The Bridge Chronicles Trilogy (37 page)

Today would be her first opportunity to really show off what the eyes could do. She activated the telescopic feature, zooming her vision to 20x magnification. The change in perspective was dizzying at first, but she steadied herself quickly. The smoke caused a few problems, and she had to hold her head as still as possible to keep the dizziness from returning. She could see clearly past the front lines of police. A confused scene played out before her eyes.

There were certainly
Los Magos
involved. She could see at least six of them huddled in three clumps behind makeshift cover on the north side of the street. Their ragged line seemed to be positioned to protect them from both the police lines of fire as well as the opposite side of the street. Eight other gang members had taken up positions on the south side, some taking potshots at the police line. Gina recognized the gang signs of both sides immediately. “It’s not just
Magos
down there,” she said. “I can spot
Diablos
too.”

“How do you see that?” Graves asked.

“I see you’re putting your enhancements to good use, Officer Danton,” Pollock replied with smarmy satisfaction. “Glad to know the department’s money is well-spent.” The last statement dripped with sarcastic reproach, and Danton heard the L.T. grunt disapprovingly.

“You got cybered?” Gina had not told Graves about her surgery. After all, it was her goddamn business, not his. “I couldn’t even tell.”

“Your anonymous tip didn’t tell you this was a turf fight?” Danton asked.

“No. Is that a problem?”

“Only if you care who wins. Shit.”

“What?”

Gina had finally assessed the terrain.
Magos
was boxed in on the north side of the street, but the south side wasn’t quite closed off. A parking lot ran in front of the warehouse that closed the street to the east and off towards East 6
^th
Street. One look at the sign on the building the parking lot serviced gave her a cold chill. “They aren’t all boxed in. That building on the south side there. That’s the Gun Club.”

“Fuck,” the L.T. sighed.

“What’s the Gun Club?”

Graves explained. “Used to be just that, a gun club. Only CLED sold that land and building to the Way of the Gun Church. You know, the crazy fuckers who believe that god is revealed in the muzzle flash of holy firearm justice?”

Gina aimed a crooked grin at Graves. “What? I like guns. I read their pamphlet.”

“We’re lucky those bastards haven’t aimed an RPG at the firefight in their backyard,” Danton said. “And if I’m not mistaken, the Chronosoft LGL gives special religious dispensation to churches. We can’t step foot in that parking lot without permission.”

L.T. grumbled. “Those gun crazy fuckheads ain’t giving us permission. They’re probably locking and loading now to take care of it themselves.”

Pollock took a hurried glance at his watch, a sparkling jewel-crusted gold timepiece that only the most well heeled corporate showoffs wore these days. “L.T. we got about five minutes to shut this situation down, as quietly as possible.”

“Why five minutes?”

He pointed over Danton’s shoulder at the gathering news vans and on-foot vloggers gathering behind the cordon. “Them. This has gotten way too loud. If regular CLED doesn’t stop it in five, I’ve been informed that Special gets the job. They’ve already been dispatched, and their ETA is five minutes.”

L.T. ran off a long string of curses that would have caused a sailor to blush.

Danton’s confusion was apparent. “What’s Special?”

“You don’t want to find out,” L.T. growled. “We got five minutes. Danton, do your magic eyes see any good tactical solution?”

She focused her eyes down the dead-end street again, noticing the placement of several snipers already in the best vantage points. Some form of gas grenade could do the trick, maybe tear gas or some Somnobombs™ to soften up them up before sending in a rush. The holographic map had told her that the warehouse had no exits out onto Mateo Street to the east. Other than an air drop onto the roof of LA Valley Shipping, a frontal assault was the only option. “Nothing good, L.T. We got any gas on hand?”

L.T. looked to his assistant, Tom Waters. “Just plain smoke. It does have the chaff in it, but it won’t knock anyone out.”

Pollock looked from Danton to Graves to Waters to L.T. for an answer. “Well? Is it doable?”

L.T. nodded grimly. “It’s doable, but there’s going to be a lot of casualties on both sides. We got enough vests?”

Waters nodded. “A vest for every officer.”

“At least the company is good for something,” L.T. grumbled. “Suit ‘em up.”

Pollock’s pocket buzzed. He retrieved one of the prettiest personal comms Gina had seen and began speaking rapidly into it. Danton began to check her own vest, securing the straps before checking on her pistol and shotgun. “You have got to be kidding me. We talked about this. Are they even ready? You told me I had five minutes. NOW? Where?” His head snapped up, his eyes squinting against the dazzling sun. “I see them.”

Pollock snapped the comm closed. “Forget about it, L.T.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your time is already up. They want this to be Special Squad’s beta test. They’re already here.” He pointed at the sky.

Danton searched the air in the direction Pollock had pointed. What had been a small speck against the blue sky became a growing black mark, then a bug-shaped blob. Finally, she heard the helicopter’s rotors, but rather than the throbbing roar she expected, she heard only a whispery pulse, almost at the edge of hearing. The chopper’s body was big enough to carry ten men and mean-looking autocannons hung from either side. Magnifying her vision, she zeroed in on the cargo space. Three unbelievably large men in black uniforms stood waiting in the doorway. Their startling size paled beside their appearance. One had no face, his head covered by a mirrored metallic mask of some form. The second seemed a man in name only; both arms were glittery metal and the shorts he wore revealed a pair of cybernetic legs as well. Mirrored goggles wrapping around his head gave the third man a disconcerting visage, as did the book-sized mini-missile launchers sprouting from his shoulders.

“What the fuck is that?” Danton hissed.

“That, Officer Danton, is Special Squad.”

Her breath caught in her throat as all three men stepped from the chopper door, free-falling forty feet towards the flat warehouse roof.

Danton breathlessly watched the cybernetic freakshows plummet to what she assumed would be a painful death. “Oh my god, they jumped,” she hissed. But instead of seeing a gruesome display of the power of gravity, her eyes grew wide when the first made violent contact with the roof. A great cloud of dust flew up around the one with the shoulder launchers, who she nicknamed Goggles, as he landed on his feet, his body shuddering with the harmless impact. The silver-armed monstrosity she called Wall for his sheer size. He landed in a dusty roll, and sprang to a kneeling position, holding a pistol-shaped gun that was so massive its ammo must be as long as her finger. The faceless one, Mask, did not come off as lucky as his partners; while he landed on he landehis feet, whatever gear he had loaded himself with was too much for the weathered roof. Like a butcher’s knife sinking into a block of warm cheese, he exploded through the roof and disappeared into the darkened warehouse interior. “Shit, one of them went through the roof. How the fuck did they survive that jump?”

“Special Squad has been seriously upgraded,” Pollock announced proudly, “but you didn’t hear that from me.”

“Those aren’t upgrades, those are full body conversions. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Technically, you shouldn’t be seeing it now, Officer Danton, but somebody up the chain wanted a field test.”

“So what, we just stand around holding our dicks?” L.T. grumbled.

Pollock chided the Lieutenant like a cross schoolteacher. “ Lieutenant, that sort of sexually insensitive talk is not appropriate workplace banter. What if a reporter heard you just now? Officer Danton could sue you for sexual harassment and the company would have no choice but to settle.”

Danton hand-waved the talk and strode closer to the warehouse, trying to get a better look at the action. Pollock continued speaking to L.T., giving orders that she knew would rankle the grizzled cop. “Your men need to get ready to do cleanup duty. This should be over in minutes.”

She ignored the PR flack’s instructions fixing her gaze on the action. Wall had moved to the edge of the warehouse roof, carefully taking aim with the cannon in his right hand. Even from so great a distance, Danton could hear the gun’s shot as soon as she saw it. Glass shattered from windows a block up from Wall. Something with that much concussive force should have knocked him twenty feet the other way, but his shiny silver arm barely shuddered from the back-blast. The gun’s effects were similarly concussive. The target was a car that three
Magos
crouched behind. Instead of bullets, the gun must have fired some form of grenade, like a flashbang without the flash. The car rolled over onto the
Magos
and past them, knocking the whole group down and taking a chunk of the pavement underneath with them, but without any sort of incendiary effect. It was almost like a sonic wave had sent the car tumbling.

Goggles stepped to the edge of the roof next, his shoulder launchers roaring to life. Six mini-missiles shot from the launcher leaving tiny trails of smoke behind. They impacted the area around the
Diablos
on the south side of the street, sending orange gouts of flame and smoke into the air. Body parts flew from the area, and Danton followed the dizzying arc of a severed arm with sick fascination. Within seconds, most of the opposition outside the warehouse had been neutralized by these cybernetic mysteries. Another shot from Wall’s hand cannon blasted a hole in the wall of the warehouse on the north side of the street, sending
Magos
soldiers scattering towards the police cordon.

A fourth party entered the fray at that moment, much to their eventual regret. The Gun Club’s members had finally had enough of the firefight on their front doorstep and retaliated, hosing the front of the warehouse, the street and the roof down with of down small arms fire. Goggles ducked behind the lip of the roof for cover, but Wall stood tall for it, protecting the fleshy bits of his face with his metallic left arm. With his right, Wall aimed the hand cannon wildly, letting loose another cacophonous blast that bored a hole through the Gun Club’s wall, taking at least three unlucky members of the congregation with it. Wall screamed soundless obscenities down at the congregation, a primal scream of triumph that proved short-lived.

Someone at the Gun Club had an ancient RPG, the kind she remembered seeing in Beirut, Lebanon on the news as a young child when her dad would rail against the “goddamned ragheads.” A huge burst of smoke puffed from the hole Wall’s cannon had created, followed by the cone-shaped rocket straining towards the heavens on a tail of exhaust. The rocket struck Wall full in the chest, enveloping him in orange fire. Somehow the man stayed on his feet, his torso straining backwards with the force of the explosion until he was almost bent over backwards. As the mist around the cybercop began to clear, the bile rose in Danton’s throat. Somehow he had survived the direct hit. The skin of his face had practically melted in most places, little bits of flesh still hanging on to the red ruin of muscles that clung to his skeleton. What should have been the bones showed through the meat, and Danton finally understood why he’d remained standing. Rather than bone, it appeared the man’s skeleton was covered in metal, either as a protective coating or a full replacement. The external parts of him that were man were blackened and burned, but the core remained stable. His metallic skeletal grin, devoid of lips or flesh, glowered back at his assailant, who disappeared in a red mist of sonic force.

Someone came stumbling out of the loading dock at that moment, limping to the cab of the truck parked in the bay and climbing in. It took Danton a moment to recognize the bloodied face of Goyo Cardenas, one of the longest-standing
Magos
Shotcallers. It had been a long time since he’d been spotted in public, but his name had floated around the precincts since Danton’s days as a beat cop in LAPD. Slamming the cab door shut, Goyo started the truck and threw it into gear. As the truck lurched into motion, a crazed smile split the middle-aged gangster’s face. Within seconds, he had gotten the truck past both lines of gangsters and was steaming toward the police cordon.

A blurred figure leapt from the edge of the loading dock Goyo had vacated, flying into the air in a lazy arc that ended on the roof of the truck’s cargo area. Mask had reappeared, his expressionless silver face gleaming in the sunlight. Crescent-shaped blades protruded from both forearms, their razor-sharp points digging into the truck’s roof as he climbed towards the cab. As he reached the cab, he slammed his left blade into the cab’s roof, the blade emerging directly in front of the startled Goyo. The Shotcaller’s head snapped upwards to look at the roof just as Mask drove his other blade into the roof, striking Goyo right in the forehead. The dying man’s foot must have slammed into the gas pedal, the truck bursting forward and twisting into the red brick wall of a warehouse on the north side of the street. As the truck slammed into the wall and bounced off, rolling onto the driver’s side, Mask took an acrobatic leap, cut two flips and landed on his feet. His feet barely touched the pavement before he leapt back towards the warehouse seeking fresh targets.