'Ah, I see. And how is the colonel these days?'
The identity code was the same. Ruzhyo said, 'Still dead, last I heard.'
The manager smiled and nodded. 'If you will step this way, sir?'
'I have a tail. No connection to you.'
'Not to worry. He won't see through the window unless he has X-ray vision. Is he likely to come in?'
'I doubt that he is that stupid.'
'Well, if he does, he'll see you come out of the door to the WC.'
Ruzhyo followed O'Donnell through the water closet and through a hidden door to a small private room. There was a tall, green, antique safe on claw feet in one corner. As the manager opened the safe, he said, 'Would you be wanting something edged or projectile, sir?'
'Do you have a multiple-projectile model?'
'We have. A five-shooter. Small-caliber, I'm afraid, only.22.'
'That will do.'
'Here we are, then.'
He offered what appeared to be a standard umbrella to Ruzhyo, with the J-shaped wooden handle perhaps a hair thicker and heavier than normal.
'Handle unscrews here…. Inside, you'll notice the back of the cylinder. It's a revolver, you see.'
Ruzhyo looked at the five small holes in the tiny cylinder inside the umbrella shaft. The firing pin and rest of the action was in the removed J-section. Ingenious.
'One puts the shells in like so, threads the handle back on until it locks, thus. Trigger unfolds from the handle, thus, use this little notch, much like a penknife blade.'
He used his thumbnail to bring the flush-mounted lever out.
'It is double-action only, of course, and there aren't any sights, but a man proficient with firearms can point- shoot it rather well. Barrel is rifled steel, as good as most commercial long arms. The end cap is a soft, rubbery material, no impediment to the bullet if you don't have time to remove it, and actually offers a bit of sound-damping, though it must be replaced after several shots. The weapon comes with spare end caps, of course.'
Ruzhyo took the disguised carbine, hefted it. Normally, he did not like to go about armed if he did not specifically need a weapon. This was not a normal time.
'You have fired it?'
'I have.'
'And is there a place where I can test it?'
O'Donnell nodded, approving. 'That box over there. It's full of baffles and has a steel backstop.' He wasn't offended. Only a fool would trust his life to a weapon he had not personally tested to see if it would work.
'Ammunition?'
'I have some Stingers, solids and hollow-points.'
'Excellent,' he said. 'How much?'
'Two thousand.'
'Done.'
O'Donnell smiled.
The tail was across the street in a sandwich shop, watching through the somewhat foggy window. A young man, hair cut short, who could have been Huard's brother from his general look. The rain was still coming down, so Ruzhyo held his newly acquired and fully loaded short carbine up and utilized the secondary function. The black silk canopy expanded crisply on its titanium struts and locked into place. The thing had fired five rounds without any problem. It worked fine as an umbrella, too. A wonderful and deadly toy. Most people did not realize that an ultra- high-velocity.22 solid bullet fired from a long barrel would punch right through standard police-issue class II Kevlar body armor. Police agencies understandably did not like to talk about such things.
Ruzhyo smiled to himself as he walked away from the shop.
Peel would get him weapons, of course, but it was much better to have a hidden trump, just in case.
Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Chapter 26
The heat and dampness were oppressive, and the sour odor of the tiger's spoor permeated the leaden air. He was close; the tiger and the scent of his scat were mixed in with the stink of Jay's own fear.
Jay and his native guide followed the footprints across an open stretch of ground, easily seen now in the soft dirt. No doubt of it, no way to mistake the trail. It led across the open stretch into a dense patch of brush: fatboled trees, short, thick bushes, a bordering stand of big bamboo.
Jay shifted his sweaty grip on the Streetsweeper, took a long and ragged deep breath, and exhaled slowly. The tiger had gone into that thicket, and if Jay wanted it, he was going to have to go in after it. The prospect filled him with a dread as cold as a bucket of liquid nitrogen, a fright bordering on the edge of stark, gibbering terror.
Jay stopped walking. What he wanted to do was bail from this scenario, pull off his gear, and shut down his computer. He wanted to find a South Sea island somewhere in Real Time, to go there and lie in the sunshine on an empty beach for a month, to do nothing but bake and drink something cold with rum and coconut in it. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was traipse into that fecund wall of jungle ahead, stalking the thing that had crashed his wetware and put the fear of death into his mind. And if he did it, it might well be the last thing he ever did.
But he had to go. If he didn't, he might as well hang it up as a player; if he didn't find and destroy this beast, he was as good as brain-dead.
He took another deep breath and let it out. 'Let's go,' he said.
They were almost to the wood when his native guide said, 'Sahib! Behind us!'
Jay spun and saw the tiger charging them, impossibly fast.
He had maybe half a second, and he knew it wouldn't be enough. 'Bail!' he screamed.
Jay fell out of VR into his apartment, heart pounding, the panic filling him. The tiger! The tiger! He couldn't even breathe.
At his core, he knew he had to go back before it got away. He had to go back. He wanted to scream, to cry, to run, anything but what he had to do.
Instead, he said, 'Resume!'
Jay arrived in time to see the huge tiger sinking its terrible fangs into his detection program — the native guide — mangling it into a bloody ruin.
Poor Mowgli.
Jay snapped the shotgun up as the tiger realized he had returned. The great beast coughed, roared, and spun to face him. No hesitation, it charged—
— Jay stood his ground, aimed—
— fifty feet away, forty feet, thirty—
— he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked against his shoulder, lifted from the recoil. He fired again, too fast, too high—
— but the first blast hit the charging monster. It screamed in surprise and pain, sheared off, and ran for the forest. Jay saw blood on one of the tiger's shoulders as it wheeled around and ran.
He had hit it! It was fleeing! It wasn't invincible!
A surge of triumph washed his fear away. Jay had faced it down, shot it, driven it off!
