what had happened.  One of the Chinese agents had gotten careless,

since his own people were more adept than to show a gun that was

supposed to be hidden.  One of the Chinese agents had gotten

careless.

Whichever of his people who saw the piece must have felt it was being

brought into play.  All of his shooters had been told to stay

cool--unless a weapon came out.  The shout of 'Gun!'  had been the

agreed-upon signal for his shooters to take out their targets, and once

that happened, all bets were off.

Had the Chinese intended to take the shortcut?  To grab Morrison

instead of paying for the data?

Well, it didn't matter.  Done was done, no point in crying over it now.

Still, there were consequences to consider.

The Chinese were going to be most unhappy, and they might well decide

that Morrison and Ventura had ripped them off for their four hundred

million and decide to try and get it back, and that was real bad.

Morrison wasn't going to be giving anything back, and Ventura didn't

have it.

He changed lanes, and a fat man in a black Porsche honked at him for

cutting in.  Ventura had a sudden urge to pull his Coonan and put a

round into the fat man's windshield.  Honk at somebody else,

dickhead.

He resisted the urge.  That wouldn't help matters, to start shooting

morons on the L.A. freeway.  Once you started, you'd run out of ammo

quick.  Probably couldn't carry enough extra rounds in a moving van to

get them all... He giggled at the thought.  He was stressed out, yes,

better just take a few deep breaths and think this through.

He did just that.  Three deep breaths, in and out, and now think about

it calmly.

Well.  The first thing was, the couple of million he had tucked away

didn't seem like all that much money anymore.

The way he figured it, he was going to have to disappear, just as he

had told Morrison he would have to disappear, forever.  Yes, he was

living on borrowed time and had been for a long time, but the truth

was, he wasn't quite ready to check out yet.

If the deal had come off, he'd have been safe enough from the likes of

Wu.  They'd have gotten their money's worth, and pros didn't need to

take each other out for doing their jobs.

But it hadn't come off.  The Chinese were out that money; they didn't

get what they wanted, and too bad for them.  This was certainly going

to make them real unhappy.

Morrison hadn't given Ventura the account number, so he couldn't get

his hands on it, either.  Too bad for everybody.

The fat man found an opening on the outside lane, whipped the Porsche

around Ventura, and zipped past.  He waved his middle finger at Ventura

as he went by, and though he couldn't hear him, Ventura could read the

man's lips easy enough.  A fourteen-letter word.

Maybe he could shoot just the one and stop?

The Porsche accelerated and gained away, and Ventura forgot the fat

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