Fire with Fire(102)
“And me.”
“You can ride on the outside, hero.”
“Okay. And you’ll need to put one other out there. I’ve got six seats, room for two more as cargo.”
“Fine. So we’re at the buggy. Then what?”
“We drive to another outpost—I know you won’t accept going back to Syrtis City.”
“No shit, genius. So we’re at another outpost.”
“She walks away. You have the money and the buggy. And me.”
“And then?”
“When she’s safe, then I disarm the bomb. And you drive away.”
He brought up the gun quickly; Trevor let himself flinch a little.
The wiseguy smiled. “Not so brave after all, huh, Mr. Hero? So tell me, how do you know I won’t grease you as soon as you’ve pulled the plug on the bomb? And how do I know you haven’t bugged the vehicle—a hidden radio, a transponder?”
“You’ll know the vehicle isn’t wired the same way you knew I wasn’t—your friend’s RF signal detector. And as for shooting me—you might, but right now, she’s just an unreported missing person. And she can stay that way. And you don’t have to be accused as kidnappers. But you shoot me, and now there’s a crime that can’t be ignored or unreported: the law gets involved. And you don’t want any news getting out on how you got away, do you? Because if your employer finds you, that will be worse than the police. Right?”
Chapter Thirty-One
TELEMACHUS
Wiseguy’s eyes widened: he hadn’t thought of what his employers might do if they found out he skipped on the job. If they had meant him to be killed by the cops, they’d need to finish the job themselves if something went awry with that plan. He swallowed. “Okay, okay—but we do it my way. We go to the outpost I choose. And you’re blindfolded until we get there.” He forgot Trevor, started giving orders. “Peak, you get the others; tell ’em we’re moving. Now. Just suits and guns. Mel, you—”
A klaxon started shrilling. Wiseguy whirled, aimed the gun at Trevor, saw it couldn’t be his doing, started a spastic circle dance in search of the cause. “What the fuck, what the—?”
“That’s an enviro sensor, man: we got a leak, or somethin’.”
“Great. Fucking great. Probably broke a seal when you capped that guy in the back. I told you—”
The boss—Mingo—stalked past Trevor, intent on berating his flunky and checking the atmosphere gauges that were next to the inner hatch. Peak was halfway out the door that led further into the compound; Mel was standing flat-footed, following Mingo with slow, heavy-lidded eyes. No one watching and no one close.
Trevor kicked himself over backward in the chair, touching his heels together as he pushed. The contacts in each heel closed, and he felt the base of his life-support unit blast outward, the bottom panel cutting through his suit leg as it went spiraling into the room like a runaway circular saw. White hexachlorathene smoke vomited out of the bottom of the backpack unit in a wide, gushing plume.
As Trevor bounced to a stop on the floor, he joined his hands into a composite fist and hit the sternum-centered strap release: the life-support unit came loose, and he rolled toward the densest accumulation of smoke. Coming out of the snap-roll into a sitting position, he brought his left foot up between his arms, pulling his hands as far apart as he could. He angled his foot sideways, so that the black-painted razorblade taped to the sole of that boot was pressed against the duct tape. He sawed his foot up and down twice, felt the fibers of the tape give—just as gunfire erupted, spanging off the bedrock floor near his chair.
“Mingo, man—don’t shoot! There’s too much smoke: you could hit me—”
“Shoot, asshole—get him! Don’t wait—shoot, shoot!”
By the time they had worked out their sophisticated tactical response, Trevor had pulled apart the remains of the duct-tape cuffs and grabbed down under the collar ring of his spacesuit to pull up the slimline thermal imaging goggles taped there. He tugged hard, felt a moment’s resistance, then heard a plastic pop and a metallic crunch. Shit: busted an eyepiece. He got it out and around his head in a quick motion and snap-rolled again, coming up into another crouch.
The unit—already on—only worked in the right eyepiece now. But with that one eye, he could see the kidnappers’ white silhouettes plainly as they moved around the smoke-filled room, following around the walls, guns out in front, firing occasionally. Mingo was particularly trigger-happy: he’d be dry in another moment. And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king—