closer. Brevidge could smell Aqua Velva. “It's one thing to convince Incantada's buyers that our product is better. But we cannot have her product out there, competing against us. Especially in Eastern Europe! You heard that woman! She mentioned Belgrade! That's the Balkans!”

“Sure. I know.” Brevidge could see the two buyers watching it all. “But even if we tried to contact the Florence cops, I don't think we could stop this in time! It looks like Incantada's driver is already dead. Jesus, man, we gotta—”

“Think of something, Todd!”

The salesman's brain reeled. He turned again to study the screen. The mysterious blonde and her armed men were gone. Dr. Incantada's party stood, paralyzed, the woman driver lying on the floor.

Todd lifted his walkie. “Snow? Dude. You got any brilliant ideas, now'd be the time.”

*   *   *

In the control room, Bryan Snow adjusted his voice wand first, then his Buddy Holly frames. “You know? I think maybe I have an idea.”

*   *   *

Daria, her cheek against the carpet, watched the blonde and her soldiers hit the stairs.

She'd just had her ass kicked by a Barbie doll.

As soon as the opposition rounded the curved stairs, Daria sat up painfully. She hauled herself to her hands and knees. Dr. Gabriella Incantada and her engineers stood, stone-scared.

The engineer said, “Are you all right?”

Daria said, “No.”

“Those people. They took my module.”

Daria's ear was in flames and pain radiated from her skull, down her neck, to her back. Her vision blurred.

Think, bitch!
Daria cursed herself.
Get on your goddam feet, Gibron! Move Move Move!

She clamored clumsily to her feet. She almost toppled but managed to right herself.

Dr. Incantada said, “My module—”

“Is it dangerous?”

“I should think so,
signora
. There are three of them. They have guns.”

Daria screwed her eyes shut and ground her teeth together. When she opened her eyes, the room had stopped spinning. “No,” she hissed. “This module thing. Is it dangerous?”

The engineer shrugged her shoulders and her fleshy arms bobbed. “With the right technology. And the right knowledge. Yes.”

Daria said, “My backpack?”

The doctor pointed to the pile of boxes. One of the technicians had been carrying it since Daria had shrugged into the driver's jacket. Daria scooped it up, unzipped it, and withdrew the cutthroat razor of Spanish steel. She doffed the jacket, let it unfurl around her sandals. She slung the backpack over her bare shoulder. “Stay here. If Diego comes, do as he says.”

Gabriella Incantada said, “Where are you going? Are you just leaving us down here?”

Daria said, “Yes,” and headed for the stairs. “Stay here. You'll be safe.”

*   *   *

The major and the Serb soldiers sauntered confidently into the second-floor conference room of the Hotel Criterion. The room was simple, minimally adorned, the walls and ceiling and carpet a dull mushroom color. The room featured an array of audio and visual implementations designed for a state-of-the-art visual presentation. The room was outfitted with high-speed Wi-Fi and high-definition computer screens. The Criterion had become a favorite hotel for upper-level business executives, who wanted only the best for their presentations.

Major Arcana brushed aside a framed black-and-white photo of some Italianate architecture. Behind the frame was a wall safe.

She tapped in Gabriella Incantada's code. As she did, one of the soldiers moved to a wall and began pounding with the butt of his hand. Within seconds his thumping took on a hollow sound. He'd reached a hollow space behind the wallpaper.

The major reached into the safe and removed a device the size of an e-reader. She turned and set it down on a conference room table next to the maple-colored doctor's bag. She undid both buckled straps, on both sides of the handle, and opened the top of the bag. She removed a complicated electronic mechanism. She used a coaxial cable to connect the e-reader-sized device to the control circuits inside the attaché case.

She had retrieved her communication bracelet from the floor of the hotel lobby. She spoke into it now.

“We are go, this end.”

*   *   *

Daria couldn't believe how badly the confrontation in the lobby had gone. True, she had been the one to tell Diego that she was out of practice. That she hadn't faced a real foe since contracting the Pegasus-B super flu that last November outside Paris.
I'm not one hundred percent
, she had told him.

Then the cute-as-a-button blonde with the perky ponytail stomped her like a bug.

Daria hadn't even gotten in a single blow.

Her head ached.
Good, you bitch. I'm glad your head hurts
, she groused.
Had it coming.

At least she knew what she was up against now: No more surprises.

*   *   *

In the second-floor conference room, Major Arcana typed instructions on the keypad she'd removed from the stolen doctor's bag.

One of the Serb soldiers reversed his machine pistol and used the folding stock as a hatchet. He began hacking away the room's wallpaper, revealing a door-sized entry from the hotel conference room to the livery building beyond.

The other Serb guarded the conference room door. Nobody expected Dr. Incantada or her people to show any bravery, but there was still one other party checked into the hotel.

The guard at the door watched his partner gouge a door in the far wall.

“Pssst!”

The guard heard a beckoning voice from the hallway and turned back.

The black-haired woman in the brief lemon dress swung at him, as if to slug him in the chin. The Serb stepped back out of her reach. The blow didn't even land.

He grinned and raised his machine pistol.

Or
tried
to raise his machine pistol. His arms refused to obey his brain. He paused, still grinning, and felt the earth tilt a little.

He looked down at his hands, and at the SR-2 Veresk.

His shirtfront was drenched in blood. More blood poured down. Apparently from his throat. How odd.

His legs buckled.

He dropped his auto, but it never hit the carpet. The dark woman knelt and plucked it out of the air.

In the conference room, the second Serbian thug hadn't seen who had injured his cohort. He tried firing a prolonged blast blindly out the door. The bullets tore the holy hell out of the far wall and the industrial carpet in the hallway.

“It's Gibron!” the blonde said, fingers flying over the keyboard and the command module. She produced a high-speed, male-to-male USB cord and connected the Incantada device to the conference room's computer tower.

Daria fired from the corridor into the conference room. She fired blindly, but on single-shot. She could
ping
Major Arcana and the Serb for an hour, pinning them down, as Florentine police responded to the sound of gunfire. The tactical advantage to a standoff lay completely with Daria.

Wrong weapon
, the blonde said to herself. She savagely hit the last few keys on the keyboard, then spoke into her wrist cuff. “Transferring … now!”

*   *   *

In the control room in Sandpoint, Idaho, Bryan Snow heard a familiar voice coming from his earjack. He swallowed the shit-eating grin that tried to manifest itself. He hit a knuckle-buster combination of keys on his master control. A second later, both of his in-house pilots reacted as their monitors died.

In the Hotel Criterion conference room, Major Arcana stabbed the Enter button on the Incantada device.

*   *   *

In Florence, three hawks floated on the city's thermals, gracefully arcing over the southern half of the ancient city, the Arno and her bridges.