Hardwired (37 page)

Andre’s eyes, like gunsights because they were gunsights. A spring-loaded dart gun, snapping up into place on command, firing through the porthole pupil. Sarah reaches a hand to the dart, pulls it out, feels a tug in her flesh. The dart is slippery and squirts from her fingers, leaving a trace of something like oil on her fingertips. It went through the jacket, slipping through where a blunt-nosed bullet would be stopped cold. Less than a millimeter into her flesh, she suspects, but maybe enough.

Sarah raises her fingers to her nose, sniffs, smells a faint medicinal scent. Drugged, then. It didn’t penetrate very far, so maybe she didn’t get a full dose.

“Who
is
that?” An elderly patient, staring through thick glasses and stammering in outrage. Andre’s cybersnake is beating itself to death against the sound-deadening carpet. Sarah is already moving, running down a pastel corridor to Daud’s room.

He’s exercising, lying back on his bed while he works with the weights, letting Mslope watch his muscles move under the pale skin. “Daud,” Sarah breathes, skidding through the door. Mslope is rising from his seat, his eyes wide with alarm. “Out,” Sarah says, and she can see pain forming in the man’s eyes, the knowledge that his moment is over.

She pays him no attention. She runs to Daud, seeing the alarm entering his face. He lets the weights go and there is a crash.

“Things have gone wrong. They tried to kidnap me.” She presses her cheek to Daud’s, whispering in his ear. “If I get away, call me at the same number as last time. Randolph Scott, Santa Fe. Don’t call from here; this phone is not secure. ”

“Sarah.” His eyes are wide with fear. “I thought things were set. I thought––” She takes his head in her hands and kisses him, a fierce kiss that maybe he’ll remember through what is going to come.

“I love you,” she says, and is running again. Abandoning him as he cries her name again, as he tries to catch her clothing with a hand. Sarah tries to blot out his voice. She can feel the first delicate touch of whatever drug was on the needle, something wrong with her nerves, the feathery pat of a kitten that has not yet unsheathed its claws.

She’s mapped out the hospital and knows where to go. Down the green pastel corridor, left at the pink pastel intersection. Daud’s last cry is ringing in her ears. Her shin aches with each step. She reaches a steel door, takes a last breath of cold air, and, keeping her silhouette low, rolls out into the furnace of afternoon.

A truck turbine dopplers past on the limited expressway. Her brain whirls as she staggers to her feet and runs clumsily for the truck stop behind the hospital. If she can get across the expressway, she’ll be able to lose herself in the rows of residential flats behind. The drug has just dug in with its claws and each steps seems to wade through gelatin.

SARAH THIS IS CUNNINGHAM...SARAH YOU CANT GET AWAY

Suddenly there are amber lights above her vision. Someone’s broadcasting to her on her optical-tagged radio, her crystal translating the spoken words into moving print. She doesn’t have the control for it and can’t turn it off. “Go the fuck away,” she mumbles.

ALL WE WANT IS COOPERATION SARAH

She snorts her disbelief. “Go away. You’re not even Cunningham I bet.” A truck turbine begins to whine by the automated fuel pump, its tone rising. Sarah shakes sweat from her eyes and hops a low cinderblock fence, catches a foot, almost falls. Then something smashes her between the shoulder blades and she goes down.

Concrete bites her breasts, her cheek. She has lost her breath and can’t find it. Her hands flail out, scrabble at the concrete. She realizes she’s just been shot. Someone behind at the hospital, with marksman’s crystal and a pistol.

STAY WHERE YOU ARE SARAH WE WILL FIND YOU WE ONLY WANT TO HELP

“Bullshit,” she says wearily. She finds that she can’t stand, that she can only crawl. She feels the touch of grit against her palms. She creeps, slithers, rolls. Feels her shoulders tensing for the next shot.

It’s only then that she realizes that it’s lucky she couldn’t stand up. She’s been hidden from them behind the cinderblock wall. But she knows they’re sprinting for her, that the two assassins in their summer suits will be appearing above the wall shortly.

Turbines are shrieking within an inch of her skull. Tires crunch gravel and something comes between her and the sun. A robot tractor-trailer rig, backing slowly away from the automated pumps. The assassins are on the other side of it, she realizes, and she rolls to her feet, falls to one knee, staggers up again. As the truck cab passes her, still in reverse, she seizes the safety bar and steps up onto the ladder leading to the observation cab.

The turbine whimpers. Gears clatter. The truck begins to lurch forward, almost throwing Sarah off. She hugs the safety bar, then moves a foot up on the ladder. Moves a second foot. Seizes the emergency door latch and pulls on it. There is the sound of a warning buzzer, very loud in Sarah’s ears.

“This is an unauthorized entry,” a voice recites. “Trespassers are subject to penalty upon discovery.”

GIVE IT UP SARAH...WE DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU

“Entrance may not be made safely when the tractor is in motion. This is an unauthorized entry. Trespassers are subject to penalty upon discovery.”

JUST LIE DOWN WHERE YOU ARE WE WILL FIND YOU

“Shut up.” The truck lurches through another gear change. Pavement is moving by at a faster rate. Sarah’s vision contracts, her head swimming with the drug. Her arms tense on the safety bar, pulling her up. Pain cries through her arms, her spine. She kicks out and hauls herself blindly into the cab, draws a breath, reaches behind her to pull the cab door shut. She can hear the solid chunk of electromagnets drawing shut a pair of metal bolts. The turbine howl is muffled.

“This is an unauthorized entry. You have been secured in the cabin until the tractor reaches its destination, where you will be turned over to the authorities. If this is a genuine emergency, you may contact the police on the red telephone located on the dashboard.”

The message repeats itself. Sarah gives herself over to pain. She can feel blood trailing warmly down her neck. She coughs phlegm from her throat, spikes of pain driving into her back, where the shot blunted itself on her armored jacket.

WE SAW YOU GETTING INTO THE TRUCK WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU

Sarah fumbles for her inhaler, finds it, triggers another round of hardfire. Her heart goes mad, trying to pound its way out of her chest, but pain and the new round of stimulant fights whatever drug was on Andre’s needle and helps to clear her head.

THAT TRUCK IS A ONE-WAY RIDE TO ORLANDO...ORLANDO IS OUR TOWN SARAH

Sarah’s vision clears slowly. She’s lying across a pair of bucket seats in front of an instrument board filled with green glowing lights. The observation cab is where safety inspectors ride, or where emergency operators work the truck if the tractor’s crystal brain isn’t working. There are no controls as such–– the truck’s supposed to be worked through the face. Sarah looks across the panel and under the seats, fails to find a headset. The truck’s owners apparently don’t want stowaways running off with their truck. Not that she knows how to drive a turbine-tractor anyway.

She settles herself into one of the seats and looks out the cab windows, seeing the blurring posts of the limited highway, the shining, stubby radio beacons that control the robot traffic. The tires whine over concrete. A hovercraft, its props throbbing, soars by at 200 miles per hour in the fast lane. She swipes at the blood running down her neck. Presses a button and feels a blast of hot air that soon turns cold. Her head is almost clear. Time to figure a way out of this. She brushes sweat from her eyes and looks at the instrument panel.

Green gauges glow coldly. The red phone on the instrument panel beckons her. She pulls the phone from its cradle and wonders who she wants to talk to.

The Hetman, she decides. Maybe he can arrange for some of his cops to pick her up on the way. He won’t have got any of the recordings yet, and she can try to figure a way to explain those later.

She dials the only number she has, finds it’s been disconnected in the last twenty-four hours, the normal shifting of interface addresses to prevent monitoring. She calls the Gold Coast Maximum Law number and starts as the telephone tells her that her call is not coming from an authorized account.

SARAH WE ARE JUST BEHIND YOU WE ARE COMING UP

She slams the phone down, looks wildly in the rearview mirrors. Sees only a hovercraft coming up on the left. “Fuck you, Cunningham, ” she mutters, and reaches for the phone again.

WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO BLOW YOUR DOOR LOOK FOR COVER SARAH

She presses Reno’s number and scans the rearview mirrors again. Adrenaline flows through her blood. She snaps upright, represses an urge to bounce the phone off the windscreen. There’s a long black car coming up on the right, racing along the expressway’s shoulder. It’s a car she recognizes.

The voice on the phone bubbles in her ear. “This is Reno.”

Sarah’s voice sounds like the shriek of a cornered animal. She can scarcely recognize it as her own. “Reno, this is Sarah! I’m trapped! They’ve killed my guard and now they’re after me!”

The car is coming up fast on the edge of the expressway. The road is limited to robot traffic, and cars are forbidden here because the trucks and hovercraft can’t see them, but the car should be safe enough on the shoulder. Sarah sees a flash of color near the car.

Reno’s voice doesn’t change expression. “Sarah, where are you?”

Sarah tries to calm her runaway heart, takes a deliberate breath. “I’m in a robot truck on the limited expressway, moving from Tampa to Orlando. They’re following in a car.” Sarah can see the blur of a dark face in the mirror, pigtails streaming with yellow ribbon. “They’re just behind me, Reno!” Her voice cracks on the dead man’s name. She bounces in her seat, her fist pounding the instrument panel. Rage boils in her. “I’m locked in the truck! I can’t get out! Call the Hetman. Have him send his people out.”

SARAH WE ARE GOING TO BLOW THE DOOR ON YOUR RIGHT...GET IN THE LEFT SEAT AND COVER UP...WE DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU

“What’s the truck’s registration number? It should be in the cab somewhere.” Reno’s voice patterns over the letters of Cunningham’s message that are rolling past Sarah’s expanded vision. She can see one of the doors on the black car opening, the girl in the patterned blouse leaning out against the blast of wind, something in her hand.

Sarah wants to shriek. “Jesus, Reno, what does it matter? They’re just behind. Get Michael now!”

“The registration number. I need it to find you. Tell me.”

WE JUST WANT TO TALK TO YOU...GET IN THE LEFT SEAT AND COVER UP

“Oh, fuck, Reno. The registration. All right.” Droplets of her sweat and blood pattern the instruments as Sarah searches desperately for a number. She finds a metal plate, reads the contents into the phone. The black car fills the lower half of the mirror. She can see the whites of the dark girl’s eyes, the bright, sunny smile, the same smile of innocent pleasure she wore when she slapped the charge on the guard’s window. Sarah can see someone’s thick wrist, holding her by the belt as she leans out with the bomb in one hand, the other hand clawed to reach for the safety bar.

“Where are they now, Sarah?” Reno says. The calm in his voice drives her to frenzy.

“They’re right beside me! On the right! Reno help me!” She screams the last words, seeing only a blur in the mirror now, white smile, black metal, windows reflecting the blue of Daud’s altered eyes...Then there is a loud overwhelming electronic moan, filling the cab from the truck’s speakers, and she shrieks in outrage and fear and drops the phone, huddling in the left seat, scrabbling for her collar to pull it up over her head, wondering if the truck somehow senses the oncoming violence of its impending violation.

The electronic moan fades. Lights on the instrument panel flick from green to red. There is a lurch that throws Sarah against the door, and the amber lights above her vision are screaming silent panic: OH GOD LOOK OUT FOR THE...And then Sarah feels the kiss of metal, only the lightest brush, and she looks in the mirror to see a pinwheeling form, bright print blouse and yellow hair ribbons, flying like the corn doll before mad Ivan’s foot, and then there’s a wheeling car that snaps a radio post like a toothpick and flies off the embankment. An impact, a silent gush of flame in the ever-receding distance. The amber lights, the written version of an assassin’s last cry, finish their track across Sarah’s vision.

Magnetic bolts thud open in the doorframes.

“I’ve taken command of your truck, Sarah,” says Reno’s voice, his tone faint but clear from the dropped phone spinning on the metal floor. “I’ll be calling the Gold Coast people to meet you at an underpass. I’ll park the truck there. The laws will find it.”

Sarah’s heart hammers in cold emptiness, the panic still bottled in her throat, lost without its reason for existence. She scrabbles for the phone. “Reno,” she calls. “Reno, thank you.”

“I’m glad to have something to do, Sarah.”

Sarah’s hands tremble with adrenaline shock. A blinding pain is forming behind her eyes.

“You’ve got to wipe your fingerprints off the truck, Sarah,” Reno says. White noise flitters in the background of his voice. “Do that now, and then sit back and don’t touch anything.”

“Just let me catch my breath.” She leans back and gulps in the cool air. Her nerves flash hot and cold.

“Reno,” she says. “I’ve got to talk to the Hetman. Tempel is going to send him a recording. They had my voice from the job I did for them, and...The recordings are doctored. They said they’d send them to Michael if I didn’t cooperate.”

“I’ll connect you,” Reno answers.

Dimly, from far away, Sarah hears the sound of a phone ringing.

Chapter Eighteen

The
Pony Express
waits under camouflage nets a quarter mile behind the Dodger’s place, surrounded by a blizzard of security and passive electronic countermeasures. Warren, wearing a headset, his cap stuffed in a back pocket, is feeding a program into the crystal heart of a radar-guided missile, making sure the missile knows its job. Cowboy stands under a ponderosa nearby and listens to the breeze high up in the trees. Here on the ground the air is still. Tension without a name crouches in his body, touching his muscles and mind, letting him know of its presence.