city blues 01 - dome city blues (16 page)

Laser!

I’d seen enough of them in the Army to recognize one when it trimmed the edge off my ear.

It took me about a nanosecond to cram myself down between my seat and the front wall of the car.

My heart shifted into high gear and my adrenaline level skyrocketed as my body kicked into fight-or-flight mode.

I had three major problems…

#1 — I didn’t know if the guy with the laser was in front of me or behind me.  The window set in the sliding door at the front of the car was transparent enough for the laser to have passed through it like sunlight through water.  If the shooter was in the next car, he could have fired through the window without leaving a mark on it.

#2 — I didn’t have a clue what the mystery person looked like.  Male?  Female?  Old?  Young?  Tall?  Short?

#3 — I couldn’t get to my gun.

As tightly as I was jammed into the small well between my seat and the wall, no amount of wiggling was going to get my fingers on the butt of my Blackhart.  The closest I could manage with my right hand was about ten centimeters.  To get any closer, I’d have to bust a hole in the shell of the Lev or voluntarily dislocate my right elbow.  My left arm was pinned against the seat.

I listened for a few seconds, trying to catch some kind of clue to the location of the shooter.  I could hear the muffled chattering of the teenage boys at the back of the car.  I hoped they were smart enough to take cover.  I couldn’t hear anything from the old Japanese guy at all.  He might be hunkered down behind his seat in silence.  Or he might be lining up the laser for another shot at me.

I strained to hear any sounds from the next car.  If the shooter was up there waving a laser around, people might be screaming.  For the first time in my life, I regretted the quality of the soundproofing in MagLev trains.

The sound of my own heart pounding swelled until it filled my ears.  I tried to think…

If the shooter was in front of me, in the next car, he could only see me through the windows in the doors between our cars.  The laser could shoot through the windows too, but at least his field of vision would be limited.  I could crawl out of my hidey-hole, pull the Blackhart and jockey for a better position.  As long as I stayed below window level, I’d be safe.

However, if the shooter was behind me, he’d burn me the second I tried to move.

I tried to remember what I knew about lasers.  They need power.  A lot of it.  The big swivel mounted jobs (like the one that had sliced up John’s spine in Argentina) were usually plugged into a good-sized generator, or a major power grid.  The little hand-held types had to depend on battery packs.  Most of the ones I’d seen were reasonably bulky, small enough to fit into a backpack or a large purse, but much too large for a pocket.  Which meant that my shooter was probably carrying a largish bag or package.

Who did that leave?  Somebody already on the train?  Uh-uh.  No one could have possibly known exactly which Lev I would catch.  Whoever it was had followed me to the Lev station and boarded when I did.

The two business women were probably out; neither had carried a briefcase or purse.

The Japanese man, with his origami package, was a strong candidate.  That would put the laser behind me.

The young lovers were also a possibility.  I couldn’t remember whether the woman had been carrying a purse or not.  If it was the young couple, the laser would be in front of me.

My attempts to reason my way through the problem had taken me full circle.  I still didn’t know if the laser was in front of me or behind me.

If I were a vid detective like Mike Hammer, I’d have pulled the foil wrapper off a stick of gum and used it as a mirror.  Then I could have spied on the Japanese guy behind me from the safety of my hiding place.  Or, if the laser were in the next car, I could have used my foil mirror to reflect the deadly beam back into the killer’s face.  No muss, no fuss: Bad Guys dead in time for the commercial.

I didn’t have any gum, and I couldn’t have reached it if I had.

Come to think of it, Mike Hammer wouldn’t have dived for cover anyway.  When the shooting started, he’d have whipped out his automatic and shot it out with the Bad Guys on the spot.

This entire line of thinking took place in the ten seconds following the first laser shot.  That left me with two minutes and change before we pulled into the 52nd Street depot.

All I had to do was wait.  The killer was bound to take off as soon as the doors opened.

Two things changed my mind.  First: it occurred to me that, on his way out, the killer might just decide to ease up to the side of the train and shoot me through the nearest window.  Second: my right arm was beginning to fall asleep.

I mentally tossed a coin.  It came up heads.

I threw myself sideways, uncoiling my body until I was stretched most of the way across the aisle.  If that nice Japanese gentleman happened to have a laser, I was now a perfect target.  I snatched the Blackhart out of the shoulder rig and rolled over, ready to spray 12mm slugs toward the rear of the car.

The Japanese man was still sitting up.  There was a neat round hole the diameter of a cigarette in his forehead.  The laser had taken him just over the left eyebrow.

I touched the half-moon shaped notch in my left ear.  The flesh was cauterized, no blood, but it stung like hell.  I was alive by an accident of geometry.  If the beam had been a few centimeters to the right, it would have been me sitting there with a hole in my forehead, instead of that poor Japanese man.

I scrambled to a crouch and turned forward, most careful to stay below window level.

I spotted a crumpled sheet of hardcopy on the floor.  I carefully reached for it, picked it up, and rolled it into a cone.  I poked it above the lip of the window for about a second.

The laser fired again, cutting perfectly circular holes through both sides of the paper cone.

Two shots.  A hand laser on batteries was only good for about five shots at maximum power, and that one certainly seemed to be cranked up to the limit.  Which left the killer with three more shots, four at the outside.

A totally irrational urge came over me.  Suddenly, I wanted to pop up like a jack-in-the-box and start pumping 12mm slugs through that window.  I couldn’t do it; I knew that.  The killer wasn’t alone in that car; there were people in there with him, people whose only crime was riding the wrong train at the wrong time.

The Lev braked suddenly, taking everyone by surprise.  Levs
never
brake sharply unless there’s some type of emergency.  Thrown off balance, I lurched forward out of my crouch.

My head and left shoulder slammed painfully into the door.  Somehow I managed to hang on to the Blackhart.  The body of the Japanese gentleman pitched forward, bounced off a seat-back, and fell sideways into the aisle.  Behind me, I could hear fumbling and cursing; the teenagers had gotten banged around a bit too.  I knew that everyone else on the train had suffered similar fates.  Everyone except my friend with the laser, that is.

I had no doubt that the killer was expecting this, and had prepared for it.  He was probably the only person on board not nursing a few new bruises.

Now that I thought about it, it made sense.  Even if no one was monitoring the security cameras, probably two-thirds of the people on the train were carrying phones.  At least two dozen passengers had called the police by now.  When the Lev pulled up to the platform at the 52nd Street depot, the place was going to be crawling with LAPD Tactical.

The killer would have foreseen this, and planned for it.  It was a perfect recipe for hit-and-run murder: follow Stalin until he gets on a train, boil his brain with a laser, stop the train suddenly (well short of the next depot), and run like hell.  It would have worked too, had I not leaned my head against the window at the last second.

The doors hissed open on both sides of the car as soon as the Lev came to a stop.

My options were limited.  I couldn’t fight back with innocent people around.  So I had to lure the shooter to a place where I
could
fight back.  I had to get the killer off the Lev.

On hands and knees, I scooted across the floor to the door at the left side of the car.  A quick look both ways told me that the killer was either still on the Lev, or had gone out the other side.

I gathered my body into a crouch and threw myself out the door.

The ground came up hard and fast.  I rolled with it and came up running.

A pencil thin finger of ruby light flashed by the right side of my head.  I swerved suddenly to the left and kept running.

Three shots.  Which meant the laser was down to two charges, maybe three.

I changed course every few seconds, darting to the right or left with intentional randomness, trying to make myself a difficult target.  I was angling toward a trash dumpster behind the closest of the apartment stacks, about twenty meters away.

The ground under me was cracked plast-phalt, littered with broken glass that crunched beneath my shoes as I ran.

I made the edge of the dumpster, and darted behind it, breathing hard.  Up close, I saw that the dumpster was an old orbital cargo module, no doubt reduced to trash duty after its seals could no longer hold pressure against the vacuum of space.

I peeked over the top of the dumpster, the Blackhart in my fist outstretched like an accusing finger.  My pursuers had covered maybe a third of the distance between us.  It was the lovers, moving toward my position in sort of a weird half-walk/half-stumble.  The man was in front, the woman with her left arm around his neck.

The woman raised the laser over the man’s right shoulder and fired in my direction.  The beam scorched a line of paint across the top of the dumpster.  Four.

The man was struggling and it was throwing off her aim.  She was using his body as a shield.

The hostage thing might be a ruse.  They’d gotten on the Lev together, been huggy-kissy at the depot.  They were probably working together.  On the other hand, his struggles obviously weren’t helping her aim.

I had a couple of brief opportunities to take her with a head-shot, but I passed them up.  It had been a long time since I’d even pulled the trigger.  I certainly wasn’t ready for trick shooting.

She pointed the laser at me again, then changed her mind and jammed it against her hostage’s right cheek.  He stopped struggling, and started cooperating with her.

She pulled him to the side, angling away from me.  What was she doing?

She moved cautiously, careful to keep her hostage’s body between us.  I was equally careful to keep the dumpster between us.

They were moving toward an alley between two of the apartment stacks.  She was probably down to one shot, and had decided to abort the hit while she still had enough firepower to get away.

They broke and ran into the alley.

I took off after them.

The Blackhart led the way around the corner into the alley.  I could see them up ahead.  I was gaining on them.

A flight of steps was coming up: a good tall one, maybe twenty-five steps high.

They hit the steps about four seconds ahead of me and I was still gaining fast.

I took the steps two at a time.  By the time I was halfway up, they were at the top.  I expected them to keep running.  Instead, they paused at the top and turned to face me.

I froze on the steps, my automatic pointed up at them.  We looked at each other.

The woman shoved her hostage down the stairs and ran.

The young man came bouncing down the concrete steps in a jumble of arms and legs.  I don’t think a professional stunt man could have taken that kind of fall without breaking a few bones.

I could have jumped out of the way and let him tumble past.  Lady Laser was expecting me to stop and help the poor bastard.  I had a split second to decide.  I stepped to the side and lowered my center of gravity.  When he rolled by me, I reached out and grabbed him.  His momentum dragged us both down three or four steps.  For a half second, I thought we were going to end up careening down the steps together.  Then, thankfully, we ground to a stop.

I could hear the woman’s footsteps receding in the distance.  There was still time to give chase.

One look at the young man’s battered face made up my mind for me.  He was badly injured, maybe critically.  I let the woman go and tended to her victim.

His pulse was weak and rapid, but he never stopped breathing and his heart never stopped beating.  He undoubtedly had several broken ribs.  If I’d had to use CPR, he’d have died for sure.