protections or shields. Harvey smiled wryly; he'd expected the man to try to kill him to provide a cutout for anyone on the trail of that missing metal. But it would have been so convenient if he had agreed, of course. Always better to have someone hand the goods over to you rather than take them by brute force.
'You really should have taken me up on that,' he said regretfully. 'Or at least been willin' to consider it. But I suppose if you was reasonable, you wouldn't be in this exact line of work.'
He ignored the trickles of sweat running down his face and flanks. He'd spent a lot of his life in hot, humid, smelly places, starting with Texas. The Brotherhood had been obligingly incurious as to how much plutonium he'd smuggled out of Seversk; the organization had always been decentralized. Part of the hell-metal had gone into the coffin bed of a postcorporeal Shadowspawn lord, which had been Harvey's official mission. The rest had come here, and there was more than enough for a critical mass.
'Didn't I get you the finest ex-Russian bomb components? And after all, we got the stuff to you without a problem. That shows we can handle transit security.'
'I said I would consider it!' Dhul Fiqar snapped.
It surely does alter your interactions with people when you can sense whether they're fibbing, Harvey thought. Could that be the reason I keep getting divorced?
'Where are y'all keeping the bomb?' he asked with a guileless smile.
'Far from here.'
Another lie, and the Arab's mind had jumped sideways at the word bomb, a feeling of anxiety reassurance.
'And it is not yet assembled.'
Bingo, lie number three. I thought he'd work it this way and it turned out I was right. The bomb's ready and it's in this building. He wouldn't want it out of reach.
'Okay, time to cut the comedy,' Harvey said.
His hand went under his embroidered, khaki-colored linen guayabera; he was wearing it three-quarters unbuttoned over a black T-shirt printed across the chest with very small white letters:
Yes, I am carrying a concealed handgun. (Pursuant to CH 411.172, Texas Government Code.)
The hand came out with a Colt Commander. 45, a customized model with a Caspian Arms titanium frame and an integral laser sight that came on when you took up the trigger slack. The little dot came to rest on Dhul Fiqar's chest, and the man froze with his hand halfway to an open drawer. There was nothing quite so intimidating as knowing exactly where the bullet would hit: in this case in the cluster of big blood vessels just above the heart.
Harvey knew he wasn't nearly as fast as he'd been thirty years ago, but he was still pretty good, he had the priceless advantage of moving first, and the Arab wasn't a pistol expert anyway. If he had been he'd have carried at all times rather than leaving his gun uselessly in a desk, and Harvey would have made a different plan to begin with. A firearm where you couldn't reach it was about as useful as one on the cold side of the moon; you might not need it often, but when you did you needed it very badly.
'Now kick back from the desk, friend,' he said. 'That's right, lean back in the chair. Relax, and we'll have us a talk.'
There might be some position that made it more difficult to move quickly than sitting back in a swivel chair with your feet off the ground, but he couldn't think of one offhand. Dhul Fiqar was sweating, but his eyes were steady and burning with hate. The fear in them was well under control, and Harvey could see him note how the gunman's back was to the open door. A shout would bring armed help.
'You know, it's a relief sometimes to deal with folks who can't hex firearms,' he said.
The important thing now was to keep hitting his opponent faster than he could respond until his mental balance went completely to hell. He grinned.
'Sure, yell for help if'n you want to; that alarm you pressed had a little malfunction. The more, the merrier.'
'You are mad,' the plutonium buyer whispered, though he obeyed and kept his hands visible. 'You will die for this! Die slowly.'
Then, louder: 'Rashid! Jasim! Come quickly! Alert the others; the Jews and Crusaders are here!'
There was a brief burst of fire from below.
MP-5, Harvey thought. ' Bout half a clip.
It was racking-loud inside, but through the thick coral-block walls a casual ear would miss it, or mistake it for a piece of machinery stripping a gear.
Harvey shook his head with a tsk sound. If you could Wreak, even the little he and the other two could manage, you shouldn't need to shoot.
'Guha, bring Jasim in, would you?' he said, speaking normally. 'It ain't polite to keep friends apart.'
To the man in the chair: 'I took the liberty of havin' some company of my own along on our little visit. Sorta forgot to mention it, on the off chance you'd be unreasonable.'
The pickup mike was in a little skin-colored patch on his throat. The bud in his ear was similarly tiny and inconspicuous. The Brotherhood might make its operatives fly coach, but they didn't stint on gear.
A woman's voice with a singsong accent spoke: 'Jasim's in bad shape, oh, yes, indeed. Will this much of him do?'
He could hear her voice twice, through the radio and from the door behind him as she walked through and tossed something through the air. It landed on the desk with a wet, meaty thump.
'It's very big,' she went on.
Which was what Jasim meant: big, or huge or strong. The man had probably taken the name because he was a six-four slab of muscled beef. Dhul Fiqar scrabbled backwards a little in his seat; the head of his follower was wrapped in a piece of burlap sacking, but that fell away to show the blank-eyed contorted face. A spray of blood whipped across his cheeks and mouth, and he scrabbled a hand at it in involuntary reflex. The metallic-coppery scent was suddenly heavy in the damp hot air, and flies buzzed downward.
That's more Farmer's style, really, Harvey thought. But I suspect Guha is a bit prejudiced about these folks. You can take the girl out of Hindustan, but you cant take the Hindu out of the girl. Come to think about it, her family were Kashmiri Pandits back a ways, if I recall correctly.
Theoretically once you knew about the Shadowspawn-Brotherhood war and the reality behind the false front of history, human tribes and nations and religions shouldn't matter anymore. The ancient enemy was more important, and besides that, you learned how they used human rivalries to keep the prey species down. In practice it didn't always work that way, not for humans, sometimes not even for Shadowspawn.
And I can't fault a severed head for technique. It's classic. Now we have to keep our friend Dhul Fiqar psychologically off balance well and truly.
'There was a machete,' she said half apologetically. 'I think he was using it to open coconuts and then tried to open me.'
The front of her cotton blouse was soaked and dripping with sticky red. It clung to her body so closely that the blouse was transparent, and he could see her navel and the outline of her sports bra.
'It seemed bloody appropriate to use it on him,' she finished.
She chuckled, and Dhul Fiqar flinched a little. It probably didn't help that she was a woman.
'Rashid! Rashid!' he shouted.
Farmer came in with Rashid stumbling before him; Rashid was thin and dark and probably quite quick. He was bleeding freely too, from a pressure cut above the eyes that more than half blinded him with the stinging, sticky fluid. The sort of injury you got when you turned around at a sound behind you and got pistol-whipped in the same motion; his hands were secured with a one-way loop, a variety that could be yanked tight with a tag but couldn't be removed without cutting it.
'The others?' Harvey said.
'Dead,' Farmer said. 'A little Wreaking and they didn't suspect a thing until too late.'
'Evidence?'
'Nothing that'll show from the street until they start to smell. The truck they've got will do fine to get us to Lopez's boat with the package. It looks like a piece of crap but the engine's in good shape, the cargo compartment is well shielded, and they've got a knock-down lifting tackle inside.'
'Looks like they were planning on using it for exactly what we'll do. Secure friend Dhul Fiqar here. We
