Koko Takes a Holiday (21 page)

Wire nuzzles the dark barrel slit of her HK softly under her chin. She winks at Heinz and imitates the look of a terrified child.

“You’re one sick pup, Wire.”

“That may be true,” Wire says drily. “But unlike Mu, I’m not stupid enough to leave myself exposed. Not in the long game.”

“And yet you lie there on that bed and tell me you’re going to kill me when we get Martstellar.”

“Did I also happen to mention I’m a confident bitch as well?”

Heinz contemplates drawing on Wire and blazing a pulse round right through her heart. Wire acknowledges the simmering menace behind Heinz’s eyes, and the two stagnate in measured silence for a full minute before Heinz breaks off their stalemate. They need each other. For now.

Heinz crosses the room. She unzips her new rucksack and removes two pulse grenades. After she depresses buttons on the sides of each, attachment prongs spring open. Charges from the two pulse grenades will fry the entire hotel room out clean.

“Cover the hall,” Heinz says, tapping in the armament codes. “I’ve got these.”

Wire sits up. “Hey, so we are going proactive, then?”

“What, you need a written invitation?”

Wire jumps to her feet. “But what about housekeeping? That Lee down on The Sixty stressed discretion.”

Heinz looks around for a place to plug the grenades into the walls. “You’re not squeamish about leveraging some old woman, why should I care about some loser housekeeper? The whole place is probably maintained by drones anyway.”

Wire beams. “Now we’re talking!” She grabs her rucksack from the bed and bounces happily toward the door. “Redhead honey finally got her pretty little head in the game. Man oh man, I just love that. Ooh, yeah-yeah. Ooh, right-right.”

“Do you have respiratory issues or something?”

Flynn and Koko are in front of a six-foot-high curved metal hatchway. Hands splayed and planted on her knees, Koko looks up at him. If eyes were daggers, Flynn is pretty sure he’d be harpooned to the wall like a bug.

Koko wheezes, “Just… tell me… we’re done… climbing.”

“We’re done climbing.”

“It’s about freakin’ time.”

Flynn explains that the hatchway accesses one of the least-populated areas of
Alaungpaya
’s incoming cargo and transport baggage holds. Flynn tells Koko that he has passed this way plenty of times before and that the hold is stacked with shipping containers managed by unmanned systemized robotics. The air about them is warmer and bitter with the pungent odor of scorched metal. Vibrations from the machine activity nearby shake the flooring beneath them. The whole area backs up to
Alaungpaya
’s arrival and departure decks and is a restricted section where, Flynn assures Koko, they are unlikely to encounter any additional techs. There are security image sweeps, naturally, but only one visual monitor trained on a bad angle and that had a cracked lens and frayed wires the last time Flynn passed through. He tells Koko to keep her head down anyway.

“I h-hate having my picture taken.”

“Just move fast,” Flynn says above the rumbling noise. The icicles in his beard have melted in the warmer temperature, and his face drips. “If somebody gives us any static, just keep quiet and let me handle it. I’m somewhat of a familiar face, and I’ll power us through.” He reaches over and starts to undo the seals and buckles on Koko’s coat.

“Hey! I’m still freezing,” Koko protests.

“You won’t need it,” Flynn says. “Take off the gloves I gave you too.”

Flynn takes her coat and his own and stuffs them both behind a dark cross-sectioned nest of winding rubberized cable. As he takes her gloves from her, one of Koko’s sharpened fingernails slashes the plump flesh on his exposed thumb. With the abating cold Flynn doesn’t feel the cut at all.

Flynn sees the sluggish red glob leaking from his tingling digit and looks at Koko, bewildered. He sticks his bleeding thumb in his mouth and sucks.

Koko bunches her shoulders. Lets them fall.

“Sorry.”

A wheel a foot and half in diameter is centered on the hatchway, and on the count of three Flynn rolls the wheel counterclockwise and pulls back on two locking bolts. As soon as he tugs the heavy door inward a brash screech undulates, indicating their presence. Oily gusts of balmy air muscle past them, and Flynn guides Koko inside. They huddle like two pilgrims lost in a storm, and he uses both arms and his full body weight to pull the hatchway shut behind them. When the door closes the alarm’s screech goes silent. Flynn locks off the bolts and signals for Koko to stay close.

He presses his lips close to her ear. “Fifty meters right and we’re clear.”

* * *

The cargo hold is, indeed, vast and filled with the thundering sounds of chaos—hissing belts, grinding gears, and powerful slams of metal on metal. When a large chained container clamped in magnetic claws whizzes by overhead, Koko has to fight the urge to look up.

The next thing she knows they are in a low-ceilinged tubular passage lined with horizontal sleeves of wire and a floor brightly illuminated from beneath and so heavily scuffed it resembles marble. Flynn races ahead to a door on the right and taps a keypad. The door unlocks with a small snap. As Flynn drags Koko inside by her wrist, she catches sight of shelves with jugs and plastic storage crates. As the door shuts behind them, they are swallowed in darkness.

“Be quiet,” Flynn whispers.

“What the hell is this place?”

“A custodial closet.”

“Oh, for the love of…”

“Shhh,” Flynn scolds. “The alarm. If anybody noticed, the SOP is to send a security check in under eight minutes.” He drags her right and lifts the lid off a large plastic bin braced against the wall. “Here. Get in.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Koko curses herself for trusting this suicidal whacko. She should have just shot him in the head and taken her chances. Her itching hands fall, and she feels the plastic edge of the large bin in front of her. Insistent, Flynn’s hands press in on the back of her waist.

“Just get inside,” he says. “I’ll climb in on top of you.”

Koko wants to jab a pointed elbow into his ribs. Maybe a little higher up his chest and stop his heart cold. “This is stupid,” she argues. “We’ll be cornered in this stupid thing.”

Koko turns her head and desperately tries to see Flynn’s face in the inky black, but she can’t. All she feels are his hands behind her right knee, urging and lifting.

“If they suspect any kind of a breach, it’s over,” Flynn says. “I don’t care how good you think you are, you’ll never get off
Alaungpaya
. They’ll lock down every exit and might even depressurize the whole cargo area and surrounding flight decks just to be sure.”

Koko groans with frustration and hoists herself over the edge and into the large plastic container. In a squat, she feels the stifling interior dimensions. The bin is empty, and the funk inside smells of burnt chemicals and putrid wet waste. Flynn climbs in next to her and lowers the lid on top of them. There is a buzz as the latch on the bin locks itself.

Flynn shushes her. “Quiet now…”

“Are we locked in here?”

“Yes.”

That’s it. Koko pulls her Sig from her belt as her other hand finds Flynn’s throat. She chokes him, and he starts to gag. Koko feels the edges of her nails break the skin and mark his neck as she buries a gun muzzle firmly against his cheekbone.

“How are we going to get out of here, bright boy?”

Flynn seems to be holding his breath. The slightest of moves on his part and her nails will make him gush out like a stuck pig.

“If no one comes,” he squeaks, “we’ll… cut our way out.”

Just for spite Koko considers ending Flynn right then and there, but she releases his neck.

“Boy, you sure know how to show a girl a good time, don’t you?”

Flynn rubs his throat and coughs. “Thank me later.”

Tucked inside the bin, they listen hard. Turns out, no one comes down the hallway to check on the alarm or the custodial closet. When they agree the coast is clear, Flynn instructs Koko to set her gun to the lowest pulse setting and squeeze off a reduced incendiary round to melt the lock. She does as he suggests, and the lid pops free. Koko throws back the lid and scrambles out of the bin as quickly as she can, but she trips and tumbles out onto the floor. Rolling over, she jumps up and finds her feet.

* * *

Flynn starts to hoist himself out of the bin, but he sees the dim red lights ornamenting the sides of her gun pointed directly at him.

“Put that away,” he says.

The gun indicators hold steady in the gloom.

“You know,” Koko says, “maybe I should just take my chances and get rid of you right here. Hell, you’re in that stupid trash bin already, what do you care? It’ll make a fine coffin. I’ll be doing you a favor. I can find my way from here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, but good luck with the rest of your little escapade trying to get off
Alaungpaya
.”

“I don’t need you, lawman.”

“Are you so sure?”

The indicator lights on the gun move and settle again. “This is my finger applying pressure on a weapon I’m not so familiar with,” Koko says.

“You know, you’re right. What do I care? Go ahead. Shoot me.”

“You think I won’t?”

“No,” Flynn answers, “I know you can. But you’re smarter than that. Tactically speaking, it makes no sense at all. Think about it. You know you can still use me for at least a little while longer.”

Flynn finishes fishing his lanky body out of the bin and straightens. He draws up a hand and rubs the neat, tenderized cuts scored beneath the stubble of his neck.

The red eyes on Koko’s gun abruptly swirl and disappear as Koko shoves her weapon back in her belt.

“You are something else, you know that?”

“I do have my moments,” Flynn says.

In the darkness, they go over the next steps of their plan and then head out.

“Welcome to DwopSwedz, twhere convenience twis our motto, thwherever your twavels may lead. May I help you, fwiends?”

The blonde, perky sales clerk working the DropSledz rental counter in
Alaungpaya
’s arrival and departure area adjusts the tilt of her skullcap as she addresses the two unamused women before her. The clerk’s tongue has recently been pierced with a waffle stud and gives the girl a heavily whistling lisp.

Wire hips past Heinz and cocks an elbow breast-high on the counter. She drops a couple of strat-sled coupons they took off Juke Ramirez on the counter between them.

“We have these strat-sled coupons…”

With an inspecting lift of her chin, the clerk leans forward and picks up the chits with dainty fingers.

“Oh yeth-yeth,” the clerk chimes, examining the chits beneath a scanner. “Our economy swed special with exthenwed wawanty. Pwart of our way-test pwomotion.”

Wire nods. “Yeah, terrific. Listen, maybe you can help us. We’re sort of looking for a friend of ours.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We’re supposed to meet up and travel together, but there’s been a bit of a miscommunication and now we can’t reach her. She may have come by earlier and booked a strat-sled. Has anybody come by and checked in under the name of Martstellar, first name Koko?”

The clerk’s blinking eyes ping between the two women. Heinz strokes the ribs of her neckbands and scrunches her nose.

“Oh. I don’t thwink so,” the clerk replies with cookie-cutter eagerness. “No, no one by the name of Koko. I thwink I’d wemember a name like that, and I’ve been on thwis shift for a while. Thorry. When would you two wike to departh Awaungpaya?”

Wire grumbles and takes the chits back from the clerk. “Never mind,” she says. Then Wire reaches into her rucksack and peels off a bunch of credits from a banded roll. “Here. This is for you. We’ll check back in a bit. If anyone named Martstellar shows up to book a rental, maybe you can let us know. Oh, and one more thing. Our friend doesn’t know about my red-haired friend here. It’s sort of a surprise, so if you see her don’t say anything until we talk with you.” Wire gooses Heinz’s ass, makes kissy noises, and winks. “Ain’t that right, sweetie?”

Heinz glares.

The clerk looks at the credits held out to her in Wire’s hand. The credits are easily more than the clerk pulls down in a week. The clerk leans over.

“I can’t accthep tipth,” she whispers.

“Just take it,” Wire says.

The clerk looks around and quickly palms the credits with a hasty nod.

Heinz has already turned away from the strat-sled rental desk and is scrutinizing the terminal area as Wire joins her, chuckling. In the arrival and departure area there are dozens of zig-zagged queues jammed with cattle-bored people awaiting transport. Most faces are upturned and glued to feed screens that hang at nearly every turn, and on a filmy blue membrane rotating above the entire area, a large scrolling display lists times, origins, and destinations of all departing and arriving aircraft. All listings on the blue membrane are underlined in red and marked
CANCELLED UNTIL POST-EMBRACE
.

Heinz gestures to a busy café a mere story above the whole place packed with travelers.

“We should probably set up surveillance there,” she observes. “Looks to have a pretty good view, fore and aft. I could take the port side; you could take starboard. Martstellar comes through here, we’ll spot her and cut her off.”

Wire agrees, and they go up a short flight of stairs to the café. It is noisy in the café, and the cone-domed ceiling above the centralized bar is lit by thousands of tiny twinkling blue sequins of light. Bulling their shoulders through the patrons, they purchase a couple of large coffees and then position themselves at hover tables in their agreed-upon positions and begin their watch

Twenty minutes later, Heinz’s ocular flutters on her skull with an incoming message from Vincent Lee down on The Sixty. From the communiqué’s tone it seems Lee is less than pleased and freaking out. Heinz immediately buzzes Wire.

“Talk to me.”

“Lee back at SI HQ wants an update on our status.”