Someone was shooting at them from ground cover now. This had the feel of a well-assembled trap. The Cadillac was crashing through thick grass, and the snipers were well dug-in.
Krokodil adjusted the M-312, and squirted concentrated napalm in an arc, hoping to start a brushfire that would distract the ground troops.
One of the copters came too close, and Elvis got off a ground-to-air rocket that took out its right runner and arm-guns. It wavered in the air, and went down for a bumpy landing. Hoodheads poured out, burpguns chattering.
A stray slug passed through Krokodil's thigh, putting a grey hole in her karate pyjamas. The lead just grazed her. Her bioflesh tingled as it knit. She wouldn't even have a graze. Since Dr Threadneedle worked her oyer, even all her old scars were healing over. One morning, she expected to wake up a virgin again and with her eye grown back.
She turned around, feeling the wind press her jacket to her back, and potted enough hoodheads to make the others throw themselves flat. She noticed there were two types of bandit in the assault team. The CAF were the hoodheads with red crusader crosses on their camouflage robes and white steeple hats. The others wore brown suits and stetsons and bootiace ties. Krokodil recognized the usual strip of the Good Ole Boys, an Agency she had heard only bad things about.
The sole remaining copter was hanging on, keeping high enough to be out of range, but staying in the race. A hatch opened in the bottom, and four black things dropped into the air. They didn't fall, they flew like whizzing birds, clawed arms clacking.
Krokodil recognized the devices as Killer Crabs. They were remote probes that locked in on a human heat pattern and pursued their subjects mercilessly. When they caught up with you, they hugged you with their razor- tipped arms and exploded.
The Killer Crabs moved too fast for her laser sight to be any use, and so she fell back on her senses. Aiming and firing fast, she exploded two and winged a third. The crippled crab fell out of the sky and burst in the grass. The final drone zigzagged towards her. It was too close for the M-312. She reached into the sky, and snatched it, turning it around so that its arms tried to hug the empty air. The Killer Crab pumped streams of paralyzing nerve- toxin out of its arm, and green splashes marred the roof of the Cadillac.
Krokodil's fingers sank through the durium-laced carapace of the crab, and she felt circuit-boards crunch. The Killer Crab sparked, and its legs hung useless. She tossed the piece of junk away.
They were out of the grass and on a highway again. And there were other ve-hickles in the game. This was moonshine country, and the GOB would need souped-up machines to keep up with the moonrunners. Fifty yards back was a wedge-shaped racing tank with a rear-mounted cannon. Krokodil put a line of slugs across its window, turning the supposedly shatterproof white glass to powder. The tank flipped up and over and exploded.
Elvis was slowing down. Krokodil looked up front. There was a block across the road. The kind of block the Op wouldn't drive through.
Krokodil swore. Her hair had come loose, and was streaming around her face in rat-tails.
If the GOB had parked a couple of trucks across the road, and set fire to them, then laid down a hundred yards of minimines and caltrop spikes, then Colonel Presley would probably just have cruised on through and trusted the Cadillac's defences.
The Cadillac rolled to a halt. Krokodil slipped a new clip into her M-312, but held her fire.
Strung across the road was a human chain. Men, women and children in ragged work clothes. They must be indentees. They were chained at ankle and wrist. There were one or two white-ish faces in the chain, but the overwhelming majority were black.
A couple of Good Ole Boys with pumpguns were riding herd on the indentees. There was a small gentleman with white whiskers and a big hat in charge. Krokodil wondered where she had seen him before.
He took off his hat, and swept the floor with a bow.
'Howdy, ma'am,' he said. 'Always a pleasure to meet a lady.'
She sighted the red dot on the crotch of his tan pants. He had an automatic pistol in his hand. It was pointed at the head of a sullen, big-eyed little girl.
'Now, if you would kindly cayuh to lay down your weapon, then I won't have to spread this pickaninny's brains all over the interstate.'
Krokodil didn't have time for this. But the Op was already out of the car, without a visible gun and. with his hands up.
'Back off, Chamberlain,' he was saying.
The pursuit ve-hickles were drawing up around the Cadillac, and Good Ole Boys were pouring out. There were one or two hoodheads left, but most of them had been wasted in the air.
Krokodil kept her sight steady. Her business was too important for this distraction.
'You could be singing soprano,' she said to the Southern gentleman.
The automatic kicked, and the little girl screamed, pressing her hand to her head. Chamberlain had just nicked her ear.
'Next one will be two inches to the right.'
Krokodil knew why the Good Ole Boy seemed familiar. She had seen his face recently, but not in the flesh.
'Krokodil,' said Elvis, 'please…'
She let the dot fall to the ground between Chamberlain's feet, and set the M-312 on the car roof. Two Good Ole Boys snatched for it, and immediately started arguing over the bone.
Krokodil stood tall on the Cadillac, feeling the slight breeze in her hair, letting her body relax.
Inside her, the Ancient Adversary stirred.
III
Shiba's bites were itching badly. He knew he shouldn't scratch, but he lacked the willpower not to. The backs of his hands were worst. Dotted red with bites this morning, they were covered with nail-tracks this afternoon. The scratching didn't help, of course. If he got the time, he would ask Mary Louise Blaikley if there was anything he could do.
He was having to spend the day with Visser, which was not a thing he much relished. There had been another break-in, and a whole stretch of the compound fencing was down. Visser had some of his Good Ole Boys out in the swamp with rifles, tracking whatever large predators were out there. The ground by the fence had been suggestively trampled by something big. Some of the indentees were missing. Shiba wasn't sure whether they had been taken by the intruder or simply taken the opportunity to run away.
There was a work gang seeing to the fence now. The indentees worked slowly. Shiba noticed that there was an apparent epidemic of grogginess among them. One woman had just spent five minutes trying to loop a piece of wire around a pole. It was hard to watch. Shiba felt a compulsion to step in and perform the simple action. But that was not done. He was in administration. It was his job to administer. The woman acted as if she were drugged, or struck down with a swamp fever. Shiba would check to see that the indentees were being fed and medicated correctly. GenTech knew how to treat a workforce to get the best out of it.
There was a thumping sound, and he turned. Two indentees had been carrying a roll of wire, which was now quarter-sunk in a mudpatch.
'Hey, boys, that there's 'spensive,' Visser shouted, slapping his truncheon in his hand.
One of the indentees bent down to get a grip on the wire, and a Good Ole Boy planted a kick on his buttocks. The man took a nasty fall on his face.
Visser laughed. 'Get him one o' them mudpack beauty treatments, eh?'
'This is ridiculous, Captain,' Shiba snapped. 'How can you expect these people to work if you treat them like this?'
''Denties are lazy, sir. You gotta give 'em a couple o' asskicks a day or they fall behind.'
The fallen man got up, and a mask of mud fell from his face. Shiba noticed that mere was something wrong with his cheek muscles. His lips were pulled away from his teeth in a
