Val had turned to look out at the city.
To his southeast was downtown with what was left of its towers, including the stump of the U.S. Bank Tower—what old farts like his grandfather still called the Library Tower—and the vertical rubble of the Aon Center. Most of the other remaining towers were largely abandoned and wearing their black antiterrorist condoms.
But Val wasn’t looking at old buildings.
He saw Los Angeles, as everyone did now, as sections of owned and protected turf, almost as if the different areas he could see were pulsing in different colors. To his south and east was spanic turf, mostly
The rich-shit areas of Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Pacific Palisades, and parts of Santa Monica were where the real nighttime fun was these days, but Val’s grandfather didn’t have a car Val could steal, so he didn’t try to go there. The gang wouldn’t get into those gated and security-guarded richshit communities anyway. Coyne’s pathetic little flashgang was on foot, so the Pacific Ocean was as unreachable as the moon.
“Want to hold it?” Coyne asked Val.
Coyne had been going around the circle holding out the Beretta semiautomatic like a priest offering the Communion wafer and now it was Val’s turn.
Val took the pistol. He was surprised at how heavy it felt—even with the magazine out and still in Coyne’s hand—and the crosshatched butt or handle or whatever you called it felt cool in Val’s sweaty hand. Acting as if he knew what the fuck he was doing, Val racked the slide back and looked into the empty chamber.
“Sweet, isn’t it?” asked Coyne. The other six boys hovered behind Coyne like the eager acolytes they were.
“Yeah, sweet,” said Val and aimed the pistol at the distant stub of the U.S. Bank Tower. “Bang,” he said softly.
Coyne laughed so the other six behind him giggled like idiots.
Val was thinking of who he might shoot if Coyne gave him the gun and the loaded magazine. His grandfather, of course, but what the fuck had Leonard ever done to Val other than hover over him like some surrogate parent? One of his teachers, maybe, on the way to or from school, but the only one he hated was Ms. Daggis, the English teacher in ninth grade who’d made him read his fucking essay in front of the whole class. That had been the last time Val had written anything worth a damn in school. He liked to write stuff and he’d simply forgotten himself that one time.
No… wait.
If he had this gun, Val realized, he could find a way back to Denver and shoot his old man in the belly. He couldn’t fly there, Val knew. Shit, they stripped passengers stark naked these days, MRI’d them right there at the airport, and had fifty sensor-thingees sniff their orifices to make sure they hadn’t packed Semtex up their wazoos. Plus, only the Japs and richest Americans—like Coyne’s old lady—could travel by air.
No, he’d have to hitchhike, somehow get through a thousand miles or more of bandit country, staying away from the militia and fed-controlled Interstates, avoiding the walled city of Las Vegas, take those surface-street highways that the gypsy truckers knew about, and show up in Denver after his six years of exile and find his old man and…
Val realized that Coyne’s hand was open and extended. He wanted the pistol back.
Val handed it to him and the leader slapped in the magazine with a practiced movement and then ratcheted the slide back and let it slap back into place. Theoretically there was a bullet in the spout now and thirteen—or was it fourteen?—more waiting in the magazine.
“This is the tool,” said Coyne.
“This is the tool, fool,” echoed Sully. The six others giggled. Val waited.
“This is the tool,” repeated Coyne. “What we got to do now is make the real deal happen.”
“The real deal,” echoed Sully.
“Shut up, shithead,” said Coyne.
“Shut up, shithead,” said Sully and shut up with a goofy grin.
“We waste some people with this,” said Coyne, turning his gray-eyed gaze on each of them in turn, “and we can flash on it for years. And it’s got to be someone special.”
“Mr. Amherst?” said Gene D. Amherst was the principal of their high school.
“Fuck Mr. Amherst,” said Coyne. The six boys—everyone but Val, who was still thinking about wasting his old man—were so attentive that their mouths were hanging open. “For full flash value, we got to waste someone
“A movie star?” breathed Gene D. The boy with the serious acne was getting into it.
Coyne shook his head.
“There’s nothing in the ’verse like flashing after wasting somebody,” said the older boy. Coyne was only a month away from his seventeenth birthday and mandatory induction into the army. Val faced the same abyss eleven months from now.
“But it’s gotta be somebody special,” said Coyne. He looked from face to face. Now even Val was interested.
“Who?” said the Cruncher.
“A Jap,” said Coyne.
The other boys exploded into laughter.
“Zap a Jap!” cried Sully. “Clip a Nip!”
Val shook his head. “Their security’s too good. Their fucking cars are armored. They’ve got ninja bodyguards and Secret Service guys and MUAVs up the ass. And their Green Zone is… I mean we couldn’t… you can’t get to them, Coyne.”
“I can,” said Coyne. “There are fourteen rounds in this Beretta. I can get my hands on three more semiautos just like it and I can get us close enough to a real live Jap Advisor that even Dinjin couldn’t miss. The flashback on it will be gold. Who’s with me?”
Six of the seven other boys exploded in noise and high-fives and loud affirmation. Val just continued looking at Coyne’s gray and slightly mad eyes for a long minute.
Then Val nodded slowly.
The junior flashgang moved off the overpass ledge and into the overgrown trees and weeds toward the wilderness of the Old Plaza and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Park with its graffiti-desecrated church. There were flash and gun dealers waiting there.
1.02
Denver—Friday, Sept. 10
Sato couldn’t fit in the car seat or get the damned seat belt harness on.
Nick had done the entire three-tier security thing in reverse with Sato in tow: Mr. Nakamura’s personal security
