action, whining and rattling.
“What’s that?” Catie asked.
“We’re blowing up,” Andy teased.
“
“Psych.” Andy tracked the two battlesuits stumbling through the streambed. Both of them acted as if they’d lost their way. He readied the short-range missiles and fired a salvo at each.
The missiles struck the two Space Marines and started breaking them down at once. They shivered and shook like tin cans strung together.
Andy opened the comm-channel. “And that’s all, Blue Leader. Game over. Thanks for playing.”
The battlesuits exploded, showering the nearby terrain with shrapnel.
Andy lifted the HUD helmet and glanced at Catie…“We’re about done here, I’d say. Ready to see if we can get off-line?”
“Very,” Catie said.
“Detective Holmes.”
Maj glanced at the vidphone screen on her foilpack and saw that the LAPD detective was getting out of his car. The vid pickup swirled crazily, pulling the man and the alley into conflicting views as Holmes ran. “It’s Maj.”
“I’m kind of busy here.”
“Me, too,” she replied tautly. “I’m in an access tunnel under the convention center. The people who’ve got Peter Griffen are escaping through it.”
“How’d you find that tunnel?”
“History,” Maj said, her breath coming shorter from the excitement and the exertion. Her feet slapped against the tunnel’s stone floor. “We’re working on current events.”
“Do you know where it lets out?”
“The front lobby. There’s a storage area the tunnel accesses around the corner from the main desk. If they get out onto the street—”
“They’re gone,” Holmes said in agreement. “Got it. Keep this connection open.”
Maj ran harder. She leaned into the running, regretting the stale, still air around her because it wasn’t what her body needed for sustained effort. Her lungs started to burn.
At the next corner turn Maj folded her arms protectively in front of her, bumped into the wall, then pushed off with her hands to change directions rapidly. Wounded or being carried, she didn’t think Peter could move along as quickly as she was. She was certain she was cutting his lead.
The tunnel ended abruptly two turns later. Light glinted off the rungs of the ladder built into the wall. The hatch above was open. She scrambled up the rungs. The air felt cooler in the storage room.
A woman screamed out in the lobby, quickly echoed by other screams and hoarse warning shouts.
Maj opened the door and paused, looking through. The lobby was filled with people from the convention who looked lost and confused. But fear was catching on quick because three men drove a flying wedge through them, knocking bystanders aside with fists, knees, and elbows. Two more men trotted easily behind the wedge, holding Peter in a come-along grip.
None of the men said a word, but the big black pistols in their gloved fists spoke volumes.
“Detective Holmes,” Maj said over the foilpack. “They’re in the lobby.”
“I’ve got men there,” Holmes promised.
At that moment the crowd separated and four uniformed policemen ran toward the group with Peter. “Halt!” one of them ordered in a loud voice.
The three men forming the flying wedge raised their pistols and fired without hesitation. Dulled splats like a hammer driving home a nail echoed in the hallway. The four policemen fell without firing a shot.
Controlling her fear, Maj dashed forward. “Your officers are down, Detective Holmes!”
“How many?”
“All of them.” Maj pulled up short and looked at the bodies while the crowd continued to scatter around her. Natural light filtering in through the polarized windows fronting the hotel gave her plenty of illumination. Yellow- feathered tranquilizer darts stood out against the dark colors of the uniforms. The gunmen hadn’t fired for the center of their targets, choosing arms, legs, throats, and faces.
“What kind of shape are they in?” Holmes asked. “I can’t get radio contact.”
“They’ve been darted.” Maj kneeled beside one of the men and put her fingers on his neck. She felt the pulse beating sluggishly. “They’re still alive.” She pushed up and ran to the lobby doors, stepping over two more people who’d been darted.
The doorman was dropping at the same time she reached the red carpet under the canopy. The doorman fell limply halfway out into the street. Traffic screeched to a halt in front of him, missing him by inches.
“There’s the girl,” one of the men said. He aimed his pistol and fired.
Maj ducked back around the door. Glass broke near her right ear, shattering with a double-clap of impact. Pulling away, she spotted the two yellow-feathered darts that had stabbed through the glass pane she’d hidden behind. Hairline cracks spread out from the darts.
Horns honked indignantly out on the street.
Maj watched through the fractured glass as a gleaming, light blue Dodge van barreled down the four-lane street. The driver laid on the horn, pulling out into the oncoming traffic lane, then cutting back in to pull to a rubber-eating stop twenty feet down from the hotel entrance.
The black-suited men, with Peter in tow, rushed toward the Dodge van as the rear door opened. They threw Peter inside, then climbed in. The van took off before they could shut the door. Traffic ground to a halt in both directions, but the van roared down the middle of the street, careening occasionally from the stalled cars with a scream of tortured metal.
Maj dashed after it, trying to spot its license plate. No luck — it was missing. She lifted the foilpack and gave the best description she could of the vehicle as it sped away. It turned right at the corner and disappeared.
14
“We lost them,” Detective John Holmes announced as he strode into the conference room.
Maj had taken advantage of one of the implant chairs in the room and jumped into her own veeyar. She didn’t have access to all the investigation’s progress through the LAPD’s systems, but the local HoloNet servers were doing a good job.
Logged into her own veeyar and taking advantage of the room’s holoprojector systems, she was able to be on hand and access the Net at the same time. She had nine windows opened up to different media servers at present. Several of the stations covering the gaming convention were already doing back-story pieces on Peter Griffen, and she copied those immediately, archiving them as files.
Catie and Megan sat in one corner, engaged in their own conversation. Matt, Mark, and Leif, although actually still in-flight, occupied chairs at the main table with Captain Winters, who was really still back in his office as well. Andy had returned to the game room as the various services came back online.
Holmes glanced at his watch. “Uniforms found the vehicle less than two miles from here. It had been abandoned at a bar.”
“What about Peter?” Maj asked.
“He wasn’t there.”
“He was injured,” Maj said.
Holmes shrugged. “The investigating officers reported there was blood in the back of the van, but said it wasn’t enough to cause any real concern.”
“Other than the fact that Peter was forcibly kidnapped in front of thousands of witnesses.”
“We’re investigating, Miss Green. But we’re also checking into the possibility that this is a publicity stunt.”
“They wouldn’t have to do that,” Catie put in. “Did you see that dragon? That alone would sell millions of
