himself that he had denied Zamora the thing he wanted most- Conover. But he's got me, thought Jonny.
And he knew that Zamora would eventually get Conover anyway.
That thought brought the anger back, stronger that ever.
'I see right through you, Colonel,' said Jonny.
Zamora raised an eyebrow, amused. 'Oh really?'
'Damn straight,' Jonny said. 'It came to me while I was up there in the hills. I haven't worked out all the details, but I know you're in bed with the Arabs. I saw broadcasts from L.A., on a restricted Arab Link channel. Obviously, if there are Arabs operating in the city, you know about it. And if you know about it, it means you're being paid off.'
'What if I told you weren't even warm?'
'You'd be lying. Cause it's that Arab connection that makes you so nervous about Conover. He's got CIA connections that go back decades. You're afraid he's onto you, that he'll cut a deal with the Feds and that you'll end up in a sterile room somewhere with wires in your head, spilling every thought you ever had.'
'What makes you think I'm not prepared to go up there and drag Conover down by his skinny neck?'
'Because you don't want a war. Conover's not stupid. Obviously, you know where he is. That hologram dome is just a carny trick to impress the locals and the other lords, but he's got that haunted house set up really nice against any kind of assault. You'd have to flatten the whole hill to get him down. But if you did that, people would start asking questions and you'd be back in the shit again. That's why you told me that fairy tale about the Alpha Rats. You thought I'd be all impressed and terrified of your heavy connections. That I'd get Conover off that hill and come sucking around to you, looking for table scraps.'
Colonel Zamora shook his head, let go with his throaty lizard laugh. 'God kid, you've really gone around the bend. Maybe we should get you to a hospital after all, W he said. 'Naturally, there's Arabs operating in Last Ass. Hell, Washington and Tokyo've got some of the most influential Mullahs in Qom and Baghdad on the payroll. It's the way of the world. (Economics, remember?) But these L. A sand-scratchers are just a propaganda cell. Bureaucratic pussies that couldn't keep me in lunch money.'
The elevator was still climbing. Jonny knew then that they were headed for the hoverport on the roof. He shook his head. 'I know that you were lying that night back at the warehouse. You don't have Sumi. If you did, you'd have brought her up already. Used her to threaten me or something.'
Zamora smiled. The elevator was gradually slowing its ascent.
'You sure about that, Jimmy?' The Colonel reached out and gently fingered the rip in Jonny's prison tunic. 'You ready to bet your life on it?'
'You telling me I got anything to lose?' Jonny asked.
Zamora laughed again. 'No, probably not.'
The elevator shuddered as magnetic bolts locked it into place below the hoverport. They were still two floors from the roof. Like most port-equipped buildings in L.A., this one had a special, restricted-access elevator they would have to use to reach the port.
'Get ready,' Zamora told the Committee boys. Neither boy directly acknowledged the order, but each moved, adjusting datapatches, wiggling their shoulders to smooth the targeting webs. The boys were living on a different level, Jonny knew, in the extended sense-field of the targeting matrix, experiencing a digital approximation of expanded consciousness. For a moment, Jonny found himself envying them. He shook his head at the absurdity of his own mind. Nothing to lose there, he thought.
The elevator doors whispered open and Jonny was propelled into the hall; Zamora came behind him, the Committee boys on either side. The Colonel moved quickly to the other elevator, slid his identification card into a slot under the key pad and pushed a button.
A few meters down the corridor, a prison maintenance worker was using a caulk gun to apply a clear silicone sealant around the edges of an observation window. The corridor itself was silent and anonymous with beige walls and brown institutional carpeting; Jonny was relieved to find that the vile prison smell did extend up to this level.
Time was definitely slowing, Jonny decided. He felt as if he were moving through some heavy liquid medium, acutely aware of his surroundings, pulsing with the exaggerated senses of the dying and the doomed. Objects had taken on an almost holy significance.
Potted palms by the windows. Dull chrome lighting fixtures. The blue overalls of the maintenance worker, his mottled skin. Pink shading to black. Something in his hand. Silver bolt in a crossbow pistol.
The name came out, involuntarily. 'Man Ray,' Jonny said. But by then it was over. The Committee boy on his right was dead, a slender length of super-conductive alloy bursting through his chest, glittering there like a bloody spider, the ribbed filaments bent back, tangling and shorting the targeting web- frying the boy in his own sense- data.
The other boy was firing down the corridor, spraying the walls with hot red tracers. Jonny spun and round- housed him in the kidneys. An arm clamped around Jonny's throat, jerking him backwards. 'No!' Zamora shouted; the Committee boy had turned on them; stoned and red-faced with rage, he had his gun pressed to Jonny's jaw. There was a subdued hiss. And the boy fell back, his throat split with a spidery bolt.
The elevator doors opened and Zamora pulled Jonny through.
In death, the second Committee boy's eyes were like those of a bewildered child. Jonny felt for him, but then his head was snapped back savagely to meet the barrel of Zamora's Futukoro. 'It's not that easy!' the Colonel yelled. He flicked the barrel of his gun at Man Ray and blasted between the closing doors, the sound thundering through Jonny's head. Man Ray leaped the bodies of the dead Committee boys and rolled clear of the shot. The elevator doors closed with a soft thud and the car began to rise.
'Nothing,' Zamora whispered in Jonny's ear. 'Not a move, not a breath, not a sound. The arm around Jonny's throat tightened, threatening to lift him off his feet. You think your companeros are cute? They're assholes. Got nothing going for them but card tricks.'
'Maybe,' said Jonny, 'but your boys are still dead.'
The car shivered gently to a halt and the doors opened under the towering lighting gantries of the hoverport. The Colonel's Futukoro pressed to his temple, Jonny crossed the tarmac, the Colonel hugging his back. Smog-light bloodied the sky, the setting sun burning feebly through hydrocarbon-laden mists. 'Heads up, children!' Zamora bellowed. 'There's Croakers in the building!' Boys moved in the dusty desert light.
A dozen broad circles, were laid out evenly across the roof, like illuminated manhole covers. The hovercar landing pads were essentially waffled discs of carbon steel inset with guide lights, set on a bed of leaking shock absorbers. At the moment, there was only one car on the roof, resting on a pad at the far end of the port; Zamora was pushing Jonny toward it as a dozen running Committee boys and cops fanned-out behind them, preparing to lay down covering-fire across the rooftop. Off to Jonny's left, a young cop with a lightning bolt tattooed on each side of his bald scalp, was sending the aircraft elevator to the basement, sealing the roof from the rest of the building. Horns sounded and crimson warning beacons revolved. The platform dropped about two meters and stopped. The roof lights flickered and died.
'Power's cut!' someone yelled.
Zamora shoved Jonny forward, into the arms of a couple of slope-browed Meat Boys. The taller of the two, an acne-scarred chollo, tall even by Committee standards, said, 'Where's Rick and Pepe…?
'Shut up,' said the Colonel. 'They're gone. It's the asshole's fault. Take him to the car.'
At the moment the Meat Boys' brutal fingers death-gripped Jonny's shoulders, something fluttered in the air. The Mitsui Pacific Bank complex, dark a moment before, glowed a pale, snowy gray, and a black and white hologram of a woman's face coalesced in the air, gridded with windows and shining robot washers. The image refocused, tightened until only the eye remained. And the profile of a man with a straight razor in his hand. The gray eye covered ten stories at the top of the bank as the razor slid through the cornea, cutting it neatly in half. On every side of the roof, buildings flared behind tides of phosphenes. Pale dustings of porn flesh. The wet red of an autopsy instructional. Collaged ads, too fast to follow: shoes, cars, new eyes, cloned pets.
From somewhere, a loudspeaker blared metallically: 'We are the revolt of the spirit humiliated by your works. We are the spark in the wind, but the spark seeking the powder magazine!'
'Get him out of here,' said Zamora as the first concussion shook the roof.
The Croakers were above the hoverport when Jonny saw them, high enough to still be silent under the whirling blades of their ultralights. He figured they had launched themselves from the nearby buildings under cover
