Toys

Chapter 106

Lucy and I landed directly behind a parking lot, which was filled to the brim with the most expensive cars on the planet. Interesting to note, almost all of the car designs were human in origin-no one had ever understood personal transportation better, or had more passion for it. Mercedes, Daimler, BMW, Cadillac, Lexus-these were still the most desired names on hood ornaments, even for rich Elites.

“You know your way around this place, right?” Lucy asked me.

“I do. I used to work security here all the time. Let’s go.”

A loud, commanding noise interrupted. “You’re Hays Baker. I remember you. And you-you’re just some human scum.”

“Actually,” I said, “we’re both human scum. We’ve come to kill the president. You have a problem with that?”

Of course he did-since he was Devlin, the president’s bodyguard. At least I thought the speaker was Devlin. He was surrounded by eleven nearly identical clones of himself-just as large, just as formidable, just as threatening. I’m sure it was in vain, but I prayed the clones didn’t have the same deadly level of Elite fighting augmentations.

“We have a problem with that. Which means that the two of you have a big problem-with us.”

The twelve deadly Devlins started to close in.

“Plan B,” said Lucy. “Run!”

That’s exactly what we did-very fast. But the bodyguards weren’t exactly challenged in the foot-speed department. They sort of reminded me of old-fashioned tackle-football players-the kinds who took massive doses of steroids. Lucy and I gained a little ground, but not enough. That’s when the Devlins started to fire laser rounds, as if merely crushing us with their bare hands wasn’t good enough.

“We have to take these guys out if we’re ever going to get to the president!” Lucy yelled to me.

“Yeah, my thought that they’d get tuckered out from chasing us isn’t working so good,” I yelled back. “Got any other brilliant ideas for stopping a dozen commando-programmed behemoths?”

“Not a one.”

“Maybe I do,” I said, inspiration flashing as another round exploded inches from my head. “Grab a car, any car. The keys’ll be there. No person in his right mind would steal an Elite’s vehicle, much less from the president’s driveway.”

“Good thing we’re just a couple of crazy skunks!”

Lucy took an oversize Mercedes pickup truck while I leaped into a sporty BMW. Both top-of-the-line, of course.

“In this case,” I said to her through my combat headset as we started the cars, “it’s great if you get them in the head, but it’s OK to kill the bodies too.”

Lucy and I accelerated back toward the armed Devlins, who clearly didn’t think we had the nerve or the talent to do what it looked like we were about to do.

But we did-we had the nerve, the talent, the guts, the willpower. And besides, we were humans, and as a species, humans have a special bond with high-performance machines.

Half the bodyguards dropped to a knee in the middle of the drive and leveled their weapons.

My windshield exploded and I could hear Lucy sucking in breath over the communications link.

Maybe this hadn’t been the brightest idea.

Chapter 107

I dropped across the seat. Metal splinters and glass rained down upon me, and the air screamed as laser blasts tore tunnels through the air where my head had been.

Fortunately, one of the many perks of my artificial endowments is a fail-safe sense of direction, distance, and velocity. Basing my actions just on my memory of the crouching Devlin phalanx, I kept my foot on the accelerator and managed a tire-burning zero-to-ninety in just under four seconds, at which point I violently yanked the steering wheel sideways and broadsided the augmented bodyguards. I killed, or at least badly maimed, six of them.

Then I went into a fast spinning turn and sped back for the rest while Lucy joined the melee from the other side with her own truck. Four more of the bodyguards were squashed between us like grapes.

But there were still two of them-smarter, or at least faster learners, than their peers. I watched in frustration as they jumped behind cars-each in a different direction-avoiding the obvious carnage.

Great minds thinking alike, Lucy and I jumped out of our ruined cars. Even if we didn’t shut down this entire operation, several Elite car owners were going to be royally pissed at us.

“Left,” she said and pointed to her own chest.

“Right,” I yelled.

Something told me the original Devlin wasn’t among the initial fatalities, and I personally hoped he was the one I was going after now. I’d never liked that huge, haughty bastard. And I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

My target called out to me, “I trained with Jax Moore, you pathetic skunk,” definitely sounding like the real McCoy.

“Oh yeah?” I taunted, hoping to provoke him into doing something rash. “Well, let’s hope you learned your vaporization-prevention techniques a little better than he did. I heard there wasn’t much left of him after we were done with that so-called interrogation.”

“Let’s do this, Hays Baker.”

Just then Lucy let out a victory whoop.

“I won’t go down quite as easily as my clones,” promised my Devlin.

“We’ll see,” I called, weaving my way crabwise between the cars until I finally had a clean line of sight-and then I did something I’d always wanted to do but had never had the nerve.

I took off at full speed toward the bastard protector of the War Criminal in Chief. I got up to forty easily, then fifty, and finally sixty-which was pushing my outer limit.

He spotted me and, fortunately, his ego got the better of him. Rather than trying to gun me down, he dropped his weapon and crouched to absorb my impact. Just as I’d hoped, he wanted to do this mano a mano.

With him having easily a hundred pounds on me, and a combat pedigree I’m sure I didn’t even want to speculate about, it was definitely something of a gamble on my part. At the last second, I turned my shoulder and drove into him with all my might, causing a noise like that of a wrecking ball hitting a modest-sized house.

It took me a moment to get my bearings back, and when I figured out which way was up, I felt as if I were standing on a waterbed. But as I turned to finish what I’d started-or die trying-I quickly realized I’d knocked him out cold. He wasn’t moving a muscle, not even any of the ones in his head.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been underestimated by a genocidal maniac in recent days.

“You all right, Hays?” Lucy called to me. “Because he sure isn’t.”

With that, she walked up and put two bullets into the sleeping giant’s skull.

“Like I said, Hays. Kill the head!”

Chapter 108

Lucy and I ran onto the main lawn, where the action was taking place. And there he was-Hughes Jacklin himself, head of the Elite nation.

He was wearing a dark suit and couldn’t have been more serious or impressive. “My fellow Elites! I welcome you here to celebrate this wondrous and important day!” His amplified voice boomed across the concourse as he