Impact

'Mark was an old friend of mine,' said Abbey. 'Changed my life.'

Ford turned to look at her rather sharply.

'Tutored me in math when I was a freshman in high school, kept my ass from failing. I can't believe it, I saw him just yesterday. He was telling me he'd discovered something important out there, at NPF. Something about gamma rays.'

Moto nodded again. 'They wouldn't pay his severance so he was going to get back at them. Broke him up, getting fired. I never seen him so broken up.'

'How was he going to get back?'

'Said he found something and they were ignoring it. He was going to make them pay. Ah, the poor kid, started to take a few at work. When a bartender starts getting into the sauce . . .' His voice trailed off, the man unwilling to speak against the dead.

'What did he find?' Abbey said.

Moto wiped his leaking eyes. 'Jesus. These punks.'

'What did he find?' Abbey repeated gently.

'I don't remember. No, wait--he said he found something on Mars. Something emitting rays.'

'Rays? Were they gamma rays?'

'I think that's what he said.'

'How, exactly, was he going to make them pay?'

'One night, he'd been dipping into the sauce pretty bad, he showed me a hard drive he got from NPF.'

'How? What was on it?'

'Said a professor friend of his had stolen it, given it to him. There was something on the drive going to make him famous, change the world, but he wouldn't say what. He wasn't making a lot of sense.'

'Where's the drive now?'

Moto shook his head. 'No idea. What does it matter? The punks--killed his mother, too . . . Too many punks in this crappy world.' A tear trembled on the end of Moto's nose.

There was a rattle and the door chimed. Moto quickly wiped his eyes, blew his nose, and composed himself. A man walked in wearing a gray turtleneck with a tweed jacket and khaki pants, and took a seat at the far end of the bar. Abbey narrowed her eyes; he looked just like her old calculus professor at Prince ton.

Moto ducked his head. 'Excuse me,' he said softly, 'got customer.' He walked down the bar.

Abbey turned to Ford. 'There are those gamma rays again.'

'The hard drive is what the killer was looking for when he tossed the house.'

'Yeah, and I bet the gamma ray data is on that hard drive.'

Ford didn't answer. Abbey saw his gaze flicker over to the man at the end of the bar, the new customer, who was leaning over the bar and talking to Moto in a low voice.

The conversation went on for a while and Moto's voice started rising, taking on a querulous tone, still not loud enough to make out individual words. Abbey tried to ignore it, pondering instead the problem of gamma rays from Mars, but she noticed that Ford was staring intently at the man and she wondered what he found so interesting.

'I tell you nothing, you punk!' Moto cried out suddenly.

The stranger said something in a low voice.

'I not answer your questions! Get out or I call police!' Moto pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and started punching in a number. 'I dial nine-one-one!'

The man lashed out at Moto, knocking the cell phone from his hand, at the same time reaching into his jacket and pulling out a large handgun.

'Get your hands above the bar,' he said, and then as Moto raised his hands, he swung the gun toward them. 'You two--I know your game. Get the fuck over here.'

Before Abbey could respond, Ford leapt up and tackled Abbey off her stool, flinging her to the floor behind the curve of the bar. A moment later the man began firing, a strangely high-pitched kwang! sound shaking the bar, kwang! kwang! and the glass wall behind the bar exploded into fragments. Ford dragged her along the floor. 'Get moving! Crawl!'

Kwang! Broken glass and liquor cascaded down around them. Abbey could hear Moto screaming obscenities in the background, the word punk rising above all others, and then a series of shots from another gun, much louder. Boom-boom-boom-boom! followed by the word, 'Punk!'

She frantically crawled behind Ford toward the back.

Kwang! Kwang! More glass and bottles came crashing down, with splinters of wood and pieces of insulation and wallboard whirling through the air. Moto roared something in Japanese.

Kwang! Kwang! The bar above their heads exploded into splintered wood, pieces of metal, and chunks of drywall and insulation.

'Get back here!' the man screamed.

Suddenly Moto was staggering along beside them, wheezing and coughing, blood spraying from his mouth. He clutched an enormous revolver in his hands and turned to fire two more shots, which went wild.

Kwang! Kwang! came the response and Moto, struck in the chest, was thrown backward into the shattered wall, one hand clawing away at the shower of broken glass, before crashing to the floor.

Kwang! Kwang! A small bar refrigerator tumbled to the floor in front of her, several bullet holes in it, spraying Freon in a cloud of condensates--and there, duct-taped to the back of it, was a slender, brushed-aluminum case with a stenciled logo of which Abbey saw only the initials NPF.

Almost without thinking she ripped it off, stuffed it into her belt.

'Run!' Ford said, turning around and seizing her by the arm; they bolted through the door, into a little stockroom filled with boxes. Another door stood in the back of the stockroom and Ford slammed through it and they tore down a narrow flight of stairs into a basement corridor, turned a corner, sprinted up another set of stairs, busted through a pair of metal crash doors into a back alley. Still gripping her arm, he hauled her along the street and around the corner to a busy intersection. They paused, gasping for air.

'You all right?' Ford asked.

'I don't know.' She gasped, sucking in air, her heart galloping in her chest. 'You're bleeding.'

He pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his face. 'It's nothing. We've got to get out of here.' He raised his hand, whistled for a cab.

She shook glass out of her hair, trying to get herself under control. Her hands were trembling. It was horrible to see a man killed in front of her; it reminded her all over again of Worth lying on the deck, blood welling up from his caved-in head. She leaned over and vomited on the sidewalk.

'Taxi!' Ford yelled, handing her a handkerchief.

She gasped, tried to straighten up, wiped her mouth with the handkerchief.

'Taxi!'

'Aren't we waiting for the police?'

'Absolutely not.' He flagged down a cab, opened the door, and shoved her in. 'La Guardia,' he said to the driver. 'Take Grand to Flushing. Stay off the expressway.'

'Your call, man. Gonna add ten minutes.'

The cab lurched forward into the rush of traffic. 'Why are we running?' Abbey almost shouted.

Ford leaned back, his face covered with sweat. A cut on the bridge of his nose was welling blood. 'Because we don't know who just tried to kill us.'

'Kill us? Why?'

Ford shook his head. 'I don't know. He was a professional. If our late, brave friend didn't have that cannon behind the bar, we'd all be dead. I've got to get you to safety. I should never have involved you in this.'

Abbey shook her head. She could feel it pounding. 'This is insane. What the hell's going on?'

'Somebody's looking for that hard drive. From what he said, it seems he might think we have it.'

Abbey reached into her jacket and pulled out the aluminum case, duct tape dangling. 'We do. This was taped to the back of the fridge.'

Ford stared at her. 'Did the shooter see you grab that?'