JUST BEFORE daylight, a Chicago cop stared through the windshield of his cruiser. “Holy Jumping Jesus Christ! I’ve been on the force since before you were born, kid. And I’ve never seen anything like … that.”
Both the retirement-age sergeant and the rookie sitting next to him were staring at bodies draped over a row of identical dark-blue sedans. Each body had been skinned, graphically displaying that all were missing large bones, from femurs to skulls.
Neither cop noticed the city-camo shark as it slipped past the scene. Running without headlights, it looked more like a shifting shadow than a car.
Inside that shark, Buddha said, “Someone got to him first, boss.” His gloved hands delicately fingered the thickly padded steering wheel as his eyes checked the instrument display projected on the lower windshield.
“Viktor always was an optimist.”
“Huh?”
“He was a HALO jumper,” Cross said. “Absolutely positive his chute would open whenever he decided to pull the cord. This time, the ground got there first.”
“Chang sees a picture of this, he’ll think you worked some magic, getting it done so fast.”
“Yeah. So will the Russians.”
“They paid, too?”
“More than Chang. The Russian Bear is a sacred icon to them. In their eyes, Viktor was looting a national treasure.”
“But it had to be some of their own people doing the actual poaching.”
“Sure. But that’s their problem, at their end. We only got paid to solve the one at ours.”
“Comes out perfect, boss. It’s like Viktor’s number came up, and we hit that number at the same time.”
“Yeah,” Cross said. “Perfect.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Come on, Buddha. You saw those bodies yourself. All of a sudden we got partners? Silent partners?”
THE ROUND screen in the War Room flickered. “What the hell is he up to now? More damn driving around the city?” the blond man muttered, moving a joystick to control the screen images.
With the camera’s eyes, the team saw Cross step out of the camo car, which immediately pulled away. They watched as he walked to the back of the shack on the pier, grabbed a pole thick enough for a firehouse, and slid smoothly down until he disappeared from sight.
The pole itself went all the way into the water, but Cross only dropped about halfway down—slowing whenever his boots made contact with the stops jutting out of the pole.
Cross then jumped lightly onto a short landing which had been laboriously constructed under the pier. Within seconds, he was inside his hideout.
The blond man was busy at his private computer, tapping in coordinates, watching the screen for data translation. All of a sudden, his expressionless face lit up:
“Got him! Son of a bitch lives in a goddamn cell, can you believe it? Let’s see, now.…” He continued to work the computer as street maps flashed on his screen, from macro to micro, zeroing in.
“Yes!” the blond man half-shouted in triumph. “The waterfront, not far from where the ore boats come across the lake. Let’s get rolling. We’re looking for a spot on the north side of Pier 29.”
THE INSTANT the team’s van began to move, it dropped even the vaguest resemblance to any ordinary vehicle. Its sheer mass of “military” and “futuristic” radiated menace.
Cross stepped out of a stall shower, a towel around his waist. He lit a cigarette, sat down in a sling chair, closed his eyes, and blew smoke at the ceiling. His facial expression resembled an Easter Island statue on Botox.
Wanda was working at her computer, handing each new piece of printed-out information to the blond man, who scanned and tossed the sheets over his shoulder the way a wolf works his way through the carcass of a fresh-killed sheep, seeking the most edible parts.
“He’s got communications,” Wanda said. “Microwave … Using a bounce on the transmitter … You have to dial a number.… Okay, I have it. It’s a pay phone. Pulling up the location now.”
The camera showed a narrow doorway with discreet neon lettering running vertically in a window slit next to it. The neon spelled out:
O
R
C
H
I
D
B
L
U
E
The camera moved past a muscular woman at the door, her folded-arms stance saying “bouncer” as clearly as if written across her chest. Orchid Blue turned out to be a high-class gay bar, accommodating same-sex and mixed couples both, with nothing outrageously campy allowed. The camera nosed through the place like a patient bloodhound. It ended up in the back, showing a bank of pay phones next to the restroom.
The last phone had a large “Out of Order” sign prominently placed across its face. Closing in, the camera showed that the receiver itself had been severed from the phone—the coiled metal cord dangled, clearly expressing that there was no point even trying to make a call.
“Okay,” the blond man said, “back to base. It’s time to give this Mr. Cross some idea of who he’s dealing with.”
INSIDE THE War Room, the blond man could not keep the smirk off his face as he punched in a number on the phone console.
“Orchid Blue … what kind of name is that for a nightclub?” he asked, slyly. “Any of you guys ever heard of it?”
Everybody shook their heads except Tiger, who gave him a challenging look … which he promptly ignored.
A phone rang inside Cross’s cave. It continued to ring as he took three precisely spaced drags on his cigarette.
The blond man did not share his target’s calmness. He pounded on the console, muttering, “Pick up the damn phone!” at the image on the screen.
Wanda worked the monitor’s dials. The image on the round screen sharpened.
Cross reached out a hand, picked up the receiver. Said: “What?”
“Mr. Cross,” the blond man said, “I have a proposition for you.”
“Yeah, fine. Meet me at …”
“There’s no need for that, Mr. Cross. And no time. You either step outside when we tell you or we’ll be coming to pay a visit in person.”
“Visit me where?”
“Right where you are, right this minute. We’re locked in on you. In fact, we can see what you’re doing even as we speak.”
“Is that right?”
“Mr. Cross, we are aware of your little phone-forwarding system, but you are not dealing with a pack of maladroits this time. You don’t believe me? I’ll make it simple. Raise your hand; I’ll tell you how many fingers you’re holding up. Come on, go ahead.…”
The screen flickered. Tiger chuckled.
“Very funny, Mr. Cross. And very mature as well. Have I convinced you yet?”
“What is it you want, buddy?”
“I’m not your buddy. And what I want is for you to step out of your cave long enough for a civilized conversation. You listen to our proposition. That’s it. Nothing more.”
“How close are you?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll be outside.”
AS THE surveillance van picked up speed, homing in on its objective, Cross took inventory, as if considering a number of propositions. He glanced at a round hatch-style door set into his back wall—obviously an emergency escape route. The red pull-down handle made it clear that this was an option which could only be used once.
Finally, he shook his head and started to get dressed.
WHEN THE van rounded the last corner, Cross was standing at the edge of the pier, hands in the pockets of a coat that trailed to his ankles, so voluminous it could almost be a wraparound cape. The coat was a distinctive bright white with a high collar and wide raglan sleeves. At his feet, Cross had a small satchel, roughly the size and shape of a doctor’s bag. His back was against a wood pylon.
The van pulled to a stop. Man and machine eyed each other, waiting.
The side of the van opened with a hissing noise—a hydraulic panel, not a hinged door. Tracker jumped lightly to the ground and approached Cross, his hands open at his sides. He bowed slightly.
“I am Tracker. Will you come with us?”
Cross returned the bow, perhaps an inch lower, maintaining eye contact. “You’re not the one who talked to me on the phone.”
“That one is inside. Where you should be … so that we can explain our offer to you without observation.”
“Down here, you don’t have to worry about stuff like that. Looking into another man’s business could get you killed.”
Tracker shifted his body slightly, checking the area, sweeping with his eyes. “The … thing we’re after, you wouldn’t see it coming.”
“The thing you’re after. Not my problem, then.”
“It will be, I promise you. Very soon, too. If we meant you harm, you’d be gone now. I have approached you respectfully, have I not?”
After five seconds of utter stillness, Cross walked toward the van, deliberately allowing the Indian to move in behind him. He walked ponderously, as if his coat was a suit of armor.
Cross climbed inside the van, took the seat gestured by the Indian, and found himself directly across from the blond man.
The blond man smiled his thin smile, asked Cross, “Can I take your coat?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. I assume you won’t be offended if I don’t offer to shake hands. Our records indicate considerable expertise in improvised weaponry. I’m told you can kill a man with a sharpened credit card.”
Cross gave him a contemptuous look. “There’s women who can do that with a dull one.”
Percy laughed.
Tiger crossed her arms under her heavy breasts, arched her back, and spit out: “Maybe you should try a woman you don’t have to pay for. Provided you can find one, that is.”
Cross turned to her. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to offend you. There’s something about this guy I don’t like, and I let it make me say something stupid. That’s not professional. I was wrong.”
Tiger’s expression changed, but she watched closely to see if she was being played with. And finally decided she was not. She uncrossed her arms, leaned a bit forward.
“That’s okay,” she smiled, “I don’t like him, either.”
The blond man remained profoundly uninterested in all this—he was well accustomed to people not finding him likable.
“Sorry for the demonstration,” he told Cross, “but we didn’t have time to approach you through the usual channels.”
“You want to hire me, then?”
“That’s exactly what we want.”
“What’s the job?”
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to show you rather than tell you. That means a drive to our HQ, but it’ll be easier that way. Quicker, too.”
Cross shrugged, flashing back to the cold truth of what Tracker had told him: if these people wanted him dead, he’d have stopped breathing some time ago.
But that possibility cut both ways. Now that he had the satchel he carried inside a closed space, he knew his crew was safe, no matter how this ended. If things went wrong, he wouldn’t be leaving even a scrap of DNA behind.
“Call it up,” the blond said into the microphone.
BACK IN the War Room. Everybody was there, including Percy. He doesn’t get out much, unless there’s something requiring combat skills. Or kills.
The blond man made the introductions. Nobody shook hands.
“Why him?” Cross asked Tracker, jerking his thumb at the blond man.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s personal for you,” Cross said. “Not for him.”
Wanda didn’t speak, just threw a couple of keystrokes at her type pad.
Tracker tapped his heart as the large monitor flashed on an Indian hunting party returning to camp, finding those they left behind hanging upside down, bleeding out, stripped of bone matter.
Cross nodded his understanding.
“Why not ask me, too?” Tiger half-snarled. As if in compliance, Wanda hit more keys.
“They took out three of my sisters,” Tiger whispered as the monitor showed three women, all armed to the teeth, standing in a back-to-back-to-back triangle in some sort of tunnel. Their faces reflected both calmness and rage—warriors facing certain death, determined not to go easily. Or alone.
Cross lit a cigarette. Wanda’s face showed disapproval. Cross didn’t look nervous, didn’t look bored, didn’t look impatient.
Finally, the blond man broke the silence. “We know what you are, Mr. Cross. And we have a job for you.”
“You don’t have a clue about what I am, pal. All you know is what I do.”
“Meaning …?”
“I don’t know what you do, and I don’t give a damn. But I know what you are.”
A grin flashed across Tiger’s face. Even Percy nodded his head in agreement.
“We didn’t bring you here to play word games,” the blond said.
“You don’t know me. Maybe you know some of the things I’ve done. Or I’m supposed to have done. Whatever, you don’t know much more than rumors. You don’t want to play word games, you can stop talking in code anytime you want. Just get down to it. What do you want done?”
“The job—”
“Not the job, the price. Say the figure for me to get something done. Or the threats if I don’t, whatever you deal in.”
“Neither. How about you just tell us whether you’ve ever seen anything like this before?” The blond tossed some photographs on the table in front of Cross.
A number of corpses, hanging upside down as one might hang a slaughtered steer to drain its fluids. The blurred background was a thatched hut of some kind, suggesting only an equatorial climate.
“Yeah,” Cross said, bringing a look of surprise to the blond’s face.
“Where?” he asked.
“Africa. We came back from patrol, found the whole sweeper team hung up, exactly like that.”
“What did you think it was?”
“What did I think it was? We all knew what it was. A message from the Simbas. That’s the way they did things over there: kill your enemy and leave his head on a stake. Discourages anyone else from hanging around.”
“Did it work on you?”
“Sure,” Cross replied, surprising the blond once again.
“Then look at these.…” The blond tossed more pictures on top of the originals. All same-signature corpses, but the settings were vastly different. A penthouse apartment, a hunting lodge, an abandoned warehouse. No individual bodies, all multiple kills.
“They all look alike,” Cross said, neglecting to mention that he had viewed an exactly similar scene only a short while ago.
“Those scenes are not—”
“Not the scenes.”
“What, then?”
“The bodies of the losers.”
“Don’t you mean ‘victims’?”
“Fighters aren’t victims. These are all some kind of battle sites. And a C-note to a dime says it wasn’t civilians who got taken out.”
“They …?”
“I told you before. The Simbas.”
“Wanda …?” The blond man turned to her. She was busily tapping away at the computer keyboard with one hand, clicking a silver pen against her teeth with the other. “Simbas … Got it. None ever captured alive. Some of the intel says they’re a myth. Not really a tribe at all. There’s no hard—”
“A myth?” Tracker interrupted, surprising everyone on the team. “Like the so-called Seminoles in Florida? They set up base in the Everglades, down where Stonewall Jackson wouldn’t go after them. So they had to call Cherokees who refused to walk the Trail of Tears by something other than their true name. It was Jackson who named them Seminoles—that way, he could tell the government that all the Cherokees were accounted for. Same as those Vietnam body-counts.
“You know what my favorite song is,” Tracker continued, his voice heavy with a dull-thudding backdrop of ancient hate. “It’s called ‘Cherokee Nation.’ Naturally, a bunch of white men got to sing it. Even named themselves after the white man’s heroes: ‘Paul Revere and The Raiders.’
“We were here before Columbus,” Tracker said, his tone making it clear that he was not inviting a response. “Maybe the Cherokee word for ‘blanket’ should be ‘smallpox,’ too.”
“That does fit the Simbas,” Wanda said, gently breaking into the silence that followed.
“Yeah?” Percy asked. “How’s that make any sense?”
“Start from here,” Wanda recited, reading from her scrolling screen. “Allegedly, the Simbas are the only known tribe of mixed Africans.…”
“Black and white?” Percy asked, now genuinely curious.
“No, tribal-mixed. That almost never happens. And, when it does, it’s usually a war-rape. But with Simbas, they eventually accumulated sufficiently to form their own tribe.
“Ample reports of this phenomenon from the Congo over the past sixty years. Yoruba with Hausa, Watusi with Pygmy, Kikuyu with Bantu. And so on. Some of them were allegedly part of the Mau Mau, but that wasn’t so much a tribe as a movement. All the database shows is a thematic legend.”
“A what?” the blond spat out, looking annoyed.
“Thematic legend,” Wanda answered, more annoyed at the interruption. “One that retains its characteristics regardless of jurisdiction.
“Essentially, this one was that, originally, the Simbas were freedom-fighters who had to flee to the bush when the invaders had them outgunned,” Wanda said, with a quick glance at Tracker. “The term ‘invaders’ probably originally meant ‘colonialists,’ but its usage has changed over time—probably because of mercenary raids on specific targets.” She turned in her chair, looked meaningfully at Cross, and returned to her narrative:
“The Simbas were classic hit-and-run guerrillas. They can be distinguished from the modern version easily enough. Unlike, say, the FARC in Colombia or the Shining Path in Peru, or the Maoists in Tibet, they—”
“We don’t need to know what they’re not,” the blond man said, fussily impatient.
Wanda continued as if no one had spoken. “They do not recruit, they permit no looting, rape is punishable by death, and there is no enforced membership. Their minimal requirement—and this is only a rough translation—is that a prospective member must bring a ‘hard’ part of their enemy as an offering.”
She ran her right hand over her hair, as if to smooth it down. “Even the deranged creatures created by that so-called witch doctor Joseph Kony—the Lord’s Resistance Army—even those kidnapped and drug-crazed children fear the Simbas.
“Their trademark never varies. It … well, you’ve seen the pictures.”
“I wonder …” the blond mused. “Could that be the link?”
“Africa?” Tiger asked.
“Why not? They had to start somewhere. Maybe they started killing for what they thought was a good enough reason and just got to like it. That does happen.”
“Yes. I have seen it myself,” Tracker said, coldly eyeing the blond.
“Come on,” Cross said, in a tone somewhere between tired and bored. “Started in Africa, huh? Wasn’t that what you government idiots were saying about AIDS? I mean, before everyone found out it was a lab experiment gone wrong in Haiti?”
“We have confirmed signature kills all over the globe,” Wanda answered, looking straight at Cross. “I don’t see how it would be possible for unacclimated Africans to strike in the Arctic Circle. Do you?”
“Maybe they evolved,” Cross said. “Same way we all did, right? Humans, I mean. Some seeds grew in the sun, some in the ice. Or we started in the Cradle, like a lot of scientists think. Places get too crowded, people move on. Especially when they get a lot of encouragement. When’s the first confirmed kill?”
“It is difficult to determine with any degree of accuracy,” Wanda acknowledged. “We have references to similar multiple slaughters throughout history. Cave paintings of Neanderthals looking up at hanging corpses, looking puzzled, as if the killings weren’t their work. Egyptian pharaohs left what could be records of something similar, unearthed by tomb robbers. Hannibal kept a journal on his way over the Alps. And there are a number of references in futhark—”
“What?”
“Scandinavian runes—probably dating back to early Viking times,” she said to the blond man, now seriously annoyed at the interruption of her report. “The references go as far back as we can go. But, with so many other myths and legends disproven, it’s impossible to tell for sure. No way to come up with authenticated facts.”
“So those so-called Seminoles could be … they could be from the same root?” Tiger wondered aloud.
“Of course,” Wanda replied.
Tracker was silent.
“Junkyard dogs,” Cross finally said. “They’ve probably formed into their own species by now.” He looked up at the blond man: “I still don’t know what you want from me.”
“A specimen,” the blond man answered, in the same tone he would use to order room service.
CROSS SCANNED the blond as he would a snake he’d never seen before. He couldn’t identify the snake, but some deeply rooted instinct warned him that it was poisonous.
“I don’t do that kind of work,” he said.
“Yes, you do. We don’t have time for games. You’re a man for hire. And the job doesn’t matter if the money’s right—we’ve seen your résumé.”
At a nod from the blond man, the large screen started running a “Greatest Hits”-type trailer: Cross moving stealthily behind a young man wearing a ski mask who was aiming a recurve bow armed with a barbed arrow at a giraffe in a zoo enclosure; Cross and another man—short, squat, implacable, casually holding a butcher knife—speaking to a man handcuffed to a desk; Cross in an Amazon jungle, walking point at the head of a small squad.…
“That’s supposed to tell you … what, exactly? All that proves my point. I’m a problem-solver, not a hit man,” Cross said. “A guy like you wouldn’t know the difference, but”—turning to the Indian—“I thought some of you would.”
“I know the difference.” Tracker spoke quietly. “It is also what I do. As Wanda just said, even these ‘Simbas’ appear to have rules governing what they are permitted to do. But this isn’t a contract kill we’re talking about. It’s … it’s another war.”
“If it is, you’re no draftee.”
“No. As you said, for me, it is personal. For Tiger, too. Wanda and Percy, they’re just lifers.”
“Tribalism,” Cross said quietly. “The curse of Africa. Spread until it became the curse of humans.”
“Never mind the philosophy,” the blond man told him. “You in or out?”
“What’s ‘in’ mean, pal? What’s the objective here?”
“A specimen, remember. Not a dead body … a live one. There has to be a way to … deal with them, but we need to study one of them to find out how. No negotiations. You can name your price. But this job is purely COD.”
CROSS SAT, thinking it over. Replaying in his head all the assignments he’d undertaken over the years.
Not a hit man—who am I kidding? he thought to himself, keeping his face a show-nothing mask.
“Why me?” he finally asked.
“Believe it or not,” the blond man told him, “what we want is your mind, not your combat skills. You have unique … experiences that our superiors believe would be invaluable.”
“Two choices: either actually say something, or drive me home, pal.”
“Look around you, Mr. Cross. Tracker got his name from his work. Percy’s been in more wars than I’ve had birthdays. And Tiger … well, she’s earned her name. Between our financial resources and the commitment of our volunteers, we have more than enough manpower.”
Tiger raised an eyebrow at this last word, but didn’t deign to speak.
“Okay, you’ll pay the freight, but only COD. Fair enough. But it’s not only money I work for. How high do you guys reach?”
The blond man made a gesture which instantly translated to: “All the way to the top.”
“Yeah? Can you fix me up with a Get Out of Jail Free card?”
“What’s that?”
“Just what it sounds like: immunity from prosecution. The feds do it all the time. They do it for rats; why not for … contract employees?”
The blond man exchanged a look with Wanda. “We could probably handle that. Give us the details.”
“Details?”
“When the crime was committed, who was involved, that kind of thing.”
“It hasn’t been committed yet.”
“What? That doesn’t make any—”
“My crew are all tightrope-walkers. You can’t make too many passes without taking a fall. Sooner or later, that happens—maybe to one of us; maybe to us all. So that’s what I want: the next fall, on the house.”
Another look between the blond man and Wanda. Finally, the blond said, “We’ll have to check on that.”
“I can wait,” Cross told him. He slid a slip of paper across the table. “These people’ll know how to reach me. Or you can track me down yourselves, in case you want to show off your toys again.”
“Tiger and Tracker will take you back,” the blond man said as the Indian slid behind Cross, a black blindfold in his hands.
ALMOST DAWN. A limo-sized four-door sedan made its way through the city. It moved purposefully, a shark attracted by the electrical pulses of potential prey.
The comparison is valid. This is the infamous “Shark Car,” known and feared throughout the Badlands. A three-ton armored beast, all-wheel drive with adjustable power distribution, independent suspension all around, air bags under each wheel. The power plant was a totally reworked mega-monster engine: a thirteen-plus-liter Hemi, with two separate shots of nitrous oxide always available. Its city-camo paint was a shaded, blotched gray-black, rarely noticed except by those who knew what they were actually viewing.
The high-tech van was on the move as well. Tiger was behind the wheel, Cross next to her in the front seat, the blindfold still over his eyes. Tracker was riding behind them, a short-barreled, night-scoped rifle across his lap.
The van moved placidly through constantly changing neighborhoods. Multi-levels yielded sharp contrasts as antiseptically wealthy sections became festering-sore slums. The lines of demarcation weren’t always so clearly marked, especially in newly gentrified areas. Desolate poverty ran through the near-deserted night streets as randomly as the broken veins in a wino’s nose.
“What you said before. About tribalism. Was that just playing games with that government stooge?” Tracker asked.
Smoking a cigarette with the black blindfold still in place, Cross looked like a man facing the firing squad. He answered without turning around.
“You tell me. Doesn’t this feel like one tribe’s doing all the killings? They got their own way of doing things, their own gods to worship.…”
“But how could one tribe …?”
“You wouldn’t have said what you did about Seminoles unless you’ve got Cherokee blood yourself,” Cross answered.
“I do.”
“But you’re not exactly a Cherokee, right?”
“I just said—”
“You’re a Chickasaw,” Cross interrupted, speaking as if simply stating a fact. “Which means your ancestors didn’t sow crops. Didn’t do a lot of hunting, either. So they had to keep on the move.”
“Speak clearly,” Tracker said, his voice just a shade off threat.
“Okay. How’s this? Your ancestors got what they needed from other tribes. And not by trading. They took what they needed.”
“That was the truth,” Tracker finished. “Yes. I see what you speak of now. The Simbas—”
“Tribes wander,” Tiger interrupted, speaking aloud what she had been thinking ever since Cross used the word “Simbas.”
Cross nodded a silent affirmative.
“Some tribes don’t even have a homeland,” Tiger rolled on. “Nomads. They just pitch their tents wherever they are. Like the Mongols. Or those Chickasaws.”
“Yeah, there’s no racial piece in this,” Cross agreed. “Look at the Gypsies. Like the ones they tried to drive out of France. Had them standing in line for Hitler’s ovens, too.”
Tiger’s “uh-huh” was more growl than speech.
“And you don’t have to be Roma to be a gypsy, do you?” Cross finished.
As Tracker silently nodded agreement, Tiger looked over at Cross, thoughtfully. “Right,” she agreed, her voice so soft it was almost a purr.
“ARE YOU guys the whole team?” Cross asked.
“What team?” Tiger responded warily.
“Whatever Blondie’s in charge of. There’s five of you that I met. All I’m asking: are there any more?”
Tracker and Tiger exchanged looks. Tracker shrugged his shoulders in a “Why not?” gesture.
“The op is multi-national,” Tiger told Cross. “We’re Unit 3. I don’t know how many teams are working this, but I can tell you this much for sure: there’s no place where the killers we’re looking for haven’t made an appearance.”
In her mind’s eye, Tiger reviewed footage she’d been shown of other units. Some seemed racially homogenous, others were overtly mixed, but it would take an expert eye to discern between the Japanese, Korean, Thai, Laos, Vietnamese, and Chinese that formed one group. Assembling a team from those nationalities had never been accomplished—their traditional posture toward one another has historically ranged from simmering hostility to outright warfare.
It was the same for a black crew. A closer look would reveal members ranging from Africa to the West Indies. A Latino unit had Mexican, Cuban, and Central and South American members—the latter still another example that flew in the face of any attitudes known to the authorities. Or the underworld.
“Who’s the boss?” Cross asked.
“TRAP,” Tiger said, glancing at his blindfolded face. “It isn’t a person, it’s a program. A computer program. We all feed to a central database, and instructions come back.”
Tiger’s mind viewed a super-computer, encircled by a waist-high band on which terminals sat. Behind each terminal an operator was incessantly inputting, examining, then inputting again and again.
“A computer …” Cross snorted. “Computers don’t understand hunter-killer teams.”
“It was TRAP that told us to bring you into this,” Tiger answered. “Computers don’t have to understand, they just have to process. They’re no better than the data they feed on. And, sometimes, human ‘understanding’ would just get in the way.”
As she wheeled the van around a long, sweeping corner, it became apparent that they were back in that part of the city where Cross was at home. Tracker leaned forward and unsnapped the blindfold.
CROSS BLINKED his eyes a couple of times. Once sight-oriented, he said, “Drop me anywhere.”
The van pulled to the curb. Cross jumped down and slipped into the shadows, penetrating deeper and deeper until he became one himself.
“He knows the old ways,” Tracker said to Tiger.
“He knows some new ones, too,” Tiger replied as the van pulled off. She flicked a switch to pop a rectangular gauge into life. The activated screen was blank. “See? We lost thermal on him the minute he put on that long coat.”
CROSS EMERGED from an alley. The Shark Car was waiting, idling soundlessly. Its back door popped open. Cross stepped in. The car moved off.
“You got them, Buddha?”
“Knew where to meet you, didn’t I, boss?”
“I had the transmitter on me—in the heel of my boot. But they’ll probably sweep that van, find the little unit I left behind.”
Buddha pushed a button. What looked like a navigation screen opened on the dashboard. A moving red dot was plainly visible. “Maybe so,” he said. “But they haven’t done it yet.”
“Then Rhino has them locked on, too. I guess that’s all we can do for one night.”
“You really think they might go for that free-pass deal, boss?”
“It’s probably not their call. But that doesn’t matter. They’ll say so, anyway.”
“YOU GOT the package?”
“In the trunk, boss. Right next to the RPGs.”
“Okay. We might as well clean up the bear-claw thing. Chang’s expecting a visit—his spot’s right above that Chinese restaurant. The building is only two stories. He’s got all kinds of protection on the first floor, and the upstairs windows overlook the street, so their lookout will see us the second we show—they all know this car.”
“So they see it. So what? You’d come by to pick up your money in person, right? Besides, I’ll be ready to launch ten seconds after you hit the street.”
“Yeah. We really got no choice. Chang thinks we did the job on Viktor. Maybe there’s all kinds of questions about how those Russians got splattered, but nobody doubts they’re gone. All of them. That’s gonna make him nervous. Chang’s the kind of guy who hates loose ends. That’s why I have to just walk in. Coming to pick up my money, that is what he’d expect. So seeing me might calm him down some. And we don’t need him calm for long.”
“I HAVE your payment, Cross. In that silver case, over to my right. But, before you pick it up, would you indulge an old man by answering a question?”
“Depends on the question, Chang.”
“Ah. You are a man who never changes, Cross. Very well. There is no question but that you have earned your fee. But one question remains unanswered: how did you do it?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“And why would that be so?”
“Trade secret.”
“To be sure. But do not friends sometimes share their secrets?”
“They might. But we’re not friends. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have my payment—payment I already earned, remember—sitting between those two gunmen of yours.”
“I have insulted you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I apologize. Perhaps we are not yet friends.” The old man snapped his finger. One of the men who had been guarding the silver case picked it up and brought it over to Cross. He placed it on the floor, and then returned to his post. “But friendship between us, that remains a possibility?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Perhaps you would like to open the case?”
“Why would I disrespect you, Chang? You are a man of your word, as am I. That was what we both respected when we reached our bargain. This is something we share. So I leave as I came, with promises kept on both sides.”
“I understand,” Chang said. He moved his head a fraction of an inch. Cross returned the gesture, bowing more deeply, but never below the range of his eyes.
Then he picked up the silver case and walked out of the room.
STANDING BEFORE the passenger-side door of the Shark Car, Cross spoke very softly. “This case weighs more than the other one.”
“If it’s a trick, it’s the last one he’ll ever pull,” Buddha’s whisper came from under the car. By the time Cross had his door opened, the first RPG launched.
The second floor exploded in a burst of flame. The next two rounds hit the restaurant below. The fourth went back to what was left of the second floor.
Buddha slid into the driver’s seat. The Shark Car disappeared, paying no more attention to the sirens that tore the night air than did the men in their death-throes inside the building.
“Where’s the RPG tubes?”
“I left them behind, boss. Take too long to pull ’em out, stick them back in the trunk. But they’ve all got timers. Three minutes from launch, each one’s going to turn into metal dust.”
“Timers …” Cross said, looking down at the silver case he was holding in his lap.
“Toss it?”
“There’s supposed to be about three hundred K in here, Buddha.”
THE SQUAT little man’s touch on the steering wheel was as delicate and skilled as that of a concert pianist. The Shark Car ripped through the city, heading for the Badlands. When it crossed the barrier and slid to a stop, Cross jumped out, yelling “Condor!”
A teenage boy with a blue Mohawk haircut popped up, bending his body around the roll of razor wire that topped a chain-link fence in the pose that had earned him his name.
“See this?” Cross held up the silver case. “I’m going to lob it over. You take it and put it someplace nobody’s going to stumble over. Then get away from it as fast as you can. Don’t come back to wherever you stash it until I show up again—it could be a bomb, with a timer on it. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cross held the case in both hands, swung it back and forth to build momentum, and released his hold on his last forward swing. Condor caught it in both hands and took off, running through the darkness as if he had infra-red eyesight.
The Shark Car pulled away.