“No, I’ll handle this one,” Gorski determined. “You need to stay out of sight. Preferably in a bolt-hole someplace.”
“You’re taking out the guy who wants my head on a platter to present to Herod,” Ashton said, “and you tell me to stay away? No way in twenty-eight levels of hell. I want to at least be able to see the guy get taken into custody.” He folded his arms, firming his jaw almost truculently.
Gorski and Peterson glanced at each other.
And sighed.
In the end, Ashton had his way…sort of. He sat with Rassmussen in the latter’s sharpshooting covert, there to watch from an out-of-the-way location. They were sitting in an alley across the street from where the team intended to take Gorecki into custody, and were screened from view behind a trash bin. The other police sniper on their team, Jones, waited behind a car nearby with the tranquilizer rifle.
More, Nick had talked Maia and Stefan into letting him handle the VR suppressor, so he could at least be a functional part of the team, not merely a tagalong.
They got there bright and early, just in case. Gorecki had been working into the evening for the past week or so, on what, the ICPD didn’t know and hadn’t been able to find out. But they’d been staking out his apartment and his office for nearly a week, and had a good feel for his hours by this time.
So no one was really surprised when it was mid-morning before Gorecki emerged from his apartment building in the South End to head into work. This was the quietest time of the day in the South End, with the revelers of the night before still in bed, and those with normal jobs already at work. Which was just the way they wanted it, Ashton considered. He triggered the VR suppressor.
Just then, Armbrand and Ames, wearing ICPD uniforms instead of their usual plainclothes look, stepped forward as Gorecki left the front door of his apartment building.
“Stanley Gorecki?” the male officer asked.
“Yeah, what about it?” Gorecki all but snarled. Then he glanced at the other officer, the female – and recognized her.
Damn, it’s the she-cat bodyguard, he realized. And she actually thinks she’s gonna take me down. I can see it in her eyes. Well, bitch, you got another think comin’.
“You’re under arrest,” the male officer said then. “Come with me, please.”
Jones raised his rifle to the ready, loaded with a tranquilizer dart. He targeted the biggest muscles of the body: the thigh and hip.
Rassmussen also raised his sniper rifle to the ready; it was not loaded with a tranquilizer dart. He targeted the part of the body most likely to drop a perp the fastest, sighting carefully through the ‘scope. Then he waited.
Gorecki turned and looked behind himself down the sidewalk, using the move in an attempt to hide drawing a pistol from an inside-the-waistband holster in the small of his back as he spun back to the officers.
This oughta take care of the she-cat and her pal, here, he thought, vindictive. I’ll catch Ashton later and put him down like a dog. Heh. Cat and dog.
But Ashton saw the move.
“HE’S GOT A GUN!” he called. “CALLY, GET DOWN! PETE, DUCK!”
Jones promptly fired a tranquilizer dart; it hit Gorecki in the left thigh, but the big man was already moving, amazingly fast for his size, far faster than the tranquilizer could take effect.
Gorecki raised his gun, swinging it toward Ames, his intent plain, even as Ames and Armbrand dove for cover, drawing their own weapons.
Rassmussen fired. The hollow-point bullet smacked Gorecki in the temple, angling back and across the inside of the skull, expanding and spinning as it went, beginning to tumble as it penetrated the bone of the skull. The resulting carnage in both brain tissue and VR nanite networking was severe in the extreme.
Stanley Gorecki was dead before he hit the ground.
“Well, that should take care of a few things,” Peterson said that afternoon, as The Team, as Ashton had thought of them long since – Stefan Gorski, himself, Peter Rassmussen, Roger Armbrand, Timothy Jones, Darrell Osborn, Rich Weyand, John Smith, Hugo Weaver, Callista Ames, and Alan Compton – sat in the investigations briefing room. “We have everybody who survived in custody, trussed and delivered to the Imperial Guard, and it’s up to the Throne to take care of ‘em now – those that aren’t already taken care of, I suppose. If you like, I’ll keep the lot of you informed of matters as I hear of ‘em. Or, Stefan, if you hear from the major, you can fill us in.”
“Right,” Gorski agreed.
“Now, you’ve all been working pretty steady, including some around-the-clock stuff while you tracked down our perps, so I’m going to let you go home early for a change, and get some rest,” Peterson said with a smile.
They were too tired to cheer, but they all grinned.
That night, the Palace was attacked.
Empress Ilithyia II was presumed dead.
Ashton stared at the news in his VR feed in horror.
Getting the Hell Outta Dodge
“NO!” Lee Carter decreed, as he lay beside Maia Peterson in their bed, and they discussed the horrible events of the day. “Nick was the single most promising, the most straight-laced, new recruit I’ve had come into IPD in years! Hell, watching him is what gave me the renewed backbone to stand up and walk out of that damned place! Do not let that boy be harmed, Maia! Get him offworld immediately! If they got the Empress, they won’t hesitate to take him out, if they can get to him! Especially if the Council gets control of the Throne!”
“All right, all right, Lee, calm down,” Maia told her newly