Cybernation

with no shirt on if you wanted, tropical heat, with snow seldom, if ever.

When he had gotten close to the spot where he intended to burn through the protected cable, using a few coils of Thermex welding cord he carried in his pack, he ran into unexpected company.

He thought this strange, since the place was in the middle of nowhere, a long way on foot from the nearest road.

There were two of them, big men. They wore back-country cold weather clothes — dark wool trousers and hiking books, plaid wool shirts and heavy Gore-Tex parkas, and orange caps with state logos on them. The logos indicated that the pair were game wardens.

Bad luck. For them.

Santos was not carrying a gun, and thus shouldn’t be thought a hunter, unless they thought he was chasing mountain goats and throwing rocks at them, but the two men decided to give him a hard time anyway. Santos figured out why in a few seconds when one of them said, “Well, well, whadda we got here — a hiker? Hey, Jerry, you ever hear of niggers hiking?”

“Can’t say as I have, Rich. They only have two forward speeds — cock-stroll and feets-do-your-stuff! But they show up nice against the snow, hey?”

Both men laughed at the lame humor.

That made it easier, not that it was necessary to be easier. He would have had to take care of them anyway, since they’d seen him, but it made him feel better that they weren’t nice men.

Santos waited for the two to get closer. Both men wore sidearms in holsters, visible under the unzipped jackets, the guns being Glocks, probably in 9mm or.40. The one named Jerry had a scoped bolt-action rifle slung over his shoulder on a hand-tooled leather strap. Looked like a Winchester Model 70, no way to tell the caliber. A good weapon, the Winchester.

“Colorado game wardens. Let’s see some identification, boy,” Rich said.

“Am I doing something illegal?” Santos said. “I thought this was public property. I’m not hunting or fishing.”

“Ooh, listen to that accent, we got us a foreign nigger. You from Mexico, boy?” That from Jerry. “Habla Spicko?”

“We want to take a look in that backpack of yours,” Rich said. “See if you have a gun you might be using to illegally hunt with. Hand it over.”

“Okay,” Santos said. “You’re the law.”

Both men smiled, glancing at each other, secure in their ability to whipsaw this one black man into subservience out here in the cold mountains.

He swung the backpack into Jerry’s face, hard, and before Rich could react, Santos did a cartwheel and kicked the surprised man flush on the mouth. Yes, it was a flashy move, one his Mestre would have slapped him for trying so quickly in even a street match, but these were not players, they were white racists. He wanted to bash them with style.

Rich went down, hard, and as Jerry managed to recover from being hit in the face with the backpack, Santos danced in and slapped the man, slinging his arm around using the twisting of his hips like popping a whip to deliver the power. The heel of his hand connected with Jerry’s temple and sent a shock up Santos’s arm. A good hit.

Jerry sprawled, and Santos would bet gold against sawdust the man was out of it.

Rich came up, clawing for his pistol, but Santos got there, grabbed his wrist and wrenched it, turned the gun so the muzzle faced Rich’s belly, then grabbed Rich’s fist with his own free hand hard enough to trigger the weapon.

The explosion was very loud in the quiet afternoon.

The empty shell ejected in a lazy, slow-motion arc, glittered in the sunshine, and fell, bounced from a flat rock, and tumbled from sight.

It shocked the hell out of Rich as the bullet hit him in the belly, you could see that.

The wounded man released his grip on the gun and fell to his knees, trying to stop the blood flow with his hands. That didn’t work. Red seeped through his fingers, dripping to the ground. It smelled like warm copper.

Santos grabbed the pistol, pointed it at Rich’s head.

“No, please, don’t—!”

Santos grinned. “Vaya con Dios,” he said. “That’s Spicko, right?”

“Don’t—!”

He shot the man right between the eyes.

Jerry was still down, feet twitching. Must have knocked him cold.

Santos took two steps, aimed, and put a round into Jerry’s head. The man spasmed, then went limp.

Two men, armed, and too easy. He sighed. In his country, the women fought better.

Santos tucked the gun into his belt. He would get rid of it later, where it wouldn’t be found. His prints weren’t on record in the United States, but he didn’t want this coming back to bite him twenty years from now. The authorities had long memories when you killed any of their own. Fingerprints, DNA, whatever they could get, these things stayed in the system forever. He had heard about guys picked up thirty years after they did a murder when something that had been sitting in a refrigerator at some lab for all that time matched with new crime scene evidence. He didn’t want that, always to be looking over his shoulder.

He went to the bodies and squatted. He already had his gloves on so there was little risk as he went through the dead men’s pockets.

He found two wallets on each man, which puzzled him. A look at the contents brought a big smile to his face. Huh. What do you know about that?

He dropped the wallets, collected his backpack, and headed back toward his target. He’d be done in an hour, long gone by nightfall… This high up, cold as it was, if the animals didn’t get them, they would keep a long time, turning to dessicated mummies. But the authorities would discover what the scavengers left when they came to find the broken cable, which would be sooner rather than later.

When he was far enough away, maybe he’d use a throwaway phone to call the authorities about these two. Just to make sure they didn’t go undiscovered. That would be amusing, no?

Yes. Most amusing.

* * *

Toni came into Michaels’s office looking at a computer printout. “Here’s something that will probably make the director happy,” she said.

“What?”

“You know those two federal fugitives, the militia guys? Ones suspected in the killings of a couple of game wardens in Colorado a few weeks back?”

“Bank robbers and armored car hijackers, right? Numbers five and six on the Ten Most Wanted? The ones the regular FBI has been combing the mountains looking for for the last three months?”

“That’s them. Seems some anonymous call tipped off authorities about where to find the pair. And sure enough, they had the game wardens’ ID and some of their clothing on them when they were located.”

“Captured alive? I seem to recall they swore they’d never be taken that way.”

“They were right. But they were both cold when the local sheriff’s deputies got there. Shot to death.”

“Who shot them?” he asked.

“Nobody knows. I’d venture to guess nobody really cares, either. Somebody who saved the state and the federal government the costs of a couple of trials.”

“Life is strange sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it just? The local cops also found a major transcontinental fiber-optic phone cable nearby had been cut.”

“Maybe the phone company shot them. Hear anything from home?”

“Yes, I just talked to Guru. Little Alex is sleeping. Has been no problem at all.”

“Ask her if she wants to move up here permanently, be a full-time nanny. Just for, oh, fifteen or so years?”

“You think you’re joking,” she said. “I’m considering it.”

“Now you’re joking.”

“Nope. She’s an old lady and I love her. I owe her a lot — what she taught me helped make me who I am.