“It hasn’t been the same around here without you,” Moore said, welcoming me into his office with his usual ruggedly handsome smile and a handshake firm enough to break bones. I shook off the impulse to break all the bones in his face.
“I think we can get back on track pretty quick, boss,” I said crisply, lying through my teeth.
“Coffee, Agent Baker?” asked the familiar mechanized voice of the office’s built-in catering unit.
“The usual, thanks,” I said, since I was being careful to make sure that “the usual” was exactly the impression I made.
Within seconds, a robotic arm handed me a cup of delicious espresso, strong and bitter. At least this stuff wasn’t washed out like the no-calorie food served everywhere else in New Lake City.
Moore waved me to a leather easy chair and sat behind his all-glass desk. He lit up a stogie, and I kept imagining it blowing up in his face.
“I’ve got a top-priority assignment,” he said. “I wanted to give you a little time to rest, but it can’t wait any longer. Hays, we need you. President Jacklin has asked for you personally. Are you feeling up to a little action?”
“One hundred percent,” I said.
“Good-you’re going to love this.” He touched a control, and a monitor screen blinked on.
It displayed a life-size image of Lucy’s face. I did, in fact,
“Recognize her?” Moore said.
“She’s one of the terrorists-the ones who attacked Lizbeth and me when we were leaving the president’s party,” I said grimly, as if my hatred of her was still fresh in my mind. But my guts twisted as I guessed what was coming next.
“She goes by the code name Lucy, or sometimes Megwin. How folksy those humans are,” Moore said. “She’s very good at eluding surveillance, but now we’ve got her located and we’re ready to move on this worthless skunk bitch.”
I was seething with anger, but I had to say yes to my boss. Backing out would look suspicious, and besides, I’d rather go after Lucy myself than let someone like McGill get the assignment to kill her.
“You’re right I’d love it,” I said. “I want to take that one out myself.”
Moore smiled and relaxed back in his chair. “Hays, you’re sure you’ve never seen her, except that one time with Lizbeth?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said, looking surprised at the question. “I’ll never forget that one.”
“Lizbeth said you were still confused from the anesthesia. If I’m going to put you out there, I want to be damned positive you’re at one hundred percent.”
“That was just one small glitch-right as I was waking up. There’s been nothing else since then. In fact, I feel perfectly rested and ready to go.”
“All right, but don’t get overconfident,” Moore warned. “She and her people have killed a lot of Elites, including those executives at the Baronville Toyz store.” A cruel look came into his eyes. “Hays, we want to take her alive. Her interrogation will be most entertaining. This Lucy/Megwin bitch has a lot of secrets we need to know.”
Chapter 84
My old partner and “good buddy,” Owen McGill, was waiting for me on the city’s south side, at the fringe of the so-called Human Slums, or Darkness. It was already night when I got there, but McGill’s height and build were easy to spot. Some things never change.
“My main man!” he said, hurrying to give me a bone-crushing hug. “Welcome back, Hays. The good times are about to get rolling again.”
“Going to roll right over whatever gets in our way,” I said with equally false heartiness. I was remembering how McGill had spat in my eye while I lay strapped to a hospital bed. And how he had punched me in the face.
That was another score I wanted to settle, but now wasn’t the time for vendettas. Now was the time to find a way for Lucy to escape from an Agency trap, whatever it might be.
What a foul night this was turning out to be. I’d driven here with my hands clenched so tightly on the wheel that I almost snapped the damn thing off. I couldn’t think the situation through because I didn’t know enough about this mission, the plan of attack, or even where Lucy was supposed to be hiding. Jax Moore had told me that McGill would fill me in, then he hurried me out of his office-probably because he still had doubts about me. Moore is nothing if not clever, devious, paranoid,
“You’re probably thinking the skunkess is in there.” McGill jerked his head toward the slum’s squalid streets, which were crowded with hapless humans, plus violent Ghools-wyre addicts-moving through the smoky glow of the cooking fires. “So did we at first. It took us a while to locate the clever bitch. But we’ve got her, Hays. We have her nailed.”
He pointed in the opposite direction, out to where the slum ended at a dried-up river channel and a dark wasteland stretched into the distance. The only structure I knew of there was the city’s old water-filtration plant-a concrete hulk about the size of a sports stadium.
“That old plant?” I said. “How has she managed to sneak in there?”
“That’s where we’ve got a small problem,” McGill said. “Take a look at this.”
He handed me a perspective imager, a slender mask that fit across my eyes and relayed a sharp picture of the building’s interior.
I knew that Lucy would be there-but actually seeing her was like taking a hard punch in the stomach. She and two men were working at tables spread with a cache of rifles and pistols, the kind that shot metal bullets. It looked like they were cleaning the outmoded weapons, getting ready to use them.
And McGill’s “problem” was easy to see on the imager-Lucy had an escape route. The plant’s water mains had been opened and their maintenance hatches torn off. The mains dropped underground and branched into a complex network that ran under the entire city. At the whisper of alarm, Lucy and her team could easily disappear into the tunnels. That was certainly reassuring to me.
“We need her alive,” McGill emphasized, laying a comradely hand on my shoulder. “She knows what the humans are up to. We need to know everything she knows. Actually, this should be fun. For both of us.”
I studied the imager for a few seconds longer. The plant’s entrances were sealed, but there was a row of grimy industrial windows about twenty feet above the ground. That’s where I planned to go. I was starting to see a chance of how I might succeed-by failing.
I took one last close-up look at Lucy’s face, then I set off, ostensibly to capture or kill her.
Chapter 85
Minutes later, I was crouched down at the border of the dark wasteland. I had a stun-gun carbine in my hand and was tensing my legs for a sprint to the filtration plant where the Agency had isolated Lucy-I was the point man in her capture. I sucked in one more deep, measured breath. Then I jumped forward, racing in long, springing strides.
I lunged straight up as I reached the building’s granite walls, catching the ledge below a window with my free hand, throwing the carbine to my shoulder with the other.
This was it, life or death. For me, and for Lucy.
I rammed the rifle barrel through the window and aimed. Right now, this instant, I had to be the best marksman I could imagine.
Very slowly, I squeezed the trigger.
Shot of my life.
And Lucy’s too.
Lucy and her men spun around toward the shattering glass. I had fired the most deliberate and careful shot-
