The Hammer Falls Page 18

  The weariness of running gnawed at him. Trying to shrug off the weight, he got up and paced, trying to think of ways to go on the offensive, to free Lilly, to put Yvgeny Mogilevich’s head next to his son’s.

  Bunny came from her compartment. “The news is calling it a corporate skirmish. Law enforcement is staying out of it,” she said.

  “Peachy,” Horace said.

  “I had Jimmy do some digging.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I ran the numbers on that drone. It’s a security model, the kind that patrol factory campuses in sketchy areas, registered to InVista Corporation.”

  “Never heard of InVista.”

  “Me neither, so I sent a bot to sniff out the paper trail. Turns out InVista has a factory here in Buffalo. The paperwork says they make molded plastic and ceramics for the International Hockey League. Helmets, armor, spiked gauntlets and such.” A sense of intrigue and satisfaction crept into her voice. “The thing is,” she said, “they’ve never actually had any injection molding or 3-D fabrication equipment delivered to the site. Nothing to make anything. I’ve checked the neighborhood surveillance cams, at least the ones that are working. Nuking the entire zone would be an improvement.”

  Horace leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Decrepit industrial zones like that peppered every city in North America, a deep, spreading rot, like necrotic tissue that could not be excised.

  Bunny said, “The registration for the action of the drone tonight was filed legally. It was a ‘preemptive strike to assert corporate rights.’ InVista filed the registration about fifteen minutes after your appearance began. You were all over the net.” She swallowed hard and teared up for a moment. “All of the guys were.”

  “So is there any doubt InVista is a front company for the Russian mob?” Horace said.

  “You’re pretty smart for a palooka.”

  “And you’re pretty ballsy for a dame. Is anyone really surprised that some company no one has heard of is a fake? We’ve uncovered a paper company doing bad deeds. So what?”

  “Those drones aren’t cheap. Anyone with that kind of money to burn has high stakes on the line if they’re exposed.”

  “But how do we prove it? Since the corps cover the cops’ payroll, who would we tell if we could prove it?”

  “Still working on that.”

  He looked her in the eye. “You’re amazing.”

  She blushed. “Child’s play. I used to do stuff like this in my sleep.”

  Then it came to him. “I’ll tell you how we prove it.”

  Horace asked the attending nurse in the Emergency Room kiosk how Trask and the injured fighters were doing.

  “We’re assessing them all now,” the nurse said. “Laser wounds are a nasty business. They’re worse than knife wounds. They boil the water in the surrounding tissues, which causes them to expand and rip apart. I didn’t think pit fighters used lasers.”

  “We got caught in some corporate crossfire.”

  The nurse grimaced and shook his head. “They kept that kind of thing out of this city for a long time. I guess it had to happen eventually. They’re worse than scavenger gangs.” With a glance at the ruler-straight blackened furrow across Horace’s cheek and the bloody bandage around his forearm, the nurse said, “Come on back and we’ll patch you up.”

  “I can’t pay you.”

  “Screw the rules,” the nurse said. “Come on.”

  Horace went.

  After the nurse disinfected his wounds and sealed them with synth-skin, Horace relaxed in the waiting room with a cup of beautifully awful vending machine coffee and thought about his plan. He molded it into a number of different shapes and tried to look at it from different angles.

  Then his netlink chimed. Lilly’s face appeared on the screen. He stared at it for a moment, a shudder of mixed dread and hope shooting like an explosion of fireworks mixed with artillery. Another chime. He thumbed the biometric scanner and answered.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello? Hammer?” It was Lilly’s voice.

  His heart kicked his sternum and his knees turned to raw steak. “Is it really you?”

  “Yeah, who else would it be?”

  Relief like the touch of warm breath and jasmine perfume flooded over him. His voice caught.

  “You okay, Hammer? You sound funny.”

  Was it possible she had no idea about what was going on? “Never mind that. Is everything okay there?”

  “Yeah, I did what you said, took the kids on a road trip. We’re—”

  “Don’t tell me where you are! Your phone is probably tapped!”

  “What!”

  “How’s Jimmy?”

  “I have to take him back to the hospital next week for another treatment. You’re scaring the shit out of me! What’s going on?”

  “There are some very, very bad people who are very, very pissed at me. And I hate to tell you this, I feel so awful about it, but they’re going after my friends.”

  “How bad are we talking?”

  “The worst.”

  For several long moments, all he could hear was her breathing. When she finally spoke, her voice was hard. “The next time I see you, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you, you hear me? A stiletto heel to the sack!”

  “I’m sorry, darlin’. I’m gonna make this go away, but until then you got to lay low.”

  “I’ve had stalkers before. I can take care of myself. Have you gone to the police?”

  “This is bigger than the police.”

  “Feds?”

  “Bigger than them, too.”

  Another long pause, then a taut sentence: “Why did you wait so long to warn me?”

  “They were tracking my netlink. And, well, I’ve been in the hospital myself. Wasn’t exactly conscious for a couple of days.”

  “Hospital!”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about that now.”

  “How can you expect me to talk to you, but you won’t tell me anything?”

  “I...you’re right. But I can’t tell you over the phone. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. You’ll know everything that you want to know, I promise. Deal?”

  There was no reply.

  “Lilly? Hello?”

  Silence.

  He tried to call her back. The netlink beeped that the call had been disconnected.

  Tina walked up and sat down beside him, hugging her elbows.

  “This is not a good time,” he said.

  “It never is. Bunny told me about your plan.”

  “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Fuck you, Gilgamesh. You need somebody to watch your back. Besides, your infiltration skills rival those of a drunken water buffalo. I’m coming with you.”

  “I can’t let you.”

  “Look, I lived on the street for two years after my dad died. I didn’t have to, he left me a little money. I wanted to. I looked at it like the capstone project of my training. I was hungry a lot, I stank, but I learned a few things. There used to be these samurai called ronin. It means ‘wave man,’ somebody tossed on the waves of life. They were warriors without masters, cast outside the bounds of society, bandits mostly, but not always. Not always.” She took a deep breath, and her face hardened.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She sighed. “A bunch of romantic bullshit. When are you going?”

  “How about now? One in the morning is the perfect time for sneaking around.”

  “You going to wear that?” she said. “You look like you’re on fire. At least you’re not glowing anymore.”

  “All my other clothes went boom.”

  “Then you’re staying in the getaway bus, Geezer.”

  “Getaway bus. So much for any plans for stealth.”

  “That thing’s a tank. Bunny says the only eyes in that neighborhood are surveillance cams. We’ll park a few blocks away.”

  “You guys have done this before?” he said.

  CHAPTER NINETE
EN

  The dark streets of the decrepit industrial park gave refuge to a darker, box-like bulk that moved with precision and relative silence. The air smelled of earth poisoned by rancid petroleum and caustic chemicals with an undercurrent of industrial lubricants and solvents. Breathing the air for any length of time would give anyone a headache.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor near Bunny, Tina said, “Running dark is a little creepy.”

  “Only human eyes need lights,” Bunny said.

  Horace had covered his armor with a black, hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, purchased at a local all-night discount store. He no longer looked like he was on fire, but the seams of the sweat gear were stretched almost to ripping. At least now he didn’t feel utterly exposed. With a vibro-axe in his hand salvaged from Trask’s storage compartment, he felt almost at home. With a black silk scarf covering his face, his disguise was complete.

  “You look like a Viking cosplaying a ninja,” Tina said. She had attired herself in the same sort of black clothing, face and hair obscured by a bandanna and hood, soft rubber-soled shoes instead of her jackboots.

  Bunny said, “I’ll monitor the net chatter. Anyone showing up here at this time of night might bring some security, so get your butts moving and don’t dawdle. After your little shopping trip, it’ll be dawn in two hours.”

  They set their netlinks to intercom mode and plugged in earbuds so they could talk to each other.

  With the axe in his hand, Horace stepped out into the chill autumn night. The jagged hulks of abandoned factories and half-empty warehouses were black silhouettes against the sky’s glowing haze of city lights. Only directly above were a smattering of stars visible. Dark, empty streets and crumbled pavement stretched away in all four directions. An occasional streetlight flickered beside a surveillance mast with a camera mounted atop it, faint pools of luminescence swallowed by shadow.

  Tina stepped out beside him and set off at a brisk trot in the direction of the InVista factory.

  Horace trotted after her, feeling like a lumbering elephant behind a gazelle. As they went, he went over the map of the place again in his head. The main building was two hundred meters long, eighty meters wide. A chain link fence with one front gate, minded by a guard shack. A sprawling parking lot for employees, a holdover from the days when factory workers could afford cars. A massive central building with walls of steel and concrete, a few small windows near the roof.

  The streets were little more than paved trenches between fences of chain-link, devoid of anything to mask their approach. There were no sidewalks, no cover for them to cling to. Gang symbols decorated great swaths of the pavement, which told him the security bill was not paid with any regularity in these parts. His heartbeat slowed a bit. This place was as silent as an empty desert, bereft of traffic noise or commerce, except for the wind. In the distance, one unknown factory blazed with third-shift activity, but this was not their destination.

  Horace and Tina approached the InVista factory from the rear entrance near the loading docks. Fresh, shiny razor wire topped the rusty, chain-link fence surrounding the factory campus.

  Tina whispered into her netlink, “Any sign of motion detectors or heat sensors?”

  Bunny answered, “Nothing like that in any of the data logs. Of course I’m looking at three-year-old records. It was all I could get my hands on. But I’m keeping a close eye on the alert feeds.”

  Tina produced a bolt-cutter, which Horace used to make quick work of the rusty padlock on the chain. From where they stood, two surveillance masts were visible.

  “There are two surveillance masts inside the fence,” Tina said. “Are they active?”

  If they were, Horace and Tina might already have been detected.

  “They are,” Bunny said, “but there’s no security provider on record.”

  “What’s that mean?” Horace said.

  “It means,” Bunny said, “that they haven’t kept up on their security bill, or they have a security force on staff.”

  The ambient glow of the city lights painted the intruders black against the pale, crumbling concrete as they ran for the loading docks. A single light fixture provided the only illumination under the eaves covering the concrete docks, a meager splash of flickering grayness. More gang signs slathered the massive, corrugated garage doors. Tina pointed to the single gray fire door, just at the edge of the light.

  Smudges of shadow clung like tar to the earth and frustrated him. In his mind, weaponized defense turrets, security bots, and guards with guns lurked in every pool of darkness.

  “Places like this always have an alarm system,” Tina whispered.

  “Odds are good,” Bunny said into their ears.

  Tina peered up the wall at the windows five meters up. “Think you can boost me up there, Aging Hercules?”

  “What do you weigh? Fifty kilos?” Horace said.

  “Fifty-one.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You going to catch me if you miss?”

  “I guess we’ll see.

  The wall between them and the window sill was rusty corrugated steel, with no finger- or toe-holds. The only possible purchase was an electrical conduit running horizontally about a meter below the window, toward the light fixture above the loading dock.

  Both of them took deep breaths. Then he cupped and locked his fingers, and she put her small, soft-shod feet into his hands. He hefted her a couple of times, adjusting his angles for maximum thrust.

  “Ready?” he said.

  “Go.”

  A deep breath, a massive heave, and she was flung skyward like a doll.

  But not five meters.

  She scrabbled at the steel with fingers and toes, clawing for that last half-meter. Then she caught herself with her fingertips on the electrical conduit. She hung there for a moment, breath whooshing in and out of her. He waited below, arms outstretched to catch her.

  “You all right?” he whispered.

  She peered up at the window, gauging the distance. “I can make it.”

  There was no other possible purchase between her and the window. But she chinned herself up, swung up a foot to a junction box just within reach, hooked her toes there, adjusted her fingers, reached up for the window, fell short, levered her fingers higher with toes and upper body strength, and caught the lip of the window with two fingers, then four. A moment later, she had both hands on the window sill, drawing herself up, planting both feet precariously on the conduit, peering into the darkness inside.

  “Don’t see anybody,” she said. “Looks mostly empty. There’s some equipment. Place is dark.”

  She pulled out a small knife and started prying at a pane of glass about half a meter square. The ancient glazing gave way without breaking the glass and she eased the plate gently inside, careful to keep her fingers around the edges lest it fall in and crash to the floor, and then angled it outside where she balanced it precariously on-edge atop the junction box. The slightest gust of wind could catch it and send it crashing groundward. The empty pane was large enough for her to worm through the opening.

  The last he saw of her was her feet disappearing inside.

  “She’s inside,” Horace muttered.

  “Clear so far,” Bunny said.

  Tina gave no reply, and Horace was forced to wait, blind and deaf to what she was doing. Seconds ticked into minutes. He clutched his vibro-axe, wrung the textured rubber grip, and waited beside the back door. The only sounds coming into his earbuds were occasional breaths of exertion or the faint click of a door latch.

  “There’s a keypad system, no print scanners,” Tina whispered. “All the exterior doors are alarmed, and so are the offices.”

  “You see anything?” Bunny said.

  “I can see down through the center of the plant. Nothing here. No machinery... Wait... Yeah, by the loading docks, there some equipment stored. Hang on.”

  Half a minute passed. “Oh, shit! There’s a security drone, parked near the opposite end of the
plant, just inside the main doors. It’s not moving.”

  “Stay the hell away from it!” Horace said.

  “I’m not seeing any transceiver activity,” Bunny said.

  More damnable, interminable silence.

  Horace did his best to breathe deeply, slowly, trying to control his heart rate. The last thing he needed right now was for his heart to seize up, which would hit the Go Juice trigger, and then he would glow like a neon sign, probably even through the sweatshirt. This was no time to be flashy.

  The crackle of plastic sheeting came through the earbuds. Tina’s voice hissed and popped. “This equipment here, it looks like Regenecorp regenite stations.”

  “Take some photos,” Bunny said. “Find serial and model number plates. Send them to me, and I’ll start running the numbers.”

  Horace’s netlink started to beep with incoming photographs. Checking one, he found a blurred image of a stamped serial and model number plate, illuminated by her flash that was too close.

  “There are thirty-seven units,” Tina said.

  “Get as many numbers as you can.”

  Another two minutes ticked by. Breeze whispered over his cheeks.

  Then something crashed to the ground next to him. His heart leaped, and it was half a second before his brain registered the sound of shattering glass. The precariously perched pane of glass had fallen. He breathed deeply, then again, and again.

  “Okay,” Tina said, “Got ’em. Gonna try the offices.”

  The moments raked across Horace’s mind. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth.

  Then Bunny’s voice. “Heads up, Tina, you just triggered an alarm. The alert just went out. Get out of there.”

  Ten seconds passed.

  Bunny said, “The closest manned security station is about a kilometer. Hold on.... There, I just bought you some time. I just triggered alerts all around this district. They’re going to have their hands full. Move your butts.”