Fire With Fire

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-

Trevor grabbed one of the mugs off the table, threw it away from himself, against the wall that was directly opposite Mingo.

Who, along with his crew, promptly blasted away at the sound. Mingo’s response was short-lived, however: “Shit! I’m out.” His silhouette jabbed a finger frantically at his gun’s magazine release. Trevor moved toward him, pressed against the same wall, keeping his weight on the sides of his feet.

Mingo had a new magazine out, snapped it up into his weapon-

As he did, Trevor shoved his body against Mingo’s flank, rotating him slightly out from the wall as the thug finished reloading. In the same instant, Trevor reached over the kidnapper’s left shoulder with his left hand and grasped the right side of his jaw, just as Trevor’s right hand locked in a secure grip on the left rear side of the thug’s neck. Trevor uncrossed his arms in a sharp X motion: his left hand yanked Mingo’s head swiftly to the left; the right kept the neck from rotating with that sudden turn. There was a sharp snap, like a piece of well-dried kindling broken over a knee, and Mingo went limp, a shout dying out of him as a breathy gasp.

Trevor snagged the MP-5 in mid-fall as he dropped to one knee, made sure the slide was back, and snapped the selector switch to semiautomatic.

“Mingo-Mingo, man-”

Trevor aimed for the center of Peak’s mass and squeezed twice in rapid succession. Peak screamed, went backward, firing wildly, still screaming without words. Mel froze in place-thank you, stupid-and, taking about half a second to aim, Trevor centered two rounds into him, as well. Staying low, Trevor crossed the room, knowing what he would have to do when he got there.

Peak was still screaming, heard someone approaching. “Help me, man-oh, oh, shit-fuck, help-”

Trevor crouched so he was very close and fired a single round into the center of Peak’s bucking forehead. He snatched up the thug’s pistol-another ten-millimeter Sig Sauer caseless-and headed back to the airlock’s inner door, which he opened wide before returning to the center of the room. He snatched up his life-support unit, reached in through the jagged hole where its base plate used to be, and burned his hands as he yanked out the empty smoke canister that had been installed in place of the second air tank. He reached in again, pulled out a black disk the size of a hockey puck, flipped back a cover, pressed the single concealed button, and placed it in the center of the floor, looking away as he did. There was a flash that he could see quite clearly in his peripheral pickups: the thermite filament fuse had lit-and would burn for about three minutes. He pulled a small packet out of the ruined base of the LSU before strapping the unit back on.

Then over to the table as he pocketed the small packet, found his helmet, latched it on and toggled the communicator as he started moving in the direction of the storm room. “Crossbow, this is Quarrel. Crossbow, this is Quarrel.”

“Quarrel, this is Crossbow. Go.”

“I am in. Beacon is set. Have you acquired lock?”

“Negative, Quarrel. I’ll have to come closer to see the heat from the fuse. Not getting the UV phased- spectrum signal from your beacon at all.”

“Roger. Any sign of laser targeting beams?”

“Negative. Looks clear. No sign of fixed defenses or heavy weapons.”

“Take no chances. Use the antilaser aerosols as you approach.”

“Pretty marginal effect, Quarrel. Wind is over forty klicks, here. And rising.”

Trevor had spun open the storm-room hatch. “Use the aerosols anyway. Out.”

“Out.”

He swung the hatch inward-and found the hostage, taped to a chair in the center of the room. The duct tape was so thick on her that she seemed half-mummified.

He slung the machine pistol, stuck the barrel of Peak’s weapon through a utility ring on his belt, grabbed her chair by the backrest, dragged it out of the door’s sightline, speaking as he went: “We’re getting out. No time to talk. Answer my questions-and only that.” She nodded as he pulled the razor off the sole of his boot, and started sawing at the tape binding her legs.

“Nod for yes. There were eight of them, all told?”

Nod. He moved on to her arms and hands.

“See anything bigger than a machine gun?”

She shook her head.

“You know how to use a rescue ball, right?”

A pause. Then a tentative nod.

Great. That pause meant she didn’t really know. He began to slice at the wraps that bound her midriff to the chair. There were a lot of those. And there was some distant, tentative shouting: the rest of the rogues’ gallery was on the way, no doubt.

He pulled the pack off of his belt, dropped it on the floor in front of her. “Rescue ball. Listen carefully. When you pull the tab, the ball will balloon out at you, so stand back. It’s in two halves, joined by a hinge at the bottom. Sit in the middle. There’ll be a zipper at your feet: pull it up over your head; the ball will expand more as you do. When the zipper can’t go any further, you’ll feel a click. That means you’re sealed in. You’ll find a mask to your right, on the floor. Put it on right away; that’s your O² with chemical rebreather. Gives you about forty-five