toppled into a coffee table and dresser. I was up. We were in an enormous bedroom. It had its own living room. I ran at Adrian, leapt on and off an overstuffed easy chair. My fist caught his chin hard. He buried his knuckles in my guts. We went down, rolled against the bed. Adrian's face glared at me. I glared back.
'Join me, Wildclown!' he growled angrily, blood spraying from between his teeth. 'I have millions. I have the…'
I threw a fist at his temple. Adrian was no slouch. I suddenly felt his arms turn to steel, then caught two of his punches on the left cheek. My left arm was wood. More sparks flew. My vision jumped. I wrestled one of his arms to his side.
'Wildclown!' Adrian threw a glance at the door. I noticed the gunfire had become sporadic. A fog of acrid smoke rolled over us. 'They'll be in here to get us. We're both dead if they do. I have a way out. Join me. At least don't stop me!'
'Where's Van Reydner?' I choked as his forearm slid across my throat.
Suddenly Adrian smiled. He had managed to push my right shoulder under the bed, pinning it. The best my wounded left could do was flail like a landed fish. His forearm suddenly weighed ten tons as he found leverage. He chuckled and whipped his right arm onto the bed. It came back with a gun attached. A dark light filled his eyes.
'Where is she you stupid clown?' I could smell the cordite; the muzzle was so close. My blood had spattered the barrel like paint. 'The first place…' But that was all he said. A fountain erupted out of his chest. I gagged as blood gushed over my face. Adrian rolled forward off of me, and lay still. I pushed the gore from my eyes and looked at Willieboy. He stood in the doorway smiling, weighing the machinegun in his hands.
'Help me get his body. We'll question him later.' Willieboy's eyes were stern. He took a step toward me. The gunfire had stopped outside. Authority Enforcers were closing in on the room. Someone had shot out the lights, but I saw a glint on gunmetal.
'Willieboy!' I hissed and pointed.
Willieboy swung around already shooting. Bullet holes pocked a ballistic trail along the wall as he turned. He concentrated his fire on the facemask at the door. It erupted in sparks and blood. My hair stood up; I sensed motion behind me. I kicked Willieboy in the calf, and ducked. He swung his gun around still firing.
Adrian was out of Blacktime. Standing, his corpse took the withering blast in the abdomen. Bones and blood burst in a wide upward gash, the body toppled back, the hole in his chest ate into his face. The heavy caliber bullets pushed him as they tore him apart. Then he was gone. His body slammed into the window and out. There was a great crash, nothing more. Then dark smoke from the penthouse battle rolled in the door and filled the room.
'Fuck!' barked Willieboy. He shook the machinegun. 'Fuck!' he roared as he spun and let a blast go at the door. 'Wildclown! Move that fucking dresser and overturn that mattress on it. Quick!'
I was still bleeding from the bullet wound in my shoulder, so I was a little slow. Willieboy kicked at me as I climbed to my feet. 'Hurry, we're running out of time!'
My arms were leaden as I pushed the large oak dresser near the bed. I idly looked out the shattered window and thought of Adrian one hundred floors below-smashed to sleep now, beyond any worldly cares. I envied him as I pushed the dresser, felt my head throb against the weight. I heard Willieboy yell 'Fuck!' again, when a tear gas canister thumped and rattled into the room. Still firing, he dropped to one knee, grabbed it and threw it out again. He thrust his steaming hand into his armpit, face twisting with pain.
With what seemed the last of my strength, I upended the mattress against the dresser, then the box spring. I collapsed into the rectangle formed by the body of the bed. I heard Willieboy yell again, then felt him thump into place beside me. Despite the extremity of the situation, he smiled. A few bullets whizzed overhead and knocked out pieces of glass-began to eat into the mattress with harsh chuffing sounds. Willieboy pulled his transceiver out of his pocket turned it on, then smiled at me again. 'I'd cover your ears if I were you.'
He barked orders into the device, then dropped it to cover his own.
There was the sudden faraway thudding of a helicopter. I was wrong. They were just out of the way sounds. It must have been waiting high above Galaxy Tower, hidden in the clouds. A large Authority Attack Helicopter appeared at the window. It looked like an armament show with helicopter blades. Its long black fuselage shone dully in the overcast light. The flying weapon dropped enough to center its cannons on the broken windows. All its killing power was pointed into the penthouse.
I looked over at Willieboy. He still smiled, though there was a definite tension in his black eyes. 'The stakes are high!' he bellowed. The helicopter's machineguns roared. The walls around us vanished. The ceiling overhead was chewed to pieces in the blink of an eye. Then followed the heavy gut sickening concussion of missile launchers. Fire exploded all around us, I felt the floor come up and kick me in the head. Incredible light blinded me. Another roar and I knew no more.
Chapter 59
I smelled creosote, or cordite, or gasoline. At first I thought it was in the air, then realized the smell was coming from me. I was still in Tommy so had to bend my neck to look down. My coveralls were burnt and charred. The blood on them had been baked black. My left arm was useless. I couldn't get it to bend. I sat up quickly. A dark orange light glowed above. My head throbbed noisily then I realized it was not my head at all. It was the sound of an engine. My first suspicion was that I was lying on the steel floor of an Authority Transport. A chill went through me like deja vu. Willieboy smiled down at me from a bench seat. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill someone. I reached for my pink skipping rope belt, but found only a line of melted plastic fused to my waist. No gun.
Willieboy chuckled. 'Here.' His large hand held out a pack of cigarettes. From a compartment beside him came a bottle of Canadian Club. 'Drink?' He needn't have asked. A part of me, that part that wasn't shell-shocked, was experiencing an odd sense of familiarity. But I was too numb to place it. We were in the cargo bay of a transport. Both walls held benches over which ran streamlined weapons' compartments. Authority used these big monsters when they were called in to break up a riot or start one. Transports could carry equipment, weapons and Enforcers. The benches running the length of the bay were of molded high-impact plastic. I counted places for twenty armored bottoms. Struggling onto an elbow I took the tin cup offered me-downed the drink then held it out again. I also grabbed the cigarette offered and let Willieboy light it. He was being nice to me for a reason. My singed nostrils ached.
'So there wasn't enough left of Adrian to question?' My voice trembled.
'I didn't mean to take him out so bad in the first place.' Willieboy smiled fiercely. 'Gun jammed! Heat of the moment. He's done.' He gestured with his chin. I turned my head and saw a clear plastic garbage bag smeared with red. It crackled as a pile of hamburger moved inside. A lidless eye peered out. The gristle around it twitched. 'You never know. The King's got some good stitch men.'
'Lovely.' I tried to shift my body away from the monstrosity. 'Speaking of heat. You were playing it pretty close to the candle.'
'We were surprised. Cane's people came in through the floor. Blew a hole and up they came. I suspected something like that. But whoever that first group was that came in through the roof, I'm still trying to figure them.'
'King's people?' I grinned.
'Maybe…' Willieboy offered me another drink.
'The Businessmen?' I struggled onto an elbow again to accept the drink.
Willieboy gave me a hard look. 'What do you mean?'
This time I smiled. 'They should have been there. But, that would mean that your helicopter fired on your own group. I know the stakes are high, but you can't buy that kind of loyalty. You know it wasn't the King's men in the penthouse, because you know the King's men came in the helicopter.'
Willieboy stared for a moment, then ruined the whiskey by drinking from the bottle. I tried to register distaste in my features. He worked the liquor in his mouth. 'What makes you say that?'
'You said yourself that the King was a big player. Yet, I never bumped into any of his people. Why would that be?'
'Maybe they only tailed you.' He drank again, and lit a cigarette. 'It ain't over yet.'
