Bart and I—with our chosen lieutenants Paco and Sydney—talked out our tactics before putting the teams into the van. Or maybe “tactics” isn’t the right term for a battle plan that boils down to “drive through the fence, jump out, and blow drek up real good”. My (limited) experience with the Eighty-Eights told me not to expect much security at the temporary warehouse, and the scout reports back that up. (Unless—and here’s a nasty thought—Ranger leaked details of the raid, and now they’re waiting for us with everything they've got. That would sure as drek take me out, but it’d also cost him nine more valuable assets, including Bart. No, the cost would be just too high.) The goal’s a quick in-and-out—maximum impact, maximum shock value, minimum personnel exposure. And that means personal explosives.
That’s why everyone’s packing a half-dozen grenades. If we
do it right, we'll be back in the Bulldog and on the road again before the echoes have died away—and before whatever Eighty-Eights happen to be there know just what’s going down.
A new voice in my button transceiver—the driver. “We’re at King and Marginal.” I tap my earpiece, sending a beep of confirmation back to her. Out the corner of my eye I see Bart do the same thing. His eyes are still closed, but he’s definitely awake now.
Less than a minute. I feel the Bulldog start to accelerate. “Lock and load,” I tell my people—unnecessarily, probably, but I always love saying that. The inside of the van echoes with metallic snicks and clacks. I pull my H & K from its shoulder-holster, and let wire and weapon get reacquainted.
“Point one,” the driver says, and now I hear her voice both in my earpiece and through the van’s intercom. “Hang on, boys and girls.”
I brace myself as the Bulldog swerves hard to the left and accelerates again. A jolt and a crash of metal against the body-panels, and we’re through the gate. I’m almost flung out of my seat as the driver jams on the brakes and we skid to a stop. “Go!” I snap. The two side doors of the modified Bulldog fly open, and we pour out—Team A out the left side, Team B out the right.
The warehouse is straight ahead of me, about twenty meters away. The two windows I can see are dark, the only light coming from above the door that must lead to the office. Parked out in front is a flash new targa-top Westwind 2000. (Looks like members of the Eighty-Eights make more money than the Cutters.) The Westwind severely depreciates in value as Sydney pumps a grenade into it—crack-WHUMP—a friendly invitation for whoever’s in the warehouse to come out and play, I guess. I turn away from the flames, and wave Team A around the left side of the warehouse. Paco takes point, with the others following close behind him, and I trail along at the rear.
Just as we round the corner, a door bursts open and out pelt three armed figures. Paco and Jaz open up with their SMGs, and the targets basically disappear in clouds of blood and tissue. It’s over before the three Eighty-Eights can cap Off a single round, and before Doink even knows there’s a fight on. The sound of gunfire comes from around the front of the building, and I realize the triad’s sent forces out that way too. This is where it gets dicey as far as I’m concerned. Once the bullets start to fly, all Bart has to do is sit back and wait for the best time to take his shot at me. Again there’s that strong tingling between my shoulder blades.
The three deceased Eighty-Eights neglected to shut the door behind them, so Paco dive-rolls in, and I hear his SMG stuttering away inside. Jaz and the others follow him, and again I’m ass-end Charley.
This warehouse is a lot smaller than the Cutters’ Lake Meridian facility, and it’s nowhere near as claustrophobic— none of those high-stacked crates that turn the place into a labyrinth of walls and alleys. There’s still a drekload of cover, however, and the handful of small lights make the place about as bright as a moonlit city street. There aren’t any colors, and few details, but the light should be enough to spot movement.
Like that over there. I spin to the left and up comes my H & K. But before I can even bring the gun to bear, the running figure—another Eighty-Eight, presumably—gets chopped down by someone else. From somewhere to my right—the warehouse office where Team B was headed, I’d guess—there’s the distinctive ripping sound of a Uzi III on full-auto. A hostile, obviously—none of our guys were packing Uzis. Then the whole fragging place echoes with the brutal ba-ba-bam! of Bart’s auto-shotgun, and the Uzi doesn’t speak again.
The sound of that fragging shotgun on burst-fire brings back too many bad memories of my last visit to a warehouse, and in my mind’s eye I see little Piers getting blown out of all human shape. Way down deep in my heart of hearts (or maybe half a meter lower in my contracting scrotal sack) I know that good old Bart has one of those three-round bursts earmarked for me. That he’ll grease me— preferably from behind, so there’s no chance of me reacting—and then claim that the light was deceptive or that I wandered into his killing zone or some drek. Translation: Oops, better luck next reincarnation. Not particularly satisfying, from my point of view.
So the trick is to hunker down somewhere where I can see trouble coming and do something about it. I look around, look up . . . Ah, perfect.
Mounted on the wall near me is a ladder leading up (presumably) to the overhead catwalks. About ten meters off the ground, right next to the ladder, there’s a rusting metal light fixture bolted to the wall. Like the other lights dotted around the warehouse, it’s not bright enough to illuminate the floor well.
But it
is
bright enough to dazzle someone looking directly into it. And that’s all that matters.
Quickly, before I have time to think it through and get scared, I scurry over to the ladder and clamber up. For the first few moments I feel hideously exposed, but that’s just irrational fear talking. Then I’m ten meters up, right next to the metal housing of the light. I can feel its heat on my bare skin. I feel more exposed than ever, but I know that’s not the case at all. Anybody looking my way will see only the light. I turn around, hanging on with my left hand and settling the H & K in my right.
This is an incredible vantage point, I realize. With low piles of crates and other similar drek providing cover, I can still see over a lot of it. In the first few seconds I spot a couple of Eighty-Eights hiding from the marauding Cutters. I could cap them both if I wanted to, but I don’t. It’d only draw attention to me, which is the last thing I want. I can also see members of Team A—namely Paco and Doink— doing their sweep.
And there’s Bart. He’s come out of the office area, and he’s moving forward slowly near the wall. Hanging from its broad suspension harness, shock pad firmly against his right hip, the auto-shotgun is at the ready. Even mounted on a suspension harness, the AS'7 is big and bulky enough to make most people clumsy. Not Bart; he’s big and bulky himself, and strong enough to lug the killer weapon around like it weighed no more than a feather. I’ve got to take that into account, as well as the fact that he’s probably strong enough to ride out the recoil of multiple bursts. For all I know, he might have jiggered the gun so it’s capable of full autofire. Not at all a pleasant thought. I lose sight of him for a moment behind an abnormally high pile of crates, and my stomach twists with sudden fear. Maybe he knows where I am, and he’s moving in for a clean shot . . . But then the big brutal muzzle pokes out into the open again, followed by Bart himself, and I breathe a little easier.
Part of me wants to cap him right now. The wire tells me
I can put a burst right on the money, all five rounds impacting within a centimeter of his ugly ear before he even knows what’s happening. But then my years of drek-sucking cop training get in the way: lethal force only in response to direct threats and all that jazz. Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong about Bart wanting to grease me, and taking him down before I’m sure is just plain premeditated murder (yes, officer, I'll come quietly). Below, the bloated ork pivots slowly and his shotgun comes to bear on something. My eyes follow his intended line of fire.
It’s Paco. Continuing his sweep, the young ganger has just cleared a crate that’s marked as machine parts. I see his head move slightly and I know he picked up Bart in his peripheral vision. I also know he’s labeled the ork as “friendly,” and decided to ignore him. Bart moves the shotgun to follow, and I know what’s going to happen. The ork’s “mandate” isn’t to drop only me, but anyone who’s personally loyal to me as well.
“Paco, break!” I scream, and not a millisecond too soon. The younger ganger reacts like he’s chipped to the max, flings himself forward and down into the cover of some macroplast shipping cases.
The assault shotgun roars, the burst disintegrating the crate where Paco was standing an instant before. The ganger might have caught the periphery of the shot pattern, and almost certainly got hit by what was left of the crate, but odds are he lived through it. Not through any fault of Bart’s, of course.
I bring my H & K to bear, putting the sighting dot on the ork’s temple. “You’re out of here,” I say.
But before I can pull the trigger, he’s coming around, bringing the AS7 up into line. Faster than I’ve ever seen him move, faster than anyone has a
right
to move. He pulls the trigger and the big motherfragging gun roars again.
Too soon, an instant too soon. The light next to me, the metal housing, and a good chunk of the wall explode into shrapnel. Splinters of metal lash my bare hands and face. Instinctively I bring up my right hand—my gun hand—to shield my eyes, an instant too late to do any good. Then I have to bring my H & K back into line.
I’ve got enough time to make it good this time around. Bart had to swing the shotgun’s shock pad off his hip when he spun to take a shot at me, so he didn’t have the pad to absorb any of the recoil when he fired. Strong as he is, he’s not strong enough to stop an AS7 on burst-fire riding way the
frag up and off-line. And strong as he is, it’s not enough to
wrestle the gun back onto target before a five-round burst of nine-mil smashes his skull wide open.
“Scrag ’em all,” I mutter as I clamber down the ladder, trying to control the sudden shaking in my hands and the wrenching in my gut.
7
And to think I’d been concerned about how to deal with Ranger. Elementary, my dear Watson, and all that drek. I didn’t even have to lift a finger.
With Big Bad Bart’s brains blasted, I let the rest of Teams A and B geek the other Eighty-Eights and have fun with their grenades while Paco and I slipped outside for a quick discussion. It took all the jam I had to suppress my reaction—the shakes, the nausea, the sense of absolute fragging
wrongness
—that comes every time I’ve had to kill someone. (Every time? Well, to be honest, priyatel, that’s
both
times—including Bart.) Anyway, I was sure that showing such a reaction would probably diminish me in Paco’s eyes, something decidedly counterproductive at the moment. So I bit back on everything, shoving it into the old emotional gunnysack where my nightmares go looking for raw material.
Predictably, Paco wasn’t hyped to the max to learn that Ranger had put both him and me beyond salvage, and I didn’t even have to voice the idea that the war boss’ useful days were over. But Paco was also smart enough to realize that, satisfying though it might be, marching up to Ranger and putting a bullet in his gut wasn’t the best way to handle the matter. All I had to do was remind the younger ganger that Ranger always rode his big BMW Blitzen super-bike
everywhere, and that the war boss seemed sadly negligent
when it came to mechanical maintenance. A satanic grin spread across Paco’s face and he told me, “The gumbas a corpse. Count on it.”
The matter resolved itself nicely the next day. The explosive charge Paco wired into the Blitzen’s ignition was big enough to take care of the immediate problem, but small enough not to cause too much collateral damage. The concussion shook the Ravenna safe house and broke a few windows, with both Paco and I on hand to rush outside with the other shocked gangers and swear vengence against whatever rival outfit had done the dirty deed. Ranger was out of the way, and the last things that went through his mind were his cojones.
And that, of course, left a nice opening in the Cutters hierarchy. Can't have a gang without a war boss. Not in Seattle, and particularly not in 2054. Blake had to replace Ranger and he had to do it now. No, not now,
right
now. In an ideal world, I’d have gotten the nod, called up from the ranks to sit on the council of the high and mighty. Yeah, right. I can think of lots of words to describe the world, and “ideal” isn’t one of them.
Instead, Blake called in a marker from the boss of the Cutters’ Atlanta “chapter,” and within twenty-four hours of Ranger’s last ride, there was a new hoop in Ranger’s chair. Bubba, his nickname was—I drek you not; fragging
Bubba
—a red-necked Georgia cracker who also happened to be ork. (Considering the way a lot of good ol’ boys view the metaraces, it’s surprising Bubba managed to avoid lynching himself. Or is that too cynical?) To my eternal surprise, I found myself both liking and respecting the newcomer after talking to him for a while. Even though his accent made him sound like his IQ was in the room-temperature range—and yes, we’re talking Celsius here—he turned out to be smart as a whip, aggressive but willing to listen to people more familiar with the scoop going down in Seattle. I could almost get to like him.
Even though I didn’t get the war boss slot, there must be more of a turnover in the ranks than I thought. Or, at least, that’s the way I interpret it when I get called in to talk to big-boss Blake a couple of days after the explosion.